Interview With Vampires

chapter three

The recorder clicked once again.

The fire in the drawing room had burned lower this time, more embers than flame. Outside, the night settled like a velvet curtain — soft, dark, and endless. Joe glanced at the two figures across from him, trying to read the silence between them.

Lucien spoke first.

“I don’t remember the first time I felt powerful,” he said, “but I remember the first time I enjoyed it.”

He leaned forward, fingers clasped loosely between his knees. His silver eyes had darkened slightly, not with anger — but memory.

“It was weeks after the turning. My skin had stopped burning from the inside. My mind, once buzzing and cluttered, had finally quieted down. Celeste—” He gestured toward the elder vampire beside him. “—had been teaching me to move without sound, to listen to things beyond sound.”

Celeste raised a brow, lips twitching slightly. “You were a fast learner. Impatient. Reckless. But brilliant.”

Lucien ignored the compliment. “He told me I had a gift. Something rare. I could slip into the thoughts of mortals as easily as breathing. At first, it was overwhelming — hearing strangers' secrets echo in my skull. But then… it became thrilling.”

Joe’s pen scratched quickly across his pad. “You mean mind reading?”

Lucien nodded. “It started small. A flicker of emotion. Then full sentences. Desires. Fears. I could walk into a room and know who was lying. Who wanted something. Who was about to make a mistake.”

Celeste added softly, “I showed him how to focus it — how not to drown in the noise. Once he understood control, it became a weapon.”

Lucien smiled faintly. “A tool.”

Joe leaned in. “What did you use it for?”

“A pub,” Lucien said, almost laughing. “You’d think I’d go after something glamorous. But I liked the idea of people — their energy, their mess. I bought a rundown tavern with cash from a nobleman whose mind told me where he stashed his fortune.”

Celeste looked away, amused. “He didn’t ask for permission.”

“I didn’t need it,” Lucien replied. “I charmed the realtor. Fixed the place up in weeks. I knew exactly what my patrons wanted before they said a word. I hired barmaids with good hearts and bad tempers, because I knew they’d protect the place when I wasn’t around.”

Joe blinked. “You ran a vampire-owned bar?”

“Still do, in a way,” Lucien said. “Though now it’s got a jazz band and overpriced wine.”

Joe laughed. “Did people suspect?”

Lucien’s gaze turned sly. “They suspected I was dangerous. That I knew too much. But they liked me too much to care.”

Celeste added, “He had charm before the turning. Immortality only sharpened it.”

Joe flipped a page in his notebook. “So what happened next? You made money. Gained power. What about… your relationship?”

Lucien paused — then looked toward Celeste. For once, the silence between them was soft.

“We moved into a house on the edge of town,” Lucien said. “Big. Old. The kind with winding staircases and iron-gated gardens. Mortals thought it was haunted. We liked it that way.”

“There was light in it,” Celeste added quietly. “Not sunlight — but music. Books. The sound of your laughter.” His voice dimmed at the memory. “It had been a long time since I had lived in a home, not just a hiding place.”

Joe noted the subtle shift in their tone. “You were falling in love.”

Lucien didn’t deny it. “Slowly. It crept in — not like fire, but like ivy. He stopped being just my maker. He became the only person who truly saw me.”

Celeste’s voice was barely audible. “I tried not to.”

“Why?”

Celeste looked away. “Because when you love something, you start fearing how easily it can leave you.”

Joe glanced between them. “And yet, you're still here.”

Lucien leaned back slightly. “It wasn’t always easy.”

Joe flipped to a fresh page. “Tell me.”

Lucien’s expression shifted — thoughtful, restrained. “It started with blood.”

Joe frowned. “Human blood?”

“I stopped drinking it,” Lucien said. “At first it was guilt. Then it was instinct. The more I read their thoughts, the more I saw — their children, their regrets, their dreams. It started to make me feel... sick. I tried feeding from thieves, abusers, the worst of them. But even that wasn’t clean.”

Celeste sighed quietly.

Joe turned to him. “You disagreed?”

“It wasn’t just disagreement,” Celeste said. “I was furious. I had taught him to drink elegantly, discreetly. He’d mastered it. But he began to pull away — sneaking off to drink from animals, disappearing into the woods like a feral thing.”

Lucien snapped, “They didn’t scream in my head. They didn’t beg. They just… accepted it.”

Joe glanced at Celeste. “Did you try to stop him?”

Celeste’s voice was measured. “I wanted to. I considered locking him down, starving him, forcing the hunger back until he craved what he needed. But…”

He looked over at Lucien.

“…he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was choosing who he wanted to be.”

Lucien didn’t meet his gaze. “We stopped speaking for almost a month.”

Joe blinked. “You lived in the same house and didn’t speak?”

Celeste nodded. “We slept in separate coffins. Separate rooms.”

“But eventually,” Lucien added, “he knocked on my door one evening. And all he said was, ‘I bought fresh linens. Yours smelled of moss.’”

Celeste smiled faintly. “That was my way of saying I missed him.”

The fire had almost gone out now. Just embers. Red and pulsing, like a heart too tired to stop beating.

Joe leaned back slowly. “So you learned to live with the differences?”

Lucien said, “You don’t survive eternity with someone unless you learn to love them for who they are — not who you expected them to be.”

Celeste looked at him. “Or who you tried to make them.”

Joe turned off the recorder with a soft click.

“That’s more than love,” he said quietly. “That’s devotion.”

Lucien gave him a sideways glance. “Don’t write that down. Makes us sound romantic.”

Celeste murmured, “We were. Once.”

And outside, the wind moved again — through the trees, over the rooftops, around the house at the edge of town where two coffins waited in the basement.
Not as tombs.
But as home.