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Daniel took the interview out on the hotel terrace. It was late enough that she was the only customer, empty tables already prepped for the breakfast service, black sea glittering under the half moon, clink of the last waiter polishing glasses at the bar. Daniel slipped him some cash and told him to fetch her a pack of Marlboro Reds and not to let her glass get empty while she was on the phone. Granted, a stiff martini didn’t have the effect that it used to, but Daniel had spent years curating the habit of drinking through press calls, and she wasn’t about to break it now.
The journalist at the Times was a dick who had called Daniel’s first book “fetishized radical nonsense” and her second “petty woke erotica”, so this interview was bound to be a good time. He started by apologizing for the late hour of the call. Daniel smiled and fixed her AirPod closer to her ear.
“For you, Chuck? No problem.”
“What time is it down there?”
Daniel tapped her Macbook to wake the screen. “Just gone two a.m. in Cabo.”
“Quick vacation from the book tour?”
“Something like that.”
Chuck mostly followed the same line as all the other hacks Daniel knew; goading her to admit that she’d made the whole thing up, pressing her on minor facts that they didn’t have a hope of disproving, trying to get her to drop the bit.
“And allegedly you first met this woman in the 1970s?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said. “Dyke March ‘73. She was at one of the afterparties.”
“Because they only come out at night?”
“Exactly,” Daniel said, grinning. “You know what happens when a vampire goes out in the sun?”
“I have read your graphic description of it.”
“I’m a great writer,” Daniel said, “but I have to tell you nothing compares to the real thing. The smell alone…”
Daniel winced. She had already made that mistake back in Dubai, before she had really understood the gravity of her situation. Running out onto the roof when she woke up, thinking only of escape, before the sun hit her and turned every inch of flesh into searing pain. She could still remember staggering to the ground, screaming, clawing at her face. Armand was the one who had dragged her back inside, and then they had to spend a month recovering together, in the wreckage of that penthouse prison. Speaking of… Daniel tapped the screen to check the time again. Almost two thirty already.
“So what’s next for Danny Molloy?” Chuck asked. “Should we expect ‘Lesbian Vampire Blues’ to hit the shelves next year?”
Daniel laughed. Sometimes you just gotta hand it to ‘em. “I like that a lot, Chuck. You want a credit if I use it?”
She missed Chuck’s response because at that moment Armand drifted out onto the terrace. The new shirt was slightly too big for her; rumpled sleeves rolled up to her elbows, collar unbuttoned so the burgundy fabric fell open and exposed her collarbone, a swath of cleavage. Daniel shook a cigarette out of her pack and slid it across the table as Armand sat down, lifted it, waited for Daniel to flick open the lighter.
“Now, Chuck, the industry’s moved on a little since then. There’s no shame in being big on booktok.”
“May I have my room key?” Armand said.
“Give me a second,” Daniel said, and muted her microphone. She turned to Armand, who stared back at her calmly. Her hair was a little ruffled, a few stray hairs stuck to her neck like she might have been sweating earlier tonight, but otherwise she looked the same as she had a few hours ago. Fine features unperturbed, glassy nails immaculate, her delicate golden nose ring still in place.
“Good night?” Daniel asked.
Armand shrugged, thin shoulder rising and dragging her shirt further open across her chest. Daniel wondered how far she had run tonight, if she’d worked up a sweat beneath the shirt too, damp salty skin beneath her tits, across the small of her back.
“The tourists out here are like fish in a barrel,” Armand said.
“I was expecting you back by two o’clock.”
Armand checked her watch, fastened to her wrist on a golden chain. Daniel watched her feign surprise at the time. “I’m sorry. He was a faster runner than I expected.”
“Is that my problem?”
Armand said nothing, kept her eyes down. Daniel pulled the first room key out of her jeans pocket and slid it over. She always kept both of them, never let Armand have her own for too long. Made it easier to keep track of where Armand was.
“You know where to wait.”
Armand rose her eyes to meet Daniel’s. “Yes, sir,” she said, and it made something inside Daniel click on and start to purr. She knew that kids these days preferred to say daddy, but Daniel had always been partial to sir, the implied distance, the hierarchy that did not suggest mutual obligations. Daddies had babies. Sirs only had inferiors.
“Go back up to the room,” she said. Armand nodded, and glided away from the table. Daniel unmuted her phone again.
“Listen, Chuck, can we wrap this up? These bookplates don’t sign themselves.”
As she paid the cheque with Armand’s credit card, she decided to have one last cigarette on the terrace. Back when she thought she was going to die, Daniel had made a more conscious effort to notice the beauty of her surroundings. Now that she was already dead she got a new kind of kick out of it, this sea breeze, this starry night, none of the melancholy certainty that one day she would lose it all. These days it felt more like surveying a kingdom that almost no one else could claim.
Booking.com said the sunrises here were spectacular but it didn’t really bother Daniel that she’d never see them. She’d always been more of a night owl anyway. She’d always had a taste for things that kept you up late and then knocked you out cold in the morning; San Francisco’s best cocaine in the 80s, new York’s best molly in the 90s, and then she met Alice and signed herself on for twenty years of red wine and raising kids and the mindfuck of divorce, and now here she was, gray haired and somehow more toned than she had been at twenty two, that persistent ache in her lower back gone overnight, the whole world opened up to an entirely new kind of high. The blood of the tourist kid she’d drained yesterday still thrumming like a bassline in her heart. She could sense Armand upstairs in their suite, willing her to finish up and come upstairs. She smiled to herself. One more for the road.
Daniel was not Louis du Lac. She did not feel the need to endlessly over analyze her own decisions or form grand hypotheses about her desires. She needed a guide and Armand needed a keeper - simple as that. Everything else was just gravy.
Armand’s only concern was that Louis might find out about them. Daniel thought Louis didn’t give a flying fuck what Armand did anymore, especially not after she’d found Lestat in New Orleans, but she was saving that little tidbit for the next time Armand really pissed her off. She would throw it hard into the center of an argument. You know Louis ran straight back to Lestat as soon as she could get away from you? Talk about a mic drop moment. Armand was great fun when she was devastated - big weepy eyes and trembling lip, speechless for a blessed few minutes. It made Daniel feel powerful when Armand ran out of things to say. She suspected Armand had already figured that out and would use it to manipulate sooner or later, but that was okay. It made it easier for Daniel to keep her guard up, made her feel more justified in her lack of empathy. Another way that Daniel was not like Louis: she did not suffer from an excess of guilt. Hell, Daniel had been an out dyke in the 70s, she’d sympathized with killers on death row, she’d marched on Washington with her tits out. She’d long since scourged herself of shame.
The night manager nodded politely as Daniel passed through the lobby. Nice guy, very discreet - he would have already seen Armand go up alone. Daniel knew how they looked together, when they checked into these five star resorts. The old, wealthy dyke and her pretty young sugarbaby, out here for a month of excess. Fine dining and shopping and fucking, and no wonder none of the staff saw them in the daylight. Truly shameless, the way Daniel led Armand around, always walking two paces behind so she might as well have been on a leash. The racial element wasn’t doing Daniel any favors, she knew, made her look like some kind of ultra problematic misogynist taking every ounce of structural power she could get. Sometimes it amused Daniel to lean over to the scandalized elderly couple in the loungers next to hers and say, “Actually she’s 400 years older than me and a billionaire - that has to count for something!” Admittedly, Daniel had taken over control of the finances some time ago.
When she got up to the hotel room she found Armand naked and kneeling beside their bed. She had let her hair down, and it trailed down her back in waves, glossy black and soft. Daniel wrapped it around her knuckles, got a good enough grip to drag Armand upward and fling her onto the bed where she landed.
“Belt,” she said.
Armand crawled toward her, delicate hands dragging across the sheets. It still fascinated Daniel, how slight Armand was, such a small handful of muscle and skin and blood, eternally powerful but always contained in her sweet, girlish body. She put her hands on her hips while Armand unbuckled her belt, dragged it from the straps and handed it to her.
“You were thirty minutes late,” Daniel said. “Thirty strikes seems fair to me.”
Armand nodded, said nothing. She must have been expecting this. Had probably been late on purpose to make sure she got it. Daniel wondered if Louis had put up with tricks like that, deliberate rule breaking for the sake of punishment. It seemed like the sort of thing that Louis would deem inauthentic. Daniel didn’t mind it so much.
She put Armand over her lap, sitting on the edge of the bed with the belt folded in her hand, and strapped her across the ass. Daniel had read all the books on safe kink, gone to all the seminars, had the rules of engagement recited to her by every leather dyke at every Safe Sane Sober workshop in the country, but somehow she didn’t think those rules applied to Armand. She did not hold back at all, the thwack against Armand’s ass loud enough to wake up the neighbors.
It only took three strikes before Armand made a noise: a high pitched yelp, deeply undignified. One of her hands was clutching the denim at Daniel’s thigh. Bruises had already started to form. Daniel focused on the biggest one, a dirty purple mark, and aimed her next blow accordingly.
It was always her goal to make Armand cry. She didn’t know why - with Alice it had always been about getting her off, humiliating her with how much she wanted it. But Armand was different, ignited something in Daniel that only wanted to see her wrecked, sobbing, destroyed. That was the thing about power, Daniel guessed. Ever since Armand had delivered it into Daniel’s veins Daniel was only interested in gaining more, and Armand was a never-ending source.
Daniel got the tears she was looking for at twenty-two strikes. Armand’s skin was etched with deep purple lines, and her toes kept curling and uncurling. She was wet, of course, a damp patch forming on Daniel’s lap, but Daniel was more interested in Armand’s mussed up face. She dragged Armand back by the hair, got a good look at the tear tracks down her face, dewy eyelashes, deep flush to her cheeks and a little blood on her lower lip where her teeth had come out and she’d nicked herself. She gave Daniel a look that was a plea, though she clearly did not want to stop.
She took the last eight strikes pretty well, all things considered. Daniel was almost out of breath with the exertion; if Armand had been mortal, the damage would have been enough to keep her sore for weeks. As it was Armand would probably be mostly healed by tomorrow, just the ghosts of bruises left for a reminder. She tilted her knees just enough to roll Armand off of her lap and dump her onto the floor. Armand cowered there, wet-faced, naked, shaking.
“Thank me,” Daniel said.
Armand swallowed. Ran the back of her hand across her mouth. Came forward on her knees to undo Daniel’s fly.
Armand was a quick study; she had figured out early on how to get Daniel off, and she’d only improved since then. She undressed Daniel with neat, careful fingers, dipped her head between Daniel’s legs, smart flick of her tongue. At Daniel’s first sigh she felt Armand smile against her, come closer, flattened tongue finding Daniel’s clit with ease. Daniel thought that Armand derived a kind of pride in how well she gave head, and it made her want to slap Armand around and tell her no. There’s no pride in getting your mouth fucked, she wanted to say. There’s no being good at it, there’s no skill involved. You just take it.
She fisted her hand in Armand’s hair and dragged her in closer, felt Armand’s nose crush against her, Armand’s hot mouth gasping for her.
“Slut,” Daniel said. “Fucking comeslut.”
Armand groaned, a shudder rolling through her, and Daniel grinned and pulled harder. She thrust her hips up against Armand’s face, a rough, humiliating grind against Armand’s tongue, and took her pleasure as she wanted it. At one point Armand’s hand drifted down hopefully between her legs. Daniel kicked her away, boot making contact with Armand’s thin wrist. Armand whimpered, but she should have known better than to touch herself without asking.
“Just for that,” Daniel said, “you aren’t gonna come tonight.”
A tiny crease appeared at Armand’s brow, but she made no attempt at protest. You ever think about those 400 years before you met me? Daniel had asked her last week. Think about all those things you did, all those people you killed, all of it just so you could end up as my pet?
She came hard into Armand’s mouth, hips rising off the bed and head tilting back, so fast that she sent Armand sprawling back across the floor. Armand looked a mess, coated in sweat, hair flying everywhere, mouth swollen from loose. Daniel made her wait while she got herself back together, pulled her jeans back up, ran a hand back through her own hair. Then she clicked her fingers and Armand came crawling forward.
“Kneel,” Daniel said. “Don’t speak. Don’t even think.”
Armand bowed her head. Daniel could sense it, the will to obey, the rush of coherent thought leaving Armand as she focussed on the command. Don’t even think. She had linked her hands behind her back, perfectly still.
“I’ll know if you moved,” Daniel said. She picked up her leather jacket from the back of the chair. Their two coffins were set up in the suite’s living room, laying open with their pillows fluffed by the maids who clearly thought they were just another fetish for their degenerate guests. She had two hours until sunrise - more than enough to sprint up the coast to the closest party town and peel a frat boy away from his pack. Daniel always got hungry after sex - one thing that hadn’t ever changed.
She left Armand kneeling in position, practically jogged down the stairs, had to avoid the urge to whistle to herself. Daniel was always in a good mood these days.
Once again Daniel, I have to advise against this relationship.
“Relationship?” Daniel said. “I’m not sure I’d use that word.”
Louis’ voice was gravely serious in Daniel’s head. Despite escaping Armand, she had failed to lighten up at all.
You are in great danger.
Daniel clicked her tongue against the inside of her cheek, nodded again to the night manager on her way out of the hotel. The stars were on full display above, a thousand tiny dots of light, really awe-inspiring stuff.
“You really think so?”
You do not know what she is capable of.
Daniel stretched her arms and shoulders out, another old habit. Her body rarely caused her pain anymore. “Why don’t we all just worry about our own shit,” she said.