Dangerous Game

Interview (With The Vampire)

On top of Gallant and Evie, where no one, except for maybe Coco, was convinced Evie had died peacefully in her sleep, no one had seen Emily and Timothy since yesterday. It turned out they'd also been caught having sex, and they too returned back to the music room very much alive and still dressed in rich purples.

"Don't you think it's weird how Langdon shows up and suddenly people are all having sex and not getting shot for it?" asked Jaz. Lucy paused her reading to look at her friend. "Or that they're even having sex in the first place?"
"Maybe people are just tired of Venable?" She had been for the last eighteen months.
"But why would it start now Langdon's show up?" Lucy didn't know, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to know.
"Maybe he's changed the rules on it," she said. "I sure wish I could have sex, but I don't really think anyone here is my kind of guy." Jaz laughed.

"Who is your kind of guy anyway?" she asked. While Jaz had spent hours talking about how she wished there was a tall dark and ruggedly handsome man to sweep her off her feet and save her from the boring purgatory of the outpost, Lucy hadn't really mentioned the types of guys she'd fantasised about.

"Miss Williams, Mr Langdon requests your presence."
"Wish me luck," Lucy said. Jax laughed and gave a wave as Lucy stood.
"Good luck, hopefully see you later."
"Everyone else came back fine."
"Fine?" Jaz scoffed. "Just come back alive." Lucy grinned and followed Venable to the fireplace room, with a desk. She thanked Venable as she headed inside.

"Shut the doors," Langdon said. Lucy slid them shut and turned to face him. He sat at a desk, several papers in front of him.
"Should I sit?"
"That would be best." He gestured towards an armchair. "I have a kind of night vision of the soul. I can see the darkest parts of you and you cannot hide them. If you lie, I will know. If you try to trick me, I will know and this interview will be over. Understood?"
"Yes, I understand," Lucy said as she sat down in the armchair. She tried to lean back, to put herself at ease. But with everything being so strange around this man, how could she ever be at ease?

"Why are your eyes an unnatural orange colour?" She raised her eyebrows. Surely he'd know it was genetic if he already had information on them.
"It's inherited. Genetic. Traces back a hundred and fifty years, I think," she said. He hummed but said nothing so she continued on. "An ancestor, Marie, was disowned from the family for a third eye that was orange in colour, and I'm descended from her sister. Every once in a while, it reappears in weird ways. My cousin got it too."
"Interesting," he muttered to himself. Lucy tried to take a steady breath in, this felt more like an interrogation rather than an interview, but she wasn't entirely surprised.

"Tell me about your father."
"He worked for the Cooperative, he was very secretive about it. He just told us we'd be safe when we needed to be," Lucy said honestly. Langdon nodded and leaned back in his chair behind the desk.
"Except he's dead. So is the rest of your family." Lucy swallowed and nodded. They were. He'd done it to protect them, and she'd been the one they'd protected. She hadn't deserved it, not really. "What do you know about that cousin and her family?"
"Katlynn? No one ever said much about her, except my uncle split up with his wife over something to do with her. Her brother, Tyler, ended up being sent to a boarding school. I don't know much else. I was kinda young, no one told me much about it."

"Tyler Williams, he went to an all boy's school."
"I think so, yeah," said Lucy. Was that also in her file? If he knew that, why was he asking her about everything else? Shouldn't he already know it all? "This place used to be an all boy's school, didn't it?" He didn't say anything but she wondered if this was the boy's school Tyler had gone to.

"There's a darkness surrounding you and your family," he said and Lucy's eyes widened. If he wanted to talk about that, why hadn't he just asked? Then again, she hardly believed it herself. "Tell me what you think that is."
"I don't know."
"I think you do." He leaned forward, his fingers curling underneath as he lifted his hand to the side of his face. It reminded her of Lestat in Interview With The Vampire, the one with Tom Cruise. The look in his eye was similar to how a vampire might look at prey.
"I don't know, I guess..." She remembered back to when she was younger, in middle school. When her grandmother died. "My family's kind of been weird since my grandmother died, but I don't really remember it."

Michael stared at her for a moment and then sighed. Suddenly he stood up, the chair scraping across the floor.
"Failure to comply results in exclusion from the Sanctuary and this interview would be over," he said as he walked over.
"They told me my nan died peacefully in her sleep, but I always felt like it was a lie," Lucy said. She could remember her parents sitting her down when she was seven, explaining her nan had suffered a heart attack after falling asleep. "I sometimes dream of a man with two faces talking to my grandmother. There was another woman with him. But I don't remember any of what actually happened. I don't, honestly."

Michael hummed as he knelt in front of her, staring intensely. Nearby, the wood crackled and fire burned, casting shadows on his face.
"I think you should remember." A pain spread stretched from her temples across her head.
"I..." She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to ignore how he stared, trying to ignore how her head suddenly hurt. "I don't feel well."
"There's nothing wrong with remembering what happened, nothing wrong with being honest with the darkest parts of yourself." His voice was somehow soft but powerful. "The people here, they irritate you. Coco might as well be a cartoon caricature, with all the personality she has. Gallant is annoying, a stereotype. Ms. Venable is too strict and Jaz too gossipy."

The pain in her head eased and she took a deep breath, lifting her finger to rub her temples and tense muscles.
"Just because they can be irritating doesn't mean they're always like that," she said with a shrug. If it wasn't for this place, some of them might have had to face their realities and change as people, or at least, Lucy hoped so. "We're stuck in here, it's not exactly the best place to be yourself or to be nice."

"And Ms. Venable?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"She dislikes me because I have a habit of not following rules," she said. Not the ones that could get her killed, she wasn't that stupid. Just the ones that wouldn't make a big difference. "I'm late to breakfast or skip it, I don't have cocktails with the others every day."
"You prefer reading in another room." He smirked as he stood up.
"Or just talking to Jaz, she likes chatting about the others but I'd rather hear the gossip from her than be forced to sit there," Lucy said honestly. Sometimes Jaz got a little annoying with it, but it was something to do. "I'm just not good with authority."

"Not good with authority? You dropped out of Princeton after one year." He knew that?
"Deadlines count as authority to my brain?" she said quietly. "The one professor was a dick and I only got to go because Dad used the Cooperative's money. He tried keeping it quiet but it didn't take a genius to figure out where the money came from." Within the seconds, Michael's face darkened and the flames in the fireplace dimmed. Lucy glanced at it before turning back to him. He stood by his desk, staring at the papers on it.

"This interview is over."
"That's it?"
"If I have any more questions, I will call you back in," he said as he picked up his pen. He stared at her for a moment. "You may leave." Nodding, Lucy stood, not liking his sharp movements and the way he looked at her. He seemed almost angry, had she said something wrong? She hadn't lied.
"Thank you for the chance and the interview," she said as she stood. Interrogation was definitely more accurate, and she couldn't understand why he knew some things but asked about others.

Lucy headed to the doors and shut them behind her, feeling the hairs on her neck stand up. Her arms were covered in goosebumps and she shivered before setting out to find Lucy.