The Vampire Chronicles

Watch "The Vampire Lestat: After Dark"

on AMC+ or wherever you get your podcasts.

Previously on "The Vampire Lestat"...

The collection has been named "The Failures."

That's why these movie producers hired you,

Daniel Molloy, vampire slayer.

They said you requested me.

What happened at age 9?

I was taken to see witches being burned at a stake.

It's what moms did with kids before LEGO and Peppa Pig.

Ready to eat your own?

What is with the tan, Dan?

I'm seeing someone.

The Vampire Armand, the love of my life.

More deaths than births.

It's happening, Daniel.

The Great Conversion, it's real.

Your music speaks to them.

They long for a communion.

You're the one putting the show together?

50,000 of us.

They're coming from all over the world.

Find someone else to swindle.

He's the one coming around here doing all this with me.

I look like her. I look just like her, don't I?

We eat your soul at the long table.

If it was just the two of us again, could be nice.

Could be.

You'd be a head mounted above a coven toilet

if it weren't for me.

You assume death at decapitation.

You are listening to "The Failures"...

Album 57, Side A.

Could be nice, says Louis.

Could be, I say.

And our hands touch.

I am staring at Alex in his plastic Dracula mask.

And then I think, why is he here?

And then the world pivots.

And I see stars in the sky.

Boots upside down.

My blood, a half-painted moon.

And then I'm dreaming.

I'm walking a path.

I am listening to hidden birds in a forest

and transcribing their chatter into music on paper.

It's the same dream I've been having

since I finished the album and faked my death,

except now I'm hungry and it's daylight all around.

And as I'm a vampire, confirmed by the glass nails

on my fingers, I should be burning,

but I'm not.

The birds' music becomes repetitive.

And then the forest goes quiet.

No birds singing.

I am left with my hunger,

a feeling like my stomach is eroding from the inside.

And then, as if the forest has heard my thoughts,

a murder of waiters carrying silver-domed trays

take over my path.

Come now, Lestat.

No falling behind.

And I follow my hunger into the wood.

And I begin to hear sounds of a city,

and that little song they play for the blind

at crosswalks throughout Montreal

carries my hunger to the table of my youth,

where my selves sit with the abbot of Haute-Loire...

Circles us as God...

Instructing from my father's chair.

Encircles us with his love.

The hood?

Limits our view and cuts out the world

so we gaze ahead towards God.

And the length of our habit trips us up

and gets in our goddamn way.

- Lestat. - Lestat.

- Lestat. - Lestat.

Have a seat, Lestat.

There's seven waiters and only four of us.

both: Have a seat. - Have a s--

Seat. Seat.

The light's gone out of your blue eyes.

all: As if all the summer days are gone.

Course 187, the soul.

I have been enduring intense conversations

with myself in the three years since our companionship ended.

And as part of that journey, I wish to say something

from the deepest regions of my soul.

Ar--

Two grievous lies, gross betrayals.

The first is a well-trod pit of hot coals

I blistered my feet on for 77 years.

Arm...

I chose my coven over you,

lured you into a production of a play,

in which your death would act as the grotesque climax.

The coven was twisting my arm, but...

Ar...

I took aesthetic pleasure

in making your death visually exhilarating.

...mand.

All of which was made worse by our heady lovemaking

throughout this period of betrayal, and...

the second.

I shamefully took credit when Lestat saved your life.

Where am I?

That lie bound you to me, and it lay like a corpse

in the boiler room of our companionship.

Many times, I told myself the lie did not matter

because what we had built,

a love that served as a bunker against time,

was weightier and more consequential

than the lie, but it wasn't true.

Can't move...

The lie did matter because the corpse was there,

calling forth the facts.

Can't move my body.

And as for the many boys

you drugged, drained, and lay with,

I feigned resentment when, in fact,

I welcomed your straying

because your guilt in their aftermath

bound you to me all the more tightly

and allowed me my hours of observation with Daniel.

I told you I loved you, but did I?

Hmm? Did I?

Or was it a clinging to the underside

of anyone who would help me survive?

And when I look back on who I've deceived,

how I've deceived, how easy it was

for me to lead a cult for 400 years,

to burn in ritual any who broke the archaic laws

we lived by, I--

I think I might be a room without walls,

floors, a ceiling.

An infinite nothing.

Also, yes.

I put the Fred Steins in your photo collection

just to fuck with your head.

And that is my full and heartfelt "Armends."

Now...

It's your turn.

I am the chair, the maker,

the Vampire Magnus.

Fledglings, state your names for the record.

The Vampire Nicolas de Lenfent.

The Vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac.

The Vampire Gabriella Vecce.

The Vampire Antoinette Brown.

The Vampire TC.

And where's Claudia?

She said all she needs to say to you is what she said.

Her actual words were,

"Fuck him, fuck y'all, go burn

like that dumb nine-fingered bitch, Antoinette."

Antoinette, hello.

Don't you "Antoinette, hello," me.

Restrain yourself, Ms. Brown.

So... I'm dead.

This is death?

My father's ugly table in your shitty tower?

Dying.

This is you dying.

This is the reminiscence, the deliberation

and mastication of the early risings

and nightly failures of the vampire.

- How? - "How" is not his name.

His name is Lestat.

- How did I die? - I'ma type Lestat.

Dying.

Not yet dead.

Wasting time.

Much like you've wasted your lives.

- Could be nice. - Could be.

Hands touch.

Second time's the charm.

Keep typing, Ms. Brown.

So you're all here to judge me.

We are the failure finders.

Judgment comes from God, Satan, the Simulation.

We don't know. No one ever tells us.

And yet here we are on course number 205.

all: The soul.

This is a dream.

I am not here.

You are here.

And also in a bowling ball bag

walking west on Avenue Van Horne.

A bowling bag.

And also lying on the sideboard

in the back room of a butcher shop.