Foster Fledgling
Chapter Eleven
"Okay, but it don't make a lot of sense," François warned. "I remember pretty clear up to a point, and then things get really weird. I mean, I remember seeing stuff that I know can't be real."
"Like vampires?" Armand suggested. François punched him on the arm.
"No, well, yeah. But that's later. First off, I got into some serious deep shit."
"Trouble?"
"Drugs," François nodded. "I didn't do that shit, I stayed clean."
"'Just Say No,'" Armand quoted.
"It wasn't that, at least, that isn't why. I just didn't need the hassle. My life was already complicated enough, I didn't need to be hunting for fix money all the time. One addict in the house was enough."
"Your mother," Armand stated.
"Who else?" François shifted on the bench, pulling up the opposite foot to sit upon. "Anyway, I stayed clear of those guys, too. They're always looking for somebody to mule for them, and it's hard to say no to that kind of money. But, I seen too many kids buy it doing that. If it wasn't the cops or the Welfare people putting you in Juvey, it was some other dealer trying to protect his territory. I seen little kids get into that, and they'd be dead before fifth grade. And then, if you was late, your own boss might decide you were too much trouble."
"Not worth the money, is that it?"
"Not on your life." François shook his head, grinning ruefully.
A streetcar clicked by, and stopped; a lone figure stepped down, an old woman in the uniform of a hotel maid. She paid them not the least attention as she made her weary way past them. Suddenly, she stumbled over a broken piece of concrete, and fell, landing hard on her knees. In an instant, François was at her side, helping her up.
"Here, ma'am," he said, picking up her bag; moving too quickly for her to see, he pulled out the wad of money he'd taken from his victim, and dropped it into her bag.
"Thank you, darlin'," she said, taking her purse from him. "God bless you, child. You'd best be getting home, now, your Momma'll be worryin' 'bout you."
"I'll be fine, ma'am. You take care." She patted his arm, and continued on her way, heading down the dark side street with the familiarity of one used to late hours.
"Very smooth move," Armand commented. "Can you pick pockets as well as plant them?"
"She needed it more than I do," François said, his eyes narrowing. "Louis said I can do what I want with the money. And I wanted to give it to that lady."
"Of course," Armand held up a conciliatory hand. "I meant no offense. Merely an observation."
"Sorry," François flashed him a half-grin. "No sweat."
"Good. You must forgive me, I forget sometimes that not everyone appreciates sarcasm." He threw an arm around François, and gave him a quick embrace. "Now, you were telling me about what happened to you. If it wasn't drugs, what was it?"
"It was drugs, actually," François admitted. "This guy my mom knew, she got her stuff from him, he needed a runner, and told her he'd give her the next bag free if I'd run some stuff for her."
"Your mother did this?" Armand could not keep the shock out of his voice.
"Yep." François raised his eyebrows as if to say, 'what can you do?'*"So, this guy gives me this bag of money, I got to deliver it to some guy at the cemetery. Like the guy last night?" he said, helpfully. "Oh, duh!" He slapped his forehead. "You weren't there."
"It's nothing. Go on," Armand urged.
"Well, I didn't want to do it, but she said she'd beat me if I didn't, and he said it was only this once, his regular runner was doing thirty. So, I did it." He sighed once. "He gave me a bag, and I showed up at the cemetery, and handed off the bag. That's when everything went wrong."
"What happened?" Armand leaned closer, listening intently.
"The guy took the bag, and opened it up, and started counting it. I started to leave, but he had these goons with him, and they grabbed me." His hands began to shake slightly, and he quickly shoved them into his jacket pockets.
"Did they hurt you?"
"Not right away. The guy said the money wasn't all there, and he said I must've took it, since Chaunce - that's the dealer - He said Chaunce wouldn't never try to cheat him. He tried to scare it out of me, tried to make me tell him where it was. Only, I didn't do it. I didn't have the god-damned money!" He was shaking all over now. "Of course, he didn't believe me. Said I'd learn not to steal from him. Said he'd have to make an example of me."
"What did he do?" Armand moved closer, and slipped an arm around his shoulders.
"They took me inside the cemetery, and they hit me a few times." He swallowed hard, and paused a moment before going on. "Then they stuck me with something. I don't know what, it was in needles, it hurt, too. Stung, like a bee sting, for a long time."
"They gave you drugs?" Armand inquired, surreptitiously exerting the slightest bit of control over the boy, calming him. "Do you know what it was?"
"I think it was acid," François replied, the quaking diminishing as Armand's influence took effect. "Yeah, I think they said it was acid. I'm not very sure, that's when things get really weird."
"Hallucinations?"
"I guess so. It was just . . . weird." He chuckled weakly. "It was really retarded."
"What?" Armand asked gently. "Tell me what happened."
"I'm not sure, exactly. I know they left me there, dumped me over the fence of one of the tombs. Scraped my back on the pointy part of the fence, I think, there was a huge blood stain on the back of my shirt later." He paused, and bit his lower lip, concentrating. "And then I heard them take off. Only, then I heard somebody yell, I thought it was them. Screaming, you know, like a girl?" He paused, waiting for a response.
"I understand," Armand nodded. "They were frightened by something, you think."
"Yeah, but, what could scare them like that? I mean, they had guns, they were big guys, body builder types. What could scare them?"
"What indeed?" Armand murmured.
"Anyway, I just laid there on the grass. My back hurt a lot, and my arms. I think they broke my arms," he looked at Armand in surprise. "I forgot that. They twisted both my arms until they broke, I could hear them, it was like eating celery, and God! It hurt so bad." Tears sprang to his eyes, and he wiped them away irritably. "So, anyway, I'm laying there in the dirt, and my arms hurt and my back hurts, and stuff starts to kind of get all wavy."
"Wavy?"
"Like on TV, when somebody has a dream or something. Wavy." He raised his hands, and made serpentine motions in the air, back and forth, and made a warbling noise. "Like that."
"Ah, I understand," Armand nodded, smiling. "Special effects. A dissolve. As in 'Wayne's World.' It's one of Daniel's favorite movies.
"Yeah!" François nodded enthusiastically. "You know what I mean. Anyway, everything looked all wavy, and I heard those goons screaming like little girls, and then, all of a sudden, it was really quiet. And then I heard somebody laughing, just laughing like crazy. Like one of those little boxes you find at joke stores, going on and on, just laughing. And then I heard some kind of a really loud noise."
"A loud noise," Armand repeated. An idea was forming itself in his mind, but he said nothing. François had grown silent, and was staring into the middle distance, his brow furrowed. "What kind of noise?" Armand asked. "A siren? An explosion? A gunshot?"
"I don't know," François shrugged. "Nothing like that. It was a funny noise, kind of like thud-thud-thud. And a sound like dried beans falling. Only louder." He paused, looking at the ground before him. "I don't know exactly what it was. I can't tell you."
"That's alright," Armand stroked François's hair. "It isn't important. What else do you remember? What happened next?"
"This is so retarded," François ducked his head. "I saw somebody. Or something."
"What did you see? The vampire who made you? Did you see that?"
"No," François shook his head emphatically. "I don't know who did this to me, I swear to you. I saw . . . I saw an angel." He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right! Real good, Frankie."
"An angel?" Armand asked.
"Yeah, a stupid angel. Like in church. You know. An angel. I know, you don't believe me, I don't blame you."
"But I do believe you," Armand insisted. "I can see it in your thoughts that you believe that is what you saw." He bent close to François's ear, and whispered. "Francesco, Caro, I believe you. I have seen a lot of miraculous things in my life, I have seen spirits, shades and elementals, many things that you would not believe."
"I didn't believe in vampires, until a few weeks ago," François said quietly.
"Exactly," Armand laughed. "You understand what I mean, then. Please, tell me this, if you would. What did this angel look like?"
François sighed. "Like an angel. It looked like an angel," he held up his hands up in the air, shrugging. "It had a halo around its head, kind of glowing like, a golden halo all around its head. It was all in white, dressed in white. And it had wings. Big, white wings coming out of its back. Like an angel at Christmas."
"That sounds like an angel to me," Armand agreed. "Could I - could I see it? Could I see what you saw?'
"What do you mean?" François asked. "You mean, go back to the cemetery? I tried that, it didn't work. Nothing there anymore."
"No, Caro. I mean, let me see into your mind, as we did before, in the house. Only, allow me to see what you saw. You concentrate on what you saw, and I will see it through your eyes."
"Will it hurt?"
"Of course not," Armand soothed. "It . . . tickles a bit. It is not unpleasant, not like this."
"Okay." François squeezed his eyes shut, and grimaced.
Armand laughed softly, and took his hand. Images flooded his mind, a confusing mixture of fleeting pictures. Louis. Mojo. Louis again. That ridiculous shower Lestat had installed. His own face. Louis again, smiling as Armand had not seen him smile in decades. François's face, in a mirror, a sudsy beard on his face.
"Concentrate, Francesco," he laughed again. "Show me what you saw. Show me your angel."
The images faded, and were replaced by darkness, blurred, whitish outlines of what had to be tombs. The night sky, circles of light from street lamps. Suddenly, he saw a figure hovering above, floating, a seemingly huge figure, in white, its face a pale, glowing blur, and an aura of yellowish gold around its head. Sure enough, behind its back, spreading out from the shoulders, were what looked like wings. Armand tried to look closer, tried to make out some distinct features or details. The face remained a formless, glowing shape, but he thought he could just make out that the angel was wearing . . . pants? White, or light colored, pants. Not a gown of shimmering white, but, as far as Armand could determine from François's foggy memory, white trousers. And the angel's wings looked suspiciously like a monument atop a tomb.
"You can open your eyes now," he said wryly. As an afterthought he impishly tickled François's consciousness.
"Hey!" François giggled. "You did that on purpose."
"Did I?" Armand smiled.
"Well, did you see it?" François demanded. "Did you see my angel?"
"Yes, I did," Armand said. "Tell me what else you remember."
"Not a lot," the boy shrugged. "The angel flew over me, and I think it landed. And then things get really fuzzy. I remember feeling scared, I thought I was going to die, it was the Angel of Death, you know?"
"Yes, I understand," Armand replied. "Did it harm you?"
"I don't think so," François shook his head emphatically. "I only remember it picking me up, and holding me, and . . . kissing me." He seemed surprised at this himself. "I think it kissed me. It felt good. I wasn't scared anymore. And then, and then -" He broke off, blushing slightly. "I only remember, it felt so good. I mean, really good."
Armand smiled knowingly. "You mean, it was sexual? It gave you an erection, didn't it?"
"Jesus, Armand!" François grinned, still blushing, as much as was possible for a vampire. "You weren't supposed to look at that!" He shoved Armand aside playfully. "You perv!"
"I didn't see it in your mind," Armand protested, shoving him back. "I just guessed."
"Why?" François asked, still grinning with embarrassment.
"Because, Little One," he replied, standing and pulling up François with him. "I believe that your angel was actually the vampire who made you."
"You knew who it was?" François gripped Armand's shoulders. "You know who it is? Please, Armand, please tell me!"
"Little One, if I knew, I would tell you in a moment," Armand replied gently. "I do not know who it is. I only know, from what you have told me, and what I saw in your mind, that your angel was in all likelihood a vampire. But I could not see the face, no more than you could."
François released his grip on Armand, and dropped back onto the bench, resting his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "I really thought you could tell me. I want to know. I want to know why this happened. I need to know."
Armand sat down and embraced him, kissing his hair. "You will remember, sometime soon, you will remember," Armand assured him. "These memory lapses, they will vanish, the same as the lisp."
"Oh, God, I almost forgot about that," François sighed. "Louis pretends like he doesn't hear it, and I'm more used to it now. It's pretty bad, though, isn't it?"
"Oh, Little One," Armand sighed, and stroked his hair. "You are so very young. Nothing is as terrible as you think it is. It will pass, I promise you."
"Promise?" François peered at him sideways. "You promise? I'll get better, I'll know?"
"You're better already, aren't you?" Armand asked. "You have no burns, those have all healed. Your face has filled out, even just since we left tonight, the hollows in your cheeks are gone. Your color is better." He grasped François's hand. "You are warm, as warm as one of us can ever hope to be." He lifted François's face, and looked deeply into his eyes. "You are far better off than when Louis found you, aren't you?"
"I guess so," François admitted. "I do feel better. And I'm not so scared anymore."
"You see?" Armand smiled warmly. "You take my word for it. Within a few weeks, you will wonder why you were so upset. Now," he rose to his feet, "Louis is very near. If we go this way," he pointed Uptown, "we will meet up with him very quickly. Come." He held out his hand, and François took it, standing and slipping an arm around Armand's waist.
"Thanks, Armand," he said, standing on his toes to plant a kiss on Armand's cheek. "I'm going to keep you to your word, though. I'd better lose this damn lisp pretty soon."
"I could probably help with that," Armand said, as they headed up the street. "If you drink from me, it should help you heal faster. Our blood has healing qualities that mortal blood does not have."
"Um, okay," François said, uncertainly. "I guess."
"Don't worry, Little One, it won't hurt. It will feel . . . heavenly." Armand drew close to him, pulling him into an embrace, and bent his mouth to François's throat.
"No!" They both turned. Louis stood behind them, obviously displeased.
"Louis!" François ran to him, and threw his arms around him. "Did you hunt? You're warmer, you did, huh? I missed you."
"I missed you, too, p'tit," Louis smiled, embracing his child. "Armand, you know my feelings on that."
"Louis, I don't know what you mean," Armand replied, unruffled.
"You know perfectly well what I mean," Louis snapped. "He's far too young for that. You should know better."
"Louis, did I do something wrong?" François asked nervously.
"Of course not," Armand said. Louis shot him a warning look. Armand frowned, but said nothing more.
"No, mon cher," Louis turned his attention to François, and smiled reassuringly. "You have done nothing wrong. You are just a child, as Armand well knows." He glared at Armand again, who shrugged insolently. "You are too young to share blood, that's all."
"But, he said it would help me lose this damn lisp," François protested.
"François!" Louis looked down at him, and put a finger on his lips. "You mustn't curse. I don't want to hear that kind of language from you, do you understand?"
"Yes, Louis," François nodded. "I'm sorry."
"That's alright, p'tit," Louis kissed him lightly. "Besides, all these little things will go away, in time. You have eternity, there is no need to rush into things. Do you remember what I told you last night?"
"You told me a lot of things," François said.
"I mean, I told you to savor your experiences. Do you remember that?"
"Here we go again," Armand muttered.
"Yes," François nodded. "I remember that."
"Good," Louis said, pointedly ignoring Armand. "Well, I want you to savor your childhood -"
"But, I'm not a kid," François protested.
"Don't interrupt," Louis admonished. "You are a child, as I have told you. You are a young vampire, not even a month old."
"And Louis is a young vampire, not even three hundred years old," Armand interjected, grinning.
"Will you hush!"
"Oh, Louis," Armand laughed, throwing his arms around both of them. "You never change, Caro, and that is why I love you."
"That is entirely off the subject," Louis protested. "François is my responsibility, and I am trying to raise him with some modicum of civility. Children need structure, and rules, and above all, they need time to be children. Perhaps if Marius had given you a few boundaries, you wouldn't be so impossible."
"But, Louis," Armand said, smiling. "Francesco is hardly a child, any more than I am."
"François, p'tit, would you go up ahead a bit? We need to discuss something in private. There's a good boy." Louis kissed François warmly, and shooed him a bit further up the street, waving him on until he was out of earshot. Louis then turned his attention to Armand.
"Armand, François has never had the chance to be a child," Louis said quietly. "He was forced to grow up too quickly, both in his mortal life and now. I intend to give him that opportunity, to be a child, to play, to be free from worry or adult concerns. I will care for him, make the decisions for him, until he is mature enough and ready to make them on his own. For as long as he wishes, he can and will be a child."
"Louis, that is very noble," Armand said. "I know your heart is in the right place. But how do you know it's what he wants? He is old enough to decide for himself."
"I believe he wants to be a child," Louis replied. "He . . . projected this to me. He longs for what he considers a normal life; a nice home, security, safety, and above all, to be cared for by a responsible adult. He has not had an easy life. I know this much, just from his reactions, and the little he's told me. He's had to make decisions and take actions that no child should have to do. Even in my mortal lifetime, a child was not expected to be responsible for the parents, and that's exactly what his life has been." He gave Armand an meaningful look. "I should think that you, of all of us, should understand the importance of allowing a child his innocence."
"He is hardly an innocent," Armand said coldly. "He is a vampire. He has killed. He kills quite easily and exceptionally well."
"That's as may be," Louis looked up the street, to where François stood, kicking at tree roots, his hands in his trouser pockets. "But he is still an innocent, in many ways. Surely, you can see that. He craves this, Armand, he needs it. He needs it to heal his wounded soul. Would you deny him this, just to appease your own curiosity and lust?"
"Oh, Louis," Armand sighed. "You know how to hurt a guy." He looked up at his old friend, his eyes misting. "You win, Louis. You win. Raise François as you will. You won't have any more trouble from me." He poked a finger into Louis's chest. "But you promise me something, Caro."
"What?" Louis asked, brushing Armand's hand away, and giving him a small, forgiving smile.
"Promise me, Louis, that when François no longer wishes to be treated as a child, you will allow him to grow up."
"He's not Peter Pan," Louis laughed. "I promise, when he's ready, he will be free to grow up. But not before. And I don't want you or your filthy minion corrupting him." He started up the street toward François.
"Hey!" Armand hurried along beside him. "Daniel is not filthy! I just gave him a bath this morning."
"Ugh! Armand, I do not want to hear about your disgusting habits."
"What's disgusting?" François asked, as they joined him.
"Nothing, Little One," Armand laughed. "Louis is just ranting. You'll find he does that from time to time. Don't worry about it." He leaned closer to François. "Just keep him away from any open flames," he whispered.
*Click to see related spec, Instant Karma's Gonna Get You
Foster Fledgling - Chapter Twelve
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