Part 9 - Meeting Claudia 

EXT. DANK NEW ORLEANS BACK STREETS. NIGHT.
Louis walks down the street alone.
A rat scurried down a gutter, then another and another. Louis' hand graps the rat. We see him from behind, walking down the street, gripping one, then another.

Another image of Louis wandering the streets.

Smaller side street, in which every house is marked with an X. The street is crawling with rats, and Louis is following them. A man passes with a lantern.

A man pushing a wheelbarrel.

Man pushing cart: Don't go that way Monsieur, it's the plague. Go back the way you came.

We now see it's two men pushing the wheelbarrel one calling out to Louis.

L: (Louis smiles bitterly at these words, repeating them to himself.) The way I came.(He walks on, following the rats. )

(A house, the door slightly open, marked with an X. The sound of a child crying inside. Louis walks towards it.)

INT. HOUSE NIGHT.
Claudia's Voice: Mama. (A little girl, pulling at a figure in a rocking chair.)

A mortal Claudia stroking her mother's dead hand.

(As Louis enters, he sees the woman is dead. Louis gasps in horror. Claudia turns. She is a radiant doll or angel as she stretches out her hand to Louis. She runs to him. Instinctively, he gathers her in his arms. He looks down pitying on her beautiful face. )

Louis sits down behind the mortal Claudia, watching her.

Claudia: Please help us. Pa left us and didn't come back. Please wake mama misour. (She snuggles into him, suddenly utterly secure. She tugs at his hair, brings his head down towards her. And we see Louis shiver, as his lips go to her neck. Louie bites Claudia's neck, Claudia Wimpers abit. Her breathing becomes calm as she goes into the swoon. Gradually another sound replaces it.)

Louis drinking the life out of the mortal Claudia.

(Lestat appears, laughing. Suddenly Louis backs away, caught redhanded, the child in his arms. He sees Lestat slapping his knee and laughing in the doorway.)

1 of 2.  Lestat appears at the doorway laughing..2 of 2.  Lestat appears at the doorway laughing.

E: My philospher, my marter, never take a human life. Oh yes, This calls for a celebration.

(Lestat snatches up the dead mother from the chair and begins to dance with her in great circles, humming and talking. Her head falls back.)
Lestat dancing with the dead mother.  Singing as he does so.

E:
ah nortcha drif
far falorna,
ah maralorana solo,
Áno ta jorn,
no de corn
no jeraten no.

(Louis stares at the unconscious Claudia in horror, then lets her slip gently onto the bed. Shamefully he wipes his mouth, sees the tiny wounds on her throat.)
E: There's still life in the old lady yet.(Louis flees into the street. Lestat drops the mother.) Louie, come back. You are what you are, Merciful death, how you love your precious guilt.

(Music - Lestat's Tarantella)

EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.
Louis running through an assortment of streets. All the night life of New Orleans flows by him.

Louis running threw the night streets.

LV: Her blood corsed threw my veins sweeter then life itself, and as it did, Lestat's words made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed, and when I heard her heart in that terriable rythem I knew again what peace could be.

EXT. WATERFRONT. DAWN.
Fingers of light in the sky. Louis, pale and shivering, walks splashing through the water. He comes to a huge sewer-pipe, crowded with rats. He crawls inside.

EXT. TOWNHOUSE. EVENING.
Lestat standing at a window, looking out into the rain.

EXT. WATERFRONT. SOME EVENINGS LATER.
The same sewer-pipe. Now the bodies of dead rats lie all around. A pire of fine leather boots splash through the water.

INT. SEWER-PIPE. EVENING.
(Louis huddled there, so pale and shivering he seems close to death. Lestat comes through.)

Louis sits at the end of a sewer drain, Lestat at the openning walking in.

E: I'll I need to find you Louie is follow the corpses of rats. Pain is terriable for you, you fel it like no other creature because you are a vampire. You don't want it to go on.

A close up of a consirned Lestat.

L: No.
A close up of an unhappy Louis.
E: (He bends down to him.)Then do what it is in you nature to do. And you feel as you felt with that child in your arms. Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscrimitatley and so shall we. For no creatures under god are as we are, none so like him, as our selves. I have a gift for you, come. (Lestat offers his hand) Please.
Louis watches Lestat, judging him.

(Louie takes Lestat's hand, Louis seems baffled. He follows silently.)