Part 14 - Lestat's Vengence 

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANSICO
I: You missed him.
L: He was all I knew, It as simple as that. We where like two orphens learning to live again. We booked passage to europe.

LV: Over the weeks while we waited for the boat to arrive, she studied the myths and leadgens of the old world, obsessed with the search for what she called our kind.
Claudia looking up from a book she is looking in.

(Piano music, birds)
INT. FLAT. NIGHT.
Sturdy mullato workmen lifting cases and trunks out of the apartment. All the furniture is covered in white sheets. Claudia dressed in a cap and hat, is playing the piano by the light of one remaining oil-lamp. Louis comes from her room with the cage of canaries.

L: Look who we forgot. Let's set them free, yes?
C: Yes.
L: Yes. (Door bell) It's the carrage (Door bell)
He goes downstairs. Claudia plays a moment, then stops. She goes to the window.

THE STAIRWAY --
Louis walking to the door. He opens the door. But Louis has opened the door. Nothing there. He looks around, then back at the room, puzzled.

C: (Claudia appears in the hall.) No Louie!
Then at the door again when, swooping into his vision comes the nightmare image of -- Lestat, In filthy swamp-soaked rags, robust again, but his flesh shrivelled, covered in scars, his eyes riddled, bloodshot. he roars.  Louis throws his body against the door, slamming it on Lestat's reaching hand. The hand withdraws, as Lestat roars. Louis bolts the door.

A muddy swamp stained Lestat grasps Louis by the throat..Another view of Lestat grabbing Louis by the throat.

Louis runs up the stairs, sweeps Claudia in his arms, watching apalled as the door shudders with the force of Lestat's body.

IN THE PARLOUR
Louis runs through with Claudia in his arms. Lestat is sitting at the Piano playing.

E: Listen Louie, There's life in these old hands still, not quiet fully usful, morerto, catobly perhapes, bless the alligator his blood helped, better dine on the blood of snakes toads, and all the putred life of the mississippi, lestat became like himself again. Claudia you have been a very naught, naughty little girl.

Louis holding onto Claudia protectively, their's image reflected in a mirror nearby.

Music- Escape To Paris

Lestat lunges again at Claudia. Louis hurls the lamp, which explodes him in flame.
Louis gathers up Claudia, smothering the burning house, carries her down the back stairs, through the carriage way and through the gathering crowds of mortals into the street.

EXT. STREET. NIGHT.
Louis and Claudia running threw the night, trying to catch their ship.
Louis running, with Claudia behind him, holding his hand. He looks back at the flames of the house. Sound of a ship's horn.

C: The ship is sailing without us.

EXT. DECK OF SHIP. NEAR DAWN.
Louis standing at the rail of the ship, watching the fire.
Louis stands at the railings in the morning mist as the ship moves down the river. He sees...

LV: Thought the fire spread threw the quarter, I stood on that deck, frearful he would come out again, in the very river like some monster to destroy us both, and all the while I thought Lestat you deserve you vengence, You gave me the dark gift and I delievered you into the hands of death for the second time.
Claudia and Louis standing aboard the ship.  New Orleans burning in the background.

CITY OF NEW ORLEANS
A closer view of New Orleans burning.  A pole shown in the foreground, looking very much like a cross.
With flame lighting up the sky.

EXT. SHIP. EVENING.
The ship, shrouded in mist. A body is slipped into the sea. A priest reads last rites to a mourning family.

L: Though the ship was blessidly free of rats, a strange plague none the less struck it's passangers. Claudia and I seemed immune, we kept to ourselves pondering the mystery of each other.

EXT. SHIP. NIGHT.
Passing through the Straits of Gibralter.

L: We reached the Mediterranean. I wanted those waters to be blue but they where black. Night time waters. And how I suffered then, straining to recall the color in my youth I had taken for granted

EXT. DECK. NIGHT.
Claudia, sitting with an easel and sketch-pad, sketching the bay of Naples. A beautifully realised drawing, all in shades of grey and black. Louis observes.

L: We searched villiage after villiage,

The sketch changes to a sketch of -

THE ACROPOLIS --
In the moonlight.

L: ruin after ruin,

The sketch changes to a sketch of --

TRANSYLVANIA --
And the traditional shapes of the vampire landscape.

L: country after country,

Music - Marche Funebre

a montage of sketches now - A TRANSLYVANIAN VILLAGE, A GRAVEYARD. RUINED CASTLE AFTER CASTLE, LOOKING INTO THE SKIES...

L: and always we found nothing. I began to believe we where the only ones.

INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO.
A small image of Louis and Melloy sitting across from each other in modern day.
Malloy and Louis, sits in the room together.

L: There is a strange comfort in that thought. For what could the damned really have to say to the damned...
I: You said you found nothing.
L: Peasent roamers, superstions about garlic, crosses, the old stake in the heart, but one of our kind, not a whisper.

Louis in modern day, looking serious as he explains.

I: So there are no vampires in Transelvania, no, no Count Dracula
L Fictions the vulgar fictions of a demented irishman.