EXT. DANK NEW ORLEANS BACK STREETS. NIGHT.
A rat scurried down a gutter, then another and another. Louis' hand
grasps the rat. We see him from behind, walking down the street, gripping
one, then another. 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.
Man pushing cart: Don't go that way Monsieur, it's the plague. Go back
the way you came.
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.)
(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. )
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 Whimpers
abit. Her breathing becomes calm as she goes into the swoon. Gradually
another sound replaces it.)
(Lestat appears, laughing. Suddenly Louis backs away, caught red-handed,
the child in his arms. He sees Lestat slapping his knee and laughing in
the doorway.)
E: My philosopher, my martyr, 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.)
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.
EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.
Louis running through an assortment of streets. All the night life
of New Orleans flows by him.
LV: Her blood coursed 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 terrible rhythm 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
pair 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.)
E: I'll I need to find you Louie is follow the corpses of rats. Pain
is terrible for you, you feel it like no other creature because you are
a vampire. You don't want it to go on.
L: No.
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 indiscriminately 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.
(Louie takes Lestat's hand, Louis seems baffled. He follows silently.)
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