It had started as a performance.

The night at 1132 Rue Royale gleamed in excess—jazz humming through the chandelier light, laughter spilling down the staircase, perfume and sweat mingling with the promise of something rotten underneath. The ball had thinned to its most decadent survivors, those too drunk or too foolish to leave when they should have.

Now, the masks were gone. The velvet gloves, the careful smiles, all discarded. The family moved through the room like dancers finishing a long-practiced routine. Claudia, with her girlish grace and merciless precision, had already cornered a man by the piano. Louis lingered near the window, his hunger quiet but heavy, his lips red where the restraint had cracked.

And Lestat... Lestat was radiant in the ruin. His laughter filled the parlor, sharp and delighted, his white shirt streaked with crimson. “Eat, my loves,” he murmured, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “The living have had their turn.”

The music inside the house had stopped hours ago, but somehow it still pulsed in the walls, in the air, in your chest. The room was a feast, the family feral and beautiful in their frenzy. You could feel it all around you: the warmth, the madness, the intimacy of shared violence.