"It's time for justice, little one!"
"CLAUDIA! NO! CLAUDIA!" I yelled and I yelled, worried and angry and frightened and desperate all at once. "CLAUDIA!!"I tried yelling again, but I knew it was pointless. She was already gone. I banged on the lid of the coffin I had been encased in, yelling. "ARMAND!" I screamed, my voice cracking and throat going dry from all the yelling. I began crying in intense anger and fury. Instantly my brain was clouded with images of little Claudia. Practicing Piano, stroking her dead mother's hand and crying "mama...", Dancing with me hand-in-hand and grinning ear to ear.
"LOUIS! NO! LOUIS! AHH!" Claudia screamed, holding her hair as the Theatre Des Vampires troupe pulled and carried me upside down to wherever I was headed. "LOUIS!" she yelled again, and screaming as the red-headed female cackling by her right ear yanked her hair again. She could hear Madeleine screaming in pain and fear not too far in front of Claudia, already endangered even before she can live her first day as a vampire. Claudia could hear Louis' frantic screams as if he were just around the corner, and with each one her heart wracked, which was a surprising feeling for a vampire. Then, suddenly, they were thrust into a small circular room and locked in. Claudia paused for a second as memories flooded into her mind's eye. Louis, crying as he explained how she became what she was now, Louis and herself dancing in the ballroom, curling up in his coffin and twirling her fingers in his hair. Claudia's lower lip trembled as she scrambled to get close with Madeleine, and they cried themselves to sleep. The room was a large cylinder with a screen at the top; They were going to burn to death.
CLANG! CLANG! The lid of the coffin moved and was lifted, flooding the darkness with a hazy light. I gasped a great breath of air and stepped out, wheezing "Claudia." Armand looked at me and said "I cannot save her," but didn't sound like he cared whether she lived or not. I said her name again and stumbled into the hall, but Armand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me. "No Louis! I will only risk losing YOU!" he said, poking me in the chest with a long-nailed finger. I pushed his hand away and walked down to the room they had been locked in. Pulling open the door, he stepped in, and cringed terribly at the sight of what remained. Two ash sculptures perfectly shaped as they had been when the sun rose, they gripped each other in a hug so powerfully emotional that, even gone, still jolted Louis' motionless heart with a pang. Fighting back tears, he walked up to the ashen faces twisted with pain. Gently stroking Claudia's finger, the entire sculpture fell away, blowing ash all over. I squinted in disbelief as waves and waves of grief washed over me. No, not grief- words alone cannot describe the pain I felt. It was enough to make myself burn in the dawn's sunlight also, to be with her.
Louis stumbled out, eyes wide and full of misery. He pushed past Armand and left, heart-broken. He knew deep inside that she was gone...forever... but he didn't want it to be true. An empty shell left to roam the streets in misery and loneliness for the night.
"And who will care for me my love, my dark angel, you have gone?"