The Vampire Lestat - Plot

Check out The Vampire Lestat Cast Of Characters.

It is 1984 and Lestat wakes after going underground in 1929. He literally "went underground" by sleeping in the earth for 55 years. In Interview With The Vampire, Lestat was badly hurt and sleeping for so long in this way healed his wounds and revitalised him. Indeed, he found that his strength had tripled and he could leap atop four storey buildings.

The writing style of The Vampire Lestat is different to Interview With The Vampire. It's much more personal and informal, perhaps reflecting the openness of the age?

Vampires are immortal (excepting the infrequent death by burning under the sun, and dismemberment) and often struggle with living through change. Some commit suicide because they can't adapt. However, Lestat is completely absorbed by the newness of the 1980s - although he does recognise musical concepts of his age in rock music.

In Interview With The Vampire, Louis was a reluctant vampire. He thought himself evil and didn't enjoy killing humans. Lestat extends this idea of a "good" vampire by limiting himself to killing only those who deserve death - murderers, thieves and vagabonds. He will not drink innocent blood.

Shortly after Lestat awakens, he joins a rock band called Satan's Night Out. Lestat is more than a little unsettled, when, after revealing that he is a real vampire, the band members think that he is merely modelling himself on a vampire of old called Lestat. They even show him a book that mentions his name. It is Interview With The Vampire! The band rename themselves The Vampire Lestat.

It is at this point that we start getting Lestat starts recounting to us his life growing up in 18th Century France.

Lestat's Childhood

Lestat's childhood was an unhappy one. There was friction between him and all other members of his family - apart from his mother. With his mother he had a strange relationship. She was often absent from his life, but she was always there for him in times of distress, and understood him deeply when others didn't. However, Lestat always felt his mother's absence.

Lestat forms a very close relationship with a well to do childhood friend called Nicolas de Lenfent. They run away to Paris together and Lestat starts performing at a theatre there. He falls in love with the audience's adulation with him and nicolas play violin in the accompanying orchestra, However, Nicki is somewhat embitterd (perhaps that is too strong a word) with Lestat's "success". He believes that whatever Lestat touches turns to gold. This reaction foretells the dark side of Nicki.

Life In Paris

Lestat and Nicki start making money at the theatre and Lestat always sees right by his family by regularly sending money and gifts back. One fateful night a dark figure appears in their room and makes off with Lestat. It is Magnus, an ancient vampire so powerful that Lestat can do nothing to assuage him. Magnus makes Lestat a vampire before throwing himself onto a burning pyre.

Lestat is beside himself when the weight of being a vampire hits him. He feels that he cannot ever return to Nicki for fear of what he might do to him, and also because he is ashamed of what he has become. They maintain their relationship clumsily at a distance.

His mother, Gabrielle, was ill (dying, in fact) with consumption when he left and before long she pays a surprise vist to spend her last breaths with him.

Lestat cannot ber the thought of his mother dying and in desperation reveals his vampiric nature suggests that he make her a vampire. Gabrielle is keen so he feeds on her and then lets her drink his bllod. She is made!

However, their relationship is... tense.

During their time in Paris, they have been aware of a strange presence of something supernatural that seems to be stalking them and that is full of malice towards them. It is an ancient coven of vampires that is offended by their lack of respect for the old ways and their comfort in the company of mortal humans.

It transpires that this coven is led by Armand, an old and powerful vampire, who deceives the members of the coven into believing things that limit them - such as the delusion that they cannot go into sacred places like churches or spend time with mortals and live a better life. After an unavoidable  confrontation with them Lestat shows them the folly of such delusions and the coven is destroyed.

The coven had kidnapped Nicki and fed on him and now he is half dead, trapped between the land of the living and the dead. To save him, yet again Lestat feels forced into making Nicki a vampire. Bad move. Nicki's dark side just needed an avenue of expression and this is just such an avenue.

Lestat and Gabrielle leave Paris and all its associated strife and travel the world, but Lestat;s thoughts are never far away from Nicki, to whom he feels some sense of loyalty. However, these noble feelings are met only with bitterness from him. Bitterness at Lestat apparently keeping his vampire nature a secret from him and also of preaching goodness in the past, when he is so obviously evil.

The relationship between Lestat and Gabrielle doesn't become the one that Lestat had hoped for. They are often silent and Gabrielle is quite selfish. She doesn't understand Lestat's sensitivity. In some ways, this relationship mirrors the relationship between Louis and Claudia in Interview With The Vampire.

The sad day comes in Egypt when Lestat and Gabrielle part and Lestat is grief stricken.

During their travels together, Lestat had heard the myth of an ancient vampire called Marius who, legend had it, was slain. Nevertheless, wherever they travelled together, Lestat always left some message for Marius, etched in stone or carved in wood. The message would tell who Lestat was and where he was going. Lestat hoped to meet Marius but wasn't sure whether his calls went unheeded. When Gabrielle left, he was so despondent and full of despair that he "went into the ground". He dug into the sand and lay there for who knows how long.

Something mysterious comes for Lestat in his Egyption sleeping place - something powerful. It is Marius! Lestat rises but he is weak from starvation and Marius instructs him to drink his blood. He is rejuvenated.