THE CLAUDIAS DIARIES Belogradchik, October 5, 1941 - I've been waking up to the blitzkrieg of Panzers and the guttural German clashing with the guttural Russian. And the all out war the death the dying the crawling of the half dead the humans going up in flames. It's making me nervous. We should have burned Uncle Les. I should have burned Uncle Les. I never should have let Louis talk me out of it. I had a plan. Now I've got a list. The list keeps me sane. One folklore legend at a time. One castle at a time. I know Louis is trying to make amends for New Orleans. Too little, too late. I need him, he follows me. But for how long? Varna, November 23, 1941: This land is overrun with soldiers and suffering. I should have started elsewhere. The folklore here in Varna never felt promising. But all folklore has its origins in truth. I knew we had to come and see for ourselves. The local legends of Shtriga, creatures that supposedly sucked the blood of infants and then turned into a flying insect - a moth, a bee, a fly. Not even Uncle Les could turn into another creature... or maybe he could. Who knows what other lies he told. All legends have an origin story, a tiny ember that reveals something true. There must be some detail that's true. There must be. There must. Armiansk, December 1, 1941. It's been two years. Two years since we left our home in America and came to this place. [β¦] Their enemies bombed an island so far removed from here. Everything seems so far removed from here. It's been two years of false leads and dead ends. But I mustn't be discouraged! Louis is discouraged enough for the both of us. [β¦] Nova Kakhovka, Dec 11, 1941. We ve been trapped under a battle in a burrow for two days....I'm starving down here. But I refuse to be discouraged, unlike Louis. He speaks, laboriously. He speaks, broodingly. He speaks, all the time. He speaks in his dreams. I do not dream. I don't know when I stopped. On my college tour? All the days are grey and too bright
somehow and too empty and the nights bring nothing but blackness. No images in my brain to disturb my days of sleep. And in all my waking hours my mind turns to the future and to where else we can go to find our kind. Louis' mind turns to the past only. [β¦] Rostov. February 21, 1942 I wish the humans we've found tasted better. Some are so malnourished that there's barely any flavor at all. [β¦] The whole continent is one big open air graveypit. It's foul. It kills my appetite. I wish I could purify it all with fire. And even in this town of stakes through the heart, no vampires. Gyor, May 7, 1942 - We're in Gyor. Torturous conditions in this city. We feed on the blood of humans; we are predators. What are the human's e'cuse? I dislike their claims of racial purity. The Germans have decided there are humans and there are vermin, and they, of course, are the humans. Occasionally I pick them off like an avenging angel. Prague, September 12, 1942 - This is a place of death. No still-crawling corpses that I could find. The dead stay dead. heard a passing rumour that there are shadows lurking in the sewers of this city. We went down into them and found only rats. Louis ate a few. I found myself wondering if that was how Uncle Les might have survived in that box. If he hasn't feasted on the lifeblood of those creatures, biding his time to come after us. Why didn't we burn him? Because Louis was a coward. Because Louis was a failure. I had a plan. RzeszΓ³w, Sept 30, 1942. [β¦] We can kill wildly, kill over and over, kill and leave our kills out in the open, and sometimes kill the wounded on battlefields as they call for loved ones. The final words are always about home, The Red Soldiers are malnourished, nothing but bone and sinew. Their blood is bitter, it almost makes you feel sick to drink it. But still, a feast compared to the poor S.O.B.s they trample on.
Hievakha, December 17. 1943 A wooden stake through the head. I have seen the skull. The people killed a vampire here.. or at least thought they had killed a vampire. That the word exists in their lexicon [β¦] They have meaning because they are real. We carry on. Louis falters and I carry on. It is the same as it always has been with us. He thinks he's a father to me, protecting me. I am the one who is protecting him. I am the one he is leaning on. It is as it was. It is as it will ever be. Tirasopol, January 17, 1944 Louis is no help at all. I've grown so desperate in plotting a course of discovery, i've taken to using Bram Stoker as a map. Folklore is always subject to fictionalized claims; [β¦] And Stoker was obviously wrong about so many vampiric rules garlic for one, holy ground for another. But he had so many things right that he must have encountered someone like us like me in his lifetime. He must have done research, as I have done, and used that as a roadmap for his Dracul tale. So it is that we find ourselves at yet another castle, yet another place the locals in hushed whispers say houses a vampire. And I did find a smallish item in the subterranean rooms and pocketed. A face with fangs. A face like mine. Botosani, April 1944 He asks me if we can go home. Home? Can there be a more offensive question. Run weight. He cannot even say his name. Well, I can. Lestat de Lioncourt. I killed you, Lestat du Lioncourt. I outwitted you. I outmaneuvered you. I outlived you. You lied to us time and time again. And you lied to us about the vampires of the world. I refuse to believe you were the last and only vampire in this world. It's not possible. There must be more of us. Who made the vampire who made Lestat? Who made that vampire? We're a lost tribe, maybe, but even though today we hit another dead end, I found evidence that vampires did thrive here once. But for Louis, who is still in love with
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After a recent auction, a lucky buyer shared the production notes for Claudiaβs diary entries from Seasons 1 and 2 of Interview With The Vampire, offering new insight into her inner world.
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