My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 02

Daniel looked down at the hand, face deadpan save for a small twitch of his right eye, before he looked back up to the Prince. "As always, I see a woman wearing silk, laughing, bathed in blood and surrounded by corpses, a sword in hand."

A woman, sword, silk? No historical figure jumped to mind.

Daniel held it out to her.

"... I uh... I shouldn't."

"Come now." The Prince gestured to her, and her eyes betrayed no mercy. "Hold the object. You must become comfortable with these affairs if you are to become a member of the order; they are not always so bloodless, or dead."

So much for only observing. Shaking hands and trembling fingers found the object, palms up, and Daniel set it into her grip.

Gross. But, even with the grossness, the skin of the object on her skin sent little sparks into her. Unlike the shrunken head and its icy touch, the dried hand felt alive. Odd, considering it was a dead thing just like the head. Natasha turned the hand about to point the palm tattoo toward her face, and she stared into it.

And as she stared, it stared back at her. She couldn't see for sure, couldn't tell, but it did seem like the eye was adjusting itself to keep eye contact with her, like a creepy portrait might. The longer she looked at it, the more it felt like staring into the eye of something alive.

"Should... should I start wearing gloves like you Sire?"

Daniel smirked, and raised a hand to his face to adjust his glasses, middle finger against the bridge. "It helps."

Mental note: buy gloves, multiple.

The Prince took the hand, and set it back on the table. "We will do much of our experimenting in this room. It is the only locus within a hundred miles that is stable enough, and it is why I have built the tower here."

"Locus?" Natasha said.

"A tear, Miss Vola. But, the details should come later. For now, let us focus on the occult, and the ways early kine and Kindred managed to see the hidden and touch the incorporeal in ways we have forgotten."

"Forgotten." She followed the Prince back to the table, and stared down at the objects. So many creepy things. "I wonder if... the Circle of the C-Crone remember any of them?"

The Prince smirked at her. "If you can convince Jacob to share his secrets with me, I would be delighted."

Yeah, fat chance of that ever happening.

The next few hours were a blur of lectures and demonstrations on various occult items. The Prince seemed to be an intellectual at heart, which she already knew from when she was first in the order for a paltry time. But it was Antoinette's passion for the items she described that surprised Natasha.

There was a vase with Egyptian hieroglyphs on it. Ashes were inside, and when placed upon the circle and viewed through the display, again they found blue wisps, this time two people, walking around the vase, holding hands. There was a mask with many lines of silver drawn on its black surface. Said to possess the powers of doom, and when put into the circle, it showed a black — not blue — cloud of some sort. There was a voodoo doll, which Natasha thought looked a little silly with pins sticking out of it, until that too was put into the circle. Another ghostly image was found, lying on the ground, with what could have been swords or spears sticking out of its chest. Hard to tell with wisps of cloud, but it looked dead.

Most disturbing, Natasha found, was the wedding dress. The Prince removed it from a garment bag and laid it out over another table in the large room. A few hundred years old, dirty, tattered, and with a very obvious blood splatter along its front. But when she put the dress into the circle, the viewed image froze Natasha solid. The ghostly images were clearer this time, as if the youth of the object compared to its older siblings affected them. And the image was of a woman wearing the dress, stabbing two other people, a man and woman, while they were in bed. It was all in blue wisp and fog, but the dress's images were so detailed, so exact, Natasha found herself mesmerized by the vividness and brutality. Whoever wore the dress stabbed the two in bed, and stabbed them, and stabbed, and stabbed, for ten minutes.

Hell hath no fury. Damien would probably say something like that.

After each event, the Prince asked Natasha to recite it back to her in detail. Now that she knew what her master was looking for, it got easier for her too, and lots of little details she'd normally leave out, she started to add in. And each one earned a smile and nod of approval from either her sire or the Prince. They wanted her to embrace her attention to detail and obsession with accuracy, instead of summarizing things into neat, inaccurate little boxes like Maria would. And as much as she was glimpsing into something disturbing and horrifying, she was enjoying herself. The nightmares would be worth it, hopefully.

"You may leave now, Miss Vola. I do expect you back tomorrow night. We have more to show." The Prince offered her a nod and a tiny dismissing wave, before she returned to her table of occult objects. "Daniel, you may escort her."

Escort. She didn't need an escort, but she really wanted one. Maybe the Prince noticed?

Natasha returned the nod, made a small bow, and as Daniel came up beside her, she turned and left the room of ghosts. Out into the hall, her knees started to shake again, and she forced herself to smile up at her sire as they re-entered the large stairway and started up to the tower lobby.

"That was t-t-t-terrifying."

"Indeed." He didn't return her gaze, hands in his pockets and glasses pointed forward. "The first night the order introduced me to the experiments they did, I was also terrified."

"What sort of experiments?"

"The branch I was introduced to was not interested in the mystical, they were interested in blood and vitae. Experiments were performed on the bodies of Kindred, some willing, some not. Scalpel's were a common sight."

Oh god. She clutched her stomach at the old vomit reflex. Vampires cutting into other vampires was a sickening prospect. You could cut into a vampire, cut deep, without them dying.

As they rounded the corner of where the stairway connected to the lobby at its peak, she blinked and glanced down at some moving black dots along the wall and floor. A few spiders. Funny, she doubted the spiders had much to eat in as sterile and lifeless a place as the tower.

The walk back to her apartment building was not so fun. If she'd been alone, she would have run it rooftop style, not to enjoy being juvenile like many young Kindred did, but just to get home faster. Every shadow seemed like it was moving, every kine walking past looked like they had some dark, disturbing history, and the crescent moon above gazed down on her like it was watching her. There were things that existed just beyond what her eyes could see, and now she had proof of it.

If she were kine, she would not be able to sleep. At least a Kindred never had to worry about insomnia. That didn't mean she wouldn't be imagining dead girls crawling out of her TV, or rotting limbs grabbing her from her closet.

"You look worried," Daniel said, once the two of them had walked a few blocks away from the tower and were exiting the Elysium zone.

"Course I'm worried! Now... now I know there are... I had no id-d-dea! No idea. I... ugh. Ignorance is bliss."

The sheriff chuckled, only for a second, and adjusted his glasses before slipping his hand back into his long trench coat.

"Sorry. Your fears are mostly unwarranted, but only mostly. Ghosts, spirits, the stuff of ephemera? You don't stumble into those sorts of things, Natasha, you have to go looking... and we will go looking."

Ephemera? Ghosts? Spirits? Hearing it put into words was the knife that jammed home reality. Her shaking only got worse.

Outside her apartment building, deep in Invictus territory, Daniel put a hand on her shoulder. She really needed to move out of the Invictus half of South Side, find a place more neutral.

"You will be fine, Natasha. Before long, the secrets we hunt will no longer frighten you as you master them. As much."

"I... I hope I can live up to that expect-t-tation."

"You dealt with Maria for decades, Natasha. You'll find the Prince and I easier to deal with." And again, her sire gave her a smile. So many smiles in a single night. Was he really that happy working with her again?

That made her smile too.

Daniel adjusted his glasses, nodded, and turned around.

"W-wait," she said. Wait, wait what? He turned around, head tipped to the side. Waiting. Well, at least he was listening, a far cry from how things went back then. "We uh... we should... c-catch up somet-t-t-time? Maybe... get a drink together?"

Another smile. "I would like that."

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~~Author's Note~~

Happy to see so many people excited I'm bringing this series back. Lot of story planned, lot of dark politics coming, lot of Jack coddling Antoinette's bosom.