My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 01

"Whatcha reading?"

"... you want to know?"

"Yeah man. We're buddies, pals... sort of?" As expected, the man raised a brow at her like she'd grown two heads, so she shrugged and grabbed a wooden chair to sit beside him on. "We should take a little time to get to know each other better."

"Like you know Othello?"

"Hey, I... well I mean, if you ever had someone over, sure I could give some direction? But like with Othello, I ain't gonna join. Got a boyfriend." And she loved her boyfriend damn it. "But I was serious. What're you reading?"

"Journey Through the Rain, by Edward Fairchild."

"Hit me, what's it about?"

"A man in a coma confronts his inner demons. The road to recovering from the coma is through the hellscape of his thoughts given form."

"Uh..."

Aaron sighed, closed the book, and set it on his lap. "You expected something more along the lines of a thriller, or perhaps fantasy, or science fiction?"

"Well, yeah."

"... you don't think our second lives have enough action as is? Yours especially?"

"Never thought about it like that, I suppose." She spun the chair around so she was sitting with its back to her chest, and she put her arms across its back, her chin resting on her arms. "But I wouldn't want to read a boring book either."

"Not boring, but it might take a little self awareness to appreciate the messages in the metaphors." He popped open the book, and flipped back a few pages. "The forest cleared to an open field, where the grass bent in the waves of wind, blades of red like fire against the cold backdrop of the clouds of my family, friends, and colleagues. Damn them all. Where they float above the pain, here I stand, with thorns in my skin and embers upon my heels."

"Doesn't sound like he's handling his demons very well."

"No. No it does not. I look forward to learning if our lead here manages to overcome his demons, or if he's destroyed by them." Aaron put his gaze back upon the page he was reading when she interrupted him, and vanished. Still there, still sitting and reading, but the man was gone. If she stared really hard, she could see the world he was imagining through his eyes. Yeap, gone.

She got up. No point in talking to him, not when he had a book in his hand. Now that she thought about it, she didn't really know what to expect from Aaron's books, but now she picked up on that philosophy vibe he was laying down. Dude might get along with Julias if she introduced them; not that they didn't know each other in passing, all Kindred did, but hanging out was a different thing than knowing names.

Jacob. The beast in Beatrice's gut stood upright as she, and her fellow Kindred all acknowledged the presence, the aura of the returning leader. He came into the grand cavern and headed directly for his private room, same as every night the past week.

"Jacob," she said, and she fell into step beside him. "Couple of Invictus neonates are looking into that Barry dude's death, like you figured. Didn't see any activity from the Carthians or werewolves though."

"Keep trying. No one thinks Barry's death was an accident. Someone killed him. Or he's been taken hostage." Old eyeless shrugged, and sat down on his furs, once inside his alcove. Beatrice followed him, and stood in the doorway; if it could be called a doorway. The tunnel that lead to his alcove was kind of a door in itself.

She looked around his room. The scary masks, voodoo bags and dolls, the strange bones, the figures carved from black wood, it all reeked of Jacob and his obsession with scary shit. The occult, ghosts, and she supposed nightmares too, all of it was the sort of stuff she imagined Jacob tinkered with in his spare time. Maybe he had other blood bowls where he bled other kine, and himself, a place where he could use the blood to do his dirtier, deadlier shit. She wasn't stupid after all. An elder like Jacob would keep secrets, and then secrets, and then buffer secrets he'd leak to the Circle, and then secrets he'd share with them willingly.

"... do you have any secret places?" she said. Might as well be upfront about it. "I bet you have a secret stash of shit somewhere. And probably three more besides."

"Are you suggesting I don't trust you, or your fellow members of the Circle?" He smirked at her as he leaned back, grabbed some weird, large black book, and popped it open. Nothing on the cover for her to read, and she leaned forward a little to take a peek at the contents of the old, tattered pages.

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting."

"Ha! Good call." Joker smirked up at her, eyes wrapped in his bandage as per usual, and showed her the pages. Some symbols she did not recognize, some language that looked weird, old, something like Egyptian hieroglyphs but not. "Not that it'd matter when none of you could read half the things I deal in."

"Well fuck you too." She frowned at her boss as she leaned against the cave wall, folding her arms across her chest. "So, do you?"

"Secret places? Of course. So does the Prince, and the Invictus council, and Garry. When you get to be our age, you learn the value of not putting all your eggs in the same basket." He got comfortable again and flipped another page.

"Yeah but... what the fuck is an egg for you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." Again, eyeless shrugged, and flipped another page of his book.

Considering what the book looked like, Beatrice could only guess it was necromancy, or some other absurdity that shouldn't actually exist, but probably did. And she knew Jacob had some robes — stored in one of those secret places probably — that looked like they belonged on a necromancer, or some other creepy occult shit. He also had some stuff that looked like it belonged on Genghis Khan, and she had to ask about that cause she kind of liked it and hadn't seen him wear it in a while.

"I suppose I can share one egg with you," he said, lowering the book again and smiling up at her. "How's Damien these days?"

Oh shit.

"You—"

"Yes, I know what you did."

"... how?" She looked around, over her shoulder, and stepped deeper into his room before pulling the hanging fur across the doorway. She lowered her voice, got to a knee, and stared at the man with a hard frown to go with. "How do you know?"

"I wouldn't be a very good witch if I told you my secrets, now would I?"

This man. God damn this man. She really loved and hated him.

"You... you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"You fed him your blood once. He isn't bound by the vinculum, and I doubt he's become addicted to vitae. You have some awkward encounters ahead I'm sure, but his feelings for you will pass. A few weeks, maybe a few months at worse, and he'll be back to normal." He too brought his voice to a whisper, but his grin only grew. "But I'm sure if you dropped by his place, a few kind words could have him doing you a favor or two. Maybe join you and Julias for a threesome."

"Ew, no thanks." Not that Damien was unattractive. Hell, he was pretty damn sexy sometimes, but his churchy attitude grated on her worse than anything. "Feeding Kindred blood is... I mean I got some earfuls from Garry when I suggested it once, as a way to get an advantage. Thought he was going to slug me just for using the word."

"There are many ways to gain an advantage," Jacob said, eyes back on the symbols in his book, "and many of them are dark, twisted, manipulative, and underhanded. But to force the vinculum on someone is a special sort of rape that most Kindred find disgusting."

"That is what you do when you create a thrall or ghoul though, isn't it?" She sighed and leaned back as she let her mind wander. "Lot of them seem pretty happy. That girl Madison that Othello's been spoiling has—"

"Othello's sexual obsessions aside, he's been teaching Madison to be well versed in the art of eavesdropping. And," he said with a smirk, "she agreed to the vinculum, the nature of being a ghoul. The love of a kine for their master. Some Kindred have obtained it by force, and it has created some strange love hate relationships between ghoul and master."

"Sound like you have experience in that department."

"I'm five hundred years old, Beatrice. The fuck do you think?"

The two of them chuckled. Christ he was old, but he didn't act like the other old vamps, not even a little.

She knew about the fading of memories Kindred his age had, and the strange dreams they went through when they took their long torpors. What was Jacob like when he was young compared to now? How accurate was his age of five hundred years anyway? By his own admittance, Kindred his age couldn't remember that time, and for someone like him and Antoinette, half a millennium was a guess. Could be younger, or older, by a fair amount of years at that.

But it was enough to know the man was old, had earned his years, and she was better off listening to him rather than ignoring him. Give Damien his space until he was normal, and don't even think about adopting a ghoul until you found someone who liked you enough to willingly accept the effects of drinking Kindred blood.

Next question.

"I've been thinking about that night," she said, "in the tunnels. Two spider monsters. A second one no one had expected." Again she kept her voice down, but she stopped looking her boss in the ey—bandage, and tried to read his expression. He seemed absorbed in the book, like Aaron would have. Not a flinch or nothing. He could beat Julias at poker. "Was that your doing?"

"Beatrice, please, how could I, a simple vampire, somehow manage to either create or lure a second one of those ancient beasts into our tunnels?" Again, without a flinch or even a shift of the eyebrow, he turned the page. "I was delighted, and surprised, to learn that one of Avery's pack died."

"I get you wanting Avery to suffer, but killing her pack seems like including innocent bystanders."

"There are societies that punish the family for the transgressions of its members." Again, another page, and this one had a detailed drawing of a skull, along with some feathers and some worms. No idea why, but there was, indeed, a drawn pile of worms on the picture. "One for all, all for one, and all that shit."

"But—"

"And I didn't kill her. You know that." He smirked at her before he turned the page. Another picture, this one with a human heart with some sort of old knife sticking out of it. A very old knife, with a handle carved out of a tree branch maybe. And around the heart were some human teeth. What the fuck.

"Ok, seriously, what's the book about? We can't read it, but this is fucking creepy shit... kind of metal though, and interesting. But also very creepy."

That managed to get a raised brow from the man. "You're interested in the occult?"

"I wouldn't have been when I was kine, but after the shit I've seen? I've seen a girl unleash some sort of weird spider nightmare thing from the aether, I've seen half-spider half-human hybrid monster things nesting in the city underground, I've seen werewolves rip and shred and tear things apart in the most brutal way, like it was... Yeah, I want to try and expand my horizons a little."

"And you think I'm the man to do that?"

"... yes! Yes you're the man to do that! You're my boss, you're old as dirt, and you know shit. So your subordinate, your fellow witch of the Circle is coming to you, requesting that you teach her." God damn this man. Getting him to do what she wanted was like working with a child, an intelligent child that knew how to be obstinate. So maybe a really old stubborn fuck was the more apt comparison.

"You understand the depths of depravity and cruelty these rituals can descend into?" he said, gesturing to the heart on the page. "Many of the rituals the Circle of the Crone practice were first discovered by civilizations long dead. This here, a woman discovered by dissecting her husband. She sacrificed something truly precious to her, removed that which their tribe considered precious, and then burned them as she prayed to the spirits of the dark to grant her immortality."

"... holy shit. Did it work?"

"Yeap. She was the first vampire."

"Are you fucking serious!?" she said. But as she stared at the page, and then at Jacob, she could almost see him roll his non-existent eyes.

"No. The origins of Kindred remain a mystery. But the woman's efforts did earn her a rather nasty case of dead."

"Dead?"

"Yeap. Her tribe found her curled up in a ball by the altar. The ground around her had turned to black soot. No idea what killed her; but it was an ancient tribe, so it's not like they knew how to do an autopsy and diagnosis."

"Whoa." She stared at the picture of the heart and teeth. Sacrificing someone you cared about, like a husband, to pursue the black arts? She tried to imagine cutting something out of Julias, but just imagining the hurt look on his face when he realized she betrayed him made her heart ache. "Did they write this book?"

"No, this was written by a Kindred centuries before I was embraced. And they talked to a tribe, who had talked to another tribe, who had told them the ancient legend of the wicked wife who sacrificed her husband." He ran his fingers along the picture of the heart, and smirked, the sort of smirk someone gave when they were deep in intriguing thought about the subject. Kind of sick, but kind of interesting too.

"That's a lot of hearsay."

"Which is why various members of the order have tested it, using the power of Kindred blood to fuel the ritual." His smirk turned into a chuckle, and he shook his head as he slowly turned the page. "Fools. To sacrifice the things that make existence bearable, in pursuit of power? Self destructive lunacy."

"... d... did it work?" Kindred sacrificing the things they cherish to pursue dark shit like witchcraft seemed pretty counter-intuitive and self destructive to her. Vamps sacrificed enough as it was.

"No." Jacob laughed, loudly at that, and showed where the next page depicted someone lying on the ground, surrounded by what Beatrice could only describe as a circle of death. Someone with a decent hand had drawn a forest and field, and the area around the lying person was withered of all life. "The Kindred were never heard from again. Whatever did this to the human who first tried it, we can only surmise killed the Kindred as well."

"Jesus."

"I'm sure Jesus was laughing at their idiocy." He turned to another page, where an altar was shown, one made of wood and lined with skulls and other bones. Looked a lot like the one they had in the main cave. Above it, a person was hung by rope around their hands, and several knives were sticking out of their stomach and waist. Blood — or what looked like blood anyway considering the pictures were done in black ink — dripped from the person's feet into the bowl.

"... this is some dark shit."

"As you know, the Circle of the Crone embraces, explores these rituals, Beatrice. But as Kindred, we have a better way to approach these arts." And again, to another picture, this time of someone cutting their wrist. But the blood coming out of the wrist didn't pour; instead, it came out in a slow, single, controlled, thick droplet. Kindred blood.

"So if I know what to say and do, I can use my blood to fuel these rituals? Instead of... cutting people up or getting my hands on ancient voodoo dolls and shit?"

"Your butchery of the terms aside, yes, many of the black arts that you yourself have no doubt surmised, you are capable of performing with the sacrifice of Kindred blood. Your own typically, but if there's an enemy you'd like to bleed dry, powerful rituals would be at your disposal." More chuckles, quieter though, before he slowly closed the book and looked at her. "Why the sudden interest?"

"Why? Like I said, monsters and—"

"That's all? It couldn't have anything to do with wanting to hurt someone specific? Or help someone specific?"

"I... I um..." If he was asking the question, that meant it was worth considering. Why did she really want to know about this stuff? There was certainly appeal to the power it provided, but also fear, and overall terror. The pictures looked like they belonged on some serious death metal album covers, not in an instruction manual.

But, she wanted that power. She wanted to be able to help if the situation arose, even help Julias, or fuck it, even help Garry if it ever came to it. And after that run in with the spider monster, she felt it important to open her eyes to more than the typical Kindred politics that disgusted her. It was part of the reason she joined the Circle after all. Still didn't feel like the whole reason though, still felt like she was missing something.

"... I don't know."

"Good answer." He pat her on the shoulder, and reached out to grab a tiny burlap bag beside him, something that fit nicely into the palm of the hand and had some crow feathers sticking out of it. "If you knew the answer, I'd be hesitant to teach you anything. But you seem like you have an open mind."

"Is that a requirement?"

"Yeah, it is."

He put the bag in her hand, and she froze as the weight of death filled her. Ice. Rock. Something heavy and frozen stuck to her guts and pinned her to the ground. She couldn't move, couldn't blink, couldn't even shiver as the waves of panic ripped at her, demanded she drop the bag despite her inability to do so.

"Feels pretty horrible, doesn't it?" he said, and he plucked the bag from her like picking up a simple pebble. The moment it left her palm, she fell back onto her hands, and stared at the horrible device. "Othello, Aaron, and Jennifer long learned to stay out of my room."

"You... got that just to deter people from coming into your room?" She wiped off her hands, and looked around at all the other little objects sitting around she never touched. Would putting on one of those masks burn her face off? Would picking up one of those knives cut her hand off? What the fuck.

"That's not what it was made for. But that is a nice bonus isn't it?" He laughed as he held it in his hand, then between finger and thumb before he brought it to his bandage-covered eyes, and then held it out to her. "This time, take it in. You're holding dread incarnate."

Dread incarnate. Lovely. And Jacob was handling it like it was nothing at all.

She thought she knew dread, thought she knew fear and whatnot. Thought she knew a lot of things that didn't know, apparently. Nosferatu had three natural talents in the blood: strength, hiding, and the ability to bestow nightmares. Nightmares of dread.

She didn't know dread at all.

Gulping on nothing, she reached out, and took the horrible thing into her palm. And again, just like before, ice froze her guts, and stones tied to her feet dragged her down to the bottom of a black, ocean abyss. Sinking. Sinking. The further she went down, the more she was doomed, covered in oblivion, until it felt like fingers gripped her face and took her deeper into nothingness.

Just in your mind, Beatrice. Just in your damn mind. Whatever this bag was, it was forcing you to feel something. Just a feeling. A feeling.

She dropped the bag.

"Impressive," her boss said, and he picked the bag back up. "Managed a lot longer than Aaron."

"Aaron tried this?"

"Mmhmm. But the Gangrel prefers his books to witchcraft. Can't blame him." A smile had sneaked its way onto the old man's face, and he chuckled a few more times, quiet and genuine sounds, as he put the bag away. "If you really want to explore the dark arts, come to Three Kings Cemetery tomorrow night. I'll show you a few things."

"Um... oh... ok." Her catacombs were in the South Side Cemetery, where everything was normal and dead. Three Kings Cemetery was avoided by most, due to some silly ideas that it might be haunted.

If Jacob was taking her there, he was probably the bastard haunting them.