My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 02

"You think I'm interested in dancing naked in moonlight?"

More laughter, and he reached out to grab a second blade from the bowl. Holding it between fingers along with the first in the same hand, he kept his other hand around her far shoulder. She felt trapped.

"I'm sure Jennifer and Othello would love that, and there are rituals often done in such a manner." Still with the two knives between his fingers, their blades pointed backward and toward his wrist, he pressed their handles together like cigars turning between his knuckles. "There's a bit of animal in you, Beatrice, that I like, that you like. Hell, that even Julias likes. That spice to you that makes you dangerous and interesting."

"You sound like you're trying to convince me to join a cult."

"That's exactly what I'm doing." He put the daggers in her hands, and smirked. "See a lot of myself in you."

Fucking god. "This some Nosferatu bonding shit?"

"Nope. Not at all. I could describe the things you've done, the things that make you who you are, and make the comparisons. But I think we've chatted enough. Spill my blood into the bowl, and I'll show you."

Hard to read. Why was he so god damn hard to read? A bandage instead of eyes was definitely part of it, but the man's voice, his tone, he kept flirting with playful, and then serious, and then psychotic, and then compassionate. Couldn't place him, couldn't figure out his motives, couldn't ever get a handle on it. But he wanted to show her, and that was a far cry from his typical manipulative ways. The dark secrets of the Circle of the Crone, blood magic, the thing Kindred whispered about in shadowy alleys, the thing that made witches so damn fucking scary. He was going to show her a crúac ritual.

With a gulp, she dragged one of the knives across his wrist. Jacob smiled at her the whole time, no flinch or anything, and reached out a bit further to make sure the large droplet of thick Kindred blood fell closer the center of the empty bowl, near the corpse's feet. It landed with a quiet splash, but the echo of its impact resonated in Beatrice's ears.

The howling in the walls grew louder.

"W... What is that sound?"

"Not afraid of ghosts, are you?"

"... after the shit I've seen? Yeah, I'm afraid of ghosts."

"Good." He held out his other hand. And again, wincing the whole time, she cut his other wrist. The tiny splash of his heavy blood pulled her guts to her feet, laden with stone. The room grew darker, the lantern now fighting to pierce some invisible black that fought against the light.

And the howling in the walls grew louder still.

Whatever light the lantern was giving, she couldn't see it anymore. The floor, the bowl, the walls and bones, it was all solid black. She could see Jacob, and she could see the corpse hanging before her, but all else faded away in a black cloud she could neither feel nor smell. Not like there'd be a breeze in a cave underground, but she expected to be able to feel something on her skin; not anymore. Whatever texture the air once held was gone, until the feel of Jacob beside her was almost jarring against the backdrop of numbness.

"What's going on?"

"Shhh." Chuckling in his quiet, sinister little way, Jacob motioned with his head toward the bowl.

The blood was moving. It trickled down the shallow edge, and pulled its own mass behind it so no trail was left. More like watching a slug of liquid move. It dragged itself down to the center of the bowl, and once beneath the corpse with maybe four feet vertical distance between them, it began to spread. The pool of blood clawed outward, gripped at the bowl and crept up its sides in all directions, until it became veins for the bowl, black veins.

The black veins didn't stay in the bowl. Beatrice looked around into the oblivion swallowing her, and shrank into Jacob's side as her eyes opened wide. It may have been pure black around them, but something was moving. Tendrils, blacker than black in the endless shadow, crept along the walls, along the ceiling, over and around the lantern, until they reached up and touched Beatrice.

She felt these. Cold. So cold. Like ice but without the sting, only the weight and lifelessness of cold death pulling at her and her skin. The fuck did an undead creature like her have to fear from death? A lot apparently, as the shadows around her clawed at her skin, sank their fingers into her, through the skin without damaging it, but filling her legs with more of the same cold weight. She looked to Jacob's legs, and found the veiny tendrils doing the same thing. Didn't bother her boss.

The bowl began to fill. Blood, black and thick, began to pour up from the bowl, managed to spout a few inches into the air before spreading out over the insides of the bowl. More, and more, until the large bowl was filled, and droplets of the heavy liquid fell over the sides onto the stone and dirt beneath it, until the black liquid dripped down the skulls of the skeletons holding up the bowl, and down their jaws like tears. She started to back up, but Jacob stopped her, hand to her leg to keep her from getting up until she calmed down.

Calming down wasn't happening. She looked around again, at the drops of black that started to drip out of the bones on the walls, and from the cracks in the stone. There were screams, still distant and hidden from her, but with the total silence falling on them with every moment, the quiet noise was free to grow louder, and louder, until her skull shook with the sounds of death wails. She looked around again, past the blood bowl and to the other side of the room, where a wave of the blackness that shouldn't be there came forward. Onyx mist, that crept along anything and everything until Beatrice, Jacob, and the corpse disappeared into black.

She could still see him though, could still the corpse, hell she could see the lantern now, when she couldn't before. But nothing seemed to be visible with light anymore. She could see it, but not because it was lit. As if someone had removed the need for eyes, she could see everything around her in the black, despite the total lack of light. Despite that it felt like she was drowning, when Kindred no longer needed to breathe. Despite how it felt like something was pinning her to the ground, something that wasn't Jacob, something cold and dense and smothering.

Something that grabbed the corpse, and yanked it off the chain.

Beatrice gasped hard and fell back, but Jacob's arm kept her from falling onto her ass. And, he kept her from not seeing what just happened in front of her, the black hand that gripped the body, big enough to cover the whole corpse in six fingers, before ripping the dead woman free of the chain. The corpse's wrists tore, and the sound of wrenching flesh forced Beatrice to look up, to see how the dead body's hands fell away from the chains to splash against the black blood in the bowl, while the body disappeared into the curtain beyond.

The howling in the walls settled, and instead, a deep rumbling came from the black before them. It shook the walls, shook them both, shook her teeth until she felt them rattling in her head. It couldn't have been real, couldn't have actually been doing that, more of the fake stimulus like that weird voodoo bag Jacob had back in his room. But the corpse, the dead woman, all that remained of her was her ruined hands floating in the thick Kindred blood.

"Malachi," the darkness said.

"Hello old friend," Jacob said back. "This is Beatrice."

"... Beatrice." The darkness moved. Something large, invisible but silhouetted against the obsidian that buried them. Its voice was a rumble, bass overpowering the room and the two Kindred in it, while harsh rasps scratched to the surface of its voice. "Hello."

She blinked a few dozen times, and looked into the shifting back. "Um... hello?"

"Beatrice, this is The Black Blood of Dolareido." Jacob nodded a few times, but remained seated. Just a few friends sitting around the dinner table chatting. "Will the body do, old friend?"

"It will."

From the blackness, some scraping sounds ripped through Beatrice's head until she closed her eyes. It passed, only for another to happen, and then another. And then movement to go with it, familiar movement, the movement of a humanoid walking.

The corpse came forward. Each step she took, her feet scraped against the stones beneath them, ripped up the dirt as if weighed down by several tons of rock. But the corpse stood there, favoring one side, with one shoulder drooping too low, and her eyes wide to stare at the two Kindred. Her eyes were black, solid black, and more of the black liquid dripped down her cheeks, like she was crying black tears. The liquid dripped down her naked body, down to her gut where the knives remained and wounds leaked more of the same liquid, down to her wrists where the black blood continued to drip. The corpse had no hands, and the shredded, ruined wrists, with bones jutting from them, were dripping with the same liquid.

She—it sat down with them, legs apart and folding at the knee. The weird liquid dripped from its nostrils and mouth, and down between its legs as it leaned forward.

"Why have you summoned me, Malachi?"

Malachi. Another name Jacob had? Elders occasionally changed names as the centuries went by, but Jacob was an old name as is, no need to change it.

"Two reasons. First, to tell you that one of the Uratha died in their confrontation with the Azlu."

The corpse laughed, and a splatter of the black liquid fell from its lips onto the bowl before it. "Delightful. My fellow spirits noticed the death. Still, we are unhappy about the presence of the Uratha."

"No one is happy with their presence," Jacob said.

Beatrice frowned. She didn't mind their presence, now that they weren't trying to kill Fiona.

"And?" the incarnation of everything Beatrice feared as a little girl said.

"And, I'm going to teach Beatrice here some of the basics in crúac rituals. Thought you'd like to help."

Oh fuck.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Author's Note~~

... I think I may have gone overboard with the girl talk between Antoinette and Natasha. Ah well, it was supposed to be a bit of silly fun, before things get dire, as they are wont to do.