My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 02

"Nosy fucker, isn't he?" Jacob said, half grin, half frown.

"Yes..." Jen, shivering enough for it to be visible, walked forward and peeked over the bowl. Body parts, no doubts, and she made an 'ick' face like an upset squirrel before backing away a little.

"How may kine have you killed?" Jacob said.

"Killed?"

"Yes, killed, you silly girl." He reached into the bowl, and started throwing the body parts around. Legs splattered flaps of skin and wet meat against the walls. There were a couple more skulls too. Good fucking god.

"I... just a couple, you know that. When I was young."

"Triss, how many have you killed?" the bastard said.

"... I didn't count. A fair bit. Kine who deserved it, when I was in a bad mood."

Jen raised a brow at her. Yeah, that wasn't something they'd discussed yet. For all Jen's confidence, and her delightful embracing of the Circle's philosophies, her hands were surprisingly clean. And then there was the whole thing with Rebecca too. Fuck, now she could see Jen's eyes changing, adjusting, adopting a new perspective on Triss. If she was scared or perplexed or surprised, Triss couldn't tell, but the lady was thinking something new about her.

"You're going to have to get comfortable with death, and blood, Jennifer." Once the bowl was empty of bodies, Jacob motioned for Triss to come over. "And don't worry Beatrice, Daniel pissing me the fuck off won't make this any worse than I'd already planned it."

"... right." Wincing the whole way, Triss handed Jen the lantern, and got into the bowl. She took off her top too, and tossed it aside. It wouldn't survive if she kept it on, and it wasn't like Jacob was some sort of pervert. Well, maybe not entirely true, but he hadn't done anything perverted to anyone as far as she knew.

She put her arms and legs out, and stared at the ceiling, the dirty bowl pressing to her ass and back, bits of the dead rubbing into her skin. The chain hanging over her had flakes of dried blood on it. Sighing, she turned her head to watch Jacob as the man walked over to the wall where the light couldn't penetrate, and he started ruffling through what sounded like a box. Out came candles and a lighter, and the man began to decorate the bowl with the candles along its edge. Vampires hated fire, and elders really hated fire, but Jacob didn't so much as flinch as he flicked the lighter on, and lit each candle.

He gave her the necklace, and she put it on. An ugly thing, old string she was sure was coated in the blood of a thousand dead; smelled like it. Or maybe it was the tiny skull on it that smelled so bad. A crow skull. Bird skulls were surprisingly neat looking, and a crow skull just reeked of witchcraft. Triss was almost surprised at how cliche it was that Jacob had asked her to wear such a thing during the first lesson.

But the surprised turned into panic, when Jacob had locked her wrists and ankles down, as he did now.

"... Triss told me about this," Jen said. "About how this is done."

"Ah, good, then I don't need to ease you into this." Jacob, still not done lighting the candles, yanked a knife out of somewhere in his robe, and slammed it down.

Beatrice had expected him to finish lighting the candles first. Shouldn't have. She needed to be prepared, she needed to use her fucking brain and stay aware. But, not like it would have helped much, as she screamed out, the blade cutting into her intestines. She knew what that felt like now, knew it intimately. No amount of bracing, no amount of preparation would ever be enough, for the feeling of metal cutting through the muscle of the abdomen, and the stabbing into the guts. Parts of the body that were never intended to have anything more than food — or a meal's blood — pass through them did not know what to do about metal puncturing through the wall of flesh. The only possible response, was pain.

"Oh god." Jen took a step back. Probably for the best; Triss was going to start spitting up blood sooner or later.

"Crúac is blood magic, Jennifer. But at the same time, that is such a poor descriptor, that fails to capture both the power of the Circle of the Crone, and of the Beast in us all." Another knife came out, and slammed down. Triss was prepared this time, but it didn't matter. The most she managed was to grit her teeth and not scream, her crocodile teeth filling the gaps between each other snug, to the point of grinding on each other.

"You may have noticed, Jennifer, that when I perform my rituals, blood is always needed. Typically Kindred blood. But that is fuel, essence, for the ritual. It is not the vehicle."

"Vehicle?" she said.

"Mmhmm. Dolareido is such a cozy place these days, I honestly didn't think this would be necessary to teach you or Aaron or Othello. But, Beatrice is interested, and with everything that's happening in Dolareido these days, I think it's important. So I am teaching her at her request." Done with the candles, he picked one up, and dripped some of the wax droplets onto the bird skull between Triss's breasts. "So, you're going to have to get used to something I think even an open-minded person like yourself will have trouble with."

"... which is?"

Jacob grinned at her, and with a snap of his wrists Triss almost couldn't see in the black, he yanked out the two knives, and stabbed again, higher, getting between ribs and reaching her stomach. Blood flowed up her withered insides, vampire blood, thick, heavy, desperate to stay inside her. Its rise was joined by a flood of searing misery, pain like acid coursing through her flesh. Triss yanked against the chains, yanked hard, putting all her Nosferatu strength into trying to snap the chains. Should have been easy. Steel chains, small ones at that? She was Nosferatu, and she was a strong Nosferatu. Steel was her bitch.

They didn't budge.

Jacob chuckled, pat Triss on the head, and smiled at Jen. All a blur in Triss's eyes as the agony fought to overwhelm her senses. Don't let it, don't let it overwhelm you.

"Letting out your Beast."

"... frenzy?" Jen said. "You can't be—"

Jacob grabbed one of the daggers, and forced it across Triss's body.

There was agony, and then there was this. Bone, fighting against blade, before it gave way. Muscle slicing apart, tearing or cutting, she didn't fucking know. But she felt the fire scorch over her, her entire body, head to toe, until she threw her head back, and thick Kindred blood splattered over her crocodile teeth. Her mouth opened wide, full size, to expose the depths of her torment.

The scream echoed for ages.

The first time they'd gone through this, Triss had asked him to stop. He didn't. She learned for the second time to accept the reality of the situation, to try and embrace what this fucking lunatic was trying to teach her. You had to be crazy to see what this fucker was talking about, the way the beast in a Kindred's guts had more power than they realized. It didn't only speak in terms of animal, it spoke in terms of blood, and things beyond.

Pain, and blood loss, brought that beast to the surface, screaming and roaring the whole way. But she wasn't there yet, and she glared up at Jacob with her snake eyes as the man grinned down at her. She managed a glance at Jen too, and grit her teeth at the sight of the woman, her wide eyes, and the panic starting to rise in them. Despite her confidence, Jen was not hard, not like Jacob wanted from his witches.

Would she be able to handle it? Triss didn't know, and as Jacob twisted the knife, she didn't care.

"I told you to stop trying to control it!" Jacob yanked the knife out, and she screamed as the man made sure to do it on an angle, tearing through ribs with the motion. "If only you were Gangrel, letting your Beast out would be so much easier." Spinning it around in his fingers, between his knuckles, he walked around the blood bowl, smiling at Triss with every step. Fuck him, fuck him and his stupid fucking smile fuck him fuck him.

Again, Jacob dropped some wax droplets onto the skull crow between her breasts. The sting of hot wax was buried in the waves of agony. Her toes stretched outward inside her boots, her fingers and claws tried desperately to grab onto anything; the only thing they found was the blood bowl's edge. She could feel more of her blood pooling inside the bowl, until her ass was splashing in it as it faded into ash. Hungry. So hungry.

"I... I don't understand. How is she going to learn anything from this?"

"Her mind is in the way. Crúac isn't about learning a set of ingredients, it's about scarring your soul, letting your soul taste the Beast within."

Triss twisted, squirmed, struggled, tried to break free of the chains. Hungry. So fucking hungry. Had to get blood into her. She was losing more of it, losing all of it, and as her Kindred body started to heal itself, Jacob laughed, and stabbed the blade into her leg. For a faint moment, she wanted to complain about him damaging her jeans, before she screamed, coughing up blood over her chest. Jacob hit the bone, and went into it, twisting the blade around and churning her flesh like potatoes and butter.

Her voice started to go hoarse from her constant shrieking.

"Pain is delightful, isn't it?" The psychopath walked up to her side closer to her head, leaving the one knife jammed into her femur, while he brought the other up to her neck. Then, up her chin, and toward her mouth. "If I bury you in it, let it wash away your thoughts, your feelings, your everything, the Beast within you can actually touch your soul, Jennifer. Like tea time, between these two Brobdingnagian concepts. I have taught Triss the rites for this particular crúac ritual. Now, I must force the communion within. And"—his knife came up at an angle, up through the base of her jaw, and up into her mouth—"that's half the fun."

Triss's scream turned into a roar, and she twisted her head from side to side to try and dislodge the metal skewering up through her jaw, hitting the roof of her mouth through her tongue. Get out get out get out, eat, eat, let me feed!

To a vampire, the beast was both a problem and an ally. It gave them their instincts, their abilities, it gave them their acute senses and their love of blood. It also took over if a vampire got too hungry, went too long without eating, or suffered so many wounds that they bled away all they had. Any animal went frenzy if dying of hunger, but for a vampire, it was like letting an entity off its chain, Mister Hyde on the inside, something that was there all the time but you kept it down because if you didn't, you'd break the Masquerade and quickly find yourself dead. More than that, you kept it down because you could feel the thing that was still human inside you slip away every time the fucker got close to the surface.

Giving into it was freeing.

Thoughts vanished. Images vanished. Ideas, concepts, vanished. Triss vanished. All she wanted, all she cared about, was getting this fucking thing, this sharp and painful thing, out of her body, and devouring something. Someone. Anything! Anything with two legs, anything that bled.

There were two things, things like her, in the room with her, near her. She could drink them! Have them, drink them, take their lives and fuel hers. Law of the jungle, law of the wild, law of the fucking world, the strong prey on the weak. Break free, break free!

The chains would not break.

One of them was still talking, making stupid noises. Woman beside him was also making noises. Again Triss struggled against the chains, harder, every ounce of her Nosferatu strength pulling against the weird metal. Steel? What was steel? No, just hardness, just a thing she wanted to break through, but she couldn't. Fury and fire mixed together, and the thing inside her guts roared until the walls became an echo chamber, the blood bowl vibrating with her voice.

And then, everything froze.

White. She saw white. Going to die? Bright light? Snarling, twisting, turning, she stared at the white light, and drew her head back to the bowl as it grew brighter. What the hell? What the fuck? Silence came second. She turned her head to look around, but all she could see was white. Yeap, she was dead, this was death. That man killed her... Jacob, Jacob was his name.

No longer bound. No longer in a blood bowl. Her, standing, naked. She looked down, and sighed relief at the lack of knives puncturing her, her guts or her jaw. Naked, but still with her tattoos and piercings, still with her claws and her crocodile teeth. The beast was no longer roaring in her skull, and the pain was no longer the fire on its tail.

She walked around, on the white endless. It had no feeling, no texture, and she had no weight; strange to be walking around then. She turned around, and around, and around, until a black wall in the distance caught her eye. Wall was a strong word, more like a pocket of shadow, some weird hole of darkness against the endless white that surrounded her. And, there was movement in its embrace.

She walked toward it, but arrived instantly. Wherever she was, this heaven, or hell, or purgatory or whatnot, it didn't care about the physical. Land of the mind, or something. Was this all in her head? But if that was true, then what the fuck was she looking at?

Before her, against the small pocket of blackness, was an altar. A dead crow's body sat upon the small wooden table, candles burning all around it. Its head was already removed, and its feathers, brains, and eyeballs were scattered upon the alter, around the candles. Its skull sat in the center. But she'd seen the altar before, in the real world. Jacob had showed her the ritual, demonstrated it, this ritual, the Crow's Eye ritual. But, words, all words, just words. Feathers and brains and eyeballs, crows, and... the thing that sat before her.

The beast.

Shadows, flowing, flicking at the whiteness around it, a cloud of onyx with wings and talons, a snake tail, claws, a beak with teeth. It had all these things, wrapped in obsidian and flowing in and out of existence, shadow swirling in and out against the white. Like a tide in the ocean, or blood in a sacrifice.

The beast looked at her, eyes blood red, nothing but blood, only blood. And, with its wing arm claw limb, it reached out, picked up one of the candles, and dripped wax onto the crow's skull. It set the candle down, stepped aside, and waited. Well, far be it from her to keep the beast waiting. Wax on, wax off, sensei. She stepped in, got down on her knees before the altar, and did the same thing, a drop of wax for the crow skull.

The beast reached out with its wing arm claw limb, and cut its talon claw knife fang across it. A drop of blackness fell upon the crow skull. Triss reached out, cut her wrist a little with her claw, and forced out a drop of her vitae onto the crow skull. The beast nodded.

What the fuck was this zen horse shit? This wasn't the fucking Matrix! Oh god, she took the red pill. When did she take the red pill? Why the f—

"—UCK!" Pain snapped its ugly maw and devoured her whole once again. Weight, blood, knives and twisting and bone and sinew and tendon and muscle and organs and stained, rusty metal, all came crashing back. Back to the real world, back to heavy, back to two people looking down at her, one of them looking like she was about to cry, one of them grinning an evil, mad doctor's grin, as he stared down at her with no eyes.

He raised his knife.

"Jacob," Triss said, "... something happened." Something, something happened. Like a dream, it all faded, hazy, wisps of images and sensations dispersing into the whiteness of wherever her mind had taken her. But something had happened, something had changed. Something in her trumpeted triumph. Something in her roared its power.

Jacob leaned over her, looked into one of her eyes, then the other, and smiled. "Welcome to the fold, witch."

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~~Jack~~

As much as he loved his vacation, spending every moment he could in Antoinette's arms, it was time to get back to work.

"Finally done fucking your girl?" Jessy said. "Been at it for a week now. Poor woman must be painted white."

He laughed. Crass and crude, but at the same time, that was how Jessy gave compliments. It was Jessynese for 'glad you're back, hope you had good sex'.

The two of them were in his apartment again, on the couches and opposite of each other, ready to get to work.

"It was pretty great," he said. "Ever had a stronger person pin you down and pamper you in sex, Jessy? Like, someone who could turn you into ash before you even realized they wanted to hurt you. And instead, that person is making you cum again, and again, and again?" He almost surprised himself with how direct he said that.

The Gangrel raised an eyebrow, and took the glass of blood he handed her. "Can't say I have. Been that girl, thousands of times. Never been on the receiving end."

"Hmm, actually, you might be able to try that on Damien. I mean, he's too strong for that, but, you know what I mean."

"What?"

He shrugged, and took a sip of his drink. Damien wasn't around, and both Jack and Jessy knew the man was entertaining the possibility of sex. Seemed safe to talk about, a little at least. And honestly, he was a little happier to talk about something like sex, instead of Angela and Jeremiah and shit.

"You were getting kind of buddy buddy with Damien. Thought you might have wanted to show him the ropes on a few more things."

"Ha. Kid, are you trying to hook me up with the priest boy?"

"He's almost as old as you, and I can see that glint in your eye when you tease him."

"Bah, he's too small."

"I'm smaller than him," he said.

"And I'm not trying to get into your pants, am I?"

They laughed. It was true, and it made being friends with the aggressive animal easier.

"You do have a type."

"And that type isn't you or Damien. But, it's not like Damien isn't a sexy fucker, just not in my wheelhouse. If I got him into Bloodlust, I could get him laid before the night was over."

"New mission?"

"New mission."

"I do suggest you don't try and get him laid in the actual club; send him somewhere quiet instead, with walls."

She snorted annoyance, but nodded once she thought about it, and sipped her drink as she leaned back in his couch. "That Fiona was a firecracker though, damn. Didn't have to do much to get her tits out and legs open."

How had he not predicted it was Jessy who got into Fiona's pants? Not paying attention.

"Be nice to her," he said. Jessy had gotten into the Fiona friendship circle a little late, and he still wasn't convinced the Gangrel knew how to be gentle with her. The monster inside Fiona may have been something epic and terrifying, but the girl was young, younger than even him.

"I was nice! She had a great night, and so did Eric. I made sure of it."

"Eric, right." The guy that drove Jack to safety. "I've yet to speak to him directly. I have to thank him."

"He works at Bloodlust most nights. Drop by, say hello. Though fair warning, I might be on him at the time."

"Like him?"

"Yeah, I kinda do, actually. He's not as big or tall as I usually like my guys, but still, sweet body on that guy. Used to do MMA."

"I meant do you like his personality." He tried to not laugh, but it came out anyway.

"Not sure yet. He's got some serious grit and bitterness to him. I can like that."

Ah, yeah, gotta love a dark, brooding dude. Ha. He laughed some more and shook his head. Time to move on.

"I suppose we should talk about work," he said.

"It's not work, kid. It's life. You think about it like work and it'll eat you up. Think about it like life and it becomes a motivation on its own. Live and breathe the struggle, and it stops being an annoyance, and starts being as natural as breathing used to be."