My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 05

~~Jack~~

"Name them yet?"

"No. Really torn on it too." Jack leaned down, held out his hand, and smiled as the two crows each took some oats from his palm. "It's gotta be something meaningful."

"Bonnie and Clyde?" His sire laughed at his own joke. Tacky, but the mafia boss man made it work.

"I'm thinking something a bit less depressing. Just... nothing coming to me."

"I wouldn't get too caught up on making the names special or meaningful. A name's something that should resonate with the person giving it, not carry connotations or expectations on the person receiving it." Julias leaned back against wall of his mansion. The two of them were outside, around back where there was a garden and some pretentious statues. Beyond the backyard, was the outside of the city, rocks and bits of trees and dirt and road. The mansion was surprisingly defendable, because no one could approach it without being seeing. It was something Jack knew Julias would take advantage of. Man probably had snipers in lookout posts nearby, or maybe on top of the mansion.

"... Mulder and Scully."

"You can't be serious." His sire facepalmed, loud enough for Jack to hear his soul breaking. "The great Jack Terry, rising star of the Invictus, watches too much TV."

"Hey! ... does anyone call me that? Seriously?"

"That's how I sold your promotion to Maria and Michael."

"... you fucking liar." He smirked at his sire, laughed a few more times, and lifted his hand. He wore a bird handling glove, a black one that matched his suit nicely, long enough to cover some of his forearm, but thin enough to be discreet. Crows weren't eagles or owls, he didn't need anything major, and the two crows perched on the glove beside each other without issue. "I was thinking G'Kar and Londo, if they were both males, but this one here is female. So, I'm thinking Mulder and Scully."

"I hope you don't tell anyone."

"I'll definitely tell everyone."

"You're not nearly social enough to use 'everyone' in a sentence."

"True. But Damien and Jessy will know, at least."

"How are things with the right hands, anyway?" Julias motioned forward, and the two of them started to walk the garden, and then further out, past the gate, and out into the endless grass, dirt, and rocks that surrounded the city. A casual stroll where the sun would be inescapable, if it decided to throw a temper tantrum and rise before it was supposed to.

"Good, actually. Jessy's teaching Damien and I about the people we bully around to keep the city running smooth. I only just learned about this Terra Den company and the nasty shit their CEO Jeremy Long has been up to." Cyberpunk mob bosses were a thing, he'd only learned in the past couple weeks. Using fancy tech to run his criminal organization.

"Yeah, he's a tough one to keep under our thumb, but he provides a lot of benefits."

Jack wasn't convinced. He frowned over his shoulder, and kicked at a couple of rocks, motion subtle enough to not disturb the two birds still on his arm.

"He traffics some pretty nasty drugs, Julias."

"He does indeed. Heroine, cocaine, barbiturates, others."

"Then why aren't we putting him in the ground?"

"Because he doesn't sell to kids, and he doesn't force his product on anyone. The only people getting addicted and involved in his business are people willing to ruin their lives, old enough and informed enough to make that choice."

"Just because someone's eighteen, and they've read the back of a get-help pamphlet, doesn't mean they're old enough or smart enough to make decisions for themselves." Jack groaned, picked up a rock, and threw it. Still the crows did not move, comfortable on his arm. It made him smile.

"There has to be a cut off point somewhere, Jack. Eighteen-year-olds are fucking idiots, but so are twenty-five-year-olds, and thirty-year-olds, and so on. They're all idiots, just slightly less idiotic than their younger selves. We draw the line somewhere, because the line has to exist somewhere." His sire walked beside him, hands in his pockets, eyes looking up at the night sky. Out here, the darkness was real, and the stars and moon had a chance to shine through. "Half the human adults on this planet aren't smart enough to think more than five minutes into the future, Jack. Don't feel bad because someone gave them some rope and they decided to hang themselves with it."

"Harsh... but, yeah, I get you. You have to call them adults at some point, and let them do their own thing." They'd had similar conversations, before Jack was sired, when Julias took an interest in him and started asking him questions about things. He asked questions, and Jack loved to think about shit, think out loud about shit too; answering them came naturally. Lots of conversations about the nature of people, that Jack had no idea Julias was slipping predator/prey bias into. Kine were prey. Kindred were predators.

The man had been training Jack on how to be a vampire for years before he ever became one. Damn, Kindred liked to think in the long term.

"So anyway," Jack said, continuing, "yeah Jessy and Damien and I are getting along. Jessy's easy, and she surprises me sometimes."

"Smarter than she seems, isn't she?"

"Yeah. Most of the time, she's a crass, rude, sex-obsessed frat boy... girl. Sometimes though, you can tell she's got this Kindred thing figured out, more than most."

"She's Michael's right hand for a reason."

"And Damien is... well, he's Damien. I've caught him smiling on a couple occasions though, so I think that's going well." Getting through to that man was difficult. Half a century of self-induced brainwashing for a psychotic father figure wasn't going to disappear overnight, or even over months. "Jessy's got it in her head to get him laid. And I kind of agree with her, it'd do the man some good."

"You know he's a member of the Lancea et Sanctum, right?"

Jack shook his head. "He is, but their tenets are about the humans, not themselves."

"Been researching the Second Estate?"

"A bit, yeah." Knowledge, it was always about knowledge. If he knew things, he could make decisions predicting more steps ahead, manipulate outcomes, steer circumstances and events. He wasn't half as good at it as Julias, but fuck him if he wasn't going to do his hardest to get that good. "That reminds me. I wanted to ask Damien about history records. Did any survive?"

"Good question. The purge was a violent affair, but as far as I know, Lucas's records were not completely lost. Bu—" He blinked, and looked down as he folded his arms across his chest. "Garry destroyed a lot Lucas's stuff, during the purge, and then again after you killed him. He went to Tony's lair that Lucas was using, and let out a little of his rage, I guess, before the tunnels were collapsed."

After he killed Lucas. That was still a lot to wrap his mind around, killing such an older vampire, in such a powerful way. Dominating a vampire, even a broken one like Damien at the time, was not something Kindred his age were supposed to be able to do. At the time, both he and Julias assumed it must have been a fluke of circumstance, but after the incident with Angela, he knew it wasn't. He'd be able to do it again, hopefully, if someone put his back to the wall.

He stroked the back of the head of the closer crow, Mulder, and smiled as the bird leaned into the touch. "I knew about what Garry did, but Damien might still have some stuff. And now that he's working for Maria, I bet she's got him digitizing some stuff. Or at least has a thrall helping him out."

"Maybe. Were you looking to check into something?"

"Yeah... you might actually be able to provide some insight." He leaned in toward the crow, and the crowd leaned in toward him. Nose bump. Scully grew envious quickly, pecking his glove, and he laughed as he started to stroke her breast feathers instead. "I wanted to ask about... Viktor."

"Yeah? What about?" Julias tried to match his gaze, but he didn't hold it, looking away to the dark horizon instead. His sire didn't want to talk about his own sire, Jack's grand sire, anymore than Jack did, really. But, again, knowledge was everything.

"I keep hearing that he was a very powerful Kindred. But, do we have any history on him?"

"No. Unfortunately, only the Lancea et Sanctum keep records about Kindred, but only those worthy of note, and only the most key points in Kindred history." Their walking took them around in the empty land, but they didn't go far, and soon they drifted back toward the garden behind the mansion. "Everyone keeps tabs on things now though, with the dawn of the digital age. At least, to a point. Detailed records about our illegal activities wouldn't be smart, and any records outright calling out Kindred for being Kindred, less smart. Only the Second Estate would do that, because they dedicate so much of their existence to protecting those records."

"... because vampire memories fade."

"More than fade. You've seen first hand what happens when an elder Kindred needs to take a long sleep, a long torpor, to let the blood lust return to normal levels. Those years of dreaming wreck the mind, turn memories into their playground. Lucas was far more stable before the purge. And Viktor was far more stable when he sired me, far more." Julias opened the back gate, and sighed as it let out a classic metal squeak. "Though, even then, he apparently had secrets from before that I was unaware of."

"Such as?"

"Just... he was more of a monster than I realized." Back in the garden, they walked beside the statues, the fountains, and Julias gestured to the statue that looked like Viktor. "He had a taste for torture. His torpor twisted him into a paranoid psychopath, but even before then, he'd grown a taste for inflicting agony I was unaware of."

Ouch, so much ouch. Jack could see the pain dripping off his sire's body, like blood into the dirt.

"You're a century embraced and you're probably the nicest Kindred in the city, Julias," he said. "If you're worried about Viktor's past becoming your past, I—"

"I thought you were the one worrying about him?"

"I... I am. I shouldn't, I know, but I am. Because..." He sighed, the exact same sigh Julias had made moments before. Lot of sighing going on, whenever the topic went in this direction. "Just worried Viktor's bloodline might rub off on me, us, and sneak into our lives in ways we might not expect."

The memory hit him with all the grace of a car crash. How dare they. That's how his mind had put the whole scenario, that's how his anger, his disgust, his hate, had framed the whole circumstance of his capture and his escape. How dare they. Something Viktor would say, to the point Jack could hear the sound of the man's voice ringing in his head.

The last words Viktor had said to him were: learn your place, and die. Christ, he'd wanted to say those same fuckings words during the whole ordeal.

No wonder so many Kindred were stereotypical, brooding, dark and dangerous types. Even knowing about it, even being aware of how ridiculous and silly it was to worry about this, he did, and he felt like hanging out in a dark corner to brood about it. Brood menacingly at that. Maybe it was just something Kindred did when they were upset, brood in corners, maybe with some kine around to provide a meal if they were drawn in.

"I worry about that too, but there's nothing to show that his ghost will haunt us. That's not how siring works."

Nothing to show, right. Nothing at all. Nothing, nothing at all.

"M-Mire?"

Both men stood up straight, backs to the Viktor statue, as they looked out over the bushes and garden railings to the familiar voice.

"Back here, Tash."

Heh, Tash. Sometimes it was easy to forget Julias had worked with Natasha, for a very long time at that. Julias never hung out with the group of them, him and Tash, Jessy and Fiona, Damien too. The boss hanging out with the employees or their friends was always a weird dynamic. Dumb reason. Jack should ask him at some point.

Natasha poked out from behind the wall of the mansion, and offered a tiny wave as she walked up to them. "Hey g-guys."

"You alone?" Julias said. "You—"

She put up her hands a little. "Art and M-Matt escorted me. And, um, I c-can call them again, to come by and escort me out. B-But, I was hoping to leave with Jack."

She was? Strange, he had no meetings planned with her, and from the look on her face, it seemed like she wanted to talk serious talk.

"Um, sure," he said. "Right now?"

"No, I wanted to visit t-t-too. I don't see Julias much... these days." She came up to them, and smiled a little brighter, especially as her eyes found Mulder and Scully. "Animalism?"

"A bit, yeah." Jack resumed stroking the heads of the two crows, smiling with the pleasurable texture of soft feathers. "But not as much as you might think. Crows are surprisingly social if you give them a chance."

She nodded as she came in closer, and Jack lowered his arm to hold out the two birds to the tiny woman. Copying him, she stroked behind their heads a few times each, earning some quiet caws. Not the delightful, pleasant whistling the typical pet bird made, but then, Jack always hated those birds. He'd worked in a pet store for a little while when he was younger, and he knew first hand that parrots of all shapes and sizes could be juvenile assholes. Corvids, on the other hand, or at least crows, seemed to have something else going for them. Like comparing dogs to wolves.

"I do plan on keeping them as pets," he said. "Haven't fed them any vitae yet either, trying a more passive approach."

"D-Did you name them?"

His sire shook his head. "No, he didn't."

Laughing, Jack brought them in closer, and again nudged his nose against their beaks. "I'm thinking Mulder and Scully, but Julias thinks it's dumb."

"It is dumb. You're a Kindred, a right hand of the Invictus, act like one." Much as the words sounded like they should have had some bite, Julias was smiling as he said them. He was trying to say the things he knew he should say, Jack could see, but he didn't really believe them himself. Which earned some giggles from Tash.

"How... about Huginn and Muninn?" Tash said, fingers rising to offer more head scratches for the two crows.

"Who're they?"

She nodded, smiling as Scully pushed her head into her finger. "Odin's t-two ravens, from Norse mythology. They flew around... M-Midgard, and kept Odin informed about what happened within."

Well, damn, that was a pretty good comparison for what he was up to.

"Almost perfect, but they were ravens, right? And I'd like something a little more modern." He shrugged a little, and adjusted his tie a bit, drawing attention to the suit to pair with his point. "Ugh, picking names for things is tough."

"It is. B-But I think Mulder and Scully is fine." Tash walked up to Julias, and offered her old partner a small nod, halfway to a bow. "Any sightings of the hunters y-yet?"

"No." The older Ventrue found them a bench, and gestured for them to sit with him as he sat on the end of it. Tash sat center, and Jack took the other end so the crows had some room, his gloved hand further out. "It's like they disappeared. No sightings of those four we'd seen before, and no sightings of Jeremiah or Angela."

"And Fiona?" she said.

Jack's turn to shake his head. "Haven't seen her either. Jessy says she likes that Eric fellow at the club, so maybe he'll know?"

The little Mekhet sighed, but nodded. "Y-Yeah, the Begotten are hiding more now. I... I hope F-Fiona is ok."

Jack hoped Antoinette didn't get her killed if she did eventually decide to enact a purge. The possibility was there, despite his love's attempts to settle his worries. No wonder the monsters were hiding, with hunters on one side, and an angry Prince on the other.

"... then pay her a visit," Julias said. Both the tiny vampires raised a brow at him, and he laughed, offering a dismissing finger wave. "You know where Azamel hangs out, and you know she's probably hiding out there. If she's in her nightmare world, you know she's still got feelers on that hole in the ground she loves so much. She'll know where Fiona's been."

Jack shivered. Azamel was forever a giant, twisted, corrupted elephant god, in his mind, no longer the old woman in the rocking chair."You want me to pay Azamel a visit?"

"You visited her last time, without my permission."

Not this again.

"Azamel and Athalia didn't want my visit to be official business. They wanted something more organic, and I can't really blame them for that. We covered their tunnels in explosives."

Natasha shrank down between them as the air started to heat up with impending argument.

"I know you're not a fan of deterrence, Jack, but it's the lesser of two evils here."

"I... I'm not disagreeing with you. But I'm not going to ignore the knock-on effects of that either. Azamel's pissed. We didn't strap explosives to Avery's home."

"Avery's home is not a stronghold, and not a place she's worried about defending, Jack. And we remember Simon was the true issue with the Uratha last time, not Avery."

"And yet the Uratha have caused more trouble for us in their time here than the Begotten have. They nearly killed Natasha." Not that he was unhappy about the Uratha being in Dolareido, but when compared side by side, the Uratha had already caused some problems with their aggressiveness. The Begotten, not so much.

Tash inched a hand up. "I—"

Julias cut her off. "Don't forget the amount of kills Fiona's ravenous appetite led to. And the Uratha didn't bring hunters to our doorstep."

"You didn't know hunters were here when you set up the explosives." The fuck did his sire not get about how Azamel was being treated unfairly?

"We didn't know, but we knew trouble was going to follow her arrival, and unlike Avery, we knew it'd be Azamel's fault. Last time her hunger grew out of control, and she destroyed entire buildings."

Jack winced, and looked down. Yeah, there was that. "And we weren't worried about Avery going full on aggro when she showed up, rinse and repeat Simon's actions? Jacob certainly was, and is." Why was he arguing so hard to give the Begotten a break? It wasn't just because of Fiona, despite her being a perfect example of why they shouldn't judge the hungry monsters too harshly. Maybe it was because of Athalia. The way she'd looked at him during the ball, that hate in her face, steel gaze cutting into him.

He wanted to make her not hate him, or the Kindred. And, he couldn't imagine how rough things were for her, with her daughter in the city, trying to kill her.

"I know that look, Jack," his sire said. "Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for other people and trying to save everyone."

"This isn't like with the kine, Julias, with the arbitrary eighteen-year-old cut off. This is a mother caught between who she is and a psychopath daughter trying to kill her."

"It doesn't matter that she's a mother!" His voice split the air, going from a raised voice to a full on yell. Mulder and Scully took off, taking to the air and perching on top of the mansion. "I know your mother is still alive, Jack, but that's no reason to sympathize with Athalia. And don't think we don't know you're still visiting your family, your mother especially, with Amanda's help."

Shit. Shit shit shit shit.

"I... She doesn't know, Julias. There's no harm."

"She might see you, your sister might see you, and you'll have to get your fingers into their brains again. And... this situation with Athalia..."

Silence fell on them both, and they both leaned forward to set their elbows on their knees, hands dangling between. Yeah, no need to say it. Jack was letting his family issues cloud his judgment.

He wasn't supposed to have family issues. He never connected with his sister, and his relationship with his mother was 'fine', but just fine. Never a true connection, never any deep meaning, never any major value. He wondered if he'd feel sad at either of their funerals. He wondered... he wondered why he was still asking Amanda for help, so he could spy on them.