My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 05

"I... I um... uh..." Natasha, fidgeting her fingers like she was tearing apart invisible sheets of paper, stood up, and turned to face them. After backing up a bit of course. "Jack, um, d-do you want to walk me home? I wanted t-to talk to you about some stuff."

"... yeah, ok." He stood up, slipped off the glove, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and faced his sire. "Cool with that, Julias?" First names meant connection, first names meant he wasn't letting the weight of the argument put a wall between him and his sire.

"Yeah. Just be careful, Jack." Good, more first names, both signing a truce. "And, as for your visits to your family? I'd have stopped you already if I didn't trust you."

"... thanks." Much as Jack appreciated it, the cut of Julias's gaze said enough.

You're flirting with pain, Jack, and it's going to eat you alive.

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

Jack called for a drive, and both he and Tash started back for his apartment. He didn't go there much, but he still had stuff there, and sometimes it was nice to remind himself that he did actually own his own place. Now, he had money for a much better place, but would he ever move into one? The Invictus wouldn't let him full-on live with Antoinette, probably. He had to keep his Invictus-connected laptop and stuff at his apartment, safe from the Prince's prying fingers. Safe-ish. As if she didn't already know everything the Invictus told him.

They got out before arriving at his apartment though, and decided to walk around. Mulder and Scully followed him from above, blending in with the rest of the crows that hid themselves on the rooftops. Plenty of the crows in Dolareido didn't bother hiding, and perched atop street lampposts, or garbage cans, benches, and street signs. Some of the braver ones stood upon the signs of the local casinos, bars, and clubs. The bravest stood on the street with the kine, and picked up bits of food. He knew about crows that dropped nuts onto the streets in Japan, and used traffic to break them. They used the traffic signs or pedestrian flow, to wait to cross the street, and pick up their prize. And since then, crows had been spotted doing some fairly insane things, intelligence-wise, all over the world.

So Mulder and Scully had no troubles blending in with their neighbors, keeping tabs on his car, and then tabs on him as he and Tash got out of the car and started walking the sidewalks. Time to do some rounds, walk around, see if they spotted anything out of the ordinary. A quick walk around familiar territory just to make sure things looked normal. Chance of it helping with the hunter hunt was less than zero, but whatever, better than nothing.

"Sorry about that," he said to the tiny girl beside him. "With Julias, I mean."

"That's ok. I know w-what it's like to argue with your sire."

"... Daniel knows how to argue?" Imagining the borderline lifeless man in a debate, let alone an argument, was impossible.

Tash giggled again, quiet and subtle. People were around, better to keep their voices from traveling too far. Normally, kine hearing some of their dialogue was harmless, but the conversation topic was sensitive, and with the risk of hunters hiding in their midsts, best to not get cocky.

"The same way that a s-st-s-stone does, or a w-wall."

"Then he must be good at it, cause I've argued many o' times with a wall. Lost every one of them."

They chuckled. Yeah, both of them knew what that was like, rehearsing arguments, or having arguments with imaginary people. It never ended well, just going around and around with pretend situations, pessimism leading to the worst outcomes.

"I, um... I visited the old prison, w-with Art and M-Matt."

"Yeah? Invictus leave behind any evidence?"

"No, n-nothing anyone besides Uratha would find. B-B-But... they... they um..."

He raised a brow as he looked down at her. She caught his gaze, made a tiny frown, and took his wrist. With a small yank, the Mekhet took him into one of the dark alleys, maybe ten feet into its depths, so the neon lights of the nearest casino cut across the asphalt between the walls at an angle. She put her back to the wall where it hid her from the light, and he stood next to her, both now in the darkness, and soon, both hidden in her cloak of night.

"What's up?"

"They... th-they wanted me to... t-to ask you..." Sighing, she hugged herself, looked down, and shivered a little. Social anxiety, he recognized the signs well enough, but what did she have to be anxious with him about? "Are you ok?"

"... um, I guess?" Weird direction to take the conversation, and random. "What's this about?"

"The b-boys, they... they could feel the... the um... th-they think what happened at the prison, is... is... worse than... than..."

He sighed, long, and hard. Seemed like the thing to do, to finish her sentence with a noise of blatant brooding. Just two vampires, in a dark alley, hiding in shadow, talking about their problems. His problems, this time. Did the cliches never end?

"They could?"

"Y-Yeah, they... they noticed it, immediately, when we arrived."

"You asked Matt and Art to help with the hunters, didn't you? Avery won't be happy, you stepping around her like that."

Natasha shivered a little, rubbed her arms, and gulped. "Maybe. The boys, they say they c-can handle her, and that she... won't d-d-do anything t-too mean to them, for disobeying her."

Must be nice, to have that level of freedom. Must be nice, to trust your bosses to be... human, about things. He trusted Julias like that, but he trusted Michael and Maria a total of zero. If he stepped out of line like that, they'd punish him. No wonder Julias wasn't too happy about him seeing Azamel without his permission.

"And... they noticed what happened?" he said. "Thought the Invictus cleaned the place up. The usual evidence sweep."

"Yeah, the d-did, and no... no kine would find evidence. But the boys, they... b-b-both noticed, how... how bad it was, how bad it must have been... They said you... um, that the event, scarred the place."

"... I suppose it'd be pretty stupid of me, to dismiss that, pass it off." He swiped the air with his hand, like wiping the remains of a broken plate off a table. Part of him still wanted to not say anything, to act tough for others. He had let Julias see how damaged he was, a bit anyway. He had let Antoinette see more. He hadn't told either of them the extent of it, of what it was like for his mind to reach out, and crush the souls of human beings like they were ants, annoying, pestering, biting little ants that deserved to be squashed.

Antoinette said she wanted him and her to have a more adult, mature relationship, talk with each other about serious things, vampire things. At the time, he thought that meant talk more about the trials and tribulations on a larger scale. Now, he realized, it meant he could talk about this sort of disgusting shit, the shit that got under his skin and made him hate being a vampire. Tash worked for the Prince, and he trusted her, so, this could be a trial run.

"... it was horrible," he said. "Yeah, it hurt being tortured, and they terrified me, and sometimes I dream about Angela's psycho eyes." Fucking daily torpor dreams were never so vivid before. And you couldn't just wake up from a nightmare as a Kindred. You slept through that shit, and let it take you down into a spiraling pit of insanity until the sun set. You didn't have a choice. Kindred could force themselves awake during day hours, but the effort of being awake while the sun was up was like dragging a boulder on your back. You didn't do it to avoid scary dreams.

"That... d-does sound bad," she said, voice a hovering waver almost lost to the street noise.

"And... and it was more."

"More?"

"... you ever want to kill someone, Natasha?"

"I d-d-don't kn—"

"I mean, have you ever wanted to kill someone. You ever wanted to feel your fingers around someone's throat, because you know, you just know, deep down in your bones, that the sensation of their windpipe crushing and their bones cracking in your grip, would be the most euphoric sensation? Ever wanted to look into someone's eyes, actually meet someone's gaze, hold it from only inches away, and see the life drain out of them, see the terror in them as they realize they're gong to die? Ever wanted to..." He held out his hands in front of him, and squeezed the air, like he was squeezing organs into mulch. Hate. He'd had no idea what hate was before that. In that moment, in that single night, he'd tasted hate to such a degree, it was scarred into his mind; and onto the prison itself, according to Tash's wolves.

No wonder he was turning into a brooding cliche. Christ, just thinking about that night had him craving the feel of crushing their worthless minds with his superior Kindred mind. He was the predator, they were the prey, how dare they.

"... no... I... d-don't know what that's like." The far, far older Kindred looked down, and Jack looked away, toward the street. She had fifty Kindred years on him, and she didn't know what it felt like to hate like that. Wonderful. "... you... you sounded like you w-wanted to help Athalia, earlier today, with Julias."

"I do! Fuck, I do. I... I don't... I don't walk around, feeling like this. But sometimes, it hits me. Sometimes, I remember what it was like being trapped in that chair, with those fucking hunters holding me hostage, and..." He looked at his hands again. His hands were squeezing the air, like he was crushing minds, like he was crushing organs and bone. "... I feel like a fool."

"W-Why?"

"I'm just over a year embraced, Tash. Who the fuck am I to be getting so morose about this? I survived hunters trying to kill little ol' me, and dealt them a serious blow at the same time. I have the most amazing girlfriend. I'm swimming in money, sex, and blood... food, for the metaphor. I...I'm just a confused idiot who over thinks everything." He shouldn't be letting it get to him so much.

"... I would... I would say you might be over thinking, a little? B-But... all Kindred have to fight their... b-b-beast," she said, looking at him, weak smile on. "You w-want to help Athalia, and others. That's good. You... you're tasting some... some p-powerful feelings... that Ventrue come t-t-to naturally. It's your b-bane, right?"

He sighed, nodded, and leaned his head back, putting it to the old building's wall so he could look up at the washed out sky. All Kindred blood clans had tendencies, weaknesses inherent to the blood, that manifested in their behavior. With Ventrue, it was perfectly manifested in that one moment where Viktor had cut him open. 'Learn your place, and die.' Only for Viktor to die, in the end.

He nodded. "Yeah, it is."

"Then, you... you... I d-don't know. You're one of the nicest Kindred I know, Jack. I... d-d-don't think you have anything to worry about. But... but the boys, they... they were surprised, by the... the pain and hate and death... carved into that place. I wanted to make sure you were ok. Are... are you ok?"

"... yeah, yeah I think I am." He smirked at her. "Antoinette told me that you told her, that she shouldn't try and keep the real world out of our relationship?"

She squeaked, and lowered her head. "... I d-did."

"... thanks, for that." And he shouldn't try and protect Antoinette from this side of him, just because he thought he was overreacting. He probably was overreacting, and Antoinette could confirm, with her wealth of experience. Or, in either case, help him.

Natasha's phone rang. She pulled it open, blinked at it, and answered. "Sheriff? ...um, Terry is here with me, should... Oh, ok. Um... sure, we'll b-be right there."

"We will?"

She smiled at him, a tiny, curious smile, as she put the phone back in her pocket. "He said y-you would want t-to see this anyway."

What wonderful, delightful twists and turns was Dolareido going to throw at them tonight?

"Hey Tash?"

"Y-Yes?"

"Don't tell the Prince about our conversation, if you don't mind. I'll tell her, eventually." When he could wrap his mind around it a little better.

"Sure."

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

They took a drive toward Devil's Corner, closer to the border with the Carthians. This late at night, and in this particular section of the dirty corner of the city, it was basically the most dangerous place Dolareido had to offer. The people who were outside hung out in alleys and in groups, heads covered in whatever was a fashionable 'fuck you I'm dangerous' getup. Men were particular to tattoos on the chest, and jeans hanging down till they were basically falling off. Women were particular to fancy chain link piercings, and short haircuts, sometimes going bald.

Getting mugged was a possibility, for Jack and his little Mehket friend, but it would only be an excuse to let off some steam for him. And, he didn't want to let off steam by breaking kine minds and bones. Instead, he looked up and made sure Mulder and Scully were still there, before he headed down the alley for the location. A storage locker rental site, where storage lockers as big as small bedrooms were set up, hundreds of them.

Daniel was waiting beside one, back to the roll-up locker door, wearing his usual trench coat. Hands folded across his chest, holding his elbows, he was looking down at the facility's floor, mind wandering about god knows what. He didn't look happy, but the man never did, so that didn't tell Jack anything. The facility was no different than a garage for storing cars, multiple floors dug into the earth, with some above ground, pillars of concrete and other building materials, old metal, rusting doors, and the occasional puddle along the cracked ground.

In Devil's Corner, this was the perfect place for people to get involved in the really nasty shit, the visceral and hands-on brutal stuff, and hand-me-downs from Terra Den drifted this way. Drug dealers fighting over turf, or dealing in general, were not uncommon in the multi-layered dens of old buildings like this. And what sort of shit people stored in these lockers, he could only imagine. How Dolareido was, statistically speaking, safer than other cities, Jack didn't understand, when he first got involved in the nightlife. But seeing how Jessy bossed around big, bad corporations like Terra Den, and kept them in line, he understood now. The Invictus kept the titans with money from ruining everything, and the Carthians kept their local population of... rougher types, from getting too rough with shit.

But, Devil's Corner didn't have the Carthians, and the Invictus had no reason to deal with it either. So a trip to storage cell, in the middle of the night, with the sheriff standing outside it waiting for him and his childe, had an air of crime scene, murder mystery, or other grizzly discovery. The sheriff should have been smoking, and there should have been police tape around, to complete the image.

"D-Daniel." Tash walked up to him, and stood straight, smiling up at her sire. "You found something?"

"Indeed." He turned, and offered Jack a small nod, before leaning down to pull the roll-up door open. Darkness awaited them, and he ushered them in, before closing the door behind them, and turning on the light.

Jack wished he hadn't.

The Ventrue gasped, and stared. Walls, all the walls, all the fucking walls, were covered in symbols. The floor was covered in the biggest one, so large it covered the entirety of the room's base. Red, painted, etched and carved. They smelled, rotten blood, a smell all Kindred knew well, knew instinctively, knew to never ingest lest they wanted to vomit their guts out for hours. Joined with the sight, it created a nauseating mess.

He recognized the symbols. Anyone would recognize the symbols. Inverted pentagrams in circles. A bird skull. A cow skull. A horse skull. The skull symbols sat outside the flat edges of a triangle, a triangle that surrounded the pentagram. And around the triangle itself was another drawn circle, two borders, with symbols drawn within the two borders, letters of a language he didn't know.

"... what in the ever living fuck." He looked around and around, and gulped with each wall he looked to. The enormous symbol beneath him was big enough to reach the three tables that were pressed to the walls, out of the way of the door. And each table was covered in more symbols, hundreds, thousands of them, many carved into the wood their surfaces, many painted with more dried blood.

"J-Jack."

"This looks like something the Circle would do. But, why would they, in a locker in Devil's Corner? The fuck?"

"... Jack, um—"

He turned to Tash, and gestured to the table and a stack of papers on it. Piles of drawings, done in pencil. Drawings of the symbols, but drawings of other things too, and he reached out to start pushing them aside. A drawing of a skeleton. A skull. A hand with half of its flesh eaten off. Whoever drew these was really talented, and sick as fuck, and—

"Jack!"

He turned around again, and looked to Tash as she tugged on his arm. But, she wasn't looking at him, she was looking up. And, like being asked to not look down, he followed her gaze up to the ceiling.

There was a skeleton, nailed to the ceiling. Not a fake skeleton, not a drawing, and not an old skeleton. It couldn't have been more than few months old, he could smell flesh and blood, but he couldn't see them on it, minor traces of the smell a vampire couldn't miss. String, or some sort of thin rope, tied the limbs to the nails, and they looked stained with blood.

Now they were knew where the blood came from, used to paint the symbols.

"Fucking god." He walked over to it, underneath it, and stared up at it, slowly rotating in spot. "Sheriff, why d..." Why do you think this has anything to do with me, or that I'd want to see this? No need to ask, no, not when he was staring at himself.

There was a drawing, of Jack, on a necklace. And it was dangling from the skeleton's neck.

"I've already dug up the records on this facility. No one was renting this locker, according to the manager's records." Daniel walked up to stand beside Jack, and looked up along with him, at the picture. Or probably, at least, but Jack couldn't look at him to check, eyes locked onto the picture.

It was a really good picture. Someone with a great hand, a fan of the pencil, someone who could cross-hatch and capture the depth of a shadow, and the depth of an emotion. They caught the look of joy in his face, the total, overwhelming bliss he felt, when he put on his headphones and let music wash away his thoughts. The only thing that could ever truly, totally and utterly silence his mind, was music. And when he listened to complex, long music, with sprawling movements, let it take him away on a journey of pure sound, vibration, waves, energy, he knew he wore that emotion on his face.

Someone captured that expression, the unique expression he wore when listening to music, fucking drew it, and put it on a corpse.

"I... I... how? Kindred faces don't show up on camera! Digital, or analog, or what-fucking-ever!" He gestured to the picture, and started looking around for some sort of reference. "How the fuck!?"

"Jack, p-p-please, calm down." Tash grabbed his hand and tried to pull him away, but he yanked it free and gestured back up to the hanging picture.

"What is this? What's going on?" Oh god, oh fucking god. He stared at the picture, at the portrait, and put both hands on his head to begin rubbing his hair. "They... that..." He had headphones on in the picture too, big ones, open, supra-aural, expensive and magnificent. "My apartment! They... they... had to be watching me... and drawing me..."

Panicking. He was panicking. He was legitimately, truly, panicking. He didn't know what that was like, to lose control, have your body fight against you, have your impulses go haywire. If he was still alive, with a beating heart and dependent on oxygen, he'd be gasping and fighting his own body for air. He stumbled around, pushed past Tash, and fell toward the table. Still on his feet, he slammed his palms down against the wooden surface, and forced his eyes to focus on something solid, but all he could find was occult symbols, and drawings of dissected body parts.