My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 08

~~Natasha~~

"This place reeks of wraiths... but... there's more." Matt pointed them toward the mausoleums, deep in the cemetery, raised up slightly on the gentle slope with platforms of stone, concrete, and stairs. "Someone's been walking this path."

"Can't smell em," Art said, "but yeah, someone's been walking this path."

"B-But, if you can't smell em, how d-do you know?"

"Traces of difference in... eh, it's hard to describe." The gentle giant shrugged, and started up the slope toward the back of the cemetery. Big cemetery. Walking there would take a moment. "And... there's... there has to be a locus here. Has to be. Where is it?"

Art shrugged, and the two of them started poking around tombstones as they continued on. "Dunno Lenny, keep looking."

Lenny and George; sometimes she wondered if either of them had actually read the book, or had just seen the movie. Gary Sinise was delicious in 1992, yum. She rolled her eyes at where her thoughts went, and refocused her mind.

"Umm, I know that B-Beatrice used to live in a different cemet-tery, South Hill Cemetery. But, um, I don't think any Kindred live here."

"I know I can smell something weird," Art said, stepping around another enormous tombstone. A statue of an angel, again, this one with a skull face, armor, and six wings. The werewolf continued along, bending down and over, and looking at various grooves in the ground and such.

"W-What're you looking for?"

"A secret switch."

"... a what?"

"Secret switch." He shrugged, and gestured to Matt. The big guy was doing the same thing, down on a knee behind one of the statues, and running his hands underneath the grooves of the stone.

"Why... w-would there be a secret switch?"

"City was built by vampires, right? I assume every major area has a half-dozen secret switches or levers, to open secret doors, to secret tunnels and whatnot."

Laughing, she shook her head. "Um, m-maybe? I may be older than you, b-b-but... still n-nowhere near as old as Jacob, or Antoinette, or the others. They m-might know, but they wouldn't t-t-tell us if they did."

Matt stood up, and looked at her like she was crazy. "Your bosses wouldn't even trust you with things like secret stashes?"

"N-No, it's not their fault, I w-wouldn't either."

"You wouldn't trust your Vivi with a secret location?" Art said, moving his search further up the path.

"Not all of them, no. She understands. It's... it's b-because... Kindred live so long, and... and you c-can't trust someone to always b-b-be an ally. She might be d-dominated by a powerful Ventrue, or coerced by a p-powerful Daeva. Or, with d-decades of time, might no longer like you, m-might no longer be... an ally." No wonder so many Kindred lives turned into soap opera dramas. They had the years and the motivations to make a soap-opera-esque string of ridiculous circumstances a reality.

She smiled at Art and his question, though. He remembered Vivi's name.

"Avery says you vamps need to learn to trust each other, and watch each other's backs," Matt said, heading in her direction, before passing her and heading up further through the cemetery. "Or rather, she says you need to, but it can't, and won't ever happen."

"That... is accurate," she said. No hope there, despite Antoinette's best efforts, to ever get Kindred trusting each other. There were acceptable compromises though, and Tash felt Dolareido had found that, for the most part.

"Maybe it's a good thing we're here, then." Art winked at her, and gestured for Matt to follow as he walked up to the mausoleums. "Could be a case of a lack of proper role models. I, for one, would make an excellent role model for new Kindred." Placed at the top of the slope of the massive graveyard, the row of mausoleums overlooked the rest of the cemetery, the imposing buildings of stone and their adorned stairways and archways casting judgment over approaching explorers. Art and Matt shivered, and Tash did as well, eyes looking between each religious symbol that awaited her. Excitement, anticipation, or preparation, she wasn't sure what it was she was seeing in the two men, but the weight of their bodies shifted forward onto the balls of their toes more, and their fingers curled and uncurled at their sides. They were getting ready for something.

Hard to ignore a mental image of two dogs, excited before a front door as they hear the unique noise of the master's car pulling up the driveway.

The two of them stood before the mausoleums, and their eyes scanned over the beautiful artwork. The statues were impressive, and she spent some time re-imprinting the image of them in her memory. The one of the female angel, nude, with sword drawn high, and a man's collapsing body cradled to her side with the other hand, was empowering. But, the two boys were more interested in the statues of Mary.

The stairway up to the mausoleum wasn't very big or long, a single step in reality; the statues of Mary made it seem like an ascension into heaven, a long stairway rising from the hard cruelty of stone and life. The statues had their arms outstretched, and the features of their guises were washed away with at least a century of rain and wind. The discoloration was saddening to look at, and Natasha frowned as one of the statues caught her gaze. With empty eyes of stone, Mary gazed into her, faded and smooth face caught between a stare of longing, and one of horror.

Tash gulped, and followed the boys to the arch above, where a cross adorned the entrance to the old building of stone. If there was any place a vampire shouldn't enter, it was a church, or a cemetery beside one; so the myth went, anyway. Bogus, and incorrect. It didn't change she was unnerved to step underneath the cross, and let the large pillars that held the building and its walls up envelop her. Undead thing in a holy building, how did Maria do it? Sleeping beneath a Cathedral was asking for divine retribution.

Inside the mausoleum, they found exactly what she expected: shelves of dead people inside boxes. She didn't expect they'd also find smaller caskets, many partly broken open, showing weird things. She'd forgotten about such things, sometimes found inside mausoleums, storage for special items. One was cracked enough to see straight in to a doll inside; a very creepy doll.

Art and Matt didn't seem creeped out. They peeked at it, looked at each other, chuckled and nodded, then made reference to something they both remembered. At the same time, no doubt. Then, they got to work, examining the small room. Mausoleums weren't huge on the inside to begin with, and this one had shelves of caskets on all the walls, leaving only the middle of the room open.

"Still looking f-for secret... sw-switches?" She giggled, and shook her head, as she watched the silly men feeling up the old stones. "Hey! Respect the... the d-dead."

Art smirked at her, and winked, too, as he ran his fingers along some dust atop a coffin. "I am. I am also dating one."

"H... Hey." Sometimes it was easy to forget she wasn't only a vampire, she was also a corpse. But she could tell Art was teasing her, and she kicked him in the calf for it, hard enough to hurt at least a little.

Matt laughed, but he, too, was feeling around the old caskets. "The dust and dirt around here has been disturbed. And I can hear something coming from somewhere."

Click.

Matt and Tash turned to look at Art, and Tash's jaw dropped as the floor beneath her began to move aside. With a squeak, she jumped out of the way, over to Art, and stared at him.

"S... Secret switch?" she said.

Art winked at her, and tapped the side of his nose a few times. "Irraka."

Matt rolled his eyes, and looked down at the stairway. A tiny stairway, that led into blackness. "... um, can I fit in there?" He made the attempt, stepping down a little ways until it was time to duck under where the floor became the stairway's ceiling. "Yeap, barely."

"W-We don't know what's down there!" she said. There was brave, then there was suicidal.

Art shrugged, and started down the stairs after Matt. "We can handle it," he said, like it was a perfectly normal trip into the bowels of Earth. She grabbed Art's hair once his descent brought his downward journey to her hip level, and yanked him back a bit, earning a quiet yelp from him. "Hey!"

"D-Do you wolves always barge in head first? Like you said, it... c-c-could be a secret Kindred room. It... it c-could be... dangerous, with traps, and... and things! Or hunters!"

Both Matt and Art looked at each other, then her, and shrugged.

"We'll keep an eye and ear open," Matt said. "We are pretty good at this, you know. Tijuana was a pretty big trial by fire sort of city."

"Did... d-did you kill many Kindred there?"

Art sighed, and nodded after a few seconds. "Killed some, yeah. Lost a couple of our pack, too."

"Then you... then you know how d-dangerous Kindred can be, w-when you... touch their personal things." Secret room underneath the Three Kings Cemetery sounded like either the Lancea et Sanctum, or the Circle of the Crone. The former was gone, but the latter was very much not. She shivered at the memory of Jacob grabbing her, the terror that had run through her, being in the grip of that psycho, before she shot him.

"Yeap, we do," they said together.

"Then, the hunters c-can be found in a d-different—"

"This isn't just about tracking down the hunters, Tash," Art said. "Those weird red wraiths are up to something. We knew that before you called us in for the ritual. There's a connection, and we're going to find out what it is before it leads to... well, what you can imagine a gore-obsessed wraith might want to perpetuate."

Sighing all the louder, she nodded. They were doing their duty as werewolves. Duty. Werewolves. Why they had a 'duty', she couldn't understand, but apparently it was something they just had, something that was expected of them to do. Made zero sense to her.

She was thankful, since it meant monsters like that Azlu creature were no longer a threat. It also meant they were willing to help deal with the hunters, since the ritual was linked to these weird wraiths they kept talking about. Lot of things lining up, but now, it meant seeing her two boyfriends putting themselves in danger, straight up.

She didn't like that.

Groaning, she pulled out her sword, her pistol, and started down the stairs. "You t-two be careful, and stay n-near me, so I can cloak us." With a stern look up at Art, shutting him up before he protested, she pushed past him in the tiny stairway, and got between the two wolves. "L... Let's go."

For a moment, she thought the two boys would stop her. Part of her wanted them to, but a bigger part of her didn't. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, and could handle Kindred better than they could; at least, when trying to avoid violence. They might stumble onto what Maria was doing, maybe something to do with what the secret the spirit had mentioned. They might stumble onto Jacob doing some dark ritual. They might stumble onto Garry, running a secret meeting of the Carthians, or planning a strike maneuver against the Invictus. They might run into the Prince, performing some dark, evil sciences where she thought no one would bother her.

It paid to be paranoid. Kindred were strong, but they didn't get to live forever by being careless. The two Uratha with her, on the other hand, could get run over by a train and probably survive, so, maybe it paid to be more adventurous in their circumstance.

Tash set her phone to a dim light, and hooked it onto the breast pocket of her suit. The tiny bits of light broke through the fabric, and in the ensuing pitch black, the glint of light was enough to show the way ahead.

The tunnel was old. She expected something closer to what Maria had, a grand chamber built of strong concrete and metal. Instead, she found dirt and rock, and wooden beams, deep under the cemetery, beneath the dead and ash. Some of the rocks were a bit wet, but she wasn't sure where the humidity was coming from. The air was stale, stagnant, and she smelled death on it. Old, and new death. And if she could smell it, Art and Matt surely could. The two sniffed, and grimaced in tandem with the thought.

A large support beam, held up by two of its kin, braced the thousands of tonnes of rock over their heads, and the wooden sign that dangled from it, completed the lovely trip into hell they were taking. Continue Forth, and Death Awaits Thee. It was burned into the wood, and several skulls hung from the sign as well, with hooks rammed through their sides.

Circle, definitely looked like something the Circle would do. Jacob.

She tapped Matt on the back, and squatted down. The two boys got down as well, a knee each; maybe not flexible enough for easy squatting.

"This is p-probably one of Jacob's lairs," she said, voice a whisper, and buried in her cloak of night. It wasn't going anywhere, unless she let it.

"We don't have much experience with the Circle." Matt shrugged, and looked down the tunnel ahead of them.

Art nodded. "Even Avery doesn't have much. They were pretty low key in Tijuana, and from what Avery tells me, her issues with Jacob when she was here last didn't exactly expose the intricacies of the covenant to her."

"Intricacies is... a, um... light w-way of p-p-putting it." She peered down the tunnel as best she could, and pulled up her vitae until she could feel it in her eyes. Sith sight. Auspex was a discipline only the Mekhet knew, and she put it to good use. Why hers let her see better in the dark, she wasn't quite sure, but far be it from her to not take advantage of it. She saw only empty tunnel ahead of them though, and heard nothing.

No, that wasn't quite true. Screams. She could hear screams, little things that echoed down the tunnel, like ghostly wisps along the walls, hidden in the grooves of the rocks and dirt. Her eyes locked onto the walls, the wooden beams, the skulls above and the sign; her gaze darted around looking for the movement she was sure she could see. No, no movement, no ghosts, but no matter how many times she shook her head to dislodge the sounds, they came back, shrieks on the air.

Art and Matt both made quiet growling sounds. It'd have been cute, if it didn't mean they could hear them, too.

"You... you sure you want t-t... to keep going?" she said.

Art touched his nose again. "There's something going on down here. You don't want to know what it is?"

"I d-do, b-b-b-b-b—"

Matt set his hand on her shoulder, and winked. "Relax, we'll be fine."

She punched him in the chest, and pointed up at the sign. "That is n-not fine!" And if Jacob found her snooping through his stuff, she doubted that would go well at all. Or, maybe it would? He might enjoy her brazen disregard for his superiority.

Art gave her a small shove, and she squeaked as she fell onto her hip. Not sneaky at all! "Look, Tash, we have to investigate this place, anyway. If shit's fucking with the Gauntlet, if someone, even Jacob, is opening up a can of worms they can't control, we need to know."

"We're trying to shut this problem down before it grows any bigger. David and Avery brought us here for a reason."

"I... I d-don't know what that reason is, you w-w-won't tell me."

"We'll show you, eventually." Matt nodded, and helped her back up into her squat. "But if you think this is too dangerous, then we can't take you to the Hisil, either. Shit can be a lot worse there."

Perspective, like an ice bath after being out in the heat. Or a slap to the face with a tire iron. They were about to do something dangerous, probably something that would upset Jacob, and that was the level of danger the Hisil provided. Either the Hisil was fucking deadly, or these two were underestimating Jacob.

Both, it was always both with these things.

Gulping, they resumed. Deeper, and deeper into the Earth, deeper into the awaiting screams that crept along the stone and wooden beams, that came up behind them in the black, and down upon them from the dead, above. Some tree roots reached them, aged and covered in dirt, like everything else down here. It would have almost been expected for a skeleton to pop out of the walls or ground, and come at them with ragged, rotted clothes dangling from their limbs. But only the mix of silence, and there-but-not-quite-there howls of pain greeted them.

Soon, her eyes could no longer penetrate the darkness ahead. It looked like the tunnel was about to open up into a chamber, but instead, a wall of black blocked them, like a fog, except with no body, nothing palpable. More like, staring into a black hole, some abyss, some barrier of alien origin. As if Death itself had set up its home, and the little leech and her two canine friends had stumbled onto the deity's lair. As if the gates of Hades were—

Matt reached out, and touched it.

Tash and Art both slapped themselves in the forehead. The following pop, as if Matt had pin-pricked a balloon, caused the three of them to raise their arms in defense. Yeap, dead, so dead; Death's wall was going to eat them.

Except not. She blinked, and looked at her arms in front of her, before lowering them. Still alive, still in a tunnel, Art and Matt still with her. Art walked up to his friend, and slapped him in the back of his head.

"God damn it, Lenny!"

"Hey! I—" The two wolves went silent, and stared on into the chamber ahead of them, as a corpse collapsed.

Tash came up to stand beside her two werewolves, and peeked at the sight, at the symbols on the walls, at the giant bowl in the room supported on the backs of lying skeletons, at the corpse of the disemboweled female corpse on the floor next to it, and at the mess of blood everywhere. A hook dangled over the bowl too, the sort you might use to lug cargo with. What in the world?

"... Triss," she said, and managed a small wave with her gun hand to go with it.

"Um, hey, Tash. And, uh... this is Art and Matt, right?" The snake woman tapped on some of her crocodile teeth a few times with a claw, and looked left and right at her boss and her friend, Jen. "Whatcha doing here?"

"I... I um, c-could ask you the same thing." She gestured to horrific display, the two other Kindred standing around it, and the symbols that surrounded them all. She did not like that she recognized them from recent memory. "W-What's going on here?"

"Private business." Jacob took a step forward. Tash took a step back. The boys stayed where they were, lips curled into snarls. "You two have balls. I like that. You know, I knew a girl, a weird sort of vampire that needed to eat flesh to survive. She had a thing for eating the testicles of men, especially the brave ones."

"Was... was that corpse... standing up?" Tash, shivering, trembling, did her best to keep her hands tight on her sword and pistol. They'd be useless against Jacob, but it was better than nothing.

"Indeed it was! Your two boy toys have probably put together what I was doing." The man reached into the bowl, and withdrew something red, and dripping. Something that belonged inside a human body. Chuckling, he whipped it at Matt, and the big guy knocked it aside with the back of his hand. Blood splattered across his wrist and over his face and shirt, but Matt didn't flinch.

"We didn't realize you were fueling Black Blood's mutation," Art said. He snarled a few times, loud, voice rumbling, getting deeper than a human's could. "What was it originally, before you poisoned it?"

"Me? Poison a spirit? You must be joking. And besides, Black Blood was in Dolareido before I ever was." Jacob came closer, and again Tash took another step back, now behind the two boys. They still didn't move. "I think you two dogs should be moving on. Tell Avery I said hi, by the way. Next time I see her, I'll make sure to give her a present."