My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 10

Those were the good days. Instead of worrying about monsters, nightmares, spirits, and what might as well be gods, she worried about when and where to get her next meal, and how she was going to get away with breaking an Invictus woman's arm. In the end, the woman probably didn't report it, to save face, or whatever. Good for Triss, because it had been a stealth mission; one she fucked up. Now, if she fucked up, she'd piss off a demon, or an ancient spirit of the Black Plague or some such, and get everyone killed. Not only bigger stakes, but a playing field she wasn't comfortable with, not at all.

No, that wasn't entirely true. Now, she was dipping her toes into crúac, and overcoming her fear of pain. Now, she was talking to an ancient, deadly spirit on something similar to a schedule. She was earning the title, witch, very much so.

"Any news on the hunters, by the way?" she said. The two boys were supposed to be looking into it.

Aaron raised his hand for a moment. "I spoke with some of my crow friends. I... actually, did you know your little Ventrue friend Jack has been dipping his toes into animalism?"

"Has he?" she said.

"Mhmm. I don't think he knows how many other Kindred have also made friends with the crows and rats of Dolareido. He'll learn, eventually." Holy crap, the Gangrel actually smiled. "My friends noted some weird activity in Devil's Corner. Of particular interest was an old woman in a wheelchair, hooked up to a breather."

Othello rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you told me about this. Lot of old people in the city, Aaron."

"This one had an escort."

Jen leaned in. "That's not... too unusual. There are..."

"It's not just that. My friends told me they didn't like what they saw. There was something unusual about it, about her, about everything."

Triss shook her head. "That doesn't mean she, or they, were hunters. Hell, Azamel is an old woman, sitting in a crummy chair, with a bunch of bodyguards around her."

Aaron mirrored the head shake. "Based on what you told us about Azamel, this wasn't her. This woman looked two days away from death. Only thing keeping her alive was drugs and the respirator."

Shrugging, Triss got up, stretched a bit more, and headed for the exit of Jen's hole in the wall.

"Wait," Jen said. "We should... we should talk about that night, with Black Blood."

Yeah, they probably should. Problem was, Triss didn't really want to talk about it. Much as it appealed to a dark part of her that loved scary shit, that loved she was a part of scary shit, there was no denying the chills Black Blood sent up her spine.

"We'd love to know the details," Othello said. "And if Aaron and I are ever going to join you in these secret rituals... I know I'd like to know a little more, instead of going in blind."

"Yeah... ok." Groaning, she sat back down. Maybe this was better than the awkward conversation she'd planned to have with Damien. "Black Blood is a spirit, and that's about the extent of my knowledge. That, and Black Blood knows Jacob, has known him for a long time. Calls him Malachi."

"Malachi?" The two men said.

"Yeah. No one else calls him that, and I don't suggest you start. Probably an old name from his younger days, when he first came here to Dolareido. Far as I can tell, Jacob was just as wild then as he is now, and had another group of vamps as part of his Circle. They got down and dirty with the blood magic, the crúac rituals, and all that shit. Jacob discovered Black Blood, on the other side of the wall, when Jacob and company were still newcomers to Dolareido." She looked up, letting her mind wander for a moment, to images of cowboys and farmers, old bars and streets of mud and horse shit, to brothels and prostitutes with warts on their faces. A time when superstition ruled the world. God damn, it must have been a paradise for Kindred; if they could find a safe place to sleep, far from mobs with torches.

"They're friends, I guess," she continued, "if you can be friends with a spirit. It... it was like speaking with a shadow of a god, if you can imagine that. Something dark, something that literally oozed black stuff, black mist, black water, black everything. It took the place over, used all the symbols and shit Jacob had set up, and seeped its way into our world. It likes to use a corpse as a host, I guess, or at least, a tool. I don't think host is the right word here, more like a puppet. And, like Jacob, or Malachi, it shares an interest in crúac, blood rituals, and other things. The two of them seem to be buddy buddy, and delight in..."

"In being gross," Jen said. "Black Blood seems intelligent, really intelligent, the sort of intelligence that comes with not being human.Above human. It was weird, and as it and Jacob talked about the next crúac ritual like it was as mundane and predictable as the weather, I... it was scary." She shivered, and hugged the blanket tighter as she looked down, at the book. After flipping through pages to where she'd left off, she turned the page. A person burning on a stake greeted her. The artist had taken the liberty to not show the facial expression of someone being roasted alive; how nice of them.

Above the burning person, was a wisp of smoke. Smoke made sense; the drawing was detailed, and the artist didn't spare details like flames on the wood, or the smoke it gave off. But the cloud above carried an expression, cuts through the smoke making the shape of eyes, and fangs.

"Ain't no vamp surviving this," Othello said, as he pointed to the picture.

After a moment of reading, Jen shook her head. "This account suggests the person was human all along, and was being possessed by a vampire."

"Dominated?" Aaron asked.

She shrugged again. "This book wasn't written by a vampire or anything, just a human touching on things when they'd only scratched the surface. I'm reading it because Jacob said it was oddly accurate in many ways, and a lot of the information was pertinent to the things we witches and warlocks can do with crúac." Her fingers found the drawing, and she caressed where the smoke formed the grinning face. "I guess this is the sort of stuff we'll be exploring, with Jacob and an otherworldly entity as our guide. Cheating death by possessing people? Seems doable, considering the things we've seen Jacob do. And considering what we saw Black Blood do."

Silence fell on them again; no need to say what they were thinking: what boundary had Minerva crossed, to earn death at the hands of the werewolves? Was Jacob and Black Blood going to get them killed, if they pursued the rivers of blood and insanity the old Nosferatu was inviting them into?

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

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

~~Eric~~

The forest. A bright, shining moon. A gibbous moon. Grass around his naked feet. Breeze against his naked skin.

He was dreaming.

Catching on quickly, aren't you?

The voice in his head. His normal voice, his him, his me. Good ole Eric's voice, internally narrating. Nothing wrong with that, everyone does that.

You'd be surprised at how many people don't. You know who narrates their actions and motives in their heads?

Introverts?

Well, yes, them too. But so does a Cahalith.

Cahalith?

Mmhmm. You think all Uratha walk around, seeing things, hearing voices? The Ithaeur may be harassed by spirits, but what's happening to you isn't the same.

... am I sure this is me?

Yeah, just you who knows more than you. And I'm telling you, you're in for a rough ride, werewolf.

Eric breathed deep, and looked down at his naked body. Him, the man he knew. Average height, very dark skin, and well built. Muscular, with little in the way of body fat. Lean, abs and serratus anterior muscles, everything chiseled and ready for war. Old habits die hard, and keeping the fat mass low meant staying in a lower weight class. It also meant people underestimated you, when you were wearing clothes.

No clothes out here though, in the soothing, gentle breeze of mother nature. Out here where it was the rule of the world. Mother nature? Father wolf is dead, you coward. Your forebears ruined everything, and now it's on you to manage the mess. Mitigate, like a janitor cursed to wear a ball and chain while idiot school children continue to litter and spill. Poor fool, doomed to wander the halls in a circle, forever cleaning, never done.

Eric turned, and looked to the city before him. Dolareido had no forests, not like the one that surrounded him, but his dream felt different. He stood high on raised ground, sloping hills of grass, with endless trees behind him. The city of lights, drugs, and sex lay before him.

So I'm Cahalith.

Indeed.

What does that mean?

I'm sure Avery will give you a better breakdown. Or a worse one, depending on how much bias you're willing to accept. All I know, is that you're a storyteller. A fucked-in-the-head storyteller, Eric. Which is hilarious, by the way. It doesn't fit you at all. Or maybe it does? Forever in pursuit of glory, because glory makes for a good song; or good media exposure, in the modern world, anyway. That is why you got into fighting, isn't it?

That's how I destroyed my knee. I learned my lesson.

Well, recent events are giving you a second chance. Get to be big, bad, dangerous, and glorious! All the glory, all the fucking glory, all for you, Eric. That knee is fine now, nothing to stop you from going on a glorious hunt.

For... Father Wolf? Or... Luna?

You know her name. She's been talking to you, hasn't she? Because if she didn't, you'd have crumbled by now. You don't know how to breathe, how to take a moment, how to focus on the fucking moment. You should feel proud, special; Luna actually talked to you. Maybe she likes you?

Eric looked up at the sky, the few clouds that gently moved by, and the moon that cut through them with its light. Her light.

Were his ancestors' sins, his problem? No, of fucking course, they weren't. He didn't ask to be a werewolf. He didn't ask for...

Someone's here.

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

He sat upright in his bed. Kat was there, and her smell assaulted him from every direction; she'd been rubbing up against everything while he was sleeping, evidently. She sat beside him, meowing a few times before stretching out. A few more meows, then she walked over to rub her face against his chest.

Fur was everywhere. The new bed did not appreciate it, its purple silk sheets exposing all of Kat's glorious colors. The maid was going to hate him.

He had a maid.

Eric laughed, crawled out of bed, and put on some loose pants. His new apartment might as well have been a mansion, far as he and Kat were concerned. So much space. What was he going to do with so much space? Laughing again, he stepped out of his room, and—

"Hi."

"Sweet jesus!" He jumped and spun around, bringing up his fists. The room was dark, the only source of light the crack of illumination getting around his black-out curtains. But it was enough for his new eyes to see well, and see that he was alone in the room. The door was closed, too; Kat's routine was to sleep with him for solid eight hours, every night, though there was still five hours of sleep left on the schedule. The joys of working nights.

No one else was supposed to be in the room. His front door was locked, and the bedroom was locked with a new, proper lock. He did recognize the voice, though.

"Fiona? Er... Vrall?"

"Yes, that is who I am," the spider woman said. Her voice was quiet, but not a whisper. She didn't need to whisper, given how much these fancy suites focused on sound insulation. As far as Eric knew, his neighbors might as well have not existed, sound-wise. Made talking with the monster who'd snuck into his room, and was now under his bed, easier.

"How did you get in here?" He squatted down by the bed, with enough distance that, if something decided to reach out to grab him, he could jump away in time. No reason to suspect Fiona, but there was no denying that a giant spider lady was talking to him from under his bed. He couldn't see her, but she was there.

If there was one way to get arachnophobia, it'd be from something like this.

"Damien knows which room you're staying in. He showed me."

"How, exactly did he show you the place? I haven't left here since last night."

"You can't hide from the eyes of a Mekhet, especially that one." She chuckled. "But, it's true that I've never seen the insides of this particular room before. I had to use Vrall's past experience with half-blind jumps to... well, find this delightful corner of shadow." A hand reached out from the blackness. Her hand. Not Fiona's, Vrall's. Less fingers than a human hand. Each finger was a long, pointed blade. If she squeezed anything with that grip, her fingertips would sink in like a fat needle into an arm, hungry for blood.

"And why... why are you... like that?"

"Like what?"

"Why are you in that form right now? Where's the pretty redhead?"

"Ah. Here in the dark, on the edge of the dream you just had, Vrall can come with me." More chuckles, and another hand slipped out from the darkness. Two sets of claws began tapping on the floor, until at last the spider woman's face peeked out from the black. Only the bottom half of her face emerged, so the top half of her head — which would not be able to fit under the bed anyway — was hidden. The seductive smile, thin lips, dark skin.

Damn she was beautiful, in a 'come into my web so I can fuck you, then eat your head' sort of way. But she was a spider, not a praying mantis. So she'd fuck him, then liquefy his insides and suck out the juice.

"Did you see my dream?"

"No. I have never been able to enter the dreams of others, only nightmares. Some Begotten might able to? It would be interesting."

"I... I'm a werewolf, Fiona." And she fucking knew it, too.

"Yes." Her hands and face slid along the length of his bed a foot, then back a foot, without making a sound, without altering her angle; like she was sliding on a sheet of ice under the bed. "Did something happen?"

"You haven't talked to your buddies?"

"Athalia? Mark and Azamel? Not yet. I only just arrived back from a rather long and dangerous journey. The sun is beginning to rise."

The black-out curtains would keep the sun out for a long while, thank god.

He leaned down a little closer to the spider woman's face, so she'd see his frown.

"I killed four people, and ate a chunk out of each of them." He spared no expense on the malice in his voice. There was anger there, rage, maybe even a little blame, aimed at Fiona for not telling him more, when she had the chance, before the madness started.

"I... can't apologize, for that."

"You fucking... no, no, of course you can't." He sighed, and fell back, his ass meeting the hard bedroom floor. Right then, he kind of missed his old apartment's shitty carpet. "Yeah, I know. I fucking know, but... fucking christ, Fiona. I killed people."

"What happened?"

"Those fucking pricks working me over a loan came for me. Jessy had wiped my debt with an asshole, but apparently they wanted to kill me and send her a message." He laughed, a sad laugh caught in his throat. "I vomited up bits of human. I can still fucking taste it too. Blurry images, nothing specific, but there was a rush, a terrible, amazing rush, when I bit into them. It... it's still there, on my tongue. The fuck am I?"

Cannibal. Cannibal? Was he actually a cannibal, if he wasn't human? And he wasn't human, not anymore. His dad was human though, so Eric had to be human, too, to some extent. Christ, Dad. He had to go see his dad again, and soon.

"If I had had time, I would have told you more, Eric."

"No time?"

"Correct. After the hunters showed up, my kin and I had to hide. I became distracted. I haven't been to the Bloodlust since then. And, I am hungry."

A hungry monster. He gulped, and found himself inching away. He was a hungry monster, in a way, but what was he compared to the nightmare under his bed.

"How do you satisfy your hunger?" How do you satisfy our own, new hunger, Eric? Far as he could tell, he wanted to eat what he always liked eating. Except, maybe, a bit more toward bacon and beef, spare the carbs.

"It's different for different types of Begotten, and not by our... nature. I am a monster of darkness: Eshmaki." Without moving her fingers or face, Fiona's exposed hands and chin flipped upside down, as if she was now clutching the underside of his bed. Fucking christ. "But, so is Athalia, and she doesn't eat what I eat. She doesn't find those who are guilty, and make them suffer for their violations."

"Violations?"

"It is different for each Begotten who satisfies their hunger in this way. Nemeses. I, Vrall, must find those who have mistreated others, bullied others, abused others. I devour the dread dripping from their pores. I inhale the fear escaping between their clenched teeth, then absorb the terror fleeing from their screaming mouths." She sighed, wistfully, and licked her lips. He still couldn't see above her nose, the shadow of his bed somehow hiding her enormous crown of horns. "When I first came to Dolareido, I let Vrall indulge her hunger, and torture prey to the point of death. I even devoured their flesh."

"How many did you kill?" This tiny girl — not so tiny right now, but still — was a killer, someone who had killed people before. A young, small woman, with blood on her hands. What did that make him?

"Almost a dozen, before the Kindred sought me out. I had crossed a line, damaged their Masquerade."

He winced, and nodded. Athalia was right, then, all of them were. Eric had come dangerously close to a precipice he didn't know existed. If he had damaged their Masquerade irreparably, those vamps would have his ass on a stake, no matter if he wanted to reconcile.

"I know the feeling," he said. "You've... killed people... coherently?"

"It was easy for me. The people Vrall wants to eat, or at least terrorize, deserve to be punished. Abusers deserve nothing but pain and suffering."

"Personal vendetta?"

"No." Still upside down, the nightmare licked her lips, then opened her mouth enough to expose some of her fangs, this time. "Vrall is the horror, the monster in us all that... it is too large a concept to explain so easily. There are men and women who have nightmares, Eric. Nightmares that haunt them because of a little kernel inside them. A little nugget of wisdom, a tiny voice they've buried speaks to them in whispers, begging for them to stop being such horrible people, to stop torturing others for their own sick pleasures. They ignore the voice. The voice crafts nightmares to persuade them to stop." Grinning, her claws reach up to tug on his blanket's edge. "Those nightmares extend, touch, and live in a realm beyond your imagining. The dream world touches everyone's mind, and in an unconscious mass, horrors are birthed, to teach lessons. Fear the dark, fear the long drop, fear the greater predator, fear the wrath of the vengeful."

"You teach people lessons?"

"Some Begotten think in such a way. Vrall does. Whether or not it is taken to heart, is up to the Begotten. But, I can tell you that Vrall, that I, am not some scarred and beaten thing that has come back from the beyond to enact vengeance. I am an idea, a nightmare, that has grown from a seed planted deep in the minds of billions of people."

Ok, yeah, literal nightmare.

"Heavy stuff."

"And you, are an Uratha. Vrall knew of your kind, centuries ago. You guard the wall, tend the herd, keep balance between this world and its shadow."

So his dreams were telling him. It was nice to hear someone else confirm it, so he knew his new life wasn't just a delusion brought on by insanity.

"And, if I don't want to play guard duty, or worry about culling weeds?" He got up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Breathe, right? Breathe. A meow cut through the silence following the question, as he stretched his shoulders and opened the bedroom door. Kat knew where the litter box was, no need to help her.