My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 11

A raise in the pitch of her voice, and an elongated vowel every now and now, put Jessy's words in a new light. Normally she spoke with a bit of bite; it was her natural state, to bite and snip and snap with her voice, even when just being playful or kind. But there was a softness to her voice now, subtle but there. Julias's training paying off.

"What's the plan with him?" Damien said.

She shrugged, and turned the telescope around as she squinted the one eye with ridiculous exaggeration. "He's gone from being a useful set of eyes and ears, in a high traffic zone, to being an extremely useful set of eyes and ears in a high traffic zone."

That was true. Much as Kindred had great eyes and ears, Uratha's were better, and they had a great nose to go with it. They also had aggressive tendencies to go with them though, which made Eric's position at the Bloodlust an issue.

"If he doesn't break someone in half for looking at him the wrong way," Jack said.

Jessy laughed, and shook her head. A smile crept onto her face, one he doubted she realized was there. It was damn adorable on her. "Jack, you should see this man's cat. Kat the cat. She is the nicest creature on the planet. You can't be an asshole if you have a cat like that, unless she was fucking lobotomized. Never had a cat rub up against me like that, you know? Not since being embraced. It was so... so... why are you looking at me like that?"

Shit, he was wearing his expression on his face again. Shaking it off, he shrugged. "Nothing, just sounds like you two are getting along." More than getting along.

"I haven't seen you parading yourself in front of your window, as of late." The assassin's smile returned, and he held out his hand for one of Jack's crows. With a small nudge from Jack, Mulder jumped to Damien's hand, and the man fed the crow some of Jack's oats. Good training, for Mulder and Scully to be comfortable with other Invictus. "Could it be you're hesitant to engage in your typical sexual endeavors, if you like this man?"

"I gave my ghouls a break, Damien, nothing more. I'm too god damn old to be going one-on-one with any man, or woman." She sat down beside him on the roof edge, shrugged, and pulled out her phone. Checking messages or news updates, no doubt. But the tiny lip twitches, and quick glances of her eyes in Damien's direction, gave her away. "And besides, aren't you interested in Fiona? I know she likes Eric. And I know firsthand she's a firecracker."

They didn't need Jessy's words to prove that, not with the unusual sex spirit's words still clear in their minds. It was clear in Jack's mind anyway; no doubt it was for Damien too. The man looked down, tiny frown on his lips as he offered Mulder some more of his oats.

"You know I'm a man of the cloth, in a way, Jessy?"

"You didn't take a vow of celibacy." She shrugged, reached out, and offered Mulder some rubs of his breast feathers, before rubbing the back of his head. Scully, envious, pecked at Jack's hand, and bit him a little too, hard enough to earn an ouch, before he rolled his eyes and began to scratch her, as well.

"Can we talk about something other than sex?" Damien said.

"Can we?" Shrugging, Jack set Scully back on his shoulder, and Mulder flew over to join her, opposite shoulder. It earned a smile from him, when his crows willingly came to him. Animalism had been the tool to establish their first link, but since then, he only used it for communication. The crows came to him on their own, happy to help in exchange for food and attention. "It's Slut City, right? Sex kind of sneaks its way into everything we do."

The assassin glared at him, and Jack had to do his best to not grin like a giant jackass. The Julias grin, the grin the man gave whenever he let a conversation prove him right. Dance, puppets, dance.

"Unless the hunters hire a prostitute," Damien said, "and that somehow becomes a lead for us, I don't see it helping us in our main objective."

"All work and no play makes Damien a dull boy," Jessy said. Heh, nice dodge on the Jack name in the original quote. "Much as I'm all for focusing on the job, because the job currently involves saving our asses from getting murdered, I do think we should always take time to enjoy our second lives, Damien."

"I—"

"And hey, I know you're a priest boy, but you didn't take a vow of celibacy, and far as I know, your religion believes in embracing being a monster, right? Scare people into the awaiting arms of God, or whatever. Well, Fiona's a monster. Should be fine to fuck her silly, right?"

"... I—"

"And yeah, I know, fucking a monster doesn't really help in your religious goals, but maybe if you learned to relax a bit, you might recruit more followers. I mean, how many have joined your church since the Prince let you start practicing again."

Ok, maybe it wasn't a good idea to tease Jessy; she didn't take it very well. Girl played dirty.

"I have yet to tell others the church is open. And the great cathedral is Maria's home; I must contend with that barrier, that the place I will give my sermons is the place one of the more terrifying Kindred sleeps."

Good to know it wasn't just Jack that was scared of Maria. He knew that already, but hearing it confirmed, especially by one of the few ancilla Kindred of Dolareido, was reassuring.

"Mulder and Scully reported seeing a woman that fit Azamel's guess as the shaman's description," Jack said. "But I'm sure a lot of women fit that description, in Dolareido."

"Better than nothing." Jessy took some oats from Damien, offered her hand, and the two birds pecked from it for a moment. "That ritual must have been a terrifying sight."

"Yeah, that's putting it lightly."

"Nice of the sheriff to share the info. Good to have friends on the inside."

No way was the sheriff his friend. He doubted anyone could be, considering the man might as well have been made of stone, or ice, or both. But, the first night Jack slept with Antoinette, on the journey down the tower, he still remembered what Daniel had said to him: 'Be kind to her, young Kindred. She is more fragile than you know.' The words were carved into his brain, never to be forgotten. But if they were true was another question, because, yeah, man was stone, and probably thought everyone was fragile. If that was the reason Daniel was helping Jack more directly, to keep Antoinette happy, well, he was cool to roll with that.

Would Antoinette be able to handle Jack dying, was not a question he wanted to think about, and probably part of why Daniel was helping him.

"It is," he said at last. "I'm pretty sure I'm not the focus of Daniel's efforts, but, yeah, nice of him to share. He's going to keep looking, and so's Natasha, for more leads linked to the ritual. Best we can guess is it was for information, and now we know it probably has something to do with spirits, and Black Blood. Why this shaman working with the hunters needs to... do those things, with the pictures and the sacrifice and... I don't know. And Azamel said the shaman has done this ritual in the past, in different cities. Is Black Blood elsewhere? I doubt it; seems localized to Dolareido. The red wraiths seem involved, so maybe they're elsewhere? Or... or did someone come to Dolareido with the shaman?"

"That's the conclusion I would come to," Damien said. "Something must have come to Dolareido with this shaman woman, if Azamel was telling us the truth."

And she probably was. The more they found out about the shit happening in Dolareido's shadows, and the Shadow World evidently, the more it seemed like Jacob had been working with other-worldly entities for some time. The shaman, whoever she was, brought more insanity into Dolareido.

City Night had mentioned other names. Red Tide, and Street-Tail King? Maybe one of them.

"... do you guys ever miss when things were normal?" he said. "What was it, something like a year ago, I walked into Bloodlust, scared as all fucking shit because I ran into the Prince. She made me sit down with her, and flirted with me, just to watch me squirm. I remember before that, going to the Invictus ball, and being scared shitless of talking with Viktor. I managed, but it was rough. Not long before that, I'd awoken from a frenzy, and found I was on a rooftop, with the corpse of a woman... Mrs. Pavala." Pavala. Christ, that name grabbed his mind, dragged it through the blood-soaked mud, and made sure to sink some sharp rocks into his soul before he managed to pull it back out. "Honestly? I'd take all that shit, over this. I'll take dealing with scary vampires, and still struggling to stomach drinking blood, over fucking Cthulhu and kin nesting in our city."

The Gangrel raised a brow, and leaned in a bit toward him. "That include the werewolves and monsters? Figured, since you keep getting drawn into this intermediary role, you have to have a soft spot for them."

He threw his hands up. "I do! Even Avery, a hard bitch, and Azamel, a colossal bitch." Damien raised a brow, and Jessy laughed. Yeah, calling them both bitches was uncalled for; and it didn't really fit his normal dialect. Bit of Jessy coming out of him, there. "Because they're still people, deep inside. We are, they are, we still got a fucking soul inside our guts, and it means something. We can talk, we can communicate, we can settle our differences with fucking words!" He got up, and started to pace. Just like on the phone, something about focusing on the words forced him to get up onto his feet, and move, so he could feel the feedback of solid mass beneath him. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on this god damn planet who remembers we can always communicate, even with people we'd consider to be monsters. People, they're people. Maybe not normal humans anymore, but still people, capable of fucking reason, and logic, and if we can just find a way to communicate, we can make progress!" Mulder and Scully stayed with him, and for a brief moment, Jack had to wonder what the image of him was like, pacing around with philosophical thoughts falling out of him while two crows adorned his shoulders.

"... and Angela?" Jessy said.

Fuck. Leave it to the damn Gangrel to shatter his dreams with a fucking sledgehammer, as if they were nothing but thin glass. The mention of that fucking abomination of a human brought him to a standstill. He lowered his head, clenched his fists at his sides, and bit down on his teeth until he heard his jaw crack. The name was fire on his spine.

"I'd love to be able to talk to her, and get through to her. But I looked that psycho in the fucking eyes, Jessy. I'd have an easier time breaking through an arctic glacier with my god damn face."

She laughed. Hell, Damien smiled, too, but it was short lived humor. The silence that followed was painful, and Jack sat down again before he resumed feeding his crows.

"She sounds like Lucas," Damien said. "A true believer in her cause, and also a twisted soul. There will be no communicating with her, and if the opportunity presents itself, she will delight in torturing those that get in her way."

Jessy nodded. "A zealot. You won't be able to talk her out of anything, based on how you described her. Was your report objective?"

"Yes," Jack said, sighing as weight started to pull him down. Angela was the perfect counter example to his views. "It was. We're all in agreement here, there's no talking with her or Jeremiah. The other hunters though? They came here with those two, and I bet we could come to some kind of common ground."

Or could they? He remembered the words in his mind, clear as water, when he found the strength to break free of his capture. Hunters, kine, were lower on the food chain. There'd never be peace, not even a truce, as long as that continued, as long as Kindred required kine blood to survive. No one would ever accept being lower on the food chain, when they had every reason not to be, too. Billions of humans with shotguns and flamethrowers would be more than a match for all the Kindred of the world.

He had to wonder if hunters tried to prove their existence before, and just gave up. The media could spin anything to mean anything, and vampires had their fingers in that world, deep in it. Political matters, vampires were a part of it. Matters of global economy and trade, vampires were a part of it. Matters of religion, well, he was sure vampires were involved somehow. They were the puppet masters, and they were everywhere. It was probably true that hunters used to try and prove the existence of vampires, and stopped trying when vampires came to positions of power in the human world. Or maybe it'd always been that way, and hunters were screwed from the start. Perhaps with the dawn of the cyberpunk era, the Masquerade would prove too fragile to survive, Antoinette's fears come true.

Capturing a young vampire like him wasn't too difficult, was the issue. He, and others his age, were Masquerade liabilities. He doubted a Begotten or Uratha could be captured, but young Kindred were a different matter. He'd hate to be the reason the Masquerade was violated to the point it led to a global extermination of his race. That would majorly suck.

"What are you going to do about Terra Den?" Damien asked.

The Gangrel shrugged, went back to the telescope, and began another scan of the buildings. "I'll pay them a visit, in a more official capacity. Michael will come with me, maybe Julias too, and we can scare them straight. As for Montoya, I'm sure that snake is trying to push things along in underhanded ways. We should pay him a personal visit." She stopped turning, and whistled before licking her lips. Probably some people having sex in clear view.

Jack raised a brow. "We?"

"Sure. He's yet to meet the rest of the new Right Hands of the Invictus. Should be interesting."

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~~Antoinette~~

"You were correct, Daniel."

She stood upon a rooftop with Daniel at her side. The man was a master of the cloak of night, and had no trouble keeping them hidden within the invisible veil. Anyone glancing their way would find their eyes sliding off of them, and their simple minds refusing to process the two people standing in the open.

She envied the Mekhet and Nosferatu clans their skill at the discipline. It was a skill she could use, of course, but she would never come to the same mastery as the other clans.

The two of them stood in the moonlight, and watched one of the outdoor restaurants. A quaint and homely little place, bordering between the Carthian and Invictus half of South Side. Less kine in suits or fancy dresses, and more people in jeans in worn t-shirts. It was an appealing distinction Antoinette had long realized, that people with less money walked differently, and talked differently, than those that had money to waste. They were all liars, as was the norm; only her little Ventrue was an exception to that painful truth of reality. But at least those with less money did not wear their lies on their clothes or in their gait.

With a sigh, she squinted her eyes, folded her arms across her chest, and stared at Avery. The small woman sat in the outdoor seating of the archaic-but-charming restaurant, eating what looked to be a blue-rare steak. A man sat with her, someone of similar age to her, at least in physical appearance. Avery was far older than she looked, perhaps a hundred years old, and the man she ate with was likely fifty. But the man carried his age well, with his long salt-and-pepper hair coming in waves to match his finely groomed, trimmed beard. He may have only been wearing jeans and a simple red shirt, but it was plain to see the man took good care of himself. He was likely built well under the clothes too; she expected no less from any Uratha, than for their sexual partners to share in a desire for fitness. Vigor was to be expected from werewolves, after all.

Had the old wolf found a lover? The signs of attraction were blatant, and so too were the signs of familiarity. The two chuckled as they shared small talk, words Antoinette could not hear from her perch, and they shared joyful glances too. Perhaps more telling was when the unknown man touched Avery's hand, and she didn't pull away.

The man was eating spaghetti. Antoinette doubted Avery could stomach such a meal.

"Reports say Avery visited Eric yesterday morning," Daniel said.

"Do we know the outcome of that conversation?"

"No, but I'm sure she will tell Terry soon, and we will learn after that."

She nodded and sighed. Having Terry as an intermediary was proving fruitful; it lessened tension with the wolves and monsters, to the point Antoinette felt they were not both on a collision course with the Kindred of the city. But it did create a delay between events, and Antoinette learning of the details. In the past, she would walk down to Avery at this very moment, and ask to know what had happened, which would no doubt lead to an argument. It was better this way, frustrating as it was.

The two stood and watched, as Avery giggled. To see the small woman of steel giggle was interesting, and telling. Perhaps there were more feelings for this simple human than lust. Coming to Dolareido, meeting a man, and becoming involved in a sexual relationship was expected of anyone that came to her city, but a romantic one was a different matter entirely. And for one in Avery's position, a weakness. Defeating others through indirect means was a Kindred's greatest skill, after all, and any Kindred in Dolareido would be able to use this man against Avery. A simple matter, to dominate his mind or turn him into a slave with majesty. A simpler matter, to feed him some blood, and render him an infatuated thrall.

Such acts were cruel, malicious, and a part of the Danse Macabre. Play the game, or be destroyed by those willing to stoop to its disgusting lows.

She smirked as she watched the smile on Avery's face, but despite herself, she could feel the smirk begin to soften. To smile in such a way, a genuine way, where the muscles of the face include the eyes, and the whole of the body leans into it, was a powerful thing. Melts the heart. It made her long for Jack's touch, to feel his body hugged tight to hers, feel his lips upon her breasts, find his gaze, and stare into his soul.

Annie, grow up. You are not a child, and your relationship with Jack is already many months in age. It is stable. You are a fool to let your mind melt with a simple thought of the boy. You can melt all you want when he is in your arms, but between such times, you must harden yourself. Her city was in increasing disarray, and it was time to take a more active role in settling it.

"I wonder," she said, "about the things my love shared with me last night. There is a connection between Black Blood, these red wraiths, the hunters, and Jacob." And she most sincerely did not want a connection of anything to Jacob. Why could her old friend not simply let things be, and enjoy his elder years? The damn fool was worse than any dragon, with his unending need for information and power.

Daniel nodded, and adjusted his glasses. "And Azamel's warning?"

"Oui. But, whether Jacob is connected directly or indirectly, to such a grand threat, is an important distinction."

"You could ask him."

She chuckled, and combed some of her hair over her shoulder in front of her with her fingers. "Do you think he would tell us the truth? I am sure you offended him when he found you in his ritual chamber."

"Our ritual chamber. It is our city, after all."

So it was, officially. Jacob never truly agreed to that rule, that Antoinette was the Prince. In Jacob's mind, he was equal party to ruling the city, and he simply chose to leave affairs in her control. If he decided to contest her on that, the fallout would be disastrous.

But, Jacob was her friend. A strange friend, but a friend, and his counsel was both appreciated and wanted. The issue was, how with every new discovery, every new piece of information that came into her possession, she found more reasons to not trust the man. Now, he was teaching his new students the power of crúac, according to Daniel, and likely involving Black Blood.