My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 07

~~Eric~~

All things considered, that didn't go so badly. Into the belly of the beast, and then right back out. He half expected the Xnomina building to bite him during his escape, but it didn't.

He groaned as he rotated a shoulder, and rubbed his trapezoid with his other hand. Course, that only redirected the pain back to the source, where Jeremiah had stabbed him with that fucking silver knife. It was healed, but tender. Were he still human, it'd be a big enough hint to not exert himself, but he was confident his new body could take the punishment.

Jessy was beside him, but he could tell she was waiting for an opportunity to take lead. She liked leading. Unfortunately for her, it was his nose they were following.

North Side. It wasn't a place he'd ever had to work, unlike his dad. Blue collar work, and a lot of it. A lot of abandoned buildings too, as the ages passed, and both companies and people stopped being interested in working what were dead end careers. The growth of technology into software, fashion, media, the explosion of automation, and all that shit meant less and less people were working in factories. That wasn't a good thing. Automation taking over the world meant people were losing jobs everywhere. How long would it be before cab drivers were all out of the job?

He sighed as he looked at the buildings they passed, the dusty windowsills, broken glass, old machines inside meant for God knows what. Making shoes, maybe? Plenty of North Side was slowly being re-purposed with large buildings meant to host company employees for stem fields and whatnot, but plenty of it still wasn't. It was like walking through a graveyard of the 1920s.

Jessy looked back at the two other vampires with them. Jonah LeBrun, and Hella Vendram. Nobody to worry about, according to Jessy. Easier said than done. Hella looked simple enough, a tanned woman, fit, slightly tall; a Gangrel according to Jess. Jonah was a different thing all together. He was keeping them wrapped up in some kind of invisible aura, something called the Cloak of Night, that made them almost impossible to see. Impressive shit. A black dude with some nasty hands, fingers extra long, with claws to go with. He didn't have pupils either, just solid black eyes, and his mouth was lined with very sharp teeth. Fucker probably bit down with the same sort of tearing damage of a piranha.

He was a Nosferatu. Jessy said they all got random, weird mutations that made them look — or smell — like freaks. This guy wasn't too bad off, as long as he wore some sunglasses, didn't open his mouth wide, and kept his hands in his pockets. Chicks like that Beatrice were a bit more obvious. What other deformities did Nosferatu get stuck with?

He sniffed the air deeper. He could smell old chemicals, something sewn into the walls, the brick and concrete, the plastic and steel of nearby factories and their interiors. No smell of humans, though, present company included. Vampires barely had an odor to them; made it easy to ignore so he could focus on sniffing out the hunters.

They stopped by the scene. The tire marks were still there, as were bits of glass, mostly cleaned up but some shards remained against the curb. He breathed deep, smelled, dug for the scents, and walked over to where the kid had got caught under the wheels. Nothing.

"You vamps really don't leave behind a trace, do you?" he said.

Hella shook her head, and squatted down where he was standing, looking down at the tire marks. "Nope. Just a bit of ash. Though, if you kill a really young Kindred, they don't go poof. You get a decomposed corpse. Nasty stuff."

Sounded nasty. With his new nose, smelling a rotting corpse would probably kill him.

He walked further, onto the parking lot where they'd stopped. Much as he had a powerful nose to help him track people down, it'd been weeks since him and Beatrice had saved the kid. Rain destroyed the odor trail.

"We really expect to find anything out here, boss?" Jonah said.

"Dotting the Is and crossing the Ts and shit." Shrugging, Jessy nodded toward the prison down the street. "Plenty of other teams are already running South Side, both halves, and Devil's Corner, and the tunnels. We might as well start out here, where we know the hunters have hidden out once before."

Hella stood up, shrugging. "That makes me think they're unlikely to come back."

"Me too, but we have new information now. We didn't know they had a Begotten working for them. We also didn't know that Angela can't seem to fucking die. We also didn't know this shaman woman does crazy shit with flesh magic. New perspective."

The Gangrel raised a brow, tapped her chin a few times, and nodded. "So we keep an eye open for weird, occult shit?"

"Exactly. Invictus cleanup crew weren't looking for unusual shit. So, let's do that."

Everyone shrugged, nodded, and followed. It was as good a plan as any, he supposed. The fuck did he know about any of this anyhow? All he was was a nose.

Except, that wasn't entirely true. Not long after learning about what he was, some spirits had tried to talk to him, things in the shadows. It was hard to ignore that, hard to forget it. And the fucking moon kept telling him to do his duty or whatever, so it wasn't like he could ignore that either. He was supposed to be guarding the wall between the Hisil — a word he knew without knowing how — and the physical world, and culling problem causers. He wasn't just a werewolf, he was... whatever was required, a tool of some higher power, to do some higher calling.

Christ, he hated that. But it did mean he should do more than just keep his nose open for strange smells. He should keep all his senses open, new ones included, to see if he could spot anything out of the ordinary. Elen was out of the ordinary, and so was that monster Sándor. He had to think like what a werewolf was, not what his childhood thought a werewolf was.

He kinda preferred the childhood image, a beast of mindless rage and hunger, not this weird border patrol dog on a mystical leash. Then again, childhood image didn't have him fucking a beautiful vampire on the regular. That was a nice perk.

Jessy took them to the prison. Eric curled his nose at the smell of some strange chemical, something the Invictus must have used to get rid of the blood. Not bleach, but something stronger, something they must have tried to wash off with water, but couldn't quite get rid of the scent. Better than leaving traces of blood, he supposed.

Jessy pushed the unlocked gate open, and gestured for them to follow.

"Been a while since I was here," Jonah said. "Thirty years ago? Still kine, and barely eighteen."

Eric chuckled, and smiled as he stepped into the prison, struggling to not make a few Dave Chappelle jokes.

"You were arrested?" Hella said.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Had the audacity to look like someone else when I was wearing a hoodie."

"I don't—"

"He's saying racism," Jessy said, rolling her eyes with a groan. "Progressive as Dolareido is, it wasn't immune to that sort of shit."

"Isn't," Eric added.

She threw him a smile. "Isn't."

Hella nodded as she started walking around the civilian prison lobby, eyes scanning over the old walls. "Guess I really wouldn't know."

"Say one thing for Kindred," Jonah said, squatting down and looking at the scratches in the concrete, "they couldn't give two shits about the color of your skin."

"Is it like that everywhere?" Eric said. "Or just here, cause of the Prince?" They all shrugged. "None of you know?"

Jessy walked behind the dusty, worn desk, and started pulling out drawers. "Vamps don't travel much. Not like I can just take a trip to Los Angeles, and try out the local cuisine. How the fuck would I get there? In a coffin filled with dirt from my homeland, and a bunch of thralls and ghouls guarding me?"

That was true, he supposed. Kindred dying when in sunlight, and passing out come sunrise, were huge disadvantages. They were stuck. Going to another city must have been a massive risk, terrifying really, considering you had a decent chance of being woken up by someone opening the suitcase you were hiding in, in daylight no less. Even if a vamp had a far safer means of transportation, it was still a risk, one you had to leave in the hands of thralls and ghouls to manage in a crisis situation.

"Do the Invictus communicate?" he said.

Jessy nodded as she pulled open the gate to the next lobby, the prisoner lobby. "Yeah. It's a complicated hierarchy, a large organization with different branches and shit. The council handles all that stuff, though. And to them, it's all about two things: power, and money. They control so much of the world, but they're really only concerned with getting local power; cause elders are paranoid fuckers. So they amass wealth and power, and turn the cities they rule into monarchies or dictatorships. Communication with other cities isn't really in pursuit of any sort of major goal, just, elder assholes, being assholes, occasionally working together to be bigger assholes."

The other Kindred winced with her words. If this were a monarchy or dictatorship, those sorts of words could get her killed. Brazen Jessy being brazen.

They walked deeper into the prison, everyone keeping their eyes peeled, scanning for any semblance of something unusual, something out of place, something the cleanup teams wouldn't have bothered with. The first idea that came to his head was an occult ritual circle carved into a wall with a spoon. Some inmates did that, he was sure, but probably as a joke more than anything. Still, considering the weird shit these hunters did, a strange ritual circle was right up their alley.

So many cells. If walls could talk, this prison would have a lot to say, a lot of shit about a lot of horrible shit, probably. Nice a city as Dolareido was, it wasn't perfect, and prisons always had a mix of good and bad people, on both sides of the bars; his dad made sure he knew that.

Old beds were abandoned, mattresses looted with metal frames remaining. The cells were open, and the walls of concrete were filled with cracks. Water damage, and rat damage. Give a rat enough time, and they could chew through anything, supposedly. Considering how many rats and crows Dolareido had, he wouldn't be surprised if they could chew through the whole damn prison.

"Are... are you here for me?"

Eric froze. He looked to Jessy, then Hella, then Jonah. Nothing. Couldn't have been them.

With a deep breath, Eric entered one of the cells, following the voice. Darkness. Good as his eyes were, seeing in pitch black was impossible. He pulled out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and squatted down as he scanned around.

He gulped, as the shadow moved. A tentacle-like limb pulled away from the light, leaving behind a fading trail of ink. The light struggled to penetrate the shadow around the spirit, and the black mass wriggled, and squirmed, and dragged itself away from him and into the back corner of the cell, underneath the bed's metal frame. Eric came in closer, pushed the light in closer, and the mass of black let out a wheezing sound. It had two eyes, black, blending in with the rest of its amoebous body, catching light and reflecting it. Two round, inky mirrors.

"... what sort of spirit are you?"

"You do not know? You are... a young Uratha then." The spirit managed a gurgle, a bubble of something coming out of its—it didn't have a mouth. Where a mouth should be, a bubble of black fell, splashing onto the floor before fading away.

"Yeah, you could say that."

"P-Please... d-d-do not... do not... consume me."

"I don't plan on it. Still eating meat, these days."

It nodded, head a sphere of jiggling black sticking out of the rest of its slug body. "Young Uratha."

"Eric, who the fuck are you talking to?"

Eric looked over his shoulder, back at Jessy. With a raised eyebrow, she came in closer, and squatted down beside him, looking around.

"You can't see it?"

"Um, no."

Jonah and Hella came as well, and looked at him with the same raised brow.

He knew why they couldn't see it. More knowledge, more memories, something that dug its way out of the deep matter of his brain. They couldn't see it because it was in between, in a state, in a place, that was in the physical world, but not really. Shurilam. Twilight?

He snorted, and the bubbly creature recoiled. Shit, he wasn't angry with it, he was angry because a fucking moon god thing was responsible for knowledge he didn't ask for. Damn thing probably felt he owed her. Her? Luna?

"Please, no eat."

"I'm not going to eat you. Why are you here, in an old, abandoned prison?"

"Seriously, Eric, there's nothing there." Jessy leaned in closer, reached out, and ran her arm around where he was shining the light. Predictably, her arm moved right through the spirit. With her arm to contrast it against the light, it was easier to see now that the disgusting blob of oozing black, was partly see-through. Yeah, Twilight.

"A spirit's there," he said. "Looks like a... no, it's not a shadow spirit."

It gurgled, and its big eyes stared at him all the more. "I am... hiding."

"Hiding? Why?" It had to be a shadow spirit, and yet it wasn't. It was like, someone had mixed shadow with ink, or... blood?

"Black Blood would devour me if they found me." More blobs of black ooze splashed outward from its non-existent mouth, landing around its bobbing head, and disappearing into the black. "I... I only here, to... to sustain on the... death, and blood, and black."

Black Blood. Eric clenched a fist, and forced in a breath. Yeah, this gurgling little spirit did look something like Black Blood. Course, his memories were a blurry mess, having nearly died from his wounds when the strange spirit had come to rescue them. But, he remembered enough. He remembered the inky waves, and the strange, cold-but-not feel of it on his skin, as it pulled him into itself. Swimming, floating, Eric and the others had drifted in what might as well have been a swamp of death and decay, and... shadow.

"Show yourself to my friends." He knew it could. Spirits could manifest, become solid, or possess people; more knowledge that seeped into his consciousness.

"B-But, it is very draining, and I—"

"Do it, or I will eat you." Course, he hadn't the slightest clue how to make that happen, if he couldn't touch it. The knowledge he was given, the words of the First Tongue, it was a puzzle missing many pieces. Avery probably had the rest of them.

Blubbering and sputtering, the creature shimmered black, like a TV with a bad signal, before it began to solidify. The vampires stared on, and as the strange spirit manifested, all three of them gasped.

"What the fuuuuck is that?" Jessy said, eyes wide. She slid a step back, still squatted down beside him, but putting a little more distance between her and the tiny thing. Not so tiny, he supposed, since it was about two feet long.

"Some kind of shadow spirit. But, from what it says, it's got some blood and death mixed in there, too."

It gargled up another blob of the strange ink, before it wiggled across the floor a little closer. "The... the city, it... it overflows, with those things. It is all connected to the Blood Tower, right? Red Tide, and Street-Tail King, they... they feast on it too. You... you should go deal with them! Help Flowing Sanctuary."

That was a lot of random names. Questions for Avery, he supposed.

"Hey, slug thing," Jessy said, "were you around when a young vampire went on a killing spree in here? Summoned a bunch of rats?"

It gargled another bubble, and dragged itself a little closer. "I was, I was. The carnage... like a beacon. I came. Hid better." It had no lips, or at least nothing that could make the sounds it was making. The sound came out of its whole body, instead of a normal mouth.

"Awesome. Tell me—"

"Trade."

"... I'm sorry?"

"Trade. I help you, if you help me."

Eric suppressed the urge to smile. He knew the spirit would try and trade, would try and work a deal. It's what spirits did.

"You can't be fucking serious. Listen here you fucking slug, I'll rip open your guts and—"

"It has no guts, Jessy," he said. "It has no blood, or organs, or anything like that. I... do wonder what this weird abomination is weak to, though." And it was some sort of abomination. Magath? The word floated around in his mind, but, he couldn't place it, couldn't put a meaning to it.

"Will not tell! Can not tell ban or bane, but... but you want to know about the small one? The one the humans called Jack?"

Jessy, growling, stood back up and began to pace. She was handling the absurdity of what was happening pretty well. Given their encounter with Black Blood, and that Sándor monster, her capacity for insanity must have increased quite a bit; or, his had, and she'd been able to handle this level of fucking nuts for a long time.

"I want to know about the hunters that were torturing Jack. What happened after Jack escaped?"

"I know where hunters went."

"And," Eric said, "you want what in return for that knowledge?"

It crawled out a little further again, until it was no longer under the bed frame. Hella and Jonah both had their lights out, and they shined it down at the blubbering mess, their eyes wide and bodies squirming. If it jumped at them, no doubt they'd scream and jump back. The fact that the only source of light was a few phone lights, so the weird blob cast a wavering shadow into the black of the prison cell, was perfect nightmare fuel.

"Let me go? Leave me here. I hurt no one."

This thing was afraid, of him. It was afraid of Black Blood, but it was also afraid of him. It really didn't need to be; not like Eric knew how the fuck to kill a spirit that could hide in Twilight. But if the creature was afraid of him enough to ask him this, seemed like a perfect opportunity to take advantage.

"Fine," he said.

It nodded, and began to hover. That was enough to make everyone step back, as its inky, blubberous body rose into the air, and began to drift toward Hella and Jonah. It drifted into the hall, and the rest of them followed after it. Easy to do, since it was leaving a trail of dripping, inky spots.

"You said you knew Black Blood?" Eric said. Jessy winced and looked at him. Yeah, no one enjoyed hearing that name.

"Do not know, no. Avoid. They would devour me."

Spirits devoured spirits. Devour didn't mean the same thing to humans, though. Absorb was probably the better word. He wish he knew more, but what paltry amount of knowledge was floating around in his skull, it wasn't enough for him to piece together the details. One thing he did notice, though, was how similar this disgusting thing was to Black Blood.

"You got a name?" Eric said.

"No... not yet." It looked over its blobby mass of a body at him, and tried to do something close to a shrug. "Maybe soon."

It was a young spirit, that much was clear. Did spirits get names with age, or were they bestowed them by someone else? He didn't want to care about all this spirit shit, but he did, some part of him drawn to the knowledge and the ancient duty. Fuck, it was frustrating.

Eric looked back at Hella and Jonah, and offered them a small shrug. They tried to return it, but their eyes were wide, and still transfixed on the blob of ink with eyes.

"Where you taking us?" Jessy said.

"Not far, not far." Hovering a few feet off the dark, dingy floor, it took them out of the prison. Eric expected it to stop at any moment, maybe point out some sort of secret passage, or symbol drawn into the ceiling. Dumb of him, when the Invictus had cleaned the area, and would have spotted anything abnormal.

It took them outside. He should have expected that, he supposed. It wasn't like the hunters would have been able to vanish from within the prison, unless that Begotten monster had done something.