My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 16

Jessy sighed, and looked down. Seeing her feel guilty about something was a strange sight, and Damien flicked his gaze between her and her sire.

"What... do you wish to do, sire?"

Sighing, Michael shook his head, like a parent disappointed in an actual child. "You are partly responsible for Eric's behavior, as his self-appointed liaison. You will be pulling patrol duty around South Side until Mister Terry returns to us, and Eric will join you. You will both do this in addition to your current duties. Mister Terry, I do expect you to speak with Avery about this, sooner rather than later."

"Yes Mister MacDonald," Jack said. "I imagine Avery is already cooking up a punishment for Caleb, if it's true he's partly responsible for this."

"Very well. Dismissed." Michael nodded, and walked over to the screen to begin his observations, tablet in hand likely filled with thrall reports.

The three Right Hands stepped out of the room, and took the elevator back down to the lobby of the Invictus HQ. They were silent in the elevator, and Damien struggled to find something to say.

"Holy shit, Julias is gone," Jessy said. Apparently, getting punished by Michael didn't faze her much. It'd probably happened semi routinely, considering Jessy, and Gangrels in general.

"Yeah..." Jack sighed, and his head slumped a little again. "Not even twenty-four hours later, and everyone's just... pushing past it."

She pat the kid's shoulder a couple times before leaning against the elevator wall. "Never seen Maria or Michael get that soft with someone before. Julias's death must have really fucked them up, emotionally."

Damien nodded. "It's true. I've never seen either of them express any emotion freely, except for maybe frustration." Not entirely true. Maria had been willing to let a little of herself come through her shell, when in her private quarters with Damien. But he wasn't about to tarnish her image, and spread word that she was softer than she let on.

"Y-Yeah." Jack lifted his head, but he might as well have had an anchor tied around his neck.

Jessy touched his shoulder again, but this time she squeezed it, gently, and turned him slightly to look to her. "You going to be ok? You've been through fucking hell, Jack. Like... like... fucking god damn."

"I'll be... not fine, but I'll make it."

"We should call Tash," she said, "get together, have a night out, trade memories." Nodding, she gave him a tiny shake, before letting him go. Thankfully, the Gangrel knew when to stop before she crossed a line. "I'd say we should ask Beatrice if she wants to come, but..."

Jack shook his head. "She won't come. She might attack you for even suggesting it. I told her earlier tonight, and it... it didn't go well."

"Damn, you had to tell her? Jesus christ, Jack."

Damien winced at that. The three Mekhets had abandoned Jack to that responsibility, but it would have been worse for Beatrice if they'd stuck around.

"Let's wait a few days, Jessy," Damien said, "before we try dragging Jack anywhere."

"Yeah, I getcha." She nodded, and stepped out of the elevator as the doors opened. "Anyone else get hurt at the hospital?"

"I don't think so," Jack said.

"Good. Eric's dad is there, and those two have a typical love hate relationship going on." Groaning, she stopped halfway through the lobby, and hooked her hands behind her head as she looked up. "Still can't believe he's gone. God damn fucker was... was..."

"We can talk about it later, when we get together." Jack managed to offer her a small smile as he passed her, and he pat her on the shoulder. Returning the favor, Damien supposed.

"Yeah, then." She snapped her fingers, gave herself a slap in the head, and started toward the exit. "Until then, I'm going to bury myself in blood and sex."

Damien rolled his eyes. "Seriously?"

"Hey, fuck you. We all grieve in our own way."

That didn't sound like grieving. That sounded like avoiding grieving. Damien barely knew Julias, and felt little need to grieve for his passing, but even he felt a bit cold for something like sex. Not that he was one to have any opinion on it.

Except, maybe he was? He resisted the urge to look at the picture Fiona sent him, but he'd text her later, and see if, or rather, when she wanted to go on their next date. Be aggressive, or at least confident, Maria said.

Still, it'd only been a day since Jessy's old friend had died. He didn't understand her, and he'd never understand her.

Jack and Damien followed Jessy out of the building. A few caws drew Damien's eyes up, and he moved his hand closer to his suit jacket where he kept a small sword hidden. No swarm descended upon him, and as only two pairs of wings flew down, Damien lowered his hand back to his hip. But the moment earned a glance from Jack, and the hurt on his face was obvious. No hiding now that Damien was a little scared of Jack and his crows.

"Mulder, Scully, I am damn glad to see you two." Jack wiped the hurt away with a smile, and nudged cheeks into each bird once they perched on his shoulders. "What happened after I passed out?" This close to the Invictus HQ, still under the shadow of its front doors, no kine were close enough to hear them, though a couple did stop to notice the guy with crows on his shoulders. Expected, considering what happened last night was now circulating the internet; and a guy with crows on his shoulders was an unusual sight, regardless. If anyone took a picture of Jack now, they wouldn't get a good shot of his face, thanks to the Beast.

Jack nodded as the two birds cawed, clicked, and crooned. "Thanks, for sticking around. And if... if I do something like that again, you have my permission to hide, and ignore my summons, ok? I... I don't think I can be trusted, when I'm like that. Lot of crows died. I'd hate for you two to be a part of that." They cawed a few more times. "... ok, if you really think so." With a nod, the two birds flew off, but didn't go far, landing on rooftop edges above.

"Still having trouble understanding this," Jessy said, standing at the top of the stairs that led to the street sidewalk. "I mean, I know you're a skilled mother fucker, Jack, like Julias... was. But what you're describing is... it's pretty nuts, you know?"

"You're telling me." Shoulders heavy, movements sluggish, he started walking down the stairs, and the other Right Hands joined him after a second. "I'm just trying to roll with it as best I can for now. It explains a lot of things, and lets me put them aside while I focus on other things."

"Like your mom?" she said.

"Yeah. And Triss."

"Triss?"

"I need to talk to her. Not now, like I said, but sooner rather than later. She... she..." Shrugging, he looked up at the sky, and slipped past the kine on the sidewalk without so much as a glance at them. "I feel responsible."

Damien shook his head. "You know—"

"No, I know. I know, logically, that my sire's death is not my fault. Emotionally is a different matter, and Beatrice is probably feeling the same thing. She knows it's not my fault, but she won't feel that way. The only way to get over that hurdle and help her, is to talk to her."

"She's got Jen," Jessy said, "and the other witches. You don't need to... to do a Julias, and bear the burden yourself, you know."

Try as he might, Damien couldn't help but smile at that. That was an elegant way to frame the dilemma for Jack, that he hadn't expected to come from Jessy. He really didn't understand her, especially when she proved she wasn't as dumb or callous as he figured she was.

"You're right. I know you're right. I... I'll wait, and see what happens."

Hiding inside holes in the city, curled up in misery, Damien was familiar with these sensations. He was not familiar with the overwhelming emotional destruction of your intimate lover dying. For him, it'd been about hiding, about avoiding. It wasn't the same, not by a mile, and he could only feel distant empathy for Beatrice and her situation.

He shook his head a little, trying to dislodge the thought. Part of him wanted to go to her, talk to her, soothe her, and it wasn't a natural feeling. He barely knew Beatrice. No, the desire to go to her was just the residual effects of the Vinculum. They weren't friends. They'd had maybe two conversations in the year since Damien's return.

Making connections with his fellow Kindred was difficult, and so far the only connection he'd made was with Jack. Maria seemed to be following suit, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"I'm off," Jessy said, waving. "Cell's on. Call me if shit goes insane."

"Seeing Eric?" Jack said.

"Yeah. Michael beat his ass hard, cause we got into this big scuffle with the Carthians, and Caleb, one of the wolves, and... I'll explain it later. Cya." She offered them a flick of her fingers over her head as she turned her back to them, and walked off.

Damien and Jack stood there, watched her leave, and sighed.

"She's got life figured out," Jack said, "in a way I don't think we ever will."

"Probably." With a shrug, Damien started down the sidewalk, and Jack followed, occasionally glancing up to check on his two crows watching them from overhead. "I... I had a rather... intense moment with Fiona, last night."

Jack quick-stepped up to his side, and walked in tandem with him. "Oh?"

"Sorry, if it seems selfish or badly timed, but—"

"Damien, my sire is dead, my sister is dead, and my mom's at the Elysium tower right now, probably crying her eyes out over the shit storm that's happened to her. I've awakened some sort of curse, and I can... feel it... lurking, hunting, except now instead of it being the Beast we know, it's something massive and hungry, and angry and fucking twisted." With a groan, he ran his fingers over his buzzed head, scratching. "The last thing I want to do, for the next ten minutes as I head back, is think about that stuff. You're getting somewhere with Fiona? Hit me."

As usual, Jack managed to hit his personal struggles with a degree of clarity of brutal honesty Damien never found in others. It was impressive, but if the kid never gave himself a break, it'd be his undoing eventually.

"Very well. I... was injured last night, badly, in an ambush by hunters. Fiona offered me her blood, and I... tasted it."

Jack raised a brow. "How'd that taste?"

"Like... as if someone had created an alcohol for Kindred. It was a powerful flavor, and the effect was equally as powerful. Before I knew it, I was... on her, touching her, as I Kissed her. It was... frightening."

"Frightening?"

"I became aggressive. I pinned her, and... did some things to her..."

That earned both of his eyebrows raising. "How'd she react?"

"She... she uh..." Damien scratched the top of his head, in hopes it'd soothe him as it apparently did for Jack. No such luck. "She enjoyed it... a lot..."

Jack laughed and shook his head. "Well, I don't know about the whole Begotten blood thing, maybe making you into an aggressive drunk. You seem fine now? And it seems like Fiona wants to be manhandled a bit." He raised his fingers, air-quoting 'man'.

"Manhandled. I... am not sure how to do that."

"Antoinette is usually the one manhandling me, so I'm not the best person to get advice from. But with Ashley and Julee, they really enjoy it when someone else takes charge. Hell, Julee likes being choked, like, a lot."

It was sometimes easy to forget that the small Ventrue regularly engaged in sex with not only the Prince of Dolareido, but her duo of lithe, beautiful ghouls.

"And you think Fiona will be... into that?" It was hard to imagine cute, tiny Fiona, wanting to be handled roughly.

"I think you should ask her. Or, you know, do whatever you did last time, and see what she tells you?" Shrugging, he ducked left and right around kine, flowing easily through the masses of suits. "It's a good problem to have."

"Oh?"

"When you know the girl wants you, but you don't know what to do. There's electricity, and it burns, but it draws you in anyway. Before you know it, you're in each other's arms, drowning in a delightful heat you didn't know you needed."

Damien looked back to the sidewalk, the kine they walked past, and digested that. It was a poetic way to put Damien's inexperience with women.

"Jessy confuses me," Damien said.

"Oh?"

"She... seems to enjoy such aggression, but Fiona is nothing like her."

"Yeah, no denying that. I think Jessy treats sex like a sport, more than something to get intimate about." He laughed, shrugging again. "She knows what she likes, and she's not afraid to go after it. Eric's a lucky guy. I wonder if he gets to see an intimate side I've never seen of her before."

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

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

~~Eric~~

"Holy shit," he said. "And... and everyone else at the hospital?"

Jessy shrugged and sat down on his couch before putting her elbows up on its back. "Your dad's fine, I'm sure. Hunters only killed one person working there, an orderly named Jez."

"And the crows?"

"Shit load of crows died. Jack's probably feeling guilty as shit for that."

Eric frowned. "I meant the people at the hospital. Lot of sick people, compromised immune systems, like my father."

"No crows came near your father, and the clean up crew know what they're doing. So do the doctors." Sighing, she slid her arms off the couch back, put her elbows on her knees, and slouched. From confident to not, in seconds. "But the news is out there, about the crow attack. My bosses were understanding of Jack's position, but that doesn't change that we have to deal with the fallout."

"The crow attack on the hospital?"

"Guaranteed that headline is already circulating the internet. No chance in hell it isn't going to attract attention."

Nodding, he joined her on the couch. Once he turned a little to face her, she pushed herself into him, shoulder and head pressing to his chest. A meow announced Kat's interest, and she jumped up onto Jessy's lap, only to mirror the vampire's motion, except into her and not him. Might as well have been two cats on his couch.

"What's that mean for you?" He slipped his arm behind her, half hugging, half rubbing her back. Seemed like the boyfriend thing to do, and she seemed to appreciate it as she nuzzled half her face into his chest against his white t-shirt.

"Means more hunters, probably. Probably nothing like the hunters we got, cause they're fucking insane. But, it means nights of only worrying about tussling with Carthians like last night will be a thing of the past."

"I'm surprised that, considering shit like this happens, shit like the stuff I did, and now Jack, and whoever's done whatever in the decades since the invention of the internet, that the world doesn't already know about vampires."

She chuckled, didn't lift her head, and pushed into him a little harder. He fell onto his back on the couch, his head on its arm, and pulled up a leg onto the couch, the other dangling off, so Jessy could lie on his stomach. Kat had no trouble adapting, climbing up Jessy's chest and settling on her back once Jessy was settled on him.

"You'd be surprised how easy it is to keep this sort of shit under wraps, Eric."

"Say what?"

"Most kine are adamant that paranormal shit doesn't exist. I mean hell, how long were you pestered by your new, inhuman urges, before you genuinely considered you weren't human?"

"That's... not really the same, I think. It was happening to me, randomly." One of his arms dangled off the couch along with his leg, but his arm closer to the couch's back slid down Jessy's side, and found the small of her back. He traced lines into it, slipping his fingers underneath her suit blouse so he could caress her skin.

"True, but still, paranormal shit happens everywhere, all the time. We're good at hiding it, but with the invention of cameras and the digital world, there's fuckloads of decent sightings online. Everyone calls bullshit. There are hunters out there working day and night to try and prove we exist, but the world just refuses to listen. Then Kindred do some cleanup, directly or indirectly, call shenanigans someway, manipulate someone, and entire websites are marked as nutjob conspiracy theories."

He nodded and sighed, looking up at the ceiling of his new, fancy place. "I see your point. The last thing the world wants is to deal with a whole new kind of horror. It's a scary enough place without things like us."

"Yeah, true that."

"... so..."

"So?" She lifted her head and frowned at him. "That sounds like inbound heavy talk."

"Well, I mean—"

"No. No heavy talk. My friend is dead, my other friend's all kinds of fucked up, and more shit is going to end up on our doorstep. I don't want heavy. I want to curl up on my boyfriend's chest, listen to his heart beat — because it does unlike mine — and forget about heavy shit." She slammed her forehead down on his sternum, hard enough to earn a groan from him, before she set her cheek down on his chest again. "Maybe... maybe later. Much later."

Nodding, he raised his other arm, set his fingers along her neck, and gently combed them through the back of her hair. Instant, quiet moans from the undead vampire.

"How's your dad?" she said.

"Thought you didn't want to do heavy talk?"

"My heavy. Not your heavy."

He chuckled. Well, his heavy wasn't nearly as heavy as her heavy, right now. "I tried to pay him a visit yesterday, after the whole crow thing, but a bunch of officials had the hospital blocked off."

"Yeah, load of Invictus thralls with different groups and shit, managing cleanup. Then tonight, I know my bosses sent some vamps more equipped to do damage control, Ventrue and whatnot."

"Hope I can see my dad again soon."

She chuckled again, and drew some lines in his side with a fingertip. "You will, I'm sure. Maybe this will scare him into taking better care of his fat ass."

Wow. He almost wanted to get angry at her for being so callous about his dad's stupidity. Almost. Jessy was Jessy, and she was just saying what she'd be thinking otherwise; and what he was thinking, too.

"What do you think I should do?" he said.

"About your dad?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck, I dunno." She turned her head so she could rest her chin on his sternum, with no mercy for how uncomfortable it was to have hard bone pressing on his chest. "You make enough money you can just leave him in there, can't you?"

"Maybe? I'm not sure. He's taking up a hospital spot, and I think they can argue that at this point, he should just be moved to a retirement home with the facilities to take care of him." Which, admittedly, would be cheaper.

"Sounds like a good idea to me. That's what's happening, right? He's too old and stubborn to change his mind about things, and too unhealthy to be anything but retired. You have more than enough money to put him into some expensive home, and we can make sure he's well taken care of." She waggled her eyebrows. "Sponge baths from sexy topless nurses and all. "

He shuddered. "Why would you put that image in my head?"

"Because I am evil." She put her cheek back to his chest, and resumed nuzzling, both her hands pressing into his sides and chest in random, massaging motions, like a kneading cat. "Ok, no more heavy talk about your dad. That's officially crossed the line into too heavy territory, for now."

"Ok. What do you want to talk about? How about... that building, that spirit I found pointed you to?"

"We took a peek after I got you home. Big symbol drawn on the wall, but it was all black and burned up and shit. Leftovers, I guess. Turns out the hunters are using some portals to get around."

"Portals?" He raised a brow. "You say that like it's normal."

"After what you saw Michael do last night, I figured you'd be past the 'oh god is this really reality' crap."