My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 02

Eric shrugged and ran a finger along his head and dark skin. "Ladies seem to like it."

Tash nodded, and froze when Avery snapped her a glare. Well, it was true, she thought. Black men looked nice with shaved heads, especially when they wore suits. Eric wasn't in his usual work suit, but still.

"Here are the rules of this trip," Avery said, glaring at the two of them more. "Stay quiet, and stay out of the way, Vola. I've agreed to this because you vamps have played nice with us, and I know you dragons are obsessed with getting your hands on any information you can."

Yeap, that was true. Even before she was a dragon, information was sweet candy, to be savored with the utmost bias. The chance to see the spirit world, the Shadow Realm, and see with her own eyes the crazy things Jack had spoken of? Even better, it was an opportunity to see the world where the creatures Antoinette had summoned came from, creatures like Safe, or that weird eyeball squid thing that liked secrets.

The squid spirit. It'd said Maria was up to something. Maybe she could learn something about that while in the spirit world too, as long as she didn't earn Avery's ire in the process.

"I w-will."

"Good. Eric, we're hunting for an Azlu."

Tash petrified in place, and blinked at the woman several times, before looking to her boyfriends. A moment's wisdom told her to keep her mouth shut, and she did.

"Azlu?" Eric said. He said it like a question, but there was a glint in his eye. Information was rolling around in his head, and Tash raised a brow as she watched him.

"One of the Hosts. These monsters wreak havoc on the balance, and Azlu in particular, sew threads, weaving their webs in the Gauntlet until there's no flow between the two sides at all. That causes problems."

He raised a brow. "We're going into the Hisil to do that?"

Avery nodded. "We're looking for the signs they leave behind. They'll probably be hiding in Gurihal, but we can find areas where there's... emptiness, you could say. We can find it better in the Hisil, and it'll give us a clue."

Natasha tapped a finger on her chin. If the Hisil world was a sort of reflection of the material world Gurihal, and some sort of barrier came up between them, then it did stand to reason that the Hisil would be affected. She assumed it'd lead to death, like a river suddenly drying up would for the area, but spirits didn't work like biological entities. Emptiness made more sense.

What would happen to the material world in that area? Would it dry up like her original idea, or would people and animals simply leave the area? Would it become still? That was hard to imagine. Graveyards had a certain energy to them even kine were aware of, and so did majestic geography like the Grand Canyon. They were still, but not 'still' still. What would a place devoid of a connection to the spirit world be like, then?

She wanted to ask about all of it, so badly. What was ephemera and how did it work? What was essence? How did Antoinette's strange machinery manage to create, or at least emulate it? How were the physical and spirit world connected, and why? Why was there a wall between them? But the questions could wait until she was alone with Art and Matt, and even then, she got the impression they wouldn't tell her. They hadn't before.

She squeaked as half a dozen of the werewolves began to change. They fell onto their hands, and fur emerged from their bodies, pouring out through their pores and overtaking their clothes, until the fabric vanished beneath their leathery hide. Wolves, enormous and terrifying replaced them, each nearly twice as long as a normal wolf, and thus nearly twice as wide and tall. No one would mistake them for regular wolves. More like, Gmork from The Neverending Story.

She knew the Uratha had five forms: wolf, big wolf, big scary werewolf, beastly man, and man. She'd had sex with Art and Matt once, when they transformed into their beast-man bodies, and that'd been quite a treat. They'd been almost too much to take, but the night had been very satisfying. And Jessy was having sex with one in their full werewolf form. Did they ever have sex in their wolf forms? She knew Jessy could become one, and all the Uratha could, and—that is a strange line of thinking you should probably not go down, Tash.

Avery remained in her human form, as did Clara, Art, and Matt.

"W-Why, um—"

Rolling her eyes, Avery cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Faster, and better noses."

"Oh, right." Nodding, she looked up at Art and Matt and—and she squeaked! A white light cut through the air in front of them, as if someone had sliced through it with a sword that could pierce reality. Strange that her mind went to 'magical sword' first, but there was no denying the comparison. It really did look as if someone had cut through the air in the center of the shitty apartment's living room, and had left a tear in the air and whatever else permeated space.

Art took her left hand, Matt took her right, and they walked her toward the light. And she almost screamed. Half because she was about to enter another dimension, again, and that was scary. Half because she wanted to ask a bazillion questions before she did. No one had done anything to create the portal, as far as she could tell. No one waved a wand or slashed a sword, or did anything that drew her eyes. Avery was touching a necklace she had, rubbing it with her thumb, but that hardly seemed like enough to open a portal to another dimension! Antoinette had been working on this for years, decades, maybe centuries, and these werewolves did it as easily as a breathing.

No wonder the Prince and Jacob were so frustrated with them. Both elders had answers they wanted, and both figured they could gain some of them by piercing the Gauntlet on their own terms, and enter the spirit world. Jacob had Black Blood to aid him, and Antoinette had her tools. Both were a pale comparison to what these Uratha could do.

She couldn't feel Art and Matt's hands anymore. When she tried to squeeze her hand, they wouldn't close, indicating the two men's hands were still held between her fingers, at least. The Gauntlet didn't want her to feel, or do anything, apparently; or maybe that was how the Uratha passed through it. She could kind of feel something underneath her, as if she could walk on it, and she was sort of walking, but it was like walking on cloud. Her eyes showed her some depth in the endless white, hinting that it was more than a white sheet burned into her retinas. It was a place, a thing, somewhere she could walk and move around in, even if she couldn't hear or feel or see well.

How many old stories were there, about people walking dangerous paths, and always told the same: don't stray from the path? In newer stories, straying from the path was how you found adventures, and how you grew as a person. In the old tales, Brothers Grimm and before, straying from the path was how you got eaten. She was no fool, and not ignorant of survivor bias. Now was the perfect time to hold onto her boyfriends' hands, and just move the way they moved.

And then, they were back in Dolareido. She blinked and looked around, trying to understand what had just happened. Dolareido? Dolareido. They were in an apartment too. In fact, they were in the apartment Avery considered home, or her den or whatever, and as far as Natasha could tell, it was perfectly normal Dolareido.

She looked around. There was Matt and Art, and Avery and Clara, and the others, many of them still in their giant wolf bodies, all in the apartment with her. This didn't make any sense. If they were in the Hisil now, shouldn't it have been different?

As the silence filled the room, she wiggled her ears a couple times, and looked around. It was quieter, though, in the Hisil. She could hear the breathing of the werewolves, but other than that, it was basically dead silent. That couldn't be right. They were in South Side, and even this far from central, there should still be noise. It was a densely populated city, and while the Carthian half of South Side didn't have the bustling traffic or streetlight of the Invictus half, it still had hundreds of thousands of people. There should have been some noise, like a group of people walking down the street, or a car alarm going off.

Nothing.

"Stay close," Avery said. "And don't touch anything unless you're ok with it biting your hand off."

It? Biting? Tash raised a brow, and looked around at the things around her. They did look different, if only slightly. The couch lacked some of the texture detail. The floor and its dirty carpet didn't have stains anymore, but were slightly warped and dirty all over, like a gradient. And the windows showed water dripping down the glass. Except, it wasn't raining.

Avery went out first, opening the door and motioning for everyone to follow. That gave Tash pause for a moment, before she followed after the boys. She almost screamed again as, from across the hall, one of the doors opened an eye. The door itself didn't open, but the cheap white paint was hiding an eye, and the big eye opened to look at the wolves and her. Jack mentioned things like this, but she'd had a hard time believing him, assuming he must have been exaggerating when he said the doors literally looked at him.

It only got weirder when she got outside. The sky didn't look like Dolareido's sky. Weird colors streaked across it, the same sort of colors you might find on the signs above bars and casinos. Black shadows, subtle blobby things moved along the base of buildings. The streetlights were bent in strange ways. The moon faded in and out like a slow heartbeat. A few of those strange squid things Antoinette had summoned floated by. The windows weren't see-through, not from this side, as if they were one-way, and solid black.

Once the strange details became obvious, it was almost overwhelming. She might as well have been on an alien planet!

Every fiber of her being wanted to pull out her phone and start recording, but she knew Avery wouldn't let her. If she ever wanted to come back here again, she had to play by her rules, and focus on being a quiet bystander who only watched.

She looked over at Eric. While Natasha was doing her best to be invisible, Eric's eyes were wide with wonder as he looked and walked around. The man breathed deep, taking in the sights and smells of the spirit world like it was a magical place; which it was, of course, but for Eric, it was almost as if seeing his hometown again, after being away for decades.

Natasha outright squealed, when a giant wave of water splashed around a distant street corner, and started to come their way. She dug in the balls of her feet, ready to run, but no one else moved, and she forced herself to calm down. Ok, incoming tidal wave in the middle of the street was apparently a common occurrence for the Uratha.

"Calm down," Clara said, chuckling. "If you need to react, we'll let you know."

"Easier f-for you t-t-to say!" It was hard enough to not run away from an oncoming tidal wave in the middle of a street; a street she only just now noticed was completely void of any kine. It was even harder to hold still, as the wave not only grew closer, but grew higher.

The water was pristine, and it shimmered in the light of the stars and moon above, when it really shouldn't have, considering the stars were usually invisible in Dolareido, washed out by the city light. The waves were beautiful, and scary as it was to see a giant wave coming at her, Tash had to admit it was a dazzling sight.

It grew doubly beautiful, when a feminine figure emerged from the water. It had no arms, and instead of legs, the flowing waves beneath it connected at the hip. White wings emerged from the waves, jutting from the spirit's back, like an angel. Mist flowed out from where arms should have been, gorgeous and glittering.

Natasha put her hands to her mouth, and gasped, staring, trying to wrap her mind around the beauty before her. "She's... it's..."

"This is our pack's totem. Flowing Sanctuary," Avery said, joining the spirit on the sidewalk.

Totem? She'd heard the boys talk about that, but she hadn't really mentally pictured what a totem would be like. There were a lot of similarities between the Uratha, and the beliefs of the Native Americans that lived on the land long before the Colonials came. Flowing Sanctuary could have easily been one of the spirits such people paid respect to. A spirit of the river, maybe? It had something to do with water. But it's name suggested more. A spirit of protection?

"H-Hi!" she said at last.

Everyone looked at her, raising eyebrows, before they laughed. Laughing was better than anger, considering she was supposed to stay quiet. And besides, there was no way she could not at least greet something that looked like a literal goddess.

"Hello Kindred," the spirit said. The voice was powerful, with none of the softness Natasha expected of something so sparkly and beautiful. It didn't have a mouth either, face lacking details, with only the subtle shapes of nose and jaw and eyes carved into the flowing water. "And this new Uratha is Eric, I assume?"

"Yes," Eric said, looking the water waves up and down. Flowing Sanctuary was tall, and most of her mass of water swirled underneath her. But it wasn't the same amount of water she used to get to where they were. Maybe she should create more water as she moved around, or something? Of course, that made no sense from a physics standpoint, but she doubted anything here did.

"Come on," Avery said. "This is half about looking for any spots we think the Azlu could be fucking up. Half, to get Eric used to the Hisil. If we're going to stay in Dolareido, least we can do is help our city expert with hunting in the city's shadow."

Eric raised a brow. "Expert?"

"You know the city better than any of us. For a lot of us, Tijuana is the closest comparison, and it's not a good one."

"... oh." He blinked at Avery several times, and the spirit several times more, before nodding.

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~~Eric~~

Light bulb moment. He eyed Avery closely, and looked to Natasha for a moment before back to the pack leader. That was dangerously close to an admission of ignorance, and that she'd need him to help her with hunting in Dolareido. He knew she'd suck at dealing with Dolareido, from her attitude, and how the Kindred were so wary of them. But to actually hear the arrogant woman say that he knew more than her, was a surprise.

Avery didn't like asking for help, that was obvious. She was used to being in charge. It wasn't like she hadn't earned the role, from what he'd seen from her. The pack respected her, trusted her. So maybe it was a respect thing, a face thing, a culture thing. Or maybe it was just like how guys didn't like asking for directions, she didn't like asking for aid.

Avery came up to him and gestured down the street. "We think the Azlu is somewhere in the sewers, same as last time. We have to be careful, exploring, hunting, because the Azlu weave their webs thick in the Gauntlet. If shit hits the fan, we can't jump back to the material world; not that we can do that easily in a fight, anyway." With a snort, she nodded her head toward Art. "At least, most of us can't."

Art smiled, and winked down at Tash. "Irakka got skills," he said, in that silly rapper show-off accent. It was corny as hell, but in typical girlfriend fashion, Natasha squeaked a chuckle.

It surprised him, that she was not only maintaining a relationship with two guys at once, but she seemed happy and delighted with it. Matt and Art must have jived on a friendship level Eric had never seen, for the two of them to be happy with one girl between them. Then again, they both had her at the same time, according to Jessy, so it wasn't like they had her on a timeshare setup.

Those two huge guys with tiny her. No wonder Jessy wanted video evidence.

"So... what's the plan?" Eric said, shrugging. "Cause, I got no clue on how to fight a spider monster."

"We're not fighting it, not tonight," Clara said. "We need fire to kill it. Avery can use some fire gifts, but it's not really enough to stop an Azlu, especially once it splits apart and scurries."

"Splits apart... and scurries." Something in his brain told him this was, indeed, what Azlu did. He couldn't wrap his mind around a creature just splitting itself into smaller parts, but hey, he was in a spirit world. Crazy was the name of the game.

Clara nodded, and started walking down the street. "If we have to fight it, we will. We got the pack, and you, and even a vampire. Should be enough to fight it, if we're forced into the situation. But we're not hunting to kill, tonight. We're hunting for information."

Sighing, he followed after her, grabbed one of his shoulders, and started rotating it, like he was preparing for a fight. A lot of 'ifs' in her statements, which, in his experience, meant shit was going to go down. In the past, that meant arguments with the fuck heads that set up fights in the ring. Here, it probably meant people getting sucked into life threatening situations.

But, honestly, he was itching for an opportunity to let the wolf out, and rip something apart. Much as letting out his sexual hunger through the wolf with Jessy was satisfying and fulfilling, he could feel the need in him for the hunt, for violence, for the feel of flesh — animal or spirit — giving way to his fangs. And maybe tonight, he could let a little of that out. Maybe.