My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 07

His mom turned around in place, frozen, horrified, hands up to her lips. The utensils and plates and glasses didn't come for her, though. Metal and glass flew up in the air, and headed toward Jack with straight force, like someone firing a bullet. He rolled to the side as plates smashed into a million pieces, white porcelain raining in the floor. Glass exploded, tearing his suit and cutting his skin. Metal forks and knives stabbed into the floor and walls, penetrated drywall and tile flooring alike.

Whatever it was, it was focused on him. It didn't care about his mom. Good, he could focus on just keeping himself alive for the next few minutes, but if a lucky knife came at him and cut off his head, no curse was going to save him from that. And more were coming. He grabbed the frame of the archway that led to the living room, and threw himself into through it, as more utensils peppered the floor and nearest wall.

The cold pressure only grew, until every motion felt like slogging through a swamp. It pulled on him, tried to drag him down, demanded he give in and lie down in the oppressive weight of the invisible blizzard. The mist swirled, scattering around him and his panicked motions, and reformed within moments. Any second now, rotting fingers or bones would reach up, and yank him under the rising mist.

Luckily no fingers rose from the fog, but the sound of utensils stabbing the walls, each intended for him, continued as he ran into the living room.

"You," the fog said, "you... stole... my... my..."

"Please, stop!" His mother ran into the living room to join him, but something heavy, large, and invisible, blew through the room. The cold mist swirled again, making way for the incoming force that slammed into his mother, and threw her into a couch. She tried to get up, but it held her down, rendering her struggles, even the strong struggles of a Daeva, futile.

"Jack... Jaaack..."

More whispers in the dark, from the grave, in the shadow and the endless obsidian that seemed to haunt him wherever he fucking went. And he knew that voice, better than he knew the screams. The banshee wails continued, rolling over the fog around him, but a woman's voice rose above it all, thundering through the house. The closet door nearby vibrated, and Jack could hear the hangers inside hitting each other furiously. A louder vibration sound drew his eyes, and he realized the couches were shifting along the floor with the power of the voice, wooden legs hidden in the mist.

"Tell me," he said, grabbing the staircase railing, "who you are? You... you sound like Mary!"

"I am Mary!"

Stupid question to ask. The couch his mom wasn't sitting on vibrated like it was angry, and then launched at him. He managed to twist out of the way of the railing and the stairs that led up, but the couch hit him anyway, and he flew through the air as he was sent downstairs instead. The family room had carpet, but it was thin, and didn't do much to soften the impact of his skull as he slammed against it.

He grabbed a nearby couch — not the one thrown at him — and forced himself back to his feet. The mist leaked down over the stairs, a slow and endless tide of cold and death, come to hurt him. A nameless wave of—no, not nameless. It was Mary. The voice, the anger, the presence. It was Mary.

But Mary was dead.

"I don't... understand," he said to the mist. "I never stole anything from Mary!"

The fog parted as something descended the stairs. He stared at what could only have been invisible legs, steps of a walking gait, someone coming down the stairs to join him.

"You stole my memory!"

A hint of silhouette formed in the mist, a woman, a little taller than him. She was wearing normal clothes, but it was hard to tell, the details lost to the fog and to the shimmering illusion. It couldn't have been Mary. No, it was a trick. This was Black Blood's doing, or the hunters' somehow.

"Memory? I—"

The couch flew at him again, and he wasn't prepared, mind digging through the past for what the voice could possibly mean. Distracted meant easy target, and he screamed as the couch smashed his legs into the TV stand behind him. His scream ended when a second couch, one of the couches already down in the family room, smashed into his chest, and drove his back and skull into the TV. Glass showered over him, tore through his scalp, and shredded his suit until shards of plastic lodged themselves in his shoulders.

"Stole it! You were alive. Alive. And you stole that memory!" The banshee, or ghost, or what the fuck ever it was, floated off the last stair, and hovered over the mist, two feet above the floor. He could see through her, directly through her, like she was nothing more than a thin silk curtain. Shoulder-length dark hair, and a soft face, details he recognized, but were lost to the harsh cold of her new form. She was so pale, and all color from her clothes gone, except for hints of cold blue, and deadly white.

He pushed the couches away. No blood followed his wounds, and the pain was minor, compared to the hell he'd been through the past couple years. But no matter how minor the lacerations were to his Kindred body, it was Mary that had hurt him, and wanted to hurt him. An ache bubbled in his withered guts, and he grit his teeth as he did his best to ignore it. He knew what she was talking about.

"Mary, please, stop." It wasn't her. It wasn't her! It was some after image, some scar left behind, not the real Mary. Mary was dead, and this ghost creature wasn't her.

No, Jack, you idiot. It's her.

He should have known this would happen. But how the fuck was he supposed to know about ghosts? They were nothing but a whispered rumor, something Kindred said existed, but never spoke of, never recounted meeting one, never discussed. He should have known, the moment he set foot into his old home, and felt the frigid bite of death in the air, that something was going on.

If there was one way he was going to die, it'd be to the sister he got killed.

"And now Mom! Mom's like you! What have you done!?" The shrieks rose higher, piercing Jack's skull until he felt vitae throb through his brain to heal the wound. His eardrums threatened to pop, until vitae protected them.

"Mary, stop! Stop, it's—"

The lights flickered on again, but off a second later, only to be followed by darkness beyond what was possible. Black fell upon him, buried him and the large room, blocking out the small windows at the top of the walls in the semi basement. The blinds trembled, and the mist began to rise, flowing along the walls, until he might as well have been in the eye of a tornado.

But the mist was still visible. It almost looked like a lava lamp in the dark, except instead of wax, it was mist. The gray fog glowed until it was white, but did not illuminate the walls. Mary's ghost moved over top it, a black outline he could see through, against the white death around her. Her eyes were empty, completely empty, like a skull, and she stared at him as she screamed. The darkness hid everything. The couches, the carpet, the windows, the ceiling, it all disappeared into endless oblivion, except for the glowing white fog, and the eyeless gaze of the shrieking creature hovering toward him.

Her face was twisted and warped, cheeks sunken in, and her hair was frayed and wet. Her mouth was wide open, exposing teeth, and a black hole that he couldn't see through, same as her eyes. She came closer, and closer, screaming endlessly. Every foot she gained, he could feel the chilling ache pulse through him, tear at him, and it made him feel heavier, heavier, and heavier.

The curse didn't have anything to contribute; ghosts were outside its purview, apparently. Fucking useless.

"You were alive! Stole my memory! And now I'm... I'm..."

He knew what this was about. This was about the time he ran into her, not long after his Embrace. He'd run into her randomly, and had to wipe her memory of the encounter to keep the Masquerade safe. He'd violated her mind, tore something from her, and now she knew about it. Then, it had to be Mary. Oh fuck.

"I'm sorry, Mary, I had to!"

"If I knew, maybe I'd still be alive!"

He sucked in his breath, and stared at the ghost as she came closer, frozen. Mary wouldn't talk like that. But, this Mary, was different.

"Mary, please listen. I didn't have a choice. I—"

The world turned into a blur. Something grabbed him, something enormous, heavy, and invisible. The mist exploded outward as if in a panic, desperate to get away from the maelstrom of effort as something squeezed him, and threw him toward the stairs again. The couches and the TV went with him. The ghost wanted him low, deep down in the Earth, and threw him toward the doorway that held the final stairway down into the final basement; the door frame was the only thing that saved him from the incoming TV and couches.

The lowest floor again, and it greeted him far more harshly this time than last. He cracked against the metal support beam in the center of the first room, the storage half, and slumped to the floor as a shower of glass followed him from the TV that couldn't fit through the door. More of that thin carpet that might as well have been concrete caught his weight, and he groaned as he pressed his palms against it. Broken ribs, lovely.

The mist was already down in the basement, thick and smothering. The room almost looked like a different place, with white fog up to his knees, and he clutched the support beam as he looked around desperately. He had to stop this, before the spirit brought the house down.

Mary followed him down, slow and wavering, body dipping left and right over the fog. She never blinked, just glared at him, and her mouth hung open between shrieks, like a zombie that didn't know how to close its mouth after groaning. Down and down she came, until she was only a few feet from him. He had no where to run. All he could do was look up at the ghostly face of his sister, and sigh.

"Mary, what do you want from me? I regret that you... died, but I don't regret doing what I had to do to preserve my secrecy. I had to wipe your memory, or—"

She pointed a palm out at him. This close, he could see her clothes, the casual clothes she wore when she was out shopping, jeans and a jacket; guess she didn't like hoodies anymore. There were holes in the jacket, a lot of them, slits that had the same darkness to them that her mouth and eyes did. Stab wounds.

The world turned upside down, and gained warp speed. No, that was him. Reality caught up a second too late, when he felt his body crash into some shelves. Cans of food went flying, some split open from the impact, and the crunch of the chest freezer denting against the impact of his head was the climax of the new hurricane of pain. He liked that freezer. His mom used to hide treats in there, ice cream and stuff, buried underneath frozen fish and liver, where no child would look; smart woman, his mom.

The mix of nostalgia and pain was not a pleasant one. A desire to scream coursed through him, but the world wouldn't stop spinning, putting a halt to any immediate attempt to make noise. The floor, basement, cans and shelves, and fog were covered in the endless, overwhelming, cold, white fog, glowing in the darkness but providing no light. It was all he could see until he pushed himself up onto his palms again, and peeked his head over the mist.

"Mary... don't..."

"A stranger on the street stabbed me to death! And now Mom's like you!" Wails and shrieks mixed into her words, layering over each other. It wasn't an echo, it was extra voices, all hers, pouring over and overwhelming the basement, and the whole house. Her voice had the cans vibrating along the floor, and the shelves, and whatever else was hidden beneath the fog.

He'd already be dead if he wasn't a vampire. She'd have killed him already. Good fucking god, his sister would have killed him. Revenge, a dish best served cold, right? He managed a small chuckle, clearly delusional as he struggled to understand the situation, and the absurdity of it all. What a way to learn ghosts were real.

"A stranger! I saw what happened. I watched! I watched!" Again she pointed her palm at him, and again the world stopped making sense. Gravity reversed, and he fell into the air, crashing into the exposed wood beams underneath what would have been the kitchen floor. He hit the ceiling hard enough that half of him lodged between the wood beams, and he gasped, a reflex that mixed with the crunch of bone. Pain followed a second later, and it only grew worse as the upward force driving him into the ceiling continued. Finally, he could start screaming.

"I watched! Mom fell, and some people came, and took us to the hospital. I was dead! Dead! I watched them put my body on a gurney!" Again an invisible force found him, and decided he was better off a painting on the wall. She threw him toward the wall his dad built, and he went through it, drywall and then the studs. More bones broke, but he was too busy trying to figure out up from down to notice; plus he was already screaming in pain.

"I ran home! It... it was dark... everywhere. But I could see home! Home... home... It's not dark here. I can see, and I can... I can feel things, touch things." Her mouth opened wide, wider than it should have been able to, and her empty black eyes stared through him with all the tenderness of a bullet. "And then I remembered! I found my missing brother! But you stole that memory! Took it from me! Took it! Took it! Took it!"

He managed to lift his head, and gaze back through the hole in the wall she'd made with his body. Pieces of his suit lined the broken wooden studs, and so did pieces of his skin and Kindred blood. They burned away to ash in moments, lighting the room with small red cinders, before the only thing visible was the glowing fog once again.

Mary came through the doorway, glaring at him like he was the one who destroyed her life, and all she could think about was revenge. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing how he felt about himself. The more those eyes tore into his soul, the more he found himself agreeing with her. Angela came for her because of him, because he fucked up and failed to kill her when he had the chance. His war spilled over into the kine world, and he was stupid to think that psychopath woman wouldn't go for his weak spot. And it was a weak spot, as it must have been for any Kindred his age; a neonate, barely older than a fledgling, still fresh from the Embrace, and still struggling to let his old life go.

But just because he felt like it was his fault, didn't mean it was. He knew that, and he wasn't going to let a stupid thing like crippling depression and self doubt change that reality.

"It wasn't my fault!" he screamed back at the shrieking banshee. "Blame Angela, and the other hunters. You could have lived your life free of all this if it wasn't for her."

"And who says I wanted to live that life, with Dad dead, and my little brother missing? Mom and me didn't know what happened! We cried almost every night for a year!"

Up again he went, lifted by the invisible hand of the dead, and thrown. There was another couch and TV down here, a smaller room meant for watching movies and stuff. The shattering of glass was the first sensory input Jack received, to let him know he'd been thrown into it. Like an old friend who refused to let go, pain flooded him, renewed, and came at him from new places. He'd have bled out a dozen times over if he was alive.

"P-Please, Mary, I couldn't let you know." His voice came out broken, between groans and sobs. Sobs? Right, of course, he was crying. Only a little, and not about the pain. Somewhere inside him, he knew he was talking to his dead sister. Every word she said ripped at him until it felt like his fucking insides were bleeding. "There's rules! A secret society. I wasn't allowed to bring you into it, and even if I could, I wouldn't have!"

Slowly, he managed to get a sense for his surroundings. Glass was sawing into his stomach, fighting against his suit and penetrating his abdomen. He couldn't see anything, not even the fog. So, his head was in the wall behind the flatscreen TV, and his torso was in, or through, the TV. It'd have been comical, if it was a cartoon. Turns out, getting rammed through a TV screen so hard you go through it and into the wall behind it, is blindingly painful.

He pushed himself out, or tried, but a second later he didn't need to. The invisible grip of his sister's rage grabbed him, and threw him back and away into the opposite wall. Again he felt parts of his body crumple to the impact, but since they were in the lower basement, the outer wall was thick and reinforced; more than strong enough to stop him, his body just broke against the studs of the wall instead.

He pushed himself out of the wall, and fell onto the couch beneath him. His Kindred body repaired itself quickly, far quicker than it would have in the past. Much as he'd prefer to keep the curse out of his life, it was terrifyingly useful, and it pulsed vitae through him at an unprecedented speed. Bones snapped back into place. Joints slid back into their sockets. Skin closed on itself, and began to mend, preventing any more of his stubborn Kindred blood from leaking out.

Ventrue were hard to kill, and with the curse, he was probably as hard to kill as Viktor; maybe he could regrow half his head if someone blew it off, too. But he couldn't use his abilities against a ghost, that much he could tell every time he made eye contact with the black voids of Mary's eyes. Summoning animals to his aid would require some time as well, and Mary wasn't going to give him that; not like an army of rats would be useful right now anyway. The only thing he had was his Ventrue resilience, and all that did was let Mary indulge in breaking him.

So, he sat on the couch, ready to let his dead sister beat on him some more.

"I'm sorry... for everything," he said. "I didn't want any of this to happen."

"Sorry? You're sorry!? I died, Jack! I died because—"

"Mary Julia Terry, stop that this instant!"

The fog, high and swirling around Mary, settled down instantly. Mary herself froze, before slowly lowering her outstretched hand, as she turned to face their mom. Samantha stood in the doorway, hands in fists at her side, and eyes wide as she glared at the floating ghost.

"M... Mom?" Realization dawned on the dead woman's face. Her massive, empty eyes shrank to something resembling normal size, and her mouth closed into a grimace. "Mom, I... I..."

"Mary! Look at what you've done to my house! You've put holes in the walls. You've destroyed shelves, the freezer, windows, both televisions, and the couches. You've ruined the kitchen and all the utensils. You destroyed all the plates and bowls!"

"But... but I..."

Jack stared at the hovering ghost, and his lips parted. Every moment their mom yelled at her, Mary looked less and less like the hovering maelstrom of rage and death, and more like Mary. The heavy darkness that buried everything faded away, and the mist became nothing more than a quiet gray around his ankles.

He looked at his mom. Her eyes were hard, glaring, and doing her angry mom face. Sadness danced in her gaze as well, but she wiped it away on her sleeve, before she pointed at Jack, still glaring at Mary.

"Your brother doesn't deserve this! None of this is his fault. He did what he had to!"

"But he—"

"But nothing! After we were attacked, your brother put himself in danger to save me! His best friend died to save me! And if you had been alive too, I'm sure they would have done the same." She looked down, ground her teeth, and started to tremble. Crying, as a vampire, was always a strange sight, with the lack of tears. But she was crying, sobbing, and half screaming, as sorrow and frustration poured through. "A man died to save me! Jack's friend! If anything could have been done, if they had any idea what would happen, people would have been there to save us!" His mom marched toward the ghost, and glared up at her hovering body, straight in the eyes. The fact she was crying didn't seem to affect her ability to talk. Maybe she was more used to it than he was.