My Little Ventrue Pt. 08 Ch. 13

Soul. The S word. Jack squinted one eye at the wisp of smoke beside him, and then looked back at the two figures dancing in the bowl. The man grabbed the woman by the head, yanked it back, and brought his face down to her neck. Fighting, struggling, and not the sexy kind.

"This a memory?" He gestured to the two wispy figures, one dying to the other.

"Indeed."

"This is nothing like what happened to Susanna."

"Oh? This man convinced this woman that they were soul mates, destined to be together, forever. So consumed was he with her, he devoured her, down to the soul."

"Susanna wasn't fucking dancing with the person she killed." He'd already told Black Blood about Susanna's ritual, but the spirit loved his drama and monologues.

"This man," Black Blood continued, "gathered the ashes of his dead lover, and brought her before the Strix. A tree, deep underground, dead, ancient, a haven for the owls that haunt your kind."

It was like he'd ripped the memory straight out of Jack's brain. Holy shit.

"You didn't mention you already knew about the tree..."

"You didn't ask."

Oh this mother fucker.

"What... what are they?" The bastard knew more. He had to.

"Ah, the striges? The Birds of Dis. Ephemeral creatures that haunt your kind and loathe you for daring to pretend you are human." Black Blood chuckled, and his voice shook the cave with its deep vibrations. "Can't say I blame 'em."

"I get that they're ephemeral or whatever, but... but what are they? The fuck do they care about vampires?" He looked to Jacob when he said it, but the bastard just shrugged and nodded to the wisp beside Jack.

"You may as well ask what is a vampire, and where did they come from?" Black Blood continued.

"Uh, yeah, I did ask that, like, the day after I was sired."

Triss and Jacob laughed, and Jack couldn't help but smile a little. Laughter was contagious. Even Black Blood laughed.

"The owls. They'll never forgive you, vampire, for your refusal to let go of your human half. That's all you need to know."

Jack snarled, smile gone and replaced with a flash of rage in an instant. He slashed his arm at Black Blood as he jumped back from him, but all it did was pass through him, like punching smoke.

"The fuck it is! Susanna's curse is fucking ruining my life! I want it gone! I haven't done a fucking thing to deserve this. Never even met a Strix." He'd remember if he ever met a ghostly black owl with glowing yellow eyes, and a need to ruin his life.

Triss stopped laughing, but Jacob didn't. At least he kept it quiet, unlike the spirit.

"Regardless," Black Blood said, "the intent of those creatures is not my concern. What I can offer, however, is my assurances that I can extract the curse."

"Extract?"

Chuckling again, the spirit gestured to the remaining shadow silhouette on the bowl. Whoever they were, they lay flat on some invisible ground, as a swirling mist surrounded them. At first it seemed like it was the strange, only partly real black water that was everywhere, but as Jack squinted, it became clearer that this was part of the memory. A swirling tornado of blackness that fell upon the man, and cut into his chest. All shadow smoke, no detail, but it was enough for Jack to see the man writhe in obvious pain.

But when the tornado cleared, the man got up. The shadow silhouette faded, and Black Blood chuckled his usual chuckle.

"That's it?" Jack said, gesturing to everything around him. "That's all I have to go on, that you can actually do something about this curse? That you can... extract it?" Which didn't look pleasant at all, from the shadow memory.

The shadow clone asshole hovered behind Jack and around him, with a sliver of a smile -- fucking huge mouth -- on the wisp's face that he could see through. Disturbing.

"Take off the necklace."

"What? The necklace?"

"The necklace the dragon gave to you. Take it off."

"Why?"

Shadowy hands he couldn't feel settled on his shoulders from behind. "So I may see this curse, in your mind, boy. The necklace is suppressing your Beast, and the curse is attached to the Beast, infects it, alters it, changes it. And you and I both know this curse is more than a simple infusing of power and desire."

"I'm not letting you inside my head, Black Blood. Forget it." He brushed the wisp of shadow away, and walked toward the exit. Of course, the moment he did, the green light that allowed him to see vanished. "Oh fuck you."

"Boy, I'm trying to help you."

"Bullshit. You just want the curse for yourself." How the fuck some sort of spirit thing would be able to extract a curse that seemed very Kindred specific, he had no idea. All he knew about Black Blood was the spirit was obsessed with the dead.

And, like he said, Kindred were dead.

"You say that like it can't be two things. Think, son. My good friend Malachi has grown rather attached to your mother, and we both know it doesn't do her well, seeing you fight this curse." The spirit's shadow floated up and over to the bowl, and he sat on its edge as he looked at him. No eyes, but the mouth that cut clean through the shadow's head seemed to be pointed at him.

Jack glared at Jacob, but with the bandage over his eyes, it was impossible to read him. His smile softened a little, but that could mean anything from a poker master elder like Jacob.

"Leave my mom out of this."

"Very well." The shadow shrugged, and raised his arms to point at the cave around them. "Dolareido has been my cooking pot for centuries, boy. You know the sort of things I get my hands into. Ever hear of me interfering in a bad way? Have I ever done wrong by you, boy? Ever hurt your Prince, or the city? What have I done to make you doubt me?"

That was true, much as Jack hated to admit it. There wasn't any doubt that Black Blood was up to no good, same as Jacob, but that didn't mean he should automatically assume they were nefarious fuckers. If they could help themselves and help him at the same time, they might just do it, out of the kindness of their hearts. Otherwise, Triss wouldn't be with them, right?

Jack trusted Julias. Julias trusted Triss. And Triss trusted Jacob and Black Blood, at least enough for this conversation to happen.

"So you... you've extracted this curse from someone before?"

"This exact curse? Probably not. But I have helped a vampire before, and ripped out the taint the Birds of Dis left on their Beast."

"What happened to him?"

The shadow laughed. "Lived another good five... days."

"Five days!?"

"The man had enemies, being a diablerist. Without the power of the curse to protect him, he couldn't defend himself. The idgit."

Triss snorted on a laugh. Black Blood didn't talk like some sort of ancient spirit of death and the dead. He talked like Yosemite Sam.

Jack paced side to side, looking at the shadow in the corner of his eye, and turning thoughts through his head until he got dizzy. He wanted the curse gone. Sure, his meditation sessions helped suppress the curse, specifically its voice and hungers. Combined with the necklace, he felt mostly safe that the curse and the voice in his head were under control. Mostly wasn't good enough. He wanted to be back to normal, even if that meant throwing all the power away. Walking around with a nuke tied to him that he could accidentally set off at any point was torture.

He stopped, and stared at the waiting shadow.

"Who are you?"

"Me? I'm Black Blood. Haven't you been paying attention, boy?"

No, he was lying. Sure, his name was Black Blood, but everything else was a lie, had to be. Spirits didn't behave like this, behave like... Jacob. Spirits were far more one-track minded, right? He'd seen a few by this point, and they didn't bob and weave with their words and intent like this, like someone with a human mind would. And the fuck did a spirit want with a vampire curse? What could he do with it? Why was Black Blood so interested in death and the dead? Spirits vibed on human emotion, but death wasn't an emotion. Corpses were corpses, piles of meat and bone, empty, useless to a spirit, right?

"Don't fuck with me, Black Blood. Who are you? What are you?"

Jacob's smile was unchanged, but Triss looked confused, eyebrow raised as she looked between Jack and the shadow.

Silence settled on them for a minute, before the shadow hopped off the bowl, and floated toward him.

"Take off the necklace, invite me in, and I'll show you."

Clenching his teeth until his jaw cracked, he took off the necklace, and glared at the spirit like he meant to kill him.

"Fine, come in."

Black Blood laughed, came in closer, and set his hands of smoke on Jack's shoulders. And as Jack stared at him, the shadow opened eyes, like someone slicing through rubber with a knife where his shadow's eyes should have been. Eyes, windows to a soul.

And then, it was just the two of them.

Jack stumbled back, almost falling on his ass as he looked around. This place. This place again.

For just a moment, he thought it was the exact same place where he met the azlu's mind. But it wasn't. The giant dome was there, but it wasn't black. It was Jack colored. His memories danced along the walls, shifting, oozing with every color of the rainbow, altering his memories into a mess he couldn't understand. But it was him.

Last time he was here, it wasn't his mind, it was the empty mind of the azlu's host, a dead person with a body kept alive by the spider's infestation. This time, it was his mind, or at least some sort of pocket of it, one that could allow for interaction. Not like the strange, endless white oblivion, when he'd talked with his Beast. No, this was his human mind.

And the curse was there with him. His Beast, the giant mass of black smoke with claws and talons, feathers and fur, beaks and fangs, all mixing and sliding in and out of its body, stood behind him. Except, maybe it wasn't really his Beast? Or maybe it was, being controlled and pulled along by the curse, the other voice that now lived in Jack's head. Maybe it was attached to his Beast like an infection. Or, like a parasite, one that needed to be extracted.

"You fucking suck, you know that?" the curse said in that deep, disgusting, alien voice.

Jack smirked. "This body is mine, and I'll do what I want with it, and you. Fuck you."

"You silenced me."

"You silenced me! Last time you took over." He swiped his arm through the smoke. Predictably, his arm passed straight through it. Not like he could win a physical confrontation with a non-physical part of him.

"You're weak, Jack. Weak, and..." The many heads of the Beast turned from him, and faced the other side of the large dome they were in.

Jack didn't want to look. He knew what'd be there, and he wasn't looking forward to having this conversation, but it had to be done. Sighing, he slowly turned on the white stone underneath, and faced Black Blood.

If the god of death truly existed, he would have looked like this. A giant, black skeleton, one that put Athalia to shame. He came out of the ground from a black pool, a slowly turning whirlpool of onyx ooze that dripped off the giant skeleton's body as he climbed up from the depths of some strange hell to reveal himself. Small strands dangled off his bones, looking almost like the remains of clothes someone might find on a corpse a thousand years old. His eyes were completely empty, endless voids of obsidian. Athalia's eyes had small white dots for irises, but Black Blood had nothing.

"What is this?" Jack said, gesturing around them. "I thought this was... for human connections only."

"I reckon you did. Assumptions will be the death of you, boy." The enormous skeleton didn't have the room in the giant dome to completely pull himself out of the pool, but he managed his torso and arms, and that was more than enough to tower over Jack forty feet above his head. "Spirits enter the minds of humans all the time. Twist them, mold them, and turn them into perfect tools for their goals."

Jack ground his teeth, and paced side to side again, looking at Black Blood with each turn. "You're not taking me over."

"Ha! No I ain't. I'd have competition." The spirit leaned forward, and pointed his giant, black skull at the hovering smoke behind Jack. "This curse of yours, is aware."

Before Jack could say anything, the Beast grew. And grew. With a hissing snarl, the body of the Beast and curse expanded, taking up more and more of the white stone ground until Jack had to step back to make room. Bigger, until it, he, was bigger than the skeleton half Black Blood managed to fit inside Jack's mind.

"You," the curse said, voice dropping an octave until it rumbled inside Jack's skull as much as the dome, "are no spirit."

Jack reared his head back. "You fucking serious?" The curse had been reading his mind before, as usual, and apparently agreed with him.

"This thing," the curse continued with a smoky arm gesturing toward the giant skeleton. "It's no spirit. It walks and talks like one, it hangs around with them, but it's no spirit."

Black Blood did something then that Jack hadn't expected, something the fucker probably thought too good for a vampire. He got angry. With a rumbling rasp that sounded eerily similar to the curse's, Black Blood growled, and sank his fingers into the stone like it was made of sand.

"You're not like the last curse I tasted. You, are aware."

"No shit." The curse growled as well, and Jack stared on as he did his best to ignore the growing pain in his skull. This metaphor for a conversation between two demons in his brain was about as comfortable as two dueling jackhammers would have been.

"Ain't this a surprise. What are you then? A remnant, some shred of will from the Strix? Worthless vermin."

"And what are you? Some forgotten thing who's lost everything? All power? All relevance? Dropped at the bottom of world and left to rot where no one would find you?" The Beast pressed in closer, until its swirling mass of beak, snout, fang, and everything else, came within several feet of Black Blood's face. Several feet wasn't much when you were big enough to walk over buildings.

"Wait wait," Jack said, swinging his arms in the air. "How do you know he's not a spirit?"

The Beast looked down at him, and Jack froze. For all his bravado whenever the two of them clashed wills, there was no denying the Beast and the curse were a duo shitloads stronger than him. They couldn't hurt him without hurting themselves, but that didn't change that the power Jack had been given, was at the curse's beck and call more than his own, and he was looking right at a metaphorical representation of it.

If there was one way he was going to die, it'd be pissing off a metaphor.

"How can you not tell?" the curse said. Well, yelled, and Jack winced as he put his hands to his ears. "Spirits are reflections. They're shadows. You saw it, we both did. Spirits can only pursue what birthed them. This... thing," again he gestured to the enormous skeleton, "is not that. He thinks. He feels. He's something else. I can smell the presence in him, like a soul."

Jack almost said something, shut up instead, and stared at Black Blood.

"And you," Black Blood said, "are residue, leftovers from a dying breed of meddler." The skeleton raised his head high, and pushed more of his body up and out of the black lake he was still only partially free of. "Jack! You coulda told me this thing was aware. Gonna be hard to pull it outta you with it fighting back."

"You're not taking me! You don't get to have me," the Beast yelled.

"Ha! Hell you gonna do about it? You ain't real, curse. Just some shadow, a leftover from your Strix masters. You've gone and wrapped yourself around this boy's Kindred half, but don't think that'll save you from me. Why, I'm fixin' to--"

The curse hit him.

Hit might not have been the best word. An ocean doesn't really hit something. An ocean crashes. The wave of smoke that poured out of the curse slammed into Black Blood like a tsunami, a weightless form suddenly weighing millions of pounds. Black Blood's skeleton body fell back, and the small world shook around Jack as the black spirit's weight dragged over the stone.

No. Not a spirit. The curse said it, and Jack knew it was true, knew it from the first fucking night he ever met the monster. Black Blood wasn't a spirit, he was something else.

"Jack," the curse said, and the swirling maelstrom turned to look at him. "The fuck are you thinking? I saved your ass so many times, and you're going to hand me over to this? This fucking thing? And the fuck do you think he's going to do with me?"

"I..." Jack gulped and stared up. How the fuck was this happening? What was going on? Yeah, he knew that this whole experience was happening in his head, and if he really wanted to, he could hit Black Blood too. But the curse just knocked him to the ground like... like he could, like he could fight him off if he had to. Holy shit.

"Well now," Black Blood said, a rumbling chuckle rising up through him and the whole dome as he recovered. "Seems I underestimated the situation."

The world went dark. Black mist poured up from around the giant skeleton, up from the pool half his body remained within, and flowed up and over everything. Black everywhere. The curse and Black Blood should have blended into a big mix of obsidian that looked the same, but his brain could tell them apart as easily as red and blue. And, as the seconds went by, it was easy to see the dome was filling up with Black Blood's particular shade of black.

Cold dread poured over Jack like an avalanche, and he fell to a knee. Death buried him, invisible creeping fingers that sank into his limbs, his muscles, and pulled him down until he went to both knees, and his hands. Black Blood hadn't even touched him, and he struggled to keep from getting crushed into the ground.

And the curse suffered the same. It went down with a crash, and a host of talons reached out to brace against the stone, but he couldn't move either.

"Let me make this perfectly clear, curse," the god of death said as he pressed down on Jack, on the curse, and the Beast it rode. "There are rules. I follow them. The only reason I play this game, and don't rip the boy you possess into shreds, is the rules. But don't push me, varmint, or I'll--"

Jack's Beast roared, cutting through Black Blood's words and resonating until Jack's skull felt like it'd burst. Rage poured out of the curse, rage Jack was all too familiar with. The rage he felt when he'd first been kidnapped by Angela and Jeremiah. The rage when they tortured him. The rage when he escaped. The rage when multiple chances to kill Angela slipped through his fingers. The rage when she'd killed Julias. Rage that was partly his, and partly not.

Back then, he'd thought that rage was all him, and that his situation had awoken some part of him that legitimately wanted to rip off Angela's skull and fuck it, just for spite. Some part of him, something animal and insane, wanted to unleash cruelty so inhuman, they'd put nightmares to shame.

That disgusting, abhorrent, overwhelming rage burst from the Beast and the curse, and threw Jack back into the wall of the dome. His Beast swirled, and shrieked, a banshee cry that sounded like a hundred crows going to war, and a dozen wolves preparing for the hunt. A thousand claws struck out from the Beast, each matched with a pushing wind of smoke, each an ocean crashing against the force of a fucking planet.

But it worked. Black Blood snarled an annoyed rasp, and his presence lifted. The explosion of the Beast's rage settled, at least enough for Jack to fall back off the wall and to his feet. His own groan might as well have not existed, with these two titans roaring and screaming at each other. Like, Godzilla and Ghidorah, having a shouting match in someone's skull.