My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 02

Triss winced and sucked in a breath. "I saw that, yeah. She use her book to do that?"

"A book, with a lot of rituals in it. And a knife. I don't know where she got the book, but the knife was something she created."

The two vampires exchanged looks again. They didn't want to ask, but they had to.

So Triss took the plunge. "How did she make it?"

"Sacrificed a child."

Triss threw up her hands. "My fucking god! Every step, every mother fucking step, is just one giant road of nasty shit, isn't it? Why the fuck is this so hard? Why the fuck is everything about this always just 'oh look you want to resurrect someone? Better be willing to literally kill babies to do it' sorta shit!?"

Sándor watched her, a hint of a smile on his face, before he held up the bottle as if clinking her own, and took another drink.

"The Prince took the knife, didn't she?" he said.

"She... did, yeah, with the book."

"Then, if you can get the book, perhaps you can also get the knife?" He took another drink, a sip this time, and met her eyes. "Or you could kill an innocent."

Triss glared at him. "Julias loved the kine. Fucking loved them. First date I ever went with him on, it was obvious just how much he envied them, cause they lived in the moment, and vampires like him couldn't help but plan plan plan. Danse Macabre shit, you know? When he got the mansion, he got thralls using Dominate so he wouldn't have to use the Vinculum except for just a few special circumstances. He was one of the few vampires in the damn city that thought kine were more than blood bags. Last thing I'm going to do, is sacrifice a fucking child, so I can see him again. Do I look like someone willing to walk right into some shitty Greek tragedy to you?"

Sándor didn't look away, the whole rant. And when she was done, he laughed; dude was definitely getting drunk for him to actually laugh.

"He sounds like he was a great man," he said, and he drank again. "Not a night goes by I don't hate myself for what I did, helping kill him."

Ah shit, the vodka was making him say the stuff he probably shouldn't. She dumped a fucking rant on him, about how awesome Julias was. Fucker was the reason Julias was dead! Except, not really, and they both knew it, but fuck, he probably felt guilty as all fucking hell, all the fucking time, and fucking fuck she fucking just fucking went the fuck on...

She crawled over to him, sat beside him, and Blushed Life. Before he could say anything, she grabbed the bottle, and took a swig.

"Holy fuck this burns. Oh my fucking god, I forgot what alcohol tastes like. Why the fuck would anyone drink this?" Whatever. She took another drink.

He blinked at her, and the bottle in her hands. "You're going to puke that up later."

"Yeah, well, I hear Daeva do this sometimes. Blush, eat and drink human food, and puke it up later. Thought maybe I might be able to get a little drunk off it while faking life."

Jennifer smiled at her, but didn't join her. "Count me out. I'll be the designated driver... And, I do believe the Blush won't allow you to absorb the food, Triss. You won't get drunk."

"Shit." What a fucking waste. She handed the bottle back. "Well, if you get really drunk, can I have a drink of you, Sándor? I saw what Fiona's blood did to Damien. Dude looked really..."

"Horny," Jennifer said, nodding.

"Well, yeah, that, but kinda tipsy, I guess? It was weird."

Sándor chuckled again. It was a nice sound, coming from the usually closed off guy.

"I've never had a vampire feed on me, I don't believe. Maybe hundreds of years ago, but I've been avoiding people, in general, for some time since crossing the ocean. Before then, vampires and monsters had a... difficult relationship. Superstition and whatnot."

"You were nightmare monsters," Jennifer said. "I can imagine there were issues."

"Yes. But here in Dolareido, there's a strange peace. And it's... good. I was scared of it at first, but Azamel's shown me what Dolareido can be like. Fiona as well. She's in deep for that Damien fellow." He raised his bottle high before taking another drink. "I owe him, too. And you." He nodded to Triss.

"Ah, that what this is about?" she said, gesturing to the bottle. "Paying us back? Cause I don't think anyone really feels that way. We wanted Jeremiah and Angela dead. Freeing you ended up being easier than killing you."

"Regardless." He took another drink. "Azamel's helped me calm down, and... yes, if you wanted a drink of me, I wouldn't say no."

Jennifer rubbed her hands together, and slid over a bit so she sat on Sándor's other side, opposite of Triss. In the past, Sándor would have ignored her, or moved, but now he gave the girl a small smile, and took a sip of his drink. It was hard to tell how depressed he was. Sad, yes, but how sad, how drunk, how stoic, Triss couldn't figure out. It was all blending together in his calm, solid face, the sort of face a ship captain might use if he was staring out to sea in self reflection, or some shit.

"Might take you up on that," Triss said.

He nodded. "Fiona says it does intoxicate Damien, in a fashion, but also gives him some... hunger."

"Hunger?" Jennifer asked.

"The vampire says it's hard to define, according to Fiona. But he... loses control, and ravages the girl. Thoroughly."

Triss and Jen shared a few confused blinks. Hunger equals ravaging?

Jen was the first to laugh. "That explains why Damien fucked her in public."

"K, well, maybe not, then," Triss said. Of course Jen gave her an evil glare, so Triss just shrugged at her, a 'maybe' shrug. Now was not the time to try and get into Sándor's pants.

He nodded, took another drink, and leaned back against the coffin behind him as he looked up at nothing.

"Elen can take objects," he said, "and imbue them with... power. I don't know this power. It's not something us creatures of the dream understand. Vampires might understand it better. There's power, in flesh, and life, something visceral, and it's only found in the physical world."

Triss shrugged. "I've noticed, but I don't have any fucking clue if vampires can do that shit. We drink blood, and when it's fresh, it's... definitely more powerful. There's something in it that has power, and we convert it into shit vamps can use."

They all nodded, like it was a shared school lesson they were trying to learn. It was a part of their life, but it's not like any of them truly understood it. Vampires, drinking blood, fancy magical powers? Sure, an everynight thing, but none of them knew how or why it worked, not even Jacob.

"The world's a crazy place," Triss said eventually.

Everyone nodded again. Yeap, they'd been thinking the same thing.

"Sándor," Jennifer said, "do you... want to talk, about what happened to you?"

Before the poor guy could say anything, Triss waved a harsh hand at her friend.

"Leave the dude alone. We're talking about the now, and the shit we're trying to do. No need to bring up that... that shit." Or Julias, for that matter.

Sándor managed another small smile for her, but set the bottle down and shrugged. "I don't normally drink. Even before Margaret, I didn't drink. It's not a good idea for Begotten with hungers like mine."

So Margaret was his wife's name. Very old school.

Jen gestured to the bottle. "But you're drinking now?"

"Azamel's helped me find ways to sate my hunger, so it's under control. Mostly. And..." He shrugged, grip still on the bottle's neck, and he tipped it side to side, gently sloshing the contents around. "You know what I've gone through, in a sense. But at the same time, you're willing to do something I'm not. I wanted to know why."

"Ha! Why? Cause I'm a fucking idiot, that's why." She took the bottle from him and gulped down some more. Burned the whole way down, and she coughed a few dozen times. "Cause I can't let anything go. Cause I can't let him go."

She handed him the bottle, and he took another drink. Poor guy was going to wake up wishing he was dead, at this rate.

"You must have loved him, dearly."

"Fucking right I did. He really helped me out of a dark spot, and I did the same for him. We had a great relationship. We loved each other! I..." She groaned and flopped onto her side on the dirty stone floor. Not in a 'oh god I'm gonna cry' kinda way. More like a 'ugh fuck Mondays' sorta way. "The fuck is the point in being a witch, if I can't use it to bring back the man I loved, you know?"

Silence again, until Sándor sighed, and tapped her hip with the bottle.

"Aaron told me you were becoming quite happy in the Circle? Jennifer seems to think so, according to him."

"I... I am," Triss said. "I really am, no joke."

Jennifer laughed, reached across Sándor's lap, and poked Triss in the ass. So of course Triss had to sit back up and slap her hand away.

"I like to think she is," the damn slut said.

"I'm not lying. I am happy with you guys. Ok? But with Julias, it was... it was more, you know? Christ, I felt..."

"Peace," Sándor said, eyes downcast, voice heavy. Yeap, the vodka was doing a number on the man, cause there was some genuine sadness on his face.

"Yeah." Sighing, she slid in a little closer to Sándor, until she was arm to arm with him, and she gestured out to the emptiness around them. "What was Margaret like? And your kid?" Yeap, they were going there.

He laughed, a weak little thing, and took another drink. A long, long drink, and Jennifer eventually took the bottle away from him.

"You may be Begotten, but you're not immortal." She set the bottle aside, out of arm's reach, and frowned at him.

He laughed again, just as weak, but nodded as he leaned back. "Margaret was a royal pain in my ass."

Both women jaw dropped. That was not what they expected the man to say about his late wife, killed by the people who'd fucking enslaved him.

"It's true," he continued. "She was stubborn, and she pestered me constantly. If took any longer than five minutes to do something, she'd prod me until I did it." He lazily reached across Jen for the bottle, but she gently pushed his arm down, and he chuckled as he fell back against the shelf behind him again. "And Theo, he was a troublemaker. He was five, but he was a smartass, and loved to find holes in any order you gave him. Tell him go to bed, and he'd wait until you said 'now', cause otherwise, he'd pretend the order was for later."

The girls laughed. Ha, that was a smartass kid, for five. Oh god, five.

Sándor laughed and shrugged, and almost fell over onto Triss. Considering he was sitting down, nearly falling over put him in drunk territory. Least he wasn't slurring and drooling everywhere.

"But that's important, you know?" he continued. "It's important to remember things as they were. You can't look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, if you want to make smart choices." He gestured to Triss. "Tell me something you didn't like about him."

Ah shit, what she didn't like about Julias? Fuck, she'd spent months just idolizing the memory of him, thinking about the way he liked to hold her, about his smile, his great body and ridiculous sex skills, his--

Rose-tinted glasses. Julias had told her he'd hit his fiance, not long after he'd been embraced. A good, hard hit. He'd taken her to the hospital, and it was the last he ever saw of her.

Sándor was right. Julias wasn't... hadn't been perfect. It was important she remember that. He wouldn't want her to remember him as something he wasn't.

"The sobbyness," she said. The gargoyle raised a brow, and she laughed. "Like I said, Julias loved kine, and envied them. But ugh, he could get really emo about it sometimes. Really emo art, emo music tastes, emo... everything. Like, god, I know Daeva that are less up their own ass than you, Julias."

Jen and Sándor laughed, and she did too.

"Margaret, she... she knew what I was, before we were married. And that stubbornness is how she managed to... get to know me."

That made sense. Sándor reeked of closed-off brooding asshole, when Triss met him. It'd take a woman with a hard, stone-breaker attitude to punch through some shit like that.

"And Theo?" she asked.

"Theo. I played games with that kid every weekend, and he shocked me every time; too damn smart. But, it wasn't how smart he was that really caught my attention. It was his honor."

"Honor, in a five-year-old?"

"Yeah. If we caught him doing something bad, or if he tried to wriggle out of a punishment, but we called him on it, he'd accept defeat. 'You got me, daddy', he'd say." More laughter. "It was so strange, listening to a kid that age, willing to use tricky tactics, but also have this weird sense of honor about it."

There was no stopping everyone from smiling, and from silence hitting them again as they absorbed the reality. His wife was dead, and kid, too. Triss had gone through hell when Julias died, but how fucking bad had it been on this poor fucker, losing his wife and his fucking child? And then being forced to work as a slave for the killers for years?

But the bastards who'd killed them and Julias were dead. Revenge had. Woo.

Jennifer sighed, and handed Sándor back the vodka. "Don't hurt yourself."

The gargoyle smiled at the bottle, but set it aside, no drink.

"It's easy... to get lost in the memories," he said, closing his eyes, head tilted up. "I can still remember the smell of her favorite shampoo. I can still remember the way she scrunched up her nose when she was angry with me. I can still remember how she'd try and take charge, when we had sex, but it never lasted. She'd start trembling and..." After a few surprised blinks, he coughed. Probably surprised by his own words.

"Queen in the streets, freak in the sheets?" Jennifer said.

Triss choked. Sándor laughed.

"That's as good a description as any," he said. "Sorry, for mentioning it. Maybe a little too much information."

The two vampires laughed, loudly. God, that was cute, thinking he could embarrass them. Sure, he was a fuck load older, but he wasn't a vampire. His hunger didn't pull him into sexual situations like the Kiss often did. Any vampire with a few decades under their belt, except for maybe the more unlucky Nosferatu or the super shy types like Tash, was basically a sex expert. If Sándor literally waited around for decades, guarding shit, and hunting things like a fucking hawk hunted and killed prey, dude probably wasn't the most sexually exposed.

"Nonsense," Jen said. "Sex may be a private matter to most, but to Kindred, it's as common and practiced as feeding itself. And only a fool thinks sex isn't an important aspect to understanding a person." Nodding, she pat the man on the shoulder. "If she liked to take charge, but then became submissive during, it sounds to me like she really enjoyed herself."

"Definitely," Triss said.

Sándor looked at each of them quizzically, before taking another drink. The dude could certainly hold his liquor. Begotten thing, or, gargoyle specific thing? He coughed on the drink, didn't spill any though, and looked to Jen.

"I've known plenty of vampires, and yes, they're usually quite sexually... comfortable. But I admit, when you two helped show me to the rest of the Kindred at the ball, I was a little... surprised, with how sexual everyone is." Ha, there it was. "You two were half naked, and I was sure you'd be the only ones. The night did not go as I imagined." Damn, a bottle of vodka really helped this guy loosen up.

"Did you like what you saw?" Jen asked, grinning at him. Of course the grin vanished when Triss reached across Sándor's lap and slapped her friend on the leg; easiest body part to hit from where she was.

"Jen, everyone liked what they saw. But you don't show up at the party with your tits hanging out. Everyone has to loosen up first, and then you let the tits come out." And people had definitely loosened up, at that party.

"After what Avery did," Sándor said, "I imagine there won't be anymore balls for some time."

Triss shrugged. "Eh, maybe. Antoinette or the suits might host one just for Invictus, the dragons, and maybe witches and Begotten can come to those. Course, the Carthians have parties all the time, shitty little things, twenty people in a room, jumping around to bad music."

Sándor shuddered. "Punk music."

Oh god. Triss snorted on a laugh and punched the man in the shoulder; softly, of course.

"More like EDM and stuff these days. But, ugh, fuck punk music. I'm a metal fan."

Apparently she'd said the magic word, cause the obviously half drunk, slowly-becoming-more-drunk man's eyes sparkled.

"What sort?"

"Oh, I like classics," she said, "and some of the newer stuff. So I flop between shit like Iron Maiden, or sometimes I'll listen to the bands that grew up listening to Iron Maiden, you know? I can get into power metal too, maybe progressive or symphonic stuff, or metalcore and shit if I'm in the mood for something heavy. Not too big a fan of the really heavy stuff, death metal or speed metal, but I can groove on it sometimes. And--" Jen slapped her in the leg. Revenge, for the earlier slap, the bitch. "Hey! I know a metal fan when I see one, Jen. We are all connected, by the great metal web consciousness."

The gargoyle nodded. "She's right. It's a thread that binds us, and is stronger than steel."

Jennifer sat back and rolled her eyes. "Oh no."

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

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~~Eric~~

Six weeks since the incident.

Eric sighed, and pat his ear. This music was going to kill him. Thudding bass, like a heartbeat, big and strong and loud as all fuck. Hard on his new ears, but at least it wouldn't lead to any hearing loss, now that he could recover from damage like that. His knee was testament to the new regenerative powers he had. No, the music was going to kill him cause it barely qualified as music, and every moment he could hear it, all he could think about was how much it sounded like life, sex, and everything in between. Probably on purpose.

He sighed some more, and tapped a few fingers on his bicep, arms folded across his chest. On the dance floor, two vampires were the center of attention of fifty people, and everyone pressed their bodies in tight as they danced. Bodies grinding, sweating, everyone horny and looking to let off some of that energy.

The two vampires would be going home with at least half a dozen humans in tow, and he doubted they had to use any Discipline to do it. Dolareido was just that kinda place. Well, once they were off the property, they weren't his concern anymore. All he had to do, was make sure everyone in Bloodlust got along.

Several people, some at the bar, some in booths, some on the dance floor, turned to look behind them toward the door, to stare at the new girl walking in. They knew her; she was a regular. Most of them had probably seen her naked at some point, having sex in the club, or just dancing and not giving a shit if her clothes slid off. She was completely, utterly shameless. And he smiled as she noticed him, and walked his way.

Jessy wore a ridiculously short black skirt tonight, basically a tube top that'd fallen around her hips somehow. It was so damn small, it exposed the hips of her black thong, and a bit of its underside, too. She also wore a fishnet tank top, though the wiring was so thin and sparse, it was barely a top at all. And, so she remained 'decent', she had some black nipple pasties on, X shapes that just barely covered her nipples.

"I know that look!" she shouted over the music.

"Look?"

Laughing, she came over to him by the wall on the first floor, and she made sure to put a bounce in each step. Lean as she was, Jessy had fairly large breasts, a genetic gift she was super happy to have, and a huge ass she was super proud of earning. Jiggling them for admiring eyes was a regular part of her nightly routine. Utterly shameless.