My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 08

~~Jack~~

"So you let Tilly go?" Elaine asked, chuckling as she stepped in past the door.

They were in his mansion, and Mulder and Scully sat on his shoulders, eying the much, much older vampire. Idly, Jack noticed that neither of the birds crapped anymore. They'd always been smart enough to not do that in the mansion, but apparently it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

"How do you know that?"

"Do you think I came to this city alone? I have eyes and ears everywhere."

He eyed her. She laughed. There was some truth in her statement, sure, but a lot of lie, too. Maybe Antoinette told her. Maybe not. Elders be doing elder things.

"You're probably wondering why I called you."

She shrugged as she stepped past him, and slowly started up the stairs. "It's been a week since your fight with Garry. I assume you want to talk about that fight, and the curse."

He followed her up the stairs, eying her as she picked a seemingly random direction. This was the first time she'd been in his mansion without Antoinette, since the Prince was usually with her, especially when Jack was involved. But ever since the Avery incident over two months ago, Antoinette had been willing to take her eyes off him, even if Elaine was around. Kinda weird, considering how badly that incident had gone, but then again, no one had died. Plus, with Elaine's necklace, his Beast was quiet and the curse easily suppressed.

And, for some damn reason, Antoinette trusted Elaine, a lot, more than she should. And Jack trusted Antoinette.

"Yes and no. I also wanted to talk about Mulder and Scully."

"The crows?" She paused, glancing back at him, before she swung open a double door, and walked in.

"Yes, the cro--could you stop walking around randomly opening doors? This is my home, you know."

"This was my childe's home," she said, and he had to follow her into the room to hear her properly. "Your successes are his, and his are mine."

"Isn't that the exact opposite of how a parent child relationship is supposed to work? Kids inherit from their parents, not the other way around."

"Indeed, but it is how sire and childe relationships work. Or did you think Kindred embraced kine in some biological need to reproduce? Of course not. Kindred spread the disease of vampirism for many reasons, but above all, subconscious or not, they do it because childer are terribly useful tools."

He frowned, but it faded as Elaine walked around the large room. This one had a big window overlooking the backyard, its huge lawn and its statues. It was a long room, with several long tables side to side, running its length, and several unlit candles on the table in fancy candle holders. Equally fancy, ridiculous lighting fixtures lined the walls, decorated by gorgeous red curtains. The chairs and their red cushions looked uncomfortable, but beautiful nonetheless, complete with gold trim.

No way would Viktor have used this room for actual dining. Dude was a vampire. No, but he probably had kine in here, tied to the table, to be shared with other Kindred in a feast. So, dining, sorta. And considering the dude's tastes, those kine probably didn't always live.

Christ, it was easy to forget sometimes that a lot of people had probably died in this mansion, not just in the dungeon beneath it. Which sent a new kind of chill up Jack's spine. Sabrina, Viktor's ghoul, might pay him a visit some time, and if she was going to come at him from anywhere, here seemed a likely place.

"Which first then?" she asked. "Your pets or your engagement with the Gangrel?" Without so much as a glance his way, she sat down at the head of the table, and folded one leg over the other as she set her hands on her lap. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was looking at Antoinette, with the half playful half serious expression on her face.

"Mulder and Scully. And... isn't their a better word than pets? I never really thought of them as pets." He sat down at the table corner next to her. For a second he was tempted to sit at the other end of the table, like that scene out of Tim Burton's Batman. But he was no Michael Keaton.

"Attendants or agents then. Or, as some vampires with a love for the classics prefer, familiars." She smiled, expression softening. Apparently she'd liked what he said about the word pets. "What would you like to know?"

"I know I have to feed them my vitae now, and their wounds at death are permanent." He vaguely gestured to his stomach, where the sealed stab wounds Rebecca had left him would forever remain. "That right?"

"Indeed."

"And they seem to sleep all day now, and are up all night. From dusk to dawn, to the dot, just like a vampire. That normal?"

"Mhmm."

Mulder hopped down onto the table, flapped his wings a few times, and tilted his head to look up at Elaine, making his broken neck bend in a disturbing way. Scully hopped down beside him, but stayed by Jack's hand, looking up at him instead.

"Jack."

"Jack."

"Mother?" Mulder said, and he gestured to Elaine with a forward head tilt, and a quiet wing flutter.

"She's my great grandsire," he said. He'd already told them this, but now that some intelligence had awoken inside his familiars, maybe it was time to reiterate some important facts. "Samantha is my mother. You remember Samantha, right?"

Both birds nodded. It was infinitely easier to communicate with them now, to share complex ideas, and even get their feedback on things. They were still birds, though. They thought like birds, and framed things like birds, but there was no question they were scary smart now. Familiars, yeah.

"Anything else I should know about them?"

"They are quite resilient, now that they are undead creatures. They are half vampires, in a way."

"Sunlight--"

"Is of no danger to them. They are undead, and they are given fake life by the power of your vitae, but they are not vampires themselves. It is only the damned who must flee fire and sun."

Oh what fun it was, having banes now. Fire and sunlight, two of the most damn common things on the planet, only beat by water and air.

"You... had wolf familiars?" Time to take a trip down memory lane, hers, and hope he could dig up something useful.

Her eyes grew sharp, but she kept her hands on her lap as she juggled the question in her mind. "I did."

"Wanna tell me about them?"

"No."

"Because...?"

"Because losing them was painful. My life back then is a blur, but I can remember the touch of their fur, the strength of their bodies, the undying friendship. I can... I can remember enough, to still feel pain when I think of them."

That was a better response than he could have hoped for. He smiled at her, earning a raised brow from the elder, but her expression softened as he scratched the back of each of his familiars' heads.

"That's good."

"Good?"

"Yeah. Means you got some humanity left in you." And considering the warning Black Blood had given him about Elaine, he'd been worried she didn't. The fuck did she do to get rid of her curse, if her sire had had to commit diablerie to get it? Bathe in the blood of a thousand innocents? Or maybe repeat the ritual, drain a vampire dry, supposedly devouring their very soul, and offer their ashes as a sign of... what?

Doing the ritual a second time didn't seem likely, but that didn't mean she didn't have to do something equally as fucked up, to get rid of the curse.

"Did you believe I was a draugr?"

"No, but Viktor wasn't a draugr, and I bet my grandsire didn't have enough humanity to fill a thimble."

"But your sire had plenty, enough that it slowed his--"

Jack put up a hand. No way was he going to let Elaine talk bad about Julias.

"I get it. Some traits are passed on from sire to childe, but a lot aren't."

"Precisely. I know Viktor did not care for familiars, for example, or animals at all. Did my grandchilde?"

"Julias didn't do pets, or familiars." Sure, he summoned rats every so often, and possessed them with Dominate, too, but he didn't really care for animals much. Jack, on the other hand, had always wanted a dog. His parents wouldn't let him, for the usual reasons.

"They will serve you well," she said. "Better than you know. You may communicate with them from vast distances as well."

"Wait, really?"

"Mhmm. Your connection to them no longer requires them to be near."

"Holy shit."

"I am surprised that you are surprised. Did my grandchilde not explain?"

"Julias didn't exactly have decades to train me. And... my second life got pretty damn busy pretty much the same night I was sired."

"Ah yes, that is true. A kill on your very first night."

He winced. "I try to not think about her." Pavala.

"You are soft."

"You think? Cause I look at a cold bitch like you, and sure, you're hard, but I'm not impressed. Soft things can bend and get back up, unlike you. But if I hit you in the right spot, and you'd shatter." For some reason, he just blurted out his thoughts, and his thoughts wanted to come out swinging.

If he offended her, she didn't show it. Her smile grew, and she licked a fang.

"The Ventrue in you grows."

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"But you are soft, regardless. You remind me of Ann, convinced you can find peaceful solutions others have used force to solve for thousands of years."

"If you think Antoinette is soft, too, then I'm happy to be soft."

"I knew you would be. But if you did as I would do, Garry would be dead, and so would any Carthians that challenged you. You could have ended this war swiftly and minimized damage. The Invictus could expand without issue, and power would pour into your hands."

Of course the conversation drifted in this direction. It surprised him, but it shouldn't have. She was his great grandsire, and had a right to give him a bit of that 'disappointed mother' attitude. No wonder Mulder and Scully said what they did.

"Dooming everything to a shitty cycle that people have been doing since they were smart enough to form hierarchies? No thanks. The Carthians would eventually reform, and a bunch of Invictus would probably defect to join them, if I turned into a tyrant and just forced my will on them."

She laughed, loudly at that, and both birds hopped away from the sudden burst of sound.

"You and Ann, my word. Romanticists."

"Thanks, I guess."

"How did your battle with Garry go, then? Is he as romantic as you?"

"He... isn't. But he's not the soulless asshole Viktor or Tony or Lucas were. I don't want to kill him."

"Bold of you to assume you can."

Jack winced and looked down. Ventrue hubris was a pain in the ass.

"The battle got pretty fucking bad, but I barely used the Ripper at all, just for a minute. Didn't even let him out."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. For a second there, when Garry hurt my friends," he gestured down at his two familiars, "I lost it. Only one thing on my mind for that split second: make Garry suffer. That... that overwhelming hate, you know? Like, not natural hate."

"How do you know it was not natural?"

Of course she'd ask that, because she, like most elders, probably thought everyone was capable of extreme hate, down to the bones. And sure, Jack didn't necessarily disagree with her, but it wasn't nearly as common as she probably thought. If Maria and Athalia didn't hate Jack as much as everyone thought they should, then crazy, insane, inhuman hate and rage weren't the, as Antoinette would probably say, pervasive 'raison d'être', that Elaine thought they were.

"Because I was practically foaming at the mouth for a moment there. And for that moment, I had the power of the curse, the full power, the shit that... thing, brings to the table. I mean, seeing Mulder and Scully get hurt like that"--he made sure to scratch the back of their heads lovingly--"brought anger out of me, and that was me, all me. But something else came with it, hate and excited rage that... that was the curse, I know it. And the power that came with it, was his."

Elaine raised a hand and tapped a finger to her chin in the same way Antoinette sometimes did. "Memories dance along the edges of my mind, my childe. I am sorry I cannot remember the details, but... but I do remember the rage and hate, and the power that came with them. I remember how much it infected me, as well."

"It was like that for me, when the curse was bound. When I freed it, all that fucked up shit manifested as its own personality." He fiddled with his necklace. "I'm guessing there's an emotional connection. Hate and rage, that obscene fury and almost perverse... joy, summoning that feeling from the curse was the same as summoning its power. Which is how the Ripper manages to use the power so freely, I guess."

"Emotion. Yes, I suppose that makes sense. The Strix are fueled by such reckless, all-consuming hate."

"That help with your research? I still want this curse gone."

"It does help, yes. There are old ideas, fictions about vampires being possessed with pure rage."

"But, not fiction?"

She nodded. "Perhaps not. There were rituals performed, superstitious things, absurdly archaic and unscientific, but something for me to start with."

"Thanks."

Her next smile was borderline sinister. "Is that the only reason you summoned me here?"

As expected, the damn woman saw through his words easily.

"No. I wanted to talk about Isabella."

Elaine rolled her eyes and leaned back in the chair. It was a dining chair, couldn't lean back very far, but she managed.

"Must we?"

"Yeah, we must. I'm talking to you now as a Right Hand of the Invictus, not your great grandchilde, and this Right Hand isn't happy that you've been sowing dissent in our ranks."

"Sewing dissent. Quite the word choice."

"Yeah well, I'm in official mode."

"What fun."

"Spill it, Elaine. Why're you fucking with the Invictus?"

Slowly, she unfolded her legs, leaned forward, and set her hands and elbows on the table as she smiled at him. "If all it takes is a gentle nudge to topple your empire, does it deserve to exist?"

"Oh god, is this some existential crap?" He sat back away from her, and Mulder and Scully hopped up onto his shoulders immediately. "You here to fuck with Doleirdo because you're an agent of chaos?"

"Hardly. I am not Jacob."

Jack winced. Knowing Elaine thought of Jacob basically the same way Jack did was not a good thing.

"Seriously, why did you talk to Isabella?"

"Oh, many reasons. I dislike Michael. I like Isabella. The Gangrel is a barking mongrel liable to burn this city down with his obsessions. Isabella wants quiet. Isabella wants nothing more than to pursue her passion, and she knows the Invictus and Carthians are only barriers to that goal." The elder shrugged. "I was planting a seed. It is how elders operate, after all, young Kindred. Plant seeds, sometimes tiny things, and wait for them to grow. And we can wait a long time, my childe."

"You make it really hard to trust you, you know that?"

"Is that something you desired? To trust me?"

"Yes! Of course I want to trust you."

"Learn to guard your back, Terry. You--"

"It's not about that!" He almost slapped the table, but stopped himself at the last moment. Neither Scully nor Mulder so much as reacted to the sudden movement though, a nasty reminder they weren't really crows anymore. Half bird, half something else.

Elaine blinked at him, confused. "Is it not?"

"No, it's not. You and Antoinette might be comfortable half-suspecting even your good friends, but I'm not. Maybe it's cause I'm only a few years embraced, but fuck me, the idea of living centuries not being able to fully trust even my best friend? Damien and me, we trust each other with our lives. More than that, we trust each other with secrets, the personal kind. We trust each other with everything. The idea of... of not being able to do that in a century? Just because life wears us down, breaks us, makes us paranoid? Fuck that."

During the rant, Elaine's eyes remained on his, still confused. It was like he was speaking another language.

"I admit, I struggle to think in those terms."

"Yeah, I get that. You're like, five centuries old? I can only imagine the amount of people who've tried to backstab you. Some you probably knew for a long fucking time. But it doesn't have to be that way. Antoinette doesn't think so, and I don't think so."

"You two. At a glance, you do not fit at all. But the more I hear you talk, the more I believe your relationship will survive for a long, long time."

"Thanks."

"But not for eternity."

He rolled his eyes. It was true, of course. If him and Antoinette were still alive in a hundred thousand years, would they still be together? Probably not. But he'd cherish every moment they were.

"And when we're not together? Will you stab me in the back then?"

She tapped her chin, thinking about it. She thought hard, too. It wasn't a hard question, Jack thought. She'd either say no because she liked him, or she'd say no because she'd lie in hopes of him lowering his guard for the potential opportunity to betray him. But her sitting there, thinking about it, was strange, like she wanted him to know that he couldn't trust her. If that was true, why would she want him to know, unless he really could trust her?

This statement is false. The liar paradox. But that was the way of people, kine or Kindred or whatever, walking talking jumbles of double speak, capable of thinking one way but feeling another.

"I do not know, my childe. But I suggest you learn to balance trust with distrust, if you wish to survive the years. There is only one way you could ever truly trust someone wholly and completely."

"And that would be?"

"The Vinculum. Though, even that and the obsession it brings can backfire."

He shuddered. "Julias once told me about vampires who drink each other's blood, creating a Vinculum pairing."

"Do you think ill of the Vinculum? It binds your two crows to you, now that they are your familiars."

That was true, he supposed. Mulder and Scully no longer flew out to the city, to explore and socialize with other crows; he didn't know if they even could anymore, considering how much they'd changed mentally. They were his slaves now, undead slaves. At least with Veronica, there was the possibility -- and his intended plan -- that she become a ghoul, and then someday her own vampire. Dying during the embrace would free of her of the Vinculum, and from then on she'd be his childe, not his slave. He had no intention of siring her any time soon, but it was the plan. With the crows, they--

Mulder and Scully, on his shoulders, nuzzled into the side of his head and crooned.

"Jack. Nice. Protects," Mulder said.

"Jack. Master. Good master," Scully said.

Elaine smiled at him, and made a subtle gesture toward the two birds. "Ah, the tragedy of our second lives comes in many forms."

"I suppose it does." He scratched their heads again before looking at his great grandsire. "You're never gonna be straight with me, are you? About your intentions I mean. You're gonna leave me with half truths, and I'm gonna spend the rest of eternity not quite able to trust you."

"Of course. I would have it no other way." She tapped her chin again. "But, I think it is safe to say that the dilemma you have, the curse, this Ripper character, is not what I had envisioned when I decided to come to Dolareido. When I recall what I can centuries ago, I remember power, and hate, and rage. I remember unleashing it upon kine who did not deserve it. I remember... rivers of blood."

"I told you, it--"

She waved a hand again. "I remember guilt. I remember the power that rushed me with the hate, rage, and strange elation of indulging such reckless abandon. But I also remember guilt, and how it ate at me, as surely as the curse ate at me, biting and clawing and destroying who I was, dragging me down ever closer to becoming draugr. And perhaps, if it had ever succeeded, I too would have manifested a personality, the same as you. Perhaps it would have eaten who I am, devoured me, leaving only the personality that you are forced to share your body with."