My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 14

Antoinette aimed her grin down at the woman. "You trust moi?"

"Fuck no. But, after tonight, I guess I distrust you a little less."

"That is something, I suppose."

Before they reached the stairs, Antoinette turned, and looked down at the one of the booths they walked by.

Of course, Elaine. Her suit jacket and blouse were both open, and she straddled a woman's lap, a short creature with dark skin and frizzy short hair. The kine had both hands on Elaine's naked breasts, along with her lips, and she devoured Elaine's breasts hungrily. A man sat beside her, also of dark skin, shaved head. His fly was down, and he casually masturbated as he watched his wife -- she wore a wedding ring, at least -- kiss Elaine's bosom.

"Christ you vamps," Clara said as they walked past, "are all ridiculous."

"Oh?" Antoinette grinned down at the werewolf as she came to a stop at the railing. A spot they could both watch Elaine as she indulged the touch of the two aroused kine. "You are hardly one to judge. Did you not enjoy Jessy's ghouls? All four of them? At once?"

Clara blushed until her face looked near to bursting. "Everyone knows?"

"Naturally."

"I was sad, and drunk, and--"

"Clara, my point is not to shame you. My point is, cease your incessant judgments, and enjoy your indulgences. Surely with how many times you have risked your life for worthy causes, you do not feel shame over drowning in an indulgence every so often?"

She looked down at the dance floor below. "I guess not. But I don't view sex as something you just... do, like eating a fucking chocolate bar."

"No, I suppose you do not. Though if you did, I would have said you were welcome to join Jack and I in bed, little werewolf."

Clara blinked up at her, and gulped. "You serious?"

"Of course. You are beautiful. I would have gladly brought you to orgasm a dozen times as you rode my lover's length. I know Jack would certainly enjoy filling you several times until it poured out of you. But, you have made it clear you do not separate sex from romance, and I will not share Jack with another romantic partner."

The Uratha, predictably, blushed all the harder, and did not even look Antoinette in the eye as she squirmed. "Yeah. Probably a bad idea."

Antoinette adopted her devil smile, and serpent voice. "Indeed."

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

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

~~Beatrice~~

The three vampires walked toward the outskirts of the city, on the way to the cave where Elen was kept hidden. Thankfully that meant roads that took them outside main city areas, desert on one side and city on the other, and that meant no kine around. No one to stop them from having a private conversation.

"You think Sándor would take the offer?" Triss asked. "Assuming I can get this ritual working, think he'll try?"

Jen shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe? The man is clearly depressed over the death of his family."

"Imagine that," Samantha said. When Jen and Triss looked her way, eyebrows raised, she winced and shook her head. "Sorry. That sounded mean."

Jen put a hand around Sam's hip, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. Which of course earned a smile from Sam, cause the woman was so totally empathetic, any positivity sent her way had her smiling.

"Sándor visited us a little while ago," Triss said. "Found Elen. He... he's not a stick in the mud or anything. Gives off that vibe, right? But he's pretty open to stuff."

Jennifer grinned at Triss, and then Sam. "And, he's gorgeous." And of course she said it without stopping her hug.

Sam's earlier depression vanished, replaced with shy giggles. Too easy.

"He is."

Triss rolled her eyes. "Oh god, not you too."

"He is! He's so stern looking, but kinda dreamy too."

"Sam, he looks like a taller, older version of your son."

"That is not true! That... that is kinda true. But he's not my son. And besides, Jack is a handsome man."

Jen laughed. "He is. And Sándor is also definitely a handsome man. A bit tall, lean and muscular, with just enough gruff on his face to look positively beautiful. The deep eyes, blue, dreamy. The defined chin. The buzzed hair works well, I think. But I wonder how he would look with a full mane?"

"Fuck me I'm working with two Daevas. A full mane? He'd look like the dude on romance novel covers. Just brunette instead of blonde."

"That does sound dreamy," Sam said. "And... and agreed, about everything. Sándor really is gorgeous." She squirmed a bit as she looked down. "Now, don't be mean! But, he kinda reminds of Viggo, you know? In that scene where they first see him, in Lord of the Rings." She squirmed a little more. "Jack made me watch it."

Triss laughed. "They were good movies. And yes, Viggo Somethingsen was stupid hot in that opening scene. Very sizzling."

"Sándor does remind me of him," Jen said. "And yes, I saw the movies as well."

There wasn't any way around it, Sándor was fucking hot as hell. And as much as he gave off those smoldering, brooding stoic vibes, there was definitely more to him than that. Apparently alcohol worked on him, and helped bring out a side to him that really humanized him. Well, maybe not humanized, he was a Begotten. Whatever, he was a lot more interesting than he initially seemed.

Which made all that shit when Jen dragged him to the ball feel really strange now. Triss hadn't really thought about Sándor as anything other than a poor, fucked up dude who'd been royally screwed by life, back then. Now, well, dude was interesting, and hot, and wasn't put off by all the witchy shit Triss was up to. And the widower thing was, horrible as it sounded, kinda hot too.

A sharp jolt shot up from the bag in Triss's hand, right up into her fucking heart. Nothing magical, nothing crazy weird, not witchy, just plain old guilt. She was trying to revive her dead lover, and now she was thinking about Sándor in the exact way Jen had planned. But it wasn't anything Jen had done that'd really changed Triss's outlook on the guy, it was that night he got drunk with them, and talked about his dead family. Triss talked about Julias, for the first time in a long time, and it'd been... nice.

Plus, he liked metal music, and apparently had a healthy, adventurous sex life with his wife. Which pretty much made him the perfect man.

She refused to think of Sándor that way. Fucking refused. She had a mission, and it made no god damn fucking sense to look for a man for her, when she was trying to revive one. Christ, how fucked up was that? That she was even thinking it? Made her insides hurt like someone was jamming ice shards through her guts.

Jen just thought Sándor would be an awesome fuck; that was her main reason for dragging him into stuff, not romance or anything. And he probably would be. And that gargoyle form was, uh, scarousing. That'd be pretty interesting, honestly, and--

"If... if he's open minded," Sam said, "then maybe you should ask him? About reviving his family?"

"Yeah. Yeah maybe I will. I get the impression he'll say no, cause... cause he's smarter than us."

"Smarter..." The Daeva sighed as she stepped up close to Triss's side, Jen on her other, and she leaned in to press her head against Triss's shoulder. "Yeah, he probably is. But I don't care. I want my daughter back."

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

"You sure?"

"I'm sure," Sam said.

"... really sure?"

"Yes! Yes, I'm sure Triss."

The three of them stood outside the cave entrance on the outskirts of Dolareido, the cave where they kept Elen, and their experiments.

"We've been keeping you out of this for a reason, Sam. Jacob hadn't gotten you involved for a reason, too." They'd talked about this before. Getting Sam involved in the nitty-gritty of all this shit was a bad idea. Hell, Sam had understood that. Maybe it was because of how long the ritual was taking that Sam wanted to get involved now, or maybe it had something to do with her ghost daughter?

"I know, but I've been thinking about it hard, and I... I need to know more. If I'm going to ask Mary to jump into a body, then I should know how it's made, beginning to end, right?"

Jen and Triss looked at each other. Yeah, it was a good idea. It was also a good idea to try completing the ritual with Mary's ghost, before Triss jumped into the deep end and tried grabbing Julias's soul from across the god damn universe.

Christ this would all be so much easier if he'd turned into a ghost, too. Why hadn't he? Didn't feel he had any unfinished business? Fucking asshole.

"Samantha," Jen said, touching the trembling woman's shoulder, "we don't know if Mary's ghost is truly Mary. We have no idea what will happen if we rebuild Mary's body, and then ask your daughter to possess it."

Triss and Sam stared at Jen as the woman pointed out the elephant in the room, and shot it with an elephant gun.

"I know! But... but shouldn't we try it with her first anyway? She's here! And Julias... Julias isn't. And you said yourself getting his soul will be the hardest part."

Hard was an understatement. Jacob and BB had said they had to kill a fuck load of people for just a peek into wherever souls went, and Triss was already pushing it with how many people she'd killed for her resurrection project. If she went after a little more a little faster, she'd get the Prince's attention. And doing whatever ritual Jacob had done would take a fuck load more than just a dozen.

The only idea Triss had that could work, that wouldn't leave her a smoldering crater of guilt, was to find a large, maximum security prison, and kill everyone inside. And even that would be fucked up; not everyone in prison deserved to be there. Maybe someone like Jacob could harden himself enough to go on a slaughter spree like that, but she couldn't, and she knew Julias wouldn't want her to.

"It will be," Triss said, shrugging. "Figuring out how to get his soul will be... a problem. Elen won't die, but she is falling apart, so we need to use her while we can. Get her to build the bodies first, and figure what to do about the souls second. Hopefully since she's immortal, her flesh magic will keep kicking, and keep our... bodies alive." She almost said zombies.

"Then that means we should make my daughter a body soon, right? If it'll take a long time to do the ritual to get Julias's soul, we might lose Elen as our... might lose her help before she gets to make Mary a body, right?"

"Yeah, you're right. I don't know long she has left before she's just a pile of meat that won't die, so... you're right." It was stupid of them to think they could keep Samantha out of this forever anyway.

Triss knew why she didn't want Sam to see all the shit she was up to. Shame. Butchering kine like sheep so she could pursue a ritual for purely selfish goals? Yeah, it was pretty fucked up. She could only hope Julias wouldn't hate her for it. She did everything she could to make sure good kine didn't die for this. Hopefully.

"Alright then," Triss said. "If you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"Because we can't completely trust Elen, Black Blood possesses her. So you're going to be in a room with that... thing. Dude. Dude thing. Still sure?"

That got a proper shock out of her, but after a few long seconds, Sam nodded again. "I'm sure."

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

Sam covered her face with her hands when Triss pulled down a blanket, exposing a pile of bodies. Inside the cave, with Elen dangling from ropes over a giant metal bowl, the air was thick with the smell of flesh. Not rotting flesh, since Elen knew how to keep it fresh and pulsing, but there was no stopping the smell of skin, blood, and all the other smells that told a vampire wounded prey was nearby. It almost made things worse. A pile of rotting corpses might have been easier to ignore than a pile of perfectly fleshy, borderline alive bodies.

"I... I thought the ones in the fridge were the only ones."

Sighing, Triss pulled the blanket back over the bodies, and then stepped over to one body in particular, sitting on a chair by the bowl. A blanket covered this one too, and Triss stared at it for a while before she looked down at the jewelry bag in her hand. Something shifted around inside gently, and didn't seem to show any signs of stopping, so hopefully she had enough time to get things going.

"Elen, I have a piece of Julias here."

"Oh dear," the old woman said. "I can sense it. I'm not sure what it is, but I can sense it." Her voice was hoarse, quiet, but Triss didn't care. Fuck the old woman, she deserved worse than getting hung up by the wrists to dangle over a big bowl. Hell, Jacob originally had her wrists skewered with a giant hook, but the old woman's hands would probably rip off soon, and Triss needed those hands.

"You don't know what it is?" Triss held up the bag.

"I'm not a vampire. You do things differently than I would, dear."

"Well, the ritual got the piece, and all I know is you need to... uh... fuse the piece into the body, and then you know what to do."

She grinned at that, nodding. "I can do that, dear. I can fuse items into a body, and essence as well. I should be able to fuse whatever you give me."

Triss eyed the old woman, before looking at the bag again. "And if it's a soul? Can you fuse a soul?"

"What is a soul? I have played with magic for a long, long time, vampire. I have never seen a soul."

"You don't believe in souls?"

Elen smiled. "I never said that, dear."

The damn woman was so hard to read. Her skin hung off her bones, and every look she gave had serious granny energy, but the words didn't match. Plus, the whole nearly dead but refusing to die thing made her weird to talk to, every word a scratchy, whispering mess. No wonder the hunters used to go around with an oxygen mask for her.

Beatrice tightened her grip on the bag, and looked to Jen. Jennifer got to work immediately, lighting candles in the small cave. Samantha kept on staring, looking around at the mess, the covered bodies, the dangling old woman who refused to die, and the blood. Blood was everywhere, refusing to fade or rot with Elen's magic turning the cave into one of her fleshy magic zones or whatever. All in all, it was a terrifying place to someone who wasn't used to it, and Triss wasn't used to it, let alone Sam.

It was only going to get worse.

"Black Blood," Triss said, and she held up her hands, "I summon you."

With how much death there'd been in the cave, and all the other preparations Jacob had taken to make it a summon-friendly zone, Triss didn't need to do much to call the spirit. If she wanted Black Blood to have a body to possess, so he could walk around and do shit with his own hands, she'd have to kill someone and immediately call him. But she didn't need that for a friendly conversation. And in this case, he'd have a body to possess anyway.

Black Blood crept into the room as he always did, straight out of a horror movie script. Triss tried to get used to it, hoped it'd get easier to be around, but feeling the stabbing, unnatural cold of his presence as the walls began to bleed black, was too fucking much. You didn't get used to death.

Samantha froze. Her eyes flicked around in panic, but she didn't move, didn't even turn her head. Even when the black ooze began to creep up her legs, she didn't look down, still staring ahead at Elen and the wall behind her as the creeping blackness overwhelmed everything. The candlelight turned into weak little flickers, barely brighter than fireflies, and the still air whispered with the screams of the dead. More of the black ooze flowed into the small cave, seeping out of the bowl Elen dangled from, and from the stones and bones that held the bowl.

Samantha finally squeaked when some of the black ooze literally dripped upward, falling from the floor and splashing against the cave ceiling with all the urgency of a leaky drain. She hugged herself, hands against her biceps, and she backed away toward Jen as she looked left and right. Thankfully Jen caught her, done with the candles. Surprisingly, Samantha didn't jump or freak out at a hand catching her shoulder; too busy looking at the overflowing waves of black ooze that slowly enveloped them all.

It felt like being buried alive. It felt like being trapped deep in the hull of a sinking ship. It felt like getting stabbed in the guts in a dark alley, left to bleed out alone in the darkness. It felt like being locked up in an isolation ward in a straitjacket, with all pleas ignored. It felt like dying.

No wonder Samantha eventually screamed.

Beatrice looked to Sam and motioned down with both hands. "You're fine, girl. You're fine. See? We're all here, alive."

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god." Ok, maybe this was a bad idea after all.

"Now who in the Sam Hill is this?" a Southern accent called from the darkness. Sounded like a regular dude, probably someone in his fifties. Also sounded like an alien creature with a booming, raspy voice.

Sam Hill. It was almost funny.

"This is Samantha Terry," Triss said. "She wants to see what we're up to."

"Oh my, this is Sam Terry? Howdy." The voice came from everywhere, BB not having picked a body yet. Sure enough, Sam spun around a few times, looking for the source.

"I... I..."

Triss joined Sam and pat the woman on the shoulder. "Don't worry about Black Blood. He can't hurt you. Just don't make any deals with him, no matter how small, or accept any gifts from him, no matter how small, and you'll be fine."

"Now Triss, you wound me."

"Don't give me that shit. You'd happily have us sign our souls away on a dotted line if you could make us."

The darkness around them chuckled. "I don't know about that. Wouldn't be no fun if you were my slave. We're partners. Business partners."

"Uh huh."

"Swear to God."

"Uh huh."

Again the darkness laughed, merrily at that, before his voice settled. "Samantha Terry. I've heard a lot about you."

Sam, hyperventilating pointlessly, stared at Triss before looking around randomly again. "You have?"

"Malachi talks about you."

"M-Mala--"

"Jacob," Triss said. "Old name."

"Oh. He... he talks about me?"

"I reckon he talks about you more than anything else these days."

Despite how obviously terrified the girl was, Sam managed a small smile. "I... um... I didn't know that."

"Well of course you don't. Heavens to Betsy, it wouldn't be very manly for a man to go telling his woman how much he talks about her to his friends."

Oh god, this conversation was going to drive Triss to drinking. Or, drinkin'.

"I guess so," Sam whispered.

"I know about your boy, too."

"Jack? My son?"

"I reckon so. Boy has made a lot of waves. Got a powerful force of will, that boy. You must be proud."

Naturally, a compliment thrown her son's way melted a lot of the ice the Daeva was currently buried in. She smiled more.

"I am."

"Don't let the smooth talker trick you," Triss said. "Black Blood is an evil fucking spirit of death and the dead."

"Well I think that's a matter of opinion, little missy. Now, did you summon me just to trade barbs, or did you actually have something you wanted to get done?"

Triss held up the bag. "Need you to possess Elen again. I'm gonna put... whatever's in this bag on the body. You figure out how to infuse it into the body. Supposedly it should basically create a perfect copy of his body, or something."

"Well now, that is some mighty fine magic you're summoning, to get that problem sorted." Black Blood went silent for a moment, probably analyzing the bag, and how whatever was inside it never held quite perfectly still. "Crúac ritual?"

"Yep."

"Now where did a little witch like you learn a powerful ritual like that? I can do many things with a corpse, but to craft a living body perfectly after a dead person? That's a sneaky bit of magic right there."