My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 14

"Had a visit from the Crone. She gave it to me."

Silence. But before Triss could speak up, Black Blood jumped in again.

"The Crone paid you a visit."

"Yeah. Didn't have to sacrifice people like last time or anything. Totally random."

Silence again.

"And she gave you a ritual. Why? Out of the goodness of her heart?" The darkness scoffed. "Unlikely."

"Hey, you wanna take it up with her, be my guest."

"I'm fixing to."

Triss did not like the way he said that. That wasn't the sound of a spirit curious as to why some god entity took an interest in Triss. That was the sound of a spirit who wasn't happy someone he knew was getting involved in his affairs.

How much of what the Crone said had been about Black Blood?

Triss gulped down her questions, nodded, and motioned to Elen. "Well either way, let's see if it works."

Just as Samantha got over her fright of the spirit, she froze again as the black syrup oozed up the bowl, and up the dangling Elen's tattered old clothes. Triss half expected Sam to start screaming again, but she didn't, petrified as the obsidian liquid forced its way into Elen's body. Under her clothes, under her fingernails, her tear ducts, her mouth, and her nostrils.

Elen didn't fight it. Every night, her mind was a little further gone, and now she didn't say a word as the spirit forced his way into her. Black Blood insisted even if her mind went, he could still use her magic, use her for years and years until she was nothing but a ball of cancer. Insisted, but also wasn't completely sure. Fucker was one of those optimistic types.

"There now," Elen and Black Blood said together, "let's try out this item you've acquired". Most of the booming rasp was gone, but a hint of it remained, mixing with Elen's voice, Southern accent gone.

Triss glanced back at Jen and Sam. Sam was pretty much a statue, but Jen stayed close to her, close enough their shoulders touched. Should be enough to keep Sam from freaking out too much. But Triss kept her in the corner of her vision anyway, as she pulled the blanket off the corpse sitting in the chair.

"Oh my god! That... that... looks a lot like Julias."

"You met him?" Triss asked.

"Only a couple times. He'd taken an interest in Jack, and was sort of tutoring, or mentoring him. He... he was a very nice man."

Sighing, Triss nodded as she looked to the corpse. "Too nice."

The body did look a lot like Julias. Considering the amount of people they'd burned through trying to rebuild him, he'd... it'd look like a fucking Frankenstein's monster if they had to do it with tools, sewing needles and thread or whatnot. But Elen was a master of flesh magic, and Black Blood was a master of the dead. Together, the two were able to merge corpse flesh like people mixed paint. Strange bedfellows.

With Elen keeping the corpse from rotting, the body sitting in the chair looked like a perfectly normal, attractive dude. Even had blood in his body, keeping his skin looking normal. Eyes closed, he sat in the chair, unmoving, no heartbeat, no brain activity, nothing. If Triss opened his eyes, they'd stay open, lifeless. Last thing she wanted to do was look into the lifeless eyes of a Julias look-a-like corpse.

She jumped up onto the big metal bowl, and helped Elen down from the rope. As Black Blood got comfortable with the body on a chair in front of the corpse, Triss opened a small safe they had in the room. The cave was a good place to store Elen's knife and book, but no way Triss was going to leave the old hag alone with it. So Triss kept a key for the safe, one key, no copies.

She gave Black Blood the knife and book, and with shaking hands, the spirit set the book on her lap, and the knife on the book.

"Alright deary, let's see what the Crone's ritual dug up for you."

"Don't call me that. You're not Elen."

"Whatever you say, sweetie."

For fuck's sake.

"Alright. I... I haven't seen what's in this bag yet."

"No time like the present, then."

Right, no time like the present. No time like now, to reach into a bag and pull out a moving, living thing, that was supposedly the piece of the puzzle needed to craft Julias a proper body. If the vessel wasn't right, jamming Julias's soul into it could lead to some freaky shit according to Black Blood and Jacob. Like, anything from eyes melting in their sockets to straight up rabies symptoms.

If Triss fucked up, they might end up with a fully aware, functioning body walking around with no soul. And who the fuck knew how that'd end up? Jacob had more horror stories, about vessels without souls, constructs and shit, that could think and act but didn't have the spark of life in them. Sometimes they did crazy shit like start eating the hearts of people, convinced they could get a soul that way.

But, fuck it. No guts, no glory. She was a witch, and that meant risking nasty shit. That meant putting her god damn heart and soul into rituals that could leave her a scarred mess. That meant... becoming like Jacob.

She reached into the bag, half expecting to get bitten by something. But her claws found something smooth, and circular, or spherical. Slowly she slipped her fingers around the shifting thing, and removed something that felt almost like a Christmas ball.

It was glass.

Triss blinked at the ball in her hand. A crystal ball, the size of a baseball, and it gave off a gentle golden light as it gently nudged around in her grip. It teetered on the edge of her hand, and she snapped her other hand up to cup it with both palms.

She was holding life in her hands. Life, or just a memory, she couldn't tell, but the crystal ball softly rubbed against the sides of her hands as images played within it. She stared into the ball, and forced down the rising urge to scream as it showed something she never, fucking ever, wanted to see.

Julias, on his knees, with some kine with a gun behind him. Julias, smiling. His last moments, and his last memories. Scenes of her. A lot of memories of her, playing through his mind.

Her lover had spent his final moments thinking about her.

She had said she'd need to do nasty shit. Christ, how many fucking times had she told herself this ritual stuff would get nasty, in all sorts of ways? Hundreds. But words didn't mean shit when holding the literal final moments of your dead lover in your hands. Final moments, in the form of a crystal ball.

It didn't get much witchier than that. It didn't get much worse than that.

Triss gulped down more screams, silencing every one of them, as she fought against her hands' urge to tremble. Slowly, she forced her eyes away from the repeating memories, and set the bulb against the corpse's chest. The only thing keeping her from drowning in tears was she wasn't Blushing Life.

"Ever see something like this?"

"No," Black Blood said, and his, or her, eyes stared with wonder at the shiny ball. "But I can tell what it is. The last piece of Julias in this world. Not what you expected, I guess?" Grinning, the flesh mage opened her book, and scrolled through the pictures and weird text. "Elen has a spell to merge a body with a magical object. It was meant to be used for protective talismans and the like, but I think it'll work with this."

"This... This... Christ, I'm holding..." She shook her head as she gritted her teeth, and refused to look into the ball anymore. "Just hurry up."

Elen nodded, reached out, and sliced into the body with the knife, below the sternum. Message clear, Triss slipped the ball into the corpse's abdominal cavity. Didn't get much closer than being inside.

Elen recited words from her book, and Triss took a step back. No need to be involved anymore, and the idea of the corpse opening its eyes with Julias's eyes was horrifying. What if it spoke? What if it looked right at her, and told her she was a fool for refusing to let him go?

All three vampires gasped, as the body changed shape. Naked as it was, it was easy to see where the changes happened. The muscles, the bodyfat, the hair, all of that changed subtly, enough that it fit his big and strong, lean but not six-pack-abs lean build, but it was a pale comparison to the changes of his face. A sliver of movement for the eyes. A millimeter for the eyebrow ridge. A touch of the ears. A trace of the chin. Tiny changes that each felt like sliding a puzzle piece into place, until she froze at the sight of Julias's face.

Julias took a breath.

"Oh fuck!" Triss jumped back hard enough her head hit the cave ceiling, and she crashed into the ground with a thunk.

Sam did the same, not high enough to hit the ceiling though, and Jen caught her before she fell like Triss did.

Triss scampered to her feet and stared at the corpse. Not a corpse. A living person? Oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh--

"Relax," Black Blood said. "The body lives. The mind doesn't. He is an empty shell."

He. Oh fuck, he. Triss forced herself closer, and stared down at the body of Julias. An exact replica of him, right down to the tuft of chest hair, the waves of his blonde hair combed back, and the very, very kissable lips.

She reached out, and touched them. The body didn't react, but it did breathe. Warm breath. It's not like breathing was something she associated with Julias; they were vampires. But seeing the body sit there, breathing, like a comatose patient, felt real. It felt so fucking real. And as she softly slid the blunt side of her claw along his lip, the heat told her it was real.

"It worked?" Jen asked.

Elen nodded. "So it would seem. The Crone's ritual worked. Once it was inside the body, I had the blueprint to fit the pieces together. It did a lot of the work for me."

After a few more seconds to recover, Sam stepped closer.

"It worked? That... that does look even more like Julias."

Triss nodded. "It's definitely him, right down to this." She pointed at a spot on his chin. Julias was clean shaven, but sometimes he woke up from his daily torpor with a single hair on his chin. Something from before he was sired that he sometimes forgot to prevent from regrowing.

Sam gulped as she came even closer, until she touched Julias's shoulder too. "So... so if... if I do the ritual, and we... get the parts we need, we--"

"We can build your daughter a body." Triss smiled at the Daeva. "I can't guarantee anything, and we have no idea what'll happen if Mary tries to possess it, but... but it's worth a shot, right?"

It almost hurt, watching the understanding work through her. Samantha really wore all her expressions on her face, her heart on her sleeve. From terrified to excited to terrified and back again, all as she realized what she had to do, what they all had to do, and then what could happen if things went badly. Triss was tempted to tell her to wait until they got Julias's soul somehow, but that could take who fucking knew how long. Mary's ghost was still around.

But if it wasn't Mary's soul, but some weird ghostly afterimage thing, the fuck would happen then?

Christ, they were all in over their heads. Even Jacob didn't fuck with this shit, and Black Blood said souls weren't something he could affect. It was all so big, so beyond a few vampires fucking around with crap. They were kids playing with their dad's gun.

But Julias sat right there in front of her. A breathing, living body. Elen's magic would keep him preserved, giving Triss the time she needed. She couldn't waste this opportunity.

"Let's do it," Samantha said, and she clutched her necklace. "Let's do it. I owe it to Mary to try. I... I owe it to myself!"

Triss grinned. Wow, a pretty huge breakthrough for Samantha to say something as selfish as that. Good. The woman was so nice and giving, she was the last person on Earth that deserved the shit that came her way. Dead husband, dead son, sorta, and dead daughter, sorta, and woke up a vampire, not her choice. Woman needed some god damn happiness in her life. Sure, she was really enjoying being with Jacob, and the Circle was pretty damn good at soothing woes with mountains of sex, but if she could have her daughter back, just imagine how much happier she'd be.

Imagine how much happier they'd all be, if they could have their dead loved ones back.

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

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

~~Jack~~

The next night, Jack sat in his mansion, on the stairs in the main lobby. There were much more comfortable places to sit than some big stairs; shit wasn't carpet, or even wood, it was marble or something. His ass did not appreciate. But he didn't care, he had thinking to do. And a habit he picked up when he was younger was sitting on the stairs between his living room and upstairs hallway. Mary and his mom would have to step over him or around him. And one time, his dad had tripped on Jack's leg going up the stairs, and chipped a tooth. That day ended in a grounding.

"Veronica," he said, "what do you think of Antoinette?"

"The Prince?" Veronica stood near him, wearing her modern maid outfit -- with one too many blouse buttons undone -- and she looked up at him from her spot at the bottom. "She's beautiful and brilliant, master."

"Be frank, Veronica. What don't you like about her?"

"Don't like? She... I mean, I haven't spent any time with her except... sexually."

"But?"

"But... she um, she's definitely... not, um, like most people. Like... people. Her and Elaine, they're so... calculated. Every word, every movement, everything is all so perfected and controlled." She smiled as she looked down. "They're gorgeous. But I wouldn't want to be caught alone with them. I feel like they wouldn't hesitate to use me as a shield if someone shot at us."

Jack grinned. Yeah, that was one way of looking at it. Elaine and Antoinette wouldn't give a shit about bullets, but they would definitely use a thrall as a shield if they had to for some reason. Not a ghoul though, someone they poured life, time, and energy into. Right? The idea of Antoinette sacrificing Ashley and Julee if she had to, to achieve her goals, was sickening. But if she was willing to risk his mom's life, why not theirs?

Because there's a difference between dooming someone, and making a calculated risk, Jack. Calm the fuck down.

Jack sighed as he clutched the necklace Elaine gave him. "You're not entirely wrong."

"But, you love her, right? I'm sure there's good reasons. I trust your judgment, master."

Ah yes, the mindless devotion of the Vinculum. That was something he was quickly getting used to, something all elders were probably completely used to, maybe even bored of. Given enough time, Jack would think and act in the same way as Antoinette, or Elaine. Or even Jacob.

But Jack would either eventually turn Veronica into a ghoul, and then a vampire, or he'd ween her off his blood, and then wipe her memory so she could go back to her old life. He didn't have the stomach to be heartless, not when it came to people who didn't deserve pain.

"There are a lot of good reasons I love her. But we're having a bit of a fight, and... No, never mind. Forget I said anything. That's an order."

She stood up straight. "Yes master."

He couldn't help but smile at that. Straight to the ego. He doubted all thralls were so subservient, but Veronica definitely gave that vibe, that 'please master I've been a good girl, praise me love me fuck me' vibe. Antoinette probably figured that out before picking her as a thrall for Jack. And honestly, she had been the one to pick her, not Jack. She picked well, cause god damn, the way Veronica looked at him, the happy sex slave look, struck a chord in him he didn't know was there. Maybe it was the Ventrue part of him, or just the guy part of him, he didn't know.

"The mansion looks clean."

"Thank you master! It wasn't all that dusty, and there wasn't really much to clean upstairs. The... the basement is harder."

The dungeon. Yeah, upstairs in the mansion, it needed maintenance, but without regular people walking around, there wouldn't be much dust. The dungeon on the other hand was underground, and got damp and stuff. And there was outside the mansion, the huge lawns, the statues, the fountains, all of that needed maintenance too.

He needed more thralls.

"It's a big place."

"It is, master."

"It'll need more than only you to take care of it."

"I... You're right, master. I can try, but places like this usually have a crew working on it, I think. Yard workers, gardeners, cleaners and stuff. I don't think you'll need a big crew, unless you had humans over frequently, and a lot of them."

"Definitely not."

"I'll do what I can, master. But... did you have others in mind?"

"I don't know, but Antoinette would. She knows what I li--need."

"You trust her with everything, don't you master?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Much as he didn't want to admit it right now, he did trust Antoinette with everything. He didn't want to trust her with his mom's life, but she wasn't really his mom anymore, she was Antoinette's childe. And even if she wasn't, Antoinette wasn't doing what she was doing because she was an asshole. She was doing it because it'd potentially save her city, and the lives inside it.

He hated that he agreed with her.