My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 17

"I don't know."

She grinned. "I can guarantee if you asked Fiona, she'd consider it. Girl is just as much a hornball as me. You lucky fucker."

Fiona was definitely that. And maybe in some sort of strange, distant future, Damien would do something as crazy as a threesome. But not yet.

"She's not the barrier there. I am."

"Ah man, you too?"

"Too? Eric?"

"Yeah. I mean, I can tell he'd love to ram that werewolf dick into some kine girl I've got my teeth in and legs around." She fisted the air, mimicking a sexual motion. "But he's hesitant. PTSD from shit with his wife, and probably from living the rich life only for it to all to go up in smoke."

Damien sighed. Why were they having this conversation? Jessy reaching out and trying to be his friend, he supposed. Jack and Damien talked about books and psychology when they wanted to have a fun chat, not sex. At least, not usually sex, and they both did their best to navigate the topic without too many details.

But not Jessy.

"We should trade sex tapes! Tash and I do it all the time."

"All the time?"

"Yeah. Got a few vids of her now. Holy shit that little thing can take a pounding! And she makes my sex tapes look like cheap corner store garbage. Which, I mean, they kinda are. I just set up the laptop and point it at me and stream shit sometimes. Tash though, she's gone full blown porn director. Fancy cameras and lighting and everything."

Sometimes, just sometimes, in a tiny little dark corner in his mind, Damien could understand Lucas's desire to purge the city of deviancy.

"I--"

"And don't tell me you got a problem with public sex. Fiona told me about that time you fucked her in Bloodlust. Jen and Beatrice showed up and you fucked her anyway, right?"

"I... that..."

Jessy winked at him. "I know all and see all."

"You're a gossip."

"So's Fiona."

That, was true. Jessy's gossiping annoyed him, but Fiona's gossiping was cute and endearing. Or more likely, he was being biased.

"I don't plan to have anyone else in our bed any time soon. And Fiona is happy with that."

"Buuuuuuuuuuuut?"

"... but I imagine you'll be telling all this to her later."

"Of course."

"And you'll put the idea of filming a sex tape in her head. Any idea she'll love."

"Undoubtedly. That little redhead is a perfect fit for Dolareido."

Lord help him.

"I... agree. She is."

"Ha, right? And those tits, my god. Gs?"

"I'm not telling you her cu--you already know, don't you?"

"Now you're catching on." She gave him a pat on the arm. "I got a vid from Jack, too. Couple, actually. Want?"

"I know, and no thank you." That would add a new angle of awkwardness to their friendship he did not want. "Can we focus on the mission please?"

"Ugh, fine fine."

"... am I insane, or am I noticing a pattern, that the women in Dolareido are very, very... lustful?"

"Dude, you don't think every girl out there wants to get railed? That the idea of getting thrown over a table and just fucking pounded doesn't get her wet? You even pay attention to what erotic books and movies make the most money, and who's buying the tickets?" She shrugged. "Girls are usually just more careful who they share this with, and the words they use. Not in Dolareido, though. Fuck that noise. Girls can be just as shameless as the guys. My favorite part of the city."

Dolareido. Special for so many strange reasons.

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Jessy kicked in the door of one the apartment buildings, and they both went in, guns blazing. Literally. Damien kept his pistol in his left hand, sword in his right, and fired several shots into the walls of the building. The heavy gauge rounds would penetrate the walls and cut into the various rooms on the bottom floor, as well as announce their presence. No fear of unwanted deaths. Only Kindred lived in this building.

"The fuck!?" the one Kindred in the lobby said. But she went silent when Damien snapped his gun in her direction, and put a bullet through her heart. A neonate, a fledgling at that, some young girl who'd likely been given guard duty for this nest of young vampires.

The cruel, harsh reality of being a Kindred: age mattered. Fledglings could barely function, neonates were weak, ancilla were strong, and elders were gods. The girl fell over, groaning and crying, unused to pain, but she'd recover eventually.

Jessy came in with a shotgun. Damien had insisted otherwise, but relented when Jessy promised she wouldn't aim for any torsos or heads. He wasn't entirely convinced. Yes, they both believed in Jack's cause, but Jessy had issues with the Carthians. Damien had abandoned his issues with them with the death of Lucas, but Jessy was probably itching for an opportunity for some payback.

But he trusted her. Barely, but he did.

Kindred responded quickly. They poured out of the apartments and into the hall, leaving Jessy and Damien both aiming down a hallway filled with Kindred and open doors.

"Y'all have seen this movie before!" Jessy shouted. "Love John Woo!" Movie? What? Who?

Jessy threw herself to the side, and unloaded several shots from the shotgun as she did, mid air. Pellets ripped and tore walls, opened doors, the tile floor, everything. True to her word, she didn't aim directly for anyone, but that didn't mean the spray didn't catch some unlucky Kindred in the arms, legs, or even the chest and head. They screamed as they fell back, but none took serious damage, relative to what Kindred could handle.

Problem. More than fledglings lived here. Neonates with a decade or three under their belt came out of their apartments, and they didn't hesitate, unlike their young friends. Armed with pistols and shotguns of their own, they pointed directly at Jessy, and fired as she scrambled. The small lobby contained only a single staircase, and the path of apartments, but thankfully the hall entrance was smaller than the lobby, giving Damien and Jessy a wall to hide behind. He took the left. She took the right.

"Come and get it, bitches!" She poked her head out long enough to fire again, before quickly ducking behind cover as a hail of bullets came her way. The building's outer walls may have been concrete, but the interior was wood, and bits and pieces of it and drywall alike flew past her.

Which gave Damien the opportunity to poke his head out and fire a couple shots. The hall was a mess of splintered doors used as cover and Kindred firing through the holes Jessy's shotgun had made, but Damien managed to spy a few opportune shots. One Kindred screamed as they lost a toe. Another fell back, hollering as a bullet ripped through their knee.

Attacking an apartment building filled with fledglings and neonates was one of the greatest insults a covenant could give another. A good distraction. A good idea from Jack.

It was a fellow Mekhet that made a dash down the hall as Damien and Jessy reloaded, that got the worst of it. The moment she passed through the arch, Damien slashed down with his sword, and her right hand flew up into the air along with her shotgun. A moment later, it burst into a cloud of ash as it landed on the floor along with the gun.

The woman screamed and fell, and rolled on the floor, clutching the stump where her wrist used to be. She'd regrow the hand eventually, but Damien did not envy her the pain. He knew what it felt like.

Jessy, on the other hand, was not feeling so empathetic. She looked down at the screaming woman with a knowing eye, but a glance back up at Damien stayed her hand.

She spun around, and blasted a shell up at the stairs over their heads.

"Don't think you can sneak up on me motherfuckers!" She fired several more shells up at the stairs, and pellets ricocheted in a chaotic mess. But most of the hail of metal sneaked through the steps, and the Kindred above shrieked and yelled as they jumped back.

Part one of the distraction, complete. Damien nodded to Jessy and then to the door behind them. She did the same, and the two of them ran for the exit they'd come in from literally two minutes earlier.

They weren't in North Side. Close, but not quite. The Carthian half of South Side was filled with people, but they mostly stayed in bed at night, unlike the other half of South Side. Run down buildings and apartments, but not as bad as Devil's Corner. Damien and Jessy were mostly in the clear to make a ruckus without accidentally killing any humans. Mostly.

But the Carthians knew that too. As Damien and Jessy ran back out into the street, bullets rained down on them from above as a few eager Kindred poked their heads over rooftop ledges. Submachine guns. Damien and Jessy slid into cover behind a car, and covered their heads as the sounds of metal slamming into metal at high speed deafened them.

"Dude, Cloak us!"

"A little hard to do when we're being shot at!"

She rolled her eyes, poked her head up over the car, and shot up at the building across the street. The Kindred above ducked back into cover, and used a different tactic: aiming over the rooftop edge without actually looking. Which meant bullets went everywhere.

"Fucking hell man, Cloak us!"

"Give me a moment, for fuck's sake! I--" He pointed his pistol at the door of the apartment building they'd just left, and fired several bullets, each whizzing past Jessy's head and crashing into the metal door frame. The two Kindred about to stick their heads out jumped back into safety, but a moment later they came out just enough to return fire.

Jessy holstered her shotgun, grabbed the passenger door of the car they hid behind, ripped it off, and turned it into a shield. With left hand now preoccupied, she took out her pistol, and fired through its window at the two Kindred trying to get out of the apartment building.

"Do something!" she shouted.

The panic was half fake, half real. They had to be a distraction. According to Jack, they had to be a very obvious distraction, and obviously a distraction. The damn boy didn't elaborate, and now Damien wished he'd forced him to, because now bullets came at him from above and beside, and the last place he wanted to die was beside Jessy in the middle of a pointless firefight.

Using the Cloak under duress was not easy. It was like trying to do a card trick, while being shot at. But Damien and Daniel had trained plenty, and that included using Obfuscate while being assaulted. Damien closed his eyes for a moment, blocked out the insane onslaught of sound, and summoned his vitae.

He grabbed Jessy's shoulder, and focused. With vitae pouring up into his core, he forced it out into the world around them, and over him, Cloaking himself and his partner in its power.

"Alright, let's go. Next target."

"Christ, Jack owes me a hundred porn vids for this." No longer shooting, Jessy put the door down, holstered the pistol and drew the shotgun, and followed him.

The Cloak of Night was not perfect. It was limited by two factors: his talent and abilities, but also the eyes of whoever he was trying to fool. A drunkard was easy to fool. A hardboiled detective with several decades of service would be a hard set of kine eyes to deceive. Vampire eyes currently shooting at the target trying to Cloak themselves, were borderline impossible to trick. But Damien was skilled, quite skilled, and both he and his partner managed to escape from behind cover as the assaulting Kindred suddenly found their targets difficult to see.

Difficult, but not impossible. Their eyes would glide off Damien and Jessy, or see nothing but a hazy blur where the two were, but they still had some idea of where they were. And the only thing that kept the Cloak from breaking, was Damien constantly reapplying it, which took vitae. He couldn't do it forever, and the Carthians kept shooting at their general location regardless.

Jessy was no Mekhet or Daeva, but she was fast, and she kept up with Damien as he sped up. Their jog turned into a run, run into sprint, and sprint into a gallop no human could match. But they were pinned down, with more Carthians poking their heads out windows to lay waste to the area they thought Damien and Jessy were with bullets, bullets, and more bullets.

Step two: get up on a roof, and get the Carthians chasing. The chasing part was done a bit prematurely, and Damien snarled as said chasing Kindred managed to cut a bullet across his shoulder. Jacket and flesh tore, but nothing debilitating, and Damien snapped his hand and grabbed a fire escape railing. Jessy followed, catching his meaning without a word, and the two ran up the old, bent, rickety stairs of metal as the hail of bullets and pellets continued.

It was a tall building. Dirty windows, windowsills with peeling paint, and old brick stained by time surrounded the two Kindred as they scaled the wall. Some kine looked out the window, but remained oblivious to Damien and Jessy, as Damien's touch blanketed the metal stairs with Touch of Shadow. The shaking, the creaking, only a kine paying close attention would notice. Or a vampire.

The two Right Hands jumped the final ten feet up to the rooftop, but another Kindred waited for them. Damien recognized her, an up-and-coming woman named Jody, and she aimed both her pistols at Damien's head.

Jessy pushed him aside, full body tackle. Bang bang. Jessy's scream announced she'd been shot. Damien crashed to the rooftop, rolled, and dove at Jody. She tried to right her aim, but as Damien closed the distance, he shot her, and the bullet landed in one of her thighs. Screaming, Jody took a step back as the pain hit her, and Damien closed the rest of the distance in moments. She didn't get the chance to shoot again, Damien slicing his sword up and cutting off one hand. And as she fell back, he brought the sword down, and cut off her other hand.

Jody fell on her ass and stared at both her wrists as she screamed, but managed to bite it down halfway as she looked up at Damien.

He pointed his pistol at her, but he already knew he wouldn't shoot. And the fear in her eyes when he aimed at her sent a jolt of nausea through him.

"Shut up and don't move." Sighing, Damien walked over to Jessy and crouched beside her. "Wounded?"

"Yeah. Bitch got me twice in the chest." Jessy stood up and rubbed her chest, exposing the bullet wounds. They didn't penetrate far, probably an inch. A bulletproof vest would have worked better than her own flesh, but Gangrels hated trying to move in one. 9mm bullets weren't the most effective against Kindred capable of hardening their bodies anyway, such as Ventrue and Gangrels. It made logical sense that she push him out of the way and take the bullet for him.

But he also knew that thought hadn't crossed her mind at all when she pushed him out of the way. She did it because it wouldn't even occur to her to do otherwise, like it would Damien.

Sighing, Damien helped her to her feet. "Thank you."

"Oh shut up, come on." She pushed him off, but she teetered a little as she did.

Damien frowned, but there'd be no point in helping her. He knew that about her as well.

He broke into a run, and she followed. Cloaked, the two ran together, jumping across rooftops as they made their way through Carthian territory. They still had more ruckus to make.

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~~Jack~~

He sat in the big empty room, and waited. A damn big room too, the basement of an abandoned library near the edge of South and North Side. There were people nearby, other buildings that had people in them, apartments and casinos. But the old library had a deep, deep basement. Apparently it'd been a storage facility for shit before becoming a library a hundred years ago, only to die when the internet swooped in and took over.

A lot of libraries adapted, became internet and information centers in other ways. Not in Dolareido. It was a surprise a library ever got off the ground at all. There was a bigger one in South Side, at a university, but you could barely call it a library anymore. An information hub, all computers and tablets, nothing more.

This library was the love project of someone who loved books, and no good deed goes unpunished. Alas, the tragic case of Dolareido. Antoinette would have found it poetic.

Jack looked around at the empty, dingy old room, the concrete walls, floor, dirty wood beams, and steel support pillars. And he grinned as Garry kicked in the door, literally. Old building, wooden door. It was bound to happen.

"Jack," Garry said, and he stomped his way into the room. "I'm going to fucking kill you."

Jack shrugged, threw his feet up onto the desk he sat behind, the only desk in the big empty room, and smirked at the Gangrel.

"Garry Tones. How nice of you to drop by."