My Little Ventrue Pt. 10 Ch. 03

Jack locked the door to the basement behind him. The real one, the thick metal one with giant metal bars. After that, he closed the wooden door that hid how ridiculous and obvious the giant metal one was. Much as he trusted his thralls, he didn't want them stumbling onto information they shouldn't have. Last thing he wanted to do was mentally scrub his own thralls' minds of any secrets they were better off not knowing.

He felt a little guilty blocking off chunks of the mansion from his thralls, but only a little. The Prince did the same, and didn't let her ghouls into her room during the day while she slept, either.

"So what, now you have a vial of the Ripper's vitae? I thought the vitae part of our blood didn't last when outside the body." Plus the whole burning away to cinder and ash part.

"It would not, normally. But we of the Ordo Dracul have measures to keep things in the state we need them."

"And what're you going to do with it?"

"I cannot tell you. But do not worry. I plan to help you deal with this curse, Jack. That has not changed."

He wanted to accuse her of lying, get in her face about exploiting him and making him drop his guard. But, again, it was hard to fault her for her tactics.

"Could you stop acting like it's no big deal?" he asked. It was, however, much easier to fault her smug attitude. "You make it so damn hard to trust you."

"Never trust me completely, young Ventrue. All decisions must be calculated. But..." Sighing, she stopped walking and turned to face him. "I do hope you will trust me, perhaps more than I think you should."

Fuck, she was doing that thing with her face again, little hints of guilt showing through. And for the fucking life of him, he couldn't throw it out as some sort of trick. It looked, and felt, genuine.

"You came to the city years ago, to take a look at Julias."

Her lip twitched. "I did. The curse did not lie to you."

"You wanted to get him under a scalpel, didn't you?"

"I... wanted to explore possibilities. I was visiting my good friend Antoinette, and--"

"Was that the main reason, or was seeing if Julias was a candidate for you to steal and operate on your primary reason?"

"Can it not be both?"

Jack folded his arms across his chest, and tapped a foot on the floor. Full on frustrated parent stance.

"What stopped you?"

"From what?"

"From abducting the man. I can understand being careful around Viktor. He knew who you were, was a powerful elder, and had the curse feeding his power. You were afraid of him."

"I... was."

"But Julias? In that memory, he was still a neonate, and I doubt Antoinette would have gone to bat for him at that point. Why didn't you kidnap him? Afraid Viktor would find out? Afraid it'd cause an incident?"

After a few quiet moments, Elaine slowly shook her head, and set a hand on the front door of his mansion.

"Perhaps I was hesitant to acquire a power I once nearly destroyed myself to remove?"

"Maybe."

"Perhaps... I did not wish to see someone who was nothing like myself or his sire suffer."

"Again, maybe. I admit, I do like that second reason quite a bit."

She smiled. "You look for the best in everyone."

"I used to. But everyone's been telling me that's a bad idea. Antoinette, you, even Julias told me to be careful about it."

"Then I suppose you will have no choice but to trust in your judgment. Can you trust me? Will I betray you? Antoinette does not think so, but she also knows to listen to the old lesson: trust no one. And Daniel has never trusted me. That leaves you, childe of mine, with only yourself to believe. What do you do?"

"I... don't know."

With a wicked grin and a small wave, she walked out of his mansion, and under the watchful eyes of his two crows perched on a nearby statue, left. Jack watched her go, and idly flicked at the necklace around his neck, the only thing keeping his Beast down and the Ripper down with it.

If there was one way he was going to die, it'd be from trusting the wrong person.

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~~Eric~~

Every hair on his body stood up. His heart rate jumped. Adrenaline flooded his system. Breathing quickened. Every faculty he had prepared for war.

But nothing came. They stood still, looking around, listening so close Eric could hear Begotten and Uratha heartbeats, along with his own. Nothing.

"Can you smell it?" Sándor asked.

Eric shook his head as he squatted down next to Natasha at the ravine edge. "Only traces. If an azlu has been here, it's been gone for days."

"Days," Art said, "but it's been months since the last one died."

Avery groaned as she joined them. "Which means there's another one. Fucking christ."

"There's been some disappearances," Matt said, "of people who work in North Side, over the past few months. But I hadn't seen anything to imply azlu."

Art nodded. "It's getting sneakier."

Avery shook her head. "Azlu don't get sneakier. It's a creature as old as Father Wolf. It can't get any sneakier than any real spider does."

"If it's th-that old," Natasha said, "then m-maybe it's evolving? Some real spiders are... very sneaky."

Eric shuddered. All the Uratha did.

The boss woman groaned again. "Terrifying thought. I'm going to assume it's been doing the same thing it's been doing for the past million years, and just hiding until it thought we'd leave. They are smart enough to do that, sometimes. Then it got hungry and only recently starting feeding."

Art nodded. "I suppose that's more likely than it suddenly getting smarter at how it hunts."

"So this is its lair?" Eric asked, gesturing down at the small canyon. "I'm not seeing any bodies."

"Yeah," Matt said. "Maybe it was hiding out here? Might have a lair somewhere else, and relocated here? Here, because..." He gestured back to the path they came from. "Because it has a new tear to try and sew up?"

Right. Azlu were driven by some sort of great, ancient instinct, to plug holes between the spirit and physical world. They also took it too far and covered the Gauntlet in so much webbing that all flow between the two realms stopped. And when flow stopped between the two realms, the area died. Not died as in death, which the spirit realm was perfectly equipped to mimic or embody. Death as in, void of everything. Life, death, all of it, like turning a color movie to black and white.

The tears were why the azlu were in Dolareido, according to Avery. Sure, azlu showed up in places with a lot of human activity to do their thing, since human activity was one of the strongest forces for punching holes through the Gauntlet at a large scale. A big, active, lively city like Dolareido was bound to attract azlu. But three, or more, in only a few years? No, they came for the tears, driven by their instinct to sew them up as best they could.

Eric stared down the path they'd walked. Natasha did too.

"Why is there a t-tear here, then?" Natasha said. "W-Wouldn't the azlu be here, trying to close it?"

Avery shrugged. "Maybe that's why there's only a few traces of the azlu being here. The tear is new, and the azlu only stayed for a little while, trying to sew it up, gave up and left and started feeding. It might come back bigger, stronger, and better equipped."

"Either way," Eric said, "I guess we have something to hunt, now."

Natasha shook her head. "We're b-busy! We have to stop the ritual."

Eric gestured around. "We don't even know what the ritual is, Tash, or how to close these tears. Best we got is to let the azlu keep doing what they're doing. They'll close them eventually I'm guessing, after they've killed a few dozen innocent people." Knowing how fucked up vampires could be, especially Antoinette and Jacob, it wouldn't have surprised Eric at all if they'd be perfectly okay with that. Maybe they had dungeons full of humans they deemed 'fodder', to be sacrificed in situations just like this. But unless they had literal dozens of people tied up in cells, people that deserved a horrible fate, Eric wouldn't agree to it. And he knew they didn't. As many people as there were in Dolareido, it didn't have dozens and dozens of murderers just lying around, ready to be plucked like ripe fruit for dark rituals and shit.

He didn't even want to think about the rumors about Beatrice.

"Regardless," Sándor said, "we won't accomplish anything here. Let's leave, and leave a guard post on the physical side of the tear."

Eric suppressed a smile. Guard post. Dude talked like he was alive hundreds of years ago. Probably was.

"Agreed," Avery said. "If we catch the azlu around, we can get here asap and burn the fucker. But we all know it won't be that easy. Something's going to happen that's going to throw a wrench into things."

Yeah, that was true. Much as Eric wanted to disagree, this was too weird. Why a tear that went nowhere, that wasn't on Tash's graph? There were tears many years old, maybe centuries, and none of them were on the graph, but all the new ones, all seemingly made in the past three or four years, were all on it. This new one wasn't. The only thing it did, was lead them to the remains of azlu activity that'd only temporarily been in the area.

Easy to think the azlu had just been around for a bit, and examined the tear, before leaving. Scarier to think Black Blood created the tear to point them at the azlu. And damn it, it was too scary an idea to not share.

"I wonder," Eric said. "Is Black Blood... actively making us hunt azlu?"

Avery spit on the floor. "I was wondering about that. Disturbing idea, that that spirit is making us chase something that's its problem, considering it's the one creating the tears. More disturbing because now we have to do what it wants. Ain't no Uratha gonna let one of the Hosts live, especially us."

Right. Avery and her pack were Hunters in Darkness, the Meninna. Their specialty was hunting Hosts, Shartha. The perfect predators to deal with azlu, and azlu were inevitable with literal tears in the Gauntlet showing up.

It did all fit together way too perfectly.

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~~Beatrice~~

"You sure you want to be a part of this?" Triss asked.

Sándor nodded, subtle, but sturdy and solid. Pretty much summed up the dude's whole personality. Well, that was fine. She could go for some sturdy and solid right about now.

Triss sighed, and looked to Jen and Sam. Jen managed a small shrug, and Sam just stood there, shaking, eyes on the floor. Poor girl.

"I'll stay out here," Sándor said eventually, after a glance Sam's way. Before they could say anything, the man moved to the center of the abandoned building's basement, and stood there, facing the stairs. Stood wasn't even the word. Dude turned into a fucking statue, holding so still he'd make a vampire in torpor envious. If he was breathing, Triss couldn't see or hear it. God damn.

Nodding, Triss stepped into the walk-in fridge first, and undid the magic seal. Jen and Sam followed her in, and Triss closed the door behind them.

"W-Why is Sándor helping us?" Sam whispered, doing her best to avoid staring at the pile of bodies Triss had in the corner of the huge fridge. With the giant door closed, they were able to talk privately.

"He's... keeping an eye on things," Triss said. "He wants to be a protector, I guess, for the paranormals in Dolareido. He feels indebted to Jack, and me, and the others for helping him." And he felt guilty as all fuck for getting Julias killed, and indirectly, Mary. No point in trying to convince him otherwise. Dude knew logically that Julias's death, Mary's, and his own family's weren't his fault, but knowing it emotionally was a different thing altogether. At least he didn't keep trying to apologize for it. Triss wouldn't have been able to handle it if the dude suddenly got on his knees and tried to say sorry for everything; she'd probably have ripped his heart out. Sándor didn't use words, he just did shit and let his actions speak for him.

She understood that. She appreciated that.

Sam gulped as she took a step toward the bodies. "Ok, ok. So... so I..."

Triss gestured to the pile. "Grab a body, any body." Sam already knew this, but the girl was trembling. Best to say it all again. "You need the skull and heart, and put them into a container." She held up a small black bag, identical to the one she'd used when she did the ritual herself. "Then, you need to remember the person you're trying to... clone, essentially. That's what the ritual's going to do, take the power of the dead person, trapped in the mind and heart, and combined with your memories and vitae, turn it into a... a defining blueprint, a magical one."

"But I can't cast a ritual, or do magic, or any--"

"I'll be casting the ritual. Just follow the steps." Like helping a kid jump into a pool for the first time, Triss had to help Sam with every inch, including repeating instructions, and promises of help. It fucking hurt. Sam shouldn't have had to do this.

Christ, how did Sándor feel about this? To him, this was an opportunity to maybe help some people get back what they lost, people that wouldn't have died if he'd just done a better job defending himself from Jeremiah years ago. Or, it was an opportunity for him to clean up the inevitable mess Triss and Sam were going to create, when all this backfired, and they accidentally created some sort of monster they had to put down with fire.

Damn it. Now all she could think about was that fucking sickening scene in Alien Resurrection where Ripley had to kill her fucked up clones with a flamethrower.

"Samantha," Jen said. "You can stop any time you want to, you know that. You don't have to do this. We don't know if any of this is going to work, ever."

"I know. But... but I want to try." Nodding, still trembling, she walked over to the pile of bodies.

She knew the deal. Much as Triss wanted to do this for her, Sam had to it herself. It was the deal with the ritual, and all rituals. It wasn't about the fancy symbols or the words or the tools. It was about the symbolism, and the effort put into the ritual. It was about the sacrifice. If you had that, and the mentality for magic and shit, you could cast rituals. Triss most definitely did not want to teach the rituals to Sam, especially not the way witches did, with pain and suffering.

The poor woman reached down, and grabbed a man's body. It was fine if it was a man. The sacrifice just needed a skull and heart, while the painful part came after. And fucked up and sexist as it was, Triss had to admit, it was easier cutting up a man than a woman. She didn't blame the Daeva when she found an older man, and got to work.

No claws. She brought a knife.

Jen didn't watch, but Triss did. This was important, and if Sam was going to join Triss on this fucked up journey, the least she could do was watch and make sure she did it right. Sure enough, Sam struggled, but Triss watched and waited for Sam to ask for help. She didn't. Grimacing, Sam sawed at the man's head, breaking through the skin with the obvious clumsiness of someone who didn't know what they were doing. She'd watched Triss tear bodies apart, and bring pieces to Elen, so they could sculpt the body for her daughter, but she hadn't taken part in the process herself. Triss didn't want her to, but now she could see that was a mistake. Sam was struggling, but hopefully, this would be the one and only time she had to dismantle a dead body.

It took time, and more than a few times Triss thought Sam would burst into tears. She did sob a couple times, making Jen flinch and glance over her shoulder to the gory mess before quickly looking away. But the mother pushed through, sawing and carving, until she peeled the skull out of the dead man's torn open skin. She looked away when she scooped out the insides with a spoon Triss had given her for this exact purpose.

"Here," Sam whispered, and handed the skull to Triss. Triss met the woman's eyes, gave her a silent 'you're doing great' smile, and dropped the skull into the bag.

Next was the heart, and that was going to be harder. Cutting open a face, ruining it, separating a skull from spinal cord, and scooping out eyes and brains was tough. But there was something absolutely guttural about cutting open someone's chest, and Sam quickly ran into the biggest issue when she set the man between her legs, lifted the knife, and stared down at his shirt. She had to get inside him.

She slammed her knife into the sternum, and the crunch of breaking bone was audible. Everyone winced, and Sam dry heaved several times. If she'd been human, she'd have puked everywhere. She looked away and closed her eyes, even as she yanked down on the knife, and forced it through the rest of the sternum, and down through the man's abdomen. Slowly, she set the knife down, and forced herself to look back at the body.

No gloves. It'd ruin the weight, the impact, and both were core ingredients in the ritual. So with hands soaked in the blood of a dead man, she set them into the chest cavity of the corpse, palms facing out, and pulled. More things went crack and pop, and Sam again dry heaved as she stared down into the insides of the victim. Heart, lungs, diaphragm, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, spleen, kidneys, liver, all of it was there.

It was the ultimate dose of reality. Vampires were special. Something in them kept them ticking, despite the fact their organs were withered and no longer functioning. Shoot a vamp clean through the stomach and it didn't mean shit. Humans, on the other hand, were blood bags, running entirely on electrical signals and the flow of oxygen. Sacks of meat. Vampires needed them, but whatever it was that so was so special about life, whatever it was humans had that made them the center of so many aspects of the paranormal world, it didn't do shit to keep them from dying. Humans were beyond fragile.

Mary had been stabbed to death. This, was a really fucking shitty way for Sam to learn what it felt like to stab through flesh and bone.

She reached between the lungs with one hand, grabbed the heart, cut the pipes with the knife, and plucked the organ. And just like Triss, she stared at the disgusting, bloody thing in her hand. She felt it too, the power, the spark of weird, mystical voodoo, something Triss didn't know and neither did Jacob. Life. Whatever it was that gave kine life, traces of it were left in the heart and mind, something that crackled silently and sparked invisibly.

Sam took a slow, useless breath, and set the heart in Triss's bag.

"And now... I have to remember Mary, and bleed into the bag?"

"Yeah. For me, I had a picture on my phone I--"

Sam nodded, and clutched her necklace tight in one hand, soaking it in the dead man's blood. One of her daughter's necklaces. And like she was clutching her daughter herself, she closed her eyes, and shuddered. Little shivers worked through her, head to toe, and she sniffled a couple times. She wanted to cry. Hell, she was crying, but without the Blush, there weren't any tears to join it, no sniffles, no choking sobs as the throat swelled. All she had were tremors, little things that grew into larger things, until she let out a low groan.

Poor woman. Triss loved Julias, loved the fuck out of him, and digging through her memories until Julias was forefront in her mind so she could empower the ritual, had been fucking horrible. One of the worst things she'd ever done, even compared to all the painful torture she'd gone through to learn crúac rituals with Jacob. But she'd known Julias for only a few years. Sam knew her daughter for over two decades. On top of that, she'd bonded heavily with her daughter when her son disappeared. And on top of all that, Sam was her damn mother. No parent, ever, fucking ever, should have to know what it's like to lose a child.