Chapter 98

~~Antoinette~~

“Does he speak?”

“No.”

Antoinette sighed as she glared at the bound man. Two thralls were seeing to his body, cleaning and maintaining Sándor so he did not drown in his bodily fluids, or die of starvation. An unfortunate consequence of keeping a prisoner alive was handling the frustrating elements of biology.

It was not a process she was unfamiliar with. She kept several prisoners in her tower, after all, emergency sources of blood should she or an ally need them. Dealing with biological functions was a necessity. But, with her prisoners, normally they were of no threat, and could be handled easily. The Begotten, on the other hand, was a dangerous foe, and it paid to be wary with such creatures.

She waited until her thralls were done, before she closed the door of the cell, leaving her and Daniel in the dark with the monster. With a sigh, she turned on the light of her phone, and set it in her breast pocket. Its light was plenty for Kindred to see by, despite the fabric covering it.

Sándor’s back, and the symbol carved there, remained unchanged. Frustration coursed through her, and she clenched her fists tight as she glared at the symbol. Natasha was convinced it would heal with time, but without a time frame, the wait was proving infuriating. They needed the knowledge this man could provide to track down and deal with the hunters, and in his current state, he was useless.

“You are still convinced your Auspex cannot unmask the secrets of his mind?”

Daniel nodded, walking around the kneeling creature as he kept his chin between his gloved fingers. “Jack was correct. The seal protects his mind. Only brute force can get through it, and Jack was probably correct about the consequences.”

Not only was Jack likely correct about the consequences, he was the only Ventrue in the city strong enough to attempt such a feat. Viktor could have performed such a task, and so could poor Julias, she was sure. In both circumstances, it seemed like Sándor would have been damaged for the experience, and perhaps rendered useless. If Jack attempted to enter the man’s mind, he was convinced his curse would rip and tear Sándor’s psyche until he was beyond saving.

To know her little Ventrue had been given such power, cursed with it and its baser desires, gnawed at her endlessly. She wanted to help him, save him, free him from his burden. But there was no denying that it was a valuable tool that could spell the end for the hunters, if they could find them. Knowing her love, he would carry his burden, and march into the hunters, wading through fire and bullets until they were defeated.

Defeated, and dead. There was no doubt in her mind that her love would succumb to rage, upon finding the hunters, and that he would destroy everything in his path to exact his revenge. While she could not fault him for that, displays such as his crow summoning at the hospital could not be tolerated. If he brought the eye of the media upon her city a second time with such a reckless display of power, she would be forced to act.

It was difficult to tell, if Jack Terry was someone should could control, if it came to such a circumstance. She was confident that, if she was forced to use might, she could deal with Garry, Maria, and Michael. Jack Terry, on the other hand, was an enigma, now that the curse permeated his being. She could still sense and feel the young Kindred she had first met, but now she could also feel the inflated power his curse provided. Every moment in his presence had her confused, and not sure how to manage the strange presence and its two halves.

Groaning, she shook her head and gestured to the Begotten. “The longer I let this man remain here, the longer he is useless to me. I cannot let this advantage be wasted.”

“Agreed, but I don’t see any other options. And besides, with him trapped here, he can’t help Jeremiah.”

That was true. For all the annoyance it brought her that she could not rip information from the prisoner’s mind, he also could not help his masters while trapped within her tower. That would have to do for now.

She motioned for her sheriff to follow, and stepped out in the long hallway, deep within her labyrinth of black marble. “Are you excited to see Elaine, old friend?”

That earned a pause from the Mekhet, and she struggled to not chuckle at her friend’s discomfort. Earning any reaction from the stone was always something to be cherished.

“Is she here yet?”

“Non. I assume she will arrive within the next few days.”

“I ... see.”

It was too delightful, and she could no longer hold back her chuckles as she started up the stairs. “Daniel, she is a beautiful woman, intelligent, and as devoted to the order as either of us. And she is fun, as devoted to finding joy in our second lives as I ever was. Why do you resist her so?”

The man frowned, but the almost cataclysmic shift of the stars that would lead to a genuine expression on his face, faded away, taking the frown with it, and leaving her with the usual stone face of her friend. As much as she loved Daniel, she could not understand how Elaine could find his concrete-wall personality so enticing. Antoinette trusted him, valued his opinions and wisdom, and enjoyed his company. But she did not wish to smother him with her sexuality, unlike Elaine, who had expressed her desire for Daniel to her on several occasions.

Perhaps she should not have warned Jack of her potential advances? Elaine was difficult to predict. The woman had joined Antoinette on many of her more absurd sexual adventures, while at the same time, had engaged in the occasional, far more reserved relationship.

Thinking of her brought up more than a few wonderful memories, that quickly became bitter. Elaine had joined her several times, when Antoinette dated her childe Tony, and Elaine had long warned her that the man was devolving into a self-involved, destructive twit. Antoinette should have heeded her advice.

“I resist her,” he said at last, “because I do not like her. She’s ... volatile.”

Antoinette sighed and shrugged. “It may surprise you to learn that all women are, perhaps, a touch volatile, old friend.” Though that was hardly unique to women, it simply manifested differently compared to men. She knew what Daniel meant though, that he preferred predictable interaction, while Elaine had drifted through England hundreds of years ago, whoring herself for coins, purely for the entertainment of it rather than any need to hunt in such a manner. She had a long history of eccentric pursuits and experiences.

Daniel did not care about the woman’s sexual exploits, but he did care about calm waters. Antoinette had long been of the mind that the man could do with a few stones tossed into his waters, to stir and add a ripple here or there, but the man was ancient at this point, and would not budge.

“And Athalia?” she said.

Daniel sighed, adjusted his glasses, and waited for the elevator. “What of her?”

“You pursued her once, did you not?”

“That was—”

“Come, Daniel, do not take me for a fool. She trusted you, and only you, before she met Jack Terry. I saw the look on your face, when you escorted her to my ball. You are interested in her.”

“I...” He was surprised. Good. It served an elder well to be reminded that they did not know everything, and Daniel had not realized how obvious his interest in unstable Athalia was.

“She is far more volatile than Elaine,” she said.

“She’s young, and ... and her volatility is not a simple state of her personality. It’s a result of her circumstance.”

“You believe that, were her circumstances more stable, she would be as well?”

“I had hoped, but I guess we’ll never know.”

She sighed with that, and lowered her head to look at the floor as the two of them stepped onto the elevator. “Indeed.”

There was no denying the inevitable reality. The hunters were going to perish eventually, now that they had both lost their enforcer, and their numbers had dwindled to Jack’s assaults. It was simply a matter of time before Angela was dead, and Athalia would become more unstable. Would she strive for revenge, or accept her daughter’s necessary death? Antoinette struggled to imagine any parent accepting their child’s death, no matter if it were deserved.

“I ... had planned for another ball,” Antoinette said, “but I believe it will be best to wait until the hunter threat is eliminated.”

“Athalia will not be invited, I presume.”

“I do not believe so, no. My childe knows her by name, and what her daughter has done. Were they to meet, I do not believe it would end well, for either of them.” Young as Samantha was, a Daeva was a dangerous creature when strength was the deciding factor. Doubly so, for a mother wronged and robbed of her child.

“Your childe, she ... she seems a lot nicer than Tony ever was.”

Antoinette smiled at that, and nodded as she touched her lips with a couple fingers. “Not so nice that she would not throw herself at Athalia in a fit of rage, should they ever meet. But yes, Samantha is a breath of fresh air, I must admit. I can now appreciate where my love earned his honest soul.”

The doors opened up, and she stepped into her primary meeting room, high in her tower, with Daniel following.

“You think he’s being honest?”

Stopping, she turned and looked at Daniel with a raised brow. “You do not think Jack has been honest with me, about the curse?”

“I think he’s more concerned with keeping you happy, and safe. What he’s shared about his curse, is probably only what he felt necessary.”

With a long groan, she stepped passed the meeting table, and instead took a stand by the grand window overlooking her city. “I suspect you are correct. But do not underestimate my little Ventrue. He will either bear his burden, or expose his need when it is required.” Ventrue hubris would not destroy him, as it had Viktor.

However, she was no fool. For all her lover’s intelligence and tenacity, she could not assume he could predict the future. It was in his, and her best interest, to plan for many outcomes, including the worst.

For now, her primary goal was finding the hunters, and eliminating them. She sat down at the table, and began preparations for the next Primogen meeting. Terra Den continued to push on Invictus corporations, irritating the Invictus and doubtless soon to instigate confrontations in some form or another. And while the two covenants were free to poke and prod each other, jousting as they fought for territory, she had to manage their petty squabbles before they erupted into war.

Insufferable children, honestly.

~~Natasha~~

She slid off of Matt’s back, pulled out her weapons, and started spinning around in a borderline panic. She knew that voice. She didn’t like that voice. And this time, she was in its realm.

Her jaw dropped as her eyes flicked around, spotting movement in the darkness. The only source of light was the moon above, and that was enough to illuminate the pustules of black ooze that started to trickle over the buildings. It seeped down the walls, thick like sludge, and built on itself in heavier, and bigger waves. Soon it fell onto the sidewalks, and filled the cracks and crevices before it started to flow onto the streets.

Natasha looked at the pack, but none of them were moving. Clara and Avery were in human form, and they certainly looked like they were ready for a fight, but they weren’t running. Running would have been good. Running would have been smart. If Black Blood had come for them, they didn’t have the protection of its limitations in the physical world. They were in the spirit world, and the entity would have no trouble unleashing its full power here, as far as she understood.

But the pack remained. Eric, she could see, was looking quite jumpy, and he backed up into the pack as he snapped his ears around. Well, it was his idea to start here first. He was probably feeling guilty for leading them here. Avery had to know Black Blood’s locations though, or at least what it was capable of, and no way would she just blindly follow Eric here if it was too dangerous.

It was hard to imagine Avery being ok with Black Blood’s unplanned arrival, but she and Clara folded their arms across their chests, and waited, eyes locked onto the oncoming blobs of black puss that flowed. More of the gross liquid leaked onto the street, the cracks and crevices of the buildings and streets no longer capable of handling its total mass. The air grew cold, and smelled of death; not rotting flesh, but death itself, something she didn’t realize was a smell on its own. It was. The city had gone quiet, the chirps, barks, and talking of spirits vanishing into the growing blackness.

“We don’t need permission to be here, Black Blood,” Avery said, glaring around at the growing pile of obsidian water. “And we’re not here for you. Let us pass.”

Please don’t be mean to the scary alien creature thing, please please.

“I have lain claim to these streets and walls, dog.”

Natasha squealed as an arm shot out of the black ooze on the street before them. A huge arm. A huge, absurdly skinny arm. Bones! Natasha gulped as she stared at the arm, and how it managed to reach from the street to the top of one of the casinos, four floors up. It was a skeleton arm, colored black, and dripping with the gross liquid.

Flowing Sanctuary drifted over the asphalt, and set herself between the wolves and the entity crawling out of the pits of Hell. Another arm reached up through the ooze, big enough to crush a bus, and soon the entity’s skull emerged as well. Skeleton was right. Natasha froze, unable to gulp or shiver or anything, as her eyes took in the sight of the gigantic thing pulling itself out of the street.

It stopped once it got its ribcage out of the Earth, but that was enough to have the black skeleton towering over them. It placed its elbows on the street, like someone resting at the edge of a pool, skull pointed down at them. Unlike Athalia and the creepy white dots that sat in the center of her skull eye sockets, the giant skeleton was only a skeleton; as much as any human skeleton bigger than any dinosaur could be ‘only’, with no glowing eye dots. Black ooze dripped from its eye sockets, and trickled down over the colossal bones, into the pool the monster came out of.

The black waves inched closer, but Flowing Sanctuary pushed them away with her body. For a moment, Natasha thought it might have been a sort of attack, but Flow didn’t react with anything more than gentle, lapping waves of crystalline clear blue. Black Blood wasn’t attacking them. Black Blood was just being itself, a titanic entity of ... she didn’t know. But she felt it, felt something horrible, and cold, and heavy pressing down on her, as the skeleton creature’s skull blocked out the pulsing moon above.

“You do not own this city,” Flow said. Such a beautiful, strong voice. It reminded Natasha of an angel, the sort that could boom their voice in the movies, so entire areas could hear them.

Black Blood laughed, and lowered his head toward the water spirit. “I am this city, Flowing Sanctuary.”

Avery shook her shoulders out a bit, and stepped up to stand beside the water spirit. Flow’s base, the wide splashing waves of clear blue, parted to give Avery a place to walk.

“Not only are you fighting Street-Tail King, and Red Tide for this place, Black Blood, meaning you’re rather busy, but you are, as you said, the city.” She snorted, and rubbed her thumb across her nose once. “Dolareido welcomes all who come searching for cures to what ails them, doesn’t it?”

Black Blood laughed. Southern accents and laughter normally mixed to create a lovely sound; not so with Black Blood. Its big, terrible voice, with strange rasps hidden underneath, made every sound grate on Natasha’s soul, until she could feel ice building in her dry veins.

This thing could kill her. This thing could kill all of them. She’d seen the werewolf pack hunt and fight, and while their strength and endurance were massive, Black Blood could swing an arm and decimate a building. Fighting it made as much sense as a mouse trying to kill an elephant.

Natasha put her knife and pistol away, doing her best to keep her fingers steady as she did.

“You navigate dangerous waters, dog,” Black Blood said.

“Yeah well, we know you as much as you know us.”

The spirit snorted, and leaned in closer, head only a few feet from Flow and Avery. Good god it could have opened its mouth and swallowed them both.

“The protection I provide breaks the moment you cross the line, dog. So you see here. If you or your pack violate any of my rules, be assured I will deal with you personally.”

Natasha blinked. Black Blood apparently considered itself to be the city. Spirits had banes that hurt them, and bans that determined their behavior. If Black Blood, a colossal entity that may as well have been the Devil itself, as far as Natasha could tell, considered itself to be the city, then that had to affect its behavior. So, as long as Avery obeyed the rules of the city, Black Blood couldn’t touch her?

She doubted it was that simple, or that limiting to the creature. But she didn’t understand how any of this worked, and until she was back in the safety of her boss’s tower, she’d keep her assumptions to a minimum. Avery may have been comfortable playing by the spirit’s rules, but she wasn’t.

“We’ve violated none of your laws, Black Blood,” Clara said. “Step aside.”

The god of death laughed, quiet and controlled, as it lifted itself up a bit, and leaned over Avery, Clara, and Flow, toward her. Little, itty-bitty her, who was doing her best to disappear into the fur of Matt beside her. Shit.

“I have right over this dominion, dog. And I reckon I have a right to asks questions. Such as to this tiny creature here.” One of those gigantic hands let go of a nearby rooftop, and it came down onto the street to support the god’s weight as it leaned in closer. Natasha, or any of the Uratha, could have fit into that hand completely.

“M-Me?” she managed to say, voice cracking and barely getting above a whisper.

“You, little lady.”

Avery growled, walked past the giant arm of black, oozing bone like it didn’t matter, and came to stand beside her. “Natasha, be careful with your words. Don’t agree to anything. Make no deals. Accept no gifts.”

She stared at Avery for a second, before her eyes locked onto the giant onyx skull again. It didn’t breathe, but it moved, shifting about with the idle motions of most living entities. Creepy. Very creepy.

But this was Black Blood, an entity that helped Jacob. It’d saved her and the others from Sándor’s nightmare. It’d probably been in Dolareido for a long time. Despite how scary it looked, and how hilarious strong it must have been, it wasn’t some thug looking to squash her and unleash violence randomly. It was smart. Which, made it scarier.

“W-What do you want t ... t-to know?”

“You’re Natasha Vola, right? Yes, I remember you now. I pulled you out of that monster boy’s nightmare chamber. Heck of a feat, if I do say so myself.”

“R-Right! Um ... thank you, for that.” No dealing, no gifts, nothing. Questioning every word she came up with was tiring. She never was any good at the Danse Macabre.

“I understand the kid, Jack Terry, he’s unleashed something pretty nasty, hasn’t he?”

She froze, and glanced to Clara and Avery. They were looking at her with raised eyebrows. She hadn’t told Matt or Art, or any of the pack, not her place. Now was most definitely not the place, but it wasn’t like she could just ignore the alien god’s request. Could she?

“W-Why do you ... want to know about J-J-Jack?” Ok, answering a question with a question was a recipe for problems, but Avery and Clara seemed alright with it.

“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine, little lady.”

Shit. She looked to Clara and Avery again, but the two werewolves looked pensive. She expected for them to immediately shake their head or something, but apparently a trade of information like this didn’t bother them. Or maybe, they were curious about Jack as well.

“I ... sorry, I c-can’t tell you. Jacob, uh ... he’ll p-probably ... probably tell you. But I w-w-won’t speak ... for my friend.”

Black Blood chuckled, and Natasha did her best to not visibly wince. Something about its voice was terrifying, like she was listening to Death itself; if Death lived in Texas. And the fact she’d just told Death that she wasn’t willing to give it information herself, in an effort to protect her friend, was asking for Death to slap her upside the head.

But it didn’t. It looked at her, as far as she could tell based on where its skull was pointed, and chuckled some more.

“Tough little thing, ain’t ya?”

“I ... I try.”

“This is pointless,” Avery said. She stepped in closer to Tash, stood in front of her, and glared at the enormous creature. “We’re not here for you, Black Blood, or your rivals. We’re here looking for—”

“The Azlu, I reckon.”

Clara stepped up and joined her leader, between Tash and the creature. “You know where it is?”

Having two Uratha between her and Black Blood was enough to let Tash relax, but only a little. Glances around in the dark showed movement, subtle things hiding around the buildings. Some things poked their heads out of manholes, while others peeked over rooftop edges. Spirits were watching, hiding in the dark, hiding behind benches and streetlights, hiding in alleys and behind barriers.

They were afraid of Black Blood, but they respected it. Thin line between fear and respect, she supposed.

“Damn spider is hard to find. It’s hiding, like you figured, but not here. Essence flows here, as you can see, with no trouble. So git, and look elsewhere.”

Matt didn’t like that. The enormous wolf bared his fangs and snarled, body going rigid with tense muscles. Art did the same, coming in closer and standing beside Avery as he matched Matt’s growls. But before any more of the gigantic wolves could start growling and lead to some sort of fight, Avery waved a hand back at the pack.

“Back off guys. You know the deal, he can’t touch us if we obey the rules.”

Another of the wolves began to stand upright. The rest of them looked, and Tash chewed on a lip as she watched Eric reform, his fur disappearing into his clothes as his skeleton adopted the two-legged shape.

Black Blood turned its head down to gaze on the man. “Right, you. I remember you. Another fool that tried to kill that hunter, Jeremiah.”

Eric scratched the back of his neck, and glanced around at the other members of the pack. Other than Avery and Clara, the rest of them remained in their giant wolf forms, still ready to fight based on the muscle tension Natasha could see, and the bared fangs.

“Thanks for that,” Eric said. “But, yeah, I don’t care what beef you have with Avery and her friends. I’m just trying to do a job. Where’s the Azlu?”

Clara and Avery both winced. Apparently, they didn’t like the way Eric was talking to Black Blood. Hell, Natasha didn’t like the way he was talking to Black Blood. If they all kept disrespecting it, would it retaliate? Did its nature allow it to?

The god creature chuckled again, and pushed itself back up to standing straight, lower half of its body still hidden in the pool of black covering the street. “I can respect that, little dog. And I admit, it’s the job of dogs to run off vermin.” The skeleton lowered its mass, until its colossal head was only several feet from Eric. To Eric’s credit, he didn’t step back, but there was no way for anyone to not tremble a little when so close to something like that, even someone as obstinate as Eric. “I wager that pest is hiding in Devil’s Corner.”

Devil’s Corner. Natasha shivered, and looked to Avery to see her reaction. The pack leader groaned, and sighed. Ok, so the pack leader of the deadly Uratha was not happy about her quarry being in Devil’s Corner, which meant Devil’s Corner was probably not a fun place to be in the Hisil.

“ ... thanks,” Eric said.

“Don’t thank me, boy. I hope y’all find yourself at the end of its blades. And better sooner than later.” And with that, the giant skeleton began to ease itself into the ocean of black that coated the street. “Not you though, vampire. No beef with you. Happy trails.”

“W-Wait!” Natasha ran past the wolves, past Clara and Avery and their confused gazes, and past Eric. She stopped in front of Black Blood, hands held in fists at her side, and she glared up at the creature as best as she could manage. It wasn’t a good glare, but it was enough to stop the enormous spirit from its descent.

“Yes, little lady?”

“I ... I ... w-want to know. You’ve b-been working with Jacob for a long t-t-time, haven’t you?”

“Gutsy of you to ask, after shooting me down.” Chuckling, the skeleton lowered its head over her, until she was literally two feet away from its teeth and jaw bone. This close, she could feel the strange cold pouring off its body. Calling it cold wasn’t right, but it was the only way her body could interpret the feeling. Cold and death. If Natasha had been frozen in a block of ice and tossed into a ravine in the Arctic, to wither away to her Beast’s hunger until she fell into torpor, it probably would have felt like this.

“S-Sorry, just, I ... Dolareido’s been going through hard t-times, lately. Everything’s turned upside down in the past couple y-years, and everyone’s looking for someone t-t-to ... blame.” She didn’t want to say that Antoinette suspected Jacob, and Black Blood especially, of doing bad things and perhaps threatening the city. But it was the truth. “Jacob, he ... he trusts you. And I d-d-don’t believe Jacob is ... is...”

“Give it up, Tash,” Avery said, growling as she joined her. “Black Blood couldn’t begin to give a shit about our troubles. All that matters to it is its city, and its ruling of it. Only reason it’s giving us a tip about the Azlu is it wants it gone, not because—”

“You think you know me, dog. You’re just an ant, biting off more than they can chew.” The skeleton god shook its head as it sank deeper into the pool of black at Natasha’s feet. “And if you’re looking to stay alive in the coming tide, little lady, I suggest you trust Jacob a bit more than you have been, and maybe you keep your head down. More than one elder vampire out there, fucking with shit they should know to leave well alone.”

Maria. It was talking about Maria.

She opened her mouth, and closed it. Instead of putting her foot in her mouth and tipping off everyone that she suspected Maria was doing something dangerous, she stayed quiet, and watched the alien disappear into the black Earth. As it left, the tide of oozing black faded away, no longer combating Flow’s waves. The giant blobs of onyx drooling down the walls of the buildings around them faded, or sank into the hole with Black Blood. The weight of the cold death went with it, letting its grip on her shoulders go as it sank into the ocean of obsidian.

Once the haze of black that sat on them all was completely gone, all the wolves started breathing again. It was almost a shock, hearing a bunch of lungs kick in like that; she was used to the silence of meeting rooms filled with vampires. But once Black Blood was gone, the wolves all visibly relaxed, or at least stopped looking like they were ready to fight. Considering the size of Black Blood, she had a hard time imagining the Uratha lasting twenty seconds in a tussle. Then again, she doubted the Uratha could only use brute strength. Then again ... again, she doubted Black Blood was really just a giant black skeleton.

“Natasha,” Avery said, “the fuck did I tell you, before we left?”

Uh oh. Natasha shrank, taking a step back from the angry woman. Art and Matt, both still in their Urshul forms, came up behind her, and she set a hand against Matt’s shoulder as she put her back to his side.

“T-To ... stay out of the way.”

“Yeah, I did. So the fuck do you think you’re doing, talking with—”

Clara threw up a hand and joined them. “Avery, come on, you saw Black Blood engage her first.”

“No reason for her to follow up.” Glaring daggers, Avery pointed a finger at Natasha. “You vampires keep sticking your fingers into shit you shouldn’t.”

Natasha blinked at her, and struggled to hide the realization that clicked. Avery didn’t want her talking to Black Blood, and it wasn’t just because she was worried about the old spirit. This was about Minerva.

Tempted, so very tempted, to ask her why she killed Jacob’s lover. How could a vampire do something so horrible in their research, that werewolves felt the need to kill her? And it wasn’t like Minerva was just someone they could kill without consequence. She’d been Antoinette’s friend, and Jacob’s love. The only reason Avery was alive was because of her old leader Simon, as far as Natasha knew, and Simon wasn’t a factor anymore.

“S-Sorry,” she said.

Clara shook her head, and put a hand on Avery’s shoulder to drag her back. “Don’t be sorry, Tash. We know shit’s been crazy in the city since we showed up. Since a year before that, from what we’ve heard. I’d bet money Black Blood’s involved.”