Chapter 103

~~Jack~~

Telling Antoinette about Mary had been easier than he thought. Well truthfully, Antoinette talked to him about it, after his mom had filled her in. Jack had promised he wouldn’t be visiting Mary for a little while, and Antoinette agreed it was a good idea for both he and his mom to avoid her for a short period of time. His lover also said she might have some ideas, but in the meantime, she’d talk to Samantha about it in depth.

When he’d inquired about ‘in depth’, she’d dodged the question, saying it was a private business of the Ordo Dracul. He was cool with that. With all the secrets he was learning about the Circle of the Crone, secrets he’d prefer to not know, he was perfectly cool with not learning about the secrets of the Ordo Dracul. Ignorance was bliss.

The hunts continued, but there was still no sign of the hunters, which had everyone on edge. Somehow, the hunters were being healed of the wounds Jack and the others had dealt them, far faster than humanly possible, which had them all anxious to find them as soon as possible. The only explanation was Elen, or maybe some other weird magic the hunters had access to. Either way, it meant the Kindred had to go on the offensive to secure any real advantage, but they couldn’t if they couldn’t find a target; the hunters were using guerrilla warfare and using it well. It was infuriating.

He joined his proper sweep team with Gloria, Isabella, Clara, and Athalia, and started exploring North Side. It was quiet, out in North Side. It was an hour after sunset, and most people were no longer working. Gloria, their group’s Mekhet, was keeping them wrapped in her Face in the Crowd aura, so anyone who spotted them simply wouldn’t care. It wasn’t past midnight yet, so there was the occasional person walking by, working late hours. As long as no one in their group did something loud or strange, no one would care they existed.

Athalia may as well have put a bell on his neck, with how fixated her eyes were on him. Untrusting. Suspicious. Scared. Gloria and Isabella could tell he changed, and Clara could sense it more than his fellow Kindred, but Athalia could see the reality. The curse, its size and mass, its presence, it was all plainly visible to her. Could she see that it talked? Could she hear its whispering voice in his head, the dark voice telling him to indulge his Kindred desires with all the control of a child entertaining their id? God, he fucking hoped not.

It was good that the curse had manifested itself properly now, instead of being bound to him so tightly by the seal. He could feel its influence more obviously now, instead of a mysterious urge that drove him to violence with subtlety. With its revelation, it was easier to keep it at a distance, and to recognize its desires as something separate from his own. On the other hand, those desires were stronger now, and he knew that at some point, the curse was going to come at him like a typhoon. It was going to overwhelm him, and take control, even if only temporarily.

The memories of the scene at the hospital were still there, maybe a little blurrier than his own memories, but still there. Summoning the crows and unleashing them upon the hunters, the sounds of their screams of agony as hundreds of beaks ripped them open, and the smell of blood and feathers, were permanent memories, cut into his brain with a rusty knife. He could summon that power easily now, and he knew if he did, he would be letting the curse have free reign to run around in his brain. Every time he called upon it, it’d have an easier time getting its claws into him. And he didn’t want to give it that opening unless he had to.

Every time he glanced Clara’s way, he caught her looking at him. Unlike Athalia, who watched him like he was a bomb ready to go off any moment, Clara could not help but hide her sympathy. She tried, he could see that, but learning that his dead sister was back as a ghost was apparently her breaking point.

“I still can’t believe she’s back,” Clara said.

Isabella, who was ahead of them with Gloria, looked over her shoulder. “Who is back?”

Clara froze, and blinked at him. “Shit, sorry.”

Yeah, he hadn’t told everyone. It was personal, and not exactly information he wanted floating around. But it wasn’t a secret, and maybe it’d be better if people knew.

“My sister is haunting my mother’s old home,” he said. “And yes, I mean literally haunting.”

Everyone stopped walking, and stared at him. Even Athalia, who was following from behind, looked surprised when he glanced her way.

“A ghost?” Gloria said, visibly shaking. “B-But ... that means—”

“Yes, ghosts are real,” he said. “Our bosses have dealt with them before, I’m sure. No one talks about them, I guess, because they’re ... problems...” What a lovely way to view the situation, thinking of his dead sister like a problem, like an infestation that wouldn’t die easy.

“I have known of only one ghost in my lifetime,” Isabella said, the tall Daeva tapping a finger on her chin. “We don’t speak of it because ... it can be tough to discern what actually happened. Was it a trick of our imagination, a hallucination, some strange repeating dream localized to an area? The one ghost I know of, I passed by the building it haunted. It was ... unsettling, to say the least.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way of describing it. It was unsettling, if unsettling was what you found at the edge of Hell. Now imagine you walked past that edge, down the stairs through each circle of Hell, and then decided to camp out in the center.” He ground his teeth, stared at the sidewalk, and started walking. The group started moving again too, but he could tell they were hesitant. Another glance back showed Athalia was still keeping her distance, but not as far as before, as if the story about Mary had softened her a little. Maybe it had. She was a mother.

“That sounds horrible,” Gloria said. “Why ... why do these horrible things keep happening to you?”

“It’s not me, it’s my sister.” This time, this horrible thing was happening by proxy. That was a step in a better direction, he supposed. Except, not really. If shitty things happened to the people he loved instead of him, that still sucked. “And I don’t know. But, we’re not out here to talk about my sister.”

“Sorry,” Clara said again, “I didn’t realize people didn’t know.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, really.”

“How is she?” Gloria said, earning a raised brow from everyone. “Er, well, you know what I mean.”

“She’s about as well as you can expect, Gloria. She’s furious about her murder.” And utterly furious with Jack for having harmed her, in a way. But he wasn’t about to bring that up. “Ultimately, the issue with my sister is untimely, and horrible, but there’s a bit of good in it. I got to talk to my sister again.”

Every woman awwed, even Athalia, though when he whipped his head around, he saw only the hard face of a woman who would never dare utter such a sound. Christ he wished there were some men in this team.

“My point being,” he continued, “don’t worry about it. Let’s just focus on our jobs, ok?”

And they did. Isabella and Gloria were both curious, but they let it go, only offering him the occasional glance as they tried to read him. Clara was a little better at focusing, but every so often he met her gaze, and found that hint of sympathy. Or maybe it was understanding. She’d told him once that she’d lost her brother, a kine, and maybe she was envisioning what she’d do if she’d been in Jack’s circumstance. The opportunity to talk to a dead loved one sounded like a good thing on the surface, but the reality was a two-edged sword.

As the hunt went on, Athalia stayed in the back, and kept her eyes on Jack, never quite losing that nervousness she displayed the first time she saw him since the curse awakened. There was more there, though, in her gaze. Maybe she was thinking about Mary, about what it was like for Jack’s mother to speak to the ghost of her daughter. When Angela was dead, how would Athalia take any of it?

Fuck him, if they had to deal with Angela’s ghost too, he wasn’t sure what they’d do. But it wasn’t like ghosts were just wandering around, appearing in the wake of everyone dying. There was no Julias ghost, or Barry ghost, or Viktor or Tony or Lucas ghost. A lot of kine and Kindred had died, and one Uratha too, in the past couple years. No ghosts.

But then, most of those people had died in circumstances that made sense, in a strange way. Stephanie the Uratha had died on a hunt. The vampires died as a part of conflicts that arose from being a vampire, from being hunter and hunted, and from the Danse Macabre. Kine died because Kindred preyed upon them, or because of the various, normal reasons kine died. Mary’s death, on the other hand, had been a freak of circumstance done by a psychopath, and combined with Jack’s memory-wiping her before she died, it was probably that anger that kept her from crossing over.

Now that he’d apologized to her, and she’d apologized to him, she was free to crossover, wasn’t she? But she hadn’t, not yet, and that was a worry that terrified him.

A couple days later, it was time to pay Garry a visit.

“I had my first session with the sheriff last night,” Damien said. “It was ... painful.”

“Painful?” He and his friend rode in an Invictus car, the same one that took him and Jessy to see Avery only a couple days ago. “When Julias and I trained, we did a little physical stuff, him teaching me about using Resilience for defense. You should have seen him Damien, in ... in the hospital. He took a couple hundred bullets from half a dozen firearms, and kept on coming. He was practically a walking skeleton by the end, and still going. Kicked Sándor’s ass, Dominated some hunters, and ... yeah.”

“Julias was an impressive Ventrue for his age, Jack.”

“I wonder how much of that is from the curse. Though, in the memory the curse showed me, Julias’s subconscious was ... less enthusiastic about trying to break the seal.” Not that the seal needed to be broken to let out its power, but whereas Jack had embraced its power when he could, well before the seal was broken, he doubted Julias had.

“Then I can only guess that it was his own talent, same as your own.”

Jack laughed, elbow on the door arm, chin on his palm. “I’ve relied on the curse plenty.”

Damien looked at him, for a long time, until Jack turned his head to make eye contact. “I felt nothing of any curse, that time ... you know when. Only you, a stubborn Ventrue.”

A stubborn Ventrue. Laughing again, Jack nodded, and looked back out the window to watch the slow traffic of South Side.

“Thanks. I didn’t feel it then either, pushing to get out; at least, not as hard. So, maybe it was all me, back then, and maybe it was all Julias, in the hospital. Either way, he was only a century old. I can’t imagine how strong the sheriff is.”

Damien’s eyes fell, and he groaned, the groan of a man who’d finished a grueling workout, and was afraid to do it again in the future. “He’s teaching me how to use a sword, and forcing me to use Celerity and Cloak of Night together, while we fence. I ended my first session utterly starving.”

“Paid a visit to Fiona, I imagine?”

Damien grinned at him. It wasn’t common for Damien to grin. The Mekhet normally kept his facial expressions subtle, like a mini-Daniel, but now he grinned a big grin, and nodded.

“If I had known how ... enjoyable, a relationship can be, I think I would have pursued one even while I was hiding from the Prince.”

“They’re pretty damn amazing. Can Fiona handle giving blood often?”

“She can, she says. Her Begotten body may not be as sturdy or regenerative as the Urathas’, but it still heals quickly, and a quick trip to her nightmare chamber accelerates the process.”

Right, the nightmare chamber, the jungle. It was so easy to forget that Fiona was a Begotten, with a nightmare creature inside her. If he wrote it out on paper, he’d think Fiona was bad for Damien, and that the boy’s troubled past would only be worsened by Fiona’s borderline evil presence. Maybe an evil girlfriend would turn the man into an evil assassin? But the girl was the biggest ray of sunshine he’d ever known, and was probably the best thing for Damien.

“Julias also trained me in Dominate and Animalism. I assume Daniel is helping you develop Auspex?”

“He is. There are levels of that Discipline that I don’t know if I’ll ever obtain, but perhaps, someday. I assume you’ve managed to skip over some steps in your training, because of the curse.”

Groaning, Jack squirmed in the car seat, and threw Damien an annoyed glance. “Yes, but that’s not a good thing. Not at all.”

“Hello Joe,” Jack said. Him and Damien stood outside one of the rundown apartment buildings in the Carthian half of South Side, where Garry hung out during the night. Jack doubted he slept there, considering how easy it’d be to infiltrate or destroy a building like this during the day, even for thralls. Maybe he had a secret bunker beneath it, or a bomb shelter nearby?

Joe the Carthian stood at the entrance to the apartment building, dressed in some torn jeans and a hoodie. A white guy with a shaved bald head and a bodybuilder physique, he was like a weak version of Michael; a weak version of a deadly-as-hell man wasn’t exactly no threat. Joe was a neonate, nothing special, but he’d earned a position working close to Garry, and that meant he had more power to him than was obvious. Hard to imagine, considering the man reeked of stupid henchman syndrome.

There were a few ancilla in the Carthians, tough men and women that could pose a serious threat to any Kindred. Why didn’t Garry have them guarding him? Maybe they were, and Jack couldn’t see them. Either way, having to deal with Joe was annoying enough.

Maybe Garry knew Joe annoyed the Invictus, and that’s why he had Joe as his door man? That would actually be pretty smart, if Garry’s goal was to be a jackass. And it was, to some degree or another.

“Jack, Damien.” Rolling his eyes and sighing, Joe stepped back and let them enter. “Garry’s been expecting you.”

Jack nodded, a very proper nod, with a hint of Invictus superiority to it. Despite himself, knowing full well such an action would do nothing but annoy a Carthian, he did it anyway. At this point, he assumed it was typical faction brainwashing. He had no real reason to hate the Carthians, but because they were generally considered an enemy of the Invictus, aggressive or hateful thoughts seeped into the brain with time.

Not exactly being a good peacemaker with thoughts like that. So he took a deep, useless breath, and tried to purge them. How would Antoinette treat the situation? She’d be annoyed with Garry, and everyone else who didn’t have the foresight to make decisions with 10,000 possible futures, for a thousand years beyond, in mind. But, she would do her best to eliminate bias, and enter every conversation with a clear head, and an eye for pragmatic conclusions. He could do that.

Garry was on the top floor, in an office; not an office really, but a re-purposed apartment. No wonder the werewolves got along with him.

“Jack,” he said from behind a large, beat up, old wooden desk.

Oh, this is where the ancilla were. Two men and one woman, the strongest of the Carthians, and as far as he knew, half of the total ancilla in the covenant. And they were here, when they could be out looking for hunters. Garry didn’t trust Jack or Damien, and he wanted backup in case he needed it.

“Garry,” he said. “You uh, looking for a fight?” He gestured to the three Kindred sitting on a nearby couch. The two guys were playing a fighting game, and the woman was reading a book. If there’d been chips and beer on the wooden table between the TV and two couches they were using, Jack would have recognized the scene from his college days. Not a scene he’d ever partaken in, but one he saw plenty in the various break rooms.

“Course not. But I’m not stupid. Lucas’s childe, right here, in my office? God damn, how easy it’d be to put a rest to this whole project of Maria’s, if you were dead.” He leaned forward, set his elbows on his desk, and pointed at Damien. “I could tolerate your existence when you were just an Invictus dog, but now you’re a church slave again?”

Ok, so, this was going well. An aggressive Gangrel, and an elder at that, was looking at Damien like he wanted to kill him, and it was Damien and Jack’s job to convince Garry to calm down about the return of the Lancea et Sanctum. Wonderful.

Damien frowned for a moment, but kept his hands in his coat pockets. The man would have at least one, if not two pistols hidden inside the coat, and he had that long sword hidden in the back of it as well; sitting down wasn’t an option for him. Sighing, the Mekhet simply stood there, withdrew his hands, and folded them across his chest.

“I remember you,” Damien said, “during the purge. I remember the smile on your face as you stormed the church I was in.”

Garry returned the frown, leaned back in his chair, and put his feet up on the desk. “And?”

“You have a lot of nerve,” the Mekhet continued, “acting like a leader for a covenant of anarchists, raging against the machine, when really you just like fighting and killing.”

Jack winced. Yeah, there was some truth to that. Garry looked like he ate knuckle fights and breathed bullets since he was a just a kid, and the man’s history lent to that deduction. The Gangrel loved to fight, a rebel without a cause, until another Carthian gave him one. Now he was the thorn in the Invictus’s side, and once the Lancea et Sanctum’s before their demise in Dolareido.

Maybe Maria made a mistake, sending Damien here.

“Fuck you,” Garry said, without lowering his feet. “It’s not a crime to like your job. I was taking out the trash that night, for weeks before, and for weeks after. I guess I missed my calling as a garbage man.”

Fucking god, how did Viktor ever put up with this man enough to actually invite him to gatherings? The Carthian was looking for a reason to argue, a reason to fight, a reason to say Jack and Damien fucked up, and no way in hell was Garry letting the Lancea et Sanctum come back.

Remember what Antoinette would do, what you’d do, before you were given the power to kick this fucker in the teeth. Be calm, be calculating, and be intelligent.

It was surprising how much easier it was to give into frustration, when he knew he had the power to make change in a physical way. Every piece of him wanted to use it, to just force the issue, and bypass having to deal with the idiots in his way. Maybe that’s how totalitarians were born?

“Garry Tones,” Jack said, “you know by now that my colleague Mister Burksen has aided the Kindred of Dolareido in multiple capacities since the death of his sire. He has, of his own volition, expressed remorse over Lucas’s actions, and dismay when he learned of his sire’s rather tyrannical plans. Madam Turio herself has shown sorrow over Lucas’s actions. The Lancea et Sanctum you are familiar with is not the Second Estate that Burksen or Turio wish to revive. You are judging them based on the actions of a singular, disturbed individual.”

Garry snorted, and poked himself in the temple with two fingers. Garry was average height for a male, with a shaved head not unlike Joe, but while Joe was much larger, Garry’s lean physique and myriad of scars spoke of a far more eventful first life. He was a scary man. The fact the three ancilla did not lift their heads from what they were doing also gave him a crass ‘I do shit myself’ atmosphere.

“You know, Jack,” Garry said, “I can’t help but wonder if you were sent here to pressure me.”

“Pressure? Me?”

“Yes, you. Everyone knows about this curse business, Jack. Story going around is you summoned a million crows, and—”

“It was more like, ten thousand, but—”

“And that you defeated a couple dozen hunters in that hospital.”

“It was, like, six, and—”

“The point is, Jack, that everyone thinks you’re here as an enforcer, that the wonder kid with the big bad curse is here to bully me.” Sighing, Garry leaned back in his chair and hooked his hands behind his head. “That’s not good for business.”

Jack ground his teeth until his jaws hurt. Good for business was a nice way of putting ‘not good for his image’, a very Invictus way of putting it. Calling Garry out on it would have guaranteed an argument, but that wasn’t his reason for being here. He had a job, to keep the peace between the paranormals, and at least attempt to do so with the covenants in a capacity Primogen meetings couldn’t.

“I’m not here to push you into anything, Tones. This is a mission of peace.”

Apparently, he’d said something funny. The two guys playing video games stopped, paused the game, and looked at him with a raised brow. The woman stopped reading her book. Garry himself raised a brow, like he didn’t believe a word he was hearing. God damn it.

“It’s a good thing I trust Antoinette, at least a little,” Garry said, “or I’d call bullshit on this curse thing.”

Jack saw where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “I’m not going to prove to you the curse is real. I’m sure you can feel it.”

“I’m not sure what I feel, kid, but I don’t make grand decisions without knowing exactly what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on.” Tempted, so damn tempted to start yelling. “This thing with me, the curse, it has nothing to do with why we’re here. I’m here because it’s my job to play liaison. Damien’s here because he wanted to meet you face to face, and show that he’s sincere.”

“And I am sincere,” Damien said. “I’m not your enemy, Garry. All I want to do is teach the word of Longinus to those who wish to learn.”

“Pfft.” Garry got out of the chair, stepped around his desk, and sat against its front edge as he folded his arms across his chest. Defensive stance. “You stormed the Prince’s precious tower, and tried to kill her. You expect me to believe you’re just going to sit around and play preacher, boy?”

“It was mistake, and one I’m glad to have survived.”

Jack glared at Garry, but kept his mouth shut. The underground tunnel, the fortress Tony had built, had had a strange power to it supposedly, sucking people in and bending their minds to the will of the group and leader. He wasn’t sure if he believed that, but it wasn’t like it was impossible. Tony had swayed a lot of Kindred to his weird, pointless cause, and after his death, his Kindred had dispersed, left Dolareido, or joined the other covenants. Lucas had taken over the underground fortress, and history repeated itself, with Kindred flocking to him.

Now that Jack knew a thing or two about spirits, he had to wonder if they had a hand in that. Maybe the fortress had been affected by spirits, and that was why it had a strange power. It made sense, considering the brothels in Devil’s Corner worked the same way. Either way, it was rubble now, destroyed, and no longer exerting its influence on anyone.

“That doesn’t mean jack shit, Damien. My concern is that you’re a dangerous asshole who’s willing to kill to spread his religious bullshit. Don’t forget, you entitled little fucker, that I dealt with Lucas for years before you were embraced. I watched that fucker twist words, bend rules, break minds, and spread his cancerous garbage through the city. It was decades in the works, with me bitching and whining about it every Primogen meeting. I was ignored, until it got so bad that Lucas outright started fighting. Finally, the Prince and I went to war against him, and your fucking sire killed without discretion. He fucking killed the Prince’s ghouls, a couple of young, innocent girls. And this psychopath, this deranged lunatic, picked you as a childe. So how about you give me one fucking reason I should ever, ever, trust a damn thing you have to say.”

Before Damien could say a thing, Jack stepped up to Garry, and got close. Very close. In a second, only two feet separated him from the dangerous asshole, close enough Garry slid off the desk and brought his arms up, ready to fight. The three ancilla in the room got up, and Damien reached behind his neck, ready to draw his longsword.

“Did you like Viktor, Garry?” Jack said.

“What? Don’t fuck with me, kid. I’ll—”

“Did you like Viktor? Did you like that asshole basically running the Invictus?”

“Course I didn’t like that mother fucker. He—”

“Viktor sired Julias, my sire. And Julias was the best of us. My sire did more for covenant relations than anyone, and you know he was a good man. Don’t judge a childe by the sire.” In the corner of his eyes, Jack could see the three ancilla, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, ready to jump him. Two Gangrels and a Mekhet. They probably had knives hidden in their pants, and other weapons hidden in the room.

It didn’t matter. If it came to it, he was confident he could handle them, or that Damien could. They may have been a bit older than Damien, but his friend was a skilled Kindred, very skilled, and Jack trusted him to watch his back.

Unfortunately, even if Jack was strong enough to take on Garry, and Damien could hold off three ancilla, that didn’t change that they were in the heart of Carthian territory, surrounded by Carthians, and any fight that broke out was bound to summon more people.

Garry glared at him, but lowered his hands after a few painful moments of silence. “Fine. You make a good point.” Once Jack backed off, Garry turned his sights to Damien. “I’ll be watching you. Get me? Do anything even remotely out of line, and I’ll put your ashes on Maria’s doorstep. The Prince won’t interfere over me killing a fucking bishop, and you know it.”

Sighing, Jack stepped away, and looked at Damien. The Mekhet visibly relaxed, arms lowering, but his eyes stabbed at Garry like he was trying to kill him.

“Understood,” Damien said.

And they left. Jack nodded, Damien nodded, and the two of them left the room. Jack didn’t want to entertain Garry’s threat with a response; doing so with anything less than violence would be an admittance of weakness. So they left, glancing at the ready-to-fight Carthians, who were staring at them like Jack and Damien were going to attack them first. Wow, they were wound up tight.

All things considered, that went worse than Jack figured it would. He’d underestimated how aggressive the Carthians had become in the past couple years, and how comfortable Garry was becoming making his desires known. With the death of Viktor and Tony, there was little reason for Garry to not become more aggressive, if he had plans to expand the Carthians and their control.

The moment the hunters were dealt with, the Carthians were going to become a problem. Fucking lovely.

~~Eric~~

A knock at his door summoned him from his nap. Where was he? Couch. Time? 8:00PM. The sun had just set. He was still having some trouble getting used to working at night, and now that he was involved with the vampires, sleeping during any hour of the night was a thing of the past.

The rattling of keys announced who it was. Jessy walked in, dressed in her Invictus suit, complete with a tie, a hard contrast to him wearing only his boxers.

“Jessy, glad to see you’re making yourself comf—”

“You know, I think I’m in the mood for some normal sex. Don’t feel like getting stuffed like a turkey right now.” Without ceremony, she threw off her suit, as if she’d had a long day at the office, gave Kat a kiss on the head, and dragged him off to the washroom. With each step, she kicked off more clothes, tossing pants and socks, then underwear and bra, all over the hallway floor. Far be it from him to stop her, considering how her large, toned ass bounced a bit as she half walked, half hopped toward the washroom.

Eric choked on his laugh as he turned on the water of his shower. “It must hurt, doesn’t it?”

“What, having sex when you’re transformed?” Jessy shrugged, stepped under the hot water, and sighed bliss. “Dude, we talked about this. Those parts can stretch, a lot.”

“Still, it—”

“It’s fucking awesome when I’m struggling to handle it. Fuck me, I love the god damn feeling of ... like ... I’m about to burst, from how much I’m filled up.” Shrugging, she reached for the lube hooked on the wall of his bathroom, and Blushed Life. It was easy to see, with how her pale skin darkened slightly, and suddenly he could smell the odors of a living person, not ash. “I know not every girl does, but let me tell you, a lot of us want to feel overwhelmed with how much is fitting inside.”

“But not right now?”

“Not right now. Right now, I want my boyfriend to come into the shower with me, hug me, kiss me, and have tender sex with me under the hot water.” As she said it, she faced him, smiled a flirty, silly smile he wasn’t used to seeing on her, and started masturbating. She used full hand strokes, burying her clitoris and her folds in exploring fingers, far rougher than most woman would want straight off the bat.

As confusing as her proposition was to him, it was more than enough to get his blood running. Plus, watching the fit, curvy woman start to masturbate under the hot water of his shower, would be enough to get anyone’s blood pumping down between the legs.