Chapter 107

~~Eric~~

It was probably a dumb idea. Hell, he knew it was a dumb idea. But he was going to do it anyway.

Maybe he was doing this because he wanted to get some control of his life; it hadn’t been under his control in god damn forever. Maybe he was doing this to prove to Avery that he could be Uratha without her guidance. Maybe he was doing this because Jessy was obviously into it, and he could practically feel the hunger in her gaze when he announced his intentions. Going against the ‘man’ apparently did it for her. He bet, if he met her twenty years ago, she’d be listening to RATM every night during her orgies. Fucking to ‘Killing in the Name’ would have hit Eric weird for sex, especially the lyrics, but Jessy was the sort of girl to ignore lyrics when dancing, or fucking, and move to the beat.

It surprised him sometimes that she was an Invictus, and not a Carthian. Her rebellious attitude jived with what he knew about the Carthians far more than the money-loving Invictus. Then again, she liked expensive things, expensive places, expensive hobbies, and everything in between. Gift idea? Buy her a fancy suit?

Well, she had money, far more than he did. Hard to buy something expensive for her, when she could just get anything expensive that she wanted. What else did she like? Sex, she liked that. And tonight made it obvious that she was anxious to get some more bodies in the bed. She’d been having orgies for decades, and had gone solo because of him. Orgies didn’t interest him, but maybe he should try and meet her halfway. Threesomes were pretty standard, as far as Dolareido was concerned, and vampires as old as Jessy had been doing far more than threesome for years.

He’d like to get her a gift of some kind, though. They’d been dating for a while, half a year, at least, and a gift seemed like a good idea. Except, the only gifts he knew how to give girls were shit like jewelry; that’s all Sheryl ever wanted. Jewelry wouldn’t work on a woman who could buy anything that ever crossed her path. And jewelry did seem kind of shallow, in the context of their fucked up paranormal lives.

He looked at the wolf beside him. While Matthew, Arturo, and the tiny vampire who rode them were content to stay behind and follow, Jessy stayed at his side. It probably didn’t even occur to her to walk behind, despite this whole trip being his idea. For her, it was a reflex to go shoulder to shoulder with him or whoever was leading. He liked that. Last thing he wanted to be was a leader, and it was nice to have someone who’d go side-by-side with him into whatever shit show he inevitably triggered.

Needle Swords was their target. According to the two Uratha helping him tonight, Needle Swords was a spirit that’d grown in Devil’s Corner, originally a spirit of misery, that fed on some spirits of drugs. Drug spirits were not negative, and if anything, many of them shared space with spirits of pleasure or adventure, according to Matt and Art. The problem was when a spirit of agony, or misery, or depression, devoured them, or vice versa. Spirits grew either by absorbing similar spirits, or by devouring spirits that fit into the framework. A hawk spirit could devour rodent or fish spirits to become bigger and stronger. It could absorb other bird spirits to become stronger as well, and absorb their natures along with them.

So a misery spirit had devoured or absorbed some drug spirits, and had its nature altered in the process. Now, it was a pretty fucked up spirit with a specific agenda, while also being quite strong. It was becoming a menace. A perfect target for Uratha looking to keep a city healthy.

Spirits had bans and banes. A ban defined the spirit’s behavior, what actions it could and couldn’t take. Spirits generally operated on a barter system, trading favors for favors, or objects for objects, and were bound by their agreements; usually bound, Art insisted. More specific bans included things like, a fire spirit not being able to cross water, or a spirit of surveillance being bound to give up their secrets if you knew the password.

Banes were actual ways to hurt spirits, to a far greater degree than normal physical violence could. Light could hurt spirits of darkness. Water could hurt fire spirits. It got more complicated, the more complicated and stronger the spirit. A spirit of the darkness of caves where insects made their home, to whom a village had routinely sacrificed goats to, would be a very strange spirit that would require research to figure out. Maybe it could be harmed by purified river water specifically from a nearby stream, blessed by the village who did the sacrificing. Maybe it could be harmed by gathering some of the insects that nested in the cave in the physical world, burning them, and creating a refined powder. Or maybe it could be hurt fire, too.

Figuring shit out was a part of an Uratha’s job, according to the others. But it wasn’t always necessary. Werewolves were half spirit by nature, and their teeth and claws did damage to spirits like fire did to vampires, and silver did to werewolves. Unfortunately for the werewolves, claws and teeth didn’t do the trick on particularly powerful spirits, not very well, at least. Art insisted that, if looking to take something down that was very strong, finding its bane was a requirement.

Needle Swords was not strong, but not weak. They could take him down with their claws and teeth, according to his guides. If they couldn’t, they could always go ask around and figure out what was the creature’s bane, asking spirits for information, and having to do favors to get it. The original water rapids of economics: trading favors. What sort of thing could be the bane of a spirit of pain and drugs? AA? How the fuck could you distill AA into a bottle so you could—maybe get one of those badges or coins people in rehab programs got? That wasn’t a bad idea, actually.

He was excited. He tried to hide it, but Jessy saw, and she bumped wolf shoulder to wolf shoulder with him. Yeah, this was kind of fun. And, it was kind of fulfilling. It felt good to be out, doing this, hunting down something he wanted to kill. There was an itch inside him he’d been struggling to scratch, and this hunt was doing a damn good job scratching it. Hopefully a successful hunt would wipe the itch away, and he could breathe easy again until the next itch arrived.

Natasha wrapped them in the Cloak of Night as they entered the busy half of South Side. They hopped up onto the roof of Doc Omala’s, a fat building several stories high, and they looked around at the skyline of Dolareido. The sky in the Hisil, especially in the entertainment center of South Side, was a beautiful concoction of colors that almost looked sinful, as if someone had found the colors to represent sex and alcohol, and painted the night clouds with them. Or, it just had the Las Vegas color palette, he supposed.

The Blood Tower stood not too far away, and everyone took a moment to stare at it. The Prince’s tower, a place Eric had been to only once, and it was a place he was glad to avoid. Antoinette was a scary lady, the sort of woman who’d rip your throat out and not even flinch, if she felt it was an optimal strategy in whatever game she was playing. The Hisil version of the tower did a decent job of representing how fucked up a place it was, as the tower leaked blood down its sides in such volume, the tower looked red. A far cry from the Elysium the Prince supposedly said her tower, and the grounds around it, were. No violence allowed. Yeah right.

Shock and awe over, the group looked down through the skylight as they transformed back into their human forms.

“I don’t know much about this place, in the normal world,” Eric said.

The skylight, what would have been nothing more than an outward curved piece of glass in the real world, was larger, wider, and stuck out of the building rooftop like a dome, in the Hisil. Yeah, it was a feature that attracted the eye, and the Hisil’s reflection of it emphasized that.

Inside, Doc Omala’s was a strip club, through and through. There was a stage with several stripper poles, and the Hisil had the poles larger, and glowing. Eric tried to not laugh as he dug up a memory, his first trip to a strip club. It’d blown his mind when he realized it was the pole that rotated.

Eric sniffed deep as he leaned in over the glass to peer. A couple of large pleasure spirits were flowing around on the floor, and some other spirits were as well, more of those dragonfly-looking spirits. But, the spirit that defined the room, was definitely the spirit on the stage. It wasn’t Needle Swords, but some sort of spirit that obviously demanded to be the center of attention, something that thrived on being in the spotlight.

And it was beautiful. Nothing about it looked feminine or masculine, but it was humanoid, tall, and a long flowing cape glittering with all the colors of the rainbow hung from its shoulders. It drifted from one pole to the other, and showed long, beautiful legs, far longer than a human’s, and colored reflective silver. Its face was smooth, lacked any features, and Eric found himself staring at it and its silvery color. It was like, some sort of tall alien creature, that somehow had managed to find a way to look beautiful with its smooth body, despite looking nothing like a human except for a basic humanoid shape.

It was putting on a show for the watching spirits, and it was doing a good job, dancing, swaying, and sliding around the polls. Everyone watched, entranced, and that included the five people on the rooftop.

“That’s Dancing Light,” Matthew said. “It’s pretty old, been around for a few decades at least. Thrives on being—”

“The center of attention, obviously,” Jessy said. “Strangely beautiful, isn’t it?”

Everyone nodded, Eric included.

Art gestured to the scene below them. “It’s been making deals with Needle Swords. See it, in the corner?”

Eric strained his senses, but it was difficult to ignore all the lights and movement in the strip club. Bright colors and flashing lights, spurts of utter darkness, and glittering that would have put any glitter crafts to shame, meant the dark corners were hard to peer into. But he squinted, and forced his senses to focus on the corner Art gestured to.

Right, this spirit, he remembered this spirit, from the last time he was in the Hisil. Natasha recognized it too, and she made a tiny growl that was half intimidating, half adorable.

The spirit was tall, not unlike the dancing spirit on the stage. Unlike the hypnotically beautiful, silver and rainbow creature dancing, Needle Swords was an ugly fucker. A gray cloak filled with holes covered most of its gangly limbs. It wore a plague doctor mask, the kind with a beak, and looked like a crow or raven’s face. And its fingers weren’t fingers at all. They were needles.

“Plan?” Jessy said.

Art shrugged. “Well, we can walk in and take him out, nice and quick. Black Blood will have our hides for that, though.”

“Black Blood,” Jessy said, shivering. “What a spooky motherfucker.” Right, she’d seen Black Blood, when it rescued them from Sándor’s nightmare. What a way to first meet the fucked up creature.

Spooky didn’t really describe what he felt when that giant black skeleton crawled out of oblivion, the last time Eric saw it. A bit of awe, sure, but mostly abject terror. Black Blood didn’t feel or smell like any of the spirits he’d seen in the Hisil. There was something else to it, something that felt very not-spirit like. Even that weird, black blob creature Eric had found at the prison, while emanating the strange aura that did qualify as ‘spooky’, didn’t have the odd aura Black Blood carried with it.

Better to just avoid it if it made an appearance, and do their best to meet its demands, if they somehow violated the rules of the city. The ‘rules of the city’ were vague at best, and he wasn’t looking forward to figuring them out the hard way. It was likely the spirit’s ban, and it’d follow its ban without hesitation; it had to.

“So, assuming that if we storm the strip joint,” Eric said, “and we piss off Black Blood, or break its rules or whatever, we ... probably shouldn’t do that.”

They all nodded.

“Then, m-maybe we bait it out?” Natasha said.

Matthew scratched the scruff of his short beard as he considered. “Needle Swords will want to make a deal. More than most spirits, making deals will be a part of its nature.”

“Course,” Jessy said, “it’s a fucking drug dealer. Might as well be pimping with its off hand.”

Eric almost corrected her, but decided to keep his mouth shut. The spirit wasn’t a dealer, but someone who thrived on the pain that drug addiction could cause. Plenty of people in Dolareido enjoyed drugs, and sometimes even the hard stuff, without letting it build into a destructive habit. Plenty of people, on the other hand, did, and Needle Swords was probably there to enhance their pain and devour the essence it created. It wanted to spread sadness and torment, not prostitutes.

Eric grit his teeth and clenched his fists as he felt anger course through him. Yeah, he wanted this fucker out of his city.

His city? When did he start thinking of Dolareido as his city? He grew up here, sure, but he never thought of it in those terms. That was a new development, something that came with being a wolf he supposed. Territory, home, a den, with food to eat and kin to protect.

“If Natasha is comfortable with it,” Art said, “we could let her make contact.”

“M-Me?”

“You or Jessy. Needle will be suspicious of us, but Kindred in Dolareido get their fingers mixed up in the same sort of shit Needle’s into. It knows that Kindred have started getting into the Hisil I bet, so it might believe you if you said you had a deal to make. And spirits love to trade, make deals, and make contracts they think they can twist to be a profit for them.” How delightfully similar to humans.

The two women looked at each other, frowning.

“We try and keep Dolareido from becoming too slimy a place, you know,” Jessy said.

“Y-Yeah. It’s not like w-we just ... it’s not like Tijuana.”

It was Art’s turn to frown, his and Matt’s. Eric, on the other hand, was confused. The Tijuana remark seemed almost random.

“I can’t go two feet without smelling how fucked up this city can be, Tash,” Art said. Oh, Tash had picked up a previous conversation she’d had with Art.

“B-But it’s not nearly as bad as other cities.”

“So? It could be better.”

Eric nodded with Art’s words. Mistake. Jessy glared at him, and he managed a small shrug, earlier anger over Needle Swords vanishing. Uh oh.

His girlfriend turned her frustration toward Arturo, thank god. “Dude, Dolareido’s crime scene is minor, and that includes the drug scene. Be happy we don’t encourage rampant drug abuse; people lost on a high or sleeping dead drunk, are easy meals for vamps.”

“Yeah, I know. Kinda grew up in that scene.”

Oh, that’s what this was about. Arturo grew up in a city where vampires exploited the drug scene, and Dolareido had some symptoms of that. Eric wasn’t ready to blame the vampires for that; people were people, and people were stupid. But Arturo was.

Tash opened her mouth, but Jessy jumped in again.

“We let the kine be, Art. Much as we use them for blood, we also let them do what they want to do. The fuck do you want? For us to hold their hands and tell them they should make decisions with the future in mind? Want us to make the city squeaky clean, top to bottom? Looking to be Big Brother?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I think that we should be doing more for them than just taking from them.”

“Taking?” She got in close, and practically bared her fangs at him. “Dolareido’s a great city, and we made it that way. The humans here are enjoying the fruits of our labors.”

“So it’s a gilded cage. Doesn’t change the fact that the humans here are at your mercy, and you’re letting them get into some deep shit.” Art pointed down through the skylight at Needle Swords. “If Eric wasn’t here, you’d be content to let this fucker keep doing what it’s doing, spreading its misery. Easy meals, right?”

“Is the spirit possessing anyone?”

“No.”

“Then the people getting into this shit were making their own choices. Just because they’re being influenced doesn’t mean it’s not their responsibility. The fuck? Come on. You let a drunk man off for punching someone, just because he was drunk? Or not break up with your girlfriend, if she was fucking behind your back, just because she was horny and you weren’t around?” This time she did bare her fangs, and hissed a little, enough to make everyone shut up. “Humans aren’t children. They might seem like it, compared to us, but they aren’t. Let them make their own fucking mistakes. It’s not our job to hold their hand, never was.”

This was an argument Eric did not expect. He knew Art came from Tijuana, and the vamps there didn’t run the city with as gentle a hand as Antoinette. Now, he was getting a clearer picture. Kindred, in powerful positions, abusing entire groups of poor people, downtrodden and desperate, and setting them up for lifelong, life-destroying addictions. Kindred turning kine into slaves, and using them in turf wars, until the bodies piled high. Kindred killing kine, and if the horror stories were true, maybe harvesting their organs, too.

Eric’s childhood, pretty cliché for a poor black kid growing up in a big city, paled in comparison to the horrors Art must have witnessed.

Art didn’t look convinced by Jessy, or shocked to silence for very long. “Like I said, if it wasn’t for Eric, you’d let this spirit continue doing what it’s doing, and ignore that it’s helping ruin lives. Wouldn’t you? Where’s your compassion?”

Anyone else would have been caught off guard by a comment like that, but Jessy didn’t flinch or blink.

“Eric wants to try and make this city a better place, I say all the power to him. Hell, I’ll help, cause I happen to like the man. But I haven’t heard him blame us Kindred for the state of the city.” She leaned in closer to Art again, and while she may not have flinched, Eric did. That was her fight face. Eric had seen it, when they were brawling with the Carthians not long ago. “You, on the other hand, seem quick to blame us. Don’t drag your hate of vamps into this. We already show kine more compassion than most Kindred do, here in Dolareido.”

Matthew looked like a child, trapped between his two arguing parents. Natasha looked like she wanted to join in, and maybe defend someone, but couldn’t figure out who. Side with the friend or the boyfriend. And it wasn’t like they didn’t both have decent points to make. The Kindred could have been doing a better job, and turn Dolareido from an already pretty great city, into a borderline utopia. But that wasn’t their responsibility. Hell, vampires fed on people, and it was obvious a lot of aspects of Dolareido were there specifically to make that easier, even if it did mean a potentially harder life for some of the humans. Vampires were higher up on the food chain, after all. It wasn’t like Eric could completely argue against that; farms worked under the same premise.

Except, he didn’t used to be a chicken or a cow. He used to be human. Same with vampires.

“Um, m-m-maybe we should ... t-talk about this later?” Natasha said. Matthew nodded vehemently.

With a grunt, Jessy and Art nodded. Maybe it was because she was a Gangrel, but it was obvious to Eric Jessy looked for arguments, at least when Uratha were involved. He didn’t really mind. It was nice, having a girlfriend who voiced her opinions honestly, even if she did get a bit overly aggressive about it. Better that than passive aggressive.

“I think,” Eric said, “Jessy should make an offer to it. Draw it out to ... Devil’s Corner, I suppose. What should Jessy offer it? And, once we get it alone in Devil’s Corner, should we just jump it? Or—”

“You will do no such thing.”

Ah shit. The group of them looked to the roof edge, and Jessy almost jumped back, as a crystal blue wave flowed up and over, onto the roof. And angel wings came with it.

~~Natasha~~

“Flowing Sanctuary,” Tash whispered.

“Indeed.” The tall goddess of flowing water and angel wings — two types of spirits with angel wings! — flowed over to them, and hit them with water. For a moment, Tash wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or if it’d be actual water that hit her. It was. That begged a billion questions about what it was that a spirit’s body was made of, because there was no question that all five of the paranormals on the roof were now knocked onto their ass, and soaked.

Uh oh. Uh oh uh oh. She looked between the group, the skylight that was now covered in water, and the enormous water spirit that had risen to join them on the rooftop. Her Cloak of Night was shattered, and it wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep something as huge and majestic as Flow hidden anyway.

Flowing Sanctuary really was a beautiful creature, the very definition of a water goddess, a human-shaped torso of water so pristine, it was crytal. Its angel wings started blue, and turned into white mist at the tips of their feathers. No arms, but small waterfalls for arms that turned into the same sort of mist her feathers did. No legs, but instead a slow-swirling vortex of water, like a reverse whirlpool that supported Flow’s body. She had no facial features, but at certain angles, and when the water flowed just right, Tash was sure she could see two glowing white slits for eyes.

The fact Flow and Safe both had angel wings was a pattern she’d noticed before, and now that she thought about it, both spirits had similar motifs. Flowing Sanctuary provided a form of protection for her Uratha clan; assuming her name was indicative of her nature. Safe of Grey Street and her fellow, younger spirit, were literal spirits of safety that hung around suburbs where kids grew up. It wasn’t like kids couldn’t feel safe in an apartment, but there was something unique and powerful about owning your own home, and the spirits must have picked up on that. Why they both manifested with angel wings, she wasn’t quite sure.

“The fuck?” Jessy said, getting up from her butt and back onto her feet. “Whoa, what’s this?”

“This,” Arturo said, grumbling as he also stood up, and spent a little time wringing out his t-shirt, “is Flowing Sanctuary, our pack’s totem.”

Jessy held up a hand, not dissimilar to how Tash would have. Maybe Jessy was picking up the habit; more likely, just mirroring Tash’s mannerisms to get answers.

“Totem?”

“She’s part of the pack,” Matt said. “She helps us, and we help her.”

Help a spirit, a spirit named Flowing Sanctuary. If spirits always tried to spread their influence, and create more of what they were reflections of, then Flowing Sanctuary would probably try and create a sanctuary of some kind. Or maybe, being that it was some hybrid of water and protection, it was too complicated for Natasha to figure out with such simple labels.

Jessy raised her hand again. “Help her with...?”

“None of your concern,” Flow said, powerful voice almost booming. “But I will not let my pack mates destroy the tenuous truce we hold with Black Blood, on some flight of fancy. And I assume this ridiculous plan is yours, Eric Tanverson?” The water goddess pointed one of her—its mist arms at Eric.

“It is.” Eric wiped some of the water off his clothes, before he walked up to the enormous water spirit, and looked it in the face. “And I’m not part of your pack. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Can’t I?”

Natasha didn’t have to say it. The look on Eric’s face may as well have blared it out with a loud horn, and comedic sound effect. Mistake.

A crashing wave smashed into the roof. Flowing Sanctuary did not pull punches, and Tash couldn’t help but think about real water, as a colossal, heavy wave of liquid smashed into her and her friends, sending them off the building like leafs to the wind. Real water was impartial, and some might say, even cruel. As much as Flowing Sanctuary looked like something that would protect those that it cared for, it also attacked them with the same callousness and total indifference of a monsoon. Or, maybe the better comparison was angel. Much as its angel wings reminded her of Safe and how joyful it’d been, Flow was quickly reminding her of angels from the Old Testament.

Thankfully the spirit didn’t throw them out onto the main street. Instead, it tossed them onto the back alley that separated Doc Omala’s from the other entertainment buildings. Except, there wasn’t much room in the alley, only six feet wide, and to Flow, that wasn’t much room at all. As the group of them plummeted toward the asphalt below, water poured over them, crashing downward faster than gravity allowed, and encompassed the five paranormals.

With zero concern for avoiding damaging its passengers, Flow threw them out from the alley onto a distant street, dumping them into an intersection. Nearby car and street spirits swerved out of the way, and left tire tracks behind as they sped off as fast as they could. Crow spirits fled to higher perches. Nearby rat spirits unleashed a choir of shrieks before scampering into the sewers. Random spirits that were drifting between the warped, half glowing, half lit up buildings, scattered and disappeared into the buildings they’d been leaving.

The water drained away, as quickly as it’d arrived, and Flow stood before them, tall, and immutable.

“Avery expected this,” it said. “I said she did not trust her Uratha, if she thought them capable of this. Silly me, for not believing her.”

The group of them slowly got up, grumbling and groaning with each step. From wet to dripping soaked in seconds.

“Shit, really?” Matt said.

“Fuckin’ boss.” Grumbling louder than necessary, Arturo rung out the base of his shirt, again. “We weren’t going to violate any truce, Flow.”

“You know very well Black Blood would not accept this action.”

Art threw his arms up. “You know damn well that’s not how it works. We weren’t going to disturb the peace, and that’d keep Black Blood happy.”

The water angel shook its head. “You underestimate the connections of this city, Uratha. As usual, you do not appreciate the politics of the Hisil. I can forgive Eric for his ignorance, but I will not forgive you.”

“I don’t—”

And up Arturo went. Natasha stepped back and gulped hard, as water poured out from Flow’s base, crashed into Arturo, and literally threw him into the air. Thirty feet into the air and then down again. Flow didn’t brace his fall this time, but Art was ready for it, and he landed on his hands and feet. Big as he was, it was still a rough landing, and he collapsed onto his side with the impact. Thud.

With a squeak, Tash ran over to him and helped get him onto his knees. “I thought you said F-F-Flow was part of the pack?”

“It is. That doesn’t mean it gets along with us all the time.”

“Avery and I get along beautifully.” With a sigh, Flow began to circle them. A fairly theatrical feat, considering they were in the center of an intersection, and spirits were watching them from a safe distance. “You two troublemakers, on the other hand, are a problem. You disturb the sanctuary I seek to create.”

Matthew, still on his feet, got between Flow and Art. “Alright, we get it, you don’t like us. Can we calm down?”

“I do not think so. You two need to be taught a lesson.”

Jessy stepped up, earning some raised eyebrows from everyone. Well, Natasha knew her friend would throw herself into harm’s way, but the boy’s were surprised. Even Eric blinked at her several times.

“So, uh,” Jessy said, “we’re making quite a bit of ruckus out here. Isn’t Black Blood going to come around and, I dunno, smack us?”

Everyone went silent, and looked around. Considering the power of the spirit, Tash did expect it—him to arrive the moment he felt a disturbance in ‘his’ city.

Where was Black Blood?

~~Damien~~

Never, in a million years, did Damien expect to find the horrors he did. But the dark forest proved to be the thorny barrier that tried to keep prying eyes from witnessing its secrets. A forest worthy of the Brothers Grimm. Now that the werewolf and the demon ripped that barrier apart, the secrets of the forest were laid open before them.

Jacob would have been envious of the secrets they found.

At Jack and Clara’s feet, Damien could see black soot; the dust Angela used as a barrier in the hospital. Just inside that, was a glowing amber line, and it circled the small forest clearing all the way around, same as the black soot. It was a barrier Damien was all too familiar with. Just within the circle, there were twelve trees, fat, twisted, black, withered, and barbed. Each tree carried a body, a naked corpse, crucified, nails hammered in through the ankles and wrists. Their stomachs were cut open, and contents spilled at the base of each tree. It reeked, and the nightmare was content to have flies buzz around the corpses.

“Your work?” Jack said with a cackle. The demon kid gestured to the tree near him, and then to the hunters beyond the barrier.

“Like this even compares to the shit you’ve done!” one of the hunters said.