Chapter 14

~~Beatrice~~

“So you’ll do it?” Jacob said.

“Yeah I’ll fucking do it. But if this Damien is as sneaky as you think he is, you think I can really just creep into his place and follow him around?” She clicked her teeth together.

“I know you can.” Psycho-man circled around the skull alter so it was between them, and began to move his hands over the bowl of rotting old blood. “That’s part of the reason I brought you, after all. You have a lot of power, strength, and that animal instinct, unlike those worthless fucking leeches.” He laughed then, and started to wave his hands over the blood. “And you’ll have help.”

“Help?”

He nodded then, and with a motion so casual, sliced open his wrist. She winced, he cut deep, but it wasn’t enough to make Jacob even blink. The dark, thick blood of a Kindred started to drip from the unnatural wound in a slow, mesmerizing flow. When it fell into the pool of old blood, it pushed away the gross mess, and overtook the bowl of blood. Eventually, the blood was renewed.

And then Jacob started to hum.

“ ... what the fuck are you doing?”

He held up a finger then, and gave her a quick glare that shut her right up. He was serious. Scary serious. When he looked down at the blood, the look was so solemn it made her insides clench, and it only got worse when he put his hand into the blood. He kept humming, louder, and louder, until he found the frequency to make the very cave resonate.

She took a step back, but Jacob’s other hand rose, and gestured her to step closer. His joking smile was gone, and now she was standing in front of an elder. And he was bleeding his blood, his vitae right into an alter bowl of skulls in front of her. Suddenly, the bones on the cave walls didn’t seem so ridiculous.

As the weight of his hums made the cave almost vibrate, she couldn’t help but get drawn into the awesome but overwhelming, sinister, and horrific nature of it all. Bones, blood, bleeding, dark words that had no meaning, it all combined into a surreal array of theatrical notes. She could almost hear the chanting of naked, ancient Kindred dancing around the corpses of their kills.

Scary stories spread by fellow Carthians about Jacob and his dark arts were the things young neonates talked about. What else were freshly embraced going to do? They sat around in the dark, afraid of the elders, and talked about the unusual, disturbing things they’d heard those elders could do. There’d been talk about the Lancea et Sanctum, long gone, and their strange works of God. But the stories about Jacob were so much more visceral, because Jacob was real, and none of them knew anything about the Circle of the Crone. Stories about something they could do with blood, and magic. Something called Crúac.

And now she was here, in his dark ritual. It was Crúac. The whole cave was made as Jacob’s shrine, and the altar in the center that had seemed moderately innocent at first now loomed before her like an evil god. It was a sacrifice alter, and the weight of that only now dawned on her.

What sort of fucked up shit had she gotten herself into? Her insides were howling, like wolves howling at the moon. She stepped closer to Jacob then, because her inner-beast demanded it, and she watched with wide eyes. Something called to her, something wild and animal, hungry and territorial, savage and pure. The sounds of those hums danced up and down her spine and made her whole body tingle.

When Jacob reached out to place a bloody hand against her face, she didn’t even flinch, she only closed her eyes and let the elder put a hand print of his own blood on her face. And just like that, it was as if someone had injected the blood of a god straight into her withered, undead veins. She stumbled for a moment while the power worked its way up and down her legs and into her claws; it even made her teeth vibrate.

“What ... wh—”

“You’ll have my mastery of the cloak of night, for tonight. Use it well. I want to know everything about this Damien, and now that Lucas is back, I am sure he’ll let something show.”

“Your ... right, right, ok. Why not do it yourself though?”

Jacob shook his head and idly scratched at the gash made in his own flesh. “I will be distracting Lucas.”

She gulped. Jacob was putting a whole lot of faith in her. Why? Why not the others? The psycho bastard was going to ‘distract’ some other elder, while she fucking followed his childe?

It was some serious next level shit.

“I’ll try.”

“Ha. Might want to do better than try. You fuck up, and Lucas may just rip you to shreds.” Jacob shrugged, gave a large psycho smile, and dismissed her with a wave. “I knew him, and that was fifty years before his torpor. Who knows what kind of man he is now.”

How long had it been since she’d felt so nervous? Must have been since she was turned. Back then she was just a mess of self-loathing, thrust into a fucked up world, and only Garry showed her an ounce of compassion. And Garry was a scary guy. But now? Now she was dragging her ass through the vents of Tony’s old underground lair, with a Crúac bloodmagic symbol on her face giving her elder levels of badassness, so she could spy on a super dangerous elder’s childe.

Nervous did not begin to describe how she felt.

Fighting on the streets, pushing around Invictus assholes treading on Carthian territory, and worrying about how she’d get her next meal were the things she was used to. Now she was neck deep in the shit. Jacob had said he knew her, that she was sick of being on the sidelines, and back then this was exactly the sort of shit she would have wanted. She had stakes in the game now and some power to go with it. She got what she wanted, but not so sure she wanted what she got.

The vents were built into the structure of the ceiling of the tunnels. How Tony had managed to get all this shit built she could not guess, but then he had centuries to work with. And Jacob knew it all. Jacob had probably arranged the entrance into the vents being built somehow too. Her life was in his palm, and she could only hope the crazy fuck knew what he was doing.

Beneath her, there were ghouls wandering around, all very new to the whole thing. They sat in the tunnels of metal walls and discussed with each other their new masters. She peaked down through grates to watch, and spotted several Kindred who walked with them. From how the conversation was going, the ghouls seemed to be the servants of the Kindred, which was typical.

What wasn’t so typical was how they talked about God. Not a god, but God. Kindred serving God? The fuck kind of shit was that? Jacob had said Lucas was an Archbishop for the Lancea et Sanctum, so maybe this shit was the norm back before her time, but now it sounded like cult talk.

“Sam said that the Archbishop said that Vince is doing well! He was sent out to scare some kine into thinking the devil was haunting them, and...”

Beatrice rolled her eyes, and moved on. What a sick, twisted joke. Kindred scaring kine into being obedient little religious folk? Ugh.

Vents were not easy to move through. The movies made it seem easy, but when you don’t have the proper traction of feet, and you have to be quiet, squirming and wriggling through vents is a bitch. Whatever weird blood spell Jacob had cast had definitely affected her, made her cloak of night stronger, but that didn’t mean she could make a bunch of noise. Not when there were other Kindred walking around beneath her. Not when this mysterious Damien character was such a question mark.

It really was a weird thing, now that she thought about it. Jacob had only just learned about this Damien apparently, and she’d never heard about him from any other Kindred. Who the fuck was he? If he was Lucas’s childe and Lucas had been in torpor for half a century, then Damien was at least fifty years old. It’s not like a Kindred just hopped city to city, so Damien must have been hiding out in Dolareido for fifty years.

Jacob had said sneaky Mehket. No joke.

She continued on.

“Jonathan, you spend far too much time worrying about things beyond your control. Your purpose is clear, and the Archbishop and I will help you with any problems you may have serving in that purpose.”

Archbishop and I? Jackpot. Beatrice came to a stop over one vent and peered down into the room beneath her, and found more than one Kindred gathering there. She could put her face onto the grate, nose against the metal, and as long as she trusted Jacob’s blood magic, she would be able to remain hidden. Hopefully.

“Serve your sire. She will teach you how to seduce kine with but a glance, and you can feed upon them as God demands we should. You are the wolf, and they are God’s sheep.”

She blinked down at the one talking. So that was Damien? He seemed normal enough, with a cool haircut and half-shaved head. His voice was soft, but confident. He seemed ... unremarkable. Even her inner-beast barely noticed him. He was just another Kindred.

And then he was gone. She was staring right at him, analyzing him, and then he was gone. Poof. She almost made a noise, bit her tongue, and pushed her face closer to the grate.

“I am surprised. It has been not even two weeks since Tony’s death, and already scouts have come for his nesting grounds?”

He’d moved. What the fuck, the fucker had moved, and she could only barely see him in the large room, at the doorway of what looked like a tunnel.

Two other Kindred were there, and she knew these two: the bitch Jessy, and the pussy Natasha. What were the Invictus doing here? Natasha started talking then, and Beatrice could just see her and her partner’s back, facing Damien. The speedy fucker must have moved to block the doorway.

Natasha said a few quiet words, and Beatrice strained to hear her. That Invictus was always quiet, and she stuttered like a scared mouse probably would have. Fuck she was infuriating.

But then Natasha shot the guy. Beatrice barely even noticed the movement, but like a sly snake, the tiny Mehket girl drew her pistol and put a hole straight into Damiens’ forehead. He crumbled like a sack of potatoes. The brains and dark, Kindred blood that splattered out behind his skull turned into bits of hot ash in the air.

And then all hell broke loose.

Beatrice was so focused on the two Invictus and their unexpected appearance, she hadn’t even noticed the growing crowd. They threw themselves at the Invictus, but Jessy wasted no time throwing herself at them. Fuck Jessy was such a mindless animal, and that Gangrel side of her came out with no hesitation, claw mutation and all.

Beatrice took a moment to look at her claws, and then the claws of the wild woman in the orgy of punches and kicks. Jessy spared no effort, and tore into the young Kindred and ghouls alike as if they were fresh meat. They kind of were, even the Kindred with a few years on them, and Beatrice winced each time one of them was bent in half by the barbarian.

Damien got back up though. He healed fast. Very fast. Before Beatrice could figure out what was going on, Jessy just went psycho and grew claws straight out of a monster horror flick. She jumped at Damien, and he started fighting her off with a sword, and then it was Natasha against the mob. They tried to pin her down, but just like the insane, reckless fuck she was, Jessy jumped in and killed them. It was fucking chaos contained to a few seconds.

Holy mother fucking of shit. Day one of her new sneaky sneak Circle of the Crone ways and she was already watching two covenants shit down each other’s throat.

“Stop them! Stop them! Lucas is here. He’ll want them!”

Beatrice looked back down, and her whole body went stiff. Lucas wasn’t supposed to be coming. Jacob was supposed to keep him distracted! Fuck fuck fuck. She started to creep backward, but her eyes fell back down through the grate to Damien. The two Invictus were running, but Damien wasn’t pursuing. He’d collapsed and sat down on a chair with his hands to his chest. The barbarian bitch must have landed a hit on him with her claws. It was a wonder he hadn’t been split into separate pieces.

Leave, Beatrice. Lucas is coming, and you have no fucking clue if you can stay hidden from an elder. But of course she couldn’t leave, not when all the tasty, succulent information she wanted was right there in front of her. Heh, wow, first day on the job and she was already addicted to the rush of the Danse Macabre.

So she kept quiet, and did her best to stay hidden with the cloak of night. Jacob said Lucas and him were friends, so maybe she’d be able to talk her way out of a second death?

~~Julias~~

The three of them sat in silence.

Not true silence, of course. His fellow members of the triumvirate were busy with their smart phones and tablets. He had to give them credit, the two elders had managed to adopt modern technology to a degree Viktor never could. They weren’t exactly capable of multi-tasking like younger Kindred, but with their devices they could handle large, complicated webs of data. Both of them used their smart phones for only that, and talking.

The thought of the Nosferatu ghost woman playing a match-3 game made him smirk.

“The ball the Prince is hosting seems like it is in good faith. Master Terry says as much, though he is definitely biased,” Julias said.

“I’m sure he is.” Michael gave a hearty chuckle, but his eyes never raised from his tablet. From what Julias could see, the large Gangrel was reading reports on the affairs of Xnomina. “Your childe has proved efficient in both Xnomina’s dealings, and at making friends in high places.”

“He has. The former I predicted, the latter not so much.”

“We all change when embraced,” Maria Turio said, and she reached up with one hand to idly stroke her flat, black hair. She could never truly hide her corpse-from-the-water look, it was her curse after all, but she dressed for her role and was all the more intimidating for it. “As for the ball, you know the Prince is simply looking to gauge the feelings of the Kindred population here. The death of two elders would make any city’s Prince worry for political change.”

Julias gave a small nod and leaned back in his chair with a hand on his chin. “Agreed. I plan to go too, if only to do the same. Will you two?”

They both considered, but eventually gave Julias a nod and returned to their devices. For a moment, Julias thought of them as children addicted to their smart phones, as many kine were these days, but the two elders were anything but addicted to mindless distraction. Their finger strokes were determining the outcomes of many merges of companies, acquisitions of product and resources, and other elements of Xnomina Julias wasn’t even familiar with.

He thought of the ball. He’d go to test the political climate, and to keep an eye on Jack as well. Beatrice though ... he wanted to go with Beatrice. The damn pain-in-his-ass Carthian was really stirring up all sorts of strange feelings in him. Joy and recklessness combined. He thought of her in an evening gown that highlighted her ridiculously amazing legs and ass, and that too put a smile on his face. Elysium was open to kine, so she’d have to hide her face to stop one from seeing her Nosferatu elements, but a silky face veil would look foreign, exotic, and very sexy.

Then the door opened.

“Madame Vola, Madame Herrington ... what the hell happened?” Julias got up and just stared at them. This was not good.

They were all back at the Xnomina HQ, in the same scenario as when Julias gave the two women their order. Maria and Michael were sitting at the center table of the office, and Julias was standing while leaning back against the table.

The exact same, except that Natasha and Jessy had limped in. Kindred didn’t carry wounds like a kine, being a walking corpse and all, but he could see it in their uneven steps and their worn faces. They were more pale than usual, they winced as they moved, and even Jessy held a hand up to her neck every so often to hide the obvious gash.

“Mister Mire,” they said together. The could barely even muster the energy to sound professional.

“What. Happened?”

They looked to each other, and the shared glance of guilt was obvious.

“Sir,” Natasha said, “we ... there was...”

“It was the Lancea et Sanctum, Mire.” Jessy took a step forward, and met his upset gaze. “Tony’s old brood are now a bunch of religious nuts.”

“Truly?” This time it was Maria to speak up, and everyone in the room looked to her. The ghost woman sounded genuinely surprised. Excited, maybe?

Natasha managed a tiny nod. “Yes, Madame Turio.”

Michael tapped his fingers on the table loud enough to grab their attention. “Hold on. The Lancea et Sanctum is back? What about our missing neonates?”

“They’ve ... they’ve joined,” Natasha said, and looked down at her hands. Even Jessy went quiet, and looked down.

Julias too looked down, and grit his teeth. For fledglings to change covenants was not unheard of, and the state of peace in Dolareido allowed it, but it was always painful for a sire to see their childe leave their ways. But who could just randomly sway dozens of young Kindred, three of which were Invictus, to join the Second Estate?

“ ... it was Lucas, wasn’t it?” Julias said. He reached up and tapped his chin, but his eyes looked back over his shoulder to Maria. She looked away, and for just a second, he saw a small twitch of delight on her ghostly lips.

Viktor had confided in Julias more information than his council realized.

Natasha tilted her head a little. “Lucas, sir? We heard that name when we were down there.”

“Lucas is alive then?” Michael got up and started to pace around, but his slightly hunched, animal posture made it look more so like a stalking wolf. “The Archbishop survived the Prince’s purge.”

Jessy and both Natasha raised their head, blinked at each other, and looked at Michael together. “Archbishop, sire?”

“You were both embraced mere months after the purge, and we were not to discuss the Archbishop or his Bishops and priests.” Julias gave a small dismissing wave of his hand, but the memories of the purge were still there. Memories of the sheriff, his sword, and the ashes of dead priests. Memories of Lucas, a Mehket so persuasive and compelling, he should have been Ventrue.

“Archbishop Lucas of the Lancea et Sanctum. He ran the Second Estate here, and was a frequent thorn in the Prince’s side.” Michael chuckled and folded his arms across his chest. “We thought he may have escaped the purge, but we had no proof.”

“Is ... is he an ally then?” Jessy said. She had a guilty look on her face, and Julias squinted at her. She avoided his gazed, shuffled her feet, dripping guilt all over the floor.

“The Invictus and the Lancea et Sanctum are almost always allies. We are the First Estate, and they are the Second Estate for a reason.” Maria got up, moved to the display wall and brought up the digital overhead display of the city. “The Archbishop had twelve churches, here and here, and here.” Elysium and the Prince’s lair lied in the center of the city, more or less, with the Xnomina HQ – where they stood – not too far off. The churches circled it nicely. “If things had continued as they were half a century ago, the current Prince would probably not be Antoinette.”

Julias gave a small sigh. There had been a purge for more than one reason, but he did not disagree with the Prince’s more known explanation: the religious pursuits of Lucas bordered on mindless zealotry. Julias had been quite happy with their removal, while his sire had most definitely been not.

“Did you speak with Lucas then?” Maria said, and approached the two right hands. Both Jessy and Natasha avoided eye contact with her most of all.

“Um, Madame T-T-Turio, we ... um...”

“There was a fight,” Jessy said, and she forced her eyes to Maria’s.

Julias winced. He knew what was coming. Right on queue the ghost woman reached up to the taller Gangrel, grabbed her by the neck, and brought her down to her knees like she was a toddler. Jessy could only comply, and Julias could see the mix of shock and fear in her eyes.

“Did you kill anyone?” Maria’s voice had turned gravely, and Julias could hear dirt and grit coming out of her mouth. If graveyards could talk, they’d sound like that.

“N-n-n-n—”

“Shut up Natasha.” Maria squeezed harder, and Jessy brought up her hands out of reflex to grab the elder’s wrist. She even struggled a little, but Maria’s grip was absolute. The itty bitty ghost woman had more than enough strength to crush Jessy into dust right in front of them, and they all knew it. “Did you kill any of them?”

Julias considered stepping in to help the Gangrel, but the way anger was just pouring off the ghost woman told him he better not.

“Yes but ... no one ... important,” Jessy managed to stay through a crushed windpipe.

With a loud scoff, Maria threw Jessy back and onto the floor. She stepped toward Natasha then, and the tiny Mehket did her best to stand her ground. Julias hid a small smirk, as Natasha managed to even make some eye contact with Maria despite the proximity.

“So you both just strolled in?” the Nosferatu said.

“Y-yes ma’am.”

“And you found Lucas?”

“No m-m-ma’am. We found a ... a congregation, ma’am, and someone called Bishop Damien.” Natasha looked away when Maria leaned in closer. “We ... got into a fight, and ... B-B-B-Bishop Damien tried to detain us. We ... resisted. And we were forced to d-defend ourselves. Some of Tony’s old brood died.”