Chapter 160

~~Jack~~

“So, uh, what’re you gonna wear to the ball?”

Elaine laughed as she lit another candle. “Obviously whatever I can that is both luxurious and fashionable, and scandalous.”

He watched her as he paced around the mansion’s basement’s basement. Viktor had several large rooms carved deep into the Earth, offshoot rooms from the empty cells and the secure sleeping room. Torture rooms. Something about blood got into concrete and changed it, altered the color. You could never quite get it out, far as Jack knew. Doubtful Viktor tried. Fucker probably enjoyed sleeping down the hall from the smell of death.

Well, either way, the room was useful, once he removed the chair Viktor had probably tortured people on. Now it was just a big, empty concrete room. Was empty. Candles sat in the room corners and in the corners of the symbol Elaine drew on the floor, which she of course drew with blood because why the hell not.

“You could wear something not scandalous, you know.”

“Where is the fun in that?”

“Elaine, come on. You’re five hundred years old. I seriously doubt you get excited by wearing something scandalous anymore. You could strut naked in a packed football stadium and not even blink.”

She grinned at him over her shoulder, before dipping her small, dark brush into a black jar filled with blood, and working on her symbols again.

“I could.”

“Then why bother with scandalous?”

“Just because I have played the game for hundreds of years, does not mean I no longer enjoy the game. We go through phases, young childe of mine, we all do. Antoinette knows what it is like to be filled by half a dozen men, at the same time, while another half dozen coat her in white. And yet I have seen her enjoy some of her most fulfilling sexual moments with you, a single, small man.”

Jack frowned, but it just made her laugh.

“What I mean,” she continued, “is that Antoinette is now in a phase in her life where she finds her greatest joys in fulfilling your sexual desires. Perhaps in a hundred years, you will wish to do the same with her, and she will enjoy that you will enjoy satisfying her with a myriad of kinks.”

“What’s this got to do with scandalous clothing?”

“Phases. Your lover and I show off our bodies for different reasons than your younger companions, now that we are as old as we are, but we still wish to show them off. I am blessed to have been sired at the height of my beauty, and I am blessed to have had the genetics to be so lovely a creature.”

“Not lacking for confidence, that’s for sure.” Ventrue she was.

Again she laughed. “Well, unlike your lover, I am all natural.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Dressing scandalously is, for Antoinette and I, a game about making other people squirm. The goal is not to show off, but to force reactions from others. Surely you noticed how many times Antoinette has done something, not with the intent of drawing the eyes of others, but to make specifically you wriggle?”

Jack groaned and paced faster. “Yeah, that happens a lot.”

“After centuries, you learn to accept reality, and stop seeking validation. She and I are beautiful, and no longer look to prove it. We look to tease others, and indulge in this mischief.”

“That’s what you matured into? Teasing people? Cause I knew more than a few girls in high school who thought the best thing in the world was teasing young guys. A little flirting, a boob smoosh, anything to get the guy to blush or squirm.”

“As I said. Phases.”

“I don’t buy it. I think you’re both just a couple girls who’ll always be a couple girls, using tits and ass to flirt and tease cause you like causing, as you said, mischief.”

“That would imply Antoinette and I are quite young at heart. Do you believe that?”

He eyed her, even gave her his best stink eye, but Elaine just laughed as she drew another line on the concrete floor. No, he didn’t believe that. As much as he loved Antoinette, there was no denying that was she was old, right down to the soul. Hell, that was part of the reason he loved her.

“Think of it as nostalgia, then,” she said. “Antoinette and I are indulging our nostalgia, when we act like young women. Forgive us old monsters our guilty pleasures.”

That did make a lot more sense. Nostalgia was a powerful force, and even Jack, in his mid twenties now including his kine years, found himself occasionally listening to old songs or watching old movies from his childhood for a taste of it.

“I suppose of all the silly immature habits an elder could have, being outrageously flirty is pretty reasonable.”

“Indeed.” Laughing, she stood up, walked over to another corner, and continued expanding the symbols below. “I suppose you told Antoinette that I was here?”

“Yeah.”

“You do not trust me?”

“I trust you enough to try this. Not so much that I won’t tell Antoinette you’re here. I’m a pretty trusting guy, Elaine, to a fault, and I didn’t tell her anything about your past or what we’re up to. But I made sure she knows we’re up to something, in case you stake me, throw me in a box, and ship my ass to Europe.”

“Come now my childe, I would never use something as dull as a box. An expensive coffin, on the other hand, would be far more comfortable.”

“Pretty sure there’s issues with shipping dead bodies across borders.”

“Then it is a good thing the Ordo can make such issues disappear.”

He hadn’t considered that. In Dolareido, the Invictus had their fingers in every aspect of running the city, from the mayor to the police to its criminal groups. A lot more than that, considering how big an organization the Invictus was. The different cities normally ignored each other, but when they had to, Invictus had ways to help each other out, and that probably included getting into other countries without issue. No reason to think the Ordo Dracul didn’t have the same systems in place.

“So, um, are you gonna stake me?”

“It is always a possibility. Will my great grandchilde be so valuable a prize, I steal him away and lock him in a dungeon somewhere, where I can experiment upon him in peace?” She shrugged, laughed again, and lit another candle, as if she hadn’t just threatened to basically be his undoing. “I suppose it will depend on developments. But, for what my word is worth, it is not my plan. It is clear the curse you bear is not a blessing.”

“You did remove yours for a reason.”

“Mine had been bound, eating away at me as a whisper I could never quite define. You said the same of yours, before my grandchilde’s death broke it free.”

Jack winced. “Julias’s death didn’t break it free. I did.”

“Regardless, your tales of your time with the curse before then were quite vivid, while my memories of it are blurry scars.”

“But...”

“But now, your curse is no longer bound. It is free to run amok in your mind, instead of some insidious part of your subconscious. I do wonder if it could somehow be extracted.”

Jack paced some more, if only so Elaine wouldn’t see the moment of surprise on his face. Yeah, Black Blood had suggested that very idea, and Black Blood gave the impression of a villain who liked telling the truth, so he could make people suffer with it. The idea was there, an option Jack considered every night now, letting Black Blood extract the curse. No way he’d do it knowing the spirit-not-spirit was performing some kind of ritual the size of the damn city, but still.

“I assume,” she said, “you will be wearing a suit to the ball?”

“What dude won’t be?”

“I suppose that is true. How many variants can you make of a suit, before you retread ground? Suits three hundred years ago looked closer to penguins than they do to the suits of today, and yet, still suits. Women have so many more options.”

“Yeah well, guys don’t wear suits for how they make the guy look visually.”

Elaine smiled, like a teacher glad her student figured something out.

“Correct. The world of fashion for men is an entirely different beast, filled with social posturing and silent proclamations of power and control. I do not envy the fashion game men play. I am quite content to be judged solely on my looks, particularly when it comes to a ball.”

“Easy to say when you’re thin and have huge breasts.”

Licking a fang, she came closer, walked past him, and scooped up a book from the floor.

“Do not forget my ass.”

He rolled his eyes, even as he took a couple peeks at her ass and the suit skirt snug to it. Anal sex had become pretty norm for them, because Antoinette liked burying him in kinks, but wasn’t a fan of anal herself. So Elaine was a tool Antoinette could use to treat him, an ass for him to fuck. Which Elaine seemed to enjoy, being treated like a sex toy by her friend. Elders were weird.

It really was a great ass, though.

“I wonder,” she said, “about your friend Beatrice.”

“Triss? What about her?”

“I’ve come to understand she and Sándor have spoken to each other several times over the past few months.”

“I know, but—”

“And several more times besides, when pursuing the dark path your friend follows.”

Jack winced again. “Really? I was hoping she ... fuck, I don’t know. Beatrice and Sándor are nothing alike, but then so was Triss and Julias. Maybe ... Maybe she and Sándor could get involved, romantically, and help each other be a little happy.” If that was even why they were hanging out. If Sándor was hanging out with Triss because of the whole resurrection rumor, Jack wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

“You do not hate Sándor for his role in my grandchilde’s death?”

“You know I don’t. He wasn’t in control of himself. And fuck me, if Triss can get past his role in Julias’s death, I can.”

“Perhaps. I wonder if Sándor’s guilt, and Beatrice’s resentment over his part in Mire’s death, has led to a strange connection between them. Perhaps he aids her in her ultimately futile goal, to settle his guilt? The poor fool reeks of it.”

Slowly, Jack sucked in a breath as he shook his head. “I trust her. She’s smarter than she seems. Same for Sándor.”

Elaine raised a brow as she met his eyes. “I am surprised. Ventrue normally prefer to control their friends, and meddle in their lives.”

“I get that. Part of me really wants to get involved and say something about what Triss is doing, and Sándor’s involvement. But I won’t.” He gestured to the circles drawn into the floor, and the candles at the connecting points between lines between the circles. “Ready?”

“Indeed. Kneel in the center, if you would please.”

“Kneel.” Yeah, he hated this. “Reminds me of the vision I had, of Susanna, and the priest binding the curse. You ever find that dude?”

“No. There was much chaos during the 1500s. Upheaval, death, communities ruined by flame or disease. I have no idea what happened to my sire, as you know. And I have no knowledge of the priest who bound her curse. If she told me of him, it is too far a faded memory.”

“He was in the vision, but I can’t really remember what he looks like. Like trying to remember a dream, but he was there, casting the spell on Susanna. And he was there, watching, when Susanna sired you.”

Elaine nodded as she flipped through the pages of her book. Her very old, very creepy book.

“Shadows of my past.”

“Think they’re still alive?”

“No. They would be ancient elders by today, and I have not discovered any elder Kindred older than I, few as they are, that could be those from your vision.”

“Damn.”

“As I said, the time period was fraught with dangers for Kindred. With the curse bound and weakened, Susanna and her extreme tastes — as described by you — would likely have led to her exposing herself, but without the power to defend herself, not against an entire mob armed with pitchforks and torches.”

“But those urges were because of the curse ... right? It didn’t have any visions from before Susanna cast the ritual and got the curse.”

“Naturally.”

“I ... remember what she was like when it and her were in full bloom together, slaughtering people by the thousands. It was just like when the curse gets a hold of me, that crazy blood lust that’s psychopathic. Like ... rage, and eroticism, mixed into some kinda gorefest.”

“Then the question is, how much of the curse’s personality is a product of the Strix, and how much of it is a remnant of Susanna?”

“Lot of questions about Susanna.”

“Indeed. If only my sire would reappear, and answer all our questions for us in a dramatic storytelling moment.” Elaine looked to the concrete tunnel stairs, and waited. No one appeared. After a minute, she sighed and shrugged. “Alas, we are on our own.”

Jack chuckled and knelt in the center of the circles. The chuckles vanished, and he gulped on a dry throat as he looked down. He felt it. Holy shit, he felt it, felt the invisible lines in the air circling him and tugging on him. He felt the power in the blood, the dead life used to tear down the barriers between physical and otherworldly. He felt wind swirling around him, even though the air was still.

It’d always be a shocker that magic actually existed. For some reason, it was easier to believe in vampires, werewolves, and stuff like spirits and other realms and dream monsters. But magic? It felt too silly, too ridiculous, but kneeling in the center of a ritual circle smashed him the face with the truth of it. And it was terrifying.

Elaine stepped outside the circle, and fetched a knife from her purse. More like a curved piece of stone that looked like it’d been chipped out of a bigger piece of stone, complete with a wooden handle bound to it by leather strings. Just looking at it was enough to put images in Jack’s head of someone getting sacrificed under the full moon, having their heart cut out or something.

His great grandsire looked the book over a couple more times before she set it down, and walked over to him. Face steady and unfazed, she nodded, and slowly dragged the knife across her palm. Kindred blood resisted leaving the body naturally, so Elaine had to focus, eyes locked onto her split palm, until a thick, heavy, dark droplet of vampire blood fell and splashed onto the floor beneath her in front of him.

White lightning cracked across his vision, silent, and blinding. He closed his eyes and looked away, but when another one of her drops of blood fell, it hit him again. Not actually there then, but inside him. He ground his teeth as a third droplet summoned a third bolt of lightning, brighter than the others, blanketing his vision in white until it was all he could see.

And then he wasn’t kneeling. Standing, naked, in white, endless white that curved at edges beyond any distance he could ever reach. A dome, not endless, but it certainly felt like it.

He’d been here, multiple times. As far as he could tell, it was some sort of interaction point in his head, some place his mind created when it needed to communicate with other entities at a level deeper than dialog. If psychics existed, true telepaths, and he assumed they did with all the other shit that apparently existed, they probably had their visions or conversations in this place.

Elaine stood there as well, also naked. As much as seeing the tall blonde naked would usually send Jack’s mind into the gutter, it didn’t seem to be how this place worked. Naked meant as much as clothed in this place: nothing. Plus, there was a ravine between him and her, some sort of pit carved into the white, exposing endless black, a canyon that couldn’t be crossed. It was maybe ten feet wide, and Elaine and him were maybe twenty feet from each other, but he just knew, no matter what they did, this canyon couldn’t be crossed.

“It has been some time since I have gleamed the inside of a mind,” Elaine said. “Someone else’s, or mine. I rarely cast such rituals, even at the height of my experiments.”

“I see it far too often.”

“Oh?”

“Something the curse does, I guess. Whenever we Dominate, it lets me see this.” Jack gestured around him. “Dominate didn’t let me do that before.”

“Indeed. Dominate does not let you meld minds with your victim. It is predatory, not an exchange.” Elaine folded her arms under her breasts as she came closer to the edge and looked around. “If the curse allows you to see this part of your mind frequently, it is perhaps using your mind in ways a vampire cannot normally.”

“Yeah, maybe. It was in here I ... I freed the curse.” And as if his subconscious was intent on torturing him, a sledgehammer materialized in his hand, dangling and half resting against the nothing floor. A moment later, the chains appeared on the floor too, giant and broken, surrounding him.

He tossed the hammer aside. Fuck his subconscious and its masochistic desires.

“Then ... perhaps it is not that the curse is using your mind in a unique way, but rather it is letting you see into it in a way not normally possible. Perhaps the curse is letting you see what the Beast sees, when it attacks someone’s mind.”

“You mean this room isn’t mine? This isn’t my head? It’s the Beast’s?”

“I imagine there is overlap. But to Dominate someone is to use the power of the Beast, as is all acts of using our Kindred Disciplines. It is not you, but the Beast that makes true contact with another’s mind, in order to Dominate. After a fashion, at least. Thus, if you are seeing this room when other Kindred do not, you are being shown something the Beast normally cannot show you ... or perhaps simply prefers to not show you. That is until it is cursed by the Strix.”

“You make it sound like it’s an animal guarding its own interests.”

“I would not be the first Kindred to come to such a conclusion. The difference now, is that your curse connects both your Beast and your consciousness.” She looked down, chin in her fingers. It was easy to see now why she was a dragon. It wasn’t just the lust for power, cause she could have easily been Invictus if that was all she wanted. But in her eyes, he spotted some real hunger for knowledge, as if everyone else vanished and questions and answers were the only things that mattered anymore. “Perhaps it—”

A heavy growl silenced the both of them, and Elaine stepped back as a growing black mist seeped up from the white floor near Jack’s feet. Up, and up, and up, until a cloud of smoke stood twenty feet over Jack, twisting and swirling on itself. Red eyes flowed within, occasionally joined by a beak, or set of fangs, or a snout, or mandibles. Claws occasionally reached out from the cloud to touch the floor, sometimes talons, and sometimes a tail or a black feather.

Elaine blinked at Jack, and blinked up at the Beast and the curse melded to it.

“Extraordinary,” she whispered.

“So here’s the bitch, finally paying a visit.” The Ripper snorted, a guttural sound mixed with rasp and bass. Here, inside Jack’s head, the curse felt like a Goliath. Standing beside it ... him, was enough to have Jack trembling, and he had to force himself to stop shaking as the curse hovered closer to the canyon edge.

“You are the curse.”

“I am Jack the Ripper.”

Elaine squinted at the giant creature. “You are a Strix creation, infecting my great grandchilde’s Beast.”

“And you’re nothing more than a whore Susanna pulled off the streets, cause she knew you’d make a valuable asset.”

After a few seconds of cold staring, Elaine growled. “What do you remember of my sire?”

“More than you.”

“Tell me.”

“Why the fuck would I tell you anything? You’re nothing. How much power did you have hiding under your nose, but instead of releasing it like Jack here, you fucking removed it?” The curse laughed, and his titanic body of compressed black mist vibrated.

“You are an unseemly creature.”

“And you’re a waste. Susanna saw potential in you, you know? She groomed you, prepared you, because she thought your tits combined with your aggressive personality and quick reasoning, she could get some real value out of you. Not exactly a lot of women like that five hundred years ago. But what did you fucking do? You ran from power, and then spent the rest of your life chasing it again.”

“Chasing it?” Jack asked.

“Chasing. You heard it yourself, Jack. She’s an Architect of Terror, and according to her, that means she’s spent her time with the dragons studying the Beast. Now why would someone do that, someone who used to have power, power attached directly to their Beast?” The cursed laughed, a heavy rumble that shook the metaphor room. “She wanted the power back, of course. She did everything she could to find a way to get the curse back without the Strix influence.”

Laughing all the more, until both Jack and Elaine were wincing, the curse extended an arm, something covered in feathers and ending in claws. He pointed it to the endless, infinite wall behind Jack, and waved an arm. The wall disappeared under an image, blurry colors that danced over the white, and both vampires watched, intrigued, and maybe a little terrified.

And then the projection came to them. Both vampires jumped back, startled, as the image the Ripper summoned became 3D, and surrounded Jack. It didn’t cross the canyon, leaving Elaine to look on from a distance, but she had no trouble seeing with how defined the blurry images slowly became.

“Now that she’s here,” the Ripper said, and gestured to Elaine with a freshly sprouted black arm, “I think it’s time to show you what sort of person Elaine really is, Jack.”

Viktor. Elaine. A party. Jack winced as he stepped back from the images sitting around fancy tables drinking wine and whatnot. Not this again.

“Beast,” Elaine said, “you cannot scare me off with a simple memory.”

“But this isn’t your memory, is it? You showed up out of nowhere after disappearing for years, and now look at you, watching Viktor, after a failed attempt to get back on his good side.”

It was true. This was Viktor’s memory. This must have been not long after Elaine showed back up in Viktor’s life, and the man didn’t want anything to do with her. He sat at one end of the table, and Elaine sat near the other. Jack didn’t know anything about the party, who the people were, or how Elaine could show back up years later and just invite herself into their home. But she had. She chatted with the kine, the ladies in their gowns and bodices, and men in their penguin suits with lots of trim, from probably the 1700s. The rich people of Europe.

Elaine, the past Elaine, kept glancing Viktor’s way, and every so often, she licked a fang. Not exactly a big tell, and easily mistaken for someone just being hungry, especially a vampire. But combined with the hunger in her eyes, the mad scientist hunger, it was obvious what was going on. It was a look she’d given Jack many times when they talked about the curse. She wanted to experiment on her childe.

The memory changed, this time to Julias.

“Ripper,” Jack said, “don’t—”

“Shut up.” The creature chuckled as he slammed a hand against the white floor, before it again changed into a different floor. A street, Dolareido, maybe eighty years ago. People walked it, but not packed to the shoulder like today, and the clothes were kinda drab. Right after the industrial boom in Dolareido then, maybe?

Julias walked alone, face unreadable; probably on a mission for the Invictus. Slowly, Jack’s sire looked up and then left, toward the road and across it. Old cars drove by, slow as hell considering it seemed to be the 1940s at night, and the city wasn’t glowing so much back then. Someone on the other side of the street had caught Julias’s attention.

Elaine. She met Julias’s eyes, before disappearing into the crowd.

The Ripper sliced the image in half, and Jack jumped back as the creature’s claws slammed into the street. The street vanished, and the images faded, leaving the three of them in endless white once again.

“How many times did you come to Dolareido, to see if you could somehow capture Viktor or his childe, and lock them away so you could experiment on them, hmm?” The mocking tone was palpable.

Elaine wouldn’t be deterred. She stood her ground and stared at the monstrosity across the ravine, and even tapped her foot, like some kinda impatient mom.

“I admit it,” she said, “and I know the others have surmised as much. I had great interest in the curse, and sought a way to isolate it.”

“Isolate it, or reunite with it?”

“I never wanted you back, monster! Disgusting, abhorrent, vile creature. You are a tool to be harnessed and nothing more!”

Jack winced as he looked Elaine’s way. Was that the first time she’d ever raised her voice? Hearing her get emotional like this, loud, angry, was strange as all fuck.

“Oh really?” The Ripper formed a head, a crow’s head, enormous, and it reached out from the giant ball of mist with a snake’s body for a neck. “And this ritual we’re in? This isn’t some little magic circle to let us just talk, is it?” Bird head still attached to the weird, long, black snake neck, the Ripper pecked at the space over the canyon, and his beak collided with the air. There was a wall there, invisible.

“I have no intention of telling you anything, creature.”

The Ripper snarled hard enough Jack felt it in his throat. But after a few moments, the curse purred. “Then how about a trade?”

“A trade?”

Uh oh.

“You want to know more about Susanna, and the Strix gift. I want to know more about how you removed the gift from yourself. The ritual. Who you killed. All of it.”

“Why do you want information? You are a tool. A magical tool, but a tool, and one to eventually be disposed of.”

Another growl. “Says you. But either way, I’ve been here, digging through the memories hidden in the echoes of the Strix. And I have images that will interest you.”

Before Jack could say anything, the Ripper summoned up another image. Not a memory from Viktor or Julias, but Elaine.

“Don’t,” Elaine said, eyes growing wide as she realized what was happening. “Don’t.”

But the Ripper just laughed, and the Beast creature hovered out of the way so they could see what he wanted them to see. Elaine, naked, covered head to toe in blood. She was in a hut, some sort of wooden cottage or something, and there were three corpses around her, two men, one woman. One of the men was in her arms, Elaine sucking the man dry, her arms wrapped around his chest and holding him to her.

Her eyes were wide and crazed, like a hungry, rabid animal.

Elaine dismissed the image with a swing of the arm. “This isn’t—”

“Oh it’s very real. The Strix gift still flowed through your veins back then, and any moment where you brought me out, the memories are vivid. Would you like to see another?”

“I—”

The Ripper didn’t wait. It pulled up another image, with a similar result. Except this time, there were two people, a man and woman, and Elaine was currently in the process of drinking the man mid sex, with the woman behind her, pressed against her back lovingly. Another wooden home from easily nearly five hundred years ago.

The image fast forwarded quickly, showing the violence as a rapid display of carnage. Elaine, ripping the man’s throat open with her teeth, still mid sex. The woman screaming in shock. Wolves, literal wolves, breaking into the house. Wolves eating the woman alive.

Meal complete, Elaine stood up, smiling widely as the dying man’s fresh blood dripped down her jaw, neck, and her naked body.

Jack looked away. “She got rid of the curse for a reason, Ripper. You’re not showing us anything we don’t already know, or will fucking sway us about anything.” A peek Elaine’s way showed stubborn defiance, but he recognized the guilt he saw last time they talked, when she explained some of her past to him. To have it rubbed in her face by someone as fucked up as the curse, must have fucking sucked.

Jack knew the feelings, too. He knew what it’d been like to have fucked up, thoroughly twisted thoughts running through his mind. The things he wanted to do to Angela would have landed him in a psych ward as much as a prison, if he’d been human.

“Then how about this,” the Ripper said.

The image swirled around Jack, but not all that much. Still some sort of wood building, but no snow outside. Elaine gone, wolves gone, corpses gone. No, wait, Elaine was there again, in bed, with another woman, and Susanna.

Elaine gasped. This was Susanna’s memory. Or was it Elaine’s, from the moment of her embrace?

“There she is. The first vampire to hold me.” The swirling mass of black smoke drifted over top now, and pointed down at the hallucination that surrounded Jack with a myriad of his flowing claws. “Look at her. Tiny, and unassuming. How’d she seduce you?”

The elder Ventrue snarled. “That does not matter.”

“Uh huh.” Laughing, the curse pointed again, this time at the man watching them from the side of the room. The Sanctified vampire. “Recognize him?”

Elaine shook her head. Of course she couldn’t recognize the face, considering it was blurry.

“I suppose you can’t sharpen the memory,” she said.

“Nah. Sorry. Reaching across five centuries of time, through memories that have echoed in the veins of the Strix gift, isn’t exactly easy. Moments where I came to the surface, moments where I was called, used, or where my beloved Beast was called, those are moments I remember. But even then, five hundred years is too damn long to keep the memory crisp.” He chuckled again. “With time, and maybe a little help from a smart dragon with some crazy rituals on her side, I might be able to recall more.”