Chapter 17

~~Natasha~~

Nothing was as satisfying as the sensation of keyboard keys giving way to just the right movement of the fingers for flawless typing.

Did that make her a geek? She was too old to be a geek. Fifty-years embraced, and another twenty-five kine years on that meant she was older than commercial computers. By a lot. But she picked them up quick. Perhaps it was her lifetime of piano play that drew her to typing. Even as a kine, she found typewriters fascinating.

“Yo, Natasha.” Snap snap. The Gangrel was snapping her fingers in front of Natasha’s face, and she hadn’t even realized. “The info?”

“Right, right.” The two were in Natasha’s apartment, in her living room, and she had her laptop on the kitchen counter. Jessy must have got up from the couch to pester her.

“It says here,” she said, and raised a finger to point at the screen, “that Lucas came to Dolareido after the Prince, Viktor, and Jacob did. Hmm, about one-hundred and fifty years ago. Only Jacob knew him, but he quickly became friends with Viktor and Maria.” Natasha gritted her teeth. No wonder her master was so intrigued by the news.

“No connection with my sire then?” Jessy said.

“No. Mister McD-D-Donald’s relationship with Lucas was distant at best.” Natasha’s eyes scanned through the records. Thank god someone in the Invictus was smart enough to digitize their old journals Nothing was written that was incriminating or destructive, but enough that she could read between the lines. A company merged here or acquired there, a piece of real estate changing hands, funds and donations, etc.

Natasha pointed at the screen again. This time there was a picture of Lucas, as much as anyone could take a picture of a Kindred. It was, at best, a hazy glimpse of his side in a blurry picture from a time when commercial cameras were only just becoming popular. “It-t says here ... Lucas was embraced sometime in the sixteenth century.” They both whistled. He was very old. “And ... he’s from Africa.”

Jessy looked down at her, but Natasha was dumbstruck until her friend poked her a few times in the head. “So?”

“Here.” She pointed at the hazy picture again, and a quick summary someone wrote of Lucas. “Lucas is the name he chose after he escaped Africa. He was ... a slave, and was about to be transported when someone turned him.”

“Fuck. So he’s ... that is some old school dark ages shit.”

“And he escaped a continent after being embraced, not before.” She turned on her stool and looked up at Jessy. “Whoever Lucas was, or is, he has been through some ancient hell. How c-could a Kindred survive a boat trip across the ocean hundreds of years ago? How could you...”

“I guess that’s why he’s a member of the Sanctified then.” Jessy gave a shrug, hoped back onto Natasha’s couch, and turned the TV back on. “Worst possible life you can imagine, then someone turns him into a vampire. Can’t blame him for looking for something to believe in.”

“Maybe, except the Lancea et Sanctum don’t believe they are God’s children. They believe they are God’s monsters.” She reached across the counter and lifted the Testament of Longinus. The full version, not the abridged the typical neonates read. It was a beast of a bible. “Longinus was the Roman soldier who stabbed the crucified Christ with a spear. A moment of compassion, or fear, if you read the book, from the overwhelming gaze of Jesus. The wound splashed blood, and some of it went into Longinus’s mouth, or eyes, or something.” Natasha grumbled with the infuriatingly vague and confusing text. “But thus was born Longinus, ancient Kindred. Potentially the first.”

“So ... what, Kindred are just damned things?”

Natasha shrugged and rubbed her arms. “They think so. They have to serve as God’s monsters, terrorizing and torturing the kine, like wolves to sheep, to scare the herd back into the Shepard’s warm embrace.” She found the imagery disturbing, but powerful. It was no wonder such a message affected her childe. “If they serve, then maybe, some day, they will no longer be damned. Very maybe. The text isn’t specific about redemption at all.”

“Brainwashing.” Jessy scoffed, dismissed it all with a wave of her hand, and turned on a streaming service on the TV. “Let’s watch a movie. I’m thinking—”

It all faded to background noise, for Natasha. She had a hand on the Testament of Longinus, and her eyes kept switching between it and the picture of Lucas on her laptop. This man, and his Bishop Damien, had converted several Invictus, including her childe Vivienne. It couldn’t be just mindless brainwashing idiocy, if Vivienne could be turned.

She hated herself. She should have seen this coming. Information about the Lancea et Sanctum was not hidden, and even information about Lucas was not hidden. But by the time she’d risen up the ranks and had access to such information, it had ceased to be an issue. The Sanctified were long gone.

She turned off her laptop, made some quiet grumbling sounds, and reached for her coat.

“Hey where you going?”

“Just ... out.”

“Fuck that. You’re going out to look for Vivienne.” Jessy was up in a flash and getting in Natasha’s way, herself between Natasha and the door. “And you know that’s a bad idea. We’re already on bad ground after having killed some of them.”

“You killed—”

“You shot the Bishop in the face!” Jessy reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She knew she didn’t like to be touched, but again Jessy insisted on touching her arm. Stop touching. “I had your back when shit hit the fan, right?”

“Yeah b-b-but—”

“But nothing. You owe me, so promise me you won’t go looking for Vivienne, ok?”

“I still—”

“Ok!?” And then Jessy shook her like a child.

Natasha lowered her head and did her best to hide her destroyed feelings. If she were alive, she’d have tears in her eyes. “You d-d-don’t know! You don’t have a childe. It ... it gnaws at you. She’s mine. Mine and ... I lost her.”

“You didn’t lose shit you dumbass. Either things will calm down and you can hang with your childe again, just on different sides of a business fence, or someone will put the Sanctified back into the ground and we’ll make sure Vivi isn’t involved in that. Ok?”

Natasha did her best to get a stiff upper lip, or some such. It was hollow. But she tried anyway, and managed to put on a stern face and a nod for Jessy. “Ok. I ... I just want to go hunt.”

“Hungry? I could get the boys over.” Jessy let go of her and hoped back up onto the counter. Her super short blonde hair and her tall, boxer build really made every motion she made seem so ... ferocious, like everything she did was in preparation for a fight. Maybe she was.

Sometimes Natasha wondered why they were friends. She wanted quiet, peace, and all those other things that made her and her Gangrel friend fire and water. The classic introvert and extrovert pairing.

“You know you ... k-k-killed some of those K-kindred. Are you ... okay with that?”

Jessy just shrugged. “It was a fight. We could have died too, we had no way of knowing. I ain’t gonna bust myself up about shit hitting the fan. But seriously though, can I invite the boys over? Come on, I know you want em.” The Gangrel reached out, grabbed a glass, and tossed it from one hand to the other. “How many years now since you had some fun with your meal? You gotta open up a bit, have some fun.” She put her hands up then, and gave a big, playful grin. “Hey, I’ll be there! No funny business, and hot damn it’ll be a glorious mess of legs.”

Natasha shuddered. Touching. Contact. So much ... close quarters proximity with others, kine at that. They were warm, they breathed and bled, they salivated, they ejaculated. Part of her was so very repulsed by the idea of others being in her personal space like that.

But she wasn’t oblivious to her own desires. She spent plenty of time online, like any introverted Mehket did. An idle mind lead to a vary diverse browser history of pornography. She took care of her sexual needs in peace, alone, with a belly full of blood and some toys in hand. She didn’t need others to take care of that need.

But it could be pleasant. Jessy would be there after all, for better or worse, and it’d be nice to have a quartet of men lined up to drink.

“Maybe ... later.”

“Bah, you always say later. Been saying that for years.”

“And I mean it! Ok! Just ... g-g-gotta ... I’ll be back later.” She didn’t wait for Jessy to interrupt her again this time.

Out the door and down into the lobby, she took a deep breath to relax herself. Of course it did nothing. She hadn’t needed to breathe in decades.

She fidgeted with her long coat around her, avoided eye contact with the humans on the way through the lobby, and got out onto the street. There. In the crowd of kine just moving past and around each other like chaotic water, it was so much easier to blend in. She could forget all the bullshit, and just let her hunter instincts guide her.

A wolf among sheep. Just like the Testament of Longinus said. Surrounded by anonymity and blood, she had the freedom to just let her beast lead her. Someone would eventually take a break in an alley, or expose their back in a secluded convenience store, or drift further down into the city underbelly where it was a free-for-all.

But she didn’t get very far. Without even looking up she could feel a wall, a barrier of power that spread kine apart around it without anyone even realizing. It stopped her in her tracks, and shook her to the core until the beast inside her was kneeling and whimpering in fear.

After a few hard seconds, she looked up, and five feet in front of her was the sheriff, Daniel.

The sheriff was an average looking man, just a little tall with a lanky figure, and a boring, dull trench coat hanging off of him. Short brown hair, some simple glasses, and brown leather gloves. He was the epitome of simple. There was a sword hidden underneath the coat along his back, but it was not visible. She knew it was there, though.

She took a look around, and used her Mehket sight to scan for nearby threats. But there was no Kindred within earshot of the two of them. “ ... sire.”

Daniel reached up, pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, and stepped in closer to her. He stopped once he was a couple feet away, looked down at her, and gave a small nod. “Madame Vola.”

“You know you can c-call me Natasha.”

“You never call me Daniel.”

“ ... never feels right. N-not since then.” She shook her head and tightened her coat around her. She wasn’t cold, she couldn’t get cold, but that barrier between her and her sire was like ice.

“ ... I know you infiltrated the Lancea et Sanctum.”

A small nod. He always knew. “ ... yeah.”

“You attacked Damien.”

“How ... how d-d-did...” She was looking down. She didn’t know when she started to look down, but before she knew it she was hugging herself protectively and keeping her gaze on her sire’s shoes. He really did always know everything.

“I am the sheriff. It’s my job to know things.”

“I ... had to act fast. I d-d-didn’t know who he was, or what he’d d-do.”

“He spotted you through your discipline.”

Oh no. “He ... yes.” She could feel her insides trying to make her whimper, but without the blush of life going, she had no tears or the muscle contractions. Just a still, pale woman who couldn’t look the man in the eye.

“He’s a dangerous man.”

“He didn’t look dangerous.”

The lanky man adjusted his glasses again. “Exactly.”

She forced a frown. “I did land the shot. Right here. Forehead.”

“Impressive.” Daniel gave her a small smile. It was such a small thing, innocent and barely noticeable, but it made her dead heart flutter for the praise. “How is Maria treating you?”

Natasha shuddered a little. How many decades now, had she served under Madame Turio? The ghost woman was scary. Very scary. Her orders were usually of the information-gathering nature, and Natasha was very good at that, but every failure and every mistake felt like it could be her last. “ ... c-could be worse. Viktor was ... worse.”

That earned the tiniest smirk from the sheriff, so fast he probably thought she didn’t notice. She very much noticed.

“Was I worse?” he said.

“What? No! No just ... the Ordo Dracul, and ... the things you and the Prince researched. You know I found it t-t-t-too...” Both she and Daniel and had drifted to the side of the street, closer to the building by this point, out of the way of the flow of kine. Even with the anonymity of the crowd, talk of the Dragons was too sensitive to speak of as anything more than hushed whisper.

“Too frightening. And Maria is not more frightening?”

“She works with money, and real estate, and politics and and and ... d-d-deals and contracts.” She reached out with her hands and grabbed at the air subtly with each example. “Real things.”

“The order does deal with real things.”

“Those weren’t ... just...” Ugh, talking with her sire was like talking to a stone. But then, she imagined she wasn’t very easy to talk to either. Couldn’t they have had this conversation with e-mails, or texting? Did Daniel even know what those were? Time for a topic change. “So...” Her feet drifted around a little. Nervous shuffling. “Why ... um ... why did you come?”

“I came to warn you.”

“Warn me?”

“About that man, Damien.”

“The Bishop? He wasn’t that t-t-tough.”

“He is ... a true believer, Natasha. You got very lucky. In any other circumstance, he would have killed you to protect the Sanctified.” The sheriff looked away, and even down, as if the words had weight. Why would Damien mean anything to Daniel?

“ ... you know him.”

“I do.” He raised his eyes again, and even reached out with a gloved hand for her. She flinched, he paused, and after a few moments of awkward silence, Daniel put his hand away. “Just ... avoid him, please.”

Please ... please? Had he ever said those words to her before?

“Things will get worse,” he said, and adjusted his glasses again, “and more Kindred will die before this is done.” He turned, and started to walk away.

Her hand was out and tugging back on his elbow. She didn’t remember putting it there, and once she realized what she’d done, she pulled it back with a little squeak.

“How?” she said. “You can’t just...”

“It was a ... moment of compassion. Of weakness.” He looked over his shoulder at her before turning halfway to offer a small frown. “I spared him during the purge. He was ... just like you.”

Just like her? He was fifty-years embraced like her, and a Mehket like her, and ... something else? What else? She looked up at her sire, but Daniel had already turned around again, and was making his way through the crowd.

And as always, it was the kine who stepped aside for him, like water parting.

She sighed, leaned back against the apartment building wall and watched the kine go by. Talking with her sire was a rare thing, and it was like two stones trying to have a conversation. As far as the rest of Dolareido knew, she had no sire, and as far as their conversations went, it felt kinda like that too. Or at least it normally did, but the way he looked at her, it was almost like ... someone caring for her? So many questions.

The beast in her gut grumbled. Right, food. She could analyze the conversation later.

~~Julias~~

“So the Lancea et Sanctum – god what an annoying name – are back?” Jack said.

“After a fashion. Lucas is back, and he was the leader of their movement here in Dolareido. How convenient he came back right when Tony left a whole herd of young, easily controlled Kindred without a leader.” Julias ran a finger down his jaw as they walked. There were pieces, a puzzle, and not much time to put them together before shit hit the fan.

“So he was in torpor?”

“Most likely.”

“Just ... what, hidden in a coffin underneath the city where the Prince and the sheriff couldn’t find him?”

“Most likely.”

“Fuck, that’s a long time to be in weird dream coma land.”

Julias and Jack were in a taxi and being driven through South Side. A ghoul of the Invictus was driving them, otherwise the conversation would have been a little more subtle. They were also dressed for business, real business, a combination of business savvy fashion, and freedom of movement. It was their ‘shady deals could mean a fight’ suits.

Of course his childe was practically oblivious to all the undertones and hidden messages of the various elements of the suits, but that was fine.

“It is. Lucas was a very old Kindred, so old I knew that he’d begun feeding on other Kindred in order to satiate his hunger. A long torpor will suppress such insane hunger for many decades, and it let him vanish from existence for half a century. He will be weak, but his strength will return.”

Jack tapped his chin with a finger, in a manner not too dissimilar to Julias, which made the older Kindred smirk.

“And you think Damien raised him?”

“Yes. He sensed the opportunity with Tony’s death. But ... ugh, something doesn’t make sense. Even if he raised Lucas, Lucas wouldn’t just expose himself like this by living in Tony’s old nest. I remember the purge, Jack, and it was not like Antoinette walked up to a pacifist and stabbed him. Lucas was a raging zealot who was hellbent on controlling all the Kindred and forcing everyone to follow the Lancea et Sanctum. Now he’s playing passive, and that just isn’t Lucas.”

“Maybe his torpor changed him? Maybe he’s a more passive person now?”

Julias gave Jack a long, dead stare, and Jack rolled his eyes and nodded.

“Yeah yeah, not likely, I get you. I’m still not sure what to gain from visiting the Carthians though.”

“Well,” Julias said, but stopped talking as the taxi pulled up to the sidewalk. A moment later both him and his childe were on the street, and making their way down through the Carthian side of South Side. Down here, the people weren’t in business suits or power dresses, but jeans and shirts instead. The two of them stuck out like a sore thumb. “It was fifty years ago, and the Carthians were still young and growing at the time. Garry though, Garry was the tough new guy, only a hundred years old but standing up to the Prince and Jacob and the Invictus on his own.”

“I remember seeing him at the Invictus ball, all those months ago.”

“Indeed. He’s smart and tough. And when the Prince began the purge, it was more than just those two against the Lancea et Sanctum army. Garry and his small group of Carthians were, at the time, at war with the Sanctified.”

“Shit...”

Yeah, Julias could see it on Jack’s face now as they walked. The boy was only barely paying attention to the kine on the sidewalk, but was instead intently focused on his sire’s words. Fingers on his chin, eyes flickering back and forth, Jack was thinking about all the connections and possibilities. The Danse Macabre was a complicated web of madness.

“And Jacob?” Jack said.

“The witch? As usual, he watched from afar, and knowing that man he probably instigated a lot of the conflicts between the covenants.” The damn witch was chaos incarnate. If he could find a way to deal with Jacob, he would, but the Sanctified was the bigger question mark at the moment.

“The Invictus didn’t do anything either, from what Natasha tells me.”

“Viktor called it a crisis of politics. The Invictus don’t mindlessly follow ideologies, you know that. We pursue power, growth, money. Neither side was a safe bet, and Maria and Michael were divided on it anyway.”

Jack nodded. He got it, Julias could see that. In fact, Jack embraced the power growth money motto quite well. Kid had that ruthlessness buried in there, hidden under goofiness, but then, that’s why Julias was bringing him. If, and when things went sideways, the kid would pull through, and the only two people who knew that were Julias and the Prince. His ace in the hole.

He was damn proud of his childe, but he wasn’t about to shower him in praise. Not yet.

“So, we need to talk to Garry, and get some more information,” he said.

“You think I’m ready for this?”

“You think every sire takes their childe to multi-million dollar business deals? You think every neonate can dominate half a dozen kine?” Julias reached out and gave his childe a hard punch in the shoulder. Maybe a little praise.

Jack almost fell over, but kept walking and rubbed where he punched him. “Antoinette said I had a talent for it.”

“I sired you for a reason Jack. I said I needed you to watch my back, remember? So hey, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He leaned down then, but kept walking. No need to draw attention. “I’m young. A hundred years for my position? Very young. And you are in the same boat. We’re young, and when things go bad, people will underestimate us.” He chuckled and ran his fingers through his blonde hair. “Never underestimate a Ventrue.”

That got the kid walking with a little confidence in his step. Good, Jack deserved it. He had the drive, the obsessive drive to master and overcome obstacles of a Ventrue, now all he needed was the confidence it deserved. As long as it didn’t inflate his ego to disastrous proportions, as had a tendency to happen with Ventrue. Like Viktor Honors.

The neighborhood only grew more urban and downtrodden. It wasn’t like the city underbelly, filled with vice and disease. Instead it was just hard working folk with no time or money to waste on frills. There were far less people on the sidewalks, and the buildings were often brick and stone, painted horrible ugly colors. The streets were cracked, patched, and all the road surface markings were faded. Taxis and buses and old cars that sounded like they ran on coal.