Chapter 47

~~Antoinette~~

The next evening was not a pleasant one. She’d hoped to awaken to news from her thralls of the boy’s whereabouts. She’d awoken to despair.

“Why am I not out in those streets, Daniel?”

“Because we’re trying to find a needle in a haystack, Annie.” The man stood and watched out over the city along with her, the two of them by the large window in her office, at the top of her Elysium tower.

“I am an extra pair of eyes!”

“You know that’s not how you find someone in a city.”

Her hands were in fists at her side, squeezing, clenching, shaking.

“It is my city.”

“It is.”

“And I should be able to find anything within its veins.”

“You know that’s not true. Millions of people, thousands of streets, tens of thousands of buildings, and a billion places to hide anything and anyone.” The man shook his head, and gestured to the desk behind them, her main desk. The laptop upon it displayed various messaging windows she had used to communicate with the Invictus, and Natasha as well, about the boy’s disappearance.

Part of her was tempted to tell Jacob or Garry, but she could not trust those two. Jacob may have been playing games with her, tormenting her by stealing away her love, while Garry may have been making a move for power. The man had been somewhat quiet, less aggressive than usual, at the ball. There had been times when Garry was quiet in the past, and it was purely because he was in a quiet disposition. Sometimes a cigar was a cigar, after all. But there had been times when his quiet behavior was a precursor to aggression against the Invictus.

And Jack was not Ordo Dracul, he was Invictus, a target for those such as Garry. That alone presented problems, as the Invictus would no doubt suspect her in some sort of trickery as well. Perfectly reasonable suspicion; it would not be the first time she had manipulated them to dance to her tune.

Still, Jack was missing, Julias confirmed it. The Invictus were looking for him, regardless of their potential suspicion of her.

She wanted more. She wanted to demand Garry search for her love. Demand it of Jacob. Demand it of Avery. Demand it even of that abomination Azamel.

“ ... should I bring this to the attention of the werewolves, and the monsters, my sheriff?”

“I’m sure Avery already knows. And Azamel probably does by now too.”

“And you are sure it was not your friend Athalia that is responsible? The entire Kindred population saw her speak with Jack.” And every ounce of willpower Antoinette had went into stopping herself from marching down to confront Azamel and her subordinates about that conversation. “Perhaps she spoke to my thralls, and is working with them, manipulating them, falsifying their reports?”

“I ... can’t imagine she’d do that. Azamel might, but why would she? It’s the Invictus she has a problem with, and the Invictus won’t bend over backward to save their youngest Kindred. Jack isn’t the bargaining chip Azamel needs with them. And, revenge against the grandchilde of the man Athalia hated, a dead man, seems too insane even for Athalia.”

She glared at her companion, stared at him with all the fury her eyes could muster. And the man returned it with a quiet, calm, almost cold gaze, before adjusting his glasses again.

Her fury broke, and she sighed as she stepped in closer to the window, to gaze out through the wall of glass from only an inch away. He was right, after all. While the Invictus would attempt to save their young neonate Jack Terry, ultimately, he was not of grand importance to the covenant. Of grand importance to Julias individually, as to her, but Julias was intelligent enough, wise enough, to not let his love of his childe destroy the Invictus if such an ultimatum were ever presented to him.

She was not so sure she could be that heartless anymore, not after Jack had touched her soul, ripped the roots clear that shackled her depths, deep down in the lingering black.

It had only been an hour since the sun had set. In that time, she received three hundred and twenty-seven reports from her dozens of thralls, all of which were of no value or use, except for one. A mention of four humans, seen together, skulking about. But attempts to pursue them by the two thralls that had spotted them were quickly rendered fruitless, as the four humans vanished.

She knew of these four. She had read the Invictus reports her network of spies had uncovered; nothing significant. But the report had mentioned four individuals seen more often, kine, with scars. They suspected hunters. And now, so did she.

For all her power, for all her intelligence and experience, it was her and Daniel running the city, two Kindred against hundreds. She controlled the ebb and tide of power, the flow of money and influence of Kindred and organizations alike. Macro, the Invictus would call it, macro management. To be the one in the street, giving orders, partaking in the hands-on digging for clues and evidence, that was not her purview. And no matter how logical that assessment was, how correct it was for her to be giving her orders from above where they had the greatest effect, it still hurt. She wanted to be in those streets, looking for her love with her own eyes.

Perhaps she was overreacting? No, it was foolish to think that Barry’s death and the sighting of these four suspicious kine had nothing to do with Jack’s disappearance. And Kindred were paranoid creatures by nature. They did not simply disappear for no reason, especially not at Jack’s age, and especially not in the modern world, where technology had made constant communication as easy as it was. She had called him twice more upon awakening, texted him, but again, there had been no answer.

“Natasha’s out there,” Daniel said. “She’s plugged into the network. Any thralls find traces of Jack, she’ll know. And I’m sure Mire’s got his own feelers out.”

“Yes ... I know.” And it was not enough. Not enough. “We should have looked into these suspicious kine earlier.”

“We let the Invictus run much of the city so we can focus on our own affairs, Annie. You know that.”

“Perhaps that is not enough anymore? We toil, exploring what mysteries lay beyond our grasp, for centuries now!” She grit her teeth, and forced her nerves to calm. A moment later her hair was pulled over her shoulder, and she combed it with both sets of fingers as she watched her city beneath her. “When the greatest joys are to be found within our reach, within our presence.”

“ ... you want to stop?”

“No. When the secrets of existence are so near, to be beyond our grasp is but a question of time. Still, this dilemma has made it painfully clear that without the closer things, our seconds lives are ... void of value.” Void, in general. “If he is dead, Daniel, I ... I do not know what I will do.”

Her old friend winced, an expression she did not see him carry often. And as he came closer, he gave her a single, gentle touch of the shoulder, and stood by her to watch the city beneath them.

Neither of them said what had become too strong a reality to ignore. Jack’s disappearance was killing her, and threatening her objectivity, threatening her abilities as Prince. She would be quite the fool to abandon her role as Prince, abandon her role in the Ordo Dracul, in order to join Jack in romance, and protect him for all the years to come. And she would be quite the fool to abandon Jack, who wrested her soul from atrophy and sparked life into its withered corpse.

No matter the hardships her second life threw at her, should would find a way to have both. And with time, Jack would grow to become a Ventrue worthy of fearing, a greater power than his grandsire or even his sire, relative to their ages. With time, he would become as like her, a rock against the tide.

But it would be decades until he was strong enough to face the more dangerous threats of their second lives, and until then, she could only offer so much protection.

“ ... sometimes, my old friend,” she said, “I remember the faces of mothers and fathers as their sons went to war, almost seventy years ago. Do you remember?”

“Sometimes.”

“Some nights, I would hear crying, mothers learning of the deaths of their sons. Wives, who lost their husbands.” She stopped combing her hair, and let her hands fall as weights at her side. “Only now do I understand such pain, the desire to protect with all your soul, that which you cannot protect.”

Forever wiser than she, her old friend said nothing, and gazed upon the streets below them. Asphalt, black veins through the body of her greatest accomplishment, Dolareido. Her greatest accomplishment, and now her greatest enemy.

~~Beatrice~~

Julias left the moment the sun set. He did his best to be lovey-dovey with her, to kiss her and say ‘I love you’ and stuff, but she shooed him away. No time for the romantic stuff when shit hit the fan.

As for herself, she had no idea what to do. Jack was missing, and with all the shit that’d been going on lately, she doubted it was an accident or coincidence, especially not with the girlfriend the kid had. Antoinette was wearing the pants in that relationship, and it’d be a bad idea for Jack to piss her off.

Plus, why would he want to? The two oddballs really loved each other, and with a rack like that, no way the kid wasn’t doing everything in his power to fall asleep on those things every dawn.

She slapped herself in the forehead. Stop. Thinking. About. Sex.

Crouched, upon the edge of a roof between North and South side, not too far off from the canyon where the Circle of the Crone liked to sleep. She needed to pay him a visit. Jacob had mentioned to her that they’d be preparing defensive measures of their cave, in case someone managed to discover it. Unlikely, with how well it was hidden in the unclimbable canyon’s base, but shit happened, and you didn’t get to live to be Jacob’s age without compensating for the shit-happens factor.

She jumped along the rooftops, and soon down into the canyon. Jagged rocks and steep cliff faces meant you weren’t getting down here without a pulley system or something similar. Dangerous for even her to scale. Each step a trap capable of breaking a leg, each hand hold ready to break apart or slice open the fingers. But soon she was down in the crag, sharp rocks and prickly bushes everywhere.

She crouched low through the darkness and found the opening of the cave, and crouched lower again to move through the tiny opening. Didn’t get far though, before she ran into bars. Giant, thick, spiked, metal bars.

“What the fuck.”

“Beatrice Damor?” A voice in the black, one she didn’t recognize.

A man came out, wearing nothing but a robe like Jacob would probably wear, dark brown and leathery. Maybe in his thirties, healthy, strong looking man, and now that he came closer, she managed to recognize the silhouette of his body and blur of his face. This was one of Jacob’s thralls.

“They got a thrall to guard the gate?” She laughed and leaned her crouched body against the tiny tunnel wall. “Any Ventrue or Daeva could break your mind and have you open the door.”

A sudden light forced her to block its glow with her hands until her eyes adjusted. Once she could see again, she squinted at the man, and the small candle he was holding. There was something around his neck, a necklace, something made of bone. It reeked of Jacob.

“The Master has protected me from such mental control. I guard the gate, until the city is safe once more.”

Anti-brainwash necklace? That was pretty awesome, actually.

“Cool. Let me in.”

“Yes, Beatrice.”

Oh god he really was a slave, a mindless servant sort of type. He had a small smile that never went away, the sort of person who was happy to serve their master. Well, the blood bond did that. Three tastes and you were bound to your master, devoted to them, for months, years even.

Kindred weren’t immune to the blood bond. She had to visit Damien and see how that was going, cause the two hadn’t even made eye contact at the ball. Hell they’d made damn sure to not even look each other’s direction during the whole fiesta.

The thrall disappeared around the corner, back into the depths of the cave. And just as she was about to call out to get the fuck back here, the bars slid away, disappearing into tiny holes in the little cave wall. When the fuck did Jacob get this set up? Must have always been there, just never activated. And she doubted the bars could be taken out with anything other than a nuke. Made the cave a pretty damn safe place to stay then.

She crept through the tunnel, and winced as she heard the loud screech of rock and metal scraping against each other, bars sliding back into place.

Everyone was home. Hell, everyone was actually together, standing around the blood bowl. More candles were lit than usual, some thralls and ghouls wandering around and lighting them, tending to them, making sure they bathed the room in a pleasant, creepy-as-fuck glow that highlighted the array of bones and skulls along the walls with defined shadows.

Aaron, Othello, and Jennifer. Each wearing robes similar to the thrall at the door, each watching Jacob as old eyeless, not wearing his eye bandage, dragged a finger across his chest to bring forth some Kindred blood. Thick, heavy, the powerful liquid coated into a single drop upon his fingertip, and he dandled his fingers over the blood bowl before him to let it fall into the red.

This blood bowl was a pale comparison to the one she’d seen in the secret underground lair in Three Kings Cemetery, and she was fucking thankful for that. No corpses dangling over this thing, dripping old, cold blood into it. No screams echoing in the walls. And the moving shadows were caused by flickering candlelight, not the stuff of nightmares.

She almost asked what was going on, but that’d have been pretty dumb. The atmosphere screamed silence, and maybe some chanting. No chanting though, much as it would have fit, but everyone kept quiet as they watched Jacob work his magic, his ritual. And, as Beatrice came in closer, she felt the chill work up her spine again, the same chill as that time in the cave.

“Beatrice,” Jacob said, his gaze still on the blood ... she thought. Hard to tell, being empty eye sockets and all.

“Jacob.” Hushed voices, as if volume would shatter the power of what they were doing.

Aaron and Othello stepped aside, and she stepped between them. The five of them, standing around the blood bowl. And just as she was about to make a stupid comment about her lack of proper fashion, Jen came around the group and tossed a robe over her shoulders. The woman smirked at her, adjusted the robe a little, made sure to spend a little more time than necessary adjusting it around her chest, then went back to stand where she’d been.

They did this every so often, watched Jacob do his work, to get glimpses into the true nature of the Circle of the Crone, and the Crone goddess herself, whatever the fuck that was. Occasionally, Jacob described various roles in the organization’s structure during these demonstrations. The Whore, the Hero, the Maiden, the Fool, Father and Mother, Hermit, and others. Jacob had, on occasion, referred to himself as the Father of this particular little pod of witches, and also, the Fool.

The rest of them though? He gave no role. Or rank for that matter, other than that they served him. Serving him, for the most part, meant doing whatever the fuck they wanted. But, on occasion, he had requests for them, like the time Beatrice was sent to spy on the burned building and the Kindred investigating it. And then he’d go weeks, months, without so much as a single order or goal.

Fuck he was a weird dude, and Antoinette wanted her to connect with him. Yeah, sure, she’d get right on that.

“Jack is missing,” she said.

“Yeap,” Jacob said.

“Know who did it?”

“Nope.”

She sighed, and looked at everyone else. The three others were content to listen quietly, or stare at the pool of blood with interest. It was moving, almost like it was boiling, but it wasn’t. A couple bubbles came up from underneath it, and for a second, Triss thought maybe someone would leap out of the bowl, as if they’d been drowning. It was only a foot deep, but still.

“I want to find him.”

Eyeless nodded, and chuckled. “I’m sure you do.”

“Can you help me?”

He nodded again, and gestured to the bowl with his chin. “Watch.”

His hands disappeared into his robes, and pulled out objects. Objects was as best a descriptor as she could come up with, as each thing was unique. First, a crow feather, or at least something black. Then, a dead spider, a large one. Both into the blood bowl; or pot, now that he was tossing things into it like ingredients. Then, a rotted finger. Good fucking god

Another nod, and he took out a final item. A knife. A knife she recognized.

She stepped back.

“I had an interesting conversation with Fiona,” eyeless said.

“ ... don’t torment her, Jacob. She’s a really nice girl, and—”

He waved a hand over the bowl, dismissing her and drawing her eyes to the blood at the same time. Damn liquid refused to hold still.

“I didn’t torment her. But, her naivete is apparent. She did not realize how many questions she answered without answering them.” A chuckle, a laugh, like an old man might make when he managed to outsmart a young whippersnapper. “It seems Azamel is not in Dolareido just to chase something. No. Seems she’s in Dolareido to avoid something too.”

“Avoid?”

“Oh yes. The old monster’s caused a stir in many places in the world. Small towns in quiet, ignored places, have been damaged, or destroyed. Some not so small, in different corners of the country, gone.”

“ ... destroyed villages?” What the fuck?

“Indeed. Scary, isn’t it?”

“How do you know what—”

He gestured to the blood bowl. Right, of course, magic. Fucking blood magic.

“I am preparing a ritual, before I go and speak to Azamel herself.”

“ ... herself.” Yeah, if Azamel was destroying literal places, wiping them off the map, maybe it was better if they kept their distance? “Sure you want to antagonize her?”

“My dear, sweet little Beatrice.” French accent included. “You want to see how dangerous a beast is? You have to poke it first.”

Cause that was a good idea.

“Seriously?” She mimicked his gesturing hand, and met his eyeless gaze as best she could.

He smirked. Always with the smirking. “Afraid of a little chaos?”

“I—”

He chopped off his hand.

The four of them jumped back, and raised their hands to guard themselves at the brief flash of light of the man’s hand disintegrating. It looked almost like fire, a brief touch of flame like a firecracker, but turning into ashes without a sound. The man was so old, antediluvian, severing a body part created instant dust. And as the four of them managed to lower their hands and stare at the falling ashes, they gulped.

The ashes danced upon the surface, before sinking into the blood. Aaron, Othello, Jennifer, they stared at the crimson liquid for a few moments before they looked to watch Jacob. Man was ancient, disgustingly ancient, and before their eyes, he regrew his hand. First it was the blood coming out of his wrist, binding on itself, turning into bone, into muscle, into tendons, ligaments, and skin. But Triss couldn’t help but stare at the bowl of blood instead, at how the bubbling was getting worse, at how it churned, writhed, and breathed.

He was going to teach her crúac rituals, blood magic, and he’d said the way to do that was pain, because with pain, you could tap into the beast. Hurt someone enough, really hurt them, and the pain turned the ego off eventually. Instinct took over. For a vampire, that meant frenzy, that meant letting the thing with claws and fangs on the inside out onto the surface, meant giving it control. Jacob wanted her to let her beast closer to the surface, cause it was the beast in a Kindred that had true power. It was the beast in a Kindred, that could call upon the power in the blood, do shit like cross barriers, empower Kindred with insanity beyond understanding, and even communicate with madness like the Black Blood.

She licked her crocodile teeth, and watched, wide-eyed, as a single eye floated up from underneath the blood. An eyeball, an actual, white eyeball, with a dark blue iris. And then, another eyeball floated up as well, same color. It drifted around in the settling blood, the red liquid finally calming as it offered its prize.

Jacob reached down, took an eyeball, and slipped it into one of his eye sockets. The four of them winced, maybe even groaned a little at the unsightly display, and Jacob laughed at them as he covered the grotesqueness with one hand. The hand glowed red, subtle, between his fingers and from his palm where they couldn’t see with it flat to his face and eye. But, when he removed the hand and lowered it, the fake eye had an eyelid, and eyelashes to match it.

“Handsome, don’t you think?” he said, Joker smile on full tilt. And when he moved his hand over to cover his other, empty, shredded eye socket, Triss stared at him.

He was kind of handsome, in that older man sort of way, salt and pepper hair giving him a sort of debonair appeal. With his lean frame and deep cheeks, it would have fit well in a soap opera, wearing a nice suit and running a massive corporation or something. Crazy to think so, but maybe there was some appeal to this man, sexually, even romantically, that drew Minerva to him.

“The eye, um ... what’s it for?” Why was she the only one asking questions? Why did the other three just watch wide-eyed, and not wonder how he was doing this insanity? For fuck’s sake he just created an eyeball out of blood, and random occult shit! But no, Jen, Aaron, Othello, they just watched on, intrigued and amazed, but silenced by their own hesitations and fear. Or laziness.

She wanted to know.

“Begotten are not creatures of blood and shadows, like Kindred. They aren’t beasts of muscle and aggression, like Uratha. They are nightmares.” He laughed again, and reached for the other eyeball. “They think they’re beyond our reach. But they’ll learn. I’m going to do a little hunting, for nightmares.”

“ ... I want to come.”

Everyone raised a brow as they looked at her, Jacob included, and he lowered his hand to expose the empty, ruined eye socket, while also looking at her with the good eye.

“You think they’ll know where Jack is?” Aaron said.

She shrugged. “I’m sure the Invictus and the Prince are throwing every resource they have into finding him ... well, Julias and Antoinette are at least. And I’d probably step on their toes. But the Begotten know something, about something. Athalia talking to Jack, and Jack disappearing on the same night? Come on, fucking suspicious. And, I bet Jacob’s thinking the same thing.”

Her three fellow witches nodded, while Jacob held his chin in his fingers, and considered her. God, he had an eye, a fucking eye, and he was using it to look at her. Gross.

“You can come, if you’ll be an asset.”

“ ... and how do I do that?” Here it comes.

Eyeless snickered and gestured to the blood bowl. “You’ll need one of these eyes.”

Yeap, of course it had to be something really fucking gross and nasty. Something right off the cover of a metal album.

“The fuck am I supposed to do with one of these eyeballs?”

“Wear it.”

She blinked, and stepped back. So did the others, wincing and each reaching up to touch a part of their face with caring fingers. Othello of course would be against the idea of damaging his face, even temporarily. Aaron and Jennifer, well, no one liked the idea of losing an eye. Replacing it with an eye from a dark blood ritual wasn’t any better.

“I ... I...” Fuck it. “Fine, let’s do it.” She leaned forward, set her hands on the edge of the blood bowl, and stared the old man in the eye. “Take it.”

“What? Me? My dear Beatrice, if you want to explore the depths of darkness crúac can provide, you have to learn to embrace the pain.” He gestured again to the bowl, where the single eye rolled around half sunk in the liquid. Considering how much blood was in the bowl, and how dark and thick it was, she imagined the reason Jen and them were at the bowl was to provide their own blood for the ritual.

“I’m embracing the fucking pain, just—”

“Just do it yourself.”

She let her head drop. Just do it yourself, he said. Easier said than done! The amount of reflexes a person had, Kindred included, to not harm the self, was high. Very high. Every instinct she had told her she shouldn’t be ripping off, or out, her own body parts. But it was in that darkness of pain and blood and the beast where the insanity Jacob demonstrated existed.

She remembered a story of Odin, Norse mythology, and how the god gouged out one of his eyes, in pursuit of knowledge. This shit was right up that alley.

“You ... you don’t have to,” Jen said, stepping in closer and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Jacob was going to do this alone. Azamel is dangerous, and we shouldn’t piss her off.”

Aaron and Othello nodded, but said nothing.

She looked between the three of them, and slowly, she felt a frown and harsh glare creep into her expression. The three of them did nothing but fuck all day, every day. Witches? Circle of the Crone? Suddenly, she felt insulted. These three weren’t witches, they were freeloaders.

“ ... why are the three of you in this covenant?” She pushed Jen’s hand away, and glared at her three companions. “Jacob offers us secrets, knowledge, power, and the three of you do nothing but fuck your food and do him the occasional small favor? Don’t any of you care about this shit? Don’t any of you want to fucking know what’s out there? Don’t you want to understand how the fuck he’s able to do the shit he does, understand the things he communicates with? Christ, we’re vampires, and all you three give a shit about is satisfying your hungers!”

The three squirmed, looked between each other and her again, and then back to Jacob. Eyeless shrugged, and waited, smirking at all of them the whole time. And when his one-eyed gaze met Triss, he winked the eye at her. So gross.

She wasn’t done ranting. “The shit we’ve seen, the shit we’ve felt, and you three are concerned only with ... existing! Fucking god, even you Aaron, all you do is read. You can read until the god damn apocalypse, but they’re just words, they’re not real! And you two,” she gestured to the Ventrue and the Daeva, “sex and blood and that’s it, that’s all you two live for. How the fuck Jacob lets you three just coast like this without actually giving a shit about this stuff, the Crone, the madness that hides beyond our view! How can you not care?”

The rant really came out of nowhere, and she was probably just redirecting her fear into an outburst. But, it was still true. These three did nothing to belong in this covenant, other than agree with its views. They barely helped Jacob in his endeavors, and their interest in the terrifying nature of their primal existence was nil. Well, fuck them.

Before they could respond, she used one hand to pry open her eyelid, and reached into the socket with the claws of her other hand.

She’d be able to regrow an eye, with a good night’s sleep and a belly full of blood. Unlike Jacob, she wouldn’t be regrowing any limbs in minutes, but still, losing an eye was temporary. And the pain was temporary.

Temporary, but the memory wouldn’t be. The slicing of her claws along the soft shell of the eye earned a shudder from her as the scalding agony exploded outward from her face and down into her body. Maybe she should have done this slower? No, fast was good, like tearing off a band-aid. Except, the eye. And as she got her claws around the squishy flesh of it, she screamed. Flesh, cutting and splitting apart in her fingers, Kindred blood fighting against the damage, and she having to tell her body to let it be as she forced the claws in deeper, behind the eyeball, pulling it out of her while the claws fought against her eyelids trying to close.

Her claws were sharp. It made the whole process a blurry agony of blood and distorted images as the eye was cut into by her fingers. She’d never really thought about it, what it’d be like to see through an eye as it was being destroyed, as the lens distorted under pressure, as the eyeball was punctured and the fluid coated her claws and eyelids. She screamed again, her other eye closed, the ruined eye in her grasp but still in her skull, and every reflex in her body telling her to let go.

She didn’t. She tugged on it, and fumbling in pain, she swiped her finger along the backside of the eye. She knew enough about anatomy to know the eyeball didn’t just float in your skull. It was attached, and she had to detach it.

The eye fell away, rolling off of her hand, and landing against the rock of the cave floor with a quiet plop that followed the silence of her cries. And as she forced her other eye open, she watched it fade away in a tiny ember, before it became ash. Her empty eye socket was closed, no opening that, and she felt her Kindred blood flood it to heal the wound. Regrowing an eyeball wouldn’t be happening any time soon, and she could suppress the healing to prevent that, until they were done what needed to be done.