Chapter 8

~~Beatrice~~

She had to get something to eat first, then she’d show Julias. She’d show up and beat the undead shit out of that piece of shit, stupid shit fuck. Eat first though, definitely. She was drained and tired from shadowing the trio, and there was no way she was going to confront big bad ancillae Julias without a stomach full of blood.

She’d tried feeding on some people gently lately, using the darkness and her strength to her advantage. It had worked well enough, and she’d had more than one kine succumb to her grip and enjoy the Kiss from the unknown creature in the shadows. But tonight, she stalked the streets for a bit, found some asshole who was about to rape someone, and then she drank him to death after making him relive his most horrible nightmare.

That made her feel a bit better. She could get into people’s heads too; perks of being a Nosferatu. Not like a Ventrue could, but damn there was something very satisfying about making a fuckwad of a kine piss themselves in fear with hallucinations.

And then it was the next night. She was fully rested, strong, ready to kick some Invictus ass. She dialed his number.

“Yo let me up.”

Bzzt. The door to the apartment complex opened. She could be walking into a trap for all she knew, but fuck it, she wouldn’t go down easy.

She was dressed in her combat boots and jeans, with a black t-shirt to go with. The boots were steel-toe, but not obviously. If things went sour, she was going to crack some nuts.

On the elevator, she folded her arms across her chest and waited while it went up. Her mind drifted around to all the things she might do to Julias if it turned out he’d been messing with her head. She already owed him for Mike. Poor kid was always a bit nervous and shaky, and now she could only imagine the sort of paranoia he’d have. Just thinking about it was making her nervous too.

She walked in with the same confidence she had last time she was there, when she’d shown up with a box of sex toys and night of fun in mind. Julias gave her that warm smile of his though from behind his counter, and already put a dent in her armor. For just a split moment, she thought about forgetting the whole vendetta thing and just having a good romp with Superman again.

Jack was there too. The two of them were sitting at the counter in his luxurious apartment, and they were ... looking at a candle.

“Hey Beatrice. I was showing Jack here the difference fire has on the skin now that he’s Kindred.” With that, Julias ran a fingertip through the candle flame quickly. It only took a moment, but just that was enough for the flame to cut a deep gash of ash into his finger, almost deep enough to burn straight through it. If he’d been an elder Kindred, he’d have lost his entire hand.

When Jack repeated the motion, with a groan and grimace to join it, the damage to his skin was far less. Just a few specs of ash and burned skin.

“And now ... focus on that blood inside you. Pool it into your finger. Tell it to rebuild you.” Julias put his hand palm up on the counter. Beatrice stood beside the counter, and watched the Ventrue rebuild his own flesh. Kindred blood was nothing like kine blood; it was thick and viscous and moved like another limb. True to Julias’s words, the strange, dark red covered the deep hole burned into his finger, and rebuilt pale flesh onto his dead bones.

“This is ... fucking ... hard.” The poor kid groaned all the more, and Beatrice openly chuckled. He glared at her, and she straight up laughed. His expression was so hilariously honest and juvenile in its frustration, she had to sit down on the couch before laughter knocked her over.

Julias looked over at her with a frown, but she just grinned back him, crocodile smile and all.

“ ... why don’t you go home and work on this, Jack?”

“Yeah, good plan.” Jack, still holding his hand in the other and looking at it like it were his enemy, got up and headed over to the door. He managed to throw Beatrice an angry glare, which she returned with a smirk to go with. A moment later he was gone, and she was alone with her supposed boyfriend.

She got up and stood there, hip out to the side and arms folded on her chest. Julias looked back at her, and tilted his head to the side.

“How’s it going Beatrice?”

Damn him. That smile, that confident but benevolent, powerful but gentle smile, was so inviting. He didn’t just sit there either; he got up and walked over to her, and even put his hands on her hips.

She clicked her crocodile teeth together. “ ... this isn’t a social visit.” She couldn’t wane. He was a Ventrue; just repeat that line. An Invictus Ventrue.

“Oh? What is it?”

“I want to talk about what happened last night.”

He didn’t even flinch. “What happened last night?”

In that moment of him acting like nothing happened, so smooth and perfect, she felt her insides burn. Her inner-beast almost sent her into a fury right there, with how rage exploded and filled her limbs.

She shoved him hard enough to send him back five feet and onto his ass. “You know what fucking happened!” There, that earned a flinch from him.

“ ... what happened to the no-work-talk rule?” Julias reached up to a nearby stool to stand up, but he didn’t fix the mess she’d made of his suit. His shirt had loosened at the waist and his shoulders weren’t on straight anymore, but all he did was stand there once he was up again. His expression was ... hurt? Serious? Angry? She couldn’t tell.

“You and your right hand bitch friends broke into Mike’s place and you ... you ... you fucking screwed with his head!” Her voice was getting louder, and that made it easier. With the rage building again, she pulled back a fist and drove it into the bastard’s chest. He fell to the floor with a very audible thud.

“ ... what do you want me to say?” This time, he didn’t even bother to get up.

Well then she’d make him. She stomped over to him, reached down, and picked him up by his shirt like he weighed nothing.

“I want you to fucking explain yourself!”

“You know I can’t.”

“Bullshit!” She threw him into the fridge. The heavy appliance cracked against the wall behind it, and Julias fell to the floor again with his back to it. His suit was a mess now, but all he did was sit there and look down at the floor.

“ ... I can’t. You know it’s Invictus business.”

“Fuck that and fuck you. You rewrote my friend’s memories! I bet you made him tell you something! So-”

“So I can’t ... tell you.” He didn’t look up, he just looked to the side.

“What about me then, hmm? The fuck did you do to me?” There wasn’t much thought left going on in her head anymore, just enough to know she wasn’t thinking. She reached down, picked up the damn Invictus bastard, and shoved him back against the fridge again.

“You? I’ve never done anything to you Beatrice.”

“Liar! That’s why you agreed to go out on a date with me, isn’t it?” She punched him hard enough to hear something crack. “Like a classy, sophisticated, self-righteous Ventrue would ever date a shark-mouth! You saw an opportunity! What Carthian secrets did you take from my mind then, hmm?” The second punch made a dent into his old, undead bones. “What the fuck have you made me forget!?”

This time, she used her claws. Cutting into a Kindred was different than cutting into a living human. His suit was like paper, but the flesh underneath was hard. It was a Kindred reflex, after all, to expend vitae to protect the insides, but it wasn’t enough to stop her claws from forcing their way through a couple inches of his pale skin and into the hidden, withered insides of a vampire.

It had only taken a couple minutes, but she went from his hands on her hips, to her cutting open his chest. What surprised her even more was her sudden outburst about being a shark mouth. Her anger only increased; she was supposed to be passed that Nosferatu self-lamenting bull shit. She was done with it! Done!

He fell back down again, and did not react. He just slumped, and slowly raised his eyes to look up at her. Fuck, those god damn eyes really were hurt.

“ ... I’m not lying.” He looked down at his chest, and put a hand over the open gashes. The Kindred blood stayed inside his wounds, like a liquid with its own mind determined to stay hidden. With a groan of pain, he looked back up to her. “About either part.”

“Either? What fucking either?”

“What you’re thinking.” He finally started to pull himself up under his own power.

Watching the beaten and sliced open Ventrue get up struck her with a sudden fear. What she was thinking? He didn’t know what she was thinking!

“Actually, I do know what you’re thinking,” he said. She practically gasped. “You’re angry. You’re angry I hurt your friend...” He stepped toward her. “And now you’re using that as a cover.”

“ ... cover? What fucking cover?”

“That you hate being a Nosferatu. You hate being a shark-mouth, and now ... you’re taking out that hate on me.” He came a little closer.

She punched him in the face hard enough to crunch nose. “Fuck you! Tragedy freak! This isn’t a fucking therapy session you stupid-”

“I’m sorry I hurt your friend, but I had to to save his life. He had info we needed, and if I didn’t take it from him that way, he would have ended up ash.” He hadn’t fallen over this time; he didn’t even break his gaze with her when he raised his hands to realign his nose with a crack. “And ... I have no way to prove to you that I’ve never wiped your memories, other than that I simply can’t. You’re too strong.” He started walking toward her again, with a sad and tired smile. “And I have no way to prove to you that I really do like you. You know me though, I’m a tragedy freak.”

“You fucking calling me a tragedy you fucking-”

“I am.” His smile returned, even as he used the counter for support while his wounds closed. “And now you know what I’m thinking.”

“ ... you think ... that I haven’t gotten over this Nosferatu curse.”

He gave a nod, and stepped closer to her again. “And maybe I’m a freak because I like that about you. Maybe I like that you’re not dead inside ... like Jacob. Or Maria.” His weight fell onto his hand on the counter, and he held himself up that way with his other hand on his chest. He didn’t try and fix himself up, fix his suit or heal his wound. He just stood there, a half-smile on his face, confident as always, but ... something else. “I like you, Nosferatu tragedy included. This,” he gestured to the wounds she’d inflicted, “included.”

Too much. It was way too much. How dare he? How dare he just stomp on twenty-years of her bullshit. Fuck him and his ... his ... bullshit!

She punched him again, but her rage had faded. It wasn’t even hard enough to make him stumble back. He stepped toward her again, and she could see where his hands were going. He wanted to put them on her hips again. She couldn’t let him.

She shoved him, and ran away.

“Beatrice! Wa-”

Slam. Fuck listening to that psychology shit. He couldn’t read her mind! He ... could practically read her mind, without any powers. How was he so good at reading her? Screw all that ... fucking ... stupid...

Ten minutes later, she was back in the catacombs where she first talked with Julias. Dark, filled with bones, deep underground with nothing but stone and earth and death around her. No one would hear her here.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaarr!”

Her claws came out in full force. The shelves held hundreds of skulls on layers of stone and dust, and it all came crashing down when her claws ripped through them. Her inner-beast took over, and she scratched and clawed against the walls with rabid abandon. More screams came out, inhuman and wall-shaking, until she could almost feel her jaw crack with how wide her mouth was. Before she knew it, she had grabbed a coffin and bit through it. The bones and clothes within exploded outward from the force of her shark teeth snapping through it all.

“It does not bother me anymore! It shouldn’t bother me anymore! How ... how can this ... still...”

She collapsed in a corner, covered in dust and bone, and cried.

~~Julias~~

It’d been a week since he last saw Beatrice. He may have just fucked up the first real relationship he’d had in decades.

He’d known Beatrice would be volatile, it was part of what attracted him to her, but not only had she picked a fight with him, she had literally cut him open. She’d followed him as per Carthian orders he figured, and that didn’t bother him. It was scary the young Kindred was able to hide from Natasha and stalk all three Invictus right hands, but again, that didn’t bother him. If anything, that just made her more interesting. She was powerful.

Julias paced in front of his massive window, a hand on his chin with a glass of blood in the other. It’d been a week since Beatrice had thrashed him, and he hadn’t seen her. He’d considered walking into Carthian territory, knocking on the door of their pathetic apartment building, and just asking for her. He couldn’t risk inciting an incident though, after Rebecca had put everyone on edge.

“ ... I really do like her though.” He took a sip of his blood. What could he say to her? He’d said all he could say. “Yeah but I talked to her like a fucking therapist. I’m surprised she didn’t rip off my arm.” He chuckled. “You really fucked this up Julias. Tragedy freak.

“Alright, alright, how to fix this ... fuck I don’t know how to fix this. She hates being Nosferatu, but I can’t fix that. She still doesn’t accept that I like the way she looks, not really. I have to convince her that I do. The thing with Mike though ... she was really upset I hurt her friend. Or was it about ... that I could have...”

He smacked himself in the forehead. “Fuck. She can’t trust me anymore. She thinks I can do to her what I did to Mike, that I may have rewritten her memories. How the fuck am I supposed to prove I—”

His smartphone rang. It was Viktor.

“ ... shit.” He answered. “Alder Viktor.”

“Mister Mire. I require your presence.”

There was no triumvirate this time. In the meeting room of Xnomina, Viktor was standing by the digital board, with his back to Julias and his hands netted together on the small of his back. Julias stood where he did last time, but without Jessy or Natasha at his side.

Just him and his sire, one of the most powerful Kindred in Dolareido. Each and every time, his one-on-one’s with his sire made him more nervous.

“Mister Mire, you know that tomorrow is when you must retrieve that sensitive information from the North Side drop location.”

“Yes Alder Viktor.”

“Are you also aware that Antoinette has started visiting Bloodlust every week, starting about the same time I sent you to retrieve the information from Vance? The night of the fire?”

“I ... was not.” Julias folded his arms across his chest and stepped up to be next to Viktor. On the screen, pictures of Antoinette were shown, entering and exiting Bloodlust. They were date stamped. “I knew she had been visiting Bloodlust, but I did not make that connection.”

“Indeed.” Viktor gave him a short glance, cold and demanding. “And did you know she has been seducing your childe?”

He did not like where this conversation was going.

“Yes, Alder Viktor.”

“Strange that you have not brought this to my attention.” Viktor looked back to the screen, and gently eased several more digital photographs onto it. There was Antoinette, tall and gorgeous, with Julias’s little childe in her arms.

The kid was right, Antoinette was really sexual with him. Really sexual. The picture was of them in Elysium, sitting on a bench outside her tower, and she was holding his childe to her and snuggling and ... kissing. His childe was kissing the Prince of Dolareido.

Viktor looked back to him, and his eyes were even more cold.

“I hadn’t realized it had progressed this far,” he said. God damn it Jack.

“Is he aware of any sensitive information?”

“No, sire.”

Viktor idly wiped some non-existent dust from the shoulder of his suit. “But that does not mean he will not become aware of any. She...” His voice trailed, and he reached for another digital image to drag into the center of the screen. He dragged at its corners to expand it, and zoomed in on Antoinette’s face. “Interesting.”

“Sire?”

“I’ve known the Prince for a long time. We met before she was Prince, and... , “ he pointed to her eyes, “she rarely shows those eyes anymore.”

Julias took a long hard look at the picture. Antoinette was stroking Jack’s chin with her arm hooked around his shoulders. She was holding him close, and she’d leaned in close enough to touch her nose to his. He almost felt jealous, that Antoinette was getting so much of his childe’s attention. It was in the Prince’s eyes though, and now that Viktor pointed it out, it was clear as day.