Chapter 39

~~One Week Later~~

~~Jack~~

“Second fire this week,” he said.

Amanda knelt down, and ran her fingers through the ashes. “Poor Barry.”

The two of them stood on the street corner, and stared at the destroyed apartment building. The edge of South Side, closer to North Side. Not far from the Uratha and the building Garry gave them, and touching Carthian territory too.

“First fire didn’t get a Kindred though.”

The Mekhet shrugged and dusted her gloves free of ash. “Yeah, but Monica used to live there. She only moved deeper into South Side two days before that fire.”

He sighed, but nodded, and squatted down beside her. Police tape around the place kept everyone at bay; everyone being no one. This close to North Side, people minded their own business and kept to a decent sleep schedule. A rough, but not super rough neighborhood. A nice neighborhood, kept that way by Garry and his covenant. Which, Jack thought, was pretty stupid. It wasn’t a Kindred’s job to cultivate the attitude of people. He smirked at no one and shook his head as he looked over the remains of the destroyed building. The Lancea et Sanctum would disagree with him, and Damien probably would too.

“What did she say about the fire?” He also picked up some of the ashes, and felt them in his gloves. He’d made a point to start wearing gloves; seemed like the thing to do. Cool, badass gloves, black, leather and stuff, the sort of gloves a professional wears. A professional assassin maybe, and he grinned to himself as he rubbed his fingers together.

“Nothing,” Amanda said.

“Nothing? We know she’s been involved in that Mirrden business.” Cause starting fights with the Carthians over meaningless territory was a great way to spend their time. Maria and Michael said it wasn’t just about territory, but blood, humans, their sheep, their sole food source, and their future. Jack figured they just wanted to show the Carthians that the Invictus were stronger. They were right, but they didn’t need to make enemies over it.

“Yeah but she says there wasn’t any fighting over the area she’s covering. Told me things had been clear as day for her.”

Sighing, he got up along with Amanda, and the two of them stepped out onto the wreckage of the building. No one had died — except for Barry — but some humans had been burned, many inhaled smoke, and overall the area was now considered dangerous. Old buildings spread fire if they fell in a bad way, and while that hadn’t happened here, it didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. And this far from South Side’s main district, the buildings were old and flammable.

Kindred did not like fire. But more than that, they didn’t like it when the sheep were spooked. It was hard feeding on kine who were constantly glancing over their shoulder, so if an entire district of people were feeling nervous about burning buildings, it meant younger Kindred might trip and stumble on a hunt they’d otherwise be fine with. It only took one, just one vampire to royally fuck up and ruin everything for everyone. So, as per the Prince’s orders, it was their job to keep that from happening. Dolareido was a great place for Kindred, and it was their responsibility to maintain that utopia, and the Masquerade within.

But that wasn’t the main reason Jack and Amanda were investigating the fire. This was a second fire, one that killed a Kindred named Barry. A young guy, only a little older than Jack, and a Gangrel. Young Gangrels were often troublemakers, but they didn’t set fire to buildings, especially not when they were in them.

And the biggest telltale that something was up was that Barry was the only one that died. Sure, fire was a bigger concern to a vampire than a human, since vampires went up like kindling. But Kindred were more than capable of dealing with it with a little foresight. Kindred like Jack slept in buildings that were secure and borderline impossible to burn down or whatnot. Kindred like Barry often slept in hidden holes, secret, safe, secure, and kept a separate den for their living arrangements. That was this building for Barry, his den; the fire didn’t catch him sleeping.

“Barry was also working the Mirrden job,” he said.

“Yeah. I have no reports of any incidents with the Carthians about it though, not since that whole business in the tunnels and the Uratha.” Amanda followed him along the piles of broken wood and fallen walls. A lot of collapsed rooms, and the five-story building’s top two floors had collapsed down onto the center fire. Meant that trying to recover anything was impossible, with Barry’s den right in the dead center of the extinguished inferno.

“I can’t believe this is an accident.” He pulled out his phone and took a few pictures of the pile of rubble, ash, stained walls, melted kitchenware, and some ruined couches, all half buried.

“Yeah but, this is a bit extreme for the Carthians. It’s not like they just burn down buildings. And besides, Barry could have gotten out anyway.”

“Agreed.” He stepped down from the rubble and started to circle the building. There was a good twenty feet between it and the next building; normal for this far out from South Side’s central area. It gave him the room to walk the building’s contours, and stop to take some more pictures. Amanda did as well, and came to stand beside him.

The two of them had become work buddies. They got along, and had started handling contracts together, or inspections, or similar tasks. The sort of relationship that stayed at work, but had all the makings of a friendship despite that limitation. Jack liked it, kept things fun. Not that his work was supposed to be fun, necessarily, but if you can’t enjoy your work, bleh.

“What about the wolves or monsters?” Amanda said.

He shrugged, and climbed up onto the next floor. With so much of the building collapsed, gutted, exposed, little him climbing onto higher floors was easy.

“Can’t see any reason for it. I know Garry and Avery are on good terms with each other, and Garry isn’t happy about the Mirrden situation, but I doubt he’d ask for this kind of help from her. Not hearing anything from the network either.” He looked down at his partner from his perch, and squatted down near one of the melted ovens. Damn fucking hot to partly melt an oven.

“And the Begotten?”

That was a better question, and he hummed with his thinking. “We still don’t know what Azamel wants, why she came back. So, I won’t cross her off the list. But no reason to suspect her either.”

“ ... we still sure this isn’t a coincidence?”

“How often do buildings burn down in Dolareido?” Not very often. He sighed and rubbed his head—fuck now he had ashes in his buzzed hair. Amanda giggled at him, and he kicked down a bent frying pan at her. “How much surveillance we got on this area?”

She dodged the frying pan with barely a glance, giggling the whole time. “Not much, nothing over here really to monitor. At least not until the Uratha moved in down the street. We got eyes on them, and reports say the Uratha haven’t been down in this area. At least not from that direction.”

“ ... I wonder if the Prince has more information.” He paced around the wreckage for a while, snapping some pictures, before jumping down the sloped mess and rejoining his partner. “Cause we got nothing.”

“How are you and the Prince anyway?”

“Eh? What do ya mean?” He raised a brow and eyed the woman closely. But she only returned the raised brow, like he was the crazy one thinking she was crazy for asking about his relationship.

“Jack, stop being so antisocial! You never talk about yourself, about normal things, you only ever talk about music and books and stuff.”

“Those are normal things!”

She rolled her eyes, and started walking, making their way around the building. She had better eyes than him, Mekhet and all, so maybe she’d see something he couldn’t.

“You don’t wanna talk about your relationship?” she said.

“I ... I mean I guess we can do that. What about you though, no relationship?”

“I um ... been getting kind of close to this kine I met.” She shook her shoulders a little, like a creepy crawly was going down her back, and she giggled again as she took a few pictures of different corners of the ruined building. “And after that conversation you and I had, I started getting a little more aggressive with him.”

“Oh?” He never did quite understand talking about this sort of stuff, having a back and forth about the nuances of normal, everyday life. Much happier to talk about things he understood, like music and books.

“Mmhmm. I took him out to a movie.”

“You took him out? Not vice versa? I’m impressed.”

More giggles. “It was some shitty old movie, no one else there. So, after nudging against him and getting him to kiss me, I Kissed him.” More giggling, more squirming, and she almost jumped as she vibrated.

“A kine?”

“Yeah ... do you think that’s weird?”

He shrugged as he put his phone away, and slipped his gloves into his jacket pockets. They’d gone out wearing dark woolen coats; looked great with gloves, and gave them both a professional look. They could also have disguised themselves as cops or whatnot, brought fake badges, but Amanda opted for the nice coats. Jack had to admit, he liked the coat, a woolen trench coat that screamed ‘I’m an assassin and a lawyer’ all at the same time.

“No, but it is dangerous. I mean, sleeping with and drinking kine, even familiar ones, I get. But the moment it crosses the barrier into a relationship, you’ve got a classic dilemma. How much of your personal life do they get to see? How much truth are you willing to tell him?”

“I know! I know I ... I don’t know, you got me all excited to start being more aggressive and stuff.”

“Hey, I’m glad I did. Just be careful, you know? Make him a thrall if you want him around. Maybe a ghoul if you really like him. Just ... be careful.”

She nodded, and got in a little closer until they were almost touching shoulders. “I asked you first though. How are you and the Prince?”

“We’re fine.”

“Nooo! Not fine! That’s horrible.”

“I ... what?” He stopped, and raised both brows this time as the girl started shaking her fists in the air like she was freezing.

“Fine is bad!”

“ ... no it’s not. What the fuck? Fine is good!”

“No, it’s bad! Don’t you know girl talk?”

He facepalmed. “I didn’t mean girl talk fine, I meant actually fine. As in, we get along, we talk, about things I like, and things she likes. We have sex. We sleep in each other’s arms.”

“Oh, that is good.”

Yes, it was, and the memories made him smile. He nodded as they walked, and brought out his phone to call up an Invictus driver. “You going to the ball next week?”

“Mmhmm! But ... I shouldn’t bring Brad, should I?”

“Definitely not. I mean unless he’s the meal. Can he feed a couple hundred Kindred?”

She giggled again and made a small wave to the approaching car. “Nope. Oh, that reminds me of a scary story Michael brought up once, about the old Invictus balls Viktor hosted. Did you know he used to have a person tied down to a table, in the middle of a ballroom full of Invictus Kindred, and bled them dry. Cut their wrists and drained them into bottles for everyone.”

They both shuddered.

“I wonder what other sort of dark shit Viktor’s done in his past,” he said.

“I wonder what any of the elders have done. And so do they, I guess. You know their memories get hazy and their dreams get vivid and insane.”

“Yeah.” Weight forced his head down, and he sighed as the two of them stepped into the car. They stopped talking about elders once they opened the car door; didn’t want the driver to hear and report what they said. But his mind was already on the topic again, of Antoinette and her crazy long life, and that she’d eventually have to take a long sleep to suppress her ever-growing hunger. It’d be years, decades before she had to do that, according to her and Julias, but the thought still ate at him.

Him, without her, for years while she slept. And would she rise the same person? Apparently it was a thing some of the Ordo Dracul were good at, preventing the long torpor from affecting the mind.

He shook his head out, dislodging the negative thoughts as best he could. Stop thinking it about it, stop worrying about things you can’t change.

The driver took them back to South Side and back to the Xnomina headquarters. Amanda got out and waved at him, and he returned it with a nod and smile, before the driver started him back toward his place. He was getting hungry, and tonight was as good a night as any to get some blood in him. Drop off the clothes, wear something a little less business, a little more street. Street for an Invictus meant a casual suit of course, without losing the edge of professionalism and the I’m-better-than-you shoes that cost as much as the suit.

Jack used to think it was a dumb game, dressing for the role, but it was starting to grow on him. It really was just a game, and putting on nice clothes was a fun way to play it, now that he had the money to fuel it.

He stepped out of the car, motioned for the driver to leave, and turned to face his apartment building. A few other Invictus Kindred lived here nowadays, and since the building was made by Kindred for Kindred, it meant burning down wasn’t really a concern. Still, he wouldn’t sleep well today, thinking of Barry. Someone must have killed him, or incapacitated him — a stake to the heart would paralyze a vampire — and left him for the fire. But who would do that? Why—

Clara waved at him from the front door of the building, smile on her face and arms folded across her chest, before one of them raised to comb her box-braid hair back over one shoulder. She really was a beautiful woman, a fit, lean body in jeans and a white tank top showing off her hard stomach, her tan skin matching her dark hair and dark eyes. Average height for a woman, which meant he was looking up at her by an inch or two. He was used to it though.

“Clara?”

“Yo Jack.” She grinned at him and motioned him over with her head. “Thought I’d drop by. Avery wanted to give you a heads up on some stuff.”

“You guys have phones now, ya know.” He shrugged but nodded, and stepped into the apartment building’s lobby as he motioned for her to follow.

“Business talk should be done face to face, don’t you think?”

She had a point. Invictus did their important stuff face to face, half cause reading a person’s expression was just as important as delivering the information, half cause phones were not a secure means of information exchange in general. So he nodded again as he stepped into the elevator, and pressed in his number as Clara stood beside him.

She kept glancing his way, little glances, and she held her fingers in front of her together as she shifted her weight back and forth along her toes and heels. Sneakers. Such a stark contrast to him and what he was wearing, but then, that was Beatrice and Julias too. Maybe girls just liked men in suits? But he was taken, and Clara knew that.

And yet, the glances didn’t stop, subtle as they were. And when he caught one, she smiled, and held his eye contact for a little while before she resumed looking at the elevator door. He could smell life on her, almost hear the blood in her veins, and see it pulse on her neck. Kindred senses kicked into overdrive as he realized he was in an elevator with both a dangerous, deadly animal, and a woman who was attracted to him.

That was so very alluring, and he coughed as the Antoinette in his mind tore him apart. The Prince was the dangerous, deadly animal he was supposed to be attracted to, not this Clara. But at the same time, he was only human—er, Kindred. Not like he was going to do anything about it, but he couldn’t help but notice Clara’s movements, her body language, her interest in him.

He was an adult. A happily in-love adult. Totally an adult, who could be trusted to have a girl in his apartment who was attracted to him. Totally.

“So what did Avery have to say?”

“Just a heads-up that we’re looking into the burned buildings. Figured you guys are, but we’re curious too. We don’t want to go up in flames anymore than you do.”

Oh. Well, that was good to know.

“I was just going to get changed into something more casual before going out to eat,” he said. “I—”

“Oh, really? I’ve never actually joined a vamp on a hunt. Can I come?”

“I ... what?”

Clara chuckled as she kicked off her sneakers, and walked after him down the hallway of his place. Thankfully she stopped outside his room, and leaned against the wall as he mostly closed the door before he started getting changed.

“I want to come. In Tijuana we never got along with the vamps. Hell, it was war half the time. It’s a pretty nice change of pace here, not worrying about Kindred assassins and shit. Just being able to talk to you is unusual. Aaaaand I know people really like a vamp’s Kiss, when you’re not doing it mid violence and shit.”

“I ... yeah.” Yeah they do. A lot. He’d gotten better at meeting women in clubs and bars, and leading the conversation toward a romantic event. Course romantic event translated into him draining them dry until they went comatose; no sex or anything like that, he couldn’t do that to Antoinette. It wasn’t always easy keeping it sex free, considering how strong the effect was on some kine. There’d been one kine woman who’d started masturbating the moment he’d gotten his fangs into her.

The Kiss was good, but not so good as to turn anyone into a bubbling mess of arousal incapable of thought. No, it was Dolareido that was doing that, that had the kine so ready and willing to get Kissed without knowing what it was. The Prince’s city, breeding vice and comfort at the same time, and keeping the kine relaxed, horny, and ready for hungry vampires at all hours of the night.

“Ok, but fair warning,” he said. “Dolareido is ... well it’s a pretty sexual place. The Prince and her companions built this city for hundreds of years to be a utopia for Kindred, and she runs the whole city, so—”

“Yeah yeah, Avery gave me the speech. You think I can’t handle a little sexual awkwardness? Come on, I want to see the nightlife I’ve heard so much about.” More laughter, and she shrugged like she didn’t believe it. “Hear her tell it, people are fucking in the club booths.”

Wouldn’t she get a surprise then.

“Holy shit.” Clara stared ahead at the pulsing lights of Bloodlust, and stood a little closer to Jack as the two of them moved forward.

“Never been anywhere like this?” he said. Or, almost yelled. The music was the same, bass-heavy, repetitive garbage that was closer to a heartbeat than music, and it was loud. But it did a good job of covering the noises people made.

“In Tijuana we had clubs and shit, but uh ... people ... mostly kept their clothes on.”

The two of them stepped past the bar near the front door, and toward the dance floor. As they moved on, Clara slowed down and stared at the booths, at the people in them. While people on the dance floor were dancing as expected, with revealing cocktail dresses and casual suits with shirts almost completely undone, it was the people in the booths that were the main attraction.

Jack recognized one of them, a Kindred. For a moment he wanted to panic, explain why he was at a club with a girl that wasn’t Antoinette, but he poked himself in the temple a couple times and shook out the thoughts again. Stop feeling guilty, you haven’t done anything wrong. If anything maybe Clara would get laid tonight with someone from the club; girl was so attractive that many people were glancing her way, and Jack was sure she’d have a few men, and maybe a woman or two, proposition her tonight.

Clara’s clothes comment was more directed at the Kindred Jack recognized though. Clarence, a black man, Gangrel in the Invictus, with a shaved head and a few years on Jack. He was leaning back in his booth with his arms out limp at his sides, while a woman sat on his lap, her dressed hiked up so she could straddle and fuck him, and pulled down to expose her breasts. Hard to see much in the pulsing red of the light show Bloodlust provided, but there was enough light to see enough.

While Jack could simply not blush life, and keep any sort of physical stimulus or arousal at bay, Clara had no such tool at her disposal. He couldn’t help but notice her nipples were getting hard, and pressing through her bra and tank top. But that was normal, she was alive and breathing and surrounded by sex, and probably feeling awkward as all hell. She did say she wanted to see the nightlife. Got what she wanted, but probably didn’t want what she got.

After coughing a few times, she motioned with her head for them to continue. He smirked at the stubborn ox, and walked to the sides of the dance area, along the walls where the stairways were tucked away. Up and up, they stepped onto the second floor, where the music was a little quieter, and the booths a little more secluded. Where the kine felt even more comfortable getting sexual.

One of the booths held another Kindred, a woman of the Invictus, Ventrue, beige skin and short blond hair. She was still clothed, but two men on either side of her had their hands in her shirt, fondling, fingering, and squeezing things as they both kissed her. For a moment, Jack thought she might see him too, but she started to Kiss one of the men, and any possibility of her looking beyond her current predicament was gone. Even noticing the presence of a werewolf would have been impossible in that state.

It wasn’t just the two Kindred having sex either. One of the booths further in the back, one with no table so it overlooked the rest of the booths from a small stage, had two women and one man in it. One of the women was riding the man, and she’d taken off her dress entirely to do it. The other was leaning in, kissing the man one second, and kissing the woman’s breasts the next.

“Wow,” Clara said. First time he’d ever seen the woman looked so shocked. Normally, she dripped of confidence, but being surrounded by so much sex and flesh, in pulsing lights and pulsing music, seemed to break her composure. It earned a grin from Jack, but he washed it away quick before she noticed. Not like he’d been much better first time he came here. Hell, he’d been worse.

He nodded toward one of the empty booths in the dark, and the two of them walked over to sit within.

“This is how vampires hunt?” she said, sitting close enough to be touching shoulders. At first he thought it might have been flirtation, but as she looked around, he realized she was a touch scared. “This isn’t hunting! This is fucking! This is voyeurism, exhibitionism!”

He shrugged and scratched his head before rubbing the buzzed hair a few times. “Kind of, yeah? Part of the deal here in Dolareido. There are a lot of ways to hunt, but seduction is a prime one in this city, or at least this part of it. Antoinette’s efforts to keep it a vampire utopia at work.”

“So ... what do we do now?”

“In Bloodlust? We wait. You’re here, so I’m sure we won’t have to wait long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She turned her head to look at him, brow raised and the eye scrutinizing him.

“Just means that, when there’s a couple in a booth, any lone women are probably intrigued. Especially if the other woman is as attractive as you. Makes—”

She turned her head more, and smiled at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. Uh oh.

“You think I’m attractive?”

“What? Yeah, I ... er, well, yeah.” You dumbass. Foot, mouth. Antoinette is going to kill you. “You are, but I—”

“Yeah yeah I know, got a girl already.” She rolled her eyes, and reached out to set a hand on the table before them. Once she began tapping her fingers, she started to nod her head to the beat. “So, we just sit and wait.”

“Well, maybe if someone sits by themselves, we look their way and see if they look ours. Then, if eye contact phase goes well, we move onto engagement phase.”

“Phase?”

“Ah, yeah sorry. Just how I think about things.”

“Quite the nerd aren’t you?”

“Hey! ... yes, but don’t bring that up here. Video games, I’ve learned, are not a sexy topic of discussion,” he said, smiling and shrugging.

Clara burst into laughter, and elbowed him in the arm. “You might get along with David then.”

David? Oh David, he remembered him. Man could never look anyone in the eye, far as Jack could tell, but not because he seemed shy; man seemed like he was watching invisible butterflies or something.

“I—oh, there’s Natasha.”

“Natasha’s here?”

“Not Vola. This is Natasha Leblanc.” He gestured with a nod to the woman who was coming up the stairs. Leblanc was a beautiful woman, slightly tan skin, long blond hair, average height, and with a very pleasant hourglass figure. She wore a red cowl cocktail dress, tiny straps and plunging cleavage that showed off her massive breasts. Jack knew they were fake; didn’t have nearly the gravity, the collapsing weight, or the teardrop shape of Antoinette’s.

“You know her?” Clara said, one of her brows raising again as she watched the curvy woman approach.

“Yeah. Antoinette’s been teaching me how to hunt without using disciplines. I—hey Natasha.”

“Hello Jack. New girlfriend?” Natasha stopped in front of their booth and leaned forward to trace one of her fingers along it. Leaning forward meant showing off her cleavage, and now that her hair came down over her collar, show off the dyed color as well.

There was a time when Jack would have found her fake assets annoying, and his opinion of her would have dropped considerably. But, that was then. Nowadays people using fake anything as a part of their everyday life seemed like a small thing to get upset over. The ‘play the game however you want’ motto included kine and the nuances of the living’s life.

Looking at him, growing up a little here and there. Just a little.

“No, Antoinette’s still my girl. This is Clara, a friend.” He managed a tiny grin, slid out of the booth, and motioned for Natasha to sit down. She did, and he slid back in, to trap her between him and Clara. Much easier to convince her to do something if she felt trapped, make her feel helpless, like prey. Course that was all tactics for a first time seduction, while Leblanc had felt his Kiss once before already.

And he could tell she seemed excited, smiling, almost shivering as she made sure to slide up beside him when he sat back down. The dress had a mermaid sort of skirt, so no leg exposure, but it was also backless, and Jack could see how low the dress cut, almost exposing her ass. No underwear. Girl really was looking for some action tonight.

“Clara right? Looking for a good time?” Natasha said. “I know some men around here, and at least one woman, who would love to get their hands on a strong woman like you.” Easy to tell Clara was strong, considering the tank top. And Jack was sure Natasha was looking for signs of interest, of arousal, of intrigue and attraction from Clara. Hard nipples were a clear sign. “Or maybe some rock?” Or she was just selling drugs.

“I uh ... I’m good, thanks.” Clara smirked, but Jack caught a hint of embarrassment there. Funny, coming from a wolf, from someone who normally radiated self certainty and even a little animal aggression. From someone who’d licked him on the cheek.

“You sure? If you’re not Jack’s girl, you can—”

“I’m good, really.” She held up her hands and shook her head. “So you know Jack?”

“Yeah. Little man and his woman here really took me under, you know? Not sure how they do it, their secret, but they—have they ever done it to you? The thing they do with their lips.”

“No, they haven’t. But I’ve heard good things. Wanted to see it in action.”

“Oh! Perfect. I really wanted to try that again.” Leblanc leaned in toward Jack, and then down to bring her lips close to his cheek. “Still won’t tell me how you do it?”

“Nope.” He shook his head, and smirked. “You know the rules. Gotta turn around though.”

“Done.” Natasha Leblanc turned to face Clara, and Jack could practically see the kine grinning through the back of her head. The woman knew what she wanted, and she had no hesitation in pursuing it. She wanted a Kiss, and she wasn’t interested in dancing around the subject for too long.

Lucky for Jack then. Dancing around the subject, flirting with it, playing coy, hinting without tipping his hand, he was utterly atrocious at all these things. Someone like Natasha made it easy for him.

She reached up, and pulled her hair to one side to expose her neck. “So, Clara, I’ve never seen you at this joint. Doesn’t really seem like your kind of club. I place you as more of a sports bar girl.”

“ ... I do enjoy sports,” Clara said. But Jack could see, over Natasha’s shoulder, that the werewolf wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation. She was staring at Natasha, and Jack, and her eyes had widened a little like she was about to see a mystery or secret. Which she kind of was, as Jack thought about it. The woman had never been friends with vampires, from what he’d learned about her past, her time in Tijuana and the violent history it held for Kindred and Uratha. This was a first for her.