~~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.
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~~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.
