~~Antoinette~~
Three months later.
She stared down at the corpse, and sighed. Sigh turned to frown. Frown turned into snarl. In her youth, she would have likely elevated to outright rage, and destroyed all in her vicinity. But she had long learned to control her anger, and she quelled it now as she stood, confused and frustrated.
Blood seeped out over the lines of the ritual circle, over the dark tile, and around her feet. She stepped about it effortlessly as she motioned to Daniel.
"It does not come."
"No," her sheriff said, "it does not."
"We did the ritual correctly."
"If the book is to be believed."
She snatched the book off the nearby table. Deep in the tower's basement's basement, she was free to explore the darkest, most sinister, vile experiments, free of watching eyes or worry of contamination. Down, deep in the earth, surrounded by metal and stone, only she, her sheriff, and her tools existed.
The summoning circle was the same as it was before, though all electricity had been disabled. Only candles would do for this ritual. And the corpse, a woman, a murderer, was not old. The younger the sacrifice, the stronger the resonance.
Antoinette was not happy to kill someone so young, but dealing with Black Blood was too important. Dolareido was built with such options in mind, that it would have an underbelly where black hearts could enact their desires, only for Kindred to capitalize and use such kine for whatever purpose they wished. The city was a utopia for paranormals, not for kine. But she tried. She had found a balance, after all. There was less crime in Dolareido compared to similar cities, and what crime was committed was often untraceable, allowing Kindred to make problematic kine simply disappear without drawing the attention of the media.
But she did not enjoy using such a tool. Several criminals still sat within her cells, and she did not enjoy their presence. And killing them was never a joyful act. Worse was killing a young woman, a troubled girl who had killed her ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend in a fit of rage and madness. A crime of passion, and Antoinette did not enjoy being the judge, jury, and executioner for the woman.
But a body was needed. Black Blood was summoned by death, by decay, by corpses and blood and lifeless mounds of flesh. She could not contact the spirit without it. And yet, even as the girl died in the circle, spared the horror of death as she had been unconscious for it, there was nothing. The dark mist and oozing black blood, it did not appear. Antoinette and Daniel were left standing in candle light, in deathly quiet, with only the spreading blood of the corpse to remind them they were not frozen in time.
With a heavier sigh, Antoinette flipped through the pages of the tome. A terribly old book, she had had to encase each and every page in protective plastic, lest a gentle breeze destroy the parchment. And the cover, a leather of some kind, was encased in the clear plastic as well. Laminating or varnishing had been options, but she worried it would damage the rituals themselves, to permanently alter the book that held them.
A dragon was no dragon if they did not attempt to eliminate unknown factors from their experiments.
Alas, the experiment was for naught.
"Do you want to summon it normally?" Daniel asked.
She shook her head. "I summon it to attempt to bind it. I do not desire another pointless conversation. The damn monster made it perfectly clear last time we spoke, it will not parlay with me. And... I do not wish to kill another soul this night."
"Then I'll call the clean up crew."
She nodded. They could not let the thralls see the ritual circle, however, thus Daniel and Antoinette took steps to alter and damage the ritual. Once the site was sufficiently ruined, they left, and several thralls stepped past them into the room, armed with an assortment of cleaning tools.
No one was allowed to see the rituals she cast, save for Daniel. Not Natasha, not Elaine, not Samantha, and not her thralls or ghouls. These rituals were beyond dangerous, and only Elaine and Daniel could be trusted to have the mental fortitude to defend themselves from the prying minds of other Kindred. She did not share with Elaine for a different reason. It was best to keep her old friend out of this business with Black Blood and the tears, though as the months went on, that might change.
Daniel and Antoinette stepped into her main experiments room, where the resonance machine could summon spirits by amplifying the resonance of objects. No one sat within, so Antoinette sat with Daniel, and noted down her results, or lack thereof.
"I had meant to ask of Beatrice," Antoinette said. "How goes her own experiments?"
Daniel sighed, but did not sit with her. He closed the metal door, locking them within the large room of black marble, the hanging chandelier and its blue light, and the nearby ritual circle of mathematical precision that decorated the floor.
"No sign of Julias."
"Naturally. I am sure she and the flesh witch have finished preparing his body, but to pluck his soul from the afterlife? Every dragon in the world would beg to learn how she managed to accomplish such a feat."
"And... a few women kine have gone missing. Some of them young."
Antoinette sighed as she leaned back, and met her old friend's gaze.
"What do you think will happen?"
"I think Mary is dead, and Samantha is going to... learn the hard way, that death is permanent."
Permanent. So they assumed. Bold words for half-dead bloodsucking monsters of myth.
"Keep an eye and ear open for whatever catastrophe Samantha may unleash," Antoinette said. "I will let her make these mistakes, but I will not allow them to break the Masquerade, or risk her life. Protect her from whatever creation or mayhem she may cause."
Daniel nodded.
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~~Jack~~
The Carthians stared at him, some of them dropping their jaws. That was fine. A little shock and awe, and fear, would make negotiations go better, hopefully. Julias taught him how to negotiate, and his sire knew the value in using both good cop and bad cop techniques.
So let them think he was the bad cop for a moment.
He held the pub door open long enough for Scully and Mulder to swoop in, and the two birds circled over the heads of the dozen Kindred waiting inside, before they landed on his shoulders. One still had a broken neck, the other a broken wing. It only made the Kindred in the bar more nervous as they looked between Jack and his two friends.
Jack would have scratched and pet both crows normally, but it didn't fit the image. Right now, he was Jack, childe of Julias Mire, Right Hand of the Invictus, Jack the Cursed, Jack the Ripper, or as he sometimes heard down the grapevine, That Annoying Little Asshole. Whatever, as long as they listened, he didn't care. And with the hilariously expensive black suit jacket and vest, the red shirt underneath, a black tie with a hint of a flowing pattern of blood red lines, and the two crows on his shoulders, he looked like a mob boss, or the devil's assistant, or Viktor's grandchilde. They knew him by that title, too, and it was a valuable negotiation tool.
There weren't any kine in the bar, except for the ghoul bartender, and a few thralls and ghouls at nearby tables. The thralls and ghouls were particularly terrified of Jack at this point. He hated that. At least with the Kindred the fear was mixed with some predatory instincts. With the kine, they were straight up scared of him. If he grabbed one and threatened them, they'd freeze up. Viktor would probably have loved that.
Jack looked between the bar-goers without a pulse. Steve, Bella, Kass, and Garner were in the bar, Garry's four ancilla. He had others, but these were the four Garry used when things got physical. They were also the four ancilla Jack had thoroughly thrashed after killing Joe. Cory wasn't around. Good. He was still pretty young, and Jack didn't want to look that dude in the eyes, not after ripping a hole in his guts.
It was a typical bar, homely, with pictures of friends on the walls, and not all of them flattering. People knew each other's names here. He had to give that to the Carthians, they were better at fostering connections.
Lots of wood stools around dingy tables. Always stools, or chairs with short backs. Made it easier for people to socialize with each other, to quickly turn around and engage in new conversations. That was the point of bars, for people to drown in meaningless rapidfire conversation, something Jack doubted he'd ever be able to enjoy.
Jack walked up to the four ancilla. They sat at a table near the center of the room, and Jack grabbed a nearby chair from another table as he approached. He slid in close enough, sat down a foot back from the table, and leaned back as he looked between the four vampires. The whole room had gone deadly silent, everyone staring and watching, and more than a few Kindred put their hands closer to their nearby jackets hanging off chair and booth backs. Knives, guns, all of it hidden, all ready to come out if Jack got aggressive.
"I'm not here to follow up on my promise," Jack said. "I'm not going to kill anyone. I don't plan to, ever."
Bella snarled at him. Tan skin, a bit tall, with curly long black hair. And most importantly, Gangrel.
"You were pretty adamant you were going to kill us."
"The curse gets vocal. Sorry about that."
