~~Beatrice~~
Holy mother of fuck.
Athalia and Triss stared out from behind a rock, now much closer to the standing stones, close enough to hear what everyone near them said. Triss had her Cloak dialed up as high as she could take it, to the point she was going to be ravenous and depleted soon. Athalia had some tricks of her own, and she managed to help bury them in shadows that blended into the black water nicely. Whether Black Blood was just pretending to not notice them or not, Triss couldn't tell, but a sneaking suspicion told her he had, him or Jacob. No way they didn't have precautions set up to let them know when people approached.
But the gang had no choice. So Athalia and Beatrice got closer, staying low and keeping some of the giant boulders between them and the standing stones. Once close enough they could hear and see, they peeked out, listened, and jaw dropped. They looked at each other, eyes wide, before looking back to stare out at the titan, and Jacob, and apparently, Sam.
Jacob, god damn it. How much chaos had he stirred, just so he could have distractions? Hearing that he'd had nothing to do with Azamel's arrival, or Jeremiah's, settled a huge pit in her stomach, but still, a lot of shit had gone down that was his fault. Kinda. Sorta. In typical witch fashion, typical Jacob fashion, he'd found a nice moral gray area to ride and fuck people with. Give a man enough rope and he'll hang himself, and Jacob was handing out miles of rope for free.
Samantha. Seeing her tearing herself apart as she stood there beside the man, listening to him, her eyes peeking at Jack every few seconds as Jacob explained his master plan like a villain -- which he probably loved -- was painful. Poor Sam. If anyone on the fucking planet would understand the desire to hit a big reset button on the whole fucking universe, and put everything back together so that even life and death didn't exist anymore, everyone together forever, it'd be Sam.
Then of course, there was fucking Black Blood. No wonder every time Triss was around him, she felt like she was in the presence of something so much fucking bigger than he let on. But in no fucking universe did she'd think he'd have a lady he was trying to get to.
Things went from bad to worse before she could blink. Mark jumped out of the fucking water like the Bogeyman, and Elaine came up with him. The water around Jack was only a few inches deep, but that didn't mean shit to Mark. Jack dodged back instantly, reflexes no Ventrue of any age would normally have, leaving Elaine grabbing air. She jumped to the left, and Jack jumped back and to the right.
And then he came to a standstill. He squirmed and wriggled, but something had locked his feet down. Not Black Blood, he hadn't moved. Eventually the kid looked down with his one eye, and stared.
"What's going on?" he asked. "I--Elaine!"
Elaine smiled at the kid, before she walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Much as the kid evidently wanted to punch her, fists shaking at his sides, he couldn't.
The water at his feet spread away, pushed by something, and glowing red lines, like the ones Jacob had carved on the standing stones, lit up the ground around Jack's feet. He was standing on a ritual circle. Elaine had baited him into it.
"Elaine!?" Samantha ran over to her, and eyes wide. "What're you doing? Jack, what's--"
"We knew your son wouldn't cooperate. He doesn't trust Black Blood, even though Black Blood is the only way... the only reasonable way, to remove his curse." Sighing, Elaine took Samantha by the shoulder, and gently pulled her away from her son. "His heart's in the right place, but you know your son."
"I... I do, but--"
"He will do everything he can to stop Jacob, and Black Blood, even if it means getting himself killed, Samantha. Is that not right, childe oh mine?" Elaine, dressed in a business suit and skirt that looked horribly out of place, guided Samantha back to Jacob's side. "Black Blood will need tools, once the realms are converged. If he can convert the curse into such a tool, then it will be valuable. If not, then it will be destroyed. Either way, your son will be free of it."
"Mom! Don't--"
"Don't what?" Elaine said, snapping her gaze back to Jack. "Save you from yourself and your stubbornness?"
"You can't trust Black Blood to--"
"Are you so blinded by your distrust that you cannot see what Mictlantecuhtli has done for you? The times he has saved you?"
Mictawhatnow? Triss and Athalia looked at each other, expecting the other to know, shrugged, and looked back to the insanity.
"You're the one that told me to trust less, Elaine," Jack said.
"We are not speaking of the Danse Macabre, Jack. Black Blood is beyond ancient, and his goals are amiable."
"Amiable? He's going to..." Jack looked up at Black Blood before slowly turning his single eye to Elaine, anger gone. He'd thought of something. "Elaine, who did you kill? Who did you... you know..."
It was like someone hit the elder in the gut with a sledgehammer. She looked away and took a step back, before setting a hand against one of the standing stones.
"It does not concern you."
"If you're siding with Jacob and willing to break the whole fucking world, I think it kinda does."
Elaine shook her head desperately, the practiced motions of an elder vampire thrown out the window, hair bouncing against her shoulders.
"This world is a cruel place, little Ventrue. Jacob understands that. Your mother understands that. Mark understands that." She gestured to the man in the hoodie, standing a ways off, arms folded across his chest and head pointed up at the ghosts circling above. "This broken machine grinds its gears, and we are caught in its eternal cycle of misery. Enough, I say. Enough."
Well, fucking shit. Stopping Black Blood and Jacob was already going to be insanely tough. But Elaine and Mark, too? Fucked. Triss and the gang were absolutely fucked.
"Now, bear witness," Black Blood said, "to a miracle."
Nodding, the god of the dead reached down for the tear, and slipped a claw into it. The ghosts above howled, and the water rippled as everything shook. The standing stones didn't budge, immune to whatever the fuck Black Blood was doing, but everyone else felt it. Energy. Triss looked Athalia's way, half expecting her hair to stand up like lightning was about to strike, but it didn't. The water around her rippled, instead.
Movement above forced them all to look up, and everyone's jaws dropped. The ghosts overhead swirled over themselves, bodies half merging and overlaying with each other, and came down. Like a funnel or tornado, hundreds of the ghosts, maybe thousands, slowly crept down from on high and reached down for Black Blood. And like he was controlling the fucking weather, Black Blood reached up with his other hand, and a black glow -- however the fuck that worked -- shot out of his bone palm. The ghosts came down to it as if Black Blood's palm was the sole point of ground the tornado could land on. The tunnel's tip twisted on the way down, until it finally reached him.
Black Blood let out a groan, like a fucking dinosaur exerting itself to lift something big. Kinda applicable. He pulled up, and up, and tore the fucking universe apart. Triss's jaw dropped, again, as the giant skeleton lengthened the tear, pulling it up with him as the skeleton lifted. The ghosts above helped him. Almost like someone holding a rope, the tornado of dead straightened, and Black Blood squeezed on it harder with every foot he managed to tear the portal's opening. The swarm of ghosts went from howling, to screaming, and Triss covered her ears as the banshee shrieks hit hard enough she felt it in her withered guts.
Again, the god of death groaned, whatever he was doing obviously taking a massive amount of effort, and he squatted down in front of the tear. Higher, and higher, his claw ripped the tear further up, until he was standing again. Then higher, until the tear reached his chest. Higher, until the giant tear reached his head. Only then did the giant god stop ripping a hole through the world, and let go of his tornado of ghosts. Released from whatever Black Blood was doing to them, their shrieks faded into gentler-but-still-horrible howls, and the tornado lifted until it again became the swirling hurricane above.
Colors danced inside the tear. Blues, reds, greens, golds, violets, and strange colors that didn't make a lick of sense.
"Stop!" Jack pulled and pulled against whatever was holding him, but invisible chains bound his arms and legs. Considering how strong the kid was with the curse to help him, there was no way the ritual binding him was using strength to do it. Magic.
Black Blood let out a sigh, and even with his strange, new alien dialect and anatomy, he sounded exhausted.
"You okay?" Jacob asked.
Black Blood nodded as he stood there, arms hanging at his sides. Not like a skeleton needed to breathe, or a giant death god or whatever, but he looked drained. Ripping tears through the dimensions took a lot out of him. That was good for Jack and the gang then, hopefully.
Jacob nodded, and gestured to Jack, head still pointed up at Black Blood. "Gonna be able to do the ritual for Jack?"
"Yes. In a moment."
Nodding, Jacob opened his book, and resumed carving symbols.
And then a bunch of people fell out of the bottom of the new-and-improved tear, a few feet over the black water. They landed with quiet splashes, but ended up dogpiling on each other, and they scrambled as they tried to get to their feet. Oh god, Natasha, three werewolves, one fucked up weird looking spiky wolf vampire, and Brianna.
"Welcome," Black Blood said, looking down at the newcomers, "to the apocalypse." If a skull could smile, it'd look like that.
