. 02

~~Julias~~

"Tonight, you're going to communicate with a rat."

"Delightful."

Julias smirked down at his childe, and gave him a pat on the head, the sort he knew would infuriate his friend. "Don't like rats?"

"I think rats raised by humans are awesome creatures. Rats who grew up in a sewer? Not so much."

The two of them stepped out of the car, and Julias waved the driver off before turning to walk toward North Side. Dolareido was a city, a very large city, and that meant crows, cockroaches, and rats. Maybe the kid would prefer trying this with a crow? Later. For now he knew where he could find rats in large quantities.

"I was hoping we could talk about relationship troubles," Jack said.

Relationship troubles. Kid did love to be blunt. "Oh? Having issues with the Prince?"

The two of them walked further and further from any ears, any pedestrians, any traffic, and further out again toward the edge of the city. The driver had taken them out a ways, but Julias preferred to walk the remainder. And the kid had said he wanted to talk to him about something; so now worked.

"Not exactly? In fact, she seems to already know about Clara... liking me. No idea how she knows, but I guess that's why she's the Prince." He shrugged, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes on the sidewalk. No one around anymore, just the two of them surrounded by empty factories and emptier streets. "Just, uh... she's, um... Ok, yeah I... saw her breasts."

Julias rolled his eyes and combed his hair back with his fingers a single time. God damn this kid. "Alright, walk me through what happened. Spare no details."

And thus followed an asinine tale of an idiot boy who didn't know how to say no to a pretty girl. Jack could say no to most people about most things, with a straight face held in the cradle of cold logic. A valuable trait, that went out the window the moment a beautiful woman fluttered her eyelashes at him.

"She could have covered up!" He threw up his hands, utter dismay chiseled onto his face. "She didn't have to let that woman lift up her shirt!"

"Sounds like she saw an opportunity to let you see something she figured you'd like." He sighed and flicked the kid in the temple, hard enough to make him yelp and jump to the side. "Maybe you should lay off seduction hunts for a while, and do some regular hunts? Less sexual, less likely to get you into trouble with a girl trying to get into your pants."

"Arg, I've never had this problem before! I didn't really... I don't know, expect her to get that... that..."

"She likes you. And she's not some simpleton teenager, she's a woman, and judging from what I know of the other Uratha, she's older than she looks." Clara was a beautiful woman to be sure, looking perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, with the body of an athlete and a beautiful face. She took care of herself, and managing a full head of box-braid hair down to her hips couldn't have been easy. "You seem to attract older women."

"I guess so." Upon reaching a corner, Jack walked into the lamppost. Into it, hard enough to make a clear, resonating thunk as he planted his forehead into the metal. The kid leaned against the pole, arms dangling like weights pulling at his wrists, and his forehead stuck to the lamppost. "Antoinette said she trusted me, but... I don't know, I've never been in this position before. Can I trust myself? I don't think I'd ever betray Antoinette, but I've never had a girl approach me like this, not since her." A low, whining sound came out of the kid, and he banged his head a couple more times against the pole.

"Jack. Come here."

With time, Jack eventually stood back up, and waddled his way over to Julias.

Until Julias smacked him upside the back of the head.

"Ow! What the fuck man!"

"Kid, you're an idiot. A lovable idiot, but an idiot. The fact you're deliberating this so much, when nothing has even happened yet, means you're giving this far more thought than any cheating man would. So give yourself a little credit, you're a faithful man and I bet Clara could literally tie you up, pin you down, and rub her naked self all over you and you wouldn't even kiss her."

"I mean... I guess yeah. I can't get the image of her out of my head though."

"Yeah, you have a sex drive, same as everyone else. Figured you'd be used to that by now."

"But—"

"And you're feeling super anxious and paranoid, which is making you run the thoughts through your head over, and over, and over, like you always do. That's why you can't stop thinking about her. You and Natasha both, always running a million thoughts through your heads all the time, organizing and analyzing." This kid, god this kid. Such a great friend to have, someone he could trust, someone who would dig through things with the utmost tenacity until he'd filtered a million bits of information, and gotten to the bottom of things. Until he'd become an expert — or at least learned — in whatever he needed to know, he would obsess about something until it consumed him. Think about things until he paced his brain into a ditch, and then a grave.

"So I should do... what?"

"Nothing. That's what I'm saying. Maybe next time don't take the girl who likes you to a sex club, but other than that, nothing." Chuckling, he put his hand on his friend's shoulder, and started walking them down the street again. "Really, you think too much."

"I know, I know. It's just she's my first girlfriend, and I really love her. God I love her, and she spoils the fuck out of me, and—"

He shook the little man by the shoulder, just enough to get him to cut his worrying to a quick halt. "Worry less about Antoinette. Worry more about the Prince. Do anything like that suicidal trip into the tunnels again, and if I don't kill you, she will. And, if by some strange fluke, she doesn't, then Michael or Maria will."

That got some raised brows. Good, kid needed to stop worrying about girls so much, and worry a bit more about his own hide.

"Rats," Julias continued, "are intelligent creatures as you know. Observant, but not the best eyesight. Great sense of smell, great hearing. And because there are so many of them, a Kindred would be hard pressed to suspect a rat. Be careful when using them to spy on particularly crafty Mehket, or any elders, and you'll be surprised at how much information you can get from a rat."

"I'm confused though. How's a rat going to convey the information?"

"You're going to talk to it."

"... say what now?"

With a laugh, Julias brought him to the end of the street, where a couple of decayed large buildings sat abandoned and decrepit. Dolareido was an old city — for the US — and had gone through many phases, many revolutions of technology, many changes as the old died and the new arrived. Areas that couldn't adapt fell apart, and such was the way with certain corners of North Side. Old factories that used to make things like string, or newspapers, or clothes, or anything that the manufacturer couldn't update for the modern era lead to such buildings being vacated. Someone would buy them eventually, tear them down or replace them, refit them, but for years, sometimes decades, many of the buildings sat useless.

Rats loved it.

Julias slid open an old door, and brought out a couple of LED flashlights. No power and with old, dirty windows, the outside light wasn't getting in; the rats counted on it. So Julias set the flashlights on the table pointed up to act like lanterns, and stood in the center of the empty room. A lobby of sorts, maybe for a small hospital, with a large desk and some doorways that led into dark hallways. Around them were a few small, worn couches, some stools, and some magazines on a table from the eighties.

"I can hear them," Jack said.

"Yeah. Thousands of them. More rats in Dolareido than there are people. Ten million, twenty million maybe."

"Damn... reminds me of when Viktor summoned all those rats."

"An advanced discipline. Summoning the swarm is something I'm sure you'll be able to do someday, and with proper preparation, to far greater effect than Viktor's on-the-fly decision to use it. We needed a way to get past Jessica's rifle." Not a fun night, dealing with that Daeva devil. But the memory of Beatrice ripping her in half, so her literal ashes scattered to the wind, was a happy memory indeed.

"I could summon a swarm?"

"Given the years to practice and grow your strength and skill? Yes, definitely. And more besides. There is far more to being Kindred than simply being strong or fast, or not needing to breathe, or being able to mesmerize kine with your eyes." And, to demonstrate, he squatted down, and waited.

Rats were cautious and crafty creatures by nature, but given time, darkness, and quiet, they came out of their holes. First one, and then another, and then another. They scurried along the walls, into holes that must have taken years to make, up scratched door frames, down counters, and eventually onto the center of the floor.

And once one of them looked his way, Julias met its beady little gaze with his own.

"Come here," he said, voice quiet, calm, and direct. Each letter enunciated, each marking the instrument of command to penetrate the rat's alien mind. The bad eyesight, the great hearing and sense of smell, the tiny body, the feet and tail. It was one thing to own a pet rat, but to establish a dialog with such a creature took a different level of understanding. And to a Ventrue, animalism was simply giving commands to animals instead of people.

The rat walked up to them, and stood up on its hind legs.

"God damn," Jack said, chuckling a little as he squatted down beside Julias. "Really doesn't feel like a Ventrue thing to do, talk to animals."

"While both Gangrel and Ventrue have a natural talent for animalism, and animalism may seem, perhaps, a discipline you'd expect from only a Gangrel, to give commandments is as natural to Ventrue as drinking blood. Whether it be to kine, animals, or once you are strong enough, other Kindred, Ventrue are rulers." The whole Damien situation aside.

"Daaamn." Jack's smile reached across his cheeks, ego growing before Julias's eyes. He reached out as well, and touched the rat. Before the animal could bite the finger, Julias made a few, tiny chirp sounds and high-pitched clucks of the tongue, and the rat nodded, giving Jack freedom to touch it. "Did you just... speak rat?"

"I did. Sort of. When you learn to speak in feral whispers, you can use words, but you'll also find it'll come natural to make animal sounds to better fit the way the creature's mind works." He held out his hand for the rat, and made a few more quiet clicks with his tongue. The rat nodded, and climbed into his palm. "It's a thing we have in common with the werewolves, the beast inside us. Much as you don't want that beast coming out and making a mess of your life, it does provide some significant advantages. It is an animal, it speaks animal, and can communicate with other animals."

"I'll say. So, I can talk with rats?"

"Talk, give it orders, ask it questions. Here." He held the rat up in front of the boy, and gestured to it. "Tell it to turn around."

"I'm... not sure how I'm supposed to do this."

"You have to stop thinking in terms of contracts, suits, shoes, clubs, taxis, and money for a moment. Let the beast in your gut come to the surface; it'll show you how to think in terms of smell, blood, hunting, hunger, territory, and all the animal things you normally suppress. And once you've let a little of that beast out of its cage, focus on the rat."

"Right, beast... right."

A sore spot, and Julias knew it. Kid didn't like listening to that part of him, didn't like that he had a beast in there, something that had driven him to murder an innocent woman, Mrs. Pavala. Part of being Kindred was understanding that you were no longer human, but also never letting go of your humanity, lest the beast take you over and turn you into a mindless animal. Forever a tug of war, using but controlling the animal inside.

Kid was going to have to learn how to use both sides, sooner or later.

With a deep, unneeded breath, Jack set his eyes on the rat. Like watching a child learning to ride a bike, there was a balance to be found that took practice, that took trial and error, that had Jack frowning as he attempted to communicate with a rat. A weird direction to take the brain, which was exactly where Jack's problem was; his brain kept getting in the way. But Julias had given him decent instruction, and he trusted the kid to figure it out.

"... turn... around," the boy said. The rat tilted its head to the side and stared at him. "God damn it." Again, the boy stared at the rat, and leaned in to make better eye contact. Julias almost interrupted with more advice, but he could see Jack was in 'Jack' mode, his 'don't disturb me while I figure this out, even if it takes days' mode. "... turn around."

The rat turned around. Jack grinned a grin Julias knew all too well, the Ventrue grin of 'I'm a god damn Ventrue and I did this' accomplishment.

Julias smiled at his childe. "Well done. Now, ask it a question."

"Like what?"

"Whatever you want."

"Whatever I want, right right. Um, how was your d—"

"Something a rat would understand, Jack. It's a rodent that spends its days scavenging for food and fucking other cute little rats."

Jack rubbed his buzzed head, took another sigh, and tried again. "... how many Kindred are in this room?" The rat stood there, unmoving for several moments, before it held up two fingers. And a squeak to go with it. "... did I just understand it squeak? Can I speak squeak language now?"

"After a fashion. The noises help bridge the gap for your mind to understand how the rat communicates. And now, if you tried to talk to the rat using rat-like noises, you'd find it quite natural."

"Natural. Ok." And the kid made a few little squeaks of his own, which enticed the rat to do a slow full body turn again. "Wow I'm the Rat Whisperer."

"Viktor had a natural affinity for commanding others, as do you and I, be it Kindred or kine or animal. Viktor and I are also comfortable with physical combat, which, despite my best guess, you seem to be as well."

"Ha, I doubt it." The kid clicked his tongue a few times, and the rat crawled out onto his awaiting palm. Rat-equipped, Jack stated to walk around the abandoned building, and scanned the walls up and down with his eyes. "I got very, very lucky with that spider creature."

"Still, given some training, I think you could learn to use more than a gun." Julias shrugged and stood back up. Squatting for extended periods was a bitch, even for a Kindred. "And it may come up, if things go sour, that all Kindred in the Invictus will receive some proper training with a knife."

"A knife? Why?" Jack approached a corner where a rat hole was, and clicked his tongue a few times. A few more rats emerged, and they stood in a row while Jack put down the first rat to join them. The rats did not flee, but stood there longer yet, and nodded a few times as Jack offered them a few squeaks. Kid caught on fast, very fast. Scary fast even.

"You would be hard pressed to use any discipline on a werewolf, and unless you learn how to use a knife in proper combat, a silver knife will be useless."

"Silver... knife." And reality came crashing down on Julias's childe in the most obvious way, with collapsing shoulders and a low groan. "Thought we were on good terms with the Uratha."

"We are. That's why we're slowly setting up our Kindred with silver knives, instead of arming everyone overnight with both those, and silver bullets."

"Putting me in a weird position as the middle man for the Uratha and Kindred. You know Avery's looking into Barry's death too?"

Barry. Julias frowned as he started to pace, and raised a hand to stroke his chin. "Barry was nobody. That was part of why we liked him. I could trust Barry to pursue a goal, a contract, and not only would he do it, but I didn't have to worry him drawing attention to himself. At least until this Mirrden business. And you know Avery and Garry are friends right?"

"Think she killed Barry to slow down our takeover, for Garry?"

"Seems extreme." But the Uratha lacked the subtlety of the Kindred. What was extreme to a vampire was a regular night for a werewolf. "Whatever's going on, it has to do with the Mirrden business. Monica could have been caught in a fire as well if she hadn't moved."

"Yeah, but I found nothing that could help me track down who set either fire. No footage, or what little footage Amanda got was useless." Jack stopped, looked at him, and then at the rats standing before him. "... I should have asked the animals."

Now the kid was catching on. "Being a Kindred is a cold war, most of the time. Information. And the information you can learn from an animal is better than no information at all. Rats, and crows in particular, have surprisingly good memories."

"But—"

"And you can use that information to prevent fights as much as win them, Jack. I'm happy with the way Dolareido is now, far more than my peers, and I struggle every day to keep them from ruining it. Garry, Michael, and Maria are almost desperate to fight each other, but a little nudge here, a hint there, and I help them settle their issues without Kindred getting caught in the middle." He motioned to the rats. "Now, try again, more elaborate orders, more elaborate questions."

The two of them spent the next two hours working on the kid's feral whisper, and each passing moment made Julias all the prouder. Kid was good. Kid was damn good. Some Kindred bloodlines seemed to water down with the generations, but Viktor had been a natural, Julias even more a natural, and Jack was proving to continue the trend. Kid was going to become a powerful man, given the time to grow. It wasn't long before Jack had several rats fetching him things, disappearing into rooms, only to return and describe the room contents, and he had some other rats besides standing in formation.

"Excellent," Julias said. "Keep at it, and soon you'll be raising similar animals from the dead to be your devoted familiar for a few nights."

"Raise the dead? Are you fucking serious?"

"That is basically what I did to you when I sired you, Jack."

"Touche."

"Once you can do that, then we'll see about summoning animals to you, and perhaps possessing one."

Jack's eyes opened wide as he looked at the rats, then back to him, then the rats. Kid just didn't get it, didn't understand how profound and insane a Kindred's abilities could become, how amazing his abilities could become. Still thought small. Julias would weed that trait out of him, and then there'd be no stopping the kid's growth.

Chuckling, he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and guided him back onto the street.

"So, only Ventrue and Gangrel can do do this?" Jack said, voice a tiny whisper now that they were out in the open.

"Other Kindred such as the Daeva can learn animalism with practice, and a Ventrue can learn to move with Daeva speed, but to dominate a mind like a Ventrue can would require teaching from a Ventrue. And vice versa. For a Ventrue to learn how to enrapture people with the awe and majesty discipline of the Daeva, you would need to learn from a Daeva. Each bloodclan comes with their own, unique discipline as you know."

"Maybe I could ask Antoinette to teach me?"

Julias laughed, no longer whispering; no need for it when nothing they were talking about was secret. "There are Daeva in the Invictus who could teach you instead, but I think you'll have your hands full learning from me for many decades yet. And besides, you'd need to taste a Daeva's blood to unlock their unique discipline. Antoinette wouldn't let you do that."

"Oh... yeah, you're right. That makes me wonder, about Vivienne and Natasha—not the blood tasting, I mean, just the fact they... don't really talk anymore, not like you and I do."