~~Jack~~
Back at the burned apartment building, alone this time, and using his free time as well. Course, Invictus didn't exactly mandate hours, but you were expected to work a certain amount. Work above that, accomplish things, and you moved up in rank and social standing; which was like gold in the Invictus. And he wanted to figure this out, who burned down this building, who killed Barry.
He stood atop the ceiling of a neighboring building. The sun had just set, and he only had a couple hours before he was supposed to visit Antoinette, to join her. They were going to the ball together. Ugh, butterflies in his stomach refused to settle. Maybe some work would calm his nerves, so he decided to spend more time on the investigation. With dusk only having just passed, there were still plenty of people out on the street, even in this part of town, so he kept to the rooftops. Up here, he could hide well enough, even without Amanda. And this close to North Side, this part of the city was pretty dark anyway.
He got down on a knee — careful of his suit — and looked across the way to the ashes and ruins of the destruction. Still surrounded by police tape, still being investigated by the humans. Perhaps they'd find something? If they did, Jessy would notify him; Invictus had their eyes and ears on everything the police touched, after all. No word though, and likely that the police wouldn't find anything anyway, not with no evidence. A burned down old apartment building wasn't exactly uncommon.
But maybe the animals knew more?
He looked around from his perch. No rats. Well, maybe there was, but it was dark and he was high up while rats preferred the ground. But, there were three animals cities always had in droves. Rats, cockroaches, and crows. Other animals too, but those three would stand the test of time and outlive them all. Cockroaches were just resilient to the point of absurdity, but rats and crows were smart, damn smart. And they made the perfect informants of the animal kingdom.
He looked around and behind him. A couple of crows stood upon the ceiling with him, upon its ledge and emitting the occasional caw. When he turned to face them, they both looked over their shoulder to look back at him, complete with a couple ruffles of their feathers.
He took an unneeded breath, and met the gaze of one of the crows. Feral whisper, Julias had called it. Bringing up the beast in the gut, taking it to the surface, using its animal nature to communicate with other animals. He did not like the beast, did not like the predatory impulses it sent him, did not like how it forced him to think of other people in terms of dangerous or not, food or not, competitor or not. And, when hungry enough, the beast took over and sent the vampire into a frenzy. The aftertaste of its presence was forever on his tongue, and he could just barely make out the blurry memories of the insanity. Almost a year ago, the hazy images in his brain showed him grabbing an innocent women, drinking her dead, and dragging her corpse up a building like some sort of leopard taking its fresh kill into the trees.
Nope, don't go down that road. It was a long time ago, and every vampire had to deal with frenzying. Many of them didn't really care if they killed an innocent in the process; just part of being Kindred, losing your humanity, your connection to the human race. The fact it still ate at him just meant he still had that humanity, and he should keep it that way.
Another breath, and he stepped toward the crow. "Come here." Spoken in English, but the words carried the animal power from his chest, from the strange beast lurking in his ribs and always on the prowl, looking for escape. The two crows looked at each other, then him, like he was the craziest two-legged thing in the world.
Until he came closer, and said it again, vitae flowing through his dry veins and bringing out the feral whisper within. "Come here."
He could almost see the dawning of awareness in their black eyes. Beautiful creatures, crows, and the way they held themselves always denoted a degree of analysis, he thought, even before he was Kindred. And now, as he crossed the gap between animal and vampire, he came closer, and closer, and let the voice of his beast come to the surface.
"Come here."
The two crows hopped over to him. He smiled, held out his arm, and both birds flapped their wings until they'd found comfortable spots on his forearm to perch. Excellent. Not so excellent for his suit, with bird claws digging into the sleeves, but he'd live.
"How much do you two remember about the fire that happened here?"
The two birds made some quiet clicking noises. And, through some madness that would forever surprise him, the beast lurking in his chest listened. It relayed the information, parsed it, turned it into human concepts his brain could understand. But even with that, the birds communicated with their senses, not words. And once the beast in him turned it into senses like his own, he had to make sense of it.
Crows had great memories, he knew that. Latest research suggested they had memories that lasted far longer than a day, that they could remember faces, that they could teach each other how to use tools, and a host of examples of intelligence beyond that of most animals. Not only that, but crows had better eyesight than humans. A smart Ventrue — or any Kindred who used the discipline animalism — would start to use crows more and more as they grew in power, grew in strength, grew in their ability to command multiple crows.
According to Julias, he was such a Ventrue. The ego stroking made him smile, and he smirked down at the two crows as they relayed information back to him.
Daytime, sunlight. Christ how long it'd been since he'd felt those sensations like the crows did every day, warmth and brightness. He forced back the obvious imagery of life, and through it into the details. People, people below the crows as the two birds watched from on high, up in the air where it was safe, where the air was cleaner and the noises were too. Easier to tell where things were, what things could be eaten if conveniently dropped by the humans.
So much more vivid than the rats. The rats couldn't see anything, but had a billion smells and touch sensations to share with him. The birds were far closer to humans, where sound was important, but vision was of utmost importance. And that, his brain could make better sense of, turn into more useful information as he filtered through the hundreds of men and women that walked by in their memories.
Unfortunately, as much as crows had great memories, they weren't looking for what he was looking for. They didn't have the context or need to remember things specifically in the ways humans did, so the onslaught of images, of people, of fabric covering skin, of food, and honking horns from the metal cages on wheels, wasn't broken down into weighted data. Too much of everything, without anything.
The birds clucked a few times at him.
