~~Eric~~
It was probably a dumb idea. Hell, he knew it was a dumb idea. But he was going to do it anyway.
Maybe he was doing this because he wanted to get some control of his life; it hadn't been under his control in god damn forever. Maybe he was doing this to prove to Avery that he could be Uratha without her guidance. Maybe he was doing this because Jessy was obviously into it, and he could practically feel the hunger in her gaze when he announced his intentions. Going against the 'man' apparently did it for her. He bet, if he met her twenty years ago, she'd be listening to RATM every night during her orgies. Fucking to 'Killing in the Name' would have hit Eric weird for sex, especially the lyrics, but Jessy was the sort of girl to ignore lyrics when dancing, or fucking, and move to the beat.
It surprised him sometimes that she was an Invictus, and not a Carthian. Her rebellious attitude jived with what he knew about the Carthians far more than the money-loving Invictus. Then again, she liked expensive things, expensive places, expensive hobbies, and everything in between. Gift idea? Buy her a fancy suit?
Well, she had money, far more than he did. Hard to buy something expensive for her, when she could just get anything expensive that she wanted. What else did she like? Sex, she liked that. And tonight made it obvious that she was anxious to get some more bodies in the bed. She'd been having orgies for decades, and had gone solo because of him. Orgies didn't interest him, but maybe he should try and meet her halfway. Threesomes were pretty standard, as far as Dolareido was concerned, and vampires as old as Jessy had been doing far more than threesome for years.
He'd like to get her a gift of some kind, though. They'd been dating for a while, half a year, at least, and a gift seemed like a good idea. Except, the only gifts he knew how to give girls were shit like jewelry; that's all Sheryl ever wanted. Jewelry wouldn't work on a woman who could buy anything that ever crossed her path. And jewelry did seem kind of shallow, in the context of their fucked up paranormal lives.
He looked at the wolf beside him. While Matthew, Arturo, and the tiny vampire who rode them were content to stay behind and follow, Jessy stayed at his side. It probably didn't even occur to her to walk behind, despite this whole trip being his idea. For her, it was a reflex to go shoulder to shoulder with him or whoever was leading. He liked that. Last thing he wanted to be was a leader, and it was nice to have someone who'd go side-by-side with him into whatever shit show he inevitably triggered.
Needle Swords was their target. According to the two Uratha helping him tonight, Needle Swords was a spirit that'd grown in Devil's Corner, originally a spirit of misery, that fed on some spirits of drugs. Drug spirits were not negative, and if anything, many of them shared space with spirits of pleasure or adventure, according to Matt and Art. The problem was when a spirit of agony, or misery, or depression, devoured them, or vice versa. Spirits grew either by absorbing similar spirits, or by devouring spirits that fit into the framework. A hawk spirit could devour rodent or fish spirits to become bigger and stronger. It could absorb other bird spirits to become stronger as well, and absorb their natures along with them.
So a misery spirit had devoured or absorbed some drug spirits, and had its nature altered in the process. Now, it was a pretty fucked up spirit with a specific agenda, while also being quite strong. It was becoming a menace. A perfect target for Uratha looking to keep a city healthy.
Spirits had bans and banes. A ban defined the spirit's behavior, what actions it could and couldn't take. Spirits generally operated on a barter system, trading favors for favors, or objects for objects, and were bound by their agreements; usually bound, Art insisted. More specific bans included things like, a fire spirit not being able to cross water, or a spirit of surveillance being bound to give up their secrets if you knew the password.
Banes were actual ways to hurt spirits, to a far greater degree than normal physical violence could. Light could hurt spirits of darkness. Water could hurt fire spirits. It got more complicated, the more complicated and stronger the spirit. A spirit of the darkness of caves where insects made their home, to whom a village had routinely sacrificed goats to, would be a very strange spirit that would require research to figure out. Maybe it could be harmed by purified river water specifically from a nearby stream, blessed by the village who did the sacrificing. Maybe it could be harmed by gathering some of the insects that nested in the cave in the physical world, burning them, and creating a refined powder. Or maybe it could be hurt fire, too.
Figuring shit out was a part of an Uratha's job, according to the others. But it wasn't always necessary. Werewolves were half spirit by nature, and their teeth and claws did damage to spirits like fire did to vampires, and silver did to werewolves. Unfortunately for the werewolves, claws and teeth didn't do the trick on particularly powerful spirits, not very well, at least. Art insisted that, if looking to take something down that was very strong, finding its bane was a requirement.
Needle Swords was not strong, but not weak. They could take him down with their claws and teeth, according to his guides. If they couldn't, they could always go ask around and figure out what was the creature's bane, asking spirits for information, and having to do favors to get it. The original water rapids of economics: trading favors. What sort of thing could be the bane of a spirit of pain and drugs? AA? How the fuck could you distill AA into a bottle so you could—maybe get one of those badges or coins people in rehab programs got? That wasn't a bad idea, actually.
He was excited. He tried to hide it, but Jessy saw, and she bumped wolf shoulder to wolf shoulder with him. Yeah, this was kind of fun. And, it was kind of fulfilling. It felt good to be out, doing this, hunting down something he wanted to kill. There was an itch inside him he'd been struggling to scratch, and this hunt was doing a damn good job scratching it. Hopefully a successful hunt would wipe the itch away, and he could breathe easy again until the next itch arrived.
Natasha wrapped them in the Cloak of Night as they entered the busy half of South Side. They hopped up onto the roof of Doc Omala's, a fat building several stories high, and they looked around at the skyline of Dolareido. The sky in the Hisil, especially in the entertainment center of South Side, was a beautiful concoction of colors that almost looked sinful, as if someone had found the colors to represent sex and alcohol, and painted the night clouds with them. Or, it just had the Las Vegas color palette, he supposed.
The Blood Tower stood not too far away, and everyone took a moment to stare at it. The Prince's tower, a place Eric had been to only once, and it was a place he was glad to avoid. Antoinette was a scary lady, the sort of woman who'd rip your throat out and not even flinch, if she felt it was an optimal strategy in whatever game she was playing. The Hisil version of the tower did a decent job of representing how fucked up a place it was, as the tower leaked blood down its sides in such volume, the tower looked red. A far cry from the Elysium the Prince supposedly said her tower, and the grounds around it, were. No violence allowed. Yeah right.
Shock and awe over, the group looked down through the skylight as they transformed back into their human forms.
"I don't know much about this place, in the normal world," Eric said.
The skylight, what would have been nothing more than an outward curved piece of glass in the real world, was larger, wider, and stuck out of the building rooftop like a dome, in the Hisil. Yeah, it was a feature that attracted the eye, and the Hisil's reflection of it emphasized that.
Inside, Doc Omala's was a strip club, through and through. There was a stage with several stripper poles, and the Hisil had the poles larger, and glowing. Eric tried to not laugh as he dug up a memory, his first trip to a strip club. It'd blown his mind when he realized it was the pole that rotated.
Eric sniffed deep as he leaned in over the glass to peer. A couple of large pleasure spirits were flowing around on the floor, and some other spirits were as well, more of those dragonfly-looking spirits. But, the spirit that defined the room, was definitely the spirit on the stage. It wasn't Needle Swords, but some sort of spirit that obviously demanded to be the center of attention, something that thrived on being in the spotlight.
And it was beautiful. Nothing about it looked feminine or masculine, but it was humanoid, tall, and a long flowing cape glittering with all the colors of the rainbow hung from its shoulders. It drifted from one pole to the other, and showed long, beautiful legs, far longer than a human's, and colored reflective silver. Its face was smooth, lacked any features, and Eric found himself staring at it and its silvery color. It was like, some sort of tall alien creature, that somehow had managed to find a way to look beautiful with its smooth body, despite looking nothing like a human except for a basic humanoid shape.
It was putting on a show for the watching spirits, and it was doing a good job, dancing, swaying, and sliding around the polls. Everyone watched, entranced, and that included the five people on the rooftop.
"That's Dancing Light," Matthew said. "It's pretty old, been around for a few decades at least. Thrives on being—"
"The center of attention, obviously," Jessy said. "Strangely beautiful, isn't it?"
