~~Jack~~
"So you let Tilly go?" Elaine asked, chuckling as she stepped in past the door.
They were in his mansion, and Mulder and Scully sat on his shoulders, eying the much, much older vampire. Idly, Jack noticed that neither of the birds crapped anymore. They'd always been smart enough to not do that in the mansion, but apparently it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
"How do you know that?"
"Do you think I came to this city alone? I have eyes and ears everywhere."
He eyed her. She laughed. There was some truth in her statement, sure, but a lot of lie, too. Maybe Antoinette told her. Maybe not. Elders be doing elder things.
"You're probably wondering why I called you."
She shrugged as she stepped past him, and slowly started up the stairs. "It's been a week since your fight with Garry. I assume you want to talk about that fight, and the curse."
He followed her up the stairs, eying her as she picked a seemingly random direction. This was the first time she'd been in his mansion without Antoinette, since the Prince was usually with her, especially when Jack was involved. But ever since the Avery incident over two months ago, Antoinette had been willing to take her eyes off him, even if Elaine was around. Kinda weird, considering how badly that incident had gone, but then again, no one had died. Plus, with Elaine's necklace, his Beast was quiet and the curse easily suppressed.
And, for some damn reason, Antoinette trusted Elaine, a lot, more than she should. And Jack trusted Antoinette.
"Yes and no. I also wanted to talk about Mulder and Scully."
"The crows?" She paused, glancing back at him, before she swung open a double door, and walked in.
"Yes, the cro--could you stop walking around randomly opening doors? This is my home, you know."
"This was my childe's home," she said, and he had to follow her into the room to hear her properly. "Your successes are his, and his are mine."
"Isn't that the exact opposite of how a parent child relationship is supposed to work? Kids inherit from their parents, not the other way around."
"Indeed, but it is how sire and childe relationships work. Or did you think Kindred embraced kine in some biological need to reproduce? Of course not. Kindred spread the disease of vampirism for many reasons, but above all, subconscious or not, they do it because childer are terribly useful tools."
He frowned, but it faded as Elaine walked around the large room. This one had a big window overlooking the backyard, its huge lawn and its statues. It was a long room, with several long tables side to side, running its length, and several unlit candles on the table in fancy candle holders. Equally fancy, ridiculous lighting fixtures lined the walls, decorated by gorgeous red curtains. The chairs and their red cushions looked uncomfortable, but beautiful nonetheless, complete with gold trim.
No way would Viktor have used this room for actual dining. Dude was a vampire. No, but he probably had kine in here, tied to the table, to be shared with other Kindred in a feast. So, dining, sorta. And considering the dude's tastes, those kine probably didn't always live.
Christ, it was easy to forget sometimes that a lot of people had probably died in this mansion, not just in the dungeon beneath it. Which sent a new kind of chill up Jack's spine. Sabrina, Viktor's ghoul, might pay him a visit some time, and if she was going to come at him from anywhere, here seemed a likely place.
"Which first then?" she asked. "Your pets or your engagement with the Gangrel?" Without so much as a glance his way, she sat down at the head of the table, and folded one leg over the other as she set her hands on her lap. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was looking at Antoinette, with the half playful half serious expression on her face.
"Mulder and Scully. And... isn't their a better word than pets? I never really thought of them as pets." He sat down at the table corner next to her. For a second he was tempted to sit at the other end of the table, like that scene out of Tim Burton's Batman. But he was no Michael Keaton.
"Attendants or agents then. Or, as some vampires with a love for the classics prefer, familiars." She smiled, expression softening. Apparently she'd liked what he said about the word pets. "What would you like to know?"
"I know I have to feed them my vitae now, and their wounds at death are permanent." He vaguely gestured to his stomach, where the sealed stab wounds Rebecca had left him would forever remain. "That right?"
"Indeed."
"And they seem to sleep all day now, and are up all night. From dusk to dawn, to the dot, just like a vampire. That normal?"
"Mhmm."
Mulder hopped down onto the table, flapped his wings a few times, and tilted his head to look up at Elaine, making his broken neck bend in a disturbing way. Scully hopped down beside him, but stayed by Jack's hand, looking up at him instead.
"Jack."
"Jack."
"Mother?" Mulder said, and he gestured to Elaine with a forward head tilt, and a quiet wing flutter.
"She's my great grandsire," he said. He'd already told them this, but now that some intelligence had awoken inside his familiars, maybe it was time to reiterate some important facts. "Samantha is my mother. You remember Samantha, right?"
Both birds nodded. It was infinitely easier to communicate with them now, to share complex ideas, and even get their feedback on things. They were still birds, though. They thought like birds, and framed things like birds, but there was no question they were scary smart now. Familiars, yeah.
"Anything else I should know about them?"
"They are quite resilient, now that they are undead creatures. They are half vampires, in a way."
"Sunlight--"
"Is of no danger to them. They are undead, and they are given fake life by the power of your vitae, but they are not vampires themselves. It is only the damned who must flee fire and sun."
Oh what fun it was, having banes now. Fire and sunlight, two of the most damn common things on the planet, only beat by water and air.
"You... had wolf familiars?" Time to take a trip down memory lane, hers, and hope he could dig up something useful.
Her eyes grew sharp, but she kept her hands on her lap as she juggled the question in her mind. "I did."
"Wanna tell me about them?"
"No."
"Because...?"
"Because losing them was painful. My life back then is a blur, but I can remember the touch of their fur, the strength of their bodies, the undying friendship. I can... I can remember enough, to still feel pain when I think of them."
That was a better response than he could have hoped for. He smiled at her, earning a raised brow from the elder, but her expression softened as he scratched the back of each of his familiars' heads.
"That's good."
"Good?"
"Yeah. Means you got some humanity left in you." And considering the warning Black Blood had given him about Elaine, he'd been worried she didn't. The fuck did she do to get rid of her curse, if her sire had had to commit diablerie to get it? Bathe in the blood of a thousand innocents? Or maybe repeat the ritual, drain a vampire dry, supposedly devouring their very soul, and offer their ashes as a sign of... what?
