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Victor held many names and descriptors over the years, Entrepuire, celebrity, founder of the Temple of the Boon, Venture, Kindred, Baron of the Valley. He held each close to his chest made it apart of him, embraced, and relished in each. However, there was no descriptor, no title he was more proud of than Dad. He may not be considered a good father these days, death having stolen far to much time from him, but he tried to keep his kids safe. Unsteady as it had been he thought he'd managed it.
However, over the past year, something had changed. A spark of a girl his own son had fallen for had pulled him in. This fledgling kindred, a naive little spark who had more humanity than some mortals, had pulled his coterie into a family. Romona jokingly referred to him as 'undad' and the more he bled with these people the more it rang a bit more true. He saw just how good, but stubborn Annabelle's heart was, for all her flaws. He had been witness to how terribly lonely but incredibly smart Jasper was, he could see how hard the kindred tried to be kind. They triggered something paternal in him, something that reached out to the far younger members of his coterie. He couldn't help it, being a parent was as much a part of him as his ambition. He had hoped to keep it in check, as young as they were, the two were, after all, adults. As Annabelle liked to remind him, time and time again, they could make their own choices.
It came out in what he hoped were subtle ways. He started giving more subtle but earnest compliments to try and boost Jasper's crippled self-esteem. He dropped hints at potential easy prey for the Nosfertus peculiar tastes. Bigger signs existed too, like the passages he made just for the other kindred to move through in the new club. With Annabelle, it was simpler. Making sure she had a home, someone watching her back, a soft place to land, a guide he often failed at being, a kind word she desperately needed, and sometimes a finger to point her blame. Victor was far from perfect, he was learning that now more than ever. He still firmly believed, despite Annabelle's protest that his ends justify the means in most cases.
But he was trying. He just wanted his family safe.
They were, as far from safe as they could get right now. Aurora had found them, and managed to disable the lights long enough to get into his club. Surrounded in the darkness he could hear the sound of fighting. The angered growl from Jasper, and defiant shout from Annabelle was all he had to orient himself. A feeling of cold void enveloped him, no sound, nothing felt like it existed or could ever exist again. The Ventrue had no idea how long it lasted before most of his senses were restored, though the darkness remained. From one instant to another he felt arms restraining him as he tried to get his barrings. He went to fight but was held by two ghouls on each side, he could feel a stake at his chest, and a very large knife at his throat. His self-preservation knew a lost battle, so he fell still.
Another moment of shuffling and the supernatural darkness lifted, leaving the low lighting of the emergency lights. His eyes refocused, he could see they were in a private room in the club still. His barely contained panic flared when he caught sight of what was a few feet in front of him.
Annabelle and Jasper had been forced to their knees, where he had been allowed to stay standing. The same threat to their safety as had held them in place as much as the strengthened ghouls. Shadows seemed wrapped around their mouths keeping them silent. Annabelle already had a rivet of Vitae going down her neck where she'd struggled too hard and the bite of the blade had cut. Jasper's hood had been knocked off, but it was his arm that drew Victor's attention. The growling Kindred had a grossly dislocated shoulder. The Nosferatu's predator eyes were flickering in calculation between Aurora and the two present members of his coterie. Victor could only spare a moment of thanks that Nellie was back in Hollywood tonight.
"Your coterie took something from me." Her voice was as cold as the shadows that flickered around her. Like an impatient cat waiting for its prey. "I do not know who took him from this world, but I know it was among you. Someone will pay." He met her eyes, they were black with the shadows she wielded. "You will all, in some way pay." Victor struggled to find his tongue as he shook his head a bit. "He attacked us, we defended ourselves, you can't kill us Aurora, the Camarilla wouldn't allow you to break the truce." She smiled, and it put Jasper's worst smile's to shame.
"Do not fear, none of you will meet final death tonight, not unless you truly refuse to cooperate. You see we are going to play a game from the old days." She flickered her finger like a puppeteer and the shadows near Jasper and Annebelle crept onto their arms and around their necks. Muffled growls from Jasper and equally dampened angry pained screams came from Annabelle. He could see them hyperventilating forgetting they did not need to breathe at all, in their panic. "My shadows can do many things, Baron Temple, they are the antithesis of light and warmth, and even Kindred usually need a bit of that. Keeps you sane, keeps the life in your undead flesh. My shadows can take that. Leave you shriveled and decayed yet still attached to this unlife we lead, it's said that's how they feed." She snapped and the shadows let go of the younger Kindred.
Where the shadows had been on their skin, deep nearly purple-black Lichtenberg-like marks remained. Like if someone had could turn shattered glass into a hangman's noose and that mark was what the rope burns left behind would be. "And as you've seen they can embrace you into their home, their nothingness. I believe that needs no demonstration. Correct?" He bit his teeth against the rhetorical question as the shadows flared like a separate entity, eager for her command. "What's your point Aurora, if you're not here to kill then why the show." He ground out.
Her eyes which had been on the younger Kindred snapped to him again. "Simple, my shadows want to feed, they feel the absence of my counter strongly, and my brother's death demands retribution. I cannot kill you or any of your coterie, but I can use you with your agreement. Revenge has many forms after all. Once upon a time, when one took from the Lasombra clan one of two judgments would be deemed. The final death, or repayment. You are lucky, you can meet the following. Let my shadows feast, and while I can't guarantee you'll leave with your wits or consciousness, you will all leave here alive. If not, if you reject these terms I return to the Camarilla, explain how my generous offer was received, by showing them their heads." The Lasombra said, nodding to Jasper and Annabella.
Victor swallowed past the lump of fear in his throat. "So what you 'feed' these shadows, and we end up not dead, so in Torpor?" She smiled a predator's smile at his questioning. "That's one possibility if you are lucky." Victor ducked his head and then squared himself against his own fear. "Alright then, I'm all yours." A silence fell for several awkward seconds before a biting laugh fell from the Lasombra's lips. "Oh, no you misunderstood. You are not going to feed my shadows, you are going to pick who will." The whispers of smoky black wrapped around Annabelle, caressing her cheek in a parody of a soothing gesture. "The baby Brujah leader of the revolution .." The tendrils shifted and moved to a snarling Jasper. "Or the little wannabe assassin himself."
Victor blinked processing her demand, "You, what you want me to pick who gets...their life force? Vitae? Whatever sucked out and just take your word they come out the other side intact." Aurora, shrugged, "I didn't say they would come out intact, I said they wouldn't meet perhaps death, but you've had a taste of what my shadows do. But yes, you get to pick, whose the main course." Victor shook his head, but as he did so the shadows flared wrapping around both Jasper and Annabelle, and the noises of panic that slipped from underneath the gags, had Victor's dead heart lurching. "Pick. Or not only will they both be tonights special, but perhaps I'll take just a bit to much." Victor lurched forward just slightly, his body moving on instinct before the bite of wood and steel reminded him of his position and he restrained himself. "Wait, okay okay." The shadows receded lingering just near the two Kindred. He met Annabelle's eyes, and was both proud and devastated at what he could see in them. There was fear, of course, there was, he was sure his expression was not hiding his panic. It was the hardened steel of determination, the subtle nod of acceptance and resolve that was behind it. She wanted to be his choice, she thought she could handle it best.
His eyes caught the near pale, nearly colorless blue of Jasper next. The Nosferatu's gaze going from Annabelle to him. Jasper's eyes were not filled with righteous determination or even defiance, they were filled with resignation like the decision had been made before his knees were ever forced to the floor. Victor could see it in the young man's eyes, in his bowed slumped body, it was etched in the face of a man who even if he were mortal he knew could not be much older than his sons. Jasper didn't just accept he would be the one chosen for whatever horror Auorora would inflict apoun him, he couldn't see how Victor could ever choose anyone else. It was that knowledge that made him swallow past his self-disgust when he spoke up voice cracking. "Annabelle...I chose Annabelle"
He caught a glimpse of several things at once, Aurora's smug grin, Jaspers wide panic and confusion, and Annabelle's satisfaction and fear-filled face. Before they were all plunged into supernatural darkness once more. A brief sound of animalistic muffled fear from Annabelle before she was silenced.
Several moments passed in this state, and then several more, time was slow but it had to have been at least 10 to 15 minutes. Jasper's struggles and muffled growls were the only way Victor knew they'd not been plunged into the Lysombra's vacuum-like void. Finally, a thump and worryingly Jasper's sounds turned to pain, just for a moment. Before lights were restored, the ghouls were gone too, vanished like ghosts. Aurora stood in the center of the room vitae on her fingertips, and a wicked grin. "Well that was fun, might have taken some dessert from your boy, but my promise is upheld, and your misdeed repaid for now. Goodbye Baron Temple" The shadows cloaked her and she was gone.
His eyes darted around the dimmed space for Jasper and Annabelle. He found them both in the corner, drips of vitae specking the marble flooring. Annabelle was curled into a ball, hands over her head, and sharp fingernails digging into her scalp. Much of her clothes had somehow been, burned or rotted away. Visible skin was covered in rope-like blisters and bruises, though the bruises had an electrical burn pattern to them. The same, but much darker Lichenburg like threads running through it, not unlike the lines that traced Jasper's skin due to his nature. Jasper himself was curled around the whimpering Brujah, crouched around her, and holding her to him. They were shaking, and he couldn't tell who was the cause or if both were. Jasper had a fainter bruise along his dislocated shoulder, where his hoddie had been torn away and the flesh there corroded, though to a lesser degree than Annabelle's.
He took a breath and stepped toward them. He could hear Annabelle mumbling under her breath, but only understood it when he got closer and crouched near them.
"I am not alone, it's not real, I am not alone." The words were slurred and fast, the same phrase blending into its self. A broken mantra of a freighted child. Jasper's occasional shakey whispers of "You're fine, you're okay" was broken when Victor got to close. The Nosferatu turned to snarl at the Ventrue. "She turned on me after Annabelle, only for an instant, it was like freezing and burning, and endless cold. And that..void became...like...weaponized despair. " He paused, squeezing Annabelle to him a bit tighter as she muttered frantically to herself. Jasper's gaze met Victor's again, challenging, demanding, and still terrified. "Why did you choose her?" He eventually bit out his voice shook, and the smell of Vitae was thick in the air with both the young kindreds tears. "Why her, she's young and hardly can be said to.... deserve it." Victor ran a hand down his face.
"Because you believe that you do."
He gave in to his instincts despite the danger of Jasper's possible attack and grabbed the two, pulling the trembling pair to him, tucking them to him like he could keep their pieces together with his own strength. "I'm sorry." Both tensed, Annabelle quickly latching onto him as soon as she realized who he was. Jasper took longer, fear wanting to present as rage wanting to reject vulnerability, but one of Annabelle's hands grasped him and the other clenching at Victor's shirt, where she had tucked herself in between their grip. Victor could feel the tension leak from Jasper, as he leaned into his larger form, keeping Annabelle between them. Victor placed a hand lightly on the back of his neck, and the other on Annabelle's head, trying to soothe them like he would when Mark and Isaiah were little. "I'm so sorry." He repeated and breathed out an unnecessary breath.