Chapter 14: Madhouse 3-5

I walked through Therese and Jeanette's door with the ghost's amulet in hand. After my experience at the Ocean House hotel, I was positive that I never wanted to mess with ghosts ever again. Several times I'd almost died, but against all odds I'd gotten the ghost's personal belonging. In a way, it was satisfying knowing that I'd given the little girl peace. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to get hacked up like that by my own father. It was chilling to think about.

When I walked through their door, I was surprised to see not Therese, but Jeanette greeting me. She'd boredly been lounging on her bed, sitting up very quickly as if ready to attack. When she saw me, she scoffed playfully, tilting her head and looking at me with that wide-eyed, faux innocent look that she gave everyone.

"Not even a knock?" She drawled, cat-like gaze examining every ounce of my being with eyes that just knew. Knew what, exactly? I didn't know. "I could've been undressing, and who knows what I would've had to do to you?" - The way she said that sent a shiver down my spine, prompting nasty thoughts from my beast - "You're here to see her royal majesty Queen Victoria, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I need to see Therese." I managed.

"Therese is making a show of how well her lips fit on the pants seat of the Camarilla." She said, adding an extra bit of venom when she said Camarilla. Did she dislike them like Jack did? "Did you happen to find her chastity belt or something?"

She eyed my pocket, and the way she did it made me uncomfortable with giving the amulet to her. Jeanette was...friendly, I supposed, but she wasn't exactly the type of person I'd allow around children. I wasn't going to give the amulet to her.

"I'd rather discuss this with Therese." I said, hoping I sounded firm.

"So…" She said, completely ignoring me. Like a cat, she padded over to me, swaying her hips in a very deliberate fashion, slowly closing the distance between us. She continued once she was practically pressed against me. "Therese told me you might be back with something for her. Do you have it with you?"

No, something was definitely fishy about this. I said, "I'm not giving it to anyone but Therese."

Suddenly, the sultry, seductive act was gone, replaced with sadness. The way Jeanette switched her act at the drop of a dime made me think she did this all the time, and it usually worked. Seeing the way she made herself look smaller, helpless, sad made me see why it did work.

"I'm not just some silly doll, you know." She lamented. "All my life, my sister's made me out to be a joke. She told you I was an embarrassment, didn't she? That I couldn't tie my shoes, let alone hold onto something for her! Is that it?!"

This situation was immediately spiraling out of control, and that was probably what she wanted. The thing about crying - especially women crying - is there was a social implication around it that was hard-wired into our brains. Whenever someone cried or whined, we wanted to make them stop. But I couldn't succumb to it. If I didn't give the amulet to Therese, the deal would be off.

"Not at all." I told her. "Please, calm down."

"She's always belittling me!" Jeanette continued, escalating. "She's the smart one, she's the favorite, she's the successful one. Well, it's not fair! I'm not a fool! This club's success is just as much my doing as it is hers!"

"I understand, but I still can't give it to you." I said evenly.

She tried a different tactic. How her voice was lower, barely above a whisper. "Do you understand what it's like to have your own flesh and blood ripping you apart on a daily basis for two lifetimes? Can you?"

I stonewalled her. "I'm sorry to hear that, Jeanette, but I really need to give it to Therese."

And just like that, the sad act was gone. Her demeanor wasn't seductive anymore, either, just neutral, confirming that it was all an act. Jeanette was good at this, but unfortunately for her, I had quite a few psycho exes in the past that prepared me for this behavior.

"Fine. You hold onto it." She said. "Hmm...since you were so willing to brave that big, spooky place for my darling sister, how about doing a teensy, tiny favor for little, troubled me?"

I sighed and said, "Depends on what it is."

"Do you know Gallery Noir, down the street?" She asked. "I happen to know there's a charity event being organized there. Lots of influential Santa Monicans slithering in for token appearances. But there's one thing they don't know…"

"That being?" I asked.

"The whole event's been set up by a Kindred trying to establish their own power clique in our city." She answered. "And we can't let that happen, can we? So I need some brilliant young upstart to spoil the milk."

I blinked. Am I seriously being asked to do someone's dirty work? Before it was performing favors for favors, but now I was legitimately getting involved in something that had nothing to do with me.

"I need to talk to Tung." I said. "This isn't helping."

Jeanette chuckled as if I was joking. It was condescending, almost. "I thought we went over this? Therese isn't here. Until he hears it from her, Bertram's like a windshield in the deep blue sea."

I furrowed my eyebrows. That was a strange analogy.

"Invisible." She elaborated.

Crossing my arms, I said, "Fine. What do I have to do?"

She giggled. "I promise this won't take long. Take that knife of yours and give the paintings in the gallery a good slashing. Don't get caught, and don't turn it into a massacre. And steal the charity box, would you? Buy yourself something velvet."

That last part was a little too much for me. Jack said that these would be the last of my sins before the night is over, but stealing from charity was a pretty big sin. And what? Just to keep a vampire from establishing themselves in a city that I had no stake in? How exactly what I benefitting from all of these awful things?

"No, I can slash the paintings, but I'm not stealing from charity." She said.

Jeanette frowned. "Do you believe it's actually going to charity? Oh, honey… it's only going to be used to fill the pockets of the Camarilla. Trust me, darling, there won't be a single starving kid in Ethiopia that'll see a cent of that."

I paused. She probably had a point there. I doubted vampires were the charitable type.

"Fine." I said. "I'll be back when it's finished. This time the feud will be called off?"

"I'm sure Therese will be thrilled to honor your agreement when you get back." She said, her eyes filled to the brim with glee. "But in the meantime? Get to the museum and ruin those paintings, then pay me a visit. I want to hear all about it… Hurry up, I can only amuse myself for so long."

"Wouldn't keep you waiting for too long." I said. "Be back soon."

Before I left, Jeanette said, "Oh, by the way! The paintings are protected by some sort of ward. Some sort of Tremere spell. You have to slash the paintings in the order of the events they happened, otherwise it'll just hurt you if you try. There was something else about the paintings, but what was it…? Mm...oh well! Can't remember. Have fun, duckling!"

That gave me a bad feeling, but I ignored it. "I will."

Gallery Noir was one of those places that two types of person went. One was the rich art connoisseur that looked at a painted wall and swear that it's a metaphor for the artist's place in society, and the other would be the faux art student that only pretended to understand things, and only liked art to seem like an interesting person. I was never either of those types. Personally, I never considered myself an artistic person. I was awful at all forms of art except for writing, I supposed, and even now that was taken from me. Whenever I tried to write, I'd find that what I'd come up with had very obviously been done already. It's like my ability to form an original, creative thought had been taken away.

Well. Vampirism was called a curse for a reason.

When I approached the gallery, I was immediately stopped by a security guard. This guy was morbidly obese, so obese that I couldn't tell where his torso ended and his neck began. He was bald and couldn't be younger than fifty, and he wore a blue button-up shirt with a star on his breast that said Security Guard. He looked like the archetypal rent-a-cop buffoon, but I noticed the pistol strapped at his side. Regardless of how stupid you were, anyone was dangerous with a gun.

"Hey!" He said, stopping me. "Hey, hold on a minute there. I'm afraid you're committing a 351, that's trespassing on private property. I'm gonna have to ask that you vacate the premises immediately or I'll have to radio this in."

Something about this guy made it impossible to take him seriously. I didn't feel threatened at all by him. This is the security that the gallery hired?

"Open the door." I compelled him.

That telltale glossing-over of his eyes happened, and I saw the gears turn in his head for a second.

"Uh, sure…" He said. "Yeah, I can do that. Right this way."

I nodded. "Please."

He walked with me to the entrance of the gallery and unlocked it. I grinned tightly at him and walked through. The gallery was, for the most part, completely empty except for four paintings. Two of the paintings showed scenes from the Bible, but the other two were scenes I didn't recall reading about in Sunday School. The paintings were labelled as: Caine slays Abel. Caine gets punished by God. Caine meets Lilith. Caine spurns Lilith.

Weird. I'd never seen Cain's name be spelled with an "e" at the end. Maybe it was spelled like that in some different copy of the Bible? I knew there were thousands of versions out there. Maybe Cain also met this Lilith girl in that version too. I knew from studying mythology in college that Lilith was the real first woman, but she was cast out from Eden for refusing to be subservient to Adam.

Remembering what Jeanette instructed me, I began to slash the paintings in order. When my knife came in contact with the paintings, there was a flash of red light, but after that, nothing. Once I had slashed the paintings in order, I found out that my bad feeling upon leaving the Voerman sisters' room was entirely justified.

A weird symbol glowed in front of all of the paintings, a circle with strange rune-like symbols along the edge. A red liquid - blood - began to pour out from the ruined paintings and gather at the middle of the room, forming into a semi-solid lump. At first, the lump was nothing but a formless, writhing mass, but then it took shape, turning into something only vaguely humanoid. It was featureless, and had long arms with long, sharp talons at the end. The silhouette made from blood began to move stiffly and unnaturally, slowly gaining more and more fluidity to its actions until its movements were more like a xenomorph's.

That isn't something you see every day.

I didn't have the time to look at it much, because it immediately jumped at me with all of the ferocity of a wild, starving animal. It hit me hard, solid enough to knock me down but liquid enough to secrete blood on my clothes. I tried to get the thing off of me, but it wasn't even solid enough to move properly. It turned into liquid and then spilled all over me, reforming beneath me into its humanoid shape and flinging me across the room. I hit my head hard against the table and all the painting supplies fell all over me, ruining my clothes.

"Already getting tired of this." I growled, getting up. The blood construct lunged at me again with its sharp claws, but I was ready. I dodged and it splattered all over the wall, just a blood stain on the brick. Immediately, it reformed, its claws digging into the stone. It lunged again, but I dodged, this time stabbing my knife into its back. It was as futile as I imagined it would be; the blood construct was made of, well, blood, so I ended up going right through it. Quickly, I got up and ran to create some distance between the construct and myself. It didn't let me, and lunged right at my back, slashing me hard enough to leave a nasty cut near my shoulder. I screamed out and squirmed to force it to go liquid again, and it did. I used the opportunity to get away.

Think, Algernon. I thought to myself. What did I learn from this thing? Well, I assumed it had to be solid before it attacked me, or at least solid enough to exert meaningful force. It seemed to be bound to some kind of center of mass, otherwise it would just multiply and attack me with two of itself. And when I focused to try to see if I could manipulate the blood it was made of, I couldn't.

By all intents and purposes, this thing seemed to be invincible.

It lunged again, and I dodged just in time for it to not slash my head off. This time, it got me in the stomach. My blood poured from my wounds, and I got an idea. I sensed some kind of energy flowing into this thing, like a circuit. Whatever made this thing move, it wasn't self-generated action. I had to find a way to cut off the energy. Using my blood, I commanded it to connect to my blade, engulfing it and hardening. If blood was the medium through which whatever magic kept this thing moving, then it stood to reason that I could use my blood to interrupt the flow of energy.

Right?

I may have been pulling it out of my ass, but the working theory I had was better than anything I'd come up with so far. Again, the construct lunged at me, but I dodged, grunting as it got me in the side of the stomach. I dove down to the ground, summoning the power I used on Gimble. The tips of my fingertips felt hot and I shot forth an arc of lightning from them at the blood construct. The lightning conducted off of the iron content within the thing's body, forcing it to seize up as if it had muscle mass. Taking the chance, I lunged at it and slashed my blood knife straight through its midsection. It wasn't hard at all, like cutting through butter. Runes glowed on the blood construct's body, then they died down. The construct then fell into a puddle on the ground, slowly shrinking as the blood evaporated.

"Jesus H. Christ, things just keep getting weirder and weirder." I said out loud to myself, limping over to the nearby desk and opening the charity box. It seemed it got me in the leg at some point too, though I wasn't sure of when. After going through that ordeal, I opened the charity box and stuffed a majority of the dollar bills into my pocket. Now I had about two thousand, which meant I'd be pretty good in terms of money for a while.

"Fuck this place." I muttered to myself, exiting the gallery. Luckily, it was raining pretty heavily, so the blood from the construct washed off of me for the most part.

After a few times feeding, I was good as new. I went back to The Asylum and rode the elevator up to the Voerman sisters' room, walking through their door. I was surprised - and displeased - to see a very pissed off Therese, glaring daggers at me. If looks could kill, I'd have been atomized on the spot. There was no sign of Jeanette, which left me wondering what the fuck I did.

"You!" She hissed. "What were you thinking?!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Um-"

"The museum!" She chided. "That was my event! Did you think I wouldn't find out?!"

Uh-oh. Now I was in deep shit. Jeanette tricked me.

"I-"

"Shut up!" Therese barked. "I thought I could control my sister as long as Tung is out of the picture, but nothing's changed! I should've expected that you'd succumb to Jeanette's influence like all the others. But how dare you!"

Okay, keep calm. How could Therese possibly know what I did? Maybe I could lie my way out of this.

"I didn't do it, I swear!" I told her.

"Jeanette claimed you did it for her." Therese said, her voice dripping with venom. "But let's say I believe you. After all, you've acted decently and rationally up until now. I imagine you'd still like me to call off the feud?"

"Yes, I have the item from the Ocean House…" I said, taking out the little girl's amulet. "And a diary from there too. Hopefully this balances things out."

Therese's expression suddenly became more pleasant. "Excellent! I'll take that. However…"

However? I thought. Oh god, please don't let there be a 'however'...

"There's only one problem." She explained. "If Tung gets word I'd threatened Jeanette, which he most certainly already has, it's not likely he'll believe me. So, in order to call off the feud, you're going to have to convince Jeanette to forgive me first."

I was about ready to punch through a wall. More of this shit? It's bad enough I slashed up a gallery and got my ass handed to me for no reason, now I was going to help someone make peace with her sister? This had nothing to do with me! Still, Therese probably had a point. I'd heard through the grapevine that Tung and Jeanette were close. If I wanted to get to that Sabbat warehouse, I was going to have to cooperate.

"For Santa Monica's most powerful Kindred, I'd be happy to." I said, trying to put on my best smile. "But...I wasn't aware you threatened her. Is that why she isn't here?"

"Yes. I've made some threats against my sister - idle threats - involving fire and her impious satin sheets. She took them quite seriously and is avoiding me. I want to meet with her, and smooth over matters."

"What do you need me for?"

"I asked her to meet me at the Surfside Diner, to reconcile, but I'm busy with the club and my other endeavors. I'd like you to go and promise her I don't intend on taking any action against her. Wait for her in the back booth, near the phones."

So I was really doing this because she was too busy? Really? I had a feeling I was going through the equivalent of hazing.

I sighed. "I'll go. Then the feud is off?"

"I want to see my sister." Therese snapped. "Yes, I'll call it off when I see her myself. Just do as I ask."

I was getting really tired of the both of them. Jeanette with her melodrama and Therese with her demands and her cold demeanor. Where was my respect? Yes, I know my Sire broke the rules, but I've been trying to act as decently as possible. And what were people doing? Treating me like an errand boy. Hell, whether the thin-bloods were a sign of the apocalypse or not, they at least treated me with decency.

"I'll do." I said begrudgingly.

It took all of five seconds to realize that this was an attempt on my - or Therese's - life. Either Therese called the thugs to the diner and told them to shoot as soon as they saw me go to the back booth, or Jeanette told the thugs to shoot as soon as they saw someone look to the back booth. It had to be one of those things, because whoever set this up was savvy enough to know that vampires couldn't just eat shotgun blasts. As soon as I saw a cocking of a shotgun, I dove behind the bar, narrowly dodging a shotgun blast that instead blew a hole through one of the waitresses.

When I walked in, I counted three of them, each of them armed. I reached into my backpack and grabbed my GLOCK, leaning over to peek and taking a shot at one of their knees. My aiming wasn't precise enough and I got him in the lap instead, but that was still enough to knock him down. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get him out of commission. I moved behind cover again as another shotgun blast boomed in the restaurant. Patrons began running out in droves, and the thugs stopped shooting either because they needed to reload or out of sheer pragmatism.

I took the opportunity to vault into the bar. Now it was just them and me, which meant I could let loose. Grabbing control of the blood that had been shed, I went from undercover and shot one of them with a hardened blast, sending them flying through the window. While I was out from cover, one of them took the opportunity to get a pot shot on me. The force knocked me back on my ass, and it created a pretty nasty hole the size of a soccer ball in my chest.

Jack was right. Shotguns fucking hurt.

"So long, freak." One of the thugs said as they pointed the shotgun at my head. I wasn't able to move, the pain was so great. Just what kind of fucking ancient witch or deity made the decision that vampires were weak to shotguns?

Suddenly, a mist covered the thug that was about to land a killing blow on me. The mist was blue, glowing, and almost solid, coiling around the thug's throat and the life out of him. The thug's lifeless body fell on me, and I had to summon all of the strength I had to push him off. I grabbed the edge of the counter and forced myself up, flinching as I heard more shots from a shotgun. I saw Lily and E near the entrance of the diner, Lily conjuring up clouds of mist that obscured the thugs' vision, and E outright tearing them apart. The final one tried to shoot, but he had to reload, so he wasn't able to. Terrified, he backed up against the wall.

"Sorry, mate." E said to the thug. "Can't let you kill my friend."

He thrust out his hand, and one of the shotguns that the fallen thugs were holding flew to him. He grabbed it out of the air and quickly pointed it at the thug, shooting him right in the midsection. With a loud boom from the shotgun, the thug was dead.

"E?" I rasped, cringing as I felt a searing pain in my ribcage. That would be a collapsed lung. "Lily?"

"Oh god. Lil, looks like we were just in time." E remarked. "Hey, Al. You're not looking so hot."

"I'll be fine. Just...just a flesh wound." I said. "It'll patch itself up...ah fuck…"

Soldiering through the pain, I directed my blood to heal the wounds that I'd gotten. It was working slowly, but the gaping holes in my body began to slowly close up.

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked.

"Rosa told us you'd be in trouble." Lily explained.

"Rosa?"

"One of us, the spooked-looking gal you see on the beach." E explained. "Said she helped you find where Dennis and his gang was."

I recalled the woman on the beach. She seemed to be speaking riddles last time I'd talked to her, and I couldn't find her since. Did she know I'd be attacked in the diner? If so, how? Considering how Therese treats thin-bloods in her city, I doubted that they had any verbal contact at all.

"We all came to help you out." Lily said. She stepped aside and I saw the rest of the thin-bloods from the beach walk in. They all looked green and scared to death, but they came. It made me smile. For harbingers of the apocalypse, they were pretty decent people. Much better than the other vampires I'd come across.

"But why?" I asked.

"You helped me find Lil here." E said, wrapping an arm around Lily and smiling. "You were also the only vamp that came around and didn't try to help us. Far as we're concerned, you're alright."

Before I could say anything, I heard ringing from the payphone near the back booth. The thin-bloods glanced at me and I shrugged, walking over to the phone and answering.

"Hello?" I asked.

"I'm terribly sorry about that." The voice on the other side said. It was Therese's voice...or was it Jeanette's? "My sister was just furious about your refusal to take part in her designs, so she sent those men to kill you. But I'm going to make sure it never happens again. Drop by, we'll take care of this Tung business."

"She's crazy! Help!" Another voice, either Jeanette's or Therese's interjected.

I hung up the phone.

"Who was it?" Lily asked.

I grimaced. "Nothing but trouble."