AU Daemon Vampire Continuation

[unholyterror]

Continued from here and about two months later

It was rough at first. Jake rarely slept as long as he needed to keep an eye on Dee. His transformation was rougher than any Jake had seen or read about but he accepted that it was likely due to his connection to the deadlands. Jake was tireless and the wolves patient with his newest child. He hoped, with time, that Jay learned and found a place to be something. It was a struggle for the human too.

Eventually, they got Dee's beast under control. It was a bit of manipulation, a few blood charms, partially threats, and the honest realization that as things stood the beast and the man were under the whims of the spirits in the deadlands. That last fact had irritated the beast enough that it came around, sort of, better than before. It wanted to control and the revelation that something else had control drove it to madness, enough to behave.

Now, they were working on controlling Dee's abilities. Jake was glad that his beast was, more or less, on board with helping. At least there was routine and structure again which Jake thought had helped Jay and Dee both settle, but then again, maybe it was just seeing progress.

Comments

[unholyterror]

"no one can deny, we are the Sons of Night.
When war begins, we'll rise again" Jake repeated back.
"We'll take control. Don't give up when all they know is corrupt.
We were born to fight for this and you will lead us through crimson skies."

Jake wasn't one to know how to interpret prophecy either but he had been obsessively reading the writings of vampires for years now.

"Not yet. The wolves would know, I think, since the packs are all in contact and they converse with spirits regularly." Jake didn't know how far that network went but something as big as a fallen portion of the veil would certainly gain their attention.

"We're the ones that know." Jake mentioned and Davy sighed so heavily that it was audible even over the talking.

"That will keep things from feeding on you." He glanced at Dee and hoped that the other vampire understood the reason he thought that wise for the human. They had a couple close calls with Dee and Jay. Now though, it might interfere with more than Dee feeding on him.

[willoftheblackbird]

"If that's been their plan all along, then why tell ME their secrets?" Dee asked, while the voice in his head was already answering. The tone in his voice betrayed his beast's presence. "Unless they need me. Unless they can't do this without me."

Jay held the amulet for a moment before quickly putting it on. With all this talk about dead vampires and other vengeful soul-devouring spirits trying to bring down the veil and kill humans in the living world, some kind of supernatural deterrent was very, very welcomed.

Only after the fact did he glance at his partner and the others.

"...What does it do to them if they try?"

[unholyterror]

"Unless you're round two?" Jake mentioned with disappointment in his tone. "They did drop me on the Temple doorstep. If I had tore into the temple that would have started a war."

Or something akin to one. Jake was uncertain to what the case was but he distrusted the situation.

"For my kind, it makes your skin act as if caustic to our bite... so I wouldn't go wearing it when you want to get frisky in his coffin." Jake chuckled because it was funny in the midst of talking about apocalyptic level problems. "I'm not sure about others. It probably prevents wolves from even biting at all if it is going to work."

[willoftheblackbird]

Of course, that hadn't happened.

"Would that have even done anything?" Dee questioned.

It was Jay, though, that answered, "It..it actually might."

Dee turned to his partner, who was fiddling with the amulet now around his neck.

"We were always taught that the Blackbird, in its mercy, created the veil to protect us from everything that lies beyond it. The veil is sacred and absolutely unbreakable." He began with the usual rhetoric, but then added, "but I heard, once, before we found you - an offhand comment about needing to locate a new prophet to prevent untold tragedy. Like famine, pestilence, war, and the shearing of the veil. I don't know for certain, but there were clerics of much higher stature who feared the veil could break under a massive number of casualties all happening at the same time..."

[unholyterror]

Jake sighed and wavered before speaking. "The way I was when I woke up, I would have purged the temple before they could stop me."

That was a hard thing to admit because Jake had horrifying memories of those first days. "I had every skill I have now and I would attack people and drink blood until I vomited from my body being unable to hold more, only to start again as soon as the heaving stopped."

He had rarely spoke of those days but Davy had seen them first hand. "The hunter, whoever sent him, accidently lured me away by running from the horror I was before I killed him too."

Jake paced for a moment before speaking. "Yet, for all that, they continue to ensure the most powerful person they know of continually dies in the same spot. You should be glad the Prophets don't produce the undead or that Temple would be worse than the moments you spent in the deadlands."

[willoftheblackbird]

Ja couldn't help but glance back at Dee with a look of momentary horror. When he woke up, he could have easily done that. He drank with no sign of wanting to stop, until Jake stopped him.

And now Jay had a much better understanding of what would have happened if he didn't.

"I..I don't think prophets can..." he stuttered. "Produce undead, I mean. On their own."

Clearly, they could become vampires, but no prophet had ever received a vision from another prophet. Dee corroborated that he'd never encountered another like him in the Deadlands. Which meant that either there wasn't enough soul left at the time of death to actually go there, or they were in a state far too weak to call for him.

[unholyterror]

Jake's pacing continued while they spoke. It was what happened when he was deep in thought but he froze and stared at the other two.

"No, but what better place to break the veil.... than the place the hungry congregate to easily feed?" Jake could only imagine all those hungry spirits. Then drop a vampire there to create the kill field to break the veil.

"And the stupid bastards in the temple don't even check for vampires." Jake knew that well enough from how openly he walked around. "You don't have to rely on a frenzied vampire... just one that wants to kill."

[willoftheblackbird]

If a feast was what they were after, they probably should have found a way to orchestrate it during his final concert. The sheer number of people who came into the temple grounds was record-breaking. Dee couldn't imagine there being nearly as many people during the Blackest Nights since.

"What good is a Savior that kills their worshippers?" He growled.

[unholyterror]

Jake snorted a laugh. "Priceless if your goal is to make a show of your brutality or topple the religion in charge."

Jake raised a brow. "If I had turned you on the stage we might have both turned on the priests."

[willoftheblackbird]

"Maybe that's what they were hoping would have happened." Jay suggested. He was very relieved that it didn't happen that way, honestly, for a whole host of reasons.

He looked to Jake. "Um... thank you for not doing that."

[unholyterror]

"I don't think the blood magic I do is common for vampires." Jake mentioned. "They might have assumed I had no other option."

Jake chuckled. "I think they're a cult but I don't particularly like to kill people without a reason."

[willoftheblackbird]

"If their best opportunity was wrenched from them, then anything that's happening now is just a backup plan." Dee scoffed, and they could all tell that was his beast talking.

His beast didn't seem to revel in the hunt and the kill, not the way Jake's did. So, if they were trying to still use The Prophet, it was definitely going to take a little persuasion. Or manipulation. Or starvation...

He didn't have much control at all, over his beast or his powers. His soul was extremely easy to separate from his body. He was, perhaps, very much a wild card in the supernatural world. Maybe they all were.

[unholyterror]

Jake scoffed right back. "You're still not in control. You could still be their plan."

He sighed and shook his head. "If we don't find out what's going on you could easily start killing." That was the unfortunate truth of the situation whether any of them liked it or not.

[willoftheblackbird]

It Jay's mind hadn't been lost in a train of thought, he would have gulped at the sound of that.

"What if they have to tell you?"

Even the birds looked back with confused faces.

"Every single trance from every prophet I've cared for, not just yours, have all resulted in a vision. Sometimes they speak during their trance, sometimes after. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But it always happens... Always." he glanced between Jake and Davy as he added, "I know you've been considering everything he says as gibberish. But what if it's not just a free meal? What if information is the price for feeding on his soul? What if they have as much control over what they say as he does over where he goes?"

It was clearly a price many in the Deadlands, even very powerful things like vampires, were willing to pay. Hell, they instigated the exchange. They called a prophet to them to feed. That meant what they were getting in return had to be worth the cost.

[unholyterror]

"Just because they have to speak doesn't mean they have to reveal it clearly or honestly." Jake shrugged. "How long have I been talking to you about blood magic without ever telling you I was a vampire or that it was the ability of my kind?"

Jake raised his brow. "Are you suggesting free will doesn't exist?" At least for the dead.

omg, you won't believe what I found in my literal spam folder...

[willoftheblackbird]

Of course, all of them had plenty of reasons to keep secrets.

"I don't know." Jay sighed, grasping at straws like all of them were. "He doesn't seem to have very much when it comes to this kind of stuff. Maybe the vast majority of the dead don't either."

[unholyterror]

"If we're without free will, that is one more black mark for your blackbird." Jake growled and at the moment it is hard to say if it is the man or the beast speaking. "I'd rather not believe something else is forcing everyone. If they are, they are evil."

Jake could think of a million reasons why a greater power with all the control doing this, all the stuff in the world, could be classed as evil.

"What if it is spirit binding?" Jake was talking in such a tone that was almost like talking to yourself when you are trying to pace out a problem. "You bind spirits to objects and they are drawn to them. You can bind spirits to something like a spirit board and they tell you things when you have questions. What if something about being born a prophet causes some thread between here and there?"

Jake was thinking but he had no a damned clue how to test to see if that was true. He wasn't adept at Psychometry.

[willoftheblackbird]

For someone born and raised in the Temple of Night, whose very job it was to care for prophets as their bodies broke down, Jay knew surprisingly little about their unique biology. He knew how to treat symptoms, not cure. And Dee, being a prophet himself, had no idea either. Just that it happened, and it was supposedly unavoidable.

"So is it a weak soul that lacks cohesion, enough to be constantly pulled through the veil? Or am I bound to...something... on the other side and that's what keeps pulling me through?"

Or was it more of a chicken and egg type situation?

"A prophet is a conduit. That much, I know is true. But what would he be bound to?" Jay replied, turning to his partner. "Is there anyone, anything, you see in every vision? In more of them than not?"

Dee thought, but sometimes it was hard to place those memories. Coming out of a trance was disorienting. There were reasons why clerics like The Mystic were around at all times.

"No... no, I don't think so..." he shrugged. "I mean, unless you count the veil."

He did encounter that in every single vision. Obviously.

[unholyterror]

"I don't think I would say your soul is weak." If it was weak then it wouldn't survive all this feeding in Jake's estimation. "Weakly connected, maybe?"

That seemed to be supported, in Jake's mind, by the fact Spectre could travel so far away.

"It might." Jake stopped and stared at Dee, brows bunched up in thought. "Does the veil crossing look the same?"

Maybe they couldn't find a what but maybe a where. It would be more than they currently had which was a bunch of possible straws.

[willoftheblackbird]

Dee looked down. "It's dark. Like smoke. Like shadows. It's jarring..."

Both Jay and Jake had seen Dee on the other side. When in the deadlands, his spirit was wispy, semi-translucent. Unlike the threads that tied someone to their daemon, what bound him was more like a feathery shadow.

"When you called me, it was different, though." Dee noted to his partner. "The shadows bled. When I came through the veil, everything was red. And you were on the other side of it."

Unfortunately, that probably didn't narrow down a place.

[unholyterror]

Jake was listening and doing his best to envision where Dee might be talking about.

"He called you from the Spirit Realms of the Wolves, not the Deadlands." Jake was growling under his breath but it was a thoughtful sort of sound like someone might hum quietly in thought. "Was it as easy to pass from the Deadlands to Jay as it was to pass from here to the Deadlands?"

Jake had no idead but maybe there were weak points in that realm boundry too, not that he relished thinking about that.

[willoftheblackbird]

He nodded. "Maybe even easier. It's hard to say. It all ferls effortless to me."

The hard part was resisting. Even with Jake's help and a vampire's powers, resisting was the hard part. Passing through the veil was far yoo easy.

"...is that a bad thing?"

[unholyterror]

"No." Jake's voice trailed off as he answered the question. "I don't know the entire veil between here and the Deadlands but we do have people here who know all the spaces between the Deadlands and those of the Spirits."

Jake was thinking outloud at this point. "If it is so easy for your soul to pass, but not the spirits of the dead... then what if there is a place that is weak for living spirits to pass through but not the dead?... everyone worries about the dead coming out, not the living going in."

However, wolves were always going into other realms. It followed that they might know places that living might cross easier. It was a random thought and not one Jake had any solid ideas about.

[willoftheblackbird]

Dee wasn't sure if one place was any different from another. There wasn't some supernatural train station where all prophets got off. When he appeared in the deadlands, it was all over, really.

"Have the dead ever come out?" Jay asked.

[unholyterror]

"Yes." Jake answered immediately. "There are wraiths, at least, that can come and go here and interact with the living world."

Jake raised his brow and let out a breath that expressed how difficult and over the top his thoughts were right now. "I don't know any wraiths... I don't think the wolves do either."

He doubted Dee or Jay did either. "I guess the best bet may be just to wait for a vision and try to hunt you down on the other side until you happen to meet with the vampire again?"

That might take days but so would fumbling around with every possibility they could imagine