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]

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