Julian Blackwood (synapticstatic) wrote in nybynightic, @ 2020-10-20 05:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | activity type: log/thread, activity type: plot prompt, character: julian blackwood, character: micah lucciano |
Though now in hindsight he had to wonder if that had been because of Dorian’s connection to what was happening.
Now it could simply be that his mind was still dealing with coping with the change in his strength of power. Or it was simply because he was still that cracked. Some days were better than others and considering the fugue-like state that had pulled him to this place without him even thinking about it or noticing—this was not one of the better ones.
Standing now in front of an abandoned church he could tell why he had been pulled here. The whispers crowded in on him and he knew just what the Sheriff and his Hound lover had done to the hunters they had found here. The whispers were almost crowded out by the echoing screams of the hunters they had killed while Julian continued up the steps of the church and stepped into it.
Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti. Beatae Mariae semper Virgini. Beato Michaeli archangelo.Sanctis apostolis omnibus sanctis. The confessional prayer of a hunter embraced and waiting for true death. Quia peccavi nimis—
Yet those whispers and screams were weaker than the ones that continued to draw him forward through the wreckage of the church—some of it caused by a certain two Kindred—to a large cross that was set on the wall at the very back of it. On it hung a kine—no, a ghoul the whispers told him. One that had been clearly tortured for days. Julian knew nothing of torture. Technically he had never killed kine directly. His method was more to drive a weak already fragile mind mad until they did it themselves other right then or days later when they couldn’t get the thoughts and whispers out of their minds.
This was unfamiliar to him so it wasn’t the mutilation of the body that told him that it had taken days for him to get to this point. It was the screams, the crying, the pleading that started to swirl through Julian’s mind like the buzzing of a hive of angry bees. Faintly he could hear things being asked of the ghoul but they were too weak while everything else was too loud.
His eyes managed to flick over and notice that written on the wall was God have mercy on his soul, his senses telling him it was in blood. It barely registered though as the buzzing grew louder and louder until he sank down on one of the pushed aside pews. Numb fingers managed to pull his phone out of his pocket and dial.
“Micah,” was all he said when the Ventrue answered, Julian's voice sounding uneven and far away even to his own ears.
Even through the phone, Micah could detect that all was not right with the Malkavian. There was a slight pause, the sound of background noise suddenly diminishing to nothing. “Julian.”
There was a longer pause on Julian’s end as for a moment he forgot that the phone in his hand even existed. His eyes pinched shut and his brow furrowed as he tried to focus once he did remember. “I can’t get to stop. They won’t stop. He won’t stop.” It was so very hard to make much sense when he was like this.
Micah was no Malkavian, but there were certain things that even he could understand without being one. There was yet another pause, the sound of Micah speaking to two different voices and finally—”Stay where you are, Julian.”
His arrival took, in reality, another good fifteen minutes. In the New York traffic, that was almost negligible. But for Julian it might have been the blink of an eye for all that it mattered. The GPS tracker that Julian had on his phone had been a precautionary measure, dormant at most times, but still remotely controllable, specifically for instances like this. And when he arrived, an entourage on tow, the GPS signal had gone back to its inactive mode.
Taking the sight in without a single word, Micah was glad of the foresight to bring his men along with him. He motioned to the two he’d brought along, wordlessly telling them to take care of the ghoul with a single look. And instead turned his attention to Julian, still frozen where he was.
The Sheriff needed to be informed. The Hounds ought to come by to take care of this. But all that would happen in due time. For now, Micah’s focus was on the largely absent Malkavian. “Julian.” Softly, without touching him yet, just a deep, familiar baritone reaching out to the still cognisant parts of Julian.
“Kyrie eleison,” Julian muttered, not registering at first that Micah had said anything. Then his name said in that familiar voice managed to draw the Malakavian’s blue eyes away from the ghoul and to the Ventrue. It was clear from the look in them though that he was still lost in the buzz in his mind.
His eyes looked upward towards the ceiling as if he could see the roof from there. “They found what was left of him up there. Charred and blackened from the sun. Too young, too newly turned to turn to ash from the sun but damned enough that it killed him. It took longer that way. Just as intended. He’d be glad to know it did. Would have found those screams and prayers to his god sweet.” Julian didn’t clarify who either he that he was referring to was but it was clear that whoever he was referring to was a different he than the one he had spoken of on the phone. That one well—
Eyes wandered back to the ghoul as he hung there upon the cross. They had even driven spikes through the ghoul’s hands to hold him there. At least he had been dead already for that. “He wasn’t damned yet, but we dirtied his soul with our blood. They purified him before he died so he’d be saved. He screamed the loudest then.”
Difficult to say, whether he would have been glad of the ‘saving’ or not.
Staring at the remnants of the ghoul, Micah was inclined to lean towards ‘not’. “Hunters.” Micah wasn’t surprised. He had known about their presence in the city for a while now. Amadeus had made that information available to them all as Primogens. But it was difficult to think that the St. Leopold's would grow so bold. Even in the dead of the night like this, it wasn’t impossible for more curious kine to stumble on this scene.
His men had split up, one remaining on the scene to contact the hounds and the other disappearing quickly, presumably to circle the perimeter and make sure that there was nothing else they were missing, keeping curious eyes away until the hounds arrived.
He cupped the back of Julian’s neck, pulling the Malkavian back with a single touch, to the here and now, not lost in the past with the screams of the dead. “They’re gone now.” Meaning the ghouls. “But there’s more work to do.” To focus on those who still were, to ensure that such incidents were limited to the least possible occurrences. Micah had always been task-oriented. More so now that he was Primogen. The Elders could not afford the whims of questioning their own purpose or existence; there were too many who had done so only to give into the ennui.
A soft exhale escaped Julian at that touch—not even thinking of the use of blood to do so, just doing it on reflex—his eyes sliding shut so he could focus on it and let it ground him. As deep as he was in it took a moment before he opened his eyes again. They looked a bit more clear and focused than they had before and his tongue ran over his lips as he continued to work on sharper that focus, using Micah as his anchor to do so.
“So much death lately,” Julian pointed out when he finally spoke again. “There will only be more. It’s only a beginning.” Whether that was Malkavian insight or just logic considering what they were dealing with was hard to say. It was more than likely both. After all these hunters seemed to be working with a bit more caution than the last ones since they were hitting them indirectly.
For a second Julian had to wonder if they were the ones responsible for the fire. But he hadn’t been drawn there even if he had been witness to the screams there as well, just at a distance. That hadn’t been hidden from them though had it? This—this had needed to be found.
New York was where Micah had built the foundation for his empire. Sure, he had connections in other cities, allies. But all of that couldn’t compare to where he had grown his influence painstakingly over decades of work.
Hunters appearing like this—even in the shadows—it threatened the very fabric of what Micah had worked so hard to maintain. And it wasn’t simply his pride either. If New York fell, many more would follow.
“Let’s hope it won’t come to that.” He would see to it that it never came to that.