~~Antoinette~~
Three months later.
She stared down at the corpse, and sighed. Sigh turned to frown. Frown turned into snarl. In her youth, she would have likely elevated to outright rage, and destroyed all in her vicinity. But she had long learned to control her anger, and she quelled it now as she stood, confused and frustrated.
Blood seeped out over the lines of the ritual circle, over the dark tile, and around her feet. She stepped about it effortlessly as she motioned to Daniel.
"It does not come."
"No," her sheriff said, "it does not."
"We did the ritual correctly."
"If the book is to be believed."
She snatched the book off the nearby table. Deep in the tower's basement's basement, she was free to explore the darkest, most sinister, vile experiments, free of watching eyes or worry of contamination. Down, deep in the earth, surrounded by metal and stone, only she, her sheriff, and her tools existed.
The summoning circle was the same as it was before, though all electricity had been disabled. Only candles would do for this ritual. And the corpse, a woman, a murderer, was not old. The younger the sacrifice, the stronger the resonance.
Antoinette was not happy to kill someone so young, but dealing with Black Blood was too important. Dolareido was built with such options in mind, that it would have an underbelly where black hearts could enact their desires, only for Kindred to capitalize and use such kine for whatever purpose they wished. The city was a utopia for paranormals, not for kine. But she tried. She had found a balance, after all. There was less crime in Dolareido compared to similar cities, and what crime was committed was often untraceable, allowing Kindred to make problematic kine simply disappear without drawing the attention of the media.
But she did not enjoy using such a tool. Several criminals still sat within her cells, and she did not enjoy their presence. And killing them was never a joyful act. Worse was killing a young woman, a troubled girl who had killed her ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend in a fit of rage and madness. A crime of passion, and Antoinette did not enjoy being the judge, jury, and executioner for the woman.
But a body was needed. Black Blood was summoned by death, by decay, by corpses and blood and lifeless mounds of flesh. She could not contact the spirit without it. And yet, even as the girl died in the circle, spared the horror of death as she had been unconscious for it, there was nothing. The dark mist and oozing black blood, it did not appear. Antoinette and Daniel were left standing in candle light, in deathly quiet, with only the spreading blood of the corpse to remind them they were not frozen in time.
With a heavier sigh, Antoinette flipped through the pages of the tome. A terribly old book, she had had to encase each and every page in protective plastic, lest a gentle breeze destroy the parchment. And the cover, a leather of some kind, was encased in the clear plastic as well. Laminating or varnishing had been options, but she worried it would damage the rituals themselves, to permanently alter the book that held them.
A dragon was no dragon if they did not attempt to eliminate unknown factors from their experiments.
Alas, the experiment was for naught.
"Do you want to summon it normally?" Daniel asked.
She shook her head. "I summon it to attempt to bind it. I do not desire another pointless conversation. The damn monster made it perfectly clear last time we spoke, it will not parlay with me. And... I do not wish to kill another soul this night."
"Then I'll call the clean up crew."
She nodded. They could not let the thralls see the ritual circle, however, thus Daniel and Antoinette took steps to alter and damage the ritual. Once the site was sufficiently ruined, they left, and several thralls stepped past them into the room, armed with an assortment of cleaning tools.
No one was allowed to see the rituals she cast, save for Daniel. Not Natasha, not Elaine, not Samantha, and not her thralls or ghouls. These rituals were beyond dangerous, and only Elaine and Daniel could be trusted to have the mental fortitude to defend themselves from the prying minds of other Kindred. She did not share with Elaine for a different reason. It was best to keep her old friend out of this business with Black Blood and the tears, though as the months went on, that might change.
Daniel and Antoinette stepped into her main experiments room, where the resonance machine could summon spirits by amplifying the resonance of objects. No one sat within, so Antoinette sat with Daniel, and noted down her results, or lack thereof.
"I had meant to ask of Beatrice," Antoinette said. "How goes her own experiments?"
Daniel sighed, but did not sit with her. He closed the metal door, locking them within the large room of black marble, the hanging chandelier and its blue light, and the nearby ritual circle of mathematical precision that decorated the floor.
"No sign of Julias."
"Naturally. I am sure she and the flesh witch have finished preparing his body, but to pluck his soul from the afterlife? Every dragon in the world would beg to learn how she managed to accomplish such a feat."
"And... a few women kine have gone missing. Some of them young."
Antoinette sighed as she leaned back, and met her old friend's gaze.
"What do you think will happen?"
"I think Mary is dead, and Samantha is going to... learn the hard way, that death is permanent."
Permanent. So they assumed. Bold words for half-dead bloodsucking monsters of myth.
"Keep an eye and ear open for whatever catastrophe Samantha may unleash," Antoinette said. "I will let her make these mistakes, but I will not allow them to break the Masquerade, or risk her life. Protect her from whatever creation or mayhem she may cause."
Daniel nodded.
