Jack and Gotfred (Underground Battle, continued)

The few surviving Nosferatu cheer with the howl.

Jack is one of them. He cheers. He raises his snakeoil voice his voice of honey a tool to fit any con [War is a Con] or any song [and War is a Song], and he cheers. Because there's strength in making a gosh-darned big ol' mess of a holler. There's strength and there's solidarity and there's meaning in screaming defiance and victory, even a hard-won victory, especially a hard-won victory. 

Besides. Jack is an optimist. He believes truthfully that the chorus is as strong as it needs to be until it isn't. 

But Jack, like a right-hand-man ought to, finds Gotfred amidst the bodies, burning husks of fallen enemies and allies alike. So after that cheer, after that ragged, empty swell of we're still here, he pitches in. 

There's work to do.

--

When his howl dies and his rats disappear to their dark holes - holes even darker than this one - Gotfred's pinhole ears turn toward the sounds of the cheers before their first echoes reverberate through the warren of tunnels. His eyes, an amber tone, are more orange in the still-dancing firelight. They dart around, like he is picking out with the cheers that finish and the sounds of different scraping feet setting to work, each of his clan that had survived the battle. Each who had fought in it. Each who lent a hand in the victory.

Or whatever passes for a hand down here.

The fleshy bark twists as, gaunt and tall, he turns like a young chestnut tree in a strong winter wind toward Jack. His eyes burrow into that shotgun, and then dart right to where that woman shovelhead had flung down fiery death, before being blasted down in Final Death with a bark from the barrel. The barrel he again looks to. Perhaps he recognizes it from the cache. His teeth part, the edges of his mouth turning up in a bloodthirsty grimace-smile, and the noise he makes...

It is a long, raspy, entertained, "Ooooh."

"The many eyes said you were coming, little brother. I guess we know you're not the mole, proved it, jumping into a sinking ship," somehow still able to speak clearly through that toothy hole, cold and logical and concise. "And just in time. I was thinking of thinning the ranks," and the finally dead, burning away to ash, he leans beside.

"To cull the loose lips," but he seems saddened by the loss, it's in his tone, a wavering in that coolness as his fingers play on a charred-still snarl before one of the bodies crumbles to dust.

His ill-fitting and blackened suit is in tatters, frayed at its hem, but he gives it a look over after rising, straightening it, patting the wrinkles out, like he doesn't consider changing it. "My sire, Henrietta," Henrietta in Rags, Jack might remember, "gave me this suit, Jack. I'll die again in it if I have to. Not until this siege is over will I take it off. It is my armor."

--

The many eyes said.

Jack looks at the barrel when Gotfred does. He doesn't smile. He doesn't grimace. His blood-thirst is a contained thing (though less contained now [the Beast wants to tell him such things]), and he takes no joy from war. But gallow's humor -- he can wear that well: gallow's humor in the slant of him, in the contemplative downward glance, his gaze en-shadowed. He doesn't spend a long time staring at the shotgun, though he grimaces at The Mole.

And his gaze moves back up to Gotfred, General, Rat King, Leader. Takes in the suit. Takes in the tell-tale waver like a flaw in a sheet or the passage of a ghost in the primogen's voice.

His mind goes to the dark-skinned creature with the bandana over his face. He regrets the bandana; he regrets that he didn't get a good look at the whole of that face, as right now, he feels as if could do such things, if only he could steal it, hey?

There's an easing of his shoulders into something more respectful when Gotfred speaks of the suit. And armor. A charm, that's a thing that Jack [canny, cunning, lucky, bold] believes in. He says, "Well, sir. The ship's not sunk, and when it is, there's always the possibility of Atlantis." Beat. Then: "It looks like a good suit."

--

"Come on," the undead tree barks. "Let's go see my tailor. We can talk in front of him," leading him deeper into the warrens and to his private haven. A place where perhaps the rat would one day be cornered, or perhaps with so many private means of escape and egress he never could be.

The long concrete conduit dives way to silt deposits that plaster its corners, saying that at some time or another it flooded out with runoff from above. At its end some tarnished the luxuries of the world above, and there sitting in a bed in one of the alcoves-turned-room is a blind man in an expertly tailored and absolutely filthy suit.

He looks of South American descent, and when he speaks, his accent is Chilean.

"Good master Gotfred, I heard shots. Another rip or tear?" His head rises as he looks-without-looking up from cleaning a gun. A hare lip and darkened round spectacles sit on his face, bald on top with a ring of hair on the sides and back of head head, and a thick mustache that almost hides the previous deformity.

"I'm afraid many. We have a guest, Lazlo," the Nosferatu standing before a large antique mirror as he holds out his arms. The tailor descends upon him silently to attend to and mend the damage to his suit of ill-bespoke armor.

--

He looks over and toward the rest of the warren. Its cathedral height. Its underworld gloom, its decrepit grandeur-that-isn't, its castled filth and charred refuge clearly no safe haven, toward the alcove Jimmy Hendrix loud and clear beneath the crackle-pop of explosion and gunfire singing I don't wanna be tied down (I wanna be free [Stone Free]. Maybe he's thinking about potential subtext. That one of those Nosferatu who'd just joined the cheer, eh, one of them still cannot be talked in front of.

And then he follows Gotfred into his private haven.

Jack hopes for Gotfred's sake that it's one of many, because he doesn't believe there are corners or hideyholes that cannot be uncovered, and that battle came far too close; while he is surprised the Nosferatu warrens were attacked (Again), he doesn't find it unbelievable.

He's not a Ventrue, presuming that because it's a hiding sort of thing a little work won't reveal it, that flattering a secret's secretiveness is what'll turn a secret into a truth.

So! Jack. Jack who is wondering.

Jack looks around, of course, because he's a Looking Jack, a Jack of Noticing Things, his eyes as sharp as starlight, and his manners on. Says, kind-voiced and gentle, "Hello, Lazlo," as the tailor descends. He puts his hands into his pockets and stands where his lack of reflection won't come under scrutiny. It's not a secret he's kept from the Nosferatu, but it's not anything he wants attention drawn to now.

"So, to start."

He'd come down to report, after all.

--

"Tell us of the world above," Gotfred says, remaining with arms stretched out like some freak show messiah, or a statue of one thanks to the utter stillness his form takes in this post.

The ghoul's fingers are precise and quick, a needle produced from the lapel of his own suit, and that needle attached to a thread that slowly but surely degrades his own suit jacket. Every now and then he has to bite it short, re-thread somehow though blind, and again rebuild the tatters to their former ill-fitting glory.

"What do you hear? What do you see? And, most importantly, what do you think, Jack?" His viscous teeth clack together as he talks more casually than he had barking orders or even with the cold logic he'd aimed at Jack earlier. More inquisitive in his tone.

--

Jack's interests in the world above--and yes, that phrase in particular has always struck a chord in the creature he has become, ever since his first wretched and transformative nights--are perhaps more varied than most of his aquaintance might suspect. Those who know him as a voice on the telephone or an e-mail in their inbox or a face that belongs to a personal assistant or a secretary or a courier or a nepotism-fueled relation of somebody's Somebody, there are a hundred roles ready to wear, have certainly been snookered, rooked into believing that the Jack they interact with is only interested in what that Jack acts like he's interested in. Often, that is their lives. Their work. Their projects. The mundane and tangible cat's cradle world of bureaucracy which makes the city work. The nerve-system of the city, if transportation is the veins and arteries.

The kindred of Denver might also assume that Jack's interests revolve around them. What they're doing. Who they're talking to. Where they hide their dirty laundry, just how dirty it is. They might assume that now his interests have, like most Camarillan vampire's, angled more toward the Sabbat, finding and uncovering and, ultimately, rooting out and destroying. Maybe some few remember him talking to a Ravnos and a Malkavian about Methuselahs and, couple that with lakes of blood, think that The Nosferatu (plural, represented singularly by Jack) are following up on that, 'cause that's what Nosferatu do.

But the King of Skulkers, of the Monstrous Boys and Girls of the Underground Kingdom, Denver's Rat-King, Lord of the Many Eyes, knows (at least a little) more of how varied Jack's interests in the world-above are.

So.

Jack watches the ghoul's skilled fingers flash with needle and thread. His voice when it comes is meditative and somber, as if it takes effort to drag his thoughts back to the world above when they're so much with the world below just now. "What do I hear. I hear there's a book come out of the west might be connected to what's going on under the ground. I mean what's going on under-the-ground killed the kine at the Zoo and made that lake turn to blood. I hear that book's fallen into unscrupulous hands."

He is quibbling as far as 'hear' goes, but Jack considers Kali, Baja, and Mercy to constitute 'unscrupulous hands,' especially since Kali and Mercy's pokerfaces were just so good 'til later when Jack put this and that together.

"I hear it said there are Two Gangrel Ancients on the loose and they're behind the whole mess. But," and his voice gets a little less meditative, a little more lively, "I don't know about that. There's too much of Malkav in the stories." But if it seemed like Jack might for a moment, ultimately he doesn't go off on a speculative tangent aloud-for-Gotfred's-benefit. He circles back to:

"I hear there's a Gangrel out there has something the Sabbat want. What that is I do not yet know, but yet's a word for a reason. I also hear that Anarch St. Germain had a run-in with one of the warlocks almost lead to his Final Death, 'til a gypsy stepped in to rescue him. That this warlock, Redknapp by name, incited the guy first. I also heard before that the warlocks left this place back when, and maybe you remember," he's watching the ghoul's fingers, but his gaze briefly roams to take in the suit-at-large, suit he's never thought about before if he's seen it, suit he's now looking at the wreckage of it like it'll shake some memory of his and give him a date, even though Jack's never been a fashionista (he cut a dash, in his day, but that was a matter of good-fortune and slickness and the advice of certain ladies), "or remember hearing tell of when that happened, and they never came back. 'Til now, lakes turning to blood, Sabbat burrowing deep. Do you remember anything, or being told anything, about their absence? Why all the High Clans really left?"

He asks that as a matter-of-course. As if it's just the logical next step in the pillow book listing of things he's heard, since they're mostly circling the stranger and more eldritch rumours in kindred society just now, add in a dash of politics, stir with a silver spoon, drink down and have potent dreams.

"I think I've never believed in coincidence, sir. Just cause, effect, and will."

--

"Knowledge is power," Gotfred return to Jack's mention of the book. "And possession is nine-tenths of the law," and this summons a little chuckle out of Lazlo as he kneels beside his domitor, as if knowing his master would wants some positive reaction of mirth to his recital of cliches. "Perhaps more scruple-bound hands should find this book and peruse its secrets," a glance in the mirror toward Jack, but...

Well, it is at this point that Gotfred seems to remember that Jack has no reflection.

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the soft leave them to the work of keeping the kingdom. They had no stomach for a city in disrepair. Not in those days. At least, that seems to be the party line. And look how once again Winthrop of the Great Ventrue has disappeared, either Finally Dead or sniveling somewhere, leaving us a girdlocked city tight bound in the rigor mortis of his influence's fist," bemoaning the near state of martial law, a police state, the city is now set in. No easy thing for the Nosferatu to cope with, what with their conventional modus operandi. This is no new development to Jack's ears, but has greater heft from the Nosferatu Primogen when delivered directly to his subordinate.

"I think it no different than the disappearance of the Sabbat. But for once they showed more patience than our own Sect. The High Clans left to leave the city to grow, then came to reap rewards they did not sow. The Sabbat left to let the chaff be sifted, separated, readied, and now they've come to join the feast, push the entirety of our Sect from the table. But the Tremere?" He shakes his head and what is discernible of human facial features, cheek bones, muscles around the mouth shift into something more solemn, as if hinting at a more esoteric - unknown - motive.

"The Malkavians always questioned why the Tremere didn't return with the rest of the their more genteel cousins, though. When the Malkavians question something, sometimes that makes it all the more easy to brush the question under the rug," and now he turns, Lazlo's fingers on the hem of his pants, so that he is no longer facing the mirror, but instead facing Jack. "The Tremere shroud their secrets in powerful magic. A kind even we have trouble skinning back to get at the meat." It is a very nice way of saying he is unsure, though drawing attention to a new point of interest for his subordinate Sewer Rat to look into, all without ever issuing a command.

And only then does Gotfred transition to what Jack has shared.

"I've come to suspect a single Gangrel of some great age is involved. I would look to your sources. Not the only ancient involved, but the only of the more feral," he nods. "It glimmers of the broken mirror to me, as well. Though, as we look to the rumors from Las Vegas, I look to the activity in our own city. We find our Sheriff to have been disturbed recently. More so than usual, more than her iron fisted megalomania and paranoia. The many eyes have seen her looking to the moon in revery. Denver," he says, the misshaped finger of one hand up. "Las Vegas," another. And, as if knowing, or at least looking to see if the next will be revelations in Jack's eyes, "Wichita. Omaha. And Salt Lake City," until all five fingers, if the gnarled and long digits could be called that, now risen to enumerate the disturbances he seems to tie together.

"To believe in coincidence," Gotfred finally says, nodding as Lazlo begins working further up his tattered garb, "is to invite the hand of fate to steer one's course. I am glad to hear that you, too, consider yourself the forger of your own destiny."

--

The first time Gotfred glances in the mirror towards Jack Jack's still dividing his attention between the needle and thread and Gotfred. His gaze had risen up to Lazlo's mustache and thence to Gotfred when the former chuckled (tittered[creepsomely, blind man under-the-ground, brave-Tailor]), but turned inward again. The third cliché puts a twitch into his fingertips and his apparent attention leaves the ghoul's needle-thread game completely to stay with his primogen's bark-rivulated face, the shape of it from the side and the echo of it in the old-fashioned mirror-glass.

A tailor. A mirror-glass. A monster. A war, and armor made of thread. Love? Why not. It won't make things better and it won't help things see through to an end but it isn't a lie. A conspiracy of warlocks, blood-saturated and terrible, who're so arcane that even the Nosferatu, the ugly ones given secrets as a sop to lost vanity or life, can't easily pierce to the heart of. A silence that only the mad questioned. He listens and he puts everything into its true place.

The next cities (three, four, five) do seem to be something new to Jack. Something new and something old. The number five again. He'll find a way to put that into its true place too. Just now it causes him to grimace. "I also hear," he says, "that five childer of Malkav once believed in a rock's power, all at once, and they believed so hard that others believed, and now maybe somebody believes this rock is hidden in Denver, or just buried deep."

"I'd guess: maybe there's something to that kind of belief when it is old and it is funded by potent Vitae and tied up with lunacy."

He could only mean that the 'something' is the way others will behave when operating under certain beliefs. He could be more literal, mean that maybe he is not completely discounting the idea that some of these old Malkavians' delusions rubbed off on a stone as a prank or a trick or just a quirk of the blood and has been causing trouble since and that's the lodestone the center of all this mad-seeming mess. Jack's a nuanced creature, who's looking at Gotfred now like there might be something new to see. He is politely attentive.
But he nods, as if to indicate the self-forged destiny, as if glad to make Gotfred use the word 'glad,' and says softly, "Doesn't it all come down to what is believed."

"I'll help re-set some of the defenses before the dawn comes."