Molly
Somewhere, through the shadows of nothingness, came an ache. It was a stomach pang, but more familiar and typical than the humming stabbing hurt that she went to sleep with.
No, that she died with.
I died?
Yes. She remembered that much. She remembered the triumph, the exhaustion, the victory, then the terror and... everything got lost in a haze of rolling roiling pleasure and finally the sweet release of rest at long, long last.
But that rest felt short, interrupted by the gnawing angry red hunger in her guts. She clenched her eyes closed, willed the sleep to return, but there was none of that.
No sleep.
She realized soon after, while laying there, that she didn't feel the familiar pattern or hear the familiar song of air and blood. No breathing either. No beating heart. Only hunger and the tick-tick-tock of her own mind.
No..., and it was the only thought she had for a while. She wasn't sure how long she lay there awake, with only 'no' dangling in her head and echoing off its corners. Denial, but more than that regret. Self-pity. Hunger.
Finally, after what could well have been three minutes or three hours, Molly at long last opened her eyes.
Nobody
The ceiling is brickwork and stonework, and very dimly illuminated. The ceiling has some loops on it, which speak of graffiti, and should she follow them down: yes, graffiti. The kind of graffiti which would chill an urban explorer, because it is a representation of a staring man, disproportionate and in dark shadow but for a half-a-second couldn't he be real with his fedora and his Cold War era stare. Molly is on a sleeping bag; it is cold down here, but her body does not process cold in the same way, and she feels it but does not feel that it bothers her. Her veins want her to drink. Her veins want her to feed. Her body is -
Best not to think, immediately, about her body; the appearance of her body. The mind continues on.
Back hard against the wall opposite Molly, across an expanse of old stains and dirt from who knows how many years, (this is a tunnel; this is a tunnel of some sort, somewhere) is Jack the Nosferatu, as she only saw him for a moment before he pushed her away from the bus and it knocked his Mask right off him. He was somewhat worse for wear after that, the body she dragged back.
And the body Gregory took her too was dessicated, lifeless. Even more warped, and twisted; bloodless.
It's not much of an improvement. He is still a monster, and looks like a Monster. Unlike all of the other vampires she has known, he doesn't get to pretend. His blood is in her and it binds them as close as any of their history together does, closer.
His forearms are on his knees; it looks painful. He didn't wake up much earlier. The chains of the night are loosed, and anybody can wake up as soon as the light blinks off. But his eyes are already fixed on Molly, and they're the morosest things.
He's fucking mad. Molly doesn't know how deeply the transformation ruined him. Or maybe he's not mad at all; maybe he's right. Curse-breaker, Fairy Tale Hero, and now look what happened.
"Molly?" he says, and it's that voice. Honeyed; as morose as the eyes.
Molly
Brick and stone. Looping lines of graffiti and the briefest impression of a man in a hat painted on the wall in the shadows.
Her head rolled on the floor-- something soft and cool rested under it, a sleeping bag cushioning her from the floor upon which she lay. She processed something curious and unfamiliar on her scalp when her head turned, but didn't stop to think about it. Over the past several days she's gotten herself stuck in the 'one step at a time' gear. It served her in getting through the slog of horrors and adventure previous to now, so it felt like it was the best possible course of action to maintain. If her life wasn't a slog of horrors before, it certainly would be now (if you could call this "life", by technical definition).
Molly?
Molly's head turned again, now toward the voice, toward Jack's twisted figure pressed back against a wall. She'd come to recognize this appearance well enough-- between viewing it when she dragged him away from a bus crash, the reflection's representation of it, and how he'd appeared as a dry husk, she knew. Somehow (the blood, something in her veins felt it [much like the hunger that throbbed in lieu of a pulse]) she knew his face, him, better and closer than anyone or anything else. Perhaps there were a number of mysteries, undiscovered nooks and crannies, but she still felt like her heart swelled up and her gut ached with a blood-laced shadow-shaded love for him. For that honey voice and that sad gaze.
She groaned quietly and closed her eyes, aimed her face back up at the ceiling. She didn't want to move, didn't want to discover her own condition all at once. Fingers tapped gently on the material of the sleeping bag under her, from where her arms were at her sides, and she felt something different in the contact. Like maybe her fingertips were partially numb in patches.
"Jack," she said in a voice that was dry and cracked with a brand new kind of thirst. Hearing the rasp of her own voice had her furrowing her brow and clenching her eyes further closed.
"You'd better be okay. This shit-show better have been worth something."
Nobody
"I am -- " the Jack chuckles. This quick-dry noise that catches in his throat. He was a conman and a heartbreaker, once upon a time. Now he is a Jack, and Jacks are clever and quick and know how to use their tongues but a chuckle isn't a tongue. Still, this is a Good Jack, most of the time: and when a Good Jack is Bad it will feel bad. His conscience pains him at what he did to Molly, and he's glad for it. His recent misadventures haven't taken him deeper into the Night Kingdom, the Court of Darkness hasn't scrabbled over his soul and left its fingerprints smudging; he can still break the Curse, even if he's given it to someone else now.
"I am no longer in torpor; my limbs are straight as they ever are. But I turned you. I'm not sorry; it was clearly the thing to do, given the circumstances. But I'd never planned on turning you. The blood in my veins is going to press a two-fold Curse on you. The blood always carries a two-fold Curse, but ours is particularly -- "
His eyes glance across her face.
"Hard to bear. I am so sorry."
Molly
"I know," croaked Molly's voice. It was still hard to tell if her voice would forever sound like this, or if it was just that niggling... that nagging need. She licked lips that felt dry and thin compared to usual. At first it was hard to say what she knew, but then Jack figured it was easy enough to presume that she meant all of it.
One couldn't lay still denying what had happened forever, and Molly felt more than just the hunger urging her on. There was a mission there, logged into the back of her mind-- tattooed there supernaturally until it was completed. Only then would the ink fade and the drive would finally die. She would maybe be able to rest at long last, if she could just get something to eat along the way...
"Shit," she groaned again, and this time as she did she sat up and opened her eyes again. Though it wasn't her reason for getting up, Molly found herself surveying the damage of the curse all the same.
Granted it had only been several hours, perhaps (again, Molly was missing how much time had gone by) since Jack had taken her life entirely and given some of his substitute back in return, but already things were changing. She left a small nest of red hair where her head had been resting, a good amount of it having fallen out of her head already. Not all of it, mind, but it was significantly thinner and more sickly looking now. Her nose was smaller, her lips thinner and pale. Her fingers were longer, hands more spiderlike, and the healthy ample weight that she'd carried in life was already melting away from her middle.
She stared dull at her hands, the only real change that she was able to see herself. Wriggled her fingers and stretched them, then shook her head and looked around.
"I need...," she started and trailed off, scowled, and looked over to Jack. "I need a lot," she admitted. "I need a phone. And I'm not ready to think about it yet, but I need..." Again, she trailed off, but he knew. He'd been there himself. She needed to feed.
Nobody
You will contact me using the following phone number. The imperative is thudding at her temples as her pulse never will again. Only fury, or frenzy, or anxiety, or her own damned thoughts. Eternity is a long time, especially when it is conditional. The Ventrue woman's voice is no less compelling, no less enchanting: ensaring. You will contact me using the following phone number. Mission one. Then tell Jack. But first, the phone-call.
And Jack is shaking his head, rising to his feet. He has a phone. Molly knows he has a phone. "You can't call anybody you knew; you can't even see them. Especially not," a bare half-huff, "some of your previous acquaintances who dance in the Court of Bloody Worship and Hunger. But none of them; you've got to be disappeared, my dear."
Molly
She shook her head hard enough that more red wisps floated from her crown to the floor. Pushing the thought from her mind Molly also pushed her body up to a stand. Her feet felt different within her shoes-- a little cramped, pinching in the toes. That would come later, though, when it was enough of an inconvenience to be addressed. She already had a long list of shit to worry about before shoes came up on her radar.
Jack was on his feet as well, advising her that she couldn't speak to anybody. They all had to believe that she was dead. Molly stilled and looked at him for a couple of seconds while this sank in. No doubt she was recalling the family that lived out of state-- a mother and father and didn't she say she had siblings? They'd probably believe that she was kidnapped and killed, and they wouldn't even have any worthwhile suspects to start with. Molly didn't keep boyfriends for any of them to come after her for scorned revenge. They would ultimately accept her fate as something awful but ultimately mundane.
Nathan Amherst, though... He may come looking, and he had a pretty good idea of where to start.
Later, the mission-centered part of her mind scolded her. Contact Sophie at the phone number she gave.
"It's nothing like that," she told Jack, and strode across the tunnel-space to approach him where he stood at the wall. He didn't answer her directly, but she knew that he had a phone. She'd called and texted it plenty herself. One hand was extended in front of her expectantly, as though he had no reason in the world not to give the phone up to her. Palm up, spidery-long--new fingers curled just so, almost like a venus fly trap.
"It will be quick and formal. I just need to... Give a message. I'm expected."
Nobody
"By who?"
Jack does not reach into his pocket to give her a phone. He looks at her with attention, and it is one of the things people notice about him in many of his Guises; that his attention can be careful.
The hunger bucks against her; balked, she can feel the beginning furl-fire of the Beast, which wants what it wants and what it wants is always to murder; this is what it is to be a vampire: a thing that goes bump.
Molly
Molly's face wouldn't look so human for much longer at all, but when she stopped to stand before Jack with just a few feet between them he could still make out the freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her eyes weren't quite sunken, and they were still clear blue and sharp and intelligent. Maybe a little more pale, but.... well, the next couple of days would tell the tale of how much of herself may remain. Probably not much at all. For now, though, it is overall a rather familiar face that fixes him with a scowl that spoke of exhaustion and aggravation and urgency and impatience.
Her stomach was in knots, cramps and pangs of hunger that stoked a fire that she always thought she had inside her, but had never felt such threat of spilling over and consuming before. She couldn't be sure of how far her patience could carry her any longer.
Spindly fingers twitched wantingly and stayed outstretched, waiting for the phone as she explained her answer.
"Her name's Sophie. I need to tell her I found you." There's a particular note, a keening at the word 'need' that spoke almost of addiction. An unreasonable kind of desire, something that had to be done otherwise she herself may be undone. "Please. I want to hurry."
Molly @ 6:27PM
[Charisma 3 + Empathy 2]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
He raises his brow - or his brow-ridge, as the case may be. He is a monster, and he looks like a monster: the humanity in his eyes, deep-sunk and too-human and not quite Harald's, only exaggerates this.
He hands her a cell phone taken from his back pocket. How many times has he arisen, just like now, and texted Molly immediately?
He isn't hungry now, or - no more than slightly. He fed well the night before. Better than he has in a long, long time: he never kills - he only sips, only sups; doesn't drink until there's nothing left to drink.
Molly
Maybe it was because he sensed the urgency and lack of control. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for her and guilty for what he had done. There she was trying not to snarl, contending against a gnawing hunger unlike anything she'd known before while he stood there, belly and veins full of what was once hers.
For one reason or another, Jack conceded and handed her the cell phone.
Molly's eyes softened, a moment of thanks and relief before she turned and dialed in a number with a thumb whose new angle she had to adjust to-- her grip on the phone wasn't familiar.
When the number was successfully dialed she pushed limp, thin red hair from her ear so she could put the phone there instead. Jack could observe, as she turned to give him her right shoulder and waited for the phone to ring, that her ears were already pushing out into something longer and thinner of skin.
Ring-ring.
Nobody
Her voice is as (enchanting) lovely, as hook-you-in somehow, as interesting and just-let-me-listen-to-you over the phone as it is in person, though she sounds a touch different. People always do over the phone.
"Yes?"
Molly
Molly sounded a touch different over the phone too. Her voice was coming back the more that she used it. Thankfully the croak-and-rasp wasn't permanent (as of yet at least). Mostly, she sounded less wary and cautious and curious. Now she just sounded tired, maybe even a bit defeated when she said:
"This is Molly Toombs. I want you to know that I've found Jack."
Her expression was flat, but from how she cradled her right elbow with her left hand it was somehow conveyed that she didn't like the conversation. Was uncomfortable with it at its core, in some way. Her arms were hugged in too close for her body for the stance to be casual.
Nobody
"Commendably swift," Sophie says. "I will see you soon."
Sophie does not hang up; Molly will need to.
--
Jack watches his childe (and she is transformed, and the transformation is happening, and it means something different to him; that he has passed on the Curse, that the Curse is being observed; that it happened after delving into the mirror world, doppelgangars, and in this city where the Moon is madness - ), and is prepared to step in and take the phone away. He is inquisitive, and guilt-struck; and curious.
He is always curious, searching, questing. Not all of Harald was a lie.
Molly
If that was all that needed to be said, then Molly disconnected the call precisely as quickly as she had implied to Jack that she would. Sophie's voice was a beautiful thing, and it rang like a bell in her ears, but she had no love for it and no desire to wait on baited breath (or lack thereof) for her to say more. Soon as the phone call was ended she pushed an exhale past her lips out of habit over necessity, then handed the cell phone back to her sire.
Her Sire. That was going to be a concept to wrap her mind around.
As she returned the phone to Jack's hand she paused, hand hovering over his own, then looked up into his melting-wax face.
"I have a story to tell you."
-------------------
And a story it was. She would tell him all about how his reflection sought her out. How she'd gone looking for clues on how to find him but ran into Morris and, soon after, was taken to Sophie. How Sophie had explained that she would need to be ghouled or otherwise disposed of, and how she'd bartered her way to a deal. How she opted to seek Jacky out and bring him back to fulfill this requirement, as opposed to falling under the crimson sway of a stranger. How Sophie had sealed the contract with the supernatural force of word and will and domination.
She would normally have sat down to tell the story, presented it slow and calm. Now, though, corners were cut and edges were clipped. She didn't describe things in the same detail that he'd heard before, didn't interrupt herself to ponder meaning and mechanic and depth as she would have before. That was the cadence of their discussions in Gregory's donut shop, in her apartment, wherever else it may be that they would have met to talk. Now she was rushed, and her body language spoke to this as well. She'd paced about while telling the story, occasionally talking with her hands with a sort of flourish that would actually befit the spindly-spidery length that her fingers were taking on.
"But now," she said at last, before he'd have many opportunities to ask many questions, "it's on to the next thing."
She certainly didn't sound like she was too pleased by the prospect, but all the same she came to a stop in her pacing and instead turned to start looking around, as though a thought had just occurred to her.
"Which way is out?"
Nobody
Molly is part of the fairy tale now. Molly is a good name for a fairy tale heroine: plain and homespun and able to weather the passing of many ages. Just like Jack. Perhaps she won't need to change her name. It wasn't a bad way to die, but now her flesh (re-shape, transforming) is immortal. Her bones are immortal. Her heart isn't beating in her chest but it is suspended forever, eternally, eternity on that last flutter, the indrawn breath never exhaled. Jack, he listens. He's always been a listening Jack, and right now with his new Childe - his illegal Childe, although he believes he'll be able to talk himself out of any penalty, considering. He'll needs be clever, but Jacks must always be clever: without their cleverness, the Kingdom of the Sun's greatest shield golden Helios radiant Phaeton will turn him into dust and ash and so much memory and the memory of vampires is soon blown away.
He is held rapt by most of the story, but attentive to how she jerks like a puppy on a leash running for a treat. And when he hears about the treat, what a world. What a world. He frowns, deeply.
Which way is out?
(There is no way out; thresholds are crossed, and then there are crossroads, but they just lead further into the - )
"You need clothing to wear so you can go on the streets. I will accompany you and account for your face. Wait here."
He'll leave her, then. Unless she stops him, he'll leave her in the tunnels, in a hidey-hole, squirreled away like a nut; and when he returns, it will be with appropriate clothing. Hoodeys, scarves, coats, long skirts, a whole armful of clean (he's always smelled clean, sharp like laundry detergent) and clothing, both ragged and not.
Molly
Molly did not follow, but stayed hidden away in whatever cavern that Jacky found that was dry enough to serve as a 'home'. The word 'nest' seemed to suit the situation better, though, and Molly was left to consider the Nosferatu's relationship with sewer rats while waiting for Jack to come back.
When he returned with clothes to choose from, Molly considered the clothes that were still stuck to her body as an option for what to keep. But the black pants and shirt were slick with goodness-knows what, and smelled horrendous. It would be good to dry her skin and put on clothes that smelled so crisply of detergent. She'd request privacy to change, however that may exist (even be it with Jacky's honor and turned shoulder). Took her time in peeling her old clothes off, no doubt discovering something different and unpleasant with each garment peeled away. It was in finding the dark slick wetness pervading her pants worse than anything else, and where in particular, that prompted a question while she dressed:
"Whatever happened to the... thing inside me?"
She wasn't sure if it would have died with her, if it would have withered and faded away back into the Darkness from whence it came or if it may have broken free and scuttled out for shelter deeper in the sewers. It wasn't a question she necessarily wanted to walk around having unanswered.
When she was finished dressing Molly would re-emerge dressed in a green skirt of heavy folds of fabric that fell all the way to the floor where it dragged with moderate wear-and-tear on the hem, probably soon to be worsened. She'd lost her shoes, her feet now too malformed to walk the distance they would need to in them. Whatever was going on with them was hidden beneath the skirt. She wore a black hoodie that was about two sizes too large for her and so the hood did a fine job of creating a carry-along cavern of shadows for her face to be obscured by. Her eyebrows were lightening and shedding away as the rest of the hair on her body was as well, and her nose seemed to be shrinking, just a bit. Her chin appeared a little sharper too. She looked tired and miserable, but stalwart and soldiering on as somebody used to doing nothing else would.
Nobody
Every new, unpleasant thing Molly finds about herself as she dresses, every time her emotion pangs at her, and the Beast lurches in her chest; her hunger wicks up, just a little. Wouldn't it be nice to bury her fangs in somebody's throat or something's throat and drink, and drink, and drink and drink oh just drink, she has a need; it wants to wear her like a puppet, but she has a Will. New, but not unknowing: and yet still - it is scrabbling at her.
Jack goes a little further down a tunnel in order to allow Molly time to change. He doesn't look. He was always a gentleman, even on their dates back when he was awkward Jacky and she was curious Molly.
"It may require some study, but if you were ...pregnant by something that needed your mortality and your life, then it is gone; the Kindred body does not suffer pregnancy, not at your Generation, any more than the Kindred seed may bloom a garden."
"It certainly requires study." Pause; he is down the tunnel still. But when he next speaks, his voice is - "Molly, the lengths you went to in order to find me are incredible and impressive; what a daring woman you are."
Molly
Pregnant. The very word made her want to gag bile into and back out of her throat, but her body didn't really function that way anymore. The pang in her gut riled something up in her chest every time it happened. She felt like she was starved, desperately craving something like protein or water or both and anxious to get to the place where she could just gulp it down and soothe the ache and the hunger and the anger.
She shook her head under the heavy hood of her sweater and lifted a hand to scrub at her eyes-- still blue, still clear. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't there anymore. They'd have to look into it further.
Molly's bare feet were very cold on the floor but she didn't care. If something pricked her foot here or there she didn't seem to care much either-- the soles of her feet felt thicker to protect from exactly that. She walked from their nest into the tunnel, seeking where Jack had gone to give her the privacy she'd requested. He'd find her staring at him when he finished his accusation of daring. Her expression was conflicted-- love and sorrow, modesty and pride, bitter remorse and maybe even a tiny kindling flint of resentment.
"Well, I didn't exactly have any other choice." She was trying to be dismissive of her own accomplishments. "I was-- probably still am-- upset with you, but never really doubted in my gut that you wanted anything bad for me. Sophie and Morris?" In particular Morris. She shook her head. "I couldn't say the same. After that it was just a sweet misfortune that I knew where to look for the worst way possible to go about getting you."
Nobody
Jack is the kind of Jack one would choose as better than the alternative. Molly finds him gazing off into the dark, his shoulder resting on brickwork, his back to his childe (who is taking her transformation into a Nosferatu with less weeping, less gnashing of teeth and less frenzy than most Nosferatu childer take their transformation in - he truly is a Lucky Jack), and though his frame is wracked and wrecked, twisted into grotesquerie, Jack is a confident (driven) Nosferatu. A man, beneath it all. And the man was handsome as anything, and he never unlearned that initial way of holding himself, as if the world had found its beloved son. He is not proud or arrogant, not this Jack, but he is confident in his powers, he is always looking forward toward the end of his quest. He believes it will end. Perhaps it will end with his failure, but it will end. And now, well. Now Molly, and because he made her some of that quest will fall on her. The story is shaping itself.
The sound of her, and he turns. They are both ruins. Ugly is too slender a word, but she is bundled. Can't see what she's becoming, not like that. He smiles faintly, though he sees the conflict in what of her expression is visible.
"They didn't kill you; that says something about the way they think. You need to feed. I can make a call and see about getting you a bag of blood, but you can feed from me. I'll put it in a cup. And then we'll go. I've called a cab, driven by an ally."
Molly
What Molly felt within herself when Jack addressed her need to feed was distressful in a cornucopia of ways.
--see about getting you a bag of blood--
Her stomach yawned, hollow and needy from the thought of drinking from the bag, and she touched her tongue to canines that felt sharper than they ever had. Fangs? Or just the way her teeth were from today forward?
--but you can feed from me.
Molly stood still and thankful for the shadow of the hood, because an urge leaped within her. She pictured climbing upon Jack's monstrous body and straddling him while she drank from his neck. Hollywood and literature could be blamed for planting the seed of romanticism in the concept of Vampires, and the Bond she felt to her sire drove a forgiving gaze to his warped, melted, hideous visage. Memory both of the Kiss and addiction lit fire under this initial thought, but--
I'll put it in a cup.
Calm down now, Molly. She swallowed a dry throat and nodded, heaved a sigh to feel wind in her lungs again out of habit (for how strange it was to feel so still on the inside). Molly kept her composure, for she was on a mission, and she was Willful and even before then she had always been cool.
"Alright. Let's do this and get moving, then."
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