[Sodium_noir] At the Temple

[Jennie Teakle]

JOINT POST - Liz & Jennie


Jack, Christine
Confused, Bewildered

Temple of the Five Dragons


Jack looks at the shard, but doesn’t touch it. Apprehension clouds  
his face, as if the inanimate piece of obsidian was about to bite him.

“This little thing did that to you?  Shit…”

Courage up, Jack’s fingers inch tentatively towards the dark object,  
then stop in mid-reach.  He turns his face to Christine, an eyebrow  
raised.  “Hang on – you were a ‘vampire’s minion’?  A ghoul?  You let  
a leech do that to you?  What was that all about?”

Christine's eyes narrow slightly. She had braced herself to be judged  
negatively by other Mages but no one had, so she'd relaxed about the  
whole ex-ghoul thing. Now here was this . . . former flunky of Fu Man  
goddamn Chu looking at her funny because she admitted to consorting  
with a vampire.

"It was about love," she says coldly. "At the time. At least, I  
thought so. I was dying. Mara fed me her blood and I didn't die."

Her flecked hazel eyes glitter green and gold as she glances at the  
obsidian shard, dark and baleful against the woven blanket. "If not  
for this chunk of rock, I'd still be hers and know what? Mostly I  
wish I'd never set eyes on it. "

Jack, realizing both his error and the insult it's inflicted, averts  
his eyes and bows his head.  It's an instinctive reaction, harkening  
back to his time in Akril's haven, when such ignorance was rewarded  
with a painful reprimand.

"Ah...Mara...you and...ah, I get it."

In fact, Jack didn't get it at all.  He didn't understand anything  
about vampires, save what Akril claimed to know or what he gleaned  
from watching horror movies.  He knew even less about human  
relationships.  Love was a mysterious, mythical thing and he'd never  
personally experienced or witnessed its presence.

Christine sees Jack flinch and - not for the first time - regrets her  
hasty temper. Defensive much, Christine? She wonders whether to  
explain that her relationship with Mara is not simple as she made it  
sound. That it has always been riddled with conflicts, mostly about  
the blood thrall and dependency.  Christine doesn't know how she  
feels anymore  - about anything. It's just that without the craving  
for vitae and the magnetic pull of the blood bond, Christine can no  
longer kid herself that she has no choice but to be Mara's devoted  
slave and can thus abdicate from her own Fate and its  
responsibilities.  But the silence unwinds heavily as Christine  
struggles for the words to explain. It's all so fucked up.

Desperate to focus on anything except the awkward silence now hanging  
in the room, Jack's fingers grasp the shard, expecting to feel  
nothing but the smoothness of its surface.

Instead, he senses a recognizable aura - one which reverberates deep  
inside him, past the flesh and blood, into the part much older.  He  
doesn't know the origins or purpose of the black shard, but Jack is  
fairly certain that something similar to himself passed through - or  
was once held - inside it.

Startled by the sensation, Jack nearly drops the gleaming obsidian.

"Who...who told you what this was, Christine?"

Christine notes Jack's surprise but, grateful once again for a change  
of subject, doesn't query it. She just says, "Er . . . a guy called  
Damien Carter recognized it, I think, but it was Panic who gave me  
the information about the sacrificial, snake statue it was once part  
of. The owner of the Chaste Dragon?" Christine adds, glancing up at  
Jack. "He's very knowledgeable. I bet he'd be able to help you find  
out more about yourself."

Jack nods and, his eyes still fixed on the shard, carefully places it  
on the blanket.  “Sacrificial? I think spirits were sacrificed to it.  
There’s a remnant of... something I know, or knew.” He shakes his  
head, a growl of frustration passes through clenched teeth. “I can’t  
fucking remember!”

He looks at Christine apologetically, as sorry for his emotional  
outburst as for his inability to decipher the obsidian puzzle, and  
takes a deep, calming breath. “I’ve heard of Panic. Akril hated him.”  
Jack chuckles. “Well, Akril hated everyone, to be honest. I think he  
was....I don’t know, he almost seemed a bit afraid of Panic. Kinda  
weird, since the guy’s not much more than a kid. You think he’d help  
me even if he knew I’d worked for the Khan?”

Christine shrugs. "Only met him once," she says, "but he helped me  
and didn't ask for anything in return."  Christine's reflects on her  
encounter with the notorious owner of the Chaste Dragon. "I wouldn't  
run away with the idea that he's  any kind of knight in shining  
armour. Far from. But he does seem to know an awful lot and I think  
you'd interest him, for sure."

Christine shifts her position on the floor, curling her legs  
underneath her and twisting to look directly at Jack. She just  
remembered something. The night she met Panic was also the night she  
met Aurora and the Scarab.

"Mind if I ask you a question? About something I saw in your memories?"

Jack looks a bit puzzled and shrugs, "Not at all.  What do you want  
to know?"



TBC








	
	
		
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