Chapter Eleven: Jeanne and the Lost Children
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Ever since that night, nothing's been right. Not her father, not her life, not even Tony. Jeanne feels lost, like the ground underneath her isn't solid and unyielding anymore. Like there's nothing stopping her from being flung into hell where she's starting to suspect she belongs, along with her entire damned family. Damned in the biblical sense.
This isn't what she became a doctor for.
"Now, mon trésor, you know you took an oath?" her father says to her on that night, right before taking her to a room filled with dying children. Dying bitten children, although they're not talking about that, are they? But Jeanne knows. Born children aren't like this. They're not this forgotten.
"Père, what is this?" she asks him. He doesn't answer, just tells her to save as many as she can.
She can't.
They die one by one in horrible pain and the only thing she's thankful for is the end of those blank eyes. It's the only thing she's thankful for anymore.
After that night, the world seems so much colder, and she knows that she's alone.
"Poisoned," she hears the other doctors help her confirm, their eyes grim. "An attack. But who?"
Who? She wants to ask the same question, but different: who the hell has been biting children? Why so many? Thirty-five children die that night. Another twelve adults. And they must all be bitten because she knows those symptoms… no born vampire would succumb to them. So how long has this been going on?
But she took an oath when she was ten years old. "We tell no one," her father had told her as he'd led her into the room with the masked men. "Not even your mère."
And it's all just starting to make this terrible sense.
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When Jeanne was fifteen, she'd discovered something bizarre. Some children were not born but given. This had seemed very strange to her.
"Why?" she'd asked her father.
He'd answered that some parents were chosen. Some were just special. "It is a very powerful thing to be gifted a child of another," he tells her. "It is even more special to be the parent gifting the child. It is how we formalise our bonds as a clan, and a family, by the sharing of children. It takes a clan to raise a child, Jeanne."
"Was I given to you?" she'd asked.
He'd laughed. "Non. No. My love, you were born to us, our dear heart. We pay our familial dues in other ways. But, this is the kind of thing you mustn't talk about outside of the closest of friends. Only those who took the oath you did. Our people are hunted… this keeps them safe."
And, in all Jeanne's life, she'd never met a 'gifted' child, so she never really thought about it again.
Until now.
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She's ambitious. To be anything in a clan, to have any semblance of respect, it's not enough to be an established doctor with years of study behind her. Her father is dismissive of her education and her work, amused by her 'Americanised' ways, and only barely interested in her love life.
Until Tony. Until she meets a member of a high-ranking clan, and stupidly falls in love. It's her foot in the door of her family's approval.
She should have known better. There's nothing in this life she wants anymore.
After that night, she tries to talk to Tony about it—ask him why he looks so shaken like he's been sick—but her throat closes, the words won't come. Remember, you took an oath, the memory of her father whispers. An oath like a trap, she's starting to realise. Closing in on all the liars and the monsters around her, and she caught in the middle.
Tony stops coming over as often.
She stops returning her father's calls.
She wants out. Wants away from this city and the memory of those dying kids. Wants out of the oath she was too young to properly consent to. Wants some kind of reassurance that her family isn't rotten.
She goes looking for that reassurance and doesn't find it. In all the books on vampire history and culture she reads, she finds no mention of the practice of 'gifting' children. It's just not there. What is there is damning accounts of how evil it is to turn someone without consent, the damage it causes. She finds accounts of bitten vampires driven mad by the change, sometimes immediately, sometimes years after. She finds stories of the danger of a starving vampire—a born vampire starved dies; a bitten one goes mad.
She'd courted Tony, dated him, hoped to fall in love with him, all on a slim hope of finally finding the approval her family wants of her. A foot into the clan life she feels shut out of because to be clan is to have 'duties'. To raise children for them, to maybe even be 'gifted' one… but that's all a fucking lie, isn't it?
And all they tell her is: you took an oath.
Fuck her oath.
She's not their pawn anymore.
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"Is something wrong?" she asks Tony on this day. He's finally having dinner with her, arriving late and looking harried, his focus shattered. In stark contrast, she's never been sharper, working hard to appear normal and even simpering, anything to throw him off that she's onto them. She wonders if he knows about the children, and her heart twists tight in her chest. God, that hurts. Looking at him now, the way he startles and looks at her all confused and half-smiling, she knows that she loves him. Whatever her reasoning for accepting his courtship, she loves him now and the idea that he might be a murderer with the rest of them is… horrifying. It's so horrifying. Despite the pain this brings, she chokes out, "You've been weird since… well," as he lowers his phone and looks at her.
And breaks her heart.
"What happened that night?" he asks quietly, leaning towards her. His eyes are intent: she can tell that he knows. There's too much knowing in those eyes. Once again, she's a fool in love with a monster. Just like her mother. Just like the rest of her life. "What aren't you telling me…?"
So, she acts her part. The idiot.
"I'll tell you soon," is all she says. "I… Dad told me that you're going to… well, he said I can talk to you soon, I promise. I'm not hiding anything from you that I won't tell you soon."
Despite how careful she's being with her words, she still feels her throat tightening. The oath biting down: Tony will take it soon. Then he'll be theirs. The difference is, he's asking for it.
He wants this.
"This meeting I'm going to… did you go to one?" he asks her carefully.
She hates him at that moment; hates and loves him equally. Any hope she'd had, of running away and leaving this behind, it fades then. She can't run. She's the only person who knows enough to care. Everyone else just stood by and watched those stolen children die, and when they were dead, only cared enough to discuss the impact. What had been lost in terms of products, not lives.
"We all do," she replies coldly. Let him know that he's in good hands. "It's okay. It doesn't hurt—there's really no danger at all, and they won't hide things from you anymore after—we'll be a real couple. Part of the clan properly."
Be careful what you wish for, Tony, she thinks but doesn't say.
And when he leaves that night, it's the last time. She doesn't ask him back. That's okay; he doesn't ask anyway. He's got what he wanted.
A foot in the door.
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She's at work when the world ends, turning on the TV in the breakroom to find the news ticker with Breaking splashed across the bottom of the screen. Raid on VFD Headquarters by FBI. Multiple Arrests Made. She watches silently as the wavering footage from the news helicopter shows black-clothed SWAT officers moving in on every opening. She sees a magical shield going up around the facility, more mages and agents circling it. She wonders, distantly, if her father is there. She wonders, distantly, if Tony is.
She wonders if this has anything to do with the stolen children.
But the news changes. There's a man on the screen being harassed by reporters. She recognises him as a high-ranking DoD official, a vampire. Far above the ranks of most of the VFD in the pecking order. And she unmutes the set just in time to hear the question: "Does this have anything to do with the allegations that DC vampires have been involved in the trafficking of abducted children?"
Her heart skips a bit, watching numbly as photos begin to flicker up. When she changes to another channel, the same thing. An anonymous tip had delivered a packet of information right after the news of the VFD raids had broken: in that packet, detailed information on abducted children going back almost forty years. There are photos. Names. Images from both before and after the abductions. She sees faces she recognises: children she now knows are dead. One is a senator's son. Another, an ambassador's daughter. The twin daughters of a judge.
The man they're harassing denies it adamantly. "No one bites children," he snaps, slamming a door between him and the reporters.
Jeanne turns the TV off, feeling nothing but fear. Whoever went to the media, they must have known what this would cause. The raid on VFD, high-ranking vampires closing ranks against the allegations… it's natural behaviour to refuse to comment on something that they don't understand yet. Understandable, even if they don't know what Jeanne does. If they're as blindsided by this information as everyone else.
But, from the outside looking in, dangerously suspicious.
The door slams open, her workmate rushing in. "Have you seen the news?" she gasps, staring at Jeanne. Behind her, the senior doctor on the ward is following, her own expression wary. "Jesus, that's going to…" And she trails off, turning to look at their colleague.
"You're going to need all hands-on-deck," Jeanne says numbly, digging her nails into her palm just to be sure that she can still feel at all. "You know what this is going to cause."
"I'm very aware," their senior doctor answers, her expression giving away how worried she is despite her careful words. "Jeanne, you should probably go. The types we're likely to have in tonight if this becomes a witch-hunt…"
If. If it becomes a witch-hunt. Stolen, bitten children?
There's not a vampire in DC not trying to get out of town tonight, Jeanne can guarantee that. In her pocket, her phone has been humming non-stop since the news broke.
"You need me," she says weakly, knowing it's not enough. "People are going to get hurt."
"We don't know how bad this is going to get," is the answer. Jeanne can translate that: you're in danger here, and we don't know if we can protect you if they realise what you are. She's the only vampire here. "Go home to your family."
She goes.
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It's a good minute of standing in the doorway of her father's office watching him hurriedly pack before he notices her there, her phone in her hand.
"Jeanne, thank God," he says, standing straight and running his hands through his hair. "I need your help. Have you seen the news?"
She nods dizzily.
He darts forward, hands on her shoulders and his eyes fierce. She remembers being small and trusting him with everything. "Honey, they're baseless accusations—baseless! Someone is trying to take down the VFD and we're scapegoats. All of this is fabricated!"
"Is it though?" she asks quietly, earning a glare.
"Quiet! Not now. Right now, I need your assistance. Take this briefcase with you to the airfield. Do you have bags packed? No, don't go home—just go. There's a plane there waiting to take us to France, away from this until it settles down. We'll buy you new things there."
Jeanne takes the briefcase, noting the locks. "Why are we running if the accusations are baseless?" she asks, her voice wavering a little.
"Because the truth matters very little when emotions are high, and, tonight, emotions are going to be very high. Everyone is in danger, everyone is fleeing—honestly, Jeanne, are you so simple to think that everyone is in on, what? Some horrendous child-snatching scheme? Ridiculous."
She swallows, hard, hugging the briefcase to her.
"You saw the children that night, Jeanne," he continues. "That was them, attacking us. This is all a conspiracy to push us into the underworld with everything else hated—demons and necromancers and all manner of vile things."
"Them?"
"The US government, those federal dogs. See how they set up their own for a fall first? You watch, the VFD will collapse and then they will come for every other vampire—we must be gone before that happens. You know that. When she smells smoke, the smartest witch runs—not waits until her toes are warm."
"Yes." The word falls heavy, her cell warm in the hand pressed against the case. "Yes, I understand. Père?"
"Jeanne, you must go, now! I will follow, I have to make sure those who are vulnerable to what is coming are safe first."
She nods, stepping back, but says it anyway, because some tiny, tiny part of her still wants her father to make this all better, knowing it will never be better: "Senior called me. Tony is missing. Something went wrong at the oath ceremony today."
But her father doesn't even pause. "Go, Jeanne!"
She goes.
Hasn't she always done what she's told?
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Not today.
She drives until she can find somewhere secluded to park, and then she studies the runes on the briefcase. Stupid. Her father is stupid. He uses the same runes he always has to protect his secrets, runes she'd learned to pick past when she was eight and wanted to sneak a peek at her Christmas presents.
She does so today, opening the briefcase and pulling out what's inside. Endless manila files overflowing with paperwork and photographs. Passports. More documents. Reams of monetary data, banking statements, written records of cash transactions. She ignores all that and tips the folders up, rifling through them until she finds something concrete in the small time she has left: something that will cement this choice she's about to make.
Her family, or her suspicions?
Her life, or what's right?
The oath will kill her.
But her family have killed others.
The documents blur in her eyes as she tips them up in a wild flurry of panicked paperwork, wiping her hazy vision clear with her sleeve and then focusing on what she's found. The photo that catches her eye. The face of the photo. It's a row of children. Twelve. The same age, all with the same clipped haircuts and same blank expressions. Twelve little soldiers lined up in a row.
She knows that one. That one little soldier, the one with the saddest eyes. Seven if he's a day. And, when she picks up the photo and turns it over, there it is. The proof she needs: just a number. Each of those little soldiers has a number to designate them. Each of the folders in her lap does too. It doesn't take her long to find that little soldier's number, to open the folder, to find what she's looking for.
Tony looks back out at her, cocky and real. His ID photo from his NCIS days, before he returned to them. And, behind that photo, him as a child. She recognises that empty stare: Tony was bitten. He was turned. She tips the folder up, finding more documents, more information she doesn't have time for—and here, a missing person report.
His name was Samuel.
She's not sure how long she sits there looking at that, wondering if he knows. Is this why he came back to the clan?
Is this why he left in the first place?
Finally, she moves. There's a sign behind the group photo, fuzzy with age but still discernible. When she types that name—Carrington Group Home—she finds that the place is still in operation.
She finds an address.
And she, once again, goes. This time, under no one's orders.
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Her father's car is parked in the parking lot. The building is shut tight, every window closed, every shutter sealed. It stands out starkly. She watches it for the longest time, unsure if she's strong enough for this confrontation. Finally, she realises that she is. Fuelled by anger and fear and a building fury stoked by the deaths of all those children, of Tony's lost life, of every lie she's ever lived, she gets out of her car with the photo of Tony in her hand and walks towards that car, slowing when she sees the shape in the driver's seat. She hadn't seen that from the street where she'd parked, as she slips through the gates and pauses, heart thudding.
"Père?" she calls, looking around at the silent street. This is vampire territory; no one moves. Everyone is hiding. "Dad?"
The shape in the front seat doesn't move.
Maybe she knows before she walks over there. Some part of her does. The other part is distant, raw. Noting with detachment the exact amount of damage that had been done by whoever had stepped out from behind that wall and shot her father through the head as he'd pulled into park. She stares through the driver's window: at the round hole in the windshield, at the glass peppering his lap, at his mildly startled stare. Just as empty as all those children now.
Half of her grieves. The other half holds that photo tightly.
And she knows: her life is over now.
Dazed, she turns her back on her father's body and walks around the building, right to the front door. She rings the buzzer and, when there's a squeaked, "Yes?" from the speaker, she says firmly, "I'm Jeanne Benoit. You know my father. Open the door."
They do.
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She asks to see his office. She doesn't tell them that his body is cooling in the car outside. Because family is everything to these people, they don't question her beyond asking for evidence of her validity. And they take her there, to an office in a building he's never spoken of having a connection to. Down empty halls with no toys or life. No photos on the walls. If this is a children's home, it is bizarrely devoid of actual children.
As though they've noticed her looking, they tell her that the children are upstairs, getting ready to flee. "We've opened the doors," they add, these two nervous looking matrons who really don't seem to want to be here. Jeanne watches them carefully, seeing fear and restlessness in every nervous twitch of their eyes. They want to run. Probably to their own families—they have no real care for this place, they're just… fulfilling a duty. Because isn't that what they've all been raised to believe?
"Where are the doors located?" Jeanne asks, giving none of her crushing grief away. It's easier than expected. She doesn't really feel anything but numb.
"The chapel. They lead to the boltholes, or so we're told."
Jeanne nods again. "Okay," she says, and smiles. It's the hardest smile she's ever managed. "You can go then, both of you. I'll take the children down there."
They stare at her.
"Go," she prompts, letting her smile slip and her father's icy stare take its place. "Do I need to call him?"
"No, ma'am," they blurt out. Just like that, they're gone. For once, Jeanne is the one giving the orders. It's a strange thing, using the power of her familial name. She waits until she hears the echo of the front doors closing behind them, safe in the knowledge that they'll be going left—to the staff parking lot—not right, to where her father rots, and then she keeps walking. Past her father's office and whatever misery lies within, up the stairs, down yet another hollow hallway, and into a long room lined with beds. Children stare at her, all silent. All empty.
"Hi," she says, studying each and every face. She's seen these faces, in the files in her car. She wonders if their families will take them now that they're not who they were. "My name is Jeanne. I'm going to take you home."
"We're supposed to hide?" a girl asks, her voice hoarse, unused.
Jeanne doesn't answer, just lifts her phone and looks at it, wondering who the hell to call. Not really all that surprised when her finger automatically hits speed dial two. Not one. That goes to her dad, who isn't ever going to answer it again.
The line rings then connects. She takes a breath, and then lets herself hope: "Tony?"
