Author's Note: Since today is my birthday, I decided to release this chapter a bit early. Once again I had to split a single huge chapter into two, so this means that there will be two chapters through LaCroix's POV rather than just one. I personally find short chapters to be more enjoyable when compared to very long ones, so that is the primary reason for my actions. I'm finding it a challenge writing for everyone's favorite Prince, but hopefully I'm not doing too horribly in my mission to capture his personality. Anyway, I hope as always that you enjoy this chapter!
Special Thanks: Thank you to Sasha Naruto, aberdeenkev, and Sof for their awesome reviews on the last chapter (it is heavily appreciated!). To Sasha Naruto: I always saw Grout as an unfortunate victim in the Prince's schemes rather than someone who was trying to start a war. Judging by the recordings left throughout his mansion in Bloodlines, he decided to hide instead of go against which ever devious vampire (assuming LaCroix) had him so fearful. I'm still glad to hear that you're enjoying the story though! To aberdeenkev: I'm glad you like my story so far, and yes LaCroix is a bit of a prick isn't he? I do plan to implement a few of the more obscure clans in the future, but thank you very much for the idea! To Sof: I'm quite pleased to hear that I'm portraying Sebastian's speech patterns correctly. I always feel like such a jerk when I write for him because I tend to place myself in the mind of the character. Thanks again everyone! =)
Disclaimer: I own nothing from the World of Darkness, Troika Games, or Activision. I only own Valeska and my other OC characters.
Chapter 14 Misery Loves Company
Sebastian LaCroix was in a bit of a pickle, and in fact he had been for the past few weeks. Ever since that fateful night in which the Prince had partaken in Valeska Latimer's blood, his ability to work effectively had decreased drastically. He wasn't even entirely sure why either, but his thoughts continuously drifted to topics that were pointless to ponder. How infuriating it was when he was meeting with the Primogen and all he could think about was how fanciful it would be to sample his ghoul for a second time. Every night he found himself angrily snapping at his secretary more and more, and for what? A delightful dinner?
He had read the information Gary had provided him, and was appalled that there was nothing overly fantastical about Miss Latimer. She had been born and raised in southern Arizona, and lived there all her life until she moved to California a year ago to further her education. Her mother had perished giving birth to her, and her father supposedly died only five years later, leaving her in the care of her sickly grandmother. During her early years she had excelled in her studies, but remained a social outcast when compared to her fellow students. She was heavily bullied until high school, in which she established a group of decent friends she could relate to. After which she attended a community college, graduated with the highest honors, and acquired her associates in Computer Science. While this was going on, she had been employed as a secretary for her grandma that ran a moderately successful realty company. Eventually the young woman's grandmother succumbed to a severe case of cancer that had forced her to quit the work force all together. Probably since she was grateful for her only living relative, Valeska started picking up shady jobs that involved a colorful array of illegal activities to pay for her grandmother's medical expenses. Even after she had moved to California, she continued to send money to her dying relative on a regular basis.
Other than that, there was nothing else overly interesting about her. She had a handful of hobbies she enjoyed like anyone else, and the only reason she stuck out at her schools was due to her superior grades. It was safe to say that up until now, she had lead a more or less normal and uneventful existence, excluding her criminal accomplishments. The information he had received from Gary, while much more useful than the report Katrina's ghoul (recently deceased) had provided, still gave no insight into why Valeska's blood was so sweet or the cause behind the hallucinations it brought on.
While Sebastian had not grown up as a spoiled child, his current position in life made it so that he was used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted it. Not having an explanation for his ghoul's nature was incredibly frustrating, and he only hoped that an answer would develop soon. At least he had a general outline of her history on hand though, and knowing about her attachment to her grandmother would be excellent blackmail material should the need to exploit her arise. With how careful she had been with her choice of words before, it had been obvious that she was hiding something. Now he understood that it was because she had been nobly protecting her only living relative. Valeska was quite clever, he gave her that, but her intellectual abilities paled in comparison to the resources he possessed. If she thought she could get away with disguising the truth from him, then she was truly mistaken.
Days passed for the Ventrue vampire, with nothing out of the ordinary occurring. A signed contract here, a newly proposed marketing campaign there, and of course his usual duties as Prince were carried out as was the norm. His Sheriff had returned from his conquest to wipe out the Sabbat, but all that he had been able to track down was a shack outside LA. There were around two dozen of the parasites within, so rather than risk some of them escaping, the Sheriff rightfully reported back to his master on his discovery. The very next day, LaCroix bought up the land and had the hovel bulldozed to the ground when the sun was highest in the sky. Their ashy remains were then swept away along with the rest of the building, and the humans were none the wiser of what had really transpired. All in a day's work for the Prince of LA.
Yet his accomplishment did nothing to improve his mood, for near the end of the second week after he had last seen Valeska, his levels of frustration had grown dangerously high. At some point, he had been visited by a Malkavian requesting permission to sire a childe, but instead of listening to the vampire, he had flown off the handle at him. There was no decent reasoning behind his behavior either, it just sort of happened. The Malkavian had left in a hurry after that, probably attributing the Prince's poor manners to a bad night. While the Malkavian was an upstanding member of the community and had agreed not to act against the Masquerade, LaCroix set a couple of agents after him just to be sure.
He knew that his irritation was due to his impatience with waiting for Valeska's return, but he decided that perhaps if he acquired more sleep, then maybe he would feel well rested for once. Even if he didn't, the rough waters of vampire politics had been unusually tranquil, so there would no consequence for distracting himself with longer slumbers. That idea though, turned out to be a very poor decision indeed.
On the average the French Ventrue tended to rarely dream, but when he did his dreams always focused around his harsh upbringing or the battles he had fought during the French Revolution. Yet as of late, rather graphic imagery involving Miss Latimer had invaded his sleeping mind nearly every morning. Most of them didn't even make any sense either. When he had been alive, he had held little interest for romantic encounters with the opposite sex. He was far too busy fighting for his life or his ambitions to have time for a partner, and in his unlife it was nearly the same. Sure he was still a man who ogled the female figure from time to time, but some things were simply more important than being in a relationship. Yet the dreams he continued to have suggested otherwise as they always seemed to border on the erotic. It disgusted him that he was having impure thoughts of his young ghoul, and worse yet was that they sometimes lingered with him upon waking.
Tonight in particular was no different, as he couldn't get that damn woman off his mind no matter what he did. All he had been trying to do was pay a simple set of bills, but no, he couldn't even do that without being distracted. What was taking her so long to return to him anyway? Logically he knew that cracking the security of a Nosferatu database was no easy task, but that didn't halt his desire in wanting Valeska near him right at that exact moment. If he could just taste a single drop of her blood, then maybe it would ease the discomfort he was experiencing. Then it hit him. Was this how ghouls felt when they didn't acquire their fix? Just what the hell had he gotten himself into?
After his startling revelation, Sebastian had left his office in a hurry for two reasons. The first was to give Katrina the signed bills to mail out, and the second was so that he could order his chauffeur to transport him to Valeska's apartment. He needed to acquire a sample of her blood so that he could find out if that was what had been driving him insane. How surprised he had been when instead of walking into an empty elevator, he had walked straight into the person he was planning to see.
In his past, Prince LA had been placed in many uncomfortable positions. Business deals gone sour, screw ups in the battle field, conflict with the Anarchs, and even an incredibly awkward situation involving Therese Voerman switching personalities on him halfway through a conversation. Nothing though, came close to describing the difficult position he had been placed in when the two of them collided outside the elevators. He hadn't quite wanted their next rendezvous to result with his ghoul landing right on top of him, but that was exactly what had happened.
For him the event happened in slow motion. She had been dressed in a baby blue sleeveless blouse with a knee high black skirt, and because of this it gave him ample opportunity to feel her peachy skin which was remarkably smooth to the touch. Even her chocolate colored hair which brushed his fingers lightly was soft, and he literally had to stop himself from running his hand through it. When he gazed into her emerald green eyes he got the distinct sensation that she desired to kiss him, but what shocked and sickened him was that he wished to kiss her too.
Eventually after a long moment of awkward silence, they did separate their bodies and LaCroix had to retreat to his office in an attempt to calm himself down. It hadn't helped that when she bent over to pick up the mess of papers, her cleavage had been placed on full display for his wandering eyes to see. She was not aware of her mistake, but he had seen it, and it pissed him off.
When he returned to his office, he immediately returned to the work that needed to be done surrounding a recent business proposal. It had a decent payoff down the road, but the important thing was that it was an opportunity for him to escape from the confusion and anger he had. He would settle for just about anything to help him cool off at this point as he was not only still reeling from his close encounter with Valeska, but he was furious at the result of said event. He was the Prince of LA and a Ventrue on top of that, so he couldn't let his head become clouded by some pretty face. Any kind of romantic relationship with a human was ridiculously absurd, and something he would never, ever give into under any circumstances.
The moment Valeska had entered his office he put on his best poker face. Unemotional facial expressions, short and to the point responses, and any other techniques he knew to keep their affairs professional were what he planned to employ. He also intended to throw more than a few insults in her direction. He wasn't happy, so why should she be? However, the report she had written up had blown him away and prevented him from being overly rude. Rarely did he find himself impressed with his underlings, but the results of her labor contradicted his expectations entirely.
While he was already well aware of where most of the Nosferatu nests in California were, LaCroix had only a general inkling as to what kind of protection the clan had to protect themselves. Valeska's surprisingly advantageous report shed light on not only their defenses, but even a number of ways to elude them. The fact that she had gotten inside the database within a period of only two weeks, and spent only a single day creating the report added to the amazement he had with her. What had meant to serve as a simple test, she had passed with flying colors. Sure she had been the cause of his sufferings over the previous weeks, but now more than ever he believed that he had made a sound investment with her.
Yet the possibility that she may have gotten help kept nagging at him in the back of his mind. The level of work that went into her report and the material contained within was almost too good to be true. Ever since he had arrived in California, he had formed barely any allies, but many enemies such as the Anarchs, the Sabbat, the Kuejin, and even a handful of independent trickster vampires who thrived on mischief. The one person he could think of who had the resources and motives to help Valeska, was Gary Golden. The Nosferatu Primogen after all had made a deal with the Prince so that he could meet his new ghoul, so it was possible the pair came to some sort of agreement behind his back. It was unlikely though that the sewer rat's leader would be willing to part with data that might leave him open to attack, not that many would be foolish enough to do so. The report may have been falsified, but that too seemed doubtful. He would simply have to keep a careful eye on her movements and keep his paranoid suspicions at bay.
One very long conversation later, the Prince had managed to line up all of his ducks in a perfect row. He had rewarded Miss Latimer with a decent amount of cash, an event that had provided him with a fair bit of amusement because of her stunned facial expression. After that he had gotten Valeska to agree to her second job, which would serve as an excellent test on a wide range of abilities Sebastian might make use of in the future. This job in particular would probably be the most important thing the young woman would ever do while employed under him, especially because of the way the Malkavian Primogen had been behaving as of late.
The first time Prince LA had met Aleister Grout, they had treated each other with a level of respect LaCroix believed to have been absent since the ending of the nineteenth century. In fact if he hadn't known in advance that he was Malkavian, the possibility would have never crossed his mind. His appearance may have been a bit eccentric in that it looked like he was dressing from another era, yet even that wasn't entirely unusual when it came to older vampires who spent most of their years away from mainstream society. Even his vocabulary had been in pristine condition when compared to his peers who often babbled paranoid nonsense. The more Sebastian and the other Primogen met with the highly cultivated and intellectual Grout, the more they were convinced that he would be perfectly suited to serving the community. Eventually they offered him a seat of power as clan Malkavian's Primogen, and he had graciously accepted, even going as far as to change his clothing style to be more modern as to play the part.
As of late though, Grout's actions had slowly started to shift to that of someone who was hiding something. He was continuing to host his semiannual dinner parties/research presentations, but his absence in important meetings was frequently being noted. When he did show up, his typically ironed clothing was wrinkled, and the colors of said attire simply didn't match. His normally neat silver hair was frizzy, and his dark eyes had begun to cloud with more than a hint of mistrust. Previously he had held an opinion on almost every issue, and the solutions he offered to them were quite effective or at the very least, incredibly creative. Now instead, Grout spent most of his time during conferences seated in the rear of the room, remaining silent and directing most of his almost fearful attention to LaCroix.
Now the Prince knew that he was not the most trustworthy of persons in the world. He had been forced to claw his way up from the day he had been born, and his ambitions made it so that he wouldn't stop until he reached the top. He desired power above all else, and for that exact reason he had been involved in some more than questionable things in his past. Murder, treason, blackmail, theft, lying, anything that could exploit or harm his opponents he had either done himself or manipulated someone to do it for him. Yet even with all of that against him, he held the deeply seated belief that he was not an evil person. The end justified the means after all, and in this case the end would result in him having higher amounts of authority in vampire society.
Even before he joined the Ventrue clan, leadership was something that had always been close to his heart. Now that he was both a successful business CEO and a Camarilla Prince, it would be fair to say that he had excelled in being an effective and fair leader. While he had his flaws, he was able to make the hard decisions that no one else could and often that was what leadership was all about. If something came crashing to the ground or if someone disagreed with a certain verdict, it was he who took the blame for it. The fact that he was okay with this and that he could handle the heat just meant he was more than capable at doing his job. The sooner the inner council realized this, the sooner he would be closer to achieving his goals. After all, who better was there than he to lead the masses of kindred and kine alike?
However, one wrong slip up or one detail exposed about his shady past, and he might as well go into torpor for a century, because that's about how long it would take for him to climb back up the ladder of vampire politics. With the way Grout was acting around LaCroix, it was clear he had knowledge that could be used against him. How the Malkavian Primogen knew was uncertain, but like many of the lunatics it was probably due to insightful voices that might be whispering the Prince's secrets. Even if it was something small, which he doubted based on Grout's paranoid behavior, he couldn't risk anything about his history getting out. Assigning Valeska to snoop for hard evidence in Aleister's mansion would be like killing two birds with a single stone. It would allow him to further test his ghoul's abilities in different situations and also to discover anything the Malkavian might be plotting against him.
The dinner party was not set to occur until several days though, so his next move was to get his vitae into Valeska's system as quickly as possible. He still planned on establishing a blood bond with the ex-college student, but he was incredibly cautious about doing so based on past experiences.
In the last hundred years or so, he had only a handful of ghouls he had ever employed. The first had been a complete accident due to his own stupidity in feeling sympathy and attraction toward a dying mortal. He had been very young and very foolish at the time, and he had no idea that the French woman would become completely obsessed with him after her first sip of his vitae. Having a beautiful female literally worship the ground he walked on and submit to him entirely was incredibly appealing, and he rewarded her accordingly. Eventually they formed a blood bond, and it was only then that he realized the danger behind such an unwise decision.
When his sire had found out about his actions, LaCroix had been punished harshly, and his ghoul put to death. It had been a tough lesson for him to learn, and his response to her passing had not been pretty. Eventually he did come to understand the wisdom associated with being careful in his choice of ghouls and most importantly what level of attachment to form with them. In this instance, he was unsure of how far he should actually go with Valeska. A truly compelling blood bond that inspired the highest of loyalties though, could only occur when a mortal fed upon a vampire three separate times over an interval of thirty days. So far Valeska appeared to be submissive to him, but there was still a bit of resistance emanating from her. Additionally she was continuously lying to him about a great deal of things, but raising the blood bond between them would solve that problem. It was a risky move, but the more attached to him that she was, the better he could control her.
When she rejected his more than generous offer of vitae, it was further evidence that he needed to get her under his control and soon. He couldn't have a rebellious minion running around disobeying his orders and refusing his authority after all. If he had wanted that, he would have traveled to The Last Round. He needed Valeska to feel like she had a choice in the matter though, but he had accidently come off too strongly with his demands. Realizing his mistake he quickly employed his silver tongue to try to persuade her, but that too seemed to fall on deaf ears. What else could he do to make her feel comfortable? Well, there was one thing…
Rising from his sofa he made his way to Miss Latimer whose eyes were glued to the ground. Gently he lifted her chin and stared deeply into her eyes; an action he could tell she found surprising yet also pleasant. Due to the effects of his own vitae, he already knew she held a decent amount of attraction toward him. Her body language and the events of their accident outside practically screamed of her obvious interest in him, so this was something he could and would exploit. He would have preferred their affairs be kept professional, but until she was attached to him, it couldn't be helped.
"I can understand the reasoning behind your unease, but I can assure with the utmost faith that you have absolutely nothing to fear from consuming my blood," LaCroix promised with a reassuring smile, "All I'm requesting is that you place your trust in me, your master."
In her eyes he saw the same level of skepticism, but it had lessened and was continuing to do so the more physical contact he bestowed upon her. To back up this theory, as soon as he put his arm around her, he felt her muscles relax almost immediately. Leading her to his sofa, the pair seated themselves upon it and he made sure to keep her body close to his. In just a few more moments he would have exactly what he wanted as long as he maintained the façade that he cared for her safety.
"I know you will enjoy this, Valeska," he said softly in her ear while placing emphasis on her name. He felt her shudder slightly and could tell he was arousing her. Controlling her was almost too easy, for he had her exactly place where he wanted her.
Raising his wrist to tempt her, he was stunned at the ferocity that suddenly overcame her. She was acting almost like a wild animal that hadn't been fed in weeks and was thus taking it out on him. If she was a vampire he might have said she was frenzying, but she was obviously human, so he had no idea why she was behaving the way she was. Deciding that she had had enough, he tried to pull away, but she held fast to him like glue. Right as he was beginning to feel unnerved, her hungry mouth slipped from his wrist, and her body slumped into his.
"Uhm, Miss Latimer?" Prince LA asked while shaking her gently. Well this had never happened before. Checking her pulse to make sure her heart was beating, he found that thankfully she was indeed alive. It was not often he let his subjects feed directly from him as he saw it as highly unsanitary, yet never had any of them fallen asleep on him. Her reaction may have been usual, but it wasn't cause for alarm.
Trying to reposition her body so that it wasn't crushing him, he was startled when she suddenly fell right across his lap. Staring at her unconscious form he saw her enticing neck peeking out at him from under a mess of brown hair. While he had intended to feed on his ghoul after her own meal, he had anticipated that she would have been awake. Did it really matter though? Every plan that centered around Valeska for that evening lead up to only one point anyway: satisfying his thirst.
"Wait outside," LaCroix ordered quickly to his Sheriff. He trusted his bodyguard, but anything that happened between Miss Latimer and himself should remain private. Nodding, the massive vampire of clan Nagloper obediently left his presence, closing the doors behind him. Now to finally get down to business…
Author's Note: So how was this chapter? I personally am finding it fun to backtrack to certain events to reveal how the different characters interpret a single situation. One could interview a room full of people, and yet each person would tell a different account of the events that happened. I kind of wanted to employ that same technique here, only to show how vastly different Valeska, LaCroix, Gary, and others view things based off their personalities. It's also refreshing for me to switch views here and there as so the story is not so stale. I would also assume it's a nice change of pace for the reader as well, since I can reveal a lot more about a character's history through their own mind rather than them openly telling everyone around them. LaCroix in particular is a mysterious character whose history was made rather vague in the game, and although he obviously thinks highly of himself, he's the type to not risk sharing anything about himself. Anyway I'll stop blabbering on and let you guys get back to your lives. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and that you drop a review if you can! =)