My Little Ventrue Ch. 09

Oh. He was bait. That's why Viktor wanted him, not for his 'insight,' but for bait. Well, he had to admit, it was a smart move. A dangerous move, for him. His unlife was on the line now and Viktor was specifically goading the monstrous Daeva into attacking. If he did, Jack would be the first he'd try and kill.

But Viktor was keeping between the two of them, and the Ventrue seemed more than ready to fight if the situation called for it.

"You don't know what happened between us, Viktor. You know nothing." Tony stepped forward again, but then raised a hand. "You know, we're both here for information. Think I'll find any nasty Invictus secrets?"

It was Viktor's turn to grimace, but he said nothing.

"I don't give a shit about you, Invictus," Tony said. "I want Antoinette crushed and ruined. So, how about we put this little dilemma on hold?"

"So you can get your hands on that information? I have no intention of letting vermin learn of our secrets."

"And if I promise to share?" Tony said, but he laughed when he said it. "We could ignore each other, for the time being, and use the information together."

"You do not even know what the information is." Viktor dismissed Tony with a wave of his hand. "Or if it's here already, or coming."

"Mehket can be sneaky, but I saw a car drive away when I got here." Tony snickered. "So it's probably here, somewhere.... come on Viktor. You're not being very reasonable. Think I don't know you want to be Prince?"

"When I become Prince and destroy Antoinette," Viktor said, with sword now raised and pointed at Tony, "it will be on my own terms, and not with the aid of some vermin ser-"

"What? You can't hurt Antoinette." Before he could stop himself, the words were out of his mouth. Jack put a hand to his lips, as if he could cover up the mistake. If there was one way he was going to get himself killed, it'd be making a really, really stupid decision.

Tony stopped and looked at him, eyebrow raised and hands slipping into his pockets. Viktor, on the other hand, slowly turned to face his grandchilde, and his expression was shocked. More than shocked. His eyes were wide, confused, and his mouth looked like it was ready to drop.

"... I beg your pardon?"

"Um... I...."

Viktor started to walk toward him, one slow step at a time. His eyes were still wide, and... afraid? It didn't make sense. The ancient Kindred just walked toward him until Jack's back was against the garage door.

"You... you would dare insult me?" Viktor swung the sword in the air several times, as if to display his disbelief. He wasn't afraid. He was furious.

Like Tony moments before, Jack could feel the anger actually flow out of his grandsire as crushing waves. His own inner-beast was screaming in terror, but he couldn't move back any futher. His mind was in a panic, he couldn't turn to lift the door, he couldn't get out. Trapped. Trapped!

"Al-Alder Viktor, please, I.... Antoinette is-"

"You would betray me for her?" Intent was dripping from Viktor's gaze like blood. Maybe there was fear in his eyes. Fury, but also paranoia. Julias had said elders were paranoid, but he had no idea.

Jack was shaking.

"I-"

The blade came down fast. Too fast. Almost as fast as a Daeva. And in the next moment, the blade had swiped through and was now pointed down at Viktor's feet.

The moment after that, Jack fell to his knees, and then onto his side. Things stopped working. He clutched his hands at the floor and tried to pick himself up, but it just wasn't happening. He looked down at himself, but found only a mess of his suit cut down the center, and the thick, viscous blood of a Kindred dripping down onto the floor; Kindred blood wasn't supposed to do that.

Then the pain started. It exploded outward from his face first, and when he reached up to clutch it, he found a massive gash down through it, through his forehead, nose, mouth, jaw, and into his skull. It wasn't just a small cut, but a deep cut that had sliced deep through his bone. The pain moved downward, and with a trembling hand, he managed to bring a hand to feel his chest. There too, a massive gash had cut into chest.

Things were falling out of him.

When he managed to force his attention through nausea and blistering pain, he could just barely make out withered things, dark and atrophied and dead things slipping from his pale skin, and soaked in dark red. Kindred insides.

"Learn your place." Then Viktor kicked him. "And die."

Bone cracked inward and more of his precious vitae splattered over the floor. Hard as the viscous liquid fought to stay inside him, he was cut open like a gutted fish, and the blood was helpless but to pool around him. He tried to talk, to beg, to plead, but all that came out was Kindred blood.

He could hear laughter, and voices. Viktor was talking, but not at him. Tony. The two were walking toward each other, faster, and then... running at each other.

Gunfire. Metal smashed against the machines. Everything became a blur. Tony was moving, jumping, insanely fast but everything was spinning now. Even Viktor looked like a blur, with his machine pistol drawn and unleashing a sliding light of muzzle flash in the darkness.

Their fighting was his death song. Sword against the floor and bullets against the spooling machines. Whoever won was going to kill him. Either Tony would for his relationship with Antoinette, or Viktor for Jack's audacity.

He was going to die. He was going to die because he didn't know how to keep his mouth shut, because Viktor was a paranoid bastard, and because Tony was a deluded asshole.

... no. Fuck that. Fuck it. Fuck Tony. Fuck Viktor. Fuck them all.

He reached out across the floor with one hand, dug his fingers into the floor as best he could, and started to drag himself. He'd broken his leg once as a kid. He'd been kicked in the balls by a bully once in high school. One time, he lost a tooth to an infection.

None of it even compared. If he'd still be human, kine, he'd have passed out from the pain. So much of his body had been split open, he could feel bone grinding against bone where it was supposed to be connected. Each inch crossed sent migraines of pain that overwhelmed him until he couldn't think. No! He was Kindred now. He was a fucking Ventrue, and he wasn't going to fucking pass out and die to a fucking flesh wound in the middle of a fucking textile mill!

Textile mill! Thread. Fabric. Spools of it. Let it be let it be... yes! The lighter was still in his pocket.

The two elder Kindred were still fighting. He could barely follow that they were moving, and the gunfire was growing quiet. Gunfire wasn't supposed to be quiet. He had to go faster. Find some thread, some fabric, something that was hanging far enough down he could light it.

He wouldn't let these fucking animals hurt Antoinette.

The building was in disarray. It'd obviously not been properly emptied when abandoned. And after dragging himself twenty feet, he found one of the spool machines. It was such an old machine, no wonder the mill had been abandoned. It wouldn't have passed safety inspection, and it would have cost a fortune to replace all the machines. But it'd only recently been abandoned, and now that he was up against the machines, he could see through cloudy eyes that bits of fabric were everywhere.

He held the lighter in front of him. It was drenched in blood, and he had to struggle to hold it. He was shaking, either from how close to his second death he was, or because he was holding Kindred bane in his hand. Every flick of the thumb against the flint wheel was fruitless. He kept trying, even as he fell over onto his shoulder, and could barely see the lighter in front of him or the threads of fabric, he kept at it.

Finally, a spark.

And then, fire.

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~Beatrice~

Fire. Fire! Fire poured out of the old warehouse like death given its own life, its own desires, its own hands to reach out and grab and take whatever it wanted. And it wanted everything.

"No! Jack!" Julias tried to rush past her, but it only took a quick hand to his chest to knock the big man down onto his ass.

"Stay back, fucking idiot! Look at that!"

Fire didn't just rise from the old building. It exploded outward. Fire and smoke and chemicals; it was a giant cluster fuck of insane proportions.

And then it was the next building. They didn't go up in flame with the same eagerness as the first building, but the fire was spreading nonetheless. Just looking at the flame was making the Nosferatu tremble.

"Jack was in there, with Viktor!" Julias motioned to the first building that went up in flame. "I have to get him!"

Superman got up again, and she put him down just as easily. Hell, he was missing a hand and beat to shit, he couldn't even land without stumbling over. "You'll fucking die! We'll both fucking die. The fire is spreading." She reached down, picked him up by his collar, and shook him. "Use your god damn brain, Invictus!"

He struggled. "No. No I have to go get him, I-"

Nope. Fuck that. She punched him in the face, and when he spit curses of pain, she punched him again until she heard something crack. She couldn't knock him out without nearly kill him, but it was enough to break his face if that was the only way to get him to not commit suicide.

She dragged him off. He was holding his face now, yelling and struggling, but at least his hands -- er, hand -- was off of her so she could drag him without issue.

"I didn't save your god damn life so you could throw it away. Now shut up. The kine will be here soon. This whole district will be in flames soon!"

Wow, he did not stop struggling. Whatever, she overpowered him easily, and the big man was helpless to escape her grip as she bounded up onto rooftops.

She took him back to his place.

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Finally, they were back at his apartment. She had to use her cloak of night to get past all the pedestrians, and with the one-handed Ventrue hanging off of her shoulder, that was no easy task. At least the big lug had finally given up struggling.

"Sit down and so help me god if you try and leave I will rip off one of your legs. See how far you can get with half your limbs gone!" She threw him onto the couch, hard enough to make her point.

"...alright."

Superman slumped against the couch and cradled his missing hand. He'd be able to regrow it during the day when he slept, and the host of other wounds he'd taken. He'd be hungry as well when he woke up, for the sheer amount of vitae it'd require to regenerate.

"Sunrise is in an hour. So don't... just don't." She stood there, arms folded across her chest, before she finally took a look down at herself. God she was a filthy mess. She had Rebecca all over her.

Ok, the situation sucked, but that thought made her laugh. Julias quirked a brow at her, and she raised her hands up in surrender. "Just a funny thought."

"Jack could be dead."

"Yep."

"... fuck you," Julias said.

She did a double take. He had said it, right?

"Hey, he could be alive too." Pretty damn unlikely though. The fire had eaten a dozen warehouses by the time it was beyond them and out of sight. And even to a Kindred as young as Jack, fire was still extremely deadly.

Julias didn't say anything. Just looking at him was enough to make her feel weighed down though. For just a moment, she thought of the old stories she'd heard, of what a parent went through when they lost a child. The Ventrue was beaten, missing a hand, suit in shambles, but it was his down-pointed eyes that had her feeling... feelings.

She came over and sat down next to him.

"... what are you going to do?" she said.

"Don't know. I don't even know if Viktor is alive; he hasn't called to arrange another meeting."

"God. What the fuck went down tonight, Julias?"

"It was just supposed to be a smash'n'grab! Get the package, get out, push Tony and Rebecca around if we had to." He reached up with his only hand and covered his face. "Important information, just didn't know what it fucking was. There were too many signs to ignore though, so we risked it. Fucking... Viktor. I trusted him to keep Jack safe."

"It... uh... doesn't sound like a very well thought-out mission. Not very Invictus-like. No offense."

"It wasn't. But the information was supposed to be sensitive to the covenants, so Viktor... thought it was so important, he'd go himself."

"Wow, the big man himself thought it was that important?"

Julias gave a slow nod, but she'd set the wheels turning in his head. His eyes drifted forward, but he just gazed into nothingness while his hand gripped at his other wrist. She had no hope of following all the webs he was untangling in his mind.

"... thanks... for telling me all this," she said.

Julias blinked; she'd startled him.

"I... I really shouldn't have." He managed a small smile at her, and scratched at the back of his neck with his only hand. She could see he was in a lot of pain, but he bore it like a true Ventrue. The stupid bastard.

"Well, thanks anyway." She got up again, headed for the door, and gave the poor guy a pat on his shoulder. "And... he... well...." Arg, why was this so hard? She clicked her teeth together from side to side. "I... I'll go."

When she lifted her hand and stepped to the door, a tug on her arm stopped her. She turned around, and found Julias's one good hand holding onto hers. His hand, covered in the now-turned-to-ash blood of Rebecca, sneaked its fingers between her long claws. She gave a small tug again, but he didn't let go.

He didn't raise his head, didn't smile anymore, didn't move, just looked down at the floor in front of him, and held onto her hand.

"Sunrise is in an hour, I have to-"

"Stay." Finally, he raised his eyes to look at her. "Please."

Man, even a begging Ventrue still looked noble. Part of him looked like a poor boy asking for more food, and another like a defeated king bravely requesting of his conquerer for his people to be spared. Those eyes of his lowered a bit, to where their hands were netted together, and then he looked up to her again. He tugged on her this time, only tightened his hold of her hand, and lead her to sit back down beside him.

"It takes thirty minutes to get back home though. I-"

"Just... stay."

Her turn to blink. She wanted him to stay? "As in... stay the day? Like, sleep here? Like, super defenseless deep Kindred sleep, with no one around to protect me?"

He managed a small chuckle, weak, but real. "The place seals off from sunrise to sunset, and the curtains automatically close. And I... I could...." His eyes lowered again, where his hand held hers over his knee.

She'd never thought she'd ever see a Ventrue look so defenseless, open... vulnerable. Broken.

"... alright."

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~~Jack~~

Fire was always a frightening beast. It seemed alive and bloodthirsty, even when it was just a candle's flame. But dry fabric like cotton was not the same. Not the same. He could not have known how bad it would have been.

It was like an explosion. The fire filled the air far faster than he could have imagined. The flash of it burned his skin until he could feel it against bone, and he backed away from it like a panicked animal. Fear, so much fear filled him, that for that brief instant the red flame lit up the mill, he could not feel that he'd been cut open from head to gut.

"W-wait!" Tony screamed.

"No. No!"

Jack looked across the way, but all he could see was flame billowing out. Something was in the air, something that caught the flame and whipped it into a maelstrom. He'd heard stories, horrible stories about cotton mill fires, but he had no clue. It slammed him into the garage door hard enough that he was sure something else broke. To the two elder Kindred though, the effect was entirely different. The explosion of incinerating air crashed into them, and through the fury of its swirling red, Jack forced himself to watch.

The two of them only had time to raise their hands in panic, and then they were gone. Their voices echoed with billowing force over the explosion, like dying gods, and then they were gone. They burst into flames, bright and unnatural against the fire, before falling apart to ash, and then they were gone.

It was almost disgustingly quick. Beings hundreds of years old, ancient, powerful, deadly and intelligent, were gone in a flash. A literal flash. The air was on fire and it didn't care about how powerful and ancient they were, it just made them gone. And it was coming for him next.

The walls, the machines, so much of it was old and dry. It was going up in flames after the flash fire, and he had no time. No time to think about it, no time to worry about it, he could only do one thing.

He turned around with one hand holding his guts in, got to a knee, and used his free hand to grab the garage door's base. He lifted.

Agony coursed through him. He could feel his undead insides fight against the weight. It wouldn't have been too hard for a kine, but even as a Kindred, split almost in-half and with one hand, nothing was working right. He started to tumble over, blink in confusion, lose his sense of awareness, before he snapped back to his senses. He pulled harder, and harder, until he heard the creak of moving metal against the roar of fire. More of his blood was pooling out of him. Kindred blood wasn't supposed to do that, but it didn't matter. Ignore it, just move!

At last the door lifted. For a moment, he forgot about his singed skin turned to ash over half his face. The next moment, it was almost enough to blind his thoughts. He stumbled forward as the door rolled up, and fell out onto the pavement. He managed a glance around, silently begging for Julias, but his sire was no where to be seen.

He looked behind him, and found only more of the growing red engulfing everything in its wake, like a demon on his heels.

He grit his teeth. He wasn't going to die to this bullshit. He'd killed Tony. He'd killed Viktor. He was not going to die to some fire that he himself created. Fuck that and fuck them. He was a Ventrue.

Ventrue do not fail.

He started to crawl. Attempts to stand quickly proved impossible, for pain and lack of strength, but that was fine. He didn't need to stand, he just needed to move. More of his dark blood dripped out of him in unnaturally thick globs, but he ignored it. Just move. Just move.

A small chuckle escaped him, quickly regretted for the pain. He was absolutely and completely alone, in what was proving to be a raging fire that was doing more than just burning the building behind him; it was burning the buildings everywhere around him. Still, somewhere in his mind, he refused to accept it. He was a Ventrue. He would not die here to a stupid fire.

So he kept crawling, even as the fire spread out to the buildings in front of him, even as the palettes of wood around him burned, and the trucks and what-the-fuck-ever started to catch fire, he kept crawling. His bloodline would not let him give up.

Boots. There were boots in front of him. He looked up and tried to focus his eyes. A person, someone tall, in a trench-coat. And glasses?

Whoever it was leaned down with a hand outstretched. Part of him wanted to panic and fight, but the hand was empty. He was too tired to fight anyway. Instead, the stranger put his hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Mister Terry? I got you."

Heh, Mister? His title was Master Terry, just a kid. Julias was a Mister. Whoever this guy was, he was no Invictus. Darkness pulled him under, and all he could think was, what a dumb last thought to have before you die.