My Little Ventrue Pt. 02 Ch. 10

"Lucas. How dare you. How ... dare ... you ... Do you think I will let you leave after this?" She stepped forward, and with the grace of a feline, stepped out of her shoes. Shoes were a mistake for any creature that planned to move quickly, with force. With intent to kill, you needed to feel your ground beneath you, so you could tell how fast you were moving before you crushed someone's face in with your fist.

Daniel followed beside her. He said nothing, but his sword was still drawn and at his side. He kept his shoes on, but when the violence began, he would not even touch the floor.

"No, I did not think that you would. But then, I will not be leaving as you instructed either. My flock and I have, with heavy hearts, agreed that the only course of action is to remove you from your position." He stepped forward a little closer. She noticed he was carrying a very old looking sword; how quaint. "Will you step down as Prince?"

She laughed. "You are pathetic, Lucas. You have only recently awoken from half a century's sleep, do you honestly expect me to fear you? Daniel, would you please disp—"

Lucas held up a hand. "Damien, if you would?"

The crowd of robed Kindred stepped aside like water, and the young protégé who had stalked her streets for fifty years stepped forward. He seemed like such nice a young man, with an average if athletic build, and a half-shaved head that combed long black hair to one side. He was the one Daniel had spared in their purge.

And he was the one who held Natasha in front of him, with his sword against her throat.

Oh no.

She stopped walking forward. Daniel stopped walking forward. They both just stopped, and stared at Damien and Natasha each. The girl was awake, bound, and glancing around with panicked eyes. She knew what was coming.

"Daniel," Lucas said, and he moved over to stand beside Damien, "I don't suppose you could save us all the trouble, and execute the Prince for us?"

Fear. For just a second, just a passing moment, fear hit her. Fight Daniel? Could she fight Daniel? She could not win against her sheriff, not in a straight fight.

They looked at each other. Daniel's eyes downcast once they met hers, and flickered up to meet them again several times. He was ... sad. A lifetime of conversations, of actions, of events, of decisions and anarchy and vengeance and justice and conquest and secrets and learning flashed before her eyes, of her and her friend Daniel. Her quiet, monotone friend, supporter of all her endeavors, was torn. More emotion than she had ever seen on his face in the centuries that she had known him.

His eyes flickered to her, then back to Natasha.

"Sire, you..." Natasha twisted to get free, but Damien held her strong. "Sire, you c-c-can't-t-t-t ... give int-t-to these ... monsters."

If only it was that simple, girl. Daniel had only ever sired two, one long long ago, and that was tragedy for him. Antoinette could not imagine what sort of emotional wreckage her friend had to dig through to build up to siring Natasha. It was not a choice she envied.

Daniel, with sadness etched into his face with pain, fell to his knees. Jack gave a tiny gasp, echoed by the host of terrorist in her home.

"Ah, it is the way of things is it not?" Lucas stepped around in front of the crowd of cultists, and made another sweep of his arm with the old sword. "Our childer, our future. And for some, our weakness."

Damien winced. Antoinette noticed it, just that quick snap of the lip edge, but she noticed.

Lucas smiled. "I knew it would be too much to ask you to kill the Prince for us, but understand that if you intervene, sheriff, your childe's ashes will scatter the floor."

"You ... you will all die if you touch her." Daniel's voice was a broken thing, wavering and cracked.

"We have faith, sheriff. You should try it sometime. And you," the Archbishop said, and he pointed that silly sword at her once again, "you, I suppose, will not step down just because I hold your friend's childe hostage?"

"I think not. She is not my childe, and this is my city." She took another step forward, and unfurled her fingers like claws at her side. "I am going to kill every last one of you."

Jack was still around. The fool boy had at least moved aside and out of the way of the inevitable carnage, but he was poking his head out from behind one of the pillars near the stairway to the depths of her castle. The boy was still wearing the tuxedo he wore last night, and a Ventrue was nothing without weapons or servants.

She, on the other hand, found herself looking forward to finishing this with her bare hands. As long as she kept herself between the zealots and Jack, this would be easy.

"It is ok Daniel." She set her hand on her friend's shoulder; he did not move. "He will not touch her if you do not intervene."

Daniel did not even move, he simply knelt there, head lowered, eyes flickering between the floor and the feet of the mob before them. To see her friend so ruined was enough reason for her to tear Lucas's teeth out, force them through his eyes and into his withered, worthless insides.

Better yet, she was going to make Lucas's flock do it for her.

She stepped forward a few more times, reached out her hand, and pointed it at the crowd of Kindred. "Kneel."

She dug deep into herself, far into the endless reservoirs of vitae she had to muster. Elder Kindred harvested blood, coveted it, held it dear inside them and pooled it into oceans within. And when they wanted to, they could draw on that ocean to unleash the absurd.

Forgive me Jack.

The aura was invisible, but not subtle. Like a goddess, like a succubus, her presence filled the room, overflowed and overwhelmed everyone within. As if a divine spotlight was on her, and only her, every mind would bend, break, and succumb to her allure. The beast in their guts would bow, beg, and their every desire would be replaced with a need to serve her.

And it was working. She grinned at Lucas when, like a choir preaching to their new god, his flock began to fall to their knees. One by one, they went wide-eyed at the sight of her as she broke them with something they could not see, but only feel. Lucas was out of her reach, as was Daniel, but everyone else was enthralled, enslaved, and defeated. She was their goddess. If a choir of angels had joined the sudden silence to announce her presence, it would have been only too perfect.

Damien and Natasha were beginning to fall, and Jack beside her was already on his knees with gaping jaw. It broke her insides to see him enslaved, to see his honest face ruined by such fake admiration. Those beautiful eyes of his were empty of anything but total love for her, but like a perfect doll, devoid of anything real. She would make it up to him later, if the poor boy could look her in the eyes again. It would kill her, if she damaged the normal look in his eyes she cherished so much.

Lucas noticed, and reached down to pluck Natasha from Damian before Daniel had the opportunity to act. The elder's grip was more than enough to pluck Natasha's head from her body in an instant, if it was needed.

"This serpent is strong. Step aside children," Lucas said. "And behold the glory of God." Then the damn idiot zealot held the sword high, and started to hum a hymn.

Antoinette rolled her eyes and stepped closer. "You cannot be serious." He was just a Mehket. His were the powers of speed, secrets, and shadows. He had no way to stop her majesty.

But then the sword started to glow.

Everyone stopped moving. The Lancea et Sanctum backed away, gasped, and froze. Jack's jaw dropped even more. Daniel raised his head, and even his mouth parted. Natasha and Damien gazed up at the glowing sword with stunned faces. Even Antoinette, despite herself, raised her gaze in surprise and watched, shocked.

Only Lucas was smiling. "I pray unto thee, O Lord, to smite the wicked. Your will be done."

She would have gagged, if not for the increasing glow of the sword. Soon, the lobby itself was bathed in so much light, she worried that the sun had risen and she did not notice. Many vampires raised their arms and covered their eyes, but not Lucas, and not her. They both gazed at the searing light, blinded but unable to look away.

For a brief moment, she thought she was looking at the sun again. Old, dead memories of ten lifetimes ago flooded her. She remembered standing on a street, horses with carriages were trotting by, and a man was holding her hand. The air was filled with the sound of hooves on cobblestone, calls of the crowd chatting about their day, wearing frilly dresses and fancy vest tuxedos. She could smell the sea.

And like lightning, the light cracked white and streaked outward into the air. Then thunder that vibrated the glass tower and the earth it rested on, until it nearly cracked. A wave of invisible weight pushed against them all, as if the air was water, and it threatened to crush her. All she could do was stand there, confused, dazed, eyes wide, and let the madness consume them.

A second crack of lightning, but this time the sword Lucas held incinerated from the explosive crash of white energy. The lightning smashed into her chest, and she fell to her knees as the weight increased a hundred fold for a single moment. Everything went black before coming back as blurry shapes, so the crowd of robes before her were blended together like mist.

They were getting up, her majesty discipline broken. She reached out with a hand and dug deep into her insides, but the vitae would not rise. She could still feel the vitae coursing through her fingers, toes, through her chest and her eyes, but when she tried to use it to engulf the lobby in her majesty, it was blocked.

With time, her vision started to return, but nausea and pain coursed through her. She reached out and steadied herself against a pillar, and her other hand rested on Jack's shoulder.

" ... Jack? Jack please, you must ... get ... downstairs."

"He just hit you with lightning!"

"A miracle, boy!" the Archbishop said. All that remained of Lucas's sword was dust at the zealot's feet.

Antoinette scoffed, and dug her nails into the rivets of the pillar to try and stand straighter, but for all her proud posturing, it was taking effort to not lean on Jack. "Sorcery. Theban sorcery."

"Strong are the miracles of God, Dragon. Now my children, bring her down. She cannot enchant us with her serpent gaze any longer." Lucas chuckled, a dark chuckle, something a cartoon villain would do. Did his flock not hear it? Could they not see how deranged and psychotic their leader was?

The crowd of Kindred started to stalk forward toward her, like hungry but desperate animals. They had crazed looks in their eyes, and they lowered their hoods when they got closer to her.

She pushed out against Jack, hard, and sent him flying back against the wall toward the stairwell and down. There was no way to escape her tower's deeper levels, as such escape routes often backfired an elder. Now, all she wished was that she had such a route for that damn fool boy who should have been running.

And poor Daniel was forced to watch it all from only ten feet away.

"Wow, she looks wrecked!"

"Yeah, this'll be easy."

"Faith. Reward for our faith."

"The Archbishop will be Prince before the night is done!"

They had knives, large ones, they had pistols, they even had shotguns. Nothing military, nothing extreme. If they had taken more time they could have perhaps armed themselves appropriately, but in their hubris they came unprepared. Their mistake. She had no sheriff, she could not use her majesty discipline, she was outnumbered, but she was going to kill every last one of them herself.

At first she feigned weakness, trembling, her body against the pillar like it was the only thing keeping her up. For a moment it was true, but she found the strength in her bones. Once they encircled her, that confidence in their eyes like poison, that was when she struck out. She did not need to enthrall these fools to destroy them, no, she had all the strength and speed of any Daeva, and that speed was a blinding blur of motion and force. The first one, she grabbed by the throat and slammed it back into the pillar she was leaning against. If the Kindred had any intentions of protest, they were rendered meaningless by a destroyed larynx.

But she did not stop with merely crushing the enemy's throat. With no time to play with her prey, she struck hard. The vampire's throat crushed inward, then into the spine, and then apart as Antoinette's hand cut through withered vampire flesh and bone until her grip found the marble of her tower's pillar. The body fell away, and the girl's head sat on her hand for a moment before it rolled off to the side. She glared anger into the young Kindred's face even as the woman she just killed blinked at her. Then the dead vampire fell apart to ash.

She turned to the three Kindred who surrounded her; they jumped away, but not before she managed to grab the one with the shotgun, the dangerous one. Her first kill had forced her right hand against the pillar, but she spun with the motion so her left hand could grab the other in a reverse spin. Her hand was open palm so her fingers sunk into the Kindred's skull, through bone, into teeth and ashy flesh from the strength of the impact. The grip was more than enough for her to pull the arm in as fast as she could, and smash the Kindred's face into the same pillar.

There was a split moment where the Kindred she had caught could not understand that Antoinette had driven her fingers into their skull, eyes wide with shock, but it all went away when their face crumbled against the pillar.

The result was explosive. For a single second, she could feel bone resist, but then it collapsed and exploded in a mess of dark, Kindred blood, hair, bone and eyes. She didn't bother to keep her gaze locked with his as he dispersed into the tiny flames of death before ash was all that was left. There would be more than enough death eyes tonight.

She slowly turned to face the stunned crowd of onlookers, curled and uncurled her fingers, and growled. Thick clumps of warm ash fell from her palms like death's tears. The Kindred closest to her were terrified. Good.

"Come then."

She could faintly hear Jack calling out for help into his phone as the hail of gunfire began.