My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 06

Movement. Jack looked to the corner of the subway platform, and moved toward the shifting shadow. Just a subtle motion, enough to grab his attention. He had back up if he needed it, and it should be a safe location, so he shrugged and headed toward the shadow.

Another Nosferatu, hidden behind a subway gate.

"Bob, right?" Jack said. "Er, sorry, Master... Bob?" Bob the classic vampire. Jack never said that, cause damn that'd be fucking rude. And Maria would rip him apart for the Nosferatu insult. Not like he needed to give her more things to discover about him warranting his death.

Bob nodded, and fidgeted with the edge of his robe. "Looking for Natasha?"

"We are."

Bob looked past him toward Jessy, who was shaking Lil a little too hard and wholly absorbed in the ordeal. Amanda and Vivi looked Jack's way, but their attention went back to Lil once she started talking about protecting her friendship with Natasha.

"... Miss Halla, she..." Bob put one of his hands onto the toll gate, and forced himself to stand. The nails weren't claws, just really long, gross nails, enough that Jack had to force down a shudder.

"She'll be fine. Not like Jessy will hurt her... much." He shrugged, and gave his best I'm-in-control face. "You know where Natasha went." Not a question.

"... I... I do."

"You don't want to tell me."

"... I... I shouldn't. We're friends, and she didn't want to be followed."

"Your friends? How old are you? How long you been embraced." Older than Jack for sure, but there was an opportunity to exploit.

"I am four years embraced, Master Terry."

"Madam Vola and Madam Herrington have been close friends for decades. And Madam Vola isn't even an Invictus anymore, yet Madam Herrington continues to aid her, as she once did. She wouldn't be asking if this wasn't very important," Jack said.

God. Damn. Kindred. Every request, every favor, every action, every nuance and detail, was a dance. Every word had three meanings. No sentence was overly committal, and yet every sentence said a dozen things. And it was starting to come naturally to him, the doublespeak and manipulation. His sire would be proud, but probably as sad about it as he was.

Not exactly the time to get dramatic. But, he couldn't help but remember the Prince, and how much she loved his genuine attitude.

"... you're right." Bob sauntered over to Jessy, Jack beside him, before he made a small wave of his hand. Enough for Jessy to put the scared girl down. "Mada—Natasha went to the tunnel under Ronder Street. She was investigating the spiderwebs there."

"Spiderwebs?" Jessy said. "Know why?"

Bob shook his head. "She... she said she was investigating something involving spiders, and I mentioned I found a lot of spiderwebs in the tunnel beneath Ronder Street."

The Gangrel smirked, set Liliana back down, and pat Bob on the shoulder, Lil too. "Ronder Street eh? Thanks for the info." She leaned in toward Bob, close enough their noses were almost touching. "If it were anyone else, I would have phoned for the info. And if you hadn't given it to me, I would have ripped off fingers until you did tell me what I wanted to know. If you'd lied to me to cover someone's tracks, I'd have ripped out your intestines." Jessy's hand changed from a pat, to a hard shove, and both Lil and Bob crashed against an empty stack of crates behind them. "So consider it a favor that I don't use rank and punish the both of you." She gave a small wave, and started the walk to Ronder Street.

Jack winced again, but when he reached out to offer them help, they shook their heads. They knew the game as well as any. Don't show weakness or expose your neck when you don't have to. They stood up, dusted themselves off, bowed, and returned to their chatting. So much for not burning bridges; but then, Jessy had probably burned that bridge a dozen times, and only got to push people around because of her rank.

Much as he wished she was nicer to people, he also enjoyed having such an aggressive woman as his boss. Barriers could be broken down much easier. Sometimes. Hopefully.

The three young Kindred fell in line beside each other behind Jessy, and each took out a flashlight. Quality flashlights that lit the tunnel up to its end. It still had working lights, so the flashlights may have been overkill, but they had to keep an eye open for any signs of Natasha.

But, as they continued down through the depths, and found more of the tunnel lights no longer worked, the flashlights quickly earned their worth.

"So dark," Amanda said.

Jessy pointed her flashlight back at Amanda, then at the ground around her feet, the tracks, then down the tunnel once more. Looking around for who knows what. What do you look for when someone disappears? With kine, you'd look for their last known whereabouts. Done. Then you'd move onto their property and personal information. Places they visited, personal errands, friends they knew. Sometimes you were looking for information on the disappearing person, sometimes on who could have done the kidnapping.

All they knew was Natasha was investigating spiders in the tunnels. So, unless they stumbled onto spiders or... spiderwebs.

The four of them stopped, and pointed their flashlights along the concave walls. Glints of white marked the edges of concrete brick, casting weird, stringy shadows over the cracks as their flashlights buried them in light.

"I uh... I hate spiders," Amanda said.

Vivi shuddered. "Me too."

"Bunch of pussies." Jessy walked up to one of the spiderwebs, light pointed, and she ran her fingers over the threads. The two Mekhet groaned and took a small step back, but Jessy raised her fingers to her eyes with the light pointed at them, before rubbing her fingertips together. "Yeah it's a spiderweb, but it feels different. Strong, I guess, for a spiderweb?"

"Madam Herrington." Jack stepped up to her and looked at her fingers too. "You realize we're deep underground and searching for Natasha, who's disappeared while investigating spiders. This whole situation reeks of trouble. I mean... spiders? What does that mean?"

"Yeap, it does reek of trouble. That's why there's four of us." She wiped the web off her fingers on her pants, and kept moving. The tunnel greeted them with more webs, and Jessy paused every so often to shine her light on them. "And if shit hits the fan, at least one of us will escape, and then we'll have the whole of Invictus down here. If we have to fucking lock elbows and walk the tunnels to find her, that's what we'll do."

"I—"

"Do I make myself clear, Master Terry?"

Yeah, there'd be no talking with her in this state. Dog with a bone. He nodded, drew his pistol, and flipped his light in his other hand so it was reversed. Pointing the light out toward the tunnel, he rested his pistol hand on the wrist of his flashlight hand so both were pointed into the black, and he started to move forward.

The two Mekhets sighed, and did the same.

It was a slow, quiet crawl in the darkness. The webbing only got worse, bigger, stronger, and the smell of stagnation was almost pungent. No one was talking anymore; for the best. The longer they walked, the more it felt like walking into a den, into something's home, into a death trap, into a—

There was a giant hole in the wall.

The four of them pointed their lights at the enormous hole, and scanned its edges up and down. So much concrete debris everywhere, but also a bent metal door. Bent in half mostly, and a huge dent was also in it, like someone had smashed it in with a giant boulder. Concrete dust and bricks lay around Jack's feet, and he got down to a knee as he shined the light on floor.

"Looks like there was a fight," Jessy said.

"A fight?" Amanda walked over to the wall, light pointed into the black. "I can't—oh shit, the... the hole cuts through to the other side."

Everyone stood up and pointed their flashlights into the room. Inside there were old computers and monitoring equipment built into the walls, along with old pipes and dials. But all of them were destroyed, cracked, shredded, slashed.

The wall on the other side was gone. Just gone, like the first wall.

He pointed the light down at the blocks, and kicked some of them. Too damn heavy to move with his foot unless he wanted to break a toe.

"Explosives?" he said.

Vivi shook her head. "No, Madam Herrington is correct, there was a battle here. There's claw marks, and... and..."

"Looks like a few Gangrels went nuts and tore the place apart." Jessy pointed her light up and down, and snapped her fingers each time she found what looked like claw marks. "I could make these, but not that tall or wide unless I was jumping up and actively trying to hit the ceiling. And the whole wall is gone. Eight feet wide hole in concrete? I'd take me a while, and it'd be pointless when I could... fit through the door."

Something had torn it down, ripped it apart, and threw the chunks of concrete aside. Something that couldn't fit through the door.

"Out here!" They all turned back to Amanda, and pointed their lights where she was at the ground. "More claw marks... and... and I don't know, footprints?"

Vivi knelt down and ran her finger along one of the grooves in the concrete. "If dinosaurs were running around, maybe?"

"What do you mean?" Jack said.

"Something huge and heavy left a bit of an impact print of talons against the concrete. So, I mean, unless there's a Utahraptor running these tunnels, I don't know."

Jessy growled, knelt down beside the neonate, pointed her light down at the tracks, then down the tunnel into the black. "Claw are marks coming our way."

"Then... I guess they were running away from Ronder Street." Vivi pointed the light back to the room that'd been ripped apart. "And they decided to switch tunnels?"

"Switch in a hurry. And... and there are a lot of these claw marks," Amanda said. "I doubt they were running from something."

"Then they were running after something." Shaking her shoulders, Jessy stood up and headed toward the ripped open wall. "Let's get going."

Amanda pointed her light back down the tunnel toward where the tracks came from. Thinking what Jack was thinking probably: should someone explore what Natasha was exploring? But, it'd have been ripped out of a bad horror film to split up. Besides, whatever lead led to Natasha, they were going to follow.

"Any claw marks going the other way?" Jack said. "Toward Ronder Street?"

"No."

"Then, we follow the boss." He brought his pistol to bear, and walked after Jessy. She offered him a happy smirk before she continued along, doing the same as Amanda now and scouting for claw marks.

In the past, she wasn't his boss. He usually worked with Natasha, or other, lower ranks in the Invictus since he was just a fresh neonate after all. But now Natasha was gone, Julias was far too busy, and with Viktor dead, everyone was sharing the workload. Jessy was now his boss, their boss. She was working her ass off, and now she was trying to save her friend who'd disappeared. Least he could do was back her up. And make sure she didn't get herself killed.

The tracks continued through the second subway tunnel, but the lights were working again, some of them anyway. Good thing too, with each step a careful one to avoid the mess of ripped up ground. Whatever these things were, they were heavy.

"So, uh." Amanda stepped up to Jessy, peeked over her shoulder at Jack and Vivi, before shaking off her fears and looking back to Jessy. "Do you know what we're following?"

"I do."

Amanda stopped, but Jessy didn't. She had to jog to catch up as the Gangrel marched on.

"Um, Madam Herrington, you... you could... tell us?"

"I'll tell you when it matters."

Enough. Jack doubled his marching, grabbed Jessy's hand by the fingers, and let her own movement jerk her in a turn to face him. When it matters? When it fucking matters, they could all be dead.

"The fuck?"

"Jessy. I get it, Natasha's missing and you're terrified for her. I get it. We get it. But we're not your enemies here, we're your back up, we're your subordinates, and I'm your friend."

"Friend? You fu—"

"Friend!" Jack yanked on her hand hard enough to bring her a step closer. One misstep and she was going to rip him in half with her bare hands, but if he didn't do something, she was going to stay in guard dog mode. He needed her brain working. "I told you about Marv's job last week. I told you about what Julias meant when he asked for that job the week before. I came to you when I needed help with that contract with Hovonar Industries, because I knew I could trust you. So, good friends? No, but we're friends. Give me a little credit, and trust me."

Too much? Maybe too much. But he understood Jessy enough to know he had to be blunt with her.

She raised her fist.

Shit. He closed his eyes and winced. Incoming punch, incoming punch... no punch? After a few seconds he opened his eyes, and found Jessy looking at the ground.

"Getting good at this manipulative shit, Jack. You remind me of Julias," she said.

"... did you trust him?"

"Yeah I fucking trusted him. Hated his guts sometimes, but I trusted him... so if I tell you guys what we're going up against, can I trust you to not freak out? I need your help."

"In for a penny." He smiled at her, let go of her hand, and started walking next to her as she resumed her march through the tunnels. A glance back showed the two Mekhet not so convinced, but they fell in behind them anyway, grimaces and frowns and frustrations fading away as they started focusing on the danger ahead. They weren't happy, but at least they were professionals.

"Right, so... it looks like a pack of werewolves."

Jack froze, but forced himself to catch up when Jessy didn't stop. "Werewolves."

"Yeap."

"But I'd heard they hadn't been to Dolareido since the fifties," he said.

"Yeap."

"So—"

"So how do I know? Been dead a lot longer than you have. Smart Kindred prepare for shit, and at the time of my embrace, the Invictus were still recovering from that shit show. Natasha, me, we got thorough lessons in werewolves, what to do if you run into one, how to handle one."

Jack looked to the two Mekhet, but they both shrugged and shook their heads. Neither of them had taken a course on werewolves either, and Jessy had to know that.

"It was better if you didn't know," she said. "Didn't want you pussying out."

"Think that low of us?" he said.

"Ha!" She smirked at him, and pat him on the shoulder as they walked. "Kid you got balls, and you do good work. Vivi and Amanda might be a pair of wimps, but they do good work too. Problem is, with werewolves, it's... running away is the better option."

"They tough?" he said.

More laughter.

"Kid, if shit hits the fan, I'm using the three of you as cannon fodder while I get Natasha and run."

"... lovely." He gripped his pistol tighter. Part of him thought she was kidding, but she had an edge in the voice that said otherwise. "Can we get a little info then?"

"Sire filled me in, about the werewolves in the fifties. What a fucking shit show. Some vamps got caught in the middle of the wolves and their hunt. The vamps died. The wolves didn't."

Jack lowered his gun and raised a brow. "Kindred didn't get revenge?"

"Jacob tried. Didn't work out."

"Wait!" Amanda jogged back up to walk beside them, and Vivi too. "Jacob couldn't kill a werewolf?"

"Hey, you want the nitty gritty of it, go ask Jacob. All I know is there was a throwdown, and Jacob had beef. Werewolves are not to be fucked with. They are... well, you saw the wall. One werewolf could do that just fine."

"... holy shit." He lowered the pistol, looked at it, then her. "Then—"

"Keep the gun. It won't kill them, but might slow em down for a few seconds."

Great, just great. Great great great. He gulped on nothing, and looked to Vivienne and Amanda. The two were in sync, switching from depressed to terrified like a rehearsed play.

"Anything we can do at all?" he said.

Jessy shrugged. "Maybe if we had some silver. Cheesy as it is, it hurts them. No more cheesy than vampires and sunlight, I guess."

"So if I stab or shoot them with something silver, they die?" Vivienne said.

"Nah, just hurt them a lot more than any pistol or sword would. Werewolves are fucking monsters, kids. God damn fucking monsters. They will tear a city apart with their bare hands, and you can't do shit to stop them except get out of the way. So... yeah, eyes peeled."

The Ventrue and two Mekhet looked at their pistols, felt for their swords under their jackets, and sighed.

"We... oh shit." Vivienne pointed her light down the tunnel, jaw dropping, eyes wide.

Jack blinked, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. "Holy shit."

There was a train. Or at least, he thought it was a train. Metal shards the size of his body were scattered around, glass, bits of plastic and rubber, and a lot of claw marks. Hard to imagine claws tearing through concrete and metal like opening a tin can, but the train had been literally opened like exactly that. For a moment, he pictured people inside being picked out of the train, like sardines in a can.

"I... it... uh..." Amanda shined her light along the front of the train and the edges of where it'd been opened. It wasn't like someone had carved a door into its face, more like someone had ripped the front of the train open wide enough to fit an elephant. Claw marks dug through the concrete and shredded the ground; they must have braced themselves against the floor as they tore the train open.

"... suit." Vivienne climbed up into the train and through the opening the beasts had created, before getting down to a knee to scoop up something in her hand. "Black suit, piece of it. Torn off of someone."

"Any blood?" Jessy said.

Vivi shook her head. "Bit of ash."

"Looks like we're on the trail. Of some vamp at least. Come on."

Without pause or glance, Jessy walked through the train. Shredded from end to end. Someone must have been running through the cars, and the wolves had to give chase in the most efficient way possible: through the train.

"Any idea why werewolves are chasing her?" Jack said. He glanced around at the destroyed poles, the seats, grip bars, everything. Bent, cracked, ripped, shredded, everything was a warped version of its former self, along with claw marks on the subway train floor at each car's end. Gripping their bodies down while they ripped the car ends into paper strips, probably.

"Guess she got between them and their prey. What's their prey? No fucking idea. All I fucking know is what Bob just fucking told me, and what you and Amanda told me in your report. I got disappearing people in my city, I have spiders apparently in my city, and I have fucking werewolves in my city. Connection? Again, no fucking idea." Each word, louder than the last, earned winces from the three following her. "And since I'm not going to sit around and wait for the triumvirate to debate this and figure out what to do, I'm going to act. Natasha could be dead if we wait, and that possibility seems to be growing every god damn minute we're looking. So, we're going to do everything we fucking can to find her, and if the werewolves don't let us, or they've killed her, we come back with the whole of Invictus with silver knives and silver bullets, and we hunt ourselves some fucking dogs."

"... should... should we go back and get Bob and Halla?" he said.

"Nah. Four lives is already a lot to ask for a first stab. We'll get them and everyone else in round two, if it comes to that."

"And if the four of us die on this trip?"

"Got shit set up so a message goes out to the council if I don't log in tomorrow. Can't text for shit down in the tunnels."

"Oh." Jack scratched the back of his head with his flashlight. It was a good plan for a spur of the moment thing. Jessy had maybe two hours of no check in from Natasha before she decided to go action movie hero and hunt down her missing friend. Probably planned for this ahead of time, now that he thought about it. Those two were an odd pair of friends, but then, Kindred friends were rare in and of themselves. For two Kindred to trust each other with their lives was a step beyond rare. Sad but true. It made him smile, knowing Jessy valued her friend's life so much.