My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 11

How long had it been since she'd heard a heartbeat? She hung out with Kindred so often, and when there were humans or ghouls nearby, there was far too much city noise to hear the quiet things. Down deep in the Earth, she could hear them breathe, and swallow every so often; perfectly normal for a human or giant wolf, but so weird to hear. Felt like being on a hunt, hearing things so acutely, hearing life so acutely.

"W-What are we... looking for?" she whispered.

"The Azlu will weave webs," Matt said, "that often look normal, and then huge. But it'll also weave invisible webs in the Gauntlet, trapping any who crossover." The giant shivered and rubbed his arms. "I do not enjoy the thought of being wrapped in webbing and having those vermin crawling on me."

"Spiders... are s-scary."

"They are." He smirked down at her, knowing full well she was talking about real spiders. But it was nice to see the huge guy express the same fears she had. "So we're looking for those webs where we found you last time."

She wanted a shower just thinking about those webs getting into her hair.

They continued on for another thirty minutes, deeper into the old tunnels and through the abandoned depths. All the lights were out, the only source of light her flashlight. If it went out or broke, the best she'd see would be blurry silhouettes, and her two partners would be blind. But they weren't down here for a fight, they just needed to find the thing and prove it wasn't Fiona.

Did she want to prove Fiona wasn't their prey because she liked Fiona? She did, but she barely knew her. Maybe it was Damien; she wanted to help bridge the gap there. Or was it Jack? She liked him a lot, and Julias too. She wanted to help him.

Did she have her own reason for being such an idiot, or was she just drifting through her choices without knowing why she was making them. She'd ask Julias such an existential question, and he'd probably say something like: you're doing it cause you're the sort of person who tries to make everyone happy, at your own expense.

Silence and darkness really did make her mind wander.

As they went deeper, she had to check herself for any spider webbing that may have caught on her. More webbing, and more, bigger and thicker. Ahead, Art came to a stop. Matt and Natasha stopped behind him, and she pointed her light into the distance before them. She expected to see a giant web perhaps blocking their path, but instead found webbing that'd been cut.

Someone was there, a woman, walking around in the darkness.

"Two Uratha and one Kindred. Odd arrangement." The woman walked toward them and dusted some spiderweb from her shoulder. "What're you three doing down here?"

"We could ask you the same thing," Matt said. "Tunnels are off limits to Kindred."

"Good thing I'm not Kindred." She came closer into the light, and spent a little more time wiping webbing from her pants. Dressed like a Carthian, wearing some black jeans and likewise black boots, along with a white t-shirt. "Asked you a question, what are you doing down here?"

Natasha took a step back, and looked at the two wolves. "That's... n-n-not Fiona."

"Nope, I'm not Fiona. Looking for her though. Can't find her in the dream so I figured I'd come looking where everyone seems to think she is." The woman was a bit tall, black with long, beautiful dark hair that made Natasha jealous; so lustrous. Skinny but fit, and her face had a softness to it that her eyes didn't agree with; they seemed angry, and comfortable being angry.

"How... c-c-can you see... in this darkness?"

She shrugged and folded her arms across her chest. Whoever this girl was, confidence dripped from her as much as the air of creepiness around her. "Most Eshmaki can."

"Are... you Athalia?" she said.

"Hey, you know my name. Kudos."

"I... there were rumors... about the sheriff and a Begotten."

"Just rumors." Athalia sneered and shook out her shoulders, like she was preparing for a fight. "So if you don't mind, leave. Way I hear it, you dumbass wolves are hunting Fiona, which is pretty fucking stupid. She's not a host or what-the-fuck-ever you call your prey."

Matt came closer, as did the giant wolf beside him, but Athalia didn't move. Didn't even blink, far as Natasha could tell.

"We're hunting the creature," the big guy said. "If it's this Fiona girl you're talking about, then she's already dead, and I'm sorry. So we're—"

"Yeah I don't think so. Get out." Athalia took a step toward them, sneer unwavering.

Matt looked down at Natasha, blinked a few times, and looked back at Athalia. "I—"

"You fucking wolves love to bite first, ask questions later. So how about, no. Get out, before I make you." Again, she came closer, and her dark brown eyes glared death into the three of them.

The colossal wolf took a step forward as well, snarling and growling, rumbling in his throat, primal and angry.

"W-Wait! Please." Natasha lowered her pistol and came closer, light pointed at the tracks beneath them. "This is w-what I wanted to avoid. We c-c-can work together, communicate, and p-prevent any more fights when—"

"I trust you as much as I trust your wolf buddies to not chase a squirrel. I. Said. Leave!"

Natasha's light began to flicker as Athalia raised her hands. It should have been stable, but the light cut the darkness in periodic flashes, like panicked heartbeats, and all three visitors took a step back as a wall of obsidian nightmare filled the air behind the beautiful woman. They could see nothing between the flickers, but when the light shined on the tunnel, movement subtle but chilling drifted around Athalia.

Whatever it was, it was crouched forward to fit itself in the tunnel, its head of bone and teeth and spiked, serrated horns looming closer. It had arms, each also covered in what looked like spikes jutting from its black flesh, black that bled droplets of onyx onto the concrete before they faded. Like a giant, human torso, with arms and fingers, a head, all covered in spikes that poked through its dark skin and bled devil's blood. Gaunt, with bone showing through so its face looked more like an ancient mummy armed with a thousand shark teeth. Where its waist should have been, its flesh fell away and exposed a massive, dangling spinal cord that sat behind Athalia.

And it had wings. Black angel wings.

The colossal entity slammed its immense hands onto the concrete beside them, and for the brief second the death creature existed, it shook the tunnels enough to send vibrations up through Natasha's bones and into her skull. And then it vanished in an instant, leaving the angry woman standing there and glaring at the trio.

"Azamel says I should see the horror in each of us, and respect each other as different forms of beast, as different children of the dark mother." She scoffed, and came closer again. "Each of you think yourselves dangerous creatures of the night, the moon, of blood and hunger. Pathetic. You Kindred are nothing but blood leeches, and you wolves are animals. Just simple-minded animals." Again Athalia brought her hands up, and again in the flickering waves of white from Natasha's flashlight, the torso of Death appeared, struggling to fit in the tunnel, great maw open so they could see the endless darkness down its throat. It roared at them, but its voice was a screeching wind and no more.

When the light was off, the only thing Natasha could see, was two white, glowing dots where the horror's eyes were, like small white pupils in the empty eye sockets of a skull.

The horror faded away, and again, only Athalia remained.

This was a Begotten? Fiona had demonstrated a little of her power, and she'd seemed like some sort of spider entity. This Athalia, she felt sort of like Fiona, but sort of different, and her horror certainly looked different. Like something out of a far more modern, more twisted nightmare. Like something out of a horror movie a little kid shouldn't be staying up to see, a movie with slaughter and gore and death cries.

Natasha took a step back, and stared. But Art barked — more like roared — and came forward. Matt did as well. Certainly not fearless, not from what Matt had just told her about spiders, but they came toward her anyway.

"You're the one starting a fight," Matt said, "not us. Hell we're here without our pack, just to see if Tash is right about Fiona. So... so..." His voice died away as he looked past Athalia into the darkness beyond. Athalia turned around as well, and Art came closer to her. The opening was there, Art could take it any time he wanted, but instead the enormous creature stood near the other two, and stared into the black.

The little Mekhet walked over to join them, and in the dead black and cold silence, she pointed her light into the tunnel. There were more spiderwebs ahead, large ones, and they were moving, shaking a little, like someone was tugging on them. And now that she was listening again, it wasn't cold silent anymore, there was noise, a distant rumbling sound. And scratching, like someone dragging stone on concrete.

Someone was out there.

"I... w-what... should w—"

The ceiling of the tunnel exploded. She had only enough time to point her flashlight up to see the webbing narrow with tension, and the sound of strings tightening like rope, before concrete slabs started to fall in. A lot of them. The rumbling rose to ear shattering, and an earthquake tore through the tunnel as more than just the walls of the tunnel fell apart, but the metal tracks ripped upward as well. For a split moment, the rails bent like a whip, before twisting into permanently bent coils that shredded everything around them, breaking like rope pulled too tight. And the four of them were on the tracks as they snapped.

"Fuck! Get back, get back!" Matt started to back away, arms out and up. Natasha managed a quick glance at him before every panic reflex she had had her turning around and sprinting at full Mekhet speed. Matt was getting bigger than before, taller, thicker. Some of his wolf was coming out of him, making hair grow longer, muscles bigger, everything. One of the giant blocks of rock crashed against his shoulder and tore through muscle, but Matt stayed standing as he turned around to join her.

She didn't get far. The tunnel ahead had webs as well, and the domino reaction of the collapse was tearing through the darkness faster than she could move. One of the tracks ripped up from underneath her, and snapped to the side with a loud crack. She went with it as it caught her, and the blackness engulfed her as she collided with concrete. First the ceiling, then the wall, each got a turn to remind her how hard concrete was compared to skin and bone.

Matt was running for her, so was a giant wolf next to him.

She reached up to touch her head. It was wet, and covered in dust and dirt. Couldn't see it with her flashlight on the tunnel floor and pointed away, but she could feel it. She could feel bone too.

Then the pain hit her. White flash, but not from the flashlight, and she coughed from the overload, searing fire launching through her extremities before settling in her skull. Vaguely aware of the noise around her, blurry movements, massive walls of concrete and metal beams ripping the world apart, the howls of pain from what sounded like wolves, and a dark-skinned woman running past them.

And spider legs.

Movement followed the chaos, and enormous legs stabbing into the shredded floor followed, eight of them, spindly and hairy and long and sectioned into many joints, just like spider legs, just like the legs Fiona displayed.

But this wasn't Fiona. A man, or at least his torso, sat upon the spider body where its head would be, its form mutated and lined with black discoloration to match the hairy, enormous, mutated spider body underneath it. Its face was a mess of ruin, spider eyes mixed in with human eyes, nose vanished, mouth expanded with a pair of fangs, and random patches of his—its hair and beard were gone, leaving bald, scarred flesh where they must have been before. Its arms didn't end in hands, but in giant bones that looked more likes scythes or sickles.

It screeched at her, mouth opening and exposing a disgusting mixture of human teeth and spider fangs.

She tried to move, but her legs weren't working. Too hard to see what was happening to them in the black, with the flashlight still pointed away from her and sitting on the concrete before her, but the pain running through her limbs was buried by the pain in her skull. Again she tried to move, hands reaching out for the slabs of concrete sitting around her, still shaking as the giant spider before her yanked and pulled on its trap of web. More of the tunnel around them shattered and ripped open, like someone inside the belly of a snake making its body bleed around them. Damien would probably make a comparison to Jonah and the whale.

Athalia was gone, or at least Natasha couldn't see her; not that she could see much at all. She reached for her flashlight, and screamed out as the movement lit her body on fire. Her arms collapsed with a new weight, immovable, total and final, pinning them to her sides. Nothing on them, nothing holding them down, but she could no longer move them, dare not move them, even as the spider thing came closer to her, its many eyes blinking and hairy legs stepping over the flashlight.

A roar interrupted the rumbling of the tunnel's collapse. Claws and fur from a new source jumped across the light and against the spider titan, crashing weight against weight as a ten-foot giant of muscle landed onto the spider's side. The werewolf was mammoth in size, but the spider monster was taller, and five times longer and thicker with its grotesque monster body, and human, mutated half far larger than any human should be. More than large enough to fight the werewolf.

Another wolf leaped onto the monster, almost as large as the first one. Matthew, and Arturo, in their full werewolf form, towering beasts of strength and primal rage filled with snarls and roars, were both latched onto the creature. They bit into it, clawed and tore at its body, red and black gushed from wounds, and its screeching sounds threatened to rupture her ears. Like lions trying to bring down an elephant.

It raised a bone claw, and slashed one of them along his side. More blood poured, and animal roars followed. But the wounded beast didn't relent, he leaned in and kept his claws sunk into the side of the creature and bit into it. He thrashed his head from side to side, like a wolf tearing meat from a carcass, and the monster spun and twisted on its eight legs as it tried to stop the beast from shredding it.

It raised both claws again, and slashed as it spun. The speed and inertia of its enormous size was undeniable, and the two werewolves were thrown from its body onto the debris around them. They rolled, twisted, and almost flew as their weight crashed into the rubble, sickening crunches of bone and flesh following each impact.

She had to run. Flee, get away. The tunnel was collapsing around them. Buried alive. Buried alive and she was going to wither into a husk and her two friends were going to die.

The spider creature slashed the walls and pulled on more of the webbing, bringing down more of the concrete and metal and god knows what into the black. Art and Matt were already up, bleeding, broken bodies healing faster than Natasha ever could. They threw themselves back at the creature, but found only a crumbling ceiling of rock. What was once a tunnel of rubble became a wall, filled with steel bars and enormous slabs of concrete.

She looked to the right. Her flashlight, still on the ground in front of her, managed to light up the tunnel enough so she could see it, and the wall of rubble. She looked to the left and found the same thing, except with two giant wolves standing before the new barrier. The larger one was clawing at it, tearing at the mess and metal. His claws ripped through concrete one inch at a time, grating it down deeper and deeper until Matt dislodged a chunk. As the block fell to the floor, the tunnel rumbled, and more of the ceiling began to collapse around them.

"Stop! S-Stop before the t-tunnel caves in!"

He didn't stop. He continued to rip and tear, snarls and howling included, and more of the tunnel began to collapse as the beast shredded the barrier. Until Art grabbed his fellow werewolf and threw him to the ground.

"Enough!" Art said, or barked. "Look." He gestured to the mess around them, barely lit by the flashlight.

Matt forced himself back to his feet, blood trickling over his fur, exposed wounds healing and closing, even as he turned and started back for the wall. "Must kill. Kill. Kill."

"S-Stop!" Natasha tried to move again, but her body was rooted by pain and weight. Something was holding her down. "Stop please, you'll... you'll g-get us all killed."

A long time ago, maybe forty years, Natasha had a mission to kill a draugr, a Kindred who had succumbed to the beast inside. Much as Kindred liked to think of themselves as intelligent, superior to the humans they preyed upon, vampires had a beast inside them as mindless and bloodthirsty as a starving animal. It ate at the mind, the soul, and every Kindred fought against its desires to feast, to hunt and kill, or they'd destroy the Masquerade, and their self in the process. If they lost that battle, they become draugr, a revenant, mind and soul gone, just a body for the beast within.

She found a woman, not much older than her, who'd indulged her beast far too long, forgot she was once human, and bathed in the hunt, the kill. Natasha had to end her; felt like shooting a rabid dog. But she remembered the look in the woman's eyes, the total and utter lack of humanity, the primal, animal hunger and aggression. Chilled her to the bone.

Matt looked at her just like that.

Art grabbed his friend by the snout, and yanked him down to look him in the eye. "Peace! Kuruth devours you. Peace, shartha escape... for now."

Matt looked ready to rip his friend apart; and he could have, considering their size difference. Art was a big guy and a huge wolf, but his friend was titanic. The tension in the dead air forced Natasha to stare at the two of them, even as searing agony filled her skull. If she coughed, she felt like Matt would snap, and tear Art in two.

But the enormous creature started to breathe deeper, slower, and he let his shoulders drop. Art let go of his snout, and the two beasts stared at each other as the silence settled around them.

They started talking, in a language Natasha didn't know. Kuruth came up again, something she'd heard before, but everything else was new, hard guttural words that fit their mutant wolf mouths far better than English. They nodded a few times, mentioned Azlu a few more, and Fiona once, before they both started to walk around.

Art found her, winced — if it could be called wincing from a giant wolf head — and reached down to pick up her flashlight. His hands struggled to handle the tiny thing, now that they were beast-like, and immense. But, he came closer to her, and knelt down with the flashlight. As he did he started to shrink, his features began to fade away, and not always with a smooth transition either, but sometimes with a disgusting crunch of what must have been bone. It didn't seem to bother the man, and he pointed the flashlight at her as he got smaller and smaller, until his clothes reappeared, and his dark eyes were human once again.

He shined the light along her body to her legs. Both were crushed under a metal beam, one of the tracks. But, there was more trouble than just her ruined legs, as she caught the man's obvious and loud wince and groan when he brought the light up to her head.

"You uh... appear to be missing a chunk of your skull."