My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 12

"I dinnae ken, they're just strange. I can feel a strange... weird... I dinnae ken. It's strange. Sort of reminds me of those werewolves. Feels... sort of like that." After she'd accumulated enough webbing on her hands, she rolled it up into a ball and dropped it. How she managed to get it to obey her commands like that and not stick to her anymore, Jack could only guess was because of her spider horror.

Damien looked down at the odd ball of webbing, grimace on his face, sword in his left hand and pistol in his right. "So, unless an army of huge spiders has been down here, there is indeed some sort of spider creature, something the Uratha are hunting."

"Framed. Totally being framed." She stomped around, destroyed a few more webs, and a few more, and started moving further ahead as she did. But the webs were becoming more and more numerous, along with bigger and bigger. Girl had no choice but to give up after a while. "Arr, I'm hungry."

Strange direction for her to brain to go. Strange, and scary. Started giving Jack images of her turning into a giant spider monster right in front of them, ready to devour. But she'd said her horror feasted on punishing abusive people; closest thing they had to that in their group was Triss, and she really wasn't that sort of person. Fiona had no one to feed on.

"Azamel might be able to help with that," he said. "Maybe we should go talk to her?"

"Later. Let's go find this thing. Let's go kill this thing!" Fiona air boxed a few times, wiping off her lip with her thumb after every two punches. "Then we can aw be friends. I saw some of them werewolf boys, damn they were cute!"

Jack blinked at her, and looked at Damien and Beatrice. They both shrugged.

"Natasha," Damien said, "has been getting quite friendly with the two I mentioned. Friendlier than I suspect she realizes."

"Hope she bags one of them." Fiona chuckled and came back to stand between the group as they walked along. "The tiny lass hooking up with one of those huge beasts? Hot." She hugged herself and spun around a few times. "Nothing like fitting in the arms of a man so much bigger than ye. Triss knows! Julias is a big guy."

"You know, I could take offense to this." Jack frowned, but it was hard to keep frowning with the silly girl twirling around in front of them. Didn't she realize how dangerous the situation they were in was?

Triss laughed and gave Fiona a shove of the shoulder. "She does have a point though. Julias holding me in bed, and I can fit into the nook of his arm, snug against his chest. Makes a heart melt."

Fiona squealed and shook her hands like she'd been electrocuted. Damien shushed her, but she frowned at him and shoved him before turning back to Jack. "Well ye got a different thing going! Some girls want to have a man's arms wrapped around them. Some girls want to pin their man down and spoil him, getting on top for lots of tit action. Sound familiar?"

"... aren't you and I the same age? You can't pull this 'I'm so wise' angle with me."

"Aye, I can. I'm a lass, and we're smarter than wee jimmies." She giggled as she got in his face, and giggled all the more when he shoved her. "Am I wrong?"

"I'll have you know sometimes I do do the... what, 'alpha' male thing." He quoted the word alpha, and combined it with the most painful sneer he could muster for such an idiotic term. "I—wait, why are we talking about this?"

"Cause Fiona has sex on the mind," Triss said, laughing as she shone the light around. "Maybe these scary life threatening situations really turn her on? Like taking a girl out to see a scary movie, gets the adrenaline going, stimulates. Fine line between fear and arousal."

"Ha, maybe!" Fiona started walking beside Triss again, so close they were almost touching shoulders, like they were best friends or close sisters or something.

And Triss put out her arm to set it on the small woman's shoulders. So buddy buddy. "Welp, vamps need to blush life in order to get physically stimulated. So be aware of that before you go trying to seduce any Kindred. We can just go nope, and not blush life."

"Ye telling me if I go to Damien 'ere, priest boy in desperate need of a sex life, and—" Fiona reached out for his hand, grabbed it while Damien raised a brow, and pressed it against her leather jacket, against her breast. "Ye telling me I cannae get him hard?"

Jack facepalmed. This girl was his age? Simultaneously much more immature than him, and yet sexually confident. Definitely his sister.

Damien rolled his eyes and pulled his hand away. "Kindred are, ultimately, walking corpses."

"Lot of sexual attraction and activity going around for a bunch of corpses," she said.

Yeah, that was true. Triss nodded too, no doubt thinking what Jack was already thinking. Old Kindred were boring, but young Kindred were sex obsessed. How Antoinette had remained such a lover of the physical for so long, he could only guess.

"You know we're in a dangerous situation," Jack said. "Think you can take this seriously for a minute Fiona?"

"Fine." Frowning until her nose scrunched up, she started walking again, and the four of them fell into a tiny formation with only a few feet between each of them.

Maybe that's who he was in this Scooby-Doo gang: the voice of reason. Or he was just being Ventrue about it and thinking too highly of himself.

A few more minutes of walking and silence, and the four of them came to a stop. Up ahead, in the darkness, someone was sitting against the concrete wall, someone bleeding. The smell of blood had no where to go in the tunnel, and it spiced the air enough for all three vampires to smell it. Triss took a large sniff, and the two men did in follow, as they approached the woman sitting.

"... Athalia." Jack ran over to her, and shined the light up and down her body. Woman was alive, awake, and frowning at him as she struggled to breathe deep. Her right shoulder was hanging out of its socket, but her flesh seemed intact; at least until he looked at her opposite leg. Blood.

"Fuck. Better you than the creature I guess." She shrugged her good shoulder and coughed. "God... fucking damn it. You, Fiona right? Get over here."

Fiona squeaked, and jumped over to join her fellow Begotten. "Who are you?"

"Athalia. Look, just pop my shoulder in and carry me out of here. We got to get back to Azamel before that thing finds a way over here."

Jack and Triss looked at each other with raised brow, but Damien walked over to Athalia, put one hand against her collar, other hand around the wrist of her bad shoulder, and yanked forward. Not a pleasant sound, and neither was the grunt.

"... thanks." She frowned at him, and looked back to Fiona, as if Damien hadn't just popped her arm back into its socket. Woman really didn't like Kindred.

"What happened?" Damien said.

"Ran into that fucking spider monster everyone seems so fucking obsessed with. Natasha and a couple of her wolf friends were down here looking for it when I ran into them. Fucking creature surprised us."

Strange to hear a Begotten use the word monster like that, made Jack smirk. Smirk quickly vanished as he processed the words.

"W-Wait," he said. "Natasha and the two Uratha. What happened?"

"I just fucking told you. Fiona, help me up, leg is broken. Been down here for what, twenty-four hours, and I can't get back to my lair from here."

"Oh, ye have a lair? Can I see it? I—"

Jack stepped between the two Begotten, and frowned down at the woman. "Details. What happened? Where are they? Why are you injured? Explain."

"Like I—" Athalia went silent as she looked up, and found four people looking down at her, frowning. Even Fiona, comical as it was. "... fine. The creature had set up a trap; probably to catch some lone werewolves and kill them. Guess it worked. Couple miles down the tunnel from here, the webbing got crazy big and thick, and me, the vamp, and two dogs were talking when the spider thing pulled the trap. Made the tunnel collapse. Barely got out of there, but I can't get any further with this leg."

"The tunnel... collapsed on her?" Damien said.

"I don't know. When thousands of pounds of concrete are falling on your head, you bolt. Not like I was going to stay behind for them." The woman shrugged her good shoulder and shook her head. "You going to help me or not?"

Damien got down on a knee and examined the woman's leg. He lifted it a little, and Athalia's groans of pain confirmed. "Broken."

"Like I said."

It'd take a young Kindred some time to heal a broken leg; big bones took time. Older Kindred could do it quickly, but Jack certainly couldn't, not without someone pouring gallons of fresh blood down his throat. How fast would a Begotten heal?

"... Damien, can you set the leg?" he said. Man seemed knowledgeable of injuries, at least enough to know what to do for a dislocated arm.

"Her break is severe but simple. I can enough so that she'll heal... assuming Begotten heal better than kine."

"Do it."

Athalia glared daggers into the Mekhet, but they closed as a scream tore through her when Damien yanked on her leg. Jack would have to ask him where he learned to do stuff like that sometime.

"Fiona," Jack said, "can you make her a bandage of some sort? With your webbing? "

"Aye, that I can." She got down on her knees next to Athalia, and with her palms, started covering her leg in webbing. It just came out of her, out of some invisible hint of her horror showing through, something in her hands they couldn't see.

"Creating... webbing... like this?" Athalia said, and she stared as Fiona wrapped her leg up where her femur had been broken. Pain blatant on her face, but it didn't stop her from staring at the girl's work. "That's not normal."

"It's nae?"

"No. You're summoning the horror's physical form in a very subtle, controlled way, with a persistent effect. That takes... that takes skill."

"Cannae take the credit then. Vrall showed me how to do this."

"Vrall?"

"My horror." Fiona nodded and continued wrapping away, until the top half of Athalia's leg looked like it was legit wearing a real cast. "She's... arr, she's hungry."

"Then let's go talk to Azamel, and we can show you how to feed without attracting so much attention. Before more shit like this happens, or before some fucking hunters or heroes show up."

Every word this Athalia spoke was angry. Venom dripped from her tongue and teeth. Every time she looked at him, he thought she was going to bite and kill him. Jack eyed her closely as she struggled to stand until Fiona helped her, half convinced the woman was going to attack them with how she glared.

He understood the risk of hunters. But heroes? What?

"I cannae leave yet! I have to find this thing. And... and ye said it killed Natasha?"

"Didn't say that. That's probably what happened though."

Fiona frowned at her fellow Begotten, and started walking down the tunnel toward their supposed cave in. "Come on then, let's go find Tasha."

Everyone smirked. It was too damn easy to like her.

Athalia stared at them, somehow summoning even more malice into her gaze. What kind of monster was she, what sort of abilities, what crazy horror could she summon? Summon was the wrong word, more like, embodied, or simply was. Not so easy to like her.

The woman sighed and started limping along back the way they'd come, hand out to the wall and hopping a foot at a time on her good leg. No doubt it'd be a really rough walk out of the tunnel, especially considering she'd been down here a day. Jack felt a little sad about leaving her to tend to herself, but only a little. Woman was mean.

The gang didn't have to go far to run into the larger webs. In fact, far as Jack could see, they shouldn't have run into webs so soon, but within fifteen minutes they found the larger webs, strings thick as a finger, some as thick as a wrist, and a lot of them. No one had to say anything, and when Jack looked at the others, the two other Kindred looked around, at each other, then him with knowing. Would they get crushed in a trap too?

Fiona stomped her foot, and glared at the webs. She pointed her hands up, and unleashed the monster. Just like before, for a flash moment, long, enormous spider legs that looked almost like swords shot out from the air around her, attached to a blur of mass. The three vampires jumped away as the little monster started to dismantle the webbing around them, each stab of her spider legs severing webbing from the walls, cutting it with the grace of a scalpel.

"I'm nae stupid," she said. "Nae gonna let the same thing happen to us. And this is personal. This thing used me to hide its tracts, it framed me!"

"Azamel did say they were sneaky." Triss nodded and came in a little closer. Dangerous getting near the woman as she walked, each step met with a stab outward from one of the huge, phantom limbs. But Fiona kept them from hitting her easily; hell, her precision with them was awe inspiring. And as everyone grew a little more comfortable with Fiona's plan, they all started walking along while the spider monster undid the work of the other spider monster.

When did his life become about monsters? He kind of preferred it when it was politics and money and territory. Now he was underground in a tunnel with a monster that seemed only interested in death, and also with a monster that was intent on clearing her name. Next, there'd be gigantic wolf monsters causing chaos and making a bad thing worse.

You did not just jinx it, Jack.

Beatrice and Jack kept their flashlights out, though as they got deeper into the tunnel, Jack also withdrew his pistol. A machine pistol, since the Invictus had updated the threat level of the city with the arrival of the Uratha. He'd never fired it before outside of a few training sessions, but he was confident; Kindred strength made dealing with recoil manageable. Damien had his sword in one hand, pistol in the other, same make. Triss seemed comfortable with her bare hands, but she was a Nosferatu, and their insane strength justified it.

Fiona was the unknown quantity. How would she fight? What could she do? She had the weird spider limbs that stabbed like swords, and the ability to create spiderwebs, but was that it? Did she have other abilities? What happened if she took a bullet in the brain; Kindred would survive that, but would she? Learning on the field was not the Ventrue's preferred method.

"These webs are... strong." Fiona stomped her feet a few times, frustrated, and cut some of the larger webs they came across with a little more impact, a little less subtlety. "I wonder if I can kick its ass, spider to spider."

"If this thing is as dangerous as Athalia says, as the Uratha think," Damien said, "we should focus on finding Natasha and getting out of here."

Triss laughed and shook her head. "Yeah but do you think it'll go like that? I mean, that's what I'd prefer too, hopefully prove Fiona's innocence in the process, but we're walking into this thing's world, its tunnels now. I'm guessing it's going on the defensive, and it's apparently smart enough to lay traps. Like a fucking spider." She laughed some more, then shivered as she tapped a claw against her crocodile teeth. "Keep cutting those webs though, and..."

Everyone went silent as they came upon a hanging cocoon. No denying what it was, given the shape and size: a person. Fiona sighed and cut the thread hanging it, and knelt down over the body.

"It even feeds sort of like I do." Her spider limbs struck out to split open the cocoon, and everyone groaned as the body inside showed itself. A corpse, with a withered face, dry of fluids.

"Looks like a mummy," Triss said.

"The mummification process does include using salt to dry the ins and outs of the dead." Damien knelt down beside Fiona, and leaned over the face of the corpse. "But, this one is... still quite wet on the skin, and the skin doesn't show any serious discoloration. This corpse is fresh, maybe a few hours old."

Jack took a step back, and pointed his light around along with his pistol. "I... I guess it got cocky after dealing with Natasha and her two friends. Decided to start feeding. Julias sent me a message saying there were more disappearances. This must be why." He left out asking why they thought it was a good idea to come down here. Complaining was only soothing for so long.

"Let's keep going. But let's be quiet from here on out." Damien took a long, unneeded breath, and started marching once again. With the cloak of night to protect them, they were safe... probably. The man was good, very good at hiding, and Jack was confident the Mekhet could keep them hidden.

But then, Natasha was his equal in that regard he figured. And she'd been discovered. She would have used a flashlight at this point, like them, and the cloak of night wasn't going to cover a beam of light. But if this monster was just a mindless monster, it wouldn't have launched a trap against some light with no source. Maybe it could see through the cloak?

Jack ran the possibilities through his head, analyzed them, even as the group walked through the webbing into the awaiting death tunnel. He had to plan this out, know what to do when shit hit the fan as it inevitably would.

But no plan was coming to mind, just regrets. Should have got Jessy, should have got someone. They were walking into black, just pure shadow, with dozens of feet of rock over their heads that was apparently collapsible by spider trap. One wrong step and they were going to be crushed, or trapped and left to wither over centuries.

A quiet rumbling sound started to fill the tunnel, like a distant train; no way a train was still running down here though. And in the endless dark, it almost seemed like the tunnel was breathing, the small rumbling sound the voice of the dying underpass, insides invaded by some arachnid. The webbing was thicker, and it crossed their paths with vines strong enough to strangle. Another body too, a smaller one, a decoration hung to adorn the spider's new home. And the deeper they went, the more the tunnel grumbled its discontent, until the grumbling sounded like rolling rocks.

The tearing sound of rubble crumbling and smacking into metal and concrete forced their little gang to creep along as best they could without touching anymore of the webbing. If it was ahead, they had no choice but to keep going; no branches in the tunnel yet, just a single path into the awaiting maw of darkness. He really, really didn't want to. Fuck he didn't want to. More sounds, growls and snarls, and rocks falling and cracking. A lot of rocks, being moved by a lot of hands. Spider legs? They couldn't see anything yet, and as they crept along they had to point their lights down at their feet to do their best at remaining invisible.

But when they rounded a sharp turn, it all fell apart.

Eleven men and women stood before a giant pile of rubble. The wall of debris, broken rock and metal and concrete reached all the way to the ceiling of the tunnel. No getting around it, over it, nothing. The eleven people were huge, utterly huge, seven feet tall on average, with muscles bulging through their shirts, and an unusual amount of hair coming off of them, their necks and arms.

They had a couple LED lanterns sitting around along the edges of the tunnel, and had cleared the area of the spiderwebs with all grace and care of raging animals.

He recognized some of them. Clara, Avery, Stephanie, David and his twitching. They were all bigger, like they'd gone halfway to werewolf mode.

They all turned around, and looked at the gang.

"... you have got to be shitting me. Get the fuck out here whoever you are." Avery took a few steps toward them, and Clara followed after her. The others snarled a few times, but got back to digging. "Turn off that cloak of night shit before I make you."