My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 12

Just more rubble and darkness. Then what was making that clawing sound?

A rock jumped from the rubble, a large one, one both Kindred had been leaning against. The giant mass catapulted outward from the pile, knocking both vampires down. Jack tried to stay upright and see what was happening, but all he could feel was the shattering of a few teeth as the rock collided with his jaw. He screamed on the way down, and gasped as the slab of earth cracked and fell apart a foot beyond his head.

Too fucking close.

Groaning, struggling to push himself back to his knees, he rolled over and clutched his mouth in his hand. God, his teeth, his fucking teeth. Some of them were cracked open, and the pain throbbed through his skull like fire. When he was alive, a love of candy had lead to an abscessed tooth, and the pain it had caused him was incapacitating, as if someone had poured acid into his skull.

But now he was Kindred, and those nerve endings didn't have the same sensitivity if he wasn't blushing life. And yet, he still fell over and clutched his head; felt like a pipe bomb had gone off between his temples. Every drop of vitae he had to spare went into his head to repair the damage, even as his ears picked up the sounds of falling rocks and a crumbling wall. Even as he heard the screeching of something breaking through the hole they'd made.

He looked left and right. The spare flashlight was broken, only the one Athalia had worked; at least she was pointing it at them and the tunnel at large. But her jaw had dropped, the same way Jack's had before.

Shit.

Jack looked up, and felt his body petrify. You'd think after a certain point, he'd be saturated on shock, unable to be surprised anymore by the grotesque or strange or unusual. But the spider monster before him proved otherwise as it forced its massive body against the hole, and through it, screaming at him with a mutant face of arachnid and human. Like someone had begun merging or transforming a human into a spider, but stopped halfway through, with a weird mess of multiple eyes and spider fangs sticking out of human mouth trying to fit too many objects.

Its arms clawed at the rock, ripped and tore through it like curved blades carving striations through concrete; it had no hands, just bone blade things coming from overly muscled forearms. Its waist was connected to some sort of enormous spider body, and the colossal creature struggled to force its hairy, long, gross legs through the hole they'd made. Like watching a spider force its way out of a dug hole too small for its body. Not far from the truth.

Jack managed a glance to the other side and saw Damien, standing there giving the same look as everyone else. He looked the other way, and sure enough Fiona was doing the same thing. Only Triss managed to react.

She threw herself at it.

Seeing a normal sized person land onto the spider's huge, hairy abdomen put the creature's size into a new perspective. Might as well have been a mouse trying to fight a house cat.

But Triss had arms and claws, and she used them to climb the beast's spider body with zero care that her claws were cutting, digging, and ripping it open. Small as she was compared to it, it must have felt like ant bites to the enormous arachnid, and ant bites hurt. The monster spun around again and again, faster, screeching until Jack covered his ears as he stumbled away.

"Someone get the fucking dogs!" Triss said as she held onto the creature. Like riding a bull, except the bull was the size of an elephant, and as it crashed around inside what was ultimately a tunnel barely big enough to hold its size when it stood up, its many legs and weapon arms destroyed everything around it.

A staccato cascade of harsh, loud snaps, along with a string of bright flashing lights snapped Jack's attention like lightning. Gunfire. Damien had his sword in his left hand, his gun in his right, and he was holding down the trigger, full auto. The recoil kept controlled by Kindred strength meant the man had little issue hitting his target, and a splattering of red and black liquids washed over the debris around them. Warm, and Jack threw himself back as more of its blood splashed against his face and body.

Not enough room. The thing was too huge, far too fast for its size, and its spider legs sliced into concrete as it thrashed, body hitting the walls again and again and again. It wasn't stopping, even as Damien's bullets peppered its exoskeleton. From the thunk sound Jack managed to catch between the loud pops of the gun, it didn't sound like the bullets were getting deep, despite the host of blood they unleashed. If anything, each bullet made the creature louder and angrier, until Triss's legs were being tossed into the air; only her claw grip sunk into its back where human and spider merged kept her from being tossed.

Rock and a hard place wasn't a good enough metaphor. Maybe between two monsters? Two nightmares? Jack managed a stupid, reality-defying smile for a split moment as he held down the trigger of his gun. Monsters and nightmares. Not even a year ago and he thought his sister was stupid for still being afraid to close her eyes when showering, afraid of ghosts or evil little girls standing outside the curtain to get her.

His bullets went everywhere, many missing and striking the walls as much as the creature, and he cursed as he walked backward from it. Practice went out the window the moment rubber hit the road. But each moment alive was a moment to aim better, and he grit his teeth as he tightened the ring onto the giant spider monster. Not easy to hit a big target when walking backwards along rubble and tracks and when the damn thing refuses to stop trying to kill everything around it.

It came at him, like a scorpion with its pincers. It wasn't going to pinch him though, it was going to slice him in half with one of those bone arms, and Jack threw himself to the side as the arm came down hard enough to sink half a foot into the tunnel floor. Fool him once, he wasn't getting cleaved like that again.

There were still sounds coming from behind him, and they were getting closer, more roars, more monster screams that sounded all too similar to the ones in front of him. More howls, and some whines you might hear if you kicked a dog, a really really big dog. He winced with each one, but he kept getting closer to them as he got up, only to throw himself back again as the monster brought its other hand down at him. And the other again, and again. Jack kept jumping back to avoid the claw coming down inches in front of him, but one jump too many meant his heel landed on a bit of rock the wrong way.

The world pulled out from under him like a rug as he fell onto his back. Everything flipped, and he was staring at the ceiling, more pain cutting through his skull. Biting down on half-regrown teeth was bad enough, but hitting his head against the metal underneath him hard enough to shake his brain in its bed was icing on misery cake. He tried to get up, to reorient himself before the creature brought its hand down to cut him in half, but feedback rippled through his limbs like tingling waves that held them still. He'd hit his head hard.

The creature was over him, screaming down at him with both hands brought to the air. Blood poured out of its human half, dripping off its waist and down onto the spider hairs of its underbelly, and onto Jack as the creature overstepped. Soon Jack was underneath it, and the world went crazy. The creature turned around again, reacting to more gunfire, and all Jack could see was the hard shadows of the light against the spider's body.

But he was underneath it, and he'd seen enough movies to know what to do. He yanked out his knife, and jammed it upward.

Like trying to cut through leather. Only his Kindred strength let him push the blade past the spider's exoskeleton, and even then only a couple inches in, enough to unleash a flood of black liquid onto his hands and chest. Sickly warm, and it did not smell like blood.

The gunfire stopped. Damien cursed and threw his gun aside before taking his sword into both hands. No more bullets probably, and Jack had heard him reload at least twice. The little Ventrue could see the man approach him, and the colossus turned to meet him. The Mehket became a blur of speed, and Jack had to squint his eyes to see the man move outward along the walls to try and catch the rampaging creature from the side.

No good. It turned to meet Damien's speed, and stabbed outward with one of its spider legs into Damien's oncoming body, its own speed a blur, like a samurai drawing his blade in attack. Momentum, combined with the spider's strike, forced the creature's limb through Damien's stomach. And out his back.

A second of silence hit them all as Damien dropped his sword, and looked down at the enormous limb. It wasn't a tiny sword or bullet hole piercing him, but a spider monster's leg, half a foot thick. And when the spider yanked the limb free, the dried insides of Kindred fell around Damien. Everyone stared at the massive hole in his stomach that shown clear through him, before the man fell over, and the bits and pieces of him that fell out of his insides faded to ash.