My Little Ventrue Pt. 03 Ch. 13

Only Clara was left, and she roared her frustration as she lunged for the human half of the body. She managed it this time, and got her claws into its back before trying to get her teeth into its skull. She really, really wanted to get its head.

But the monster was bucking around again and throwing itself against the walls. The werewolves may have had a hard time colliding with solid concrete at such velocities over and over and over, but it barely phased the spider. It crashed into the wall again, and then galloped into the wall on the other side with more speed, angling its human half so both it and the werewolf slammed into concrete, hard enough to crack, and dent it.

One final crush was too much for Clara, and the werewolf fell to the ground, on her back and butt against the cracked wall around her. She stared up at the spider, even as it glared down at her in return with its myriad of spider eyes, many of them cut open or destroyed, and regenerating in front of her.

The spider reached forward with two of its spider legs to pin the woman against the wall, limbs skewering through her shoulders and into the concrete behind her. She howled, a defeated sound, a whining dog sound that made Jack's heart fucking break, even if it was deeper and halfway to a roar. What the fuck was the spider doing though? It brought in the tail of its spider body's abdomen, and set it against the pinned wolf's stomach.

Oh god it was going to cocoon her and eat her.

Ok ok ok, what to do what to do. Fuck what to do. With Viktor and Tony, he'd just reacted, dragged his bleeding ass across the floor until he found something he could do to stop them. With Lucas, he'd just reacted, threw himself in front of Damien before the man could kill the love of his life. Blind luck had saved him with Viktor and Tony; they hadn't expected an explosion, hadn't expected fire. Blind luck had saved him with Lucas; Damien was a broken man before Jack laid eyes on him, and found the man easy to dominate. Try to avoid the blind luck approach this time.

He got up, and looked around. No knife, but Clara had ripped the bars that barred the tunnel path behind him. He ran over to them; yeap, totally broken apart. And one of the broken off parts was a good three feet long, a thin metal bar maybe an inch wide, with the ends jagged and sharp.

Best he was going to get. He picked up the bar and walked back to the edge of the tunnel. Clara was barking at the spider, but for all her struggling and wriggling, the huge creature was layering her in enough webbing to blanket her legs completely, and wrapped too. Just like Fiona had done to Athalia's leg, but in much thicker layers. And her howls turned into screams as the creature plucked its legs from the wall, but still skewered through her shoulders, and started to rotate her. Like a scene from the nature channel.

Last chance Jack. Do what she said, get out and tell the others.

Fuck that, the other Kindred would figure out what happened when a bunch of their members were gone, and so were the werewolves. They'd come to the tunnels, find all this crap, and take care of it. He didn't need to go back and tell them about it, Clara was just trying to save his life.

And if he left, Triss and Damien and Fiona and even that bitch Athalia were as good as dead. And so was Clara. And he really wanted to save Clara.

He touched his cheek where she'd licked him, and looked down at the drop. Sixty feet, seventy, eighty feet? Fuck it could have been a hundred feet for all he knew. He looked at the bar in his hand, squeezed it a few times, got a good grip on it. Him against this thing? This thing that'd been shot a hundred times, cut open, stabbed, bitten, clawed into, ripped and shredded and refused to go down. Even as it regenerated before his eyes, its regeneration wasn't enough to cover all the wounds, and the spider bled black and red everywhere it moved; still didn't go down though.

Maybe an ancilla could fight this thing in its wounded state. Maybe. Julias would probably get his ass handed to him; Ventrue were talkers, rarely doers. And here he was, with a piece of metal in his hand, about to do something really, really fucking stupid.

What happened to him? What happened to that kid that just wanted to go through life playing it safe? He could still remember the conversation he had with Julias, that night the man proposed to him the deal of a lifetime. What was he willing to do to destroy his enemies? At the time, the worst he could imagine doing to someone was ruining their life financially, leaving them broke and without an asset to their name. To his enemies? Maybe kill someone in self defense. Apparently he was willing to do a lot more, if it was for a friend.

Fuck, Antoinette was going to kill him if this monster didn't do it first.

He squeezed the metal bar a few more times, and looked down. The spider wasn't moving much, human half holding still as the spider half was raised up slightly, legs twisting and turning Clara over and over as he cocooned her. Now or never, now or fucking never.

He jumped.

On the way down, he remembered a conversation with Fiona. She'd been nervous about seeing the Primogen, and it had her in smiles. Said it was how she dealt with it, with anxiety and fear, like with skydiving.

Jack was most definitely not smiling on the way down. It was an interesting sensation, free falling. He'd expected his gut to shoot up into his throat even though he knew that wasn't how gravity worked. Instead, just weightlessness, and some air resistance against his wet suit as he plummeted down toward the spider. He'd been smart enough to manage his jump so he'd come down feet first at least, and he pointed the bar down at the spider as he plummeted, held between his feet like a pogo stick.

A whole two seconds. A fucking eternity. Don't move don't move don't move don't move don't move.

Every muscle in Jack's body tensed as the bar landed on the creature's head. He squeezed the bar with everything he had, every fiber, every ounce of blood he had into his hands, every bit of vitae he could pour into his grip, all into squeezing a bar, squeezing until his fingers felt like they'd break.

There was a moment of sickening crunch, and then there was chaos.

Jack's grip remained, even as every bit of his weight coming down at a pretty insane speed drove the metal down through his target, forcing his feet apart. Even as his hands ripped at the palm, dragging the dried insides of his vampire skin along the metal, he kept his grip tight. Even as the metal kept going down until his hands met the head of the creature, scalp pushing against his grip.

The shrieks were loud, only two feet away from his ears, as he held on for dear life while the spider freaked out. It bucked, screamed, twisted and stomped. It threw itself against the walls, human half swinging around in the air, and Jack holding on to the metal bar he'd stuck a couple feet down through its skull, neck, and into its chest. How it was still alive Jack had no idea. How he had managed to even hit the target, Jack had no idea. But there he was, holding onto a metal bar sticking out of the spider monster's skull, blood flowing and splashing everywhere, while it crashed itself against the walls.

And Jack held on. Fucking god he held on, even as the creature drove itself into a wall onto its side, and Jack felt concrete embrace him yet again. Something broke in his shoulder. Didn't matter, he held on. More screams, higher pitched, panicked, and another toss of its insane weight against the other side of the drain pipe. And Jack, swinging around like a tether ball, hands still squeezing the metal bar, crashed into the wall right along with him, breaking what Jack was sure was every rib in his torso. Didn't matter, he held on. The wall cracked, splits in the concrete rising a couple dozen feet; anymore of this lunacy and the creature was going to collapse the Dolareido streets above onto them.

But, after a couple more thrashes, it collapsed. The seven enormous spider legs gave out so the bloody mess of its hairy, fat, monstrous abdomen fell to the wet floor beneath it. The human half slumped forward, arms dangling, and Jack's weight pressed against the back of it. He still held on, squeezing, even as the agony shot through his broken shoulder for it. Didn't matter, still held on.

And then the platform Jack stood upon, the spider's exoskeleton and abdomen, gave way.

"Fuck!" He fell through it, the cloud of gray and black, the blackness that surrounded him for a brief moment before his body fell forward onto the leaning human half of the spider. He still held on, even as the angle forced him onto his side, holding the metal, and staring at a bag of skin. "Fuck me!" The pain of broken bones vanished as he stared at the corpse, the human corpse, red blood all over it, and its spider features gone.

And as he looked to the gray cloud, he froze. Not a cloud, most definitely not a fucking cloud. It moved, scattered, spread out over the shallow water, and poured out everywhere. Spiders, large spiders, tarantula-sized spiders and hundreds of them, crawling and swarming and running to the small drainage pipes connected to the main one Jack sat in.

"Kill... Azlu..." Clara said.

Ok, sure, a couple hundred spiders, he'd get right on that. He groaned through his pain as he forced himself back up, and did his best to not stare at the mangled remains of a human's body. Ignore that he'd just skewered said human through the skull a couple feet into its torso; at the time it'd been a mutated monster and a couple feet wasn't much. But now that he looked down at where the bar stabbed through into the fleshy, ruined remains, he realized just how much he'd impaled his target with metal.

Ignore it, ignore it. Get up, squash some spiders. Pushing off his good hand and onto his feet, he stomped around after the spiders, and squished them under his foot, each stomp threatening to break his already broken ribs. Crunch and splash as his boots crushed arachnid, and they went splat with a stomach-turning sensation, the texture of an exoskeleton giving way to pressure. Like crushing hard grapes, so the guts came out from the impact. Very gross.

But after killing maybe twenty in a panic, the majority by far escaped through the small drain pipes that connected to the base of the main drainage shaft.

"Well fuck," he said.

The other werewolves groaned, and Jack jumped around with a startle. They were awake, and looking at him, something between exhaustion and frustration in their animal eyes.

"You... killed... Azlu's... body," Avery said. Even the pack alpha, beaten to a pulp and lying down on her side in the water, managed to force herself to sit up a little, palms to the water, enormous muscles struggling to lift her weight.

"That uh... that was the plan, right? Kill it? I didn't think it'd turn into a bunch of smaller spiders though..." He managed an awkward shrug, sucked in his breath between his teeth, and walked over to Clara. Holy fuck the holes in her shoulders were already closed; probably not fully healed, but not gushing blood anymore. Jack took the webbing and yanked on it with his good hand, but not only did it feel like trying to rip apart hard leather with the strength of a normal human, it also stuck to his hand. He had to put his leg to the wall to push himself away, abandoning Clara. Fuck his god damn fucking ribs. He screamed, and the werewolves laughed.

He walked around to the others, frowned at each of them for laughing at his pain — sorry he wasn't a masochist like these wolves apparently were — and checked their injuries. Bones snapping into place, wounds closing before his eyes, many joined by sickening crunches of what must have been painful super healing. His broken arm and ribs would take hours to set, and a good day's sleep to heal right, young as he was. He'd wake up from his daily slumber fully restored, but still, it'd be nice to not be walking around in agony, with every step sending scorching misery through his ribs, his arm, his skull.

With time, the wolves got to their feet, and one of them walked over to Clara to rip her free. Once done, they all reverted back to their human form, clothes reforming, fur disappearing, sizes shrinking, and shrinking, and shrinking some more until Avery was once again her tiny self and Jack could feel a little better about himself staring down at her.

"The goal was to kill the Azlu, not its body," Avery said. "It escaped in one of those spiders."

Well. Fuck.

"Considering the circumstance," she continued, "killing the body was the best any of us could have hoped for."

Well. Not so fuck then?

"Kid, I told you to fucking leave." Clara walked over to him, human again, and glared down at him with furrowed brows. But, Jack could see a smile break through the expression. She was a very pretty woman Clara, and he really did like the box braid hair and tan-colored skin.

He shrugged his working shoulder, and focused his blood into his bad one. Heal faster damn it. "Saw an opportunity. Had to take it."

"Azlu could have stepped to the side one fucking foot and we'd all be dead, you included."

"Seemed pretty focused on wrapping you up for lunch," he said, smirking up at the woman.

"You should have run—"

"Someone would have come anyway, whether I ran for help or not! I needed to—"

"You could have gotten yourself—"

"I wanted to save my friends! Hell I wanted to save you too."

Her dark eyes faltered, and she looked down as she grit her teeth. But before she could say anything, Avery walked over to them and pat Jack on the back.

"Things did not go as planned, Jack. As you no doubt guessed, we didn't expect two fully evolved Azlu. These creatures don't work together like this, or hide their tracks nearly so well; they're mindless animals, instinct driven. All evidence suggested one Azlu, but it looks like another one was working with it, and probably feeding from a different section in the city. That... that is not something hosts do."

Jack sighed, but nodded. "Animals do have this nasty habit of evolving instincts complicated enough to suggest intelligence."

"To imagine Azlu changing with time is a scary thought," another wolf said, a man now in human form.

"So," Jack said as he gestured to the small drain pipes at the base of the wall surrounding them, "it uh... broke into a bunch of little spiders? And fled?"

Avery nodded again, and walked over to the tunnel-hole dug into the wall. She had to climb and jump a little to reach it, but she got up there and turned around to motion for them to join her. "It's why we brought fire to kill the other one. It can't survive and spread if it's covered in fire."

"So I shouldn't have killed it, er, its body. The Azlu thing escaped in one of those spiders."

Avery shook her head. "It was either that or the pack dies. And Stephanie, she... she..." The leader winced, closed her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. "Come on, let's go see if anyone else survived."

So it was Stephanie that died then. Fuck. Jack nodded, and walked over to the wall.

"Uh... little help?"

Clara and the other wolves laughed, and helped him scale the wall, one acting like a step while the others pushed his feet and butt upward until Avery could grab his good hand.

"Much as I'm pissed at you for disobeying my order," Avery said as she turned around and started to walk the dark, dug tunnel, "I'm happy you did. If we'd had to fight both Azlu at the same time, we wouldn't have survived."

Well, big bad alpha woman wasn't too proud to admit fault or weakness. Kind of surprised him, he'd expected some defiance and denial.

"We wanted to find it, prove Fiona wasn't it, and when I called to see if Natasha would help, I couldn't get through to her."

"So you assumed she was down here?"

"Well, it is Natasha. She wouldn't turn her phone off, even at gun point. Too addicted to technology and schedules." She wasn't the social addict type, that was for sure. "And Damien said she'd been making friends with some Uratha."

"Fucking Arturo and Matthew." Avery sighed and shook out her shoulders while stepping around one of the cocoons. She'd probably have to get rid of the evidence, if the tunnels hadn't been abandoned and blocked off from kine by the Kindred. "Yeah, we smelled all three of them, behind those rocks. Didn't expect another fucking Azlu."

The two of them stepped into the subway tunnel again, and found several other werewolves sitting around a corpse. Stephanie's corpse.

Jack approached them, softly as he could, and winced as each of them offered him a glare, a blaming glare, but Avery stepped in and shook her head.

"We owe the boy our lives, all our lives. Show him some respect. And Stephanie some respect."

And they did. A word from their leader and their glares broke, sadness replacing it, long faces as they looked down at Stephanie's corpse, two pieces that someone had brought together. Guts, organs and all.

He didn't say a word, not a single word. He had no idea what sort of death rituals they had, hell what sort of attitude they even had toward the death of a pack member. Foot in mouth enough times to know to shut up in this sort of circumstance.

He looked over at the burnt body of the Azlu. It too was just a husk of human flesh now, the top half a bag of skin, and the spider parts gone. All around it were the bodies of spiders, incinerated, some burnt to ash, most turned onto their backs with legs coiled inward, bodies burnt to a crisp. So that was the plan then, kill it while it was on fire. And if it'd broken into its smaller spiders while on fire, then the chances of catching the thing were higher.

So one of them was still alive, still in the city. Fuck fuck.

Noises from down the tunnel drew his eyes, and Avery nodded as she motioned to Clara.

"Go with him."

"Right right," Clara said, nodding and walking in stride with Jack as he made his way toward where his friends had been.

Still be alive still be alive please still be alive. Athalia dying would be an annoyance. Damien dying would suck. Fiona dying would hurt and hurt bad. Triss dying would hurt worse, and ruin Julias. Christ, he hadn't even thought of Julias in all this. What would the man do if he found out Beatrice was dead? If he found out it was Jack's fault? Bad, bad bad so bad. Bad—

Oh thank god they were alive. This far back in the tunnel, the wolves' lanterns didn't reach, but Athalia still had her flashlight, was still sitting against the tunnel wall near the rubble, and was still shining it around. Fiona was sitting beside her, injured, beaten, bleeding, and no doubt soon to be bruised, but alive, and smiling.

Triss was sitting over Damien, and as Jack approached, she pulled her wrist away from his mouth.

Shit.

Damien, unconscious, eyes closed and body slumped in Triss's arms, stirred and groaned. A giant hole still cut through his clothes, remnants torn and shredded over his stomach, but the hole in his guts was sealed.

Healing a wound like that would have taken a lot of blood, a lot lot lot of blood, and a good day's sleep, or week's sleep. Or a few mouthfuls of vampire blood.

"Jack, you're alive." Triss picked Damien up and carried him over to the wall to set him beside Fiona. "Fuck, we've been trying to just get the fuck up for the past ten minutes."

He looked between the Uratha and the Begotten. None of them seemed to care that Triss had just given Damien some of her blood. They must not have known then. That was good, saved them from having a horribly awkward situation.

"Yeap, alive. You're all alive too." He walked up to her, and hugged her. "Fucking hell. Damn thing chased me and then we were in a sewer drainage shaft, and then it was beating the Uratha and—"