My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 10

"You say that, but here I am, regular Joe, in some sort of nightmare jungle with a half naked spider lady."

"... I imagine in your hallucinations, there is only the one moon... and... perhaps she speaks to you?"

"How do you know that?" He reached out for her, grabbed her bare arms, and shook her. The crown of enormous horns that coiled back from her forehead and eye sockets shined in the strange moonlight. All her skin did. She really was soft. "How... I... I don't..."

"... perhaps, as you said, we should focus on our present circumstances? I can explain about you, later, but for now, you should understand that you are in my lair. Please, tread lightly. I am... there is... you are in a dream, Eric, but you are not dreaming."

He frowned. This was turning into some ridiculous Disney movie spiel, about how he'd stumbled onto something magical, and his life would forever be changed after this moment. Yeah, changed, because now people were shooting at him, and he was going to go home with fucking malaria.

"A dream?"

"A pocket of dream. A nightmare. A... very old nightmare, where... Vrall nested." She gestured to herself, her body. "I told you about my nightmares. I guess I was just... trying to bond with someone who was going through their own changes, not so long after I went through mine only a year ago."

"And—"

"And you are not a Begotten. But changes are upon you, and... ugh, this is a mistake. This is all a big mistake. I should not have involved you, I should have let you be, and later when you came into your own, maybe then..."

"Yeah, well, too late for that." He sounded angry. He was angry. Christ, he was always fucking angry, and whatever was happening to him was adding some straight up hunger and aggression to go with it. Breathe. "I really am a fucked up person to help you with... whatever it is you're doing, you know. Did you not piece together the train wreck that is my life?"

She tilted her head to the side. Without eyebrows, he guessed it was the best way she had to express surprise, or interest, or something.

"That is a part of the reason I was delighted to see a change was upon you. You seemed so... normal, compared to my vampire friends."

"And vampires, vampires are a thing?" Again, his hands went up, and again he braced against the tree in case sneaky gravity decided to break his neck.

"Yes. But we can talk of them later. For now, just understand that you are in my lair, my home, a nightmare. I am a creature of the nightmare, and you are within that nightmare. Please stay close, or the nightmare may attack you."

Ugh, this was some fucking Amazon jungle nightmare shit right here.

"Ok, I'm just going to turn off the smart part of my brain, and just go stupid kid mode here. I'm in a dream world, a nightmare, got it. You're a nightmare creature, some magical, terrifying, creature. Got it." He almost said busty, cause the little silk dress thing she was wearing was barely more than a sash, and it didn't do a good job of covering up her exaggerated proportions. Made sense, he supposed, if she was a dream creature thing. Combining sexy with terrifying was a staple of nightmares, and slasher movies. "And those dudes chasing us?"

"Hunters. Killers of vampires and other creatures. Perhaps of Begotten as well. I wanted to follow them because it is possible they know where Jack is. A friend who has disappeared. A vampire."

"O... k. Friend, vampire, vanished, think he might be alive. So we were going to tail these four and now everything is fucked."

"Yes. I—" Her body went rigid, her lowered head raised to stare straight, and then snapped around to look down and behind her.

Light beneath them, flickering as it passed leaves and vines, white light, the sort of light you got from LED.

"They're here."

"They followed us?

"... they must have followed my trail of blood into the building and its basement."

"You didn't, I don't know, close the crazy fucking magical gateway behind you?" Getting snippy wasn't going to help, but then, this was why he normally just kept his fucking mouth shut, because he turned into a snippy asshole bastard when he started mouthing off.

"It takes a moment to close, and... and the gateway is large, it filled all the darkness of the basement. They must have been right behind us. It is closed now, but... too late."

Bad to worse, always bad to worse. Why the fuck did things always go from bad to worse?

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~~Jack~~

The pain went from bad, to worse. He was never going to get used to pain.

Part of him thought he might. Memories of what Viktor did to him weren't old enough to be forgotten. Memories of Damien stabbing him through his stomach were definitely not old enough to be forgotten. He still winced when he remembered Julias's lesson about how much fire hurt Kindred, and how the older a Kindred was, the more damaging fire and sunlight could be.

It all sort of amalgamated into a searing poker of experience that stabbed through his brain, along with the sword stabbing through his leg.

His screams continued for ten seconds, until at last the agony became manageable, enough so he could stop screaming at least. He stared at the hand holding the large knife, the knife itself, and where it penetrated through his suit pants, his flesh, and through the bone of his leg. Never, ever, had a pain hit him with such vivid clarity, as a knife jammed through his bone. Viktor cutting his face and chest in half an inch deep had been overwhelming, almost surreal. This was all easily defined, radiating from a specific point, and making the muscles in the leg flex in some sort of futile attempt to expunge the blade. Each flex forced groans from Jack, each blinding him with flashes of white pain, until he started to go limp.

He grit his teeth, started breathing through them, and forced his eyes to look up at the psychopath.

"Stop..."

Jeremiah twisted the knife.

All at once the pain renewed, bones bending, flesh scraping along the side of the blade, bone too, until he felt something snap. Pain worked up and down his body in waves, each hitting his skull and forcing his stomach to squeeze on itself. Trying to make him vomit. Kindred wouldn't vomit, not like this, but he could still feel his body trying to make it happen.

"Azamel's nightmares spread, vamp. She grows hungry. You don't even know what I'm talking about and you still defend her?" He almost snarled, but opted for twisting the knife more instead.

"Stop! Stop, please!" He wanted to vomit twice over, for saying those words. But for all the movies he'd seen and stories he'd read about heroes resisting torture, nothing could prepare him for real pain. Not resisting it, anyway. If some empty words could get it to stop, then he'd fucking say them.

He remembered once a book he'd read, where one of the main characters was a torture survivor. The man had described in vivid detail how his permanently ruined body had been flayed, burned, cut and dug through, but it was the passages about having his teeth broken apart and the nerves prodded that made Jack's body sick with worry.

The man smirked, and yanked the blade out. Jack screamed again, and threw his head back as he felt metal destroy muscle and skin and bone on the way out. But again, he grit his teeth, and forced himself to breathe on useless air; it stopped his screaming, and for the moment that was the only goal he could focus on.

The two guards at the door winced, a few times at that, and glanced between each other before looking to the two nutjobs intent on torturing him. They didn't seem the same as the psychopaths. And, when he managed eye contact with them, he could feel the mind of a kine, like he should have been able to.

Not the two in front of him though. Jeremiah, and Angela, he couldn't get past their eyes. Something in their gaze, something in them in general was blocking him, holding him at bay. But if he could tap into the other two, then it wasn't the cuffs blocking his Kindred abilities, or not completely anyway. And his leg was healing, so the cuffs weren't working some crazy magic magic to keep his vitae-infused blood from healing him. The cuffs were doing something, but not that.

Ever since he'd seen Lucas summon a bolt of lightning, he tried to keep an open mind about magic. Antoinette had called it Theban Sorcery. Made swallowing the fact they'd put some sort of enchanted cuffs on him easier.

"You're young," Angela said.

"... y-yeah... you could say that." Groaning, stifling a whimper, he looked down at his leg and the closing wound. His blood realigned the twisted and punctured bone, set its contents, and let him relax as the pain lowered from agonizing, to only extremely painful.

She reached out, grabbed his chin, and forced him to look her in her good eye. Hard hands, callouses and all. "What would Azamel want with you?"

Ugh, moving into territory of sensitive information. He shouldn't tell them he was sort of an intermediary with the Uratha; they didn't seem to know the werewolves were even in the city though. But Azamel wanted him for the same role, and he shouldn't bring that up.

Angela's grip tightened, let go, and then turned into a fist to crack backward against his jaw. She hit hard for a human, and his head jerked to the side fast enough to wrench his muscles. Bone to the skin, hard enough to damage and split the skin at the lip. Kindred wouldn't bleed from that, and the wound started to slowly heal; which just pissed her off, and earned another backhand against his face, twisting his head the other way. A strange sensation, feeling your brain bounce around inside your skull. And then the pain replaced it, headache, then migraine.

It healed quickly, but he did his best to not let Angela know that. Better to act like he was in agony at this point. And he was, fucking hell he was, just not dying of it like a kine would have been. Silver lining, always look for the silver lining.

Scratching metal drew his eyes. Sparks, and then, flame.

"I asked you what Azamel wants with you."

He pulled his head away, and tried to do the same with his body. But the chair was bolted down, and as he jangled the cuffs behind him, he could tell the cuffs were chained to it. He couldn't even shift his hands from side to side, which meant the cuffs were solid connected to the chair somehow.

He was avoiding the question, and that was probably the last thing he should have been doing. Angela brought the blowtorch closer, and closer, until the flame cut across his face only inches from his lips. Heat, fire, panic. He started fighting against the chair harder and harder, but all it did was jingle the chains louder, and earn a smile from the woman with the glass eye.

Jeremiah pushed down on her hand, and inched the fire away from his face. "You really have a lot of respect for Azamel."

"... respect?" Jack said. "Just... fear, really."

Jeremiah raised a brow, wiped the ashes from his knife, and slipped it back into some pocket inside his trench coat. "Afraid of her are you?"

"Like you guys said, I'm young. Afraid of a lot of things."

"Not of us it seems." Angela brought the flame closer again, and Jack twisted his head side to side as he pulled it back. Maybe if he still had a functioning bladder, the piss soaking his pants would have backed up his claim.

"... you're... the first hunters I've ever seen."

"Dolareido," she said as she pulled back the flame, "isn't too high on the local hunters' list. You vamps keep a low profile, here in slut city."

"... the Prince encourages Kindred to feed without killing." Maybe he could talk to these people? No need for all this violence, right? Ugh, just fooling himself. They were going to stab him again, or punch him again, or torch a hole through his chest, and he was really just talking to avoid that from happening.

"Lucky you." Angela shrugged, let the blowtorch go out, set it aside, and leaned over the back of the chair while she flicked the lighter. "In other cities, where the vamps are real fucking maggots, we're not so nice in getting the info we want." She brought the lighter closer, lit it, and held it inches from his face. Inches, only because he couldn't pull his trembling head back any further. "Great thing about vamps though, is you can torture them so much more than most things. Ever seen what happens to a vamp when you cut off their arms, and their legs, with barbed wire?" Chuckling, grinning, she brought the lighter in closer still, until all he could see through one eye was the flame, and the death it represented an undead thing like him.

"Sounds... horrible."

"It was." Jeremiah grabbed a nearby chair and sat down, though not reverse like before, like Angela was. He folded a knee over the other, took out a leather-bound journal, a pen, and started writing in it. He was halfway in the beam of light that came through the open door, and he aimed his book toward the light as he wrote.

"Jeremiah is a little soft when it comes to vamps," she said.

Oh Christ, if he was soft, the fuck sort of duo was this? Bad cop and sadistic cop?

"You'll have to forgive Angela, Jack. Bad history. But then I suppose that's how all of us get into this sick little game, a bad history." He shrugged, jotted a few more notes, and gestured to the two guards. "Angela and I aren't hunters though, not like the ones you're thinking about, none of this Vigil shit. We're not here for you worthless blood suckers. We're here for bigger prey."

"... Begotten."

"Bingo." Angela closed the lighter, putting out the flame. Once between her fingers, she gripped it in her palm, squeezed on it, and used the fist to punch him. Brain bounced around in his skull, headache throbbing and pulsing through his body. The damage to his face, his lip, his jaw, all superficial sharp stings compared to the migraine.

Hadn't even asked him a question and she was hitting him. The fuck was he supposed to do?

"Azamel's domain," Jeremiah said. "Ever been there?"

"... domain? She... she lives in the tunnels. You already know that."

The man nodded and closed the book. "Well, she's hiding down there. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm asking about her domain. Have you seen it, or any of its chambers?"

"No... I've talked with her once, and it was in the tunnels."

"Why?" And again, Angela drilled her fist into him. His chest this time, and he coughed up on the air he was going to use to speak. She liked hitting him. A human her size shouldn't have been able to hit him this hard.

Before he could say anything, she punched him again. Crack. He groaned a scream, gargled messy sounds, and stared down at his shirtless chest, where her fist was pressing and grinding knuckles into his breaking ribs.

"Angela, he's a vamp but he still needs lungs to talk." Jeremiah opened the book again, and started jotting down more notes. "Jack, keep talking and she won't cut a hole through your stomach with that blowtorch."

The woman flicked her lighter a few times, and adopted her grin again. Jacob's grin, when he was feeling playful. Jack winced as he saw it, and did his best to ignore the trembling in his legs and the pain in his chest.

"I don't... know anything... She showed up some months ago, randomly."

"Not so random." Jeremiah lifted the journal, and showed him a page. A drawn picture of Lucas's face. Made sense, since you couldn't take a good picture of a vampire.

"H... How did you... manage to draw that?"

"I didn't. A hunter did, many years ago. Way I hear it, there was some fighting between the vamps here some fifty years ago, and Lucas disappeared. Only to show up again after that Viktor vamp died. And then he died too." The old man shrugged, leaned back into his seat and flipped to another page, slow and controlled. "Azamel didn't get along with those two."

"How... do you know all this? I—" A fist crashed into his face, and his skull whiplashed backward, bouncing against tightened muscles behind him. Pain came a second later, and he choked down a sob as the pulsing agony exploded outward from his face. Not a good time to cry, so he wasn't going to cry. He was a Ventrue, and he was going to bite his lip and figure out a way out of this. And crying would let them know how fucking close to broken he was.

"Hunters are a pretty dedicated sort. Useful. Aren't you?" The old man looked to the two at the door, and they returned some sneers. Not happy to be working with this guy then, maybe. Made sense, given that Angela and Jeremiah were sending him all sorts of psycho killer vibes.

Hunters must have been in Dolareido for some time then, or at least, humans who knew about vampires, and kept their eyes open. Reporting information to someone? Kindred told him hunters were just people, or groups sometimes, wandering around and killing paranormals they got their hands on. For understandable reasons really, as vampires like Viktor or Lucas toyed with the lives of kine like cats toyed with mice before killing them.

A lost family member, a lost love, killed by a hungry Kindred that made a mistake in their hunt, got seen, or let the other person go. Said person gets it into their head to get revenge, and gets sucked into the world of paranormal. Might make a good novel to read, if said persons weren't currently beating his face in.

"What did Athalia want to talk to you about," Jeremiah said.

Jack winced, and looked down. Mistake. Angela cracked her fist against his chest once again, and he whined as he felt knuckle crash against muscle and bone. A second punch caught him when he didn't expect it, couldn't brace for it, and the pain of a wrenching neck joined the breaking agony of knuckles, again, colliding with his face.

His head fell forward, but not because he was looking down. He wasn't looking at anything. Body refused to work anymore as everything went blurry, as the waves of pain had him shaking, spots filling his vision, tremors working down his chest and into his core. Part of him wanted to ask, beg her to stop beating him, but he knew she wouldn't. He knew that, despite their words, they weren't going to let him leave alive.

Two options then: stall until someone came to his rescue, or figure a way out of his current circumstance.

Well, there was a third. Tell them everything he knew about Azamel and Athalia. They might let him live, at least for a little while. Hell if they were nice they might let him go; no fucking chance. The thought almost made him smirk, but a nauseating wave of pain had him choking on air instead. He could tell them all he knew, little as it was. It might make the pain stop for a little while, if nothing more. Or get him a death with less torture involved. No, fuck that, he wasn't going to die here.

Only reason he wasn't telling them everything was because he was afraid of Azamel, afraid of what she might do if she found out a vampire spilled everything. But he had nothing to spill! At least, he thought he didn't. Did he? What detail would be the detail they needed to do whatever, he didn't know.

Angela lit the blowtorch again, and brought the insane flame closer to his face like before.

"Talk."

"I... I don't know... anything..."

"That's not true. You spoke to Athalia, and you spoke to Azamel. You know something." Jeremiah jotted down a few more notes, and shrugged as he brought the pen up to his lips to nibble on it. "Did you see the heart of her lair, hmm? Did you see the great temple?"

Great temple? He managed to raise his head and look at the man, only to draw his head back as Angela moved the torch in close enough for him to feel the heat waft against his eyes.

"I've seen where she's staying in the tunnels! But that's it, I swear!" Please take the fire away please take the fire away.