My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 10

She lowered the torch, but didn't pull it away. She traced the waves of its heat over his chest, held to the side so it didn't hit him. But it was fire, insanely hot fire, melt through metal fire, and being anywhere near it was terrifying. Just a tiny little blue flame sticking out of a metal pipe, but hot enough to annihilate him and the metal chair he was sitting in if she wanted to.

"And the others?" she said. "Where are they nesting?"

"Athalia? She... she's with Azamel I think. I've never even seen Mark!" What details could he give them that wouldn't have Azamel coming to kill him? Best he could imagine was avoiding telling them that the Invictus were holding her home hostage with explosives, and that the woman had wanted to speak to him privately about becoming a new intermediary. Everything else? Any detail he could use to keep that blowtorch away from him, the better.

"Why did you visit her the first time?" he said.

"We... we had an infestation, in the sewers." Careful, leave Avery out of this. She might be your only hope for all you know. "Some sort of mindless monster thing. Looked like a spider. Azamel showed up not long before they did, so I asked her about it. She helped us pin down their location."

"Monsters in the sewers?" Angela turned off the torch again, and shrugged as she looked at Jeremiah.

He returned the shrug, and took down a few notes. "Arachnid monsters hiding out in old tunnels and sewers are not unheard of."

Jack doubted they meant Azlu, which meant there were other kinds of monsters that were spider-like. Ugh, why was the world dumping all this scary shit on him now, when before it'd been perfectly happy to let him live in ignorance of all this paranormal insanity.

"Something to tell Joanna about?" Angela said.

"Maybe. I—" A phone rang. Jeremiah sighed, put his journal away, stood up and pulled a smart phone out of his pocket. "Yeah? ... shit. Angela." The man nodded his head to the side, toward the door. She made an annoyed groan to match his, and walked after him.

"Wait," one of the guards said. "What do we do with the vamp?"

Angela shrugged and pointed at Jack. "Kid isn't even a year embraced. He's not getting out of those cuffs and he can't brainwash you with them on. Don't be an idiot and you'll be fine."

And with that, they were gone, leaving Jack alone with the two guards. Finally, a god damn moment of peace, a moment to heal, to get his vitae working and fixing his wounds. Broken ribs, a concussion, lots of split skin, a hole in his leg. And it was only going to get worse. They were going to come back, and they were going to use that blowtorch to cut off his limbs, and then draw the alphabet into his stomach. They were going to fucking kill him.

"Shit, another? Stay on their tail." Jeremiah's voice, from down the hallway.

He had to get out of here, back to Antoinette, back to Julias and the Invictus, back to a simple vampire's life of manipulating kine for money, for blood, but no one getting too hurt for it. Back to hiding in the shadows and, much as hiding in shadows sucked, back to enjoying the joys of his second life. Back to enjoying being in Antoinette's arms, his face in her breasts, melting into her. He was going to get back to that life, he was going to escape, one way or another.

Jack let his head droop, and let the pain make his body shake, let the quivers work up and down his legs, and let some small sobs break through. He wanted to cry, but right now, he wasn't sobbing to let out the need to cry. He was sobbing, quietly, barely, so the two hunters would think he was broken and weak. He wasn't. He was a Ventrue. A fucking Ventrue. He would not be broken by this.

He was stronger than Kindred his age. He knew it, Julias knew it, and other people were starting to realize it. But these hunters didn't know it. To them he was just another young Kindred they could bully because they knew what vampires were weak to, what they were afraid of. And yet, they were kine, and that meant they were his prey, not the other way around.

The two psychos may have been able to block his mind, his brainwashing abilities, but he doubted they could block bullets.

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~~Eric~~

What drugs had he taken to get him this high? Alice in Wonderland much? Maybe he was still falling down a well, or rabbit hole, and just going down and down into a pit of insanity that made no sense.

"Beast! Show yourself!" The four hunters moved through the black, two of them holding rather powerful LED flashlights, held reverse grip under hands holding pistols. They were trained. The other two walked forward with shotgun in one hand, knife in other, hacking and slashing away at the vines of the jungle.

But Eric and Fiona had gone higher, and higher. She took his hand and guided him up branches, and branches, and more branches, until they were a hundred feet up in the canopy. He could hear howling, like monkeys or apes. And every so often, he could hear a growl, and as far as he knew, big cats didn't go around randomly growling.

This jungle wasn't normal. Fucking felt like he'd been dropped into Jumanji. God he wished he was dreaming.

"Stay here," she said, raspy voice almost inaudible in the jungle's breathing.

"... what?"

"I must deal with these hunters. Please stay here, remain safe." The spider monster pat his shoulder, and hovered away, her spider legs moving through the canopy of trees and green with barely a sound.

It was more than just barely a sound. It was without a sound. Her spider legs brushed against the foliage and leaves, but the foliage and leaves didn't respond. And as he squinted to see her movement, she faded away.

Faded. Just fucking faded. Vanished. It wasn't that she was just a dark-colored creature in a dark place, but something caused her body to blend into the black far more than she should have. The only thing he had to go by was the direction she was originally moving in, toward the hunters beneath them.

One of the hunters had a glowing necklace as well, something that was emitting white light in a slow pulse. The necklace had begun glowing when Fiona had started doing inhuman shit, attacking these 'hunters' with the crazy comic-book insanity.

Monsters. And apparently vampires? Wait, she'd laughed herself into stitches about the him getting fed to Jessy comment. Oh fuck, were Jessy and Natasha monsters too? Or vampires? Oh god oh fucking god what crazy fucking world had he—

Gunfire. He almost jumped, but his grip was a constant vise on the tree trunk beside him. He was in dress shoes though, and they had no fucking grip for a mother fucking god damn wet-from-the-humidity tree branch. Fuck. Fuck fuck. He crouched as best he could, one hand still on the trunk, and another testing a vine. Stable. He held it tight, and stared down into the blackness below.

No way the hunters would be able to see him. From below, he'd just look like a part of the canopy, pitch black as it cast overwhelming shadows upon those under him. Their sources of light couldn't penetrate the canopy, and it was enough for him to see them, a little at least.

Whoever these people were, they were organized. They moved as a unit, even as they cut apart a jungle. Other than some mumbling curses, or demands for Fiona to show herself, they kept quiet. Not like people couldn't hear them, with all the chopping they were doing, but they didn't waste words either. Sometimes they turned to face each other, and in the light made some hand gestures; very trained, very professional.

Hunters, she'd called them. She was a monster. They were hunters. Was he on the wrong side in this? Why wasn't he running up to the hunters and asking for their help, for them to save him from the terrifying monster?

Ugh, cause if anything, you're part monster, with all the fucking crazy shit happening to you, and Fiona was a monster willing to help explain it. Lovely, just lovely, he was a bad guy in this shit show. Maybe he should just run up to them anyway, ask for their help, throw Fiona under the bus. He'd never done a damn fucking thing to deserve getting lumped in with monsters.

And he considered doing that for a second. Climb down the tree, hopefully not fall to his death in the process, and ask for their help. Explain it was all a misunderstanding.

Cause sure, that'd work. Just as likely to get a bullet between the eyes. And he couldn't do that to the girl. She'd done nothing to earn any ire from him. Hell if anything, she was the nicest girl he'd ever talked to, and that included Sheryl during their honeymoon phase. Monster? Yeah, apparently she was a monster, at least in the physical sense. A monster with a tiny waist and a huge rack.

That was kind of strange, wasn't it? The monster in the jungle looked like she had a rather sexually exaggerated figure, with a bunch of spikes and sharp limbs on top of it. It was creepy. Beautiful, and creepy, and scary. But, it wasn't as scary as it should have been. Rewind a few weeks and he was sure it'd be terrifying, sure that Fiona's monster side would have rendered him paralyzed in fear. Not anymore. A bit scared, yeah, but not terrified.

He stared from above, and tried to see if he could spot Fiona. Vrall. Whatever. Couldn't see her, but he could see some leaves and vines adjust ever so slightly, enough so he could get at least some idea of where she was. But those massive spider legs made it difficult.

She was doing something, ahead of the four. Unseen, silent, she was weaving something, drops of white flicking across the tree trunks and buried in the shadows. She worked fast, still borderline invisible, but the white lines she created were not. He stared on, squinting to see through the darkness, and watched as black blades flicked through the dark, each planting another white line in the shadows. She was weaving a web, a big web, big enough for a human.

A spider in the dark, setting up the trap.

She'd told him about nightmares, her nightmares, from when she was younger. It was obvious she was looking for someone to put her woes on, to share some of her baggage with, and find a shoulder to lean on. Maybe he should have listened more, because it didn't seem like such juvenile baggage anymore, having a bunch of nightmares. Now it felt real. Now it felt like he should pay more attention to his own dreams, if this girl's nightmares about something dragging her into the dark was now what she was actually doing herself.

Gunfire. He almost fell of again, and dropped down low to squeeze the trunk and stabilize himself as best he could. In the hushed whispers of jungle life, and even the loud howls of nearby animals, it paled in comparison to random gunfire. His heart nearly jumped out of his mouth, and he swallowed it back down as he stared into the black. White flashes joined the lights, and again, more bangs.

"Get this shit off of me!" a woman said. Someone was trapped in one of the webs.

"Shit is fucking tough."

"Here, I got it. Watch my back."

Quick, seamless, a unit used to working together. They didn't hesitate to cover each other's backs and help each other the moment one of them was trapped. Really did make him wonder if he was actually helping the bad guy in all of this, and these hunters were the good guys. Good guys covered each other's backs like that. Good guys helped each other without hesitation. But, he didn't feel that, didn't sense that, didn't get any of that from these four from the way they looked at him, and Fiona. The sheer hate in their eyes, when they caught him and Fiona off guard? Now that had been terrifying.

"There!"

A shotgun blast. And then, screams, inhuman, loud, ear piercing. A weird rasp that would have fit a banshee. Eric winced and pulled his shoulders up to his ears, and another blast forced them higher. No scream this time.

"Jeremiah better get here soon. No fucking bane for this monster."

"He didn't mention anything about this Begotten."

"Think he set us up?"

"Unlikely. You saw the size of his troop. Others hunters seem to think he'll do right by them."

"Or he's just a good liar."

"Stow it. And he did say use the knives. Better than nothing."

"You really want to go melee with this thing?"

"Better than wasting bullets."

They were whispering. Eric could hear them, over the jungle noise and through the canopy, ears straining but hearing. The four kept moving as they talked, and as they moved, two new blades were drawn. He could see the blades by the glint of moonlight; really fucking shiny knives. Too shiny, unnaturally shiny. Yeah, those weren't regular knives. No idea what was special about them, but seeing them move through the jungle night, he felt his hairs stand up.

"Get out of my home." Vrall's voice, bouncing off of trees and mixing into the vines. Couldn't locate the raspy voice, but its power echoed through the life and death of the jungle without issue.

The hunters said nothing, but their knives cut through more of the vines, and more as they pushed forward. Fucking fearless.

"Get out!"

Fiona's body slashed through the walls of the jungle, appearing from the side, and half of her massive blades sliced down through the branches, vines, and trunks of nearby trees alike.

The four hunters dived out of the way, rolling in the mud, catching twigs and roots and rocks on their bodies. Groans and curses abound, but their reactions were fast and harmonious, each throwing themselves out of the way with full commitment, and then rolling onto their feet and unloading their ammo. Two kept their pistols up, firing into the black and lighting it with their flashlights, while the ones with knives slashed out at the nearby limbs, their spare hands holding flashlights.

Fiona screeched, a splatter of blood painting nearby trees in red, a brighter shade of it than Eric expected. Again she disappeared into the black, and Eric winced for the hundredth time. They'd hurt her, bad.

"Get out!" Again the monster cried out, but remained hidden this time. Learned her lesson he guessed; the hunters were too damn fast.

"Fuck you, monster. Working with Azamel, or that psycho Athalia? Her daughter's going to do her in, Jeremiah's going to do Azamel in, Mark's next, and then we're going to clean this city up," one of the men said.

"Derrek, shut up."

Derrek shrugged. Probably thinking there was no way Fiona was going to get out of here alive, no harm in spilling info. A fatal flaw, or earned confidence.

So many names he'd never heard. Remember them, could be important.

"I've done nothing to harm you!" Fiona said. A blur of her shadow shot across the dark, and the two hunters unloaded more shells into the black. They missed. Fiona was dark, and right now, so dark even Eric couldn't see her unless she was moving.

One of the hunters leaned in to her friend, shotgun still held up and aiming at anything that moved. "How the fuck is Jeremiah supposed to get here from the prison?"

"He said trust him."

"I don't fucking trust him."

"I—shit!"

The four hunters dived out of the way, each throwing themselves at full forced into different directions, whatever got them out of the way of the collapsing tree. A big tree, a tree so tall it reached past the top of the canopy, and its weight tore through the limbs of its brethren. That included Eric's branch.

Shit.

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~~Jack~~

"Then follow them!" Jeremiah's voice echoed through the hallway outside Jack's cell. Metal and concrete had a habit of doing that.

The conversation didn't stop, but it did go further away, two steps of boots thudding against the hard floor. Thank god, thank fucking god. He choked down a sob, but another one came after, and he let it leak out of him as the pain blinded him. If he got out of this alive, he was going to go to Antoinette's, not leave her tower for the next month at least, and fall asleep holding her tight every morning. Cause fuck this, fuck this shit, fuck these hunters and these fucking psychos. Fucking having them in the city, skulking around, hunting, killing. Killed Barry for nothing.

Anger. Anger was good. Anger he could use. Pain invited anger, and anger was one way to get the beast to the surface, to get that creature in his guts to bare its fangs and tear into something.

He inched his head upward enough to glimpse at the faces of the two remaining hunters. These two weren't the same as Jeremiah and Angela. They—fuck, what was it about Angela's face that seemed so familiar? Certainly not the glass eye. He'd probably remember meeting someone with a glass eyes. Either way, these two weren't the same as those other two. These two felt like normal kine, and when he managed eye contact with them, they adjusted their eyes and posture like normal kine would. Like nervous kine would.

He tried to pull up his vitae, to empower his body, to regenerate his wounds, and maybe tap into some of that resilience Ventrue and Gangrels were known for.

It wasn't happening. Not easily, at least. It had to be the handcuffs suppressing it, making it difficult to pull and manipulate the flow of vitae, it had to be. Enchanted fucking handcuffs. He pulled at them, squeezed on his muscles hard, and pried against the metal.

"Give it up kid," one of the hunters said. "Vampires a lot older than you have been trapped by those."

He kept trying, engaging his shoulders and pulling his arms apart harder, and harder. The metal started to cut into his wrists, splitting the skin enough to make him bleed if he'd still been human. Kindred blood took a more serious wound to warrant coming to the surface, but he was getting there, twisting and grinding his wrists and hands against the metal. Deep in his guts, he pulled at the pool of vitae in his core, in his being, in his beast, and forced it through the murky waters that buried him. These handcuffs were a pale comparison to the sorcery Lucas had used, and if Antoinette could still fight an army after that, then the least he could do was escape some handcuffs.

That's what he would have liked to think. And maybe if he could summon the raw strength of a Daeva or Nosferatu, or a Ventrue a hundred years older than him, he'd do that. But the metal wasn't bending, and he doubted most Kindred, Daeva or Nos or otherwise, would be able to get out of those cuffs at his age.

But he wasn't most Kindred.

"... how many vampires have you killed?" he said.

"What?"

"How many of us have you killed?" He grit his teeth and started to squeeze on his muscles again. The hunters were watching him, but he needed them to lower their guard, to not fear him. To get closer. "I'm... pretty young, and... never really... thought hunters would come here."

One of them scoffed, and adjusted how she held her shotgun, unnecessarily.

"Been hunting for almost a decade, kid. How many do you think?"

He sighed and twisted his head a little. He could feel the vitae in there, buried and suppressed. But he could get it, he could find it, scratch it out of the weird layer of what-the-fuck-ever was keeping it down. These handcuffs weren't perfect, and he was going to get past them.

"... A few?"

"Try dozens." She came in closer, and leaned in to glare at him. A hard face, someone who'd seen a lot of shit, someone who wanted vampire dead cause she was a vampire hunter. What sort of twisted story did she have? Something worthy of a book, surely.

"... why?" Let's find out. Get her closer.

"Why? Cause you fucks are a menace, spreading like flies and hiding in the shadows, killing people, ruining lives, why—"

The other hunter reached out and touched her shoulder. "Stace, he's just goading you."

"I'm... not goading."

"How many people have you killed?" the hunter Stacey said. She came in closer, and poked his skull with the butt of her gun. "You started this. How many humans have you killed?"