My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 11

"You killed three of my men."

"You were going to kill me. You honestly think I care?" The concrete walls and the empty hallways did wonders for carrying the voice, and the two of them talked as if only a few feet from each other.

"Your life is worthless, vamp. Fuck, you're already dead, and you have the fucking nerve to compare yourself to the lives of the living?"

"... I am what I am, human."

"Yeah, a cancer."

"I don't blame you for hating me. The mouse hates the cat that kills it." He snarled again as he stepped forward. The distant humans took a step back despite the range, except for Angela.

"You don't get to kill me."

"... you are different from your hunter friends, aren't you? You and Jeremiah, not entirely normal."

"Fuck you, I'm human."

Jack took another step forward, and again the hunters stepped back, except for Angela. The humans were retreating, she wasn't. What was she? What was so different about her and Jeremiah? Christ she looked familiar.

"I'll say it again, get out of my way, and you get to live." And he knew that wouldn't happen. Empty words, meaningless, and he wasn't sure he'd let them live even if they let him go. Way too dangerous to keep them alive. And, he really wanted to inflict pain on that woman, grind her face into a bloody mess under his heel, break her limbs, and drink her dead.

He licked his fangs as he came closer still, his two guards in front of him at each shoulder, and his rats flooding over him. Many climbed up his pants, some settling on his knees with claws digging into the fabric, while others poured over his ankles, and several took anchor on his shoes. Others poured around his two guards, and of their own volition, climbed up their bodies to perch on their shoulders, their heads, all their limbs, scurrying and squeaking.

Eventually Jack and his bodyguards stood at the gate between the prisoner lobby and the civilian lobby.

Angela took out a lighter, one of those larger ones with the flip top. She flicked it on, then closed it. Opened it, flicked it on, closed it. Her smile grew as she did, and she took a step closer to meet his gaze as she played with his bane. And then, grin growing so big she'd have given Jacob a run for his money, she lit the lighter, then dropped it.

As it fell to the floor, he realized what that smell was.

It spiraled around the lobby ahead of him, flicking left and right, snapping at the air and whipping through the only exit to the prison available to him. Red, scorching, the searing death, vampire's bane, engulfed the room, up and down the walls in zigzags, and racing across the floor in swirling spirals. Fire, dancing across the trails of gasoline.

He jumped back, threw himself back, every Kindred reflex taking over and shoving him away from the red death as it sped at him. No idea, he had no idea fire could run across gasoline this quickly, and it licked at his shoes as he flew through the air, back and away ten feet. The fire stopped short of him, its wicked flame not passing the gate. Angela must not have had time to coat the prison lobby, thank god.

It didn't stop there. Laughing, maniacally at that, Angela held out a hand to one of her fellow hunters. He set a glass bottle in it, with a white piece of fabric jammed into its mouth, on fire. A molotov cocktail.

She threw it. She had a really, really good arm, and with the front entrance of the building opened, she had a clear shot across the lobby to the gate that separated him. The glass flew straight, like a fucking professional pitcher, and smashed against the bars near Jack.

Fire. Everywhere. It exploded around him, engulfed everything in the red death, blanketed his eyes and screamed its fury at an undead thing in its presence. Dead, so very very dead.

Except, not dead. In a fair bit of pain from many claws digging into his skin, but not dead. He could not say the same for many of his army, his loyal subjects now screaming shrill squeaks and squeals as they burned. The smell of burning rat fur and flesh curled his nose, and he jumped back from the shrieking chorus, arm raised to cover his eyes from the wave of heat. So close, so very close to the fire hitting him, every vampire instinct he had was shrieking right along with the hundreds of dying rats.

But, sad as it was, it was only the rats who were damaged. They worked as a carpet and had covered him and his two hunter tools, some leaping out to block the flammable liquid as it splashed through the air from the bottle's impact against the bars. The only reason he was alive was the sheer amount of rats that had come to him, to block death for him. So very close to dead, and so very close to his two hunter tools being set on fire right along with him.

He snarled as he stared on, through the flames ahead of him, through the flames that flicked across the bars of the unlocked gate before him; except, now the hallway was barred with flame, and flame was a better barrier than steel. Another growl escaped him, its inhuman sound alien to his ears, but another again came, until the hunters in the distance took another step back, their eyes widening. The psychopath, on the other hand, barely noticed.

"You don't get to leave," Angela said. "You get to burn."

"It's a concrete building! The fuck do you expect it to do, melt?"

She laughed. Her fellow hunters laughed as well, nervously, and seconds later. Girl reeked of a super villain, with the dramatic poses and pompous speeches to go with it.

"You're mind controlling a bunch of shit right now, stupid vamp. You can't keep this up for forever, and this exit's the only way out of the prison. Sunrise will get here eventually, and we have all the time in the world. You on the other hand, are running out of it."

"Did you read that speech on the back of a cereal box?"

"Ha ha. Fucking joke all you want, fucking Ventrue, but you're not getting out of here. Trapped, like a rat. Fitting, huh?"

He grit his teeth until his fangs came out again. She was right. This insane, ridiculous nutjob of a woman was correct, and that boiled his blood almost as much as the fire covering all his exits.

He backed up until the counter of the prisoner lobby was against his back, and looked around. Above him were the catwalks that led to other hallways, probably of the exact same style as the one he came from. To the side, similar hallways. Behind him, another big gate that opened up into what looked like an outdoor area of some sort, some place where the prisoners went to do their allotted exercise. It had no ceiling, but there was no way he was going to be able to climb out of there, with its smooth, high walls and barbed wire.

"Panicking yet?" Angela yelled out. She was maybe a hundred feet away, and yelling super loud wasn't really necessary. Or at least, it wasn't, until one of the hunters threw another molotov down the lobby again. Glass shattered, gasoline went everywhere, and Jack stepped back again as he watched the flame snatch up the liquid. Bits of fire flew through the air like evil fireflies, and they landed on his escape path with reckless abandon.

And just as the fire was starting to die down, things only started getting worse. There were still a few hunters around Angela, but some others had disappeared, only to return with torches. How the fuck they had torches, he didn't know. They were hunters, and if there was any paranormal creature hunters were used to dealing with, it was probably vampires, which meant they had the means to burn him alive. Lots of different ways to burn him alive, probably. Considering the amount of people he'd already dealt with, and the amount of people he still had to go through at a minimum, there was probably a lot of tools they had at their disposal.

His one advantage: they hadn't expected him to get out of his cell. Their tools weren't on them, and they had to fetch them; at least, fetch the fancier tools. Except, one of them did just that, and Jack's heart sank as one of them handed Angela a large gun-shaped tool. A blowtorch was bad, but a flamethrower? That was not something any vampire could handle easily, free of shackles or not.

He stepped back again, or tried, but the counter was behind him, and going further back was pointless. Every path he could take was a dead end. It was a fucking prison after all.

"Henry, Stacey, either of you know another way out of this prison?"

"No, master," they said. He knew they'd say that too, god damn it.

Angela, armed with a flamethrower, stepped ahead of the hunters behind her. They had molotovs, pistols, torches, and god only knew what else. He was sure they'd tie him up and burn him at the stake if they weren't afraid he'd brainwash them first. Angela was laughing, each step she took marked with more laughter, and every so often she shot the flamethrower. The spewing beam of liquid carried the red death on its wings, and the flame whipped the air into a hazed frenzy of blurry chaos as fire marked the walls, and the floors around Angela's path, but not in front of her path. Whenever her and her hunters came upon a patch of burning, they hopped around it or over it, except Angela. Angela stepped on it and kept walking. As long as she walked quickly, the fire would not catch to her, and no doubt she did it because she thought it would intimidate him.

She was right. She could get close to fire, have it touch her, tickle her boots or pants, brush against her skin, but for a human it was as simple as not standing in the fire for more than a second to prevent skin or hard fabrics from burning. For a vampire, each second in a flame would have meant serious damage, and the agony to go with it. Fucking hunters knew his weakness, knew how to exploit it, knew how to embrace flame and its fickle nature, knew how to wrap it around themselves and protect themselves with it.

It wasn't him using a surprise advantage to take down a few hunters anymore. Now it was him, trapped inside a rabbit hole, and the hunters were after him. So close to getting out, but he'd underestimated how quickly they'd have reacted to his escape. He'd stirred the hornets' nest.

Whatever happened to those action movie scenes, where the hero, once captured, manages to escape, and then proceeds to slaughter everyone in the facility that held them? Why wasn't it that easy? Why couldn't these hunters just be really dumb, and stand around waiting for him to come to them, so he could kill them one by one, or in pairs? Reality wasn't so kind. These hunters had brains, and once they'd realized what was happening, they'd retreated to a bottleneck and reestablished the offensive using the one weapon he couldn't fight.

The one weapon he couldn't fight directly, at least.

"Stacey, Henry, march forward. Fire at will. We're leaving." The longer he sat back, being defensive, the more they'd box him in. Now or never.

"Yes, master."

Their minds crashed against the shackles he'd placed upon them, pushed against the boot crushing them beneath him, and cried out for mercy. But as each tool glanced at him, he gave them a glance back, and offered a quiet, rumbling growl. Their tiny minds broke once again, silenced beneath his boot, and they began their march of death.

They weren't going to survive. And that was fine.

"Hey, guys! Come on, you still in there? You keep doing this and I'm sorry but you'll have to die to get to the kid." Angela stood in the center of the civilian lobby, fire surrounding her, fire on the main, large desk in the center of the room, fire on the walls, fire trickling from her flamethrower. There was a grin there, mixed with a touch of concern maybe. Maybe she did actually care about these hunters she was going to get killed, but if she did, she cared about killing him more.

It was a half-ass attempt to break through his mind control, and token, futile, and she knew it. Not the hero she was pretending to be, not the hero she probably convinced these hunters she was. The hunters weren't nearly as quick to kill their friends, he could see it in their eyes, in their movements, in their everything. They wanted to save Henry and Stacey, save their friends from the horrible vampire that had taken their minds and already killed three others.

Fuck them.

Jack's tools raised their pistols, and began their assault. He followed after them, and as the two tools stepped over the fire, gunshots started to fill the air.

"Don't make us kill you!" One of the hunters said, a man, tears in his eyes and on his cheeks reflecting the flickering flames that surrounded him. Their original plan had gone so wrong, usurped by the monster they hadn't suspected capable of this madness. Just a simple catch-and-kill job for them probably, just another day breaking a demon, learning what they could from the soulless monster before dusting him.

The drama would have been overwhelmingly sad, if he wasn't the monster on the other end of that plan. Instead, the sight of the man in tears over the inevitable death of his friends was frustrating, and infuriating. How dare they, how dare these fucking ingrates be upset over this outcome. They started this, this was on them. Fucking insects.

Again, his tools hesitated as they aimed their pistols. They paused, each casting a glance at Jack. He returned it, and offered them each a soul crushing word.

"Now."

Henry and Stacey stepped forward once again, and began firing.

"Henry don't!"

The hunters jumped out of the way, each diving behind various tables, chairs, and Angela herself jumped back to get into the circular desk in the center of the civilian lobby. She was still too far to attack him with the flamethrower, but the others had pistols, and molotovs. They seemed hesitant to use them. Their loss.

Jack pointed his hands forward. "Go. Kill them."

The army of claw and fur ran before him, and all was brown and flame. Many rats succumbed to the fire they ran over, and some were no longer enslaved as the fire took them. They shrieked their death cries and ran against the wall, while others ran forward, bodies of writhing flame entering the second lobby, only to die to the flame's power.

Each rat that died so horribly hurt him, made him wince, made him grit his teeth all the more. The beast in him identified with these little scavengers, scurriers in the dark and hiding from humanity, more than it ever could with the humans trying to burn him alive.

His tools took advantage of the chaos, stepped into the second lobby, and fired. Their bullets tore into the furniture and the desk, ripping shards of wood up into the air, only for it to join the fire that surrounded them. It kept the enemy hidden behind furniture, and an opportunity for rats to pour out into the frenzy. The hunters were quick to use torches to fight off the rats at their feet, but it kept them pinned down, as planned.

Jack followed the rats, slow steps, many soaking his shoes in the blood of his dead servants. No time to pity them anymore, he had hunters to kill. The hallway of fire could not be escaped, it surrounded him, covered the floor ahead of him, and as he approached the flame, more rats threw their bodies onto the red death. Their fur burned for only moments before only their corpses remained, and he again stepped on them, spreading their blood and soaking his steps in death.

"Forgive me!" One of the hunters popped up from behind a nearby overturned table, and fired. Stacey went down, a splatter of blood coating Jack's body as God apparently thought the situation needed to be more horrible. Jack stared at the shooter, only for the offending hunter to point his pistol at Jack, and begin firing.

Bullets hit him, tore through him, ripped apart his insides and got lodged against his bones. Two ribs cracked as the hollow-point rounds collided with them. Another bullet hit him in the stomach, and he stumbled back several feet as it lodged into his guts. And yet another slammed him in his leg, and he fell to a knee as the muscle gave way.

He glared at the offending hunter, and watched as karma reaped its vengeance. Bullets slammed into their shoulder, their chest, and their neck. The blood sprayed, followed by the bits of tearing flesh, and the screams. Jack's remaining guard had adjusted his aim, fired upon his comrade, and didn't stop firing until the offending human fell back, clutching their neck with their only good arm.

Fool would have been fine if they had ducked behind their table more quickly. Shooting their friend Stacey had no doubt given them pause, a pause Jack's tool did not reciprocate.

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" Another one of the hunters unloaded their ammo, poking out from behind the same desk Angela was hiding within. Bullets whizzed past Jack, slamming into the wall, into the metal bars behind him, chunks of concrete showering over the fire and dead that surrounded him.

Not just one hunter shooting at him now, three of them were. They poked out from behind their chairs and overturned tables, eyes locked on him, wide, glaring. They were shooting at him, but not at their friend Henry, who slid down onto a knee beside Stacey, picked up her pistol while tossing his aside, and began firing that one instead.

More bullets flew past Henry, aimed at Jack, many going wide as the hunters were forced back into their hiding spots by Jack's only remaining guard. No time to set up good shots on him, not as Henry continued to shoot at them, and not as the rats continued to pour over the floor, earning their ire. Half the time, the hunters were tossing molotovs at the floor or waving their torches at it, blocking the path of the rats as best they could, then resumed shooting at Jack.

They were good shots. Jack forced himself back to his feet, only for another bullet to slam into his shoulder and force him back a foot. In the chaos, in the flames and the screams, dodging bullets and holding an army of rats at bay, the hunters continued to shoot at him. Another bullet sank into his other leg, and he screamed as his body tried to stumble with it. Tensing muscles and aching bones kept him upright. Another bullet caught him in the waist, tore through his obliques, and created a hole to his insides. Another again caught him in the neck, took a chunk of the side out, exposing the throat within.

He stayed standing, and pointed with one of his stumps. "Get him first."

The army of rats picked a new objective. Instead of swarming randomly, they changed to his target. No longer rapids of random brown joined by burning fur, the rats pooled together, piling high until they flowed over the table the hunter was hiding behind. His army met fire, met gasoline, met bullets, but there were simply too many of them, and they flooded over the man.

His screams joined the inferno as a thousand rats began to tear into his body. Jack had hoped he might stand up, so Henry could shoot him, and Jack could guide the rats to a new target. But the man fell behind the table, rolling, screaming, but out of sight.

Angela stood up from behind the counter, and unleashed hell upon the dying man. Somehow, she held the flamethrower in one arm, and unleashed the river of fire on her doomed comrade. At the same time, she fired her pistol at him with her other hand. No need to see the carnage to know what was happening. Angela was killing the hunter and his rats at the same time, putting her follower out of his misery while destroying hordes of the little scavengers while they were vulnerable.

Henry was still standing. They didn't want to shoot their comrade. Or at least, the hunters didn't. But once Angela was done with the man covered in rats, she turned to face Henry. The tool had been shooting at another hunter, and Angela took the opportunity, firing the flamethrower around the desk, while at the same time firing the pistol through the flames at Henry. One hit the man in the shoulder, and he went down.