My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 12

More gunfire, and screams. She continued along, summoned her vitae, and hid herself in the cloak of night. With this much darkness, trees, and vines dangling around, she'd be able to walk up to someone and punch them before they realized she was near.

Or at least, that would have been nice. But as she came closer to the gunfire, the sound of voices joined in, and then lights, far stronger lights than Triss's phone, cut through the black. And then the toppling of a tree.

She'd never heard a tree fall. How could she have? City girl her whole life, and second life, and the closest she'd ever heard to a tree falling was in movies. But there was no mistaking the creaking of wood, and then the tearing of vines and breaking of branches in a crescendo of weight and an impending crash. The tree was huge, so very huge, so very fucking huge, and it tore a through the canopy until moonlight bled through the wound.

Two moons. Holy shit.

Holy shit! She jumped back and scampered as someone fell in front of her, and landed hard enough to splat against the mud and splash it against her clothes. Some black dude in a suit. The fuck?

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~~Eric~~

That hurt. That really fucking hurt. His head didn't hit anything too hard on the way down, but riding a giant tree down as it tumbled onto its brethren through the black night of a jungle, wasn't fun. Close to the bottom, when gravity decided it didn't like Eric anymore, the man fell and crashed down through brush, vine, and darkness. Mud greeted him, and softened his landing as much as a bellyflop in a swimming pool would. Better than breaking all his bones, but it still really fucking hurt.

He sat up, groaning, rubbing his head. Covered in mud, and Fiona's blood, and god only knew what else, whatever sort of shit, literal or not, you found on a jungle floor.

He froze. A woman was staring at him. The light from the torn-open canopy hit her enough he could see her decently well, or at least he should have been able to. Something was making it hard, something pushing at his eyes, causing them to slide off of her, and he had to squint and focus to force his gaze back onto the stranger. She was only two feet away, in literal punching distance, but it was damn hard to look at her.

She had one normal eye, and one snake eye. Fucking weird. They stared at each other, both unmoving, his heart pounding and his breath panting. But not hers. No breath, no heartbeat.

And just like before, his gears kicked in. Again, adrenaline spiked his system, and he found himself breathing in the scent of this newcomer, trying to analyze the threat they posed, trying to figure out friend or foe, or where they fucking came from.

She was doing the same thing. Expression on her face was—holy shit she had extra teeth, extra teeth where her cheeks should have been. Her raven hair hid it by framing her face, and so did the darkness, but the piercing moonlight and his new eyes managed to catch glimpses of them. Weird crocodile teeth, sharper though, and big enough that it was easy to imagine them tearing off limbs whole.

"... I... uh—"

She held up a hand and put one of her fingers to her lips. She had claws.

"Don't move, don't speak, or I'll rip you in half."

He almost said something. Very a much a 'don't look down' sort of situation, being told not to say anything so suddenly. But after he stared into her very, very weird eyes for a moment, he nodded. Girl was sending him the same sort of signals Jessy and Natasha did, some sort of sneaky-but-deadly vibe, the sort of vibe he imagined anyone would get when walking around poisonous snakes.

"Work for Jeremiah?"

One of them had said that name, Jeremiah. He shook his head. Girl didn't know he wasn't one of these hunters Fiona was dealing with.

"How can I trust you?"

He gulped, and gestured to his clothes. Not like these hunters were in suits, and unlike him, they had weaponry.

"... good enough I guess. But, tell me, name of the person who let you in here?"

"Fiona. Scot girl. Asked me to help her follow four people. Said she wanted to find someone named Jack." Spilling the beans. Well, in all the chaos, this girl with the crocodile mouth seemed like she was on Fiona's side, and that was his best option at the moment.

"And—" She raised her hands to protect herself as the sound of gunfire, and the sound of tearing trees started up once more. He did too, and threw himself to the side behind a trunk as gunfire ripped through the leaves.

And then, claws. Bone claws. Giant, massive, black claws tore through the leaves around him, over him, and black feathers covered the sky over their heads. Spikes, serrated, jagged, ripped at the bark and the vines, pulled down the forest with the motion of the titan, and earned the ire of the hunters. Shotgun blasts fired in the direction of the damage, and both he and the new woman found themselves face down in the mud.

Another monster. This one had wings, and some sort of torso of bone. Its beady white eyes, tiny, betrayed what must have been a huge skull. Streaks of reflecting black cut through the jungle, curved, showing only glimpses of its form, of spikes and horns, of ribs. No legs. No fucking legs. As it moved, hovering through its new path of carved and ruined jungle, he could see its spine dangling behind it.

Death. He was looking at death, moving around, and hunting in the darkness.

The hunters appeared in a clearing, their backs to each other, pistols and shotguns and two special knives drawn. The moment something moved, they shot it, and Eric winced as he recognized the sound of Fiona's new, monster scream. But, as he peeked out from behind the tree trunk, he caught a glimpse of the spider woman. Wounded, but alive, and still trucking, pulling herself up into trees and slashing out at the four hunters.

Damn the four shmucks were so outclassed, but they kept on fighting, each firing into the black, and every so often, they earned an alien snarl from the darkness. This time it was one Eric didn't recognize, some sort of raspy thing without the texture of a human voice. The other one, the other thing with black wings, it hissed and rasped and disappeared into the black as quickly as it came. A bullet managed to hit it, clipped one of the bones, and only then did Eric notice it had skin, gaunt to the point it wrapped the bone like saran wrap clinging to leftovers. Bits of the black material tore away, and blended into the mud of the dark jungle.

And then shit got even more crazy. Universe just felt like dumping it on, shitting down his throat with as much insanity as he could possibly handle. Another dude showed up.

"Get down!"

The crocodile mouth girl didn't listen to the new voice. Instead, she sank her claws into one of the trees and started climbing, while Eric was more than happy to throw his body to the muck and cover his head, as he watched the man pull a grenade from his trench coat, and toss it into the forest.

An explosion, his first explosion. He wasn't prepared for the kinetic force of it striking out like a wave, or the sound of it. And he wasn't prepared for the debris, the shredding bark and branches cutting through the air. Somehow, crocodile lady was prepared, and she held on as she climbed higher.

"How did you get in here!?" Fiona called out from the black.

The newest newcomer laughed, and wiped his thumb on his lip, content to keep his secrets. He took out another grenade. And then, another. And the jungle forest screamed in agony as the man destroyed it with reckless abandon. Two more grenades immediately after, into the darkness, into the chaos. Not like the stranger had to worry about casualties, not with his four buddies beside him.

Eric certainly had to fucking worry. He did his best, stayed down and covered his head, but this fucker was tossing his grenades around like confetti, and they got closer, and closer, until everything around Eric was shredded trees falling over. If he didn't move, he was dead. If he got up, he was dead; the hunters weren't asking questions, just shooting first.

He started rolling, staying as low to the ground as he could, but there was only so much he could do to avoid what was turning into a giant fuckfest of carnage and mayhem. Get up, and die. Stay down, and die a bit later once one of those grenades landed beside you, or one of the hunters noticed him. More and more of the forest was being destroyed, so more of the dual moonlight was reaching them.

"Such a young monster," the trench coat fucker said. Might as well have been wearing sunglasses at night. "Got a name?"

"I—"

"Don't tell him anything," the blackness said. That angel of death thing, no doubt. Both Fiona and its voice sounded horrific, but the death thing's voice was the sort of raspy you expected to hear in a graveyard when you were looking for ghosts. Almost like a whisper that was somehow louder than yelling.

"Athalia, you really should just come out and let me kill you. Think your daughter is going be as nice as I am?" Man's voice flirted on playful, and angry. Reminded Eric of a bar before a fight erupted, when people were pounding their chests, but thought they were being sly about it by using shitty jokes and sarcasm.

"You... brought Angela... here?"

The sound was more focused, coming from somewhere past the five humans — christ, identifying people with 'human' was fucking weird — and showed a touch of shadowy movement. The guy with the grenades took advantage, drew his pistol, and fired. Eric didn't see the movement, just the result, his gun aimed. Fast.

His bullet hit something, and something hissed its fury as it faded back into the shadows behind the trees.

"Lovely girl. She's really looking forward to repaying you."

"I did nothing to her!" Again the voice came from the black, but Eric couldn't pinpoint it this time, and neither could the man. Jeremiah, according to the hunters and what they said earlier. And he'd also said something about 'her daughter'. So, that made this death angel creature a woman, and a mom too. Creepy.

"Guess that whole wandering life, getting into fights with the werewolves and the vampires, making enemies of everyone, having it follow you wherever you went, didn't agree with her."

More movement, shadows slipping by the trees still standing. Jeremiah shot his pistol just once, straight into the darkness, and earned another loud hiss of pain. How the man could hit anything in the jungle, let alone through the parts of it that were pitch black, Eric had no idea, but he was.

"You... poisoned her against me."

"No, you did that. I just found her. Gave her a lift. Gave her a gun." The man marched forward, pistol in one hand, and he eased a sword out of a hidden sheath into the moonlight. And it shined with the weird shine the two hunters and their special knives did. "Who's your new friend? Another Eshmaki vermin to hide with you in the shadows?"

"She is none of your concern."

"I think I'm going to have to make it my concern. Hurt one of my friends here. And besides, can't let a monster live."

"Get out of my home." Fiona's voice, or Vrall's, Eric supposed. Making heads or tails of this whole situation was getting insane.

Fiona lashed out, massive legs coming in from above and stabbing down at the ground. It was her home, she had the advantage, and she was a fucking monster. The fact the humans were standing their ground was hard to comprehend, but they were, and they rolled out of the way as massive blade-like legs stabbed down from above. When they all started firing upward, Fiona had already moved on, legs carrying her back up into the canopy in another direction, dark skin fading into the shadows.

As they got up, one of the hunters leaned in, and whispered something to Jeremiah. The man nodded, and began looking up, but not in the direction Fiona's shadow had moved. He was looking for something else, and he squinted hard as he panned his gun over the black canopy above.

He fired. Someone screamed. A woman's voice, a normal, human-sounding woman's voice.

Eric almost stood up as the woman from earlier came crashing down beside him. She screamed fury and pain, and rolled to the side to get behind a tree trunk as a hail of bullets followed her. The ground and mud and roots ripped up, rocks and insects scattering over the jungle floor as lead decorated the wet moonlight beside Eric. The girl's shoulder had a hole in it, and she covered it with her hand as she pinned her back to the tree. No blood, or at least, she didn't gush blood like he expected from a wound like that. There was something red between her fingers, thick and slow, and it didn't smell like human blood.

Nothing about her smelled human.

"Triss, get out of here! Take Eric with you."

"What?" Crocodile face said, and she looked across the cut ground to him. "Are you fucking serious? Let me—"

Both Triss and Eric flinched, covering their heads, as an enormous splatter of white coated the trees around them. Webbing, a lot of it, not arranged into any pretty patterns or elegant strings, but thick, heavy vines of white that splattered around randomly, chaotically, painting the trees and forest and everything between Eric and the humans with spin art.

"Get out Beatrice! We'll be fine. Mark will be here soon."

Triss winced at the word Mark. "He uh... might be? Jacob—" Another grenade landed by their way, slipping through the webs, and splashing in the mud between Eric and Triss.

The two of them stood up, and threw themselves to the darkness. The landing didn't go so well, and Eric felt rock and branch rip through his suit and into his body. Skin tore, his blood joined the fabric, and his knee was fucking killing him.

"Mark will recover and be here shortly." Athalia this time, her voice somewhere above them, flickering bits of dripping black mist sliding off the branches overhead.

"R-Right... well, you're the boss." Coughing, groaning, and still holding her punctured shoulder, the crocodile lady started pushing herself up to her feet, back to the bark. Eric couldn't help but stare. Certainly an attractive woman, with a very lean, fit body, with the muscle and abs to go with it. But as her head hung forward, her long tongue dangled out of her mouth, and Eric shuddered. Perfectly normal human lips from the front, but where her cheeks should have been, crocodile teeth chomped together. Not the time to be staring at her extra teeth, but something about them made him do a triple take. Something about the idea of biting someone with those teeth was oddly appealing.

"How the fuck are we going to get out of here?" he said. Don't ask why this random monster woman would bother saving him, just assume she would for now. He had to do something, anything. Bullets whizzed by his head, and he again rolled onto his stomach. Crawling, dragging his body, he wormed his way through the jungle floor and toward another tree further from the gunfire and yelling men and women.

"Back the way I came. Christ that fucking gun is strong. The hell is this." She motioned toward him with her shoulder, and he winced as he managed to peek through the hole and out into the jungle for a second. "I can't leave until I have some fucking clue about Jack though."

"You're looking for Jack too?"

"Yeah, I am, I—" A chunk of the tree beside her head exploded outward, and she ducked as the bullets started ripping the trees around her apart. Then she vanished. Like a fucking ghost fading out of existence, she was gone, and Eric stared on as he gulped down his surprise. Just gone, vanished and—she appeared in front of him, and grabbed his wrist. "Stay close, and—"

And he punched her.

"Shit! God fucking damn it, christ woman. You fucking startled me."

She picked herself back up off the mud, now coated in the slimy earth, and snarled at him. The hole in her shoulder was starting to close, right before his eyes, the weird blood, thick and heavy, filling the wound and pulling in skin and muscle, or making it new. But, before he could apologize again, or comment on the fucking insanity of her healing something so fast he could actually see the flesh rebind itself, she reached out, grabbed him, and started running.

He tried to move his legs to run with her, but they weren't touching the ground. Like one of those silly videos with someone picking up a dog and carrying them just over ground, and the dog tries to walk or swim but can't reach the water or ground. He was that dog. This woman, average height, built like a rock climber, was far stronger than even her impressive muscle mass would allow. Carrying him like a fucking child. And he was kind of glad she was, as more bullets started to slam into trees around them, causing the wet bark and vines to explode and shower them in plant matter, and god knew what else.

She threw him down into the muck, and she threw herself down next to him. Bullets crashed against rock, a couple creating some small sparks as they hit the minerals. There was a crag ahead, some sort of wall, some sort of cave.

"Stay close," she said. "You're invisible now, sort of, just stay close and stay quiet. Assuming the way back actually takes us back to the real—er, the material world, you'll have to run out without me."

"Cause of this Jack guy."

She nodded, crawling on her belly right along with him. Her shoulder was working again.

"Kid needs saving, if he's alive. And this Jeremiah fuck or his buddies might know where he—"

"I... did hear these fuckers say that Jeremiah was coming from the prison."

She stopped, turned to look at him with her normal eye, and her crazy green snake eye. The smile was unsettling.

"You just saved the fucking day... Eric, was it?"

"Yeah."

"Don't know why a human is with Fiona and in this shit, but if we make it out of here alive, we're gonna have a lovely chat."

Human. She called him human. Every warning signal was going off in his brain, telling him that this girl was dangerous, but it was a shit load better call than going back toward the psychos behind him.

They continued crawling along, bellies to the mud, darkness covering them again as the sounds of gunfire, screaming, monster roars, and howling animals came and went. Laughter too, that guy in the trench coat, but not the sort of laughter you might expect to hear from a guy in a trench coat in a jungle with grenades and swords and guns. This guy's laugh was heavy, hoarse, smoking and yelling his whole life, but only strengthening his voice instead of damaging it. The sort of guy who could scream his fury at the ocean, and it'd notice.

It started to rain. It was a jungle, so of course it started to fucking rain. Not just rain, but flash flood, water pouring down the enormous leaves and twirling vines above. With Triss and Eric back under the canopy, none of the rain hit them directly; instead, it hit them as waterfalls flowing from the branches above. And it was strong enough, heavy enough, to leave the man gasping for breath with each forward swing of his elbows. Drowning in the mud of a jungle was not fun.

They continued the crawl toward the cave, and once they had their hands against the rock, they got to their knees and moved into its welcome embrace. Anything to get away from the hail of gunfire slamming into rocks and trees behind them.

Beatrice grabbed his arm, pulled him up, and the two of them broke into a jog. Or at least, that was the plan, but he fell, groaning and clutching his knee. Soaked, in pain, exhausted, and scared. What a fun night.

"The fuck is the matter with you?"

"Fucking knee. Old injury."

Crocodile lady mimicked his groaning, and got down on a knee. Too dark to see much in the cave, but he could tell what she was doing by the feel of her arm holding his.