My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 12

"Hop on."

"... seriously?"

"Seriously. Two seconds before I leave without you."

"Fucki—fine!" He got behind her, hooked his arms around her neck, and then his legs around her hips.

And then she got up and started running, as if she wasn't carrying a middleweight fighter on her back. Hell, he'd seen people struggle to run this speed with a heavy backpack on. She definitely wasn't human; not that he needed more proof, what with the crocodile face, but it was a sight to behold — or feel in the darkness — that she was carrying him. No wonder she'd been able to throw him so easily.

Hope she didn't run into a wall in the darkness, or he'd have to add broken nose to the list of tonight's delights.

She didn't go far. Maybe a few hundred feet before she stopped, and looked up. He did too, and sucked in his breath hard at the sight of the sky and moon. The moon, but not the moon, something alien but familiar, around alien but familiar stars. And the smell, alien but familiar. His new nose told him it was old rot and bones, a different smell to the jungle. Wet but not soaking wet, barren, rock, and while the jungle was half alive, half dead, there was nothing but dead awaiting him in this new nightmare.

But he couldn't see shit. He hooked his arm around the woman's neck, reached into his pocket for his phone, pulled it out, and— "Oh fucking hell it isn't working."

"Phone flashlight?"

"Phone flashlight."

"We're so wet we might as well have been swimming. I probably can't use mine either."

"Then what the fu—" Gunfire snapped past them again, hitting more rock while others slammed into the bones before him. So damn dark he almost couldn't see it, but with the stars and moon way way up there, and them apparently at the bottom of some giant hole in the ground, he could just make out the silhouette of a mountain of death before him.

Beatrice jumped forward, and onto the bones. And then again, jumped, each jump going a fair bit higher than was possible, each landing into the bones and sending them scattering in random directions from the weight of their combined bodies. Bones cracked and shattered, many exploding and sending their shards down the hill of the dead.

"The fuck is this?" he said

"Another nightmare. Athalia's."

"Right, that... that..."

"Yeah, I know. Fucking spooky. And she has a daughter apparently, working with that Jeremiah fuck." Through her scaling over the mountain of bones and toward the other side of the enormous vertical cavern, she didn't break her words at all. Almost as if she didn't need the breath. "I—" And then gravity decided the two of them needed to join the dead beneath them.

Gunfire, several shots, shattering the silence of the cave. Beatrice went down, slamming into the mountain of dead, and launching Eric to the side as she spun. He only had time to realize she was falling harder than a simple trip would have caused, before the dead decided to ensnare him. Hands, arms, skulls, they all took liberties with pushing against his clothes and rubbing against his mud-soaked face as he rolled down the hill. At least he was rolling toward Beatrice's goal, but every roll was a combination of a horrifying dance with the dead, and scraps and bruises peppering his already very beat up body.

"Fuck!" Crocodile face fell down the hill somewhere beside him, and he had to blink a few times to find her silhouette in the darkness. She was holding her leg. "Fuck fuck fuck. Give me a few minutes," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

"A few minutes to what?"

"Heal."

"What happened?"

"Someone's coming up behind us. One of those hunter fucks must have got past Fiona and Athalia. Put a hole through my shin."

"... and you're going to heal that in a few minutes."

"Enough to put weight on it again at least."

"Are you fucking serious? Christ, you and Fiona and that corpse angel thing, the fuck are you—"

"We can discuss it later. We—" They both turned and raised a hand to cover their eyes as white light blinded them. A flashlight. And as he tried to block out the searing in his eyes, the sounds of gunfire joined the white beam.

Not for him though. He would have recognized something like a gunshot wound in his body, even with his eyes covered, he was sure. Seems the hunter was aiming for crocodile face, and was a good shot from the sounds. Each was followed with a shriek of pain, and the thud of a bullet hitting flesh. The creature fell backward, screaming again, and again as a bullet ripped through her and splattered a mess of her flesh out over the dead that surrounded them. The splatter, lit by the hunter's light, vanished as it moved through the air, turning into tiny flickers of ember and ash.

Eric threw himself to the side and out of the way, but once he was on his knees and palms again, he stared at the hunter at the top of the mountain. One of the woman hunters had managed to follow them, and she sneered from atop the hill of bones, gun still pointed at Triss. So much for being invisible.

"H... how—"

"You were moving the bones while you walked on them. Idiot." The human managed a quiet chuckle, out of breath and covered in sweat and jungle muck. She loaded in another magazine, smooth as butter, and pointed it at Beatrice.

Eric managed another glance at crocodile face, and winced. She had a bunch of new holes in her body, lit by the flashlight the hunter was holding underneath the pistol. Seven shots fired, seven hits, and each straight into crocodile face's torso. Enough to make the monster cough up some of that weird, thick red liquid that wasn't blood onto her extra teeth.

"... fear..." Some of the red liquid trickled from the woman's tank top and stomach, too thick to go far, and some of it slid back into other holes, as if something inside the monster was pulling it back into her guts. "Fear."

Eric expected to hear the click and boom of another bullet, but none came. The hunter stood there, shaking, glaring, and fresh sweat started to drip from her forehead, lit by the glow of her flashlight. Her breathing quickened, and Eric blinked as he watched her gun and light start to jitter. Her heart was beating faster too, and she raised her flashlight to her face to wipe away the sweat drops threatening to touch her eyes.

Something was up, something was wrong, something was weighing down on the area and burying it in the cold, suffocating grip of terror. He gulped and stared on as crocodile face, sitting on the side of her hip with her hands to the ground in front of her, looked up at the hunter, stared at her, and growled. It came out of her, out of Beatrice, something invisible, something that clawed at his skin and told him to get away from her, something that felt wrong.

"I'm not afraid!" Click. Bang. The shot went wide, missing crocodile face and slamming against the rock wall behind her. There was a ramp, some sort of path that led up the side of the vertical cave, some way to get out and escape. But what really got Eric's attention was that somehow, the hunter missed. She fired again, and again it missed, as crocodile face stared down the woman above her.

"... fear."

Panting and panicking, shaking and fumbling, the hunter woman started to mumble to herself, words of encouragement like 'it's not real, it's not real' and 'she's just fucking with your brain, it's not real' over and over. Didn't change that the girl was trembling, and the bones around her were rattling right along with hers.

Triss jumped up, and growled. Not a human growl, not a human sound, something far closer to an animal, something that would hide in shadows and bite with the ferocity of a badger or wolverine. Something that told Eric's gut that she was a creature of shadow, a hunter in the night, something that told him she was like a wolf—no, no. He had it all wrong. Not a badger or wolverine or wolf.

An owl, waiting in the night for prey. An owl that could growl, that could roar, that could sink fangs into you. The imagery struck him still.

The human screamed and ran. Eric gulped and looked after her, but with her went the light, and soon he and the thoroughly punctured monster were left in the dark again.

"The fuck did you do?"

"Lot of vamps have ways to fuck with a person's mind. I mean come on, you must have seen Dracula." She sighed, a dreamy sort of sigh, and as his eyes adjusted to see her silhouette, he noticed she was fanning herself. "Gary Oldman back then? Fuck, I'd let that man do a million things to me." Acting like she barely noticed she was horribly injured, and perhaps she did barely notice.

Wait.

"... you're a vampire."

"Yeap."

"... Fiona mentioned vampires... do... do all vampires have mouths like yours?"

"Ha, fuck no. Nosfer—you know what? How about we get out of here first. My phone is..." She reached into her jeans, soaked in blood, mud, water, and covered in bits of dead everything, and pulled out her smartphone from the rather tight confines. Girl definitely had a thing for her ass, with jeans like that. "Yeap, my phone's fucked too. Fuck fuck, why does this fucking nightmare shit affect us like it's real? Oh, right, cause it is real." She started crawling, but crawling fell to groaning and grunting as her body fell too. "Ok, switch. You carry me."

"You can't be serious. I can't—"

"It's either that or you leave me here, and I can personally guarantee my boss will do worse to you than I did to that hunter if you do, so come on."

Yeah, point taken. Grumbling, he forced himself to his knee, and held his hand out to her.

And then began the crunching, the grinding, and the pressing bone against ruined cartilage that could not protect the joint. Knee injuries were the fucking most horrible thing, because of how much they lied to you, how much they tricked you, how easy it was to think your knee was functional, that it could handle something, that it'd be ok if you pushed it a little. It was good at this lie, and Eric fell for it far more often than he liked to admit.

He groaned once, grit his teeth, and forced down the next dozen groans as he started up the cave ledge. It was a wide ledge, no real risk of falling down the hole in the cave's center, but each step on the slope was precarious, and falling down it to roll a rather painful trip was not something he wanted to experience. And each step, his knee tried to make that a reality, each step putting the weight of this bleeding, swiss cheese vampire on his back into his knee. She wasn't extremely heavy, but with a body like that, she had enough muscle mass to put a decent amount of weight on him.

He almost laughed. Bad time to tell a girl she was heavy.

"You are slower than molasses going uphill in January."

"... the fuck kind of expression is that?"

"Had some relatives from Canada. Newfoundland I think."

He groaned a few more times, and came to a stop. He managed maybe a hundred feet before his leg started to buckle, and he fell to his good knee. But falling to a knee was a painful position to be in for his bad knee, no matter which knee he landed on, and he groaned again, louder, as the fucking thing clicked.

"Sorry," she said, "didn't know you were eighty."

"Fuck... you." He almost told her to get off and carry him, but he could feel the holes in her flesh with how her body was pressing against him. Vampire indeed, a walking, talking corpse. No wonder she didn't sound winded earlier, since she probably didn't need to breathe. But despite that, he was better off than her, and it was the better call that he be the one carrying her. He got moving again, but the best he could get was a slow walk. No way they were outrunning anyone chasing them like this.

But it seemed like no one was chasing them anymore. Thank fucking god.

"Shit, I hope Fiona's alright," she said. "We just left her."

"She told... us to leave... seemed... confident." Every word was labored, sweat dripping down his forehead and chest, each step a shaky mess.

"You're handling this insanity pretty well."

"Just... guess I... was getting used to... crazy shit."

"Oh?"

"Just... nevermind... Fiona can tell you... later." If Fiona and this dead thing on his back were friends, well, maybe she'd tell Triss about his dreams later; hopefully after telling him about them.

"K, I can walk now. But christ, that hunter pumped me full of holes. Only walking."

"Walking... better... than this." He got down again, and the vampire hopped off. She put a hand on his shoulder, and the two started walking. Fuck fuck fuck every step was painful, every step made his leg wobble, and every step made him grumble.

"You're a whiny fuck, aren't you?"

"... you can't be serious. My knee doesn't work you—"

"I know you can't see it in the dark, but I currently have a bunch of holes in my chest and the lead's in there too. I'd be dead twice over if I was human. Oh, and you saw what that Jeremiah fuck did to my shoulder. So, yeah, I still feel pain. Get over it."

Damn this girl had bite, crocodile teeth or not.

"... so vampires exist."

"Yeap. You really shouldn't know that, but you seem to be helping Fiona out, and me out now, so I'll cut you some slack."

"... and if I wasn't?"

"Well then you'd be dead, or forcefully turned into a thrall. Masquerade violation, letting you know about us, about any of this shit."

"Violation?" Even with her off his back, his breathing, his words, all of it was getting weighed down by his exhaustion, his pain, every step up the slope draining him. This night was brutal. Walking with Fiona, then running with her in his arms, then the trees in the jungle, then belly crawling along the jungle floor, then this shit in the cave. He wouldn't be able to stand for days, maybe weeks, once he got to sleep. Hopefully his boss would let him sit at his new job, assuming he still had it.

Fuck, he really hoped he still had that job.

"Yeah. There's a reason you didn't know vamps existed until now."

"Shit. Am I fucked?" Fuck, did he just stumble into the mafia, except, vampires? Fuck. Fuck fuck.

"Well, maybe. We'll see. But stick with me and I'll see about getting this sorted out."

"... and if I don't stick with you?"

"Then I have to tell the boss, and you'll be dead within twelve hours. Or worse."

"... guess I won't need to worry about my new job at the Bloodlust then." He really should have just told Fiona no, and let the girl do this on her own. Doubtful she'd have found the hunters then. Probably wouldn't be fighting them now, or had gotten shot earlier, or any of this shit. Bad decisions loved to create cascades of horrible leading to more horrible.

"You work at the Bloodlust?"

"I do. I did. Started just a little while ago, bouncer."

"Heh, you've probably met other vamps then."

"... really?" Wait wait wait. Those two Fiona was with, what were their names? "... Jessy, and uh... Natasha?"

"Ha, yeap."

"Shit. Fucking shit, Jessy agreed to do me a favor."

"Getting a favor from an Invictus? Might as well have been getting a favor from the devil. Expect to be repaying that favor," she said. Great. Fucking great. Life was just a lovely avalanche of shittyness shitting down his shit-filled throat. "How'd you get mixed up in all this anyway?"

He almost told her, about him and Fiona, about her saying she knew about his hallucinations, his dreams, all that shit. Life or death kinda did that to people, apparently, got them feeling truthful when they really should just shut up. He didn't know if this woman would actually help him, or if she was just using him to get out of this nightmare and back to Dolareido, where she could then suck his blood out and leave him a withered corpse. So he decided to keep the truth to himself, and wait.

"Met Fiona at the bar. She came to me tonight, asking if I knew where Jack was. I didn't, never seen the guy, but she mentioned she was also looking for four strange people, which I had just seen. We tailed them."

"You left your job randomly, to tail some strangers, cause a girl asked you to?"

"... she was very convincing."

"Uh huh, right. Well, whatever, we're friends so she'll tell me about it later." She shrugged, and then screamed before falling down to a knee again. "Forgot... about... the fucking shoulder."

"How the fuck do you forget about a hole in your shoulder?"

"Fuck you dude, let's see how well you last with a fuckload of holes in your body."

"Pretty sure I'd just die."

"Then don't fucking complain!"

"I've earned the right to complain." With one arm hooking around her waist so she could hook his shoulder, he gestured to the stones and rock beneath them with his other. "I can't see shit. I'm in a nightmare. I'm going to have to see a doctor about my knee, for the tenth time. And now you're telling me Jessy is a fucking vampire, and Invictus, whatever that is. I... she said she'd take care of Montoya, and then she'd fuck my brains out. Please tell me she wasn't making some sort of metaphor."

"Jessy? Well, I have no idea who Montoya is, but yeah, fucking the bouncer from the club sounds like something she'd do. Probably while you're in the club too. Don't be surprised if she wants a Kiss though."

"A kiss?"

"Vampire Kiss, you know? Suck your blood."

"... Jesus! What—"

"Don't worry about it. Feels good, won't kill you, and knowing that whore, she'll fuck you and do it at the same time."

The strangest. Conversation. Of his life. Pit of dead beneath them, bones and random crap like bags and clothes littering his route, a precarious walk up a very long path up the inside of a cave, all inside a nightmare world. But it was the realization that the girl he owed a favor to was a vampire that poked his brain more. Please just mean sex, please just mean sex, he didn't want to be a vampire or some vampire's slave.

The path came to a stop, almost at the top of the cave, where it turned into yet another cave, small, but tall enough and wide enough for the two of them.

"You came in through here?" he said, and as she nodded, he guided her through the passage. Yay, more absolute darkness. Fucking annoying.

"Yeah, Athalia was walking me through the dark and then bam, I was here."

"Sounds like me and Fiona. I—holy shit." The sweet sweet clack of his shoes against something man made: concrete. Yes, finally, back to city, back to reality, back to hum of cars and other machinery, echoing down as near-silent vibrations through the earth.

The jungle had been overwhelming. He much, much preferred the breathing of the city, even if he was... "Where are we?"

"Beneath Morning Street. The old tunnels."

"Right... I—"

"You, are going to get my ass topside. We got a prison to get to... and maybe ask Azamel for a phone."

Do what she says you dumbass, or you won't live to regret it.

"Think... think Fiona and them will be alright?" he said.

"We'll find out tomorrow. Right now we got a dumbass kid to save. Fuck, if he's not there or if he's dead, the Prince will burn half this city to the ground to get revenge."

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~~Jack~~

Fire hurt. Getting shot, stabbed, cut open, beaten, broken, dismembered, all of that was horrible, painful, excruciating, agonizing, and made each undead nerve in his body scream bloody murder. But fire was different. Fire was alive, and it laughed at him as more than just his nerves screamed in pain, but as his beast did as well. The licking flames filled him with both pain, and dread, and struck terror into his gut until it felt like ice cold enough to burn.

Ice, burning his insides, while fire burned his outsides. The clash of pains sent his whole being into a frenzy, sent his beast roaring into its own level of agony, and overwrote every thought he had except for one: get out.

One of the hunters got up from their friend. They'd managed to get him down and pinned, but only after he stabbed Angela. And after they hit the man several times in the face, Jack could tell his brainwashing was broken. Henry was borderline unconscious though, with the beating they gave him, so that was another hunter Jack didn't have to deal with at least. The one getting up though, she was in Jack's way, and Jack bowled her over, hard enough he could hear the crack of her skull against the floor.