My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 12

Probably not dead, or at least, not if someone pulled her out of the fire along the wall.

He didn't stop to see if they did. No, he couldn't stop, couldn't control himself, couldn't do anything other than ride the overwhelming, overpowering need to get the fuck out of the fire. It took all his willpower to guide the beast toward the other entrance, instead of letting it pull him back to the safety of the prison cells, where there was no fire. Ahead, was fire, and it clawed and scratched at him as he ran past it.

He managed only a momentary glance over his shoulder to see what the psycho was up to. Angela was on her knees, bloody knife beside her on the floor, and she was screaming. Screaming, and standing. That deserved another glance, and he winced as the woman turned to face him, reached out, grabbed the knife soaked in her own blood, and started running after him.

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" Her voice mixed with the fire, like someone bellowing over the ocean. She ignored the hunters, ran past them, clutched the hole in her stomach with one hand and squeezed the blade grip in the other. The other hunters, their voices blended with the fire, were buried by it as they tended to their wounded, got people away from the flames. But not her, her voice vibrated along the walls and slammed against his ears, piercing the flames like a siren.

That woman was not human.

He jumped through the lobby. If he went fast, the flames had only a split moment to touch him, grab at him, dig at him. Surface wounds. His skin burned away, sending more searing pain up through his body and into his skull. He had to wonder if spontaneous human combustion was really a story about vampires catching fire. Or at least, he tried to wonder, but the beast in his gut suppressed the thoughts, pushed them aside, pushed the pain aside, and let the fear of its bane drive him through the lobby.

His skin was leaving him, ashes, dust to the flames. He was moving fast enough to keep his pants and shoes from catching fire, but his torso, his arms, the flame caught his skin and took it like peeling a sunburn, times a thousand. And it hurt, it hurt until he felt like he was back in that mill with Viktor and Tony.

But the fire was starting to fade, and once he burst through the wall of flame into the center of the civilian lobby, he found much of the fire had faded. Gasoline or other flammable liquids on concrete meant it wouldn't last, and he thanked fucking god that he didn't have to run through more halls filled with vampire bane.

He kept going. He could hear screaming him, all coming from Angela, the others defeated and exhausted. But not her. The psycho continued after him, and made a few loud clicking noises of metal on metal. She was reloading.

Gunfire. Bullets ricocheted against concrete, slammed into the counter as he got past it, and sent sparks flying as some found the bars of the gate ahead of him. Normally he wouldn't be concerned about some bullets, but if she nailed him in the head, he'd be down and wouldn't be getting back up without someone spoon feeding him a mountain of blood. And in his current condition, even a shot to the heart or spine would probably do that as well.

Outside. Oh thank god the outside. The beast finally calmed down, let him take in his surroundings, let him make some decisions, let him think about things other than the overwhelming need to flee, and feed. He just fed, ten fucking minutes ago, but it was gone, used up, bleeding out of him or healing his wounds to at least get his legs working.

Working was a strong word. As he got out onto the street, he fell, and screamed out as he landed on one of the stumps of his arm. Legs collapsed, muscles refused to contract and tendons refused to bend to pull on the bones.

Outside though, he was outside. Good, and bad. Gunfire out here meant cops would be coming, eventually. Cops were also good, and bad. The hunters wouldn't want to be around for that, to have to explain to cops what they were doing with their weapons, or to—bang! More gunfire, more bullets whizzing past him, hitting nearby buildings, shattering windows, and hitting parked cars. The fuck were this many parked cars doing here in the middle of the night in this part of town? Half a dozen more cars than seemed normal. The hunters, maybe? Too many cars for this part of town to be just civilians, and a van was parked beside the prison too.

For a second, he thought maybe the hunters would come pouring out of the cars, each armed with guns and stakes and fire, but they were empty, and he leaned against one as he forced himself back to standing. Running wasn't working anymore, and instead, he limped forward, one leg refusing to propel him like it should, so each step was weighed down by it.

He looked back toward the prison. Only Angela came out. Now holding her wound with her knife hand and bleeding down her leg, she limped after him, gun hand aimed and wobbling. She fired again, and again. One of them caught him in the back, and he screamed as he fell over again, landing on an elbow. But, the pain blended into the mess of agony writhing up and down his punctured, burnt corpse, almost fading away as he got back up, and started limping away again.

The other hunters weren't with her. Why? For fuck's sake don't look a gift horse in the mouth, just move. Go.

He couldn't go, not very well anyway. Best he could manage was limping, dragging his body against the cars, each step a painful lesson in how heavy even his light body could be when injured like this. Antoinette had fought with injuries like this, and only when she had lost an arm and leg did her wounds bring her to a halt. She was a Daeva though, and it was Ventrue and Gangrels that were the more resilient of the clans, that could get a chunk of their skull chopped off and shake it off, that could get up from a train wreck, that could march into a hail of gunfire and ignore the bullets tearing through them. How she managed to do it as a Daeva, he couldn't imagine.

Ventrue resilience was the only thing keeping Jack from slipping into torpor. He grabbed his Ventrue blood, forced it up, felt that piece of Viktor inside him, and Julias, and used it. His body was holding together, just barely, just enough he could keep moving, keep dragging himself away from the maniac with the gun.

"Get back here you fucking leech!" Another gunshot hit the windshield behind him, and the glass exploded over his body as he limped over to the next car.

How the fuck was she keeping up with him? A glance back showed she was struggling, bleeding, limping, but it didn't matter to her, like a wound wouldn't stop her. It was a fucking knife wound, through the back and out the stomach; it should have been enough to stop her. Streetlights lit the red path she was leaving behind, and she announced each drop of blood with a curse, a scream, and many were paired with more gunshots.

She pulled out another magazine, and loaded it, letting go of her wound to do so. Jack looked over his shoulder as he heard her scream, then grunt with impact. She'd fallen. It might have been a good opportunity to turn around and kill her, if he hadn't been in the same boat, stumbling, dragging, fighting the urge to pass out as well. No, he had one option here, and that was to run.

"Fucking killed Johnny, and Mike, and Fran, and Stacey's dead because of you. You don't get to just walk away!" She got herself up again, put her hand back on the hole in her gut, and leaned against the cars as she limped toward him. More gunshots, all misses, all decorating the streets beneath him and shattering the glass of car windows beside him. At least the newer cars had windshields that didn't explode, but older cars weren't so nice, and bits of the sharp material showered Jack like rain.

Eventually, he ran out of cars to lean against. In this part of North Side, there were no houses around, no neighborhoods, just factories and business buildings. Empty streets, old roads, and older buildings with alleyways between them. Darkness. Some of the streetlights weren't working anymore, and as he passed through the black spots, Angela stopped shooting. The moment he was back out into the light, more gunfire came for him.

"Stop running and die!"

He only offered a growl. Part of him wanted to insult her, throw a scathing remark or two, but buried in pain and wounds and ashes, with bones and guts exposed, all that came out of him was the noises of the beast. More growls, a few snarls, and one scream as one of her bullets caught his leg.

Not just his leg, his ankle. The shattering of bone was too much, and his shriek sliced the night air apart as he fell down again. Asphalt greeted him with a punch to his arm and chest, and he screamed again as the tried to get back up. Bones broken, muscles punctured, tendons torn, skin peeling off of him as ashes, he lay there and managed to roll onto his back. Get up. Get up. Get the fuck up.

No one was around to help him. Middle of the night, no one was in North Side, not near the abandoned prison anyway. The cars they passed had to be more of her hunters, but they weren't here. Off scouting, planning, taking notes about vampire whereabouts maybe? Either way, no one was around to hear him scream, hear him snarl, hear him shout and curse at the fucking woman as she limped her way over to him. The best he could hope for was the echo of gunshots being enough to entice someone to call the police.

He drove his heels against the road, pushed his body away from her with his weight on his elbows and ass, and ignored the grinding of his bones against the street. Keep moving, don't stop, you're not going to die here.

She came in closer, and closer, hissing a dark laugh and firing her gun again. Missed. She fired again, missed, and fell to her knees with a crunch.

"Kill... you... fucking... vampire." Even crawling she was still faster than him, and after a few feet she forced herself back to standing, gun hand weighing her down like an anvil tied to her wrist. "Going to... fucking... kill you..." She got closer, and closer, blood dripping and her curses growing louder with each drop.

He only snarled.

"Mother... was right... about vamps." She reached him, and stepped onto his ruined leg. She'd probably have kicked him if it didn't risk her tearing open her insides any worse than they already were. "Look at you. Fucking... growling like a wounded animal. That's all you are, a wounded animal that needs... to be put down."

She fell forward, right onto him, but she was smart about it and landed on her knee against his chest. The crack hit his ears first, and then pain came after, but all he could manage was more snarls and growls. Thoughts were almost gone, just noises to his brain now, just meaningless words, and all that came up instead were more animal sounds.

"We're going to... purge this town, you fucking... leech. Going to burn you all out. Vamps, the fucking monsters, whatever else is hiding... in the god damn cracks of this slut city, they're all dead." The knife came out, the one soaked in her blood, and she brought it up as she glared down at him, glass eye piercing into his soul.

She was going to kill him.

He tried to find more of that power, that will, that beast inside him that let him defeat those weird handcuffs, that let him summon thousands of rats, that let him break the minds of three hunters easily. Gone, all gone. He was just a defeated corpse now, holding together as well as a paper bag held water.

But, a smile sneaked its way onto his lips. "The Prince is going to kill you." A threat of posthumous revenge? A very real threat though, and he let his head settle back on the street as he went limp. God, he wanted to see Antoinette again, so damn badly; the only damn thought to break through his frenzy. Just hold her one last time, say something poetic, kiss her again, and—

Angela's skin started to light up. Heaven, maybe? White light at the end of his puny existence? The dark skin, the soft face but steel gaze glowed brighter and brighter as more light shone upon her; so familiar.

Honking yanked his attention back up from the depths, and he turned his head enough to see an oncoming car. Maybe he could get run over, squash his brains into pudding. Better than letting this psychopath cut his head off.

Angela sat up and held one hand over her eyes, trying to pierce the blinding light of the incoming car. High-beams. And the car wasn't slowing down. In fact, it was speeding up.

Only at the last moment did Angela actually force herself to stand up.

"What the fu—"

Jack stared on, and watched as the car came for them, the two of them. Two tons of metal roaring, wheels spinning with all the care or delicacy of a child given a rocket launcher. A split second, for a lightning moment, he managed to see the bumper of the car slam into Angela's body and send her flying. The next moment, a wheel was on his stomach, and he got to feel what it was like to be run over.

It wasn't that bad, actually. Massive weight crushing his punctured guts into his back, spinning rubber tearing up the already ruined skin, and the impact forcing him to roll were all horrible. But it was disorienting, overwhelming. He didn't even register the second tire, just a blur of sensory input, of lights and noises and some sort of extra pain adding to the mix. He didn't make a sound, didn't move, just let the insanity take him and turn him into a skid mark on the street.

Or at least he thought he'd be a skid mark, but there was a curb. The car hit it, and somehow, some of the crushing weight didn't press down onto him. He rolled a few times before hitting against that curb, and went still as his mind tried to make sense of what just happened. He'd just been run over, literally, a car had just run over him with its two right tires. Did the left tires hit him? No, almost hit his feet but not quite. He tried to move them; still working.

A groan escaped him, and it turned into a gargled scream as he tried to sit up. Ok, ok, no sitting up. He touched his stomach with his stumps. Still had a stomach, just a mangled, flattened, ruined one. Still intact. Ok, everything was still together, or at least, just as intact than before the car hit him. Ventrue resilience indeed.

Still in one piece other than his hands, and the moment of relaxation ripped away the pain suppression of the beast's anger. The pain returned, the agony, and he let out a wail as his skin, his guts, his bones, everything told him he was dying, like he was being boiled alive, like he was being dipped in acid, like he was being set on fire. Close to the truth, too close, and another groan turned into a gargled sob as that pain came back to him and danced along his charred body.

He turned his head. The car had run into the parking lot of one of the business buildings. Angela's body was over there too, off to the side. Must have been launched like a basketball to land over there. She wasn't moving. Good.

He tried to move, to take advantage, to do something to get away from his current situation, but trying to move his arms was met with one, two, maybe three inches of movement, and other than his head, they were the only things moving much. Couldn't go anywhere, couldn't get away. So close, so damn fucking close, but he couldn't move.

The car was coming back. There was yelling, but not from the car. Somewhere down the street he could hear yelling, from several people, and then gunshots. He had trouble making out what was happening, but, once he heard the sound of bullets hitting metal, he was starting to put together a picture. People were shooting at the car.

And the car came to a stop on the street between him, and the sources of the gunfire. "Get in!" Someone's voice, from the window. A man's. "Holy fuck how is this kid still alive?"

"Jack! Jack you fucking idiot. Holy fucking shit." Another voice, a woman's. A voice he recognized. Triss.

Another sob broke through, but he choked down the second. No time for crying, not yet. Get up. Get up get up get up get up get up.

Wasn't happening. He raised his arm, and managed a small wave of the stump toward the car. Blurs of color and light was all he could make out anymore. That, and the feel of something slipping under his shoulders and legs. Someone else's arms.

"I've seen roadkill in better condition than you." Triss's voice again.

"You... r-ran... me... over." Did she really have to make a stupid joke like that now? He was literal roadkill.

"If I had known you were this fucked up, I might have tried something a little different. Seemed like the only option at the time though, considering a second later she would have cut off your head."

"I—aarg!" He had enough energy to scream, but that was it. Just scream, and groan as the Nos picked him up. Arms dangling, legs swaying, every fiber of his body started sending him warning signs that he was falling apart, that his limbs were going to slip out of their sockets, skin was going to tear in half, and his guts were going to fall out.

It didn't happen. Felt like it would, but it didn't happen. Triss didn't waste time coddling him either, and threw him into the backseat of the car hard enough he bounced a little. More screams.

"Eric, get back there and let him drink."

"What!? You can't be fucking serious," the stranger said. Eric. Jack tried to look at him, to see this man driving the car. Couldn't, not as everything grew heavy, and the blurry colors started to fade into a gray mess.

"Do it! Just put your wrist on his lips and help him bite down."

"You fucking do it! I'm not—" Gunfire again, more glass shattering, and the harsh tink tink of bullets slamming into metal. It sounded so distant now; it shouldn't have.

"Do it! You'll be fine. Vamps shouldn't—I don't have time to explain shit! Do it, I'll drive."

Lots of yelling between these two. They threw some curses at each other, some more noises, and created an almost settling atmosphere of panic and anger, a pleasant change from the torturing chaos of moments before. Almost felt like he had a sitcom on the TV in the background.

Eric jumped in back with him while Triss got into the front seat. Did she know how to drive? Lot of vampires didn't drive, not in a dense city where it wasn't needed, where driving came with risks; an accident that showed a vampire surviving a car crash was always a potential problem. For all he knew, Triss behind the wheel was just as dangerous as being under Angela's knife.

The thought made him laugh, for a moment, before the pain punched him in the sternum and reminded him he was nearly dead and looked dead twice over.

"Fuck, you vampires can survive a lot." Eric's voice. He was leaning over Jack, looking down at him. A black man in a nice, casual suit, but covered in what smelled like mud and blood. Weird.

"Admire how awesome we are later, just—fuck!" Triss slammed on the pedal hard, hard enough for the screech of tires skidding on the street to ring loud and split Jack's ears. He started to slide along the seat with the shifting inertia as Triss made some turns, but Eric held him down. Gunfire joined the screeching, and Eric ducked down against him as glass and metal were pummeled by incoming lead.

"Where the fuck did you learn to drive!?" Eric said.

"I didn't!"

Fuck, he knew it. Jack would have loved to say something, to protest, but as much as he tried, all he could get out were groans.

"Every cab driver in the city just clenched hard enough to shit diamonds, fucking city girl!" Eric seemed to agree with him.

"Fuck you, cab drivers are horrible drivers."

"Fuck you we are! You're the—"

"Just feed the man!"

Eric yelled some more curses, and put his wrist to Jack's mouth.

One taste was all Jack needed to know there was something weird about this guy. One more taste of the sweet, delicious, amazing, perfect concoction of life-giving power in blood form, to not care that something was weird about this guy. Give it to me.