My Little Ventrue Pt. 04 Ch. 16

"I... recognize this city," he said. The three of them were stepping out of a dark alleyway, an alley he walked past on the way to Elysium usually. Sure enough, once they were out on the street, he recognized the buildings. Except... "What the fuck." The buildings, their signs, normally a subdued Las Vegas, looked warped, strange, like they were melting. They weren't melting, as far as he could tell, but the blood rain made it look like that, as if they were being destroyed by the flood of crimson that fell upon them.

None of that compared to the fact the moon in the sky was red; and really fucking close. If he'd had a plane, he could fly into it. And to make it all perfectly terrifying, the red moon was dripping blood, oozing it down onto the city, almost as if something had wounded a god in the heavens.

Athalia hovered to his right, drifting over cars and the people inside them. People on the streets. People in the cafes and pizza joints. People in the bars. Not a one of them moved, all holding perfectly still, all... all... actual statues, made of stone. He approached the ones on the sidewalk, and touched one in the shoulder, some older man with a belly, in a trench coat. Stone.

"A nightmare," Athalia said, whispering voice cutting through the rain. "I found this chamber, many years ago, a good example of the horrors your kind have inflicted on someone, someone who felt fear, someone bathed in it. It scarred the Primordial Dream, forever a nightmare. Fiona found it as well."

"W-Wait, we did this?"

Fiona shook her head, massive array of glorious, horrifying horns of black turning with it. "Not directly. Someone, probably human, must have... glimpsed, the sort of world Kindred have here, and saw something they probably shouldn't have. Something that terrified them to their soul." Fiona raised herself higher, walking on four of the massive, segmented blades that served as spider legs, while the other four reached out to poke against and balance on nearby buildings, street lamps, and cars. "It isn't only us Begotten that can be monsters."

Athalia snorted, a strange sound considering her voice was nothing but loud whispers, like a howling wind given the ability to speak.

"I uh... um... so, I'm in a nightmare?" He stared up at the blood moon as he walked along with the two monsters. Trying to be prim and proper, all business and such, wasn't going to work anymore since he was soaked to the bone in blood. And despite himself, he licked his lips to taste it. Tasted... weird... and wrong, and provided no filling sensation, no tingling warmth in the core. But at the same time, it did fill him with something else, a colder sensation with stings of pain, like swallowing frozen thumbtacks. Yeah, don't do that anymore.

"You are," Fiona said. "The lair, our lair. The Begotten of Dolareido share this chamber."

In a nightmare, a literal, actual nightmare. A real place, in a dream world, that was apparently a real thing too. Fiona had told him all these things, but words were meaningless compared to the sights he was seeing, to the nightmare fuel before him. A giant, red, bleeding moon, titanic drops of red falling like a waterfall onto some of the larger buildings, while other globs turned into misty red above, becoming rain. The more disturbing part was the people, the cold, dead, stone people, their empty gazes, and how the blood running down their heads looked like tears on their cheeks.

He looked at Fiona, her large ass wrapped tight in the partly see-through, white silk dress, and then looked at Athalia, the bones and black wings and dangling spinal cord, a hovering torso. Couldn't be more different, and yet, he could see how Fiona would be the more deadly monster. Damien said she lured men in to her, abusive men, and she punished them for being lowlifes, before killing them, a regular black widow; or at least she used to kill them. He wasn't sure how she was feeding anymore, but he hadn't seen any reports about strange, butchery murders since then.

Athalia's nightmarish form was far more chilling, far more direct, far more 'the thing in your closet' sort of horror. Or maybe, the thing in the tomb, in the old mausoleum, in the empty grave, the thing that would snap out from the darkness and drag you screaming into the dirt and bones beneath. Both were horrors of darkness, both were terrifying in their own way. And both were escorting him down a street in a literal nightmare.

He shivered.

"I can taste your fear," Athalia said, voice slithering across the blood drops and into his ear.

He swatted away the sound, and frowned at the colossal entity. "Where are we going?"

"To speak with Azamel," Fiona said.

"I got the impression Athalia here wanted to talk about Angela."

The reaper monster drifted head of them, and began to hover backward a few feet above the bloody street, eyes locked onto Jack. "I suppose you must know by now. Jeremiah said it, so Beatrice heard it, and I assume she would tell Julias, and you. I... wanted to ask... how is my daughter?"

He stopped, and stared at the skeleton, at her giant skull, at the glowing white dots within. Hard to remember the actual woman's face, Athalia's face, when he was looking at the reaper version, but he managed, after a while. The dark skin and black hair, the soft face, and the steel eyes. Just like Angela.

"... she's your daughter?"

Sucking in a breath through her teeth, Fiona stepped to the side, her spider legs drifting her some five or six feet away from him; predicting an argument, no doubt. If Angela was Athalia's daughter, yeah, an argument was likely.

"She is."

"That... psychopath, is your daughter?"

Predictably, the reaper monster snorted again, the harsh whisper cracking the soaked air.

"She isn't a—"

"I was bound." He marched up to the giant skeleton, up to the skull nearly half the size of his body, and poked the floating monster in her giant sternum. "Tied to a chair. Your psychopath daughter put a blowtorch up to my fucking lips." He jammed his finger into the monster hard enough to make her hover back a few inches. "That maniac hit me, and hit me, and hit me."

"She—"

"Fuck you! Your daughter cut me, shot me, laughed at my misery, taunted me. She treated her fellow hunters like cannon fodder. I'm glad she's dead, I'm glad she—"

"She's not dead."

He stepped back from the reaper, and stared at her as hard as he could. Maybe, just maybe, if he thought about it really hard, wished for it really hard, she'd explode. No such luck.

"She's not dead?"

"I would know if my daughter was dead, and I know that she is not."

"She was stabbed! She got hit by a car!"

"... injured then, but not dead."

Fuck. Shitting fucking shit!

"She... she hated me, Athalia, hated me like... like you hates vamps but a thousand times worse." He lowered his gaze to the bloody street, and tried his best to keep calm. Again, no such luck, and his arms started to tremble slightly as the memories of being captured, tied up, stabbed, punched, shot, burned, all slammed into his mind with the grace of a nuke.

The reaper monster sighed, black mist flowing out of her skull mouth, before dispersing on the bloody street around his feet.

"I am surprised your Invictus council did not tell you, if Beatrice did not. I'm sure they know."

"I haven't had the opportunity to meet with them yet, none of them, not really. We're... they're... giving me a vacation."

Fiona drifted back toward him, and lowered herself down until she was beside him. Much as he barely recognized her, it was Fiona, someone he'd hung out with on several occasions, someone who had helped him look for Natasha. A new friend. He let the monster slip her strange hand, two large claws for fingers, and one large claw for a thumb, around his shoulder. And with her enormous spider legs still holding her sharp feet an inch above the pavement, she started to walk forward, nudging him along with her.

"I only learned a few days ago, myself," the spider monster said, "about Angela, and Athalia."

"Fiona, he's not going to—"

"Athalia, you underestimate vampires, and you underestimate Jack. Even after his escape from those hunters, you underestimate him."

How Fiona knew about Jack's encounter with Angela, or any of the details, he didn't know. But then both she and Athalia were monsters of darkness, according to her, and they lived and breathed shadow as well as any Nosferatu or Mekhet, or better than. They probably got their hands on the information in ways his superiors wouldn't appreciate. But, that was fine, and he sighed as he looked at the woman beside him. Those massive black horns coiling back over her head, from her eyes, from her scalp, looked almost like hair.

"I... didn't come here to talk about that night," he said.

"It deserves to be talked about." Fiona rubbed his head a few times, not unlike how Antoinette would have, though she was only average height in her spider form, other than the extra legs. And the feel of her black claws on his head was strange, but welcome. "I know you came here to talk with Azamel, but she knows we're talking to you first. She'll understand if we spend a moment talking."

"... will she?" he said.

Athalia snorted again, but nodded, and hovered with them, beside him again, as Fiona walked him along. "She will. And she knows I wished to ask of Angela."

"Angela... your daughter. I... did you—"

"I did not know she would come here. I... abandoned her, years ago, left her with an orphanage in a distant city. She knew about me, what I was, and it had created... problems." Seeing and hearing an angel of death give a confession was a strange sight to behold, from how her enormous skull head couldn't provide any facial ticks, to how her voice was a harsh whisper with very peculiar inflections. Like listening to a graveyard wind confess its sins.

"She knew you were a monster, back then?"

"She did. I left her because it was the only hope I had of keeping her from the life, before you ask."

He put up his hands in surrender. "No judgments here. Not like a vampire would have any right on judgment in the reproduction front anyway." Vampires spread like a disease, no other way to think about it.

The winged monster nodded, and sighed as she dragged her claws along some of the still cars. "But she disappeared several years later. I'd heard sightings of her from elsewhere, then once again a couple years later, before she showed up here, with this Jeremiah bastard using her against me. Against us."

"... fuck." He sighed, and bit his tongue before he said something he'd regret. No use in blaming Azamel now, for Jeremiah following her to Dolareido. "Did... you want to ask anything about her?"

Athalia stopped, and floated their, enormous spinal cord dangling half a foot above the red and black street, before she resumed again. Hesitation, maybe?

"... I... don't know. I guess I can piece together her life from what you told me, and her new role as Jeremiah's partner. She must have... got into... hunting very young, to be who she is now. Lost her eye in a hunt probably. Became... hateful."

Jack winced as the reaper's voice died away. No need to say it, no need for him to call attention to it or blame her either, for Angela's attitude. Like mother like daughter, times a thousand.

Wait.

"... Athalia," he said, "Angela's your daughter, but she's here to kill us, me, Azamel, and..."

"And me." The reaper drifted ahead of them, and fluttered her onyx wings a few times, black mist and black feathers alike falling into the street of consequence and bad decisions that lay ahead of them. "But she's my daughter. I can't kill my daughter, Jack."

He opened his mouth, and then shut it. To make a comparison between Angela and Tony was a bad idea; childes were not true children of their sires, the relationship was different. It had been painful for Antoinette to orchestrate Tony's death, he was sure, but he was her childe, not child, and she'd had over a century of being the man's enemy to steel her heart. Athalia had... how long?

"How long have you known Angela's been hunting monsters?"

"As I said, I heard that she'd resurfaced a couple years ago, but I had no details, nothing I could... I had no idea it had progressed like this."

He had to admit, there was a bit of sympathy for the devil going on here, between him and Athalia. What a royal bitch Athalia was, but she'd lived a very hard life, gave up her daughter, and now that daughter was a psychopath who probably wanted to kill her monster mother. That sucked. Anyone would think that sucked.

And it was going to suck a thousand times more if, and when, he killed Angela.

Again, he bit his tongue, kept the words down, no need to say them and make things worse when Athalia was probably already thinking them. Angela and Jeremiah were now primary targets, and in a city filled with vampires and werewolves and monsters, being a primary target meant death. The hunters had bitten off more than they could chew, and one way or another, it was going to cost them their lives. He'd make sure of it.

He could still remember the look in Angela's eye as she brought the blowtorch in toward him with a practiced hand. She was excited to see him turn to ash. She'd done it before.

"... I couldn't break her."

"What?" Athalia and Fiona said.

"Angela, I couldn't break her. The hunters got in close, made eye contact, underestimated me, and I broke them, dominated their minds. But Jeremiah, well I didn't try on him, but Angela? I tried, and I really tried. The others hunters I broke like toothpicks, but her, I couldn't get through. There was... it was like, a wall, in her mind, that blocked me out."

Both the monsters looked at each other, and shrugged.

"And in the fight," he said, "she was ruthless, but... really, really good. I mean, it... it didn't feel like I was dealing with a regular human, you know?"

Athalia sank, body inching closer to the bloody pavement, until she no longer hovered, but stood there on her bone hands, spinal cord dragging along the bloody street. She looked down at the ground, black mist trickling out of her, and raised her gaze to look at Fiona.

"Jeremiah," Fiona said to her monster companion, "felt the same way. The four with him, the weird knives they had, they were dangerous. That Jeremiah though, he... it didn't feel normal."

"Azamel wanted to talk about that, about him. Let's go." Athalia continued on, and with a sigh, Jack followed after her.

Why didn't Julias or Antoinette tell him about Angela? They had to know. Jacob too, though, Jack had no expectations of that Joker to tell him anything. The others though, why hadn't they told him? Surely they would have, sooner or later, but it'd have been nice to know ahead of time. Arg, that was partly his fault, not telling anyone he had a meeting with Azamel, even though they'd have probably guessed it. They couldn't have guessed the day though. Or, maybe, they just thought he should hear it from the mother herself? Nah, they trusted Athalia less than he did. They were going to tell him, they must have been. Maybe they thought everyone else would do it, so they didn't have to be the bearer of bad news.

He could worry about that later. For now, he had to worry about himself, about the secret meeting he was having with the old monster partly responsible for the newest threat in Dolareido. Newest, and likely one of the biggest.

When they turned a corner, Jack froze, and looked up. He had to look up a little to look at either Athalia or Fiona, but for this new beast, this new monster, he had to look way, way up.

"Holy... fucking..." He stumbled to the side, and stuck out a hand to catch a car to keep from falling over. It didn't help much, and he kept stumbling against it as his muscles refused to work, fingers slipping on the wet car hood, and elbow slamming against the metal. He barely noticed, eyes locked onto the giant elephant creature sitting in the middle of an intersection.

There was no traffic since the cars weren't moving, so the monster was free to sit there, in what Jack had to guess was the center of the weird nightmare city. Nightmare, he was in a fucking nightmare, looking at monsters, and this monster in front of him was the most twisted, weird thing he could have imagined. Ganesha, even he recognized that. He didn't know shit about Hinduism, but he was pretty sure this incarnation of the god was very much not accurate to Ganesha.

There was the body, the two legs and four arms that looked human, and the large belly too, but the head was an elephant head, and the blood rain dripped down from its tusks. Each hand was wrapped with a huge chain, and from each chain was dangling shit he did not expect to find, but probably should have. A giant net, like a fish net, except one big enough that a boat would have had to haul it in, not human hands; and it was filled with human skulls. Another hand's chain held a dangling corpse, a curved spike skewering it through the stomach, like the corpse was fish bait. It was almost as if he was looking at a fisherman of human flesh. The swords in the other hands looked like scimitars, but in the context, he could only imagine them cutting up human bodies on a butcher's table.

He forced himself to stand up straight, and stare up and up at what he could only assume was Azamel. Sitting down on the pavement, the monster was at least fifty feet tall, and as it, she, breathed, he could hear the rumbling of titanic lungs, and hear the beat her heart. Slow, pounding, and colossal.

"Jack Terry, of the Invictus," she said. Her voice was almost pure bass, and Jack winced as it vibrated through him. The puddles of blood trembled all around Azamel for hundreds of feet in all directions, as if a herd of dinosaurs was marching through. But there were layers to it, human layers, enough that he could understand the words.

"... Azamel?"

"Indeed." She didn't move much. She was a monster, a nightmare incarnate, sitting in a world where she reigned supreme; he should probably go up to her. Hell, he was surprised she didn't ask him to bow. "I am surprised you came."

"I did say I would, didn't I?"

"... then either you are a fool for ignoring the threat these hunters and Jeremiah pose, or you thought me so incapable of logical reasoning, that you risked your life to see me and ensure I am placated." She laughed, a booming and roaring sound that made her elephant trunk trumpet a little. Fucking weird, and terrifying when combined with the blood flowing down her body, tusks, and the dead in her hands.

"Little of both?" he said.

"Perhaps." She reached out with a hand holding a scimitar, chain gripped tight in her palm, and used three of her human-but-giant looking fingers to gesture him to come closer.

Sighing under his breath, he forced himself to stand straight, stand tall, and walk toward her. Athalia and Fiona stuck with him as he approached the gargantuan entity. Good, cause he was three seconds away from panicking and bolting. He'd seen vampires do crazy shit, he'd seen fucking magic at work, he'd seen a pack of werewolves unleash their inner titans, he'd seen a spider monster mutation thing, and he'd seen legit nightmare monsters, Athalia and Fiona. But Azamel was a new level of holy fucking shit, and he wasn't sure how to process what he was looking at as he got closer, and closer, and closer.

Her foot was bigger than him.

"As I'm sure you guessed," the giant god of death said, "I asked you here, because I need a way to communicate with you Kindred that will not escalate into conflict. Surely you know what your covenant has done to my home in the physical world?"

"... the explosives, right?"

"Your superiors are fools to think they can control me with such a small measure. I could make my home elsewhere."