My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 09

"Go, go!" Jack yelled as he slammed his back beside the windowsill, reloaded, and fired into the approaching black cloud. Swirling bits of red followed the pairs of eyes moving up and down in the obsidian wall, and the webbing Fiona left disappeared into the rolling waves. Left, right, up, down, the eyes moved around and around, letting out shrieking cackles, and dragging a pair of claws up the walls, floor, and ceiling. Jack shot at them, taking his time to aim for a set of eyes each time, and squeezing the trigger with solid strength, Kindred strength. The odd sounding thud of bullets hitting spirit bodies joined high pitched shrieks, as pair, after pair, of slitted white eyes fell into the black. Then, got back up.

Damien shot the window. Jack half expected the window to not break, then announce its frustration to the intruders. But the satisfying sound of a bullet shattering glass filled the hallway, causing Jack to sigh, in relief, as he glanced at Damien, watching him work. Boot against the glass and wood, Damien made short work of the window. Before he could say anything, Fiona jumped out.

"Fiona!" Damien threw his hands up, before he, too, jumped through the window.

"Give us the woman," the spirits said, their voice a harsh whisper between the gunshots. Many voices, fading in and out, speaking out of turn from each other. Voices overlapping, cutting through each other. "Give us the woman, Jack Terry, and we will tell you more of the ritual of faces."

Ritual of faces. Name? Could be, or just what the spirits call it. Better than nothing, though. He had something to go with, something to sink his teeth into, and learn about. Later. For now, Geronimo.

They weren't up very high, so landing wasn't easy. He was light, undead; the combination made falling a couple floors easy to manage. His shoes didn't like it much, but his bones handled it fine. Fiona landed on her spider legs. Jack expected her to descend to her human feet, but she turned around, and sliced several spider blades at the window. The monster's blades slashed over Jack's head, crashing into the window, and slathering it in webbing.

A moment to catch their breath. Or for her to catch hers. The Kindred looked at each other, the web-covered window, then around themselves. Two courses of action: run, or ask Fiona to cover the apartment building entrance with webbing, and then run.

A shriek from around the corner, outside the building, made the decision for them. Jack looked left and right, and let his shoulders drop, as more of the deadly creatures started to emerge from shadows. Their eyes blended into the flickering darkness, slits of white joined by dripping blacks and reds that leaked onto the street before them. Cracks in the sidewalk filled with the dark liquid, mixing red and black into ribbons, little streams, and overflowing veins that bled onto the street.

"Leave the flesh."

"Leave her to us."

"Undead will be left alone."

"But only if monster left behind."

"Will dissect her."

"See her insides."

"Blood, muscle, organs, bile."

"And the horror inside. Where is it? How does it work?"

"Taste. Let us taste the Begotten."

If aliens came to Earth, and needed to ingest people to figure out how they functioned, Jack figured they'd sound like this.

"I'm nae letting ye touch me!" Fiona backed away, down the empty street toward South Side. But, even if they could run to South Side, there wasn't anything there to escape to. Where were they running?

They weren't running anywhere. They were just running. Sky said run, and unless the bird had some miracle planned for their rescue, their running was fruitless.

Damien didn't agree. He scooped up Fiona, and bolted, making his way to South Side. "Don't stop."

"But—"

"Jack, keep running. We'll figure this out."

Easier for a Mekhet to say in the circumstance. He could run, he could hide. A Ventrue was at his best when standing his ground, preferably with army of thralls and ghouls under his command. An army of animals, at his beck and call, would not go amiss, either.

But, he had none of that, so he did the only damn thing he could. He ran, firing shots behind him. Was Sky overhead? He didn't know, and couldn't pause to look. Run. All he could fucking do was run. All he could do was—the two vampires, and the monster luggage on Damien's back, came to a dead stop, and stared at the wall of water coming their way.

Holy fucking hell, had a meteor hit Earth? That's what happens in all the movies, a giant wave of water followed the meteor's impact, and half the world drowned, or some such. A quick glance up showed the moon was still there, so the Moon didn't fall to Earth. And the water wasn't coming at five-hundred miles an hour; maybe a tenth of that. But there was no denying, it was a giant wave of water, fifty feet high, hitting the rooftops of North Side factories and warehouses, as it crashed down and around them.

Jack threw up his hands, covered his face, and waited. He couldn't drown, he hoped. He didn't need to breathe but considering where he was, for all he knew a giant wave in the Shadow world was more than capable of drowning a vampire. Maybe he'd melt away, like in some vampire myths. Maybe he'd walk on water.

Whatever it'd do to him, he didn't get to find out, as the crashing tide split around him and Damien at the last moment. Snapping out and back in, whipping around them with ferocious drive, the great water smashed into the oncoming, shrieking dozen of pursing death creatures. He turned, and stared on, as thunder rumbled through his body, enough to make his feet inch along the vibrating street. It would not have surprised him if one of the spirits had started to cry out 'Moses!', as the collapsing walls of compressing terror crashed in upon the ghastly creatures. Poor Ramesses.

Like drops of red and black food coloring, lost to insurmountable amounts of crashing water, the spirits began to fade away into the unending liquid. They cried and shrieked, alien sounds that reminded Jack of a fox's scream. Bone chilling. It was impossible to see what happened to them after the first ten feet of water, as the splashing white foam and rapid, crashing waves disguised their journey, well and beyond what he could see. But, with how hard the water was slamming against the buildings, any human would have cracked like an egg on contact.

With time, the water began to fade, and Damien set Fiona down before drawing his sword once more. Jack still had his, but the hell was a sword going to do against water? He stared into the path ahead, where they had planned to run; there was now a river cutting around them. Nope, no glass between him and the water, but Jack peered into the water anyway, wondering if fish would be swimming by, like in one of those underwater aquariums.

The strange places a mind went when death was on your door. Maybe this was why Fiona always turned into a weird, giggling creature when she was super excited.

The water was eventually gone, draining into the gutters and manholes, and leaving behind a goddess of the Nile. Jack tilted his head to the side, and stared at the beautiful entity, with white wings, rising high, and catching the moonlight. Whatever the wings were attached to, it had womanly curves, formed in the clear blue liquid body. The goddess had no arms, but a human-ish body nonetheless, with jaw, neck, shoulders and hips. Its legs merged into a flowing blue wave which seemed to churn on itself, over the asphalt. Mist sparkled and flowed out of the woman's shoulders where arms should have been, and the sparkling crystal spread outward, nudging against the dead streetlights, rekindling them.

"... you are Terry?" she... it said, as it came toward them. "And you two must be Damien and Fiona. You are lucky my pack did not catch you during the misunderstanding, monster, or your death would have been sure."

"I, um... your pack?" Pack? The misunderstanding had been with the werewolves, but—"You work with Avery?"

"She does."

Jack felt every muscle, every tight, gripping, squeezing bit of his insides relax, as he recognized Clara's voice. She stepped out from behind the strange spirit, wearing jeans, brown hiking boots, and a loose white shirt. Casual, comfy, and beautiful against her tan skin tint.

"Hey, Clara." Wait, shit! They weren't supposed to be here. Crap! This wasn't a good thing, but at least it was better than being cut up by those other things. "Um... how's it going?"

"Oh, you know, fine. Was hunting some red wraiths, until apparently, someone stirred the hornets' nest. Every red wraith in the area converged here." She nodded up to one of the rooftop ledges, where Sky had perched. "And this fucker found me and Carter, said you were in trouble."

Carter, right, one of the werewolves getting a new apartment, courtesy of the Invictus. Older, and tough as nails by the look of him.

"Um, er... yeah, uh—"

"This one," the water creature said as it pointed at Fiona with one of its angel wings, "tore open the verge... but it is closed once more. So, not torn, then. Opened?"

Fiona, with a single nod and silly giggle, hopped off of Damien's back. "Aye! I go where I want. I'm a—"

Damien snapped his hand out, and covered the girl's mouth. Yeah, no need to follow that up, Fiona talked too much.

Carter stepped forward, snarling, and cracked his knuckles as he came in closer and closer. "If Begotten can open portals, then she's too dangerous to be left alive."

"Whoa, whoa!" Jack threw up his hands, and took a step forward, getting between the oncoming old man, and Jack's two friends. "No need for that, and you don't have the right to make that call. Fiona goes where she wants, and she wanted to show us the damage to the... verge, whatever that is."

Carter didn't seem too convinced. He reached out, and shoved Jack aside, with all the grace of a bully. High school flashback. Funny thought, before the asphalt greeted Jack and his torn up shirt and jacket, again.

He wasn't worried about Fiona and Damien though; Damien was an assassin and Fiona was freakishly strong when she chose. The fragile truce between the wolves and vamps didn't need more shit dumped on it though, and someone did love to throw shit at it.

Groaning, he got back up, and marched back over to Carter. The old man was built strong, not fitting his age at all, but the scars and gray hair didn't lie. If he'd shaved or buzzed his head, Jack was sure he'd recognize the man as a drill sergeant from any number of old war movies set in Vietnam. Now if only the old wolf would unleash an either unrelenting wave of insults, or a particularly malicious insult that rendered someone a sobbing mess in only a few words, the image would be complete.

"Ye want to fight, old man? Fucking mon' then! Ye bawbag." The small girl took a few practice swings at the air as the somewhat large, tall man, who might as well have been made out of steel, came in closer.

Then Damien stepped in the way. Without losing a beat, he ejected the magazine from his pistol, slipped in a new one, and manually ejected the old bullet by racking the slide, all without letting go of his sword. But, there was no need to manually eject the old bullet.

"You don't own this world," he said. "You want to keep things secret from us? Fine. But you have no basis for telling us we can't be here. We're exploring, learning, and you have no right to make us do otherwise." Steel face, eyes locked, the Mekhet's eyes might as well have been a pistol barrels, with the look he was giving Carter.

Both Jack and Fiona raised a brow, and stared at the normally calm man. So did Carter, before he smirked, and drew a hand back.

"You expect a bullet to stop—"

Damien pulled the trigger, and Carter let out a scream as he fell to his ass. Big and bad drill sergeant Carter gasped and clutched his jeans covered leg, staring at the wound, his mouth open and eyes wide. The blood splatter was unusually massive, considering it was a typical 9mm pistol, but as Carter's scream turned into a guttural, growling snarl, hands still clutching the leg, Jack understood.

Silver bullet. It'd left a shredded hole through the wolf's leg. The flesh bulged with veins and flexing muscle around the damaged skin. The veins show red, blue, and bits of black, as if the silver was poison. But then, if someone had shot a bullet made of fire at Jack, he'd be screaming in pain, too.

"You fucking maggot!" Carter struggled to get back to his feet, but the bloodshot eyes and trembling body made it all too obvious he wouldn't be doing that for a minute or two. Caught by surprise by his bane, the werewolf held out a hand, and Clara helped the man to his feet. Er, foot, poor guy forced to stand on the one good leg.

Jack expected a follow up: something to explode, Clara unleashing hell, or the strange water goddess-spirit thing with the soft, white eyes half hidden inside the flowing, crystal water face, to unleash a special kind of torture on them. Or maybe just for Fiona to take Damien's actions as an invitation to go all out on the offensive, instead of the warning shot that it was. But, no one moved, jumped or started shooting or slicing. The only person who made any more noise, other than Carter's snarling and growling — very guttural despite still being in human form — was Sky, crowing and cawing.

Jack sighed in relief, and stepped between everyone again. "Ok, Damien's views aside, we might have overstepped ourselves a bit here. We had planned to go back once we were done getting our toes wet, but... those weird, um, you called them red wraiths? They ganged up on us. Apparently, they wanted to get their claws into some meat." He gestured back to Fiona, the only one of the three of them who qualified.

Clara smirked at him, but when she opened her mouth, the water creature spoke, instead, sliding forward over the shallow water beneath her.

"You wounded one of my pack," it said, billowing mist as a gesture at Carter.

"Your pack?" Damien said. "Thought it was Avery's pack."

"I have entered a contract with Avery. You need not know the details, except that if you wound one of mine, you contend with me." The angel of water started to rise higher, and higher, water pulling in from the gutters, from the windows that were forever wet, from the cracks in the old and worn asphalt, from everywhere. Higher, until she was ten feet up, and her white angel wings grew larger along with her. "You need not permission to be here. I need not permission to kill you, either."

Ah, shit.

Clara stepped around the flowing water, jeans getting wet as she stepped onto the curving waves which formed the spirit's lower body. "Calm down Flow, he's not our enemy. Much as this little fucker, and his friends, have a habit of showing up where they shouldn't be, we owe him our lives."

"... sympathy is disaster in the making, Clara," the singing voice said, words cutting the opposite direction of the angelic voice. Flow shrank herself back down to normal human size, and flowed over to Carter, before encompassing his leg in some crystal blue. Within moments, the wound began to heal. Shards, of what Jack assumed was the silver metal bullet, were removed, and Carter breathed heavy sighs of relief as the wound closed.

"You didn't say that to Avery the day you met her." Rolling her eyes, Clara got down on a knee, and examined the wound, as well.

"That was not Dolareido. We must be strict here."

"Uh huh."

"Your juvenilism will get you killed, Clara." Shaking her head and shrugging her wings, the water goddess flowed away, and took position higher in the air, waves pushing up her body until she was looking down at them and some of the shorter buildings. Nice vantage point.

Ok, time to take stock of the ridiculousness that was his current situation. He was in a parallel Dolareido world. He, his fellow vampire, and their spider monster friend, were just on the run from a bunch of weird wraith things who very much wanted to cut her open and play with her insides. Two werewolves were upset at the three trespassers, because they were on the wrong side of the Gauntlet. And, the three troublemakers had been saved by some sort of water goddess creature thing.

The Prince was never going to believe this.

"Um... Flow?" he said. One mystery at a time, what the fuck was Flow.

"Flowing Sanctuary." Patting Carter on the shoulder, she nodded in Flow's direction, and with a grunting sigh, the man walked off to join her. It. "Our totem."

"Totem?"

"Totem."

He tilted his head to the side, and rubbed his buzzed hair. Totem? "I... I'm picturing Native Americans, or First Nations people, and totems."

"Well aren't you a racist fucker."

"W-What? No! I... um... I plead ignorance." He threw up his hands. No knowledge whatsoever on the topic. But, she said totem, and there were spirits, so of course that's where his mind went.

She rolled her eyes, and laughed. Yeah, make fun of the young kid for not knowing anything about this stuff. Must be what she was thinking, cause she came forward, pat him on the shoulder, winked, and started walking, arm hooking around the shoulder too so he had no choice but to follow.

"Relax. You had a giant bird called City Sky helping you, so, yeah." She smirked at him, then offered both Damien and Fiona a nod as she guided Jack past them, and back toward the road they'd been running on. "And you're right, we don't have a right to keep you out of here. But that doesn't mean we won't."

Yeah, saw that coming. He glanced over his shoulder, at Damien and Fiona, but the two of them were busy keeping a close eye on the strange water spirit, and the very angry Carter. The first time anyone had used silver on the wolves, as far as Jack knew. It could have gone a lot, lot worse. Fur flying, ashes too, lots of blood, screams, and carnage; that's what Jack was expecting. Instead, a single incident shut down a wolf who thought a little too highly of himself.

He should have trusted Damien would make a rational decision, 'cause he did. A leg shot was good. He could have shot him in the chest, and potentially killed him, or in the head, and guarantee it.

"We're not here just randomly exploring," he said. "A ritual's been performed, back in the real—"

"Physical world." She tightened her arm around his neck, enough to hurt a little, before releasing him. Sighing, she walked over to one of the wet, warped benches, sat down, and gestured to the bent street lamp which was turned almost corkscrew toward the city's center. "Shadow world is as real as any other."

"Right, I mean... well, you know what I meant. Back there, a ritual's been performed, and I'm trying to rack down details."

"Ritual? Fucking Jacob up to more shit again?"

He sat down next to her, and looked around at the spirit world, the Shadow world. Still a little ways from South Side, and he was already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed at all the strangeness. The larger buildings in the distance didn't look normal, some of them bent and warped in subtle ways only someone who'd been born in the city would notice. He couldn't tell from here if they'd have the same water running on their windows, but it wouldn't surprise him. At this point, blood on the windows wouldn't surprise him, either.

"We think it was the hunters."

"Hunters, doing a ritual?"

"Jeremiah and Angela aren't exactly normal hunters. Azamel thinks some old woman who works for them did a ritual. It was... pretty nasty." He looked back down the road they'd run down, and gulped as he forced himself to examine the memory. Red wraiths chasing him, hovering after him, after his friends, claws and bodies dripping a weird blood at they moved, claws slicing through everything.

It wasn't so bad compared to what it could have been. The wraiths had come up to them, talked to them, practically introduced themselves. Of all the ways to meet sick fucks like that, wanting to claw up Fiona and dissect her, out in the open in the moonlight wasn't so bad. Except, now, he wouldn't be able to shower without thinking they were ready to pounce him whenever he closed his eyes. Great, just great.