My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 16

"And where will you be?" Athalia said.

He frowned at her. Trying to earn the woman's trust was going to be a lifelong endeavor, at this rate. "With Damien and Tash, as their support. Much as I'd like to be up front and center, I'm not an idiot. I've got a year under my belt as Kindred, and that's it. Tash and Damien are ancilla, and far more skilled in combat than I am." Whatever fire was in his gut that survived his first encounter with Angela, he wasn't about to put it to the test without due cause. And, Ventrue as he was, he had a natural talent for resilience and animalism, the former not useful for a blitzkrieg, and the latter useless inside a nightmare, he figured. Dominate would serve him well, if he could get in close enough to use it, and no way they'd let him do that without filling him with lead and dousing him in napalm.

"If anyone has a better idea," he said, "speak up. The hunters know we're coming, so this is going to be chaos incarnate."

Noah stepped up. "Given how quickly we have to move, your approach is the best we can hope to achieve."

Well, that was a point for him. He looked at the others, and they all shrugged. It was a weird balance between having a little — only a little — faith in his plan, and not having any better ideas. But everyone had a strong drive to make this thing happen. Werewolves wanted to save Clara and Eric. Vampires wanted to save Jessy. Monsters wanted to learn how Jeremiah was working with one of their kind; it was a scary thought, one who slays their kind working with their kind.

"Alright, get ready," he said. The urge to hyperventilate hit him. If he needed to breathe, he'd probably be seeing stars, or passing out. This was the first time he'd ever truly gone on the offensive, against anyone, ever. That one time he, Viktor, and Julias were attacking Tony was sort of offensive, but Viktor and Julias did all the work; Jack was a spectator. Lucas? On the defense. That fucking spider monster in the sewers? They were ambushed. And of course the time he was kidnapped, his escape was reactive.

This would be the first time mounting a true offensive. The first time going into something, expecting to have to fight, and kill, and be the one actively causing the engagement.

Sighing, he nodded to the Uratha, and they began to transform. He offered Athalia another nod, and the monster set her colossal, skeletal hands against the door, and pushed.

The doors pushed back with the strength of an erupting volcano, shattering the wood. There was a moment, a single moment, where Jack could see the wood bend and warp like ripples in water, before it exploded into the hallway. Shards of it, some small, some massive, crashed over the group, and all of them fell back as the kinetic wave smashed into them. It pushed into them, through their bones, organs, and slammed them to the floor until they were sliding along the old stones hard enough to tear small holes into their clothing.

Slow motion, flying through the air, a vague awareness that he was going to be in pain when he came to, but until then, he was numb. The others were bundles of limbs and chaos around him, rolling, twisting, sliding. It was like God had chewed them all up, and spat them out.

The world went silent. Jack forced his eyes open, and stared up at the ceiling above, body grabbing at air it didn't need. Up and down, left and right, all lost. Like waking up on some mornings, and not having your natural, innate awareness of your position and orientation; it made you feel lost. But as the silence turned into a ringing in his ears, deafening and painful, he forced his weight up onto his elbows.

He was on his ass, and he was in pain.

Groaning as the scorching agony shot up his body, he looked down at himself, and groan turned into a grunt and growl; at least he thought he was making those noises. Hard to tell when you were suddenly deaf.

There was a shard of wood jammed into his gut.

He reached out, and ripped it out. Bits of his skin came out with it, and bits of muscle, hooked into its jagged edges. Don't waste time thinking about it, don't pause to let the pain enter your thoughts. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he remembered the time that Rebecca woman had stabbed him. Viktor after that cut him open. Damien after that, stabbed him. Did the Azlu monster stab him? He couldn't even remember. All of that was washed aside by the memory of Angela, and the torture she had inflicted on him.

Yanking out a glorified splinter was nothing. He glared at the wound, and forced it closed, forced his vitae to pool into his muscle and skin, and demand it seal. It did. He was a Ventrue, resilience was in his blood, and he had to react before—

An arm, massive, and covered in fur, reached out over his head, slammed down into chest, and grabbed him. The hand was big enough for the claws to get around the sides of his ribs, and throw him. The world became a blur as he spun through the air, and crashed into one of the side doors. It swung open from the impact, and darkness greeted him, along with stone, and wood, as he rolled across the floor and slammed into a chair, and then a chair, and then a table.

Pop. Pop pop. Quiet, little popping noises rattled in his ears, growing louder and louder, as the ringing grew quieter and quieter. The headache came like a rising ocean wave, slamming into his brain as the realization finally clicked. The moment Athalia had touched the door, it had exploded inward. Nothing except for a military grade large explosive was blowing down that door, the way it had.

Jack looked around himself. With the door of the room open, and the gargoyle braziers outside providing a strip of light cutting into the room, he could see the smashed chairs and table around him. Bits of wood, cracked in half around his, yet again, thrown and beaten body. As the ringing went away, the pop pops grew louder and louder, until it was obvious what they were. Gunfire. And not glocks, like he knew Damien and Tash used. He recognized the boom of shotguns, the loud cracks of higher caliber pistols, and the rain of bullets from fully automatic rifles.

God he hated being right all the time.

Two shapes threw themselves into the room. He tried to sit up, to use his—oh fucking god he dropped his weapons. Groaning, he slammed his palms against the floor, sending a painful jolt through his body. Get up, defend yourself!

"Jack," one of them said, body a blur mixed with the dark, light hitting their colossal back, world spinning around them. "You ok?" Their voice was hard and choppy, almost a bark, mixed with depth and bass.

"... yeah, um—"

"Art."

"Right, right. Matt?"

The bigger wolf grunted. Guess Matt wasn't much for talking when transformed then. But then, it looked like Art had a hard time, with a lack of lips, and the tongue and chops and yeah, hard to talk as a wolf.

"Thanks," he said. One of them must have thrown him into the side room, before the hail of gunfire began. Matt shrugged, like it was no big deal. The man was way too nice.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the two wolves fell into the shadow around the streak of light that cut across the floor, Jack stared at the two beasts. There were holes in their bodies, bleeding, and badly. He'd seen the wolves recover from extreme wounds in moments, when fighting the Azlu monster, but the holes in their bodies trickled red down their fur, and both wolves were breathing hard.

How long had he been out? It must have been only seconds, and he'd managed to recover from a hole in his gut quickly. At least, recover enough function.

"... silver bullets," he said to no one.

"Just pistols," Art said, "and only a little silver." He groaned, voice rumbling as he rotated his shoulder. The size of his muscle was so massive, his arm was almost as big as Jack's whole body. "Maybe shotguns had silver too. No time to check." Each word came out as a half bark, but powerful enough to punch through the noise still coming from the hallway. Yelling, shouting, gunfire, and screaming.

If the silver bullets were only coming from the pistols and shotguns, maybe there were some issues with creating silver bullets? Expensive, or a metallurgical issue, he had no idea. But it was nice to know that, presumably, some rifle bullets had hit Art and Matt, and hadn't caused the sort of damage Jack was looking at.

"So much for the plan." Groaning, Jack forced himself onto his feet, and dragged himself toward the door. Maybe, just maybe, he could get his pistol and sword back. Maybe, just maybe, he could do something to save this foolhardy plan. Maybe, just fucking god damn maybe, he could save the others, if they needed saving.

He stuck his head out along the door, just far enough to get his eye poking around the door frame of stone. The hallway was a mess, bits of wood everywhere, and splatters of blood, some of it too dark to be a werewolf's. Some of the darker stuff was fading into ash, vampire blood. But some other blood, even darker in shade, didn't.

Fiona. The spider woman lay on the stone floor of the hall, and Jack gulped as he stared at her. Other doors in the hall had been opened, likely hiding the other members of the ragtag crew; trails of blood led into the rooms, same as Jack's. No one else was in the hallway except for Vrall, and the gunfire from beyond came to a stop as the dust settled. The blood was hers, and it continued to leak from the holes in her gut and limbs, as she trembled. Her long spider legs on her back squirmed, like a struggling spider unable to escape a sticky surface. Her human-shaped body was a dead weight, shivering, barely breathing, and the crown of many horns on her head shifted against the smoothed rock of the floor.

Why weren't they shooting her to death? They—no, they had ammo, they had the numbers, and they had the advantage. They weren't shooting her to death because they saw an opportunity.

Fuck. Jack stuck his head out a little further, enough to look down the hallway. A bullet whizzed past his head, and he ducked back into the darkness as it slammed into his door frame, opposite of the hunters. It'd only been a second of looking, but it was enough to see that a group of the hunters were waiting in the next room, a dozen of them at least. They were hiding behind some sort of giant pillar, in what looked like an enormous chamber.

His plan would have probably worked then, probably, if the hunters hadn't struck first. The fuck did they use? Some sort of plastic explosive, and a lot of it? Jack's ears were still ringing, and only his Kindred vitae kept it from becoming a lasting problem; kine would have taken days to heal the hearing damage, if at all. The hole in his gut wasn't completely healed either, just closed, and his limbs and torso ached with impact damage. If he'd still been alive or blushing life, his body would be covered in bruises tomorrow.

And like a giant fuck you to vampires everywhere, there was fire. The explosion hadn't created it, the hunters had, probably immediately after the explosion to prevent the vampires from escaping. The fire circled what remained of the door, bits of wood still attached to the frame, and one of the hunters was out in front of the pillar, closer to the shattered door. They had a flamethrower, and every so often, they re-coated the area around the door, the floor, the ceiling, all of it in flame. No vampire was getting through there easily.

"Surprised you came, Jack."

He froze, and looked at the two wolves with him. They shrugged, and waited, not recognizing the voice. He recognized it though, and god he wished he didn't.

"Angela," he called out from his hiding hole.

"Stick your head out again, please. I missed."

Jack snarled, gritting his teeth until his jaws clicked. "You survived getting stabbed, and run over."

"I did."

Sighing, Jack stared at Fiona. She'd been shot a half-dozen times, at least, and the wounds weren't small. How hunters got their hands on ammunition that could do this much damage to flesh, he didn't know; he didn't know if Fiona's skin was fleshy either. Whatever they'd shot her with, it had not only ripped clean through her arms, legs, and stomach, the holes the bullets left were far too large. Werewolves could heal from that damage, if it wasn't silver, unless it got one of them straight through the head. A vampire might live after getting shot in the head from bullets that large, maybe, but they'd go into torpor for a long while. Defenseless was as good as dead.

"A human wouldn't survive that," he called out, "let alone recover so quickly."

"And yet here I am. Gonna take more than a stab wound and a car bumper to kill me."

"Are you even human?"

"Fuck yes I'm human! Unlike you. Unlike your wolf buddies and your monster friend. Unlike your vamp partners. All of you, hiding in Sándor's nightmare. You are all so fucked."

Sándor? Judging from what she said, it was the monster who owned the nightmare they were in, then.

She said monster friend. Singular? So she didn't know about Athalia yet.

The door across from Jack was closed, but at least one of the doors, across the hall and closer to the hunters, was open. Jack and the pair of wolves got knocked back pretty far then. Hopefully Damien, Tash, and Noah were together. But where the fuck was Athalia?

Think, think. Athalia could transform into a black mist when moving around, but she said she lost the ability to sense things when doing so. He doubted she completely lost her whole sense of orientation and position though, cause otherwise, she wouldn't be able to move around, or know when to come out of the mist form. Did she turn into mist when the explosion happened? The strange blood was Fiona's, and he doubted a skeleton monster bled, so maybe she was unharmed. Maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to use the mist form, sneak in behind the hunters, launch a counter attack, and give the rest of them the window they needed to respond.

Could Damien and Tash sneak past the hunters with the cloak of night? Not if they'd been shot a bunch; they didn't have the resilience of Ventrue or Gangrels. And no vampire except an elder was maintaining the cloak of night while jumping through a ring of fire.

Think think think think. If he had to rely on Athalia, there'd be trouble. Athalia herself hadn't been able to confirm or deny if she could attack her daughter, and it was her daughter blocking them from getting to Jessy and the others. It was her daughter and her gang of psychopaths stopping him from getting to Fiona.

"Jack?" Fiona said, voice quiet, wavering.

"Thank god. Fiona, you alright?"

"I... I... am surprised..." Her blade-like fingers pressed to the floor, trying to lift herself.

"Don't! Don't, don't move."

"I... I'm bleeding... badly. I have to... I have to return... to my... lair." The beautiful monster tried to move again, but her efforts failed, body flattening to the stones as she collapsed, spider legs twitching. "Have... to... return... or I'll... die."

"If you move, they'll shoot you, Fiona." With his voice low, and a wall of fire between them and the hunters, some whispers should be safe. "They want us to come to you." Please stop moving please stop moving please stop moving.

"I... guess I am... the fly in the web." She let her blood-soaked body collapse completely, earning a loud chuckle from the glass-eye bitch beyond the fire. "I cannot help but feel... that we... underestimated... the threat."

Hearing her new voice analyze the threat hurt. Better than hearing giggling, Scottish Fiona though. It'd be too heartbreaking, and he needed to use his brain right now, not listen to an aching heart. Think think think.

"Which one of you is faster?" he said to the two wolves.

Art raised his giant hand of claws, but Jack's eyes fell to their bodies, and he winced as he looked at the bullet holes that remained on their limbs. It was weird to see Uratha not heal, and weirder still to see the two, hulking, massive brutes, panting. The hunters must have bombarded the hallway with bullets when they blew the door. Jack went flying, got lucky with—

He blinked, and stared down at himself, as he noticed there was a gash through his pants, above the knee. A bullet had got him, two in fact, hitting the leg and tearing through the muscle. His undead body prevented blood loss from the wounds, despite each being an inch deep, and he stared at the open split of pale skin and dry muscle within. Only after realizing he was wounded, did the pain kick in.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and forced down the pain. No, he didn't have time for this. He had to save people, had to make a plan to deal with the situation, had to think. He tapped into his gut, his core, his beast, and told it to deal with it. Moments later, thick Kindred blood pulled at the wound, and the muscle and skin closed. Barely. It was nothing compared to what the Uratha could do, except, they weren't. The silver bullets had damaged them almost as badly as a normal bullet would hurt kine, or fire would hurt Kindred.

Asking them to do any running was going to be a problem, but what other option did he have? No matter what happened, they needed the Begotten for their escape plan. And, the last thing he wanted was for Fiona to get hurt in this. Much as Vrall was supposedly an experienced monster, Fiona was a young girl.

Then again, who was he to talk? Either way, the only one who could save Fiona was Art.

"Art, can you—"

A hail of gunfire cut through the hall, and Jack almost jumped off his ass. Both Uratha fell back as well, bodies rolling into the darkness, away from where the gargoyle firelight cut along the floor. The fuck were they shooting at? He forced his eyes onto Fiona, terrified he'd find her nothing but a pulpy mess of flesh and spider legs. But it wasn't her they were shooting at.

Jack stared at her at bullets flew past her, around her, slamming into the stone walls and tearing them apart. Many of the bullets went high, crashing into the braziers and sending bits of fire around in small splashes of flame; the nightmare's fire had more weight than it should have. Every so often, the telltale thud of a bullet hitting flesh was a small pause in the rain of death.

Someone in a suit, full of holes, came sliding in, momentum forcing them to skid foot first, their arm to the stone. Fast, very fast, but the man was trailing bits of blood, thick heavy blood that vanished into ash moments later.

"Damien! What the fuck are—"

The man did a running pick-up of Fiona, slamming his weight into the wall by Jack, before he scooped her up as he threw his weight toward the door opposite of Jack. It swung open with a loud crack as Damien's back and shoulder crashed into it, and both he and Fiona rolled along the floor. Fiona's rolling was a mess, her enormous spider leg blades coming out of her back, each many feet long, and having to twist and bend along their multiple joints.

"Damien! Damien you fucking idiot. Are you alright?" The gargoyle braziers cast their light into the room, and Jack stared at the two bodies strewn around against the wood chairs and tables.

Damien managed to raise a hand. His back was against the leg of one of the tables, and he was sitting, legs spread out, Fiona on the floor next to him. Alive, still alive, but Jack could see the myriad of holes puncturing the man's chest. Jack was in no position to judge his brash actions though. The little Ventrue was the moron in this circumstance, unable to stay armed, while Damien managed to not only save Fiona, he kept his weapons on him as he did.

"You fuckers have a lot of nerve," Angela said, voice loud and burying the sound of fire. "You break into an unknown world, with absolutely no clue what's waiting for you. How fucking arrogant can you get? Or do you think hunters are that stupid, that pathetic, that we'd let you just march in here and do whatever you want?"