My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 17

Fiona smiled at him as she used all eight of the pointed swords, the tiny holes almost invisible along their sharp angles. The small droplets of white emerged, and as some of her blades poked at his clothes to slide them up, exposing his chest, stomach, and holes there in, she began to weave her bandages. He wasn't sure if her smile was because she was feeling better, or she was feeling worse, and was facing death like she faced all her worries: with giggles. But it was a nice change of pace from the cold pit of his own thoughts, he had to admit.

Had to admit a lot of stuff when around her, lately.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Jack~~

"Ok, they're alive," Jack said, grinding his teeth into dust as he looked through the door across the hall. He never expected Damien to be so rash, though. Maybe the Mekhet thought his extreme speed would be enough to rescue Fiona without him sustaining more damage; dumbass. Ugh, Jack slapped himself in the forehead. He thought he could save Antoinette from Damien, back in the day, so he couldn't fault for the man for being impulsive like him.

Except now the man had been shot, several times, on top of who knows how much damage from the initial assault. Jack couldn't rely on Damien anymore, injured like he was. Maybe he'd be able to save Fiona from bleeding out, though. The two of them had moved out of the light beam from the doorway, so he couldn't see them very well; hopefully they were still alive. Damien definitely would be, but whether he could still fight, still aim a pistol, still anything, was hard to discern.

Think think.

He looked to the two wolves around him. They were still healing, and from the sight of it, it was going to take hours. They feared silver the same way vampires feared fire, but the wolves would fight despite it, he knew they would. He could rely on them to fight until they were nothing but bone, until they were dead. But how to use them? They couldn't move up, couldn't press the attack, couldn't do anything to break through the barrier the hunters had set up. And the clock was ticking.

"Athalia... if you can hear me, wherever you're hiding, we could really use your help." He looked down and stared at the floor, as he started praying for a monster of darkness to come help him. She was the only true unknown factor, since Noah and Tash had to be in the other rooms. If they were alive or dead, he didn't know, but they wouldn't be able to press up either. Maybe—

A breeze moved through the hall, and stirred the flames in the grasp of the gargoyles on the wall. Jack raised his head, and stared at the flame as it danced in the cold air. The air smelled different.

The two wolves noticed it, too. They raised their noses, each wolf breathing the new air deep, and looking to each other with confusion in their eyes. A strange expression to see on giant wolf heads, eyebrows raising, eyes lifting. Stranger, was the look of shock.

Jack looked back into the hall, and froze, as darkness began to seep over the stones. Cold, quiet, the silent shadow crept up along the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and reached out with slow tendrils of obsidian fog. The distant roar of fire, the curses from Angela, the occasional gun shot, all of it became quiet, deadened, as if submerged in water, or behind a thick wall. The flowing black moved further, and the breeze that came with it attacked, slashing gusts against the gargoyle braziers, and ripping the fires from their hands until they were extinguished.

One by one, the flames went out. The encroaching darkness was cold, like ice, enough to send a painful chill down Jack's spine as the shadow engulfed the hallway. One by one, the fires died. One by one, the only sources of quality light available in the hallway of ancient stone, vanished. Jack gulped, and stared down at the shadowy movements as it trickled along the walls; far more than a simple shadow. It was like that scene from The Ten Commandments with the Angel of Death, the creeping fog that stretched out over Egypt, and killed the firstborn.

If only he had some lamb's blood.

He pulled out his phone, turned on the light, and pointed it down, but the light didn't reach far, the black fog blocking much of its power. He recognized this fog. This was Athalia's fog, the same icy shadow that surrounded him when he took those stairs down into hell, into her nightmare world.

Distant hollers of trepidation reached his ears.

"What the fuck is that?"

"What's going on?"

"Keep the fire going!"

The voices of the hunters struggled to reach him, unable to penetrate the fog easily, but he could hear them a little. It was enough to send another chill up his spine, as he heard the fear in their voices, the panic, as the creeping death came for them.

He stuck his head out from the stone door frame, and watched more and more of the gargoyles succumb to the black. Closer, and closer to the fire and remains of the giant door, and closer to the awaiting hunters, the blackness moved. Many of the hunters pulled out flashlights, others turning on mounted lights on their rifles, and the hunter with the flamethrower applied several coats of the liquid flame around the bottleneck between them and the paranormals. Their little lights might as well have been candles against the encroaching fog, and the fire was nothing more than a small thing, a tiny thing against the endless onyx. Like building a fire in the wilderness, the light it provided only highlighted how vast the darkness around them was.

All the gargoyle braziers died, leaving Jack and his two werewolf companions in the black, except for his phone. And like the hunters, his phone was barely more than a firefly.

The darkness continued, and Jack watched as it came into contact with the fire. The roaring flames struggled, but the darkness was cold, death in mist, and it killed the flame like smothering life was the black fog's purpose. The hunter with the flamethrower tried again, and again, voice rising into screams as they painted the area red. But with each moment, it was more and more like watching primitive torches fighting the inescapable blackness, and then eventually, nothing but tiny candles. All the new fires the flamethrower created died in moments.

And then there were only the hunters, and their flashlights, weak, and futile.

Jack raised his phone, and pointed it at Art and Matt. Both wolves looked scared, and that was not a look he expected to ever see on one of the titans.

"Matthew, Arturo, we have a window here. See if Tash and Noah are fine, but stay low, move slow, and don't make any noise until you've got a stone wall between you and the hunters. I'll go check up on Damien and Fiona."

No idea, he had no fucking idea Athalia was capable of this. He should have, now that he thought about it. They were in a nightmare, and just because it wasn't Athalia's didn't mean she didn't have access to everything that made her a creature of darkness. A monster under the bed. With a few, slow, useless breaths, he prepared to sprint across the darkness and into Damien's room. A glance at the two werewolves showed they were ready to move, too.

The world went red.

Jack froze again, and every nerve in his body went numb as a flash of screaming faces filled his vision. He wanted to fall back, to get away from the sudden death shrieks in his ears and the pained face of someone dying horribly away from his eyes. But he couldn't move. The air became blood, and the wails of the murdered blazed in his face.

The world turned to darkness again, a little bit of light from his phone the only brightness to guide him. What the fuck was that?

"What the fuck was that!?"

"Guard up! I know who that is." Angela's voice. The other hunters must have seen that too. "Come on out, Mother!"

A shrieking howl filled the stone walls, erupting outward from the darkness and its origin, where it crept out from the hall, toward the hunters. Jack fell onto his ass, and closed his eyes, but it didn't help. The red images came again, piercing his eyelids: dying faces, blood tears, throats being ripped open by claws. And then gone again, as silence crushed everyone. He raised his hand to his ears, but when another inhuman scream echoed through the hall, the hands did nothing. The bloody screams followed, and no matter how hard he closed his eyes, an image of death, gore, screaming and torture filled his vision.

When it passed, he forced himself out into the hall. Running wasn't going to happen, and the hunters were too busy shining their lights around at random shadows. But after a few seconds, another shriek slammed into their souls, everyone's, and demanded they stare at nightmares. Jack tried to ignore it, but the scream in his mind was a death cry, distinct, and all too familiar. It reminded him of the hunters he'd killed, that he'd sent rats to devour alive. It was a sound that stuck with you, scarred you, a sound you'd never forget. And if he guessed right, everyone was hearing it.

He pitied any of them who hadn't heard that sound before. The nightmares, in bed and sleep nightmares, would ruin them for years.

He forced himself forward, on his hands and knees, and crawled across the hall. The hallucinations returned every few seconds, and lasted a second, but if he concentrated on moving, he continued to make progress. The hallucinations didn't freeze him, only made him feel frozen, feel like he was buried in ice, or frozen earth, or at the bottom of a lake of cold corpses. Keep moving, keep moving, ignore the death cries, ignore the eyes of the dying penetrating your eyelids.

Once he reached the next door frame, he brought up his light.

"Thank god," he said. "Damien you dumb—" He winced, and lowered his head in reflex as a dying woman's face hit his eyes, and then was gone. "You good?"

The man had bandages wrapped around a lot of his body. Legs, arms, his chest under his shirt and jacket, white bandage that looked like Fiona's silk dress. Except, her dress was soaked dark red, and while she was covered in bandages as well, she was a panting, trembling mess, bandages redder still.

He braced for another scarring hallucination, but none came. Biting his teeth together, he slowly looked behind him at the darkness, and raised his light. He couldn't see the door he came from, where Art and Matt still were. Or, might have still been. Subtle movements, silhouettes, moved through the black fog, and Jack squinted to see if he could identify them. No. All he could do was hope it was them.

"I'm good," Damien said. "Was... were those..."

"It was Athalia." The spider monster next to him nodded, voice ragged and quiet. "She... she is... a better Eshmaki than Vrall ever was. She is the terror in... in the dark."

A glowing recommendation from a fellow monster. Jack nodded, and braced again as another shriek echoed through the stone walls. But nothing came. The inhuman sound was more distant, like it must have been closer to the hunters. Thank fucking christ.

His dreams in torpor today were going to be borderline PTSD.

"I guess we have an addendum to the plan," he said. "We need to get out of here ASAP, once the primary objective is met. The werewolves have been shot with silver, Fiona here is bleeding, and Damien is beat up. My wounds are minor, but we still haven't found Tash or Noah."

"I saw Natasha," Damien said. "She's alive. Injured, but not as bad as me."

"And Noah?"

"He was with me, before I decided to help Fiona. He was shot several times as well, and at least one of those was silver. Not in good shape."

"Damn." Grunting, Jack forced himself back up onto his feet, and held out a hand for Damien. The Mekhet stuck his gunhand out, and Jack lifted him by the wrist. "Fiona, how does this attack from Athalia work?"

"She... she is... she is lost to the darkness, Jack. She knows she is supposed to attack the hunters, but... but you may not be able to approach with her also attacking you."

"You mean the hallucinations? I—"

"No. Not them. Her... from the black. She might attack you, and... and anyone who is... is where she is. Hide. Hide until... the darkness fades. Or at least, don't move."

Shit. Shit shit shit. Things weren't going smooth. Why didn't things ever go smooth.

"Alright. We'll... we'll try and get closer, but stay out of her way," he said.

Damien managed a shrug, but winced, sucking in his breath through his teeth. "As much as we can stay away from fog."

"Fiona, stay here. See if you can hide more, and don't come out until we're back." He felt bad, sidelining Fiona, but the monster was shot up worst than any of them, and it was plain to see a gunfight was not where Vrall was at her strongest. If they had to fight in woods, or in tight hallways or something, her webbing and blades would be invaluable. But the large, open hallways and corridors provided no cover, no way for any of them to use their abilities easily. No wonder the hunters were setting up camp in this monster's nightmare.

Jack got down on a knee by the door frame, and peeked his head out to look down the hallway. The darkness was thick, and the light couldn't penetrate far. It wasn't just light though, but sounds. Distant screams echoed from the black, as if from a great distance, like someone crying for help from the depths of a canyon. But the hunters were only maybe a hundred feet away, and he could see tiny white dots in the dark, their flashlights, struggle to find the source of their torture.

"I'll be back... I promise," Damien said.

"... bye," Fiona said.

Jack raised a brow at the man. That was very out of character for the once-assassin. Maybe the man listened to him, and talked to Fiona? He was tempted to look back at Fiona and check her reaction, but he'd barely be able see her if he tried. Better to ask about it later.

He got down on his knees, and crawled once again, pointing his light at the floor, and making sure every motion he did was subtle. It might have been unnecessary. The hunters could barely make sense of their own surroundings, let alone resume the attack on Jack's crew. But Fiona had said something about Athalia, and not moving, so, subtle movements for now.

"Focus! She's out there, somewhere. Keep looking, get your backs together, and keep your lights up!" Angela's voice. Like the others, it was distant and submerged, but it hit with more volume. Woman was not afraid to yell, and make a stand. Something about her was unique, something that made the whole situation of her, fighting monsters and nightmares, almost seem to fit like a puzzle piece. Almost.

Jack forced himself along, taking each baby crawl step nice and slow. Closer, and closer to the next door along the hall, closer to Tash and Noah, closer to getting this group back together. If Athalia didn't kill them all.

The next door was indeed open, and he almost crawled into it, but held up his light instead. If it was him in this darkness, and some shadow poked its head in, he'd be liable to shoot said head.

"Noah? Tash?"

"J-Jack? Oh thank god. W-What's going on? Noah is across the hall." Tash's voice. Relief washed over him. More of his group, still alive.

"I—" An ear-piercing scream sundered his skull, and he fell to his palms. For a moment it was there again, a group of faces, close enough he could see the white of their eyes as they rolled up in their unknown torture. He was too close to the next room, too close to Athalia, and her nightmare scalded his vision with the bleeding faces of the dying. When it passed, he shined his light on Tash where she was hugged to the wall by the door frame. "It's Athalia. She's—"

The door frame of stone exploded. Jack fell down onto his side, and stared up above him at the slice marks that appeared in the stone. Massive slash marks, the sort of marks a werewolf's claws might make. Bigger.

"What the fuck!" Staring at the claw mark that wasn't there a moment before, he gulped at the bits of its rock that fell around him. "Damien, did you—"

Slash marks cut across the floor, next to him. Deep marks, and he rolled away from the sound of stone tearing apart in a split second. Gulping again, he pointed his light at the deep slashes, and drove his feet against the floor to push himself away and into the room.

Fiona said don't move. Why? The massive slash marks could have come from Fiona's Vrall, but—no, they couldn't have, they were way too thick. Whatever made the marks had thick, massive claws. Athalia had thick, massive claws, on her colossal bone hands. Shit. Oh fucking shit.

"Don't move!" he said, as Damien poked his head around the door frame, on his knees as well. "Don't move, don't move a fucking muscle, don't—" Again, the screaming hit him. Hit them. Jack managed to keep his eyes open for a split second, and saw Damien and Tash both freeze. Teeth gnawing, claws tearing, knives twisting, blood splattering, screams echoing. All in his eyes, in his ears, in his head where he couldn't get it out.

And when it was gone, Tash lowered her hands from her eyes. He shined his light down at the floor between them, so they could see each other, and he offered her a small smile. He wanted to roll over, curl into a ball, surrender, and try and block out the images; it wouldn't work, though. Whatever Athalia was doing, it was not something that could be blocked out. Unavoidable. Immutable. Like a nightmare that comes back every night to haunt you. Best he could do was give his friend a small everything-will-be-fine, lying smile.

No one moved a muscle. If the red flashes wouldn't hurt them, then all they had to do was not move a single fucking muscle, and whatever was—another quartet of slashes hit the ground, somewhere between the stone floor, and the gate that exploded earlier. Jack looked in the corner of his eye, and winced at the sight of Damien. The man had crawled forward a few feet, and drew the attention of whatever was happening; the claw marks had hit the stone floor in front of him.

"Wait," Jack said. "Just... just wait... Hold still. Wait until... I don't know, until these flashes are gone." If that would ever happen. The hunters beyond continued to yell, but from the shape of their lights, he could see they were keeping some kind of formation. With the black fog between him and them, they looked like stars against the endless oblivion of space. Now there was a cold thought. "Noah, you there?" He had to speak up, almost yell, for his voice to penetrate the thick blanket of death, but he risked it.

"I am."

Jack turned his head slowly, and only enough to see the other side of the hall through the corner of his eye. Noah's voice sounded almost like a bark, so the man was still transformed. How long werewolves could stay in their titan form, he didn't know, but he got the impression it wasn't forever. Everything felt like it was on a timer. They still had to rescue their friends, and now everything had ground to a halt.

"We're here too," Art said from beside Noah. Good, they were all alive. Things were going better than—

Jack's head jerked up as impact sounds filled the hall. A slash mark appeared on the remains of wood still attached to the door frame of the large gate. And a blur of movement, of bone, of wings, came and went. And then another, against the pillar in the next chamber, the one the hunters were grouped around. Jack couldn't see it, but he could hear it. So could the hunters. Their lights went up, all of them pointing at the pillar, before the little lights started aiming around randomly again.

No more flashes came. Jack gave it a moment, twenty seconds, and he counted them. No more flashes. As the twenty seconds went by, another slash landed against something in the other chamber. And then another, each announced by screams, the hunters still suffering the red hallucinations. By the twentieth second, a third slash hit something, and earned a scream. One of the little stars in the black flew up, and landed on the floor.