My Little Ventrue Pt. 05 Ch. 18

She laughed, shrugged, and tapped on his arm. Mistake. The gentle impact nudged against his wrist, and he groaned.

"Ah, shit, sorry. Um, well, Jacob's not so bad once you get to know him. He likes to keep Invictus at arm's length though, cause, you know."

"Indeed."

"Don't be like that," Jen said, walking over to him and nudging up against his other side. "Really, you can trust the man more than you think you can."

Triss raised a hand. "But not completely."

"No no, not completely. That'd be a mistake, and Jacob wouldn't want that. But you can trust him with Jack's life, sure."

"But... maybe not the Uratha's. Jack took some on this trip, right? I don't know about them. Boss might leave them to die." Jacob did absolutely hate them, for their meddling, their entitlement, and their involvement in Minerva's death. It was hard to say if Jacob was able to make smart choices when they were involved.

Hopefully their involvement wouldn't affect Jacob's rescue mission.

"Come on, Jen," she said as she walked back to the bowl. "We're supposed to be a tether."

"He never did explain how that works."

Shrugging, Triss held her hands over the bowl, and concentrated her effort and will into the area. Jacob said if they concentrated their vitae into their fingers, and kept it over the bowl, it'd work. Why'd he need a tether, if he had Julias's blood to guide him? She didn't understand, didn't know how, but knew how to do what he wanted. Yeah, it made no sense, but these days, nothing did.

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~~Natasha~~

Jack spun in place. His gun flew out of his hand, and his phone did too. Its light twirled as the phone spun repeatedly, streaks of light cutting across the chamber of madness, as werewolves struggled to handle the hunters surrounding them. Everyone froze when Jack went down, and the two vampires gasped at the sight of the boy's head exploding.

No, not exploding, thank god. But for a moment, the side of his skull was gone, and Tash felt every muscle in her body clench as she brought her hands to her lips. The bullet had hit his eye, against side of the socket along his temple, and cut through the bone along his ear. Through the fires flickering in front of her, all she could do was watch as the boy collapsed backward, turning to land on his stomach. He touched the wound, body shaking, and bits of blood dripping from the wound before fading into ash.

Since Athalia's strange shadow fog had dissipated, the fire that Angela had renewed was taking its sweet time burning away, leaving her and Damien stranded. She could jump over it, if her leg was working. Damien could jump over it, if he didn't look like he'd been shot a dozen times, considering the bandages on his body. But she had to get over there, had to save Jack, had to save Art and Matt and even Noah and Athalia. Had to save Fiona. Had to save Eric, and Clara, and Jessy! Had to do something.

"Sorry about that, Angela. Sándor and I had a bit of trouble with these three, and I'm guessing you had trouble, too?" An older man stepped out of the darkness, pistol in hand, other arm dangling weakly at his side. Blood. As he came in closer, the old man looked at the prostrated skeleton creature, then Jack, and chuckled as he held out a hand to Angela.

"... yeah. Athalia kamikazed." She took the man's hand, and dragged herself over to get her pistol.

The man had to be Jeremiah. But—oh god. Tash stepped back, as something stepped out of the blackness, something tall, something that earned the thud thud of a giant's footsteps. Its horns came first, topped upon an almost human, but not quite human head of colossal size; no, its whole body was colossal. And it had four arms. Four wings! Some sort of gargoyle monster, something that walked on raptor talons, and leaned forward, counter balanced by a tail.

Three bodies dangled in its hands. His hands. Jessy, Eric, and Clara. Clara and Eric looked like hell, and they were in their human bodies, dripping small drops of blood as the beast moved in closer to the others. From the way they dangled, they looked unconscious.

Four hunters walked around the monster's legs, and they looked beat to hell, too. Soon-to-be bruises covered their bodies, and gashes, patched up but otherwise a serious problem for kine. They limped and dragged, but remained at arms, guns held and ready to shoot. It was more than enough to bring the wounded and exhausted three werewolves near Jack and Athalia to a stand still.

"We lose anyone?" Jeremiah said.

"A few, yeah. Athalia killed a couple, and these fuckers hurt Jackson enough to kill him." She nodded her way to a man by the pillar, slouched, and not responding. Blood was pooling around him.

"And the paranormals?"

"None dead. Two vamps right there." Angela pointed to her and Damien. Oh no. "Three more dogs here. And Mom's little friend is down in one of the rooms, bleeding out. We should go check and kill her."

"That we should." Jeremiah walked over to the flamethrower, and sighed as he picked it up. Damaged. He set it back down, and looked across the flames to the two vampires. "I'm not in Dolareido for you blood suckers. I'm here for Azamel, and the rest of her kind, true monsters. Bring the spider woman here, and you get to live."

"W-What?" Tash said. "... n-no, we—"

Damien leaped. Tash jerked, and snapped her head to the side as the man jumped over the flames. No way his body could handle that, but he did it anyway, sword up and ready to slash.

His impulse earned him another bullet to the chest. Jeremiah raised and drew his pistol with the speed of a professional duelist, a subtle and quick movement that wasted no motion, hip firing. The pistol he had was something high caliber, and it slammed into Damien's chest the moment the man had left the ground, putting a stop to his forward motion so he fell back to the ground beside Natasha.

"Is the spider woman a hot spot for you, boy?" Jeremiah said.

Tash shook her head. "She... y-you can't, she..." There were no words she could say to this psychopath. The look in his eyes was one of zero empathy, as if someone had ripped that part of him out with bloody claws. It was the sort of look she expected Jacob to have, if the man had eyes of his own.

"Fuck... you," Damien said.

"Hot spot it is. Isn't that cute." Shrugging, Jeremiah walked toward the werewolves. Each of them had four hunters around them now, guns pointed at their huge bodies. The beasts struggled to stay standing, and both Art and Matt had blood leaking from their chops; their own blood, mixed with the blood of hunters they managed to bite earlier. Many of said hunters were the ones holding guns to the werewolves, and they did not look pleased. How they were standing, Tash couldn't fathom, but these hunters had the resilience of ghouls, without a ghoul's extreme healing or strength.

"Now, this little punk here lied to me." Glaring at the Uratha, Jeremiah stopped beside Jack, who was still on his hands and knees, trembling. Jeremiah slowly, almost gently, put his boot on the boy's back, and pushed down, until Jack gave in and collapsed to the floor. "He mentioned someone named Avery, and when I asked him about it, he lied about who it was. I only found out later from Elen about the werewolves. Took some digging to find out about Avery."

The bastard pulled his foot back, and kicked Jack in the side, hard. Poor boy was knocked onto his side, trembling, cradling his face and trying to stop Jeremiah from kicking him again. No luck. Jeremiah kicked him again, and again, as if getting revenge for what Jack just did to Angela. Angela was beat up, and had had a gun pointed at her; he must have assumed, and assumed correctly.

"All of you, you're all going to surrender, immediately. I can make use of each of you, and if you play nice, some of you will get to live."

Matthew snarled. "Some? You—"

Jeremiah hip fired once again, and the bullet slammed into Matt's leg, sending him down onto his knees with a howl. Oh no.

"P-Please, don't," she said.

"Please don't?" The man looked her way and laughed, and with only a quick glance, fired at the two remaining, standing werewolves. The bullets slammed into their legs as well, and each went down, growling and grunting as their palms caught the stone floor. "You're our prisoners, monsters. You have no rights, and you don't get to beg. Do what we say, and if I'm feeling charitable, I'll let some of you live. But be under no illusions, you're nothing but pests, and we're exterminators. Only reason some of you might get to live is we're after—"

The world split apart.

Everyone turned, and looked at the cut through the universe. A seam, like someone had taken a sword and sliced through the fabric of space. Tash knew her brain was having trouble interpreting it, like an illusion, one made to defy the eyes and make them see something incorrectly, messing with depth perception and colors. But something had cut its way through the air, and was reaching out through it.

The seam began to bleed black. Tash froze to the point her body ached, muscles clenching, eyes stuck on the sight of air bleeding. Air didn't bleed, but it was. As if the universe could bleed, as if someone had cut through its skin, infected skin rotting with black ooze. And someone stepped out of it.

"J-Jacob?" she said. Everyone was silent, and her voice was loud enough for all of them to hear.

Dripping of black ooze, and yet with his dark robes and hair still looking dry, Jacob smiled at the group of insanity before him. The bandage that covered his eyes looked dry too, gray and worn like it always was, as if it was decades old. There was blood on him, dried and crusted, but whatever the ooze was, it fell off of his body like it wasn't real.

"How the fuck did you get in here?" Angela said.

"How indeed." Laughing, Jacob spread out his arms, and with him, spread the tear in the universe. Unlike Jack, Jacob didn't hesitate.

Everyone jumped back as the black liquid gushed out of the hole. Like water rapids, the blackness raged from the tear, and washed over the stone floor around the group of hunters, werewolves, and everyone else. The fire, already dying, disappeared beneath waves of black, as did the wood remains of the giant door, the stone floor, and all the fallen things. Guns, lights, the bodies, Jack, everything disappeared under the black waves.

Leave it to Jacob to have the perfect opportunity to monologue, and instead, laugh. Laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Defying expectations at every turn. Tash glared at the man, and the man offered her a tiny wave, as he let the gushing water pour around him. It didn't hit him, despite how fast it was rushing from the tear, as if the black liquid was sentient and avoiding him. Maybe it was. Maybe—hands, there were hands in the water! Black hands. Dozens of them. They poked up from the water, exposing scrawny wrists and skin so thin the tendons were defined, before they disappeared beneath the surface of the raging stream.

Raging whirlpool, more like it. As the insane amount of liquid gushed into the chamber, it defied every law of physics Tash could imagine. The water rose quickly, faster than the vertical geyser created, and dozens upon dozens of the strange, black hands reached out from the ooze to grab onto varying things, varying people.

But the fire was out, and that was good enough to get moving. If this was Jacob's rescue attempt, it was a good one, because every single hunter, and the four-armed monster, were struck dumb. It was entire seconds before they responded, all of them raising their guns, and firing upon the elder. As much as Jacob was easily one of the most powerful Kindred Tash could imagine still alive in the present day, a few hundred bullets traveling faster than sound, slamming into him over a whole two seconds, would turn him into pulp.

The water erupted. It shot upward from around Jacob, and only a subtle silhouette of the man remained as he disappeared into the black abyss. The force of it sent waves ten feet high, well above the already two-feet deep current, and the hunters screamed as it slammed into them. Even the werewolves, massive as they were, let out yelps of surprise as the dark ooze smashed into them, and sent them under. More than under, but pulled under, as the dozens of onyx hands, with their dripping fingers, reached up over the waves, and pulled the beasts into the black.

She reached down, and yanked Damien up onto his feet. The man groaned as he leaned on her, but he hadn't dropped his sword either. If anything, he was clenching it tight, ready to fight, despite the new hole that had been put into his chest. The bullet looked like it slammed into his sternum, through it, and was probably lodged in the organs inside him.

"Come on," she said. "Let's—"

A roar cut through the maelstrom of noise the black rapids made, and Tash stared at the colossal gargoyle as it struggled against the arms grabbing it. They were tiny, so very tiny compared to its immense size, but there were dozens of them grabbing at its legs, and trying to topple it. With its four wings folded snug to its back, it still had four hands to fight off the assaulting limbs, but three of them were full. Big as it was, holding a whole person in each palm was a large task, and eventually, the monster was forced to let them go, all three of its hostages falling into the black.

"No!" Jeremiah's voice. He unloaded bullets at the geyser, but as far as Tash could tell, it was an endless void of black liquid, ready to accept each bullet as the meaningless hunk of metal it was. Jacob had vanished, and the alien entity was making short work of the chaos Jack and his crew had been unable to handle.

Athalia was lost to the liquid. All three Uratha were gone. The tide raged, and slammed against Tash's and Damien's legs, and the black hands came for them too. They took their time though, more concerned with the other chamber, and dealing with the hunters struggling, twisting, squirming, and kicking at them. One hunter went under, screaming. Another did as well, but they slashed and kicked and fought, and broke free, before reaching down to grab and free any fallen brethren from the black.

The hands weren't trying to pull the hunters under, not the same way they were trying to grab the werewolves. The strange, alien hands buried and pulled the enormous, unmoving skeleton monster into the black. They had long ago quickly pulled the injured, prone Jack into their depths. They grabbed the falling Jessy, Clara, and Eric, and pulled them beneath the raging surface of the dark ocean, where they disappeared. But the hunters, they fought against the unending ocean of hands, and began firing at the ghostly limbs.

Bullets worked. The hands shattered, tearing apart, and exposed strange liquids within. Black wasn't a good enough word to describe the liquid void, so dark it confused her eyes all the more.

"F... Fiona." Groaning like a dying man, Damien pushed himself off of Tash's shoulder, and started wading through the water in Fiona's direction.

What had happened to that man? She suspected those two were interested in each other, but it was strange to see Damien go from cold and detached about everything and anyone, to suddenly risking his life to save her, and going back for her too. She almost wanted to go with him, but she had to watch, to see what happened, to look for an opportunity, as the hunters fought against the raging waters. Hands reached up through the black around her, but she didn't resist them; no point. Whatever it was, whatever they were, it was from Jacob, and the man was going to help them. Probably. Hopefully.

An explosion of water erupted in front of the gargoyle monster, and it jumped back. It was such a massive entity, all its movements seemed a bit slow; it was the difference in size, not because it was actually slow. But either way, it was not fast enough to escape Jacob erupting from the dark waves. Like a shark attacking prey from beneath, the old Nosferatu threw himself at the gargoyle's neck, going for the kill.

To see Jacob punch a giant gargoyle in the mouth, and send the creature toppling over, was strange. It was like a scene from a comic book. Maybe that's what the old Nosferatu was aiming for, for something ridiculous, over the top, and all-around unnecessary. But whatever his goal with theatrics, it worked. He punched the twelve-foot-tall gargoyle beast of Goliath proportions in the chin, and sent it falling back. Jacob must have weighed only one twentieth of what the gargoyle did, and his strength ultimately sent himself flying back and away from his target after the punch. Like a gymnast, Jacob backflipped several times before landing on his feet in the waist-deep water. The black ooze was rising.

The gargoyle fell back, massive weight slamming into the dark ocean waiting for it, and onto dozens of black hands. Many shattered, snapping apart like bone and flesh should, before disappearing into the ooze. Others reached out and up, grabbing onto the beast's struggling limbs. They couldn't pin it down, and it thrashed against the hands, breaking more and more of them as it rolled back onto its knees.

The hunters were all standing again, the ones that were still alive, and each of them was firing at the oncoming hands. As the strange, dark limbs tore apart under a hail of bullets, the hunters backed up toward where Jeremiah had originally come from. They formed a line, those with pistols holding one of their wounded on a shoulder, and those with shotguns or rifles standing in front of them, all of them backing up. It was like watching military, or special forces. The synchronization, hand gestures mixed to signal movements and intentions, and a mix of fear and fearlessness.

No vampire in Dolareido had this sort of training.

"Come on!" Jeremiah, pistol in one hand, other hand dangling at his side with a bleeding shoulder, started to back up as well. Angela had found her pistol at some point, and draped her weight over Jeremiah's shoulders with one of her arms, while the other continued to shoot at the hands.

Now, go now! They're both distracted and slowed! Go!

Tash raised her pistol, and began to fire. But the ocean of black crashed against her legs, and the hands grabbed and pulled at her.

"No! Stop! Let m-me shoot!"

The hands, the water, the strange, black ooze didn't hear her. Or didn't care. The hands grabbed, yanked, and pulled her down, and she kept firing at Jeremiah and Angela as best as she could. She wouldn't hesitate and lose this opportunity like Jack did, Athalia be damned.

One bullet hit Jeremiah in his leg, another hit his shoulder, and another hit Angela in her shoulder too. But she couldn't get them in the neck, the head, anywhere that meant death! She tried again, and again, but the flowing water slammed into her harder, and buried her, soaking her in the strange, not-wet liquid, and blocking her vision as the hands pulled her into the depths below.

She forced her head above the surface long enough to hear Jeremiah say something.

"Elen, crash it!"

An explosion of white filled the chamber, and slammed down against the pillars, the walls, the hunters, the everything. What darkness was brought by Jacob was lost inside the overwhelming onyx that swam over them all. Black, on black, on black. Silhouettes of movement against the churning oblivion. And the sensation of being ripped out of the universe.

All was silent.

The hands pulled her under, deeper, into an endless black. The floor was no longer solid. The stones stopped blocking gravity's will. The eternal void beneath her welcomed her with a silence and numbness, all sound and feeling gone as its black tendrils filled everything.

And then she was floating. Blackness everywhere, nothing but blackness. No, there was something moving, but it was black on black, and trying to see the details had her straining her eyes.