My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 08

No, wait, not ropes. Chains. The chains, dangling, swayed gently, occasionally clinking against each other, except the clink sounds were deadened by the sounds of flesh. On the chains, were body parts, attached by meat hooks. Torsos, arms, legs, fresh body parts with skin torn open and bones jammed or tied into the chains, dangled. And as Tash looked closer, she realized the fleshy walls of the chamber had bits of human flesh tied to it, flayed, spread, and hooked to it. Tapestries of skin were stretched taut over metal hooks, latched and secured to the alien flesh of the chamber.

If they hadn't been vampires, the five of them would be vomiting.

The source of the chanting was clear now, too. In the giant chamber, against the back wall, was Elen. She was in her wheelchair, with the respirator machine making sure she had easy access to oxygen. There were a few others standing around, hunters, and they were managing various IV tubes that were... connected to the wall. And it wasn't the hunters doing the chanting, it was the faces on the wall.

Faces. On the walls. Perfect, smooth, pink fleshy faces, all with eyes closed, all with immaculate teeth, and all chanting the alien language. Not Latin, or any other old language Tash might have recognized, but it was definitely a language. But, the language aspect was less interesting than the fact there were a hundred faces on a wall of flesh, singing. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Was it their blood, in the tubes being fed into Elen's veins? Had to be.

There was someone kneeling at Elen's feet. During all this, Elen wasn't simply sitting there. She was leaning forward, with a scalpel in her hand, and she was making marks on a shirtless man's back. A white guy, dark hair buzzed short, average height, with a lean figure of muscle.

Did they walk into a nightmare? Were they inside some chamber of dreams and fear, where the Begotten lived? It was the only possible explanation for the walls of flesh and bone. But, Begotten didn't just randomly open their chambers, connect them to the physical world, for no reason. And as far as she knew from Fiona, Begotten could open and close their chambers into any place where they'd been, but the place also had to share resonance with the chamber. There was no reason to keep a chamber open, when they could open and close it at will.

Which meant, either a Begotten had opened their chamber preemptively, expecting someone to be coming or going, or this wasn't a Begotten's chamber. She dearly wished it was. Walls of bleeding skin, flexing tendons, tightening and relaxing, and enormous muscle fibers surrounded them. It was the stuff of nightmares. The pieces of corpses used to decorate were almost tacky in comparison.

The faces on the walls, in their perfect symmetry, kept their eyes closed, and continued to chant. What Natasha would do to know what they were saying. Just knowing what language they were speaking would have been a tantalizing drop of honey on her intellectual curiosity. And why, why flesh? Why was everything made of flesh?

Wait. One of the hunters. Tash had seen that hunter get cut open by a werewolf, in the nightmare world. If this shaman could heal the hunters, that made everything so much more problematic.

Elen sighed, leaned back, and spent some time rotating her wrist, in pain from the exertion of carving into a man's back. Frail as thin glass. Capturing this woman alive would be difficult.

"Sándor, if you would stop healing so quickly, I wouldn't need to do this so often," she said.

"My apologies, master," the Begotten said.

All five vampires froze, tension drawn tight until it threatened to snap. Not in a chamber, then, if that was Sándor; he'd be in his gargoyle form otherwise. Unless there was a way for a Begotten to remain in their human form when inside nightmares? Maybe, but from what she'd seen from the others, and what they'd said, it seemed to be expected they be in their horror form when in dreamland.

"No matter. We will do this, again, and again, and again, until Azamel is ruined."

"Yes, master."

"And when that day comes, Sándor, you need to pay closer attention. Jeremiah and Angela both nearly died, and if I have to sew them back up again, I'll take it out of your hide."

"Yes, master."

One too many masters. This Begotten was being controlled! Tash managed to poke Triss in the side, and blink several times at her, emphasizing as best she could. The Nos nodded, and mouthed 'controlled' slowly. Ok, good, communication. Tash returned the nod, and frowned as she looked out to the room with dangling, amber crystals. If she could see what Elen was doing to Sándor's back, what she was carving or writing, maybe she'd get some idea about what to do about it.

Or, maybe the five of them should just run in there and kick some ass? There weren't many hunters, and it wasn't like hunters could take a vampire at close range. The undead would win this fight, if there weren't any surprises.

Tash nodded forward, and the five of them pushed out a little more.

They crept forward, everyone low, everyone deathly silent, and moved to a pile of flesh, a mound of it that came out of the red blood like a tumor. It'd be better if they split up, but Tash needed them close if she wanted to make sure they were invisible. And she was getting tired. Vitae, draining more and more with every moment, demanding she replenish it, or at least stop acting like a super hero and keeping a squadron of people invisible.

They were way too deep in this for this to become a problem now. And, with decades of Invictus practice under her belt, she wasn't about to let her discipline break when she needed it most. She grit her teeth, and bore it. They moved in deeper, moving to another pulsating nodule of flesh. Not big enough to hide all of them, Jennifer stayed a bit further back, but still near, finding a big rib bone to stand behind.

This was all so very possibly a trap. Did the vampires find the hunters unawares, or were they hoping to be found? Tash tried to reason through it, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like good luck. There was no way Elen would leave herself this exposed on purpose, or have Sándor in such a compromising position.

Compromising position. Undefended, and unguarded. She could shoot him. She... could shoot him! If she got him in the head, he'd die. Maybe it'd make up for not landing the shot, and killing Angela or Jeremiah when she tried. There were a lot of those weird, dangling amber crystals in the way though, and she was already strained trying to keep everyone wrapped in the Cloak of Night. But, if she could get a little closer, and line up a shot, she could kill him, and put a huge dent in the tools available to these hunters.

Except, watching Sándor kneel there, eyes empty, staring at the bloody floor of skin and muscle he knelt on, it was clear that he was being controlled somehow. His face was a blank slate. Tash had seen faces like that before, whenever Julias mind controlled some kine; or Viktor, on the rare occasion Natasha got to see that. And she couldn't shoot a man who was a slave, a mind-controlled slave.

"Here." One of the faces on the wall opened their eyes. Black eyes, completely black eyes.

"Here." Another one of the faces opened their eyes. Oh no.

"Here!"

"Someone's here."

"Here."

"Here."

Elen started coughing, wheezing, a ragged sound of tearing throat and exhaustion, all caught in the mask she wore. The hunters around her brought up their guns, and started scanning, one of them focusing on removing the tubes and needles from the old woman.

Triss looked back, and groaned, nodding toward the entrance they came from. The pathway closed off, like a constricting ring of muscle. They may as well have been inside a stomach.

Shit.

Sándor got up, leaned his head left and right, earning some loud cracks, and started walking toward them. He may not have been able to transform, but Tash could see the subtle silhouette of the gargantuan gargoyle creature around him.

Double shit.

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

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

~~Eric~~

Three vampires, and one fresh werewolf, in a brawl with six vampires, and one experienced werewolf. Shit.

Caleb came for him again, and Eric sidestepped the punch. He returned it with his own, and unlike Caleb, he knew how to skim the line. Whoever this guy was, he wasn't a professional fighter, and didn't know how to move by inches. His motions were exaggerated, when they didn't need to be. His punches would hurt like hell if they got him, but now that Eric was paying attention to him and only him, it was clear to see the man was not trained. He was, on the other hand, a brawler, a man who'd learned how to fight the hard way. If he managed to land a punch, it was going to hurt, more than Eric's would.

Much as fighters like to say otherwise, there was one undeniable fact about fighting that always made fighters uncomfortable: size mattered. It didn't matter if you were Bruce Lee, you were helpless against a two-hundred and fifty pound brawler. And Caleb did have a few pounds on him, a few inches of reach, and height. He'd be in a higher weight class, if this was a proper fight. Getting hit was to be avoided at all costs.

But, playing by ring rules wasn't required either. And to a professional fighter, there were dozens of dirty tricks they weren't allowed to use, that were suddenly on the menu.

Eric ducked in close, too close to get punched, and with his fists brought in to protect his face, raised his elbow and threw it out in a swing. Crack. The satisfying sensation of elbow bone whacking someone in their head. The dirty play came in when, as Caleb stumbled back, Eric struck out the same arm, grabbed the man's short hair, and yanked downward. Having knocked the man off balance meant a good, quality hair pull drove him into the asphalt. He'd only be on his side for a second, but that was plenty of time for Eric to kick the man in his head, hard enough to half spin him horizontal along the street.

Who knew fighting dirty came so naturally to him. Well, they did come at him with a knife. Fighting fair wasn't in the cards anyway.

The others weren't doing so well. Two of the female vampires had jumped Hella, and they were punching her. Joe and another female vampire were circling Jessy, and Jonah had his back to a wall as the two new male vampires came in closer. The Carthians were all street punks with outdated fashion sense, and it made the whole situation look like a Michael Jackson music video. Just beat it.

Eric reached down, grabbed Debby off of Hella, and threw her. To throw someone, get them airborne, was exhilarating. As a human, he'd never fought someone much lighter than him, and never with this much strength available. Debby was light, and he was a colossus in this form. She flew twenty feet before she started rolling. While she was airborne, Eric sank his heel into Kathy's head, hard enough to send her rolling as well.

These vampires were idiots. Picked a fight at the worse time, and they fought like idiot punks. Their movements were powerful and fast, but predictable, and when the two vampires harassing Jonah turned around to swing at him, it was easy to duck underneath, and nail them both in the chest, a fist for each.

If there was one god damn thing, one thing in this fucking world he was good at, it was a fist fight. These Carthians didn't know that. All the better for him.

One of the vamps he punched crumbled, clutching their chest, at least one broken rib. The other was far more durable. He stood up, glared at Eric, and sneered.

"Sit."

Every ounce of Eric's being, every bit of rage, every bit of frustration and carnage in him wanted to punch this fucker in the face hard enough to collapse it. But, he didn't. He couldn't. As his eyes met this stranger's, a wall crashed into Eric's mind. A steel wall. He couldn't get around it, see through it, stop it, nothing. A wall of total, immutable will smashed into him.

This was a Ventrue, ordering him around.

He almost did sit, too, but Jonah punched the man in the back of the head hard enough to send him careening over. Crack, face to the asphalt. As the ability to think, and move his limbs, came back to him in a rush of glorious freedom, he used it. With a snarl and growl, Eric drove the hard toe of his shoe in the fucker's head, hard enough it jerked to the side fast enough to tear ligaments. Potentially lethal, to a human. A vampire would heal, eventually.

Joe and his friend had jumped Jessy, and had started punching her back and forth. That was strange. Jessy was stronger than this Joe, Eric's instincts could see that, and the woman with Joe seemed only as strong as him. Two on one, but Jessy could have fought back, if she went psycho like she did on the monster gargoyle thing. She was holding back.

He came up behind Joe, growling, and kicked the man in the back. Joe went with the motion, falling forward, but tucking into a roll. Maybe the man was more dangerous than he let on.

Jessy turned her attention to Joe's friend, and jumped her, punching, grabbing, slamming. Perfect time for Eric to deal with this Joe fucker, and—

A shoulder smashed into Eric's back. Flashbacks of high school football, except, without the shoulder pad. Eric went down, hands slamming into the street and skin tearing against the asphalt and small rocks. Ow. Groaning, Eric looked at his palms and the trail of blood they'd made a couple feet on the street, before he turned over his shoulder to growl at the man. This fight was pointless, and they were all wasting time while simultaneously exposing themselves to interference. But, fuck it.

Eric tried to turn over completely, but Caleb was on him; except the man obviously didn't know shit about grappling. Getting his arm was easy. Getting a leg around his neck, and the other around his waist, almost as easy. Eric pinned the man's hand to Eric's chest, and twisted as he locked the man in an arm bar. And unless Caleb wanted his shoulder to dislocate, or elbow to bend ninety degrees in the wrong direction, he had no choice but to move with the grapple. A second later, he was on his back on the street, perpendicular to Eric, his torso underneath Eric's legs, and his arm up along Eric's waist and chest where Eric held it locked.

Of all the martial arts in the world, there were only two he ever worried about. Boxing, and Jiu Jitsu. So of course, those were the two he learned.

"We didn't come here looking for a fight!" Eric yelled, while giving his body enough of an arch to earn a groan of pain from the pinned man. It wouldn't take much to destroy his arm, and sure, the man would heal from it, but that didn't change that getting an elbow bent in the wrong direction was a horrible feeling.

Caleb snarled at him, and tried to sit up. Eric wasn't having it. Didn't the fucker know anything about fighting? Eric locked his grip like steel on the man's forearm and wrist, and arched his back again, forcing his abs up into the man's elbow.

"Fuck you," Caleb said. "You're just young blood, overstepping your boundaries. A pup like you is going to get people hurt in your ignorance."

"Because I fucking talked to a spirit?"

"Because you fucking talked to a spirit. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it'll happen."

"I'm willing to talk to Avery, you stupid fuck. Been kind of busy lately, and—" The tap tap of a sprinting set of sneakers forced his attention back to the Kindred he'd taken out in his drive-by. Eric let go of Caleb's arm, and rolled away, crunching over his shoulder and the back of his neck as he rolled backward. Minor damage caused by his weight, and it healed almost instantly as he got back to his feet.

Caleb, still on the ground, grabbed his ankle, and threw him.

Getting thrown was an interesting sensation. For the first moment, his stomach hit the wall of his insides, giving him that roller coaster sensation. Once it caught up to him, he found his bearings enough to realize he was actually flying through the air like a Frisbee, far enough that he'd probably go thirty feet before landing. Problem: he was flying toward a building. With the spinning and the speed of it all, the best Eric could do was pull in his limbs, and prey for a minimal amount of cuts, as he slammed into a window.

It shattered around him, and the downward momentum gravity grabbed him with meant a few more points of the sharp glass cut into his skin than he'd like. Worse was the way the inside of the building greeted him with a lovely, hard slap of tile to the ass. And bouncing, especially in his new, heavier body, was not fun either. Also not fun, was how a set of metal stairs stopped him, his back slamming into it, butt to the floor. Each step was a hard edge punching him in his spine, and he yelled pain as white fire danced up and down his back.

Groaning, he got up, one hand reaching for the stairway railing beside him, other against the wall. Where was he? No signs inside, but it was some sort of office building, with short cubicles and computers within, office chairs, desks covered in random crap, and a high ceiling with warehouse metal bars above. Some company had re-purposed an old warehouse into an office building then.

No one else was inside the building, no noises or fresh scents were present. The stairs beside him led up to an overhang room, where a manager probably watched his workers from the window during the day. Ugh.

Debby and Kathy were the first to jump into the room after him, snarling and growling, like small monsters. Kathy still had her knife, as well. He supposed he should have been happy it wasn't silver.

"What will it take for you to back off?" he said, slowly backing up as they approached.

Kathy returned his snarls, and passed a knife from hand to hand. "You're an Invictus lapdog, literally. So, we'll back off, when we've taught you a lesson. You don't work for them, you stop working for them, and you never work for them."

Debby nodded, and grinned as she rotated her shoulder. "And of course, since you're fucking that bitch Jessy, we know we're going to have to pound some sense into you."

He backed up again, back pressing to one of the short cubicle walls. They thought he was retreating. He was setting up his spacing.

Kathy came at him with the knife again, relying on her inhuman speed. Fast. He sidestepped, and her knife grazed along his chest as it slipped by. Her speed was used to cover a few feet, but he only had to move six inches to the side with a twist to keep from getting stabbed, stopping on the outside of her arm. And from there, it was easy to grab her wrist with one hand, and slam his palm into the elbow with the other. Quick, sudden movements, with impact.

He remembered a story once, about training by punching rain drops. Power, speed, direct, instant, stable. These Carthians didn't know how to fight like that, but he did, and he growled at the woman as he destroyed her elbow, bending it ninety degrees the wrong way. Before she could fall, he kicked down at her knee from the side, and with his new strength, it was easy to cave it in, dislocating the knee cap and tearing ligaments in the joint. She fell, howling, screaming, and roaring.

He had to give it to her, she didn't let pain break her. If she was strong enough to heal the damage, she'd be at him again without hesitation. But, if she was a Mekhet like he figured, she wouldn't be healing that—

Debby tackled him. It was laughable how small she was compared to him, especially now, but she anchored herself to the ground, and tackled upward. Vampire legs pushed her up into him like a freight train, and he rose ten feet in the high-ceiling building, before he crashed down on the tile floor. She full mounted him, and started punching, hammering her fists down. But without momentum to give her inertia, she was too light to keep the position, and he landed a single punch in her shoulder at the side to force her sideways off of him.