My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 09

A silhouette of an enormous wing snapped out, blocked Othello's path, and slammed outward toward him. Half wind, half blurry darkness, it crashed into Othello's body and sent him flying through the air, hitting the dangling chains, body parts, and the metal and hooks.

Aaron should have taken a second to reevaluate. He didn't. Growling, the man stood up, and charged at Sándor, spikes erupting from his body as he closed the distance. Tash had seen this transformation before, in powerful Gangrel. Jessy did this transformation, a grotesque mess of muscle and bone. It was as if an alien creature had erupted from inside Aaron, and decided it should have spikes on the shoulders and back and head and elbows and knees and knuckles, and leathery skin to go with.

"Get out!" Elen said. Natasha peeked out again to see the old woman behind one of the tumorous mounds of flesh, in her wheelchair, a scalpel in her hand. It almost glowed with how it caught the amber light.

Othello laughed as he pushed himself up from the bloody floor of flesh. "We can't. You closed the door!"

"Guess we found you with your pants down," Beatrice said, poking her head out again. Tash did too, and groaned as two hunters took Sándor's left side, and another two took his right. A wall between the vampires and their target.

"You are not welcome here!" Her shrieks sounded less human, more banshee-like, as she grew more irritated. It sounded like Beatrice guessed it right; caught with her pants down.

Except, pants down or not, the vampires were now trapped in a room with four hunters, a Begotten, and an old woman with a deceiving amount of power. Maybe they could cut their way out, if they had to; and they might have to. Sándor had been an overpowering presence in the nightmare, and she had no idea if that translated to the physical world.

This chamber of flesh and blood was the physical world. How was that possible? Think think think. The sacrifices, those had been focused on a single thing: the human body. Organs, tendons, sinew, muscle and blood, whatever it was Elen did to do her magic was based around that. What kind of magic was based on that? Not even Crúac was so debased, so disgusting and horrible. Not that she was an expert; she knew almost nothing. But as far as she knew, Crúac was some sort of blood magic for vampires that used vitae, and it was often brutal and grotesque, but not always.

If someone could do magic-y things with vampire blood, and the vitae it contained, could someone do the same with human blood? Why did they sacrifice kine in other locations though? If Daniel found the other locations, maybe whatever it was that they did, was something the sheriff could track.

That made her frown. Kine were for feeding on, not for butchering, especially not for lunacy like this. A strange feeling, one she'd never really felt before, getting possessive over their flock. The Prince would have been proud.

She poked up over the mound, and started shooting. The hunters had been mostly behind cover, staying close to Sándor but keeping some flesh or bone things between her and them. But their heads or hands were poking out, and those were good enough targets to shoot at. She grinned as one of the hunters yelped, when she landed a bullet against his gun. It'd have been better if she shot his finger, but hitting the gun was better than nothing.

She changed targets to the shirtless man, Sándor. He was a Begotten, and Begotten were tough when in the nightmare. But out here, in the physical world? She pointed her gun, and aimed for his knees.

The man knelt down on one knee, and brought his arm around over his chest to place his knuckles to the bloody floor of flesh. A shimmer of blackness covered him, and the wing of the gargoyle appeared for a split second to catch the bullets. Shit. He stood back up, glared at her, and started walking for her.

Aaron ran past him. The monster reached out for him, but Aaron slipped under his arm, and sprinted toward the hunters. More and more spikes covered him, erupting from bones in strange ways, until Aaron didn't look human anymore. He fell to his hands, and jumped up onto the chains. Oh, gross. His claws tore into the body parts that were strewn about the chains on meat hooks, and he swung from chain to chain as the hunters raised their weapons to him. They unleashed a hailstorm of bullets, and the chains clinked furiously, sparks flying, as well as chunks of meat, as the bullets collided with the hell scene.

Othello got up, and darted in, coming for Sándor. With the Begotten looking up at the monkey Aaron, Othello had a second to get in closer, and pull back a fist. Growling, Sándor jumped back, but Othello was on him in seconds, and he pounced him. Anyone would have fallen over with the impact and weight of Othello, but Sándor remained standing, apparently far heavier than he looked.

The silhouette of the man's wings snapped out once more, and he stepped forward, hands connected with Othello's, the two of them locked in a battle of strength. And Sándor was winning.

Triss vanished. Natasha looked around, and gulped as she watched the foot puddles the invisible Nosferatu made as she ran into the chaos. The hunters caught on quick though, and as Beatrice leapt around, splashes following her, two of the hunters changed their target to her.

Not two, just one hunter. Jen had gotten closer in the chaos, and when she peeked out from behind another rib bone, one of the hunters looked at her.

"Lower your weapon," Jen said, confident, insidious grin on her face.

The hunter froze. He had an opportunity to shoot Jen, but he didn't. He stared at her, arms trembling, fingers fighting to keep a grip on his gun, head twitching. A mistake, to look her in the eye. But it was dangerous for Jen too, standing there, staring at the man, herself exposed as well.

When the other hunter turned to face Jen, raising his gun, Beatrice reappeared, and swung her claws down at her. The hunter jumped back, and rolled backward, soaking herself in blood as she came to her knees. Holy shit these hunters were good.

The other two turned to face Beatrice, putting their back to Natasha. Tash stood up, aimed, and sank two bullets into one of the hunter's back. The woman cried out as she stumbled with the impact before falling. And then she got back up, turning onto her back, a blood puddle half covering her body, as she started shooting at Natasha. Kevlar armor under her jacket, probably. A bullet whipped past Tash's head, and she ducked back down behind her flesh mound cover.

This was the weirdest fire fight, in the history of fire fights.

She peeked over again to see Beatrice grappling with two of the hunters. She was super strong, being a Nosferatu, but these hunters were brutally efficient, and they grabbed her and used her light weight against her, lifting her so she couldn't anchor and throw or tear. Aaron jumped down from the chains, and Tash thought for sure he was going to help Triss, but he ran for Othello instead.

In the insanity, Natasha had stopped watching Othello. He was fighting the Begotten one on one, and he was losing. The two were still locked, fingers and palms together, squeezing, but Othello had fallen to his knees, and his head was hanging between his arms. How the hell was Othello losing a fight of strength?

Aaron jumped the Begotten's face, and started slicing. Sándor let go of Othello's hands and jumped away, before he thrust his palm out, and the shadowy silhouette of the colossal creature slammed a wing into the Gangrel. Aaron went flying, knocking into chains and the body parts hooked on them, but he managed to land on his feet.

Everyone was too busy to really care that the wall of faces was chanting again. They'd closed their eyes, and Elen wheeled herself away to put her back into a groove at the base of flesh wall. There, she started to repeat the chant the faces on the wall were saying. Her wheelchair looked less like a wheelchair, and more like a proper throne, with how it sat underneath and between a host of visages.

Arms, sickly gaunt and pale, oozed out of the fleshy wall between the faces, and began to encircle Elen. A wall of meat and bone. Either this flesh room thing was sentient, or Elen had summoned them. Gross gross gross.

Beatrice continued to wrestle with the hunters, while Natasha shot a few more times at them. But they did a better job staying in cover this time, and when Beatrice jumped toward their cover, they unloaded two dozen shots her way. Bullets ripped into her and pushed her back, enough of them cutting through her flesh to reverse the momentum.

Oh no. This was going badly quickly. It would have been easy to handle, if Sándor wasn't proving ridiculously strong. Beatrice was forced to fight three hunters, while Jennifer kept one of them frozen, occupied. Unfortunately for the Ventrue, she was too young to rip the man's will away completely; hunters had far too much resolve, and Jen wasn't Jack.

Ok, think fast think fast. She poked her head out, and started shooting again, forcing the hunters to stay behind cover as Beatrice dragged herself behind some cover as well. Sándor remained in the open, and as Othello and Aaron both jumped the man again, the beautiful man slapped them both down with the wing silhouette, slamming them into the shallow blood of the fleshy floor, and causing it to splash everywhere. Everyone was coated in it, and with how it was crashing and slathering everything in red, a little got into Natasha's mouth.

It tasted human.

"Release the B-Begotten, Elen!" Natasha said. Might as well delay the chaos a little, until she figured out what she could do.

One of the hunters cursed, loudly, and started shooting at her. "Fuck you! We're fighting fire with fire, you filthy monster."

Natasha rolled her eyes as she slapped in another magazine. To Kindred, and probably every other paranormal, that was some terribly cheesy dialogue. She poked her head out again, and squinted as she scanned the room, looking for the three hunters. Still where they were, but Tash could see they were concerned about Beatrice sneaking up on them again, or one of the boys running for them, or Natasha shooting them if they got caught out. If only Sándor wasn't there, ruining everything, this would have been easy.

Triss got back up, and vanished again. The hunters started firing at the splashes in the blood her feet made, but stopped a few seconds later, as the splashes came in close to Sándor.

"Sand, look out!" one of them yelled. But the Begotten was too busy fending off Othello and Aaron to do anything, as the invisible woman rushed for him.

Her invisibility ceased as she jumped Sándor's face, her claws on his chest. Gunfire tore Natasha's eyes away from the mess of vampires digging into the monster, as one of the hunters started firing. She expected to see one of the Kindred getting shot, but instead, the hunter Jennifer had Dominated was shooting at the other hunters. The hunters panicked and spread out, throwing themselves to different points of cover as their friend fired wildly.

The hunter Jen controlled fought to free himself, eyes glaring, jaw clenched, gun hand shaking. But, somehow, she'd managed to get enough control of him to prevent his escape. Impressive.

"Wake up!" Beatrice said. Tash snapped her vision back to the three Kindred, and winced at the sight of them bringing the Begotten to his knees. Triss was tearing at the man's back, trying to destroy whatever symbol it was Elen had carved there.

"No!" The old shaman in the back shouted, hidden behind her wall of curling arms and layered fingers.

Blood flowed into the grand chamber with all the grace of a typhoon. It came from beneath, from around, from above, surging and crashing against the walls and flesh tumors and chains alike. Geysers bulbed up from the flesh underneath them, and bloodfalls fell upon them. It shot out from torn holes in the walls like gunshots out of a tsunami, and one slammed into Natasha hard enough to send her flying into the back wall.

She kept hold of both her weapons, though. Progress over last time an explosive force had hit her.

Blood flowed over them, crashing, splashing, churning. As if someone had broken a dam, it swirled with chaos as walls of red turned the world into a whirlpool. Any attempt to get her bearings, any attempt to grab onto the giant bone ribs that filled the room, was pointless. She screamed into the torrent of crimson as her body was thrown into the chains. Body parts with hooks sticking out of them caught her, tore into her, ripped a few inches into her, but didn't hook her.

She dared not open her eyes. It wasn't red water, it was blood. It was thick and overpowering, and a part of her wanted to drink it down in the madness, but she had no idea what would happen if she did that. Worse, she could feel it getting into her wounds. As the crashing waves ripped her up and tore up her clothes, she had to wonder if the hunters and Sándor were going through the same thing. It didn't seem like it, from the little she managed to see when her head broke over the waves. The hunters were by Elen, where the blood did not touch.

Sándor, on the other hand, had managed to grab hold of one of the dangling chains, and was weathering the raging waters with all tenacity of a colossal boulder. It crashed against him, but he did not give into the heavy liquid. Tash stayed curled up as a ball, knowing full well if she stuck her arms or legs out, they'd snap in the liquid insanity.

And then they got sucked out. She choked on a bit of the strange blood as the new momentum pulled her stomach up into her throat. Her back hit something soft, then hard, as she bounced around a smaller area, the tunnel they'd come in from. Like a ball bouncing around in an arcade machine, she ricocheted over and over, body hitting bone and flesh of the snake-like entrance tunnel, until she landed on her back on something much harder than bone.

The concrete of the basement greeted her, and she coughed and sputtered up blood as she lay there, staring at the dark ceiling for a moment. Once reality set in, she sat up quick and looked around; no sword, and no pistol. Damn it, dam—oh! She scooped through the blood, picked them up, and sighed as she put them away.

She groaned as she forced herself up onto her feet, and glared at the tunnel entrance. Blood flowed out of it, and so did Beatrice, Othello, Jennifer, and Aaron. Once they were in the basement with her, a foot of blood around them, the tunnel of flesh closed itself. She stared at the flesh, and walked up to it as it started to turn darker, and darker, until it blocked off the amber light completely. She touched it, and sighed as her fingers found concrete, the same concrete of the rest of the basement wall.

Absolute blackness. She used her Auspex, and her unique quirk to see in darkness, and gasped as a white circle, something drawn with chalk or something, appeared. They'd drawn some sort of summoning circle, and—wait, this was the same circle they found at the ritual sacrifice sights. It wasn't a summoning circle, it was a traveling circle! Traveling to... some sort of... weird flesh chamber thing. Gross, so gross.

She looked down at herself, and then the witches. They were all soaked. She'd hoped that, once outside the strange chamber, the blood would go away, but it did no such thing. It was real blood.

"Natasha."

She squealed and turned around. A light flashed, and she raised a hand to block it before it incinerated her eyes.

"S... Sire?" She sighed relief as Daniel stepped down the last few stairs, except stopping before the final two. Keeping his shoes above the blood, no doubt.

"I see that you've encountered something suspicious." He gestured to the blood, and the four witches sitting in it.

Beatrice laughed and stood up. "You could say that." Groaning, she tried to wipe the blood off, but it soaked and coated everything. "You boys ok?" she said to Aaron and Othello.

Othello nodded and stood up. Tash tried not to stare, but, the man did have an obnoxiously sexy look to him with his dreadlocks, and all the blood dripping down his tan skin. Yum. Aaron, on the other hand, was still covered in all the strange mutations and protrusions Gangrel grew when they wanted to fight; or at least, the powerful Gangrels. It was haunting.

Sighing, the boys climbed to their feet, before Aaron reached out to help up Jen. As he did, the spikes disappeared, along with the grotesque leathery skin, and the deformed facial features that had him halfway to some sort of dragon monster thing. It didn't bother Jen though, and she took his hand with a quiet slap of wet palms. She got up, and groaned as she adjusted her now only half-on bra, still shown blatant since she kept her shirt unbuttoned.

"I'd offer a cloth," Daniel said, "but I feel it'd be pointless." The five vampires looked at him, and laughed. "Report?"

Natasha nodded as she took off her jacket, and began to wring it out. "W-We found Elen, and Sándor. Elen seems t-to be able to use some kind of... flesh... magic? Whatever it was, it w-was alive, in a way. And she could-d-d control it. It was a chamber of flesh, and body parts and... and—"

"And," Daniel interrupted, "is connected to the sites where I found the sacrificed." He nodded toward the wall past them, his light now shining there.

"Yeah!" Learning things was exciting. It sent a jolt of joy and energy through her, to see they were making progress in their goal. Happy worker bee syndrome. "The chamber Elen uses... it was... it was gross."

Her sire raised a brow, before shining the light around at the foot-deep blood pool that filled the basement. "Clearly."

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~~Eric~~

Eric stomped out of the building, through the hole in the wall he'd made. A part of him was sad about that, something about a Masquerade he should have been paying more attention to, or worrying about more. A larger part of him wanted to beat this bastard into the ground. A massive part of him could barely think as bloodlust poured over him, and demanded he fight, demanded he hunt, demanded he do what animals did. Assert dominance.

Caleb got up quickly, but Eric was already running forward. A run, proper, full, all out run. Every step was a smashing weight into the black earth, and he grinned as he felt each step tear up the hard ground behind him. It felt good. It felt so damn good to be out in the open, and let his warmed up body swing. He'd yet to do this in this Gauru form, and god damn it, it felt amazing.

Eric crashed into the man, and a metal cage on four, round legs on the side of the black path crumpled underneath Caleb's weight as Eric drove his fellow Uratha into it. Glass shattered and went everywhere. Caleb didn't let it stop him. As the two met eyes, Caleb roared up at him, and slashed out at his chest, despite Eric pinning him to the metal cage by his shoulders. Eric didn't think he'd have to dodge claws, but the new Beast in him knew better. He jumped back, and dove back in, trying to pounce after the escape, like Caleb had done to him a minute before.

Caleb jumped. Eric slammed into the bent metal, claws shredding through it like dried leaves in the Fall. As he ripped his claws free, the bastard landed on him, and started clawing at his back. A set of teeth came down for Eric's neck, but he threw his weight back, driving his talons further into the black earth as he used his strength to send Caleb flying back off of him. His rival weighed many hundreds of pounds, but that was nothing for Eric. In fact...

As Caleb landed, Eric grabbed the metal cage, one hand underneath and one on its rear, and he sank his claws into the cold, hard material. With a little leverage and grip, he anchored his talons into man's black earth, and threw the cage at Caleb.