My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 12

The thrall Jez was on her knees, hair held by Angela's free hand, and she looked battered, beaten. One of her arms was broken, and she looked almost unconscious, dazed and listing. Fucking assholes.

The hunters managed to look his way as he slammed open the door, only for Jack to poke his head around the corner, crouched, and begin to unload his weapon. If there was ever any hope for this to not escalate, Jack crushed it. But the kid saw the opening, six hunters standing around, and Julias had already told Jack they were going to kill them. It was how he expected this to go, but, seeing his childe not hesitate, not flinch, not even say a word, just unload bullets at the humans, with every intent of killing them then and there, was a painful thing to see.

The bullets crashed into the air with a loud crunch, and fell to the floor. Jack reloaded his next magazine and sank every bullet he could at the standing hunters, taking less than a second to reload, and only two more to empty the gun once again. And again, each bullet slammed into the air in front of the kneeling hunter. The hunter's eyes were wide, blatant shock painted there, and he breathed deep a sigh of relief as he put away a small, black bag.

A trail of black soot ran across the floor from wall to wall, a line that separated the two Kindred and the seven humans. The bullets fell on that line, beside it, on the side closer to the vampires.

"Holy shit," the man said, standing up. A small man, for a hunter, with a shag of red hair, and a scar across his cheek. "A second sooner and we'd be splattered."

Laughing, Angela came over to the black line, dragging the thrall behind her. Jez didn't struggle, and if she wasn't unconscious before, she was drifting into it now.

"Jack," she said, "how nice to see you again."

Growling, Jack kept his back to the corner, and stuck his head out for longer than was safe. The hunters didn't take the opportunity to shoot at him; the barrier was likely blocking them as well. Julias stuck his head out from the room he hid within, and stood up as he realized his hunch was correct. But he wasn't willing to bet his life on it yet, and he kept most of his body inside the room he'd opened. The room was empty thankfully, sparing him having to worry about a patient, unconscious or otherwise.

"Angela," Jack said, the venom in his voice palpable.

"And you are Julias Mire, childe of Viktor Honors the murderer." And, like Jack, the venom in her voice could fill a swimming pool. "I've met a few hunters that have tried to take a shot at him, you know."

Ah yes, the history of his sire coming to light, bringing all the pain expected with it. Wonderful.

"Considering the things I've heard, you're the monster in the room, Angela." He nodded past her, toward the woman she was dragging.

"I'm not going to waste my sympathy on a thrall, vampire."

Why? The Vinculum wasn't permanent, and neither was vitae addiction. If they threw a thrall into a cell for a few months, or a year at most, both could likely be broken. He almost told her that, but giving the hunters new tools they could use to kill Kindred was not a good idea, even if it could possibly endear them to the hunters a bit more.

"You killed my sister," Jack said through clenched teeth.

"What? I didn't touch your sister, or your mother." She nodded toward the door. "I heard about it on the news, same as you did, I imagine. I'm taking advantage of an opportunity someone else created."

Julias ground his teeth, as did Jack. She was lying. He'd been playing poker for too many decades to not recognize a bluff, a confident one, but a bluff nonetheless.

Did she know they wouldn't believe her? Probably, which meant she wasn't lying for them, she was lying for her troupe, to keep them in the dark about her activities. A possible opportunity, a way to show these hunters their leader wasn't the beacon of trust they probably thought of her as, if they were willing to go to war, and fight for her.

Take advantage of it later, handle the immediate situation now. There was black soot on the floor, and it was probably erecting some sort of magical barrier, invisible but hard as stone. If any sweeper team ran into something like this, he didn't get to hear about it, having left to go find Jack before the reports were circulated. And knowing his luck, or rather, Jack's luck as of late, that probably did happen.

"Assuming," Julias said, "that you didn't kill Mary or hurt Samantha"—an evil glare from Jack forced a pause from him—"what are you doing here, and with Samantha?"

"I thought that would be obvious. We're taking her, and either she'll tell us a way to force Jack to tell us what we want to know, oooorrrr..." She laughed, and reached out to press her gun hand against the invisible barrier. A lot of trust for an invisible wall. "Jack comes with us now, and tells us what we want to know about Azamel."

"All this for a Begotten," Julias said, sighing as he stuck his head out a little more. At this point it was pretty clear that the invisible barrier wasn't going to burst any time soon. "Azamel hasn't hurt a soul since she's been here."

"She's brought villages, towns, and cities to ruin, vampire. She'll do it to this one, too, given time. Millions of innocent people here, and they'll die because you continue to house a monster."

This time, she wasn't lying. Julias blinked, and managed a quick glance at Jack to see what his reaction was, but the boy was too busy oozing rage from every pore to notice Julias anymore.

"Has my mom told you yet?" Angela said, grinning at Jack like a hungry hyena. "She tell you what her boss did to mine?"

"... Azamel told me."

"From the mouth of the bitch herself. That's just the tip of the iceberg, fuckwit. She's ruined many lives, destroyed so many homes. And I bet you've seen her, the real her, the fucking monstrosity she is. You have the god damn nerve to defend her? A fucking twisted, evil re-imagining of a god? You're all monsters."

"Angela," the hunter with the red hair said, "it's time."

"Finally. Let's get this over with." Angela put her pistol into the holster on her hip, pulled out a knife, and with all the grace of a butcher, slit Jez's throat.

Julias stood up straight, stepped out of the patient room, and walked up to the barrier. Pistol in hand, he reached out with his other, and pressed fingers against the odd surface. He glared at Angela, met her one good eye with his, and then looked down at the corpse of Jez lying on the cold surface floor of the hospital hall. Angela had cut deep, two inches into the poor woman's throat. In her dazed state, Jez probably hadn't even felt it, just faded away in five seconds as all the blood of her body poured out of her.

The other hunters winced. Angela didn't. She put the knife in her other hand, and redrew her pistol into her right. She didn't back away from Julias; if anything, she came in closer, and glared up at him.

"We're going to kill all of you if we have to," she said. "Or, help us kill Azamel, and you vamps get to live. Viktor's dead, so Tony's, so the worst of your kind are off the list. We didn't come here for vamps from Slut City, we came here to kill a true horror, a monster you can't possibly understand. We can compromise. Tell us what we want to know about Azamel, help us kill her, and we'll move on."

A lie. She smiled when she lied. Subtle, a fidget of the corner of her mouth where she tried to suppress the desire to smile, but it was there. People often had issues suppressing those muscles when they bluffed, especially if they got a thrill out of it. This psychopath of a woman was that sort. She got off on lying, and on being a menace. One look in her eyes, glass one included, was enough to tell him plenty about her, about how she felt about vampires, and how she would get off on seeing them all burn.

She wasn't a hunter. Hunters often married their job, and many even took it into the pleasure realm, enjoying killing monsters, but there was something else in this woman's eyes, something insane, something inhuman.

"You killed her." He nodded down at Jez's body.

"I did. A thrall's a thrall, another of your devoted servants. And we need blood." She nodded toward the redhead. "Get to it, Bill."

Bill sighed, nodded, and pulled out a small paintbrush. Squatting down by the wall opposite of Samantha's open door, he dabbed the paintbrush into the blood around his feet, and started painting on the wall.

"Angela, you should get away from them," Bill said, as he began to paint a circle on the wall. "Ventrue, right? You—"

"I'll be fine, Bill." The woman glared at Julias, stared him straight in the eyes, and licked her lips, the hunger for violence blatant on her face. "No Ventrue is dominating my mind. No Daeva or Nos or whateverthefuck who tries is going to get anywhere. Not me." Like a striking snake, she brought up her blade and stabbed it at his face. His eyes went wide, and every reflex he had demanded he move out of the way. He almost did, before the blade crashed against the barrier, tip slamming into it as if she'd just stabbed rock. "Made you flinch."

"... my childe is right. You are a deranged, sad woman, with a mountain of woes." And she was right, that he couldn't dominate her, not with a simple glance at least. Something in her was blocking him, a wall between him and her, and it wasn't the physical barrier.

He looked to the other kine, but they were smart enough to avoid eye contact with him. If they saw his eyes, the path was open to him, the eyes a window to the soul. He didn't need to be able to see their eyes, as the Beast reached out from his own; as long as they could see his eyes, he could find their minds, and break them. They kept their eyes away, trusting in the barrier to keep them alive, so they didn't have to keep their attention on him. A lot of faith in a bit of black dust.

"I am what my mother made me."

"Way my childe tells it, your mother left you in an orphanage."

"Not before she let a little of her monster side feed on me." She dragged the knife through the air, grinding it against the barrier, and snarled at him like an angry tiger. "You know what that's like? To have your own blood use you for food?"

Julias looked to Jack, without hiding the glance. Let them see he was curious about this, it invited more conversation. The more they talked, the more time he had to figure out a way through this barrier. But the boy looked confused. The details of Angela and Athalia's relationship when they were still a family was not known to him.

"You knew my sire, or stories of him at least," Julias said. "Viktor was a violent, deranged man, toward the end."

"Heh, Viktor ever torture you?"

"Nothing so direct. Has Athalia ever tortured you?"

"Not directly. But, she's a twisted creature, as any Begotten is. She feeds on destruction and ruin, and the fear that comes with it. One time, when she was so hungry she couldn't control herself, she destroyed my doll house. Cried afterwards, both of us. Pretty stupid, sad little story, right?"

That painted a full image. A young girl, impressionable, still open to ideas like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, exposed to the horrific nature of her young, unstable, monster parent. Begotten had insatiable hungers, and he could only imagine the trauma it'd cause someone so young. She'd never be able to sleep comfortably, never able to feel at home, never able to feel truly loved, if her mother was a monster forever fighting her hungers.

"It is a sad tale, Angela, and I sympathize, I truly do."

"What? Fuck you, vampire, you don't—"

"But it's nothing I haven't heard. I'm sure most hunters have suffered equally horribly pasts, and so too have us paranormals. The Uratha, the Kindred, and the Begotten, go through worse, and many of them are not only less violent than a psychopath like you, but many strive to save as many lives as they can. You don't get to use your mother's treatment of you as an excuse for your actions."

She sneered, and looked over her shoulder to Bill. The man's painting was complex, but it was clear that it was some sort of occult circle he was drawing on the wall. If it had to be done in blood, then it couldn't be good; reason enough to stop them, let alone saving Samantha, and taking the opportunity to stop the hunters permanently.

"Your childe killed several hunters. Your wolf friends killed several hunters as well, or nearly; Elen managed to save them."

He raised a brow. She was willing to talk about Elen. Maybe some information could be gathered? Jack said she had a habit of talking, and hadn't learned the important skill of saying less than she knew. Children had that habit.

The more he looked this twisted woman in the eye, the more it was becoming clear she was exactly that, a child. Athalia had abandoned her, with good cause, and the whole situation had created this revolting example of a human. The guilt Athalia must have felt, every day, especially now that Angela had killed Jack's sister, was immense. It explained her anger, classic redirection.

And Jack probably knew it, too, though he probably wasn't admitting it to himself. Easier for him to think of Athalia as a burden, and Angela as nothing more than an enemy at the moment. He couldn't blame him. Killing her would have been easier if he didn't know this much about her. No one minded killing a faceless enemy. It was always harder to kill a person, someone with a family, with a past, with a voice of their own.

"Elen can resurrect people?"

"Elen can do some pretty amazing things. But I'm not going to tell you." She shrugged, not realizing she just told him that no, she couldn't resurrect people, but she could do some magical stuff otherwise. The woman would be a horrible poker player. "I look forward to what she tells me about Jack, when she starts digging through Samantha's brain."

He snarled, while Jack outright growled, and the boy approached the barrier. His eyes were wide, and glaring, animal fury blatant and overwhelming his gaze. His free hand reached out to press on the barrier, with his gun hand clenched at his side, still pointed at the hunters.

"You're not touching my mother."

"Sorry, kid. You got information we need. Come with us, and we'll spare your mother. But you're not going to do that, are you? Too selfish to—"

Jack slammed his hand against the barrier, hard, hard enough to make his arm bounce off it, and for his body to push back five feet across the floor, shoes literally sliding with him. If he'd punched a person, he'd have broken their bones. The crack of the impact was enough to make the hunters jerk, and for Angela to flinch; Julias suppressed the urge to make the obvious retort.

"You can lie to your hunters, about what you're doing, and why. But I know what you're doing, you fucking, disgusting bitch." He walked back up to the barrier again, and again pressed his free hand against it, fingers spread at eye level. His voice dropped, a whisper, only he, Julias, and Angela could hear. "If you touch my mother, I'm going to rip off your fingers, one at a time, and your toes, and let you bleed out as I slowly cut your stomach open with a thousand small cuts."

Angela glared at the kid, and Jack returned it. There was more here than simple hate, there was something greater. Something inhuman was in them, both of them, aching to dance in the blood of the other. Julias held his gaze on his childe for a little longer than he needed to, but it was hard to look away from Jack, once the honest introvert, with a smart mind and analytical nature, being filled with so much bloodlust.

That said, seeing this vile woman standing there, lying to them, lying to her hunters, cutting open Jez's throat like she was a sheep, and ready to sacrifice Samantha to Elen for whatever strange ritual she had planned, was infuriating. He couldn't deny the rage was building inside him as well, and he glared at the woman, keeping his vision on her real eye, as he let the anger boil over. This woman had ruined his childe, poisoned him, driven him to insane depths of hate and wrath, and was going out of her way to ruin his life. What could she possibly get from Samantha's mind that would be of use to her, except leverage over Jack?

Everything about this screamed vendetta. She wanted to hurt Jack. Using him to get information about Azamel seemed ridiculous at this point, with all the other targets she could be going after. With the resources she was spending on this hospital attack, and the lives she was risking, this had clearly become a sunken cost, and there was no way she was unaware of that. Were the others? Was Jeremiah? Something was off. The hunters didn't know what sort of woman Angela was.

"Almost done here," Bill said.

"Good. Zak, get the woman."

"Get her? I don't know how to remove a ventilator."

"I know how, sort of," Bill said. With a groan, he reached up, and finished the occult circle he was drawing. A star, an inverted pentagram, some symbols Julias didn't recognize, all arranged in a specific pattern. "I'll help Zak. Olivia, you can open the gate now."

"Finally." Another hunter walked up to the circle, and placed a hand against its center. Bill disappeared into Samantha's room, and Zak went with him. Four hunters in the hall, one preoccupied with the circle, while Angela continued to stand at the barrier, glaring at Jack like she was trying to fillet his soul.

Julias had to stop this. Samantha was going to die, either by what was bound to be a haphazard removal of her ventilator and insertion of a manual, portable one, or by what was going to come next. Jessy's report had described what Elen was going to do to Eric, cut into him, and learn things from him whether he wanted to tell her or not. She had some way of getting information with her magic, and could probably do more things besides, considering what Angela said. Either way, he had to stop her, for Jack's sake.

He set his free hand on the barrier, open fingers like Jack, and stared into Angela's eye.

"What're you gonna do, Mister Mire? You can't cross this barrier, and you can't break my mind. Throw your weapons away, lie down on your stomachs, put your hands behind your head, and we'll take Jack, instead of her. Otherwise, Samantha comes with us, and we'll get some tasty info about Jack from her." Lies on top of lies. She'd take Jack alright, after she executed Julias.

"Fuck you," Jack said. "You're just doing this to hurt me."

"I'm doing this to force your hand. Surrender, and we don't harm her."

"She's innocent."

"Yes, she is. But she's half dead, unlikely to recover, and I won't let that life go to waste. You—" Her voice stopped, and her body went rigid, before her arms started to go limp at her sides. Gulping, she stared at Julias, and her head tilted slightly to one side.

Julias grinned.

"Boss?" one of the hunters said. The hunter had to be careful to not look at Julias, or he'd catch the hunter's mind and break it in seconds. They couldn't see what was happening then, not clearly, not with their eyes facing in other directions, as Julias and Jack did nothing but stand there, not drawing any attention to themselves.

Angela did nothing either. She stood there, eyes wide, stuck on Julias's, and he managed a small smile as he reached out with everything he had, every ounce of vitae, every bit of blood, every bit of will he could muster. He slammed his mind into hers, and made her tremble. He slammed it into her again, hard enough to make her head sway back slightly. He crashed against it, against this strange barrier in her mind, the wall of hate and anger and inhuman determination.

For a moment, he remembered the heroes in ancient tales. Many heroes from mythology were psychopaths, capable of great feats, while obsessed with themselves or their goals. How many of them were twisted, convinced of their immortality, or gladly committed war crimes in pursuit of glory? Legends upon legends of the greatest the human race had to offer, and many of those stories described what could only be called a lunatic, someone driven in ways no sane mind could understand.