My Little Ventrue Pt. 06 Ch. 12

"Put her down!"

"No," Julias said, looking over the struggling, squirming woman's shoulder, as he squeezed on her neck. Yes, break it, crush it. Angela held his wrist with both her hands, her gun on the floor, and her arm bleeding more as she fought against him. His Dominate hadn't lasted long on her, but it didn't need to. Jack could see her neck begin to buckle, and he licked his lips as the woman's frantic struggles grew more panicked, her face turning red in the darkness.

And then everything started to glow amber. As if a portal to hell had suddenly opened up, the orange light filled the hall, and Jack had to raise an arm to cover his eyes for a moment. Julias stared ahead into the hall, and Jack stepped over the corpse of the hunter he'd executed to put his shoulder to the corner he'd been using as cover again. Bullet casings were everywhere, and the white of the wall had been torn apart by metal shrapnel, exposing the building steel underneath. The amber glow grew, and Jack stuck his head out, ready to pull it back to avoid getting shot.

The wall, opposite of his mother's room, the one the hunter had painted on, had opened.

Jack blinked, staring at where the hunter had drawn the blood circle. He'd recognized the circle from the ritual sites Daniel had showed him, but he didn't know their significance. Significance now explained. The circle was open, and an orange light flowed out of it, pouring over the hall, and the room his mother was in. And suddenly, everything smelled thick of blood, far more than it had. What the fuck was going on?

A man stepped out, someone of average height, dark hair buzzed short like Jack's, shirtless, wearing jeans and combat boots. He smelled of blood, too. For a second, Jack could see the man's muscular back as he stepped out of the portal from Hell, and he squinted to see the strange circle drawn between his shoulder blades. It was a similar circle to the one that'd been painted on the wall, and it looked like it was carved into his flesh.

The man turned to face Julias and Jack, and raised the corner of his lip in a snarl. He leaned forward slightly, put a foot behind him, and readied a sprint. As he did, a subtle, black silhouette filled the air around him, and Jack felt every muscle in his body clench, as he recognized four giant arms, and four colossal wings.

Oh shit.

The beast charged forward, and as he did, his boots tore the floor apart. Jack had seen the werewolves do that, using their talons to anchor their weight, so they could propel themselves. This man was doing the same thing, except it was the strange silhouette of the colossal, four-armed gargoyle tearing the floor apart. And as he came in close to Julias, he threw his weight to the side, one of the wing silhouettes, a shadowy mist lit by the amber of the portal, flapped to force the Begotten toward a wall.

Julias tried to compensate, turn to face the monster, but Angela fought him, bringing up both her feet and driving them into his chest. Julias still didn't let go of her, but it threw off his balance, and he couldn't keep his hostage between him and the monster. With a quiet, cold ruthlessness, Sándor jumped, bounced a foot off the wall, got around Angela, and smashed his weight into Julias.

The hospital wall didn't appreciate it. It cracked, bits of white falling away like brick, and where the Begotten drove his hands into Julias's shoulders and into the wall, it was dented. Angela fell, and scampered to take away the gun of the hunter Julias had dominated. The two of them started to roll, trailing blood and firing the gun wildly.

Angela was strong, even with only one uninjured arm. While her gun, and Julias's gun had scattered around on the floor in the earlier mayhem, she managed to grab onto the wild, flailing gun hand of the dominated hunter, and she pointed it at Jack.

The sensation of metal tearing through his flesh was not a pleasant one. He thought he'd get used to it, with how often it was becoming a part of his life. But, as much as he thought maybe he could handle pain, the way a bullet tears through the flesh with such unbridled enthusiasm, was not a pain he could ever prepare himself for. One bullet hit his leg, another hit his guts, and another hit his chest. His body hit the wall, back planted to it, and two more bullets slammed into his ribs. When another hit his gun arm, crashing into the bone, he dropped the pistol, and his body fell back, back sliding down the wall as his feet gave out. He tried to get up, but another bullet crashed into him, ripping up his legs, and putting that idea on hold with a silent wave of agony.

How? How did this happen? One moment, Jack and Julias were kicking ass, ready to put these six hunters in their place. Hell, one of them lay beside Jack, a big hole in his skull where Jack had executed him. There'd been a sick satisfaction in that, in the cold and brutally efficient act of putting a bullet in his head when he was down, taking advantage of the opportunity Julias's Dominated hunter had created. But now, Jack looked down at the many holes that peppered his body, made by bullets that had ripped through his muscle and bone, scattered some ashes to the hospital floor, and left him broken. Angela didn't stop firing at him, until the pistol clicked, empty.

Angela drove her elbow into the side of the Dominated man's skull, and the hunter went unconscious. With the Dominated hunter down, and Jack momentarily incapacitated, Angela got up, and joined Sándor, kicking at the man while the Begotten rammed his fists into Julias's sides.

"Zak! Bill! Get Raymond back through the gateway now! Elen might be able to do something for him."

Two of the hunters ran around the corner Jack was sitting against, and grabbed the man Jack executed. Do something for him? Unless Elen could sew the bits of his brain back together, she shouldn't be able to do a thing for him. Could she?

He managed a glare up at the hunters as they ran past, but they were very, very good at avoiding his eyes. They'd learned from their mistakes in the past, and had training in this exact, specific niche of combat with vampires: avoiding looking them in the eyes. Just a glance, just a peek his way, and he'd reach out and break them, but of course he wasn't that lucky.

He tried to move his gun arm. Grab the pistol, grab it, grab the pistol. He growled as the pain tore through him, and vitae flowed over the bones, forcing them back into place. Move, move your hand, grab the pistol. You have to do something or you're dead. If you don't do something, don't fix this, you're dead, your sire's dead, and your mother's dead. Move!

He managed to look to his sire, but Julias was busy. Angela was in there with the Begotten, and the two of them were fighting him hand to hand. Angela didn't manage much with her bleeding arm and head, and upon second look, Jack could see his bullet had hit her in the bone of bicep; partly out of commission then, at least until it was fixed up, probably by Elen. But that didn't stop her from trying, kicking at Julias's side and forcing Jack's sire to block with his arm, while the Begotten pounded on him.

Sándor was strong. Sándor was ridiculously strong. Jack hadn't seen such a display of sheer, brute strength since the werewolves had fought against that spider monster in tunnels, or maybe when Antoinette had torn apart over a dozen Kindred with her bare hands. The stomach-turning crunch of bones breaking, the thud of flesh rippling under explosive impact, the way the body moved off the floor half an inch with each upward punch — or in this case, several inches — was nauseating. Jack stared as the smaller man, probably fifty pounds lighter than Julias, beat him into a pulp.

Julias took it, a small grin on his lips as he blocked as many punches as he could. He glanced Angela's way, and the woman froze.

"Kill the Begotten."

Whatever wall she had in her mind to keep vampires from getting their fingers into her brain, it must have been damaged, because she turned on the shirtless man beside her instantly, and tackled him. Sándor fell over, caught off guard and a slave to physics; he wasn't as big a guy as Julias. And Julias sealed the deal by driving his fist down at the man's face when Angela caught his side, forcing him onto his knees. Angela pulled a knife out from behind her with her good hand, and threw herself onto the Begotten's back, stabbing wildly, sending blood everywhere. The Begotten only grunted as his blood painted the walls, and rolled underneath her, bringing her down with him.

As Sándor and Angela rolled around on the floor, Jack stared at the pistol beside him. Forcing down the bubbling scream that threatened to make his head explode as pain flooded him, he twisted over, and reached for it with his offhand. Get it, get the pistol, and shoot everyone, riddle them with holes. Time was running out, and if things kept going the way they were, either the hunters would kill him, or sunrise would.

Julias looked down the hall, where the circle had been drawn, where the amber light was bathing the area in the colors of a crimson sunrise, where Jack's mother's room was, and he froze. His eyes went wide for a moment, before the room erupted with an unending sea of thunder and metal. The flashing white of a thousand small explosions lit the hallway like the fourth of July, if someone had been unlucky enough to accidentally light all the fireworks at once, at their feet.

Jack did his best to ignore the hail of gunfire, half his focus on getting his gun arm working again, other half trying its best to twist itself so he could grab the pistol with his bad hand. He got his fingers on it, and pointed at the rolling Begotten and Angela, but the rain of gunfire rattled his brain, and he snapped his head to the side as a chunk of the wall corner he was sitting against exploded. His back was to the corner, wall blocking him from being caught in the gunfire, and with Angela and Sándor on the floor, there was no reason that the few hunters still on their feet, and whoever came out of the hole in the wall, couldn't unleash hell at anything higher than three feet.

Julias, already with dents in his body and some twisted, mangled bends to one of his wrists, didn't try and dodge. He just stared at whatever Hell awaited him, and managed a small grin, as the bullets started to rip him apart.

Jack froze, and stared at his sire. Sándor threw his head down and covered his ears with his hands, and Angela, perhaps brought out of her enslavement by the Begotten's punch, or maybe the explosion of metal death, did the same. She broke her enslavement in seconds before, and had done so again. She was insane.

Julias was insane, too. As dozens of bullets ripped into him, Jack stared on, paralyzed, unable to look away as the small shards of metal opened him up. And yet, the man remained standing. Kindred blood filled the wounds, pulled withered skin and muscle over them, and hid the damage as best it could.

For a moment, Jack was reminded of when Viktor lost a chunk of his skull to a sniper bullet. It'd taken some of his brain with him, but the man had managed to regrow it in minutes; a staggering, impressive regenerative display he now only expected from transformed Uratha, but not Kindred, not even elders. And yet as the metal ripped into Julias, Jack found the same thing happening.

It was more than that. The bullets hit his skin, and many didn't penetrate. Some flattened against his hardening body, falling to the side. Others cut through his suit and skin, but were pushed aside by the writhing mass of dark Kindred blood within. Others went through him, slamming into the wall behind him, and the holes in his flesh filled in within seconds.

It was worse when some hit his face. The sight of teeth getting ripped from his mouth, a cheek tearing open, and a chunk of his upper skull getting exposed, made Jack's stomach turn. His sire's combed-back blonde hair was ripped into a mess of torn bits, with his scalp getting hammered with at least a dozen bullets, one penetrating his sire's skull, above the eye, and causing him to stagger. He didn't fall.

Jack managed to stick his head around the corner enough to see what was going on. The four other hunters in Angela's troupe were there, and so were four more. While the four that joined them had pistols, three of them were unloading their bullets at Julias, the fourth stood behind a wheelchair. Elen, the old sack of bones, ready to succumb to extreme age and frailty, watched the fireworks from a safe ways back. The other black line of powder was behind her, keeping her back safe while she watched the onslaught, six hunters unleashing Armageddon on Julias, one small piece at a time.

Jack ducked his head back in, and brought up his gun. Still not the good hand, and that arm was struggling to work as well, considering a fair amount of metal was now lodged inside him. But if Julias could stand there, and take a couple hundred bullets in five seconds, and not fall, the least Jack could do was shoot at the fucking bitch at his feet.

Angela managed to crawl Jack's way, and throw herself at him, tripping over herself as she did. It didn't need to be a graceful tackle. A stumbling mess of shoulders and limbs was more than enough to crash into Jack before he could get the pistol straight. He held onto the gun this time, squeezing the grip as hard as he could, and he struggled underneath the shoulder of the woman. Work, body, work, mend. Fix the bones, reattach the tendons, get the muscles to bare functioning minimum. Let him kill this woman before she ruined everything.

She turned so she was facing him, on top of him, and the sheer manic rage he found in her one good eye was almost enough to shock him. Being controlled by Julias, twice, must have triggered something in her. This was the Angela he saw when she was on him last time, in the street, when Eric and Beatrice had run them over. If both her arms worked, he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd tried to strangle him, pointless as it was.

But her arm didn't work, and neither did his. The best she could manage was hammer punches down on his face with her good hand, and a weak grab on his throat with her bad one. He blocked them with his forearm, before swinging the gun hand against the side of her head, sending her falling over. The two of them were out of the way of the gunfire, and with Julias pinned to the wall under a constant incoming rain of death, Jack was on his own.

At least, that's what he hoped for. In all the chaos, the darkness, the pyrotechnics of muzzle flashes and bullet ricochets, Jack rolled onto Angela, and started beating his gun down on her. Break her face in. Use the grip, smash her teeth in, break her nose, break her eye, smash her skull in until it's pulp. And when she's almost dead, when she's struggling to breathe, when she's gargling on her blood, Kiss her, and drink her until she's a withered corpse.

Each blow he rained down, she managed to block, same as he had her. The difference was, he was a vampire, and she was just a stupid human. He was stronger than her. Break her. Rip her in half. Ruin her. Tear—

Two hands found him, lifted him off the floor, and smashed him into the wall. His skull cracked against it, and for a brief moment, he knew Sándor had crawled out from under the gunfire, and got him when his guard was down. Stupid, stupid Jack.

Jack fell onto his back, dazed, hot misery exploding outward from his dented skull. His eyes barely worked, but he looked up at the bleeding, shirtless man, and met his gaze. The monster had blue eyes, and they looked a little sad. He'd seen similar eyes, in Angela actually, when he was about to shoot her in the beast's nightmare.

The silhouette of the monster gargoyle filled the hallway, and Sándor raised his boot. He was going to die, skull crushed under the boot of a man he turned his back to, a monster at that. And of all the ways to die, this seemed to be the most empty, most pointless, most unsatisfying of them all.

The gunfire stopped, and Sándor turned around. Julias walked his way, and Jack's jaw dropped as he stared at his sire.

The man was missing half his flesh. The suit had torn to shreds, exposing an arm, half of his torso, and his pants were no better off, one leg half exposed below the knee, the other half exposed above it. Some of his sire's bones were visible. Jack winced, staring, eyes locked onto how he could see a lot of the bone of one leg, and one arm. And as Julias took another step toward Sándor, Jack was reminded of a scene from Terminator, where his skin was being shot off, but it didn't stop the machine.

Blood coursed over Julias's body, thick Kindred blood, and it filled in the gaps where muscle was gone, and filled in for tendons and ligaments, keeping his kneecap where it should be, and allowing his wrist to work.

His sire held up his hand, pulled it back, and drove it into Sándor's face, enough heft and vitae behind it to send the man half spinning through the air before he landed.

"Get the fuck off my childe."