My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 11

"Ok, you begin, Triss," Jack said, "and... so will I. Just... yeah... stay out of my way, everybody."

Poor kid. Poor fucking kid. She'd asked him to do this, to be ready to jump into this insanity in order to get revenge, and he'd agreed. She'd asked him to be ready to use his curse for this, and he'd agreed. He'd helped her butcher kine, and speak with ancient, evil gods. And now he was going to make good on his word.

Christ, if this broke him, if something happened to him, Julias would... Julias was dead. His childe was on his own now, and more than smart enough to make his own choices. Don't feel guilty for this, Triss. You want this, and he wants it. He—

"The fuck!?" Harcourt jumped back as Jack took a bite out of his wrist. Clara and Athalia both did as well, without noise. The vampires didn't budge. They all knew Ventrue could do this, use blood to summon animals to their aid; Gangrels could do it, too. When Gangrels did it, it was like watching a monster summoning his brood. When Ventrue did it, it was like watching a lord summon their army.

While Jack did his thing, Beatrice got to work. She touched the crow skull on her chest, and traced a claw along the drawn lines of the ritual symbol Elen or one of her flunkies had made. It was almost invisible, in the dark, charcoal-colored lines on concrete at night. During the day, it'd have looked like silly graffiti to anyone who noticed, and in the shadows underneath the bridge, out here between North and South Side, no one was going to notice.

So close though, she could feel the power emanating from it, subtle, but distinct. It felt like the flesh chamber Natasha and her had found the night Julias died, so she was sure Harcourt was telling the truth. Whatever madness Elen performed to create things from flesh, and to divine information from haruspex, Triss had no idea, but she couldn't deny that it felt familiar. Maybe it was the blood and murder, maybe it was how it was founded on death and darkness, but there was something similar between Crúac and whatever it was Elen was doing. Crúac reached across the ether, tapped into something hellish and twisted, and used vitae to fuel that effort. Elen, on the other hand, found a way to do it with the flesh and blood of the living. Vitae was what the vampire curse created when given the blood of the living.

Might as well have been neighbors, 665 and 667 getting buddy buddy with the handsome dude next door.

Electricity danced along her fingertips, and she shivered as the power of it practically burned her fingers. Yes, this was the power the Crone had exposed her to, introduced her to, and scarred into her mind. She'd never forget this pain now, this sensation, the way this portal worked, the way it opened and closed. It'd take her months, maybe years, to figure out how to open it with a sacrifice, but she was a vampire, she had vitae to fuel her efforts, unlike Elen.

Skittering sounds drew her gaze, tiny movements that ran along the corners of her eyes. Everyone else in the group started looking around as well, even Harcourt, once the noise grew noticeable to human ears. When he noticed, he started spinning around and around, breath quickening as it became obvious the noises were coming from all directions.

Triss was supposed to be focusing on opening the portal, but for a moment, she let herself stare in awe at the sight unfolding around her. Rat eyes. There were rats eyes everywhere. Tiny orbs that caught glimmers of nearby streetlights, and what little moonlight slipped through the clouds. They glinted and moved, dozens of them at first, each flowing along the pavement, and then down to join them in the dark and rocks. Dozens more, and then hundreds, flowed along the bridge above them, tails and claws rubbing against wood and concrete in such number, it sounded almost like churning water.

The shadow may as well have been a flowing, black creek around them, with how it moved, and rose. It started to trickle down over the edges of the small ravine, and then flowed, and then poured like rapids, a bubbling mass of black fur, claws and tails and eyes, that filled every crevice. And as the rats came to join them, the skies above darkened.

"The longer we take," Jack said, eyes on Triss, "the more likely they'll be prepared. There's no way they don't have some method to peek outside of their portals, or they'd never use them. So open it up, and let's get to killing."

Time had come to a standstill, and Beatrice found herself unable to move. That was Jack? His voice had changed. There was a bounce to it, almost a chuckle, a sound she was used to on Jacob, but not on the kid. And the grin, the Joker grin, looked freaky as fuck on him.

It was more than rats; there were plenty of those, but Jack seemed intent on bringing Armageddon. Two crows, without a caw or croon, glided down under the bridge and perched upon the boy's shoulders. He reached up, stroked the back of each bird's head, and grinned up at each, a knowing grin. It was then that the dark clouds above began to descend.

The shadows around them, churning over each other, were the rats of Jack's army. The black sky falling upon them, was his crows.

"Oh god oh god oh god." Harcourt had backed up to the other side of the pit, and he was quickly becoming a panting mess. Wide eyes snapped left and right, up and down, each trying to take in the madness collapsing on him. "Sweet fuck, oh mother fucking god. Merciful Christ protect me, mother fucking g—"

Athalia smacked him, again. That caused Clara to chuckle, but it didn't sound natural; of course it didn't, considering the fear Triss could see on her face. They were all frightened by the display, and Triss had to force herself to hold still as she felt rats begin to climb over her combat boots. Jennifer and Aaron were in awe, jaws dropped in what must have been envy over the display of Animalism even Michael McDonald couldn't have done. Othello had a new grin on his face, one Triss wasn't used to seeing, something that mixed excitement, surprise, and fear. Athalia had backed away from Jack, and it looked like the monster was struggling to hide her trembling, rubbing her fingers together and lowering her gaze down from the boy. She didn't want to look at him. And Damien looked like he was watching his best friend march into the valley of death.

Another glance at Clara showed she truly was scared, but not of the animals, or even scared of Jack. She looked scared for Jack, and that drove a knife into Triss's gut she didn't need right then.

Triss recollected herself, and looked back to the portal. Ignore the scurrying, the tiny squeaks, ignore the thousands of moving bodies swarming around you. Ignore the strange look in Jack's eyes. Jack was the trump card, the big move no one was expecting. Ignore anything strange, ignore that voice in your head telling you to stop this before the kid loses something, and commit to the fucking goal.

The choir of rats and crows, fur and feathers, claws and talons and beaks, were the music to her ritual. The beady eyes were the lighting. The flapping wings and chattering chirps were the rustling of her audience. They all grew silent, and almost completely still, as they stared at Triss, waiting.

Time to get this show on the road.

She lifted her t-shirt with her left hand hand, up to the neck, and set the claw of her right hand high up against her sternum. The portal was a concoction of flesh, woven together using some intangible energy that permeated the world, and she could feel it. As she sank the claw into her skin, she closed her eyes, set the hand that lifted the shirt against the concrete, felt the symbol beneath it, and searched for the connection. She had to find it, the same way she could find another's mind if she wanted to bestow a nightmare upon them, as all Nosferatu could. Instead of another person's mind, she was connecting to something magical, something mysterious, something royally fucked up and twisted. She was connecting to unnatural flesh that could split apart and close itself, guarding another world.

Her chest cavity would serve as the conduit, the connection, the way for her vitae to cross the space between her and the portal, and rip it open.

She kept down the growing scream as she forced her claw into the bone of her sternum. Jacob had introduced her to many forms of pain, in his growing efforts to teach her Crúac rituals. The physical pain was almost blazé. Several times now, when buried to the neck in agony, she'd quieted her mind and found a way to commune with her Beast. When she came to, waking from the coma, the details of the encounter were lost to a haze and fog. But she could remember the shadow creature, and she could remember the feeling it shared with her, of there being something, or someone else out there it could touch.

She summoned that feeling as her Beast had taught her, as the entity Jacob called the Crone taught her, and ripped apart Elen's magic as she ripped apart her own body. Thankfully, she didn't need to literally rip her ribcage open, but that didn't change that she had use Kindred strength to drive her claw down through the bones of her chest, and into her stomach. With each inch her claw cut open, the wall before her began to bleed from its own forming vertical cut, deeper, and longer.

"Oh... god..." Clara, of all people, was the first to gasp. Triss didn't dare look her way; breaking concentration now would really suck. But it was obvious Clara's words triggered a chain reaction, and everyone started gasping as they realized what Beatrice was doing.

"What? What's going on? I—oh sweet fuck!" Harcourt apparently stepped close enough to take a peek, and almost screamed before someone grabbed him and covered his mouth. Muffled cries lasted for a few seconds before the man calmed down.

Triss kept her eyes on the portal before her, and ignored the scalding pain coursing through her chest. Vitae, thick, heavy blood that refused to drip, dripped. A wound this large was too much for her Kindred body, and several of the viscous droplets splattered on the swarming rats around her feet. They didn't seem to mind. Hell, Jack used his own blood to summon them, so they probably thought this was just part of their master's shtick, and it'd turn to ash in a bit anyway.

She pressed both her hands against the enormous, vertical slice down through her chest, soaked them in her vampire blood, and pressed them against the concrete. Like stabbing into flesh, she pressed her claws into the concrete, and began to pull it apart, this time as if she really were ripping open a ribcage. The ritual had turned the concrete into skin, into muscle, meat, bone, something she could rip apart and shred. Something that bled.

"Fuck me," Othello said. "It's like... watching Jacob at work."

She grinned at that, but didn't let him see it; too busy with her chest nearly pressed to the portal, and her elbows out as she ripped it apart. It didn't take long, maybe fifteen seconds, but it was fifteen seconds of concrete becoming flesh, and fifteen seconds of her groaning as she tore it open, hoping to god her chest cavity didn't explode from flexing muscles.

When the folds of flesh were finally spread apart, the hole was maybe five feet high, and three feet wide. More than big enough for people to enter.

"Triss!" Jennifer came up to her side, and winced as she felt the wound of Triss's torso. "This is horrible."

"I'll live."

"You can't fight like this!"

"Watch me."

"Good job, Trissy," Jack said. Trissy? She looked over her shoulder again, and stifled a scream, nearly brought by the agony boiling in her chest, and the look on Jack's face.

That wasn't Jack.

"Th... thanks."

"Now step aside. Follow in when you can. Harcourt, stay behind me, we're going in first. The rest of you, follow behind Harcourt. We're not leaving until Jeremiah's head is decorating my fist, or until we're ashes." Chuckling, Jack nudged Triss aside with enough force to nearly make her trip. And then, the stranger stepped into the hole.

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~~Jack~~

Letting the curse out was surprisingly easily. He didn't need to do anything, not really. He just, opened the door, and the curse hopped on out to party, summoned by the promise of blood and carnage. It wanted to play.

It wasn't as overwhelming as the first time. It was there, in his mind, and he could tell it was there, altering him, overriding parts of him, taking over. Jack could still feel, could still control, but the curse was in there with him, in his fingers, in his toes and limbs, and in his blood.

And then, Jack was in the passenger seat. He was still in the car, and still looking around, seeing, hearing, but it wasn't his hands on the wheel anymore, or his foot on the pedal. It was the curse.

The curse was a much better driver.

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He reached into himself, and unleashed Armageddon. He bit his wrist open, and spilled his sacred blood. He smiled in the darkness, and reached out for the city around him. The shadows were his to control, and the animals were his to lead, order, and rule. There were many animals that lived with the sheep, animals that held kinship with Kindred. In some places, coyotes and owls held closer kinship to Kindred. But in a city, overflowing with flesh and sin, the crow and the rat were his brothers and sisters, and they would be the stepping stones to claiming his throne.

Yes, it was his city. Antoinette owned it in name, and Jacob owned the darkness beneath its shadows, but in the end, there was always a single force that rose to the top of any squabble: the mightiest. They could serve him; Jack would be ok with that, right? He could let them live, and they could serve him. He had no true need for sex, take it or leave it, but it'd be a shame to let a piece like Antoinette go. And Jacob, the old bastard deserved respect.

He could think about those two later. For now, his city had to be cleansed of vermin, and he was going to enjoy every moment of it.

With eyes closed, he reached out for his servants, and felt their presence. Claws, scurrying through the dark. Wings, flowing through the air. Noses sniffing french fries and used condoms. Talons clutching to glowing neon signs and rain-worn rooftop edges. So many. There were so many of them. He knew, deep down in the recesses of memories that were not his, that Susanna would have creamed herself at being so spoiled for choice. So many, there were so many. Thousands upon thousands of crows covering his city in their beautiful feathers, and millions of rats, living beneath the hooves of its sheep.

And they came. He knew Mulder and Scully would be with him soon, since they were following him already. They'd feel the call, and come. The others though, they would come in a number he could not quite perfectly control. They would obey his call and command, true, and there would be a swarming mass of them, but exactly how big that mass would be, was to be seen. It got him excited. He'd be hard as fuck, if he was Blushing Life.

Scully and Mulder perched on his shoulders, and he gave each of them a deserved scratch on the back of their heads. They would bear witness to his triumph, to the slaughter, and spread the tale to all other birds not present to witness it. Let them know of him, and be in awe.

As the rats began to pour into the small ravine, Jack felt his vitae flow with a renewed hunger, desperate for violence, aching to dance in blood. His wound closed in moments, and he chuckled as he looked around at the waves of fur and claw. He didn't bother glancing at his fellow vampires, weaklings that they were, but he could hear their muffled surprise. The human wasn't nearly as muffled, and he proved his pathetic weakness with every squeak and squawk. A glance at Clara, on the other hand, showed the cute werewolf was looking at him like he'd sold his soul to the devil, and all she could do was watch. Heh.

A glance at Athalia showed something different. She managed eye contact with him for a single moment, before she looked down and backed away. Fear. True terror. That annoying creature inside her, the nightmare creature, it could see him, all of him, and it horrified her. Pretty fucking dumb for a horror monster to be horrified of another monster. Well, fucking psycho skeleton bitch, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Beatrice, in true witch fashion, began to do something super twisted and awesome. She began slicing her chest open. Fucking sick. It was almost predictable that, to open a door made of flesh, a witch would have to cut open their own flesh. When Beatrice started opening the flesh with her hands, pulling it apart, Jack had to fight to keep down an orgasmic groan. It was a perfect way to begin the festivities, pulling open alien flesh like tearing open a present.

Jennifer and Beatrice argued for a moment, but Jack stepped up and nudged the witch aside.

"Good job, Trissy."

"Thanks," she said, eyebrow raised. Christ, trying to be nice and she still looked at him like he was the devil. Fuck her.

"Now step aside. Follow in when you can. Harcourt, stay behind me, we're going in first. The rest of you, follow behind Harcourt. We're not leaving until Jeremiah's head is decorating my fist, or until we're ashes."

He pointed both hands forward, and grinned into the darkness that awaited them. The hunters doubtlessly knew their portal had been opened by now, and probably had some idea about who was out here, ready to come in. He laughed. Yeah, they had no fucking idea what was about to hit them.

It was this moment that made it all worth it. He was seconds away from unleashing Hell upon these poor fools, and they had no idea, no fucking idea at all. He was going to slaughter them like fish in a barrel, delight in seeing the surprise and horror on their faces, and dance in their blood. Relish it, savor it, the edge of the moment before the climax.

"Um, shouldn't we cloak up?" Damien said.

Jack shook his head. "Last time, Trissy snuck in because the door was open and unlocked. Here, we basically just kicked down the door. They know we're here. So we do this SWAT style."

"Which is?"

"Expedient, overwhelming force."

With a great roar, the tide of flesh and fur flowed forward. It wasn't subtle, or quiet. It was like watching a ship-breaker wave, the sort that could snap one in half from hull pressure, and it slammed into a hole far too small to accept the rushing tide. The flesh of the portal rent apart under the scratching weight of the rats, and the weird blood splattered around him as his army tore through it. Thousands of rats pushed through in seconds, and thousands more followed, swirling about Jack a foot high off the ground, in a foot-wide radius around him. The rats would not dare accidentally get in his way, and they moved with almost one mind.

Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The ocean of blackness scurried forward, and Jack followed. No need to run, he moved along at a slow pace, chuckling as he did. He skipped a little too, because how could he not. Finally, fucking finally, he was going to get to crush Jeremiah's skill, and rip Angela's innards out.

"Better warn them, Brace," he said to the hunter behind him. "Any hunters who even look like they're going to attack us, my army will devour alive." There, good enough, Jack? A fair warning to all within, that their lives could be spared. All they had to do was lay down their weapons, and pray that Satan was feeling merciful tonight.

"Shit! Shit shit shit!" The idiot human ran up to join him in the tunnel, and held up his hands to his mouth. "Guys! It's Harcourt! Put down your weapons, and stay out of the vampire's way! You won't be harmed!"

There were a thousand better ways Jack could have done this. He could have established communication himself, under a banner of a parlay, or provided some sort of warning of what was about to happen. He could have sent in Harcourt first, and let the man try and convince them what was happening. This was chaos. This was a giant mess of a situation, horribly handled, that would doubtlessly lead to many deaths.