My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 12

"Come on Denver! Get in here! Get—"

Too late. One final hunter tried to slip past the closing doors, but Clara, snarling and roaring as she charged forward, slammed into her. Her massive weight crashed into the hunter's body hard enough, Jack could hear bones snap as her head hit the wood. But she didn't die; that came after, as Clara sank her claws into the hunter's chest, and ripped her in half, literally. Body parts went flying, blood followed, and Jack laughed as the two parts of the woman's torso splattered against the stone walls.

Clara had been shot, but she shrugged it off. Ah yes, the amazing regenerative abilities of the Uratha. Maybe there was value in the Uratha after all? He considered it, and balanced the pros and cons of Dominating one, and turning them into a thrall. Maybe Clara? An intriguing thought, but he set it aside for later.

The enormous doors closed with a thud, which was soon followed by more thuds, hammering sounds, and hollers muted by the wood. The humans were creating a barrier, probably throwing nearby things against the door to try and block it off. Cute.

Jack took a second to look behind him, and at the swarming army of rats and crows. Damien and Othello followed, and soon, so did Beatrice and Athalia. Of course, once Athalia made her appearance, it wasn't the tall, beautiful, angry black woman he'd come to know and love, it was a strange, enormous skeleton creature with no pelvis or legs, that walked around on its hands, and had bone wings. Seeing that push through the fleshy mess on the back end of the hallway, slipping out from what was otherwise a wall of stone, was wicked awesome.

"I will get Fiona," the skeleton creature said, raspy, loud voice cutting scratches on the walls. "Jack, do not—"

"Yeah yeah. Shut up and do your job." Fuck, what an annoying woman. Head buried so deep up her ass, she was still convinced she could have it both ways, with the whole being a monster and having a hunter for a daughter thing. Dumbass.

Athalia snorted, opened one of the side doors, and disappeared into the darkness.

"Jack," Damien said, blood dripping down his trench coat. "I told Aaron to stay behind and try and keep this portal open, so you can... you know."

"Yes, good call." It was true that Jack's connection to Dolareido was growing thin, so deep in this realm. The vitae he'd spilled to summon his army was a beacon to him, and to the portal where the blood had fallen nearby, but the creatures had to come to him through two portals now, two magical portals at that. Reinforcements were going to come slower, and at a rate that couldn't be matched by the amount he lost to bullets and fire.

He didn't need his army to unleash Armageddon on these fools, but it was good to let people think he did.

He walked up to the giant door, frowned, and looked down at the blood splatter the two halves of the hunter's corpse left behind. The problem with having strength and a small body, was physics. He could tear this door down, but he was too small to get leverage with weight and friction. The stone floor was smooth, too smooth for him to line up a good punch. And he couldn't fit his fingers between the two doors, either. Unless he managed to get his hands around something, he was just too light to punch it without sending himself flying backward, instead of damaging something as heavy and solid as a giant wooden door at least a foot thick.

"Harcourt," Jack said.

"Y-Yeah?" The man was just coming through the flesh portal, groaning with every step. His eyes were down, and he was doing his best to keep from stepping on the blood-soaked rats that swarmed past him. Some crows were latched onto his shoulders as well, and took to the air once he was in the hallway.

"Plan Vandermont, what is it?"

"Um, it's us taking up defensive positions in Sándor's nightmare chambers. We got a lot of shit stored in there, shit we can use to defend in the off chance we needed to. But, I mean, I figured you'd have figured that."

"I did." After the last time the paranormals managed to break in and attack the hunters in the nightmare, it made sense they'd prepare for the potential it happened again. Since the Begotten weren't following in Sándor's wake to pierce into his lair this time, the Begotten couldn't just walk into the monster's lair, either. "Did you know they could break into the nightmare from Elen's flesh room?"

"Uh, yeah. We do most of our business in the flesh room, though. I don't think Elen can go in and out of the nightmare easily"

Jack slowly turned and glared at the man. He didn't like this. They were losing momentum, and there was nothing quite as annoying as losing momentum when on a blood high.

"Clara, tear it down."

Clara went to work. He may have been a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet, but Clara had to easily break seven hundred pounds in her enormous werewolf form. She didn't have quite the burly mass of the male werewolves, but that didn't change that she was enormous, and an Uratha. She sank the claws of her feet into the stone, set the claws of her hands into the wood of the door, and began ripping it apart.

Glorious. Absolutely, utterly glorious. He could almost see her muscles bulge underneath the fur of her body, and he groaned as her huge claws ripped through the wood like it was paper.

"God damn that's hot," he said.

She paused, looked at him with her wolf eyes, confused, before returning to her destruction.

It only took her twenty seconds. If the door had been made of metal, she'd still have probably been able to get through it. Werewolf claws were something special, something supernatural, and Jack almost moaned at the sight of her ripping through the wood and sending the splinters everywhere. They were bloodied with the crimson life of the dead hunter at their feet.

Once she had a hole big enough, about a food wide, he sent the swarm. They had to keep the blitzkrieg moving, keep pushing forward, keeping ripping into the hunters before they had time to recover and defend. Clara's short work of the door caught the hunters by surprise, and they took a second before they started unloading lead at the door. The lead was met with furry bodies, and immediately, Clara was splattered with the corpses of hundreds of rats; a living shield, summoned by Jack.

She kept tearing. If the hunters had explosives on the other side of the door they could use, they'd take longer than a few moments to set them up and use them, he hoped. It'd really suck to have Clara die; watching her go full feral freakout berserk rage, and tear open a goliath of a door in seconds, was really arousing for his undead bones.

"Um," Harcourt said, "Jeremiah does have a habit of putting plans inside plans, and only sharing those details with a few people. So, I mean, Plant Vandermont was about defending Sándor's nightmare chambers from invasion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it included other things."

"Then we'll deal with it when it comes up." Jack threw a final glance back at his crew. Othello and Damien were ready, with Beatrice staggering along behind them. Fucked up as she looked, her eyes were nothing but solid anger and determination, ready to walk through fire to make sure that bitch Angela died. Awesome. "Get ready to rush in, Damien, Othello. I expect a lot of gunfire once Clara's opened the door up, and they still have one flamethrower. Find the fucker with fire, and take them out."

"Sure thing boss," Othello said.

"Alright," Damien added.

At last, with a mighty roar that shook the walls, Clara give a final outward tear of her hands, and ripped a giant chunk of the door open. Within sixty seconds of entering the hallway, Jack and his crew had rushed through it, killed a hunter, forced the hunters to flee into the main chamber beyond, and had already torn a path into the hunter's defenses. Yes, good, fast, brutal. Don't let the hunters breathe, don't let them get their bearings, just run them down like the worthless animals they were, and kill them. To the paranormals, sixty seconds was plenty of time to get things done. To the worthless blood bags, sixty seconds wasn't enough time to get anything done.

As Clara burst through the door and into the darkness beyond, Jack pointed his hands forward once again, and guided his army of sacrifices and servants. Scully and Mulder flew above, keeping tabs and offering caws of information to him. Yes, he could see what they saw, or at least have a vague idea.

In the room beyond, the hunters fled. There were a few heavy logs thrown haphazardly against the door, but nothing that could create a realistic barrier. And in the next room, Jack had expected to find the enormous columns from last time, each topped with a statue that mirrored the Horror of Sándor. But there were no columns in the large room. Hell, there wasn't a roof. He looked up, and he could see sky, stars, clouds, the full moon, and he could feel a breeze on his face.

It was a village.

Maybe village was the wrong word. It was definitely a group of houses one would expect to see in the medieval ages, but it was also a nightmare, and no fucking way would something like this function as a real village. First thing he noticed was how the castle, with a fresh hole torn through its front door, didn't have a courtyard. No, the door with the hole was connected to a road, and the road was a mile high in the fucking sky. The road, nothing but dirt and rock, was maybe twenty feet wide, and off either side was a giant fall that would kill anyone, paranormal or otherwise. Terminal velocity, even for someone as light and strong as him, would turn him into a splat on the ground if he landed on rock.

They were on a winding, thin road that was literally the top of a mountain, high enough it practically pierced the clouds.

Clara had stopped not far ahead, probably struck dumb by the sudden change in scenery, same as he was.

"Harcourt," Jack said, "the fuck is this?"

"Oh, right! Yeah that Sándor dude has multiple nightmares, right? I thought we were in the castle, but this is a different nightmare."

"But the castle is behind us."

"Yeah, sorta. You can go into the castle from here, but it kinda warps you around. I'm pretty sure when you're inside, it doesn't really match up with that." He gestured back behind them, to the castle sitting on the cliff edge.

He was right. The castle looked more like a very large, Gothic mansion, which certainly fit the decor, especially considering it had a bunch of gargoyles on columns and stone walls. But the mansion, despite its grandeur, wasn't big enough to hold the colossal chamber Jack and the others had fought Angela, and Jeremiah in before. That would have taken a grand stadium to contain, something a fair bit bigger than the Dracula-esque castle he was looking at.

But the gargoyles upon its walls and stone outcroppings did indeed look like Sándor, the giant gargoyle with four arms and four wings. Such a magnificent beast of power, the captured Begotten. Maybe Jack could turn him into a thrall, as well.

"Are any of the hunters in the nightmare?" Jack said.

"Back in the castle? Probably no. The Sándor's Horror is fucking stomping around in there. We stay away. There might be some of us out here though, and Elen's probably here. She hangs out here." The hunter gestured to the village at the end of the thin, winding road.

"His Horror is... stomping around?" Damien said.

"Yeah. I guess wherever Sándor's locked up, he can't get in touch with it. So it's just rampaging around like nightmare things do."

So a Horror and the Begotten connected to it weren't completely merged. A Begotten not in the nightmare was separated from its Horror. That made for some weird implications, and Jack didn't have time to sort them out now. He had some hunters to butcher.

They started down the winding path, going at a steady jog, while Clara burst forward with Uratha strength driving her to inhuman speed. Each step caused her claws to rip up the earth beneath her with far more brutishness than the stone castle provided, and Jack grinned at each running step she took. Fucking hot.

But the rest of them were going too slow. Lucky for them, Jack had been wrong about expecting the hunters to set up a defense outside the door. If they had, he would have lost more rats, and potentially some of his crew to the flames. He didn't mind walking over the ashes of his crew to reach his goal, but they were more valuable alive.

"Othello. Grab Harcourt, carry him."

"Roger that."

"W-Wait, I—shit!"

Othello had no problems picking the guy up and slinging him onto his back. And then the group of them were free to move at a proper running pace, even Beatrice, who was grimacing with each step. She may not like who he'd become, but the witch had spirit, and he had to respect that. With her guts almost hanging out, she was willing to run after her vengeance, vengeance he was going to make sure happened.

The hunters had managed to get a little further away, both from the door having blocked Jack's path, but also because Jack and crew were a little shocked by the sight before them. Being this high up was absurd, far higher than any cliff could reasonably be and hold a village. But more than that, it was the geography, the shape of the cliff. At no point did it spread out into a flat land for the houses ahead of them to be placed. Instead, the houses were attached to the sides of the thin, winding cliff, attached by enormous tree roots and sitting upon jutting boulders and rock face edges.

Withered trees sat between the houses, titanic and towering, dark and sharp with a myriad of leafless branches. As Jack ran down the road's length, jumping left and right as the strange road curved to ridiculous degrees, he scanned ahead for where the hunters were. The hunter group had managed to put maybe a thousand feet between them and the paranormals; fast mother fuckers.

What was that quote, from Max Payne? 'I don't know about angels, but it's fear that gives men wings.' Too true. The hunters were terrified, completely surprised by Jack's full-frontal blitzkrieg, and they weren't prepared for it. Four of them were dead, two of them had dropped their weapons and surrendered, and one of them was a traitor. The rest were probably convinced they were all going to die, after seeing that. They were on the run, desperate, panicked, adrenaline pumping and fear coursing through their veins. Their world had fallen apart in a matter of minutes, and the only thing they could do was follow Jeremiah and Angela.

They'd only be able to flee from Jack so far. They were in the nightmare world, and as long as Jack stayed on their heels, they'd falter. If they had another way out of the nightmare, it'd take them time to use it. Athalia was convinced they probably didn't, but she didn't know Jeremiah like he did. She'd never stared the man in the eyes as he tortured her, like he had. The fucker was crafty, devoted, and doubtlessly had backup plans for when shit didn't go his way; that probably included the unlikelihood of Elen's flesh chamber being penetrated.

Plus, as Jack looked out past the village, it became obvious that the strange nightmare town, with its dark windows and empty, winding street, had no exiting road. While the entire village existed on the single road, the road itself looked like it ended by colliding with a forest in the distance. In typical nightmare fantasy fashion, the forest was tall, dark, and obtrusively thick. No one was getting through that forest unless it was on foot, and even then, it'd take ten times as long go through it than open land. Anyone inside would be easy meals for paranormals, especially a werewolf.

If this was where they were going to make their last stand, it was suicide. The houses were made of wood, long slabs of timber, like shitty cheap cottages, and decrepit at that, judging by how horrible they looked; any paranormal could tear through them. With the dark clouds above, the night sky, the full moon, and the creepy wind drifting around the houses, rustling the dead trees and their branches, the village screamed haunted. Nightmare fuel. Well, it was a nightmare, a chamber created in the dream world by some event or entity, according to Fiona. Naturally it'd be fucking creepy. Naturally, he felt right at home.

There was one problem, though. As Jack's rats poured out onto the road, and his crows dotted the sky, no new animals joined him. There was a giant forest ahead, undoubtedly filled with small creatures like rats and crows, but none rose from their hiding places. Jack reached out with his mind, and grit his teeth as he found nothing. The vitae he'd spilled to summon his legions sat upon the dirt and earth of the physical realm, and it summoned the creatures of the physical realm. Here, in a world of nightmare fabrications, a dream realm forged and molded by dreamers and strange creatures, his Kindred powers did not reach the rodents, scavengers, and predators. They weren't real. Fiona was real, and so was Athalia, but whatever things with tiny claws and tiny beaks rested within the nightmare, they were only as real as the road Jack walked on: not.

He was at a disadvantage here, and that pissed him off. Whatever. Once he got his hands on the hunters, or was close enough to force eye contact, he wouldn't need his legions.

"Damien, get ahead of us. I don't want anyone with a molotov hitting us from a window."

"Done." The Mekhet jumped ahead, clearing over Clara, and landing on the rooftops. The hunters were still in view, and a few more of them had joined the others, increasing their numbers to maybe ten. What were hunters doing in the nightmare village? Probably helping Elen do something; she'd yet to make her appearance. Maybe she was doing more of her strange witchcraft, and if she was doing it in the nightmare chamber, instead of her strange flesh chamber, maybe whatever she was doing was meant to affect the nightmare realm.

Or maybe she was just taking a nap and preferred to nap here, instead of on a cancerous pile of flesh and blood.

They ran through the village, scanning for possible ambushes, but Damien landed beside them and shook his head.

"The hunters are fleeing into the forest. All of them."

"The forest?" Othello said. "That forest? Are they serious? We're going to eat them alive."

"Don't be stupid," Clara said. The booming, guttural growls of her voice silenced everyone. Talking must have been difficult, with a big snout and without lips to articulate. "If Jeremiah retreat into forest, he has ways to defeat us there." Her sentences were choppy, and missing a few words. It was kinda adorable, in a 'big bad wolf can't talk' sort of way.

"Yeah," Harcourt said from Othello's back. "But, fuck me, I don't remember setting up any defenses here, just in the castle. Jeremiah and Elen didn't let any hunter stay here in the village for long. They were protective of this place."

Protective of the village, hmm. It wasn't a real village, no more than its fake forest, or the fake castle were. The creatures he could see scurrying along the darkness of the mountain, the building edges, the crows and other scavenger birds perched on the dead trees, and the howls he could hear coming from the forest, none of them had true lives of their own. They were just echoes of someone else's nightmares. It made little sense for Jeremiah to be protective of this place.

Unless, Jeremiah and his two bitches were up to things the hunters were unaware of. And they probably were. What other nasty shit was the human witch up to, and capable of doing. And if she was up to something, why here, and not her flesh chamber? Perhaps this place provided her more privacy, if Harcourt was right, and the hunters weren't allowed to stay for long. That meant she could do the darkest, dirtiest stuff. And if she was in those woods, where the hunters were fleeing to, maybe she had some particularly nasty stuff waiting for them.