My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 14

"They're not getting away this time," he whispered to himself. He'd burn the whole fucking city down looking for them if they escaped. And he didn't want to do that. Dolareido was his city.

The Horror lined up a punch on the wolf, rather than using its claws and risking its arm. Clara was fast, and she let go of the arm she was tearing into, got onto all fours on the dirt, and slipped under the giant's crotch. No longer snarling or roaring, focused entirely on the hunt and the fight, the wolf creature ran her claws along the inside of the beast's thighs, earning deep gashes that sent some blood squirting onto her.

Jack licked his lips at the sight of it. God damn, that was hot. And those claws, werewolf claws. Normal claws couldn't do that, even on a creature that brutally strong, and even if the claws were indestructible. The teeth, too, like the claws, had something supernatural to them. Werewolves had the tools to put out raw destruction from the moment they became what they were, unlike vampires, who took a good fifty years to become truly dangerous.

But, despite the nasty wounds, the colossal creature responded with deft speed, lifting its right leg, half turning, and slamming down with its two lower fists. Clara was forced to jump to the side, abandoning her attempt to rip open the Horror's tail. But she didn't jump far enough. The creature was strong, and far too fast for something its size. The crunch of knuckles hitting Clara's body was obvious.

It'd turned around though, to deal with Clara, and that left its back exposed to Jack. Oh boy oh boy, time to have some fun. Jack ran up to the Horror's tail, knowing damn well he was too light to make much noise as he leapt from cracked trunk to cracked trunk. The joys of being tiny.

Crew check. Othello was picking himself up a good ways away, and so was Damien, albeit slower, but the Horror's utter destruction of the area had buried them in fallen timber. They had to both heal from their wounds enough to fight, and had to climb out from underneath the debris; easy enough for Othello, not so easy for Damien. And Clara was now on her back, using both her hands and wolf feet to claw and slice at the Horror's attempts to punch down at her. It tried once, and got its knuckles cut up for it. Anyone who owned a cat knew better than to go for the stomach, which gave the cat four sets of claws and a set of teeth to use on the attacking hand.

Jack grinned at the gleam he spotted on the monster's side, and leapt for it. Yeah, he was light, and small as fuck compared to a fifteen-foot behemoth, but there was no way the monster wouldn't notice a kid jumping onto its back. But, for that brief second, Jack managed to land on the creature's spine, underneath where its four wings jutted out from between four shoulder blades. It hurt, landing on his crotch and ass, but it gave him a bit of control with his legs half wrapped around the titan's waist. And as the monster twisted around in surprise, Jack grabbed the sword sticking out of the Horror's side, and yanked.

Blood poured out of the titan, and the monster's roars turned into a deliciously higher pitched, alien scream. The Horror's voice had layers to it, so it sounded like a bunch of monsters all screaming bloody murder. And this close, it was painful, loud and hard enough Jack felt his eardrums struggle, threatening to take damage. Ah well, he'd heal them in moments anyway.

He let gravity take him off the creature. Thump, he fell like a bag of sand to the ground. When the monster turned around, shrieking and roaring unendingly, Jack waited until the monster was looking away from the direction it'd sent Damien. Jack threw the sword that way, and bolted in the other. The creature gave chase to Jack, as planned.

The creature's skin was too thick for his legion to harm, and much of his legion had died to fire and bullets already. And since the human half of the Horror was nowhere to be found, leaving behind nothing more than a rather large, angry dream shadow thing, Jack couldn't Dominate it. It was like trying to Dominate an aspect of the environment, like a tree or bush, and those things lacked the parts needed for his brain to catch and control. If Sándor were piloting, he'd be able to Dominate him, and make short work of this whole excursion.

More problematic was, for all his strength, Jack was ultimately trapped by his size and weight. He wouldn't be able to win a game of strength against this colossal brute, not easily anyway, simply because he wouldn't be able to anchor and engage it. The gargoyle could literally punt him like a football, if he got the chance, and it wouldn't matter how strong Jack was.

It was frustrating. But it did mean he could move quick; maybe not as quick as a vamp fueled by Celerity, but pure brawn still created speed in physics. With all the destroyed trees lying around, he had no trouble finding things to push off of as he bounded his way back to where Clara had been digging in the hole.

The Horror tore after him. Queue Jurassic Park music. Sándor's nightmare might not have been as big as a tyrannosaurus rex, but it wasn't far off. The Horror was gargantuan, a tall and hulking mass, that sped up after Jack far faster than physics — damn physics — would allow. He remembered a similar thing with Azamel, when he met her elephant man form, how it could move faster than something that big should be able to. So, instead of a giant creature taking its sweet time pushing itself up to full speed, like a movie dinosaur might, the Horror bolted after him like a fucking tiger, complete with a mighty roar and extended claws.

The monster was quick, but Damien and Othello were quicker. Celerity fed their movements until they were practically blurs, and the two vampires launched themselves at the running monster's back. They may as well have been trying to ride a dragon, but they got onto the monster's back, and started hitting. Damien went for a killing blow, but as his sword sank into the gargoyle's head, it came to a dead stop.

"Its bone is like metal!" Damien said. This time, he managed to jump off without getting hit, but he had to leave his sword behind again. Unfortunately, the handle and a chunk of the blade went with Damien, while the majority of the blade remained with the creature. The long thing was literally sticking out of the Horror's head, between two enormous horns. Fucking. Hilarious.

While Damien got off the ride, Othello didn't. He wrapped one arm around the beast's neck, and started punching with the other. Othello wasn't very smart. The monster had plenty of flexibility, and it reached up with one hand to grab onto the big man pounding dents into its neck.

Only for Clara to collide with it again. The werewolf threw her weight at the Horror's back, and she weighed a lot more than Othello. A full pounce, one that utilized her extreme strength, so that her weight came down onto the gargoyle's back with a massive amount of inertia powering it. It was enough to make the monster drop Othello, and start turning around at high speed in an attempt to dislodge Clara. She held on, her teeth biting the base of one of its giant wings, but her legs stuck out from the monster's body with the force of its spinning.

It would have been hilarious, if not for the crunch of bone as Clara's body collided with trees. Jack and Clara had knocked down trees, Jack far more, and the fight with the Horror had knocked down hundreds, but the forest was enormous, and every few feet meant another thick tree. As the fight drifted around, the monster continued to clear out the woods with all the grace of a wrecking ball run by a drunk asshole. Each step the monster took was enough to break and crunch through most of the trees it stepped on, and its claws latched onto the larger ones without issue. It wasn't going to fall over easily.

"Harcourt," Jack yelled, "I don't suppose you know what this thing is weak to?"

"Uh, would you believe sunlight?" The hunter was nowhere to be found, until he poked his head out from behind a particularly massive tree.

Of course it'd be weak to sunlight. It was a gargoyle. Maybe it'd turn to stone or something. Either way, a useless weakness for a vampire to take advantage of, at least in this situation.

Othello came back in, or tried to, but the monster didn't stop spinning around. Eventually, it threw itself backward against the trees, crashing through them and smashing through trunks two or three feet thick without issue. A wolf's howl cut through the explosion of wood.

"Othello, Damien, get him over here," Jack said. This was getting ridiculous. This giant thing was just a dumb bull, a stupid bull that needed to be put down. If this monster was the other half of Sándor, killing it would probably kill Sándor. Ah well, if it came to that, so be it, but he wanted to try his other idea first.

"How are we supposed to do that!?" Othello yelled. The vampire ran underneath the gargoyle's tail, and landed a solid punch against the creature's leg. Thunk. Othello was strong, a hundred-year-old Daeva with plenty of strength to summon, plus plenty of muscle and heft to put to use. But in a fist fight against a giant nightmare that was practically living stone, they needed an anti-tank rifle, or maybe a nuke. The fact Damien's sword had managed to survive as long as it did, was sheer dumb luck.

The wound Jack had dealt with the sword had already closed, still there, but no longer bleeding. The shallow cuts Clara had left on its body were closed as well. The thousands of bites and scratches his rats had inflicted were meaningless. The damn thing was just too large a juggernaut.

Grinning, Jack hopped across the downed trees, and stood not too far from the hole that Clara had dug. He turned to look back at the gargoyle, pointed his hands at it, and tapped into his core, his vitae, and reached deep. No matter how much he reached out for nearby wildlife, the nightmare landscape provided no link for his mind, no animals for him to Dominate. It was a dream realm, and he was a creature of flesh and blood, both literally and in intent. Everything about a vampire was about blood, and the flesh that contained it. Begotten existed parallel with dreams. Uratha existed parallel with spirits. Vampires existed in the world of blood, and unfortunately for him that meant the things in nightmares, including a Horror, were something his mind could not reach out and Dominate.

But he could still control his own body, and his own flesh and blood.

"Draw him here as best you can," Jack said. "I'll deal with him."

Licking his fangs, Jack kicked away nearby rocks and trees. Now that there was space, mostly created by the idiot creature's clumsiness, drawing it to him should be easy enough.

Much as he loved destruction, loved breaking things, loved to feel an explosion course through his body, and loved to hear the screams of the ruined, this creature's idiotic, wanton destruction was juvenile. It had no sense of purpose, or desire guided by context, memories and experiences, thoughts and goals. It was a mindless vortex of chaos and carnage. Cool in theory, but now that he got to see the colossal creature ripping and tearing, all it made him think of was an angry bull. Not even a bull! More like, a volcano, just doing what it did naturally. Where was the context? Where was the emotion that dripped from real carnage. Where was the drama?

Susanna would have been annoyed by this thing as well. She bathed in the blood of hundreds, because they deserved it, because she loathed them, or was disgusted by the actions they'd done. Hate, anger, molded by years of interaction. This nightmare creature had none of that. Exploiting it would be no harder than manipulating an amoeba, or guiding a river; a large river, admittedly, but a river nonetheless.

Clara let go of the titan. No, not let go, was thrown. At some point in the chaos, as the giant Horror thrashed around and slammed her into trees while it tried to catch Othello, she couldn't hold on anymore. Her body went through a tree sideways, and into the next before coming to a stop. The lump of fur and muscle that landed still moved, but barely, twitching limbs twisted, turned, and broken. Her head lifted for a second, looked at Jack, and slumped against a destroyed tree trunk beside her, jaw hanging open and wolf tongue dangling out.

Triss, not far from the downed Clara and hiding behind a large tree, put a hand to her lips as she stared at the broken werewolf. But she got over her shock quickly, and looked to Jack, then the hunters, then the dragon they still had to deal with.

Othello got out from around its legs, and sprinted over to Jack, bouncing off fallen trees as he crossed over the growing clearing of destroyed forest. But the Horror was fast, and it charged forward after Othello, ripping the earth up underneath it as it tore through the ruin to snatch him out of the air. It was like watching a house cat grab a toy ball flying by, an insane display of reflexes and timing that no human could hope to match. Except, the Horror was fucking titanic, and had no business being that fast.

It wrapped its four hands around Othello, one on each limb, and lifted the man up to its mouth. Welp, there went Othello. Ah well. The man's death would give Jack the time to tap into the reservoirs of vitae he'd need, to become a juggernaut himself.

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~~Beatrice~~

Sándor, or Sándor's Horror, was fucking insane. From what she knew about Fiona and Athalia, they were strong individuals, deadly strong, like the Uratha were. Strong without having to sink in decades to earn it like Kindred did. In the land of nightmares, Begotten became even stronger, becoming, or merging with the Horror, or whatever. She could still remember what it felt like, when Athalia had taken her into the nightmare, and Triss got to see the woman's Horror up close and personal. Triss's Beast had recoiled in fear of the alien power of such a creature.

But, apparently, the human half was separate from the Horror half, when the human was out in the real world. So, what, the Horror half was just a mindless thing? Just something that, what, drifted around and caused nightmares? Or, maybe it fed on people's nightmares? She didn't have a fucking clue about Begotten or how they worked, but for the moment, she didn't need to. It was obvious that Sándor's Horror was a fucking titan, far stronger than any of them could have predicted, far stronger than Fiona or Athalia, or that insect pile Mark that Jacob had spooked. This beast running for Jack was a god damn fucking myth of legend.

Triss hid behind a tree, a big one, one of the fat fuckers at least five feet wide. Hopefully it'd survive a hit. Clara had destroyed a bunch of trees earlier, and Jack had knocked down dozens for the fun of it. Sándor's Horror was knocking down hundreds. The rats were scattered and dying by the thousands, mostly to falling trees. The earth was starting to run red with blood, and not long after, it began to turn black with feathers. Above her, the birds were doing their best to be a part of the fight, dive bombing the gargoyle, but for each that managed to close in on the creature, another died to the chaos, from falling trees crashing into each other, or from the gargoyle's many flailing limbs. A flying twig might not have been a big deal, but the giant branches shattering and sending enormous splinters everywhere were. The trees had no give. They didn't bend. They were hard, old, dark, bitter trees, that snapped violently, as if making sure to part the world with a fun-filled farewell.

She looked back to the clearing the hunters were in. The four bodyguards stared at the chaos of Sándor's Horror fighting a werewolf and three vampires, but Jeremiah, Elen, and Angela remained focused on their task. Every so often, Angela twitched, spooked by the impact of the monster smashing through more trees, ripping the nigh endless forest to bits around it. Jeremiah only bothered with a few glances, and Elen didn't even notice. The old woman, now being wheeled by Jeremiah, started drawing on another tree with her glowing red knife, before moving onto the next. Those portal symbols again. They were going to go somewhere, and they sacrificed a fuckload of bodies, trained and useful bodies, to go wherever somewhere was.

"Brace," she said, "sure you don't know what your bosses are up to?" The hunter was lying down on the ground behind a fallen tree on his stomach. Smart. If the nightmare monster came there way, there was a decent chance it'd run right past him. Or step on him and kill him instantly.

"No," he whispered, "not a fucking clue. Andrew and the others probably know. They're with Jeremiah and Elen all the time." He gestured to the four hunters, shook his head several times, dropped his forehead into the dirt, and shook it again. Guy really wore his emotions on his sleeve.

Considering what they knew about Jeremiah, he was probably pulling out some last ditch effort to achieve his goals, which meant Azamel's life was in danger. No one fucking cared about Azamel, though. The problem was it might mean they get away, again, and that could not happen.

What a delightful circle of hate. Azamel ruined Jeremiah's life, so the fucker spent an eternity hunting her down. Angela ruined Beatrice's life, so she'd spend an eternity hunting her down Angela probably didn't know who she was, the fucking bitch. But, no, she wasn't going to escape again. This was going to end tonight.

Triss poked her head around the giant tree. Fucking god, that monster was huge. When it stood up straight, it must have been fifteen feet tall, muscular, with dark blue skin, like the depths of the ocean. The four arms, one pair set under the other, were each almost as a big as her. Its horns were massive, its wings gigantic, and its tail slithered left and right behind it with serpent grace. Clara clung to its back, biting and clawing at where its four wings jutted. The arms of each wing, not as big as its more normal four arms, were still big, long, and muscular. The werewolf didn't make much headway in damaging them.

It was obviously male, and its face wasn't too far off from a human face, if perhaps a little demon-ish, with a broad hard chin and heavy brow. He, it, whatever, might have even looked attractive, in a 'I am a demon incarnate, bow before my might' sort of way. And watching it rampage, ripping and tearing the forest around it like paper, sealed the image pretty thoroughly. It was a nightmare alright, the sort of nightmare someone might have had five hundred years ago, imagining a gargoyle on a cathedral being possessed by a demon and unleashing its hate and fury on the city. It would have been kind of awesome, if the damn thing wasn't trying to kill them.

It threw Clara off, hard enough that she smashed through a tree like a rock through a window, before she slammed against the tree Triss was behind. The thud of her body against the trunk was sickening. Crunch, tearing bark and breaking bones. The werewolf slumped to the earth, and Triss slowly crouched down, and peeked around the tree at her.

Poor woman. Her body was twisted almost one-eighty at the waist, her torso pointed up, head leaning against the nearby tree trunk of a destroyed tree, and her mouth hung open, with tongue hanging out. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't there. Unconscious, or dazed. A good thing, too, or she'd be shrieking in agony. One of her legs was bent at the knee, in the wrong direction, and the other leg had a bone sticking out of it. Her arms weren't in as bad condition, except one being bent horribly out of place around and behind her back; dislocated. Much of her fur was soaked in blood, and giant gashes ran down her side. They must have been caused by the trees and branches she'd hit. Triss could see the gashes closing themselves, that ridiculous werewolf endurance putting itself to use, but it had its work cut out for it, trying to rebuild someone as beat up as Clara was now.