My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 14

Stupid woman, putting herself through this, knowing full well her boss was going to rip her a new one when she found out. And for what? Because she had a crush on Jack, or because she genuinely agreed with this ridiculous plan? God, she hoped it was the latter.

"Go back to having fun orgies with ghouls, Clara," Triss whispered, hoping Clara couldn't hear her. "Don't get attached to the kid. Don't... don't get attached to anyone." Fuck, was she that bitter now? Screw love, screw romance, screw the idea of ever connecting with another person? A lot of Kindred did that, gave up on romance when looking down the road of immortality. She could see it, see herself telling others that love wasn't worth it, especially if you were an undying creature of the night, and had to carry the heartache for who fucking knew how long. But, no, she wasn't that fucked up, hopefully. She'd bounce back. Angela's corpse would be her trampoline.

As she started dragging Clara's body around the tree and to a safer location, Othello sprinted ahead of the gargoyle. Her fellow witch rarely ever used his physical abilities. He was a slut, through and through, and was only concerned with using Majesty to seduce people. Seeing him exercise his Daeva muscles, and dash away from the Horror with some inhuman speed, was pretty wicked. Except, the monster tore after him far faster than it should have been able to. It wasn't a creature of muscle and bone. It was a nightmare. It didn't have to obey normal rules anymore than Kindred did.

It caught Othello, and it got a hand around each of his limbs.

Oh fuck. No. No no. She would not allow this. She'd lost too much already. She wasn't going to lose anyone else.

She ran out into the clearing of destroyed forest, and jumped out for the giant gargoyle. There should have been a moment's hesitation, but there wasn't. It might kill her, it might not. Maybe Jack would do something, cause he was just standing there by the barrier, waiting. Maybe Damien was would show up and save Othello? She couldn't wait.

Faintly, for a moment, she wondered if maybe the whole night had been a bad idea. As she flew through the air, and did her best to ignore the tearing sensations in her chest, she wondered if any of this had been a good idea at all. How blinded by rage and a need for revenge could she be?

Pretty god damn fucking blinded.

She latched onto the gargoyle's shoulder. Christ, it was huge, over twice as tall as her. This close, it was easy to see that, yes, one of its arms literally was nearly the size of her. Its skin was hard, but not rough. It was tough, quality leather, and as she sank her claws into it to get a grip, she could feel the steel muscle underneath it. Most of Damien's blade was still stuck in its head, and the gargoyle just didn't care. Well, it'd care about this.

She lunged for the side of its face, and sank her teeth into its neck. All her teeth. She opened her mouth wide, as wide as it could go, like a motherfucking python, and sank all her extra teeth onto the gargoyle's muscle.

Back in the real world, grunts and groans, gasps, and even the occasional human scream, were noises she was familiar with, when she sank her fangs into someone. She'd never, ever sunk her crocodile teeth into someone, and she'd never sunk any teeth into something like this. Her eardrums didn't know how to register the sound. It was like someone running a guitar pick along the strings of an electric guitar, with the gain cranked to max, and having ten guitarists do it at the same time with fifty speakers, all pointed at her ears. And, underneath that, it was like someone had attached an earthquake to her head, thousands of square miles of land, literally attached to her skull, and vibrating wildly, bass filling her until she thought her teeth might shatter.

Nosferatu strength poured through her, vitae pumping through her limbs and through her jaw. She ignored the sound of the creature's shrieking roar, ignore how it felt to hear that with her teeth lodged into its neck, and bit harder. Its blood squirted into her mouth, and she ignored that, too. A second of taste was all it took for her to realize its blood would provide no nourishment to her. Like the forest, the castle, the village around her, it was all fake, a dream, a nightmare. The thing she was biting into was a phantasm, not flesh with blood to be devoured. But that didn't mean she couldn't bite it, and hurt it, a lot.

The monster started thrashing around instantly, roaring and screaming with an animal's panic. It let go of Othello, save for one hand around one of the man's legs, and reached for her with the other three. It got two of its hands on her legs, and tugged, but the moment it felt her teeth threaten to rip its throat out if it pulled her off, it hesitated. That's right, motherfucker, I'm a god damn bear trap, and I'm on your fucking jugular.

A few extra seconds in the chaos was all she was going to manage. Her guts were threatening to pop out of her, since she was flexing every muscle in her body, and the cut she'd given to herself wasn't healed. Maybe, just maybe, if she was at full strength, she might be able to tear this fucker's throat a hole, but she doubted that'd kill it. Still, a nasty wound was a step in the right direction.

A strange thunk went through the beast's body, followed by more deafening roars.

"Triss, let go!"

Damien's voice. She let go, and threw herself to the side, away from the creature. In the blur of movement, she spotted Damien bouncing off the creature's head. Oh, he'd kicked the sword still lodged in its skull. It was still there, and a fresh squirt of blood came out of the gargoyle's head, only to cease a moment later; it healed as fast as the werewolves. As Damien flew through the air, he unloaded his pistol at the creature's face, a dozen shots in a single second, before the Mekhet landed on a branch of a nearby tree. Fucking bullets did nothing.

It was surrounded, and every attempt the Horror made to home in on someone and kill them meant it got attacked by someone else. But the gargoyle was learning. It turned to face Damien, ignoring the bullets that bounced from the skin of its skull and face, but as it did, it snapped its tail back behind it, straight at Beatrice.

A giant tail, a snake's tail, a dragon's tail, was not a weapon she expected to ever have to worry about. It wasn't like anything with a tail was up and about, walking around in Dolareido. But the gargoyle had one, and it was long, ten feet probably. And it slammed into her like a fucking truck. Her ribs shattered instantly, she knew that. The strange part was the complete cessation of feeling all together as she flew through the air. All he could do was go limp, and wait for gravity to put her down, an angry child sick of its toy. Spinning fast enough that the world swirled into a blur, she twisted and turned, orientation completely out of her control, until she hit something.

What did she hit? She couldn't see it, whatever it was. Oh, right, the invisible barrier. Like a stone, she fell to the ground, and landed on her head upside down. The ground greeted her like an old, spiteful friend, content to spew bitter words over past misgivings. Dirt, rock, twigs and sharp bark cut into her skin. Only when she slumped over onto her side, did the real pain start kicking in. Ribs, back, and a leg, were broken; attempts to move told her that pretty quick. Agony, searing lava, ran up her limbs and into her skull, explaining to her about her broken body with waves of pain, each screaming 'I'm from your leg' and 'I'm from your back' and 'I'm from your chest'. If she hadn't been Kindred, the broken back would have probably saved her a lot of that pain, but a vampire's corpse body didn't play by biological rules.

It took a few seconds, but eventually the pain subsided into utter misery, instead of paralyzing torment. A level of pain she could manage, after all the training Jacob had put her through. The problem now, was moving. She turned her head and looked at her body, broken and twisted, just like Clara's had been. Miraculously, both her arms were still working, nothing dislocated or broken, and she stabbed her claws into the dirt to begin dragging herself away from the carnage.

She looked over her shoulder, at Jack. He wasn't too far from her. The pit Clara had dug sat between them, so maybe thirty feet was between her and the kid. The monster hadn't been to this side of the growing destruction zone, so, she managed to pull herself between some of the trees. Clara was fifty feet away, behind the giant tree, and out of the way; a big enough tree that even the gargoyle wouldn't be able to break it. Harcourt was nowhere to be found, but the man wasn't stupid enough to try and escape. He had nowhere to go. Fucker was just hiding, as if he finally managed to grow a brain.

Othello had not escaped the gargoyle unharmed, like she'd hoped. What had—oh, right, it had four hands, and one of them had held onto Othello when she bit into it. And, when Damien showed up and kicked the blade lodged in its skull, the gargoyle had whipped around, throwing its arms about. Her fellow witch would have been thrown like a doll, a cheap, small doll that would break if thrown too hard.

Yep, the man was skewered, body dangling from a tree, twenty feet in the air, with a giant branch rammed through his chest. He was in torpor, eyes closed and head hanging forward. A wooden stake through the heart, or anything similar, would do that.

Damien and Jack were the only ones left standing, and Jack seemed content to just stand there by the barrier, grinning at the gargoyle. His legion of rats had been beaten, smashed in by a few thousand hunter bullets, who fucking knew how much flamethrower fire, and now the chaos of a fight against a colossus, in the middle of a forest where the rats were getting squashed left right and center. And black feathers were everywhere. Many of the crows still lived, and had taken to the sky, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, but they just couldn't do a damn fucking thing against the fucking Horror.

Damien hopped away from the monster, only for it to charge through trees in pursuit, body crashing through them like the fucking Kool-Aid man. The vampire was fast, very fast, but the speed didn't mean shit if he couldn't turn it into an offense. Queue epic music, as the poor fucker just ran from the Horror, unable to do anything. If the monster got his hands on him, he was fucked. Maybe an elder Gangrel would be tough enough to take a beating from it, or maybe a Ventrue, but not a Mekhet.

It couldn't match his speed enough to catch him though, and Damien managed to put distance between him and the titan, a lot of it. He disappeared into the woods again, undoubtedly to hide with his Cloak of Night, and look for another attack strategy. Well, fuck, she knew he had none. And the Horror was realizing that, too. Damien was a fly, pestering it, but unable to hurt it with a useless pistol, and without his sword.

The giant creature turned its dark, steel gaze to Jack, and started to march toward him.

"Jack!" Damien yelled from the woods. "Got a plan?" His usually smooth, subdued voice was filled with panicked yells, but the thick forest suppressed the sound, unholy trees muffling all the noise so it was directionless.

The kid didn't respond. He stood there, looking at the gargoyle, and tilted his head from side to side as if to crack his neck. Kindred bodies couldn't pop their knuckles or crack their backs, no nitrogen bubbles or shit in the joints. But it was obvious he was getting ready for something.

Searing pain scorched up through her body again, and Triss bit down as she tried to ignore it. The taste of that monster's blood was on her tongue, and it tasted weird. It tasted wrong. It tasted good. The fuck would Sándor's blood taste like? She shook her head, throwing away the thought, and replacing it with a mountain of pain from the stupid fucking act of shaking her fucking head. But vitae coursed through her, started fixing her spine and fixing her leg, and she screamed through clenched teeth as more pain flowed through her. Things were sliding into grooves and slots with almost audible grinding of bone on bone, the Beast within putting her back together with all the care and delicacy of an overworked masseuse turned serial killer.

She looked to the clearing. Not the one the Horror had made, a ruin of destroyed trees, rat and bird corpses, and blood. She looked to the other one, with the hunters standing safely behind their bullshit magic. The clearing with the sacrifices on trees now looked like a saintly display, compared to the zone of death she was dragging her broken ass through. Loads of the rats and birds weren't completely dead, and some of them squeaked or squawked in misery as she dragged herself past them. Fuck, it was horrible. It fit the nightmare environment of the old, dead forest, and the haunted village perfectly.

She managed to get her body around a tree, between her and the rampaging gargoyle. Clara was nearby, and Triss sighed relief as she noticed the werewolf moving her jaw slowly, inching out of her coma. Movement in the other direction drew her eye in a snap, and she hissed to herself as she glared at Angela and Jeremiah. Whatever they were doing, it was taking longer than she'd figured it would. Well, if this was some sort of last ditch effort at something, and they were willing to kill almost all the hunters they had to do it, it made sense that it was going to take them more than a minute to set it up.

They were drawing lines in the grass now, carving them with their belt knives and heels. Elen followed them as they dug, pushed by her bodyguards. No way was that old bitch leaning down to write on the ground without accidentally snapping every bone in her body, but she didn't need to. As she was pushed along, she let her right hand dangle off the side of her chair, so the tip of her glowing knife was only inches from the ground. Drops of red fell from it, gentle glows of crimson that pulsed like candlelight in the night air.

"Harcourt," she said, biting down as another pulse of pain went through her. Crack, crunch, a femur bone slid into place, bone rubbing and grinding sliver by sliver. "Harcourt."

"W-What? I—holy shit." The man poked his head up from behind his fallen tree, and stared at her. "Your—"

"I'll be fine, fucking moron." The look of concern on his face dug at her like a thorn. The man was a hunter. Killing things like her was his reason for getting up in the morning, or night. Where the fuck did he get off looking concerned. "You sure you don't know what your bosses are doing?"

"Creating a portal of some kind. That's all I know."

"Yeah, I gathered that much. Fuck me, you are useless."

"Well sorry! I'll just take back the info that enabled this stupid suicide mission!"

She rolled her eyes as she looked back to the hunters, and then back to Jack. The Horror was charging at him now, full speed, and it'd get to him in a couple of seconds.

"Come on, I want you to do it, I want you to do it," Jack said, grinning and staring at the gargoyle. The kid had moved closer to the pit Clara dug, now only a few feet from the ditch, and stood his ground. "Come on, hit me. Hit me!"

Oh my fucking god, he was quoting The Dark Knight.

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~~Damien~~

He felt useless.

Sándor's nightmare was a juggernaut. Bullets couldn't pierce its skin, and his sword was lodged in its skull so hard, he wasn't getting it out. The sword's handle, and a few inches of the metal, were lost, and useless besides. He still had a silver knife, but the soft metal wouldn't stand a chance against this thing's body; it wasn't long enough to do serious damage anyway.

As he sped away from the chasing gargoyle, he tapped into his core, found the vitae stirring and coursing through him, and blanketed himself in the Cloak of Night. Doing it while running, especially while running in this environment, bouncing off trees and in the dead of night, wasn't easy. He had to slow down to do it, but at least that gave him some time to look over his shoulder, and check on Othello.

The man had been thrown aside when Damien kicked the blade lodged in its skull. Following that, the gargoyle had spread its wings in a powerful explosion of force, and Damien had lost track of the Daeva. Those four enormous sails of leather, each draped under arms longer and thinner than its main four arms, were far tougher than wings should have been. Instead of thin membranes, they were full-on leather, sturdy enough that, when it spread its wings, it not only sent wind outward with explosive force, sending branches and rodents alike outward in a blast, it kicked up air and twisted it into a momentary tornado. The poor Daeva was skewered on a branch, dangling like a rag doll, defenseless.

He had to do something. If he could get inside the circle the hunters had created, he could destroy the altar Elen had prepared. It must have been controlling Sándor and his Horror, and if he destroyed it, Lord willing, the spell on the man, and the new one cast on his Horror, would be broken. But Clara hadn't managed to make even the tiniest hole through the black soot. The ground was tougher than Jack had predicted.

If they had time, the could have done something. All they needed to do was cause the earth to vibrate at the hole Clara dug. Vibration would make the earth crumble, and the line would be broken. A quick trip to the Invictus HQ, and they could get some grenades, assuming Michael and Maria didn't lock them up immediately. Or, they could maybe grab some of the fallen trees, and smash them into the hole Clara dug. Surely with a cooperative effort, they could lift some truly heavy objects.

Damien dashed up a tree and got fifty feet into the air, before he started returning toward the chaos. Kindred eyes helped with navigating the insane, deadly maze of sharp branches and twisted, fat, warped, withered trees, but rolling clouds above kept the moon and starlight from helping much. He had to go slower, slower than he wanted. Each branch he had to take carefully. The bloody forest was brittle in some places, and deadly sharp in others. Running through it would lead any human to die a slow death to a thousand cuts, or to trip and be skewered by an errant branch through the neck. Nightmare realm indeed.

He got as close as he could before he ran out of trees. From up high, everything was different. It were as if a giant explosion had gone off, creating a crater of mayhem and death below, several hundred feet wide. Dead rats coated the forest floor like a carpet.

Up in the trees, high up where everything was black, and hopefully beyond the notice of the gargoyle, there were crows everywhere, far more crows than Damien had thought. Had Jack told them to hide? Plenty of crows had died, but it was the rats that'd taken the brunt force of both the hunters' weapons fire, and the Horror's chaotic destruction. Up in the high branches of the angry forest of black bark and petrified wood, thousands and thousands of wings waited in absolute silence.

Damien scanned the ground below him. Clara was there, but Triss had managed to pull her behind a tree earlier, so all Damien could see was a bit of her tail, and one of her feet. Paws? It was twitching. Clara had been crushed into a broken mess of bone and meat, and Damien was confident she'd be on her feet in another ten minutes, given her werewolf regeneration and tenacity. Ten minutes was an eternity, in their current situation.

Triss had been hit as well, and unlike Clara, she'd had no one to pull her out of harm's way. He could see her, dragging herself behind some of the fallen trees, not too far from where Clara had gone down. Harcourt was there. For a moment, Damien wondered if the man would take advantage of the situation, and kill Clara, Triss, and maybe Othello, but the fear passed quickly. Jack had proved the man was trustworthy before they went on this suicidal mission, and even if he hadn't, Harcourt was trapped by circumstance. Maybe he'd help. Or, most likely, he'd hide.