My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 16

When they reached the wooden door with a large hole carved into it, a work obviously done by claws, Sándor thrust out his hands, and the doors swung open for him. Antoinette had anticipated resistance from the door, but it parted to more than simply the gargoyle's strength. It opened the way a door does when touched by its owner, with total familiarity and servitude. Beyond, Antoinette expected the enormous castle interior Jack had described to her, but she found something else entirely.

She stood upon a cliff edge, a narrow road that raised to a point. The point grew in width enough to hold, with impossible strength, a castle. She once had her own property on the face of a cliff, and she knew all too well the realities of an enormous structure of stone on the edge of a mountain. What she was looking at here, here in the nightmare, was not physically possible.

A lightning strike, distant and well behind the old castle, shook the nightmare whole with the following thunder. The flash of white against the cloudy night sky illuminated the castle, its glorious stone Gothic architecture, and a nigh endless drop that awaited beneath its precarious perch upon the cliff edge. The nightmare cared nothing for the reality and impossibility of such elevation. It cared only to terrify those within, and for all her strength and ability, Antoinette could not ignore the overpowering presentation of its aesthetic. Were she human, such a castle, at least a mile high, would have had her quivering.

So too, would the village that awaited her. She gazed out over the old, wooden buildings, the long winding road they surrounded, and the tall, twisted trees of black bark between them. Not unlike the castle behind her, the buildings weren't set flat upon stone earth, but instead hung off the sides of the skinny cliff, and she could see the enormous roots of trees about them curling, twisting, and holding the buildings into the rock. A single earthquake would have left the village decimated, perhaps nonexistent, but it was a nightmare, and she had to start thinking in such terms.

Before the four of them could proceed down the road, and into the clearly haunted village, the sky was set aflame. Antoinette covered her eyes for a moment, lowered her hands, and gasped as she made sense of the insanity in the dark air above the woods ahead of them.

Over the distant forest, over the horrible trees and wicked branches, was Azamel, the enormous elephant creature, now in her full size and monstrous glory. Shackled to the sky, the monster trumpeted her agony and rage, and struggled against the amber, glowing symbols that bound her. But she could not move.

"In the forest," the gargoyle said, and took off. The creature's great weight tore into the ground, shredding rock and earth alike as he sprinted forward, spread his wings, and caught the air. With wings spread, Sándor looked far more enormous, his wings titanic and long enough to lift his colossal weight against the air currents beneath him.

Before she could pursue, the world went dark. Beyond dark. The world ceased to exist. She froze, and vitae pumped through her limbs like a flood as she prepared for an attack. None came. She listened for the sound of the wind, of the distant gunfire in the forest, of Sándor's absurd wingspan, or of Azamel's trumpets of pain. Nothing. As if the world had decided it simply no longer existed, and had blinked out of reality, all around her she found nothing. No wind touched her skin through her business suit, and no ground greeted her bare feet. The smell of rock, wood, and mountain air vanished. It had all faded away.

All except Azamel. The elephant above came closer, and closer, until Antoinette was not far from the hanging giant. Or, had Antoinette come closer to her? With nothing else in existence, literally, to form context, movement had no meaning. She may as well have been floating through space, though she could tell she was not, somehow.

"Daniel?" she said. No, she did not say it. She tried, and she was certain her mouth moved and lungs compressed to create the noise. And yet, no noise came. She was speaking into oblivion, and oblivion was all she could hear.

"Azamel," the darkness said. "Azamel. I loved you."

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~~Jack~~

Jack reached down, picked up a rock, and grinned as he stepped out from the forest. He didn't need his pistol, or any of his weapons, to kill these fuckers from a distance. A well thrown rock with Kindred strength behind it would kill just as well as a bullet.

This wasn't how he wanted things to go. The hunters were supposed to be buried under his legion, and he'd torture them to death in a beautiful, gory display of dominance. He'd march toward them, unstoppable, a fucking Terminator, and he'd spend the whole night picking them off one by one. He'd break their legs, and drag them screaming to a room, where he'd gather them and bathe in their wails. He'd Kiss one or two of them to death, but the others wouldn't get to die so quickly, or pleasurably. It'd be a great night of slaughter!

But noooo, Jeremiah had to be a fucking asshole, and sacrifice his pawns for some sort of gambit. Now there was fire everywhere, blocking him. Worse, the hunters were all dead! He'd get, at best, seven hunters to kill, and that was a pale comparison to the nigh two dozen he'd had not long ago. Even doubly worse, was how they'd ruined his groove. It was cool, beating up the gargoyle enforcer, but his night of unleashing unimaginable horrors on the hunters was wrecked. Now, he was in the fucking forest, ready to throw a rock, because they had fire and protection circles, and—

No. Fuck a rock. This was his follow up performance! His debut at the hospital was awesome, and he had to top that. Nothing less than a grand display of strength, complete with explosions and loud noises, would do.

He put the rock down, reached out for the base of a tree trunk, and reached into himself. Jack, old Jack, was such a weak Ventrue. He, on the other hand, was the mother fucking best. A drop of vitae was all he needed. For him, a single drop was enough to break minds. A single drop was enough to heal wounds. A single drop was enough to summon a wall of blood around his body. A single drop was enough to command legions of animals. And, and this was where old Jack sucked, a single drop was enough for him to unleash strength. Real strength. Kindred strength. Ventrue didn't come to Kindred strength as easily as the Nos or the Daeva, but Susanna had spent the time to build it, develop it, master it, and the new Jack could feel Vigor as easily as Dominate, Animalism, and Resilience.

There was something about the power of raw strength, that fucking rocked.

Jack sank his fingers into the trunk of the tree, the one tree that stood between him and the hunters, and started to lift. He was going to crush them, all of them, right now. The barrier was mostly gone now, said the chirps of his two best agents, so there wasn't anything stopping him from attacking the humans from a distance. A tree thousands of pounds heavy, thrown sideways, directly at the hunters? It'd be great. They'd shoot him, and he'd shrug off the bullets as he threw the tree. They'd get crushed, damaged, but probably live, and he'd walk up to them once the fire died, and have some fun.

Which would give first, the roots of tree and their grip on the ground, or the wood itself, snapping the trunk? He—

He let go of tree, and stared up at the sky. Amber fire scorched the black clouds, and he glared into the burning light, letting it sear his retinas for a single moment before his irises adjusted. Azamel, in the sky, bound to it, with Elen's ritual symbols burning in the air around her.

Jack stepped out from behind the tree, and glared at Jeremiah. The fucker was doing something, yelling and babbling, and he had a knife in his hand. The fuck was he doing? The fuck was Azamel doing here? Christ, she was making a racket, trumpeting her strange Horror's pain, and practically making the forest shake with its piercing, layered noise. What the fuck was—

Darkness. Everywhere, was darkness. The tree he was leaning against, gone. The feeling of its bark under his hands, gone. The feeling of ground under his shoes, gone. The sound of fire, the breeze on his naked chest, all gone. All that was left was him, standing in endless darkness, underneath Azamel's hanging, enormous elephant body.

"Azamel," someone said. "Azamel. I loved you." Jeremiah's voice.

Jack frowned, and swung his hand out for the tree he knew was beside him. Nothing. His hand moved through the air, unimpeded, not by tree or even air.

The elephant above remained where she was, and while he could see her, it, whatever, she wasn't making any noise, despite her attempts to. The flapping, dangling, gigantic elephant trunk was obviously trumpeting, but not making a single sound anymore, when before the darkness came, she'd been driving a railroad spike into his brain.

Ok, so, what was happening?

"It took decades to learn this ritual, Azamel, to get the ingredients I needed. Elen, a shaman from the old world, before we Americans ran this land over, and killed everyone. A nightmare realm, to trap you, the whole you, the real you. People who trusted me with their lives, to be sacrificed." The man's voice broke, wavering, a hitch in his throat. "It's a cursed ritual, Azamel, and it was my last option. I never wanted to do it, but my hand has been forced. If you'd just... let me kill you, none of this would have had to happen."

"If you loved me, then why are you doing this?" A woman's voice, and one Jack struggled to identify. Azamel? It sounded kind of like her, the human her, but softer, without the cracks and grit of decades of smoking and age.

"You killed my friends and family."

"They came for my head, Jeremiah."

The man grunted. "Can you blame them? You're a monster, Azamel. They knew what needed to be done."

Azamel stopped struggling against her bindings, and went limp. Her eyes were still open, but she looked drained, empty, as if someone had ripped something out of her.

Jack stared ahead into the darkness, and frowned as Jeremiah faded into being, younger, and without any of the tattoos or scars. He stood there in clothes Jack guessed came from post the American civil war. A woman stood next to him, a bit older, attractive, handsome, someone in her forties. Azamel, back when she was strong, tough, and judging by how she carried herself, ready to boss people around. She wasn't wearing the sort of shitty dress women wore back then either, giant dresses with huge asses. She was wearing the same sort of clothes Jeremiah wore, and both of them looked a bit dirty, like they'd been working fields. They probably had.

"I defended myself."

"You ruined their lives," Jeremiah said. His voice had its youthfulness revived as well.

"How? I built this town, and gave them a life."

Was this the past? Azamel had said she'd known Jeremiah, a hundred and fifty years ago, fucked up, lived with him in a town she'd been mayor of; dictator of a town, really. Jeremiah had been a deputy, and when his sheriff had learned who Azamel was, Azamel had basically exiled him from her town. Jeremiah asked why, Azamel explained about her monster side, Jeremiah left town, got the sheriff, and they tried to take the town back. Azamel killed them all, save for Jeremiah. All in all, it sounded like Jeremiah had been a fucking moron, to throw away a babe with money and power, for some misplaced sense of justice.

But this conversation he was witnessing didn't sound like it fitted into that time line. Then, it was happening now? Right, Jeremiah had said something about soul ritual.

Oh fucking god, were they having a soul battle? Is that what was happening? He was watching these two fossils butting heads, except instead of heads, it was their souls? Someone come kill him quick, and spare him the drama.

"You were a tyrant, Azamel," Jeremiah said. "You killed people."

"Just the criminals."

If Azamel was in the sky during this, and her soul, or projection of her soul, or whatthefuckever, was standing in front of Jack, next to Jeremiah's soul, then where was the real Jeremiah? Probably invisible like everyone else was. They could probably all see Azamel, her, prostrated in the black emptiness above, while her and her pursuer had a friendly conversation. Dramatic. Stupid. The moment Jack figured out how to find the real Jeremiah, or any of his hunters, this sham would be over.

"You ruled with an iron fist," young Jeremiah said.

"And gave people a good life, a life worth living. They had money. They had homes. They were not abused."

"They had no freedom!"

"They had the freedom I gave them, and it was enough! You ruined it for them, Jeremiah, not me!"

Jack walked around, but it made no difference. Like walking on a frictionless surface, he couldn't get anywhere, and the reference points he had, Jeremiah and Azamel, remained fixed where they were relative to him. Growling between clenched teeth, he reached into himself, and grabbed vitae, far more of it than he needed. It poured through him, into his fingers and toes, into his nostrils and eyes, and he stared around with every sense he had on overdrive. He couldn't smell them, hear them, or see them; the hunters simply weren't nearby. He couldn't smell the forest, his burning, dying legion, or blood anymore, and there'd been plenty of blood.

He froze, and looked around with bewilderment as new things flickered into existence, new places, new areas, and more than one. A building, wood, dirty windows. Sunlight. He winced as he prepared for the burning, but none came. Instead, the illusion spread out before him of a town, obviously a village from a hundred and fifty years ago. People were walking around, townsfolk, guys in boots, and women in stupid dresses.

The illusion didn't hold still. It faded in and out, and each time it showed something different, but also of the town. Kids running through the streets. Horses trotting along with carriages. A sheriff, walking around with a gun in its holster on his hip, a revolver. They were coming up on the end of the 'Wild West' era, the American Frontier, and people weren't as utterly filthy as Jack expected they would be. The illusion provided no noise and no smells, as if to spare Jack the authentic experience of horse shit.

The sun burned bright in the sky, and Jack spared a peek at it, several times. It was fake, but damn, it'd been a while since he'd seen the sun literally above him, shining, and being annoying. He didn't miss it.

"You fed on the fear they had of you!"

The illusion jumped to the inside of another building, a fancy one for the era, big, and imposing. Azamel's home, no doubt. She had hunting trophies on the walls, deer and bear heads, and a large fireplace built into the wall. Bear fur rugs, with the bear's head and hands still attached. A stone house, well built, sturdy, meant to last the ages. A few more decades and she'd probably have some electricity set up for lighting.

Young Jeremiah and young Azamel stood by the fireplace, yelling, in the familiar way lovers did. Either the illusion had fully pulled them into its lie, or just the sight of her old home was enough to regress them.

"All people should fear the might of a predator, and the wrath of a ruler. I did not abuse that power!" young Azamel said, throwing up her hands, before they tightened into fists at her sides.

Ok, they may not have been literally butting heads, but the anger in their voices may as well have been shotguns jammed up to each other's throats, and triggers pulled. The two of them screamed with enough vitriol, it made Jack smile. God damn, old people knew how to hate, really really how to hate, in a way young people just couldn't appreciate it. Old people hated down to the fucking essence of their being; case in point, a soul ritual, demonstrating just that.

Jeremiah took a deep breath, calming himself. "Angela convinced me to avoid using this ritual, when we captured Sándor. She thought, maybe with Elen's magic, the way she can manipulate flesh, we could catch you without having to use it. But... my hand's been forced." Lowering his head, Jeremiah began to pace around the room with the familiarity of someone who'd done it a hundred times. He didn't glance at the taxidermy around him, or even the fireplace.

Jack's smile grew. Yeah, you fucker, I forced your hand. Using Elen and the fucked up shit she could do, to try and catch Azamel when she was vulnerable, just an old woman in a wheelchair, was a good idea. Pissing off Jack until new Jack could come out to play, was not a good idea.

"You speak as if this ritual will kill you," the oddly beautiful, or rather handsome woman said.

"Because... it probably will." Sighing again, the man stepped closer to the woman, and set a hand on her shoulder. "I've done more than hunt you all these years, Azamel. I've researched, as well. I've dug, and dug, and dug. Not long after you destroyed my home, I tracked down where you'd been before. From there, I went down a hole, searching for anyone who knew anything about the elephant monster. Nightmares, Azamel, the nightmares you spun and the memories they'd left in others were my trail.

"It took years to find people who knew of you. They were old by then, a hundred years ago, and were only children when they'd seen you. All the way to the Middle East, Azamel, where I learned about a woman, a foreigner, journeying across the land. Apparently, she'd been haunted by a nightmare, and ranted and raved about it." Slowly, Jeremiah used his other hand to reach into his suit shirt, and pulled out a knife from within. The blade was white.

Azamel's eyes went wide, and she stepped away. Jeremiah's other hand held her shoulder firm, stopping her from taking a second step.

"It took years," Jeremiah continued, "to figure out that you, your Horror, have nothing to do with Ganesha. It took decades to learn about the story of the cursed elephant, an old horror story told around campfires. It was just a tale, a stupid tale, Azamel, that people in the East told each other, to spook each other about the folly of mistreating or underestimating the anger of elephants.

"It was when I heard about a man who'd died, long ago, that I pieced it together. This man was supposedly a big believer of the tale, and due to unfortunate circumstances, found himself trampled to death under the feet of an enraged elephant. Worse than trampled, he'd been skewered first, by a tusk."

Oh. That made a lot more sense. Jack had been racking his brain, trying to figure out why Azamel's horror was some sort of twisted, corrupt version of Ganesha. He'd even looked it up. Ganesha was a god of intellect, wisdom, and a 'remover of obstacles'. Nothing about that, at all, was scary.

Now, a spooky campfire story about some sort of evil elephant that looked like Ganesha, maybe a story meant to dissuade people from aggravating elephants, or a warning to avoid the dangers of an elephant, that idea made much more sense. He could imagine it easily, a person trekking through the jungle or savanna, forced to move at night, being terrified of running into a lion or tiger or something. Then, they stumble onto a fucking elephant, sleeping. Elephant wakes up and panics, or maybe hates humans for hunting their kind, or goes on a rampage for any number of reasons. All Jack knew, was a raging elephant was a fucking terrifying idea; it'd give most Kindred pause, let alone kine.

Running into that, in the night, and having it attack you, skewer you with its tusks, and trample you to death? Yeah, that must have qualified for creating a nightmare chamber, according to what Fiona told him. Maybe the tale created the Horror, and that experience created the chamber it needed to exist? Fuck him, he had no idea. But it definitely painted Azamel in a new light. She wasn't a Ganesha knock off. She was an embodiment of the terror people felt, before the might of an enraged creature, a symbol known throughout dozens of cultures, suddenly going on a rampage. A majestic creature, corrupted by fury, murder, and bloodlust. Badass.