My Little Ventrue Pt. 07 Ch. 16

And there they were. Five hunters, plus one witch. Angela was leading them, limp and all, while the dude with the old woman on his shoulders was in the middle of the pack.

He didn't bother to tell the Nos to hold on. She would or she wouldn't. If she wanted to be part of this bad enough, she'd hold on, and close as she was, it wasn't like she wouldn't be able to tell he was about to unleash a bit of his power. And it'd only take a little bit.

"He's here! He's here! Stop him! Stop—"

The woman, the one who'd been using the flamethrower, was taking up the rear. She had a rifle now, and she pointed it straight at him, its muzzle light shining into his eyes and blinding him. He didn't care. When the gunfire started, and the explosion of bark and wood began, he didn't mind. When some of the bullets crashed into his body, he didn't flinch or wince. The pain was minor, and a little will was enough to summon his Kindred blood, and begin filling and healing the wounds.

He ran up to her, and she screamed a mix of rage and fear as she emptied her magazine into his chest. Maybe if there'd been more room, more light, and less roots tripping her up as she walked backward, she'd have been able to aim for his head. That'd have at least have slowed him down. But as her bullets went thunk thunk in his chest, blocked by his building wall of blood, he didn't slow down at all.

"Hi," he said as he got in close, reached out, grabbed her shoulders with both his hands, and squeezed.

Things were a bit awkward with Beatrice on his back, her legs hooked on his hips. But he was strong enough to carry dozens of Beatrices, and she was doing a good job keeping her arms out of the way of his, and her head behind his. It meant he was clear to go nuts, and nuts did he go. The hunter shrieked bloody murder, and started twisting and turning as he squeezed on her shoulders harder, and harder, and harder, until his fingers sank through skin, muscle, and bone.

Her arms didn't come off completely. Clothes got in the way, and probably a few bits of skin hidden inside, but they were basically both completely off, popped off like squeezing a stick of butter until it separates. Her screams rose to a climax, and she foamed at the mouth before the pain became too much, and she passed out. Damn.

"Jack," Beatrice said. "You... don't need to be so—"

"These fuckers hunted us, killed us. These worthless, pathetic humans had the audacity to kill us!" He snapped the idiot Nos a harsh glare over his shoulder, and she recoiled. Good. "They're fucking sheep, and they killed Julias. You want me to spare them?"

"No..."

"Then shut up, and let me get revenge for the both of us. And hey, I'll even let you have a shot at Angela."

"Fine! Fine, just... fine."

He caught up to them again pretty quick. A man this time, the one without Elen. He had a shotgun, and that was substantially more dangerous than the rifle. Unfortunately for the hunter, the forest was the perfect guard against it. A rifle might penetrate through trees, but a shotgun wouldn't.

Jack slipped between the trees, ducked low underneath nearby branches, and closed the distance over the seconds, as the hunter roared his fury. Boom, boom, shotgun shells unloaded their pellets, sending bark everywhere, but only managed to clip Jack every so often. He'd summoned his blood to protect him fully by this point, as he had with Sándor. The pellets hit him, and then fell to the forest floor, as Jack got in close.

Very close, close enough for eye contact. Perfect. The hunter met his eyes, and only too late realized he'd done it. Maybe he thought his tattoos, his bracelets and necklaces, his bullshit, would keep Jack out of his mind. Jack reached out with his thoughts, and smashed through all that crap instantly.

"Cut out your stomach open, and pull your guts out."

The man's eyes went wide. There was a kernel of awareness in there, a part of him that knew what Jack was demanding he do. Perfect. What was the point of a torturous death if the person being tortured wasn't aware of it?

Jack sped past his victim, and didn't look back. He didn't need to. The sounds were telling. A knife being drawn. A quiet cutting sound. Screams of agony. It was a shame Jack couldn't really indulge and watch, but they were appetizers anyway. He couldn't let the main course escape.

The next hunter, the other guy, had Elen on his shoulder, and was running, not even bothering to turn around and shoot. Jack made no effort to be gentle. He hopped in close, jumped at the man's back, pushed down on the man's head with his left hand, and grabbed Elen with his right. He was right, the old woman weighed basically nothing, and her shitty old gown didn't tear when he yanked her off the man's falling body, then dumped her on the forest floor. And the hunter, his real target, fell with a satisfying crunch against the cruel forest floor.

With Beatrice on his back, Jack actually had a bit of weight to him. He stood beside the downed hunter, waited a second for the man to look up, winked at him, and brought his foot down on the side of the man's neck. Crunch.

Breaking someone's neck wasn't a good way to kill someone, if the goal was efficiency. People survived a broken neck all the time, or took a long time to die. The man's scream ended quickly, but he was still twitching, squirming, dying. Perfect. The night was starting to look bright again.

"What do we do with her?" Beatrice said, nodding toward the old woman lying on the ground. A quick glance showed she was on her back, looking up, and not moving. Breathing, but not moving. In the tussle, her dress had come up a bit, enough for them to see her calves. Skin and bones, to the point that the woman should have been dead. A walking corpse.

Not walking. A living, breathing mummy, sure, and probably immortal. But not walking. She wasn't walking anywhere anymore, hence why the hunters had her in a wheelchair. The breather was probably so she had enough oxygen to think straight when performing her rituals. Aging, and aging, and aging, but never dying.

"She's not going anywhere, and I have questions for her." And even if she did somehow manage to escape, despite the Prince being on Jack's heels, it wasn't really Elen his hate was pointed at. She was a tool. His hate was saved for the wielders of the tool. One was dead, and another was going to die a horrible, horrible death soon enough.

Noise up ahead, besides the screams of panic and grunts of exertion, announced the location of the two remaining women. Jack took off after them, chuckling with every thud his boots made against the wood and grass. The dark chuckle, the kind villains practiced in front of the mirror. He knew Angela and her remaining hunter could hear him, and that made it all the better.

This was how the night was supposed to go! Fuck Jeremiah and his stand-off bullshit. This was how things were meant to be, a vampire running after humans, in the dark, and bathing in the slaughter. It felt good, god it felt good. He was closer to his Beast than old Jack would ever be, and his Beast was howling with joy at getting to unleash its instincts tonight. Catch them, kill them, maybe save one, and drink them until they were nothing but a dry husk.

"Here," the darkness whispered. Not Jack, not Trissy, and not the two hunters. "Here!" He recognized that voice. He'd recognize Athalia's monster voice anywhere.

There they were. He slipped around a fat tree, and found the two women running, huffing and puffing. And falling. Just as Jack reached out to grab onto the Angela, she stumbled down into the earth, and disappeared beneath grass and twigs, with her hunter friend beside her. He got a glimpse of her eyes for only a split moment, and found a mix of pain, likely from her running with a limp, and utter despair. But not fear, like her friend.

He'd have to fix that.

He stopped before the pit, and looked down into the blackness below. A hole, but not a natural one. Around its edges were finger bones, sticking up from the around the roots and dirt. They held open the hole, unmoving, and certainly not inviting, but Angela and the other hunter had gone down the hole like Alice.

"Athalia?" Beatrice said.

"Athalia. Fucking bitch. Probably has Fiona tied up somewhere, and was waiting for an opportunity to save her daughter."

"She... opened a door to one of her nightmare chambers, then?"

"Yeah. Ready?"

"You're going inside?"

"Yep."

"For all you know, Athalia's opened the chamber to—"

"To somewhere her daughter could survive." They wouldn't land inside a volcano or something.

"Maybe Begotten can give guests immunity to their lairs?"

"Maybe. I'll deal with anything she throws my way. And then I'm going to kill her, too."

"But—ah!" Beatrice squeaked, as Jack jumped into the hole.

The transition from one nightmare chamber into another was seamless. Just like when he'd went to visit Azamel in the tunnels, found nothing, and then took a magical stairway down into a room covered in sewed-up faces. How their lairs managed to blend into each other, and the physical world, he had no idea, but it meant things could get difficult. Lairs were evidently big, and complicated. Linking them together meant he might have to navigate a maze if he took too long chasing after Angela. Better to throw caution to the wind, and stay on her heels. Momentum! It was all about momentum.

He was not, not not not going to let this become a long, drawn out chase. He was ending this in the next five god damn minutes. Killing Angela might take longer, but in the next three hundred seconds, he was going to get his hands on her, break her legs, and make her watch as he drank her one remaining hunter to death.

While they'd jumped down a hole, the hole didn't go down. It went up. Physics, gravity specifically, decided to go on a bender, and before Jack could reorient himself, he was being thrown out of a hole by his own bodyweight. Up and up, and then down and down, onto more grass and dirt.

He got up quick. Beatrice had let go of him in the strange gravity reversal, and was lying next to him in the grass. Clean, green grass, a bit damp, and almost glowing under the moonlight. Where the fuck were they? It was cold, and it was windy. Some nearby trees bent and blew with the wind. Tombstones stood defiantly against it. And the moon above was enormous, without a cloud in the sky. The moon, hilariously, had a subtle skull face drawn by its craters.

A cemetery. Jack and Beatrice had tumbled out of an open grave, literally. And moments before, so had Angela and her friend. Said friend now had Angela's left arm over her shoulders, and the two were currently stumbling away toward what looked like an old church. Like, 1600s church, like a bunch of Amish had built a big barn in a day, put a cross over the front door, and some pews inside, church. He assumed there'd be pews, anyway, with no cushion, and probably all aimed at a pulpit.

"Angela!" Jack yelled. "Stop running already! Christ, I've had a long night, and I'm getting sick of having to chase you guys down."

"Fuck you! Fuck—" The words were lost under the explosion of a gun. Angela pointed her sawed-off shotgun at him, and boom.

He'd been ready for a fight though, and as the pellets slammed into him, his skin, his jaw and neck, his chest, and his right eye, the blood wall coated his skin and protected him. It was enough to make both hunters pause, before they pressed their backs against the large doors of the church, and disappeared inside.

For just a second, when the door was open, Jack could see into the dark church, and noticed movement. Large arms of bone shifted around in the darkness, and so did the two white dots he recognized as Athalia's eyes, inside the huge skull of her monster body. He was going to have to kill her, to get to Angela.

"Trissy, you good to walk on your own?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Not fine to fight, though."

"Just stay behind me. I'll deal with them." He marched up the small wooden stairs up to the church door, and opened it.

Immediately, he was hit with bullets. Shotgun shells were unloaded upon him in quick succession, only for Angela to reload in record time, and do it again. The female hunter with her held down the trigger on her rifle, and the much larger bullets slammed into Jack's flesh.

Two hunters wouldn't be enough to stop him. He laughed as he walked through the storm of bullets, through the dark church lit only by their flashlights, and headed toward the muzzle flashes. He had to pour vitae into his blood shield to protect him, but it was enough to stop the assault of both hunters cold. A waste, but scaring them to death was half the fun.

"What is this?" he said, throwing up his arms. "Now? Now you finally accept your mother's help? Now, at the end, when it doesn't matter, now you accept the help of a creature you've been hunting for years?"

Angela glared at him, trembling. The two of them had their backs against the back wall of the small stage, and while they were trying their best to shoot him down, they made no headway. The reality of the inevitable was sinking in for them, and Jack relished the terror building in their eyes.

Jack glanced back, to see where Beatrice was. But, Beatrice was Obfuscating herself with her Cloak, and doing a pretty good job of it, too. He could see her, mostly, but she was a natural at the Cloak, and as long as she moved slowly in the darkness of the old church, he doubted anyone else would be able to notice her. Except for, of course, a nightmare monster of shadows.

Looking behind him had been a mistake. He knew it the moment he did it. Angela and the hunter were now out of bullets, and Jack didn't see any grenades or anything on them. He also didn't see Athalia anymore either, and he should have fucking realized she'd attack him the moment he turned his head, and the hunters had stopped shooting.

Athalia came down, and Jack snapped around, jumping back and away. She'd been hiding up in the darkness of the high ceiling, and had a good opportunity to attack him. Hell, she might have even hurt him. She was no Sándor or Azamel, but that didn't mean she wasn't dangerous. Maybe she knew it'd be pointless in the end, or maybe she was afraid of him after seeing the things he could do, but she didn't take the opportunity to attack him. She stood there, in the isle of the church, enormous hands crushing pews as she placed herself between Angela and Jack.

"Curse," the black skeleton creature hissed, "remember our deal. Angela is beaten. Leave her be."

"I'm not beaten!" the bitch in the back screamed, and she drew her knife, the shiny one. Heh, out of ammo. She tried to run at Jack as well, but her friend pulled her back.

"Fuck you, Athalia. Your daughter looks plenty threatening to me. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to put her in the ground."

"You will not touch my daughter."

Jack snorted, and started to pace the width of the small isle. He didn't glance toward Beatrice, or acknowledge her presence in any way. The others knew she had to be nearby, but they knew she was injured, and probably thought she was still outside. Then again, if this was Athalia's lair, there was a good chance Athalia knew more about her surroundings than was obvious. Besides, she was a creature of darkness, a monster of shadows. Maybe she'd be able to spot Beatrice no matter what.

She didn't seem to, though. Maybe she was too distracted with him, or she was baiting him. Maybe maybe maybe. The hunters also had a nasty habit of being able to spot Kindred protected by the Cloak, but it was so damn dark in the church, that as long as Trissy crouched low and kept pews between her and the targets, she might just make it.

"This wasn't part of the deal," he said. "Sparing your daughter was only if it was guaranteed she was incapacitated."

"She's beaten, Jack! She has nothing to defend herself with."

Rolling his eyes, Jack took a step forward. It was enough to make Athalia flinch, but not step aside. Making her flinch with a single step sent a shiver of pleasure up his spine; not as much as if she'd jumped back, but fear was fear, and it felt fucking good to use it.

"Get out of my way, Athalia. Your daughter doesn't even want your help." He looked past the skeleton, to the two women on the stage. They both had knives now, and looked ready to die swinging. But, even with that resolution to die in combat, there was fear there, plenty of fear, and he licked his lips as he smiled at them. Not enough on Angela though. There was time to correct that.

"She is my daughter!" The black skeleton creature, a beast with bone wings, a massive size with no legs to speak of, slammed her claws against the church floor. The wood splintered, and the church rumbled with the impact. "You will not touch her!"

Jack rolled his eyes, licked a fang, and stepped in closer. "Yeah, well, we'll see about that."