My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 06

"You might not want to, but I want to kill Michael, and he wants to kill me!"

"So the rest of the city has to burn because you two hate each other?"

Garry leapt at him, landing on one of the tables before pouncing at him. But Jack was ready for it, and he ran at Garry before rolling to the floor and underneath him. Garry tried to hit him with his tail, but Jack made sure to get another metal table between him and the asshole, and again Garry lodged his spiked mace into a heavy metal object.

Garry spun, taking the table with him and getting on the defensive, expecting Jack to lunge with the opening. But now Jack had a new plan. He wouldn't let the Ripper have his way. The Ripper had to be strong enough to kill Garry, probably, and if Avery told Garry everything, Garry either knew that too and had a plan to escape, or overestimated himself.

But Jack wouldn't kill him. He'd fix this problem before the city burned down around them. If that meant he had to lock Garry, Michael, and Maria up in a fucking room and make them shake hands, then he'd do it. The Ripper could kiss his fucking ass.

"Maria and Michael will gladly see me dead, stupid kid. This war is old, and--"

"For the love of god, Garry! Let me fucking fix this! I have more important shit to worry about than this stupid war, and--"

"More important? The fuck is going on that you think is more important than this war?"

Jack froze, and stared at the man. "You don't know?" If he was good friends with Avery, then surely she'd told him about it? Or, did she really distrusts vampires so much, she wouldn't even tell him?

"The fuck are you going on about? I--"

"Jack!"

Both vamps snapped their heads to the doorway as someone else ran down to join them.

Jessy, oh thank god she was alive. Though, her clothes were torn to shreds, holes everywhere, and some nasty holes were clearly visible in her flesh, too. She didn't let it stop her, and she raised the barrel of her shotgun as she limped toward Garry.

He had to give Jessy credit, she was brave as hell. Elder Gangrel transformed into a demon gargoyle thing? Didn't matter to her at all. She shot shell after shell at Garry, and limped closer with every shot. Garry shrieked as pellets tore at his skin, most bouncing off the hardened leathery surface, but plenty managing to pierce and shred.

He took a step back, stumbling back against crates, but not falling. Jessy shot him again, and again, each forcing him back a step until his weight began pushing one of the tables out of the way.

"Break my fucking jaw and think you can get away with it!" she yelled after sinking another shell into him. "Fuck you! Fuck you!" Another shell, and another, until bits of Garry's skin came off and burned away as tiny cinders in the air. More, until bits of his wings ripped apart, creating holes that tore as Garry tried to flap them.

Click click announced Jessy was out of shells, and Jack winced as he waited for her inevitable charge. But the moment the gunfire stopped, she reached into a small bag on her hip, and loaded more shells into the gun. Seamless and smooth, no hesitation, no fumbling. Holy shit.

But both she and Jack jumped back, falling over, as Garry exploded. As crates caught Jack's ass, holding his weight, he stared at where Garry had been, and where a giant black cloud of smoke now hovered. Easily thirty feet across, the black smoke swirled on itself, so thick Jack couldn't see halfway through it.

There were eyes in the smoke. Two glowing yellow eyes.

Jessy got back up and shot shells into the black smoke, but they did nothing. With a hissing snarl, the smoke flowed up to the ceiling of the basement, and seeped through the cracks in the rafters.

"Shit, he's getting away!" Jessy motioned to Jack. "Come on, get up and get over here!" Without waiting, she loaded a few more shells, and half limped half ran back up the stairs.

Jack hopped up, and got halfway across the room before looking to the table at his side, pressed up against the wall near the stairs. Mulder and Scully lay there, still unmoving, still dead. Snarling, he forced down his rage, and ran after her.

"Ah shit, he's gone."

Back in the lobby, Jack looked around for where Garry could have come out, but all he found was more smoke slipping out through cracks in the walls.

"Jesus, I didn't know he could do that."

"He's an elder Gangrel, Jack. Course he can do that." Sighing, Jessy walked over to the kine Kathy and Tilly had taken down. "You fuckers alright?" They managed some weak groans. "Good enough."

Jack leaned against a wall leading to the front door, and sighed as he looked down at the kine. Kathy and Tilly were gone.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I got the upper hand on Steve, but then Bella got me from behind. Then Ryan stabbed her in the back, and then Joe got him, and--yeah, big fucking orgy."

"They alright?"

"Yeah. Derick came back, and Steve and Bella ran, but that Bella bitch came in here, and I thought she was gonna go for you so I chased her, but she got Kathy and Tilly out instead. Then I heard fighting, and I came down, and yeah, you know the rest."

"Hella?"

"Hella and Ryan are in the building over there." She pointed across the street. "Recovering. And--"

"Boss." Derick walked in with Bruce and Kyle, and the trio of vampires nodded to Jack. They were unharmed. "We good?"

"We're... good. Garry won't come at us again tonight, and we need to get back in contact with the HQ."

"We have been," Bruce said. "We were on the phone with some people in the Xnomina bunker, until we lost the signal. Must be jamming us somehow. Building's on fire, but most people seem to be safe. Amanda though, her sire thinks she's still in the building. Last thing she said before we lost contact."

Ah shit. He'd been hoping Garry had been lying to throw Jack off.

"We need to--"

Bruce waved a dismissing hand. "Mister Burksen's there."

"Mister Burksen' leg barely works," Jack said, grumbling. "Fuck. Fuck fuck. Derick, Kyle, Bruce, get back to Xnomina and make sure everything's fine. The rest of us are pretty fucked up, and I... can't go yet."

"Yes sir." Nodding, Derick and the others left. Still afraid of him, but less so. Good.

"Jack?" Jessy asked. "You uh, seem pretty distracted. Figured you'd be happy. We kicked Garry's ass. Still got this dumb building, too."

Wincing, Jack walked back down the stairs to the storage room. The merchandise was a mess, but most of it was salvageable; didn't really matter anyway, it was the locale that was important. A heavy, dry gulp forced its way down his throat, and he trembled as he stepped into the big room, and then stood beside the table with his two crows.

Jessy followed, poking her head in through the door. "Fuck, lot of dead rats and birds in here. And... oh."

"I... I fed them my blood."

"You did? What, how? You were in a fight, with fucking Garry."

"It's... it's a long story." He put his necklace back on, leaned forward, and set his palms on the table around his two friends. He was still shaking. "They'll... get back up, right? I drained them, and fed them my blood. Put as much vitae as I could into it, you know? I've never done anything like this, and..."

"Oh shit. I don't know, dude. I've never tried the whole undead pets thing, you know? I... I don't think anyone in the city has."

"Garry has. He... he told me what to do, and from the look on his face, I could tell it was... personal, for him."

"You're shitting me. What the fuck happened down here?"

He shook his head. "Later. I..." Sighing, he let his head dangle between his shoulders.

They were just crows. Hundreds of crows and thousands of rats had died serving him, since he'd become a vampire. Why not get worked up over them?

Because he was selfish, and he'd grown attached to these two. Pet wasn't a good enough word for them. They were his friends, his partners, and--

Mulder's wing twitched.

"Mulder! You ok buddy?" He reached out with Animalism, and clucked his tongue several times.

Slowly, the crow moved more. A tail feather twitch, a small opening of the beak before closing it again. His eyes opened.

"Mulder. Christ, I didn't want you to stick your neck out like that. You could have stayed up in the rafters, kept a barrier between you and Garry. You..." Jack sighed, lowered his weight onto his elbows, and smiled down at his friend. "You ok?"

Mulder managed a couple quiet, gravely coos, and hopped back up on his feet. Jack winced. Yeah, like he'd suspected, Mulder's neck had been broken, and now his head didn't sit straight. Mostly straight, but not quite, like he had a crick in his neck, and not a small one, but a 'oh god how are you still alive' sorta crick, with a super tiny bulge against some feathers showing that a bone likely pressed against the side of his neck.

But Mulder showed no signs of pain. He looked up at Jack, cawed, and hopped closer, getting under his head. So close, Jack smiled down at him, and clucked his tongue several times. The busted neck looked disturbing, but from so close, Jack could also see Mulder's breathing didn't look right. Breathing, yes, but it didn't match his movements, and lacked the usual natural shifts along with the typical bird twitches and quick head turns. He didn't look quite alive.

A few more caws, and Jack gulped. In the past, Animalism turned their connection into sounds, images, and sensations in his mind that he could interpret, and occasionally some very simple words. But the caws Mulder made now were not so simple. They sounded a lot like 'I am glad you are ok, master'.

Mulder hopped over to Scully, and pecked at her broken wing a few times, before he cawed over her. Jack gulped again. His pet crow had just asked his other pet crow 'are you ok, Scully?' complete with name.

"Mulder, I... I don't know if--" Scully twitched, and Jack sighed relief. "Oh thank god. Scully, you ok?"

Scully went through the same process, twitching a few times more before she finally hopped up to her feet. It was the same thing, a crow but not a crow, the same unusual, solid breathing, the lack of normal bird twitches, the obviously broken wing that didn't fit snuggly to her side like the other. But she was in no pain, and Jack smiled as the tension melted out of him.

He touched her broken wing. Still no pain from her. She cooed a few times, clicked some more, and hopped over to him to take shelter under his head and between his arms. Animalism interpreted for him what she wanted to communicate, the sensations and emotions, but like with Mulder, the attached words and meaning were far, far more complex than they would normally have been.

~Are you ok, Jack? Did that vampire hurt you, Master?~

Holy shit.

"I'm fine, guys, I'm fine."

~What happened?~ Scully stretched out her wings, including the broken one. Jack almost told her to stop, that she might hurt herself, but the wing stretched out completely, broken bones pushing out the wing with only a little trouble. ~What is happening?~

This, he had not expected. Sure, he'd known vampires could revive animals, Julias had told him, but he'd said nothing about this, about a pair of crows suddenly able to use actual sentences.

"Jack."

Jack lifted his head back. Jessy hadn't said that. Scully had.

"Jack," Mulder said, like a talking parrot.

"Jack," Scully said.

"Jack."

"Jack Jack."

Mulder and Scully looked at each other, cooed a few times, before they both nestled against the inside of Jack's arms, one bird each.

"Jack."

"Jack."

"Jack."

"Jack."

"Jack," Jessy said, laughing. "Guess they're taking well to being revived."

He rolled his eyes, but laughed all the same. "Crows can learn to talk in captivity."

"Jack. Master. Oats?" Scully asked. Asked, not just said, but asked, complete with inflection.

"They uh... can't really do that, though," he said. Parroting words was one thing. Crafting sentences was something else entirely. "Sorry buddy, I don't have any oats on me right now. And... and I don't think you'll want them, when you get them." He chuckled again, lowered his head down between his arms and shoulders, and both birds nudged their heads into his chin.

"No oats?" Mulder asked.

"You'll... you'll see." Because they weren't alive anymore, not really. Just like vampires, they were undead creatures with flesh bodies. They needed vitae to survive now, but unlike vampires, they couldn't produce their own.

He wouldn't be feeding them oats anymore. He'd be feeding them his blood, infused with vitae. Or they'd die.

"They look pretty beat up," Jessy said, and she clucked her tongue a few times. They clicked back. "Seem ok though."

"I... I owe Garry, for this."

"Fuck." Jessy grumbled as she joined him at his side. "I was afraid you might say that. Dude, he injured them, right?"

"It was a fight. I can't blame him for that. But I..." Might as well tell her, she already knew. "I told him, about Viktor and Tony, and Lucas."

"Ah fuck. Fuckity fuck. Why?"

"I couldn't help Mulder and Scully with him on my ass. I needed to give him something, so he'd let met help them."

"So you dropped the biggest truth bomb you could on him?" She didn't sound too happy about it.

"They were his enemies too, Viktor and Lucas at least. Figured he... he'd cut me a little slack so I could save my friends, since I helped him so much. And he did." Because the fucker wasn't as bad as they thought he was.

"Indirectly. It's not like you killed them as a favor to him."

"I know. But... but it was better than nothing. Better than fighting, hoping to win, making Mulder and Scully wait, and risking their lives." He nodded down at the two crows still between his arms on the table. "Mulder was dead by the time I..."

Sighing, Jessy pat him on the shoulder. "Hope it was worth it."

"It was." Nodding, he stood back up and held out his arm. Mulder hopped up and walked up to his shoulder, but Scully, broken wing and all, flew up to his other shoulder. Thank god, if she couldn't fly anymore, he didn't know what he'd do.

"You know it's going to bite you in the ass though, right? He's gonna tell, and soon the whole city will know you've killed three elders."

Sighing, he reached up, stroked the back of Scully's head, then hesitantly did the same for Mulder. Again, his friend didn't complain about any pain, and showed no signs of it, but Jack had to force down a wince as he felt the broken neck through Mulder's feathers.

"I'll deal with it if... when it comes up."

"Right. Well, I got your back." Nodding, she looked around the mess of a room, and whistled. "You two really went fucking nuts. Curse help out much?"

"The curse is the only reason I'm a tenth as strong as I am, Jess. But if you mean did the Ripper help much, no he didn't. I kept him suppressed... mostly."

"That's good, yeah?"

"Mostly."

She chuckled as she squatted down and picked up a pack of cigarettes. "Sure we shouldn't head back to Xnomina?"

"It's a feint. Garry isn't willing to throw his covenant into a meat grinder yet."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that." Jessy jumped up and sat on one of the tables, and leaned on a stack of crates. "Like, I get that Garry and Michael are trying to bait each other into triggering the war, because whoever can claim to be the victim has an easier time of it. But... I don't know."

"You don't?"

"I mean yeah, with the Invictus it makes sense. If Garry kills one of ours, then we all happily work together to kick his ass. But, well... the Carthians aren't like that."

"They're anarchists."

"They're a community, Jack. We're playing this poke game with them, trying to make the other overstep, get caught, go too far, but the Carthians don't need someone on their side to die for them to pull together. They don't have anyone like that Isabella bitch, who just wants to do her plays. They don't have anyone like Jacob or the Prince, happy to do their creepy shit or experiments behind closed doors, away from the rest of the world. The Carthians, every last one of them, is personally invested and attached to this city."

"You don't think Isabella is invested? You just said--"

"I'm saying, if Michael told us all to go on the offensive with no cause, some of us are gonna drag our feet. Isabella, definitely. Bruce has his own shit. Vicky and Parker are running their whore houses, and would love nothing more than to be left alone so they could continue bathing in blood, money, and tits and dicks. Shit like that, you know? But with the Carthians, they're..."

He sighed as he slumped back against a table, leaning his ass against it. "Yeah, I get you. The Carthians are united, more united than us anyway. The Invictus are too self centered."

"Or they were. Garry getting Terra Den under his thumb is pretty, uh, anti-Carthian. And--"

Jack's phone rang. Damien's phone. He answered it. "Damien, thought you guys were being jammed or something?"

"We were, but whatever was causing it was short lived."

Jack smiled. It was good to hear his friend's voice. "Damien, did--"

He stopped short as someone else walked down the stairs to join them. Ryan, with a big grin on his face, and Tilly the Carthian held hostage in his arms.

"Jack," Damien said over the phone. "We... we think Amanda's dead."