My Little Ventrue Pt. 09 Ch. 18

Finally, a pair of hands pushed under the crack of the building's basement ceiling, and picked it up. All of it. Two fucking giant hands, each the size of Jack's whole damn body, and they trembled as they put Azamel's strength and power up into the building from the bottom up.

She lifted the library up off the ground, and pushed it back onto the street behind it. It was a pretty big building, three stories high. A small library, sure, but small libraries were still enormous buildings, and Jack stared on as Azamel's elephant god body came into view. He couldn't move if he wanted to, trapped at ground zero as the building crumbled. Buildings weren't meant to be scooped up and pushed over, and the library ripped itself to shreds under its own weight.

Jack sat there as the wood, concrete, bars of metal, and even the fucking tile of the floor above rained down around him. Most of it rained behind him, past the back wall of the basement, and onto the mayhem of destruction that threatened to blow his eardrums. Again he tried to get up, and again he fell as the Earth decided it didn't want him standing anymore. It wasn't just the building falling over, literally directly behind him, that had the whole place vibrating. It was Azamel, her, her absurd size as she shifted and moved to pick up a fucking building and push it over. The whole nightmare trembled as she went retro and played a game of Rampage.

Dust and dirt should have splashed over Jack and the two Gangrels, and buried them in it. But as the building collapsed, they got buried in something else. Rain. Red. Fucking. Rain. The nightmare chamber didn't bother with things like dust and dirt, as if that wasn't worth the effort; more like whoever dreamed up the nightmare was a little more focused on other shit. And the rain fucking poured.

Finally, the crumbling building shut the fuck up, and Jack stood up. Reality smacked him in the face, and he snapped his gaze around. Garry was slowly pushing himself back up to his feet, but Michael was down. Not dead, not even in torpor, but down, a hulking mess of ripped open alien flesh that couldn't handle its own bulk anymore, just like the upturned library.

"Jack Terry," the four-armed elephant said again. And the bitch made no attempt to speak softly. That flubby elephant god's chest boomed with a voice so loud, what few rats and crows still remained either fled, or froze solid. Animalism would not move them. They were broken inside, mentally shattered, heartbeats skyrocketing and so much adrenaline pumping through their veins they were close to death. Some did die, just rolled over and died, rather than process the fact they'd been pulled into a nightmare version of Dolareido, with an ugly elephant god who literally pushed over the building they'd been under.

"Azamel, the fuck are you doing?" He pointed his remaining hand at her. Way way up at her. "Don't interfere!"

The stupid, old beast sat in the middle of the street, cross-legged and knees apart, two hands empty and resting on her knees while two others held her symbols. Those two hands held a chain by each end, one end a dangling fishnet filled with hundreds of human skulls, the other a dangling corpse from a hook, like bait. A fishermen of men, literally. Jesus would have been proud.

On the ground beside her were two scimitars, the size of trucks.

He was kind of getting sick of all the big fuckers he had to deal with. First Garry transformed into a tall bat gargoyle thing. Then Michael transformed into a giant hulk mutating beast. There was Sándor, who transformed into a much more classic, but much bigger gargoyle than Garry. Even Athalia and her weird half-body-skeleton nightmare thing was pretty damn big. And if Jack stacked them all on top of each other, they wouldn't have been as tall as Azamel was now, sitting on her ass. What a pain.

"If Jack Terry remained in control, I would not have." The monster leaned forward and looked down at the trio of vampires. "But you're not Jack Terry. You're an abomination."

Despite her attempts to sound commanding and powerful, she sounded weak compared to the first time he'd heard her talk through her Horror. Winded, weak, and pathetic. A dying beast putting on airs. Considering Azamel the human -- human body anyway -- was an emaciated old woman on death's door, it made sense her Horror would feel the same way when they merged. How the fuck the two entities worked together, he had no idea. A big diff between Begotten, and old and new Jack's relationship. But either way, they seemed linked. If she died, it died.

"Ha! Funny, coming from you, someone who owes their existence to the dark corners of other people's minds. You're nothing more than the reflection of someone else's fears. You'd be nothing without the people you feed on." He grinned up at her. "So you can act all high and mighty and call me an abomination, but you and I both know you're just a leech."

"How quaint, the vampire calling a true monster a leech."

He shrugged. "I wasn't created in the mind of some terrified, religious shmuck running through the jungle."

"No. You were created as a tool, nothing more than an infection for your masters to spread. And where are those masters now, you cursed thing? Where are their black wings? Shadows of shadows. Useless remnants of an age past, desperate to hold onto the Kindred who left them behind."

"I..."

She was talking about the Strix. She knew them? Knew about them? Even he didn't know a damn thing about them, except what Susanna had to do to create him.

"Jack Terry. Are you capable of taking control, or not?"

"Old Jack is shutting up until I'm done." Shrugging, Jack pulled the necklace out of his pocket. A sturdy string, barely a necklace at all. "This is the only reason old Jack even exists anymore." An ancient artifact from back in the day when assholes made shit like this, hidden in caves or forests or underneath castles, deep in abandoned dungeons.

"Then put it on."

"You know what? Sure." The Jack inside was fighting to get back in control, and the Ripper knew he'd win that battle eventually. As long as there were two of them sharing this body, he couldn't keep old Jack suppressed forever. Which meant, if he destroyed the necklace, old Jack would eventually retaliate. Go to Antoinette, lock himself in a box, wait for sunrise, something.

You're never taking this body.

Yes, I will. You can feel it. You know each time I come out, I take more control.

You sound like a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

Jack snickered as he looked down at the necklace, and put it back into his pocket.

"I'll put it back on, after I've killed these two." He turned around, gave Azamel the finger over his shoulder, and walked toward Garry.

By this point, the man had regained his footing, and he took a small step back from Jack as he got into a fighting position. But the man knew he was outmatched. It was written in every one of his nine eyes.

"You do not get to kill these two," the stupid booming voice behind him said flatly.

Jack snapped his head back. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You will not be killing Garry, or Michael."

He laughed. "And why the fuck not?"

"Their deaths will create a vacuum. More chaos. I will not allow this city to--"

"The fuck do you care!?" He turned around, marched up the short stairway up to the sidewalk, and stared up at the fat bitch.

The nightmare version of Dolareido was pretty damn big, and impressive. A blood moon, with raining blood, and an especially large amount of it pouring over the Elysium tower too if memory served; couldn't see it from here. Only a couple cars in the street this far out from the city center, but just like last time Jack came to this nightmare, there were some people in the cars. Petrified, and made of literal stone. A few of them stood in windows of nearby apartments, more statues. One stood next to a streetlight. A fucking weird streetlight that didn't do a very good job penetrating the darkness of the city, which was also too dark for Dolareido in general.

Everything was tinted red. The nightmare wasn't subtle at all. Whoever dreamed this insanity had one very clear picture in mind of what Dolareido was truly like: a bloody place full of cold, lifeless people. Probably some dumb bastard in Devil's Corner who offed themselves cause their mom didn't love them enough. Roland, maybe? It'd figure, but nah, the nightmare looked mostly modern.

"I care because I will not leave my family to political chaos and a bloody, ash-filled wasteland."

"Ah I get it. You want your nest to be a good place for your kids? Newsflash! They ain't your kids!" He laughed again as he faced Michael and Garry. "And besides, you really want these two idiots around? They've got the city fighting itself, vampires killing each other and burning down buildings, because they can't get over a grudge! Over something they didn't even do! Roland killed himself you stupid fucks! It's not your fault!" He pointed at Garry. "Or your fault!" He pointed at Michael. "It's Roland's fault! Get it? He killed himself! The only one to blame, is him! But you're both looking back at the past with rose-tinted glasses so thick, you've apparently turned this guy into a fucking martyr!

"You don't even realize the Prince and the werewolves are trying to save the city from a strange, weird ritual being done in it, or on it or something, do you? They've been working on this problem for years now, and you don't have a fucking clue. Course Avery won't tell you, Garry, cause she knows what everyone knows! You, Michael, you're both too pathetic, stupid, juvenile, shortsighted, and fucking deluded to take five fucking seconds to think maybe there's more shit happening in Dolareido than your moronic grudge!"

Garry stared at him, obviously confused. He tried to hide it of course, but the hints were there. Michael reverted his transformation, a disgusting display of popping, gurgling bubbles of flesh and bone that shrank in on themselves like thick ooze going down the drain. But soon his suit emerged from the folds of muscle and skin, and Michael remained. A broken, tattered, beaten Gangrel, who half sat, half knelt, as he tried to push his weight onto his hands but only succeeded with one. He looked confused, too.

"Oh I'm sorry, did you not catch that? Let me repeat. No one told either of you for a fucking reason! Because everyone knows you two are so fucking worthless, with heads jammed right up your asses, that telling either of you anything was a recipe to tip off whoever's doing it! You can't be trusted by anyone, and hey! Guess what? You proved everyone right, by starting a war, over a fucking hundred-year-old grudge!" He marched toward Garry, and clenched and unclenched his only remaining fist. "So die, you fucking useless sacks of shit."

He didn't get much further. Azamel roared, a full on elephant roar, complete with a trumpet of her giant elephant trunk, and Jack whipped his head around in time to see her swing her hand for him.

She was slow, slower than he remembered. A giant, heaving creature soon to die of a wound it should have died of months ago. But, problem: he was pretty fucking beat up, too. Kinda had his body broken and smashed into mulch ten minutes ago, not to mention getting his left arm cut off. And the fact she was fifty feet tall, sitting, made dodging a giant hand difficult.

But he managed. He jumped high, damn high, clearing twenty feet so her huge hand swooped underneath him, nearly smashing into the two Gangrels; no such luck, she avoided hitting them. He landed on his feet, and turned to face Azamel, ready to give her another speech. But the damn bitch took another swing for him, with her other hand, palm open. Jack jumped it again, this time jumping straight toward her.

Yeah, she was gigantic. Yeah, she was fucking strong as hell. Yeah, this was her nightmare, her home turf, and for Begotten, home turf meant a fucking massive advantage. But she was old and dying, weak, vulnerable. One moment of focus, one moment as she recovered from lugging those gargantuan arms around, and he'd reach out and break her mind. Breaking the mind of an ancient vampire like Daniel might have been out of his reach, for now, but an old, dying bitch with a superiority complex? He was going to make her rip out her tusks and stab herself to death with them.

"Oh I am going to beat your fucking ass until you're dead! I don't know where Sándor and the others are, but all they're gonna find is your fucking corpse you fucking--"

She swung at him again, with her third and fourth arms, and plucked him out of the air. That, he hadn't expected. Those hands had held the fishing net of skulls and the long hook with the corpse on it like they were symbols essential to her existence. He at least expected her to set those objects down if she was going to use those hands. But she let them go, and the net, the huge black chain that connected it to the hook, it all came crashing down.

The giant net of skulls fell apart, and hundreds of the beautiful orbs scattered over the red-soaked street, shattering into dust. The hook landed on a roof of a parked car, and sank in through it, dragging the corpse along with and tearing it in half.

Azamel glared down at Jack as she brought him in front of her, holding him with both hands, like a god damn child holding a doll. He was just barely big enough that she needed to use two hands to make sure she completely encased him, with only his head and neck sticking up from between her leathery skin.

And before he could reach out through her dark eyes and into her mind to break the damn bitch, she slammed him into the ground. She was a lot stronger than Michael.

Jack, pinned on his stomach on the street in front of Azamel's knees, pushed his elbows down against the cracked asphalt. She kept his torso buried under one palm, and he managed to push up against it enough to shift the colossal weight. She may have been strong, but so was he.

"Let go of me you fucking--" The world cracked around him as a new weight slammed into him. Bitch just squashed her one hand onto the other, and she was not kind about it, pinning him to the street with both hands hard enough his vitae struggled to keep his bones from breaking into powder.

"Stay there," Azamel said.

"Good job." Garry's voice. That fucker. It was muffled, Jack buried under two giant hands after all and unable to see, but he could still hear him. "You... should probably kill him. That curse--"

"I will do nothing of the sort."

"I mean, he--hey! What the fuck!"

Loud sounds. Crashing. Thundering. Azamel was moving. Dealing with Garry. She kept one hand on Jack, and at this point Jack was a pancake. The rage tore through him, boiled his insides, lit an inferno inside him until he was screaming and roaring as he pushed up against Azamel's hand. But she fought against him, trumpeting her stupid elephant sounds as she refused to let him go. Even as he dug deep, poured his power through his body until his remaining hand cracked the asphalt as he pushed against it, Azamel rumbled her weird god sounds, and pushed her weight down against him.

And through all that, Azamel's weight shifted side to side. Judging from the grunts, roars, and pained hollers of Garry, and Michael evidently, she was fighting them. And winning.

"You will cease and desist! You are trapped here, in my domain!" Her voice poured through her arm, into her hand, and into his fucking head. Supposedly whales could sing so loud, if you were in the water with them and near them, it could pop your eardrums. Same fucking thing.

"Azamel!" Michael's voice. "The curse has to be dealt with. He--"

"I am in control here. You will silence your useless mouth, or I will crush you into oblivion. Do you understand me, blood leech?" Old bitch had apparently caught the two of them, judging from the sounds she was making.

Yeap, she'd caught them. She lifted her hand off Jack long enough for him to see Garry in one of her left hands, and Michael in one of her right, both back in their human bodies and trapped in her grip. But the moment Jack got back to his feet, she'd already brought her hand back down on him, two of them, and not to pin him. She crushed him, like swatting a spider.

He poured his vitae through his limbs, his skin, his bones, his muscles, everything. He was Jack the Ripper. He was better than her, a dinosaur falling apart at the seams. He was better than these two fucking cunt Gangrels. He was better than them, stronger than them! It wouldn't be long before he could kill them all, every last one of them, take the city for his own, and everyone in it. It wouldn't be--

Azamel swatted him again, hard enough he sank through the asphalt. Last thought before torpor took him: he probably made a funny human-shaped hole in the road.