My Little Ventrue Pt. 10 Ch. 11

The azlu was just as disgusting as the others they'd seen. A spider had gotten an old woman, crawled into her, and ate her from the inside out. Then, a giant monster body came out of the host's waist, almost like a centaur had a horse's body below the belt, except it was a disgusting, freaky, mutated, monstrous spider body. The host's body was also mutated, pulsing with muscle and equipped with giant scythe-like arms made of bone. And too many eyes.

David and Avery tore into its sides, and it spun around, shrieking and screeching and swinging its arms at Carter. But the old werewolf was fast, and ducked under the arms before jumping the monster straight on and landing on the human half of it. Jack couldn't tell who the others were in the chaos. They were covered in blood, and they stood up from the mist as broken bones snapped back into place. Erica, Caleb, Monica, and Mason, all four of them with huge gashes on their body, gushing blood that disappeared into the fog. It only slowed them down for moments before the wounds closed, and the blood-soaked beasts again threw themselves at the giant monster.

"Noah!" Avery yelled, feral eyes looking in Jack's direction. "Fire!"

"Can't get here! Ghosts are blocking him! Black Blood knows what you planned!"

"Fuck!" Evidently not happy about the news, she sank both her claws into the fat spider body, and got to tearing, until the monster's blood gushed over her.

"Damien," Jack said, "look for an opportunity to get in there and end this quickly. Stay hidden as best you can until then."

"On it." Damien slipped away, crouched into the mist, and vanished, his Cloak and the fog working together to make him almost invisible. His friend was tired. Cloaking all of them for so long had drained him How well the Cloak worked on the spider monster, Jack didn't know; didn't seem to do much against ghosts. But with seven werewolves trying to tear it into bits, it wouldn't notice a vampire hiding in the mist.

Jack, on the other hand, wanted it to notice him. He walked straight up to it, and fired every bullet in his magazine as fast as he could. Big as the werewolves were, the azlu was gigantic, and aiming for the lower half of its body, where spider body connected to human body, was enough to avoid accidentally shooting them. It shrieked as it noticed the new pain sensation, but when it tried to take a step toward Jack, one of the werewolves sliced at one of its many legs hard enough it stumbled. Jack slapped in a new magazine and unloaded it as fast as the gun allowed. And another magazine. And then another. The azlu shrieked and screamed, and hints of the human it possessed came through in its voice. Jack emptied his last magazine into it, before holstering the pistol. Dozens and dozens of bullets, and the damn thing just refused to die.

He pulled up his Beast, and sent vitae into his limbs. Mountains of it. Without the necklace, it was like riding rapids, a torrent of energy and instinct that hit him and threatened to drag him under the overpowering current. If he'd been back in his mansion, or maybe in the Elysium Tower, he'd find some peace and quiet, and throw his thoughts into a flame. Now, all he had was chaos, roars and shrieks, blood, and an enemy he had to kill and kill now.

He jumped straight at the giant spider monster, and sank his shortsword into its chest. With anything else, the short blade would have sunk straight through the chest and into the organs, and ended the fight in seconds. With the azlu, it was like trying to stab through a thick layer of wood, and his sword penetrated maybe three inches before it came to a stop, and Jack was left dangling from it like a fish on a hook. Jumping at it with his small body had not been the smartest plan.

The monster swung both its arms down for him, and while he managed to swing aside enough to avoid one, the other bone scythe arm collided with him and smashed him into the ground. Thick Kindred blood coursed over the wound, summoned under the skin and thick enough it stopped the monster from getting through the limb. The stone ground was not forgiving, but nothing broke, and Jack groaned as he forced himself back to his feet.

He had to be careful. He couldn't have a repeat of what happened with him and Avery, or Garry and Michael, and let the Ripper out by getting pulverized.

He managed a glance back to Sándor's group. Enormous shadows cut through the air over pillars of flame that shot out in random directions. With all the mist, the distance turned everything into a blur, and he couldn't tell what the fuck was happening over there. But he didn't hear any screams of pain, so, probably alright enough he could focus on the giant spider monster trying to kill him.

Avery and the others ripped and tore into the creature with more ferocity than Jack could manage. Claws, ripping through exoskeleton, drawing splatters of more monster blood, until the whole place smelled of it. The spider turned and slashed at one of the werewolves, and they dashed out of the way before disappearing into the mist. Shadows enveloped them, and they ceased to exist, only to pounce from the mist on the spider's other side, and get his mouth around one of the enormous spider legs. But the spider was too big, too strong, and a solid kick of the spindly leg sent the werewolf flying back into the mist.

It quickly got worse. As Jack looked for another opening to jump onto, or maybe get under the damn spider, or maybe get his sword back, the huge thing jumped. Apparently eight legs and monstrous strength allowed for some pretty big jumps, and the huge thing cleared twenty feet with half a dozen werewolves stuck on its body. It landed hard, nearly collapsing onto its side, but managing to stay standing, while three of the werewolves fell off.

As Carter got back up, a spider leg came down onto his chest, through him, and pinned him to the floor. Screams mixed with roars, but Jack couldn't see the man now that he was below the mist. His clawed hands stuck up through the surface of the fog, and swiped at the spider leg several times, before falling back down below.

Avery roared. Not a normal roar, something that'd hurt the ears but otherwise do nothing. It was a blast wave. It erupted from her like an explosion, and everyone not currently attached to the monster with a clawed grip flew away, and they didn't land nicely. Whatever it was Avery just did, it hit Jack hard enough he fell back and slid over maybe thirty feet of stone before stopping, and when he got back up, he was facing the wrong way.

He spun back around in time to see Avery's claws erupt with flames, and sink into the spider's large abdomen. The whole fight had been filled with screaming and shrieking monster sounds, and it only got worse as bits of the monster's flesh caught fire. It wasn't normal fire. It faded away quickly, thank god, but once Jack ran back in to join the fight, he could smell the burning hair of the spider's body.

Those claws hurt. He knew.

Six werewolves took the opportunity to jump back up from the mist, and tear into the spider's big fat abdomen where Avery had left a nasty gash. Blood rained, and Jack took a step back as the monster spun around at high speed, trying to dislodge the pack. They held on, sinking their claws in as deep as they could go, as if they were trying to burrow their way into the spider's insides. It bucked and roared, and sliced at them as it turned the human half, but couldn't get anything more than passing grazes on the wolves that cut but didn't kill.

Jack wanted to help, but any time he got close, the spider spun around again and swiped hard. With his blood shield protecting him, he'd survive a hit, but all it'd accomplish would be getting sent flying again.

The spider finally stopped bucking and spinning long enough to turn its human half again, and raise both arms, ready to take a big swing down at one of the wolves with both hands. Before it tried, a blur of motion cut through the mist, and slammed into the side of the spider's head. The spider's swings went wild, twitching randomly and slashing at nothing and everything around it.

Damien hung from his sword, both hands holding the handle tight, the long blade skewering the monster through the temple, all the way through. He'd put a lot more power into his jump than Jack had. But the monster wasn't dead. It swung its body in random directions, not swinging at anything in particular, but its death throes were still deadly as fuck, and Jack backed away again.

Okay, monster was dying, that was good. Carter was down and not getting up. Not good. He could still hear Clara and the others fighting ghosts off behind him. Not good. Help Carter, or help Clara and Sándor?

"Damien! Help them finish it off!" He spun around, and jogged toward Clara. The werewolves behind him continued to rip and tear into the spider monster, but it'd die eventually. It'd break apart into a bunch of smaller spiders, with the azlu's spirit half hidden inside one of them. Maybe they could catch it? No, not a chance in the mist. They'd have to find it and kill it again later, but for now, he had to save as many people as he could. And he knew he'd never forgive himself if something happened to Clara. And he hated that he knew he still felt that way about her.

He got maybe fifty feet before motion caught his eye. He spun around again, half expecting to find a giant spiderweb launched at him or something, but instead, he found the black, empty eyes of a ghost, and the glint of a knife.

"You killed the master!" Sabrina swung the knife down, and Jack sucked in a hard breath as the metal cut along his forehead. The only thing that stopped it from cutting deep into his skull, was reflexes and the blood shield. Whatever the fuck that ghost knife was made of, it cut through the blood with far more effectiveness than it had any right to. It was just like that time Avery had got him with her claws.

Sabrina had used the knife to kill ghosts. Apparently it could kill more than that.

"It was an accident!"

"Liar! Master Honors wouldn't die to an accident!" She came at him again, swinging fast, and Jack backpedaled as best he could. Behind him, the sound of a flamethrower spewing fire in random directions only grew closer.

"He wanted to kill someone I loved, so I set the whole building on fire to stop him. I didn't think--"

She half cackled, half snarled as she dove at him like she wanted to tackle him, and he rolled to the side. But the moment he was back on his feet, she dove again, forcing him to again duck. And again, she swung her knife at him, pushing him back toward Noah and the flames.

"You didn't think fire would kill a vampire!? Well then this is going to be ironic!" Her manic laughter reached psycho levels as she pointed behind him, no doubt at the fire Noah was spewing everywhere. He didn't dare look.

"That's not irony!"

"What!?" She came in close and stabbed up for his guts. He sidestepped and risked a punch, and grinned as he felt knuckles smash into ghost flesh. As long as she was manifesting herself physically, a fight was a two-way street.

"Irony is when something extremely unlikely happens! A pilot dying in a plane crash isn't ironic. A pilot having a random plane fall on his house and kill him while he's sleeping would be ironic!" One perk about being a vampire he never truly appreciated, was getting to argue while fighting. No need to worry about breath management.

"Nerd!" She swung again, shoulder to hip, and he jumped back only far enough to keep the blade from piercing skin. His shirt and suit weren't so lucky, getting a second cut through it. "How could you!? How could you kill the master!"

"Your master was a psychopath! A violent asshole!"

"The master was loving! He adored me!"

"Probably because you're a fucking psychopath! And a violent asshole!"

She shrieked, mouth hanging open further than a human mouth could, and the noise forced him to squint as his ears struggled.

"You don't deserve to live! Master's grandchilde is a killer! A monster! Without the necklace, you're just a monster!"

"What do you--"

"Black Blood told us! Told us everything! Master Honors had the curse, but he kept it controlled. Your sire had the curse, but he kept it controlled. You're the first one to release it! You're the monster!"

He'd told her everything, then. She went for the necklace first because it was his weakness. She didn't know what that meant.

It was his turn to snarl, and he stepped in closer to the ghost. She was freaky fast, almost as fast as Damien, and her body was hard to keep focus on with how it leaked the same mist they were fighting in. But he came in close enough to drive his fist into her face, and as she hovered back in some weird sort of ghost pain, complete with angry alien screams, he jumped toward her and again punched her, bringing a fist down and putting the power of the curse into it as hard as he could. He didn't have time for this.

As usual, the power and his bodyweight didn't get along, and he flew back from the impact. But so did she. Her ghost body broke apart from the punch, face literally breaking in half like a log to an ax, before she fell into the mist rolling, causing the mist to spread around her in waves.

"I'm not a monster."

He didn't wait to see her reaction. Hopefully having her face smashed apart would give him at least a few seconds of peace.

He managed another ten feet, before his body stopped working. A small glint between and above his eyes forced him to look up, and he groaned. That, was a knife.

"You killed the master!" Sabrina said, and she yanked the knife out of his skull as he fell into the mist. "You killed my love!" His face planted against the stone, and as torpor pulled him under, Sabrina stabbed him in the back again, and again, and again.

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~~Beatrice~~

It wasn't the first time she'd been in Athalia's lair. By all accounts, it should have been awesome. An enormous cave that went straight down, with downward spiraling ramps of rock along the walls. At the bottom, a pile of bones. Lots, and lots, and lots of bones. The whole thing was super metal. And it was so dark, each step had to be carefully calculated. She'd survive falling. He'll, she could survive tripping and rolling down the whole damn spiral until she landed in the bones, vampire and all, but she'd break every bone in her body. No time to spend the next week in torpor healing.

Beside her floated the giant skeleton monster, Athalia. In some ways, she looked similar to Black Blood's supposed true body, a giant black skeleton. Similar roots in being super scary and shit, probably. Black Blood was some sort of spirit or god of death and the dead, and you didn't embody that much better than a black skeleton. And there were few things peopled feared more than death.

They didn't go far. Just as Triss was about to ask what the plan was, Athalia hovered over to a wide tunnel connected to the wall of the huge pit, and disappeared in blackness. Complete, utter, total fucking blackness. Triss followed as best she could, which wasn't very well.

"Uh, Athalia, I can't see shit."

"Just keep walking."

"Easy for you to say. Can you see?"

"Eshmaki like myself and Fiona can see in darkness, yes. We are darkness."

"Uh huh. Fiona's the biggest ray of sunshine I've ever met."

Athalia snorted on a quiet laugh. "Her Horror's body count is in the many thousands."

That was more than a little disturbing, actually.

"How'd someone like Fiona get a Horror so... murdery?"

"The Horror comes to us in our dreams, and devours us. Becomes us. Fiona is not the sort to feel guilty for doing what comes naturally. Like a spider."

"So... Fiona's dreams attracted a spider Horror, because they both lack guilt?"

The darkness chuckled quietly. "Or perhaps because spiders are happy creatures. Have you ever met an unhappy spider?"

Apparently Athalia found a bit of her shitty sense of humor when merged with her Horror.

"No," Triss said.

"Do not judge things you do not understand."

"Uh huh, thanks for the life advice. Now when are we--"

The darkness peeled away, and Triss stared on in awe, at the cave they stepped into.

It was huge. It was beyond huge. Endless mist covered the floor in a cave with walls so far and so big, she couldn't contextualize how big they were. A thousand feet high? A mile? Titanic pillars of stone reached up from the ground to touch the ceiling, and once she dipped her head left and right to try and get a little sense of depth, she could only gawk. She might as well have been trying to see if she could move her head enough to make the moon move in the distance. It was too big and too far.

The whole place had a strange, eerie glow, subtle but there, something almost green, almost blue, despite the whole place having no real light source. The light was just... there, quiet, and subdued, like it was afraid to grow brighter and reveal the secrets of the underworld.

In the distance, tiny green fireflies drifted around. She squinted and dipped her head left and right again. Nope, not fireflies. Bigger, and further.

"Holy shit," she said.

Athalia sighed as she nodded. "Yeah." She was back in her human form again, and looking just as overwhelmed by the sight before her as Triss.

"You know where the others are?"

"Yeah. That way." She pointed to some place in the distance.

"Uh, you sure? Cause this all looks identical."

"Sándor pointed it out to me before."

"Uh huh. And you... went there and visited it, physically, right?"

"... no."

Triss groaned and buried her face in her hands. "We're going to die."

"No we're not. Now sum--" She cut herself off as she took a step back, and looked directly ahead of them.

Triss almost asked what was the problem before her Beast announced the presence of another vampire. And their Beast was one she was intimately familiar with.

"Aaron?"

Maybe fifty feet in the distance, someone stood up from the mist, a normal looking white dude, average height, average build, and short blonde hair that was so predictable you almost didn't notice it. He wore the most typical blue jeans she'd ever seen, and a black t-shirt with absolutely nothing on it. The Gangrel gave the sheriff a run for 'most boring man on the planet'.

"Oh, it's you." He nodded slowly, face still deadpan as he slipped his hands into his jean pockets. "We weren't sure who'd come through."

Triss almost walked over to him, but halfway through her first step she noticed Athalia had taken a step back. The tunnel behind them was no longer a black, endless cave, but more of the same Great Below cave, and a rock face with some curvature to it that led nowhere. Athalia had closed her lair off, and looked like she was getting ready to open it again.

"Aaron, what're you doing here?" Triss asked.

The man frowned slightly before he looked up, turned to the side, and paced, as casual as ever. "What do you think?"

"I... oh shit." She looked to Athalia, hoping to see something to prove her thoughts wrong. But of course not. Athalia looked at Aaron like he was a threat.

"You guessed it," he said. "So please, go back the way you came. We can talk when Jacob and Black Blood are done."

"Fucking shit, really? You? God damn it, Aaron! You're the one fucking person in the whole fucking city I expect to keep a level head!"

He winced and motioned for her to calm down. Which, of course, only made her fucking furious.

"I do have a level head. I'm not yelling or screaming in an underworld realm filled with angry ghosts. Notice the lights?"

She snarled at him, but she couldn't help but look past him and up at the endless fog in the titanic, endless cave.