My Little Ventrue Pt. 10 Ch. 16

It didn't matter. He had to stop this. He had to fix this. He kept going.

"Into the new world! No more life! No more death! No more pain, no more misery, no more--"

Jacob's head fell off.

Jack stopped and stared. If his jaw had worked, it would have dropped open. His one eye slowly slid from Jacob's headless body, to Jacob's head, as the eyeless thing fell harmlessly on Elaine's broken and battered forearms and head, and into the black water. His body fell over, half sideways and half forward onto Elaine, before it ignited into a puff of cinders.

Elaine managed a small squeak of surprise, and pushed the corpse off before it could burn her. A second later, the corpse was gone, nothing but ash, and the scary robe sizzled and burned before the black water doused the small flame that'd managed to spread.

Jack stared down at the robe, at where the eyeless man used to be. All the man was, all the... everything, just up and gone in a small puff of ash. All that was left of him was a soaked, creepy robe, half burned.

His mom stood over Elaine, by her legs, with Elaine's knife in her hands. Kindred blood soaked the blade, but with no vitae powering it, the blood ignited and burned away, tiny flames and cinders that left behind nothing more than a faint trace of soot.

"Mom?" Jack asked, voice quiet, words mumbled and agonizing to say with the broken mouth.

"I... I couldn't... couldn't let him do it. I... I couldn't..." She dropped the knife, and stared down at Elaine as she took a few steps back. "I had to stop him. I had... to stop him, right?" Her eyes opened wide and wider, until her horrified gaze looked to Jack again.

He wanted to look away. No one could look into eyes like that and not get scarred for the rest of their life. But he couldn't look away, as his mom stared at him, desperate for him to say something, anything.

"You had to stop him, Mom." He dragged himself closer to her, and set a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling. "You had to. It--"

"Malachi!"

Oh fuck. The whole time, Black Blood had been roaring and screaming and fighting off the curse, stomping his feet and twisting and turning between the standing stones only a couple hundred feet away. But now, the giant skeleton looked their way, and the white flames in his eyes exploded in size until they were too big for the eye sockets.

He took one step toward Jack and the others, and let out a shriek that silenced every single ghost above. The vibration pulsed through the floor and stones, and while Jack and probably everyone wanted to cover their ears, they couldn't. He tried to lift his arms, but his body didn't respond. Ice spread through his limbs, and the ghostly nails-on-chalkboard sound he'd become way too familiar with shot up his spine until every tendon in his body seized hard.

Black Blood couldn't touch them. Couldn't hurt them. Right?

"Damn the rules! I'll see you burn! I'll spend a thousand years tearing your skin from your flesh, and force-feed you blood to keep you alive until I am satisfied! I'll tear out your eyes and rip out your tongue. I will drive metal and stone through your intestines, and every dead remnant in my domain will taste of your pain! Pain! You will know pain!"

Rules?

The skeleton took another step forward, and leaned down, arms outstretched. He was going to grab them.

Before his giant hands could wrap their bodies, huge shadowy wings erupted from Black Blood's face, and again the titan roared as he stood up straight, and tore at the Ripper. It was like some freaky cancerous disease, trying to break out of Black Blood's body, or take it over like an alien parasite. They ripped and tore at each other, splattering black ooze and black shadowy feathers alike.

But Black Blood was winning. As the titan stepped back and clawed at his face, some of his bone claws snagged the curse's chest, and Black Blood ripped the shadow owl free from his body. Only a slither of shadow connected it to his bones, like an umbilical cord.

"How dare you! I am not some Kindred for you to infect, vile leech!"

The giant owl in the god's hands let out a screech, and flared its wings as best it could as it pecked at the titan's fingers hard enough bits of black bone fell into the water below. And somewhere in the alien screech sounds the owl made, two words came out.

"Fuck you!" The bird let out a final harsh flap of its wings, hard enough it freed itself from Black Blood's grip, and flew directly into the titan's chest.

Black Blood stumbled back. The white in his eyes erupted until two giant pillars of white flame shot out from them, and he let out an alien shriek of his own, before he sank his claws into the giant shadowy bird, and ripped it nearly in half.

Another shriek. The curse fell to the shallow water, two chunks barely bound together by black strands at the bottom of its body, each half of its head still holding a glowing yellow eye. They both looked to Jack, before the dying creature let out another weird sound. Laughter.

Run, you moron.

Jack's head snapped up. The whisper was in his mind, quiet, raspy, and dying. The destroyed black creature laughed again and tried to flap its wings, but Black Blood took one step forward, and crushed it underneath his foot.

The curse died, and it hit Jack like whiplash. He stumbled back, and his mom caught his wrists before he fell back on his ass again.

"Damn you all!" Black Blood took a step closer. "Malachi was my friend! And you, Samantha, betrayed him! I cannot complete the merge without him! Damn the rules, I no longer care! I will see you suffer a thousand agonies for a hundred thousand years! Death is too good for you!"

"Go," Elaine said. She pushed herself to her feet, one of her forearms a broken mess, the other barely holding together, but she managed, and she pushed against them with her shoulders. How she managed to see at all with her destroyed face, Jack didn't know. "Go!"

Jack and his mom managed to turn around long enough for it to become painfully clear they weren't getting anywhere in time. They were too beat up, Jack dragging his feet and Elaine barely able to stand. Everyone on the other side of the barrier stared, and most of them took steps back as they realized what was happening.

Whatever rules bound the god of corpses, he didn't give a shit anymore. He was going to catch them, and kill them.

"Jack!" Antoinette's voice. She pounded against the red barrier again and again, each crash of her hands against the red light loud enough it sounded like a gunshot. "Run!"

"No!" Jack's mom broke off to the side, and Elaine and Jack almost fell over as she ran past them. "Mary!"

"Shit!" Jack stared after his mom, but all he could do was watch. She used Daeva speed to throw herself back toward Mary's ghost, and collapsed on her hands and knees beside her.

"Mom! Run!" the ghost said, struggling and squirming in the ghost chains that still bound her. "Leave me! Run!"

"I can't! I won't!" She grabbed the chains and pulled on them hard. Jack half expected it to be too heavy for her, but their mom had no trouble lifting her daughter and the chains.

It didn't matter. Black Blood was on her in a second, and he scooped her up off the stone, watery floor without issue. Sam screamed as Mary's ghost fell back to the ground, and Black Blood lifted their mom up into the air until he was standing again.

"They will not arrive soon enough to save you," Black Blood said. "I will not be cast back into the depths alone. You will come with me, Samantha Terry, and you will suffer Hell unimaginable."

He lifted her up to his skull face, and growled over her as he began to squeeze. Jack's mom's scream cut off, turning into a hoarse gargle that died a second later. This wasn't supposed to happen. Couldn't happen. Black Blood wasn't supposed to be able to hurt them!

Jack ground his teeth, and dragged himself back toward the giant god of corpses.

"Black Blood! Stop it!"

"A thousand curses upon you, Samantha Terry. A thousand lifetimes of misery. A thousand swords in your belly and a thousand maggots in your eyes. A plague upon your undead flesh for ten thousand years. You will know death in all its forms, and--"

A scream cut him off, harsh enough Jack almost fell over as he clutched his ears again. He knew that scream. He'd heard it shatter glass.

Mary erupted from her chains, broke them, and dove at Black Blood. The banshee ghost screamed without end, and pulsing waves shot out from her that pushed the water away as the sound threatened to pop Jack's eardrums. She shot up for Black Blood's hand, and as she closed the distance, she changed. The hanging threads and strips of fabric of her new, tattered and torn cloak grew longer and longer. Her claws grew longer, until her hands were dwarfed. The mist that poured from where her legs should have been converged into something more solid, with weird hanging bits underneath her elongating body.

Hands. Holding knives. Her body grew longer and longer, her tattered cloak becoming some sort of giant cape full of tears and holes, but somehow creating a perfect shadow beneath it. And within, sticking out from under the strange shadow of her elongated body cape, were hundreds of hands, holding knives.

She'd been stabbed to death, and Angela hadn't stabbed her once. She'd stabbed her a bunch of times.

The horrific creature slammed into Black Blood's wrist, and slashed down with her claws. The god of the dead roared in rage, and pain, and let go of their mom as he took a step back, only for the strange creature to dive at his chest. Mary's ghost must have grown five times in size, all the extra length coming out of her human torso like some sort of human centipede hybrid, and she used it, slamming it into Black Blood's sternum. She was still tiny compared to him, but big enough, and strong enough, to force him back another step. And as she did, the hundreds of hands underneath her body stabbed at the giant god's bones. Bits of black bone fell like rain.

If those knives hurt half as much as Sabrina's knife, Black Blood was in the worst agony Jack could imagine.

Black Blood roared again, and chains shot out of his palms, aimed for Mary's ghost. But she was fast, and she flew underneath them before rising up to attack the god's face, again dragging her many knifes across his dark body.

Jack held out his arms, and caught his mother. Unfortunately, physics in reality didn't do the whole 'catching some who's falling' as cleanly as it did in the movies. All the strength in the world couldn't have stopped him from collapsing forward when she hit his arms, but it was better than letting her crack her head on the stone. Unfortunately, he was barely holding together in general, and he collapsed with her straight into the shallow water.

"Mom, we have to go!" He'd found enough vitae to get his jaw bone aligned. It'd only take a gentle tap to break it again, but it was enough for now.

"No, not without Mary!"

"Look at her!" He threw a hand up and pointed at Mary's ghost. The monstrous thing slashed at Black Blood, a frenzy of screams and shrieks that forced Jack to yell into his mom's ear from half a foot away. "That's not Mary anymore!"

"That's my daughter! I don't care what you say, I won't leave her!"

"That--"

Just as quickly as Mary's assault began, it ended. The god of the dead managed to get a hard slash of his claws through her, and Mary's shrieks came to a harsh stop. She tried to fly away, to get some distance between her and the giant skeleton, but Black Blood slashed out again, and again his claws met her ghostly body. Giant gash marks cut deep, and didn't fill in like mist should have. She looked like a centipede someone had cut halfway through a dozen times, never quite managing to cut off a piece of her, but it didn't matter.

The giant ghost fell, and landed only a short distance from Jack and their mom. She tried to get up, her mutated form pushing against the stone, including the hundreds of hands still holding ghostly knives. But she couldn't. She fell over, and writhed and twisted on her side, her upper human half pushing against the stone floor and staring uselessly at Jack and their mom.

"Run," Mary said. "Mom, Jack, ru--"

"I am a god of the dead, remnant. How dare you think to strike me." Black Blood walked toward them, three whole steps all he required to cover massive ground, and reach down for them. "You broke free of my chains. A powerful remnant, you have become, Mary Terry. But all you have earned is a place at your mother's side." He snarled and laughed as both his hands covered them in shadow. "All three Terrys will spend an eternity, prostrated upon torments you cannot comprehend, with only pain to be your--"

A blinding flash of gold erupted from the center of the site. It almost looked like it came from the giant tear, but it came from... everywhere, a wave of gold and white that buried everyone and everything. It seared the eyes, but Jack looked anyway, eye half locked on the giant skeleton hands about to scoop him and his mom up, and the other about to scoop Mary up.

Black Blood couldn't. A dozen chips and tears and half broken bones on his colossal frame didn't mean shit to him, but the giant gold chains that now bound his wrist, connected to them by enormous handcuffs, did.

The blinding light faded away, and Jack's eyes stopped burning, still locked onto the giant hands above only a few feet away from grabbing him and his mother. The fingers wriggled, desperate to capture him, but the strange gold chains that came out of nothingness pulled back on the god's wrists, and Black Blood thundered as he fought against them. It was like watching a desperate psychopath fight against the chains that bound him to his cell.

"I. Will. Not. Be. Denied!"

The chains came out of glowing orbs in the air, glowing the same gold as one of the colors in the giant tear. The tear stood there, unchanged, still surrounded by the standing stones and their glowing red symbols, as more giant gold portals opened up around it. Two high above had the chains binding the giant god's wrists, and two more appeared, also high in the cave sky. Two gold chains shot out of them, and snapped gold metal bindings around Black Blood's body, his throat, and around the base of his spine. Two more portals opened up, close to the ground, and again shot out gold chains that snapped around Black Blood's ankles.

The titan fell. With another one of his ghostly roars, a searing sound that stabbed the ears, Black Blood fell backward. For a moment it looked like he'd fall through the giant tear, but he fell beside it, and the cave trembled as the colossal creature smashed into the ground on his back.

"Vas reln korta," someone said.

What the fuck? Jack forced himself to his feet, his mom helping him, and the two looked around for the source of the new voice. It wasn't raspy, had no ghostly shrieks or screams, and it wasn't a primal roar.

It sounded lovely, like... ocean waves on the beach.

"Reln difera! Forv ku--" The chains around Black Blood's body yanked hard, and Black Blood's head snapped back into the ground with a crack. An explosion of black water outward announced he'd broken the stone underneath his skull.

Jack didn't know what language they were speaking. There were other words layered into it, like multiple languages being spoken at once.

"Nu ramrelu. Ziar, thaisrah," the ocean said. Not grating, not heavy or powerful or aggressive. Calm, and deep. Immutable. And just like Black Blood, the words were layered, other words blending in that Jack's brain swore it could find English in, but couldn't.

Black Blood and the invisible voice shared a few more sentences, and while Jack couldn't understand a word of it, he didn't need to. The god of corpses was being reprimanded, punished, or whatever the godly equivalent was.

Black Blood snapped his head up enough to look at Jack and his mom, and again, his eyes erupted with white flame.

"I will return, and have my revenge, Samantha Terry. I will rise again. I will--" Instead of letting the god of corpses have his epic final villain monologue, the gold chains tightened harder, and dragged Black Blood down. He was already on his back, arms and legs spread out between the standing stones, but somehow, the chains pulled him down anyway. The gold hovering orbs that held his chains lowered until they touched the ground, and seeped lower until they disappeared into the rock. They brought their chains with them, and Black Blood twisted and writhed fruitlessly as he sank into the black water.

Whatever the chains were doing, it wasn't easy. Black Blood resisted, and the chains were dragging him straight through solid stone; if that mattered at all to a god. Slowly but surely, the giant skeleton sank and sank, as if the water around him were quicksand with no bottom. Or, thick black sludge. His feet went first, then his hands, then his waist. His skull went last, and his burning eyes stared directly at Jack's mom as the silenced god of corpses was pulled deeper, and deeper into the Great Below.

The moment the black skeleton was completely gone, the red barrier of light surrounding them vanished. No fanfare, no special effects or loud noises, just gone, like someone flicking a light switch. The ghosts above that still remained grew silent, and went on their way, fading into blackness as they flew off. The glowing red symbols on the standing stones remained, but their glow didn't, the red light fading away slowly until all that was left was quiet darkness.

"Jack! Samantha!" Antoinette dashed for them, and Daniel followed beside her. She stumbled several times on the way. Whether that was because she was overwhelmed with emotion, or because Mary's claws had thoroughly wrecked her body, Jack couldn't tell. But once she reached them and hugged them both hard enough Sam and Jack winced, he had a feeling it was the former.

Daniel helped Elaine, picking her up before sliding her hair out of her face.

"It was a stupid plan," he said to her. "A lot of problems."

Elaine, face a broken mess and arms even worse, managed a weak shrug as she walked toward Antoinette. Daniel stayed with her, and helped her from falling over a couple times.

"It was stupid," Elaine said. "But I needed to be sure. I--"

An explanation Jack was dying to hear was cut short, as blinding gold light flooded the giant cave again. Thankfully not so blinding he couldn't tell there were a half dozen orbs coming up out of the black water, each burying the onlookers in their presence, each four times as tall as a person. The black water pushed away from them as they hovered up from the ground, and once they were a couple feet above it, the six orbs drifted toward the tear.

"W-What's going on?" Samantha asked. "I--Mary! Mary. I have to see Mary!" She wriggled free of Antoinette and Jack's arms, and ran over to her daughter's ghost. With no hesitation at all, she got on her knees beside the giant, grotesque creature, and pulled its head onto her lap. "Mary. Oh god, Mary."

Jack winced as he looked to Antoinette, to Elaine, to the rest of the crowd who'd all dragged themselves closer, before his eye fell on his mom again. If his body didn't feel like it was about to break into bits and pieces, he'd have run after her and pulled her away.

Mary's ghost squirmed. The upper body, the human half, looked mostly the same as it had before, but the giant cape, or millipede half, was disgusting to look at. Hands and fingers and knives, clawing uselessly at the ground, with several giant gashes cutting through the enormous body.

"Mom." Mary's voice was soft, a whisper, some of the ghost harshness still there but mostly a faded thing. "You're safe, Mom."

"I am, baby. I am. We... I... oh god, baby, I'm so sorry. I didn't want this to happen!"