Chapter 9

~~Jack~~

Jack’s eyes went wide. Half of Viktor’s head was gone, just gone. The bloody gibs of brain matter and bone turned into tiny fires that faded into ash and embers before they even hit the ground.

“Shit! Shit shit, what-”

Julias put a hand against Jack’s mouth, and pushed him back against the wall. “Sniper, down the path.”

Jack reached up and pulled his sire’s hand down. “What about Viktor!? The fuck are we supposed to do now?”

Just as he was about to start ranting, his jaw dropped yet again when Viktor sat back up, safe out of the line of sight of the alley. Half his head was still missing, but it was rebuilding itself. That dark and thick Kindred blood was seeping into the gory mess and quite literally rebuilding bone, muscle, tendon, teeth, and even his hair. It wasn’t like when Julias healed from his burn; this was some freaky mutant insane healing powers shit.

A minute later, Viktor was standing and dusting his shoulders off. His hair was now undone, and the black length reached the middle of his back. “Vermin. Cowards. If they want to play as rats, then rats they shall have.” He looked to his childe, grandchile, and gave a small grin. The smirk was gone so fast, Jack wasn’t sure he’d seen it.

And then, as if thrown into the ocean during a hurricane, Jack had to press a hand to the wall to brace himself against the invisible. Viktor’s voice was quiet, but he could feel it resonate through him. There was power there, so much power that it shook the blood in his withered insides. It only got worse when Viktor used a fingernail to slice open his wrist, and forced a large splattering of his blood to land on the pavement.

Squeaks. At first it was a barely audible buzzing sound, like a fly near the ear, but soon the rising tide of squeaks flooded toward them. When Jack looked toward the source, he could not find it. It came from everywhere. In the dark of night, it looked like the pavement had come to life.

Hundreds of rats poured over everything. They ran the corners of building and street, flowed up from sewer drains, and down the walls of warehouses, all to sip at Viktor’s blood.

“Go. Swarm and devour my enemies.”

King of the rats. The flood of moving fur poured past them all and down the alley. The moving carpet of teeth was met with gunfire, squeaks of death and exploding, furry little bodies, but whoever was shooting did not have nearly enough bullets to stop a torrent of claws. Within a minute, the sounds of gunfire had fallen back.

Julias went in first, his pistol held in both hands. Viktor had also drawn his pistol, a machine pistol at that, but he held it in one hand. With an almost flamboyant flare, he drew his sword and held at in his right hand at the ready. It was not some antique, but rather something clearly modern, almost more like a very long dagger.

Jack found himself suppressing a grin. He was afraid, there was gunfire, and Viktor had lost half his head, but damn if his grandsire wasn’t an irrefutable badass. Viktor went in after Julias, and the two went at a full run. Jack came up behind them, and found himself drifting to hide behind Viktor more than Julias. No offense to his sire, but his grandsire was scarier.

Instead of stopping to regroup once a new set of warehouses were reached, they kept running. Fearless. It was strangely exhilarating. At first, he was terrified, and he still was, but there was something to this, hunting things in the dark. Something primal and ancient tugged at Jack’s insides, that inner-beast that now lived inside him, and pulled him along like a cat chasing prey. He forgot about Mrs. Pavala, about Mary, about all the stupid shit that didn’t matter then. For the moment, he was a predator.

They soon found themselves in a cross section of road, warehouses, factories, dipping ramps of asphalt that lead into garage doors. The rats were pouring down one of the ramps and under a barely-opened garage door. Then the air was filled with squeaks, hundreds, even thousands of squeaks. Dying squeaks.

Viktor held up a hand, and Julias came to a stop with his back against the wall of the opened door. Jack’s sire clearly had training; he moved with efficiency and speed with his pistol in both hands. His grandsire on the other hand, walked forward as if immortal. For all Jack knew, he might as well have been. The elder Kindred stepped underneath the garage door, following the rats into the darkness.

Jack followed him in, only to have the garage door slam behind him.

~Julias~

Shit.

Julias only had time to take two steps toward the garage door before a pair of hands crashed into him. Everything turned upside down, everything hurt, and suddenly the pavement was zipping by underneath him. He was sent fifty feet before he skidded to a stop, suit torn to bits and his pale skin ripped open all over.

His skin closed and healed itself within seconds, and he was up on a knee in the same amount of time with his gun drawn. A quick look around showed he was in clearing of street, likely where transport trucks rerouted.

“God damn Ventrue. Too damn hard to kill with bullets.”

Rebecca. The redheaded bitch was wearing a wearing a black trench coat, and ... a nice scarf. Damn Daeva always concerned with looking sexy. The woman had a large rifle with a long barrel in her hands, but she threw it to the ground with a frustrated groan.

“Good thing Daeva aren’t so hard to kill.” He’d shot thousands of bullets from dozens of different guns. His current pistol had kick, but it was nothing a Kindred couldn’t suppress easily, so firing several bullets in rapid succession from the oversized weapon was easy.

Hitting the Daeva, on the other hand, would not be so easy. Rebecca moved as a blur, fast enough that before he knew it she had put a warehouse corner between them. He’d clipped her; the splattering bits of dark blood and withering ash proved it. He’d have to hit her in the chest several times just to slow her down long enough to take off her head, though.

Well, at least the place was deserted for a wide radius. No cops.

“Come out come out wherever you are.” Julias stood up and started to walk toward where she’d disappeared, pistol at the ready.

“Are we going to play hide’n’seek?” the darkness asked.

“Well, you can hide, but eventually I’ll give up and get back to Viktor.” He poked his head around the corner, just long enough to see what waited for him. Nothing.

“Well I can’t have that.”

“No I don’t suppose you can. You really think Tony can kill Viktor?” He really only had one direction to move in: toward the voice. Rebecca was staying ahead of him, ducking around warehouse corners and likely hiding on rooftops to throw her voice.

“What’s a Ventrue without his subjects to fight for him?”

“Ah, so that’s why you separated me.” He kept his pistol in both hands, and tracked his gaze with practiced speed.

“Indeed!” Always with a flare for the dramatic, the serpent jumped from a rooftop. Jumped was incorrect, she’d actually propelled herself down toward him, and she crashed into him with enough force to dent the wall behind him with his head.

He was prepared this time, and Ventrue reflexes had his vitae pumping defense through his body upon impact. Physics were physics though, and he slammed into the wall hard enough to almost bounce. He pulled the trigger, several times, but all the bullets went wide. It only got worse when a punch hit his hands hard enough to knock the weapon away.

“I’m going to – ah!” Rebecca jumped back with her hands to her chest.

Julias got back up, knife in hand and Rebecca’s blood on its blade for only a moment before the red became ash. He didn’t need a gun.

“You nearly killed by childe. You nearly killed me.” He gripped the blade tight in his right hand with his left hand open and pointed toward the Daeva. “You really suck at finishing jobs. You wouldn’t last two days in the Invictus.”

“Old hags and dusty dicks who couldn’t move on from dead dynasties.” She paced left and right in front of him, a growl on her beautiful lips. Her hands were empty; she’d left the sniper rifle behind.

Or at least, they were empty. It was too damn hard to follow her movements, but she managed to reach into her jacket and pull out a weapon before he could move. He wasn’t worried about a pistol, but she wasn’t pulling out a pistol. She was pulling out a short-barreled shotgun, perfect for splattering a Kindred into bits.

He ducked in and tackled her. She was faster and stronger, but he was tougher. Her shot clipped over his shoulder and tore a chunk of his flesh free, enough to disable the arm. For the moment.

“Get off of me!”

She bashed him in the face with the weapon, but he was inside now. His right hand still worked, so he swung the knife for her guts. She raised the gun in a harsh uppercut though, straight up against the hand, blocked his swipe, and drove the butt of the gun into his face. The damn Daeva hit so hard, his knife was knocked up from his hand and away, and his head snapped back almost hard enough to break his bones.

She pointed the gun at him again, but he reached for it with his good arm while falling back. His torn up arm was taking just seconds to heal, but seconds was a long time when a Daeva was struggling to get a shotgun in your mouth, so he only had the one hand to hold onto the gun while she had a free hand. She used it to punch his chest again, and again, and again, until bone broke inward.

He didn’t let go of the gun. She beat him, tore into him, ripped open his chest, but still he didn’t let go. Over the seconds, his arm put itself back together with the crack of undead bone and shifting cartilage. When the arm finally started working again, he ignored the blinding pain – his inner-beast demanded it – and raised his free hand to grab her face. He was bigger than her, much bigger, and he put his size to use with his larger grip over her eyes, and his grip squeezing hard enough to crush bone.

He may not have had the strength of a Daeva, but she didn’t have the resilience of a Ventrue. Within seconds, he felt her pale skin start to give way to his fingers, and soon the bone underneath it around her temples and eye sockets began to crack.

She screamed. Kindred were not immune to pain, and her noises made Julias grimace. Her high-pitched wail turned into a furious banshee cry as she let go of the gun, but put both hands against his assaulting hand, and ripped it off.

It was his turn to cry out. Her nails dug into his flesh, into the undead insides, and tore it apart at the wrist. Bits of bone flew out, along with a small splatter of his blood before the viscous liquid contained itself to his open wound. His hand was gone though, and the severed limb crumbled into old dust and bone on the pavement. He wasn’t Viktor, it would take a lot longer than few seconds to grow an entire hand.

Rebecca threw her fist into his face, and this time he flew back only to crash into a nearby warehouse wall. With only five feet between them still, the Daeva pounced at him.

But he hadn’t let go of her shotgun.

With barely enough sense of mind to pay attention, searing pain tearing through his wrist and through his body, he raised his remaining hand up to the serpent’s face. She was mid-air, she couldn’t change direction, and the speed of it all meant she crashed into the gun the moment he pulled the trigger.

Rebecca still crashed into him, but now it was a mess of limbs, blood and ash. She wasn’t trying to grab him, not yet. Maybe he’d killed her? He got his bearings – she was on top of him – and he swung the gun into the side of her head. She rolled off of him, onto her knees, and started moving, struggling, groaning.

He forced himself up and onto his feet, gun still in hand. He tried to not look, but eventually he had to take a glance at the damage Rebecca had done to his other hand. There was no hand, just a stump of wrist where it had been. Pain re-surged anew, and he forced down the need to scream and yell. He had a job to do.

The Ventrue looked down at Rebecca, who was whimpering with obvious pain and favoring one arm. When she realized he was up, she turned around on her knees to face him, but immediately fell over onto her side. There was a mess of blood, torn clothes, and a blatantly open cavity in her right chest that exposed dark flesh and shrunken organs. Were the shotgun any stronger, it would have put a hole clear through her torso.

He pointed the shotgun at her head.

“ ... m-mercy,” she said.

He froze.

She attacked.

He only had time to blink before the Daeva forced herself into a tackle against him. She was practically snarling, and despite a giant chunk of her chest missing, she was still using both arms and managed to punch him in the jaw hard enough crack bone again. When his back smashed into the pavement, he let go of the shotgun, and immediately found his only hand pinned underneath one of hers.

“God damn Julias Mire. Still a sucker for a girl in distress. You know what? Fuck you. I’m not going to kill you because it’s my job. Instead, I’m going to kill you just because you’re an archaic, sexist dick.” She put the shotgun against his head.

And then she had no arm.

Julias’s jaw dropped open as Rebecca’s arm dropped to the floor. By the time it reached the ground, the limb fell apart into bone, ember, fading ash, and the shotgun bounced harmlessly across the pavement.

Rebecca’s eyes opened wide. She tried to get up and turn around, but only two seconds after her arm had simply fallen off, a massive set of claws were sticking out of her chest. Some claws poked through the wound the shotgun had made, while most just bore straight through her back and out through her ribs.

“I ... I ... can-”

Another set of claws punctured her, next to the others. Rebecca was skewered ten times through, and shaking with disbelief, and pain.

With taunting slowness, Beatrice exposed her face from behind and over Rebecca’s shoulder. Like a dark ghost, the Nosferatu formed into view from the shadow, with obsidian melting off of her to expose her teeth, claws, and snake eyes.

“Beatrice? Wai-wait, I-”

Julias’s hand was suddenly free, and he had to raise it to his eyes to cover himself from the sudden explosion of Kindred flesh. Beatrice’s arms swung to both sides, and the Daeva split apart at the center, down the middle and in both directions. For just a split second, he saw a surprised look on Rebecca’s face, before his hand was covering his eyes, and the Daeva’s blood and body went everywhere. Within seconds, her flesh withered and decomposed, until moments later it was nothing but bones and dust.

When Julias lowered his gaze, it was just soon enough to see Beatrice showered in red, her arms out to either side of her, and large chunks of Rebecca still within her claws. With a slow, almost dramatic flare, the Nosferatu stepped up from her knee, and stood over Julias. He was still just laying there, jaw dropped, and blinking up at the woman.

Holy shit.

“Fuck that felt good. I really hated that bitch.” She chuckled, stepped forward, and reached for his hand. “Need a haaaand ... oh god, I didn’t even realize.” She managed a glance at his missing hand, then back to him, before she burst into laughter.

“ ... thanks.” He took her hand, and pulled on it hard in a weak attempt to pull her down to him. But she was Nosferatu, and instead pulled him up to his feet like he weighed nothing.

“Damn you really owe me one for this.” She was smiling, big crocodile teeth on either side of her mouth, with her sweet, perfect lips between them. He really wanted to kiss right then. Not now, Julias!

“I do. Definitely. But I need to get in that building. Jack, Viktor and Tony are in there.”

~~Jack~~

If there was one way Jack was going to get himself killed, it’d be making a stupid decision.

There were dead rats absolutely everywhere. Someone had ripped them up like a tornado of meat and bits of blood, stomped into mulch underneath boots. It was a carpet of whiskers and rat tails midst tiny guts and tufts of fur.

“My oh my. The great and proud Viktor Honors himself. I’d have thought you would have sent your right hands,” the black said.

He froze; he knew that voice. That was Tony.

Rows and rows of machines lined the floor of the large warehouse, abandoned and forgotten. Spools of different fabrics were being rolled into machines of turning wheels that were then threading the threads into other machines. All were silent, except for the hidden man’s voice bouncing along the walls for a dull echo.

It was the textile mill.

Viktor sneered. “It wasn’t you, serpent, raiding on Xnomina property then?” The elder Kindred walked forward into the black, unhindered with any sort of hesitation or fear.

Why weren’t they leaving? Tony was a Daeva, and that meant fast, and strong. If Jack turned around to open the door, it meant being exposed. Still, there were two of them, he could open the door while Viktor covered him. Instead, the ancient Ventrue walked between the old machines, sword and gun in each hand, black hair pouring down his back.

It probably never even dawned on his grandsire to retreat, or that retreat was even an option.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect one of the triumvirate, especially the Ventrue himself. What good are you without an army to bark orders to?”

Jack tried to follow the voice, but Tony’s sly tone was a soft echo and nothing more.

“You try my patience, Tony. Begone.”

“Guess I’ll just take the pack-”

“You don’t have the information drop, plague-ridden vermin. Otherwise you would have left already.” Viktor took a swipe at the air with his sword.

Jack smiled. Damn his grandsire was such a badass.

“Tch.” From down the pathway of cold floor and dusty machines, Tony stepped out into the open. He was wearing black jeans and a jacket, so casual Jack almost found it insulting.

But the grin on his face was enough to make the tiny Ventrue’s withered stomach turn on itself, and his inner-beast recoil in fear.

“Begone.”

“Nah,” the Daeva said with a shrug. “The fuck do I have to fear from a god damn Ventrue?”

The two elder Kindred stood there, looking at each other, neither moving, neither making the first move. At first, Jack noticed the hilarious similarity of it and shogun samurai duels; two people staring at each other, as if their facial expressions alone were a battle. But as time went on, his body slowly froze under the power if it. These were not juveniles throwing around testosterone, but gods, staring down hundreds of years of wisdom and murder.

Jack stepped back an inch.

“Ah, hey, it’s they kid. Hey twerp.” Tony stepped forward toward them.

It was enough to make Jack step back again, even with a hundred feet between them. Viktor didn’t move though, and with a leisurely gesture, angled his sword down between Jack and Tony.

“You’ve met my grandchilde then? As I understand it, he’s accomplished something you could do not.”

Jack went completely still. What? What had he accomplished? The only link between him and Tony was ... Antoinette.

“ ... be careful Viktor.” Tony tightened his hands into fists. On the surface, it was nothing but posturing, but Jack could feel the anger and power flowing out of the Daeva like lava.

Viktor glanced over his shoulder at Jack, gave him a knowing smirk, and looked back to Tony. “He managed to woo the Prince, but a month old and barely a fledgling.” He took a step toward the Daeva. “Does it sting, vermin? The great and mighty Tony, forgotten by his sire, only to be replaced by a freshly embraced?”

Oh. He was bait. That’s why Viktor wanted him, not for his ‘insight,’ but for bait. Well, he had to admit, it was a smart move. A dangerous move, for him. His unlife was on the line now and Viktor was specifically goading the monstrous Daeva into attacking. If he did, Jack would be the first he’d try and kill.