Chapter 22

~~Julias~~

“Natasha is here! Lucas has her held hostage! Everything is—”

More gunfire, and the line went dead after a single, static snap.

“Shit shit shit shit shit.”

He wasted no time. He jumped out of bed and got dressed while he walked toward his office. Office was a strong word, it was just a room with a computer, and all the weapons he preferred up on the walls. A pistol, a small shotgun, another pistol, a large knife, a small sword, all slipped into various places on his body once he started putting on his belt, vest holster, and suit jacket over top the small armory.

Hold on Jack, I’m coming.

He started dialing his phone when Beatrice grabbed it from him.

“The fuck are you doing?” she said.

He almost echoed the words. “Summoning the Invictus! I’m going to save my childe.”

Beatrice kept the phone at bay when he reached for it. “Fuck man, you’re a fucking Invictus triumvirate! If you get between the Ordo Dracul and the Lancea et Sanctum, shit is going to get ugly.”

“Ugly? You have got t—”

“Lucas is there for the Prince, and no one’s going to agree to fight a war because of the death of one young neonate.”

The urge to smash her face into the wall hit him with enough force to surprise him. He had to blink a few times and shake his head to dislodge the compulsion.

“Natasha is there too! She might die as well. And since when did you care about any of this?”

Her eyes dropped, and she handed him back the phone. “I don’t want a war. I wasn’t here for the last one but I bet a lot of Kindred will die if there’s another. Just let those two fight each other and the strongest one will come out on top.”

Was she serious? He glared hard enough to crucify her, and she looked away like a guilty child. He didn’t buy it. Beatrice enjoyed violence; maybe not to the level of a war, but she was always one of the first ready to throw a fist.

“And if Jack gets killed in the process?”

She winced. “Hey I don’t want the kid to die either.”

His grinded his teeth down inside his mouth until he could practically feel them falling apart. “I have to do something. How the fuck are they even managing an attack? The sheriff is there.”

Beatrice tilted her head to the side and started to pick her teeth with her claws. She leaned against the wall, wearing absolutely nothing, and let her eyes roll upward in thought.

“I...”

“I what?” he said. Bitterness was in his voice, and he didn’t care. She was the one stopping him from interfering, and that meant his childe could die. Worse, she was right. If Jack did die, it was doubtful the Invictus would go to war with the judges over it, even if he was a childe of one of the triumvirate.

“I ... guess it might be because of Natasha.”

“What, Natasha? Why? Why is she even at the tower?”

She was hesitating, he could see it all over her. Why didn’t she want to tell him. Even with him staring at her, she started to walk back into the master bedroom. He followed after her, and glared at her while she got dressed. She was stalling.

“Look, this is exactly what I was worried about. Shit is—”

“The fuck. About. Natasha?”

Enough games. He tried to keep calm, to be polite, kind, to try and understand it from her perspective, but his patience was tightened to nothing but a wire strand. Jack was in danger. Right the fuck now, Jack was in danger and everything was between him and doing something about it.

“Maria and Lucas are old flames, yeah? And Natasha works for Maria.”

“Mhmm.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame. There was that little kernel of Ventrue inside him that wanted to reach out and force her to tell him everything, force her to obey. He wouldn’t do that, he wasn’t Viktor, and he loved her. But holy fuck every bit of him was being torn in half.

“Natasha is the sheriff’s childe.”

Glass shattered in his mind. “Natasha...”

Tiny, skinny, little Natasha. She was fast, and she had great Mehket eyes. Secrets and shadows were her world, and Julias knew she was always a step above the typical Mehket her age in that regard. But in a fight, she was only as useful as the gun she was carrying. Her stuttering, her shy demeanor, her inability to even look someone in the eye, it always threw him.

But then, there was the sheriff, the most quiet man Julias had ever known. It fit so well, it made him nauseous that he never pieced it together. It hurt that she never told him; they’d worked together for decades. Questions and questions and more damn questions ate at him.

And then, how did Beatrice know? He’d have to ask her, later, when everything stopped burning to cinders around him.

“You ... you think...”

“Yeah, I do,” Beatrice said. “I haven’t seen Daniel much, but he ... he had that somber look in his eyes, you know? Like you used to all the time.” She walked up to him, wearing the dress she was last night, and poked him in the forehead with a claw. “In that sad way that just begs for someone to come along and fill it. Someone who could have their heart strings tugged at easily, if you knew where to tug.”

That stung, but she was right, and he knew it. Just like that, he was the one getting a lecture.

Then she put her hand on his. “So I’m thinking Lucas is holding her hostage and forcing the sheriff to stand down while he deals with the Prince.”

“I can’t believe he has her! He can’t just take an Invictus hostage, not unless he wanted to risk war with the Invict—”

Maria. That bitch. The fucking stupid, vain, twisted bitch. She gave Lucas permission to use Natasha, she must have!

He turned around and headed down the main stairs.

“Julias? Hey! Where you going?”

“I am going to the Elysium tower. Alone.”

“Without the Invictus? Are you fucking insane?” The Nosferatu jumped straight over him and landed between him and the door of his mansion. “You could get killed!”

He tried to push past her, but the damn Nosferatu put her claws against his chest and pushed him back. He was bigger than her, tougher, but she was much stronger, and pushing him back was easy for the little monster.

“Get out of my way Beatrice.”

“No.” She backed herself against the huge door, and put herself dead center between its two sides. “Lucas is there to kill the Prince. You heard the gunfire! Jack could already be dead!”

“Get out of my way.” He approached her and tried to push her aside, with strength this time, but the Nosferatu twisted his grip away and pushed him back like he weighed nothing.

“Come on Julias! You’re going to get killed, and I don’t want that!”

He tried again, grabbed her wrist, put one hand against her shoulder, and put his weight into a throw. She struggled against him, lighter than him, but she got a foot behind his and pushed him backward hard enough that he flew backward ten feet. The monster wasn’t going anywhere.

“Damn it Beatrice, I have to help him!” He yelled at her from the floor, but didn’t bother to get up. She’d just knock him down again.

“What about me? Huh? What the fuck about me? You’re going to get killed and I’ll be alone...”

“I—”

She stomped forward and slammed a clawed foot into the floor in front of him. “No! No you don’t just throw yourself into the middle of shit like you have a death wish.” Then she kicked him in the boot, hard, hard enough to send him back a bit and send a spike of pain up his limb. “I thought ... you wouldn’t ... cause I’m...”

He was down on his ass, glaring up at the Nosferatu trying to stop him from dying. If a Ventrue’s weakness was hubris, a Nosferatu’s was loneliness. The look in her eyes was heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and every part of him wanted to get up and hold her. God he wanted to hold her, stroke her hair and promise her he wouldn’t leave her like it was some sixties movie.

But he had to save Jack.

“ ... Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Yes, ok. I won’t Rambo in there.” He held out a hand to her.

“Fucking good.” She reached down and plucked him up with enough force to almost yank the shoulder from his socket.

He looked at her, looked down, looked at her some more, and he could feel his face range from sorrow to fury, back and forth as he struggled with it. He could feel Jack pulling at him, like some invisible thread that caught his throat and was pulling him toward his childe. It was as mindless and powerful as a mother’s idiot urge to sacrifice herself to save her child even when it was hopeless.

But Beatrice was glaring up at him, and when she put her claws on his shoulders, her snake eyes penetrated him like knives. Her expressions mirrored his own, half angry and half terrified.

“I have to do something though, anything,” he said.

“Then just ask.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Just. Ask.” She stepped in closer, lowered her hands to his sides, and hugged him. Actually hugged him, complete with her face pressed against his chest and her body close to his. “I can help, you stupid fucking cunt fuckhead.”

“I di—”

“Yeah I know what you didn’t want to do, fuckwad. But fuck you and your white knight bullshit.” Even as she tore into him, she kept her face buried into the jacket of his suit, like a little girl holding her teddy.

He really was fucking stupid. It was only a year ago when he was alone, with no childe and no love, and that’s how it had been for decades. Now this woman was hugging him, holding him, squeezing him like he’d vanish in a puff of smoke if she loosened her grip. He didn’t know what to do, all he could think to do was protect the new things he’d been given.

“Hey,” he said, and he raised his arms to hug the creature buried against his chest. “You’re right.”

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “Yeah. It’s just been me for a while since I’ve had anyone. And now...”

She pulled her head away, looked up at him, and clicked her teeth side to side. “And now you’ve got a girl and a kid. Yeah, I get it. But do I look like a fucking trophy wife?”

“No, no you most definitely do not.”

“Hey! Calling me ugly?” He should have seen that coming. One moment she was frowning at him, the next she was punching him, but then she smiled. “So, you going to ask?”

“ ... will you help me save Jack?”

“Of course I’ll help you save your childe you stupid god damn fuckhead.”

~~Jack~~

“Julias! Get help, get fucking help! Here! Now!”

“What’s going on?”

“Natasha is here! Lucas has her held hostage! Everything is-”

The phone exploded in his hand.

He didn’t see who shot the smartphone, but whoever they were they were was one fucking crack shot. And worse still, the other Kindred started unloading bullets upon bullets upon bullets toward Antoinette at the same time. He wanted to jump in there and do something, but dozens of robed Kindred swarmed across the lobby toward them both.

The mob started to march forward, and with them came more and more bullets. The marble pillars of the lobby chipped and tore apart, and the walls around Jack showered him in chipped rock and metal. The gunfire was no longer just pointed at Antoinette, but him as well. He’d survived getting his body nearly cut in half once, but it was a very close call. He wouldn’t be able to survive what Antoinette could, what Viktor could. So he did the only thing he could do as more robed Kindred approached him: he backed away, down the stairway and out of the lobby.

Below him was the underground network of the Prince’s facilities. Black marble walls, a stairway, multiple floors, and deep rooms filled with all sorts of luxuries. But there was no escape from down there. Secure to a fault. Still, it was either that, or deal with the two Kindred who were now at the top of the stairs. They wouldn’t kill him, like they wouldn’t kill Natasha, unless they had to.

But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t put twenty bullets into his feet just to make sure he didn’t interfere. And he really wanted to interfere. He could hear the gunfire, he could hear the odd sound of bullets colliding with ash with his vampire ears, and he could hear the screams of terror of Kindred. He’d only seen Antoinette kill two of them before he was forced back into the stairway, but the sheer speed and brutal strength of it was sickening.

This time, he got a clear view of the brutality when his lover attacked the two approaching Kindred from behind. It was almost comical when both her hands appeared through the Kindred’s robes, out through the chest straight through the center. Her hands were flat; she used the tips of her fingers like some sort of blade so she could jam her hands through their bodies.

That wasn’t enough to kill a Kindred though, and Jack had to look away when the Prince swung her hands outward to either side of her with such force, the two Kindred ripped in half.

It only took a couple seconds, but both Kindred had just enough time to start screaming before their bodies fell to ash. One of them didn’t fully turn to ash, but instead turned into a husk of withered skin and bone. A young Kindred, like him.

“Jack!” Antoinette said. “You must—”

A bullet tore through her face. One moment, Antoinette was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at him, and the next she was missing a large chunk of her cheek and some teeth. The flesh ripped open, and her teeth provided just enough impact resistance that the bullet continued forward and ripped one half-side of her lips to bits. The pieces of her flesh splattered outward, and turned into tiny flashes of cinder, then ash in a single second.

Before Jack could even say anything, she was diving forward and out of the line of fire. She scooped him up with enough force that he could feel a rib break, but he was too shocked to even react. All he could do was blink as she carted them down the stairway and into the first level of her underground facilities.

“If only I had listened to Tony,” she said. Her voice was quiet hisses between clenched, ruined teeth. “His network had many escape routes. Mine has none; I did not think them worth the risk of invasion.” She got around a corner and put her back to it, Jack still held to her chest. “I never thought someone would risk a kamikaze assault through my front door.”

He tried to speak, but instead he just gazed at the sight of her shredded face. It was healing before his very eyes, pale flesh reaching out with the thick, dark blood of Kindred and weaving strands of skin and bone. He could actually see her teeth reforming – not regrowing, reforming – in her mouth.

She set him down, and pushed him further behind the wall with her hand to his chest. “Stay down.”

“I—” As if they were waiting for him to speak, gunfire started tearing into the wall corner they were hiding behind. Bits of black marble chipped away in small explosions of impact again and again and again until the air was filled with dust and rock.

He looked around, panic creeping up his legs. Hiding wasn’t an option, not really. They’d find them eventually and there was no escape route. They could hide until the police showed up? That would only lead to a mountain of dead police. They could fight? But then he was useless, and whatever that lightning did to Antoinette had gutted her ability to enchant.

Fuck he really wished he had a gun.

“Prince,” a voice called out. “Come out and die with honor.”

Antoinette scoffed. “There is no honor in death, worthless boy. Daniel should never have spared a zealot such as you.”

~~Damien~~

He gritted his teeth until his jaw cracked. “Spare me? I was just one of many fledglings, innocent and weak. I had assumed I simply escaped your notice as you slaughtered the priests we looked up to!”

He crept further along the wall, sword in his right hand, pistol in his left. The ridiculous weapon combination worked well for a Kindred who could handle the recoil with one hand, and he had spent fifty years mastering it. All for this moment.

The Prince stuck her head out from around the wall, just enough to take a peak, and he wasted no time taking a shot. He was fast, faster than any Mehket his age should be; fifty years of constant vigilance saw to that.

But she still managed to dodge it. She was an ancient creature, filled with oceans of vitae, and with far more experience than he and the entire mob he brought with him combined.

It was a good thing the mob were going to be his shield, to give him the moment to strike when it presented itself. With a low sigh, he sneaked a peak at his fellow Kindred. Some were still with Lucas in the building’s lobby, but many had joined him down the stairway into the snake’s tunnels. Thirty robed vampires.

Thirty meat shields.

He went silent, absolutely silent, like only a Mehket or Nosferatu could, and approached the corner of the wall. The others though, he motioned for them to approach with no such subtlety, but out in the middle of the hallway the stair had opened up into. He could drink in the strange sights of the Ordo Dracul architecture later; the long, coiling dragons carved into the black marble with white streaks could wait.

Three of his mob jumped around the corner, all with pistols at the ready, but they did not fire.

Damien frowned and stuck his head around the corner. Nothing. Just a long, empty hallway that went on for some distance, with several doors along its sides.

He could keep going down the stairway, or turn around and go in the other direction of the hallway, but it was a fool’s hope that they would connect behind the hallway the Prince had fled down. He stepped into the only option left and walked down the hallway with slow, testing steps. His army did the same.

“I see where Tony learned to love tunnels,” he said.

“Tony learned much from me.” Her voice carried in the hallway, and despite his ears he could not pinpoint it. There were vents, no doubt for the ghouls the Prince pampered to breathe. Perhaps she was using those to send her voice? That meant the snake was hiding in one of the rooms. He grinned. The hell he would unleash upon her once he found her would be all the sweeter if she was trapped like a rat.

The first door, he had one of his Nosferatu kick open, but inside laid only ornamental things. Paintings, drawings, and old, occult objects he did not understand. He grunted, and moved on.

“Tony was a vile snake,” he said to the air.

“Agreed.” Again her voice echoed off the walls. It had to be coming from down the hallway, but beyond that he could not tell.

“Don’t act like you’re so above him. He was your childe, and like you said, he learned much from you.”

The robes around him nodded and hummed agreement. He could see the fear and worry in their eyes, but also that powerful righteousness of a child of the Lancea et Sanctum. He tried to take pride in that, but found only bile.

“Tony is dead, and I have only regret for his actions.”

“Bullshit! Do you regret when he killed priest Marken? Or Bishop Vance?”

Silence.

“That’s right, your anarchist childe killed Sanctified! But his acts pale in comparison to what you, your sheriff, and that fool Garry Tones did.”

More silence. His anger was starting to creep up into his fingers now, up into his skull until it blinded him. He was very much aware he was letting his fury force him to speak, instead of controlling his tongue, but he no longer cared.

“Speak, demon! You killed so many of us! Servants of God!”

The mob at his side hollered and grunted and cheered, but instead of joining them, Damien only managed a quiet groan. They hadn’t been there, none of the Kindred at his side were old enough to have been present for the purge, and their enthusiasm for this snake hunt saddened him. A lust for violence was in them just as much as any belief in their God, but they had no reason to be so enraptured in the hunt, not like him. They were just thugs following Lucas’s orders, with an ache to fill their cravings for brutality.

They were his shield for God?

Again the voice whispered through the hallway. “You act as if Lucas is innocent. Your sire is a monster.”

“Lies!” This time it was his fellows who called out to the dark hallway.

Damien didn’t say anything. Natasha, now Antoinette, they both said the same thing. All Damien could remember from so long ago was a caring family of priests and Bishops, the great Lucas and his mighty word.

Not now, later. He could rebuild the shattered pieces of that serene painting later.

Another door. The muscle at his side tore this one open as well, with Nosferatu strength and claws and mutations working through metal and marble. A host of his bodyguards stayed out in the hallway with guns at the ready, but those that followed him into the room came to a stunned stop just as quickly as Damien did.

The room was massive, circular, like a stadium built into the earth. The floor was covered in white lines in what could only be described as a complex weave of mathematical patterns. Circles upon circles upon circles drawn in joined spirals at perfect angles, with every trigonometric math pattern he recognized, and many he did not, connecting into a tapestry of language. The walls of the room were painted with the same white dragons that were found in much of the Prince’s inner domain, and the ceiling held a hanging chandelier of twinkling crystal dangling below blue flames.

“What ... is this?” one of the Kindred asked. The Nosferatu approached the blue-lit room, got to a knee, and put his claws against the floor within the circle.

Everyone jumped back when the floor rippled, like water.

“What insanity is—”

“A Wyrm’s Nest.” Damien put his hand onto the Kindred’s shoulder and pulled them back. “I am sure the serpent studies this, and attempts to circumvent God’s curse. Let us begone.”

“What’s a—”

“Do not ask.” He ushered the few Kindred who followed him back out into the hallway. What power the Prince harnessed there, he would let Lucas handle it. The Ordo Dracul held more secrets than any covenant, and their twisted, hidden ways were beyond him.

“You built your tower upon a Wyrm’s Nest, snake? How arrogant do you presume to be?” he said to the walls.

The voice mixed a whisper with a chuckle. “Tony did the same.”

They all stopped. “W-what?”

No answer. Tony’s nest was built on a Wyrm’s Nest?

“Bishop Damien, what does she mean?” A woman, Gangrel, came up to him and stared at him with scared eyes.

Damien shook his head. “Focus. She deceives, like the snake in the garden. Focus.” He pointed ahead, and they all started to march again.

Deep and deeper still the hall went into the earth, much as any of Tony’s tunnels did. Despite the loud march of his army’s boots, no words or actions from the Prince came. Eerie silence was all that awaited them. But after a time, the hallway came to a stop, and a single door remained at its end.

Damien motioned with his fingers, and again his mindless muscle tore the metal apart. Or rather, tried. The deformed Kindred wrap his claws around the handle of the rather flat and unceremonious door, but it did not budge.

Considering a Nosferatu or Daeva, even young ones, had the strength to throw a person like a baseball, this did indeed surprise Damien. “Zed, Karla, Casey, Mark.”

Two Daevas, another Nosferatu, and a Gangrel stepped up and joined their brother. Hands, claws, and animal ferocity join in. The Gangrel Zed, in particular, managed to morph his hands into monstrous claws that that were just as strong as the dark metal they were trying to tear apart. With five sets of Kindred muscle, devoted and faithful, prying at the door, it finally began to bend. Metal and marble screeched in pain, specs and sparks tore at its structure, and the dark hallway of black was opened up to a cast light from the room that waited them.

It was like watching a group of monsters peel open a particularly stubborn can of sardines.

But with time, the door opened. Damien held his sword at the ready with one hand, gun in the other, and watched with careful eyes. She was in there, in this room. He could feel her. He could smell her. The light that crept around the corners of the peeled and bent door beckoned him like a beacon. She was right in there.

And once the door was open, it was the others who rushed past him to secure the room. His shields, Lucas had said. His brainwashed, sad, pathetic, idiot shields. His new friends. More of them were going to die, in the very room they were rushing into. Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it. Focus.

Before them was a large room with all the amenities any kine could hope for. Again it was black marble, but the color of the bed, the furniture in the corners, the desks and dressers and the fancy sink, all of it had the tone of life. Now that he was in the room, he could smell it too, the smell of flesh and blood.

The Prince’s ghouls were in here. He couldn’t see them, but he could smell them, and he could almost hear the sound of heartbeats. This was their room.

“Her two ghouls are here. Find them. Kill one, and hold the other hostage,” Damien said. That would bring her out of hiding, and enrage her. A foe blinded by anger was an easy kill. He knew that all too well, and was doing all he could to keep his own rage from boiling over.

“You got it, Bish—”

A fist collided with Zed’s face so fast, the Kindred was left a headless corpse one moment, then a pile of ash and burning robe the next.

~~Antoinette~~

Jack and the girls were in the bathroom of the ghouls’ room. To think that all that stood between the death of those closest to her was just a flimsy bit of metal without even a lock, made her whole body vibrate with rage. She would not have this, could not have this.

The door to Ashley and Julee’s bedroom was strong, but it was not the vault door of her room. She could have tried to run past the mob and hid in her room when they had first attacked, but to do so would have doomed her ghouls and potentially her sheriff. This whole ordeal made it painfully obvious that she should have listened to her childe Tony, and used connected tunnels with more modern defenses, something that could be used to counter-attack. A giant vault door was useless for protecting those you cared about.

She was not in the bathroom. She was above the entrance to the bedroom, back to the wall and nails sunk into the marble, just beneath the high ceiling. The cost to repair all this damage was just icing on the cake for her hatred.

The sound of a group of Kindred peeling open the huge door was a screeching announcement of the inevitable.

They poured into the room, arrogant and bloated with defiance. Robes upon robes, guns of varying sizes, and every blood clan of the Kindred flowed into the bedroom of her ghouls like locusts. Once they were all inside, contained and within arm’s reach, she would slaughter them. Patience. She did everything in her power to suppress her presence the way Daniel taught her, but she was no Mehket or Nosferatu; they would find her above the doorway sooner or later. All they had to do was look up.

Then Damien walked in last, her target. The other robes were pressed too close together, too many knives and swords at the ready, for her to jump into the middle of the swarm without losing her head. Just step away from the crowd, little Mehket, and I will clean up the mistake Daniel made fifty years ago sparing your worthless second life.

“Her two ghouls are here. Find them. Kill one, and hold the other hostage.”

A flash of red drenched her eyes. Rage so thick it blinded her, coated everything blood red, and had her body tremble with anticipation. Kill them. She was going to kill every last one of them. She would not let them kill her precious ones, not again, not this time.

One of them was turning around. He was going to see her.

“You got it Bish—”

Her fist found this one’s face. One moment she was on the wall, and the next she was on the floor, on her feet and hands. She landed with enough force that her claws dug into the floor, and she skidded along it from the inertia. Her fingernails left trails of ruined marble where they scratched through the floor. She had already turned around when realization dawned on everyone’s faces.

To her, it was slow motion, a dance of ages. The Kindred she had killed was crumbling beside her, his head was rolling on the floor already, and in the moment he burst into the smallest spark of flames in second death, she pounced. Thirty robes entered the room, twenty-nine remained.

“Kill her!”

The bishop. Damien. His face seemed determined, yet morose, and split with bitter anger, but it was no matter. He was going to die along with the rest of them.

The nearest Kindred had a knife, long and shining; it even had a cross carved into its blade. There was just a flicker of awareness in this enemy Daeva’s mind that they were not going to survive, just a blink of sadness, but Antoinette did not care. What sympathy she may have had was buried in centuries of shell and concrete, well beyond the reach of this poor fool, even as her hand snapped out with a whip crack and her fingers sank into his skull. She did not bother to hold eye contact as she drove her other hand into their chest, and ripped their head off.