Chapter 69

~~Eric~~

Someone was coming.

He sat up in bed, and climbed over Jessy, but she sat up at the same time, and he rolled with the momentum. The floor greeted him, and he wished he’d landed on cheap apartment carpet, not beautiful, designer ceramic tile that had all the softness of Sheryl’s soul.

“The fuck?” she said.

“Someone’s coming. I can hear them. Feel them.” He tried to stand up, but the moment he was on his feet, everything felt heavy. Arms, legs, the head on his shoulders, it all increased in weight to the point he felt like a newborn unable to lift its own head.

Jessy was up a moment later, hands on his shoulders, stabilizing him. “You serious?”

“Someone ... familiar.”

“No hunter’s getting past the Kindred watching outside, Eric. The only people who could get in here without them knowing are other paranormals.”

He frowned, blinked away his dizziness, and grabbed some jeans from the closet. “I don’t know who it is, but I can feel them. Someone’s here, in my territory. I have to—”

“Your territory?”

“I ... shit, I didn’t even think about saying it like that, it just came out.” He marched out into the living room, wearing nothing but his boxers and jeans. Good enough to answer the door. Good enough to punch someone in the face if they were looking to try and convert him to their side.

Not good enough to stand. He got to the door, before his hand had to brace his weight, fingers to the wall, head falling forward.

“You look really hot in nothing but jeans,” the vampire said, coming up behind him. “If you were cuddling Kat too, it’d be like a fashion shoot, specifically for wooing lonely, crazy cat women.”

“Can we stop joking for a second?”

“Fine, but I don’t see—”

The stranger arrived at the door. There was a coldness to the smell that crept under the door frame, an alien, and almost overpowering aura. He didn’t know what the fuck an aura was, or how he knew he could feel one, but he was. This person at the door had an aura, and it was dark.

Jessy pulled him back by the shoulder, and put her eye to the peep hole. Mistake. He tried to reach out, to grab her shoulder and yank her away, but the world wouldn’t hold still under his feet. Before he could say anything, the door opened with a loud crack, the door frame shattering open around the lock.

But Jessy jumped back in time. As she slid by, socks gliding on the floor, she grabbed him by the wrist, spun, and threw him into the couch fifteen feet away. Nausea hit him, but he managed to keep his food down as his back collided with the couch back. He tried to keep his eyes on Jessy, but she was twisting, moving, sliding—no, she was standing still now. It was the damn world moving around, refusing to hold still again.

“Who the fuck are you?” she said.

Someone stepped into the room. Some guy wearing a nondescript gray hoodie, blue jeans, and black sneakers. He was tall, broad shouldered, and brought his hands up like a boxer as he put the weight of his body onto the balls of his feet.

No answer.

He was familiar, whoever he was. Fucker smelled familiar, felt familiar, and Eric was sure he’d seen the man before. Where? Who the fuck was this guy?

“Jessy, he’s dangerous!”

The woman snorted a growl, and came in closer. “Answer me before I—”

“I didn’t come here for you. I came for the Uratha.” The stranger’s voice was almost monotone, and for a moment, Eric almost expected him to say ‘I vant to suck your blood’ or some other stereotype. Romanian? It was subtle, but there. Except, whoever this fucker was, he was no vampire; he didn’t smell like they did, hints of ash and staleness. Instead, he smelled more of that alien smell from before, something his nose didn’t recognize.

The man stepped in, and swung his hand upward. Whoever he was, he had balls, but he didn’t smell like a vampire or werewolf. What was he, then? The fist collided with Jessy’s blocking arms, and sent her flying, the impact of knuckles on forearms hard enough the sound was almost comical, like a scene from a movie. A growl filled the room as Jessy stumbled back upon landing, before dropping to a knee and onto her hands, like she was getting ready to sprint.

“Jessy, I—”

“Shut up and stay put, Eric.”

Yeah, that made sense. He wanted to get up, to fight, but the very thought of standing up was enough to have him reaching for the couch to brace himself. He was no use in a fight right now.

Maybe if he changed? Could he change? He knew he could, felt the ability in his guts as much as he knew how to flex a muscle. But trying to change right now was like trying to fly, and until whatever was happening to him settled, he wasn’t doing anything.

Jessy said the place was being watched by Kindred, but she wasn’t calling for them. She had faith they’d come in on their own, then. But then, this fucker wasn’t supposed to be able to sneak in past them. They might not have been coming; and not like they could see in, since Eric had blackout curtains hung up everywhere. Really regretted that now.

He half expected the man in the hoodie to tell Jessy to leave. Another part half expected him to pull out a pistol and start shooting. He did not expect the man to run up to Jessy, and take another swing.

Jessy came in to meet him, and swung her arm down. Eric stared on, sure his eyes were playing tricks on him, as Jessy’s arm exploded in size, spikes and thorns erupting from her bicep and tricep, from her forearm, from her knuckles, and the length of her fingers extending as they thickened into claws. The counter inertia was enough for the rest of body to get launched a foot into the air, as the colossal hand slammed into the floor.

Oh god, his floor.

The intruder dodged to the side at the last moment, throwing himself with a panicked jump. He slid into the wall, near a cat tower. Shit, Kat! No, Kat wasn’t around, still in his bedroom, and smart enough to not come out with the noise.

His eyes locked onto Jessy, and he forced himself to sit up more, one arm gripping the couch back at he squinted. If the world could stop spinning for just one fucking second, he could get a better look at the vampire.

He gulped as Jessy’s other arm erupted in the same mess of death, covered in the same sort of spikes, and fingernails elongated into massive claws from monstrous hands. She launched forward, weight on the balls of her feet, back raised, as if she had a tail to counter balance. She didn’t. Instead of an animal, she just looked like a hulking monster, several spikes erupting from her back, her spine, and from her elbows. Others erupted outward from the top of her head, and others erupted from her feet, talons that shredded her socks.

The man sidestepped at the last moment again, but Jessy’s speed was immense. Her claws snagged on his hoodie, and cut through the pockets.

“I don’t know you, who you are, or how you got in here,” she said, stalking back and forth, now that her prey was out of reach. “But I’m going to rip you to fucking shreds.”

The man stood, looked at her, and frowned. His features were largely hidden in the hoodie, its hood pulled forward, and burying the man’s face in more shadow than it should have. How he managed to punch Jessy so hard that she flew clear across the room, Eric had no idea, but the man grimaced as he looked the vampire up and down, his lips only barely visible. No banter, despite Jessy fishing for it.

Just as Jessy was about to pounce, the man ran in, sneakers gripping the floor as he vaulted up, drew his fist back, and slammed it down toward her. As he did, a flash of shadow blanketed the room, black, enormous curtains that jutted outward from behind the man. The fist he drew back was enormous, black, leathery, and there were two of them for the one hand.

Wait.

“Jes—”

She leapt aside, talons tearing up the ceramic tile as her weight caught against it, skidding like she was ice skating. Her hand’s claws sank into the floor as well, helping bring her sliding body to a halt.

“I saw it, Eric. I said shut up!”

He gulped. Her voice had changed, some inhuman growl overtones mixing with the woman’s usual tone. It was like a demon was bursting out of her.

And a demon was trying to kill her. The intruder stood up from where he landed, and the tile around his punch splintered outward, a small crater around his fist. Any fighter understood that you could only put as much weight into a punch as you had weight attached to it; a light guy with a hard punch would send himself away from whatever he punched, if the thing was heavier than him. But seeing a guy jump, and then land as if he weighed a couple thousand pounds, was massive dissonance to Eric’s trained mind. This made no sense.

Jessy dashed for the man, and threw her weight at him, hands out to both sides with claws elongated. If the intruder dodged to the sides, he’d risk getting clawed. If he stayed where he was, Jessy’s weight would hit him, and then she’d close her claws around him.

The intruder turned his side to Jessy, and brought one of his wings down over his body, like a wall. Wings?

Eric squinted again, stared, breathed deep, and did everything he could to get the world to hold still for a second, so he could see what the ever living fuck the guy in the hoodie was doing. Something was coming out of him. Not like Jessy’s spikes and claws, which had erupted from her skin like bone growths, but something that faded from existence the moment it had served its purpose. Something black.

Jessy’s body collided with the black wall, and before she could close in her claws around him, he snapped the black curtain away from him. It was a wing, it had to be a wing, something that connected to the man’s back, and had bent around him like a shield. Wings, four of them.

The thing from his dream.

He sprinted after Jessy, sneakers making tiny squeaks against the fancy floor as he threw his weight into her. The Gangrel hadn’t gotten up from her rolling, and only managed to get to a knee as he ran into her. He slammed forward his palm, the one motion sending two alien palms to reach out, one grabbing her face, the other grabbing her wrist. With a growl, a familiar, shrieking growl, the man in the hoodie slammed the vampire’s skull into the wall separating the living room from bathroom.

The drywall gave way, bits of paint and white mist splashing outward like water, before it cracked inward and let Jessy’s head to pass through it. It was like a fucking cartoon, half her torso going into the wall too, and the impact causing her legs to straighten out in the air behind her, before slumping against the wall and floor.

The man turned toward Eric, and marched his way.

Eric stared at him, and tried to force his body to respond; so far the only thing that was responding appropriately was the increased heart rate and breathing. The world wasn’t going to hold still long enough for him to stand up, and every motion felt like trying to find where gravity was again. He was borderline helpless.

Borderline. Growling at the intruder, Eric dug his fingers into the couch cushions, and stood up. He expected his feet to land on the ground, but they didn’t, tripping over themselves sideways, and sending him to the floor. It was like being very, very drunk, and as Eric reached over to the couch now beside him and tried to pick himself up, he groaned against the familiar struggle. Drunk as hell without any of the buzz, delightful.

A loud crack turned his head toward the door.

“What the fuck is this?”

Eric squinted at the apartment entrance, trying to make out who it was. But sound and smell filled him in a lot quicker than his eyes.

“Clara! This guy is ... trying to ... take me to Jeremiah,” he said. She must have heard the commotion; everyone in the building must have heard the commotion. The Kindred had to know what was going on, or at least that something was happening.

The man let out a single snort, before he swung his foot for Eric’s chest. To try and dodge it was a reflex, but a pointless one, and Eric let out a loud groan as the man’s sneaker crashed into his stomach hard enough to send him back a few feet. If he had anything in his stomach, he’d be vomiting as he spun over once before landing on his side.

“He smells weird,” Clara said, approaching, corner of her lip raised in a snarl.

“He’s ... a Begotten,” he said between coughs and groans.

“The fuck is a Begotten doing working for Jeremiah?” Clara looked to the other side of the room where Jessy was pushing herself out of the hole in the wall, and then back to Eric’s direction. Groaning, Eric put his palms to the floor, and twisted to look back toward her, and the fucker who kicked him.

Mister Hoodie hesitated, before he brought his fists up to his chest, and cracked his knuckles. As he took a step toward Clara, a shimmer of black filled the air around him, burying them in shadow. Flickering movements, each massive, each swallowing the air around them in its shadow. A set of dragon feet, then gone. Four arms poised to rip and tear, then gone. A long tail slithering behind it like a swimming crocodile, then gone. Four wings, with a pair of horns rising up between them from the demon’s skull. Gone again, as Mister Hoodie came in closer to Clara.

“The fuck were you hoping to accomplish?” Clara said. “Not like you’re getting out of here with Eric, or alive.”

The man snorted again, and a heavy blast of air shot out around him, as if a great beast had expressed discontent. He raised his hands, grabbed reality between his two and four sets of fingers and claws, and ripped out the curtains of the universe.

As blackness set upon them, he could hear Jessy, scrambling with her phone. “Damien! Get in here now, we have an intruder! I can barely see anything, shit is going black, and the ... shit.” She put away the phone, and ran for the monster and two werewolves, before everything was swallowed in the growing shadow.

The blackness came, and fled, like a morning fog. Slow, heavy, cold, and unwanted. Eric groaned again as he reached over for the couch, and froze as his hand found something hard instead. Something hard, cold, and rough to the touch. Something that gave him a splinter as he slid his fingers along it.

“The ... fuck...”

“Eric?” the darkness called out. Jessy’s voice.

“Yeah, I’m here. Clara?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Where’s here?”

“Dunno,” Jessy said. “But ... but if what Fiona told me is right, this fucking Begotten just pulled us into a nightmare.”

The following silence might as well have been the Funeral March.

“Shit,” Clara said.

Eric sighed, and stood up. Stood, standing, up! Fucking yes, finally. He couldn’t see much, only some barren walls in the dark and the two nearby women, but he could tell the world wasn’t spinning anymore.

“I ... am apparently feeling better,” he said.

“Might be because we’re in a nightmare?” Jessy came up to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. He expected to feel claws, but they were gone. She changed quickly. “If that fucker got into your dream, and did something to you there, maybe it’s broken because we’re here?”

Clara snorted, and came up to them as well. Until their eyes adjusted to the darkness, better to stay near each other; the fucker could still be around, too. “So you two might be perfectly fine with this, but this is my first time inside a nightmare. You sure we’re in a nightmare?”

Shrugging, Jessy brought up her phone, and used it as a flashlight. “My first time too, but we know what Begotten can do. If you have any other ideas, hit me, because I’m getting no reception.”

Eric smirked at the Gangrel. Panic was rising in his gut, and every sense he had told him he was in some alien location, but Jessy handled it in stride. He supposed her fifty plus years of being a vampire, and decades of being some sort of front liner for the Invictus, meant she’d earned her scars and stars. Maybe they were in good hands, if the woman’s volatile nature didn’t doom them.

The world decided he wasn’t ready for standing yet, and he reached out for Clara’s shoulder. “Ok ... feeling a lot better, but not back to full speed yet.”

The Uratha nodded, pat his arm, and looked around the room that surrounded them. It was a large room, with walls, and a similar layout to his apartment. But as he breathed deep, he smelled stone, and the ocean. He smelled wood, the forest, just a hint, but the stagnant air mostly held the scent of old stone, and the sort of water damage from decades of weathering storms. As Jessy’s light came by, he squatted down and ran his fingers along the floor. Dirty, and he could feel the stone, smooth and worn, against his skin. He was barefoot, after all, Jessy too, and the stone was colder than his bare feet appreciated.

“Feel like I’m standing in some sort of old, fancy cottage with stone floors,” he said. Back on his feet, he walked over to a wall, and touched it. “No, this is stone too. Stone walls and stone floors?” Looked like a wood ceiling though. Old, stained, and a bit warped, but yeah that was a wood ceiling, with planks showing many imperfections.

“Oh shit.” Jessy pulled on something, and the two wolves turned to look at the incoming light. The sound of wood shifting on stone was strange, grinding, not the sound you’d expect from a cottage. Eric and Clara came over, and watched the gentle light cut across the floor, flickering, swaying. Fire.

Jessy winced, put her phone away, and pointed at the wall beyond the door. A hallway, with torches high up on the stone wall, lit. No, not a torch, a brazier, fancy, with a gargoyle shape holding the flame in its hands, the beast perched upon a stone outcropping.

They both stepped out into the hallway, and gasped at the size that awaited them. Eric looked left and right, half expecting the fucker in the hoodie to pounce, half expecting the four-winged gargoyle to pounce. But they were alone, and the hallway greeted them with nothing but silence, and the fire the gargoyles dangled over them.

The ceiling of the hallway was high, much higher than the room, at least twenty feet, and the hallway was wide, twenty feet as well. Several doors like the one they’d opened awaited, all closed, and while one end of the hallway came to a stop, a wall of stone and nothing more, the other end of the hallway looked like it opened into a turn.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” Jessy said.

Fuck him, if the damn woman couldn’t make him laugh.

~~Damien~~

He took the stairs.

Wrapped in his cloak of night, he tapped into the speed of a Mekhet, and drove his shoes into the hard metal of the inner fire escape stairway. Kine were there, some fleeing the building, but not in a panic. As far as he could tell, they had thought the noises might have been explosions, or maybe a collapsing wall or structure pillar. But the noises were gone, nothing had happened, and no fire alarm had gone off. People began walking back up the stairs to their apartments.

Some of them paused, and glanced around, confused, as Damien sped past them, jumping along the railing and climbing it almost straight up. He was a blur to them, their eyes sliding off of him, and minds unable to parse the alien presence. Moving quick and silent among the masses was as much an art as it was a blood discipline, and Damien was confident in his mastery.

Eric’s floor was near the top of the tall building, and Damien frowned as the journey took seconds longer than he wanted it to. He’d said on the open line he was going in, and half expected Julias Mire to tell him to wait for back up. He didn’t, and gave him an ‘affirmative’ instead. Perhaps the man was beginning to trust him.

It’d be a nice change of pace, for people to trust him. The only people he felt truly did so, were Jack and Fiona.

He steeled his gaze, sprinted down the hall, and went for the open door, sword in his right hand, pistol in his left. But the room was empty.

“What in God’s name...” Sighing, he put his pistol away, and pressed in on his ear piece. “This is Damien. Eric’s suite shows signs of melee combat, extreme damage, but there’s no sign of him or Herrington.”

“What about Clara?” Julias said.

“Negative.”

Damien could almost hear Julias frown over the line. “Video feed saw her jump from her couch, and then run out of the apartment. I assume she ran to join Eric and Jessy.”

“She probably did. And Carter?”

“Not in the building tonight.”

“Roger that.” Damien squatted down over the crater on the floor, and frowned. The floor was damaged as if someone had dropped a very large iron ball onto it from on high; but no iron ball was to be found. The hole in the wall could be accomplished by smashing someone into it, and the claw marks along the floor were long and filled with cracks and shred marks; the work of a Gangrel’s protean transformations. The crater in the floor though, that would have required a great weight.

An Uratha could make a hole like that, if transformed into their war form, and if they drove the entirety of their weight into a single fist, after jumping to a great height. There had been two Uratha in the room, but no howling or roaring. That could have simply been the building’s good sound insulation though.

He raised his head, and offered Jack and Natasha a nod as they walked in.

“They really just vanished?” Jack said.

Sighing, he nodded again, and walked over to the hole in the wall. Clear through, studs smashed, with bits of fabric against the wood between the drywall.

“A bad fight,” he said.

“Think ... m-maybe ... a Kindred did this?” Natasha stood by the door, and looked back out. The police would not be coming, of course, and the residents would be informed there was no cause for concern.

“You know a Kindred that can make people vanish like this?” Jack shook his head, and squatted down by the dent in the floor, as Damien had done. “Cloak of night can do a lot of things, but the only Kindred I can think of that could use it, and incapacitate Jessy and Clara, and take them and Eric out of here all at once, would be—”

“Jacob or the sheriff.” Damien shook his head, and motioned to the claw marks. “Jessy would have called that in immediately, if it were Jacob. No, she called in something more vague after hesitating, and based on these marks, she thought she could fight the intruders.” Jessy wasn’t stupid enough to try and fight those ancient undead, and if it was either of them, she would have called it in.

“Could always be an ancient elder we don’t know about,” Jack said, rolling his eyes with his own absurdity.

“The chances of that are ... v-very ... very low.” The little Mekhet came in and joined them, taking pictures of the damage with her phone.

“Yea, but the other three options suck.” Wincing, Jack sat down on the couch, and looked around with wandering eyes. “Either the hunters have a way of bypassing our stakeouts, getting passed all the Mekhet’s auspex on top of that, or the Uratha or Begotten have taken Jessy and Eric. And Clara ran up here, so...”

Damien shook his head. “I doubt Clara helped the intruder. Your sire says she ran up here after the noises started, body language surprised. Though, that does not dissuade the possibility that an Uratha is responsible; I don’t know what abilities they have, but I assume some would be strange and powerful, considering their ability to journey to the Shadow Realm.”

“B-Begotten then?” Tash said. “It w-w ... would make sense, with what Jessy’s m-message said, about Eric’s dream. We could ask them.”

“We?” Damien said. “You came along to cover Jack. That—”

“That’s still a thing!” Frowning, the tiny girl came up to him, and jammed in the chest with one of her fingers. “Trying to get rid of ... m-me?”

“No.” But he’d prefer to not involve her in the dark games he and Jack were drawn into. And that was a definite possibility, if the conversation turned in directions Damien wouldn’t be able to predict. “Fine.” There was no reason to suspect the oncoming ‘threat’ Jack warned him about was linked to Eric’s kidnapping, but, it never hurt to be prepared. Mekhet motto, or Mekhet paranoia, either or.

Their ear pieces gave off a quick beep tone, announcing an incoming message. “Jessy’s phone is off the grid, no GPS, no signal.” Mire’s voice. “Think it was destroyed?”

Damien did a double check on the damage. “No sir, at least not here. It may have been, if it was taken elsewhere.”

“Tracker history shows it didn’t leave that spot,” the ear piece said. “So unless she was teleported somewhere deep underground or into a jamming zone ... I suppose that’s all very possible, if she vanished.”

What a scary technology, being able to not only locate a person anywhere in the world if they had their phone with them, but to also have recorded where they’d been. Would Kindred keep maps, showing the life path of each Kindred and where they moved at all times? The Invictus would, surely.

“What do we do now?” Jack said, finger to his ear piece. “She’s completely gone. The intruder, Clara, Eric, they’re all gone like they stepped into the twilight zone or something.”

The beep dialed in once again. “Unfortunately our options are limited. Is Natasha willing to help?”

Damien nodded. “She is.”

“Ask her to visit the Uratha, and see if they have any ideas.”

“Sure you don’t want me to do that?” Jack said.

“You need to visit Azamel. Jessy’s description of Eric’s nightmare intruder, and his sudden incapacitation, are too specific to ignore.”

Damien winced, and looked to his companion. The expression on the boy’s face was obvious. Shit.

Damien sighed. Jack sighed. The two of them crept into one of the old, abandoned subway tunnels, and through a locked door, into the depths of Dolareido.

Damien was not looking forward to this meeting; and yet, a smile kept sneaking onto his lips. A small thing, teasing him, sparking memories of Fiona, her giggling, her accent, her curves. A part of him told him he should be more concerned with immediate circumstances, about Jessy’s disappearance, and the two werewolves. There was a very real chance that the three of them were in the hands of the hunters, and Jessy could be killed as collateral damage to their real target, Eric.

Perhaps they should have asked the Circle of the Crone for help. Their blood magics were capable of extraordinary feats, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if divination or mystical viewing and tracking were among them.

His mind warped back to Fiona, and he slapped himself hard enough to pull a gasp through clenched teeth. Jack stopped, and raised a brow.

“Sorry,” Damien said. “Thinking about ... things.”

“Fiona?”

“ ... how did you know?”

“The only times I’ve ever slapped myself, and was thinking about things, was when it was about a girl.”

“Jessy and Clara are girls.”

“Ha, yeah, but you know that’s not the same thing.” Jack had a smile on, small but there. Perhaps he wasn’t worried, or had learned from Julias the value in not showing fear.

“ ... she is on my mind occasionally, yes.”

A strange look washed over the boy’s face. Relief, perhaps?

“She’s been flirting with you, so that’s understandable.”

“She has?” Damien looked at his companion, and raised a brow. “Isn’t she trying to seduce Eric?”

“She’s attracted to Eric, sure, but a lot of that seems to be about making you jealous.”

Madness. Damien shook his head, and started walking again. It was a mile to Azamel’s hideout, and they couldn’t dally.

“ ... are you sure?”

With a chuckle, Jack followed after him. “Julias — and Antoinette — have been teaching me a lot about social queues. Fiona’s young, fun, trying to discover herself, all that typical young adult stuff I’m still going through.”

“I spent those years hiding in sewer and subway tunnels, I’m afraid.”

“Which is why I’m telling you. I wouldn’t have said a thing, honestly, if you didn’t just say you were thinking about her. She likes you, but she’s all over the place, not sure what to do with herself, what she wants, or how to figure it out.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. “I could be wrong, but the signals aren’t subtle.”

“Then how come I haven’t seen them?”

“Because they’re not subtle by female standards. Flicking hair over the shoulder, frequent glances with smiles, sneaking peeks at you while drinking, turning to face your general direction. Women think these things are giant signs, big neon letters that say ‘I like you let’s chat’.” He shrugged, and took a moment to check his vest within his suit. Good to always check that your weapons were on hand. “But we’re guys, socially awkward guys at that. It’ll take a lot more than that for us to notice.”

He found this all hard to believe. It was a stereotype he was familiar with; he spent fifty years hiding in a city, not in a cottage in the woods. But he’d assumed it was exaggeration. Who’d be silly enough to play these games?

Fiona would be silly enough, and her silliness kept pulling smiles out of him, whether he wanted it to or not. She was his total opposite, bright and cheerful and forever giggling. But, how was he supposed to respond to flirting? He hadn’t a clue. His goal in unlife was to serve Lucas, and women were not a part of that plan. The plan was dead, along with his sire, but the wake of his inadequacies and ignorance remained.