Chapter 88

~~Julias~~

Everything had fallen apart in a matter of seconds. When it was just the six hunters, he and his childe could have handled the situation easily. Even Angela, for all her absurd might and endurance, was only human. Six humans? He could have handled this himself.

Having to work quickly, break through Angela’s defenses, deal with a magical barrier, and save Samantha, threw a wrench into what would have otherwise been simple. Unless the hunters managed to nail him with a shotgun or Molotov, he could shrug off the bullets easily enough. It wasn’t like they’d use a grenade or a high caliber sniper rifle inside a hospital. Hell, even the guy with the assault rifle wasn’t too bad to deal with; a bullet going through him instead of tearing him up was less damaging to a vampire.

But, he hadn’t predicted running into the Begotten, Sándor. A colossal mistake. He knew the nightmare horrors couldn’t use their full ability outside of the nightmare realm, so he’d been confident that, even if he came across the monster, he could handle him with Jack’s help. Another mistake. Whoever this man was, whatever cosmic entity of fear and terror had merged with him, it had given the beast incredible vigor. Julias was as likely to win a battle of strength against this brute, as he was against Maria or Michael.

Using Angela against the Begotten had been the best he could manage, but once the two of them were down and fighting each other, there’d been nothing to stop the remaining hunters, and the four new ones, from unleashing Hell upon him. Shit.

Julias froze, staring, glaring, as the wall of bullets smashed into him, tore into him, ripped his suit apart, hacked through skin and muscle, and cracked bone. Most of the hunters didn’t use armor piercing rounds; they wanted maximum torn flesh, and used hollow-point rounds instead. He growled as he felt the metal shred him, until he could do nothing but stand there, pinned to the wall by the momentum of dozens of bullets hitting him.

He knew bone had become exposed. Bone, muscle, some old organs, random parts of his body giving way under the sudden onslaught. His left arm screamed in agony, as did his left leg, as bullets ripped them open. He tried to look down, but couldn’t, as a bullet crashed against his skull, his Kindred bone and its hollow-point nature the only thing keeping it from sinking into his brain and knocking him unconscious.

Going into torpor wasn’t an option. He had to save Jack. A quick glance at the kid showed that, in the chaos, blood, bullets, and spraying bits of wall, Jack had managed to win his struggle against Angela, despite the dozen bullets he’d taken. His success was rewarded by a Begotten grabbing him from behind, ready to break him in half.

No. Julias would not allow that. Whatever it took, whatever happened, he would not let them capture, or kill, his childe.

He looked back to the six hunters shooting at him, and held up a hand. First, defense. He summoned the vitae in his core, summoned the Beast with it, and brought it to the surface. The monster within, dormant, contained, he let rise like a dragon disturbed from slumber. The growling monster rushed up to his skin, and it howled through the bullet holes in his body, through the clenched teeth of the ancilla Ventrue, and flooded his frame with Kindred blood. Literally. The running, living liquid washed over Julias’s body, and where skin, tendon, and muscle had been ripped apart by the hail of metal, his blood pulled double duty, protecting, and forcing it to move. He was a Kindred, and a Ventrue. He didn’t need muscles to move, only his will.

As the bullets crashed into the crimson liquid, they broke upon it like sand thrown against a wall. What bits of metal managed to pierce the flowing waves of blood coursing over him, did not reach the Kindred underneath. He was impervious to their weapons, while his vitae lasted. He had to be done with this quickly, before the inevitable.

The hunters had done a good job of avoiding his eyes before, but once they’d turned him into a target for their shooting gallery, they had no choice but to look at him. With all the muzzle flashes, and three hunters holding a flashlight directly at him, the darkness did not hide his gaze; they had no choice but to be able to see his eyes.

He grinned through the flowing waves of crimson, and reached out with his mind.

“Kill your comrades.”

To ask anyone to do something wholly against their nature was difficult. To ask a hunter to do so was extremely difficult. To do it to three of them at once, almost impossible. To do it, while they were shooting him, while he summoned up the blood barrier? Viktor would have been proud of him.

The three closer hunters immediately turned on their partners, and Hell broke loose. The other three were quick on the draw, and immediately grappled with their friends, grabbing their guns and taking them out of the equation. They’d had training for this sort of thing, then. But, three on three, meant that no more hunters were free to shoot at him. And Elen could do nothing but watch from her chair, glaring and angry, as the six hunters became a free-for-all mess of punches and kicks.

He looked beside him, and winced as the Begotten slammed Jack’s head into the wall. A splatter of Kindred blood soaked the surface, before burning away with tiny flames, as the boy fell down, rolling onto his back. Jack had managed to knock Angela around a little, hurt her, leaving her bruised and probably concussed, but the Begotten was mostly fine. Angela, only moments before, had stabbed him several times under Julias’s Dominate, cutting through the skin and muscle around the man’s shoulders, and for all Sándor’s power, it didn’t seem like extreme regeneration was one of them.

With a small grin on his lips that he just couldn’t seem to get rid of, Julias walked up behind the Begotten, and when the monster turned around, likely tipped off by the ceasing gunfire, Julias drove his fist into the man’s face. It wasn’t like a Ventrue couldn’t tap into strength and Kindred Vigor with extreme effect, it was just far harder for them than Nos or Daeva. And, letting his Beast come to the surface like a tidal wave, was hitting him with power he hadn’t felt in decades. With the extra vitae sunk into it, he summoned enough strength to punch a hole through a brick wall, and he put that force into Sándor’s face.

“Get the fuck off my childe.”

Earlier, a glance at Sándor’s eyes had made it obvious breaking his mind would be difficult, and take time. So he resorted to brute strength, like Triss would. He didn’t have the vitae to waste doing that, inefficient as hell for a Ventrue, but he had to put the Begotten out of commission, now. The coursing blood flowed over him, drained him to near starving, but got his body working, kept it working, and would protect him; it was now or never. Jack was staring at him, and considering the amount of bone and withered muscle Julias was showing, he no doubt looked like a fucking monstrosity. He’d yet to enter one of the nightmares to see what the nightmare monsters looked like, but he’d read the reports, and Julias probably didn’t look too far off right now.

The hunters he’d broken wouldn’t stay under his control for long. Sharp blows to the head, or a few minutes of freedom, would eventually release them from the very weak control he’d put them under. But a few minutes was enough time to beat this fucking asshole into oblivion.

He reached down, one of his arms showing the bones of his forearm, knuckles, and some fingers. It was enough to make Sándor open his eyes in what Julias could only guess was fear. Making a literal nightmare horror afraid of him? Yes, that stroked a Ventrue’s ego just fine. He rewarded the man by grabbing his shoulders, picking him up, and throwing him into the other wall, hard. Before the man could fall, the Ventrue shoulder checked him, driving his weight into the smaller man’s chest hard enough to earn a spray of blood from his mouth.

The only thing that kept this from being a horrible Masquerade violation, was that the hallway was unlit, and they were fighting at the end of it, so its length managed to blanket some of the insanity in darkness. A quick glance showed none of the nurses or anyone had left their staff rooms, but the fight had only been going on for a minute. Someone was bound to show up sooner or later, take a picture, or try and get involved. The list of reasons to deal with this in the next thirty seconds was growing.

As Sándor started to fall, back flat to the wall, Julias drove his knee upward, catching the man’s head as it drifted forward, and smashed the man’s mouth and nose. The crunch of broken cartilage and breaking teeth was satisfying. The thud of his skull hitting the wall from the hit, and the crack it left in the hard white surface, was even more satisfying. Blood flowed over Julias’s knee, and Sándor went limp, body falling forward until it hit the hospital floor with a wet crunch from his face.

Julias smirked as he walked over to Jack, reached down, winked at him, and picked up Angela. Break her neck this time, quickly now. A memory tickled him, one of Rebecca, smashing his head in with a hammer, and leaving him for dead in a burning building. She’d caught him off guard then, hadn’t given him the time to build up to something like this. And, at the time, his childe hadn’t been in danger. Jack was in danger now, and there was no way in hell Julias was going to—

He fell to a knee, and let go of the one-eyed woman before he’d even had a chance to squeeze. She stumbled back, landing on her ass beside Jack, and she froze as she stared up at him as well. The blood that coated him, protected him, started to fade, and he growled as he felt his insides run dry. Doing so much, so quickly, brought the world into a blurry haze, and ripped the strength out of him. The Beast in him, the creature he normally kept deep down in its cave, roared in frustration, as it ran hungry.

He looked beside him at the Begotten. Groaning and growling as well, Sándor pushed himself up onto his hands, and then struggled to get up, blood flowing out of his mouth and nose as one of his hands pressed to the wall. And get up, he did. Angela’s face bled in a similar mess, beaten in by Jack, and while she may have been mentally ready to get back up and fight him, her body disagreed with her. Her attempts to get up failed, and she vomited onto the floor, the concussion and blood loss mixing into a powerful concoction of misery for her. She was out of the fight, for a few minutes, at least. Sándor was another matter entirely.

Julias tried to stand up. His body didn’t listen. The Beast in him raged and shrieked, but for all its fury, Julias’s body was broken and empty. No more vitae to draw upon, no more blood, no more strength, no more anything. The flowing dark crimson that covered his bones and forced his body to work, despite missing a myriad of muscle and tendons, ceased. Only the withered ligaments kept his bony arm and leg from falling apart entirely

Jack was struggling to get back up. After a blow like that, anyone his age would have been in torpor, and out of the fight until a day’s sleep. Not Jack. The kid’s dented head was healing over right before Julias’s eyes, same as it would for him, and Viktor; not as fast, but far faster than a vampire his age should have been able to.

But then, that was Jack being Jack. He’d make it through this, somehow, even if Julias didn’t. The kid always did.

Julias tried to stand up again, and he bit back the desire to scream as pain flooded him. Exposed insides, bones, withered organs, and worse, drops of Kindred blood fell to the floor around him, lifeless, useless to him. Get up. Get the fuck up. He grit his teeth, and bit down another scream, as he forced himself up to his feet.

As blood flowed down Sándor’s face, he looked down at Angela and Jack, the two of them a mess of blood and wounds. Another, short-lived hint of sadness crossed his face, and he bit his lip, before he looked over to Julias. There it was again, something that crossed his eyes, something heavy, something Julias recognized from his own mirror. A moment later it was gone, and the monster walked toward him.

“Sand,” Angela said, gargling, coughing up more blood and puke, before she managed to get herself onto a palm and elbow. “Kill ... Mire ... Capture Jack.”

The monster nodded, and walked up to Julias. Apology was written into his eyes, but he said nothing. The short man grabbed Julias by the shirt, and drew back his other fist. The silhouette of the gargoyle monster filled the hallway, and the array of claws it sported on one of its hands aimed themselves at Julias’s face.

Julias managed to catch Jack’s panicked eyes, and he offered his childe a small smile. You’ll get out of this, kid. One way or another, you’ll get out of this. I’ll make sure of it.

Julias found the last bit of him, the final ounces of whatever strength he had left, scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever remained in his corpse body, the tiny shred that kept him out of torpor. It was enough, just barely, to twist his body, and let the monster’s momentum roll with him, as Julias grabbed his shoulder with a hand. Hard to bodyslam a man who wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he managed, grabbing the wrist of the punching arm with his other hand, and throwing the Begotten over him into the floor.

He dropped his weight straight down with his knee, down onto Sándor’s chest, and made sure to put some momentum into it, jumping a few inches so he could put all of his weight into the knee. Crunch. Sándor coughed up blood again, a lot of it, before rolling onto his side, clutching his chest as he went fetal.

Julias, unable to get back up after that, managed to turn and face Jack while on his knees, his back to the hallway corner where the hunters were fighting each other.

“Jack,” he said. “Get out of here.”

“What?” Good, the kid was capable of talking. If he could talk, he could think, and could act. The world was nothing but a blur to Julias at this point, and the aching hunger in his gut was loud enough to tell him he was empty, and drifting into torpor. That was fine.

“Get out of here. Run.”

“Fuck that! I’m not leaving you, or Mom.”

“If my guess is right, someone from the Invictus will be here soon, or the dragons. They’ll get you out of here.” The Beast within Julias roared at the top of its lungs, demanding he get up and fight. Sorry Mr. Beast, would if I could.

“I’m not—”

“Jack.” He sighed, and offered his childe a gentle smile. “You can’t save her if you’re dead.”

“I—”

“Jack.” Julias shook his head, before he glanced Angela’s way. The woman was drifting in and out of consciousness, struggling against her blood loss and her damaged head. “The hunters I’ve Dominated, might be another minute. We don’t have time to debate. They want you alive. Use that, and get out of here.” He could hear them struggling in the back, fists hitting flesh, and an old woman’s sharp barks of orders.

“We’re not doing this,” the kid said. “We’re not doing this last stand bullshit. You’re—” Angela’s groans drew his gaze as well, and Jack reached out for the gun beside him, likely with a desire to shoot her. But his skull was still a half-ruined mess, and his attempts to grab the pistol forced him to roll onto his side, screaming in pain.

Sándor groaned as well, and Julias looked over his shoulder to make sure the man was still down. He was; not that Julias could do anything if he wasn’t. Julias couldn’t move. His body was paralyzed. Every inch of him refused to move as he knelt there, arms limp at his sides. Torpor was moments away. He doubted its heavy embrace would find him before the hunters managed to either escape his Dominate, or knocked out the ones who had been brainwashed.

“Jack.” Julias tried to lift his arms again, purely out of habit. They weren’t budging. Using his body in a fist fight, driving it to such an extreme, had damaged it greatly. Pile on the hundreds of bullets, and his empty vitae reserves, it was like trying to move a mountain. He was done, no matter how much his Beast might roar and fight to say otherwise.

“Julias, please ... don’t...”

“Sorry Jack. I ... I pushed myself a bit hard, here.” He got cocky; Ventrue do that from time to time, and it was a harsh way to teach his childe this lesson. Julias found his head collapsing forward, the weight of it too much to bear. His back slumped, and he fought against gravity to stay kneeling. “Tell her, for me.”

“Tell ... tell Mom what?”

Julias managed something like a laugh, though it was more of a whispered chuckle as his lungs refused to cooperate. “Tell ... Triss ... everything...”

Jack got his head up, his weight on his side, but he managed to get a palm underneath him so he could force himself into a half sit, half lay. When he finally looked Julias’s way, his eyes were wide, and a mix of anger and terror was in them; anger because of the hunters, and terror, because his sire was going to die. Poor kid.

“Please Julias! Don’t ... do—”

Footsteps silenced his childe. Julias tried to turn his head around to look at them, but he couldn’t. Everything was going dark, and torpor crept up his spine, demanding he sleep. Only a mouthful of fresh human blood would stave off torpor now, and unless one of the hunters was feeling generous, they wouldn’t give it to him.

“K ... Kill him,” Angela said, coughing up another wad of blood, her bruising neck straining. “Kill Mire.”

Julias managed a smile. It’d be in the hunter’s favor to capture him, but Angela wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Good, this was better.

As his eyelids grew too heavy to keep from falling, he managed one more smile for Jack, before his eyes closed. As he heard the boots of a hunter come up behind him, he let his mind drift to Triss.

God, she was going to be mad, him being a reckless idiot like this. Hopefully Jennifer could comfort her. He pitied whoever the messenger was; it’d probably be Jack, too. Poor kid again.

Triss. Her smile, beautiful, and the way it sat between two sets of crocodile teeth always gave him a thrill. Her snake eyes, even more beautiful. Her touch, her embrace, the feel of her body, the way she laughed when she thought she was winning, and the way she got obstinate and juvenile when she didn’t. The way she was super playful when she was happy and comfortable, like a cat. The sound of her purrs. Th—

~~Jack~~

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Julias!”

The hunter sank a bullet into the back of his sire’s skull, and a mess of gore exploded outward, scattering and turning into sparks and embers, before becoming dust. The first bullet sent Julias onto his stomach, and the next two were done as the man became nothing more than a still corpse. Executed, like Jack had done to a hunter only moments before.

Jack stared on, mouth open, jaw hanging, as his sire faded. The man, half skeleton at that point, had held a smile, and gave Jack what could only be described as a loving look, before the telltale flames of a dead Kindred took him. His suit, his skin, his muscles, organs, bones, all of it, turned into ash as it vanished into an almost gentle puff of smoke and flame. In the darkness of the hallway, it was a soft light, something that lit the faces of everyone watching, enough for Jack to see them.

The hunters did not look happy. Some of them looked a bit sad, if he was reading them right. Did they not want this? Sándor was out of commission, the brutal, ridiculously strong monster beaten by a Ventrue. Angela lay on the floor not far from Jack, trying to sit up, trying to see what had happened, but managing only the dry heaves of extreme nausea and pain.

As the small mound of ash that was once Julias spread over the dark hallway floor, Jack looked passed it, to Elen and her hunters, and found something different on her. She looked happy. Satisfied.

All Jack felt, was fury. Blinding, white fury. It coursed up through him, made pain disappear, and sent vitae pouring through his limbs. Thick Kindred blood engulfed his wounds, filled them, rendered them moot, as his vampire body demanded he moved, as the Beast demanded he moved. He needed to be able to move to kill them all, and he was going to kill them all.

Julias had been smiling. His sire had spent his last moments trying to save Jack’s life, and died doing so. He’d spent his last moments smiling at him, in that typical ‘this is alright, don’t worry about it’ sort of way. His last god damn fucking moments, and he did his usual ‘you got this’ smile.

Jack’s insides wrenched, vitae mixing and coursing, while his muscles wanted him to vomit again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t happen. All he could feel was every muscle in his body flexing, the memory of his sire’s eyes, his smile, his ashes, hitting every nerve in his frame like fire.

Don’t be dead, please don’t be dead. God, please, please don’t ... don’t be...

The pile of ashes before him mocked him, a testament to yet another thing that was Jack’s fault. Another thing he couldn’t fix.

He squeezed his fists until his arms shook, and forced himself up, even as the world swayed before him. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them all.

“Stay down,” Elen said, her stupid old granny voice weak and pathetic.

He ignored her. Get up. Get the fuck up. Get up, kill them all. Ignore the pain, ignore the spinning world, ignore the wounds. Let it flow, let the blood flow, theirs and yours.

Stand up, he did. He demanded it, forced it, didn’t care if his body was willing to do it or not. Vitae surged through him, Kindred blood fueling his will. Stand up. Stand up, and kill them. Kill—

White. Complete, total, all consuming, all encompassing white.

He froze and looked around at the white that surrounded him. It was the same white that had flashed in his vision when he executed that hunter. Endless white, as if God had decided to hit the reset button on the universe, but forgotten to turn off the light. There was no feeling or weight to it; might as well have been walking on floating clouds with the color depth of white plastic.

Without the hunters around him, without the smell of blood, without the pain of his wounds, his fury diminished, and his mind started working again. Where were the hunters, the blood, pain, and wounds?

“Oh ... kay...” What the fuck. He reached down and pressed on the floor, but his brain registered no feeling to it. Looking down did show that he was naked though. Naked, and without the wounds that Angela had dealt to him tonight.

Angela. He squeezed his knuckles as he remembered how many times she’d shot him tonight alone. A dozen? And those bullets really fucked him up, tore him apart. A bullet that went straight through was barely a wound to a Kindred, but a hollow-point round that tore up flesh and got lodged in the body, was a lot deadlier. Sándor smashing his head into a wall hard enough to crack the bone, had scrambled his circuits so bad, he hadn’t been able to move. All those wounds had ceased to exist.

He sighed. Was he dead? He supposed it didn’t matter, since Beatrice was going to kill him anyway. He was tempted to let her. She was going to blame him for Julias’s death, in a moment of rage and grief, and she was going to cut into him. He’d let her. She’d say that he died trying to save a fucking kine, a human, someone Jack should have left behind long ago. He’d agree.

Maria and Michael? They’d punish him. Leaving his sweeper team early had no doubt earned some sort of punishment, but that spiraling into this, into his sire dying, was beyond horrible. They might execute him, as a warning tale to all other Kindred to always obey orders. Jessy and Damien would protest, but it’s not like they could stop the two elders.

The white world he found himself in gave him a moment of peace, at least. The fury that bubbled through him, threatening to blister and boil his skin and insides, lessened, now that he was out of the scene. Without Angela’s face to stare at, the heat in his guts lowered enough that he found himself fending off the rising need to cry.

Mary was dead, and now Julias was dead. Sighing, Jack clutched at his naked chest, and fell down, ass hitting the strange white surface, hard enough to elicit pain but finding none. He sat there, staring down between his knees at the white oblivion, and let the misery rise. His emotions were raw, and no matter how much he looked for his trusty logic switch, he couldn’t find it. His earlier run-in with Mary had left his guts exposed, soul shredded, and nothing he could do now could hide its bleeding surface. Sadness, agony, regret, guilt, it all washed over him, digging at him with a knife in his guts.

Jack rolled up into a ball, and lay on his side. Julias was dead. Dead. His sire was dead. His friend was dead. Oh god. Oh fucking god.

After a minute of paralyzing agony, movement forced his eyes open, and he sat up with a jolt. He stared, eyes analyzing the strange, floating shadow that stood before him, and he gulped down on nothing.

If there was one way he was going to die, it’d be to a shadow monster on the plains of oblivion.

The monster creature stood over him, a flowing wave of mist, shadow, darkness, and wings. Onyx poured over itself, and from within the churning waves of its black smoke, he could see other things, too: claws, feathers, some red eyes that belonged on a snake, a beak ... with teeth, many things. It was like he was staring at an amalgamation of beasts, of the sort of creatures Kindred identified with. Crow, snake, fox, wolf, rat, pieces of those things were all there, inside this flowing mass of darkness that stood six feet tall.

It was a Beast. He knew it, somehow. Some part of him knew.

He was looking at his Beast.

The chains, though, he didn’t understand those. Chains wrapped the shadowy creature, with enormous locks of rusted iron dangling from around its body. How could chains remain hooked around something that looked like it was made of smoke and shadow? Metaphor. It was a metaphor for being bound.

“ ... are you ... my Beast?” Might as well ask.

The monstrosity said nothing. It probably wasn’t capable of it. But, despite the communication barrier, several of the flowing heads blinked their red eyes at him before disappearing into the murk of its body. One of them nodded.

“Am I ... dead?”

The monster shook its heads.

“Then, I don’t understand. What’s going on? Where am I? I—this is in my head, isn’t it? This is one of those ‘life flashes before your eyes’ sort of things, right?”

The monster nodded.

“And ... you summoned me, for this heart to heart? I suppose you’d want to have one, if I got us both killed.” With a sigh and groan, Jack forced himself back up onto his feet. “I really hate you, you know that? First person I ever killed was an innocent woman, and that’s on you.”

A blurry, shadowy image of her face appeared in the air, covered in blood, like some sort of holographic projection his mind decided to torture him with. His mind, or the Beast. Not the face of her on the news, either, but the face Jack was most intimate with, the dead Mrs. Pavala, the one he’d found when he’d awoken from his frenzy, with puncture marks in her neck.

“Yeah, her. Fuck you, you fucking ... monster.” Insulting it for its bloodlust made as much sense as insulting any animal for chasing a meal.

The image changed, to Julias, his final moments as a juggernaut of unstoppable ... protection. There was no rage on his face, just a cocky smile, and a concern for Jack written in his eyes, in a way only Jack would recognize.

Before Jack could say anything to this fucking abomination tormenting him, the image changed again. This time, he didn’t recognize it, and he stared, curious, at the two people. Julias, and Viktor. The clothes suggested sometime around World War I, and based on the positions of the two men, it looked like Viktor was draining Julias of his blood; and not by Julias’s choice.

The image was more than the two men. Somehow, the Beast extended the scene, filling it, showing Jack the environment, the lighting, the smell, the sounds, despite it being a frozen moment. The beast also took the courtesy of giving Jack back his clothes and shoes whilst setting the scene, how nice of it.

Julias’s mansion, or rather, Viktor’s mansion, at the time, now surrounded them ... There was more though. Within Viktor, on him, around him, the shadowy waves of a Beast floated, normally invisible. And as the elder vampire killed Julias, preparing him for the embrace, the darkness of Viktor’s Beast moved into the corpse, infecting, duplicating.

When Viktor set his bloodied wrist to Julias’s mouth in the next frozen moment, and forced a heavy drop of the thick, dark liquid into Julias’s mouth, the shadowy creature inside Jack’s sire awoke.

There were chains. Jack walked around the two figures, frozen in time, and listened to the classical music playing in the background, as he watched a Beast be born within Julias. The shadowy creature inside Viktor had chains, just like the Beast floating next to Jack. And the new one, awakening inside the corpse that was Julias, had them as well. Dark, rusty things, that circled around and around the black cloud, sealed with massive stained locks, and a few dangling giant balls of metal.