Chapter 89

~~Jack~~

He started to get up.

“Stop!” one of the hunters said. “Stop, or we’ll keep shooting until you can’t get up.”

He continued to get up, a small grin on his lips. This was going to be fun. This was going to be so much damn fun.

“Shoot him,” Elen said, voice cold and hard. “Don’t kill him if you can help it.” Well, nice to know they still wanted him alive. It’d make this slaughterfest all the easier.

The bullets began. Just like with Julias, it was like staring into fireworks, all going off at once in the dark hallway, complete with the ear-splitting cracks.

The bullets crashed against his suit, tore through it, and slammed into his skin; but they didn’t penetrate. Hollow-point rounds were great at tearing flesh, but the Beast laughed as it hardened Jack’s body. Useless, weak, pathetic metal. The fools didn’t understand the only threat to him now, was fire, and they didn’t bring fire. Perhaps they feared damaging the hospital? Their loss.

As the bullets crashed into him, and fell to the hospital floor, he smiled more, exposing his teeth and fangs. Tilting his head, he glared at Angela, stared, and her eyes widened as she realized he was mobile. Somewhere in all the chaos, the barely conscious woman managed to find one of the dropped pistols. She brought up the gun, and fired it at him, but the telltale sound of click click announced the empty clip. Her jaw dropped. Wonderful. Perfect. Let her soak in her fear. Let her roast in it for that moment, before he ripped her asunder.

As the bullets continued to slam into him, his body began to regenerate. The metal lodged into him from earlier fell out of him, joining the mess of metal of other bullets falling to the floor. The flesh within mended. Bones reformed and sealed. Muscle sewed itself back together. Skin knitted over the holes. Easy.

The conversation he’d had with his Beast was a blurry, fading thing, like a dream. He vaguely recalled that he knew it’d be like that, that whatever he’d done, whatever had happened, he wouldn’t remember the details. He remembered her, though. He remembered the short brunette woman, sitting on her mountain of bodies. He remembered the smile on her lips, the sickle in her hand, the farmer’s hat on her head. He remembered the crows that sat on her shoulders and hat, and on the rooftops. He remembered the thousands of rats that scurried around her, between her feet and the feet of her stool, and through the bodies they gnawed on. He remembered the Beast that existed within her, and its titanic, overwhelming size.

That was him now.

His smile faded for a moment, as once the gunfire settled, Jack looked down at the ashes of his sire. Julias. Dead. His sire was dead. He’d died with a smile on his face, but that didn’t change that they’d murdered him, killed him, destroyed his life and silenced his voice.

How dare they. How. Fucking. Dare they.

He raised his eyes again, and found the hunters staring, jaws dropped, confusion and dismay carved into their faces; they hadn’t expected a vampire to suddenly be immune to bullets. The fear on their faces, the sweet, delicious sight of their terror, almost made selling his soul worth it.

Jack raised a wrist to his mouth, bit into it, and tore a chunk of his flesh out. The hunters gasped and backed away; maybe they’d seen something like this before. He doubted it.

Two hunters approached quickly, grabbed Angela and Sándor, and dragged them into the darkness with the other hunters. Their companions reloaded their guns, and pointed them at Jack, but didn’t fire. They would soon, once they realized what he was doing, but he knew, and they knew, it wouldn’t help them.

Jack swung his arm down at the floor, and splattered it with Kindred blood. A drop of will imbued into the flowing crimson kept it from burning into ash, and would keep it around for several minutes. And as the vitae set into the hospital floor, near the ashes of his dead sire, Jack could feel the pulsing wave of its power, his power. God, so much power, sweet, delicious, intoxicating power.

These kine couldn’t see it, smell it, or hear it. They couldn’t feel it. Jack felt it, and any Kindred in the area would. Any Kindred within a mile would. Each pulse a wave, each a thundering explosion, silent, unfelt, but blatant to any paranormal, he was sure. Others would know. That was fine, let them know. Let them witness his resurrection.

Five seconds after he spilled his blood, and created his summoning beacon, he smiled as he felt the call reach his flock. The room Julias had first used as cover had its door open, and as the fluttering noise in the background grew louder, one of the hunters turned to look in its direction. The noise grew louder, and louder, more fluttering, the sound of movement of small things in such number, it became a white noise; far too loud for white noise. Louder, and louder, and from all directions.

The cawing began. At first, just one, but one was the trigger that announced the flood. As if a host of angels — real angels, the ones in the bible, the freaky ones with extra mouths and eyes — had descended from the heavens to speak the word of God himself, a shrieking sound crashed against the hospital walls. The hunters jumped, spinning around and pointing their guns at patient rooms, and the two hallways, seeking the cause.

The banging began. Birds slammed into the windows, hard, hard enough to break beak and bone, hard enough to die. That was fine. His army would die for him; that’s what armies were for, dying, in heaps and droves for their lord. Him.

The banging grew louder in only a few seconds, until it sounded like gunfire itself. Sturdy windows.

The hunter with the assault rifle moved forward, pointed at Jack, and started firing. Apparently this one had decided to spare their ammunition, likely having put some of it into Julias earlier, but not wasting any others until now. These bullets were not hollow-point. These bullets were meant to pierce. The only reason holes didn’t punch through the hospital wall or floor, where the hunter had shot Julias, was because the hospital was built to survive a hurricane.

Jack smirked, and raised an arm, the injured limb already healed over from earlier wounds. The pieces of metal slammed into him, each hitting him with far more force than could ever be explained as anything but ‘getting shot by a rifle’. The punch a proper assault rifle could give, combined with the pointed tip of the bullet, meant each bullet hit him with enough force to pierce through metal.

But they didn’t pierce him. The vitae in him hardened his body, a mix of malleability and durability preventing the bullets from penetrating his skin. Metal slammed into him, and broke upon him, water against the shore. The hunter with the rifle stopped shooting, and Jack could see his jaw drop. Yes. Cower. Let the fear roll through you. Delicious.

Jack took a step forward, chuckling as he did. He felt good. He felt amazing. He felt hungry.

“You,” Jack said to the man with the rifle. “Come here, and kneel.”

Without hesitation, he came forward. Fool should have looked away before Jack could make eye contact, but fear had paralyzed him. His mind broke like tissue paper under water. One of the hunters reached out to stop him, but after a moment, she thought better of it. She turned around, grabbed Elen’s chair, and started wheeling the woman away.

She didn’t get far. The windows of the open patient rooms erupted, including Jack’s mother’s. An explosive force complete with an ear-splitting bang. Jack almost started to dance to the tune as more windows shattered under the impact of his servants. As the glass smashed inward, all the hunters turned to face the two open doors behind them, except the hunter under Jack’s Dominate. The man with the rifle continued forward, came up to Jack, and fell onto his knees.

As if to announce the man’s imminent demise, the hallway flooded with darkness. Loud, squawking, flapping darkness. The hunters threw their hands up over their heads, and tried to protect themselves from the onslaught, but the crows were unending. More of them poured in through the windows, and soon, patient rooms began to open. Crows were smart, very smart, and the only thing that stopped them from opening door levers was their absurdly small mass. That wasn’t a problem when there were hundreds of them working together.

“Stop their escape. Kill them all,” he said to his flock, “except for the Begotten. Capture the Begotten.” Traitors didn’t deserve death. Traitors deserved an eternity in the ninth circle of hell, in the frozen grip of Lucifer himself, or his maw, depending. Jack would recreate that Hell for this Begotten, while he still breathed. Heh, poor Judas.

Hundreds of crows became thousands. The swirling mass of endless black poured over anything and everything, like locusts, blanketing the walls, the floor, the doors, everything in fluttering obsidian.

Jack laughed as he held his hands out, and two familiar crows joined him. “Scully. Mulder. Is help coming?” The screams of the hunters buried his voice, but his voice was ancillary. Animalism was how he communicated with these friends of his, and now, it was easier than ever. As easy as being.

They both cawed a couple times, and clicked several more.

“Good. Unnecessary, but good.” They’d contacted the Invictus and the Ordo Dracul. Antoinette would send someone, probably Daniel, and the Invictus would send someone, probably his fellow Right Hands. What would they say? What would they do? Undoubtedly, there’d be some arguments over the Masquerade, and Jack would have to justify his actions.

No, he wouldn’t have to justify. What could they do to him? Nothing. They could do nothing.

He smiled down at his meal, who knelt patiently, waiting for him. With the crows swirling around him, a wall of flesh and feathers, it meant he was protected from outside interference, and free to begin drinking.

And drink he did. He motioned for his prey to come closer, and the man stood up, crouching enough for Jack to be able to reach his neck. Once he did, Jack grabbed him, hands on his shoulders, and he squeezed hard enough to break bone. This worthless maggot didn’t deserve a pleasurable Kiss. No, this was going to be agony.

The hunter screamed, and Jack laughed, as he sank his fangs into the man’s neck. The murder of crows flowed around him, swarming, swirling, a tornado of beaks and claws that spread out and flowed through the hall. Kill the hunters, kill them all.

The swarm of crows communicated with him using their caws, explaining to him what was happening as they did his bidding. Two of the female hunters went down, swiping and slicing at the birds with their knives, but there were too many. Jack could hear them, but seeing them was difficult; only small flickers of their bodies were visible through the walls of crows. Their screams were a siren’s song, and he groaned in joy as he drank down his meal. The birds were pecking their eyes out, ripping their scalps apart, and their clothes could do nothing to stop the hundreds of claws and beaks.

Blood was going to fill the hospital, overflow it, pour through the halls and down its elevators and stairs. Blood was going to drown the patients and staff. Blood was going to paint its walls, counters, doors, everything. Blood would cover the building, by the time he was done warming up.

As Jack refilled his stomach on the blood of the shrieking hunter in his grip, the old thrill of murder tingled along his bones. Fuck, how long had it been since he’d done this, just crushed someone as he drank them? Must have been over six hundred years. God damn it felt good. So good, he pushed his hands together harder, and smiled into the screaming man’s neck, as the hunter’s shoulders collapsed inward, collar bone breaking, then his ribcage. Like popping a grape.

Blood splashed over Jack’s body, as the hunter in his hands broke. Strong as Jack was, he couldn’t get his hands to push all the way through, but he was content to get them within a few inches of each other. Flesh, bone, all became mush between his squeezing grip, the hunter’s clothes an inadequate shield to keep the blood off of Jack’s hands; and it was the only thing that kept the hunter from splitting in literal half.

Grape popped, blood drained, the broken, dry husk of a man was now useless to him. Jack threw him aside, and licked his lips. Yes, god yes, it felt good. It felt so damn good.

Scully and Mulder cawed a few times, and Jack shrugged at them. “I am different.” They clucked a few times more. Apparently, they weren’t entirely sure what to think of him. “Don’t worry. You’re still my favorites.” And they were, of course. That’s how it was supposed to be. Two crows to be his eyes and ears, and he wouldn’t throw those things away without just cause.

He stepped forward over the body, and toward the other two. Ah, two women. Screaming, crying, they died swinging, but it had done nothing. It was a pity he didn’t get to see it, with the amount of his servants he’d summoned, but the aftermath was plenty appealing nonetheless. Bodies torn open, crows biting at their brains through their now empty eye sockets, and much of their skin exposed as his servants pulled and tore it off. Stomachs torn open, intestines pulled out, organs pecked to bits in moments. If he’d had time, he’d have made some necklaces.

The liver was a nutrient powerhouse, and essential food. Had to have that. Brains, eyeballs, heart, kidney, all good, but the liver was the prime meal for his army. Of course, when dealing with thousands, nothing went to waste. He watched with a smile as his army ripped off their skin with their beaks, finishing the job they’d started while the hunters had still been alive moments before. While it’d been shame he didn’t get to see it, see the terror in their eyes as crow beaks punctured them, hearing their screams over the swarm had been delightful.

The swarming mass cawed their frustration, and Jack listened, Animalism the bridge that turned their chaotic squawks into noises he could understand, could interpret into sights and sounds. Several of the hunters had escaped back through the hole in the wall, and they not only took the woman in the wheelchair, but also the damaged one with the glass eye. And, according to the crows, the hole had closed up, and vanished.

“Fuck!” He turned, and punched the wall, hard. Vitae pumped through him, and the Beast within flowed outward freely, pouring into the limb, and causing his fist to sink into the wall. The hospital wall was some sort of concrete painted white, and it cracked and crumbled around his fist. The fucking bitch escaped him again. Again!

After a few moments, his smile returned. No matter, he’d find them again eventually. However it was the hunters were traveling around, it was magical, and it was limited. If it required a sacrifice to paint such a circle and create the portal, that was a limitation he could use to track them. And for all its power to jump from location to location, it seemed like the hunters couldn’t make the portal opening wherever they wanted. They had to manually go to a place first. Which meant the hunters were still somewhere in the city, coming out of a portal, and departing from such a location to head out, and paint more circles.

He blinked at the wall and his fist. The sight of the damaged wall stirred a strange dissonance in his mind. Jack could never punch concrete hard enough to nigh shatter it. Jack could, now, easily. Hell, he felt almost as strong as a proper elder Nos or Daeva now, in pure physical strength.

He squinted at the wall, and drew his hand back to admire the damage he’d done to his skin and bone. It was minor, and healed over quickly, far quicker than Jack normally could. Yes, he was different now, very different, and something about it tickled somewhere in his brain. The conversation he’d had with his Beast was such a blurry thing in his memory, and it was hard to pull out the specific words that’d been said.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was revenge, saving his mom, and everything in between.

More caws in the vortex announced the capture of the Begotten. They’d stopped one of the hunters from dragging him through the portal, pecking and stabbing, until the hunter was forced to abandon the monster.

“Yes, finally. How many fucking times have these bastards sneaked away? Not this time.” Capturing their enforcer wasn’t as good as capturing Elen or Angela, or the MIA Jeremiah, but it was still a great step toward that goal. Now, time to collect the prize.

Jack stopped, and tilted his head to the side. In one of the patient rooms ahead of him, were two people, and the caws of his army announced both their arrival, and who they were. Antoinette, and Damien.

Jack held out his hands, and opened them, palms out. The crows went silent, and many of them flowed out the windows of the nearby half dozen patient rooms with open doors. Outside, he could feel their presence, feel their claws perch atop roof edges and power lines, feel their beady eyes scanning the darkness for any suspicious movement. A few caws from outdoors announced that the hospital exterior was clear.

Time to collect the prize, and talk to the Misses, then.

~~Antoinette~~

Blackout. It was a true blackout. Such power outages were rare in her city, where electricity was the lifeblood of its pulsing heart, and for power to cease was enough to elicit panic from many.

Such panic was a problem. The fire department was out in full swing, driving the streets, looking for the problem as best they could; no doubt their equipment was hampered by whatever spell the hunters had cast, forcing them to do things manually. Hospitals had backup generators to keep their patients alive and maintained, but for many night organizations, no electricity was paralyzing, and it left customers out on the streets, flooding the large sidewalks, and bringing traffic to a standstill.

The South Center Hospital, on the other hand, looked deserted. It was stupid of her to approach the hospital directly from the front, but it was also the fastest method. Time was of the essence, and she was not about to risk the Masquerade by jumping onto the building’s side and charging in through a window. Admittedly, there were better routes she could have taken into the hospital, but she did not have the mind to plan that out. It had been a literal eight minutes since Jack’s crow had arrived at her tower, and she had jumped rooftops to get to the hospital as quickly as she had.

Gunfire. She looked up at the building, and toward the East Wing. Too difficult to isolate the noise to the exact floor or room, but there was no doubt it was happening near Samantha Terry. There was no time. Go. Now.

She did not enter. She was about to, but a growing noise drew her eyes and ears, until she was forced to look upward. The stars were quite visible in the district, with all the lights out, and nothing protected Dolareido from the heavenly gaze of the stars above. It made her feel exposed. She had spent so long building this city, and with each decade that went by, the amount of light the city produced increased. For the roofs, the walls, and the windows, to be dark or only lit with gentle light, elicited a strange feeling, as if she were afraid of the dark.

No. This darkness, as alien as it was to her these days, was not what sent chills up her spine. The silence it brought with it did not upset her either. These were where Kindred were their most comfortable, between walls and shadows. And, as much as she originally thought so, it was not a fear for Jack that had her body trembling. She was not human, and she did not have adrenaline to trigger such a response. Vitae did surge through her, though, and it was in fear, but she did not know why.

Her mouth parted, and she stared up at the sky, as crows descended upon the hospital. Their wings hid the sky, and their growing noise became unimaginable. Not so loud as to damage her ears, but overwhelming nonetheless, heightened by the eerie silence of the district moments before. Cawing, the squawking bird noise that crows made, distinct, unique, wholly recognized as a sound of death and impending doom. It was all she could hear, as the sky became a moving tapestry of shadow and feathers.

It was as if a demonic entity had sliced open the sky, spilled its obsidian, endless blood over the stars, and from it, an army of black birds came to reap the souls of her city.

She was stunned. She tried to move, tried to tell herself to ignore the birds, and enter the hospital, but the sight was horrific and beautiful. The squawking birds numbered in the thousands, and the volume of their calls only grew as they came closer, and closer. As they began to lower themselves onto the hospital, Antoinette gasped, staring, as dozens of the birds matched speeds, and smashed their beaks into the windows.

Many of the birds died, and each that did hit the glass with such force, that even staring up from the parking lot, many feet away, it sounded like a gunshot to her ears. She flinched, something she rarely did anymore, as more birds destroyed themselves upon the glass, harder, sometimes in pairs, in trios, quartets, and quintets at the same time. They hit the glass hard enough, that the loud crack of their beaks against the windows echoed against the walls of nearby buildings.

It took them maybe twenty seconds, before the windows exploded inward, such was the force of their determination. As a hundred crows fell to their deaths, bodies of fragile bones smashed into pulp against their targets, the glass broke, and thousands of crows flew inward into the patient rooms. Oh no.

Footsteps behind her grabbed her attention; Kindred ears captured the sound as pure reflex, rather than conscious effort, so loud was the army of crows and their kamikaze mission. From the sound and the pace, it was a Kindred.

“Prince,” Damien said.

“Mister Burksen. I assume my love’s other pet found you?”

“Found the Invictus, yes. Madam Turio sent me.”

Antoinette frowned. This boy, a member of the Sanctified by Lucas’s choice, had become Jack’s friend. A frustrating position for Antoinette, who wished for nothing more than for the boy and his accursed religion to disappear. But, the man had proved his worth and reliability. If things continued as they were with Damien and Maria, Antoinette would have no choice but to eventually let them reopen the Lancea et Sanctum in Dolareido in an official capacity. She dreaded the thought, but she could not deny them for forever, lest the covenants feel her rule totalitarian. And that would lead to other troubles.

Even now she danced the Danse Macabre, as the sky parted to unleash its army upon the hospital. Sighing, she turned back to the building.

“Come,” she said.

“ ... uh ... you’re coming, yourself? Are—”

“My sheriff and my student are both hunting down the cause of this power outage, Burksen. I assume Turio sent you because the other Invictus are indisposed. Logic dictates that we work together, and rescue Mister Terry and Mister Mire.” She marched forward for the hospital front door.

“ ... alright. Then, I suggest we scale the building wall, and go in through one of the windows the crows are using.”

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “The sky devours us with endless wings, and you wish to perform yet another violation of the Masquerade? Do you not think kine are awake, and aiming their phones about at this very moment, filming this?”

“I’ll Cloak us.”

“I can tell from the way you move that you are injured.”

“I...” Damien looked down at one of his hands, and the leg she noticed he was keeping his weight off. “I’ve fed enough to Cloak us. My injuries are irrelevant. I’m not going to let them hurt Jack.”

She blinked at the man, and tilted her head to the side slightly. Those were powerful words, and not words she ever expected to hear from Lucas’s childe.

Looking at the man could not help but spark memories within her. This young man, just old enough to be ancilla, had cut off one of her arms and legs. He had stormed her home with weapons and zealots, and the two of them had shared barbed words. He had played his hand, exposed what he thought of her, what Lucas thought of her, and had sent his companions to their demise in order to defeat her.

And he had failed, because of Jack. To see them become friends in the months that followed would forever be the rarest of social interactions and changes of personality she had ever seen in another. That did not change that the sight of the man sparked anger in her, and she was not comfortable with letting a man who had taken a sword to her, help her. For all her power, even she was vulnerable to a swift hand with intent to betray, and stab her in the back if she lowered her guard. Though, considering his injuries, she was the one helping him.

It was not that she could not use the Cloak of Night herself, but it was certainly not a discipline with which she had had much practice. Daniel offered to spend the time and teach her, but instead, she focused on the abilities that came naturally to Daeva, and her pursuits in the Coils of the Ordo Dracul. To her utmost annoyance, Damien’s suggestion was the better approach.

“Very well.” It took effort to keep the venom out of her voice. But now was not the time for such juvenile frustration; healthy paranoia, perhaps, but not childish antics.

The boy nodded, and summoned up his Cloak of Night. It was a subtle, hidden thing, for a Kindred to tap into their vitae, and encapsulate themselves, or others, in the aura of the Cloak. Humans watching would first have found their eyes sliding off the two Kindred, in such a way that did not garner attention. And then, as the full effect of a true Cloak of Night arrived, total invisibility followed.

The boy was powerful, to be able to encapsulate both her and himself in his Cloak, to the degree of total invisibility. Natasha could as well, but then, Natasha was a talented woman, and the Prince trusted her to handle herself with Daniel, despite how exhausted little Vola was after her return tonight. A talented Mekhet was a dangerous thing.

The two of them ran over to the hospital East Wing, from the outside, and looked up at the windows the crows were pouring in through. Such recklessness. Such insanity. Did Jack do this, or Julias? Their bloodline was impossible to predict, forever causing mayhem in her city with their surprising bursts of strength and talent. Viktor had ruled the Invictus under such strength, bullying his two fellow councilmen into submission. But Viktor was dead. Who was summoning the crows, and how were they managing such a massive number?

She sighed as she looked down at the dozens of dead crows at her feet. Neither Jack or Julias would be so cruel as to use Animalism, and send so many creatures to their death. But then, when Jack had escaped the hunters’ torture, the reports indicated that many rats had died in his escape. Jack would never kill animals like that, never let himself become so drunk on violence and death, that he would kill hundreds of creatures to enact his will. Would he?

“It’ll take me a few seconds to climb up,” Damien said. “If—”

“Come.” She grabbed him, and threw him. The man’s eyes went wide, and he almost let out a yelp, before he managed to close his mouth at the last second. Fool boy was weightless in her grip, and she had no trouble launching him at one of the windows where fewer crows entered. If his Cloak failed, she would have to leave, and enter through the hospital front door instead.

It did not fail. Impressive. She leaped after him, keeping the distance between them small, so he would not have to extend his Cloak too far. Two vampires, dangling off a windowsill, outside a hospital. Très drôle.

How long had it been since she had left her tower, in pursuit of a mission? For decades now, over a century perhaps, she sent her thralls, or Daniel, to enact her will, to force the covenants into line, or to deal with kine who overstepped their limits. Not since the Purge had she truly used her own hands in such a way. She had forgotten the thrill of engaging things with her own fingers, to leave the safety of her tower, and seek out an objective, with purpose. She could not deny there was excitement to it, but any potential joy to be found was lost under the growing fear within her core. What had happened here?

She forced up the window -- better than risking damage on the broken glass -- and rolled into the room. Damien followed, silent and slick. His movements were terribly similar to Daniel, and she struggled to suppress both a smile and frown at the value and threat that represented. For now, she could trust him to watch her back, if only because she was standing and at full strength, while he was not.

The two of them stared down at one of the patients. The machines beside the man continued to beep, and the crows that filled the room avoided him. The ventilator continued, and the sensitive equipment such as the IV feeding into the man’s body was untouched. The birds swarmed around the room though, and both vampires were forced to crouch to prevent them from hitting their heads.