. 14

~~Jack~~

"Sándor's locked up, and isn't going into any nightmare," Jack said. Much as he knew that that was true, that didn't change that the roaring coming from the castle, was a roar he was all too familiar with.

When him and his crew had been fighting Angela and the hunters, when they were trying to rescue Jessy, it'd gone horribly wrong. Still, with the help of Athalia's crazy darkness attack, and the sheer endurance of the werewolves, they'd managed to turn things around. It was only when Jeremiah and the four-armed gargoyle showed up that they lost control again.

The four-armed, four-winged creature had defeated Eric, and Clara, and Jessy. And judging by size of it, and the aura Jack had felt in its presence, it would have been able to do a lot more than that. It, he, whatever, was a force to be reckoned with, something stronger than Athalia or Fiona, and definitely that fat fucker Mark. Sándor, or at least his Horror, was on a scale of power Jack didn't feel often. It'd been like being around Jacob or Antoinette, or Azamel. And that force was being summoned by whatever the fuck Elen was doing.

"You understand so little of the beasts, the monsters," Jeremiah said, grin growing. "Vampires, werewolves, you're all just leftovers from an era long past, when true monsters roamed the world, feeding on people and seeding their minds. Nightmares, the real, terrifying kind, the ones that scare you to the point your blood runs cold and your heart stops, the ones that give you glimpses of what's waiting in the dark, in the brush, in the cave, in the forest and in the depths of the ocean, are a product of monsters. Or, perhaps, the nightmares create those monsters, and carve them into ethereal existence, the ultimate threat to mankind." The man was smart. Despite his obvious, cocky attitude, he didn't ever met Jack's gaze; knew too well that Jack could probably reach through this barrier of his, if Jack was given a fair chance of it. Smash through the amber line, and grab the fucker's mind. The black powder line, on the other hand, was being a major cock block.

"Ha, you trying to demean me?" Jack said, but his eyes kept flicking past Jeremiah, and to the two women. Elen's knife was still glowing, and it continued to glow with the red aura as she carved what must have been dozens of tiny symbols into the skin. It was like, watching an old woman who used to be a virtuoso pianist, moving her fingers with extraordinary speed and precision that persevered despite her aging, decaying body.

"Monsters like Azamel, and Sándor, have no souls, Jack. They lost their soul, gave up it, or had it stolen. All that's left is a beast, a Horror, a literal incarnation of fear and evil, that's taken up residence where a human's soul should be." With a shrug, Jeremiah started walking the circle's inner edge, and picked up one of the assault rifles one of the dead hunters had wielded. Jack stayed with him, glaring at him with every step as he removed the magazine, grabbed another magazine from the corpse, and continued on. It was dark in the forest clearing, and what little light the hunters carried on their guns or attached to breast pockets, didn't help all that much. The man had good eyes.

Jack laughed. "That's rich, coming from you." Shaking his head, Jack reached out and ran a finger along the invisible wall as he walked. "You're the one who sacrificed people who put their lives in your hands, were willing to die for you. You betrayed them."

"They knew the risks."

"Did they know it'd be you, killing them?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters." Jack laughed louder, and gave Jeremiah a big grin, showing his fangs. "You're a monster, Jeremiah, the human kind. Don't need to be a werewolf, or vampire, or have a Horror for a soul, when a human is perfectly capable of being an abomination that needs to be put down."

That managed to make Jeremiah pause, and for just a second, Jack saw a touch of pain in his eyes. Fucking delicious. These philosophical conversations were always fun, especially when the other person didn't realize the universal truth: everyone's a fucking monster. The only thing that matters, is what monster rises to the top of the food chain.

"Controlling the human mind is doable," Jeremiah continued, "even when it's become tainted, or infected by the vampire, the werewolf, or the monster. Elen knows spells to do that, and as you have obviously guessed, that's what we did to Sándor. Unfortunately, when we lost Sándor, wherever you have put him has separated him from his Horror. The spell's influence over it is weak, and the most we could manage was to prevent it from attacking us while we rested here." The psycho gestured to the trees around him, the ones with corpses attached. "Elen's magic is costly, but it's all worth it to guarantee Azamel dies, Jack. And, you'll have to forgive me, but looking at you now, I see the darkness Angela told me she saw in your eyes. I will be Azamel's death, but Angela will be yours."

"Aww, that's touching." Jack touched his chest with his fingertips, feigning joyful surprise. "Angela, you going to be my nemesis?"

The word hit her like a ton of bricks, and she met his eyes. Oh yeah, she'd been thinking about the word too, and he could see it resonate in her like a tuning fork. But, awareness hit her before he could try and breach the barrier, and she looked down again. She was trembling. Rage coursed up through her limbs, and every part of her probably wanted to unload a hail of bullets on him. Only by cutting open his guts, filling it with cinders, and watching him turn to burning ash from the inside out, would she be satisfied. He knew it, because it was a feeling he shared. And as much as nemesis was too good a word for her, there was no denying she was the target of his hate.

She was his nemesis the way the roadrunner was Wile E. Coyote's nemesis, just a meal who kept getting away. Not this time.

"Come on, Jeremiah," she said. "We have to do this now. You know what that Horror will do after."

"Good luck, Jack. You'll need it." Jeremiah offered him a small bow of his head, and walked back to Elen.

The old woman made one last, small gesture, with the familiarity of someone writing their signature, and another thunderous, screeching, alien roar announced the completion of whatever it was she was doing. Her knife was still glowing, too. He doubted she used artifacts for all her works, probably making this particular spell unusually potent. Or maybe she did? Maybe she had every person she killed hold an object she'd cursed, and that was how she absorbed their lives into the knife. Like, collecting ink for a quill. And she still had ink left.

The four hunters guided Elen away from the stone and flesh she'd been carving on, and pushed her toward the center of the clearing again, eying Clara closely as they did. They were afraid she'd get through the barrier then. Queue for Jack to start heading back to her, and get ready to run in—

The roar sounded again, and it was louder this time. A lot louder. Once his ears readjusted to the following silence, it became painfully clear that it wasn't silent at all. His rats, his crows, his legion had stopped making noise, holding deathly still. Clara ceased her digging. Harcourt ceased his stupid whining. Beatrice, Othello, and Damien all came back to stand with him by Clara, and look up at the branches above, at the incoming noise.

"What's that sound?" Damien said.

Woomp. Woomp. Woomp. A heartbeat that grew louder and louder, closer, and for the fucking life of him, Jack couldn't place the sound. It was familiar, but it wasn't. And it wasn't the impact of the gargoyle's feet; that had a distinct sound, and sensation. This was—

"Down!" Damien said.

Jack realized just a bit too late what the sound was. Wings. Beating wings.

The snapping of trees was an explosion of chaos and speed. The dark canopy above, needles and thorns of onyx against a cloudy night sky, shattered. And the thing that came down for them moved faster than the falling twigs did. How could something that huge move so quickly? It descended upon them, its giant body tearing through the tall trees with greater ease than Jack had. It was like watching a train derail and smash through the woods that surrounded it, its mass rendering the blockade of trees irrelevant. Crash, snap, boom. Wood held little sway against thousands of pounds of meat.

Everyone threw themselves down against the ground, everyone except Jack. As the titan plummeted toward them, destroying the forest with far more explosive impact than Jack and Clara had managed, Jack grinned. He hadn't expected this, but it was a good opportunity. Crush Sándor, and crush the final hope Jeremiah and Angela had. It'd be fucking beautiful.

The monster landed maybe twenty feet in front of him, and the impact alone was enough to send vibrations into the hundreds of nearby of trees, big and small. The beast's arrival sent an explosion of momentum and inertia outward, until the thousands of crows above took to the sky as their perches shook violently. His legion of rats trembled on the dark forest floor like rippling sand. Branches, rocks, and tree trunks flew everywhere, soaring over the heads of his crew who'd taken to the dirt. But not him. He kept his back to the barrier, and lifted his arms in front of him, swatting down or blocking oncoming debris, using the barrier to keep him from getting knocked back.

"Clara," he said, "how's that hole coming?"

"The line... not break!" she said, werewolf voice half words, half roaring barks.

Jack managed a second to glance back at the hole Clara had made. She had no choice but to dig straight down right beside the line, since she couldn't cross it, but the dirt the line was drawn on refused to crumble. Considering she'd gotten a good three feet deep and wide beside the line of soot already, and the whole damn forest was shaking with the mess Sándor was making, the fact it still didn't break meant there was a good chance they wouldn't be able to break the line at all.

But then, a colossal gargoyle that easily weighed eight times what the werewolf did was running at them. If Clara couldn't cause the disturbance needed to break the line, maybe this thing could. Maybe—

The titan bull rushed forward, and Jack's eyes opened wide. Just like Clara, the enormous beast sank its huge talons into the earth to create the grip it needed to tear forward. Unlike Clara, the gargoyle was so massive, it hit every single obstacle between it and Jack. And, unlike Clara, the trees it crashed into didn't slow it down in the slightest. It fell upon Jack within two literal seconds, showering the area in more debris as it came for him.

Jack grinned from behind his hands, and met the beast's charge.

Sándor—no, not Sándor. Sándor was locked up in the Prince's tower. This was Sándor's Horror, a literal manifestation of his other half, just like how Kindred had a Beast, and Uratha had a... wolf spirit thing. Vampires and werewolves were never separate from their other half, but a nightmare beast apparently could be; he was looking at it. And, it was grabbing him with its four arms.

Holy shit those were strong arms. He knew Sándor's Horror was unusually strong, but god fucking damn. Its hands were big enough to cover most of the length of his arms, and half the length of his legs, one hand for each.

There was a moment, a single moment, where Jack could see the Horror was confused. Jack hadn't dodged, hadn't tried to jump out of the way, and that would have confused any giant beast running down prey. Jack also knew there wasn't a single shred of fear on his face, and when facing down a literal nightmare, a creature that existed on humanity's fear as the basis of its existence, of course it'd be confused. It'd find no terror here.

And it wouldn't find easy prey. Jack met the gargoyle's eyes, and smiled. As predicted, there was no mind to bend there, no human mind at least. When he reached out and attempted to Dominate the Horror, all he found was a tapestry of desires, without any of the rhyme or reason a human mind had. The Horror had less mental awareness than any wolf or rat. All it was was a bundle of hunger, and it spoke in a single language: terror, the terror it inflicted on others. Jack would not be able to Dominate, or use Animalism, on such a strange, simple, ethereal, and insubstantial mind.

But, that didn't mean Jack couldn't beat it into the ground, break it, and rip it apart.

Rats poured over the beast, and the Horror roared as a swarm of claws climbed up its dark skin. Jack had continued summoning rats throughout all this, through his rants and taunting at Angela, and through his circling of the clearing. They came from the castle by only dozens, so far from his original sacrifice of vitae, but they came. They had scurried down the road. Damien had made a good call, telling Aaron to stay behind to keep the second gateway opened.

The gargoyle threw Jack to the ground before it had a chance to hurt him, and started backing off and to the side around the clearing. It scraped at the rats, dislodging them by the hundreds with its four giant hands, and with enough speed and force that Jack's legion died by the hundreds as well.

It? Now that he thought about it, Sándor's Horror had masculine features, and its face wasn't all that too far off from being human, just big, and dark blue, with some horns. Fiona's Horror Vrall was obviously feminine, to the point it—she'd had sex with Damien. Athalia and Azamel, on the other hand, their horrors seemed genderless. But none of them were natural, organic creatures that reproduced sexually or a-sexually. They were things, dream creations, or maybe parasites that existed in the dream landscape. Without their human half, they were powerful creatures, but mindless, drifting phantasms, less than real. Hell, less than mindless, just a shadow of the physical world. And anyone with more IQ than a grapefruit could outsmart a mindless beast.

Groaning, Jack pushed himself up off the ground, and managed a quick look back at the hunters. Angela spared him only a moment's glance, before turning back to help whatever it was Elen was doing. If she was willing to miss this, then whatever she was doing was important; either running away, or helping Jeremiah go for Azamel.

"Damien, annoy him. Clara, go for the legs. Othello, go for the face. Beatrice, you and Harcourt stay the fuck out of the way."

And they listened. Good. Much as he didn't really care if they died, he needed them to live, if he was to prove he was the better Jack. And Clara, transformed and unleashed, was growing on him.

Damien came at Sándor, sword in right hand, pistol in left. Crows descended upon the colossal creature, and they swarmed it like locusts, cawing and scratching and pecking. But his legion of claws, teeth, and beaks, drew no blood and made no headway. The damn gargoyle's skin was as tough as leather, tougher, and thick. Clara charged at its legs straight on, momentarily getting on all fours before throwing all of her weight into the distracted creature's leg. Othello jumped high, very high, above the creature, and plummeted down at its face. Fucking Daeva were a bunch of pretty boys, but they had speed and strength.

Except, the speed and strength didn't matter much. Sándor's Horror threw one arm up, and smashed Othello out of the sky like it was smacking a beach ball. Crunch. That was a broken leg at least, and more besides as Othello flew threw the air before colliding with another tree, then slumping down onto the ground.

Damien had better luck. His bullets bounced off the Horror's skin as he approached, but he got behind the gargoyle, and managed to sink his sword into its right side, a foot deep. Red blood seeped from the wound, and the Horror threw out one of its other hands. It was fast, and strong, and while Damien managed to duck underneath one gigantic arm, the monster had four. The third backhand attempt at Damien sent him flying, with even more velocity than Othello, and the Mekhet crashed into the invisible barrier with a thud.

While Othello and Damien were flies to be swatted, the thousands upon thousands of rats crawling and biting at the Horror's skin could not be dislodged so easily. Again, Sándor's Horror stepped to the side, off balance, roaring its alien sounds as it scraped them off. Their claws and teeth couldn't penetrate the fucker's thick hide, and even the crows that dive bombed it, many dying as they slammed their beaks into its wings at full speed, couldn't so much as draw a drop of blood; thousands of scratches, but no blood. Scratches were painful though, and if you were getting hundreds of them chiseled into your skin every second, even a giant monster like this Horror evidently couldn't ignore the pain.

Clara had better luck than Othello or Damien. With the monster distracted, she crashed into its leg hard enough that the giant brute began to topple. Jack almost yelled 'timber', but the moment was cut short, as the Horror fell to its knees, stopped itself from falling over with three of its arms, while the fourth reached out and grabbed Clara. The two creatures roared at each other, but Clara didn't take nearly as long before she started ripping and tearing. While the monster's hand was big enough to get a grip on her waist and chest, it wasn't a good grip, and Clara ripped herself free with her own sets of claws, while at the same time sinking her teeth into the gargoyle's arm.

Did Jeremiah and Angela really trust this monster to fight them? Sure, the Horror was unusually strong, but—

The gargoyle spread its four wings, hard and fast, sending wind outward in a powerful pulse that caught Jack's crows in its wake. The wings were massive, utterly massive; they had to be, to carry something as absurdly huge as a fifteen-foot-tall gargoyle with four arms and a tail. Trees fractured and were demolished as the wings hit them, turning the large path of destruction they were fighting in, into a clearing all its own, wood exploding and shattering as it went everywhere from the impact of thick skin membrane, and the thick bat-like arms along each wing. Wings were supposed to be fragile. This beast could break down a brick wall with its wings.

Jack covered his face with his arms again, but otherwise stood his ground as the wood and wind ripped through him. What crows who survived took to the sky, and stayed there, circling high above as they looked for an opening. Mulder and Scully were already up there, cawing and giving him information about the hunters. They didn't think the Horror could be beaten. Run, run, stay away from the black, live to hunt another day.

Jack smiled up at the night sky, winked at his pets, and started marching toward the giant creature. They had nothing to fear.

"You know, you're the reason I didn't get to kill Angela," Jack said. "Hell, you're the reason twice over. Once in your nightmare, and once in mine. If it weren't for you, I'd have killed Angela, and my sister wouldn't be dead. If it weren't for you, my sire would be alive. Course, you can blame any link in a chain for where the chain goes. The joys of causality, right?"

The Horror made no attempt to understand or retort. It probably didn't know how. All it knew how to do was let out more screams and roars as it turned its attention to the werewolf biting and clawing at its arm.

"Uh, Jack," Beatrice said from behind a fallen tree, a good fifty feet away. "They're... I think they're opening another portal."

Yeah, Scully and Mulder confirmed strangeness was happening. Elen was drawing markings on the trees, and he recognized the symbols as the ones Beatrice had cut through to get them into Elen's flesh chamber, the ones Angela's friends had painted, when they sacrificed a thrall in the hospital. And if they were drawing it on multiple trees, it wasn't going to be just any portal, like the other ones Elen had created.