~~Antoinette~~
Jack had seen her. She knew he must have. And yet, he gave chase into the forest, with Beatrice over his shoulders. So committed was he to his plan, to his need for revenge, that he would ignore her approach, the Prince of Dolareido, and his lover, to pursue it.
It was not Jack she saw. It was the curse, a relic from ages past, from those infuriating striges and their obsessive need to disrupt the lives of Kindred. The curse. The damned, bloody curse, that crawled into her thoughts all minutes of the night. Of course her love would use its power to achieve his goal, for vengeance, to settle the ghost of Julias over his shoulder, and the very real ghost of his sister. She knew it would happen, and yet, she was still surprised.
The carnage the curse had wrought was extreme, and she stared in nigh disbelief as she came closer to the forest. One hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hundred feet wide, a clearing of destroyed trees and shredded earth. And corpses. The corpses of crows and rats, but corpses nonetheless, thousands of them. Only Jack could have summoned such an army to his side, and only a battle between him, hunters, and Sándor especially, could have created a field of mayhem such as the one she walked through.
She checked back over her shoulder for Mark, or perhaps someone else. There had been someone else nearby, a young Kindred, but she did not see them, eyes locked onto Sándor as they had been. Mark, on the other hand, she knew was to follow behind her. And he was, though he stayed away, far away, a lowly creeping skeleton covered in grime, insects, and gore. One could barely see his shifting shadow in the darkness of the night.
A werewolf leapt down from a tree, Othello in her arms. She looked at Antoinette as she set the man against a large rock, near the center of a rather disturbing clearing connected to the zone of destruction. Fire awaited her, but the gargoyle made quick work of the flames, flattening them with his palms, one after another. And, unless her eyes deceived her, the nightmare itself began to fight back against the flames, trees regrowing when she was not looking, and grass rising from the ashes. In the clearing with the gargoyle, corpses were crucified to trees, and perhaps a dozen hunters lay dead in the burning grass.
"Prince," Sándor said, "Jack has..." Sighing, the beast pointed to the forest with one hand, while his other three continued to squash the fires as if flame had no power over him. Perhaps it did not. Blood coated his mouth, and Antoinette did not need to guess whose it was. Jeremiah's clothes, or what remained of them, were on the ground about his feet.
Azamel lay beside Sándor. Breathing, alive. Good. Antoinette would have questions, once she had a moment to process what was happening.
"I will be back, and I will deal with this insanity," she said.
She took off into the woods, and Daniel followed. Once again, she had arrived too late to help in the battle, and found nothing but the remains. But, perhaps if she caught up to Jack, she could influence the outcome of the curse's actions. Without a doubt, it was the curse enacting its will to create such chaos, and while Jack may have been willing to let it unleash its will, in order to achieve victory, he would not be able to stomach the carnage it might force upon him.
Past the clearing, she noticed a man sitting behind a tree. The others must have known of his presence, but did not react to him. Harcourt then, the hunter Jack had mentioned in his message to her. She decided to leave him be, and kept after Jack's trail.
She and Daniel came to a dead stop, as a black wave of thick water oozed and boiled between some trees. An aura of dread, of fear, of death and of power flowed out from where it bubbled on the ground, and Antoinette steeled herself as she dashed toward it. Mark? It was similar, and yet Mark was but an ant compared to the aura that buried her. She knew that presence. Here? How? Why?
She expected a confrontation, of wills or of fists, but as she slipped past the twisting trees and found the spot where the ooze bubbled up from the dirt and grass, she found the ooze vacating. It slipped back into the earth, and it took something with it. Someone? An old woman with sickly thin limbs, and a tattered dress, disappeared into a black void.
And then, Black Blood was gone. It was Black Blood, it had to be. The cold air, the sense of decay and death, as if someone had distilled a cemetery, its tombstones and mausoleums, into perfume. It could only be that blasted spirit. But it was gone, and had taken someone with it.
Elen. The shaman. The flesh witch.
She bit down her teeth, and followed after the curse currently controlling her little Ventrue. Black Blood and Jacob could be dealt with later. For now, her love mattered more.
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~~Beatrice~~
Sneaking in the shadows with her injuries was difficult. She was injured, in pain, and ravenous. No more blood flowed through her, and she was forced to run on fumes to power her Cloak. No choice. If she let Athalia stop her, this opportunity might slip away. She had to, even if she had to drain herself until she fell into torpor, she had to do it. At this moment, nothing else mattered.
Jack shook his head, snarling. "Athalia, you know damn well she has to die. She's a hunter, and—"
"Beatrice!" the skeleton shrieked, and lifted her giant skeleton head to look around. Beatrice froze solid. She knows you're here. Not like you could hide from a monster of darkness, in darkness. Do it now, before she stops you. "I know you're in here. The shadows will not hide you from me. I will—"
Bang.
The hunter beside Angela went down, and her blood splattered against the wood behind her. Beatrice had aimed well, and the bullet went straight. The hunter went down like a bag of sand, a hole in her head, and chunks of her brains everywhere. It was a church in a nightmare, so, it felt kinda proper to fill it up with murder. Angela yelped and jumped back, like a frightened animal.
