. 17

~~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.

Athalia, the giant, black, alien skeleton thing with no legs, turned to face her, shock somehow chiseled into her bone face. Triss looked at her from halfway along the wall of the church, outside the pews, pistol hanging at her side.

"Thought I might need this," she said, "cause my legs are all fucked up. In all the chaos, especially when Sándor showed up, the real Sándor, and broke Jeremiah's ritual, it was easy to take a moment to find a gun." And she knew how to use a pistol like this. You checked the slide and flipped the safety. Easy.

"Beatrice, do not—"

Jack stepped up to the woman, the huge monster creature, and glared. "Athalia, the only reason I haven't broken you in two, or Dominated you and made you move, is because you're a creature, like me, like Trissy, like all of us. But if you don't get out of my way, I'll do more than break you. I'll make you watch."

Triss winced, and looked away from the skeleton monster. Jack, this curse Jack, may have had more going on in his head than Triss realized, but that didn't change that he was so fucking twisted, it made her sick. Twisted, cruel, and sick. Jacob paled in comparison to how fucking mean the kid was, and the shit he was willing to do to make his desires a reality.

Asking him to Dominate some kine, and bring them to Jacob for the execution and ritual to the Crone, may have hurt Jack, but this Jack must have enjoyed it.

Triss looked to Angela, who clutched her knife in front of her, eyes wide, and panic ripping through her. This was the fucking cunt who killed Jack's sister, and nearly killed his mother. This was the psycho who stood with Jeremiah, shoulder to shoulder, when the man threw away the lives of his hunters, for a shot at killing Azamel. This was the bitch who killed her Superman. Triss was going to enjoy killing her.

"You're a fucking monster!" Angela said. "All of you! Fucking monsters, every last one of you. You kill humans, you eat them, you hunt them and you infect them! Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!" Tears were in her eyes now, and she almost tripped over her fellow hunter's leg as she stepped further back. "You killed Jeremiah! My father!" She knew she was trapped. She knew the only reason Beatrice hadn't shot her too, was because getting shot to death was too quick a death for her. She knew the only thing standing between her and a painful, torturous end, was the monster in front of her, her mom, the monster she'd been looking to kill for years.

The struggle was blatant on her face, and Beatrice couldn't help but smile as she took a step closer.

"Angela, please!" Athalia turned more, until she was looking at Angela on the stage. "Please, I'm trying to help you! I know I couldn't help you before. I know I... that I ruined your life, daughter. Please, let me help you now, before these—"

"Fuck you, monster! You're not—"

"I am your mother, Angie!"

"Don't call me that!" The hunter's voice rose so high, it silenced them all. They all stood frozen, stunned, as Angela took a step closer to the stage edge, undoing her retreat seconds before. "Jeremiah is the only family I ever had. And now he's dead! Killed, by monsters. All of you, you're nothing but monsters." Tears flowed from her eyes until they dripped from her chin. "We would have done anything to make sure you all died. If I had to kill hundreds, thousands of innocents, to make sure your kind were wiped out, I would! It'd save more lives, in the end. And you!" She pointed to Jack, eyes wide, hand shaking. "You. You're the worst thing I've ever run into, ever dealt with. You—"

Beatrice shot her in the stomach. The shock on Angela's crying face was delicious, for a second. As the weeping girl fell onto her ass next to her dead friend, Athalia turned and lunged for Beatrice. She didn't get far. Jack grabbed a pew, a long, heavy slab of wood, and slammed it down on the skeleton monster. Wood shattered, splinters and shards going everywhere. He hadn't been gentle, and Athalia crashed down into the floor of her nightmare church. She didn't get back up.

Beatrice looked down at the skeleton monster, who had one of her huge arms outstretched, reaching for her. Triss was on the outside edge of the church, though, and as long as she stayed that way as she walked toward Angela, the monster couldn't reach her. It was hard, damn hard, to not look down at Athalia, as she marched toward her daughter, but she managed. Angela was the target. Ignore Athalia. Nothing else mattered.

Before Athalia could recover and get back up, Jack came around to her face, and met her eyes, her strange, skull eyes with small glowing white dots in them, and snarled.

"Do not move from this spot, and do not interfere." His voice was resonant, filling the church with far more bass than the little guy should have been able to summon. But, he did, and Triss felt his voice roll through her as the curse stared down into Athalia's soul.

The monster did not move.

"Please... Jack... she's my daughter."

"Your daughter killed my sister, and my sire. Your daughter stabbed my mother. Your daughter has slaughtered... I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? I could describe a thousand atrocities your daughter's committed, and it just wouldn't matter, would it?" He squatted down in front of Athalia's huge, strange, alien skull, and shook his head like an annoyed dog trainer. "Where's Fiona? What'd you do to her?"

"Nothing. She's... in Azamel's lair, waiting. I told her Jeremiah was likely to go there."

"You really wanted to save Azamel, didn't you?" Triss said. Fiona, spider monster Fiona at least, was supposed to help with the assault on the hunters if things went into the dream. They did, and instead of getting her help, Athalia told Fiona to stay out of the way, essentially. At least if Fiona was in Azamel's lair, she might have been able to help the old woman if Jeremiah had gone there.

Christ, Athalia had risked their lives on that gambit. If any paranormals had died on this assault, Triss probably would have shot Athalia in the head, because she kinda deserved it. But maybe Athalia knew Jack, the cursed Jack, would be able to handle whatever Jeremiah threw at him. The whole time, she'd been looking for an opportunity to save her daughter, even if it meant they all died. It was hard to hate her for that, even if she did deserve the hate, and worse. She was a mom, doing mom things.

"... yes, I did. Azamel's been our caregiver, and we owe her much." The skeleton monster shook her head as her massive claws dug at the church floor. Did she have a way out of this nightmare chamber? Cause it certainly seemed like a dead end. Maybe she expected Angela to accept her help faster. Maybe she had another escape route, from this chamber into another, and into another, and into another, and Jack had simply caught up faster than she'd hoped.

As Athalia began to sob, the joy Triss felt drained away, until all that was left were the sounds of the weeping monster. It was a fucking sad night, for everyone. Try as she might to be elated over this, to find the joy she had moments before, Triss couldn't wipe away the cold feeling in her gut that only grew with every moment.

"She's a monster!" Angela said, spitting blood over her lips as she did. "You... you all are... monsters... every last one of you. Fucking monsters. You killed Dad. You... you..."

"Please don't kill my daughter, Jack."

Jack stepped over Athalia like stepping over roadkill, and made his way toward the stage, and Angela. "She's got to die," he said, speaking to Athalia, eyes on Angela, "and you know it."

Athalia may have been bound by Jack's Dominate to not move from her spot, but that didn't mean she couldn't turn around and watch the two vampires closing in on her daughter. She was crying. In her monster form, it didn't sound like sobs, but a strange, grinding rasp, quiet, and unnerving.

Jack and Beatrice stood on the stage, and looked down at Angela. She still had her knife, and she held it in front of her with one hand, like she'd be able to use it in a fight. But, she was sitting on her ass, back to the wall behind her, and her blood was pooling down the fingers of her other hand, pressed to her gut.

"Do you know who I am?" Beatrice said.

Angela hocked up a nasty, bloody bit of snot and saliva onto Beatrice's pants. Triss could have dodged it, even with her busted legs barely held together by what little vitae she had. But, something about the moment, the scene before her, of a defeated, crying human expending their last ounce of effort to spite her, demanded she let the hunter have her final act of defiance.

"I'll take that as a no." Beatrice squatted down in front of Angela, ignored the corpse next to her, and glared. She had a good glare, when she stared hard with her snake eyes. It was enough to unnerve other Kindred, let alone a bleeding kine. "Beatrice. In the hospital, when you were going to kill Jack's mom, you killed a vampire named Julias. Julias was Jack's sire. He was also my lover."

Maybe Angela realized what Beatrice had realized, that in this final moment, some rules weren't to be broken. Angela got to have her last moment of heroic defiance, and Beatrice got to have her evil villain monologue speech.

"Vampires don't have lovers. You have—"

Beatrice snarled, loudly, until she felt her guts threaten to spill from how tight her abs clenched. She jammed the barrel of the pistol against Angela's forehead, hard enough to pin Angela's head to the wall. The bitch dropped her knife with the impact, and once her brains probably stopped rattling around in her head, her eyes opened wide, meeting Beatrice's.

"He was the love of my life, you fucking bitch! He was my everything. My... everything." Like a tidal wave, everything she'd been keeping down slammed into her. The sound of his voice, the touch of his fingers, the way he held her from behind and set his chin on her head, the way he told jokes, bad ones, the way he could be loving and soft one moment, then imposing and powerful the next.

If she'd been blushing life, she'd have cried tears, as she held the gun to Angela's head. This person was the reason the greatest thing she'd ever had in her life was gone, this fucked up psychopath, this broken woman, this idiot. All Angela was, was a disturbed kine who'd met up with a fucker named Jeremiah. He'd slipped into her life, filled the parent role, and channeled her fucked up brain into being a hunter.

With a gun to her head, Angela froze, but the defiance in her eyes didn't leave. Beatrice thought that, just maybe, Angela would break, and become a sobbing baby who'd whine and beg for her life. She didn't. As the cruel, harsh reality of a gun against her head sank in, Angela's face changed into something Beatrice never expected.

She looked relieved.

"Don't shoot her," Jack said, grin growing as he stared down at the woman. "At least not yet. Come on, she killed Julias. I was there. She ordered another hunter to shoot him dead, when the man had given everything he could to save my life, Jack's life, and my mother's. She executed him, Beatrice. The man was on his knees, spent and ruined." He squatted down next to her, mad smile growing wider as he looked the woman in the eyes. "We should have some fun with her at least. I can make her pull her intestines out, one foot at a time. I can make her do worse. I still owe her for torturing me."

Beatrice slowly turned her head from Angela, to the demon next to her. Tony, Viktor, they'd been fucking assholes, but even they didn't talk like that. What the fuck.

And now that she was here, with a gun pressed to the head of the woman who ruined her life, the idea of torturing her was fading away. Dancing in her blood, delighting in her pain, none of that appealed to her anymore. Maybe it was because Jack was next to her, providing a very clear image of what it'd be like to completely give into her Beast's dark urges. Or maybe it was because Athalia was forty feet away in the center of a creepy church, crying as inevitability finally came crashing down. Or maybe it was because Angela was nothing more than a rabid animal, deranged and violent, and needed to die.

There had been satisfaction, for a little while. Beatrice loved watching the fuckers get destroyed by Jack, but that part was over. Now it was just slaughter. She thought she wanted that. She thought she wanted to string Angela upside down, and slit her throat, after thoroughly beating her within an inch of her life. She'd plant Nightmares in the girl's head, if she could get past the warding on the woman's body. Jack could get past them easily, and he'd happily make her torture herself to death in ways Beatrice probably couldn't even imagine. And she thought she'd love that. Now, in the end, she knew she wouldn't.

"Do it," Angela whispered. Her voice was a wavering mess, on the verge of sobs again, but never breaking. Even as tears continued to stream down her face, she kept her eyes open, glaring at the two vampires. "Do it."

"Alright...Angela." Triss lowered her head, stood up, and pointed the gun at Angela once again.

The world froze, as it had a habit of doing the past couple years. Often, something big would happen, something dangerous, something epic, something deadly, and everything would freeze as her brain tried to understand and process the sensory overload. But, this wasn't like those times. This was like that one other time the world froze for her, when she saw Jack's face, seconds before he told her Julias was dead. This was the world freezing because it'd grown so cold, it had to. This was the god damn universe telling her, forcing her to feel with agonizing cruelty, the reality of what was happening.

A final tear dripped off of Angela's chin, and Triss pulled the trigger.