Damien shrugged. "God has mercy for humans, and plenty of it. Not for us, but for you."
That earned two raised brows from the woman. She pushed off the barrier to stand up straight again, and stared at him, tilting her head to the side. "I thought the Lancea et Sanctum were wiped out in this city."
How did these hunters know this much? It had to be Elen's magic, or Jeremiah's unusual skill set; or both.
"They were, except for me. I survived."
"Yeah well, God doesn't seem to give a shit about hunters, so you're not going to sell me on converting."
He sighed, louder this time. Dolareido didn't care for religion, and neither did the hunters. The only people who thought God still existed was him, who spent fifty years hiding underneath streets and in filth, and a dried-up corpse vampire woman, whose lover and loyal servant of God was dead. With the way the world was going, he couldn't blame people for their lack of faith. But a little faith could go a long way.
"Dolareido rarely had deaths, hunter, of those that didn't deserve it. Even Azamel, for all the ire she's earned, has done little since arriving. The Kindred of Dolareido have changed quite a bit since Tony and Viktor's deaths. Surely we weren't on any hunter radar." Normally it'd be Jack saying these things, but the boy was in no mindset to be playing ambassador or peace talker; and he wasn't here. If Damien could pull it off, well, the better for everyone.
"You're right, you weren't. But, you gave that elephant freak monster sanctuary. And besides that, you're vampires. You'll eventually cause problems. We might as well kill you along with all the other paranormals. Kind of like a crusade, you know? And hey, if you're a God-fearing vamp, I'm sure you know what those are."
Damien's sigh turned into a quiet growl. Jack was right. There was no communicating with these people, and that was infuriating because he knew not all the hunters had to be mindless killing machines or genocidal crusaders, with zero consideration for specifics. The Devil is in the details, and that was a painful lesson Damien had learned the hard way, a lesson these hunters had yet to.
He glanced over his shoulder at Fiona. The smile on her face had faded, and her shoulders slumped. She had stayed close to him, and was peeking out from behind him at the hunter. Scared. This was the first time she'd ever faced a hunter, while forced to stay in her vulnerable human body. Worse, this was the first time she'd ever heard the words of a true believer of their cause, someone of complete faith in their views of the world, willing to kill her.
Vicky and Parker were pressing up against the other side of the circle, trying to get out. They were getting a little more panicked, each trying hard enough to escape to force their shoes to slide on the concrete beneath them.
"... Matthew," he said, "transform. See if you can break through this."
The big guy wasted no time. The juggernaut of strength began to grow, fur pouring out of him as muscle mass appeared from nowhere. Weight, solid, heavy, filled his body, turning the already big man into a Goliath of towering proportions. The hunter stepped back and stared up as Matthew hit seven feet in height, then eight, then nine, and nearly hit ten feet. He would have, if it wasn't for how his head and neck set forward from the shoulders instead of above.
Damien had to step back to give the gargantuan creature his space. His arms were nearly as thick as Damien's whole body, and with the wolf's forward hunched posture, they dangled enough to almost reach the floor beneath him. His tail was big enough Damien had to step back several times to keep out of its way, and doing so drew his eyes to the beast's feet. Not paws, but monstrous feet that looked more at home on a dinosaur than any wolf, with talons there were already starting to puncture the concrete with the Uratha's weight.
The werewolf's breath was slow, but loud and heavy, enormous lungs fueling the giant creature. His snout was thick and long, and his mane of fur around his neck thicker than the short fur on the rest of his body, almost like a lion. His ears were pointed at the hunter, and he rumbled animal aggression deep in his chest loud enough Damien felt the vibration through his shoes.
The hunter gulped, but managed to keep her eyes on Matt as she stared up at the hungry, angry beast. Brave, this woman.
"The reason I'm this close," she said, "is because this detonator won't punch through concrete from too far."
However the barrier worked, it didn't seem to block sound. From further down the tunnel, a couple of hunters appeared, each armed with assault rifles, grenades, knives, the works. Shit.
Matt started clawing at the barrier. He had to get through the ring barrier that circled them first; the second barrier could wait, if they were going to even attempt it. Three hunters were manageable, but not if the one with a detonator started the fight off with an—
Boom. The shock wave was immense, far greater than Damien could have predicted; which was stupid, now that he thought about it. Their attack on the Begotten's nightmare had proven the hunters had access to heavy explosives. Why wouldn't they use some now? Well, they were in a tunnel, and detonating a high-yield explosive could cause it to collapse, especially since it seemed to come from above. They must have dug it in there somehow, or concealed it, for no one to see it or smell it.
The realities flashed through his mind, before other images did. A quick glance to Vicky, Parker, and Matt showed them all slowly turning their heads upward, to the source of the shock wave. The world had gone into slow motion, just like in the films. He brought his eyes to the small woman hiding behind him, and winced as he saw the shock painted on her face as she looked up.
His vampire discipline Celerity kicked into override, a thousand times more effective than any human's adrenaline. Speed at his fingertips, absurd speed, the sort that had let him cut off Antoinette's arm and leg, the sort that helped him save Fiona in the nightmare from the unrelenting gunfire, and now, it'd help him save her again, God willing.
Except, they were trapped inside the circle, and among the blast coming down for their heads, were giant blocks of concrete that would crush them into paste. Matt might live, but the rest of them weren't going to be so lucky. And yet, that reality didn't seem to stop him from trying. Parker was Daeva, another practitioner of Celerity, but the man wasn't ready for this; lazy idiot. As the blocks slowly fell, Damien sped toward him, slammed a palm into his stomach so he'd start falling down, and then slammed a palm into Vicky's back toward her partner, so she'd fall on top of him. He made sure his punches were downward angled, and strong enough to drive them into the floor fast so Vicky would land on him before the concrete did. She was a Ventrue, resilient, and had the better chance of survival.
He, on the other hand, was going to break like glass. Ah well. He threw a punch upward, hitting one of the falling blocks, the world still a slow motion symphony of falling death, and used the reversed momentum to drive himself down onto Fiona. Her golden brown eyes were wide with shock. He stared into them as he fell on top of her, smiling, and bracing his weight into his elbows as he put his chest over her head. With any luck, she'd live.
He didn't look up as the explosion crashed into them. It wasn't fire, napalm or such, thank the Lord. It was pure kinetic force though, and it crushed them all into the subway tunnel floor like pancakes. Pain wracked his body, a blanket of agony from head to feet, before the individual balls of pain joined in. Thud. Thud. Sickening crunches, sounds he recognized: bones breaking. He could hear them because they were inside his body, punching through the ringing deafness the explosion caused. Each crunch took a moment to echo with pain, but it did, and it wasn't long before the sonata of agony overwhelmed him. The concrete came in two waves. The first fueled by the explosion's punch, turning each giant block into enormous bullets, and with the second wave, larger chunks of concrete fell, slower, fueled by gravity.
One hit his back. Another hit his shoulder, then forearm of the same arm. Then the other arm, the hand. Another hit his lower back, and others hit his legs in various places. One falling block of death crashed into his ankle, and summoned a cacophony of misery through him as he felt the joint shatter. Another hit the floor in front of his head before toppling down onto his skull; lucky, or it'd have shattered his head like a glass jar.
Worse was the weight of the blocks. Jagged and misshapen, the heavy pieces of rubble crushed him into the ground, pinned him, dug into his broken limbs. He couldn't move, the weight unrelenting, oppressive, and uncaring. And, with time, all was silent.
But, he was alive; as much as a Kindred could be. Groaning, he tried to push against the floor, and couldn't. The very attempt reignited the pain into a concert of agony, and he groaned, unable to muster the energy for a proper cry or sob as his body shrieked in torment. A jagged, sharp piece of concrete was sitting on his head, but another was resting on that, pinning his skull down, and a mess of chaos and weight pinned his limbs. Bones were broken, a hand and wrist, an ankle, a leg, an arm, ribs, and he had the distinct impression one of his hips was, too.
The world was quiet. Underneath rubble, and lots of it, sound was muffled and turned into nothing more than quiet rumbles. Darkness. He groaned again as the pain danced up and down his body, demanding he move but knowing full well he couldn't. A Gangrel or Ventrue would have been able to take the blows better, but not a Mekhet. Vicky was Ventrue, so, maybe she'd pull through?
An explosion ripped outward from the pile that buried him, and his groans turned into shouts as he felt the weight shift, and the darkness split with beams of light. Someone had torn their way out from under the rubble. Matthew.
Half the rubble that covered Damien flew into the air, outside the barrier, including the block that pinned Damien's head to the floor. With it gone, he managed to lift his head enough to look around, and force down his groan as he started taking stock of the situation. His spine was intact, at least, if he could move his head, and send agony into his limbs trying to move them, too.
