Chapter 11: Madhouse 3-2

Hell is Hell.

lThat much is obvious, but I don't think people realize what that means. Imagine the most awful, nightmarish imagery you can imagine...then amplify that a thousandfold. That doesn't even begin to describe Hell. It's like the place was specially crafted to be all kinds of fucked up, to target all types of fears. It was less of a place and more of a formless maelstrom of pain and torment, only taking form to further fuck with you.

And I was there, in this nightmare dimension.

When I was younger, I used to love vampires. I'd read Bram Stoker and even Anne Rice novels. So you'd expect me to be more prepared for this vampire bullshit, right? Well, no. This was nothing like I'd expected. And I'd never read about vampires being able to throw others into some kind of hell dimension. From day one, I pretty much learned to forget everything I thought I knew, so at this point I wasn't too surprised.

I was in a field made of nightmares and nasty memories. Above, the sky was black as death, and the ground below me was squishy as if it were made from beaten flesh. The smell of rotting meat filled my nostrils. It was overpowering and, since I was undead, I didn't have the mercy of being able to gag. I tried to move, but it looks like I was slowly sinking into the "earth" beneath me. It was almost suffocating, the way that the ground just digested me. And no matter how strong I was, I wasn't strong enough to escape.

"Vance?!"

Suddenly, I was at my parents' house in New Hampshire. It was a dark and stormy night outside. Rain pelted against the window, and thunder boomed outside. Below me was my father, splayed about on the ground, a pool of blood beneath him. I turned my gaze towards my mother, her face stained with tears. She held a shotgun in her hands, shaking like a leaf as she pointed at me.

What? This couldn't be real.

"M-Mom?" I asked, stepping forward.

She quickly stepped back, shaking even more violently than before. "D-Don't fucking move! Or I'll blow your fucking head off!"

Woah. I never heard my mother speak like that before! No, this couldn't be real at all. Yet...it felt real. It felt more real than even my most vivid dream. I could smell the fresh, warm crimson coming from my father's corpse. I could hear the rain violently splashing against the window, the loud thrum of the thunder booming in the sky. Everything about this indicated it was reality.

"Okay, okay…" I said, raising my hands. "Mom, I don't...I don't know what happened."

"You're sick, Vance." She said, her tone harsh. "You broke into the house and killed your father."

"I-I...I killed him?" I asked in disbelief. That couldn't be true. I'd never kill my parents! But the situation was undeniable. My father's body was lifeless, I could tell by his lack of heartbeat. Judging by the situation, my mother had just seen me kill him. But none of this made sense. How could I have killed him?

"I...no." I muttered. "I was in...I was in Foxy Boxes, going after an Asian vampire…"

"Asian vampire?!" My mother barked. "You killed your father! Your father is dead!"

My eyes widened. "No! Mom, I-"

"I'm sorry."

A loud boom and a kick, my mother blew a hole clean through me. I fell back from the sheer force, freefalling into an abyss. Nothingness. Had I died? Had she killed me? No, this was worse. I felt nothing, blanketed by absolute nothingness. If I closed my eyes, there would be no difference in what I was seeing. Surrounded by a void as far as the eye could see, destroyed by my own mother.

I woke up with my head in Justine's lap. Everything was as it was that fateful night. We were in the same cheap hotel. Justine was stripped down to her bra and panties, and I was naked. She'd just been humming something lightly while stroking my hair. The gesture was oddly...motherly. Although she couldn't have been a day over 23, her demeanor was much, much older.

"What..?" I started, my mind in a stupor.

"Shh." She said gently. "Your mind is recovering from the Embrace...it isn't uncommon to have visions."

"Visions?" I groaned. "I...I don't understand. First I was at Foxy Boxes, then… Justine, you're alive…?"

She smiled warmly. "Of course I am, silly. I was just going to tell you what you're in store for."

My vision blurred. Was I crying? Yes, I was crying. I didn't know why I was so overjoyed to see Justine. Maybe it was because the nightmare I'd experienced in the last two nights wasn't real. It's as she said: I was just experiencing visions. There was no LaCroix, no Mercurio or thin-bloods. They were all just figments of my imagination.

My undead heart dropped as soon as I heard her cackling.

Justine's gaze was absolutely malicious. Her eyes were orbs of blood red, and her mouth was a maw of jagged teeth. Spittle and saliva flowed down from the corners of her mouth, dripping upon my flesh. As she cackled, her voice distorted, becoming deeper. Soon, her laughter was a chorus of laughter, absolutely inhuman. If this was reality and what I'd experienced up until now was a nightmare, I wanted to go back to the nightmare.

"You weakling!" She roared, her voice the voice of a legion. "You couldn't stop yourself from becoming a monster! How many have you killed?!"

I rolled right off of her lap, colliding with the cold floor. I ran straight for my door, glancing back as Justine's form began to change. It expanded, becoming segmented like a centipede. Dozens of arms sprouted from her sides, faces and eyes growing all over her elongated, deformed body. All of the faces were contorted into malicious grins. Her body moved sinuously off of the bed, slowly drawing closer and closer to me.

My door wouldn't open for some reason. I repeatedly slammed my shoulder against it, only opening it on the third try, when the monster that was Justine was the closest. Without looking, I ran through, only to end up in my room again. It was as if I'd walked out of the bathroom rather than the apartment. Justine turned her deformed, bulbous head towards me, her mouth opening to be unnaturally wide. She moved towards me with utterly supernatural speed, tackling me to the ground. I tried to get her off of me, but I suddenly felt weak. She was too heavy.

"NOURISH ME, WEAKLING!" One of her mouths roared. Once again, she cackled as her mouths began taking a bite out of me. Huge chunks of my body were removed, and I seized up from the pain. It was the most excruciating thing I'd ever experienced, being torn apart like this. Once again, I descended into the abyss, falling into the void of unconsciousness. Maybe I was dead and this really was Hell. Maybe I deserved this for what I did at the beach house.

"Dude! Wake up!"

The choked-sounding voice of Knox Harrington awakened me from my daze. I was in Foxy Boxes, standing in the exact same spot I had been when the Asian vampire appeared. The vampire in question was currently on top of Knox, strangling him. I moved almost automatically, breaking into a sprint and slamming my foot right into the vampire's chest, sending him flying into the wall and bouncing off.

"Agh...thank you, man." Knox muttered, standing up but staying in a low crouch. "That dude is, like, crazy strong, dude!"

I watched as the vampire slowly got up, recovering rather quickly. I didn't know how hard I kicked him, but I had a feeling he should've been down quite a bit longer than that.

"Knox, what are you doing here?!" I hissed.

"Oh man! I just, like, followed you here dude!" Knox said, using his normal tone of voice even though we were in the middle of a heated battle. "It didn't feel right to let you run into a fight with somethin' you don't know about, man! Especially not since you were so nice to me!"

I wouldn't exactly call my behavior towards him nice, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Either way, I didn't have time to, as the vampire immediately lunged. With surprising speed, Knox intercepted him, flanking him at the side and drop kicking him in the chest. That sent the vampire flying into a pile of wooden crates, making the entire structure come down on him.

Wow. Knox was a lot more competent than I thought. I saw the same electrical aura that engulfed Jack engulf him, except it was different. Fainter. I suspected that he had a weaker version of whatever ability that Jack had.

"Dude!" He called out, kicking an object to me. I caught it with no problem. It was an aluminum baseball bat, the same as the one that Knox was holding.

The crates exploded into splinters as the Asian vampire rose. He moved quickly - so quickly that he was a blur - immediately clashing with Knox. Knox was just barely fast enough to dodge the slash from the vampire's blade. I sprinted over to assist him, batting the vampire in the back of the head to prevent him from attacking again. He was to quick though, too quick. Before I could make contact with his skull, he was gone. I had to stop my swing before I hit Knox.

"What the hell?" I asked. "Where is he?"

"I told ya, man! He can just disappear and reappear." Knox warned. "Be ready, dude."

Suddenly, the vampire appeared out of nowhere and lunged. Knox was ready, though, and he swung his bat directly at him. I heard a loud bwong as the metal made contact with his head, denting the metal quite a bit and knocking the vampire down. I took the opportunity to attack, swinging my bat down like a hammer, but again the vampire was too quick. He swept my feet from under me and, in a fluid movement, kipped up. Knox attacked again, but the vampire spun gracefully and kicked the ghoul right in the chest, sending him flying into a concrete pillar.

I threw a kick towards his knee, but the vampire rose his shin and kicked me in the side of the leg, making my entire limb ring in pain and sending the kick off of its course. He stabbed his sword into my shoulder, which made me scream. That fucked smarted. Knox got back up and tackled the vampire to the ground, which the vampire had clearly been expecting. As they fell, he used the momentum to tumble so that he was now on top. I would've helped, but I was currently pinned to the ground. The sword pierced through me and the concrete.

"Dude! You gotta" - He let out a pained ugh as the Asian vampire punched him - "do something!"

I would've retorted, but I was in too much pain to say anything. He was right, though. Knox was a lot more skilled than I'd originally expected him to be, but he was just a ghoul. An enhanced human. He was going against a vampire, and losing badly.

So, what were my options?

I couldn't reach into my backpack to grab my gun, not that it mattered. My tiny revolver wouldn't do jack shit to him. It wasn't like I had a shotgun or something useful for fighting vampires. He wasn't bleeding, so I couldn't manipulate his blood, and I couldn't focus for long enough to make him purge it. That put my options squarely in "jack shit" territory. For a moment, Knox gained the upper hand, pulling a reversal on the vampire and ending up on top, getting a few of his own punches in, but ultimately being reversed himself.

Okay. Improvise. What could I do? Well, I could see auras...which was useless. I could try to compel him, but even if I could manage to make eye contact with the Asian vampire, I had some severe doubts that I'd be able to get him to do anything he didn't want to do. Maybe I could do something with blood? He wasn't bleeding at all, but I was. If I could manipulate the blood of other people, why can't I control my own?

I cut my palm on the blade of the sword.

"Come on…" I muttered, closing my eyes. Surely enough, I found that deep, quiet power within my own blood. I focused on moulding it, forming it. Once I had a form in mind, I thrust my bleeding hand out. A cord of flexible, almost viscous blood shot out from my wound, sticking to the back of the vampire's neck and wrapped around his throat. I jerked back, making his skull slam into the concrete hard enough to create a crack.

Knox quickly got up, watching as my blood spread over the vampire's body at my command, sticking and binding to him.

"Brooo! I didn't know you could do that!" Knox said. "Fuckin' Tremere, man! So cool!"

"Not now, Knox!" I growled. "Help me up!"

Knox muttered, "Ah shit!" Before coming to my rescue. He grabbed the handle of the blade and pulled back with what I presumed was all his might. It took a while, but eventually the katana was dislodged from my shoulder. I quickly got up, moving my arm experimentally. To my surprise, I could still move it and it didn't hang lamely at my side. Perks of being a vampire, I supposed.

"Give me the katana." I told Knox. "My blood isn't going to keep him down forever."

"What? Dude, no!" Knox protested. "You have a perfectly working baseball bat!"

I gave him a look, but had no time to say anything back. The Asian vampire broke out of the blood shackles I'd created for him, dashing straight for me. I swung my baseball bat, but he blocked my hit with his forearm, taking a hold of my wrist and disarming me. Once I was disarmed, he judo flipped me over the shoulder, slamming me to the ground hard enough to crack it.

Knox took the opportunity to attack, swinging the katana at the vampire's ankle. He hissed loudly as the blade sliced through his ankle like butter, making him stumble. I took the opportunity to clock him in the jaw, sending him crashing down to the floor. He tried to get back up, but his mobility was pretty limited without his right foot. Quickly, I got up and kicked him in the face, sending blood splattering across the floor. Knox sealed the deal, stabbing his blade through the vampire's heart.

What happened was...not what I expected. Instead of turning into ash like a normal vampire would, I watched as his body began to rapidly decay. One second, he looked normal - albeit wounded. The next? He was nothing but a putrefied carcass as if he'd been dead for months. For the second time that night, my nostrils were filled with the scent of rotting meat. I couldn't gag, so Knox gagged for me.

"Dude!" He whined. "That. Is. Gnarly! Aw man."

I turned to him. "Thanks for helping me out. I was caught in that vision and...well, I don't know what would've happened if you didn't step in."

"Oh man!" He said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I saved a vampire! I fought a vampire! Oh man, this is so freakin' cool! Oh man, oh man!"

My eyebrow twitched in annoyance. "Hey now, calm down-"

"Oh, dude! I totally won't mention me having to help to Bertram." Knox said. "If you let me keep this cool ass katana. Look at it, man! It's like a war trophy!"

I eyed the katana. Having something like that would be useful, but it isn't exactly easy to conceal. The prospect of walking around Santa Monica with a katana didn't strike me as very smart either, what with all of the cops and all. It probably wasn't very smart for Knox to do it either, but he could do what he wanted.

"Sure, dude." I said. "You can have it."

Without another word to each other, we walked out of the building. This was a very valuable lesson to me: don't underestimate people. That, and make sure you're sufficiently prepared before fighting a vampire. As I walked through the streets of Santa Monica, I thought about the visions I had. I saw my mother pointing a shotgun at me, and I saw Justine. How did he know what I feared? Did he go into my mind, or did he show me a world that showed me my nightmares? I shuddered as I thought about it.

Things are just getting more and more fucked, aren't they? I thought to myself, continuing on into the night.