Fic for norilys (1/3)
Title: Until the Sun Burns Down
Pairing: Akame
Word count: ~23k
Rating: R
Warnings: vampires AU, double timeline, references to Kame's solo 1582, love\hate relationships
Notes: Dear norilys, I hope you like this! Thanks to my betas and to my friends for brainstorming and hand-holding!
This fic is inspired by the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire and its film adaptation.
Summary: Days, months, years, centuries of longing and searching for answers he isn't even sure he could find... yet he continues in this path, haunted by his past, because Jin is condemned to live with those feelings, until the sun burns down...
Paris, 2000
Kazuya hated museums and despised art, but Jin had always thought this was rather strange.
The Louvre was deserted at this time and only the sound of steps echoed through the long halls of the palace that had belonged to the kings long ago.
Kazuya hated when his victims called him beautiful, touching with enchantment the smooth skin of his perfect face. His brilliant blue eyes always shined with indignation at hearing this word and then he took their lives without playing, not really enjoying the hunt anymore.
Jin had always thought it was strange because Kazuya loved to gently caress Jin’s cheek, kiss his neck with his cold lips, and whisper softly into his ear how beautiful Jin was.
He looked again at the colorful prospect in his hands. He was close already. His eyes briefly landed on the enigmatic smile of Giaconda, leaving him absolutely indifferent. Another room, and he reached his destination; the painting, the one he was searching for, was hanging on the wall. Near it, the dim light of a lamp was the only source of illumination. But Jin didn’t need it at all; his brilliant green eyes could perfectly see every detail of this painting created by the brush of a very famous painter from the 17th century.
Jin knew this was all a lie. The little numbers were lost in the different strains of the colorful kimono that embraced the figure of a dancer exposing his pale shoulder. His face was hidden under long strands of hair. One hand was thrown back graciously, as if the young man had been depicted while dancing.
1582
The numbers. Jin touched the pale shoulder but could only feel the canvas and the paint. Yet, his mind was soon filled with memories of sensations he thought he had forgotten: the touch of the smooth, marble-like skin, so tempting and alluring, the whispers in the night, and the last gaze of the person he had betrayed.
Kazuya hated paintings as well as his own reflection, so how could someone capture every second of his dance in different paintings, each dating from different years and centuries? Jin had to find the one who did it and demand answers to all the questions that were eating him alive.
A disgusting cold feeling spread inside of him. This had been Jin’s enigma for the last centuries, the enigma he still couldn’t understand at all.
Kazuya was his enigma.
*
The dark narrow streets with dim lights hide the lonely figure from the eyes of passerby, his footsteps producing a dull echo. The leather gloves tightly embrace his long fingers, hiding his smooth, too pale skin. A fedora hides his eyes and a long dark overcoat completes the mysterious aura of this man.
He arrives at a magnificent bridge, in this empty hour, only a few cars rushing by, showering him with the blinding lights of their headlights. This bridge looks almost the same as the first time he had been there, only now the artificial lighting is too bright. The little faces of cherubs and nymphs that decorate the bridge are looking mockingly at him, but Jin knows this is just his imagination. They were made of stone centuries ago, and they have no soul. They’re just empty shells.
What an irony, he thinks and a bitter smile appears on his full lips. What is the difference between him and these sculptures then?
The green eyes throw a quick look around at the deserted bridge. Paris looks alive with all the colorful lights of a night city, the Eiffel Tower hovering like an ugly caricature over the middle of the beautiful city. But it's not what Jin is longing for, what he is searching for, what led him here.
He has been wandering around the world, because of this question sinking into his chest like a sharp knife, making him feel pain, an endless torturous and killing pain. But the awaiting death just never comes.
He is alone. He’s been alone for the last years, always, searching for answers and trying to understand why he’s alive.
The pale moon has no answers, neither does his heart. He can only hear silence, the suffocating silence that echoes in the emptiness of his heart.
His life had been empty even before and that isn’t Kazuya’s fault. Maybe he himself is the one to blame and no one else. It’s always easier to place all the guilt on someone else’s shoulders and try to escape by using high words as a shield, while inside, cowardice is eating you alive.
He stands on the edge of the bridge, feeling that only one step separates him from falling. Does he even have anything to regret, to miss, to feel sorry for?
Jin looks at the dark river under his feet, so deep and so inviting, just one step, only one step. But it can’t give him the desired deliverance from his existence. The memories appear before his eyes. This place, this bridge and Kazuya with his glossy eyes shining under the moonlight, his red lips curved into a smirk, playing, provoking and knowing what kind of power he has, and his voice slipping under the skin and making you lose all will, leaving only a spreading desire to succumb to the pleasure, to follow the steps into the insanity that burns in his brilliant blue eyes.
“This world belongs to us, Jin! Can you feel it?”
When was it? 50 years ago? A century ago? Or maybe even longer? Jin has been alone for so long he has stopped counting.
"Why Kazuya? Why have you condemned me to this life?" he whispers in the silence. A sudden rush of the wind and the dark fedora falls from his head, freeing his long black hair to frame the smooth, white, marble skin of his face and his brilliant green eyes. Too bright, too wild.
Inhuman.
*
Kyoto, 1852
The big house of a respected family full of goods and traditions, where the son must follow his father’s footsteps and become the grateful worthy heir who will increase the honor and the profits of the family.
But the only surviving son of this family was a good-for-nothing idler and his head was always full of strange ideas. This ungrateful disrespectful son dared to mock the philosophy and the morality of people who were ready to give their lives for the things they had believed in. Their names were engraved in the memory of every person who, thanks to these heroes, was now living a happy life. The son, who was the last hope and last comfort of the family that was dying inside, had no interest in the family’s business and didn’t even want to learn anything.
“This is absolutely unacceptable; we have to live and to cherish every moment of life. If he was ready to disembowel himself for the sake of ridiculous and high words, he was just a coward and had no courage to live and deal with it!”
Impudent, bold, insulting words ran from his mouth before he could understand what he had said, but even after he realized, he knew that there was nothing to regret. This was his truth. A hard slap in the face made his head jerk and he felt the disgusting taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. He could still feel the coldness of the heavy rings circling his mother’s slender fingers.
Jin and his mother looked at the world differently and they couldn’t find any compromise; they just hurt each other more and more with every new conversation, which always ended the same way. Jin hated it, her hypocritical façade, her stupid exaggerated philosophy that asked to give up everything, and the sanctimony of her smile. His family wanted him to learn the wisdom of his ancestors but Jin refused to follow in the footsteps of his brother who had killed himself for the sake of some high purpose, leaving him alone with a new responsibility and an emptiness that was tearing him apart.
Jin’s face was burning from his mother’s slap, but he showed her his defiance looking straight into her disappointed eyes filled with hatred. He couldn’t accept his mother’s reality, not in this life nor in another, no matter who he would be reborn as then.
Jin spent days wandering the crowded streets of Kyoto without any purpose and without any goal. He wasn’t searching for anything and he doubted anyone was searching for him. The life that was waiting for him made him feel sick inside, the already familiar feeling of apathy spreading with the understanding that he couldn’t change anything, his beliefs, the society, where he was born, who he was. He couldn’t revive his brother or his father who had also left this world. He had no strength and no idea what he believed in anymore. He felt lost in ideas that were too complicated with smart and deep meaning words he couldn’t really grasp and understand. It was suffocating. The contradiction between this society and his inner state pushed him to the edge of losing himself.
Jin had no philosophy; he didn’t need a philosophy to crave death. Even with the beauty of the world around him, the ancient architecture and the soft petals falling on his face, he couldn’t feel anything. The big house and the money and power he had in his hands now, he didn’t know what to do with them.
The playful lights of Shimabara invited him and his legs obediently went to a place where the dull emptiness inside his chest almost disappeared. The strong taste of alcohol burned his throat. Jin thought that his brother could just escape and Jin would never judge him, ever.
No matter how much he drank, the feelings still boiled inside of him. The faces around him were ugly, reminding him of his father’s face. Jin knew that he didn’t have any desire to live, to become like his father and obey the hypocritical false truths, to have a child who would lead the same life and almost be buried alive so young, just because it was the right thing to do.
The pliant body so close, the silk of her clothes and the aroma of the incense made him look around in a haze through the shroud. His head was too heavy. Her hands were touching his neck and helping their clothes to fall, but he felt nauseous because of the strong and sickly sweet smell that should have the purpose to help him relax.
Jin escaped from her hands, from the unbearable stuffiness of this place, running and running without any way to find salvation, only plunging more deeply into the abyss of despair, locking himself into a cage that he created but couldn’t find the way out of anymore.
He was only 23 and was already tired of living, of the pressure, the responsibility, and the faint-heartedness. Jin longed for death, invited it. But he couldn’t finish it himself and so he welcomed the one who would help him obtain the end of the hell inside his mind and heart.
Death appeared, already waiting for him, with a dirty face and decayed teeth. It came as a man in rags, stabbing him and taking his money because Jin was rich and because people without any moral restrictions existed.
This is an irony, was the last thought in Jin’s head, as he felt his life power leaving his tired body and suffering soul. This man wouldn’t give his life for any high purpose. Maybe he was like Jin?
Jin felt like he was falling and welcomed it, but the next moment, he felt somebody catch him and then, like the sky was so near. And maybe he was flying. Jin opened his eyes and was met with a brilliant blue gaze, and then came the pain. He was still in the air, so light, but panic rose inside of him. This was something wrong.
“Do you want to die?” The low voice came in a hot whisper. Jin tried to focus on the man who was speaking, but was too weak.
He was too young to die. The sharp pain on his neck burned. In that moment, all Jin could feel was horror, the disgusting horror that he would die. He was scared. What was waiting for him there? Darkness. No, he was not ready. The animalistic fear and the newly raised desire to live grew in him.
“No,” answered Jin and he knew that was the truth. He didn’t want to die, not yet. Maybe in his meaningless existence he would find answers. The horrible fear of darkness made him repeat, “No.”
Jin was too weak to die. He was afraid of darkness. But little did he know that soon, he would be born again to wander for eternity in darkness.
*
When Jin opened his eyes, he was in the street lying in dirt, feeling numb and painfully alive. He stood on his wobbly feet and returned to his home, the empty home that his mother had left, because Jin was a shame. Jin was the worst son and she had lost hope and faith in him. He lay waiting for death to come, feeling the pain and the fever, day after day. Before, it was just a nagging feeling in his chest, the melancholy, but now, it was real pain. Because of the man with blue eyes and the wounds that he had left on his neck, Jin felt like he had lost his vitality. He was ruined more and more inside with every passing minute, just waiting for the last moment and the last breath to escape from his dry lips. The bright radiance of the blues eyes seemed like a hallucination from his alcohol-polluted mind. The newly added pain to his already hurting state was unbearable and tearing him apart.
He heard a rustling sound, sensing a presence of someone else in his room.
“Who is here?” His voice sounded hoarse and his throat was dry. He wanted to ask for water, but was met with the same blue eyes that haunted him in his dreams, that looked too bright at his pale face, that were calling for him.
“I came to make your wish come true. Life has no meaning anymore, does it?” Those eyes were hypnotizing. The voice sounded so soothing, wrapping Jin in something warm. The stranger took a step towards him, moving in smooth motions.
“Food has no taste and alcohol doesn’t let you to find oblivion. There’s no reason for any of it?” The eyes were fixated on his and he couldn’t take his gaze away from the smooth skin without any wrinkle and the two brilliant blue eyes, which were so deep that he felt like he was drowning.
“What if I can give it to you? No more pain and another life that you have never imagined? It would be for all time and neither sickness nor death will ever touch you again,” the stranger continued, coming closer, his white face was just few inches away. The face was like a mask, without any tiny hint of human expression, absolutely emotionless.
“I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”
The words were spinning around, tempting, but Jin was too weak and exhausted from the pain, from his life. He wasn’t even sure what was going on, what exactly the stranger was talking about, but he wanted the pain to go away, he wanted something to change in his life, he wanted this unbearable despair that came with the understanding of how useless his existence was to just disappear. Jin had nothing to lose.
“You can die here as you want or always be young.” The words were like a spell caressing Jin’s ears and making him plunge into the mysterious web the stranger wrapped around his suffering heart and ill mind.
Too tired of his pointless life, Jin said yes to Kazuya’s propositions. He said yes to something that became worse than darkness for him.
*
Jin remembered his last sunset very well. He had seen so many sunrises and sunsets before, but the only one that was engraved in his memory was his last one. The sky was painted with wonderful stains, so painfully beautiful that he couldn’t take his eyes away from them. Everything seemed so unreal, colored by the warm hues.
“Have you bid your goodbye to the light?” He heard the soothing voice so close, caressing his ears so nicely. But the next second, Kazuya bit him. Jin had no idea what to expect so when he felt the strong hands holding him firmly and not letting him move, he was terrified. The pain struck and he lost all his strength. He was struggling, trying to free himself, to hit, but found no power even to move. He didn’t even notice when the sharp fangs left his flesh.
“I’ve drunk you to the point of death. If I leave you here, you will die. Or you can be young, forever, as we are now.”
Kazuya embraced him, Jin’s head on his chest. Jin tried to open his mouth and say something, but he found it impossible. He felt the cold fingers touching his cheek. He could only look motionlessly at Kazuya’s actions, how he bit his own wrist letting drops blood fall on Jin’s clothes and then, on his chin. He felt the taste on the tip of his tongue and Kazuya let him drink. Kazuya’s voice led him, telling him to be patient, to slow down, but Jin couldn’t control himself. He could hear the enormous drums in his ears. His only desire was to have more of this blood, yet this pain was still here. He felt betrayed. Why hadn’t the pain disappeared even a bit?
As Kazuya forced him to let go of his hand, he understood that the loud drums were the sound of Kazuya’s heartbeats mixed with his own, the sound of blood rushing through his veins. When the pain deafened him, it was worse than anything he had ever felt. He tried to squeeze his temples, to suppress the ache, but it was impossible. It was indescribable. He was tearing apart.
“You are dying.” He heard the voice and felt the cold fingers caress his forehead. “It happens to all of us.”
When Jin opened his eyes after few minutes, the pain was gone and the world was different, yet the same.
“Now, look with your vampire’s eyes.” Kazuya’s voice sounded breathless but amused. Jin looked around and found the brilliant blue eyes looking at him. It was different. Kazuya’s skin was so pale and smooth, even radiant and Jin couldn’t take his eyes away from the dark lips. He could see new colors, new details. Before, Kazuya looked so inhuman to Jin, so overwhelming. It was only now through vampire’s eyes that he could understand the beauty and perfection of the dark creature standing in front of him and how luscious red and inviting his lips really were. Kazuya’s mouth curved into a smile.
“Stop looking at my lips, you fool. Look around at the beauty of the night. But be careful; don’t fall in love with it.”
Jin took a step and raised his head to look at the sky. Now he understood what Kazuya meant. He spent hours spellbound, lost in the colors and sounds.
When he returned to his empty home, Kazuya was waiting for him. Jin couldn’t fight the desire to touch his skin, to understand how it felt, so beautiful, so tempting. Jin remembered the taste on the tip of his tongue. Kazuya took his hand and led him to the room that used to belong to his brother, a room that no one had entered for so long. Two coffins were resting in the middle, yet it didn’t even cross Jin’s mind to ask himself how they had appeared there.
“Don’t worry, you need to sleep. When you wake, I will be waiting for you and so will the whole world.”
Kazuya placed a kiss on his forehead and Jin lost himself in sleep.
The next evening, Jin woke with a hunger he had never felt before.
*
Kazuya was a perfect teacher who explained everything with passion, using visual teaching methods.
Always playing with his prey, elegantly, he liked making the oblivious victim fall into his perfect trap with her own steps. He enjoyed playing the game by the rules that only he knew. The victim was happy to fall into his hands, waiting for his skillful fangs to find her neck and trail his finger over her pulsating veins.
With his first victim, Jin felt horrified. But the sight of the Kazuya’s lips trailing slowly over the girl’s milky skin and the blue brilliant eyes looking daringly and invitingly at him encouraged Jin to take the next step.
Jin felt his strength growing with every drop of her blood rushing into his veins. The familiar drums in his head mixed with the melody of the girl’s heartbeat, fast in the beginning and then slower with every second. At the same time, he felt how fast her light of life diminished, how her heart skipped a beat, then stopped, forever. Jin felt like drowning, falling into weightlessness.
“I don’t want to take her life,” he said with force, trying to let go and not drink the last drop. But the cold blue eyes met his gaze and philosophical voice stated, “She is dead already, you fool. You can’t drink when they are dead. You must stop or you will succumb to death, too.”
The feeling spread inside his guts, an awful, cold and dreadful feeling that he couldn’t bear. He took someone else’s life. And he could feel it, her life and her death, everything. Even the sweet delicious taste couldn’t cover what he did with his own hands. He threw a brief look at Kazuya. Jin couldn’t control his hunger. He looked at Kazuya’s hand preparing to bite again, when Kazuya slapped him across his face. Jin looked astonished. He was shocked.
It was Kazuya’s fault. His perfect teacher forgot to warn him about a guilty conscience. Maybe because Kazuya had no conscience at all.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for them,” he said to Jin later while looking over his accounts and blabbering that Jin was so rich, but absolutely useless and couldn’t take care about their prosperous living. Kazuya’s ability to talk about taking a human’s life during such routine moments, or while choosing new and expensive clothes for himself, was unbelievable. His face had a bored expression while Jin still had the picture of the girl’s brown eyes, becoming like glass, losing all their life.
“You’ll get used to killing,” said Kazuya, kissing his neck. When he told Jin that he must be strong, not bother so much, and that with time, he would get used to taking lives, Jin grew silent, just nodding. He doubted he would ever get used to killing and he couldn’t understand Kazuya’s imperturbability and the total absence of respect and reverence towards the process of taking someone’s life, nor could he comprehend the feelings that were boiling inside of him: the enormous drum, the melody in Jin’s ears, the experience of taking someone else’s life, all together making his blood rush in his veins, making him feel and see the life of this person like magic. It was absolutely fascinating.
Jin also couldn’t control the overwhelming feeling that took over his whole body when Kazuya was near. The heartless vampire played, enjoying every moment and Jin sometimes felt the desire to strangle him and drink every single drop of his blood, sticking his fangs into the smooth white neck, feeling it again. It drove him insane, Kazuya’s closeness. There was nothing special in Kazuya, Jin repeated to himself every time he saw this intriguing monster. He knew that behind the façade, he was only an empty shell only looking for blood.
But Kazuya had a power over Jin, the knowledge about vampires without which Jin would die the next day, like how the sun, could burn him in seconds or the things that were famous in legends and superstitions but actually had no powers at all. Kazuya was a manipulator, toying with Jin, giving just enough information to render Jin silent but still hiding the biggest part.
“I’m sure you are not the only vampire on the Earth,” Jin told Kazuya. “Someone created you, and I will find them.”
Kazuya laughed aloud, kissing Jin’s lips before whispering into his ear, biting his earlobe slightly, “Without me, you can’t last for long. Just admit it, you need me.”
Jin felt the blood rushing in his ears, feeling again the power of the brilliant blue eyes on him.
“He would like you, because you are beautiful, Jin. You are fool, but a precious one.”
Jin hated Kazuya.
*
London, 1956
Jin looked at the magazine in his hands. The last article was the main reason why he found himself in the National Gallery at this hour, when not a single soul would interrupt his research and see him. It was dark in the gallery, but Jin had no need for any light. He could see every single corner and every detail of the paintings on the walls perfectly fine.
Jin found modern art boring and sometimes, too difficult to understand. Yet he spent the last years wandering and searching for paintings, although he had no idea where and when he would find the next key to the riddle he had been trying to solve. That last article was like a gift from God. Or better said, from the Devil.
Kazuya’s loud laugh echoed in his ears and the words: “The Devil!? Oh, Jin! I’d chase him and cut his horns, so now I’m your devil, Jin! Will you worship me?”
Jin’s steps were unheard and his motions unseen by other people, the speed of vampires’ steps being like the blink of a human’s eyes. Jin had never underestimated humans. He was fascinated by the things they could make and what they were willing to achieve. There was a reason for each brushstroke on every painting painted onto a simple canvas.
This latest exhibition, the wonderful Sakura, belonged to a modern painter who had dedicated his whole life to art but died young. Another lie, Jin knew. The painting was modern but the style, the colors, the technique, everything was evidence to him, just like the gentle violet stains that symbolized so familiarly the blossoming of the plum trees, the fragile petals and the figure dancing under the tree, embraced by red stains on the white background. The painting was beautiful; the gracious tilt of the head with long dark hair, the white neck, and the red lips. Jin knew this movement from every time that Kazuya’s long hair had covered his eyes and he tried to brush the locks away. He saw this painfully familiar moment in his head and the knots in his stomach made it difficult for him to breathe.
Jin didn’t doubt that these paintings belonged to the brush of the same painter-the dancing numbers on the red stains were the evidence.
1582
Someone had made Kazuya dance, for eternity.
*
Kyoto, 1861
People around started to notice that something strange was happening with their master but Jin couldn’t prevent it. Kazuya was careful, always polite and charming. He never touched Jin’s family or servants, but people kept dying. The lifestyle in the house, the plates full of food and the paleness of Jin’s face, the same as the guest who lived with him for almost ten years now, were strange. Jin hadn’t changed at all and people around him could see it too.
Kazuya pinned Jin against the nearest wall with an inhuman force and said through clenched teeth, “Do not let people see you near candlelight! You want us to lose all we have? This house? Our money? This comfort? Do you want to live like rats?”
Jin looked at the brilliant blue eyes and felt that for him there was no difference. This comfort and the expensive fabrics Kazuya wrapped himself in, he didn’t care about it at all. He wanted to burn it all and Kazuya along with it, but first he wanted to sink his fangs into the veins of the damned tempting white skin.
Jin felt restless. With each new victim, it was becoming harder and harder to take a human’s life, and he felt like he was dying along with them each time. It was a torture and yet Kazuya only thought about his own comfort.
Jin wanted to be free from this hunger and from Kazuya, from his obsession with Kazuya.
His creator saw his suffering but never helped him. He just prepared another victim, telling Jin what awful thoughts this human had, because Kazuya had the gift to read minds. Every vampire actually had a gift, but not Jin. Even as a vampire, he was cursed. It was Kazuya’s fault. Kazuya knew what was inside the people he killed.
*
Kazuya stayed near the candles. They were absolutely alone. The servants hid, no one wanting to participate in the night parties that the master had with his friend, sometimes with women who always disappeared from the face of the earth the next day.
Kazuya licked his lips, the white fangs, the smirk that belonged to a predator, the fast move, and he caught something in his hands that struggled and tried to run. But no one could run from Kazuya’s grip, Jin knew it very well, having spent nights in the marble hands and fighting between the urge to kiss and bite the red luscious lips.
“What are you doing?” Jin asked. With disgust, he saw a big rat in Kazuya’s hand, and then the heavy massive ring at Kazuya’s finger, with a skull and very sharp part, cut the flesh in a moment. The drops of blood fell into a long glass, the one that cost a fortune but Kazuya said they must have at home.
Kazuya took a sip , but wrinkled his nose despondently. “It gets cold so fast.” He noticed Jin’s horrified look and added, “Sometimes, you need to live only on rats to survive, so wipe that foolish expression from your face.”
Realization hit him hard and Jin asked, “We can live without killing, just from animals?”
“Yes, we can. But it’s difficult to call it living. It’s just surviving. Sometimes, we have no other choice, like in the ships. What else can you do than taking the lives of rats?” The mischievous smile played on the defined lips.
“It is possible!?”
“Everything is possible. Just try it for a week.” Kame looked at him, as if he knew how pointless all Jin’s attempts were.
Kazuya was an awful teacher. He gave so much useless information, torturing Jin for years, when he almost went crazy over the feeling of killing and taking someone’s life. He threw the glass in the fire and Jin looked at the scattered pieces.
“I hope you don’t mind.” The fake apology, the almost innocent smile on Kazuya’s face made the blood boil in Jin’s veins. “Even if you did, you can’t help it.”
“I can throw you out of my house!” That was the first time Jin lost his temper with Kazuya, but the latter was still smiling.
“That would be inconvenient. If tomorrow you die without knowing simple things about yourself, that will be such a calamity, don’t you think?”
At the sight of the mocking smile and raised elegant eyebrow, Jin growled with all his force, pinning Kazuya to the wall. But the blue-eyed vampire just laughed at this, because Kazuya was stronger, much stronger, and he knew the power he had over Jin too damn well. And as he kissed his white neck, Jin hated himself, with all fibers of his soul, if he still had any, because Kazuya made the worst part of his nature appear, that part he preferred not knowing whether it even existed.
*
It was not very calm in Kyoto and Jin felt that something would happen. Kazuya preferred to be at the top, attending the places where he could mix with high society.
Kazuya tried to show him all the pleasure he could have while using his power and just enjoying sinking his teeth into a human’s neck. Kazuya was a master at it. His victims always followed his steps, without doubting his intentions, just being under the spell of his blue eyes that had such a magnificent radiance. He made them succumb to his will, with a gentle touch, with a tender word and the look through his long dark eyelashes. The red tongue moistened his dark lips and the victim was ready to give her life, already trembling in anticipation and showing her neck with a vein that made Jin’s blood boil and the drum sound in his ears.
Kazuya was a devil; he took humans’ lives with a charming smile and closed eyes, and an expression of the highest pleasure on the white marble mask that was his face. He preferred the blood of young boys. He called them the spoiled kids of high society, just like Jin was when Kazuya took his life.
Jin couldn’t follow Kazuya’s steps. He was different. Once, he had almost been caught while sinking his teeth in a poodle’s neck.
“You are a coward! Drinking the blood of animals and being a shame to the vampires, you can finish us both this night! Do you have any idea what would have happened if someone saw you and understood your true nature!?”
“You can go to hell,” Jin threw as an answer, still trembling from the hunger the animal hadn’t been able to satisfy.
“I don’t know any hell!” Kazuya was angry, enraged.
Jin was so angry and felt so miserable. This was all Kazuya’s fault because he damned him to this life. But all his attempts to hurt his creator or even punch him were useless and only made the blue-eyed monster laugh. Kazuya let him be, let him live drinking animal’s blood, just watching him.
He once said to Jin, when he had been so full of this desire to destroy Kazuya after a fight, when they had almost ruined half of Jin’s bedroom, “Life without me will be even more unbearable for you! You are the lucky one, living in your own home and being the lord by yourself.”
Pushing Jin aside and sitting on the floor, Kazuya continued with an unfamiliar bitterness in his voice, “In Europe, vampires must be very careful. Not like here.”
“In Europe? You came from Europe?”
Jin was glad to learn something about Kazuya, because he knew nothing, not even the year Kazuya had been turned into a vampire and who had turned him. Kazuya had never told him anything.
“I spent some time there with the vampire who made me and after that, I just traveled by myself until I decided to return here.”
Kazuya looked troubled and Jin understood that the situation in Kyoto bothered him. He was afraid to lose what he had.
“The vampire who made you? Tell me about him. He must have taught you something important.”
“I don’t know anything. I never had a choice, didn’t I tell you?”
“But you must have?”
“Why? Do you think I knew what kind of life was waiting for me? Did you know?”
No, Jin didn’t. And that was Kazuya’s fault too.
A few months later, they had to leave Jin’s house, because his servants burned it, finding the traces of dead animals around the home and suspecting their forever young master of all the mysterious crimes. When people came after Jin with fire, he couldn’t control himself, the animals’ blood making him even more restless and the hunger closing his eyes and ears. But Kazuya saved him.
Later, Jin sat in the dirty hold of a ship looking into the annoyed, brilliant pair of blue eyes that seemed to say “I told you,” and listening the endless rant about their lost comfort.
Kazuya only lived according to his well-known vampire’s rules. Once, he said that there was no hell but Jin knew that hell existed and he was spending every second of his existence in it.
Kazuya gripped the rat running nearby and sank his fangs into it. And so they started their exhausting voyage to Europe where Jin hoped they would meet other vampires.
*
St. Petersburg, 1968
The high vaults and spacious galleries of the Hermitage welcomed Jin with silence and darkness. Jin was used to darkness; he had been living in darkness and would live with it for eternity. Every time Jin found a new painting, an ever more powerful hope grew in his chest, the hope that maybe this time he would understand, would grasp the essence of Kazuya’s motivation, of the last look and last whisper, before the skin became parchment grey and the fire of the brilliant blue eyes faded, hanging in a silence, unsolved.
Jin’s long white coat was from the last fashion, the good fabric nicely emphasizing his shoulders in a big mirror that may have witnessed the last days of the Russian emperor. Now, two green brilliant eyes were looking back at Jin. He touched his pale cheek and trailed a finger near his jaw line.
“It shows your character, how stubborn and wild you are, Jin. But trying to hide it from me is useless, my beloved fool. I can always see right through you.”
The words echoed in one of the enormous halls of the museum, but Jin knew Kazuya’s voice and Kazuya’s words were only in his own head.
Why could Kazuya understand him and see what was boiling inside of his heart so well, all the hatred, all the displeasure at his own existence, when Jin couldn’t see anything in Kazuya’s unreadable cold blue eyes?
Jin searched for the one painting in the gallery that belonged to the end of the 19th century. Impressionism. Jin was prepared. He had read about art a lot during the last years and he knew what was waiting for him. The painting was hanging in the middle, surrounded by the works of French masters. The paint had been applied with a small, thin, but yet visible brushstroke . It was the same figure, in the same red fabric, with the same numbers hidden in a canvas that drove Jin crazy, because it still told him nothing. He couldn’t find the name of the artist, he couldn’t find anything about the life of the model, just nothing.
What attracted Jin’s attention and made him catch his breath was the smile adorning the red lips, very subtle, tender, and almost unapparent, yet as if the owner was looking and smiling at someone. It was a very intimate and warm smile that belonged to the person it was directed toward. Kazuya was dancing, but it looked like he paused just to smile warmly, while looking straight into someone else’s eyes. Maybe someone who was very dear to him?
Jin couldn’t stop staring. He spent almost a half-century with Kazuya, but he never saw him smile like this. He got the smirk, the mischievous smug, the playful smile, the mocking grin, but saw nothing like this one.
The solitude.
Jin felt it so keenly right now. He looked at the little plate under the painting and his eyes widened in understanding.
The one who had all answers, he was there, in the same time as Jin and Kazuya.
Because it was painted at the end of the 19th century, in Paris.
Part 2
Pairing: Akame
Word count: ~23k
Rating: R
Warnings: vampires AU, double timeline, references to Kame's solo 1582, love\hate relationships
Notes: Dear norilys, I hope you like this! Thanks to my betas and to my friends for brainstorming and hand-holding!
This fic is inspired by the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire and its film adaptation.
Summary: Days, months, years, centuries of longing and searching for answers he isn't even sure he could find... yet he continues in this path, haunted by his past, because Jin is condemned to live with those feelings, until the sun burns down...
Paris, 2000
Kazuya hated museums and despised art, but Jin had always thought this was rather strange.
The Louvre was deserted at this time and only the sound of steps echoed through the long halls of the palace that had belonged to the kings long ago.
Kazuya hated when his victims called him beautiful, touching with enchantment the smooth skin of his perfect face. His brilliant blue eyes always shined with indignation at hearing this word and then he took their lives without playing, not really enjoying the hunt anymore.
Jin had always thought it was strange because Kazuya loved to gently caress Jin’s cheek, kiss his neck with his cold lips, and whisper softly into his ear how beautiful Jin was.
He looked again at the colorful prospect in his hands. He was close already. His eyes briefly landed on the enigmatic smile of Giaconda, leaving him absolutely indifferent. Another room, and he reached his destination; the painting, the one he was searching for, was hanging on the wall. Near it, the dim light of a lamp was the only source of illumination. But Jin didn’t need it at all; his brilliant green eyes could perfectly see every detail of this painting created by the brush of a very famous painter from the 17th century.
Jin knew this was all a lie. The little numbers were lost in the different strains of the colorful kimono that embraced the figure of a dancer exposing his pale shoulder. His face was hidden under long strands of hair. One hand was thrown back graciously, as if the young man had been depicted while dancing.
1582
The numbers. Jin touched the pale shoulder but could only feel the canvas and the paint. Yet, his mind was soon filled with memories of sensations he thought he had forgotten: the touch of the smooth, marble-like skin, so tempting and alluring, the whispers in the night, and the last gaze of the person he had betrayed.
Kazuya hated paintings as well as his own reflection, so how could someone capture every second of his dance in different paintings, each dating from different years and centuries? Jin had to find the one who did it and demand answers to all the questions that were eating him alive.
A disgusting cold feeling spread inside of him. This had been Jin’s enigma for the last centuries, the enigma he still couldn’t understand at all.
Kazuya was his enigma.
*
The dark narrow streets with dim lights hide the lonely figure from the eyes of passerby, his footsteps producing a dull echo. The leather gloves tightly embrace his long fingers, hiding his smooth, too pale skin. A fedora hides his eyes and a long dark overcoat completes the mysterious aura of this man.
He arrives at a magnificent bridge, in this empty hour, only a few cars rushing by, showering him with the blinding lights of their headlights. This bridge looks almost the same as the first time he had been there, only now the artificial lighting is too bright. The little faces of cherubs and nymphs that decorate the bridge are looking mockingly at him, but Jin knows this is just his imagination. They were made of stone centuries ago, and they have no soul. They’re just empty shells.
What an irony, he thinks and a bitter smile appears on his full lips. What is the difference between him and these sculptures then?
The green eyes throw a quick look around at the deserted bridge. Paris looks alive with all the colorful lights of a night city, the Eiffel Tower hovering like an ugly caricature over the middle of the beautiful city. But it's not what Jin is longing for, what he is searching for, what led him here.
He has been wandering around the world, because of this question sinking into his chest like a sharp knife, making him feel pain, an endless torturous and killing pain. But the awaiting death just never comes.
He is alone. He’s been alone for the last years, always, searching for answers and trying to understand why he’s alive.
The pale moon has no answers, neither does his heart. He can only hear silence, the suffocating silence that echoes in the emptiness of his heart.
His life had been empty even before and that isn’t Kazuya’s fault. Maybe he himself is the one to blame and no one else. It’s always easier to place all the guilt on someone else’s shoulders and try to escape by using high words as a shield, while inside, cowardice is eating you alive.
He stands on the edge of the bridge, feeling that only one step separates him from falling. Does he even have anything to regret, to miss, to feel sorry for?
Jin looks at the dark river under his feet, so deep and so inviting, just one step, only one step. But it can’t give him the desired deliverance from his existence. The memories appear before his eyes. This place, this bridge and Kazuya with his glossy eyes shining under the moonlight, his red lips curved into a smirk, playing, provoking and knowing what kind of power he has, and his voice slipping under the skin and making you lose all will, leaving only a spreading desire to succumb to the pleasure, to follow the steps into the insanity that burns in his brilliant blue eyes.
“This world belongs to us, Jin! Can you feel it?”
When was it? 50 years ago? A century ago? Or maybe even longer? Jin has been alone for so long he has stopped counting.
"Why Kazuya? Why have you condemned me to this life?" he whispers in the silence. A sudden rush of the wind and the dark fedora falls from his head, freeing his long black hair to frame the smooth, white, marble skin of his face and his brilliant green eyes. Too bright, too wild.
Inhuman.
*
Kyoto, 1852
The big house of a respected family full of goods and traditions, where the son must follow his father’s footsteps and become the grateful worthy heir who will increase the honor and the profits of the family.
But the only surviving son of this family was a good-for-nothing idler and his head was always full of strange ideas. This ungrateful disrespectful son dared to mock the philosophy and the morality of people who were ready to give their lives for the things they had believed in. Their names were engraved in the memory of every person who, thanks to these heroes, was now living a happy life. The son, who was the last hope and last comfort of the family that was dying inside, had no interest in the family’s business and didn’t even want to learn anything.
“This is absolutely unacceptable; we have to live and to cherish every moment of life. If he was ready to disembowel himself for the sake of ridiculous and high words, he was just a coward and had no courage to live and deal with it!”
Impudent, bold, insulting words ran from his mouth before he could understand what he had said, but even after he realized, he knew that there was nothing to regret. This was his truth. A hard slap in the face made his head jerk and he felt the disgusting taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. He could still feel the coldness of the heavy rings circling his mother’s slender fingers.
Jin and his mother looked at the world differently and they couldn’t find any compromise; they just hurt each other more and more with every new conversation, which always ended the same way. Jin hated it, her hypocritical façade, her stupid exaggerated philosophy that asked to give up everything, and the sanctimony of her smile. His family wanted him to learn the wisdom of his ancestors but Jin refused to follow in the footsteps of his brother who had killed himself for the sake of some high purpose, leaving him alone with a new responsibility and an emptiness that was tearing him apart.
Jin’s face was burning from his mother’s slap, but he showed her his defiance looking straight into her disappointed eyes filled with hatred. He couldn’t accept his mother’s reality, not in this life nor in another, no matter who he would be reborn as then.
Jin spent days wandering the crowded streets of Kyoto without any purpose and without any goal. He wasn’t searching for anything and he doubted anyone was searching for him. The life that was waiting for him made him feel sick inside, the already familiar feeling of apathy spreading with the understanding that he couldn’t change anything, his beliefs, the society, where he was born, who he was. He couldn’t revive his brother or his father who had also left this world. He had no strength and no idea what he believed in anymore. He felt lost in ideas that were too complicated with smart and deep meaning words he couldn’t really grasp and understand. It was suffocating. The contradiction between this society and his inner state pushed him to the edge of losing himself.
Jin had no philosophy; he didn’t need a philosophy to crave death. Even with the beauty of the world around him, the ancient architecture and the soft petals falling on his face, he couldn’t feel anything. The big house and the money and power he had in his hands now, he didn’t know what to do with them.
The playful lights of Shimabara invited him and his legs obediently went to a place where the dull emptiness inside his chest almost disappeared. The strong taste of alcohol burned his throat. Jin thought that his brother could just escape and Jin would never judge him, ever.
No matter how much he drank, the feelings still boiled inside of him. The faces around him were ugly, reminding him of his father’s face. Jin knew that he didn’t have any desire to live, to become like his father and obey the hypocritical false truths, to have a child who would lead the same life and almost be buried alive so young, just because it was the right thing to do.
The pliant body so close, the silk of her clothes and the aroma of the incense made him look around in a haze through the shroud. His head was too heavy. Her hands were touching his neck and helping their clothes to fall, but he felt nauseous because of the strong and sickly sweet smell that should have the purpose to help him relax.
Jin escaped from her hands, from the unbearable stuffiness of this place, running and running without any way to find salvation, only plunging more deeply into the abyss of despair, locking himself into a cage that he created but couldn’t find the way out of anymore.
He was only 23 and was already tired of living, of the pressure, the responsibility, and the faint-heartedness. Jin longed for death, invited it. But he couldn’t finish it himself and so he welcomed the one who would help him obtain the end of the hell inside his mind and heart.
Death appeared, already waiting for him, with a dirty face and decayed teeth. It came as a man in rags, stabbing him and taking his money because Jin was rich and because people without any moral restrictions existed.
This is an irony, was the last thought in Jin’s head, as he felt his life power leaving his tired body and suffering soul. This man wouldn’t give his life for any high purpose. Maybe he was like Jin?
Jin felt like he was falling and welcomed it, but the next moment, he felt somebody catch him and then, like the sky was so near. And maybe he was flying. Jin opened his eyes and was met with a brilliant blue gaze, and then came the pain. He was still in the air, so light, but panic rose inside of him. This was something wrong.
“Do you want to die?” The low voice came in a hot whisper. Jin tried to focus on the man who was speaking, but was too weak.
He was too young to die. The sharp pain on his neck burned. In that moment, all Jin could feel was horror, the disgusting horror that he would die. He was scared. What was waiting for him there? Darkness. No, he was not ready. The animalistic fear and the newly raised desire to live grew in him.
“No,” answered Jin and he knew that was the truth. He didn’t want to die, not yet. Maybe in his meaningless existence he would find answers. The horrible fear of darkness made him repeat, “No.”
Jin was too weak to die. He was afraid of darkness. But little did he know that soon, he would be born again to wander for eternity in darkness.
*
When Jin opened his eyes, he was in the street lying in dirt, feeling numb and painfully alive. He stood on his wobbly feet and returned to his home, the empty home that his mother had left, because Jin was a shame. Jin was the worst son and she had lost hope and faith in him. He lay waiting for death to come, feeling the pain and the fever, day after day. Before, it was just a nagging feeling in his chest, the melancholy, but now, it was real pain. Because of the man with blue eyes and the wounds that he had left on his neck, Jin felt like he had lost his vitality. He was ruined more and more inside with every passing minute, just waiting for the last moment and the last breath to escape from his dry lips. The bright radiance of the blues eyes seemed like a hallucination from his alcohol-polluted mind. The newly added pain to his already hurting state was unbearable and tearing him apart.
He heard a rustling sound, sensing a presence of someone else in his room.
“Who is here?” His voice sounded hoarse and his throat was dry. He wanted to ask for water, but was met with the same blue eyes that haunted him in his dreams, that looked too bright at his pale face, that were calling for him.
“I came to make your wish come true. Life has no meaning anymore, does it?” Those eyes were hypnotizing. The voice sounded so soothing, wrapping Jin in something warm. The stranger took a step towards him, moving in smooth motions.
“Food has no taste and alcohol doesn’t let you to find oblivion. There’s no reason for any of it?” The eyes were fixated on his and he couldn’t take his gaze away from the smooth skin without any wrinkle and the two brilliant blue eyes, which were so deep that he felt like he was drowning.
“What if I can give it to you? No more pain and another life that you have never imagined? It would be for all time and neither sickness nor death will ever touch you again,” the stranger continued, coming closer, his white face was just few inches away. The face was like a mask, without any tiny hint of human expression, absolutely emotionless.
“I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”
The words were spinning around, tempting, but Jin was too weak and exhausted from the pain, from his life. He wasn’t even sure what was going on, what exactly the stranger was talking about, but he wanted the pain to go away, he wanted something to change in his life, he wanted this unbearable despair that came with the understanding of how useless his existence was to just disappear. Jin had nothing to lose.
“You can die here as you want or always be young.” The words were like a spell caressing Jin’s ears and making him plunge into the mysterious web the stranger wrapped around his suffering heart and ill mind.
Too tired of his pointless life, Jin said yes to Kazuya’s propositions. He said yes to something that became worse than darkness for him.
*
Jin remembered his last sunset very well. He had seen so many sunrises and sunsets before, but the only one that was engraved in his memory was his last one. The sky was painted with wonderful stains, so painfully beautiful that he couldn’t take his eyes away from them. Everything seemed so unreal, colored by the warm hues.
“Have you bid your goodbye to the light?” He heard the soothing voice so close, caressing his ears so nicely. But the next second, Kazuya bit him. Jin had no idea what to expect so when he felt the strong hands holding him firmly and not letting him move, he was terrified. The pain struck and he lost all his strength. He was struggling, trying to free himself, to hit, but found no power even to move. He didn’t even notice when the sharp fangs left his flesh.
“I’ve drunk you to the point of death. If I leave you here, you will die. Or you can be young, forever, as we are now.”
Kazuya embraced him, Jin’s head on his chest. Jin tried to open his mouth and say something, but he found it impossible. He felt the cold fingers touching his cheek. He could only look motionlessly at Kazuya’s actions, how he bit his own wrist letting drops blood fall on Jin’s clothes and then, on his chin. He felt the taste on the tip of his tongue and Kazuya let him drink. Kazuya’s voice led him, telling him to be patient, to slow down, but Jin couldn’t control himself. He could hear the enormous drums in his ears. His only desire was to have more of this blood, yet this pain was still here. He felt betrayed. Why hadn’t the pain disappeared even a bit?
As Kazuya forced him to let go of his hand, he understood that the loud drums were the sound of Kazuya’s heartbeats mixed with his own, the sound of blood rushing through his veins. When the pain deafened him, it was worse than anything he had ever felt. He tried to squeeze his temples, to suppress the ache, but it was impossible. It was indescribable. He was tearing apart.
“You are dying.” He heard the voice and felt the cold fingers caress his forehead. “It happens to all of us.”
When Jin opened his eyes after few minutes, the pain was gone and the world was different, yet the same.
“Now, look with your vampire’s eyes.” Kazuya’s voice sounded breathless but amused. Jin looked around and found the brilliant blue eyes looking at him. It was different. Kazuya’s skin was so pale and smooth, even radiant and Jin couldn’t take his eyes away from the dark lips. He could see new colors, new details. Before, Kazuya looked so inhuman to Jin, so overwhelming. It was only now through vampire’s eyes that he could understand the beauty and perfection of the dark creature standing in front of him and how luscious red and inviting his lips really were. Kazuya’s mouth curved into a smile.
“Stop looking at my lips, you fool. Look around at the beauty of the night. But be careful; don’t fall in love with it.”
Jin took a step and raised his head to look at the sky. Now he understood what Kazuya meant. He spent hours spellbound, lost in the colors and sounds.
When he returned to his empty home, Kazuya was waiting for him. Jin couldn’t fight the desire to touch his skin, to understand how it felt, so beautiful, so tempting. Jin remembered the taste on the tip of his tongue. Kazuya took his hand and led him to the room that used to belong to his brother, a room that no one had entered for so long. Two coffins were resting in the middle, yet it didn’t even cross Jin’s mind to ask himself how they had appeared there.
“Don’t worry, you need to sleep. When you wake, I will be waiting for you and so will the whole world.”
Kazuya placed a kiss on his forehead and Jin lost himself in sleep.
The next evening, Jin woke with a hunger he had never felt before.
*
Kazuya was a perfect teacher who explained everything with passion, using visual teaching methods.
Always playing with his prey, elegantly, he liked making the oblivious victim fall into his perfect trap with her own steps. He enjoyed playing the game by the rules that only he knew. The victim was happy to fall into his hands, waiting for his skillful fangs to find her neck and trail his finger over her pulsating veins.
With his first victim, Jin felt horrified. But the sight of the Kazuya’s lips trailing slowly over the girl’s milky skin and the blue brilliant eyes looking daringly and invitingly at him encouraged Jin to take the next step.
Jin felt his strength growing with every drop of her blood rushing into his veins. The familiar drums in his head mixed with the melody of the girl’s heartbeat, fast in the beginning and then slower with every second. At the same time, he felt how fast her light of life diminished, how her heart skipped a beat, then stopped, forever. Jin felt like drowning, falling into weightlessness.
“I don’t want to take her life,” he said with force, trying to let go and not drink the last drop. But the cold blue eyes met his gaze and philosophical voice stated, “She is dead already, you fool. You can’t drink when they are dead. You must stop or you will succumb to death, too.”
The feeling spread inside his guts, an awful, cold and dreadful feeling that he couldn’t bear. He took someone else’s life. And he could feel it, her life and her death, everything. Even the sweet delicious taste couldn’t cover what he did with his own hands. He threw a brief look at Kazuya. Jin couldn’t control his hunger. He looked at Kazuya’s hand preparing to bite again, when Kazuya slapped him across his face. Jin looked astonished. He was shocked.
It was Kazuya’s fault. His perfect teacher forgot to warn him about a guilty conscience. Maybe because Kazuya had no conscience at all.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for them,” he said to Jin later while looking over his accounts and blabbering that Jin was so rich, but absolutely useless and couldn’t take care about their prosperous living. Kazuya’s ability to talk about taking a human’s life during such routine moments, or while choosing new and expensive clothes for himself, was unbelievable. His face had a bored expression while Jin still had the picture of the girl’s brown eyes, becoming like glass, losing all their life.
“You’ll get used to killing,” said Kazuya, kissing his neck. When he told Jin that he must be strong, not bother so much, and that with time, he would get used to taking lives, Jin grew silent, just nodding. He doubted he would ever get used to killing and he couldn’t understand Kazuya’s imperturbability and the total absence of respect and reverence towards the process of taking someone’s life, nor could he comprehend the feelings that were boiling inside of him: the enormous drum, the melody in Jin’s ears, the experience of taking someone else’s life, all together making his blood rush in his veins, making him feel and see the life of this person like magic. It was absolutely fascinating.
Jin also couldn’t control the overwhelming feeling that took over his whole body when Kazuya was near. The heartless vampire played, enjoying every moment and Jin sometimes felt the desire to strangle him and drink every single drop of his blood, sticking his fangs into the smooth white neck, feeling it again. It drove him insane, Kazuya’s closeness. There was nothing special in Kazuya, Jin repeated to himself every time he saw this intriguing monster. He knew that behind the façade, he was only an empty shell only looking for blood.
But Kazuya had a power over Jin, the knowledge about vampires without which Jin would die the next day, like how the sun, could burn him in seconds or the things that were famous in legends and superstitions but actually had no powers at all. Kazuya was a manipulator, toying with Jin, giving just enough information to render Jin silent but still hiding the biggest part.
“I’m sure you are not the only vampire on the Earth,” Jin told Kazuya. “Someone created you, and I will find them.”
Kazuya laughed aloud, kissing Jin’s lips before whispering into his ear, biting his earlobe slightly, “Without me, you can’t last for long. Just admit it, you need me.”
Jin felt the blood rushing in his ears, feeling again the power of the brilliant blue eyes on him.
“He would like you, because you are beautiful, Jin. You are fool, but a precious one.”
Jin hated Kazuya.
*
London, 1956
Jin looked at the magazine in his hands. The last article was the main reason why he found himself in the National Gallery at this hour, when not a single soul would interrupt his research and see him. It was dark in the gallery, but Jin had no need for any light. He could see every single corner and every detail of the paintings on the walls perfectly fine.
Jin found modern art boring and sometimes, too difficult to understand. Yet he spent the last years wandering and searching for paintings, although he had no idea where and when he would find the next key to the riddle he had been trying to solve. That last article was like a gift from God. Or better said, from the Devil.
Kazuya’s loud laugh echoed in his ears and the words: “The Devil!? Oh, Jin! I’d chase him and cut his horns, so now I’m your devil, Jin! Will you worship me?”
Jin’s steps were unheard and his motions unseen by other people, the speed of vampires’ steps being like the blink of a human’s eyes. Jin had never underestimated humans. He was fascinated by the things they could make and what they were willing to achieve. There was a reason for each brushstroke on every painting painted onto a simple canvas.
This latest exhibition, the wonderful Sakura, belonged to a modern painter who had dedicated his whole life to art but died young. Another lie, Jin knew. The painting was modern but the style, the colors, the technique, everything was evidence to him, just like the gentle violet stains that symbolized so familiarly the blossoming of the plum trees, the fragile petals and the figure dancing under the tree, embraced by red stains on the white background. The painting was beautiful; the gracious tilt of the head with long dark hair, the white neck, and the red lips. Jin knew this movement from every time that Kazuya’s long hair had covered his eyes and he tried to brush the locks away. He saw this painfully familiar moment in his head and the knots in his stomach made it difficult for him to breathe.
Jin didn’t doubt that these paintings belonged to the brush of the same painter-the dancing numbers on the red stains were the evidence.
1582
Someone had made Kazuya dance, for eternity.
*
Kyoto, 1861
People around started to notice that something strange was happening with their master but Jin couldn’t prevent it. Kazuya was careful, always polite and charming. He never touched Jin’s family or servants, but people kept dying. The lifestyle in the house, the plates full of food and the paleness of Jin’s face, the same as the guest who lived with him for almost ten years now, were strange. Jin hadn’t changed at all and people around him could see it too.
Kazuya pinned Jin against the nearest wall with an inhuman force and said through clenched teeth, “Do not let people see you near candlelight! You want us to lose all we have? This house? Our money? This comfort? Do you want to live like rats?”
Jin looked at the brilliant blue eyes and felt that for him there was no difference. This comfort and the expensive fabrics Kazuya wrapped himself in, he didn’t care about it at all. He wanted to burn it all and Kazuya along with it, but first he wanted to sink his fangs into the veins of the damned tempting white skin.
Jin felt restless. With each new victim, it was becoming harder and harder to take a human’s life, and he felt like he was dying along with them each time. It was a torture and yet Kazuya only thought about his own comfort.
Jin wanted to be free from this hunger and from Kazuya, from his obsession with Kazuya.
His creator saw his suffering but never helped him. He just prepared another victim, telling Jin what awful thoughts this human had, because Kazuya had the gift to read minds. Every vampire actually had a gift, but not Jin. Even as a vampire, he was cursed. It was Kazuya’s fault. Kazuya knew what was inside the people he killed.
*
Kazuya stayed near the candles. They were absolutely alone. The servants hid, no one wanting to participate in the night parties that the master had with his friend, sometimes with women who always disappeared from the face of the earth the next day.
Kazuya licked his lips, the white fangs, the smirk that belonged to a predator, the fast move, and he caught something in his hands that struggled and tried to run. But no one could run from Kazuya’s grip, Jin knew it very well, having spent nights in the marble hands and fighting between the urge to kiss and bite the red luscious lips.
“What are you doing?” Jin asked. With disgust, he saw a big rat in Kazuya’s hand, and then the heavy massive ring at Kazuya’s finger, with a skull and very sharp part, cut the flesh in a moment. The drops of blood fell into a long glass, the one that cost a fortune but Kazuya said they must have at home.
Kazuya took a sip , but wrinkled his nose despondently. “It gets cold so fast.” He noticed Jin’s horrified look and added, “Sometimes, you need to live only on rats to survive, so wipe that foolish expression from your face.”
Realization hit him hard and Jin asked, “We can live without killing, just from animals?”
“Yes, we can. But it’s difficult to call it living. It’s just surviving. Sometimes, we have no other choice, like in the ships. What else can you do than taking the lives of rats?” The mischievous smile played on the defined lips.
“It is possible!?”
“Everything is possible. Just try it for a week.” Kame looked at him, as if he knew how pointless all Jin’s attempts were.
Kazuya was an awful teacher. He gave so much useless information, torturing Jin for years, when he almost went crazy over the feeling of killing and taking someone’s life. He threw the glass in the fire and Jin looked at the scattered pieces.
“I hope you don’t mind.” The fake apology, the almost innocent smile on Kazuya’s face made the blood boil in Jin’s veins. “Even if you did, you can’t help it.”
“I can throw you out of my house!” That was the first time Jin lost his temper with Kazuya, but the latter was still smiling.
“That would be inconvenient. If tomorrow you die without knowing simple things about yourself, that will be such a calamity, don’t you think?”
At the sight of the mocking smile and raised elegant eyebrow, Jin growled with all his force, pinning Kazuya to the wall. But the blue-eyed vampire just laughed at this, because Kazuya was stronger, much stronger, and he knew the power he had over Jin too damn well. And as he kissed his white neck, Jin hated himself, with all fibers of his soul, if he still had any, because Kazuya made the worst part of his nature appear, that part he preferred not knowing whether it even existed.
*
It was not very calm in Kyoto and Jin felt that something would happen. Kazuya preferred to be at the top, attending the places where he could mix with high society.
Kazuya tried to show him all the pleasure he could have while using his power and just enjoying sinking his teeth into a human’s neck. Kazuya was a master at it. His victims always followed his steps, without doubting his intentions, just being under the spell of his blue eyes that had such a magnificent radiance. He made them succumb to his will, with a gentle touch, with a tender word and the look through his long dark eyelashes. The red tongue moistened his dark lips and the victim was ready to give her life, already trembling in anticipation and showing her neck with a vein that made Jin’s blood boil and the drum sound in his ears.
Kazuya was a devil; he took humans’ lives with a charming smile and closed eyes, and an expression of the highest pleasure on the white marble mask that was his face. He preferred the blood of young boys. He called them the spoiled kids of high society, just like Jin was when Kazuya took his life.
Jin couldn’t follow Kazuya’s steps. He was different. Once, he had almost been caught while sinking his teeth in a poodle’s neck.
“You are a coward! Drinking the blood of animals and being a shame to the vampires, you can finish us both this night! Do you have any idea what would have happened if someone saw you and understood your true nature!?”
“You can go to hell,” Jin threw as an answer, still trembling from the hunger the animal hadn’t been able to satisfy.
“I don’t know any hell!” Kazuya was angry, enraged.
Jin was so angry and felt so miserable. This was all Kazuya’s fault because he damned him to this life. But all his attempts to hurt his creator or even punch him were useless and only made the blue-eyed monster laugh. Kazuya let him be, let him live drinking animal’s blood, just watching him.
He once said to Jin, when he had been so full of this desire to destroy Kazuya after a fight, when they had almost ruined half of Jin’s bedroom, “Life without me will be even more unbearable for you! You are the lucky one, living in your own home and being the lord by yourself.”
Pushing Jin aside and sitting on the floor, Kazuya continued with an unfamiliar bitterness in his voice, “In Europe, vampires must be very careful. Not like here.”
“In Europe? You came from Europe?”
Jin was glad to learn something about Kazuya, because he knew nothing, not even the year Kazuya had been turned into a vampire and who had turned him. Kazuya had never told him anything.
“I spent some time there with the vampire who made me and after that, I just traveled by myself until I decided to return here.”
Kazuya looked troubled and Jin understood that the situation in Kyoto bothered him. He was afraid to lose what he had.
“The vampire who made you? Tell me about him. He must have taught you something important.”
“I don’t know anything. I never had a choice, didn’t I tell you?”
“But you must have?”
“Why? Do you think I knew what kind of life was waiting for me? Did you know?”
No, Jin didn’t. And that was Kazuya’s fault too.
A few months later, they had to leave Jin’s house, because his servants burned it, finding the traces of dead animals around the home and suspecting their forever young master of all the mysterious crimes. When people came after Jin with fire, he couldn’t control himself, the animals’ blood making him even more restless and the hunger closing his eyes and ears. But Kazuya saved him.
Later, Jin sat in the dirty hold of a ship looking into the annoyed, brilliant pair of blue eyes that seemed to say “I told you,” and listening the endless rant about their lost comfort.
Kazuya only lived according to his well-known vampire’s rules. Once, he said that there was no hell but Jin knew that hell existed and he was spending every second of his existence in it.
Kazuya gripped the rat running nearby and sank his fangs into it. And so they started their exhausting voyage to Europe where Jin hoped they would meet other vampires.
*
St. Petersburg, 1968
The high vaults and spacious galleries of the Hermitage welcomed Jin with silence and darkness. Jin was used to darkness; he had been living in darkness and would live with it for eternity. Every time Jin found a new painting, an ever more powerful hope grew in his chest, the hope that maybe this time he would understand, would grasp the essence of Kazuya’s motivation, of the last look and last whisper, before the skin became parchment grey and the fire of the brilliant blue eyes faded, hanging in a silence, unsolved.
Jin’s long white coat was from the last fashion, the good fabric nicely emphasizing his shoulders in a big mirror that may have witnessed the last days of the Russian emperor. Now, two green brilliant eyes were looking back at Jin. He touched his pale cheek and trailed a finger near his jaw line.
“It shows your character, how stubborn and wild you are, Jin. But trying to hide it from me is useless, my beloved fool. I can always see right through you.”
The words echoed in one of the enormous halls of the museum, but Jin knew Kazuya’s voice and Kazuya’s words were only in his own head.
Why could Kazuya understand him and see what was boiling inside of his heart so well, all the hatred, all the displeasure at his own existence, when Jin couldn’t see anything in Kazuya’s unreadable cold blue eyes?
Jin searched for the one painting in the gallery that belonged to the end of the 19th century. Impressionism. Jin was prepared. He had read about art a lot during the last years and he knew what was waiting for him. The painting was hanging in the middle, surrounded by the works of French masters. The paint had been applied with a small, thin, but yet visible brushstroke . It was the same figure, in the same red fabric, with the same numbers hidden in a canvas that drove Jin crazy, because it still told him nothing. He couldn’t find the name of the artist, he couldn’t find anything about the life of the model, just nothing.
What attracted Jin’s attention and made him catch his breath was the smile adorning the red lips, very subtle, tender, and almost unapparent, yet as if the owner was looking and smiling at someone. It was a very intimate and warm smile that belonged to the person it was directed toward. Kazuya was dancing, but it looked like he paused just to smile warmly, while looking straight into someone else’s eyes. Maybe someone who was very dear to him?
Jin couldn’t stop staring. He spent almost a half-century with Kazuya, but he never saw him smile like this. He got the smirk, the mischievous smug, the playful smile, the mocking grin, but saw nothing like this one.
The solitude.
Jin felt it so keenly right now. He looked at the little plate under the painting and his eyes widened in understanding.
The one who had all answers, he was there, in the same time as Jin and Kazuya.
Because it was painted at the end of the 19th century, in Paris.
Part 2