Those Forsaken Ch. 12
Title: Those Forsaken
Rating: M
Genre: Angst/Horror
Characters: Subaru, Seishirou, Kamui, Fuuma
Summary: It all started when Subaru accidentally brought one home. Now Kamui and Subaru find themselves running for their lives, wrapped up in a fight neither could have foreseen.
Warnings: Vampirism, blood, physical abuse, nondescript nudity, etc.
Word Count: 3,907
Chapter 12
The Illusion
"I think your time has run out, Kamui-kun," Seishirou murmured dispassionately in the ringing silence of Satsuki's departure. "If they even remotely think you're the one in the dream, they'll never let you go. They're going to turn you just to find out."
"I am not going to be a Sakurazuka," Kamui replied adamantly, staring flatly at the man. "You killed Hokuto-chan and Subaru…"
Seishirou usually couldn't care less what others thought of him, but he was really getting tired of being blamed for things he hadn't done. "Actually, I didn't kill your brother. You have your companion there to thank for that." And while Kamui stood there rooted to the ground in surprise, he turned to Fuuma and continued. "You're going to lose him."
"No," Fuuma replied, resolved. "This is one dream that's not coming true. How long do you think they'll be?"
"Long enough." Seishirou's smirk was a bit too knowing. For once, Fuuma thought they might have been thinking the exact same thing. One way or another, these people were going to find a way to make Kamui a Sakurazuka. If he wasn't the one from the dream, well, they'd just have themselves one more vampire to torture, and Kamui would forever belong to Seishirou's bloodline. But if he was… (and really, that wasn't possible, because Kamui had no Power-the gashes that hadn't healed earlier had been proof of that-and one didn't suddenly gain Power by being turned) But if he was… Fuuma looked at Seishirou and knew they couldn't allow that. They couldn't give these people another weapon. And more to the point, Fuuma refused to give them Kamui… Just as adamantly as he refused to allow Kamui to be linked to the other man. Whatever yumemi had dreamt up that little vision was destined to be wrong. Fuuma was going to make sure of it.
"It's not going to work!" Yuzuriha caroled from across the room. But no one paid her any attention.
Kamui, still reeling from the ramifications of Seishirou's earlier statement, turned on Fuuma, mind putting the pieces together furiously. Fuuma had been the one to tell him Subaru was dead, but he had never said who killed him… Never mentioned… Kamui spluttered and struggled toward coherent sentences. All that time! Fuuma had simply let him assume…
"Is it true?" The words, when they finally came, were strangely empty. "Are you the one who killed Subaru?"
"Kamui…" Fuuma extended a hand to him as if he hadn't heard at all, and Kamui jerked back from his touch into the wall
"Don't you dare!" His voice rose sharply, venomously. "Don't you dare! How could you?" He backed away slowly, sliding along the wall, keeping his eyes on the other man. "Were you just going to go on letting me believe you had nothing to do with it?" Fuuma advanced and Kamui scuttled backward, trying in vain to put more space between them in the small cell. "Don't you-mmf!" The yelp was cut off as Fuuma pounced, clamping a hand firmly over the boy's mouth, satisfactorily silencing him. Then, while Kamui tore at the offending hand with sharp nails, he snagged his other arm around the boy's waist and pulled him into his arms, crushing that slender body against his own.
"Make sure he doesn't make any more noise." Through the bars, Seishirou pinned Fuuma with a measured gaze. Fuuma returned it with a condescending slant of eyes, all contemptuousness, then dragged his struggling prize into the far corner, out of the other man's line of sight.
He curled up with the boy in his lap, not quite as effortlessly as if there hadn't been a spell suppressing his strength, but well enough considering Kamui was kicking and clawing and making it incredibly difficult to hold him down. But Fuuma managed it, dragging rough fingers through the boy's silken hair before grabbing a fistful of the shorter strands at the nape of the neck in a painfully tight grip.
"Kamui, Kamui, Kamui…" the man chided, even as he used that grip to pull the boy down head first, slowly forcing that agile body to bend impossibly backward over his knee in a long, lithe arc. For a moment he simply enjoyed the heady smell of summer and warmth that always enveloped the boy. "I'd stop worrying about what I might or might not have done to your brother if I were you. And start worrying about what I'm going to do to you…" He breathed into the soft skin under Kamui's jaw. And though the boy continued squirming furiously, any response was drowned out by the hand he still had clamped over the boy's mouth. Fuuma continued as if nothing had happened. "You said you wouldn't leave me. But in the very act of saying that, you were lying. You lied to me! You can no more stay with me than a leaf can keep itself from fading in the fall. But I'm not going to allow it. You're going to keep your promise, Kamui. Even if I have to kill you myself." Kissing that smooth expanse of bared throat, he jerked the boy's head back even further, keeping that body drawn back in a long, taut arc over his lap, and bit down.
A small hand thudded uselessly against his chest-opened and splayed wide against his shirt, pushing up at his larger form, straining desperately. He didn't mind it when that hand clawed blindly at his arm, his chest, raking angry furrows in the skin-didn't mind the heated, frustrated murmurs of drowned protests vibrating against his lips as he lapped at the boy's brilliant blood. Fighting the seduction. Pointless.
Sudden stinging in his hand made him start. Then he realized the boy had bitten him. He chuckled.
That's right, Kamui. Just exactly like that. You're a natural.
Amused, he bit deeper, drinking the boy in till the pleasure drowned everything else out. He wanted the boy-wanted him just the way he was, flustered and fiery and passionate and all. For a second he stopped to wonder when that had happened, when he'd started wanting this boy so desperately. Had it been when he'd faced Seishirou? Or earlier, watching the boy get lost in the crowded streets time after time? Or when he'd stretched out his hand to take the boy with him into the city? Or had it been… had it been when he'd heard a voice calling for help and found himself staring into wide, amethyst eyes?
It didn't matter anymore. He wasn't going to let the boy go. Not this one. Not now. The boy was going to stay with him, whether he liked it or not. Forever. And as Kamui's blood coated his tongue, beyond the pleasant warmth and lassitude that consumed him-the fine shimmer of ecstasy-there was that glitter of gold again, too fine to be sifted out or caught and examined. Filling him.
Fuuma didn't stop when Kamui's struggles became too weak to be effectual-didn't stop until the heart beating in that lovely chest was stuttering helplessly.
When the body bent backward across his knees was shivering silently, translucent skin cool against his hands, only then did he stop. Only then did he finally let go.
"Kamui?" Subaru came awake with a start, head lifting for foggy green eyes to scan the room, brows furrowed. An impending sense of wrongness beat at him. For a second he struggled to identify it-to put a name to the rapid beating of his heart and the itch in his feet-then, with methodical precision, his head turned to face the cell his brother was in, like a needle spinning to face north. "Kamui?" He stood and started for the bars that divided them, dragged by a force beyond thought, beyond reason.
Alerted by the boy's sudden start and cry, Seishirou caught him halfway there, wrapping one arm around his thin waist from behind, and attempted to hold him back.
"Subaru-kun, stop!" Seishirou tried to get the boy's attention, but Subaru struggled against him, squirming in his hold. Finally, with one particularly agile twist, thin wrists were jerked free of his grip and the boy threw himself forward, calling pleadingly for his brother. Subaru clung to the bars, pressed against them so firmly they cut into his skin, one hand stretched out desperately. Stung, Seishirou stared after him, uncomprehending. Subaru had never just ignored him. Still standing where he'd been left, he watched the boy with a growing sense of unease.
"Subaru-kun." The voice, when it came, was deceptively soft. "Look at me." Seishirou stood stone still with all the calm that preceded the storm, cold and merciless. Oblivious to the impending danger, Subaru only continued to claw at the bars, as though he hadn't heard him at all, raking bloody fingernails along the cold metal. He had always been so obedient before. But now… now Seishirou wasn't so certain. And he wouldn't stand to be ignored.
"Subaru-kun." The words were sharper than before-a warning. "Come here." And a set of conflicted eyes was at last lifted to meet his, glazed with distress. Recognition. But other than that he made no move, caught in the grip of panic and desperation and fear for his brother. And that just wouldn't do. Seishirou's eyes narrowed. "Subaru. Come. Here." There was another agonizing second of indecision, and finally the boy turned toward him fully, one hand sliding free of the bars. He stood like that, whole body shuddering under the weight of two opposing forces, before taking a lurching step towards Seishirou. Just one. Then another, each successive step gaining firmer resolve. Seishirou let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding as the boy approached. And as Subaru drew nearer, the boy reached out, beseeching, clinging to Seishirou when the man made no move to touch him, standing firm and unyielding.
Subaru clutched desperately at the hard lines of that unyielding body, pressing himself against the man tightly.
"Seishirou-san." He jerked on the man's shirt for emphasis, clutching at the material with those bloodied nails, determined that he listen. "Something's wrong with Kamui! He's hurt! He can't… he can't die!"
"I really don't care about your brother." The reply was coldly succinct. Unmoved.
"I promised! I promised Obaa-chan! I promised nothing would happen! And now it'll break! Kamui…" Frustrated tears welled up as Subaru tried to make him understand.
"What will break?" Suddenly confused, Seishirou attempted to pull out the important pieces.
"I swore I wouldn't tell!"
"Subaru-kun," Seishirou caught the boy by the shoulders and held him firm, "what will break?"
Subaru gulped and looked away. "The… The seal…"
Seishirou still didn't understand what exactly the boy was babbling about, but suddenly he had a really bad feeling about the whole thing.
"I think… there's something you need to tell me…"
But at that point there were footsteps at the door and Subaru tensed, wide-eyed, as Satsuki and Yuuto returned. Sooner than anticipated. Seishirou started to call out a warning to Fuuma, sure that they'd stop him now, but instead, Yuuto's gaze swept over Fuuma and Kamui somewhat mechanically, as if he hadn't seen them… turning straight to Subaru and Seishirou…
Fuuma straightened, pulling the boy up with him. Kamui leaned limply against his shoulder, good hand curling and uncurling feebly in his shirt. Fuuma ignored the weak breaths fanning against his neck as he bit his own wrist, teeth digging deeply into the skin, and drew a mouthful of blood.
Then he leaned down and kissed the boy.
He was met with minimal resistance at first as Kamui tried to pull pathetically away from him, but he crushed such pointless rebellion easily, catching the boy's jaw in a bruising grip and parting the less-than-pliant lips with a rough tongue. The blood spilled between them, from Fuuma to Kamui. The boy made a noise at that-a sort of smothered half protest, half whimper-and jerked faintly in Fuuma's grip. Fuuma didn't let go, pressing down mercilessly on that pretty mouth even while tipping the boy's chin further up, until he choked and swallowed… and simultaneously started coughing.
Quickly, Fuuma bit down on his own wrist again and then recaptured that mouth before it could be turned away. Kamui tried a bit more forcefully to resist this time, anticipating what was coming and trying weakly to twist free.
Enough of that now, Fuuma thought, wrapping the fingers of his free hand around the boy's broken wrist. A little pressure was all it took. Kamui winced-made a stuttered little "A-ah" of pain that was drowned out by the warm liquid coating his tongue, sliding down his throat.
Drawing another mouthful of blood, Fuuma curled his fingers tighter around that wrist warningly, and finally Kamui submitted, opening with a shudder to his prodding kiss. Swallowed.
A bird, Fuuma thought, staring down at the pale, shivering body in his arms. Broken and featherless and incapable of flight. He smirked, bending to the faint blue tracery of veins in his wrist again. But I'm sure you'll be beautiful when you fledge.
When at last he'd judged the boy had had enough, he released his hold on the twisted wrist.
"It'll be over soon," Fuuma whispered, licking the blood from Kamui's lips. Amethyst eyes stared up at him accusingly, silently condemning. But then the first faint flickers of pain splintered behind that stare, and those eyes widened.
"Fuuma-a-ah!" An uncertain little question fractured upon a gasp…
…and Fuuma clamped a hand back over that pretty mouth to smother the screams.
"The little one, right?" Yuuto asked, unlocking the door. And behind him, Satsuki nodded. Seishirou's hold on Subaru tightened, dragging the boy away from the bars. He'd expected them to come after him to turn Kamui, but with sudden alarm, he realized they didn't need him at all. Subaru was, after all, a Sakurazuka too now. So he held onto the boy tightly, determined not to let him go. But with the spell suppressing his natural speed and endurance down to human level, he couldn't dodge arrows at so close a range. The first thunked into his side, then higher, when he wouldn't let go of Subaru, into his shoulder. Seishirou stared at the hunters, unyielding. But in his arms, Subaru was staring in horror at the shafts, squirming desperately to free himself. Seishirou's grip was vice-like though, and the boy's struggles were futile, even as he pleaded with the older man.
"Seishirou-san! Stop it! You're hurt! Please!"
Seishirou ignored the boy's cries, refusing to relinquish him to them again. But when the next arrow hit the arm he had wrapped bar-like around Subaru, he couldn't keep the boy from exploiting that second when his grip loosened, squirming away and out, between him and Yuuto at the door.
"No! Stop!" Subaru cried, throwing himself in the way of further shots. "Stop! I'll come! I'll do whatever you want! Just stop hurting him!" And as Satsuki pulled him out of Seishirou's reach, closing the door and wrapping one arm around the boy's shoulders tightly, Seishirou felt cold heat rise within him. An uncontainable restlessness. The sudden desire to tear through the bars or kick down the walls or…
Stupid boy. Stupid. Always having to save everyone else. Always so selfless. Always the martyr.
Seishirou pulled the arrow shafts out with deft jerks, ignoring the blood that stained his shirt, and paced liked a caged panther in front of the door, watching Satsuki with unwavering amber eyes.
You touch him. You dare touch him…
Satsuki smiled at him. A cold, cruel little smile, like she knew exactly what he was thinking. Slowly, the arm she was using to pin Subaru to her rose, till her fingers curled around the boy's neck, tightening imperceptibly. Subaru choked, hands coming up to loosen the death grip on his throat.
"What are you doing?" Yuuto asked suddenly. "We need him alive!"
Satsuki's gaze flickered to him suddenly, and Yuuto had a single second to realize how wrong the world was, to think he should never have called attention to himself, to stop cold. There wasn't a hair physically out of place, but looking into those eyes during that single second, something inside him jumped in alarm, and it was just enough time to think… this isn't Satsuki. Then her hand shot out, angling upward at a vicious slant, quickly turning into an all-too-familiar strike… through Yuuto's heart.
Subaru, still caught firmly in Satsuki's grip, jerked as blood splattered his face.
"Satsuki-chan…" Yuuto stared in mild surprise at the arm firmly embedded in his chest, hand buried in his heart. "Who are you?" He looked up at her, astonished and confused… and collapsed.
Stuck behind the bars, Seishirou stood in an acute state of awareness. He knew-with sudden, sharp, blinding clarity, he knew… They were dead. Both of them. Not just Yuuto, lying crumpled on the stone, but the girl as well.
Satsuki was dead too.
"Okaa-san," he whispered. For a second, Satsuki stood there, hand dripping with Yuuto's blood, watching him, then slowly the image shimmered, wavered, guttering out, and a woman took Satsuki's place, long black hair falling to the floor.
"Is this," a tiny pink tongue darted along the line of the slender neck she still held too tightly in her hand, causing Subaru to squirm, "why you stopped playing?"
Because it was a game-it had always been a game-and he'd failed to put the pieces together in time. There had been too many pieces, too many different puzzles overlapping. He had failed. And now Subaru was going to pay for it.
But now that he knew what the pieces were supposed to look like, they made sense. It wasn't that his memories had been tampered with, or Fuuma's for that matter. He had been right initially to think his memories were correct, that no one had managed to mess with them. He simply hadn't seen what was real in the first place. It wasn't his memories that had been changed, but the appearance of the world itself. Maboroshi.
"You… You used an illusion so it would look like you'd killed Monou-san. You turned him, knowing he'd come after me." Monou-san's a Sakurazuka…
"Oh, so you want to keep playing now? Isn't it a little late?" The tips of her fingers tapped lightly against Subaru's pale throat, the sharp little points of her nails a staccato warning.
"Did you tell the hunters where to find me too?" Seishirou stared back at her, golden gaze burning through the bars that separated them, willing her with his eyes to watch him, to focus on him, to forget about Subaru.
But she smiled, a small little smirk, and tilted laughing eyes at him, like she knew. And she probably did.
"I can see why you stopped playing." The words whispered inside Subaru's ear, secretively, as her eyes sought and held Seishirou's. "He is pretty." The flick of that tiny tongue again, wet against sensitive skin. "But Seishirou, you know better than to invite new players without permission."
No, Seishirou thought, I was unaware the game continued with one of the players presumed dead for half a century. But that's what you wanted, wasn't it?
On the other side of the bars, Subaru gasped for air, trying to breathe around the tiny fingers curled sharply around his throat, just a hair's breadth shy of suffocating. Deftly, Setsuka caught one of the feeble hands scrabbling at her grip. Bending it brutally backward at the wrist, she brought it to her mouth, traced with tongue and tooth the winding blue thread of life under the skin from wrist to inner elbow and up along the more sensitive underside of his arm.
"Did my Seishirou give you his blood? He used to only give it to me…" A flicker of fingertips, this time at his hip, pushing beneath his clothes to trace the vein there, and Subaru squirmed under the unexpected intrusion, kicking out desperately. But then the hand was withdrawn and she shoved him suddenly backward. The edge of the table dug painfully into his lower back.
"Do you squirm so when he touches you?" She smiled condescendingly, but the question was rhetorical-Subaru could no more answer than he could breathe. "I think… you'll be much more pliant when I'm done." And then she bit deep into the line of his throat. Subaru's breath caught, lodged where her hand cut it off, but then the dizzying draw of pleasure started to drag as his consciousness, and reality dissolved into incoherent colors, meaningless compared to the breathtaking ecstasy consuming him. A pleasant lassitude pulled at his limbs, making movements slow and fumbling. Difficult to think. Difficult to care. He moaned, limp and listless and totally at her mercy.
Then, just as quickly as she had started, she let go, leaving Subaru gasping wordlessly, dazed and confused and still half drugged.
Pliant, she had said, and frustration welled up in him with the humiliation.
Smiling darkly, she leaned back down closely. "Does he love you?" Whispered in his ear again. Whispered so Seishirou couldn't hear. She was watching him again, watching for the slightest shift behind those flat eyes as she held the boy to her chest. Knowing.
Subaru flinched as those delicate, dangerous fingers brushed the side of his face, gently pushing stray strands of hair behind the curve of his ear. She smiled down at him pleasantly as she traced the feathery lashes of his right eye
"So pretty," she mused. "Such a shame. You'll never see him again." The fingertips that had been resting over his eye curled suddenly, jabbing deep into flesh and tissue. Subaru jerked. "And when I'm through with you, he'll never want you anymore." She hummed a few bars of some lullaby, fingers buried to the hilt in his skull, digging deeper.
"Setsuka!" Seishirou, trapped behind the bars. Setsuka laughed delightedly-a tinkle of breaking glass, a thousand bells shattering.
But at that point they were both interrupted.
There was a sudden prickling along Seishirou's skin, the crawling of a hundred little feet. It came unexpectedly and passed over them-through them-washing away the world around them. Reality rippled-distorted the way a road does on a blistering sunny day in a heat wave.
Setsuka looked up, startled.
And everything exploded.
Kamui shuddered one last time in Fuuma's grip.
And then… something broke. Inside. Fuuma felt the reverberations all the way to his fingertips and toes-felt the strength of it jerk the body in his arms-and for one wild second he thought the boy's spine had snapped. One infinite second in which Kamui lay unmoving in his arms and the pressure in the room seemed to double and double again and he could only sit there, frozen, mind racing-repeating over and over again on an infinite loop… Something is wrong.
But before he could sort through what had just happened. Before he could even blink…
There was a second snap-the high snap of a spell stressed beyond its ability to endure, to suppress-and the wind howled as the backlash exploded outward. But Fuuma barely registered any of that, because after that second snap… the blood inside him burst into flame.
Author Note: Next chapter, Seishirou has to take on his insane mother in a maboroshi battle (I thought one maboroshi was bad enough! T_T). Now there are two insane people running around instead of one. *grin* Meanwhile, Fuuma is having his own problems and quickly realizing just how badly they screwed up when they decided it would be better for him to change Kamui.
Hints leading to this chapter:
"…to a strange woman with long black hair dragging him out of bed, clamping a hand over his mouth so tight he was practically suffocating." -Fuuma, ch. 5
"I woke up a vampire… after you two left." -Fuuma, ch. 10
Chapter: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen
Rating: M
Genre: Angst/Horror
Characters: Subaru, Seishirou, Kamui, Fuuma
Summary: It all started when Subaru accidentally brought one home. Now Kamui and Subaru find themselves running for their lives, wrapped up in a fight neither could have foreseen.
Warnings: Vampirism, blood, physical abuse, nondescript nudity, etc.
Word Count: 3,907
Chapter 12
The Illusion
"I think your time has run out, Kamui-kun," Seishirou murmured dispassionately in the ringing silence of Satsuki's departure. "If they even remotely think you're the one in the dream, they'll never let you go. They're going to turn you just to find out."
"I am not going to be a Sakurazuka," Kamui replied adamantly, staring flatly at the man. "You killed Hokuto-chan and Subaru…"
Seishirou usually couldn't care less what others thought of him, but he was really getting tired of being blamed for things he hadn't done. "Actually, I didn't kill your brother. You have your companion there to thank for that." And while Kamui stood there rooted to the ground in surprise, he turned to Fuuma and continued. "You're going to lose him."
"No," Fuuma replied, resolved. "This is one dream that's not coming true. How long do you think they'll be?"
"Long enough." Seishirou's smirk was a bit too knowing. For once, Fuuma thought they might have been thinking the exact same thing. One way or another, these people were going to find a way to make Kamui a Sakurazuka. If he wasn't the one from the dream, well, they'd just have themselves one more vampire to torture, and Kamui would forever belong to Seishirou's bloodline. But if he was… (and really, that wasn't possible, because Kamui had no Power-the gashes that hadn't healed earlier had been proof of that-and one didn't suddenly gain Power by being turned) But if he was… Fuuma looked at Seishirou and knew they couldn't allow that. They couldn't give these people another weapon. And more to the point, Fuuma refused to give them Kamui… Just as adamantly as he refused to allow Kamui to be linked to the other man. Whatever yumemi had dreamt up that little vision was destined to be wrong. Fuuma was going to make sure of it.
"It's not going to work!" Yuzuriha caroled from across the room. But no one paid her any attention.
Kamui, still reeling from the ramifications of Seishirou's earlier statement, turned on Fuuma, mind putting the pieces together furiously. Fuuma had been the one to tell him Subaru was dead, but he had never said who killed him… Never mentioned… Kamui spluttered and struggled toward coherent sentences. All that time! Fuuma had simply let him assume…
"Is it true?" The words, when they finally came, were strangely empty. "Are you the one who killed Subaru?"
"Kamui…" Fuuma extended a hand to him as if he hadn't heard at all, and Kamui jerked back from his touch into the wall
"Don't you dare!" His voice rose sharply, venomously. "Don't you dare! How could you?" He backed away slowly, sliding along the wall, keeping his eyes on the other man. "Were you just going to go on letting me believe you had nothing to do with it?" Fuuma advanced and Kamui scuttled backward, trying in vain to put more space between them in the small cell. "Don't you-mmf!" The yelp was cut off as Fuuma pounced, clamping a hand firmly over the boy's mouth, satisfactorily silencing him. Then, while Kamui tore at the offending hand with sharp nails, he snagged his other arm around the boy's waist and pulled him into his arms, crushing that slender body against his own.
"Make sure he doesn't make any more noise." Through the bars, Seishirou pinned Fuuma with a measured gaze. Fuuma returned it with a condescending slant of eyes, all contemptuousness, then dragged his struggling prize into the far corner, out of the other man's line of sight.
He curled up with the boy in his lap, not quite as effortlessly as if there hadn't been a spell suppressing his strength, but well enough considering Kamui was kicking and clawing and making it incredibly difficult to hold him down. But Fuuma managed it, dragging rough fingers through the boy's silken hair before grabbing a fistful of the shorter strands at the nape of the neck in a painfully tight grip.
"Kamui, Kamui, Kamui…" the man chided, even as he used that grip to pull the boy down head first, slowly forcing that agile body to bend impossibly backward over his knee in a long, lithe arc. For a moment he simply enjoyed the heady smell of summer and warmth that always enveloped the boy. "I'd stop worrying about what I might or might not have done to your brother if I were you. And start worrying about what I'm going to do to you…" He breathed into the soft skin under Kamui's jaw. And though the boy continued squirming furiously, any response was drowned out by the hand he still had clamped over the boy's mouth. Fuuma continued as if nothing had happened. "You said you wouldn't leave me. But in the very act of saying that, you were lying. You lied to me! You can no more stay with me than a leaf can keep itself from fading in the fall. But I'm not going to allow it. You're going to keep your promise, Kamui. Even if I have to kill you myself." Kissing that smooth expanse of bared throat, he jerked the boy's head back even further, keeping that body drawn back in a long, taut arc over his lap, and bit down.
A small hand thudded uselessly against his chest-opened and splayed wide against his shirt, pushing up at his larger form, straining desperately. He didn't mind it when that hand clawed blindly at his arm, his chest, raking angry furrows in the skin-didn't mind the heated, frustrated murmurs of drowned protests vibrating against his lips as he lapped at the boy's brilliant blood. Fighting the seduction. Pointless.
Sudden stinging in his hand made him start. Then he realized the boy had bitten him. He chuckled.
That's right, Kamui. Just exactly like that. You're a natural.
Amused, he bit deeper, drinking the boy in till the pleasure drowned everything else out. He wanted the boy-wanted him just the way he was, flustered and fiery and passionate and all. For a second he stopped to wonder when that had happened, when he'd started wanting this boy so desperately. Had it been when he'd faced Seishirou? Or earlier, watching the boy get lost in the crowded streets time after time? Or when he'd stretched out his hand to take the boy with him into the city? Or had it been… had it been when he'd heard a voice calling for help and found himself staring into wide, amethyst eyes?
It didn't matter anymore. He wasn't going to let the boy go. Not this one. Not now. The boy was going to stay with him, whether he liked it or not. Forever. And as Kamui's blood coated his tongue, beyond the pleasant warmth and lassitude that consumed him-the fine shimmer of ecstasy-there was that glitter of gold again, too fine to be sifted out or caught and examined. Filling him.
Fuuma didn't stop when Kamui's struggles became too weak to be effectual-didn't stop until the heart beating in that lovely chest was stuttering helplessly.
When the body bent backward across his knees was shivering silently, translucent skin cool against his hands, only then did he stop. Only then did he finally let go.
"Kamui?" Subaru came awake with a start, head lifting for foggy green eyes to scan the room, brows furrowed. An impending sense of wrongness beat at him. For a second he struggled to identify it-to put a name to the rapid beating of his heart and the itch in his feet-then, with methodical precision, his head turned to face the cell his brother was in, like a needle spinning to face north. "Kamui?" He stood and started for the bars that divided them, dragged by a force beyond thought, beyond reason.
Alerted by the boy's sudden start and cry, Seishirou caught him halfway there, wrapping one arm around his thin waist from behind, and attempted to hold him back.
"Subaru-kun, stop!" Seishirou tried to get the boy's attention, but Subaru struggled against him, squirming in his hold. Finally, with one particularly agile twist, thin wrists were jerked free of his grip and the boy threw himself forward, calling pleadingly for his brother. Subaru clung to the bars, pressed against them so firmly they cut into his skin, one hand stretched out desperately. Stung, Seishirou stared after him, uncomprehending. Subaru had never just ignored him. Still standing where he'd been left, he watched the boy with a growing sense of unease.
"Subaru-kun." The voice, when it came, was deceptively soft. "Look at me." Seishirou stood stone still with all the calm that preceded the storm, cold and merciless. Oblivious to the impending danger, Subaru only continued to claw at the bars, as though he hadn't heard him at all, raking bloody fingernails along the cold metal. He had always been so obedient before. But now… now Seishirou wasn't so certain. And he wouldn't stand to be ignored.
"Subaru-kun." The words were sharper than before-a warning. "Come here." And a set of conflicted eyes was at last lifted to meet his, glazed with distress. Recognition. But other than that he made no move, caught in the grip of panic and desperation and fear for his brother. And that just wouldn't do. Seishirou's eyes narrowed. "Subaru. Come. Here." There was another agonizing second of indecision, and finally the boy turned toward him fully, one hand sliding free of the bars. He stood like that, whole body shuddering under the weight of two opposing forces, before taking a lurching step towards Seishirou. Just one. Then another, each successive step gaining firmer resolve. Seishirou let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding as the boy approached. And as Subaru drew nearer, the boy reached out, beseeching, clinging to Seishirou when the man made no move to touch him, standing firm and unyielding.
Subaru clutched desperately at the hard lines of that unyielding body, pressing himself against the man tightly.
"Seishirou-san." He jerked on the man's shirt for emphasis, clutching at the material with those bloodied nails, determined that he listen. "Something's wrong with Kamui! He's hurt! He can't… he can't die!"
"I really don't care about your brother." The reply was coldly succinct. Unmoved.
"I promised! I promised Obaa-chan! I promised nothing would happen! And now it'll break! Kamui…" Frustrated tears welled up as Subaru tried to make him understand.
"What will break?" Suddenly confused, Seishirou attempted to pull out the important pieces.
"I swore I wouldn't tell!"
"Subaru-kun," Seishirou caught the boy by the shoulders and held him firm, "what will break?"
Subaru gulped and looked away. "The… The seal…"
Seishirou still didn't understand what exactly the boy was babbling about, but suddenly he had a really bad feeling about the whole thing.
"I think… there's something you need to tell me…"
But at that point there were footsteps at the door and Subaru tensed, wide-eyed, as Satsuki and Yuuto returned. Sooner than anticipated. Seishirou started to call out a warning to Fuuma, sure that they'd stop him now, but instead, Yuuto's gaze swept over Fuuma and Kamui somewhat mechanically, as if he hadn't seen them… turning straight to Subaru and Seishirou…
Fuuma straightened, pulling the boy up with him. Kamui leaned limply against his shoulder, good hand curling and uncurling feebly in his shirt. Fuuma ignored the weak breaths fanning against his neck as he bit his own wrist, teeth digging deeply into the skin, and drew a mouthful of blood.
Then he leaned down and kissed the boy.
He was met with minimal resistance at first as Kamui tried to pull pathetically away from him, but he crushed such pointless rebellion easily, catching the boy's jaw in a bruising grip and parting the less-than-pliant lips with a rough tongue. The blood spilled between them, from Fuuma to Kamui. The boy made a noise at that-a sort of smothered half protest, half whimper-and jerked faintly in Fuuma's grip. Fuuma didn't let go, pressing down mercilessly on that pretty mouth even while tipping the boy's chin further up, until he choked and swallowed… and simultaneously started coughing.
Quickly, Fuuma bit down on his own wrist again and then recaptured that mouth before it could be turned away. Kamui tried a bit more forcefully to resist this time, anticipating what was coming and trying weakly to twist free.
Enough of that now, Fuuma thought, wrapping the fingers of his free hand around the boy's broken wrist. A little pressure was all it took. Kamui winced-made a stuttered little "A-ah" of pain that was drowned out by the warm liquid coating his tongue, sliding down his throat.
Drawing another mouthful of blood, Fuuma curled his fingers tighter around that wrist warningly, and finally Kamui submitted, opening with a shudder to his prodding kiss. Swallowed.
A bird, Fuuma thought, staring down at the pale, shivering body in his arms. Broken and featherless and incapable of flight. He smirked, bending to the faint blue tracery of veins in his wrist again. But I'm sure you'll be beautiful when you fledge.
When at last he'd judged the boy had had enough, he released his hold on the twisted wrist.
"It'll be over soon," Fuuma whispered, licking the blood from Kamui's lips. Amethyst eyes stared up at him accusingly, silently condemning. But then the first faint flickers of pain splintered behind that stare, and those eyes widened.
"Fuuma-a-ah!" An uncertain little question fractured upon a gasp…
…and Fuuma clamped a hand back over that pretty mouth to smother the screams.
"The little one, right?" Yuuto asked, unlocking the door. And behind him, Satsuki nodded. Seishirou's hold on Subaru tightened, dragging the boy away from the bars. He'd expected them to come after him to turn Kamui, but with sudden alarm, he realized they didn't need him at all. Subaru was, after all, a Sakurazuka too now. So he held onto the boy tightly, determined not to let him go. But with the spell suppressing his natural speed and endurance down to human level, he couldn't dodge arrows at so close a range. The first thunked into his side, then higher, when he wouldn't let go of Subaru, into his shoulder. Seishirou stared at the hunters, unyielding. But in his arms, Subaru was staring in horror at the shafts, squirming desperately to free himself. Seishirou's grip was vice-like though, and the boy's struggles were futile, even as he pleaded with the older man.
"Seishirou-san! Stop it! You're hurt! Please!"
Seishirou ignored the boy's cries, refusing to relinquish him to them again. But when the next arrow hit the arm he had wrapped bar-like around Subaru, he couldn't keep the boy from exploiting that second when his grip loosened, squirming away and out, between him and Yuuto at the door.
"No! Stop!" Subaru cried, throwing himself in the way of further shots. "Stop! I'll come! I'll do whatever you want! Just stop hurting him!" And as Satsuki pulled him out of Seishirou's reach, closing the door and wrapping one arm around the boy's shoulders tightly, Seishirou felt cold heat rise within him. An uncontainable restlessness. The sudden desire to tear through the bars or kick down the walls or…
Stupid boy. Stupid. Always having to save everyone else. Always so selfless. Always the martyr.
Seishirou pulled the arrow shafts out with deft jerks, ignoring the blood that stained his shirt, and paced liked a caged panther in front of the door, watching Satsuki with unwavering amber eyes.
You touch him. You dare touch him…
Satsuki smiled at him. A cold, cruel little smile, like she knew exactly what he was thinking. Slowly, the arm she was using to pin Subaru to her rose, till her fingers curled around the boy's neck, tightening imperceptibly. Subaru choked, hands coming up to loosen the death grip on his throat.
"What are you doing?" Yuuto asked suddenly. "We need him alive!"
Satsuki's gaze flickered to him suddenly, and Yuuto had a single second to realize how wrong the world was, to think he should never have called attention to himself, to stop cold. There wasn't a hair physically out of place, but looking into those eyes during that single second, something inside him jumped in alarm, and it was just enough time to think… this isn't Satsuki. Then her hand shot out, angling upward at a vicious slant, quickly turning into an all-too-familiar strike… through Yuuto's heart.
Subaru, still caught firmly in Satsuki's grip, jerked as blood splattered his face.
"Satsuki-chan…" Yuuto stared in mild surprise at the arm firmly embedded in his chest, hand buried in his heart. "Who are you?" He looked up at her, astonished and confused… and collapsed.
Stuck behind the bars, Seishirou stood in an acute state of awareness. He knew-with sudden, sharp, blinding clarity, he knew… They were dead. Both of them. Not just Yuuto, lying crumpled on the stone, but the girl as well.
Satsuki was dead too.
"Okaa-san," he whispered. For a second, Satsuki stood there, hand dripping with Yuuto's blood, watching him, then slowly the image shimmered, wavered, guttering out, and a woman took Satsuki's place, long black hair falling to the floor.
"Is this," a tiny pink tongue darted along the line of the slender neck she still held too tightly in her hand, causing Subaru to squirm, "why you stopped playing?"
Because it was a game-it had always been a game-and he'd failed to put the pieces together in time. There had been too many pieces, too many different puzzles overlapping. He had failed. And now Subaru was going to pay for it.
But now that he knew what the pieces were supposed to look like, they made sense. It wasn't that his memories had been tampered with, or Fuuma's for that matter. He had been right initially to think his memories were correct, that no one had managed to mess with them. He simply hadn't seen what was real in the first place. It wasn't his memories that had been changed, but the appearance of the world itself. Maboroshi.
"You… You used an illusion so it would look like you'd killed Monou-san. You turned him, knowing he'd come after me." Monou-san's a Sakurazuka…
"Oh, so you want to keep playing now? Isn't it a little late?" The tips of her fingers tapped lightly against Subaru's pale throat, the sharp little points of her nails a staccato warning.
"Did you tell the hunters where to find me too?" Seishirou stared back at her, golden gaze burning through the bars that separated them, willing her with his eyes to watch him, to focus on him, to forget about Subaru.
But she smiled, a small little smirk, and tilted laughing eyes at him, like she knew. And she probably did.
"I can see why you stopped playing." The words whispered inside Subaru's ear, secretively, as her eyes sought and held Seishirou's. "He is pretty." The flick of that tiny tongue again, wet against sensitive skin. "But Seishirou, you know better than to invite new players without permission."
No, Seishirou thought, I was unaware the game continued with one of the players presumed dead for half a century. But that's what you wanted, wasn't it?
On the other side of the bars, Subaru gasped for air, trying to breathe around the tiny fingers curled sharply around his throat, just a hair's breadth shy of suffocating. Deftly, Setsuka caught one of the feeble hands scrabbling at her grip. Bending it brutally backward at the wrist, she brought it to her mouth, traced with tongue and tooth the winding blue thread of life under the skin from wrist to inner elbow and up along the more sensitive underside of his arm.
"Did my Seishirou give you his blood? He used to only give it to me…" A flicker of fingertips, this time at his hip, pushing beneath his clothes to trace the vein there, and Subaru squirmed under the unexpected intrusion, kicking out desperately. But then the hand was withdrawn and she shoved him suddenly backward. The edge of the table dug painfully into his lower back.
"Do you squirm so when he touches you?" She smiled condescendingly, but the question was rhetorical-Subaru could no more answer than he could breathe. "I think… you'll be much more pliant when I'm done." And then she bit deep into the line of his throat. Subaru's breath caught, lodged where her hand cut it off, but then the dizzying draw of pleasure started to drag as his consciousness, and reality dissolved into incoherent colors, meaningless compared to the breathtaking ecstasy consuming him. A pleasant lassitude pulled at his limbs, making movements slow and fumbling. Difficult to think. Difficult to care. He moaned, limp and listless and totally at her mercy.
Then, just as quickly as she had started, she let go, leaving Subaru gasping wordlessly, dazed and confused and still half drugged.
Pliant, she had said, and frustration welled up in him with the humiliation.
Smiling darkly, she leaned back down closely. "Does he love you?" Whispered in his ear again. Whispered so Seishirou couldn't hear. She was watching him again, watching for the slightest shift behind those flat eyes as she held the boy to her chest. Knowing.
Subaru flinched as those delicate, dangerous fingers brushed the side of his face, gently pushing stray strands of hair behind the curve of his ear. She smiled down at him pleasantly as she traced the feathery lashes of his right eye
"So pretty," she mused. "Such a shame. You'll never see him again." The fingertips that had been resting over his eye curled suddenly, jabbing deep into flesh and tissue. Subaru jerked. "And when I'm through with you, he'll never want you anymore." She hummed a few bars of some lullaby, fingers buried to the hilt in his skull, digging deeper.
"Setsuka!" Seishirou, trapped behind the bars. Setsuka laughed delightedly-a tinkle of breaking glass, a thousand bells shattering.
But at that point they were both interrupted.
There was a sudden prickling along Seishirou's skin, the crawling of a hundred little feet. It came unexpectedly and passed over them-through them-washing away the world around them. Reality rippled-distorted the way a road does on a blistering sunny day in a heat wave.
Setsuka looked up, startled.
And everything exploded.
Kamui shuddered one last time in Fuuma's grip.
And then… something broke. Inside. Fuuma felt the reverberations all the way to his fingertips and toes-felt the strength of it jerk the body in his arms-and for one wild second he thought the boy's spine had snapped. One infinite second in which Kamui lay unmoving in his arms and the pressure in the room seemed to double and double again and he could only sit there, frozen, mind racing-repeating over and over again on an infinite loop… Something is wrong.
But before he could sort through what had just happened. Before he could even blink…
There was a second snap-the high snap of a spell stressed beyond its ability to endure, to suppress-and the wind howled as the backlash exploded outward. But Fuuma barely registered any of that, because after that second snap… the blood inside him burst into flame.
Author Note: Next chapter, Seishirou has to take on his insane mother in a maboroshi battle (I thought one maboroshi was bad enough! T_T). Now there are two insane people running around instead of one. *grin* Meanwhile, Fuuma is having his own problems and quickly realizing just how badly they screwed up when they decided it would be better for him to change Kamui.
Hints leading to this chapter:
"…to a strange woman with long black hair dragging him out of bed, clamping a hand over his mouth so tight he was practically suffocating." -Fuuma, ch. 5
"I woke up a vampire… after you two left." -Fuuma, ch. 10
Chapter: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen