http://clampfix.fanworks.net/x-fix/dark2.txt </head><body><pre>When there's nothing else to do I certainly get a lot of writing done. *stares at screen* Okay, actually I have lots of other things to do, but this is much more fun. ^^;;; Well, here's chapter two. Enjoy. ^_^ C&C please. ~Chapter Two~ I'd gotten about three hours of sleep after I came home from my abortive vampire-slaying expedition. That was a little worse than usual, but not too much. My nightmares plus my job--it's nearly impossible to find vampires during the day--mean that I don't sleep too much. But today I really wasn't at my best. I'd called the Yamamotos, tried to politely decline the job. The father had told me in no uncertain terms that they wanted to see the murderer of their little girl dead and if I didn't do it they'd find someone else who was willing to. I almost took that way out. But it wouldn't have worked. I don't think there's anyone in the city who could succeed in killing a vampire if I couldn't. And I wasn't eager to send some innocent kid who'd watched too much occult anime up against a magic-using vampire. For Kigai that'd be the same as a take-out meal. But I couldn't do anything now. I had no clue where Kigai slept, and it was two in the afternoon. It'd be a long time before sunset. It's a hell of a lot more dangerous to hunt vampires when they're awake, but it's nearly impossible to find the sleeping places of older vamps. Young, stupid ones aren't too difficult to track down, but I had the feeling that Kigai was neither. Which meant that I was sitting in my room, bored to death, and therefore brooding. Until the phone rang. After a few rings, the machine picked up, and I listened with half an ear to the familiar "please leave a message after the beep." It beeped. "Hello," the caller said. Her voice was perfectly calm and even, unusual for someone calling about a job. They were generally hysterical... "This is Kishuu Arashi. I am attempting to contact Sumeragi-san on a matter of vital importance..." What the hell. I picked up the phone. "Hello?" "Sumeragi-san?" she inquired. "Yes." "Good afternoon. Will you be available to meet with..." she hesitated for a long time, "...with my employer today?" "When and where?" I said. "I will meet you on the steps of the Diet building at three," she said. It wasn't like I had anything else to do. "What does the job involve?" "I'll let her explain it," Kishuu-san said. I sighed. "I'll be there." "Good," she said, and hung up. I put the phone back on the cradle and stared at it. Well, this sounded like a reasonably entertaining way to spend the afternoon. It took a little less than an hour to get to the Diet building from my apartment. Kishuu-san had impressive timing. I'd have to leave at once. --- The Diet building hummed with occult energy. I didn't know when the first spell had been put on the place, or whether it had been built on old holy ground, but it was nearly impossible to sense anything here though the sheer 'background noise' of old spells. It wasn't entirely comfortable to be around. All right. Steps of the Diet building, check. I glanced at my watch. Two minutes after three, check. Where was Kishuu-san? There were only a few people on the steps, two aging men in business suits and one high school girl still in uniform. Well, maybe--I headed for the high school girl. "Kishuu-san?" She turned, and nodded regally. "I am. Are you Sumeragi-san?" "Yeah." I stared at her. The voice was the same, cool and collected, and her face was as calm as your average stone. Her hair fell unbroken down her back nearly to her school uniform's skirt. Really, she was quite beautiful. She didn't look like anyone I had expected to be calling me on some mysterious errand in the middle of the afternoon. Well, except for her aura, which flared with energy even against the interference of the Diet building. High school student or no, she was clearly an accomplished magic-user. "Come with me, please," she said with a bow, and headed up the steps. I followed. Kishuu-san led me on a convoluted path towards the basement of the Diet building, one involving elevators, back stairs, and deserted corridors galore. I had completely lost faith in my ability to get out of the building again by the time she stopped outside a nondescript door that hummed with strange, ancient power. I frowned at it. She opened the door and gestured me in. Oh well. I went. The room behind the door was just about as strange as I had expected: it was lit by charcoal braziers that burned with a cloying smoke and gave off barely enough light to keep me from falling on my nose. A raised dais filled the other half of the room, with a traditional bamboo curtain half-unrolled to hide the figure behind. Two women knelt at the corners of the dais, heads bowed, eyes watching me sharply from behind the curtain of their bangs. Kishuu bowed deeply to the hidden occupant of the dais. Suddenly recalling my manners, I did the same. The figure made an indistinct motion, and suddenly the braziers flared up. In the new light, I could see the figure clearly. It was a girl, with the face of someone even younger than Kishuu-san. Long white hair spread out around her like the silk of a spider's web, over intricate robes. She seemed to be kneeling, her entire body lost in the folds of cloth, only a child's face and two small hands visible. She didn't look at us, nor did she speak. But I heard, entirely inside my mind, a girl's voice say, ~Sumeragi-san. I am glad that you have come. There is much that I need to tell you.~ Her pale red eyes remained fixed on the corner of the room. With a shock, I realized that she was blind. And, probably, mute as well. But the power that emanated from her was like nothing that I had felt before. No matter what she looked like, I knew that she was no child. "Thank you for admitting me," I said politely, trying to remember whether I'd heard anything about her. Someone this powerful certainly must be known to the Sumeragi family, but I couldn't recall my grandmother ever mentioning a spiritual master under the Diet building. "Excuse me, but what is your name?" She smiled sweetly, suddenly seeming as young as she looked. ~My name is Hinoto. I am a seer. I asked you here because I have foreseen a terrible disaster that threatens to destroy the human race. You are one of those who must help prevent it.~ I laughed bitterly. "Why me?" There had to be some better candidate than a aimless vampire hunter with a death wish. Both of Hinoto's attendants glared at me, and the left-hand one snapped, "Show respect to the princess!" Hinoto waved them both back with one tiny hand. ~Because you are the most powerful necromancer in Japan,~ she replied with perfect calm. ~Take my hand, and I will show you what I have seen. That should answer all your questions.~ Nameless misgivings bashed on the back of my skull for attention, but I knelt down to touch the seer's hand. And leapt back in horror. "You're a vampire!" I accused. She'd managed to fool me for a long time, when no other vampire I'd ever seen had been able to conceal their nature. But I was a necromancer, and I knew a dead body when I touched one. She was still for a long moment, then bowed her head. ~I am. And I know the hatred you feel for us.~ Her head came back up, and the scarlet irises had bled out to the edges of the eyes, leaving them depthless pools of scarlet. Particularly appropriate for a vampire, I thought. She took a deep breath. I had the strange feeling that she was counting quietly to ten. Her eyes began to return to normal. ~I will not hurt you, I give you my word. Take my hand. You MUST help us.~ I didn't want to. I really, really didn't want to. But my curiosity will kill me some day. I reached forward and took her hand. And plunged into darkness. Hinoto's hand was still clamped around mine, but now the vampire seer (and who ever heard of a vampire clairvoyant?!) was the only other thing that existed. She had swept me into her mind somehow. I shuddered, staring around. A world was slowly taking shape around me. It was dark, lit by fitful fires that burned sullenly in the lee of shattered slabs of concrete. I stared. Devastation, pure and simple. That was Hinoto's vision. The destruction was so total that it took me several minutes to pick out the shrouded forms of seven people standing in the center of the wreckage. Seven. The number necessary for a magical Circle. Were they the ones who had caused this disaster? "There," Hinoto said, in a voice that sounded like a normal human's. Well, the entire vision was hers, I supposed that she could speak however she chose to. She continued, "They are the ones who brought this upon us. But this is only one possible future." The center figure, standing in the place of the Circle's Key, slipped back his hood and looked up at us. It was a boy, maybe high school age. A predatory smile and matching gleam in the violet eyes made his beautiful face terrifying. I'd never seen him before in my life. "Who is that?" I asked Hinoto. She sighed. "That is the one on whom the Future rests." I absolutely detest 'fate' mumbo-jumbo. On the theory that it wasn't a good idea to annoy ancient vampires while you were touring their psyche, I didn't say that out loud. "Do you know who he is?" I inquired, as politely as I could. Hinoto shook her head. "He noticed me as I dreamed about him... That should be impossible. He has great power. But I do not know who he is. I cannot travel from my home in the basement of the Diet building, and I have not yet gathered the other six who must support him." "Look," I said, "I'm not going to help destroy the world. You must have made a mistake somewhere." "No, of course not!" Hinoto looked surprised. "There are two groups that I have seen. You will defend the Earth." I sighed. "Hinoto-san, I am obviously missing something here. Can you please tell me the entire story from the beginning?" "Of course. I'm sorry." The world around us faded out, becoming a vision of the seven cloaked figures standing in a Circle. The seventh was at the center, his hood pushed back and the same coldly amused face visible. Clear water flowed beneath them, their reflections visible in the silver surface. "At the bottom," Hinoto admitted, "it's all my sister's fault." Vampires had sisters? "She's a vampire too?" I asked. "Yes; we aren't sisters by blood, but the same master made us both. She can invade my mind if she wishes, and see the visions that I see. She has always wanted power. Although I am a master vampire, she will never be. We are the same age, and she has had a *very* long time to consider her weakness. When I first had the vision of the end of the world, this is what I saw." And the image changed, to show a creature made of light rising into the sky over Tokyo. It was something like a dragon and something like a lightning-bolt, and it flared with worldshattering power. I recoiled, calling power instinctively into a protective pentagram. Hinoto laughed silently. "It's only a vision," she said. I relaxed, feeling rather stupid, as she continued. "My sister saw this vision, and she decided that if she could control a spirit of such power she would be a master such as the world has never known. But she doesn't have a prayer of raising this spirit on her own." "What is it?" I interrupted, still staring at the creature. It was ...fascinating, in the old sense of the word. It drew the eye and kept it. There was a sort of deadly dangerous beauty about it, glittering in the dark clouds as it reared above the city. "It is the spirit of the Earth," Hinoto said. She was very serious. I turned to stare at her. "You mean, like the Gaea theory? The Earth has a mind of its own?" I really didn't believe in that kind of stuff. "How can anything so very alive have no spirit?" Hinoto countered. "Yet it is not awake, not aware of what happens. My sister proposes to raise it, as you would call a spirit from the dead, Sumeragi-san. She doesn't realize that, no matter the power she accrues to herself, she will be unable to control something this immense. It will wake from its sleep, and then--" The world around us shifted to the devastation she had first shown me. "It will realize the danger humanity poses to its survival," Hinoto continued, voice very quiet and implacable. The wind keened around the broken city as she spoke. "And it will eliminate us. All of us." "So that's why you're helping humans," I said, enlightened. "This ...spirit of the Earth... won't discriminate between vampires and humans when it takes its revenge." I turned to look out over the destruction, and thought about everything I knew of the things we'd done to the Earth. Global warming. Pollution of the air, the soil, the oceans. Deforestation and mass extinctions. "I can hardly blame it for wanting to kill us all," I commented. Hinoto stared at me. "You must help us!" she begged. "How can you leave the whole human race to be destroyed? We need everyone we can to help us!" I had seen a lot of the darker side of humanity. In my profession, you can hardly help it. After a certain time, the stories of death and despair that you hear from every ghost you exorcise begin to wear on you. The faces of every savaged vampire victim begin to blur together. I wasn't all that sure that humanity needed to be saved. The vampire seer could probably see that in my face. She said softly, "You must help us. I didn't want to use this information, but... I know the names of those who my sister has gathered to her." She reached out toward the cloaked figures standing amidst the wreckage, and another of the hoods fell away to reveal a face. I stared. It was a terribly familiar visage, darkly beautiful, with the same predatory smile that the boy in the center wore. It looked better on this face. There was no possible way that I could turn down Hinoto's offer. And she knew it too damned well. I didn't trust my voice not to shake, so I just nodded. "I'm glad that you will help us," she said. "We really do need you. And, Sumeragi-san... I'm sorry." No apology could heal the ache in my heart as I stared at the face she had revealed. The face of the vampire who had marked me, who had murdered my sister, who had left my life a shattered wreck and simply walked away. Seishirou-san... The world fell away around us, and I opened my eyes in Hinoto's smoky sanctum. It looked like I had a new job. --- And under yet another government building, Hinoto's sister lay sleeping the sleep of the undead. Her scarlet-painted lips curved in a tiny self-satisfied smile, her ample and largely bare bosom lay still, and her soul walked in the dreams of her more powerful sister. She noted, impressed, that her annoyingly moral elder sister was excellent at fighting dirty. She was less thrilled to realize that Hinoto now had recruited three of her 'foreseen champions of humanity'--and if that wasn't typical Hinoto hyperbole she'd eat her coffin--while Kanoe had only succeeded in collecting two. If she had been inhabiting her body, she would have pouted. Her older sister was ahead in this game too. Well, she knew everything that Hinoto did about the champions of both sides. Maybe she should cut to the chase and send her servants out after that lovely young boy Hinoto had seen as the keystone of the circle. Or maybe she could recruit a few more first...a thoughtful frown tried to cross her spiritual visage. Hinoto had been lying to the necromancer, but she might actually have been right. Although Kanoe had not yet contacted the master vampire Sakurazuka Seishirou, his power would be a great boon to her efforts at raising the Spirit. She scoffed at her sister's repeated whinge about how Kanoe and her coterie couldn't possibly find enough power to enslave the spirit of the Earth. Honestly, Hinoto repeated that every time. She couldn't seem to grasp the fact that Kanoe was collecting vampires--and, yes, even a few humans--with powers that dwarfed the ancient gimp's. Hinoto kept thinking that no one had any more power than she herself did. One of these days, someone would teach her just how wrong she was. Kanoe cherished the hope that she would get to teach her older sister that particular lesson. Once the Earth's spirit was free. Then, she would have the strength she'd wanted for so long...</pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>