http://clampfix.fanworks.net/x-fix/dark4.txt </head><body><pre>Minna-san, I'm sooo sorry I took so long to write this chapter. ;_; It wouldn't cooperate... The people belong to CLAMP, the world belongs to Laurell K. Hamilton, I'm just borrowing them for a little. Slight profanity, angry Subaru, Sei-chan, continued mild Kanoe- bashing (What can I say? I don't like her). Possibly OOC Sorata ;_; (I tried). Kamui and Fuuma will probably show up in the next part. ~Chapter Four~ Kanoe hovered over me, rage pulsing off her in sickening waves, so close that I could smell rotten blood on her breath. I was still too dazed to move, although believe me I wanted to. "Kanoe," Kigai called from behind her, "we might need him." She turned on the blonde vampire, snarling. He held up both hands in a placating gesture. "Maa, maa! I just meant that he might be able to help." A little of the anger slipped out of the atmosphere. I tried to make myself very small and difficult to notice. The feeling was starting to return to my limbs in an all-over wave of pins and needles, which was a good sign although annoying as hell. I flexed my fingers unobtrusively while Kanoe stared at Kigai. "What do you mean?" she asked, and a little of that predatory drawl was back in her voice. Looked like she'd gotten over her snit. Damn, did this mean I owed my life to *Kigai*? Kigai shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "Well, he's a necromancer, he can raise the dead, wouldn't that help?" Thoughtfully, Kanoe turned to stare at me. "*Can* you wake a spirit?" *Everyone* was now looking at me--so much for being unobtrusive. I quickly considered my options. If the answer was yes, they'd recruit me, and I didn't think I would have a choice in the matter. If it was no, they'd kill me. Which left the truth. Nice coincidence. "I don't deal with spirits, just bodies. I don't know if I could or not." Kanoe hissed in frustration. "What use is that to us?! We can't roll his mind, he doesn't know if he can wake the spirit so we can control it. He's nothing but food." Oh this was not good. I slipped my hands inside my sleeves, reaching slowly for the ofuda in the inner pockets. They didn't seem to be advancing on me just yet, so I had a little time... Kigai looked exasperated. "He is the human servant of the Sakurazukamori! Another vampire, remember? You can't kill him, it would be an act of war!" "You know as well as I do how well the Sakurazukamori gets along with his 'human servant,'" Kanoe sneered. "He'll be glad to get rid of the burden." It was probably true. It hurt anyway. I fanned the hard slips of paper between my fingers, gathering energy slowly. At least they were ignoring me again... The thought seemed to be a jinx. Satsuki's head snapped around. She frowned. "Stop that!" she ordered, petulant. I abandoned the attempt at stealth and whipped my hand out of the sleeve of my coat. One of the thinner wires came to life. Before I could even throw my half-prepared attack, it snared my wrist and yanked it back against the motion of my arm. I heard the wet crack of bone breaking at least half a second before the pain hit. The ofuda spilled from my suddenly limp fingers. Another wire snaked out to entangle my left hand, and the two pinned my arms against the wall. It was unnecessary. Really it was. I wasn't thinking about escape. Mostly I was thinking about just how much my broken arm hurt. Why the *hell* was it always my arms?! I clamped my teeth shut on what probably would have been an undignified squeak as the wires tightened. Satsuki gave me a thoroughly unpleasant cute-little-kid grin. Kanoe sighed. "Let's just kill him. We can deal with the Sakurazukamori, *if* he even objects. This is getting far too inconvenient." Kigai shrugged. So much for allies. Satsuki said, quite emotionlessly, "Kill him, BEAST." A cable swooped down from the ceiling. I tried frantically to think of any protective spell I could cast with no preparation, no ofuda and my hands literally tied. I came up blank. Dammit, this was NOT the way I had envisioned dying! About a foot from my chest, the cable started to disintegrate into delicate sakura petals. My ears rang with the peculiar silence of Seishirou-san's maboroshi. I slumped, twitching very slightly with residual panic, as the cables snaring my arms followed the admirable lead of the one that had been trying to kill me. "BEAST?!" the five-hundred-year-old teenager faltered, looking around. I had to admire the perfection of the illusion, even though I was planning to strangle Seishirou-san for waiting until the very last moment to step in. Well, that and all the other excellent reasons I had for wanting to kill him. At the very edge of the circle of wan yellow light shed by the bare bulb above the door, the shadows began to curdle. I stared at it, hypnotized by the swirling darkness. Seishirou-san, showing up twice in a single night? And this time... to save me? I wasn't sure that I wouldn't have preferred to take my chances with BEAST. I was *not* up to dealing with Seishirou-san any more tonight... The shadows finally solidified into the familiar figure. I couldn't help noticing, purely as an aesthetic thing of course, that he was beautiful. Both of him. It would probably have been even more impressive if I wasn't still seeing double. He was posing, quite deliberately, arms crossed and faint smirk firmly in place. The shadows slipped around him, blending with the long black trench coat he wore. The sunglasses were gone and his single golden eye gleamed ferally in the dim light. He was so still that he could have been carved from obsidian, except that his utter lack of motion held the deadly promise of a snake poised to strike. "Kanoe," he said, his voice slipping over us all like ice water down the spine, "I don't recall giving you permission to play with my toys." All right, forget beautiful, he was going to die. The statuesque and insufficiently clothed vampire seemed even paler than before. She managed to pull herself together enough to laugh at him. "You want *this* as a human servant?" she mocked. "He seems entirely uninteresting to me." "Well, Kanoe," Seishirou said, abandoning the pose and strolling towards me, "that's because he's *mine*." I would not react. I would *not* react. I was in no shape to fight anyone no matter who they were or what they said. His hand closed around my right wrist. I stifled a sound of pain as the freshly broken bones grated against each other. The inverted pentagrams on my hands flickered to life, burning silver against pale skin, and he lifted the captured hand. Ignoring my very quiet agonized squeak, he brushed his lips across the gleaming star. Gently, he lowered the broken arm to my side again and straightened. I was shaking, fine tremors all over, from pain and emotion and the sheer frustration of not being able to do anything. But no matter how stupid I can occasionally be, I do have *some* sense. I stayed still and watched. "Kanoe," Seishirou-san said, "attacking my human servant is the same as attacking me personally. Do I really have to quote the Council's laws to you?" Satsuki said as coolly as a computer, "Your servant entered our territory without permission and attacked us. By the Council's laws, we were within our rights." There was a brief pause. I felt a swirl of power and glanced up in time to watch Seishirou-san drop the layer of illusion that mimicked the vampires' lair. Darkness surrounded all five of us, endless and deadly. Seishirou-san gave the trio of vampires an amused smile. "Indeed you were. As I would be within my rights to kill you all." There was a longer pause. Finally, Kanoe said, her careless facade developing some significant cracks, "You can take your servant and leave. We won't stop you." A little belatedly, I realized that this didn't sound like the kind of conversation allies would have. Hinoto had *lied* to me about Seishirou-san? I would have to talk to her about that. Seishirou-san mused, still smiling at Kanoe, "Perhaps. And yet you did come very close to killing my Subaru-kun." I bristled at the possessive pronoun. "I think it would really be easier just to kill you all and remove a possible future annoyance." She flinched, then seemed to steel herself. With a predatory smile, she took a step closer to him. "Oh? I think we could be very effective allies..." He laughed derisively. "You must be joking." "We seek power," she said, settling one hand on her hip. "Power beyond the dreams of anyone... beyond the Council, perhaps beyond God himself." "And why, again, would I be interested?" Seishirou-san asked, the shadows rippling dangerously. Yuuto cleared his throat, and suggested with a brilliant smile, "Because it's going to be fun." The Sakurazukamori paused, startled, and then laughed. "Well. Finally a good reason. Perhaps we do have something to talk about," he mused, flashing them a dangerous smile. It must have been about then that I blacked out. --- The light in my eyes was the first thing I noticed. I tried to move my hand to cover my eyes, and *then* I woke up. I was in a hospital room. Like most of them, it was diabolically designed. The window was right at the foot of the bed, bright morning light slanting in between the slats of the Venetian blinds. Directly into my eyes. The bed was sagging, the pillow was lumpy, and the air conditioning was up far too high, especially considering that I was wearing only a thin sheet and one of those awful hospital gowns that opens in the back. My arm, which really hurt a lot less, was encased in a cast that reached from my wrist to above my elbow, effectively immobilizing both joints. The plaster was neon pink. I stared at it for a while. Pink. And it was going to be on for at least a month. Oh well... "Oh good, you're awake!" an unfamiliar Kansai-accented voice said cheerfully. I whipped my head around, tensing automatically. There was a man sitting by the edge of the bed, dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, grinning at me. He probably wasn't much more than seventeen or eighteen, but he had an aura of controlled power that rivaled most master magicians. "Who are you?" I said, giving him a hostile glare. He held up both hands, looking alarmed and even younger. "I'm not your enemy, I swear! I'm Arisugawa Sorata, but you can call me Sora- chan. I'm supposed to tell you that Hinoto-hime--" "You can tell Hinoto-san that I want nothing more to do with her," I interrupted, letting my head fall back into the lumpy pillow and closing my eyes. I was not happy with Hinoto. She had *lied* to me-- had used Seishirou-san as a lever to get me to go along with her delusional little apocalyptic scenario. Besides, broken bones always make me just a little grumpy. Arisugawa yelped, "What?!" I pretended to be asleep. "But Sumeragi-san, we found the boy Hinoto-hime saw in her dream," he said. Presumably that was the message. I wasn't sure why I should care. I essayed a faked snore. "But you have to help," he pleaded. "What about the world?" Arisugawa was obviously not the best at picking up on subtle little hints to leave people alone already. I gave up and opened my eyes. "I could not care less," I said, "about the fate of the world." Arisugawa dropped the puppy-dog pleading face and gave me a long, even look, the sort of look that says your soul is being examined and it doesn't look too squeaky clean. It was almost enough to make me feel guilty. Almost. I closed my eyes again. "All right," Arisugawa said, sounding surprisingly serious. "I'll leave, then. I'm sure we can find some way to protect that boy, since the vampires *might* not know where he lives yet and *might* want to try convincing him to help before they just kill everyone else in the vicinity and kidnap him. Goodbye, Sumeragi-san." The chair scraped on the floor, and a few moments later the door opened and closed quietly. I stared up at the ceiling. Shit. Now I *did* feel guilty.</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>