Soul Searching
Chapter 1
The first hunger pangs for a century were like nails through her body, and she reached out insubstantially to find something to feed on.
The first soul she found was cheery, bright, and untouchable. She recoiled in disgust and hid behind her glass in disgust, waiting for a new victim. This one she couldn't touch, pure and undamaged bar two deep scores. She could bide her time for now.
The next soul was young and fresh, still tinged with teenaged angst, but threatening to develop into the same pure cheer as the first. It had similar twin cracks to the first, but there were hairline fractures spreading out to cover the surface. There was so much potential here, but when she tried to pull the soul away it burnt much as the first did. Angrily, she let go again and went to sulk once more.
But then...
The third soul was glass held together with tobacco and typewriter ink, a veritable banquet of pain and frustration and anger and bitterness. Just the thought of such a morsel was enough to make her tremble with anticipation, splintering her glass with the urge to spring on it immediately. But she quashed the feeling; a good seasoning of irritation could be added in short order.
Takahiro had given the mirror to Misaki to keep for a few weeks until Manami's birthday. It was a pretty thing – a black wood frame with blossoms inlaid with a red enamel. The glass was grimy, and a crack was forming down the centre of the mirror and Akihiko promised to have it replaced as part of his birthday present to her.
Misaki could still hear the bitter tinge in the man's voice when he said that. He knew Akihiko loved him, and not Takahiro, but it still upset him a bit when he was reminded that his lover had once pined for his brother.
In an act of small, petty revenge he made far too much green pepper laden risotto, so they could make any number of meals out of it. Usagi-san grumbled through his first meal, and then spent as much of the next day as possible out of the house to avoid the next dose of peppers.
Unfortunately this meant that he was stuck away from the house when his car refused to unlock and left him stranded outside on an achingly cold day for four hours and unable to leave because leaving a Ferrari with a malfunctioning lock system un-chaperoned in any city was a good way to never seeing that car again.
Akihiko came home frozen and frustrated to a Misaki who had been seething all day about his lover's disappearance.
"Where the hell where you?" he snapped, ignoring Akihiko's attempts to unbutton his coat with icy fingers.
"Waiting for a tow company. The car was being tricky."
"You should have called. I kept that rice cooking for ages I should have been doing useful stuff in!"
"I would have, but my phone was inside the car. And I was outside."
"How useless are you! Keep your phone on you!"
Akihiko growled and finally managed to clear himself of his coat. He stalked over to the coffee machine and turned it on, grabbing a random glass.
Misaki half shrieked in irritation and snatched the glass back. "Heat resistant ones! Can you not read, idiot?"
The author took another glass, this one clearly labelled, and poured the coffee, grumbling, "I don't think it would make any difference, breaking a glass. My hands are so cold I don't think there's a drop of blood in them."
"Go warm them on a radiator then!" snapped Misaki.
A honeyed voice purred, "I'd rather warm them on you."
Misaki slapped the approaching and truly freezing hands away and growled, "Don't even think about it."
Akihiko gave up and went to bed.
This was only the start of a terrible week for the both of them. After another five days of car troubles, cold weather, university, jobs, deadlines, editors, professors, interfering family, chain smoking and green pepper avoidance, the pair of them were barely on speaking terms anymore.
They had both said some pretty harsh stuff and Misaki cringed internally when he remembered the agonised look on Usagi-san's face when he may have told the man he hated him, hated him with his stupid smoking and his lack of regard for deadlines and his inability to be a normal person and so on. It had been cruel and unfair, and he should have had the sense not to ever say a single word of it.
She sensed hurt, guilt, pain in such doses she could have made a meal alone from that. But she wanted the main dish – the soul.
She pounced in the dead of night, while they slept alone.
Misaki couldn't seem to sleep anymore. He was alone in his small, cold bed and he couldn't stop thinking about the arguments.
Both of them were proud creatures, and neither wanted to be the first to admit they were wrong, but Misaki was dying to say sorry right now. When Akihiko pulled that face... Dear god, it was heartbreaking.
Downstairs, a glass shattered.
Terror seized him momentarily – a burglar? But he shook that thought away – this was a well secured building. An intruder wouldn't be able to get past the front gate, let alone all the way up to their penthouse. It was just Usagi-san dosing himself with coffee for an all-nighter.
He decided to seize the moment and go apologise. Otherwise Usagi-san would start writing those stories that reviewers tended to describe as 'gut-wrenching' or, even worse, 'bitter'.
Anyway, his bed was cold and lonely.
He padded out onto the landing; it was dark and silent in the penthouse, so he fumbled for the light switch. It remained silent, there was no one lurking in the kitchen or standing by the bay windows as Usagi-san usually would.
"Usagi-san?" He peered about worriedly and crept down the stairs. The man hadn't collapsed on the floor anywhere, which was probably a good sign, but that was equally a bad sign. Who had smashed the glass?
Misaki took a careful step forward and yelped in pain. Something sharp had embedded itself in his foot and robbed him of his balance. He pitched forward, cold shards spiking into his palms as he caught his fall. These prove to be glass; scattered across the floor are their siblings, forming a spray formation from a blackened wood frame. The mirror had apparently exploded, leaving a matte backing plate exposed to the world. The student gingerly picked the frame up and studied the plate – there were symbols engraved into the metal, unpleasant ones that made his eyes water. When he traced one complicated line with his fingertip, burning sensations spread up his arm.
"I wouldn't touch that."
The voice is that of a woman, slow and pleased. Misaki yelped and turned to stare at her.
She was grey-skinned and black-haired, wearing shadows as a dress and eyes like an abyss. She held a silver wire in both hands, a wire that pulsed gently with a light of its own, winding it around talon laden fingers.
"What the fuck are you doing in my house?" Misaki stood up and pointed a fingers at her, trembling with rage and terror. "Did you break this?" He wielded the frame and she grimaced.
"I did break the glass, but I would appreciate if you didn't break my frame. I need that for living in."
Slowly, Misaki took a breath and released it again. "What?"
"Don't break the plate. It is the doorway to my home." She spoke as if to an idiot, gently placing one end of the silver wire in her mouth. Immediately she sighed in pleasure, and Misaki felt an overwhelming urge to wrench the wire away from her. "Oh, only humans can do this to themselves. You would never get such a meal from an animal." She opened a mouth that was dark as a pit, bared red fangs and swallowed the wire.
And promptly coughed it back up.
"What has he attached this to?" She peered at the wire like it held a secret and then froze. Misaki shuddered as her unnatural gaze fell on him and she smiled. "He's attached this to you, little boy."
"Who? What? How?" He wielded the frame again. "You explain everything or I break this!"
The woman rolled her eyes and licked the wire again. "I am a soul-spider, and as such we eat souls. This is such a thing, and a very tasty one too. I would be eating right now, but the man I stole it from has managed to attach it to you, so I can't." She narrowed her eyes. "You're too nice for me to be eating, so if you could just give his soul to me that would be great."
Misaki clutched the mirror frame to his chest and stepped back, ignoring the pain in his feet when glass scrunched into his soles. A soul-spider... He'd never heard of anything like that, not even in the fairy tales. And if that wire was someone's soul... This was the oddest explanation he'd ever heard, but it just seemed to fit the situation.
Wait, if that wire was someone's soul, and Misaki was fairly sure he still had his, there was only one other person in the apartment it could belong to.
"That's Usagi-san's!" he yelled, anger replacing the fear and confusion for a moment. "Don't you dare eat that! That's mine!"
A clawed hand shot out and buried itself into his chest. It should have hurt and bled and killed him, but instead it drew back unbloodied and all there was a slight 'ping' somewhere Misaki couldn't describe. The woman raised her hand and showed him the emerald wire wrapped around her fingers.
"This is yours." She let go and shook her hand as if disgusted by the sensation of Misaki's soul on her skin. The student touched his chest in horror, and then gritted his teeth. He was not backing down. That was Usagi-san's soul and someone needed to fight for it. "You should give me his. If you don't I'll have to kill you, and neither of us would enjoy that."
"I am not giving you his soul." Misaki gripped the mirror frame with both hands and tapped it against the wall. "And if you try any funny stuff, I'm smashing your 'home' to bits, understand?"
"I see we have reached an impasse." The woman ambled away and slid onto a sofa, playing casually with the silver wire. "Maybe you should go make sure your 'Usagi-san' is still breathing, and we can think of some way to solve this?"
Usagi-san was breathing, if shallowly, but he would not wake, no matter how hard Misaki shook him. He was also absolutely freezing, so the student hunted out a few extra blankets for him when it was clear he wasn't going to open his eyes.
"So..." The woman had clearly crept up behind him, and was whispering into his ear. Misaki wanted to turn around and shove her away, but he didn't think pushing a thing that ate souls was a good idea at all. "So, you still won't give him up?"
"No way."
"And I couldn't eat both of you. Your soul is just too pleasant, despite all the cracks. And killing you would lose me both of you and get me in trouble…" She sighed and then dropped something onto the bed sheets. "Go on. Take it."
The object looked like a jar, but with blackened wood for a lid and occult symbols carved into the glass. Misaki didn't touch it – he could still feel the burning in his fingers from where he'd touched the symbols on the back of the mirror.
"So here is what I shall do. I can't send myself out of this world without another meal. But I can send you. Wander off through a few of the multiverses and find a warped little version of your darling and steal his soul for me."
Misaki gawped at her in silence.
"Don't make that face. It's not too hard. Just find a man who's suffering like this one and stab him in the chest with that." She pointed at the lid of the jar, which tipped off the container to display a sharp metal spike on the other side. "Wind the soul up, stuff it in the jar and come back home."
"I don't know how to do that!"
"Oh, you'll figure it out as you go along." She smiled nastily.
"But I don't have time! Usagi-san will starve while I'm gone!"
"I'll make sure nothing happens to my meal, don't you worry." The smile widened slightly – Misaki could see more fangs in her mouth than any human-like creature should have. "The soul jar will disguise you and itself as you travel, so you don't attract unnecessary attention."
Tears of anger and frustration welled up in Misaki's eyes. Earlier that evening the worst thing in the world was the fact that he had temporarily upset Usagi-san and that he was going to have to apologise. Now… If he didn't follow the orders of this creepy, soul-eating monster, his Akihiko would die. And so would Misaki himself, by the sound of it. Aware he wasn't acting his age, but not caring at all, he stamped a foot and ran off, hurtling down the stairs and grasping helplessly for the phone.
He dialled the first number that came to mind – his brother's – but the phone made no noise. Desperately, he tried the emergency number, but still there was silence. When he fumbled for his mobile, the screen was filled with grey static, flickering every so often to show a creepy blackness that Misaki hadn't realised this little screen could manage.
"You won't find anyone to help you, boy," said the woman, advancing down the stairs at a leisurely pace. She still held the silver thread in her hands, watching it like a starving man might watch a meal being cooked, and appeared to pay no attention to Misaki at all. He took his chance and bolted to the door, but then there she was, looming horrible and dark over him.
The door lock creaked and crunched heavily in the socket, and the electrical bolt gave a fizzing noise. Misaki hoped for a second that it would send out some sparks or smoke, and trigger the fire alarm, but no such luck. His disappointment must have been obvious on his face, for the woman laughed then.
"No escape," she crooned, dangling the wire in front of his nose temptingly. "You cannot have it until you get me a replacement…"
"But…"
The woman's face distorted for a second as her temper twanged. "This is not a hard choice! You keep your own life and his, while some other imbecile loses theirs. You will not know them for longer than a few minutes, and all you have to do is stab them in the chest with a supernatural weapon! There will be no blood, no guts, no gore, no loss! Why won't you do it?"
Misaki stared up at her, watching in terror as her arms lengthened and bent and broke at odd angles and her body hunched up and widened and her jaws jutted out of her face to form pincers of bone. He had no choice. "Fine," he sobbed, holding out a shaking hand, "Fine, I'll do it…"
"Good boy." Just like that she was normal again, smiling broadly and showing only a few of her many, sharpened teeth. "Turn the symbols on top when you want to move on, and try not to break it. Please."
The jar was dropped into Misaki's shaking hand – it was lighter than he was expecting, but the symbols remained horrible up close. He touched one with the tip of a finger and winced at the sensation as he pulled his hand away. On the surface of the wood, the sign gave a wiggling little lurch and squeezed through a field of other gruesome marks, following the digit like a piranha. Misaki almost dropped the jar in shock, but a bony hand closed over his and the soul-spider's face loomed down, upsettingly close.
"Take care, little boy, and I'll watch your precious while you journey."
There was an immense sucking sensation at Misaki's feet, and he looked down in time to see the ground disappear, a hole as black as the woman's eyes growing like spilled ink. He shrieked in fear, tried to grab at the woman and fell.
This is something different, and I'll hope you'll like it! It's been fuzzing around my hard-drive for a while, and just caught my attention again recently. I'll be able to explain the premise a bit better in Chapter 2, but I hope that Chapter 1 worked for everyone.
I'll still be mostly focused on Youthful Ventures, of course, so updates might be a little irregular for a while, but this will be my first port of call once that story is done. Equally, this will probably stay below an M, because I don't think smut really fits in with the story I have planned!
Until my next update, my lovelies. =D
