Note: Contains spoilers for Azusa's More Blood route and mild ones for Vandead Carnival. This story is almost a companion piece to my previous story, Blood Bath. I hope you like it!

The sparkling bathroom in the Mukami manor usually lights up automatically, but tonight the lights are dim, and the air is heavy with humidity and a strange fragrance, like cinnamon and cloves and something else… Yui nearly slips on dark gray tiles that gleam almost black in the low light and catches herself on the damp wall. Her hand comes away with a tint of liquid red.

Yui almost expects to see writing appear in the steamed mirrors.

A ring of lights, like a portal to another realm, circle the full tub at the far end of the bathroom. Drawn in like she's enchanted, Yui steps closer.

The lights are candles around the altar where Azusa is bathing.

The water is filled to the brim and the surface lightly ripples as it reflects the flames… and the color is blood red, Yui realizes with a start. Like Countess Elizabeth Bathory, bathing in the blood of virgins… No, no, it's more likely to be Azusa's blood, isn't it?

If Azusa has let himself bleed out in the bath…

Yui smothers a scream and, fear sparking in her veins, she runs to him.

Only… she stops when she catches the sight of him breathing in the limited light, chest rising and falling slowly.

The scent of cinnamon and cloves is stronger than ever, and it is distinctly not the pungently metallic scent of blood Yui knows so well.

Azusa is dozing in the bath, curled up against the side of the bathtub, one arm crooked against the tile with his face pressed into his elbow. The golden glow of the candles outline the top half of his body, where his left arm ends before it starts, and the knitted amputation scars glint like blackened, burning gold. The bottom half of him is submerged as if hiding something dark within the dark pool, like scales and tentacles and teeth.

Only his face is truly visible, lit like a waning moon as he gazes into a candle's flame. His eyes are half-mast and dark like an animal's. The black, glinting morass of his hair breaks up the beauty of his face, coiled on his forehead and clinging to his cheeks and neck in wet tangles that she half-expects to see move, silky and snakelike.

He looks like a dark, ancient god… or demon.

The illusion shatters abruptly as his eyes fly open wide and Azusa jerks upright, plunging his face into shadow. He looks directly at her with pale eyes that flash in the limited light, but then… Azusa's knees tuck against his chest and he tilts his head in a cute, familiar gesture, asking, "Yui-san...? What are you…?"

"O-Oh!" She squeaks out, suddenly aware that this is—she didn't mean to, truly, but she's interrupted his bath! Yui slams her eyes shut and stumbles back, horrified at her own behavior. "I'm so sorry!"

"Wait!" She hears him cry in distress, and then—a telltale sloshing.

Oh no! With her eyes still squeezed shut, she throws out her hands with her palms up in the sign for stop! "Please don't get up, Azusa-kun!"

She hears a soft, "Ah." More sloshing, and after a moment: "…I'm sitting."

Yui sighs and presses her hand to her chest, feeling her heartbeat drum against her ribs. "Okay. Okay, that's good…" She cracks one eye. "Are you okay?"

"Yes… of course… what's wrong, Yui-san?" Azusa's chin rests against the edge of the tub as he peers at her. His eyes catch the light and reflect it like an animal's eyes, glowing in the dark.

Enthralled and confused, Yui shivers. "Azusa-kun, what's in your bath water?"

"Huh?" He sits back and cups some of the red liquid. He lets it drain through his fingers, a tiny waterfall of blood. "This is… a 'bath bomb'… Kou got some from a fan. He gave it to me, because… he thought it might stain."

Yui sinks to her knees.

"What is it…?" Azusa ducks his head so that only his eyes and nose are visible above the bathtub's edge.

The tricks of her imagination have flown, leaving Yui feeling very, very silly. The tile under her legs leeches heat from the embarrassment now boiling her alive. Azusa is simply taking a bath. A spooky bath in the dark, with candles and red bathwater, but… oh, it's just a bath. She walked in on his private time and panicked over a bath.

Yui shakes her head and her curls flutter. Azusa-kun is alright, that's the most important part! She glances at the shimmering red surface of the bath. "How many bath bombs did you use?"

His eyebrows furrow. "…one package?"

Multiple ones, then. A smile creeps over her face. She stands up, pats her legs, and bows. "I'm sorry, Azusa-kun, for interrupting. I thought… some strange things. Excuse me."

"Don't go…" Azusa jerks upright, splashing and making blood red dribble over the dark tiles.

Yui pauses.

With gold light and shyness dripping from his face, Azusa pushes one finger through the liquid, doodling a circle and churning the murky surface. "I thought… you might want to… take a bath with me?"

"Eh?"

"You came in to take a bath too, right…? I'm in the way, so… we can share."

Yui mulls it over.

In the past, Yui once bathed with Azusa by accident-Azusa wanted to share a hot spring at the underworld carnival, but Yui was too embarrassed and refused. She slipped and fell in anyway, to Azusa's delight.

Now, Azusa gazes up at her with soft lavender eyes, like a puppy begging for treats. His usual manner is so melancholy that excitement transforms his face in the most endearing way, and her suspicions entwine with something warmer and lovelier.

Ahh, Azusa-kun is sneaky, huh…

Yui sighs and tries not smile. "I don't know. Will you promise not to peek?"

Azusa immediately slaps his hand over his eyes… and then cracks his fingers and peeks at her with one sparkling eye, saying, without a shred of self-awareness, "Alright…?"

Her fondness for him tickles her. "I guess I have no choice, but please turn around?"

A dark ancient demon with puppy dog cuteness is a peculiar combination, but she can't resist the allure.

Yui excuses herself for a moment. Being a diligent Japanese girl, Yui thoroughly washes up her body before getting into the bath with a towel secure around her modesty and her hair tied in a bun.

Curled up on the edge like a pale spider, Azusa gives her plenty of room in the great gaping hole of a bathtub, and Yui plunges into the hot, dark waves. For one heartbeat, she thinks she'll just sink, sink, sink down into this unholy portal, swallowed by Azusa's beautiful trap.

But Yui hits the bottom of the tub and, oh, it's not the nexus of some dark dimension. Her imagination has grown wild and thorny from all the strange things she's seen and experienced after being sacrificed to this endless night of vampires and magic. Dark red waves swirl and splash up around her knees, and the candles flicker around her, but it really is just a bathtub.

Azusa smiles at her and scoots a little closer, animal eyes flashing light purple again in the darkness. Without his bandages, his body is a strange sight. He looks a bit bigger somehow, not sectioned off with ropes of gauze. The warm light on the uninterrupted curve of his pale throat and shoulder is elegant, even when it ends with a ragged slash of scarring.

Catching her gaze, Azusa spreads his fingers over the golden edge and gives her a nervous look.

Her lips curve up, and Yui sends her hand to his damp cheek in a silent message: the specter of his missing arm doesn't scare her at all. She loves every bit of her dear Azusa, and sight of what he sacrificed to protect her and stay with her could never, ever frighten her.

He tilts his head into her palm, and the dark coils of his hair brush wet and cold against her hand.

Yui shivers.

His pale eyes trace over her. "Are you cold?" He shifts closer.

Oh, that's dangerous . Subtly retreating, Yui soothes, "Oh, no. It's very nice! The water smells like Christmas decorations and baking." Whatever dark rituals and human sacrifice smell like, it probably isn't cinnamon and cloves.

"Is that so?" Her beloved creature of the night and Christmas barely know each other, after all.

Thinking about next year, Yui wants to make spiced orange pomanders with him. He'll probably enjoy stabbing the peel with cloves and making different designs; even without his dominant hand, Azusa is very nimble, as well as patient and thoughtful...

But thinking about her beloved Azusa-kun means not actually looking at her beloved Azusa-kun, and it slips her mind how clingy he can get… until he grabs her!

Yui squeaks and squirms at the sudden contact. Stormy water sloshes over the edge of the tub and threatens the candles, but it's hard to worry about those details—when Azusa's bare skin touches hers as he presses his face to her neck, her skin unprotected with her hair tied up. His arm hooks around her bare shoulders and his body is damp and cool, a sharp contrast to the warm water splashing around. The mix of sensation is overwhelming.

"A-Azusa-kun, please—!" She cries, tormented mercilessly by his kisses to her throat, her shoulder, her collarbone… open-mouthed kisses, wet with a touch of sharp fang… he's boiled her now, she's sure, with her exposed skin flushed red down her chest, with this embarrassing assault of neediness and affection. "I was just thinking about you, I promise!"

Azusa-kun's mouth traces up her shoulder again and breaks from her in a dark, slow laugh. "I know… I could tell." Even in the low light, she can still see him smile wickedly.

Oh.

Yui really is a sacrificial bride, isn't she? Sacrificed to a sweet devil.

"You're so cute, Yui-san," he charms her, drawing her into another trap. He is very cute monster, to be sure, but still a bit of a sadist, and Yui isn't surprised by his next request: "Hey, can I have you? I'll be gentle…"

Gentle enough to make her cry, and relish every tear that falls.

Imprisoned by a smooth white arm in the dark, Yui truly is a virgin sacrifice. Within her again stirs the suspicion that Azusa is tempting her to participate in a ritual of blood and candlelight and a gateway to hell. But the scariest, darkest secret is that Yui will follow him anywhere, even to the depths.

She whispers, "You can have as much as you want, Azusa-kun."

Azusa laughs again, and the sweetness doesn't hide the truth: he'll take everything. His hand cups the back of her neck, holding her steady as he takes a deep breath, and his fangs plunge into her, like two short nails.

Pinned by pain and love, tendrils of warmth unfurl throughout her body. Yui gasps when Azusa's fangs pull out and his lips close around the wounded skin, sucking her blood with soft moans and cold licks that make her shiver. Her head feels intoxicated, weak and heavy, and she sinks against him.

She's drowning in him. Her towel comes undone, but she doesn't fight, too warm and deliriously happy now. Bare skin on bare skin, Azusa unravels her slowly.

"You look enchanted…" His low, dreamy voice is pleased with her. "Shall I...enchant you even more?"

Blood drips down her chest and dissolves within the red bathwater, making it a true bath of blood. Something about that prickles her, like a prophecy she's just seen come true. There's nothing Yui would've done to avoid it, though.

Forever under his spell, Yui Komori will continue to do far stranger things than this for Azusa Mukami.