(Watch out. Halloween gore ahead! Not my characters, and i bet they don't like where i've put them. I'm expecting a summons from Ootori . . . .)
Light like corpse-candles bobbed over her body and the spreading pool of blood. Sudden as illusion Morinozuka, looking human again, knelt beside her.
"Not dead. Yet," he reported.
His hand went into the blood as if it were a running stream, and he lifted a palm-full and drank. He shook off the rest and wiped his hand on her sweater. Then he scooped more and raised the bowl of his cupped hands toward his shoulder.
A yellow fox crouched where nothing was before. It leaned to drink from Morinozuka's hands, and then its eyes went wide and it bristled all over and disappeared in a puff of smoke. When the smoke drifted away the little blond boy sat on Morinozuka's shoulder again.
"Not sweet, not sweet at all," Haninozuka complained. "Like whiskey or fire, not a bit like cake."
"Our toy! Ours!"
The body was graceless, ragged, and shorn. Haruhi's long hair had wisped away with her power. The twins lunged forward on either side. Both looked like human boys again, but they moved on all fours and snarled at Morinozuka until he stepped back into the dark. The one on Haruhi's left licked at the floor.
"We swore to share everything, Kaoru, but how can I ask you to share such a cursed drink?" he asked with stained lips.
"If it was the draft of Hell, Hikaru, I'd drink it from your mouth!"
"Oh, Kaoru!"
"Oh, Hikaru!"
They clung together across the body.
"Little devils! Leave that poor ignorant commoner to die in peace!"
"Yes, King Idiot. Of course, King Idiot!"
When the twins sprang apart, both mouths were stained. They flickered back into the dark, and Suou knelt by Haruhi's side. He lifted her hand, staring tenderly into her blind eyes.
"You must have known this would be your end, when you fought those greater than you," he sighed. "How bitter your life has been, commoner demon hunter. But fear not! You will live again, part of something greater than you've ever known!"
He kissed her hand, and dotted quick chaste pecks up her arm to the seeping wound, where his lips stayed longer. He laid the arm down gently. Ootori stepped out of the dark, pushing his glasses up.
"Demon hunters don't usually fall so easily."
"Hear that, my brothers? Even the Shadow King acknowledges our remarkable victory. Three cheers for the Host Club. Three cheers for moi!"
Morinozuka remained unheard but the twins and Haninozuka happily joined his cheer. Ootori huffed in irritation. He dragged Haruhi up by her arm, drank briefly, and let her fall in an ungainly sprawl.
A globe of light on a silver stalk rose from her chest. Faint segments appeared, and it opened like a five-petaled flower. For an instant it was still and perfect.
And then the petals stretched and writhed, dragged out toward the darkness, and shadows pulsed from their center.
"Our toy. Ours!" the twins chortled, and Haninozuka laughed, "So sweet!"
"I THINK NOT!"
The hosts froze. Everything was silent. The petals snapped back to their flower again, and the flower closed into a bud, though five irridescent cords fed into it. Haruhi's body shifted and slowly rose. The glowing globe hung just by her heart.
A woman with dark hair and a pale face materialized behind the body. Her arms held it in midair. The woman smiled down tenderly, and then a skull's grin replaced her face. Haruhi opened her eyes and smiled up at it.
"WHAT DID I TELL YOU, DEAR?"
"Not t'come home early. Sorry 'bout this. Daddy's going to cry."
One who is terrible to all looked about the darkened realm. Suou shook almost too hard to stand, but he reached a hand out imploringly. Ootori stepped back into shadow. Light glanced off his glasses like blind eyes staring. The twins tangled together, grappling like wrestlers for a closer, tighter hold. Haninozuka ducked his head against Morinozuka's chest. The taller host stood braced for a storm, but sweat beaded on his forehead.
Haruhi stood again, only a little unsteady. A pale face misted back across the skull. The woman held Haruhi's hands. They looked like an older sister and a younger, but one face was the color of flesh and the other of bone. The soul globe bobbed between them.
"I couldn't get back, so I made sure the hosts couldn't go back without me. Rich bastards didn't think twice about a free meal. Guess they will now. Can you tell Dad . . . tell him you saw me?"
Moving Haruhi's hands with her own, the woman pushed at the globe. It drifted closer to Haruhi, and faded, and left the five pale threads behind.
"I'LL TELL HIM WHEN YOU'LL BE LATE," she said and vanished.
"Tell him there's a coupon for dried mackeral at half price!" Haruhi called, but Death was as absent as an incarnation of mortality could be.
"You seem to think you've accomplished something," Ootori said in the dark.
Haruhi knelt for the stained blade. Long hair swirled around her again. She took off her glasses.
"He always gets the serving-size packets, and they're so much more expensive."
Suou glided toward her, looking not so much human as angelic, gilded with glory.
"Why, Fujioka-san, you're beautiful. Why did you hide it? Little common hunter, come join us. Beauty, power, strength, centuries of life . . . . What commoner doesn't long for them?"
He reached out, his gesture graceful as a geisha's.
The wards Haruhi had drawn around her flashed irridescence. The shock threw Suou across the room and stripped the glamour from his human form. He was one of the living dead. His eyes had fallen in and his skin was grey and mottled with fungus.
"Don't look . . . don't look . . . ." he whimpered, and drew shadow around him instead of light.
"Damn you! You scared Hikaru. I'll take you apart for it!" one of the twins howled.
It wasn't possible to know which one spoke. Both lunged at her. They clung to her like lovers, but they had sharp, sharp teeth. She stood impassive as the Hitachiins writhed about her, and was not touched.
"Blood binding," said a voice from the dark. "Blood willingly given, and willingly taken. You are reckless, Fujioka. It is too dark a skill to be taught to hunters in this enlightened age. You must have found an old scroll at your father's shrine."
Ootori stepped in front of her, and the twins receded.
"We can't leave this pocket-realm without you. Yet binding demons to you means you've bound yourself to demons. I can make you regret our company."
Her wards didn't even flicker. His power came through them, and was ropes around her. He reached around her in something not much like a lover's embrace, and pulled her head back with a fist in her hair. Not ropes but tentacles coiled around her legs and arms, bending her back like a sacrifice on a stone.
Across his shoulder Haruhi saw Morinozuki turn away, but the twins were giggling.
"I can hurt you. I can drive you mad. Why aren't you afraid?"
"If you knew about the binding . . . why did you drink?"