Chapter IV

THE NON-CHOICE

"…If only we could be together forever…"

The door opened, and the woman came in, not bothering to knock.

Takashiro Giou, the head of God's Light's clan and leader of the Zweilt Guardians, raised his eyes, but without any particular surprise. He let the documents he was holding in his hand fall onto the top of the desk and then let himself fall against the chair backrest.

"They have reached their limit, haven't they?" he asked in a tired voice, knowing that it was, indeed, so.

The family healer nodded.

"They all have been getting worse", she admitted somberly. "Shusei-san is on the edge, already."

"I thought that after I had spoken to him there was an improvement", Takashiro commented, frowning.

"He resumed striving to eat for a week or a little less, but now he's worse than before: he doesn't touch food anymore", the healer explained.

Takashiro sighed and ran a hand over his face.

"The others?" he asked.

"Hotsuma-san is being cantankerous; just coming near his room means risking a brawl, and Kuroto-san has already provoked him a couple of times just in those five days, with the result that now they both have a lot of bruises, even if they were stopped practically immediately. Sairi-san also is tense; it has been four days that he hasn't been talking at all. Ria-san and her brother have been locking themselves up in their room since Yuki-sama's disappearance, three weeks ago, and they're still using their powers trying to find her, but to no avail. Tsukumo-san is really weak because he can't sleep; he has nightmares, and tiredness will soon make him too slow and powerless, totally unable to fight. And Toko-san lost her menstrual cycle. I have run some tests and, even if I can't say doubtlessly that it had stopped because of stress, I'm sure it isn't because of pregnancy. The only one, who seems to be still normal, is Oboro-san, but even he wanders the halls of the Twilight Mansion without a purpose and without knowing, where to go."

Takashiro closed his eyes and sighed, staying still for a moment.

"We need the Light of God", he said, as if speaking to himself, "Zweilts were born from her, in a way: their powers derived from hers. She's their only guide and salvation: if we don't find Yuki-sama soon, none of them will live long."

"With all my respect, Takashiro-san, Zweilt Guardians survive in the period between one God's Light's incarnation and the other", the woman interrupted, confused. "I don't understand, why now…"

"Because they don't know." Takashiro dismissed her, rising to his feet. "Because when she dies for them, they know that the fate has had it so and that there has been no other possibility, and so they accept it. As the things are now, Yuki-sama could be alive, dead, imprisoned, suffering… What is killing Zweilts is not the actual absence of Yuki; it's not knowing what is happening to her and having to stay put because they don't know what to do."

Three weeks had passed. Rituals, researches and patrols resulted in nothing. Each of the Zweilts did their best recklessly, but it was useless. Yuki-sama seemed to have dissolved into thin air, disappeared without a trace, and it was as if she were not even in their dimension anymore. There were two possibilities: either she'd been captured and brought to Infernus, or she was…dead. The second prospect was terrifying: if she had died without Takashiro to assist her in passing away, the Light of God wouldn't have been able to reincarnate and her powers, due to the absence of her biological heirs, would have been lost forever. The war against Duras and the salvation of the humankind in that case would have been seriously compromised.

Takashiro waited another moment, eyes closed, but then he raised his eyelids and focused his gaze on the healer.

"Gather all the Zweilts together. We have to find the princess, some way or other."

[And I'd give up forever to touch you
cause I know that you feel me somehow.
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
and I don't want to go home right now.]

Luka, eyes closed, spread his arms a bit, rising them to the level of his stomach, and appealed to all his powers. He felt the air crack around him and little energy shocks flare up and vanish between his spread fingers, but he waited a little longer. Only when he finally felt his blood pulse in time with the spell, he began.

"I invoke you, with an ancient incantation, from the darkest abyss. I call upon our blood pact to awaken you from eternity's flow." Blood increased its running, always faster since his heart seemed to stop his beating, unable to stand that rhythm, and started flying. "Will you throw yourself upon the brimstone, offering your blood alongside mine?" The air around him was dense because of the energy that whirled his clothes and hair, blowing them away from the skin to let them waver, exposing his flesh to wind and sight, spreading his scent through the surrounding space as a warning to other predators. "Show your dark master your will and follow me. May your power be resurrected, like those blazing crimson eyes!" It was time. He concentrated and extended his mind, searching for the object of the seal he was creating. "Come, king of beasts! SALAMAN-!"

"Uh, Luka, maybe it will be better, if you stop…"

Luka opened his eyes, perplexed.

And his spells faded, like a weak match in the middle of the sea, when the demon discovered that in front of him, in the pentacle he had drawn on the ground, there was nobody.

"… S-Sodom?" he asked, a bit hesitant, blinking a couple of time.

The answer he received was an embarrassed smile, coming from God's Light, sitting on her heels on the ground on the other side of the pentacle, while she pointed to a fir-tree. At that moment, the desperate voice of Sodom's calling for help made the demon raise his eyes upwards.

The little dragon, astride a branch, was wriggling and waving his arms over his head to chase away some magpies, intent to savagely attack him.

Luka didn't understand.

"He has been…distracted…" Yuki explained, visibly hard-pressed, biting her lower lip, "by something glittering in their nest."

Luka turned his eyes again to his familiar and stood there for a minute, but eventually he sighed.

"A moment", he asked of the Zweilt before setting off to save Sodom.

"He's still a puppy, and dragons have a really dispersive mind, before maturity", she shouted after him, defending the little one. "It's not his fault; it will take him a bit of time to learn to stay concentrated for so long."

"How much is 'a bit'?!" Luka muttered under his breath, jumping onto the branch, but careful not to let her hear him because he was not especially sure he wanted to know the answer.

His appearing was enough to make the troublesome birds flee, and immediately Sodom laughed and threw himself against him to cling to his leg. Luka was so taken aback by the sudden change in his familiar's mood that he lost his equilibrium, and so they both dropped disastrously to the ground.

Yuki let out a little scared shriek, when she saw them down, but she smiled in relief, noticing that Luka had hugged Sodom to his chest not to let him get hurt because of the fall.

It had already been three weeks since she and the Duras made the deal to exchange her liberation for her assistance with Sodom, and she had already learned how different Luka was from what he seemed to be. He was protective of 'his' puppy, respectful with her, proud and tenacious, but also sad. It hadn't taken her too long to understand it: his soul's despair appeared obvious, if only you scratched his icy façade a little. And since he didn't talk much, she decided to ask Sodom, secretly, about his master. That little, which the dragon, bona fide convinced that he was doing nothing wrong, had been able to tell her, had really upset her. It was no surprise that the demons were so brutal, if they were brought up in such a cruel way. Certainly, Luka's situation had been aggravated by his family status, but it was difficult for her to accept that a child could have been treated in such a way, even if she had been studying the betrayers' clan since her first life because the Crosszerias had always been at the forefront in battles, so she knew they were slaves in their society. On balance, she would even have understood, if Luka had become the killer his world expected him to be. However, he wasn't that kind of person: maybe, he was no more, or maybe he never had been. She admired him for the moral code he had appointed himself and strictly followed, even when it came at a high cost for him. Yuki had never known anyone like him before.

Shaking her head a bit, she returned to reality and smiled sweetly, looking at the Duras' pathetic attempts at scolding Sodom. Ultimately, all the three of them knew he would never be able to do it, but every time he had to try - and duly failed, giving up with a sigh in the face of the puppy's pleading expression.

The little dragon had tied part of his powers to his master's ones as many as ten days before, but he had not yet been able to stay still enough to let Luka return him to his animal shape. Yuki was looking for a way to do it all sooner, but since then they had only been able to constrain Sodom's dragon shape with Luka's power, while the familiar had control over the other three forms he had developed. They could leave everything the way it was, but both she and Luka had some reservations on giving to the puppy the opportunity to turn human on a whim.

"Let's try again.", Luka muttered, coming near, and his voice shook Yuki out of her reverie, in which she had got lost again.

But exactly at that moment Sodom yawned loudly, and Yuki couldn't refrain from laughing at Luka's desperate expression.

"Master, Sodom is…" Sodom paused. He frowned, glanced at Yuki and then returned his eyes to his master with an expression of concentration. "I am tired."

Yuki nodded when the puppy looked at her, seeking for confirmation, and the little one broke into an enormous smile.

"Sodom am good, did you see Master?"

Luka smiled with a corner of his lips. Yuki seemed to be able to succeed, where he had failed, teaching Sodom to refer to himself in first person. The results were still poor, but it was a good step forward.

"I saw, and you're really good.", he praised the little dragon, ruffling his hair.

Sodom laughed and ran into the cave, to the bedding he had been sharing with Yuki.

Luka, out of the tail of his eye, spied on God's Light, who, laughing softly, had turned to follow running Sodom with her gaze. She accepted his familiar without any problem; since the first night, when the little one fell asleep by her side, she had readily let him sleep, hugging her, while Luka stayed outside, guarding.

Seeing them, huddled up to one another in the night, so similar to a pair of siblings or to a young mother with her child, always made his protective instinct flare dramatically.

"He's really sweet.", God's Light commented, bringing him back to reality.

Luka recognized he had to answer something, so he snorted.

"He causes a lot of trouble.", he muttered, feeling those amber-coloured eyes look at him and finding himself surprisingly glancing away in some strange embarrassment.

"Not so much, in the end…" she tried to defend the puppy, not losing her smile, because she knew it wasn't necessary as, underneath it all, the demon felt big affection for his familiar. "Or more exactly, not as much as he could."

Luka shrugged, but didn't reply.

The silence stretched on and became so heavy the Duras realized that, beyond the topic of Sodom, there was nothing they talked about. Not that it was strange: she was his prisoner, and he kept her alive just for a merely practical matter. However, that silence made him anxious.

All of a sudden, he remembered a thing that had roused his curiosity, and before he could make up his mind, his mouth had already given breath to his question.

"Why didn't they feed you?"

Yuki raised her eyes to him, totally surprised.

"You're skinny", he hurried to explain, turning his gaze away and fixing it on the cave. "They fed you less than what your body needed. I was just wondering, why Zweilts had weakened their source of life so much."

Yuki blushed deeply, despite the indirect reassuring enlightenment from Luka's question, and lowered her head unexpectedly.

Luka was not really surprised, guessing that she had to have done something to be punished and deprived of food, but he was surprised a lot, when he caught himself thinking about going hunting to give her something more nutritious than berries, fruit and vegetables.

"It's not like what you think."

Luka once more lowered his gaze to Yuki, still on her knees on the ground at his side, and found her fiddling with the fabric of the already shredded skirt of her kimono. She looked hesitant.

"It's not that I was interested.", he said, shrugging. "It only seems a bit stupid, to me."

"They gave me food", she interrupted, not looking at him. Just before Luka's eyes, Yuki's gaze became empty and lifeless, as vacuous and melancholic as he had never seen it before, while a bitter fake smile appeared on her face. "All I could wish," she continued, apparently disregarding the gaze he was keeping on her, "everything I wanted, I just had to ask to get it. Food as well as everything else, just a word of mine, and I would have had anything. Great, wasn't it?" Luka couldn't imagine it, especially hearing her pained tone. It was like she were playing a part according to some script without really believing in it, but she was still repeating her lines. "They gave me food, really, but I couldn't eat it."

Yuki sighed and, slowly, raised to her feet and swept away the dust from her skirt with her hands. Luka was looking at her, shocked.

Then… she had reduced herself to that state on her own?!

"Why?!" he asked, not realizing that his voice had lost all the apathy.

Yuki raised her eyes to him and in order to do that she had to lift her chin a bit, too, reminding him how much shorter she was. And in the end, after a moment, she smiled, even if she did it with such sadness that Luka found it hard to recognize in her the girl he had known until then.

"I've been…ill.", she admitted, a bit uncertain, as if looking for suitable words to explain herself. "I was really weak, I had almost no strength to move, and I rejected everything I was able to eat."

Luka was surprised, but, in fact, God's Light seemed really debilitated to him at their first meeting, on the day of that fight, and she was hardly walking, then. Come to think of it, she had recovered in an incredible way, considering her previous condition: she ate without problems, laughed with Sodom and, even if she usually preferred sitting on something or on her heels, walked around without any difficulties, maybe a little slowly, but there was nothing too strange or worrisome about that.

"Now you're okay.", the demon let slip from his tongue, expressing his thoughts and fixing her with a suspicious glare. Maybe, rapid healing was God Light's power?

Yuki jerked, as if she had been hit treacherously; then she raised her slightly dazed eyes to him, as if he had told her something incredible, of which she had never thought before. For a moment, she stood there, watching him, then she lowered her gaze to her hands, nodding to herself in a troubled way.

Luka watched her, bemused, and in a few seconds, she smiled a bit, in a strange, but really…sweet…way. And it was him, who thought something like that, though he really knew no much about being sweet…

"I feel better, now.", she murmured, then, still watching her own hands, but with a slightly more normal expression on her face. "I would have never believed it possible before, but now it is as if I were healed."

Luka frowned.

"But you are, aren't you?" he asked. What strange words she had chosen! According to what he saw, she seemed so perfectly healthy and in full vigour that he hardly believed she had been in the state she described before.

Yuki, again, seemed surprised for a moment, but then she smiled.

"Sorry, sorry!" she laughed a little, excusing herself with her cheeks blushing. "I…my wording was wrong."

Luka stared at her, even more confused by her attitude and her causeless mood swings, but in the end he shrugged and headed to the wood. Obviously, he was going hunting solely because he wanted Sodom to eat some meat, not because he cared about God's Light's regaining her strength.

[And all I can taste is this moment,
and all I can breathe is your life,
cause sooner or later it's over:
I just don't want to miss you tonight.]

Yuki watched Luka go. He had a beautiful gait, she decided, and something in the manner he kept his shoulders gave him the appearance of an invincible warrior, ready to challenge anyone, who got in his way. However, she wasn't thinking just about that, but also about the questions he had asked. Those were signs that he truly cared about her, her needs and her requirements; but those also confirmed that he didn't know anything. Takashiro told her that he had done everything he could for the truth about Light of God's possessor's destiny not to leak away, but she hadn't believed it would have really worked.

She sighed. Carried away by the moment, she had nearly told to a demon the key to destroying her. If Duras ever discovered, what her power really was and what the consequences to her were, they would start wounding Zweilts on purpose, rather than trying to kill them, and, in such a regime, she wouldn't be able to resist for long.

Stupid., she reproached herself, but then she raised her gaze to where Luka had disappeared.

Surely, it was her madness drawing near again, after the intermission of those days, because Yuki had the weird feeling of being able to trust him.

What a folly., she shook her head. A Duras and a Zweilt, how could they ever coexist in peace?

And yet, a low voice whispered in her head, wasn't it exactly what they had been doing for about three weeks?

[And I don't want the world to see me
cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.]

Luka stopped abruptly in the middle of his running, leaving furrows in the ground, where his feet pivoted to let him turn back immediately.

He had gone hunting, eventually, and had found a hare; so, short of traps, he had been chasing after the animal. The problem was that someone was now chasing after him. No longer than a couple of seconds - Luka had felt him at once; and so the demon looked for a clear spot, where he could start a battle without his opponent having a hundred of hideouts.

He curled his lips in disdain and growled to his mysterious chaser, his tense body bent forward slightly in an aggressive posture, ready to attack.

An evil laugh accompanied the entering of the tall red-headed Duras, and Luka instinctively stiffened.

No!, his mind hastily reached out to Sodom to check on him and Yuki, but he stopped himself just in time, when his powers felt the seal he had put around the cave. If he had contacted his familiar, the protection would have vanished, and Cadenza would have been able to sense the little dragon as easily as Luka could. He had already made that mistake once, in Infernus, when his mental contact with Sodom, without his knowledge, broke the masking seal, making the little dragon detectable for his master, and he wouldn't repeat that error.

He set his jaw, forcing himself to become impassive and straightened up, squaring his shoulders, though his whole body was screaming at him to attack and then to run to protect the occupants of the shelter. He just had to trust the fact that his barrier was still up, and so nobody had crushed it, he didn't have any other choice.

"Cadenza."

The Duras laughed upon hearing the warning in Luka's voice and, without even hinting at an assault, started applauding slowly, taunting him.

The Zess got tense. It wasn't a good sign, Cadenza was too happy.

"Ah, Luka…" the redhead sighed, stopping applauding to put his hands on his own hips, already just a step away from his interlocutor, at too short a distance for a normal conversation. "I would never believe there could be someone so… so…" he brought his head to Luka's one, exhaling the last word into his face, "…idiotic."

Luka retreated a step, growling in warning.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, furious. Every fiber of his body was beginning to pull him in the direction of the cave; he wanted to go to the only two creatures his subdued spirit wished to protect, and he had to call upon all his self-control not to execute that command.

Cadenza laughed again, then took a step back, as if consenting the whim of a capricious child's, and spread his arms to show he was unarmed. Not that it mattered, anyway, since he would have been able to materialize his sword from nothingness at any moment.

"I'm here just to check", he explained, his voice calm. "You can imagine on whose behalf, can't you?"

Luka stiffened, a shiver ran down his spine, and his eyes widened a bit.

Dammit! It had already been three weeks that he didn't report or fight to stay with Sodom; why hadn't he thought of devising an excuse?!

"Zweilts are locked up in the Twilight Mansion", he told then, giving breath to the first lie his mind had been able to invent. "I can't get them inside; I have to wait for them to come out."

"Why so defensive, Luka?" Cadenza pretended to be surprised and cocked his head a little. "I didn't accuse you of anything, did I?"

Luka forced himself not to clench his fists. He made a mistake, and Cadenza knew it: he wouldn't lose the opportunity to work on it.

"If you're not here to learn how the hunt is going, then get lost. I have other things to do.", he growled, turning to move away from the redhead.

He had not yet taken a step, when Cadenza grabbed him by an arm and, turning him round, threw him backward to slam against a tree. Luka felt the blow, the dull pain of the impact, and immediately bended his knees slightly in a springy crouch, evoking a spell, teeth bared and a furious growling in his throat. Mallow-purple electric shocks started cracking around him.

Cadenza didn't lose his playful demeanor, but rather burst out laughing. The other Duras liked provoking him, and Luka knew it; Cadenza wanted him to make a mistake so that he could report it back to Lucifer and see him punished by his master. He had not to play his game; otherwise, it would end really badly.

Striving to suppress the bewitching voice inside, which was telling him to cut that damned wretch to pieces and thus to solve a lot of his problems, Luka straightened. His back gave him a weak protest because of this movement, but he was used to worse. Keeping the tree behind him, he stared at Cadenza.

"What. Do. You. Want?" he growled.

Cadenza directed an eager glance to his body, making his gaze slide from head to toe in such a slow and intensive manner that Luka seemed to feel his hands on his skin the way they had roamed there some time before. He felt sick.

"Cadenza!" he raised his voice instinctively, shocked by the turn the events were taking; but he instantly realized he had made the umpteenth mistake.

In a second, the Duras appeared close to him and grabbed him by the hair to slam him against the trunk again, and then the redhead pushed his body against his, blocking his movements.

Luka panicked more. He was a Zess, so he didn't have the permission to stop a free demon from using him, but maybe…

"You're not allowed to do this.", he hissed as Cadenza's teeth approached his neck. "I'm more than sure that my master didn't give you the permission to do this. Drop it, or we'll see how he will react, when he learns that someone has touched his Zess without his consent."

A flash of something, maybe fear, shot in the Duras' eyes for a second before he returned to his malignantly satisfied expression.

To Luka's great relief, Cadenza receded. He didn't actually step back, but that proved that he really didn't have the permission to touch the king's toy, and that was quite a bit.

"Do you want to know why I have come here? OK, then", the redhead hissed, keeping his face at a distance of an exhalation from Luka's. His voice exuded satisfaction again, and Luka was more than sure it wasn't a good thing. "It's exactly about your dear Zweilts, you know? It's really strange that they have locked themselves up in their headquarters and don't do anything, isn't it? It makes no sense, it goes against their pathetic moralistic ideals, so I wondered what they were plotting. It surprised me a lot that you didn't investigate and simply stood by, waiting; you're not a greenhorn and not even someone who can do such mistakes. However, do you want to know what I have discovered? Why Zweilts aren't fighting?" Luka stiffened, guessing the upcoming catastrophe. "It seems that their princess, the Light of God, has incredibly…vanished. Puff! Into nothingness. And listen, what else I've discovered: the girl disappeared right after the battle against us. I'm sure you remember that fight, during which you, mysteriously, didn't appear. Where were you, Luka? Didn't you hear the explosion?"

"I heard it.", the demon invented, keeping his eyes fixed on the redhead's. "That was just the reason why I stood away: you know well that I would have died, if I had got near. That's why even you ran away, isn't that?"

Cadenza gritted his teeth for a second, but then he closed his eyes and smiled haughtily.

"Right, right…" he murmured, but Luka was sure there was something else. "It only seems a bit strange to me, that your communication with Infernus stopped right at that moment. What an absurd coincidence, don't you think?" Luka found it wiser not to answer and kept silent. He knew from Cadenza's expression that the redhead didn't genuinely believed he had the Light of God; it was more probable that he was just trying to tease him in order to lure him into a trap; so he had to keep calm and not to let Cadenza understand there was some truth in his accusations. "Another coincidence is that I took view of the local area, and your more recent traces didn't spread far from that cave nearby. Have you been staying in your shelter for three weeks, Luka? You're not ill, I hope."

Damned bastard, one day I'll turn you to pieces.

"I had things to do", the Duras growled, getting more furious. "You really have no other orders to execute, if you have so much time to worry about what I do."

Cadenza didn't react well to Luka's last insinuation and tightened the hold of his hand on the black hair so that, with the other one, he could grab the shirt on the Zess' chest, but when he brought his face nearer to growl something, he paused. A strange fragrance, not Luka's or his familiar's, reached his nostrils. It was sweetish, nauseating for him, clearly belonging to…

"…a woman, Luka?" Cadenza widened his eyes as a shining and satisfied smile appeared on his face.

Luka felt as if he were dying inwardly, and froze up. That was really not good. Theoretically, he couldn't have a relationship with anyone but his master, unless that one wanted it otherwise, and Cadenza was surely thinking that the female scent was a proof of his 'infidelity'; but if he ever discovered that it was God's Light's… Luka had to do something, and fast, or the situation would pass the point of no return.

He quickly reasoned: Cadenza wanted to get him in trouble, it was the only thing that mattered to him - he didn't believe Luka had God's Light, he simply thought the Zess was taking advantage of Zweilts' absence to try to escape. He couldn't deny anymore that he'd been in contact with a woman and, with the clear evidence that he had stayed in the wood, he couldn't even invent a casual contact.

Luka had to make a decision rapidly. If his master learned that he had had a female scent on him, he would undoubtedly punish him. If he denied having had a partner, Cadenza would demand to check the cave and would find the Light of God, safe and sound as well as free. It wasn't really a choice.

"Stay out of this!" he, accordingly, growled, defensive. "This doesn't concern you!"

Cadenza burst out laughing, so hard that he stepped back and doubled over, keeping his hands on his stomach. Luka clenched his fists, but he forced himself not to say anything. Better a slap then a dagger in the chest.

"Oh, Luka! I knew you were an idiot, but reaching such great heights..!" the red-haired man said, laughing. After a while, he stopped and straightened, but only to stare at Luka with a happy expression and a crazy light in his eyes. "He'll cut you to pieces, when he finds out you had a lover in the human realm! You'll never see anything apart from his bedroom for the rest of eternity, and you can say goodbye to your pet! I can't wait to see you whimper!"

Luka lunged at the redhead, unable to stand it anymore, but Cadenza vanished.

"Bastard…" the Zess growled, but then his eyes grew wide.

If Cadenza was going to report it to his master, in a matter of minutes Luka would be summoned, and his Contract wouldn't allow him to refuse or postpone.

He had to take Sodom and Yuki to safety before then.

[And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
or the moment of truth in your lies.
When everything feels like the movies,
yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive.]

Yuki tried to compose herself, but eventually she had to put a hand to her lips to contain her laughter.

Sodom was striving to pass into his human form from his furball one he had finally regained, but it really seemed there was no way for him to achieve that, and so Yuki found herself staring at a little wad of black fur, which was swelling like a treacherously wetted cat, blowing and squeaking.
"Don't worry, Sodom", she said in the end, taking the creature between her palms and lifting him to the level of her face. "It will be getting easier with time, you still have to learn."

In reply, the little one licked the tip of her noise, making her laugh again. Only to stop abruptly, when someone entered the cave at a run.

Yuki raised her gaze, surprised, to see Luka in front of her, pale and panting after his race.

"What's happening?" she asked, jumping to her feet and instinctively tightening her hold on Sodom.

Luka ignored her to grab his own cap and to take off his coat. He threw both the items onto the pallet, made Yuki move away a bit and then, with an energy discharge, set all those on fire to hide her scent from anyone, in case Cadenza or his master decided to hunt his down elusive lover.

"I carry you home", he ordered to the girl, without listening to her weak requests for explanation.

Yuki, again, tried to retort, but before she could, Luka bowed and picked her up, putting an arm under her knees and the other one behind her shoulders. She let out a shriek of surprise and moved her hand away from Sodom to cling to Luka's shirt.

"What are you doing?!" she asked, shocked.

"Can you open a hole in the barrier around the Main House?" Luka asked, ignoring her question.

Yuki hesitated, confused.

"But Sodom…?"

"Can you or not?!" he growled.

Yuki jerked, astounded, but finally she nodded, although still a bit hesitant, and Luka, without asking anything more, broke into a run.

[And I don't want the world to see me
cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.]

The Light of God looked at the Duras' face, while he jumped from a tree to a tree to bring her to her house. She had agreed to let him in, and a part of her soul was calling her an idiot because of that, but she coaxed it, telling herself that there would be the Zweilts, that she had already recuperated and so Luka, even if he had bad intentions, wouldn't be able to hurt her.

Her other part, the one, which had surely gone mad already, was praying in a low voice for that one and only true bond she had ever created in her lives not to betray her.

[And I don't want the world to see me
cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.]

Luka continued running, even when he saw the Kekkai in front of him. Yuki told him she could let him in, and he didn't have time to doubt her word.

The barrier opened just in front of them, a moment before they bumped into it, and closed again immediately after their passing through.

"I can't open too big a breach for too long", Yuki explained softly, her hands wrapped around Sodom. "Takashiro would have noticed it, and sincerely, I don't want them to destroy you on account of that you have helped me."

Her caring surprised Luka; however, he felt compelled to set her scale of priorities right again.
"You trust that pack of guys too much", he muttered. "They wouldn't be able to catch me, even if I decided to let them do it."

Yuki gave him a dirty look, but she had a smile on her lips, and that confused Luka.

They whizzed past the garden, heading to the house, which stood with its back to them. Yuki decided it was better for them: passing the main door with a Duras as a sedan chair didn't struck her as the best idea possible.

"Which room?" Luka asked, making her jerk.

"Last floor, on the extreme left, the window under the tower", she explained, embarrassed.

Takashiro had reserved a whole wing of the House for her, and nobody had access to it but her. She strove to see the positive aspect of the matter: Luka would not be risking being discovered.

The demon sped up even more, moving so swiftly that two women, intent to collect something in the garden, didn't see him passing by. In a moment, he slipped into the window Yuki had pointed to, set her down and drew the curtains behind him.

Both of them stood still, silently, for a moment. Eventually, it was Yuki, who broke the silence.

"What's happened, Luka?" she whispered. Sitting on her heels on the floor, her hands absently caressing the small furball, who had fallen asleep, Yuki bowed her head, and her voice was very sad. "Our pact hasn't been fully executed: Sodom cannot control his transformations yet."

Luka checked for nobody to be in the vicinity, then he sighed.

"I know; because of that, I leave him to you."

When Yuki jerked and raised her widened eyes to him, Luka was still absorbing the blow of the pain those words had caused him. Parting from Sodom was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, but taking him along meant endangering him tremendously.

"What are you doing?!" Yuki exclaimed. God's Light ran to her own bed to put Sodom there, then took care to cover his ears with the blanket, before returning to the Duras. "Are you mad?! Sodom will take it very badly!"

Luka clenched his fists, but then, through his teeth, he rattled off to God's Light that minimum she had to know about his meeting with Cadenza, some time before.

"If I bring Sodom with me now, they'll kill him.", he finished, his stomach revolting at the mere thought. "At least, he trusts you."

Yuki stared at him. There was a terribly sad expression on her face, and Luka saw, for the first time in his life, someone weep for him.

"You can stay here; maybe, there's a way to…"

"I have a Contract.", Luka stopped her, shaking his head. "There's no way I can disobey."

Yuki closed her eyes, as if in severe pain, and only after some moments she nodded.

"Thank you, Luka. For everything.", she whispered. "If there's something I can do…"

Luka hesitated. The idea of asking of her what others had always done to him hurt him: he knew how terrible it was to be forced to yield a gesture of love to someone you didn't know or knew and hated; but he didn't have so many alternatives.

"My master will ask me if I had a partner.", he murmured, watching her face, but striving to not see her. "The Contract will make me say the truth - that I haven't slept with anyone; and if that ever happens, my master will start investigating on your scent."

Yuki seemed to be perplexed for a second, then she blushed a bit, but held Luka's gaze.

"Then…what?" she asked slowly. "Are you asking me to…sleep with you so that you could tell your master you had effectively had a relationship?"

Luka shook his head.

There was no time for that, and besides, he was not sure he wanted to make Yuki experience an empty and only passively-consensual relationship. However, if he wanted to save her and to keep Sodom safe, he had to bring something to his master.

"Forgive me.", he only murmured.

Yuki didn't have time to ask. Luka took her face in his hands and firmly pressed his lips to hers.

The demon stiffened and immediately backed away from her.

What the hell…?! Something didn't go the way it had to. He should have felt the skin of her lips giving in under his thrust, then the mellow and slimy consistency of her saliva, the slight pain of the impact of their faces, and that was it. Certainly, not too nice sensations, but nothing too bizarre, either. Instead, something hadn't worked; maybe it had been their powers interfering. Luka had felt a strange heat there, on his lips, and her skin and saliva hadn't irritated him; but now he felt as if her mouth were still on his, as if it had left a brand, which was burning, but wasn't scorching him. He had stepped back immediately, but he was breathing hard, all the same, as if he had been running for hours, and there was something which was beating in his ears, drowning the other sounds.

When he was able to focus on the scene in front of him, Yuki seemed to be not in a better state than himself.

Luka retreated to the window, drew the curtains back and opened the shutter; then he tried to concentrate for another moment.

"Sodom, I order you to stay with Yuki", he declared, infusing all his power in that order, making it official and unbreakable. For a second more, he stared at Sodom, all curled up under the white blanket, and felt a big gratitude to him for having loved a slave like him in that childish and sincere way of his. Finally, he glanced at Yuki. "Please, take care of him."

She nodded, like in a trance, and Luka let himself drop down out of the window without looking back.

[And I don't want the world to see me
cause I don't think that they'd understand.
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.
I just want you to know who I am.
I just want you to know who I am.]

Luka continued running, although he knew he was doing it without a destination or a motive. He had neither place to go to, for the cave wouldn't have protected him, nor anyone to reach out to. Anyway, it wouldn't matter for long, where or with whom he was: when his master called him, nothing would be important anymore, and he would be in hell again, with no opportunity of escape. However, he wasn't able to stop because too much thoughts were chasing after him.

What had he done?! An idiocy, doubtless. He had felt the need to protect God's Light, not only Sodom; and so he had provided Cadenza with what he had wanted - an excuse to get him in trouble - in order to keep the redhead Duras away from them. But Yuki was nobody to him, she wasn't one of his familiars or a member of his clan or his family; they didn't know each other, and, surely, he didn't owe anything to her. Dammit, she was the Zweilts' princess! The leader of his enemies! What the hell had sprung to his mind?!

He had simply screwed up big time, that was the only explanation. And to save her, he had just damned himself to a fate that not even Cadenza would have ever invented for him.

He was barely outside the barrier, with Yuki's help, when it happened.

LUKA!

His breath was taken away. The scorching chains of the Contract rose from the ground and wrapped around him immediately, forcing him to his knees, although he hadn't disobeyed any order. His seared skin began to swell as the first blisters appeared, while his body was steadily being enveloped in the new loops of burning-hot metal. He set his teeth, striving not to make a sound, but the pain only increased.

LUKA, COME HERE IMMEDIATELY!

And Luka had no choice; he didn't take any decision. Before he could even think about what the voice in his mind had ordered, everything around him went black, as if he were falling into the darkest abyss of the universe.

Come to think if it, that was exactly what was happening to him.

[I just want you to know who I am.]

I'm sorry, really sorry for the late but this chapter was really difficult to be written.

However, now I'm here and I have to say that the chapter is totally mine, except for the spell Luka use in the first part of the chapter: that was taken from the anime :)

I hope I'll update soon the fifth and the sixth chapter because I see in front of me a little period of peace before the storm of May, so I'll try to finish the story during that time XD

A really big 'thanks' go to the girl who help me with a sentence which alone gave me a lot of troubles XD Thanks, Gabrielle.

Ok, let's see again :)

Write you soon,

Agap