sorry for the long delay everyone, ive been prepairing for college so writing has gone slowly, ill be uploading a bit more sporadically in the future as i attend classes, but the wait shouldn't be as long as it was this time. anyway i hope you enjoy the chapter
"w-what am I?" Sora said as he once again looked at his blood covered hands in horror. "oh my god! Kaori!" Sora said as he grabbed her shoulders, shaking her back and forth. "she…. she's still alive…" he said with a sigh of relief as he checked her pulse…" those…. were memories…." Sora said as he rasped his tongue over the fangs that had sprouted behind his canine teeth. As if a switch had turned on in his mind, all the grief and sadness hit him all at once. A crippling pain swelled in his stomach and he vomited off to the left side of kaori, now slumped over unconscious. The bile burned and tore at his throat as it came up "oh god…." He stammered as he wiped away strings of drool. Purging did little to ease the pain he was feeling and he too slumped over next to kaori as tears streamed down his face.
"jeeze, I've seen some of us take the transformation pretty hard, but come on, I think your overreacting just a little bit. does it really bother you that much to feed on people?" Sora's head shot in the direction of a voice, the first thing he noticed was an iconic head of messy blue hair with two cowlicks in the shape of wolf ears.
"you!" Sora screeched fearfully.
"yup" he said with a smile and a wave. "Now if you'd just calm down for a moment I might be able to help you understand what you are, wait!" he said as Sora peeled off running into the woods.
"I just have to get away from here! Run, far far away from everything!" he said as he broke through thorn bushes and piles of dead twigs and leaves. He would have kept running but he smacked headfirst into tatsumi's chest.
"please. If you would just let me explain" he said with an irritated sigh as Sora heeled off in a side direction. Once more Tatsumi beat him to the clearing, this time stopping Sora with a hard punch right under his ribs. Sora spat blood as he fell flat on his back. The sickening thud from the punch was still ringing in his ears, though the blow was so hard he went numb, skipping past the pan of impact. "I tried to do it the nice way but now your gonna lay there until I finish talking." Sora gasped for the air Tatsumi so efficiently knocked out of him.
"I-I can't move my legs." Sora panted in a hoarse voice.
"I bet you can't, after all, I hit you hard enough to shatter your spine." Sora pondered that for a moment, in shock he raised a hand to speak again.
"am I gonna be a cripple for the rest of my life?!" Sora gasped. Tatsumi slapped his forehead in irritation.
"just shut up and calm down, I'll explain to you what you need to know. Firstly, you aren't human anymore. But I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you knew that already." Sora about to pass out from the trauma, but Tatsumi lightly slapped his cheek to get him to focus. "you're a creature called a jinrou. We're named after werewolves, but in reality we are actually a superior subspecies of vampire."
"f-fucking what? Vampires aren't real!" Sora spat. Tatsumi moved close to Sora's face and bore his fangs.
"we are indeed." He said as he pointed to the fangs in his mouth "you're actually an interesting case, jinrou aren't totally different from humans, but surely you would have noticed before the thirst got to you. How long do you suppose you've been one? Remember any point in the past where you got really sick? As if the life was sucked out of you?" Sora looked at him in shock.
"y-yeah…. a couple months ago…" Tatsumi smiled in an almost professional way when he heard that.
"that must have been it. A normal vampire or a jinrou must have fed on you." Tatsumi said with a wink.
"what? I think id remember if someone did something like that to me!" Sora wheezed as the pain from the punch started to build.
"you probably wouldn't. See, we can exert influence over and hypnotize people when we drink their blood, make them forget something, give them commands, etcetera. Anyway, two months…you would have had to notice within a few weeks from hunger alone, so I have no idea how you've remained this oblivious" Sora looked away guiltily as Tatsumi questioned him.
"can we hypnotize ourselves?" Sora asked quietly as he shifted his body up, wiping away damp leaves and pine resin from the forest floor.
"I'm not sure, when a vampire drinks vampire blood, it's sort of like drinking alcohol, they get a powerful drunken feeling, and since we need to actually draw blood to use that power, you really wouldn't be in the right mind to do something like that.
"I actually think I might have once… about a month after I got sick I lost control of myself and attacked a friend, some kind of primal instinct took hold of me and it's like I wasn't myself, but then I snapped back to normal after I finished…I freaked out and ran to the bathroom, buried the fangs I had sprouted into my arm and told myself to forget that night and all the pain I was going through, it was an unconscious desire I guess. It was only after I lost control and fed on that girl, kaori, that I remembered everything… "
"normal humans will never remember something you tell them to forget even after the hypnosis wears off, but since jinrou and vampires will heal any injury as long as we aren't staked in the heart or get our head cut off, it seems at least possible. It would certainly explain how you've remained so oblivious to your situation." Sora looked in surprise as Tatsumi explained the situation.
"you…said…we…heal injuries?" Sora asked as the feeling came back to his legs. Tatsumi smiled in an unsettling manner and Sora could feel a chill down his back, as well as the cold earth from the forest floor. He shivered as his legs started to tingle. It was an electric feeling, like a limb waking up after you've been setting it in a strange position, every little movement caused an explosion of pins and needles in the muscle that Sora used.
"yep. That's why you aren't destined for a wheelchair even though I crippled you. Cuts and lesions will close up within minutes, broken bones will set themselves back, though this takes longer, and it's impossible for us to bruise. Normal vampires heal faster than jinrou do, but they are fairly weak in other ways." Sora scratched his head as he shakily stood up.
"so, there are two types… I remember you saying jinrou were superior, but how is that?" he asked hesitantly. Tatsumi shot Sora a wolfish grin. "this guy really gives me the creeps…I can see the bloodlust in his eyes…"
"normal vampires will burn to a crisp in sunlight, they are afraid of spiritual symbols and artifacts, and they can't go into a place unless invited. also, they need blood every day or at least every other day to survive. Jinrou on the other hand are perfectly fine in the light, religious things don't bother us and we can go weeks without blood if we need to, though we will grow weak and frail without it. we still can't go into a place unless invited, but we make up for it in other ways. One thing I'm sure you've notices is that your senses are more powerful. Like when you tried to find that megumi girl in the mountains. You peeled off in a different direction because you caught her scent. All of our senses are vastly superior to humans. And when we've fed recently we're ten times as strong as a normal person, so strong in fact that if we aren't careful we could do as much damage to ourselves as to the target of our force. One more thing to remember is that vampires are basically dead dead and jinrou are alive. They have no pulse or body heat. There's more to it than that, but you'll pick the rest up soon enough." Sora dusted the dried leaves away from his shirt and sneezed when the dirt hit his face.
"so…why tell me this? What do you want from me?" Sora asked suspiciously as the two began to stare each other down. Both immediately noticed the tension hanging in the air, the same sort of tension when an alpha wolf sizes up a challenger. Tatsumi took a step forward towards Sora. Sora, though hesitantly took a step forward as well, seemingly in defiance of the oppressive aura Tatsumi was emanating. The two were silent for a moment, but both put up their guard.
"I need to handle this carefully, Sunako will be pretty pissed if I let this one slip through my fingers...I wish Yoshie was here too, in terms of brute strength she's got me beat, though my senses are much more acute than hers…but that won't help me subdue this one if he gets out of line. I want you to come with me." Tatsumi said with a bit of extra aggression. Sora hesitated for a moment, but reluctantly followed.
"that girl I attacked, what's going to happen to her?" Sora asked mindlessly as Tatsumi led him deeper into the woods.
"you just fed on her once, so she'll be pretty weak and sick, but she'll live. A third time will kill her, so be prepared just in case she rises up, she might be mad at you if she does." Sora shot him a flabbergasted look.
"what?! I'm not gonna feed on her again, it was just a moment of weakness. Most of the villagers are pretty vile people, but I'm not gonna just kill them." He spat indignantly. In an instant, Tatsumi turned and grabbed Sora's neck, with one arm he lifted him into the air and began to choke him. Sora gasped and gargled for air, clawing at his throat. He was taken by such surprise that he barely noticed the suffocating feeling.
"now listen here. I could kill you pretty easily right now, jinrou can suffocate just like normal people. You don't get a choice about whether you kill or not. As of right now, you're a dog on a leash, you'll do what I say when I say to do it if you value your life. You'll kill who we say to kill, and when we say to kill them. I don't care if it's a vampire, I don't care if it's a villager. Insubordination will NOT be tolerated." He said through gritted teeth. Sora was taken aback when he noticed tatsumi's eyes. They were black as the night, with a glowing red ring where the iris should have been. He gasped for breath, but Tatsumi was crushing his windpipe with an inhuman grip, all Sora could think to do was claw at the hand lifting him, but watched in horror the scratches disappeared before his eyes.
"I-I refuse!" Sora gasped as he grabbed Tatsumi's wrist. With the last burst of strength, he squeezed as hard as he could. The fingers loosened around his neck and Sora could feel the bones in tatsumi's arm start to bow and crack. "that's right! I'm strong like he is" he thought with a brief moment of elation. Tatsumi howled in pain for a moment and dropped Sora. In another second, Sora landed and threw himself at Tatsumi, sending both rolling on the floor. "I refuse!" Sora yelled defiantly as he straddled Tatsumi, fists raised like a boxer within clinching distance. "you can't make me do it!" he said as he slammed a fist down as hard as he could, Tatsumi jerked his head to the side causing Sora's fist to collide with the large rock underneath them. He pulled his bleeding knuckles away from the shattered stone, and both winced as the splinters embedded themselves into the cheeks of the struggling jinrou.
"yes we can." Tatsumi said with a smug smile. Sora looked angrily at him for a second, but recoiled in pain as Tatsumi delivered a powerful head-butt. Sora tumbled off him, and staggered to his feet, fists raised. He felt a cooling sensation as the cuts on his face started to heal.
"how could you? From what I've seen I'm just as strong as you, maybe even a little stronger." Sora said as he spat out the blood that was pooling in his mouth.
"that girl who just died. Megumi right? Weren't you two close?" Sora leered at him.
"what of it?" he asked bitterly. Tatsumi smirked as he noticed Sora's eyes change, now both of them were staring down the black eyes of a predator.
"well the blonde woman you met in kanemasa, chizuru, is the one who killed her." Sora had a look of such fury that it caused Tatsumi to hesitate for just the slightest moment. "she fed on that girl until she died. But let me tell you something interesting, new vampires are born when someone dies like that. In a few days megumi should rise up from her grave to join us. If you don't submit to me and cooperate fully, I'll make you watch as I kill her all over again." Sora took a thundering step closer to Tatsumi, fully prepared to pounce on him once more.
"oh yeah? Well what if I kill you first" Sora spat as he bore his fangs. Tatsumi smiled sadistically and took a step towards Sora again.
"do you really think you and I are the only jinrou? There's one more besides me, Yoshie, and she's got much more brute strength than I do. You don't have a prayer against her. We already know what you are and what to do if something happens to me. I suggest you clean up your act and join us. You might be a jinrou but even you will have trouble against her, not to mention all the other vampires." Sora took a step back and Tatsumi took one forward. "this whole process can go as easily as you want it too as long as you do what we say. You can even be together with her once she rises up." Sora thought about it, and considered jumping Tatsumi again. But ultimately he took a deep breath and calmed down.
"what do you want me to do?" he asked begrudgingly.
'that's the spirit. Just keep following me for now." Tatsumi walked forward once more with Sora reluctantly in tow. The two kept scratching at their clothes because of the humidity in the woods, but after a long walk Tatsumi directed Sora to an old run down shack nestled in between two pine trees. Sora got an unsettling feeling as he looked over the rotting building. The boards were broken and bowing, and the windows, what was left of them, were splintered, and the glass yellowed. Tatsumi graciously opened the broken door revealing a person, bound and gagged, lying on the floor.
"Kill him"
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