After his travel Kaname needed a nap but a sudden notification from Shoutou made him leap out his warm bed and get his anti-vampire weapons. Dragen in the day-time had made his appearance. "Right…", he thought. He was in a haste since that was a meeting that he could not afford to lose, that could be the final curtain for all of them.
-What are you doing here, my lord? Stella asked as Dragen's tall and dark figure stood in the opening of the cave blocking the sun. He was holding his anti-vampire blade at his hands. He walked slowly to her.
-I came to see you, a rather exquisite spectacle you make. So you are an outcast?
-It is true, she said looking in his black unreadable eyes.
-I know, that's what my "friends" reported after tasting your blood and your memories. I also know that the cave, the sky and the rocks here are full of his spies. Bringing you to my lair could be rather dangerous therefore…I came to…My question is; is he going to come?
Stella saw Dragen's eyes shining red in the dim light of the cave. She felt out a wild scream that echoed wild as the blade ripped her heart throwing her at the side of her feet…it was still beating. Her blood covered the walls.
Dragen tilted his head while still supporting her back from falling and he sunk his fangs to her neck to extract her powers and all of her blood.
"You beast…you murderer…you let him kill me to get rid of me once and for all…You…"
Sudden images started flashing in his mind, a white house in the woods, which was also somewhere buried at the back of his mind, a girl with red hair now looked at him, she was so much alike her mother but she still was even more closer familiar to him, the boy…was like her. So she was the another descendant of the White Clan? But that girl was something more…
"-Throwing him into your bed or offering your blood won't make him stay with you…there is nothing that you can actually offer him…as a pureblood little girl you are nothing to him…you should realize that…he will return to me."
The scene changed again…now that thorn called King was speaking…
"-How much do you know about Aeries, Stella?
-Apart that you and she are lovers?
-Yes…
-I know that she is hiding and that she is behind all the incidents that have occurred in the last season against you, I know that you know it and that you cover her up in order to keep her. "
Stella suddenly sparked in Dragen's arms. He dropped her in the floor.
She was white as a paper…and then crystals and silence.
Dragen swept the blood of his lips with a sarcastic smile while looking at his opponent who stepped in at that moment.
-So we met again…
-I hope that you enjoyed your last meal…Kaname responded with a slightly ironic smile.
Dragen threw his unkind and cruel stare at the crystals lying now under his shoes.
- She is free now. I guess that only now she realized that you have no mercy at all, how much of a monster you can be, as much as I am. Sacrificing her like a lamb…
-Stella was no lamb…he had decided her own fate a long time ago, he said looking at the crystals with a gold stare. So where are the others two that will help you to keep my forces out this cave while you are supposed to kill me?
Dragen smirked.
-They are already here…. so are you ready to leave your throne and your kingdom?
-More than ever…Kaname responded calm and honest.
Dragen initialized the attack flying over Kaname…Kaname disappeared in time avoiding the hit and pulled the rod that instantly grew in his hands to a long scythe.
Outside of the cave the two vampires wielding the anti-vampires were dodging the attacks of shock, ice and fire that the purebloods set out to them. This had been arranged to be a quick death for both parties.
Inside the cave Kaname was trying to block Dragen both his powers and with his scythe…Dragen was quick appearing and disappearing, avoiding all attacks in time, jumping and flew from the wall to the ground and vice versa. It was a merciless chase and hunting that in which they were both quite skilled.
Finally with a sharp stroke of the scythe Dragen lost one hand. The cave shook from the blast and the walls started retreating. Rocks started falling and Dragen dissolved his body in all directions to avoid the crushes of the rocks. Blood started dripping the ground underneath the rocks…ancient powerful blood…His blade rested on the ground. Kaname quickly picked it up.
All the blood transformed in thousand bats that filled the cave flapping their wings with force, squirming. Dragen had no means to escaping as all the purebloods outside were waiting to crush him or his bats in one million pieces...
The bats made a dashing attack on Kaname who pushed them back revolving the scythe with speed above his head. In the same time he raised his hand ready to make this beast appear again and finally throw him into the abyss he belonged to.
His cuts at the air made Dragen to land, heavy wounded all over his body, at the ground. Kaname stood above him and the scythe shined. He lowered it in speed on Dragen's body but suddenly he changed direction twisting it to his left side and cutting in the head of the pureblood vampire that was ready to attack him from behind.
Dragen found in that little second to change back in bats and hit Kaname at the face as the latest returned to face his opponent. The bats floated out of the cave to make an exit. The other one with the anti-vampire that was guarding the exit ran inside to delay Kaname. He saw his partner torn in two in the ground and his anti-vampire weapon missing.
A prevailing figure chopped his head off… The dull white color of his partner's eyes which had rolled up as he was facing the agony of the death was the last image he saw.
Kaname quickly picked the two swords and stepped outside, his purebloods were hunting Dragen's traces in the skies like hunting dogs. Under the excruciating sun of the dessert he joined them. There was no escape for that beast…
Soon he took a lead in front of the other pureblood's bats, eagles and hawks that were chasing Dragen. After an extensive chase he finally saw the bats landing in an underway passage hidden under some heavy rocks… "An underground hiding in the middle of nowhere…" So true as nothing but sand covered the landscape. He also landed and stepped underground revealing the entrance. Dragen was heavily hurt and he would not make it far.
As he entered the dark passage scents of different bloods inserted his nostrils. Used as he was he paid no notice but there was a scent, there was a known and familiar odor that made him to twist his head around. He kept following with decisive steps Dragen's presence in the underway labyrinth which was expanding before his eyes. He saw Dragen's form making a turn left…getting in another set of caves…
As he was ready to follow a known voice immobilized him…
-Ka-na-me… it sounded more like a whisper coming from a tortured soul forgotten and lost.
He doubted himself.
"Sawn?" His eyes widened in surprise.
The other purebloods following, reached Kaname and he made them a signal to go on with their persecution…
-This way… Shoutou shouted.
Kaname made a step back. The whisper sounded again coming somewhere behind the wall. He let all the purebloods pass and then his powers exploded the thick divider of the cave.
He could not believe his own eyes as he saw Aerie's brother laid above a tall table, chained and naked. Dragen had amputated his legs and his hands. Now whatever had remained from upper part of his legs and his shoulders were wrapped in thick white bandages burying great stains of blood all over them.
His upper body was all peeled off the skin and just the meat remained, whereas his neck had been roughly stitched with the fleshes projecting. On the table, axes stained in blood, scissors and other metallic equipment of torture rested.
A large metallic funnel, connected to a grand boll rested above his head slowly spilling drops of blood to the dry mouth of the unfortunate boy.
He had been brutally abused as an enquiring process to extract from him information and had been even greater brutally maintained into life sustaining unbearable pains night and day…
Sawn's eyes opened making a great effort…
-I did not say anything….nothing…she would never forgive me…
-Sawn… He had lost his words with the courageous heart and the strength of the boy.
"All of these months you should have suffered a real turmoil, how much strength you showed is really beyond my comprehension…they have tortured you and yet you sustained silently everything…drawing your courage from…"
-Ae-ries… Sawn, whispered.
Kaname brought his hand to the forehead of the boy showing a face of sympathy and acknowledgement of his inner strength and durability in suffering.
-She is fine…
-She thinks that I am…
-We all thought so.
Sawn closed tightly his eyes. Tears formed at the edges of his eyes…After all that despair, the pain, the tortures, the hate... he was aching so much that every effort to talk made his whole body to suffer…
-Please….kill me!
-Sawn? You will be fine. You survived so far.
He knew that it would take years for Sawn to return his, so heavily abused, body to its original position. He was maintained by the blood. If it stopped, then it was a matter of minutes…
-Aeries should not live with a cripple like me…I will have to take her blood every minute of the day or depend….on others offers and…I do not want her to see me like this…she will hate what it became of me…
-No she would never…
-I am dying…I should have been dead…
-You can regenerate…
Sawn started crying in frustration…
"After so many endless hours of agony…you only wish for relief and salvation? Don't you Sawn? You believed that your life was finished and here you cannot take anymore".
-Like what? Sawn screamed aching merciless… Like her new baby brother? You never suffered a pain that is similar. She will suffer along with me, agonizing. I was cut with an anti-vampire blade all over, cut in pieces. I will take years to regenerate, I will have to drink all of you to sustain this torture, to convey all of this fleshes you know as well that I am dead already… Think of her, think of her first…
Kaname's eyes were focused on Sawn but they were looking into space trying not to think of her. If he did then he knew what he was really capable of…here and now…
-Stop this, kill me now, before he returns…
-Dragen will be caught, he will pay for his crimes, you can be certain of this.
-Please Kaname, do it! Tell her nothing, I cannot suffer any more this pain, this turmoil, I hate myself….take care of her…now...
Kaname nodded in apprehension. "Murderer…" It was the first and only time of his life that his hands were trembling, wielding the scythe.
"Unforgiveable…a beast…a monster… adding more victims in your list…A cruel ruthless game… sacrificing people and consciousness…"
-We will meet again, Kaname said and Sawn nodded with a friendly touchy smile.
With a sudden lowering of the scythe Sawn's eyes closed forever finding eternal relief… Kaname averted his eyes from the boy's unfortunate body and pulled the scythe out.
"Goodbye my friend, may your next journey be better".
The body turned to its crystals…there was nothing left of him. Nothing…
Kaname took a deep breath, on his long trip on earth he had witnessed so many lives whose thread had been so suddenly and merciless cut at a very young age…dying before actually living…asking to find salvation in death just like Sawn. And he had played the role of the reaper, during his wars, killing opponents and allies, offering to them a quick escape from their pains. But that was a sad, bitter role that made him every time to breath heavier and heavier.
He looked at his hands, so much blood…so much tainted they were, every time more tainted than before…would there ever be a stop? An end?
His thought travelled to Aeries… "You are my end Aeries, I know this already…"
With a determined look he took the way that the rest of the purebloods had followed…it led to an opening… an underground lake and then as the ground slowly ascended to the skies… The light was blinding his eyesight. He only hoped that his purebloods had not left Dragen to escape. He had lost time. He was ready to turn in bats and join the chase but a sudden realization stopped him… His wolf had been blown and he could no longer see…
"Aeries…"
During Kaname's attacks to Dragen Aeries was making her own attacks and here is how…
She marched with quick and decisive steps towards her house. The idea that was had started to puzzle her had brought anger to her eyes and tension to her body…
Her aura had changed becoming more menacing and threatening, the wolf quickly sensed that something had changed. Once they reached the exterior door of the house Aeries opened it and slapped it behind her letting the door to shut at the wolf's muzzle. The animal stepped back ready to jump in through the broken window but his plan was canceled the moment it heard Aerie's shouts;
-PETER! PETER!
Peter startled at her sudden shout dropped from his hands the slice of the bread he was ready to eat. He approached and could not help stop wondering what he had done. Aeries stood in the middle of the room with her hands crossed and her eyes really determined. Peter sensed that something was wrong.
-So can you tell me what that pureblood woman did in my house and why she attacked me? She asked now in a softer manner.
-Eh? He scratched his head. But how should I know miss Aeries, why are you asking me such a thing?
-It's simple, she said with a steady voice. This woman claimed to be the King's fiancée and she knew you, she recognized so you've seen her before. Was she his fiancée?
-Hm, Peter cleared his throat. Well I do not know so much about purebloods. But I guess that master Kaname explained it to you.
-Master Kaname said that she was his fiancée in order to justify her presence and her attack on me. He gave me that excuse when I accused the King and the palace saying that they are mad living a person as her walking free.
The pupils of her eyes were set on Peter. He was speechless with this sudden aggressiveness towards himself, unable to see the logic behind this dialogue.
-So where is the problem? He made some steps behind feeling uncertain about everything. "What I am supposed to answer? What got into her all of the sudden?"
-The problem is that this woman said that she was the King's fiancée and she attacked ME believing I was his lover. And some women today said also that, confirmed her statement.
-But what do they know?
-THEY WERE FROM THE PALACE, NOBLES! Which one is lying here? And WHY?
Peter's mouth became dry; his eyes fell at the ground. She was holding back her anger and he could see it as her hands almost trembled. Aeries might be innocent and cute but she was also a pureblood. She could do anything she wanted with him. For the first time in his life he felt a spasm of fear.
-I told you that I do not know miss Aeries…you should ask lord Ka…
Before even finishing his sentence Aeries had already approached him and had grabbed his hand.
-Show it to me…Show me your King…you know him, he saved you from the streets…let me see him.
Peter instantly reacted pulling his hand from her grasp in shock. She was about to bite him! His eyes widened in complete panic and distortion. He made several steps away from her. Aeries' aura became even darker. Now she was enraged.
-Please, Miss Aeries, I can't do that…
-You CAN'T? YOU CANT' HA?
Her eyes flashed red and Peter ran to the kitchen the same time as a vase flew and smashed against the wall. He locked the kitchen's door and before he knew the door exploded behind him. Pieces of wood scattered all over the floor towards Peter's direction. The same moment he dashed to the rear exit Aeries appeared behind him and Peter immobilized as a force kept him with his foot stabbed at the ground. His body refused to travel him and inch further. He turned to her almost hypnotized. Her voice sounded now in the corridors of his mind and Kaname's images filled his eyes.
She walked again straight to him and grabbed his arms with a sad and at the same time single-minded look. She would stop at nothing to learn whose baby she carried inside her.
She brought the soft flesh to her lips ready to learn the reality of the King's identity but a loud barking behind her back stopped her. The wolf…
She turned to him with inflamed eyes and the animal crushed under her sudden blow. The blood covered her face, the floorboards and the tiles of the walls.
Finally undisturbed and alone Aeries shoot her fangs in Peter's hand…
The truth was revealed…
-I am sorry sir, I stepped on you…
Kaname lowered his head with sympathy to the boy.
-No, I stepped on you little boy…you were searching in the garbage for food? Don't you have any parents?
"I do not want to be at the orphanage, no…"
-I have to go now, sir…
-Wait…how about working for me? You see I have a home that is quite large and I am lacking hands. But there you must really work, behave and I won't forgive any stealing.
-So where is that place?
-Follow me…
-But I do not know your name sir…
-My name is Kaname Kuran. Here see? The Kuran crest was at his blade.
"The royal crest? He is…then the house is?"
-Are we going to the palace? Is there my new home? Really? My parents would be so proud of me that I achieved so much in such a young age. Are you as old as they say?
-You are asking too much….Kaname laughed…
-This is what they say about me but I was always a talkative kid and…
-Well Peter as your King I have a little demand.
-What? Should I clean your shoes?
Kaname laughed again.
-Stop talking that much, girls do not like it…
-Oh that's a serious reason, sir..
-Yes I know…
-And…
Aeries dropped Peter's hand to the side and released him of her control. The boy's eyes came back to reality to face two fiercing eyes.
-Get lost …or I kill you hear and now…I swear I do! I will kill you.
Peter knew that had no place in there, he quickly disappeared.
After all of her effort and the spending of her energy Aeries felt emotionally and physically drained. She sat at the floor and delved her head into her knees shaking from a sudden cold that had spread all over her body…
The split blood of the wolf started moving, generating bats that floated above her body and then they left with haste…
It did not matter to her anymore, anything…mattered…If he was or if he was not…no next to the fact…the inner notion that…
Her had betrayed her heart and had shattered her world. He had deceived her, fooled her, he had played both with her heart and her beliefs, he had used her in so many different ways; Why?
"He should be laughing with me all of this time; I was his ridicule, his amusement, his slut…wasn't I? He fooled both me and poor Sawn…He did that…
But his feelings were true; I know, I cannot be so mistaken, so crazily mistaken. Or maybe I am? Perhaps it was just me and my need to believe that someone once again loved me and needed me, he was just having fun, when I…I gave everything to him. My everything…".
And then a new realization struck her.
"I should go away and hide; I should…try to escape now before he learns…if he learns…he does not deserve it…Oh Sawn I wish you were alive…I wish you had heard me…if you had remained here by my side, nothing, nothing of all these would have happened. Idiot! STUPID!"
Tears had filled her eyes and regret her heart, like dark clouds her thoughts had covered her. Aeries spend hours at that kitchen crying and laughing, forgetting and remembering, loving and hating….living within her own contradiction of emotions and logic.
The light gave its place to the dark and Aeries had not moved herself from the cold floor, losing all meaning once again, trying to drain courage from her heart.
"Now don't you do anything funny….the baby it is not it's fault…no, don't place your hate there…stand to your feet Aeries…get up…. Hate yourself if you want, him, the entire world but not the baby …don't let it happen…Get up Aeries and Go! It will be shortly when he will arrive…GET UP!"
She finally found the strength to move. She lifted herself up feeling light headed, she had wasted so much energy and if it was not for her tension she would have certainly collapsed. "No, not now…"
As she headed to the stairs to pick up her things, a sudden wind blew all over the house…She turned her head scared as the reflection, an illusion image of a quite dominant man with black long hair and eyes now stood in front of her eyes….coming in from the broken widows…
She breathed in heavily. He had send another pureblood to her exposing her identity? So he did not even have the guts to face her?
The anger rose in her once more.
-Hello there, female of the White Clan, Dragen said his breath sounding heavy in the silence. The odor of his blood filled the house. So we are surprisingly alone…I did not expect that to be so easy for me.
-Who are you?
-I am a Dragen Han, ever heard about me?
Aeries nodded her head affirmatively in a strict way; What did that dog who had butchered her brother wanted from her? To finish her?
She could not take her eyes off him watching him as he gradually closed the distance between them. The sound of his steps sounded threatening in the hoary oak floor of the house. He was quite old and precarious.
- If you are here to kill me…I have no means to defend myself against you…, she shouted.
-I am not here to kill you…on the contrary I want you to kill someone for me…Someone you know very well…
- Kaname?
-That bastard will haunt me down to eternity; you are going to give him to me.
-I do not have that power…
Dragen began sarcastically laughing to her words.
-Power can be rather strange and unexpected…you can never know but the weakest of all may hold the greatest power. Your true weakness is your ignorance… You are lovers… he is exposed to...isn't he?
-How do you?
-That does not matter. What it matters is that you have his blood in his body, something quite rare. Centuries now he protects his blood refusing to share it with anyone. Not after the purebloods, to whom he gave the power, turned against him. This is one time opportunity. The weapons that he created and entrusted have all been gathered and destroyed. So pathetic…he spend centuries trying to undone his mistake. He turned into dust the last two purebloods with whom I shared my blood, that contained his blood, and he took all weapons. Find his weapons and feed to them your blood, you will be able to wield them. A secret so simple…
-Why, why should I do it for a murderer like you? You killed my brother, you murdered him…!
-Have I? Are you sure?
-Liar! You are a liar! Enough, enough you all played with my feelings and my mind. I have had enough with your games.
-I might be a liar but my blood speaks only the truth…
Dragen pulled his cape and a portion of his blood that was hanging from his earlier chopped arm landed to the floor.
Aeries approached it reluctantly…
And then she saw the atrocious sight of level-e vampires biting and devouring the remaining fleshes of her brother's legs and arms that Dragen had ambulated from his body. Sawn screaming in shouts as Dragen extracted his guts with a knife….
She shut her eyes; a great disturbance shook her stomach, he dropped on her knees and started vomiting. She could not take this any longer.
Dragen made slow circles around her… slowly laughing in a cynical way with her reaction.
-You bastard…you KILLER! STOP! TORTURING HIM. PLEASE…she begged among her cries…
-Then make my wish come true, but no hasty moves here. Your brother is heavily wooded and I supply him with blood to maintain him, despite the fact that he was useless to me, I had a feeling that he would became a good pawn in the future time. You know the game…play it well…I am not in a hurry. This should be done properly; it's such a rare opportunity that I cannot afford losing it. He should trust you, make sure you become the Queen, I will give you two years… to serve me…we will speak in time…I am being chased and you will have visitors soon. So let's make this more real….
Aeries screamed again as the illusion send her a wave of destruction energy. She fell at the floor from the instant pain at her arm, again… She only managed to see fleets of bats dashing in her home, purebloods masters appearing, looking down to her with curious hungry eyes and questions rising in an abstracted way…her home a living battlefield full of glimpses and flashes, trespassing her, before they all disappeared again in the dull sea of her mind.
"Blood…more blood…I want blood…."
"I only want this man's blood"
"Remember…"
"Wake up…Aeries…"
-Aeries are you all right? Dragen… I am so sorry Aeries, seeing that woman's memories send him right to you, didn't he? I arrived in time to chase his bats away…but not to prevent him from hurting you. Aeries please say something…
Aeries had lost track of the world around her. Instinctively she brought her hand to her belly. It was fine…Where was she? She was not in her house, this room and its heavy classic furniture were alien to her…
As she scanned the space around her, Kaname's hands wrapped around her waist and pulled her to his chest, elevating her back of the mattress.
-This is all my fault, he whispered with his eyes closed. We followed him but he scattered in too many directions. When the purebloods finally spotted a part of his body on the way for the West I suspected that this might be his destination. We destroyed that "part of him" but other parts remain in the East. He knows all about you…and you know the truth now…I am sorry, I wish you could let me explain. I know that you will say that I fooled you and I lied to you, perhaps in my means I did lie but not about myself, not about who I am and what I ever really wanted. It's quite the opposite; you are the only know who knows the truth about me, the only person I ever trusted with my dreams and my scopes is you. I wish I had spoken to you before but all your hate about the palace, all of your perceptions made it more and more difficult. I was afraid of losing you… I know that I am unforgiveable but I love you, I love you… more than anything else in this world.
Silence followed his last words and Kaname had no idea what she was thinking of. He expected a great reaction from her but Aeries had deserted herself in his hands like a still doll saying nothing at all. He deposited her gently on the mattress.
Her eyes were almost expressionless.
-What is it? He said with agony pictured in his eyes. Are you in pain? We stitched your arm and you must be better, I injected some of my blood to you so that you would come around sooner and as painless as possible…Please Aeries, say something, whatever, even that you hate me…I will accept anything coming from you…I will…he said lowering his head.
"Even the blade that could take away your life?", she wondered.
"Even the blade that would take away my life. I deserve this…", he thought.
"Two years" Dragen had said. Two years were more than enough to give birth to her child and then…
Aeries brought her hand to his cheek, Kaname almost shivered to her touch, a least expected touch of acceptance that made his heart melt. He wanted to delve his head into her chest and confess to her his most evil side.
He wanted her to know…to understand everything about him… In time, they would have time. Now she was here resting under his care and that was all that really mattered.
She needed to understand this game, of power and sins, she wanted to save and to be saved but right now everything seemed so vague and distanced. The baby was fine, saved. Her mind suddenly realized the difference. Her first worry was that of the baby, her time on earth was becoming harsher to her, minute after minute.
And that man who now looked at her with caring eyes was a man she did hate and one man she also so much loved. He was the cause of her destruction and the way to her salvation. How can all of these fit together? "What I am going to do?" She tilted her head to the side and she started crying and sobbing without control. Kaname softly caressed her hair to comfort her.
All she knew was that she could not take the risk of Sawn's life and talk to him. All he knew was that telling her about Sawn's death was something again impossible.
"In the farthest depths of sin and darkness…we shall fall…together…"