Chapter Thirty-Six

Sakura buried her face in her pillow, trying to stifle the sobs tearing free of her throat. They would not be silenced.

It's all my fault, she thought, dragging a shaky breath through her teeth. I should've never let him leave, I should've begged him not to go, I should've . . . She sobbed again, feeling as if every cell of her body was being ripped apart. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that anything she could've done would've been a better alternative to letting him go.

Kurogane-san was right to yell at me before. If I'd never let him go to Seishirou, he would still be alive. Her breath hitched and broke, and she let loose another shaky sob.

She had known something was wrong from the moment the others had returned without him, but she'd assumed he was in the hospital, that he was going to be fine.

And now she knew he wasn't.

She lay there, body crumpled up on top of the blankets, face pressed into the pillow to muffle the sobs she couldn't suppress, until she heard a knock on her door. She flipped her moistened pillow over and wiped her eyes, not sure why she bothered. The others had probably heard her uncontrollable wails, as quiet as it was out in the living room. But in a way, she was ashamed of her outburst, ashamed that she was so selfishly wallowing in self-pity when they were as hurt as she was. "Come in," she called hoarsely.

The door opened a crack. Most of the time, when someone visited her in her room, it was Fai. This time, it was Kurogane. "It's been hours. You need to eat."

Sakura blinked. Her lack of appetite was to be expected, but it still surprised her, when she looked at the red numbers on the alarm clock, at how long it had been since she'd eaten. Over seven hours, if she remembered the time of the others' return correctly.

But she didn't feel hungry, so she just shrugged and figured she'd eat when the urge hit her.

There was a soft sigh at the door, which struck her as odd. Kurogane-san almost never sighed, and when he did, it was pronounced and layered with exasperation. He must be hurting terribly, too, she thought. He lost a student. I just lost . . . She faltered, unsure how to define her relationship with Syaoran. The past few weeks had proved they were not, and would never be, friends. There had too much distance between them, too much suppressed resentment from both of them after everything that had happened in Tokyo.

But he had meant something to her. There was something indefinable and critical between them, some draw that made her mourn him now that he was gone, mourn in a way she hadn't for the unnamed bodies of those who had perished in the apartment fire weeks ago. He was not her Syaoran, not the way she thought of it. But he could have been. So easily.

Could have been mine, she thought as another sob broke through her teeth. Her face was slimy with saltwater, and her throat ached, stressed by the spasmodic sobs.

"I'll leave your dinner in the fridge," Kurogane said after a few seconds. "You won't even have to reheat it."

She didn't trust herself to speak without breaking down again, so she just nodded. A moment later, the door closed with a soft click.

There was some shuffling around in the other rooms. She guessed one of the others must've been going to bed, given the late hour. The other followed about fifteen minutes later, and the apartment grew quiet again. The silence allowed her to think.

Even if I couldn't have stopped him after he decided to go, what could I have done before then? I told Fai-san and Kurogane-san not to fight about his place here, but was that enough? I never told Syaoran anything like that. I never told him it was okay for him to be here. Was that what he was looking for? My approval? She wiped her eyes again, brushing away the nascent tears.

He agreed to help find my feathers, even after I acted so cold to him. She remembered telling him something, a few weeks after they'd arrived in Infinity. She couldn't remember the words exactly, but she'd told him to stop trying to act like her Syaoran had, that it wasn't making things any easier. I was so selfish. All he wanted to do was help me. I should've been grateful he was with us at all. Maybe then, he wouldn't have left.

I deserve this, she thought. I deserve to suffer for being so cold. It wasn't his fault that I lost my Syaoran. She curled up into a ball on her bed, sensing another crying spell coming on. Looking for my feathers, facing games of human chess, learning to use a sword . . . All for me. And I treated him like a monster. Her throat protested as another shrill cry passed through it.

You're the monster, part of her mind accused, and she couldn't find the will to deny it.

She moved her head back to her pillow to muffle her cries.

The dark-skinned woman recoiled from the sound of her name, eyes wide with panic. Seishirou caught hold of her arms, pinning them to her side.

Syaoran blinked, briefly distracted from the ache in his stomach, an ache that had spread to the rest of his body while he'd been waiting. "What now?"

"You cut her throat with your claws and drink her blood."

The woman paled at this, but Syaoran had to say he was more shocked. "But she's still awake!"

His teacher rolled his eyes. "The first thing you learn as a vampire is to take your meals when you can get them. You're not going to have the luxury of a willing donor."

No, that's one thing I don't have in common with Fai-san, he thought, swallowing the lump that had risen in his throat. Before he could pluck up the courage to approach this world's version of Souma-san, she started screaming.

"Foul demons, my tribe will hunt you to the ends of this jungle! You cannot harm me without bringing on their wrath."

"Can't you do something?" Syaoran asked, lifting his hands to his ears to shut out the woman's wails.

His mentor sighed and moved his arms up around Souma's neck. Her freed limbs flailed wildly before they started clawing at Seishirou's arms. Her struggles proved futile after a few seconds, as the panic faded from her eyes.

Syaoran had trouble forming words through his horror. "Is she . . ."

"Unconscious. All I did was clamp down on the arteries leading to her brain. We've got a few minutes, but you'd better hurry, before the villagers come poking around with torches and pitchforks."

He stared at Souma's limp body, trying to come to terms with what was required of him. He knew that if he didn't take her blood, the pain in his body would keep growing until he lost control of himself, but he couldn't condone what his old teacher had done, bringing a helpless native here and knocking her out for him to snack on.

And above all those other concerns, this was someone he knew. She wore the same face as the woman he'd met in Outo, spoke with the same voice, reacted with the same intensity. If she had come willing to offer up her blood, he might've been drinking already. But she had not come willingly, she had writhed and shouted at the thought of being used like that.

"Syaoran. Syaoran, just relax. It's okay."

He shook his head. "I can't."

"You have to feed. The first feeding cements the transformation. You will die if you don't."

"I can't."

"If it's not her, it's someone else from the village. Better this one woman, unconscious and weakened, than a dozen dead in their houses because you lost control."

"I know, but . . . I knew her. In another world. We were . . . She was nice to me."

Seishirou's voice became quiet, cajoling. "Little Wolf, there's a reason you came to help me. I know how you must feel about this—I've been through it all myself. But if you don't feed soon, all you've done for me and the princess both will be for nothing."

He knelt down beside Souma, smelling the exotic fragrance of her blood, just under the surface of her skin. If he didn't think about who he was feeding from, if he just imagined he was settling down to eat breakfast, perhaps it wouldn't be so hard. Besides, the closer he got to that smell, the more his body craved it. His claws grew impossibly longer.

"You can take it from the arm," Seishirou said after a minute, his claws growing out with a sound like a sword being pulled from its sheath. With a jolt, Syaoran realized it was the first time he had seen Seishirou show his vampire side. How can he be so controlled when I'm so weak?

He didn't have much time to think about it, as right then, his teacher ran one knife-sharp nail across the woman's arm. A thin line of blood appeared on the surface, thickening as it seeped out of her body. When the smell of exposed blood hit him, any semblance of self-control Syaoran had maintained slipped away to some dark corner of his mind. He bent down, pressing his lips tight to the cut, and drank.