Since this chapter is very short, I will be a proper, merciful author to my readers and update another chapter later today. So please, shower me with gratitude in the form of reviews...or don't...and leave me all achey and empty and needy because I'm pathetic like that.
Chapter 37
The darkness brought him to a more primitive state, and as the stretch of his pupils expanding as far as they could go sucked in the black, even his nostrils seemed blooded for the run. Outlines in the pitch black came to him—and he could see—and with it came the mind spinning instincts that hunched him down and sent him running towards the door with Atem. He couldn't see the shadows, though. Only the door opening on its own, the black bodies heavy with the ripe aroma of meat, of teeth, of power.
Fear, he realized. This sweet, heady scent like ripe fruit beneath the sun was fear.
His lips curled back. His gums itched, and fangs brushed his bottom lips. His throat felt hot in a pleasant sort of pain, like a massage on sore muscles. Each breath brought it deeper.
Then something unseen wrapped about his waist and dragged him through the crowd. Atem's red eyes drank him in, narrow, disapproving.
"So young," he whispered, or sighed.
Then Seto Kaiba found himself again and fell into a run. The colorless shadows withdrew from his waist. Sounds of boots and yells and the rustle of Kevlar bodies reached out to him, but the only ones who could see were the vampires. Seto found himself needing to move faster than he'd ever dare before in order to just keep up with the older vampire, and the ease in which his legs sprung him up stairs and swung him about corners threatened to bring the addictive wildness back to his lungs.
The next floor brought with it a waft of cold and an entirely new scent. Sweet fear turned sour, rotten, and a cold chill cooled whatever heat had been left in his throat. It was like body odor, old socks, a bed overdue to be made. Underneath it he caught the now familiar rotten fruit scent of his own kind, and suddenly understood what this odor was. After all, he wasn't the only predator in the building to smell the human's fear.
Suddenly, bars snapped over the double doors. The clang of more bars dropping cracked across the vast expanse of the jail. A wild roar came from the rotton fruit scented cells.
"Atem—" he started, just to be cut off as Atem took a running leap, spread the giant wings that had been folded against his back like an oversized trenchcoat, and shot straight up to a clouded skylight that had been taking it's time barring up. Afterall, what human could reach that height?
Seto's mouth went dry.
But he moved all the same, sprinting towards the nearest wall of cells and launching himself up the wall. His long limbs served him well, and his extended strength shot him up one story, then two, then—
"Kaiba!"
Holding himself to the railing of the third story line of cells by a foot and hand, he twisted back. Atem's hand hung below the skylight, legs and fist keeping the bars from closing, shattered, opaque glass splattered along the floor below.
Seto jumped to the top of the railing, crouched, then let go as he sprung out for the hand—
The lights flashed on. The world flashed white, spiking pain through his skull. Fingers brushed his wrist—claws bit. He let out a shout of pain as the claws dug deeper to the bone, weighted by his body.
Thunder cracked the air. Fire pierced his legs, his chest—
The claws slip. His insides flew to his mouth as the rest of him fell.
Then the hard concrete knocked out whatever made Seto, leaving only agony and a chaos of senses and hungers that took up the space where thought had once been.