53
Atem woke with a start. Everything vibrated.
He dropped off the couch onto Yugi, bracing himself. She squirmed beneath his weight.
"Atem? What?"
The glass wall he hated so much, filled with too bright sunshine, shivered. Grey smoke rushed to cover the view. Crap, if the glass shattered—it had to be thick too. This was only one of the many reasons Atem thought glass a stupid construction material for anything other than moderately sized windows, and even then—
Across the apartment, the front door slammed open.
"Out! Quick!" shouted Marik.
Atem and Yugi had barely managed to get to their feet and face the ancient vampire and his two cronies when the glass wall exploded.
Atem did his best to cover as much of Yugi as he could as they fell. He fell onto her small body hard and cracked his chin against the side of her skull.
Only once the tinkling of glass had stopped and the trembling world drew back to a distant rumble did Atem dare to raise his head. A thin trail of blood dripped off the curve between his bare shoulder and neck.
Suddenly, Marik was there, tearing him off of Yugi. Miraculously, he caught himself against a small patch of carpet untouched by the giant shards of glass. As he did so, he felt something large, solid, and wet, slide down from his back, stretching with a knee-weakening, pleasantly painful wave of relief. A wing.
Marik wasn't gentle. He didn't wait for Yugi to catch her breath, just slung her over his shoulder, dark eyes shut against the light. He barked for the other vampires, but they had recoiled against the door, palms to their eyes. Wave upon wave of cold wind billowed through, carrying with it the scent of fumes, smoke, and ozone.
Atem looked to the open space. He stretched his free wing, feeling the second stretch the smarting skin of his back.
Marik started shuffling blindly towards the door, Yugi choking for breath against his back.
With a spike of sheer, raw adrenaline, Atem tackled Marik and sunk every nail and tooth he had into the arm about Yugi.
Instantly, Marik's claws tore him away, but not without Atem getting a hold of Yugi. Both Atem and Yugi hit the floor. Atem turned it into a roll, knocking into glass with naked shins—and into a mad dash to the open air, clutching Yugi to his chest. Marik's hell-bent shriek rent the air. Claws scraped the back of Atem's heels.
The floor vanished. Open space swallowed him, and gravity took hold. Fumes and dust rushed past to show the road far below rushing up.
Atem's second wing broke free with a snap of broken skin.
Pain blinded him as the air caught his outspread wings, tearing what felt like his entire back and shoulders from his body. For a moment, only the force of the air and his hands stopped Yugi from dropping.
But caught they did, and through watering, protesting eyes, he squinted his way over to the top of an approaching, shorter building. Unable to flap, he leaned his weight over, praying his screaming wings didn't snap before he reached it. Even then there would still be a twenty foot drop.
Through sheer miracle his wings held and his feet found the roof. The moment they did, he felt to his bleeding knees, gasping for breath and clinging to Yugi for dear life.
"Are you okay?" he asked the moment he could.
"Atem…your wings…they're covered in blood and pus."
He painfully folded them against his back. "No time," he panted, pushing her to her feet. "We have to—"
A thunderous crack came from behind. Atem only had the time to turn and see Marik, cracks radiating from his feet where he had landed—before the beast was on him.
Fangs and claws tore into his shoulders, tossing him. He flew through the air. Yugi screamed. The roof vanished and he was falling once more towards cars and pavement.
With a sharp suck of breath, he snapped open his riddled, infected wings. Stars burst across his eyes. But somehow, the pain was less this time, and he managed to pump once—twice—
He reached the top of the building just in time to see Marik stepping through the door to the floor below. A mixture of adrenaline and the screaming of his soul for Yugi filled him with a fury as he had never known, bleeding a familiar red across his vision. Fangs stretched from his gums as he dashed through the door and down the dark stairs. Yugi's screaming rebounded up the cement tower.
Instinctively, not even stopping to think if it would even work, he reached out for the shadows. Like invisible fingers trailing along the walls, he mentally imagined gathering every shadow that caught against his fingers as he jumped step by step and wheeled into the door just closing behind Marik.
The second floor of this particular building had windows spanning all sides. While not floor to ceiling, they would have let in a phenomenal amount of light had not most of them been covered by blinds. Offices separated by temporary, felt covered walls and more glass filled the space, and the smell of industrial cleaners, paper, and ink tickled his nose.
He found Yugi immediately in the midst of them all, reaching for him over Marik's shoulder.
Marik vanished, she fell, only for the ancient vampire to appear before Atem before she had even hit the ground. As the monster's claws dug into his ribs, all the shadows he had gathered snapped in about him. Darkness enclosed them, tight as a rubber suit.
Atem squeezed the shadows in as hard as he could.
Marik squawked.
Atem stumbled back from his knot of shadows, unable to breathe. Blood poured from his chest. His wings trailed alongside him, staining the neutral, flat carpet with blood and yellowed strings of pus.
But even as his head felt like bursting and his eyes popping from the effort to compress his shadows about Marik, white claws brust through the blackness. The ancient vampire reared his head from the mass, skin and flesh stretched taunt from his gaping, stretched jaws of fangs, black eyes fit to bursting from his skull. An ugly, lionic snarl tore from his throat. The tips of his gold blond hair had been dyed red by blood, Atem's or otherwise. As the red irises pierced into Atem's gut, fear spiked through his desperate fury. He became all too aware of the deep wounds on his chest and shoulders streaming blood and the mottled, half-rotten state of his infected wings.
I wouldn't have been able to take him on even at my prime.
As a muscled hardened arm tore from his shadow's grasp, and then a leg, Atem took a step back, beginning to tremble. Everything had already started to blur and his head felt light.
Suddenly, Yugi vaulted up from behind, grappling Marik's head through the darkness to bury tiny, razor sharp fangs into his neck. As she did so, she jammed her forearm into his open jaws.
"Yugi! No!"
The wounds he had given her reopened. Bright red blood splashed into Marik's maw, denching his tongue. Marik momentarily wagged his head in protest, but then, as though unable to help himself, buried his dozens of shark-like teeth into her thin arm.
Whatever noise of pain she made was muffled by her own mouthful of the ancient vampire's stone-like flesh.
Atem stumbled forward. Tendrils of shadow peeled from the knot to pull at her, but he couldn't tear her free, not without tearing off her arm in the ancient vampire's mouth.
He fell to a knee.
"No…" What was left of his darkening vision filled with burning tears. "Yugi. No."
Just as Marik took another deep drag of Yugi's blood, however, he let go to gag, crumpling to the ground amidst the sinewy remains of Atem's weakening shadows. Yugi fell away, hugging her mince-meat arm to her stomach, dark, vampiric blood staining her mouth.
The door to the stairway crashed open just as Marik vomited dark blood onto his braced hands.
"Get out of here!"
Joey, golden hair flying about her like a halo, crossed the distance to Marik in one super-human leap. She tore back the retching vampire's head by the hear and thrust her arm into mouth. Teeth peeled away flesh as she tugged it back out.
"Run!"
Faster than his failing eyes could catch, Joey swiped Yugi from the ground with one arm then came round to pick him up around the middle with the other. Marik was rising to his feet, screaming, gagging, black eyes bulging, blood drenching his face and hair. Muscles and tendons bulged from his neck.
Joey charged one of the open office windows, apparently too blind from the sunlight to find the door back up to the roof.
"Joey—!"
Too late. She threw herself shoulder first through the glass window.
At the same time, Marik exploded.
Heat and fire shoved them out, scorching him, forcing his eyes shut. Falling, wind tore at his limp, useless wings. He couldn't breathe. The last of his shadows seemed to recoil back to him, slapping away the last of his consciousness.
Author's Note: Because why freaking not.
