Ayato found himself resting in his iron maiden, the lid still uncovered. He forced himself to get up, his bones echoing with a piercing pain. How did he end up here? He was confused for the longest moment, then gathering his senses, he looked around, taking in his surroundings. It was still night time. But somebody had shut off all the windows in his room. The wall opposite to him had been torn open, and he sort of had an idea who had done this. "Tch. Fucking Pancake." He flung his body outside the iron maiden, just in time for Laito to burst in through the door. He was missing his trademark fur jacket and fedora, and had been sweating bullets. "Ayato kun!"
"Thanks for forgetting that I was a part of the plan, Laito," Ayato said, his voice gaining a sardonic edge. "That punk Ruki almost killed me, you know that?"
"Reiji says he lost little bitch," Laito said, looking at the huge hole in the wall. "Is that your doing?" He pointed at it, unsure.
"Ruki ripped through the wall." Ayato was seething with rage. "How did he even know about the false walls? He doesn't even know the mansion that well?"
Laito breathed hard. "Little bitch told him."
Ayato felt his pent up anger bubbling up inside him. "Even she shouldn't know the ins and outs of the house. She must have been researching about it."
Laito could barely suppress his chuckle. Ayato turned to look at him, enunciating every syllable of his sentence. "Be serious for now."
"I can't get over the fact that you couldn't even control little bitch," Laito tutted at him. Ayato ignored him, as he bent down to inspect the little hole they had torn into the wall, looking for the slightest chance that they hadn't escaped from them. He'd have his chances of success thinned down if that happened. He could not be set back at any cost. He couldn't go further by lying and cheating.
"Let's send Reiji's familiars into them," Laito said, offering a solution. "They might not have gotten too far."
"Reiji's little pigeons wouldn't be able to get through the sewers, idiot." Ayato took off his hoodie, leaving him in a grey undershirt. "I should be able to send my bats inside, but even those sons of bitches wouldn't be able to do much if Ruki notices them. Laito," he turned towards his brother, "Send somebody to guard the dungeons. Yui might take that route to escape from the castle, if I know her well."
"Well, you clearly don't." Laito's indifferent statement stabbed him like a spear, right into his heart.
Ayato sighed. "Which is why I am sending Shu to observe the drain that connects to the city. Just in case I don't know her enough."
Laito shrugged. "I had told you to be a little more upfront if you wanted to advance towards her." He looked at Ayato, his expression smug.
"Fuck you." Ayato couldn't handle the condescending remarks Laito was giving him continuously. Ayato wasn't a novice in sex, and he didn't want to feel inferior in front of his devious little brother. He had hoped to be a bit more forward as well, but Yui was so fucking prudish at times he wanted to smack himself across the face for even thinking of getting into her pants. He might as well seduce her father with the effort he had put into her chase. Ayato opened the window, whistling loudly. A bat flew towards the window, sitting right on the ledge, facing Ayato. Its beady eyes looked at Ayato, ready to take orders.
"Take the nearest route to Reiji, and tell him to station somebody in front of the drain that connects to the city." Ayato breathed in, his thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. "Look after Pancake, if you find her."
"Reiji might not like the recent events," Laito said, crossing his arms. The bat flew away, towards the other side of the mansion. Laito opened the doors as Ayato rushed behind him, slipping on a white shirt. "He had been pretty sour ever since he got to know that Subaru was genuinely trying to help little bitch."
"That hothead doesn't know what Reiji is capable of," Ayato said, knowing where Laito's conversation was headed. The last thing he wanted to hear was his own brother accusing him of being unfaithful to the family.
They'd never been close as a family, per se, but recently with the resurrection of Cordelia, and further with the blood moon eclipse, he had only seen his brothers come closer together in order to secure their existence as a species. Gradually the lines separating them blurred a bit, and they were slowly being able to see each other as a barely functioning family at least. It took more than half a century to reach them to this point, but at least they had reached that milestone. And nobody was ready to just shatter the trust they had just been cultivating. Cultivating trust by plotting against an innocent girl. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to forget the whole month behind him. He wanted to just go back to being the possessive bastard who didn't really think about others before himself.
He wanted to focus on things to come before him, but found himself slipping into the fever dream again. With his fangs against her neck, his body bathed in the blood of Ruki. That was the only thing he could focus on, at least for now.
Yui coughed into her fist, as another set of bats scattered around them, as they neared the tunnel that connected the city sewers with the mansion. Yui knew a bit about the drainage because of her last encounter with Laito and Ayato in the dungeons, which happened to be connected with the sewers. She wanted to be able to fight against them and if not, at least get away as quickly as possible if the situation arose. Scouring through Reiji's study had been pretty tiresome, but she thanked the Lord for making her go through that torment.
Ruki shielded her from the onslaught of leathery wings. Yui noticed it all; the silent stare that Ruki seemed to give her, the way his hand stayed just a moment longer around her shoulder.
She did not know how to read through all this subtext. She had been blessed with troubled boys that just couldn't accept and admit their feelings for her. The thoughts of Ayato swarmed her mind, and her body shivered on its own accord.
"Eve?" Ruki asked, his grip light on her elbow. "Are you okay?"
"Hm." Yui couldn't focus very well, as the drug had started to take its effect on her. Her head spun slowly, as she held onto Ruki's chest to steady herself.
"Don't you have a mobile phone or a torch instead?" Yui said, her voice low. She didn't know whether they were still being followed or not, and she still was against lighting their surroundings. But she couldn't rely on Ruki's sense of direction or her touch anymore. Soon after the first turn on the right, they should carry forward to turn hard to the left. Her hands felt through the walls around them, her fingers tangling up in cobwebs and catching weird sticky substances. Ruki halted, and she heard a rustle of his clothes. She heard him groan. "Electronic devices don't work well in vampires' presence; I never had the reason to keep a contraption like cellular devices on me."
Yui raised her eyebrows at that fact. Then how did Karlheinz work with cameras as his politician alter ego Tougo Sakamaki? Did this handicap with malfunctioning technology only affect him as a person, or did this translate to the whole Sakamaki family as well? She didn't see any television set in the mansion despite them being filthy rich. They never used cell phones to communicate, never bothering to engage in video games or the internet as most of the other kids their age did. But then again, calling them kids wasn't really justified. Along with their fucked up personalities, they might just be an entirely different species.
She shook her head. "We should have turned left a few steps ago but… We didn't find anything on the left, did we?"
Ruki gasped. "Don't tell me that we're lost."
Yui stayed silent, as she tugged at his sleeve. "Better keep going, Ruki kun. They'll catch up to us in no time."
Ruki kept his hands on her shoulder, guiding her through the labyrinthine sewers. "Once we reach the end, what do you intend to do, Eve?"
Yui stood still in her tracks. What, indeed. Ruki had started to pose questions she wanted to desperately answer, but did not know how to. She knew she wanted to be different from what she was here, a cowering, hiding girl with only her survival on her mind. She didn't want to be tied down by being just a human or just a person. She wanted to be treated like an adult but feared what might just happen if they do start treating her as one.
Yui gathered whatever she felt and put it into one simple sentence. "I want to observe what becomes of me, rather than predict what might."
Ruki smiled uncertainly, and even in the pitch dark she could feel his pride after hearing her speak somewhat logical points. Yui doubted herself to much, which accounted her to be what she was right now, a mere pawn being dictated by Reiji and his cruel brothers to act on their whims. But forcing herself to adopt a persona that was different to her original character seemed unjust and dishonest to herself. She might have been prudish, she might be naïve, she might not know the ways of the vampires that well, but whether she liked it or not, whether anybody else liked it or not, she was her own self, and trying to be someone else was a disservice to everyone around her, including herself.
And that was probably what Ruki wanted from her. He didn't expect her to magically transform into an assertive individual that would just power up her way out of the grim situation she had fallen into, but to accept that the fragility of her being was what defined her as a person as well, and there was no shame in admitting it. Contrary to that, she had loads of positive attributes she refused to acknowledge because her faults and shortcomings were so glaring and out of place. She was empathetic, she thought about others and had recently been able to distance herself from the toxicity of others that seemed to put her down. She was slowly being able to stand up for herself, while maintaining her faith. She was being able to embrace her feelings for seemingly inhumane people, both pleasant and unpleasant.
And while most of her peers would put her down for being so insufferable, that was the only thing that kept her alive and sane through the gruelling torture she endured. Being able to smile, laugh and love despite being dealt with such a horrible fate was commendable to say the least.
"I think you're being too hard on yourself." Ruki chuckled, knowing she would take the statement in a generally bad taste. Well, what did she expect? She was brought up on the idea that being docile and acting on rules was rewarding. The convent generally didn't want to hear her interest in science, and her faith was generally unfounded by the things she wanted to pursue. It all felt so contradictory, yet so understandable. It wasn't justified, by any means, to be trodden down by others, but at least now she had a lens to look at her past.
"I think we should just go ahead for the time being, Ruki kun," Yui insisted, as another flurry of batwings erupted them into stifled gasps and screams. They all flew towards Yui, colliding against her chest, leaving her in scratches. Ruki turned her around to inspect the damage. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine… Ruki kun." Yui stumbled as she felt something flop onto her shoulder. She cupped her hands as she held something in her hands, leathery wings and fur in the dark.
"That's a bat," Ruki said, his hands cupping around hers, cradling the bat fallen into her arms. Yui tilted her head as the bat appeared to glow with a fluorescent light, its beady eyes fixated upon her. She rubbed its little head, trying to comfort the fallen beast into her embrace.
It let out a high pitched squeal, trilling with joy as she rubbed it. Yui looked at Ruki, his face being lit with a ghostly green light from the bat's bioluminescence. His expression was as unsettled as Yui currently felt.
"What is this?" Yui asked him. The bat fluttered its wings, hovering above them, as though waiting for them to do something.
"I have no idea," Ruki said, as the bat proceeded forward at a slower pace.
"Maybe," Yui said, stepping forward in towards the bat's flight, "Maybe It wants us to follow?"
Ruki huffed in disappointment. "We'd just bump into a guiding bat after travelling for hours through the sewers?" He skipped the trickling stream of water to join beside Yui.
"We don't really have an option at this point, Ruki kun."
Yui halted to a stop, and Ruki's chest collided with her back, as she stumbled forward, her scream piercing through the air. Ruki grabbed her arm on impulse, pulling her against his body.
"Eve?" Ruki turned her towards him. "What happened?"
Yui heaved against his chest, her body shivering in sobs. "The path stops here. This is the outlet into the city system."
Ruki knotted his eyebrows, looking over her shoulder. A huge stream of sewer water dumped into the huge ravine like drain, with a steep slope in front of them only leading into the drain. The glowing bat in front of them hovered above the water, trilling at them.
Ruki breathed in frustration. "We don't have much choice."