Chapter Four: Ichor
The scorching sun blazed down upon the sand. He shielded his eyes from the merciless rays.
"Your Holiness," a voice called, echoed through the viscous heat.
He turned. Blue eyes pierced into him. The sand fell away. White armor gleamed. The rasp of a sword drawn from its scabbard.
"You'll stand in my way for the last time."
His feet sunk into the ground. The darkness sucked him down. From the black, luminescent wings unfurled. They wrapped him in their loving embrace.
You shall never see the light of day again.
Yami jolted to wakefulness. His book laid open over knee. He was still reclined in the chair. He rubbed his forehead a moment. Giving his blood so often normally didn't take such a toll on him. He stood. He walked from the room.
Kaiba crawled back to consciousness. "Ugh…" A throbbing ache pounded at the back of his head. His mouth was dry as sandpaper. A sharp pain echoed in his gut.
Ruby eyes haunted the darkness behind his eyelids.
What a weird fucking dream. "Just wait until Mokuba hears about it… Jesus…"
Then his eyes opened, and he froze.
Dark green canopy curtains. His fingers curled into silken sheets. "No… NO. Fuck!" Slowly, he sat up. The ornate chair sat empty. "Goddamnit." With tender caution of his pounding headache, he slid to the edge of the mattress. The smooth, dark floorboards felt unusually warm against his bare feet. He frowned, and dipped down to check under the bed.
It was just an empty gap.
He scoffed to himself. Why would that guy hide under the bed? Jesus. He really was going crazy.
When he stood, his sudden vertigo nearly knocked him back. His chest lifted with his deep breath, and he held his forehead in his palm. The coolness of his hand eased the gnawing edge of the pain. The darkness of the room lulled him. The lamp was off now.
And there were no windows.
He shuffled past the bed. The door was wide open. He rushed closer. He slowly leaned through the doorway.
A hallway, dimly lit. Gray brick and stone, though a plush rug lined the center of the hallway. But the architecture was unmistakable. Kaiba's brows furrowed. It was a repurposed Catholic church. He looked down both ends of the corridor. There was no sign of his shadowed captor.
He warily stepped out. The smell of dust and rock and wax swirled about him. A tinge of copper and sweat stained it. He lifted the neck of his undershirt up for a sniff. The blood and sweat was coming from him. Gross. He tugged on the collar of his button-up. It was stiff with dried brown-red. His nose wrinkled.
He looked both ways down the corridor again. He turned to the right. His footfalls hardly made a sound, and he padded down to the next door. He carefully jiggled the knob. It was locked. When he neared the next door, he stopped. Rhythmic, nearly musical clicking emitted from behind the door. It occasionally preceded a chirping ping! He pressed his ear to the heavy wood. What the fuck was that sound?
"You may enter, Kaiba," that deep voice intoned from within.
Kaiba hastily backed away.
"I know you're there. There is no point in concealing your presence."
The clicking continued. Ping!
Against his better judgement, Kaiba opened the door.
A vast study. Shelves upon shelves of tomes. The air tasted of old paper and faded ink. Behind a huge, old mahogany desk, sat Yami. Before him, in all its brassy glory, rested an antique typewriter. His slender fingers danced over the keys. The tiny hammers pattered against paper in a cascade of sound. Ping!
Kaiba thought briefly that the stranger's typing rivaled, might even surpass, his own in speed.
"Come, sit," Yami invited. His purple eyes lifted to his unwilling guest, but his fingers maintained their steady rhythm.
"No," Kaiba snapped. But his feet moved on their own, and he found himself settling into the velvet cushions of a crested chair.
Yami chuckled and plucked his finished page off the paper guide. With a deft grip, he set it neatly to the side. The typewriter itself soon followed, despite its bulky size. "How are you feeling?"
Kaiba gritted his teeth. "My head is pounding. What the hell did you do to me?"
Yami set his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. "I sedated you with my powers. A migraine is not uncommon."
Kaiba scoffed. "Your powers, my ass."
A smirked curled pale lips. Fangs glinted briefly in the light of the lamp. "After all you have seen, you still deny reality."
An elbow on the arm of the chair, Kaiba held his forehead in his palm. "I'm going batshit crazy. I've finally cracked." Yami's held tilted back, and he laughed heartily. It was a deep, musical sound. Blue eyes helplessly traced the lines of that slender throat. That sharp pain tore into his stomach. Kaiba's molars ground together. "What's so damn funny, you freak? And what the hell kind of person has a typewriter?"
The corner of Yami's lip was still lifted. "Don't you feel it? Deep in your gut, within your still heart? You know this is no joke."
Kaiba gulped. Perhaps that was the most intimidating part. He could always sense a liar when he heard one. But the man before him radiated honesty, in both action and word.
"Maybe we're both crazy, and we are feeding each other's delusions," Kaiba reasoned. "You're clearly not right in the head." The last words dragged out on a growl. As evidenced by the fact that he was holding Kaiba captive. A shadowed monster lurked behind his eyelids. He wasn't going to escape anytime soon, not if Yami had anything to say, or do, about it. "If you're going to keep me prisoner, I want to know some things." But where to start...
Yami arched an eyebrow at his choice of words, but acquiesced with a slight nod.
"How long has it been since the incident in Pegasus' office?"
"Three days. You spent two of those days in the throes of the change. The last was a bit… imposed."
Kaiba's hand clenched in his hair. Someone definitely would have noticed him missing by now. Mokuba would have felt something off after the first night. Sure, Seto had spent nights at the office before, but he always called home beforehand. Then, his secretary, and all of his business associates. But his car was left at Industrial Illusions. Someone could track it there. Unless Pegasus managed to clear it out. Or Yami stole it. Which he doubted, for some reason.
He growled in frustration. He had foolishly refrained from telling anyone at KaibaCorp about the meeting with Pegasus. It just slipped his mind. After all, appointments were normally scheduled through his secretary.
He was sloppy.
Mokuba was the only person outside of I.I. that knew about the meeting. He could easily report it to the police, but with the sort of political sway Pegasus had, he would divert the attention with a flick of his wrist. Unless he directed it to Yami, the true kidnapper. But that seemed unlikely. Pegasus would want nothing to do with the scandal.
"Shit," he hissed. At least he didn't have to worry about the company being run correctly. Mokuba was fifteen, and Seto had made sure that his brother knew how to run KaibaCorp in his absence long before that. It didn't stop him from worrying, though.
"Do you have other questions?" Yami inquired.
"My car is at Industrial Illusions. People know I am missing, and where I went. What is stopping Pegasus from sending the police your way?"
Yami chuckled. A dark smirk contorted his face. Kaiba shivered. "He has… incentive to leave me be. And no amount of armed humans could ever hope to harry me or my abode."
"Hn." He paused a moment. "What sort of incentive?"
"Let's just say that he did not make it through our last encounter unscathed."
"Why didn't you just kill him? He wouldn't be a problem anymore. He wouldn't need incentive because he would be dead."
Yami waved a pale hand languidly. "He's more valuable alive than dead. Though that is subject to change."
"Hn."
Silence fell over the pair. The resonance of Kaiba's own voice in his skull exacerbated his migraine. Yami turned back to his papers, which he neatly organized and slipped way into drawer, locked upon closing. Violet eyes glanced up to the gaze that followed him.
"I'm sure you hunger yet again, Kaiba."
"What?"
Yami stood and walked to the front of the desk. Arms crossed, he leaned his hip against the wood. Kaiba stared at him. The man was actually quite short. His forehead probably didn't even reach Kaiba's collarbone.
"You need to feed again," Yami clarified.
Brown brows furrowed. "What the hell? Feed? I hope you aren't going on about this vampire garbage still."
Violet eyes narrowed. "You mouth is dry, is it not?"
"That's nothing a little water can't fix, you freak."
"Your head probably is still pounding. A sharp ache is developing in your stomach. Feels quite like being stabbed, if it weren't so hollow."
"So what? What would you even do about it anyways?" Kaiba snarled.
Deft fingers plucked free the band around Yami's wrist. A nail, suddenly thick and sharp, dragged over the dark veins there. Dark red, nearly purple-toned blood welled up eagerly. The liquid was viscous, thick, but still so lithe as it unfurled over pale flesh. Kaiba's stomach clenched painfully. His tongue darted out to wet his chapped lips. His throat was so dry…
A bitter tang blossomed over his palette. A purr rumbled low in his chest. He recognized this taste. A small, long-fingered hand combed through his hair. His eyes snapped open.
He cradled a small hand in his grasp. The slender fingers seemed dwarfed by his own. Dark red was smeared into long streaks on white marble skin. Yami loomed above him, purple eyes passive, pleased.
Kaiba had been licking up the blood.
He recoiled, flung the proffered wrist, wrenched his head from that grasp. "Holy fuck!" His gums ached, his gut cramped, seemingly in protest to his vehement rejection.
Yami shifted closer, though, unphased.
Kaiba scrambled back against the chair. "No! Stay away, you bastard!"
Yami shot forward. He wrenched his hand into Kaiba's hair and yanked him closer. Kaiba's lips mashed into and slipped on that blood-slick wrist.
"Drink," Yami commanded firmly. "Before the wound closes."
Copper washed up into Kaiba's nostrils, lurid crimson smeared his lips and trickled down his chin. He gasped, growled, but with each breath he was inundated by heady temptation. That bitter tang traced its way into his mouth, and his tongue rolled deliriously against the confines of his teeth. He latched onto a forearm. His nails curled into solid, cold muscle.
He whimpered. Yami pressed him tighter, held him closer.
His shoulders slumped. His lips sealed onto the weeping flesh.
And he drank.
"Mr. Pegasus," the little secretary said quietly, "You have a visitor."
A cognac eyes blinked slowly, a silver eyebrow arched.
"He says he's from… Paradius?"
He gulped, and waved acceptingly.
She left, and a tall form took her place. Heterochromatic eyes gazed upon him. "Pegasus."
Pegasus nodded his greeting.
"Ah, too good to give proper salutations now?"
A grim frown twisted his lips. His jaw distended, teeth lengthened, and a ragged stump of a tongue darted out cautiously.
The austere, statuesque face of his visitor grimaced. "I see. I can only assume who afflicted such an injury upon you. Was it… him?"
Lips tensed into a hard line. A stiff nod.
The visitor's eyes darkened, his skin flushed purple before it returned to its pallor.
"He must be eliminated. It's only a matter of time."
END PART