I do not own Gundam Wing.

Chapter Eight

Heero watched as Jina made short work of the human pets.  A seasoned vampire might be able to deflect her offensive attack for half a minute or more, but humans without immortal strength and experience didn't stand a chance.  The three pets were on the ground, gasping for breath as their own blood flowed down the stairs of Wufei's castle. 

He could see Jina stumble, her eyes locked on the thick crimson liquid that stained her sword.  He knew that she hadn't wanted to kill anyone but vampires.  She would most likely feel guilty about this for a long time, just as she felt guilty for the death of his parents.  Even though she wasn't responsible for their deaths at all, she still would feel guilty for their pain.  And she was feeling it now, he could tell by the look in her eyes, the way they changed from deep red to dark brown. 

Jina stumbled and fell to her knees by the green-haired pet.  Duo was beside her instantly, putting an arm around her and telling her that their fate led them to death. 

"You should eat," Heero said silently, unmoving.

Jina looked up at him, her eyes wide with shock.  "I can't.  Not here, in front of all…" her voice broke off as she looked around, taking in the Night Hunters.  She had never fed in front of live humans before meeting them.  She hated feeding.  And she'd be damned before she ever let her friend Duo and her…friend…Heero see her at her most ferocious. 

"You should," Heero insisted.  "You said that blood helps rebuild your strength, and you'll need your strength for when we meet Chang.  Otherwise, we're all in danger."

She hesitated for a moment, looking aside at Duo's violet-blue eyes and asking questions without saying words.

"He's right you know.  You can't help who you are."  Duo stood up and backed away, putting an arm around Hilde to brace his beloved for what was going to happen next. 

Jina ran her hand softly through the pet's green hair.  Growling softly, her lips curled back to reveal her elongated and sharp incisors.  She closed her eyes as she drank from the rapidly dying human, careful not to drink from him right before he died. 

She stood up, refreshed, and took a deep breath.  Her pink tongue slid out from between her lips, removing the excess blood from the outside of her mouth.  Taking off her coat, she extended her wings, ready to fight.

"Let's go," she simply said, walking away from the three pet corpses on the stairs and toward the large iron doors of Chang's castle. 

Heero and Trowa braced their shoulders against the imposing black doors, pushing inward with all their might.  The doors swung inward, slowly with a high-pitched metallic screech that made them all shiver. 

The entry way was large, with a tall ceiling and thin gothic-like columns along the sides.  Stone gargoyles and statues of pain rested at the foot of each column, staring at them with cold gray unmoving eyes.  Their footsteps echoed as they trod lightly through the stone hallway, trying to make as little sound as possible.  The entryway ended abruptly into an indoor courtyard, showing three passages: one directly to the left, one straight ahead, and one to the right. 

"Just like Chang to live in a castle shaped like a gigantic cross," Trowa muttered under his breath, his voice echoing regardless in the high-ceilinged marble and stone room.

"What should we do now?" Duo asked, puzzled by the strange design of the castle.  "You'd think Chang would be at the end of the longest side of the cross…" nods from the group confirmed that they'd been thinking the same thing "…but which side is the longest?  We don't know which way this cross-castle is facing."  Duo frowned as he turned in a circle, looking at each pathway. 

Jina stepped forward, looking at the doorway for the entry hall.  "That doorway has angels carved in the lintel, and it leads outside," she observed.  "The one on the left has hands and eyes carved into it…"

"That's incredibly disturbing," Duo interrupted with a quiet voice.  He turned and smiled broadly, taking a hold of Hilde's hand.  "And that's the way we're going.  See you guys soon," he called, dragging his reluctant Hilde down the left corridor.

Trowa shook his head slightly, giving his own beloved a meaningful look before speaking up.  "And this one on the right has faces of demons carved on it, like masks.  It calls to me," he explained, giving Heero and Jina a nod before walking with Roddy under the doorway and out of sight in the dark hall.

Heero and Jina stood looking at one another, exchanging hope with their eyes before looking up to see what carvings decorated the center lintel.  Jina gasped when she saw the detailed sculptures of vampires devouring frightened humans.  Vampires with horns on their heads and fangs in their mouths were chasing and dragging down humans, ravaging them with their teeth and laughing while covered in the innocents' blood.  A large vampire was centered on the doorway, standing on a pedestal of human skulls and overseeing the mutilations of the humans below him.  That vampire had large wings like a bat's with human bones for armor, external bare ribs protected the vampire's own torso as he stood on his skull dais.  He held a large staff in one hand, made of human femurs with an opened bone hand on the apex of the tall staff.  His other hand rested on the head of a gargoyle-like dog.  He was smiling evilly at the horrors before him in the carving, his hair wild and fanned around him as the winds in the sculpture ruffled his clothes and hair.  The lord vampire's eyes were just as wild as his hair, the master sculptor able to capture the vamp's crazed lust in the stone.  His face was Quatre's.

Jina only stood with her mouth agape.  She'd always known that the last Pureblood was supposed to contain the power of all immortal souls, but she'd always refused to believe her sweet little Quatre could be that same destructive power.  Someone had to have already known that Quatre would be the last.

And she would die protecting him.  Jina recognized her own eyes large and in the background to the right of the Lord Quatre on the lintel.  Her eyes were sad and angry all at the same time, looking from the mix of the swirling clouds down upon the scene below.  Heero's eyes were also in the clouds, on the left side of the Stone Quatre, showing his anger.  Jina looked closer.  She looked at the live version of Heero next to her, then back up at the pair of disembodied eyes in the clouds on the carving.  It was Heero.  Those eyes were definitely his.  But this doorway was carved hundreds of years ago, when the Guild of the Triad Vampires first established.  How could they have known Heero would be with her?

She looked closer.  The woman directly in front of Quatre, on her knees and begging as she reached a hand out to the evil Quatre was Cathy.  Jina was sure of it.  The other women being raped and fed on at the same time were crying out, their face distorted in pain and horror, but they were distinguishable.  They were Roddy and Hilde.  Jina's eyes scanned the other humans in the carving, looking for the remaining two.  And she found them.  Trowa was being eaten by one vampire, half of his arm gone in the process, while fending off another vampire with a broken sword.  Duo was still standing his ground, his eyes locked on Hilde as he fought to get to her.  The carving of Duo didn't see the demon-vampire sneaking up from behind him.

Jina's breath hitched.  She choked. 

Heero was there, his arm around her as he kept asking her in his soft deep voice what was wrong.  She was sobbing freely into his shoulder, clutching the back of his neck as she wept and holding him so tightly he had trouble breathing.

"Don't you see it?" she managed to say.

"See what?"

"The carving, don't you see it?"

She felt Heero's head turn as he looked up to the lintel again.  "There isn't any carving above this doorway, Jina.  The frame is blank."

Jina shivered as she pried herself away from Heero, risking another glance at the terrifying doorway.  "It's still there," she whispered, burying her face in his neck again to keep from looking at it.  "Its horrible."

"But I don't see anything…"

"And you never will."  Jina's head snapped around as she heard the Chinese vampire's voice boom from the interior of the dreaded hallway.  He walked slowly forward, emerging from the darkness of the corridor.  "Heero, you will never see the beauty of this doorway until you become one of us."

Heero growled, but he held tight to Jina.  "I will die before becoming one of you."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Heero.  My dear friend, you know better than to make promises like that.  I made that promise once, you remember?" Wufei teased, smiling as only evil vampires can.  "Just as you made the promise to kill your partner if ever one of us is taken by vampires.  I was there, Heero, and you never raised your gun and aimed it at me.  You let me be taken."

"I couldn't kill you, Wu…"

"You are weak, Yuy.  And you always have been.  You and Trowa hide behind a soldier's mask and pretend to fight for the innocence of humanity.  But you fight because you are too frightened to accept the truth of human hatred."  Chang snarled down at where Heero was still kneeling on the floor.  Jina stood up.

"Humans do not know hate, without first knowing love," she said, her eyes suddenly dry and her body suddenly calm as she faced her adversary. 

"How poetic," Wufei spat. 

"What do you want, Wufei?" Heero asked, standing beside Jina and in front of her wings to face Chang.

"I want the Pureblood.  The blonde in the carving you see, Jinakel Wohess." 

Jina snarled at the use of her human name, her full name, her real name.  "I do not go by that name anymore," she growled.

"Oh, is that because your master's mother killed your entire family and took you in as her slave?"  Chang walked closer, a menacing smile tugging at the edge of his lips revealing his elongated teeth.

"Slave or not, I still do not use that name," Jina said with the same calm voice.  "That name is the name of my past life, and that life is as dead to me as my parents and village are."

"So be it.  Then you'll not object to your dear master being dead as well."

"I would not speak such words.  The Guild Triad will have your head for your insubordination."

"On the contrary, I already have the heads of the Guild Triad," Chang confessed, motioning to his right where three underlings emerged from the shadows of the corridor and held the heads of the three most powerful and old vampires in the world.  Or what used to be the three most powerful vampires.  They were dead now.

Jina snarled.  "So you've killed your masters.  How come your picture isn't on the carving in Quatre's place?"

"Because I've yet to kill the last remaining Pureblood, and the only one more powerful than myself.  Even you don't fit into the grand scheme of Vampire History.  You're an incidental, a mutant that should never have been allowed to live," Wufei taunted. 

"But I do live, and I shall make sure that your own live ceases tonight, Chang," Jina answered, her voice rumbling with barely contained fury. 

*******

"Quatre," Cathy said, looking up from the bed at the blonde as he paced naked in his bedroom.  "What's wrong?  You're acting strange all of a sudden."

Quatre paced a few times more between the bathroom door and the wardrobe closet before he registered that Cathy had been speaking to him.  "What?"

"I asked what was wrong," she said patiently.

"I can feel Jina.  She's angry, confused, saddened, frightened, and worried all at the same time.  Such powerful emotions that are all going to burst from her soon if I don't get there to calm her down," he explained, unsure of the situation himself.

"Is that your relationship with her?"

"Yes, part of it.  She takes care of me physically.  She finds us places to live and protects me from the hunters and vampires who would destroy me.  And I protect her in the only way she needs protecting.  She bottles herself up and keeps everything she feels inside.  And Jina is an angry person because of it," Quatre confirmed.  "She and I fit perfectly together."

"Are you going to go to her?  You know that would make her more worried about you, if you went into Chang's castle," Cathy said.  Quatre stopped pacing.

"I cannot leave her there alone."

"She's not alone.  She has Heero with her," Cathy pointed out.  "But he is as useless as she is when it comes to dealing with emotions."

*******

"I shall take my rightful place on that skull dais," Chang insisted. 

"Over my dead body," a small voice said from behind Jina.  She turned around swiftly, hoping that the person behind her was not the person thought it was.  

"That's the point, Winner," Wufei answered with a smile.  Everything was falling perfectly into place. 

"What are you doing here, Quatre?" Jina demanded, stepping closer to her master and getting between him and Chang.  "You know that this too dangerous…"

"Please, Jina, I have to do this.  I can see the carving, too.  And I have to prevent this," Quatre insisted, his light blue eyes brimming with tears.  "And I could feel your rage, and your sadness.  We're connected."

"But by being here, you're putting yourself in danger of becoming that demon," Jina said, reaching up to touch his cheek.  "And you can see what I see about the Night Hunters."

"I do."  Quatre smiled reassuringly at her and stepped to the side in order to address Chang.  "And I will not become that monster."

"I don't want you to, Count Winner.  I will become the ruler of the Vampires.  I will become Lord of this world."  Wufei took a hold of the sword at his side, holding it in front of him.  Quatre brandished his own sword, a curved Arabic piece given to him by his father.  "There is something you should know before you challenge me, Pureblood," Wufei hissed.  "Do not be so hasty to fight me.  Bad things can happen to your dear friends."

"My friends are safe, and far from here," Quatre insisted.

"You are wrong."

Heero, Jina, and Quatre were suddenly surrounded on all sides by vampires holding weapons at ready and hissing at them.  To Quatre's horror, he saw Cathy being held around her neck, her eyes pleading for him to save her.  As he looked around the circle, he saw the other humans, Trowa and Roddy being held captive.  Duo and Hilde had been captured as well. 

"Let them go!" Quatre bellowed, his voice loud and echoing through the marble halls of the cross-shaped castle.  Jina merely growled, keeping her eyes on Chang and waiting for the opportunity to rush him.  Surprised at the sudden appearance of the vampires on all sides, Heero brought his sword out, trying to find a way to release his friends from the grip of the vampires.

"I shall let them go when I can drink your blood, Winner," Chang answered.

"Let.  Them.  Go," Quatre repeated, growing more angry and warm by the second.  He hardly felt Jina's hand as she put it on his arm, attempting to steady him and calm him somewhat.  He couldn't help but glance at the lintel above Chang's head.  The carving was still there, his own face glowing in rage and insane power as he ordered the destruction of every living human.  Jina's eyes looked down from the mists of the clouds.  He glanced at her, seeing the same mix of extreme sadness and rage in her crimson eyes as he saw in the stone carving.