Chapter Three – Shadow Waking
Warm.
Everything around him was warm and soft.
She was velvety heat under him, around him. Her hands slipped over his back, fingers splayed wide, trailing warmth after them: ten individual lines of heat crisscrossing the muscles of his back. She braced her feet on his legs, and clasped his hips between her thighs. She matched him with every thrust, tightening her hold on him.
He buried his face at the junction of her neck and shoulder. He could hear the blood rushing under the skin, could feel it under his lips. Her heart was racing, thundering, calling to him. Her blood was his for the taking, and they both knew it. She was pleading for him to take it, her voice coming in sharp pants and husky cries.
He resisted the siren call of her blood, increasing the pace and sending them both closer to the edge. She bucked underneath him, straining to keep him as deep within her as she could. He overcame her attempts at containment, pulling back and thrusting deeper and deeper, gauging her response by her cries.
She stiffened abruptly, crying out and digging her nails into his shoulders. He felt her inner muscles clench around him in an unbearably tight hold, and he lost control. He buried himself deep within her, crying out her name, and felt himself explode. The world went blank for a moment as he emptied himself into her. When he returned to himself, she was still trembling beneath him, her hands limp on his back and a smile on her lips.
He withdrew from her slowly and moved to the side, enjoying a brief moment of masculine satisfaction at her flushed and sated expression. He rested his head on her chest, listening intently to the gentling of her heart rate. Her hands came up to his head, cradling it and tangling into his hair. Her scent engulfed him, sweat and sex and sunlight; it was orange blossoms and satisfaction and blood, the bloodscent rising and increasing his hunger.
She was murmuring to him, but he couldn't understand what she was saying. She never made much sense in the brief time between bliss and sleep. He stroked his hand over her hip, willing sleep to come to her soon. Her hands slowed in their exploration of the contours of his head, dropping to her sides.
He waited until she was completely asleep to slip from the bed and enter his dressing room. With the door shut firmly behind him, he fell upon the bottle that rested in a bucket of ice. He uncorked it with his teeth, spat the cork away, and chugged.
The blood was cold and slightly clumpy. It was nowhere near as satisfying as her blood would have been; hot and sweet and flowing like wine. But, weighing cold blood against an innocent's life, he would take clotted blood every time. It eased the hunger that had built in him and took the edge off his need to hunt.
When the bottle was empty and he had erased all traces of his snack, he returned to the bedroom. He was planning the most pleasant way to wake his companion up to repeat the evening's earlier events when he sensed…something. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up sharply; he shivered. And then he looked upon her.
She was sprawled across the bed, blood-drenched and motionless. In a grotesque parody of invitation, her head was tilted coquettishly, her hands cupped her breasts, and her legs were spread wide. Arcane symbols had been carved and burned into the soft white thighs, her belly and breasts. Her entire body was a lattice of bloodied welts and cuts; her wrists and ankles were abraded, as if by rope.
He had been gone for less than five minutes.
"Koishii…" His voice was harsh, broken, as he stumbled to the bed. He clasped her body in his arms, stroking her hair and weeping blood-salt. Her limbs were still warm, but the blood within them was silent, unresponsive. He rocked back and forth, alternately pleading with her to return and cursing himself for leaving her.
You didn't think you would know happiness, did you, Ken? The voice came from everywhere in the room, hauntingly familiar and bitter. It swept in from all the shadows in the room, a tormenting whisper that cut into his despair like a serrated blade.
In all the world, no one deserves happiness less than you. No one is more hated than you. You taint everything you touch. The voice of a friend…an enemy. Known from childhood, from adulthood, from death.
I'm waiting for you in Hell.
"How can Hell be worse than this?" he cried, clutching her cooling body…a body that twisted and writhed in his arms, shifting in form until the only thing recognizable as hers were the eyes…violet…beseeching…filled with hatred and betrayal…
Ken sat bolt upright in bed, sheets twisted and pillows tossed. A feeling not unlike the cold sweats passed through him as the dream replayed in his mind. He flung the covers away and huddled in the centre of the bed, knees drawn up protectively towards his chest.
Rachel. Her body had been burned and cut, but she hadn't been laid out in such a vile position. He knew that Weaver had raped her repeatedly during her captivity; the scents of blood and sex and fear had been strong on her. Fear and pain had been her constant companions until the end.
And if the spectre was to be believed, Ken had brought them both to her.
He shied away from that line of thought, focusing instead on the remembered warmth of Rachel's body. They had been lovers for the six months before her death, infrequent clandestine joinings that had filled his nights with heat and hunger. She had been his willing pupil in the arts of love, quickly becoming his equal in creativity and libido. He hoped that the memory of their lovemaking had sustained her somehow, but he doubted it.
Ken sighed, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his chin on his knees. Remembering Rachel's sweetness reminded his body that it had been over half a year since he had taken a lover, and that it had been even longer than that before Rachel. Not because he was clinging to a human notion of morality, as Ver insisted, but because he was very selective. He needed to be attracted on more than a merely physical level, and lately there had been a surfeit of beautiful bodies with empty heads. He could no more imagine taking any of them to bed than he could imagine himself becoming human again.
And then there was Lucy…his beloved Lucy, whose mind was still sharp and engaging but whose body was succumbing to the ravages of time. Their time together had been intentionally brief: a chance for her to seek, and him to offer, comfort without words. They had shared a month, never intending it to continue further, and he had cherished the memory. But friendship, while wonderful and fulfilling in many ways, couldn't substitute for the release of a physical relationship.
Rutherford had thrown an intriguing spike into his path with the introduction of Takaoka. She was beautiful, and, more importantly, carried an air of familiarity. Her beauty was a traditional kind, pale and unruffled, with delicate features and lush hair. He had grown up among such women; his first lover had been one. If she had a brain behind her mask of submissiveness, she had the potential to become quite interesting.
Thoughts of Takaoka led to thoughts of her companion. If the woman was classically Japanese, Fujimiya was anything but. Unusually tall, taller even than Ken, with near-colourless skin and flaming scarlet hair, the young samurai was an exotic among an already strikingly foreign people. During their brief encounter at Lucy's ball, Ken had picked up on the whispers directed at Fujimiya. Comments ranged from 'savage' to 'angelic', and anywhere in between. His air of dangerous intensity and his clasp on the hilt of his katana had stirred both fear and desire in the hearts of the Fashionable.
And if the form that Rachel's body had shifted to in his dream somewhat resembled Fujimiya, well, that didn't really mean anything.
Ken hoped for his own sake that it didn't mean anything. He had no irrational prejudices against what was considered by most to be a forbidden love: indeed, he taken several male lovers in his time. However, he didn't think the young samurai would welcome the advances of a woman, let alone a man. The wall of ice around him seemed deliberately cultivated to keep human contact at bay, and Ken had no doubt that he would defend his honour at the slightest hint of an insult.
Ken sighed again. There was no time for the line of thought he found himself immersed in. Sunlight peeked in through the curtains around his bed; he had gone to bed just as London was waking, and he judged it to be past noon already. If he wanted to be at his best to face Fujimiya's blades, there were many things to be done beforehand.
He pulled the curtains back, allowing the watery English sunlight to dance across his bed. It stung his eyes, and he hissed reflexively, squinting. In almost two hundred years, he had not accustomed himself to introducing daylight slowly; he still clung to the habits of childhood, when morning was the start of every adventure. The small shock of pain every morning was a subtle reminder to him that his adventures had already ended in sorrow; he was not human and he would never be human again.
He rose and rang the bell for Geraint. His butler cum valet appeared promptly; Ken harboured a secret suspicion that the man slept just outside the door, for he had never once rung the bell without Geraint appearing before it had finished ringing. He was the epitome of 'English manservant', right down to his highly polished shoes, but had never shown anything but respect to his foreign master. In fact, he knew much more than Ken would have liked about his master and his habits, but was so patently loyal that Ken couldn't bring himself to do anything about the situation.
Together, they selected his apparel for the day. A pair of fashionable black trousers, cleverly tailored to allow maximum freedom of movement, were paired with a white linen shirt and black waistcoat. A snowy white cravat, understated and starched to perfection, was accented with a single gold pin. The tip of the pin glittered with a small ruby, as did his only ring. A tailored jacket of black velvet topped of the ensemble, made by the same tailor who had crafted his pants. It was a fortunate thing for the male vampire population of London that Emile Gagnon's love for tailoring had survived his Change; no one knew what a vampire required in clothing better than another Nightwalker.
"Will you be requiring sustenance this morning, master?" Geraint inquired blandly.
"Just coffee, I think, Geraint. I had a late supper." The mugger he had dined on in an alley while returning from Verderan's had been enough to sustain him for several days at least. Ken didn't think he could stomach the blandness of cold bovine blood after feeling the hot rush of the human version the night before. Coffee, however, was something of a necessity. He had grown to love the smell of it, the bitter taste. In some ways, it reminded him of the first time he had tasted blood; how he had thought that he would never get used to it, that he would never enjoy feeding.
"I'll take it in the study, Geraint." The manservant nodded, and turned to leave. "Oh, and Geraint?" Ken said, picking up his walking stick. "Have Cherry come to the study after you've brought the coffee."
The study was Ken's favourite room in the house. The large room was furnished with solid oak and mahogany, accented everywhere with lacquered pieces in black and crimson. The Oriental fad that had swept across Europe several decades previously had left a wealth of knickknacks and accent pieces that he had gladly collected. Although most of them were as Oriental as the English notion of tea, they nevertheless gave the room a familiar feel. If he hadn't been to his homeland in a century, at least in his study he could feel like a part of that homeland was with him.
The desk was one of his vainest purchases. Nearly as wide as he was tall, it was positioned before the full length windows with a deep-backed black leather chair. When the curtains were pulled open, the sunlight that poured into the study left him in shadow. Whoever was on the other side of the desk would be blinded. He had terrified a number of tradesmen before he realized it, but refused to move the desk on the off chance that he would someday need that edge. Most of the time he kept the curtains drawn, and he knew that the rich red velvet provided an exotic backdrop. He looked imposing at the desk.
It was vain, and he knew it. He had stopped caring after a month. It satisfied him to look his best when doing business with Europeans. Considering that most of them were so far beneath him, while all the time thinking he was the savage, it pleased him to have them on edge.
He sat behind the desk, sipping idly at the coffee Geraint had provided and mentally running through his katas. It had been years since he had taken up a real blade, and he was looking forward to the endeavour.
He heard the door open, a whisper of sound that a human ear might have missed, but he kept his eyes focused on the newspaper before him. His quarry was more nervous than a cornered rabbit, and he had no desire to alarm her.
"You wished to see me?" The girl stood before him, trembling with a nervousness that two years in his service had yet to quell. He looked up slowly.
"I have a mission for you, Cherry," he said gently, willing her to trust him. The girl was stick thin and twitchy, her dark brown hair tied back in two braids that she constantly fidgeted with.
"Anything, my lord," she whispered, still unable to lift her eyes to look at him.
He frowned inside, being careful to keep his face blank. "I don't like it when you call me 'my lord', Cherry. You don't have to bow down to anyone." Her subservience was in no way pleasing to him; she was like a dog that had been kicked so many times it no longer hoped for a pat.
"I'm sorry, Master Ken." Stammered, nervous. Head bent meekly.
"That's not much of an improvement, but I will let it pass." The friendly timbre of his voice was encouraging, and he was pleased to see a little of the tension ease from her shoulders. "Do you know where Edwin Rutherford lives?"
Her head popped up. "Creepy Rutherford? He lives in a posh brownstone at the edge of Riverglen Park, doesn't he?" Cherry's knowledge of the dwellings of most of the Upper Ten Thousand was a valuable aspect of her employment in Ken's house. He was surrounded by servants who knew many secrets; secrets he used to his advantage occasionally.
"Yes. What I need for you to do, Cherry, is to set up watch nearby." At sixteen, the child was a master in the art of skulduggery. A child growing up on the streets of London had to be.
"He has two Japanese people in his house, and I want to keep an eye on them." He thought that might spark her interest; he had often seen her examining the Oriental pieces in the study, and he didn't think she was looking at them with an eye to pawning them. She had given up her earlier career readily upon being taken into his household.
"I don't want him to notice that he's being watched. I know you still have connections on the street; I want you to use them." The practically reformed thief blushed slightly; she hadn't realized her master knew about her 'family ties'. She looked into his eyes, though, and saw no accusation, no reprimand.
She smiled, a fleeting expression that reached her eyes and lit them from within. "I can do that."
Ken smiled back, happy to have eased her initial discomfort. "Tell your friends to be careful. Rutherford is vicious." She nodded, and turned to go. She made it to the door before turning back.
"Master Ken?" she asked. "What does Creepy want with the Japanese people in his house?" The hint of fear in her voice was heartbreaking; he knew that she already had a fair notion of what Rutherford wanted from the strangers. Rage burned in him at a world that taught its children cruelty from the cradle.
"I don't know, Cherry. But I do know that I don't want him to do it, whatever it is." She nodded, and turned to leave again. "And Cherry?" She paused. "Be careful yourself. If he catches you and connects you to me, I don't know how he'll react." Ver would laugh herself sick if she could see him, worrying about the fate of one small housemaid he had lifted from the gutter.
That got a reaction from Cherry. She turned to face him, stuck her hand on her hip, and said, "Teach your granny to suck eggs, Master Ken. The only person who ever caught me was you." She was gone before Ken could say anymore, a small blur that whipped out the door and disappeared down the hall.
'What bizarre expressions the English use,' he thought to himself, trying to shake the feeling that her words were ill-chosen. He preferred not to tempt fate by stating absolutes. If he could catch her, then there were surely others in the world who could do so. He hoped that Rutherford would not be one of them.
He dallied at his desk until half past two, and then summoned his carriage to take him to Pierre's. The ride was fairly lengthy, taking him from the heart of Fashionable London to the outskirts. Most members felt that trip was worth it; for Pierre's skill and teachings, most would have been willing to travel for hours. The rustic atmosphere of the salon carried with it the sensation of travelling back in time, of a journey to a time when men lived by the sword instead of merely exercising with it.
Ken stepped down from the coach and approached the main building. As soon as he walked through the doors, he was assailed by a feeling of nostalgia. He had learned Western swordsmanship in a place very similar, in a villa in Italy over a century before. There, his lessons had been taught by moonlight, under the instruction of a granite-faced Italian vampire who was convinced that the touch of the sun equalled death. There, too, he had learned languages to accompany the sword: French, Italian, English.
He could hear the sounds of sparring from various rooms, and the sounds of instruction. In some cases, it came with words; in others, physical reprimand. He was uninterested in the occupants, though. He came to spar with Pierre, and no one else.
The largest of the salons was empty, as he had requested in the note he sent the previous evening. He entered, removed his jacket while closing the door, and threw it on one of the small tables that lined the perimeter of the room. He chose a foil from the rack, and began a series of warming up exercises, stretching his muscles and attuning his senses to the shifts of ki.
After fifteen minutes had passed, he could sense a strong presence coming towards him. He lowered his blade and faced the door. There was a sharp knock, and Pierre entered. He was a distinguished man, in his mid-fifties, with salt and pepper hair and a body that belied his age. He was carrying a bundle that he deposited on a table, and Ken tossed him a foil. He said nothing, merely taking up the beginning stance across from Ken.
For half an hour they sparred. They said nothing. The only sound in the room was the clang of metal upon metal, and the sound of measured breathing. At the half hour point, they both stepped back and saluted each other with their blades. To a casual observer, it might appear to be a stalemate. The number of hits taken by each was minimal; the form of both was perfection.
Pierre replaced their foils in the rack, and returned to the bundle on the table. He lifted it up and carried it over to Ken, holding it out as if it were an offering. And indeed it was.
He took the silk wrapped bundle from Pierre's hands almost reverently. The weight of his daisho, the perfectly matched katana and wakizashi, was at once achingly familiar and strangely foreign. For years, his only true weapons had been his hands and fangs, and he had become accustomed to the visceral feel of flesh shredding under his fingers. The exercises he performed with Western foils were merely for show, entertaining but not complex enough to present a challenge.
He laid the daisho on the small table next to the window, conscious that Pierre was behind him, trying to rein in his curiosity. In the four years Ken had attended his salon, Pierre had never asked him about Japanese kenjutsu, but his love of blade work, in any form, was patently obvious. Ken angled his body slightly, allowing the fencing master a better view.
He untied the red cord, revelling in the feel of the braided silk under his fingers. The cord fell away, and the black silk parted. His black wrist guards rested upon the matched sheaths, and he lifted them up. He pushed his sleeves back and fastened the guards to his wrists, re-accustoming himself to the feel of the thin cord between his fingers. The guards moved with his hands, at once both stiff enough to protect and flexible enough not to hinder movement.
A sudden flaring in the ki in the building had him pulling out the sash from beneath the swords and tying it on. He stuck the swords through the sash, and turned to face the door. Pierre followed his movements, turning at the same time. Thus, they were prepared as Edwin Rutherford pushed the door opened and entered, his retinue following closely behind.
As he had the night before, Fujimiya followed several paces behind. Once again, his eyes were locked on Ken, chips of violet ice that burned with frozen fire. The salon was silent.