The Vampire Heero
Part Sixteen
By Lady AngelFiren

I thought some more on what I could do, and closed my eyes, trying again to listen to the thoughts and memories of the two people I was stuck between. If there was going to be a life ended anywayit would be ok to make use of the person's blood before they died, right? This person was definitely serious about what they were doingit was a young girl. She had her daddy's gun, loaded and ready to go. I headed in the direction of her thoughts and feelings, opening my eyes once the trail was clear. I led Heero to a nice house, in a classy residential neighborhood. I knew which house was hersher pain was echoing off the walls in my head like a beacon now, leading me straight to her. She wouldn't open the door if I knocked.

Heero wasn't saying anything about my choice, I was hoping he wouldn't say anything, even if he approved. I knew that his approval was only based on experience, and that no matter who I chose it would not be entirely wrong. He could understand that I was hungry, couldn't he? I thought about the little silver cross dangling around my neck. My hand absently went to it, stroking the metal that was as cold and hard as my skin. If it had been me making this choice when Solo was dyingI would have put him out of his miseryI think. Or maybe I would have turned him into a monsterI really don't know. There were a lot of things I couldn't decide at the moment, I told myself not to think about it right now, I had food to concentrate on.

I went around to the back of the house. The girl was in the basement, her room was down there. The doors were lockedbut I had my lock-picks with me. It took me less than ten seconds to pick the simple lock, and then I was slipping as quietly as I could into the house. There was the smell of popcornthe rest of the family was not home, of course somebody this intent on ending their own life wouldn't choose to do it when there was someone home.

I opened the door to the basement as quietly as I could and crept lightly down the stairs. Heero waited at the top, and when I looked back for him he was right behind mehaving moved faster than my eyes could track. I suppose he was more comfortable being certain that he would not make a noise and spoil my hunt.

She was sitting on her bed, running her fingers over the cool metal of what I knew to be her father's gun. His illegally kept handgun is more like it. The gun he hid between the mattresses of his and his wife's bed, just in casebut the father was a killer. From what I got off of the girl, he was definitely not the kind of man who deserved his life. Maybe I would have to make a different kind of choice tonightif he was coming home. I turned to Heero and whispered, lower than human ears could detect.

"HeeroI'm not going to kill heras long as I don't see any blood, I think I'll be able to resistI want to kill her father. He deserves it. I want to talk to her."

"That's dangerous Duo.if you go around revealing your nature to people, you will learn the hard way that they aren't going to see you as anything but some kind of ethereally beautiful monster. You will have to kill her eventually to keep her quiet."

"But Heero"

"You're going to have to learn. Do what you want, I'm not going to stop you, I'm just warning you that you should not go around telling people there are vampires lurking in their neighbourhood. Even if you are nice to her, and you don't really make her scared of you, even if you kill her father, she will never ever sleep again, knowing what's out there."

"I'm willing to take that chance, I want to help her."

"Go ahead, you'll see. I'm just saying that you don't have to hurt so many people just to learn this lessonbut maybe you're different from me, and you need to see how much damage you can actually do before you realize what kind of power you have, even when you aren't using it."

I glared at Heero and followed my nose to the smell of a living person, the girl who was still looking at the gun. I stepped out of the shadows, revealing myself to her. I remembered that my hair was short now, for tonight. It would look strange to me, but I suppose she would have no opinion about it one way or another.

She froze when she saw me, and slowly lifted the gun so that it was pointing at me.

I smiled as disarmingly as I could and took a slow step towards herwhat was she going to do, shoot me? Noshe only wanted to hurt herselfnot me.

"Hello Amy." I said quietly, showing her that not only did I know her name, but I wasn't afraid of her in the least, no matter what kind of weapon she was holding.

Amy kept the gun trained on me, but she was very scared now, I could see that. She sort ofwithdrew from mesinking as much into her covers as she could so that she seemed smaller. I wished that I knew how to move as fast as Heero, I would have snatched the gun out of her hand so that she couldn't do what she did, which was put the weapon to her temple. My brow lowered at first, and I listened to what was going through her head. I saw myself through her eyesStunningly pale and beautifulHeero had been right. An ethereal, dangerous creature.definitely not human. It was sad to see how far from myself I appeared to be now, but I put that, and the smell of her pounding blood out of my mind.

"AmyI know you aren't afraid to pull the trigger, but could I maybe talk to you for a minute before you do?"

Hesitantly, Amy brushed her damp bangs out of her eyes and slowly lowered the gun to the bed, flicking on the safety. I hadn't thought my words would be that effective, but I was glad they were. I walked closer to her and sat down on the bed beside her, taking the gun and emptying the clip. I slipped the ammo into my pocket and handed the gun back to her.

"Who.what are you?" Her voice was scared, but there was too much curiosity there to make her stay quiet. I smiled at her, more broadly this time.

"It doesn't really matter what I am.My name is Duo. I came here tonight for one reason, but now I have a different idea. I thought, that maybe if you were going to kill yourself, that I could drink your blood so that it wouldn't go to waste. But nownow I'm thinking maybe your father would make a better meal, Amy. I don't want you to kill yourself. I don't like seeing things die. But the man who owns that gun is wrong in the headmaybe you don't know this, maybe you do, but he has killed people. I don't pretend to have any kind of divine inspiration, maybe I am making a bad choice, what do you think?"

Amy stared at me through her straight, damp bangs. "You want me to choose?"

"No, I want to know what you think."

"How do you know my name?"

"I can read your thoughtsa little bit."

"Then you already know what I think."

"I want to hear you tell me. I can hear all kinds of things going on in your headbut maybe I have some of it mixed up. You could tell me how you feel very easily."

"I think you should do some research next time."

"Huh?"

"Do some research. I guess you're new at thissorry if that's some kind of insult or something. Anyway, if you had looked into this at all you would know that my father is already dead. He died last year. He was shot. He may have been a bastard, but I still love himhow could you think I would want you to kill him? Are you stupid or something?"

I would have blushed in embarrassment, especially knowing Heero was watching me, but I guess vampires don't blush. I looked down at my pale hands in my lap. How could I be so dumb? I must have been reading her memories, not thoughts about the present.

"Butwhy are you killing yourself then?"

"Honestly, that is none of your business no matter what you are."

I glared at the girl angrily. She was insulting meand the smell of her blood in my head was becoming overpowering. She didn't seem like she was very intimidated by me, and Heero's words had only managed to aggravate me. Now that I thought about itwhy should I let her walk all over me like this? Did it really matter to me whether she lived or died? Well there was the principle behind killing innocent peoplebut some things can just not be helped. So, like Heero had saidI was going to hurt more people than I had to to learn my lessons well. Of course, at the time I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about how stupid this dumb girl was. I was mad at her for insulting me, and my pride was stung.

I wrenched the gun from her hand and pinned her to the bed with my body. Obviously there was nothing she could possibly do to fight me, it took no effort at all to hold her down. I inhaled her scentshe was so aliveand such a bitch. I wanted to kill her.

Holding her with one hand I ran my fingers through her soft hair and over her skin. So warm.so aliveI licked her lips and closed my mouth over them, biting her tongue to get a taste of her. As soon as the first drop hit my tongue I was hooked, she tasted much better than the other people I had already tastedmaybe it was because she was innocent. I didn't want to rush this, although I was really hungry, its not like I gave myself much of a choice.

She stopped struggling when I bit her, and looked into my eyes. She saw a monster. A beautiful, terrifying, merciless monster who had come to taunt her about her father's death before stealing her blood and killing her. And she was exactly right I guess. I moved my mouth to her neck and easily opened up her flesh with my teeth. This was like a drug, I couldn't help but gulp her blood down, it just tasted impossibly good. It was orgasmic almost. Pleasure filled my veins and my head sang. I sucked Amy dry in under a minute, holding onto her even after she was gone. I didn't have the strength to let go, I was overwhelmed by heat and pleasure. It must be sinful to feel this good, I thought to myself as I stared at her wide eyes without really thinking that she was dead.

Heero pulled me off the bed at some point, licking my bitemarks shut with his own blood and shooting Amy in the head with her father's gun after getting the clip out of my pocket. He Didn't bother asking my permission. He used her still, limp hand to pull the trigger, then let everything fall into a natural position on its own. He glared at me, lying on the floor where he had set me, then left the house on his own. I was still in Amy's room, not having said anything to him or really moved since she'd died. There was something about her blood, something about the fact that she was innocentsomething about the way she was laying with one leg sticking out into thin air off the bed, although I couldn't see the rest of her at all.just something about the whole situation that made me feel like I was high.

I got to my feet, my head still swimming with the heat of her life that was presently crawling through me, and I staggered out of her house. I didn't want to think about how royally I had just fucked up, maybe it would go away if I didn't think about it. Her critical words still rang clear in my earsI was stupid, and I was new at thisbut it didn't mean I needed to make mistakes like this, even on the first hunt. Now a girl was dead, and a man who would have liked to die very much would live longer than he had to. I had made the wrong choice, that was clear to me.

Frowning past the pleasure and warmth, I went back to the alley where I had parked the car. It was still there. Maybe it would be wiser not to take it back to the schoolbut if I left it here somebody was bound to find itand it would take too long to get back if I left without it. I got back inside and started the vehicle up, then tried to be inconspicuous as I made my way along the least populated streets back to the less densely populated areas, and the school. I drove into the parking lot, and replaced everything so that the vehicle looked exactly as it had when I first got to it. Nobody would know I had ever been insidewould they? I was leaving a slight trail of evidence behind me everywhere I went, not to mention a lot of bodies. It would not make sense to stay in this area for a long time, the city here wasn't big enough to support two vampires and not have anything look suspicious.

Trotting through the dewy grass under the small light provided by the crescent moon, I found my way easily back to the dorm and climbed in. As I expected, Heero was not back yet from wherever he had chosen to hunt tonight. Good. I had an idea, and I didn't want him knowing about it.

I slipped the key into the lock on the drawer beside my bed and withdrew the old deck of Tarot cards, running my fingers over the subtle flaws around the edges of the cards. Character, the deck had a personality. It was written in her book. Sometimes it told things that were in riddles. What was the deck trying to tell me? How had the cards escaped the drawer and laid themselves out on the bathroom counter in broad daylight, when I shouldn't have found them? How had the deck known what I was dreaming about?

I pulled the leather-bound Book of Shadows from under my bed and flipped quickly to the pages about Tarot. I could easily read the lightly scrawled words in the pale breath of moonlight, my vision was a lot better then it had been when I was human. I got a piece of paper and wrote down the meanings of five particular cards, the ones from my dream.

The Fool was the first card in the deck. It had to do with ambition and venturing off into the unknown with a high headbut it could also mean that a person was being naïve. The 4 of Swords designated rest and vacation and inner peacewas Solo on a journey to find something? Was he looking for answers? What did it have to do with me? Next I looked up the meanings of the three cards he had handed me. The Queen of Cups made me curious. It was about divinity and power and messengers. Right side up it was devoted and supernatural. Generally a good, healing, dedicated meaning, but reversed the card had something different to say. It became lonely and misunderstood. Almost lazy in misuse of power. Was I like that? It seemed terribly important that I find out what all of this was supposed to mean, and why it was important or significant. The High Priestess card warned me to be wary of strange people and things, because they could be a cover for something unearthly. The Tower card actually made sense. Abrupt change, life revision, power. That made lots of sense to me, after all I had just turned into a vampireI thought that was a pretty huge change that involved power.

SoI was being warned it seemed, not to be lazy with my new powerI should be careful, because things were obviously not what they appeared to be. I tucked my notes into the drawer with the cards and put the deck away. Heero still wasn't back. I turned back through the book to the section about astral projection and out of body techniques. Meditation was importantand it was a good way to teach self control. After fucking up so very royally tonight I didn't want to do it again, I needed some self control. And I wanted to find out more about Solowhat was he looking for?

I read over the pages several times, trying to decide what I wanted to do. Theoretically I could send a messenger, a part of myself to a certain place or time and whenever it was summoned back into me it would deliver information, but that required a lot of intense focus and a strong belief that it would actually work. I was a little too skeptical for out of body messengers just yet. However there were other optionsI guess one person could learn a lot when they had the patience that the owner of this book had hadit made me feel like I was silently being challenged by her, could I pass her test?

Chewing on my lip out of habit I thought about what I would do if I had the power to travel through time and space to he past. SoloI would go back and see if I could do something to keep him alive. But.was it possible to take people between time? Could I literally pull him out of the time that he had died and bring him here? Would it be the same between us? There were just too many variables, too many unanswered questions. I was sick of not knowinganything would be better than nothingright?

Laying down on my bed and closing my eyes, I thought that maybe I should just take a nap and talk to Heero when he came back. He would have the right thing to say to get my head screwed back on the way it was supposed to be. But if anything I'm an impatient little bastard.

I followed the instructions I had easily memorized, breathing deeply until I started to feel like I was sleepy. I methodically relaxed my whole body and worked my way through the sequence. The most difficult part...or so the book had said, would be getting up and out of my physical body and staying all in one place. Concentrating, I thought myself up and outit took less effort than the book had said it would. When I opened my eyes next I found my nose up against the ceiling. I took a startled breath and sat up. My head went through the ceiling, into the room on the floor above me. There was nobody inside.if there had been would they see me? How was I supposed to move like this?

There was no gravity where I was, but still I was able to turn myself around and walk on the floor of my room after I tried a few things. I prepared myself to see my body laying lifelessly on the bed, and it was there when I looked at it, breathing peacefully. I was here and out of my bodyweird. However nice this was I was still not going between times thoughhow on earth was I supposed to do that? Frowning, I walked over to the mirror in the bathroom. The light wouldn't turn on, I couldn't touch anything from the real world no matter how I tried. That was frustrating, and this whole thing seemed kind of boring now that I was actually doing it. I Would have preferred to be out hunting something with Heero or sleepingwhatever. Creeping around unable to touch or smell or taste anything sucks.

I completely lost track of time during my little trip around the room, and when Heero crawled back into the window, he walked over to my body and looked at me strangely. I watched from the other side of the room, curious about what he could sense f me. He sat beside my prone form on the bed and touched my chest.

"Duo?"

I watched, nothing happened. He shook me lightly.

"Duo"

I walked up behind him and grinnedhe couldn't see me or hear me.could he feel me? I stepped through him and he shot to his feet faster than my eyes could track, snarling and looking suspiciously around the room.

"Who's there."

"Can't you hear me Heero?" I said to his face and there was no sound to my voice. He made no response to my silent words, but his hands came up and brushed the air, like he was trying to touch me. I put my hand in his and he stiffened, looking at his hand.

"Who are youwhat do you want?" Heero was looking all around the room, he was obviously pretty spooked. I chuckled and walked through him again.

"So you can't hear meman what is useful about this if nobody else can see or hear me?" I spoke, although, as before, no sound actually left my lips.

Heero continued to look suspicious. He glanced to my body on the bed. Worry came into his eyes.

"What did you do to Duoanswer me damnit!"

I thought that Heero was probably freaked enough for one night, so I went over to the bed and touched my body. Instantly I was sucked back into it. The feeling of gravity came upon me so suddenly that the first thing I did was sit straight up and lose my dinner all over the bed. Heero whipped around to face me with lightening speed, looking at the blood all over me.

"What was that"

"I was teaching myself how to go out of bodyits in the book."

"Soit was you I felt?"

"Yeahspooked ya didn't I?" I had to laugh, I didn't like seeing Heero look so scared.

"I thought something had happened to you"

"Heerothink for a minute. I'm immortal, nothing is going to happen to me."

"You are overconfident." That was all he said. He glared at me, the concern gone from his eyes.

"Well its good to know I'm lovedman you're an assholeyou really can't admit that I got the better of you?"

"You didn't."

"See what I mean? I totally flipped you out and all you can do is yell at me."

"I wasn't yelling."

"WhateverI'm taking a shower."

Heero watched me get up and shut the bathroom door on him, and then I was in the shower, loving the nice warm water that took the coolness out of my skin and made the blood in me rise closer to the surface so I had some colour. I had only been this way for a few nights but I was already missing the feeling of being alive for real, not just the mock-life that I was fated to lead forever because of Heero. I didn't really hate him for what he had donebut when I thought about the animal way I had devoured Amy's blood it made me sick. I threw up again, watching the blood dribble down the drain. Enough of thisIt was a lonely world and Heero had made it more lonely. It seemed I wasn't getting along with him so well now that I was like himmaybe there was a lesson in that somewhere.

Drying myself off after rinsing away all the blood, I went back into the main room of the dorm and saw that Heero was reading the book I had left on the bed. I snatched it away from him and snapped it shut, holding it against my naked chest.

"Stay out of this thingits not yours."

"Its as much mine as it is yours Duoyou didn't even write it." He looked at me challengingly. Anger flared and made my skin colour.

"Jesus Heerojust stay out of it"

"Whatever you want Maxwell"

"Hmph."

I stuffed the book back into the drawer and locked it after placing the Tarot deck in with it. Then I went over to my dresser and pulled on some black silk boxers that made my pale skin look even paler. Finally I went over to the window to look at the slice of moon that lingered in the graying sky. Heero came up behind me, sliding his arms around me.

"I don't want to fight with you"

"Me neitherjust quit being a prick and we won't fight."

"Duoyou aren't being reasonable."

"Why the hell do I have to be reasonable all the timeHeero why should I be the one who has to have his head on right just in case someone else fucks up and needs saving I didn't ask for this"

Heero's lips were kissing my skin. He turned me around so that I was looking into his eyes. They were silver.inhuman. It made me want to hit him. I pulled roughly out of his embrace and frowned out at the moon.

"Duo stop acting like a child. You are what you are. Accept that. You've only just started outif you give up now then you'll be miserable forever."

"You're one to talkare you going to try and convince me that you're happy being a monster? I don't buy it."

"Iof course I'm not happybut at least I'm still trying"

"What, trying to pretend that you're doing good? Trying to pretend that one good deed will justify everything you've done to stay alive and sane? Bullshit."

"We are talking ourselves in circlesthis is pointless."

"So is life, but here I am livingsort of."

"You're depressed and cynicalI don't expect you to believe me if I tell you that there are things worth living for."

"Well for once you're perfectly right soldier boy I don't believe you."

"Fine."

"Fine."

He didn't say anything else to me for the rest of the night.