Title: Tsubasa o Orinasu Mono (Part I of the Cubes Trilogy.)
Summary: AU; yaoi? Found by a clan vampires, Seto and his colleagues can only hope that their captors will kill them swiftly. But maybe humans aren't the only ones trapped among the vampires.
Warnings: Dark. Will get darker. And lanuage.
Thanks so much to tenshimagic for betaing!
Chapter 1: Ice
Was there really no news more interesting than an oil spill in the arctic? If so… Well, this was a rather dull world.
Then again, being stuck in a 30-foot deep pit was anything but dull.
To think that Kaiba Seto, acclaimed reporter, prodigious writer, and winner of innumerous awards which had long overflowed the neat, cardboard boxes that he stored them in, would be reduced to this. This, of course, was standing on top of the news van, frozen despite thick coat (and the 5 layers of clothing underneath it), most expensive, though probably now useless, equipment clutched in arms quickly going numb, and trying not to move so he wouldn't shove his colleagues off. Surprisingly, all 18 of them fit on top of the van.
Someone sneezed. Someone screamed. There was a thud.
Oh, scratch that. It looked like the maximum occupancy of the top of a van was 17 people. Too bad. The man who'd slipped had been the cameraman, pretty essential to their news program. Not that they would have a news program for long if this kept up.
The snow and ice combined piled quickly on any surface that held still long enough, and after a while, it just became too tiring to shake it off. The fallen cameraman gave up trying to climb back up the van quite suddenly, falling backwards into the snow with a muffled thump. It was snowing like mad, and in just minutes, he was completely buried. Nobody tried to help him (although some did shout out "helpful" advice), knowing that if they did, they would only meet the same fate.
If the cameraman had retained any wits after his fall, (assuming, of course, that he'd had them to begin with) he would've walked to the other side of the van. After all, the entire hole was covered with ice, excepting the one break above his snowy grave where the van had fallen through. In those last moments, while the van had been falling, the wheels continued to roar, and had probably served to propel them forwards even though they weren't on solid ground anymore. This had not only slowed their fall, it also brought them under the protection of unbroken ice. Then again, the snow that fell didn't exactly stay in a neat little stack. It was already slanting forwards (damn the wind), and had surrounded the bus. Pretty soon, they would all be buried alive, ice or no ice. Unless the ice that had kept them alive thus far decided it was tired of waiting for the snow to finish the job and came crashing down upon them from the combined weight of the snow on top and the fracture lines the van had previously made.
Seto's morbid thoughts were interrupted when his sharp eyes caught sight of a shadow on the rim of ice. Squinting at the shadow, he found that after he looked at it too long, it didn't look any different from all the snow and ice that surrounded it, if it was even there at all. "Take this and give me the camera," Kaiba ordered, grabbing the camera from the woman next to him and dumping the equipment he had been carrying into her arms. She complied quickly; they all somehow thought of him as the boss, despite his youth; otherwise, he wouldn't have been standing in the center of the huddled group of miserable, freezing people, probably the safest place on top of the van, although safe in this case was a relative term. He turned around as much as the cramped conditions would allow, and found the man holding the zoom lens. Impatiently, he grabbed it out of the man's hands, motions graceful despite how restrained his arm movements were, and attached it deftly to the camera.
By now, people around him were murmuring. After standing deathly still for three hours already, someone was actually moving! And was the heck was he doing with a camera? What could he want to take a picture of around here?
He lifted the camera to his eyes and zoomed in on the shadow, but before he saw anything, distinct thuds and scrapes sounded. Confused, he took the camera from his eye for a moment.
The snow and ice mixture had been coming down heavily before, that was true. But in a sudden Armageddon moment, it seemed as if all the snow in the world was falling at once, and the sky with it, every bit struggling to get through their ceiling at the same time. Seto estimated ten people to be screaming, give or take, but nobody seemed to be falling over. The ice cracked some more, but held. And then the river of snow stopped.
It was considerably brighter, and Kaiba realized that he could kind of see through the ice overhead. The snow had been cleared off the ice? Still amazed by this, it took him a few seconds to realize that he could see a shape through the ice.
Words were shouted in a commanding tone and echoed down the pit, meaning disrupted by so many repetitions. They all waited anxiously, feeling rather short of breath, trying to decipher the words that rained upon them. Footsteps erupted overhead, apparently to carry out the commands.
A hand reached over the edge, and everybody was shouting and whispering and crying at once, relief evident in their voices. Only Kaiba remained silent. And then, in their celebration, another tipped over the side of the van. The driver. Everybody fell deathly silent again, but she didn't move. Red stained the snow around her head.
Cracking interrupted them and directed their gazes up rather than down at the second of the fallen among them. There were now four hands reaching over the edge, grabbing at the ice, cracking it and pulling it up. (Seto wondered dimly just how much strength was needed to pull up a layer of ice over five inches thick.) Finally, a huge sheet of ice was lifted away, and the break in the ice was tripled, but they didn't see any more of their rescuers than their hands and a few brief glimpses of sleeves.
A rope was flung down, slender and snake-like. It was amazingly long, managing to brush Kaiba amiably across the shoulder. He glared at it as if it were an enemy, stomach knotting in unease. Still, nobody moved.
Finally, somebody moved close enough to be seen. Dressed rather archaically in a leather cloak and boots, hair wind-swept and quite long, he raised a snow-frosted eyebrow at their stunned silence. "Well?" the walking anachronismasked."Are you going to climb out of there or what?"
Several people burst into cheers, but Kaiba stared up coldly. How could they trust this man? But then, there really was no other choice, was there? It was either climb or stay in the hole to await death. Being the closest to the rope, he grabbed it, grateful to find that it had been knotted at regular intervals. It was quite simple from there to grab on to each knot and heave himself up, and not long later, he had reached the man, who smiled and nodded and helped him up…
…And thrust him to the ground as soon as they were out of sight of everybody below. Three men Seto hadn't noticed before came up from behind him. An angular block of wood shoved into his mouth effectively blocked out all protests as his hands were tied behind his back.
Each person to emerge from the icy pit was treated in like fashion until all 16 of them were tied up and strung together like animals. Some cried, some tried to struggle through their bonds.
The long-haired man ignored them, walking forward andjoining the others in hushed discussion. He paused briefly to smirk back at the prisoners, and Kaiba felt his heart join his stomach.
The man had fangs.
Kaiba Seto and the rest of his team had been captured by vampires.
To Be Continued…
