The Sacred Night, Chapter 19
"How do you know my name?" I asked the dark-haired vampire.
"Oh, I seem to have forgotten my manners! I'm sorry, Himura-san, I was just looking forward to fighting you so much that I guess I got a little eager! My name is Seta Soujirou, and Shishio-san told all of us your names,"
"Soujirou, I have never met Shishio-san…" I trailed off as I looked over to where the dead form of the vampires' leader lay changed back into his natural form- he was tall, dark-haired, and muscular, just like the vampire that had called Misao 'bishoujo' that night on the way to Kyoto, only now he was covered in scars, just like the vampire I'd seen when I followed Aoshi to the den of this very group of militant vampires. "I see," I finished.
"So now you understand? I'll prove to you that it's right to follow the natural order of things," he declared, raising his sword again.
"Is it natural to murder the innocent?" I asked, partially wanting to clarify what the vampire before me meant, and partially wanting to convince him it wasn't true, while waiting for him to strike.
"Feeding isn't murder, Himura-san. Is it murder when a human kills a fish to eat it?" He asked, just like someone else I recalled. He rushed toward me at such a speed I couldn't even see him.
"Fish don't have souls, Soujirou. Humans are sacred. They're better than we are," I replied to the air, thinking of the most sacred human of all: my wife. How I missed her…
Kenshin! I heard her voice say in my mind. I hadn't been reliving a memory of her saying that, so where had it come from? We were too far apart for me to sense her or hear her thoughts, unless she had been moving the entire time I'd been gone…
Soujirou was laughing mildly again, from every angle this time. "You are wrong, Himura-san. Humans are no more to us than fish are to humans. They are food, and their deaths benefit us. Why would any vampire want to save one?"
"Because they're innocent! They aren't killers like we are, and this is their planet. They are alive, and they love and are happy,"
"What makes those things important? None of it could exist without strength, and they don't have that, we do. We can love and be happy, and there's no reason to be innocent. Innocence only means not knowing the way things are meant to work," he replied, slightly less happy and musical than before. Perhaps I was beginning to annoy him.
Each passing word came from a different place in the room. I realized I was very likely going to die, since I had no idea where Soujirou would be when he attacked me, but I began to feel something. I could sense a tense, tight ball of anger moving through the air around me, growing from a tiny pinprick to consume more and more of Soujirou's ki. I sensed him coming closer and closer to me in an erratic pattern, but I knew exactly where to block when the blow came.
I threw him back and he landed well, but seemed put out that I had been able to throw him back at all. I was no longer worried. Now that I could read him, I knew exactly were to block and how to attack most effectively. He rushed at me with less precision, but more speed, than he had had before, but it did no good, that it didn't.
We finally squared off for the final blow, since both of us were so high strung that we would expend everything we had regardless of anything. He was anxious to prove to me by winning that his philosophy and that of his mentor was correct. I was anxious to end the fight so I could leave, and perhaps talk some sense into him first. We took similar stances, both preparing to use something akin to what had once been my signature move: a single, lightning fast stroke drawn diagonally up as the sword was drawn.
We rushed toward the middle of our battleground and toward each other, both most probably invisible to anyone else, but I could see him and I had no doubt that he could see me. We both drew our weapons in the same instant with a sound that would curdle a human's blood, but we were deaf to it. Another thundering clash echoed through the building as our swords met and a piece of metal flew to the side as my weapon contacted with his flesh. It was clear just what had happened as he lifted off the ground and fell in an arc, still clutching half a sword, the other half stuck straight up in the floor.
"Kiddo!" The human shouted, running in halting, jerky steps toward us, hindered by her restrictive kimono and what was possibly a birth defect or an injury causing her to walk with her feet turned inward. She knelt next to Soujirou and cradled his head in her lap. He lay there, relatively still, but still emitting a readable ki, so I surmised that he was alive, but willing to admit defeat.
"Are you all right, Soujirou?" I asked, receiving a glare from the woman at that.
"Yes, Himura-san. I am a vampire, remember. I'll be ok in awhile. I guess I owe you an apology, don't I Himura-san?" He answered shakily.
"Why?"
"You were right all long. You won, so you're stronger than I am. You're right,"
"Soujirou, just because I won a fight doesn't mean I'm right. Being right is determined by your ideas and how you live your life, that it is. If anyone who won a fight was always right, one person would rule the world and everyone would have to believe him no matter what he said just because he was strong. You have to decide for yourself what you believe is right, that you do,"
"You're very demanding, Himura-san. I didn't think anyone could be more demanding than Shishio-san was, but you forced me to think,"
"I have to go now, Soujirou, but I hope you learn to live in a better way, I do," I finished.
"Here," the woman said so softly I hardly heard her. She handed me a small vial of a clear liquid, which I accepted, assuming it was the cure to the virus the bound humans were experiencing, but I was slightly confused that she would give it to me so willingly. "Shishio-sama ordered me to give this to you if you won, and I laughed at him, thinking he was invincible, but here you are. You were stronger than us; you deserve to do what you think is right. That's what he would have said,"
"I'm not so sure about that anymore, Miss Yumi. Himura-san confused me, and now I don't know what the truth is anymore. I think I'll have to go be by myself awhile to try and figure things out…" he continued talking, but I walked away to let them be alone. It seemed like a personal moment, and I didn't want to intrude.
Aoshi, Sano and I left after I showed them the vial Yumi had given me. We were soon back in Tokyo with the others, but there was a new person there. Misao seemed all right, but worried and hungry, and Kaoru was in our bedroom with the new person. She was lying there, barely moving, and mumbling incoherent sounds. She seemed to have started to hallucinate, the new person told me. She was, apparently, a bound human doctor. A knock came at the door.
"You have humans here!" The strange vampire shouted when Misao opened the door. Misao could barely keep her out of the apartment, pushing with all her might to remove the half-crazed vampire from the premises.
"Kenshin! Help!" She shouted. If the vampire was stronger than Misao in her emaciated state, I hated to imagine what she would have been like if she'd fed recently. She must have been hungry before the human epidemic started to have gotten so bad already. It was either that, or she just didn't have much discipline. Still wondering where the doctor had come from and why she wasn't sick like the other humans, I ran to aid Misao. I tried to grab one of the woman's arms to restrain her so she wouldn't get in to where the humans were, but she twisted out of my reach.
"Misao, push us out with the door and the lock it," I instructed. I clearly couldn't pull or push her out myself, but the door could accomplish it easily. The only catch to it was that I would also get pushed out with her. She was so small and skinny that it was difficult to believe she could get away from me, and truly she wasn't as strong as I was, but she twisted so strangely that I could never get a grip to stop her from fighting.
Once we were out in the hallway, I completely let go, thinking she would leave, but she merely attacked the door. Being a vampire, she could break through it fairy quickly, so I had to stop her from damaging it enough to get through to my Kaoru and the doctor. I reached around her waist and picked her up to remove her from the door.
"You must stop trying to break down my door, that you must!" I appealed urgently as she tried to claw her way out of my grip.
"There are humans in there! You have humans and you're not sharing!" She reached behind herself to attempt to injure me, and I didn't worry about it or try to dodge because I knew she wouldn't be able to reach me. Imagine how surprised I was when she latched onto my hair and pulled it hard enough to jerk my head around to the side, and while I was distracted and stunned, she leapt away.
"Those humans are important! One is my wife, and the other is a doctor who's going to fix the problem with the humans, she is!" I shouted as I attempted to pull the skinny female away from the door yet again. She could reach me behind her so easily and injure places I never would have thought to defend, though, and I was forced to let her go again.
"Fix the problem? It doesn't matter, they're all gone already, except those two in there, and I'm getting one!"
"Onna-san, you can't feed on them. Why do you think I haven't? There are three other vampires in there who haven't, either!"
"That's not true! One of them is feeding on the healthy one right now!"
I felt around in the house, curious and confused about who would be feeding on the doctor when she needed to help Kaoru, but I did, in fact, sense Sano feeding on the young-seeming doctor. She seemed willing enough, so I didn't worry about it, but it did make it more difficult to convince the starved vampire to leave. I stood in front of the door to block her when she attempted to break through it again, as I was sure she would.
I was right. She leapt at me, but twisted in midair and stretched out a long leg to kick out at my legs, and since I'd learned something from her previous assaults, I did dodge, but not enough. Her limbs always seemed to twist farther than those of a normal person should. I was able to change my position enough to trap her leg with mine, but even with it incapacitated, the other could reach across it to strike my jaw. I didn't understand how a person could be so flexible, but the fact was there and I had to deal with it. I had to expect the unexpected and defend everywhere at once, even places it didn't look like she could reach.
************************************************************************************************************