AUTHOR: Macx and Lara Bee
DISCLAIMER: not ours. Definitely not! We just play with them and hope we tread on no one's toes.
Author's Voice of Warning (aka Author's Note):
English is not my our language; it's German. This is the best we can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize g The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are...
ADDITIONAL WARNINGS: DO NOT SKIP: this story deals with sensitive topics, above others implied rape and constant sexual abuse of a child. It is dark, and I mean DARK. There may be readers among us who know more than they'd ever wanted to know about this topic this story contains TRIGGER MATERIAL.
ARCHIVE: yes
NOTE: "Bête noire" translated means "Black Beast, but it also stands for "Nightmare".
TYPE: yaoi
RATING: M, down-rated specifically for FFNet. The uncensored version can be found on our website after I've posted all of the story here.
PAIRING(s): Touda/Byakko, Tsuzuki/Hisoka
FEEDBACK: empty inbox seeks emails g
It was summer in GensouKai. The explosion of flowers and blooming trees was reaching its peak, the sun was out almost every day, the clouds were sparse, and there were a lot of very warm days and barely cooler nights. For those shikigami who liked the heat of summer, it was the perfect time. For those who preferred cooler temperatures, it was a matter of staying in the shade and not wandering about too much.
Touda was a fire serpent and for him, heat was nothing. He enjoyed it, he spent hours dozing on the palace roof, and he tried to stay out of the daily politics. Sohryu called on him of course, but since Touda wasn't his first general any more and had no intentions to become one again, he wasn't required to be on duty all the time. It didn't mean he was slacking either. The hell serpent had simply found a nice balance between work and sunbathing.
Right now he wasn't on the roof but in the expansive garden, enjoying not only the sun but also the very welcome company of his lover and partner. Byakko, being a cat shikigami, liked heat, too. The area where they were resting was very private and only a few servants would even think of bothering the two men here. It was one of the reasons why Touda had divested himself of his clothes, except for the bare necessities, just in case, and was watching his equally mostly naked lover sunbathe.
Half-closed red eyes smiled lazily at him and a black and white striped tail twitched. Byakko was very relaxed, his tanned skin smelling of the sun, all muscles warm and pliant and so very, very nice to run a hand over. Which Touda did.
It got him a purr.
Byakko turned on his back and Touda took the unspoken offer to continue the caress over his stomach. The tiger stretched, showing off his sinewy form, and Touda straddled him, leaning over the warm body.
"Enjoying yourself?" he murmured.
Fingers buried in his by now longish hair and carded through it. "Very."
Byakko stopped in mid-caress when he heard the Summoning. Golden eyes flashed at him as his lover stroked over his cheek once, then slid smoothly off him. Touda had heard it, too. He was bonded to Tsuzuki and he would feel the echoes of whatever was going on. But since it wasn't him who had been Summoned he had no right to intervene.
"Come back in one piece," Touda muttered, stepping back to give the young man room to follow the call.
When Summoned, shikigami appeared in the world of the living in their fighting form which in Byakko's case meant, a white tiger. A huge white tiger.
"Of course," Byakko answered, then initiated the transdimensional jump.
Right into a battle.
Right into the middle of things.
And right into action.
° ° °
The fight had been ugly and nasty, his opponent being a devil with immense powers. But Byakko had defeated the bastard. Tsuzuki had been proud. Disheveled, slightly bruised, but proud. He had radiated his emotions quite openly, hugging his fighting companion after things had been over.
Byakko had returned to his home realm.
Once again, it was over and no harm done.
Or so they thought.
° ° °
It had been easier than he had thought. So much easier. Entering the world of the living had been child's play. Devils and demons went and came as they wanted to. Finding a shinigami, the right shinigami, had been a bit more difficult. He couldn't just choose one by default. He had to find one with the right shikigami, and there was only one who had the most powerful at his command.
So the devil had roamed until he had been made by the Shokan Division, and Tsuzuki Asato had been sent after him.
He was working with a time window. He needed to fulfill his mission within a specific time frame, he had been told by the one who had come up with this plan.
Find the shinigami, possess his shikigami, enter GensouKai under the radar. The devil wasn't clear how he could go in undetected by the likes of Enma-Daiou, but he had been reassured again and again that it was possible.
But only now.
Only in these few days while GensouKai recovered from the almost fatal blow it had suffered. The realm was weak, as were the other realms, but only GensouKai mattered at the moment.
Possess a shikigami.
Get in.
Take out his target.
And his mysterious benefactor would be pleased.
The devil didn't think about the why. He had a dislike of shikigami, so killing one, using another to do it, was easy. Of course he had heard the rumors that with the destabilization of one realm, the others might suffer, too, but as long as he circumvented killing one specific shikigami, things would become balanced pretty soon.
The fight had been hard, he had taken a few blows by the white tiger, but he had managed the impossible in the end: he had possessed him. Without the shinigami seeing or feeling it. There had been a delicate moment when the shinigami had hugged his shikigami, but then things had gone smoothly.
And now for the plan...
° ° °
The gate between the worlds spit out a disheveled and roughed up white tiger. The feline was spewed ungraciously to the ground, landing hard and tumbling over several times with the force of the transfer, turning into a white haired young man at last.
Byakko coughed, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and tried his best to scramble to his feet, but only managed to get onto his knees. He moaned.
"Get the hell out of me, you bastard," he whispered roughly, fighting down the mixture of anger and pain and horror.
And why should I do that?
"Because I say so. Leave me alone!"
No can do, kitty
"I won't surrender to you!"
You will
The voice was in his head, in his mind, blocking out everything else with its coldness and venom, seeping into him, poisoning his thoughts, his feelings...
Byakko clenched his jaw in the desperate attempt to get up, but the devil wouldn't let him move. The mere presence of the hellish being that had invaded his body and his mind during the fight was causing him excruciating pain, setting every nerve ending on fire. Byakko felt his muscles start to tremble with exhaustion as he tried to fight the devil, and he cried out softly when it caused another wave of pain. Fingers curling into the dirt, he panted.
"I... won't... surrender."
You will
Sweat was running down his back, and Byakko sucked in another lungful of air. He had to withstand the devil, just long enough to force the hellish creature out of his body. Devils could possess humans without much effort, they could even overpower a shinigami, but a magical being like a shikigami had to surrender himself to the devil, had to willingly hand over the control or the devil wouldn't be able to hold on to the possessed body. All he had to do was to resist it, to win the battle that was currently taking place within himself by winning time.
"I... will not... surrender..."
You will, believe me. Let me explain why...
Red eyes widened when the devil activated his magic.
"... no..."
Oh yes
Byakko felt a hot wetness run over his cheeks as the invisible torture continued, the pain increasing.
"No!"
Yes, my kitten. Like it? I bet you do...
"NO!"
The voice in his head had taken on a sick sweetness, the agony making Byakko sobbingly suck air into his burning lungs, feeling invisible hands caressing his body in a perversion of tenderness.
Surrender, kitty. Don't make it so hard for yourself
" ... no ... "
As you wish
Byakko whimpered, closing his eyes against the onslaught of cruelty, his mind pleading for something, someone...
Touda...
...to stop the brutal assault...
He's not here. He won't come, kitten
...to end it, make the pain go away...
You're the only one who can end it, kitten
Touda... Tsuzuki!
No one, kitten. It's only you and me here. Oh, you want to see one of your friends, don't you? That can be arranged...
All Byakko could manage was a choking little sound when he looked up, looked into onyx eyes above him, felt strands of silky hair brush over his face as he ...
The anguished scream that echoed through the canyon spoke of a pain so complete, so soul deep even the age old mountains had ever heard of.
And Byakko opened his eyes again.
But this time they were empty.
tbc...