The chapter's title "Sweets for the Sweet" is a line modified from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. "Sweets to the sweet" is the line but I kinda tweaked it. Thankies to Aoi Umenokouji for lending me her silver frying pan! It's down there in the fic...with Horohoro and Tamao. And best of all...my lovely machine is finished! The Anime/Manga Character Duplicator/Modifier Machine (TM) is finished! I can't wait to try it out...
Authoress disappears off to find the Shaman King characters and duplicate them...especially Hao-sama...
Horo: Whew...good thing Tamao-chan and I are in this chapter...or we'd be there too...
Tamao: Ne Horo-kun...she's coming back...
Horo: GAH let's go!
Both characters disappear into the fic
A Castle's Hospitality
Sweets for the Sweet
As the light filled the air, Horohoro had eyes only for one woman. The light made her delicately pale skin glow and filled her rose-hued eyes shine with light. He averted his eyes from her face, lest he be caught staring and have to endure her curious glances, but found himself looking at her dress instead. It clung to her torso and breasts, and the thin straps that should have held rested on her shoulders were slipping down to her upper arms in a very suggestive manner. He could see no sash around her waist and wondered how the dress fit her like a second skin until she half turned to motion to a door opposite them and he noticed how the back was laced up, baring more of her pearl-pale skin to his eyes. The skirt stopped just above her knees and had two slits reaching up to mid-thigh on both sides, black lacing identical to the ones across her back keeping them from revealing too much. Her feet were adorned with sandals that were mostly straps and silver buckles arranged at her ankles. It was only when her feet shifted that he realized she was speaking to him.
"Huh? Sorry," he told her, blushing and scratching the back of his neck nervously. "I guess I wasn't listening."
"That's alright," Tamao said, her head tilting to one side. "The kitchens are this way."
Horohoro followed the girl while keeping his eyes trained on her shoes, trying to make sure they wouldn't wander. As he stepped into the kitchens he stopped. They were large and clean, white tiles sparkling. Oddly, the kitchen was empty. It couldn't have taken so little time to clean all the dishes…he thought to himself, slightly suspicious. "The kitchen staff is very efficient if they're done with all the cleaning already," he remarked offhandedly. "With all that extra food, I assumed they'd still be here."
"We have a lot of people working here," Tamao answered, a trifle defensively in his mind. "What would you like to take with you on your trip?"
Is it just me or is she trying to change the subject? Horohoro decided to drop the topic of thought for the moment and twisted his face into a look of mock concentration. "We poor travelers have only been managing on travel bread, cheese, and water. Anything would sound good…but if I had to choose, I must say that the roast was very tasty…"
Tamao giggled quietly, more at ease. "I'm certain I could give you some of that soup that was served today. It's creamy and filling, and Asakura-san seemed to like it a great deal," she told him with a small smile.
"That will do fine," Horohoro answered, confused by the small stab of jealousy that he felt by the mention of Yoh. He and Yoh were great friends, and he had never felt this way towards Yoh, so he was understandably bewildered that hearing one girl mention his friend and fellow vampire hunter would make him feel such jealousy.
"Shall we get the soup then?" Tamao asked tentatively. Horohoro's normally clear, cerulean-blue eyes had darkened slightly as he had answered, and she felt uncertain and worried at his reaction to her words.
With a nod, Horohoro followed her through a door near the back of the kitchens, down a barely lit hallway, to another door. He leaned back against the opposite wall, staring at Tamao's back, crisscrossed by those black laces so dark against her pale skin. The door opened smoothly and he followed Tamao to the table where the servants sat, dining on the desserts of their meal. Tamao reached over and grasped the silver soup tureen, only to gasp in pain, the soup tureen dropping with a clang back onto the table as the servants got to their feet with cries of "Lady Tamao!"
Tamao gasped in pain as she held her hands close to her chest. Smiling weakly, she reassured the servants of her wellbeing, strengthened the shield that hid her aura and let her handle silver. Picking up the soup tureen gingerly, she felt relief seep through her body when she felt not the sharp pain of silver poisoning but the soothing cool of the spell. "The tureen was hot, that's all," she told Horohoro as they left the room, avoiding the dark-blue eyes that were filled with concern, suspicion, and confusion.
Just as she exited the room, a hand, rough with faint calluses, stopped her by taking hold of her wrist. She was swiftly relieved of the tureen, and found herself walking behind Horohoro as they returned to the kitchens. Bewildered and slightly embarrassed by the sudden change in his manners, she quickly began packing different types of food into bags that she pillaged from the pantry.
"Here." Loading several bags into his arms, she motioned him to follow her as she hurriedly made her way down corridors and through doors to the stables. Not that it was easy since she was wearing a pair of very strappy sandals. Pausing at the stable door, she put her own bags down, panting lightly from exertion as she rested against the doorframe. She could feel shame flooding into her as she trembled, partly from the near run that she had arrived at, party from the shame and embarrassment of the way she had acted towards Horohoro.
She felt so inadequate, acting so uncertain as a 38 year old vampire.
"Hey, wait up please?" She turned as a panting Horohoro ran up next to her. He collapsed into a tired heap, buried under the 15 or so bags of food which Tamao had packed. Biting her lip to suppress a giggle, she gingerly removed the pile of bags from their perch on top of him.
"I'll take them, don't worry," Horohoro told her as he shifted the bags quickly, loading up each of the horses equally.
With a very un-Tamao-like sound that might have been a snort if Pirika had made it, Anna and Jeanne being too calm and collected to make such a noise, Tamao picked up some of the remaining bags and followed Horohoro into the stables to the horses.
A shrill whinny made her wince, the horses rearing in nervousness. Quickly, she added more power into her shield, knowing that some vampire hunters trained their steeds to detect vampire auras. She could see Horohoro rubbing the noses of first one horse, then another, as he attempted to calm them down. Pulling an apple out of his pocket, he gripped it firmly and twisted, making the two halves fall neatly apart. He fed them to two horses, and then repeated the process for the remaining two while she watched quietly.
Horohoro frowned as he soothed the frisky, finicky mounts. Their reaction to Tamao was suspicious and it did nothing to quell his deepening concern. Horohoro was seriously beginning to get suspicious. She was pale, had a liking for fancy black clothing, she lived with three others who were very much like her, had reacted strangely when she picked up the silver soup tureen in the other room, and was exciting a vampire-reaction from the horses.
But she's so sweet…too sweet to be a vampire…
Another inner voice chided him. Haven't your travels with Yoh taught you that not all vampires are bad? That sometimes it's the humans who are the bad ones?
He could see Tamao packing bags away onto still-skittish horses, but he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to let his mind wander from the turmoil of his musings. There are times when I think I feel her aura. Or the aura of a vampire hanging around her, but it's always so faint, masked, that I can't tell. I can't be certain. Horohoro grumbled softly as he followed Tamao back to the kitchens.
It was only when his sandals, the ones he had found in his bedroom, met the tiles of the kitchen floor that he looked up. He had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn't noticed where they were. What he did notice though, was the pile of cookies sitting in a neat silver tray next to a silver-handled glass pitcher of milk.
"You and your cousins are quite odd Tamao-san," Horohoro told her laughing as he gestured towards the tray and jug. "Almost every utensil you have is made of silver! Even this frying pan!"
Tamao blushed as he picked up a silver frying pan that had been lying inconspicuously on the counter. "I-it's Lady Anna's hobby of collecting lots of silver things, Usui-san," she stammered.
Horohoro grinned at her. "Just call me Horohoro or Horo, not Usui-san. It makes me feel old and I'm just 18!" he told her.
"Y-yes, sure." She pointed to the pile of cookies. "You can have some if you'd like…only…" she blushed a darker shade of red than before. "You have to tell me what made you, Yoh-san, Ren-san, and Diethyl-san decide only to kill vampires when necessary."
Horohoro raised an eyebrow and picked up a cookie from the top of the pile. He glanced at the chocolate chips and then bit into it, savoring the taste. "We each have our own story," he told her, his mouth half full of cookie. He nodded his thanks to Tamao as she got him a glass and poured him some milk. Washing the sweet down with the cold beverage, he began.
"I wasn't always a traveling wanderer. I've been traveling with Yoh and Ren and Lyserg for the past five years, but before then, a long way before, I was just Horohoro Usui, age 10, trying my best to help my parents in their weaponry shop. I guess you could say that I'm the one who provides the group with interesting silver-made weapons. But my parents were murdered by a group of blood vampires that passed by my village." Horohoro's voice darkened and Tamao looked at him, sorrow filling her heart at his misfortune. She knew what it was like to have somebody kill your parents.
"I picked out the best weapons in my parents' shop and traveled for two years, looking for the ones who killed them. But I managed to get myself lost before I managed to find them. I was saved by a little girl. She led me to her oak-tree house, brought me food and water, and made sure I was okay. If it wasn't for her, for little Kororo, I'd have died, lost in the forest with little to eat and less to drink. She taught me how to track vampires better, what things could hurt them, how to spot some symptoms of vampires…and two weeks after Kororo let me out past the boundaries of her home, the villagers found us." Tamao flinched as Horohoro bit into a cookie in an attempt to keep the bitterness from his voice.
"She only had time to warn me to hide my aura before she went out to face them, to fight them to protect me… Because I was human, because I couldn't fight humans the way she could fight them. Because she was a vampire… And I thought of her as my imouto-chan. Just because she was a vampire…they killed her because she was a vampire. Not because she did anything wrong, but because she was a blood vampire who needed to feed every so often. A month she could go without feeding, but afterwards she'd feel weak and tired. Even I could tell when Kororo hadn't eaten, even if I didn't know why she was acting the way she did. She was so weak when it happened…" Horohoro whispered to himself, feeling old guilt all over again. Letting the guilt fade, he turned to Tamao, drinking the last of the milk in his glass.
"I blamed myself for her death," he told her quietly, eyes dark and filled with pain. "Because I wasn't strong enough, I couldn't help her. I couldn't protect the imouto-chan I had made over the six months I spent there. So I trained. I trained myself for her memory, for the little girl who loved nature and didn't like having to feed upon innocent people. And when I met Yoh, Ren, and Lyserg who were passing through, I asked them to take me with them. They didn't have the proper weapons, and I had saved the best from my family's shop. I also had many ideas for weapons that I had developed over the last six months alone in Kororo's house." He grinned softly, the hurt fading from his eyes as he turned to Tamao. "They had already agreed not to kill a vampire unless completely necessary. Most vampires that plagued villages were of the evil sort, weak ones who had given into the bloodlust or energy lust that made them hunger. But if we met a good vampire who only fed because they had to, and didn't take a lot, who had found the wrong sort of village or place to feed off of, we tried our best to help them relocate."
"It's a very noble cause that you and your friends work for," Tamao told him quietly, head bowed.
"We would all like to think so," Horohoro answered, leaning back against the counter, his hands clasped behind his neck. His fingers played with the clasp of the silver chain around his neck as he looked at Tamao.
Aware of his gaze, Tamao averted her eyes to his empty glass. "I'll fill that with milk for you," she said hurriedly, reaching out for the pitcher.
"It's alright."
Tamao turned nervously at the tone of his voice, surprised by the commanding tone in it. From his normal behavior, she wouldn't have expected it. The serious tone just didn't fit with the view of Horohoro being a sweet-toothed, casual, easy-going guy who was optimistic about his future and tried to make up for his past by doing what he felt was right. The first thing she noticed was that the silver protection chain was in his hands. Not around his neck. His eyes were calm, serious, and determined; it scared her terribly. And she did not want to be scared.
"Tamao, I know you're a vampire. Your aura shield is low and I can sense it."
She froze, every muscle in her body refusing to respond to her brains commands of running away or biting him and killing him. She couldn't. She was too startled and confused by his implications, and finding herself caring too much for him to kill him. I can't…I can't Horohoro…
His hands took her by the waist, pulling her close to his warm body as he tilted his head to the right, exposing the pulse point. Tamao gulped audibly. She needed to feed and wanted so badly to sink her fangs into his neck, but her heart wouldn't let her, because she couldn't hurt him. "Tamao." The whisper caused her to flinch, but Horohoro just pulled her closer, his hands running soothingly up and down her back, calming her as she was pulled against him, her lips dangerously close to his skin.
"Please Horohoro," she whispered, knowing she was begging and too far gone to care. "I can't…I don't…I've never had anyone offer to let me feed," she told him, her voice breaking.
"It's alright, shhh. It's fine. I wouldn't let a sweet vampire like yourself go hungry… Please, don't be stubborn like Kororo, Tamao-chan," he whispered into her hair, warm breath brushing her ears. "It won't hurt me, I promise."
Tamao nodded, her forehead resting against his shoulder as tears rolled down her cheeks and soaked into the fabric of his shirt. "I won't…" she swallowed, trying not to let her voice break, "I won't change you into a vampire…"
"I know," he told her softly. "I know."
Tamao gave a shuddering sigh as she placed her lips against his pulse point, savoring the softness of his skin before sinking her teeth into his flesh. Warm blood, sweet and filling, so savory, filled her mouth. She could feel Horohoro stiffen as she drank the deliciousness of his being. But even as the blood pooled into her mouth, even as she felt it strengthen her, she cried.
Horohoro gritted his teeth against the pain of her sharp fangs, taking deep breaths, his fingers curling around the handle of the silver frying pan in an effort to distract himself from the pain. And then it stopped. But not quite stopped. He could feel the softness of her lips as she drank his blood, the delicate stroke of her tongue against his tender flesh, and took a deep, shaky breath to keep from groaning in pleasure as she continued to drink. Even as he felt himself growing weaker, the pleasurable feeling of her lips and tongue caressing his skin intensified until he was groaning, sliding down against the counter to settle on the floor as Tamao removed her fangs from his skin and licked the broken flesh clean with her tongue.
"Hey, don't cry." He wiped away the traces of her tears with tender fingers. He twisted his head around in an attempt to look at the punctures she must have left in his skin, but being unable to see the marks, he brushed a finger across them. He winced a little at the way his rough fingers scraped across the sensitive skin, but instantly regretted it when Tamao winced with him. He could practically feel her apology like it was tangible.
"It doesn't matter. You're full, and I'm hungry so…" Horohoro made some attempts to get up off the floor, but it was in vain. The blood sapped from his body having not yet been renewed. All he managed to do was grab the handle of the silver frying pan…which had not been his actual goal.
Tamao giggled and got up, getting the tray of cookies, the empty glass, and the milk. She poured the still-cold milk into the glass and offered both glass and cookie to Horohoro.
"Whoa, hold on…" Horohoro said, blushing and holding the frying pan between then. "I've never been fed by a vampire before…and not one as pretty as you…" he said, it a quieter voice.
Tamao blushed a little, more in control of her features now that she had fed. She relieved him of his frying pan shield, and placed the cookie against his lips. "You do need to eat," she told him with a playful note in her voice.
Horohoro grinned and bit into the cookie, picking up another one and offering it to Tamao as he took a sip of his milk. She raised an eyebrow and looked at the cookie a while before taking it and biting it.
"So what is this?" she asked, referring to his offer of the cookie. "Vampires don't need to eat normal food for a few days after they feed you know."
Horohoro grinned and leaned forward until his lips were lightly brushing her ear. "It's called 'sweets for the sweet,' Tamao-chan," he told her in a seductive whisper. He kissed her cheek lightly before leaning back against the counter to finish his cookie, watching a pink Tamao with a satisfied air.
Thank you to all the people who reviewed! The next chapter will be JeannexLyserg, then PirikaxRen, and finally AnnaxYoh...and THEN we'll have my final chapter. I was persuaded against making the fic only 3 chappies long. Returns Aoi's silver frying pan to her.Thank you Aoi for lending me the frying pan. Horohoro made use of it ne?And now you all know what I'm going to say...Review Please!
Cobalt Rose
