Disclaimer: All characters belong to the great Watsuki except for any OC – the Ocs are mine.

To my reviewers – IknowNot, Nekotsuki, Lolopopoki, and avidrkfan – thanks for reading and commenting.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sano entered Sagara's office, hidden away in the basement of an abandoned warehouse.

"We've received a message from the Meiji faction up North."

Sano immediately bristled at the words from his captain. "Those bastards! What do they want? Another fight?"

Captain Sagara, a tall, lean vampire whose brown hair had a tendency to fall over his eyes, jerked his neck in a clean, compact motion to move the locks away from his face. "No. You know we're in no shape for another go around with them."

"We held our own." Sano returned confidently.

Sagara held his gaze for a long minute, then said. "We lost half our forces and so did they. I'd say it was a draw."

Reluctantly, Sano nodded.

Sagara continued. "We're still independent of them, and that's what matters. Evidently, they want a favor."

"A favor?" Sano repeated slowly, brows furrowed in disbelief. "What makes them think we'd ever do them a favor after they tried to take over our territory?"

Sagara shrugged and looked at the painting on his wall of a Japanese garden with a sun-speckled pond with an arched bridge over it, shaped like a rainbow. It was a scene from their past, a world they could never re-enter. "Remember, Sano. When we were alive, the Sekihoutai served the Meiji cause at one time."

Sano. "Yeah, until they betrayed you. If they'd taken your head instead of Ito's by accident, then your master couldn't have turned you while you lay dying. Those scum don't deserve any loyalty."

Sagara turned back with a mirthless grin. "We can't choose our death, Sano. It comes for us when it comes. The Meiji officials who ordered my death lived out their lifespans and are gone. I remain. Katsura's vampires up North weren't the ones in the government who betrayed the Sekihoutai."

"Why didn't you go after them when you were turned?"

Sagara's eyes darkened with memory. "Because destroying the Meiji meant bringing the Tokugawa back to power, and how could I take away what little hope the peasants had for change? The Meiji, for all their corruption, at least passed laws guaranteeing freedom."

"I still don't understand why you're even considering doing Katsura a favor."

"Because it's something that might affect us all. There's a rogue loose up North. Drained corpses have been found in the mountains. If the humans start to suspect it's us…"

"Damn it!" Sano punched his hand into his palm, then let both hands fall abruptly. "Let them take care of it themselves."

Sagara crossed his arms. "They say they're busy. They asked that we send our strongest vampire to deal with the matter."

"I'll go."

"No." Sagara lifted a hand to stop him as Sano prepared to brush past him. "I've decided to send Yahiko."

"Yahiko?" Sano glared at his captain. "Yahiko's just a kid! He hasn't even been a vampire for four decades!"

"Exactly."

Sano stopped ranting and stared at Sagara. "You're sending him because he's not the strongest, is that it?"

Sagara nodded, and watched Sanosuke assimilate the information. A frown appeared on Sano's face.

"He's not the strongest, but he's a lot stronger than you think, Sanosuke. He'll be alright."

Sano shrugged, and looked down. "Hey, I'm not worried about him. Little brat."

Disbelief and humor flashed across Sagara's eyes, but he said nothing.

Sano noticed Sagara's lack of response, and plunged on. "Fine. So we send the brat and then what?"

"Then we wait and see why the Meiji group wanted our strongest warriors up North."

"Warriors?"

Sagara nodded. "They requested five. I told their messenger that most of our strongest were out on missions, that I was considering expanding into San Diego and sent them down there to pave the way. It was a lie, and I let him guess I was lying."

"So we'd look weaker than we really are?"

Sagara nodded. "They'll assume I don't have five strong warriors left."

"I don't like this." Sano said flatly.

"Nor do I. Spread the word to the men to be on alert."

Sano nodded, and left.

OOO

Yahiko was not happy. Why did he have to go kill the vampire who was carelessly leaving drained bodies out in the boondocks for the authorities to find? He knew Captain Sagara's group of vampires was short handed since their war with the Meiji group, but even so, there had to be someone else he could have sent. Why not that big lazy lug Sanosuke?

Sano had been a vampire long before Yahiko. Yahiko's mom had been in the camps in Manzanar during World War II. She'd married one of the guards there and five years later along came Yahiko. From his dad he learned to play baseball and love barbecues. From his mom he'd learned Japanese and was sent to her uncle to learn martial arts. His dad approved, said it kept him out of trouble. By that he meant away from the hippies and the drug scene.

It was drugs that got his dad.

After the war, his dad joined the police force in San Francisco. That's where Yahiko grew up, and where some drug dealers his father had sent to jail got out, and killed his mom and dad. Yahiko had come home from a late night college kenjutsu class just as they were leaving. It was too late for his parents, but Yahiko wanted revenge, so he'd pulled out his practice sword. He'd killed one of them, but the other had a gun.

They'd ended up on the street where a red haired bystander had pulled out a sword and finished off the gun-wielding murderer. Then he'd knelt by Yahiko, whose life's blood was draining away, and asked if he'd like to become a vampire. From what one of the criminals had said, they'd been sent by someone to kill his dad. If he died, Yahiko would never get revenge on the man ultimately responsible for his parents' death, so he'd said yes.

The stranger turned out to be Battousai, the legendary assassin of the vampire world. He told Yahiko to call him Kenshin, and said he was waiting in San Francisco for his wife to join him. He helped Yahiko to track down and kill the drug lord responsible for his father's death, then traveled with him to Los Angeles and asked Sano to look after him. Even now, over thirty years later, Sano still treated him like a brat and a burden.

Yahiko hated camping. He'd never been a boy scout and never wanted to. Sure, trees were pretty and all that, but who needed the dirt? It was a good thing he could sense other vampires, or he'd never find the one he was looking for in all this wilderness.

It took a month of sleeping in a specially designed tent during the day and hunting at night. Yahiko only brought one pack of human blood, so if he didn't find the vampire soon, he'd have to get more, since the animal blood was only a stopgap measure. It was harder to hunt down a wild creature than to just walk up to a domesticated one and drink your fill. It wasted time, and Yahiko was getting impatient.

It seemed like the vampire was always one step ahead of him, but at last he felt its presence nearby instead of far off when he woke one evening. Taking down the tent and shoving it into his backpack only took a moment, then he set off up a ridge, running in the direction of the vampire.

When he got to the spot where he sensed its presence, he stopped. He was at the edge of a bowl shaped depression. Resting on a large, cracked boulder, he stared down into a pastoral scene. A pond lay in the center of the bowl. Grass, dotted with little yellow flowers, surrounded the pond. A young deer made its way delicately toward the water. The animal hadn't smelled him yet, and moved with fluid unconcern. It lowered its head to drink.

There was a blur of motion. It would have been impossible for a human to see exactly what happened, but Yahiko did.

A vampire burst out from underwater, grabbed the deer by the neck, and twisted it so that it fell to the grass on its side. Within the same second, the vampire dug its fangs into the deer's neck and began to drink.

The deer's legs thrashed twice, and then it fell into a relaxed lassitude as the vampire took its fill of blood.

Yahiko's lips pursed, but he didn't release the low whistle of appreciation that he wanted to. Why alert the vampire to his presence and lose the element of surprise? He had to admit though, that trick of hiding underwater to draw prey in was pretty cool. Since vampires didn't have to breathe, they could stay underwater indefinitely, though the wrinkled skin got to you after a while.

Finished, the vampire raised its head, and pressed two fingers against the deer's neck for a moment, before releasing it. The deer rose to its feet, shook itself all over, staggered a bit, then jogged away.

The vampire flung its head back to get its damp hair off its face. It was sitting half in, half out of the water, one leg bent under it, and the other extended into the pond at its back. With the back of its hand, it wiped the blood off its chin and raised its face to the moonlight to watch the deer go.

That's when Yahiko realized that the vampire was a girl, and that she was beautiful.

She had on khaki colored shorts, hiking boots, and a maroon tank top. Her hair was short for a girl, barely touching her collarbone. It was dark looking because it was sopping wet, so he couldn't tell what actual color it was, and her eyes…

The girl turned and looked right at him. Her eyes were big and brown. He couldn't see the expression in them, because he was too far away.

In a second, he was even farther away as she jumped gracefully to her feet and took off uphill in the direction the deer had gone.

Too late, Yahiko registered a crack in the opposite edge of the bowl shaped depression. It was a way out, and she took it, scrambling up the edge of the ravine with a speed that took even his breath away.

Collecting himself, Yahiko ran after her, leaping from boulder to boulder along the edge of the bowl until he too reached the ravine. By this time she'd left it, and jumped to the mountainside next to it, and was scaling what looked to be a steep cliff.

Yahiko smirked. She might think getting to the top of the mountain would give her an advantage, but she was wrong. So what if she could see him coming? He'd just keep coming until he caught her. One vampire, however cute, couldn't be allowed to endanger all of vampire-kind.

'Cute'? Where had that come from? Shrugging it off, Yahiko followed the vampire up the side of the mountain, dropping his backpack and letting it fall to the bottom of the ravine so it wouldn't hinder him. He kept his sword though. He felt the weight of it, strapped securely to his back. He was going to need it. Decapitation was one of the surest methods of killing vampires.

The girl got to a ledge and disappeared. Yahiko kept his gaze upward as he found the hand and footholds he needed to follow her, but she never appeared again above the ledge. Was she waiting in ambush?

He angled the direction of ascent, and came level with the ledge while clinging to the rock face on the right, instead of coming directly up underneath it.

She wasn't there, waiting to push a boulder onto his head as he half expected. She wasn't there at all, but a dark, wide crack in the mountainside was. It was the entrance to a cave.

Damn. She was probably halfway through the mountain by now. Who knew how many exits there were to the system of caverns honeycombing these mountains? Gritting his teeth, Yahiko plunged in after her.

It only took a second for his eyes to adjust to the greater darkness inside the cave. It was a tunnel-like cavern, high and wide where he entered, but reducing to a smaller exit in the back. Yahiko ran, ducking his head a little under the lowering rock ceiling, and burst out into an open area with three more cavern openings to choose from. He paused, staring at the ground before each, but the sand was so uneven that he couldn't see footprints, or tell which opening she'd chosen.

He took another step forward and reached for her with his senses.

That's what saved him. He had a bare second to register that her presence was above him, when she dropped.

Yahiko leapt forward and turned, reaching over his shoulder to draw his sword out of the sheath strapped to his back. It was a razor sharp wakizashi, his favorite Japanese weapon. Shorter than the traditional katana, it was easier to conceal, and the length suited him.

She'd landed in a crouch right where he'd just been standing; a wicked looking hunting knife plunged into the sand about a foot in front of her.

Yanking the knife out of the ground, she rose partway to her feet, remaining in a crouched stance as she spoke.

"Tired of hunting human prey, vampire?"

She held the knife's hilt in her fist, so the sharp blade pointed forward, protruding from the bottom on her fist. Her other hand was up by her face, ready to block or punch.

Yahiko kept his feet apart, one slightly forward of the other, balancing his weight between them. His drawn sword was pointed out straight in front of him, the tip directed at the girl.

"You should know all about hunting humans," he sneered.

Yahiko thrust forward suddenly, pushing off the balls of his feet into a lunge that should have punctured her chest, but she pivoted fluidly and brought her knife crashing down on the center of his blade, knocking it toward the ground.

His hands loosened on the hilt at the force of the impact. Tightening his fingers, he immediately swung the blade to the right, angled upward to take her head.

She danced away and stood in the doorway of one of the other caverns, crouched and waiting.

Yahiko turned his body to face her. "You leave their bodies where they can be found. Did you really think we'd let that go?"

The girl's expression didn't change from the hard wariness she'd had since the beginning of the fight, but she answered in a derisive tone. "I don't kill humans,' she said. "Unlike you."

Then she was gone, and the cavern doorway stood empty. Yahiko had no choice; he had to catch her. He hesitated a moment, then ran after her, sword out in front, at the ready. Even so, she almost got him.

A slight whoosh of air at his left was the only warning he got as the knife slashed down while he ran past. He threw himself to the side, earning a gash on his neck along the flesh under his ear. Swinging his wakizashi around in a horizontal slash, he forced her to jump back against the wall of rock behind her, but when he stepped forward and brought it back around for another slash, hoping to cut her while she was trapped against the rock, she surprised him.

Gathering her feet against the base of the rock wall, she pushed off and leaped over the swinging blade, and Yahiko, somersaulting to land behind him.

Yahiko ducked and turned on his knees, ending up with his sword held level in front of him, one knee up, and the other knee down, his shin lying parallel on the sand. They'd ended up in a dead end cavern. It was roughly oval, and they confronted each other, eyes glittering, at the narrow end of the egg shape by the entrance. A low-pitched rumbling noise came out of the girl's throat, like the warning growl of a dog.

He hated to admit it, but the girl's words were getting to him. Yahiko sank his weight into the heel of his right foot, which rested flat against the ground, and pulled his body upward into a fighting stance as he bit out the words in sharp, distinct syllables. "I…do…not…kill…humans."

A disbelieving snort was her only reply as she moved, throwing herself through the opening and back to the wide cavern where their fight had begun.

Having learned his lesson, Yahiko plunged in right behind her, to avoid giving her time to set up another ambush.

Sensing him at her heels, she turned and slashed. Yahiko blocked, and tilted his blade downward, trying to force her off balance by making her blade slide along his toward the ground.

She simply jumped back and landed in her favorite fighting stance, a crouch with both hands up and at the ready.

"I suppose you don't drink their blood either." She spat at him bitterly.

As he got back into his own favored stance with his feet apart and sword pointed outward, Yahiko's brow furrowed. There was something weird going on here. Why was she denying her misdeeds? They were both vampires, it wasn't like she'd been hauled in by the cops and had to lie or whine for a lawyer. And what was with that bizarre statement?

"Of course I do, we all do."

"I don't."

Yahiko's eyes widened. There was no way that could be true. Vampires needed human blood once a month to survive, so unless she'd only been turned a month ago…but no. Sagara had told him that bodies had been found every so often over the past two years. She had to be lying, unless she really wasn't the vampire killing the humans.

He stared at her. She stared back as if waiting for him to make his next move, and calculating how she'd block it. She wasn't scared or intimidated. She wasn't boasting about how clever she was. She was just determined to defend herself.

Yahiko lowered his sword and straightened his legs so he was standing in a more natural position. "So you're telling me that you're not the vampire leaving the drained bodies out in the woods?"

The girl stayed crouched down and wary. "No. I hunt animals, not humans. The bodies you speak of are already dead when he leaves them. They are no temptation to me."

Blinking, Yahiko assimilated the new information. "You said 'he'. 'He' who?"

She gave a quick shrug and continued to watch him tensely. "The human in the jeep. He is the temptation, not them."

Yahiko let his sword arm dangle at his side, and rubbed his chin with his other hand, thinking. "So let me get this straight. You've been watching some human dumping bodies in the woods for the past two years, and you haven't done anything about it? You keep bragging that you don't kill humans, but what about those bodies? If you really care at all about the humans, why didn't you stop him?"

The girl shifted slightly, moving to keep Yahiko in front of her, as he'd taken a step to the right while he was talking. Her knife remained in front of her body, protectively. "The humans are cold when he dumps them. I do not even know if he is the one who kills them. He could be an accomplice for a vampire. He could be dumping them for you."

Yahiko stared, dumbfounded at the implied accusation. She stared back steadily, not giving an inch. At last Yahiko shrugged and sheathed his sword behind his back. Crossing his arms, he regarded her consideringly.

"I believe you," he said at last. "If a human is dumping dead bodies, then it's a human matter. Come to the police station and give them a description, and we'll let them handle it."

She blinked. "Are you insane? Go down the mountain to a police station, with all that blood around?" she asked incredulously. Then she licked her lips unconsciously, moistening them. They were red, bow shaped lips, and they looked really soft.

Yahiko gulped, and pretended he hadn't noticed. "Why not?" he asked airily. "It's not like you HAVE to drain every human you see." He stuck his hand out toward her. "Come on."

Flinching, she drew back and growled. "I won't go."

When Yahiko stepped forward she lifted the knife menacingly with a low growl in the back of her throat, so he stopped. Scratching his head, he wondered why she was still acting like he wanted to kill her. "Look, if you don't want to go, fine. At least show me where he goes to dump the bodies and give me a description and I'll go tell the cops."

A drop of water from the girl's hair broke free and landed on her collarbone. She was silent the whole time it took for the drop to spill down her chest and disappear under the edge of her raspberry colored tank top. Then she spoke in a low, reluctant voice.

"He drives to different trailheads in a red jeep. The bodies are in a duffel bag he slings over his shoulder and he walks off the trails and dumps them out. Sometimes the animals get to them before hikers find them. He comes at night. That's all I know."

Yahiko nodded. "Show me where he dumped the last body."

At first, he thought she was going to refuse, but slowly she rose to a standing position, and lowered her knife. She was almost exactly his size, maybe a quarter of an inch or so shorter. She was also tiny, with thin wrists and ankles and a waist that he bet he could almost circle with both his hands. Her bosom wasn't very large, but it fit her proportionally. Yahiko wrenched his gaze off of it. He didn't want to spook her, she was wary enough as it was.

"This way," she said, and turned toward the entrance to the tunnel that led back to the ledge. Stepping through it first, she walked confidently through the tunnel to the opening, and moved out of Yahiko's way so he could exit to the ledge. This was a good sign. She'd turned her back to him; that showed that she trusted him not to attack her.

He bent his head a little to avoid knocking it on the rock above, and stepped out into the cool night air. He was just turning to thank her when an explosion of pain ripped through his chest.

She was behind him, her knife imbedded in his back, her other arm reaching under his to pull his chest toward her so his back was flush against her, enabling her to shove the knife in further.

In the midst of all that pain, he felt her eyelashes against his cheek as his head lolled back in shock, touching hers in a parody of a lover's embrace.

"Why?" Yahiko choked out.

"Because you are a monster, like me." She whispered, then shoved him forward off the cliff, and he was falling and falling for what seemed like forever, until he landed with a crash of pain and shattered bones on the rocks below.