Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin characters.
Thanks to Lolopopoki, Nekotsuki, and Iknownot for reviewing my story.
CHAPTER NINE
Sano followed Battousai into the mansion. Who was he kidding? Maybe he could help Battousai? That was funny. The vampire making his way quickly but cautiously through the first floor rooms was a legendary assassin. He was the one you called when one of the vampires in your territory started running amok. He's the one you called when you had to get rid of monsters. And yes, there were other things that went bump in the night besides vampires.
Sano had even heard rumors that human governments had called upon Battousai to take out leaders of terrorist cells. The only job Battousai wouldn't take were ones involving innocent human lives, or ones from vampires he didn't like or trust. That he'd accepted Sagara's job offer at all was a huge honor for the captain.
A reluctant grin crossed Sano's face. He should be happy Battousai was even letting him tag along. He'd known of the man by reputation when both were still human, and had met him once in Japan. Sano learned from some criminal associates that a human named Jineh was after Battousai, hungry to kill him and enhance his own reputation.
Sagara sent him to tell Battousai that Jineh was after him, and that Jineh had a reputation for using hostages in order to get to his prey. That really steamed Sano. He would never stoop so low as to use hostages to get to someone.
When he finally managed to track down Battousai, he found that the vampire already knew about Jineh. Embarrassed, Sano left abruptly after blurting out his information. A night later, Battousai tracked him down, and thanked him. Sano protested that he hadn't actually done anything, but if he ever could in the future, he'd do it. He hadn't expected Battousai to take him up on the offer, but that's how he'd got saddled with Yahiko. The brat was obnoxious, proud, and always out to prove himself around the older vampires. He reminded Sano of himself.
Battousai made his way to the kitchen. Sano's senses weren't as alert as the assassin's, but he could sense a human below.
The redhead stopped at a large island worktable in the center of the room, and glanced left. Sano followed his line of sight past two large stainless steel refrigerators and a wine rack to a door painted to look like more cabinets. From the handle hung a padlock, twisted open.
Battousai moved over to it, removed the padlock and pulled the door open. Beyond the doorway were steps leading down to the basement. Battousai moved his right arm across his body and let his right hand hover over the hilt of his sword, ready to pull it out and strike. He glanced over at Sano, nodded, and started down the stairs.
Sano followed, stepping carefully where Battousai's feet had landed. Not one step squeaked. At the bottom of the staircase they found themselves in a gym with a linoleum floor and weight equipment positioned across it. At the far end of the room was a widescreen TV and an open space with mats laid out before it.
The room was deserted. Why lock up a weight room? Unless you didn't want the staff using it. Sano shrugged to himself. Rich people were weird.
He was ready to turn around and see if there wasn't another basement under the next wing, when Battousai started moving again, drifting soundlessly to the far wall. Against it were the more common basement sorts of implements. An old coal furnace, dusty and disused, sat next to a modern electric one. Tanks, huge ones for storing hot water, stood up like columns supporting a temple roof. Between two of the tanks was a thin crack of light between the wall and the floor. It was a door.
Inhaling, Sano caught the smell of blood and human mixed together, along with other scents common to basements.
Battousai was already at the door, the fingers of his left and right hands seeking around the edges for a clasp, but there was nothing. He stepped back and looked again. Sano did too, but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the cracked plaster by the hidden door. There was nothing that remotely resembled a doorknob.
Suddenly Battousai dropped to his knees and reached behind one of the tubular water tanks and pulled on a lever identical to the one in front that regulated water temperature.
The door swung ajar, creating a thin rectangle of light on the floor. Battousai shrank against the water tank, placing his hand over his hilt again, and used his left hand to push the door further open.
It was like walking into a space-aged spa, or a very stylish hair salon. The floor was marble. In the center was a circular depression with four steps leading down it into water. Under the water the floor of the small indoor pool was imbedded with tiny bits of tile in plaster, the colored bits making up cherubs and cloud patterns. Sano had seen pictures of things like that in archeological magazines. It was a roman style sunken bath.
Directly to their left was a wall with hooks for towels. The wall rose to the ceiling for a few feet, then dipped down into a three quarters high partition, which ended before reaching the far wall.
Directly to their right by the door was a huge freezer, and along the far right hand side wall was a massage chair straight out of a Sharper Image catalog. A glassed in cabinet sporting various oils, lotions, and what looked like a jar of mud was just beyond the massage chair, and beyond that was a set of marble steps leading up to…Sano tried to remember the layout of the mansion and guessed it was the garage.
Sano gaped for a second, then noticed where Battousai's eyes were, at the shorter part of the wall to their left. Across from where the wall ended was a huge plastic tube with a curved rectangular hatch running down the side. It was translucent, and there was a long bed-like table on the inside.
From behind the left hand wall came noises, and the smell of blood.
Battousai moved over and crept slowly, relentlessly forward past the towels hanging down like shrouds from the hooks in the wall. Sano followed as the redhead came to the end of the shorter wall and rounded it, stopping between the wall's ending point and the tube-like structure against the far wall.
What Sano saw when he came out from behind the wall was like something out of a horror film.
The first thing that he noticed was the starkness of the scene. Everything was white. Alabaster hued linoleum covered countertops and floor. The man standing at the countertop picking at various items of clothing was wearing a white painter's body suit, which covered him loosely from neck to plastic wrapped feet. On his head was a white painter's cap, with some brown stains spattered across it.
At the far wall, which lay flush against the ones with the water tanks in the gym room was another sort of tank, made out of white ceramic, like a bathtub. Above it, strung up like a slaughtered deer by its hooves, hung a human body, a woman's body. The edges of the bathtub-like tank were too high to see over, but Sano could hear the slow drip of the blood splashing into the liquid in the tank below it.
The female body was naked, its throat slashed, and it had been draining for quite a while, judging by the pallor of the skin.
He should have been shocked, horrified. If he were still human he would be barfing his guts out by now, but all Sano felt was a kind of morbid fascination at the thought of the complete blood supply of one human body dripping into a tank.
He realized that his fangs were out, and glanced over at Battousai to see if he'd had the same reaction, but the redhead wasn't faced his way. Instead, his amber colored eyes were glinting fire at the human standing at the countertop sorting through clothes, a handgun on the counter directly in front of him.
With a start, Sano realized that another body lay under the countertop, wrapped in plastic next to a duffel bag.
"You'll turn around slowly," Battousai growled, his low menacing voice causing Sano's hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.
The human was no more immune to it than Sano. He started, and whipped around, the pink lacy slip he held in his hand waving like a flag of truce as he turned.
"What?" the human asked, startled.
He glanced at Battousai with a deer in the headlights look, then widened his eyes even more when he glanced over at Sano. Sano took the opportunity to smile his most predatory smile, revealing his fangs.
The human blanched. "V…v…vampires?" he asked. Then a weird look of calculation came into his grey-blue eyes. He dropped the slip. Sano felt his gaze follow it instinctively, even as he registered the fact that the man was moving his hand to the wall over the countertop and flicking a light switch.
Then things moved fast. Sano felt Battousai's arm around his waist, pulling him off his feet and backward. He felt the heels of his feet dragging along the floor and the impact of his back against the water as Battousai dropped him in the bath, and saw an explosion of light against the eyelids that closed automatically when he submerged under the water in the sunken tub.
Even though he no longer breathed, certain human instincts remained. As soon as Sano's back hit the tiled bottom of the tub, he popped to the surface and screamed. As soon as his forehead had cleared the edge of the tub, it seared. Sano plunged back down in the water, hurting and wondering what the hell just happened.
Sunlight burned him, but how? It wasn't anywhere near dawn yet.
Then it clicked.
The tube with the hatch. It was a tanning booth. When the human flicked the switch on the wall, it turned on. Sano thrashed underwater, his arms reaching out to find nothing. So Battousai escaped, shoving Sano into the bath to protect him on his way out of the room.
Sano stilled at the thought. Battousai was still out there. There was a chance of surviving this. He made himself sink like a stone and crouched underwater, his back against the side of the bath.
"Vampire? Hey! Vampire!" The man's voice was shaky but gleeful. "Didn't expect that, did you? Did you want some of my lovely blood? Well you can't have any. I need it all for a very special purpose."
"And what purpose might that be?"
Sano unclenched muscles he hadn't known he'd kept tense at the sound of Battousai's calm voice. From the sound of it, Battousai was in the gym, calling out through the open door. Though muffled by the water, Sano could make out the words.
"Wouldn't you like to know? I've got your friend trapped, you know. You can always just come and get him," he taunted. "No? I guess what they say about sunlight and vampires is true then." He giggled. "You and I have a lot in common."
There was a silence.
"Vampire?" the man's voice called out.
"Vampire?" he called again, this time impatiently. He allowed seconds to tick by then continued, his voice jeering, belligerent.
"All I have to do is wait until morning you know, and then you and your friend are both helpless. Maybe we can make a deal."
Sano heard the scrape of the man's shoes as he walked closer to the tanning booth. Why there? The sound of an opening hatch answered that question as the sunlight above the water got brighter instead of just being diffused through clear plastic. He winced and sunk lower in the water.
"You bring me humans, I drain them, and I give you any excess blood I don't need. How about that?"
Was this guy insane? Bargaining with a vampire like Battousai? Sano wondered what the guy was thinking.
"I do not bargain with murderers." came Battousai's voice coldly.
"It's in a good cause."
There was a rasp of metal, as if something were being pulled off the wall. Sano tried to think what was on the wall by the tanning booth. Kuso!
"Kenshin, it's a mirror!" he shouted, the words coming out distorted and indistinct through the water. The human planned to use a mirror to direct the artificial sunlight at the Battousai.
There was a clang from the gym area, the sound of a sheath hitting a metal tank, but no cry of pain.
"Aw damn," the human sounded as if he'd broken a fingernail. "I thought for sure I'd get you with that one. Oh well, I guess we'll just wait for morning. I've got all night." he finished smugly.
The lights flickered then went out. Sano shot up from the bath, but Battousai beat him to it. A shot was fired. He heard the thud of the bullet landing in the ceiling, then saw a red-headed blur of motion as the Battousai's sword swung, connecting with the gun and knocking it out of the human's hand.
Then the sword was at the human's throat, backing him against the wall.
"You will tell me, now, why it is you kill and take blood. You are no vampire."
The man gurgled in fear, incapable of speech with Battousai's eyes, yellow slits, inches from his own.
"Battousai." Sano noticed the man's hand, red from where the gun was knocked out of it, pointing at something on the countertop. Sano stepped over and moved aside a blue tee shirt to find a book.
The assassin glanced over. "What is it?"
"It's a book. The Biography of Countess Bathory" Sano read the title and wrinkled his brow. "A biography?"
Recognition flared in Battousai's eyes.
"Hey, Kenshin! I mean Battousai." Yahiko's voice preceded him into the room. I pulled the circuit breaker for the downstairs like you wanted me to. Did it work?"
"Yes, Yahiko. Thank you."
"Kenshin?" Sano repeated, bemused by what Yahiko called the Battousai.
Battousai blinked. "It is my human name. Not many know it."
"Oh," said Sano, not sure if he should apologize for having learned it, or swear that he'd forget it as soon as possible.
"Sorry Ken…Battousai." Yahiko apologized glumly.
For a second, violet replaced the angry amber glint in the redhead's eyes as he looked at Sano. "It's alright that Sanosuke knows my true name," he said. "Twice now he has given me valuable information."
Sano grinned. "Guess I have at that." So Battousai heard his strangled yell from underwater.
The assassin turned back to the human, who was still wheezing and sputtering in an attempt to not move his adam's apple against Kenshin's blade.
Yahiko took in the body, the tub, and the book in Sano's hand. "So what's going on here?"
"I believe that this man forces his sister to come down here and bathe in human blood in order to keep herself young and beautiful." Battousai said in a level tone. "The countess Bathory was a medieval madwoman who killed village maidens in order to bathe in their blood for the same purpose."
Sano dropped the book on the counter and grimaced at it in contempt. "What a crock. His poor sister, I bet he keeps her prisoner here and only lets her out to compete in pageants to show off his work."
The human stopped making gurgling noises, and started making other sounds.
Sano realized the man was laughing.
Battousai moved his blade a fraction away from the man's neck. The laughing became more pronounced. The human opened his eyes wide. "Me, force Melissa to do anything? You fools! This was her idea. All of it."
"Where is she?" Battousai growled low in his throat.
"Upstairs," spat the man. "Having her bath."
Sano and Yahiko both glanced over at the ceramic container with the steady drip of the corpse hanging above it. Sano stood up on his tip toes and glanced over the edge. There was only about three inches of blood at the bottom, and a drain he hadn't noticed before was pulling down at the level of liquid in the tub.
"Look." Yahiko pointed to a pipe leading from the bottom of the tub up the wall. "I bet that's how she does it. She pipes the blood upstairs."
Sano frowned. "Yeah, but why not have her bath in here?" he gestured to the sunken pool behind him.
"Because it's too big." Battousai said dully. "It would take too long to fill. Miss Tsubame probably barely even smelled the blood in the small tank down here. She must have smelled the blood upstairs in the bathtub."
Yahiko's eyes got big. "Tsubame! I left her alone." He raced out of the room.
Sano took a step after him, then glanced back at where Battousai kept the giggling man pinned against the wall.
"Go ahead, Sanusoke. Let me know what you find." By the sound of his voice, Battousai already knew what they'd find, and it wasn't good. Sano took off running.
Yahiko was already up the stairs and following the smell of blood to a bathroom on the second floor. By the time Sano followed, Yahiko was inside the bathroom, stopped dead just past the doorway.
There was Tsubame, her face, torso, and arms covered with blood, standing over a crimson filled bathtub, shaking.
Inside the bath, floating face down, was the body of a woman, her blonde curls half escaping from the plastic hairclip at the back of her head.
Tsubame lifted her gaze from the body in front of her and spoke.
"I did it. I killed her," she said, and then dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
