A.N: Includes hints of yaoi (if you don't know what it is…go fetch a dictionary or something…), I mean it, they are really there…consider yourselves warned. (Waits until there is only one reader left) Now, let the fluff begin! Muaha ha ha ha haaa!
Disclaimer: same as before….
-The contract-
Ayame woke up in a soft bed, wide enough for two to sleep, opened her eyes and gazed the beautiful room, with pale blue walls. There was a silvery night table with crystal decorations and a thick, soft, white, fluffy carpet, on the floor, near the bed. Rest of the floor was covered in different shades of icy blue floor tiles.
The windows were made of foggy glass, with little, surprisingly detailed, snowflake decorations on the upper side. The long drapes were finest white satin. The good sized dresser and the empty bookshelf were made of some transparent light blue glass. Everything in the room made you think about winter, snow and ice.
It wasn't overly luxurious like the dragon room had been, but it held a similarity. Both rooms had a theme and matching colours. The dragon room had been all gold red and dragons. This room was all pale blue, white and silver. And the theme was probably snowflakes and crystals, although there was natural size picture of long haired woman's face carved to the almost transparent glass door leading to her living room. The face had a calm expression even though a little smile curled it's transparent lips. Ayame had chosen her two room apartment, within the mansion, last night. She'd fell in love the first time she'd seen it. The bedroom was small and cosy, but most definitely the most beautiful Ayame had never had. And she had her own bathroom with a shower and a bath tub. The cold colours of the room made Ayame curl more tightly under the thick blankets.
"I could lie in bed whole day like this… maybe I could skip school….." Ayame murmured to herself as she heard a knock from the door.
"Ayame, you should get up now, if you wish to go to that school of yours." Emi's voice called from the door. "And you also need time for getting your own things here, and filling the contract is also something that takes time. And I hoped that I could show you at least the east wing and your co-workers in the morning."
Letting out a defeated sight Ayame slipped from the bed yawning widely. She had known that it had been too good to be true.
15 minutes later, she stepped to her living room fully dressed and ready to go. Emi stood in the middle of her living room waiting patiently. Somehow she seemed out of place in the middle of pale blue room with her now deep forest green dress and short, flaming red hair. The living room was decorated with the same snowflakes and crystals theme as the bedroom, but it was relatively empty.
There were only an empty white fire place, two tall windows that showed a view to a lake, beautifully carved white writing desk and a matching chair with the palest blue velvet covering and three silvery candlesticks for seven candles, standing on the floor almost as tall as Ayame.
Ayame wondered briefly how beautiful her room would be in the candle light, before asking: "Can I bring more furniture here? My bedroom is perfect as it is, but the living room… Don't get me wrong now, I really like it. It is just so…. empty." Ayame said with a nervous smile.
"Sure, as long as you don't mess with the theme of the room too radically. For example an orange sofa with fire pattern wouldn't fit here too well." Emi answered with a little amused smile and Ayame made a mental note to find drapes to the empty windows of living room and possibly a rug of some kind to put in front of the fireplace and maybe even armchair…
"This is the key to your rooms." Emi continued pulling Ayame from her thoughts and handing her a big old fashioned key with a snowflake decoration on the other end.
"Don't loose it. There are only two spare ones and one of them belongs to Tatsumaru, our butler, and he isn't all that understanding when it comes to loosing things."
"I won't. Can I ask you something stupid?"
"Sure, what do you want to know?" Emi asked a curious look in her large, green eyes.
"What do you do? I mean what's your job is in this house?" Ayame asked feeling both silly and a bit rude.
"Oh my, I must be getting old, forgetting good manners like that. Let me introduce myself. I am Emi Nakahara the keeper of the house and the head of maids." she said bowing politely.
"Pleased to meet you." Ayame answered with a similar bow "What does the 'keeper of the house' mean in reality?"
"That title means that I am responsible of the maids as well as other female employees of the house. I'm the one that makes sure that they do what they are supposed to do, that they get their rest, their food and their payment and if they are sick or there is an accident I make sure that they get to see the healer. I'm also the one who will be responsible if anything goes wrong, whether it's an injured servant or a broken window. So if you have problems of any kind, come to me and I will help you the best I can. My rooms are three doors left from your rooms, a black door with cat carvings, they are hard to miss." Emi explained patiently.
" I'm also one of those higher up servants. Only the master Gohda, Tatsumaru and possibly Rikimaru have the power to order me, and in certain situations I even overrule Tatsumaru and Rikimaru. Well that's all you need to know about me. Now we have to hurry." She said, probably wondering had she said too much, and glided to the hallway trough the plain white doors that separated Ayame's rooms from the rest of the vast mansion. Ayame followed right behind her.
They moved quickly trough the narrow, torch illuminated, hallways, making unexpected turns and opening doors just to find themselves in a similar looking hallways moving onward with increasing speed. When they finally stopped, Ayame had completely lost her sense of directions. The door ahead of them looked simpler than most of the doors, she had seen in this weird building, only her own plain white doors were simpler. These doors were painted grey and there were no carvings. Only decoration was the metallic knocker, shaped like wolfs head. As Emi used the knocker Ayame noticed a weird thing the other one of the knocker glass eyes was pitch black as the other one was white like newly fallen snow.
She didn't get chance to think about it any further as the door was opened by a man whose face seemed to be trapped to an eternal scowl. He probably wasn't much over thirty, but his expression made him seem at least ten years older. He was dressed in similar clothes that Ayame had seen Rikimaru wearing. It was probably some kind of uniform.
He had brown eyes and his look was cold as he glanced at Ayame. His long, black hair had been tied back to a ponytail revealing slightly pointed ears. He was tall and Ayame wasn't sure would she even reach his muscular shoulders. He held the same sense of danger as Rikimaru, but if Rikimaru made you think of a hidden weapon or lurking predator then this man would most certainly been revealed sword or attacking beast. The man made Ayame feel nervous.
"You are late" He hissed to Emi with a voice which made you think of sword being pulled from it's sheath. The lesser woman would have run away crying and apologizing, but Emi just gave man a look that made the Antarctica seem warm in comparison, and pushed past him moving even more gracefully than before.
The man ignored the look and moved inside giving Ayame enough space to walk in. The room was simple. There were very little furniture in the room, just a long, black table with 13 chairs one small window and a fire place.
Master of the house sat in his place, on the end of the table. As Ayame got closer she noticed how tired he seemed. His face was almost the same colour as the white sleeves of his haori, his dark eyes were bleary and his hands were shaking a little as he gestured Ayame to sit down.
Behind him stood Rikimaru, seeming, if possible, even gloomier than yesterday. The fire of candles on the table reflected from his golden eye, making it glow threateningly in the shady room. His ears were flat against his head in a manner that reminded Ayame of angry dogs. And as she sat on the other end of the table, she could have sworn that the heard a growling noise emitting from Rikimaru's throat.
"What is wrong with these people?" Ayame wondered looking from the stone faced, dark haired man who looked ready to commit murder, to Rikimaru, who seemed to be on the verge of tearing Ayame's throat open with his teeth, if she would even look at him in the wrong way.
The tension seemed to ease as Gohda greeted her: "Good morning, Miss Ikisaki. How are you this morning?" His voice was weak, hardly more than a whisper.
"I'm fine, thank you… Are you all right? You don't seem too well. " Ayame asked a worried tone in her voice.
"It seems that I have caught a little flu, nothing to worry about." He said in a weak voice and gave her a little reassuring smile. "Here is the contract." he continued handing Ayame an old parchment "Take your time reading it trough, this is not something to be made lightly."
He was obviously lying about his well being, because he almost dropped the parchment from his shaky hands to the wooden table as he was handing it over to Ayame.
"And it seems I'm getting clumsy as well." He said, letting out a small chuckle.
Ayame took the parchment and eyed the contract trough. Everything seemed to be in order. She nodded, took the old fashioned pen that the stone faced man was offering her and signed the contract.
"Now as a mark of our contract, please take this." Gohda said and gave Ayame a similar looking silver pendant that Rikimaru was wearing. "Think of it as a key or an identification system. Keep it always with you in a place where anyone can see it, so that my guards won't mistake you as an intruder. " He continued with a more serious tone.
"I will. Thank you." Ayame said inspecting the pendant closer. There was something carved on it's silvery surface, but she couldn't tell what it was. Shrugging her shoulders she tried it on, the chain was a bit too long for Ayame's liking, as the pendant hung between her breasts, but it was a small price to pay for free food and a nice apartment.
"I won't take anymore of your time. I'm sure that Emi can explain you the rules of the house and give you a quick tour around the mansion." Master Gohda said smiling
A moment later Emi leaded Ayame from the room to the hallway.
As the door shut behind the pair the smile vanished from Gohda's lips, and he turned his attention to his gloomy butler.
"Tatsumaru, make sure that everyone in the east wing stay in their human form today. I don't want to scare the girl, it's better for her to find out the truth in her own pace." His voice held a tone that left no room for arguments.
"Yes, sir." Tatsumaru answered bowing deep before Gohda. With a smooth motion he straightened his back and left the room.
Rikimaru's ears twitched angrily as he remained silent for awhile to make sure that his half brother was out of hearing distance. He wasn't going to embarrass his master by letting Tatsumaru hear, how he told the god damn ignorant punk, he had sworn to serve, exactly what he thought of this madness.
"What were you thinking? She is a mortal, a human for god's sake. She shouldn't even be in this mansion, and you hired her! And what are you doing here any way, have you lost your mind completely? You are badly injured! You shouldn't even be out of your bed yet, let alone keeping meetings, that Emi or Tatsumaru or even I could have handled!" Rikimaru said raising his voice with each word.
He would have continued expressing his feelings even louder, clearer and with more colourful verbal set, but he was interrupted as the master of the house tried to stand up just fell to the floor with audible thud, as his legs betrayed him. He was clutching his side with his hands and Rikimaru could see growing red stain on the green fabric of his haori.
Rikimaru was quickly on his master's side. Despite the way Rikimaru was always criticizing Gohda's decisions, he cared deeply of his young master.
"Why does he never listen to me?" Rikimaru thought studying his master worriedly. Gohda's face was twisted to tortured grimace, and he panted with short, sharp gasps. There were drops of sweat running along his pained, colourless face. Gently Rikimaru moved Gohda's cold, shaky hands from the wound getting better access to inspect the damage. The wound on his side had opened again, apparently the healer Tesshu hadn't got all of the poison out. He must have looked at least half as worried as he felt, because his master forced a little reassuring smile on his pale lips.
"I'm fine Rikimaru, just help me up." Gohda said with almost inaudible voice, trying to calm his bodyguard.
"No you are not! And who gave you the permission to act like I'm a scared little kid, worrying over nothing." Rikimaru fumed mentally.
Rikimaru helped Gohda up from the floor. His master stood there leaning heavily on Rikimaru. Then he took a deep breath and straightened up, wincing visibly.
"See, I'm alright. I can walk to Healer Tesshu's chambers by my self. Besides it would look ridiculous if I leaned on you with each step, like an old man." The master of the house joked, in a weak voice. He had managed to take few wobbly steps towards the door, before he lost consciousness and fell.
Luckily for him Rikimaru was close enough to catch him before he hit the floor. Holding the limp body of his master in his arms Rikimaru shook his head in disbelief, before shifting his master in to a better position in his arms. He could feel how cold Gohda was, even trough the multiple layers of clothing. He needed to get to the healer, and fast. Kicking the grey door open Rikimaru sprinted to the hallway with inhuman speed.
"If you survive this alive, I'm going tie you to bed for a month!" Rikimaru promised to himself.
As Emi ended her quick tour on the east wing of the house Ayame asked: "Who was that tall man in the meeting?"
"He is the butler of the house Tatsumaru. He is an insensitive brick if you ask me, but you can't find a better butler anywhere. And before you ask, that was his normal expression." Emi answered with unusual edge in her voice.
"So he is normally as pissed as Rikimaru?" Ayame asked astonished. "Does anyone beside you and master Gohda smile in this house?" Ayame joked.
"Where on earth, did you get that impression?" Emi wondered "Rikimaru is one of the sweetest kids I've ever met. He is actually quite a story teller, once he made me laugh for hours. He just gets grumpy, when he's worried or stressed."
"Really? Wow, I must have seen on his worst days, since I could have sworn that he growled at me as I sat down."
"Our master hadn't been this sick ever before, and Rikimaru tends to overreact when it gets to Master Gohda's safety. He takes his job a little too seriously." Emi sighed and lead her to the front doors. "When you get back, here continue this hallway until you find a big white pair doors with, green butterfly decorations. It's the library; either I or one of my underlings will be waiting for you there." Emi said pushing the big black doors open with ease.
"Green butterflies, ok…Well, I'll be off now. Have a nice day." Ayame said, stepping out of the door to the stoned road of the front yard. The Yard looked equally scary in daylight as it had been in moonlight, gravestones and mausoleums standing in each sides of the road.
"Nice day to you too, and remember to return before sun set." Emi shouted after her as Ayame hurried towards the school.
Tesshu had removed the last of the arrow's poison from of Gohda's system, and he wasn't in an immediate danger anymore. But he was tired and his body needed time to heal the damage that the strong venom had inflicted on him. To put it simply: he needed rest.
Tesshu had allowed Rikimaru to move master Gohda to his chambers. And now Rikimaru was sitting on the edge of Gohda's wide bed, in his surprisingly simple bedroom, keeping an eye on the younger man. Ready to tie him to the bed by force, in case that he wakes up, and decides to do something stupid again. Gohda seemed better already, his face had gained more colour, even though he was still paler than usually, and he had stopped sweating. He was also warmer, Rikimaru noted as he felt Gohda's forehead. Only thing that worried him was the fact that Gohda was still unconscious.
"Why do you always have to push yourself to the limit, Matsunoshin?" Rikimaru wondered watching his unconscious master's chest rise and fall, in a steady rhythm of his breathing. The younger man had really scared him this time. He had been closer to the gates death than ever before, and Rikimaru made a promise that he wouldn't let his master wander as close of them ever again.
"It's not like you hadn't proven yourself to be worthy of the title countless times. He continued, bending over Gohda to position the blankets more tightly around his slender body.
You don't have to be invincible all the time, let yourself be weak every now and then. I'm here to protect you now, and always." He promised mentally, a tender smile curling his lips and softening his features, as he unconsciously took his master's hand to his own.
It was already dark as Ayame left her apartment, in a filthy apartment building. She had only one sport bag with her; it contained all of her earthly possessions, much of it being school books. She had paid her last months rent to the greasy, middle aged man that called himself her landlord.
Packing had taken much more time that she had intended, since the janitor had changed the lock to her apartment earlier that day, and had been too drunk to stand at the time Ayame got back from school. He hadn't recognized her and thus refused to give her the keys to her room to pack her things. It had taken over an hour of begging until he had graciously given her the keys to her neighbour's apartment.
All in all it had taken three hours to find the right key and pack her things. And Ayame was starting to get a nasty premonition that her problems for today had just begun.
"No, don't think about it. Think about happy things…You have a nice big two room apartment in a nice big old, historical mansion. You are going to get a big salary that you can spend on anything you want, since you get free food and don't have to pay rent anymore." She thought trying to cheer herself up.
"Think how much sweets and clothes you can buy with the money. And you can take a hot bath whenever you want." She continued on an on, until she could see the forest before her.
The premonition hadn't been erased completely, but she was feeling a whole lot of better as she stepped to the dark forest. She was wearing jeans and a long, black jacket. The skirt of her school uniform was too long to be wandering in a forest, dirt road or not.
The forest didn't seem as threatening in the moonlight that she had expected it to see. Or that's what she thought until se saw someone walking ahead of her. It was dark so she could only see an unclear shadowy figure of a man, some distance ahead of her. There was something weird about the traveller. He was moving with an oddly stiff, jerking motion. It was like he would have problems to move his limbs properly.
Suddenly the shape of a man stopped moving and looked to his right, head slightly raised, like he would have smelled something in the air. To Ayame's relief he stopped it quickly and started to jerk forward, facing the direction he was moving. He hadn't took more than a few steps before he made something that no mortal human could do: he turned raised his chin until it was high in the air and he was facing backwards his head hanging on his back, upside down. It opened it's mouth to speak:
"A fleshling girl!" It croaked with a voice of breaking bones, watching Ayame with pair of glowing white eyes.
Ayame, who had never shrieked in her life, let out a high pitched shriek, and turned around to escape, but somehow the creature was already behind her. It was so close that Ayame saw it's dead, grey skin and smelled the rotting meat of it's body.
The creature reached for Ayame with it's long claws. Ayame felt a sharp pain on her right arm as the razor sharp claws cut her skin, like it would have been butter. She tried to defend herself by throwing a sharp kick towards the creature's stomach, but her leg went harmlessly trough the creature, like it would have been made of air itself.
Loosing her balance, Ayame fell to the ground. The creature didn't spent any time, before it was clawing her body, slicing deep wounds to her body with every strike.
Ayame didn't know exactly what happened, but suddenly she was back on her feet limping towards the lights of mansion as fast as she could. She was bleeding and aching all over, and was quite sure that her left hand was broken, but she couldn't stop. Glancing around, she could see that the creature was following right behind her and it had gotten company.
"Only a little longer and you are safe…Only a little longer…" Ayame thought beating herself to run even faster.
She was almost inside the manor's sturdy gates before, one of the creature got a grip on her left ankle. Ayame could feel the sharp claws digging deep in to her leg and pulling her further away from safety.
"NO! … I'm so close!" She cried, struggling towards the mansion and for some reason the creature's grip loosened enough for Ayame to pull her injured leg free. She was practically blinded by pain and tears burning in her eyes as she kept limping forward, them she saw a wooden door and dashed towards it.
Ayame hauled the door open with her healthy hand and limped inside. She understood her mistake too late as she stepped into one of the mausoleums, in the mansion's front yard.
She was still running, as she tripped to something solid and fell towards an old full body mirror that lay on the floor, abandoned. She could just raise her hands to protect her head and close her eyes, as she fell on the mirrors surface …and trough it.
As Ayame opened her eyes a moment later she found herself on the stone floor of what seemed to be a dungeon. With a tear blurred vision She studied her surroundings. The small room was covered in large, grey stone bricks from the ceiling to the floor. In the darkest corner of the dungeon she saw something chained to a stone wall, with massive amount of sturdy chains.
Crawling closer she saw, what it was: a mummified human corpse that had probably sat there back against the wall for centuries. It's mouth was opened to a mute scream. Who ever it had once been had died in this room all alone, no one hearing his screams.
"Just like I'm going to . . ."
That thought, broke what was left of Ayame's self control. Her feet betrayed below her. She curled next to the mummy, in her ripped, blood soaked clothes, bleeding red pool of blood to the cold, stone floor. Violent sobs shook her petite form as she nursed her broken arm.
"Please… someone… anyone? Please… help me…I'll give… anything….please? … I don't want…to die…" She begged, sobbing silently.
From her tears Ayame couldn't see, how her blood stopped gathering to pools around her, but flowed towards the mummy like some unknown force would have drawn it closer to it. First it seemed that the mummy was just gathering her blood around it self, but then the blood started to absorb to the corpse, making it look less mummified with each drop.
After the corpse had consumed all the blood she had bled to the floor, it was looking like a pale man, in his early thirties, instead of centuries old mummy. The man had longish, raven black hair that reached little over his broad shoulders. Then the body shifted a little, opening it's glowing red eyes to study the sobbing creature, that had curled next to it.
"Will you give me your blood as a payment?" The man asked in a deep voice that hadn't been heard for centuries. The voice made Ayame raise her head from her hands to look for the source of the voice. As her brown eyes met his glowing red ones, her self protection instinct kicked in, making her dash towards the other end of the room… but he was faster. Quickly, he snaked his chained arm around Ayame, and pulled her towards him. Despite of her injuries Ayame fought back ferociously, but the stranger was stronger and she was pulled to the back of the dungeon.
-The end of chapter 2-
A.N : I think I might have managed to write an almost cliff-hanger… I'm so proud of my self…I usually write only parodies...