Blood Ties

by SailorMoonV

A letter from D's past returns the dark memories to thepresent, forcing him to remember the ordeal of being a prisoner in the hands of a pair of dunpeal sisters....

2. Chains of Pain

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust "Blood Ties"

by Troy A. Stanton note: This fanfic follows the events of the original stories "Winds of Change" and "Final Hours" (both written by me), and also incorporates a few elements from the story "Drawing Blood" by Catherine B. Krusberg. I have her permission to make use of her work as a source of material, so anything 'new' you see in here about D's past with Doris that didn't happen in the movie is most likely her original plot material.)

WARNING: This story contains graphic violence and adult content, please do not read beyond this point if you are easily offended by such things.

((Chapter Two - Chains of Pain))

She had remained motionless in the shadows for hours now, not wanting to run even the slightest risk of having her movements betray her. The sun was brushing the edges of the horizon, slowly bringing the long summer day to what appeared to be an uneventful close. And it was that very same lack of activity during the day that bothered her greatly. She knew that only a fool would try to attack the castle during the night when Baron Winters was at the height of his power, which meant that any such attack would be made during the day. And she knew, she knew that such an attack was coming today. So why hadn't it started yet?

A faint beep suddenly registered in her ears, the distinctive sound of the outermost tripwire sensor being set off on the lone road leading away from the vampire's castle perched on the edge of a truly epic canyon. The lay of the land was such that the only way to approach the castle was via a very dusty and twisted road from the east. A stone archway had been built over the road on the outskirts of the castle domain, serving as both a gateway and a watchtower. The terrain between the archway and the castle was heavily mined, making it an almost guaranteed death-sentence to try to traverse unless you did so slowly and kept to the very center of the road, thus becoming a fairly easy target.

A second beep soon followed the first, indicating that the second sensor had just been tripped. The timing between the two of them indicated how fast the target was moving, and having them go off so close together could only mean there was a fast-moving horse on the road heading towards her position.

So close to nightfall, she thought to herself as she darted towards the open crack in the stone masonry that overlooked the road. The slender shape of her rail-gun was scooped up in an instant, her fingers reflexively slipping the safety off as she started to charge the capacitors. She normally would have used a crossbow for something like this, but given the extreme tension of the situation she thought it was best to use the most powerful weapon she could to make absolutely sure that one shot would do the job. She had heard about him, of course, so she knew that the odds were slim she would be allowed to get a second shot off if things went awry.

The rail-gun beeped quietly to itself to indicate it was fully charged a bare instant before the third tripwire went off, warning her that her target was approaching the ridge in the distance. It was her intention to take the shot as soon as she could after he crested that ridge, knowing that it would take even a galloping horse a full five seconds to traverse the distance and duck under the archway where she couldn't shoot.

She braced the rifle against her shoulder and laid her cheek against the cold metal stock, closing her left eye as she peered through the target-scope with her right eye. Her quarry came into view an instant later, a dark figure riding a dark horse at a thunderous pace towards the castle. Took you long enough, she thought to herself as she exhaled and centered the cross-hairs on the figure's chest.

The pressure of her fingertip against the trigger had barely started to increase when the rider suddenly jerked hard on the reins, causing the mount to rear up and momentarily spoil the shot. That didn't bother her at all, as she knew she only had to wait that extra half-second for the horse to drop back to all fours before she could shoot again. The mount did precisely that, and she once again took a brief moment to make sure she was centered properly before starting to squeeze the trigger again.

Much to her surprise, the figure reached up and made a fierce grabbing motion, pulling apart the dark tunic. The sight of at least two buttons being popped was a minor distraction, given the way they twinkled slightly in the light of the sun as they spun through the air, but what was impossible to miss was the way the parted tunic left a pair of feminine breasts prominently bared and tinted bronze by the setting sun. The realization slammed into her mind a moment later, knowing that the target she expected was very much a man and that the bare chest she had been a quarter-second away from blowing a hole through thus most likely belonged to her older sister.

"You stupid bitch," she muttered to herself as she took her finger off of the trigger and slipped the safety back on, still peering out through the scope to try to make out any recognizable details. A truly heavy sigh rose up from her chest as the rider snapped the reins and started to charge forward again, her face quickly resolving into a familiar visage once she got close enough.

She grumbled quietly as she stepped back from the sniper niche and sat down, absently resting her rifle against her shoulder. The sound of thundering hooves reached her ears a moment later, reaching a powerful crescendo before audibly skidding to an abrupt halt. The wooden sounds that followed meant that the horse was being put into a hidden underground stable so that nobody would immediately be able to tell that the archway was currently populated.

The small access hatch at the far end of the archway's parapet seemed to explode upward as it was thrown open with a tremendous force, allowing the dark rider to scramble up onto the top of the archway. She hadn't bothered to try to close her tunic, letting her pert breasts swing freely in the warm evening air. "We've got a problem," she said without preamble as she darted halfway across the parapet, pausing only to scoop up a pair of binoculars and training them west towards both the castle and the setting sun.

"Nice one, sis," the sniper growled, causing the other woman to pause and glance over her shoulder at her. "You hauled ass across the road all dressed in black, and on a dark horse to boot. If you hadn't pulled your shirt open like that when you did, I'd have blown you halfway back to the village."

The older woman glanced down at her half-ruined tunic and sighed softly. "Yes, that just occurred to me when I rounded the bend. The horse was the only one I could find that was already saddled, but I'll take the blame for picking out the blouse this morning." She paused and looked back up as she refocused on the situation at hand. "Pearl, I think he got past us," she confessed as a weary look crossed her features.

"What?" Pearl said as she shot to her feet, her eyes widening. "You have to be joking, I've been out here all day and the sensors haven't picked up so much as a tumbleweed," she protested. "There's no way he came by here!"

The other woman sighed quietly and turned back towards the castle and looked through the binoculars again, trying to see if she could spot anything out of the ordinary. "He left his horse in the village," she said quietly. "And I spoke with three people who swore to me that they saw him themselves. He's here somewhere. He has to be," she added softly, almost too softly for her sister to hear.

"Coral, listen to me," Pearl said urgently as she gestured to the display panel imbedded in the wall. "This thing hasn't chirped once so far, and I've tested it twice. Here, watch," she added as she raised her rail-gun up to her shoulder and flipped the safety off.

Coral remained impassive as the trigger was pulled, resulting in a sharp twang of energy as a slender needle-like projectile was spat out from the end of the rifle at a truly unholy velocity. The air made a very distinct humming sound as the hyper-sonic projectile tunneled through it, moving faster than either dunpeal could follow as it traversed the full length of the minefield and sailed into the canyon on the other side. A series of strident chirps immediately started up as the network of motion-sensors was set off, drawing a line on the map that traced the precise trajectory the projectile had taken through the minefield.

"See?" Pearl said in a faintly edged tone as she silenced the alarms and reset the various sensors.

"So he didn't pass through the minefield," Coral countered gently as she cast a level look at her sister. She paused and shivered lightly as the wind gusted for a brief moment, teasing her exposed nipples with what to her felt like a warm caress. "Oooh, that was nice," she purred quietly before shaking her head to refocus again.

"Sis?" Pearl spoke up with a faint sigh. "There's no other way into the castle. Unless you want to try scaling the edges of the canyon, but he'd be a sitting duck and then some. Especially in broad daylight," she added darkly.

Coral shook her head gently. "No, he wouldn't bother with the canyons. However, he might have given the crypts in the village a try," she sighed as she continued to peer through the binoculars.

"The crypts don't go through to the castle," Pearl pointed out. "Father himself spent a century probing every single crack and corner in there. Okay, so they go pretty deep underground, but they don't go that deep or extend anywhere close to as far as they'd need to go to reach the castle catacombs."

The elder dunpeal sighed quietly and turned around to face her sister, absently leaning back against the edge of the parapet. "What if something was overlooked?" she said in a carefully modulated voice, trying to sound calm and reasonable without upsetting the other woman. "This is D we're talking about here, who knows what sort of secrets he knows? Remember, Father didn't build this castle, some other noble did quite some time ago and a lot of the really old ones have all sorts of secrets and surprises built into them. Like the room behind the fireplace in the den, for instance. Surely you remember how we... Eh?" she said as a low sound brushed the edges of her vampiric hearing, causing her to cock her head at an angle.

"Sis?" Pearl said in a quiet voice as her face became dangerously pale. "I heard it too. That... that sounded like it came from the castle."

Coral immediately turned around and held the binoculars up to her eyes, a frown forming across her face as she saw a faint plume rising up from one of the western towers. "A gunshot, perhaps?" she said absently. She blinked as she saw another plume waft up, a second soft boom reaching her ears after a brief delay. "No..." she said, her voice perfectly flat with disbelief.

"Sis?" Pearl prodded in a faintly wavering tone.

More dust plumes began to rise up from the castle towers, accompanied by a series of percussive booms that weren't powerful enough to shake the land yet were still strong enough to be clearly heard. "You've got to be kidding me" Coral moaned quietly in resignation as she lowered the binoculars, knowing what the vibrations meant. She cast a sidelong glance out of the corner of her eye as she felt a hand touch her elbow, seeming to be shaking slightly.

"Coral?" Pearl said quietly, her voice now openly trembling. "Why is the castle shaking like that?"

"Sometimes I hate being right," the elder dunpeal said softly, closing her pale yellow eyes as more plumes of dust began to rise up from the castle. The ancient edifice was soon obscured by the rising wall of dust and dirt, but the sound of creaking and crumbling stone could still be clearly heard.

"Oh, god," Pearl whimpered as a single tear formed in her aqua-blue eyes. "Sis... Father's dead, isn't he? That's why the castle is falling apart, it's because we failed and the hunter got him, isn't it?"

"You're a crafty bastard, D, I'll give you that," Coral murmured softly to herself as she continued to listen to the sounds coming from the castle in the distance. "Okay, so Father wasn't much of a warrior and was too proud for his own good, but still. Rest in peace, Father. Wait," she said as she opened her eyes and lifted her head up, glancing over at Pearl. "That means the title is my problem now, right? Baroness Winters now, am I? That might actually be a good thing, now that I stop and think about it... HEY! she yelped as she was forced to avoid a vicious punch that would otherwise have slammed into her jaw and likely knocked her completely off of the parapet. "Pearl!"

"How dare you say such a thing!" Pearl raged, her vampiric fangs bared and her eyes almost literally glowing a cherry red color. "He just murdered our father, and all you can say is that it's a good thing?"

"Pearl, listen to me for a moment," Coral said in a soothing voice. "I'm just as upset as you are over Father's death, but let's be practical about it. Yes, the castle is falling apart because he's dead, and yes, D is likely to blame for it. Now here's what I meant... if I'm the Baroness now, it means that he'll be coming for me next. You still with me?" she prodded carefully.

It took Pearl a few moments to get her rage back under control, her eyes still glowing like burning coals. "And having him hunt us down one by one is a good thing?" she snarled, seeming to still be struggling with her temper.

Coral made a dismissive gesture. "Please, of course not. However, if we do this right we can have a really, really nice welcome planned for him when he comes for me. Look, we both tried to warn Father that D was in the area, but he blew us off and look what happened," she added, making an absent gesture to the billowing cloud off in the distance.

Pearl reflexively glanced towards the source of the constant rumbles and booms of collapsing stone, her temper coming dangerously close to the breaking point once again. "He's dead," she snarled quietly to herself. "I'll rip him open with my bare hands if I have to, but I will feast on the blood in his veins before bathing in what's left of his life-force..."

"Now, now, let's not be hasty," Coral spoke up in a somewhat light tone, drawing another dark look from her younger sister. "Bathing in blood is such a waste, and we both know what happened with Carmilla. Besides, you don't want to kill him right away, Pearl. No, you want to watch him suffer for quite some time," she purred in a suggestive tone. "Just imagine staring into his eyes as he is oh-so-slowly broken on our little rack, drinking in his pain with every little fun game that you get to play with him..."

"Sis, don't do that," Pearl growled flatly, absently reaching down to rub the back of her left hand. She knew it tended to ache whenever her sister's voice took on that honeyed echo, but the reason for just why it did so eluded her. Her hand was perfectly fine, but she knew an accident long ago had seared away part of the back of Coral's left hand, forcing her to replace it with a flexible metal plate of some unknown origin. While her elder sibling usually wore gloves to conceal the implant, such as the riding gloves she had on, it was not an unknown for her to show it off for one reason or another. Pearl had long suspected that the tendency for her own hand to itch and throb gently was a side-effect of some sort of charming influence, but she saw no reason to ever try to discuss it. Besides, Coral really did have some of the greatest ideas whenever inspiration struck her...

"Look, I've got an idea, but it'll need some work first," Coral said in a neutral tone. "However, we have to capture him alive."

"Good luck," Pearl growled, turning her head to spit over the edge of the parapet. "Tell you what, if you get to him before I do, subdue him any way you want. If you can," she added in a warning tone. "If I find him? He's dead."

"Fine," Coral sighed quietly as she reached up to gingerly massage the bridge of her nose. She paused as a new sound reached her ears, a distinctly heavy sound of metal rasping against metal that seemed oddly familiar. "Hey, was that the portcullis being opened?" she asked the open air as she turned her attention back to the cloud of dust.

"What?" Pearl gasped as she whirled around to look west as well.

Coral blinked as she thought she glimpsed motion within the veil of dust, quickly raising the binoculars to let her focus a little more closely. She saw nothing at first and was about to chalk the sound up to the collapsing of the front entrance when a carriage suddenly emerged from the cloud.

"Sis!" Pearl yelped.

"I see it," Coral replied in a low tone as she tried to zoom closer. The edges of her mouth tugged down in a sharp frown as she made out the blonde face of one of her father's slaves holding the reins, a defiant and feisty woman by the name of Celene. Both Coral and Pearl had suspected her of being the leader or at least the driving force behind a series of very subtle acts of rebellion against their father's rule, but so far nothing had been conclusively proven. The situation was made harder by the Baron himself, as he was interested in 'charming' the woman without having to use any of his vampiric powers as a sort of test of his 'prowess' and hence paid very scant attention to his daughters' words of warning about the blonde human.

Well, so much for his experiment, Coral thought to herself as she tracked the motion of the carriage. A series of blurred shadows could be seen in the curtained windows, suggesting that more slaves were riding inside the carriage on what they thought was their way to freedom. "Think they'll be able to make it past the minefield without killing themselves?" she wondered aloud.

"Even if they do," Pearl replied in a chilling tone, "They won't get past me. Think a single salvo will be enough?" she inquired as she leaned her rail-gun against the wall and moved to pick up her crossbow.

Coral paused to watch out of the corner of her eye as Pearl opened up a small box, picking out a pair of bulbous attachments that could be fitted over the tip of a crossbow bolt. "I'd aim for the back axle first, myself," she replied indifferently as she returned her focus to the carriage. "You'd need a second shot for the driver, but I think you'd want to take it anyway. It's Celene holding the reins, by the way."

"Oh?" Pearl said, pausing briefly before carefully screwing the explosive tip into place and loading her crossbow. "You're right. Two will be enough, one for the axle and the second one just for her."

"Tsk tsk," the elder dunpeal murmured to herself. "You're a vindictive one, Pearl, you know that? Wait," she suddenly said in a sharp tone as she saw a second horse emerge from the cloud of dust that continued to billow up from the collapsing castle. She stared at the dark rider intently before it finally sank into her mind. "It's him," she whispered in awe.

"Eh?" the other woman said, still focused on tipping the other bolt with the explosive warhead.

"D," Coral said simply as she lowered her binoculars, still staring at the carriage as it began a cautious turn to the right to remain perfectly centered on the road. "He's following the carriage out. Pearl... hold on for a few, okay? They're coming this way, but they're taking their time in doing so. I think we've got a few moments to think about what to do before they get here."

"Coral?" Pearl said very slowly, her voice clearly filled with unease. "Don't be stupid. D's deadly, we both know that. There's no way we can take him on, even if it's two against one. I say just shoot him now and be done with it. That way we can both get stinking drunk and spend the rest of the night pissing on his corpse without needing to worry ever again about waking up one evening to find the tip of his sword hovering over us and ready to gut us from crotch to gizzard."

"Oh, I don't know," Coral murmured very softly to herself as an odd smile touched her lips, reaching up to lightly brush a fingertip over her exposed nipple. "I wouldn't mind having the tip of his... sword hovering over my crotch..."

Pearl blinked as she caught the sound of her sister's voice but couldn't make out the words. "What was that?" she inquired in an uneasy tone.

The other dunpeal remained silent as she stared at the approaching horse-drawn carriage and the lone rider following behind it. They were making a turn to the left now, and she figured that they had perhaps another thirty seconds to go before they would be on the straight portion of the road and essentially free of the minefield. Her right hand came up to absently tap the back of her left wrist, her fingertips dancing back and forth almost as if she were idly playing a piano as she thought.

"Pearl, we can do this," she suddenly spoke up as she made a decision.

"Do what?" Pearl replied with open wariness.

"Capture D alive. Or at least try to," Coral amended with a shrug before she turned to her sister, reaching out to grab her by the collar so she knew she had her full attention. "Listen carefully," she said in a low tone, her pale yellow eyes taking on a faint gold luminescence. "You focus on dealing with that bitch Celene and the others, D is mine. Do NOT shoot at him unless he gets past me, is that clear?"

"Your funeral, sis," Pearl muttered with a soft snarl.

A knowing smirk crossed Coral's face. "Trust me, little sister," she said in a faint purr, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek before letting go and turning around to the sensor control panel. "Okay, keep low," she said as she lowered her voice and crouched down. "Soon as the carriage goes through I'll drop the portcullis and trigger the ballast charge, so don't worry if part of the archway collapses."

"Whatever," Pearl replied with a dismissive shrug as she carefully brought her crossbow to bear and crouched low in the sniper niche. She tensed as the sound of galloping hooves reached her sensitive ears, knowing that the carriage was now only seconds away from the archway and the slaves from their freedom.

Not on my watch, the dunpeal promised silently as she carefully exhaled.

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He would have been far more wary of the situation if he hadn't been so preoccupied with his thoughts. The secret entrance to Baron Winters' castle had been right where the decrepit diary had said it would be, hidden inside a particular sarcophagus near the back edge of the crypt. The tunnel leading to the catacombs had been filled with forgotten horrors that he would just as soon forget about himself, though there were less of them now after he had to fight his way past a number of them. And as for what he had found waiting for him in the catacombs themselves...

He frowned lightly as the carriage in front of him suddenly seemed to pick up speed now that the road had straightened out. He fully understood their burning desires to escape the vampire's domain, to be free of him for the rest of their natural lives, but he had also explicitly cautioned their leader not to throw caution to the winds as they made their escape. She had assured him that the road was safe once they got past the archway and that the minefield ended before that, but he was still uneasy with the smoothness of things. He had rescued countless slaves from innumerable vampires before, and the way out afterwards was more often than not just as dangerous as going in...

The archway loomed ahead as they continued forward, a small and fairly low-lying stone construction that was maybe thirty yards wide from end to end. It was more of a ceremonial gateway than a literal one as it straddled the road like a stony barricade, as one didn't need to go very far off the road to go around it should the gate be closed for whatever reason. However, given the fact that the terrain behind them was known by everyone to be heavily mined, it would be a brave soul indeed who dared to leave the safety of the road without a discernible reason.

He wasn't quite sure what it was that made him tense up without warning and slow his borrowed horse's pace, but he soon realized that his instincts had done so for a very good reason. The carriage plunged through the archway at a rapid pace, barely spending more than a second inside it before emerging out the other side. He was only moments away from entering it himself when the air seemed to shout with a sharp report, the unmistakable twang of a crossbow being fired from somewhere.

What happened afterwards almost came too quickly for even his extremely honed combat senses to process. The iron grate of the portcullis started to descend, the dull spikes at the base missing the back end of the carriage by a rather wide margin and causing D to reflexively rear his mount up to stall its forward momentum. Failing to stop the carriage didn't seem to matter as the back window was promptly blown out by the crossbow bolt, letting the projectile sail inside where to D's horror it erupted into a ball of fire that decimated the stolen vehicle.

The sound of the blast, however, couldn't fully drown out the sound of something else exploding almost directly above him. A purely reflexive glance upwards revealed a large slab of stone outlined in a dozen tiny sparks as the mortar was shattered by blasting caps. Freed from its anchorings, the massive overhang promptly plunged downwards before he could react, catching both him and his still-rearing mount out in the open to shatter his senses.

Gotcha, Pearl thought to herself with a truly evil smile as she watched the doors of the carriage blow out in a spectacular fashion, accompanied by a literal wall of blood and gore. She wasn't sure how many slaves had been in there, but she was quite sure that their bid for freedom had just been denied with extreme prejudice. And as for you... she thought as she stood up and quickly reloaded. Yes, you, she added as she saw the blonde picking herself up off the road where the blast had thrown her. She zeroed in on Celene's head before lowering her aim slightly, waiting until she had looked up and exposed the curves of her neck before sending the second explosive-tipped bolt towards the hollow of her throat. Her father hadn't been able to charm his way into being able to sink his fangs into that delicate expanse of flesh, but now she would ensure that Celene's virgin throat would not remain intact for long...

Coral ignored the clanging sound of the portcullis hitting the ground, knowing that dropping it hadn't been anything more than a simple attempt at making sure D wouldn't be able to escape with any ease. What she found she couldn't ignore, however, was the sound of bones snapping and flesh imploding as they became squashed beneath a half-ton of free-falling stone. "Aw, shit," she snarled to herself as she jumped up and promptly leapt over the edge where the stone had been blown off, landing only a few feet away from where it had left a minor crater in the road surface.

She paused for a moment as she heard the crossbow twang a second time, casting a quick glance over her shoulder just in time to witness an explosion of crimson mist that scattered bits of flesh and blood in a wide radius. I'll bet that had to sting, she thought absently before she returned her focus to the way the slab was resting on the ground at an angle. She winced at the way a sheet of blood and viscera had been squirted out from beneath it, suggesting that her attempt at catching D alive had not gone according to plan.

She was about to cuss again when she heard a faint moan coming from under the slab. She darted over to it without thinking and braced herself as best she could before heaving upwards on the slab. The effort required to move it was far from a trivial one, even with her vampiric strength, and she had to use every ounce of power that she could muster to flip it up and over to flop back down on its other side.

"Gross," she muttered to herself in disgust as the damage became exposed. It was clear that the horse had taken the brunt of the impact and that its internals, or what hadn't been liquefied, were now very much external and what was left was probably no thicker than a pancake. And as for the dark hunter who had been riding it...

Another weak moan caused her to blink hard, realizing that he was still alive and seemingly intact. "Holy shit, I don't believe this," she breathed in a bare whisper as she lunged forward to examine him, scarcely able to fathom that he had not only survived being squished by the slab but that he was still hanging on to semi-conscious. "Absolutely incredible..."

"Did you get him?" Pearl called out from atop the archway as she carefully leaned over to survey the results of her sister's plan. She blinked at the carnage and winced, recoiling slightly from the sight of so much raw gore. The blood didn't bother her in the least, but there was just something nauseating about seeing some creature's abdomen compressed to a thickness of maybe two inches and the formerly solid contents splattered around like so much gelatin. "Eww, I think you got him..."

"Guess what?" Coral called back over her shoulder, giving her sister a truly delighted smile. "He's alive."

"Bullshit!" Pearl gasped, blinking hard in disbelief. "Look what it did to his horse, how the hell could he have survived that? His chest has to be flatter than my ass now..."

"I told you to trust me," Coral cooed before turning to look down at D. She blinked hard as he moaned again, his eyelids fluttering slightly as if they were about to open. She paused to think for a moment before sighing and gently shaking her head to herself. "No, I don't think I can risk having you wake up just yet," she murmured as she tugged her left glove off, exposing the metal plate imbedded in her skin. It covered the back half of her hand, extending back to the mid-point of her lower arm and forward over her knuckles to the first joint in each finger. The metal seemed to be unusually pliant, adhering to the curves of her hand like normal skin and able to flex along with her fingers without any resistance or stiffness.

She blinked as D made a soft hissing noise to himself, parting his eyelids just enough to try to see what was going on around him. He seemed to be quite dazed at first, trying to focus on the clouds above him before his eyes tilted just slightly to the right to look at her.

"On the other hand," Coral said softly to D as she flexed her left hand before curling it into a fist, "Sometimes I just love being right. Sorry, D, but this one really is going to hurt me more than it hurts you. See you in the morning," she added in a soft, almost tender whisper before she drew her arm back and belted him as hard as she could in the jaw.

The world was already badly fragmented to begin with, or at least it was to D's damaged perception, and the blow across his jaw only served to shatter it into tinier pieces as his mind was sent spiraling down into the dark depths of unconsciousness. He thought for a moment that he felt a gentle touch on his lips, as if a feather-light kiss was being given, before everything faded out and he finally slipped into a merciful, painless void of empty silence.

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Even though dunpeals were only half-vampire and could rely on their human side to protect them from things that would weaken if not outright kill a noble vampire, they were still sensitive to exposure to the sun. As such, they still retained the preternatural awareness of full vampires in regards to where the sun was and instinctively knew when it crossed the horizon to either rise or set. The tingle produced by each event was unique, and it was the slightly more ominous sensation of the rising sun that finally drew D's mind out of the abyss and back into some semblance of awareness.

Another innate awareness that both vampires and their dunpeal descendants shared was a sensitivity to their depth within the ground. A vampire in need of healing instinctively sought respite in the cool embrace of the earth, as it was both the creator and host of the circle of life that sustained all living creatures. The notion of needing to sleep in coffins was viewed by vampires as being the longest-running joke in the history of life, as all they truly needed was protection from the sun and the occasional immersion in the ground. It was thought by some that a coffin was simply an economical solution to both, as it was quite dark when you were buried underground in one, but very few vampires bothered with coffins except to use them as travelling beds when on an extended journey for one reason or another.

It was this 'earth awareness' that brought him a faint feeling of comfort as he very slowly and painfully clawed his way back up to consciousness, able to tell that he was currently underground. That wasn't to say he was buried in a dirt-filled pit or anything, but that it was unlikely he would have to be overly concerned about immediate exposure to the sun. And if what he thought his body was trying to tell him was anywhere close to being true, he had very little reason to believe he had the strength to survive the searing rays of the sun for longer than a few minutes.

"Sis?" a very faint voice registered on the slowly congealing fragments of his mind. He couldn't even tell if it was a male or female voice, let alone who it might have belonged to or where it was coming from, but he took another small measure of comfort from the fact that he could still hear.

"I'm working on it," another voice replied as a new sensation registered, this one of something brushing against his foot. He would have stopped to try to focus on it if he thought he could spare the energy. Right now his main goal was to try to identify and quantify the searing agony in his chest. It was exquisitely sharp, ebbing and flowing just slightly with every breath he managed to take. He carefully began to dredge the mental sludge that was his memories, trying to remember what had happened to him recently.

"Work faster, I think he's waking up," the first voice prodded in a flat tone. It became clear that the voice belonged to a woman, though there was little else that he could tell by the sound alone.

"Almost done," the second voice promised, also resolving into that of a woman's. A sharp sound registered on his ears at the same time a cold feeling was reported in his leg, followed by the feeling of motion as it was jerked to the left before becoming still again. "There, done," the voice said, seeming to sigh quietly with relief.

The carriage, D suddenly thought as the memories slowly began to return. The fragmented edges of his mind began to assemble themselves as he started to walk himself through the distorted images, slowly clearing them up into focus as his consciousness began to reassert itself.

"So now what?" the first voice prompted.

"Listen carefully," the second voice replied in a low tone, seeming to be tainted with a dangerous edge. "He is mine, and we will do things my way. I will let you play with him all you want, I promise, but here are the ground rules. One, leave his face alone. He's quite handsome and I'd rather not see him marred. Two, same goes for his balls. Hands off and don't break them in any way, understood?"

"What?" the first voice said in open surprise.

"You heard me," the second voice growled. "Just don't do it, okay?"

"Spoilsport," the first voice sulked. "Any others?"

"Just one more, a simple one. Don't kill him."

"But sis...! ERK!"

"Do. Not. Kill. Him. Am I clear?" the second voice said clearly.

"Ow, let go!"

"AM I CLEAR?" she repeated in a glacial tone.

"Alright, damn you, I won't kill him! Ah... damn, Coral, what's with you all of a sudden?" the first voice demanded, rasping just slightly for a moment.

A truly dark chill crept down D's spine as he realized that he had been captured somehow after leaving the Baron's castle. The memories were still a tangled jumble, but he kept seeing a mental image of a carriage racing down the road with him following it.

"He's mine, dear sister, and I'll explain it all to you later. For now, let me deal with him until I'm sure he can handle your skilled touch," was the honeyed reply, the final words seeming to be edged with coy amusement. "Don't look at me like that, I've never broken a promise to you before, now have I? You'll get to play with him soon. Now settle down. Oh, and pass me that, will you? Thank you, Pearl," she purred after a moment.

The carriage, he thought again as he struggled to both remember and cope with the continuing burning in his chest. He was pretty sure that something was either broken or had been recently broken and was still in the process of mending. Unfortunately, there was so much pain that he wasn't sure where it was coming from save that it seemed to be confined to his upper chest. The surging of pain every time he inhaled, even as shallow as possible, was not a good sign either. He didn't think his lungs had been punctured or collapsed by whatever had wounded him, but as long as he could still breathe properly and not suffocate the 'why' was a secondary concern at best.

A sudden cool sensation across his face jolted him into a slightly higher degree of consciousness, briefly drawing his mental focus away from his chest injuries and attempts at remembering what had happened in the recent past. It felt like someone was brushing a damp cloth across his face, an oddly welcome sensation that helped him refocus his sense of direction.

He realized that he was lying face-up on his back, and that whatever he was lying on felt to be padded just slightly. A few simple twitches of his arms and legs resulted in the discovery that he was essentially spread-eagled and that something distinctly cold was around both his wrists and ankles. The overall mental picture was not one he found to be comforting, as he doubted he would be in that position if he were being tended to by any sort of physician.

"D?" a soft voice murmured quietly, seeming to be very close to him. "I know you're awake, or at least you're somewhat conscious now. Can you try to open your eyes for me?"

His mind had recovered enough to the point where he was fairly sure that he wasn't in a good situation, his instincts warning him that he was probably in significant danger. Nevertheless, the soft-spoken request was still rather reasonable given the fact that he would have to have a look at his surroundings sooner or later.

The task was unusually difficult for some reason, his eyelids seeming to weigh far more than normal and felt like they were glued together. He kept at it, however, and soon they yielded to his will to part just enough to assure him that he wouldn't be blinded by further efforts. Visual focus was another matter entirely, as everything was very much a blur to him, but he knew that he had to take things one step at a time.

"There we go," the voice purred softly as there was the sound of something being dipped in water, followed by the cool sensation of something wet brushing against his throat. "I see what they meant by their depths. Very enchanting, if I may say so myself."

D paused to try to decide what to make of her response to his efforts, not certain if it was a good thing or not. Figuring that he had little to lose at the current moment in time, he closed his eyes for a moment to try to gather his strength before forcing them open enough to let him see properly.

It seemed an eternity passed before the gray blurs resolved into distinct blobs of color, slowly reshaping into discrete lines and curves as his eyes adjusted to the low level of light. A small motion off to the side caused him to reflexively focus on it, squinting slightly until the details were finally brought into focus.

She was smiling gently as she gazed back at him. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary at first, a pair of pale yellow eyes framed by a silky mane of soft light gray hair. It wasn't the kind of gray associated with old age, but rather a pale silvery hue that was far richer in tone as it seemed to shimmer faintly with reflected light. Her face was rather young, making her seem to be on the heavy side of twenty but not still not too far removed from her youth. He would have thought little else about her had he not caught a glimpse of the points on her ears, not the sharp prominences of noble vampires but still obvious enough to indicate she had vampiric blood in her veins.

A dark chill swept through him as he realized that she was a dunpeal like he was, which meant that he was in very serious danger right now. The memories suddenly rushed back at him as if a switch had been thrown, remembering how he had been following the carriage out after slaying Baron Winters. The memory of the carriage exploding in front of him chilled his blood even further, but what truly turned his insides into an icy slush was the memory of being caught under the falling overhang as it was blasted off the rest of the archway. How he had retained consciousness after that was nothing short of a miracle, but it had been enough to let him catch a glimpse of his captor and the look in her pale yellow eyes...

Eyes that were now looking at him again, widening slightly as she saw the flicker of recognition that he knew had flashed across his own eyes the instant his memories had returned. He suddenly realized that he had made a very grave mistake in his research earlier about Simon Winters and his descendants. He had made sure to account for all of his vampiric children, born to the noble vampiress Lady Valentina Winters, but he had never found any indication that he had sired any children on humans. Tried to, if what two of the female slaves had whispered about was true as they shivered at the memories of what they had been forced to do, but no other children had been mentioned. And for whatever reason, it simply didn't cross his mind to stop and ask the slaves if they knew of any other relatives of the recently departed Baron...

"I see you're more than a little awake," the voice said, gently drawing him out of his thoughts and refocusing him on his current situation. "I'll be honest, I'm surprised you've recovered this quickly, but then again I'm still amazed that you even survived to begin with. Can you talk, by chance?"

D closed his eyes briefly as he tried to draw in enough breath to at least attempt to speak. The effort was a costly one, sending a searing wave of agony across his chest like a wave cresting over the shoreline. All that emerged from his lips was a muted gasp that might not have been audible had she not been focused so intently on him.

"I guess not," she replied in a disappointed tone as she let her eyes roam across his upper body. "Oh, well, I'm sure you'll find your voice soon enough. How are you... oh, my," she said as she brushed a hand across his chest, only to reflexively draw it back as the contact caused him to hiss sharply. "Yes, I would imagine you'd be a bit sore after all that. Here, let me get a good look, hmm?" she purred in a silken tone as she very carefully unbuttoned his tunic and drew the fabric aside.

"Damn," a distant female voice said softly as the woman hovering over him took a step back, her pale eyebrows arching clear up to her hairline.

"Wow," she breathed quietly as she studied the extensive bruises that left the skin of his chest a mottled pattern of blue, purple, and black. "And to think you had all night to heal that, too. Maybe it did collapse something," she said over her shoulder, casting an uneasy look at someone D couldn't see.

"Told you," the other voice replied simply. "Seriously, seeing what it did to the horse? I know his armor felt pretty solid, but even tempered metal like that can be compressed under that much weight. Even if he didn't break anything, I know every single muscle fiber in his chest got bruised. There's simply no way he could have avoided that sort of damage."

"Still," the pale-haired dunpeal sighed as she turned her attention back to D. She paused and blinked as she saw the level of focus in his eyes, her own narrowing slightly in suspicion. "D?" she murmured. "Now I know you're awake, and I'm willing to bet you've got your marbles sorted out by now, too. Say something, or at least give me an indication you can understand me."

"Wh..." D rasped softly, almost silently as he tried to force his voice to work. The searing agony in his chest made it hard for him to draw in enough breath to make his larynx vibrate but he persisted in the effort until he had enough air to force the sounds to form. "Who... are..."

A gentle smile touched the edges of her soft lips. "That'll work. As to who I am... I'm surprised you even have to ask, D. Hm?" she added as she saw the look in his eyes, sighing quietly as she realized that for whatever reason he truly didn't appear to know. "Oh, now I'm disappointed with you, D, truly. And here I thought I was next on your list. No matter," she added lightly as the smile returned to her face. "I am, or at least now I am, Baroness Coral Winters, daughter of his lordship Baron Simon Winters. You did recently meet with him, I trust?" she said in an almost lilting manner.

D narrowed his eyes slightly, not entirely sure what to make of her rather odd behavior. Most other vampires and dunpeals would be raging at him by now after the death of one of their own at his hands, but she didn't seem to be overly concerned by that little detail. Granted there had been a few who had thanked him for sparing them the task of disposing of their troublesome elders, usually the noble children of a particularly long-lived vampire or vampiress, but something in the back of his mind was warning him that she wasn't one of those proverbial bitter apples.

"C'mon, sis, just get on with it," the voice spoke up in the distance.

Coral sighed quietly and craned her neck to peer over her shoulder. "I said settle down," she said in an openly patient tone before turning back to D and making a casual gesture with her chin. "My younger sister Pearl," she said by way of explanation. "Oh, don't worry, you'll get to know her pretty well soon enough, but one thing at a time. How's your memory holding up?" she asked as she leaned forward slightly to study the hideous bruises on his chest again.

"The carriage," D whispered, trying not to let the pain show in his voice. He very carefully tried to flex his arms and legs as discreetly as possible, attempting to get a feel for the specifics of his situation.

"Ah, yes, the carriage," Coral mused as she glanced down, studying the way his hand twitched gently. "Well, what can I say, D? Sometimes you need to use a firm hand to remind your slaves of their place at times. Okay, so maybe my dear little sister missed the rear axle that I suggested she aim for and hit the window instead. Not that I think it was an accident, as she is quite the hawk-eyed sniper with that crossbow of hers, but mistakes do happen. And as for Celene..." she said before trailing off, shrugging her shoulders in absent dismissal after a few moments of empty silence. "Had my father been smart he would have had his way with her ages ago, as all men do with human slaves they lust after, and then killed her once she became unruly so she couldn't pose a future threat. In any case, I'm not about to even pretend to cry over the loss of a rebellious bitch like her. Oh, I'll admit that her death was... a little over-the-top," she added in a light tone before giving him a predatory smile, "But to each their own style when it comes to executing treasonous slaves."

D said nothing as she returned to studying his chest, trying to keep a firm grip on the roiling of his stomach. There had been seven humans in total he tried to rescue, though one had perished inside the castle when part of the roof collapsed before he could reach her. The remaining six, led by Celene, had led him to the stables in the castle courtyard where they quickly made use of the Baron's carriage and horses in their bid for freedom. It was not the first time such an escape attempt had been thwarted, but it still sickened him to contemplate how callous and uncaring his kind could be when it came to such things. Humans were all but powerless against vampires and their evil ways, and yet they were still routinely cut down in cold-blood on a whim for sport or even casual amusement.

His kind, D thought bitterly as he glanced over at Coral, feeling the dark rage trying to ignite itself yet again. He knew that all the vampires were related by blood to one degree or another, or so the legends went, but he knew that he had absolutely nothing in common with any of them save for the hunger for living blood needed to sustain his darker half. He rarely found anything in common with other dunpeals as well, despite being half-human themselves and thus likely sharing the same capacity for emotion and feelings as he had. No, almost to a man they were just as heartless and soulless as their 'noble' kin, little more than breathing masses of sinister evil given flesh and fang.

"Damn," Coral said quietly in admiration, obviously impressed by the sheer amount of damage done of his chest that he had managed to survive. "They said you were unstoppable, D, and I'm starting to think they meant literally. Let me see what else happened to you," she said as she started to undo the rest of his buttons.

"Hey, sis?" Pearl spoke up suddenly. "I have an idea. If you want to strip him or something, why don't you let me handle that? It'll be a snap," she added languidly, her words accompanied by the sharp sound of what sounded like a whip being gently cracked.

Coral blinked hard and twisted around, giving D a fairly decent view of her body in profile. The dark blouse she wore seemed to have been carelessly closed, three of the five button-holes empty where a fastening would normally be. That left a modest portion of her decollete exposed but not indecently so, revealing a swath of pale and seemingly flawless skin.

"I don't know, Pearl, that might be a little rough on him," she replied in an uneasy tone. "I would imagine that his back isn't in much better shape."

"You said I could play with him," Pearl countered as there was another whip-cracking sound. "Come on, you want to see him suffer just as much as I do after what he did to Father. Just think of this as a warm-up. If he screams too much or can't handle it, I can always stop and you can grab a knife or a pair of scissors to finish the job."

"You do have a point," Coral admitted as she turned to look back at D, her right hand absently rubbing the back of her gloved left hand. "What do you think, D, ready to meet my charming little sister?" she inquired lightly. "She isn't what you would call experienced with men, but I'm sure you'll be able to cope with her attentions. Here, up you go," she added as she stepped back and tugged on a lever behind his field of vision.

D blinked hard as the entire surface he was lying on began to tilt at an angle, slowly rotating forward ninety degrees until he was essentially standing on a small shelf. With his new perspective, he immediately noticed that he was in a dungeon of some sort, and that his wrists and ankles were bound to the edges of the padded frame by metal chains.

A searing pain immediately erupted from both his chest and his ankles, suggesting that the heavy armored plates in his boots hadn't been able to fully protect them from being crushed by the falling rock. He didn't think that they had been broken or shattered at any point, but there was enough pain to suggest that it was doubtful he would be able to walk on his own within the immediate future. As it was, it was hard enough with his weight on them without having to scream or otherwise make a sound to indicate he was in significant pain.

He cast a brief glance over his shoulder as best he could when a heavy clicking sound reached his ears, able to watch with his peripheral vision as the padded surface he had been lying on was split in half and folded back to rest against the sides of the frame. That left his back open and exposed, as he was essentially left chained between two large metal columns.

The sensation of something cold pressing just below his chin enticed him to turn his head back around, finding himself almost nose-to-nose with a rather beautiful young woman with aqua-blue eyes. As with Coral, it took him an extra moment to realize that she too was a dunpeal, the hallmark points on her ears all but masked by the short shock of extremely fine and pale blue hair. The coloring was so pale as to almost appear white if seen under a strong glare, though not easily mistaken for the white hue of a woman many decades her elder.

Pearl pressed slightly harder on the handle of her whip, forcing D's head to tilt back slightly so she could gaze into his eyes. "Yeah, I see what you mean about his eyes," she finally said in a neutral tone. "I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call them enchanting, but they do have a depth to them you don't find in many others. So you're the legendary vampire hunter, hmm?"

D remained silent as he gazed back at her, trying to get a feel for what she was like. While Coral was somewhat hard to read, if only because he had yet to decide what to make of her rather erratic behavior, it was quite clear to him that Pearl openly hated him. The spark of anger in her eyes appeared to be kept in careful check at the moment, but he had encountered that very same spark in the eyes of countless others and knew that her rage could be unleashed on him in an instant. Whether her current level of control stemmed from her own will or was a result of Coral's influence was unknown, but he knew that he would have to find out fairly quickly if he was going to have even the faintest of hopes of making it out of his situation alive.

Not that his prospects appeared hopeful. The explorative tuggings he had attempted earlier warned him that the metal bonds had been fastened with almost no wiggle room whatsoever. Even if he had not been bound, his strength had been all but obliterated by the falling rock and the subsequent concentration of what little energy he had left to focus on healing himself. Then there was the fact that the odds were two-to-one against him. While that was nothing to be concerned about under normal circumstances, he was both unarmed and without his protective armor at the moment while they were clearly prepared to deal with him should he even look like he was going to try something. He had been in quite a number of hairy situations before where the initial odds of survival were not encouraging, but this was the first time he could remember being in a situation that seemed to be truly hopeless.

"Not a talkative one, I see," Pearl observed calmly as she tapped the butt of her whip against his chin before taking a step back and reaching for the front of her shirt. The outfit she wore was not too different from Coral's, consisting of a dark-colored blouse and contour-hugging pantaloons. As he watched, the blouse was quickly unbuttoned and drawn off to reveal a sleeveless black undershirt that left her well-muscled arms bare. The shirt was more than a little tight in the front, outlining both the moderate swells of her petite breasts and the subtle points of her nipples.

"Showing off again, Pearl?" Coral mused lightly as she took a few steps back to observe from a distance.

Pearl cast a sidelong glance at her older sister as she cast the blouse aside and started rolling her shoulders. "It's called freedom of movement, sis," she replied in a faintly edged tone. "Hard to wield a whip properly if you don't have enough room to move your arms. And after that stunt you pulled last night with your shirt open like that, I don't think you've got much room to talk about showing off."

"Yes, well," Coral sighed as she glanced down at the front of her blouse, one hand coming up to absently tug on a loose thread where a button had once been, "Like I said, it was the first thing that came to mind when I realized I might have looked like D from a distance. It worked, though," she added as she glanced up to give her sister a meaningful look.

Pearl just rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "Be glad I'm your sister and not someone who would either be sexually aroused or traumatized by the sight," she muttered before grabbing the tip of the whip in her left hand and snapping small segments of the material to test it for tensile strength. Her gaze fell back down to D's chest, causing her to pause for a moment before reaching out to firmly press a fingertip against his chest where his sternum was.

To D, it was like being struck by a bolt of lightning. Sparks flooded his vision as the pain coursed through his entire body and he was unable to keep himself from gasping aloud between clenched teeth. The world took on a blue cast a moment later as his vampiric side began to thrash against the power of his will that normally kept it dormant, his canine teeth elongating into the prominent points of a vampire ready to use them.

"Pearl..." Coral said in a tone that was laced with a subtle warning.

"Just checking, sis," Pearl replied in an unconcerned tone as she removed her finger and studied him carefully. "Okay, so maybe I'll have to start with his back after all. No big deal, he won't be able to tell the difference soon enough..." she said as she walked around to stand behind him.

Coral tilted her head slightly for several seconds before blinking hard. "Oh, Pearl, wait just another few moments, okay? Silly me, all this excitement going on and I haven't even told D anything about our little playground," she said, chuckling quietly to herself as she moved forward to stand in front of him. She reached out to touch his chin, tilting his head up slightly to look at him for a few moments before making a gesture to the chains that bound him.

"Take a good look at those chains, D," she purred softly. "Know what they are? Adamantium links encased in pure, tempered titanium. It took quite some time to gather enough adamantium for something like this, but Father was kind enough to acquire it for us as a sort of gift. We had to have it reworked on our own, of course," she added, "But you would be amazed at how simple that was once we found the right humans with the right metalworking skills."

D felt an icy chill slide down his spine as he cast a wary glance up at his wrist. Even when in perfect health and with his full strength it would have been quite difficult for him to break or otherwise bend something crafted from tempered titanium. But if what she said about the links having adamantium cores were true, however, then breaking them was well beyond him. He knew very little about the exact metallurgical nature of the extremely rare ore, but he had heard from a few blacksmiths who had worked with it how it was extremely difficult to temper but was virtually unbreakable once crafted into a shape.

"Look around you, D," Coral purred quietly, her thumb coming up to lightly stroke his chin. "It took Pearl and I years to make this place, even with the help of a few dedicated slaves. It was more for Pearl's enjoyment than mine, but we both have found enough entertainment in it to make it all worthwhile. The rack you're tied to? Adamantium and titanium, just like the chains. I'm not sure how strong you really are, as we both know certain stories become... embellished over time, but I don't think even you can break free from them."

He scowled slightly as she leaned closer to him, letting her lips brush against the edge of his ear as she continued to speak very softly. "Do us both a favor and don't try to break them, either," she breathed. "I really, really would rather not have to kill you if you managed to ruin them. Now be a good boy and go play with Pearl. You and I can play later," she added, her voice almost fading away to inaudibility as she very lightly kissed his ear. She then stood up and took several steps back, crossing her arms over her chest and nodding her head at Pearl.

"He's all yours, Pearl," she said calmly. "Remember, don't hurt him where I told you not to hurt him, and don't kill him. That would really spoil the fun," she added with a disturbing smile.

"Alright," Pearl replied as she uncoiled her whip and took a measured step back, trying to gauge the distance between her and the bound dunpeal. She took a second step back as she decided it was better to play it safe and hefted the shaft of her whip carefully. "Hey," she suddenly said, seeming to pause for a moment. "How far can I go with this?"

"Hmm?" Coral said absently, keeping her focus on D. D glanced back at her briefly before focusing on the wall in front of him, blinking in surprise as he saw his sword resting on a small shelf. Everything else of his was likewise spread out across the shelf, his hat and cape neatly folded at one end while his boots and armor were stacked at the other. Between them were his belt and chest bandolier, both still laden with pouches and various devices that he had found uses for at assorted times in his vampire-hunting career. There was far too much space for him to reach across while he was still bound in chains, but the mere knowledge that it was relatively close at hand was enough to ignite the faintest of sparks of hope in his hybrid heart.

"How much do you want taken off?" Pearl inquired carefully as she studied the broad expanse of D's back with a critical eye.

"Let him keep his skin, by all means," the yellow-eyed woman replied as she started to purr very quietly to herself. "But you can take everything else off if you want. Easy on his ass, though. There's nothing wrong with a solid spanking, but you really don't want to whip the shit out of him in a literal sense, now do you?"

Pearl blinked before casting a disturbed look at her sister. "Thanks for the visual, sis," she grumbled before flicking the whip behind her and taking a deep breath. She exhaled slowly as she focused her senses, zeroing in on the spot right between D's shoulder blades. She waited until her lungs were almost empty of air and her body was perfectly steady before bringing her arm forward in a sharp movement.

D's hearing was extremely acute, a skill he continually honed whenever he could as it helped him detect vampires who tended to move in almost perfect silence whenever hunting something. Thus it was all but impossible for him to miss the way the air seemed to hiss just slightly as the whip sliced through it before the pliant tip was jerked to a sudden halt to produce the trademark cracking sound. It was like a thunderclap when compared to the relatively soft hissing of the air an instant ago, and the sudden tensing of his body in the anticipation of feeling the blow only made his nerves that much more sensitive. The expected lash across his back never fell, however, instead feeling a puff of air tease his shirt as the tip of the whip fell short by maybe an inch.

Coral's eyebrows promptly arched up as she noticed that D didn't seem to have reacted in the slightest. The cracking had sounded somewhat odd to her equally sensitive ears as well, prompting her to lean slightly to the side as if she were trying to examine his back. "Pearl?" she called out in a curious tone, wondering if she was missing something.

The pale blue-haired woman simply shrugged in casual dismissal. "Relax, that was just a ranging shot," she assured the other woman. "C'mon, sis, you know I don't miss in a setting like this. Which is more than can be said for your skill with a whip..."

"Just get on with it," Coral grumbled, her face twisting into a sullen pout for a few seconds before smoothing out as she looked over at D again. "Siblings," she muttered soft enough for only D to hear. "You try to learn how to do things their way and never hear the end of it when you happen make a few mistakes after having borrowed their favorite slave for target practice."

It took D a moderate amount of effort not to openly snarl at her casually callous attitude. It was people like her that had started him on his darkened path in life, witnessing the constant pain and suffering of innocent humans at the uncaring and sometimes openly sadistic hands of vampires. Some he had made a vow to destroy regardless, those who had taken part in the assault on his father's palace that triggered the global catastrophe known as the Blood Wars, but far too many others had failed to show the slightest regard for the value of human lives, innocent beings whose sole crime was living under the yoke of vampiric evil.

You should know better, D had sometimes been tempted to shout out to the other dunpeals he had encountered who were just as evil and merciless as their noble ancestors. You who have a human parent and human feelings, you should know this is wrong, you should know that human lives are equally as important and precious as our own! But that urge to confront them and try to open their eyes had long ago faded, trodden down by encounter after encounter with such evil creatures that eventually extinguished any lingering hopes of redemption. He then vowed to destroy them all, both vampires and dunpeals alike, so that the humans and their world could be free from the ten-thousand year reign of terror caused by the continued existence of that evil hunger for blood. He knew that he himself would have to follow them into the maw of oblivion as well for the world to be truly free of his blood, but it was a price he was willing to pay for the greater good.

The hissing of the air suddenly snapped him out of his darkened thoughts, catching him off-guard. He didn't have time to quietly curse himself for his lapse in attention before his back jerked beneath the onslaught of pain. The gesture had been little more than a reflex as the stinging sensation wasn't all that great, the very tip of the whip grazing his flesh as it rent the fabric of his shirt. There was a sudden silence that lasted for maybe four beats of his quickened pulse before the air hissed again and another exquisitely fine needle of pain was felt in his upper back.

"Whoops," Pearl said casually, causing Coral to blink.

"Whoops?" the other woman echoed, giving her an uneasy look.

"I just realized what his shirt is made of," Pearl replied with a faint gesture of her free hand. "It's that expensive stuff from the northeast, the really soft but sturdy kind. I'll bet it cost him a pretty coin or three, but I'll also bet it was probably worth it and then some. Oh, well," she added with an empty sigh before slowly refocusing and drawing the whip back.

"Oh, that stuff," Coral commented as she nodded, pausing as D was whipped again. "I had a nightgown made from that once. You weren't kidding about the price, but it lasted for quite a number of years. Smooth, too. Not like silk or satin, mind you, but it..." She paused as another sharp crack was heard, this one causing the corners of D's mouth to visibly twitch. "It served its purpose fairly well. What just happened?"

"He moved," Pearl explained in a casual manner, as if they were talking about the weather. She drew her whip back and lashed out again, unable to keep herself from smiling as D twitched again at the contact. "I'm doing the best I can, of course, but the difference between hitting his shirt and hitting him is pretty miniscule. As long as he holds still, however, there won't be any sort of problems to worry about. So how'm I doing, D?" she called out in a light tone as she lashed out again, this time deliberately letting the tip edge forward a fraction of an inch farther than she needed.

Unlike the previous strikes, which has been quite sharp but confined to discrete points on his back, the latest blow etched a burning line of fire just under his left shoulder blade. The jolt of pain forced him to almost literally bite his lower lip to keep himself from making any kind of noise, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of making him cry out. He had the very bothersome feeling that if the experience were to last for too much longer, his willpower wouldn't be able to fully withstand the constant jolts of pain. He was still suffering heavily to begin with, given the still-searing feeling in his chest and the fiercely protesting nerves in his ankles, and he knew that even he had his limits.

"D?" Coral spoke up, seeming to be faintly amused by something. "Silence is golden and all that, but you really should speak when someone else asks you a question. It's rude not to, you know," she added. "Especially when she's holding a whip..."

"I'm not worried about it," Pearl said as she lashed out yet again, this time barely grazing his skin as she continued to methodically cut a horizontal line across the back of his tunic. "He'll be singing soon enough. Now there's a thought for you," she said as she paused for a moment before drawing the whip back behind her. "Think he's the kind to sing in the shower?"

"Ooooh," Coral purred softly to herself, casting a brief glance over at D as he reflexively twitched beneath the precision blow. "Don't say things like that, it gives me the really soft shivers just thinking about it. Let's get him housebroken first before we can wonder about such things, okay?"

"Whatever, sis," Pearl sighed as she flicked the whip across his back at a slight angle, leaving another small tear in his shirt. She paused to study the new rent for a moment before curling the edges of her lips down in a small frown. "You know this is going to take awhile, right?" she grumbled.

"You wanted to do it that way," Coral reminded her.

Pearl wrinkled her nose before pausing to deliver another carefully aimed blow to D's upper back, inflicting an identical tear parallel to the first. "Yeah, but not too gently. Hey, do me a favor and take a peek at his back for me and let me know what kind of condition his skin is in. I don't want to move now that I've got the distance ironed out," she explained.

"Alright," Coral purred quietly, casting a somewhat sultry glance at D as she approached. She paused to lightly brush her fingertips over his arm before reaching around him, slipping a finger into the surprisingly straight and even tear in the back of his shirt to pull it open. "Oooh, now look at this," she cooed as she pulled her finger down, letting Pearl see the patch of skin for herself.

"Great," Pearl replied with a wicked smile, delighted to see that his back was virtually undamaged. She would have to change that, of course, but now she knew she didn't need to hold back nearly as much. "Step back, I think it's time to pick up the pace a little bit."

"Mmmm," the gray-haired woman hummed softly to herself as she glanced over at D, studying the look of controlled pain in his eyes. "You will, I trust, let me know if my darling little sister is being too rough with you?" she said in a low, almost husky tone as she briefly ran her hand along his arm. "We don't want her to wind up with the wrong kind of reputation, now do we, D?"

D remained silent as he glanced back at her before refocusing his gaze on his sword. He knew that it was likely he was going to be tortured for quite some time and that he needed to conserve as much of his strength as possible. He had been injured countless times before, sometimes almost winding up on the doorstep of death itself, but never before had any sort of captivity been like this. Brutally beaten until he was senseless, yes, and another time having a spike driven into his chest that missed his heart by what had to be a fraction of an inch, but never had he been deliberately toyed with like this. They had all known it would have been too dangerous to do so, as every moment he was conscious was another moment he had to possibly escape and come back to exact his own brand of vengeance on them. So why were these two sisters taking that risk by torturing him like this?

His moment of reflection was abruptly ended by the hissing of the whip, only instead of feeling another needlepoint of pain he found himself having to cope with a jagged line of fire that spanned the full length of his back. The burning sensation was intense, almost as if a knife had been drawn across the skin at a moderate depth. Oddly enough, he could tell from the throbbing that followed that his skin hadn't been broken by the blow and would likely only bruise and swell up.

"Easy, Pearl," Coral cautioned as she watched D jerk against the chains, his back arching as his muscles spasmed from the fiery pain.

An exasperated sigh rose up from the other woman. "Do you want to try to do this?" she challenged in a level tone. "Just grab a chair and sit down to watch the show or something. He'll still have his skin on when I'm done, so relax."

Coral said nothing as she watched her sister wind up again to deliver a second blow to D's back, the sound of several inches of the whip's surface slapping across both fabric and skin making her twitch slightly. She often found it quite the experience to watch Pearl ply her skill with the whip, the application made with such exquisite precision and care that could easily be elevated to an art form. The results could also be viewed as works of art, a fully-dressed human being stripped of clothing one shred at a time with very few marks left on the skin to indicate how her skin has been so deliciously bared before their eyes.

The strokes that she observed being delivered, however, were far cries from Pearl's usual delicate touch. D's body rocked with each blow that landed, leaving behind long tears in his tunic and spasms of pain on the hunter's face. She was sure that Pearl would keep her word and that the flesh of his back wouldn't be split open like a ripe melon, but there was just something about the look in her eye and the way she was gripping the whip that said she wasn't in a mood to be gentle.

She edged herself to the side after a few minutes of watching the tip of the whip lash out again and again, trying to see what it was doing to him. It was obvious that her sister knew what she was doing, as the upper part of his shirt was almost completely shredded now as if a giant cat had came by to use him as a scratching post. The blows were being directed lower now, close to the base of his spine as he continued to be methodically stripped in a most painful fashion.

The silence in the room became almost eerie as time went on, broken only by the rhythmic cracking of the whip and the creaking of the metal chains as D continued to rock with each blow. Pearl seemed to be completely focused now, her eyes half-closed and barely seeming to breathe as she directed the whip in a calculated fashion. D remained silent as well, much to her surprise. She knew that a human would have screamed himself hoarse by now, but the dunpeal somehow managed to remain stoic save for a ragged rasp in his breathing.

Coral cast a glance to her side as she sensed motion in the distance, one eyebrow arching up as she saw the door open silently. A young girl poked her head into the room, her crisp blue eyes widening dangerously as she realized what was going on. Her gaze fell on Coral as the baroness made a curt gesture, indicating that she should find something else to do. Her slave nodded to her in understanding before she promptly vanished from sight, the door being eased shut a moment later to close with only the faintest of metallic rattles.

The sound, faint as it had been, was enough to cause Pearl to pause in mid-motion, cocking her head sharply towards the doorway. "Hm?" she hummed in a low tone.

Coral sighed softly and made a gesture of dismissal. "It was just Abby," she explained.

Pearl snorted to herself before she flexed her arm gingerly. "I told you she needed to be locked up," she growled, mostly to herself before hefting the whip once again to deliver an unusually vicious blow to the seat of D's pants.

"Hey, hey, hey, easy there," Coral protested calmly. "And leave Abelyne alone, okay? She's a good girl."

"Pah," Pearl countered as she delivered a second, less-powerful blow to D's bottom to create a perfect X-mark. "That's what Father said about Celene, remember?"

"Father was blinded by lust," Coral pointed out, raising an eyebrow as her sister changed the focus of her attacks up to D's left shoulder. "Now what are you doing?" she prodded carefully.

"Forgot the sleeves," Pearl replied as she began to lightly flick the tip of her whip up and down the length of D's arms, turning what was remained of his left sleeve into so many thin and ragged strips of fabric. "And tell me you don't have your own lusts for your slaves like that."

"Oh, here we go again," Coral muttered as she sighed softly.

"Remind me was she doing to you last month when I tripped over you two out on the west tower?" Pearl said in a pointed tone as she finished whipping the fabric off of D's left arm and started in on his right arm. The blows left a trail of torn fabric down to his elbow before they paused, Pearl turning her head to give her sister a piercing look. "Well?" she prompted flatly.

"Like I said," Coral said as she looked away to study a set of rusted manacles hanging from chains set into the mortar in the wall, "She's a good girl who knows how to serve her mistress. If she wishes to please me further after sharing her blood with me, why should I deny her such desires?"

Pearl just rolled her eyes before resuming her efforts. "That's what men are for, sis," she muttered. She continued to flay the remaining fabric off of D's arm before a sudden thought popped into her mind, causing her to freeze in mid-motion. "Sis, about what you said about not ripping his balls off..."

"Don't worry about it, Pearl, I said I would explain things later," Coral replied in a honeyed tone, drawing a glare from her younger sister. "We both know men are delicate creatures when you finally pin them down, and they tend to treasure their manhoods very much. So much so that I wouldn't be surprised if they simply died with their removal. Be that as it may I'm not about to risk it in this case, so for the moment you will steer clear of injuring him in that location. Understood?" she added, her voice turning from charming and honeyed to tempered steel in the span of a single heartbeat.

Pearl simply rolled her eyes again. "Sure, sis, whatever you say," she replied absently as she flexed her wrist several times before hefting the whip once again. She paused for a moment to gauge how much she had left to do and how much space was around her. "Coral, do me a favor and step back a bit. I want to try something new."

"Oh?" Coral inquired in a faintly uncertain tone as she edged back several measured paces. "Like what?"

"Show you in a sec," Pearl promised as she took a single step backwards as well and began to breathe deeply. She closed her eyes briefly while she turned her focus inwards before raising the whip once more, starting to sway it back and forth until the tip rasped against the stone floor in a rhythmic pattern. She then seemed to pause for an instant, taking a deep breath that expanded her chest in a truly inviting fashion before suddenly exploding into motion.

Coral gasped and took a step back as the whip started to lash out faster than she could track, striking the side of D's leg before the tip was whirled around to snap at his other leg like a vicious and hungry cobra. The strikes were as incredible as they were brutal, slapping along not just the fabric of his pants and the flesh beneath but also striking the metal support columns hard enough to make them resonate like tuning forks.

The scent of blood filled the air a few moments later as Pearl continued her frenzied onslaught, her expression twisted into one of bestial fury as she continued to lash out as rapidly as she could. Tiny flecks of crimson began to spackle the floor around D as his trousers all but disintegrated beneath the powerful blows, exposing badly-abused flesh and abraded muscle that began to ooze tiny rivulets of blood.

"Pearl!" Coral snapped as her sister seemed to slip deeper into the sudden burst of rage, her aqua-blue eyes clouded by glowing red corneas and her fangs bared as she gritted her teeth. The muscles of her arm were visibly taut from the frenzied exertions, making Coral wonder if something wasn't starting to kink by now and that Pearl was using the pain to spur her own anger on in a dangerous vicious circle. "PEARL!" she called out again, actively debating her chances of being able to intervene without getting herself hurt by the still-flailing whip or the fury that was driving it.

Pearl spun on the ball of her foot in a full circle before lashing out one final time, the tip of the whip swinging out in a wide arc and coming close enough to Coral to make her leap back with a startled hiss. The whip came back around to catch D in the side at the very top edge of where his pants met his hip, sending a lengthwise split through not just the trousers and the underwear beneath it but also leaving a gash in his side that immediately began to bleed at a slow but steady rate.

The impact threw D against the other support column hard enough to bruise his shoulder and essentially knock the wind out of him. A harsh noise rose up from his throat at the contact, not quite a cry of pain but still nothing that he could have hoped to suppress. An almost inhuman veil of silence arose once the chains quit creaking, broken only by Pearl's heavy panting and the soft but still audible rattling of D's breath trying to re-enter his lungs.

"Damn you, hunter," Pearl snarled very softly as she started to raise the whip again, only to jerk to a halt as Coral's hand grabbed her wrist in a grip that sent sparks of pain shooting throughout her arm.

"Pearl," Coral said in a dangerously calm voice, her pale yellow eyes all but masked by the golden glow of her corneas. Her vampiric fangs, described as tiny when compared to her sister or another vampire but still just as sharp, were barely visible as they peeked out from the edges of her lips. "What do you think you are doing?"

It took the other woman a moment to get her breathing under control to the point of allowing her to talk properly. "I want to hear him scream," she said in a deathly cold voice, her lips barely moving. "He killed our father, and I want to hear him suffer before he dies."

"I'm not going to say this again," Coral countered, increasing the power of her grip until Pearl's lip curled back in constrained pain. "Do not kill him. I need him alive for now."

"For what?" Pearl demanded, her voice dropping to barely a whisper.

Coral stared at her younger sister in silence, her eyes narrowing down to mere slits before she abruptly let go of Pearl's wrist. "I already told you I would explain it later," she said, her voice audibly straining to remain calm and seemingly collected. "In any case, I captured him and so he is mine to do with as I please. I don't mind if you have your fun with him, but you will do so by my rules. You've never been a problem-child, Pearl, and I don't think you really want to start being one now," she added, her voice smoothing out and changing pitch to take on a honeyed aspect.

Pearl snarled quietly to herself as she rubbed her aching wrist, feeling her pulse throbbing in the bruised veins where Coral had gripped her. Her arm was aching fiercely now as well, obviously a result of her sudden slippage into rage at the desire to hear D scream. His silence in the beginning was quite expected, being as strong and resilient as he was, but his continued silence after being exposed to pain that should have had even the most hardened of men crying out in pain and possibly even begging for mercy gnawed at her. She felt she was owed his pain after killing her father, and while nothing she could do to him could ever bring her father back, there was still something to be said for the satisfaction of revenge...

"Pearl," Coral said quietly, seeming to give her a gentle look.

"What?" Pearl growled, still massaging her left wrist.

"It's late," Coral replied softly, reaching up to lightly brush her hand over Pearl's bare shoulder. "The sun rose an hour ago, and we're both still keyed up from what happened earlier. You should think about going to bed soon. Don't worry, D will still be here for you to play with once the sun sets," she cooed with a tender smile. "I promise. Besides, it'll give both you and him time to rest up. The whip-marks should have healed by then, don't you think?"

Pearl's eyes narrowed even more, unable to shake the feeling that she was somehow being manipulated. Her sister had a point about bed, however, as they both had been up since sunrise the previous day. Besides, D wasn't going to be going anywhere, not while he was bound by those literally unbreakable chains. But she still wanted to have some measure of satisfaction first...

"I still want to hear him scream," she finally said in a low tone, all but daring her sister to try to mollify her. "He can still bleed for me. Just let me use a dagger on a non-vital area, I want to hear how he sings..."

"Pearl..." Coral sighed quietly as she briefly ran her fingertips through her flowing gray hair. She paused to stare into her sister's eyes in silence before sighing very quietly again. "Alright," she said in a subdued, almost sullen tone. "One strike in a non-vital area. And I don't care if he screams or not, one strike and that's it. And Pearl?" she added before she reached up to light cup her chin in a gesture that was partly a squeeze and partly a soft caress. "If he dies..."

"Trust me, sis," the other woman assured her calmly as she jerked her chin free from Coral's grasp and crossed the room. The whip was casually flicked to wind up in a neat coil in her hand, hanging it from a small hook on her belt. She went over to the shelf where D's equipment was and studied it for a moment before removing one of the daggers from his belt. She made a soft noise of appreciation as it slid free from the holder with a quiet rasp, revealing an intricate design on the blade that raised her eyebrow in curiosity.

"Hey, sis? Come look at this for a moment," she said as she turned around and held up the blade, blinking as she realized that Coral hadn't moved and still had her back turned to both her and D.

"I'll... take a look for myself in a moment," Coral said quietly without turning around.

Pearl frowned lightly before glancing down at the flower-like engravings on the dagger before shrugging in dismissal. "Yeah, whatever, sis," she said as she advanced towards D, absently hefting the blade in her hand to test it for balance. She stopped directly in front of him, pausing to glance down at the tattered remains of fabric that still clung to him. There might have been enough left of his shirt to make a decent handkerchief if you gathered it up and sewed it together to make a square, though it probably would have been more stitches and thread than actual fabric. His pants were likewise shredded into near-uselessness, though a rather large expanse still remained intact around his groin where she hadn't dared to try to use the whip. The elastic was quite broken on the one side and the rest split into utter ruin, however, which made her wonder what was keeping that last handful in place to preserve his modesty.

She took her time in examining the rest of his body, part of her wincing on the inside at the way his entire chest was still a solid wall of black and bluish-purple bruises. The size and composition of his muscles were obvious now that his skin was exposed, and it was pretty much what she expected to find given his legendary kind of strength. A voice in the back of her mind was whispering an urgent warning that she couldn't afford to let him to regain any of that strength back lest he pose an immediate danger to her. Even now, with his body half-broken and chained down by a metal amalgam that was every bit as legendary as he was, she sensed that he was still a very serious threat.

She reached out to grab his jaw, forcing his head up so that she could see into the dark depths of his eyes. Her own eyes narrowed slightly at what she saw reflected back at her. Pain, certainly, but he was still quite lucid and seemingly in control of himself. His pupils seemed to flicker slightly as he focused on her, the rasp in his throat smoothing out as he visibly tried to rally his strength. If he knew what she intended to do, which she was pretty sure he did, he was doing a damn good job of not letting any sort of emotion show or otherwise giving her any indication that he was overly concerned.

"I'll be honest, D," Pearl said very quietly, unable to keep a slight hint of admiration out of her voice, "You are, without a doubt, the toughest nut I have ever tried to crack. But even the toughest of nuts will break when the right hammer is applied. You killed my father, and for that you will suffer like no living being has ever suffered before. That I promise you, D. When I am finished with you, you will beg me with tears of blood to let your life slip from my fingers and into the cold embrace of death. But for now?" she purred softly as she swung her arm back, "I just want to hear you scream."

Coral closed her eyes as she heard the subtle rustle of Pearl's undershirt moving with her arm, followed by the sound of a dagger being sunk into flesh. A truly sharp gasped echoed throughout the dungeon, the hissing sound of one who suddenly found himself in an incredible amount of pain but yet was using every fiber of his being to suppress it, to keep himself from crying out. It wasn't something she wished to contemplate or visualize, but she knew that it was necessary for her to allow if she wished to keep her sister under control.

Pearl blinked in surprise and amazement, first glancing down to see the full length of the blade imbedded in D's abdomen, then looking back up to see the look in D's eyes. She could almost watch the pain impulses travelling over his optic nerves, surging with each beating of his heart that jostled his lower organs just enough to sear the nerves with unspeakable pain... and yet there still burned a spark of determination, a fierce gathering of his willpower to fight against the mortal agony and not make a sound. The sound of his teeth grinding together and the rasping of his labored breathing were well beyond his level of control, but he still refused to cry out in pain even as the dagger continued to throb slightly in her grip.

"You have to be shitting me," Pearl said quietly in a tone of disbelief, more than a little unnerved by his resolve even as his lifeblood began to seep across the hilt to coat her fingertips. A very soft sound could be heard a few moments later as his blood began to drip off the end of the hilt to form a tiny puddle of crimson. "Just who the living fuck are you, hunter?" she breathed.

"Pearl?" the subdued voice drifted from several feet away, sounding to be unusually tired for some reason. "You forgot to say the magic word."

Pearl blinked at her sister's tone before glancing back to D, trying to figure out what she was talking about before it finally hit her. "Oh, I get it now," she purred in an evil tone. "You know, sis, you're absolutely right, I forgot all about that. Scream for me, D," she said as she readjusted her grip on the dagger and braced. "Please," she added with a truly malicious smile as she twisted the blade as hard as she could.

Coral flinched as the unholy sound filled the room, obviously a result of D's body finally having been taken past its limits of tolerance for pain. The scream was one that was likely to leave his throat raw if not a bloody ruin, a sudden outpouring of every molecule of air in his lungs. She wasn't sure how long the scream went on, the sound seeming to last for an eternity without any sort of interruption before finally falling silent. For a moment she feared that the life had been driven from his body by the experience, but then she heard just the faintest of sounds from over her shoulder, not quite a rasp of breath being drawn but not quite a sob either. Regardless of what it was, it was enough to assure her that he was still alive.

"Thank you, D," Pearl said calmly, a truly dark smile still visible on her lips as she savored her victory. "I guess there's something to be said for manners after all." She glanced down at her hands and very carefully let go of the dagger, leaving it fully imbedded in his abdomen. Satisfied that it would stay put for the moment, she carefully examined the blood that coated her hand before tentatively bringing her fingertips to her lips.

"You don't want to do that," Coral said quietly, her back still turned to both D and Pearl.

Pearl froze in mid-motion, the tip of her tongue barely an inch away from the crimson nectar. "Why not?" she inquired warily as she slowly lowered her hand and tried to figure out why her sister looked so tense all of a sudden.

"You remember what Father said about blood-marriages and how they were performed, right?" Coral said, her voice sounding weary. "That and you don't know how strong his blood is. It could end up dominating you."

Pearl glanced over to where D lay half-slumped, unable to move very far because of the chains around his wrists. "Yeah, alright," she found herself saying after a moment, realizing that her sister probably was not making idle commentary about the potential strength of D's blood. "Well, in any case, I got what I wanted. At least for today," she added in a faintly ominous tone as she glared at D.

"I'll see you tonight then, Pearl," Coral said, almost too softly for her sister's vampiric hearing to detect. "Sleep well."

Pearl paused to try to make sense of her sister's mood. Granted that was not an easy task given Coral's whimsical nature and tendency for sudden shifts in mood, but at least those usually had some reason or method behind them that triggered the change. But as for why she seemed to be so withdrawn all of a sudden was beyond her imagination. "You too, sis," she replied in a slightly uneasy tone. "Try not to have too much fun with him, okay?"

Coral remained silent as she listened to the soft footsteps making their way across the floor. The door creaked slightly as it was first opened, then closed just as gently to leave her alone in the dungeon with D. She finally opened her eyes and sighed very softly, trying not to imagine just how much damage Pearl had done to D and how long it would take for him to regain his strength. Or at least enough of it for her purposes...

Her footsteps where whisper-quiet as she turned around and moved over to stand in front of him, her lips tugging down sharply in a scowl as she saw that the dagger had been left in his abdomen. A small pool of blood had already formed on the metal plate beneath him, continuing to be fed one drop at a time.

"Damn her," she murmured as she reached out to grasp the hilt. She paused as the gesture caused D to inhale sharply, his lips once again pulling back to bare his vampiric fangs. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she braced her hand against his chest and yanked the blade out of his abdomen.

The moan that followed was enough to make her skin crawl, sounding as if he had wanted to scream again but simply didn't have the strength to do even that much. That was not a good sign in her view, as it suggested that he was a lot closer to death than he seemed to be. She didn't bother looking at the blade as she set it aside on a small table, exchanging it for the small cloth she had used earlier to rouse him.

"D?" she murmured as she carefully tried to wipe the blood away from the wound in his abdomen. She watched nervously as it began to seal itself, his regenerative powers seeming to take an eternity by her standards before the flow of blood eventually stopped. She knew the internal damage wouldn't be repaired so quickly, but at least he wouldn't be losing any more of his blood.

"I'm sorry about that, but I kind of had to let her do that," she said to him in a quiet, almost subdued tone as she dipped the bloody rag in the bowl of water and started to gingerly rinse his chest. She paused as he made a very dry rasping noise and glanced around for something to use as a cup. Seeing nothing immediately available, she settled for scooping up a handful of water from the bowl and splashing it against his lips. "Easy," she murmured as she spent the next couple of minutes giving him handfuls of water to help quench his burning thirst.

"There you go," she purred as she rinsed the cloth again and carefully started to clean his upper back. "You'll be alright, D. Believe me when I say I'm not going to let you die on me. You're just a little too important to me, now that I have you. Damn, you're a tough one," she added as she noticed how the welts on his back had already started to heal.

She blinked hard as she heard him whisper her name, a sound that was all but incomprehensible given the way his throat rasped as he forced out the pair of syllables. "Don't," she said quickly as she came back around to the front and ran the cloth over the base of his throat. "Don't try to talk, D, I know you're not up to it yet."

She blinked again as he somehow summoned the strength to lift his head up, just enough to look into her pale yellow eyes. "Wh... what... do... you... wh... want?" he rasped. It was obvious that the effort was costing him dearly in terms of pain, his corneas starting to flicker blue in time with his pulse.

"D..." Coral started to say before falling silent, one hand reaching up to lightly touch his cheek. The gesture was a gentle one, almost like a caress as her fingertips lightly probed the spot on his jaw where she had struck him last night. The faintest of smiles brushed her lips as she continued to study him, still not believing that she had actually managed to capture him.

She finally drew in a breath and looked him in the eyes, almost choking with anxiety at how intently he was looking back at her. "As I told my sister, I'll explain it all to you later," she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. "But know that I have no wish to harm you. I've dreamt about being able to meet you for years now, ever since... well," she said as the smile briefly faltered before reasserting itself, "Let's just say I've been waiting for just the right moment. Waiting, all this time..."

Even through the haze of pain that threatened to send him over the edge and into the abyss of unconsciousness at any moment, he could still sense that there was something very wrong with her whole demeanor. His initial impression of Pearl had proven to be accurate in terms of her hatred for him and her own fires of rage, but understanding Coral continued to be an elusive task. Maybe it would all make sense once his body healed enough so that he could stop and think like a rational and sentient entity once again, but right now he was simply in too much pain to both think and keep his vampiric side under control. The latter was far more important to him, as he knew that it was liable to be the death of him if it got out of control and tried to go on a rampage in his current environment.

He paused and refocused on her as she giggled very softly to herself, a look of idle amusement reflected in her eyes as she tilted her head slightly to study him. "You're absolutely amazing, you know that?" she murmured quietly as she picked up the cloth and started to tenderly rinse the dried blood off of his arm. "I've seen her flay a battle-hardened knight before, and he screamed his throat apart after only going through a third of what you just did. I'm quite impressed, D, you are everything that the legends have said and more."

She giggled softly again before the cloth slid down to his abdomen, very carefully passing over the angry red mark where the dagger had been thrust past his kidneys and narrowly avoided shredding his intestines. An icy chill ran down his spine as her hand moved lower, her fingertip slipping inside the edge of his ruined underwear and giving the elastic an experimental tug.

"Oops," she purred very softly as the material fell away from his body as a single unit, apparently held in place only by its weight, friction, and maybe even a touch of static electricity. He was essentially naked now, save for a few small scraps of cloth that still clung to his arms and shoulders, and he only needed a single glance at the look in her eyes to know that it was not an accident that she had forbidden Pearl from injuring him in the groin.

"Well, well, what have we here?" Coral cooed as she leaned over to him, her lips almost brushing the shell of his ear as the cloth was dunked in the bowl of water once again. "I guess the rest of the stories are just as true, then, hmm?" she said as he felt the cloth brushing over his waistline where the elastic had been. "But then again, I already knew that. I see you know what I'm talking about," she added coyly as she caught the look in his eyes as her hand very slowly worked its way downward.

"Rest assured, hunter, I will not hurt you," she said, letting just a single fingertip trace the length of his manhood before bringing the damp cloth back up to very carefully try to brush against his chest. The pressure of her hand in badly bruised territory caused him to hiss slightly, resulting in her jerking back in a startled motion. "Well, not intentionally," she amended with a slightly embarrassed look.

He remained silent as she edged back to study him, her gaze seeming to wander across the whole of his body. He was only faintly surprised when her gaze didn't linger on his exposed manhood, continuing to roam around at random before coming to rest on his own eyes once again. A truly dark chill shot down his spine as she gave him an odd smile, the faintest of twinkles forming in her eyes to suggest that she was up to something. And if his instincts were even remotely close to being correct, he was definitely not going to like finding out just what it was that she ultimately wanted from him.

He blinked as she suddenly yawned, a faint frown forming on her lips as she turned her head to one side and discreetly covered her mouth. "Oh, my," she sighed as she turned back to give him an apologetic look. "I do believe I may be getting too old for this kind of thing. Granted I'm only a hundred and thirty, but staying out in the sun all day and then staying awake through the entire night to keep working until sunrise isn't something I can do like I used to when I was a little girl. No matter, sleep will come soon enough and I'll bet you could use a nap yourself right now, hmm?"

D was probably sure he had enough energy by now to speak out and ask her a question, or at least get enough words out for her to understand him, but he remained silent as she headed over to the series of levers that he could barely see out of the corner of his eye. He supposed that he might have been able to see them better if he moved his head, but right now he didn't want to risk even the slightest loss of energy from muscle movement unless he had to. He could literally feel his insides mending, one fleshy fiber at a time, which bothered him greatly as he couldn't ever remembering being that badly injured before to where the regeneration could be measurably felt.

There was a clicking sound and suddenly the floor beneath D's feet opened up to reveal a truly deep tunnel. The realization made him jerk back slightly in a reflex before his mind clamped down on the initial fear of falling. Had he been standing on the floor he would have been sent tumbling into the tunnel, but he was still chained to the metal columns and support shelf. He blinked as he suddenly saw light at the bottom, realizing after a few moments that he was suspended over a tunnel that opened out over the bottom of the continental rift where Baron Winters' castle had been situated.

"Yes, it's a long drop," Coral assured him as she carefully peered over the edge. "This whole place used to be volcanic at some point, and the room we're in now was a lava bubble that solidified ages ago. All we needed to do was refurbish it a little, shore up the floors and walls for ambience, and our little playground was born. The tunnel used to be a lava tube, and as you can see it stretches the full length of the canyon cliffs here. It makes for a great garbage-disposal system, don't you think?" she purred as she picked up the chunk of his pants that she had pulled off him earlier and tossed it into the void.

D couldn't help watching the fabric as it fluttered through the air on its way down, seeming to take forever before it flashed in the sunlight and finally disappeared from view. It had to be at least two thousand feet straight down, if not more, and not something he wished to contemplate falling into. Perhaps he might have stood a remote chance of surviving the fall, depending on how close to the canyon wall he could remain to try to brake or otherwise control his freefall, but in his current condition...

A second clicking sound caused him to look up, first up towards her, then up higher still as a bright light suddenly lanced down from the ceiling. His skin immediately started to tingle moments later as he realized that the lava tube continued up through the ceiling and that a hatch of some sort had been built into it. The hatch was open now, allowing the bright rays of the sun to shine down into the tube and illuminate him in its searing light.

"As you can see," Coral purred softly, "The tube goes clear through the lava bubble and up to the top of the canyon. Mmm, that's bright," she added as she held her ungloved hand out in the light. "You'd be surprised at what you can do with a few mirrors in just the right places. In any case, D, I'm going to have to leave you here like this until I can come back for you once the sun sets. Oh, don't look at me like that," she sighed as he glanced back down at her sharply.

"You see," she said quietly as she reached out to stroke his cheek, "I know how strong you are, D, and I can't risk letting you regain your strength just yet. Don't worry, it'll be overcast soon, so you won't have to worry about heat exposure just yet. Okay, you might wind up with a bit of a sun-tan before nightfall, but I think it would look good on you," she purred as she let her fingertips trace the outlines of his arm muscles. "But I'll take care of you once the moon rises, I promise. You can trust me, D," she murmured as she leaned over to kiss him.

He jerked his head back to avoid letting his lips contact hers, ignoring the sudden creaking of his neck joint and the sparks of pain that the movement caused. She paused and blinked at the gesture, easing her head back with a look of surprise in her eyes.

"D, don't do that, I'm not going to bite you," she said demurely as she leaned forward again. She sighed as he again resisted the contact, twisting his head to one side with a grimace of pain as the tendons in his neck made a rather hideous cracking sound. "Very well," she said as she leaned back, her expression slipping into a truly disappointed pout with a quiet sigh. "But do think about it, okay?" she whispered as she reached up to squeeze his arm. "I won't be truly ready for another few days, but still... think about it?"

He remained silent as she stepped back, holding onto his chains with one hand for balance and stability so she wouldn't fall into the gaping tunnel that lay open beneath his feet. "I'll send Abby to check on you in a few hours," she said quietly as she gazed at him, an unknown emotion starting to form in her pale yellow eyes. "She'll close the roof if the sun is too strong. Try to sleep well, D, for tonight is going to be... fun," she whispered, a chilling smile brushing her lips. "I promise."

It was all D could do to remain impassive as she turned away and left the room in silence, her footsteps barely making any noise whatsoever. The door seemed to creak ominously as it was opened, allowing her to step inside the archway before pausing to cast a final look at him. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of the way she smiled at him and wiggled her fingers in a wave before she vanished from sight and shut the door behind her, but the way the door clicked loudly a few seconds later spoke volumes of his true situation.

((D?)) it spoke up in a very uneasy voice after a few moments of silence.

"Quiet," D managed to rasp in a broken whisper as his eyes closed.

((For god's sake, D...)) it tried to say.

"You must stay quiet," D said, ignoring the burning agony in his throat as he forced his vocal chords to work. "If they find you..."

((Yeah, I think I got the picture thirty minutes ago,)) it replied in a very quiet voice. ((Look, just stay quiet and listen to me for a few, okay? Here's the bad news, she wasn't kidding about the composition of those chains. Pure titanium smelted around pure adamantium cores. If you're thinking about trying to break them somehow? Don't bother, it just ain't going to happen.

((But get this... not all of it is what they think it is,)) it added, the faint note of hope in its voice causing D's eyes to open just slightly. ((The chains on your left wrist are like everything else... but not the bolts that attach them to the band around your wrist. The other sets are titanium, but the ones here were replaced with carbon-tempered iron. You might be able to pop them if you had your full strength back, but you'd be just as liable to snap your wrist in half as well. I don't recommend hinging any plans around it, but it's still a weakness to keep in mind.))

"Thanks," D murmured as he closed his eyes again. The information wasn't as useful as he had hoped, but like the knowledge of his sword being relatively close at hand, it was still just comforting enough to help take the edge off. "Can you reach my gear?" he rasped.

((Uh, not by any stretch of the imagination,)) it sighed. ((I think she did it on purpose, too, just to tease you. D, all jokes aside, you've got to keep an eye on her. Pearl is just like any other rabid dunpeal you've dealt with, but I've got a very bad feeling about Coral. You know she's got some kind of controlling hypnosis power going, right?))

"How so?" D asked softly. The sunlight beating down on him wasn't too strong, or at least not yet, but it didn't need to be strong to concern him at the moment. Unless the clouds came soon, he well and truly didn't think he could withstand a full hour of sunlight before heat exposure would overcome him and that would be it. Had he been otherwise healthy he might have been able to recover from heat exposure with the right assistance, but with his grip on the warmth of life currently little more than a rapidly-fraying thread...

((I felt it as a tingle in my nervous system, which we both know is quite different than yours,)) it explained. ((That's actually a good thing, since I'd have been screaming louder than you were had our nervous systems been fully linked. D, about that...)) it suddenly said in a concerned tone. ((Look, with as long as we've been together and all...))

"Quiet," D murmured softly. Already the sunlight was making his skin itch and burn, and he knew that it would only continue to erode what little control he had left. "Just stay hidden until I need you."

((D...)) it said in a pained whisper. ((Just... hang in there, okay? Not that we have much of a choice, all things considered, but... Eh?)) it said as D's chest convulsed once before becoming still again. It remained silent for several moments before it finally dared to speak again. ((D... tell me that wasn't a laugh at what I said.))

D said nothing as he tried to force his mind to shut down, attempting to enter a dormant state akin to sleep. The pain in his body would guarantee that true sleep would evade him for some time, and the constant exposure to sunlight would only further add to his problems, but he knew that he had to at least try to conserve as much energy as he could. Perhaps the night would offer some sort of respite from the mortal agony he was in, and at this point he would not have refused the relief of death. He had long ago come to terms with the idea that one day he might make a mistake in his quest or simply be out-powered by one of ancient nobles he sought to destroy. That his demise would appear to be at the hands of another dunpeal and a woman at that only bothered him slightly, or at least the first part. He knew how strong dunpeals could be, being one himself, and he had long known that women were extremely dangerous entities.

((D?)) it said, the voice seeming to be quite distant and fuzzy now as he felt his consciousness starting to slip. Granted it was a deliberate action, or so he dearly hoped, but no doubt that it would upset the parasite in his hand who likely wasn't aware of his thoughts. ((Stay with me here...))

It seemed to take forever for his body to go numb enough for his mind to fade to black, finally allowing him some measure of relief from the constant searing pain of his flesh and broken body. Part of him knew that it wasn't a good development, as feeling pain meant you were still alive. But still, even he needed a respite from such duress, didn't he? Surely everyone knew that a dunpeal like him had his limits. Hadn't Pearl proved that?

Pearl. He had seen the look in her eyes when she had stabbed him and he refused to cry out, sacrificing every remaining thread of his willpower to keep his breath in his lungs and his pain in that iron box. Twisting the knife had broken him, of course, but there had still been that glimmer of respect and awe in her eyes... Could he use that? Coral seemed to be able to control her, so that meant her willpower was pliant. Perhaps he could use that...

Perhaps he could. Use Pearl.

Perhaps.

Per. haps.

per...

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