Part 14 "The Vampire and the Mortician"
Duo hadn't heard the sound of a footstep, or the door swinging cautiously open behind him, for he'd been too busily staring out into the rain-slicked street. He was not so much as scrutinizing the glowing orange puddles in the pavement as replaying the impossible night over in his head to pinpoint just exactly why he couldn't stop remembering the moments when he saw the corners of Heero's mouth twitch upward, when he heard him laugh, when he would divulge his dark origins with a heavyhearted expression, when they would touch—if by brief accident, or with dizzying purpose.
(But it was not sharp, diving teeth he felt after that long, drawn moment—Heero cupped his chin with one hand, turning his face toward him)
He distantly felt his mouth move again to smile without his knowledge as he stared out the window, with Fridolf standing lightly at his side, gazing up at Duo with his piercing amber eyes as if curious to his thoughts. The wolf watched him absorbedly, bathed in the hazy orange cast from the streetlights just out the window, and even he, in all his long experienced years of life, could not hear or sense the second and unwelcome presence behind them. It quickly acquainted itself with him, though.
Fridolf careened suddenly into the wall ahead of them, his body crumpling to the ground as he let out a horrible sound of pain. Squealing like a kicked mutt. Duo's eyes widened in confusion for an instant, before he was also acquainted with the mysterious force. A rough hand clapped over his mouth, brutally clutching at his face and muffling his cry of surprise, and ramming him backwards, slamming him back against the chest of Heero's less amicable roommate with bruising force. Duo gasped for breath, suddenly dizzy and filled with panicked adrenaline, and found a knifepoint quickly jabbed to his neck. His arms flew up instinctively to protect it, but he had only twitched and the assailant had forcefully shoved the blade against his exposed neck, his white-knuckled fingers digging in and throwing his head back, leaving his mortal flesh to be intimately acquainted with a finely-sharpened six-inch blade.
Duo felt the blade point gently slicing into his skin, making an excruciating tiny cut as the pressure was continually applied. Walker's mouth was at his ear, heaving hot and offensive breath on the back of his ear. His voice had not one hint of hospitality, and Duo found himself not surprisingly disappointed it was not Heero's husky tone instead.
In fact, I'd rather not be forcibly held up at knifepoint either, but it just doesn't seem to be going my way tonight.
"What the hell," the hunter enunciated angrily, moving the knife tip around the soft circumference of Duo's neck, around the dancing pulsation of his jugular, "are you doing in my place?"
Fridolf was suddenly on his feet again and his growling voice filled the darkened room like an engine. Amber eyes glowed like fire and his jaws were open, lips grotesquely drawn back into a furious expression that would have sent any relatively sane person at least through the door, if not out of the building, but Walker simply snorted at it. Snorted as the tremendous wolf bristled, stiff-legged, eyes burning.
"What, don't you like me anymore, Fri?" he asked with a laugh.
Fridolf wasn't amused. He lunged, fangs bared, ready to tear the hunter from head to toe, tooth and nail, and Walker only smirked and slashed, slicing into the soft skin with a flash of his hand. Duo let out a scream of shock more than pain and clutched at his rent shoulder as blood began to throb out of it. He could barely breathe as the pain spread surely through his body, and the adrenaline in his head thundered away, fresh from terror.
"Ah, shit!" he cursed, gasping loudly as his fingers tried to close around the gash. "Oh, just fucking perfect! That's another shirt ruined!"
Walker jarred him. "You keep quiet," he told him, putting the knife against his unblemished neck, smearing his own blood over it. He looked down at the wolf and sneered. "Yeah, that's what I thought. You move and I'll slit this nobody pal of yours quicker than you can blink."
Duo squeezed open an eye. "Hey, pal, I'm not the fucking nobody here! Jeeze, you're more messed up than I even thought—and damn, man, buy some breath mints!" he hissed, earning himself another sharp jerk. He grit his teeth, trying not to keen out from the pain of his fresh wound.
Walker kept Duo close and in pain, and one eye firmly on the bristling wolf as he shifted to turn his head ever so slightly, watchful. He carefully scanned his eyes over the darkened room. "You're right—the real nobody is still somewhere in here. Now, where'd your little dead friend go? I know you came here with that rottin' piece of—"
Duo heard Fridolf snarling a split second before Walker let off a scream of pain and staggered forward, but the mortician was staring straight at the wolf when the hunter threw him to the floor, blood streaming down the side of his head from the pearly white fangs of a wolf digging into it. One of pure white—still airborne, claws digging into the hunter's shoulders viciously, and snowy muzzle stained red.
Walker screamed and toppled forward, dropping the knife that had been held to Duo's neck, but not before he grabbed a hold of the snarling creature on his back and threw it off him. Duo fell to the floor with jarring force, hissing in pain, and immediately clutched at his shoulder. Fridolf was at his side within an instant, gently tugging him up into a sitting position so he could dizzily watch the hunter collapse to the floor, bleeding.
But then where had the other one come from?
Walker was more resilient than Duo gave him credit, for he was on his knees, pulling a concealed gun from his boot within a few seconds. His face was suddenly very pale, contrasted by the brilliant red coursing down the side of his hateful expression. He whipped the gun up at where the wolf had fallen, sneering as he staggered up, panting.
"Don't you move!" he screamed at Heero, who was somehow lying on the floor there, the target of Walker's Browning. Duo's head spun abruptly again, though it was not from his painful wound. When the vampire shifted onto his stomach, obviously weak and his movements pained, the mortician first saw the turbulent blue eyes burning up at Walker with nothing short of hatred and then saw the blood dripping down the front of his face. Something in the pit of his stomach twisted in confusion and fear, but mostly pain, as his shoulder had begun to throb horribly.
"I'll blow you to bits, Heero," Walker snarled as he stood up. The gun was leveled evenly at the vampire, who laid on the ground and simply glared in return, but the hand that held it was pale and unsteady and the blood running down his face wasn't relenting.
"You know you can't fight me in your condition," he hissed, contemptuous and breathless. "You're so weak you can't even hold a transformation! You know you wouldn't survive a bullet to the head, because you're too chickenshit to feed and now you're on the brink of death, but you'll never be able reach it!"
"I'm not too 'chicken-shit' to face you," he growled, Walker's blood dripping down his lip as he curled it in hatred. His blue eyes burned in the shadows. "Leave him out of this. Face me without a hostage. Or am I still too much of a threat to you, like this?"
Walker snorted behind the safety of his gun. "You're scum, that's all. You should have never existed, bloodsucker—why should I do what you ask?" He laughed, as if it were the best joke he'd heard in a week, and readjusted his sights, his entire body poised for the imminent gunshot. "Man, it's such a pain dealing with you now. I should have paid attention and just killed you off years ago."
Duo cut his narration instants before his finger began to squeeze the trigger with the nearest weapon possible as he stood and flew to Heero's defense, brandishing a single empty beer bottle from a nearby side table. He grunted and swung down as hard as possible onto Walker's tenderized head, shattering into thousands of green beads. The hunter screamed this time out of surprise, his cry slurred by pain, and crumpled to the floor again, barely able to prevent himself from collapsing completely. Duo could see bits of glittering green buried in his hair and dripping with blood. He hesitated, holding the jagged mouth of the bottle, momentarily watching the carnage, dizzying as his own bleeding intensified, his heart beating close to his tongue.
Heero staggered to his feet and rushed to Duo, instinctively putting a hand on his arm, asking if he was all right. Instinctively lifting and brushing his fingertips over the wound in his shoulder, pursing his lips together in a crooked grimace.
The mortician hesitated to answer, carefully raking his eyes over the vampire's face, over the blood on his mouth, but quickly seemed to break from his trance and breathe a response. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Let's get the hell out of here, 'Ro," he muttered, still unable to take his eyes off of Heero, whose only response was attempt an anemic smile and to take him by the wrist and pull him away from the groaning hunter, rushing for the doorway. The human, the undead, and the wolf fled from the blood-stained room into the hallway, Heero leading the way as they ran, without a moment's thought to who may have been sleeping behind the doors they passed.
As they neared the end of the hall, Heero suddenly snatched Duo by the wrist again and whirled into apartment 23B, throwing the door open. He stopped to hold it open for the mortician and his face paled, catching sight of Walker staggering out of the door at the end of the long, whining corridor. He saw the fury on his red and white face swell, spurring the Browning up into the air again, leveled remorselessly at them.
"Go!" he said, pushing Duo through the door. Fridolf rounded the doorway at a sprint, barely dodging Walker's shot. It bit into the wooden frame like a hammer, spurring Heero to slam the door shut, throwing the locks as soon as he had. When he whipped his head around, the mortician was standing at the window, grunting as he tried to open the stubborn thing.
"God damn it, does anybody fix anything around here? This whole place is a walking death trap," Duo complained loudly, his knuckles turning white as he braced his legs and shoved. The mortician bit down on his bottom lip in concentration, muttering curses all the while. Heero glanced at him momentarily, then back at the locked door. An instant later he was breezing by Duo into the empty apartment's bedroom, making the living human turn to look at him, baffled. "Heero?" Another blur passed him with the tattoo of claws on the wooden floor, only deepening his confusion. "Fridolf? What are you guys doing?"
"Relena must have gone for her early walk—thank god," Heero muttered to himself as he strode fearlessly into the startling pink room, scanning it hastily, painfully conscious of the footfalls of his disgruntled roommate approaching, heavy and furious, down the hallway. "She would have only gotten hurt if she'd been here—and fussed over me, anyway." That was when he crawled onto the pink comforter and began tearing through the piles of stuffed animals amassed there, throwing them over his shoulder as he went through the collection, frowning at each respectively.
"Heero, what the hell are you doing?" Duo asked as he watched, one hand on the windowsill, the other at the back of his head, scratching. "This ain't no time for a tea party with your dolls, ya know."
Fridolf trotted about the room, sniffing at the other piles of girly things Relena had collected in her frighteningly colored room, dodging the stuffed rabbits and unicorns that came pelting through the air as he moved.
The vampire picked up a mauve teddy bear, scowled at it, and sent it flying carelessly over his shoulder.
"She must have kept it. That's all she loved to do, collect those things," he said, his face set tightly, as dawn drew carelessly closer, a knowledge that ached deeply in him. He reached for another, pushing the last great pile over and scattering the playthings, when there came a pair of gunshots and a following crash as Relena's door flew cleanly off, the hinges shot through.
The mortician was in the pink bedroom faster than even Heero could register, slamming this door shut and cursing, "Shit, man!" as he dragged a salmon colored vanity across it, kicking the chair in front of the blockade for good measure. He looked up at Heero as he tried to catch his breath, still pained from his bleeding shoulder. He couldn't help but laugh at the vampire, kneeling on the fluffy rose-colored comforter, in his clothes, face covered in red, glaring at the stuffed animals as he scattered them to ever corner of the cramped room. "If I had ever been told I'd live to see this day," he muttered to himself.
Heero looked at him, as if he was going to say something, then his deep blue eyes widened and he lunged up off the bed, toward Duo. "That's it!"
Duo confusedly looked to both sides of him, then spun around to see a shabby old brown teddy bear sitting quaintly on the vanity he'd moved, its stubby arms matted and seemingly reaching out for Heero as he reached for it. Around its neck hung a quaint little vial of dirt, which was Heero's key to survival. He sighed as he picked it up, but he smirked tiredly as he held it in his hand, reminded of the absurdity of it all.
"Risking life and limb for a teddy bear," he said, running a finger over the button eye that remained. "It hardly seems sane when I think about it."
"Well, sanity's overrated, as you and I both know. So, if we've got what we came for," Duo responded, looking warily around the pink walls and finally at the blockaded door, "then how the hell are we going to get out of here?"
Heero looked at him silently, still oblivious to the bloodstain marring his face, then his head turned, eyes silently pointing toward a small metallic square breaking up the pink floral pattern decorating the walls. An old blouse hung halfway out of it, and more dirty clothes lounged in a pile beneath it. His eyes traveled back to Duo's in consultation in the shadowed, rosy room, and immediately the mortician's mouth gaped in shock, rebuttal even. He enthusiastically shook his head as he declared, "Oh, no, no, 'Ro, I am not going there."
"What's the matter?" he asked, smirking back. "You're thin; you'll fit. Unless you'd prefer to spend the night here?"
Duo glanced at him, holding a teddy bear tightly to his chest, with wolf standing at his hip, nearly half his height, mouth rimmed in red, and then tossed his hands into the air. "I can't believe this!" he muttered, stalking over to the opposite of the room, grumbling, "Fine, fine! But only if it's the only way out!"
Fridolf trotted ahead of them, putting the laundry shoot open, resting both paws on the metal cover as he looked over his shoulder at Heero and Duo. Then, at a nod from his master, leapt fearlessly into the narrow metal chute. The flap shut reactively behind him, and they could hear the distant metallic thuds as he traveled the three stories down, down, down. As soon as Duo didn't hear the wolf land, he began to grow nervous again—"What the hell am I supposed to land on, exactly? Man! This is some plan you've got, 'Ro!"
The vampire stood close to him again, smiling only in his eyes, which compelled Duo silently to climb into the laundry chute, though begrudgingly, feet first. Heero followed him closely as the mortician shimmied in a ways, clutching tightly at the rim. He gave Heero a pointed look as he sat, body halfway into the narrow metal space, and pursed his lips nervously. "You sure you know what your doing?" he asked. "Well," he grit out, "what I'm doing, more exactly?"
Heero bent down as silent as a shadow and put the scruffy stuffed animal into Duo's arm, keeping their faces consistently close as he did so, running his deep blue eyes over his face. Duo swore he saw a smirk growing there as Heero told him, "Trusting me," and pressed his lips against Duo's abruptly, surprising the mortician so his eyes flew open and his fingers loosened. Their mouths ripped apart as Duo dropped in a blink of an eye, and Heero smiled as he heard Duo let out a groan of complaint below. The vampire gave one more glance to the blockaded door, noting with a certain anxiety that Walker had made no attempt to intrude, and jumped inside himself.
And after no ambiguous distance, fell into a large canvas hamper with a loud thump! and a pair of socks flopping onto his hair. Duo was beside him, pushing a pair of tattered gym shorts that were suspiciously odorous off of him as he tried to stand. Heero got to his feet first, taking Duo by the arm and pulling the both of them out of the knee-deep pile of clothing and into the cobwebbed laundry room on the first floor. Through the filthy windows, Heero could see the dawn reaching her colored fingers out into the lightening sky.
"Come on," he urged and he bolted for the door, with Fridolf close at his side. Duo staggered out, cursing, and followed at a similar speed with teddy bear in hand.
Heero threw the door open, leading to the dilapidated foyer, and as soon as he had stepped out into the hallway, the door leading to their freedom outside only a few feet out of their reach, he had jerked back inside, jarring Duo, who had just caught up with him. He barely had time to breath, "What?" before Duo heard the vicious bark of a gunshot and the wood only a few inches from the vampire's head bursting as an angry bullet bit through it.
"Damn!" Duo cursed automatically. He could hear Walker's vengeful footsteps thundering down the stairs just beyond the door, and could feel Heero's entire body tensing and shuddering, exhaustion competing with surging adrenaline and fear as he took Duo's hand tightly in his, cold and determined, and bolted for the door. He felt as if his arm might fly from the socket at first, and they sprinted for the door, as the space of only twenty feet seemed to stretch impossibly. The rug slipped beneath their feet as they ran, and Duo looked over his shoulder to see Walker stop and level the gun, face contorted and bloodied.
"Shit!" he barked, pushing Heero toward the door as another bullet bit into the wood, not far. His accuracy was improving, Duo noticed with a dry swallow.
Fridolf yipped and jumped clean into the air as another thunder crack came—there was a neat hole in the wooden floor at his feet.
The vampire grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, throwing the door open into the dawning light as Walker's footsteps thundered down the agonizingly small corridor toward them, raising his gun again. Duo staggered onto the sidewalk just behind Heero and dashed for the dented shape of his car, parked on the opposite side of the road. The glowing orange puddles burst beneath their feet as Heero threw open the passenger side door, reaching it first, and slid hastily inside, breathless as he sidled into the driver's seat, Duo only a hair's breadth behind. Fridolf leapt into the car, then dove into the backseat. The mortician hesitated, and spun his head around at the sound of a fist pounding on the door, which had slowly begun to swing shut. It flew open again, and Walker sent a furious stare across the street, where he caught Duo's gaze for a moment.
A second was spent just staring, and then time burst remorselessly back into motion. Walker lifted his gun as Duo dashed inside, slamming the door. He squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet careening into the backseat window as Duo yanked the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Heero. As the shattered glass fell, the engine turned, roaring into life in the silent street, and as Fridolf cautiously lifted his head again to peer out the broken window, Heero's foot fell on the pedal and one dented Camry hauled off into the dawn, tires squealing.
They passed one streetlight—then two, three… ten—before they turned off, leaving the streets only in the hazy glow of morning dawning.
They passed one street, then another, crossed through one intersection, one green light, then another, all in silence. It was only punctuated as they slowly caught their breath, still coursing with adrenaline. Heero's hands, clenched around the steering wheel, loosened eventually and, even wincing in the brightening light, found himself stopping in front of Duo's door, the mortician resting his head against the window breathlessly. His warm breath clouded on the window as his breathing finally evened out, teddy bear clutched tightly underarm. His eyes opened tiredly and he blinked at the familiar image of his apartment for a few moments, doing nothing. Heero let out sigh, and leaned back in the seat after pulling the key from the ignition. His eyes drifted close in exhaustion—looking bone pale in the dawning light—but opened again as Duo suddenly let out a chuckle.
Heero turned his head to see the mortician gazing down at the scruffy brown stuffed animal he held, and smiling. He laughed again, louder this time, and laughed again, until he couldn't help it but to continue laughing, staring at the one-eyed teddy bear. Without really knowing why, Heero smiled and chuckled himself, leaning tiredly against the seat.
"That was some first date, Heero," Duo murmured, chuckling again. "Points for originality, at least."
"Well," he whispered quietly, eyes closed as his head tilted back, "I hope you won't be bored if the next one is just dinner and a movie."
The first sunrays were creeping over the horizon, spilling slowly out over the spread of the city, creeping over the skyline in red outlines, painting the streets orange, when Duo leaned over in a small car to rest against the vampire he'd brought back to life, felt an arm go around his waist, and rested his head on his shoulder, dead tired.
Cleaned up and changed, with the curtains drawn, Heero and Duo lay curled up in the mortician's bed, beneath a collection of thick comforters as the first early morning commuters were boarding their buses in the world of light outside, coffee cups in hand and on the brink of another workday. In the tangle of red and black sweaters and arms and legs that was their comfortable shelter, clutched to Heero's chest by two pairs of arms was a tattered little teddy bear with a vial of dirt around its neck. Both slept deep and peaceful like the dead as the world brightened outside, driving the creatures of the night into their darkened corners, their reservoirs of shadow.
At the foot of the bed, curled into a warm ball, lay a great gray wolf, remaining protectively at his master's side as morning crept over the city and tried in vain to peer through the drawn curtains into their room. Fridolf suddenly lifted his head, ears turned toward the door, and silently unfurled and slunk down from the bed onto the floor. The mattress moved as his weight disappeared, but both the living and the undead did not move except to sleepily draw closer, and the wolf navigated his way silently through the piles of blood-stained clothes left on the floor to the door.
Open a crack, he nudged it with his muzzle and peered curiously into the dim living room. Suddenly, his bright amber eyes lit up and a smirk came to his mouth, baring a wicked tooth as he spotted a portly rodent wandering across the floor and ran his tongue over his lips. He trotted out to pursue his newly found, succulent prey, and gently closed the door behind him with a paw, letting the vampire and the mortician sleep in peace, at least until Trowa would find what was left of his precious pet.
la morte.
