Chapter 2: The Pain of Sorrow
Dru slowly opened her eyes. It was dark and the night's breeze coming in through the open shojo door chilled her pale skin under the blanket. She attempted to sit up but thought better of it when the pain hit her. Unable to move, she surveyed her surroundings. She was in a small room with little furniture. There was a small table to her right with a lamp and the open door leading outside to what appeared to be a porch. To her left was another door, this one closed and leading to the unknown.
Not seeing her children, Dru felt for their energy. A few feet away in the room to the right of hers she could feel the two oldest, Taiki and Niiro, and to the one left, the youngest Shinta. Where were the twins Riku and Riko? Shouldn't they be here with them? She searched for their energy but it was nowhere to be found. A thought struck her, what if He had killed them just like all the others? It was very likely. Her eyes started to mist over and a single tear slid down her right cheek.
There was a sound coming from the porch and she turned to face a tall redheaded human with bright green eyes. For a moment she wondered who this strange boy was until she recognized his energy. It was Kurama! She remembered now, waking up in his arms in that awful dungeon, how he promised to save her children. Hope filled her heart at that thought. Maybe he had saved them; maybe they were still alive, just not here.
"Kurama." She whispered. There was so much she wanted to ask but she barely had the strength to speak. Her throat was sore from screaming. He walked over and sat beside her mattress on the floor. He wouldn't look at her, not even when she tentatively grabbed his hand in her much smaller one. Now she knew something was wrong. "Kurama," she said again, "where are the twins? Something happened to them didn't it?"
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "When we found them they were already dead. There was no way to bring them back. We brought the bodies back though, just in case you wanted to see them." He looked up at her through his bangs to gauge her reaction. She laid there, her face turned away from him to hide the tears even though he knew she was crying. Her small form shook as she sobbed into her pillow. He sat on the bed and pulled her slender form towards him in an embrace. "I'm so sorry," he whispered again as tears misted his emerald eyes as well. "I'm so sorry. I should have been there; I should have protected you. This is all my fault!" He felt so guilty right now. If he had been there all those years then she wouldn't have lost her children and she wouldn't be crying right now. All of this was his fault!
"It's not your fault," she said between sobs. "It's not your fault."
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Dru and Kurama sat outside in the yard. In front of them lay the small forms of Dru's eight-year-old twin children under a blanket. She felt numb, two more of her children had died and there was nothing she could do about it. There was no miracle potion that could bring them back. What made it worse was the fact that she hadn't been there; she wasn't there in their last few minutes to comfort them like she had for her other children that He had killed. They died alone and afraid.
'I should have died to. I can't even protect my own children. I don't deserve to live.' Dru thought bitterly as she stared unblinking at the still forms of Riku and Riko, her babies. She even couldn't bring herself to pull the blanket back and look at them. What kind of mother was she?
"Dru?" Kurama asked, trying to bring her out of her thoughts. He was really worried about her. He'd expected her to be upset but he wasn't prepared for this. It was as if she had just given up hope of ever being happy again. When she didn't answer him, he grabbed her chin and turned her to face him. "Dru I know you're upset about your children dying and it's understandable but you can't stay this way forever. You have to move on."
"How can you say that! You know nothing of what I've gone through! You don't know what it feels like to watch your children suffer and die and know that it's all just to make you suffer in the end, that it's entirely your fault! I've had to deal with that for seventeen years! Seventeen years! Don't you dare talk to me about moving on!" she yelled.
Suddenly, she no longer felt angry or hurt. It was like a giant weight had been lifted off her shoulders. But even though she no longer felt like killing everyone and everything that moved, she still felt a terrible loss in her heart. A loss caused by the knowledge that no matter how much she yelled or wished for it, Riko and Riku were gone and they weren't coming back. Overcome with emotion again, she began to cry for all she was worth.
Kurama just sat there and held her, whispering that everything was going to alright and rubbing calming circles on her back. It was good for her to let go and cry, it would help her to deal with the pain.
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Shinta poked his head around the corner. He had woken up in a strange room alone and became worried when he heard his mother screaming. He had found the last room she was in for her scent still clung to the sheets but she was nowhere in sight. He was about to leave and search in another room when he noticed the open door leading outside. Being the smart five-year-old he was, he decided to try the open door.
Once out on the porch he spotted his mother being hugged by a strange man with long red hair in a white shirt and blue pants. Quietly he approached, unsure whether it was safe or not. As he approached he began to make out the sounds of his mother sobbing and the strange man comforting her. Shinta began to wonder what would cause his mother to cry, until he noticed the covered forms of his brother and sister.
"Riko… Riku…" he mumbled as he fought back the tears. He couldn't cry, that would make him weak… he couldn't cry… Shinta broke down and sobbed for his dead siblings.
His mother looked up from her place crying on Kurama's shoulder. She watched as her youngest son, only five years old, as he cried his heart out for his brother and sister and wished that she could turn and look away as if this wasn't happening, but she knew that she couldn't. This really was happening and she was his mother, it was her job to look after and protect him. Now it was her job to do the comforting.
"Shinta…" she whispered to get his attention. When he finally looked up at her with his puffy red eyes that looked so much like hers, he stood up and ran into her open arms. She stroked his hair and murmured words of reassurance just as she had done so many times with him and his older sibling. He kept begging her to bring them back but all she could reply was that she couldn't and that they were gone for good. The whole time she was consoling her son, telling him that they were gone, her grief started to ebb away. They were gone like so many of her other children that that bastard had killed just to spite her but they were no longer suffering and that was what counted.
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Exhausted from crying and lack of sleep, Shinta drifted off in his mother's arms. Dru in turn was resting against her kitsune, content to just be with him after all these years of longing. A slight breeze blew a lock of his flame red hair into her face and she stared at it after she caught between two of her fingers. It was so different from his old form, that of a sleek silver fox, as deadly as he was beautiful. It was hard to believe that this human body housed that spirit.
Kurama chuckled slightly as he watched Dru study his hair. It was a vast contrast to the silver hair of his Youko form. Oh well, she would get used to it eventually. Upon hearing his laughter, Dru turned her head upwards to look at him. Emerald met ruby and they stared at each other for long minutes, lost in the others eyes like they used to do when they were alone in Makai.
After a while Kurama noticed that Dru's eyes were slightly glazed over and that she was leaning more heavily on him than before. "Are you alright?" he asked. When she didn't respond he asked, "When was the last time you fed?" Again she didn't answer and now he began to worry. If she hadn't fed in a while then she would go into a frenzy soon and drink from whoever she could get her fangs into.
Carefully, so as not to shake or disturb the sleeping boy in her lap, the fox in human form pulled back the sleeve to his shirt and brought his wrist up to her lips. When she did not respond, he used his own teeth to slightly break the skin just enough to draw blood. When he brought his wrist to her lips again, Dru suddenly grasped on to his arm and bit down hard, her fangs puncturing his soft flesh as she drank his blood.
He gave a soft gasp of pain until it ebbed away into pleasure. See, Dru was a Blood Demon, where the vampires of the NeginKai originated. There were some differences though. Unlike vampires Blood Demons were very much alive and could walk in the sunlight although they tended not to like it. Most live in cave deep in the forests and only came out at night, using the darkness as a cape to help capture their pray. The story of killing one with a stake to the heart was all a lie as was the one about sleeping in coffins. Blood Demons had excellent night vision as well as super speed, strength, agility, and the ability to fly. Their only true weakness was that they could only survive on blood because their stomachs could not handle solid foods.
Their most powerful ability, at least in Kurama's opinion, was the special enzyme they secreted in their saliva. If exposed to the flesh, it created a felling of intense pleasure and once exposed many would do anything to feel that way again. That was how Blood Demons acquired their Blood Dolls, creatures that allow themselves to be fed off of just to feel the pleasure of a Blood Demon bite. That was how Kurama and Dru had come to be together. One night he had coaxed her into his bed and afterwards she had fed off of him. He had let her stay with him at first just to feel that pleasure and have her as his lover but over time they had fallen in love and the bite no longer mattered.
Dru let go of Kurama's wrist once she had drank enough to satisfy her for now. She licked her lips to capture any last spots of blood she might have missed. She longed to continue drinking his sweet blood but knew not how much he could handle loosing. The wound was already closed; leaving only faint marks where her fangs had sank into his flesh. They would be gone within a day or two. Content for the first time in many years, Dru rested against Kurama again and closed her eyes, for once not dreaming of pain and torture.