Author note: This chapter contains possible triggers for nonconsensual bondage, cutting, and suggestions of rape. Nothing too canon-noncompliant. In light of that, however, I think I'll up the rating a wee bit. . . .

The sensation of being strangled woke Tsuzuki with a start.

Instinct kicked in. He bolted upright—but something dug into his throat before he could lift his head very far and yanked him back to the mattress. He tried to tear whatever held him away, but his wrists were bound at the edges of the bed by thick straps.

He recognized this getup as the kind used to hold down the insane for electroshock therapy. Yukitaka had strapped him to a similar cot after his first attempt at suicide. We must protect him from himself, he had told the frightened nurses who came to visit. But Tsuzuki had only to be patient and catatonic and wait to be released to try again.

Then Tsuzuki's hands had been bound by his side, rather than at the level of his eyes, as Muraki had done. He tried to move his legs, but though he could move them sideways if he struggled, a pair of straps over his thighs ensured he couldn't raise them more than a centimeter off the bed, and ankle cuffs kept them a certain width apart. The cuff around his throat was loose now, too, no longer digging into his skin when he relaxed, but it was warning enough. If he fought his restraints, he was liable to only hurt himself. A true hospital setting would never allow such a rigging, as it was just as likely to injure the patient as keep him safe.

Then again, Tsuzuki knew better than to expect Muraki to abide by codes and regulations.

"I see you're awake."

Tsuzuki might have growled, if his windpipe weren't recovering. If he turned his head the other way, he could see Muraki standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

And he could see that this wasn't the bedroom he'd gone to sleep in. This one looked even more clinical, perhaps an operating theater, à la 1925. "You went through a lot of trouble to move me," Tsuzuki said through vocal chords that felt bruised. "More tranqs, I presume?"

Muraki smirked. "I have more effective tools at my disposal." But that really wasn't a satisfactory answer.

He crossed the room far too swiftly for Tsuzuki's liking, even if he did take his time. And when he reached the bedside, he made a show of inspecting the straps, confident enough in his own safety to lean over Tsuzuki. Now, with such intimate proximity, Tsuzuki saw the malice behind the smile. He wanted to turn away from it, but he resisted the urge.

"You destroyed my dolls."

"Every last one," Tsuzuki said with relish.

"Many of them were my late mother's. They were irreplaceable."

"Well, then. You should have thought twice about leaving me alone with them before you used them to spy on me."

Tsuzuki expected a blow. He welcomed it. Anything to know he had managed to wound Muraki in some significant way. He did not look away from those silver eyes, even the scarred one, searching for the anger and hatred that he had earned there. And he was not disappointed.

But only for a moment. Then Muraki forced an airy laugh and pushed himself away from the bed. "You're right, of course. It shows a lack of foresight on my part. I must admit, it upset me to see what you had done, and I was disappointed in you. But I suppose in some sense I should thank you as well."

"Thank me?" Vengeance Tsuzuki expected, but thanks?

"For freeing me from the last physical reminders I had of her. I may have allowed my sentimentality over them to hold me back."

He turned to a cart beside the bed. The gentle clink of metal instruments against a steel tray. Sharp metal instruments. Tsuzuki felt his heart leap within him in fearful anticipation, like a beaten child at the rattle of a belt buckle.

"Perhaps there is some truth to the poets' exhortation," Muraki mused, "to kill that which is precious to you. I was never much of a Buddhist, but I can agree that attachments do have a tendency to keep us from realizing our full potential. In destroying those dolls, I feel as though you have freed me from any remaining vestiges of responsibility I owed her memory. Like a man who has been shown that the right and wrong he believed were so rigid and true for so long are merely an illusion, I no longer fear earning her disappointment, nor understand why I feared it as long as I did."

When he faced Tsuzuki again, it was with scalpel in hand. Watching the sunlight glint off the edge of the blade, Tsuzuki had no doubt of its keenness. Nor did he have any doubt that Muraki could clearly read his panic.

He fought against his restraints. Though they fought just as hard against him. The slap of the strap pulling taut and unyielding had a ring of finality that Tsuzuki could not, would not accept. "Is that what you plan to do to me?" he growled. "Break me like I broke your dolls? Kill me? Over and over again until you're rid of me?"

That earned him a little laugh.

"As though I could ever rid myself of you, Tsuzuki," Muraki said. "As though I would ever want to. Though there is no doubt you are . . . dear to me." A sharp intake of breath when he said that word, making Tsuzuki's stomach turn. "You are an attachment I would not willingly free myself of. Not anymore."

"But there was a time?" Somehow, Tsuzuki took that as a compliment.

"Of course, there were moments," Muraki said as he contemplated the scalpel's tip. "Moments when I thought embroiling my affairs with yours was costing me more than it was worth."

"Here I had no idea I was such a thorn in your side. Maybe I should have tried harder. What changed?"

Muraki's gaze turned to him at the note of sarcasm. Was that a glare of disapproval Tsuzuki detected in the doctor's good eye?

Yet, he smiled. Set the scalpel down. Placed his hands upon the edge of the mattress. Tsuzuki could feel the dip in it beside his ribs when Muraki leaned his weight on those hands.

"Do you remember the second time we met, Tsuzuki? The young girl in the park, who had collapsed from the heat—how we set her back on her feet again, together?"

Tsuzuki remembered thinking of that incident a lot in the weeks after that case—trying to remember what his impression of Muraki had been then, before the doctor had kidnapped and tortured Hisoka to get to him. Before Tsuzuki learned the truth of who Muraki was, how he was connected to the case, and to Hisoka. He remembered asking himself how he could not have seen through the facade to the monster underneath. Or, if he had had some inkling of it, why he had not trusted his instincts.

"It was foolish of me, I see that now," Muraki said, taking Tsuzuki's silence for an affirmative, "but I truly believed that day that our relationship might turn out different from how it did, that we two might even have become allies. Dare I say it: friends? I had had this notion for some time before we met, that the two of us would meet as kindred spirits. Perhaps I allowed my hope to cloud my initial assessment of you. But I wonder. . . ."

He reached out to brush a lock of hair out of Tsuzuki's eyes, and Tsuzuki recoiled at the touch. Realized with chagrin that the cuff around his throat would not let him shy away.

Muraki saw the realization dawn on him, and it seemed only to amuse him further. "It was getting on to sunset by the time that child and her mother parted ways with us. Do you remember?" His voice was a murmur, as seductive as the first low chirps of the crickets that would have been emerging at that hour. "What few clouds were in the sky were tinged red and rose, like the first blush on the leaves in autumn, and everything was washed in a melancholy shade of gold. You looked so fragile in that light, so filled with the heaviness, the ennui, of life . . ."

He had mentioned fragility, Tsuzuki remembered. The fragility of human beings. And Tsuzuki at the time had thought it was just the physician in him speaking, though there had been something ominous in his choice of words. In the weight of them.

He had been leaning against the edge of a picnic table. And when Muraki reached out a hand to retrieve the book that lay on the table beside him, even so carefully, Tsuzuki had felt the vibration through his thigh, so near, so that for a moment it was as though the Earth itself had lurched in its orbit beneath him. He had felt like that simple act of reaching out might tip him over.

The sense of breathless vertigo came back to him as he lay strapped to the bed, the mattress dipping beneath Muraki's weight beside him. The ceiling tilting as the blood pounded in his ears. Along with Muraki's voice. "I could not help but be reminded of the first time I had seen your photograph—the one my grandfather took after your attempt to take your life. The time of day must have been the same when it was taken. The cast of the light left you seeming just the same way. You were convinced that humans were resilient beings, and the hope in your voice told me you believed that to be a virtue. Your eyes, however. . . ."

Feeling self-conscious under that gaze, Tsuzuki turned his stubbornly away.

"Your eyes told a different story."

Muraki's gaze dropped as well. To Tsuzuki's throat, bobbing beneath its collar as he swallowed. To the open top buttons of his shirt.

"You had a way of making light of the matter, but you could not entirely hide the pain underneath. Like a scar that only shows itself in a certain light. I was drawn to that pain, to the pathos in it. I wanted more—so that there would never be a time when you did not need patching up. Never a time when you did not need me." His gaze burned, like a stroking fingertip, as it traveled downward. "It was hours before we saw the child safely off. You could have left at any time—"

"I guess I just didn't trust you alone with her."

Muraki found some humor in that. "I'm sure I could have given you no reason to suspect my intentions were anything but pure up until that point."

"Nah," Tsuzuki muttered under his breath, "you just give off that vibe."

"Or, as I suspect, you were drawn to something in me as well. I like to think that, even at that second meeting, you had a sense of the connection that existed between us, even if you were not conscious of it. Your soul, once in such proximity to mine, would not be satisfied by mere moments. Otherwise, why seek me out?"

"Oh, I don't know, your kidnapping Hisoka couldn't have had anything to do with that."

"An act for which you should have despised me."

"I do—" Tsuzuki started.

"Yet your actions are not the actions of a man who despises another. Of all the opportunities you've had to put an end to me, to deal the final blow, you have always pulled back at the last second. When I have walked away, you have always chased after me. You may as well admit that you can no longer contemplate existing without me."

A memory flashed across Tsuzuki's mind, of being back on the Queen Camellia, Muraki's breath across his ear, silky and numbing as a fine wine and warm as an evening bath. His hand heavy on Tsuzuki's waist, heavy as a claim, his body as unforgiving as the velvet-covered wall against Tsuzuki's back. Why didn't he run? Why didn't he fight it? It couldn't have been just his sense of honor, as the loser of a gentlemanly wager. His heart had been racing with fear, his limbs as frozen and useless to him as they were now, only no straps had been restraining him then. Even if Hisoka hadn't shown up then to save him, he had been free to choose his next move.

He had always been free to choose his next move. So why, in God's name, have I always chosen him?

"You could have had your way with me a dozen times over by now," he said, somehow finding even that idea easier to focus on than his own motivations. "You could take me right now if you wanted to; it's not like I can do a damn thing about it." The very idea had Tsuzuki short of breath like he hadn't felt since that night aboard the ship. Terrified that Muraki might take his prodding as an invitation, but finding the tension of waiting for it to happen almost too much to bear, as though he might explode with it.

At least then he would know what Hisoka went through, he consoled himself, and he might have some solid reason to cling to to hate Muraki as he should. At least in that way he might begin to atone for his partner's death—both of his deaths, as Tsuzuki knew now he was equally responsible for what Muraki had done as he was for destroying Hisoka's soul. "I thought you always wanted me this way. Helpless. At your mercy."

"Mm," Muraki agreed, "I could have you now. It's true."

"But you're not going to do it, are you? So it's not like I'm the only one who has to answer for his choices."

"What I want is for you to want me as I have wanted you," Muraki said. "I want you to come to me willingly. Though perhaps 'willing' is the wrong word—it implies acceptance, but not desire, not intention. I have contented myself with your accepting my affections for long enough. No. What I want is what every child wants of their progenitor. To hear you say: 'You're a part of me, and I will always love you.' "

Now it was Tsuzuki's turn to force a laugh. "Now I know you really are insane."

"I suppose it does sound hopelessly sentimental when one says it aloud."

"If you expect me to come running to your arms," Tsuzuki all but spat, "like some paperback romance, you're delusional. I'll never want you like that. Because you're a part of me that I will always, always hate."

"At least you concede that I am yours." Muraki sighed. "But I suppose that is all I can expect you to give me freely. You cannot even accept what you are, so how can I ask you to accept me?"

"Here we go again about me being a weapon. . . ."

"You deny what's plain for any idiot to see and yet you think I'm the delusional one."

But he straightened. Took a step back. Muraki did not offer his hand, but there was something in the way he gazed down at Tsuzuki, it was as if he were begging Tsuzuki to take it anyway. "What I want, Tsuzuki—what I really want, at this moment, is for you to get yourself out of those bonds."

Tsuzuki almost laughed. He tested the cuffs, just to be sure he hadn't merely been tricked, and found them as tight as ever. "You've gotta be kidding me—"

"Why would I? I've seen you escape from worse, and I haven't even enchanted these in any way. No tricks. No allies rushing in at the last moment to set you free. Just you and this cot, and half a dozen simple straps."

And all the time in the world, I'm sure. Sure, Tsuzuki supposed, he could get out of his bed—if he was willing and able to break the bones in his hands and slide them free from their cuffs. Yet even that, he suspected, was not what Muraki intended for him to do.

"Or perhaps," the doctor said, smile itching at the corner of his lips as a new thought occurred to him, "you merely lack the proper motivation. You see this as a game, one you can simply forfeit. You merely need to wait for me to get tired of waiting for you to make the first move. But I wonder if you might be convinced to participate, if the cost of forfeit were worse." He picked up the scalpel again. "So, what do you say we do a little experiment, Tsuzuki, and see what motivates you best."

The scalpel's blade was so cold and sharp against Tsuzuki's skin, he barely noticed when it first broke through the surface.

Then the pain. Searing as the flesh parted before the blade like a ripped seam, the air itself seeming to stab and set his damaged cells on fire. Tsuzuki shut his eyes against it, clenched the scream inside himself so hard his jaw ached. But he would not give Muraki the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt, and he would not struggle. That was just what Muraki wanted.

It's just flesh. Tsuzuki repeated it like a mantra in his mind. It's only temporary. This is all temporary. This pain is temporary.

But it was also intense, and though white-hot light danced around his vision, not intense enough to let him black out. The cut was deep; that much Tsuzuki could tell. He could feel his own blood streaming hot down his sides, soaking through his shirt and tickling his back. At one point, the resonance of the blade scraping his sternum lit up his nerves, and it was all he could do to keep still. To keep from breathing, because if his lungs expanded, that would only make the wound worse. And Muraki was dragging it out so slow—God, he was so slow. He only stopped when he reached the point above Tsuzuki's diaphragm.

By that time, the top of the cut had already ceased to bleed. For now, every gasping breath felt like it was ripping Tsuzuki apart anew; but a few more minutes and the two sides of the incision would stitch themselves back together again, leaving no sign of his ersatz vivisection.

Tsuzuki knew Muraki was only too aware of that when he bent over his handiwork, and murmured: "So, pain isn't the answer. Then again, perhaps pain is too easily ignored. After all, if death has already lost its sting, what hope does the blade have? And you've experienced so much pain already.

"But perhaps . . ."

With the one hand, Muraki let the scalpel fall back on its tray on the side table. A flick of his other wrist undid the next button of Tsuzuki's shirt; and the press of Muraki's lips to the same spot not a moment later nearly made Tsuzuki jump as much as the start of the incision. At least he had seen the incision coming.

"Perhaps pleasure will move you," Muraki breathed against Tsuzuki's bare skin, "where pain does not. I suppose it all depends—" Another button gone, another kiss. "—on how badly you want me to stop."

So, so badly. But Tsuzuki would not say so. His breath hitched in his chest as Muraki's mouth trailed lower, continuing the line of the incision, until the warmth of his breath filled the cup of Tsuzuki's navel. It was a different kind of agony that made Tsuzuki's pulse race and his nerves scream out against his will. And a different kind of fear that had him in its grip: a fear that a part of him actually liked what Muraki was doing.

He was petrified by it. His limbs trembled despite his attempts to control them—past any thought of struggling against his bonds. Just wait for it to be over. Like a prey animal, caught in the jaws of death. Just stay still, and wait for it to be over. Because no matter what he did now, Muraki would win. And if he succumbed to what he couldn't help but feel, what he didn't want to feel, how could Tsuzuki face himself without despising himself?

Muraki circled the depression with his tongue. Tsuzuki tried and failed to keep count of the tiles on the ceiling; any attempt to distract himself from that gentle friction only made him more aware. Strange how at that moment, it was Hisoka he wanted to beg to forgive him, though he was no longer there to forgive. Yet it felt somehow like it was his memory Tsuzuki was betraying. Or the possibility, of something they never truly had but that he only now could appreciate once any hope of it was gone forever. Forgive me . . . for being so weak. . . .

But, as though Muraki had heard him, he went no further. And when he began tugging at the straps that pinned Tsuzuki's hips and thighs, it became apparent in the resignation of his movements that it was not simply to free Tsuzuki's body for his own use.

It was just to free Tsuzuki.

"There was a time you would have begged me to stop," he observed with a sigh.

"What, getting nostalgic for the old days? This can't be very exciting for you, my not having any fight left in me to put up." Tsuzuki's attempt at sarcasm was shaky through the adrenaline. There was something darkly humorous in this, if he cared to see it. Like being told once the noose was on and the last words said, that it was all just a joke, he could go home.

If only that were the case. If only he could go home—or had one to return to.

"Maybe I just realized while you were lying there like a corpse—" Ankles freed, Muraki moved on to the collar. "—that this wasn't what I wanted. I thought we had made progress, I thought you were beginning to understand your position, your purpose. But I see now I expected too much of you too soon."

"My purpose." If he says one more word about me being a weapon. . . .

At Muraki's sideways glance, Tsuzuki had to wonder if the doctor really could read his thoughts. Or perhaps he was just that transparent.

"You eat my food and sleep half the day," he said coolly, "and what thanks do I get for my hospitality? You break my possessions, and when I actually require you to perform a task, you lie still and feel sorry for yourself. As if—what—if you just close your eyes all of this will go away? If that's what you call self-preservation, it's no wonder the people around you have a tendency to drop dead. Or dead-er, as the case may be. If you can't stand up for yourself, how can they expect you to have their backs when they need you most—"

The cuff encircling his left wrist came free in Muraki's hands, and Tsuzuki did not wait for the other to be released. He swung at the doctor with his free arm, satisfied when his elbow connected and Muraki reeled back off the bed.

Satisfied that he had caused that man even a little pain, but it wasn't enough. Now that Tsuzuki had a taste of it, it wasn't enough to repay everything he had suffered. He felt something snap in his other wrist when he jumped off of the bed, but didn't care. The scalpel, still wet with his own blood, found its way into his hand as though that was where it had wanted to be all along. Tsuzuki lashed out with it while Muraki was still off his guard, aiming for the eyes. If Muraki were so taken with that picture of him after his suicide attempt all those many years ago, he may as well know how it had felt.

Muraki regained his wits quickly enough to dodge; but a line of red blooming across his cheek told Tsuzuki his aim had been true enough to do at least some damage.

And when Muraki wiped his cheek, and saw the blood smeared across the back of his hand, he chuckled. "That's more like it, Tsuzuki! Now, this is the side of you I've been waiting to see!"

But when Tsuzuki lunged towards him again, it was without the same results. Before he could even tell where he went wrong, Muraki had blocked his blow, seized his arm, and wrenched it hard behind Tsuzuki's back. A cry of pain escaped Tsuzuki before he could catch it—and before he was pinned face-first to the bed he had just left. Muraki's arm snaked under his shoulder and his hand pressed firm against the back of Tsuzuki's head, ensuring he had nowhere to go.

Nonetheless, Muraki breathed an impressed "My, my". As he turned Tsuzuki's right hand over in his grip, Tsuzuki could feel what had caught his attention: the cuff that had been around his right wrist was still attached, dangling a short length of the woven strap that had been torn in two. "You see, Tsuzuki? I knew you had it in you all along. You only had to believe in yourself, and your bonds would have given you as much resistance as if they were made of paper."

Muraki gave the strap a sharp tug, and the scalpel fell from Tsuzuki's hand before he could stop himself. He bit back a cry as his bruised bones were manhandled further, his wince turning into a snarl as he felt Muraki lean in over him to whisper in his ear: "That was quite a blow you landed. Not nearly good enough, but a decent start. So? What else do you have? I'm sure you need more than a taste to satisfy you. Surely you want to get even with me for trussing you up. Fight back!"

What, he actually wanted Tsuzuki to strike him again? Then again, it should not have come as any surprise that Muraki might have masochistic as well as sadistic tendencies. When it came down to it, there wasn't much of a difference. And Tsuzuki couldn't deny that when he had held the scalpel in his hand, it had itched to do more damage than the one shallow cut it had made.

But that wasn't what this was about. It wasn't really a tit-for-tat Muraki was after. Like a cat with its prey, Tsuzuki didn't provide much entertainment if he didn't struggle.

"You're not really over those stupid dolls," he grunted back. "Are you, Muraki? And you know something? I'm glad I broke them all. I'd do it again. Now you know how it feels, to have something you love taken from you—"

Wrong thing to say. The hand on the back of his head tightened in his hair, wrenching his neck uncomfortably backwards.

"I could cut you in half," Muraki growled through his teeth.

"Then why don't you?" For the briefest moment, Tsuzuki would have welcomed the pain. He would have welcomed a reason, a real reason, to feel like all this hatred and righteous anger that should have burned furiously inside him was worth holding on to.

But the fight died. All the tension left his body, and all the pain went with it as he let himself sag against the bed. Even the unnatural angle of his arm stopped hurting in that moment. The moment he surrendered himself to his despair was the moment he stopped caring about anything at all.

"Do whatever you want," Tsuzuki tried not to whimper. "You can't possibly hurt me more than I've already hurt myself. I destroyed everything I still cared about, because of you. There's nothing left for you to take. So, no. I'm not going to fight you. I'm not going to play your stupid little game. The sooner you accept that, the better."

In his mind's eye, he could see Muraki's features twisted in displeasure. Which was worse, Tsuzuki wondered? The displeasure of hearing his own words tossed back at him, or of failing once again to make Tsuzuki bend to his will?

With one last menacing shove, Muraki released him. He raked a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes, his intake of breath shuddering with barely contained rage. And as he did so, the cut on his cheek stood out clearly, the flow of blood having stopped, even if the flesh around it had not yet begun to heal.

"We shall just have to see about that, won't we? We'll just have to see how long you can keep up this pretense, that you are not what you damned well know yourself to be."

Sex clubs like this one had a very particular appeal to Muraki. The flagrancy of flesh disgusted him, but somehow in the disgust was a kind of intrigue. And somehow, the less was left to the imagination, the more a hunk of meat the human body resembled.

But for people-watching, there was hardly a better place. Kokakurou this was not; the dim neon lights and flimsy curtains of reflective beads pretending to provide privacy did more to testify to the club's seedy qualities than disguise them. Just the same, the patrons of this establishment came expecting anonymity, or at least the understanding such venues cultivated that any recognition of a familiar or famous face would be kept to oneself. Entertainers came here, seeking the privacy of the club's cubicles, but more often, businessmen and bureaucrats and politicians, the same Golden Triangle that not only ran Japan but kept Muraki and Oriya employed in their respective trades and services.

Nor were humans the only ones to find occupation here. He recognized the demonic in a young woman clad only in lingerie who was on her way to a meeting with patrons. It wasn't the brilliant red hair that gave her away so much as the brilliant red eyes. Though they glowed their natural color for only a second, it was enough for an understanding to pass between them.

Muraki turned back to the bar and his drink. He might have only waited a few minutes before he heard the impatient sigh at the stool next to him. "You rang?" said Zepar in an overly bored voice.

If Muraki had to put a label on the devil's new look, he would perhaps have called it Going Legit. Zepar hadn't bothered with choosing a face from Muraki's memories, instead taking the face and haircut and suit of a very well-paid host.

And he would have wagered that Zepar had been earning that pay. "You seem tired," Muraki observed. "Been keeping busy?"

"The work of the King of Hell's right-hand man never ends," Zepar sighed as he helped himself to Muraki's drink.

Muraki ordered another with a gesture. "And judging by how you're sitting," he said to the devil beside him, "I would guess she's been riding you hard."

Zepar scowled. "What do you want, Muraki? All joking aside, I am a very busy devil, and I have far more important things to do than exchange witty banter with you all evening. So if you wouldn't mind getting to the point of telling me why my legion called me here—"

"I wish to see Ukyou."

Zepar blinked; then laughed. "Uh, you're delusional if you think that's going to happen."

"It was not a request, Zepar."

But something was wrong. Muraki could feel it. Zepar should have felt compelled by his nature to obey Muraki's command, or at very least tremble at it. Yet to Muraki's disappointment, the devil showed no subservient reaction to his voice at all.

And judging by Zepar's grin, he knew just how much that stung. "Ah, I see what's going on here," he cooed. "Well, you should know, Kazu-kun, it isn't going to work. You commanded control over me so long as you and my mistress still had an open deal on the table. But that's been fulfilled now, thanks to you. Your debts are paid, your account closed. You should be happy about that."

But Muraki wasn't happy about it. And he was furious that Zepar would dare to use Ukyou's name for him against him, and with her inflection. It implied the devil had gotten close enough to her to learn of it, close enough to peer inside her mind, and that was too close.

"I haven't forgotten the terms of that deal," Muraki growled through his teeth. "It was a child of my blood I promised, and it was a child of my blood I would have given. I have no use for another Muraki. But Ukyou is outside the letter of the deal—"

"Yes, but so long as that child is still in her, she won't be going anywhere. My mistress has much invested in this child's health and well-being, and we believe that the best way to ensure that is to keep Ukyou well looked after. And safe from all harm."

"Safe," Muraki sneered. "In Hell."

Zepar blinked, but his sympathy was disingenuous. "Oh, I can assure you, she is being taken care of. She is surrounded by all the comforts she was accustomed to—well, except perhaps a view with a blue sky and green trees, but we have to work with the resources at our disposal. We even have a dedicated staff of couriers bringing food from the living world to her every day."

"And what's to happen to her once the child is born?"

"She will be returned to her home—or, near enough to it—no questions asked. We will have no more use for her then."

"I'm to trust your word that she will be returned alive?" As Muraki very much doubted that any of the devils of Hell cared the least bit whether she survived giving birth to their savior. Or even if she did, if she would still be sane by the end of it.

It was that thought that pushed his hand. He had thought this decision would be difficult for him, but hearing Zepar now, remembering what he had given up, it was all too simple. "Tell your master I propose a trade."

"I don't have to do a thing you say," Zepar muttered, but Muraki spoke right over him.

"Tell her I will deliver Tsuzuki to her in person if she returns Ukyou to my care. Immediately."

Zepar made a show of thinking it over; and for the briefest of moments, Muraki thought he might have persuaded the devil to at least take the offer back to his realm for consideration.

But Zepar's mocking laughter shattered that hope. "Mm, I don't think so. You see, as much as my mistress would love to have Tsuzuki by her side, fighting for her, I doubt you can give her any guarantees that he won't try to flee back to his own world as soon as she turns her back. Whereas an infant is a blank slate. It can be raised from day one to be loyal. It will defend Hell to its dying breath because Hell will be the only home it ever knows."

Control. That was what it came down to, and Muraki knew that long before this confrontation. Astaroth had never been able to control Tsuzuki—not even Enma could claim that accomplishment. Yet a child, raised to think of Ashtaroth as its mother—and perhaps, when it was grown, something more—was a sure bet.

"Wait a moment." Zepar narrowed his eyes, making quite a show of studying Muraki, of peering into his soul. "I think I see what this is about. The honeymoon isn't living up to the hype. Experiencing a little trouble in paradise? Tsuzuki not cooperating nearly as well as you hoped? Big surprise there."

Even with the wall Muraki put up around his mind, the devil was disturbingly close to the mark. Muraki made every effort not to give any external sign of just how close he had come.

Smug grin on his lips, Zepar sat back, reveling in the other's misfortune. "Sorry, Kazu-kun. No take-backs. If Tsuzuki's proving defective, the one you should be talking to is the guy who made him that way." And he jabbed a needling finger in Muraki's direction before turning back to his drink. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to play gently with your toys?"

"You don't believe I could simply be asking you this out of the goodness of my heart?" Muraki said, a grin to match Zepar's to show how much he despised the devil. "Do the noble thing, Zepar. Convince your master to let the woman go. She's done nothing to deserve Hell, whereas Tsuzuki—"

"Is no innocent? Yes, well, perhaps my mistress and I don't believe your sainted Ukyou is entirely lily-white either. More like ecru, the way I see it." Zepar skimmed his fingertip over the rim of his tumbler, before touching it lazily to his lips, sucking the drop of liquor that was smeared there. "And that's before she got herself knocked up by a shinigami, even. Which, by the way, we're still trying to make sense of."

The blood boiled in Muraki's veins. He could feel his racing heart pushing at his lungs, pushing at the muscles in his arms that longed to seize Zepar and slam him into the bar, gouge his pretty face on the broken glass. But he would not break his composure. He would not let that sniveling demon claim the slightest victory.

"The mechanics of it, I mean," Zepar went on as though it was Muraki who wasn't following. "For something that's dead to create life—it shouldn't be possible, you see. The other bit doesn't surprise me in the least, frankly. It's the story of my life, after all. She must have seen something in him that reminded her of you. Only you weren't there—"

"I'm warning you, Zepar. You may no longer answer to my command, but I can still inflict pain on your kind."

That threat, uttered in a way that would have earned him swift obedience only a few months ago, was met with a pitying cluck of the tongue. "Oh, Kazu. . . . You say that as though I wouldn't enjoy it! And King Ashtaroth will not give up the child, no matter what or who you offer as a trade. You and I both know that, so I don't know why you waste my time. Surely not for the pleasure of my company."

He raised his glass towards his lips, but before it could get there, Muraki knocked it away. The dull ring of it hitting the floor went unnoticed in the noise of the club, but the violence was not lost on Zepar. His eyes went wide as Muraki seized his wrist hard enough to twist bones out of joint. At the connection, he grasped for a lifeline in Muraki's mind, not thinking, the choice coming out of pure instinct.

And Muraki was clenching his jaw so hard, trying to hold back what he really wanted to do to the devil, that when he laughed even he was surprised by the murderous intent in it. "Oh, Zepar. If you were looking for a face that would save you from my displeasure, you chose the absolute worst one."

It was Saki who looked back at him. That was, a semblance of Saki. Muraki could not remember ever seeing a look of such concern for his own safety on his half-brother's face, though it would have been quite at home on his sixteen-year-old self.

"You humans all think you're some hot shit, don't you?" Zepar snarled. "But I see humanity for what it really is: the dungheap of Creation. You think I'm afraid of you? You're just the turd that floats to the top."

If there was supposed to be a threat in there somewhere, or an insult, Muraki missed it. Abruptly it hit him, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud bringing back all the depth and relief to the world. This was absurd. This devil was nothing to him—no more an annoyance than a mosquito buzzing its tiny voice around his ear. Why worry himself over its insignificant little bite when there were much larger things more worthy of rousing his passions over? Why make a scene over a little gnat?

When Zepar pulled back against his grip, Muraki released him without any ado. Zepar could change his face till Christ returned on a burning cloud for all he cared. He could go picking a fight all he wanted. Muraki would find a way to get Ukyou back, and get what he wanted out of Tsuzuki, but he would give this petty creature nothing. Nothing.

With little more than a "We're done," he stood and swept his coat over his shoulders. Left a few bills on the bar, and did not look back as he headed for the door.

"That's better," Zepar said after him. "Run along back to your prize." And his derisive laughter echoed in Muraki's mind as he strode off into the night.