AN: If you have read my Kaname/Zero stories starting from "the Beast Within" all the way to "Scarlet Silken Spiderweb", you will familiar with my sadistic side…This is merely an experiment on a more violent, practically insane side of Kaname Kuran. After all, vampires aren't all for rainbows and roses, and a purebloods even less. The story will contain graphic torture and sexual violence. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
"I'll get him back for this. In private. One on one.
When they had returned to Cross Academy, he expected Kaname to walk to the school, but Kaname turned and headed for a stable a distance away. The guard followed, pushing Zero ungently.
Kaname dismissed the guard at the entrance of the stable, and propelled Zero in before him.
Zero stumbled forward, but was unable to catch his balance and fell on his face. The barn was old but clean, with straw on the wooden floor and well oiled hooks with hay nets, harnesses, reins and saddles. There were no horses.
Without the cool, calm presence of the vampires, Kaname was free to reveal his emotions. And reveal them he did, for as he shrugged off his jacket he shed the pleasant and charismatic demeanor he had displayed before the vampires; it slid off like a reptile's second skin and revealed the rancorous snake within him, twisting and spitting with a viperous grace.
"What on earth were you thinking of?" Kaname demanded, striding forward.
The boy was rolling and wriggling awkwardly on the ground, trying to maneuver into a standing position.
Kaname took a hook which was attached to a long leather lead, usually used to hold a bale of hay for the horses, and slid the end into the ropes binding Zero's wrist so that his range of movement was limited.
He then yanked the gag out of Zero's mouth. The boy heaved and spluttered for a few seconds, working his jaw away from stiffness.
"What were my last words before we left the car?" Kaname questioned, his voice hissing and sibilant.
Zero would have spat in his face but for the particularly venemous sheen in Kaname's eyes that had lasted from when he had ordered the public defacement of the young noble vampires.
"You told me to stay out of trouble –"
"And what part of that did you not understand? Must I keep a constant eye on you, like a master on his pet? Is that what you want?"
Zero opened his mouth for a wrathful retort, but Kaname seized a long leather whip.
"If you insist on being a dog, I will treat you like one."
Zero's eyes leveled on the whip, glazing in horror. He pulled at his bonds fruitlessly, growling in agitation; raw fear boiled like acid in his stomach.
"Misbehave like a dog, and I will punish you like one!"
The ex-human never saw it coming, but he heard the whip's eager hiss as it unfurled and arced towards him. Zero managed to remain silent but he jerked away and choked all the same at the blow. He staggered to one side as fire tore through his chest and shoulders.
The whip fell again, and this time Zero groaned, his knees almost buckling.
He rushed head on at Kaname, intending to break free of the leather restraint, only the cord held and snapped him back, nearly spinning him around.
The third lash, and all thought of pride and control flew from his mind. The scream tore fitfully from Zero's throat as he collapsed to his knees from excruciating pain.
"You openly drew fire on the nobles!"
"I didn't start it!"
It was childish, pathetic protest, but Zero was in too much pain to think straight.
"What does it matter? Is it not obvious that station and rank are everything in our society? You, an exhuman, are no more than the dust beneath the soles of the vampire race, inches from insanity by my whim!"
He ripped Zero's jacket off, leaving him with no protection.
Another lash, and another, and another; each blow fell like a devil's deadly kiss, leaving long bloody welts that stood out starkly against his pale, bare back.
His skin parted almost gratefully; fresh blood welled from his back and trickled down, giving off the familiar rusty odor of mankind.
The human part of Zero hated Kaname with a black passion. The vampire side of Zero was in terror of the pureblood, and it showed itself strongly.
"Must I hide you like a beast to show you your place?"
Zero hated his weakness, his own shame, yet, on his knees and screaming, he could do nothing to help it.
He hated it that he was unable to escape and cowered against the wall like an animal, trying to dodge the vicious blows.
"No more!" Zero begged, almost incoherently. "Please, no more!"
Kaname stopped then, and Zero sobbed in relief.
"When I give you an order, you obey it!"
Kaname looked at his back, glistening with dark red blood in the moonlight, saw the boy's pallid face full of loathing and helpless terror, and felt a moment's pity. How old was this boy? Sixteen? Seventeen? He had lost his family at twelve…so young, to be involved in this.
Young? I was born into the life of a pureblood. I was six when I learnt to inflict pain my my lessers. I was eight when my parents introduced me to this political dance of daggers and spears. I was twelve when I met Shizuka Hiou, the mad pureblood, and learnt about the curse of the bloodbond. I was fourteen when I committed the gravest sin possible in our race. I murdered a pureblood, Rido Kuran, my own uncle, to gain the sole hierarchy of the Kuran line.
The whip cracked back to life, and against his will, Zero shrank toward the wall, whimpering.
He wielded the whip again, unwilling to let the boy off so easily; leather rent the flesh as a leaping lioness its prey. Zero threw back his head and bellowed like a wounded bull.
Compared to me, you had it easy, Zero! You were brought into our world, babied and swaddled in soft cloth, when you were twelve! I was thrust to the fore line of battle when I was eight!
Kaname was not surprised to find himself panting, and not from exertion. Never had the boy been physically tortured so; his bloodied frame, slender and nubile as a fawn, shivering and flinching at his every movement, excited the pureblood unreasonably. His body burned as if in a narcotic fever, and Zero saw and understood it. When Kaname's eyes lidded over with a demented pleasure, when his lips curled to reveal a tongue slipping over his extending fangs, rage, indignation and helpless fear churned in his stomach like a foul mixture.
"I'm sick and tired of your disobedience, Kiryuu. One more time, and Yuuki or no, I'll leave you out for the council dogs to treat you like your parents were treated by Shizuka Hiou."
"I hate you," Zero whispered, every syllable laced with abhorrence and poison. Kaname stopped short.
You hate me?
He reached into Zero's body with his mind, and found his own blood coursing through Zero's veins. He was already bleeding so badly, he didn't have to do much. One little burst of power, and Zero's bloodlust hit him full on, sending him into throes of numbing desire.
Zero's every sense heightened perceptibly to the presence of blood – splattered in a gruesome pattern on the wooden wall, oozing and welling off his back, trickling down the leather cord of the whip, pooling on the ground; but most of all, Zero's five senses zoomed in on the carnal drug of pure blood coursing, like boiling lava, through the vampire prince.
They were so close, but for all that there were only a few feet between them, Zero wishing for his blood was like wishing for the moon in the well.
"Stop it!" Zero screamed as he shook off the beginning traces of madness. "Stop it!"
Unfortunately for Zero, Kaname was in a very dangerous mood.
You hate me?
Zero hauled uselessly on the lead, a silver lynx trying to break free. Kaname grabbed Zero and turned his face towards him, looking into his lilac eyes, frantic with fear and insanity. Zero tried to pull away, but Kaname held him steady by his chin.
With his index finger, Kaname made a small slit in his right thumb, and ran the bleeding thumb over and under Zero's lips, leaving a bloody mustache within easy reach of his tongue.
The smell of blood, so fresh and potent just beneath his nose, assailed Zero. His eyes screwed shut, but the scent was overpowering and he could not block it out.
"If you hate me so much, then resist my blood!" Kaname taunted, releasing him, and bringing on again the bloodlust that had begun all this.
Zero tore away, the half-human side of his mind hunching his shoulders, trying to rub away the blood of his archenemy; the vampire side urged him to lick it, just a taste of the cool toxin that would satisfy this accursed thirst more readily than any other drink.
Kaname watched with a lopsided sneer as Zero shook and trembled and tried to control his warring sides, shoulders heaving and jaws clenched. Finally, Zero collapsed on his knees, wrists were bleeding from where the ropes grazed against his skin.
Kaname grasped his chin and turned the boy's face toward him. His lips were bleeding badly where he had bit himself to keep his tongue inside, but all of Kaname's blood was gone. Zero had given in and had licked it away.
Kaname shoved Zero's head away viciously. Zero gasped as his head made contact with the straw littered barn floor.
"What a disappointing performance…Yuuki seems to think you're human enough to be worth protecting. Now all I see is one with no more self control than a wretched worm in the dust!"
Defiance smouldered in Zero's heart, and he somehow managed to push himself onto his knees.
"Don't you befoul her name with your lips!" Zero roared.
A brutal kick, and he was back on the floor, winded.
Three times he got up, and three times he was kicked back down. There he lay, inhaling the musty odour of dried straw and old wood, every muscle in his body on fire and begging for reprieve.
The ox-headed stubbornness he was so famous for would serve his unwilling flesh no longer.
"Have you given up so easily? Why…Zero, what's wrong?"
Zero wasn't fooled by the perfidious tone of kindness. Kaname dragged him up to a kneeling position, but Zero crouched forward, putting his head between his knees.
"Get yourself away!"
"What are you hiding from me?" Kaname murmured, and Zero felt his cool breath teasing the strands of hair at the back of his head, raising goosebumps down his neck. The pureblood knelt behind, and, putting his arms around Zero, stroked his chest, flicking one nipple hard enough to make the boy yelp.
He slid his hands around Zero's waist, meeting in the center and inching their way downwards.
Zero swallowed and closed his eyes. This couldn't be happening.
Chapter 3 will be up...soon...I hope. I have to apologize for the long drag between updates, but I'm in the middle of moving house - and country. GRA.
So...more blood and violence will be up in the third and final chapter.
Review, please! This story is on alert for more people than have reviewed - culptrits, REVIEW!!
right, see you all soon!
-talking cockeral