"Thank goodness you're here!" Ichijou exclaimed, spotting Shiki and allowing the relief to flood his face unchecked. Carrying Yomoriko across the room with ease, he set her down on Rima's bed gently before turning to the pair with an expression that bespoke deep anxiety. "Kiryuu-kun brought her here a minute ago but he wouldn't tell me anything. I think it's serious this time; listen."
Obediently, they both listened intently and at first could hear nothing amiss. Amplified by their vampire-strengthened hearing, they could hear the normal sounds of a peaceful night; the musical tinkling of water from the stream which cut through the school grounds; the whispering rustle of leaves in the chilly night time breeze; even the gentle trod of light footsteps made by a patrolling prefect nearby. All perfectly usual sounds by anyone's standards.
Underneath those ordinary nocturnal noises was the clearly descernible – and for obvious reasons, far more appealing – thud of their heartbeats, strong and healthy in their chests, accompanied by the thick, liquid gurgle of fresh blood being pumped around three separate bodies...
...only three?
Horrified understanding dawned on Shiki and his crystalline eyes snapped to Yomoriko's pale, ghostly face.
She wasn't dead– not yet, at least – because he could still see her thin chest rising and falling like that of a sleeping baby – frighteningly irregular and incredibly shallow. But what was more disconcerting was the fact that even with their vampiric hearing they were unable to detect her heartbeat; surely in such as state as she was her death could only be minutes away, if that. This was it; Shiki Yomoriko's last moments had come. And her brother, outwardly as cold as the snow in which he'd abandoned her, was frozen in sheer disbelief, unable – or unwilling – to accept what was happening.
Shiki loved his little sister – loved her as deeply as he loved Rima, though in a completely different way. He knew this now more clearly than he ever had before, the absolute conviction behind the emotion detectable even to one as puppet-like as he. He supposed he'd always loved her; even the deep rooted certainty that she was dead had done nothing to change that.
And so it was with this in mind that he raised his arm woodenly to his mouth, pulling back the sleeve of his white Night Class blazer as he did so, and bit down ferociously on the soft flesh there.
The blood flow was instantaneous, filling his mouth with it's iron tang and making him want to gag – for whatever reason his own blood had always tasted foul to him. It was neither nutritionally beneficial nor appetizing in the slightest – but this was something he had to do. He could only hope it would work.
"Shiki!" Rima gasped in surprise, forgetting, for once, to maintain her exterior.
Shiki ignored her and removed his arm from between his jaws, wiping the blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand. He approached Yomoriko, limp and unresponsive on the bed, and slid his un-bitten arm under her head, pulling her into a sitting position easily. Prying her lips apart gently, he settled his wounded arm against her mouth and waited – he hoped, though at this point it seemed unlikely, that the vampire in her would taste the blood and work on it's own, drinking as much as she needed to recover her health.
Why did he bother? Simply because, puppet or not, it wasn't in him to just let her die. She'd probably hate him for it even more – if that were possible – but at this point he was willing to accept that outcome. Even if she hated him, even if she wished for his death, he would not abandon her again.
At first nothing happened and Shiki's heart sank horribly; was fate so cruel that it would rob him of his sister again? Would he not even have the chance to redeem himself?
Then, with a sound like air being released from a tyre pumped to bursting point, Yomoriko took a deep breath and – eyes still closed – latched on to the wound, fangs deepening the injury further. She drank the blood forcefully and Shiki bit his lip from the pain her greedy suckling inflicted on him, forcing his facial features to remain static. He watched in relief as Yomoriko drank deeply, the colour returning to her in a flood like the light of sunrise travelling across land and sea alike.
With the colour came a gradual and somewhat unwilling return to consciousness – Yomoriko's eyes snapped open and she peered around blearily, trying (and obviously failing) to understand why she was still alive when she had been sure that this time round she was a goner. She spotted Shiki and her eyebrows furrowed in a mixture of anger and bewilderment; he was so close, enough so for her to touch him, which struck her as odd seeing as he hadn't dared venture so close in all the time she'd been at the Academy. Then she realised there was something in her mouth, something damp, thick and oh-so-delicious... and suddenly she understood.
With an enraged, wordless scream – muffled in part by her elder brother's arm but mostly by her seemingly uncontrollable need to drink the blood seeping from it – Yomoriko started heaving at his broad chest. When he ignored her – to her ever increasing fury – she pounded at him fiercely, yet somewhat ineffectually, with tightly balled little fists, desperate to break the contact and prevent herself from drinking any more – after all the more she drank, the longer it would take to die.
Shiki held her tight, seemingly oblivious to her rebellious – and as time wore on, strengthening – attempts to break free, while Rima and Ichijou stood awkwardly by, feeling like they were interrupting something highly private. He held the back of her head by the hair, forcing her mouth against the wound with a single minded coldness that surprised even himself. He wouldn't let her die; not right in front of him; not like this. If she wanted to die she'd have to do it somewhere else, away from him.
Rima tried not to feel resentful; she tried not to think about the fact that someone else, some other girl, was drinking Shiki's blood right in front of her. The knowledge that she was his sister didn't help matters either because after all, incest wasn't looked upon in the vampire community with quite the same level of disgust as it was by the humans. In fact if anything, Yomoriko being his sister made it so much worse – for the sake of maintaining bloodlines and the unique gifts associated with them, it was very common for siblings to marry. Encouraged even! Now that it had come out about Shiki's sister, was it not reasonable to think their parents would want them to be together? Rima didn't know about Yomoriko but Shiki was more of a non-confrontationist; she didn't think he would argue should someone order the pair to be married.
And it was here that Rima finally understood something she should have known all along – there was never any hope for her and Shiki as a couple. Even if Yomoriko hadn't existed, they could never be together. Because the fact was her feelings were unrequited – he hadn't even wanted to kiss her; it stood to reason that if he did think of her the way she thought of him, he wouldn't have so much as hesitated. She cared for him so much, would do anything for him, but he didn't feel the same way. And he didn't need Yomoriko around to help him see that – he'd have discovered it himself in the end anyway.
So that, as they say, was that. The only tie that had held her to Cross Academy – the only real reason she'd stayed as long as she had – had finally, inevitably been severed. And with it something much more important; something she couldn't give name to but knew had died nonetheless.
She would pack later, she decided silently. For now, she had to get out of that room (her room) before she suffocated. It hurt too much; her heart felt like it was in the clutches of some awful demon's claws, being squeezed so tightly she thought it might burst like an over ripe tomato. It would serve her right as well – someone stupid enough to believe in a ridiculous fantasy with happy endings like she had deserved nothing less.
Vampires don't have happy endings.
She spun away from the sight of the Shiki siblings on her bed and stalked out of the room with all the speed she was capable of, not daring to look back nor think about where she might go. She'd return to her room later – for the last time – and then she'd get the hell out of there. For good.
"R-Rima? Rima! Where are you going?!" Ichijou called after her. She didn't give any indication that she'd even heard him. And by the time he made it into the corridor with the intent of talking to her about her strange mood these past few days, she was long gone leaving not even the hint of a trail in her wake.
The escapade, brief as it had been, had been observed by Shiki with a gloomy almost-frown from his position on the bed. He wished with all he had that he could go after her now but knew that was neither possible nor the wisest course of action to take at present. Right now his sister needed his blood – needed but didn't necessarily want – and he was bound by the obligation of being her elder brother to give her it. But it wasn't only that – he was bound even more tightly through the debt owed her after his last failure to save her. Besides that, Rima wouldn't want to see him. And when Rima didn't want to see someone that someone would never reach her no matter what they said. As much as it pained him, he would have to wait until she'd cooled off before he tried to find her.
As Yomoriko's struggles steadily increased in both ferocity and frequency, Shiki slowly came around to the idea of letting her go. She had enough blood in her now to last another three months at least; that would do for now. But if she thought for even a second that this was the last, she would be sadly mistaken. There was no way Shiki was ever going to watch this happen again; he was never letting it get this far again so long as he had breath in his body to prevent it.
He loosed his steely grip and Yomoriko flew back from him like a bullet fired from a gun, thin trails of blood dripping nightmarishly from the corners of her mouth where two thin, razor sharp, white points could be seen peaking over her lower lip. Her eyes, the crimson red of a vampire deep in the throes of blood-lust, were literally aflame with loathing as she glared venomously at him, and her lean muscles – newly restored by the hot blood rushing through her veins – rippled with new-found power and intensity.
Shiki watched her as she raised a shaking hand to her mouth, feeling the dampness left there with an almost incredulous disbelief. Withdrawing it, she saw the tell-tale red that glistened on her pale fingertips like ruby wine and could do no more than stare in shock and frustration. Then, in a measured movement that came across as a little strained to Shiki, Yomoriko curled her hand into a tiny fist that shook with barely suppressed rage.
"You bastard!" she hissed at him, sounding like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. "Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
Hm... I reckon there'll be a few frustrated readers out there who were hoping for a little more Shiki x Rima development, huh? Well you'll just have to be patient. Don't worry – I predict that in little under a week this story will be fully posted. Only three chapters left. Just to let you know, the last one's quite big (bigger than the other chapters at least).