Chapter Thirty-Four

Everything blurred together in a flurry of sensation. The light filtering through the leaves stabbed at his eyes like daggers. The chattering birds were so loud he felt like the sound was going to puncture his eardrums. The air currents raised the hairs on his arms as they ran along his skin, hot and humid and almost painful to his sensitive nerves. But all those pains were secondary to the agony in his gums, the fiery stabbing pain of his teeth changing, roots digging deeper into his flesh. Tears burned in his eyes, barely obscuring his sharpened vision.

"Easy," someone said. Syaoran could tell the word was meant to be a whisper, but it assaulted his eardrums with its volume and drove him half-mad with fresh pain. "You're still acclimating to your new body. It'll ease up in a minute."

His head throbbed, as if every word had been an explosion next to his ears. The pain of his current situation and the remembered agony of a moment ago tangled his thoughts, stripping him of his rational mind. The only thing he could follow was his instinct, and it was telling him to attack, to kill the man who'd done this to him. Claws erupted from the ends of his fingers, a sharp but short pain, and moved automatically to tear out the throat of the speaker.

Before he could, hands wrapped around both his wrists and twisted him around. A foot planted itself between his shoulder blades, bearing down and keeping him from turning. He hissed, then flinched at the too-loud sound.

"Syaoran, calm down. You've just survived a very traumatic injury, but you need to calm down."

His rational mind was finally working well enough for him to remember who the voice belonged to. How did Seishirou get me out of there? he wondered, the longest string of coherent thoughts he'd had since the searing agony of a few moments ago. Humiliating tears ran down his cheeks. He felt every tiny drop as they rolled down his face, felt the saltwater sticking to his skin, felt the subtle temperature difference between the hot tears in the corners of his eyes and the lukewarm tears on the edge of his chin. Too much, he thought. I can't think.

"You're transitioning well, just stay calm."

"Hurts . . ." he whispered through his raw throat. The pain seemed too intense, given that he'd only just started crying, but everything seemed too intense. He could feel the fibers of his torn shirt, some crusted with drying blood, others still relatively in tact.

"I know it does. It'll be over in another minute or so, just stay still."

The pain was almost gone from his body, resolving to a dull ache everywhere except for his gums. He could feel the taste of iron on his tongue, but it didn't taste the way blood usually did when he licked one of his cuts. It tasted almost appetizing, like something he'd want to drink while rereading his favorite books. But even so, it wasn't the right flavor. It was something less than that, a cheap imitation of a well-loved dish. His body needed something, something with that coppery taste, something stronger than his own blood, leaking from his gums onto his tongue.

As the pain faded, his senses became more focused. For the first time, he realized he could smell everything around him, and that everything had a unique smell. The roots had a different smell to them than the topsoil, and the moss had a stronger smell than the emerald leaves above him. Something he'd so blandly categorized as the smell of nature suddenly became a complex web of sensations, a thousand new experiences, all flooding in at once.

There was one smell that dominated all the rest, a smell similar to the light, metallic taste he'd experienced a moment ago, but so much more alluring. His mouth started to water. What is that? he wondered.

Seishirou sighed loudly. Or maybe it wasn't loud, it just seemed loud, like everything else. Once Syaoran concentrated on his breathing, he realized he could hear each breath as it moved in and out of his lungs.

He was distracted again by the succulent fragrance. "What is that smell?" he asked.

"It's blood, and you can't have any yet."

The words confused him, so at odds they were with the image of food he'd had in mind. Blood, it can't be blood, blood doesn't smell this good. It must be something else.

Slowly, though, his rational mind was coming back to him. It smells a little like metal, though. A little bit like blood used to smell before . . . What happened to me? Something must've happened, to make me like this. But what am I?

And why does blood smell so appetizing now?

"If I let you go, will you sit still and let me explain?" Seishirou asked. Syaoran took a minute to ponder the question, not sure he'd be able to control himself if he caught sight of whatever was giving off that aroma, blood or not. After a moment, he decided he could probably endure the temptation.

"I'll sit still."

Seishirou released his arms, which he flung out reflexively to keep himself from falling. He focused on shutting out his sharpened senses and turned to his old teacher, sitting up. "So what happened?"

"How much do you remember of the what happened before you woke up here?"

Syaoran tried to focus through the sensory overload, tracking his thoughts backwards. Before waking up, he remembered the searing agony, the thick, garbled murmur of his pulse in his ears. There was a blank spot between that and their apparent departure; they clearly weren't in Infinity anymore. Dwelling on the blank space, he tried to reason through what had most likely happened. He guessed Seishirou had used his magic eye to transport them away. From there, he'd likely given him vampire blood to facilitate the transformation. That realization jolted him out of his ponderings. "Seishirou-san, you're a vampire?"

The dark-haired man nodded patiently. "Didn't you notice? I haven't aged a day since I met you in Clow."

Syaoran blinked. He'd noticed, but at the time, he'd been preoccupied. There had been so much going on that he hadn't had time to dwell on that insignificant detail more than a few seconds, not long enough to come to the obvious conclusion. Now it seemed like a glaring oversight. "For how long?"

"Since long before I met you," Seishirou murmured. "Way back, when I met Subaru."

Syaoran vaguely remembered Subaru from Tokyo. Though he'd spent much more time around Subaru's twin, Kamui, he'd seen enough of the vampire to know he feared Seishirou. "But . . . Why are you still hunting them?"

"Vampire blood is a valuable commodity. The blood of natural-born vampires even more so."

"But why?" he asked, annoyed with his teacher's cryptic tendencies.

"To sell to Yuuko, in the event I needed something else from her. I don't know where it goes from there."

Syaoran decided he didn't want to think about it too much. "Okay, so you're a vampire, and you're hunting vampires, and you've changed me into a vampire . . . Why?"

"Think further back. What was the last thing that happened to you in Infinity?"

He almost rolled his eyes, certain that if anything particularly remarkable had happened in Infinity—

Oh.

Oh.

He blinked. How did I not remember that? "Did that . . . Did Fai-san really . . ." He lifted a hand to the hole in his shirt, feeling the crusty fibers with his fingertips. He felt almost disconnected from the sensation. Numb.

Seishirou nodded. "It was a very near thing. Your heart even stopped beating for a time."

Panic shot through him, a much stronger feeling than he was used to. In the time it took a human to blink, he was standing upright, spine rigid. "That's impossible. He would never . . . Kurogane-san would never allow it."

"You hesitated," Seishirou said, his tone clinical, as if he was merely stating a fact. But the words held all the accusation. Syaoran's eyes dropped to his feet, where his attention was momentarily absorbed by the tiny rips and tears and spots of mud on the leather.

"They would never hurt me," he whispered.

"But they did. The mage ran his claws through your heart, and the ninja let it happen. I was the only one who took care of you when your life was at stake. I was the only one with the power to keep you from truly dying." His voice softened a bit. "I know this will be hard for you, Little Wolf, but you have to accept the fact that any loyalty you had for them was founded on their manipulation, not any sort of affection for you. I, on the other hand, care for your well-being almost as much as I do for my brother's. I trust you, I will always trust you, no matter what you do, or what they say about you."

He trusts me? No matter what? A shudder ran down his back, but not one of discomfort or fear. A shudder of relief. "Really? You really do?"

Seishirou nodded. "Absolutely."