16So this is an idea I had, coming off this recent influx of vampire media. I've wanted to write a vamp-story for a while now and after a pretty decent stint in the Fanfiction Black Lagoon archive, decided to write this in somewhat of a manga style. Here be a healthy dose of Japanese speak, hopefully it's not too corny ;)
Oh, and perspective shifts between first and third person. Hopefully it's not too difficult to keep up with :)
As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated, but please, be gentle :)
To this day, I remember the sight of my home as it burnt to the ground against the backdrop of night. The smell of the thatched bamboo as it burnt. The sound of the fire as it cracked its way through every corner of my childhood. The cries of my mother and father, my infant sister, and younger brother as the flames consumed them. I even remember the warmth of the tears on my face as I wept for them. Of all my memories of that night, I don't remember the pain I felt as Shinjiro Tokugawa's katana pierced my spine; leaving me paralyzed, but alive. Alive so that I may watch as he and his brothers beat and raped me.
They had killed every member of my family, and left me for dead after desecrating my body. As I lie at the foot of my family's land, I was through weeping for them; my only thoughts were of vengeance. Vengeance I would never see through. Near death, I remember feeling a tingle at my throat. My weak eyes opened to the sight of a handsome young man, drinking the cold blood in my veins. As I came to, he withdrew his teeth from my neck and looked down at my lifeless body.
Not a drop of my essence on his lips, the man spoke to me, "So much pain."
The young man delicately ran a finger down my face, tracing the paths my tears had taken. Then, almost as if he had heard my wishes as I silently screamed them, he raised his hands above me, his open palms to the night sky.
"Live?" he beckoned as he raised his right hand. "Die?" he again asked, this time raising his left.
Unable to move, my eyes locked onto his right hand and a smile formed on his lips. He slipped a short blade from the pack at his side, and slid it across his tongue. He lowered his face to mine, his bloody tongue intruding on my mouth, as his cold lips met mine.
As his blood ran down the back of my throat; my body came to life. Feeling returned to my arms, my hands found his face, and before long; my body was mine again. As soon as I had the strength, I quickly forced the stranger off of me. As he fell back laughing, I scurried away from him like the frightened little girl I was.
He smiled as he caught his breath, "Not alive; not dead. Nothing but your inner most desires. Tell me little girl, what do you wish?"
What did I wish? Punishment? Pain? One thousand deaths to those who had murdered my family? All of those things seemed far too generous for that filth.
"Tokugawa," he spoke of my thoughts, and my eyes locked with his.
"What do you care?" I harshly spoke.
"They will soon rule over all of Japan, if they are not stopped," he replied. He stood and brushed himself off as he continued, "What could be a more perfect task for creatures such as us, but the destruction of the family that wishes to claim all of Japan for themselves?"
Feeling a strength and confidence I had never known, I denounced, "Tokugawa's death is mine alone."
He extended his hand as he approached me, lifting me from the ground with the slightest of effort. His eyes met mine as I straightened my body out, and again he spoke, "You don't yet know what you are, yet you believe you can destroy your enemies by yourself."
"I don't care what I am, I-"
He interrupted me, his tone filled with subtle discontent, "Then you will only suffer further. Only once you've learned of the gifts you now posses, can you vanquish our enemies."
"None of this is a gift," I felt the blood in my veins pumping harder and faster than ever as I spoke. "Nothing but my inner most desires you say?" The look on the young man's face was one of absolute terror. I felt no control as I continued to speak, "Then I am death."
My hands reached out of their own accord and pulled him closer to me. He didn't fight or struggle as my teeth sank into him, and I couldn't stop drinking his blood. Slowly he collapsed to the ground and I followed with him, my teeth still buried in his throat. As the flow of blood slowed, he spoke one last time, "Take all of me with you."
To this day I can feel him in me. I can remember the feeling of his lips on mine, of his blood restoring my body, bringing me into this half-living, half- dead state of being. Kaneshiro was his name; Kaneshiro Tokugawa. The rebellious son of the family I wished to destroy. He knew of the attack on my family. Perhaps he could have stopped it, but what better way for a teenage vampire to punish his family, than to send another immortal -the eldest daughter of their sworn enemies- to their village to kill every last one of them.
He used me. Used my family, used my body, and in the end, I only gave him what he wanted.
I killed them all.
The party that had burned my home to the ground, burned my family alive was but a mile from where they had left me for dead. All of them trained Samurai; surely there should be no way for such a little girl to survive an encounter with them, though I couldn't stop myself from advancing on their camp. All of their faces were familiar, as the memories of each and every one of them forcing themselves on me ran through my mind. Beside one of the odious men that lie on the ground, his swords lay. The longer of the two blades felt weightless in my hand, as if it were an extension of my arm.
Then, as though the blade were guided by nothing but the result I wished, one died, then another, and another. Their blood washed over me like a light rain, slowly turning my white kimono red. Finally, I stood before the man who led their attack; the man who hadn't yet washed the blood of my innocence off of his body, leaving it as a reminder of his conquest.
The blade I held never even touched him as his blood covered me. There was nothing left of his cowardly body that an insect couldn't have fed on. As I stood there, covered head to toe in the blood of my enemies, my hunger for death was insatiable. My grip on the hilt tightening by the second, I slowly continued my march towards Tokugawa's village. What Kaneshiro had told me; that we nightwalkers had 'gifts'. Mine was exactly as I had warned; death incarnate.
The first of the villagers I found was a just poor and little old woman. Dressed in rags and wearing a look of great concern as she observed my blood stained silk.
"My dear are you-"
I broke her neck like a twig before she could lay her kind hands on me. I didn't care who she was, mother, wife, daughter; all I wanted was death. Home by home, family by family; I destroyed Tokugawa's village. With each life I took, the hunger I felt grew more, until I had reached the home of Hironori Tokugawa; the head of this clan of filth.
The guards Tokugawa left at every doorway served as but a first course to the pain I would deliver to the man who ordered the attack on my family. With each step I took, a part of me grew terrified of the hunger I felt. The parade of death in which I marched; it was not me. That morning I was but a teenage girl, on the eve of her twentieth birthday. My mother and father taught me to respect life yet the bodies of men, women, and children lay dead in my wake.
My body no longer in my own control, I opened the doors to Tokugawa's quarters, only to find the coward surrounded by guards. The blade I held was once again guided merely by the results I so deeply wished, the severed arms, legs and heads of my adversaries falling to the ground all around me. Before Hironori could take a step in any direction, my blade pierced his chest as well as the wall behind him. His fingers gripped at my unflinching form, at the blade that pinned him to the wall, all in a futile attempt to continue breathing.
I shouldn't have taken the satisfaction I did in watching Tokugawa die, yet I did. As his eyes closed, my arms, my legs, and mind were mine once again. I fell to my knees in the absolute silence of Tokugawa's home. Not a sound to be heard when suddenly, the wail of infants broke through the din. I immediately got to my feet and sought out to find the newborns. In the next room, I found them; Tokugawa's wife clutching her newborn children securely in her arms.
Again, my body was free from my control as my blade swiftly and cleanly removed her head. Her blood washed over the weeping infants and slowly I knelt before her lifeless form. I took the throats of the infants, one in each hand and slowly squeezed the life from them, until finally, my body was mine once again. I instantly relinquished my grip on the children as I struggled to regain my thoughts. My eyes shut tight and when I opened them, an apparition stood above me.
"Kill them, Miku," Kaneshiro beckoned of me.
"You used me; used me to kill them all."
"Did you not wish for their death? Did you not wish for revenge, my crimson angel?"
"The wishes of a raped little girl-"
"Are the most elegant, and pure forms of hatred," He interrupted. "Did their lives not appease you? Did you not feel satisfaction as you dismembered and murdered each and every one of them?"
"I…" had never before known such pain. He was right; I wanted their lives. I wanted their blood painted on me as it was. I had my vengeance, and he'd had his fun.
"If you do not kill them, they will only return to haunt you later."
"You can't-"
"I can," Kaneshiro interrupted. "I've seen the way your story ends, unless you kill them now."
His blood made me the killer I had become. Without his blood, I could die the girl I once was. I slipped the blade across my wrist, the light spray of my essence splashing across the faces of the Tokugawa infants.
As blood poured from my wound, the world grew darker and darker. From above me, Kaneshiro faded into the black, once again admonishing my failure before he disappeared, "Foolish girl."
The following morning, I woke as though from a most terrible nightmare. When the world came into focus, I found it was no such dream. The katana I had taken rested in my right hand, bound to my flesh with the dried blood of my enemies. Flies swarmed the headless corpse of Himiko Tokugawa; her infants nowhere to be found. As I got to my feet, the whereabouts of the Tokugawa infants no longer concerned me, as I took in the mess I had made. In Tokugawa's sleeping quarters, Hironori Tokugawa and his twelve subordinates lay in haphazard piles of limbs.
I did not regret what I had done to the men responsible for my family's murder, for my rape, but as I continued on through the village, I saw just how dangerous this power is. I came upon the bloody and twisted corpses of a mother and her children. Tears filled my eyes as I dropped to my knees before their lifeless bodies; I knew nothing of the people I had so violently killed.
"You think your guilt absolves you?"
Kaneshiro. He appeared before me, again as a ghost intruding on my regrettably real world.
My eyes didn't detract to him as I quietly begged, "Leave me."
"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. You drank the blood of a nightwalker, and now; I will be with you forever," he happily replied.
I stood and shouted at the apparition, "I don't want you with me! Look what you've made me do!"
"What I made you do?" Kaneshiro laughed, "Make no mistake, Miku; your will alone conducted this orchestra of blood."
As I took in his words, I found myself incapable of looking away from the blood on the bodies of those I killed. I could smell it as though it were right beneath my nose; the essence of life.
"And you will drink if you wish to live."
I turned away from the vile apparition and stomped off away from Tokugawa's village. I wanted Kaneshiro to be wrong; I needed him to be wrong. I wasn't a nightwalker. I wasn't some damned creature of hell.
Was I?
As the clouds parted, the mirage of what I had done the night before became my reality. The sunlight burnt and blistered my skin in seconds, my only immediate sanctuary; the home of one of the families I had slain the night before. My skin rapidly healed itself of the burns I'd incurred in the sunlight, and a bucket of water offered me the opportunity to clean myself of the blood that covered nearly every inch of my body.
I slipped my stained and tattered kimono from my shoulders, the brittle morning air biting at my skin. With little water available to me, I wet my fingers and rubbed at the crusted red grime that polluted my skin. Looking myself over, the horrors of these last few hours became all the more real. The blood that covered my thighs, the blood they forced me to bleed; my remorse over what I had done grew less by the second. Of the many that had died by my hand, many of them deserved far worse.
I closed my eyes and attempted to focus my thoughts. My vendetta claimed the lives of countless innocents, and while I couldn't bring them back, they at least deserved my thoughts and prayers.
"Welcome to the night, Miku-chan."
I had no tears left to cry as I begged of my tormenter, "Please leave me."
"Are you ready to listen?"
What was I to do? Kaneshiro was the only person who might offer me any knowledge of my predicament. Now that I was trapped until the sun went down, I finally agreed to the conversation he was so desperate for, though by my own rules.
"I am listening, but I am not like you."
I pulled my kimono over my shoulders -just enough to keep my body out of Kaneshiro's view- and roughly tied the sash behind me. As he relished in the sight of me covering myself, he spoke.
"No matter what lies you choose to tell yourself, you are exactly as I was, Miku; a nightwalker. You will walk among the living, but you are no longer alive."
I am Miku Yukimura, I told myself. I screamed it over and over again.
"You are dead," Kaneshiro mocked of my thoughts.
My hands crashed onto my ears, and my eyes slammed closed as I shouted, "Get out of my head!"
He laughed in my thoughts, louder and louder still as I struggled to silence him. Finally, he collected himself and spoke.
"The spirit of a demon resides in you now. Its power is now yours. Occasionally, it may try to make its will yours as well."
My hands slowly came away from my ears, and my temperament settled slightly, "What I did-"
"Was what you truly wished for," Kaneshiro interrupted. "The demon's influence just brought it out of you; made it real. As you must learn to control its power; you must also learn to control its desires."
"And how do I do that?"
"With blood," Kaneshiro replied. "The demon requires blood to sustain itself, and because it has bonded with your soul, if the demon dies-"
"I die," I finished for him.
"You must learn how much blood to drink to sustain your existence, maintain your power, and control the demon's hunger. This illness I've passed on to you is nothing more than a disease; a contamination of the body. Inside, you are dead…"
I pressed my fingers to my wrist, hoping, praying to find a pulse, yet there was none.
"…within days, most of your organs will have disintegrated. You will be but blood, and bones."
While a smile graced my lips, my tone told of my feelings, "Nothing inside but you, and a demon; I am a monster."
"Can you not think? Can you not walk? Can you not act of your own volition? You can do as you wish, and you may do so among those who are alive. Are you any less of a living thing because your body fails to behave as it once did?"
"But the creature inside me-"
"The demon offers you several gifts in exchange for its place in your body, Miku," Kaneshiro interrupted. "Of those gifts; you will never grow old, you will never fall ill, and you will never die."
"I will be a child forever?"
The cold touch of his vaporous fingers lifted my chin, so my eyes might meet his.
"Would it be such a terrible thing, to be young and beautiful forever?"
I felt like I had aged a lifetime over the past few hours, no longer pure, no longer even alive. My family was gone and now I was some hybrid creature, kept company by the ever present ghost of a sworn enemy of my family. I shouldn't have blushed as he called me beautiful, shouldn't have felt warmth, not from his words.
I collected my thoughts and asked, "What else?"
"You will never bare a child," Kaneshiro replied as his fingers slipped clear of my chin.
I remember feeling my jaw quiver as he continued.
"It is difficult to place the gifts you've been given, Miku. I believe the demon that accompanies you, guides your body to accomplish the results you desire."
I looked down to my fingers as I curled them, a slight smile on my lips as I replied, "Anything I wish, anything I can imagine; I can make my reality."
"Yes."
I felt confidence like I'd never known as I got to my feet.
"What are you doing?" Kaneshiro beckoned.
I didn't answer him as I walked from the home, into the sunlight. His ghost had followed me into the light, yet as I stood in the glaring sun, my body did not burn. I examined my hands, my skin as Kaneshiro looked on me with baffled eyes.
My smile was unwavering as I spoke, "Any result I desire, indeed."