19. Dark Deeds (1/2)

title: of the darkness||chapter: dark deedscharacters: ryou, shou, camulachapters: 19-25||words: 1,069||total: 21,342genre: family, supernatural||rated: pg-13challenge: diversity writing challenge, ygo gx, j6, multi-chapter with 15-25 chaptersnotes: it's an au. it involves vampires.summary: shou invites his

other in after ryou returns from a long trip away. that is his first mistake. it only gets worse from there.

shou knew she was still there. he couldn't see her; the bedcurtains remained closed. he couldn't hear her; she was too quiet, much more so than ryou, who even now made little more noise than a falling leaf. but he knew she was there. just that simple sense of presence, and stronger than that, the sharp scent of blood as she fed.

he knew that their friends were there. he wanted to get up and meet them, to get their help through all of this. he didn't know yet what ryou had told them. when camula was around, it was all but impossible to get any real information out of him, mostly because the vampire queen enjoyed having his

other remain silent while she made her plans.

she wanted to kill them all; that he definitely knew. he wasn't surprised either. yuusuke's abilities meant that ryou couldn't hide what he was, which meant that camula couldn't have him explain it all away with something simple and believable. the presence of the shadow mage changed too much.

shou thought kenzan's presence helped too; the shape-changer's sense of smell would prevent her from hiding. blood followed a vampire and there wasn't a blood-trail that kenzan couldn't follow.

not that shou would tell him that. the big lug didn't need to know how much shou was counting on him and the others.

he wanted to get up. but ryou told him to stay where he was and his body refused to disobey. he thought he recalled something about a vampire being able to take control of others, though he couldn't put a finger on the specifics of it. it sounded about right to him, though, as much as he disliked the thought at all.

the bedcurtains rustled back and camula stood there, looking down at him. faint traces of blood still stained her lips and he turned his head away. his heart beat faster just at the thought of her being there. what could she want?

"rise up," she murmured and with no more than those two words, he shifted over, slid out from under the blankets, and rose to his feet. "we have places to go, my little toy, and people who need to be killed." her eyes darkened in a rage he'd never seen before. "one person in particular will die tonight."

oh, that sent a very unwelcome chill from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. at her command, he washed and dressed, moving for all the world as if he were under his own power. yet he remained silent, because she hadn't commanded him to speak.

his eyes continually scanned the room either for any sign of ryou or for any weapon that could

ing her to death and quickly. even if he'd found that last, he knew with a sinking sense of despair that he couldn't use it against her. not because he wasn't fast enough or strong enough but because his body answered to her and not to him for now.

for now. he would make certain that changed. he didn't know how. he'd do it anyway. he was a marufuji. they made a habit of doing the impossible, or so his father had told him once upon a time. he hadn't made a miracle yet, but he hoped he could still pull it off.

at camula's gesture he followed her out of the room and through the corridors. he knew this place as well as anyone could who'd grown up in it, but he still didn't recognize all of the hallways she took him through. he didn't know if that was because of his mind still being a little out of it because of the control or if she'd found ways that he didn't know. what mattered a little more was that as they moved along, he began to hear small traces of familiar voices.

kenzan! that's kenzan! he wanted to