One Step Ahead of the Devil 2

[snoozing_kitten]

“Hey fuckers!” Ryo called out across the roof; there were a bunch of the undead standing around, dripping and decaying where they stood, all turning in scary unison to the sound of their entrance.

“Shit.” Koyama swore softly, taking aim and firing at the closest, two shots and he was down, switching targets to the next closest even as she began her shambling walk towards them with arms outstretched greedily. Her face crumpled two holes blossoming just above her eye.

“What’s this?” He could barely hear the bodiless voice over the ringing in his ears caused by the retort of the guns and hiss of the wind through the parapets. “Intruders?”

“God damn it.” Ryo snarled and Koyama was already shooting at another and another. Spread out it hadn’t seemed like many, but now that they were crushing in the numbers seemed to double arms and hands hooked like claws coming at them. Unceasing in their slow shambling assault, like spreading cancer; slow as fuck but relentlessly deadly. Breath out, two more shots fired and another fell like a sack of dirt, tripping the man behind him. Koyama’s next shot went high hitting the woman behind him in the stomach; she rocked back on her heels but didn’t stop. She too tripped, sightless eyes of no use.

Biting back a cry of disbelief he shot until the gun clicked completely empty, Ryo’s clicking not even a moment later. By now the mob was closing in, close enough to smell fetid air and see the milky film that covered their eyes. Clothing in tatters, gouges and broken bones, peeling skin and one notable man trailing his own entrails, the undead pressed onwards.

“That is it.” Ryo snarled drawing a knife and Koyama’s heart seized up, there were too many Ryo was going to be ripped limb from limb and eaten, and Koyama was stuck frozen with terror and on the verge of trying to make a run for it. Numb hands reached for the half a clip he had tucked away, dropping it to the ground with a clatter.

Power exploded across the roof-top and standing so close to the source his mind swam and his breathing caught all locked up in his throat. It wasn’t dark but it was rich, old power. Back in the chapel he hadn’t realized what was going on, couldn’t recognize the traces of grave dirt and lore that accompanied the dark man. With a cry that was more animal then human Ryo darted forward, physical prowess and reflexes way beyond that of any human. In the faintly diffused lighting from the streets below Ryo became a blur, attacking the zombies with a knife and his hands. Hell, probably with his teeth too, Koyama couldn’t see for water beading on his eyelashes.

Koyama was stunned, immediately dropping to his knees and searching for the clip, mind whirling and clicking without being able to fix on anything in particular. He needed to survive that was all. His fingertips stumbled across cold gun metal and he snatched it up, ejecting the empty clip and jamming it in. A moan from his left startled him and he threw himself away from it even as a black shadow descended and the petit woman was thrown to the ground Ryo’s weight pinning her long enough for the knife to hack through her throat exposing the spinal column. Then Ryo was throwing himself the other way, knife in hand as he slashed, trying to drive them back away from where Koyama was huddling uselessly against the wall.

“Go.” He snarled. Everything he had ever learned told him not to leave his back to a vampire, but the other man was clearing him a path through the zombies and Koyama had to do something.

He shot the first one in the head, kicking it into the one behind it even as it was falling. That gave him enough room to slip by, hands grabbing ineffectually at his arms as he hurtled through them. Once free of the press of bodies he couldn’t see Ryo, couldn’t tell if the small vampire was handling himself or if he was being over-powered. It was a dead eat dead world out there. And his wild sprint had him all but barrelling into the one man behind it all.

“Mr. Okazaki?” The librarian stared at him, naked and soaked, symbols painted all over his body, some even carved into the smooth flesh of his thighs, wounding looking red and sore. The genteel man was loved by the whole community he had a jar of candy on his desk for the kids that went there after school to read and do homework.

“Koyama.” His smile was cold and promised nothing but pain and a slow death.

Koyama often took out books on plant care from him, Mr. Okazaki often helped him find just the book he needed. This couldn’t be right; he couldn’t be responsible for the string of deaths and the amassing of this zombie fun-house.

“No, why?” The wind howled around them and Koyama’s gun wavered for a moment.

“Why not?” Something grabbed at his arms and Koyama instinctively twisted pivoting his weight on his back foot and bringing the offender over his shoulder and slamming it into the ground. A dead face stared back up at him, just a kid, couldn’t be any older then fourteen. He didn’t pause, brought the muzzle of his gun against the hair matted with blood and pulled the trigger. Flesh rippled away from the impact and brain matter splattered back against his hands.

It was all the distraction he needed, the other man had dove for something, returning with a knife and Koyama jumped back to avoid being stabbed, the tip whizzing past his nose with the faintest displacement of air. Shocked, it didn’t take much for the gun to go clattering to the ground and he was left unarmed and again staring his own death in the grisly painted face.

“Your vampire isn’t going to make it in time to save you. He’s probably been overwhelmed by now. I’ve got so many little pets.”

“Why are you doing this?” Koyama resisted the urge to nervously lick his lips; his face was flecked with gore, maybe he could stall him long enough to think of something.

“I needed the power.” He shrugged; the incantations carved into his skin shifted too, all sorts of energy channelling gates. Standing too close to him was setting Koyama’s teeth on edge, black magic seeping off his body and into the air and it hissed and spit, howling against Koyama.

“You wanted to make them virulent.” He was pretty shitty at math, but the calculations on the walls had called for way too many more then they had killed already. “An army.”

“Everything would fall so fast.” He grinned sickly.

The conversation had been enough to help him refocus, he wasn’t very good on the best of days, but if he was going to survive then this was important. He a moment where he felt his energy build inside, focusing like a tiny supernova then expanding past him in a wave of brilliance.

As far as distractions of his own went it was good, Okazaki staggered raising his arms in warning even as Koyama launched himself at him, knife already drawn from the sheath. He stabbed and stabbed until he managed to bury the hilt in his chest, undeniable dead. The spray of blood had been warm, alive.

Okazaki gurgled on the ground, hands flailing and twitching before stilling. Behind him was a large tub and Koyama stumbled towards it, soaked to the bone with rain, blood and desperation. He kicked his gun along the way and stooped to pick it up, sticking it in the holster blindly; he missed the first time and had to try again. He fell to his knees in front of the tub, the smell here was infinitely worse than the basement had been. It was filled with green and black goop that smelled so strongly of decomposition that it had to be liquefied human; nothing else could smell that bad.

Somewhere in there was the focus of the spell, one item of sufficient conductivity to act as a lighting-rod for something this huge. With a hot water bath for insulation. He gagged as he plunged his arms elbow deep in the mess. It was warm and slid between his fingers and along his wrists. He threw up a little in his mouth, tasting bitter bile and probably crying a bit as his fingers combed through the wreckage scrambling for the focus, it was raining and he couldn’t really tell the sting in his eyes from tears. He hit something, and it slid out of his hand once sending him searching for it again, before finally getting a good hold on the item. He emerged from the human stew with a skull clutched in his hands, a skull that was too small to be an adult. Grimacing at the pain of even touching the source of pure black energy he threw it at the ground as hard as he could. It bounced but didn’t break, shattering finally when his foot came down on it hard.

Silence and rain reigned on the roof, the last zombie falling to the ground before Ryo could even lunge at it. He was filthy now, liberally coated from head to foot in entrails and blood, bone and gore. Alive.

With arms that shook from the nerves Koyama drew his gun and pointed it at the other man. “Vampire.”

“Koyama.” Ryo nodded his head, taking a step towards him.

“Stop, or I will shoot.” He was so damn tired, and to top it off he was filthy from head to toe.

“True, at this distance there is a good chance you could shoot me before I got to you.” Ryo nodded, taking another step forwards anyways and Koyama’s hands tightened on the butt of the gun, trying to steady his aim with his other hand. Vampires needed their hearts; a few good shots would do it. “But I know something you see. You’re not going to shoot.”

“Explain yourself, what are you doing here?”

“I’ll explain when it isn’t raining on me.”

“Don’t come another step closer. “ Koyama narrowed his eyes at him, the rain had picked up again flattening his hair to his forehead and dripping into his eyes. Ryo looked pathetic all sodden, floppy hair framing his face and clothing clinging to his skinny body. “I don’t want to kill you.” Ryo had saved him, twice.

“You won’t.”

Koyama closed his eyes; breath hitching, you couldn’t trust vampires. The heart of evil. He squeezed the trigger not a moment later and nothing happened, the click of an empty clip.

“You see, your gun is empty.” Ryo’s voice was right in his ear. He shuddered, but if it was fear or the sensation he couldn’t say for sure. “Tsk tsk.” Ryo took the gun from his hard easily, Koyama didn’t even put up a fight. He was so exhausted, the terror and the confusion had taken so much out of him, he didn’t have anything left. He’d just wanted to survive.

“You’re a vampire.” He said, and instead of sounding firm and convicted like someone in his position should have, he sounded weak, unsure.

“Yeah, my name is Ryo remember? We had some good times.” That flash of teeth in the pale light. Dangerous teeth. “Me and you.”

“But.” Koyama sighed.

“Not now, we’ll continue this after we get clean. You really stink.”

Koyama stopped to vomit all over the floor, Ryo’s hands on his back still too hot.

~~

He wasn’t sure how wise it was to invite the vampire into his house, but he would have been killed several times over if it was not for the other man and offering him tea seemed like the least he could do. He’d come to an epiphany of sorts on the way back to his apartment, there was more to Ryo then met the eye, a sinner and a saint, and so Koyama wouldn’t kill him. Probably couldn’t anyways, Ryo’s power felt old, the same pulse as the little flower buds he cared for.

“I’m sorry, but I need to shower, I am not getting any of this on my couch.” In the light of his living room they looked even worse than they had in the half light of the roof-top. Ryo was pretty much covered in gore and blood like war paint, his hair was matted and thick with it, there was something that looked suspiciously like a shards of bone stuck in the whole mess.

He had what was probably a month or two worth of liquefied person under his nails.

“Can I join you?” Ryo sort of wiggled his eyebrows, but it seemed like he was also sagging a little, but it might have just been the blood staining his skin and the rain flattening his hair it was too hard to tell. Koyama paused, looked at Ryo standing in the middle of his living room, pants leaving sticky smears across his floor and a hopeful look in his eyes. He came to a quick executive decision.

“Why not?” He shrugged, smiling a little. Invite a vampire into your bed, into your shower, what was the difference really.

He would probably need to burn this outfit; there was no way he was ever getting that smell out. Stripping off his shirt, and pushing himself over the sink in the tiny bathroom to check for damage, there were a handful of scrapes on his hands and elbows, probably his knees too and what felt like a forming bruise on his back.

“Are you okay?” Ryo was too close, had to be given the size of his bathroom and Koyama shrugged. When he wasn’t so exhausted he would heal the abrasions.

He caught Ryo’s reflection in the mirror, shirtless with a skinny chest. They both looked dirty and tired. The other man was looking intently at his back, a light touch of fingers against the sore spot on his lower back.

“I’ll be okay.”

They stripped and stepped into the shower. The water sliced through the grime that covered Ryo’s chest, the water running rusty down the drain. His skin underneath was fair, bruises and cuts spanning across his chest and back. Koyama sucked a breath in through his teeth, Ryo looked liked he’d, well he looked like he had taken a hoard of zombies in hand to hand combat. The hot water had to have stung when it hit the cuts but Ryo didn’t react, just tilted his head so that the water was hitting his hair too. Something suspiciously globby slid out of his hair and inched towards the drain. Koyama tried not to stare.

There was a nasty cut on his shoulder; it looked like something had tried to take a chunk out of him with their teeth. That was probably actually what happened. Koyama’s hand moved towards it without thinking and he hissed softly to himself, it felt wrong, off.

“Don’t move.” He murmured softly, the water misting around them and clinging to his eyelashes and making everything blur. After the night he had had and this felt surreal? But then again, he was taking a shower with a vampire.

“What are you doing?” Ryo tensed the muscles across his shoulders and back visibly tightening.

“You’re hurt. Relax.” Controlling the flow of energy to bring light or fire took all his concentration, but this, this was like flying for birds or swimming for fish. He’d been born to do this. It pulsed through him slow and sweet, he closed his eyes and imagined the shimmering lights at his fingertips, sought out Ryo with his mind, letting his mental shields fall and Ryo’s mind wash over his.

He’d never seen a vampire before, only felt the residual surge of power on an injured hunter he’d healed once. Ryo’s power was huge, deep and smooth like a perfect still lake; it felt like hot chocolate and silk across his mind and Koyama broke out in goose-bumps as he immersed himself in it. Ryo’s mind was so powerful, but it didn’t push back against his, yielding to him as he pushed his power through the other man.

He focused on using his energy to push the taint of sickness from the wound on his shoulder then knitted the skin back together. Flowing across the topography of Ryo’s body with his mind and fixing all of the bumps scrapes and bruises that he came across.

Wasn’t sure how long it took, time was irrelevant, but it was almost physically painful to pull away from the allure of Ryo’s power. He took in a quick little gasp as he broke the connection, the echo from Ryo’s mind slamming through his head hungryneedwant. He was still reeling from it when Ryo pressed him back against the cold tile wall shocking him out of his funk.

“I can’t.” He snarled pressing up against Koyama, naked and slick like a seal pressing his face against Koyama’s wet hair and rubbing his obviously hard dick against his hip. He stilled his struggles as Ryo pressed him harder against the wall, breathing hard and ragged. “Fuck.”

“What?” Koyama wiggled and Ryo moaned, lips touching his shoulder and Koyama froze up barely even breathing.

“I can’t hurt you. I just.” Ryo braced his hands on the wall to either side of him, and looking like it took everything in him to pull even that far away. “Your power.” He actually whimpered, “it’s like. Fuck.”

Then he was plastered against Koyama’s body again rubbing desperately. Maybe Koyama could understand him a little, because Ryo’s mind had been brushing against his and his dick was hot against his own and arousal was rocking through his body despite the alarm, or maybe because of the thrill of terror.

Ryo’s lips touched his neck and Koyama squeaked, held in place and too exhausted to fight, but it was only lips and tongue, suction bringing a bruise to the skin, a jolt of pain to add to everything swirling through him. His hands came up to the other man’s shoulders should have probably pushed him away. Instead he just held on, biting his lip and groaning as Ryo tried to crush him up against the wall.

He could only hold on as the other man rode his body, strong despite his small frame, breathing hard into the skin of his neck. He was dizzy with the humidity and the heat, Ryo’s skin burning his. Achingly hard now, and trying to rock back against the pressure that was making his knees weak.

He grabbed Ryo’s hair, wet strands tangling against his fingers, but it gave him enough of a grip to force Ryo away from his neck and angled his head for a hard kiss. He groaned against Ryo’s mouth, sliding his tongue out to meet. Slick and hot, just like the way their bodies slid together. Ryo came with a sound that Koyama muffled with his own mouth. Rocking his hips in time with Ryo’s until the pressure built in his balls, snapping down his spine completely electric. He shivered, going taught for a moment as it ripped through him wiping his mind of everything but the euphoria pulsing through him. Koyama came thick and sticky between them without having to touch his cock at all. Ryo snarled something muffled against his neck when he came too, going all shivery in Koyama’s arms.

Wrung out Koyama sagged against the wall panting, Ryo still pressed against his chest.

“Sorry.” Ryo muttered.

“No problem.” Koyama said faintly, barley able to stand on his own.

He barely had the energy to wash his hair, arms almost shaking as he held them over his head. But he had desperately needed to get clean. Once he could only smell the sharp and fresh smell of his body-wash did he stop scrubbing, the skin on his arms rubbed almost raw. He just needed to get all the smell and the feeling off of him, thick and sticky clinging to his skin. Ryo just looked contrite squishing himself into a corner and trying to look like less then he was.

When they were both de-zombie-afied, Koyama finally turned off the water, they probably just went through the whole buildings hot water in what felt like two hours. His toes were all prune-like shrivelled skin so sensitive that it almost burnt when he touched the tile of his bathroom floor.

“I am going to sleep for a million years.” Koyama declared, all but slurring the words together. Without the feeling of steam to hold him up he sagged as he tried to towel himself off.

“Here.” Ryo took the towel from him and all Koyama had to do was stay standing long enough for the other man to dry his body, crouching on the floor in front of him Koyama mustered the energy to smirk at him. Ryo laughed a bit nervously and finished.

He was mostly asleep by the time he hit the bed. His last thought was of Ryo, wondering if he would still be there when Koyama woke up.

~~

Shige was pounding on the door to no answer, Koyama hadn’t been in his garden or at the book store where he liked to part-time or any of the weird places that Shige had been forced to look for him in the past. That night he’d had terrible nightmares, children screaming and crying, burning alive and at the center of it all Koyama wrapped in a deep black cloak that seemed to be less covering him then swallowing him whole, weeping silently. A man he didn’t know, black like ravens and night and red like blood walking uneasy circles around him snarling and screeching at nothing.

Shige had woken up drenched in sweat and completely sure that something bad had happened to Koyama. Damn the witch for always being so cavalier about his assignments, always with a bright smile and a ‘don’t worry Shige, I can handle it’. Shige worried about him when he sent him to deal even with a minor haunting, and this may have been the biggest thing that had ever crossed them. He was cursing himself for not going with him, not supporting him somehow.

He grabbed Massu as he was leaving, the other man was sweeping up the golden fan-shaped leaves that had been falling all over the walk-way recently into impossibly neat piles, told him to close everything down and to take calls Shige needed to be gone for a bit. Gone were the robes, messy jeans and a thin t-shirt in their place, only the prayer beads still wrapped around his wrist because who knew what kind of nasty thing had befallen his friend.

Signs pointed to Koyama being at home and he rushed the whole way there, heart beating too fast and trying to figure out what the dream meant.

When the door finally opened it was a very grumpy looking shirtless man on the other side, and not Koyama. His black hair was sticking up in all directions, flat on one side like he had been sleeping on it and the crease of the pillow case still on his face. He looked almost murderous as his eyes swept up and down Shige’s body quickly and dismissively. Was this what evil Koyama had encountered? A demonic troll-hooker or whatever Koyama dragged home?Shige flushed to the roots of his hair and determinedly stared down this small man.

“Where is Koyama?”

“Who are you?” The other man mirrored his pose arms across his narrow chest looking pissy. “Boyfriend?” He practically snarled the word and Shige flushed a bit more, Koyama was indeed very pretty but the witch wasn’t’ really his type.

“No.” Shige hedged. “Just let me see him, this is important.” He was about to shoulder his way through the door when the other man finally backed off, letting him inside the small apartment. It was dark, all the lights were off and it was cool inside. Sinister.

“He’s sleeping.”

Indeed Koyama was sprawled on the bed, possibly naked Shige didn’t lift the sheet to check, and sleeping quite deeply. Shige paused at the doorway, in the diffuse morning light that spilled in from the window Koyama looked peacefully asleep if it were not for the bruises that marred his shoulders and chest.

“What happened?” Shige crossed the room in two long steps and hesitantly reached out to touch his friend’s shoulder.

The other man might have been speaking but it was all lost in the rush of blood pounding through his ears. Unexpected and at the same time completely the expected result. Screaming, so very much screaming, high pitched moans and sobbing it all echoed through his brain, the future rolling like a steam train through his brain and shoving itself down his throat.

Koyama in the arms of this man completely silent as a pool of blood spread around the two of them the dark man’s lips were moving saying something and looking stricken but there was no sound like a television on mute. A creature, more like a ball of flesh floating in the middle of a blood strained room, arms and legs sticking out this way and that, the faces of a hundred children peeking out from between elbows and knees, all screaming with deafening intensity. A dark church with stained floor and strewn with corpses.

Koyama on his back legs wrapped around someone and moaning loudly.

Shige fell back with a sharp curse running into Koyama’s dresser and scrambling away in a half slide- half crab walking movement. All of it was jumbled in his head a mass of death and sex the possible futures spilling through his mind in fast motion and refusing to order themselves nicely. Well at least now he knew why the other man had wanted to know about possible boyfriends.

“You’re a seer.” The other man said simply, crossing the room to sit on the other side of the bed. Koyama didn’t stir at the movement or the voices.

“Well yeah.” Shige dead-panned. Pressing his hands to his now-aching head. There was something wrong with Koyama’s future, it felt tainted, slimy and it oozed behind his eyes thick like molasses and cold. “Who the hell are you?”

“Ryo.” He said simply, like that should explain everything. “Is something wrong with him, you’re turning green? You’re not going to throw up are you?”

Shige didn’t open his mouth, lurching to his feet and barely making it to the bathroom before vomiting in the toilet. Something in Koyama’s future had touched him, and he gagged and gagged until there was nothing left, still tasting traces of it on his tongue. That hadn’t been Koyama’s power that touched him, Koyama’s power felt like sunshine and daises, like the flowers he cared so much for. This had felt like disease, like the slow rot of things deep underground, that wasn’t Koyama in his future.

“Are you okay?” Ryo was standing at the door, still shirtless and frowning. He didn’t offer a hand to help Shige up so he had to claw his way to the sink and a semi-standing position, his own face was too pale and still a little green in the mirror. “Is he okay?”

“I’m not sure.” He said, running the water to wash his face, not caring that he was soaking his shirt. He took long mouthfuls of the cold water and spit them out, trying to wash the taste of stale coffee and stomach acid from his tongue. It wasn’t working so well, he briefly debating the merits of stealing Koyama’s toothbrush.

“What did you see?” Ryo was started to sound antsy now, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet and dark eyebrows drawing together in a frown. All the curtains were drawn and the lights out, and he moved in and out of the light from the bathroom, pacing like an annoyed cat.

“The church.” Shige said, closing his eyes and trying to sort the images into some sort of reasonable order. The future always felt like it was being shoved into his head, coming out in jumbled images and a splitting headache.

“Impossible, we killed the necromancer and broke the focus point.” Ryo looked thunderous, face dark, eyes dark. He looked familiar. “I helped kill that son of a bitch.”

“There is something else there.” Shige shook his head, the faces of a hundred crying children sticking. “Something evil, I think it got inside Koyama.”

Through all of this the older man was still asleep, curled on his side and sleeping like the dead, bad analogy, and possibly a bad use of foreshadowing. Do you know if he let his shields down for anything? Oddly at that Ryo’s face turned pink, the blush spilling down his neck. “He healed me.”

“I see.” Shige brushed his fingers through Koyama’s hair without thinking, pulling his hand back when he realized what he was doing and Ryo was stilled flushed but now he was glaring too. He looked a little like Koyama’s cat when he got all pissy, crossed with an annoyed guard dog. “We should probably wake him up.”

Koyama knew he had to be sleeping, he was dreaming of his childhood home. His mother hated living with the family, healing injured hunters when they needed her and trying to raise her children alone. Their grandmother, their late father’s mother had been a stern woman who pushed his sister into learning how to control the destructive power of her magic, she had tried with him too. He dreamed of her and the way she always smelled like smoke and death, eyes cold as the icy winds she could conjure on a whim.

Koyama had been terrified of her. Even more terrified of the things she had wanted him to do.

Now he was dreaming of her, she was scolding him again, waving around the small stick she would hit his hands with when he did something wrong, snarling and shrieking like a banshee. This time his mother and sister were nowhere to be found when he started to cry.

“Good for nothing. Can’t even save your own soul.”

He put his arms up to defend himself when she began to rain blows on him. Such a frail creature had no right being so strong. Something welled up inside of him, blackness it felt like, screaming in his head so loud and piercing that it drowned out anything else. It took all his fear and his anger and made it burn bright, bright so bright, bitter in his mouth. She wanted to see him use his magic to hurt, so he would. All the reasons he’d had for not harming people, everything that he cared about seemed suddenly so pale and unimportant, all the beauty he loved about life washed out pale and useless.

It fizzled through him, hot and cold, not magic but an explosion of energy, a burst of emotions and power.

“Keiichiro.” His grandmother’s jaw was dropping like it was unhinged and echoing with the shrieking of demons. Her face was melting like wax eyes burning like fire, but she still had the stick and was trying to beat him with it. Anger dried up the tears.

“Keiichiro wake up.”

The words meant nothing to him, years of fear and terror spinning crazily through him and breaking his control.

Like being dunked in ice, power washed over him, sizzling across his skin and shocking him out of everything. Everything went dark like someone hit the power and it was so black that Koyama couldn’t even see his hands. Something was rubbing against his mind sensuous and he panicked lashing out against it.

“Wake up.”

The light was so piecing, straight through his eyes and into his head. Koyama shut himself against it, curling into a tight ball and sobbing. Hands rubbed soothing circles across his back and down his shoulders.

“Shh.”

“It’s okay.” Two scared sounding voices. Eventually the pain eased into a dull throb and the terror receded.

He opened his eyes to find Ryo’s face hovering over him and Shige just behind him. Ryo’s lip was bleeding and his mouth was bruised. Shige looked like he had a black eye forming pretty. They almost looked like they had gotten into a fight. There was also a deep burn mark on Ryo’s chest, it looked raw and scorched, the room smelling faintly of burning skin. Koyama winced, recognizing his own hand print. Knew the slight tingling in his fingertips was probably Ryo’s skin stuck to his hands.

“Sorry.” He croaked voice raw.

“Don’t worry about it. Are you okay?” Ryo’s eyes were too wide, he looked actually spooked.

“I don’t think so.” He shook his head and tried to sit up, everything hurt every muscle and every tiny scrap of his skin hurt. It felt like he’d been dragged along the road by something huge and then maybe stepped on. Hell, the spaces between his toes even hurt. “What happened to you? Are you okay?” He asked Shige, the redness around his eye screamed recent damage.

“We got into a bit of a fight.” Shige hedged, his eyebrows drawn together in a familiar frown, plush bottom lip sticking out a little sullenly.

’Vampire!’ Shige screeched when Ryo let his aura expand across the room trying to subdue the explosion he felt building through Koyama’s sleeping form. His power was shifting and fizzing like a shaken bottle and Ryo was terrified of what it could do. ‘Get off of him.’

‘Fuck off.’ God damn seers couldn’t see past their own fat noses some times.

Shige tried to touch him and Ryo lashed out automatically, with Shige fighting back. Felt his elbow connect with the other man’s face and in return took a hook to the mouth. Then he could see Koyama moving, felt the air pressure spike followed by the smell of burning ozone. Ryo swore and shoved Shige out of the way. It ripped through him like the sweetest pleasure and the sharpest pain the conflicting sensations making him grit his teeth against the urge to scream.

“It wasn’t really anything.” Ryo tried to smile and Koyama blinked at him, nodding like he didn’t believe him but too tired to argue. Koyama flopped back against the sheets. The effort just to sit up had visibly exhausted him.

“Do you want me to heal that for you?” He felt guilty that he’d lashed out. Glad it had been Ryo to take it, Shige was just a person and a shock like that might have seriously hurt him. Guilty then that he was glad that he had for lack of a better word zapped Ryo, it looked like it really really had to have hur. Ryo turned bright red almost instantly.

“Uh, no. You should… save your strength.” He looked all cute with his cheeks flushed like that and hunger shot through him fast enough to make him choke on his breath. He sucked a breath in through his teeth, his ears echoing something he couldn’t quite grasp. It all tangled in his head and pulsed like the beginnings of a headache.

“I think there is something wrong with me.” He groaned. Normally he didn’t feel things quite so intensely, enough to have his heart beating too fast and mind spinning with a half-remembered taste and feel of the other man.

“I know.” Finally Shige approached the bed, casting a leery glace at Ryo as he slipped past him. “I had a dream.”

“Of me?” Koyama tried to look flirty but he must have failed because Shige just looked alarmed.

“I had a vision when I touched you.” Koyama couldn’t even bring himself to say something dirty about that, beginning to feel too tired. “Hey, stay awake!” Koyama was slipping, it felt like the ground under his bed was opening up and he was spinning above a gaping hole his stomach dropping and rolling, about to fall down and be lost forever.

“Wake up.” Ryo’s voice cracked like a whip through the room, and his mind brushed against Koyama’s none to gently, like a crack of power against his weakened shields. It shocked him into the here and now.

“Thanks.”

Ryo smiled weakly at him. “No problem.”

He’s lost count of how many times the other man had helped to save his life already. It was probably getting to be a bit embarrassing actually.

“Something about that church-”

“It was Mr. Okazaki.” He said sadly, talking over Shige.

“The librarian?” Shige blinked.

“Yeah, I killed him.” Koyama sighed, thinking back to the scene on the roof, of the terror and the knowledge that he would need to kill or be killed. Couldn’t stop to think about all the children who loved Mr. Okazaki, all the books that would miss him. Thought about the spill of hot blood making his hands slide along the handle of the knife as he stabbed him again and again until he wasn’t moving any more.

“I’m sorry.” Shige shook his head. “But there is something else there.”

Thinking hurt his head and on the heels of the pain was something, something niggling and there, worming in his brain. He closed his eyes and focused on it, thought about that big old empty church and the press of evil against his skin.

“Fucking zombies.” Koyama hissed, pressing his palms against his forehead, that thought hurt too. He’d been terrified, wrung out and had missed the glaringly obvious. “There were way too many zombies. I found the calculations; I didn’t stop to think about where he found so much energy.”

“You mean?” Ryo cut in.

“The church itself.” Koyama finished. “It felt evil, but there was so much else layered on top of it that that I didn’t really think about it.”

“A hundred children.” Shige muttered and Koyama looked at him sharply, he cleared his voice and tried again. “I dreamed of the screaming souls of a hundred children.”

“Well that would do it.” Ryo agreed.

“And now they are stuck in your head.” Shige smiled at Koyama sadly.

Well shit. That explained a lot.

They were going to have to purify the whole damn place. Koyama sighed; he was too tired to deal with it.

“Hey, it is okay.” Ryo said, voice low and growly and strangely comforting. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” It was probably more reassuring then it should have been, but so far Ryo’s track record with his life was pretty good.

“Thanks.” Koyama smiled and tried to keep the screaming in his head at bay. If Shige had any opinion he kept it to himself.

~~

In the hazy twilight the church looked almost serene. The sight of it made Koyama’s stomach lurch uncomfortably. The pounding in his head only got worse the closer they came to it. Part of him wondered if he would be able to pull himself together enough to do the purification when it came down to it. He felt weak and sick. Ryo was more or less stuck to his side, dressed in some of Koyama’s jeans with the legs rolled up a few centimetres and had his own holsters over top of it. He was moving more fluidly ticking his head and peering easily through the twilight that blinded Koyama. It seemed like he had dropped all pretence of being human all together.

It probably should have bothered Koyama more than it did. He had Van Hellsing blood through his father. The Van Hellsing were a clan of witches dedicated solely to the eradication of that which can hurt the innocent lambs; essentially kind of famous for not getting along with vampires at all. Koyama stumbled, and Ryo caught his elbow, peering at him with concern written all over his sharp face.

Massu was with them now, him and Shige hanging back and doing their own thing. Koyama had tried to get them to stay out of this all together but his argument hadn’t been all that convincing when he kept swaying on his feet to the beat of claws digging through his brain.

The night rushed onwards, twilight shifting into dark along the horizon, the moon already hanging bright and low over the buildings in the distance. Full, fat and yellow with menace. It was a bad omen kind of moon, Shige kept looking at it distractingly, like it was telling him some sort of ill secret.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ryo’s voice was low, carrying on the flat air and twisting around him.

“I’ll be fine.” He lied through his teeth. He kind of wanted to ask ‘why are you doing this?’ but this really wasn’t the time for it. If it wasn’t zombies it was trapped souls.

The great wooden main doors were still closed the way they had left them the night before, untouched. Darkness was closing fast.

The screeching was getting worse, and Koyama closed his eyes against it, when he opened them again he was standing alone in front of the church, lit in a hazy peach lighting. Koyama looked around, but nothing moved, nothing breathed, just the faint pressure of something great looming over him.

“Hello? Shige? Massu, Ryo?” Nothing. The air held its breath and he tensed ready for an attack at any moment.

“What are you doing here mister?” He’d only blinked but she was right there in front of him, on the verge of pressing into his personal space. Couldn’t have been older than eight, pig tails and a tiny festival kimono, blinking wide black eyes at him, her eyes were depthless and white-less nothing but inky blackness regarding him. “If you are here they will get you too.”

“Who?”

“The monster.” She nodded, blinking her huge bug-like eyes. “It ate me, my arms and legs and it ate my head last.”

“I’ve got my own monster.” Koyama smiled faintly. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“Not as sorry as you will be mister.” She smiled revealing rows of needle sharp teeth. “I’ll get you too.”

“Koyama.” He blinked and Ryo was in his face again, the two of them standing in the foyer, shrouded in darkness a desperate hammering on the solid door behind them slowly filtering into his perception. “Are you with me again?”

“What happened?” The breath it took to speak assaulted him, the stench of decay so thick in the air that he could feel it crawling along his skin. He shivered, eyes tracking in the gloom, shapes slumped against the wall tacky sprays of blood darkening the water stained wall paper.

Flashes of the flash of his muzzle, whole body tensing to control the recoil breathing softly and stomping down the instinctive terror, racing through his mind. He swallowed thickly. Been there, done that.

“You just kind of zoned out and started walking inside. I tried to stop you but the door closed. Oi! We are fine, stop your banging!” Ryo yelled, and it echoed too loud in his skull painful to the point of tears. Koyama grit his teeth against the incessant pain.

“The door won’t open.” Was Shige’s panicked voice.

“Just wait there.” Ryo yelled.

“Koyama!?” Massu’s voice added to the banging and he pressed his hands to his ears to try and muffle the pain.

“I’m fine!” He yelled as loud as his head would let him. Fuck that really hurt. “Let’s move on.” He nodded deeper into the church, fumbling with his holster until he was comforted by the weight of his gun. Kind of useless against spirits but more like a security blanket then anything.

“Yeah.” Ryo passed his light to Koyama, the light in here was fading fast. “Take it, you are the only one here who really needs it.”

Koyama scowled at the truth in that, trying hard not to see the rotting corpses they had left there, the details blurring as the light faded fast. They really made quite the mess the first time they came through, but the thought wasn’t very comforting. Ryo took the lead, edging around corners and peering into the gloom of the empty halls. Here and there the walls were painted with blood hand prints or smears of something unidentifiable. But nothing moved, not even a breeze, the air dead and heavy, oppressive.

The stink clung to his skin lining his lungs and making each breath a labour. Sometimes Koyama would feel things brushing against his feet, against his face, tugging at his hair and his hands. The first time it happened he jerked away with a startled cry and Ryo was at his side in an instant looking around wildly as Koyama’s flashlight lit jerky streaks across the empty hall. The next time he flinched much less violently, but again found nothing when he looked.

“Marco!” A voice, androgynous with youth, called out ahead of them and Koyama stopped breathing altogether flooded with instinctive terror.

“Ryo.” He hissed.

“Polo!” Another voice called right behind him almost right on top of him and Koyama whirled finding nothing behind him. His skin felt like someone had dunked him in cold water, goose flesh creeping down his arms, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He could feel someone watching him, just there hovering on the edge of his senses, waiting. Anticipation almost tangible in the air, quivering around him.

“What?” Ryo was around him, a dark comforting brush against his skin and his mind. “Did you see something?”

“Can’t you hear them?”

“No.” Ryo passed around him once more before touching his shoulder, smoothing the tips of his fingers down the jut of bone in a soothing gesture that did little to ease the tightness in his chest. He was beyond the point of comfort at this point.

“Of course.” They were in his head.

“Come on hurry, you look delicious.” It was a little girl’s voice, high and childish, complete with creepy giggle. It sent an almost violent shiver cascading down his spine, nails on a chalk board and bone rubbing against bone. “I want to eat you.”

“Well too bad.” Koyama muttered and Ryo made a soft inquiring noise that he brushed off with a shrug of his shoulders. “I like to think that means we are getting close.”

“If you say so.” Ryo’s feet scuffed against the floor as he backed off.

He did say so. Ryo kept up his hovering guard as they pressed deeper into the church looking for, well something. Koyama wasn’t sure what they were looking for, ghosts could have a focus, or this whole place could be their focus. The voices in his head were a good enough place to start.


Part 3