Beautiful Death (5 page)
“And your mother? What is her name?” Ash asked with aching sympathy in his voice that cut right through Tristan.
“Masuyo Ur—Uru… aw, fuck it. I’ll just write it down.” There was a pen in a sideboard drawer and using a napkin he wrote out the name. “I don’t know the Japanese characters for it… hell, I don’t know that I even spelled it right here. It’s kind of hard to pronounce.” He dropped the pen, grabbed another drink, more than he really needed and went over to Ash.
The other man took the napkin from him and furrowed his brow in consideration. “Your handwriting is atrocious,” Ash muttered, frown deepening as his eyes traced over each scribbled letter. “You are sure on this spelling?”
Tristan let out a long huff, sinking into the chair across from Ash. “Sure enough, I guess.”
Such confidence.
“Only one “i” at the end?”
“Yeah,” he answered a little more agitated. “I think so. Why, what does it mean?”
“Uruwashi,” Ash answered pronouncing it better than Tristan could. “They are just letters. I must see the kanji to fully understand its meaning.”
Tristan gave a dismissive shrug. “It’s at my place. So unless you feel like going for a quick trip into town…”
Quick indeed. “Town” was nearly a forty-five minute drive out of the country. And
she
was closer than town… Goddess of all, Ash hated the idea of going to her for help, after all she’d done.
After a long pause, Ash sighed. “I do not know what peaked Malik’s interest in you, Tristan. He may not even have a reason. But, I can tell you with full certainty, that even if you do leave, he will find you again. He will follow you wherever you go and carry out whatever fantasy he has in mind for you.”
“You mean, kill me.”
“Eventually.”
Tristan took in a shaky breath and then remembering the weight of the very full glass of straight vodka in his hand, took down a big gulp. “So… say I believe all this talk about vampires and ji—jiki—”
“Jikininki.”
“That. Say I buy it. Leaving means I’m good as dead. Stay, same thing, just a hell of a lot faster.”
Ash shook his head. “Perhaps. But if you stay here, with me, I can protect you.”
“Well,” Tristan sighed, slumping back into his chair again, “I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?” He really didn’t want to stay with Ash, but he didn’t want some vampire or zombie to have its way with him either. Ash was the lesser of evils. By far.
“Very well, now that is decided…” Ash stood with a soft grunt and went to retrieve his sword from the fireplace. “I will be going out for a short time. You are welcome to any room but my private chambers. And I do not wish to threaten you but you understand that Haruka herself is also off limits.”
Tristan ignored the implication of him being a cad, which he sort of was, and went to the part that made his pulse speed up. “You’re leaving?”
Ash nodded, preoccupied with tying the sword into place. “I have a friend, well, no, more of a neutral party.” Ash looked up. “A vampire ally that might know what Malik is scheming, if he schemes anything at all.”
Tristan couldn’t help be frown. There were so many things wrong with what Ash had just said. “You’ve got a vampire for a friend?”
“Ally,” Ash corrected. “She is far too fickle to be friends with anyone.”
“Shouldn’t I uh, go with you?”
A secretive smile appeared out of nowhere. “Afraid of the dark?”
Tristan huffed at his host and got up. “Only if there’re vampires in it.” God, he was really buying all this supernatural horseshit, wasn’t he?
“The house is warded. It will not keep someone like Malik out but it will slow him down. I will also know if anyone welcomed or otherwise comes or goes from the house and I will not be so far that I cannot return in minutes.”
“Fine,” Tristan sighed and waved the guy off as he poured himself another drink. He didn’t care about answers anymore and just wanted to be numb. “Later.”
“Very well. Good night.”
“Yeah,” Tristan said dismissively. “Night.”
Ash was almost to the doorway when Tristan asked, “Hey uh, what exactly are jikininiki anyway?”
Ash smirked at Tristan’s poor pronunciation. “Man-eating demons. But do not worry, they do not live as long as their Masters, a week at best.”
Tristan’s mouth was hanging open in incredulity. “And they look just like us?”
Ash’s smile slipped away. “If they have eaten a human recently, then yes, they look human themselves.”
That body, back in the alleyway, Ash had said Shizuka had eaten it. God, he was going to be sick.
“So how the fuck do you tell them from us?”
An eyebrow rose. “
You
do not.”
Tristan was softly cursing under his breath when Ash left the room. From the foyer the other man called out, “Sweet dreams,” before the front door slammed shut.
Letting out a huff, Tristan collapsed back in a chair. “Unbelievable,” he grumbled and wondered what weird private joke his host was imagining when he said that. In the end, he was sure that he didn’t really give two shits.
VAMPIRES, jikininki, zombie… What a load of bullshit.
Tristan stumbled into his room and tripped on his own feet, falling face first. At least the bed was there to catch him even if half his limbs hung off. Soft, clean smelling bed, his new best friend. He rubbed his face against the comforter and sighed, settling in for a good nap. He waited up all night for his host to return but finally gave up when the sun started to come up.
Being up all night and drinking for most of it had left him thoroughly drunk and even more tired. Was Ash’s own fault anyway, filling his head with fairy tales marketed as truth and leaving him alone with no TV, no internet and very little else to do with Haruka off limits and almost no books in English, what the hell else was he supposed to do? At least he kept himself mildly distracted with Ash’s surprisingly extensive CD collection. Anything to help calm and distract his mind, loud rock music was almost as good as alcohol. Usually.
How could he believe anything Ash said?
Vampires
. Really. God, maybe he was still asleep, or drugged. That had to be it, because saying that rotting thing that was Shizuka was real was just…
“…fucking stupid…”
Aw hell, Tristan supposed that he wasn’t in such a bad place, if these things Ash had said were really true. He’d never admit aloud, but he was starting to kind of like the dude. Sure he had an odd sense of humor, but seemed like a stand-up kind of guy. He was helping Tristan and that was something he couldn’t forget. Tristan would find a way to repay him, it was the right thing to do.
Tristan felt himself starting to drift off when the front door slamming startled him alert. He groaned and started to lift up to get off the bed when a second door, just down the hall slammed too. With a huff, Tristan dropped back down on the bed and shut his eyes.
“Didn’t want to talk to him anyway,” he grumbled.
He was asleep within moments.
And then he wasn’t. There was noise in the room. He jarred awake, blinked up at the ceiling in confusion. He looked to check the time, but the bedside clock was out of reach and turned away from him. All of the curtains were open, moonlight showing in soft patches across the wood floor in wide bands. The window by the armoire was propped open, letting in a cool breeze and frowned wondering why it was dark again.
A shadow near the foot of the bed moved and Tristan sighed. God, was it really night again? Would explain why he didn’t feel drunk anymore at least.
“Haruka,” he groaned, trying to sit up and failing. His body was just so heavy. “What are you doing?”
He looked down as a figure stepped into the light of the open window and his pulse instantly sped up. The person was definitely not Haruka. Not unless Haruka had grown half a foot taller and had large breasts that he missed earlier. Not likely. The night breeze brought a soft scent to Tristan, her scent.
“Ca—can I help you?”
The woman smiled warmly and started towards the bed, swaying her hips more than necessary. She was showing off. Tristan chuckled and shifted to sit up and noticed that he’d gotten into bed at some point. He couldn’t remember stripping off and climbing under the covers, but there it was, only a thin sheet covering him to his waist. Tristan managed to sit up just enough to prop himself up on his elbows. When he saw the face of the person in his room he heaved a deep, annoyed sigh.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He huffed and flopped back onto his pillow again. “Seriously. Not funny, Ash.”
Tristan was just starting to understand that Ash had a dark sense of humor, he just didn’t realize the dude would take it so far, dressing up as a woman and coming into his room for… well, something Tristan wasn’t interested in. He wanted nothing to do with the boy parts. “I’m not into whatever this is... so get the fuck out.”
There was a warm chuckle with a definite feminine candor and then a cold hand grabbing his.
“Hey,” he snapped, “what the fu—”
His words were cut off sharply when his hand was thrust into the crotch of the person standing over him. There definitely were no boy parts. Okay, so not Ash. Then who was she?
The woman smiled slyly and leaned over him, putting a hand to either side of his upper body, pressing silk covered breasts to his bare chest. She let out a hot breath across his cheek, shifting his hair aside.
He wiggled under her, smiling. “Well, hello darlin’, what can I do ya for?”
She smiled, lowering her face to his, lips parted, just teasing him. Despite not having a clue who she was or why she was there—not to mention that she looked like Ash—he wanted her. God did he ever. There was a hot ball of tingling excitement in his belly that called to her like an old lover his body remembered and longed for.
Her lips grazed his cheek as she whispered, “Just relax.”
And his body did exactly that. He let out a long, slow breath and sank against the bed, feeling its warmth envelop him, hugging him. The woman’s weight bore down on him as she pressed herself to him, groin to breast. Even without her telling him to, he was going to let her do whatever she came here for.
“Yes, very good.”
“Who—” He had to take in a breath and force himself to concentrate to speak. “Who are you?”
She smirked, showing the first hint of white teeth. Instead of an answer, she wiggled against him, pressing her lower half against his hardness. He raised his arms, though they felt heavy as stone, and grabbed her. The bare skin of her shoulders was silk under his hands. She felt so good and smelled even better. He wanted to devour every bit of her. It’d been so long for him since he’d had good company. There was this incident before he left the States that kinda left a sour taste in his mouth. And a dent in his wallet, to say the least.
The woman pulled him back to reality as she pressed her lips to his temple. She gave him a butterfly light kiss and then let her lips drag across his skin as she moved down. He turned his face towards hers, ready to accept that next kiss to his lips, but at the last moment, she turned away. He groaned, trying to lift his arms to take her face into his hands, but they wouldn’t move anymore. He was a useless lump, a victim to her power. Oh god, but he wanted her to use him. She smirked and moved over him until she had a hand between their bodies, nails tracing lines on his chest. He groaned and tried again to move his arms to no avail. When she reached down and grabbed him through the sheet, that’s when he realized he could still move his hips.
“Oh god,” he moaned. “Listen, not that I don’t appreciate this, but who the hell are you? Are you Ash’s sister or something? Because I don’t think he’d approve of this…”
The hand moving over his groin stopped and the woman lifted her head to look at Tristan. God, there it was again, the undeniable truth that he was making out with Ash. Well, a woman that looked just like him anyway. That same sarcastic, crooked grin that Ash had made a brief appearance and then the woman was in a full-throated laugh that made Tristan’s skin tingle and his stomach tighten. And then he noticed something that made his pulse jump as he tried again to move. Only this time he wanted to get away because he was trapped.
By a vampire.
“It is fine…,” she said softly in her low ashy voice. “You are fine.”
She sounded so genuine, so kind. The fear was instantly gone with those three little words and he wondered if there was something more to them than just simple speech. He could feel it tug at his middle. She wouldn’t let him be afraid. Those words held a magic.
He had a small thought that maybe she really wasn’t a vampire. That the fangs were only press-on fakes.
She grinned and plucked at one. “They are most assuredly real, Tristan.”
He muttered a resigned curse, giving over to his new fate. This vampire was going bite him and he’d let her just because she said so. He didn’t care that she was going to bite him. He didn’t care that she made him not care. “Damn…” The words barely left his tongue.
She let out a soft chuckle and bent to him again. “Just a taste.”
Tristan let out a quick breath, his lips parting to accept hers, but at the last moment she veered away, mouth dragging across his skin in a damp line until they settled on a spot below his ear. Her breath came out hot against his flesh and he ran with goose bumps, shivering. Her lips opened across his neck, a molten wetness and the press of teeth made his eyes shut as he moaned, suddenly wild with anticipation. Something in him, though slightly frightened, wanted this. Yes, this was what he had wanted all along, her hot lips on his neck, sharp teeth pressed to his flesh. Push harder, and harder. Break the tension and then slip in, take everything he had to give. Yes, have him whole, vampire. Drink to your content…
The pressure built and just when he was sure his skin would finally give, spill forth his life’s blood into her hot mouth he was sitting up in bed, gasping for air. Alone. “Oh, fuck me!” he gasped, clutching his neck. “What the...?”
He swiped a hand across his forehead to push the damp hair away. Staring at the bright sun streaming through the windows, he realized the truth of the woman. She was a dream. Just a fucked up dream.