[Team Drama] (Mythological creatures) No lonely hands

[reikah]

Title: No lonely hands
Prompt: Mythological creatures
Rating: M-15
Warnings: Violence, blood and gore, character death
Author's note: My sincere apologies to everyone, I was really trying to get this finished in time, but work just didn't let it happen this week. It's stupid o'clock now and work happens again tomorrow, so here's what's written so far. I'm aiming to try to have it done by the weekend. Thank you for reading and apologies again!




Past the city lights, on the western horizon, on a clear night, Kurogane could sometimes still see the remains of the blue moon. It was very faint, and the smoke and the bright streetlights masked it, but it was there; fractured, broken, jagged but still, a memento. Some of the humans nowadays could see it, using expensive little instruments with expensive little glass lenses. There were pictures drawn of it, although none in the Kinomoto clan-house. That was fine with Kurogane. The little dead blue moon bothered him.

He would have liked to have said that it was the presence of a picture of the moon embroidered on the lapel of Reed's jacket that made him dislike the man, but it wasn't. Kurogane had had a lot of time to master his instincts, had met a lot of people, but he still could not say what it was about Reed that he did not like. Perhaps it was the slightly unctuous air to him; perhaps it was his bodyguard, standing by the wall opposite from Kurogane refusing to make eye contact, who smelled of hybrid; perhaps it was the way Reed had begun the meeting by referring to Kurogane's employer, his host, as if they were family members; or perhaps it was the way he had shucked that expensive silk jacket, without his host's invitation, and hung it over the back of his chair before rolling up his sleeves and taking out a cigar case.

"I'm afraid I don't smoke in this office," Kurogane's employer said, with a small half-apologetic smile. "There is a balcony just there, if you would like to partake?"

Reed had slipped the cigar case back into his pocket and smiled affably. It did not quite touch the edges of his eyes. "My apologies," he said, and gripped the edges of his chair's arms. "I appreciate the invitation. You are a busy man, and I am sure you are quite overwhelmed by your day to day business tasks, but I wanted to speak to you, clan-head to clan-head."

Fujitaka bowed his head in acceptance, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. The lanterns behind his desk were burning low, and Kurogane knew, from many years of acquaintance, how poor his eyesight was in the gloom. The study was normally better lit than this, but Fujitaka meant to retire for the night directly after the meeting, and had instructed the servants not to replenish the candles until the next morning. "I am always happy to meet with a relative of my wife's," he said, and Kurogane could see how his hands were folded on top of each other tightly on the desk. He was a compulsive fidgeter, a trait both of his children had inherited, and liked to have something in his hands at all times; even now his eyes flickered to his pen, sat quietly in its holder, before he glanced back at his guest. "How may I help you, Mister Reed?"

Fei Wong had not arrived at the Kinomoto clan-house alone. Aside from the bodyguard, whose offensive scent was giving Kurogane the beginnings of a tension headache and making his jaw ache with pressure, he had brought with him a young woman, wearing a smart dress underneath her coat and with the same blue moon symbol stitched over her breast. She was perched quietly in the chair beside him, her dark eyes on her hands in her lap. Now she glanced up at her clan-head, watching him from under lowered eyelids as he cleared his throat and gestured briefly in her direction.

"My daughter, Xing Hua," he said without looking at her. "She is eighteen years old and unwed." He must have picked up the same shadow of concern on Fujitaka's face as Kurogane had, for he hastily continued, "And too young for that sort of thing, of course. She is quite an adept witch, and has taken very well to my family's magics. I am eager to allow her to expand her mind by studying with another witch-family, in order to learn the magic unique to each clan.

"Our family tree split many generations ago, yours and mine; you inherited Clow's clan-house along with - " he rolled a shoulder in Kurogane's direction - "other things, while my family inherited his name. Over the years our magic has split accordingly. Fostering students from another family was a grand tradition in Clow's era, in the days directly after the witch wars, and I would like to propose a continuation."

Fujitaka gave into temptation and reached for his pen, his expression thoughtful. "I am not of your blood," he pointed out. "My line is separate, and, allowing for honesty, without quite the prestige of the Reed name. We are Kinomotos. Our powers are more instinctive than many witch-clans, Mister Reed, and less... flashy. I am not sure," he addressed Xing Hua directly here, "that you would benefit from studying with us as much as you would with one of the other great clans, Miss Reed. The Daidoujis are also related to my late wife through blood. Kotori Monou has taken students before within this very city."

Xing Hua's eyes darted to her father before her tongue came out to wet her lips. Her body language, Kurogane thought, with the suspicion that clouded his every thought, was very meek. He distrusted people so honest with any emotion, people he didn't know very well. And he couldn't smell her, although that was probably because of that fucking hybrid on the opposite wall. He sneered at it, showing just a hint of teeth, and it hunched its shoulders.

"I would be honoured to not only learn from the books of our ancestor Clow in your library, but also to tutor your heir," she said. "I have some experience tutoring students at our clan-house."

"Touya is rather fond of study," Fujitaka agreed, smiling, "But he already has a tutor, and he is doing quite well."

Probably because he's close to his tutor, Kurogane thought. Xing Hua accepted this news without so much as a change of expression, and her voice was a little flat as she asked, "And your daughter?"

Now Fujitaka looked down at the pen in his hands. He had absently been pressing the nib against his ink-blotter, a habit of his which cost the family more than it should in replacement ink blotters, in order to let the ink bleed out in great feathery black splodges. Xing Hua and Reed were both watching him, Xing Hua deadpan, Reed curiously. "Sakura is - well, her tutors could give you a whole essay about Sakura," he said, with a laugh, "Which - essay-writing - is something she's not fond of. Made for the outside, that one. Always getting into scrapes. Once she slipped away from her tutor and I had to send Kurogane to find her - where was she again?"

Kurogane scowled. "Down by the docks," he said, "playing with werewolf pups."

And not just playing dolls, either; she had been missing for three hours before her panicking tutor had returned to the clan-house and notified them of what had happened. It had taken Kurogane another half-hour of determined tracking to find her, and when he had, he had been furious to find her rough-housing with werewolves, tickling their chests while they nipped her with little puppy teeth.

The fact that the modern werewolf was a sad and sorry creature bent backwards under its desire to appear harmless to human society didn't mean much to Kurogane. He had grown up in an era where you carried silver weapons with you if you had to enter the deep forest, and kept half an ear on your surroundings at all times.

Reed had turned in his chair to look at him as he spoke, and his gaze lingered for several seconds after Kurogane had finished speaking. Kurogane met his eyes steadily, his face as blank as Xing Hua's, and eventually the man turned back to Fujitaka. "She sounds like quite a scoundrel," he said, and smiled. "Perhaps she would benefit from some new surroundings? I am a great proponent of educating children through indulging their natural instincts to play and explore. My clan-house is located south and east of here, further along the cross-country rail line. It sits on some two hundred miles of private forest. Sakura - and, of course, yourself and your son - would be more than welcome to visit."

"That's very kind of you, Mister Reed. It's been a long time since we left the city, the children and I." Not since Nadeshiko died, Fujitaka didn't say, but he didn't need to. "I will keep it in mind for this summer, perhaps."

Xing Hua had gone back to contemplating her hands, but now she looked up and said, "The library at our house is vast and well-stocked, sir. It does not have Clow's scrolls and documents, but it has much research we have gathered in our own right." After a pause, she continued, still hopelessly formal, "I think your family will find it educational. I have learned much from our resources, but it has come time for me to expand my knowledge. I had hoped to study with yourselves because of the mysterious nature of your magic, as much as because of Clow's writings."

"Ah," Fujitaka said. He put the pen down, although not back in its holder; he'd be fiddling with it again in a matter of seconds. "I myself do not possess my family's famous magic. That has passed to Touya and Sakura both. I am afraid we do not have room for any students at this time, but I can loan you some of our scrolls, if you would like? You may keep them until you have had a chance to have your clan's archivists produce copies."

"How about a trade?" Reed proposed, quite suddenly. He leaned forward and put both of his elbows on the desk, and Kurogane tensed up. Ginryuu was in her sheath at his side; he knew from experience that if Reed tried anything threatening, he could have her out and the man's head off in under five seconds - and the thought had him on high alert. "You have no room for students but a library any witch-clan would love to enter. We have too much room, and a library with simple books. I propose that one of your children comes to study with me and my household, and Xing Hua stays here and studies with yours. She is very set on learning from you, and what father doesn't want the best option for his children? Sakura would enjoy the forest, and the books there would probably be more appropriate for a student of her age."

Fujitaka was shaking his head before the man had even finished speaking, an apologetic smile on his face. "I'm sorry, Mister Reed," he said, "But not today. Touya is seventeen, and there is less than a year to go until he reaches his age of majority and replaces me as clan-head. Sakura is, despite her scrapes and her eternal difficulty with essays, doing well with her tutors. I appreciate your offer, but I am afraid I will have to decline."

A curious ripple of emotion passed across Fei Wong Reed's face, then, although what it was not even Kurogane, with all of his experience reading people, could say. Xing Hua sat further back in her chair, pursing her lips in disappointment. "Well," Reed said, sharper, "We shall have to look elsewhere. Shan't we? Perhaps the Monou clan, although we have no kinship with their family."

"As you say, father," Xing Hua said hollowly, and Fujitaka grimaced.

"You are, of course, welcome to those scrolls I mentioned from the library," he offered. "I will have those ready for you by midday tomorrow, Miss Reed."

"Thank you."

There was a rather ugly silence then, as Xing Hua resumed staring at her hands, Reed settled back into his chair, and Fujitaka fidgeted with his pen. He dotted three more ink pools onto his blotter, and Reed's bodyguard shifted its weight onto its other foot; Kurogane settled back further against the wall, projecting an image of effortless languidity that wasn't much of a lie. Eventually, the silence was broken by Reed, who clapped his hands together loudly enough Fujitaka nearly dropped his pen. "Well," he said, "That's life for you, isn't it? You should never count your chickens before they hatch, and so on. We will try the other clans of this city, then. Our hotel room is paid for another week, at any rate. Aside from the Monous, which clans do you think both skilled and able to satisfy a student as hungry for learning as Xing Hua?"

With relief, Fujitaka grasped the change of mood; and after a quarter of an hour had passed, Reed had a list of most of the prominent witch clans of the city, starting with the Monous with their explosive spells and continuing on all the way to the haughty and aloof clan near the jeweler's district who specialised in teleportation and locomotive magic. "Of course, I shall expect your family to visit during the summer sometime," Reed added, toward the end of the discussion, and Fujitaka laughed and nodded assent. The conclusion to the meeting was conducted under a much more pleasant atmosphere as Reed and Fujitaka finalised a list of what scrolls would return with them to their estate - very few of Clow's actual works, mostly lesser works from other famous mages - but rare, for all that. Still, a great gift for a clan distantly related to their own through blood.

"I am sure we will find time to see your estate," Fujitaka said as both men stood and shook hands. "I will have my librarian prepare the scrolls for transport this evening. She seems to prefer working through the night - I'm sure she'll have it all done by tomorrow morning!"

"Librarians are strange creatures," Reed agreed, putting on his coat, and they laughed together as though they were old friends; but Kurogane was keeping an eye on Xing Hua, and the way she stood there quietly behind her father's chair, looking for all the world as though the scrolls she had professed an interest in did not matter. Her face could have been carved from marble, all cold and pale, and the blue moon badge on her breast seemed brighter somehow, the sight of it making Kurogane want to touch the tip of his tongue to his teeth. His jaw still ached. Kurogane wished the fucking hybrid wasn't there, clogging up his senses with its reek of rot and twisted magic. Her heartbeat was slow and steady, rhythmic and normal, but something about her gnawed at him., and he watched her through narrowed eyes as Fujitaka summoned a maid to escort his guests to the doorway, where their hansom would be awaiting them. She glanced up at him just once, beneath lowered eyelashes, but quickly looked away again.

Kurogane had known all the women of Clow's line. It was hard not to, since he was older than all of them. They were different - but even Tomoyo and Nadeshiko, the most seemingly tranquil of Clow's descendants he had served, had been more animate than this.

It bothered him, and he did not know why.

---

The next day dawned grey and miserable. It had rained heavily overnight, and Kurogane had stood on the balcony outside Fujitaka's room, looking down at the nocturnal side of the city he had lived in now for thirty years. He had his own rooms, of course, located beside the mansion's master bedroom, but he rarely slept anyway and besides, the whole house still stank of Reed's hybrid.

"I don't trust him," he had said to Fujitaka after Reed had left.

"He is correct," his employer had murmured, and when Kurogane had glanced at him sharply, merely adjusted his glasses and sighed. "About the fostering, I mean. It was common-place. Duke Ashura from the Valerian clan was fostered with me when I was growing up."

"Why didn't you let him have the kid, then?" Kurogane challenged. Clow had bound him to serve, but that did not mean without question. Fujitaka had accepted his contract after Nadeshiko died; he was long used to Kurogane's rough manners.

"Sakura is still... unsettled. It's been nearly eight years since her mother died, and with Touya about to become the clan-head, with all the family upheaval that will follow..."

He had risen from behind his desk, carefully taking up a candlestick-holder and opening the glass front of one of his lanterns. "I didn't accept his daughter as a student here for the same reason. You are very suspicious, Kurogane. I know you have good reason to be, but... I have done my fair bit of research. For all his pride concerning his old name, Mister Reed's branch of the clan is very much... how shall I put this - new money? He has the name and the wealth but little else. He just wants to strengthen ties with the older branches so the other clans will respect him."

Kurogane snorted. "Is that why you agreed to meet him?"

"I thought he would ask for more books, to be honest." Fujitaka blew out the study's lanterns, one at a time. The candle in its holder glowed brightly. "Tomorrow I must go to the marketplace; that ink-merchant will be there for one more day, and I would like to buy some more of those handsome purple inks before he goes. I also need to stop in at the swordsmith and pick up Touya's ascendency gift."

"You could send a servant out to do these chores for you," Kurogane said impatiently, "like every other clan."

Fujitaka just looked at him levelly over the top of the candle. "Nobody is going to attempt to assassinate me at the market, Kurogane."

"I'm going with you," Kurogane had said flatly, and Fujitaka had not bothered attempting to dissuade him. They had had this discussion every time he wished to visit the market since Nadeshiko had died and Fujitaka had, to his not inconsiderable surprise, inherited Kurogane's contract from her in situ until Touya was old enough. He was the first person Kurogane had been bound to who was not of Clow's direct lineage. Before Nadeshiko he had served her second cousin, the Grand Duchess Tomoyo of the Daidouji clan.

He had come here, disgruntled, at Tomoyo's urging; she had seen him here in a dream, she had said, and he had known better than to argue with that. The Daidouji clan had been blessed with a strange kind of sleeping precognition, and he had spent three generations there, bound by Clow's contract to his heirs. Tomoyo had been easier to watch over than Sonomi, at least, and both of them combined easier than Kendappa.

He had instead protested that he was meant to serve each person for their whole tenure as clan head, his contract transferred to the clan heir on the death or resignation of his charge; but Tomoyo had just looked at him with soft, warm eyes, and said that she had also seen the end of her clan. "I will never marry," she had said. Kendappa had said much the same, Sonomi too, although both of them had consented to take a husband purely for their clan's futures. Sonomi's husband had run away from her after only three years, but she had had Tomoyo by then, so she hadn't given much in the way of a damn. He'd offered to go fetch the guy, but Sonomi's indifference extended beyond that.

(Kurogane didn't know if the Daidouji predisposition towards other women ran in the blood, or if it had merely been some kind of fluke that three successive generations had been so inclined. He also didn't really give a fuck, so long as his charges were content. Clow's contract required him to look out for the well-being of each charge, and he was secretly grateful that this didn't mean searching out their ideal spouses for them. There was only so much a monster like Kurogane could endure.)

Still, Tomoyo had dreamed she would never marry, and so she felt it was more appropriate to send him to her cousin, who (she claimed) had just had a daughter. Kurogane had left the unique city in the tundra that housed the Daidouji clan-house, strapped on a pair of snow-shoes, and alternatively hiked and hitched rides over the one-and-a-half thousand miles between destinations over the better part of a year. He had arrived just a week after Nadeshiko's birth.

All the witch clans were interrelated in some way. The spate of marriages between each clan to secure the peace after the witch wars had seen to that. Although Nadeshiko was the daughter of a second Daidouji child, through her father she could claim lineage to Clow Reed, and had inherited from him Clow's own house and with it, a tremendous amount of both respect and... interest. He had watched her grow and thrive, as he had watched her second cousin before her, and her grandmother and her great-grandmother ad infinitum, a series of men and women tracing all the way back to the man who had found him slavering in that burning church and bound him by blood and oath to his descendants.

Many witch clans had geased hybrid guards. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The clans gained a strong, powerful ally, immune to most confounding spells and charms, and the hybrids gained a ready source of legitimately obtained blood that didn't have the villagers sharpening their stakes and fetching their pitchforks. Kurogane was not a hybrid, although in certain regards he was much the same, and thus his presence had been enough to keep the other clans at bay. Nadeshiko had grown up clever, and although on marriage she had taken her husband's name, given Fujitaka's lack of magic she had become clan-head. Kurogane had protected her for over thirty years, until she had eventually met an assailant he could not defend her from. She had died of the white death during an outbreak at the Kinomoto country estate the summer Touya turned eleven.

Fujitaka had taken the day to day tasks of running the clan's business assets upon himself while his children grew up, although at times Kurogane sensed that he missed his days of studying in the library. The Kinomotos’ library contained a large selection of books and historical documents entirely unrelated to magic, Fujitaka thirsty for knowledge; he had amassed works on astronomy, herbalism, architecture, the bestiaries, even a slim volume on the archaeological evidence for the existence of dragons - all kept side-by-side with spellbooks, potion-making guides, tomes on the very nature of magic and Clow's own journals. He was a perpetual scholar, was Nadeshiko's husband. Kurogane could read and speak seventeen different languages, but he had had many years to learn to do so. Fujitaka studied because he loved to do so. He had published several collections of dry scholarly notes himself, mostly before he had become a widower, and Touya showed inclinations of having inherited his considerable skills at mathematics. He was already a dab hand at accountancy and estate-management, and with Yukito and his father to support him, would most likely manage the clan very well when he took control in scarcely three weeks from today.

Kurogane had served dozens of people of their line, and the thought of protecting Touya did not bother him. The kid was clever, watchful, and while a little protective of Sakura, hardly overwhelming in the same. He was also a decent fighter, having grown up with Kurogane as a sparring partner, although he preferred to use words instead of violence. Fujitaka had commissioned him a beautiful sword as a gift for his ascendency, forged with trace elements of silver and mostly free of unnecessary embellishment. The fact that he personally wanted to collect his son's gift irked Kurogane a little, although he was forced to agree with Fujitaka's assessment that his life was most likely not at risk in the market.

"It's pissing down," he announced with his usual lack of formality over the breakfast table. Some of his charges had ordered him to tone down his language, but Fujitaka just gave him a look over the top of his broadsheet. "You could still send someone from the staff."

"Send who where?" Sakura asked curiously, her spoon halfway to her mouth, heaped with honey and something that might have been a speck of porridge. Someone had managed to squeeze her into a petticoat today, an achievement in itself.

"Send you to the school for misbehaving girls," Touya offered across from her, grinning; he only had an apple for his breakfast. Next to him Yukito was demolishing what had to be an entire family's worth of porridge. "They'll teach you how to write essays there. And how to not get your new shoes so scuffed up."

"They're shoes," Sakura protested haughtily. "Walking in dirt is what they're for."

"I'm going to the market today," Fujitaka said, ignoring this. He folded the newspaper into quadrants. "The ink-trader is heading south for the summer soon, so I wanted to stock up before he leaves. Touya, you and Yukito are going over your spellcasting circles again today, aren't you?"

Touya nodded, his mouth full of apple, and carefully chewed and swallowed before opening his mouth to speak. Yukito slipped in front of him with effortless artistry before he could, however. "We're starting on three-stacked circles today, sir," he said. "We've notified the household staff to stay clear of the west wing of the mansion. I've borrowed a little bit of stardust from the treasury for the protective wards, and Touya is a very careful, thoughtful witch, so I can't see many problems." He smiled brightly at Touya, who furiously bit into his apple. Yukito was a distant relative of theirs, from an impoverished lesser clan; his father had been a seventh son. He had applied for an apprenticeship with Nadeshiko many years ago, and had become Touya's tutor more or less by default.

Sakura stirred her porridge and pillowed her face on her fist, pouting. "I wish I got to learn circle-stacking," she said, wistfully. "My tutor is still making me draw plain single circles out a lot."

"Muscle memory is important, Sakura," her father said, gently. "Don't worry, I've spoken to your tutor. She thinks once your performance in mathematics improves you'll be onto second-level shapes soon. In the meantime -" He captured the cut strawberry floating on top of his own forgotten bowl of porridge and leaned over to his daughter, delicately placing the fruit in her bowl, "Would you like to come to the market today with Kurogane and I?"

Sakura's face lit up, and that, Kurogane supposed, would be answer enough. He unfolded his arms and leaned further back against the wall. "Don't run off with werewolf pups this time, kid," he said, and she blushed furiously.

"That was once! Ages ago! And I was fine! Besides, I just wanted to visit the music-shop. It's Su's birthday soon and I was going to get her a violin."

Fujitaka raised his eyebrows at that and glanced around the dining room, at the serving maid waiting against one wall and Kurogane, leaning lazily against the other, dressed (reluctantly) in a very nearly typical gentleman's outfit with a tie around his neck instead of a cravat, his sword heavy in its sheath at his side. "Well," he said, diplomatically, "I think that might turn out to be a little beyond pocket-money range for you, but we'll see when we're there. Now finish your breakfast, and we'll be off."

Sakura ate the strawberry first, and inhaled the rest of her porridge so fast she nearly outpaced Yukito; she tore out of the dining hall to fetch her coat at such speed her shoes squeaked all the way across the foyer and up the grand marble staircase. Kurogane watched her go with a derisive snort, and then went to help the footman prepare the carriage. The rain was still pouring outside; the plants in the gardens were bowing under the weight of the deluge, the flowers looking subdued by the vibrancy of the green grass. The rain didn't really bother Kurogane; it was snow he hated, and although Tomoyo's city had been blessed with warmth, the rest of the far north had the bloody stuff aplenty. It had been a relief to head south.

"According to the papers it will rain for the rest of the week," Fujitaka remarked as he climbed into the carriage. Sakura had already been helped up by Kurogane and had claimed a seat near the opposite window, peering out with excitement at the world. Kurogane didn't hugely want to ride inside, but the coach driver's body language screamed discomfort, something Kurogane was familiar with; he had snorted and followed them. "There was a quote on the third page from the Amewarashi about it."

Sakura huffed out a breath against the window of the carriage and drew a circle in the condensation. It was a pretty good one. She had been born with the ability to draw a perfect circle freehand, so that part of her training had come a lot easier to her than her brother; squares and triangles and stars, the other forms of her magic, seemed to provide her with more of a challenge. "Are we collecting Touya's sword, papa?"

Fujitaka hummed agreement and leaned over, ruffling her hair. The sight made Kurogane look away. "That and your gift, my dear," he said, and laughed at Sakura's small gasp of surprise.

The marketplace was emptier than it usually was at this time of the morning, the rain and the chill together having conspired to deter many non-essential errands. They left the carriage in the yard of a large, well-lit tavern, and walked the rest of the way on foot, declining the loan of horses. The stalls had hooked their canopies together, stiff waxed awnings keeping the rain off their wares, but Fujitaka passed the open marketplace and directed them toward the smith, who had a wood-and-glass shop on the western end. He had an open-air anvil and forge outside, normally staffed by one of his journeymen, making horse-shoes as advertisement and practice both, but the wet had evidently dissuaded this as well. Sakura stopped to examine a selection of swords just inside the windows, the kind of string-thin rapier favoured by the upper class nowadays, meant to be concealed in a walking stick and without much in the way of actual use. Fujitaka left them there while he entered to speak with the smith in person.

"You want one?" Kurogane asked, loitering beside her and keeping half an ear on her father.

"Not really," Sakura said, biting her lip. "They're - very sharp."

Kurogane grunted agreement and crouched down, to be on roughly the same level as her; she was not tall. "Swords aren't toys," he said. "Swords should be treated with respect, not bought off a rack. A sword purchased without effort or respect is a sword used without either." He rapped his knuckles against the glass window. "These were made with nobody in mind, and they could end up used with nobody in mind, either. You want a sword, you need to know why you want it, and what you want to do with it."

Sakura touched the glass next to him with her spread fingertips, dragging her hand downward, and then sighed. "Touya knows," she said. "I - I don't think I would want one. I don't - I don't see myself needing one."

Kurogane set his hand on Ginryuu's hilt, smothered and hidden beneath layers of leather wrap. "No shame in that," he said briskly, and Sakura glanced at him briefly before looking back at the swords. He searched his memory, trying to recall what else his father had said - but it had been a long time, and memories faded for even creatures such as himself. Maybe especially for monsters like him.

Fujitaka emerged then from the shop, bearing in his hands a brand new leather sheath. The hilt of Touya's gift-sword emerged above it. The guard was filigreed silver, the grip wrapped with fresh black leather, and while the pommel was thankfully free of any garish gems, the knuckle guard was made of worked steel shaped like a winged lion. Kurogane scowled at it, the one point of ostentatiousness he had not been able to talk Fujitaka out of. The smith followed Fujitaka out. "Thank you for your custom, my lord," he was saying, and beamed at Sakura. "I hope you'll choose me and mine when this little one needs a weapon of her own, eh?"

"I'm sure we will," Fujitaka replied warmly, surrendering the sword to an exiting journey woman, who deftly wrapped it in oilcloth. Kurogane took it before she could hand it back to Fujitaka, earning a startled glance from the young lady. "Fine work, and well made. You have my thanks, sir."

"It was an honour," the smith said, still smiling. Well, if Fujitaka had tipped him the way he usually tipped craftsmen, no wonder. Kurogane sighed heavily. That, too, ran in Clow's family line. No wonder Nadeshiko had chosen this man.

Sakura shifted closer to Kurogane as Fujitaka and the smith shook hands, although not quite touching. Despite the wax awnings, she had pulled her hood over her hair, and she was looking at the swords in the window thoughtfully. Her father tugged her hood down with a smile as the smith returned to the shop, and said, "Shall we visit the violin-maker next, or the ink trader?"

"Oh," she said, brightening, "Oh, I think I shall spend ages at the violin-maker... Su likes mother's old violin from the practice room, you know, so I was hoping to get something like that... let's go to the ink-trader first, and then the violin-maker. As long as you promise not to spend hours lured by the new pens he's selling."

"I make no such promises," her father replied, laughing, and placed his hand on her shoulder, drawing her closer to him; they set off together, and Kurogane shifted Touya's sword under one arm and glanced around the market assessingly before falling in behind them. The rain damped down his senses, but he could pick up a note of hybrid, crisp and stomach-churningly sharp. He let his upper lip curve despite himself, his jaw clenching. He knew they existed down here in the city, tolerated for reasons he could not understand; they had not changed the way the werewolves had. Speaking of which, there was one of those around, too. Nothing quite like the smell of wet fur and leaf-mould.

The ink-trader had set his stall up in the lee of his caravan near the railway bridge. It was one of the less-desirable pitches, assigned to this travelling tradesman as a deliberate snub, but he hadn't seemed to care. The caravan was a clever contraption; it opened along one side, and the side that opened could be propped up with steady branches to serve as an awning. The trader was seemingly dozing amidst a pile of cushions in his home, hood pulled down over his face, his wares set out on a collection of upturned flimsy wooden milk crates in front of him. Aside from inks and pens he sold paper of various qualities, for much cheaper than the city's scribes did. There were already a few other clan-servants browsing when the three of them arrived, bundled up tight in oilskins against the rain, faces all but swallowed by caps and scarves; their clan's badges stuck out on their chests. Kurogane could count the crossed swords of the Monou clan, the standing bear of the Kasumi clan, and the snarling wolf's head of clan Nekoi, and it occurred to him rather abruptly that even if it had not been raining, Fujitaka would still be the only actual clan-member doing his own damn shopping.

Or, well. Only clan-member from one of the larger clans, at least.

The scent of werewolf was growing stronger despite the rain, and as Fujitaka approached the stall and the trader lifted his hood, Kurogane paused and breathed in deeply. Sakura glanced up at him curiously, but he ignored her, planting his feet and sniffing.

"Big fella," said the trader to Fujitaka, jerking his chin at Kurogane. "Wolf?"

"No," Fujitaka said, and smiled politely. "Now, I was hoping for a few more bottles of that wonderful ochre..."

Kurogane tuned them out, tense. He had found the werewolf. His hand crept to his sword as a young man rounded the corner wearing a shapeless and rather ugly tunic, as well as a heavy brown leather collar around his neck spaced evenly with loops, from which hung a large number of metal tags and a brown moleskin drawstring bag. He kept his gaze on his own toes as he approached the trader, and hovered at the corner of the makeshift horseshoe collection of boxes until the trader broke off his discussion with Fujitaka with an apologetic hand gesture and nodded at him. "What?"

"My lady Kishu wanted to collect the wares she ordered," the boy mumbled, lifting his eyes to the trader's very briefly before returning them to his own feet. He reached up and opened the purse attached to his collar, drawing out a rolled-up note. "She sends this letter of credit and requests a receipt."

The trader snorted and took the letter, unrolling it and reading it. "You got her tag?"

The boy leafed through the tags attached to the left-most loop on his collar and pulled free a metal tag on a short fine chain, depicting a lightning bolt; the trader leaned over and took it, turning it over to inspect the back, before nodding. "Fine, I'll get it ready, you go over there - " he jerked his head at a fine pinewood screen set aside from the booth - "And change."

As the boy did so, he reached under his counter and pulled out a waxed carrying case attached to a complicated leather harness, picking his conversation with Fujitaka back up as he did so. "Now, the nibs you say you liked - there's a smith who makes them a couple of hundred miles west of here. I shan't be coming back this way until next spring, but I can bring a few more with me. It's the durability and innovation of the so-called cartridges I find most attractive in those pens, anyway. Well worth the price, not to have pots of ink all over the place, just waiting to be upset by a careless mistake." A tan-coloured wolf with amber eyes stepped out from behind the screen, tail carried low and ears swivelling carefully, the ugly shapeless tunic clamped between his teeth and the tags on his collar jingling with each step. The trader took the tunic and stuffed it into the carry-case, sealing it. He then arranged the straps on the leather harness, and the wolf carefully stepped into it, standing still as the waxed scroll-case was tied in place to his side. "I'm hoping the design will catch on, myself," the man added to Fujitaka, before leaning forward over the wolf and rummaging through the tags until he found the lad's courier badge. "Right then, lad, I'll put your customer's receipt in your little bag here. I want that carrying case back, the harness too, before the end of the day or I'll be having words with your employer."

The wolf turned back to look at him, ears pricking up, and jerked its head up and down once in a nod. Sakura let out a soft breath beside Kurogane, her eyes fixed on the wolf, and Kurogane glanced at her suspiciously to see if she was experiencing some sort of urge to run away again and play with werewolf puppies. For a moment before he departed, the werewolf looked back at her, and the pair of them remained frozen for the span of a heartbeat before he shook his head and set off at a lope, collar tags jingling. The smell of werewolf had gotten stronger when he changed shape. Sakura watched him go, her expression soft, contemplative; Kurogane eyed her with suspicion, but she shook her head not unlike her wolf pup and turned back to her father, who was watching the trader wrap several expensive glass vials of ink into a rough piece of cloth.

"Kurogane," Sakura said very quietly next to him, "Is it true that Fei Wong Reed himself came to see papa last night?"

She was looking up at him, nothing but innocent curiosity on her face. If Kurogane hadn't known Tomoyo, he would have believed it. "Yeah," he said shortly, and because she was going to ask anyway, "He wanted his daughter taken on as a student. She offered to tutor, your dad said no."

"Oh. Touya said he had requested the meeting, I just - I just. I don't know." She bit her lip. "Did his daughter seem nice?"

Kurogane gave her a withering look, his expression spelling out the futility in asking Kurogane for an opinion on someone's so-called niceness. She grinned quickly at that. "Your dad said you had enough on your plate with - with the other kid, and all. 'Sides, what's wrong with that girl who's teaching you now? The one you're buying this violin for?"

"I'm buying us a violin," Sakura corrected him brightly. "As a consequence Su will get the one she likes that used to be my mother's. I don't want to, um, overwhelm her." She reached up with one gloved hand and pushed back a strand of her hair; despite her hood it had dampened in the humidity of the city and was curling over her forehead. "I just - I don't know. I'm sorry. It's just funny to think of this whole other side of our family I hadn't known about before. Our family tree is very broad, isn't it?"

"And tangled," Kurogane muttered, and she smiled.

"That too. I just wondered if maybe this daughter - if she could help me with our clan-gift."

Now Kurogane scowled. "Can you still not turn it off?"

"No." She looked at her shoes. "No, I can't. Touya has been helping me block it, but when I'm not near him it's - it's always on. Not strong, but still."

Kurogane hesitated for a moment, and then dropped his hand on top of her head. "Oi," he said, and tousled her hair. "Stop worrying at it. Your cousin was twenty-eight when she learned to control her clan-gift. It'll happen sooner or later. There's nothing wrong with asking for help, if you need it."

His mother had said that, once. Not to him, to someone else, on the day that night fell mid-afternoon. He didn't want to remember that day, so he consciously didn't, distracting himself with the way the corner of Sakura's mouth turned up. "Thank you," she said, and that made up for it.

Mostly.

---

He couldn't forget it completely, of course, and it came to him that night, as most memories did. He didn't sleep much anymore anyway - didn't seem to need it as much. Instead he had a tendency to slip into this strange kind of waking daze, conscious and aware but somehow not there. He was on the balcony outside Fujitaka's bedroom that night again; the clan-house, despite being aired as best it could be given the weather, still smelled a little like fucking hybrid, and his tiny little sleeping quarters located next to the master bedroom did not appeal to him. Fujitaka had come out to him with his dinner, and then bid him goodnight and gone to his study; he had work to do, he said. He had seemed a little off to Kurogane, ever since they had run into Reed's agent upon arriving home after ordering the violin for Sakura. Kurogane should have known someone like Reed would have sent yet another hybrid, bragging about how many he could command as though hybrids were creatures worthy of respect.

This one was a slim young man, with something of the manner of a particularly harmless clerk about him. He had long black hair tied back with a blue ribbon, and was dressed smartly in thigh-high riding boots, with a cavalry sword at his hip and wearing a long black military-style coat. The blue moon was stitched onto it, too, and Kurogane could feel his fangs stirring at the sight of it. The courier had greeted them with a particularly slimy bow, bending so low his head was level with his knees, before passing on his master's greetings; he had come to collect the promised scrolls, he had said, smiling at them and then at Sakura. And was this young Miss Kinomoto? he had enquired. Fujitaka had replied, his voice a little stiff with surprise, that she was. Ah, the courier had said, how lovely. He had offered his hand, but Kurogane had stirred just enough to make it plain that this was an unwise option, and the courier had withdrawn it and smiled at Sakura brightly instead. I am Kyle Rondart, he said. There was something off about his stench, and Kurogane had had to look away sharply before his teeth could reveal themselves; Kyle did not seem offended, although Kurogane doubted he had missed it.

Hello, Sakura had replied. Her voice was subdued and many, including apparently Rondart (who had beamed at her) would have taken that for shyness, but Kurogane had seen how pale her face was. Her father had as well, as Fujitaka had said, smiling, that Sakura was about to run an errand for him; he had given her the package that contained Touya's sword and sent her off to his study with it before engaging Reed's messenger in small talk. Had the household staff looked after him? Had he a horse waiting to help him carry the scrolls back to Reed's hotel, for there were several, individually stored in waterproof carrying cases? Was he from Reed's country estate, and, if so, was he enjoying the city?

Rondart had answered all the questions easily enough, but Kurogane had not missed the way his eyes had followed Sakura up the stairs, and he had kept one hand on Ginryuu's hilt until finally the man was seen off, buried under a small mountain of scroll cases and bags of books.

"I know," Fujitaka had said as they stood at the front door and watched Rondart's horse pace down the carriage drive. "You don't like him. You hate all of the vampires, Kurogane, I know that."

"You were quick to send the kid away," Kurogane had replied, suppressing his irritation at the word vampire, and Fujitaka had sighed.

"Yes. I should see how she's doing. My clan's magic has never meshed well with - well, with the vampires, if you'll excuse me for saying so."

Kurogane growled. "I have nothing in common with hybrids," he said in a low, tight voice, and Fujitaka had looked at him for several seconds before nodding and making his apologies.

(Sakura, sitting in Fujitaka's desk chair waiting for them, had been fine; she had seen shadows around Rondart that had frightened her, she claimed, but she wouldn't look at Kurogane as she said it and he knew she sometimes saw them around him, too, and that she knew full well what they were. When Fujitaka had asked him to excuse them, he had agreed.)

The blue moon had been visible again that night, the rain washing away the city's soot and smog. Kurogane had stood there on the balcony, absolutely upright with his arms folded across his chest. He missed it being whole, missed its soft light.

The white moon brings you health, his mother had told him once, her hair over one shoulder as she sat on the porch and turned her face up into the night sky, smiling. The blue moon brings you luck. Both of them are needed.

Kurogane attempted to force his mind sharply away from the memory as he had done earlier, but it was too late; he was in that strange dream-haze, and it played out despite him. He had been sitting next to his mother, waiting. They were both fully dressed for a trek in the forest, and he was so young and foolish. His father had been late returning from the village's main building, but when he had come, weary but smiling, that was all forgiven. Hey, Youou, his father had said, lightly tousling his hair. I brought this for you.

This had been a silver hunting-knife, sharp as anything, in a wooden scabbard. He had accepted it with eyes as round as the twin moons. For me?

Well, you weren't planning on leaving all the protecting to me when we went into the woods, were you? his father had asked, grinning. His expression had slowly become serious, however, as he continued, I don't think the werewolves will come for us, kid, but if they do, you use that blade and you don't hesitate.

Is it true they can make you one of them by biting you?

No, his father had replied, but they can rip the limbs straight off you if they get hold of you with their teeth. Remember, Youou, you should never draw a weapon unless you mean to use it. Most werewolves will only attack a man if they feel threatened. It is your duty to use every means possible to avoid conflict. We are men of the Suwa clan. We do not seek fights for the fun of it.

My love, you're scaring him, his mother had said, laughing, and climbed off the porch; his father had taken her pale delicate shrine-mage's hand between both of his, dark and calloused from the sword, and smiled at her. We will be perfectly well, Youou, my love. The wolf pack of the forest are indifferent. They will watch us, but leave us alone. She held her free hand out to him, smiling sweetly. That hybrid stench is getting stronger, isn't it?

What? he replied, and she leaned toward him, so close he could smell the woods-and-water clean scent of her perfume.

Youou, his mother said, still smiling so gentle, Wake up.

He opened his eyes.

There was no disorientation between his not-sleep and waking. There never was. He breathed in deeply, felt his fangs unfurling despite himself. The reek of hybrid was there alright, overpowering and pungent. This was more than just the remnants of Reed's guard and his foppish messenger; they were close, they were here, and in one lightning movement he pushed himself right off the balcony, landing with barely a sound in the open driveway in front of the mansion. The carriage lights weren't lit and there were no household guards standing guard.

This was what he was made for. This was what Clow had wanted him for. Ginryuu purred as he slid her free, and he could feel his jaw crack and dislocate as his extra teeth grew in, sharper than knife-blades, hungry; he felt the pinch in his eyes as his pupils slitted. His heart fluttered once, twice, pumping out the last blood in its chambers, and then stilled; his breath stopped, nothing to give him away to his prey. I will give you what you want, a soft voice whispered in his memory. You will be the greatest hunters this world has ever seen.

The cook's kitchen door was hardly ever locked, for deliveries and for staff sneaking off to liaisons in the city to return safely. He slipped through it, scenting around the room with deliberate casualness. He could hear the human heartbeats of the men and women dozing in their beds in the servants quarters, see them as faint red blood-warm outlines, smell the mortality of them. There was fresh blood in the air. The hybrid filth had slipped in during the night, attempting to be as stealthy as they could. He found a guard outside the kitchen doorway, his throat slit and his face surprised; they had come at him from behind. The deep bite marks in the man's neck had been made after he had died.

Kurogane could feel the fury burning within him; had his heart still been beating it would have been pounding lightning-quick with rage. He tightened his grip on Ginryuu, although not too much; he could not afford to break her hilt, and lifted his head, scenting, open-mouthed, for the assassin scum.

There were probably thirty in his house. He could hear footsteps on the carpeted floor of the corridor outside the kitchens, and when he focused he could see faint green-blue outlines through the walls. Heartbeats weak and subdued. He hesitated, his hand on the doorknob, and watched intently as they headed past him, turned toward each other; his hunter's sharp hearing picked up whispered words - "Upstairs, we have to be upstairs."

He opened the door with a wrenching motion and was on them before they could react. Two hybrids, as he had thought. There wasn't enough room to swing Ginryuu properly in the corridor, to bring her to bear as he wanted, so he settled for smashing her hilt into one of the hybrid's mouth so hard he took out half the creature's fangs; a contemptuous and hard kick to the kneecap sent that one reeling backwards, grunting. The other he seized roughly by the hair with his free hand, fisting it and forcing it over to one side and off-balance, and showed it his fangs as he popped them back into his jaw, the bone shifting back to normalcy so he could speak.

"Who are you??" he snarled, as the hybrid grunted and jerked like a caught fish, attempted to free its hair from his grasp. "What are you doing here? Answer me!" He smashed the hybrid's head into the wall hard enough to make it whine, watched its red cat-slit eyes roll toward him in panic. It thrashed, swiping at him with fingers turned talons, so he hit it against the wall again. It was not as strong as him. It never would be.

The other hybrid was climbing unsteadily to its feet, one hand over its battered mouth. Kurogane had his back to it, but he still knew what it was doing; he crashed the one in his grasp's head violently against the wall again, hard enough it cried out, and turned back to its partner. "Come for me, and I'll fucking kill you," he said in contempt, standing straighter and dropping the hybrid in disgust. "What are you here for, scum?"

It hissed at him, so he kicked it back onto the floor and leaned over it, both of his hands going around Ginryuu's hilt, pointing the blade straight at its heart, and snorted. "Weak, pathetic little things," he said, scornfully, and stabbed the blade downward; the monster's back seized as it died, the redness of its irises fading to dull, shocked brown. He slid Ginryuu back out of the carcass, wiped her against the dead thing's clothes, and turned back to the other one. Its eyes were wide, taloned hand held against its head, but it was staring at the corpse, rather than at Kurogane. He grabbed it by the front of its plain brown jacket, dragging it its feet against the wall. "Who sent you? Speak!"

"You killed him," it said, and hissed. "He was my friend. What the hell kind of monster are you?"

"A strong one," Kurogane said flatly. "Why are you here, weakling? After the treasury?"

"You'll kill me just the same," it snarled, and Kurogane snorted. "Doesn't matter what I say. Maybe I'll be honest, maybe I'll be lying, you'll never -"

"I don't care," Kurogane said, and dropped it, and killed it with another stab through the heart. Mind-games were mind-games, and he had no time for them while there were other hybrids in the building. He scented again, curiously; fresh blood, and oh it had been a long time since he had had a chance to fight, to fight these weak pathetic things that still reeked of him, of the old blood, that served as a reminder of what had happened to him and what he needed to do, and he could feel the old battle-thirst stirring in him, feel his mouth curve up into a grin - it had been so long since he had had a good brawl, until he had broken bones and torn into meat with his teeth - since he had been himself, as he had been made to be - the greatest hunter the world has ever seen -

And then, cold and logical, the geas tightened like a lasso around his bloodlust and reigned it in; cool blue magic taking all that rage and hatefulness and pushing it under, as though that eradicated it. He had stood in the burning church with blood on his chin and sworn to Clow to serve, it reminded him. He had agreed to the geas (why? he did not remember). He had a duty that superseded mindless, animalistic slaughter. Fujitaka. He was geased to protect Fujitaka and his family. That took precedence over all.

Fujitaka had not been in his room when the hybrids had broken in. Even in the dream-state, Kurogane would have sensed that. That would put him in either his study or the library, both in the western wing of the mansion, up the grand marble staircase in the foyer; the family's living quarters, where Sakura and Touya would be, were in the eastern wing. He hesitated only a second before heading east. Fujitaka's study door was strong and heavy, generations of witches having fortified it with spells; the study had been a private retreat for many great mages, including Clow himself. The kids, not so much. He did not know if he himself had made this choice, so clear-headed it seemed, or if the geas had helped; all he knew was that he ought to find the kids first, keep them safe. Fujitaka was alive. He was still contracted to him. That would be sufficient.

There were more hybrids in the grand foyer, seven of them, but he had room to swing Ginryuu to her full length out there and so it was even less of a fight. They were weak, they were all weak, no matter how strong they thought they were. Vampires, they called themselves, bragging. A bastardised form of upír, a word from a country near where Kurogane had grown up, now forgotten; 'to bite'. They thought they were imaginative. He called them hybrids, and it never seemed to occur to them, these pathetic half-human things, that they had not sprung into the world fully fledged. That they had to have descended from something dark and shadowy and primal.

As much as Kurogane hated the hybrids calling themselves vampire, he would never refer to himself, even in his own head, as pureblood. But sometimes it seemed like the only word that fit.

He found several dead members of the Kinomoto's staff on his way through the east wing, past the classroom and the second ballroom, past spare bedrooms and studies. A few more hybrids, too, but those didn't bother him, and he left them on the floor inches away from the corpses of their victims.

Touya's room was empty. Someone had been through it, violently; his books were thrown around, his ornaments shattered, his bed on its side with ripped blankets trailing off it, but Kurogane couldn't smell his blood. The boy had been in here mere hours ago - with Yukito, some small watchful part of Kurogane noted - but he hadn't been here when the hybrids had come looking for him. The fact that they had made Kurogane's spine tingle. They were after the little witches, he thought, and reached urgently for his bond with Fujitaka; it was not a true bond as it would be between himself and a member of Clow's blood, the tight locking one that sealed his charge's fate with his. He could sense that Fujitaka was alive, but not more than that. The little witch, he thought, and took off down the corridor at a lope.

He ran into a pair of hybrids around the corner and tore through them like a bladed hurricane, and as he approached Sakura's door he was licking the blood hungrily off his forearm. Her door was tightly closed, and he could see her in there; a small figure, warm and red, curled up in a corner with her arms around her knees. He hesitated at her door, unsure, as his jaw popped and cracked and reformed itself to something human, his rows of sharp fangs receding watchfully. Reassurance was not his strong point. He was not a reassuring creature.

"Oi," he said, remembering to make himself breathe again, "Oi, you - little witch, it's me. Are you hurt?" He already knew she wasn't, he'd sense it otherwise, but he asked anyway; he could see her blurry outline shift as she glanced up. "Did they try to get in? You keep them out?"

"Yes," Sakura said, clutching at her knees. Her voice was so quiet he wouldn't have heard it if he had been human. "You - you can't come in. I - I cast a spell on the door. I don't know how to uncast it." She was quiet for a few moments, breathing in and out at increasing speed, and then said, "They wanted me to come with them. Who are they?"

Kurogane hissed out a long slow breath and leaned back against the door, folding his arms over his chest and crossing one ankle over the other. "I don't know," he said. "I need to get you out of here, kid."

"Is - is my father - is he -?"

"He's alive. But we gotta find him, you and me. Come on, kid. Your brother, too."

"I don't know how to open the door," Sakura whispered.

"How did you lock it?" Kurogane tried. "Do that, but backward."

Sakura sucked in a deep breath, and then let it out shakily. "It doesn't - it doesn't work like that, Kurogane."

"I don't have any other ideas, little witch. Do you?"

A pause, then: "No. Um. Stand back."

"I can try to find something heavy and break through the wall."

"No! It's, um, please hold on. I'm trying to think of the right circle."

"Don't panic," Kurogane advised. "Panicking doesn't help."

He turned around again to watch as Sakura paced in her room, red outline blurry; she turned tightly on the spot, drawing one of the magic circles on the floor, and sat down to apparently begin doodling the specifics. Kurogane felt for Fujitaka again, felt nothing abnormal, and scuffed the heel of his boot on the floor, sheathing Ginryuu.

"Um," Sakura said, very quietly behind him, in a strange tone of voice, "Kurogane?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you - did you check the rest of the house before you came here?"

"What's the matter?" he asked sharply, putting his palm against her door. "Oi, kid - "

"They killed Su," she said, and paused. "In the music-room, apparently. She was - she was reading sheet music when they, when they came, and she's here, I can see her." She sucked in a breath and then burst out, "Kurogane, they - they ate her, she's -"

Damn. Touya was too far to rein in his sister's clan-gift, so it seemed. Of course the house was full of fucking freshly-made ghosts, all flocking to the light in the dark, the little witch with the ability to speak to them, poor Sakura who did not need to know how her family's staff had died, men and women she had known from childhood - "Concentrate, kid," he said, thumping on the door; Sakura's heat outline was still and frozen. "Oi, concentrate, you'll never get to your dad - you can't help them now, you have to focus on the ones alive. Kid -"

Sakura cleared her throat. "No," she said, "but they can help me. Please stand back, Kurogane. Su is going to show me the right circle to open the door."

Mediumship was one of those rare clan-gifts that couldn't be learned. It was an inherited trait, apparently. Fujitaka had missed out, but both of his children had taken after his clan, rather than Nadeshiko's more conventional telekinesis. The problem was that both kids were so damn good at it; Touya had seen his first ghost at three, and Sakura had been innocently bringing peace to revenants and poltergeists since she was old enough to talk. Ghosts were a thing they were used to, a thing Sakura was used to; Kurogane had known her to walk in graveyards just to hear the dead tell their tales. It was still different when the freshly murdered spectre was someone she had grown up with. He signed and turned away from the door, waiting for Sakura - with the help of her poor slaughtered tutor - to crack it open.

She emerged barely a minute and a half later, after some whispered one-sided conversation, pale and wearing a soft fleece-lined coat over her nightdress. A pair of pink rabbit-shaped house-slippers clung to her feet, little zircon eyes winking. "Kurogane," she said, in a very quiet voice. Her eyes were red, but she blinked furiously and shivered. "Kurogane, what's happening? What do they want from us?"

He eyed her thoughtfully, assessing her condition; unwounded, scared, a bombshell of grief waiting to drop - but alive. "I don't know," he said. "We'll get out, and then I will make them pay, I promise."

Sakura's eyes roved over him briefly, questioningly, and she bit her lip as she took in his forearms, coated in dry blood to the elbow; it was beginning to flake away around his fingernails. She looked as though she wanted to ask about that, but instead she tugged her coat tighter around herself and said in a stilted voice, "I'd like to find my father."

There was another hybrid group in the library, throwing books from the shelves into a heap on the floor. The librarian was lying behind her desk, her throat ripped open and winking, pale gore in the gaslights. Kurogane was on them before they knew he was there, low and sharp and savage. Ginryuu swept in great arcs, deceptively slow, humming through the air to part meat from bone; one engaged him in a brief swordfight while another launched itself at his face, fangs out. He simply knocked the sword away from the fencing hybrid and twisted in the same moment, slugging the biter in the face. Another jumped at him from behind, and in the scrum he briefly lost himself in a delicious red haze.

When he emerged, it was to find arterial blood spurted along one half of his face, Ginryuu painted red and brown, and the hybrids all dead around him, looking as though they had been assaulted by an animal; he licked his lips slowly, wrinkling his nose at the salty blandness of hybrid's blood, and then wiped what he could off his face with his hand, licking his palm; fighting made him hungry.

"Kurogane?" Sakura said behind him very quietly, and he snapped around to glare at her for a second before he remembered who she was. She was watching him, without surprise; she knew what he was, had known all her life, but she still seemed exceptionally calm at her first sight of him exposed as something other than her father's tame bodyguard.

He glanced around at the carnage around him and growled. "You shouldn't've seen that. I told you to wait outside."

She was looking past him, with that eerie focused expression she wore when she could see something nobody else could. Kurogane suppressed a full-body shiver. He didn't spook easy, but this - this was different. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she said, gently. "I know. We didn't, either." An awkward pause, presumably while the ghost replied, and Sakura closed her eyes and lowered her head. "I will," she said. "You should head home, too. It's safer there. Please be at peace."

"Librarian?"

"Yes," Sakura replied, casting the woman's body a brief glance. "Apparently the - those things were collecting Clow's journals. I don't know why, there's no new magic in them! We've always shared his knowledge!" She brushed her hair away from her face and pulled her coat over her shoulders, looking at him helplessly. "Why are they hurting all of these people? Nobody here has done anything to anyone, I don't... I don't understand."

Kurogane gave the heap of books in the centre of the library floor, spattered now with red, a disdainful nudge with his boot. "Did she, uh, overhear them say anything about who sent them before she died? Or after?"

Sakura shook her head, which Kurogane supposed was inevitable. He sighed, opened his mouth to say looks like your dad must be in his study, let's get moving and reeled suddenly as his entire body seized painfully; his limbs locked rigidly to attention, his pupils slitting without intervention on his behalf, his hand jerking and skittering so that Ginryuu whistled through the air; he had started his breathing again in order to speak and now it felt like the air in his lungs had caught fire, burning him all up. The fit took several red, thudding heartbeats to subside and left his knees weak and his skull aching. Sakura had taken a step toward him, eyes wide, and Kurogane braced himself with his hand on one knee, bent over and snarled, "Fuck. Fuck."

"Kurogane?" Sakura's were wide and green, all the fear she had kept hidden on display here. "What was that? Was that a magical attack? Kurogane?"

Kurogane didn't reply straight away, his teeth gritted; and then he heard it, sharp and cold and furious: Touya's voice in the back of his mind: I hope you have Sakura. Meet us in his study. Now.

"Fuck!" he roared, so that Sakura flinched; he turned away from her sharply so that he did not have to see the fright on her face. "We have to go, now. Come on!" He sheathed Ginryuu while she moved uneasily a step back. "Little witch - it's -"

"Your face," she whispered. "There's - there's a sigil on your forehead, Kurogane, did you know? Is that, I mean, please tell me that... please tell me that's not..."

"We have to go to the master study," Kurogane said, teeth gritted, and Sakura covered her mouth with her hand as tears spilled down her cheeks. "Your brother's there, kid. I'm... sorry."

"You came for me first," she whispered. "You came for me first and they - they..."

He was no stranger to breaking bad news to children. He had served many charges through the years and most of them had not relinquished his contract voluntarily. He had lost count of the number of people he had had to stand in front of, people who were not expecting it. This did not make it any easier, but he did as someone else had done, many years ago after he had lost his mother; he set his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, as gently as he could, and turned away to give her space to weep.

Sakura did not, which worried him; she lowered her hand, clasped it with the other, squeezed until her knuckles went white. Her face was bone-pale, two spots of colour riding in her cheeks, and she screwed her eyes shut furiously for a few seconds, tilting her head back and biting her lower lip; and then quite suddenly she opened her green eyes and looked at him with no expression at all and said, "We need to go to father's study, if Touya's there. We should hurry, Kurogane."

That was not good. It was also bitterly familiar. He recalled that after someone had told him about his parents, he had waited for almost a week; and then he had gone into the deep woods and screamed his rage into the forest, felling trees with artless blows of his sword. He knew what she was doing, and he didn't like it, but he knew his priority right now was getting her out of this damn house alive. She probably didn't need an angry non-human emotional cripple guiding her, anyway.

"Fine," he said.

---

Kurogane had expected the study to be ruined, and had braced himself to need to step between it and Sakura; instead it was in perfect condition. The lanterns had even been lit. Fujitaka's desk had a stack of papers on it waiting for him to process them. His pen was in its holder; a cup of cold coffee sat on a bronze disc where he could easily reach it. How many times had Kurogane sat in the armchair by the fireplace, bored senseless as the man himself worked? How many times had he taken the coffee from the serving man or woman who had brought it at the door, and carried it across the room to Fujitaka himself?

They had killed him in his chair. He hadn't had time to push himself away from the desk; a throwing knife, in the chest. By the time Kurogane and Sakura arrived, Yukito and Touya had carried him to the sofa and covered him with a torn-down curtain. Touya didn't say a word; as soon as Yukito had opened the door to them, he had gone straight to his sister, cupped her face in his hands, and bent down to touch their foreheads together. He hadn't cried either, Kurogane could tell.

"Who did this?" Sakura whispered to him when he drew back.

"Reed," Touya said, scowling. "He was after us, Sakura. The rest of this - it was just a distraction. He wanted us."

"Fei Wong?" Kurogane interrupted. "How?"

"Father told me, after he died," Touya said. He glanced at Kurogane sharply. "He couldn't stay, but he said to thank you for going after Sakura."

Sakura hitched in a breath, and Yukito said, very gently, "Sakura, he's with your mother now. We need to work out what to do. There'll be more monsters, won't there?"

Kurogane curled his upper lip back; his top teeth were more fang than anything else. "Yeah," he said shortly. "I can handle them, I handled these. I can go after him and make him bleed."

"No, you can't," Touya said, icy with anger; it did not seem directed at Kurogane. He turned away, began to pace. "Your geas forbids you from harming a descendant of Clow's line. That's not something I can override. You would burn away before you could scratch him, not that I'm not tempted to give it a try if you're willing, that murdering filth -"

"So what are we going to do?" Sakura interrupted, touching the back of her brother's hand; Kurogane was reminded rather suddenly of how they cared for each other, always had, despite their bickering. "Where are we going to go?"

Her brother glanced up at Yukito, who gazed back at him steadily, took a deep breath, and said, stiff with resolve, "Yuki and I are going over the border to the south. You're going to our cousin Tomoyo with Kurogane."

"What?" Sakura took a step back, and Kurogane snapped his gaze to Touya.

"Listen," Touya said in a low, urgent voice, leaning forward and seizing her shoulders, "Reed wants us, Monster. You and me both. We need to split up. Yuki knows some people to the south of here and we'll be... bright, a distraction. Tomoyo can hide you better than anyone, you know her home is - strange. Kurogane can keep you safe. I'll transfer his contract to you, and he can get you there safely. Monster, look at me." He squeezed her shoulders gently until she lifted her eyes to his. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it would work. You need to get away from here."

"I don't want you to go," Sakura whispered, her face white, her green eyes wide; and her older brother touched their foreheads together again, gentle. Her hands rose and curled around his wrists; she closed her eyes and drew in a small, shivery little breath.

"Sakura," Touya said, ferociously, "I'll see you again. I promise it. I promise. But you need to go. There is nowhere safe in this city, and only our cousin can protect you. Kurogane will guide you and protect you, and you will be - you'll be safe, Monster. I promise."

The little witch opened her eyes slowly and looked deeply at her brother; Yukito was watching them, his eyes shining soft with sadness and concern. Kurogane folded his arms over his chest, glancing awkwardly at the walls, privy to a private moment. Or what should have been private, anyway. When Sakura spoke, it was little more than a whisper. "Okay," she said, and "I trust you."

She pulled away from her brother with minimal effort and padded over to her father's desk. There was a large bloodstain on the leather seat; when she saw it she physically flinched, but sucked in a deep, steadying breath and leaned forward, sliding open the wide flat drawer under her father's stained ink-blotter, marked with drops of ochre ink that he had loved, and drew from within it a sword; black leather scabbard, silver filigreed guard; winged-lion knuckle-guard. "This was supposed to be for you," she whispered, holding it out to her brother, and Kurogane, who had made a lifetime of noticing this sort of shit in other people even when he didn't want to, saw the brief ripple of pain pass over Touya's face before he took the sword his father had had made for him.

He unsheathed it and took in the blade, straight and true; the perfect balance of the weapon, the decoration. Sakura watched the sword, her lips pressed tight together and her eyes shining with a faint trace of wetness, but she blinked hard and pushed it back. Kurogane watched her with great caution. "Kid," he said, and she flicked her gaze toward him. "It's a long way to the Daidouji clan."

"I can make it," she said quickly, and he shook his head.

"I know you can," he said. "I meant we should go, and soon. Get that contract changed and we'll be on our way."

Touya lowered his sword, frowning. "Watch out for her," he said, and turned to Sakura. "Father taught me the circle and the words. Repeat them after me, alright?"

Kurogane wriggled his lower jaw, feeling his fangs itching below the surface, a sensation impossible to fully describe to a human, and touched Ginryuu's hilt. It was a ritual he had seen nearly half a hundred times by now, generations of men and women; he remembered standing there as Nadeshiko's mother signed his contract to her, a gurgling baby; remembered Tomoyo, already a girl of seventeen, sitting in a green meadow as she formally accepted his contract, moments after he had had to be the one to tell her of Sonomi's death. He remembered all of them, every man and woman he had served, all the way back up to Clow; felt the heat of the flames on his face, the blood in his mouth, his teeth extended sharp and hungry as the greatest mage there ever had been smiled at him and said, There's always a choice, Kurogane.

Well, he hadn't been wrong so far, Kurogane thought, and looked away as Sakura began to repeat her brother's words. He could always refuse the contract. That was the secret, that was why it was so binding, and that was why he never would; because then he would be nothing at all but a monster in a burning church, all instinct and the same thoughtless, animal pragmatism that meant wolves would devour human children, that primal knowledge that meat is meat.

Never again. He wasn't human anymore, but he wasn't going to be vampire, either.

He had decided that long ago.

---

The city was dark but not silent. The streetlights were going off, one by one; it was coming up to four in the morning, and with it, the dawn. Sakura's face was painted white and black by the shadows as they stood together in a side alley by a closed bank, Kurogane's long gentleman's coat around her shoulders, and Kurogane crouched in front of her, waiting for the lights to go off in full, and for Touya's promised 'grand distraction,' before they moved.

"We'll need supplies," he said. "Food, clothes, actual boots you can walk in." Under his coat Sakura still wore her house-coat, nightdress and fluffy rabbit-shaped slippers. They had left the house together the moment his contract had been reassigned. "Hardy's general goods in the marketplace carries them, but I want to wait until he's opening up before we break in. There are four guards there at night."

Sakura glanced at him and nodded, but made no comment. She was curled in on herself, clutching his coat and her heart tightly to her chest.

"It's a long way to the Daidouji clan-house," he continued. "There are dozens of small towns and hundreds of small villages between here and there, but once we pass the coal mines of the mountains, the inhabitants thin out. We might find some of the reindeer people, but I wouldn't count on it. We can probably get a sled to drag supplies in, but we'll be skiing a good portion of the way. It'll take months. It'll be cold and you'll be hungry. We need to bulk up now."

His charge bit her lip.

"Oi," he said. "Little witch. Look at me. I need you to concentrate."

She swallowed, three times, and then whispered, "There's a train. To the coal-mines. Isn't there?"

Shit, Kurogane had forgotten that; they had still been building the line when he had come here, thirty years ago. The thought made him scowl. He distrusted trains; he had only ridden in them a handful of times, and found them loud and uncomfortable - but they were fast, for all the noise and the belching steam. "So we need to grab some supplies and sneak onto the next train out there, fine." He stuck his head out of the alleyway, sniffing suspiciously for that sour reek of hybrid.

"Maybe we don't have to," Sakura said slowly. "Kurogane, we could - father grew up with Duke Ashura."

"We can't trust anybody in this city," Kurogane said, mostly because he had no fucking clue who Ashura was. The name sounded familiar. The title probably meant witch-clan. "We don't know what that bastard has said and who he's spoken to. It's not worth the risk, little witch."

"Maybe." Sakura bit her lip and shivered, pulling Kurogane's coat around her; she rubbed the dirty sole of one rabbit-slipper against her bare shins, which were goosebumping. "Duke Ashura's clan specialise in teleportation, Kurogane, I just... I just don't know if we have a better option."

Smoke. It was suddenly in the air, the mark of Touya's promised distraction. He cast his eyes up the hill; the sun was rising behind him, and ahead of him he could see the Kinomoto clan-house, tongues of fire beginning to creep out of the windows of the library tower. Beyond the burning of Sakura's home, of Clow's house itself, the dead blue moon sat dark and lifeless on the western horizon. He curled his hand into a fist, remembering his father sat in judgement over the man with one eye, the fool who had brought this fate upon them all.

"We've got no money," Sakura pressed on mercilessly. "Which is fine, I know we couldn't have spent any money we took from home anyway without someone finding out about it. But we can't buy a train ticket and we can't buy supplies, and I am not going to let you rob an innocent person for us!" There were spots of colour in her cheeks, mingled shame and fire. "People have - enough people have, have, have been hurt already today."

Because of me, she didn't say, but she didn't need to. Kurogane looked away, back up at the house; bells were beginning to ring in the city. There was a fire station four streets away, but they wouldn't be able to get their old water-pumping stream up to Sakura's clan-house in time to save much of anything. That was good. The fire was catching quicker now; the library tower was sending tongues of flame dancing high into the sky, and as he watched the windows in one of the dining halls blew out, the blaze licking lazily from within. Clow's journals would all already be gone, along with all the other books Fujitaka had spent so long collecting. Sakura had come to stand next to him; she couldn't see as well as he could, not enough to pick out the fine detail, but she didn't need to to know how brightly her home was burning.

"You don't need to see this," Kurogane said, without much hope.

"Yes," she said, almost dreamily, and rested a hand against the alley wall. "Yes, I do."

The alarms were ringing now in the fire station down by the wolf slums; there were six stations in the city, all with their own pumps, each with its own response times. Kurogane turned his head, sniffed; the city smelled like smoke and charcoal, but there were sharp notes underneath that, closer. People, mostly. Refuse, including a pungent note from the river itself, which was used as an open sewer by two bloody thirds of the city anyway. Soot. A werewolf, the same one from the ink trader.

That had his attention, alright. Kurogane did not believe in coincidence. "Where's this Ashura's clan-house?"

"On the north-side of the jeweller’s square," Sakura said, surprised. "They own a couple of sapphire mines in the mountains outside the city. Are... are we going, Kurogane?" Blushing furiously, she added, "I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm sorry."

Everything in your life just changed, and you apologise to me, he thought, incredulous and a little humbled, and utterly unable to voice the feeling aloud. Instead he rested his hand on her hair. "It's fine," he said. He could still smell the market-wolf. "Let's get going. It'll be dawn soon, not even that fire on the hill can blot out the sun."

The alleyway they were in was next to a former merchant's bank, one that had closed in suspicious circumstances (which weren't really all that suspicious once you talked to the neighbours and heard about the frequent visits to said bank by tax collectors and revenue inspectors, in groups). It was on the south side of the marketplace they had visited together with Fujitaka only yesterday. The fastest way to get to the jeweller’s square, Kurogane thought, was probably to cut through the square and head up the street of silk, lined with tailors; then cut right through Gropecunt Alley, populated with ladies of negotiable affection all hoping to negotiate with men rich enough to shop at the street of silk's tailors, and you would come to Smith's Row, populated largely by silversmiths. A turn off Smith's Row would get you to Reed Road, named after Sakura's ancestor and popular with insurance company offices; off that you could find Golden Lane, populated by goldsmiths, and then you could follow that straight to Jeweller’s Square. Kurogane knew the route. It was fairly simple and straightforward.

The smell of werewolf complicated it all, however. Ginryuu was forged with traces of silver in her steel, and he had, in case of emergency, a knife in his boot with a much higher concentration of silver to it; soft as fucking butter, a useless metal. He'd always preferred fire, when dealing with wolves. "Follow me, and move fast," he said to Sakura, and she nodded, watching him with absolute trust; and they left the alleyway together, his hand on her shoulder.

Fucking werewolves. Of course Reed probably had one of those up his sleeve. Their sense of smell was almost without equal; bloodhounds were better, but with a bloodhound you didn't have the advantage of a human mind behind the nose. Sakura followed him without complaint, her rabbit slippers barely slowing her down as they hurried over marketplace cobblestones. The square was mostly empty, none of the vibrancy of its daylife in it now. The only other person in it was the old man turning the street lights off, who didn't even pay them any heed, halfway up a ladder and humming some off-tune and awful song, lost in his work.

The street of silk was similarly closed, lights off and shops closed and shuttered tight. A drunk was sitting on the doorstep of a dressmaker's, morosely holding a bottle of brown ale between both his hands. His only response to their movement was to raise his bottle, cheer, "luvverly slippers, darlin," and belch hugely while Sakura gripped Kurogane's sleeve and whispered don't, before he could spin and hiss at the man.

The werewolf smell was sharper now, and turning back, Kurogane could see the fucking thing; brown, yellow-eyed, sniffing delicately at the alleyway they'd just left. Fuck. "Faster," he said shortly, and heard Sakura's heartbeat speed up; they passed through Gropecunt Alley at a fast walk, Sakura's face averted and Kurogane's eyes firmly fixed on the exit. One of the ladies sniffed at his back, muttered, "Ain't right, when they're kids. Disgustin'." Kurogane ground his jaw, but they kept moving. He could hear the drunk in the street of silk; Who's a good doggy then? Iz it oo? Aw shit, you's a wolf, innit. Sorry, mate, thought you wuz a dog. Got a copper?

"Kurogane?" Sakura mouthed, as they emerged into Smith's Row and he pulled her immediately into the porch of a boarded-up shop.

"Werewolf," he said shortly. "Can you do something about our smell?"

Her eyes went wide, and then thoughtful; she rolled them to the side and then whispered, "Yes. I don't need a circle, I just need a moment."

"Fine," he said, and set his hand on his sword hilt as she bit her lip and closed her eyes, concentrating. He could hear the beast panting, hear the lady in the alleyway tut. Disgustin'. Get off with you, 'fore you gives me fleas.

"It's done," Sakura whispered beside him, and he nodded, pulling her deeper into the shop's porch, tucking her face into his chest to muffle the sound of her breathing; he stopped his and waited, watching, as the wolf stepped quietly out of the alleyway, nose to the ground and tail out stiff behind him. In the gaslights, still burning on this road, his coat wasn't a uniform brown; grey and gold and red hairs rippled through it, giving him a dappled appearance. His collar was the same dark brown leather, heavy with tags that jingled and chimed as he paced in a circle, sniffing furiously at the ground; he whined, his ears going back, before venturing south a ways along the road, cautiously snuffling that way. Sakura was very tense against Kurogane, her shoulders stiff under his arms. The wolf doubled back to the alleyway, sniffing along there, then came back out and raised his head, his ears swivelling upward to attention; Kurogane slipped back fully into the porch himself so that he would not be seen.

Several long moments passed. He became aware of Sakura's heartbeat, thrumming in her chest. The wolf sniffed a few more times and paced around some more; this close to the thing Kurogane could hear the soft muffled noise of its paw pads over the cobbles, much less the tags attached to its collar. It wasn't a dog, it wasn't foolish enough to be completely lost over the end of their scent-trail; Kurogane heard several times a change to the cadence of the tags jingling that let him know it had jumped up on crates and a few other surfaces, although he didn't look to see what they were.

Eventually the wolf sneezed, made a strange disgruntled yawning noise in disdain, and jumped back onto the cobbles. It yipped, high-pitched and annoyed, gave the mouth of the alley one last sniff, and then growled quietly and headed south for good. Kurogane didn't let Sakura go - nor did she try to move - until he was sure from the sounds of its collar and its receding dog stench that it was truly gone in that direction.

"Not much further," he said, when he let her go. "C'mon, kid, we'll be there in half an hour. Let's get going before it comes back. Can you hold that spell?"

"Easily," she said, pale. He offered her his hand to help her down the porch steps, which she accepted, holding his coat around her with the other.

Kurogane didn't smell the wolf again as they made their way, quicker now with urgency, through Smith's Row. He didn't smell it along Reed Row, although he did detect the powerful scent of magic that indicated they were approaching one of the older houses. As they turned into Jeweller’s Square, a faint and odd scent, almost like citrus, wound its way through the smell of 'old witch-clan'; it was very faint, barely discernable under the usual city-stink, but Kurogane wondered at it as they passed a wall of closed shops, signs in the window discreetly offering bespoke wedding bands and Diamonds available by limited supply.

"That must be Duke Ashura's manor," Sakura said softly beside him, pointing to a pair of wrought iron gates, behind which a surprisingly modest townhouse rose. "He prefers to live in Ruval, his country estate, to his city residence. Father told me once." A brief look of concern passed across her face. "I've... I've never met Duke Ashura myself. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to expect."

"Be yourself," Kurogane replied shortly, eyeing the house and then turning around walking backward to check out the jeweller’s houses across the road, looking for signs of marksmen in the windows. He saw none, but he'd stay suspicious.

There was a guard standing just inside the gates; when he saw them he sighed and folded his arms over his chest. "Sorry, friends," he said, "No vagrants."

"We're not vagrants," Sakura said quickly, before Kurogane could; "We need to speak to the Duke, urgently. I am Fujitaka Kinomoto's daughter." Her voice did not crack on her father's name, but it wavered. Kurogane glanced at her sharply, but she did not turn away; her back was straight, her chin up.

"And I'm the Tsar," said the guard. "Nice slippers, girl."

She held her hand out behind her, fist clenched, and somehow Kurogane was able to rein in his temper enough to refrain from punching the gate open. "I'm telling the truth, sir. My name is Sakura. My family home was attacked by vampires, my father was slain, and I urgently require assistance from the Duke. Please take him a message, I know it is early but I - but I know he'll see me. Please."

The guard was frowning; her sincerity could have that effect on people. "Look," he said, "Assuming you are who you say you are, you can't just walk in and see the Duke -"

"Actually," said a new voice cheerfully, "She can. Thank you, Frederick."

The first thing Kurogane noticed about the new arrival was the citrus smell; strong, sweet, heady. This man was the source of it. The second thing he noticed was that the man was... not typical for this city. He was willow-thin, tall with pale blond hair, dressed in white silk and velvet to the throat, and his eyes were scary-blue. Shit, Kurogane thought, more out of surprise than anything else. "Oi," he said, "You the Duke? Listen, we should get inside before we talk."

The man smiled at him brightly. His right cheek dimpled when he smiled, Kurogane noticed, and wondered why the fuck he had. "Oh, I'm not the Duke," he said happily, "I'm Fai! Fai D Fluorite, pleased to make your acquaintance. Let's get that gate open, shall we?" He watched with interest as Frederick unlatched the gate, clearly with great reluctance, and then began to pull it open; it was heavy and the hinges weren't well-oiled, so it took him a long time. Fai offered no assistance, although he did clap with a bright smile on his face when Frederick had it open all the way and stood against it, panting to catch his breath. Somehow, the gesture came off as supportive rather than patronizing; Frederick shrugged his shoulders and smiled in an ah, well, it was easy way.

"You must be hungry," Fai said to them, still smiling from ear to ear. "Let's get you in to see the duke, and then we'll get you something warm and yummy to eat, hmm? And perhaps some new clothes for Miss Kinomoto? I'm sorry, tall dark and handsome, I don't know your name. Let me guess, though!"

"Kurogane," he said, scowling.

"Dracula!" Fai announced over the top of him, like it was nothing. As Kurogane stared at him incredulously, he clasped his hands to his chest. "Oooh, yes, Dracula suits you, Mister Tall & Ominous! We don't have any virgins in the house for you to ravish, I'm afraid - well, maybe Kentarou from the kitchens, but to be honest with the way Takeshi has been with him lately I'm not even sure of that anymore."

"Are you some kind of idiot?" Kurogane asked, marvelling. You wouldn't've guessed it looking at the man.

"Oh, most likely," Fai said. "There's a lot of things I don't know. Steam engineering, for instance. Such a mystery to me! So impressive! But then, every one of us is an idiot in some field or another, eh?"

Kurogane turned to Sakura, mutely appealing for her to tell him that she had confused her clans, that this was not Duke Ashura's clan-house and Duke Ashura's chosen secretary or whatever... come to think of it - "What do you do around here?"

"Oh," Fai said, and looked crestfallen. He turned to Frederick. "What do I do around here, again?"

"You're the Duke's majordomo," Frederick replied patiently, and Fai turned back to Kurogane, grinned, and pointed both of his thumbs at himself.

"There, you see? Perfectly placed to assist you. Miss Kinomoto, will you follow me indoors? You look cold. Here, take my hand."

"No," Kurogane said, sharply, as Fai extended his hand; the blond babbling moron lifted both eyebrows. "Stay with me, little witch."

"My," Fai said, in a very different tone of voice, and smiled at Kurogane. "How protective you are, Mr Bitey."

Kurogane wasn't able to stop himself this time; he snarled straight at Fai, teeth bared, jaw crooked, rows of fangs out. Frederick swore violently, drawing his short sword from the sheath at his belt. Fai lifted an eyebrow, said, "Interesting," and leaned forward. "Fascinating! Look, Frederick, just like a shark! A most lethal predator, how impressive! Hyuu~!"

"Kurogane," Sakura said, and he felt his teeth folding back in on themselves; he attempted to salvage his dignity by scowling deeply at Fai, muttering moron, and folding his arms over his chest. "Could we see the Duke, sir? It has been a very long night."

"I can imagine," Fai said, and his gaze softened as he looked at her. "A very long night indeed. Of course, my lady. Follow me." He stepped aside to allow the pair of them to enter the townhouse grounds, and grinning impishly at Kurogane, "Mr Shark can follow you if it makes him feel better."

He led them along a short stone path into the front door of the townhouse. The main hall of the house was sparsely decorated, the walls whitewashed, the staircase carpeted in a shade of dark blue that Kurogane knew probably cost a lot more than it looked like it did. There were framed portraits on the walls; dark-haired men and women looked out of gilded frames with sober, unyielding expressions.

"It's not Ruval, of course," Fai said, taking a lantern from a hook inside the door; the sun had risen, but it was still dark inside the house. "The Duke is in his private receiving room upstairs. Would you care for any refreshment?"

"No," Kurogane said darkly. Sakura had opened her mouth to reply, but then quietened and shook her head. Fai turned toward her, holding his lantern high, and said, gently, "We aren't going to poison you, you know. Despite what Mr Suspicious thinks."

"I'm - I'm not hungry," Sakura lied, and badly. Fai looked at her for a few seconds, then nodded and began to climb the staircase.

"Did you know Duke Ashura's great-grandfather was a Daidouji?" Fai said as he climbed, the pair of them trailing after him. Kurogane cast a suspicious eye on their surroundings, scrutinizing the walls. The odd citrus smell was very strong here, nearly as strong as the witch-clan scent of magic. "Kendappa's grandfather, that would have been, before the Daidouji line crossed with Clow's. He inherited a little bit of their precognition. That's why we knew who you were, Miss Kinomoto."

"Sakura," she said quietly. "That's my name, Mr Fluorite."

"As Fai is mine," Fai said, sounding not in the slightest perturbed. They came to the landing at the top of the stairs, narrow and carpeted. It was also, thankfully, free of portraits. "There, the door straight ahead. I'll knock and introduce you."

"Thought your Duke knew who we were," Kurogane said suspiciously.

"There's such a thing as manners, Mr Abrupt!"

"Kurogane!"

"That's just so long to remember!" Fai complained. "I can't call you that. You should have a short name, easy to remember! How about Mr Grumpypants?"

Kurogane stared at him, several things struggling to be the first out of his mouth, most of them explicit; what eventually came out was "How is that shorter than Kurogane?!"

"You have a point," Fai admitted easily, placing the lantern on a hook beside the door. "Bitey?"

"Fuck off, you moron," Kurogane growled, and Sakura gave him a long look of warning.

"Such a brute," Fai murmured, his eyes going half-lidded for a moment, and then he rapped sharply on Duke Ashura's study door.

"Enter," called a man's voice, calm and low, and he opened it and ushered them in before him.

Duke Ashura's study was whitewashed too, with low-hanging timber beams painted a glossy shade of black. There was a fire crackling cheerfully from a small grate, in front of which the Duke himself sat, behind his desk, with a book in front of him. He wore a pair of half-moon glasses low on his nose, and he peered at Sakura carefully over the top of them with striking golden eyes. His clothes were neither elaborate nor plain, but a comfortable in between.

"Vikontessa Sakura of clan Kinomoto, your grace," Fai introduced, "With Kurogane, first-cursed."

Kurogane felt a jolt of shock run through his spine at the formal phrasing. First-cursed. He had thought the world had forgotten that. He turned to glare at Fai, who merely shrugged at him.

Ashura closed his book. "Thank you, Fai," he said, and Fai quietly closed the door behind him, taking up position against the wall with his hands clasped together.

"Your grace," Sakura said, "Mr Fluorite - Fai - said that you knew why we were here, and what happened to my clan-house. And to my - to my father. I would not bother you if we didn't really need the help. I know - I know that your clan has the ability to create inter-spatial portals, and I - we - were hoping you could help us get to the clan-house of my cousin, Grand Duchess Tomoyo Daidouji." She swallowed, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. Ashura was watching her with mild curiosity, nothing more. "I know that it is a risk. I know that you have no reason to put yourself in danger for my sake. I would not ask this if my situation were not desperate. I don't have anything to offer you in return, I'm just - that is, I - I would. Um. I would appreciate it."

She tailed off weakly, her fingers clenched in the fabric of Kurogane's coat. Ashura leaned slowly back in his chair. Kurogane, his teeth tingling, said, "Her cousin will pay for her, if you want a fee."

Now the Duke's golden eyes flicked toward him, politely curious. "She has told you this?"

"No, but I know her." He glared at Ashura. "If you can't help us, just say so. We've got a lot of miles to cover."

"It is a very large personal risk," Ashura agreed. "Reed commands many, possibly hundreds, of vampires. He has a great deal of magic. He was able to slip right into the heart of one of our most powerful clan-houses, under the nose of someone -" he hesitated - "Of such skill as yourself, Kurogane. You ask me to put quite a bit of my safety and those who live in this house under my protection on the line for you, Vikontessa."

Sakura paled, but Ashura was not finished. "As it so happens, I am unable to help you. For the last year now the Daidouji's clan-house has been fogged. I cannot situate a portal there, for you or for anyone else. It has been quite a mystery to me, although looking at the two of you I am beginning to sense the reason for this fog."

"Why would you be keeping tabs on the Daidouji clan-house?" Kurogane demanded. "Who could want to go there?"

The Duke just blinked at him lazily, looking for all the world like a sleepy tiger. "I have my own reasons," he said. "Happily for you, I believe they may coincide with your own."

"In what manner?" Sakura asked. Fai shifted uncomfortably against the wall behind them, and Kurogane spared him a narrow-eyed glare before focusing again on the Duke.

"My man Fai needs to reach the tundra," Ashura said. "It's a risky journey for anyone to make alone, and especially a young person, Vikontessa. I would swear him to you, if you would keep him with you until you reach the Daidouji clan house."

"Swear him to me?" Sakura tilted her head in confusion, and Kurogane glanced sharply at the blond, who was watching the Duke intently. His blue eyes were bright and focused.

"Fai is a very powerful wizard," Ashura said. "He has agreed to serve me, but it is time for this oath to come to an end. If you would take him with you to the Daidouji clan-house, he will swear an oath to serve you, in turn."

"She doesn't need him," Kurogane said flatly. "That's what I'm here. He'd just get in the way and be irritating."

"Oh my," Fai murmured behind him. "So stubborn you are, Mr Go-it-alone."

"Kurogane," Sakura said in a low voice, and Ashura smiled at them.

"I understand it is something you would like to discuss," he said. "Please, Fai will show you to a reception room and bring you refreshment and some new clothes. I will be here when you have made your choice."

And with that, he picked up his book again, a clear dismissal. Kurogane scowled at him, but Sakura was already climbing to her feet, nearly tripping over his coat. "Ah," said Fai, materialising on her other side and taking her by the elbow, "Look at this old thing! Made for a big growly grumpyguts, I think, not a young lady. Come with me and I will show you what we have. It's much nicer. Also a little bit pinker, but that might just be me."

"Thank you," Sakura whispered, and accepted the hand he offered her this time. Fai beamed as though it were a privilege, and Sakura gave him a small, weak smile back.

Citrussy idiot, Kurogane thought grouchily as he followed them out of the room. How could someone act like such a moron and yet know a term like first-cursed, something he hadn't heard for generations? How?

It gnawed at him like a needle as he stared at the back of that blond head, the idiot chitter-chattering to Sakura as he escorted her like a queen through the haze. There was more to this man than just idiot. That bothered him. He didn't like people who pretended to be something they weren't; hadn't since the one-eyed man had ruined everything.

He'd need to watch this one, he knew, and narrowed his eyes, and followed the sound of his idle gossip down the hall in a state of deep suspicion.

---

"Ta-daa," Fai said, whipping the cloth off the tea-tray he had brought in for them and grinning proudly at Sakura. "As promised!"

"What the fuck are those?" Kurogane snarled, glaring at the strange powdery things arranged on a pretty willow-patterned plate.

The corner of Sakura's mouth turned up. "They're macaroons, Kurogane. A kind of biscuit. Thank you so much, Fai, it's very kind of you."

"Nonsense!" Fai sounded delighted. "It's a pleasure to have someone else to give them to, and that's a fact. I'm the only one here with a sweet tooth. The Duke drinks black coffee without sugar, even." He shivered delicately, as if the thought of black coffee genuinely frightened him, and bent his knees a little to transfer the plate of bright pink macaroons onto the little table next to Sakura along with a steaming cup of tea. "I see you found clothing you liked while I was gone?"

Sakura blushed and tugged at the hem of her dress. It was a simple knee-length design, free of both bustle and corset, and made of soft grey lambswool; she wore a pair of thick stockings under it, her feet covered by long fleecy boots not out of place on reindeer herders. "It's very kind of you to let us have it, Fai."

Fai tapped her lightly on the tip of her nose, making Kurogane shift in his seat. "That's the fifth time in less than an hour that you've told me I'm being kind, Sakura. I've told you that it's perfectly fine. It's nice to help people."

"Thank you," Sakura said, and smiled awkwardly when he raised a finger in mock-admonishment.

"Besides," he continued, "it's not very nice of me personally to give you a dress. It's not my dress, you see."

"Oh." Sakura blushed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean -"

"- Mine are prettier," Fai finished triumphantly, running right over her, and watched her face until his deadpan cracked and he burst out laughing at his own cleverness. Sakura grinned sheepishly.

"It's been a long night," she said quietly, picking up her teacup. "Kurogane and I haven't really stopped moving. It's hard to handle, I'm sorry."

"Mmm," Fai said, crossing over to the dresser of the spare bedroom they had been hurried into to change. He placed the tea-tray on the top of the dresser and slid a drawer open, rummaging through it. "It's alright, Sakura. Ah, here!" He turned back to her holding an ivory hair-comb. "Here you go." He held it out to Sakura, causing her to do an awkward juggle while she tried to shift her teacup and take the comb at the same time, and after a few seconds of watching her do so, said, "Would you like me to comb your hair instead?"

Kurogane sat upright. "Hey," he snapped. "I can do that!"

Fai's expression clearly indicated that he did not believe this. "Mr Snappy has such short hair," he said, "How much hair-brushing can he have done?"

Kurogane rolled his eyes. "Do you even know how many girls I've watched grow up around me," he snapped. "I can damn well brush hair. I can braid it too, even if the brats say my braids are too military."

He got up and snatched the comb from Fai, showing him his (human) fangs in the process, and then attacked Sakura's hair; the night's events had left it looking a bit like a bird's nest. She yelped a bit at first, but that was expected, and once the large knots had been (carefully) worked free, it was easier. Fai watched him do with an expression of mild surprise.

"Well," he said, "There's certainly more to you than meets the eye, isn't there, Mr Bodyguard?"

Kurogane snorted. "I've been around for seven hundred years," he said. "What do you think, you loud obnoxious heron?"

"Heron?" Fai's face lit up. His bloody cheek was dimpling again. "Because of my slender and graceful proportions?"

"Because you're all leg and you don't shut up," Kurogane snapped back.

Sakura's eyes were darting between the two of them, following the exchange; when Fai stood on one leg and tucked his hands into his armpits like a bird, she let out a started giggle, followed by another; this was followed by a third, her expression surprised, then quickly becoming distressed. "Oh," she said, another loud hiccup emanating from her, "Oh no, I... Oh no..."

Her giggles and hiccups were becoming sobs. For a moment Kurogane hesitated, unsure what to do; his hands seemed too huge all of a sudden, too big to offer comfort. They were warrior's hands. He had tried to vanquish Sakura's enemies, but he had been too slow, and now here were their ghosts, come back to attack her again.

Fai did not hesitate, however. He sank down onto his knees next to her chair and rested his hands on her kneecaps, rubbing them in a soothing fashion by making encouraging little shush-shush-shush noises. "It's alright," he said, gently. "They died, Kontessa, and you can't bring them back. It's alright to laugh. It's alright to be happy you're alive."

"No," Sakura whispered behind her hands; tears were spilling over the backs of them, down her cheeks. "No, they died because of me, how can I be here - they were eaten and I saw Su and I didn't see my father but I knew what they did, I knew - why am I alive? Why am I here? They were hurt because of me, because of me -"

"I know," Fai said, still in that quiet, soothing voice. "I know, it hurts, and you feel so angry and helpless and guilty. It's all tearing you up inside, isn't it, Sakura? It's alright to feel that way. You're alive because you deserve to be. Don't blame yourself for what happened to them, Sakura. Blame the people who hurt them. You should be here. You are wanted here. I know it hurts, and it'll hurt for a long time, Sakura, but you must move past this, Kontessa. You must."

"How can I laugh?" She had lowered her hands from her mouth, although her face was wet; unlike in books, where crying was pretty and silent, her eyes were red and puffy, and her nose was running. Unsure of what else to do, Kurogane gave her a handkerchief, which she accepted without breaking her gaze from Fai, still crouched in front of her. "It's like for a moment I forgot they were dead. I forgot that I'm, that I'm now an orphan - "

A fresh wave of sobs burst out of her as she forced herself to confront that word, and she buried her face in the handkerchief, her shoulders convulsing. Good, Kurogane thought. This needed to happen.

Fai must have sensed something of the sort, because he didn't try to silence her; he stayed there, rubbing her knees reassuringly, making nonsense noises at the back of his throat, until her tears dried up. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief, and Fai just smiled at her in a manner that was somehow totally different to any smile Kurogane had seen on him before.

"You mustn't be angry with yourself. You're a kind person, Kontessa," he said warmly.

"I could say the same to you," Sakura said, still dabbing at her eyes, and Fai's expression didn't seemingly change but did seem somehow to become a little more lifeless.

"I'm not angry with myself," he said. "But thank you, Sakura. I do try my hardest. I'm very trying, aren't I, Kuro-braid?"

"What."

"I was worried that if I said 'Mr Stylist' you wouldn't know I was talking about you! So, Kuro-braid it is! The first two syllables of your name are so simple. I can do so much with them! Kurocula, Kuro-grump, Kuro-comb, Kuro-scowl, Kuro-bite -"

"Fucking hell, shut up."

"Fai," Sakura said, completely ignoring this. "If you want to come with us, you can. If you genuinely want to. I don't want you to do anything you're not comfortable with."

Fai blinked at her, and Kurogane scowled. "Are you sure about this, little witch?"

"Yes." She was watching Fai thoughtfully. "Yes, I am."

Fai licked his lips. "Kontessa..."

"Is that a no?"

He shook his head, bowed it. "It's not a no. Yes. Yes, I will go with you to the Daidouji stronghold."

Kurogane glared at him, but did not complain as loudly as he wanted to. The idiot was an idiot, but he had made Sakura cry in one of the rare few times that she needed to and therefore doing so was not a black mark against him. He was smart, underneath. And clever. And he knew the term first-cursed.

He was also going to be stuck with them on a train for the next two weeks. Sometimes fate dealt out a cruel hand, although Kurogane didn't think that was coincidence. First-cursed and all.

---

~the end.

Thank you for reading! How did I do?
Please score my fic according to these guidelines:
1. How in-character was this fic? (1-10)
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? (1-10)
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? (1-10)
Remember that you must provide some form of identification (a link to a blog or profile on another site will suffice) for your vote to be counted!

Comments

[eijentu]

i know you already know this, but i love absolutely every single thing about this story, babe! i don't even have words, like, i just don't even know where to begin? i love the little dead moon and kurogane's waking dream-haze, the trauma to his jaw as it cracks and dislocates; i love syaoran's courier collar, and mr shark and the heron!!! and god just everything about sakura (THE LITTLE WITCH I AM CRYING FOREVER!) breaks my heart into thousands of pieces! ;_; your characterisation - of kurogane, oh my GOD, and of sakura, of FAI, all of them here - is superb, it always is, and the world you've created in this story is so rich and beautiful and real. i love your gorgeous, evocative writing: this is tender and bittersweet and visceral all at once.

basically everything about this is perfect and i can't wait for more. you are amazing, babe! <333

[reikah]

;) you know i'll finish this, bb. <3

(ps ty you are amazing and i couldn't've done it without you!)

[zelinxia]

Sakura just lost a lot of people she loved and she's fighting not to cry and feels guilt and she's just a kid it's not fair. ;_____;

Wish you the best on finishing the fic. I look forward to finding out more about Kurogane's past, where the hell vampires came from when there were just werewolves, and guessing the one-eyed man is either Seishirou or somehow Fai. Actually, hoping it's Fai.

[reikah]

yeah, sakura sort of took over this fic as i was writing it, which is cool cos she's amazing. Thanks for commenting!

[renlylittlerose]

1. How in-character was this fic? 9
I loved the fact that you put Kurogane and Fujitaka interacting. I don't think I'd ever seen that in any fic. Everyone was very much in-character, I loved Sakura and Touya (poor babies, though). It's only a pity Fai only appeared so late and thus we couldn't see a lot of development from him.

2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 10
I loved the world you were creating, and I'm very curious about everything that still hasn't been explained.

3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 9
I'm sorry you couldn't finish this, because it was really interesting and I was liking to read it, it had a really nice setting and feeling! Hopefully everything will go alright with your work and you'll be able to finish it! I'll be looking forward to having more to read! Good luck! :)

[reikah]

Thank you! Work was CRAZY busy and while I absolutely love my job, I'm unfortunately in the situation - for the first time in my life! - where I need to be a Responsible Adult and prioritise things like healthy sleep schedules over fandom. Trust me, it's super scary for me to be vaguely anything approaching grown-up!

I'm super-glad you like the fic! Sakura sort of took over as I was writing it, but she's fabulous so I didn't mind! I am really hoping to finish this fic soon, cos it's gnawing away in the back of my head, you know? Thanks so much for the comment!

Re: I wish I could vote, but I can't so have this instead:

[reikah]

True story: the world was developed last. Also, the scene with Fai and Sakura was my absolute favourite thing to write! It really just spontaneously came out in like 15 minutes, which is always rare and wonderful.

I really wanted with this fic to tackle werewolf vs vampire in a way that made it clear that the vampire was very far from human itself. I was tired of twilight vamps, where vamps are basically classy sharply-dressed angsty humans on a liquid diet; I really wanted to tackle the idea that they are monstrous and quite easily capable of monstrous things, and emphasise that aspect of Kurogane's nature that is his human remnants struggling to enforce a sense of morality over something that, for all intents and purposes, is less human than the werewolf in this setting. I envisioned the werewolves as a bunch of rather pitiful creatures - if you've ever read the Discworld novels, then kind of like Angua, with her whole wolf + human = dog observation.

I'm hoping to finish, or at least tackle more of the fic, relatively soon! I'll post it to my dreamwidth when I do, most of my fic is posted there anyway. ♥

[bottan]

This is just soooooooo gooooooooood, omgggggg

Kyraaaa, I need more of this fic, please~? :3 :3 :3

I LOVE vicious, protective, determined Kuro-cula and your Fai is a thing of beauty, amg, I was laughing so much when he showed up!! ♥ Sakura is a brilliantly strong character in this and I adore how she holds this fic together. And the plot, oh goooood, YOU ARE DOING SO WELL WITH THE VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES AND HYBRIDS, everything about this is just so GREAT!

... it also feels like you are writing a novel for olympics, again. And a freaking good one, as usual. SO MUCH BLESS, SO MUCH KUDOS, PLEASE WRITE MORE OF THIS, BB ♥♥♥

[reikah]

I DON'T SET OUT TO WRITE NOVELS THEY JUST HAPPEN TT_TT

I am hoping to have more soon! I want to get to part 2, ft: trains, snow, and Fuuma making an ass of himself.

[bottan]

FUUMA MAKING AN ASS OUT OF HIMSELF IS SO VERY APPRECIATED, OMGGGGGGGG *cheers you on*

[zerofangirl]

1. How in-character was this fic? 10
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 9
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 9

I absolutely loved this! It was really mesmerizing and amazing! I would like to read more of this, espesially since Fai only appeared so late..
I agree with almost everything with comments on the above! :D *unable to think of something to say*

[reikah]

Ahhhh thank you, I'm super glad you liked it, especially since it's such a small piece of opening! Thank you so much for commenting! ~♥

[bottan]

ALL TENS

Is all that I have left to say on this! :D

[eijentu]

i still don't have words for how much i love this fic, baby. you are utterly amazing. <333

1. How funny was this fic? 10
2. How well did this fic handle the prompt? 10
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10

[zelinxia]

9-8-6

I do like the set up so far. But it's still the beginning of many things to come, and there's so much left I wanted to know, like what I mentioned in my first comment. And without further information and back story, I couldn't enjoy the grand world building as much as possible.

Although kudos for giving all your best!

[cloverfield]

OH GOD ALL MY FEELINGS RELEVANT TO KURO-SHARK AND TINY, INDOMITABLE SAKURA AND FUJITAKA THE BEST DAD OF ALL TIME AND FAI OF THE FRESH LEMONY SCENT get you a:

10 - 10 - 10

and a burning need for the rest of this fic when time and fate allow it ♥

[reikah]

I am working on it! I'm doing another project right now cos of ALL THE MAY BIRTHDAYS THIS MONTH SERIOUSLY PEOPLE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, but then this will be finished!

[carabarks]

I was going to wait until it's finished buuut I might lose track of the days OTL

1. How in-character was this fic? 10
I can't wait to see more of Fai!

2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 10
ASJAJDHAHAFA I finished a number of paragraphs already and was well into the fic before I FINALLY understood what Kurogane was. I honestly thought you'd go for demon/werewolf Kurogane and wizard/vampire Fai. Whewww I can't wait to see the development and the twists and complications Fai's character ALWAYS brings xD

3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10!

[reikah]

ahhh thank you for taking the time to read this even tho it's not finished! True story: I hate reading WIPs too, I always get super impatient, so thank you so much for voting so kindly on this one! ♥

DEMON/WEREWOLF KUROGANE THO I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE OH WOW

[tsubasafan]

9 it was very in character
9.5 very interesting take, I love modern fantasy fic.
8.5 only because I finished it and wanted so much more owo I'm left with so many questions.

[ereshkigali]

/YELLS LOUDLY ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THIS FABULOUS FIC wow wow wow everything in this was SO GREAT and I'd love to see more of it but YOUR SAKURA IS SO GREAT AND SO PRECIOUS AND SO BRAVE omg Fai comforting her broke my heart but also made it swell with happysad feels WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? ;A; This universe seems extremely interesting and very compelling, with a lot of great detail, and again, I'd love to know more about it! I'm also glad that you changed it up a bit and used a few characters who don't usually show up that often in TRC fic (EVEN IF SU DIED oh gosh Sakura being able to see her ghost was such a heartbreaking detail I'M IN SO MUCH DISTRESS).

1. How in-character was this fic? 8 (I do wish we'd seen more of Fai, but what we did get was wonderfully balanced between mischievousness and his gentler, wiser nature.)

2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 8

3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 8.5

[farenmaddox]

aarrggghhhh FINISH THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE PLEASE AND THANK YOU DAMMIT

As for voting, I'm going to extrapolate from what you've given us here and give you the score I feel I would have wanted to give you for the whole fic (even knowing with sadness in my soul that you'll have to subtract some)

1. How in-character was this fic? 10
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 10
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10

[kittenkin]

*drives by and flings vote out window* 10/10/ABILLIONOKAYFINE10

If you hadn't told me this was unfinished I would have accepted it as-is as A Story; that's how satisfying it was to read. *gnaws on it lovingly for hours to get every last shred of meat and marrow from the bone*

*waits patiently for the rest*

[pilatesiguana]

1. How in-character was this fic? 9
Your characterization is spot on as always. Unfortunately we didn't really get too much out of them, especially Fai. However, I did really like Kurogane's interactions with everyone as well as his thought processes, and the characterization of the secondary characters.

2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 8
Well done, I like what you've chosen for Kurogane. I would have like to get a bit more detail about the world and the magical creatures, I'm sure the rest of it will not disappoint!

3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 7
I really loved the way you've written this story, it's really set up to be an awesome fic. I'm sure it will be amazing once it's done, it's just that as it is right now, I can't really give it full marks - it's a great introduction and perhaps first chapter/section, but as a whole story it's just not enough. This is especially important in terms of character development/relationships - Fai really was only introduced for a third of the story and although we got quite a bit of backstory about Kurogane, Fai is almost a complete blank. We barely get to see any interaction between Kurogane and Fai, and this is the KuroFai olympics! All in all I'm basically only taking marks off because it's not finished. That said, I'm really looking forward to the rest, and I have complete confidence that it will blow me away when it's done! :D

[kanna_endo]

1. How in-character was this fic? 9
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 9
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 9

[carmenwoods.livejournal.com]

Arrgh, so good, I absolutely want more of this, more of this world, more backstory, more Fei Wong's evil plans~ gah, this needs to be novel-length.

1. How in-character was this fic? 10
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 10
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10

[mikkeneko]

So Kurogane is basically a vampire hipster: He was a vampire before it got cool. And all these latecomer posers piss him off.

[(Anonymous)]

1. How in-character was this fic? 10
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 10
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10

This is absolutely wonderful and I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

elaseolvidah.tumblr.com

[shachaai]

So there is absolutely nothing about this piece I don't adore, aside from there's currently not more of it. The slow dripfeed of facts about the 'mythical creatures' of the trope (the characters themselves! What is up with Fai. I want to know what is up with Fai), the gorgeous world and world-building (subtle and not-so-subtle class differences even amongst the mythical creatures, Kurogane the grouchy protector and Sakura still in her bunny slippers and just. All the characters, everything. Even Touya and Yukito feel like they have another story about them waiting to be told, unfolding like your stereotypical justice/vengeance mission thing, and it was just - ahhhh. This is an incredibly immersive fic, and you well and truly made your story come alive.

...The above is mostly just a fancier way of going daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, because holy shit.

10 - 10 - 10

[mindlessadri]

1. How in-character was this fic? 9
Overall I thought Kurogane was spot on. From what we see of Fai however I just don't think we see /enough/. Fai is a multifaceted and it's very important to me that his character be dived into when the two of them are placed in fics where they meet for the fist time /in/ the fic. Not that I doubt his character will be more revealed it's that it wasn't in the selection provided.

2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 8
The witches and their origins were pretty well explained and I have to admit I really enjoyed them. On the other hand there is still a lot more to come so without more knowledge on the creatures throughout the piece I don't feel I can judge it higher than what I have.

3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 7
I feel I should explain. I love what you have done so far. Bar none this has been my favorite fic in the competition thus far. And that surprises me because I feel the whole vampire/werewolf thing had been beaten to death from my middle school days and I don't really enjoy fiction that has them. Your writing style is spot on for this type of fic and your world building is impeccable. In the end, though, it's not done. As the reader it's a little hard to fully enjoy something that isn't complete. So through out the entire piece I was like: 10 and then I got to the end and my enthusiasm was truncated.

I WHOLLY look forward to reading this rest of this when you have time to finish!

[princehircine]

This was a fantastic read, I couldn't put it down, so to speak. And I literally exclaimed "no! where's the rest" when I saw it was over. I'm really looking forward to the rest of it.

1. How in-character was this fic? 9
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 9
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 10

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there!!!

The answers are:
1. 10
I loved every-ones portrayal, just brilliant, all the quirks that make the characters who they are.
2. 9,5
Vampires, werewolves, the like. And all really nicely done.
3. 9,5
The only reason I'm taking away 0,5 is - this is SO not finished, it's nowhere a complete story. The fun has just started. :)

https://www.fanfiction.net/~elyonmazoku

[miyakodea]

Hopefully I met the deadline (I am unsure what time zone we needed to follow). I am relatively new to the fandom and was sad I missed last year's competition when I heard about it. I got super sick this year so I don't really feel up to writing in depth reviews right now but I will come back and do that later. For now I will just give my scores.

1. How in-character was this fic? 8
2. How well did this fic handle the trope? 9
3. How much did you enjoy this fic overall? 8