Between Night and Day

Chapter 1
by Kracken

Between Night and Day

1x2xRelena

Warning:AU, vampires, were animals, het/gay/angsty, blood,magic,graphic
(multi chapter fic request with specific details)


Heero wasn't certain why he had gone to such a lonely spot. Deep in the forest, darkness only alleviated by his supernatural eyesight and a moon peaking sporadically through the canopy of leaves, there didn't seem to be prey to be taken for miles in either direction. Already limited in his options, his aching blood vessels, starved for blood, reminded him that the long hunt ahead didn't need an unnecessary extension.

The pressure of being a prince, though, in a household bent on making him an heir without parallel, had taken too much of a toll on his psyche, lately. Endless functions, lessons, and duties, surrounded by critical elders, all ready to leap in to correct any errors in his behavior, had fueled a sudden rebellion, a sudden need for solitude and an escape away from anything having to do with the life of the heir to a race of vampires.

A soft breeze rustled his dark, chocolate hair. Heero lifted his face to feel it, eyes closed, and senses enjoying the primal energies all around him. There was a soft, gentleness to nature, a refreshing pulse, the feel of the engine that powered all life. It didn't matter that the hunt and the kill was going on all around him, it had a grace to it, a rightness, that was like clockwork, an endless ticking that was regular and grounding.

Eyes watched the prince from the dark shadows, from between concealing bushes of waxy, strong scented bark berry. They were said to be a charm against vampires when the berries were tinctured down and made into a drink. It was said to make a person's blood taste like hot peppers, not a flavor that blood drinkers favored. Duo, lying low under their concealment, broke off a few berries and ate them, hoping that the lore was correct. There wasn't any mistaking the dead pale hue of the vampire's skin, or the unearthly reflection of deep blue eyes in the darkness, every time they chanced to catch a sliver of moonlight. Duo knew that he was in serious danger.

Duo's eyes had their own unearthly light, a purple iridescent glow, that was powered by something internal, rather reflective of what was around him. He had to be careful, keep them slitted almost closed, and stay as deeply as possible under cover, if he wanted to escape detection. He possessed instincts as powerful and as well honed as any hunting creature of the forest, if he chose to use them, but they tended to cloud his thinking. He found that he very much wanted to think clearly about this young vampire seated, all alone, and taking in the night breeze, so. Duo refused to shift. Instead, naked and vulnerable, he endured the cool breeze, and the rough litter of the forest floor under knees and hands.

For his part, Heero slowly became aware of a watcher that was more than beast in the darkness. His keen senses detected a human pattern of breathing, felt the warmth of blood, as if it were tangible before him. It was a taste on the breeze, tingling on his tongue, an enticing aroma of young maleness in his sensitive nose. That maleness triggered hunting instinct. The scent was uncomplicated with the smell of musky maturity, or the taint of hormones that would have made the sweet blood sour and unpure. The young man out in the woods, watching him, was a virgin.

He must be willing, Heero reminded himself to curb the powerful urge to hunt. It was the law as well as a necessity for survival. Caught in the blood swoon, a vampire couldn't protect himself while he drank blood, and after, when he was full and torpid. A killing blow to the victim could have remedied that danger, but Heero's people weren't savages or killers. They needed blood so infrequently, and possessed an allure that humans found so irresistible, that they seldom resorted to that sort of violence.

Heero stayed relaxed and allowed his vampire allure to manifest itself, to draw in the watcher. He wasn't surprised to open his eyes and see a young man standing before him. He was surprised that the man was as naked as he had been born. Illuminated under a sudden ray of moonlight slanting through the forest canopy, Heero had moments, only to appreciate a slim well toned body, well rounded shoulders, an unusually long length of brown braid, and a handsome face set with a wide mouth and a pair of glowing purple eyes.

Heartbeats. Duo could count a hand full while he stood, stupidly mesmerized by the handsome, blue eyed vampire, and then he was gasping, breaking free of that glamour, and running back into the woods as fast as he could. He changed form when he was certain that darkness and forest had obscured him from sight and flowed into wolf shape. He hit the ground with four feet running, brambles, branches, and ivy catching on his brown and cinnamon fur.

A close call, Duo thought as he backtracked, covered his scent by rolling in night blooming primrose, and used a fast flowing brook to cover his trail, before heading swiftly home. His guardian was going to be very angry with him. Not only was he not allowed night hunting, but he had managed to run into the very thing that his guardian had feared, one of the dangerous night creatures. There was no point in trying to deny the meeting, and every danger of not doing so. Duo had heard that, once a vampire singled a person out in their hunts, then they would never be satisfied until they had taken their victim's blood. They would be drawn to that chosen blood, like a hound on a strong scent. Fast paws would not keep Duo safe.

Heero sighed as he walked in the opposite direction of where the young man had fled. The pain in his veins was growing as if spurred on by an unsuccessful hunt. The scent of virgin, of pureness, wasn't leaving the area as swiftly as the young man was racing away from Heero. There was other prey close at hand, one that might be more willing than his fleeing watcher.

A goat bell came first to Heero's ears, and then the unpleasant smell and taste on his tongue of goat. The young girl was fresh and sweet, in comparison, even the sweat of hunting through the forest, after the errant nanny goat, not diminishing her effect on Heero in the least. She was like a fresh baked confection to his senses, a mouth watering pulse of blood calling to Heero's hunger. When she came into sight, dragging the goat, angrily, by one horn, it hardly mattered that she was plain, had black matted hair, or wore a dress dirtied and repaired dozens of times. It was her blood that called to Heero.

She came to his allure, leaving the goat, eyes wide as they took in the handsome young man, in his expensive silks and leather clothing, who had appeared before her. She came into his embrace, freely, eager for his soft touch of lips on her neck, knowing, at some primal level that he had something to offer her in return.

The bite of a vampire was euphoric, intoxicating. Their scent was like old roses, their skin softer than silk, their teeth painless, but possessing an ability to excite nerves into an almost orgasmic state. Heero didn't drain his victim, he sipped, savored, and took just enough to live, resting on the shoulder of his victim, trusting her willingness to leave himself vulnerable as her arms came around him and held him to her.

After, Heero had enough presence of mind to seek the shadows before going torpid, leaving the girl to slowly become aware again and wander towards home, dazed and amazed, and wondering if she had dreamed it all. The goat followed behind her, bleating, as if confused as to why he wasn't important any longer.

Satisfying, yet, not, Heero thought distantly as he closed his eyes and let the blood integrate and revitalize his own. He thought of the young man again and wondered what it would have been like to nuzzle his soft, brown neck, to sink teeth into flesh, and drink the stronger blood of a man. The victim had never mattered to Heero before, and he wondered at himself, that he should be lamenting lost prey as if he had lost a fine wine and had settled for a bitter country brew, instead.

The man's eyes glowed in Heero's subconscious as he slipped deeper into his torpid state. Humans didn't have glowing eyes, he mused, and promised himself that he would find out who this odd man was. Maybe there would be another chance to bring the man willingly to his embrace? The thought pleased Heero as night dew began settling on his clothes and he passed into sleep.

_______________________________

If Duo had been in in his wolf form, his ears would have been down and his tail tucked between his legs. He fought the change, though, as the switch came down on every choice part of his body, in a frenzy of blows delivered by his guardian and master Chang Wu Fei. Duo recognized it for cowardice, knew that the urge was only rooted in the mistaken belief that Wu Fei might go easier on a dumb beast, than a man who had made bad decisions.

The switch was thin and the blows delivered with a firm intention to make it sting, not wound. Duo had only to endure a full minute, before his master was tossing it away and confronting a cringing Duo with hands on hips.

"Get dressed!" Wu Fei ordered. "I can't seriously have a conversation with a naked man."

Duo was shivering in reaction to the warm room. He was freezing, after having pelted through cold forest for nearly a mile. His hair was a tangle, full of burs and leaves, and his skin had been marked by bramble thorns. The tall, stone house, tucked between older, wooden buildings that seemed to lean on it for support, and its warm light, coming from the narrow window of its top floor study, had been a welcome beacon and a reassurance that his guardian was still awake. The big fireplace, that walls lined with wondrous tomes of knowledge, and the round table, strewn with his master's work, and the plates of dripping candles that had illuminated it, were familiar and calming. Duo was home and safe, he felt, and Wu Fei, he was certain, would make sure that he stayed that way, despite the intentions of a night creature.

Dressed in a thick, red robe, embroidered slippers on his feet, the oriental features of his guardian and master, were scowling in his anger, black eyes snapping temper and hands on hips. Those seemingly fragile hands, Duo knew, could handle the delicate seeds of a puff flower, with ease, or deliver a killing blow. The man, somewhere in his long life, had mastered a myriad of fighting skills along with his knowledge of the natural, and unnatural world. Though he didn't appear to be a day of the first blush of manhood, Duo knew the great span of years that the man actually owned. Those with the blood of the dragon clan were long lived.

Duo scrambled to his 'room', an alcove that might once have been a closet, but now held his narrow bed and clothes chest. The thin, red leather curtain, his only privacy, was a scrap of something larger,cut awry and with the merchant's mark still burned into a corner; a bull with a crown. Duo had insisted on the curtain when he had reached a certain age for privacy to be important to a young man, but it had been one of the few things that he had demanded of his guardian. Being a child off the streets, he didn't dare complain to the man who's charity had taken him in.

Slipping on a soft tan tunic, and belting it over a darker brown pair of pants that ended at the knee, Duo didn't presume to take time to put on hose and shoes on his chilled feet. he was back in front of Master Wu Fei as soon as he could manage, head bowed and shoulders hunched down submissively. Neither his promptness nor his posture mollified his guardian in the slightest.

"Bark berry on your breath and evening primrose on your person," Wu Fei said as he reached and plucked a leaf out of Duo's hair. "You look as if you rolled in the debris of a forest."

"I-" Duo began but Wu Fei's flared, angry nostrils, and hand raised to command his silence, made him bite his lip and not finish.

"An explanation isn't necessary," his master told him. "You cannot explain willful disobedience, you can only receive punishment for having committed the offense. Recite to me, Duo, the reasons that I gave for not running in the forest at night? Perhaps, together, we can find where your error in thinking occurred?"

Duo blushed, hands clenched inside his long sleeves. It would have been far better to receive a worse beating than the humiliation of recounting, in painful detail, his errors, and allowing his master to show him his mistakes in a way designed to verbally wound him enough not to commit his mistakes again. "Master Wu Fei," Duo said with trepidation, imagining that there was a far better reason, than his wish to avoid his 'lesson', to postpone his punishment. "I=I ran into a... He was... I think... no, I know that he was a night creature. He tried to use his allure on me. I resisted and ran. He may be pursuing me."

Wu Fei didn't change expression. "I've already deduced that, my young, and foolish boy. His scent is on you, stronger than primrose. The scent of old roses."

Duo brought an arm to his nose, and took a deep breath in surprise. It was there, faint, but obvious over the mingled scent of forest loam, bark berry bushes, and primrose. "He didn't touch me, or come close to me. I ran," Duo insisted.

"It's part of the allure," Wu Fei explained patiently, "Their glamour that draws their victims, to them, so that they may feast on their blood. You were the bee to his sweet pollen. You needn't fear that he has followed you, though. They don't feast on the unwilling. It's one of their strongest laws."

"But I've heard-" Duo began, but Wu Fei cut him off impatiently.

"Old tales. Haven't I taught you enough to disregard them?"

Duo nodded, his embarrassment growing. "Yes, I'm sorry. I was surprised to meet him, alone and in the forest, and I panicked. I forgot all of your teachings in my fear. I am a miserable student, and a disobedient ward."

Wu Fei sighed and then glared pointedly as he insisted, once again, "Repeat to me the reasons that I gave for not running in the forest at night?"

Duo knotted his hands into the cloth of his tunic, twisting it unmercifully as he nervously recited, "I may forget myself, drown in instinct so deeply, that I can never recover my human self."

"That should be reason enough," Wu Fei admonished, "But, proceed."

"Hunters may mistake me for game," Duo recited, but his attention, just then, was captured by the flames of the fireplace, the deep blue at the core, that made him think of a vampire's eyes.

"I may encounter wild animals or a wild pack of wolves. As a lone wolf, or even as a human, they may kill me," Duo recited as his thoughts tried to fathom why a creature that depended on the blood of humans, would have sought a place as far from them as possible.

"There is a reoccurring theme inerrant in my teachings, Duo," Wu Fei interrupted, watching his ward's distraction. "They repeat an end result that only a madman would ignore. Loss of self and death."

"I may meet one of the night creatures," Duo ended, as Wu Fei hadn't spoken, and then he came back to himself, blinking at his guardian and mentor as if coming out of a dream. "I did."

"I hadn't been speaking of vampires," Wu Fei sighed as he paced and then sat in a comfortable, red leather chair near the fire. He didn't give Duo permission to sit and Duo didn't presume. "There are deadly creatures in the forests that you can hardly imagine the existence of, student of mine."

"I don't have to fear Vampires?" Duo said in astonishment, grasping only that one thing.

"I didn't say that," Wu Fei replied irritably. "Their glamour is not to be taken lightly. It can ignite, in a human, a powerful attraction that can destroy all reason. Some imagine that they are in love, or wish to be enthralled completely, and pursue the creatures until they ruin themselves."

"Ruin?" Duo repeated.

"Vampires are not humans," Wu Fei told him pointedly, wanting his ward to understand that fact completely."They don't love humans. They only love what runs through their veins. Once that's tasted, a human becomes like tainted meat, highly undesirable to them. They won't drink twice from the same person. A man or woman can pine after the cold creatures, to the exclusion of all else, including their health, and not get a moment's notice from them, again."

"Is their bite that... desirable?" Duo wondered, swallowing hard at the thought of that handsome man sinking teeth into his throat.

"It is said to give an euphoric feeling," Wu Fei explained. "I've heard that some liken it to the ultimate orgasm. Whatever the truth of those tales, the end result is always the same, there won't be a second experience. Attractions to such creatures are doomed from the start."

Duo shivered, even though his chill was gone.

Wu Fei bent, picked up a fire poker, and prodded at the flames of the fire. "It is useless to ask you for vows of obedience. I'm old enough to know young men's minds. I can only warn you of danger and hope for some modicum of common sense from you."

Duo rubbed ruefully where the switch had struck particularly hard. "And the beating?"

"It makes my temper less, if it does nothing to stir your mind to knowledge," Wu Fei replied sourly. He waved the heated poker at Duo. "Bathe and then go to bed. If you've managed not to have supper, perhaps hunger will be another goad to good sense."

The flames had leapt up and the walls were orange with their light. Duo could clearly see that Wu Fei's shadow was not the shadow of a man. Duo had seen it more than a few times, and had tried to guess which type of dragon the shadow represented. It was hard to believe that a creature such as that could manage to fit in the small confines of that study. This time, however, the mystery had lost its allure, and Duo didn't hesitate to take the narrow stairs downward to the pump room to bathe, thinking of dark blue eyes, a fall of chocolate colored hair, and skin as pale as down on a white goose.

-------------------------------

"You seem distracted, My Prince."

The Ifrit was a flash of gold in the air, a voice that was heard more inside the head than outside. It was a breeze against Heero's cheek before it pulled itself into human form and stood before him, golden hair a riot of loose strands, eyes large and bluer than the bluest sea, and a face as innocent as the angels of Christian teachings. Dressed in a swathe of sea green gauze, that seemed to float about it like a cloud rather than earthly weighted garments, it gave a tempting outline of a body as equally as wondrous as the face.

"I am not," Heero replied simply and leaned on the stone railing of a balcony poised on a cliff face. He let the high mountain winds chill him while he watched the sun breaking through tall peaks and coloring the black, craggy forms with colors every bit as vibrant as the Ifrit. Golds, blues, peaches, and rust reds crept softly forward until it touched the forbidding walls of the fortress and the figures that stood there.

Like rarified air, the sunlight passed through the Ifrit, giving it a ghostly appearance even as it made it's hair glow like heated gold. As for the creature of the night, it seemed to avoid him and leave him untouched, his skin remaining paler than milk, and his eyes refusing to cast back even a faint reflection. Even his dark hair seemed to drink it in and leave a null void.

"Where do you look, Oh Prince of Night?" the Ifrit wondered with a smile that could melt granite with its gentle warmth. It was hard, when that smile was turned on Heero, to remember that the Ifrit were creatures more formidable than his own race, children of the first song; wild beyond measure and full of deep cunning, knowledge, and power. That this one suffered servitude to a prince, never ceased to amaze.

"At the sunrise, obviously," Heero replied irritably even as he narrowed his eyes and hated the way that it touched his skin.

The night was Heero's element, the moon the mother that watched over him and aided his hunting with its pale light. The sun was his enemy, making him feel weak and exposed, burning his pale skin and robbing him of his senses, if he stayed in it's light too long. It made him vulnerable and no creature that hunted prey sought after that condition. The Ifrit was right to wonder, and maybe to worry, if they possessed such emotions. It was hard to imagine a creature of air and sunlight owning human feelings and concerns.

"Prey escaped you," the Ifrit guessed and then sighed. "Night creatures are so single minded. You pine over sustenance as if after a lover, and refuse to rest until you satisfy your hunger." Ifrit were not so delicate. They sucked a man dry of every ounce of life force and left a husk, unconcerned over issues of morality and a prey's willingness to die. A life force didn't sour, after all, like tainted blood, or become poison because of a prey's unwillingness to die.

"Prey was unwilling," Heero corrected and let his eyes leave the mountains and travel down into the valley where the trees parted around a small town. Wisps of smoke, from chimneys, rose into the morning light. "He was.... most... compelling."

"And you will cast your glamour until he comes to you willingly, unable to help himself," the Ifrit knew. "I enjoy watching night creatures split the fine strand of their own beliefs. Only take willing prey, even if your very nature makes them willing."

"It is nature," Heero replied, and it was the inescapable truth of the matter. There weren't excuses that needed to be made, or, as the Ifrit put it, a strand of belief to split. Their nature dictated their actions and he would no more consider apologizing for it than a mountain cat for waiting under cover for a deer to pass it by. Heero waited for his prey with the same patience, with the same instinct and need for survival.

Only it wasn't the same, Heero thought, frowning, and the Ifrit seemed to have sensed that as well. Long years of the hunt had never caused Heero to stand in the unkind light of the sun and actively wish to see his prey.

"I should inform Chancellor Jay," the Ifrit warned.

"Should you, Quatre?" Heero wondered absently as he stretched every sense, every bit of his power and tried to see into the town as the sun reached into the valley and ran golden fingers along cobbled streets.

"I have pledged him my fealty," Quatre reminded him. "He charged me to guard you."

And he was a tireless guard, during the day, when the Ifrit drank the sunlight that allowed him to gather form. Otherwise, he was a powerless creature of the air, a breath of breeze against the skin or a ruffling through a person's hair. It had been a powerful sorcerer that had bottled such a creature, murdering mountain bandits, and the misfortune of a rock slide, that had cast it aside on a mountain track, and the hand of a creature of the night that had finally found and freed it. His thankful pledge of a thousand years of service to Chancellor Jay was nothing when compared to the prospect of a deathless Ifrit spending eternity in a bottle cast aside on a mountain.

There! Heero say his prey blinking and yawning with weariness and carrying a basket towards the market. The man's braid swung to and fro, the sunlight catching strands and making them the color of fire in his brown hair. He was wearing a dark brown tunic and black overcoat, homespun pants and solid, brown ankle boots. Laces were half tied, hooks undone, and his coat put on haphazardly. He looked like a young man unpleasantly roused from sleep and sent on an unpleasant task.

"Ah," the Ifrit said, following Heero's gaze. "He has an interesting life force. Touched by a wizard of the dragon clan. Something runs through him... binding him to nature... to... wolf and hawk. Your prey is not a common man. I can see the attraction."

Hunger. Heero could hear it in the Ifrit's voice. Heero warned, as he watched Duo sleepily buy two dozen eggs, two live chickens, and a half slab of bacon, "Touch him and you will think that eternity in a bottle is a blessed condition."

The Ifrit was silent, startled, and then warmly, it replied, "If I touched that one it would not be My Prince that would punish me, I think. His protector would certainly deal with my infraction personally."

Heero had surprised himself. The warning had been instinctive and empty. Perhaps his Chancellor had power over the Ifrit because of a vow, but Heero was certainly no match for a creature that could command the elements and eat a man's essence. Was it simply because he was wanting his prey that badly that he had spoken so unwisely, so out of character for a cold creature of the night?

The young man's protector would not blame him, he thought, would not seek him out for revenge, for making his ward his prey. Taking revenge on a lightning storm, or a flood through the valley, would have been just as ridiculous. Heero hunted. His prey had unwisely traveled at night and had allowed the glamour when he could have fled at first sight of Heero. Heero was not to blame for his nature. The Ifrit was another matter. Whether he fed, or not, he would continue to live, even as a mere wisp of light and air. His feeding was choice and therefore more suited for blame and revenge.

"Will you continue to be unwise?" the Ifrit asked as Duo made the journey back to a tall house and disappeared inside, protected with warding spells from any form of spying.

The sun was begriming to hurt, Heero's skin tightening and blushing with the red of the blood of his last prey. Until he absorbed it completely it would lie uneasily, as if seeking an escape back to where it belonged. More rest was needed. Like a snake, a torpid state was best for digestion.

The Ifrit was gaining solid form as the sun began it's journey overhead. It followed Heero with audible footsteps, now, and even smelled like cinnamon and honey as it passed close to Heero and motioned to a bed of leaves, forest earth, and fine salt within a hollowed out slab of granite.

It was tradition and myth, to lie within mother earth and to rest on her dead and on the leftovers of his own prey while he slept. Salt was the only byproduct of his feasting, exuded out of his skin with sweat and crystallizing as it touched air. It made a soft bed, one that his people believed was as necessary to life as the blood that ran through the veins of their prey. Certainly they sickened when their beds of leaves, earth, and salt weren't periodically refreshed, but Heero had never heard of any night creature eventually dying for lack of it. Since living sickened wasn't a particularly attractive prospect, he doubted that anyone had attempted to find out whether death would eventually result.

Heero removed his clothes and slipped into the hollow, sleep overtaking him as soon as his skin pressed into the bedding. The Ifrit looked him over, as if needing to make certain that all was well, and then took up a position beside the granite bed, at attention and eyes turned outward. For a thousand years he would keep his post, if need be, guarding even Heero's corpse if he were to pass over during his sleep, to keep his vow to Chancellor Jay.

Heero, for his part, ignored the Ifrit. The fortress of the Vampire clans had not been seriously attacked in ages. That Chancellor Jay imagined that Heero needed any protection was a puzzle, but one that Heero didn't dwell on, just then. His thoughts remained on a young man with brown hair touched with flame, until he passed into his torpid state.


TBC


On to Chapter two

 



This page last updated: