by Unknown
of the roof and Sakurai shuddered as another wave of that powerful, heart-rending
grief washed over him from Dai’s soul.
“What doyou want fromme, Daisuke?” Sakurai whispered.
“Change me.” He looked up, his eyes dry of tears and his jaw clenched. “Make
me what you are.”
Sakurai raised his eyebrows. “That’s your heart talking, not your brain.” “Change me, goddamn you.” Dai banged his fist on the car’s roof. “You have no idea what it truly involves.” Sakurai frowned. “So, no.” Dai pounded the car roof again. “You’re a fucking cold-blooded killer who can’t
be stopped by bullets!”
“That’s part of it, yes. But you have no idea the price of that strength.” “The fuck I don’t. I’ve seen the movies and apparently the immortality is all true
and the other bullshit isn’t. You don’t sleep in a coffin, you aren’t a walking corpse, and
you can even see your reflection in a fucking mirror.”
Sakurai tilted his sunglasses down to peer over the tops. “Solitary immortality is,
quite frankly, a bitch.”
Dai removed his own glasses. “I. Don’t. Give. A. Flying. Fuck. I want revenge
and that is my key to getting it.” He slipped the glasses back up. “If you won’t help me,
I’ll find someone who will. That club had a lot of fucking vampires in it. And I heard
stories in Chinatown when I was a kid about certain community “Elders” being
‘different’.”
Sakurai shook his head. “I can’t do it, Daisuke. Not today, especially. Perhaps
another day I’ll reconsider—”
“Worthless fucker.” Dai got in the car and sped off in a squeal of tires and spun
gravel.
Sakurai watched the GTO disappear around a tree-lined bend. He walked down
the gravel drive and sought the nearest shade to wait for the workers to finish filling
Wei’s grave. He followed one of the men as he left for home, a man who was biding his
time until his probation for assault was over before he went and killed the adulterous
ex-wife of his and the bastard child he was paying support for. He took in the
adrenaline from the man’s pathetic fight and struggle then killed him swiftly, with no
regret.
Fortified by the man’s blood, Sakurai returned to the now-deserted cemetery to
await Daisuke’s arrival. It was inevitable he supposed, making Daisuke a vampire as he
was, and yet he couldn’t do it with so much pain pouring out of the young man’s soul.
Well, hecould, but it wouldn’t be the same as it could be if his blood were heated by the
ambition and passion that his own had been when he and Kiyoshi had been turned. Sakurai heard Dai’s car grind to a stop on the road behind him. The man himself
stumbled up the path a few moments later. Sakurai could smell the liquor on him even
at this distance.
With a sigh, he hopped off the waist-high headstone he’d been sitting on and
approached as Dai crumpled to his knees in front of Wei’s grave. Again, the man was
able to sense him, even when Sakurai was still a few feet away.
“Worthless fucker.” His words were slurred, but at least he had enough brain
power left to remember where their conversation ended last time. Sakurai said as much
and Dai cursed him. “‘Hell with you.”
“Go home, Dai,” Sakurai replied quietly. “There’s nothing here for you.” “You don’t know what its like to lose someone—your own brother, for fuck’s
sake!” Dai shouted, his hands digging into the fresh soil over Wei’s grave. “Yes, I do.”
Dai clenched his hands into fists. “Do you know what it feels like to be the one
who as good as killed him? Do you?” he demanded.
“Yes. I slit his throat with my own hand.”
Dai looked back at him, disgust pouring from both his eyes and heart. “You sick
fuck.”
“I didn’t mortally wound him,” Sakurai said. “But I could have. I was drunk on
the power. Drunk on the power of immortality. Drunk on the power to kill, to take
revenge for the wrongs done to my mother and myself by the townsfolk where we
lived. I craved the power. Lusted after the kill and the strength gained from the blood.
Night after night I took countless lives and reveled in it. Is that what you want?” “I want to kill the fuckers who killed Wei I don’t care about anything else.” “And after you take care of them then what?” Sakurai asked.
“I told you—I don’t give a fuck about anything else,” Dai whispered. “Then you’re ready to die? To hunt the night and live forever while those you
consider loved ones wither and die from age and disease?”
Dai looked up with nothing but anger and determination in his eyes. “I’m ready
to lose anything to make sure the fucks who killed Wei are dead.”
“You’re drunk,” Sakurai said flatly. “On more than the liquor. You’re drunk on
this idea that vengeance is all that matters.” He bent down, grabbed Dai by the collar
and hoisted him up. “I’m taking you home before you say anything else stupid.” “I’m not fucking going anywhere.”
He dropped to his knees on the grave once more, and once more Sakurai hauled
him up by the jacket collar. Dai broke away, but only because Sakurai let him. “Leave me the fuck alone!”
Sakurai folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me. If you’re so hell bent on
becoming a chaing-shih, then why didn’t you seek out Jung Kai or one of his ilk, or better
yet, go to theResurrection and demand immortality from the Mistress herself.” Dai glared. “I’m not a fucking idiot. I’m not walking into their trap unless I have
ammo equal to theirs.” He lowered his voice and his gaze. “I couldn’t get anyone on
Mott Street to talk about getting close to Jung,” he mumbled.
“ThenI am your only hope.”
“Fuck you.”
“You had the chance the other day. It’s a pity things didn’t work out.” Sakurai
expected a good retort from Dai. Instead, the young man sat back on his heels and cried
out at the top of his lungs. “Just leave me the hell alone!”
He bent forward, pounded the ground.
“I don’t want anything from you, Sakurai. I wish I didn’t dream with you or like
it so much, or fuck—I wish I’d never even met you.” Dai spat out each word and
wrapped his hands around the back of his neck. “But Ineed you to do this for me, damn
you.”
Dai sat up again, his hands dropping down to his sides. “They took his heart.
They cut it right out of his body.”
“And my brother’s heart was eventually ripped from his chest by a chaing shih
whose grief rivaled yours . . . .” Sakurai breathed a sighed and slid his hands into the
pockets of his leather coat. He tilted his head back, gazed up at the night sky. So
peaceful here, the air so calm and filled with the scents of flowers, grass and trees. Rain
was in the distance and closing in. He could smell it on the breeze that ruffled the ends
of Daisuke’s hair. He turned his attention back to the young man.
“Even if I did change you tonight, you couldn’t fight them. You need at least
some time to feed on your own and get used to what you can do. Are you ready for
that? Are you ready to take mortal lives to sustain your strength and healing abilities?
We are perfectly capable of subsisting upon liquids and small amounts of food but it’s a
pitiful existence as I’ve learned firsthand. O
nce you’ve tasted invincibility, being weak
to any degree is devastating to both mind and body.”
Dai stood, looked him in the eye. “But you did it. You let yourself grow weak
since Wei died. And yet you claim you could have protected my mom and me if we
needed it.”
Sakurai shrugged. “I have the added strength of years. I have very powerful
blood in my veins from one called Kuro, the product of both a witch and a kyuuketsuki.
I’m not like all the others. I can do things they can’t even fathom.”
“Ineed that kind of power, Sakurai. I need it to kill those fuckers.” “Youwant the power for now, but I doubt you have what it takes to pay the price
for it night after night after night.” He turned his back, walked toward the road. “Fucker,” Dai muttered. He charged Sakurai. Sakurai stepped aside and Dai fell
face first over a headstone and banged into another. He pulled himself to his feet,
swiping away the blood that trickled from his forehead. “You like the look of my blood?
Didn’t you get enough? You killed somebody tonight when I was gone. I know you did.
I can tell. I can feel your presence more than I could before.”
Smirking, Sakurai pulled his hands from his pockets and clapped oh-so-slowly. “Very perceptive, Detective.” He flicked his long hair back behind his shoulder
with a swipe of his hand. “And that brings us to another little obstacle you haven’t
thought of. “What will happen to your beloved career? Do you think the thirst isn’t
going to get to you when you see blood spilled on the streets? What will happen if you
have another incident as you did with that Lynch person? As a vampire, if you hit a
mortal the way you hit him, you’d kill him. You could crush the life out of your mother
by trying to give her a simple hug. Have you thought of that,my vengeful friend?” Dai said nothing. Sakurai shook his head. “The price of immortality is high,
Daisuke. Too high for a mere man such as yourself to bear.I will deal with Yun and his
people. Go home.”
Dark Whispers Sheridan and Cain 2009
Chapter Nineteen
“Asshole.” Dai wiped his hand across the cut on his forehead again “You stay away from those fucks—I’ll kill them.” He stood up on feet undoubtedly made more unsteady by the blow to his head than from just the liquor. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t want your help.”
So much determination for a mortal, even if what he planned to do was suicide. Sakurai had thought that kind of courage all but dead in the modern world. Then again, the label ‘New York’s Finest’ had to have come from somewhere.
“You’re going home.” Sakurai was at Dai’s side a second later, grabbing him by the back of his belt.
Sakurai hoisted Dai up in the air and over his shoulder.
“Put me the fuck down!” Dai shouted, his head at Sakurai’s hip. He kicked out like a child struggling to get out of his father’s hold, even punching uselessly at the side of Sakurai’s leg. “Let me go!”
“One day when you know me better, you’ll realize how much I’m going out of my way for you,” Sakurai muttered.
“No!” Dai’s cries ended in a low, exhausted moan. Sakurai could smell the first of fresh, salty tears welling up in the man’s eyes.
“Stop it—I have to do this. I can’t let him down again.” Dai’s words ended on a choked sob.
“They were mine to kill before they were yours,” Sakurai whispered. The thought suddenly struck him. If he’d done as Jung Kai had asked all those days ago, Dai wouldn’t be suffering the way he was now. “I’m sorry, Daisuke.”
“I hate you.” Dai said weakly, apparently too worn out to offer any more protest. “God, I hate you.”
He was asleep by the time Sakurai reached the GTO and he was still out when Sakurai carried him up to his apartment. Dai was safe here; Yun and the others would think twice about sending an assassin for him, knowing that Sakurai was in the room above. Their botched attempt on Sakurai’s life had cost them enough to be too wary to do it again.
Leaving Dai on the sofa, Sakurai slipped out through the fire escape and dropped down soundlessly to the ground. He made his way quickly on foot toward Jung Kai’s stronghold, planning to have him and his minions handle the pathetic blood drinkers theShan ching had created.
Death greeted him at the building’s entrance.
The two human guards who kept watch in the lobby both had their heads nearly severed from their bodies. Knife wounds and bite marks covered what was left of their flesh.
“Wonderful.” Sakurai smiled, not in the least fucking way amused. He could already imagine what he’d find in the Elder’s quarters, but he went anyway. As soon as he stepped off the elevator, he realized his imagination wasn’t as creative as the other vampires’ had been.
Hundreds of six-inch long iron nails pinned Jung Kai’s body to the wall. The curtains in the hallway had been ripped off the windows so the morning light would burn away the shredded flesh, leaving only the skeleton behind. Jung Kai’s head was on the floor at the foot of the body. His eyes had been taken out and his mouth propped open with another one of those nails, revealing the fact that the Elder’s fangs had been removed. Where those had been placed, Sakurai could only guess.
Covering his mouth with a hand, Sakurai laughed. Either this Mistress and her dogs were insane andwanted to be slaughtered, or they were confident in some new strength they possessed.
“It doesn’t matter.” Sakurai’s laughter faded and he exited the building. “The slaughtering part works for me either way.”
And it looked like Daisuke would get the opportunity he wanted, after all.
Of course, an occasion such as this needed some preparation and Sakurai prepared by seeking out a small, seedy club tucked away in a basement in Manhattan. He learned of this place from the minds of that female he’d toyed with along with Mikail that night at theResurrection. This was where the young ones came to relax away from the watchful eyes of their superiors.
Via the Internet, the club welcomed the mortal youth obsessed with the “vampire lifestyle”—and in reality brought them to their own slaughter. Well, at least tonight, many of them would be spared---if he was feeling merciful.
He was, but just barely.
Sakurai wasted no time. The lust for blood must have tinged his aura, perfumed his scent. From the moment he slipped in through doors, his prowess as a hunter was apparent to the handful of vampires scattered throughout the club. Even the mortals could perceive the intensity brimming under the surface of his skin.
Though the music continued reverberating in the dark expanse of the dance floor, conversations were silenced and people stared. Sakurai enjoyed the attention, his lip curling. One look at his expression was enough to warn most of the humans away, their instincts obviously telling them to leave as quickly as possible because something clearlynot good was about to happen. But the vampires, understanding the threat at last, were foolish enough to attack.
When Sakurai finished with them, their blood had stained the entire dance floor in a crimson wash. Five bodies lay in broken heaps about him, and the music continued to pulse through the club’s walls, uninterrupted.
All in all, a very good way to get his point across to the Mistress. Sakurai flicked his tongue over a trickle of vampire blood running down his finger, smirking.
* * * * *
Dai was jolted awake by a splash of cold water to the face. He opened his eyes, surprised to find himself on his bed. Naked, spread-eagle, his arms and legs restrained. Sakurai loomed over him like some stereotypical Prince of Darkness, his long hair tousled, his shirt half-open, his chest spattered with blood. But whose blood? Oh God, not his mother or the Mageras.
“ Stop imagining such stupid shit,” Sakurai’s voice boomed inside Dai’s head. “Are you gonna fuck me and kill me no
w?”
“That had been the original plan, but it changed along the way.” Sakurai stepped
closer, reached out, trailed a finger still sticky with drying blood down the center of Dai’s chest. “So very much changed along the way, pet, and I’m not certain if I will ever truly be comfortable with it.”
Dai pulled at the restraints, even though he knew it was pointless. The leather straps around his wrists were tight enough to dig into the skin. If he kept struggling, he was going to start drawing blood.
Like it mattered, anyway. Not from what he could tell, based on the look in the crimson depths of Sakurai’s eyes.
It wasn’t the possibility of cruelty lurking there that made Dai’s heart race now.
“Like I am comfortable with it?” Dai’s breathing was starting to get heavy. He yanked at the restraints again, just to do something with the building tension in his body. “Yeah, it’s a fucking trip being obsessed with a monster.” A monster who understood his deepest longings, one who actually had a shred of humanity underneath the blood-lust.
“You understand, don’t you? This isn’t some insipid film. The wounds have to be fatal before my blood can heal you and give you new life. There is always the chance a mortal body cannot survive the trauma.”
“I’ll do what I have to do to avenge my brother.”
Sakurai simply stared down at him for the longest time then turned away toward the bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
“I want this filth off me first.”
Dai stared at the open bathroom door, watching wisps of steam as Sakurai showered, unable to stop the mental images from filling his head. Sakurai. Himself. Fuck, this wasn’t the time for crazy shit like that. The water stopped and he kept watching. Waiting.
Sakurai approached the bed, a towel wrapped round his lean hips. He flicked the bedside light on to its brightest setting and looked down, that fucking smirk of his there in all it’s glory.
“This is the perfect time for crazy shit like that,” he said, reaching out and running his index finger along Dai’s growing erection. “Your passion makes your blood more intoxicating than the finest wine. I like that. You’ll understand in time—if you truly want this to happen.”