Author: Chauni
Email: asukalangley2nd@yahoo.com
Website: oocities.com/asukalangley2nd/ "Angelic Demon"
Disclaimer: Do not own the characters; they belong to the wonderfully
talented Kelly, maker of "Arcana". Read it. Now.
Notes: I've written something I'm proud of! Yay! I don't know how long
this is going to be, but I have ideas, nice little things. I'd like to take a
moment to dedicate this to Sam (Happy belated B-day!), to Ryn (thanks for
always supporting me), to PC (you feed my writing ego FAR too much ::smiles::),
and finally, to Kelly (thank you for all your hard work on the comic!
::Smiles::)
"Touching you makes me feel
alive;
Touching you makes me die inside."
~ Jay Gordon, "Slept So Long”
Chapter One
The night hung still with the
frigid breath of wind nymphs, slicing through spaces fingers could never hope
to see. Darkness raped streetlamps, leaving them hollow and black, and even the
Goddess Moon refused to show her pallid visage. No one lingered on street
corners; no one stumbled free from college bars and bass-filled nightclubs.
Even the strays had enough sense to find shelter on such a powerful hour, and
not even their glowing oculars peered from the shadows.
But he hadn’t
paid attention to the signs, had he? He had chosen to turn a blind eye to them
all, to all the nuances and whispers that lingered in some private portion of
an inner core, and had voted to take the long walk home, while sending the
equipment on with Sloane. He would be fine, he vowed; he would see them in an
hour, pink cheeked and bushy tailed.
“Like a
dog,” Az had said, and that was simply met with a glare and a growl.
Now,
though, he regretted such promises, as his cheek was slammed against the unyielding
bricks and the world slid in and out on a dim haze. He felt the tender flesh of his lip split, caught between his
chin and the alley wall and smearing into all the crooks of mortar. The caught
arm was jerked higher, and he could felt the weight straining, the bones
grinding and creaking as he whimpered somewhere in the back of his grating
throat. His free arm was captured between the building and his body, and
everything had been so strategically placed that he wanted to lose
consciousness just so he wouldn’t have to think of how ridiculously stupid he
had been to be caught in the first place.
Hot breath,
thick with death, washed across his ear, a the moist tip of a tongue soon to
follow. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it isn’t smart to go out alone at night,
Caine?”
The
singer’s lips move for a moment, but nothing emerges aside from a new torrent
of blood. Some other dimension away, he felt the hard rounded brunt of a knee
get shoved between his legs and his one brown eye widened.
-not
that not that not that not that not that no-
But the
next blow never happened, and his belt buckle was left untouched, much to his
immense pleasure. That thrill was short lived once he realized that something
as simple as that was hardly an end to his current situation as he felt the
wall pull away and crash back again.
“You have
kept him from me for too long. This is where it ends.” Another breath, another
tantalizing lick. “Not only will I get him, but you’re going to be the one to
bring him to me. How do you like that? Enough of a twist for you?”
His good
eye slammed shut and he wished this was some nightmare, begged for someone to
come save him, pleaded for some holy fire to strike this asshole dead.
Instead,
all he felt were two bitter pricks at his neck, and the sound of his own desire
slipping from his throat.
~*~
Caine
stumbled into his room sometime after three, bleeding, broken. He didn’t
remember hitting the bed, or the way the air hung, thick with his own spent
need, but he didn’t care. It was some cruel nightmare, had to be, because in
the morning, all signs of such an attack were gone.
~*~
“Wake up!
Come on, wake up already!”
The bed moved like a storm-cursed ocean, and
burrowing his face down into one pillow and covering the top of his head with
the other did no good. Sunlight kissed his flesh in a lashing as he heard the
curtains yanked open with a vengeance and more bouncing of the bed ensued.
“You sleep
like the dead, Caine! Don‘t you have a pop quiz, or band practice, or
something?”
Blankets
were tugged up over his head, another sure fire sign of defiance as he burrowed
down deeper into the sanctity sheets offered. The voice was familiar, happy,
sunny, so sweet and powerful, and one that needed to be utterly ignored for the
sake of sleep.
“This will
be sure to get him.” Another voice, this one more excited, higher, feminine,
and right beside his ear. “Hey, Caine, look! My puppy’s in your room!”
The speed
at which he rose from his comfortable spot locked inside bedding was
astounding, and had to, Holden and Az were sure, break some sort of record
somewhere. The mocha iris turned wide and frantically searched, shimmering in
the daylight as his trained dark hair fell over the scar that sat adjacent. White knuckles wrapped themselves in the
sheets beneath him and finally, coming up empty with no hellhounds in sight, he
relaxed and turned his burning eye towards the giggling duo.
“Glad
you’re so amused.,” he growled, sweeping his feet free from the bed, glad he
had passed out on the bed with his pants on. His shirt, on the other hand, was
another story, and scanning the floor, he brought up nothing. Oh, well, he
figured, waving a mental hand; he’d find it later. Feet never leaving the
carpet, he shuffled to the bathroom with an exaggerated slowness due to a
loathing of mornings…or at least this one.
“It’s not
our fault you’re being so lazy!”
Strawberry hair swam into view as he regarded his reflection in the
bathroom, fingers straightening a few errant scarlet strands. “Your alarm went off three times!”
Holden
peered in behind his shoulder, talking more to the woman than to the subject of
the conversation. “He didn’t come home until really late last night, you know.
And he sounded really tired, just sort of stumbling towards the bed. I could
hear him from my room!”
“Ooooh!”
Azriel reached over and blindly
poked Caine’s smooth cheek. “I thought you were coming straight home after the
set. Did you happen to run into Kis-”
“No, okay!”
He jerked his face away, before ushering them from the bathroom, one hand on
each back. “God, I just woke up, you harpies! Give me a second to myself, will
ya?”
The soft
click of the lock sliding into place echoed through the room for a moment, and
he leaned against the cheap wood beneath the plastic hooks were they draped
their robes. His eye darkened, then
slammed shut as fingernails scratched one layer of eggshell pain from the wood
of the door. The nightmare -was that all? - slammed into his
consciousness with all the weight of Armedgeddon, and all the power to send his
world shattering apart.
“No…nonononononono!”
He was
afraid to look into the mirror, afraid to breath, afraid to see the evidence he
willed away, but he forced himself to meet a gaze with that reflection. Pushing
himself from the door, he crossed the distance, only to steady himself against
the sink as he stared into the one brown eye. Flushed in the bones in the high
rounds of his cheeks, but the same old Caine.
The sigh
ran out with a flood of relief. Same ol’ Caine, same ol’ human Caine.
~*~
Class
rolled by with the speed of a dying
man, and with an idle eye, Caine watched the time tick past on the round metal
clocks he remembered from high. The professor was babbling on about the
importance of iamb pentameters, or something, and he was content to listen with
half an ear. Holden was in a class two doors down and he figured anything being
taught in this school had to be better than the drivel he was listening to now.
Sloane
kicked him from the row beside him, mouthing, “Make your boredom anymore
obvious and the teacher will kill you.”
Caine waved
a hand before he grabbed the mechanical pencil that teetered dangerously close
to the edge of his desk. Fine, fine, he’d look interested; maybe drawing would
help. His thumb pushed down on the black eraser, lead peeking out, before
opening his notebook and began drawing lines. One curve here, one straight one
here…were those eyes?
The world
faded to white noise, the teacher’s drone becoming soft and almost lulling. He
drew his bottom lip in between his teeth, gnawing on it as his hand slipped
around the paper, growing faster with each second, lines filling, colored,
shadowed. Faces grew from nothingness, art taking life.
When the
universe came crashing back down, he was staring into the face of Vincent, his
open mouth extending towards his own ecstatic face, teeth flashing in the most
promising of fas-
He slammed
his notebook shut, eyes widening as he watched the class gather their items and
move towards the door.
“You seem
out of it today,” Sloane commented, gathering his books onto a notebook
littered with doodles and letters, notes peaking out from all sides. He gave
his vocalist a sidelong glance out of the corner of his glasses. “Are you
okay?”
“Hm?” He was gathering his own items with a speed
he didn’t believe he possessed, slapping them into the crook of his arm and
cradling them against his chest. He wondered if the other could see the
confusion etched into his skin, if he could hear his heart thudding and
threatening to burst through his flesh and across the room. “Me? Just tired.
Didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Don’t
forget the show tomorrow,” he said, knowing that the other wouldn’t, but
finding some sort of need to mention it anyway; call it small talk, if you
will. He began heading towards the
door, free hand pushing the glasses up the slim bridge of his nose.
Caine
nodded, hair bouncing as he moved in quick repitition. He wanted to go home, wanted to lock himself in his room and
forget all of this, all of these little incidences and abnormalities. Concerts seemed a distant fantasy lingering on
some mist coated isle, dreams he didn‘t want to dwell on. However, obligations
did offer blessed moments of pure reprise, and he couldn’t change it now, so he
simply nodded before slipping out the door, much to the following cries of his
friend, who pleaded with him to wait up.
~*~
The sun had
been devoured by the hungry horizon several hours ago, and another night was in
full bloom, black rose against the sky. No moon proved her place again this
night, and the darkness swallowed the labored panting that echoed in the
smallish room.
When the
single brown iris was suddenly visible in the room, white threaded through with
sporadic red, it rolled around franticly searching for something or someone in
the shadows. His narrow chest hitched, breath caught and slamming against lungs
that had ceased to function correctly some time ago, some time while he slept.
One foot was protruding from the protective layer of blankets, and quickly, he
tucked it back in with a small frown as he sat up on his elbows.
A blind
hand found the lamp on the nightstand beside his bed and turned it on with
practiced ease. At first, the crash of
illumination across his eye was enough to force a momentary blindness before
colors and shapes came back into view.
Caine
sighed, before his hand slid across the naked plane of his chest. Comfort
forced him to sleep in nothing but shorts, and that he did with an eagerness.
His back rested against the wooden headboard, feeling his spine rest against
his as he looked down to the hand that lay across his lap, atop starched
blankets.
Blood, so dark it looked
rusted and black, covered the flat of his palm, diving into the predicting
lines of life and love with a need to conquer, to dominate, to control. It was
carved into every crack, every crater, thick beneath his fingernails and across
his callouses.
His wide, quivering eye snaked
slowly down, down across the flat length of his chest as he realized it wasn't
sweat that trickled down in heated rivers. He was afraid of what he would see,
was afraid of the four ragged cuts across his chest, of the blood welling to
kiss the air and dribble in streamish waterfalls down over the tightness of his
abdomen.
The marks screamed back at
him, offensive and alluring all in one bout. Thinking slowly came to a halt as
he trailed one coated finger across one of the rivers and brought it to his
mouth, arm trembling. Once the liquid danced along his tongue, his mouth was on
fire, his mind was numb, and his body ached for another taste, which he gladly
gave as he licked each finger clean, lips forming a word over and over again as
he did.
"...Vincent..."
Morning would come soon,
igniting the shadows with a wanton glee, and this would be another lazy dream,
at least until he spied his chest.
But even that might lose
importance as the sun burned high among the clouds that next day.
…to be continued….