The Jaws of Loneliness

Disclaimer: Yes, yes , yes, I know. None of the characters mentioned belong to me, as sad as it makes me. The content is all my own accept anything referring to the actual plotline of Hideyui Kikuchi’s ‘Demon Deathchase’.

I tried to stick to Hideyui Kikuchi’s style of writing, I think I did ok. I hope. Unfortunately, however, this storydosnt get smutty like my stories tipicaly get, for some of you im sorry, for other, im sure your happier this way. ^^

Enjoy!

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The Jaws of Loneliness

Chapter 1

I

Myel Link stood over the remains of Mashira. One had to be of considerable strength to dispatch the wily Barbarois. He looked at Charlotte’s footprints that led off into the forest, followed by a set he didn’t recognize.

Rage and fear filling his cold heart, he walked into the trees. Aside from the mutilated form of Mashira in the flowers behind him, the still waters of the lake remained undisturbed and peaceful. Only now the placid waters mirrored the stars instead of clear blue sky.

†

Quite some time later, deep into the forest, D sat alone on a rotted tree stump. He sighed quietly and slouched forward, sweeping his hat from his head he stared up at the chill night sky. If it wasn’t that his face showed no emotion at all, you may have thought that the decades of loneliness where beginning to weigh on his strong shoulders.

“Maybe it’s time you found yourself a girl,” came a strange impish voice that seemed to emanate from nowhere in particular. “Seeing a girl like that has got to give you a little hope, eh? You know what I’m say’n boss?”

D clenched his left hand into a fist and the voice was quieted with a muffled curse. The girl Charlotte had pled her heart to him and he had let her go, though he didn’t really know why. The girl really did love the vampire Myel Link, her mind remained pure and unaltered. He had a hard time understanding it.

When the other girl, Leila had fallen asleep beside him he took his horse and walked away into the woods, as silent as death. He just wasn’t the type to endure company.

He was thinking of what he was going to do now. He could have easily taken the girl and been on his way to claim the reward, but he just wasn’t the type to force someone to go home against their will. If it truly was their will. But still, he could have at least taken proof back with him and told them she was dead. He just wasn’t thinking clearly. He was getting sloppy. He needed a break.

“Um, I hate to interrupt your brooding, but we’re not going to be alone much longer.” Said the cantankerous voice, risking a nervous statement.

“Yes,” came D’s smooth reply. “I am more then aware.”

“O—Kay, but all I’m say’n is that maybe we should be a bit more careful you know, you don’t know who or what it is, and there are a lot of who and whats out there you don’t want to mess around with.”

D remained still, and silent.

“All right, I’m just trying to be the voice of reason here.”

Still there was no response from D. His eyes trained to the stars, not even acknowledging the shadowy form that grew out of the shadows of the trees behind him. The light of the moon revealed a strong, pale faced silhouette against the black of the night.

“I have left her alone for now,” said D in his smooth voice. “She is already on her way back to your carriage to find you.”

“Yes, dampire, I am more than aware, but I have a few other things left to deal with first.” Myel Link said as he stepped up to D and leaned down.

D still didn’t move from his position, he didn’t even seem to be breathing as the vampire reached around the hunter and traced a clawed finger around this neck under his chin.

“It would be so easy to defeat you like this, right now,” he pressed his finger against D’s flesh and drew a single drop of blood. “Why do you not fight me now?” Myel yelled in the hunter’s ear, frustrated by his silence. “Why don’t you move, why do you just sit there!?”

“I do not fight a man who lacks the will to fight,” D’s voice was steady, betraying nothing.

Link sighed as he ran his fingers through D’s hair, pulling it back from his face to reveal D’s pale neck. The Noble leaned in further until his lips brushed the youth’s skin right over the vessels that pumped life through his cursed body.

“Why are you here, Myel?” asked D closing his eyes against the light of the moon on his face.

“Ah, D, the question is why are you here.” Link said coyly, stepping away from the calm hunter with a flourish of his black cape.

“What do you mean?” D looked at the vampire for the first time, his hard gaze attempting to pierce the noble’s air of mystery, a concept that normally went the other way.

“Why are you here? I believe it to be a simple question. Why are you here, right now, chasing after me?”

“I am here to retrieve the girl and take her back to her family in Galiosha, for a reward of twenty million dallas.”

“Are you sure?” The vampire turned around and walked back to stand before D.

D’s blank expression failed to hide the fact that he was growing tired of the vampire’s word games.

“Well perhaps that is all that you are aware of, and it may even be so, but it is not all that there is.” Link looked thoughtful for a moment. “I am sure that you are very much aware that your reputation precedes you wherever you may go.”

“You took the girl to lure me out,” D said dryly.

“Ah yes, but that is not all my friend,” Myel Link spun away again. “All my life I have been alone it seems. My existence and my kind had, shall I say, their day in the sun, and now both fade away never to be mourned. I won’t mention your part in that.” Link’s voice sounded sad and distant.

“Make your point, Myel.”

“Ah, I see that you tire of my ramblings. I apologize, but when you are as old as I am, that tends to happen.”

D was silent and there was a long pause before the noble finally went on.

“I have longed for you D. In ways that I have only recently begun to understand.”

“Then you do not love the girl.”

“No, I do not.” Link looked sad for a moment. “It was necessary seduction in order to lure you out. A girl with a family wealthy enough to offer a considerable reward to catch your attention. She is a terribly sweet and innocent girl, it’s a shame to put her though so much.”

“As long as the girl is safe and the reward still offered it makes no difference to me,” was D’s unemotional reply to the vampire’s words. He stood and placed his hat back on his head.

“Wait!” Myel called out when the striking youth turned to leave. He reached out to grab the hunter by the shoulder to stop him, but he found that he couldn’t move. The vampire felt as if his whole body had been frozen solid by the hunter’s powerful aurora. D stopped with his back to the noble, silent and foreboding.

“You don’t know what you are saying, Myel. You don’t know what you are asking me.”

“And neither do you, D,” the vampire said as he tried to fight back against the hold D had on him.

The hunter grabbed the reigns of his cyborg horse and began to walk away into the forest, the noble watching helplessly as he began to fade into the trees.

“Do you not feel the jaws of loneliness clamp down upon your neck, D!?” Myel Link called out after D just before he disappeared into the shadows. He could have sworn he saw the hunter hesitate for just an instant before he melted into the night and was gone.


†

Myel Link had almost reached his carriage when he stopped. It would have been so easy to walk away and leave it all behind and give up. Perhaps he could even follow through with his promises to the human girl. Life with a living woman that loved him couldn’t be so bad, could it?

“Darling!” came an obviously feminine cry as he stepped into the clearing around the lake. Tears of joy streamed down Charlottes face as she ran into his arms. “Oh, I’m so sorry I disobeyed your wishes, I should have never left your side.”

“It is alright now, love. All is well, now let us go from here.”

After helping the girl into the carriage Link took his place in the driver’s seat. Now that his Barbarois body guards had been disposed of he had to take control once more. He snapped the reigns and the horses began to move, carrying them closer to there original destination.

†

“Good man,” said the detached voice that always seemed to be close by.

D was walking through the forest, leading his horse along behind him, picking his way through the trees and underbrush, his mind tuned to things one could only imagine. He had been walking for a while in silence before the obnoxious carbuncle began to try and lighten the mood.

“I mean,” the voice snorted, a strange thing for a detached voice to do. “I mean, why have a drooling vampire clinging to your arm when you have so many other, more attractive, offers. You know, you should really reconsider Leila, she had got one great body, if you don’t mind the battle scars, and besides, she’s got a thing for you. Even if she won’t admit it, though I doubt you would have notice any of this.”

You really couldn’t be sure, but it almost looked like D’s left hand was drooling.

“But hey!” continued the meddling cancer. “It’s not like you really need anybody anyways. You have me to keep you company. Though you been alone so long you probably don’t even notice anymore.”

D suddenly came to a stop.

“What, what’s going on!?” came a worried voice.

Without a word, or moment of hesitation D swung up onto his steed and turned it around, kicking it into a gallop the way he had come. The voice muffled by D tight grip on the reins. What the bothersome voice didn’t know was that D had been all too aware of the decades of loneliness he lived. He noticed every day.

†

The lake was still in view when a shadowy cloaked figure on horseback stepped out of the trees and into the path of the carriage. Myel Link reined in the horses, caming to a halt only yards from D’s silver lined silhouette.

“What do you want from me, D? We wish only to live on in peace,” the vampire said coolly from his seat in the carriage.

D was silent, unmoving. Somewhere under the shadows of the hunter’s hat Link knew that those steel cold eyes were watching him. Waiting for him to make a move.

“How hard do those jaws of loneliness hold you?” The beautiful youth finally asked in his smooth tone.

Myel Link held his fist to his throat dramatically and leaned to the side. “Oh they take my breath away, they hold on tight. Strangling away my immortal life and never letting me go. If only I could know love’s sweet embrace just once in my wretched life I might succumb to times fate in peace. If only to taste your beautiful lips once I might die in ecstasy.” The vampire’s voice seemed forlorn and far away as if faded into silence.

“Myel?” came a delicate voice from within the carriage window. “What’s happening, my love?”

“Nothing for you to fear, darling,” the vampire told her. “Soon we will be free, to love among the stars,” as he spoke his crimson gaze never left the hunter’s shadowy face.

“Die monster!” came a shrill cry from the trees followed by the sound of a stake gun releasing its deadly borage.

Distracted, Myel Link only had time to look in the direction of the voice and see the two wooden stakes speeding straight for his heart. His eyes widened in horror as, too late, he lifted his arm in defense and a shroud of black came over him.

Something heavy hit him in the chest and knocked him off of the carriage and to the ground where he lay motionless. A shriek of horror came from inside the carriage as the door flew open and the human girl flung herself out into the dark to find her cursed lover.

Myel Link lay still on the ground where he fell, feeling a heaviness on his chest. And when he opened his eyes he found that he couldn’t draw breath as he stared in shock at the two spikes that protruded from the chest of the beautiful hunter who lay, collapsed, over him.

“No no no no no,” Link pleaded, his voice a whisper, as he sat forward, taking D limp body into his arms and holding him close. “This can not be.”

“Oh, thank the gods!” cried Charlotte running around the carriage to find her love alive and their enemy dead in his arms. The happy face she expected from the vampire didn’t lean up at her, however. She watched, dumbstruck, as the man she loved began to sob miserably as he clutched the body of the hunter to his chest.

Then Leila was beside her. “D!” she screamed as she ran to the vampire and the fallen hunter, everything forgotten. “But how? Why?” She began to kneel down beside the youth before she remembered the noble.

She quickly crouched into a fighting stance and reached for the gun at her hip, but before her fingers even touched the steel handle her feet lifted from the ground as Link wrapped his hand around her fragile neck and picked her up. His arm hardened into something stronger than steel as he tightened his grip on her throat and closed off her airway. The last thing that went through Leila’s mind was the fact that she couldn’t even scream as her neck snapped. The sound resonating out through the trees as her body went limp. Enraged the vampire threw her body out over the forest where it disappeared with the sound of branches breaking as her corps crashed through he thick canopy.

“Oh, Myel!” cried Charlotte as she ran to her loves side, but instead of falling into his strong arms he struck her with a wide swing of his arm and flung her to the ground. “But, what’s wrong, love?” she asked him, lifting herself up with her delicate hands in the dirt. She touched her face where he had struck her and found blood seeping from a deep gash on her cheek.

“Leave me,” Link said turning back to D’s lifeless form and kneeling down beside it. He ran his fingers down the hunter’s face, lingering on his soft lips. “You even leave a beautiful corps, D.”

He wrenched the stakes from D’s ribcage and threw them to the dirt, picking up the dampire’s body and turning to walk toward the lake to burry him.

“Please tell me what’s wrong, darling,” the human girl cried coming to her feet. “Why do you not rejoice, we are free now aren’t we?”

The vampire spun on the girl, fire in his undead eyes. “You know nothing. You are nothing more than a pawn in the middle of a game between men. A naïve girl with nothing better to do but dream of princes that come rescue you and take you away to live happily ever after. I used you, and now I’m done with you. You can stay or go, do as you wish. But remember this, you may be able to live happily ever after, but for two cursed souls like D and myself, who aren’t even able to dream about happiness, we have to fight for every moment we have.” The vampire turned away and continued to walk to the lake, the girl all but forgotten.

The next thing Charlotte knew is that he had picked up one of the discarded stakes with tears of anger and grief streaming down her face. With the weapon raised above her head she ran for the vampire, closing the distance between them to three feet before the nobles hand, steeled and clawed, pierced her breast and extended through her heart and out her back.

A look of horror crossed her face and her body jolted as Link retracted his arm and she fell to her knees in the dirt. The vampire didn’t even bother to look back as he continued on. He didn’t even stay long enough to watch her die.

II

D’s body was placed gently on the ground while Myel Link began to dig a grave for the beautiful hunter by the water’s edge. He was on his knees digging with his hands, a mound of dirt growing beside him.

Three feet down in his hole the vampire stopped to listen. His ears picking up a strange scraping accompanied by an angry grumbling. He stood and looked around, his eyes locking onto D. Or more precisely, D’s left hand, which was palm down in the dirt, the fingers flexing to dig up the soil.

Myel Link stared at the hand as it stopped scratching at the dirt and began to crawl towards the lake. When D’s arm was fully extended toward the water his fingers began to pull and drag his heavy body, inch by inch to the water’s edge. Link thought he heard panting and grunting.

“Hey you stiff, I think you’ve gained some, you really got to go on a diet or something if you’re gonna have me draggin’ your stupid body around for you.” Link was stunned by the voice that seemed to emanate from D’s hand.

“Hey!...You…Vampire…” the hand said in between heavy breaths, it had stopped with seven feet still to go, and it appeared to be panting.

Link stood where he was, dumbfounded and still staring.

“What, are you stupid?” the voice scolded.

The noble stammered. “W-what do you need?”

“A little help would be appreciated.”

Link stepped out of his hole and approached the hunter’s body and grabbed D’s wrist, turning his hand to face palm up. A pair of eyes and a little frowning mouth glared up at him from the creases in the hunter’s rough hand.

“Well what are you waiting for, take me to the water, I need water,” the little face said harshly.

“What are you?” Link asked, his brow furrowed.

“What do I look like, your mother?” the hand grouched. “I’m a carbuncle, a parasite if you will. Now take me to the lake if you want you precious D back.”

The hand grumbled noncoherently as the vampire picked up D’s body once more and carried it to the water’s edge. “Don’t know what he was thinking.” Link could hear the carbuncle say. “Probably wasn’t if you asked me, but then again nobody ever asks me do they?”

The vampire set D down by the water and held the hand palm down over the water.

“A little lower!” the hand said, and Link lowered the hand. “There! Stop!” Link stopped and listened to the strange slurping noises that came from D’s hand as the little face drank. “Okay that’s good, you can bring me back now.”

Myel obliged and lifted the hand back up and around to face him. “Alright now, air was easy, then earth, water, now all I need is fire, think you can manage that, vampire?”

Link reached down beside him and picked a stick up off the ground and held it up to the little face. With a quick though the stick combusted into hot flames.

“Show off.”

“Is this good?” asked the vampire.

“Yeah yeah, it’s perfect, now shut up.”

The noble glowered at the foul cancer as it spoke, and as he watched the little mouth , complete with little teeth, opened wide and began to suck in air. The fire on the stick swirled and disappeared into the tiny face until it disappeared with a lick of the lips with a tinny little pink tongue.

“Okay, now put me down and stand back.”

Link set the arm down alongside D’s still body. He stood and stepped back a few paces and watched the strange spectacle of D’s arm swinging up off the ground and slapping, palm down, onto his chest. All was still for a long time as link stood watching. Then the hand slid aside to the ground and D sat up.

“You know, that isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do,” the voice scolded. “Someday I might not be able to bring you back again.”

“We can cross that river when we come to it,” the reanimated hunter said rubbing his chest. He stood up almost as if nothing had happened and turned to face Link.

“Thank you,” the hunter said in his typical smooth tone.

There was a loud scoff. “Thank him? I did all the work, you ungrateful half-breed.” D looked at his hand and clenched it before letting it fall back down to his side.

“I owe you my life, D,” the vampire said bowing low.

“You owe me nothing.”

D turned away and began to walk away toward the carriage and his horse, but before he was able to move more then five feet from the vampire he was stopped by a strong hand on his shoulder. Link spun the hunter around, his cold lips pressed to D’s, kissing him hard. Even though D had the strength to resist him he didn’t, though neither did he kiss the vampire back.

“The sun is rising,” D said calmly when the noble finally released him.

The vampire looked longingly over his shoulder toward the east where he could indeed see the sky beginning to brighten. They walked silently, side by side, back to Link’s carriage and D’s black steed.

The last thing link saw as he shut tight the carriage door was D mounting his mighty cyborg horse and turning away. Link knew he would likely never see the hunter again, and if they did meet somewhere down the road, one of them would likely never see another night.

†

As the sun set Myel Link’s eyes opened and he stared uncaring at the display on the lid to his coffin. The carriage had moved back to the lakeside, but that didn’t seem too strange to the vampire, untended horses tended to travel.

He rose and stepped outside and his senses immediately picked up another presence. The horses were all loose, wandering about grazing on the flowers and grasses that surrounded the lake. He turned and stared at the sleeping form of the vampire hunter hunkered down in the drivers seat of the carriage, wrapped in his tattered traveling cloak. The vampire smiled happily and climbed up beside the beautiful youth.

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Well I hope liked it. If I get enough of a good response to this I might continue it. But I don’t know. It depends on if I get enough request, and if I come up with any inspiration, even if it winds up just being smut. But woo…

Thank you for reading!!

Valicetra