Disclaimer: I do not own Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts, nor am I making any money off this fanfiction.

-o-o-

Requiem

Chapter Two

Unfamiliar Surroundings

-o-o-

Cloud Strife had never intended to become a werewolf.

Like so many other things in his life, it had just happened.

One moment, he’d been a regular human, mortal, easy to kill, easy to make suffer—the next? A man who shed that very shape at the sight of the full moon and became a wolf that hunted through the woods just like any other beast. Preying on the weak that he found… be it a rabbit or a deer or, a handful of times when he had first come into this part of himself and had lost control, the soft belly of the human shell he’d abandoned.

Being a werewolf was something he could have bypassed. Was something, if given the choice, he would have resolutely turned down. And it wasn’t that he couldn’t live with himself if he was—and it wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the Change, horrid though it could be. No, those things and more were simple enough compared to what was standing right in front of him. The real reason he wished he could turn back time and escape the fate he had been dealt so unfairly.

Sephiroth was bent over his desk, his pen’s tip scratching along the pages of the book he was writing in. His only source of light was the lamp on his desktop, that and the lightning that flickered outside. The rest of the house was dark, swamped with shadows and the creak of floorboards settling after a long day. A spooky setting fit for the best of them, but if Cloud was honest, none of them—Zack, Sephiroth, himself—really needed light in this kind of atmosphere. Their night vision worked just fine.

“You wanted to see me?” Cloud asked at last, when it was apparent Sephiroth wasn’t going to start the conversation. He rarely did these days.

“Yes.” Sephiroth looked up from his book, and he narrowed his eyes, the green irises otherwise unreadable. Was Sephiroth unhappy? Angry? Was he finished with Cloud once and for all? None of these options seemed too far-fetched, and so Cloud glanced away lest his pack leader see the trace of melancholy on his face.

Sephiroth’s voice came to him again, a murmur in all the shadows. “It’s about the vampire.”

Arching an eyebrow and trying not to frown too hard, Cloud chanced a look back at him. Sephiroth’s eyes studied his intently. “Which one?”

The silver-haired man’s eyebrow rose a notch. “Don’t be coy with me, Cloud. You know the one.” He reached back, his hands pulling all of that hair over his shoulder as he set his pen down. A band appeared from a pocket hidden on his person.

“Riku?” Cloud chanced, though he already knew the answer. Had known—liked to test Sephiroth’s nerves as Sephiroth so often tested his own.

“Yes.” Sephiroth began quickly working the band into his hair, and his eyes were on the desk. Cloud knew that he saw everything, missed nothing despite this. “He trusts you. I want you to find out if the boy was turned. If he’s been…” The man trailed off for several moments, and Cloud didn’t prompt him this time. He simply settled back and listened to the rain pound against the roof, kept his ears open for that distant rumble of thunder.

Across the city, it was probably storming harder. It always did.

“Well,” Sephiroth sighed. “We’ll decide what to do then.”

Cloud lifted a brow, pursed his lips… wondered what he had ever found so attractive about Sephiroth in the first place. The wolf was tame now, but Cloud knew if he angered him, or if he tried his patience, the act would be over. And Cloud, when all was said and done, would spend weeks recovering from the mental assault Sephiroth would lay on him—…and the physical, if he was unlucky enough.

He wondered again. Wondered if he’d rather heal his wounds as they were inflicted, again and again, harder and harder—or deal with the emotional instability Sephiroth continuously gave him. It was a tough call.

“When do you want me to report back to you?” he asked.

“You can wait a few nights,” Sephiroth said easily enough. His hands settled on the arms of his chair, and he cocked his head to the side—like an animal, a dog, a wolf that had heard something. But Cloud hadn’t, so he assumed it was just a gesture, nothing more. “Come back to me when it’s not suspicious—when you won’t risk detection from Riku’s right-hand.”

Leon.

“All right.”

“Speaking of which…” And now Sephiroth’s lips curved into a smirk, an expression he tended to wear far too often lately. The smugness in his eyes was entirely too knowing, and just the mere sight of all of it made Cloud want to leave and never come back.

But he had to stay.

“You need to continue to keep up the charade with him. You are still on top of that particular matter…” And those eyes glittered now. “Aren’t you?”

Cloud kept his gaze on one of the various bookshelves in the room. Light from the lamp flickered over it—cast shadows. Cloud watched them play and distantly wished he could be a part of them. Anything was better than here.

“Cloud?” Sephiroth drawled slowly, his tongue rolling over the name in such a way to make it seem like it had more syllables than it did.

“Yes…” Cloud confirmed to his earlier question.

“Good.” The pack leader settled back in his chair, his wrists against the table edge, and Cloud took that as his cue to leave.

He had just made it to the door, his fingers brushing against the knob, when Sephiroth’s voice came to him again through the darkness—softer now, but Cloud wasn’t fooled. It was that particular tone that he feared the most.

“Oh, and Cloud?” Like fingers playing down his spine with all the delicacy they would treat a piano’s keys.

Cloud stifled a sigh and didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see what expression Sephiroth held for him. He was sure he wouldn’t like it.

“If I see where his fangs marked you again…”

A long moment passed between them, long enough that Cloud got the implied threat sufficiently. He wasn’t too sure what Sephiroth had planned to say, but he knew the man well enough to know that he wouldn’t have liked it. Leon probably wouldn’t have, either.

Outside, the sky rumbled, angry as ever.

“I want a full report when you get back,” Sephiroth said, as if the realm of their discussion had never left the topic of Riku to begin with. Cloud heard a shuffle of papers, the scritch of a pen tip. Apparently Sephiroth was going back to work.

Cloud snorted softly and left the room before Sephiroth could find anything else to say to him. His boots were a clink and a thud against the hardwood, and he listened to their monotonous sound as he made his way downstairs, his hand on the banister. Windows lined the wall beside him, near the ceiling, and he could see the constant flicker of lightning against their surfaces. Wind howled, like Cloud’s pack during the full moon.

He paused halfway down the stairs to slip his cell phone from his pocket. It was sleek and black, and when his thumb pressed its edge, it slid open with a quiet shick. Numbers took on the color of a pale green, and the screen’s light illuminated his face.

No missed calls.

His thumb now hovered over the number one—speed dial. Uncertainty battled within him… the desire to hear Leon’s voice versus Sephiroth bearing down on him suddenly. But that was an old fear, and not one worth paying much attention to. Sephiroth couldn’t hear Leon’s voice through the phone over the storm. His hearing wasn’t that good.

Cloud’s lips pulled into a smirk as he held down the number.

“Hey,” came a second later.

“Leon,” he said, completing his journey down the stairs, “I’m on my way over there now.”

-o-o-

Just as lightning lit up the sky outside in several forks of eye-stinging brilliance, thunder boomed and rattled the window panes and Sora’s heart.

His fingers clutched tightly around the shirt in his hands as his head jerked up. Rain continued to patter against the window in steady waves, so much of it that it was like a sheet of water. He stared at it for several long moments, his heart still pounding. And it was only when the ringing left his ears and the spots behind his eyes faded that he eased his grip and allowed himself to swallow.

Storms.

Storms had never scared him before.

Artemis looked up from where he was standing by the closet and grinned. “Afraid of storms?”

Sora finally wrenched his eyes away from the window and turned them instead to the older vampire. He’d chased Sora down and dragged him off to his new “chambers,” which were apparently connected to Riku’s via a door in his bedroom’s wall. Not only was that thought a little creepy, Sora had no choice in the matter. For the rest of his days, he’d be forced to deal with the fact that Riku, his master who had forced him into this life, could intrude on him whenever he wanted.

Or spy.

Or eavesdrop.

But Sora had the feeling that maybe Riku didn’t need to be next door for that. Maybe he could be anywhere…

Sora shivered and shook his head. “No… Just—seemed louder than normal.” He unconsciously touched his ear and then tucked strands of his hair behind it before he lifted the fabric in his hands to study it.

Short-sleeved, black—soft as hell. Buckles fastened its sides together, and the fabric itself would fall to Sora’s thighs when worn. Not a fashion Sora normally followed, but what worried him more was that it was exactly his size. As were all the other garments Artemis was currently rifling through in the walk-in closet Riku had permitted him. So… the vampire really hadn’t been lying when he’d said he’d been watching Sora for a long time.

Long enough to prepare for Sora’s presence…

Sora shifted, uneasiness settling inside him again. For some reason, now that he saw his well-furnished room and the other accommodations Riku had made, it just seemed to make his situation more… permanent. As if he really wasn’t going back to the life he’d had before last night.

He realized his fingers were shaking around the shirt.

Artemis suddenly pushed some hangers in the closet to the side, and the ensuing sound of wire screeching over metal caused Sora to wince yet again. Though it still wasn’t as nerve-wracking as the thunder had been. That had sounded like a thousand drums going off beside his ear.

“Oi, yeah,” Artemis said. “I’m so used to this enhanced hearing that it’s all the same now.”

That gave Sora some pause, and he clenched his fingers in the shirt again as he considered his next words. Artemis had been around for a long time… Or, at least, long enough that he’d already mostly forgotten what it was like to be human. Artemis had told him that feeding would all come naturally soon enough, because that’s what humans were—food. Nothing more.

But didn’t he feel slightly revolted at the thought of… eating something he’d once been? It was like cannibalism, except not, because he was a vampire now. Still. Sora couldn’t shake the thought that he was betraying humankind by forcing himself to see them as dinner.

He wanted to ask Artemis if he ever felt guilty about it… but he was afraid he already knew the answer, and it was one he wouldn’t enjoy.

So he waited another moment, soothing his fingers over the shirt Artemis had told him to hold onto, before he sighed and forced the question out. “Artemis?”

“Yeah?” Artemis held up some pants to examine them.

“…How old are you?”

“Mmm? Twenty-three.”

Sora sighed. “No.”

His hands pausing as they lifted a pair of pants with buckles and zippers and straps decorating every surface, Artemis found a spot on the wall to stare at and became very still. It didn’t even look as though he were breathing, and maybe… maybe he wasn’t. Sora suddenly wondered if he was only breathing now out of habit, and not because of necessity. If that were the case, if he held his breath now, would he be like Artemis, still quite alive? Or would he start to choke on the lack of air?

Sora decided that he’d experiment with that at another time. Right now, he needed to pay attention to Artemis’s answer, which had yet to come. The taller vampire finally wetted his lips, though, and then tossed the pants at Sora.

Sora wasn’t deterred. “How old are you?” he repeated, more firmly.

“Old enough,” was all Artemis said before the door creaked on its hinges and Sora found himself alone in the room.

He pursed his lips and lowered the pants from where they half dangled over his face.

Well.

At least I tried.

If he had riled up the laidback, cheerful vampire enough to rush from the room, then surely he’d struck a nerve. Was it just Artemis, or did the other vampires guard their ages, too? Did they all act like sensitive women climbing into their thirties?

Sora set the articles of clothing to the side and rubbed his hands over his face. What would Riku do if he were to ask his master the same question?

Actually… how old was Riku, anyway?

So many questions, he thought. So few answers.

Then I guess it’s time to start asking.

-o-o-

Unfortunately, by the time Sora made his way downstairs to try and find Artemis—and he did, at the foot of the swirling staircase—he was informed that Riku wouldn’t be rising for another hour yet. This irritated Sora, because not only was he hungry, he felt that Riku’s henchmen shouldn’t have to be the ones showing him around. Wasn’t this Riku’s job? Or was Riku in a powerful enough position that he had everyone do his errands for him?

Would Sora be brushed aside even when Riku was awake?

Would he be tossed into others’ hands to be taken care of while he adjusted to his new undead life?

Riku had said he only wanted to win the war. If that was true, Sora was just a pawn, right? A pawn Riku could carelessly make and toss aside at will until there was some use for him…

Artemis must have read the look on his face. “Master Riku will be taking you to feed when he wakes up, Sora. He greatly wanted to be with you, but he wasn’t sure when you would rise. All vampires have their own sleeping patterns, you know.”

“Do vampires really even sleep, though?” Sora asked as he tried to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach that the word “feed” now brought. He’d never be able to think of food the same way again.

“Not really… but sometimes it sounds better to say that ‘we sleep’ instead of ‘we die’.”

They were walking slowly through some side corridor. Like the others Sora had seen, a strip of red carpet ran along its hardwood floor, so thick that their footsteps weren’t even audible. Although Sora wasn’t sure if this last was because of his own abilities or if it really was the carpet’s doing.

Artemis had a wistful smile on his face as he trailed his fingers along the cream colored wall beside him. There wasn’t much light to go by, but then again, Sora could see easily enough. And instead of mostly grays and flashes of dull colors here and there and only shadowy lumps of where objects were, he was able to pick out everything. The lights could have been on, for how well his night vision adjusted. Granted, there was still a muted haze to everything, but so what?

A tiny grin crossed his lips. Cool.

“You asked me about my age, and I didn’t know how to answer,” Artemis murmured to his right. “But you must understand, Sora, I could rightfully kill you for it.”

That jerked Sora out of his reverie, and he swallowed as he lifted his gaze to find those dark brown eyes boring hard into his. Artemis’s expression was completely somber now, and Sora almost wished that some light would come back to his face. It was much better than what this impassiveness was.

“Why…?” Sora’s throat closed around the word, and no matter how much he swallowed, he couldn’t get it to unclench.

“Because…” And now Artemis’s eyes flickered forward again, and his voice was as grim as the set of his jaw and his lips. “Vampires guard their secrets closely. Any sign of weakness… any knowledge that could lend an enemy a hand in destroying us…”

Sora didn’t know why he felt so alarmed. “You have enemies?”

Artemis’s chuckle was soft, but bitter. “You have them, too. They’re all around you.”

“But wait—knowing your age can be a strength for me against you?”

“Any knowledge, Sora. Any.”

“Well, that seems…” Sora trailed off, not knowing how to phrase it without coming off as offensive.

“Smart,” Artemis finished.

“That’s not what I was going to say—”

“In any case, you should be more worried about the enemies I mentioned.”

“I guess so…” Sora frowned and watched his feet as he walked. “It’s just hard to take you seriously about it. I don’t have any enemies. I haven’t made anyone mad. I haven’t done anything to make someone want to kill me.”

“There are those who would kill a vampire on sight just because of what they are,” Artemis murmured. “You’d do well to keep that in mind, Sora.”

And he brushed ahead of him, the tail end of his French braid swishing between his shoulder blades.

Sora stifled a groan and followed after him.

And why did he think I would think this was an honor again?

-o-o-

When Artemis led him into an ornately decorated room that distinctly resembled something close to a secondary lounge, it was to the sound of shouting. Well, one person was shouting, the other person looked as if he were ready to throttle the person shouting.

The latter was Leon. Sora recognized him instantly. He wasn’t sure if it was the shaggy hair or the way those gray eyes were currently narrowed and promising death in point two seconds—or hell, maybe it was because he’d been there when Sora had gone through the most traumatic event of his life the night before. But Leon definitely looked fit to kill something.

The person he was snarling at, however, Sora didn’t recognize. And he didn’t feel like a vampire at all… that whisper of the grave wasn’t there, that otherworldly sense that tickled along Sora’s senses and hummed a familiar song.

Tall, thin—remarkably thin, in fact. He had a shock of red hair that could have belonged to a porcupine, minus the color. It was one of the most fascinating hairstyles Sora had ever seen, and though it was outlandish, it somehow seemed to do its owner justice. And, to Sora’s new, keen vision, he could see all the fibers in that hair, and it looked about as soft as down fluff from a pillow.

Pale skin, but not quite pale enough to rival a vampire’s. A set of slanted green eyes that were currently scrunched up in frustration. Tattoos (were those tattoos?) in the shape of perfect tear drops graced either cheekbone.

Combined with the headpiece he had on, one ear bud in place, the other dangling over his shoulder, and the baggy cargo pants with a tight black shirt, Sora would say that he was a pretty interesting guy. Casual clothing clashed with the more interesting of characteristics. The end result was that Sora couldn’t tell if he belonged in this mansion, or if he was sorely out of place.

He didn’t have long to ponder on the subject, though, before he was swept up in the transpiring argument.

“I’m not gonna be some bloodsucker’s chew toy!” Porcupine yelled. His hands swished before him, and he wetted his lips quickly before he lowered his voice and started over, “Listen, Leon, you and me? We’re pals. To the end, okay? Never doubt it! But what you’re asking me now? No freakin’ way am I gonna do that!”

A low growl resonated from Leon’s throat. “I’m not asking you, Axel. Riku’s telling you to.”

“Well, Riku can kiss my white, Michael Jackson ass, ‘cause I’m not doing it!”

“You owe him a favor.”

“Nowhere in our agreement did I say that I was willing to be a pet! A PET!” Axel was staring at Leon as if he’d grown an extra head. “A PET, Leon!”

“I heard you the first time…”

Without taking his eyes away from the pair before him, Sora leaned toward Artemis and whispered, “What’s a pet?”

Axel whirled in his direction.

Sora took a step back despite himself. “Uh—hi…?”

Leon merely sighed and dragged his fingers through his hair. Sora had no doubt that Leon knew he’d been standing there with Artemis the entire time. But the fact that Axel hadn’t noticed just further confirmed Sora’s suspicions that he wasn’t a vampire.

“Well, you see, Sora… A pet is… ah…” Artemis waved a hand in a nonchalant fashion. And then he puffed his chest out and began with a flourish, “A pet is a vampire’s—well, it’s a reliable source of food, you might say. There’s a lot of advantages to it. For instance, if you bind someone to you as your pet, they won’t age, and they’ll live with you as you live… maintaining all the traits of a human, but—ageless.”

A shrill ringing cut through the air, standard beeps that didn’t fail to raise goose bumps along Sora’s skin. Oh, God, would the shrieking noises ever stop? He was going to burst an eardrum at this rate.

Leon flipped his phone open after studying the call screen, and his voice was soft as he placed it against his ear. “Hey.”

Artemis watched him a moment before turning back to Sora. “There’s disadvantages as well, of course, but the pros far outweigh the cons, and…”

Sora wasn’t sure he was following, and he was still half caught up in whatever Leon was saying. Then again, now the vampire was hanging up, so he hesitated a second longer before returning Artemis’s attention. “Wait, so then does every vampire have a pet?”

“Well, not quite, it takes a—”

“A certain ability,” Leon interrupted gruffly. He strode toward the three of them, and Sora kept his eyes on him for fear of looking in Axel’s direction. The redhead was studying him rather intently, and Sora didn’t want to see if he was glaring or not.

“Time to go?” Artemis chirped.

Leon’s nod was curt, and without another word, he was gone.

“It’s his shift duty,” Artemis explained. Then he turned toward Axel. “Now—Axel, really, you should be a dear here and get to know Sora before you decide that he thinks you’re only a chew toy.” He was silent for a moment. “Axel?”

Sora looked up at that, only to find green eyes cutting through to his own. He jerked again, ready to back away some more, but he stopped himself. He straightened his shoulders, stood his ground. He wasn’t going to be intimidated, especially when he didn’t even know what was going on.

But then a slow smirk spread across Axel’s face, and it made fingers of sudden anxiety glide down Sora’s spine—enough that he shivered and wrapped his arms loosely around himself… looked away. Not going to be intimidated indeed.

“I changed my mind,” Axel announced.

“Axel, you really shouldn’t disagree, Master Riku will—er… wait, you did?” Artemis perked up, his eyes brightening. “So there won’t be any trouble here, then?”

“Noooope.” Axel’s arm suddenly slid around Sora’s shoulders, and before Sora could even think of pushing him away, the redhead’s lips descended to his ear and mouthed seven simple words against it… in so low a whisper that Sora, with his sensitive hearing, mostly only caught the sensual undertones, “The name’s Axel. A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?”

“Yeah,” Sora said, his throat suddenly dry. “In spades.”

Artemis beamed. “This will work out just dandy!” He was all but clapping his hands together.

It took Sora another several moments before his voice came back to him—before he could distance himself from the distracting feel of Axel’s fingers playing with the small hairs on the back of his neck… distance himself from that warm wash of breath over the shell of his ear that was causing new hungers to take place of the old ones. Because holy shit, his life was suddenly filled with attractive men who seemed to take an interest in him, and he had no idea why.

Nor did he really still have a clue what the hell a pet was, why Axel had been so vehemently protesting it before he’d suddenly stopped, where Leon had gotten off to, or when Riku was going to wake up and explain something.

“I just have a question…” Sora rasped.

“Yeah, mate?” This from Artemis. Axel had finally unwound from Sora and was fiddling with the iPod at his waist.

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on here?”