The Vampire's Requiem [malexmale]

Chapter Four

Chapter Four (Newell)

Midnight was my favorite part of the day.

It was dark and most everything decided to rest, settle down for the evening to recharge for the next day. And it was the time of day when I was most active.

Xed and I moved down the hallway as silently as possible, passing by the front desk where an employee was fast asleep curled up in his seat, face stuck to his keyboard. We cut sharply to the left and approached the door to the pool. There were windows along one wall looking into the main hall, but it was currently blocked by curtains to keep curious lookers out. Even on the other side of the door, the thick stench of chlorine burned my nostrils. I knew it wasn't Xed favorite body of water to use, but we had no choice and we needed to make a plan if we were going to break into yakuza headquarters for a kitsune's star ball.

I had managed to snag a computer earlier to research just what exactly these star balls were and who the kitsune were. I had heard plenty of rumors and read fairy tales with them as minor characters, but not enough to actually hunt one down. Especially if this one was a popular character.

Kitsune were Japanese fox spirits. They're incredibly intelligent and had powerful magical abilities almost equal to that of a witch or sorcerer. Kitsune were associated with the Shinto god, Inari, and said to be Inari's most loyal servants. However, kitsune were also known for being tricksters when it came to getting what they wanted. They would possess humans or take on human form, manipulating their victims to the point where they've killed.

A kitsune's power was measured by how many tails they had. The number of tails meant how long they lived, how much power they had gathered, and how intelligent they were. And if this was a famous kitsune, he was bound to have plenty of tails.

But then again, if he was trapped by the oni, surely he couldn't be too much to handle.

But I supposed that depended on the type of kitsune. According to articles online, there were two classifications of kitsune. The zenko, generous and caring celestial beings that served Inari. And then the yako, vicious and cruel, the ones that got a sick thrill from torturing their victims.

And the hoshi no tama that Alaric so desperately wanted to get his hands on translated into star ball. It was the source of a kitsune's power. Legends claimed it held the kitsune's soul, and if seperated from it for too long, the kitsune would die. Which meant Alaric had left out the tiny part where we were grabbing more than just the star ball. We were grabbing the kitsune as well.

Bloody fantastic, really.

I picked the lock to the pool and we crept inside, closing the door as silently as possible behind us. I walked around to one of the chairs that was set up and put my things down, taking my coat off and draping it across the chair. I rolled up my pant legs and came up to the edge of the pool before slowly sitting down. Xed hesitated at the edge of the pool at the deep end that was almost twelve feet deep.

"Go. We don't have time to waste." Xed glanced at me, then obeyed and jumped into the water after having taken his pants off. I waited, watching as the bubbles exploded around him and the water distorted everything so it was difficult to see.

And it was quite a sight.

There was no magical sparkles and beautiful lights or a painless transformation from legs to a fish tail like something out of a children's television show.

I could hear Xed snarl in pain as his legs held together fast, scales tearing through his skin and running down his legs, the skin melting together. There was even some blood rising to the surface. His tail was quite beautiful, though, in a deadly sense of the word. His scales were an eerie blend of black and purple that glistened in the pool lights. It stretched out a good foot or two past his actual feet where the fins split off into something similiar to the movies. However, sprouting from just a few inches down his thighs were another set of fins, these ones a bit smaller, thinner, and longer. The strings of skin going through these were much longer than the actual fit and looked like hairs drifting in the water. Running down his thighs were finlets, smaller rayless fins. Running up from the scales that turned in skin, along his spinal cord was a thin, but curved dorsal fin.