Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson Curse ❯ Chapter 8 ( Chapter 8 )

 

Chapter 8

 

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Karin stands in front of a grave-maker bearing the name; Hitomi Hitodama, wearing a pair of black slacks and a black dress-shirt with a bouquet of red-lilies in her arms.

 

“Hi Grandma… It's me, Karin…”, she says, kneeling in front of the grave and places the flowers onto the grave, then she puts her palms together in prayer, “Tifa and Cloud couldn't come and visit with me this time, because Cloud's in the hospital and Tifa has to stay by his side… But I brought with me someone else who is also fighting against the vampires… His name is Vincent, and they stole his loved one away from him too…”, she whispers, talking as if her grandmother could hear her, “And I swear I will hunt down that bastard who took you from me…”

 

Vincent just leans against his motorcycle wearing black jeans and dark blue button-up shirt underneath his brown leather-jacket with his crimson eyes closed and his arms crossed, listening to Karin whispering to her grandmother's grave. His thoughts beginning to wander back onto Lucrecia and the night he lost her, the night he was forced into this life of immortality.

 

“I'll try to visit you more often, but first I have to do my duty as the wielder of the Banpaia Ten-Ki…”, she quietly adds, slowly getting to her feet and brushing the dust off her pants, then walks over towards Vincent.

 

He opens his eyes at the sound of her approach, “When you told me you had to go visit your grandmother, you didn't say she was already deceased…”, he says, mounting his bike.

 

“Have you ever visited the grave of your loved ones?”, she snaps, “Haven't you at least once visited Lucrecia's grave?”

 

“Don't know where she is buried…”, he quietly replies, the fact she hit a sensitive nerve evident in his voice.

 

“Oh…”, she gasps, her anger beginning to ebb, “I'm sorry… I…I didn't…”, she began.

 

“It's alright… Even if I did know where she is buried, I'm not worthy of visiting her grave… It's my fault she died, I was right there but I couldn't protect her…”, he bitterly says, angry at himself for something he couldn't prevent from happening.

 

“Knock it off! She loved you so much and wouldn't want to hear you talking like that!”, Karin shouts, then quickly covers her mouth with her hands as the impact of what she had just said hits her, `Where the hell did that come from?', she wondered.

 

Vincent just gasps at her sudden out-burst, and looks at her in shock; knowing she was right, and leaving him puzzled as to how she knew that when he hadn't gone too much into detail about Lucrecia's personality, “Karin…”, he began.

 

Karin doesn't even wait for the rest of his sentence, before turning and bolting away from him.

 

“Karin!”, he calls, leaping off of his bike to chase after her, but couldn't see her after he lost her among the grave-stones, “Damn it! I can't have her by-herself with it so cloudy out, the vampires will take advantage of the weather to get in some extra feeding before night-falls…”, he curses, weaving around the grave-stone searching for the only person with the strength to end Sephiroth's rein of terror, and the only one to give him hope after he had lost it centuries ago.

 

 

 

 

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Karin sits underneath a tree with her knees pulled up against her chest, her arms hugging her knees and her head tucked into the crevice of her arms as she silently sobs, “Why did I have to say that…? How could I be so stupid…?”, she curses to herself.

 

“Well, look at what we have here, Kai?”, a male's voice says.

 

“A young woman crying, Shinji…”, the one named Kai mocks.

 

“Huh…?”, Karin silently gasps, looking up and seeing two males who appeared to be in their late-teens; one had black-hair with green eyes and the other had bleached-hair with greenish-blue eyes, “Whatever you two fuck-tards want, go away! I want to be left alone!”, she snaps.

 

“Oh, but we're not about to leave a defenseless woman here all alone by herself…”, the one with black-hair says.

 

“And, let the others claim what we found…”, the one with bleached-hair replies, opening his mouth to reveal his elongated-canines.

 

`Shit! Vampires! And my powers haven't recharged yet!', she curses inside her head, as she leaps onto her feet, prepared to fight with only her bare-hands.

 

“Oh look Kai, she thinks she can defend herself…”, the black-haired one laughs.

 

“But speed is our advantage…”, Kai says, suddenly appearing behind her and locks her in a head and arm-lock.

 

“Not so tough now, huh sweet-cheeks…”, Shinji mocks, walking towards her as Kai held her head to the side; exposing her neck.

 

`I might break an arm, but I refuse to let myself become fodder to these low-level bottom-feeders!', Karin thinks, as Shinji closes in, `Here goes nothing!', she decides, quickly lifting her feet off of the ground and uses Kai as a brace as she unleashes a powerful kick to Shinji's head.

 

“You little bitch!”, Shinji curses, quickly getting back onto his feet in a flash and back-hands her across the face so hard that the blow leaves her dazed, and trying to shake the cob-webs from her brain, as a stream of blood quickly starts flowing from the corner of her mouth, “Now hold her still, Kai. I don't want to miss the artery”, he says, bring his mouth closer to her neck, his fangs starting to pierce her flesh and causing her to scream out in pain.

 

A gun-shot rings out through the grave-yard, and Shinji falls away from Karin's neck with a bullet-hole to the back of his head; liquid-silver oozing from the wound, and lands on the ground, lifeless.

 

“What the…?”, Kai questions looking towards where the gun-shot had come from, and sees Vincent standing there with his peacemaker still smoking and aimed at Kai's head, “Who are you?”

 

“Vincent…”, Karin whispers, on the verge of passing out, “You came…”, she falls limp in Kai's arms.

 

“Vincent huh? So you're the mortal cursed with the eternal bloodlust…”, Kai purred, “My master told me about you, and he told me that the human you'd be traveling with who would be the infamous bearer of the Banpaia Ten-Ki…”, he taunts, “So this girl is the bearer, huh?”, he grabs Karin by the chin to take a real good look at her face, “Is it true what I heard, that all the bearers of the power are always women of unimaginable beauty and that their blood is the sweetest tasting?”

 

Vincent just keeps his gun aimed at Kai's head, but unable to take the shot with him using Karin as a shield.

 

“Was Lucrecia as beautiful as my master described her, and was her blood… Oh yeah, you never got to taste her blood, did you?”, he mocks, “Oh did I strike a nerve?”, he laughs, noticing the slight twitch in Vincent's eye-brow, “I wonder what her blood tastes like?”, he says, bending over towards the bite-wound Shinji had made on her neck.

 

`Shit! I can't take the shot and risk hitting Karin too!', Vincent panics in his head.

 

Unnoticed by both of them, Karin reaches her hand into her pants-pocket and pulls out a syringe full of silver-colored fluid. She opens her golden-brown eyes and pops the safety-cap off of the needle, “I'm nobody's meal!”, she weakly yells, as she swings her hand backwards; burying the needle into Kai's abdomen and pushes the slider down with her thumb, injecting the fluid into the vampire.

 

Kai screams out in pain as whatever was injected into his body began to eat away at his insides, causing him to release Karin and she lands face-down on the ground, and she immediately clutches at the bite-mark at the base of her neck, as Kai continued to scream and quickly falls to the ground, dead.

 

“Karin!”, Vincent shouts, rushing to her side, “Karin, are you alright?”

 

“Yeah, I think so…”, she replies, pushing herself upright with one hand while she applied pressure to her injury with her other, “They must have hit a nerve when they bit me…”

 

“I need to see your bite-wound…”, he says, gently grabbing hold of her wrist.

 

Karin nods in understanding and removes her hand from her neck, revealing two tiny pin-sized punctures; just over her artery, that were slowly leaking blood.

 

“The wounds aren't deep enough to cause worry, and it looks like they only got about half a mouthful…”, he reports, relying on the loathed experience he had on blood-drinking.

 

“Good…”, she sighs, slowly getting to her feet, her legs a little wobbly.

 

“Don't try to stand up so soon…”, he warns, but his warning came a little too late as her legs buckle out from underneath her and she collapses into his arms, causing her to lean up against him, “I told you so…”

 

“Just shut up and walk me back to your bike…”, she flatly says, not wanting to admit he was right.

 

They slowly walk towards Vincent's motorcycle, actually Vincent walked while Karin just hung on and stumbled her feet through the grass.

 

“How are you feeling?”, Vincent asks.

 

“I little nauseous…”, she quietly replies, tripping over her own feet.

 

“Here…”, he says, stopping and crouches down in front of her, “Get on my back. It'll be easier on you, if I just carry you back to my bike”.

 

“Uh…”, she stammers, beginning to blush.

 

“What's wrong?”

 

“No one has ever given me a piggy-back ride before, and…”, she began, her blush growing darker as she begins to nervously play with her fingers.

 

“And…?”

 

“And…”, she started to say, before she suddenly fell over to the side, passed out.

 

“Karin…?”, he asks, kneeling besides her, but receives no response from the 21 year old, “What's this?”, he questions himself, as he gently pries the syringe Karin had used to kill the second vampire from her hand, and reads the label; `Electrolyte-supplement. Take one dose every 12 hours. Prescription For: Karin Hitodama', “She's taking medication… But for what?”

 

Vincent simply picks her up off the ground and carries her to his bike, he seats her onto the bike and sits behind her; so he could hold her to prevent her from falling off, “She's probably going into shock from not taking her medication today, there has to be more of it at her apartment…”, he says to himself, trying to remain calm as he starts up his Cerberus and speeds down the road back to her apartment.

 

 

 

 

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-Karin's Apartment-

 

 

 

 

 

Vincent gently lays Karin down onto her bed; after he had found her house-keys in her pocket and unlocked her door to gain access into her apartment, then he rushes into her bathroom to search her medicine-cabinet for her medication. After he finds it, he heads back into her room and rolls up her shirt-sleeve, uses a handkerchief he found to tightly tie around her arm to build up pressure before he inserts the needle into her vein, unties the handkerchief to release the pressure of blood and injects the supplement into her body, then takes a cotton-ball he grabbed from her bathroom and presses it against spot he inserted the needle and withdraws the needle from within her arm. He maintains pressure on the wound until the bleeding stops.

 

“There…”, he sighs, applying bandages to the bite-wound on her neck and the injection-site, “Why is Fate is so cruel...? Tormenting an innocent young woman with turning her parents into vampires, and having her be the one who had to kill her own mother to protect herself…”, he asks the heavens, as he looked out her window.

 

Even though it was around noon, the shadows in the city were as dark as if it was night; Vincent and Karin being the only ones who knew what lurked in the darkness of the shadows and the night, as dark clouds hung in the sky, completely blocking out the sun.

 

“The vampires are beginning to grow more and more restless the closer the lunar-eclipse is…”, he whispers, remembering that something exactly like this happened 300 years ago, “A storm is brewing…”, he glances over his shoulder at Karin, “And it won't be long before Sephiroth will come for Karin… To do the same-thing he did to Lucrecia…”, he mutters behind clenched teeth, “I will not let that happen…!”

 

 

 

 

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