Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ HOUNDS ❯ Hitting the fan ( Chapter 14 )

~

HOUNDS. Hitting the fan.

~By Sweetdeily.

“I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather ... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
~Unknown.”

~

A sound that had crossed itself between happiness and a scream forced itself out of his throat. Sweat rolled down the back of his neck and he gasped, trying not to pull on that soft, gelled hair. His back bowed and his left foot shifted, nerves exploding in a shower of white hot completion.

The intense pressure of that little mouth pressed against his moments later and suddenly he was drowning in the taste of his own come and the sweet scent of baby wolf. His hands wrapped around the boy’s tight ass and pulled their bodies closer until only the flimsy fabric of a school uniform separated them.

The attack was so sudden and unseen that neither of them even had time to see the front door being kicked open.

One minute he was enjoying the sound of his name moaned from between the little one’s mouth, the next, the world was a rush of black red and shock.

Yugi’s head turned slowly, those intense muddy red eyes widening in shock, as though he couldn’t believe that there was a knife sticking out of his stomach.

Yami had a few seconds of confusion, and then the smell of blood and intruders washed over his senses.

The lycanthrope opened his mouth, making a little sound of pain, and looked down only to watch as the knife twisted in his stomach and then went out the way it came in.

Yami was sure that the sudden rush of blood to his ears was why everything went so quiet after that. The little crime-boss shuddered, and it was as if with that one motion, his body began to react to what had just happened.

“Yugi!”

A thin trickle of blood gurgled out of the boy’s mouth and he fell from Yami’s lap, body curling into a fetal position on the bed. If the lycanthrope made any other sounds, Yami couldn’t hear them.

Someone was leaning over him, brandishing a knife in front of Yami’s features. Blood and thicker things dripped from the blade’s edge. A mouth moved with a disturbing smile around the edges. Several boots crunched into the apartment room.

Then the initial shock faded and everything went red.

~

Flashes of flesh, a hand. Muddy red eyes. The thick taste of blood at the back of his throat.

Pain!

Bullets!

The sound of a roar, the guttural hiss of a large cat.

Flesh under his nails, bone, muscle, and organ. He tears it.

A bone cracking under a heavy paw, a jaw twisted and broken.

Three down, so many more to go, so many…

“Give us the information we want and we’ll leave, Cat.”

He turns the eyes of a predator to the man speaking to him. His hackles raise, ready to pounce.

A whimper, a tentative meow, the sound of a bullet loading into a chamber.

“I can pull the trigger and kill him faster than you can kill me.”

Thinking. Thought. The desire to save a life. These push the anger back; shove it away from his mind, allowing him to focus, allowing him to see and think as a person. Control. Human.

“Nrow!”
“All we want is Jounouchi Katsuya.”

“Nrow!”

“I will kill him.”

Intense red eyes follow the shallow rise and fall of the boy’s chest. The smell of gunpowder and blood taints the air. The pain of so many bullets lodged in his body, blood seeping from wounds that might be lethal. But so much adrenaline rushing through his system, it seems like this alone keeps him upright. He already feels sick in his stomach.

His bloodied tongue licks his whiskers. His ribs hurt, his claws need cleaning. The boy shudders, eyes closing in pain. The knife was silver. They can both tell. If he doesn’t get the child to a doctor, the scent of death will be more than just these ones.

A human face slowly pulls itself from the tiger’s features. The hatred and malice in the expression only seems to deepen as Yami slowly takes the half-way form. Bones crunching and realigning as he shifts to his back legs. The process is hard, but he needs a human mouth to talk.

“What do you want with Jounouchi Katsuya?”

“His location.”

“I don’t know it.”

“I think you do. Word on the street is that he’s your room mate.”

“He’s not here.”

“Where?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“That’s the wrong answer, kitty.” The finger wavers on the trigger.

Yami swallows, tasting blood and bile at the back of his throat. “Wait!”

“You have until the count of three to tell me where he is…”

“I don’t kno-”

“One.”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“Two…”

“HOUNDS have him.” The words sound bitter and defeated, even to Yami.

“Where?”

“A safe house, I think. They wouldn’t tell me.”

“Why is HOUNDS hiding him?”

“Because he’s working on a case with them and someone’s trying to kill him.”

“Boss! I told you, let’s whack the faggot!” Someone spoke.

“Shut up!” The finger wavered on the trigger, easing ever so slightly. “Who is in charge of him?”

“A HOUNDS by the name of Seto Kaiba.”

“Shit isn’t that-”

“I said shut up!” The gun leaves the whimpering werewolf and points toward the voice interrupting the conversation.

BANG!

Yami flinches and takes a step toward the man holding Yugi like a hostage.

“Don’t move!” the barrel of the gun is back against Yugi’s head.

“That’s all I know! Release him and get out of here!”

“Oh, this pathetic piece of shit? Here, have him.” Yami runs, trying to catch the suddenly airborne lycanthrope as the boy is flung at him. Hands wrap protectively around Yugi’s back, pulling the bleeding boy to his body like a treasure.

BANG!

Yami’s hand feels as though it has just exploded, red dances across his vision, eating away at his senses. He sways, as though this final blow might be the straw that breaks him.

“I’ll leave you alive, so you can tell everyone how the Moutoh Clan boss died like a fucking bitch in your arms.”

Shudders are already running up and down his body. His senses drowning in blood and pain. The laughter seems almost dream like.

“Yami…?” A small, thin voice whispers, hissing past intense pain.

That’s where his strength is. He can’t find the last strand of willpower in his body; he can’t find the energy or the adrenaline. But somehow he stands; his left hand has a massive hole through it, blood drips from his mouth like a river. So much blood cannot be good.

Yugi slumps, tremors passing through his body in little waves.

The phone.

He staggers, blood, his blood, running down his chest like tainted waters of red.

The phone.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Hello?”

“I need an ambulance. My friend has been gutted with…”

Those silly red dots eat his vision so quickly he barely has time to sway before he collapses.

“Hello? Hello? Are you there? Sir? What’s going on? Are you there?”

“Yami…?”

A little scream of anger resounds in the suddenly silent apartment.

A shaking childlike hand reaches for the small school jacket sleeve and bloodied fingers close around the panic button in a death grip.

~

He woke with little more than a sharp intake of breath. One hand slid off the bed and wrapped around the butt of his gun, the other hand eased off of the blonde’s stomach. The noise was soft, a gentle whirl of sound that signaled the breach in perimeter. It was designed that way on purpose. No need to let anyone else know he was awake.

He slipped off the bed, falling to a crouching position, and flicking the safety off his gun. His tongue flicked in and out furiously; the smell of his second beast slithered below the surface. Slowly, he opened his eyes, trusting his sense of taste more than his weaker senses of smell and sight. The sharp, heady taste of sweat and come, a slight tang at the back of his mouth from something eaten earlier in the evening. The cleaning agent used on the sheets, a twist of lemony freshness. The heady taste of wood varnish and polish that rode in the background of his senses; the night-air breeze, a musky scent of pine and city grime. The windows were dusty and needed cleaning. Jounouchi’s chest rose and fell in even, rhythmic breathing; his skin had that soft aftertaste to it that made Seto want to lick strange places. The taste of air-currents, vaguely stale as there wasn’t much of a breeze to really stir things up.

He exhaled slowly, searching.

A minute passed, then two, finally, at the edge of his senses, something twisted, pulling its way out of a shadow that should have been elsewhere. The smell was snake, one he wasn’t used to, something lower on the food chain, not a black-bellied breed that much was certain. He could taste the tongue, flickering in and out, much like his own, taste the flicker of human eyes scanning the room. Moving off the windowsill like something out of a horror movie. Thick, large and long, the creature was more than six feet in length. It was not a child. The taste of its scales was large; he rolled a few over his lips more than once. A flick to the left as it tasted at him, wondering what he was.

Seto stood and fired into the snake’s head. The single round of gunfire seemed to freeze the entire mansion. It was that soft, timeless moment right before a long list of really bad things happened all at once, a moment in which Seto realized he had been so focused on the snake, he hadn’t seen the figures in the window, and that it would be too late to stop and return to the moment before this one.

Jounouchi bolted upright on the bed, tasting like adrenaline and fear. The figures in the window didn’t even pause.

He was firing at someone caught halfway between a snake and a human. The bullets tore chunks from the man’s shoulders, but he wasn’t down yet. Three more were already in the room, moving toward the bed, searching for a target.

Jounouchi surprised him then, instead of whimpering and curling up like a normal beta would, the blonde growled and unsheathed long, dangerous claws.

The bedroom drowned in the fire of bullets and howls. Seto was rolling, taking cover behind an eighteenth century genuine oak wood dresser imported all the way from Spain. Bullets riddled the polished wood, turning it from priceless to junk in a matter of seconds. His agent would cry.

Jounouchi managed to slash someone’s eyes before diving over the side of the bed to avoid wild gunshots from the now screaming assailant’s automatic.

Seto nodded to the drawer just above Jounouchi’s head and indicated his gun. The blonde pulled the drawer right out of the night-side and found the spare clip that Seto was after. Bullets turned the antique vase that his aunt Sakura had sent him, a real treasure from the Kei era, into shrapnel.

Someone was yelling, someone was screaming, but it was all background noise, like white sound with the thunderous explosion of bullets raining in the small room.

He waited, letting the wild fire and the dangerous explosion of semi-machine guns ground down, slowly counting in his head. Then, he rolled out from behind the desk and fired twice, catching the first man in the mouth and the skull. The man that Jounouchi had scratched was holding his hand over his left eye and firing toward the blonde’s hiding place with his other hand. His gun jumped and danced wildly, barely coming within a foot of where the blonde actually sat. Seto emptied four bullets into his chest and arms before rolling again.

The room was quiet. Seto waited, tongue flicking in and out of his mouth furiously. He could taste gunpowder and sweat, fear, blood, death. Jounouchi shifted beside him, toes clinking on broken vase fragments. The blonde had that wide-eyed look about him that said he wanted to be more shocked than he actually was. It was a look Seto knew too well. That Seto was so calm said that perhaps he hadn’t done enough paperwork in the past few months of work.

Nothing was moving in the room except the two of them. Seto nodded curtly to the blonde before rolling out into the open again. Gun moving steadily and coolly, slitted eyes waiting for anything to move.

Four bodies lay around the window, the snake, the half-snake, and the two men. Seto rolled his shoulders back and nodded to Jounouchi. “Go dial nine-one-one.”

Jounouchi slowly stood and his eyebrows shot up as he surveyed the mess. “Fuck me.”

“Go, now.” Seto motioned with his elbow and inched toward the bodies. He wanted the blonde out of the room in the event that even more invaders were to show up. They had come to his bedroom specifically. That meant they had been after him. No one knew that Jounouchi would be in his room, Jounouchi’s stuff was still in his own room down the hall. No, it begged to Seto’s reasoning that these people had been after him. Judging from their weapons, they had known he was a shifter and…

Seto’s eyes widened as he noticed the serial number on the machine gun at one of the men’s feet.

“Shit.”

~

Jounouchi had someone’s jacket over his shoulders, it smelt like expensive cologne and sweat, but it wasn’t Seto’s. The flash of the police lights had been irritating at first, but now the silent strobe was kind of comforting. The sirens had been left off and the silence of the night filled the cabin like a thick blanket. All the adrenaline in his system was gone, he was just tired now. Somehow that irritated him. He was tired, not scared because he’d been in a fire fight. But he was tired because he needed sleep.

Had Malik sent them to kill him? No. Malik would have sent those men to Jounouchi’s room first; these people came in through the window. Which meant…

Did Malik want to kill Seto Kaiba?

It made sense; getting rid of the officer in charge of the case concerning the missing guns would certainly put a dampener on things, but how had Malik found out that Seto was his man? It would indicate that either there was a leak in the HOUNDS team or that Malik was watching Jounouchi closely enough to know about Seto.

Several cold thoughts had tied themselves around Jounouchi’s brain as a result of this train of thought. The first was that Malik was a jealous person by nature. The second was that Malik might know about Jounouchi and Seto. The third… the third was the worst. Had Malik actually been trying to kill Jounouchi? Had he known that Jounouchi was in Seto’s room? Had he sent them to kill him deliberately?

The blonde worried about Yami and all his street contacts. How had Malik found him? It would be bad if there was a leak in Seto’s department, but worse, if Malik started killing Jounouchi’s friends…

He had tried to call Yami, but the therianthrope’s phone was off. Would Malik hurt the people Jounouchi cared about, just to get at Jounouchi? He felt like a walking target. The more that happened, the more he realized, and the bigger the circle on his back became. He was in deep enough now to know that Malik had to be controlling the Claws. He was no longer a good person to talk to about this case, half of the goddamn case revolved around him.

The car rocked as someone opened the door and slipped in, closing it behind them. Jounouchi spared a glance at Seto.

“They’re ex-military. I’m actually surprised I was able to kill them. I don’t think they were expecting two people in the room, and I don’t think their initial goal was to kill me. Now, Jounouchi, I’ve told you something, it’s your turn. What do you know?”

Jounouchi swallowed. “I think that there’s more to these weapons, then just the bullets. I tried to bend one of them, I was using all my strength and it didn’t even dint. As for the people trying to kill you… me… us. I can only think of three possibilities, and I dislike them all immensely. Either there is someone in your department who leaked my whereabouts and your involvement in the case- in which case we have a serious information problem. The second is that Malik may have found one of my contacts and procured the information about me that way, which means its very likely all my friends are dead. The third is that he is watching me so closely and intimately that he already knew where I was and sent those men to kill me… you… us, because he’s an intensely jealous man.”

“This is the same Malik you spoke of before?”

Jounouchi nodded, wrapping his arms around his knees. “But he said he wasn’t trying to hurt me. So I don’t understand it.”
Seto nodded and shifted in the seat, draping his arm over Jounouchi’s shoulders. “I’ll start the investigations on this Malik fellow. In the meantime, we’re going to a hotel for the rest of the night.”

“What about the people you killed in there?”

“The chief is allowing me to concern myself with the paperwork in the morning.” Seto waved his hand dismissively in the air, as if to say ‘how kind of the old man’ in a sarcastic tone.

Jounouchi’s lips twitched into a smile and he leaned into the brunette’s embrace. “Okay.”

~Tsuzuku…

Sweets: Mwuahah… hahah… hahha.a…. ahahahahahahaha!!!

Jou: I’m scared.

Seto: me too! *hides behind Jou*

Yugi: *cracks his knuckles* right, who wants sum?

Yami: *gurgle, flail, death*

Malik: I’m a nice guy, really I am.

Reviews welcome.