Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ HOUNDS ❯ bound and gagged ( Chapter 15 )

~

HOUNDS. Bound and gagged.

~By Sweetdeily.

“If they outlaw guns, can we use swords?
~Unknown.”

~

His fist closed around the aluminium can, crushing the empty container and then scrunching the can until it became a small ball of metal. Intense red eyes turned from the hospital window and centred on the men kneeling behind him. The can dropped from his fingers, clinking as it hit the ground. One of the newer recruits flinched.

“I will not accept failure. I will not accept defeat. Embarrassment or any hito tryingu to… to taosu watashitachi. Mou! Kono hitotachi wo kourosu! Shinune!” (Embarrassment or any one trying to defeat us. Argh! Kill these people! Death!) A series of intense dark words rattled off as the speech deteriorated into broken Japanese.

One of the men pulled a long case from inside his jacket, the long box was gift-wrapped with a small blue bow around the corner. He held it above his head for the speaker to take. Arms steady and outstretched as though he were not straining in the slightest although the box was of impressive length and weight.

“Kore wa… ah, sou desuka? Youshi. Ikusou.” (This is… ah, is that it, huh? Right. Let’s go.)The pale hands tore the wrapping off and a small smile caressed the boy’s features as the long blade was lifted from the box.

Someone somewhere was dead; they just didn’t know it yet.

~

It was Friday night. Jounouchi’s nose pressed against the cold window-pane as he stared outside. The hotel was relatively nice and the air conditioner was actually quiet for a change, but he was bored and lonely.

The hotel room was a five-star classic affair. It had a minbar, a little kitchenette, a king-sized bed and a closet full of spare pillows. A three hundred dollar work of art from an artist no one had ever heard of was positioned in perfect symmetry above the bed. The curtains were that generic expensive white that hotels such as these afforded. The room was white with splashes of crème in décor. The place had an unused, snotty feel to it that rubbed Jounouchi’s fur the wrong way. It was a place that people stayed at to show how rich they were. Not the kind of place normal police force would even consider supplying to their witness protection programme. That was perhaps the difference between HOUNDS and normal police. Money and occasional fur.

There were two HOUNDS outside his door, but other than that, there really was no one to talk to, and the HOUNDS officers weren’t interested in playing cards with him. They stood staring straight ahead and barely even swapping a word between them. Their expressions said it all; they didn’t see the point of them being there. No one did. But no one questioned Seto Kaiba, not even his immediate bosses. The brunette was the genius young officer who made even the FBI and secretive government departments look like fools. Seto Kaiba would never be lacking for a job if he ever left HOUNDS.

Jounouchi’s glazed eyes shifted and he refocused on the television. It had been three days since Seto had put the blonde in a cab and told him goodbye.

“Own good my ass.” Jounouchi moaned. He wasn’t allowed outside, wasn’t even allowed to ring Seto or anything. Just lay low and be quiet. Jounouchi wasn’t very good at either of those things.

Part of him knew that Seto was trying to keep Jounouchi safe from ex-boyfriends from hell and that when the whole thing all blew over, the brunette would come back and… Jounouchi smacked his forehead against the glass. It was no good just thinking about it. That only made the whole thing worse.

Outside, it was starting to rain.

He flexed his fingers against the glass and swallowed. He couldn’t take much more of it. He needed to get out of the cage. If he just slipped down to the pub on the corner, the house-guards would never have to know. He could have a cold, inexpensive beer, chat to some people, and then sneak back in through the fire escape like he’d never left!

Better yet, he could take a bus to the not-so-nice side of town, hop off at the number eleven stop and walk a block to The Cage. He could enter in one of the cheap, nasty fights, beat someone into a bloody pulp and then be back without anyone ever knowing he’d had his adrenaline fix. Not like anyone had told him he couldn’t…

Only they had. Seto had. Seto had sat Jounouchi down, placed those big strong hands on his shoulders, and threatened a painful, long agonising death if Jounouchi pulled ‘that shit’ ever again.

A little piece of Jounouchi’s soul died on the inside when he realized that the television was showing a boxing match.

He could go and stop by at his apartment, have a chat with The Cat about relationships and his future. They could have a beer and a pizza and watch a good movie. And then he could sneak back in the way he left and no one would ever have to know. Only Yami hadn’t answered the phone in days. It felt like it had been weeks since he’d last seen the weretiger.

He pressed his nose to the glass and sighed. “Why can’t anything exciting ever happen?”

The jinx had barely been spoken when the bedroom window smashed inward.

Jounouchi’s heart seemed to slow, although truthfully, it sped up. Time seemed to suddenly stop and begin to move in slow motion, although nothing truly affected the ebb of time inside the little hotel room. When his adrenaline kicked in, time felt as though it were moving slower. If only.

The Therianthrope had time to turn, to take about three steps into the room before the window he had been leaning against burst open. He was knocked down flat on his stomach by something heavy and black. He didn’t even have time to scream as the butt of the gun descended into the back of his skull.

A small sound somewhat like a grunt was all Jounouchi had time to make before he was unconscious.

~

He woke in an awkward position, his wrists and ankles burning in pure agony. For a moment, the blonde was so incredibly confused that he didn’t have a chance to realize how much pain he actually was in, and then his brain cells finished their start-up process and Jounouchi’s skull ached almost as strongly as his limbs. He could smell damp metal and old, dusty rusted pipes. The sickly taste of bile at the back of his mouth and a million other things that should have gone unmentioned confronted his dazed senses. Blood had dried on the side of his face, making his right eyelid stick to his cheek. His vision wavered in and out of a fuzzy definition.

His nose was pressed against the cold metal iron of the ground. He could see grates and more iron through the bar. At the very edge of his vision was the leg of a wooden chair, seemly out of place in the metallic environment. A ship, he wondered, from the sickening swaying sensation in his gut. Despite the fact that he was not moving, he felt like the world was moving around him- that could have been from the incredible agony he was in, or because the world actually was moving. Jounouchi searched for other options, a warehouse was viable.

“This is unacceptable. The whore will be a liability.” Someone was speaking; Jounouchi felt something hard nudge his foot as the speaker’s voice got closer.

He didn’t move, his eyes shifted and he blinked a few times, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t have moved, not if he had really wanted to anyway, he was so tightly trussed up that his limbs felt heavy and frozen in place. He could have been quite closely referred to as a Christmas turkey and he wouldn’t have been able to protest much at all. Cold, silver metal was wrapped around his ankles and his wrists, so tight that the skin was bunching and losing circulation.

“No what is unacceptable is you, Mr Makishima.” A cool voice purred out.

The gunshot made Jounouchi flinch, and for a second he thought he had been shot, but no pain blossomed in his stomach or shoulder. He turned his head in fear and surprise, trying to see what had just happened. A hand suddenly appeared on the chair, limp and empty. Dead.

The blonde shifted his whole body, not so concerned about pretending to be unconscious any more. There was a man in an expensive looking suit, dead on the wooden chair. The room felt like part of some kind of warehouse or submarine, the walls were a rusty metal, the floor was grates and various chains and hooks hung from the ceiling. A few boxes were stacked in one corner, and in another corner empty sacks that looked like they were from a bank were tossed haphazardly. Malik was standing in the centre of the room, pointing a gun at the dead man in the chair with a frown on his face. Several black suited men were standing behind the Therianthrope, shifting ever so uneasily. If he noticed their movements, he didn’t seem acknowledge them.

“Clean that up unless someone else would like to expression their opinion?” Malik spoke, flicking the safety back on his gun.

“The boy is awake, boss.” Someone ventured.

Jounouchi swallowed, trying to pull a little on the silver links around his hands. His wrists were already bleeding from the contact with the metal. Small bumps of clear puss had formed from where his hands must have been rubbed against the chain links while he had slept.

“Bring him.” Malik didn’t even glance at Jounouchi, he turned and walked from the room and the men parted for him.

A pair of the dark-suited men bent and pulled Jounouchi up between them, dragging him limply along the ground.

Jounouchi shuddered from the sudden movement, his vision swimming with the shift in alignment. Bile rose at the back of his throat and he swallowed hard. Now was not the time to blow chunks. He tried not to make any sound other than a small grunt as he was lifted.

His body was too smacked up to think about shifting. He could barely focus on his feet, let alone the confused fussing of his Beast. Walking around as a Labrador at this point in time was not on Jounouchi’s top list of things to do anyway.

Rust and the smell of something rotting and moulding caught his senses and Jounouchi had to breath through his mouth to stop from throwing up. Finally, after what felt like forever, he was dragged into a small room and dumped on a length of carpet.

“Leave us.” Malik spoke.

Jounouchi couldn’t tell where the Therianthrope was in the room, the acoustics were a little askew and he was lying practically face down in the carpet.

When the door shut behind the two strong-men who had carried Jounouchi in, Malik spoke again. “What do you know, or think you know, Joey?”

Joey swallowed and rolled onto his side. “Nothing.”

“Don’t play games with me, Jounouchi.” Malik’s voice came as a low hiss, his eyes were suddenly in Jounouchi’s line of sight, bright and dangerous, almost as though they glowed with purple energy.

“I’m not playing games, Malik. Why are you doing this… all of this?”

Malik snorted, and pulled Jounouchi into an extremely painful sitting position, forcing the cuffs around his wrists and ankles to bite into the younger blonde’s skin. Blood trickled down his left hand and Jounouchi whimpered. The sound was pathetic, even for him.

“Ah, Jounouchi, always so curious. That’s why you’re such a cute piece of ass, Joey. But it’s gotten you into trouble this time. I know you’re helping the HOUNDS, I know that Seto Kaiba- the great criminal detective himself has been talking to you. What I want to know is what you’ve told him about me. What I want to know is who told you about the guns and the drugs. So, please, Jounouchi, save yourself a lot of pain and tell me straight.”

Jounouchi’s brain began to switch on then. He began to think quicker and with more urgency at the sound of these words. Things that hadn’t made sense before were starting to make sense now. The guns hadn’t been the problem. The guns were linked to something else. The guns had been cargo with something else, something worse, something dangerous. Malik thought Jounouchi knew what it was, and that meant that there had to be a rat in Malik’s ranks, naturally he wanted to know who. But no one had told Jounouchi about anything else in this ‘shipment’. He was guessing, grasping at straws. Whatever it was, it was military grade. Something experimental. Right now, it wasn’t the problem. The problem was staying alive long enough to get rescued. The problem was that this knowledge that Jounouchi supposedly had was worth killing over. Guns and drugs, Jounouchi thought. AND drugs. Something military grade. He filed this, he memorized this chunk of information and placed it somewhere in his mind for later.

“I thought you weren’t going to hurt me?”

Malik chuckled then and brought a long metal tube into sight. “I don’t want to hurt you, no. but that doesn’t mean that I won’t. See, as cute as you are, Joey, as pretty and fuckable as you are- you’re still just gutter trash. And while you might think that someone like Seto Kaiba will save you, help you, even care about you- he doesn’t. I’ve seen what his kind do to stray puppies like you.” As Malik spoke he rolled the tube back and forward between his hands.

Jounouchi’s fists clenched, despite the pain that it caused and he looked away. “You’re no better. I trusted you once. And now you’re some greasy arms dealer? You’re worse than scum-” SMACK!

Pain blossomed across Jounouchi’s cheek and he literally fell onto his right side from the impact. The coppery scent of blood welled to life, as he tasted the sweet metallic taste on his tongue.

“I’m not the one you should be angry at, Jounouchi.” Malik bent and pulled the messed up blonde back onto his knees, meeting Jounouchi’s burning, angry gaze with his own heated expression. “You could have had anything, everything. But instead you’re working for a bunch of fucking human loving lap dogs! You honestly think they care about you?”

“Fuck you, Malik.” Jounouchi growled, a thin trickle of blood running down his chin from his busted lip.

~

“AWOWOWWWWWWWW!”

The moon had a thin sheen of red coating its thin, newly hatched image. Standing amidst the cold, blackened sky, it looked like a bloodied sickle. The sky seemed empty, the stars could have been attempting to run from that deathly moon.

Water lapped obediently around the support struts of the wooden docks, as though it were too afraid to battle the shore for dominance this night. The watchguard lit up a cigarette and looked out to shore. He was thinking about his underaged girlfriend, he was thinking about eloping with her to Las Vegas and getting married, popping the question and having some shmuck in a bad Elvis costume pronounce them ‘man and wife.’ The thought had him stroking the butt of his gun- a brand new, fully loaded automatic.

Right before the sound, the hairs at the back of your neck will stand up. It’s a human response to an age-old terror. Even Therianthrope have this reaction, just before the sound catches you in its grip.

“OOOOOWWWWWWW!”

A single, beautiful, pure note of sound that takes your mind back to times of fire and fur. A long, mournful sound. Plaintive, it searches for an answer.

“AWOOOOWWWW!”

He’s so used to hearing these noises that it takes him a few seconds. He has time to pause, to cock his head to one side, to thumb his gun, to blink. He pauses. And he dies. He dies because he hesitates to recognize that dangerous sound. His cigarette hits the deck, and his body follows, snuffing the fag with a rush of air and weight.

“Fangs and claws. Fur and snout. Beware the howl: werewolves are about.” The young boy says, pulling his sword from the watchguard with a twist of unnatural strength.

they step from the shadows of buildings and the blind spots of street lights. Some, giant wolves with human eyes. Others men, with the eyes of a hunter. And then more, the eye-catchers; stuck somewhere between beast and man, walking on two legs, howling at the moon.

They are creatures of dark fairytales, monsters from a place that few dare to venture.

Wolf-men. Lycanthrope.

~Tsuzuku…