Chapter Text
Karlheinz learned a long time ago how to get what he wants; realizing at a young age that through careful manipulation and patience, anything he dreams of could become a reality.
He’s at the peak of his reign when the first case appears; it seems relatively insignificant— as most things do when they start.
Vampires die often enough; they aren’t truly immortal. Instead, they’re trapped in a pseudo-immortality where their lives are prolonged past any average human’s existence by many generations.
Like any living thing, their heart beats, they breathe, they age, but the blood that fills their dark veins is cold, one could never see a warm breath from a vampire during a chilly evening, and no onlooker would ever see a blemish or wrinkle appear on the stony complexion of such a creature. Vampires are much closer to being dead than they are to being alive.
This limbo vampires remain in makes them almost invulnerable. Only illness and the unrelenting passage of time they can’t escape— and maybe a well-placed injury from a silver knife.
Now, another threat to a vampire’s life is once again rearing its ugly head— a plague.
One that makes a vampire's blood a little bit colder, their breaths a little bit shallower, a bit slower. Their hair will bleach, and their complexion goes from barely human to corpse-like. This disease is a humbling ode to the moribund nature of their existence, a cruel reminder that despite being gifted with beauty and a lifetime that can span many, vampires are not superior beings. It’s humans who are truly gifted, blessed with a vibrancy coursing through their bodies, able to live a life in the light, to feel warmth without having to drain it from another. Born with the ability to create it themselves.
Scorching, red, sweet blood. The single thing that can make a vampire feel like they’re alive. Hot cheeks and burning ears, fingertips tingling as they drink up the intoxicating warmth of some poor living thing, consuming their entire life through an artery just to feel alive for a few moments.
If being a vampire’s considered an illness, blood is the antidote.
However, blood is no antidote for this plague. Karlheinz has tried everything he can think of. Every type of blood has been obtained and trialled— even the rarest of the rare, the specially bred, and everything in between won't stop the petrification that occurs when a vampire contracts the disease— named Endziet.
His roots are turning white, and others are beginning to notice— He’s running out of time. Every night he’ll drain a virgin dry just to feel what it’s like to be normal again. The days of the fleeting warmth are over; his end is beginning.
Despite all his research, Karlheinz is always drawn back to a single solution for the disease; ambrosia, the nectar of the Gods, once used to cure a plague centuries ago. The myth, which is what it is, is one of the most well-known tales in vampire lore:
Once upon a time, an ancient demon civilization was pushed nearly to extinction by a terrible illness. Horrifying creatures, they would consume anything in their path. Then, almost as a punishment for their gluttony, a pandemic occurred, killing nearly all the demons. Many became sick and refused to eat, slowly wasting away into dust.
Then, one day, a child was born from a human and an angel with ambrosia pumping through their body. The demons took the child, and their blood was used to cure the remainder of the demon race, and ever since then, they have only been able to consume the blood of humans.
Unfortunately, Karlheinz’s already tracked down every human bloodline that claims to have direct lineage to the mortal with golden blood. He's bought and killed countless humans for this reason, but his labour is always fruitless— always more white hair, always getting colder.
The closest he’d ever gotten was a young boy, not even ten years old, who had a proven pedigree to the one he searched for. His blood was richer than most, allowing him not to have to feed for a week. However, this child was no cure, and he died after a short while. Karlheinz needed to find another, more permanent solution.
Angels are difficult to track down. They’re even more elusive than a vampire, or any demon for that matter, and once you find one, there’s less than no guarantee it’ll stick around. Most people believe angels are a holy and noble race, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re fickle creatures that act only on their own whims; they have no structured society and aren’t bound by any law. Angels simply do what they want when they want, with no regard for the amount of destruction left in their wake. Karlheinz often wonders how demons ended up with a worse reputation.
Angels have nearly no regard for human life, less than even the cruellest vampire, as a vampire still needs a human’s blood to survive. An angel might occasionally visit the realm of humans to indulge in certain aspects of mortal existence, but it’ll never stick around to see the aftermath of whatever or whomever it just fucked.
Karlheinz tracks down every alleged angel encounter he hears of, and not once has anyone been able to back up their claim with objective evidence. It seems angels most often visit humans during the night while they sleep, ravaging them while they’re too far into a dream-like trance to remember the encounter properly— probably an angel’s greatest kindness. If humans were allowed to recall an angel's touch, they would surely be spoiled for the rest of their lives.
Of all the reports of alleged angels and their deplorable succubus-like behaviour, only one human claims to have a regular visitor. Exactly how frequently he isn’t sure, and who this angel is, he also can’t confirm, but it’s the closest Karlheinz has ever gotten to a lead. He doesn’t plan on letting this opportunity pass without fully taking advantage of it.
Angels are not all-powerful and omniscient beings. They range in their abilities and powers, and most are nothing to be particularly worried about, especially to a demon of Karlheinz’s calibre. King of the Vampires, Karlheinz has been around for centuries. He’s educated extensively in the alchemist arts and literature (both human and demon) and harbours an unparalleled natural reserve of magic. He’s one of the most powerful beings to walk this earth— no angel that isn’t nearly a god will stand a chance against him.
It doesn’t take much to disguise himself as some poor traveller in the countryside, compelling the human to let him stay in his mountain cabin for as long as he needs. As soon as Karlheinz arrives, he marks the walls and floors with the runes of the spell he’s designed to trap the angel; then, he lights some incense to cleanse the old house of any remnant ancient magic that may interfere with his. Now all he has to do is wait for the angel to appear.
For weeks he waits, listening each night for any sound that could indicate his long-anticipated heavenly guest. Then one night, his patience is finally rewarded.
He’s sitting in the living room reading an exceptionally fascinating article while trying to salvage any amount of heat from the fireplace when suddenly, a peculiar silence falls over the little cabin. The crackling of the fire, the electric hum of the lamp in the kitchen, and the drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet all seem to get snuffed out beneath this new obtrusive atmosphere. Then he hears the rustling of bed sheets and a voice. It isn’t the human’s voice; it’s gentle, loving, and so soothing that if Karlheinz was any less driven to capture the thing, it might have pushed him to sleep.
The spell he’s prepared will trap the angel while it exists in a physical body, as most often, it seems to take the form of some kind of energy that pushes things this way and that depending on how it feels.
He listens more closely as he stands and quietly makes his way toward the bedroom. He knows his chance is now. Evident from the gentle trill of its voice, audible from the hallway, as it forms a syncopated harmony with the deeper breaths of the human.
Karlheinz channels his magic, and the runes surrounding the room glow and ignite before bursting to manifest into a barrier. The runes continue to drain his magic as the energy is further put to use by stopping the angel from transforming back to its natural state and preventing it from being unable to disappear or escape into safe oblivion.
He hears it scream, a sound that could shatter glass as it rolls off the human onto the floor. Its writhing limbs bend in unnatural directions as it tries to get away, unsuccessfully trying to transform back into its liminal state. Eventually, after a prolonged, dramatic episode, it stops moving; the only sign of life is a slight tremor that’s only obvious when it takes a breath.
Once the light’s faded from both the angel and the runes, Karlheinz enters the barrier and kneels beside the creature to finally take in his success, but he’s struck still in his tracks when the smell of blood fills the room. A moment of panic-ridden confusion hits him, and he wonders where the odour is coming from. However, he quickly realizes that the human must have somehow died during all that excitement— which is fine.
Shifting his focus back to the angel, he basks in his success. Its balletic body is humanoid in shape but bigger than he expects, lithe with soft edges in a way that's both masculine and feminine. Its hair is long, straight, and dark as obsidian; even with a vampire’s vision, it’s difficult for him to see in the dim room where the hair ends and the floor begins.
His scrupulous observations are interrupted as a beam moonlight suddenly shines through the window like a spotlight, illuminating the angel like an apparitional omen from the heavens direct. Karlheinz feels the urge to close the curtains, to hide from the watchful invasion of the moon, but just as quickly as the light appears it vanishes beneath a cloud. Plunging them back into darkness. It’s seen enough.
Karlheinz snaps out of his trance and directs his attention back to the angel. The underside of its arms are decorated by a distinct opal texture— not quite scales, but not quite feathers. The strange hybrid travels up the backs of its legs and through the groin to meet the same texture in a swirl on its chest. They appear more feather-like from the chest upwards as they work their way up the long expanse of the angel’s slender neck and disappear into its hairline.
Finally, his eyes register the angel’s face. It’s unconscious, but even in this state, Karlheinz is captivated. Its eyes are big and owlish, its mouth small but with full lips. It has dominant cheekbones and a jaw like a man, but a delicate brow, nose, and chin like a woman. Karlheinz is so caught up in its perfect androgyny that he hardly notices when the angel begins to stir, its eyes fluttering open to register its surroundings.
Only a moment later, their eyes meet.
Wet eyes, black as the abyss, stare back at him with an analytical fear. It tries to push to sit up, but it isn’t used to the weight of its body, and just as soon as it manages to gain some leverage, it slumps pathetically back to the floor with a scraping thud.
Next, it tries to slither away, making some leeway, but Karlheinz quickly grabs its ankle and drags it back towards him. This time it struggles in earnest; beginning to use its new-found strength to push back.
But just like how a mouse could never win against a falcon, this angle is no match for the likes of Karlheinz. Just as quickly as its struggle starts, the angel is stopped by a heavy hand pinning its wrists to its chest and pushing it into the creaking floor beneath.
“Release me!” The angel spits in a particularly venomous voice, its cat-like canines visible with the snarl of its lips, “How dare a rancid thing like you lay a hand on me!” It screams, voice escalating from the sound of a screaming woman to the screech of an eagle— a trait Karlheinz never gets used to.
“If you would calm down, I’m sure—”
“I will not!” It protests, ceaselessly writhing under Karlheinz’s vice-like hold, “Disgusting! You smell rotten; you are sick!”
It’s able to drive a sharp knee particularly hard into the gap between Karlheinz’s rib and hip, and only for an instant does his grip waver. Using this, the angel manages to crawl a few steps, but it’s short-lived before Karlheinz pins it back down onto its front, another raptor-like scream filling the room as he does.
“Be still.” He commands in a deep voice that fills the room, loud enough to undercut the incessant high-pitched wailing of the angel beneath him.
Karlheinz was, quite honestly, hoping there would at least be the opportunity for diplomacy, but as the creature falls motionless beneath him, it seems he was foolish to believe something like an angel could have any capacity for reason.
He eyes the thing as he stands up, cautiously stepping over it to quickly examine the human for an apparent cause of death, and obvious it is. In those brief few seconds, the angel managed to cut the man’s throat from ear to ear, and if he listens carefully, he can still hear his croaking dying breaths.
“What have you done?” The angel frantically asks, pulling Karlheinz's attention back to the immobile mass at his feet, muscles twitching in its back and legs as it tries to fight the demon’s compulsion, “Who do you think you are? A miserable half-dead vampire like you won’t—”
“Quiet.” He bellows again with an edge of irritation, voice travelling through the house as he rubs his brow and sighs heavily. That spell had taken more of his reserve than he anticipated, and he now finds himself somewhere he had not been for a long while— on the precipice of fatigue.
As he stares at it trying, rather pathetically, to move or open its mouth in an effort to throw more empty threats his way, he has to stop himself from laughing. The relief of finally achieving what he’s been working on for years, combined with the stark obliviousness of the angel itself about its own situation, is remarkably satisfying.
It’s so weak, not that it matters for his plan, that he almost pities it. In the realm of demons, one’s value is based on strength, wit, and bloodline. In the tragic, yet endlessly entertaining human world, things like wealth, gender, and the colour of one’s skin can determine their life course.
However, with angels, there’s no such hierarchy. In their world, there are only two categories; angels with names and angels without.
An angel with a name is a god; they’re the ones that truly live up to the human’s idea of what an angel should be. They’re the ones who control the flow of time, the spin of the planets, and how life could crawl its way out of a hot primordial ocean. An angel without a name is nothing; it has no powers, purpose, or role. It simply floats through whichever universe suits it best until it happens upon one such world that might make it feel something. A nameless angel is nothing except an energy and the space it occupies. No one knows where angels come from, and no one knows where they go; they just are.
“Do you have a name?” Karlheinz finally asks, unable to hide his cruel amusement. He knows the answer, of course, but he wants the angel to know that he knows, “You may speak again,” he offers.
Despite his courtesy, it doesn’t answer, but it stops struggling and cranes its neck to look over its shoulder to meet Karlheinz’s gaze. He sees tears begin to pool in its eyes, the downward twitch of its mouth as it tries to get a handle on its emotions, to try and come to terms with the fact that, yes, it’s caught, and now it can’t do anything about it.
Karlheinz leans down closer, enough to whisper in a low voice and still be heard over the frighted, frantic breaths of the angel, “Shall I tell you mine?"
19 Years later — Wednesday, August 25th
Shuu’s sleeping peacefully, a classical melody from another century occupying the silence as he dozes, when all of a sudden, right as the violin begins its solo, his phone rings. The music pauses automatically as the cacophony of the ringer rips mercilessly through his fragile tranquillity, making him wince as his eyes fly open to stare blankly at the ceiling above him.
Ignoring the disproportional amount of hot frustration uncoiling in his chest at the interruption, he reaches clumsily for his phone by his side and raises it to see who in hell is calling him.
“T. Sakamaki”
Shuu only hears from his father every once in a blue moon. Usually, for something family-related, like a ball to attend, a contract to sign, or some kind of political bullshit that requires the eldest of the Sakamaki family to make an appearance.
Sometimes, his father calls if he’s heard from the school about something that even he would have trouble rationalizing to the public if it got out, though most of the time its something which can easily disappear— like a complaint against Laito or Ayato from some girl, Kanato getting caught in his demented ways, or Subaru damaging private property.
One time, in his final year of high school, the school called to inform his father that he’d failed most of his exams and had to repeat the year. Karlheinz then deserted him in the Arctic for three months as a punishment, which ended up being one of the few times he's gotten through to his eldest son because from that point onwards Shuu painstakingly maintained a passing GPA while skipping nearly every class to sleep in the music room.
This time though, the phone call is about something else entirely; another one of those sacrificial lambs is coming to stay, which in most cases, is nothing to call home about.
Shuu doesn’t care one way or another about the girls that drift through, and they never last more than a few months, especially if one of the triplets sinks their teeth in early— Kanato in particular.
A little while ago, over a game of darts, Subaru told him Kanato once killed one after she accidentally spilt tea on Teddy, and she hadn’t even been here a week! What's more, he didn’t kill her by drinking all her blood; he opted to asphyxiate her instead.
“She’ll be arriving next week. I would like you there to greet her when she arrives,” Karlheinz’s voice is firm; he isn’t asking.
Since graduating high school a couple of years ago, Shuu spends most of his time at home. Reluctantly becoming more involved in demon politics and society in preparation for inheriting the throne. Only occasionally does he get to visit the human realm to take a few courses or indulge in what it has to offer.
“Can’t you get someone else to do it?” Shuu signs through the phone, an edge to his voice, “I bet that hard-ass would love to,” he finishes under his breath.
“This is not a negotiation,” he bites back. “and I want you staying there to keep an eye on her. She must not die before the equinox.”
Shuu's not completely against staying in the human realm for a while, especially if it gets him out of the majority of his princely duties, but doing so to keep what is doomed to die alive for a certain period of time is an especially tedious task.
Over the decades, his father’s sent countless girls to their deaths by condemning them to this house, and only a handful of times does he ever ask his sons not to kill her too quickly. Usually, this means he’s experimenting, or maybe her blood will be such high quality that it deserves to be savoured. That would be a nice surprise.
The last time he asked this of them was for a girl called Yui, a dainty little thing who always managed to get herself too involved in their lives. She was a bit dim and super easy to manipulate, and Shuu found her incessant doting and worrying over him particularly annoying, but even when he tried to tell her off, she still insisted on sticking around.
Ayato grew especially attached to her, and it became an unspoken rule that if anyone tried anything with her, he would make it more trouble than it was worth. Even Laito stayed away in the end.
But eventually, like all the others, she died.
It turned out their uncle used magic on her a long time ago and replaced her heart with Cordelia’s. As to why exactly he’d done this, Shuu couldn’t be bothered to know, but Ayato did not react well to the discovery of the truth. Her blood certainly had an intoxicating effect, and when that combined with Ayato's violent streak, his despise for his mother, and a full moon, Yui didn't stand a chance. It’s a miracle she lasted as long as she did.
The aftermath of that series of events was a huge pain to deal with. Ayato drained her dry and ripped her to shreds before anyone knew what was happening. It took five royal guards, three of whom he killed, and a powerful spell from Karlheinz to get him locked away until he returned to a normal state of mind.
When he finally came to, Ayato’d been pretty upset, along with Laito and Kanato, who were pissed off about the whole thing as well, but after a few months and a good number of warm bodies, it was like she'd never been there in the first place.
“Shuu? Are you listening? It's crucial you do this for me.” His father's voice holds a warning tone that pulls him from his thoughts. He must've zoned out for a moment.
“Yes, okay, don’t kill her before the equinox.”
Shuu’s getting tired now, both in general and of this conversation, and he’s still upset over his interrupted sleep; he holds a high level of disdain towards his father that any interaction with him drains him entirely. He briefly wonders what he’s planning for during the equinox, but Shuu just doesn’t have the energy or interest to engage any more than necessary.
“Tell the others as well. Sooner rather than later.” He can tell his Father’s beginning to feel the same.
“Okay.”
A second later, the phone line’s dead, and his music resumes. Shuu shuffles on the couch to get comfortable again and closes his eyes, letting the music carry him back into a dreamless sleep.
Shuu’s more of a later person; he’ll tell them when the opportunity comes.