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It was a remarkably good imitation.
Arikado wasn't sure how Celia had pulled it off. It wasn't quite the true castle - that was still locked behind the eclipse - but it was connected. Like a shadow dragged out of the abyss. By all rights a purely human summoner shouldn't have been able to do it, and the fact she had hinted at darker forces than the usual set of humans who had fooled themselves into believing Dracula would reward them for their service.
The good news was that it meant he could negotiate with guilds and collectives of monsters that knew him, and without Dracula giving orders they were happy enough to agree to a mutual non-interference pact. They would leave Arikado - and only Arikado - alone in return for the destruction of the false masters none wished to serve. And he in turn would leave the creatures of the castle be, in return for allowing them to deal with the Belmont (and Soma, damn the boy for sticking his nose where it didn't belong) in their own way. Julius could handle it. Freeing his own hands to deal with the cult was more important in the long run.
If he could only find them. It seemed they had their own spies reporting on his movements and used the knowledge to avoid him completely. He'd felt magical power roiling in the gardens and rushed to see, but found only scuffed floors and burnt branches. There was a powerful seal over a room in the centre...but forcing it down would take enough out of him he wasn't willing to bet on being the victor in any battle beyond. The price of sealing most of his powers away. Better to wait and see if he could hunt Celia's little minions down elsewhere. It would be sweeter when he did, when their blood would flow rich and dark and...
Arikado was starting to regret not feeding before heading off to the castle. Enemies didn't matter, but it would be troublesome if one of his allies got a cut.
He sat down on one of the benches and looked around. The Rycuda were calling in the distance, the Unes writhing on the ground. None came near him. The entire place was cast in cool blues and greens, with the faint sound of water in the distance, though no such stream existed. They were even more elaborate than the gardens that had emerged in the true castle last year, gardens Arikado could remember were once a constant in the chaos, not a hapstance.
It was because Mother had liked them well. Once Dracula had shaped them into a grand imitation of Babylon's wondrous Hanging Gardens, and Arikado had spent hours playing at being a pagan priest with the witch-girls before being herded back to his lessons. He'd enjoyed them often, back then.
When he had fought through them with Trevor, they had been unrecognizable.
The click of bone on stone shook him out of his reverie. His sword was in his hand before he saw the skeleton farmer, cringing and tugging what would be a forelock had the poor skull any locks to tug. He rested the tip of the blade on the ground - but did not put it away. "You realize you are by treaty bound to not attack me, do you not?"
The farmer chattered. Yes, he knew, and knew well the danger. He had no desire to challenge the wayward son of the former master, begging Master Alucard's pardon, but he was just a poor farmer-
Arikado had forgotten how elaborate politeness required the servants to be. He sighed and waved the sword to encourage the farmer to get on with it.
He did. There was an Alura Une just below, a bully that had dragged herself up from the depths to torment and punish the poor good creatures of the gardens. While the treaty compelled, could Master Alucard not find it in his heart to deal with her in some fashion? The young false master was in the area, if Master Alucard required someone else to blame. Discipline was failing everywhere and it was all these false masters' faults, the farmer was certain. The clattering of his bones sped up as he got into the rant. If Master Alucard would just do something, perhaps even take his rightful place...?
"No," Arikado said flatly. "Out of the question." He stood up, ignoring the farmer's clicks that begged for forgiveness. "I will find this rogue Alura Une and that is all. I don't need any more trouble." If he could play this off right, having the Alura Unes angry at him would be more than made up for by the rest of the gardeners and plant-creatures owing him a great favor. Death would be none the wiser. And Soma had allowed himself to shamefully fall out of practice....
The farmer's grateful chatter followed him to the stairs.
As he had been told, it was only one level down was where Arikado caught the heavy scent of an Alura Une, the hiss of vines on stone, the choked mumbling of a human. Sword loose in his hand, Arikado peeked around the doorway, gauging the situation.
An Alura Une, large and strong, her flower dyed red with blood. Soma, twined in vines so tight it seemed he could not move, slowly dragged closer to the waiting flower. Vines, writhing around them both, covering the floor as a twisting mass.
An unideal situation. But at least the Alura Une was distracted with her current prey, and would be unlikely to notice a new hunter. This far away Arikado could not recognize her - not that he knew many of the monsters nowadays. It had been far too long since he had walked among them, since he had cared about the names of miserable and damned souls. He stepped into the room. Along the wall would give him the best chance.
He moved quietly. He would have preferred to move more slowly, to be use to his stealth, but Soma's thighs already brushed the red edge of the flower cup, his face and limbs slack and limp. He held no weapon. The boy wasn't dead; Arikado could see his chest rise and fall, could smell the living blood in his veins from here, but there was clearly something wrong. He did not seem to even want to fight his entanglement. Arikado picked up the pace as best he could, tapping out an erratic path between the twisting vines.
He almost got away with it.
He was just out of striking distance when the Alura Une turned her eyes away from Soma, just far enough away to stay the idea of charging in. The Alura Une raised herself up, spitting nectar, seed-bright eyes glassy with fury. The floor erupted in a vicious bramble, reaching up to grab Arikado and drag him down to be ripped to pieces.
Arikado leapt, not for the first time cursing the decision to seal his powers. A bat or mist would have no trouble here, but- it was not the time for regrets. He landed, crushing vines beneath his feet and ignoring the tears and scratches from the thorns. His sword cut down more vines that reached out to ensnare him like they had Soma, but there were always more and the Alura Une had sharpened roses in her hand.
Between cutting down the roses and the reaching vines, Arikado chose the roses. It was a mistake. One tangling vine wrapped around his sword arm, dragging him off-balance and throwing a cloud of pollen in his face. Another twisted around his legs, stealing his balance and nearly sending him to the bloody floor.
The Alura Une screamed in triumph. Soma's head rolled toward the scene, but still he refused to fight his bonds.
The thorns pierced Arikado's flesh through his suit, thin wool and linen a poor substitute for proper armor. The pollen blurred his senses, filling his eyes, nose, and mouth with bright, choking sparks. The vines dragged him forward almost faster than his feet could keep up - but he had practiced this. The sandy arena, Kuan Sheng's training, his father's bloody practice every day until the motions were burned into his body. Arikado half stepped forward, pulled back with his sword arm and ignored the tears in his flesh, grasped the vine and ripped.
His sword arm came free, in the same motion he dragged his free arm across his eyes. The buttons scraped his face, his eyes still blurred from the pollen, but he could see the flower in front of him and the small human-like form within and that was all he needed. The vines still fouled his legs but he forced them forward, trampling and tearing free and he charged, the blade held straight for the Alura Une's heart.
She swore in the language of flowers. A vine twisted his strike so it pierced her side instead of her heart and even as she howled in rage and pain the vines wrapped around his neck, filling all his senses with packed, cloying pollen. Arikado heard a heavy thump - Soma falling? - but couldn't turn his attention away. Two hands on his blade to draw it free and strike again, his feet in a poor position and he could hear Kuan Sheng scolding at him from the mists of the past, vines choking him out as if the pollen were not doing so already, a knee on the edge of the flower to give him enough leverage for a wide, blind swing.
The Alura Une's wild screams and curses cut off with her head. The flower crackled and burned around him, cutting through the pollen with the scent of smoke and blood. The vines withered away, falling to dust as Arikado found his balance again, still trying to wipe the heavy pollen from his face.
He sneezed. He hadn't sneezed in centuries.
After an entirely-too-long coughing, sneezing, and dripping fit, the pollen was cleared away and Arikado could start putting himself back in order. Behind him he could hear Soma moving around, and hoped the boy had been too stunned in the fall to notice Arikado's current discombobulation. Either way. Soma was saved and had no room to talk; the Alura Une was dead and the creatures of the garden would owe him a large favor. It was time to find that skeleton farmer and get his hands on some desperately-needed information. Once he was sure his eyes were no longer watering and his nose not dripping, Arikado put away his sword and turned to face Soma. "Are you unhurt?"
Soma blinked sluggishly at him. His eyes were glazed - had he hit his head in the fall? What kind of untrained idiot didn't even know how to fall properly? Arikado bit himself back and, not for the first time, reminded himself Soma was neither a knight's son nor a Belmont. He stepped a bit closer and started to repeat the question, only to be cut off with a wave. "I'm fine, just...just gimme a sec," the boy mumbled, scrambling to his feet with odd, swaying motions. God's nails, he really had hit his head.
"I'm fine," Soma repeated, but his tone was dazed and his eyes unfocused. Arikado stepped forward to get a better look and Soma did react to that, raising his face and looking...Arikado couldn't identify that expression, though he could smell Soma's blood pounding through his veins. It smelled fresh and light and good, and Arikado's tongue was trailing over his fangs without conscious thought. He had sealed much of his powers away, but he was so hungry. He leaned in closer, to examine the boy's eyes, to smell the boy's blood, to do something he couldn't quite name.
Soma leaned closer to him, and Arikado realized that he had been moving towards the boy's neck. He shoved Soma away and took a step back, trying not to show how his hands trembled and his breath shuddered with how close he'd been to biting an ally. What was wrong with him? That he had foolishly neglected to feed his vampire half before venturing to the castle, of course. But - he looked at Soma, whose eyes were still dark and lips slightly parted, a blush rising on his pale cheeks, and felt a twist of something strange in his stomach. Something was wrong beyond his hunger. Arikado forced his breathing under control and held his hands out against Soma coming closer - it didn't stop the boy, who pushed against the grip on his shoulders and frowned, his voice rough and pleading, "Hey, Arikado...listen. Listen, I..."
"Stop." It was an order, an order Arikado knew wouldn't be obeyed. But he had to think. His hands clenched on Soma's shoulders, and his thumbs rubbed at the flesh beneath despite his mind's will. He could still smell Soma, his blood rushing thick and fast but there was something else, something that coated the back of his throat and scented the air around them with a thick, musky smell. It was familiar and foreign at the same time, and it brought a certain feeling to his body, a warmth he had forgotten.
The Alura Une's pollen. Of course. He'd heard stories from the monsters when he was a child, of a pollen that entrapped men and made them desperate for the Alura Une's embrace.
But he shouldn't have been affected. Iris had sprayed him full in the face with what she swore was the pollen when he was young and wild and looking for a thrill and it hadn't done a thing to his dead flesh. What had changed? Why was his blood starting to rise now, of all times?
And then Soma was up against his chest, face pressed to his neck and arms around his body. At some point Arikado had forgotten to keep his arms stiff and now he and the boy were embracing, Soma's warm, soft breaths playing across his skin. He could feel Soma's heartbeat, the pleas Soma made that were too quiet to hear. Arikado tried to push him away again, but his arms would not respond even as his body warmed under the touch. In desperation he tried to transform into mist - to hell with his secrets, this was beyond bearing - but slammed into the same block he'd cursed earlier. He'd sealed the vast majority of his vampiric powers to live amongst the humans, and-
-and that was why, Arikado realized with dawning horror. He'd sealed as much of his cursed nature as he could. He was as close to a normal human, as close to his mother's true son as he could be. He lived and breathed as a human. His blood flowed as a human. He no longer had his father's undead curse to protect him from illness, from drugs and poison, from ordinary, human lusts.
He was vulnerable.
Of all the ways he'd half-expected to be thankful for his cursed nature, this wasn't one of them.
Fighting to get this madness under control, despite the heat he could now feel across his entire body, Arikado shoved Soma away. "Stop this. We have work to do."
The boy's eyes were glazed, but sharpened oddly at Arikado's words. "Don't be like that," he whined, and the rhythm of his speech was just so slightly off. "I...I like you, even if you're a dick half the time." He considered, the light in his eyes shifting, thoughtful. "More than half. Come on," and his voice was low and pleading again, "It'll be fun. Don't do this to me."
It was the pollen that made Arikado's arms weaken yet again, the pollen that let Soma come close yet again. The boys hands were an odd mixture of hesitant and sure, and Arikado didn't want to think about that too much. This was wrong. Not just a crossing of the lines of a professional relationship, not just a mockery of God's law of chastity, but even if Soma was his own person...Arikado knew those eyes. Those were the eyes of Dracula.
He could still kill Soma, a mad, desperate part of him suggested. He could kill Soma and get out of here.
But he couldn't. Not Soma. Not with the boy's soft lips frantically kissing at his neck, the hands scrabbling at his waist, the leg slipped between his own. The Alura Une's poison was too deep in his frail, weak, human blood to stop now.
It was strength born of desperation that let him shove Soma away. He no longer had a plan, merely the last scraps of reason that bid him to run, run, find some small bolthole and wait for the poison to sweat itself out of his veins. It was that which threw his body into flight, and it was not enough.
It should have worked. Would have worked, if only Soma's legs were not already entangled with his own. Arikado's flight ended not a step away from where he started, tripped to fall headlong on the hard stone floor. The impact jarred his reason, leaving him lying there with blood in his mouth and stars in his eyes.
Soma was not so affected.
"Hey," there was a hand on his shoulder, a warm body at his back, "careful- you okay?" Breath on his neck, arms around his chest, and it would be so easy to roll over, so easy to bite and feed and lose himself in Soma, to become one- "Knock it off already," Cease this foolishness, Arikado heard in Dracula's voice, barely hidden beneath the boy's, "I know you don't have a girlfriend and Mina's cool, so come on, it'll be fun." Come, my son, let us go together.
Arikado could feel his heart pounding, for all it was as still and dead as ever. Soma's hands were undoing his tie, his jacket, his shirt-buttons, and there was an annoyed huff when they found his undershirt. Arikado pushed himself up on one arm, he was still strong enough to do that, and grasped at Soma's hands without knowing if he did it to halt or encourage, not strong enough to resist the poison within.
Soma took it as encouragement. "See, like that...you're okay with this, right? I mean if you weren't I, I'd..." He trailed off, occupied with undoing the buttons on Arikado's slacks, until they gave way and Soma could press his hand inside, Arikado still holding on. "You never held back on your opinions before," Soma said, dazed but confident.
He didn't trust his tongue to speak his wish. He wasn't sure what it was anymore. He knew they should not do this, but he pressed himself into Soma's hand anyway.
He remembered, vividly, the first time he'd been sickened on one of his father's hunting parties, when he'd seen a woman half-burned by magic and been unable to feel it was justice. He had kept his peace then by habit and by fear. It hadn't stopped him from going on the next and enjoying ripping the soldiers' throats out, but he liked to remember it as the moment he knew what must be done.
Now he just remembered how he had stood by and let it happen, just as he stood by now. He felt almost a bystander in his own body. It welcomed Soma’s touch of its own accord. It helped slip his slacks down without his will.
"Seriously, say something already. I..." Soma's hand pulled away from Arikado's feverish torso to rest on the ground. He could still feel Soma trembling, shaking with the effort of holding back. "Come on?" His voice had an odd, pleading tone, and for the first time this evening, Arikado couldn't hear Dracula in Soma's voice.
It was too late to do anything about it. To say yes would comfort the boy. He did not wish for this situation either. It would be a kindness. Arikado bowed his head and said, as clearly as he could manage: "Do it. I..." he trailed off, unable to think of anything more.
It didn't matter. Granted permission, Soma resumed his actions with even more enthusiasm. His lips found Arikado's ear, though it seemed more by hapstance than intention. He was still babbling nonsense, an inane stream Arikado ignored. No matter his words, he still had his heart. As long as he faced the familiar worn stone, as long as he didn't turn over - as long as he didn't give himself over, body and soul together, it was all right. His body had always demanded blood against his will. It was allowed. He would let this lust pass through him as well.
It was such a cheap excuse. It was what he had done before, when he had dismissed Mother's final request because he was too weak to stand up to Dracula alone. This was sin, no matter what justifications he wrote for himself.
But Soma's hands were so warm and gentle on his legs, between them. Every touch was sweet and electric and had that witch-girl's hands been so good? It had been so long, so many centuries. Soma draped over him like a blanket, comforting in the same way Father had been, so long before. He had already given his acquiescence. He had no more right to complain.
Soma pressed against him, sliding between his thighs, hot, dragging, and desperate. Arikado bit his lip against the rough pleasure, Soma gave a little wordless cry and pressed his head to Arikado's shoulder, hips still rocking even as they chafed together. Blood filled his mouth.
It was always so odd tasting his own blood. Human blood filled him with strange tastes and visions, all as unique as the individual. Vampire blood was heavy and dark, soporific the few times Father had let him try. But his own blood was salt and iron, and it wasn't enough, not now, even as he worried the wound for the familiar comfort of fresh blood.
Something wet and cold slid between his legs to the sound of Soma's inane murmurings, "Don't worry, I got this...I can figure this out, it's cool," Fear not, my son, I will end it, "Even Slime is useful, I can't believe it...it's great, though," and he was between Arikado's legs again, easy and smooth.
Some sane part of Arikado laughed that he should be made eromenos to the boy, when by all rights he was the one that taught and guided, but the greater, pollen-drunk part merely rejoiced at the wonderful, irresistible joining of flesh. Blood rushed in his veins, filled his mouth, as warm and sweet as Soma's desperate kisses to his hair and collar, as Soma's hand that reached out to clasp his own. Soma's hips jerked against his own, the unsteady rhythm of the young. Arikado allowed it, allowed his body to respond and guide, while the small sane part of him retreated from reality.
The gardens of Celia's castle were not those of the castle of his youth. But even as he knew that, it seemed the gate across from them was where he had often waited for Mother to finish collecting her herbs, the fallen pillar capital to the right was where he had scraped off half his skin making a slide, the trees were where Father had taken him for lessons when they had both grown tired of the library. He'd gotten an extensive lecture on the great Greek philosophers right there, under those boughs, and if he strained he could almost remember the rustle of the leaves, the crackle-snap of the torches, the cadence of Father's voice without the madness...
The cadence of Soma's voice.
Behind him there was a sharp cry as Soma thrust forward again one last time, his fingers clutching tightly at Arikado's hand. His other hand seized tight around Arikado, roughly jerking in the same confused, unsteady rhythm as he had thrust.
It was enough, enough even for properly dead flesh to respond and spill across the rough stone floor.
Soma collapsed, hips still moving in slight, stuttering motions even as he gave himself over to exhaustion. Arikado kept the arm holding them both up locked by sheer force of will. The boy was damned heavy.
It didn't matter. Soma slid off his back to fall in a crumpled heap beside him, panting as if he had been fighting for hours. His hand was at Arikado's shoulder, an insistent downward pressure. "...Relax already. You don't...you don't have to be so uptight all the time."
Nonsense. But a lassitude did now steal over him, and so he folded his arm and laid down, the cool stone oddly comforting. His legs were tangled with Soma's and his knees hurt. By all rights he should shake off the remaining aftereffects and find the damn skeleton whose fault all this was, but...but he was tired. But the aftereffects did still linger. But Soma's arm laid heavy upon him.
The castle could take care of itself for a few minutes.
Soma was watching him, eyes still familiar and dark under the soft fringe of hair. Arikado fought the urge to shift under the scrutiny. He could feel no surge of dark power, no endless fount of chaos and rage. Surely it was still the boy who watched him.
The hand on his shoulder moved upward, stroking his hair, his jaw. A thumb brushed away a trickle of blood from his lip - it brought a look of concern to Soma's face, a look Arikado didn't want to read too deeply. It should be simple concern for an injured ally. That was all he and Soma were.
Soma leaned in and pressed their lips together.
It was all Arikado could do not to injure the boy in struggling away. Soma licked at his lips, an insistent invitation that Arikado refused to consider granting. He could not - could never - allow Soma to be contaminated with his cursed blood. He would not allow that mistake to be repeated.
Soma was not deterred by the rejection, and continued to kiss with strangely gentle ardor - soft and insistent by turns, until at last he seemed to tire and drew away, watching Arikado with a heavy gaze. He smiled, again gentle in a way Arikado never expected from Soma, and spoke, words languid and slowed. "Yes...that was fun, wasn't it? My..."
He lost the thread of his thought, tucked his head to Arikado's breast, and was asleep before the chill had finished winding its way down Arikado's spine.
There was nothing to do but bracket the sleeping boy with an arm - to protect him, to guard against him, Arikado was not sure which - and wait through the endless night until the damned poison abated for good.
The skeleton farmer came not long after Arikado had regained himself and had started the process of putting himself to rights. The skeleton had a few scraps of sense rolling about his empty skull and said nothing of how he found them, simply gave over his watering can and planted a somnus weed by Soma without being told. He did ask if the Alura Une was gone for good, and Arikado confirmed her destruction as he wiped away all evidence from between his legs.
Good, the skeleton clattered. The castle really was going to hell these days, with no Dark Lord to maintain good order amongst the demons. Death himself was at loose ends and seemed to have no interest in command beyond the bare necessities, Belmonts rampaged without halt, and this wasn't even the proper castle at all! It was an insult to the good and loyal creatures, it truly was. Now, if they but had a proper Dark Lord again...
Arikado steadfastly ignored him as he buttoned up his clothes.
"Relay the news to your fellows. When I arrive, we may discuss my payment," he told the skeleton, which got him a look of dismay from the bare skull. "Did you think I would do this for free?"
No, the skeleton admitted sadly. He should not have hoped for such a thing from Lord Dracula's wayward son. He tucked away his watering can and seeds, and doffed his hat as he took his leave.
Once again armored in layers of wool and linen, all evidence of the past hour erased, Arikado plucked the somnus weed and waited for Soma to wake.
It didn't take long. The boy's eyelids flickered within moments, after a few minutes he sat up and looked around with bleary, confused eyes. "Ugh, I feel like crap. That was..." His eyes found Arikado and he froze, a slow look of horror covering his face.
"Soma-"
"Oh shit, I- I'm so sorry, I didn't- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...to do that. Are you okay? Are you mad? I..." He trailed off, then sat up, head bowed. "If you want to hit me, go for it."
Arikado couldn't say he wasn't tempted. But...but it had been his fault. For not killing the Alura Une faster. For not being able to stand against the pollen. For allowing Soma such liberties. For, ultimately, giving in. He had acquiesced, and had no right to complain. It wasn't Soma's fault, and to force him to bear punishment would be base cruelty.
So instead Arikado asked, coolly: "What are you talking about? Did you hit your head?"
The boy gaped at him. "I...wait." He brushed at his head and winced, apparently finding that he had, in fact, hit it in the fall. "Oh. Geez. I just had the craziest dream. What happened to the monster?"
"I killed it. Clean yourself up and get going. The cult isn't going to wait for you to take a nap every time you feel tired."
"Yeah, yeah...I knew that already. If you're just going to stand there, at least turn around." Soma pulled a handkerchief out of his clothes and started the process of getting himself back into fighting shape.
Arikado waited for Soma to assemble himself - just in case - before striding out the room without another word. They both had work to do, and the garden held nothing but long-dead memories.