The Blood is the Life IX Ranma woke slowly, brushing silky strands of hair from his cheek as he gradually became aware that his limbs were in an awkward, painful position. Suddenly he remembered the trapdoor. The hair he had brushed aside, Ukyo and Shampoo's hair, had been bait. His eyes snapped open, but the room was pitch black, the darkness an almost palpable thing pressing against his straining eyes. He struggled to untangle himself, and discovered with a sharp burst of agony that his right leg and arm were seriously hurt, possibly even broken. I knew you would come, a Voice murmured from the darkness. You're frightened, aren't you? I can hear your heart beating faster. I can smell your fear... "Why are you doing this?" Ranma asked through clenched teeth, searching for the stake with his good hand. "R-Ranma?" A sudden spark near his right eye made him flinch, then the faint, wavery glow of a single candle illuminated the vampire's pale face. The scent of roses and old blood mingled with the sharp tang of sulfur. "Ranma, my darling! It really is you!" Kodachi said with a toothy, feral grin. "Who did you think?" Ranma grimaced as she leaned in closer, bringing more of the blood scent with her. "Well, I was expecting to catch that mousy little fiancee of yours," Kodachi answered musingly, contemplating the stolen locks of hair as she leaned across him to pick them up. "But this way is even better, dearest Ranma. I won't have to eliminate her for you. Ooh! She'd make a fine first meal, don't you think?" Ranma flinched, struck to the core by the thought, but the vampire seemed blissfully unaware. If he could only keep her talking long enough for the others to find him... "Why did you kill Ryoga?" Ranma felt the stake, just barely within reach of his good hand. He slowly started to edge his way over to it, praying that Kodachi couldn't see that far into the darkness. "He was an experiment, of course," the vampire answered matter-of-factly. "I had to be sure I could bring someone over before I tried it on you. And he did stupidly set camp right on the grounds outside my window - why, he was practically begging to be taken." "Well, what about the others?" Ranma asked bitterly, pointedly glancing at the rich locks of hair trailing through her pale fingers. The stake rolled a half-turn away from him. "They were unworthy of you," Kodachi said, her expression suddenly cold and unyeilding. "And my fa- and the Panda?" He could almost reach it... "That wretched pig-tailed girl's pet? It was in the way, and I was hungry. Why on Earth would you care about that? It was only a dumb animal." "So you wanted to kill off everyone I cared about. Just so you could turn me into a vampire." Ranma could feel tears burning their way down his icy cheeks, and silently cursed himself for showing such weakness. "But don't you see, Darling?" Kodachi asked, leaning forward to trail her fingers across his chest. "We'll be together forever now. There won't be anyone to stand in our way." With one desperate lunge, Ranma grabbed the stake and struck at her blindly. For Ryoga. For Ukyo and Shampoo. For Pop. "Akane!" Nabiki gasped. Tofu grabbed up the sword, still covered with the Principal's blood. He ran downstairs, stumbling in the gloom with Nabiki right at his heels. The blood-curdling shrieks led them straight to the room where Akane knelt, scrabbling at the floor with bleeding fingers. "What is it?" Tofu said, rushing over to grab at Akane's hands while Nabiki flipped the light switch on. Akane screamed at the sight of them, and it took a moment for her to grasp that the blood was not theirs. Before they had even begun to explain, she cried out, "Ranma! He fell down in there!" The outline of the trapdoor was barely visible in the bright flood of electric light. Tofu tried to wedge the sword into the seam, but it wouldn't fit. "What was Ranma doing when the door opened?" Nabiki asked. Akane explained about the hair, and Nabiki wordlessly leaned in to peer at the wall. The marks where the tacks had been were just barely visible. She quickly removed her small post earrings and pushed them into the holes. They weren't as wide as the tacks had been, but maybe... "Cross your fingers," Nabiki whispered, then pulled the earrings back out. The trapdoor swung open, and Akane rammed the stake she held into the exposed hinge. The door groaned, but held open. The room was partly lit by the opened trap door, but it was the candle's flickering light that revealed the heart-stopping scene as Akane jumped down. Ranma's body motionless in Kodachi's arms. His arms and legs flung out at impossible, painful angles. His neck strained backward by the vampire's grip on his braid. His unfocused eyes wide and terrified. Kodachi hissed, revealing reddened fangs, as Akane landed with a graceless thud. The short-haired girl cursed her lack of foresight in rushing in unarmed, and her fingers trembled in fear at the thought that she might be too late. "He's mine!" the vampire shrieked, and in the blink of an eye she had tossed Ranma's limp body aside and crossed the room. With one blurringly quick strike, she sent Akane sailing into the far wall. The backpack flung open at the impact, and all three wooden stakes tumbled out. Akane staggered to her feet only to be thrown again. This time she landed on something soft - Ranma. He was gasping for breath, and Akane felt her own frozen heart stuttering back to life. He was still alive. Akane took the stake he still held, and slowly circled away from Ranma, shrugging the backpack off. Nabiki had jumped down at some point, and Akane tossed her the now-empty backpack, relieved to have someone to look after Ranma and terrified that her sister might meet the same fate. Tofu had to be nearby, too... "He's not yours, Kodachi," Akane called in a wavery voice. "He never was. He never loved you." The vampire remained silent in the shadows. The bright light spilling in through the ceiling actually made it harder to see in the dark corners of the room; Kodachi could be hiding almost anywhere. "Do you hear me, Kodachi?" There was no response. The only sounds Akane heard were Ranma's labored breathing, Nabiki's murmured assurances, and the fierce pounding of her own heart. Akane's slow rage started to boil at the memory of Ranma's frightened eyes. How dare she do that to Ranma? "Ranma is MY fiancé!" Akane shouted. "He's going to marry ME!" Ranma groaned as the warm, solid weight of Akane's body landed on him. He felt her pry the stake out of his numbed fingers, and he gave an inarticulate cry of fear as she left him and started taunting the vampire. She was going to get herself killed! "It's Ok, Ranma, hang on," Nabiki was whispering to him. He dimly felt her putting her arms around him, the pressure of her hand holding his, but he could feel none of the warmth of that contact. "Get Akane out of here," he rasped feebly, but he couldn't be sure she had heard him. Nabiki didn't answer. "Just hang in there, Saotome. Dr. Tofu will fix you right up again, you'll see." It seemed that the sound had to travel a far distance, but he could hear Akane shouting that he was hers, and he had to smile at that. He was glad to have the cover of darkness to hide his expression. He wondered if she meant it. Suddenly, the small room was flooded with bright light. Tofu had found a light switch. Akane blinked painfully in the sudden brightness, and blearily saw that the vampire was only a few feet away from her, covering its eyes from the glare. "Akane, hurry!" Tofu shouted. "It's almost sunset!" Akane dashed forward with the stake, stumbling as Kodachi effortlessly dodged her. Tofu dove in at almost the same moment, and the vampire plucked him from the air as easily as catching a baseball. She tore the stake out of Tofu's hand and tossed it aside, then grabbed a handful of the hapless doctor's hair. "Pathetic," she growled, pulling Tofu around between herself and Akane. Grinning at the furious little mouse of a girl, Kodachi pulled Tofu's head back and wrapped one slender arm around his chest. "One more step in this direction and I'll break his neck," Kodachi said sweetly. Akane froze, and the vampire had to chuckle. Only an idiot would fall for a ploy like that. Of course, she had every intention of breaking the man's neck anyway, after he had suffered enough for the trouble he had caused her. "Akane, you have to do it now!" Tofu gasped through clenched teeth. "She'll be too powerful after sunset!" "Yes, that's true, Akane dear," Kodachi smirked. "After sunset, I'll be stronger, and Ranma will be mine." "Never!" Ranma's strangled cry echoed through the room, and Kodachi and Akane both glanced at him in surprise. Ranma mumbled something to Nabiki, and Akane looked back at her foe in time to see the wounded, puzzled look on her face turning to one of fury. A sickening snap resounded as the barest flexing of the vampire's pale fingers broke Tofu's neck. With one desperate leap, Akane knocked Tofu out of Kodachi's slackening grip and drove the point of the stake into her chest, falling to land on Tofu's broken body with a thud. The vampire stared numbly at the stake for an instant, then plucked it out gingerly and tossed it aside. She glanced over in Ranma's direction and smiled triumphantly - just as Akane jumped back up with Tofu's borrowed sword in her hand. With one vicious lunge, Akane drove the sword home. The vampire's body dissolved into dust, which rose in a spiraling column up through the trapdoor and out of sight. Panting and trembling from the effort, and aching from bruises she hadn't even noticed until now, Akane staggered over to Ranma. Nabiki looked up at her tearfully as she drew near, and shook her head. Akane sank to her knees as the import knocked the breath out of her. Ranma was dead? He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be... Unaware of the tears already streaming down her cheeks, Akane crawled over to Ranma and gently caressed his cool cheek. "Ranma no baka," she whispered, then pulled his unprotesting body into an embrace, rocking him back and forth as she cried. Akane returned to the house late that night, bruised and bloodied and covered with soot. Nabiki was waiting up for her, and followed her into the bathroom to help her undress. "I'll get rid of these," she said quietly. "What took so long?" "I gave them the kind of burial Tofu said," Akane answered wearily, her twice-emptied stomach churning again at the memory. "I chopped off their heads, put stakes through their hearts and garlic in their mouths." "Oh," Nabiki answered. There didn't seem much else to say, in the face of that kind of horror. "You know, I thought..." Akane rubbed at her eyes, leaving a gory trail across her face. "I thought about waiting. To see if Ranma would..." "Did he?" "I didn't wait. I didn't think he would want to come back as...as that." "I don't think so, either." "And, if he had... I would've become one, too." "I know, sis," Nabiki answered compassionately. She couldn't begin to fathom the sacrilege of it, that the purest love could be a recruiting tool for that kind of evil... but even if Akane had the strength of will to try to resist him, a vampire with Ranma's power would have been unstoppable. Better not to mention that. Ever. "Then I set fire to the restaurants and the Kuno house. I don't think I left any evidence behind." "You did the right thing, Akane," Nabiki said, placing a gentle hand on her sister's shoulder. "Did I?" Akane's eyes met Nabiki's in an intense plea for absolution. "Yes, you did. I'm sure of it," Nabiki answered with a cool certainty she didn't feel. "Nabiki? What were his last words?" Nabiki paused a long moment, watching Akane begin to scrub as though the question was of no import. "He loved you, Akane. Let's just leave it at that." Nabiki quickly scooped up the clothes and exited the room before Akane could question her further. Akane scrubbed for a long time, trying to wipe the stench of the fires from her memory, the horror of Ranma's body so still and silent. Her muscles screamed in protest as she finally sank down into the tub, hissing with pain as the water scalded her raw skin. She'd had to carry the bodies of Ranma, Tofu and the Panda to Ucchan's before turning the restaurant into their funeral pyre. It would have been so much easier to leave Ranma and Tofu where they lay, but the thought was unbearable. No, Ranma's resting place had to be with his friends and his father. Groaning under her breath, she let the water out of the tub and climbed awkwardly out of it. Everything hurt. Tofu could have made it better... Akane choked off a sob, dressed quickly and hobbled over to Kasumi's room. The eldest Tendo girl was soundly asleep, smiling faintly in her pleasant dreams - dreams that were now free from horror. The red mark of Kodachi's power had vanished from her forehead, and Kasumi was blissfully confident that this meant she was now free of the vampire's curse. Akane wasn't so certain, but she could almost smile to know that her sister's peace had been restored. If Kasumi mourned at all over Tofu, she didn't let Akane know about it. Before moving on, Akane checked that the garlic blooms still hung over the windows. No point in taking any chances. Her father slept fitfully, his hair plastered against his skin with sweat. Akane fervently hoped he would recover without needing a doctor. She didn't know how they'd explain his injuries to the authorities. Nabiki was still wide awake, with a dim lamp shining by her bedside. "What were the exact words?" Akane asked. Nabiki glanced away reluctantly. "Please," Akane said. "I have to know." "He said, 'Tell that tomboy to keep her eyes front.'" "Just like that?" "No, it was more like, 'Eyes front, idiot.' I wish you hadn't made me tell you." Akane smiled. Familiar words, ones she had shouted to Ranma during an early match with Kuno. "Why, what does that mean?" Nabiki asked suspiciously. Had Ranma been speaking in code? "It means he loved me," Akane answered softly. "I really think he did. Good night, Nabiki." "'Night." It was nearly four in the morning, and Akane was only now getting ready to sleep. With a deep sigh, she flung open the window and climbed into bed. The fresh air blowing in cleared the last of the garlic scent from the room, and a few withered petals fluttered down from the dead bouquets hung over the window. Akane forced her aching muscles to relax one by one, deliberately slowing her breathing as her eyelids slid shut. She had dozed for a few minutes when the scent of roses flooded her foggy brain. Holding her breath in sudden, certain fear, Akane opened her eyes to see a figure looming over her, its glowing eyes illuminating its furious face. "Akane Tendo," the vampire snarled. "You've ruined everything." "You killed Ranma," Akane answered, the barest tremble in her voice betraying her. "You killed him. I didn't." "I offered him eternity! Freedom from sickness and aging and YOU!" Kodachi hissed. "I offered him salvation, and you robbed him of his chance! You put a stake through his heart! Through my darling Ranma's heart!" Tearless sobs wracked the slender gymnast's form as she leaned in close, her fangs gleaming, the basilisk stare of her reddened eyes freezing Akane in place before she could respond. I can't give Ranma his eternity, Kodachi whispered when she had regained her composure, her Voice sending a delicious, horrible chill down Akane's spine. I can only punish you. I can condemn you to an eternity of guilt! She bent to graze her teeth across Akane's throat, one cold hand rising to grip a fistful of short, dark hair. Akane froze in thrall as the icy fangs brushed across her sensitive skin, and her mind raced back to Ryoga doing just this... and Ranma, his eyes wide with terror as Kodachi drained his life away. "I knew you'd come," Akane murmured, slowly shaking off the vampire's spell. "It had to be wood, didn't it? Not a steel blade." Kodachi paused, irritated that her prey was still talking. She readied herself for the first delicious lunge, for the sensation of her teeth piercing delicate skin, the warm rush of blood in her throat, the final, sweet satisfaction of triumph over her hated enemy... Suddenly a fiery pain tore through her, and she fell back, staring dumbfounded at the wooden stake protruding from her pale, dead chest. Akane smiled viciously as the vampire shrieked and clawed at the stake. "This is for Ranma," she hissed, leaping to her feet. She drove the wooden shard home with one solid kick, fighting the sudden, maniacal urge to laugh as the monster gasped Voicelessly in its death throes. Akane flipped the light switch on in time to see Kodachi thrashing on the floor, a red froth bubbling at her lips as she convulsed in pain. The vampire's eyes still held a spark of malignant consciousness as Akane forced its mouth open and rammed a fresh clove of garlic down its throat. "For Ranma," she hissed, and watched as the body twitched and then was still. Akane debated a long moment on whether to dispose of the body, or just wait for the sun to take care of it for her. In the end, she decided to do it the hard way - she didn't want a Kodachi-shaped burn mark on her rug. After considering the problem for a short while, Akane bundled the gymnast's body up and carried it to Dr. Tofu's office. The office had to be torched anyway, in case Tofu had left any case notes or other evidence. Akane swiftly decapitated the body, noting grimly that she had gotten better at it. She was getting just a little too efficient at breaking and entering, too. She quickly prepared to start the fire and then knelt on the floor near the vampire's corpse, holding the sword against her own flat stomach. Just a few moments of pain, and it would all be over. She'd be with Ranma again... She stared at Tofu's bookcase, not wanting Kodachi's malicious, glaring eyes to be the last thing she saw. Her family would be safe now. Ranma was waiting for her. She could almost hear him calling her... Calling her an idiot. Her family would be safe from Kodachi, all right, but somebody had made Kodachi, and that somebody was still out there. Grimacing in frustration she was too tired to voice, swallowing tears she was too weary to cry, Akane quickly sheathed the sword, started the fire and escaped into the night. She had to be sure the deaths wouldn't be connected to her family in any way, and then she had to destroy Kodachi's maker. She couldn't rest until it was all over. Silent as a wraith, Kasumi Tendo glided through the halls of her family's house in the dark hour just before dawn. It had been almost a week since Akane had announced that Kodachi was truly dead, but Kasumi looked through the house anyway, checking that fresh garlic wards adorned each door and window. Soun was recovering from his injuries, and although the physical damage was healing, Kasumi doubted he would ever be the same again. While he was still bedridden, he had penned out a new will. He spent several hours a day explaining what to do in the event of his death... just in case. Nabiki was sleeping for now, but she would surely wake up screaming soon, as she had done every night since the events at the Kuno house. She and Akane trained rigorously every day now, both to exhaust themselves enough to sleep and to prepare for what the future might bring. As for Akane... she lay perfectly still in her bed, only the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest indicating that she still lived. Her bearing was grim these days, as she finally became the focused and dedicated martial artist Ranma had always been. The difference was that Ranma had taken joy in almost everything he did... Kasumi sighed deeply as she finally returned to her room. Despite the brave face she had shown to her family, she didn't feel at all free of the vampire's influence. She gazed out the window at the waning moon, and briefly touched the healed spot on her forehead, wondering. She must be the only person on the face of the Earth who had survived a vampire's kiss. There was no-one like her... She prayed that there would never be another like her. Gazing up at the lonely moon, Kasumi wept for innocence lost and the woman she could never be. Akane watched from the doorway behind her, her own fists clenching until the knuckles turned white, her heart burning with dark purpose. She vowed she wouldn't rest until she had wiped the vampire race off the face of the Earth. And then, finally, she and Ranma would be together, far beyond the reach of sorrow. THE END More Author's Notes: Finally! This fic was supposed to be part of the Black Rose Mailing List's 1997 October Challenge of Doom. It... uh... didn't quite get finished on time. *^_^* I am especially grateful to Rebecca Littlehales and Gary Kleppe, two of the best prereaders in the world. I doubt that this fic would have been finished without their encouragement and input; if it had been, it would be riddled with all kinds of plot inconsistencies, characterization flaws, and even some horrendous grammatical errors. ^_~ Thanks, y'all, it's really meant a lot to me. Ranma 1/2 and all Ranma 1/2 characters are the creation and property of Rumiko Takahashi, and are used here without permission or license. No claims to the above copyright are made by the author of this work.