A/N : Hello all! This incomplete story has long been on hiatus due to a lack of time, effort and creativity. I'm so sorry! Coming back to Spiderweb, however, has given me different ideas about this little fic - changes have been made to the plot and the genre, it's now more of horror and drama than romance as it was previously.

Enjoy!

(You'll figure this out soon enough)

~Italics~ : Zero

Italics : Kaname

Zero Kiryuu was no fool.

And yet, here he was, a solitary pale moth flitting silently down the corridor of the Moon Dormitory, running to the impressive bronze double doors that lead to the room of the vampires' feared lord – Kaname Kuran.

He walked briskly, stepping a little too quickly – as though the moth was unwilling to stay still, uneasy, wary of becoming a predator's target. It was midnight.

Dead leaves, blown through the windows, skittered across the floor in the slight draught with a soft cackling that made the hairs rise unbidden on the back of Zero's neck. Kiriyuu forced himself to stare straight ahead, but the more he focused on the doors in front, the more his peripheries seem to blur, rendering slinking, sliding shadows on either side of him.

~Dearest Zero.~

In an instant where the Zero's vision was restricted to the bronze and mahogany panels of two doors in front of him, the air thrummed and thickened, stirred with the presence of unseen peoples, just out of his sight. Wild was the beating of the hunter's heart; wild with fear, and wild with madness; wild under the gaze of their baleful eyes.

~Dearest Zero, dearest brother, my beloved brother, my own blood, my sweet blood, your sweet eyes, your flesh and blood, the smile on your lips, the blood on your lips, my lips on your lips, your sweet smile on sweet lips, my lips to you, the blood in your smile, my smile at your blood, your sweet blood, your sweet lips, my sweet smile at your sweet blood, my sweet blood, my dear blood, my dear brother, beloved brother - ~

He quailed for a moment on the threshold of the two worlds. In this world, specters were as thick as lies; but take a step into the lair of this king of demons, and they would flee – of this vampire prince's madness and power, they were wiser than he.

~Dearest Zero. ~

He flung the doors open, and the voices withdrew; he found Kaname. He was languidly arrogant as always, raven locks pooling, the half buttoned shirt flaunting his chiseled ridges of his collarbones and chest, even the rise and fall of his breathing was sensuous. Sprawled on the sofa like a deity incarnate.

A deity sprawled on the red ground, horror incarnate; helpless, immobile, and in pain. Paralysis, torment, the graze of cold fingers on his ribs, between his ribs, sliding about his lungs, touching his warm, beating heart with dead fingers.

"You choose the most ungodly times to appear, Kiryuu." Kaname opened an eye, showed the tips of his fangs in a small grin, and closed it again. The fingers curled around his heart, unyielding as iron.

In an explosion of movement, Zero closed the distance between them; he grabbed the front of his Kaname's shirt and bodily heaved him to his feet.

"Explain. Now!" A metallic click, and Kaname felt the cold tip of the Bloody Rose dig into his side, and pale violet eyes inches from his own, shimmering with suppressed wrath and vengeance.

The fingers constricted, tightened, stilling the swell of his heart as it beat to fuel his body. Still immobile, paralysed.

The pureblood smiled, tossed his head. Unintimidated by the gun, dismissing the threat with distressing ease.

"Why this animosity? I did the job of taking a pureblood's life, prevented your needlessly tossing your freedom away. Thank me for saving you from a lifetime of captivity, Kiriyu. Life at the mercy of the Ancient Thirteen is beyond human imagination."

The fingers closed around his heart, the hand yanked as though on a bell pull. The hand removed itself from his body, clutching a dripping, pulsating mass.

The gun moved from his waist to his temple, unwavering and steady as the pale purple glare. The click of a loaded barrel was accompanied by the faint whiff of silver.

"Shizuka Hiou was mine to kill!" Zero snarled.

Too late.

He opened his eyes blearily, feeling in his limbs a stiffness that had nothing to do with the cold floor, and everything to do with death. He could feel a new heart growing from his aorta and vena cava. It was painful, this hard intrusion pushing up beneath the lungs that had collapsed, like soggy wet bags, in the absence of oxygen. He could see the shape of his chest swelling to steeper convex as his ribs were pushed back into place by inflated lungs. He hated this process, this growing of a new heart.

Had the gods seen fit to teach him a lesson? How very ironic, fitting, then, that one as cruel as he was forced to spend the remainder of his life growing a new heart.

Immortality?

The sheer vitality and strength of his blood, such healing and resilience against death; a perfect mockery now.

Too weak to live, to want to endure with this endless excruciating agony, measured not in days but in deaths. But too strong to die.

His heart pumped more strongly as the layers of cardiovascular tissue regenerated. Blood that had cooled and pooled in his muscles was forced into movement by the pumping action of his heart, bringing warmth to his extremities. With the wakefulness came the memory of pain, and the renewing of fear, soon the abominable, cold, loathsome groping hands would come, holding him down, plunging through his flesh to take his heart. After he died – or went into coma, whichever it was – he would awake with a new and growing heart, to live another short life of dread and terror before the hands came again. And again. And again. And again. Again and again countlessly. No end.

"Yours to kill? Not now… and besides, Kiriyuu..." Kaname leaned in close, pushing against the gun held at his head,

"She wanted you. And I…I don't like sharing my possessions."

Zero recoiled, bristling with outrage.

"I belong to nobody, least of all you," he hissed, insulted. Kaname shook his head, still wearing that cold, condescending smile.

"You would do well to listen and learn, Kiryuu…put aside your human self for awhile and consider us.

"Shizuka and I, both heirs to the oldest and most powerful families, have always dominated the pureblood scene. Our dance is a ruthless tango of blood and power that has lasted for years, and finally I have vanquished Shizuka. She has been outdone, left the stage as nought but sparkling pearls of dust…

"In return I gain what any vampire would desire most – the untainted elixir of our existence, a pureblood's life and flesh.

"And in doing so, Zero Kiryuu … I have happened on…" a sensual sideways tilt of his head and an arched neck, a light lift of the haughty black brows;

"…a very interesting … toy…" Moonlight drizzled through the window, and Kaname's moving closer made shadows shift hauntingly over his features.

"What it is in you that drove Shizuka Hiou to obsession?"

There was a harsh sibilant hiss in the last word that rasped like steel in Kaname's voice, and Zero could neither miss it, nor could he explain why it provoked, on some innate level of animalism, his arousal; yet he stood still, a willing captive to lust's binding chains. The furor of curiosity and desire smouldered in his eyes, like a forest fire silhouetted against the moon.

Kaname took a full step back, crossed his arms about his chest, and eyed Zero appraisingly. For a moment both their gazes were narrowed to a single, undivided attention between mahogany, half lidded irises and sparkling purple eyes.

Then Kaname spoke, a single dizzying word that spun around Zero's mind – like a kite in a gale, a leaf in the storm – just its boldness, the authority, left him breathless –

"Undress."

No matter how many times he re-lived, he was still in the same place, condemned by sin to this glass coffin, glass indestructible as adamantium - this transparent trap of perdition, sinking through a sea of blood; a deep crimson streaked with dull brick red whirled through with a lush velvet burgundy, so many lives of mortals unfolding before him in these churning, roiling, scarlet depths. The mortals – how he envied them!- he had used to achieve this accursed immortality.

Every now and then a pale white shadow ghosted through the blood. Sometimes it was a hand, or the flat front of a belly. The dead corpses of his victims swimming in their own blood. How much blood he had spilt.

Something white swam up, pressed itself against the other side of the glass wall, grinning insanely at him.

Shizuka Hiou, who had looked angelic in real life, was nothing short of perfection in death. Perfection, that is, of a different kind. She was grinning like a hyena after carrion, mouth stretched to impossible proportions. And that hole in her heart, through which her heart had been ripped, still ghastly and empty, with blood coursing through it like water through a pipe. He backed up fearfully as the corpse of Shizuka drifted off the wall.

Zero's shaking fingers rose to the clasp of the jacket, then he paused. His trembling stilled. He fingered the smooth edged buttons teasingly, accidentally-on-purpose missing the button hole. The taut, thin line that was his lips relaxed and, for the first time, twisted into a mocking, lopsided sneer that –

"Faster."

No matter how fast it was, he could never put it off. It would come again – the binding of his limbs. The paralysis.

The sharp, callous command was tight with impatience and displeasure. Zero's confidence faltered, and he began to pull nervously at the buttons of his shirt.

He didn't move fast enough.

Kaname extended one long hand, fingers touching the milky white skin of Zero's chest; in a swift, ruthless movement, slashed downwards, tearing the thin fabric off and away and leaving only a silk magenta tie. Zero's eyes widened; his fists clenched as he unconsciously held his breath, backing away slowly.

The hands. The hands. The cold hands. The ruthless hands. Shizuka's hands, seeking vengeance for the warm organ that had been torn from their mistress, seeking to replace their eternal lost with this immortal's heart.

"I detest inexperience." Kaname shoved him away, turning his back as if disgusted by his unease. "The scent of greenness clings to you like that of spring about a newly born lamb!"

"Don't go–" Zero begged, his words deceptive, for his actions were anything but meek. He grabbed Kaname's shoulder and spun him around, dragged him close till their bodies were pressed against each other.

"I'm a fast learner," he breathed.

"We'll see," Kaname replied.

The fingers tightened, inexorably, and tore out his heart. In agony beyond articulation, racked with deep despair, Kaname screamed a silent scream.

End of Chapter 1

My first time treading in the horror department, so any constructive criticism is deserved and welcome! Please leave a review =) Thank you!