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"A light to burn all the empires
So bright, the sun is ashamed to rise and be
In love with all of these vampires
So you can leave like the sane abandoned me"
-The Sharpest Lives
Everything said and done, he’d gone to bed bone tired. Guarding Giorno, prodding Fugo when he could, it’d been a full day.
So when the Pistols wake him an hour after sleep finally kissed him goodnight, he groans that no, it is not time for a midnight snack.
His stomach chooses right then to give a gnarled growl. So he sits up and throws the covers off with a swear.
The hall’s dark, Giorno’s office empty. Surprising to see at all, but––Mista checks the wall clock––one in the morning had been his Boss’ usual bedtime these days.
Rounding the corner, Mista feels the kitchen tile chilled against his feet, his pajama bottoms should keep him warm long enough to grab some of Giorno’s leftover sandwich from the fridge.
The fridge opening strikes the dark kitchen with the glow of artificial light. Mista squinting as he retrieves the Styrofoam box. Giorno said he didn’t really care for it anyway. No doubt he’d leave it to rot like the others, the cue for Mista to step in.
After checking the box to see the sandwich still fresh, Mista nudges the fridge door closed––to see a dark figure in the doorway.
Mista jumps, half-reaches for his pistol before seeing it’s Giorno.
“God,” Mista relaxes a bit, “You startled me bad, Giorno. We gotta get a bell for you like a cat or some shit.”
In an attempt to move on, Mista manages a chuckle and returns to grabbing up his sandwich for a bite, but slows when Giorno doesn’t respond. Doesn’t so much as move.
“Uh, Giorno?”
Another moment of stillness before the guy starts walking into the room, and it’s clumsy. It’s not until the dim light of the hallway falls on his Boss that Mista sees the blood.
“Jesus–– What happened?” Mista drops the sandwich and rounds the island to meet his Boss in the middle of the kitchen. “Was it a stand fight? Are you hurt?”
But Giorno just keeps shuffling, passing Mista almost haphazardly. The one and only acknowledgement of the question that Giorno gives him is a small mutter––
“It’s not my blood.”
It eases the tension from Mista slightly. Emphasis on slightly. A million questions still bother him, and he can practically hear the pistols buzzing behind him in concern for Giorno but... he internally tells them to quiet. Guy could’ve been in a firefight and just needed a bath and sleep. He knew the feeling.
So Mista watches Giorno trudge to the end of the kitchen, disappearing down the hall towards his room for the night.
After reaffirming to himself once again that his Boss didn't really look injured––just slathered in blood and tired –– scratching his arm in thought, Mista returns to his Styrofoam box and sandwich.
The first bite is delicious, and the pistols buzzing in contentment soon make the night’s weird event fade to the back of his mind.
At least Giorno would have a story to tell in the morning to make breakfast more interesting than usual. Hopefully he wouldn’t walk in with a limp.
~~~~~~~
Morning brushes kindly on Giorno’s face. He brings himself to sit up, stretching.
His bones hum back to him, much better rested than he’s felt in a while. He sighs gratefully, and goes to get dressed.
Downstairs, he hears Mista and Fugo making coffee. An oddly quieter conversation occurring before Giorno rounds into the kitchen.
Both of them stop to look at him; Mista with a surprised look, and Fugo with a weary one like Mista has been messing with him. It’s only a moment though before they go back to their morning tasks.
“Did something happen?” Giorno asks, expecting their usual antics as he goes to take his cup and grab coffee.
“Well,” Fugo says, “last night Mista ‘got spooked’ apparently and wasn’t thinking when he used my Moka pot for hot chocolate.”
“Hey, I did look it up, old hag , and the powder wasn’t supposed to mess it up like that!”
“So it was supposed to mess it up a different way?”
“Yeah.”
“You– – !”
“You were spooked, Mista?” Giorno cuts in, glancing to the gunman as he pours himself coffee.
“Oh, uh, well I wasn’t spooked, really,” Mista covers before taking on a more concerned look, “Though, Giorno, I did want to say, uh, you know that you don’t have to go out alone at night by yourself to take care of shit. I’m ready to go with you wherever you need, Boss.”
The gunman looks at him expectantly, so he offers, “It's one of the aspects I appreciate the greatest, Mista. Thank you.” Then he goes to sit at the kitchen table––vaguely aware of the two pairs of eyes following him––retrieving his morning planner from the bookshelf above to check his timeline for the day. Though he’s sure he will have to reschedule only a few things. The lunch with Signore Perry should still be in order, unless the man turned coward and decided he wouldn’t let them launder money through the yacht club’s new location...
“Giorno?”
“Hmm?” He responds without looking up.
Mista sits across the table with a thick mug of coffee, some jellied toast on a plate clinking beside him as he starts, “After the deal this evening, we’ll have control over the judges at least for the amendment they gotta vote on soon, and that’ll be a big checkbox done, right?”
“Mhmm.”
“Figured we could get out to celebrate.” Mista takes on a lighter tone, “Some of the guys at Frank’s were talking about this one new place that’s got a dancing show with a beer buffet and there’s always girls there who love a good time, we could drive some around town afterwards!”
“A beer buffet?” Giorno glances up from his planner. “That’s your ideal Friday night?”
“Well,” Fugo manifests to sit himself on Giorno’s left with a book and coffee, “it’s more like daycare for Mista.”
“So, what?” Mista says. “You guys are ditching me to go to the opera or some stuffy shit?”
“Actually,” Fugo produces the tickets on cue. “Don Giovanni is playing, and I figured you could tag along if you wanted to keep a few brain cells.”
“Yeah a’right, whatever,” Mista says with his mouth full of toast, “ ‘augh at me for wantin’ the basics in ‘ife. What’d ’ya want to do, Gio?”
That senator had already given the go ahead yesterday on the bridge drop, so Giorno strikes out the note he’d made to call him today. Noticing the table has gone quiet, he glances up and realizes they’re expecting an answer from him, so he shakes his head, “I can’t go out this Friday. I’ve got to get started on research for the Venetian casinos we’re taking back next month.”
Mista nearly huffs, “Come on man, it’s the first break in weeks.”
He realizes he’d been misunderstood and worry snags him, “Oh, I didn’t mean you shouldn’t go or anything. Please have a good time. I just won’t be going with you.”
“’s not that, man, just,” Mista tries, “we want you to come with us.”
The notion sits pleasant for a moment in his head. Mista laughing with his arm over a girl, Fugo teasing and then enjoying the quiet that comes after Mista leaves the table. Sneaking to the opera with Fugo just to have Mista crash it. Maybe they could all go see a movie instead.
He could see himself having fun on that Friday night, and something light flutters in his chest at that.
Though, it’s not a second after that it turns to sludge and he has to swallow it down thickly in disgust.
It was just that, a pleasant notion.
Giorno shuts his planner closed and gets up from the table, “I’ve got to get to calling. Fugo, I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Boss,” Fugo says it more like a near-missed catch.
As Giorno leaves the kitchen, he hears Mista slump over the table and can practically see the wince. Guilt grabs him by the gut, but it’s not the first time he wishes Mista and Fugo would just leave well enough alone. They all lived together, sure, but–– they didn’t know everything about each other. And that was just fine.
Besides, he didn’t want to risk scaring them over other aspects about himself that had and would never become something worth worrying about.
~~~~~~~
After two successful check-in calls, Giorno rinses his coffee cup in the sink before meeting Mista out by the car.
The meeting isn’t until eleven, but seeing how the contents of the discussion were charged already with loose wires, they deemed it better to get there ahead of time to keep tabs on everyone entering the building, expected or unexpected.
The senator had been good to them, sure, but, as Giorno sits up front and watches Napoli’s golden sun disappear under his sun visor, he thinks he has a good handle on whatever the senator has to throw at him.
There’s a split second where Giorno sees the body fly over the hood, and he has just enough time to throw his hands up before the windshield shatters.
Gold Experience takes the brunt of the pieces as he ducks under his stand’s arms.
Mista swerves with a thick swear and barks, “The fuck was that?!”
“A corpse!” Giorno pivots to look out the back window, “I sensed it right before the car hit the body!”
“Then we’re getting the hell out of here before––”
“No, wait! Stop the car!”
“Giorno––?!”
“I said stop!”
Giorno meets the gunman’s determined look with his own and Mista concedes, pulling the car over.
Not a second before the car stops, Giorno kicks the door open and runs to the body before a scene can form with onlookers. Over his shoulder, he gives Mista the order to call a cleanup van.
Reaching the body, Giorno kneels to inspect the remains. The clothes appear ragged and unclean in places that suggest homelessness. Despite the skin being battered and bruised, whoever the person had been was someone malnourished before whatever unfortunate death found them. Or who had found them.
Giorno darts a glance around him, trying––in vain he knows–– to find the culprit who’d thrown an already dead body. The only reason could be to get his attention.
But as he looks, no bystanders present themselves as believable possibilities––the only onlooker of interest being another homeless figure watching. Despite it being an oddly distant look, the man’s eyes are without malice. Giorno returns to inspecting the body, and finds a sliver of paper sticking out of the collar on the body’s disheveled trench coat.
Carefully, Giorno removes the paper, slow in his movements to unfold it despite his heartrate picking up. When he reads it, however, his blood freezes.
‘I know what you are.’
His mind races at the implications. What it was in reference to–– it could just be a bluff or a blind threat meant to rattle him... but...
Lost in thought as he’d been, he’d been slow to notice what was just beyond the paper he holds. His eyes catch on the body’s pale neck.
“Oi, Giorno! What’d you find?” Mista calls, now caught up to him. “Hey, you alright?”
Giorno stands fast and says, “Call the coroner,” as he passes a confused Mista, striding to the car.
They had a meeting to get to. A day to finish and a week to continue. He didn’t have time for whatever game this new opponent wanted to play while he was already knee deep in one that didn’t have to do with something that was not and had never been an issue.
Giorno crushes the paper note into a tight ball in his grip. Wills it to turn to dust in his mind.
~~~~~~~
Three hours later, and Giorno’s near forgotten about the windshield incident.
Lunch went well, a solid perimeter had been set up and no resistance had been shown by the senator.
The only oddity that set him on edge again was before he entered the building. Just as Mista walked in first through the front, Giorno stopped. A sort of... nag in his head pulling him to look to the right. His brows furrowed at what he saw.
On the streetcorner of the next block hunched the homeless man from earlier, the one who’d watched him examine the body.
Giorno stared at the man. Assessing the distance the man would have to shuffle at the speed of a car to keep up with Mista driving them from the body to this meeting with the senator. And it blared a warning in his head.
Though... the man’s eyes, like before, were without malice... without any emotion, really.
So when Mista called back to ask Giorno if something was wrong, he shook his head ‘no’ and entered the building.
Now, leaving the meeting, while descending the stairs behind Mista, Giorno thinks to look at the same streetcorner.
And, sure enough, the homeless man is still there, hours later like he hadn’t taken a single step.
At the bottom of the stairs, Mista calls Fugo.
“We’re at the front.” Mista says. “Yeah, changed plans ‘cause the back had too many open windows. Yeah, it’s fine and quiet, just being careful after this morning...”
As Mista talks perimeters and the next location, Giorno stands himself between his gunman and the unnatural vagrant half a block away from them. Mista seeming to think that’s fine, casting a wary look over but not sensing immediate danger.
As soon as Giorno thinks the figure might as well be dead standing up, the man starts walking towards them.
He feels Mista tense beside him. Hand going to his gun.
Two steps into Gold’s attack range, the man stops and holds out his hands.
Mista’s goes quiet long enough for Fugo’s voice on the other end to ask what’s wrong. “Nothing,” Mista clicks into gear, shooing the homeless man away with a “scram old man.” When the man doesn’t move, Mista takes a step with a hard grip on his gun.
“Wait,” Giorno puts a hand on Mista’s chest to stop him. “He’s not a threat.”
Mista rears on him, "And how do you know that? He could be a crazed druggie for all we know. Guy hasn’t said a word.”
Giorno doesn’t answer, instead kneels, pulling his leftover box of cannoli from the paper bag Mista had set on the ground. Then wordlessly, he holds it out to the man.
Slowly, gnarled hands slide out from the sleeves and take the box. Those distant eyes staring at it for a long while before slipping back to Giorno.
The box hits the ground, food broken free to kiss concrete, and the man leaves them to shuffle away.
“Bizarre-ass shit,” Mista mutters, before returning to the phone call, “Yeah, we’re still here... No, it’s alright, it was nothing... You’re rounding the corner, alright. Giorno let’s––”
But when he turns to where Giorno had been, his Boss is gone.
Mista swears under his breath.
~~~~~~~
The shadows of the alleyway are sharp, defined and imprisoning enough that when the homeless man shuffles between the two buildings, moving deeper and deeper, it’s as unknowing as a rabbit into a freshly set snare.
Not a moment after the hunched man passes the graffitied dumpster, Giorno throws his arms around the man’s neck, a firm headlock that the man barely has time to fight.
“You’re going to answer me, or I break your neck like a thin branch,” Giorno tells the man plainly. “Who sent you to follow me?”
Silence sucks the air from the entire alleyway before the man’s voice scratches out a response, with words that scrape harsher than any blunt blade could––
“You were eleven when your teeth got sharper.”
It chokes Giorno like hot irons, though he manages, “How do you––?”
“When you were twelve, you kissed your mother’s pricked finger and the blood disappeared in your mouth. You stopped holding her hand after that.”
Giorno shoves the man away from him. Staring with unadulterated cold fear at the distant eyes seeing so much of him without ever having seen him before...
“Who sent you?” Giorno says low.
The man’s mouth opens slowly, but mechanically, and answers, “Someone who knew you would ask, and told me to bring you to a place where you will understand.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who sent you.”
It’s a choice that activates a different line of answers, apparently, as the man shifts tactics, “I was sent to help you achieve what you want.”
“Which is?"
“Knowing,” the man relays bluntly. “A specific knowing of what you are, not just as a copy of the polaroid in your mother’s nightstand.”
Chills scrape down Giorno’s back. And he thinks to leave, to escape this alleyway that he’d entered thinking he was entrapping this man. When in reality, the trap wasn’t his at all, and much bigger than he’d anticipated.
And he was utterly, entirely, snared.
Giorno forces Gold Experience buzzing under his skin to hush, relaxing his stance enough to address the messenger calmly.
The bizarre man waits patiently, loyally.
With every internal warning blaring loud in his head, Giorno nods for the man to lead him on.
~~~~~~~
It isn’t far, and, despite how Giorno is given the impression that the route was thoroughly planned beforehand, there aren’t any traces of life watching from the windows, no one following them.
Winding further and further into the darker corners of Napoli, is just himself and his shuffling guide. Any bystanders they pass are just that, people going about their business as usual.
Though, as they go further down the rabbit hole, the edges between life and underworld blurring, Giorno walks with Gold clicked free like a sword, ready for the slightest twitch of malintent.
After what feels like an eternity, they leave the shadow of an abandoned cafe on the less frequented side of Napoli, chairs rotting at his feet when they come to stop at one of the small branches of the Sarno River. Concrete slopes high around the trickle of water that is only a river during flood tides, a dry artery littered with forgotten waste.
He’d visited this one only a few times, when he’d been with Mista and the job required the cleanup to be done manually and quickly.
It’s one of the graveyards for the underworld. Any people living in it are the undead in every respect.
His gut twists when he looks at the cracked bridge to their left, seeing evidence of fires and food eaten by those unfortunates who can’t afford to reenter the city and survive it.
His guide shuffles on towards the bridge, taking the concrete slope of the dry ravine better than expected.
Shoving down a shiver, Giorno follows down the slope.
As they near the heavy shadow under the bridge, the stench hits him and he stops. It’s worse than any he’s experienced in places like this–– worse than what any human can make in life.
His guide stops in front of the shadows, turning to face him, questioningly, before disappearing into the thick shadow.
Steeling himself, Giorno pushes on with the sole understanding that: if he turns back now, the unscratchable itch of what he could’ve known now would kill him.
When Giorno reaches the shadow of the bridge, he steps in without a second thought.
Darkness engulfs him, and he expects to step over at least corpses, but doesn’t. The only noise that comes is the throbbing of the water’s ragged pulse by his footsteps.
When the light behind him has receded, a new kind of quiet overwhelms him––he notes the area under the bridge has become more of an underground sewer line––he stops. The blackness everywhere and he calls out, “Oi, what’s in here?”
No answer comes. Just a drip. Another.
Then movement.
Suddenly it’s like the walls lurch. He can’t see it, but the sound of so many bodies crackling into motion is deafening.
Giorno pivots. Gold Experience manifests in time to keep two from reaching him. But quick hands grab at his back and he turns with a shout to throw them off, Gold giving life to their clothes and tethering them to the ground.
One grabs his arm, and he lands a hard hit to its face before rearing on another that tackles his legs, Gold kicking the body against another. Fingers grab at his face from behind, beside him, another pulling his hair, and the sensation of that cold touch on his skin becomes overwhelming. As the weight of the bodies drops him to his knees––as he pulls at the grasps on his eyes, his nose, his mouth–– he shouts, “Get off!”
And like a switch flipped, it all stops. The grips lax, and the hands leave him.
Abruptly, in the impossibly still darkness, it’s as though the bodies never grabbed him. In the thick quiet, only Giorno’s ragged breathing lives––the chill from the many hands on his skin still there–– and it’s suffocating.
He has Gold pick up fabric from the ground, turn it into a branch and wrap a second shirt around the top. He wills specific layers of the fabric to breathe: the first buried layer into small grapes, the layer above it into an insatiable yeast. Mindlessly he accelerates the fermentation process to a horribly unnatural pace, fumbling his lighter out from his pocket before he snaps on the flame beside the fabric now oozing with ethanol.
Every time the lighter clicks, that smallest flicker of light illuminates the bodies, the faces watching him with soulless distant eyes and he shivers, forces his attention back on lighting the fabric.
When his makeshift torch finally grows with fire, gradually the space around him glows brighter with the torch’s fire.
Near over a dozen pairs of eyes watch him. That same lack of malice there, all of them hollow but filled with the same knowing patience.
Giorno forces his heartrate to calm, manages to say flatly, “None of you will touch me again. Now, where is what I’m here for?”
Obediently, they shuffle to part like a sea, his guide returning to stand in front of him. Holding a crumpled piece of paper out.
Hesitantly Giorno takes the paper, sending a questioning glance back to the man.
The sandpaper voice says, “What you came for.”
Unfolding the paper reveals it’s a newspaper article on missing persons. He’d heard the news already; civilians had been going missing. Strange as it had been, it had been spread over so many months that when he had looked into it, it hadn’t turned up with much in terms of leads. It’d been a puzzle he left on a table and returned to every now and then between other pressing issues. All the victims had been utterly random, no connections to each other or their last seen locations. This one in the article seemed to be a lawyer by the name of Michel Lorenzo.
With pinched brows, Giorno looks questioningly to his guide. And the man retrieves a badge from his torn jacket, a work badge with the name...
Giorno’s eyes widen, and he glances to the picture of the victim and places it as something the man could’ve very well looked like several months prior to entering... whatever it is that held them all hostage like this.
“And you’re all similar to this case?” Giorno asks.
His guide, apparently once named Michel, nods and says, “We are yours.”
At this, dread builds in Giorno’s gut as he asks carefully, “What do you mean?”
The man reaches up and pulls back his collar, revealing the same two marks left on the corpse that had hit the car’s windshield hours before.
Giorno’s gut drops hard, and he clenches his jaw as though it could undo all of this–– that he did something to all of these people–– the corpse–– “But,” Giorno takes a step back, says softly, “I’ve never seen you before in my life. Any of you.” His voice grows louder, “I’ve never attacked anyone, much less felt a need to! You have the wrong person–– you have to.”
With that, Giorno turns to leave, nearly ramming into a child.
Giorno stops in horror. The small little girl couldn’t be more than eight. The two marks studded just above a ragged dress speckled with dandelions.
It’s then he remembers the nightmare he doesn’t wake from, the one that happens every other week. Specifically, he remembers the dandelions slathered in crimson.
And he thinks he’ll throw up.
“You asked to know,” his guide says matter-of-factly. “You had a choice.”
Slowly Giorno shakes his head, “I still don’t understand,” before rearing back on the man, “Who sent you?!”
“Someone who wants to warn you,” the hoarse voice explains, “I was sent to tell you there’s a being coming to kill you. And they’ve already started trying.”
Giorno’s brows furrow, and he steps back towards the man. “What kind of being?”
“It is without equal, and has been made that way to better end you.”
“Then how can I kill it?”
For once in the entirety of their interactions, the distant eyes find him with an emotion he can’t read, and say, “It can’t be killed by you as you are. You must drink first.”
Giorno’s eyes widen, and a disgust builds until it bursts from him, “ No, I-I––!”
“Giorno?”
The familiar voice hits like a knife in his back. He pivots to see––
“Mista?!”
In the darkness of the space so far from the entrance, Mista stands stock-still with tension, confusion and horror smeared on his face like roadkill on a street’s edge.
Giorno takes a step towards his friend, the makeshift torch dropping embers as he does. “Mista, you should leave.”
Mista blusters with a bad attempt at a grin, “And leave you here with whatever the fuck these things are?! What are they, your new cousins?!”
It’s a joke meant to cut taut rope between them, but instead it slices to bone. Giorno bristles––but sees the worry in the statement as a more important issue to address––so he swallows it all down and says instead, “I apologize for leaving abruptly, Mista. But I had to follow any leads about who threw the corpse at the car this morning, and now I know.”
Giorno turns to the group of sightless eyes watching him, patiently. Like he was all they had. And wasn’t he? He took everything else away from them.
And for what? He clenches his fist. For his own feeding? For his own monstrous pleasure?
Giorno forces himself back. Spiraling now wouldn’t solve things, wouldn’t do the necessary job he has to do now.
So he nods to them, to his guide, saying, “I’m sorry for this, but I’ll find a way to fix you all, I promise. For now, stay hidden and safe.” And with that, he leaves. Passing Mista, who huffs before following him wordlessly.
~~~~~~~~
After climbing the slope back up, Giorno sees Mista’s car parked nearby and realizes his own dullness at how his bodyguard probably followed the personal tracker in his cell phone. Flipping his phone open shows nine missed calls from Mista’s number.
Realization sinks in at how utterly blind he’d been the entirety of his time with his strange guide. Blind with that need to understand. And now he carried that understanding like a one-hundred-kilogram weight around his neck.
The eyes of them all still follow him, boring deep.
He grips the handle of the car door just as a hand grabs his shoulder, and he’s spun around for Mista to take his shoulders hard.
“Alright, right here and now, explain!” Mista shouts. “What the hell is happening, man?! You run off with some guy and I find you with a fucking undead fanclub under a bridge that you made with what–– your teeth?! What even happened to you?!”
The living eyes that bore into him scream concern and pity and Giorno writhes under it, but also finds his emotional capacity to care spent, the whole of him too absorbed in disgust for himself to tell Mista to stop. So he says simply, “I don’t know.”
Mista’s concern triples enough to be too heavy and he lets go of Giorno’s shoulders, exhaling long before offering quietly, “You were out last night, ya know, and came back covered in blood. Didn’t say anything except that it wasn’t your blood.”
Giorno’s cold surprise is brief, drowned out quickly by that new knowing that sinks him to the ocean floor.
Mista asks, “But you don’t remember it, do you?”
Giorno shakes his head, “I don’t remember anything except... pieces, now. And I didn’t want to do any of it, I mean...” He sighs heavily, rubbing his forehead as he nearly murmurs, “It was never a problem before… I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this, Mista.”
His friend’s worry morphs into a thinly veiled fear––for a moment Giorno considers lying and telling the other it’s not as bad as it is–– but before he can, the look gets smothered by something else, something more determined and sure.
Mista says, “Well, nosey bastard I am, I did hear you’ve got some freaky inhuman thing trying to kill you that you can’t kill alone.” He grips on the handle of the sheathed purple pistol. “Why don’t we throw him a surprise party somewhere good?”
Relief is something Giorno didn’t think he could still feel, but it’s a welcome warmth against the cold iron in his gut, and he’s grateful.
Giorno nods his thanks, “Sounds good,” before sighing and feeling a little of the tension leave him, some space in his mind freeing up to plan.
Mista watches for a moment before smirking, “You got a place in mind to set up shop?”
With a satisfied look, Giorno says, “The west garden.”
~~~~~~~
Fugo sighs as he sits at his desk, working on the accounts. He’s still exhausted after the night they’d had previously, after Giorno and Mista got back from the meeting.
“So, let me get this straight: there is some undead thing hunting Giorno down because, why?” he’d asked, pinching his brow as he felt a headache brewing just hearing Mista’s explanation.
“That’s a little foggy, to be honest.” Mista waved a hand. “Point is, we need to get ready because this son of a bitch could show up at any time to take Giorno out.”
“We need to figure out how to kill vampires,” Giorno had cut in firmly.
That was where Fugo had thrown in the towel and just gone along with it. Even now, he wasn’t sure whether his Boss and the Bodyguard had completely lost it, or if there was some truth to what they said.
Frankly, he had decided not to question it. He had seen stranger, and if there was any truth to it, well, better be prepared than caught with their pants down.
He finishes a row of numbers before standing up and stretching his back out with a grunt. His tea is cold and mostly gone so it was time for a refresher.
He heads back down to the kitchen, checking the time to see how much longer Giorno and Mista will be at the meeting they’d had to attend. It had already run into the evening so hopefully they would be home soon.
He’s aware of the sound of a brief step behind him, already spinning around as a corpse-like arm wraps around his throat, the blade of a knife glinting in front of his eyes.
“How nice of you to provide a little bargaining chip for the Don,” a voice slithered into Fugo’s ear. “Let’s say we set up a nice little surprise party for him, hm?”
~~~~~~~
The meeting drags longer than Giorno intends. He tries not to appear as distracted on the outside as he feels but it’s admittedly difficult. He can’t help but feel anxious, like his hunter could show up at any moment and try to take him out.
Finally, an agreement is settled on and Giorno breathes a sigh of relief as he and Mista leave the meeting. That was the last one for a while, which means that he could finally deal with the problem at hand.
“So are we setting up for our little party when we get back?” Mista asks. His eyes dart back and forth as he drives, obviously looking for anything out of the ordinary.
Giorno nods, also watching the street corners they pass, nibbling at his nails with his just-a-little-too-sharp teeth.
They get home without incident, Giorno stepping out of the car, folding his overcoat over his arm.
Mista sighs tiredly as they head toward the door. “Well, at least business is settled for a while, right? Now we just have this…vampire thing to take care of.”
Giorno’s silent. Some innate instinct is sending out a ping inside of him and he doesn’t quite know why.
“Hey, Giorno?” Mista says as they reach the door. “It’s not like you owe me this but…When this is over and if you wanna talk about why this is happening, I’m here to listen.”
Giorno reaches for the doorknob. “Honestly, I don’t really understand it myself,” he says in a half-truth, opening the door and stepping inside.
He sees Mista reach for his gun before anything else. He sends his bodyguard a questioning look before he’s promptly pushed aside as Mista steps into the house before him, leveling his gun at the surroundings.
It’s then he sees the broken vase–some expensive thing that he had bought for the sake of show–the crooked paintings on the wall, furniture shifted from its usual place…
“The hell?” Mista mutters then calls out, “Fugo?!”
Giorno feels a sick twist in his stomach and he follows Mista deeper into the house, calling for their companion.
There’s a sudden explosive BANG! That reverberates through the house, leaving Giorno and Mista whipping toward each other with wide eyes.
They rush wordlessly toward the kitchen where the sound had come from, skidding to a stop as they see the door to the butler’s pantry blown completely off. Silverware stuck from the wall across from it, where a figure slumps, knives and forks from the household’s good silver set sticking out of it.
“What the actual fuck?” Mista demands as Fugo staggers out of the pantry. His hair is frazzled, clothes and eyebrows singed, a wild look in his eye.
“I needed silver,” he grits out, eyes wide as he stares at the slumped figure warily.
“What happened?” Giorno asks.
“Bastard thought he could come in here and take me hostage,” Fugo growls, sounding incredibly offended. “Doesn’t look so confident now.”
Just as he says it, the body starts to twitch and a hand comes up, beginning to remove pieces of silverware.
Mista levels his gun at the figure, getting off a shot just as the man surges to his feet.
Giorno feels dread well up inside of him, his fight or flight response kicking in as the man stares at them with a grin. His hair is lank around a face sporting a sickly pallor, like that of a corpse warmed over. Giorno can clearly see the two marks on his neck.
“I’ve found you at last, demon,” the man smirks.
Mista shoots, the two bullets landing center mass, forcing the hunter to stagger back. Mista grabs Giorno’s shoulder and steers him around, Fugo following as they run.
“Okay, honestly? Not sure I really believed the whole vampire thing until now but, holy shit, how can he take two bullets and still be standing, and–more importantly–running after us?” Mista demands. They could definitely hear the deliberate footsteps behind them, not hurrying yet somehow still seeming able to keep up.
“Yeah, I think I’m willing to throw logic out of the window on this one,” Fugo snaps.
They race out to the west garden where they had been setting up for their welcome party the day before. Giorno had been having landscaping done out there for the past few weeks and there were a bunch of gardening tools and trimmed branches from one of the trees scattered around amongst the trap items they had been attempting to put together.
“Did you actually finish anything?” Fugo asks.
“Not really, but we have a general idea?” Mista says, ushering them both around the meandering pond in the center of the garden. “Vampires can’t cross water, right? There’s a couple pitfalls on either side of it so if he tries to get at us by going around he’ll fall through and get staked.”
The hunter rounds the corner of the house, eyes focused on Giorno. “It’s futile to run, demon. I will kill you before the night is over.”
“Geez, Terminator over here really is full of himself,” Mista mutters as he reloads his gun.
The hunter pulls a long blade from his belt, holding them menacingly as he crosses the garden.
“Just stay behind me, Boss,” Mista mutters to Giorno. “I’ll take him out as soon as he goes into the pit.”
The hunter has reached the pond by this point and doesn’t hesitate a second before leaping over it.
“Oh shit!” Mista cries, raising his gun to fire.
“Running water, you dolt!” Fugo snaps
Giorno is transfixed for a moment by the glint of the knife catching on the surrounding light, unable to move.
“Giorno!” Fugo snaps and Giorno suddenly feels himself jostled to one side as the blade comes down.
Fugo cries out, falling against Giorno as the knife slices across his back and shoulder. The coppery tang of blood fills the night air as ruby liquid splashes across Giorno’s arms.
They both land on the ground as Mista gets off several shots, futilely trying to take the hunter down.
The hunter barely seems to notice the bullet wounds however; he surges forward and grabs Mista’s gun, before simply flinging the bodyguard backward. Mista falls dangerously close to one of the pitfalls, his head smacking against the ground with a dull thud.
Fugo groans, trying to push himself up but the hunter kicks him in the head, knocking him unconscious.
Giorno balks as the hunter reaches down and grabs him by the front of the shirt, hauling him to his feet.
Giorno just barely has the wherewithal to catch the man’s arm as he swings the blade at him.
The hunter gets in his face, baring sharpened teeth with a grin. “This is how it was meant to be. Surrender, now, demon of the night. Let me put you out of your misery with this stake in your heart.”
Giorno bares his teeth in a snarl, trying to turn the man’s knife around on him but he releases his hold on Giorno’s shirt and backhands him.
Giorno flips head-over-heels with the force, rolling across the ground, face numb.
“Gold Experience,” he whispers, his Stand glowing briefly around him.
He attempts to crawl back to his feet, but the hunter is already on him again, kicking him hard in the ribs and grabbing him by the hair to haul him upright.
“Your death is inevitable, it would be easier for you if you just stop fighting.”
Giorno grits his teeth as the tree Gold bore in the ground sprouts up fast as a punch. The dirt below the hunter explodes, knocking him off his feet a split second long enough for Giorno to shout with Gold and throw a punch–
But before Gold can even connect, the hunter’s eyes dart to his like daggers and, faster than anything visible, Giorno’s grabbed by the arm and flung halfway across the garden again, hitting the back wall before he crumples to the ground in a breathless heap. Gold disappears behind him as he tries and fails to take a simple unbroken breath. This man, this thing, was too strong.
The memory of what the man under the bridge had told him filters weakly through Giorno’s subconscious.
“It can’t be killed by you as you are. You must drink first.”
The hunter is on top of him again, straddling him and grabbing him by the throat. Giorno gasps, bucking underneath the hunter, but his grip is unrelenting. He tries to call for Gold again but he can’t seem to access his Stand. Panic grips him as he manages to stop the knife arching toward his chest, but his arms are trembling from the effort.
“Why do you fight?” the hunter mocks.
Giorno glowers at him, fighting for a single breath as his vision starts to darken. His arms falter and he can feel the tip of the blade piercing his chest.
“After all, the Dracula needs a fearless hunter to chase after him, does he not? Hunt him down like the beast he is. Do you really not remember? You’re the one who sent me to kill you.”
Giorno freezes. The hunter's words bring with them a vision, no, a memory. Another one of his nightmares–or what he had suspected at the time to be nightmares.
Dim street lights, barely illuminating a back alley. The man on his knees in front of Giorno, eyes wide, glazed from obedience to his new liege lord. The seal of their pact on his throat. The taste of copper on Giorno’s tongue.
“Find me and end this,” Giorno says before turning and walking off into the night.
The hunter yanks his knife from Giorno’s grasp and wrenches Giorno up, slamming him back against the wall, holding him at arm's length. Giorno’s head spins, trying to make sense of any of this. But the one thing he’s certain of is that he is trapped. He’s weak, and he is not going to win this.
Regret flares through him as he realizes he could have been strong enough if he had drank blood like the man under the bridge had told him to. Did he truly want to die? Was he not a monster? Biting all of those people, and for what? Why had he even done it?
His eyes travel to his sleeve where Fugo’s blood is still wet, soaking into the fabric. He felt sure that even just a small amount would do it…
But then he truly would deserve death, wouldn’t he? A true monster. No, if he were to die, then better to die as he was.
His vision is fading, desperate for air as he watches the hunter raise the knife again, getting ready to run Giorno through.
A mechanical roar tears through the garden and just as the hunter gets ready to stab Giorno, the blade of a chainsaw carves through his neck.
Blood instantly covers Giorno as the man’s head topples from his shoulders, rolling away.
Giorno collapses, gasping for breath, clutching at his throat.
Mista cuts the engine, lowering the chainsaw with wide eyes. Fugo staggers over, holding his arm.
“What the fuck, Mista?” he asks, seeming at a loss for anything else to say.
The gunman grins. “Well, I kinda figured that chainsaw probably beats anything, right?”
Giorno huffs a breath, flopping limply on his back as he stares up at the stars appearing overhead.
“I want a vacation,” Fugo snaps.
~~~~~~~
Giorno sits in the library with his cup of tea the next afternoon, nursing his bruised throat. He was still processing everything that went down the night before. The last few days had seemed so surreal he just wasn’t sure quite what to do about them.
And, at Mista’s insistence, the three of them move to sit around the library’s short table and couches for Giorno to explain what little he knew about the more monstrous aspects of himself.
“But,” Fugo asks after the pause, “nothing like this has ever happened?”
Giorno shakes his head. “I’m not sure why it started. And I…” He eyes his wrist. Thinks of the blood that had been there yesterday and how close he’d come. “I don’t know if I trust myself to sleep now.”
A heaviness fills the room, a horribly long pause where Giorno wishes he hadn’t said anything at all. In the chair adjacent, he sees Mista’s about to say something––but Fugo pipes up first, “Have you ever considered animal blood?”
“I’ve… never had to before,” though the idea shows promise and Giorno agrees, “But I don’t see the harm in trying.”
“Ok but we have to mark the containers with a big ‘G’ in the fridge,” Mista says. “I’m not drinking blood. Gross. No offense Gio.”
“None taken.”
Fugo allows a nod that yes there would be a sharpie in the kitchen drawer ready for that, before adding, “But Giorno, the man, the hunter–whatever he was–he told you that you sent him to kill you.”
Giorno’s gaze falls to the floor.
A pause ensues where Giorno thinks maybe they’re waiting for an explanation when, really, he doesn’t have any answers they’d like.
A hand places on his shoulder, and Giorno looks up to see it’s Fugo sitting on the couch beside him, weighing words before offering a simple, “I hate pouring cereal.”
Giorno’s brows furrow. “Okay?”
“It’s the loudest fucking noise. I hate it. The ceramic bowl clinks with five thousand little noises you can’t muffle and it comes out at a speed where you can’t control how much you get and––”
“Just get a plastic bowl and a measuring cup, dude.”
“Shut the fuck up, Mista. Anyway,” Fugo schools his expression, a somberness weighing his words quiet, “Narancia poured cereal every morning.”
At the mention of one of them, the room turns a new kind of quiet.
Fugo goes on, “It was some horrible sugar-coated stuff. And I don’t eat it, but I pour it. And, um…”
“Yeah, and I’ve got this.” Mista speaks up, reaching into his shirt collar to retrieve the accessory hung on a gold chain around his neck.
He hadn’t gotten to see what the chain had been carrying until this point. And Giorno sees it’s the familiar pull tab of a zipper and says, “That’s…”
“Yeah, I carry him with me. I almost think of them kinda like dog tags, actually.” Mista lets it fall against his shirt, his gaze going distant. “Didn’t really realize how indebted I was to him until after he was gone.”
And it’s in that look––he doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it in them before––but he understands the grimace Mista sends to some indiscernible point in the ground.
Mista seems to remember them looking and says, “Point is, Gio, you’re not alone in feeling gross for making it out alive.”
The thought seeps between his ears like silt, but it’s warm, and Giorno finds he doesn’t mind letting it stay.
Fugo finishes, “Additionally, everyone has different ways of dealing with it. We just have to find something for you to do while you’re awake, Giogio.”
And slowly, the cold iron in his gut softens. Doesn’t disappear, but…
“Thank you,” he tells them genuinely. “I don’t feel like I deserve this kindness.”
“None of us do,” Mista jeers. “Weren’t you listening? Fugo’s a masochist to himself by pouring cereal every morning!”
Fugo rears on him, “Oi! It doesn’t leave this room and it doesn’t come up again or you’re fucking dead, Mista!”
“Literally just said I felt bad for being alive so––?”
It’s the final straw and Fugo leaps up to pummel the other. Giorno watching on, a small smile forming.
Later that day, they visit the bridge housing the missing persons he’d marked as thralls. Giorno brings them to the edge of the shade and offers them a place to live other than the bridge– a personal greenhouse of his in the country that they could live in and tend to at their leisure while he figures out how to reverse the damage he’d done to them.
At dinner afterwards, Fugo officially posits the theory that when he went “vampire mode” as Mista puts it, he must have entered some kind of fugue state and somewhere along the line thought he should pay for his crimes, picking out a thrall for the role of hunter to chase him down.
“So do you want to write it down or something?” Mista asks with a mouthful of noodles.
“No,” Fugo says. “I just wanted to make sure the record was straight as to what happened.”
“I think it should go in a journal or something,” Mista keeps talking like it was never a question for the table, getting another forkful in before finishing the last. “It’s good shit. People would read it.”
It gets Giorno chuckling into his drink.
The following day, Giorno’s sitting by the window finishing his mid-morning tea with his usual magazine.
The door opens and Mista comes in. “Hey, you about ready? The flight leaves in an hour.”
Giorno sets his cup of tea aside. “I’ll be ready in a couple minutes. I just have to grab my bag.”
“Great,” Mista grins. Giorno hadn’t taken much convincing to take a vacation. For the first time he really felt like he needed one. And with there finally being a lull in Passione business, it was probably the only opportunity they would get.
“By the way, I got you a little something.” Mista tossed a book to him and Giorno catches it, glancing at the title.
“Dracula–very funny,” he says as he stands, stretching bruised muscles with a small wince. “I think I’ve had enough vampires for a while though.”
Mista shrugs and slings an arm around his shoulders. “How do beaches sound then? Sun, babes, fresh salt air?”
Giorno smiles with a fond huff as he allows his friend to lead him out of the room. “Beaches sound good.”