Ciel awoke in heavy darkness, lying supine in a corner someplace. The air was thin, filled with the scent of ash and charred wood. And something else. Soot. If they weren't in London, they were damn close to it. There was no mistaking that air.
But wait… they'd been in the country someplace when he'd last lost consciousness. How had Sebastian moved him again so quickly, without his knowing?
The back of his head met the wall. His eyes closed. Once more, he saw the figures close in around them. There were five. A pack. Highly unusual, but not unheard-of. Packs would trap groups of humans and take turns feeding. Either every member of the pack would have very little or some would not feed at all.
These demons were hungrier than those who never fed. Because to tempt a demon with nourishment and then deny them it was more cruel than taking it from them in the first place.
Two demons, a male and female pair, her with her crimson locks in their hurried braids and him with his black hair swept messily out of his eyes, had sprung at him. The male had thrown him back, and the female had put her hand through his torso, crushing a handful of his spine and severing it on the way out.
Pain. So much pain. He'd actually screamed: something he'd never heard Sebastian do when injured. His mind had reeled, so many things whipping through it at once, but his loudest thought was this: why did it hurt?
Hunger weakens a demon, Master, Sebastian had explained, his voice echoing through Ciel's memory from the fevered confusion that had come after Sebastian had grabbed him and taken off. If a demon does not feed, he is more vulnerable to physical pain. As well as insanity.
His hands played over the surface beneath him. It had to be at least part of a mattress, if not the entire thing. The young demon pulled himself into a reclined sitting position, and tried not to cry out.
Sharp pain in his legs and back. So his spine was healing. He could feel them now, but he still couldn't move them.
Ciel suddenly realized something else as he cursed Sebastian for not being able to protect him: He hungered. He hungered, and Sebastian was the only one who could fix that. He needed to rely on Sebastian more than ever now, no matter how hotly his anger burned.
"Sebastian," he called into the dark, startled at the rough crack of his own voice. "I'm hungry."
To his shock, though he'd never admit to being shocked, Sebastian did not reply. Ciel opened his eyes, listened closely, scanning the darkness, and found that the much older demon was nowhere in the vicinity.
His eyes narrowed. Where the hell had he gone? "Sebastian!"
Still no response from the butler.
Ciel growled, planting his hands firmly against the wall and attempting to push himself up. His spine gave a horrible creaking noise, then a terrible, impossible crack. Pain, blinding, sickening pain, ripped through his torso, and he grunted, screamed through his teeth.
Suddenly, he was falling forward. He felt his knees hit the mattress, caught himself with his elbows, then let himself drop fully, hissing.
"Master, you oughtn't overexert yourself."
Ciel's head snapped up, and he growled at Sebastian. "And where the hell were you?"
The older demon's footsteps crossed the room to him, and Sebastian's hands were suddenly on him, picking him up and sitting him against the wall again. Ciel heard the whisper of the butler lowering himself to one knee.
A match was struck, then a candle lit and placed on a small table beside Ciel's current resting place. "I've been out fetching your breakfast, Master."
Ciel looked up at the butler, narrowing his eyes as they found Sebastian's. "Where are we?"
"I'll tell you when you've eaten, Master."
"When I've…"
The older demon removed one glove slowly, tucking it into a pocket, looking quite serene. "Pardon my lack of finesse, my Lord, this will not be pleasant to watch. If you're going to look away, do it now."
Ciel didn't look away, however, and watched silently as Sebastian opened his mouth. The butler's fingers, then his whole hand, vanished into it, reaching into the back of his throat without so much as a sound. When the hand emerged, pulled slowly back out, it was offered to the young demon.
In that hand was a misty, smoky wisp of a substance. It looked fluid, but was substantial enough to have seemingly clung to his lower lip in a trail that was severed with a single lap of the demon's tongue against it.
"… that's a human soul," Ciel replied flatly. He was attempting to confirm this to be the truth, without sounding too like a curious child.
"Of course, my Lord. I said I was fetching your breakfast."
"You…" The young one looked into the thing floating in Sebastian's hand. It was colorless, yet at the same time, he could see all colors within it. He'd fed before, but he'd never seen a soul just… sitting here. Being offered to him as so much human nourishment had been in his past life.
"Go on, now. You need all you can get," the older demon said calmly.
Ciel, still uncertain, reached for the soul, plucking it from Sebastian's palm and holding it in his fingers. It felt like nothing, although his fingers did not touch one another through it. Feeling rather ridiculous, he merely dropped it into his mouth, swallowing it whole. After this, he looked up at the taller one.
"Alright, now where are we?"
Sebastian rose, and Ciel tracked him as he moved to a slightly smaller shape in the far corner, where the butler deposited what seemed to be a larger cloth of some sort onto the shape.
"This was once a bakery, Young Master, housed with two other flats in the same building, one upstairs, one in the back of the lower floor. We've taken up residence in the back flat, the one that is the least obvious and the safest to inhabit while you recover."
"How did you even choose this place?"
"The building was damaged in a fire not long ago, set by a crazed urchin, who swore that the woman who owned the bakery and the man who lived upstairs were murdering people and hiding the bodies by serving meat-pies which contained ground corpses. He claimed they'd killed the man he was apprenticed to, and had kidnapped him. He also said that the man had killed the woman and thrown her body into the oven. The corpses of a man and woman were found in the cellar, burned black. No one will come near the place; most think it haunted."
Ciel said nothing, sliding himself back down so that he could curl onto his side. He heard Sebastian cross back to him, and looked up as a blanket was drawn over him. It suddenly occurred to him that the sides of his current sleeping space were raised, like a child's crib, or…
"… is this a nest?"
"Yes," Sebastian replied matter-of-factly. He untied Ciel's eyepatch, placing it on the table beside the candle, then covering the smaller form with another blanket. "Rest now, Master."
"Are you really telling me to go to sleep?"
"Yes. If nothing else, sleep blocks the pain."
"I don't want to sleep."
Sebastian merely responded with a low chuckle as the candle flame extinguished.
Ciel heard him cross the room again, and defiantly focused on the single beam of moonlight he could see from a hole in the corner of the roof. He wasn't going to sleep. He was tired of feeling so weak, and wasn't about to let himself feel moreso because he happened to be hurt.
From the darkness across the room, however, Sebastian's voice drifted to Ciel's ears.
"Come, little children Come, little children
I'll take thee away
Into a land
Of enchantment
The time's come to play
Here in my garden
Of shadows…
Ciel's eyes began to ache, the lids feeling heavy as they threatened to close. No. He would remain awake. He was a demon now: demons didn't need to sleep. He wasn't about to allow himself such a mortal luxury.
"Follow, sweet children Weep not, poor children
I'll show thee the way
Through all the pain
And the sorrows
For life is this way
Murdering beauty
And passions…
Sebastian's voice was soft, warm, almost uncharacteristically so, as the quiet song left his lips. It was as if another blanket was being draped over Ciel very slowly, very gently, very kindly. As if done by a parent, a mother. A father.
"Hush now, dear children
It must be this way
Too weary of life
And deceptions…"
Ciel's eyes finally closed, and he heard no more of the gentle singing. It didn't cease, however, and Sebastian's eyes glittered in the darkness.
"Rest now, My Master
For soon, we'll away
Into the calm
And the quiet."