Chapter Text
Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
A fox, when cornered in a fight, screams. It’s a horrible sound; like there’s a man out in the woods trapped in a dark, unfathomable horror. Like a man who can’t even speak out of his fear. Like a man that can do nothing but scream, scream, scream.
And the sound echoes. For miles, sometimes, if the wind catches it.
Illumi heard the sounds from his very first night inside his new room at the Zoldyck manor. It wasn’t a room he wanted--and the room, itself, seemed to share the sentiment. It had sat long abandoned in the north wing of their home, door closed, its few contents collecting a century’s worth of dust and spiders and rats.
It was cleaned, of course, before Illumi moved in. His parents weren’t great providers, but they did employ an entire staff of butlers to keep their aristocratic children clean and fed.
Even with it prepared for his arrival, the room held onto a chill; the gray stone walls that rose fifteen feet into the air cared little for Illumi’s comfort, it seemed. Even after he lit a fire, heat seemed to whisper away, into nothingness, leaving him chilled and uncomfortable alone in his bed.
Alone--except for the sounds.
He could hear the foxes scream through his bedroom window--an enormous four-paned arch that was covered in a thick canopy of curtains. The sounds didn’t alarm him, at first, because he knew it had to be some animal in the woods. He searched it on his phone, after a time, and decided that yes--it was a fox. Maybe more than one.
But there was a small, unspoken part of him that thought there may be something unnatural out there. Screaming. The worst part was that sometimes--only sometimes--the scream would end in a laugh. A cackle. He ignored that part.
The laughter was worse than the scream.
Illumi told his mother about the fox-noise the next morning.
“A fox couldn’t get past the manor’s outer walls, much less through the inch-thick glass of your window, even if it could leap, somehow, eighteen feet into the air. You’re perfectly safe.”
His room was on the first floor, but at the back of the manor, the earth sagged, meaning his window was, in fact, eighteen feet from the ground. His mother wasn’t wrong.
“Nothing can jump that high,” agreed Milluki, his younger brother, busy squashing eggs across his plate. “And I didn’t hear it, anyway.”
“Your room has a window facing the other way,” said Illumi. “Mine is the only one in our home that looks towards the top of the mountain.”
“Is that what this is?” his mother snapped, slamming her silverware down upon the polished dining tabletop, gouging marks that the staff would have to repair. Again. “You want a different room? Yours isn’t good enough? You’re jealous of what we gave Kill?”
“Of course I am not,” replied Illumi. “Killua deserved the primary suite.” His other younger brother--third born--had recently been announced heir and was given, at age twelve, his own wing of the manor. The bedrooms for all the children were shuffled around, which led Illumi to this one--located on the far north side of the home, facing Kukuroo Mountain’s forested peak.
Illumi’s mother said, “Then, what? Are you afraid?”
The question was spoken with such a thick layer of disgust that Illumi bowed instinctually to his mother, in a deep, heartfelt apology. “No, mother. I do not fear the foxes outside. I was simply noting that, until last night, I did not know we had so many on the mountain.”
She sighed and wagged her hand in his direction. “Fine, fine. Sit up. Sit straight. You don’t have to bring up your brother every chance you get. Bitterness is unbecoming.”
Illumi’s back straightened, as instructed, and he said, “Yes, mother.”
When Illumi was born, he was blind.
At age two, his parents had an experimental surgery performed that restored most of his vision, but left him sensitive to the sun. A particularly sunny day without sunglasses could lead to him losing sight once again--which meant he wasn’t fit for the high society life his parents lead. He wasn’t fit for any society, being trapped indoors unless the sun was gone.
They had another child to rectify that. And when Milluki was healthy and smart but unattractive--”pig-faced” they said, though Illumi always thought he and Milluki looked closely alike--they tried again. The third son, Killua, was beautiful. Smart. Fast. And he had no defects except for his rebellious attitude that his mother was certain he’d grow out of.
Being gifted his own wing of the manor was their parents’ attempt at making Killua bow, obey, and maybe even enjoy the Zoldyck life, especially after he recently wrote a formal-looking letter disavowing the Zoldyck name.
“Killua deserves it,” Illumi said for the second time that morning. “He is the best of us.”
“And he’s not afraid of animals making a ruckus outside.”
He wasn’t home to hear the ruckus outside , Illumi didn’t say. Killua and Kalluto were away at boarding school until winter. Two more months, yet. Illumi had graduated from a homeschooling program almost four years ago, and Milluki received his diploma from boarding school early for good grades. He was a genius.
But his mother was right. Killua wouldn’t have even mentioned the fox-screams. He probably would have slept right through them.
Illumi vowed to do that on this night. He’d simply continue to sleep while the fox cried its horror in the woods. It wasn’t like he had to tolerate the noise for much longer.
“Remember that you have that doctor’s appointment this afternoon,” said Illumi’s mother. “They have to ensure you’re stable enough for surgery.”
“Yes, mother.” Another one. Experimental again. The surgery date was rapidly approaching. If it worked, Illumi would be able to live like the rest of them. His parents were planning his debut into normal society at Christmas, with many wink-nudges at the idea of him finally meeting a girl.
Illumi didn’t plan to make it to Christmas.
He laid in the dark, eyes closed, ignoring the screams. The laughter. Even as they grew closer.
No--they didn’t.
And he didn’t notice, even if they did.
Because Illumi was ignoring the fox cries outside.
The cackling didn’t exist to him because he was asleep. Soundly. In his cold, stiff bed with the new satin sheets that repelled any warmth from his own skin and--
“Ha ha ha ha,” cackled the fox, close enough now to be inside the outer wall that surrounded the manor.
Illumi sat up, shivering. His feet hit the icy stone floors and he moved quickly to his wardrobe to pull on a robe and a pair of riding boots and one benefit of being in this part of the manor was that he didn’t have to pass anyone’s room to leave through the back door. He wrapped himself against the chill and was surprised to find that the outside wasn’t quite as cold as his room.
How odd. How--unfair.
No. Illumi closed his eyes, inhaled, and let a trained smile pull at his lips. Nothing is unfair. That wasn’t a word in his vocabulary. Remember?
He did. He remembered well the feeling of his father’s fists as he said it: there’s nothing unfair about your life. His life was not unfair. He was a blessed young man born into a family of great fortune that could save him from an ailment that could possibly mean death if he weren’t a Zoldyck.
“Everything is perfect,” Illumi whispered into the moon-soaked world, his world, echoing the words he was taught as a boy. “Everything is perfect.”
A breeze blew through his straight black hair--half-braided over one shoulder so that he wouldn’t roll onto it at night. It had gotten very long over the last several years as his mother insisted it helped to distract from his odd face and even odder eyes. They were solid black, pupils permanently blown from his condition. And she wasn’t wrong--Illumi with his fine hair got much positive attention from strangers on the rare times he left the manor. Friendly faces, wandering hands--
Not that he’d engaged with any of it. He wouldn’t’ve known how, even if he wanted to.
He wasn’t allowed to wander the grounds after dark, even though it was the only time of day he could safely go outdoors. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been outside in the last year.
But the laughter--the screams--he’d never get any sleep unless they stopped. Perhaps if he captured the fox on film he could convince a butler to come out with a shotgun and solve the problem less-than-diplomatically.
Perhaps he could find one of the shotguns in the house and solve the problem himself.
Illumi walked across the lawn, the damp autumn grass appearing silver-brown through the light of the trees. He wandered back, back, until he reached the outer wall of the property, and the mountain shot up like a spire.
“Ha ha ha ha,” echoed the laugh from seemingly everywhere, all at once, and Illumi gasped, his feet taking him towards a tree that split the wall, as if its nearly-bare canopy would protect him from the unknown beast.
The scream erupted next. Loud enough that Illumi’s ears rang even after it stopped and he found himself crouched at the base of the tree, gripping the edges of his robe.
The silence washed over him as a minute ticked by. With his heart racing less, Illumi stood to his full height again.
The fox had to be close.
And there had to be more than one.
“Ha ha--”
Shriek.
“Ha ha ha--”
Howl.
Illumi spun around to see the foxes--enormous, furred, with pointed ears and long thick tails--loping through a broken section of wall, stones crumbling to the earth. Had that enormous gash in the bricked rock been there before? He didn’t see it as he approached.
In the pocket of his robe, he found his phone. He couldn’t see well in the dappled moonlight. But the flashlight on his phone’s camera--
He lit the scene before him and his blood ran cold. The shapes he had seen weren’t like any foxes he knew. Their bodies were malformed, hunched and enormous with long backwards limbs that stretched to maybe ten feet.
And with the light upon them, they turned to look, and they hadn’t fox muzzles, but human heads. Their long lupine necks carried down into those unnatural bodies and Illumi realized all at once that the screams and laughter weren’t as harmless as he expected them to be.
One of the human-faced foxes rose to stand on its hind legs, its humanoid mouth soaked in blood that drip, drip, dripped down its chin. It smiled, revealing a row of sharp teeth. Black eyes--like his, but solid, no whites--narrowed and it sniffed the air.
It laughed, the sound rippling the air, and Illumi lost grip of his phone as he gasped.
The creature was upon him in a moment flat, before he could react, and he was thrown backwards, until he hit the tree hard enough to knock the air from his chest. He coughed, hands scrambling up to protect his face as the thing breathed hot, wet, bloody air against his skin.
“A hunter?” asked it.
“No,” said Illumi, his voice caught as he tried to get air into his body again. “I am from the manor.”
“A Zoldyck-k-k-k-ke-he-he he he he,” cackled the thing.
“Yes,” Illumi said. “You know of us.”
“Yes. We had one of your kind. Small, sweet.”
The horror that gripped Illumi could have made him spew sick all over the beast, if his body worked right. But instead, he continued to choke on air, and he shook his head. They had eaten a Zoldyck? When? Who?
Why?
“What are you,” Illumi asked, his chest burning for air.
“Foxes,” said the beast. It leaned in until its face touched the top of Illumi’s head and it breathed in, stirring his hair, and the thing shuddered. “Sweet smell. Sweet flesh. We’ll eat you tonight.”
Oh, how unfair. That he would die to a mysterious creature on some fall night; cold, away from a room he didn’t want, away from a family he didn’t love, on the land that didn’t belong to him.
Oh, how unfair that he would die at a hand that wasn’t his own.
Because aside those thoughts he never had about how life was unfair, and how the sounds outside his bedroom window were unnatural, Illumi had secretly yearned to end it all. No, not just a yearn.
A plan. Steps that he was going to take before the next surgery to fix him for good.
He had a newly sharp knife in the drawer of his bath. How unfair that he never got to feel its kiss before he was lost to monsters in the woods.
“Then I ask that you kill me fast,” he breathed, a hollow sound. “Eat me all. Leave no trace.”
“You ask for death?”
Illumi finally turned his head up, to look at the creature in its uncanny, unnatural face. “Yes.”
Its smile grew. And grew. And continued to grow, until it reached nearly the pointed fox ears that protruded from the sides of its head. And then its maw opened, teeth wet. “Ha ha ha ha,” its throat began to croak, churning laughter and the wet gargling of its insides together.
Until the noise stopped, all at once, and Illumi heard a damp-sounding thwack .
The creature’s head rolled back and off its shoulders and into the earth below.
Illumi’s intake of air seemed stunningly loud to his ears. He stared forward, frozen, until the other fox-beast stepped into his vision, front leg raised and pointed razor-sharp like the end of a sword. The other fox had cut this one’s head off.
The beast’s body finally collapsed away from Illumi, leaving him exposed to the moon, the air, and the one remaining…thing.
Its body cracked audibly as it morphed. Illumi couldn’t be sure he saw it right--some of the shapes were dark, shadowed, but after a moment, it looked more like a man than a beast. The limbs were still too long. He was at least seven feet tall. Yes, he . With the creature in the shape of a human, he had a large, visible penis that fell between thick, muscular thighs. Illumi was too deeply shocked to react with more than a warming of his cheeks as the thing approached.
“Go home,” he said.
Illumi couldn’t move, at least not yet. But his mouth opened. “I. I do not understand.”
“I will eat on his flesh tonight. Not yours.”
“You eat your own?”
The fox-man’s head tilted curiously and a smile grew upon his angular lips. “You do not?”
“No.”
“But the humans taste so sweet. You don’t know?”
Illumi shook his head no this time.
“Do you want to know?”
Illumi paused. “You ask if I want to cannibalize other…people?” His heart leapt into his throat. “I don’t.”
A laugh erupted from the fox-man. “You do. You lie, but you do . You do wish to taste. You want to know if it’s as sweet as I say. It isss-s-s. Like ripened fruit. Like honey dripping from a hive--” He approached.
As he got closer, Illumi could see his face with true clarity and the warm blush on his cheeks grew more intense. The fox-man was-- severe-looking . Angular. Prominent cheekbones and glowing yellow eyes. And ruddy, red hair that fell against pale flesh.
He was beautiful. His deep voice seemed to purr as he said, “Shall I feed you?”
“No,” Illumi said, because that was what he was meant to say. “No. No. Please--let me go. You were going to let me go.”
“Yes. Yesss-s-s,” said he. “But tell me your name.”
“I am a Zoldyck--”
“Yes, but you’ve unique names, the people. People names.”
“I am Illumi.”
“I…llu…mii-e-e-e,” repeated the creature.
He shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Do you?” He nearly tripped over his words. “Do you have a name?”
“We’re foxes, my kind. But my name is a secret. It’s not like a people name. It can be used to hurt me. It has power over me. Speak a fox name and a command and it will obey.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to hurt me?”
“No,” Illumi said.
The fox-man laughed again. “Another lie. You’d shoot me now, if you could. Light my fur on fire.”
“You do not have fur right now,” said Illumi.
The fox-man’s head raised, curiously, and he looked down at his naked form. There was hair--the same red as on his head--around his manhood, which swung soft but enormous between his thighs. “Some fur,” he said.
“That is hair,” Illumi said. “Not fur.”
What was he doing?
Why was he talking to this thing?
Was he going to discuss the pedantics of pubic hair with a beast?
“Hair, yes, Different than fur,” the fox-man agreed. He stepped forward and Illumi didn’t move as he reached out, slowly--surprisingly gently--and took Illumi’s braid into his blood-soaked hand. “You have lovely hair.”
Illumi felt the compliment like an electric jolt straight to his bones.
The fox-man looked him down and up again, brows arching curiously. “You like that. When I say you are lovely.”
“No,” Illumi lied, instinctively, the way he knew he should.
“I like the way you look,” said the fox-man. “I like your smell. I would like, one day, to taste your flesh.”
“If you kill me, fine--but--”
“Do it fast,” the fox-man repeated. “Eat you all. Yes, yes, yesss-s-s. I will. You want that from me?”
Now that he wasn’t racked with horror, Illumi could see clearly now the benefits of ending his life in the woods. With the foxes. Instead of in his bathtub, in his family’s home, where the butlers would no doubt have to wash his blood from the porcelain. “I would,” he whispered, too afraid to say it with the vigor he felt.
“I will,” the fox-man said again. “I will. Come to me and I will take your life.”
“Not tonight?”
“No,” he said. “Tonight, I eat my fox-friend.”
“Okay,” Illumi whispered, distantly disappointed.
“Would you like a taste?” The fox-man kneeled over his companion and his hand morphed into something enormous and clawed and it ripped into the flesh of his fallen friend like a fork through cake. He pulled back a mound of it--wet, dripping, full of raw sinew.
“No,” Illumi said.
“It is not as sweet as human flesh,” said the fox-man, “But it tastes very good.”
Illumi’s hesitation felt apparent--like he was screaming something dark into the night, but the fox-man seemed to speak the language clearly. His fingers plucked a small bloodied piece from the flesh he held and he stepped forward. Close enough now for Illumi to smell the sweat, dirt, and blood that lingered on his naked skin.
The fox-man reached forward and placed a bloodied thumb against Illumi’s mouth. He opened with a gasp and something warm, wet, the flavor of pennies, slipped against his tongue. The fox-man instructed, “Chew. Swallow.”
The rubbery, textured meat felt foreign but the taste--that flavor--it was almost like lamb. Even uncooked, it was decadent, somehow, and Illumi felt his body warm at the sensation of it. He looked up from his distracted haze to see the fox-man biting into the flesh he held. Cannibalizing the other fox, like he said he would.
Illumi felt removed from his body--it was moving on its own--as he stepped forward, nearly chest-to-chest with the thing, and leaned forward for another bite.
The fox-man offered it, easily, a kind smile splitting his bloodied mouth. He fed Illumi another bite, a bigger one. “It’s good?” he asked, his voice quiet. Quieter than Illumi thought he could speak, with his inhuman cackles and ear-splitting screams.
Illumi didn’t reply verbally. He leaned in again. Another bite. And another. And the fox-man did the same, biting into the muscle he held. They ate together until there was little left.
A single bite remained between the fox-man’s fingers.
He lifted it to his own lips and Illumi watched as the final morsel slid into his mouth. Illumi’s chest tightened. His stomach was full, his mouth and chin dripping bloody, but still he wanted--
The fox-man raised his clawed hand to the side of Illumi’s face, tilting his head up, and he leaned in to press their mouths together.
It wasn’t a kiss--the fox-man’s tongue pressed his lips open and he fed Illumi the final bite, wet and warm from his own mouth. It tasted different this time. It tasted--
Like ambrosia. Illumi’s eyes nearly rolled back as the otherworldly delicious flavor spread across his tongue, down his throat, and he couldn’t help the blissful moan that rose through his chest.
“It’s good,” said the fox-man.
“I want more,” said Illumi, feeling drunk. He was so full that another bite could probably make him sick--but he felt nearly feverish with his want. More. More-- He reached out to frame the fox-man’s face with his hands and he pulled their faces together.
It was a kiss, this time.
A simple one, at first--lips to lips, breath to breath. But it became deep--tongue to tongue, Teeth clattered against teeth. And Illumi found himself, for the second time that night, with his back against the tree. It was decidedly less painful this time. He gasped for air the same as before, too, but it was a welcome feeling of bliss. Warmth. Desire. And the taste--the blood of the fox and the wet spit of this fox-man combined was sinister in its deliciousness.
Who knew that helping a beast consume one of its own would leave him wanting.
Distantly, there was a scream.
The fox-man pulled back at once, moving with animal grace as he guided Illumi away from the tree, and towards the house again. “Go home,” said he. “Come out tomorrow, here, to the tree. To the hole in your manor’s wall.”
“I--”
The scream was closer this time.
The fox-man grinned. “I’ve got more to eat. But I’ll leave myself hungry for you tomorrow.”
Illumi reached up to wipe at the blood that stained his face. He nodded in understanding. “Alright.”
“Go,” said the fox-man.
Illumi did.
Illumi would have thought it was all a dream except that in no dream would he have spent an hour masturbating frantically--debauched in a way he’d never confess to--in the bath and another hour trying--and failing--to remove fox-blood from beneath his cuticles. At some point the scrubbing simply made the stains worse, so he left it, and started to think of explanations that would appease his family.
Eventually he landed on: he cut his foot on a broken mirror and cleaned it up before the butlers awoke. Illumi even went to the trouble of breaking an old hand mirror kept in the drawer of the dresser in the corner of his room, so that there would be shards in his trash, should anyone go digging.
When he sat at the breakfast table that morning with his mother and father at one end and Milluki across from him, Illumi’s heart raced, but he played it even. Calm. He was under-rested--not a single moment of sleep was had in the night. Any time he laid down, he felt the feverish desire for more blood, more darkness, more…
More of that nameless fox-man.
His hands trembled some as he placed the napkin in his lap. The butlers arrived shortly after with heaping piles of french toast, thick slabs of bacon, and several bowls of freshly sliced fruit that glistened in the dim overhead lighting of their dining hall.
The meal was eaten as it normally was, with scattered conversation, and every time Illumi said a word, he had the explanation on his lips for why he looked so tired, why his fingers were stained--
But no one noticed.
“Your mother told me the doctor’s appointment went well,” said his father as the dishes were cleared away.
Illumi thought surely now, with his father’s attention squarely on his weakened form, the family would notice. He said, voice soft, “Yes. It was fine. The doctor believes I am adequately prepared for surgery.”
“Aren’t you happy?” asked his father. “I’d be ecstatic if I were in your shoes. You’re going to be fixed, finally. Healed. In just a few weeks.”
“Yes,” Illumi said, and the smile he wore was the fakest he’d ever managed. “I am ecstatic.” But what of the blood on his hands? Wasn’t he going to ask about that?
Wasn’t a more important part of Illumi broken, incapable of being fixed?
He’d eaten raw flesh from a monster under the glow of the moon. Where was his father’s concern for that? Were his freakish eyes so terrible that even his descent into immoral horror paled in comparison?
Was his family unable to comprehend the utter loss of his soul in the night?
“Good,” said Silva, blind to the sinister reality painted directly upon his son’s skin, surrounding his once perfectly-manicured nails. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re married by your next birthday.”
His mother laughed joyfully at that and said, “Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
Illumi left breakfast holding his secrets like a child holding a doll. This time, when he laid across his bed, he fell asleep.