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A thing to remember: heirs have died before.
The house mourns them, but it cannot save them.
January is sharpening its cruelest edge when Xanxus is called to return to the Vongola mansion. Frost scrapes the green off the garden outside, and the remnants of last week's snow make the wrought iron fence look like black claws. His breath makes a bitter cloud when he steps out of the car.
His father had sent it for him.
Xanxus had felt that old itch in his fingers—for a bottle of whiskey and a match—when it arrived, but with neither close to hand he had settled for gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
He hasn't been home since he was sixteen, by no choice of his own. He loved the family and the house, and the exile has been—
Well, being away from the house has been like being frozen in ice. No more warm fireplaces and his brothers laughing on the newly frozen pond. No more foggy mornings where the trees disappeared into the sky like secret cathedrals half-built. No more sprawling hallways and orange light spilling from every windowpane. He's lived all over the world since—Tokyo, Montreal, Mumbai, Madrid, Rome—and nowhere has there been this shade of amber, like the house bleeds a sunset every night.
From this angle, the house sprawls on in every direction, nine generations of Vongola obsession adding wing after wing to a building that had already started monumental. Now it's near labyrinthine, full of trap doors and secret staircases and rooms that end in dead ends behind every corner. He and his brothers had spent years learning the twists and turns of each corridor, memorizing the patterns of the ceiling rafters until they could count them like their own ribs. The shutters are closed for the winter, massive wooden arrangements that are painted black and green like beetle shells.
Squalo finds the whole thing to be a pain in the ass. Xanxus, ten years banished and ten years disinherited, can't look at it without an ache like shattered crystal in his lungs.
He nods to the driver of the car, a man he doesn't know, and steps toward the house. Ten years is more than enough time for his old man to hire completely new staff. Xanxus just hopes something of what he remembers remains.
The door creaks open a handful of inches the moment he gets within three paces. Xanxus had thought he might feel grief at the acknowledgement, or nostalgia, but instead something hot and metallic and viciously satisfied rises within him. The house still remembers him. It is still his in some undefinable way.
Or to put it more truthfully: he is still the house's.
The wood is warm when he pushes open the door into the entry room. It's a vaulted room, stretching all the way up to a stained glass ceiling, three stories up. The Fifth had remodeled the paneling and replaced it all with dark wood on some whim of the house's. Now it shines near black beneath lamplight.
Standing in the entry is his father's right hand man.
Coyote Nougat is a man who buried himself in tradition the way foundations are sunk into concrete. He has worked for his old man as long as Xanxus had been alive, and will likely continue after Xanxus is dead—just keep walking the hallways until his flesh falls away. Xanxus used to resent the way he would never acknowledge more than his duty, never turn his head from whatever problem was immediately in front of him. But time away has let him hear what the world thinks of the house—haunted, built by madmen, eats its young—and he thinks he understands Coyote's reluctance to investigate further.
"Coyote," he nods. "Where's the old man?"
Coyote sighs before he says anything. "Welcome home Master Xanxus."
"Cut the crap," Xanxus sneers back. "Not one invitation back for Enrico's funeral. For Federico's. For Massimo's. And now you want to see me?"
With every name that leaves his lips, Coyote's face grows wearier. If Xanxus were a kinder man, he would pity him. If Xanxus were a kinder man, he would have never been banished.
"He has always kept you in his heart," Coyote says. "The Ninth loves you, even when you're away."
"Don't even try." Xanxus grits his teeth. "Where is he?"
Coyote sighs again. "Come with me. He would have wanted to see you."
"What the fuck do you mean by that?" Xanxus asks, but Coyote doesn't answer him, just turns and walks out of the room. The gas lamps in the ceiling flicker, as if an invisible breeze is passing by.
Xanxus lets his feet fall heavily as he follows, too irritated to step softer. The sound echoes louder than it should, bouncing off the stone of the entry hall like a far off drum.
Coyote doesn't turn, but Xanxus does see him flinch. He leads them towards the north wing of the house, the one that stretches through the manicured gardens and the pond with willows laughing softly beside it. The branches are bare for the winter. Xanxus turns away before he can see the way the light catches the frozen water of the pond because fuck, it's good to be back but all the time has done is show him he was right to miss it.
The floor creaks in sympathy, and Xanxus moderates his steps, just a little.
Coyote eventually leads them to a large bedroom, full of pale light from a wall of windows. In the middle of the room is a canopied bed, hung with red silk. And in the middle of the bed lays the man who used to be Xanxus's father.
Timoteo Vongola used to be a man with a fire burning in him. When he was still Xanxus's father, he had been a man who stood tall and proud and carried a gun beneath his three piece suit. Xanxus still has a scar on his chin from where Timoteo's backhand caught him trying to take the house for his own. He still wears his guns the way Timoteo taught him.
Now all that's left of that man is ashes.
Timoteo's eyes are closed, and he does not stir when Xanxus steps closer. His skin is paper thin, and there is an IV line running from his elbow. He's wearing loose clothing that doesn't hide the bandage over his chest.
"What happened?" Xanxus asks, trying to hear anything over the thunder of his heart.
"He was attacked," Coyote says. "We haven't caught the assailant yet, but they're still in the house, somewhere."
"You haven't caught them? What the fuck have you been doing?" Xanxus asks. Coyote is nominally in charge of the manor's security.
At this, Coyote finally shows a little fire. "Things haven't been easy since you left," he snaps. "The house has its own ways, you know that. But if you would—"
"I don't see what that has to do with letting the old man get, what? Shot?" Xanxus interrupts. If he were still 16, his hands would be shaking. As it is, adrenaline is lightning down his back, silver and sharp.
"Stabbed, actually," Coyote spits. "Not that it would make much of a difference to you."
"I would have shot him myself if I had the chance," Xanxus says. "If it were me, he wouldn't be laid out on this bed, he'd be in a grave. What did you call me back for? Sympathy? You should have tried that before my brothers died."
"They were never really yours!" Coyote shouts, and then shuts his mouth. Xanxus feels molten rage slide down to his fingertips, hot enough to sear bone to ash. Coyote must see some of it on his face, because he tries to modulate his voice a little. "I called you for the house, to offer you the inheritance. The house needs someone here, and your father… is not likely to recover soon."
Xanxus grits his teeth. There might be blood in his mouth. Ten minutes in this house, and he can already feel the phantom weight of his gun in his palm. He wouldn't regret it.
Behind Coyote, the curtains flutter as a window clicks open and lets a breeze in. He can smell the crisp bite of snow, and though they're out of season, somehow, lilacs. He clenches the hand that had been reaching towards his concealed pistol, and drops it.
"You called me pretending my father had forgiven me because I'm your only option left? Yeah, I got that," he says, and slams the door on Coyote on his way out.
Another ten minutes finds him on the other end of the house, smoke in the air. The bite of nicotine in his lungs is heady—like he's 16 again, and angry with the entire world. He's 26 now, and it's still true, just sharper.
His whole world used to be this fucking house. And even now his father hasn't unbanished him. He's still not welcome here. It had only his father's right hand come to beg him to wet the foundations with blood.
Xanxus knew this was too good to be true.
"Fuck this," he spits.
But, even if he knows now that it was only Coyote on the other end of the invitation, some part of him still wants to believe.
From his pocket, he takes out a switchblade and flicks it open, pressing his thumb to the blade and waiting until red wells beneath. He lets the blood fall to the marble steps, and he waits.
When Timoteo's blood wets the stone, it sinks in like it's dropping into nothing, and the house nearly purrs. If Coyote were to do the same, it would splash on the steps like water. These are not the foundation stones, but the house has a thousand tongues of wood and mortar. It eats regardless.
Xanxus's blood settles on the marble and stays there, like any other outsider's. Xanxus closes his eyes and tips his head to the sky.
"Welcome home," he says to himself. Laughter feels like gravel in his throat.
He takes another drag of his cigarette and relishes the burn. The cold air outside stings his exposed face. He hasn't missed winters here; they're too honest.
He's not sure what he expected, really. That his father would be welcoming him back with open arms, after everything that transpired between them so many years ago? Xanxus had wanted to say fuck you to the old man's face. He had wanted to have him offer forgiveness just so he could reject it. But Timoteo is in a coma and fading into his bed like a dream half-forgotten. And Xanxus is tired.
He'll stay here the night and then go back to the shark and his squad. He misses the house still, even sitting here in its grasp, but missing things and wanting to have them again are different things. He wants this more than anything; and when has wanting anything brought it to him?
But when he moves to stand, he notices that the marble is once again pristine.
The house licks its lips.
(What Timoteo doesn't know is this: on the night he banished Xanxus, he had been too late. Xanxus had already laid his blood on the foundation stone. The house had already claimed him.
But he was not an heir. The house was still waiting for someone worthy of its name.
(Xanxus thinks Enrico could have done it. But he was killed outside the house's protection, and Xanxus hadn't known until months later, when Massimo got him on the phone.)
Coyote couldn't have known that Xanxus wasn't fit to be heir because no one knew but Xanxus.
It had been with that knowledge breaking his heart that Xanxus had let himself be disinherited. And the world has been colder since.)
"Three days," Xanxus tells Coyote when he returns inside. "And then I'm gone. I'll help you find the person who stabbed him, but I'm not touching the inheritance."
Coyote looks drawn and pale now that he is no longer yelling. "Very well. If that's what it will take to get you to consider. I'll have your rooms prepared for you."
"And send me what you have on the intruder," Xanxus says.
Coyote's face grows sour, but he nods.
They don't speak further.
Xanxus spends the hour before he sleeps prowling the grounds, staying away from the basement and the wing his father is in. He doesn't want to see Timoteo's slack face, somehow worse for having nothing of the man he remembered in it. Xanxus wants to shake him, ask him what the fuck happened in all the years since he was away.
The house hadn't claimed any of Timoteo's sons, and Xanxus knows better than to try his luck again. But he still wonders. The house is without an heir, and it has clearly been getting restless. Xanxus finds the summer rooms half-aired out, anxious little flutterings of air running from the windows.
He shuts the windows and turns around with a frown.
There's no way the house hasn't chosen an heir. The well hidden secret of the Vongola was that the family line was a broken patchwork: sometimes, new heirs would simply arrive in the night, breathless and starving. The family adopted them in and taught them how to hide knives in their new suits, and you'd never be able to tell they were anything but Vongola. What made the family wasn't blood, it was the estate.
If none of Timoteo's sons would do, the house surely had someone else in mind.
So what was taking them so long to arrive? The house should be a siren song in their blood, a compass in their dreams pointing straight towards its bloody floors.
And how had Coyote fucked up so badly that he had lost the assailant in the house itself? Xanxus grits his teeth. It was just sloppy. The family has too many enemies to narrow down the list of suspects. It could be any of the myriad of people they had pissed off over nine generations. That's why they kept the manor closed to outsiders.
Coyote probably didn't want to call any of the family's allies with Timoteo in a coma. He wouldn't want to take point in negotiations, and there was no heir to do so in Timoteo's stead.
He doesn't find anything that evening besides evidence that every wing had been turned over at least once. There's still furniture out of place and rugs ever so slightly misaligned. The floor creaks sympathetically beneath his feet.
Coyote had done his best and turned up not a thing.
He talks to some of the staff, but the stabbing had happened after most of them went home for the day. The ones who had still been there hadn't seen anything until Timoteo was bleeding out on the floor, and Coyote was charging into the room with a gun. They do tell him that the house has been restless, though.
"I haven't seen it this bad since the last of your brothers passed," Luca, one of the guards, tells him. The staff hasn't changed much from when Xanxus was last here, but everyone is older. There are new faces that he doesn't recognize, faces that will never know the sound of any of his brothers' laughter.
"Have there been threats? Have we made new enemies?" Xanxus asks. He used to know this off the top of his head, but the time away has severed him from their information networks as well.
Luca shakes their head. "Nothing. We don't know why. But the baseboards have been shaking when you step too hard, and the knives are always sharp." When Xanxus swears, they just laugh. "Yeah, that's about how we all feel too."
When he finally settles down for the night (in the room that used to be his, which is just—) he's no closer to figuring out what happened to Timoteo. He stares at the ceiling and counts the cracks in the plaster.
"What am I missing?" he asks.
The house has no answer for him, and Xanxus eventually drops into an uneasy sleep, turning restlessly beneath its eaves.
It had been hard to ignore the dreams, but if there was anything he was good at, it was self-delusion.
He couldn't leave. Even considering getting across the ocean, he couldn't leave his—
The morning sunlight hits Xanxus square in the face as he opens his eyes, and he swears.
Fuck, there had been some scrap of a dream— it's fading now, and all he remembers is the long exhale of ocean before him as he stepped onto the dock.
Is the heir on a boat in some god forsaken ocean? They're fucked if so.
There's a headache pounding behind his eyes, like someone had taken a pickaxe to his soft tissues, and Xanxus groans as he rolls out of bed. He slept like shit. It's no surprise to not sleep easy when things are this restless, but the crimson tide of his brain is going to be of no help at all today.
It's with his eyes half shut that he wanders into the kitchen in his wing of the house and fixes himself some breakfast. It's something he learned young; the house is picky with who it lets stay, and most of the limited staff has better things to be doing than catering to the family's every whim.
Xanxus cradles his head over his cup of coffee and tries to focus.
Okay, so the heir had clearly attempted to head in their direction, and then… what? It's useless to speculate, but that doesn't stop Xanxus from spinning himself in circles.
Coyote finally emails him a brief file, and he reads it over while he eats. There's not much in there. Coyote couldn't figure out how the assailant got in, nor how they escaped. The only way he had figured out they were even still in the house was something Timoteo had said before he passed out. Close to home.
They might have left, and Coyote would have no idea. A lot of good any of the information does him.
He does his dishes and then calls the shark while he wanders around the house, rolling his eyes when Squalo just laughs at him.
"You're never going to get a straight answer out of your father's right hand," Squalo says, when he's collected himself. His voice takes on a contemplative edge. "Not unless you threaten him."
"Can't," Xanxus says absently. "The house wouldn't like it."
Squalo sighs. "Of course not. Okay, what's the plan then? You coming back soon?"
"Day after tomorrow."
Squalo makes a dramatic noise. Xanxus can nearly see him shake his hair over his shoulders. "I'll tell Lussuria not to wait up tonight then. You need anything?"
"I need to find whoever is in my goddamn house," Xanxus says. He looks around another room with his phone pressed to his ear. There's so sign of an intruder here either, just like the last thirty rooms he's been in.
"You will," Squalo says, and clicks his tongue. "Maybe try outside. Things have been frozen for a while."
Xanxus thinks it over. "Don't let Bel on that mission he's been requesting. He's going to blow something up."
"Yeah yeah," Squalo says, and hangs up, just as abrupt as he's always been.
Xanxus shakes his head, winces at the spike of pain that sends from his left eye to the base of his neck, and heads outside.
Outside, it's started snowing again.
Xanxus takes a moment before he steps outside, caught between the warmth of the house and the icy breeze blowing in. He really hates the cold.
But if he's ever going to leave this house again, he needs to know it won't fall apart behind him. Xanxus pulls on a pair of gloves and trudges outside, squinting against the wind.
It's thankless out here. The staff leaves the gardens dormant for winter, and snow has piled up in thick drifts around the trees and over the burlaped bushes. Xanxus walks for hours, looking for something beneath the snow, not sure what he's trying to find.
It's late afternoon by the time he turns in, and his fingers are frozen to the bone. He's looping around the back of the house to head in, when he spots something he hadn't noticed before.
There, around one of the back windows, is a piece of wood missing from the house's frame. Almost like…
Almost like someone had clambered through the window and broken something off along the way.
Xanxus narrows his eyes and fishes through the snow until he finds the piece of wood that had been knocked free. Rubs his thumb over the split. It's wide enough to have been knocked free by a careless foot, which doesn't square with his image of the intruder. Someone who can remain hidden in a house that hates them should be more careful than this.
He tucks it in his pocket and walks back inside, shaking snow off his shoulders as he goes.
The rest of the day passes no closer to figuring out either of his problems, and Xanxus takes a glass of whiskey with him to bed, relishing the burn.
He rolls Timoteo's words around in his head. Close to home. What had the old man meant by that? That they were outside the house and not yet inside? It's frustratingly vague.
He still hasn't checked Timoteo's wing of the house, but tomorrow—
Tomorrow.
There was no choice now. He had felt it, when the last heir fell. His bones hurt. He wanted it so bad it kept him up at night.
Bad to go and worse to stay. He was rotting here. He needed—
Xanxus wakes up slowly, the headache from the day before spread to his tendons and bones. It's the worst night of sleep he's gotten in a while, like all the lumps of the bed had migrated to twist his muscles into knots.
"I get it," he says to the ceiling. "I'm trying."
The house doesn't respond.
The floorboards are particularly vocal beneath his feet as he walks to the kitchen, and when he turns on the stove, the flame wheezes before flaring far brighter than he intended.
Xanxus eats his eggs cooked too hard and taps his fork on the sink when he cleans his plate.
The desperation from his dream haunts him. Where is their heir, who wants so badly and hates to go? Xanxus hopes they're not in the ocean.
"Yeah, okay."
With that, he heads towards Timoteo's wing of the house.
The last time Xanxus really explored this wing had been ten years ago.
He avoids Timoteo's bedroom and walks ever expanding circles around the wing, riffling through anything that could constitute a clue. This wing of the house had always been off limits to him and his brothers, and there are a thousand secrets he wishes he had time to explore.
He had only come here sparingly before he had broken into the basement and nearly bled himself out on the foundation stones. Timoteo had caught him near the trap door in the kitchen, but had assumed he was on his way down, rather than coming back up.
When he finally steps into the kitchen of the wing, he finds Coyote sipping a cup of tea, sitting at the marble countertop. Timoteo's kitchen had been renovated recently, and there's an island of white stone in the middle of it, bafflingly modern in the kitchen's centuries old wood.
"Still looking, Master Xanxus?" Coyote asks, so mild it can be nothing but mocking.
Xanxus turns on his heel and walks out, not dignifying the hypocrisy with a response.
He had been intending to check the basement; the only entrance was in the kitchen pantry (for reasons that were never entirely clear). But he's not going to argue with Coyote about opening it. The man had never liked opening the basement in the first place, even when they didn't have a man hunt going on.
Besides, the basement was the one place that would never open for an intruder. Xanxus doesn't need to check to know that.
Eventually he ends up in Timoteo's office, nodding at a guard as he passes. It's not someone he recognizes, but they don't stop him as he walks into the expansive room.
He was only here a couple times, but he remembers the stained glass windows and leather armchairs, the way Timoteo's solid desk is piled with old books and files on the family's businesses. The room glows with green light from the windows and myriad of plants spaced around the corners.
Sitting behind the desk is another one of his father's close associates.
Brabanter Schnitten is a man who wears a tie and never ties it correctly. He handles Timoteo's work underground, which keeps him out of the house as often as not. Xanxus hadn't seen him much growing up, but he had heard about him everywhere when he was banished. Whatever cologne he's wearing makes Xanxus's temples ache faintly, bergamot and pepper overpowering the room's smell of leather and dust.
With the experience of a decade, Xanxus can see the concealed weapons in Brabanter's lazy slouch, the way he has an eye on both exits in the room, even with nobody there.
"Xanxus," Brabanter says. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"You didn't think I'd show back up?"
"Didn't think you were serious about looking around the house. I knew you'd return."
Xanxus's mouth twists before he straightens it out. "I know what it means to keep my word," he says, more acidic than necessary.
Brabanter, if anything, relaxes more. The sharp words slide right off him. "I should have expected it, really. You always were poking your head into everything as a kid."
"So? Have you seen anything?" Xanxus asks. He walks over to one of the secondary desks in the room while they talk, and starts flicking through the papers on it. He keeps one eye on Brabanter though. He doesn't trust that liquid ease. It's all quicksand and gloss, nothing showing Brabanter's thoughts beneath.
"Nothing since that night," Brabanter says. "Coyote is thorough. I don't think you'll find anything he's missed."
"He shouldn't have invited me back if he didn't want someone to double check his work," Xanxus says. The words are combative in a way that reminds him of arguing with his father a decade ago. He had thought he had tempered that impulse, but being in the house again brings it all back, the good and the bad.
Brabanter shrugs. "You're leaving tomorrow. If you're set on refusing the inheritance, you should be glad we haven't thrown you out sooner."
"Fuck you," Xanxus says. The reminder that he's only here at their whim itches, like wool wrapped too close to skin. He keeps looking through the desk though.
There had been a twitch, just a flicker, when Xanxus had started looking through these particular documents, like Brabanter had stopped himself from reaching out. There's likely nothing truly secret here, but Timoteo liked to spread out his work.
"I don't hate you," Brabanter says. "I don't know why you've refused it, either. You could be master of the house."
Xanxus starts to retort, and stops.
There, buried within the documents…
"What's this?" Xanxus asks, voice shaking.
Brabanter flicks him a look, but nothing shows on his face. "A contingency plan. It's becoming more relevant."
The multipage packet Xanxus is holding is simply labeled "Assessment Proposal". There's the details for an appraisal laid out in neat type below it, detailing how the house would be assessed for value.
"For what?" Xanxus asks, taking a step toward Brabanter. If he had matches, the paper would be set aflame right now. "Are you thinking about—" He can't even finish the thought.
"It was something Timoteo was considering," Brabanter says. "There have been offers made, you understand. We have to do what's best for everyone who works here, not just wait around for something that may or may not ever happen."
"What do you mean?"
"Timoteo saw that it might be time to relocate the family business. There's no use in staying somewhere like this any more. This house is a considrable distance from—"
"How could you even consider that?" Xanxus interrupts. "No matter what you got offered. I thought you all would have a little bit of respect—"
Brabanter cuts him off in turn. "I've never really understood what will happen if the house goes without an heir," he says. His gaze is lackadaisical when he looks back at Xanxus. "The boss is still alive, and we'll be able to move him to somewhere with top of the line medical care. The house will go to someone who will truly treasure it. Everyone will benefit."
"Do you really believe that?" Xanxus asks scornfully. "No wonder the house has been restless."
"No matter what Coyote believes about this house, we don't owe anything to a building. It's just a place, Xanxus."
Xanxus crumples the assessment proposal between two fists. "Our family has bled for nine generations here. The house made us as much as we made the house. You're a fool to think we'll last a week away from home."
The house is wood and stone and plaster built around a foundation of blood. Xanxus loves it the way he loves the heft of his gun in his palm, the way he loves a dog at his heel. The house is a hundred rooms and every one of them is home. The house sang in his dreams for the ten years he was away like a mountain whispering come home come home come home.
"You're not even related to the man who built it," Brabanter says. He stands up and walks around the desk, only pausing when he reaches the doorway. "Just because it's been this way in the past doesn't mean it must continue. It's time to let it go."
He closes the door on Xanxus's snarl. The sound is irritatingly soft.
"Fuck!" Xanxus says, and sweeps everything on the secondary desk onto the floor. The whole mess clatters, and faintly a mug breaks. He stares at it and grits his teeth before bending to begin to pick it all up.
It's not about destiny, at least for Xanxus. It might be different for Timoteo, or his sons, or any of the past heirs to the house. Maybe they had no choice. But he knew what he was doing at sixteen, walking into the basement, a cut on the palm of his hand. He had known what he was tying himself to, even as he knew he would be banished if he did not turn out to be the heir.
He chose to be the house's. The promise didn't come with any terms, came with nothing but his blood on the foundation stones and his hopes in his mouth. It's been ten years, but he came home when he was called.
He's always been a man of his word. And so he finishes sweeping up the mess and spends the next four hours scouring through Timoteo's files, in hopes of finding something else amiss.
He finds nothing more. Evening falls and he returns to his rooms restless, on the verge of pacing. The floorboards creak worriedly beneath his feet, but don't offer any reassurances.
"I'm leaving tomorrow," he tells the mirror when he brushes his teeth that night. "I'm out of time. If you have anything for me, it's now or never."
He doesn't understand. How could the master of the house not understand what he lived in? How how how—
And there's so much blood, everywhere, and he runs to the only place he might be safe, wounded-animal brave and stumbling.
Xanxus snaps awake. He's had two hours of sleep at most, and his heart is pounding.
He understands now. The heir must have arrived, and met Timoteo, and then— something. Xanxus isn't sure what. But suddenly the problem of it is clear in his mind.
He had been looking for two people, when he should have been looking for one. Close to home indeed. Fuck, it had been right beneath his nose.
Their heir isn't on some godforsaken boat. He's here.
And if the heir is here and wounded, there's only one place he'll be.
Xanxus is half dressed and moving before he thinks things through.
There's a name on his tongue as he runs through the dark walls of the house. Tsunayoshi. Xanxus has tasted his desperation, though he didn't know it. He had felt the house in Tsunayoshi's dreams, the way it beat at him like a thousand birds in his throat.
He makes it back to Timoteo's wing, shouldering past a guard who tries to bar his way.
"It's the middle of the night—" they start, but Xanxus is past them and running again. His breath comes in adrenaline fueled pants, and he rounds the corner to the kitchen, where the trapdoor to the basement is.
There, still sitting at the table—though his tea has long gone cold—is Coyote, a gun in hand.
"Xanxus," Coyote says. He stands from his seat and points the gun at him, steady as anything. There's no shock in his face, even at this late hour.
"You're not surprised I'm here," Xanxus says.
Coyote shakes his head. "I know who you're here for."
"You knew where he was all along," Xanxus says slowly, putting the pieces together, trying to keep him talking. He walks slowly around the countertop, using the movement to mask when he slips his gun from beneath his jacket.
"He's not an option. You were, even if Timoteo didn't propose it. But the house has to go to one of his sons, and if it can't—"
Xanxus fires.
The shot hits the wall behind Coyote because Xanxus hadn't actually been aiming for his head. He doesn't actually care what Coyote thinks about this, or what his plans were. He just needs to get to the basement.
Coyote ducks behind the countertop, and Xanxus vaults over it. His foot takes Coyote in the shoulder, and they tumble to the ground in a heap. Xanxus's hand locks around Coyote's wrist, and they strain for a moment before Xanxus is able to knock the gun out of his hand.
Xanxus isn't watching Coyote's other hand, which is his mistake. An alarm sounds, and Xanxus catches the button of some sort of communicator before Coyote throws it out of reach.
Xanxus bares his teeth and decks Coyote across the face while he's distracted. He's no longer 16. He has years of martial arts training behind him, and the full weight of ten years of resentment knocks Coyote's teeth together and slams his head into the floor.
He goes limp.
The taps flick themselves on as Xanxus clambers to his feet, and he hisses air between his teeth.
"Hang on, I'm coming."
He hurries over to the trap door leading to the basement and it clicks open beneath his fingers. He flings it open and closes it behind him. The solid oak locks behind him, but Xanxus already hears quick footsteps coming from the hallway. He'll have to hurry.
Gas lamps light themselves on his way down, and Xanxus sprints along the stone steps. They're rough hewn blocks of dark grey stone, and the walls are shored with timbers. All together, it looks more like a mine shaft than a basement. He can hear pounding on the door above him. Faintly, someone calls for a crowbar.
He hits the basement finally, where the stairs even out to flat slabs of granite, branching out to the family catacombs. The gas lamps continue to light themselves in little pop pop pops, casting orange and purple shadows across the floor.
Just like the last time he was here, he doesn't stop to admire the stonework, sprinting past the tombs of previous masters of the house, and the smaller tombs: of heirs that died before they took up the mantle.
He runs and he runs and he runs, flames flickering in front of him, until he rounds the corner right before the foundation stones. The place he had pledged himself is just ahead, only twenty paces away. The blocks of solid stone are so black they drink in the light. The very first part of the house that the First built rests above them.
And collapsed, curled on his side, is a teenager. Moss has grown beneath his head, and there are strange night-blooming plants grown in a nest beneath him. A slow drip of water falls from the ceiling into his mouth. His hair is a wild mess of brown, even having not been washed for days. It looks like he collapsed while reaching towards the foundation stones, like he had known what he needed to do, but simply lost the strength to complete it.
There's a worrying dark stain on his shoulder, most of it covered by the leaves of a dark green plant. How long has he been down here, in the dark?
Xanxus drops to the floor next to him, and presses two fingers to his neck. He breathes a sigh of desperate relief when he feels a pulse there. It's too slow, but that it's present at all is a miracle.
The teen's face is deathly pale, and there's blood dried on his hands, all the way up to his wrists. The red has flaked away to black-maroon, and it's stained his nails a yellowish red. The walls shudder around them like the lungs of a massive beast, a dragon with a hundred hearths for a heart and a thousand windows for scales.
"There you are," Xanxus says. There's a sun burning bright in his chest like he swallowed a lungful of coals, and they've put all the water in his blood to boil.
Tsunayoshi does not stir. The house groans above them, like an oak in a hurricane.
"Wake the fuck up," Xanxus says, and means it the way he means anything he's ever said on his knees. "The house is getting restless."