High Stakes

A/N: *I think I was influenced by Katie McAlister’s vampire series. She’s a freaking genius, and if you haven’t read any of her work and you’re a fan of vampire books you should.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“This is where you live now?”

Naruto made a face at his friend and then looked around his apartment. There were yellow stains on the baby blue wallpaper. The carpet was a dizzying mix of green and red. His new couch had a couple of springs showing through. But they were easily avoidable.

“It has character.” Naruto finally answered in retaliation.

Kiba huffed, “Your other place…”

“He’ll find me there.” Naruto leaned back into the couch and took a drink from his beer.

“Sorry.” Kiba muttered.

Naruto nodded. It was nothing like his other place. His old apartment had been in a ritzy neighborhood, with brand new furniture, brand name appliances, fluffy soft carpet. But he could never go back there. He had already gone through the trouble of creating a new identity. He still had a cop sitting outside his apartment keeping an eye on him.

“Are you scared?” Kiba sat down beside him. “I think I would be pissed. I would go after him and cut off his…”

“He’ll get what’s coming to him.” Naruto had spent the last month in the hospital after his abusive boyfriend had gotten the restraining order papers.

“So how are you going to pay for this pretty little joint? You can’t go back to your job at the hospital.”

Naruto smiled, “I’m working in the morgue.”

“Kind of the opposite of what you were doing before, isn’t it?”

“I’ve always wondered what happens to all those dead bodies we send away.”

“I’ll miss you. You were the only other male nurse there.”

“The only thing I hate about this town, is ever since I moved here, I have these nightmares.”

“About what?”

“There’s this guy standing in the middle of this really cold room. And he keeps holding out his arm for me. And I know, I know if I don’t go to him, he’ll die. But if I do go to him, I know I’ll be giving up my freedom and my way of life.”

Kiba whistled, “You know what your problem is? You always want to help people. You think you can save everyone. And I don’t just mean professionally. That’s the only reason you stayed with that bastard. You thought you could save him from himself. And instead you end up in critical condition. I bet it’s just your brain trying to tell you to knock that bleeding heart shit off.”

Naruto gave a weak smile. “Maybe you’re right. Well never again. I’ll think of me first.”

“No you won’t.”

Naruto sighed, “I know.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Naruto set down his magazine and looked around the sterile morgue. It was different than he thought it would be. He thought it would be slightly spooky to work with a bunch of dead people, but knowing they were locked in long files made him feel better. He had been told that there were many slow nights. He almost wished for a body just so he would have something to concentrate on. Tomorrow he decided he would bring a stereo to work. Even dead people must hate complete silence.

He almost fell out of his rolling chair when the heavy metal doors slammed open and a body covered in a sheet was rolled in followed by two men.

“You the M.E.?”

Naruto stared at the men blankly. He knew what that stood for, he just couldn’t think.

“Hey, are you the medical examiner?”

“Oh…” Naruto scratched the back of his head, “I’m just uh…the forensic technician.”

“Good, get this body prepared.”

They pushed the table into the middle of the room and threw it on the examination table. “Have fun.” And with that Naruto was left alone with a dead body.

He stepped over to the sheet. There wasn’t any blood seeping through it like he thought there would be. “Okay, Mr. Dead body, I’m going to uncover you now.”

He grabbed the top of the sheets and sucked in a breath. He had seen several dead bodies before, but something about the morgue made his imagination run wild. He could just imagine hands darting out and grabbing his wrists. He didn’t get much further in his daydream because the sheet was off and the hands stayed at the dead guy’s sides.

“Wow.” Naruto looked down at the red haired boy. He had pale skin, and large rings around his eyes. At first Naruto thought it was mascara but when he brushed his hand under one of the eyes it didn’t smear. “Geez, you must have been hardcore to get tattoos like that.” He felt a muscle under the eye twitch. He jerked away his hand. Surely he was imagining things.

“Ha…umm…let’s see what you died from.”

Naruto grabbed the chart and then looked down at the boy. If he didn’t know any better he would have thought the boy was just sleeping. But the chart said he had been stabbed six times.

Naruto scowled and put the chart back at the end of the examination table. He pulled the sheet down more, wanting to see evidence of the wounds. There were some dried blood spots on the boy’s chest, but he couldn’t see any incisions.

“That’s weird.” Naruto looked over at the instrument table and dunked one of the clothes in the water. He wiped it over the dead man’s bloodied stains and still found no cuts.

Several ideas ran through his head, but the only logical one was that the charts had been mixed up. Of course there was no other dead body, but he wasn’t going to dispute it.

“I wonder if every body in here is as strange as you, Mr. Dead guy.” Naruto commented as he turned and looked for the proper materials to drain all bodily fluids.

“I doubt it.”

“Doubt what?” Naruto asked, forgetting that dead people weren’t supposed to talk.

“That anyone is as strange as me.”

Light bulb. Dead people don’t talk. Naruto dropped his small plastic hoses and scissors and quickly spun around. The dead guy had pushed himself up into a sitting position and was looking quite amused.

“You…” Naruto pointed his finger at the man, “You can’t talk. Lay down this moment and let me do my job! I won’t fuck up my first body because it won’t cooperate. I need this job.”

The dead man snarled and threw the sheet off of his body. Immediately Naruto’s eyes drifted to what was now uncovered. Dead guys could have erections. That didn’t prove anything. Maybe rigamortis was setting in. Yep, that’s why the guy was sitting. Now if he could only explain the talking part. Oh, of course, this must be a coworker trying to play a prank.

“I’m hungry.”

Naruto began to laugh hysterically, “Oh, haha…I get it. This is the way you initiate the new guy. Good one. Ha. Oh wait, you’re not really dead. You must work here. Hi, I’m Nar…uh I’m Kyuubi.”

The boy in front of him growled and hopped off the table. He stepped up next to Naruto who refused to step back. “Uh…I don’t feel comfortable being this close to a naked guy.”

“You’re not scared of me?”

“Nope. So the joke is over!”

A curve occurred at the corner of the boy’s mouth. “I agree.”

Naruto wasn’t sure what happened next, but suddenly there was an orange blur in front of him, and then a sharp pain shot up his neck. When he finally had control of his body again he was laying on the floor with the naked attacker standing over him. There was a line of blood at the corner of his mouth. /My blood/, Naruto thought bitterly.

“I like the way you taste. I think I’ll keep you alive. However, just because you can’t see it, don’t think I don’t have a leash on you, pet.”

Naruto watched in stunned silence as the rather nicely built bastard stepped over him and headed out the door.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he laid there until someone came in and found him. “Kyuubi, are you alright?” The man he had been introduced to earlier leaned down beside him and helped him up.

“I uh…you have a real jerk working here. I mean that red haired bastard…he BIT me.”

“Red hair? We don’t have anyone that works here with red hair. I was told there was a new customer here. Where is he?”

Naruto paled, “Really? He was really a dead person?”

The man looked at him. Naruto knew that look: that was the look of someone who thought he was crazy.

“Maybe you should go take a walk or something. Some people don’t handle this atmosphere real well the first couple of nights.”

Naruto sighed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sasuke set his chalice of blood down and looked over at his vampire bride. “I told you I was in the study all night.”

Temari tapped her foot impatiently on the floor, “Then why is he gone? What did you do to him?”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word from you until I ask to hear from you.”

Immediately Temari grew quiet. She was by no means done yelling, but she could not disobey the command of her vampire lord. Perhaps the outside world had promoted women to first class citizens, but that wasn’t the case in the vampire world, mostly because the majority of the female vampires were over 100 years old.

Sasuke heard her storm out, how she managed to walk in the high heels she wore was beyond him, and then heard the door slam behind her.

“She certainly is a difficult woman. It’s unfortunate I have to put up with her at all.” He smirked, a gesture he only did in private, “But at least Gaara is gone.” He grabbed his glass of blood and took a victorious sip. He had officially become the leader of the vampire clan after Gaara’s disappearance, and finally he could begin his revenge.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Temari pulled her trench coat closer to her body as she stepped into the clearing at the park. She hated Sasuke. She had put up with two cold and egotistical brothers for over two hundred years, but nothing could prepare her for her husband. And she was pretty sure that her husband had just tried to kill her brother.

She sat down on a weathered bench and waited patiently for her first victim of the night. Sasuke had funded a blood bank where all the vampires were supposed to go to eat. His reasoning had been that they didn’t need to draw attention to themselves by attacking humans. So whenever Temari was angry at him, she would come out to hunt. It was her little act of rebellion.

It didn’t take long for someone to come into the park. Temari hunched her shoulders, put her head in her hands and pretended to cry. It always seemed to attract people’s attention. And just as expected she heard the footsteps come towards her direction. She was about to pounce when a familiar scent caught her attention. She looked up and watched as the blonde boy approached.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

Temari sniffed the air, she was certain the boy smelled of Gaara. She scowled, that didn’t make any sense, Gaara never left a victim alive. “You…where is Gaara?”

Naruto took a step back, “What? I don’t know who that is.”

Temari stood up and let her trench coat fall off her shoulders to the ground. She was wearing a mesh T-shirt which showed off everything underneath. She wasn’t wearing a bra. And she had on a pair of skin tight leather pants adorned with several chains.

Naruto couldn’t take his eyes off of her, he felt some weird attraction that he just couldn’t control.

Temari reached out a hand and brushed it over Naruto’s lab coat collar. “Where do you work?”

“The morgue.” He felt dazed.

“Is that where you met my brother?”

“The red haired guy?” Naruto had almost talked himself out of believing that the event had actually taken place.

“Yes. He was in the morgue?”

“He was a dead body. But…uh…he wasn’t dead.”

Naruto thought he saw her eyes flash red for a second.

“I knew it!” She growled. Suddenly the haze filling Naruto’s mind disappeared. He shook his head just to be sure.

“What?”

“That bastard tried to kill him. But he’s okay right?”

“He walked out of the morgue. Someone tried to kill him?”

Temari once again examined the boy. There had to be a reason Gaara left him alive. “Would you help me?”

Naruto sighed. This entire conversation had left him confused. “If you’re going to ask me to find him, the answer is no. That bastard bit me.”

“Someone tried to assassinate him, I’m sure he was just disoriented.”

Naruto scowled but accepted the excuse, not wanting to think what the real reason might be.

“I need help to get my brother’s killer. I think…I think my husband tried to do it. I’m so scared to go back home to him. What if he tries to kill me?”

She looked Naruto in the eyes, and suddenly the haze fell over him again. Everything she said made sense, and he couldn’t help but want to help her. What kind of man would turn their back on a frightened woman?

“Sure.”

When the girl smiled and started to walk away, Naruto followed.

“Hey, what’s your name?” He asked as an afterthought.

“Temari. And the bastard you’ll help me corner is Sasuke.”

“I’m Naruto. Oh wait, I mean…shit.” So much for his alias.