InuYasha Fan Fiction / Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ CrossFate ❯ Darkness and Dawn ( Chapter 2 )

((-)(-)(-)-(-)(-)(-))

CrossFate

Originally Posted: 2/16/08

Chapter Two: Darkness and Dawn

Stillness reclaimed the underground at last. The dark gate was gone, and the last wisp of blue spirit energy that had limned its edge faded peacefully away. Within the vaulted chamber, everything grew quiet again. The only sounds were the soft dripping of water from a fresh crack in the high ceiling and the harsh, ragged breathing of the lone demon.

Slowly, very slowly, it peeled its pale, bloodless fingers away from a piece of steel rebar that jutted out from the concrete. All of the rubble that had collapsed on top of it was long gone. So was most of the wall.

So was the Spirit Detective.

With one last panicky look around, the demon bolted for the exit.

(()()()-()()())

He was floating. He could feel himself rising and falling, swaying to and fro. He was adrift in the dark sea that had washed away the rest of the world. Only the stars remained, and they’d been swept up in it, too. They spun just out of reach, swimming in lazy circles through the liquid sky. He closed his eyes and drank in a long, deep breath. The whole experience was so abstractly pleasant, he just wanted to let himself sink into it.

Wake up, damn it! What an annoyingly intrusive thought that was. It echoed through him and brought to life a distant, dull ache that he’d certainly been happier without. After a moment, Inuyasha realized that that ache was actually his body.

Reality crashed down, completely crushing that pleasant dream world. He wasn’t drifting peacefully with the ocean’s tides. He was lying flat on his back in the middle of a swamp. The semi-solid slop that passed for ground had soaked his clothing through and chilled his human flesh to the bone. Something hard was jabbing him in the back: Miroku’s elbow, he decided, glancing down. The monk was crumpled under him, alive but unmoving. He rolled off with a strained grunt.

What had happened? Everything seemed all jumbled together. He remembered they’d been fighting a demon.... No, that wasn’t right. Frustrated, he tossed that image aside. The demon had been dead. They wouldn’t have been fighting a dead demon. But there had been danger. The memory of the raging wind was so fresh and clear in his mind that for a moment he could have almost sworn it was tearing at him again, even though the air in the swamp was as still as death now. He remembered the gaping, black gateway, too. Thinking about it, he couldn’t suppress a primal shudder.

Someone had been screaming.

“Kagome!” Inuyasha lurched to his feet. She’d lost her grip and gone flying past him.

She was there, though, lying nearby. She looked up when he shouted. Their eyes met, and for a moment, it was just the two of them.

Of course, it was Shippo who broke the illusion. Somehow, she’d managed to keep her grip on him through it all, and the little fox demon’s eyes were wide with fright as he peeked out from the cradle of her arms.

“We’re both alright,” Kagome told Inuyasha, with a weary but reassuring smile.

The young man shook his head. She said that, but he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he’d made sure. He wouldn’t put it past her to make light of an injury, thinking to keep him from worrying. Plus, she looked pale.

He made his way over to her side, stepping around several large, strangely textured, gray rocks. As he did, Inuyasha fully expected his mortal body to protest the effort. He wasn’t disappointed, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, either. His strength was returning quickly. Kagome’s was, too, and thankfully, her only injuries turned out to be a few minor scrapes and bruises.

“What was that?” Shippo asked, a tremor in his normally cheerful voice.

“Hell if I know,” Inuyasha said. “Whatever it was, it’s over now.”

He helped Kagome to her feet. Only then did he finally look around and take stock of their situation. Sango was up and had gone to help Miroku.

“Can you hear me, Miroku?” she asked, leaning anxiously over the fallen monk. There was blood on the side of his face from a gash on his forehead, and he blinked up at her like he was having trouble focusing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Okay?” he echoed. “Sango? No, I’m afraid not, but I can think of no sweeter way to die than here in your tender arms.”

“Well, you’re obviously fine,” she said dryly.

He winced when she dug her fingers into a tender part of his hand, between his thumb and forefinger. Despite its master’s condition, the offending appendage had been inching its way across her leather-clad thigh.

Inuyasha snickered.

Then he saw the others. He cursed and drew Tetsusaiga, furious with himself for not noticing them sooner. The old sword wouldn’t be much help against a serious opponent, being only a dull, rusted hunk of metal, but it was better than nothing, and its comfortable weight felt reassuring in his hand.

He counted five strangers in total, four men and one woman. They were all heaped together, carelessly sprawled near the place where the black hole had opened (along with more of those weird rocks, which he hadn’t paid any attention to before). It was like some giant hand had scooped them up and tossed them all through at the last second, just before it closed. They weren’t moving. To a one, their faces were slack and unguarded, as if they were all trapped in the same deep, deep sleep.

Seeing that, he relaxed a bit.

Kirara certainly didn’t seem to feel threatened. In her smaller, normal form, the cat demon bounded back and forth between the five of them. Her nose twitched, her two bushy tails were perked up in interest, and she mewed with excitement.

Inuyasha glanced up at the dark, starry sky, reminded of the absent moon. He couldn’t ignore the fact that his weakened senses had failed to warn him of the strangers’ presence.

If his crippled instincts weren’t up to the job, the smell alone should have alerted him. Standing over them now, the young man covered his nose with his sleeve. Three of them were plastered with filth, the shortest all the way up to his chin. The stink easily overpowered the subdued, natural reek of the swamp and made his eyes sting. Fortunately, the bright red cloth of his coat, woven from the armor-like fur of the fire rat, filtered out most of the smell, and he could breathe easier.

“Who are they? Where could they have come from?” Sango wondered, joining him.

The beautiful demon slayer wasn’t wearing her gas mask, he noticed, but she didn’t seem all that bothered by the stench. Inuyasha dropped his hand.

When it came to who they were, he had no idea, of course, but he thought he could guess a little bit about what they were just by looking at them. The taller redhead with the unfortunate face, for instance, was clearly the stubborn type, whereas the young man with the dark, slicked-back hair screamed of trouble. Sango had locked on to the short one with the black hair and white headband, who was holding a sword. He seemed to be the only one armed, and it didn’t take a demon’s keen nose to smell the danger that hovered around him even while unconscious. As for the last two, the other young man and the woman, ordinarily Inuyasha would have felt safe in assuming that anyone with such bizarrely colored hair, rich red and baby blue, had to be a demon, but he couldn’t sense any demonic aura coming from them at all. He decided to reserve judgment on those two until later.

There was something else weird about them, too, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It went beyond just the strange way they were dressed or the mystery behind their sudden appearance. Whatever it was, it made him uneasy.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “It’s way too convenient.”

“Not the word I would have chosen,” said Miroku. He hobbled over, leaning heavily on his staff, with Kagome and Shippo shadowing him closely on either side.

“Their clothes!” the girl exclaimed as soon as she got a good look at the newcomers.

“What is it, Kagome?”

“I recognize them,” she said in amazement. “I never thought I’d see anyone dressed like that here, though. Those are the kinds of things people wear where I come from...but that’s five hundred years in the future. How could they have gotten here? They couldn’t have come through the Bone Eater’s Well, that’s impossible!”

“There might be a way,” the monk mused, “but then again, that sort of coincidence really would be too convenient, not to mention highly improbable. There must be more to it. I have the strangest feeling....”

He sank down onto one knee beside the blue-haired young woman, studying her sleeping form thoughtfully. Then he seemed to feel someone watching him and looked up to see Sango scowling in his direction. He flashed her one of his most innocent and charming smiles before turning back to the other woman again.

Without warning, he cried out and jumped to his feet. The look on his face was one of absolute shock.

“That’s it!”

“What’s wrong, Miroku?” Sango gasped.

“I can’t sense them.”

“They don’t look like demons,” said Shippo.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he tried to explain. “Even if they were human, with my spiritual training I should still be able to sense at least something from them, but there’s nothing. There’s not even the feeling of nothing. I’m looking right at them, but it’s like they aren’t really there at all!”

Like they aren’t there? thought Inuyasha. What’s that supposed to mean?

Then all of a sudden, it hit him. It was subtle, but that’s what had been bothering him all along. Confused, he knelt down beside the man with the greased-back hair and pressed his fingers against his neck. He found a strong, steady pulse, and warmth radiated off the young man’s skin. He could see them, and he could touch them. He could definitely smell them. Only his sixth sense continued to disagree, like a persistent, nagging voice in the back of his mind, insisting that no one was really there, that they didn’t exist. His instincts hadn’t betrayed him before; they’d been deceived.

“They have to be demons!” he declared, jumping back and once again brandishing Tetsusaiga.

Sango nodded in agreement.

Miroku stood silently studying the five strangers, lost in speculation.

“But they’ve got to be from my time, don’t they?” Kagome asked, bewildered. “I mean, look at them.”

“No, this is Naraku’s doing,” Inuyasha said. “First, there was that demon with the jewel shard. Then, there was that portal that just happened to act so much like Miroku’s Wind Tunnel. Then, in the middle of all of it, these guys just happened to appear out of thin air. This reeks like one of his plots!”

“Slow down Inuyasha,” Sango said. “I’m not so sure. You can see they’re nothing like Kanna, and that would be awfully elaborate, even for him. Besides, what could he hope to gain from it? They’re clearly in no condition to fight us, or anyone else.”

“It has to be him.” Caught up in the idea, he shook with barely contained fury and a fresh rush of adrenaline.

“What about their clothes, though?” Kagome persisted. “How could he possibly know to dress them up like that? That guy even has a flashlight.”

“And look at Kirara,” added Sango. Perched proudly on the broad chest of the man with the reddish-orange hair, the cat looked up at the sound of her name and mewed. “She would never be so relaxed around someone who was in league with Naraku. Obviously, they’re demons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be our enemies. They haven’t hurt anyone, not that we know about.”

Inuyasha opened his mouth to protest again. Ordinarily, that’s exactly what that would mean, and Sango, of all people, should know that. Demons who were friendly towards humans were rare, to say the least. On top of that, he was already on edge, and the idea that their archenemy was somehow responsible for everything that had happened made too much sense, and was too appealing, for him to let it go so easily.

“Guesswork is only going to get us so far,” Miroku broke in. “It’ll be a lot easier to just ask them what their intentions are. It seems we’re about to get our chance.”

He pointed to where two of the five were beginning to stir. It was the handsome young man with the long, red hair and the dangerous-seeming one with the headband and the sword.

They woke up to pain. With a moan, the redhead twisted onto his stomach, breathing in short, gasping breaths through his teeth. His hands clenched into fists, then raked through the mud with claw-like fingers as if trying in vain to fend off his unseen tormentor. The other was less expressive, but his entire body had gone tense and rigid. The muscles of his face and hands twitched with the effort of holding himself so perfectly still.

Surprised and concerned, Sango crouched down next to him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, uncertain what she should do. He opened his eyes, red eyes, and looked up at her, but they remained unfocused, and it was several long seconds before he really seemed to see her face. When he did, his reaction was instantaneous and dramatic. He suddenly threw himself away, and he swiped back at her with his sword, defensively, as if he expected her to follow and try to press her advantage while he was still disoriented.

Sango let him go. The attack didn’t come close to hitting her. Dependable Kirara was quick to leap to her mistress’s defense, though. She made a pale blur as she streaked through the night to place herself between the two of them. She didn’t transform, but her menacing hiss was an unmistakable threat that she would if he tried anything like that again.

It made no difference; he was in no condition to anyway. He barely made it three steps before his meager flare of strength burned out, and he dropped heavily back to his hands and knees. He couldn’t hide the pain, nausea, and dizziness that assaulted him then, punishment for his impulsive reaction. It nearly caused him to pass out a second time, but he fought through it. With an agonized groan, he sank forward onto the wet ground, steeling himself against his own weakened, rebellious body.

“She was only trying to help!” Shippo growled bravely.

When those blazing, angry, red eyes fell on him, though, the fox demon child yelped and ducked back to safety behind Sango. She regarded the black-haired stranger coolly for that, but again made no overt move against him.

Hearing his companion’s groan seemed to spur the redhead to make the effort it took to lever himself up and look over his shoulder to see what was happening. That was about all he could manage. His elbows were already starting to tremble when, apparently reassured that at least his friend was still alive, he started to lower himself back down. Coming eye to eye with Tetsusaiga’s bared blade stopped him.

Inuyasha seethed. That night had been nothing but a series of frustrations, built up one on top of another until he could hardly stand it. Now, this. He’d had it, and he knew exactly who to blame.

“Where is Naraku?” he demanded.

The red-haired stranger stared up at him in confusion. “Who...?”

“Naraku! We know you’re working for him,” he shouted. “Where is he?”

The stranger let out a ragged sigh and let himself drop the rest of the way down to the ground, shaking his head. “I don’t.... I....”

“Where, damn it?!”

“Calm down, Inuyasha,” Kagome said. The girl grabbed his sword arm firmly and pulled him back a step. “If you keep waving Tetsusaiga around like that, you’re going to hurt somebody,” she told him. “It’s obvious he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, and all of Naraku’s incarnations have always been so trustworthy,” he snapped. “Hey, what are you doing? Stay back, Kagome!”

She ignored him.

“Sorry about that,” she said to the red-haired young man.

Somehow, in the short time they’d been distracted, he’d managed to use one of the larger chunks of rock to pull himself up into something very close to a sitting position. He leaned against it, now, exhausted, head bowed, breathing in long, deep breaths. His eyes were closed. When he opened them, there was definitely something different. They were no longer so clouded with the fog of pain, and instead, that was covered over by a mask of determined focus. His cool green eyes met Kagome’s dark ones.

“My name is Kurama,” he said. He spoke slowly and clearly, presenting each word like a precious victory in his internal struggle. “I don’t know who this Naraku is, but we are not your enemies.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she replied. She gave him a warm, reassuring smile and offered him her water bottle. For a moment, he considered it, but then shook his head slightly with a faint grimace.

“You’re demons?” Miroku asked.

“We are, Hiei and I.” He indicated the other one who was awake, hesitating only slightly before answering.

“You mean, just the two of you?”

Kurama looked at him curiously, but nodded.

“I see....” The human’s expression became troubled. Inuyasha snorted.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” asked Kagome. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so.” He made a sorry sight, pale, with cold sweat beading on his forehead, and mud and worse caked all over his body, but his tired face regained some life when he smiled weakly for her show of concern and kindness. Then he winced. “It feels as if every nerve in my body was short circuited at the same time. It’s not pleasant, but it does seem to be fading, if slowly. I suppose I should just be thankful that I’m alive at all.”

“What happened?” pressed the monk. “Do you know how you got here?”

“I only know what I saw. There was a portal....”

“Kurama!” Hiei barked, speaking for the first time. His voice sounded raw, like an open wound.

The red-haired demon met his heated gaze calmly. “I’m sorry, but at this point, I’m afraid we don’t have any choice except to trust them.”

Turning back to the others, he began to tell their story, ignoring his friend’s suspicious nature and angry, stony silence. The tale he wove, his description of the black portal, and even the events leading up to its appearance, was so eerily familiar that soon even Inuyasha had stopped pacing and was listening to him with rapt attention. His voice grew stronger as he spoke.

At one point, Kagome’s brow furrowed with worry and guilt. “So does that mean it was my arrow that caused it to open?” she asked when he paused for breath.

“I don’t think so,” Miroku reassured her. “We’ve seen you shoot your bow a thousand times, and nothing even remotely like this has ever happened because of it. This speaks of something much larger and more complex. If anything, those two events, your arrow and his ‘Spirit Gun’, both with considerable power behind them, it would seem, were probably only a trigger, or maybe a catalyst.”

“So the question remains,” said Sango. “What did really happen?”

“What about after you were pulled through?” the monk asked. “What was on the other side?”

Kurama swallowed. “Darkness,” he answered. “Darkness...and....” His hushed voice drifted into silence, and for a moment, he once again stared into the blackness of the void. He came back from it abruptly with a sharp shake of his head, and paused to take a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t know how long we must have been there. The next thing I knew, I was waking up here.”

“Interesting,” Miroku muttered.

Inuyasha swore under his breath and turned away, reminding himself firmly that he’d already decided they were enemies. It didn’t matter how good a story they told or how convincing an act they put on. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

Just then, a chilling scream pierced the darkness of the swamp, and nearly made him jump out of his skin. Only a few feet away, the blue-haired woman began to convulse. She twisted and writhed on the cold, wet ground. The sounds that tore their way out of her throat were like the cries of a wounded beast, mindless with untold terror and agony.

“Botan!” Kurama exclaimed.

With an effort, he made it over to her side, but there was nothing he could do. The woman was completely oblivious to his attempts to console her, and her wild, wrenching spasms made a mockery of his comforting stillness.

“Hold on,” he told her helplessly. “Try not to move. This will pass soon.”

Finally, miraculously, it started to do just that. The woman’s agitation began to ease, and her wailing screams faded into muffled sobs as she was reduced to trembling and weeping in his lap. The demon smoothed her hair, made awkward by his obvious shock, but his voice never faltered. He continued to offer her words of soothing encouragement.

“Was it really so bad?” Kagome asked, breaking the stunned silence that had descended on them.

He shook his head. He looked to Hiei for support, too, but the black-haired demon was absorbed in once again mastering his sore, abused body and wasn’t paying them any attention.

“No,” Kurama said. “Botan’s stronger than most would give her credit for. She shouldn’t have reacted like this.” He paused, glancing worriedly at the two of his comrades who remained unconscious. “It may have something to do with her being a shinigami.”

“A shinigami? You mean a god of death?”

“Or a death spirit, if you prefer. She’s from the Spirit World. It’s possible the...passage affected her differently because of it. Either that, or.... No, that must be the reason. Things like that happen all the time between humans, demons, and spirit beings. There’s really no way to predict how something will affect one of us just by observing another.”

Kagome studied him for a long moment. Her dark, solemn gaze could read so much when so much was hidden. Coming to a decision, she looked back to Inuyasha, Sango, and Miroku.

“We should get moving,” she said.

“Yes,” Miroku agreed. “This swamp is infested with demons. That gate must have scared most of them into hiding, but it’s only a matter of time before they get their courage back and come to investigate. I, for one, am in no mood for any more surprises tonight.” No one argued with that.

“There’s an abandoned hut not far from here, on the edge of the swamp,” Kagome told Kurama. “We were heading for it before. It’s not much, but it’ll be dry, a roof over our heads, and we’ll be able to make a fire. It is a bit of a walk, though. Do you think you can make it?”

“I will,” he said. “For a fire, I will.”

“Wait just a minute,” snapped Inuyasha. “You can’t honestly be planning on taking them with us!”

“Of course, they’re coming. We can’t just leave them here. It’s not safe.”

“Not safe? We don’t even know who these guys are! For all you know, he could’ve been lying about everything. They could be the ones who were really behind that black hole that nearly killed us all, and they haven’t proven that they’re not really working for Naraku yet. What if they’re after the jewel shards? I can’t believe this! You are so stupid! We aren’t going to be able to watch them all the time, you know. What if they decide to betray us? Then what? They could kill us in our sleep! Did you ever think about that?! You really are an idiot! I--”

“Inuyasha...” she said. The singsong tone of her voice spelled trouble, and he choked off the rest of what he was going to say, suddenly realizing that he may have gone too far. She took a deep breath. “We can talk about it later. For now, we need to get going.”

He stared at her, gaping like a fish, and not at all sure what had just happened. His stride had been effectively broken, but he soldiered on, opening his mouth to continue.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” Miroku asked, distracting him yet again.

“If it comes to that, it isn’t like we plan on just rolling over and playing dead,” Sango added.

The young man glared back and forth between the three of them, noting how they presented a united front against him, and then threw his hands in the air.

“Fine,” he yelled. “Have it your way, but don’t come crying to me when it turns out I was right all along.”

“Deal,” said the monk.

It only took a few minutes to get things settled. A brilliant flare of reddish flames lit up the night as Kirara transformed, changing from a cute, two-tailed cat demon into a fierce-looking, golden-furred, feline beast the size of a small horse, but much more powerfully built. Fire licked at her paws and two deadly saber-fangs jutted down from her upper jaw. Despite her impressive and rather alarming shift in appearance, though, her personality remained the same. She purred low and softly while waiting patiently for the last two sleepers (named Yusuke and Kuwabara, and apparently both human) to be loaded onto her back. It was all part of her training, having been raised in the demon slayers’ village to be far more than a just mere pet.

Collecting their packs and supplies, which they had discarded when the giant demon attacked them, proved to be a little more complicated. Fortunately, that battle had ranged far enough that when the portal had opened little had been lost.

When everything was ready, Kurama turned his attention back to Botan.

“Come on,” he whispered gently. “It’s time to go. You have to get up.”

It was no use. No matter how he tried to coax her to her feet, she was still too out of it, too overcome by shock to respond. His words fell on deaf ears, and trying to pry her hands away from his clothing only made her tighten her grip. A soft whimper escaped her lips.

Inuyasha watched them with rising annoyance. Finally, something in him snapped, and he stomped over.

“Give her here,” he commanded sharply.

Kurama looked up at him, his caution and doubt plain on his face.

Inuyasha sneered. So now the demon didn’t trust him? Good. That meant they were on even terms.

“Or would you rather carry her yourself?” he asked.

“Very well.” When the human bent down to take her from him, he quietly added, “But be careful.”

“Same to you,” he replied, just as low so the others couldn’t hear. It was good to know there was an understanding between them.

They set out. Inuyasha took the lead, and Kirara followed him, moving slowly and carefully to avoid jostling her unconscious passengers. Kurama walked beside her, with one hand on her flank to help him keep his balance, and keeping a watchful eye on the young man ahead of him. On the cat demon’s other side, Kagome was more concerned with just making sure Yusuke and Kuwabara didn’t fall off.

Miroku was looking much better than before. His cut had stopped bleeding, and some of the color had returned to his face. Sango gave him a hand anyway, after a sharp reprimand to see that he kept his where she could see them.

Hiei brought up the rear. Unlike Kurama, who seemed less worried about maintaining appearances than about ensuring his defenseless friends’ safety, the dark-haired demon put an obvious, concentrated effort into pretending that nothing was wrong with him. He forced himself to stand a little straighter and his feet to move with a little more grace, and he glowered at all of those ahead of him, as if daring any of them to assume he’d been left the least bit vulnerable.

The only one who looked back enough to really notice was Shippo. After a few glances, the demon child nervously ran up to Kagome and leapt into her arms to be carried instead. He kept silent about his fears.

The going was very slow, but a little over two hours later they finally reached the edge of the swamp, just as the sun started to peek over the horizon. Inuyasha stopped to watch as the first rays of morning light reached them.

The night of the new moon was over.

As the transformation overtook him, he sighed, relieved to know that he wouldn’t have to go through it again for another month. His long mane of black hair brightened to burnished silver. His nails lengthened and hardened into deadly claws, and his teeth became sharp fangs. He felt all of his senses heighten, especially his sense of smell. He really didn’t understand how the others could bear to be human all the time.

For the first time since the sun had set the previous evening, he felt whole again. The half dog demon took a deep breath, savoring the subtle morning smells that he hadn’t been able to detect before.

On the air drifted the scents of the five newcomers, too, and those he analyzed closely. The first thing he decided, reluctantly, was that the two draped over Kirara’s back really were mortal, after all. He’d been so sure that the reason he couldn’t feel their presence had something to do with them being demons that he couldn’t deny a sharp pang of disappointment at finding out for sure that they weren’t.

Strangely, the human scent hung strongly around Kurama, too, but that couldn’t hide his true identity. The underlying smell of demon was too powerful. A fox, Inuyasha thought, though it was a little muddled. Hiei was the easiest to figure out. His demonic scent was tinged with the essence of flames and smoke. That would make him an elemental, a fire demon. The evidence was laid out clearly in front of him, written in their own blood beneath the pungent stench of waste and rot that still clung to their flesh like bad cologne. Kurama hadn’t been lying about any of it.

A soft gasp caught his attention and made him look down into the pale, pink eyes of the woman in his arms. With the return of his demonic strength, her trembling form had become so light that he’d almost forgotten she was there.

The fox had been telling the truth about her, too. She clearly wasn’t human, but she wasn’t a demon, either. Her scent was pure and clean, like white light, absent of any shadows. She really was a god, or a goddess, rather, though only a very minor one. Perhaps it was her power that was masking their auras so completely.

Looking into her eyes, seeing the pain and fear lingering in their depths, he didn’t believe it. The half-demon broke her gaze.

Kurama and Hiei were staring at him, too.

“You got a problem?” he growled. He’d been missing that. He could never growl properly when he was in his human form.

“Inuyasha...” Miroku started.

“Stay out of this, monk!”

“Look,” he snapped. “It’s been a long night for all of us. Tempers are frayed. I know I’m exhausted, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.” He did look weak, and he leaned on his staff for support. His voice took on a more plaintive note. “Can’t you please just find somewhere for us to rest? Without starting a brawl?”

The half-demon scowled at him, but in the end, he stomped off into the nearby forest, grumbling and cursing. For Miroku’s part, he seemed to make a near miraculous recovery almost as soon as he was out of sight.

(()()()-()()())

Kagome might have actually been pretty generous in describing the old hut as “not much.” The ramshackle little building was barely four walls and a roof, and most of that was hidden behind a nearly solid curtain of vines and creepers. Inside, the hard packed dirt floor was dry, though, protected from the morning dew and the misty haze that had risen up off the swamp. The blackened fire pit and cleared smoke hole said that they weren’t the only ones who had taken advantage of the ready, if modest, shelter in the past. Even so, it seemed no one had been there for quite a while.

Inuyasha sniffed the air and scanned the dark interior. Satisfied, he put Botan down (surprisingly gently, despite his bad temper), and ducked back outside to wait for the others.

They weren’t far behind.

The half-demon remained sullen and glared at each of them as they entered the small clearing, following the trail he’d made through the tall grass. He even growled, low in the back of his throat, when Kurama wandered too close, half-delirious with relief that there was an end in sight at last. The journey had not been kind to either of the two demons, and in fact, the humans were looking pretty ragged by then, too. There was little discussion as they went inside and began to settle in.

A few minutes later, Kagome reappeared in the dark doorway. She watched Inuyasha silently for a moment, and then went over and sat down next to him.

“What’s the matter?” he sneered. “Get tired of playing with your new little demon friends already?”

“I’m sorry about earlier,” she said.

He looked at her suspiciously. “So does that mean you’re finally ready to admit I was right?”

“No, but I understand how hard it must have been for you, having them see you like that last night, and I know the three of us ganging up on you didn’t make it any easier.”

“That’s not what this is about!” he shouted, jumping to his feet.

“Isn’t it?”

“We don’t know the first thing about them, Kagome! Then, all I want to do is protect you, and you guys won’t even admit that you just might need me to!”

“They saw you transform,” she reminded him gently, “and Hiei and Kurama are demons, so they must know what that means.”

He flushed and fell silent. They both knew he had a point, but of course, that wasn’t the whole truth behind his reaction. In spite of his attempts to deflect her, she’d still managed to hit the target dead on.

“Inuyasha, I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear right now, but I have a feeling about them.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re the only one,” he grumbled.

The young woman took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t think they want to hurt us, but even if it turns out they do, if I’m wrong, we’re with you. We’ll fight with you. And if you can’t fight, we’ll protect you. If you let me, I’ll protect you.”

He stared into her eyes for a long moment, speechless.

Then he snorted. “You’ll protect me?” he laughed, for all the world as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“Yeah,” she said, turning her back on him. “Or maybe you didn’t see what I did to that demon we were fighting?”

“Not hardly! The only reason you even got a shot off was because none of us was in any big hurry to get the job done.”

Kagome smiled as she walked back toward the hut, and she yawned into her hand. She was glad he was feeling better, even if it did make him a pain in the neck.

(()()()-()()())

None of it was real. Not the dirt floor under him or the wooden wall against his back. Not the hushed, disembodied voices of the monk and demon slayer as they talked quietly about getting a fire started. Not the golden splash of sunlight that spilled through the empty doorway. Not even the air in his lungs. None of it existed.

Hiei could have almost believed that.

His instincts had been at war from the first moment he’d opened his eyes in that strange place. There was a part of him that accepted what his spirit awareness, his sixth sense, was trying to tell him as fact. Nothing he’d seen or experienced there could possibly be real. Another part of him was convinced that no illusion could be so complete.

It would have been nice if there were a simple explanation. Maybe it was a trick; he’d rather liked that idea, at first. Maybe his senses were still too overwhelmed to fully register what was going on around him. As much as he hated how weak it made him sound, he’d even considered that he might have hit his head on a piece of concrete when he fell through the gate. None of those possibilities seemed to fit, though.

The problem was that he wasn’t alone. Kurama and the others were there, too, and them he could still sense as well as ever. If something was affecting him, if it was an attack, or if something was wrong with him, then why could he still feel them so clearly?

Exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. In the time it took for him to blink, his head sagged forward a little more. Every thought he had took a little longer than the last to come into focus.

Hiei was aware that he probably wasn’t thinking clearly. What if he was wrong? What if it really was all just a hallucination?

The black, endless nothing was closing in around him again, and in the distance, he could feel a massive, pulsing energy.

Which one was the dream, and which was reality?

(()()()-()()())

A powerful gust of wind blasted down on the swamp from above. It flattened the clumps of tough grass and beat the surface of the standing pools of water, sending ripples and waves dancing out in every direction. Kagura, the Wind Sorceress, dropped lightly to the ground.

Grimacing at the feeling of mud between her bare toes, she looked around, surveying the scene of destruction. It was the last place she wanted to be.

“Damn you, Naraku,” she muttered, not for the first time, and surely not for the last.

When he’d realized that she’d abandoned, not only her vigil, but the jewel shard as well, his displeasure had been swift and harsh. His new command left no room for argument, misinterpretation, or failure: find out what happened.

It looked like there were no answers to be gotten there, though. The demoness turned to leave, but glimpsing something out of the corner of her eye, she stopped.

A red glow tinted a spot in the air not far from her, a silent and unassuming phantasm of light. Its fluid ebbing and swelling made it look like a patch of bloody vapor, and as it churned, bits of it wisped off and faded away. A pinpoint of darkness appeared within it. Without warning, the red light bloomed, swirling outward to reveal a heart of deepest black.

A second dark gate opened before her.

Kagura panicked. She snapped open her fan, prepared to unleashed a powerful blast of wind that might buy her time enough to escape. She only managed to stop herself at the last instant when she realized that there was no devastating wave of suction for her to counter this time.

This new portal was different from the other one she’d seen. The red light that lined its edge was threaded throughout the darkness on the other side as well. The thin lines of color spiraled away, crossing and crisscrossing one another as if to form a net to keep the shadow at bay, until they connected to a distant circle of white.

A figure appeared. He traversed the spinning web of light like a pathway or a tunnel, coming toward her. As soon as he stepped down onto the wet ground, the gate seemed to fold in upon itself again, closing off the blackness. The lingering red light dissipated beneath the sun’s rays like a wisp of tattered fog.

For a moment, they looked at each other, and Kagura found herself staring into the golden-green, slit-pupiled eyes of a demon. Then, with a faint groan, he fell forward, collapsing into the soggy muck with a soft splash.

Kagura waited.

I can’t sense his demonic aura at all, she realized, fingering her paper fan nervously. Who is he? What is he?

The strange demon didn’t move again.

Just as she was beginning to gain confidence that he was indeed as unconscious as he appeared, Kagura heard a buzzing sound. One of Naraku’s Saimyosho appeared. The wasp-like demon insect hovered above her and continued to buzz loudly. She listened, frowning.

“As you wish,” she said coldly, when it was finished.

When the Wind Sorceress left the swamp, flying away upon her magic feather, she took the strange demon with her.

((-)(-)(-)-(-)(-)(-))