InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Taste Of Power ❯ Escalation ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: I don't own InuYasha or any characters there in.

Chapter 5: Escalation

Dinner was eaten, and the night wore on. Kagome was nervous about kissing InuYasha again. She wouldn't be sneaking the kiss this time. He would know it was coming, he would expect it.

InuYasha was just as nervous as Kagome.

The others waited nervously as well. Miroku wanted to know if Kagome would kiss InuYasha again, if he would let her, and if her sudden mood change was just a figment of his perverted imagination.

Sango worried that Miroku would figure out what was actually going on and tell InuYasha before Kohaku was healed.

Kagome slowly stood up and approached InuYasha, just as she had all those other nights. Slowly she kneeled in front of him; anxiously she looked into his carefully blank eyes.

"Good night, InuYasha." She whispered as she slowly leaned toward him.

InuYasha leaned forward, surprising her when his lips met hers somewhat more firmly than before. She wasn't just kissing InuYasha, InuYasha was kissing her!

In her shock Kagome forgot the little pull to start the flow of energy from InuYasha into herself. But she did feel the power flowing, fast and strong, from InuYasha, replenishing her parched spirit, and she definitely noticed when she began to overflow with it.

Eagerly she returned the excess, laced with her own peaceful essence, and tilted her head to deepen the kiss.

InuYasha gratefully excepted her. He lifted his idle hands and tentatively touched her jaw.

Kagome's eyes flew open and she fell backwards as the touch brought her back to the present. She first landed on her posterior and would have ended up with her head in the fire had InuYasha not caught her arms.

He looked confused, "Kagome?"

Kagome put her feet beneath her and got up uneasily. "Th-thank you, InuYasha."

Kagome drifted over to her sleeping bag in a bit of a daze, `That was a kiss. A real kiss. I just got my first real kiss, from InuYasha!' She was so wrapped up in this small detail that she missed the facts of the energy exchange.

"Whoa." Shippo said. That was definitely more than he had expected from the shy miko and the grumpy hanyou.

Miroku was too worried about his state of mind to react, if the other kisses had been like this one, then perhaps his slight perversion was beginning to cloud his perception. This had certainly been a normal kiss, although it had ended on an unusual note.

Sango however berated herself slightly on not preventing Shippo from witnessing the scene, even as she gave a relieved sigh. Miroku didn't seem to be suspicious.

*

"Look, Kohaku." Sorrell brought the still incoherent child in front of her spell. Two wooden dolls stood facing each other, each had one end of a strand of hair tied to its head and the other tied to the other dolls' body. The crystal shard lay to one side, waiting.

"See the flow?" Sorrell pointed at the hairs, "InuYasha seems to be giving to Kagome now. But I need Kagome's help to heal you, she moves energy so well, and purifies it so easily. And she has a good supplier." Sorrell sighed, "I can't process youki myself, it takes more energy then it gives me."

"Now to get Kagome to give her energy to a truly worthy cause, and not that vile hanyou pig of a male, she simply needs to be redirected." Sorrell reached out and snapped the black hair where it tied to the InuYasha dolls torso and tied it around the crystal.

Kohaku flinched as she finished tying the knot.

Sorrell smiled when she saw his reaction. "Good, now we wait. Kagome will donate as much power as she can to heal you, and soon Kohaku, I will have a sister, and you will be a real boy." Sorrell sat down with her back against the cave wall and pulled him into her lap.

"And in a few years, when you are of a more proper age, I will bring you over too. Then I will have a brother. I will have a family again." Sorrell began to sing an old lullaby from her country as Kohaku stared straight ahead, unmoving and unmoved.

*

"Something's wrong here." Kagome said as she looked around.

On the surface it seemed like an ordinary village, the women were busy at work as were most of the men that they saw. Many would stop to gather and talk when the group past by them. The only thing that seemed off was the pace of the work of the men, most seemed barely able to stand for any significant amount of time.

"There does seem to be an ominous cloud over this village." Miroku added as they made their way through.

InuYasha sighed, "Do you sense any jewel shards Kagome?"

Kagome concentrated for a moment, "…I'm not sure. But nothing in the village"

"You're not sure?" InuYasha stopped walking, "How can you-"

"I don't know," Kagome interrupted him, annoyed at the situation herself, and returned to concentrating, "It's like there is one near, but I can't tell were it is."

"Perhaps someone in this village knows something." Miroku stopped in front of the head mans house, causing the rest of the group to stop as well.

"Not again." InuYasha grumbled.

"There really is something odd here, InuYasha." Kagome persuaded. "Maybe it's connected to a shard."

"Feh."

Miroku was already talking with the head mans wife.

"There has been something strange about the men lately," The women explained, "At first we thought it was an illness, but no women or children or elderly contracted it. The men won't discuss it with us, and now some of the men fall asleep and don't wake up. My husband has been asleep for several days now, please help us!"

"May I see him?" He asked.

"Follow me." She led him to the room where her husband lay in a deep sleep.

*

Later that evening, Kagome gazed at the mountains just passed the village trying to figure out where the sensation of a shard was coming from. She was tired from the day's journey, but that shouldn't be keeping her from locating the shard.

Miroku had requested a meeting of all the "afflicted" men from the village, and Kagome, Sango and Shippo had been asked to leave before they would tell him anything. InuYasha and Kirara had left on their own, not caring to leave the girls and child alone in the quickly darkening evening with an unknown youkia running around. Or just not caring, period.

When the darkness prevented Kagome from staring at the mountains any longer she sighed and rubbed her temples. All that fruitless searching had given her a bit of a headache.

"Kagome, are you alright?" Miroku asked as he came out of the house.

"Yeah, I'm just a little tired." Kagome smiled at him. "So, what's going on? Is it a youkia?"

"I think so." Miroku motioned for them to follow him to the room the head mans wife had agreed to give them. "The men have been plagued with dreams of late. Apparently…" he paused, trying to find a delicate way to phrase this while everyone settled on the floor.

"Apparently," he started again, "A female youkia with goat eyes and horns, has been entering their dreams and… and when they wake up they feel drained of energy. It started out slowly, but over the last week it has started happening almost everynight. And now some of the men aren't waking up."

"What does the youkia do?" Sango asked.

"… They weren't that clear on that. They didn't want to talk to me at all." Miroku explained. "And many of them had no memories of the youkia, just a lingering feeling and lack of energy. All they would say is that she did something to them, that she made them do something."

"How do we fight a youkia that invades dreams?" InuYasha asked, he had never heard of anything like that.

"I'm not sure." Miroku looked at Sango, who shrugged. "I'm going to bless the house tonight, and I suggest that we look for that shard Kagome senses tomorrow. Hopefully that will put an end to these attacks."

*

They ate once Miroku had returned from blessing the house and assuring that they at least wouldn't be attacked tonight.

Kagome was feeling that familiar drained feeling from before. Why, she couldn't tell. The first time she had kissed InuYasha the numbness had taken days to return.

Maybe she was just stressed. It had been a while sense she had seen her family, or school.

She had been sitting next to InuYasha all evening, looking forward to getting to bed, and the kiss. Any nervousness she might have felt now was damped down by the swiftly returning numbness.

Kagome yawned, "Good night Sango, Miroku. Good night Shippo."

Sango wasn't as nervous about Miroku this time around, and remembered to grab Shippo to prevent him seeing something that he was too young for. Never mind that he had seen the first three, he wasn't going to witness this one.

"Good night InuYasha." Kagome turned to see him looking at her expectantly. She blushed as she moved toward him.

He leaned down to her and gently pressed his lips to hers. She leaned into the kiss and squeaked. She really did like the way his lips felt on hers.

The energy flowed strong from the moment their lips met. Quickly it leaped from InuYasha and into Kagome. And, almost as quickly, from Kagome to somewhere else. But the two were too caught up in the kiss to notice the imbalance. Deep down, where he was aware of it, he didn't care, if Kagome needed it he would give it to her. Even if she couldn't give it back.

InuYasha, dizzy from the exchange, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. Kagome wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed against him.

Miroku blinked; there was something wrong this time. Something was defiantly off, something about Kagome and InuYasha's auras', though he couldn't quite tell what it was.

The kiss didn't last much longer, and when they separated Kagome stumbled straight to her sleeping bag. Sango released Shippo, who gave her a dirty look before running off to snuggle up to Kagome.

InuYasha struggled to stand and finally managed to make his way to the wall on the boys' side of the room, quickly falling into a deep sleep.

Miroku frowned.