InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust: Purity ❯ Echo of Purpose ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8

An Echo of Purpose

 

The gloomy light of the hour before dawn left deep shadows in all the corners of Eldest's home. She had offered no more comment than her enigmatic words in the wood, and had only proceeded to light a blaze in her hearth and set a kettle on for tea. Kagome sat by the fire, hunched like an old woman, staring sightlessly into the flame. The look she had seen on the face of her son before he ran from her had already replayed a hundred times in her memory, and a hundred times it had burned her, singeing like a hand held too close to a candle.

Eldest came and stood over her shoulder, observing. Kagome's fingers were tight and white, shaking so that the keen points of her claws drew thin lines of blood where they touched her skin.

“Here, Kagome.”

She held out a pale cup of jade tea, and Kagome turned slowly, responding as though in a dream. Her eyes focused on the tea, and she lifted one hand to take it, curling her hands around the warmth.

“Tell me, sister-daughter, did your Sesshomaru teach you our writing?”

Kagome nodded, and blinked some of the distraction from her eyes. The steam that rose toward her from the cup was lifting.

“Yes. He insisted, though I already knew human writing, and Chinese.”

The elder youkai raised her eyebrows, somewhat surprised.

“You learned Chinese? I was not aware that your human family was nobility - or did they marry into the mainland?”

Kagome laughed softly, and shook her head.

“The future…it is not like you think. I chose to learn Chinese in school, along with other things. I used to know a bit of English…I don't remember much of it now, though.”

Eldest brought over a cushion for herself, and then sat with her own cup. Her eyes glinted at Kagome through the steam, peering with a smile.

“That is strange, indeed, but I am glad to know you have learned our characters. I will write for you a vision that I have been given, and then you shall bring it with you, and read it with your mate.”

The leaves in the trees outside the windows rustled alarmingly, but there was no wind. Kagome's head turned, her ears following the noise as it moved from tree to tree, and she met Eldest's concerned expression with glittering eyes.

“Kouga is come for me.”

Her tone was flat, dead; stiffly, she stood and walked to the door with wooden legs and heavy footsteps.

“Kagome! Be careful.”

The younger priestess did not stop, or turn. Perhaps her head tilted in acknowledgment, but the door slid shut behind her without another word. The rustling was gone now, flowing away through the trees faster than her ears could follow, but her feet were faster than that. Swiftly, she turned after the sound and ran into the trees.

 

Kouga was wandering, not in control. The conscious past of his living soul twisted the knowledge of that soul's past, beside the awareness that he was no longer functioning with any recourse to reason. His body was flickering from the control of one set of memories to the other, going flick-flick-flick like the turning of a water wheel. It was a water-wheel in a flooded river spinning out of control. His pulse pounded behind his eyes, ruling his brain but not his thoughts. Stopped in the midst of the trees that he knew had brought this change in him, he yelled into the silent air, rousing drowsy birds from lofty beds.

“I am Kouga!”

He was, though years were unconscionable and the dead walked anew. Dog or Wolf, he had Wildness, and the groping wood inserted steaming fingers of connection into the cracks of his thoughts, pressing a new pulse into him. The natural connection that was the secret pride and vengeful power of the Wolf tribes was coming for him, reaching for what the earth remembered. There were memories there longer than his resurrected temptations, memories that recognized the sins of the day. Catapults of fear and nightmare held nothing at bay that had not already come through the lashes of death - twice.

 

Had that whip lost its sting?

 

Kouga was laughing. If he could live and be reborn, was it a curse that he had these Awakened memories, spell-shocked though they be? Maybe he would forget the twenty years he had lived as the son of the woman he wanted. Peace had come to all the lands, and it was wrong! He remembered, suddenly, violently, the gift of battling against any betrayal or rebellion, taking what was due, flinching away from nothing.

 

Now? Politics!

 

It was a dirty word in his mind. Even the Taiyoukai were victims of bureaucracy, falling in line behind one another for the sake of avoiding fear. They had had enough death, had they? Did they even know what it was that they so feared? With youkai strength and youkai power, they should fear nothing, fight everything, and refuse surrender with the power of their last drop of blood. Surrender only to the demon spirit and the plunge into occasional bloody madness.

He laughed out loud and it echoed off the trees, an insomniac beacon. He had learned the lessons his father taught well, and now he hid himself in plain view, stalking the night. Kouga was watching for Prey. Something worthy, if without much intelligence. The chase was the pleasures of lust in running, filling his veins with fire and a tide of bloodlust.

The first creature that crossed his path was noblest and desirable- a stag. Nine points on each side of his rack weighed on his neck, powerful muscles not straining to hold up that massive weight of bone. Even a youkai lord could be proud of such a trophy, the raw ability demanded to will destruction of such a beautiful, terrible Prey.

Kouga could feel already the sharp taste of wild venison on his tongue, educating with the memory of the taste of sweet meat and the flow of easy and iron-luscious blood. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, suddenly as full of longing for those tastes as though he had not eaten in weeks.

Slowly, still as twilight, he began his hunt. The breath of the air was alive to his nostrils and his tongue, giving him the scents and tastes of his Prey in the sharpness of winter air, snowless, still white. Quietly he moved on the heals of beast-scent, fur smell, the rankness of old fear betraying someone else's unsuccessful chase; but no animal or human hunter could match the speed and subtlety of a youkai after his Prey.

The world's greatest Predator never failed, it was said. Wolf stealth and Dog cunning combined, making the newest definition of that killing word, but Kouga himself was not as perfect as his heritage. A twig snapped under his foot, sending hot nerve signals to his ears, almost forgotten, collecting only the usual.

This mistake was only important to the hunted. The sound alerted the searching ears of the stag, twitching, seeking for a source of danger. Fear licked at the air, leaving an echo of deep scent on a pheromone wave, rushed directly to Kouga's nostrils by the turning of the breeze. Focused now, he heard the speeding of a panicked heart, the uncontrolled rasp of breath forced through the lungs faster than needed, slower than adrenaline desired.

Delicately, his nostrils widened, feeling the change in the air moving around him, patterns of wind directed by trees and leaves, breath and blow. He was looking for the moment that would come only once, the moment before Prey would flee and the real Chase would begin.

He thought in no language but wildness, instinctual drives taking over, meshing all movements into that perfect alignment which made for the following spring. This was the rush of Predator for Prey, this was what all the others subverted and refused. To deny his own nature? Never! Here was deepest self, unrestrained, joy trembling in every taut curve of muscle, rising to the tingle of the call in his blood. It drank him and poured him out on the ground, thick and muddy, drawing glamour. Could there be somewhere a greater Hunter than he?

There was none!

He roared his ascendancy to the world that trembled at his feet, and took up the easy loping pace that would make this Hunt less of a quick and so- certain gamble. Hoofs touched rock before him, pluck-pounding on pebbles and dirt, bending leaves into the mud, a tracery of terror. Fear was all he could taste now, almost thick enough to blind his nose to the moving of the woods around him. He was scent-searching, but the challenge of his howl had sent many creatures to small hiding places and deep burrows - gone to ground. There was so much fear-scent from so many of them that it was worthless to him in this press of trees.

Sound was better. This panorama of the senses eviscerated everything around him, left it open and bleeding for his view. There was no quivering of inadequacy in him, no faculty denied its fullness.

The patter of hooves measured out a more frenetic pace now, overmatching the beating of his heart. Hyperalertness identified the reaching of heavy breathing, the fast groping minutes before exhaustion tumbled into muscles and sinew, clawing for bone. Prey always succumbed in the end.

Finally he came to a prowling stop nearly five miles from where he had begun, still extorting his senses for all they could give him. For these moments he was totally aware that no clarity like this would ever come to him again. Speculation and his eternal internal plagiarism of philosophy returned to the immediacy of sight, rebounding.

Frothed flanks, wild eyes, glazed with that desperation which meant either hopeless attack or death. This one chose attack, flailing hooves, thrusting rack, outlined in fire. Fire! One splitting moment later he was crushed up into everything at once - hot blood, salt, flesh, death-scream, the near-dipping color of mortality already washing everything with red.

Casually, relaxing, he tore a leg away, lapping fresh threads of blood, serum of strength for his aching heart. Pleased, he gnawed chunks of meat and raw blood to satisfy that lust in him, then cracked the bone and sucked out the marrow, warm richness on his tongue for a reward. Contentment broke his speech-silence with a rumbling purr of a growl, and he lay back against the turf. For the moment before he slept he felt peace, and a total lack of the questions that had been burning in his thoughts.

All unfortunate things came out in the Chase, and he was no more powerful than any other when it came to preventing what dreams came to him on the surged breathing of sleep.

Images were training for his brain, corks and cobwebs on a dusty ocean. Visions seemed dull and empty to the remnants of his collapsing self, but how could they be otherwise when he was living the dream?

 

Kagome found Kouga's scent tumbled in the air with the screaming fear of small things, slinking, crawling, creatures - the furred smallnesses of this forest's dreams. The trees and their power did not seem to affect these wordless animals, whether because it was not meant to, or because they were empty minded. All around her the air was taking on the musical sounds of night birds, the hunting of the nocturnal predator, and the scrabbling of their prey.

There it was! Predator! That was the sign of fear, the scalding warning of the birdsong beauty. A youkai hunter prowled these woods, and animal-thoughts bonded in defense.

So, Kouga is the Hunter tonight…very well, I will hunt you my son, hunt you and you can be sure that I will find you!

The scent of beast-blood betrayed Kouga to his mother's questing senses, searching for the Hunter, revealing the Prey. She did not expect to catch him unawares, but his sleeping senses refused to signal her as a danger, mother and wanted both as she was. She slipped up beside him, took his shoulders in her hands and shook him gently.

“Kouga…Kouga, wake up!”

He blinked, slow to wake from the sleep of bloody contentment that had come with his meal. The world unfroze around them, and it was only then that she recognized the freezing that had come on them, the world in stasis, kept gentle for a minute's whispering time.

“You ran away, Kouga, and it has taken too long to find you. We should go home.”

He laughed; a rich laugh, a stranger laugh that tingled in her ears.

“Home? And you're the one to take me there? I know the way better than you, Kagome. You have not been there often.”

She flushed, almost angry now, too familiar with these attitudes and affections. Unease was crawling up her spine on feet of prickling glass.

“Ohh…”

The words she felt in her thoughts poured out her lips and ran over Kouga's ears, a river of reminders as soft as the wind.

“Be my son, Kouga! Where have you gone? I cannot follow you to the ends of these dark places, to the center of your soul. Dim you are now to me, a flame flickering in the wind, a candle almost burnt out, that last wick-moment before going under.”

The thoughts she thought stabbed bone daggers deep into her breast, dancing on the edge of reason, drawn on by the here-futile pull of mother love. So, she said it, despite all fear of what meaning he would take from her words.

“Kouga, I love you! You are my son, the eldest child of my blood and bones, the only true son of my flesh. Do you mean to lose your sister, Kouga? Do you even remember Kystra? Why are you, son of a Taiyoukai, running wild in these woods, eating raw meat on the fleshling remains of dusk? Will you really stay here, alone, until the end of time? I will not change my heart towards you - you are my son.”

Power was flaring in her words though she did not mean it to. Kouga's hands reached for what did not belong to him; a hiss of pain ached from his lips when he touched her skin, burning. The shock brought the silver back into his eyes.

“Mother? Mama?”

Stripped of that other lifetime by the stroking power of her entreaty, he was a pup again, needing comfort.

He felt against her, stumbling into her arms, and she rocked him quietly, stroking his hair. The early rays of the sun streamed down between the leafless branches, reflecting whitely off the snow around them.

“It will be alright, Kouga…we will find a way to stop this. We will find a way…”

A strangling sob choked itself out of Kouga's throat, and she tightened her arms around his shoulders as though she could pull his pain into herself.