InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust: Purity ❯ Price ( Chapter 22 )

Chapter 22

Price

 

It did not take much for Sesshomaru to recognize the scent that called him, a blood-scent for which he had long recognition.

 

Rin.

 

She wandered where she wanted, and he did not restrain her knowing that she would always come when he called. She was the pressure that had opened him, and he was gentle with her as he was not gentle even with Kagome. A certain roughness with his mate was an expected and needful thing; he was never rough with Rin.

The scent was molecules only, a bare touch that was so faint in the breeze it rode he could barely catch a direction. Now that he had the scent of her blood in his nose, he knew that the scent of strangeness that had touched him held her within in like a captured thing. Swiftly, he followed the shallow lure of that scent; swiftly, it led him into worse scents, death and decay, human blood, a bite of light that lingered in the air.

He was carried to a field of carnage, a splash of bodies under the sky, humans broken in many unnatural directions, insides outside, organs and limbs discarded. Barely breathing, half-choked by the newly burgeoning smell of rot in the warm spring air, he moved among the many deaths seeking their reason, and the reason of Rin's presence.

Behind him, Kagome stood with her eyes averted from the shattered spread of flesh, waiting, disturbed by scents and the presence of so much death.

“Why have we come here, Sesshomaru? What are you looking for?”

“We came here because this is where the scent leads - and I know now that Rin is in that scent….but she could not have done this, could not have been alone.”

He stepped further through the bloody morass, avoiding thick fluids and the strewn bits of bodies with easy grace. An aura that disturbed him clung to the scattered weapons, but he was not now concerned with the death of a group of humans. At the edge of the battle, he stood without knowing where Rin had bound her wounded arm and caught a resurgence of scent, narrowed his eyes.

 

Rin - and Kinawai. Kinawai?

 

Sesshomaru shook his head, took a few more steps, entered the edge of trees and shut his eyes, ignored all sound, ignored Kagome stepping up behind him and laying her hand on his arm.

He felt vibrations in the air, as if of power, and the biting strangeness of scent that had lured his thoughts in the first place, before he had recognized it for Rin. It was a difficult scent; it had no origin, no focus point, it moved him uncomfortably, tightening fingers around his spine.

“I cannot tell if this scent is Rin, or Kinawai - “

He spoke out loud, and felt Kagome's fingers tighten with confusion even as his own confusion was washed away. He knew, with swift, irrevocable knowing, that his Rin was no longer his, that she had been stolen, taken, claimed. Black and red stripes took over his thoughts, alternating between blood and darkness. Beside him Kagome felt the change, an imprint of strange anger that reared up in her like an echo with no boundaries and no cause.

“Sesshomaru? Sess-chan, what….happened?”

She did not know if she was asking the right question, but he flared away from her voice, gave her an internal jump that tickled her skin with chills. He did not speak, but she could feel the sudden focus of violence moving through him, taunting her, and she was ready when he lit away from her like a streak of white flame.

 

In twenty years, Sesshomaru had not felt a need that moved him this quickly, and it was a sureness of movement Kagome had never had opportunity to see, the stunning speed that had Awoken the change in Histaru. Because she had not been there to see, she could not now understand. She knew only that the quickened step of her feet that she had come to trust was somehow not enough; her breath suddenly was coming ragged, an experience she had never felt in this flesh.

In front of her, he still moved faster, and then faster.

The scent that had taunted him to such efforts had strengthened as he moved, and then become a thin and certain line to guide him. Kagome followed where he passed. Far away, to her sight, over a distance scattered by the rough sunrise, she saw the shaking convulsions begin, saw winds without source move the trees around him and felt the flux of his power move into her thoughts with stabbing intensity and shock her to a halt.

Silver fur flew rippling across the green hills, and disappeared beyond her view but not her feeling. A desire rose in her to succumb to the change that uplifted him, and move behind him in a freer shape, but she mastered it, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes and breathing deeply.

“Sesshomaru.”
The great Dog had leapt out of sight; as though on a leash, she leapt after him.

 

~=~

 

The night passed slowly, while Shippou listened to Murasaki's new tale. Images of demons and kami, endless battles, and the time before Time moved in it, and he was dazzled by words.

She did not seem to get tired of speaking, or to run out of story. One tale had become a long, interwoven myth that moved with the drifting currents of the world, and pasts and futures that had not yet been told, or might never be. He was half - dreaming in the lushness of that legend, when he realized that her voice had stopped, that the long lull had ceased.

“Murasaki?”

His voice was thick, muffled by his long silence. She was not looking at him; her attention was held by something in the house behind them that was beyond his senses.

“Murasaki?”

This time she turned, and though at first she smiled, the sweetness faded into worry.

“Your Kouga finally wakes, Shippou. Believe me when I say I did not mean for him to sleep this long…and that it may mean dangerous things.”

“Dangerous things?”

He did not understand, but after so many words it seemed as if she no longer had any to give him.

 

Kouga spent his first minutes of wakefulness completely still, eyes closed, trying to calm a pounding in his brain that threatened to suffocate him. Nausea was creeping in a searing line down from his temples, and he tried to allow himself only dim, quiet thoughts. He had never been drunk, but the mother of all hangovers had come and built a solid home in his brain.

Tentatively, memory began to sneak back into his thoughts. He recalled the shape of a face, soft-featured, a Wolf he did not know with blue-lined blackness in her movements. He remembered a touch like petals, a softness of words that had made no imprint on his ears, the whisper he knew had pressed him down into dreamless sleep.

When the sharpness of his pain had deadened itself, and he could not stay still any longer, he opened his eyes to the darkness. He was glad that the world had not shot inwards with paralyzing light, but it would not stay still. His eyes caught at the sideways scuttling of the room, and closed again, and then opened more slowly. Window, door, mats, fire, all came into focus more clearly.

He heard voices, not close, but close enough, and they, too, spun at first and then returned to an easier focus. They were not voices he instantly recognized, a woman and a man, but as he concentrated he understood. It was Teza, and Kinawai. He did not understand why Kinawai would be come, or even how he would know that this place existed. A cold drumbeat took over where his heart had been.

 

He is come for me!

 

Shocked into movement, he lurched to feet that would not readily support him. Kouga could only imagine that Kinawai's presence was the result of a search for him, that his parents had sent allies after his scent when they themselves could no follow it. He thought of his father's face, and suddenly he was terrified. If he looked at his father - if his father looked at him - he would know.

 

I can bear none of it!

 

He gained his feet, and stumbled through the screen, but what he saw, what he sensed and scented and felt moving through the air drove his own concern out of his mind. Kinawai looked up at him, and then Teza, and he felt their eyes probing him, seeking strangeness. Only Kinawai interpreted the expression correctly, and spoke words that tingled between them and told Kouga that his stunned senses did not hallucinate.

“Yes, Kouga, you see? It has nothing to do with you, after all, and when your father comes he will not be coming for you!”

Kinawai did not need any words to understand the flickering emotions of Kouga's face - he had known already that strange trouble afflicted him, had watched Kagome's concern when Kouga fled and did not return. Something dark had moved between father and son, something to inspire both fear and disgust.

“Do not run, Kouga. You look in no shape for it anyway.”

And the miko, sensing tension and weakness both, stepped forward, and set her own claim on Kouga before Kinawai could speak any of a hundred questions that were on his mind.

“You, sit now! And you thought the Wolf needed me!”

Unable to resist such an energetic command, Kouga sat where Teza pointed and closed his eyes again. Again, he remembered her - the Wolf that brought darkness but not dreams.

“Where is…Murasaki?”

Sharp-eyed once more, Kinawai looked away from a newly restless Rin.

“You know her? She is very…strange.”

Without opening his eyes, Kouga grinned humorlessly.

“Yes, very strange. I do not know her, but I did find her. There was a slash of brightness in the sky, and then there was…Murasaki. I thought she would need a miko, but instead she woke…and I am sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

He spoke the last to Teza, who had now busied herself with the preparation of teas and the boiling of water. She turned with eyes crinkled by a smile, and her voice was very quiet.

“There is no worry, Kouga. I wish I were called for so little more often!”

Occupied by her task, she paid no further attention to them, seemed to ignore even their conversation, but Kouga continued to offer no explanation of his own and asked only disturbing questions.

“Tell me Kinawai, what is it that you have been doing to attract my father's wrath? You are usually the one who understands him - the one to advise restraint.

Kinawai did not immediately answer; the scent in the air should already have done so for him, but the touched Jinina's cheek, the fading rose flush, and did not turn away to hide it.

“I have done an unwise thing, Kouga, a foolish thing, even. I expect that he will not be forgiving, because she was his first, and he will not relinquish that claim.”

He did not need to say which she he was talking about; Rin blinked under his gaze, and tugged her own blankets tighter around her. Kouga watched Kinawai with amusement - he had obviously never met a human capable of fooling youkai into she was asleep before.

“He never will, Kinawai. He gave me back my life, and my life still belongs to him, as it will until I have withered and gone. He knows that day is not as far off as it might seem.”

Rin's new closeness with Kinawai was disturbing even to her; Kouga could taste it in her words. She was silent after that, and seemed to drift back into a real sleep. But behind them Teza stood with crossed arms and pursed lips and shook her head so her hair was a dark cloud around her shoulders.

“Who is it that she gives her short, unsteady days too with such fervor? What does she mean, `gave back her life'?”

Kouga answered when Kinawai stayed silent, looking at the miko through a narrow slit of opened eyelid.

“It was my father, miko. The Inu no Taisho, Lord Sesshomaru - and she meant exactly what she said. He found her, and she was dead, and he brought her back into this world.”

Teza opened her mouth to speak, but the words never came. Instead, a long howl mourned in the air, the sound of wildness, amplified and controlled in a single voice. As one, Kouga and Kinawai turned to the window with dread.

Rin blinked startled eyes open, and then stood, pushing against Kinawai, running out the door. Illness could not restrain her - she had heard that call before, and she was compelled to answer it, would always answer it. None of the others could understand - there was no comparison she could make that they would comprehend. Her life had been a gift, and it remained a gift - the only repayment she could offer, and the payment did not disturb her.

As though returned to the vanished childhood that had so quickly swept by her, she moved unsteadily but quick, and paused to shake with cough when it was necessary. She went through the village, and up the road to the east, and on the ridge of the hilltop Sesshomaru was waiting, padding back and forth, his throat open for the haunting call and turned toward the sky.

Rin came up the hill, out of breath, weak in her legs, and Sesshomaru took two steps forward, crossed the yards between them and let her fall against his fur. He did not relax, even though she was now close. His vigilance would be immaculate until he understood her safety, and she did not care, did not fear. His essence was not the shape of his flesh; he was still Sesshomaru-sama.

The eyes of the beast softened and gave way to a snuffling moment while he probed for scents, moving through the shadow of his suspicion to a black light of knowing. The scent had not lied - scent never lied, and he should have remembered that. Had he not learned it from Kagome long before?

Kagome was approaching, her footsteps out of time with themselves, and she climbed the edge of the hill and saw Sesshomaru, and the tiny figure of Rin beside him, holding one giant forepaw. While she approached, not interfering, the wind crashed down between them and Sesshomaru was restored, returned to his focused shape.

“You will bring me to Kinawai now, Rin.”

Rin had not heard him speak in that flat tone for a long time; his eyes snapped like across and beyond her like hot red pools. Dangerous feelings flickered on Rin's face, while Sesshomaru's eyes leapt back to include Kagome. Kagome saw both sets of features, Rin's worry and Sesshomaru's face full of death. There was no union in them, but they were somehow alike.

The fragments of strange scent had meant nothing to her; she still did not understand why Sesshomaru had run as if the wind were his enemy, or why he spoke Kinawai's name with depths that were gravel and rage. Rin led them onward, down the path into the village that Kagome knew well. Sesshomaru's eyes did not lose the hardness that had propelled him through the night. Kagome watched Rin, and her footsteps heavy as though she wore lead boots.

There was not far to go. The path led them to the Miroku and Sango's door, but Kinawai was waiting outside for them. He seemed grateful to meet a more restrained Sesshomaru, and his eyes touched on Kagome with questioning gratitude, expecting her to be the source of his good fortune - but her expression was full of confusion, and did not acknowledge or accept his gratitude.

Reluctantly, his eyes met Sesshomaru's, a fencing match from the first moment. Death was lurking there, taking wide steps, moving impatiently in the shadows.

“So, old friend, shall we talk together?”

A snarl rose out of Sesshomaru's throat like a knife. He turned, walking away, and Kinawai followed. They were behind the village and away from the road before Sesshomaru turned back to Kinawai, and when he spoke his voice was like metal

“Speech is not one of the things I have for you. You have broken all the bonds of friendship. It was unwise of you not to greet me with a sword.”

His features tight, Kinawai reflected briefly that this had been the worst gamble of his life. The dice had been weighted too heavily against him, and he had lost the throw.

“I will not fight you, Sesshomaru. Even if I was victorious, I would lose. If I killed you, I could not have what it is I desire.”

“Do not speak of desire!”

The pulse of rage was pushing boundaries again, but Kinawai took a step backward away from it and then stood firm. The power that flowed from Sesshomaru moved like the shockwave of a great explosion, bending and shaking all the trees below them.

At the center of the wailing menace, Kinawai stood like a single reed against the tides of all oceans, but he did not give way. To his Sight, Sesshomaru was lit with a pale, white light like fire clinging to his skin, but everything about him remained lined in red. The sun was rising behind him like a wheel of fire, and Kinawai exhaled, and Sesshomaru reached for the hilt of his sword.

“Now, Kinawai.”