InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust ❯ Witch Bones ( Chapter 37 )

Kagome's eyes flashed open with a pained groan, and she found herself staring up at the flat wooden planks of an unfamiliar ceiling. An equally unfamiliar voice sounded from a corner beyond her vision, and she sat up slowly, trying to ignore the ripples of terrifying agony that shot from below her breasts in a radiating circle of pain. Instantly, the owner of the voice was beside her, and Kagome saw through ache-dulled vision a female youkai. Even in her weakness, she could sense the extreme age of the demon in front of her, begging and beating on the outside edges of her miko notice. Ice blue eyes stared down at her with a disturbing intensity that reminded her strangely of Kaede - the feel of power was the same, the lack of physical similarities a reminder of tainted difference.

"I told you not to move, child. You must be careful of your wound yet, young Kagome. This restored body of yours is not use to healing the wounds of battle."

She placed a hand on Kagome's abdomen, and felt the double strong pulse of life there, pressing warmly against her hand from the beat of Kagome's heart, and the beat of her unborn pup's. Kagome felt an easing of the biting pain where the youkai touched.

"I am sorry, but…who are you?"

The faintness of Kagome's voice surprised her, and she closed her eyes briefly, fighting back weakness and weariness as the woman answered her question.

"I am Eldest, and that is what I am, as well. Drink this, sleep, heal, and when you awaken again I will tell you the story of my life - for you, young Kagome, have a great destiny - if you so choose."

Eldest held a wooden bowl to Kagome's lips, and she drained it the bitter dregs, tasting faintly through a gradually increasing haze the familiar tang of herbs she had drunk under Kaede's care. The words of the Eldest lingered in her ears and gave her uncomfortable dreams as she slept a drugged sleep. Eldest walked to the pool beneath her moonlit window, and stared deeply into its depths.

At first it reflected only her face - night black skin and shining copper Family marks, a sunburst and kanji-rune that would have shocked Sesshomaru if she had allowed him to see it and decipher its meaning. From where the color of her reflected eyes blended with the clear blue of the water and the shine of mirror-chilled starlight, the vision prodded by the embrace of her power and the waters own magic began to take shape. Slowly her eyes opened wider and wider, a procession of women appearing in the shallow water, and then Kagome's face, a compilation in greater beauty of all who had gone before, shifting from human features to youkai and back again. She knew only the first face and the face of the Lady of the West, but that was enough to make the vision's message clear, and she sank to her knees by the suddenly still water, with a wordless cry of disbelief on her lips, and tears of memory in her eyes.

"Lord Kouga, your magical instruction has been greatly stinted or you would know why these youkai are gathering in groups this way."

Kouga snarled his displeasure at the intended insult, and a nearly invisible smirk played at the edges of Sesshomaru's lips. The Wolf Prince glared at him across the table, and Akira sighed mentally, seated next to the arrogant young Lord and unsure of whether the open hostility was better or worse than the subtle undercurrents of dislike that had punctuated the recital Akira and Kouga had made of events since Sesshomaru's departure.

"Perhaps, Lord Sesshomaru, you would not deign to inform us of what the HELL exactly is going on!"

Kouga's voice was thick with sarcasm, bordering on the edge of irrationality as it always did when he grew too passionate, but Akira had to admire his staunch courage in the face of his lord's displeasure; he had not missed the smoldering glare that Sesshomaru had directed at the Wolf.

"It is written in the scrolls that are kept in my library that during the War of Four Lords, the clan of Falcon youkai who fought with my ancestor against the South were completely destroyed by a single spell, that multiplied the power of the enemy. Rather than using great numbers to overwhelm, the spell forced the power of fourteen youkai into one other, giving to that one the strength and life of fifteen - turning the others into mere mist and bone illusions, fragments of a diseased and twisted mind."

He looked mildly amused.

"It can only be cast by a miko - a kuromiko, by the nature of the spell. The spell was given the name `Witch Bones' for this reason…and for the odd manner of the illusions which are thus created. An interesting diversion, and one needing great power."

Kouga stared involuntarily out the open tent flap towards the wood where the small groups of youkai, fifteen in each, lay in silent waiting. His voice lots its condescending tone, even as he failed to catch the flatness in Sesshomaru's voice, and he turned toward the Taiyoukai with ill-concealed fear in wide eyes.
"How do we fight that?!"

Akira's voice sounded stronger than he felt.

"We must destroy them before their kuromiko has a chance to cast her spell on more of these…things."

Both Kouga and Akira were stunned into silence by the low and chilling laugh that poured in a viscous river from Sesshomaru's throat, and he shook his head.

"It is no mere miko we have to worry about…oh no indeed. She is much, much more than that."

The two youkai opposite him exchanged startled glances, but Sesshomaru did not add further details to his cold pronouncement, and the sense of mysterious danger that Akira had felt on the edges of his thoughts ever since Sesshomaru's return deepened into the moment as the un-day dipped swiftly into true dusk.

Silently, one with fanged shadows of a deep land and dark, cold forest, Sesshomaru followed on the heels of Histaru, to where the young youkai had camped the patrol his father had given him charge of, watching the formation and activities of the guerilla groups He gestured silently as they approached the camp, and saw in front of them the newest addition to their motley collection of recruits - a pair of dragons, tied tight in chains. Histaru blinked in open surprised, and shrugged, gesturing. Sesshomaru was stuck in a memory of bones.

"I must admit, I am surprised…but at least now I have proof that they are the best."

Sesshomaru nodded, distracted from his own thoughts.

"You selected them yourself? All of them?"

"Yes, Lord Sesshomaru. My father gave me the pick of our troops, and Lord Kouga chose several of his best wolves to aid our trackers."

The Taiyoukai looked around the small, secure camp silently, though he could smell Histaru's anxiety, the still young youkai eager to know if his work could win approval.

"You appear to share a trait that my father, Lord InuTaisho, often displayed. He saw in the…unusual, the unique, the singular, abilities and possibilities beyond that which existed among those who were the same as those around them."

Histaru flushed with approval, surprised and pleased with the unaccustomed praise from the Great Lord.

Sesshomaru was surprised with himself. He was not social, he did not have friends, he did not know the real meanings of the words. Beyond the affection he felt for his strange children, beneath the intensity of his passionate and terrible love for Kagome, beyond any feeling directed at one that he had seen before, the cold proud heart he had nursed empty for so long was now screaming with a new hunger to love all those he respected, to make up for centuries in pieces.

The feeling, the desire, was unexpected, the first response of his own true heart to the world around him, exposed to the fragile crack of Kagome's sweet and subtle presence. He pulled with all his much - prized stoic reserve to close the warm fissure in his polar heart, and then he thought of Kagome and the laughter in her eyes, the bright silver net he was caught in when she smiled, and the softly warming satin of the pulse of her miko surged into his blood with the pure and loving thoughts of her.

Histaru watched Sesshomaru stumble to a halt beside him, and stopped, unsure of whether he should offer aid or remain distant, seeing for the first time without knowing it his Lord completely in thrall to the woman he loved. Slow ripples of warming relief flooded through Sesshomaru's veins with Kagome's brief awakening, and he felt the shock of the moment with an electric, private thrill in the currents of his soul. He pushed towards her gently the most delicate of energy wires, testing the strength of their mating bond after their ordeal. Tension flowed free of his muscles with the soft strength of her response, and the thirst of her spirit fed deeply from the wellspring of his life-force, vampiric in her need and her desire.

The boy-youkai caught only fragments of honeyed intensity in a few moments of silent thought, and the burning cold he remembered from his last encounter with the demon lord was full alight there now. Passion for the love of the woman he had achingly and unwantingly injured had turned the slow fire to a blazing inferno, the living reflection of the hottest flames of Hell.

"I will interrogate these new prisoners. We will see how it is that they may dissolve from solid flesh to bones and avoid my questions."

At a nod from Histaru, one of the dragons was handed forwards, scales dragging in the dirt, and Sesshomaru extended his claws in the direction of the dragon, to the pulsing, quick-swallowing throb in the creature's throat. A hot pulse of foreign miko sprang to life in the youkai appendages, and battle lust leapt into Sesshomaru's eyes.

"Tell me what Kasuka will use this spell for, dragon, this Witch Bone spell. When will the full power be achieved?"

There was a slicing screech, a moan in hurting pitch that was a new level of the wind, and at its first sounding Sesshomaru thrust the glowing deadliness of his claws deep into the throat flesh of the dragon in front of him. His hand flashed an eerie green, relieved of the unfamiliar power by the pressure of Sesshomaru's pushing need, and the magic was charged with enough of Kagome's spirit strength to make a slashing tear in the proved illusion - flesh of the dragon. He pulled his claws free as the delayed cry of pain gurgled to silence, and watches as the skin and tissues faded away in layers of ugliness to dry, bare bone.

The entire camp had been staring in shock, and Histaru shouted with surprise at the dissolution that could only mean the enemy they fought was an enemy of mist built on bone, but the original shock had come when they heard Kasuka's name, for there was no other Storm Flower in the Houses of the Four Lords, and they knew her to be the mate of the Northern Lord - the mate of their ally. On a wash of scent, Sesshomaru found that disbelief, angry denials, and swift anger were flooding, and he turned swiftly to warn against its cause.

"Let none of those now present speak a word of what you have heard to Lord Kinawai. He will learn of this when I have chosen the proper time."

There was a chorus of bowed heads, in acknowledgment and submission, and Sesshomaru slashed the life from the other illusion with a swift cuts of new-energy bound claws. The wounds stood out like flashes of dissolved mist in flesh that quickly disappeared. Sesshomaru smiled, and those that had never experienced a moment of emotion from their Lord experienced a shiver of fear like none they had ever known.

"Eldest was right - an army of illusion, of mist and death. This is not a question of battle but a contest of my magic strength against hers."

He turned swiftly, new decisions playing in his thoughts, and his eyes raked the strength of Histaru with piercing vision.

"Histaru, have you the speed to keep up with me, for the journey back to the castle? I have need of you."

Histaru met the staring eyes of his lord, and nodded swiftly.

"Yes, my Lord. I will match the wind if you call me to do so."

Sesshomaru smiled, and it was a deaths-head grin on fierce and proud features.

"We may all have need of such promises soon. Come."

A double flash of sudden quickness raised the breeze, and Histaru flew on the wings of his soul. In the first moments, he felt his heart would burst, matching the running footsteps of one who had never before been matched. Then the blood in his veins snapped, boiled into his thoughts, and he found the ease of perfection and knew he had reached the greatest limit of his calling. He howled in challenge, and the birds woke in fear, he howled in defiance, and the trees shook, and he howled in glee and his world exploded in glory.

Sesshomaru heard, and Sesshomaru felt, and without acknowledgment or plan the two sprang forward in four-pawed, demon-giant form. The earth cracked and dust rose in great drifts of powder like snow in the new springtime, like volcanic ash under thudding claws, and in an hours time, soft on the heels of a sword slicing breeze, they came to their destination.

On the still ice-filed plain before the gates of the Castle of the West, Sesshomaru grasped the phantom wind and forced his youkai in the submission of humanoid form, and in the wake of his change, Histaru fought for the Great Control, finding human shape still crouched on the ground, forcing the blood-call from his eyes by sheer force of will unusual in one so young. Sesshomaru growled his approval, and at the touch of his hand the great gates opened, and he beckoned for Histaru to follow. He spoke as he walked, ignoring the frosted spring landscape of the courtyards they passed, and his voice was low and edged with a deeper, whispering gravel than usual.

"You run well, Histaru. I spoke the truth when I said I have need of you. You know that through your father, you are a son of my house."

Histaru nodded wordlessly, sensing imminent danger, and paused at Sesshomaru's side when he noticed that their walk had taken them to a deep place in the castle whose door glowed shiningly blue, with violence he had never before encountered.

"What I am about to ask of you, I could order from you as your Lord. I will not do so, because of the danger to your life. I require the blood of another of my house to release an old seal on the energy in this room. If I cannot force the power to obey, it will swallow us both. Will you aid me to destroy these dragons once and for all?"

Histaru took a deep, shuddering breath.

"I will aid you, my Lord. To turn away in the time of your need would be to act with the greatest dishonor."

Sesshomaru nodded his acceptance, and they pushed together, in towards the ravages of the mystical energy that offered its protections and dangers to the Western Lands.