InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust ❯ Chanced ( Chapter 43 )

Across the field, a battle raged Sesshomaru heard Miroku's cry, and his eyes shot up to Kirara's fire-footed shape running on the wind. He focused on Miroku's words with supernatural efficacy and slashed his way through his foes with terrible swiftness. As soon as Miroku saw him moving toward where Kagome had fallen, he headed for the ground by Sango's side. Kirara dove in under a swing of Hiraikotsu and sought dragon flesh with teeth and claws, snarling her fury beside the woman who was her friend.

The waves of youkai that had come for Kagome turned away from one complete task at Kasuka's command, and moved against Sango and Miroku. The air was thick with flying ofuda, purifying flesh wherever they touched and sending up wisps of thick, foul-smelling smoke. Miroku spun his staff so quickly and in so many directions that it was a blur of ringing gold. Blood dripped in lurid streams from Sango's weapons and her hands, bright and cherry-red against the white marble dust on the ground at her feet. She felt Miroku move behind her, and they fought back to back as they always had. There was a noise in front of them like the chattering of dry leaves, and then the ranks of dragons parted before them to let a single youkai through. It was no bigger and looked no stronger than any of the others, and yet radiated a sense of more power, raw and barely constrained, sleeping in silence.

“Human?”

The questioning word was followed quickly by a rumbling laughter, and it raised and iron flail high over its head, prepared to strike. With no warning, the dragon exploded into blue-glow tinged fragments of blood and bone. When the mist of crimson cleared out of the air, Sesshomaru stood, flexing the claws of one hand to shake the blood free of his fingers. Laughter froze on his lips at the sight of the broken wall behind the huntress and the monk he had saved. He turned, silent, and met Kinawai's eyes, his follower on a trek of vengeance. Sesshomaru leapt away and over the marble dust, to where chunks of the wall lay in a precarious heap. In one broken hearted movement, he moved a bloodstained piece of wall and uncovered a limp fingered hand. Carefully, working in silence as Sango and Miroku turned back to battle, he lifted piece after piece of broken stone off of Kagome's body and lifted her in his arms. He had known since the moment he saw the battlefield that he had come to a moment where a vision of death could find his mate-not him.

Kinawai watched Sesshomaru lift Kagome's body out of the rubble, the limpness of her dangling limbs forecasting no good future for her condition. There was a sudden whisper of magic pressure behind him, and he swung his attention away from Sesshomaru to look behind him. He saw Kasuka, lips twisted in a cruel and forbidding smile. The wash of her miko power that he had never before felt swept over him, and the rage that had left him with Sesshomaru's last words returned full force. This time, it was directed at his mate. She ignored him completely, walked straight past his staring, and stood to face Sesshomaru, scorn in her eyes.

“Lord of the West! Your mate and her pup are dead - will you continue your defiance?”

“You…sound so much…like your mother…”

The words slipped from Kagome's lips as proof of her life, followed by a cry of pain. Sesshomaru's eyes darted from Kasuka's face to Kagome's, and he saw her muscles tighten, creases of pain lining her forehead. He felt then in his hands the labor of her body to give birth, and concern for her wiped all thoughts of vengeance from the front of his mind. The hours of her running and her fighting had quickened the pace, and he lay a hand against her cheek gently.

“Kagome…Kagome…hold on, koi, I'll see you safe.”

Her eyes opened hazily, staring into his absorbed features, and her lips moved softly.

“Sess-chan…”

A hammering heart leapt higher in his breast with her mumbled rendition of his name, and he turned and walked through the hole in the castle wall, heading directly to the door in the main building. He did not spare a word or a glance for Kasuka, and left the scene in disarray - a tumbled wall, disheveled human fighters; an army in silence, their mistress before them, her mate behind.

Kasuka held out her hand, and in it materialized a black-wooded bow with a gleaming string, taut with the sheen of brushed steel. From beneath her cloak she pulled a single arrow, a simple, stone-headed shaft, and she nocked arrow to string and pulled it back with a single fluent motion. The arrow she shot sped straight down the field, armed with such force as to pierce Sesshomaru's heart from behind.

He turned and plucked the arrow from the air with a deftness he had exhibited to Kagome the second time they had met, and dropped it to the ground, ignoring the angry burns of Kasuka's miko. He walked away, and disappeared a minute later into the castle. In one angry leap, Kasuka stood atop the remains of the guardian wall, and turned to face her soldiers. For and instant she stood alone, evil silhouetted with a black bow against the moon, until she held the attention of all below her. When she spoke, her features changed, darkened and deepened to her dragon-born face, and she looked to the watching Miroku like the very Queen of hell.

“Go back to the battle, destroy the others. This Lord and his bitch are mine. Soon the chosen will fight with the power I have promised!”

There was a roar of approval from the crowd below her, and then a wild scream that could be nothing but human, though it slashed unearthly through the air, terrifying as it passed. Sango's katana, thrown with her scream, sliced something shining from around Kasuka's neck, and stuck there, blade through Kasuka's white throat. Her hand came up to the hilt of the blade and pulled it free, blood spilling in a river that was quickly damned. Kasuka looked down at Sango, who stood on the edge of the pile of rubble and lifted the shikon no tama high in the air from where it had fallen.

“I take this for my sister!”

Sango's shout was nearly lost in the rush of noise that was the departure of the dragon clans army, but Kasuka heard her words with youkai keenness, and she growled down at Sango with molten eyes.

“Insolence…”

One more arrow she fit to her black bow, and her eyes fell on Miroku, standing with his hand on Kirara's back, ten paces back from his wife.

“Your mate…how lovely…”

Her arrow flew straight into its target.

 

Immersed in bloody combat in the middle of Sesshomaru's forest, Kouga and his wolf tribe fought side by side with Histaru and his patrol of soldiers. With no warning, their foes suddenly pulled away from them, and when they were lost to sight, they wre lost to every other sense, magic fading into the breeze. Kouga pulled cleaner air deep into his lungs and stiffened immediately, tasting a familiar and unpleasant scent on the air.

“Histaru! Kago - your Lady is injured. The scent of her blood comes with the breze. I will go to her aid.”

“I come with you, Lord Kouga. Where she is, so will be Lord Sesshomaru.”

Kouga looked at him sideways, disbelief evident in his eyes.

“You are that loyal to him? Had you ever even seen him before he called you to fight for him?”

Histaru took a few steps forward, forcing Kouga to look him directly in the eyes.

“I had not. But I have learned since then that he has great honor - and something more. There is true nobility in his actions, and so I have sworn my life to his service, as has my father.”

Kouga blinked in unashamed surprise. Such oaths were taken up rarely by youkai. To serve for a lifetime could be to serve for centuries, and in that moment, a clarity of thought came upon Kouga like non he had ever experience - and epiphany of such brilliance that it slowed the brashness of his nature and dulled the hot embers of his temper to smoking, dull-lit coals. The honor he had sensed in Sesshomaru, the honor that had given him back his life deserved to be compensated - and how many times over did he owe his very soul to Kagome?

*Kagome…my beautiful Kagome, no longer mine…such fire in river-water eyes. The life debt must be paid.*

Resolute, he looked around him and singled out Histaru with the piercing depth of earth-glow in his eyes.

“Let it be known to all here, both those who serve the Lord Sesshomaru and those under my rule: If I do not return from combat, I place the care and lordship of my Lands in Lord Sesshomaru's hands. I have a life - debt to fulfill, and I will not have it said of my house that we did not answer the call of a friend. A new friend, and one who may not know it, but a friend all the same.”

Histaru nodded once in flat understanding, and looked around him one last time before speeding off behind Kouga. The legs that had matched Sesshomaru's easily outpaced Kouga - with no shards of the shikon jewel, the wolf prince could not keep up.

“I will see you there, Lord Kouga!”

Histaru's shout almost vanished in the wind that swept behind him. Kouga only shook his head, and pushed his body beyond what he had considered his personal limit. The scent of Kagome's blood remained persistent in the air. It did not thicken or twist with rotten sweetness of death, but neither did it grow less. The urging of his heart pushed him along the trail that was laid for him in the still and breathless air.

 

Sesshomaru moved swiftly, gentling her so as not to aggravate the pain that rose and crested more and more often within her. At the door to the chamber that could save life or take it, he paused, remembering his last experience there. Kagome groaned and it should have hastened his motions, but instead he delayed for another moment. He remembered his father, the birth of his brother.

*Half-brother…

A nearly inaudible growl escaped his control. Hanyou births were difficult - youkai births more so. Fear rose in his heart, an unfamiliar and unaccustomed sensation, and he kicked open the door, letting the power he knew was there sweep over him and pull him in. The light of the energy around him licked at his skin, pulling the warmth from his body, and he lay Kagome gently on the floor, brushing aside stray strands of hair from the smooth skin of her face.

“Kagome…Kagome!”

“Mmmm….Sess-chan? Ah…”

Her face tightened as another contraction swept through her body, and a low voiced cry accompanied a wash of water and blood that spilled free from her body. The abyss in the floor swirled more tightly as the scent of her blood filled the room, and Sesshomaru watched as the life that had spilled was pulled into the vortex.

“Otherworld energies, I call upon you to witness the birth of the heir to the Western Lands. As has been done, I bond the life of the heir to the land - as has been done, I bond the life of my mate to the land. Accept them!”
One final time he spilled his blood, a quick and simple thing, and he turned to watch Kagome in her labor. The contractions grew quicker, closer together, and he could tell by the gasping tightness of her every breath that the pain was intensely threatening. With almost no knowledge between them of the specifics of youkai birth, and only Sesshomaru aware of this deficiency in his knowledge, he sat beside his mate and let her claw at his hands, acknowledging her right to inflict the pain, scratch for scratch hinged on her own pains.

 

Kouga followed Sesshomaru's pine-thick scent when the sweet heat of Kagome's blood grew too thin, confused with the scent of other blood. He came thus swiftly to the place where the scent of Kagome resurfaced strongest, and saw Sango and Miroku, still standing deathly still. Terrified and silent, Sango's hands rested lightly on Miroku's arm, and it was with eyes still glowing from and adrenaline rush of fear that Sango saw their old ally standing near.

“Kouga! It is good to see you well.”

Miroku looked up at Sango's words, a grim expression fixed on his features.

“Well met, Kouga. It seems that my m hand is fated to be cursed, no matter what the intervention.”

Sango tightened her hands around Miroku's arm, as though that could hold back any evil that might harm him.

“What are you talking about? An arrow wound is not a curse, Roku-chan! It will heal, and remain only as a scar and a memory.”

“The arrow wound is not a curse, but it is cursed, Sango mine. I can feel a presence of evil writhing in my blood from this arrow's mere touch. To be pierced by it is…not well. The strength of youkai energy I feel in this is stronger even than Naraku's.”

Sango's eyes became soft and hard together, looking at her husband. With a sudden stiffness of decision, she broke the head off the arrow and pulled the shaft swiftly from his palm. For the moment before she staunched the flow of blood, it seemed to her that the Kazanaa was reborn in a blaze of spilling burgundy, a crimson wine flow of nothingness; and then she tore a strip from her sleeve to bind the wound, pressing hard with her hand against his wrist to halt the flow of blood. Kouga, watching, shook his head at human frailty and daring, and focused deliberately on Sango.

“Where is Kagome?”

A worried, tired, halfway smile caressed Sango's face, and she spoke slowly, tying off the ends of Miroku's bandage.

“Kagome was here, and fell with the wall, there.”

Her voice pointed for her.

“I do not know how she fares, but Sesshomaru came and took her with him into the castle.”

Kouga stared hard behind him, where the imposing fortress of the Western Lands broke the clouds in the sky.

“Then that is where I must go. By the way - did you see a young Inu-youkai run by here?”

Sango shook her head.

“Nothing has been by here but you and a gust of wind.”

Kouga laughed.

“That was Histaru. I had hoped to beat him here after all. I wish you well in battle.”

Miroku looked at him hard, and then nodded.

“To you as well, Kouga. And please - do anything you can to help Kagome.”

There was another gust of wind, and Kouga was gone.