InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Buffy the Youkai Slayer ❯ On Borrowed Time ( Chapter 18 )

18. On Borrowed Time

Naraku's Castle, late 16th-century Japan

"A wolf," said Buffy. "He really is a wolf. Only--"

She looked back over her shoulder at the transformed Kouga. He was growling, his muzzle wrinkled in a snarl that exposed fangs the size of chef's knives, and steadily stalking Kagura around the courtyard.

"A lot bigger."

Sango, who was leading the way, stopped under the long verandah that ran around the perimeter of the courtyard. She looked like she was trying hard not to smile.

"Of course, Buffy-chan. Kouga-kun is of the Yourouzoku. His human appearance is simply a guise. That--" she pointed with her chin at the enormous black wolf. "Is his true form. Do you not have wolf-youkai in Kari-funya?"

"Not like that. We have werewolves, people who have been infected--cursed, I guess you'd call it. They're human except on the nights of the full moon, but even when they go wolfy, they're still mostly people-shaped. Just furrier. And with longer teeth." Buffy thought of Oz with a brief pang, and wondered how he was coping, these days.

"Werowufo? Ah," said Sango, thoughtfully. "They sound like wolf-hanyou, who have three forms: fully human, hanyou, and fully youkai."

"You mean Inuyasha doesn't always look the way he does? With the ears and teeth and stuff?"

"That is Inuyasha's hanyou form. But every hanyou has a time when he becomes fully human. It is a different time for each hanyou, and they keep it secret, because they are most vulnerable then. And I have seen Inuyasha's youkai form, as I have told you."

"Does he turn into a youkai...often?" Inuyasha the hanyou was incredibly strong, and had a really bad temper. If that was only his half-youkai form, well, Buffy hated to think what his full-youkai form was like.

Sango shook her head. " It is dangerous for him to transform too often. Luckily, his sword carries a spell to suppress his youkai blood."

They reached a doorway, and Sango reached to pull it open.

"So, what's he like as a hum--" Buffy started to ask, but was interrupted by Kirara's long, rumbling growl.

The firecat shouldered Sango aside, and stood blocking the door that the youkai-taijya had just opened. Kirara's fur was standing on end, and she was snarling.

Sango looked consideringly at Kirara, as if trading silent communication with the big, saber-toothed feline.

Then she untied the scarf from around her neck, and shook out two objects that looked like oversized metal belt buckles, with long laces fluttering from the ends.

Sango handed one of the objects to Buffy. "Kirara says that the castle is filled with jyaki--a poisonous miasma." She lifted the object to her face, covering her mouth and nose, and tied the laces to hold it in place. "You will need to wear this."

"Lucky you brought a spare," Buffy said, her voice muffled by the snugly-fitting mask. The edges were lined with soft leather, and the interior was filled with the sharp, aromatic scent of dried herbs. She fumbled with the laces, not sure how tight to tie it.

Sango blinked, her eyes suddenly sad above the engraved metal concealing the bottom half of her face. "It belongs--belonged--to my brother Kohaku," she said. "I--" She stopped, as if she had changed her mind about what she wanted to say next, then continued, in a different tone: "I hope it fits you? You must not breathe in any of jyaki--it is deadly to humans."

Buffy wiggled the mask experimentally, then gave Sango the thumbs-up. "Ready when you are," she said, feigning a confidence she did not feel.

This past week spent traveling around feudal Japan had made her wonder if she was really up to getting the job done.

Buffy was the Slayer, but that didn't mean the same thing in a world where skinny teen-aged boys could rip large trees out by the roots, and even Kagome had superpowers.

She couldn't ditch nagging worry that her even her best wouldn't be good enough here, and that Naraku would be left free to pillage his way across every dimension--including hers.

* * *

The interior of the castle was the absolute creepiest place Buffy had ever seen. Like a really bad B horror movie, only with smell-o-vision.

To distract herself from the horror as they crept cautiously along a gloomy corridor, Buffy started composing a list of haunted house movie cliches that Naraku's castle reminded her of.

Dark mist billowing over the floor...check.

Cobwebs..:check.

Dead bodies--and pieces of dead bodies--everywhere...check.

No sign of a rack or an Iron Maiden yet, but then again, they hadn't reached the dungeon.

And it stank. Even the herbs in Buffy's mask couldn't filter out the smell completely.

Even Sango, kick-ass chick that she was, was looking sort of green above her mask. Buffy wondered whether the other wings of the castle smelled as bad, and if so, how Inuyasha and Kagome were doing. Dog-boy had a really sensitive nose--he'd be in a special kind of hell here.

Kirara had not stopped growling since they entered the building. The firecat seemed to know where she was going, so Buffy and Sango followed her, deeper and deeper into the interior. They climbed several flights of worn wooden stairs, and started searching the top floor.

At least the smell wasn't so bad here--no bodies, and there were larger windows in the stone walls. They emerged from the staircase into a large antechamber, which was furnished with low tables, tatami mats, and floor cushions. There were hangings on the wall, but Buffy didn't have a chance to look at them.

Kirara leapt forward with a scream of rage, and knocked down the fragile wooden wall that formed the back of the antchamber.

Buffy raised her naginata, and ran after the firecat. Sango was right behind her, Hiraikotsu unslung and ready for action.

The second chamber was large, and bare, except for a dais at the far end, under a bank of windows.

Someone was sitting cross-legged on the dais. A young, girly-looking man, with large dark eyes and long, flowing black hair. Who didn't look particularly surprised to see them.

Then Buffy caught sight of a Portal Key and a shallow bowl filled with pale, glowing shards, sitting on a low table to one side. And she knew who this was.

Another demon hottie. Too bad I'm gonna have to kill him.

"Naraku!" Sango shouted, in the same instant. She swung Hiraikotsu like a giant scythe, keeping her grip on the weapon's strap, and the pale bone blade arced toward the young man.

Who had abruptly shifted form into something horrible. His long robes fell away, and he...grew...

In an eyeblink, his pale slender torso and that cold, beautiful face were perched on a writhing mass of monstrous limbs. Arms, legs, tentacles...Buffy wasn't sure what they were, but they were damned ugly, and most of them were tipped with claws or stingers.

Sango's weapon sliced through several of the misshapen limbs, sending them hurtling to the corners of the room. Buffy ducked one--she could swear it was trying to grab her hair as it whizzed by--and swung her naginata.

The Ginzu pole-axe. It slices, it dices...thought Buffy, as Naraku-bits fell to the tatami in messy, writhing gobbets. She saw Hiraikotsu come around for another pass, and grinned. But wait, there's more!

One of the dismembered hands caught hold of her ankle, and digging in its claws, started to inch up the leg of her jeans, probably attracted by the wound still seeping from Kagura's attack.

Buffy switched the naginata to her other hand, drew her sword, and neatly severed the fingers--or whatever they were--gripping the denim.

The hand-thing fell to the floor, still twitching. Ewwww. Buffy kicked it away, and saw it go splat against the nearest wall.

Kirara was doing her thing, too, lunging in and out of range of the various arms and tentacles that tried to grab her, sinking her huge fangs into anything that came within biting range, and tearing away pieces wholesale.

They weren't winning--not yet--but they were holding their own.

Buffy started to hope that maybe, just maybe, they had a chance of kicking this thing's ass.

Then, what felt like a huge gust of wind moved through the chamber, making Buffy and Sango stagger to keep their balance. All the chopped-off Naraku-bits rose--or detached themselves--from where they lay, stuck, or clung, and flew back to his body, where they stayed put. It looked like someone had turned on a giant demon-magnet.

Another huge gust of wind knocked them all to the floor. The room went abruptly dark, filling with dense miasma.

By the time Buffy staggered to her feet, Sango and Kirara were shadowy outlines, and Naraku was long gone. Along with Portal Key, and the Shikon-no-Tama shards.

"Dammit!" Buffy muttered.

Sango slung Hiraikotsu back over her shoulder with a decisive motion. "We have to find him!" she shouted. "We can't let him escape this time!"

Kirara roared, and wheeled around. Plunging back the way they'd come, all three of them raced down the stairs, the firecat in the lead.

* * *

The trail ended at the lowest level of the castle--the dungeons, at last, thought Buffy, and they were just as dank and nasty as expected.

Kirara stood over a large trapdoor in the stone floor, growling and peering expectantly at them.

Buffy did not want to go down there. She was sure that whatever awaited them in the dungeon's cellar was going to be really really nasty.

She looked at Sango, and saw the same apprehension mirrored in the youkai-taijya's eyes.

Buffy took a deep, herb-scented breath, and reached down to grab the trapdoor's handle. It rose smoothly despite the weight of the thick planks and iron fittings.

It was dark down there. Really, really dark.

She reached into the back pocket of her jeans, and pulled out a tiny, high-powered flashlight. The beam revealed a rickety-looking wooden ladder that ended in a wetly-gleaming stone floor.

"Ah, what the hell," said Buffy, forcing down the sick fear-feeling in her stomach. She had come here to get Naraku's Portal Key, and she wasn't going to leave without it. No way did she want his demonic bad-ass self paying a surprise call on that nice Mrs. Higurashi or Kagome's kid brother Souta. She owed it to them.

Sango's chin rose. "You can still turn back, Buffy-chan. This isn't your world...or your fight."

"Nah. I'm in." Buffy shrugged. "You've already died once. I've died twice. We both know we're living on borrowed time, right?"

Sango looked at her, puzzled.

"So, I guess we'd better make the most of the moment. Go out in a blaze of glory, and all that," Buffy finished.

Maybe not the most inspiring speech she'd ever given, but, hey, not bad for a stinky dungeon.

The fear roiling her tummy vanished, leaving behind only the determination to see this through to the end. She was the Slayer, whatever that meant--or didn't mean--in the Sengoku-jidai.

The best that I can do, I will. Hope it's enough.

"Right. Let's go." Sango shouldered her boomerang once more and shimmied down the ladder, into the darkness.

Buffy was right behind her.

The cellar was huge, very dark, and festooned with slimy strands. The smell was unbelievable, a thousand times worse than the castle corridors above.

And everywhere her flashlight beam touched, Buffy saw pulsing, shiny, creeping, rippling monster flesh. Kagome had told her that Naraku was composed of many different youkai that he'd forcibly absorbed. This place looked like it was littered with the leftovers.

"Hiraikotsu!" Sango yelled, sending the giant boomerang circling around the chamber.

It sang through the air with a deep throom that Buffy felt in her molars, and left a path of destruction in its wake, scattering bits of youkai flesh and breaking bones and armor plates with deep crunching sounds.

Sango reached out and caught it, rocking backward on her heels as she arrested its forward momentum. Then, there was only the soft, sucking sounds of dismembered flesh creeping along the floor like disgusting inchworms, trying to rejoin.

Yuck. Oh, yuck. I take it back--not every demon in feudal Japan is a hottie.

Buffy hefted her naginata, and wished she'd remembered to pack a flamethrower before coming through the well.

"I love a Slayer who knows how to make an entrance," she called to Sango.

"But it is your departure that you should be worrying about, little girls." Naraku's voice was cold, but he rolled his syllables as if the words themselves were smirking.

And Sango smiled, all of her usual sadness banished by a fiercely joyous expression. "I never worry about leaving until my job is finished. You will die here today, Naraku. In the name of my family and my village, I swear it."

He laughed, mockingly, and the pale circle of Buffy's flashlight caught that obscene flesh rippling then...splitting.

Something slithered rapidly out of the dark opening...something thin and lithe and almost as large as Kirara, with way too many legs and definitely way too many teeth.

"A detachment!" Sango told Buffy. "We must kill it first."

Buffy kept the beam of light on the skittering thing as it raced across the cellar floor. "Not a problem, far as I'm concerned," she said, swinging her naginata to the ready position.

Together, they went to meet the creature.

It was fast, but Buffy caught it on a downswing, and the razor-sharp blade of her naginata cut it in half.

Unfortunately, that meant they now had two of the critters to deal with--the cut halves healed in an eyeblink, and the back half suddenly sprouted a head filled with teeth just as nasty as its front half.

Sango swept Hiraikotsu around in a wide arc, sending the creatures flying without severing any more bits. "Fire!" she called. "Kirara--burn them!"

The firecat caught the first detachment-creature in its fangs with little difficulty--it appeared to be somewhat stunned from Sango's blow--and with a roar, Kirara ignited the creature.

It disintegrated almost immediately, leaving only the second one to deal with. Luckily, Kirara's flames provided extra light, and the two Slayers worked together, using the flats of their weapons to drive the creature toward Kirara.

But Naraku had been busy, too, while they battled the skittery things.

With a sweeping gesture, he sent a dozen ropy tendrils in her direction. She severed six or seven of them, then found her wrists entwined and firmly held by the rubbery flesh. The naginata was torn from her grasp, and hit the floor with a slime-muffled clatter.

Sango hesitated, and the thing they'd been chasing skittered out of range, its dozen or so insectoid feet tapping rapidly on the flagstones.

"Get it!" Buffy shouted at her, as she tried to free herself. "Burn it! I'm okay!"

Sango threw her a sharp nod, and ran forward, swinging her bone boomerang as she went, neatly slicing off whatever bits of Naraku's demon body that slithered, wriggled, or hung within range.

Buffy resumed trying to break her bonds, but the slender tendrils were tougher than they looked. Inch by inch, she was dragged forward. She tried planting her feet and pulling back, but the soles of her sneakers couldn't find purchase on the slimy floor, and she simply skidded in whatever direction she was pulled.

"Human girl, I will feed you to my youkai," said Naraku, with a chuckle.

Buffy saw something move in the shadows behind him. The flashlight, held ineffectually in her captive left hand, gleamed off bulbous eyes and a row of needle-like, translucent teeth.

She tried twisting suddenly, hoping to snap the tendrils before Needle-teeth reached her. The tendrils merely stretched a bit, before yanking her back so sharply that she fell to her knees on the hard floor.

Then, to her horror, one of the tendrils snaked down the front of her hiking jacket, and pulled out the Portal Key, which she had put in a deep pocket, sealed with a Velcro flap. The Velcro opened now with a tearing sound.

"I thought so," said Naraku's voice, from above her. "You, also, have a this key-between-the-worlds. I'm sure I shall find having an extra...very useful." That nasty chuckle again. Buffy had hated it the first time she heard it, and it wasn't liking it any more with repetition.

Crap.

"SANGO!" screamed Buffy, as Needle-teeth rushed at her.

Naraku with two Keys. Buffy trapped in this time...forever.

Or maybe not forever. Maybe just for the ten seconds remaining until I become youkai fast-food.

If ever she needed another Slayer's help, it was now.

Hiraikotsu's deep thrum was the sound of Buffy's ass being saved. The huge youkai-bone weapon whirled through the space separating Buffy and Naraku, severing the tendrils at last.

Buffy caught the cool metal sphere of her Portal Key as the tendril that had snatched it went abruptly limp, tossed the Key to her left hand, and drew her sword.

Just in time to fend off Needle-teeth. The katana that Koji had lent her was just as sharp as the naginata, and it sliced though Needle-teeth's fur and flesh like a knife through Jello.

She saw Hiraikotsu whir by again, this time taking several large chunks out of Naraku's main body.

Needle-teeth howled, toppled over, and disintegrated into goop. Buffy took advantage of the brief respite to snag her naginata from where it had fallen, then charged Naraku.

Buffy wasn't sure how long she and Sango hacked and slashed at Naraku's various appendages, not to mention the various beasties he spawned from his body--like a giant amoeba, thought Buffy--but it seemed they were making progress. He seemed to be shrinking, and was producing surprise guest opponents less and less often.

The naginata finally dulled, as did the sword, and Buffy's arms and shoulders burned with the effort of swinging them, over and over again. She could hear Sango's harsh breaths even through her mask, but the youkai-taijya swung Hiraikotsu time and time again, leaping gracefully in the air to inflict the maximum damage to Naraku's upper limbs and torso.

Finally, the two of them, plus Kirara, had him backed into a corner. Time to end the show, thought Buffy, as she traded glances with Sango.

But Naraku had one more surprise left up his...well, not sleeve, because he's sort of naked, thought Buffy, dizzily, as an invisible force picked her up and tossed her across the room.

She hit the floor, hard, and slid on a slippery layer of she-didn't-want-to-know-what. The flashlight went out, and Kirara's flame was also abruptly extinguished.

There was a great rushing and sucking sound in the darkness. Buffy felt a movement near her, and swung her sword. It cut deeply into something that squealed loudly, then retreated.

Her butt felt extremely bruised, and her left arm--where she'd landed on it--was numb and felt rubbery. She fumbled for the flashlight, and turned it back on.

Its light was sort of amber now--the sign of draining batteries--but it produced enough light for Buffy to kill the two youkai that were stalking her.

Once she'd taken care of them, she swept the dying flashlight beam around the cellar. Sango was several yards away, conscious but sprawled on top of Hirakotsu.

Kirara had apparently been smacked back to her usual kitten size. She rose, shook herself with a tiny mewing sound, then transformed back into her giant firecat form.

"He's gotten away!" Buffy reached out and pulled Sango to her feet, then picked up Hiraikotsu by one of its rough hempen handles. The pale bone was smeared with dark stains now, but the edge looked as sharp as ever.

"So, we forced him to retreat. Twice. Not bad for 'mere humans,'" Sango said, mimicking Inuyasha's usual inflection with grim satisfaction. She accepted Hiraikotsu from Buffy, rubbed her hip through her black leather armor, and headed for the ladder, limping a little. "Let's go!"

Buffy hesitated, and swept the flashlight around the cellar once more, just to make sure that Naraku wasn't playing possum among the jumble of dismembered and partially-absorbed youkai.

Most of the demon-parts were still here, but the writhing bulk of Naraku had vanished.

Then she heard Sango yell as the heavy trapdoor slammed shut, followed an instant later by the scraping sound of bolts being shot.

They were locked in. And there was no other exit from the cellar.