InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Chosen ❯ Slave of the Mind ( Chapter 10 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Chapter Ten: Slave of the Mind

The two Higurashi siblings and Sesshoumaru spun to witness two demons descend from the sky on an ivory coloured feather.

Sesshoumaru growled. “Kagura, Kanna.”

The dark haired demon inclined her head but the void demon made no indication that she had even heard him, turning away to look at Kagome with hollow eyes.

“What do you want?” Kagome demanded as Sesshoumaru casually stepped forward to obscure her with his body. She tried to hold back the eye roll, as if she needed protecting.

“To clue you guys into the secrets” the dark haired woman smiled “sort of...”

“What do you mean?” Miroku asked cautiously keeping an eye on the white haired demon referred to as Kanna. She was still staring at Kagome with dead eyes, as if she could see through the bulk that was a rather protective Sesshoumaru.

“If you have information, talk,” Sesshoumaru ordered harshly.

Kagura grimaced slightly, recognising someone who wouldn't probably respond to her teasing very well. “My master, your Uncle, is after her blood right?”

“We knew that,” Kagome pointed out.

Kagura glowered at her impudence. “Quiet, girl! He wants her because of that legend the tree recanted to you, the Miko that fused the jewel into her body may have died, but she keeps getting reincarnated, and the Mikos that are her reincarnations have the right blood! The blood of the Shikon no Tama.”

“So they want my blood because of some jewel?” Kagome asked dubiously.

“The jewel was the most powerful magical artefact to ever exist.” Kanna intoned in a monotone voice that was chilling, “Your blood is laced with power, a power that sings.” She titled her soulless eyes to look at the overcast sky.

...the blood that would attract all of Yokai...

Kagome shuddered, there was something about that girl that she really didn't like... not one bit.

Kagura shrugged in a blasé fashion “I don't know all the details, only the lords of the state should... of course our master may have eavesdropped to get the information”

“Lords?” Sesshoumaru growled. Surely this didn't mean that his father knew of all this?

“It's seems daddy and mummy dearest have kept you out of the loop Sesshoumaru-sama, I would go and enquire about this girl if I were you.”

“Your condescension will earn you a beheading,” Sesshoumaru promised as he cracked his knuckles menacingly.

Kagome chuckled, suddenly slightly uneasy, and pulled a feather from her hair, hoisting her and her sister into the air. “And this is how you repay me for my kindness? You owe me a debt for telling you this, Sesshoumaru-sama!”

Sesshoumaru's face contorted into a gruesomely promising smirk as his claws flashed green. “Come and let me reward you properly.”

“Temper, temper!” she scolded as she disappeared into the heavens.

***

Kagome was hitching a ride from her brother, completely exhausted after the previous few days of emotional and physical exertion. But she still had enough energy to whinge. Much to Sesshoumaru's dismay.

“Why can't we go now?” she demanded.

“Because you cannot walk and your brother has become a pack mule,” Sesshoumaru pointed out dryly.

“Besides that!” she waved his interjection aside as if it were a troublesome bug.

“My father is the head of the Lords of state, he presides over them all, not even I can get an audience with him on such short notice. You will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Wait, you can't even get to see him? He's your father!”

“He is the head of the Lords of State,” Sesshoumaru corrected.

“That's sad,” Kagome sympathised.

Sesshoumaru snorted. “If you had met my father, you would not think such.”

They reached the shrine in record time, considering Sesshoumaru made no allowances for their human legs and marched them all the way home like some kind of demonic drill sergeant.

Their mother promptly went into mollycoddling overload when they arrived back and Miroku and Kagome valiantly put up with being hugged until they turned blue in the face.

Sesshoumaru had promptly been ordered to stay overnight by the Higurashi matriarch and nothing he said seemed to affect the obtuse woman in any way shape or form.

He ended up in Miroku's bed, cheerfully usurping the Hentai Houshi and relegating him to the sofa in the living room.

Kagome woke the next morning and growled. She felt like a sack of potatoes with the way she had been treated recently and she really couldn't find the resolve within her to move.

Today she should be finding out what in the world she was supposed to be exactly. It was her birthday in four days, she realised belatedly as she glanced at her calendar forlornly. She hadn't really had much chance to dwell on that since meeting Sesshoumaru. It seemed her life was becoming steadily more complicated.

Shower! That's what she needed, she needed a shower, to revitalise herself and help soothe her poor muscles and aching bones.

Hauling herself from her nice, warm, bed she lurched zombie-style towards her bathroom...

Only to run straight into a bare warm chest.

She nearly fell backwards onto her bottom but a clawed hand shot out and caught her by her shoulder.

“S-sesshoumaru?” she blinked a few times. He looked good enough to eat, stood there with a towel slung about his slender hips, droplets of water running from his long hair over his intricately muscled form, steam billowing from the bathroom behind him.

He crooked an eyebrow at her agog expression and smirked slightly. “Watch where you're going sleepy-chan.”

It took her a few moments to come to terms with what he had said but when she did she directed a gimlet stare in the direction of Miroku's room. He knew just what buttons to press and she hated him for it.

Eventually she realised that wishing bad karma upon him wasn't helping her back, so she relocated to stand under the beautifully warm jets of the shower.

By the time a bleary eyed Kagome slumped into her seat at the breakfast table everyone else was sat around amicably, Sesshoumaru was munching toast and her mother was singing along to the radio under her breath.

“This is freakishly normal,” she muttered under her breath as she snagged a piece of toast and chewed sullenly.

“Freakishly?” Souta enquired, looking up at her from over the edge of the manga he had brought to the table.

“No manga at the breakfast table!” his mother swooped down on him and snagged the latest copy of `Bleach' easily.

“Yeah, freakishly,” Kagome continued as Souta began to pout. “I've nearly died so many times this week and now I'm sat here eating toast, feels like months since I had this much normality.”

Sesshoumaru effortlessly reached across the breakfast laden table and snagged the toast from her mouth, quickly polishing it off in four bites.

“Why'd you do that?” she screeched.

“Hungry,” he supplied shortly, quickly glugging down the pint of orange juice laid in front of him he caught Kagome's wrist in his hand and dragged her out of the kitchen with him. “we'll be leaving now!”

The Higurashi family waved vaguely as Sesshoumaru carted a stunned Kagome out of her own home.

***

“Stop pouting at once,” Sesshoumaru ordered as he drove, not once taking his eyes from the road.

“I'm hungry!” she whined.

“And we were nearly late, my father does not take kindly to being left waiting,” Sesshoumaru spoke through gritted teeth.

For the first time that morning, she studied his tense posture, his face was scrunched up, almost imperceptibly, in something akin to unease and his shoulders were so stiff they looked brittle.

“Sesshoumaru, are you alright?”

He spared her a brief scathing glance. “I never cared for my father after he deserted my mother.”

“Oh,” she glanced down at her interlaced fingers; suddenly the atmosphere was awkward. What did you say to a declaration of hate towards a parent? She could remember feeling like that when her father had first left them. “I remember feeling like that, when my father left.”

His eyes narrowed and his gaze never wavered from the road, as if he was ignoring her, but he hadn't told her to shut up, so she took it as permission.

“He was American,” she began, interlacing her fingers in her lap and studying them intently, “he came here on business for a while and spotted my mother, she worked in a pastry shop, back then. Fairy tale stuff ensued and they got married, had Miroku and then me and after a while, Souta,”

She paused, and Sesshoumaru glanced sidelong at her, “But my dad worked at a large company that eventually began to close down, he knew he was going to be forced into redundancy and stopped being my dad anymore. He was withdrawn, depressed and argued with Mama because he couldn't stand her attitude. Regardless of all the troubles we were sure to face Mama kept a smile and tried to comfort him. It made him angry. But then, he didn't see when she would cry in the kitchen when she thought no one was around.”

Kagome lowered her head and her hair obligingly fell to shroud her face. “But Dad eventually snapped, he left us two days after my eighth birthday... and I hated him. I told him that I hated him, I yelled it at him as he turned his back on us.”

She pushed her hair behind an ear and smiled at him. “But, in the end, it was better that way. We moved into Ojjisan's shrine and Mama started to sing again, before all that stuff with dad she'd sung all the time, when she was hanging out the laundry, she hummed when she washed the dishes, whistled whilst she baked... and after dad left she became happy again. And I realised that I needed to forgive him, it wasn't like he set out to hurt Mama.”

Kagome blinked as Sesshoumaru tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and his eyes were soft, even if he maintained his stoic expression. “Sometimes it can be for the better, but you do not know my father,” he turned into a long winding drive that was smoothly paved and lined with arches of Yamazakura that Kagome mused would be even more splendid if it was flowering season. “Unfortunately, you are about to meet him.”

The house eventually came into view, if you could even call it a house. It was a huge sprawling western styled mansion that was so big Kagome couldn't see to expanse of it from where she stood when she exited the car and gazed up at with awe.

The front door opened and an aging butler appeared his eyes shrewd, “Sesshoumaru-sama, your father is waiting for you in the third reception room.”

Sesshoumaru nodded and yanking Kagome along by a hand around her elbow, he paced through the many corridors of the mansion until he got to the third reception room.

He laid a hand on the handle but paused before opening it. “Be on your guard, Kagome, my father is not someone you can trust.”

Golden eyes closed bracingly; he couldn't help but think that maybe he was throwing Kagome to the lions maybe.

He started as she extricated her arm from his grasp and instead took his hand and squeezed, “I'll be okay, Sesshoumaru.”

Without consent, he squeezed his hand around hers, returning the gesture and opened the door, his senses all on high alert, youki fanning around him warningly.

They stepped into the huge sitting room and paused as a voice called out from a throne that sat with it's back to them, “Such hostile youki, you would think I was your enemy, rather than your sire, whelp.”

“Father,” Sesshoumaru acknowledged scathingly, pulling Kagome behind him slightly. That tone of voice on his father was not a good thing.

“Sesshoumaru-sama,” a startling familiar voice purred from beside the throne, and Sesshoumaru and Kagome started as they recognised the woman.

It was the vampire.

The one Sesshoumaru had slaughtered the day before.

“Otou-sama, what is she doing here? She tried to kill my guest recently!” Sesshoumaru growled, eyes never shifting from the woman beside the throne.

“It is fine, my son,” the male voice said condescendingly, “She was a gift from a friend of mine, you needn't worry, she is completely obedient, he programmed her that way.”

“Programmed?” Sesshoumaru growled, “you mean he resurrected her and made her into a slave?”

“Yes, she is the perfect bodyguard,” the male voice chuckled and Kagome gasped as the speaker stood and revealed himself. He resembled Sesshoumaru, same silver hair and golden eyes, but this man was older looking and his hair was pulled into a topknot, not to mention he lacked Sesshoumaru's facial markings and only retained blue horizontal stripes on each cheek.

“Perfect how?” Sesshoumaru bit out, “she tried to kill me before, who's to say she will not attempt again? Besides, she worked for Uncle, she is not to be trusted!”

“Because she is mindless,” he intoned softly, “she is my doll and would kill herself in an instant if I told her too, ne, Akae-chan?”

“Hai, goshujinsama.” The vampire nodded her head humbly, her eyes black, flat, and uncaring. Kagome shuddered.

“No matter what a person has done,” she muttered so that only Sesshoumaru could hear her, “they should never be subjected to that.”

Sesshoumaru squeezed her hand comfortingly in response.

“So, whelp.” His father narrowed his eyes speculatively. “Aren't you going to introduce me to the little ningen hiding behind you?”

Sesshoumaru's eyes hardened and he reminded himself that he had to introduce Kagome, it was the reason he was here. It was hard though, considering all he wanted to do was to hide her from his father. A sinking feeling clenched his gut and he closed his eyes; he sincerely hoped this dread was misplaced.

Discalimer: I don't own Inuyasha nor do I make any profit from this work of fiction.

A/N: Sorry it's been a while, I had writer's block on this fiction, but here you go! Thanks for reading and review!