InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Demon Hunter ❯ Split ( Chapter 16 )

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

Chapter 16

Closing his eyes, Harry dropped his hand and pulled out his cell phone.

“Yeah?” he said shortly.

“Duck,” said an all too familiar voice from the other end. Upon recognizing it, Harry immediately dropped to the ground, feeling a burst of hot air rush over his head.

Harry quickly rolled to the left and threw himself back up on his feet, whipping around to face...absolutely nothing. Though it appeared as nothing he could hear its heavy, rhythmic breathing several feet directly in front of him, its rancid breath puffing on his face. He knew something was there. His eyes darted back and forth trying to catch any movement of sorts from what he was sure was a demon. He mentally turned on his infrared as saw blotches of heat form in front of him. The demon was at least ten feet high and almost the same length wide.

Harry bent his knees slightly and began inching away from the house and towards the street, he didn't want to cause a disturbance near his aunt's flowerbed—she would kill him. The grass rustled as the demon moved forward to follow him. A short flick of his wrist brought his dagger forward and he wasted no time in cutting a long incision from the crook of his elbow to his wrist.

An earsplitting roar erupted from in front of him before he could perform any blood magic. Harry leapt backwards instinctively and felt something thick and razor sharp tear through his shirt and just graze his stomach enough to draw blood. A second claw swung forward and caught Harry on the side of the head. While he'd taken worse blows and the most he would get from that was an ugly bruise, his glasses were knocked off, leaving Harry with nothing but his other four senses. He almost growled himself now that the scent of his own blood, from his stomach and his heavily bleeding arm, was clouding that of the demon. Harry quickly drew back his arm only to be stopped again as a giant cloud of fire materialized in the air and hurled towards him. Harry cried out in shock as he ducked, almost stepping on his forgotten cell phone in the process (which was still on).

`Well this is great,' Harry thought as he dodged to the left in response to some heavy movement on his right, `I'm fighting an invisible demon who breaths fire AND I'm wasting my minutes!'

As Harry ducked another blast of fire, he reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt before he straitened and threw it in the direction of the demon. An agitated face could barely be made out in the dirt cloud as the demon ferociously wiped at its eyes. Harry smirked, seeing his chance. He drew his arm back, locking the knuckles in a semi-bent position.

“Blades of Blood!” he cried viciously, sweeping his arm forward. Five identical, crimson blades sliced through the air and then the demon; its body becoming visible in spurts of blood as it was torn apart in several places. Harry hopped up to the body, performing the burning ritual to get rid of the remains.

“Taste of your own medicine, bitch,” Harry muttered and the flames died down into ashes before turning and walking into the house. He walked back out again, picked up the cell phone and his glasses, and walked back in, grumbling about stupid promises and dumb, fire-breathing demons.

0o0o0o0o0o

Harry stepped into his room with a towel wrapped around his waist after a quick trip to the bathroom for a shower and to bandage his arm and stomach. As expected, Inu Yasha was sitting happily on his bed, trying to balance one of Harry's quills on his nose. It was not the first time Harry had a glimpse of what the half demon's mentality was really like.

“Thanks for the warning,” Harry said as he pulled on his clothes.

“No problem,” Inu Yasha muttered scowling as the writing utensil floated away from his face. Harry shook his head sadly at his mentor and pulled out the book.

“God, I'm only halfway through this thing,” he whined while flipping through the pages.

“Take your time,” Inu Yasha said, placing the quill back on the bridge of his nose, “There's no use rushing it. If you get something wrong in a ritual you could end up killing yourself or worse.”

“mmhmm,” Harry said, not really listening. He continued flipping until he came upon a page that caught his interest.

“Hey! What about this one?” he said excitedly, holding up the book to Inu Yasha's face. Inu Yasha drew his attention away from his game and looked to where Harry was pointing.

“No.”

“Oh come on!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so.”

“What's the harm?”

“Only that a million and one things could go wrong!”

“I would be so much more powerful. It would give me a HUGE advantage over Tim-Tim.”

“No. N. O. You most likely wouldn't survive a ritual like that anyway. It fucks up your DNA too much.”

“But what if I absolutely HAVE to?”

“That would never happen. Trust me, it's not worth it.”

Harry pouted, dropping the book back into his lap, knowing that he had lost this time. He looked longing at the diagram of one of the most complex rituals he had stumbled upon yet: the ritual to turn oneself into a demon.

0o0o0o0o

Harry scowled as he pushed open the door to the Grill and entered the loud and crowded area. He was not pleased with the arrangements of the day, though it was not as if he were an outcast anymore. He was currently dressed in a pair of black jeans, with a tight white t-shirt and his leather jacket and seemed to blend with the crowd quite nicely. As he pushed his way through the throng of dancing people a few of them turned to stare at him as though they just realized that the Potter criminal was among them. Harry gritted his teeth and kept moving until a voice cut through the loud music.

“Harry! Harry over here!”

He looked over the many heads to see Rachel with a group of what he assumed were her friends; kids who wouldn't dare talk to him in primary school. He groaned and made his way over to them.

“Hey,” he said dully, barley audible over the loud music.

“Hey!” She said enthusiastically. Her friend's on the other hand, seemed less than pleased to see him. There was a girl with short red hair that he vaguely remembered hanging around Rachel when they were little as well as a tall boy with spiked, dyed blonde hair and a boy with brown hair and blue tips.

“This is Cassidy, and the blonde is Steve, and that's Derek,” Rachel introduced to him. Regardless of Cassidy's timid behavior to his presence she was shyly checking him out. Derek was in the process of sizing him up and the Steve boy seemed to have already made up his mind about Harry.

“Is it true you hijacked a car and shot three cops?” he asked loudly with a haughty air about him. Harry merely stared at the blonde as though he were the biggest idiot on earth. Next to Fudge, of course. Steve seemed to loose the arrogant look on his face after a minute of silence.

“Didn't you hear me?” he asked, a bit angrily. Rachel frowned at him.

“Steve, knock it off. What's your problem?”

“My problem is this delinquent coming into our place. We didn't want him around in primary school, and we don't want him around now.”

Even Derek and Cassidy seemed a little shocked by his outburst, but Harry welcomed it fully, sensing the precognition of a fight in the air. It had been along time since he got to enjoy the feel of someone's nose breaking under his fist (the last time got him kicked off the Quidditch team). If this kid wanted to start a fight with him, well, then it was his funeral.

“Steve!” Rachel snapped angrily, “What the hell is the matter with you. I told you he was cool. Why are you giving him the third degree?”

Harry raised a hand to silence her.

“It's alright. I told you it was a bad idea for me to come here,” he looked at Steve's cold, grey eyes. Eyes that annoyingly reminded him of Malfoy's, “Kid, I will go where ever the hell I damn well please. And if you have a problem with it—do something about it.”

Harry said this while stepping up to Steve's face, which was a few inches taller than his—closer to Ron's height, actually—another thing that made the thought of punching him in the face all the more enjoyable.

Steve hesitated, looking uncertain under Harry's steely gaze, and finally seemed to back down. Harry smirked. The kid was obviously smarter than he looked.

“Yeah, that's what I thought,” he couldn't help throw in as he turned his back on the group and started his way back to the Dursleys. He heard a scuffling of sneakers on the tiled floor and a short `No!' from Rachel and the smirk returned full blast on Harry's face. So the kid wasn't that smart after all...

Harry didn't even need to turn around; he just ducked, allowing the slow, sloppy punch to sail over his head. A turn of his heel later and he landed a return blow in Steve's side. The blonde fell down to one knee, holding he side and whimpering. Harry looked on with a dismayed expression. This was just pathetic.

“Potter!”

Harry turned around to see Dudley and his gang come marching forward through the crowd. By now, most of the occupants of the Grill were watching the commotion, cheering for more action. Harry had trouble keeping a smile off his face. Dudley would be sure to be a bigger challenge than his last opponent, who, at the current time, was being helped up to his feet by Cassidy and Derek.

“Yes, Dudders?” Harry asked sweetly. Dudley briefly wore a stricken look on his face at the name.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he asked in a low voice, his boys flanking his side. Harry couldn't help but feel confused. Just last year Dudley enjoyed beating the snot out of a ten year old and now he seemed to be taking the role of defending people.

“Just self defense,” he said innocently. A few people around them nodded, having witnessed the earlier events. Dudley puffed up and stepped up to Harry in the same threatening manner he had done to Steve.

“I'm afraid I can't allow you to get away with this, Potter,” He said. His piggy eyes darted towards Rachel for a moment. Harry almost laughed out loud at what was going on. Dudley hadn't changed; he was trying to impress Rachel—who, at the moment, appeared quite unimpressed by everything that was going on at the moment.

Harry opened his mouth to say something that would only egg Dudley on—but froze as an ominous chill swept through the air. Apparently he wasn't the only one who felt it either. Everyone in the Grill began muttering to one another, looking around. Harry and Dudley locked eyes for a moment, Dudley's alarmed expression silently asking if it were the dementors he'd encountered last year. Harry gave a slow, small shake of his head. It most certainly wasn't dementors, for he didn't feel faint in the slightest. This chill was only skin deep and seemed to draw up goose bumps on anyone's skin who had felt it.

Then the ground began to shake and all hell broke loose. Teenagers ran in every which direction to find the nearest exit, Harry among them. He had to get back to the Dursleys. He pulled out his cell phone as he ran down the street, trying to keep his balance as the ground continued to shake, and dialed Inu Yasha's number.

“Fuck,” Harry mumbled angrily as he only received a busy signal in response. He jumped over a crack that was in the sidewalk and continued running towards the Dursley's.

“P-Potter...Harry! Wait up!” Dudley gasped out from the other end of the street, but he was no match for Harry's speed. As much as the overweight boy hated to admit it, his cousin was the only one who could protect him in cases like this. His train of thought was cut off as a telephone pole crashed down in front of him, causing him to scream like a girl.

Harry heard the scream from way behind him, but paid it no heed. He was standing in front of the Dursley's usually pristine house frozen in shock. The structure, which he spent 10 miserable years confined in, was now split directly down the middle and spread apart, showing half-rooms as if it were some sort of doll house. And right between the two halves, lying 20 feet embedded in the foundation, was a canyon of sorts. A red fiery glow sparked and spitted from within—but instead of sending out heat it emitted the familiar chill that suddenly filled the area moments ago.

Harry stepped forward, his human instincts telling him to get the hell out of there. There was something about the glowing hole in the ground that split the house that he found extremely threatening. He took another step forward against his better judgment. He had to find out what it was.

He was now twenty feet away from the fiery pit, the chill more intense than ever before. He idly wondered where his aunt and uncle were…or his guard for that matter. The ground, which was had been shaking with small tremors the whole while, suddenly gave a gigantic lurch, sending many floor boards and furniture falling into the abyss before him. And something else fell that caught Harry's eye. Something that made his heart stop beating. The book.