InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Midnight Blood ❯ Prologue

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Author's Notes:

NEW NOTE! This chapter has been tweaked a little. I didn't like the way I presented it before, and a few paragraphs have been added.

Sequel to “Nightwalker.”

If you haven't read that story yet, I suggest you do if you don't want spoilers or if you want to make sense of this story better. If you don't care, well, I hope you enjoy yourself anyway.

Summary: Though Mated for ten years, she wasn't sure if she loved him. But when a new terror emerges in their world, she must come to terms with her feelings, whatever they may be, or risk losing him forever.

Hey guys. Remember that storyline my sister came up with? It was a story that works out the unanswered questions about Lucy and develops Inuyasha and Kagome's relationship. Well I decided to go for it. It wasn't a bad idea after all. Plus, I just have too much fun in this universe.

Anyway, I really hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, nor do I take credit for Romiko Takahashi's genius. I'm not that good at marketing/making stories that a whole bunch of people REALLY enjoy.

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MIDNIGHT BLOOD

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Prologue

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She watched a bundle of dust flutter in front of her face for a moment before it undulated down toward the street below. From high above, the cars and the people blended together; they moved back and forth without purpose. In the distance she could hear the mumbling from many people down below, the fast-talking news reporters on TV, the sounds of cars crashing and people honking. The noise all blended together like an endless cacophony that assailed her ears night after night, and she was finding it hard to ignore. She knew the rules: don't reveal who you are, don't get involved. But everything that could have gone wrong in the last year did go wrong. An earthquake, a tsunami, the threat of a nuclear meltdown and still the people tried to move about their lives, to get some normalcy out of the hell that they were experiencing.

She sighed. It was one thing that drew attention away from her. In the ten years that she'd lived there, people had begun to ask questions. Things like, why she wouldn't eat, or why she was nowhere to be seen on sunny days, at least, not outside, or why her appearance didn't seem to change. It was getting harder and harder to say that she gets sunburn easily or that she didn't age because of good genes, especially since her friends were well into their thirties and they didn't seem in the least as smoothed skinned as she was. Ten years and she still looked the same. Her eyes were still their deep, dark blue. Her hair was still black, straight and long; it still reached the back of her knees. Her face was still childish and fair.

When tragedy struck the country back in March, there was just no more time for people to pay attention to her strange appearance, especially since there was a countrywide crisis to deal with. If only it was something less severe that had ended the suspicion, something that she could be involved in, to help with, to be useful. Yet the superimposed rules of her kind still stood, don't get involved, don't be known, act normal. “We do not exist,” she said, repeating the words her leader had told her ten years ago when he'd let her go.

It was for this reason that she was very annoyed with herself. Ten years. For nine of those years, she'd lived her life as she pleased. She worked, she studied, she graduated from school with her PhD in behavioral psychology, and she laughed and cried with her family. And yet she felt distance between the people she was once so close to. Perhaps it was the idea that she would have to leave them one day. Or maybe it was because those she knew were moving forward with their lives, and she was unable to do the same. She watched as her friends slowly fell in love and got married one by one. They often questioned her why she would never date, despite the fact that there was no lack of suitors. She sighed. Men weren't attracted to her, but the aura around her. There was a pull that her kind had toward the opposite sex, a pull that made it easy to lure humans to them. But this wasn't the reason that she never showed any interest in men.

It was because she was already mated. She was already eternally tied to another. Though she wasn't sure if she loved her life partner, she cared about his friendship too much to cheat on him.

She looked down at the street, wishing she could bring herself to care about this city, and it's people, but she couldn't. Not anymore.

In the last year, even before the earthquake hit Japan, she began to nurture a feeling of emptiness inside herself. She'd done what she'd wanted to do, she had complete control of her life, she had come to terms with what she was, but what would she do now? She knew her freedom and her time in the human world would have to end soon. Though her family had not given her a time limit, she'd always felt that ten years would be all that they could allow her. She knew the day was coming, and she knew that would not tell her human family when it finally did. It broke her heart to leave them in this chaos, but she'd done all she could to make sure they would survive and live comfortably without her. When the time came, when her mate came to take her back, she would disappear from her old family forever. The thought alone was painful and she jerked when she felt a familiar pang resound in her heart, but there was no denying that fact.

Soon she'd have to return to her other family's world and their way of life. Yet, after being part of the human world for so long, she wasn't so sure she could just as easily blend back into the other world, especially since the other world had changed so much in the last few years. The leader of her family had become King, which, she supposed, technically made her royalty. Her family was in charge of all the others like them. What was she supposed to do in that new place?

She was once human, but when he, her mate, came into her life, she had already become part of his world. When a traitor attacked her, she became one of his kind. She was a nightwalker, a demon of the night that survives on blood and raw meat. Try as she might to convince herself, she knew that she no longer belong in the human world with her human family.

She ran her hand over her eyes, pushing her bangs away from her face as she ducked her head. She walked toward the edge of the roof, and jumped down onto the balcony of her apartment. Hidden in the darkness, no one saw her jump from the roof of a five-story building onto a small balcony on the third floor. Once she was inside her bedroom, she felt the presence of one of her own. Someone landed on the balcony behind her and she prepared for a fight, but stopped when she recognized his scent. Smiling at the irony, she turned to face him.

His hair was silver, long and fell to his waist. His eyes were the same hungry gold they had always been. His appearance never changed, not since the night she'd first seen him, when he had come into her room and joined with her for the first time. “I really hate it when you do that.” 

 He blinked.  “Do what?”

“Sneak into my apartment like that. That's breaking and entering you know.” 

“Well you don't like it when I suddenly appear in front of you while you're out walking the town. So meeting you in your apartment seems to be the best bet.” He huffed.

She was about to counter him but decided against it. The first time he'd visited her, a year after they separated, shortly after she'd been granted her freedom, he suddenly appeared when she was out with her friends one night. He'd scared the daylights out her friends, but when they realized that he was someone she knew, they began to bombard her with questions that she couldn't answer. It was very difficult to explain him, his appearance, who he was, especially since he spoke to her so casually. Telling her friends that he was someone she met while she was traveling had annoyed him to no end. Yet nothing compared to when he finally met her human family. She remembered the way he had fidgeted in front of her parents and how her father looked like he was about to stab him with the kitchen knife before he smiled forcefully and let him into the house. After her father and mother had given her their approval, albeit begrudgingly, she had arranged for him to visit her only when she was alone, in light of making his visits easier on her.

“It would be nicer if you gave me a heads up whenever you came to visit. Why are you he-” She stopped when she noticed that he was breathing hard and that sweat clung to his clothes. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

He waved his hand at her concern. “I'm fine, just relieved…” She didn't miss the strange note in his voice. Someone was wrong.

“What happened?” She said.

He shook his head and grimaced. Then he faced her and the uneasy look in his eyes suddenly made her nervous. She hadn't seen that look in ten years, since the war.

“What is it Inuyasha?” She demanded. Suddenly she felt the tips of her fingers tremble. “Did something terrible happen to the family? Someone got hurt?”

He shook his head, and she let out a breath. “Then what is it?”

“Kagome,” he began, “no one…died, but…”

He walked over to her bed and sat down. She sat next to him. “But what?”

“There have been some surprise attacks on nightwalkers, especially near the `Capital.' The attacks were moving east, toward here. I was worried you might be next.”

The Capital? Kagome thought. That was what nightwalkers, her kind, called the place where the King and his family stayed. “But you know that I can take care of myself. I have for the last ten years. These attacks, what's so special about them makes you so nervous?”

Inuyasha looked around her room and then spoke. “I know that you can take care of yourself. We're not easy to kill, or gang up on, but some weird shit is happening. The nightwalkers that managed to survive the attacks came to see Sesshoumaru. They were bloody, half dead, almost insane even. And they told us that they didn't even know the attach was happening until it was to late, and that the nightwalkers that attacked them were…” He swallowed.

“Were what?” Kagome said.

“They were eating hearts, nightwalker hearts.”

Kagome covered her mouth as her stomach churned. “You're kidding.”

“I wish I was. We found bodies of nightwalkers with holes in their chests. And the last sighting of these attacks happened near this area so I came here.”

Kagome felt fear splash against her chest. Her human family was here; the country was being ravaged by a crisis. “What about the humans? The people here cant…have they caught on, are they being attacked too?”

“I don't think you have to worry about your family. For some reason, only nightwalkers are being targeted. No human has been killed. It's only nightwalkers that are piling up dead.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I know we promised you as much time as you wanted to live your life as normally as you could, but I don't think you should stay here anymore. The whole family would feel better if you came back.”

Kagome smiled ruefully. “Did Sesshoumaru order that I return?”

Inuyasha put his tongue between his fangs. It was something he would do when he knew he was in trouble. “To be honest, I left before he gave me any order. When I heard that the attacks were headed here…” He faced her, “By the way, I'm sorry. I know you wanted to live as normally as you could.”

She would have punched him if circumstances were different. “I knew this day would be coming soon anyway. Let's go.” She rose and went to her dresser. She pulled out a small tin box. Inside was where she kept her cash and a necklace that her mother, father and brother had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. Then she made her way to the window. When she noticed that he wasn't following her, she turned and tapped her foot on the ground. “What are you waiting for?”

He rose from her bed. “Aren't you going to say goodbye to your family?”

Kagome shook her head. “From this point on, I'm dead to the human world. I'm leaving without a phone or a wallet. My human family has always known I'd be gone one day, it's easier this way.”

He walked up to her and opened his mouth to say something but shook his head. Kagome felt that he was going to try and comfort her. She knew he could smell her tears, but he didn't say anything. If he had, she would have punched him for sure. They were empty tears. She had spent the last ten years dreading this day and she had already made her peace. It was time to go home. Inuyasha opened his mouth to say something but she held up her hand.

“Don't you dare say you're sorry. I've lived my life the way I wanted to for the last few years. Before you came here I had already felt that my wish to stay in the human world wasn't what I wanted anymore.”

Inuyasha nodded. “Fine. I'll keep my mouth shut.”

“Inuyasha?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” He walked out to her balcony. “We should go.”

“Right.”

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“She's looking at you.”

He looked across the street. Three women were standing at the corner. One of them, a young girl, whose blond hair glowed under the light of the street lamp, caught his eye. She was indeed looking at him and the moment she noticed him staring back, she turned her face away. He smirked at the tiny blush covering her face.

“Are you going to chase her?” His companion said.

“Too young for my taste.”

“Hmph, so says the man who prefers women who are over a hundred years old.”

“Wouldn't it be better for a man to seek a woman who is near his own age?”

His friend swept his arm out, gesturing toward the women across the street. “I meant, weren't you going to hunt?”

He sighed, looking at the tall, broad silhouette that was his companion. “If you're so eager, why don't you go after her?”

“I prefer not to. Besides, it looks like they're leaving.”

He turned to look down the street again. The women had already filed into their car. “Is there a reason you called me out here?”

His friend laughed. “I was trying to lure you out of your self-banishment.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Narek. You can't stay hidden forever.”

“You know as well as I do that I can, Chase. I have forever.”

Chase laughed again. Standing there, under the flickering, florescent street lamp, he shrugged. He is shaped like a bear, Narek thought, tall, broad, and muscular with eyes and skin there were a healthy dark brown.

“Unlike you, I don't have as many enemies. It's not like I can move about as freely as you do under this new regime. Besides, I happen to like my solitude.” Narek said.

“And living alongside Lucy hasn't made you go out of your mind yet?”

“She is our family's head. Besides, she leaves me alone and I leave her alone. Simple.”

“What about Alex?”

“An annoyance, but I can deal with him by giving him a good punch or two.”

Chase let out a long, tired breath. “There's no reasoning with you. For the last one hundred years, you've done nothing but betray and cling to the shadows, and now, after I kept the King and his brother from killing you, you're still punishing yourself.”

Narek glared at Chase. He turned to face the man, to retort but suddenly stopped. The scent in the wind had changed, and he could hear several footsteps approaching. The footsteps slowed and then sped up suddenly. They were coming in a cautious and yet half hazard way, as though they were aware that enemies were close and yet they were still excited for a battle.

“You feel that too, I assume.” Chase said.

“An ambush?” Narek smirked. “That's the first in ten years.”

“Is that excitement I hear in your voice?” Chase squared his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. Narek faced the darkness down the street. Suddenly, several shadowy figures came at them, and neither man had time to prepare, for they were suddenly fighting for their lives.

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A/N

First of all, I wanted to call attention that while I'm writing this, I hope I am not being in the least bit offensive toward the Japanese. It breaks my heart that such a tragedy happened in their country and that they are still fighting it. I wanted to say that the Red Cross is still accepting donations to help with earthquake and the tsunami relief. I know it's been a while since March, but things are still difficult for the people who are caught in the middle of it. Please do what you can to help, I did.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and see you next time.