InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Twisted Fate ( Chapter 4 )

~~Chapter 4~~

~Twisted Fate~

 

-=0=-

 

 

“Five is the normal fee.”

 

Kurt didn't bat an eye as he watched Harlan slowly circle the small demon. It hadn't moved since he'd put it down in the middle of the examination table.

 

“It's smaller than the ones you normally bring in,” he went on, pulling a penlight from his pocket and tentatively pushing back its eyelid.

 

“Don't insult me, Dr. Harlan,” he growled in an even tone. “That's one of the most powerful ones I've seen, and if you're not willing to pay what I want, then I'll just take it elsewhere.”

 

“Wait, wait,” the good professor hurriedly said, letting go of its eyelid as he scowled at it. “You say it's more powerful, but it doesn't look it. Surely you can appreciate my predicament here. I have to answer to my investors, and shelling out that much for one untried specimen . . . Well, I'm sure you can see the problem here.”

 

“And it is your problem, not mine,” Kurt maintained, reaching for the black leather gloves that he'd peeled off when he'd arrived at the nondescript building. Situated on the outskirts of the Chicago suburb amid other medical research facilities that all pretty much looked the same, Bradford Medical was a good cover for the clandestine establishment, but the research done here was entirely different.

 

Research aside, though, the other thing that made this building different from the others were the strips of paper that were embedded around the perimeter of the building, itself—papers that, with the proper inscriptions, ensured that other demons wouldn't sense the presence of the ones inside. Kurt, himself, had mounted them—had painted over them with weatherproof paint. For that task, he had managed to demand a payment of twenty-five thousand dollars—a price that the cheapskates were willing to pay since none of them were willing to tangle with the beasts without the proper precautions in place.

 

“It doesn't look powerful,” Harlan stated again dubiously, his beady little eyes taking on a calculating slant as he turned to eye Kurt over his shoulder.

 

“Let it rip your heart out of your chest so you can watch yourself die and see if you still agree,” Kurt remarked acerbically as he pushed himself away from the wall with a nonchalant shrug. “I already called Claxton in Houston, and they're very interested . . .”

 

“Claxton, huh?” he echoed, tapping his chin with his index finger—a nervous habit that irritated Kurt nonetheless. “Hell of a trip with one of these.”

 

“Be worth my while,” Kurt replied, taking a step toward the form on the gurney, his intention clear: either they bargain reasonably or he really would take it somewhere else.

 

“Six,” Harlan grudgingly offered.

 

Kurt's gaze flew back to Harlan. He had been eyeing the security team stationed around the perimeter of the large room. Seven men on detail, and Kurt doubted that it was nearly enough to deal with that particular demon if it should happen to freak out . . . With a tight and completely insincere smile, he stepped toward the gurney, his intention clear: negotiations were over. Six hundred thousand dollars for that particular demon was an insult, in his opinion.

 

“You get what you pay for, Dr. Harlan,” Kurt muttered.

 

To his credit, the professor looked duly perturbed. On the one hand, it was evident that he dearly wanted to get his hands on this one. On the other, he hesitated at the price that Kurt had stipulated, and Kurt could probably understand that, too. Too bad that this was all strictly business. If Claxton would pay more, then that that's where he'd go.

 

Loosening the restraint holding its left hand in place, Kurt held onto it as he skirted around the gurney. It was still out cold and probably would be for awhile. He'd taken care to dose it a little heavier than he had the night before since it seemed to have a high resistance to the tranquilizers on a whole. Three different kinds of tranquilizers, and none of them had knocked it out for more than a couple hours, tops. He'd given it another shot before wrestling it out of the rental car, just to be on the safe side.

 

He made quick work of taping its wrists together, slapping a couple extra seals between the layers of duct tape. He'd also cut its claws before leaving the rented office building where he'd been keeping it just in case. Those claws were just like dog's claws with a vein that extended up into it. He'd cut one of them a little too short, and it had bled like a stuck pig—yet another mess that he'd had to clean up, of course.

 

“If I had some proof that it's as powerful as you say . . .” Harlan blurted in a plaintive tone.

 

Kurt didn't spare him a glance as he ripped the tape and strode toward the end of the gurney to unbind its feet. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Harlan that he'd do well to reinforce the paltry leather straps attached to the table, but didn't. What did he care if the damn things got loose and killed the lot of them, anyway? Overbearing, condescending bastards . . . thought that they knew how to control these beasts when their `control' was only illusory, at best.

 

“Wait, Doc,” Harlan said, striding over and pushing Kurt away from the gurney as he reached for the second restraint. “Don't be hasty . . . say we let the meds wear off of it . . . I'd like to observe it for a day or so before we finish discussing the terms.”

 

Kurt slowly shook his head. “It doesn't leave my custody until it's paid for.”

 

Harlan grimaced then pasted on a bright, if not completely fake, smile. “Okay, okay . . . how about this? I can give you the five now, right? If it proves out to be as powerful as you claim, then we'll authorize a . . . shall we say . . . bonus?”

 

Kurt didn't miss the man's flash of near panic that filtered over his features at the offer. “How do I know that you won't damage it just so that you don't have to make good on that?”

 

Harlan chuckled nervously. “Damage it . . .? Why would we do that? We only observe them . . .”

 

“Cut the crap, Harlan,” Kurt intoned, narrowing his eyes on the pudgy, balding man. “Now, I can't say that I give a shit, one way or the other, but you don't really think that I'm too stupid to realize that none of the others that I've brought in to you is still here, which means that you let `em go, sold them to another lab, or killed them . . . Guess which one of those I'm banking on?”

 

Harlan backpedaled quickly enough, then grasped Kurt's arm to lead him farther away. “We have run some tests . . . to check their immunities . . .”

 

Kurt shrugged offhandedly, as much to shake off the man's grasp as to indicate his utter indifference. “Spare me. I don't care what you do with them—after you've paid me.”

 

Harlan heaved a sigh, adjusting the lapels of his lab coat. “Okay . . . five now—your standard finder's fee . . . another two-fifty after it regains consciousness, and we verify that it's healthy, and another two-fifty if it proves to be as powerful as you claim.”

 

Kurt considered the offer and slowly nodded. In truth, he'd been doubtful that he could get seven-fifty out of them, and while he wasn't particularly pleased with the idea of waiting for part of the payment, he wasn't too worried about getting the shaft. They could talk big if that's what they wanted to do. He knew that they understood that they'd be shit out of luck if he decided not to supply them anymore.

 

Sure, they employed a couple other freelance hunters. Too bad that their real catches had been nothing more than flukes. Though they often professed to be able to sense the demons, it hadn't taken Kurt long to figure out that they were just blowing hot air. To his knowledge, there were only a couple of people in the world who actually could do what he did, and of those that he'd met—he could name two of them—one was a crazy old man who had lost his precarious touch with reality long ago, and the other? Well, that guy lived in a constant state of denial about the monsters he saw sometimes when he walked down the streets near his home in Heidelberg, Germany . . .

 

Kurt had sought him out after hearing whispers of some astounding young man who wrote books that were rumored to be based on the creatures that he saw—creatures that hid themselves in the guise of humans. He'd been cautiously optimistic that the writer would know something about them that Kurt didn't. Unfortunately, Stefan Ulrich refused to acknowledge the things he saw, and Kurt . . . Well, he couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him, in the end. Living his life behind the confines of a three-foot-thick stone wall, complete with security cameras stationed in every single room of his modest home, he ventured out when he was with a group of people—as though other humans could possibly provide any sort of real defense against the demons that frightened him.

 

His family hadn't been killed by the monsters, but maybe it was just as bad. His father had bailed out when he was a child after Stefan had claimed that his boss at work was one of those things. His mother had signed the papers to have him committed to the Schliessel Assisted Living Center—a nice name for a nut house—in Hamburg about a year later, and from what Kurt could tell, Stefan had spent the majority of his youth in soothingly painted beige rooms devoid of furniture with electronic fields over the windows. They shocked him if he tried to reach through them to touch the glass panes. With a quiet smile, he'd said that they'd been afraid that he'd bust the windows and use the glass to cut himself . . .

 

Still, Kurt had felt for the young man in the end. Taking his time as he set up a protective barrier around the perimeter of the home, he knew well enough that such a show of generosity wasn't really in his nature, and yet, he really had felt sorry for young Stefan—an emotion that Kurt hadn't thought that he possessed anymore.

 

Still, he had almost laughed outright the one time that he was here when another of their supposed hunters for hire had brought in his catch of the day. The idiot had brought in a chimpanzee—where or how he'd managed to find it, Kurt never found out and didn't really care—citing that it was the creature's “true form” and that it “talked” to him. He'd been inclined to tell the powers-that-be that it really was a demon, just to give himself something to chuckle about later—at least, he'd considered it until he remembered that he hadn't laughed in years.

 

But it irked him to hell and back that those damn researchers didn't trust his judgment. After all, every beast he'd brought them was the real thing.

 

Dr. Harlan smiled in what Kurt supposed he thought was a warm affectation. To him, it seemed entirely facetious—the kind of expression that was offered to pesky children or to the waitress who snapped her gum and tapped the toe of her white canvas Keds sneaker as she waited to take your order. “Put it in the cage,” he ordered when Kurt nodded once more.

 

Two of the security guards stepped forward without a word. Kurt shook his head at the perceived carelessness. They were wearing riot gear, sure—par for course in this place—but it seemed to him that they were underestimating it entirely; lulled into a false sense of security since the demon still had yet to move.

 

The one guard unfastened the last binding that secured it in place. The two pulled the demon off the gurney, its feet dragging across the cold cement floor. The other guards fell in behind them as they headed out of the room to take it to the holding area with their tranquilizer rifles trained on the unconscious form.

 

“Authorize that payment now,” Kurt demanded mildly.

 

Dr. Harlan nodded, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

 

A loud bang, the sound of men yelling at one another erupted in the distance. He gritted his teeth as he broke into a sprint when a volley of gunfire rang out. Muttering curses under his breath, he dashed out of the room and down the hallway, stopping short as he rounded the corner into the holding room.

 

The two men who had been holding it lay sprawled just inside the doorway. Kurt didn't stop to find out if they were dead or alive, stepping over them with his eyes fixed on the demon. It was surrounded by the remaining guards who seemed to be at a loss as to what, exactly, they ought to do. Three yellow-tagged tranquilizer darts permeated its skin, and it still showed no sign of wavering. Somehow, it had managed to wrangle its hands to the front, and it stood at ready, neither moving nor shying away.

 

Three of the guards rushed forward. It whipped around in a blur of motion too fast for his gaze to discern, bringing its clenched fists down against one man's throat. Momentum brought the demon down into a crouch, and, planting those hands on the floor, it spun around, kicking out it's legs in a scissor motion, locking its ankles around the second guard to bring him down, twisting its body as it pushed off the floor enough to force more power into its legs before smashing the heel of its foot into the center of the man's chest to make sure he stayed there. The third guard dashed forward, unleashing a loud battle cry. The demon lifted its feet, let its legs bend as it caught the guard in the center of his chest and shoved him back. He didn't stumble; his feet didn't touch the ground as he flew back, hitting the two way mirrored, tempered glass wall across the room. The mirror did nothing to slow the man's momentum, but the concrete wall on the other side of the observation deck did, and the impact rattled through the building, the sound dulled but the resulting tremor reminding Kurt of a sonic boom. Kurt shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. He'd known, of course, that it was powerful. He'd known that, and even though it swayed slightly as it got to its feet again, he didn't delude himself into thinking that it couldn't very easily take out the remaining two guards without any trouble at all.

 

Damn it, it shouldn't be that cognizant. It had been heavily sedated since he'd caught it. None of the others that he'd brought in had ever woken up while he was dealing with the bargaining of fees and payment arrangements. Powerful, maybe, but . . . just what the hell was that one . . .?

 

“I thought you tranquilized it!” Dr. Harlan hissed between labored breaths as he trotted into the room.

 

“And you saw that I did,” Kurt shot back mildly since Dr. Harlan had been in the docking bay when Kurt had arrived with the demon. True to protocol, he had administered the dosage that Harlan had handed to him, himself, before he'd hauled it out of his car with the good doctor standing right there.

 

“Do something before it tears up the place!” Harlan demanded.

 

Kurt snorted indelicately and stepped forward, methodically removing the black leather glove covering his right hand. One of the remaining guards fumbled around, jerking the gun from the holster on his hip. The demon noticed it and laid back its ears, uttering a fierce growl as the man, hands shaking, brought up the weapon, aiming it directly at the demon's chest.

 

“No!” Kurt yelled, darting forward to intervene. “Don't be stupid!”

 

But the little demon leapt at the man, raising both fists to strike. The man screamed and squeezed his eyes closed as he pulled the trigger in rapid succession. The deafening sound of the firing gun resounded in the room, but didn't stop the beast. Kurt heard the bullets hit the wall behind him—the fool had missed. The beast was bringing its fists down hard, and in a last ditch effort to reach it, Kurt sprang forward, bringing his hand down on its shoulder as a hiss of energy surged from him in a flash of purple light.

 

The demon crumpled to the floor in a pitiful heap as Kurt glowered at the guard. “Put that away,” he growled, pushing the demon onto its back with the toe of his boot. He'd been careful not to hit it too hard with the full brunt of his power, but it had been enough. Dark blue eyes staring at him with emotion that he didn't want to understand as a thin rivulet of blood dripped down the demon's cheek from the singed streak where a bullet had grazed it, he slowly shook his head and, seeing no help for it, hauled it over his shoulder as he stepped past the guards, heading for the small cage situated in the center of the observation room. “Do anything like that again, and I'll kill you, myself,” he muttered, knowing damn well that it could hear him.

 

He shoved the monster through the door and slammed it shut, touching the panel that hissed as the air lock slipped into place. The cage was one that he'd built for the center. It looked like a large dog kennel—that's where he'd come up with the design—but every single bar had notes sealed into them—notes that would hurt the demons if they tried to break them. The control panel on the outside of the door was the same, but that was just a safety lock, anyway. The real locking mechanism was the main cage that extended up out of the floor once the computer lockdown was initiated. No sooner did he pull his hand back from the device than the slow series of beeps tell him that Harlan had initiated the main lockdown from the terminal near the door. The grates rose up and locked into place with a heavy clank, and all the while, the little demon stared at him.

 

“It won't be moving around for awhile,” Kurt said, standing up and pulling a pad of Post-It notes out of his jacket. Reasonably certain that the creature was secured, sure, but something about this one made him uneasy. It was just too damn powerful, wasn't it? And that feeling of unease ticked him off.

 

He plastered the entire top of the cage with more of the notes then stepped back, lifting his hand perpendicular to his face, his index and middle fingers extended as he closed his eyes and muttered the words to activate the seal. Satisfied that it was finally secured, he spared another moment to eye his handiwork before turning back to face the men once more.

 

He wasn't entirely surprised that they were all staring at him with varying degrees of awe laced with fear in their expressions. Two of the guards had woken up, and the one it had managed to club was stirring. Harlan met Kurt's gaze and tried to cover the utter revulsion in his expression a moment too late.

 

Kurt didn't say a word as he strode toward the door.

 

“You can wire the entire amount right now,” he muttered before he strode out of the room. “I think my claim's been proven, don't you?”

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Gunnar Inutaisho leafed through the small stack of pink “while you were out” notes he'd found lying in the center of his desk when he'd walked into his office at the youkai special crimes office. Nothing that couldn't wait until later, he figured, dropping them into a careless heap as he reached for the steaming mug of coffee that his secretary had slipped onto his desk a few minutes ago.

 

“Hey, Gunnar . . . you just get in?”

 

Gunnar nodded as he turned in time to see his cousin, Bas poke his head into the office. “Yeah. Why's Ms. Dunkirk calling me? I thought you were handling that case . . .”

 

Bas sighed and stepped into the office. He started to close the door but stopped when Connie asked if he'd like a cup of coffee, too. “No, thanks,” he said as he quietly closed it. “You, uh, heard from Sam?”

 

Gunnar sat down behind his desk and leaned back. “No,” he supplied slowly. “Should I have?”

 

Bas rubbed his face and smiled, though the expression was entirely too thin to me marked. “No, I just thought . . . maybe she'd called you instead of me.”

 

Gunnar shook his head and sipped the coffee. “She's out on assignment, isn't she? That Benoit case, right?”

 

Bas nodded, but he still looked entirely unsettled. “Yeah, she is, but she hasn't called since she located him.”

 

Gunnar digested that for a moment then shifted his gaze to the computer monitor on his desk. Tapping the keypad built into the arm of his desk chair, he pulled up the reports around Chicago and the outlying areas. Newspapers, news stories, weather reports . . . `Technology can be a bitch,' he thought with a wry smile as he navigated the pages via the trackball under his fingertips. “Hmm . . . looks like they got one hell of a storm,” he pointed out reasonably, nodding slightly to indicate that Bas should look at the monitor, too. “Knocked out power in a number of areas . . . tornadoes verified just outside the city . . . Maybe it knocked out cells for awhile, too.”

 

“Maybe,” Bas agreed in a tone that indicated that he didn't really believe it, at all.

 

Gunnar didn't say anything as he scanned the pages of headlines. “Nothing remarkable,” he finally said with a shake of his head. Turning his attention to Bas once more, Gunnar regarded him in silence for a moment then sighed. “Bas . . . she's only been gone a couple days, hasn't she?”

 

Bas nodded. “Yeah.”

 

“So maybe you're worrying about nothing.”

 

Bas nodded again. “Yeah . . .” Letting out a deep breath, he rubbed a hand over his face and leveled a serious look at Gunnar. “She knows that she's supposed to call,” he pointed out quietly.

 

Gunnar was inclined to agree, but given Bas' grave expression, he figured he'd be better off not to voice that thought. “Maybe she lost the target after she acquired him.”

 

“Gunnar . . .”

 

“What?”

 

Bas looked like he was deliberating whether or not he wanted to voice his current line of thought. “I . . . I've got a really bad feeling about this . . . and so does Sydnie.”

 

Gunnar nodded. He'd figured that it was something like that. “Sydnie's pregnant. Her feelings are impaired,” he half-joked.

 

“And me?” Bas countered mildly, arching a golden eyebrow.

 

Gunnar smiled slightly. “You're pregnant by proxy.”

 

Bas sighed and shook his head, but he finally smiled. “You're a jackass,” he muttered, standing up to leave.

 

Gunnar chuckled and shrugged. “Probably,” he agreed.

 

He watched Bas go as the slight smirk on his features dimmed as he reached for the telephone but didn't pick it up until after Bas had closed the door behind himself.

 

“Myrna,” he said when the sound of the youkai woman's voice greeted him after two rings.

 

“Ah, Lord Puppy-pants . . . what can I do for you?”

 

“I need you to do something for me.”

 

“Hmm, okay . . . what kind of `something' are we talking about?”

 

Gunnar sighed and sat back. “I need you to hack into Ian MacDonnough's system. I need to know everything you can find about that Benoit character.”

 

“The MacDonnough's system?” Myrna echoed dubiously. “Wow, nothing like asking for huge favors . . .”

 

“Just do what you can,” he stated.

 

Myrna uttered a small hum. “Anything in particular?”

 

Tapping his claws on the polished surface of the desk, Gunnar's eyes narrowed dangerously. “I need to know if Sam could take him down.”

 

“Sam,” Myrna repeated. “How'd she get sent in on that? Benoit would have fallen into Zelig's jurisdiction.”

 

“Call it a comedy of errors,” Gunnar intoned. “Just have that information for me as fast as you can.”

 

“Will do, Son of the Puppy . . .”

 

“Thanks.”

 

He dropped the phone into the cradle and leaned to the side, curling an articulated finger over his mouth as he propped his chin on his hand. Samantha took her job seriously, and he knew it. She wouldn't ignore protocol, and he knew that, too. She would have called, at least to give a progress report, even if she had failed to secure her target right off, and that was the hell of it, wasn't it? Bas was right, damn it. Something struck him as strange, too . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Samantha rubbed her arms in the filmy darkness of the room where they'd finally left her. The row of security lights that ran around the perimeter of the large, drafty room did little to dispel the pervasive darkness. One of the fluorescent bulbs in the far right corner flickered but clung to life, and in the quiet, she could hear herself breathing.

 

If she could just figure out where the hell she was, she'd be able to settle herself down, at least a little bit. After the incident yesterday when she'd taken down five of the guards, they'd pretty well left her alone, which wasn't to say that she wasn't of sovereign interest to them. On the contrary, it seemed to her that they'd spent the bulk of the day watching her, scribbling notes on their clipboards, but they seemed to be a little afraid to come near her, even when they'd opened the four inch high slot that ran along the base of the cage in order to slip a tray with a crockery bowl of dog kibble and a metal tin of water through. She'd stared at the food with unabashed surprise, unsure exactly what to make of it, but she'd figured out quickly enough that the men in the white lab coats seemed to believe that she was some kind of animal.

 

It was some kind of research facility; that much she'd figured out. She'd also realized fairly quickly that the one who had brought her here had somehow managed to remove her concealment, too. She'd overheard the men talking amongst themselves about her ears and fangs. Apparently, the holy man had to have warned them to trim her claws, too, because the only other time they'd bothered to come near her was to tell her with as few words as possible that she needed to stick her hands through so that they could trim them.

 

Tucking her legs a little tighter under herself, she grimaced and bit the inside of her cheek. She needed to pee, but she was loathe to do it. When she'd finally managed to move after the holy man had zapped her, she'd noticed that the cage was not only affixed to the floor, but it was situated over a six inch drain in the floor, too. In the time since, she'd figure out two more very important things about that drain. Firstly, a lot of really cold air came out of it, and the second thing?

 

Biting her lip as a humiliated flush crept up her cheeks, she'd rather not think about the second thing. It hadn't taken long for her to realize that they weren't about to accommodate her as far as taking her to the bathroom, either. In fact, one of them had even said that `it' could go wherever `it' was, and that was true, too. She'd even gone as far as to rattle the bars of the cage, ignoring the painful jolts that shot through her for her efforts. In the back of her mind, she had considered breaking down and asking them to take her, but in the end, stubborn pride had kept her silent, though to her own mortification, she hadn't been able to control her body, either. In the end, they'd gotten out the power hose and had turned it on her, blasting both her and the cage with the icy spray in what they called, “cleaning it up.”

 

Which was partially why she was freezing now. The draft coming up from the drain didn't help, either, but she didn't delude herself into thinking that she'd at least be a little more comfortable if she weren't soaking wet.

 

Letting her forehead fall against the cold bars of the cage, she closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. How had she ended up here? The time that had passed since she'd been captured was little more than a dull blur in her mind, and she had no way of knowing exactly how long had passed since that fateful night. The conspicuous lack of windows both in the small room where the holy man had taken her as well as this place made it impossible for her to gauge the time accurately. The only reason that she knew it was night now was because the men in the white coats had left awhile ago, murmuring last minute instructions to the man in the brown service suit—her warden, she figured.

 

The bars of the cage really were reinforced. She'd figured that out a little while ago. The guard was leaning back in a metal chair behind the wide desk that was lined with monitors and glowing buttons—a far sight better than earlier when he'd strolled around the cage, glowering at her as though he thought that she were going to sprout a few more heads or try to eat him. She hadn't moved an inch, refusing to allow herself to retreat to the far side of the cage—refusing to even look at him as he slowly sized her up.

 

After almost an hour of pacing around, though, he'd suddenly grinned nastily as he pushed his hat back to scratch his head. “You're not so tough,” he decided, kicking the bars of the cage for good measure. The incursion had activated the ofuda that seemed to have been sealed into the bars, though, and she couldn't help the smothered gasp that escaped her when the residual energy shot through her with a vicious jolt. White hot fire burned her deep, and, satisfied that he'd made his point, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, whistling off key as he strode over to the desk, falling asleep while reading a magazine.

 

“Do anything like that again, and I'll kill you, myself . . .”

 

Shivering slightly as the thread behind the words echoed through her mind, she sighed and drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her ankles in a vain effort to retain some measure of warmth. She didn't doubt that he was fully capable of making good on that threat. Still, why did she feel like it was just a threat, after all? She didn't know the holy man, not really, and yet she couldn't help but think that he really wouldn't hurt her, even if she wasn't feeling up to testing that theory. He hadn't used the full extent of his power in bringing her down. She knew that he hadn't. He was strong—really strong—maybe as strong in spiritual power as Kagome, herself, was . . .

 

`He has . . . violet eyes . . .' she thought almost absently as she scrunched herself a little smaller against the corner of the cage. Black hair cut short though the bangs were a bit on the longish side, his sideburns were touched with gray. Those eyes had been scowling at her as she lay immobile at his feet. Those seconds when their eyes had met, though, she knew that he understood what she was trying to tell him, even if he'd ignored her plea in the end. He wasn't a small man, by any means. Easily six feet tall—maybe an inch or two over—with a sturdy build though he wasn't even close to the brute of a man that Bas Zelig was. No, it was obvious to her that he took care of himself though maybe it was a little more difficult to maintain as he grew older. Still, she could sense the man's power easily enough, especially since the medication that he'd kept pumping into her had worn off. With her mind cleared of the drugged fog, she could process things with a lot more clarity.

 

She remembered hearing rumors regarding youkai disappearances. At the time, it had been speculated that they were fighting amongst themselves. They all seemed to have been lesser-youkai, anyway—the beings that were only a bare step above being complete animals. Most of those kinds ended up on the hunt list sooner or later. They didn't know how to control their impulses, and since the way of the youkai tended to revolve around violence, it wasn't entirely surprising that they'd eventually turn renegade, either. She'd discounted the rumors she'd heard, figuring, like everyone else, that the disappearances were mere infighting, but now . . .

 

Had they been hunted down like she'd been? Had they been brought here or to another facility like this somewhere else? Maybe not all of them—it was too easy to chalk up every single incident to the same cause, wasn't it? Still, she didn't have to be brilliant to understand that the holy man had obviously captured beings like her before, even if she doubted that he'd ever managed to snag anyone as advanced as she was.

 

But why . . .?

 

She'd sensed his anger, his perceived lack of caring, and yet she'd understood somehow that it wasn't necessarily her that he hated. It was more of a general dislike, wasn't it? An animosity for her kind as a whole . . . Hadn't she seen the emptiness in his gaze? He was just going through the motions, wasn't he? Living because he wasn't dead yet, but unwilling to look for the good in the world, too . . .

 

Heaving a quiet sigh, she shook her head, slightly irritated with herself for letting her mind dwell on the holy man. Chances were that she'd never see him again, anyway, right?

 

Besides that, she had bigger things to worry about; things like just how the hell she was going to manage to escape from this place . . .

 

 

~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~= ~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~*~=~

A/N:

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Final Thought from Samantha:

Where …am I …?

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Vendetta): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~