InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Proof ( Chapter 10 )

~~Chapter 10~~

~Proof~

 

-=0=-

 

 

Kurt frowned at the slightly smashed and dented cheeseburger that he'd picked up earlier. Warmed up in the utilitarian microwave just a little too long, the bun had taken on a somewhat rubbery consistency not unlike shoe leather, he supposed.

 

It was his own fault, he figured, for not paying a lot of attention to the food. Staring instead at the motionless figure inside the cage, he almost thought that it wasn't paying any attention to him at all if it weren't for the way its ears kept twitching.

 

Giving up all pretenses that he was actually going to eat the sandwich, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. The demon's ears twisted around, almost facing backward as the small, dull rattle sounded again.

 

Narrowing his gaze when the demon turned its head just enough to look at him out of the periphery of its vision. Reaching for his book, he opened it in his lap, watching through the veil of his bangs that had fallen forward as he wondered just what the hell it thought it was doing.

 

It didn't do anything for a few minutes, and he could sense that it was still eyeing him though he couldn't rightfully tell. Still, he trusted his instincts well enough. `Sneaky beast,' he thought with an inward sneer. `Just what the hell are you up to, anyway?'

 

He pressed his lips together in a thin line as he turned the page.

 

He knew that it was up to something, just like he knew that it could talk, just like he knew that the few times he'd actually deigned to approach the cage, it had been trying to tell him something even though it stubbornly refused to speak. In the week that had passed since he'd started watching it at night, he'd tried a few times to get it to talk. He knew it could; it had very obviously spoken to him when he'd had it at his office. So why was it playing dumb now?

 

Just last night, he'd stomped over there and all but demanded that it speak though to be completely honest, he hadn't really expected for it to comply. After all, if it was going to, it would have started to do so already, wouldn't it?

 

But it had stared at him for moment with an intensity in its expression that was almost uncanny. Lifting its eyes as though it were looking at something high above the both of them, it had slowly lowered its gaze again. Too bad Kurt wasn't in any sort of mood to play the little demon's games, and he'd stared at it for another moment before stomping away, muttering curses under his breath since he wasn't sure why he even bothered to try to get it to talk.

 

Okay, so that wasn't completely true. He knew damn well why he had tried. With every day that passed, he couldn't help but get a little more irritated that it was making him look like a damn fool. Those research bastards were laughing at him, and he knew it, thinking that he'd finally cracked and lost his mind. Talking to those beasts? Yeah, he could understand why they'd think he was mad. The other demons he'd brought in had spoken to some extent, even if it were confined to single words and guttural sounds—normally curses, of course. But this one . . . maybe it was more advanced than the others had been, and maybe that was the reason why it could talk. That was probably also the reason why it was refusing to do it now.

 

Even still, he was about to decide that he was being paranoid, after all, when it finally moved. Leaning forward in a very quiet movement, he hear the strange scrape as it sat up again, cradling its hand to its chest as it scrunched up its shoulders as though it were protecting something. A moment later, he heard the dull rattle—come to think of it, he'd heard that sound quite a few times over the past week, hadn't he—and before he could stop to think about it, he stood up and crossed the floor to the cage.

 

“What do you have?” he demanded.

 

The little demon jerked like he had startled it then shot him a perfectly blank look.

 

“Don't give me that,” he growled, reaching into the cage to grab its arm. It was faster, shoving against the side as it scooted back, still cradling its hand against its chest with its back smashed against the bars. It didn't wince at the jolt it got for rattling the bars of the cage too hard, but Kurt didn't miss the suspect brightness enter its gaze, either. “What do you have in your hand?” he demanded again.

 

Damned if it didn't keep staring at him in that completely stupid way. Kurt had had enough of its games. Slamming his hand against the release lock, he yanked the door open and reached into the cage, grabbing the little demon and dragging it out. “Do anything stupid, and it'll be the last thing you ever do,” he warned as he seized its wrist and pried its fingers open.

 

It uttered a small sound—almost like a smothered sob though its eyes remained steady and clear, and it crumpled to the floor, suspended only by his hand around its wrist as he stared at the six kibbles that it had been holding onto.

 

A fleeting surge of emotion swept through him; one that he didn't want to identify as he let go of its wrist and let it drop. The dog food fell to the floor in a deafening clatter in the silent room. Staring at the demon for a long minute, Kurt slowly shook his head. “I wasn't going to take it away from you,” he muttered, unsure exactly why he was saying anything at all to the beast. Maybe it was just the understanding that, at least at that moment, it was far more pathetic than he'd ever been . . .

 

It didn't try to move. It didn't try to fight him. Hunched over on the floor, its dull, grimy hair hanging into its face in nothing but a filthy, smelly old hospital smock, it didn't look even remotely fierce or tough, and while he wasn't fool enough to underestimate it, he certainly didn't fear it, either.

 

“Get in there,” he ordered, tapping the cage with the toe of his boot.

 

It didn't move. Kurt scowled, unsure why he felt like it wasn't trying to disobey him as much as that it really couldn't do it. Narrowing his eyes as he carefully regarded it, he had to admit that in the harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs, it really had diminished. Shoulders thinner, bonier—he could see that despite the thin smock that covered it, everywhere he looked, he could make out angles and bones protruding just under its skin.

 

What the hell was it doing? That wasn't right . . . if it were trying to eat the food, then why was it so damn frail looking?

 

Something wasn't right, was it? Unable to make sense of it, Kurt glanced at the empty cage then stopped. `The . . . drain . . .'

 

And he understood. It hadn't been holding onto the food to eat it; it had been deliberately dropping them down the drain to make the researchers think that it had been eating all along . . . What the hell was it doing? Trying to starve itself . . .? Enraged that it would try to do something as stupid—irritated as hell that he had almost—almost—felt a little sorry for it—Kurt uttered a frustrated growl and gestured at the cage once more. “Get in there.”

 

It swayed slightly but made no move to comply. Kurt snorted and grasped its wrist again, its pulse erratic and thready under his fingertips as he brought it to its knees and pushed it toward the cage. It gasped but complied, crawling somewhat slowly back into the darkness of the cage once more as Kurt shoved the door closed behind it and secured the locking mechanism.

 

`What the hell do I care if it starves itself?' he fumed as he stomped back over to the desk once more and plopped into the chair. Irritation rising rapidly—it was trying to make him feel sorry for it, wasn't it? Was that its new ploy? Well, he was on to it, damn it. There was no way on earth that he was going to fall for that, just none.

 

`Yeah, but . . . if it starves itself . . .'

 

Ignoring the voice in the back of his head that he'd always thought sounded quite like his father, Kurt snatched up the newspaper and loudly shook it out.

 

`If it starves itself,' the voice stated again, `you know well enough that Harlan won't finish paying you.'

 

Damned if that didn't get his attention entirely. Unfortunately, that was entirely accurate, and he knew it. If something happened to the little demon before they finished paying him, then he was just shit out of luck, wasn't he?

 

“Eat,” he stated, crossing his arms as he glowered down at the huddled form inside the cage.

 

It didn't move.

 

Rolling his eyes, he wondered how bad it would be if he dragged it out of the cage and force-fed it . . . As if it gave a damn about what happened to it—he didn't—really didn't—but there was no way that the stupid creature was going to cost him money, too . . .

 

And he really was pondering doing exactly that when it finally sat up, its eyes glowing in the semi-darkness.

 

“Eat,” he demanded once more, hunkering down to get a better look at it.

 

Its only response was a slow blink.

 

Glancing at the food and water bowls, Kurt snorted. Somehow during the ruckus—maybe when he'd dragged it out of the cage earlier—the water had been upset. The empty bowl was upended on the side of the food dish, and with a muffled curse, Kurt reached around, unlatching the small panel that popped up so that he could grab the water dish and pulled it out of the cage. Heaving a sigh, he stomped over to refill the empty bowl and returned, shoving it into the cage without spilling it though a bit did slosh precariously.

 

The little demon watched him, its eyes still alert enough. No sooner had he slipped the panel back into place than it sat up in the cage, grasping the water bowl in shaking hands as it lifted it to its face.

 

Why did it surprise him that it drank from the bowl as though it were a cup—albeit a very large one? Sputtering, choking, it gulped down the water as fast as it could, its throat bobbing in greedy swallows as dribbles of liquid spilled onto its chest.

 

Shaking his head in abject disgust, Kurt rolled his eyes and snorted. “Jesus, you'd think that it hadn't had a drop to drink in . . . Shit!” he bellowed as realization dawned on him. If it had been dumping its food down the drain, would it actually have been drinking, either? With a muffled curse, Kurt reached through the bars and smacked the bowl out of its hands. It clunked uselessly against the grate floor, the metal clanking with an empty ring as the demon slumped back against the cage wall.

 

Heaving a sigh, Kurt pulled his hand out, resting his elbows on his bent knees as he continued to regard the strange little demon. It stared at him for a long moment before leaning to the side as a pitiful wretch brought every last drop of water right back up again. “Damn it!” Kurt hissed, hopping back out of the way. The demon heaved a couple times, resting on its hands and knees, and as irritated as Kurt was, he couldn't help but notice that the only thing that it threw up was water . . . “God, you're stupid—stupid!” he growled, pushing himself to his feet and stomping over to the water spout. With a deft tug, he loosened the power hose and strode back over to the cage once more.

 

The little demon saw the bright yellow hose and pushed itself back into the deepest corner of the cage, eyes squeezing closed, ears flattening as Kurt turned on the nozzle with a vicious yank. The water shot out in full force, drenching the cage and the floor beneath, cleansing away all traces of the vomit and washing it harmlessly down the gurgling drain.

 

The water pressure suddenly dropped off, and Kurt glanced over his shoulder. The hose had kinked up near the faucet. Transferring the nozzle to his left hand, he turned around and gathered up a handful of the hose, then gave it a swift flick. He repeated the motion a few times. It finally worked the kink free, and Kurt's left hand tightened as roughly four-thousand-five-hundred pounds of pressure shot through the hose once more.

 

Wincing when the cold spray rained down on him—he'd been holding it upright while he messed around with the kink—followed in short order by a spray of sparks and billowing smoke. Kurt dashed out of the way as the little demon's shriek rang in his ears. Shutting off the water tap and dropping the hose, he spun around in time to see a few errant sparks showering down from the observation camera mounted high above the cage.

 

He snorted, his expression darkening. He supposed that those damn bastards would tell him that he had to pay to replace that . . . `Like hell,' he thought with an inward snort.

 

The rattling of the cage drew his attention, and he narrowed his gaze when he noticed that the little demon was clutching the cage bars and staring at him again.

 

Suddenly, the memory of it, raising its eyes and lowering them again—how many times had it done that in the last week, anyway—shot through his head. The camera . . .? Was that the reason that it had refused to speak . . .?

 

“P-please,” it whispered, its voice much rougher than he remembered. It cleared its throat and swallowed hard. “Water . . . please . . .”

 

His gut instinct was to ignore the quiet plea, but his next thought was far baser than that. If it came to harm before they finished paying for it . . .

 

Kurt heaved a sigh and shook his head, his irritation skyrocketing at the very thought of pandering to the demon.

 

Too bad he sorely needed that money. Some of his equipment was in dire need of replacement, and unfortunately for him, all of that stuff cost a lot more than he'd like to think about. Damn it all . . .

 

Stifling a sigh, Kurt strode forward to retrieve the bowl. This time, though, he'd be damned if he'd let the beast make itself sick all over again . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“How can that be possible?” John Troyer asked, gaze intense as he stared at Ben Philips.

 

The panther-youkai shook his head slowly, his eyes shifting to the women assembled around the dining room table in the Zelig's kitchen. They were trying to catch up on small-talk—that was what Isabelle had said with a tight little smile that was supposed to pass for her normal show of ebullience. Gin Zelig, her daughter, Jillian . . . Bellaniece Izayoi with Isabelle and Alexandra . . . Sydnie Zelig and Meara Izayoi . . . Nezumi and Kagome . . . Some of the strongest women that Ben had ever had the pleasure of meeting were gathered there, and not one of them would give in to what had to be the natural desire to cry . . .

 

“Your guess is as good as mine, but there's no doubt about it. It was definitely an Ofuda. InuYasha verified it in the field,” Ben commented without taking his eyes off the women.

 

John sighed and nodded, his expression shifting into a thoughtful scowl. “What does that mean?” he finally asked.

 

Ben rubbed his temple in an infinitely tired sort of way and shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but . . . but if that's the case, then it's safe to assume that we're not dealing with youkai here. Youkai can't create a barrier, not using a medium like that . . .”

 

“Then who the hell has her?” John hissed, careful to keep his voice lowered.

 

“Who do you think?” Griffin Marin, the surly bear-youkai rumbled. Expression even darker than normal, he shook his shaggy head and let out a deep breath. “It's not a question of who has her; it's a question of what the hell they want to do to her. Zelig heard anything yet?”

 

Ben shook his head and jerked his head as he turned around, indicating that the men should follow. He led the way to Zelig's office and waited as Cain paced the floor with the telephone receiver plastered against his head. “No, I'm not overreacting,” he growled, clenching and unclenching his fist by turns. “Yeah, I hear you. Call me if you find anything else.” Lowering the device away from his ear, Cain didn't glance at the men as he strode over to his desk and dropped the receiver into the cradle. “Nothing,” he stated in answer to the unvoiced question. “Not a damn thing.”

 

“They've only been out there a little over a week, Zelig. They'll find her,” Ben remarked mildly.

 

That comment earned him a darkened scowl as Cain shoved a chair out of his way and strode over to the wet bar. “A little over a week with some bastard who possesses holy powers? I don't like the odds, Ben.”

 

“Isabelle's mama keeps saying that she's alive,” Griffin muttered. “A mama would know, right?”

 

Cain grabbed a clean glass and sloshed a good amount of scotch into it before draining and refilling it before he trusted himself to speak. “A mama might believe what she wants to believe . . .” Heaving a sigh, shaking his head, Cain downed that drink, too. “I know she believes it, and I . . . I want to, too . . .”

 

“Then do it,” John commented with an offhanded shrug. “It's a little premature to give up hope.”

 

Cain stared at him for a minute then nodded. “Sorry,” he muttered, waving a hand as he pulled more glasses up onto the counter. “I'm just . . . frustrated . . .”

 

The men stepped over to take the drinks that Cain offered—even Griffin, surprising as that was. The bear didn't normally drink at all that Ben knew of, and he didn't now, either, simply holding the glass though he made no move to lift it to his lips. “We're all frustrated, Zelig,” Ben pointed out gently.

 

Cain shook his head and grabbed his glass, pacing the floor in a caged sort of way. “What good is being tai-youkai if you can't do a damn thing to protect the ones you love? I should be out there, looking for her, and I'm . . . here . . . Completely useless . . .”

 

“You're where you're needed,” Ben said. “Bellaniece needs you. Her mate is out there looking for their daughter . . . The last thing that she needs is to be worried about you, too.”

 

There was truth in that, and Cain knew it. Still, logic was just not something that Cain had a mind to hear at the moment. “Have you gotten that list from Myrna? The ones that could be capable of possessing spiritual powers strong enough to construct a barrier?”

 

“She's still working on it,” Ben supplied, settling into a chair across from Zelig's desk. Griffin sank into the other one as John slumped against the wall just inside the doorway.

 

Griffin cleared his throat, his gaze fixed on the amber liquid in the glass he held. “How long are you planning on keeping this from the women?” he asked quietly. There was no censure in his tone, no underlying hints that he disagreed with Cain's decision on the matter.

 

Cain heaved a sigh and plopped down at his desk, raking his hands through his hair before answering. “I want more facts before I tell them,” he said. “They're still . . . they're still hoping that this has all just been some sort of misunderstanding . . . a miscommunication . . . or something . . . Telling them about the barrier . . . they would know what it means. They'd know that someone had meant to trap Samantha; that it was premeditated, but they—we—don't know why.”

 

Griffin nodded. “That's what I figured,” he mumbled.

 

John shook his head. “I cannot fathom anyone wanting to do this to her . . . not to Samantha . . . It just . . . it doesn't make a damn bit of sense.”

 

“If it made sense, we'd know where she is,” Gavin Jamison stated as he walked through the doorway. “Any news?”

 

“No,” Ben stated. “Nothing.”

 

“Did you find out anything?” Cain interrupted impatiently.

 

Gavin let out a deep breath as he headed for the wet bar. “No. Dad said that he's still checking into a few things, though. Said he'd give you a call later.”

 

Cain nodded though he didn't look at all appeased. “Thanks.”

 

“What about this ofuda?” Ben asked.

 

“InuYasha said that he'd send it back with Larry. Maybe Kagome can tell us more about it.”

 

“But she doesn't use them, does she?” Griffin put in.

 

“No, she doesn't, but InuYasha said one of their friends from the old days did and that maybe she'd be able to verify that it was a barrier anchor.”

 

Gavin strode back over with a bottle of water in hand. “I'd like to go,” he stated. “I can help them track her.”

 

Cain rubbed his forehead and sighed. “That's the problem, Gavin. There's no trail to track, and as much as I hate to say it, the more people we send in, the more attention it may draw. Whoever has her knows about our kind, and sending in more people might work against us in the end.”

 

Gavin nodded despite the frustration in his expression. “All right, but if you need me . . .”

 

Cain managed a tired smile that wasn't nearly as bright as it normally would have been. “If this drags on . . .”

 

“I can go, too, if you need me,” John added.

 

Griffin nodded once.

 

“Did Attean know anything?” Cain asked.

 

Griffin shook his head and set his untouched glass on the desk. “He said he hasn't heard anything from the Chicago area, but he did say that he's heard rumors about some guy professing to be able to see youkai out near New Mexico.”

 

“New Mexico,” Cain repeated thoughtfully. “Sound like anything, Ben?”

 

“I've heard that, too, but from what I gathered, the guy also believes that we've got a little green man locked up in Roswell and that the assassination of President Werner some years ago was a sign of the Apocalypse.”

 

“Did he make Myrna's list?”

 

Ben raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Yeah, he did. The woman is thorough, I'll give her that much.”

 

“So it's just a waiting game,” Gavin muttered.

 

“Yeah,” John replied then heaved a sigh of his own. “It's the figuring out what the next move is that's the problem.”

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Samantha reached for the bowl, only to be stopped short when the holy man uttered a terse sound. “Slowly,” he warned, narrowing his gaze to emphasize his point. “Puke again, and you can lie in it all night, for all I care.”

 

She grimaced but nodded, her cheeks pinking as she brought the bowl to her lips again.

 

“Sip it,” he commanded.

 

The water on her parched tongue felt like heaven, and she had to fight against the basic instinct to drink it down fast. She knew that he was right, though. After so long a time without eating or drinking anything, her body just wasn't ready to cope with anything in large amounts. Curiously enough, though, the sip she'd swallowed only served to make her thirstier—so much so that she had to grit her teeth together hard to keep from trying to gulp it down again.

 

He didn't say anything as she slowly sipped the water. His expression still suspicious, he just watched her without batting an eye.

 

Even sipping the water was creating a bit of trouble for her. The coldness made her shake violently as her stomach knotted up a little. Still, she wanted the liquid—wanted it worse than she'd ever wanted anything before, and when the holy man reached through the bars of the cage to take it away, she couldn't help the growl that escaped her as she bared her fang and wrapped her arms around the bowl to protect if from him.

 

“Give me that,” he snarled, yanking it away from her despite her attempt to keep him at bay. She whimpered quietly as he turned it sideways and pulled it out of the cage. “Why the hell weren't you drinking the water they gave you?” he growled.

 

Letting her head fall back against the cage bars, Samantha swallowed a few times to keep the liquid down. “They drug it,” she murmured, her eyes slipping closed of their own accord.

 

He snorted and shook his head. “Well, I doubt they poison it,” he muttered. “Don't you dare throw up again.”

 

She almost smiled—she tried to. She was simply too exhausted to manage it. “Thank you,” she whispered as her eyes slipped closed again.

 

He grunted something completely unintelligible and shoved himself to his feet to dump the bowl.

 

`Stupid demon,' he thought as he emptied the bowl in the sink. Didn't it figure that it would just make itself sick if it tried to drink the water too fast again? It apparently hadn't learned anything from the first experience, and he had thought that it might have possessed at least a base level of pseudo-intelligence . . . Obviously wrong . . .

 

“They drug it . . .”

 

Rolling his eyes, Kurt set the bowl aside on the drainer board beside the deep sink. It wouldn't surprise him if they did exactly that, though the kind of drugs was debatable. He knew damn well that the researchers were concerned over its apparent weight loss, so it was entirely possible that they were adding vitamins or something—though Kurt highly doubted that, too.

 

Shuffling back over to the desk, he dug his notebook out of the knapsack he wore pretty much everywhere, flipping through the pages until he found a blank one. He'd figured that, if he had to spend his time babysitting the damn thing, he might as well see what he could learn about it, too. The information might come in handy later, after all, and while he'd never actually considered studying them, himself, he had to admit that the idea held merit. It wasn't as though he wanted to know what made them tick, no, but any information he could gather about them might help him in the end.

 

There were things that he'd already noticed about them from dealing with others. The first time he'd cut off one of their hair only to discover that it was completely grown back by morning had been odd. At the time, it had been the simplest way to remove the duct tape that he'd used to gag the beast, and that one was no different, he thought as he glanced thoughtfully at the cage. The little demon wasn't moving, obviously content to sleep after having that drink of water. Its hair had done the same thing—had grown back over night—when he'd cut it off to remove the gag lest it should have choked on its own vomit.

 

The claws had also grown back. The researchers weren't smart enough to keep them cut back, either, but Kurt was. No, he'd seen first hand what those claws could do, hadn't he? That memory was more than enough to make him cut them every morning before he left for the day.

 

He'd seen signs of he uncanny ability to heal before he'd ever encountered the little demon. A couple of the larger targets had been harder to secure, especially in his first days of hunting them. He'd learned a lot along the way, and he'd seen a lot of things, and while he had never gone out of his way to doctor any of those damn beasts, he had noticed that their wounds seemed to close up fairly quickly. Still, it had been a bit of a shock to see exactly how fast that process could be. The little demon had definitely been shot clean through the shoulder, and yet there was no lingering scarring or anything to attest to the wound that he knew it had suffered.

 

All in all, the more he learned about them, the more frightening they became. How could a race of beings that powerful, that strong manage to hide and why? Why would they bother to do that, in the first place? With a swipe of their claws, they could rend human flesh without a second thought. Lips twisting into a cynical sneer, Kurt snorted and jotted down a few notes. Unless they were lying in wait, biding their time for something . . .

 

Deliberately ignoring the voice in the back of his head that sounded entirely too much like Old Granger and his asinine babble, Kurt rubbed his forehead as the pen dropped from his fingers. There was only one real goal that he had in mind—that he'd ever had in mind. He was going to find those demons that had destroyed his family . . .

 

And he was going to kill them.

 

 

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Final Thought from Kurt:

That one is a little … stupid …

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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~