InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Reality ( Chapter 20 )

~~Chapter 20~~

~Reality~

 

-=0=-

 

 

The strangest sound awoke Kurt late in the night, and he blinked in confusion as he struggled to make sense of it. A constant rattle, wasn't it? A metallic jingle that just wouldn't stop . . .

 

Sitting up slowly, he shook his head as though to clear his mind. The sound was coming from the cage, wasn't it? It sounded like . . .

 

Shooting to his feet, he stomped across the room as he tugged off the black leather glove that covered his right hand. It was trying to escape, wasn't it? That was the sound he'd heard . . .

 

But as he drew nearer, his pace slowed, and his eyes narrowed.

 

It was lying in the corner of the cage, wrapped up as tightly as it could in a tiny little ball. As far as he could tell, it was sleeping, maybe, but it certainly wasn't trying to rattle the cage loose, which had been his initial thought.

 

`No,' he realized slowly as he stopped and crossed his arms over his chest. `It's . . . cold . . .'

 

Which stood to reason, he supposed, and he might have thought it sooner had the thing been human, to start with. The water that it had used to clean itself up had been straight out of the ground, he figured, and damn chilly, at that. Still, he hadn't stopped to think—hadn't actually cared, to be honest—that it might be cold after that makeshift shower.

 

Turning on his heel, he strode over to the desk. What did he care if it was cold or not? Why should he care? It was a monster, and those things—no matter what it looked like on the outside—those things . . .

 

Uttering a terse grunt as he dropped into the chair, he dug the notebook out of his knapsack and flipped through the pages.

 

`Susceptible to variations of temperatures. Shows marked resilience, overall,' he wrote, then gritted his teeth as he added in his head, `and that shaking is driving me nuts . . .'

 

Rubbing his eyes, he heaved a sigh and shook his head. `So six of one, half a dozen of the other . . . at least it doesn't stink anymore . . .'

 

Which was true enough, he had to admit, even if he really didn't want to think about that impromptu shower, not at all. What he'd seen had only served to reinforce his belief that the little demon had to be a creature born in the fiery pits of hell. For as diminutive as it was, it certainly had good form, which, of course, was more than enough to irritate him even more. He'd scoffed before when he'd read passages pertaining to succubae—demons who could take the form of women to entice men into having sex with them in return for their souls. He'd honestly thought that tales that those were absolutely ridiculous . . .

 

Was that the kind of demon that it was? If that were the case, he supposed it could explain the creature's outward appearance. Of course, the texts he'd read indicated that succubae tended to have very large breasts, which was not the case at all with the little demon. Still . . .

 

Shaking his head at his own absolutely ridiculous notions, Kurt scowled at the notebook and gritted his teeth.

 

That thing was not a succubus, damn it, and he didn't care what he had or hadn't seen. It was a monster, just like every other monster—an evil creature that just wanted to kill and destroy.

 

`A . . . kind of pathetic one . . .' he mused as his gaze unwittingly slipped back to the demon in question. The cage was rattling worse now, and for a moment, Kurt had to wonder why it hadn't been shocked by the papers he'd sealed inside the bars.

 

Heaving a sigh—the rattling was embedding itself in his brain, damn it—he stood up and strode over to yank one of the thin army-type blankets off the cot. Stomping over, he shoved it through the bars of the cage. “Now knock that off,” he grumbled, turning on his heel to adjust the temperature control on the main panel near the door.

 

The rattling stopped for a moment as the demon turned over to watch him. He heard it shuffling around as it covered itself up in the blanket. When it grew silent again, he almost sighed in relief—until the rattling started up again, signifying that it might take a bit longer for the damned creature to warm up enough to stop that infernal racket.

 

The groan and shudder of the heater roaring to life was enough to dull the sounds, though. Kurt shook his head. He supposed it was one of the drawbacks to having been raised out in the middle of nowhere with only a loony old man as company, but he had trouble concentrating when it wasn't very, very quiet, especially if he were trying to read or something like that.

 

Pushing the button to bring up the security walls of the cage, Kurt heaved a sigh and stomped out of the room, deciding that he might as well have a cup of coffee while he waited for the silence that he craved.

 

He was becoming entirely too familiar with that particular machine, he thought with a dour glare.

 

The groan and hiss of the vending machine echoed in his ears as he tapped his foot and waited impatiently.

 

Damn, it was strange, wasn't it? He'd stretched out, thinking about the demons he'd seen earlier in the day, and then he'd fallen asleep, too. He hadn't meant to, of course. Those demons bugged the hell out of him, didn't they?

 

“Oh, sorry, man . . .”

 

It had talked, just like the little one. It had spoken . . .

 

But the second one—the one he'd seen when he'd looked out of the window . . . What was it about that one that disturbed him? Wearing its power so loosely, it was . . . and yet it was the first one that had looked almost entirely human. The strange pupils, sure, but it hadn't opened its mouth wide enough for him to see the fangs. Those things aside, it looked entirely normal though he couldn't really say about the ears, either, given that the thing had long hair that had hung over where its ears should have been, and that was what really bothered Kurt the most.

 

Were they evolving somehow? Had they found a new kind of magic—some way of hiding what they really were better than they used to?

 

Without really thinking about what he was doing, he took the dropped more change into the machine and hit another button. `Those things . . . Damn it . . .'

 

Where were they all coming from now? Ever since he'd captured the little demon, he'd started to notice the strange auras, hadn't he? Stronger auras; more powerful, and yet . . .

 

Shaking his head as he blinked at the two steaming cups of coffee, he shook his head and carefully lifted them out of the tray before starting back down the hallway toward the holding area once more.

 

But he couldn't be positive that they had just suddenly appeared, either. Unable to tell whether or not they'd just started miraculously appearing or if they'd been there all the while and he simply hadn't realized it, it left him feeling as though he were beating his head against a wall or something.

 

He had felt that kind of aura before a few different times over the years. Always before, he'd chalked it up to a horde of those things gathering together for whatever reason. He knew now that it was simply because he hadn't wanted to believe that there could possibly be a single being that possessed that sort of power.

 

But he'd looked for them—it—before. He'd gone to search them out at the time, too, but he'd never actually found it. Recalling the image of the little demon, so effortlessly taking down the one he'd been stalking, was still fresh, vivid in his mind. He deliberately tried to remember that, to remind himself that regardless of what it looked like on the outside, it was quite capable of as much destruction as the ones he had seen for himself so long ago.

 

“Sit up,” he commanded as he stopped in front of the cage once more. It was rattling worse than ever, and he rolled his eyes.

 

It complied slowly, as though it was loathe to give up the relative warmth of the blanket he'd given it. With a grunt, he slipped one of the cups through the bars.

 

It blinked at the offering for several moments before finally, hesitantly, reaching for it. “Th-thank you,” it said in little more than a whisper.

 

Kurt didn't respond to that as he lifted his cup to his lips.

 

It took a deep swallow before it went on. “You know, I never used to like coffee at all, but this is really good . . .”

 

“Anything hot is good when you're that cold,” he muttered.

 

“You're probably right,” it agreed simply enough. Peering over the rim of the cup without blinking, it breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the freshly brewed coffee. “This smell reminds me of . . .”

 

Kurt paused mid-drink to eye the demon. “Reminds you of what?” he prompted when it trailed off.

 

“Uh . . . oh, nothing,” it said with a shake of its head.

 

He grunted noncommittally.

 

It finished the coffee in silence. Kurt wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. He'd take it as good, though, all things considered. That little demon tended to talk a lot more than he figured it ought to.

 

Still, he had some questions of his own, and as much as he hated the idea of initiating any sort of conversation, he also knew that he wasn't about to get answers if he didn't. Peering out of the corner of his eye at the beast only to find it staring into the now empty cup with a melancholy expression on its face, Kurt figured that it was as good a time as any to find out. “Tell me something,” he said, drawing its attention. “Are there a lot of demons like you?”

 

“Like me?” it echoed with a shake of its head. “Like me, how?”

 

Narrowing his eyes to let it know that its flip answer wasn't at all welcome, Kurt crouched down to look at it dead on. “Like you,” he repeated. “How many others are there?”

 

The little smile that had surfaced on its features dulled and faded away as it pondered his question. Biting its lip, it slowly shook its head then shrugged just a little as it lifted its gaze to meet his once more. “Not so many; not really,” it confessed. “I mean, back in my . . . in the old days, it was taboo to make others like me. These days, it isn't really a problem, but . . . but there still aren't that many.”

 

“They make you? Who makes you? What the hell does that mean?”

 

It blinked at the vehemence in his tone. “Everything is made, isn't it, in one way or another . . .?”

 

Heaving a sigh, he leaned forward to snatch the empty cup away, his temper snapping at the coquettish answers he was getting. He should have known better, anyway . . . asking questions of something like that . . . He had to have been insane to think that he'd actually get answers out of a being like that, in the first place. How dare it smile at him and act like he was just trying to amuse it . . .?

 

He hated it—despised it and every other monster like it—and he'd be better off to remember that before he got any more stupid ideas about asking it questions in the future . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Kichiro strode out of the police station with his father not far behind. “Fucking bastards,” InuYasha muttered under his breath as he shot a fulminating glower over his shoulder at the building. “Damn it!”

 

Kichiro shook his head and quickened his stride. “They have a point,” he had to admit despite the rampant surge of irritation that he had to admit as much.

 

InuYasha snorted loudly. “I'll shove Tetsusaiga up their asses and see what kind of point they got,” he snarled.

 

Kichiro didn't reply to that since he was hard pressed to come up with a good reason why he shouldn't let his father do exactly that.

 

“Since when does someone get arrested for having a fucking rusty-assed sword?” he growled, flexing his claws in abject irritation since he was the one who had just been bailed out of jail for the offense.

 

Okay, so it might have been damn amusing at any other time, he figured. That the great Izayoi InuYasha, hero of Sengoku Jidai, had been arrested because the police had taken offense to the fact that the hanyou of legend refused to give up his sword . . .

 

But nothing really amused Kichiro anymore, and he was starting to wonder if anything ever would again, come to think of it . . .

 

In the end, it had taken Kichiro a lot of money as well as a few phone calls to his uncle, who fortunately was still in Maine though he was planning on flying in tomorrow with Kagome. In the end, Sesshoumaru had somehow managed to convince the authorities that InuYasha wasn't out to slice and dice anyone and that the sword he carried was more for show than anything.

 

Which, Kichiro figured, wasn't entirely a lie. InuYasha was much better these days about drawing the sword on people who ticked him off than he used to be, or so he'd been told.

 

Even so, he'd wasted the better portion of the day, arguing with the police, and the already suspect authorities were even more irritated when InuYasha had mentioned rather belligerently that his granddaughter was missing. Kichiro had covered his face with his hands right about then since he was pretty certain that the police really did think that InuYasha had lost his marbles at that point. Given that the hanyou in question might actually look like he was around twenty-five years old, if that, then it was understandable, that the authorities eyed the hanyou as though they thought that InuYasha was about to leap onto the table that separated them to start spouting show tunes or something . . .

 

“At least they gave it back,” Kichiro pointed out calmly, jerking his head in the general direction of InuYasha's sword.

 

“Keh! I'd'a liked to see them try to keep it,” he snarled. “Where the fuck is my phone?”

 

Digging the device out of his pocket—the captain had handed it over just before Kichiro had rushed his father out of the station—he handed it back to InuYasha. “Bas called earlier. Said that he met some guy he thought had spiritual powers.”

 

“He get `em?”

 

Making a face and shaking his head, Kichiro tried to ignore the police car that was half-assed trailing them. “No. Toga said that the guy slipped away before Bas could figure out if he really did have them or if it was just his imagination.”

 

“Helluva thing to imagine,” InuYasha grumbled. “They look for him?”

 

“Bas said he hopped on a bus. He and Toga, Evan and Gunnar are hunting around every stop that bus made to see if they can locate the guy.”

 

“Diggin' for a needle in a haystack,” InuYasha muttered.

 

Kichiro sighed. He agreed with that . . . “Bas should have stopped him,” he gritted out.

 

“The pup ain't never met anyone with spiritual powers other than your mama, and ain't another one like her anywhere.”

 

He conceded his father's point, knowing damn well that Bas probably hadn't ever actually encountered someone with real spiritual powers other than Kagome, and her aura was tempered by InuYasha's. Having known her since birth, too, would confuse him, and even though Kichiro knew damn well that the pup was doing everything he had within his power to do, he couldn't help the anger—the frustration—that roiled inside him, just the same.

 

“Take it easy on him, Kich. He ain't to blame for any of this.”

 

Grimacing at the gruff censure in InuYasha's voice, Kichiro nodded. “I . . . I know,” he muttered with a shake of his head and a slight flattening of his ears. “It's just so . . . frustrating . . . I'm . . .”

 

InuYasha stopped short when Kichiro spun around to veer down an alley, seeking some sort of refuge from the people milling about on the sidewalk. Little by little, he could feel his carefully constructed façade wearing thin, could feel the layers of his psyche crumbling away. “It's been . . . almost four weeks,” Kichiro said in a harsh, broken tone. “Four weeks . . . where the hell . . .? M-my little girl . . .”

 

“Don't be so stuck up to think that she just belongs to you,” InuYasha growled, grabbing Kichiro's shoulder to stop him, to bring him around to face him. “She ain't, you know. Yours . . . your mate's . . . your mama's . . . mine . . . Hell, Sam belongs to all of us, and we're damn well gonna find her.”

 

Staring hard at his father, Kichiro felt the anger, the outrage that had sustained him for the last few weeks start to recede. The emptiness that surged up in its wake, though, was a painful, horrible thing. An incredulous bark of laughter welled up inside, constricting his chest, his throat as a sudden and burning ache erupted behind his eyelids. “I . . . I feel like I'm losing my fucking mind,” he muttered. “When I'm here, I feel like I should be with Belle—she needs me, doesn't she? But . . . But when I fly back to Maine, I feel like I'm giving up on . . . on Samantha, and . . . Damn it . . .”

 

InuYasha nodded slowly, his trademark scowl firmly in place. “You do what you gotta do, Kich. That's all anyone can expect from you.”

 

Dashing a hand over his eyes, he scowled at the telltale moisture that clung to his skin. “I never wanted to tell her what she could or couldn't do . . . Never wanted to do that to any of my girls, but . . .”

 

Leaning against the grungy brick wall in the filmy light of the alley, InuYasha's ears twitched as his eyes took on a more contemplative expression—an expression that Kichiro hadn't seen very often through the years. “Did you know that the first time your brother went out on a hunt, your mama sat up the whole night with the phone in her lap and tears in her eyes?”

 

“Mama did?”

 

InuYasha nodded. “Hell, you pups have caused your mama more sleepless nights than Naraku ever did, but I tell you . . . not one of you ever knew it. Thing is, you do what you gotta do. Your mama knew that, and your mate knows that, too.”

 

“Yeah,” he replied in a tone that bespoke his quiet doubt. “Old man . . .”

 

InuYasha stared at him for several seconds then snorted. “Keh! We'll find her, got that?”

 

Drawing a deep breath, Kichiro nodded. When he was a boy, he'd believed his father unconditionally. Whenever InuYasha said anything, he always made good on his word, no matter what, and now . . .

 

Now he desperately needed to believe that InuYasha could do the same this time, too.

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Frowning at the holy man as he read a thick old book, Samantha stifled a sigh.

 

She really wasn't trying to antagonize him; really she wasn't. She wasn't even certain why he'd gotten angry in the end. She'd answered his question to the best of her ability, hadn't she? What, exactly, did he want her to say?

 

It was true enough, she knew. The union of humans and youkai was no longer the taboo it used to be; didn't carry the stigma that it had in times gone by though she knew well enough that her family was the exception, not the rule. Many of the youkai still tended to gravitate toward one another, and while it might not have been a conscious decision to do so, there it was.

 

It still perplexed her, why he insisted on calling her a demon. She'd told him what she was, what her kind was called, yet he still seemed to cling to the name that he'd given her. Still, she was starting to realize from having overheard the white-coats talking about him that he was viewed as a bit of an anomaly, himself, and because of that, there was a certain hesitation, too. They feared him: who he was and what he could do. They feared him as much as they feared her. There was an almost perverse sense of fascination about him, as well, and she wondered not for the first time if they'd have locked him in a cage, too, if they didn't need him.

 

Why did humans feel the need to do this sort of thing to those things in the world that they didn't understand? Was it simply the need to prove that they really weren't inferior, after all? Samantha didn't see humans in that sort of light—at least, she didn't see all humans that way. Still, she had to ask herself exactly why it was that those white-coats could do what they did to her every day and still think that it was all right?

 

`Because it's all done in the name of science,' her youki remarked acerbically.

 

There was a certain truth in that, wasn't there? The name of science . . . `Hardly,' she scoffed with a very loud inward snort. `Papa is a scientist, and he doesn't do anything like this . . . When I get out of here . . .'

 

`When you get out of here?' her youki contended. `Do you really want out of here?'

 

`Of course I do!' she shot back hotly. `That's the dumbest question . . .'

 

`Is it? Is it really? Because from where I sit, dollbaby, you don't seem too anxious to try escaping again.'

 

Letting her temple fall against the bars of the cage as she pulled the blanket a little tighter around herself, Samantha heaved a quiet sigh. There was a certain measure of truth in that, too, wasn't there? A secret sort of truth that she wasn't entirely certain she wanted to admit, even to herself . . .

 

It wasn't exactly that she didn't want to escape. It was quite the contrary, actually. The problem wasn't her will to escape, her desire to return to those who loved her. The real problem was that she wasn't sure that she could stand the cost of her freedom. If she managed to do it—if she managed to escape . . . he'd just go out and catch someone else, wouldn't he? He'd catch another one, and he'd bring him or her here . . .

 

`So you'll be a martyr? Is that really what you think you could do?'

 

`No . . . not a martyr . . .'

 

`Then what, Samantha? What is it that you think you'd accomplish by staying here? And maybe that's not fair for the next one who is dumb enough to get caught, but you know, we can't do it . . . we just . . . can't . . .'

 

There was entirely too much truth in that, wasn't there? Entirely too much finality that she just didn't want to consider. Even still, though, did it matter? She couldn't stomach the idea of anyone else being subjected to the horrors that she'd already experienced, and worse, if they somehow managed to catch another . . . could she trade her freedom for that of her sisters? Of her parents? Of anyone she loved? And even if it weren't one of her own, did that give her the right to trade her freedom for someone else's child . . .?

 

And she knew the answer to that question; knew it as well as she knew her own heartbeat. She couldn't do it. She didn't have it in her. For every day that she'd live for the rest of her life, she'd have to wake up in the morning and wonder exactly who they'd caught to take her place . . .

 

No, as much as the thought scared her—shook her to her very core—she wasn't entirely sure that she could do a damn thing . . .

 

`And you think that anyone will thank you for it? You think that your parents don't deserve to know? Your sisters . . . your aunt and uncles and cousins . . . what do they deserve, Samantha? What do you deserve?'

 

She blinked in surprise as the overhead lights flickered to life, as the entirely too loud voice of the head white-coat rang out in the welcome silence. “Good morning, Doc!” he greeted. “Everything looks good in here.”

 

The holy man didn't even bother acknowledging the white-coat's greeting as he slowly moved his feet off the desk and got to his feet. Without a word, he shoved his book into the worn old knapsack and reached for his coat.

 

“So how's our little demon this morning?” the white-coat asked as he swaggered over to the cage, eyeing Samantha like she were nothing more than a prized hog at the State Fair. When he shook his finger between the bars, she had to rein in the perverse desire to bite the bit of wiggling pink flesh. Instead, she blanked her features, pasting on the dull, vacant expression that she strove to keep in place whenever those men were staring at her. It served her well, really. They were entirely convinced that the holy man was crazy since he'd apparently told them before that she could speak. The white-coats liked to make idiot jokes about how the two of them—the freaks, they'd said—were able to mind-link or some such ration of crap.

 

All right, so she felt a little bad for perpetuating the idiot persona, especially since the white-coats were already leery of the holy man. Still, she had to admit that she didn't feel nearly bad enough to open her mouth and speak to them. It was all a matter of pride, wasn't it? She'd be damned if she'd give them that last little bit of herself, too.

 

“She didn't give you any trouble, did she?'

 

That got the holy man's attention, and he paused as he tugged on his coat to glower at the white-coat. “It was just fine,” he stated flatly.

 

“You gave her a blanket?”

 

“Is there a problem with that?”

 

The white-coat waved his hands and laughed jovially. “No, no problem, no problem . . .”

 

The holy man eyed the white-coat defiantly for another long second before snatching up his knapsack and heading for the door. Samantha watched him leave, forcing down the surge of loneliness that welled up inside her. Whenever he left, she felt that way, but she always just figured that it was normal enough. After all, he was the only one who was even halfway decent to her, even if he didn't really seem to want to be. At least he'd allowed her to go to the bathroom earlier, so that wasn't something that she'd have to worry about. That was the real difference between him and the others, wasn't it? He didn't like her, she knew that much, and he didn't think that she was anything more than a demon, did he? Some sort of strange beast, really, and yet . . . and yet he still allowed her to retain some measure of her pride, such as it was. Taking her to the bathroom, bringing in food for her so that she didn't have to denigrate herself by eating the dog kibble that the others left for her . . . even allowing her something as base as a shower was something, wasn't it? There really was something decent about him, even if he didn't really want to show it.

 

The white-coat's chuckles drew her attention, and she reluctantly shifted her eyes away from the door to blink at the man. Something in his demeanor set her on edge; something entirely predatory in the smile that only widened when he intercepted her gaze. “We have something special planned for you today,” he murmured, his smile taking on a slant that Samantha really didn't trust at all. “Something really, really special . . .”

 

 

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

A/N:

== == == == == == == == == ==

Reviewers

==========

MMorg

Usagiseren05 ------ OROsan0677 ------ malitiadixie ------ asgard ------ Kyosama ------ jessie6491 ------ Jester08 ------ Firedemon86 ------ kittycatkitten ------ oblivion-bringr ------ Sovereignty ------ Sesshomaru4Kagura4ever

==========

Forum

OROsan0677 ------ Proforce ------ Zero ------ Firedemon86 ------ ai_Artista ------ cutechick18 ------ Mangaluva

==========

Final Thought from Samantha:

…special …?

==========

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~