InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Indifference ( Chapter 25 )

~~Chapter 25~~

~Indifference~

 

-=0=-

 

 

“Can I see that when you're done?”

 

Kurt blinked and glanced over at the demon. Stretched out on its—her—stomach with her feet kicked up, crossed at the ankles. “See what?” he asked slowly since he wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about.

 

“Your newspaper,” she replied in a tone that indicated that she thought he ought to know as much.

 

He snorted. “My paper? Demons can't read.”

 

She rolled her eyes and sat up. “Well, maybe demons can't,” she quipped, “but hanyous certainly can.”

 

“You know, you don't really change a thing by changing the word that you call yourself,” he pointed out.

 

“Neither do you,” she replied lightly. “So can I read the paper when you're finished?”

 

Peering around the edge, he stared at her for a moment then shook his head. “Nope.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I don't like dog germs.”

 

“Wh—y—I—I do not have dog germs!” she huffed indignantly.

 

“It stands to reason,” he replied.

 

“How do you figure?” she demanded.

 

“You look like a dog,” he pointed out reasonably.

 

“I don't, either!”

 

He shrugged. “You have dog ears.”

 

She snorted.

 

Kurt wasn't finished. “When you're wet, you smell like a dog.”

 

Her voice dropped to a pouty sort of drawl. “You're kind of mean, aren't you?”

 

“You know, that wet-dog smell . . .”

 

“Really mean.”

 

Scanning the classifieds, he replied absently, “And you bark like a dog.”

 

“Now, I know I don't do that,” she grumbled.

 

Kurt shook the paper. “You're doing it right now.”

 

“And you're kind of a jerk,” she amended.

 

“You know, that might bother me more—if you weren't a demon.”

 

She rolled over and sat up, her face shifting into a marked frown that was more like a pout than anything. “But you just throw it away when you finish reading it,” she muttered.

 

“Why do you want to see it?” he countered.

 

She made a face, her ears flattening just a little in the process. “I just wanted to read the comics.”

 

“You mean you really can read? Such as it is, anyway . . . I'd hardly call the comics `reading'.”

 

She shot him a narrow-eyed look. “What can I say? I like the pretty pictures.”

 

“I think I'll start reading the Wall Street Journal.”

 

“Then you wouldn't get to see the pictures, either,” she replied pleasantly.

 

“Yeah, but I can read.”

 

She heaved a sigh, her chin falling to her knees as she wrapped her arms tightly around her ankles.

 

`It—she—wants to read the paper . . .?' he thought as he turned the page. To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure why he bothered to read it since it hardly ever had any anything good in it. Just the same stories, day after day . . . stories of deaths, accidents, one country threatening war against another . . . Was there really a point to any of it?

 

“You know, you aren't getting paid nearly enough for me,” she remarked at length.

 

“Why's that?” he asked against his better judgment.

 

She shrugged, rubbing at her teeth with her index finger. “Because they want to use me to create a strain of super humans,” she replied simply.

 

That got his full attention right quick, and he dropped the newspaper as he turned to stare at her, full on. “What?”

 

“That's what the head white-coat said . . . Harlan, right?”

 

“What, exactly, did he say?”

 

She shook her head, telegraphing him a look that implied that he ought to know damn well what she was talking about. Still, she must have decided to humor him, just the same, because she ran her tongue over her teeth to finish the impromptu cleaning and rinsed her fingers in the bowl of water beside her. “He was talking to the other white-coats . . . They think that if they could isolate the part of my blood that makes me a fast healer that they could use it to inoculate their soldiers . . . or something to that effect . . . Anyway, if they were able to do that, then they'd make a lot of money, wouldn't they? If they made a lot of money, it'd make what they paid you seem like . . . what's that phrase?” Tapping her chin thoughtfully, she concentrated for a moment before snapping her fingers. “Ah, yes! Chicken scratch!”

 

“He said that,” Kurt repeated.

 

The little demon nodded though she looked entirely preoccupied. “Well, not the part about chicken scratch.”

 

A surge of anger rose inside him, a bitter feeling that he couldn't repress. Damn, he'd known that Harlan couldn't be trusted. He'd known it, but he'd chosen to think . . . `That bastard . . . that bastard . . .'

 

If he'd known that was what Harlan had wanted, he never would have brought demons here . . . If he'd understood that the ultimate goal of the research was to somehow bridge the gap between those thing and humans . . .

 

“Maybe you should tell him you want more for me,” she suggested, unaware that she'd inadvertently set off his temper.

 

“And this doesn't bother you? You want to be the one to . . . to infect countless humans with your blood?” he countered.

 

She shrugged and shot him a droll look. “It won't work,” she said simply. “I mean, they could try, but . . .”

 

“Why won't it work?” he demanded. “How would you know whether or not it could?”

 

A strange sort of expression flickered over her features; a certain amusement that was tinged with a hint of sadness. “If it got that far, that is . . . I wouldn't let it happen.”

 

“And you could do something to stop it?” he jeered, tossing the newspaper aside and stomping over to the cage. “You can't do anything, locked up like you are in there. You can't do a damn thing.”

 

“You'd be surprised at what I can do,” she murmured, her gaze igniting with a certain brightness. Then she sighed. “Our blood is different than yours,” she finally said. “Human blood can be stored, right? In blood banks and stuff . . .”

 

“Yours can't?”

 

She shook her head. “No. Well, I don't know for sure, but . . . but I do know that if we die, so does our blood. It's that simple.”

 

He snorted. “So you're saying that if they tried to inject it into a human to create, as you say, some sort of super human, then you'd just kill yourself so your blood would die?”

 

She nodded slowly. “See? Simple.”

 

“And how do you know that's true?” he demanded.

 

“I just know,” she replied with an enigmatic little smile.

 

“Seems awfully convenient, if you ask me.”

 

The little demon shrugged and pulled the blanket a little closer. “So about that paper . . .” she reminded him.

 

Kurt blinked and scowled then shook his head. “You've got a one-track mind, don't you?” he muttered. “And I'm not done with it, anyway.”

 

“Is that your not-so-subtle way of saying that you're not going to let me see it?”

 

“Yeah, I think it is.”

 

She heaved a longsuffering sigh and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. “Fine, fine . . . if you insist on being that way . . .”

 

Kurt let out a deep breath and headed for the desk again. The demon looked like she was going to go to sleep, anyway, which was just fine with him.

 

Reaching for the paper, he settled down again, scanning the headlines for anything that might be of interest. Too bad he was a little too preoccupied to really read it, though. A race of super-humans who possessed the demon's ability to heal itself? And just what sort of good could possibly come of that?

 

Kurt's scowl darkened a little more as he considered that idea. If what the demon said were true, then he supposed he could be thankful for that.

 

“If we die, so does our blood . . .”

 

Was it really that simple, after all?

 

“If we die, so does our blood . . .”

 

If he took that at face value, what did it mean? Did it mean, as she had said, that she would simply find a way to kill herself? But it wasn't that easy, was it? He'd seen for himself, how quickly the damn thing healed. Even if she wanted to, would she be able to do that . . .?

 

Still, it bothered him. Harlan's claims . . . the little demon's assertions . . . and what, exactly was the truth . . .?

 

Tugging the page of comics free, he glanced over at the cage, but shook his head. It was already asleep with the blankets pulled up over her head. He could tell from the rhythm of her breathing in the quiet.

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

`Five weeks . . .'

 

Staring out the window of his office at the snow that gently fell from the sky, Cain slipped his cell phone back into his pocket and sighed.

 

“I heard you talking, Daddy . . .”

 

Turning to smile wanly at his daughter, he held out a hand to her. “Yeah . . . that was Bas. Said that Ryomaru and Griffin called in a bit ago. They're stuck at a motel on the interstate that runs through Minnesota . . . A blizzard, I guess.”

 

Bellaniece nodded, slipping her arms around her father's waist and leaning against him with a soft sigh. “Six weeks feels like such a long time,” she murmured.

 

“I know,” he intoned softly.

 

“And tomorrow night . . .”

 

She didn't have to finish her statement. Cain knew well enough what Bellaniece was talking about. Tomorrow night was the new moon—Samantha's human night . . . and it scared Bellaniece.

 

“Sam's a smart girl,” Cain assured her. “She'll do everything she can to hide herself.”

 

Bellaniece laughed softly. “You know, when she was little, she was the only one of my girls who never cried on her human night . . . She didn't mind it . . . She said . . . she said she liked looking just like her father . . .”

 

Cain remembered that well enough. How many times had Bellaniece called him, telling him that Kichiro had to go out looking for Samantha? She'd found it interesting to view the world through the eyes of a human, and while he knew well enough that everyone had tried to curb that tendency in her, he would have been surprised if anyone actually had been able to do that . . .

 

She shook her head and stared out the window at the darkness of the night, watching at the snowflakes stuck to the panes of glass, some of them melting, others creating a thin sheet that frosted the corners of the panes. “Do you suppose that we'll all be together again? Next year or . . . or the year after . . . just sometime . . .?”

 

“Yeah,” Cain murmured, forcing a smile for his daughter. How often had he done that over the years? How many times had he smiled, just for her—smiled when he felt like breaking down . . .? How many times would he continue to do that? Just for Bellaniece . . . for Bellaniece . . .

 

“Daddy?”

 

“My lady?”

 

“I love you.”

 

He tightened his arms around her, blinked to disburse the moisture that clouded his vision. “I . . . I love you, too, Bellaniece.”

 

“Christmas is the season of hope, right?”

 

He nodded. “Yeah.”

 

She relaxed just a little, only a little, and her voice was sweet and soft. “Then everything'll be all right.”

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

The dulcet sounds of the piano drifted through the quiet of the hotel restaurant. The ambient clink of dinnerware being cleared away did not detract from the somber tones . . . Old songs that lingered in his memory, playing every single one of them by heart with his eyes closed and a sad sort of smile gracing his lips . . .

 

“Is he one of the guests here?” one of the waitresses leaned over to ask another as they stood at the end of the bar, dividing their tips.

 

“Hmm, yeah, I think that's what I heard,” another remarked slowly. “He's something else, isn't he?”

 

“Oh, wait . . . isn't he staying on the top floor? There's a whole group of them, and they're all just gorgeous,” a third waitress added.

 

“I don't know . . . there's something hot about a man who can play the piano like that, don't you think?”

 

“Absolutely! You know, I . . . oh . . . oh, my . . .”

 

The three women fell silent, all three staring, wide-eyed as another man slipped into the restaurant. One of the busboys murmured something, probably telling the man that they'd just closed. The man nodded and lifted a hand before sauntering over to the one at the piano. His movements were like a study in harmony, a perfect collision of motion and grace . . . deep blue eyes that sparkled with a sober sort of expression, he drew attention as easily as he wore the tee-shirt and scruffy looking jeans that seemed to cling to him. He didn't look around but headed straight for the piano with a purpose, flowing like water . . .

 

The two looked like they could be brothers—long silvery hair that seemed to shine in the gentle lighting. The piano player's hair was caught back in a long braid while the other's hair hung loose to his narrow waist. The second man said nothing to the one who still played, and to their surprise, the one playing just scooted over on the bench to allow the other to sit. Without missing a beat, he joined in, too, playing a quiet harmony that perfectly matched the melancholy song.

 

The first waitress—Shelly—watched, mesmerized, without noticing as a tear slipped down her cheek. The two men . . . the song they played . . . the perfect symmetry of the sound . . . The men said nothing. They didn't even glance at one another, but then, they didn't really have to.

 

A few of the kitchen staff appeared in the doorway, holding open the swinging bombazine doors. Even the clatter of the clean up crew seemed to die down, as if everyone in the place had stopped, just to listen to the two strangers.

 

Without a word, without a glance, the song ended but flowed into another. Neither man missed a beat.

 

The waitress beside her sighed softly. The third had sat on a high barstool to watch. Shelly reached up, smashed her hand against her chest, wondered why it felt as though her entire being was crumbling.

 

There was an infinite sadness in the voice of the piano, an understated emotion, as though tears had been put into song. The one man was scowling at the keyboard as his fingers danced over it. The other man still had his eyes closed. Shelly knew the song; it was vaguely familiar to her, and yet she couldn't think of the name to save her soul.

 

When it ended, the entire establishment was silent, as though applause would only cheapen the effect, as though everyone was afraid to break the spell cast over them in such a beautiful way. The two men looked at each other; the second one smiled just a little. Neither said a word, though, as they stood up and walked out of the restaurant.

 

Shelly wasn't sure how long she continued to stand there, even long after the men had left. The rich tones of the piano had long since faded, and yet the song still lingered in the air . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Kurt closed his book and lifted his face to stare at the little demon. She hadn't said anything since she woke up, but she'd started humming quietly and had been doing it for the last few minutes.

 

It was a song that seemed vaguely familiar to him though he wasn't sure why since he rarely listened to the radio or anything. Crossing his arms over his chest, he wasn't sure why, but he was loathe to interrupt her, too.

 

What did she see when she stared off into the darkness? She wasn't focusing on anything in particular, was she? And yet, she didn't have to, either. He didn't have to move in closer to know that she was smiling. Maybe it wasn't a full smile, but . . . but he could feel it, couldn't he?

 

The song was sad, beautiful, bringing to mind emotions that he couldn't quite place. An exquisite melancholy, an ethereal pain . . . a fleeting thought of something just a little too distant for him to discern . . .

He didn't know if the song had words, but it didn't matter, did it? Something about it—about her . . . Something . . .

 

The song ended, and she sat back with the softest sigh. She said nothing, and if she noticed that he was staring at her, she didn't remark upon it.

 

There was something infinitely frightening about her in that moment; something that had little to do with her physical abilities or her demon nature. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, and yet he could feel it more acutely than he'd ever felt anything before in his life. A slow trill of fear that gripped him, a silent understanding in the darkness . . . The absolute isolation that engulfed her . . . it was familiar, wasn't it? He knew it because . . .

 

Slamming the door on those thoughts, he yanked open the book once more. That wasn't possible, was it? It wasn't true; it couldn't be. Deliberately misunderstanding . . . because he just couldn't . . .

 

She was a demon—a monster—every single thing that he hated. Her kind had no regard for anything at all; wasn't that right? No thoughts, no feelings, no emotions . . .

 

Images solidified before him in the pages of the book: vile, unspeakable images of those things that he simply couldn't escape. All those things in his life that he'd seen, that he'd done . . . the grossly distorted faces of the demons he'd captured . . . the broken bodies of the family that he'd lost so long ago . . . Everything and nothing seemed to converge . . .

 

The vow he'd made as he stood at the foot of the three graves in the lonesome cemetery . . . The two graves in a Presbyterian church yard less than an hour away . . . He'd promised that he'd find them; promised that he'd destroy them, and all the anger, all the hatred that had sustained him for so very long writhed and twisted inside him with an ugliness that he could scarcely contain.

 

As if she could sense his rioting emotions, the little demon turned her head, and while he couldn't make out her features in the darkness, why did he know that she was still smiling—not a mocking grin or a condescending smirk . . . but a sad little smile . . .?

 

“They let me run today,” she said quietly. “They let me run . . .”

 

He grunted unintelligibly, distrusting himself to give her a proper response.

 

She laughed softly—a warm sound that grated on him, nonetheless. “Almost all day, really,” she went on, her eyes glowing steadily in the darkness. “It was . . . like heaven.”

 

“Running all day? That was a good thing?”

 

She nodded enthusiastically then heaved a little sigh. “I don't suppose . . . I don't suppose they'll let me do that tomorrow . . .”

 

He didn't respond to that as a bit of her ebullience faltered.

 

“It reminded me of . . . of running through the forest . . . barefoot with my hair blowing behind me . . .The scent of the trees, the decaying leaves . . . the feel of the sunshine on my face . . .”

 

She fell silent for a moment then sighed. “I want to do that again one day . . . just . . . run . . . to see the sky . . . the sun . . . the stars . . .”

 

Kurt stood abruptly, shoving away the strange and unwelcome emotions as he shot to his feet and strode over to the cage. “You'll never get out of here, demon,” he growled, his voice thick and harsh. “You'll live here; you'll die here, and no one—no one—is going to give a damn.”

 

She stared at him for long seconds: owlish eyes glowing in the darkness—eyes that did not falter . . . eyes that still smiled just a little sadly. “Probably,” she admitted quietly.

 

He snorted, stomping past her as he paced the floor. “And you're all right with that? You don't care? You think I'm joking? I'm not! I don't care what happens to you; do you hear me? I don't care! You and all of your kind! You're monsters—monsters! Just . . . just beasts that do nothing but kill and kill and . . .”

 

“I suppose you're right,” she said. “I've killed youkai . . . a few of them . . .”

 

He uttered a terse grunt, feeling perversely vindicated and even emptier, at the same time. “Yeah, well, there you have it . . . So . . . so you might as well get used to it, demon, because the inside of that cage is the only thing you're ever, ever going to see.”

 

 

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

A/N:

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Final Thought from Kurt:

…Never …right …?

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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~