InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Intuition ( Chapter 35 )

~~Chapter 35~~

~Intuition~

 

-=0=-

 

 

Kurt slammed through the service door at the facility at a dead run, breathing hard as he dashed toward the stairwell without bothering to mess with the elevator. The feeling was more than he could stand, and by the time that he broke out of the enclosed stairwell, he felt as though he were coming completely undone.

 

The hallway flashed past in a blur, his footsteps echoing around him. Catching himself on the corner of door jamb, he glanced around the holding area, seeing everything in a blur, in a second, in a moment.

 

Peterson had the little demon chained up to the apparatus where Kurt had first fastened her to give her a shower, her body naked and dripping from the water hose that hung limply in Peterson's hands. Angry red welts covered most of her skin—the bastard had turned the power hose on her full force, hadn't he—and a lone trickle of blood coursed from the left corner of her lips. The skin on her right thigh was already starting to discolor, taking on a nasty grayish purple hue, and yet she stood there, proud and unflinching, her expression completely blanked, her gaze clear and calm as a trickle of blood ran down the inside of each of her legs, spiraling around the limbs.

 

It was that blood that drew Kurt forward.

 

Peterson looked somewhat surprised to see him, his face contorting in a smug, stupid grin, as though he honestly believed that Kurt would think that what he was doing was all right. The smile didn't last long when Kurt barreled forward, flattening the man with a fist in the middle of his face. He felt the cartilage snap and crumble beneath his knuckles just before Peterson fell back. Striding over to the fallen researcher, Kurt hauled him to his feet and flattened him again. “Get up, damn you!” he demanded.

 

Peterson blinked and started to shake his head.

 

Kurt yanked him upright again and sent him flying with a fist to his jaw. “Get up, you piece of shit!” Kurt bellowed as he stalked toward the fallen man. “Get—”

 

A small whine, the tiniest sound, stopped him dead in his tracks. The little demon, her eyes squeezed closed . . . she didn't want him to hurt the damned bastard, did she?

 

“Get the fuck out of here,” he growled, flexing his fist, struggling to contain the absolute rate that demanded more retribution. “Get out now before I decide that you'd be better off dead.”

 

“Have you lost your mind, Doc?” Peterson muttered, his words much tougher than his tone of voice. Staggering to his feet, he spit out a mouthful of blood.

 

“What the hell part of research was that?” Kurt demanded quietly, stepping slowly toward Peterson who backed away toward the door. “You make me sick.”

 

Peterson opened his mouth to say something then snapped it closed again. Without another word, he covered his nose with both hands and stumbled out of the room.

 

Kurt didn't move until the sound of the elevator door banging closed sounded in his ears. Breathing hard, he slowly shook his head, willing his heart to slow. The little demon uttered a sound, half way between a sigh of relief and a sob, and Kurt wheeled around, unleashing a string of curses under his breath as he ran over to unfasten the bindings that held her in place. No sooner did he have her arms unhooked than she threw them around him, clinging to him as though her life depended upon it as she shuddered and buried her face against his chest. Late concern stopped him, and for a long second, he just stood, immobile.

 

He'd never in his life ever tried to console someone, had he? Grimacing as the realization sank in, battling back his own still turbulent emotions, he started to put his arms around her, only to jerk them away when she squeaked and hissed out a harsh sound when he felt the momentary discharge of built up energy flow from his fingers into her. “Uh . . .” he gasped with a wince as she crumpled to her knees, her hair sticking to her, twisting around her like a silvery ropes. Shrugging off his coat, he draped it over her shoulders. “S-sorry,” he muttered, unsure if he was apologizing for the jolt or for not being there to stop the attack before it had begun.

 

In the end, he figured that it was a little bit of both. The little demon did nothing as he strode over to grab a clean smock and blanket out of the supply cabinet. “Here,” he said, his voice a little harsher than he'd intended.

 

She reached up for the items without lifting her chin, letting his coat fall away as she struggled into the smock. Unfolding the blanket a few times, he wrapped it around her before heaving a sigh as he hunkered down beside her. “What did he do to you?” he asked carefully, dreading her answer yet needing to know.

 

She shook her head, refused to meet his gaze, her hands trembling as she pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders.

 

“You need to tell me,” he prodded.

 

“Did you catch one?” she countered, her voice throaty, raw, much like it had been the first time she'd spoken to him after days and days of not using it.

 

Kurt shook his head, unsure what she was talking about. “Catch one, what?”

 

She swallowed hard, sniffled quietly. “Another demon,” she whispered. “A male.”

 

“A . . . what?”

 

“Isn't that where you were?” she challenged. “Out . . . hunting for another?”

 

“No!” he growled with a shake of his head. He wasn't entirely sure where she got those weird notions of hers, but he didn't like them, not at all. “No . . .”

 

She finally looked at him, her gaze completely vulnerable yet full of a cautious sense of hope. “R-really?”

 

“Why would you think that I was?” he countered.

 

“But they said—”

 

“Who said?”

 

She let out a deep breath and shrugged. “The white-coats. They said you were going to hunt one so they could . . .” She suddenly shook her head like she didn't want to think about whatever they'd alluded. Kurt wasn't entirely sure that he could fault her for that.

 

`Damn bastards . . .' Rubbing a weary hand over his features, he sighed. “That's not why I was gone. Now tell me . . . why are you bleeding?”

 

She blinked a few times, as though she wasn't sure what he was talking about, but her mouth widened suddenly and she shook her head. “I'm all right,” she assured him. “He just hit me, was all.”

 

Gritting his teeth at the surge of anger that shot through him, Kurt was careful to keep his voice level. “He hit you,” he repeated.

 

She nodded but smiled. “I'll be fine,” she stated once more.

 

“Let me check you over.”

 

Rolling her eyes, she pushed herself to her feet, but he didn't miss the slight grimace that she hid quickly enough. “They check me over enough during the day,” she replied. “I'm okay now; I promise.”

 

He didn't look like he totally believed her, but he figured that if she could move around well enough that she wasn't so bad off. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, in any case, and he wouldn't be surprised if she were healed up by morning, anyway. Still, he'd be sure to keep an eye on her, regardless . . .

 

“Don't suppose you brought dinner for me,” she ventured in a contrived neutral tone.

 

Kurt grimaced. In his haste to get here, he hadn't bothered, but then, he hadn't actually planned on coming back tonight, either. She probably was damn hungry, too, all things considered. Glancing at her food bowl, only to see the regular kibbles of dog food, he sighed. “I figured I'd, uh, order a . . . a pizza,” he lied, unwilling to admit that he'd rushed in because he'd thought that she might need him.

 

Her ears twitched. “Pizza?”

 

“Yes, pizza,” he said as he dug through the supply cabinet for some sterile wipes her. “Come here.”

 

She did as he instructed, staring at him patiently as he carefully tore open a foil packet and opened up the moist towelette inside. “This might sting,” he murmured, his gaze trained on the small cut on her lip. It was already starting to heal up, and for that, he was thankful. She didn't wince or flinch as he dabbed at the wound. “Good.”

 

She smiled just a little. “Careful, taijya, or I might start to think that you don't hate me completely.”

 

“Of course I do,” he scoffed dryly, turning away quickly before she could discern the hint of redness that had filtered into his cheeks. “Here.”

 

She took the packets of towelettes that he waved at her. “What . . .?”

 

He grunted, jerking his head toward the bathroom as he continued to avoid her gaze. “I figured you'd want to clean up . . .”

 

“Oh . . . okay . . .”

 

He said nothing as she padded off toward the bathroom, his gaze darkening as he watched her, her back straight, proud—unbroken. If he'd been any later . . .

 

Grinding his teeth together as he purposefully refused to think about what might have happened, Kurt shook his head. If he didn't stop thinking about it, he'd be hard pressed not to go after Peterson to make sure that the bastard never, ever tried anything like that again . . .

 

It struck him, too, and not for the first time, how very gentle the little demon really was, how much dignity she held so loosely—a quiet grace that should have been far more evident to him from the start. Then again, he hadn't wanted to see it, had he? Hadn't wanted to acknowledge the idea that she really wasn't the monster that he'd wanted to think she was . . .

 

Yet he knew damn well that the ones who had killed his family . . . they were bad . . . even as her words came back to echo in his head. “There are youkai who despise humans—youkai who blame humans because we have to hide, but we're not all like that . . .”

 

“Not all like that,” he murmured. Maybe she was right when she'd said that there were good and bad ones, just as there were good and bad humans . . . at any rate . . . maybe it was all right to believe that . . .

 

Maybe . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

Cain heaved a sigh and sat back in the chair that groaned in protest of the sudden and harsh movement. Tossing the ink pen onto the desk, he let his head fall back, staring at the ceiling as he methodically deconstructed the information that Myrna had just given him.

 

The office building . . .

 

Ben Philips strode into the office, leafing through a few pictures that Cain had printed out earlier. “So these are . . . Christian symbols?”

 

“Catholic, Myrna thinks, though she admitted that she could be wrong,” Cain muttered without looking at the panther-youkai. “Some sort of symbol used during demon exorcisms back in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. The texts she looked over had symbols very similar listed for a handful of different religions. Hell, according to one of them, it was damn close to the inscription that was carved into the tree where Judas Iscariot hung himself.”

 

Ben nodded, dropping the pictures atop the blotter in the center of the desk. “So what are they doing on that building?”

 

“It's not completely unheard of for different religions to etch symbols into their buildings as a preventive to ward off evil. That building used to be owned by the church beside it, and that church has belonged to several different religious factions over the years, but without a bit of study, figuring out exactly which church would have used that exact symbol, we can't really tell.”

 

Ben considered that for a moment then shot Cain a troubled scowl. “But the one who put up the barrier around the area where Samantha disappeared used ofuda.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Any way you look at it, it's hard to connect them, isn't it? I mean, for one that uses ofuda to use another religion's symbols . . . Why?”

 

Cain nodded slowly, sitting up and pulling the pictures over. The images were a little blurred but not bad. There were more coming, too, since Evan had mentioned that Kich had gone after a disposable camera. “I feel like I'm grasping at straws,” he admitted, unable to keep the trace hint of bitterness out of his tone.

 

Ben inclined his head in agreement. “It's entirely possible for the barrier to have been there for years—decades . . . a century or better . . . Humans wouldn't have sensed it, would they? And youkai . . .”

 

“Youkai might not have, either. Evan said he didn't actually feel it until he went up on the stoop. All the same . . .”

 

“Hmm?”

 

Cain set the images aside and pulled out the paper where he'd jotted notes during Myrna's phone call, and he scrawled the name onto a clean sheet of cream colored fine linen stationery. “Here's the name of the person who's currently renting the building. There's no listing for a business at that address, though. Myrna's working on getting more information, but I figured maybe you could find out something, too.”

 

Ben took the paper and frowned. “Ed Smith? Seems a little generic, if you ask me.”

 

Cain nodded then shrugged and sighed. “I thought so, too. Still, unless the owner of the building is a complete idiot, there'd have to be some record of `Ed Smith', right?”

 

Ben agreed though he still looked rather dubious. “I'll let you know what I find out,” he said as he folded the paper and stowed it in the inner breast pocket of his suit jacket.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Cain sat back again, watching in silence as Ben exited the study, feeling like he was chasing a ghost in the mist. This lead really didn't seem any more promising than the others that they'd chased down in the more than two months since Samantha's disappearance. One of these times, they had to get lucky, didn't they? One of their leads had to go somewhere, so not following up on them simply wasn't a viable option . . .

 

He could only pray that it was sooner rather than later . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“Goddamn self-righteous, father-knows-best bullshit!” Evan snarled as he snapped the cell phone closed and glowered at his surroundings.

 

Kichiro sighed and slowly shook his head. “I don't know, Evan,” he began slowly. “I hate to say this—and I do mean that I hate to say this—but he has a point.”

 

Evan snorted, planting his hands on his hips as he stomped the length of the building on the sidewalk and back again. “Fuck! You're agreeing with Cain?”

 

Running a hand over his face, Kichiro jerked his head once in a nod. “It used to belong to that church . . . It could easily be that someone put the symbols there years ago . . . it could be that the barrier has absolutely nothing to do with this. I mean, the one was done by someone versed in the Japanese—he or she used ofuda. This one . . .” Shaking his head in a completely frustrated sort of way, Kichiro sighed again. “This one uses western symbols.”

 

Evan shrugged. “I'm going to wait for whoever rented this place to show up,” he muttered. “I want to know for sure that it has nothing to do with her before I give up completely.”

 

Kichiro stared at him for a long moment then finally nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “Sure.”

 

Evan nodded brusquely and stepped back. Kichiro watched him without a word. The young man strode over to and leapt onto the building beside the office to get a better view of the area, Kichiro supposed. He could understand Evan's reasoning: better to be sure than just to go on assumption, and at this point, all they had was conjecture of one kind or another.

 

Staring at the building for another few minutes, Kichiro slowly shook his head. He could understand Evan's frustration—he knew that emotion just a little too well, himself—but he also wasn't entirely sure that he could disagree with Cain's reasoning, and this place . . . Wasn't it just grasping at another straw?

 

Besides that, he had been asked to meet with Martin Sandstrom, one of Cain's generals. He wanted to get more information on Samantha so that they could better search the west coast area where he had jurisdiction, and while Kichiro thought it was a long shot, he couldn't say that he didn't think that they ought to try, either. At this point . . . at this point, anything was worth a try, right?

 

Evan scowled as he watched Kichiro head off down the street, ignoring the sting as his hair was whipped into his eyes, his face. He didn't care what the rest of them said; there was definitely something here; he could feel it. Something . . .

 

The problem was that Cain wasn't here to feel it, himself, wasn't able to make an accurate judgment because he was back in Maine, and even if Evan didn't like that, he had to allow that he understood why that was, and as much as he'd like to think that his father was taking the coward's way out, he knew better, didn't he?

 

That didn't mean that Evan agreed, and even if it were nothing more than wishful thinking on his part, he couldn't help but think that there really was something to the barrier, and before he could just brush it off, he had to know—had to be sure. Samantha deserved that, didn't she? Because Evan would be damned if he'd let it go if it had even the remotest chance that it was important . . . The little girl who had followed him around during his summers spent in Japan . . . the girl with the dark blue eyes . . . He owed her that, and come hell or high water, he'd make sure that she came home . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“Pizza! Pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, piz—” Skidding to a stop, the little demon's ears flattened as she drew away from him as he strode into the room with the freshly delivered pizza. “Eww . . . it has green stuff on it!” she grumbled.

 

Kurt shot her a quick glance but kept moving toward the desk. “What? Green peppers? Damn straight, it does.”

 

Wringing her hands, she slowly, cautiously, shuffled toward the table. “But I don't like green stuff,” she whined.

 

Kurt blinked and stopped, turning just enough to stare at her over his shoulder. “Oh, Christ, did you just whine at me?”

 

She bit her lip then nodded. “M-maybe . . .”

 

“Does your family think you're this big a pain in the ass?”

 

She thought that over then shook her head. “Probably.”

 

He stared at her for a long moment then let out a deep breath. “Probably . . .?”

 

She nodded. “They never actually said . . .”

 

Kurt snorted and turned his attention back to the pizza once more. “I offer you pizza when you haven't had a thing to eat in days, and all you can say is that you don't like green stuff?” he countered.

 

She shrugged. “I do have my standards,” she pointed out as she twisted her fingers together in a knot of writhing flesh. “I don't like green stuff.”

 

“So pick them off,” he said, grabbing a piece and biting into it with gusto. He hadn't realized how hungry he was, had he?

 

She stuck her tongue out as she scrunched up the right side of her face in a show of abject disgust. “But it'll still taste like them . . . ruined a perfectly lovely pizza with those nasty bits . . .”

 

Kurt snorted. “Nasty bits?”

 

Nodding emphatically, she hunkered down beside the monitor station, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her chin against her knees. “Yes,” she reiterated haughtily, “nasty bits.”

 

“You're a strange little demon,” Kurt tossed back. “Anyway, beggars can't be choosers, so either eat or shut up.”

 

She uttered a little `hurmph' and continued to sulk. “No, thank you,” she muttered.

 

Kurt rolled his eyes, folding the rest of his slice in half like a sandwich. “Then don't complain to me if you're starving. I bought you food, and you rejected it.”

 

She was quiet for all of a minute, as though she were considering a new tactic. “You . . . you could order another one . . . one without the green stuff,” she ventured a little too innocently.

 

That earned her a long look as he slowly chewed and swallowed. “What? No way! It's not my fault if you're being picky for no good reason.”

 

“I have a perfectly good reason,” she huffed. “I don't like green stuff!”

 

Kurt heaved a sigh and shook his head. `Of all the stubborn, crazy . . . I am not—not—ordering another damn pizza . . .' Glancing at her again, he had to do a double take when he noticed that her ears were not only flattened but were also stuck out to the sides, as well. “Knock that off!” he growled incredulously, forcing his gaze away from the pesky little demon.

 

“Knock what off?” she replied.

 

He snorted loudly and shoved the rest of the slice of pizza into his mouth. “That . . . that ear thing,” he muttered around a mouthful of dough.

 

She forced them back up, but they drooped once more a moment later. “But I'm hungry,” she complained.

 

“Then eat the pizza I ordered,” he shot back, “because I'm really not ordering another one.”

 

“You know, just picking off the green stuff isn't really going to make any difference.”

 

Those ears smashed down again, and Kurt heaved a sigh. `If she's that hungry, she can damn well eat what I ordered, to start with,' he growled to himself, nudging aside the misplaced feeling that he was being entirely mean, and for no good reason. She said earlier that she liked `everything'. She hadn't mentioned possessing a general disdain for all things green, had she? She could deal with it one time, damn it, because he was not about to give in and order a second one, right?

 

He snorted, jaw tightening as stubborn resolve set it. `Right.'

 

 

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Final Thought from Kurt:

Those ears …

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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~