InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Metempsychosis ❯ Halloween ( Chapter 83 )

"Daddy!  You look funny!"

Ashur heaved a sigh as Kells danced around him, clapping his hands in his fluffy white tiger costume.  Kells wanted to be a lynx, but Jessa said she couldn't find a costume like that, so he'd settled on the tiger, instead.  As for Ashur?  He still wasn't sure why he'd put the God-forsaken costume on.  He supposed maybe he'd done it simply because Jessa had chosen it for him, and, after his talk with Nora, he'd just been too deep in thought to care or to argue it.  "Thanks, Kells," he replied.

"Why you wearin' pantyhose?"

He heaved another sigh and raised an eyebrow at the child.  "It's part of the costume," he said.

"A funny part!"

Ashur rolled his eyes.

"Now, Kells, it's no’ nice to tease your da," Jessa pointed out as she slipped her hand up under Ashur's elbow.  That her costume matched his was of little comfort, especially given that she looked absolutely stunning in her elaborately gorgeous dress, while he looked entirely stupid—and his head was ridiculously hot, too, under the stupid wig, but . . .

"You look absolutely charming," she assured him with a brilliant smile.

He sighed, scowling at the lipstick that stained the rim of the snifter in his hand.  "I feel . . . stupid," he admitted.

She laughed.  It figured.  "You'd have been the very height of fashion back in the day."

He nodded.  "And that's why everyone else here is laughing at me."

"They're not laughing at you," she insisted.  "They're all just having a wonderful time!"

Ashur sighed yet again.  At least Ben looked almost as ridiculous as he did.  Somehow, Charity had convinced him to dress up like a big cat, too—a panther, of course, but the painted on, triangle nose—pink, no less—and the stuck-on whiskers were kind of awesome, but the black plush onesie was pretty darned laughable, even if it did have a long, wired black tail sticking out of the rear . . . Charity was dressed as a lion tamer, complete with fishnet stockings and glittering top hat, while the girls were both dressed as cougars—surprise, surprise.  Manami was dressed as, quite possibly, the sexiest witch that Ashur could credit, while Gin Zelig was decked out as an adorable, if not somewhat risqué, French maid.  Zelig, miscreant that he was, didn't look that different than usual—except for the blue and white 'Hello!  My name is . . .' sticker that he'd written 'Tai-youkai' on.  Bas and Sydnie were wearing matching outfits, kind of.  Bas was dressed like a really large football player while his diminutive wife wore a matching cheerleader outfit.  Evan and Valerie had opted to dress as Jack Skellington and Sally, along with infant Jack, who was wearing a Zero sleeper, which was good, considering Ashur had heard the rumor that he'd tried to talk his mate into Gomez and Morticia Addams . . . Laith was dressed as a rather overdone cowboy while Carol kind of looked like the girl doll from the Toy Story movies . . . Cris had gotten into the spirit of things, showing up in a cute little fairy costume, and Devlin?

Ashur shook his head.  Devlin . . . Well, to be completely honest?  Ashur wasn't sure what Devlin was.  He was caught somewhere between Robin Hood, a forest fairy, and maybe—maybe—Peter Pan.  Where he'd found what he was wearing was anybody's guess, and even stranger, he really didn't seem to care that he looked borderline ridiculous in all the wrong ways . . .

Ashur sighed.  "Jessa?"

"Hmm?"

"What . . . the hell . . . is Dev?"

"I . . . I really don't know," she admitted, watching as the man in question handed Manami and Myrna—who hadn't had time to find a costume since she'd flown straight in after completing an assignment for Cain—each a glass of wine.  "It's cute, though . . ."

He grunted since 'cute' wasn't exactly the word he'd use to describe Devlin's costume.  "He's something," he muttered.

Jessa giggled, tucking a ringlet of hair behind her ear.  It had escaped the meticulously arranged pile of curls that she'd managed to pull her hair into.  "Oh, should we make our announcement now?"

He made a face.  "Could we wait till I look a little less . . . ridiculous?"

She laughed and gave his arm a little squeeze.  "You look wonderful," she insisted once more, smiling as the children—pretty much all of them—raced through the living room, waving candy in the air, and Ashur sighed when he caught sight of Kells, leading the pack with a half-eaten, full-size Hershey bar in his hands.

"Excuse me!" Jessa called.  Ashur gave up and tapped his glass, letting the sound of the chiming crystal echo loudly.  The talking slowly fell silent, and Jessa smiled.  "Ashur and I wanted to thank you for coming, and we also wanted to take this time to announce that we've set our wedding date."

"You're all invited—unless you make fun of me tonight.  If you make fun of me, consider yourself banned from my home forever after tonight," Ashur went on.  "We've chosen November 27th, so please keep that date cleared."

"Congratulations!" Gin squealed, looking thoroughly excited by the announcement.

"You're not wearing that to your wedding, are you?"

Rolling his eyes at Cain's bald question, Ashur shook his head.  "You heard the part about being banned, right?"

Cain laughed.  "I wasn't making fun—exactly . . ."

"If you wear that for the wedding, does that mean the rest of us have to, too?  Because if that's the plan, then I'm not sure I want to be here for it . . ." Bas added.

"I hate them," he muttered under his breath.  Jessa giggled and tried to give him a stern look.

He let out a deep breath as Jessa was dragged away by most of the women.  Myrna hurried over to hug her, gasping and exclaiming when she saw Jessa's ring.  She turned long enough to wink at him before hugging Jessa's shoulders.  Ben chuckled as he stepped up beside Ashur.  "So, no laughing at you?"

"You have no room to talk, Ben.  You look absolutely ridiculous, too."

Ben chuckled.  "It's the one time of year that you can get away with looking entirely stupid, and no one will say a thing," he remarked.

"Oh, yeah?" Ashur countered, nodding in Devlin's direction.

Ben's chuckle escalated.  "Okay, yeah . . . He looks like a tree threw up on him."

Ashur finally chuckled, too.  "It probably did," he allowed, finally relaxing just a little.  "Hey, um . . . we need to talk."

Ben shot him a quizzical glance.  "Sounds serious."

Ashur nodded.  "It is . . . and I think I should probably talk to all of you about it."

"All of us, as in, Charity and me?  Or you mean—"

He slowly shifted his gaze to meet Ben's, and the panther nodded.  "Okay," he said, lifting his glass to his lips.  "Let me gather them up, and we'll meet you in your office.  I really doubt the women will miss us at all right now, anyway . . ."

Ashur watched as Ben slipped over to Cain and Bas before striding out of the living room and tugging the offensive wig off his head.

"All right.  I brought the booze," Evan Zelig remarked as he let himself into the rather cramped office, holding up an unopened bottle of sake, along with a handful of porcelain sake cups.

"Hand that over, young Zelig," Ben said, holding out a hand to take the bottle.  Evan grinned and gave it up.

"Congratulations, Ashur," Devlin said, stepping forward long enough to hand Ashur a white linen kerchief.

Ashur took it gratefully and started wiping the makeup off his face.  "Thanks."

"So, what's this about?" Cain asked, settling himself on the window sill behind and off to the left of the desk.

"Death match to decide who your best man's going to be?" Evan quipped, handing out the cups of sake as Ben filled them.

"As if," Bas scoffed.  "And I'd win that, hands down."

"Because you're a damn howitzer," Evan shot back.

Bas cleared his throat.  "Yes, I am."

Cain sighed and shook his head.  "Too many years of those two to count," he muttered.

"Actually," Ashur said, voice muffled by the kerchief, "I . . . I needed to see if any of you have any information about something . . . but before I say what it is, I trust you all understand that this . . . This must remain between us."

"Well, that sounds serious," Ben remarked, setting the bottle on the desk.  "What did you do this time?  Get Jessa pregnant without talking to her about it first?"

Heaving a sigh, Ashur stopped rubbing his face long enough to scowl at his brother.  "No, actually, she wanted to be surprised, so she doesn't know anything, and if any of you tell her before she figures it out for herself, I swear on all that is holy, I'll—"

"Oh, dear God, you did!" Ben exclaimed.

Ashur made a face.  "I'm only telling you all this because it goes along with what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Wa-a-a-ait . . ." Laith drawled.  "You mean, you—?"

"I will fire you," Ashur warned.

Laith chuckled.  "Good enough!"

"You have serious impulse control issues, baby brother," Ben added.

Ashur dropped the soiled kerchief on the desk and lifted a hand, curling his fingers a few times as he slowly shook his head.  "All right.  Get it out of your systems, so we can move on."

Ben grinned.  "I'm done," he promised.  "So, what is it you wanted to discuss with us?"

Somewhat reassured that the ritualistic ribbing was, indeed, over, Ashur rubbed his forehead.  "I . . . I was told today that Jessa's child—my child . . . She will be the phoenix."

Devlin stood up straight.  Ben choked on the sip of sake he was taking.  Cain's eyebrows shot up in surprise, only to lower as he drew them together in a somewhat puzzled frown.  Bas slowly shook his head.  Laith seemed unsure of what, exactly, Ashur meant.  Evan only nodded.  "I told you that it was only speculation," Devlin remarked slowly, carefully.  "I mean, if that's what my old man truly believed, but I—"

"Nora told me," he replied.  "She . . . She was the mother of the last one, though she believes that her daughter was stopped from reviving because she died in a cold climate and, instead of burying her properly, the guy just put her in a shallow grave."

Cain shook his head.  "Ashur . . . The existence of the phoenix . . . That's just a myth . . ."

"That's what I thought, too," Ashur replied.  "Nora says that she has the mark—Jessa.  It's separate from her youkai marking, and I've seen it, too . . ."

"But there's no proof—nothing about the existence of them in the past," Ben went on thoughtfully.  "Nora told you all of this?"

Ashur nodded, leaning his temple on his fingertips, leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair. "She says it wasn't a meteor that crashed into the earth, that ended the dinosaurs.  It was the first phoenix.  Pompeii . . . even up to the splitting of the Japanese islands.  All of it . . . She said that Sesshoumaru's father put a stop to Amaterasu.  She is the one who broke the island into smaller ones—the ones we know today.  He stopped her rampage before she could destroy more . . ."

"But I thought that a phoenix was a symbol of hope, of rebirth," Bas said.  "Then why . . .?"

"I read something about that once," Evan piped up, his usually ebullient demeanor, tempered by a quiet pensiveness.  "It was, uh, when I was in Japan for training.  I ran off one day, hung out with this girl, and she was into that kind of mythic mumbo-jumbo.  She took me to this old library—she said it was a secret—and she read me this thing about it . . . If I remember rightly, it said that the true form of the phoenix was destruction . . ."

"Nora said that they don't start out that way.  They're love—pure love.  That's their true natures.  The problem is, after they find a mate.  They love their mate so much that if they die, if it takes a year or more for them to be reborn, their mate has died, and . . . "

Cain grimaced.  "So, they die over and over again because their mate is dead . . ."

Ashur nodded.  "And that process breaks their . . . their minds—warps them . . ."

"Makes sense," Ben ventured quietly.  "How many times can one be reborn, only to end up dying because their mate is already gone . . .?   How many times before one's mind breaks, too?"

Ashur grimaced.  "The only way to stop it is . . . is to put their bodies into a climate so cold that they cannot regenerate."

"And your daughter—the child that Irish is carrying . . ." Devlin murmured.

Ashur drained the sake cup and dumped more into it, downing that, too, before he trusted himself to speak again.  "If . . . If I had known this ahead of time, I . . ."

"You wouldn't want to have a child," Ben supplied quietly.  "Ashur, that's not the answer, and—
"I didn't think it was," Ashur retorted.  "I just . . . I want your promises that you'll help us.  That you'll help us keep her safe.  If we fail . . ."

Cain let out a deep breath, patting his pockets for his rumpled pack of cigarettes.  "We'll do everything we can," he promised.  "Does Sesshoumaru know anything about it?"

"Nora said that, in order for him to gain the ability to defeat Amaterasu, his father had to . . . to give up his first mate.  He was made to forget her, and she, him.  I would guess that's why he didn't die from the loss of his mate, why he ended up, finding a human mate later . . . As far as Sesshoumaru goes, I have no idea what he does or doesn't know."

Bas broke into a wan smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.  He looked worried, no doubt about it, even if he was trying his hardest, not to show it.  "There's no reason for it to become an issue," he reasoned.  "If we're the only ones who know, and the proper precautions are in place, just in case . . . the worst comes to pass . . ."

"We should probably talk to Nora, too, hear her story first hand, if you will," Ben suggested.

"I'd rather hold off on that until after Jessa realizes that she's pregnant," Ashur said.

"Yeah, about that . . . How, exactly, does that work, old chap?" Devlin chimed in.

Draining his cup for the third time, Ashur shot Devlin a quelling glance.  "She said she envied humans, that they get to be surprised when they got pregnant, so she told me just to do it, not to tell her, so that she could have that kind of surprise, too."

Cain considered that, idly watching a rising smoke ring as it dissipated in the air overhead.  "It's good to know you haven't completely lost your mind," he remarked.

"Hmm, yes, well, thanks for making that engagement ring for her," Ben added thoughtfully.  "Charity saw it, and now she wants to know what I'm—and I quote—good for—since I cannot command earth like that."

"Just give her a gift card," Ashur shot back dryly.  "You're damned good at those . . ."

Ben chuckled.

"You made that ring?" Cain intoned.  "Very nice . . ."

Evan nodded.  "You should probably take that and get it appraised for insurance purposes."

"It'd be easier to make her another one than it would be to do all the insurance stuff."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Evan's right," Bas added.  "I mean, we made the diamonds for our mates' rings, but they're still insured.  Well, Dad didn't."

"Kind of a loser . . . Bet he couldn’t even do the kongosouha," Evan mused.

Cain snorted.  Loudly.  "I could if I wanted to," he grumbled.

"Okay, Cain," Evan shot back.  "Next time we're around jiijii, we'll see."

Cain grunted something entirely unintelligible under his breath.  "Anyway, foolishness aside, you're going to have to call Sesshoumaru, anyway, aren't you, or am I wrong in the assumption that Jessa's going to want to be Kells' mom officially?"

Ashur nodded.  "She does, and yes, I was planning on calling him this week."

"You could ask him when you talk to him if he knows anything about the phoenix," Ben suggested.

"Absolutely," Ashur replied.  "That aside, I'd love to see the adoption done by the time we get married."

"Well, since we're all here, why don't you tell us who you were wanting to be your best man," Devlin said.

Ashur pondered that for a moment, then stood up, rounding the desk as he headed for the door.  "I tell you what.  You all can figure it out, however you want, and you can tell me later on."

That said, he left the office, breaking into the barest hint of a smile as he strode toward the living room to scrape Kells off the ceiling . . .