InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Archangel ❯ Unleashing the Beast ( Chapter 11 )

The Archangel

 

By: Undecidedlycertain

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

Unleashing the Beast

 

 

 

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Washington DC, Central Security Vault 15

Nineteen Floors Beneath the Pentagon

Sunday, June 19th, 2:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

41 hours 30 minutes until Archangel release

 

 

 

“We're still talking about this Shikon do-dad, right?”

 

 

Mara smiled placidly at the endearingly inelegant hanyou, her eyes tracing the features of his face benignly. It made him a damn sight uncomfortable. He couldn't seem to resist the urge to shift uncomfortably into a more defensive stance, his scowl deepening as his arms crossed over his chest.

 

 

Her smile didn't budge.

 

 

“The jewel of four souls was a legend to the great men we know today as legends themselves. Four eternally battling youkai inside the heart of the most powerful priestess ever to tread this earth. A constant struggle of good and evil, a delicate balance of power, easily tipped in either favor.”

 

 

“That don't make sense, old woman.” Inuyasha interrupted bluntly. “What would four youkai be doing inside a miko's heart?”

 

 

“And how was it a legend so long ago?” Koga interjected, all seriousness for the sake of the moment. “We were under the impression that it only appeared twenty-three years ago.”

 

 

“It reappeared twenty-three years ago.” Mara corrected benevolently, stilling Inuyasha before he could protest by raising a dark, gnarled finger as she continued. “It came into being more than a thousand years ago, when a miko of considerable power gave her life and the condition of her soul to seal away four of the most dangerous and volatile demons to ever walk the earth. Titans among even the strongest of youkai, they threatened very existence of life in this world. A great battle ensued to secure their destruction, enemies uniting to rise to the challenge of a common threat, but inevitably it was the pure heart of the priestess Midoriko who, in the face of the realization that the beasts could not be slain, sacrificed her own heart to seal them away.”

 

 

 

“Ooookaayyy.” Inuyasha decided he would just have to take her word for that part. “But that doesn't explain how it got in the body of an unborn baby a thousand years later.”

 

 

 

“Ah, yes. That is the question, isn't it?” She motioned for them to follow as she moved toward the center of the room where the barrier was being maintained over a plain cylindrical pedestal bearing a crudely carved wooden box.

 

 

Inuyasha grunted, his youki snapping at the strong feeling of spiritual energy roiling in the barrier. Koga lagged a few steps behind, a grimace on his face. Inuyasha figured he had to be in a good deal more discomfort; after all, Inuyasha would just be stuck with a human body for a few days if he hit the barrier full on…Koga would be dead.

 

 

Mara stopped just short of touching the barrier, her gaze falling upon the box in the center with a look of cautious reverence. “The jewel, as it was discovered by its original guardians, was quite a powerful relic. It attracted weaker youkai by the droves, and drove them mad with its influence. It had to be guarded with a relentless ferocity by a conglomeration of both the Tai Youkai and the High Celestial Council. There was constant tribulation surrounding the jewel and its keepers until the spring of 1507, during the Sengoku period, the jewel simply vanished with out a trace. There are no records concerning it from the years that followed until it suddenly reappeared in the body of an infant descending from an ancient line of strong holy blood, though no one of promise had emerged from the line in over two hundred years.”

 

 

“Why would it be in someone's body?” Koga queried, clearly mystified.

 

 

“And how the hell would it get there in before the kid was even born?” Inuyasha added.

 

 

“No one knows. The girl was monitored for a few years, but seemed completely ordinary.”

 

 

Mara signaled with a wave of her hand and the monks at the primary points of the circle stopped their chanting. With the impression of falling water, the shimmering barrier wavered once before falling, melting away into nothing more than the faint tingle of a great concentration of power dissipating into thin air.

 

 

The three of them stepped forward over the runes inked on the floor in a flaky black substance that was probably dried blood. The box, Inuyasha noted curiously, was heavily hand carved with runes and symbols, and the seam had been pasted over on three sides with sutra.

 

 

“Oi!” Inuyasha shouted in alarm, spinning in time with Koga's growled “ - the hell?” When the barrier was raised back up behind them.

 

 

“I simply wish for you to understand what it is you are dealing with.” Mara explained calmly. “And to know in return that you won't be overwhelmed by the jewel's tainted allure.”

 

 

Inuyasha keh'd, his hand clenching on Tetsusaiga's hilt while Koga shifted uneasily beside him.

 

 

The sutra were peeled back slowly, emitting sparks at first contact with Mara's aged fingertips before fading to harmless strips of slightly charred blank paper. There was a moment when nothing happened, Inuyasha let out the breath he'd been holding with a scoff. So much for the all-powerful jewel. It had probably lost most of its power after so many years of forced dormancy.

 

 

Then, as Mara lifted the lid, if felt like fingers were tentatively prodding at his consciousness, sleepy and corroded, but incredibly powerful just the same.

 

 

“Holy shit,” Koga murmured with a nearly pained gasp as a pulse of power flooded over them, beckoning them with golden promises of ultimate power as the relic tugged seductively on their youki.

 

 

“Yeah.” Inuyasha could only agree as he watched the hypnotic swirl of darkness deep with in the fathomless confines of the pink marble-like jewel. He could feel the pull, the whispered temptations to let himself slip into that depth and allow it to take over.

 

 

He jerked back with a flash of bared teeth, one clawed finger pointing accusingly at the seemingly unassuming orb. “That thing is dangerous.”

 

 

Mara smiled, pulling the lid down and applying new sutra: seven in total.

 

 

“I'm glad you agree,” she said, pressing the box into his reluctant hands. “Don't worry, the jewel is adequately sealed so long as the sutra remain intact. Once outside the barrier, however, the lure of any surrounding youki will tempt it to flair its power.” The seriousness of her voice was echoed in the taught lines etched into her dark face.

 

 

“What are you saying?” Koga asked, his face somber and seemingly unaffected, but the tension in his shoulders belied the fact that he too had felt the caress of that horrible, seductive whispering.

 

 

Mara looked to them both in turn in all seriousness. “I don't know why you need the Shikon, but I am certain of your purity.”

 

 

“Purity!” Koga yelped, sounding mildly offended. “I can't speak for dog-shit, but I got laid three times last week, thanks.”

 

 

Inuyasha slapped him on the back of the head. Hard. “Not that kind of purity, moron.”

 

 

“Oh, right.” The wolf rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, at least having the good grace to look embarrassed. Mara laughed.

 

 

“I think fate has chosen the right people for this task.” Her voice had lightened, but the seriousness in her eyes was razor sharp. “I can not guarantee how long the sutra will be able to maintain their submissive hold over the jewel. Are you prepared to defend it, if necessary?”

 

Two determined nods, snapped off with military precision, seemed to satisfy her. With another wave of her hand, the barrier was once again dropped.

 

 

“Whatever your mission is,” Mara urged as they headed for the door, “I must caution you to use haste. If the jewel is not returned to dormancy soon it may fully awaken, and in the wrong hands…”

 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Inuyasha interrupted, turning a cocky grin on the old woman. “Spare us the doom and gloom, will ya. We'll have the thing back by Tuesday.”

 

 

Mara hmm'd, but made no move to stop them as the heavy door to Vault fifteen slid back into place behind them.

 

 

“Is it wise to allow the jewel to be taken from the vault, Mara?” One of the monks who had been maintaining the barrier asked, coming up behind her with a grim look.

 

 

“Probably not,” She conceded, turning one of her enlightened smiles to him. “But the time has come to pass on guardianship of the jewel to the next generation. Perhaps they will find a way to rid us of its curse once and for all.”

 

 

“Let us hope.”

 

 

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New York City, Lower East Side

Carrington Tower, Top Floor

Sunday, June 19th, 7:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

37 Hours until Archangel Release

 

 

 

“You're lying.”

 

 

“Am I?” Oh, he was clearly amused now, and despite her earlier convictions, something dark and hateful coiled in her belly. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Time will tell either way.”

 

 

Kagome's hands tensed in her lap, “You're a manipulative liar. You're just trying to get me upset.” And, sadly, it was working. Kagome realized with dread that she was losing this game. “You're sick.”

 

 

He shrugged, the movement casual and elegant, belaying the stature of a socialite: a monster wrapped in silk and money. People were so blinded by the gleam of his charismatic charm that they didn't even notice what was laying in wait, just under the surface.

 

 

Didn't notice, or didn't care…She wasn't sure which said more about the state of so-called `civilized' society.

 

 

“Am I? Why would I lie to you? There would be no gain in it.”

 

 

It was true, she realized, cold pooling in her chest like snow melt. She was already his prisoner, the ransom was already demanded, and now he only had to await his prize.

 

 

It was as if she had fallen into the Twilight Zone. Everything felt sharp and distorted at the same time, and a strange static filled her ears with white noise. Somewhere, way back in the dark recesses of her mind, she knew she should be upset, but all she could feel was cold.

 

 

“Wh-what did you put in me?” Her voice wavered, and with a numb realization she noticed that she was trembling.

 

 

His smirk was one born of pride: a monster reveling in the fear he could stoke with the flash of his claws and teeth.

 

 

“It's called the Archangel,” he explained with glee.

 

 

“A-archangel…” she whispered unconsciously.

 

 

“Yes.” He turned to look out over the deepening pall of night that hung over the city like a thick blanket. “Quite an ingenuity of biological technology - a true testament to the wonders of modern science. A strain of virus, spliced from some of the world's most deadly pathogens, and mutated into devastating perfection.”

 

 

She listened with ears that felt stuffed with cotton as he described the horrors the virus would inflict on her body before killing her. He seemed to take pleasure in the prospect of her pain; it bordered on excitement. It was revolting. Kagome stared blankly at her white knuckled fists where they clenched on the heavy white linen edging of the sanitarium vesture.

 

 

“And once the forty-eight hours are up, the virus will become infectious, spreading like wild fire.” Kagome must have been shaking her head, because he continued. “No? Don't believe me? That's fine.” His voice crackled with dark amusement. “It doesn't matter. It can't be stopped. Even if you cloister yourself away in some deserted hovel there will be a flee, or mosquito, or rat that will carry on our good work. Millions of innocent people will die, Nightingale, millions. Oh yes, your song will be beautiful.” he stood, turning toward her again. Madness eclipsed anything else his gaze might have given away. “And just like Gabriel, your song will herald the end of the world as we know it.”

 

 

“You're lying.” She croaked. “There's no way - it's not possible.”

 

 

He showed his teeth in a feral approximation of a smile, his eyes blood-shot and unnervingly large. “Isn't it, though?”

 

 

“Something like that would eventually kill you too!” Her voice was shrill, almost painfully so, and getting louder with every word. “You wouldn't be able to control the outcome of letting something like that loose, no matter how powerful you think you are!”

 

 

His lips peeled back much in the way a dog's might just before it bit you. Instead of being frightened, or intimidated, Kagome felt anger welling up in her veins like lava. Before she could lash out, something hard landed before her with a loud, metallic clunk. She recoiled, staring in mute shock at the sleek, black, handgun before her.

 

 

“You want to stop me?” Naraku crooned mockingly. His face was crazed and frightening, but Kagome's eyes were riveted on the gun.

 

 

Knowing she'd never get a better chance, she snatched it up with shaking hands, and struggled to stand on legs that didn't seem to want to hold her weight. When she leveled the barrel at Naraku, he laughed. It was infuriating.

 

 

“You're toying with me,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “It's not loaded.”

 

 

“Oh, it's loaded,” he assured her richly. “But shooting me will do little to alter the outcome of our thrilling tragedy, nightingale. You could, however, choose to play the hero and blow your pretty little head apart. I'm sure it would paint a lovely picture on that wall for whoever finds you. Life is full of choices, pet, you can choose death by your own hands, or you can choose to let the virus take you, consuming countless of innocents along with you.”

 

 

Her hands shook. “Why are you doing this to me?” Kagome demanded, her voice straining painfully against her throat.

 

 

“I told you before, Nightingale.”

 

 

“Don't call me that!” Her voice was bordering on frantic.

 

 

Naraku was unmoved. “This has nothing to do with you.”

 

 

“Then why?”

 

 

Naraku sighed like a teacher disappointed with a particularly thickheaded student. “We've already been over that.”

 

 

“Not that, why me?” Her breath was coming in harsh pants through flared nostrils. She knew she was losing control of herself, but at the moment didn't give a rat's ass. “I wasn't just some random hostage. Your guys followed me all night before jumping in my cab, and I want to know why?”

 

 

His smile widened, malice curling the edges of his mouth in a way that was wholly inhuman. “To make him suffer.” The last word came out as a gravelly hiss.

 

 

Kagome recoiled slightly at the sound, but kept the gun trained on his still form, gritting her teeth against the ache forming in her arms.

 

 

“Make who suffer? Sesshou?” The grin deepened, pulling so far away from his teeth that dark, blood-red gums were revealed. “Why? What has he got to do with any of this?”

 

 

“Oh, he has everything to do with it.” His shoulders rolled forward with a disgusting squelch and pop, leaving him hunched over slightly, though his height was somehow undiminished.

 

 

Kagome stepped back, shaking the gun at him in warning, which he found very amusing indeed.

 

 

“You're precious Sesshou has been keeping secrets from you, Nightingale.” He held up one arm, a pleasure-pain look twisting his face as he cracked the joints in his elbow and wrist, a sound too loud to be anything less than cracking bone.

 

 

“I already know about his wife.” She seethed, her anger spiking at the spearhead of hurt that pierced her chest at the reminder.

 

 

Naraku chuckled, the other arm cracking, bulging, elongating just as the other one had. “Even that was a lie. Our dear Sesshou has been a spike under my toenails for years, though he is more infamously known as Sesshoumaru Takishima, a notoriously proficient operative for the specialized terrorism unit of the CIA and the son and heir of the great Western Taiyoukai, the Inu no Taisho of the Youkai Council of Nine, Toga Takishima. Has he never told you of his father? Of his numerous legion of valor awards? Or that he was knighted by the royal house of Britain for services rendered in the line of duty? Oh, my…He has been keeping things from you, hasn't he?”

 

 

“No.” Kagome shook her head vehemently, even as her head reconciled fact with fiction. It fit too well, made too much sense, to discount. That didn't mean she wouldn't try. “You're lying.”

 

 

“You'd rather he was married?” He took a loping step toward her. “At least this way his lies are not with out noble cause. You're Sesshou is an international hero. A hero with noble blood: a Lord among youkai, Nightingale.”

 

 

“Don't move,” she barked, squeezing the slack off the trigger. Naraku smirked, but stayed where he was. “Not another step.”

 

 

“You would think a man like him, powerful by both blood and deed, would be more intelligent than to garner such an obvious weakness.”

 

 

“What weakness?”

 

 

“Why, you, of course.” He tisked. “For such an intelligent girl, you are foolishly stupid when it comes to him, aren't you?”

 

 

Kagome's arm jerked, her muscles protesting as she struggled to hold the gun level.

 

 

“Do you hear it now? The beauty of the song I've written for you?”

 

 

Kagome's mouth opened in a soundless protest, but closed it almost immediately with a snap, water pooling over her tongue as she fought the urge to vomit.

 

 

“He will be forced to submit, to hand a weapon of unimaginable potential over to his enemy in exchange for one, insignificant human woman. How far the mighty will fall, how low he will bend his neck in shame. He will resent you for the rest of his life.” His fingers popped, lengthened, and curved into a parody of human-fleshed talon's. “But don't concern yourself overly much; his life will be even shorter than yours once the Shikon is in my possession.”

 

 

“You're sick.” Kagome found her voice finally, screaming over the cacophony in her head. “You're doing all this for some twisted form of revenge? Just to make Sesshou suffer?”

 

 

“Sesshoumaru,” he corrected. “Or Lord Sesshoumaru, among certain circles.”

 

 

“You'll never get away with this,” she vowed, her voice was thick and hoarse, her tongue sticking to the roof of her suddenly too dry mouth. “He will stop you. He'll tear you apart.”

 

 

“Oh, I'm sure he'll try.” He shifted his body weight forward and back, as if working up the momentum to move toward her again. Her legs tried to carry her further away from him on instinct, but her back came up against the wall. Trapped.

 

 

“You're insane.”

 

 

“Genius is often mistaken for insanity, Nightingale.” His right foot slid forward across the gritty carpet, the bottom of his shoe scraping like sandpaper on metal.

 

 

“And delusions of grandeur often seem real to the schizophrenic's who live in them,” she shot back, her voice hard and angry, undermined by the quivering hunch of her body behind the barrel of a gun. A gun that, judging by the vicious transformation Naraku was going through right before her eyes, wouldn't stop him for long, if at all.

 

 

His teeth snapped angrily, making her jump. “I will bring him lower than low, I will force his hand in suffering, and he will die knowing that I was the victor in the end, and he can spend an eternity in hell, choking on the regurgitation of his own exquisite torment.” He took a step forward, teeth bared, and hook-like fingers poised in threat. “And to think…I couldn't have done it with out you.”

 

 

The bang made by the gun as it discharged made her scream, pressing herself against the cold, unyielding plaster of the wall behind her. She had only vaguely realized she was squeezing the trigger through the buzzing in her ears and the hot tingling that had engulfed her body.

 

 

The gag reflex was immediate and instinctual as her face and hands were splattered with the warm wetness of blood. Her eyes blinked slowly, moving from her trembling, blood-mottled hands still clutching the trigger tightly to the guard, to the gory destruction before her.

 

 

Her breath heaved painfully in her chest, shock gripping her like a vice as she stared at what she'd done. She had never shot a gun before, let alone shot an actual person, monster or otherwise, but she was fairly sure that this was not supposed to happen.

 

 

A breeze sucked in through the gaping, hole the size of a VW bug in the wall across from her, swirling like a vacuum in the sudden change of pressure, and acting as if to pull her right out of the building with its grasping strength. It took her breath, tugging her hair forward on either side of her face and making the buckles of her jacket twist and clang together with the eerie melody of a wind chime.

 

 

There was little left of Naraku; his legs were relatively intact, but the rest of him was in meaty, blood-soaked chunks strewn about the room, some of them possibly having gone out the hole. His face was speckled and pasty where it clung weakly to a section of shoulder and bicep, eyes wide and mouth gaping in a paradox of shock and anger.

 

 

Kagome stepped forward before she could think better of it, driven by shock and a twisted sense of macabre curiosity. She knew he was dead. What she didn't know was how one little bullet had caused the kind of destruction reserved for bazookas and rocket launchers.

 

 

And what had been up with the glowing? The memory, even in the immediate aftermath, was muddled and blurry from shock and adrenaline, but she was sure her hands had been glowing, flickering as if ablaze with some ethereal fire. They seemed normal enough now, if she looked past the oozing streaks of blackened crimson.

 

 

What had she done?

 

 

The thought was punctuated with a gurgling gasp. She screamed when a disembodied hand curled weakly around her ankle. Naraku's mouth shuttering out a wetly snarled “Bitch,” the sound barely more than a whisper over her own screams.

 

 

With out thought, Kagome fired off two more rounds, the first punching a neat hole in the monster's forehead about the diameter of a pencil eraser, the second scouring a slanted tear in the forearm near her foot. Both body parts fell immediately still. She kicked the severed arm away from her and watched with coiled readiness for any of his other disembodied pieces to attack.

 

 

Nothing moved.

 

 

And the bullets had simply done what they were supposed to do, punching neat, life-severing little holes in Naraku's quickly cooling flesh, rather than exploding on contact like nitroglycerine on a store of combustibles.

 

 

With an exaggerated slowness, as if moving to quickly would disturb the sleeping dragon, she moved to peer out the hole at a hundred foot drop to a street below that seemed on the verge of chaos. There were people screaming, running as sirens wailed in the nearing distance, and some that seemed just as frozen with shock as she felt.

 

 

And even though she knew they couldn't see her all the way up there, it still felt like they were pointing right at her when their hands raised to direct the gazes of others to the mayhem at the top of the Carrington building.

 

 

Pointing out what she'd done with accusation in their unflinching eyes, signaling her out as if she were the monster rather than the brave knight.

 

 

Oh, God. What had she done?

 

 

Footsteps on the landing had her spinning, leveling the gun defensively even before the door was flung open by the elegant looking woman fetched her water earlier. Dark eyes swept over the carnage, flickering with surprise and what unmistakably looked like hope, before dimming in resignation and settling on the quivering, blood soaked form of Kagome.

 

 

Kagome didn't give her the chance to speak, ordering her against the wall. The woman picked her way carefully through the chunks of flesh until she was standing away from the door with her arms raised in a gesture of surrender. It clashed with the caustic look twisting her pretty features.

 

 

“D-don't move,” Kagome commanded, her voice not nearly as bold as she would have liked.

 

 

“Wouldn't dream of it,” the woman replied dryly, rolling her eyes in a way that had Kagome feeling ridiculously out of place, as though she was the one with the upper hand.

 

 

Still, the woman made no move to stop her as she backed out the door. Kagome had no desire to kill anyone else, but she was frightened, pushed back to the very fringe of her sanity, so she kept the gun leveled at the woman until her feet scraped on the bare concrete of the landing.

 

 

With a last, wild-eyed glance at the woman standing placidly in the midst of Naraku's gory remains, Kagome turned and bolted, running as if the hounds of hell themselves were at her heels.

 

 

She was a murder now. For all she knew, they could be.