InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Great Jewel Hunt ❯ Riko ( Chapter 7 )

I am so sorry this took so very long to be put up. I haven't had much writing time is all. I just started my senior year of high school, and between college essays, college recommendations, college interviews, college admittance tests, college applications, college visits, not to mention a full class load, I've been pretty dead lately. I haven't had a minute to breath, much less write. It's terrible. I feel like I haven't read a book in an age. Very unlike me. Anyway, here is chapter 7. I hope you like, 'cause I'm not sure how long it will need to tide you over for. I'll try very hard not to let my updates get this spread out again. I have two other stories that need to be updated to. Every heard the saying `The early bird catches the worm'? Well. I've coined a new, equally corny one. `The Busy bee gets the migraine.' Not catchy exactly, but I don't really care. Without further ado, since I can't think of any more ado, on with the show.

 

Oh, wait, just found some ado. A few people mentioned that they didn't get the deal with the bunch of killers. Well, people, that's 'cause I haven't explained it yet. Don't worry, I full plan to make it very clear. For future reference, if I mention something that seems inane or unrelated, just hold on to the idea that I put it there for a reason, and will be explaining it satisfactorily. At least I hope I will, or I'm not a very good writer. Now, on with the show, so to speak.

 

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not a car. Not a house. Not a country. Not even a cat, and certainly not Inuyasha.

 

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The Great Jewel Hunt

 

Chapter 7: Riko

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Nerves were running high. It was early afternoon, and barely past three, yet the sky had already taken on a hue of twilight. The lighthearted mood of the day before had evaporated as the journey progressed. There was something, perhaps in the air, that was telling the unlikely pair on some level that they were headed for danger.

 

It took Kagome a while to figure out what it was that was bothering her so much about the place. Everything looked basically normal, apart from the dreary, solemn quality the whole area seemed to possess, but still something nagged at her mind. Finally, she realized what it was. Silence. Though she and Inuyasha were surrounded by trees and a forest, no noise seemed to be being made, as though every animal had up and left. No bird chirped, no squirrel rustled the leaves, no owl hooted, no rabbit scampered daintily across the ground in search of food. The air had a damned, dead quality. And Kagome didn't like it. Not at all.

 

One look at Inuyasha told her that he was feeling it too, though with the keen senses of danger she had learned he had, she wasn't surprised. He made no objection when she halved the distance between them, and seemed to be wary, walking as though expecting to be ambushed. After about a half an hour of utter silence, disturbed only by the sounds of two pairs of feet patting the road, he stopped, and sniffed at the air.

 

“You feel it too, don't you?” he said.

 

Kagome nodded slowly. There was no need to ask what he was referring to. It was simply unmistakable. “Are you worried?” she asked him quietly, expecting a scoff. She was to be disappointed.

 

Inuyasha paused for a moment and then inclined his head. “I wasn't before, even though I get a weird feeling here. That just happens sometimes, but now…”

 

“But now something has changed.” She finished. It wasn't a question.

 

He nodded again. There's something in the air. A scent. It's distant, and there's a lot interfering with it, but I'm sure I know what it is.”

 

“…And?”

 

“Blood.”

 

Kagome froze. “Human blood or demon blood?”

 

“Hard to tell, but it seems like there's a good amount of both.”

 

“Could it have been a battle or something?”

 

“Not likely.” Inuyasha answered, sounding more serious and adult then she had ever heard him. “This is a large amount of blood, some old and some new, on both sides. Humans don't usually send armies to fight a force of demon's, and most demons wouldn't be smart enough to think of banding together, not that they could get along if they were. No. Whatever's killing over there, its one entity killing everything, without discrimination. Human, demon, even animal. It's something that doesn't care.”

 

“So what do you think, a demon?”

 

“I hope so,” Inuyasha answered gravely.

 

“Why on earth would you hope a thing like that?” gasped Kagome, aghast.

 

“Because, firstly, if it's a human killer than it will be more than one person for sure. No one man could do all that. Secondly, most of the evil demons don't really have souls. They have no conscience, no power to feel remorse. It isn't innate for them like it is for people. If the killer or killers are humans willing to murder their own kind, then they aren't the kind of people that you'd ever want to meet.”

 

Kagome nodded. His reasoning was surprisingly, amazingly sensible for him. Especially for him. The priestess and the hanyou began walking again without really thinking about it, as though drawn by some horrible curiosity to the sight of the carnage. The farther they went, the heavier the air became, putting both of them on edge. Before long, they began to see land that had obviously been cultivated by human hands. The field only increased the sense of foreboding in the air, because everything in it, to the very last plant, was dead and brown. The land reeked with the pungent odor of decay. Kagome grabbed Inuyasha's sleeve unconsciously, and he did not pull away.

 

Before long, they came to the first of the homes. Actually, what they came to was a grouping of disheveled huts, well built and probably nice ten years before, but now in a terrible state of disrepair.

 

They saw no one in the village at first. “You don't think it's abandoned, do you?” Kagome asked.

 

Inuyasha shook his head solemnly. “No. Look at all the supplies here. No one abandons a village and takes nothing with them. If there really is no one here, then it's possible that there's just no one left.”

 

“What could have happened here?” asked Kagome, struggling to speak around the lump that had formed in her throat. “Who could have done such a thing?”

 

“The Blood Band,” answered an unfamiliar voice behind her.

 

Kagome and Inuyasha spun around as one, the hanyou ready for a fight. The speaker, however, didn't look much up to a battle.

 

The voice had come from a small girl, so small in fact that, when turning around to address her, Inuyasha and Kagome both thought for a moment that there was no one there. Then they looked down. The child was about nine years old, but unusually short, and somehow odd.

 

The pair stared at her for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Though the girl looked normal enough, there was something mildly unsettling about her. It was the eyes. They were eyes that had seen many battles, so many that they no longer paid mind to the bloodshed the fell around them.

 

It was Inuyasha who, eventually, spoke first. “What do you want, kid?” he demanded gruffly, earning him an elbow in the stomach from Kagome. She gave him a withering look, and then moved forward to talk to the child herself. She bent low with her hands on her knees, to put herself on eye level with the girl.

 

“Hi. I'm Kagome. What's you name?” she asked, her voice filled with enough tacky, though genuine sweetness to rot her teeth.

 

“Riko,” the girl answered in the same monotone voice. She didn't seem to need to blink as much as normal people, and Kagome had to resist the urge to squirm as she met the child's eyes.

 

“That's a pretty name. Riko, can you tell me where everyone is?”

 

“Everyone?” Riko asked, cocking her head to the side slightly.

 

“All the villagers. Do you know where they are?”

 

“Dead, mostly, I think,” she answered. “Or hiding. We are always hiding when they come here. I'm supposed to be hiding with Mama. She'll be so mad that I'm not with her,” she added, looking uncertain for the first time. “I had to come get Kotsuki.” She held up the small doll that they hadn't noticed her clutching tightly in her arms. It was ragged and torn, with dark brownish stains on the cloth body that looked suspiciously like blood, but the girl held on to it as though all the world depended on her not letting it go.

 

“Kotsuki is a lovely doll,” Kagome assured her, but Riko only clutched the tattered thing tighter like she thought the priestess might try to snatch it away from her.

 

“She used to be,” Riko said. “But now she's all dirty. Like the villagers.” For a moment, her eyes became distant and she slipped away into a thought, blinking her lids several times very quickly. But then she raised her head again and the detached look returned. “All dirty and red. Mama will be mad. I have to find her.”

 

As though on cue, a disheveled looking woman in a tattered yukata came running frantically around a hut several meters away, a look of pure terror on her face.

 

“Riko,” she called in a panicked voice, a whisper really. “Riko, god, where are you. Riko, you must come with me. It isn't a joke, you have to come out now.” The woman looked about ready to keel over when she spotted them, her knees suddenly weakening with relief. “Oh thank god I've found you. We have to…” She froze solid as she suddenly noticed Kagome and Inuyasha watching her uncertainly.

 

“He…hello,” Kagome said, with a pathetic attempt at cheeriness. “Is this your daughter?”

 

The woman made no indication that she was going to answer. Instead, she lunged for the child, grabbing her roughly by the wrist, and began to drag her away as fast as she could up the road, never once taking her wary gaze off of Kagome and Inuyasha. After a moment, the pair disappeared without a trace behind a hut.

 

Inuyasha and Kagome exchanged confused looks.

 

“Hey, wait!” Kagome called after her. The woman stopped at the sound of her voice and turned momentarily, pure terror in her eyes.

 

“You shouldn't be here,” she said. “Go. Go away, while you still can.” With that, she turned again and dragged her daughter away.

 

“What,” Inuyasha asked, “in hell was that about?” Kagome just shrugged.

 

“Something is going on here,” Inuyasha insisted. “I want to know what.”

 

Before she could so much as work out what he intended, Inuyasha had started up the road after the mother and child and ducked behind the same hut as they had.

 

“Hold on, Inuyasha. WAIT!” Kagome called, taking off after him.

 

Inuyasha didn't slow, but followed the scent trail left by the little girl, around a corner. However, he found himself in a dead end between two huts and what looked like the remains of a third that had burnt to a cinder except for the roof which was lying in a pile of ash on the dirt. The smell of the girl was everywhere, and he knew that she must have been around there a lot.

 

Kagome caught up with him, breathing heavily, and thwacked him on the arm. “So nice of you to take off and leave me behind like that!” she huffed, crossing her arms irritably. Inuyasha only held up a hand to silence her.

 

“What is that supposed to…” Kagome started, but she quieted at the intense look on his face. “What's wrong?”

 

“They vanished. I didn't see anything. I'm trying to see if I can find the girls scent to track her, so shhhhh,” he said.

 

“Well, that should be easy enough for you. You're good at that. Since when do you need concentration?”

“Since the girl…”

 

“Riko.”

 

“…is apparently all over here, and I can't tell which direction the scent went most recently, so shush.”

 

“But how does that…”

 

“Shut up!”

 

“Alright, alright. Jeez,” she sniffed, sounding annoyed. But she watched him intently anyway. Inuyasha was turning his head slowly from side to side. After a minute, he dropped to one knee, staring at the ground as though looking for a clue.

 

He jumped up without warning, startling Kagome enough to make her squeal, and stormed off toward the burnt-down building.

 

“Inuyasha,” Kagome sighed, “What are you doing. They can't be in there. That's nothing but a pile of ashes.”

 

Inuyasha's only response was to shake his head. He was running his hands gently up and down over the thatched roof, until he suddenly found what he was looking for and laughed aloud.

 

“Uh, are you ok?”

 

“I'm fine,” he answered distractedly.

 

“Are you sure, because I don't think that that old roof is all that funny.”

 

“Come here” was his answer. Kagome approached quickly.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Here,” he said, grabbing her hand in his and pulling it forwards. Kagome was glad he was in front of her, so that he couldn't see the bright blush that sprinkled itself across her cheeks.

 

Inuyasha was running her hand over on part of the roof slowly, and with unusual gentleness.

 

“Feel it?” he asked her.

 

“Feel what?” asked Kagome, more to recover herself than because she was curious. “Inuyasha, I don't know what you're…you're…Oh, what is that?”

 

She had found it at last. Though the roof appeared to be simple, weak thatching, Inuyasha had led Kagome's hand to a place where the thatch had fallen away, a place where her hand should have gone right through the roof. But it hadn't. Instead, Kagome had felt some sort of hard surface blocking the hole. A little more inspection revealed that there was a well hidden line in between two rows of thatching that seemed to be acting as a hinge.

 

“It's a door,” she realized finally. “But how do we open it?”

 

Inuyasha shook his head. “I don't know. There has to be some sort of latch or handle, but there doesn't seem to be anything. Help me look.”

 

The pair started running there hands, inch by inch, over the surface of the roof.

 

It was Kagome who found it first, a slight, almost imperceptible indentation underneath one of the pieces of cross-hatching. “Over here!” she told him excitedly.

 

Inuyasha was by her side in a second. “Well. Open it up then!” he prompted.

 

“Kay,” said Kagome. She wrapped both hands tightly under the small ledge, braced her foot against the top of the roof, and, with all her might, pulled.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Irritated, Kagome pulled again, this time jamming both feet into the structure, and pushing against it as hard as she could.

 

Nothing.

 

“Um, Inuyasha”

 

“Why is that door not opened?”

 

“I think…um…I think it's stuck.”

 

“Stuck?” he repeated, his voice quavering furiously. “What do you mean `stuck'?”

 

“I mean stuck. What else could it mean?”

 

Inuyasha clamped his teeth shut in an effort to not lose his temper.

 

“But the two of them had to go in there. If they could open it, why cant you?”

 

There was something sounding suspiciously like blame in his tone, and Kagome was in no mood have a finger pointed at her.

 

“I don't know, Inuyasha. There must be some sort of trick to it. If you're so sure it's easy, then why don't you just do it,” she said, crossing her arms and looking defiantly at the annoyed hanyou.

 

“Fine,” he growled through his locked jaw. He went over to the door, stuck his hand under the latch, and looked around for some sort of lock that he had missed.

 

“Screw it,” he proclaimed, losing the miniscule amount of patience he possessed. With a great heave, he pulled the door right form its hinges. “No door, no problem.” He added, pleased with himself.

 

Kagome, however, was not so pleased. “You destroyed it! It doesn't belong to you!”

 

“Hey,” he retorted, “You wanted it open, and I opened it. Now, are we following them or not?”

 

Kagome thought for a moment. Her gaze fell on the empty blackness that was the passage that the door had been hiding. Perhaps following that passage was not a good idea. She didn't know where it lead, had no way of knowing what she would find on the other side. But she knew that the woman and child she had met had gone down there, and they had been so scared, so terrified of something, that she was compelled to find out what that something was.

 

“What do you think,” she asked Inuyasha. He sighed.

 

“I think that those people were very scared. I think that something very bad must be going on here for them to be that worried about it. And I think there's a good chance that they need help.”

 

“You're right,” Kagome agreed. “They need help, and we can help them, let's go.” Without another word, Kagome climbed up through the door, and followed the passage into darkness. Rolling his eyes, Inuyasha followed behind her.

 

They could have found the devil down there for all they knew. What they did find was hell itself.

 

 

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Wow…yeah…time kinda got away from me there. It's been, what, about 4 months since my last update? Jeez. Woops. So sorry about that. I've been beyond busy, and writing a few lines at a time isn't my style, because it sounds choppy. Anyway, here's a post, finally. I've been having some writers block with this story. I know what I want to happen, but I can't express it in a way that isn't completely confusing. I had actually outlined this chapter to have a lot more in it, but I guess it was too much. It would have had to go on for at least another 7 pages to say everything else I wanted, and that seemed excessive. Next chapter, but I'll put a rush on it.

 

Anywho, I guess it's evident now that I'm going to be one of those slow updaters, but please bear with me here, because I do absolutely plan to keep this story going. Just to mention. Maybe I'll even become a good enough planner that I can give the next chapter name in the chapter before, like Rozefire did, but don't count on it just yet.