I'm a horrible person, to start yet another fic with so many unfinished. But fear not, I will finish them all. Eventually.
Inuyasha and Co. are the property of Rumiko Takahashi.
She Has a Penchant for Doing Things the Hard Way
Kagome woke to a painful throbbing that beat though her entire body. The stench of sweat and blood filled her nostrils and turned her stomach. Tears sprang to her eyes as she pushed herself upright, taking inventory of her many, thankfully minor, injuries.
"Oh… ow…"
"Sorry about that, kid. I should have warned you about the rabisu."
"The what? Ow," she said again, wincing.
"Rabisu. I thought you were getting the hang of this demon-hunting gig." Seraph chuckled and crouched beside her.
"I don't have to know what they're called to destroy them," she answered crossly, examining a swollen wrist. "I don't think it's broken," she muttered, but her tone was dubious.
Seraph laid his index and middle fingers against the wrist. "Nah. Nasty sprain, though. We probably ought to get it in a splint."
Kagome's partner unslung his pack from his shoulders, a pack identical to the one Kagome had dropped during the attack, and began to rummage through it. "You're sure lucky I think you're cute, sweetheart," he complained. "You're a lot more trouble than Katarina."
"Yeah, except Katarina tried to kill you." He bent her hand back to straighten it, and she suppressed a whimper. "You're enjoying this entirely too much, you creep."
"Mmm, playing good Samaritan to a beautiful young woman? You bet I'm enjoying it." He grinned savagely, an unholy light in his eyes, and she shivered.
"I hate it when you do that."
"We are all limited by our heritage, doll." Seraph shrugged, and the strange light that had come into his eyes faded. "I'm always going to like the feel of soft flesh against mine. It's in my blood."
"Because I so needed the reminder that my partner's a cambion. Believe me, Seraph, I hadn't forgotten."
"Of course not. I'm too beautiful to forget."
And indeed, he was. Women fell all over themselves trying to get a look at the angelically beautiful man. Perfectly curled, sunny blond hair spilled impishly into his innocent blue eyes. Full, firm lips that seemed to be made expressly for smiling curled upwards into his frequent, breathtaking grin, revealing a pair of deep dimples in his cheeks. He had set of eyelashes most women would kill for the body of a Greek god – he looked like a cherub that had grown into a devastatingly handsome man. Oh, yes. Seraph was beautiful.
"I guess false modesty hasn't ever been a failing of yours," Kagome retorted sourly.
"No," he agreed. "But to be fair, I'm not really an arrogant jerk, either, am I? Not like that dog-thing that used to show up around Japan every so often."
"Sesshoumaru?" A nasty spasm shot through her left shoulder, but before she could reach for it, Seraph was there, firmly kneading the flesh between her shoulder blade and her spine. She would have stopped him, except the cambion was just so damn good at it.
"Don't be petty, Seraph," she said, unconsciously shifting to offer him more of her throbbing musculature. "Sesshoumaru's pretty too."
"Oh, true, true; nobody's denying that. Guy just needs an attitude adjustment, that's all."
There wasn't much she could say to that, so she said nothing.
"You know," Seraph said thoughtfully, "I never could figure out why you liked the brother more. He's so rough-looking in comparison."
Kagome didn't answer him.
"Sorry, kid," the cambion said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "I wasn't thinking." Still she refused to reply.
"Hey." Seraph pulled her round to face him. "We'll find him, baby girl. You just have to be patient a while longer." Winking broadly, he added, "And you have to put up with a half-blood, sex-fiend partner for awhile."
The half-demon dragged her into his arms and planted a brotherly kiss on her forehead. She made a fist and dropped it lightly on his upper arm. "You're such a jerk," she grumbled. "I don't know why I put up with you."
"'Cause you love me," he answered roguishly, "and because you were way overdue for a lesson on the facts of life."
"The facts of your life belong on the pages of a dirty magazine."
"Aw, give me some credit. A porno flick, at least."
She rolled her eyes and pushed him away, even though she couldn't help smiling a little at his outrageous comments.
"There's my smile. Now, come on. And watch out for those rabisu, won't you?"
"What are rabisu, anyway?" she asked curiously, wrinkling her nose as her bumps and scrapes protested her getting to her feet. She pulled her bag over her shoulders and flinched as it rubbed against her bruised flesh.
"Well, according to Persian mythology, they're nasty spirits that ambush people from dark corners, or from behind doorways. Which reminds me." He reached into the pocket of his leather pants, then tugged on her left hand until she opened it palm-up for him, and he poured a little salt into it.
"Salt?"
"Throwing a little salt at them will make them go away. It's cheaper than bullets."
Kagome closed her fist around the white grains, even as her other hand reached for the Smith and Wesson at her side. "I like bullets."
He chuckled. "I haven't met anything yet you couldn't bring down with enough ammo."
"It's a lot different from my bow," she answered defensively "And besides, my aim isn't that bad." She drew the weapon and pointed into the next room with it.
"You've gotten better," Seraph conceded. He shone the light from his flashlight at the doorway. "After you, beautiful."
Salt in one hand and gun in the other, she stepped through the door frame.
"Nothing."
"Well, the dagger's got to be around here somewhere. We've been underground for the last two hours." He followed her inside.
"I bet we're not even close," Kagome said gloomily, "if one rabisu is all we've run into."
"You ran into," he reminded her.
She turned the semiautomatic pistol at him and raised her eyebrows. "What was that?" she asked sweetly.
"Nothing," he replied, raising his hands in mock terror.
"That's what I thought."
They had been underground for quite some time, in search of a cursed Persian knife that "the Family" wanted. The two of them had been sent, because, even though no one really trusted them, no one could fault their work, either. Kagome was new and unproven, but had experiences unlike any of their other agents. Seraph was a cambion, the half-demon progeny of an incubus and a human female, prone to sexual misconduct and superhumanly powerful. The duo made sense to the Family, since Kagome had experience with 'half-bloods,' but the partnership had its share of headaches for the rookie demon-slayer.
Seraph had long since quit trying to take her to bed, but he turned everything she said into something sexual. He refused to call her by her given name, relying on pet names like kid, Kags, sweetheart, and gorgeous. He was terribly vain, starved for affection, and craved attention. But for all those faults, she had to admit that couldn't have asked for a more loyal partner. What friendship she had reluctantly offered at the beginning of their relationship had been gratefully accepted, and returned ten-fold, and now the friendship was as firm as any of those she had formed in the feudal era. Besides, of the Family, only Seraph offered any hope that she might eventually find Inuyasha.
As they progressed through the underground building, a military structure constructed during the Cold War, the faintest whispers of evil emerged from the shadows. Kagome avoided corners and always waited for Seraph's light before moving through doorways, in hopes of avoiding more encounters with rabisu. The evil she felt, she knew, wasn't one of those brainless creatures. This evil knew itself for evil and delighted in the knowledge. When she found the source of her uneasiness, she felt physically ill.
"Kags," Seraph whispered, with a thick note of urgency in his tone. "Carefully, now."
She slipped the salt into her pocket and wiped away the residual grains on her pant legs before gripping her gun with both hands.
"What is it?" she whispered back, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the scene before her. The dagger they had been seeking was wrapped in the long fingers of what could have been a very beautiful woman, if she hadn't been drenched in human blood. The fresh corpse that lay on the ground beside her was hideously mutilated, with long strips of flesh gouged out, obviously by the dagger.
"Lamashtu," he returned softly. "Stay away from her. Let me handle this."
"Seraph, I –"
"Stay. The blood-drinker hates women." He handed the glowstick back to her; the ugly scene before them was lit by four hissing, sputtering torches.
Kagome frowned, but obediently slipped behind the doorway, allowing Seraph to move ahead of her.
"Lamashtu," Seraph called pleasantly. "Been a long time."
"Seraph?" Her voice grated on Kagome's ears like fingernails on a chalk board. The blood-drenched woman turned, baring her nude body brazenly at the cambion. Kagome shivered. Her eyes were flat and dead, like those of a fish, or a snake. "So it is… won't you join me, beloved?"
"Sorry, honey, no time today. I really need that dagger you've got there, though." He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "You've gotten messy, darling. You used to have a certain flair for cannibalism."
"The flesh doesn't interest me," she said dismissively. "It's a bonus. Only the blood matters." As if to prove her point, she gouged out another piece of the corpse's body with the dagger and sucked delicately on the meat. Kagome stifled a gag.
"If you say so. Like I said, though, I will be needing your dagger. I've got one you can have, here, if you want it. That one has some significance to my employers, though."
She bared her bloody teeth at him. "Still working for the Slayers, turncoat?"
"The pay's good," he answered carelessly.
She narrowed her eyes at him, a long, measured, calculating stare, and then her whole body seemed to relax, becoming fluid and graceful. She reached up to stroke a bared breast.
"Are you sure you won't join me? She was a virgin," she said, softening her screeching voice to a hoarse whisper that was obviously meant to be seductive, "and the meat is very, very sweet."
"I like virgins, me," Seraph said, "but I like them warm and willing."
She advanced on him, rolling her hips as she moved, as smooth as butter in a hot pan. "Come and dine."
"Just the knife, Lamashtu. That's all I want."
"Oh?" She held up her knife, and a vicious light came into her dead eyes. "Then have it!" She rushed at him, an awkward lope that nonetheless ate the distance between them.
"Doing this the hard way, huh? Hey, Kags?" he called, not sounding especially concerned.
Kagome stepped out from behind the doorway. Raising the Smith and Wesson, reaching deep within for her for the power of purification that the bullets would deliver, she fired once, twice, three times. The demon fell at Seraph's feet, before disintegrating into a pile of black ash on the floor.
"Nice shooting, sweetheart."
She glared at him. "You were awfully polite about it. I don't suppose you saved any of that charm for her." Flinging an arm at the demon's unlucky victim, she fought back tears.
"A ruse, honey. Sometimes my demon blood is the best defense we've got. It buys us time."
"Just get the damn knife." Kagome swiped at a tear and pushed past him, heading for the corpse on the far side of the chamber.
"No. You get the knife. I'll bury the body." He handed her a strip of white, gauzy cloth. "Don't touch it unless that's wrapped around it. I'm not entirely sure what that dagger's capable of, other than summoning Lamashtu, but I don't really want to find out, either."
Kagome took the cloth and watched him cross the room. "Seraph?" she called uncertainly.
He knelt by the corpse and looked back at her.
"Be… be gentle, please?" Seraph's eyes softened a little, and he nodded.
Kagome laid the wide strip of cloth over the dagger, jumping a little when the Family crest appeared above the bulge of the weapon, blackened and charred. Reaching down to it, she carefully picked it up by the hilt and wrapped the remainder of the cloth around it. After tucking it into her bag for safe-keeping, she leaned on the door frame in the flickering torchlight, waiting for Seraph to finish his grim task.
Kagome's dreams were troubled over the next week, and she woke often, jolted into consciousness by her nightmares. The experience in Iraq had sorely tested her; she couldn't get the image of Lamashtu out of her mind. In her nightmares, she confronted the demoness alone, and the corpse at Lamashtu's feet became someone she loved, became Souta or Mama or Inuyasha, even occasionally Seraph.
They had delivered the dagger to the Father, the hooded, cloaked man who presided over the Family. When she was in his presence, or in the presence of the Mother, she never failed to wonder how she had come to be involved in this secret sect of demon slayers and exorcists. It was a black and ugly world, where expediency often prevailed over morality, where the truth was often indistinguishable from lies, and where the word of the Father was law.
In the sixth months since she'd had joined the Family, she had learned to despise her new employers. Two agents had been slain; one a full Sister, one of the elite members of the Family. Kagome hadn't liked her much; she was cruel to Seraph and showed no mercy to the creatures she hunted. But as a high ranking Slayer, she had been laid to rest with a great deal of pomp and circumstance, despite her ill-temper. The other agent had been a slayer, like Kagome, new to the Family and its hidden world. There had been no funeral, no public acknowledgment of the man's contributions, or his sacrifice. Most Sisters and Brothers did not deign to speak with ordinary slayers like Kagome.
She hated the Family and its pretentiousness, but was powerless to leave it.
It was Inuyasha, of course, Inuyasha who kept her there. The impotent rage that swelled within her when she remembered the Family's careless disposal of its dead slayer, its dismissive attitude toward its living operatives, that fury faded into a helpless grief when he came to mind. She needed the Family, if she was ever going to find Inuyasha. They were the only connection she had. They were the last to have seen him, and the only organization with the resources, or the desire, to locate a missing half-demon.
With the vanishing of the Jewel of Four Souls, the connection between Kagome's world and that other world of feudal Japan disappeared. She and Inuyasha had been able to return to the shrine, but never again could they force the well to part the walls of time for them.
There had been some time of adjustment, and a long, dark time of mourning for them both. Sango and Miroku, Shippou, Kaede – they were gone, forever. But Inuyasha was eager to learn, ready to start a new life with the girl who loved him exactly as he was, brash and ill-tempered and half-blood and all, and the first three years had been mostly happy times. He had been a welcome addition to the shrine, taking on the repairs and the day-to-day maintenance that Kagome's grandfather had become unable to keep up with. He learned quickly, and everyone was more than happy to teach him.
The day Kagome turned nineteen, he asked her to marry him.
And then he vanished, barely a week later. Kagome had been searching for two years now, with no end in sight.
Kagome shook off the old memories along with her comforter, no longer willing to face her dreams. A glance at her alarm clock told her that it was just after four in the morning, exactly a week after the encounter with Lamashtu. With a sigh, she stripped off her sleep shirt and pulled a comfortable old sports bra on. She had gone out into the living room of the two-bedroom apartment she shared with her partner braless only once. His leering grin and many suggestive remarks ensure that she never made that mistake again. Not that he would have hurt her. He just liked to rile her.
She pulled her shirt back on and opened the door. Somehow, she was unsurprised to find Seraph waiting in the kitchen, a gallon of milk beside him on the bar.
"I thought you'd be getting up along about now," he said pleasantly. "Want an omelet?"
Kagome smiled tiredly. "You know I love your omelets."
"Of course you do. I make a hell of an omelet." He took a swig from the milk jug – the one Kagome had pointedly labeled 'Seraph' – and opened the refrigerator. "I've had a lot of practice, after all. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, because it's the one you have to cook for her after 'the night before.'"
Kagome groaned. "None of your sexual exploits, jokes, and/or advice. Not this early in the morning."
"You're missing out, babe," he said, head buried in the icebox. "You can't get better advice than from a cambion."
"I'll figure it out on my own, thanks."
"If you say so. What did you want in your eggs?"
"Surprise me."
"Alrighty, then." When he emerged from the refrigerator, his arms were full of vegetables, cheese, and an assortment of breakfast meats.
"If you drop those eggs, Seraph, I swear," Kagome began, but it was too late. Everything went flying.
And then it was all neatly stacked on the bar.
Kagome blinked. Even Inuyasha didn't move that fast. Seraph winked at her. "No need to worry, beautiful. Go get a shower, and I'll be done here by the time you're out."
She sighed, but did as she was told. Seraph hummed to himself as he cracked eggs and rummaged through their cabinets for mixing bowls, skillets, and omelet pans.
He's a mess, Kagome thought to herself, as the hot water streamed through her short, black hair, trailing down the single braided lock that grew just behind her left ear. She had cut her hair not long after Inuyasha's disappearance, and left that lock of uncut hair for him, because he liked it long. It was a silly kind of remembrance, but it was hers, and she made no apologies for it.
When she finished, true to his word, Seraph had breakfast ready. It smelled heavenly, and she told him so.
He slid a plate toward her on the bar, grinning his trademark, dimpled grin. "Best omelet you'll ever eat."
"Did the Father tell you what he wanted the dagger for?" Kagome bit into the fluffy omelet, savoring the expensive cheese Seraph favored.
"Does he ever tell anyone why he wants the things he wants?" Seraph snorted. "No, of course not. Presumably he's simply taking a dangerous object out of circulation. Truthfully, though, who's to say? The Family's been known to have some pretty frightening experiments with those kinds of relics."
"Really?" Kagome cut off another piece of her omelet, stabbing a piece of bacon that oozed out of it before bringing her fork to her lips.
"Oh, yeah. I guess you've never been in the research and development sector, huh, babe."
Kagome shook her head and swallowed. "Just passed by the doors. The screams sort of indicated it was a place I didn't want to explore."
"They keep a number of lesser demons around for experimental purposes. Testing out new weapons and traps, mostly. I know there are a lot of other things that go on down there." His face hardened. "I've experienced a few of them."
Kagome heard the tightness in his tone. "Don't ask?" she guessed.
"Right."
"Gotcha." She got about halfway through her omelet before pushing it away.
"Hey, you have to finish that!" Seraph exclaimed in mock outrage. "You know how expensive those are to make?"
"You always make them too big, dummy," she replied. "If I ate everything you put in front of me, I'd weigh two hundred pounds."
"Ingrate."
"Sorry."
He reached over and plucked up her braid, toying with it. "This what kept waking you up, doll?"
"Bad dreams," she admitted, pulled the lock of hair back. "About Lamashtu." She sighed heavily. "I didn't really destroy her, did I?"
"No. You just sent her back to Hell -- where she belongs. You weren't ever in any real danger, though. Not with me there. Given the choice, Lamashtu would always pick seducing a man over killing a woman."
"Just tell me you weren't attracted to her, and I'll feel a lot better."
"She's a beautiful woman, but the cannibalism is sort of a turn off." He snatched her braid again and tugged it before releasing it. "Besides, beautiful, you're the only woman in my life right now."
She blew a raspberry at him. "You're lucky Inuyasha's not around to hear you make comments like that. He wouldn't take it well."
"Ah, it's nothing serious. Besides, if I took you to bed, you'd never want to speak to him again. I'd feel kinda guilty about that."
Kagome reached over and flicked his forehead as hard as she could. "Just let it go, old man," she told him. "I had a bad enough night missing him without you bringing him up every two seconds."
"We'll find him, sweetheart. Someone in the Family has to know something. I was watching the two of you six months before he disappeared; I can't have been the only one. The Family doesn't trust me enough."
"I just don't understand why," Kagome said, crossing her arms on the bar and resting her chin on them. "He wouldn't have left on his own; he wouldn't hurt me like that."
Sometimes she wanted to believe that, because it meant that he loved her and just wasn't able to be near her. And sometimes she hoped he had taken off by himself, because it meant he was safe, or at least, he had been.
"No, he wouldn't have. But we will find him," Seraph assured her. "You'll get into the hierarchy, like we planned. You're good enough. You can do it."
"No, I can't," she said bitterly. "I see it more and more the longer I stay. I can't pretend to not care about the casualties, like they do, or treat you like less than a man, because of what you are. I'm always going to be loose canon to them. Never good Family material."
To her surprise, Seraph looked rather pleased. "Well, good. I was wondering how long it would take you to figure that out."
Tears of fury had sprung to her eyes; she blinked them back. "You knew? Why didn't you say something?"
He grinned, but the expression was tinged with a feral kind of anticipation. "Because as long as you held on to the hope of finding your lover peacefully, you weren't ever going to be able to commit yourself to doing it the hard way."