Dog Days

By SamBytes

Chapter 01: The Pursuit

"Don't let him get away!" Yusuke screamed, tearing into the darkness after the white wolf. Kurama and Kuwabara sprinted after him while Hiei jumped from tree branch to tree branch above them all. The forest loomed over, a shadowed and unfathomable intelligence that watched them with unseen eyes.

The wolf they chased was not unlike Kurama before he had become part human—a shape-shifter, the wolf could take his humanoid and lupine forms at will, making him an unpredictable and crafty fighter. Beautiful to behold and genius in his reasoning, the wolf had sought and found entrance into the Human World despite being denied a proper permit. Since Enki had become the ruler of the Demon World, demons had been allowed to come and go freely between the worlds so long as they acquired a permit and a spirit tracker to deter them from massacring the ignorant humans.

The wolf, however, was a voracious man-eater. He had been denied a permit for obvious reasons, and had summarily crossed the border between the words illegally.

The wolf led the four—whom Koenma had called upon as a favor, of sorts, since the lot of them had retired from true Spirit Detective work after being recruited by the rulers of the Demon World, or, in Kuwabara's case, after entering college—through a dense forest on the outskirts of Yusuke's and Kuwabara's city, dodging between tree trunks and jumping over fallen logs on the legs of his wolf form. They could hardly keep up; only the occasional flit of the wolf's white fur between the trees kept them on the right path. The ex-detectives could hardly see each other as they ran in the moonlight: Kurama's otherwise flaming hair had turned deep gray in the gloom, and Hiei in his customary black was nigh invisible but for the flash of his drawn sword when a moonbeam hit it on scarce occasion.

"Come and fight me, you coward!" Yusuke roared, stumbling over a tree root. His wished, oddly enough, was granted, because a few seconds later he and his friends all stumbled into a large clearing. The wolf sat crouched in the center of the space, and as soon as Yusuke entered the pool of moonlight illuminating the clearing the wolf attacked, leaping toward Yusuke's throat with bared teeth.

The ex-detective dodged, of course, but only barely—his shoulder came away with a large gash that immediately began to bleed. As Yusuke staggered backward, Kurama and Kuwabara stepped out of his shadow and launched separate attacks at the wolf: Kuwabara with a sword-strike and Kurama with a lash from his rose whip. The wolf skittered backward and managed to evade both strikes; he tried to run away from the trio and toward the other side of the clearing, but Hiei blocked his path with a bared sword.

"We have you surrounded," Hiei said, red eyes glittering in the moonlight. "Come quietly and we might not hurt you... not very much, anyway."

The wolf sank low to the ground. Paws the size of dinner plates decorated with claws like a lion's scored the earth, and with a glint of ice-blue eyes the beast threw back its head and howled at the moon. White light coalesced around its pale fur, and with a crack of displaced bone the wolf began to take on its humanoid appearance. Fur fell from its body in a snowy flurry; bones compacted and lengthened; skin and blood and muscle rearranged, the spectacle sickeningly graphic. When the light faded, a naked man with pale skin sat crouched in the middle of a pile of discarded fur. Claws tipped his abnormally long fingers and toes; his beautiful lips hid a bristling forest of ivory fangs; ears tapered to delicate points between strands of snow-white hair that fell to the man's knees. The eyes were the worst, however: as blue as a gas-flame, as cold as a glacier, as remote as a distant mountain, they chilled the heart as effectively as any blizzard.

"You tire me, boy," the man spat in a voice of velvet and silk and hail. "All of you do. Let me pass. Enough of this petty fighting."

"Not likely," Hiei said, and leaped forward. His sword sliced through the air where the wolf's head had once been, but somehow the wolf managed to lower his head just enough to avoid the swing. He swept out a foot and knocked Hiei's feet out from under him, then catapulted off the ground to land high above his pursuers on a tree branch at the clearing's edge.

Hiei righted himself with all the dignity he could muster, which was not much considering the circumstances. "Get down here, dog!" he snarled. "Even dogs fight face to face!"

A look of thunder and lightning passed across the wolf's face. "'Dog'?" he repeated. "You, a half-breed mutt that reeks of mixed race, dare to call me, a pure and noble wolf, a mere 'dog'?"

Hiei twitched at that, grip on the sword tightening. "Don't tempt me, dog!" he growled. "I'm supposed to bring you back to Koenma alive."

"Cut the name-calling, guys. We can start talking about each others mamas in the locker room after the game," Yusuke said, moving to the fire apparition's side. His shoulder had stopped bleeding but the wound pained Yusuke enough to force him to favor that arm. "I don't care how pure your breeding is. Get down here and fight," he added for the wolf's benefit.

The wolf smiled, but the expression did nothing to lighten his icy blue eyes. "I think not," he said, eyes fixed on Hiei, and he spread his hands before him. Light began to gather in spheres around his fingertips; tinged the color of a blue glacier, the light pulsed and throbbed like a living being.

"Be wary," said Kurama, joining his comrades. Kuwabara trailed at his heels. "I do not know what he attempts with this spell of his."

"Whatever it is, it can't be good," Kuwabara muttered, looking at the light. He readied his Spirit Sword.

Hiei laughed derisively. "Scared of such a paltry amount of energy, Kuwabara? That dog couldn't kill a fly with a spell that weak!"

"I'll silence that tongue of yours for good, mongrel," the wolf growled, the light on his fingers brightening into ten miniature suns. "We'll see who the 'dog' is now!" Then the light shot toward the ex-detectives in a wave of cold and frost, streaking through the moonlight like arctic fireflies.

They all dodged the light, of course: Kuwabara merely fell on his face, but Yusuke moved to the left, Kurama moved to the right, and Hiei moved backward until he was directly opposite the wolf poised on the tree limb.

However, Yusuke, Kurama, and Kuwabara needn't have expended the effort. The light was clearly meant for Hiei.

It zoomed over Kuwabara's head and straight at the fire apparition; Hiei's eyes opened so wide they looked black in the moonlight. He dodged the light as it clouded around him, but it was too quick and there were too many spheres to avoid for long. They struck his skin and stuck there, covering him in dalmatian spots of electric white-blue energy. One sphere collided with his cheek; another with his arm; another with his thigh. Once they had settled down, they began to spread like a disease, creeping over his body in a wave. His face was the last thing to be covered. Around him, his comrades stared with open, horrified eyes.

Hiei fell to his knees, hugging his body with numb arms. "Don't worry about me—get that dog!" he shouted, voice grinding like falling rocks. His comrades, wanting to help him but trusting his judgment, tore their gazes away from the fire apparition and closed in on the wolf. The wolf laughed a laugh of icicles falling on glass and ran headlong into the woods.

Hiei, strangling a pained scream before it could rent the open air, stumbled into the forest, swiping at the cold spots on his body in an effort to get them off. They burned like frostbite, and as he disappeared from sight the rest of the ex-detectives followed the wolf deep into the opposite side of the forest.

Well, this story is going to get weird, fast. But I hope you like it just the same. I'm kind of speed-writing in order to get this plot-bunny off my chest, but I'm enjoying it and that's what matters. As of now, I have six chapters done. More to come depending on my feedback.

Oh, and the title is supposed to be centered, but it won't stay that way. No idea why.

Sam Bytes