AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've got another AU now… but this time it's Inu/Kag. Which I don't think many people will be complaining about. For now, I've rated it PG-13, since there really isn't anything too bad in this chapter, except some swearing on Inuyasha's part. But in later chapters the rating will most likely go up. Just a warning.

And Kikyo haters… bear with me. She plays a major part in this, though not directly. And it will be an Inu/Kag, though the beginning's a bit misleading.

Oh, and since I don't want to bother with it on the bottom, let's get to the given: Please review. You know you want to… that submit button way down there is begging you to press it…

DISCLAIMER: If I owned Inuyasha, Naraku wouldn't look like such a moron in his new Badass™ Garb, Kikyo would smile once in a while, and Kohaku wouldn't be so suicidal. So, to put it plainly, no, I don't own Inuyasha.

IN THE DARK PLACES

Chapter One: Uncovering a Body

He waited silently for her on the front porch.

He didn't ring the doorbell. She knew he was there. She had been waiting. He could see her dark head by the upstairs window, that lovely face hidden by shadow. He wished he could see her up close, see the way her pale hands would wring around anxiously, how her misty gray eyes would dart to and fro, breaths coming in quick gasps.

He found nothing more beautiful than her fear. He relished it, thrived on it, loved it in a way so twisted even he found it mildly disturbing.

As he listened to the slight scuffing of footsteps slowly making their way down the stairs, he examined her house. It was not a place in which he would have expected one such as her to live; it was a modest, quiet settlement, painted a pale yellow, blending nicely with the lush grass, still freshly-cut from that very morning.

A flash of black caught his eyes and he saw that she now stood in the doorway, only the slightest bit ajar. Her jaw was set, eyes on fire. He bit down a sigh of disappointment. So he would not be seeing that beautiful terror. Not yet, at least.

She hissed out his name as if it were venom, poison hot, scalding on the roof of her mouth. Her anger pleased him—perhaps not as much as her fear, but it would suffice.

He replied by giving her name, rolling it off the tip of his tongue as if it were a candy to relish. She winced, just as he knew she would.

How easily he could play his game on her.

"Are you going to invite me in?" he asked.

"No."

"Ah." He clucked his tongue. "I see."

Her knuckles hardened on the door. It did not go unnoticed.

The first sign of fear.

"How unfortunate for the neighbors," he drawled lazily, raising his hands slightly. "To lose their lives over one's pettiness."

She glared at him, flames dancing in her misty orbs, but she understood his meaning. She obediently opened the door further and stepped out of the way to let him pass. He did so, letting a small smile slip across his face, if only to instill her fear.

The interior of the house was just as simple as the outside. The living room held a small TV set, a mahogany coffee table, and matching light blue armchairs. "So," he murmured, "you like the simple life, I take it? Trying to fit in with the rest of the world?"

She said nothing.

"That's foolish," he continued, paying her silence no heed. "Someone as special as you will never fit in. You should know that."

Her shoulders hunched, as if she were cringing, though her face remained motionless.

"You won't respond, eh?" He laughed. "No matter. I will fill in the silence for you."

He strolled leisurely to one of the armchairs and sat down, the woman's eyes never leaving him for a moment. "You're quite paranoid," he put in. "Do you think that I will attack you here and now?"

"I wouldn't put it past you," she murmured.

He reached into the dark, thick folds of his trench coat, pulling out a pocketknife. He carelessly flicked it open, turning it over in his palm to admire the way the blade shone against the lighting.

"You're right, you know," he mused. "I could kill you right here. Run the blade right across your fragile throat…" As if to prove his point, he lifted the blade and drew it lightly across his neck. A bit of blood trickled down his neck, but the wound healed instantly, a show of who he truly was, of what power he actually held.

She didn't avert her gaze, like many would have expected, but he knew she wouldn't—she was too strong, too proud for that. To look away would admit defeat, and he knew she would never do such a thing. Her sheer will would not let her.

He smiled languidly and raised his hands to his throat. They came back sticky with his blood. "I can bleed and bleed," he said, "and I won't die." He twirled the knife around his fingers. "But you wouldn't last… you would bleed to death, right there on that white carpet."

"I did what you asked," she murmured quietly. "I ended all ties with him. You promised to leave me alone."

"I did, didn't I?"

She looked furious, though she kept her voice level. "Yes."

He shrugged. "I lied, then."

Her composure was beginning to crack. "Leave. I want you out of here now."

"No." His voice was lilting, teasing—he knew it drove her mad. "I like it here. And besides—" He flashed her a predatory grin, "—why would I leave the presence of a woman so beautiful?"

Again, she kept silent.

"You are, you know," he went on, beginning to twirl the knife around again. "Beautiful, that is. Not the standard beauty; yours is deeper than that. It's in your very being. I saw it the moment I first laid eyes upon you. It is beyond what most people can see, or know—it's only something one who has suffered greatly can see, such as you or me." His smile vanished. "That is why Inuyasha was never the man for you. He didn't understand you, or your pain. I would have been able to help you; I would have gotten rid of those ridiculous fancies of yours for marriage, and children, and all the ridiculous, whimsical ideals of common women. No, I—I would have made you into something more."

He snapped the pocketknife shut. "But then," he said abruptly, as he tucked the knife away, "I agreed to leave you alone. And as I am a man of my word, I will do so." He stood. "Goodbye."

He could feel her eyes watching him, boring holes into him. She wasn't careless; she was just waiting for him to make an attack. Smart woman—for he was going to attack. Though not in the way she suspected.

He wasn't as foolish as that.

Naraku smirked as he closed the door behind him. Enjoy your last day, Kikyo.

Over and over again.

God, it was insufferable—that bleating, consistent, obnoxious noise! Why wouldn't it stop?

Bzzt! Bzzt!

It took Inuyasha a moment to realize it was his alarm clock. He slammed his hand against it; it didn't stop.

"Shit."

Without opening his eyes, he ripped the alarm clock from the outlet and chucked the goddamn thing across the room. It hit his wall with a thud, before shattering on impact as it skidded across the hard floor.

He peeled his eyelids apart painfully, shaking his head in the vain attempt to wake himself up. It was never so difficult before; before she would wake him up with a soft kiss on the cheek and a soothing voice whispering lightly in his ear, a gentle tickle that sent shivers down his spine.

But that was a week ago—a long, never-ending week full of hangovers and broken alarm clocks.

And now, it was Tuesday, meaning it was now eight days since she had left him with barely a goodbye. And they had been together for two years. Two fucking years!

Bitch, he thought angrily, as he imagined her angelic face, the one that crushed him with only two words: "I'm leaving." He was too angry to think of an insult beyond "bitch" as he was so exhausted, but over the week, he'd accumulated some foul names that suited her.

Bitch just didn't seem bad enough. No word in all the languages in the earth could describe that conniving, two-faced, heartless monster-woman for who she truly was.

The thought of her arose his fury, and it was that fury that woke him up. With a growl, he grabbed a pair of dark jeans and a black sweatshirt and yanked them on. Work was going to be absolute hell—he worked at a mechanic shop down a grubby little street filled with obnoxious teenagers on every corner. It was always miserable; the only reason he'd never quit was because he needed the pay. He worked two jobs and could barely manage the expensive cost of renting out an apartment in Tokyo, even after sharing the expense with his roommate.

Speaking of which…

Miroku peeked his head through the doorway, rubbing his eyes. "Did you break another alarm clock?" he asked. His question was answered as he noticed the pitiful remains that lay on the ground. "Damn, man, that's the fourth one this week! You're going to put a hole through the wall if you keep this up."

"Fuck off," Inuyasha grumbled, slipping into his shoes and storming past Miroku. "I'm not in the mood."

Miroku snorted. "When are you ever?"

Inuyasha gave him the finger.

"Okay, I get the point, I'll be quiet." He mimed zipping his lips shut. "Happy now?"

"Not until you get out of my face."

Miroku frowned. "Testy, I see. I suppose I'll just go clean up the remains of your alarm clock… again."

He stalked into the bedroom, shooting Inuyasha an annoyed glare.

Great, so now Miroku was pissed at him too… not that Inuyasha cared. It was too damn early in the morning to be nice. What the hell was he thinking, taking a seven o'clock shift? And he'd been stupid enough to give himself a hangover, too. His head was pounding.

This was all her fault… her fault for being so heartless as to leave him, to be so two-faced not to tell him the truth, too selfish to understand that it wasn't all about her… and too blind to see that he still loved her.

He shoved his thoughts away with an inward sneer; he was being so self-pitying it was pathetic. She was just a woman. She was no reason for his life to get so fucked up.

He snagged his jacket off of the coat chair on his way out, making a U-turn as he realized he'd forgotten his cell phone. After some rummaging around the living room (where had he left it again? He'd been deleting all of the pictures he'd had of her on there), he finally found it resting atop the counter. He quickly snatched it up and shoved it in his pocket, before slipping on his coat and exiting the apartment.

He'd barely taken a step before the hem line of his pants snagged on his sneakers and he fell flat on his ass.

It seemed it was the beginning of yet another shitty day.

"911 Emergencies, how may I help you?"

Kagome frowned as the panicked voice over the phone became louder and louder, until she had to hold the phone away from her ears in fear of becoming deaf.

"Yes… mm-hm… I see." She scribbled down the address given to her, though it wasn't necessary. Their computers would be able to track it in a few seconds.

"All right, we'll send someone over pronto." She paused as the voice began to scream again. "Yes, don't worry, we'll make sure it's a woman."

Sango's eyes raised as Kagome hung up the phone. "Who was that?"

Kagome tossed the pad of paper she'd been writing on. "You should go over there as quickly as you can," she replied as she grabbed a nail filer at her desk and began to file away at her nails. "I don't think you want it to get much worse."

Sango cocked her head. "What's going on, Kagome-chan?"

Kagome turned back to the files she had been organizing. "Suki Mayo, age sixty-four," she said, slipping some papers into a file. "She's a bit overweight… she said she's been stuck on her toilet seat for nearly three hours now and used her cell phone to call us. She asked specifically for a woman to help her out." She swiveled her desk chair around to smile innocently at Sango. "And since you're the best female police officer on the force, you should probably get there stat."

Sango's face fell. "Kagome…" she began dangerously.

"Yes?" she responded innocently.

"If I'm doing this, you're coming with me."

The phone rang and Kagome snatched up, shooing Sango away. "Go, Suki's waiting for you," she insisted before putting the receiver to her face. "911 Emergencies, how may I help you?"

"Uh… 911?" the voice said on the phone. It sounded like that of an older man. "911 are the police, right?"

"Of course it is, Masao." An exasperated woman's voice could be heard. "Give me the phone."

"But Ari—"

The woman, presumably Ari, had apparently grabbed the phone, as her voice was much clearer. "This is 911, correct?" she asked.

"Yes," Kagome affirmed. "How may I help you?"

"Well," Ari began, "I'm not sure if this is anything to call the cops over—" Kagome thought of the previous caller and almost giggled, "—but I think something may have happened to my neighbor."

Kagome grabbed her pencil, ready to write. "Your neighbor?" she repeated. "Why's that?"

"Well, all yesterday her lights were turned on, even at night. I woke up at four A.M. and they were still on. I tried going over this morning, but she didn't answer and the door was locked. She also never answers her phone. I know she can't have left, because her car is still in the driveway."

Kagome's hands flew across the paper as she wrote the details down. "All right," she said when she had finished, "what's your neighbor's name?"

"Kikyo Miyahara," the woman answered. "She's rather young, only twenty-four, I believe. She's lived by us for about two years, I think."

"And what's your name?" Kagome asked.

"Ari Tsakuda," she said. "Although we're listed under Masao Tsakuda, my husband's name." She gave Kagome their address. "I know it may seem like a lot to ask, but I'd appreciate it if someone could come over… Kikyo is a sweet girl, I wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

"I'm sure she's fine," Kagome replied, giving the rudimentary answer. "But I'll send someone right over."

After a few thank you's, Ari hung up the phone and Kagome grinned. Okay, so she'd lied… she wasn't sending someone over, she was going herself.

Kagome wasn't a police officer… oh, no, she would never be a police officer. Her father had been the lead of the force, but after retiring last year he had settled on becoming a private investigator. Kagome herself was only a secretary and occasionally an operator, having worked at the job with her father for four years, ever since she'd turned eighteen. She'd only done it as a means to get to the cases, hoping to find out how murder investigations worked. Because, after all, she wanted to be a detective.

But it turned out that secretaries didn't really see much of the actual cases. Not hands-on, anyway. She eagerly read all of the files given, but they weren't what she wanted. She wanted to see things up-front, to know in a way other than reading boring documents how it was done.

Her father only took her along once in a while; less and less after she kept snooping around trying to solve the mysteries. Sango was only a police officer, and though she brought Kagome whenever she could, police officers didn't often stick around much for the really difficult mysteries; after all, that was for the detectives.

But this time, Kagome figured, it wouldn't hurt to just glance at one of her callers' problems. She was doing the police a favor, really. After all, with all the crime in Tokyo, they didn't have time to go check on something so simple as a possibly-missing person.

Satisfied with her reasoning, Kagome grabbed her leather coat from the chair and pulled it on. It was November, and quickly getting chilly outside. She glanced at the mirror on her desk and frowned… she didn't look very detective-ish. She should have brought her trench coat…

Kagome shrugged and turned from her reflection, grabbing her car keys from her desk. She jumped up on her chair to peek at the next cubicle over. "Hey, Koharu," she said, grabbing the other secretary's attention. "Can you cover for me for like forty-five minutes? I've got an errand to run."

The freckled girl nodded. "Sure."

Kagome flashed an appreciative grin. "Thanks a lot, Koharu, I mean it."

She jumped down from the chair, making sure she had the paper that contained the address. She memorized it quickly, then placed the scrap of paper in her pocket, just in case. The street Ari had mentioned was only ten minutes from the station if she drove fast and managed to avoid traffic; that would give her twenty-five minutes to talk to Ari and Masao.

Twirling her keys around her finger, she made it to the beat-up Hyundai that was in the parking lot and started it up. She pulled the paper out from her pocket again to make sure she had the right address. Yes, it was the right one.

After a few minutes of fast-paced driving, she came across the address. It was a tidy brick house, and beside it were a simple yellow house and a large blue one. This was the finer area of Tokyo, not quite the suburbs but nice all the same. It was difficult to believe that only ten minutes away, there were rotting apartment buildings and trash littered everywhere.

Kagome parked her car in front of the brick house and stepped out, slipping her keys into her jean skirt. The neighbor that Ari had spoken of had to either live in the yellow house or the blue one. And judging from the environment, this Kikyo was loaded. Only the rich could live in such a nice area.

She strode purposefully up to the brick house and knocked. Almost immediately, a short, frail-looking woman opened the door; she looked to be at least sixty.

"May I help you?" the woman—was it Ari?—asked.

"Uh, yes, you can," Kagome replied. She straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat, attempting to look professional. "I'm Kagome Higurashi; I'm here to investigate about your neighbor, Kikyo Miyahara."

"Oh, yes." Ari held open the door. "Come in. I'm sorry, I just didn't recognize you without a uniform on. You look so young."

"I get that all the time," Kagome said casually, even though she didn't. She followed Ari into the living room, where an old man sat at the couch. From his slightly clueless expression, she guessed it was Masao.

"Sit down, please," Ari said politely. Kagome did so, sitting a respectable distance from Masao. "Would you like something to drink? Some cookies? Because I just made a batch…"

"No, thank you," she cut in quickly. "I'd just like to know the facts, please. Which house belongs to Kikyo?"

"She lives to the right of us, the little yellow one."

Kagome nodded. "All right. If you don't mind, I'm going to go take a look. How long ago was it you knocked on her door?"

"I just tried to a minute ago," Ari replied, twisting her hands around nervously. "Though I suppose it couldn't hurt to try again."

Kagome stood and began to walk out of the door, mildly surprised when Masao and Ari followed. She wondered briefly if she should tell them to stay behind, then shrugged it off.

The first thing she noticed as she made her way over to Kikyo Miyahara's house was that her car was an absolute dump. The black Toyota was dented and battered, looking as if it were ready to fall apart at any moment.

I wonder why someone so rich would have such a dumpy car, she wondered.

She made her way up the porch steps and rang the doorbell. After a moment of silence, she rang again. No one answered. Kagome wondered if she should start banging on the door and shouting, "Police! Open up!" but decided against it. It was just a little too much of a cop thing for her.

"What do we do now?" Masao asked.

Think, Kagome, think…

"We'll try the back, of course," Kagome replied smoothly. "It's possible she didn't lock the back. Have you tried it yet?"

Ari shook her head. "No, we didn't want to seem too panicked."

Kagome nodded and headed off to the back of the house. She paused at a window, squinting her eyes to try to get a glimpse of anything suspicious inside, but the coffee table blocked most of her view. Ah, well. It was worth a shot.

Once she caught sight of the back door, she bustled over. The screen was unlocked, not surprisingly, but the actual door was locked. "Shit," she muttered angrily. She tried jimmying the knob, though she knew it was no use. It was definitely locked.

"It's locked?" Ari murmured. "Do you think any windows are open?"

Kagome shook her head. "The only way we'd be able to get in through a window without breaking it is if it were open," she replied. "And I don't want to cause any disturbance yet." She pulled the pin from her hair. "I have a different idea."

Kagome bent the pin and then pushed it into the lock, shoving it around as she searched for a way to unplug it. She'd learned the technique of lock-picking way back when she was eighteen and first realized she wanted to be a detective; it seemed like the most obvious thing for a detective to know. She had gotten much better at it over the years—a lock like this wouldn't be too difficult.

After five minutes of jiggling the pin around, she heard a soft click. "There we go," she said with a grin. She held up the pin to Masao and Ari. "It's not much, but it gets the job done."

Yes, since she had gotten the job done so many times before.

"Stay behind me," Kagome whispered. "I doubt anything dangerous going on here, but precautions are always necessary."

At least that was what her father had always said. And her father was a pretty good detective, so Kagome was going to agree with him on that one.

She opened the door, half-expecting someone to pop out with a knife and attack. Not surprisingly, no one did.

"Hello?" Kagome called out. The back door had led into the kitchen, which was empty, though the light was on. A half-cut apple sat on the counter, a cutting board beneath it. Beside it was a knife.

So she was in the middle of doing something, Kagome reasoned. But she must have stopped for some reason…

There was a calendar hanging on the wall with several dates scribbled on it. Today was November 14—but there was no entry written there. It seemed Kikyo didn't have anything to do November 14. So she should still be in the house; only she wasn't answering to the door or phone calls.

But something struck Kagome odd about the calendar—from November 9 onward, several dates were scribbled out. Looking closer at them, Kagome saw that underneath the sloppy scribbling was a name: she could only make out a few letters: a capital I, a U, and a Y. Kagome found only one name on the rest of the calendar matched it: Inuyasha. She wondered why it was that Kikyo had begun scribbling out his name on November 9, when all the days before that, his name was perfectly legible.

Interesting…

"What is it?" Masao whisper-shouted. Kagome winced; if he was trying to be subtle, he was failing miserably.

"Nothing," she replied. "Let's keep going, shall we?"

Connected to the kitchen was a hallway. There were a few pictures on the pale green walls that Kagome kept to memory; the first one was of two girls, one looking to be about fourteen, the other around five, smiling happily at the camera. Another one contained a cluster of girls outside of a restaurant. The last was of a man and a woman—the woman was smiling slightly, while the man was smirking, as if he was pleased about something.

Another interesting thing: the man was half-demon.

"Can you show me Kikyo?" Kagome turned to Ari. "Is she on one of these pictures?"

Ari nodded. "Yes; she's the older girl in that one picture of the two children. The younger is her little sister Kaede. That's a rather old picture, though. She's also in the group picture, as well as this one." She pointed to the picture with the half-demon. "She's with her boyfriend—Maseo and I don't know him very well, though. Kikyo didn't speak much of him, either. She said he liked his privacy." She frowned. "Come to think of it, I'm not even that sure of his name. Inu-something…"

"Inuyasha?" Kagome supplied, remembering the name on the calendar, the one that had been crossed out profusely.

Ari snapped her fingers. "Yes! That's the one."

"I see." She continued walking down the hallway, pausing to look in the bathroom, but there was no hint of a person anywhere, nor any sign of a struggle. Down the hallway was another door—a bedroom, with a light pink comforter sprinkled with roses, and walls of a pale cream. At the top of the wall was painted a chain of ivy and roses.

Kagome stepped inside the room, sweeping her eyes from wall to wall. It was absolutely spotless; no hint of dirt or a strewn shirt anywhere. She opened up the closet to see if, by some odd chance, Kikyo was inside. Of course, she wasn't, and Kagome felt like such an idiot. What did she think this was, one of those cheesy cop movies where the victim was found chopped up in the closet?

"Nothing here," she said to Ari and Maseo, turning brusquely and heading out into the hallway. It opened up to a living room, which, she could see now, was where the front door was.

The living room was just as plain as the rest of the house, with a coffee table and two armchairs facing the TV set. On the coffee table were a few magazines and a half-empty glass of water. The carpet was a pale pink, mixing nicely in with the beige walls.

"Hmm…" Kagome muttered, as she started to circle the living room. She turned back to Ari and Maseo. "Well, it doesn't look like—"

Her words were cut short as Kagome's foot tripped heavily over something. She toppled to the ground, landing hard on something. Something thin and cold.

Kagome lifted her head and stared in horror at what lay below her.

It was a body.

The body of Kikyo.