Abnormalities, Chapter Ten
Slit pupils widened in the darkness, taking in every tiny flashing light, every reflection off a metal door handle. He didn't need to see where he was going – where the previous environments had been lifeless and void, this area reeked of scents that assaulted the demon's nose in a cacophony. All of them were unpleasant and decaying; between the heady stench of rats and the sour smell of machine oil, the only thing keeping the demon from gagging was the pleasing aroma wafting from the girl in his arms. But he couldn't let himself focus on that – he was hunting another scent altogether: the tang of perspiration and strange medicinal herbs left a trail so pungent that even the black hallways couldn't swallow it. A growl of victory rumbled in Inuyasha's throat as the scent grew thicker in the air. He was closing in on his prey.
His bare feet pounded the gritty floor as he made for the smell, not bothering to hide his approach, his mind all but consumed in the thrill of an impending kill. The scent vanished almost immediately. Inuyasha jolted to a stop in the darkness, breathing hard, his arms squeezing his delicate cargo to him as his mind swirled with the strange phenomenon. Carefully he retraced his steps until the man's stench filled his black nose once more, and his eyes cut through the dark to see the thin lines of a doorway and faint lights that marked the entry buttons.
The girl in his arms rustled at the displeased growl rumbling through his chest. Her dark-rimmed eyes blinked tiredly up at him, squinting as she tried to see, and Inuyasha snarled in frustration. With demon blood pumping through his veins, he just didn't have the patience to explain things to her, or time to feel guilty for disturbing her much needed rest. As gently as he could with his talon-like claws and lingering desire for blood, he unfolded the girl's hand from her lap and stretched it out in the darkness, until it lay across the glowing buttons. A small gasp of surprise slipped past her lips, and the demon felt only the slightest tickle through his arms as she released a surge of power into the mechanism beneath her fingers.
The doors slipped open to the sound of sizzling wires, and Inuyasha stepped back with a hiss, clutching the girl close to his chest. He could feel the air from the hallway slide past his feet as it fell into the pit before him, pulling him towards the echoing sound of a cavern so deep he couldn't even guess where the bottom lie. His mind reeled, unable to account for the sensory detail around him. The man had come through this door – he was sure of it! But his scent disappeared almost at once, as though he'd been taken away. Had he fallen? Taking a long sniff of the air coming from the cavern, Inuyasha ruled out that possibility. There was no scent of blood or death, as there would have been from such a drop.
"The elevator."
His human shifted in his grasp, and he looked down at her in the dark as she continued weakly "He… he must have taken the elevator. He's in a box – another room, sort of. It moved him from this floor down to a different one."
Inuyasha understood enough of her words to come to a decision. They needed to enter that strange, dark chasm to continue the chase. In one swift move he'd shrugged her out of his arms and onto his back. Her breath escaped in a violent gasp, and she clung tightly to his collar, trying not to choke him as he grasped beneath her legs in support. "Hoooold…" he rasped over his shoulder, and after a moment felt the gentle nudge of her face nodding against his neck. Slowly extracting his hands from around her, giving her time to secure her weight, he approached the ledge. Her knees squeezed his hips in a vice, her body pressing to him with what must have been all the strength left in her limbs; he wanted to hold her, but his arms were needed for other things.
Slowly he leaned forward, hands at the ready to reach back and catch the frail body grasping his back should her strength give out. The darkness was almost impenetrable, even for his demonic sight, but he didn't need to see far. At once his gaze caught on a pattern of rungs jutting out from the wall, and his clawed hand grasped one to test its strength. It held firm. Securing his other arm beneath the girl, he shifted his grip and swung till his feet came in contact with the rungs lower down. There was the briefest tightening of the arms around his neck, but his human didn't make a sound. "Tiiight…" he urged once more, forcing out words which echoed in the cavern, "Hoold tiiight." His arm left its place around her back, and slowly he descended the metal wall.
The vertical tunnel echoed with the sounds of their descent. Every scrape of Inuyasha's rough hands against the metal rungs was as loud as an ocean wave, and the harsh breathing that reached his flickering ears was a howling wind. He didn't understand how his prey could remain silent and hidden from his senses when every other sign of life was so magnified. The girl at his back tightened her vice-like hold on his collarbone, careful not to constrict his neck and ever aware of the movement of his shoulders underneath her grip. Inuyasha's sharp eyes noticed the thin edges of portals like the one they'd entered through, but waited for a sign of the box Kagome had spoken of. Minutes passed as he descended the wall, and each passing second caused his aggression and bloodlust to build. That man was getting farther and farther away; his prey was escaping. No prey escaped him.
He barely managed to bite back a nasty snarl as Kagome's arms tightened their hold, his attention redirecting to the fragile human on his back. Going faster would risk her stability, and he wouldn't take the chance of her falling off. No matter how much he wanted to tear the man who'd hurt her limb from limb… it would all be in vain if she never made it out alive. His focus went back to the steady pattern of rungs under his feet, to the weight against him and the strength in the arms around his neck, and the demon continued downward.
The grating of metal and wire snapped the demon into stillness. Echoes surrounded the pair in a dissonance of noise, but Inuyasha didn't need to look far for the source. Metal ropes extending the vertical length of the cavern had begun to move, sliding nearly against each other in opposing directions. There was another sound far below him – something large was at the bottom of these ropes, and growing farther away. Glancing down past his bare feet, Inuyasha could just make out the silhouette of a rectangular object disappearing into the darkness. His lips pulled back in the feral grin of a fox closing in on an unsuspecting rabbit. He'd found his prey.
Placing a sturdy arm behind the ever-weakening girl at his back, Inuyasha coiled against the wall, his thigh muscles bunching before he pushed off from the cold concrete and leapt down towards the escaping shadow.
He knew it did nothing – he knew the machine would only respond in its set pattern and couldn't understand his urgency – and yet Doctor Honbu continued to smash the first-floor button until it was nearly jammed into the panel. The countdown above the sliding doors paid no heed to his staccato heartbeat, its slow creep towards 'one' making him sweat more with each passing second. Just a few more numbers – just a few more floors and he'd be safe. No other floors would open to him – he'd made sure of that when he'd activated the security system to keep out the psychotic dog.
The first floor though, just a step above the labs where Subject K-9 had been held, was separate from those systems. It lay just underground, below the false entryway and lobby where curious officials were met and misdirected. There were no offices, or labs. It was a floor with no doctors, and no patients. It had only one lock, and was never in need of a guard. The LED display above the doors read '2', and Doctor Honbu allowed himself a grin: this would either be his escape, or the most perfect trap.
His voice rose in a sharp curse as something collided with the roof of the elevator. It jerked violently, surging downwards, and the doctor fell in a heap on the floor to see a dent in the metal above his head. The box's momentum was cut short by the electronic cables as the elevator finally reached its destination, and Doctor Honbu scrambled on hands and knees to exit the contraption as the doors slid open onto a black hallway. Snarls and the tearing of metal and plastic was already close behind him.
Legs aching under strain and a myriad of forming bruises, Doctor Honbu sprinted the length of the hall to a set of heavy doors at the end. His fingers punched in the required code, almost mixing the numbers in his haste, but it was a matter of seconds before the doors unlocked and the harried doctor slipped through. He turned to see the glow of red eyes approaching down the dark hallway, and flinched even as the lock clicked into place behind him.
The whir of machinery in the room set him somewhat at ease, but the feeling didn't last long as something collided with the door in a rattling thud. Backing further into the room, the doctor brushed sweat-slicked strands of black hair from his forehead as he watched the red-eyed monster deliver one powerful punch after another to the bullet-proof glass. The Higurashi girl stood off to the side, her gaze vacant and face colorless, and the doctor let slip a tiny grin. He slipped further into the shadows, not stopping until he felt biting metal at his back and a panel of switches under his shaking fingers. The first pane of glass on the doors had shattered.
Kagome glanced down at pale, shivering hands, the sound of Inuyasha's growls falling away to nothing as she willed her body to respond. She'd been well cared for by her demon protector through their dizzying drop through the elevator shaft; he'd kept a tight grip on her slight figure as he'd pinballed off service ladders and narrow ledges, eventually catching up with the escaping compartment. But the moment he'd set her before the door lock, she'd known something was off. She'd felt something sizzle briefly through her body at their approach, but no matter how hard she willed it, her spiritual energy refused to manifest. Inuyasha hadn't bothered to wait for her powers before his fist rammed into the thick pane of glass.
She felt drained, and passed the feeling off almost at once as exhaustion. But the longer they stood before those doors, desperation fueling them, the more Kagome realized this was no ordinary fatigue. With a final roar and vicious punch the glass shattered and carried Inuyasha through with the momentum. His fist was streaked with angry scratches that at once began to bead with blood; he would heal within a matter of minutes, but the fragile human girl who followed him carefully tiptoed through the wreckage of broken glass. Inuyasha was too far gone with bloodlust to help her over the mess.
He was on Doctor Honbu within seconds of breaking the glass, his powerful fingers still bleeding and wrapped around the man's thin neck. His red eyes grew large and his fangs were on full display as he grinned devilishly down at the choking doctor. A warning growl built up in his throat as Doctor Honbu struggled to get away. Realizing escape was impossible, the human went limp in Inuyasha's vice-like grip, his brown eyes wide as a rabbit's in a snare. The growl inside the demon bubbled into a dark laugh. "Vermin" he snarled, and Doctor Honbu's eyes shot wide at the coherency in the word. "I wanna make this laaaast…." His voice fell into growling as he shoved the doctor against the machine at his back. "But I'm too damn eager to watch you die." Inuyasha's clawed hand rose beside them, talons poised to plunge through the scientist's heart; until he noticed the doctor wasn't paying any attention to the tool of his demise. His eyes were focused on the panel beneath his trembling fingertips, already powered up and humming. The demon's body jolted into action, not knowing what the buttons would do but certain that he had to stop them – and then Kagome screamed.
It tore through her already dry throat, rasping and harsh, and Kagome buckled to the concrete floor clutching her heart. Rocking on her knees, Kagome shut her eyes, as if such a move could keep her spiritual energy from being wrenched away. She could feel her power being drawn out with even more force than Kanna's mirror drawing away her soul. "KAGOME!" The sound of her half-demon's voice broke through her own screams, her mind distantly registering the gruffness that meant his demon blood was still rushing strong.
"Not so fast, K-9!"
A body hit the concrete with a sick thud – but the voice accompanying the sound was all wrong. Forcing the pain away, Kagome lifted her head to see Inuyasha sprawled mere feet from her, still reaching toward her. His breath came is harsh gasps, reminding the girl sharply of that moment only days ago when she'd accidently hit him with her purifying powers. Had she… lost control? Had she hurt him?
The doctor's mad, barking laugh tore the heavy atmosphere. He was still at his place beside the panel of switches, a wild gleam in his eye as he shouted "Nice, isn't it? I told you Miss Higurashi, we're running on your power. You've turned this facility into a ticking bomb for your precious pooch." He chuckled, waving an arm around the tanks and coils and gauges filling the room, before locking eyes with Kagome. "And welcome to the epicenter!"
Her mind raced with the doctor's accusations. How had they managed all this? How could they have taken from her something so precious, so intangible, and twisted it into this weapon? Images of electric-lit rooms surged up from some buried corner of memory – of wires, so many wires, and pulses that shook her entire body. She'd been to this place before.
"You see, Higurashi? This room was built to syphon your specific energy waves. We may not understand them, but we can harness them. Oh, and did I forget to mention? We can transmit them too." His fingers made the most minute movement, turning a small dial to the right as a hum began to fill the room. Inuyasha's labored breathing became a high, pitiful whimper, his body convulsing.
"STOP IT!" She was at the demon's side at once, turning him onto his back and cupping his sweat-slicked cheek. Whatever they'd done to her spiritual powers had changed it: the waves of energy traveled straight through her, as though she weren't even there, attacking the invisible energy inside Inuyasha like purging fire. "Turn off the machine! Please!"
"And let myself be killed by him? I'd rather not." He turned the dial higher, and the current of energy throughout the room was palpable. Inuyasha's whines rose into pained yells. Kagome could see the marks on his face fading, and the red glow slipping away beneath squinting eyelids. His cries became even more tortured and his skin burned beneath her hands. This was killing him. She was killing him.
Staggering to her feet, Kagome rushed Doctor Honbu with rage in her grey eyes. His finger turned the dial further, and a ragged scream flew up behind her. She froze. "I wouldn't try anything if I were you" he shouted across the room, "unless you both want to end up as corpses here." The doctor's lip was turned up into a sneer, but Kagome saw the fear lurking just behind it.
"What do you mean both of us?" She took a cautious step back towards Inuyasha, hoping the Doctor would follow suit and turn the dial down to a lower notch. He didn't.
"You think I'm going to take any more risks with the two of you?" The black fringe of his hair stuck around his sweating temples framing glaring eyes. "You think either of your lives are more valuable than mine? What I mean by 'both', miss Higurashi, is that either you and the dog come back with me as cadavers" his fingers turned the dial a fraction further, sparks of electricity dancing over the wires and coils in the room, "or none of us are leaving this place alive."
He read the shock on her features, impossible to miss, and laughed. "You thought we were still bargaining, did you? Thought I'd give you the option to come back to the lab quietly so you could sit and plot some more? No, Subject H. You lost that chance when you destroyed Mister Tanagawa's body. And as for me? My life's work is in you two. If I can't have you, you can be damn sure I won't let anyone else have you either." His gaze darkened, his hand reaching into his doctor's robe and extracting a syringe. "So you see, I've got nothing left to lose, and you've got nothing more to gain. You should thank me for offering you a release." Uncapping the tool, he gave it an appraising look, and turned back to Kagome. "What'll it be? You can make this death quick and painless, or I can turn this dial to its max and we'll find out what an explosion looks like at the source."
Kagome clenched her teeth, her legs shaking as they attempted to support her exhausted body. She was just so tired. Far too tired to wrestle the man away from the damned panel of buttons and knobs. Her head was spinning, her fingers trembling, and her eyes were beginning to sting from the frustration of it all. Then a feverishly warm hand grasped her ankle, and she jumped. Shining grey eyes looked down to a face without markings, to eyes as blinding white and yellow as the summer sun. Although the strain was apparent in every crease on his face, it couldn't mask the determination.
"Do it Kagome. Don't worry about me. Just hurry up and fry his ass." He smirked, all arrogance and bravado, and it was as if the old Inuyasha was back, revived from the dust of Feudal Japan. His hair was long and glistening, a healthy glow to his face and his ears intact. But she shook her head, and the illusion vanished.
"I can't Inuyasha – I won't. I won't kill you just to get away."
"Who said anything about killin' me?" he groused, his brows knitting as he bit back a groan of pain. "You think I'm afraid of your powers? What's the worst you could do? Purify me? Turn me human?"
"Your body hasn't recovered" she argued, fists clenching as they used to in the wake of his stubbornness. "Even if all I did was 'turn you human', you wouldn't survive it. I nearly lost you that way already." Her persistence made no difference to him; he scoffed, pushing against her leg with all the strength of a newborn. "Just do whatever it was you did in the labs and destroy this place. I'll be fine."
Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, Kagome fell to her knees beside him, leaning over his curled body. He could barely turn his head to face her. Her hand slapped the concrete floor, the sting lost in the vibrations she felt running through the ground. "How?" she yelled hoarsely, "How do you know that?!"
"Because I know you." It was all he could say before his eyes pinched shut and he slumped boneless to the ground. His hair was melting into black – she had run out of time.
"Finished, Subject H?"
Kagome stood up silently, dragging her eyes from the lifeless body of her beloved half-demon to the impatient doctor. The balls of her feet throbbed as she strode purposefully towards the man, noting a flicker of something uncertain in his eyes as she approached. She didn't have a plan, didn't know how to harness the raw energy coursing through her veins – but she wouldn't let it end like this. Three years of her life had been stolen from her by this monster in a lab coat. He wouldn't take any more.
The machinery under his fingers began to snap and sizzle as she got closer, and Dr. Honbu jumped away from the dial he'd been so possessively guarding. "Rrrgh! Just give it up!" he shrieked, futily backing against the still sparking machinery. "What do you even expect to do out there, in the real world? You're abnormal – both of you! You don't belong and you know it!" Kagome stopped her advance, and the doctor paused as well, breathing heavily. "I was only trying to give you a purpose" he gasped, "A way to contribute to the good of humanity. It's better than being a pair of useless freaks, isn't it?" The young woman's brow knit in anger, but Dr. Honbu pressed on. "What, were you really planning to live a normal little life in Tokyo with a dog-eared super human? Were you going to keep him locked up at your shrine, or did you still think you could parade him around the streets and no one would notice? Believe me Higurashi, we're not the only ones who've seen him. And I'm not the only one willing to take drastic steps for science."
His words pierced straight through her defenses like poisonous thorns, the hidden truths behind the lies seeping toward her heart quicker than venom. They could never go back to the way things were, she knew that… but even a life of secrecy was better than this hell.
Kagome took another bold step, and the doctor stumbled away along the wall of machinery, his bravado slipping away with every closed inch between them. Dr. Honbu's eyes flickered from the dirty feet of the girl to her stalwart grey gaze, his teeth tightly clenched and fingers reaching blindly for some hope of salvation in the dark room. He never noticed her own reaching fingers.
He was too far away from the control panel by the time Kagome had reached the knob, and his voice rose into a snarling shout of "little BITCH" as she turned the power dial back down to zero. At once the room quieted, a deathly quiet as the doctor held his breath, but Kagome wasn't done. Laying her hand over the control panel, she focused all her thoughts on the motionless half-demon behind her. She didn't notice the doctor charging forward blindly, or the stir of movement in the prone form on the floor. All she could feel was the build up of spiritual energy at her core, her thoughts consumed with worry for Inuyasha. A quick, soft breath, and her power released.
Doctor Honbu's body was hurled back against a wall of smoking, sparking equipment, crying out sharply as he slumped to the floor. The already dark room became blacker with billows of smoke as fires sparked inside the generators and snapped wires ignited every flammable surface. Kagome wobbled under the sudden heaviness of her body. A cough wracked through her, her lungs desperately searching for oxygen, and her knees buckled at the jolt. She fell, ready to slip back into the darkness of her mind –
But then a pair of arms caught her, warm and so carefully strong, and she turned her watering eyes back to see shining red and blue. "Knew… you could do it…" he growled low in her ear. He didn't stop to see her grateful smile as she was hoisted into his grasp and rushed through the busted glass of the shattered door. Alarms were already sounding in the hallway, a constant flashing of red filling the otherwise sterile space. Inuyasha paused in the corridor, calculating eyes locked onto the broken elevator. The tunnel it led to was lifeless, and demon-minded Inuyasha felt it pointless to seek escape through there. Roving eyes took in every detail that the flashes of red revealed to him, desperately searching for a promise of freedom. The girl in his arms had already breathed in too much smoke.
Finally he saw something separate from the red illumination around him: a sign above a doorway, shining green, with strange characters that he recognized from upstairs. He raced for it at once, his demon-powered legs delivering a kick that made keys pointless, and passed under the glowing 'exit' sign to a flight of stairs.
The immaculate lobby was filled with the sound of a fire alarm, the usual receptionists and tour guides to the false research facility on their way out of the building as security guards phoned nervously from different floors trying to ascertain the source of the fire. They'd only managed to override the door locks for a few select rooms by the time the piercing bells had begun to shriek their warning.
The few guards left loitering about the main floor were thrown into a panic by the ground-rattling thuds that erupted from the door to the stair-well. By the time the door swung open with a crack against the opposite wall, the unnarmed men were too frazzled with nerves to do more than stare as a blur of red, white and black sped through the sunlit lobby towards the already open entrance.
No one could be quite sure afterwards just what it was they'd seen speed through the front doors of the building and out into blinding sunlight. After all, it had leapt almost at once into the foliage of trees surrounding the lab property, and no amount of searching by curious lab assistants ever turned up more than a skittering squirrel.
The trees ended abruptly, pulling a frustrated growl from the dog demon who'd been hoping for a forest to hide in. He settled in the sturdy crook of a branch and paused to gain his bearings. A bird chirped nearby, the whistle of wind through leaves disturbed by the distant roar of those metal carriages that sped through Kagome's village like blundering boars. Warmth settled on the skin of Inuyasha's cheeks and nose as a gust of wind separated the branches overhead… and he closed his red eyes, breathing deeply of the open air. It may have been tinged with gasoline and acrid waste, but… it was alive.
Drinking in a few more lungfuls of warm spring wind, Inuyasha let his red eyes fall to the sleeping girl in his arms. He nuzzled her cheek with his black-tipped nose, vainly hoping for the warm sun to wake her up, but even his hazy mind knew this was no normal sleep. She'd given everything with that last burst of power, and her soul had withdrawn inside the protective shell of her body, seeking to heal itself… not unlike the demon blood coursing through him, keeping his own vulnerabilities safe and locked away.
Inuyasha adjusted Kagome slightly so he could slip lower in the tree boughs, peering through the leaves at the city sprawling out below and beyond. The research facility was on a sloping hill, but even at this height the buildings had begun to sprawl up the mountain's sides. Red and blue eyes peered carefully at the structures, noting which roofs were flat and which were too uneven to cross. Within seconds he'd mapped out a path across them, and assuring no one was around to see, jumped down to the grassy floor and sped towards his first target.
Kagome couldn't be sure she wasn't dreaming as her eyes fluttered open onto an orange and purple skyline. She shivered, folding her arms against the thick weave of her sweater and drawing her legs in close to her body. The ground beneath her was hard, and there was a wall at her back, but all around her was open air, hedged in by a concrete barrier and falling shadows. She blinked, unsure what to believe. There was no one else about, but something in her foggy mind knew she hadn't been alone.
Her skin prickled as a new presence made itself known, and she gasped as a figure dropped from above her, crouching in the deep shadows cast by the setting sun. Her fright melted in joyful recognition at the silhouetted dog ears and shining red eyes, and she scrambled away from her resting place to fall into Inuyasha's reaching arms. He grasped her to him as she shuddered with wide-eyed remembrance. Everything they'd gone through in those labs, their last struggle against Doctor Honbu, surfaced with violent clarity as she buried her fists in Inuyasha's red sweater. But then she heard the distant thrum of car engines, and felt a gust of cool air against her cheek, and the realization struck her: they'd escaped.
She burrowed further into Inuyasha's warm embrace, and he growled softly as his clawed hand came up to brush down her hair. "Inuyasha" she started after a moment of peaceful silence, "… do you know where we are?" Kagome couldn't tell how far into his transformation he was, or how well he'd be able to understand and respond, but she was anxious to try. She'd missed their conversations so much.
The demon didn't respond with words however, merely shaking his head from side to side. A regretful sigh slipped past Kagome's lips, but she was quick to give Inuyasha a smile as he leaned down to peer into her face with concern. "It's okay," she said, her hand drifting over his chest to stroke his arm through the thick red sweater. "We'll figure it out." Kagome kept her worries to herself; whether he understood or not, she didn't need to burden her protector with any thoughts but their safety. The matters of how they'd get home, and where they were, and how they'd find food, were concerns she locked away to worry about later.
Settling back against the cold wall and wrapping her arms around folded knees, Kagome found herself relaxing for the first time in weeks. With Inuyasha right across from her, watching her with veiled interest, she let herself close her eyes for just a moment and bask in the glow from the far sunset.
A sharp pain pulsed in her stomach, reminding Kagome that she hadn't eaten anything since her entrapment with Inuyasha the day before. Had it really been only a day since their time together in his cage? Rubbing absently at her stomach, she realized the question of food would need to be answered sooner rather than later.
It was answered, and much sooner than expected as a hard object nudged her crossed arms, and Kagome looked up to see her vision filled with rubbery white and trimmed in green leaves. "Inuyasha…" she whispered in awe, taking the large, fresh daikon radish reverently from his claws, "how did you get this?" Her mouth was already watering as she brushed her fingers over the radish's tough skin, but a sudden savory-sweet scent managed to draw her attention away from the vegetable. The demon before her pulled a box from behind him, and from its depths drew out a small paper tray with- "Takoyaki?" Kagome nearly dropped the daikon in her haste to get to the little round pancakes, and somehow managed to balance both on her lap as she closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the sweet sauce covering the octopus treats. It was still warm in her hands, and Kagome realized Inuyasha must have snatched them from a street-vendor's cart. The daikon was likely pilfered in the same manor. He pushed the box closer, and Kagome peered over the edge, her breath catching as she caught sight of the prize inside. More than a dozen cooked clams glistened in the fading light, and a bag full of strawberries sat nestled beside them. It was a veritable feast, and Kagome could do little more than gape at Inuyasha, whose face lit up in a proud smirk.
"This is amazing" she murmured, picking up a round takoyaki and biting into it. Her eyes closed, and she sagged in food-induced euphoria. A low rumble sounded before her, and she opened her eyes to see her grinning demon chuckle at her reaction. She smiled in response, and held out her hand with the remainder of her treat. "Here" she prodded, watching his grin become curiosity. "Try it. It's really good!"
Inuyasha leaned forward and carefully sniffed the foreign object. He ignored Kagome's giggles at his puppy-like expression, and carefully nipped the tasty smelling treat from her fingers. It wasn't long before the demon's thoughtful chewing became greedy, and he snatched Kagome's wrist as she took another Takoyaki from the tray. Her breath caught as his hungry mouth slipped over her fingers in his haste. A warm blush spread across her cheeks as he pulled her hand in closer to lick away the sauce and clinging bonito flakes, the fire spreading a little further as his red and blue eyes peered open to meet hers across their joined hands. The air between them felt heavy and charged, and Kagome wondered if he could feel it too. She wondered if it was on purpose.
Dropping her hand, Inuyasha crept closer, his eyes never leaving hers until he was settled beside her with his back to the concrete wall. She held his intense gaze for as long as she could, and just when she thought to turn away, his clawed hand reached out to cup her cheek and pull her closer. Kagome's eyes fluttered closed at the contact. His hot breath brushed over her parted lips, her hands carefully moving the food from her lap as she leaned further into him – and she shivered as his lips pressed to hers, his tongue sneaking out to trace the curve of her mouth. She sighed against him, her hands reaching out to grasp his shoulders and anchor herself….
He leaned back out of her reach before she could touch him, and her eyes blinked slowly open to see him looking positively mischievous, licking his lips. It took Kagome a moment to gather her wits, but it wasn't much longer before she realized what he'd really been after: the last bits of sweet sauce clinging to her mouth. He'd been teasing her.
Kagome stared at the demon-man, unable to comprehend his sudden change in behavior. His ever wary, alert protectiveness? Perfectly normal in this state. Concern enough for her health that he'd risk stealing a box full of food? She'd expect nothing less. But a childish prank and a playful kiss? Still grinning, Inuyasha reached for their personal cornucopia and pulled out a clam, prying it open without the slightest bit of resistance. Kagome watched, noting the ease in his movements, his comfort at her side, and smiled. Despite the red in his eyes and the marks on his face, it appeared his human heart wasn't quite as buried as it had been before.
*Author's Note:
Try not to think about how long it's been since this updated, and take joy in their escape! *sweating nervously* yeah I know, it's been a loooong time.
Anyways, THIS IS NOT THE END! Just wanna make that clear. There's still the matter of these two actually making it back to the shrine/well... and then there's the little loose end concerning a certain crazed doctor. Inuyasha is well aware that he didn't get to crush the man's skull. The repercussions of that remain to be seen.
I have much more in store for this fic, but it's still winding down to a finale, so please stay tuned! And thank you for reading/supporting this story!