West of the Moon

Chapter 13

It wasn't until Sesshomaru got to the receiving room - fought his way back to his own throne, damn it – that he came face to face with Tomoji. Or rather, sword to sword.

Tomoji might prefer to sneak around and make covert attacks, but he was a fierce opponent if you ever managed to cross blades with him. Sesshomaru was better, though, and they both knew it.

That probably explained why Tomoji pulled one last punch and stepped back at the last second, pushing Tane in front of himself.

Her hair was tangled and there were splashes of blood across her face and hands. None of it was her own. Her features were already lengthened and pointed, halfway between canine and human. She was snapping at her captors, claws flying, but Tomoji's sudden move sent her tumbling into her son and they were both thrown off balance.

They were both quick to recover, Sesshomaru with his sword at the ready and Tane – transformation under control once more – with her claws green with energy but the momentary distraction was all Tomoji had needed to surround himself with armed guards. Sesshomaru lunged forward, slicing through demons with sword and poison to reach his adversary while Tane spun back, decimating the enemy soldiers that had tried to fill in behind them and trap them.

There was a sudden roar that came from neither Sesshomaru nor his mother and the furthest wall of the throne room exploded inward. Kiyoshi – fully transformed into a large, short eared white dog – crashed through the room with what Sesshomaru recognized as two of his former sister-in-laws. One, an enormous ice creature with razor sharp fingers, was caught in Kiyoshi's jaws and the other seemed to have tackled him, sending him rolling into the room.

It probably hadn't been too hard to send him tumbling, though, if the flowing blood and strange angle of one of his back legs was any indication. Tane was swirling and slicing her way to his aid, nearly dancing through the carnage, when there was an answering yelp of canine pain from the far side of the castle.

The sound, and perhaps the fact that Sesshomaru was all but on top of him, sent Tomoji fleeing. His daughters and fighters, the small portion left alive, detangled themselves from combat and fled at his heels just as Jiroemon, fur stained more red than white, half limped and half bounded on to the scene.

Sesshomaru leapt forward, intending to hunt his fleeing enemy down and destroy him, but his mother held him back with a bloodied hand and a shake of her head.

Sesshomaru knew she was right, there was no way he could take on Tomoji and his army alone and neither of his generals, not even Tane herself, were in any shape to help him. They also knew where Tomoji would retreat too, so there was no need to track him. None of that changed the fact that Sesshomaru had the strong desire to rip his enemy to shreds.

Jiroemon, by far the bloodiest of them all, dwindled back into his humanoid form with all the grace of an old woman tumbling down stairs. He was bleeding heavily and his breath was coming in paints but he tried very hard to make some sort of report.

"Attacked us at sun down," he gasped. "All sides. Decimated."

Kiyoshi growled low in the back of his throat and Sesshomaru wanted to as well. Tane's fists were opening and closing reflexively, her long claws shining an unearthly green.

"Tried to fight. Sent messengers here."

Kiyoshi growled again, more loudly. While he couldn't speak as a dog, and Sesshomaru suspected he couldn't stand as a man, their native language of barks and growls was sufficient enough to express his rage and frustration.

"He probably had all the messengers killed on the way," Tane hissed. "He had this planned perfectly." She unclenched her hands with a conscious effort and smoothed her wild hair back in an attempt at civilization. "How much of our armies survived?"

Sesshomaru recognized that these were the questions he needed to be asking and that he needed to be planning his counter attack, but details and strategy were swept away by rage. Tomoji had attacked him, Sesshomaru, at home. He had destroyed the palace of his father and his ancestors.

Tomoji had had the unmitigated gall to launch an attack on the very heart of the western lands.

And he'd been irritatingly successful.

"Enough." The broken bits of sentences and half heard growls swirling around him stopped instantly with his almost whispered word. Even the swirling dust of destruction seemed to freeze in the air.

"Clean up." The three other dogs were watching him intently, waiting for something. "When I return, we will crush Tomoji."

Sesshomaru disappeared in a streak of white into the darkness.

He didn't know how long he ran or even when he had stopped moving as a man and flew over the ground in his true form. He made the conscious decision to head away from Tomoji and the battle – there was nothing to be gained by attacking him alone – and found himself heading south. He wished there were something worth fighting, something to challenge himself against, but there was no one worth the effort.

There was only himself, the moon, and, at last, the ocean. For a moment he felt the urge to howl, but even at this distance his mother and the others were likely to hear him and Sesshomaru would not admit to loosing his composure.

He knew he should return to his ruined palace now, go back to his generals, rally the remains of his army and attack, but he had no desire too.

It wasn't that he didn't want to attack Tomoji, because he did. He wanted to find out for himself if an ice demon was frosty all the way through or if maybe the intestines were warm. The problem was, he wanted to do it without politics and armies.

He wanted to hunt Tomoji across the land, track him, corner him and fight him one on one. He would settle for Tomoji and himself meeting on the field of battle, armies at their backs, and fighting that way. Sesshomaru wouldn't be content with a war made up of sneak attacks and trickery. He had lost patience with that sort of fighting when he was still a pup.

He stood on the sand a while longer, watching the tide rise and the moon shine on the wave crests. When the water was at its highest, almost touching his paws, he lept into the water as though he were going for the kill and ran home with his fur still dripping.

When he returned to his palace late that night he had no intentions of sleeping, but he had even less intentions of seeing his mother or his generals. Still in his true form, then, he jumped the wall of his own private gardens and went into his rooms through the large hole in the side of the building. There were a few scattered bodies, and a few more scattered limbs, but he swept them together with a paw and flung them out into the night. It surprised him a little that no one had cleared the dead away yet, especially when Rin had been staying in this room, but, then again, Rin was even now probably tucked away in a room were there had been no bloodshed and all four walls were intact.

But it was never wise to make any assumptions where Rin was concerned. Before Sesshomaru had really quite decided what he was going to do he had shrunk back into his human form and was striding out into the hall in which he had left the girl.

She was still there. Rin had fallen asleep with her head in Fuu's lap and the rabbit had placed a blanket over her sleeping form. Fuu dropped her head when she saw Sesshomaru and her hands, one of which had been rubbing small circles over Rin's shoulder, dropped. "She wouldn't be moved, My Lord," the rabbit demon whispered. "She wanted to wait for you. I meant to move her to a room as soon as she was asleep, but she's only just drifted off."

Sesshomaru nodded even though Fuu wasn't looking at him and therefore couldn't see it. "I will take her," he decided out loud. "Bring her into my room."

Fuu nodded and lifted Rin gently. Even a rabbit demon had enough strength to lift and carry a human without difficulty. As the blanket fell away from the girl, Sesshomaru could see the dried blood still on Rin's clothes and hands.

The sight of it bothered him a little, but he couldn't say why. Rin wasn't particularly fond off being covered in blood, of course, but she was already asleep so it didn't really matter.

Fuu snuffled a little when she settled Rin into his bed once again, but that was all the opinion she offered on the state of the room or the fact that Sesshomaru had requested Rin be brought back into it. He supposed he could understand what she meant – the room was in no shape at all to be even termed a room – but he had already made up his mind and he couldn't change it now.

Fuu tucked Rin under the edge of a pelt gently and left the room with a silent bow to her lord, but Sesshomaru wasn't paying attention to her. He was watching Rin and seeing the blood on her hands.

That, he decided, was what bothered him. There was blood on Rin's hands. Not figuratively, literally. Of course, she hadn't been the one to do the killing and she wasn't responsible, but Sesshomaru had always been careful not to kill in front of her as a child if he could avoid it.

There were times when he couldn't avoid it, and this was one of them, but it had never occurred to him that Rin would – or could – kill. She hadn't, Sesshomaru knew she hadn't, but to look at her you would never believe it. There was blood on her hands.

She murmured something that wasn't quite a word and shifted a little, frowning, and Sesshomaru gave up on his thoughts of Rin and death. She was still, at heart if not in body, the little Rin he had known years ago, and that meant that she was in need of protection. He shifted forms for the second time that night and curled into his fur-lined bed with the human woman tucked safely between his front paws and held against his chest.

A/N: It's my Charlie dog's birthday/adoption day. He is now six. I demand that every one have an awesome day in honor of him.