Warnings: none

Daughters of Destiny

Chapter 13:

"Gold in the Night"

Before Kagome's body could hit the water, I started running—running as the orb of Kagome's soul floated into the night sky, circling and spiraling around another orb of the same size and shape. The orbs were pretty, but wispy and thin, like the supposed ghost orbs you sometimes saw in grainy photographs. All of the souls appeared this way, although Kagome's seemed thinner than all the rest.

At first I'd been in awe of the souls. Now the yellow lights hovering in my periphery only seemed ominous, like a field of watching, disembodied eyes.

"Kagome!" I screamed. "Kagome, no!"

People were yelling. I heard them, vaguely, as I thundered into the icy river to her side. She floated belly-up, face blank and pale, body carried downstream by the swift current. Her skin felt like hard river stone as I dragged her back to shore, where Kaede waited in her red and white robes. Hair clung to Kagome's blank and cold-hardened cheeks, but even when I dragged her over the rocky beach, she didn't move. I looked to Kaede in desperation, calling her name—but she was not looking at me, or even at Kagome. Instead she looked skyward, into the air above the river, where a field of a thousand souls burned like fallen stars.

Two stars danced in the heart of their number. They orbited one another, drawing closer and closer overhead, a tight spiral like planets caught in each other's gravity. Soon they twined so closely together, it became hard to tell them apart. A single soul with branching fragments, or two separate souls entirely? For the life of me, I couldn't say. While the rest of the souls stood still, they alone moved, and soon they moved away from the river entirely. They drifted directly over us, distant and impassive, beating a steady track toward—

"The village!" Kaede said. She knelt at Kagome's other side, scattering river stones as she fell to her knees. "Tell me, girl. Does she have a sister?"

"A sister?"

"Yes. One to whom she was as close as a sister could be?"

"A—a twin, actually," I said, shocked into stammering. "Yeah. She had a twin."

"And this twin." Kaede's mouth thinned into a line. "She is dead, is she not?"

"I'm… not sure." And this was true; given the time-travel aspect in play, Kagome's twin was probably unborn, which might not be the same thing as dead; it was complicated. "How did you know she had a sister?"

Kaede cupped Kagome's face, finally looking at her. "Twins are not mere siblings," she said, stroking the wet hair from Kagome's cheeks. "Twins are two halves of one whole, forged of the same light in the belly of creation."

My heart lurched. "You cut her, I bleed."

"Beg pardon?"

I didn't answer. There was too much that I did not understand. Desperately I begged, "What do we do? What's going on, and Kaede, what do we—?"

She held up a gnarled hand. "I have my suspicions, but there is no time to name them." Reaching into her robe, she pulled forth a folded paper boat. "Tonight the worlds are close enough that even we, the living, can touch the light of souls." She handed the boat to me, object flat and thin and still warm from the press of her skin. "Take this. Take it and follow them, child. Touch the lantern to her soul—"

"Lantern!? But this is a boat!"

"It matters not what it is!" Kaede exclaimed. "Touch it to her soul and it will bind her. Bring her to me and I will put this right." Shoving at my knee, she shouted, "Now go, child! Run! Fly!"

I obeyed her command, flying with a scattering of stones into the night, grateful that even my mundane eyes could see the supernatural—including the set of souls drifting toward the village on the wind.

The village, deserted of people, lay silent and still below the expanse of the starry sky. Torches burned in sconces in the square, but Kagome's flying soul did not linger there. Her soul and its companion drifted northward, over the steps leading to the temple in the village's heart—and then they sailed past it, slow but steady and easily tracked as I dogged their path through the night. They did not go into the temple, however. They traveled down its rough-hewn length and through the red torii just behind it. I followed as quickly as I could, but when I came to that red arch, I stopped dead.

I stopped because beyond it lay a graveyard.

I have never been a superstitious person. I had walked through many graveyards on a whim or a dare and had tempted the ghost of Bloody Mary more times than I could count. Graveyards as a concept do not scare me—but that graveyard, with its wooden placards and pagodas carved from stone, smiling Buddhas holding burners of smoking incense that glowed like coyote eyes in the dark, brought gooseflesh to life along my arms and legs. Perhaps it was the lack of any modern accoutrements that rendered the place so foreign, so alien, so unsettling, but the fact remained that I shuddered at the thought of walking down the gravel-lined paths and past the mausoleums full of cold, dead ash. The moonlight glinting off of polished stone markers and held the chill of the grave, and whoever lay within, they were no kin of mine.

But Kagome's soul did not pause at the entrance to the cemetery. It traveled on, alongside its companion, against the backdrop of stars and above the smoke rising from the incense.

Despite my misgivings, I did not allow myself to pause, either.

The souls moved with confidence; I crept along with the opposite coursing through my veins, footsteps light with caution on the graveyard's gravel paths. The souls led me past smoking incense and humble offerings to the dead, deep into the meandering heart of the large graveyard, and soon they came to rest in a courtyard in the graveyard's darkened heart. Paved in smooth river rocks, lined with wooden sotoba inscribed with the names of the dead, the courtyard housed a stone gorinto with a plate of fruit, a basket of flowers and a pitcher of water at its base. The stone marker bore no inscription or lavish decoration, but the swept courtyard, rich offering and small pergola shielding it from wind and rain spoke of esteem and care.

I had a hunch I knew to whom the grave belonged—and when the two souls came to hover above the gorinto, I knew in my bones that I was right.

As they came to a halt, the souls briefly parted, distance widening between them as they rotated and danced on the air. Fibers of golden light connected their luminous bodies, and soon they gave a blinding flash. I shielded my eyes, trying not to cry out as I watched them from the shadow of another nearby gorinto, and when at last the light faded, I had to stifle a gasp again.

The lights were gone. In their place upon the air floated two women wreathed in moonlight, forms as luminous as the golden souls I had followed to this place. One bore a face I recognized, that of a young girl I knew by the name Kagome, and the other… she looked just the same, eerily identical, only somehow older. She wore a robe of red and white and tied her long, dark hair low upon the back of her elegant neck, and her dark eyes regarded Kagome with the imperial detachment of a queen. Kikyo, I had to assume—but just as I'd grown accustomed to the Kagome-but-older contours of her face, Kagome and Kikyo flashed again. Within the burst of light, the shapes of their silhouettes shifted and blurred, Kagome's lengthening and Kikyo's shrinking until they reached the same size, as identical as Kagome and Kikyo's faces had been before.

The light faded again, and the women floating on the air were strangers to me.

The one who had taken the place of Kagome bore a tumble of amber hair upon her head, strands kinked and curled into a mass crown-like in both its height and color. She was pretty, with almond eyes and a button nose, lips full and jaw strong, cheekbones high as mountaintops. Freckles dusted her umber skin, hazel eyes gleaming like jewels as they stared at the woman across from her—a woman the same age, with the same face, freckles in all the same places and eyes the exact same shade of gold-flecked green. She had no hair to speak of, head shaved clean, chin raised with defiance the exact opposite of Kagome's—or Costello, the woman she had once been's—trembling mouth.

But Costello's mouth wasn't just trembling.

Costello was crying.

She stared across the space between herself and her sister—Abbot, the woman-who-had-become-Kikyo—with arms outstretched, tears pouring down her spectral face with glints of refracted moonlight. She tried to move forward, but she floated only a few feet before Abbot held up a hand. Costello froze instantly in place, face spasming in confusion.

"Abbot?" Her voice sounded nothing like Kagome's, and exactly like it, too. Once more she reached for her twin. "What are you—?"

"Costello." Abbot sounded exactly like her sister, only colder, her face twisted not with grief, but with anger—anger that made her hazel eyes turn black and deadly as a moonless night. "I knew it was you. I could feel it, even across the heft of centuries."

"Oh, Abbot." Costello pressed her fingers to her mouth and sobbed, a broken sound. "What happened? How are you here?"

Abbot's lip curled. "I'm here because you got the better bargain, like you always do."

"What?" Costello shook her head, coiled hair flying. "What are you saying?"

"You idiot." The word hissed on the air like a crack whip. "You really don't know anything, do you?"

"Know anything about what?" said Costello.

"About why you're here. About how you're here. About him." Here she showed her teeth, pale as tombstones in the night. "About why he did this to us."

Costello shook her head, eyes wide, mouth still trembling. "I don't understand."

"He chose us for a reason." Abbot's hand lashed the air, a cruel laugh spilling from her lips. "Out of everyone he could have picked, he chose us. And do you know why?" Somehow Abbot cut the distance between herself and her sister, looming above her twin, eyes wide and wild. "It's because we're twins. Because our souls are connected. Because when you cut me—"

"—I bleed," Costello whispered.

"We bleed together." Abbot wagged her finger in Costello's face, another laugh, another grin birthed like a gunshot into the night. "But that connection only goes so far, because you got the better bargain, Costello. You always did. You always do." She threw her arms wide, but it was the opposite of an invitation to embrace. "First it was Mom and Dad, doting on you like a precious pet, and then it was that man you married, and your rosy, warm life—and then you had another shot at life, one you can make your own! Not a doomed life like the one I was forced to live. And that just isn't fair."

"What—?" Costello said.

Abbot didn't let her finish. "But you know what would make it fair?" she purred—and then, like a snake, she struck.

Costello wasn't prepared. She didn't even try to defend herself as Abbot's hands wrapped around her throat. The pair plummeted from the air to the earth, incorporeal bodies slamming into it without a sound, leaving streaks of gold behind them against the velvet of the sky. They tangled in a golden rush, Costello kicking and screaming as Abbot bore down upon her, face stretched in a desolate grin, eyes ablaze like the stars above.

"That body you have isn't yours!" Abbot snarled. "And that makes it fair game!"

Costello's ghostly fingers scrambled for purchase against her sister's wrists, cry a strangled gasp. "A—Abbott—"

"Oh, sister." Abbot's face transformed, sympathy drawing lines across her forehead and placing tears into her eyes. "Don't give me that look. This isn't a betrayal. It's a reunion." She pressed her forehead to her twin's, smile benevolent, hands still choking. "Don't you understand that neither of us has to be alone any longer? Didn't I swear I'd always take care of you?"

Costello struggled. She couldn't speak, coughing and grizzling, eyes bulging from her face. But Abbot remained unmoved. She bent until her lips brushed Costello's ear, words a whisper on the wind.

"I'm going to drink this power of yours until we're as inseparable as water and the sky," she murmured in a voice of pure compassion, "and then we'll never have to be alone again. Never alone, always together, all mixed in like we were before we were even born. Forever." Her beatific smile widened, eyes shining with what could only be the glint of love. "I'll be with you, and you'll be with me, and I'll never had to be alone again." And then her kindly smile vanished. "I'll be in charge of your borrowed body, of course. I always was the stronger of the two of us."

"Abbott—" Costello ground out the words like broken bones. "This isn't… this isn't you!"

Abbot picked up her sister's head and slammed it without warning upon the flagstones, roaring, "Shut up! SHUT UP! Shut your fucking mouth!"

But Costello, blinking in pain, would not. "You're—"

"You don't know a damn thing about me anymore!" The glint in her eye spilled out onto her cheeks, tears running unchecked down her spectral face, and I recognized not anger in her gaze, but pain. "No one knows a damn thing about who I am! They only know that woman—that woman he turned me into!"

"Kikyo—"

"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" Abbot wailed. "He killed me to play that role, that damned role, but I won't be a puppet on his string any longer!" He hands clenched her sister's throat harder still. "And this is the only way!"

Costello cried out in pain, and although her twin bore down upon her like a hawk upon a rabbit, she managed to speak the words, "Abbott, please—!"

And against all odds, Abbot's face softened. Or maybe it broke. Either way, I knew in the pit of my gut that when I saw her hands momentarily unclasp, I would not get another chance. I bolted from the shadow of the gorinto toward where Abbot and Costello lay upon entwined upon the ground, baseball-sliding toward them so I could slap the paper boat onto Costello's tortured face. Her body lit up gold at the contact, vanishing as quickly as a breath of wind into the body of the boat, which suddenly glowed as golden as her soul had when it hovered above the river. I scrambled back as Abbot gave a bellow of rage. She shot skyward as I used Kikyo's gorinto—Abbot's gorinto, Abbot's grave—to pull myself upright.

"You!" Abbot leveled one phantasmal finger in my direction, thunder on her face and fire in her eyes. "Give her back to me, now!"

"Not gonna happen," I said, stuffing the boat into the cleft of my robe. "You may have gone through a trauma, and I feel for you—really, I do—but that trauma doesn't give you the right to traumatize others." Heart in my mouth, I raised a hand and pointed at her right back. "Least of all your poor sister, who didn't do a damn thing to you!"

Abbot's eyes widened, and for one crystalline moment, they cleared. No pain, no rage, no hurt or confusion lay within them. Just clarity, and surprise, and a shock of recognition like a glut of sudden ice-water. She'd snapped out of whatever had possessed her, and for a moment I wondered if she'd come to her senses—but then her eyes squeezed shut. She pitched forward, clutching her face, a scream of agony ripping from her throat as her skin glowed once more golden. Glow then turned to glare, and I shielded my eyes from the blinding light.

When the light faded, only Kikyo remained, body wreathed in flaming gold.

She clutched her face just as Abbot had, onyx eyes locked on me from between her splayed fingers. "Something—something unnatural is afoot," she murmured in a voice of velvet that sounded nothing at all like Abbot's, but everything like Kagome's. "Something alien. Something evil."

Slowly, she lowered her hand, staring at me in confusion. But confusion turned to thunder, and just like Abbot, she pointed straight at me.

"You." Although low, her voice held deathly cold. "You are not of this world. I sense it as surely as a wolf scents its enemy upon the wind."

I took a step back, heart a hammer on my tongue. "Kikyo—"

"And as that enemy," she said without hesitation, "so you must be banished."

Her hand began to glow. I moved on reflex, leaping to one side as a burst of white-hot fire erupted from her hand with the sound of crashing lightning—just as that same fire had erupted from Kagome's that afternoon. The cleansing light of a priestess, electrifying and deadly. It shattered one of the many gorinto ringing the courtyard, a shower of broken stone raining down like hail. I ran, ears ringing, back the way I'd come, but Kikyo soared in front of me and raised her hand again. I backpedaled and leapt, barely avoiding another blast; I smelled singed hair, but I didn't stop moving. I ran and I ran, ducking behind another gorinto as Kikyo gave chase, pursuing me through the courtyard and the many winding paths of the graveyard, a red-clad tiger stalking prey. She appeared before me and cut off my escape time and again, manifesting like a creature from a horror movie until I stumbled and fell, Kikyo looming, moonlight streaming through her ghostly body and onto my horrified face. Desperately I grabbed for the paper boat in my robe, cradling it to my chest as Kikyo rose up into the sky and lifted her hand.

"The chase ends here and now," Kikyo said as cold white light gathered on her palm. "Farewell."

Her hand glowed bright. I shielded my eyes as that light rose to blinding brilliance, a high-pitched whine growing louder and louder as the shot gained power—and then the shot went off with that snapping sound of striking lightning. A dry wind stripped by, hot and searing on my face. Hair rose on my neck and arms, body jolting, scream bursting from my mouth unchecked.

But against all reason, I felt no pain. And against all odds, a shadow fell across my face, blocking out the moon and Kikyo's deadly light.

I opened my eyes.

A shape stood before me, silhouetted by moonlight and the golden glow of Kikyo's aura.

A familiar shape, long white hair blowing like spider silk on the wind, a ruff of fur brushing my cheek.

A shape named Sesshomaru, glowing in the moonlight, standing tall between Kikyo and me.

NOTES:

Poor Abbot. She's been through a lot—more than any other Not-Quite, tbh. It's bittersweet to reveal what Hiruko did to her. I think I first mentioned Kagome's twin in chapter 16 of LC? Kagome and Keiko will ruminate on what all of this means in an upcoming chapter (natch; I'm a chronic navel-gazer, after all), but suffice it to say, it's not good.

And yay, Sesshomaru! Back at it again with his demon powers! More on him next time.

This story doesn't actually have many chapters left, and I intend to finish the story in the next few weeks. It's one of my New Year Writing Resolutions.

Many thanks to all of you who stuck with it and left a comment last time. You keep me motivated, and knowing you're there gives me writing fuel. I guess it's tough for people to stay interested in this fic, which makes you all the more precious to me: Kaiya Azure, IronDBZ, Lady Ellesmere, Viviene001, cestlavie, McMousie and some unnamed guests!