Wolf
Part Ten: "Exorcist"
by Vega
"Out," the young demon said under his breath, turning to me. Behind him, the woman sprang immediately to her feet.
I raised a hand to indicate to her that it was alright - I had it all under control. Hesitantly she sat once again and peered down into her daughter's face. I allowed the wolf to push me into the hall. Once the door was closed he dismissed the man standing guard outside it with a promise to call him if the girl's condition changed.
I crossed my arms over my chest and waited him out.
"What are you doing, Amphitrion?" He immediately asked, and threw his hands into the air in frustration. "And what's all this bullshit about all youkai being evil? You know as well as I do that--"
"–that you all have monster blood flowing in your veins!" I finished for him, and he paused in mid-sentence, stunned. It was amusing, seeing him flustered. He didn't understand. I was enjoying this.
"That it's a person's actions that makes them good or evil, and not their genetics." He took a deep breath and shoved his hands into his pockets. "You damned near got kicked out of the Shrine for arguing that, and you go back on it now?! Listen, I don't know what this woman said to you, but we haven't hurt Az."
"You stole her away! Kidnapped her straight from her bed," I couldn't resist throwing back in his face, knowing perfectly well that it was a lie. The person who had taken her that night was me.
"It wasn't me!" he protested. "I found her! Took care of her!"
I flicked my head in the direction of the room. "She doesn't look 'taken care of' to me."
"You'll see," the wolf prince nodded, sure of himself. "If she... AS SOON as she wakes up, she'll tell you. Her mom has a thing against us - I wouldn't be surprised if she'd made shit up to get you over here to help her."
"I will talk to the poor child when she awakens, and I will discern the truth."
The wolf narrowed his eyes at me. "WE will talk to her. I won't leave her alone in there with anybody, crazy friend or no - she's my mate."
"She does not belong to you," I snapped, fishing out another ofuda. I have always marvelled that they don't burn this borrowed ningen flesh, but who am I to complain? The wolf took a gratifying step backwards.
"She doesn't want to be with her Mom, either."
I smiled, knowing I had him trumped. "We'll be removing the child now."
His hands balled into fists and I could hear him growling. "You won't TOUCH her. She's not going ANYWHERE until the doctors say it's okay."
"Begone," I hissed again, and the wolf once more threw his hands in the air in a gesture of frustration.
"I'm going for a walk. I'll talk to you when you've remembered our friendship, and you've come to your senses, Amp," he said to me, then turned to the guard who had wandered away a few paces to give us privacy. "Hey you - no one in or out except those two. Keep an eye on this one," he jerked his head in my direction and made no secret of his misconceptions right in front of me. "Leave the door open when he goes in and if he so much as pulls a stick of bubble gum from his pockets, tie him up."
The guard nodded again, clearly confused with the situation, but willing to perform his part in it. Of course, once Kouga was gone, it would be easy enough to just kill the ningen guard and rush in there, snap the woman's neck, and rip the Shikon Shard from the hanyou's body.
I opted to wait, instead, musing, smiling, happy with the knowledge that soon I would have that arrogant wolf begging for his life at my feet. And that was a much better prize than the Shikon Shard alone could afford me - betrayed blood to taint it with.
I leaned back against the wall in the corridor and closed my eyes, allowing a half smile to come to my lips. Betrayed blood indeed. How hurt he would look when this body destroyed him, how confused. How like the delicious expression on that miko Kikyou and the cursed Inu Yasha's faces, when I had pitted them against one another.
How easy to take a body and manipulate a soul - how amusing the consequences.
I am not that old fool.
I am not the one that had been 'friends' with this pathetic Ookami Youkai.
That old houshin has not been in control of his body since his fortieth birthday, when he got spectactularly drunk at his own party and his defensives slipped enough to allow me entrance.
I had been watching him, of course. I knew the Shikon Shard was nearby, could smell it's power, and I needed a body again. What body better suited to me than the friend of a youkai? One that I could use to destroy him, to claim the Shikon, to poison it with the hatred of love turned sour.
And confidently, the youkai was one who had attempted to do away with me in the first place. Ah, fate was being particularly kind on that day.
And oh what a joy to have snuck in the back door, only to find that fool Miroku, of all people, staring back at me, stunned. The Wolf Prince and the Lech Monk, friends once more. It warmed my heart. Ha!
It only took a moment, and he was far too surprised to stop me.
I delighted in the knowledge that I had effectively eliminated one of those who had long ago hunted me, and was well on my way to destroying a second. Oh, Miroku would be reborn again, for certain, and I would delight it killing him again.
To his credit, he put up a good fight. But I knew his secret fear - the fear of being trapped forever in a windy hell reality - and I used it against his psyche mercilessly. Imprisoned forever in his own mind in a wind-barred box, I was able to slip in and take control of his physical form.
His wife took a very long time to figure it out, and by the time realization struck her, so did my deathblow. Their children were equally easy prey: far too trusting. The girl closed her eyes and tried to pretend that it was all just a bad dream while I violated her in her father's body. I granted that wish and sent her to her eternal slumber soon thereafter.
The young boy fought deliciously, his pain and confusion an aphrodisiac. I held on to that one, pulling out the sensations as I pulled out his intestines, slowly, carefully, so that he would stay alive. Humans are fragile, weak vessels, however, and after twenty or so hours, after I'd finished peeling all his flesh off his body like a ripe fruit's, his spirit managed to escape my grasp.
Leaving the corpses to rot where they lay I only made a cursory effort to wash the blood off my hands before I left the house. I walked, my nose testing the air, my senses guiding me.
Yes, I could feel it. So close.
That why I chose this old man. It was near... so near...
And then I bumped into it, literally.
The young woman looked up at me, her blue eyes burning behind her ridiculous violet sunglasses, and I knew her in an instant.
Here was the girl I had broken so long ago - fresh, pure, uncorrupted.
Mine to do with as I wished.
Mine to claim and cleave and hurt, and break all over again.
I knew suddenly where the power I so yearned for resided within her. I knew where she harboured the Shikon Shard for, in her future and my past, I had been the one to rip it out of her.
Time paradoxes be damned, I WANTED it, and I wanted it NOW.
With that little sliver of glass, I could be CORPOREAL again.
"Girl," I said, and grabbed her right arm as she moved to step around me. I marvelled that the flesh was whole there, even as I knew that within a few years it would be horribly and irreversibly marred. I also knew how to mar her self confidence, undermine her logical mind, hit her with that which she most feared - being different. "Girl, You're one of them."
"Them?" she echoed, her eyes narrowing in confusion. I could see the thoughts flashing though her head, their contents all but written on her forehead. I wondered if in this state, before she was traumatized by the pain of the youkai's attack, she was aware of her own hanyou nature.
Behind me I heard the two other ningen girls that my hanyou had been walking with, whispering and whimpering. I had allowed them to pass by me, unscathed, but not this one. They didn't know what to do - weak indecisive humans.
"C'mon, Az, let's go!" one said and I smiled slightly. No one was going anywhere.
"You're one of them," I repeated, enjoying my hanyou's confusion and the tang of her fear pervading the air, tickling my nose delightfully. This houshin, I had discovered as I had shrugged on his outercoat to cover the blood and gobbets of flesh that painted my shirt front, made habit of carrying ofuda in his pockets. I reached now for one of the holy incantation papers to shock and scare my hanyou with - in her startlement I would haul her up over my shoulder and make off with my prize, before her friends would even be able to react to the flare of fire the ofuda would raise when it touched her skin.
I paused in mid-gesture, however, when a younger man's voice rang out: "Let her go, Amphitron."
Amphitron, apparently, was the name of my host body. I looked up to find the owner of the voice standing just down the sidewalk with his feet apart and his chest thrust arrogantly forward, his hands balled into fists at his side. His unnaturally blue eyes were narrowed and it only took me a second to recognize him.
This man was Kouga, the Prince of the Northern Wolf Tribe Youkai, and one of the bastards that had stolen my fleshy form from me. I hated him in an instant, and peeled back my lips from yellowed teeth. It made my girl flinch, which pleased me.
Again, the old bitterness flared in me at seeing his flawless form: how was it that this youkai, this weakling wolf, had managed to survive the centuries intact, while I had to jump from host body to host body, like a sort of poltergeist parasite, in order to survive, desperately seeking out any sign of the Shikon no Tama so I could return to my former glory.
I hesitated before I answered him, unsure of the whole of the history between this host body and the hated youkai. I had only ever seen them talking together, which is what had made up my mind.
"Stay out of this, youkai," I finally decided on saying, "I'm going to purify her."
It was a bland faced lie, of course. I had no intentions of purifying either her or the Shard within her. But this is what a Houshin would say.
"She doesn't need purifying," the young man said, and I could tell that he was annoyed, but still unwilling to attack this frame I wore. Such were the advantages of body-snatching. "She's fine, you old crazy."
His arrogance made me want to rip his face off. I settled for a slight snarl. Then he had the audacity to walk up to us and STAND between the girl and I, trying to pry my fingers off her arm. Seeing red I slapped the ofuda I held down on his hand and was gratified to hear the harsh sizzling sound as it burned his flesh.
"Youch!" he yelped, jumping backwards, "You silly bugger! What was that for!" Unfortunately, his violent movement dislodged my grip on my hanyou and she managed to escape and run. I made to go after her but the wolf zipped around to block my path.
I rose an arm to strike at him, but this ningen body was too slow and he kicked me in the gut. I was set flying backwards into the pavement.
"Silly bugger," the wolf repeated again, lowering his foot and waiting for me to regain my feet. "How many times do I have to tell you? This one is mine. I'm taking care of it. Stick to the evil ones, okay?"
Then he turned on his heel and stalked after my girl and her compatriots.
I spat out a mouth full of thin, bitter, blood, and decided not to pursue.
So, Kouga had an interest in this one, did he?
Perhaps because he was intimate with her in the past. Oh, I knew. She had been my eyes and ears inside that wolf den, without even realizing it. I had known when he had lay with her, claiming her for his mate while still pursuing the hanyou's miko girl for her Shikon-Sight.
Perhaps he had waited all these centuries to see her again? Perhaps he sought to re-establish the affection? Perhaps he sought to claim her?
I had shook my head and shuffled away. I had stuffed all of the houshin's ID and plastic money cards and cash into my pants pockets, and it was time for me to stick with my original plan and vanish for a while before the authorities discovered the 'present' I had left behind at this man's house.
Now that I knew what city the Shikon Shard resided in, it was only a matter of time.
~~~
Ten years have passed since that day.
I glance over at the guard, waiting for his eyes to meet mine. The instant they do, they catch on fire. I grin and he screams, his voice betraying his agony as the tissue bubbles and decays inside his head. He slaps his hands over his face and reels away, mouth opened to call for help.
I gesture at him, and his voice suddenly dies, the flesh of his voicebox suffering the same fate as that of his eyes. It makes me laugh.
I chuckle as I push back the door to my hanyou's lavishly appointed hospital room. Wherever we are, no expense was spared to make her comfortable. They must think she was some sort of hero.
I find myself looking down into the sleeping face of the girl I had so badly maimed, five centuries earlier. Modern medicine is indeed impressive - she almost looks a pure and complete as the day I found her in the Demon Exterminator's Village.
But something is wrong - something is different about her now than when I last sensed her.
When I had last communicated with her, via her dreams, she still held the power of hte Shikon Shard within her womb. Now, I could smell the faint perfume of miko power in her, got from her ancestors, no doubt, although I knew for certain that untrained she would have no access to it. But I could not find the shard itself.
It was no longer inside her body!
With a suppressed snarl, I wondered if it resided with the wolf that I had just allowed to walk away. No, I would have felt it within him. The only reason I had not known right away that my hanyou was without her shard was the damned interfering miko throb.
So, someone had taken it from her body - a visual picture of which floated through my mind and amused me as I thought of the pain she must have endured to have such interments inside her - and hidden it somewhere.
Someone who knew what it was, and what it was used for.
I would just have to find the person and decapitate them.
A sound interrupted my musing, and her mother stood behind me, wringing her hands. "You're a priest, right?" she said, and I finally turned to face her, putting on my gentlest face. "Her Uncle... he's some sort of demon. He tried to kill me - you saw the bruises on my neck. And that boy that hangs around her, makes faces at her that I don't like, he has a TAIL. I forbade her from seeing him, over the phone, told her to get away from them, but she wouldn't listen. Either that or they won't let her go! She won't wake up - they've drugged her! You have to save my daughter from them! You have to drive out whatever it is that they're doing to ... to make her so... compliant! I taught her better than this - she can't be disobeying me of her free will!"
"Of course they're manipulating her," I said softly, and went over to embrace the woman as a gesture of comfort. I allowed her to sob onto my shoulder, musing that it would be so much easier to just kill the useless blight now and tear apart the hospital for the missing Shikon Shard.
Far easier... but far less amusing.
I pushed the woman gently away, so that I may look into her face, and said, "But I need you to do something for me."
"Anything!" She said desperately.
"I can sense an.... an incompleteness in your child." I smiled charmingly again, watching as she sunk deeper into my spell. "They took something from her. It will be a rose colour, looking like a small sliver of glass. I need that to restore your daughter. Do you think you can find it for me?"
The woman nodded, her eyes red rimmed from days of crying, her cheeks and lids puffy.
"Good girl," I crooned, and petted her hair. "Good girl." She sniffled against me, and I pulled away. "You go talk to the doctors, they'll trust you because you are her mother."
"What are you going to do?"
I smiled, and had it not been on the lips of this body, and on my last one, she would have shrunk from me in terror. "My friend and I had a fight. I need to talk to him and settle it."
~~~
Author's notes:
Well? You guys get it? Huh? Huh? ^___^ I hope all this jumpign around from one character's pov to another isn't too confusing. I started to write this chapter from Kouga's, didn't like it and moved to the Mother's, and didn't like that either. Az's would have been pointless, 'cause she's asleep. So - Amp!
And for those wondering, I did re-upload this chapter, as I found an ungoldy amount of mistakes in this one too. It jumped around way too much. I blame the fact that I have not been getting more than three hours of sleep a night this past week, as I've been getting used to attending classes again.
As it's Saturday, I plan on devoting my time to finishing the story, like I promised.
That said, if it's not, I apologize. School is going to be very busy this semester for me (I have seven classes, plus I have to direct a play - that's more hours of work a week than there ARE in a week!), so I think this story has to end here with "Wolf" I debated continuing afterwards, to turn this into a full fledged trilogy, but I don't think I can. Having confessed as much, anyone willing to give a go at it is more than welcome. All you have to do if promise me that you'll link to my website, and let me beta it first to make sure the characters are still acting the way they ought to. ^_^ If anyone wants to e-mail me seriously about this, I'll even share my back-burner ideas.
Reviews:
Kataionna: Still love Amp now?
sashlea: Evil Miroku IS a scary thought. Imagine how horrid he could be with all those magical adn martial abilities, not to mention his penchant for letchary.
Jaye: I don't know how you do it. Are you in my BRAIN? You guess what's happening next so WELL. But I don't htink you'll anticipate THIS plot twist...
Pallas Athena1: I don't know how I "come up with it". Sometimes I story arrives in my head fully written, other times all I have is one sentence. The plot seems to work istelf out as I go - you wou;dn't beleive the angst I had about taking the original middle section of this chapter away from Chap 16 and putting it here... _
nuyashazFukaiMori: Sleep? Who needs SLEEP? I'm updating as fast as I can. I hope you enjoy.
Ariane Adora : Yes, being evil is often fun. My nickname is "Harry Potter" because of my glasses, but I hang out with Draco, so she gets me into a whole lot of trouble! When it comes to fics, I enjoy throwing in twists - I sometimes run things by Draco and she'll just look at me and say, "... you're sadistic, you know that? Right?" ^_______^
Part Ten: "Exorcist"
by Vega
"Out," the young demon said under his breath, turning to me. Behind him, the woman sprang immediately to her feet.
I raised a hand to indicate to her that it was alright - I had it all under control. Hesitantly she sat once again and peered down into her daughter's face. I allowed the wolf to push me into the hall. Once the door was closed he dismissed the man standing guard outside it with a promise to call him if the girl's condition changed.
I crossed my arms over my chest and waited him out.
"What are you doing, Amphitrion?" He immediately asked, and threw his hands into the air in frustration. "And what's all this bullshit about all youkai being evil? You know as well as I do that--"
"–that you all have monster blood flowing in your veins!" I finished for him, and he paused in mid-sentence, stunned. It was amusing, seeing him flustered. He didn't understand. I was enjoying this.
"That it's a person's actions that makes them good or evil, and not their genetics." He took a deep breath and shoved his hands into his pockets. "You damned near got kicked out of the Shrine for arguing that, and you go back on it now?! Listen, I don't know what this woman said to you, but we haven't hurt Az."
"You stole her away! Kidnapped her straight from her bed," I couldn't resist throwing back in his face, knowing perfectly well that it was a lie. The person who had taken her that night was me.
"It wasn't me!" he protested. "I found her! Took care of her!"
I flicked my head in the direction of the room. "She doesn't look 'taken care of' to me."
"You'll see," the wolf prince nodded, sure of himself. "If she... AS SOON as she wakes up, she'll tell you. Her mom has a thing against us - I wouldn't be surprised if she'd made shit up to get you over here to help her."
"I will talk to the poor child when she awakens, and I will discern the truth."
The wolf narrowed his eyes at me. "WE will talk to her. I won't leave her alone in there with anybody, crazy friend or no - she's my mate."
"She does not belong to you," I snapped, fishing out another ofuda. I have always marvelled that they don't burn this borrowed ningen flesh, but who am I to complain? The wolf took a gratifying step backwards.
"She doesn't want to be with her Mom, either."
I smiled, knowing I had him trumped. "We'll be removing the child now."
His hands balled into fists and I could hear him growling. "You won't TOUCH her. She's not going ANYWHERE until the doctors say it's okay."
"Begone," I hissed again, and the wolf once more threw his hands in the air in a gesture of frustration.
"I'm going for a walk. I'll talk to you when you've remembered our friendship, and you've come to your senses, Amp," he said to me, then turned to the guard who had wandered away a few paces to give us privacy. "Hey you - no one in or out except those two. Keep an eye on this one," he jerked his head in my direction and made no secret of his misconceptions right in front of me. "Leave the door open when he goes in and if he so much as pulls a stick of bubble gum from his pockets, tie him up."
The guard nodded again, clearly confused with the situation, but willing to perform his part in it. Of course, once Kouga was gone, it would be easy enough to just kill the ningen guard and rush in there, snap the woman's neck, and rip the Shikon Shard from the hanyou's body.
I opted to wait, instead, musing, smiling, happy with the knowledge that soon I would have that arrogant wolf begging for his life at my feet. And that was a much better prize than the Shikon Shard alone could afford me - betrayed blood to taint it with.
I leaned back against the wall in the corridor and closed my eyes, allowing a half smile to come to my lips. Betrayed blood indeed. How hurt he would look when this body destroyed him, how confused. How like the delicious expression on that miko Kikyou and the cursed Inu Yasha's faces, when I had pitted them against one another.
How easy to take a body and manipulate a soul - how amusing the consequences.
I am not that old fool.
I am not the one that had been 'friends' with this pathetic Ookami Youkai.
That old houshin has not been in control of his body since his fortieth birthday, when he got spectactularly drunk at his own party and his defensives slipped enough to allow me entrance.
I had been watching him, of course. I knew the Shikon Shard was nearby, could smell it's power, and I needed a body again. What body better suited to me than the friend of a youkai? One that I could use to destroy him, to claim the Shikon, to poison it with the hatred of love turned sour.
And confidently, the youkai was one who had attempted to do away with me in the first place. Ah, fate was being particularly kind on that day.
And oh what a joy to have snuck in the back door, only to find that fool Miroku, of all people, staring back at me, stunned. The Wolf Prince and the Lech Monk, friends once more. It warmed my heart. Ha!
It only took a moment, and he was far too surprised to stop me.
I delighted in the knowledge that I had effectively eliminated one of those who had long ago hunted me, and was well on my way to destroying a second. Oh, Miroku would be reborn again, for certain, and I would delight it killing him again.
To his credit, he put up a good fight. But I knew his secret fear - the fear of being trapped forever in a windy hell reality - and I used it against his psyche mercilessly. Imprisoned forever in his own mind in a wind-barred box, I was able to slip in and take control of his physical form.
His wife took a very long time to figure it out, and by the time realization struck her, so did my deathblow. Their children were equally easy prey: far too trusting. The girl closed her eyes and tried to pretend that it was all just a bad dream while I violated her in her father's body. I granted that wish and sent her to her eternal slumber soon thereafter.
The young boy fought deliciously, his pain and confusion an aphrodisiac. I held on to that one, pulling out the sensations as I pulled out his intestines, slowly, carefully, so that he would stay alive. Humans are fragile, weak vessels, however, and after twenty or so hours, after I'd finished peeling all his flesh off his body like a ripe fruit's, his spirit managed to escape my grasp.
Leaving the corpses to rot where they lay I only made a cursory effort to wash the blood off my hands before I left the house. I walked, my nose testing the air, my senses guiding me.
Yes, I could feel it. So close.
That why I chose this old man. It was near... so near...
And then I bumped into it, literally.
The young woman looked up at me, her blue eyes burning behind her ridiculous violet sunglasses, and I knew her in an instant.
Here was the girl I had broken so long ago - fresh, pure, uncorrupted.
Mine to do with as I wished.
Mine to claim and cleave and hurt, and break all over again.
I knew suddenly where the power I so yearned for resided within her. I knew where she harboured the Shikon Shard for, in her future and my past, I had been the one to rip it out of her.
Time paradoxes be damned, I WANTED it, and I wanted it NOW.
With that little sliver of glass, I could be CORPOREAL again.
"Girl," I said, and grabbed her right arm as she moved to step around me. I marvelled that the flesh was whole there, even as I knew that within a few years it would be horribly and irreversibly marred. I also knew how to mar her self confidence, undermine her logical mind, hit her with that which she most feared - being different. "Girl, You're one of them."
"Them?" she echoed, her eyes narrowing in confusion. I could see the thoughts flashing though her head, their contents all but written on her forehead. I wondered if in this state, before she was traumatized by the pain of the youkai's attack, she was aware of her own hanyou nature.
Behind me I heard the two other ningen girls that my hanyou had been walking with, whispering and whimpering. I had allowed them to pass by me, unscathed, but not this one. They didn't know what to do - weak indecisive humans.
"C'mon, Az, let's go!" one said and I smiled slightly. No one was going anywhere.
"You're one of them," I repeated, enjoying my hanyou's confusion and the tang of her fear pervading the air, tickling my nose delightfully. This houshin, I had discovered as I had shrugged on his outercoat to cover the blood and gobbets of flesh that painted my shirt front, made habit of carrying ofuda in his pockets. I reached now for one of the holy incantation papers to shock and scare my hanyou with - in her startlement I would haul her up over my shoulder and make off with my prize, before her friends would even be able to react to the flare of fire the ofuda would raise when it touched her skin.
I paused in mid-gesture, however, when a younger man's voice rang out: "Let her go, Amphitron."
Amphitron, apparently, was the name of my host body. I looked up to find the owner of the voice standing just down the sidewalk with his feet apart and his chest thrust arrogantly forward, his hands balled into fists at his side. His unnaturally blue eyes were narrowed and it only took me a second to recognize him.
This man was Kouga, the Prince of the Northern Wolf Tribe Youkai, and one of the bastards that had stolen my fleshy form from me. I hated him in an instant, and peeled back my lips from yellowed teeth. It made my girl flinch, which pleased me.
Again, the old bitterness flared in me at seeing his flawless form: how was it that this youkai, this weakling wolf, had managed to survive the centuries intact, while I had to jump from host body to host body, like a sort of poltergeist parasite, in order to survive, desperately seeking out any sign of the Shikon no Tama so I could return to my former glory.
I hesitated before I answered him, unsure of the whole of the history between this host body and the hated youkai. I had only ever seen them talking together, which is what had made up my mind.
"Stay out of this, youkai," I finally decided on saying, "I'm going to purify her."
It was a bland faced lie, of course. I had no intentions of purifying either her or the Shard within her. But this is what a Houshin would say.
"She doesn't need purifying," the young man said, and I could tell that he was annoyed, but still unwilling to attack this frame I wore. Such were the advantages of body-snatching. "She's fine, you old crazy."
His arrogance made me want to rip his face off. I settled for a slight snarl. Then he had the audacity to walk up to us and STAND between the girl and I, trying to pry my fingers off her arm. Seeing red I slapped the ofuda I held down on his hand and was gratified to hear the harsh sizzling sound as it burned his flesh.
"Youch!" he yelped, jumping backwards, "You silly bugger! What was that for!" Unfortunately, his violent movement dislodged my grip on my hanyou and she managed to escape and run. I made to go after her but the wolf zipped around to block my path.
I rose an arm to strike at him, but this ningen body was too slow and he kicked me in the gut. I was set flying backwards into the pavement.
"Silly bugger," the wolf repeated again, lowering his foot and waiting for me to regain my feet. "How many times do I have to tell you? This one is mine. I'm taking care of it. Stick to the evil ones, okay?"
Then he turned on his heel and stalked after my girl and her compatriots.
I spat out a mouth full of thin, bitter, blood, and decided not to pursue.
So, Kouga had an interest in this one, did he?
Perhaps because he was intimate with her in the past. Oh, I knew. She had been my eyes and ears inside that wolf den, without even realizing it. I had known when he had lay with her, claiming her for his mate while still pursuing the hanyou's miko girl for her Shikon-Sight.
Perhaps he had waited all these centuries to see her again? Perhaps he sought to re-establish the affection? Perhaps he sought to claim her?
I had shook my head and shuffled away. I had stuffed all of the houshin's ID and plastic money cards and cash into my pants pockets, and it was time for me to stick with my original plan and vanish for a while before the authorities discovered the 'present' I had left behind at this man's house.
Now that I knew what city the Shikon Shard resided in, it was only a matter of time.
~~~
Ten years have passed since that day.
I glance over at the guard, waiting for his eyes to meet mine. The instant they do, they catch on fire. I grin and he screams, his voice betraying his agony as the tissue bubbles and decays inside his head. He slaps his hands over his face and reels away, mouth opened to call for help.
I gesture at him, and his voice suddenly dies, the flesh of his voicebox suffering the same fate as that of his eyes. It makes me laugh.
I chuckle as I push back the door to my hanyou's lavishly appointed hospital room. Wherever we are, no expense was spared to make her comfortable. They must think she was some sort of hero.
I find myself looking down into the sleeping face of the girl I had so badly maimed, five centuries earlier. Modern medicine is indeed impressive - she almost looks a pure and complete as the day I found her in the Demon Exterminator's Village.
But something is wrong - something is different about her now than when I last sensed her.
When I had last communicated with her, via her dreams, she still held the power of hte Shikon Shard within her womb. Now, I could smell the faint perfume of miko power in her, got from her ancestors, no doubt, although I knew for certain that untrained she would have no access to it. But I could not find the shard itself.
It was no longer inside her body!
With a suppressed snarl, I wondered if it resided with the wolf that I had just allowed to walk away. No, I would have felt it within him. The only reason I had not known right away that my hanyou was without her shard was the damned interfering miko throb.
So, someone had taken it from her body - a visual picture of which floated through my mind and amused me as I thought of the pain she must have endured to have such interments inside her - and hidden it somewhere.
Someone who knew what it was, and what it was used for.
I would just have to find the person and decapitate them.
A sound interrupted my musing, and her mother stood behind me, wringing her hands. "You're a priest, right?" she said, and I finally turned to face her, putting on my gentlest face. "Her Uncle... he's some sort of demon. He tried to kill me - you saw the bruises on my neck. And that boy that hangs around her, makes faces at her that I don't like, he has a TAIL. I forbade her from seeing him, over the phone, told her to get away from them, but she wouldn't listen. Either that or they won't let her go! She won't wake up - they've drugged her! You have to save my daughter from them! You have to drive out whatever it is that they're doing to ... to make her so... compliant! I taught her better than this - she can't be disobeying me of her free will!"
"Of course they're manipulating her," I said softly, and went over to embrace the woman as a gesture of comfort. I allowed her to sob onto my shoulder, musing that it would be so much easier to just kill the useless blight now and tear apart the hospital for the missing Shikon Shard.
Far easier... but far less amusing.
I pushed the woman gently away, so that I may look into her face, and said, "But I need you to do something for me."
"Anything!" She said desperately.
"I can sense an.... an incompleteness in your child." I smiled charmingly again, watching as she sunk deeper into my spell. "They took something from her. It will be a rose colour, looking like a small sliver of glass. I need that to restore your daughter. Do you think you can find it for me?"
The woman nodded, her eyes red rimmed from days of crying, her cheeks and lids puffy.
"Good girl," I crooned, and petted her hair. "Good girl." She sniffled against me, and I pulled away. "You go talk to the doctors, they'll trust you because you are her mother."
"What are you going to do?"
I smiled, and had it not been on the lips of this body, and on my last one, she would have shrunk from me in terror. "My friend and I had a fight. I need to talk to him and settle it."
~~~
Author's notes:
Well? You guys get it? Huh? Huh? ^___^ I hope all this jumpign around from one character's pov to another isn't too confusing. I started to write this chapter from Kouga's, didn't like it and moved to the Mother's, and didn't like that either. Az's would have been pointless, 'cause she's asleep. So - Amp!
And for those wondering, I did re-upload this chapter, as I found an ungoldy amount of mistakes in this one too. It jumped around way too much. I blame the fact that I have not been getting more than three hours of sleep a night this past week, as I've been getting used to attending classes again.
As it's Saturday, I plan on devoting my time to finishing the story, like I promised.
That said, if it's not, I apologize. School is going to be very busy this semester for me (I have seven classes, plus I have to direct a play - that's more hours of work a week than there ARE in a week!), so I think this story has to end here with "Wolf" I debated continuing afterwards, to turn this into a full fledged trilogy, but I don't think I can. Having confessed as much, anyone willing to give a go at it is more than welcome. All you have to do if promise me that you'll link to my website, and let me beta it first to make sure the characters are still acting the way they ought to. ^_^ If anyone wants to e-mail me seriously about this, I'll even share my back-burner ideas.
Reviews:
Kataionna: Still love Amp now?
sashlea: Evil Miroku IS a scary thought. Imagine how horrid he could be with all those magical adn martial abilities, not to mention his penchant for letchary.
Jaye: I don't know how you do it. Are you in my BRAIN? You guess what's happening next so WELL. But I don't htink you'll anticipate THIS plot twist...
Pallas Athena1: I don't know how I "come up with it". Sometimes I story arrives in my head fully written, other times all I have is one sentence. The plot seems to work istelf out as I go - you wou;dn't beleive the angst I had about taking the original middle section of this chapter away from Chap 16 and putting it here... _
nuyashazFukaiMori: Sleep? Who needs SLEEP? I'm updating as fast as I can. I hope you enjoy.
Ariane Adora : Yes, being evil is often fun. My nickname is "Harry Potter" because of my glasses, but I hang out with Draco, so she gets me into a whole lot of trouble! When it comes to fics, I enjoy throwing in twists - I sometimes run things by Draco and she'll just look at me and say, "... you're sadistic, you know that? Right?" ^_______^