"Shuiichi?" Kurama's mother whispered. Her hands were against her mouth. It must have been too dark to see the demon, but she, as Kurama had, must have seen its eyes and the fingers around Kurama's throat.
She took a step towards him.
"No, Mother!" Kurama shouted.
"Mother?" the demon roared. "Mother? This human is your mother, Kurama. Don't say anymore I might laugh myself to death."
"Shuiichi?" She was crying now.
Kurama was silent. He was working a hand slowly behind his head. The demon was too distracted by his laughing and his sneers to notice.
"She is my mother." Kurama said as his fingers slipped over a seed.
"A demon with a mother!" The demon laughed. "You are weak, Kurama. Weak and foolish. I thought I would enjoy your death, but now..."
It stopped.
Its words hung.
Then, it gasped and blood pooled from its lips.
Kurama's mother screamed and Kurama stared into her two wide eyes. In his hand he held the seed he had pulled from his hair. A monster from a place far away, the plant quickly grew and its two branches, like two sharp claws both struck the demon's chest at the same time and with a gargled cry from the demon, they burrowed through, wrapping around the heart and with a single, terrible move, wretched it, beating from the creature's chest.
The demon sputtered blood and for a moment before its eyes turned dim, it gazed at Kurama, hating, scorning. The hand around his throat loosened, but its other hand took one final, fatal slice.
"Traitor." it whispered as Kurama gasped and went pale.
"Perhaps." Kurama said and the demon fell without another word.
Kurama touched his own chest where the demon had cut into him. Blood soaked his shirt already. His eyes sought his mother. She still stood in the impossibly bright light of the moon, her face pale and her eyes overflowing.
"Shuiichi?"
Kurama blinked slowly. "No...." he whispered. "No....that is not...."
Kurama fell forward.
He was glad for the darkness. It wrapped him in perfect, secret darkness and he didn't have to see that look in his mother's eyes anymore.
"Shuiichi!"
...to be continued...