To my Readers: I'm so glad you like my fic!! "Inuyasha" is one of my favorite animes, and I just couldn't resist writing this. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 7

Kagome stared into the fire, wondering how Inuyasha was. Even after three days camping out in a cave up on the hill overlooking the sorceress' palace, they had learned nothing. They could see into the gardens using the binoculars that Kagome had brought with her, but they hadn't been able to spot Inuyasha. Occasionally they would see the large wolf that had taken Inuyasha coming or going, but beyond that, they had learned nothing.

"Can't sleep?" Miroku asked, sitting down across from her.

"Not really," she admitted, poking at the fire with a stick. She rather liked this cave: it had a natural chimney they could use so they could warm the place up safely. Sometimes it was chilly at night. "I'm worried about Inuyasha. He and Sesshomaru are trapped in there together, and what if they begin to fight? They could kill each other!"

"I don't think that this sorceress countenances fighting," Miroku said thoughtfully. "After all, it seems pretty quiet in those gardens."

Kagome was about to add to something, but noise from down the hill made them both go to the cave mouth and look down to locate the source. A demon-boy a little older than Shippo was running through the undergrowth down in the woods. A full moon lit the scene up as bright as day, and as he burst out into a clearing they saw that he was closely followed by the wolf.

"Get down!" Miroku hissed, pulling her out of sight. "We don't want him to know we're up here."

Kagome crouched beside Miroku and watched as the boy turned and, possibly as a last resort, attacked the wolf with his claws. The big creature sidestepped him easily, turned with lightning speed, and grabbed him, holding the boy's long hair in his mouth.

"Let me go! Let me go!!" the boy demanded, tugging at his hair in a futile attempt to release it. "I'm not going back there! My mother will kill that woman and use her bones to feed her pet snakes!"

"Calm yourself, little man," the wolf said dryly through the corner of his mouth. "My mistress has not given you leave to go, and she does not fear your mother." With that, the wolf carried him off through the trees back towards the palace.

Kagome allowed her muscles to relax and dropped to sit on the floor of the cave. That wolf was scary, and Inuyasha was trapped with that thing? How were they going to help him escape?

"Now that's interesting," Miroku said, coming to sit besides Kagome.

She stared at him. "How is it interesting?" she demanded, wondering if the monk had gone off his nut.

Miroku gazed over to where Shippo was curled up asleep on Kagome's sleeping bag. "Because I think it's just given me an idea of how to break in there."

Space

Inuyasha woke up to doors sliding back and forth all through the part of the house where he and Sesshomaru were. He looked to where Sesshomaru should have been sleeping, but found an empty bed. Curious, he got up and went to see what was causing all the noise. Outside on the balustrade he met Sesshomaru, who was staring out into the woods.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Someone escaped, but Tala brought him back," Sesshomaru said with no inflection.

"Oh." Inuyasha leaned on the railing, wondering if anyone could ever escape from here and stay free. Every attempt had been thwarted by Tala or Kimi. He headed back to bed, hoping that Kagome and everyone else was all right.