Disclaimer: Mob of Press People: "Archangelina, Archangelina! May we have a word with you?"
Archangelina: "urm...sure?"
MOPP: "What's it like owning Inuyasha?"
Archangelina: "What's wrong with you people!"
Chapter 4 "To Fulfill a Promise Part 2"
Kagome scrambled to her feet and burst through the door of her room.
"Sango! Sango!" she cried. A flickering shadow crossed the hall to her right, she had barely enough time to see it. Shivering, she pulled the haori she was never quite able to get rid of tightly about her as she sidled down toward the hall. Suddenly a hand grasped her left shoulder, another hand over her mouth. A curved blade marked a shallow cut beneath her angel bone.
"This is your fault," Kohaku's raspy voice whispered.
"Kagome!" cried Sango, sounding as though she were crying from pain.
"You shouldn't have come here," he pressed. "You shouldn't have...eh," Kohaku piped, dropping his grip on the older girl. Kohaku dropped to his knees, burying his scythe in the floor. Kagome spun on a heel to face him in the darkness. She backed up a pace as he looked up at her once more, but his stature was no longer that of an assassin, but a servant. Kagome's breath caught as she bumped into something behind her.
She looked behind her for only a second to see the small hall shrine she had knocked over. When she looked back to Kohaku, there was no longer anyone there. "Kagome!"
"Oh no, Sango!" she thought as she raced down the hall. She tore open the door to the main chamber and saw nothing at first, but as her eyes adjusted, she could make out dart spots on the paper walls. She slowed her pace, still hearing Sango's cries. "What am I going to do?" Kagome thought as she neared the far wall. "It's blood," she realized when she touched the paper door. A horrifying feeling spread throughout her body, "but whose blood is it?"
Another one of Sango's cries brought Kagome back to reality. "You can't let them down," she told herself as she pushed through the door. What lay beyond the threshold mortified her.
Sango was sprawled along the floor, gashes cut into both legs. She was crying as she pulled herself along the floor, a long crimson trail marking her path. She looked up at Kagome, fear marking the deepest reaches of her eyes. She reached a hand toward her friend.
"Ka...Kagome," she whimpered. "Miroku!" she demanded weakly. "I don't hear him anymore. Please, you have to help Miroku..."she requested hoarsely. Kagome shook her head.
"But Sango, what about you?" Kagome nearly choked. Sango shook her head.
"No...Miroku...please!" Sango insisted. "I heard him outside. He was in trouble. I could still hear him when...Kohaku attacked me and I can't walk...Please Kagome, you must see that he's alive!" she cried.
Kagome backed out of the room slowly, turning on a heal and running outside. Surely enough Miroku was just outside fighting a short opponent. Miroku was wounded badly, his left arm useless at his side, and his enemy seemed unfazed by any battle wound.
The boy charged at him, throwing the scythe before him. Miroku knocked the implement down with his staff, but met a punch from Kohaku just as the scythe hit the dirt. The monk fell over, keeping himself just barely off the ground by holding on to his staff. Kohaku landed gracefully, pulling the scythe chain as he landed. The demon-bone blade cut across Miroku's ribs as it soared to its rightful possessor.
Miroku groaned and coughed, losing grip on his staff and falling to the ground. He mumbled something to Kohaku as the boy neared him, but Kagome couldn't make it out. "I have to do something!" KAgome thought, but just as she started off, a hand pulled her backward again.
"I told you, Kagome," cooed a voice behind her. Just as suddenly as the words were said, Kagome was in the same hold Naraku had entrapped her in six months prior. He leaned near her ear again, shifting his left arm from her left shoulder to her right. He coaxed her head to lean backward as her heart pace quickened and her breathing became shorter and more frequent. "I am sincere in my promises, Kagome. I told you not to come here." Kagome squirmed under his grip.
"Naraku-sama," Kagome cried. "Please, why have you done this?" Naraku's arms tightened about her as he grinned in the darkness.
"It is not what I have done, Kagome," Naraku taunted. "It is what you have done." Across from them, Miroku struggled for a sacred charm, finding the paper and throwing it at Kohaku, but the boy merely sliced the frail paper target with his weapon before it could do any damage. Kagome tried to look away, but her lord redirected her face, forcing her to watch as Kohaku stood over Miroku.
"Naraku-sama, please," Kagome begged. "Stop him, please!" Naraku grinned, his hand beginning to slide to her upper arm.
"You know that I can't do that, Kagome," he said with twisted pleasure. "I keep my promises, Kagome." Kohaku brought the scythe over his head and plowed it into Miroku's chest. The boy was covered in Miroku's blood as he headed back into the house. "All of them."
Kagome awoke with a start in her room, breathing deep the morning air. "What a horrible nightmare..." she thought to herself. She rolled out of her bedroll and slid open the door. The house was quiet; no one else was awake. Kagome yawned as she bumped the hall shrine. She instinctively looked down at it. All of it's pictures and prayers and incense burners were on the floor, but she hadn't heard them fall.
"That's strange," Kagome thought aloud and continued to the main hall.
There were dark spots along the paper walls. Dark...brown...red...spots...Kagome's breath caught in her throat as she pushed into the main room. Dry blood paths marked the floor like brush strokes, flowing alongside splatters of brown-red of the same color. Kagome's heart beat in her throat as she followed the shorter path leading into the kitchen area. What she saw there would mark her permanently. Sango's dead body lay limp in the arms of her little brother and killer, who cried when he saw Kagome.
Deep gashes were visible on the backs of her thighs. But that was not the unnerving part of it. There in her chest, just left of the center was a gaping hole. Her heart had been ripped from her body.
"I just woke up," he sniffled. "Woke up and they were dead." Kohaku was covered in blood. It streaked his face and arms and stained his hands and fingernails. He remembered nothing "What happened Kagome?"
"I-I don't..." Kagome began with tears in her eyes. She backed away from the crying boy, eventually turning tail and running out of the house. The sight there was not better. Her friend, Miroku was there. Or at least what was left of him. His body lay atop a stone, plunged through Kohaku's scythe, which had also buried itself in the rock beneath Miroku.
Kagome's arm burned. She looked again at the sleeve of her Naraku's haori and wept. "This is all my fault...I should have stayed at the castle...I should have known better..."
"Now, now, Kagome," Naraku's voice sounded. There, just beyond the clearing was Naraku in his baboon skins. He stood and walked over to her. "Do not think such thoughts. These were but thorns in my side. They would only have hindered you." He reached over and took her chin in his hand. Kagome's eyes were marked with tears.
"Why, Naraku-sama?" she piped. An amused sigh came from Naraku as a tear rolled down Kagome's cheek.
"That is why, Kagome," he hummed. "Better to be rid of such frailties now than suffer their consequences later.
"You told them that I killed Inuyasha, kidnapped you, and I held you as my prisoner," his smooth voice sounded. "You did not tell them you call me lord. How do you think they would have reacted to that?" Kagome's breath caught as Naraku ran his fingers along her cheek. "They would have killed you, Kagome."
"No, my lord, they would never have killed me!" Kagome fought. Naraku's eyes narrowed behind his mask, but he was silent. "They wouldn't hurt me, I know it." Naraku allowed Kagome to back away from him. "It's you they wanted dead, not me!" she shouted, trying to convince herself more than him. Naraku took a slow step forward, paralyzing Kagome with her own fear before delivering a hard slap across her face.
"Do not try to convince yourself that humans are otherwise," Naraku instructed. "They attack what they fear. Anything that adds to that fear is a threat," he grinned. "Kagome, you have become that threat." His eyes narrowed. "You are lucky to have gotten off so easily. By all rights I should kill you for your betrayal." Kagome shivered as he moved toward her. He grabbed her arm and lifted it, studying the haori. "But you have kept my colors. This is your first warning. Do not cross me again."
When Naraku dropped Kagome's arm, she bowed immediately.
"Yes, my lord," she wept.
"Now let us head back to the castle, Kagome," Naraku instructed. Kagome looked at Miroku's body once more, tears streaming.
"Of course, my lord."