Kagome held her flashlight high in the air, shining it down the dark stairwell to the basement. The flashlight beam was weak, yellow, and flickering -- and the best they had. She couldn't make much out.
"Shippou, do you sense anything down there?"
The kitsune was visibly nervous; though he wasn't the child she remembered from centuries ago, and though he was a formidable fighter now in his own right, for a moment, when she flicked the dim light in his direction, the resemblance to that small boy was painfully obvious. He stood nervously on the top step, nostrils flared, red pony-tail trailing halfway down his back, tail twitching and fists balled.
"Nuh-uh," he said, finally. He glanced from her to Hanako and back. Hanako had a death grip on one very large axe. "You?"
"Nothing but vile evil and a few ghosts. Let's go." She felt about as nervous as Shippou looked. The whole go-into-the-basement-and-see-what's-there idea had her wigged; it felt like the plot of a bad horror movie. Except with two slayers, one full demon, and one ... Andrew ... they ought to be able to deal with anything short of an actual apocalypse.
Buffy had loaned her a crossbow and several quarrels; the Slayer had also had a long bow, but Kagome had not been happy with the condition of the bowstring on it, and there hadn't been any replacements. So she'd simply filled her pockets with stakes and taken the crossbow -- the crossbow had some power behind it, but the stakes would actually be more efficient in a close fight.
She could do things as a miko with stakes that no ordinary Slayer was capable of. Like charging them with purifying power and throwing them, not just using them as pointy objects to stab with. The crossbow, however, would come in handy if she needed some penetrating power.
"Lemme take the lead," she slipped past Shippou.
"Inuyasha is gonna kill me if anything happens to you," Shippou worried, not entirely happy with her leading.
"Relax. If anything takes me out," she cast a grin over her shoulder at him, "You'll have bigger and more immediate problems to worry about than Inuyasha."
"Gee, that's so reassuring!" He snapped his fingers, summoning foxfire to them. The foxfire cast a brighter light than the flashlight did, and she snapped it off. Besides making a handy torch, his foxfire was also a pretty effective weapon. She could feel the heat of it radiating off his hands.
Hanako, behind Shippou, suggested, "If we do get attacked, Shippou, I'll cover your back. Andrew, you watch Kagome's. They're our two strongest fighters; I think we should let them lead the fight and we'll make sure nothing surprises them from behind."
"R-right," Andrew agreed.
"And don't piss your pants, little boy," Shippou muttered under his breath, too low for Andrew to hear -- but since he was only a stride behind her, Kagome heard him just fine.
"Shippou!" She stopped, turned, and shot him a glare. "Be nice. I swear, Inuyasha's been a horrible influence on you."
"Feh. Why would I want to be anything like that asshole?" Shippou managed to mimic Inuyasha's crankiest tone of voice perfectly, to Kagome's amusement.
She chuckled at that, though Hanako said in confusion, "Are you and Inuyasha not friends?"
"They're like family," Kagome said, before Shippou could answer. "Complete with nice family spats. Shippou, y'know, I might be a good enough miko to make you a fancy necklace all your own now ..."
Shippou chuckled, and a bit of the tension left his wiry body. "I'd like to see you get it on me!"
She grinned.
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Shippou held his flame-covered hands up, standing on his toes so he could cast the light over Kagome's head -- in his native form, he was a head shorter than she was. She wasn't surprised, really, that he'd ended up very small, given that he'd been tiny enough to ride on her shoulder when he was the demonic equivalent of a preschooler.
The exercise-equipment filled gym in the basement was empty, albeit filled with spooky shadows. "I don't like it down here," Shippou said.
Kagome kept close to the wall as she led the way across the exercise room. The room had once housed a restaurant; Buffy had mentioned that the kitchen was still there, and sure enough, she pushed open a swinging door and that was the next room.
It looked like they'd been fixing the kitchens up -- there were signs of recent construction here. Shippou's foxfire revealed a new counter, and a new stove, and a walk-in fridge with the door pulled off the hinges and the guts scattered across the floor in bits and pieces. Given that Buffy planned to open a Slayer school in Angel's hotel, fixing up the kitchen definitely made sense.
Black miasma spilled across the floor. Shippou sniffed delicately and said nothing, so Kagome assumed it wasn't toxic. The source was a door that was propped open -- Shippou stuck his head through, then said, "Loading dock. The barrier's out there too, we can't get out that way."
He shut and locked the door.
The access to the storm drains was in the sub basement; there was a hatch in a storage room beyond the kitchen that led down to it. Shippou caught Kagome up bridal-style; he was far, far stronger than he looked. She'd seen him spar with Inuyasha a few times, and he could flatten Inuyasha in a fair fight -- though practice fights with Inuyasha were rarely fair, and her hanyou won more often than not. Shippou was just naturally nicer than Inuyasha. "We'll guard the ladder while you two climb down," Shippou suggested.
He jumped down through the hatch. The sub basement had a low ceiling, crumbling brick walls, a rocky floor, and was ten times spookier than the basement itself.
"I don't like the feel down here ..." Shippou said. His fox-fire seemed dimmer, casting less light. Kagome wasn't sure if that was a genuine issue, or if it was just her imagination.
She extended her senses, trying to pick up anything out of the ordinary. The hair on the back of her neck was trying to stand on end, but she couldn't pick up anything actually evil -- no youkai, no spirits, no nasty magic. Just a creepy sub basement.
"The trap door is over here," Andrew, who'd lived here for months, knew where it was. He led the way past support pillars and around silent, hulking, machinery -- air handlers, an old boiler that looked like hadn't been fired up in years, and mechanical bits that Kagome couldn't name. There were also piles of rubble, including a fair amount of stored stuff that looked to have come from the defunct restaurant -- there were booths, tables, boxes of cutlery and plates, equipment, a battered stage, a karaoke machine.
Shippou lifted up the trap door, and miasma boiled out. "Wait here," he said, "I'll check it out."
He dropped down into the darkness. The black fog instantly swallowed his witchlight, and they found themselves standing in utter darkness. Andrew whimpered in English, "It's dark."
"Spooky," Hanako said, in Japanese. "Kagome, is that flashlight working?"
Kagome snapped it on, then had to shake it hard to make it light. "It's about out of juice."
She handed it to Hanako, then pulled one of the stakes out of her pocket. She concentrated on it, imbuing it with purifying energy. It glowed pink, casting more light than the hopeless flashlight.
"Ohohooo!" Shippou wailed in alarm. "Trouuuuble!"
Ah, she'd been expecting that, sooner or later. Shippou yelped, and Kagome started forward, intending to go in after him. She couldn't let Shippou fight a battle alone!
But he burst back out the trap door with one very large tentacle in hot pursuit. Andrew screamed. Hanako uttered a startled oath and swung at the tentacle with her axe -- the tentacle recoiled. Kagome threw the stake at it as it retreated; there was a small explosion and a twitching tip was left behind.
Andrew slammed the trap door shut, then jumped on top of it. Something smacked it from underneath. "Let's not try to get out that way, okay?"
Shippou and Kagome exchanged a look. Kagome said wryly, "No argument there. I have nightmares about tentacles."
"Yeah." Shippou agreed. He scratched his head and stared at the tentacle tip at his feet. "Y'know, Kagome, I turned five hundred and fifty last summer. But I'm still a screaming little boy when something with tentacles comes after me."
"Yeah, you screamed, all right." She reached out and ruffled his red hair. He ducked away.
"You screamed too!" Shippou protested.
"That wasn't me. That was Andrew." Kagome eyed the trap door uneasily. Andrew had latched it shut, but she though that whatever owned the tentacle might be able to break through. They needed to put some sort of barrier up. And she wasn't good at barriers at all -- not making them or breaking them.
Andrew pulled a bit of chalk out of his pocket and sketched a quick rune on the trap door. He muttered something over it, then said hesitantly, "I think that'll hold for a little bit. We'll get Willow to put up something better."
"You're a magic user?" Hanako said, surprised. Kagome wasn't; Andrew's knowledge of the arcane had been too ... thorough ... to be entirely from book learning.
"I dabble," Andrew said -- somewhat modestly, for him, Kagome thought.
"Let's get out of here. I don't think we're going to find anything else down here, and I'll be happier when we've joined back with the others," Kagome headed for the ladder up at fast walk. Her skin was crawling.
She hadn't been able to sense the evil earlier. But it was there now, looming, all around the hotel. Waiting. Watching. Building.