Author's notes:
You can blame Scarred Sword Heart for the vampire officer of Torin's army. And you will see more of him in the sequel to Unseelie, where he'll have a starring role.
evil grin
Those of you who read my LJ (ljmouse.) may recognize the vampire from some musings pn it (and an ah-hah! moment from something Sword Heart said). Basically, a lightbulb went on, and I knew I had a story to tell. And since I'd already crossed one anime with Buffy, why not two?
And for those who don't read my journal: Why, yes, Torin's little officer is who you think he is.
--
Buffy followed Inuyasha out of the library, with the rest of the men close on her heels. The hanyou was incredibly quick despite his injuries -- he hit the stairs several strides ahead of her, and without hesitation, leaped off the second floor landing and right into the midst of a pitched battle. His sword flared full size in mid air, and his teeth were bared in a vicious grin. His white hair flowed like a banner behind him.
It was a ferocious battle already, with just Shippou and Kagome in the midst of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of monsters. Shippou was no longer a short, red-haired man with a bushy tail. Buffy had seen Sesshoumaru's real form before; apparently, fox demons were closely related. At least, she assumed the percheron sized fox in the middle of the lobby, glowing green with foxfire, nine tails lashing the air, was Shippou. Who else would it be?
And Kagome was fighting as a team with the fox.
At Shippou's feet, under his head and the shelter of his bared, snapping teeth, Kagome had her bow drawn. The demons couldn't reach her, and she was shooting arrow after arrow into masses of mixed unholy creatures. Shippou's fangs -- and the occasional gout of deadly fire -- was keeping the mob back. Foxfire rolled off his flanks in glowing, hissing waves; none of the demons were trying to get him from behind.
One quick scan of the battlefield and she saw things with tentacles, and things with slime. Insects and arachnids and reptiles. Things with too many limbs, and creatures with no limbs at all. It was a seething, rolling mass of hell in the lobby, with more creatures pouring through the front door every heartbeat. A tidal wave of demons. She couldn't see the floor, except for a clear spot around Shippou, for all the monsters down there.
It was loud. They screamed and gibbered and snarled and shouted in demonic languages.
Time seemed to slow.
Into that chaos Inuyasha landed. And one instant after he disappeared under a wave of enemies, body parts began to fly. Alien blood spattered to the ceiling, and she heard the half-demon's snarls and curses over the roar of the attacking forces. The sound of Inuyasha's voice, raised in a battle rage, brought nightmares to mind. She ruthlessly squealched them; she didn't have time to indulge bad memories in the middle of a battle.
She snapped to sudden awareness that she needed to start issuing commands -- the other Slayers and the men were coming up behind her. Only a heartbeat had passed.
"Sesshoumaru! Kavan! Get down there and help Kagome!" She pointed, but they were already moving beyond her position at the top of the stairs -- along with the neko-youkai, who streaked past her with a fighting squall. In midair the cat transformed into a flaming demon-cat and the squall went from high pitched like an alley cat's to a thunderous lion's roar. When Kirara hit the ground demons scattered as if they'd been bowled over. And then the cat started pouncing and killing, looking rather like a very large housecat surrounded by a room full of mice.
She had worried about being able to see during a fight, with the power being out. However, between Kirara's fire and Shippou's, the room was as brilliantly lit as day.
Sesshoumaru was two strides behind the cat and he also hit the ground transformed into a three-legged dog -- one three times Shippou's bulk. When he took up a position beside Shippou, the top of Kagome's head only came up to the middle of his foreleg. He filled the room to overflowing, trampling the demons as much as slashing and biting. And then he started to slay things with carefully controlled and precise blows.
Over the thunderous noise of the battle, Buffy continued to issue orders, cupping her hands around her mouth so they would hear her. "Spike! Angel! Girls! Guard the stairs, don't let them farther into the building! Wil, can you do something to get Kagome out of there ...?"
Kagome, mortal, was vulnerable. The youkai and Inuyasha could hold their own, but one bad blow could kill a human. The enemies were too dense, and Kagome too strategically valuable to risk.
But as she had been afraid of, Kagome went down under the multiple arms of something like a giant tarantula that slipped under Shippou's flaming jaws. Then, to her relief, fire crackled across the lobby from Willow's spread hands. The demon, burning and twitching, thrashed across the floor. Shippou grabbed Kagome with his teeth and yanked her back to her feet. She was out of arrows, though.
Inuyasha grabbed the burning tarantula and swung it by one leg in an arc, bowling over the demons between him and Kagome with fiery blows. And then he was beside her, and they were back to back with Shippou and Sesshoumaru looming over them.
Willow made a swirling gesture with her hands. Arrows wrenched out of fallen monsters and swooshed across the lobby and back into Kagome's quiver. Kagome gave Willow a startled look and a lightning-fast thumb's up before snapping another bolt into the body of something that looked like a skeletal horse, with head of a spider. Kagome's arrows started returning to her as fast as she could fire them.
Buffy slipped between Angel and Spike, joining them at defending the stairs, satisfied that her people knew what to do and were fighting as a rather effective team.
Inuyasha apparently had the same thought as Buffy about Kagome's safety in the fray however, because in between her attempts at repelling monsters trying to ascend the stairs, she saw him grab Kagome. He leaped over the top of the monsters and landed next to Buffy, dropped Kagome, and then, with an almost gleeful yell he tore back into the fight. There were vampires now, coming in through the doors behind the larger creatures. Vampire dust began to fill the air -- Inuyasha dealt with vampires by dismemberment.
Something was happening to Inuyasha -- she could see his eyes were the red of blood, and facial stripes like his brother's marked his high cheekbones. His voice was different; he'd quit screaming in words and now just growled as he fought. And boy could he fight -- she'd never seen him battle before, except when she was facing him. Now she understood that, hand to hand, a mortal human -- even a Slayer -- had no prayer of succeeding. He was literally tearing apart creatures ten times his size.
She thought Inuyasha's bodycount was probably higher than even Sesshoumaru's, despite the discrepancy in size. He was simply an unstoppable killing machine. She shuddered, even as she fought off her own demons, to think that she'd begun to think of him as a regular guy. She could see the light of madness in his bloody eyes now and it scared her.
Someone shouted something near the door, voice pitched to be heard over the chaos of the battle. Buffy kicked a praying mantis-like creature in the head, then looked for the source of the voice. She saw red hair, and below that gleaming amber eyes -- a vampire, in game face. He was dressed not in rags like others, but in a neat uniform of black and silver. Again, he shouted.
The monsters began to fall back.
An officer, Buffy realized. The red-haired vampire was someone in charge. The Unseelie had sent an army of hellspawn after them, and the red-haired demon was leading them.
Inuyasha, with a wordless, inarticulate yowl of rage, launched himself at the vampire. Tessaiga was bright in his hands.
The vampire had a slim, glittering sword in one hand. She rarely saw fledges fight with swords -- this, then, was an older vampire. And by the way he was holding the sword, he was very skilled. She'd been in her share of swordfights and that stance told her that he knew what the hell he was doing,.
He deftly sidestepped Inuyasha's charge and the sword hissed through the air in a glittering arc. Tessaiga flared and seemed to swing around to parry of its own volition. Inuyasha's eyes, still crimson, widened and he staggered under the force of that blow. Steel screeched against the hanyou's magical blade, and Buffy winced even as she slayed a lesser vampire of her own. Inuyasha's hands had to be burning after that strike.
The vampiric leader was short -- against Inuyasha's lanky six feet of height, he looked like almost fragile. If she hadn't seen how he could move, she would have thought him an easy mark. Loose red hair, greasy and unkempt, snarled into ropes, fell around his face. One cheek was scarred.
She realized she'd seen amber eyes, but the vampire wasn't completely in game face. His face was human. Young. More pretty than handsome, but definitely good looking despite the tangled mass of dreadlocks that was his hair.
Inuyasha lunged again -- blindly attacking even as Buffy was taking stock of her opponent. Alarmed, Buffy shouted a warning, "Be careful!"
She was concerned, because the vampire was no fledge that Inuyasha could rip apart with his bare hands. Because he was eyeing Inuyasha with coldly calculating skill. Because he held a sword like it was an extension of his arm. Because she knew somehow that Inuyasha would not win that fight.
Kagome had apparently come to the same conclusion and she didn't bother with a warning to her boyfriend. Her voice, clear and commanding, split the air. "OSUWARI!"
Inuyasha crashed into the floor.
Kagome's arrow sped fast and true towards the vampire's heart.
And the vampire neatly swatted it out of the air with his sword.
Again the vampire shouted something. And then he spun and ran through the door, with those monsters that could still move following after. With frantic haste they scrambled right over the top of Inuyasha, but none paused to finish him. Kagome put a few arrows into their backsides as they retreated, and Shippou sent one last gout of foxfire after them, frying two insectoids.
And then, except for the groaning of the wounded, there was silence. And it was dark, as Kirara and Shippou's fires died out. Buffy reached for the flashlight in her pocket, and beside her, Spike held up his lighter. Other lights flicked on: flash lights and cell phones.
Sesshoumaru wiped gore from his face, then casually cut a hole to hell with Tensaiga and began throwing dead demon bodies through it. Buffy spared him a brief glance; he wasn't injured. She didn't see anyone among her people obviously hurt -- just minor wounds -- though she seemed to be missing a few Slayers. She hoped they were tardy to the battle and not out there mixed in with the dead and dying enemies.
With that thought, she stepped out onto the battlefield and began flashing her light about.
The flashlight's beam flickered over a figure several feet from her: Inuyasha stood, staring at them. She froze, and the others started to converge their lights on him. His eyes gleaming red in the glow. He was breathing hard with his fangs visible and his fingers curved into claws. The tips of his injured hand were freely bleeding -- as Kagome had predicted, his claws had ripped loose in the fight.
"Inuyasha." Kagome's voice was calm, quiet. She stepped calmly across the floor, boots splashing in ichor.
He blinked.
"Inuyasha, it's over."
He padded towards them. Buffy tensed. She could sense predatory intensity -- and furious anger -- rolling off the hanyou as he moved. She could so easily see him turning on them, she could see him shredding every last living person in the room into hamburger. There was madness and rage and no humanity in his eyes now. His gaze was fixated on Kagome, with all the intensity of a hunting predatory.
He stopped a few feet away from her.
Buffy said, voice low so as to not provoke him, "Can you ... can you Osurawawa-something him again?"
"I don't need to," Kagome said, even as Inuyasha quivered and twitched. Every muscle in his body was tense. Very clearly she said again, "It's over, Inuyasha. We won. Come back to me now."
He blinked. One ear twitched. And then he lunged -- a quick move not to kill her, but to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair and hold her tight and close to his chest. Inuyasha said, to no one in particular, in a voice that was hoarse from shouting battle cries, "I needed ... I needed to be youkai in that fight to stay alive."
"He's still healing," Kagome explained, to Buffy, "He needed the extra strength. Letting his youkai half take over was smart tactics. I don't think he feels much pain when he's youkai. But it is scary, because I can remember a time when he couldn't control himself at all and would have killed me."
"A long time ago." Inuyasha sounded mildly annoyed. "Geeze, Kagome. Have some faith in me. I've got more control now. It isn't like I haven't been dealing with this for seven centuries."
"You've got no more brains than an animal when you're like that, Inuyasha. Animals make mistakes. At least your youkai is as much in lust with Kagome as your human soul is, so you'd follow her to the ends of the Earth to do her bidding." That was Shippou, who punched Inuyasha in the shoulder on his way past with companionable affection. Shippou was back to his own form. "Anybody know who the red-haired vamp was?"
Buffy shrugged. She didn't find Shippou's teasing at all comforting; what would they do with a demon Inuyasha if Kagome wasn't around? "Good swordsman. Never seen him before."
"That's Torin's right hand man." Kavan offered. "He's been around for awhile, we think he's been a vampire for over a century. He used to work for the youkai, actually -- Inuyasha, I'm surprised you haven't run into him before. "
"Not surprising; we left Japan four centuries ago." Inuyasha straightened up from his grasp on Kagome. His eyes and face were back to normal. He ran a hand through his hair, and found a clawed insectile finger tangled in the tresses. Casually, he untangled it and flicked it towards his brother's hell portal. His hair was matted with various fluids -- well, they were all covered in gore.
"Oh." Kavan hesitated a moment, then added, "Rumor has it that vampire used to be a samurai before he was turned. Be careful; he's very good with that sword. I've faced off with him once and the only reason I survived was that he let me live. He wanted me to take a message back to my father. I've never seen anyone humanoid move that fast in my life, and I've known a lot of swordsmen."
"What's his name?" Buffy asked. Names were important for research.
Kavan shrugged. "That's the weird thing. He doesn't seem to have one. Torin just calls him hitokiri, but that's not a name, it's a title."
"Manslayer." Kagome provided the Englist translation, and then scratched something yucky off her cheek. "Somebody's been watching too many samurai dramas. Anyway. Buffy, where's Hanako?"
Hanako was one of the missing slayers.
"Here." Sesshoumaru indicated a corpse, lying in the shadows of the hotel's front desk. Buffy hadn't seen her go down -- had not seen how they'd killed her. He stood over it.
"Son of a bitch," Spike said, but was then brushed aside as Inuyasha and Shippou converged on her, with Kagome on their heels.
But it was Kirara -- now in her lapcat sized form -- who turned to Sesshoumaru. With more understanding than Buffy would ever have credited the neko-youkai as having, she sat down in front of Sesshoumaru and stared up at him with enormous, pleading eyes. And mewed piteously.
Sesshoumaru spared the cat a disdainful glance, then stepped over her and revived Hanako with one casual swipe of his blade. He said dismissively, "I'd be a fool not to bring back a skilled fighter during a war, cat."
Kirara jumped into Hanako's lap as she sat up, then with a cheerful prip, stropped against her side. Hanako stroked the cat and stared up at them with confused eyes. "I ... I ... I died."
"Yeah." Kagome offered her a hand up. "You did."