Kagome bent over and started helping Sesshoumaru clear away the mess on the battlefield. Three years as a slayer had taught her a certain pragmatic approach to blood and guts: best to get rid of the body parts as quickly as possible, before they started to stink.

Buffy, nose wrinkled and apparently less inclined to start the mop-up immediately, picked her way around a slug-like creature that was twitching occasionally in death throes. The slug's insides were visible and Kagome recognized Inuyasha's handiwork. He'd done well, though as usual, she absolutely hated to see him in youkai form. Inuyasha had never let go of Tessaiga but Shippou was completely accurate about his lack of IQ as a demon. He was scary stupid when he let go of his humanity.

She wasn't sure if she worried more about when he might do to others, or what others might do to him. Just now, the red-haired vampire could have killed him in a fight. She was pretty sure that Tessaiga had swung itself around of its own volition to block the vampire's blow. The sword was uncanny like that. Inuyasha was a lousy swordsman -- he just had a fancy magical sword to make up for those lack of skills. He wielded Tessaiga with all the grace of a meat cleaver.

Now, though, Inuyasha was pretty much back to his hanyou self -- which meant he was being hyper-protective and he'd taken up a position guarding the lobby door. He stood right in front of it, arms folded, bare feet spread wide, jaw set. Anything coming through that door would need to get past him. If the demons attacked en mass again, he wouldn't be able to stop them, but he would slow them down long enough for the others to have time to react.

Buffy, axe slung over her shoulder and a grim set to her own jaw, joined Inuyasha. This earned Buffy a dark look from the hanyou. However, she said something to him that appeared to relax him a bit. She was looking at his injured hand, and in response to her questions, he flexed it. Already, new claws were growing in. Satisfied that he wasn't mortally wounded, she offered him a plastic bottle of water. Inuyasha accepted the water and said, with reluctant good manners, "Thank you."

Kagome, observing this while she lugged a scaly reptilian limb to Sesshoumaru's hell hole, smiled to herself. Buffy was clearly offput by Inuyasha, and given their history, this was only to be expected. However, Buffy took care of her people -- and seeing that everyone had their wounds tended, and were well hydrated, was part of that.

"I want to try to break out." Inuyasha glared at the barrier.

"Wait until Willow has a chance to study it more. We don't know what is on the other side." Buffy made it sound like an order, and this earned her a scowl from Inuyasha. Kagome caught his gaze from across the mouth and mouthed 'osuwari' and Inuyasha's ears went flat. Now was not the time to get in an argument with Buffy over just how much authority she had when it came to commanding Inuyasha to do things. And Buffy was right about not making rash moves, before they understood their situation fully.

Buffy turned to walk away, her next target obviously Sesshoumaru -- she had more water bottles in her hands. Just as she turned, however, a ferocious screech split the air and tentacles shot through the entrance. One wrapped around her waist and yanked her towards the door.

"Buffy!" Willow screamed.

Inuyasha didn't scream, or growl, he just leaped and grabbed the tentacle. He pulled his sword, clearly intending to hack and slash at it. But the tentacle recoiled ... yanking both of them right out of the lobby and into the darkness beyond.

"Buffy!" Spike lunged out the doors after them, with Angel hot on their heels.

There were twin sizzling pops and then a muffled "Bloody hell!" that could have come from either vampire. The two staggered back inside, charred a bit from contact with the barrier.

"Is she ... is she gone?" Willow stammered, into the shocked silence.

"Inuyasha ..." Kagome whispered, as Shippou put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"... Inuyasha's probably shredding them to bits right about now." Shippou said, though he sounded thoroughly nonplussed.

"Doubtless," Sesshoumaru agreed.

--

Buffy came to consciousness slowly, aware that her head hurt first and that she was vaguely nauseous. Then, slowly, she realized she was being held in someone's arms. The someone was strong, with rock hard muscles, and she thought at first it might be Spike.

The hands touching her had claws, and long, thick hair whispered across her arms. She could also smell a musky male scent that wasn't anything like Spike's mix of cologne and cigarettes. And a thin line of stitches on one arm tickled her cheek.

"Buffy," Inuyasha's voice made her open her eyes -- only to find they were in darkness. "We're in a cell of some sort. They took Tessaiga. I wanted to wait until you were conscious before I broke out. I played dumb after they captured me. They're too fucking stupid to realize they can't keep me in here with a few ofudas on the door."

"Put me down!" Being cradled in Inuyasha's arms was more than a little embarrassing.

"Floor's got an inch of nasty water on it. It's ice cold." Inuyasha sounded a little uncomfortable himself. "I didn't want you getting hypothermic."

She would never have thought he knew a word that big. Or that he would be that considerate, particularly of her.

He shifted his weight, then, and lowered her to the ground. He was more careful than she ever would have expected. Was he worried that she was hurt worse than she felt?

And she discovered he wasn't kidding about the cold, slimy water. It immediately soaked through the canvas of her sneakers. "Eww, my shoes!"

"I'm barefoot," Inuyasha pointed out, sourly. "And I think your shoes were trashed already. You have demon guts on them."

He was probably right; the lobby had been a disgusting mess after the battle. Still, complaining made her feel a bit better.

She asked, "What happened ...?"

"You got grabbed by a nasty." Inuyasha's voice was low. "We both got yanked through the barrier. It's not LA on the other side, it's some sort of fucking demon dimension, with a big emphasis on the demon. We lasted about two seconds in the fight. Actually, you lasted less than that; you got smashed into a rock right away and knocked out."

She couldn't remember. Her head felt muzzy. "I think I have a concussion."

"It doesn't smell serious." He didn't sound overly concerned. "You've only been out about fifteen minutes. Sort've half out of it, you were moaning and cussing and stuff."

"So they took you down too?" That would have been a fight she would like to have seen.

"God-damned stink demon." Inuyasha sounded completely disgusted with himself. "They took Tessaiga away from me. We need to get it back before we do anything else."

"Your magic sword?"

"It's more than just a magic sword." Inuyasha splashed through the fetid water to the door -- now that her eyes were adjusting, Buffy realized she could see a thin sliver of light around it. "It's got spells in it. Only a half-demon can use it, but ..." He trailed off.

She guessed what he was thinking. "... Vampires are sorta like half-demons."

"Never tested that theory. Don't particularly want to. I'm not the only bastard out there, though, an' plenty of 'em ain't on our side." He peered out a crack between two beams on the door. "We're in a dungeon of some sort. A really wet one."

He was far more talkative now than she'd ever heard him before. And she'd never really thought of him as either being very intelligent or capable of much planning. Certainly, during the fight earlier he had seemed like a killing machine -- focused on one thing, and that was shredding as many bad guys as possible.

He glanced at her -- the dim light picked up the faintest glow of his white hair as he turned his head. She wondered if he saw in the dark as well as he could smell, or if he could use his enhanced hearing to fight blind. The latter wouldn't surprise her.

"Without Tessaiga, I've got a problem in a fight." He padded back to her. In a tone of confession, he said, "Centuries ago -- when I first met Kagome -- I could be angered into turning youkai. And as a youkai, I was crazy. All I would do was kill, and kill, and kill until there was nothing left to kill. Or until somebody stopped me."

A short, chuffed laugh slipped between his lips. "I was a very angry young man."

"Wow, and you're so much less angry-ish now."

Her words slipped out before she had the good sense to edit them to something less baiting. To her surprise, however, her comment didn't didn't provoke an explosion. Instead, he continued in a somewhat more annoyed tone of voice, "Tessaiga was enchanted to stop me from turning youkai when I didn't want to. Then I learned to control my youkai side a little better -- with Tessaiga in hand. I can chose to turn youkai, and I will generally return to myself at Kagome's call -- or Amelia's, before her -- without killing anyone that I shouldn't."

You killed twelve people you shouldn't have, she thought, but she hadn't seen the stripes on his face when he'd lit into her in that bar three years ago. He'd been hanyou, not yukai, when he'd attacked them and killed Kennedy. After they'd killed Amelia. His rage then hadn't been demonic; his rage had been fueled by human grief and a very human soul.

"I think ... if I have to ... I'll be okay fighting without Tessaiga." He padded to one wall of their cell and trailed a finger down the stones. She heard rock splinter. Okay, maybe baiting him hadn't been the brightest thing to do in the world. "If I'm not -- just get out of my way. I'm still pretty pissed off at you."

"Oh." Shippou had commented on Inuyasha's lack of brains as a youkai; she'd never thought that he still carried a grudge and that he might attack her in demon form because of it.

"I loved Amelia." Again she heard rocks chip and splinter. "And so did my demon half."

"Can -- can we get out of here now?" He was making her nervous. She kept envisioning him spinning around and attacking her.

"Okay, stand back."

She expected him to bust the door down. Instead, he just punched a fist through the stone wall. Boulders tumbled down. Beyond, people -- demons -- screamed in alarm. The noise was thunderous.

"They put ofudas on the damn door," he said, by way of explanation, with a quick roll of his eyes. "So I made my own exit."

She could see him now -- he was filthy dirty, and had a visible bruise under one eye, but he was grinning now -- destroying things put him in a good mood. However, he offered her a curiously gracious hand up to clamber over the rubble. Then he bounded off, agile and athletic.

In the corridor beyond, water puddled thick and foul across a hewn stone floor. Torches spluttered and hissed, filling the air with greasy smoke. The air was rank with the sickly sweet scent of decay, like a corpse that had spent a week in the sun. She would have gagged had she not been too busy keeping up with the hanyou.

They made it several hundred feet up the corridor before they met any trouble. Half a dozen -- well, Andrew would have called them orcs, Buffy thought. She'd definitely seen similar in a certain Hollywood movie. Whatever they were, they were neither bright nor a match for Inuyasha's claws. He took them down in a hurry, plowing through a half dozen musclebound brutes like a clawed tornado.

"You could have left me one, you know," she said, amused by his enthusiasm for the fight. He was gleeful, grinning, enjoying the fight. "I know killing nasty monsters is all sorts of fun, but could you share?"

That earned her a quick, blinding smile. It stopped her in her tracks -- he'd never smiled at her before. Not like that, with his defenses down and no mockery in the expression.

What had she done?

Oh.

She'd teased him. She had eased him the way Kagome would, with oblivious disregard for the power and lethal force of his claws. Or perhaps it was that she had teased him like he was part of her gang. In either case, he'd reacted with unexpected warm-fuzzies to her words.

They stared at each other, surroundings momentarily forgotten.

She wondered: Had he fought with such wild, enthusiastic abandon while killing Slayers? Had he screamed, "Allright!" as he leaped into battle, before he tore them apart?

The smile slipped from his face, perhaps in response to her own suddenly darkening expression. Then the moment -- the moment where they might have been friends -- vanished. He turned his back coldly to her and ran down the corridor towards the next fight, leaving her behind.

She stepped over one of the orcish-things; it was clawed to bits, had been naked when Inuyasha had killed it except for a silver bracelet, and it smelled incredibly foul. Then she hurried after him, not wanting to miss the fight. It was un-Slayerlike to let the guy do all the fighting, after all. No matter how good he was at it.

--

Think what she would about Inuyasha -- having him on her side in a fight was definitely of the awesome. His body count of demons was racking into the hundreds; she'd killed twelve monsters herself, but he was an unstoppable fighting machine. After half an hour of nonstop battle her heart was pounding in her chest and she had a stitch in her side but Inuyasha wasn't even winded.

They'd fought their way out of the dungeon and were now in the great hall of a demon keep. The decor was Dark-on-Dark, with an extra dose of Dark. Dark wood, dark stone, bloody tapestries of nighttime battles, smoldering torches, gloomy shadows. She'd seen more cheerful graveyards.

Apparently, they'd disturbed a dinner, because a meal was on the table. She smelled roasting meat and the metallic tang of blood and something that was eye-wateringly spicy.

An army of mixed demons faced them -- surrounded them, really, but Inuyasha would tear through these forty or fifty creatures just about as easily as the last few hundred. As long as she didn't get hit by flying body parts, they'd both come out okay.

A short, sharp word cut across the growls of the enemy demons. They fell silent, and melted back, then left the room entirely as the red-haired vampire appeared. He clapped his hands mockingly, then said something in Japanese that almost sounded complimentary. As he clapped, she saw he had a thin silver bracelet on one wrist, like the orcs.

Up close, she realized he must have been turned fairly young. He would clean up to be pretty, too, she thought -- not handsome, really, but he was the sort of man who one might consider beautiful. Spoiling his good looks was his desperate need of a bath and the fact that his hair was a ratty, matted mess that hadn't seen a comb in years. Or perhaps decades. Still, even the filth couldn't hide that he had once been a very attractive man.

He was shorter than she was. Under the dirt, there was a scar on his cheek and more on his hands and neck.

The vampire had a silver and black uniform on but she could see it was stained and worn. Still, most of the demons they'd fought had been dressed in rags if they wore anything at all. A dirty, battered uniform was an improvement.

Inuyasha responded with a curt bark of words -- short, sharp, and certainly obnoxious. Then he blinked hard. Tears were running down his cheeks. He looked like he was having a horrible attack of allergies.

"What did he say?" she asked.

"That he regretted sending so many of his minions against me. It was a waste of good trolls." Inuyasha glanced back at her. His grin was strictly feral, despite his streaming eyes. "I told the bastard to go fuck his trolls."

Trolls, hmm. She'd thought they were orcs. Trolls. Orcs. Whatever.

The man shrugged and replied with something that sounded amused.

Inuyasha reached for the sword that wasn't at his waist.

"What did he say?"

"That he prefers young blond women." Inuyasha sounded scandalized. "I'm going to tear his head off and shove it up his ass."

"Inuyasha, he's a vampire," Buffy pointed out, with a laugh. "You won't get any farther than removing his head. Then he'd go poof."

"Oh." Inuyasha considered that for a moment. Then he shrugged. "I ain't good at planning things."

And with that, he launched toward the vampire. However, despite the suddenness of his attack, he didn't take him by surprise. With absolute blinding speed, the vampire whipped his sword out of its sheath. Buffy didn't even see the creature's hand move: one minute he was standing calmly, watching them. The next, Inuyasha was stumbling sideways, and the vampire's sword was shattered into a several pieces.

"Owe!" Inuyasha complained. There was a welt on his arm and blood trickled down it.

Buffy reflected that, just possibly, Kagome's concern for her boyfriend in a fight with this vampire was overrated. And again she revised her estimate of Inuyasha's fighting ability upwards -- that blow would have dismembered a mortal human. And his brains, downward. She sure hoped he was good in bed, because she couldn't imagine Kagome had much else in common with the hanyou. The man was only slightly more intelligent than the trolls they'd been fighting.

At least Spike had an IQ above room temperature.

Inuyasha had been injured by the Unseelie blade earlier -- had it only been yesterday? He still had stitches from it in his arm. Obviously, the Unseelie had some sort of juju that the vampire didn't when it came to injuring the hanyou with a blade.

The vampire looked like he was sucking on a lemon. He stared at the shattered remnants of the sword. Then at Inuyasha. He said something in Japanese that sounded distinctly surprised.

Inuyasha's grin was enthusiastic. He responded in English, with glee in his voice, "I'm going to remove your head and not stuff it up your ass, bastard!"

He grabbed for the vampire, claws bared. The vampire leaped aloft, in an impossible display of athleticism. He somersaulted over Inuyasha's head and landed on the table behind him. A platter of roasted meat went flying; Buffy saw a five-fingered hand among the meat, with a ring still on it, and felt her gorge rise. Had they been eating human meat?

Gods, she hated demons. They were so gross sometimes.

"Don't kill him," Buffy said, hoping Inuyasha would listen to her. "He's in charge and we need him to send us home and give you your sword back."

"I know that." Inuyasha sounded annoyed. "I'll remove his head after we get Tessaiga back. That make you happy?"

"And get home."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense." Inuyasha hopped up onto the table. "C'mere, you. I won't hurt you. Yet."

She wondered if Inuyasha was mocking her a little. There was sarcasm in his voice.

The vampire crouched, making a "come here" gesture with his fingers. She wondered what he had in mind -- Inuyasha, clearly, wasn't nearly as suspicious. He charged up onto the table with a sudden roar.

The vampire hooked a pot of soup with his toe and kicked it into Inuyasha's face. Inuyasha howled in pain and fell backwards, frantically wiping his eyes. "It's hot! It's hot! It's hot!"

The scent of chili peppers had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot stronger in the room. Apparently, the soup was the source of the spice. Inuyasha was now rolling around on the ground, making incoherent bubbling noises and wiping at his nose and mouth. Then he threw up, and started gasping for air.

Buffy grabbed the soup pot off the ground, swung it around by its handle, and chucked it at the vampire. He ducked, and the pot sailed over his head, but as he did, she yanked the tablecloth out from under his feet -- slowly, so that he staggered sideways. While he was off balance she tipped the table over. He went down, but not hard as she'd planned. He landed lightly on the ground, with the agility of a gymnest. Damn, but he was good!

Inuyasha had stopped moving. His eyes were rolled back in his skull -- he looked like he was out cold. She wondered if he was allergic or poisoned by chilis? His eyes had been streaming since they'd entered the room.

Well, at least he had a weakness.

She broke a leg off the table, as he vaulted over it to come after her. She'd just have to take the vampire out herself.

The man was tiny, but she didn't let that fool her. She wasn't exactly the tallest person around and she routinely took out creatures many times her size. He had consistently moved with impressive athletic grace, and show real brains when dealing with Inuyasha.

He said something snide sounding in Japanese.

"That's Miss Slayer-sama to you," she retorted, assuming it had been an insult. "Aren't you guys supposed to be polite and stuff?"

He bowed mockingly at her, leaving her to wonder if he understood English or that action was pure coincidence. Then he crouched and flipped airborn, and came at her boots first. Only her slayer reflexes let her dart out of the way. He landed next to her and shot an elbow at her head -- that connected, and with enough force to make her vision go dark. She scrambled away, forcing suddenly unwilling and wobbly legs to move and terrified a death blow would come.

She tripped over Inuyasha and sat down hard with her legs across his back and her butt on the dark stone floor. He reeked of fiery hot soup. And she could see ... oh, gag her, there were fingers in the soup. And it also smelled of warm blood. What was that, the equivalent of chili for demons? Gross.

The vampire had snagged up a chair and swung it at her. She saw the blow coming, realized her wits had been so addled she'd been distracted by the demon soup that covered the hanyou.All she could do was fling a hand up to try to absorb some of the hit.

And with a sudden snarl, as the vampire swung, Inuyasha roared to life. He shot out from underneath her, dumping her head over heels backwards. The chair splintered as Inuyasha pounced on the vampire. Inuyasha was twice the vampire's weight, and many times over his strength, and pure physics won. When she managed to sit back up and her head stopped spinning, she found that Inuyasha had the vampire face down on the ground, his knee planted in the middle of the man's spine, and both wrists clenched in one clawed hand. The vampire was silent.

Finally, the vampire spoke in English: "Kill me. It would be a mercy."

Which wasn't anything she'd ever heard a vampire say before. Say what you would about vampires, they generally didn't have self esteem problems. They were happy with being vampires and they strongly objected to being slain. Suicidal tendencies? Not a vampiric trait. Intrigued, Buffy stood up and walked over to him. "Where's Inuyasha's sword?"

Silence.

"He won't talk." Inuyasha was pulling the belt out of his jeans with his free hand. "He's a samurai. They've a code of conduct and shit. He'll die first."

In a surprisingly mild voice, the vampire said, "It's in my liege lord's bedroom."

"Huh." Inuyasha lashed the vampire's hands together with his belt, pulling it tight enough to hurt. Well, they didn't have to worry about cutting the vampire's circulation off to his fingers.

"I'm a vampire, not a samurai, idiot." The vampire's voice dripped with scorn. "Slayer, go out the door, take the stairs up two flights, go to the end of the hall, climb to the top of the tower. It's in a rack on the wall. He collects magic swords. I assume your half-demon can identify his. Take any others you like, just kill me before he gets here. He's off doing something in New York and won't be back until tonight."

"I smell a trick." Inuyasha yanked the vampire to his feet. As he did, the hanyou wobbled a bit. She realized he wasn't nearly in as good of a shape as she had assumed.

"Kill me now?" The vampire said, hopefully. "Lord Torin will if you don't because I failed him. And he'll make it hurt. Good guys are merciful. Lord Torin ... isn't."

Buffy remembered dead children. She wanted this Lord Torin bad.

"I promise I'll kill you," Buffy said sweetly, "After we find Tessa-whatstit for Inuyasha and you help us get home."

"If Lord Torin catches us, he'll make it hurt." The vampire shuddered, even as Inuyasha was yanking him to his feet. "The bracelets. They give pain. They give enough pain to kill. We all have them. It's how he controls us. Or we'd turn on him in a heartbeat."

"Charming." Buffy said, somewhat distracted. Pain-giving slave-controlling jewelry was a bad science fiction movie standard; she'd never decided if that was art imitating life, or if the Demons of the Week had gotten the idea from human cinema. In either case, she wasn't particularly surprised and had been suspicious of the purpose of the bracelets since she'd seen the first one on an orc-troll-thing. She turned her attention to the hanyou, who had a firm grip on the hanyou but didn't look well. "Inuyasha, are you okay?"

The hanyou's eyes were swollen nearly shut, and his face was covered in snot. She wasn't even sure he could see, now that she looked at him.

"Fucking chilis." He rubbed at his eyes, which was probably not helping matters. Tears were streaming down his face; she could see only slivers of his golden eyes. He sniffled, and his next question confirmed that he couldn't smell much now either. Otherwise, he would have known the ingredients. He asked, "What was in that soup?"

He had part of a finger stuck to his shoulder by gorey, body temperature liquid. Buffy reached out and flicked it off, barely suppressing a gag as she did. "You really don't want to know. -- You, your name is hitokiri?"

"I answer to that." He sounded wary. "It's what Torin has called me for several decades."

"You're going to show us where the sword is and keep your lord's minions from attacking us, and then get us out of here safely, or we'll leave you tied up for Torin to find after we go."

The vampire said snidely, "I must compliment you on your bargaining skills, Slayer."

"Whatever." Buffy rolled her eyes. "C'mon, let's go get the sword."