Okay! Only...nine more chapters to revise! Yay! I'm on a roll!

I'll skip the ramble and go straight for the story this time, though this chapter was mainly a filler...

Chapter 4

The brothers stared at the little Sesshomaru, who had fallen asleep on Sango's lap. Small tear trails still marred his round, porclein face.

"What did you do to upset him, exactly?" Edward asked, curiously eyeing the drying marks. Sango blushed and shifted slightly. "I...I asked him where his parents where..."

The brothers nervously glanced at each other, each with a wary look in their eye.

"Bad move?"

"Very bad move." Dark answered. "You see...when Sesshomaru and I were around the age of three...mother caught father with one of his mistresses...soon enough, she learned that he had had several side-line lovers, and that he also had several children from them...mostly hybrid demons. Mother was very...against...crossbreeding demons...

"Soon enough, she had left father, but she kept Sesshomaru as punishment to father." Dark looked up, a sad gleam in his eyes.

"Me and father never learned what really happened there...but he had only stayed with her for a month before running away...when we found him, he was bruised and bloody...you could hardly tell it was him..." he shuddered at the memory of his brother in such pain.

"He almost died from his injuries, if we hadn't found him when we did...he would have died within the hour, probably."

"Poor Sesshomaru...no wonder he can't trust many people! How could his own mother hurt him like that?" Kagome whispered as tears filled her eyes.

"That isn't all..." Dark continued. "A few months after he turned fourteen...father died. He was trying to protect Inuyasha and Inuyasha's human mother, Izayoi. Sesshomaru decided to stay and protect Inuyasha and his mother, and he even lived with them until Inuyasha was six, when Izayoi died. Then, he took Inuyasha and they traveled together awhile."

Inuyasha decided to continue the story from there. "Yeah..I traveled with Sesshomaru until I was fifteen, when he said he had to travel West to take over father's kingdom. After he left, I just stayed in the forests around Kaede's village."

"No wonder he became the "Lord of Ice"...one mother hates him, his father's dead, and so is the woman who was like a second mother!" Shippo exclaimed, petting the sleeping child's head.

"Yes...that may have been something that helped me decide to act as his father..." Inuyasha replied. "But now we need to get out of the past and figure out who did this to him. "

"That's going to be difficult...from what you told us..we only know that it's a bored priestess who may or may not have a grudge against Father." Edward replied thougtfully, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

A strange sound was heard, and all heads turned to watch the source. Sesshomaru was squirming in his sleep, then flipped off of Sango's lap, landing on the ground with a "thud". He kneeled on all fours, and began throwing up blood.

"No! It's beginning...I don't want to be a..." he shouted between the fountains of blood that poured from his mouth.

'Could it be...?' Miroku thought as he watched the young demon continue to vomit a crimson pool.

'Could he have been bitten by a vampire...?'