I will give the secrets you request -- And you will be the one to sacrifice -- So lay your olive arms upon my breast -- And sing the poems, free the butterflies
Pray your gods who ask you for your blood -- For they are strong and angry jealous ones -- Or lay upon my altar now your love -- I fear my time is short -- There are armies moving close -- Be quick, my love.
Toad and the Wet Sprocket – Pray Your Gods
Kagome groaned as the sunlight streaming in woke her from a very pleasant dream and promptly winced. Gods she was sore and the reason for her tender flesh was spooned up against her back with his arm firmly around her waist.
"Kami," she whispered, made to pull away, and yelped. She suddenly found herself underneath a very naked and very alert hanyou. She shifted her right leg and her thigh brushed against something silky and hard and she groaned.
"No….no, no, no, no, no! Absolutely not! I swear you are like the freaking energizer bunny!"
He gazed at her with an adorable pout and puppy dog eyes, but she was going to stand firm.
"No, InuYasha!"
"But Kagome," he entreated and rubbed his chest against her breasts. Her traitorous nipples hardened immediately and she sucked in a ragged breath.
She pushed him away. "Dammit InuYasha, I can't come anymore! We did it six times last night!"
She huffed and he smirked at her. Slowly trailing his fingers down her abdomen and inserting it into her already slick folds. She bucked and whimpered.
"InuYasha! Please…you have to…" She moaned and he whispered in her ear.
"Are you sure you don't want me to make you come again?"
She mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "Damn insatiable demon stamina," but the words were lost among their building ardor. When he plunged inside her she was more than ready for him and when the came together they screamed each others names.
He was smiling and wondering if he could talk his mate into round eight, when there was a knock at the door. Grumbling about the interruption, he pulled on his hakama, stumbled barefoot towards the door, and flung it open.
"This had better be important."
Isamu was on the other side, frowning.
"We've got a problem."
Isamu glanced from the hanyou to his right and the daiyoukai to left. InuYasha was fidgeting and growling, fingering Tetsusaiga like he was itching for a fight. Sesshomaru was behaving exactly the opposite of his half brother. The regal demon Lord looked impassive and bored, and his arm hung loosely at his side, as if he had no need to let it hover over the Tokijin's hilt.
Isamu knew it was the mark of a skilled and deadly warrior to appear so calm before a fight. It was one of the few things he'd allowed himself to admire about the daiyoukai. Below them, a legion of ogre demons stood behind a one armed ogre sporting a long scar over one milky, dead eye.
Isamu allowed his gaze to rest on Kagome briefly. She was white as a ghost and although she hid it well, her hand trembled slightly. He didn't really blame her. He remembered the war all to well, although he did wonder why her fear seemed personal. With a frown, he turned his attention back to the field beyond and his eyes focused on the leader of the ogre horde.
The snarling beast was pacing in front of the wall and bellowing.
"I've come for my revenge miko! I will raze this village to the ground and there will be no mercy shown, just as you showed no mercy to my father!"
InuYasha gripped the handle of his sword tightly and cursed. "Dammit, I thought this bastard was dead."
Sesshomaru shifted his focus and regarded his half-brother arrogantly.
"Perhaps if your aim was better." The hanyou snarled and made to lunge at him, but Kagome stepped between them, scowling.
"This is no the time for you two to be fighting each other. We've got bigger problems." With a fierce look that promised retribution he turned back to the figure pacing just beyond the village walls.
Nio was the son of the lord of the ogres, the demon Kijo. InuYasha swallowed the snarl of rage that bubbled in his throat. He glanced at Kagome and he too saw the fear that Isamu had noticed, but unlike the ronin, he knew the cause. His demon howled and he could feel the bloodlust surging through his body. He wanted to maim this bastard, kill him, and destroy him. The scent of Kagome's distress was driving him and it was making him insane.
Growling low in his throat, he leveled his golden gaze at the demon.
One thought had permeated his brain when he'd appeared. A horrible, repressed memory that he'd buried in the deepest, darkest, dankest corner of his soul.
Nio had killed her.
It was something she was unaware of, except on the most basic, instinctual level, and a secret he would take to his grave.
It was during the final battle of the war and the fighting had been fierce and brutal. To this day he could still remember the metallic smell of blood and the stench of burned flesh, both youkai and human.
He and Kagome had somehow become separated from the rest of their allies and had found themselves backed into a dead end, battling for their lives. Kijo had led the ogres against them and Kagome's arrow that had found its purifying mark, destroying the demon and effectively ending two years of unrest.
Nio had been near enough to the miko to drive his claws through her side and pull out her intestines. In his rage, InuYasha had ignored the fact that the quarters were a little too close to contain the backlash wave and had let Tetsusaiga loose. Nio had been caught on the fringes of the wave and InuYasha had thought that he'd finished the bastard off.
When he'd finally dug Kagome out of the rubble…it had been too late.
He had cradled her limp form against his chest willing her still heart to beat again and had done something he'd never thought he'd ever do in his lifetime. He'd begged his brother to bring her back.
He never got to find out what Sesshomaru's answer would have been. A demon suddenly appeared as if out of nowhere and would have put a sword through his half brother's back had not InuYasha blocked it.
Sesshomaru had gazed at him with an inscrutable expression on his face, drew Tenseiga and brought Kagome back from the dead.
She hadn't remembered anything past putting an arrow in Kijo and he hadn't enlightened her. It had been a selfish decision. He'd managed to delude himself over the years that if she didn't remember dying, then it hadn't happened.
Scowling, he shook himself back to the present and took her trembling fingers. She shot him a grateful smile. He knew she was probably wondering why she was so terrified of the snarling demon, but he'd let Kikyo drag him to hell before he'd ever enlighten her.
He glanced around, noticed the village archers were primed and ready for an attack, and he pulled his sword.
Isamu scowled and drew his own sword.
"Looks like the fight is going to start early," the ronin commented.
InuYasha grunted, but made no other reply. He wanted this bastard and a fight was fine by him.
Nio suddenly let out a blood curdling war cry and the ogre's surged forward. A yell of 'archer's ready', echoed from Hotaka, the young slayer Isamu had made his second in command. As tantamount to their training the archers notched their arrows, drew them back, and held to await the fire command. The demons pounded closer, sweat dripped off the nearest archer's brow and the moment seemed suspended in time.
Hotaka's lips had parted to form the words, 'aim and fire,' but before he could, a loud whooshing sound filled the air and a man appeared between the ogre's and the village wall, formed from inky black shadows.
Isamu and the others watched in stunned fascination as Tatsuo put up his hands and formed a demonic barrier between the village and the ogres.
Nio's legion bounced off the barrier and he roared at the man.
"What is the meaning of this!?"
Tatsuo regarded him with those eerie, obsidian eyes and spoke in the disembodied, echoing voice of legion.
"Enough…retreat or die. The moon is not upon us, it is too soon. I must have the souls of the slayer's people for my master. You will not interfere."
Nio snarled. "Fuck your master, and fuck you! You do not control the ogre tribe as you do that mindless horde you've summoned to do your nasty bidding. This village is mine. I will have my revenge!"
Tatsuo's expression never wavered. Suddenly, a crackling appeared around him and his body levitated a couple of feet off the ground.
"As you wish," he said and threw up his hands. The sky overhead became dark with ominous clouds and before Nio knew what was happening, black lightening shot across the sky and hit part of his horde.
The echoes of hideously pained screams and the stink of burned flesh rose in the air. Nio turned around fearful and watched the lightening descended, bolt, after bolt, after bolt, rending, burning, ripping, and tearing his demons into lumps of oily flesh.
Fear stripped the demon lord of his arrogance, and in his animalistic terror he lunged at Tatsuo with his sword primed to pierce his chest.
Three bolts of black lightening rained from the sky and engulfed him. By the time the smoke cleared there wasn't enough left of Nio to fill an ashtray.
Tatsuo turned, looked up at them and blandly said.
"When the moon is high we will feast." He vanished as quickly as he'd appeared.
Kagome was standing by the door to Sango's hut watching Isamu and InuYasha argue with yet another group of villagers that wanted to flee the village and leave in hopes of outrunning the demons. Isamu was coming as close to completely losing his temper as she'd ever seen him and her hanyou was apoplectic.
"You're a fool, Seiji. Those demons will never stop and if you go off on your own, all you're going to do is make yourself and your family easy meals. The village is fortified. At least here we stand some semblance of a chance."
Seiji threw up ups hands, a hint of hysteria coloring his words. "But you saw what he did! How can we defend against a demon that can call fire from the sky!"
InuYasha scoffed. "Keh, run you coward, see how far you get."
Seiji's fear overrode his good sense and he spat. "Half-breed scum, you don't care about any of us. The only one here you'd ever lift a claw to protect is your demon loving whore!"
InuYasha was on him before anyone could blink. He grabbed him by the neck and slammed him hard against the wall of Sango's hut.
"You bastard," he growled. Kagome gasped and rushed over, pulling at his iron muscles, trying to get him to release the man. Seiji was gasping and turning blue and blood trickled down his neck.
"InuYasha stop, please! You must stop!" She clawed helplessly at his hands. Her voice must have done something to infiltrate his blood lust, because he abruptly dropped the man, snarled something unintelligible, and sprinted away. Kagome dropped down to help the fallen man, but he batted her hands away angrily.
"I'm all right, don't touch me!" She recoiled and frowned at him while he scrambled away. The surrounding villagers mumbled to themselves and watched him go. Calmly, Kagome rose to her feet and ran a shaky hand through her hair.
She knew that there were those out there that would not accept the fact that she had mated to a hanyou, but she'd never….
Shaking off her wayward thoughts she turned to Isamu and said quietly.
"Seiji was cruel but he had a valid point about the demon magic. How are we to defend against that?"
Isamu crossed his arms over his chest and frowned sadly.
"I'm not sure Kagome, but don't give up hope. If we give up hope then he wins."
She nodded and opened her mouth to argue a bit more, but she was interrupted.
"The ronin be right child. Ye mustn't give up hope." Kagome turned and a wide smile split her face.
"Kaede!" She exclaimed and ran to the elderly miko. She welcomed the young woman's enthusiastic hug, even though it almost drove her off her feet.
Behind her Chie squealed, "Daddy!" and ran to her father. The big man caught her and spun her around. Kagome pulled away from Kaede and looked beyond her. Kirara meowed in greeting and Kohaku shuffled his feet and attempted to smile. She took pity on them.
She walked over, bent down and ruffled the nekomata's ears, causing her to purr in delight, and then pulled Kohaku into a brief hug. The boy stiffened slightly, but managed to endure the contact. Kagome brushed a stray lock of unruly hair off his forehead and smiled softly.
"It's good to see you again, Kohaku." He shuffled his feet again.
"It's nice to see you too, Kagome," he admitted. She smiled and he grinned before she turned back to the elderly miko.
"You overheard?"
She nodded gravely. "Aye child, I overheard. I believe I can help ye."
Those standing around started muttering again and Isamu wander over with Chie clinging to him and resting her head on his broad shoulder.
"What did you have in mind my Lady?"
She glanced around, making sure she had the villagers' attention.
"Lord Komoku came to me in a dream. He bestowed a gift."
Kaede steepled her fingers together and focused with her one good eye, muttering a few words. Suddenly a heavy lance appeared in her hands, its polished gloss and razor tip glinting in the sun.
Around them people gasped at the made other sounds of awe and surprise.
"The Guardian of the Southern Direction has lent me a portion of his power so that I may offer his protection to ye. Watch closely."
Ignoring the pain in her aged limbs Kaede twirled the lance until it faced downward and slammed the tip into the ground with all the strength she possessed. The ground shook briefly and a blue tinged light pooled at the head of the spear and slowly started to increase in circumference as it spread away from the source.
Everyone watched in awe as the light formed a barrier that surrounded the village, stopping just shy of the village walls, and engulfing it in the warm glow of Komoku's power. Kaede stumbled away from the lance, an exhausted expression on her face and Kagome quickly rushed forward to support her before she could fall.
Wearily, she lifted her good eye to the girl and patted her hand softly.
"Thank ye, child. I had to use my own power to activate the magic."
Kagome looked on the elderly miko with worry in her dark eyes. She lifted her gaze to Isamu.
"I'm taking her to Riko to be check over." Isamu was still looking at the barrier with an expression of wonder on his face and nodded absently. Kagome glanced over her shoulder at Kohaku.
"Help me, please," she entreated. The boy nodded and placed Kaede's other arm over his shoulder. Together they took her to Riko.
Chie stuck two fingers in her mouth and gazed solemnly up at her father.
"Lady Kaede told me about it. She said it would keep us safe." Isamu pulled his stunned mind away from the awesome sight of the barrier and looked at his daughter. Mixed emotions swirled through him. He was glad she was in his arms once again, but at the same time he wished she was still far away in Kaede's village were she would be safe.
"Lady Kaede, told you this did she?"
His daughter nodded. He sighed and kissed her forehead.
"Then let us hope that it will be enough, yes?"