Disclaimer: I own neither Inuyasha nor Hellsing and make no money from these writings.

Like the Dawn

Chapter Six

"What on earth was that?" Integra breathed. A flash of light appearing seemingly from nowhere had the power to push Alucard back? As her eye scanned over him where he sat on the floor, she took note of his hand. She quickly checked to make sure Seras hadn't been similarly injured and was relieved to see that she appeared mostly unharmed. She, herself, had only felt a small tingle along her skin before the light faded. How had it caused two vampires so much trouble?

Kagome bit her lip before she opened her mouth to reply, but she was cut off before she could explain.

"That," Alucard began as he smoothly rose to his feet and approached the women again, making sure to keep a little distance between himself and Kagome, "was raw holy power. Power the likes of which I haven't known to exist for a very long time."

Glaring a little at the way Alucard was staring at her, Kagome turned to look at Integra. She took a deep breath before starting to explain. "You already know that my dad's family has run and taken care of a shrine for a long time, so I come from a long line of priests. I just happened to be born with holy purification powers. Apparently, I'm the first there's been in a long time."

"No," Integra cut in as she shook her head. "That's not correct." She thought back to the man she once knew and what brought her to meet him for the first time. "Your father had them, too."

"He did?" Kagome asked genuinely surprised. No one had ever told her.

Integra nodded slowly as her mind raced at the implications. "They weren't very strong though, and he was untrained in how to use them," she explained to the younger woman. Staring at Kagome in slight disbelief, she began to realize an unexpected side effect of choosing her old friend to father her heir. Kagome had inherited the type of power that Integra had initially sought all those years ago, the power that she thought had been lost to time. But now there were so many more questions. "Come," Integra ordered with a wave of her hand. "Sit back down so that we can talk."

Kagome slowly returned to her seat where she began to fidget a little. She watched as Alucard and Seras moved to stand behind Integra, and she kept her eyes on the former the entire time. He didn't appear to be too upset about his hand, which was good. From the power he exuded, she knew that this wasn't someone that she wanted to make angry, even if he did deserve it.

"How long have you known about these powers?" Integra asked as she studied Kagome in a new light. Honestly, she'd been a little worried about Kagome's ability to handle Alucard. The younger woman seemed so small and soft-hearted that she wasn't sure that Alucard would respect and obey her.

"I found out about them on my fifteenth birthday," Kagome answered honestly. Integra had been forthcoming with her about the existence of vampires and the Hellsing Organization's mission, so she thought that she at least owed the older woman the same courtesy.

"They seem to be much stronger than your father's," Integra observed. "Have you had any training in them?" That had been one of the major drawbacks for her father. He'd never been able to learn how to control or expand his abilities. So were Kagome's powers just naturally that much stronger or had she been able to train in a way that her father hadn't?

"Yes, some," Kagome said before feeling the need to follow up her answer. "But a lot of the control was learned over time and through trial and error."

Integra's eye widened a little at the new information. "So you can control this power?" As another thought occurred to her, she asked, "Did you purposely defend yourself against Alucard a moment ago?"

"No," Kagome admitted with a small sigh. "That was an unconscious response to his no-so-subtle threat," she explained as she once again glared at the tall vampire. With the fanged smirk he wore, he seemed wholly unapologetic.

"Threat?" Integra prompted. He had put his hand to her throat, but he surely knew better than to actually harm the other woman.

Kagome's jaw tightened for a moment when she felt Alucard start to teasingly pressure her again. She wasn't going to stand for it this time, though. "Yes," she answered as she stood from her seat. She spoke to Integra but never took her eyes off of Alucard. "He was pressuring me with his aura...his presence. It was suffocating, and he knew exactly what he was doing." Not willing to allow him to push against her anymore, Kagome finally pushed back. It wasn't flashy or incredibly powerful and there weren't any lights, but a small wave of purification radiated away from her and caused Alucard to recoil slightly. It was a warning that she wasn't going to play his games.

Seras gasped a little and shivered as the power washed over her as well. "Oh," she squeaked. "What was that?"

"That was a small taste of what someone can do with strong holy blood running through their veins," Alucard answered in a slightly mocking tone as he stared Kagome down. Just like in the hallway, he didn't sense any fear from her. She was on edge and cautionary, but she wasn't afraid.

Wanting to get back to getting her answers, Integra motioned for Kagome to sit again before she continued, "How were you able to find someone to train you? From what I understood, these sorts of powers were something of a lost art."

"Ah," Kagome intoned with a small nod as she thought over how to answer. "Well, it really is kind of a lost art. I've never met anyone else in this time period who can do what I do."

Immediately, Integra thought something was off about Kagome's response. The wording was strange. Why did she feel the need to clarify this time period? It implied that she'd met people in another time period. But she'd never heard of such a thing. It was science fiction. Fantasy. Wasn't it? "Why would you say "in this time period?"" Integra asked slowly.

Kagome glanced off to the side as she chewed her bottom lip for a moment. "You know how you said that learning about vampires would probably change the way I see the world? Well, it really didn't," she laughed a little sheepishly. "I told you that I first discovered my powers when I turned fifteen, but how I discovered them is slightly more involved." She knew that she owed Integra the truth, but she was hesitant to just give over all of the secrets that she'd kept for years.

"I'm listening," Integra told her as she leaned back in her seat once more. This conversation had taken a much different turn from anything she had ever expected.

"On my fifteenth birthday, I was attacked," Kagome paused before she was able to finish, "by a demon."

"A demon?" Integra asked a little skeptically. She really had no right to doubt what Kagome was telling her after everything that she'd seen and done in her life, but she'd never once heard about an honest to goodness demon existing.

Nodding, Kagome elaborated, "A centipede demon, to be exact. She was actually called Mistress Centipede." A small shiver traveled down her spine as she remembered all of those legs and arms and the way she had slithered across the ground. "Really creepy," she mumbled.

Integra's first reaction was to turn so that she could look at Alucard. "Were you aware that demons actually existed?"

"Yes and no," Alucard answered. "I heard rumors through the years, but I never actually came across one myself."

"And you never saw fit to tell me about this?" Integra snapped a little peevishly. What if a demon or a group of them decided to attack? How was she supposed to know what to do if she didn't know what she was fighting against?

"You never asked," Alucard told her in a cheeky tone. "But I haven't heard anything about them in decades; a couple of centuries even. I thought they might have died out."

"Um," Kagome tried to cut into the small conversations between master and servant. "I actually haven't heard of or felt a demon's presence in this time, either. I'm not sure what happened to all of them, but they obviously don't have the numbers that they used to have."

"There it is again," Integra pointed out as she turned her attention back to Kagome. "You said "in this time" again. Why?"

"You've obviously seen some strange things, so just know that I'm completely serious when I say this and it's not a joke and I'm not crazy," Kagome prefaced before she continued. "When Mistress Centipede attacked me, she pulled me through a well on our shrine grounds. The well took me five hundred years into the past where I learned about demons and spirits and souls and my powers and plenty of other things. I traveled back and forth between the past and present for almost a year before the well stopped working. It didn't work again until after I graduated high school. I went back so that I could live with my friends and the little family we all made, but I was only there for three years before something pulled me back into this time. So...here I am," she explained shrugging a little at the end of her very abridged story.

"Time travel?" Integra questioned. Taking Kagome at her word for the moment, Integra had a strange feeling grip her. It became harder to breathe and there was an ache in her chest and stomach. Then it occurred to her. She was worried about Kagome's well-being. How had Rena never told her about something so huge? She may not have raised the girl, but Kagome was still her daughter, damn it. Her child had been traveling through time and had been attacked by a demon. In that moment, Integra was very glad that Kagome was in her home now where she could protect her. As the very maternal response began to ease some, she wondered if perhaps she might have been a good mother after all. Breathing out any lingering nerves, Integra asked, "What were you doing in the past for nearly a year?"

"There was this old, really dangerous relic, and I accidentally broke it. We needed to put it back together again before it fell into the wrong hands. Since I was the one that broke it and I felt responsible, I stayed to help," Kagome answered. Thinking back to the days with her friends she smiled fondly. "Even though it was scary and there was more than one time that I thought I was going to die, it was probably the best time of my life. I got to travel all across Japan and see some amazing things. I was able to make some really great friends." Her smile faded a little as she thought to herself, 'And fall in love.'

"And were there many demons in the past?" Integra asked curiously. Part of her really couldn't believe that she'd just asked that question or that she was having this conversation at all.

"Oh yeah," Kagome laughed a little as she thought back to her journeys. "I don't know about the rest of the world, but they were all over the place in Japan. All shapes, sizes, colors, and species, too."

This just kept getting more and more unbelieveable. "There are different species of demons?" She was really getting too old for these kinds of things.

Kagome nodded. "I met plenty of different kinds, and I'm sure I never even came close to meeting all the different kinds." Thinking back to her travels, she began to tick off on her fingers, "Let's see, there were dog demons, spider demons, fox demons, thunder demons, wolf demons, bat demons, dragon demons, wind demons, void demons, cat demons, bird demons, and probably a lot more that I'm forgetting right now. Then there were imps, ghosts and spirits, witches, dark priestesses, resurrected mercenaries, and half-demons. There was very rarely a dull day."

"And you met all of those creatures personally?" Integra questioned. All of this new information was making her head spin a little. Vampires, werewolves, a ghouls were one thing, but she was very quickly discovering that the world and the threats in it were much larger than she had ever known.

"Sort of?" Kagome half-answered. "I met a lot of them, and I made friends with a lot of them. But we fought against most of them and had to kill a good many. So I saw them and there were usually some words exchanged, but we didn't usually have long talks or anything."

Integra turned to look at Alucard once more. "And you never knew about any of this?"

"As I said, I only heard tales of them," Alucard admitted. "If she was traveling five hundred years into the past, I would have only just been approaching my hundredth year. I was still relatively young. And I don't believe that I ever traveled as far east as Japan."

Her first concern being the threat that they could pose in the current day, Integra turned to face Kagome again as she asked, "And you said that you haven't come across any of these creatures in this time?"

"There was a little ghost girl and a possessed mask, but that's about it. I haven't felt anything like what I used to feel in the past," Kagome answered a little sadly. She had always wondered if any of her friends had survived to the present day.

That worry slightly alleviated for the moment, Integra moved to her next pressing concern. "How were you able to fight these demons?"

"Well, there was a group of us, for one," Kagome explained as her thoughts wandered into the past. "There was me, a monk, a demon exterminator, a half-demon, and a little fox demon. We had other friends that helped us sometimes, but it was just us most of the time. It was traveling with them and fighting demons that taught me how to control my powers."

"Are you able to do what you did to Alucard at will?" Integra asked. If she was able to do that much damage to Alucard, she would be a valuable asset to the organization and a very promising heir to the Hellsing name.

"Not really. Sorry," Kagome apologized. "That was more of an automatic response than anything else. I can blast energy from my palms every now and then, but it's really hard and I haven't had the chance to perfect it yet." When she saw Integra frown a little, she hurried to reassure her some, "But I can do other things." Kagome looked around her immediate area before leaning forward to pick up the spoon lying on her teacup's saucer. Holding it in her hand, she focused on it until it began to glow a soft pink. "It's easier to channel my powers into other things for an attack. But my powers can work offensively and defensively."

Integra thought over everything that Kagome was telling her as she offhandedly said, "I'd like to see that in practice."

Kagome debated with herself for a moment as she looked over the three people in front of her. After some thought, she finally spoke, "Do you have any archery equipment?"