"Listen to me, woman—"
No.
Kalanie was done listening—done trusting these people who had done nothing but control her for weeks. They'd sworn to get Nomi, to free him, to bring him back to her, but she saw now they hadn't meant it.
They'd abandoned him.
She'd abandoned him.
Snarling, she thrashed beneath Hiei's grip, bucking against his superior strength. His forearm was corded muscle, pressed across her chest like a vice, but she clawed at his skin, her iron shifting into talons and slicing him to the bone. A growl shook through him, rumbling against her back.
"Release me!" Driving an elbow backward, straight into the hollow between his ribs, she jarred free of his hold and whirled on Kuwabara. "Open a damn portal."
The psychic shook his head, stumbling back before she could reach him, and looked to Yusuke. "Urameshi, what happened?"
Iron coalesced in Kalanie's hands, sharp as knives. "No. No more excuses. Give me a damn portal. I'm going after him—"
Hiei seized her arm, yanking her around. The force of his tug brought her barreling into his chest, too close to wedge her hands between them, too close to manage any leverage for escape. He glared down at her, his ragged breath bursting across her cheeks, hot as the innards of a furnace. "He wasn't there. Nomi wasn't there."
Liar.
"I never should have trusted you," she hissed. "You toyed with me. Made me think you'd save him. But you never planned to, did you?"
Her iron writhed once more, rolling like a molten wave up his hands. Grimacing, he threw his heat against her, smothering her power beneath his own. Even weakened, his eyelids at half-mast, he could bat her aside as if she were little more than a gnat.
Yet he didn't.
"Kalanie," he growled, "listen. Nomi was not there. We were tricked. Somehow. You won't be going after him if Kuwabara opens a portal. You'll be chasing ghosts, walking into the same trick that got us."
"No." She twisted her wrists from his hold and seized his collar. The bloody remains of his shirt crumpled beneath her fingers. "I felt the barrier go up. They're moving him. Project Shell is offline."
"Hiei speaks the truth, Kalanie," Kurama said. He'd managed to regain his feet. Blood flowed sluggishly from a gash in his thigh, and he pressed a pale hand against the injury, his impassive eyes unreadable. "Your brother wasn't at the Plains of Peril. I believe he was, days ago, when Hiei sensed him there, but by this morning, he was gone. I'm sorry."
More lies.
They had to be lies.
Nothing else made sense.
"You're wrong."
"We're not."
Yusuke groaned, slumping onto his ass in the grass. "Why the hell would we lie about this? Huh? Think about it. Getting your brother back is the only way to end all this bullshit—or so you say. So why wouldn't we do it if we could?" His eyes narrowed to slits. "Better yet, why would we get our asses kicked if we didn't have to?"
A flurry of movement on the porch disturbed their stalemate. The door slid open, revealing Genkai and the detectives' myriad women. "Enough yelling," Genkai barked. "You want to alert every damn refugee in the tents about what happened here?"
Yusuke scoffed. "Don't scold me, Grandma. I'm not in the mood."
The psychic ignored him. "Keiko, Shizuru, make sense of their injuries. Get those who need healing to Botan and Yukina. Girls, set up inside. Heal what absolutely needs it. Treat the rest with bandages and the like. Dimwit, with me. Tell me what happened."
Without further argument, the gathered demons broke ranks. Kalanie barely processed any of it. All she could think of was Nomi. Where he was now. If he was in pain. Whether he could ever forgive her for letting him down so thoroughly.
The fight went out of her. Her knees buckled. Wordlessly, Hiei followed her to the ground. His grip shifted, his hands slipping up to her biceps. "We failed you." Tension creased his brow. "I failed you."
A sob lodged behind her teeth. She refused to let it loose. Not in front of him. Not here.
His left hand released her. Its thumb rose to her chin, tipping her head up until their eyes met. "Get me to my room. Then I'll show you."
Show her what?
But she couldn't find her voice, and so she rose to her feet without question, drawing him up beside her. Numb, barely aware of what she was doing, she wrapped an arm around his waist, then tugged his right arm over her shoulders and held it there, bearing the brunt of his weight as they began to move.
At the steps, Keiko stopped her. "Hiei needs healing. More than you can give. Bring him to Yukina."
"Hn. No. My room."
Keiko worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "You heard Genkai. Your shoulder needs actual attention. Go see Yukina or Botan. Please."
Kalanie felt Hiei stiffen, spotted the telltale spark of irritation in his eyes. She spoke before he could. "I'm not a healer, but I can treat his injuries. Bandage them as needed. I'll handle it."
If nothing else, it would give her something to do. Some means of distraction. An alternative to the despair curdling within her, sinking poisonous fingers into her heart.
Keiko hesitated, bouncing uneasily from foot to foot. "Genkai won't like this, but if you say so…"
"I do."
By the time they reached Hiei's room, Kalanie's heart had slowed, the rushing in her ears fading enough for her to hear her own thoughts. Embarrassment flushed her cheeks as she leveraged the door open and helped Hiei inside.
How she'd acted outside was pitiful. Weak. Pathetic.
Who was she kidding? What would she have accomplished if she'd managed to force Kuwabara's hand? As soon as she stepped into Demon World, she'd be vulnerable to him, and she'd be no good to anyone—least of all Nomi—once he got his claws back in her.
Then Nomi would still be lost.
She'd still have failed.
Gently, she eased Hiei onto his bed. Her gaze flitted around his featureless room. "Bandages?" she asked hollowly.
Hiei's jaw clenched. For a moment, she thought he might comment on the panic fraying her edges, but in the end, he said only, "I'm fine."
"No, you aren't. Your shoulder needs to be bound or you'll bleed out in this bed."
Ignoring her, he jerked his chin at the mattress. "Sit. I want to show you what happened."
"Damn it, Hiei," she spat, anger flooding her veins, burning away the fear. "Don't force me to drag Yukina here—"
"After you will bind my shoulder, but now, sit."
Snarling, she did as bidden.
His face betrayed nothing as he turned to her. "Hand."
She offered one. Just as he had two weeks ago, he raised it to his Jagan and pressed her fingertips against the eye's crease. Purple light flared beneath his skin. His consciousness slid against hers. With it came his heat, all-encompassing and strangely calming. This time, she knew to relax when the tug came at her navel, and as she fell into him, slipping into his memories, she didn't fight it.
Hiei's boots landed on the Plains of Peril with a jarring thud, but he betrayed no sign of the impact as he surveyed the rolling grasslands. A stiff wind scuttled through the grasses, swaying their russet stalks. It carried the stench of rotting meat, but Hiei couldn't spot a source.
At his back, the others were gathering themselves. Yusuke. Kurama. The ragtag host they'd pulled together.
"All right, you two," Yusuke said, "you must have found a place for us to wait, yeah? Where is it?"
Straightening his tunic with deft hands, Kurama watched as Kuwabara's portal winked out of existence. "There's a cave near here. We can camp there until we feel the barrier rise. It's close enough that we'll be able to make our move with plenty of warning."
"And where's the opening to this bunker exactly?" Yusuke swiveled, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the rising sun.
"Hn. Follow me."
Hidden beneath scree and low-lying brush, Project Shell's entrance was a thick, metal hatch built into the ground. To the unobservant eye, it may very well have been invisible. But Hiei had found it, and he'd felt a power like Kalanie's contained somewhere beneath it. Nomi. Of that, he had no doubt.
"Not sure I actually see anything," Yusuke said, squinting in the hatch's direction, "but if you say it's there, I guess we'll take your word for it."
"It's there, Yusuke." Kurama seemed ill at ease, tensed to spring. The others appeared not to notice, but Hiei saw it—the bend in his knees, the way his gaze danced along the horizon, scanning for threats. "Now we must move. If Taku has sentries posted, they'll sense even our diminished auras if we loiter too long."
"Lead on, fox boy. Let's get this over with."
"Does it seem like we've been waiting a long time or is that just me?" Yusuke clamped a hand onto Hiei's shoulder and leveraged himself out of the sunken cave where their insurgent force had hunkered. "I mean, if my stomach is anything to go by, it's been hours."
"Three hours, seventeen minutes." Kurama crouched to Hiei's left, his focus on the grasses swaying in the distance.
Their hideout was located a mile due north of the bunker's hatch. Once Nomi was on the move, they could reach the entrance—or more aptly, exit—in little more than seconds.
"Think they're going to get this shitshow on the road any time soon?"
"If I could predict Taku's movements, I'd be far more confident in our victory today, Yusuke."
Scowling, the half-breed leapt back into the cavern. "I hate when you cop attitudes, Kurama. Leave the hissy fits to Hiei."
Before Hiei could muster the sort of scathing retort Yusuke's bullshit warranted, the barrier's resurrection knocked the breath from his lungs. Thoughts about Yusuke's insolence evaporated, and as one hand rose to his katana's hilt, he surged to his feet. "Time."
Kurama remained motionless. "Not just yet."
"They're moving him."
"Yes, but they'll need time to get him aboveground. No doubt they'll move quick, but if we're quicker, we reveal our hand too early." Peering into the gloomy cavern below, Kurama pitched his voice low. "Prepare yourselves. We move in minutes."
There was little in the world as welcoming as the wind's roar. When Hiei ran, fast as he could, all else fell away behind the scream of the air. It was in the crush of a slipstream that he felt most himself—most free.
As the grasslands blurred beneath his feet, the mile between him and Taku's bunker shrinking rapidly, he thought of Kalanie and her chains, then of the brother she'd trusted him to save. Neither free.
Not yet.
It was that distraction that slowed his reaction time. Only by seconds. And yet enough.
The blast caught him across the chest, burning away his dragon's wrappings in an instant and tearing deep into his shoulder, cutting all the way to the bone. He staggered, but drew his katana and blocked the puppet's next blow. In an instant, hundreds of energy signals flickered into existence. Puppets. Everywhere.
"Kurama! Yusuke!"
But his warning came too late. The puppets engulfed their band of fighters, pressing in on all sides.
His katana became a streak of silver, slashing and cutting, blocking and parlaying. Blazing black down his arm, the dragon screamed for release, its call hollering within him like the beating of a war drum. He didn't release it. His promise to Kalanie echoed back to him, the memory tinged with the scent of a campfire and the flickering image of the tears gathered in her eyes.
The dragon would incinerate the masses besieging them, but if Nomi were here, it would claim him, too.
Ignoring the blistering pain in his shoulder, he fought his way to Kurama, and together, they forged a path to Yusuke.
"Where the hell did these bastards come from?" Yusuke screamed. Overhead, Jin dipped and dove around a flock of winged puppets, drawing their aerial assault away, but there were too many for the shinobi to hold off on his own, and Yusuke fired a spirit gun at their flank, decimating dozens in the singular blast. "They weren't here before. I know my spirit senses are shit, but I would have felt this many assholes loitering around."
"Their energies must have been disguised," Kurama said, deflecting a pulse of energy from a puppet and lashing back with his rose whip. "Hiei, do you sense Kalanie's brother?"
He didn't.
Not in the mass of puppets swarming from the opened bunker hatch. Not in the grasslands farther beyond. Not even in the deep recesses below.
The realization swept through him like a chill, dampening the fire coursing in his veins.
"He's not here."
"Then we've been tricked. Contact Kuwabara. Get us out of here."
The portal sheared through the sky, nearly rending through Rinku as it did. The young demon stumbled back from it, his yoyos flying as he cleared a path. "Jin! Get Touya through!"
Their escape was chaos. The puppets were too numerous, flooding endlessly from the bunker. The sheer number of puppeteers needed for such an army seemed impossible, all the more so because the demons were strong, not the mindless scum Hiei had grown used to. They equaled Kalanie's power—manageable on their own, but too much in such vast numbers.
As Kurama disappeared into the portal's maw, Hiei cast his senses wide one final time, searching for Nomi, for that telltale power he'd grown to recognize in Kalanie. It was nowhere to be found.
Yusuke fired off another spirit gun. The ball of blue energy blazed across the grasslands. "Hiei, go! I'm on your heels!"
Snarling, he struck a final blow. The dragon streamed from his arm with a blast of concussive power. It streaked across the plain, ravaging the puppets' ranks, scattering the weaklings like so much nothing, but their deaths did little to assuage the sting of failure biting at Hiei's heels as he abandoned the dragon to its work and leapt for the portal.
Alone.
Without Nomi.
Kalanie was waiting, fierce, ready for a fight, her iron flowing over her skin like molten armor, but at the sight of him, she faltered. A pallor swept into her cheeks.
He recognized the moment Nomi's absence registered. Her eyes tightened. Her energy spiked. When she lunged for the closing portal, he was ready.
He stopped her.
Without hesitation, he trapped her against himself, keeping her from her brother.
And he knew the trust he was breaking. The promise he'd shattered—
Hiei released her.
Groaning, he shoved himself backward until his spine thudded into the wall, smearing his blood across the white paint. "Top drawer," he spat through gritted teeth.
Kalanie struggled to come back to herself, still half-caught in the sensation of him, the heat of his body, the strength in his muscles. Finding herself again was like swimming against a riptide. "What?"
"Wrappings." He couldn't seem to focus on her, his eyelids fluttering closed seemingly against his will. Weakly, he jerked his chin toward his dresser. "Top drawer."
"Right. Of course." She lurched to her feet. Her body felt wrong. Too small. Too weak. The disorientation proved even more difficult to combat than it had the first time she'd glimpsed his mind, and it left her reeling as she stumbled to the bureau.
Forcing her hands to steady, she yanked open the drawer and revealed a neat stack of tunics, half-a-dozen curled belts, and a pile of dressings, complete with a bottle of alcohol for disinfectant. Still fumbling, her limbs awkward and ill-proportioned, she carried the bandages and booze back to the bed.
Distantly, she knew she should say something about what he'd shown her. Perhaps forgive him for not saving Nomi. After all, how could he have succeeded if Nomi wasn't even there to be saved? Better yet, she could apologize for accusing him of lying. She'd been out of line. Thoroughly unfair.
But an apology wouldn't come.
Focusing on his ragged shoulder, she said instead, "The wound needs to be washed. Can you make it to the bathroom?"
He forced one eye open. "What do you think?"
His tone rang with a bite she wasn't ready for. Her hackles rose in answer. "Don't be an asshole," she snapped, then swiveled and stalked from the room.
In the closest washroom, she dithered a moment, staring at her pale reflection in the mirror. The face staring back grounded her, reminded her who she was, and with a final forceful push, she shook off the last lingering effects of Hiei's shared memories.
Pressing her lips into a grim line, she searched the cabinets until she found a shallow bowl, filled it with water, grabbed a towel from the rack, and hurried back to Hiei. He was as she'd left him, head rocked back against the wall, blood oozing from his shoulder injury, face leeched of color, sitting so still she might have thought him asleep if not for his left eye cracking open.
She joined him on the mattress, settling the bowl in the hollow of her crossed legs. "Sit up if you can."
A muscle flexed in his jaw, sweat beading along his brow, but he splayed a hand against the wall and leveraged himself upright. Exhaustion seemed to weigh on his every movement, turning him slow and sluggish. If she weren't quick, sleep might claim him by force.
With a flex of her energy, the iron along her pointer finger shifted, coalescing into a razor-sharp blade. Careful not to knick him, she slid it beneath his shirt and sliced clean through the cloth. The tunic caught in the ruined flesh above his collarbone and she had to work it loose with trembling fingers.
If her efforts pained him, he didn't show it. His face betrayed nothing as he watched her, his crimson gaze searing the crown of her head while she wet the towel. Gently, willing her own composure to remain as unfazed as his, she wiped down his chest, cleaning the blood that had begun to dry in streaks across his muscled frame. It ran in pink rivulets down his tanned skin, and she rushed to absorb it all before it stained his sheets.
Beneath the cover of her bangs, she snuck a peek at him. His eyes had become heavy lidded, though a nervous, fluttering creature trapped between her ribs insisted it was not exhaustion that gripped him now.
He caught her looking. The corner of his lip twitched into a smirk. "Carry on."
The low growl sent a burst of heat rushing through her veins. Setting the bowl on the floor, she rose on her knees and shifted behind him. Blood streaked down the hard planes of his back, but it seemed his chest had taken the brunt of the injury. "You should have been more careful."
"I was distracted."
"So you were." Discarding the towel, she twisted the cap from the alcohol and murmured, "This might sting."
"Hn. I'll be fine."
She was thankful she remained behind him, thoroughly out of view. Otherwise, he'd have seen the disbelief she couldn't keep from her eyes. Yet to his credit, he didn't so much as stiffen as she poured the alcohol over his injury and wound the bandages tightly into place.
"You know," she said, securing the wrappings with a metal clasp forged from her iron, "admitting pain isn't weakness. Pain keeps us alive. Tells us when we've erred."
A low rumble echoed through him, thrumming in the hand she still pressed to his back and sending a wave of bubbling nerves through her gut. Was he laughing?
"Compared to injuries I've been dealt before, this is nothing but a discomfort." He turned his head, catching her in the corner of his eye. "Using the dragon is what tired me. Not this."
The dragon.
She could still feel the sensation of its release, the sheer power it brought with it. More than anything she'd ever be capable of. It had been overwhelming, a sheer wave of energy and pain, pleasure and discord.
But more jarring still had been his feelings as he'd unleashed it. Rage at the puppets. Disgust at himself for being tricked. And something else, too. Something about her.
How exactly she fit in she couldn't quite work out. It was almost as though he'd used the dragon to avenge his own failings. As if because he hadn't found Nomi, he thought he owed her something else instead. As if destroying those puppets was an offering, a trade to hold her over until he rescued Nomi for real.
"Hiei."
"What?"
Her hand curled into a fist against his back. "Thank you. For trying. For fighting for him."
This time, the rumble in his chest was a snarl, not a laugh. "You owe me no thanks for today. That battle was a disgrace. We failed in all regards."
She didn't respond. Not right away.
Yes, they had failed. But he had tried. He'd wanted to save Nomi. That was more than anyone had done for her or Nomi in years. And it was worthy of thanks, even if he didn't want to hear them.
Sighing, she let her attention rove to his back. His flesh was a latticework of scars, a patchwork quilt of injuries from days gone by. The ruined tapestry of his skin told a story she couldn't properly fathom. All the reports she'd read, all the stories he had hissed to her in the dark of night—none of them captured the fire demon properly. But these scars… Perhaps they did.
Thoughtlessly, she traced a finger down one of those white lines. It followed the ridge of his spine, and her fingertip ghosted across the knobs of bone, sliding over muscles, gliding along the scar's puckered line.
A shiver wracked through him.
She should have stopped then. Every logical facet of her being screamed that she should have stopped. Yet her finger continued to roam. When the first scar ended, she found another, tracking it up the curve of his ribs. After that, another. And another.
Barely daring to breathe, she ran her thumb over a raised stretch of tissue at the base of his spine. The sort of injury needed for such a scar to form seemed too much to bear. What sort of life had he lived—
He twisted without warning.
The hand that had been pressed to his lower back now found itself flush against his abs as he kneeled in the rumpled blankets, a smoldering heat burning in his eyes. "Careful," he said, his voice so quiet she might have imagined it.
A breath stuttered past her lips.
Fresh scars carved across his chest. A second tapestry to unravel.
Her hand rose of its own accord, her fingers sliding upward indiscriminately, no longer bound to any singular scar's path. Perhaps these scars were his chains. The ones he'd spoken of when she'd asked about Yukina.
As her fingertips grazed his collarbones, Hiei moved, surging into her with a force that pressed her back against the sheets. He planted his hands on either side of the pillow beneath her head and hovered over her. An emotion she couldn't name—or really, was too afraid to name—darkened his crimson eyes and set her heart clamoring against her breastbone. The heat of him consumed her, settling into her bones and lighting her aflame.
Before that heat, all else slid away. The terror that had plagued her for days. The fear that Nomi was lost to her for good. The uncertainty of how Taku had moved him without the detectives' knowledge. All forgotten, burned away beneath Hiei's fire.
Instinctually, she pressed closer to him, her hands sliding up the planes of his chest. A noise she could only define as a purr escaped him, but he remained stationary no matter how much she rose to meet him.
Hell, but she wanted more. More heat. More contact. More, more, more.
Finally, as her hands began to curl over his shoulders, he heaved a rattling breath and broke away from her, the haze clearing from his eyes. His knees, planted on either side of her hips, dug into the mattress as he sat back.
Staring up at him, she knew they'd crossed some sort of line—one she had no idea how to step back over. "Hiei…"
"I warned to be careful," he hissed, as much to himself as to her. Disgust coated the words, though if she didn't know better, she'd think it was aimed at himself, not her. Too quickly for her to protest, he blurred from the bed and dragged the door open. "Go. Now."
She raked a trembling hand through her mussed hair. "Hiei, wait. Whatever that was… Why did you—"
Another growl.
Her arms slipped about her middle as she rose from the bed. "You started that. Don't blame me."
He snorted, but his eyes would not meet hers. "You're mourning Nomi. Or really, you're avoiding thoughts of him at all. I won't be your distraction."
Her body still scorched with his heat. She wanted to protest, to deny his accusation, but a whisper in the dark corners of her mind wondered if perhaps he was right. Maybe all of this had been a means of denial.
After all, hadn't she thought that she needed something to keep her occupied?
She bent to gather the medical supplies scattered on the floor. "At least let me treat your arm. I cut you." She gestured toward the claw marks dug into his forearm, the aftereffects of her wild attempts to free herself when he'd held her back from the portal.
"I'll handle it."
"You need to rest. I can do this—"
"Go."
She went.
AN: Eep, eep, eep! I hope you all like this one! Let me know what you think! And thank you times a million to all my lovely reviewers. You guys make writing this story so much fun.