WARNING! Some descriptions of sexual assault in this chapter. Descriptions have been watered down and are not graphic, but if this topic is likely to distress you please consider if you should read on. I will add a chapter summary to the next chapter for those that would prefer the outline of what has gone on in this chapter.
WARNING! A few violent descriptions ahead...
Two red haired eastern demons dragged Kikyo back to Naraku's carved quarters. Hokai was nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other demons that had been loitering around the perimeter.
The eastern demons frog marched Kikyo through the obsidian gates. Kikyo struggled weakly against them, tears streaming down her pale face. Her whole body ached from falling and fighting, and she had barely even made it out of the wretched cave.
The doors opened and Kikyo was thrown unceremoniously inside. She rolled on the floor, wincing. She heard the heavy thud of the door slamming behind them.
With bleary, half lidded eyes Kikyo looked around. She was in what looked like a bedroom, entirely crafted from onyx stone. Some candles were dotted about the place, lighting up parts of the darkness, wax dripping to the floor. A dressing table and a dining table furnished the room, in the corner was a bed covered with furs.
Naraku stood above her, an amused smile on his face. He was no longer wearing his pelt, and instead had donned a thin black kimono. "Your attempt to escape was a valiant effort. I wanted to see if your skills had dulled...And to see how far you would get. I even left you your old bow and arrows to plant the idea into your head. You did well to get as far as you did, you were always good at escaping me for just long enough, until Inuyasha could come to save you. A pity he is not here to save you now."
Kikyo wiped tears and damp hair away from her face, she avoided Naraku's smug gaze. So he had deliberately left her weapons beside her, all for the thrill of watching her try and reach freedom. Only to fail. "Get away from me, Naraku!"
Naraku ignored her snarl, he began circling her like a vulture around a carcass.
"I've found an interesting type of flower from abroad that I have planted all around this cave structure. It secretes a sort of gas, a poison that creates muscle relaxant symptoms in humans. With some of my sorcery added, it will keep your body from tuning into clay without your needed souls. At least until I can find a way to obtain souls for you without your soul collectors, and without disrupting the spell I cast around this island," Naraku said. He crouched beside Kikyo, who cringed away from him. "You'll be mine tonight, body and soul."
Kikyo's mahogany eyes met Naraku's scarlet ones. Her bruised body was frozen in terror. When he had been Onigumo, he had loved her in his own obsessive way. He had wanted her heart and her love in return, not her body.
"You would touch me against my will? Onigumo loved me, his heart cared for me," Kikyo whispered.
Naraku sighed at her ignorance. "He was a bandit Kikyo, what kind of crimes do you think he committed before he became me? I am his demon side. Pure love is not something he or I ever learned." Naraku reached out with an almost tentative hand, brushing a stray hair behind Kikyo's ear. She batted his hand away with a disgusted look. Kikyo knew what Naraku was going to do to her. She fiercely wished she had made love to Sesshomaru when she had the chance. She had coveted her virginity jealousy, foolishly believing she and Sesshomaru would have all the time in the world. She realised with dread that Naraku was about to take that from her.
"You can take my body, but you can never take my heart…My heart belongs to Sesshomaru," Kikyo said in the strongest, bravest voice she could muster. Naraku laughed and rolled his eyes. He seized her arm in a tight grip, Kikyo tried to pull away but he held on to her firmly.
"And I thought your heart belonged to Inuaysha…How swiftly you switched to the closest person like him, the brother who resembles Inuyasha so much," Naraku pulled Kikyo closer to him, until she could feel his breath on her cheek. "When you found out that Kagome was pregnant, is that when you transferred your affection to Sesshomaru? You'd already lost Inuyasha, so you settled for that cold, callous dog demon instead."
Kikyo gave Naraku a look of undiltuted hatred. "You cannot twist my love for Sesshomaru with your lies. My feelings are real."
"But are Sesshomaru's feelings for you real? Did you know that when I attacked you on Mount Hakurei, that Sesshomaru was nearby? He could have saved you, maybe you'd still be alive now if he had not allowed that fateful blow to happen. Can a demon that is so heartless truly love? Or are you just deluding yourself?" Naraku asked Kikyo spitefully.
Kikyo tried to yank herself out of his grasp, holding back the tears burning in her eyes with all her might. "I won't listen to another word of your poison!" Kikyo shouted in his face. Her usual serene composure had slipped, revealing the fraying fear underneath.
Naraku pulled Kikyo to her feet and strong-armed her over to the bed. Kikyo tried to summon her spiritual energy, but the lilac power crackled and died between her fingers. Her power had faded into nothing.
Naraku pushed Kikyo down onto the furs with punishing hands. Kikyo writhed furiously in his grip. "I am the only one who has travelled to hell and back to find you, to be with you. Inuyasha doesn't care about you, all Sesshomaru truly cares about is that young girl," Naraku gripped Kikyo's agonised face in his long fingered hands. "I am the only one Kikyo, who has set you above all others. And I have longed for your touch for far too long!"
Naraku admired Kikyo's beauty triumphantly. Her dark eyes and long raven hair scorched his soul until burning desire licked him with an unquenchable fire. He kissed Kikyo roughly. Kikyo turned her face away, her eyes full of disgust and loathing. Naraku's hand reached Kikyo's shoulders and slid down to cup her breast, his fingers ventured down further and began to untie the bow of her red hakama trousers.
Kikyo shut her eyes, her reality too terrible to comprehend. She got through the night of Naraku pawing at her by detaching her mind from her physical body. She never opened her eyes, willing her mind away to some intangible place that was more peaceful. Naraku took her body and she could do nothing to stop him.
Even as Naraku touched every inch of her, even as she felt a sharp pain between her legs as Naraku pushed himself inside her. Kikyo distracted herself by visualising Sesshomaru's golden eyes, the stripes on his pale cheeks. His long, straight silver hair. His clawed yet gentle hands. His crisp, self assured voice.
The longer the night with Naraku wore on, the harder Kikyo tried to lose herself in dreams…
The next two days were a ceaseless nightmare, not just for Sesshomaru, but for every living soul in Japan.
Despite his most forceful and determined efforts, Sesshomaru had failed to find and rescue Kikyo. She had been in Naraku's clutches for too long. Rape, torture, death…What had befallen Kikyo because of his carelessness?
And more horrifying still, what if he never found her and had to live his life with the crushing weight of not knowing? Sesshomaru had searched what MUST be the whole of Japan, every land mass from north, south, east and west. He had searched each of the hundreds of islands surrounding Japan. But there was no sign of her.
He looked for soul collectors, but could find no peaceful reptiles swishing through the sky. They too were gone and he had no idea what had happened to them.
The lack of clues led Sesshomaru to believe that Naraku was relying heavily on magic to conceal where he was. Sesshomaru was not a caster of magic, he had no idea how one could conceal demonic energy.
Sesshomaru found the courage to carry on by feeding on his paroxysm of rage. The dead and hell demons left were massacred by him ruthlessly, until no more could be found besmirching his lands. He was hampered by his ice covered cuts from Tsumetai, which had inexplicably refused to disappear, even after the ice demon's death.
With no scent to follow, Sesshomaru stalked every spider demon he could find. The spider demons he slaughtered could tell him nothing, even when he tore off their legs and plucked out their eyes. So he turned his fury on the demons living in the east and north. Nothing and no one could save those demons from the slaughter that befell them.
He asked each fleeing demon in his path where Kikyo was, and murdered every single one when they could not answer.
When the northern and eastern demons failed him, in desperate anger, Sesshomaru recklessly turned on every demon he came across. The death toll began to creep towards the hundreds, then thousands.
A sense of alarm at Sesshomaru's behaviour began to rise in the demon community. All types of demons fled their homes in droves, or hid and prayed as Sesshomaru stormed past their rivers and fens. Once teeming forests became deserted.
And still he could not find her.
Sesshomaru's frantic, now paranoid mind turned its attention to the human civilisations around Japan. It would be a likely trick of Naraku's to hide himself in some human town or city. He had done such things before.
The humans were terrified when Sesshomaru appeared, dishevelled, his claws and arms covered in green blood and gore. He prowled around each human domain, searching for a sign. Searching for anything unusual that could be turned into hope. He kept an eye out for shreds of magic or concealment that he could pick up and run with. He ripped through the humans stupid enough to get in his way, adding splashes of claret to his already blood-sodden kimono.
Nothing. No trace. No clues.
Sesshomaru wandered out of the last human town in the south that he had ransacked, his ears deaf to the screams he was leaving behind. The town was by the sea, surrounded by a craggy rock beach with the humps of emerald green islands visible on the horizon. White foam lapped at the rocky shore.
It was beautiful, but Sesshomaru was blind to it. He had no one else to question, nowhere else to go.
'Where are you now, when I really need you? Sesshomaru asked the ghostly figure of Kikyo trapped within his minds eye. Sesshomaru half collapsed, half knelt by the shore of the sea. Sesshomaru rarely felt tired, but he felt it now. He had been on the move relentlessly for days. He stared, unseeing, into the watery blue abyss of the ocean before him.
This had been his fear, that he would fall in love with Kikyo, that his enemies would hurt her to get to him. Just like Rin had been used countless times before.
If he had shielded his heart more carefully, he would not be experiencing the soul destroying suffering washing over him like the waves that he was looking now. He had always been a cold-hearted killer, uninterested and incapable of love. But Kikyo had reached out and found something he never knew was there. And now, it was destroying him from within.
Sesshomaru's world was falling under the heavy grey sky above him. The scent of an anxious Inuyasha was approaching him from behind, his bare feet scuffing on the rocks.
"Sesshomaru? Are you OK?" Inuyasha asked uneasily. Sesshomaru felt a hand on his arm, Inuyasha was trying to help him to his feet. Sesshomaru shrugged his arm away angrily.
"Leave me," Sesshomaru snapped dejectedly. Inuyasha retracted his hand and his fingers came away smeared with half dry blood.
"Jesus Sesshomaru! You're covered in blood!" Inuyasha said in a worried voice. He stood by his brother's side, taking in Sesshomaru's wretched, depleted form.
Sesshomaru turned his face towards Inuyasha, his neck and head felt heavy and cumbersome. "Have you found Kikyo?" he asked without much hope.
Inuyasha shifted uncomfortably. "Well no, I haven't. I've looked everywhere for her, I'm sure I have. I don't know why we haven't found her yet."
Sesshomaru did not reply, he had no reply to give. No energy to waste on empty words.
"We've been worried about you. I know you've been going around… …Questioning demons. The deaths Kikyo's disappearance has caused…" Inuyasha trailed off, dancing around and away from directly accusative words for fear of antagonising his brother.
Did Inuyasha expect him to explain the bloodshed? Like Sesshomaru was going to explain his actions to anyone, he would do what he had to.
Sesshomaru stayed silent, his unfocused gaze idly directly at the arched islands across the water. He had been waiting, with only half an expectation, for his frosted cuts from Tsumetai to close following his execution. But as the days rushed by, Sesshomaru acknowledged glumly that the wounds were likely to remain. Perhaps this was because Tsumetai's demonic energy had not died with his body, but now lived on in Naraku's filthy hands. Whatever the cause, the cuts were as deep and as sore as when they had first been afflicted. They made him slow and caused significant pain when he pushed himself.
"I spoke to Miroku and Kagome, I've searched all over the country for Kikyo, but it's like she's vanished. I'll keep looking, but Miroku and Kagome think that we need to start considering other options as to where Kikyo might be," Inuyasha said quietly, the lapping of the water almost disguising his words.
'He thinks she's dead,' Sesshomaru thought bleakly. But he could not say that, even thinking it briefly was too much.
"Like what?" Sesshomaru asked dully instead.
"Like…maybe she's not in Japan. Maybe she's somewhere else? Has Naraku taken her abroad by boat or something, or to the underworld?" Inuyasha said quickly, as if saying the words quicker would cause his brother less pain.
"Boat?" Sesshomaru repeated, his tired mind not connecting this word to any meaning.
Inuyasha frowned at the back of his brother's head. "You know, the wooden things humans use to cross the sea."
Sesshomaru bit back a retort, considering this new angle of possibilities. Tsumetai had told him that Naraku had been resurrected using his mother's meido stone. Sesshomaru had traversed through the meido himself years ago, in order to revive Rin from the edges of hell. Having been in Jingoku himself, he could not envisage Naraku wanting to go back to that place, with no sunlight or warmth, no spray of the ocean waves. Once you were in the underworld, the further into hell you were dragged.
No. Naraku had won his life back, now he would cling to it. And her.
But to take Kikyo out of reach by boat to some strange, unrecognisable land. That was a frighteningly plausible option that Naraku could choose, may have already chosen. If Sesshomaru was swift, perhaps he could stop this being an option in the future.
Inuyasha stared at Sesshomaru's silver locks, confused by his silence. "You know what I mean by boats, don't you Sesshomaru?"
"Of course I know what a boat is," Sesshomaru spat impatiently. "If this is truly a path Naraku may have taken, then I'll destroy all the boats, at every harbour I find."
Sesshomaru was grateful for the new direction. He pulled himself to his feet, staggering slightly, then launched unsteadily into the air.
"Wait!" Inuyasha cried, not expecting the sudden burst of action. He ran after Sesshomaru; it was not hard to follow him, Sesshomaru reeked of a foul concoction of blood and flew with a disordered inelegance.
Sesshomaru proceeded to a new rampage of destroying every boat, ship and canoe along the southern coast. Unfortunately, Sesshomaru's earlier foray into the human settlements had ended in countless deaths. This had sent the humans fleeing towards the coast. The dregs of the dead and hell demons had already menaced the humans, closely followed by Sesshomaru's violent presence. These oppressive threats had caused a nationwide panic and the villagers and townspeople who could afford the price, clamoured to get out of Japan and to safer shores. Men, women and children had flocked to the stone jetties puncturing the shoreline.
Sesshomaru swept through every harbour, obliterating any type of boat with his poison whip, until hulls, deckhouses and keels were nothing but broken and sinkable planks.
In his usual manner, Sesshomaru did not direct his violence at any humans, but the men that were foolish enough to stand against him were put down. The humans not brave enough to challenge them, shrieked and began running inland in a chaotic stampede.
Inuyasha aided for afar, demolishing any boats devoid of a human presence. After hundreds of ships had been destroyed, Inuyasha called for Sesshomaru to stop on a stone strewn sandbank. Sesshomaru stopped reluctantly, he was panting with a fatigue he rarely felt.
"Sesshomaru, go home and rest, just for a couple of hours. You look like you are about to collapse," Inuyasha said, breathing heavily beside him.
"Fool, who do you take me for?" Sesshomaru snarled exhaustedly. He did not want to sleep, could not afford to rest. If he did, all he would see and obsess over would be Kikyo.
Inuyasha stamped his foot in frustration. "If you find Naraku you need to be ready to fight him! Look at yourself! I'm trying to help you goddammit!"
Sesshomaru glared at Inuyasha, hating the truth he was spewing. The truth was that Sesshomaru, for the first time in his long life, was emotionally and physically drained. Hollow and fatigued. He needed Kikyo back, he wanted to see Rin and have the satisfaction of killing Naraku. But could he kill Naraku in his weakened condition?
Sesshomaru hesitantly accepted Inuyasha's advice. If he went to his castle, he could send his servants out to break up the thousands of boats left in Japan. Then Naraku would have nowhere to run. Sesshomaru fervently hoped his nemesis had not already left these shores.
Sesshomaru pointed at Inuyasha, his hand shaking slightly. "You will continue the search. I'll be joining you soon, do not stop."
Inuyasha nodded, looking relieved that Sesshomaru was listening to reason at last. "Of course. I'll try and think of some places we haven't looked at yet," Inuyasha looked out at the scarpering humans, "We need to be careful with the humans. They don't deserve to be punished like this…And there are a lot of demons who had nothing to do with Kikyo being taken."
Sesshomaru's expression was as cold as ice. "Then they had best stay out of my way."