Through a tangle of thorns, Kagome stared down the intruder. He was a mangy beast, feral and wolfish—grizzled and yellow-fanged and mean down to the marrow. Purple lips pulled back in a snarl as he dug his dark cracked claws into the earth and glared at her with sallow eyes full of hate and hunger.

From the boulder where she sat, the miko returned his glare as she tipped back her flask for another slow, burning sip. She could hear and smell his rank panting breath, feel the sour heat of it dampen the air between them. Lean and rangy, he growled low in his throat, poised to lunge.

He wasn’t the first of his kind she’d seen. Wild dogs like him were becoming a common nuisance these days. Abandoned by fleeing villagers and routed armies, they scavenged the land, and when they’d gleaned what they could of the war-torn leavings, they ranged close to civilization once again—

Only without any remembered fondness for humankind.

Like living wraiths, they haunted the doorsteps where they once might have lain. Many were slight and skittish creatures; others, not so much. This one was bigger and stronger than most, and bolder because of it.

“You want to sink your teeth into my neck, is that it?” Kagome said, slurring slightly as she smiled and drank again. “I’ll bet you’d just love to rip me wide open, wouldn’t you?—you stinking mongrel.”

Ears lowered, the dog held its ground, rumbling still. The miko laughed. Swiping at her lips, she abruptly stood, and the creature tensed, its coarse grey fur raised like spines.

“Well come and get it, then.” With her free hand, she unsheathed the hunting knife at her hip, and swaying slightly, brandished it at him with a glint. “I’ll slip this fucker between your ribs, and we can see who bleeds out first.”

As the beast began to edge back into the brush, another bark of laughter escaped her. Uncertainly now, the creature eyed her. Its snarl was gone, and as the silence stretched taut between them, its tongue lolled out, pink and long and vaguely obscene. Kagome scowled, slamming her knife blade-down and flaming into the dirt between them—and the dog took off with a yelp and a scamper, its claws shearing through the brittle undergrowth.

Draining the last of the sake from her flask, Kagome slumped back down to the boulder, scowling still.

It was just past midday, and she was restless. After reinforcing the shields around Edo, she’d sunk into a meditative trance, extending her senses for miles around, though she hadn’t detected any threats worth pursuing. Still, a peculiar tension gripped her from within. Chewing a handful of herb to clear the scent of sake from her breath, she mulled this over. Despite the crispness of the late autumn breeze, she felt a strange sense of stagnation, of danger festering in the air around her.

Was it merely her own inner dread that plagued her, or something else? Fuzzily, Kagome squinted ahead, unsure.

The threat of Sesshoumaru was ever-present in her mind. Beneath its pall, how could she expect to feel anything but unease? The reprieve he’d given her seemed dubious at best. Resentful and resigned in equal measure, she spat out the herbs like gall and kneaded her fingertips into her aching brow.

And then, with a glimmer she felt it—a testing of the fresh barrier she’d raised.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi