He walked through the halls of his father’s house.

Candles flickered, low and lambent in their holds, yellow light bending along walls that warped and trembled–undulating in time with the sound of two lovers’ commingled moans. His claws flexed, anger boiling within him as he advanced–slowly, as if through sand. She was here–that woman Izayoi. His father had brought her here, of all places…

Of the Inu no Taishou’s many insults, this was the gravest yet–a vile and flagrant offense. Rutting that human bitch within earshot of his own noble mother–it was a slight he could not bear.

As he drew at last to the end of the hall, a door slid open ahead of him, of its own accord. He stepped through, freezing at the sight before him.

In the middle of the room lay his father, naked on his back, his arched spine tensed and rigid, his eyes screwed shut in pleasure as his claws dug into the soft, creamy hips that moved above him. But the woman astride him was not Izayoi.

It was the miko.

In sick, morbid fascination he watched as she rose and descended, impaling herself slowly, purposefully on his father’s pale length, the ivory shaft splitting her, exposing her–vanishing and reappearing from between her legs in a vulgar, fleeting rhythm. Her head was thrown back, her dark, lustrous hair spilling down her shoulders in an inky fall. Her breasts heaved, peaked and full, striving against the cups of shimmering black fabric that concealed them.

As her pace increased, as her desire mounted, her face turned toward him, blue eyes sliding open, hazy and dark with lust. Her pink lips parted, barely.

“Sesshoumaru…”

And now he was the one beneath her, his own claws guiding her bitterly down, sinking through her tender flesh as he seared and groaned with consuming heat. Her eyes widened in alarm, her blood streaming down his hands, over her still-roving thighs, between their crashing bodies. His fingers rose to her throat, squeezing, cutting–he could feel the fire in his gaze, see the pain mirrored in her own. But he could not stop, he could not–

A spear point burst from her chest, cleaving her through the heart. They were on the cliffside again, and she was falling against him, and he was holding her as the life bled from her in rivers of crimson, staining the parched earth below. Hakudoushi smirked down at them from the air above, Mouryoumaru’s venomous tentacles creeping toward them, unhindered, wrapping around them both.

And all he could think of was her. All he could do was look into her flat blue stare as Naraku’s poison raged through his veins. Green light burned–around him, within him.

He surrendered to the blaze, and when he opened his eyes again she was there, floating above him, clothed in sheer white. Radiant and beautiful. Her eyes gleamed down at him in concern, beckoning him. Urging him. He tried to reach for her, but his hands remained fixed at his sides. And now she was slipping away–drifting out of his sight as the darkness rose up to claim him.

He stared down into the empty blackness of the well, and there was nothing. She was gone. He had lost her, again. And he despised himself more for the feeling of it than for the failure. And all around him, echoing up from the depths was the sound of laughter–mocking and cruel–his father’s, his brother’s, Naraku’s, hers…

And he hated her.

And he wanted her.

He wanted her even more than he hated her. And so he plunged down, tearing through the darkness with claw and fang, dissolving it with a virulence that surpassed all else–burning through to the light on the other side.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi