Shortly after dawn, Kohaku arrived with Kirara in tow. Outside on the porch, Kagome was armed and ready. Giving the transformed firecat a pat of greeting, she readjusted her bow across her back and swung up behind the waiting taijiya. At once the three of them took to the sky, heading north toward the village where Miroku had discovered the Beast’s most recent victim.

“Tell me more about this demon, Kagome-san,” Kohaku requested, as Edo village disappeared behind them.

Drawing in a bracing breath, Kagome told him of what she knew–which, even after more than four years of exhaustive study, was disappointingly little.

“It wasn’t long after the final battle with Naraku that the bodies started showing up,” the miko began, curling her fingers against her thighs. “The first one was savaged so terribly that Inuyasha and I dismissed it at first–as the villagers who’d discovered it had–as a wolf attack. Looking back now, the signs were there, but it wasn’t until we came across the second body a month later that it became clear to us that this was no animal.” A sick feeling settled like a brick in the pit of her stomach. “…An animal doesn’t brutalize a girl in that way.”

“…I see,” Kohaku replied uneasily.

Sharing in his discomfort, Kagome continued, “Once we suspected a youkai, we knew we weren’t up against the average sort. There was no trace of youki on the victim–there wasn’t even a scent trail. Like the first girl, the second had been pulled from the water–so any physical evidence of the killer had long been washed away.”

“This demon sounds adept at covering his tracks,” Kohaku remarked, glancing back at her. “It certainly is unusual. Youkai typically don’t concern themselves with hiding their attacks against humans.”

“That’s what Inuyasha said, too,” Kagome replied with a frown. “Anyway, all we really had to go on was the evidence of the victim herself. Inuyasha searched for miles around, but her scent trail was a bust. The girl had been dead for days, washed downriver–there was no telling where she’d originally come from, how far she’d really traveled from the scene of the crime. So we watched and we waited. Over a month went by before we heard of another such killing–then just a week. More often than not, though, by the time we got wind of an attack, the remains had already been burned and buried. Even when we did have the victim’s evidence to work with, we kept hitting the same wall. No youki, no scent, no tracks of any kind left by the perpetrator himself.”

“And there was no common thread between the killings?” Kohaku ventured after a moment’s thought. “Nothing to predict where or when the demon would strike next?–whom he would strike next?”

Kagome’s frown deepened. As the months, and then the years, had worn on without success, Inuyasha had become increasingly determined to hunt down this demon. She remembered his keen frustration, his intense disappointment every time a rumor turned to nothing, every time a trail lead to another dead end. So many nights he’d spent pacing, unable to eat or to sleep. The deaths of those girls had affected him deeply, and he’d fixated on their killer in a way Kagome had never seen before. Toward the end of his life, she’d started to distress over his growing mania–some of the things he had begun to say to her, about how Tessaiga whispered to him, about how he could he could feel it, like a brooding in his blood, when the Beast was poised to strike…

Suppressing these dark and disturbing recollections, Kagome shook her head in reply. “…None that I could see.”

As they crossed into the Northern Lands, she told Kohaku more about her own theories–about how she’d begun to suspect that the demon had modified his attack pattern gradually over the years. Expanding his appetite as she saw it–attacking more often but with less brutality, or different expressions of it. So breathlessly caught up in voicing her myriad of speculations, she failed to notice at first how Kohaku had grown quiet, his troubled gaze focusing on her.

It was a familiar look–the same one Sango had once directed at her, back when Kagome had still shared such thoughts with her.

“Have you asked Sesshoumaru-sama what he thinks of this?” the taijiya inquired with gentle tact.

Sesshoumaru–the voice of reason. Kagome looked down at the deflection, abashed. Long before she’d quit speaking on the subject to Sango, she’d stopped with her brother-in-law. If anyone refused to indulge her investigation, it was him. Her lips twisted bitterly as she recalled his last flat words to her about it.

“He said that he’d never heard of another demon like it.”

Glancing away from her, Kohaku nodded, as if to himself.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi