---

Bloodless fingers grip the shakujou tighter still. “I cannot but wonder if Kagome-sama has repressed such memories. If the shock of it was too much, at the time, for her to bear.”

---

It was a beacon, of sorts—this pale ensorcelled shell he had entreated his lord to bear upon him.

How many years it had been since he had last felt the dreaded pulse of it, he could not say.

Sesshoumaru’s long abstinence had fostered a certain complacency within him. So much so that Hirokin did not even properly register, at first, the distant knell of alarm that resounded in his ears.

There was never an end to the matters that required his attention, but at this, Hirokin found himself arrested. He dismissed Sesshoumaru’s generals with a wave; the scribes and servants with a glance. He abandoned all thought of the demoness who lay in wait for him, in his chambers.

Summoning his dragon Ohana to him, he departed the Western Palace in grim expectation.

But nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes, as he dismounted at the edge of that white-flowered clearing and beheld Sesshoumaru and his victim lying together, amidst the smoke and blackened earth.

---

“It was after Inuyasha’s death that I began to see…certain troubling signs in her behavior.”

---

Hirokin was grateful he had brought his coral staff with him. Heavily, he leaned upon it, as he surveyed them together, still intertwined—Sesshoumaru’s flesh charred down to the bone in many places, the sinews of his jaw visible as he gnashed his fangs. Still knotted within her, he crushed his palms to her shoulders, poured his youki into her so violently that Hirokin could feel the sear of it from where he stood.

It hit him like a whiplash, goading his stunned mind to process the shock of what he saw—Sesshoumaru burned almost to a cinder, and a mortal woman, trapped beneath him. Her back was ripped open, her blood seeped into the earth—yet she was still alive.

Alive—

Hirokin did not want to believe it. She was wooden, unconscious, but from her parted lips there came one reedy breath after another. And upon her neck was a mark unmistakable—

The mating mark of Sesshoumaru’s own piercing fangs.

Instinctively, Hirokin knew it—virulent and green, pinpoints of youki that seared into his eyes. He was repulsed by it. He did not want to see it, this infernal constellation. He had never thought to see it—least of all upon some human wench. Who was she?—what was she?

How dare she.

These were the thoughts that boiled in his mind as he approached and knelt before them both. Sesshoumaru’s eyes were feral and coppery still, yet he seemed to recognize Hirokin, as he always did, even in the grips of his madness.

“Kagome,” Sesshoumaru bit out, his seething stare returning to the woman below him. “Kagome…”

Hirokin grit his teeth. He did not want to know her name. This was a mistake—an aberration. In a flash of horror he saw the empire he had built going up in flames. He saw Touga and his brother Hiraitou both, laughing at him from beyond the grave—and this Hirokin could not bear. He placed his own hands to the woman’s temples, felt Sesshoumaru’s power streaming through her broken body, like water through a sieve.

It was hopeless, this mad effort to mend her. She was bound for death, or so Hirokin told himself, as he stilled the trickling flow of blood to her heart, and put a merciful end to her suffering.

---

“I cannot but wonder if the pain of her loss has unearthed traumas past.”

---

Sesshoumaru was too frenzied to notice that her heart had stopped beating. Yet the moment that she died, he went utterly still.

It was the deadliest calm Hirokin had ever known.

In hindsight, he should have anticipated what would happen next. Even his shallow father had fallen into a deep depression, in the wake of his mother’s passing.

Little had ever affected Sesshoumaru. He was not an emotional creature, by any means.

Yet what he felt, he felt to the depths of his soul.

Numbly, Hirokin watched as Sesshoumaru withdrew from her lifeless body. As though in disbelief, he turned her over, roved his reddened eyes over her pale face, her lips that no longer drew breath.

He reeled back from her slightly. His claws, grimed and lengthened, scored into his face, his features contorted in an expression of savage despair.

The howl of anguish that roared from him would forever haunt Hirokin’s dreams.

---

Golden eyes glance off, into some unfathomable distance. “The severance of a mating bond is terrible to endure.”

---

Hirokin would never fully understand what prompted him to do it. Perhaps it was guilt, or even pity. Perhaps it was simply some intuition that made him snatch the woman to him, as Sesshoumaru’s youki flared out in a maelstrom of mournful rage.

It blasted Hirokin back in its wrath. Clutching Kagome’s body to his chest, it was all he could do to keep them both from disintegrating in the face of it.

Yet through the azure haze of his barrier, Hirokin could see that it was not so much an attack as an attempt at self-destruction: Sesshoumaru had released his vast power, only to bring it down upon himself.

He was trying to kill himself, Hirokin realized, as his blood ran cold.

His own terrible selfishness assailed him. He had been more concerned about protecting Sesshoumaru’s legacy than Sesshoumaru himself. But now…now to see him trying to destroy himself in his grief, Hirokin was devastated. He loved Sesshoumaru, worshipped Sesshoumaru; he could not lose him. Hirokin could not even bear the thought. What would his life be worth—what had it ever been worth—without Sesshoumaru in it?

Hirokin would do anything to reverse this. Anything.

And then he saw it—illuminated on the outskirts of the clearing, within a shimmering protective nimbus of its own.

Hirokin looked between the sword and Sesshoumaru. Between Sesshoumaru and the woman.

Jealousy, vicious outrage, surged in his chest. “…Gods fucking damn it.”

---

“Terrible…even for a demon such as myself.”

---

Somehow he made his way to the blade with Kagome in hand, rested for a moment under its aura of protection. Wresting it up, he staggered toward Sesshoumaru, and with the last tidal burst of his own power, jolted his lord out of the dark, blazing mire of his grief.

“The sword,” Hirokin gasped, throwing both it and Kagome down at Sesshoumaru’s feet. “…Use the sword on her, you fucking fool.”

Sesshoumaru’s eyes sharpened, clearing as he took Tenseiga up in hand. Rising haltingly on his mutilated legs, he swung the blade over her unmoving form. After a moment, she stirred. A pink haze colored her cheeks as her breath returned. Yet she was still very weak, only barely alive, though her torn flesh was knitting back together, and blood was pumping through her veins.

Immediately, Hirokin snatched her up again. Despite his weakness, Sesshoumaru’s look was so hostile it drew Hirokin short.

“Give her to me,” Sesshoumaru said lowly, casting Tenseiga aside.

But Hirokin merely frowned, the manic glint in Sesshoumaru’s eyes placing him on edge. “You should leave her be.”

“Let me see her, damn you.”

Hirokin relented, kneeling down to place Kagome between them. Sesshoumaru’s gaze fastened at once upon the base of her neck, which now was strikingly bare.

“My mark…where is it,” Sesshoumaru growled, reaching for her.

Warily, Hirokin gathered her to him; had Sesshoumaru not been so drained, he would never have dared. “She died,” he said flatly. “You have no claim on her any longer.”

---

“Allowances must be made for the bereaved.”

---

Sesshoumaru’s claws were at Hirokin’s throat. He winced, but there was little force behind them.

“Do not take her from me,” Sesshoumaru said, the scorched horror of his face making Hirokin’s stomach turn.

“Do you want what’s best for her,” he countered briskly, “or do you want her to suffer all over again?”

If it were possible, Sesshoumaru’s expression became more tortured still.

“Tell me where you found her,” Hirokin persisted.

As though each word pained him, Sesshoumaru told him, and at once Hirokin departed for that river he knew by every current and swell, by every bend and ford. The woman was reviving, and now Hirokin could feel what she was—a miko, and not any ordinary sort. He supposed he should have known.

To have attracted Sesshoumaru’s attention, she must have been something special. Now to feel that holy power which even unconscious seared at his flesh, Hirokin was alarmed.

Distantly, he could hear other humans calling out her name. They were searching for her, this strange priestess. And they themselves were not ordinary mortals.

Holding her to him by the shore, upon which he could now see her belongings scattered, he made his decision. To erase the physical evidence was simple enough—a scouring wave which dispersed Sesshoumaru’s scent and signature into nothing. But it was the imprint upon her mind which troubled him most.

Would she seek revenge upon Sesshoumaru?

Peering into her memories, he discovered her mind was unlike any he had previously traversed; it was a riot of not only her own memories, but those of others. Delving deeper, and deeper still, Hirokin arrived at last at the vision of a creature, born of holy flame—

What was she?—he found himself asking again, horrified at the fire that seemed to scorch him from within. He withdrew, and now at the surface of her waking thoughts, he found that thread of betrayal, of hurt, which he sought.

It was a frayed and fragmented thing. Her patterns of thought were strange to him, and to alter them, he sensed he might damage her mind irrevocably, yet what he could he do, but to purge all thought of her encounter with Sesshoumaru from her.

This he did, and when he was satisfied that he’d gleaned away the last of these dangerous recollections, he released her, to drift face-down in the current, where her companions would surely find her soon, and invent their own tales of her drowning, ravaged state.

Or so Hirokin surmised, as a female taijiya crashed through the trees, aghast at the sight.

---

“It is impossible to predict how their suffering will manifest.”

---

Hirokin returned to the meadow.

The barrier he had cast around Sesshoumaru had served its purpose to keep him contained and concealed. Ohana herself attested to such, from her place of watchfulness at the edge of the clearing.

Patting her snout wearily, Hirokin led her forward. In Kagome’s absence, Sesshoumaru had begun to heal himself. Head hung low, he knelt amidst the melted, cloying remains of his marriage bed, his flesh lightened and mostly reformed.

Cautiously, Hirokin approached. Sesshoumaru’s golden eyes raised dimly to him.

“Is she safe?” he asked.

“She is,” Hirokin replied.

Sesshoumaru’s mouth twisted. As Hirokin knelt down and wrapped his arm around him to lift him up, his only thought was to get Sesshoumaru somewhere safe, somewhere secret, where he could recover and return to himself.

Sesshoumaru rose obediently enough. Yet when his eyes met Hirokin’s again they were so fiercely possessive that for a moment he was frozen by the sight.

“She was too young,” Sesshoumaru said quietly. “I killed her because I took her too soon, that was my mistake.”

Hirokin stared back at him. What could he say, that would not get him killed? What could he do, except let Sesshoumaru believe it?

“She died, Sesshoumaru,” he said uneasily. “Just like all the others.”

“No,” Sesshoumaru said, and the fervor in his tone filled Hirokin with remembered fear. “She was different.”

Hirokin’s eyes widened in dread, even as his vision tunneled, while Sesshoumaru smiled, dark and foreboding.

“She was mine.”

---

“The shadow of it lingers, always.”

---

To be continued…

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Series Navigation

<< Control Side-Stories: That Night, Part ThreeControl Side-Stories: That Night, Part Five >>