“Let her go!” Kagome demanded fiercely. “She’s just a little girl—she has nothing to do with this!”

“Oh, but where’s the fun in that?” Naraku’s incarnation laughed, digging his heels into the flanks of his fiery steed. “If you want her, miko, why don’t you come and get her!”

With that, he sped off, Kagome chasing after him as he galloped up the mountainside. Throwing her longbow over her shoulder, she half-ran, half-climbed up the steepening slope. Chips of slate rained down from the paths of her boots and fingers as she fought increasingly for purchase, her breath trailing after her in the thin air like a wisp of chimney smoke.

When she stumbled at last onto the summit of another plateau, Hakudoushi sat waiting for her as if bored, Rin now thrashing from the crook of his arm. Beneath him, his youkai mount pawed restlessly at the flinty earth, steam fuming from its flared nostrils as its blazing hooves gouged the solid stone.

“It’s about time,” he said, spinning his naginata above his head like a windmill blade. “I’d forgotten how slow you humans can be.”

The fire horse reared as Hakudoushi charged toward her, Kagome fumbling for her bow. At the last moment, she slammed the lower limb into the ground, her reiki channeling outward in a dome and deflecting the blazing edge of his demon spear.

“Not bad,” her enemy chuckled as he wheeled around to face her. “That bow you’re using…could it be Kikyou’s?”

Kagome’s jaw clenched. Holding her shield intact, she readied her weapon.

“Not anymore,” she answered, releasing the bowstring with an electric snap.

Her arrow streaked outward, shattering against a barrier that rose up around Hakudoushi and his steed. The crimson bubble warped, shimmering, as it absorbed her attack.

“Fair enough,” Hakudoushi said, adjusting his grip on his naginata as the horse youkai lowered its fiery-maned head in challenge. “Let’s see if it serves you better than she.”

Stringing another arrow, Kagome braced herself as he raced toward her with weapon outstretched.

Focus, she told herself over the mad pounding of her heart. It’s do or die!

At the last second, she dropped her barrier and channeled her undivided power into her fingertips. The arrow shot from her hand like a solar flare, smashing into Hakoudoushi’s youki shield. The sphere around him burst in a shimmer of reddish-white light, and he veered to the side as Kagome followed through with a second arrow blast—almost quite literally wiping the smirk off his arrogant face.

“Hm,” Hakudoushi said from the air high above her, his purple eyes no longer glimmering with amusement.

As he raised his hand to his singed jawline, Rin turned abruptly in his grasp, sinking her tiny white teeth hard into his wrist. He cast her from him with a hiss of pain, Kagome watching in slow motion as the little girl plummeted toward the earth below.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi