Kagome blanched. “What?” Recovering, she advanced hotly upon him. “Kill you, Sesshoumaru?—really?” She ground her teeth in irritation. “Don’t say such careless things!” In the hard set of his features, there was only resignation. “You will not check me, and I cannot. I am weary of it, this senseless violence.” After a slight pause, he

Kagome’s arrow cut a brilliant, rosy swathe through the darkness. Streaking toward the rutting pair, it flared almost white as it struck the ground near Sesshoumaru’s left knee. With a deafening roar, the daiyoukai reeled from the blast, the bloodied girl breaking away from him with a frightened scream. As Kagome rushed into the clearing,

With a start, Kagome found herself standing on familiar ground. Her fist clenched around the neck of her haori as visions of the night she’d stumbled across Sesshoumaru and Mayuri assaulted her consciousness once more. Here now, in stark, vivid relief was the girl—prostrate and naked, gasping and moaning and hanging on for dear life