InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Tsubaki's Revenge ❯ Priestesses Awake ( Chapter 11 )

Disclaimer: This story is based on "Inuyasha," copyrighted by Rumiko Takahashi. No infringement of copyright intended or implied.

 

 

Tsubaki's Revenge, Part XI: Priestesses Awake

 

Tsubaki sat straight up, sweating and panting, the cover falling down about her waist. Hand shaking, she touched her lips, feeling her heart pounding, feeling her entire body aroused by her dream. Damn that hanyo! How could he do this to her! He was not a handsome, powerful daimyo that had been her imagined lover, back in those days when she'd been a naive child believing her nurse's stories. He was an abomination; an ugly, disgusting display of his mother's utter, complete lack of self-respect. A woman should kill herself before birthing a monster like that, even as she should kill herself before bearing a rapist's child. The mere sight of those ears, those eyes should have filled her with revulsion.

 

Yet they hadn't, and didn't. Her very mind had turned against her, dreaming, conjuring him in his human form, wooing her, and when she had turned him down, transforming him into his silver-haired, golden-eyed hanyo self, blazing with power and beauty. She had flung herself on him, begging him to take her, wanting nothing but those hands, those lips, every magnificent piece of him to claim her and take her—

 

And in the dream, he had laughed. His golden eyes became mirrors, and she beheld herself—

 

A wrinkled, hideous, half-bald hag.

 

Tsubaki touched the smooth skin of her face, before running her fingers down the long, loose braid of hair. She was not a hag! Not now, not ever! She would be young forever, beautiful forever, unlike her mother, withering from illness and one miscarriage after another, dying in a final abortive attempt to birth the son that was all—and everything—her husband had wanted her for.

 

Tsubaki clenched her hands. She didn't want to think about her mother. Or her father. Or her childhood. None of that mattered. All that mattered was the power she had and might obtain. The power to do as she pleased. The power to remain young and beautiful—and untouchable by the grubby hands and stinking bodies of men who could never possibly understand her, or be worthy of her.

 

Knowing that she was not going to get back to sleep in her current frame of mind, Tsubaki got up, wrapping a heavier robe about her lightweight sleeping garment. She called a small spell-light into existence to light her path as she slid back the door separating her sleeping room from her workroom. Lighting a small brazier, she set a pot of water over it to heat.

 

“Mistress?” Kuroshin peeked through the other interior door. Looking around, Tsubaki gave him a frown.

 

“What is it, Kuroshin?” she asked. “The hanyo?”

 

“The hanyo sleeps deeply, mistress,” he assured her. “I gave him a second cup of tea when he seemed restless, and scratched his ears as you did. He seemed to be having a good dream awhile ago; he was smiling.”

 

“How nice for him,” said Tsubaki sourly, wishing she hadn't forgotten that Kuroshin, unless specifically instructed, tended to be a mimic. “But that does not seem worth my attention at this early hour.”

 

“Ah, no.” Kuroshin bowed. “This one begs forgiveness, Lady Tsubaki, for speaking of unimportant matters. This one does have a concern—it has sensed that the hanyo's aura has changed. It wonders if the mistress should not look upon the hanyo in person.”

 

“Changed?” Tsubaki rocked onto her toes and stood up. “Changed how?”

 

“It seems … stronger, mistress.”

 

“It is recovering from a nearly-fatal injury,” she noted, walking towards the door.

 

“This is true, mistress.”

 

But the very fact that he did not admit an error warned Tsubaki. Nevertheless, as she stepped across the threshold into the other room, she stiffened. Even without looking at the sleeping hanyo, his youkai energy was palpable.

 

Astonished, she stared at him, letting her eyes slide out of focus as she concentrated on the plane of energy and magic. Youki—the energy of youkai blood—glittered about the limp body that was curled up on its side. She no longer wondered how a mere hanyo youth could have taken on even one ogre and won, let alone two. His youki-enhanced strength would defeat many, if not most, youkai.

 

His human aura was stronger as well. In fact, the two parts of his aura were intricately interwoven, making it almost impossible to tell the two apart unless one `looked' closely or was very sensitive. The interwoven nature of the auras was something she had tried, and so far, failed miserably at, in trying to blend her own human-based spiritual powers and the borrowed youkai power. Human and youkai energies did not really blend, she had discovered.

 

Except that they did. In this hanyo. That she had not noticed it before must have been due to his human night, when his youkai blood left him, or to his injury-weakened state, or both.

 

She dug her nails into her palms against a surge of envy. This was what she wanted, this blend of youkai and human, this balance between powers. She willed herself into a light trance, concentrating on studying every detail of the mingled aura, to figure out how it formed, what controlled the merged energies.

 

She failed. The auras were merged at the very lowest level of his being, far beyond her ability to scan. Nothing she sensed told her how she might replicate such joining. It seemed that one had to be born hanyo.

 

But there was one oddity, she noticed, as she started to pull out of the trance. There was a balance between youkai and human, and yet—there was not. The youkai energy felt as if it were set to flame higher, to be more powerful than the human blood it mingled with and supported. Yet it felt constrained, somehow. Limited.

 

Limited. Opening her eyes, Tsubaki studied the sleeping hanyo by the light of her spell. The hanyo was sniffing and growling a little, until Kuroshin knelt by it and began stroking its ears. It sighed and relaxed, ears drooping. She let her lips twist briefly, annoyed and amused both by the indication that the ear-scratching must have unintentionally have become the keystone connecting her spell and the youkai tea. Looking closer, she noticed that the short hair on top of his head was visibly longer than the night before, and that his ears looked somewhat less ragged. His youkai blood was speeding his healing, no doubt.

 

She sighed, suddenly tired. “Thank-you for warning me of this, Kuroshin,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Please try to keep the hanyo asleep as long as possible—he will be more difficult to subdue than I thought, with this strength. I need to rethink my plans a bit—and get more sleep myself, if I can.”

 

He half-bowed from his seated location. “This one will do his best, Lady Tsubaki. There are several cups of the tea left, and it is still steeping. And the hanyo is quieter when I stroke its ears.”

 

At least the shikigami did not need sleep like she and the hanyo did. “Do what you must, Kuroshin. If you can keep it under until mid-day, at least, I may be ready.”

 

“I wait your word, my lady.”

 

She smiled politely at him, nodded, and left the room.

 

And hoped that he would not have to wait too long.

 

* * * * *

 

Kikyo had trained herself to awaken quickly. But this morning, her thoughts and body were sluggish. When she finally managed to force her bleary eyes open, she saw to her dismay that the sun was already well up over the horizon. The horse whickered as she sat up, and walked towards her as much as the lead rope would allow. Throwing her blanket back, Kikyo scrambled to her feet and went to the mare.

 

“I'm sorry,” she murmured, giving its chin a gentle scratch. “You must be thirsty.” Untying the rope, she made her way to the stream she used the night before. The mare pulled against her halter eagerly, plunging her nose into the water as soon as they reached the bank. Moving a bit upstream of the mare, Kikyo splashed her face, then cupped her hands and drank as well.

 

Returning to her camp, Kikyo retied the mare at a different location, before examining the camp with her inner senses. There was nothing to suggest a sleeping spell, or any other power, other than the faint aura around the bag that contained the strip of cloth she was using for her locator spell—and an even fainter aura around the bag containing Inuyasha's clothing.

 

Which she had used for a pillow.

 

Frowning, Kikyo unburied her pot of rice she'd left to cook overnight, and rekindled the fire from the banked embers. Going back to the stream to fill her teapot and refill her waterbags, she set that pot above the flame. Folding the rumpled blanket, she restrung her bow, and then seated herself, pulling the bag to her. Unfastening the leather bag, she touched the fire-rat material, but did not attempt to remove it.

 

The sense of youki was partly that of fire-rat, and partly Inuyasha. Was this the source of her sleepiness, she wondered? Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the feeling of the material under her fingers, and on Inuyasha. How was he? What was he feeling?

 

Her eyes began to ache with tiredness, and her head tilted forward. She yanked her hand away from the robes, and the sensation vanished. Inuyasha was still asleep? Kikyo glanced at the sun. She couldn't imagine the hanyo being asleep after sunrise, under normal conditions.

 

Which, of course, this wasn't. Narrowing her eyes in thought, Kikyo considered matters, then touched a single finger to the material. Carefully, she let her awareness wrap around the fire-rat robe, asking the question; was Inuyasha's sleep normal, or was he being kept under?

 

Something that sounded like Inuyasha's growl of frustration, very faint, seemed to come to her. It rose in intensity, and then fell silent, subdued, dragged down against its will. Something tickled, and a sour taste came to her mouth.

 

So. Drugged and bespelled both, Kikyo decided. Is Inuyasha in pain?

 

She received nothing but the faint susurration of sleep-numbed frustration. Opening her eyes, Kikyo fastened the bag, thoughtful. Knowing that Inuyasha was alive and apparently unharmed was a relief—assuming it was not an illusion Tsubaki was somehow creating. She doubted that—Tsubaki had never, to her knowledge, met Inuyasha before she had kidnapped him. Even if she had known about Inuyasha's normal clothing, how could she have known that Kikyo would have them with her?

 

No, she decided. This tie between her and Inuyasha was real. The question was, could she find a way to use this tie? Was there some way that she could use the link to communicate with him? To give him assurance and hope, at the least, and at best, be able to work together to defeat the dark priestess? If he were able to distract Tsubaki at the right moment, she might have a much better chance of defeating the dark priestess.

 

Kikyo set the bag aside. She turned her attention to the fire, and her thoughts were busy.