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Blood is the New Black	By : QueenoftheDream Category: InuYasha > Het - Male/Female > Sessh?maru/Kagome > Sessh?maru/Kagome Views: 5749 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, nor the characters from it. I made no money in writing this fiction.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
When Kagome arrived back at her apartment, the building seemed quiet. It was almost a little too quiet. The hallway light buzzed lowly as she slid the key into the lock on her front door. She walked into the apartment, which was cloaked in utter darkness. The hairs on her arms rose, and she knew that her eyes were wide as saucers, searching in vain for whatever was giving her the sudden unease. The hard plastic stump of the light switch met her fingers and with a quick flick upward, her living room was flooded with dull yellow light. Everything was exactly where she had left it, everything in its own niche in the organized chaos that was her home. Basically, all was in its normal place, excepting Sesshomaru, who was still apparently still holed up in his own apartment.
Despite her home being exactly as she left it, Kagome couldn’t shake the feeling of apprehension curling in her gut. She crept from room to room, trying to sneak as quietly as possible over the remaining debris of what was once her bathroom door. Really, she had to get Sesshomaru over to clean up his mess some time. It was nearly dawn, and her bones ached. It felt like her body was dragging. With a heavy sigh, Kagome collected her laptop and headed into the dark bedroom to check her email before sleep.
The computer booted up as she slipped into an old tank top and sweat pants. Bright blue light from the start screen splashed across her pillows and bedroom wall, and she nearly sighed in relief as her tired body sank onto the mattress. A few clicks and taps of her fingers on the keyboard later, and her email dinged. Seven new messages sat in her inbox, five of which were clearly spam.
Her eyes went wide at the email at the top of the list. It wasn’t from Kikyou, as Kagome expected, but instead was from Janice Marten. Janice was one of the staff in the department Kagome worked in at the university. Shit. Well, it was to be expected. After all, Kagome hadn’t shown up to work in what felt like an eternity, and her death was never made a public affair. For all that her friends, family, and associates of her former life knew, she was either missing or skipping town.
“Kagome,
I am not your boss of course, but on behalf of all the staff here in the department, where the heck are you???? You haven’t shown up in over a week! No calls, no emails, nothing! I say this as your friend and fellow T.A., but you need to get back in here or else you’ll be out of a job. Dr. Loames is already complaining, and everyone else in the department is trying to delay the inevitable, but something’s got to give here.
I don’t know if you’ve run into family trouble or are in the hospital, but if you get this email, please call me, hon.
-Jan”
Kagome groaned. She wasn’t sure of the exact protocol in such a situation, so she’d have to ask Sesshomaru in the evening when she woke up. Just as she moused over to the red X in the corner, her eye caught the unopened email her brother Souta had sent a few days previously. She felt her body tense up, and if her heart was still beating, it would be pounding and leaping out of her chest.
As much as she was burning to know what he had written in the email, Kagome couldn’t bring herself to open the message. The nerves rattled and raced inside of her, and she was ashamed that her fear was brought on by a simple email. She slammed the laptop closed and lowered it to the floor, determined to ignore the curiously timed message from her little brother.
The edges of her mind tickled as she awoke from her slumber in the evening. From behind her eyelids, she could see faint light coming from the living room. Well, either some dumbass broke in or Sesshomaru decided to be social again. Her face contorted into a disgusted grimace when she pulled her face away from the sheet. She had drooled in her sleep; it was bloody drool, no less. With bleary eyes, she trudged out of the bedroom and saw the back of Sesshomaru’s head, as he was sitting in his customary plastic dining chair. She quickly wiped away any of the dried drool and sat across from him. Her eyebrows shot upward when she saw that he was practically livid. The laptop was sitting in front of him, open to her email page.
“I took you to Charlie’s,” Sesshomaru lowly growled. “You talked to Kikyou. I told you.” His lips were pressed into a thin line, and in the dim light, his eyes seemed to flicker with golden rage.
“I don’t-“
He held up a hand, cutting Kagome off. “Emails. Brother, coworker, girlfriend. You didn’t think I would find out? Are you completely insane or did you just stroke out and lose the capacity for rational thought for a while?”
Kagome recoiled as his stinging words fell upon her like acid rain. “I didn’t respond to them,” she pointed out. The anger was rolling off of him in waves and she fought back the instinct to flee.
“Not yet,” he seethed as he stood, running his fingers through his hair. She could tell he was trying his hardest not to yell. After he took a deep breath and visibly forced his shoulders to relax, he continued. “You can’t do this. As much as I hate it, you’ll have to call Kikyou on this one. Being in hiding really limits the strings I can pull for you. Ask her to contact your work and your little friend here and inform them of your death.” Kagome nodded, toeing at her carpet aimlessly.
Sesshomaru snapped his fingers in her face. “You’re not listening to me! You can’t have any contact with your old life. I know it must be hard, but you just can’t. We’ll have to break into our building manager’s computer and change the name this apartment is registered under. I know someone who can get you a new social security number. It just needs a name.”
Kagome nodded, staring at her bare toe burrowing into the dirty carpet.
Sesshomaru cleared his voice, and she jumped. “A name? Sometime today would be nice,” he enunciated as if he was speaking to a very small, very stupid child.
Oh, he meant now. Kagome’s eyes flitted around as she racked her brain for an alias. Her eyes landed upon the hideous green coffee mug she’d made in the ninth grade sitting upon the counter. “Midori…” She saw the small framed photo of her and Souta in the Sagano Bamboo Forest just before she left for America. “Midori… Midoriko Kobayashi.” With an unsure grimace, she glanced up at her sire, who wore an expression of careful consideration.
“That works. I’ll put in a call, and we’ll head downstairs to the computer.”
“A call?” Kagome questioned as she followed Sesshomaru out her front door with quiet footsteps. “I thought you were underground.”
He gave a dark chuckle. “This guy owes me a favor- many favors actually. Gergo is a… well, he’s a special sort of man.” Kagome said nothing, so he continued as they crept down the stairway, listening for any late-night wandering neighbors. “Gergo is of one of the last Cappadocian sects, known as the Harbingers of Skulls. Yes, Harbingers of Skulls, sounds entirely too melodramatic, I know. Cappadocians, you see, have been gone for ages; you can say they were exterminated. Well, Gergo showed up a while back running from his old allies in the Sabbat.”
“You’re friends… with a Sabbat crazy person?” Kagome questioned, and she was sure her expression was a strange mix of horror and curiosity.
Sesshomaru reached the door marked “Staff Only” and put his ear against the cheap wood. “No, not friends,” he whispered, “but more like two creatures in pursuit of a common goal, each with a weapon of assured destruction against the other. Like a Cold War minus the nukes and president fucking actresses left and right.”
He apparently heard nothing coming from within the staff room and jiggled the door handle experimentally. As per building policy, the door was locked, so he pulled out a small janky lock pick that looked like it had been made out of a taped up umbrella rib. After poking, prodding, and a little fiddling with the lock, the door popped open to reveal the building manager’s computer. Sesshomaru toed the door open and extended his arm in a flourish. “Ladies first.”
Kagome rolled her eyes and stepped into what amounted to a very large broom closet with a moldy coffee maker and a nearly archaic computer perched upon a plywood table that looked rotten and rickety at best. The bare lightbulb above their heads flickered and buzzed, and Kagome couldn’t help but wonder if the blips of light were Morse code for ‘get the fuck out of here.’
He motioned to the computer, and Kagome shook her head. Sesshomaru sighed and muttered to himself as he sat down at the aged chair in front of the makeshift desk. “Doesn’t even know how to hack into the front page of a computer. Thought kids these days were supposed to be good at this shit.” Kagome resisted the urge to slap him upside the head but decided against it for the very real fear of pulling back a hand minus five fingers.
Within a few minutes, Sesshomaru hacked in and scrolling through the apartment records. A couple clicks and taps later, Kagome Higurashi ceased to exist in the system, and a Midoriko Kobayashi was listed as living in 4A. Kagome chewed her lip as he shut the computer down before ushering her out the door. He expertly relocked the door and they returned upstairs to Kagome’s apartment.
As per the usual, Sesshomaru sat in what was basically his chair now. “You’ll need to contact Kikyou and see what strings she can pull about getting your name changed on your mail and notifying everybody of your sudden ‘death.’” He picked a piece of dirt out from under one fingernail with nonchalant ease.
Kagome nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell began ringing in her pocket. “Unknown number,” she murmured, staring at the scratched screen. Looking up, she saw Sesshomaru shrug. She swept her finger across the plastic, connecting the call.
“…Hello?” she cautiously asked.
“Neonate,” Kikyou’s cool voice flowed through the phone. Kagome sagged in relief and mouthed silently to Sesshomaru that it was in fact the Prince calling her. His eyebrows lifted in approval, and he took to working one of her old pens through the crevices on the sole of his boot. She had no doubt he was focused on eavesdropping on everything Kikyou said.
“Hi, Kikyou-uh-Prince-uh-“
“Prince will do,” Kikyou drawled, though Kagome thought she could hear a smile creep into the elder’s voice. “I’ve a job for you. I’ll send you a cab, and you’ll go down to the Barrio Logan. There have been reports of bodies left along Chollas Creek and singing in the night. You will investigate and eliminate any rogue Kindred that you find. Is this clear?”
The swiftness with which Kikyou delivered her orders almost made Kagome’s head spin. “Er, yes, ma’am. Though I do have one quick question before I go-“
“Can you go tonight?”
“Yes, I-“
“Then I will send the taxi now. Any unrelated issues will be dealt with after you’ve completed your mission. As with your last job, you will meet me at the Grant Hotel to receive your payment upon completion.” She said no more before hanging up, leaving Kagome exasperated.
“Barrio Logan, huh?” Sesshomaru questioned as Kagome tossed her phone onto the dining table and rushed to pull on her tennis shoes. “Not a great neighborhood. I’ve heard about the singing around there myself. Some little birdies told me that it was a group of Sirens that’s been gobbling up people and leaving messes for the Camarilla to clean up.”
“Sirens?” Kagome asked irritably, brushing away invisible lint from her jeans.
“They call themselves ‘Daughters of Cacophony’ or some other over-the-top shit like that. Creatures similar to Kindred that have the same effect as mythical sirens. Using their voices to lure in victims before devouring them, that sort of thing. Very rare little birdies, so it’s no wonder the Prince wants to be rid of them. They only seem to feed on people with musical talent.”
“Fantastic,” she sighed. Sesshomaru tutted at her.
“Now, now. You don’t seem like you’re a prima donna, so you should be safe from their evil clutches,” he mocked with a smug smile. “All you have to do is find their haven and smoke them out.” Kagome scoffed and stood to open the door, but he caught her arm and pressed the small handgun into her palm. “Wear my jacket and keep the gun in the inside pocket. Check the surrounding area. I believe there’s a cemetery a couple miles away from the mouth of the creek.” His voice took on a serious tone, and Kagome raised her eyes to observe his enigmatic change in manner as he shrugged out of the black leather bomber jacket. She murmured a quick thanks before slipping into the heavy jacket and stepping out the door.
Just as she expected, the cab driven by the quiet guy in the dark glasses was idling in the parking lot. “Hey, Mr. Sunglasses. Kikyou’s shipping me off to-“
“I know,” was all that he said as he put the car in drive. Mr. Sunglasses, as she had taken to calling him in lieu of his unknown name, wasn’t much for conversation, so Kagome cast her eye around awkwardly. In doing so, she saw that the meter at the front of the cab wasn’t running. Apparently either Kikyou pre-paid, or he was in her employ. Either way, Kagome was grateful for the opportunity to save some precious cash.
She cracked her window to get some fresh air, and she was glad of the jacked Sesshomaru had loaned to her. The wind whistled through the small space as they flew down the freeway, and Kagome could feel the coolness of the air seeping into her flesh. She could no longer feel the distinct discomfort from the cold as living humans did. However, it did cool her skin, and she didn’t like the way that it made her feel like a corpse. She technically was one of course, but all the same she preferred to stay as warm as she could.
The taxi pulled up alongside a gas station just before they reached Harbor Drive in Barrio Logan. Chollas Creek ran just a few yards away from the bend in the road. Kagome got out and thanked the driver, and she watched as he drove away into the cool night. She carefully hopped the fence around the parking lot and picked her way down the short embankment of the narrow creek. The echoes of San Diego Bay’s waves hummed from a few blocks to the west. She perched herself on a large chunk of broken cement laying by the edge of the shallow water and surveyed the surroundings.
Immediately Kagome could tell that bodies had been dumped there. While there were no fresh corpses to speak of, there was a faint lingering smell of rancid, rotting flesh that blanketed the area. Honestly, it wasn’t even that good of a place to ditch a body. The creek was shallow and within view of several parking lots and businesses, and the water wasn’t swift enough to carry a corpse all the way out to the bay. Whoever was leaving dead people was being careless.
She was crouched down with the tips of her fingers dipped in the dirty water when she heard a faint lyrical note ring out in the night. Her eyes went wide. She strained her ears to try and tune out the crickets and cars speeding down the streets, and she heard it again. It was so quiet that it was nearly inaudible, but it was definitely there: a chorus of a few feminine voices. Sirens. Right. Kagome shot to her feet and plodded noisily across the creek to the other side before scrambling up the bank and vaulting over a small metal barricade into a large parking lot.
The parking lot was illuminated with bright street lamps, so Kagome skirted the building. As soon as she reached the other side, she saw that there was yet another, much larger, set of parking lots to get across. She sprinted in between cars, ducking each time a car drove past. The voices were still quiet, but they seemed to call out to her. If she was being entirely honest with herself, she hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going. She just followed what the street sign designated to be Bay Avenue and hoped for the best.
One of the benefits of becoming undead, she found, was that she didn’t really tire of running, which meant that she could cover much more ground in a shorter period of time. She had no working lungs to speak of, so she wasn’t out of breath. Her calves were tight and ached slightly, but as long as she took her time slinking in the shadows of the endless sea of parking lots, pain could easily be avoided.
As she drew nearer to the freeway, the singing became somewhat louder, and they seemed to echo quietly in the cavernous space underneath the tangled snarl of streets and highways crisscrossing over each other. The hairs on her arms stood on end when she came out into what seemed like an old fair ground or modern art installation. It was dead quiet, and Kagome crept between the roads’ support beams into the dimly lit space. There was a small colorful pavilion with two young men smoking, but apart from him, the place was desolately empty.
Something about the place seemed terribly strange to Kagome. The art on the pillars was bright and flamboyant, which tripled her unease. She focused on getting out of the strange park and heading toward the voices. Just before she exited the area, she caught an intoxicating scent that stopped her in her tracks.
There was a small wet patch in on the ground before her, and the blades of grass were slicked with metallic blood. It took everything in her power not to get down on all fours and lick the ground like a beast, and she moved on, heading northeast as her gut flipped and flopped inside her.
Kagome crossed several small streets as the enchanting voices grew louder and louder. The sound was ringing in her ears by the time she stopped in front of a building with an old sign saying “Technomania Circus.” Her senses were on high alert, and every instinct she had was screaming to run as far away as possible. A large, dry palm tree a few yards off rustled in the wind, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
She carefully climbed over the black wrought iron fence into a little yard behind the building where a small stage stood between a few scrubby trees. The singing was almost painfully sharp in her head. With as much care as she could manage, she crept alongside the building. Just before she reached the edge of the stage, the voices stopped abruptly. She stopped, pressing her back against the adobe finish of the building. A heavy scraping noise sounded from the other side, and Kagome swore she heard a little giggle before the bushes on the other side of the yard shook and rustled.
If her heart was still alive, it would be hammering in her chest. Her limbs itched to run, and every neuron in her brain screeched that the whole thing was a bad idea. She, however, inched her way along the building, stopping behind the stage to listen for any sign of company. Her only answer was the rustling of the lone palm tree in the front of the building. Her hands trembled as she reached into the inside pocket of Sesshomaru’s jacket to palm the small handgun. With shuffling steps, she made her way to the other side of the stage.
There was no vampire there, much to her unabashed relief. There was, on the other hand, a body recently deceased. She looked like she’d been dead for around a couple of hours. The scene around the corpse, however, was what both made Kagome’s mouth water and her stomach churn uneasily. The sidewalk and the right outside wall of the stage were splashed with dark red. The short, stunted grass was glistening with blood. The body itself was a mangled jumble of round fang marks and what looked like small razor cuts crisscrossing across the pale mocha skin. The crickets and cicadas chirped as the young woman in twisted repose began her slow journey on the road to decomposition.
Kagome could feel her anxiety building and ebbing as she considered her options. She had followed the voices and they’d led her here, but they’d disappeared before any contact had been made. On the other hand, she was immensely glad that whatever had killed this girl had left. Anything that could complete this level of torture with such utter precision was surely beyond her skills. Her hand retracted out of the coat pocket and was reaching for her phone when she saw a small smear on the sidewalk a few feet ahead of the body.
It was an arrow painted in half-congealed blood. Her eyes widened, and she was horrified to realize that the sight of the body and the sign painted in her blood was having very little affect upon her in comparison to what it would have done to her to see such a sight in her mortal life. The fact that this creature had pointed an arrow presumably to where it was and left that arrow in plain sight for any stupidly curious human to follow to his death was what entirely baffled her.
Kagome steeled her nerves and walked toward the other side of the wrought iron fence and vaulted over. A quick look back at the direction to which the arrow was pointed gave Kagome a sense of her destination. She set to walking, crossing the street and heading away from the theater. It did occur to her that she was potentially walking into a major trap. Really, though, since she’d come this far, why not finish the job? Her target obviously knew she was in pursuit, so abandoning the mission would in turn make her the target.
About half a block east, Kagome burst into uncontrollable giggles. The arrow was pointing to a “La Paz Mortuary and Funerary Services.” Vampires in a morgue. How utterly predictable and clichéd. Sesshomaru’s suggestion of a cemetery was pretty obvious, but a morgue? She bit down on a knuckle to stop the irrational laughter that tried to worm its way out of her throat.
She stepped forward under the streetlight to push on the door, but it swung open of its own volition, the little bell above the hinge jingling as Kagome stepped through. The pale light from the streetlamps bathed the numerous coffins and caskets in pallid light. Her skin went cold.
The singing started again.
- 10
- 11
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Blood is the New Black