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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
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Kagome looked out the window in the hallway of her apartment building. The sky was tinged with red, as if someone had lit the world on fire. Curiously, she couldn't hear any noises from the normally busy traffic outside. Quirking an eyebrow at the oddity, she walked back into her apartment.
The second she turned to flip the light switch next to the door, she felt that something was wrong, so horribly wrong. Light flooded the room, and she tamped down a shrill scream that rose in her throat. Splashed on the walls, soaking the beige carpet, dripping from the kitchen counter, was blood. So much blood. She quickly rounded the corner to see a red-painted figure collapse, plummeting toward the floor.
Propelling herself forward, she messily caught them before they fell to the ground and lowered herself slowly into a crouched position. She turned the person around in her arms carefully, mindful of the multitude of wounds that marred the flesh and left the clothes hanging in tatters. What exactly was keeping this person together? It couldn't be much…
When she turned the figure over in her arms, she felt her world go cold. There, limp in her arms, was the body of her mother, whose tormented eyes bored into Kagome's skull. Her mouth opened and a stream of blood trickled out the side.
"Wh…what have you done, Kagome?" she whispered, and Kagome's body shook with terror. Who did this? How did she get here? Why, why , why?!
"Kagome, what have you done?!" her voice shrieked, the body convulsing in her arms. Her mother's hand reached up to grab her forearm, and she found that it actually hurt her. She looked down to see talons buried in the flesh of her arm, decayed and congealed blood oozing from the wounds.
"Mama! Stop, I-"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"
Kagome awoke with a start, throwing the unnecessary blanket off of her legs and racing toward the front door. She shakily loosed the chain and bolted to the end of the hall, passing Sesshomaru, who was stooping to pick up the newspaper from his doormat. He stared after her.
"Who lit a fire under your ass?"
She completely ignored him and thrust her face into the window. The San Diego evening sky was dark blue, just as it was every other night, cloudy days notwithstanding. She hastily walked back down the hall to her door, shaking her head and muttering. She could practically feel her eyes bugging out of her head, but paid no heed to Sesshomaru, who was staring at her in apparent worry. After all, it wasn't every day that your neighbor completely lost their shit without provocation, especially when that neighbor was in danger of exposing the vampire community. A rogue, psychotic blood sucker was never a good thing.
She reached for the doorknob, but was yanked back when Sesshomaru grabbed her arm. "What's going on? What did you do?" His voice was firm and commanding.
She snatched her arm back and strode into her apartment, searching under the couch cushions and checking the sink, even sifting through the wreckage of her bathroom door strewn across the floor. Sesshomaru slowly followed, watching her with an apprehensive curiosity. She continued muttering, frantically tearing the towels out of the linen closet, her near-hysteria approaching a peak.
"Blood, blood everywhere," he heard her mutter.
"Do tell what blood you're talking of. Aside from the mess you've just made, the place is practically spotless," he commented, taking in her wild expression as she turned to face him.
"There was blood. It was all over the place and my mom- my mom!"
Sesshomaru grabbed both of her forearms and forcefully steered her to one of her dining room chairs.
"You just had a bad dream, kid. It happens to everyone. Now unless your family has magical teleportation powers that you neglected to tell me about, they're probably all still in Tokyo."
She was visibly shaken, but the fog of panic was beginning to clear from her thoughts. Sesshomaru stood nearby, picking up his dropped newspaper and unfolding it. "When you decide you're done with this little episode, get dressed. We're going to Charlie's today."
"Who is Charlie?"
"The sooner you get out of those pajamas, the sooner you'll find out." With that, he walked out the door, presumably to reenter his own apartment.
Kagome managed to pull herself together and stumble into the bedroom. She slipped on a Misfits tee and a pair of capris to find, to her delight, that the hair on her legs had not grown. Benefits to being undead so far: one. She looked in her small framed mirror hanging on the wall. Strange bright indigo eyes stared at their reflection, wishing, for once, for the plain dark brown that used to lay there. She shrugged and walked toward her front door, picking up the larger chunks of her door that lay in her bathroom. Upon walking out of her unit, she saw Sesshomaru waiting for her, unsurprisingly. He held out a business card, which Kagome clumsily took and maneuvered into her pocket before trudging down the stairs with her armful of what amounted to kindling. Before she reached the glass door, Sesshomaru spoke.
"I cannot go with you, not in the taxi. I wrote down her address, so just tell the driver and he'll get you there. I'll probably arrive before you, so don't keep me waiting."
"Wai-" Before she could even utter a whole word, Sesshomaru was out the door and out of sight. Just as she turned to dump the armload of door bits into the complex's dumpster, she saw a yellow cab pull up in front of the building. She quickly scrambled inside and read off the address scribbled on the back of the business card. The driver noiselessly nodded and began driving.
The silent man drove her to a large manor in Del Cerro. The Queen Anne revival style of the house was visually striking, not just for the intricacy of the classical style, but for the juxtaposition among the sharp, modernist beach houses that surrounded the place. After a moment of gawking out the cab window like a typical tourist, she handed the cab driver her bank card, only to have him hand it back. Declined. She sighed; apparently once one dies, new unlife or no, one's assets are frozen. She made a mental note to get back every penny in her now useless bank account from Sesshomaru, using whatever means necessary.
Apologizing profusely to the sunglass-bedecked driver, who sat in silent observation, she dug through her bag to scrounge up enough cash to pay the cab fare. With another sheepish apology, she exited the vehicle and wondered what to do. After all, who has strangers coming to their door in the late hours of the night? Just as she put one foot forward to start up the walkway to the house, she happened to spy something in the tree.
For once she gave thanks for her new undead life, for it gave her rather enhanced night vision. Perched upon the bough of a pear tree, his back against the trunk and a leg hanging casually down, was none other than Sesshomaru. He looked like a panther lounging; all relaxed and smooth except for those ever watchful predatory eyes that raced over her skin like fire and held the promise of destruction. He slid off the branch, landing with soft knees upon the well-manicured grass. With a grandiose flourish of his arms, he urged her toward the door. She pressed the small, glowing doorbell and waited. She could hear the bell echoing through the house, low and vaguely ominous in the still night around. Behind her, she could hear the steady pull of the sea and a chorus of crickets chirping.
No response.
"Do you feel hungry at all?" Sesshomaru casually asked, shoving his hands into his black bomber jacket and looking around aimlessly.
Come to think of it… "No, not really. Is that a bad thing?"
"No. Your first couple of nights, you have to have a lot of blood intake to make up for all of it that you lost during your Embrace. From now on, you'll most likely have to feed around once a week."
"Ah. Do you have any cash? I'm assuming I'll need to take the cab back, and my bank account is apparently frozen." She sent a withering glare at him. He pulled out a wallet and shoved forty dollars into her back pocket, causing her to hop forward in surprise at the intrusion of her personal space.
Kagome reached for the illuminated button once more, but just before she pressed the button, the carved wooden door opened in front of her and a very pale, very female person peeked around the edge, suspicious eyes darting between the two of them.
"What are you doing here," she whispered toward Sesshomaru, paying no heed to Kagome. He looked at her plainly and said nothing at all. Her tawny eyes narrowed, but she let the two of them in just the same.
She closed the door behind Kagome and, without saying anything, turned and walked through a doorway, Sesshomaru following her. She led them into an old sitting room. The walls were covered with peeling maroon floral wallpaper, and the furniture looked heavily dusty.
"This is Charlie. Charlie, this is my undoing."
Charlie turned around, one eyebrow raised, and sat upon a very old vintage green couch. Sesshomaru and Kagome followed suit on the matching loveseat across from her. She levelly gazed at the two sitting in her living room, and her lips were slightly pursed.
Sesshomaru leaned forward and rested his elbows upon his knees. "Charlie, I was wondering if you could perhaps inform young neonate Kagome here of the perils of keeping ties with family and friends after the Embrace. How is your dear brother, by the way?" His face was smug as a thief.
Charlie's expression darkened, and Kagome saw something akin to pain flash behind her eyes before the hard mask of careful indifference slipped back into place.
"What do I get out of this," the woman cautiously asked. Kagome looked around the room, trying unsuccessfully not to eavesdrop upon a conversation to which she was clearly not invited. She espied an old piano tucked into the corner, hidden by a black cover and a thick layer of dust.
Sesshomaru gave a soft snort. "The assurance that your little secret remains as such." Kagome looked back over to Charlie, who had pursed her lips even tighter. Her ears picked up on a barely-audible police siren that seemed to punctuate the silence.
"You know of the Masquerade, right?" It took Kagome a few seconds before she realized Charlie was speaking to her.
"Uhhh," was her intelligent answer.
Charlie's nostrils flared. "We don't have time for this shit, okay? I have things to do. Don't break the Masquerade. The Masquerade is a metaphor for our existence. We figuratively wear masks so kine don't discover us. That means no using most of your learned disciplines, no feeding in the open, and no juggling station wagons with your new strength. You follow me?"
Kagome nodded shyly. Sesshomaru leaned over, putting his lips near her ear. She almost shivered. "Charlie is a Gangrel. Don't test her patience." He pulled away with that irritating smirk he so liked to sport.
"If you keep in contact with your family," Charlie continued, crossing her arms across her chest, "you risk breaking the Masquerade. Imagine your family's horror when they discover their little cupcake's turned into a blood-sucking monster, condemned forever to lurking in the shadows of her past life. If they run to the press or even tell the neighbor, we're done for. You're hunted like a prize buck, and there's nothing that can end it save a sunrise or a shotgun blast to the back of the head."
"Shotgun?!" Kagome's mouth dropped. When did she sign up for gunfights?
Charlie nodded drolly, as if she were giving this lecture the fiftieth time over. An old grandmother clock tucked in the far corner chimed eleven 'o' clock. "The Society of Leopold, the main organization you need to worry about, pulls no punches when it comes to eradicating demons, vampires, and the like. They are always on the verge of discovering our true natures, so keeping to the Masquerade is especially important. The second they catch a whiff, they won't stop."
"Why, it sounds as if you speak from personal experience," Sesshomaru mused, his eyes twinkling with a twisted merriment. Charlie's hands balled into fists.
"My little brother," she faltered before settling her nerves once more. "My little brother was just a baby when I was… turned. My parents were dead, I was newly undead. I had to keep him safe." She got up and headed towards an old wooden staircase. "Follow me."
Kagome and Sesshomaru trailed after her until they reached the top landing of the stairs. Charlie silently crept down the hall to the second door on the right and opened the door, which creaked on its hinges.
"Sister?"
Kagome nearly jumped into the shadow behind the door. She hadn't expected to hear another voice, the crackly voice of a teenager. Charlie motioned them to come forward, much to Kagome's confusion. More insistent, she beckoned Kagome forward.
"Is it time to take my medicine? I'm not feeling well again," the young boy's voice sounded. Kagome saw that he was probably around fourteen, but the body reclining upon his bed had the frailty of an old man. His dull, grey eyes seemed to look straight through her as he swiveled his head toward the sound of approaching footsteps.
Charlie walked over to a small refrigerator that, strangely enough, had a digital number lock upon it. "Yup. Hold on just a sec." Kagome stood motionless in the door. She felt her face contort in horror at what Charlie pulled out of the refrigerator.
Blood. A sealed container of blood.
Followed by the blood was a can of tomato juice. Charlie walked over to the desk near the door and poured the tomato juice into a tall glass, maintaining eye contact with Kagome. She then carefully poured the entire four-ounce container of blood into the juice and stirred. Kagome was positively appalled and wanted to sprint away from this obvious lunatic.
Charlie walked back over to her brother, picked up his left arm, and placed the glass in his hand. "Here ya go, Blane. Make sure you go back to sleep after you're done. We'll see how you feel tomorrow, okay?" She smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead with a smile before turning to exit the room.
The second the trio reached the bottom of the stairs, Kagome whirled around and whispered, "What was that?!"
Before Charlie could answer, Sesshomaru cut in. "That, Kagome, was an exception." She scoffed at his usual enigmatic answer and looked to the woman standing next to her.
"Blane was born blind and was a very sickly kid. That's the only reason I'm able to do what I do. However, the others here in the city don't know about him. They'd see the both of us as a liability, despite the state of his health and his disabilities. I give him blood every few weeks to stabilize his condition."
"Blood?"
"God, you really are new at this. Vampire blood can be used in a process called ghouling. If you create a ghoul, you feed a human the blood of a vampire on a regular basis, which causes them to acquire longer life and sometimes powers such as increased strength or heightened senses. They remain human, and so pose a risk to the Masquerade in and of themselves."
Sesshomaru chimed in, "The Camarilla likes to make sure that ghouls don't remain so for long. They usually end up as half-informed new kindred or as corpses with concrete shoes."
Kagome sat back down upon the green loveseat as she processed the information. "What does this have to do with my family, though?" she asked. Charlie's long brown hair swished behind her as she returned to her place on the couch.
"I am under suspicion by the Society of Leopold," Charlie admitted. It all clicked in Kagome's head. Someone had leaked Charlie's secret, either about her brother or about her vampirism.
"I feel like you're leaving something out. I could be wrong, though. There just seems to be a tiny detail that we're missing here," Sesshomaru added, verbally prodding their host. She sighed heavily.
"My family… we were hunters. Members of the Society for who knows how long. Generations. I still do some side work for them, just small-time solo missions. Someone, somehow, picked up on what's happening here and sang to their superiors. I know I'm being watched like a goddamn hawk. It's only a matter of time before they start looking at Blane, too." Charlie looked at her lap, her features fixed into an expression of loathing. Kagome felt her heart ache for this girl. Sesshomaru pointedly tilted his head to the massive weapon hung upon the far wall, almost hidden in its case under a ridiculous layer of dirt and dust. She felt the strange urge to go up to it, to see if there was any blood coating the curved edge.
Sesshomaru, however, had other plans. "Well, we'll be leaving now. Also, don't tell anyone we were here. It would be a damned shame if something were to happen to your darling brother, no?" He got up, smoothing his jacket, and showed himself to the door. "Thank you, Charlie, and rest assured that I haven't and won't spill." Kagome bowed slightly with an apologetic smile, and scampered after her sire.
As they exited the house, she caught up with him. "What exactly was I supposed to learn from this?"
"The perils of dancing on the edge of recognition. If you had entertained any hopes of keeping contact with your family, I hope you see why it is too dangerous to risk, not only for your skin, but theirs as well. Their skin is far more delicate and bleed-y than your own," he said as he opened the door to the waiting taxi. She slid in, and when she turned to shut the door behind her, he was gone.
The cab ride back to her apartment was silent, and she stewed in equal parts contemplation, gut-gnawing worry, and intrigued curiosity.
When she climbed the stairs and reentered her home, Sesshomaru unsurprisingly reappeared from the shadows and followed. They both took their places at her cheap table in what was disturbingly becoming some sort of routine. Kagome finally slammed her palms down on the cluttered surface, sending papers and old candy wrappers flying before locking her knees and bending to hover in front of Sesshomaru's face.
"What the hell are you following me for? I don't even know you. What do you want with me?" she seethed at him.
"Touchy, touchy are we? So strange, I know everything about you." Sesshomaru leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table while perching his chin upon his folded hands. "Higurashi Kagome, 24, from Tokyo, Japan. Comes from a shrine family of priests and miko. Mother, Mayumi; brother, Souta; grandfather, Kiyoshi; father, Hiroshi, killed in a car accident in 1996-"
"STOP!" Kagome's eyes were brimming with blood-tinged tears and staring directly at her tormentor. Sesshomaru didn't flinch.
"I know all there is to know about you, Kagome."
"I KNOW! That's why it-it… It's just weird, okay? I don't know anything about you, but here you are, prancing around my living room like you own the place! You take over my home, my life, my very fucking existence! And I've never even seen you before four nights ago."
He waited until she had settled back down in her plastic chair, still seething. "I do not prance."
If looks could kill, he would be a jacket-wearing puddle of vampire sludge.
Golden eyes narrowed, and Sesshomaru leaned back in his seat. Kagome looked at him peevishly and opened the laptop in front of her. Dare she re-read that email from Iris? Tentatively, she logged into her email and surprisingly found one new message in her inbox. Her jaw went slack, and a bright, high droning rang through her ears as she felt her fingers go slack over the keyboard. The email was from one Souta Higurashi.
Sesshomaru cleared his throat, and Kagome looked up to see an almost roguish smile stretched across his face.
"Would you like to know about me, little neonate?"

This chapter was inspired by the song "Mother" by Danzig.
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Blood is the New Black