Red

Red Spell

I wake to darkness and the smell of blood. My heart races and instinct propels me to rise and unsheathe my sword. I pivot, shift, search. I don't know where I am or how I got here. I see no enemy, smell no foe. Kagome's naked, crumpled form lies before me, and I cannot breathe. I sink to my knees and take her into my arms. She is warm, alive, but unconscious; and there is so much blood.

Why is Kagome's blood beneath my claws?

I try to concentrate, to focus. Her blood is on my robes as well as my hands, so I have obviously carried her here. She has been attacked, but most of the red is the blood of her cycle. Its scent, though, is complex. I am unable to look away, though I've never truly looked there before. I feel a twinge of loathing...and arousal.

None of this makes sense, and I am falling under a spell of blood.

I feel the pressure behind my eyes that tells me the youkai within me is nearing the surface. I lean in and smell my own seed between her legs. I cough, a single bark of forced laughter that does not belong to me. The need threatens to take me under, and it is then that the truth bursts, explodes inside me.

I have done this. I am the danger.

My pulse races and I growl with effort, forcing down the self that has taken without thought, claimed without care. I lay Kagome back down and instinctively begin to lick the scratches on her belly and breasts with long passes of my tongue. I must soothe her, if I can, where I—that other I—have harmed. My nose takes me lower, where I lap at her core. I taste the blood and the wrongness of my seed here and strive to clean it, to will it away. I snarl at the self I cannot reach except in the aftermath of its violence. I am desperate, and she does not waken.

O Kagome, in this blood-red moment, you are my victim and my captor, more mine than you have ever been. Whether you ever forgive me or not, I am not strong enough to wish it otherwise.