Title: Starbreak
Author: CelesteSpring ([email protected])
Disclaimer: Seeing that all the clever ones have already been taken, I have only a humble "I don't own them" to offer. Also based on the world (world only) of Laurell K. Hamilton's vampire series. No one does werewolf politics like LKH.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, profanity, and sexuality.
Summary: [SS/K/IY][AU] Werewolf powerplay—two words best avoided at all cost. Warning: excessive violence, passion, intrigue, and betrayal is hazardous to your health (but feedback is still adored :D).
AN: Have you, dear reader, grown tired of the standard Inuyasha-save-Kagome fare served up time after time by Rumiko Tamakashi? Then this is the fic for you! (Or at least, I hope it is...)
As of now, I have not yet decided the pairing. All feedback will be taken into consideration. But then, brothers are supposed to share, right...? (Ew. I did not just say that.)
Chapter One: Flare"What about this one, brother? Is she yours, too?"—Sesshoumaru
:::=:::=:::
The distant bell tower had already sounded ten times when the first of the werewolves burst in.
Dong.... Sweeping echoes reverberated through the crowded room, and even with its masses of people twisting and flowing and twirling to the pounding music, she could hear the soothing bell chimes. Strobe lights of dark crimson and violent purple swept over the roiling multitude of people. So many people. It hurt her head just to be near this seething mass of humanity, all out and determined to have a good time. Lose yourself in the music, Kagome. Dance for me. Never mind that tomorrow they would wake up with reeking breaths and bloodshot eyes and killer hangovers.
You're such a party pooper, Kagome.
She frowned. If Hojo were here, he would've chided her for acting the part of a spoiled little girl. Why was she not dancing like the rest of them? And she would reply, with barely contained derision in her voice, I don't dance, Hojo.
She didn't know how to—but she hadn't told them that.
Then why did you come with us?
There's not much point to going to a dance club if you're not gonna dance, Kagome. Reiko, gentle smile understanding, but small frame vibrating with the eagerness to get away, to dance, to have her fun.
It's alright. I'm fine here. You guys go by yourselves. She made shooing motions with her hands, plastering a smile over her face.
So here she was, sitting all by her lonesome self in a dark corner of the bar. The tequila that she was nursing glowed dim amber in the warm light, and she took another sip. The alcohol burned all the way down her throat, but this time she didn't choke. She offered a hazy smile to her mirrored reflection. See, I'm improving. I can drink beer now without throwing up! For some reason, the thought brought an inane giggle up the front of her throat.
Why had she come, indeed...
You will have fun at college, Kagome. You will, you will, you will—!The mirror shivered like a disturbed surface of quiet water. She gave a distant start, realized that someone had seated herself next on the adjoining bar seat. Long silver hair flickered distant violet and blue in the dancing lights, and she stared in a half-drunken interest.
"Vodka on rocks." Her voice was surprisingly masculine. Wait—
The face that he turned towards Kagome reflected nothing but disinterest. "What?"
—Him."I—" The words caught in her belly.
His eyes glittered gold in the dim overhead lights of the bar. Around them people danced to the rhythm of hypnosis. Fear constricted her throat.
Werewolf.
The gold eyes—silver hair—the way he held himself, even just sitting there on his stool. An upright position, tense and ready, as if in any second he could dart up, or lunge right, or lope away into the night. But there was also something else—the feel of an aura around him, something dangerous, something that tasted of forest and pack and sharp, snapping teeth. It reminded her of an injured animal, an injured wolf—
He was first to look away. "You got a problem, girl?"
"...No."
"Then stop staring at me like I'm some sort of freak."
She averted her gaze, pinning her eyes on her tequila instead. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't. So what if he was a werewolf? Shapeshifters had been legalized almost five years ago; they were considered human, people, citizens. Citizens with rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And not all of them were bad...
But this one...
"Oh wait. That's not right. I am a freak, aren't I?" He laughed, bitter and biting. She sat frozen to her chair.
"Go ahead. Run away, girl." A hand latched onto her chin, jerking her face towards his. His fingers burned warm, tips pricking into her skin. Lights danced in his eyes like flickers of flame. She stifled a scream. "Scared, aren't you?" He breathed in, licked his lips. She watched the wicked curve of his mouth as the beginnings of terror stirred in her stomach. "I can taste it."
She winced as his hand tightened, then jerked her head back as he released her, concealing her fear with a glare of anger. "Bastard. Go harass someone else, why don't you?"
The eyes narrowed.
Stupid, stupid girl. What are you thinking?
He turned away, back to his drink, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like feisty bitch. His other hand slid out of his pocket to tap impatient rhythms against the heavy glass cup.
His nails—They tapered to fine points of sharp ivory, five individual knives. The fingers—they were normal, but somewhere along the second and third joint, the human digits furred, arched, curved into hooked claws. Sharp, wicked looking claws.
"Pretty, aren't they?" His voice, amused, yanked her back into herself. The hand—claw—flexed, and for the first time she noticed the dusting of silver hair on his corded forearm. He held his hand up to the light, and the color of tawny yellow played along the edge of nails like liquid butterscotch.
"Are you trying to scare me, or what?" She glared at him, head swarming slightly.
He smirked, and there was only a small hint of fang in his expression. "You got it, sister."
In the distance, the college bell tower sounded, deep, ringing chimes of rhythm and peace. Announcing the midnight hour. The midnight hour. How stupidly melodramatic, she thought woozily. Then she giggled.
That was when the glass mirror in front of them shattered.
"Get down!" The sound of glass exploding and wood splintering brought a small scream up her throat. Her vision swam in wood-rot brown and violent red. Too much to drink—and he grabbed her arm, those claws digging into tender skin, jerking her up violently. The world tilted again, and warmth dripped down the front of her shirt. She stared at the bright red worms crawling down her arm in dull horror.
He was staring at the blood too, eyes transfixed into stillness. The gold depths shimmered in emotion—horror? Disbelief? Shock?
Disgust. "Damn humans," he snarled. "Fucking good for nothing but bleeding!"
And then in a blur of motion he had scooped her up in his arms, sinewy muscle locked tight around her waist. She tried to scream, but what came out was a small squeak of fear. Her arm—it burned like it was alive, like nothing short of cutting it off would stop the pain. Wetness tracked down her cheeks; lights flew by in a haze of shifting gold and blue. The wind (what wind?) blew her unbound hair into streaming ribbons—
Stop. Everything. Stop fast-forward rewind
Pain lanced up her leg as metal rammed into her shin. The wooden floor burned like ice beneath her palms, her belly, her cheek. She couldn't breath, couldn't breath, could only lie there as her heart twisted in her chest like an animal trying to claw its way out of a prison, and something panicking inside her was screaming that he had dropped her, he had fucking dropped her—
You bastard
Then she turned her head the other way, so that her burning cheek rested against the ice. And saw him, buried under a pile of twisting, writhing shapes of darkness. The air stank of the smell of werewolf, feral and free. Breath clogged in her lungs. Even as she watched in her frozen silence, one of the dark shapes was tossed off, streaking through darkness and strobe lights and terrified (useless humans) people to crash into the wall. It (It's an 'it' not a 'he' or 'she' no no no) slid onto floor and was still.
Her heart jerked violently in her chest. Oh god, oh god. Another wolf, this time one the size of an overgrown German Shepard, slammed into the mahogany bar near her, thrown aside like so much trash. Its dusky brown fur stood on its end, bristling, but the deep sound that issued from its throat—it's whimpering.
"Girl! Get over here—" the man snarled, claws streaming crimson, silver hair flowing onto the floor like a spill of pale moonlight. He crouched, fangs bared as two wolves circled him, one small and compact, the other dark, black as night. "No, stay!" And then his eyes fixed on something behind her. "Oh, fuck—"
A slender hand clamped down into her hair, and she was dragged up until the tip of her toes barely touched the ground. Her scalp protested painfully against the assault, and she hissed. Those fingers—one had a grip around her waist, almost gentle?—they weren't anything like the silver wolf's. Slender, maybe even manicured, and she thought, rather insanely, about how she would've killed to get her nails as perfect as that.
Maybe I can ask him which salon he goes to after all this is over.
Oh god, this is insane.
The black wolf tensed, then pounced in a leaping, graceful arch.
"Miroku, down," a smooth voice said, unruffled and deep. The hand wound through her hair loosened, and she collapsed back down onto her feet, heart racing erratically. But the arm still captured her waist like a slender band of steel. The black wolf, Miroku, twisted aside at the last possible second, only inches from his target, and landed on four paws. His eyes, when he turned their way, were violet, and they flickered in some unidentifiable emotion.
The silver-haired man was staring at him. "Miroku..."
"Inuyasha, acknowledging one of the Ulfric's bodyguards before acknowledging the Ulfric himself is against pack law." The man behind her shifted, tsking softly. His voice purred too close to her ear, like a cold brush of velvet. "Bow down to your leader, now."
Inuaysha. His name is...Inuyasha.
"Fuck you, Sesshoumaru."
"I am Ulfric. You will call me Ulfric. You will obey me."
"Ulfric my ass. You trapped me, trapped her." Inuyasha's eyes unfocused, as if he were seeing something else, someone else, but anger snapped again in air. "I'll obey you over my dead body!"
The man behind her, the one Inuyasha had addressed as Sesshoumaru, sighed. "Silly boy." There was contempt, and perhaps a trace of pity, threaded through his voice like prickly thorns. "I see you're still keeping human company." His hand kneaded her shoulder, just hard enough to show his strength. Kagome knew that he could break both her arms without a flicker of eyelash. "Half-breed human that you are..." he said absently.
Half...human...?
Inuyasha only snorted. "This half-breed can kick your worthless ass."
Sesshoumaru kept his silence, but she could feel him tense behind her. The slender lines of his body flared in heated anger against her back, and she gasped as power flared in a wave of spasming intensity. It marched along her arms like a swarm of fire ants, but it smelled of musk, and fur, and forest. The pack.
"Say that again, brother."
Inuyasha took a step forward, but the dozen wolves surrounding him growled in warning. Don't, you idiot, don't. She didn't know when she had figured out that Inuyasha was the good guy, but somehow she knew that he was her only chance of surviving this whole damn mess.
"They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't willingly kill me," Inuyasha said, glancing around at the circle of wolves. "They were mine, once."
Warm breath tickled the back of her neck. "They will if I tell them to. Just like Miroku did."
Inuyasha cursed. "You've brainwashed him, you ass, filled up his mind with your senseless drivel. He was my wolf."
"'Brainwashed'?" Sesshoumaru mused. "Hardly. Miroku, he saw the error of your ways. So did everyone else." He swept a hand in a graceful arch, gesturing towards the waiting wolves. The dance club was empty of humans. She was alone, caught in the proverbial wolf den.
"Bastard—"
"What about this one, brother? Is she yours, too?" Fingers played along the nape of her neck, and her body spasmed to the edge of pleasure, riding the molten flow of power that burst through her veins. Warm breath fanned out over her curve of neck. Don't scream, don't scream—and he pressed lips to her skin.
Her breath shuddered out, arms hanging uselessly by her side. The cuts still burned like fiery hell, but it seemed so small next to the cloying power that smelled of lycanthrope, that grasped her by her throat, squeezing until she couldn't breathe—
He released her. She didn't scream.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
When Sesshoumaru spoke, his voice spilled over in languor, like an elegant drunk. "This one...she's no human."
"...What?"
"You're a fool." He laughed, a caressing sound that vibrated down her back. "Can you not taste her power?"
Inuyasha balanced on his heels, lonely strobe lights playing across a black jacket. For the first time, Kagome noticed dizzily the strands of silver hair that spilled onto the floor, near her feet. Silver...
Brothers.
She was drunk—drunk on terror, drunk on power, and lastly, drunk on alcohol. God help me.
Still Inuyasha said nothing. His eyes were shadowed.
The power receded like a distant tide, then flared again, a cresting wave of fire. Sesshoumaru grabbed her arm, forced it up to the light. The cuts glowed a bruised blue-violet in the dimness of the club.
"You marked her."
Disbelief, disgust. The same disbelief in Inuyasha's eyes, when he saw the snaking rivulets of crimson running down her arm. His claws loosening, falling away.
Inuyasha was silent. His head was bowed.
"Fool. You are honor bound to her now."
"Shut up," he whispered.
"If she was human, she would already be dead. Brother."
Kagome bit down on a whimper as Sesshoumaru's fingers tightened painfully. The burning was distant now, and her head once again began to swim in violent swirls of red and pink. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed back into his arms.
Was she...dying?
"She's going through it right now," a dispassionate voice observed from above. Help me. The warmth spread out in a circle of cold fire. She jerked as a thing ran her through, a slithering serpent that flowed up from her spine, down her legs, from her arms, a force that promised darkness, death, power. Power corrupts, I don't want it. Breath trembled out. Dying...dying...dying...
It hurt.
"Damn you!" Inuyasha's anger—it flowed like Sesshoumaru's power, warm and alive and smelling of pack. But there was a faint edge of bitterness and mourning that sawed at her sanity. Too much—it is all too much. She was screaming, clawing blindly at nothing. Hands restrained her, but she fought on with a savage strength she didn't know she had, fingers hooking into tight slivers of pain, trying to tear free—
The snarlings of wolves echoed through the room, a cacophony of low growls and high yips. Then came sudden silence, broken only from above, by that calm voice.
"Rin."
Quiet, detached, unemotional—but his hands tightened around her shaking wrists.
"Let go of the girl!" Inuyasha's voice scratched at her ears through the distant roar of flames. She writhed against the unseen pain, small, pitiful cries escaping her lips. Her flesh was charring, roiling like a cruel desert storm—
"Release Rin."
"You give her to me first. Now!"
Fireflies flew drunken circles across her vision. Sesshoumaru pushed her forward, and some part of her mourned the loss of captivity, the steel hands locked around her waist, the warmth of lips touching her neck. He had been trying to catch her scent, like the wolf that he was. His face—I didn't get to see his face—and then she fell, knees giving out from beneath her—fall down down down—onto the floor. Cool tiles pressed against her cheek, and she tried to curl up into a ball—it hurts, it hurts—but someone was yelling at her, screaming, and those arms, corded and strong, they scooped her up again in a careful (careful?) embrace.
"Be ready," Inuyasha whispered, and then iron sung its song of tortured metal; wood splintered into fragments of jagged mahogany and pricked splinters. The night air blew warm, like the breath of a tender lover, against her cheek.
Still, she burned.
:::=:::=:::
AN: Yech, it sure got hot, didn't it? Tell me what you think, and I'll give you a cookie! ^^