The Principle of Evil Made Flesh

The little priestess was being tickled, tickled mercilessly by something on the backs of her thighs. Swimming up through the insulating blackness of sleep, Kagome blinked in the low light. Black blobs shifted and ran, congealed and broke apart – all on the most violet sky she’d ever seen. The tree leaves above her head were entrancing and still a bit stoned from the injection she’d received, Kagome forgot all about the grass tickling the backs of her thighs – that is, until she tried to scratch that itch and found she had again been bound, hand and foot – this time beneath the howling stars, in the open for anyone to see.

She whipped her head from one hand to the other; both were cunningly tied with thick leather straps to fire-blackened iron stakes, each as thick as her arm. Her feet were in the same boat. Was she asleep or awake? Alive or dead? The only thing for certain was that she was now spread-eagle on the ground instead of in the air. Backed up hard against the earth, Kagome now felt even more imprisoned and screaming behind her dry lips in frustration she thrashed in her bounds, testing them, trying to get out of this nightmare.

She made absolutely no change in her position with her thrashing. Chest heaving in exertion, she fought the frustrated tears that wanted to prick her eyes. The thick rasping voice behind her head was almost a surprise.

“Go ahead, girl, you will cry all those pretty tears for me – they’ll taste just a sweet as your flesh.

“Go to hell, Naraku!” Kagome wailed angrily at his twisted leer.

“You are proving to be little fun, priestess – are you already beaten, are you already broken?”

Leaning her head back as well as she could brought her face to face with her captor, who sat up on his knees and leaned over her, so close that his hair pooled around her and blocked out the world. Where the thick oily strands touched her skin, Kagome wanted to scoot instinctively away; the thick serpentine ropes of Naraku’s black mane slithered over her skin like tongues and that feeling was somehow wrong, so very, very wrong that Kagome couldn’t stop the mewling groan that escaped her lips. The spider smiled at her discomfort – she truly was a silly thing. Here she was bound, open and waiting, her maidenly charms begging him to indulge himself until drunk and she was frightened by his hair, of all things. She burned so brightly in her innocence that he was immensely enjoying stripping it away, piece by piece. He couldn’t have the original sin that was Kikyou but he could have this young, ripe, living version and he was going to have her in every twisted way he could devise.

No, make that every twisted way she could devise – he’d looked into that little soul of hers and seen whose whore she was in the dark of her dreams. He was going to make those dreams a reality – his or hers, he wasn’t quite sure. It didn’t matter.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she moaned softly as the threatening tears began to seep from the corner of her crystalline eyes.

His pale hands brought him low, next to her bound ear and he allowed his black strands to curl across her white, soft throat, caressing the skin and then because he couldn’t help himself he let them play slowly along the tops of her bound breasts –

Kagome felt the slick strands slide along her skin like questing fingers and when she felt a cool touch along one of her taut nipples, the groan it wrenched out of her throat sounded just like a plea for more. She couldn’t help herself and it sickened her, even as she started to get wet.

“Why?” he whispered deeply and licked along her captive ear. Her shiver in response was delicious.

“Because, miko, I feel like destroying something beautiful.”