Before they were allowed inside, the party had to hand over their weapons. Shippou very reluctantly surrendered his swords to one of the wolf youkai, making the man – who seemed downright terrified by him – promise to return them on demand and in exactly the same condition. Souten gave him a disapproving look and turned over her spear without comment, and Kagome kept her head down while handing over her boy and quiver. This done, they were permitted to follow Ayame behind the waterfall.

The caves beyond were damper and colder than Kagome remembered, but also larger – rubble had been cleared away to expose chambers and tunnels that hadn't been visible before. Females and pups, as well as a number of ordinary wolves, were huddled in the corners, and these sat up and watched their visitors with wary eyes. Two of the women were tending an elderly male who'd lost a leg. The scene reminded Kagome of things she'd seen on the evening news. This wasn't a den – it was a refugee camp.

"Shippou!" exclaimed a child's voice, and a dark-haired pup squirmed out of a female's arms and came boucing up to the party. "Shippou! Shi... what's that?" he asked, stopping short and looking up with huge green eyes at the limp body slung across the kitsune's shoulders.

"A friend of mine," said Shippou.

Ayame shot him a glare, then stepped between him and the pup. "Kenichi," she said, "go play outside."

"What?" asked Kenichi. "Why?"

"Because Mama says so." Ayame pointed firmly at the waterfall. "Outside."

"But Shippou's here!" Kenichi protested. "He hasn't been here in ever!" He turned to the visitors with big, pleading eyes, plainly hoping one of them would speak up on his behalf.

"Better do what she says, kiddo," said Shippou. "The grownups have a lot to talk about right now."

Kenichi looked like he'd been slapped. "I'm almost grown up!" he protested.

"Outside," said Ayame.

Her son gave up and obeyed, his thin shoulders bent in a sulk. "You used to be fun," he told Shippou, and slouched out. Two adults followed him, apparently without having to be told to.

Kagome turned her head to watch them go – Kouga's son, she thought. It was a strange concept... but no stranger, she supposed, than anything else that had happened in the nine years she'd missed. In fact, the idea of Kouga having a son was actually easier to deal with than that of Shippou being grown up, but perhaps that was only because she'd met Shippou first, and Kenichi was thus less of a shock.

When she was quite sure Kenichi was out of earshot, Ayame directed Shippou to put Kouga down on a bed of rushes in one of the dryer corners of the cavern, next to where the one-legged male was. Although he was stirring, Kouga was still only semi-conscious. His eyelids fluttered and he intermittently twitched and mumbled to himself, but he was clearly unaware of his surroundings. Kagome had subconsciously expected that now that he was free of the shards and whatever influence they'd been having on him, he would start to look more like himself, but he did not. If anything, he actually looked even thinner and wearier than he had when he attacked them on the mountainside.

That observation reminded her of something. "So there was a real mononoke once?" she asked.

Ayame didn't answer. She sat down next to Kouga and took his pulse.

"There was," the one-legged male spoke up. "Some sort of monster, at least. Kouga-sama and three others went to fight it, and they never came back." He paused. "You're Kouga-sama's human, aren't you?"

"I'm Kagome," she replied. "Can you tell me anything else?"

The one-legged male thought for a moment. "Before he left... for a few months, he'd been a little strange. He got paranoid about those jewel shards of his – he would keep checking to see if they were still there, and he'd rub at the places until they bled, and then they didn't heal. Ayame-sama told him to get rid of them, and he hit her."

"Hideaki," said Ayame warningly.

"Oh, let him talk," said Shippou. "What could he possibly say that you don't want her to hear?"

Hideaki looked at Ayame for permission to continue, and when she didn't deny it, he went on: "so yes, Kouga-sama and the others vanished, and the monster became more vicious. We thought perhaps they had angered it. It began killing anything that crossed its path."

"When did you find out it was Kouga?" asked Kagome. "Was it the smell?"

Hideaki shook his head. "No. His wounds were festering, and that was all he smelled of, was the rot. Then, two years ago, Ayame-sama went..."

Ayame herself cut him off. "I was hunting, and I saw him," she said. "He didn't recognize me. He would have killed me, but I shouted his name, and that seemed to confuse him." Her voice was carefully even, refusing to betray any emotion at all. "I ran, and I got away." She paused, then added, "Hakakku didn't."

As if responding to her, Kouga moaned. His eyes opened slowly, but remained unfocussed, looking at infinity. Kagome crept closer to look at him, and Souten and Shippou bent in to see. A few more minutes passed in tense silence before Kouga really seemed to look at them, and then he blinked at the faces hanging over him as if he couldn't quite understand what they were.

Finally, his brow furrowed. "Kagome?" he rasped.

"Yes?" she said. She took Kouga's hand and squeezed it, trying not to think about his cracked skin and missing nails. "It's me. And Ayame's here, too."

Kouga followed her eyes. "Aya?" He looked at his mate and frowned. "Ayame?"

Ayame had been calm until now, but when Kouga said her name, her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She licked the corners of her mouth. "Hello," she said.

He frowned, confused, and reached up to touch the long scar on her face. "Where did you get that?" he asked.

Her face contorted with the effort of not bursting into noisy tears. "From a monster," she said.

Kouga blinked twice, then began trying to sit up. Kagome quickly grabbed his arm. "Kouga," she said, "I don't think you should do that yet!"

"Where am I?" he asked thickly.

"It's all right," said Ayame, gently pushing him back down onto the rushes. "You're home."

"Home? How did I get home?" Kouga looked at Kagome. "I saw you!" he said, his voice blurring. "I was... I was dead. I was dead, and I saw you, and you brought me back. And you came back. You came back!" His eyes were wild, the pupils enormous.

"Yes," said Kagome. "I came back." She thought for a moment. "Kouga, how did you die?"

"Huh?" he asked, trying to sit up again.

"You said you were dead," Kagome reminded him, gripping his arm tight to help Ayame make him lie down. "How did you die?"

"How am I supposed to know? I was dead," said Kouga. "It's like I was dreaming, over and over, the same damned dream again." His head swayed slowly back and forth. "It was Naraku."

"Naraku?" said Kagome. Finally, some real information. "Naraku. He killed you?"

"No," said Kouga. "No, he's dead. Kikyou... Kikyou killed him... Kikyou..." his voice trailed off. How awake was he, Kagome wondered? He'd been speaking almost normally at first, but now he was babbling... and yet she could sense a desperate urgency behind it, as if his mind were struggling to make sense while his body just wasn't up to it. "When was that?" he asked.

Shippou stood up. "I think I'm going to go see how Kenichi's doing," he said to nobody in particular. He turned and left the cavern.

"When was that?" Kouga repeated, and the sudden panic in his voice seemed to bring him back into focus. "That was a long time ago, wasn't it? And I..." he looked at Ayame and touched her face again, his eyes and mouth wide with horror. "I did that," he said.

"No, you didn't." Ayame grabbed his hand, shaking her head hard. "That wasn't you."

"Yes, it was," said Kouga. "I did it because I thought you were going to take..." he stopped. His hands went to his leg, where one shard should have been, and his breathing quickened as he realized that it wasn't there. ""Where are they?"

"They're gone," said Kagome. "They're gone and they can't hurt you anymore."

"They're mine!" said Kouga. "Give them to me!"

"No!" Ayame grabbed him. "Not yet. You're... you're sick. You need to get better."

"I want them back!" he roared, reaching for Kagome.

Souten reached out and touched the back of his neck. Exactly what she did, Kagome couldn't see, but Kouga's eyes suddenly rolled up, and he slumped into Ayame's arms, unconscious again. Souten self-consciously wiped her hands on her trousers as she stood. "He'll be out for a few hours," she said, "but I think he'll still need some real sleep."

"Thank you," said Kagome, shaken.

Ayame arranged Kouga's arms and legs on the rushes. "How could you do that?" she demanded of Kagome. "Just start interrogating him as soon as he woke up?"

"I'm sorry," said Kagome. "I just need to know what happened and I don't think I've got a lot of time. I need to fix this."

"It's a little late to fix it," Ayame said coldly.

"I have to try," Kagome insisted. "It would be worse if I came back after so long and just did nothing, wouldn't it?"

Ayame didn't answer. Kagome opened her backpack and pulled out the three shards she'd collected since she came back – Kaede's and the two she'd taken from Kouga last night. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with them... they were just shards of glass, eerily quiescent for things that had caused so much suffering.

"Kikyou killed Naraku," she murmured. That's what Kouga had said, and there didn't seem for the moment to be any reason to doubt it. Ayame had said that Kouga had been there, so he would know, and it fit with Shippou's statement that nobody had heard from Naraku in years. So that much seemed to be settled.

But if that was true, then logically, Kikyou would have retrieved Shikon no Tama for purification and safekeeping... yet it was clearly neither pure nor safe. These shards, however ordinary they looked, and be poisoning Kouga somehow. Judging from Hideaki's story, they'd been doing so slowly, affecting him for months before they finally drove him mad.

If Kikyou had destroyed Naraku... then who, or what, was corrupting the jewel?