Kagome screamed as his lifeless corpse fell with a soft thud. His firerat garb still draping her shoulders. She wanted to jump down from the branch, but feared landing on him and doing even worse damage. She saw her bag hanging from the next branch and formulated a small plan. She knew that the bag may not hold her weight, but at least she would not land on Inu Yasha. She jumped over to the bag and grabbed on. It was not the bag that had trouble supporting her weight, but the branch that the bag hung from. She dangled in the air for about two seconds before she heard the cracking. She looked up and saw the bark begin to splinter. She used her free arm to shield her eyes from the shards of wood that began to fly. She braced herself for the twenty-foot drop that still resided beneath her. The branch could no longer restrain itself, and finally gave into its inevitable fate. She let out an ear piercing scream and waited for the impact. It never came. She was caught by a pair of strong, and very familiar arms.

"Now what did you go and do something like that for? Geeze, you could wake the dead with stupid stunts such as those in the middle of the night." Her eyes grew wide and she blinked at him. "What?" he demanded.

"I think I just did." He looked at her utterly puzzled.

"What are you talking about, and how did I get down from the tree? You pushed me didn’t you?" He glared at her menacingly. She forgot all of the sympathy she had for him right then and there. Kagome pushed him back wards and jumped out of his arms.

"There, now I have pushed you, but I didn’t do it before. You started talking in your sleep and fell out of the tree, I was left all by myself up there, and thought that you had hurt yourself, but now I see that your pig head is just fine. Hmph." She turned her back to him.

"Since when do I have a pig’s head?" He felt his face and nose just in case he had missed something. She glanced over her shoulder, and couldn’t help but laughing.

"It’s just an expression, but I guess I could forgive you. I think we need to get back to sleep so that we can go ahead and find the others."

"What about that studying you were talking about earlier?"

"Tomorrow is Shippou’s birthday, and it’s something that I don’t want to miss." He shrugged at her.

"Suit yourself." he picked his coat off the ground and walked over to Kagome.

"I think I would prefer the ground if that is okay with you." He stared at her for a moment, then turned around.

"Feh." Was all he uttered while tossing her his coat. He shielded his face from her so that she would not see the disappointment on it. He was crushed that she did not want to be near him.

"What I meant was, could the two of us just stay on the ground for tonight? No, that didn’t out right either." He turned to face her, she was blushing, but he understood what she had meant.

"So, it must be your turn to have the mind in the gutter." She glared daggers at him. "What I meant to say was, I know what you mean. C’mon I’m not Miroku." She smiled at him, then just gave him a hug for no reason. At first he returned the hug, but then twitched and stiffened. She looked up at him once again. The life drained look was in his eyes again. She felt some thing warm on her chest. She looked to see the shard around her neck glowing with an eerie light. She took the chain off from around her neck and put it in her pocket. He immediately slouched over and fell into her arms.

‘That’s odd,’ she thought, ‘it seems every time the jewel is near his heart this happens. It never did this before, but why now?’ Inu Yasha was now peacefully snoring. She inched him over to the tree as best she could and propped him up against it. She went back for her bag, and placed her shard in one of the pockets. ‘He should be safe from you for now.’she thought, and settled her self next her traveling partner. She covered them both in his coat and she, herself, finally drifted to sleep.

***

The rising sun stretched over the horizon and into the eyes of the sleeping companions. A pair of inhuman eyes shot open.

"It’s here! It’s today! Yay! Wake up everyone! We have to go meet Kagome, I think we’re close, I’ve been smelling her since we stopped last night."

"And you think that has nothing to do with the fact that you slept in her bag?" The groggy monk rubbed his eyes and starred at the overly excited kitsune.

"Come on, you two, I’m already ready to go! Kirara even helped me pack my stuff, so let’s get yours too." Shippou rushed around the campsite grabbing everything and placing it into the cart Miroku had procured from the village. The monk stood and looked to the only other human member of the group.

"Then I guess a bath is out of the question for this morning?" The large demon-boned connected with the base of his skull.

"Pervert." She stated plainly as she walked away.

"Perhaps another time." He gasped as he attempted to recover the use of his limbs.

The point for meeting their friends was just over the hill in front of them. They had walked until it was too dark to see and since they were without torches or one of Kagome’s portable light sticks, they decided camping out would be the best idea. However, none of them had gotten much sleep since some kind of banshie had been screaming in the nearby woods all night. At first, the screaming worried them, but they decided that Inu Yasha could handle whatever might be threatening in the area and put it to the back of their minds.

***

He smelt them coming. At first, his groggy mind simply said,