Liar, Liar by R.M. Avalon

Liars and Monsters

Chapter One

~

Disclaimer: I do not own anything referenced herein; anything copyrighted belongs to it's respective owner or owners and I am merely borrowing it for the purpose of fun.

Liars and Monsters is by Escape the Fate

 ~

"I'm not going." Fujita Kagura snapped. "When we started dating, you promised that we would be going to all sorts of exotic places and so far we've only been to Bali and The Four Seasons in French Polynesia; we've been dating for a year and a half and I expected more than that."

Sesshomaru pinched the bridge of his nose. "Most people never go to either one of those places in their lives, Kagura. I would say that visiting both within less than two years is not too bad." he hissed. Was she serious? With his busy work schedule she had been lucky that they had been able to do even that. They had taken both vacations on her insistence and he had been willing to bend to he whims even though he would much rather have gone to some place more remote and relaxing.

"Look," he growled into the phone, "it's a week at my family's home which is nearly as fancy as the hotel that we stayed at in Bali and you wouldn't have to do anything except show up for meals and occasionally play nice with my stepmother." he leaned forwards, propping his elbows on his desk; he really needed her to go. If he showed up without a woman after having talked about her for the past year and a half, not only would his stepmother Izayoi begin fretting over him, but also his half brother Inuyasha’s taunting would be unbearably obnoxious.

He and his brother had never had what anyone in their right mind would have called a good relationship and he was in no mood to give the whelp anything to harass him about.

"No! I've heard about your family and I do not want to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with them for a week!"

A growl ripped itself from his throat; the bitch had just crossed a line by mentioning his family. While he had no warm feelings towards Izayoi or Inuyasha, and his relationship with his father had been less than smooth for the past hundred years, pack was still pack.

"Forget about coming, Kagura." Sesshomaru snarled, his claws digging into the deep mahogany wood of his desktop. "I want your things out of my house by the time I get home tonight. Anything that's still there when I walk in the door is going on the curb." He knew that red was seeping into the whites of his eyes, but he was too furious to control it or even to care. How dare she speak about his family like that, after everything he had done for her?

"Wait, no! I'm sorry baby, I didn't mean it! I'll go!" Kagura cried desperately.

"I told you; forget about coming and worry about getting your things out of my home." His secretary peeked her head around the doorframe. Wonderful; he had forgotten it was open. By the time five o'clock rolled around, the entire building would know that he had broken up with his girlfriend. It took everything he had to not snarl at the poor girl; instead, he just motioned for her to shut the door.

He glanced at the watch he wore around his wrist. "It's three thirty and I get home at six. I would suggest that you get packing." he said icily.

"Baby please!" Kagura begged desperately, "Can't we talk about this?"

"Six o'clock." he repeated, before ending the call. Somehow tapping the touchscreen on his iPhone was not as satisfying as slamming down one of the old fashioned corded phones and for just a flash of a second, he missed the 1980's, before cellphones had become the primary form of communication.

Carefully he set the phone down on his now ruined desktop. Now what? He thought. The very situation, which he had so dreaded, was about to come to pass and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He was going to have to show up at his parents’ home alone.

"Ayame." He called, and seconds later his door opened to revel his red-haired secretary again.

"Everything ok, bossman?" Had anyone other than Ayame referred to him as such, he would have ripped their throat out, however the demoness has been with him for the greater part of the past century as he had built his legal empire up from the ground and her indispensable help had a great deal to do with his success so he was inclined to be much more lenient with her than almost anyone he knew.

"It most assuredly is not, however there is nothing to be done about it now."  He looked down at the now ruined wood of the desktop. "I am going to need a new desk."

Ayame raised an eyebrow but made no comment other than, "Want another one just like this?"

He massaged his temple with a knuckle and nodded.

"M'kay. Consider it done. I'll have them deliver it on Monday morning. For now just move your calendar over the scratches." she tapped the note into her Blackberry.  "Anything else?"

"Despite this fiasco, I shall still be spending the next week at my family's home." He looked over at his computer screen, pleased to see that his email inbox was still cleared out of unread messages. "Please take care of screening my emails and phone calls for me; I will have everything forwarded to you while I am away. The only case that I wish to be kept abreast of is the identity theft case, Naraku vs. Onigumo. Everything else can be held until I return."

Ayame tapped more on her phone. "Alright. Do you want me to have your mail sent here while you're out as well?"

"Hn." He said as he opened up a new document and began composing an email to another client, a kitsune named Aoki Shippou who was accusing the bothers, Takeda Hiten and Takeda Manten, of the murder of his parents. He had so much work to do, this trip really had come at the worst possible time. Tapping out his last few lines, he clicked send and watched as the message processed then sent.

Ayame slipped back out the door and closed it behind her with a soft click, leaving him to finish his work in peace. His phone buzzed and he checked the number only to grimace.

"What is it Jaken?" He answered curtly.

"Sesshomaru-sama! Fujita-San is packing up her things! Were you aware of this?" His retainers voice was panicked and even through the phone Sesshomaru could almost see him fretting and wringing his little, webbed, green hands in his suit-jacket.

"Indeed. It is at my instruction that she is doing so. She is no longer welcome in my home." The toad imp grated fiercely on his nerves and he found himself wondering for the millionth time why he had kept him around for centuries. "See that she removes everything, I want no scrap of her presence left behind."

"Of course my lord!" Sesshomaru could hear the burning curiosity in the toads’ voice, but he was too wary of his masters’ temper to even dream of asking the question and Sesshomaru felt no desire to enlighten him. "I will have dinner waiting as usual, what time should I be expecting you to arrive?"

"Six; I am having an early evening due to my early departure in the morning." Sesshomaru stood and crossed the room to look out one of the massive bay windows in his office. "have my luggage out and waiting when I arrive as well; I still need to pack."

At least the packing part was easy enough. Nearly all of Sesshomaru's clothing had somehow managed to look the same. Black business suits with white oxford shirts and ties in red or charcoal grey. His shoes had to be custom made due to the fact that his toes were each tipped with a razor sharp claw, which would quickly make mincemeat of most store bought ones. The other half of his wardrobe was traditional yukata, of which he had quite a number, all of which he liked.

He ended the call without any further words to Jaken. At this point, the imp had gotten used to the sudden hang-ups and Sesshomaru was simply too tired to even think of continuing the conversation.

Somehow the rest of his afternoon managed to continue it's downward trend. One of his newer lawyers, a man named Oota Nobunga had managed to lose a case so spectacularly that the client was threatening to sue the whole law firm, just as soon as he figured out if he could do that. Another one of his lawyers, Saito Kikyou, who was a perpetually depressed and pessimistic former priestess who had ended up in law school when she realized that there was almost no work left in her chosen field, had come in angling for a better salary. Sesshomaru who was feeling about as ungenerous as he had ever felt, nearly fired her on the spot just for the sake of doing so. And finally, just as he was about to shut down his computer, a response from the kitsune he had emailed earlier popped up in his inbox, informing him that  he wanted to press further charges against the men for the destruction of his family's home as well.

Sesshomaru dashed off an email to the man telling him that he would be in contact within the next few days and they would form a strategy at that time. As he passes out of his office, he informed Ayame that Aoki vs Takeda was to be added to the list of cases that were to be forwarded to him while he was away.

"Alright. I've got that in my phone and I'll pass along any communication I get from them." she shoved the cell back into her oversized purple purse and together they headed through the mostly empty top floor, for the elevators.

"Hey," she said, turning to him, as the waited for the doors to open, "You call me if you need anything, ok? My family has a home not to far from yours and it wouldn't be to much of a hassle for me to drive up."

"Though the gesture is appreciated, I need no help dealing with my family." He said flatly. The elevator singed open and the two stepped inside. As it began to descend, more and more people got on and he could feel a solid number of them trying very hard not to look at their boss with curious eyes. He was right; the news seemed to have spread like a wildfire.

Sesshomaru stepped out on the first level of the parking garage and bid farewell to Ayame. His footsteps as he walked through the garage echoed tremendously even though he was walking very softly. Concrete, steel, and glass; that was what his world had been reduced to. That was the one benefit to this trip to his parents’ house; they lived high up in the mountains, far way from the noise and grime of the city.

As he slid himself into the red leather seat of his brand new white Maserati coup, he tried to convince himself that the presence of the natural landscape around him would be enough to sustain him through the upcoming trip. Somehow he just couldn't do it. The engine of his car came alive with a roar and he felt the pleasant hum of its vibrations as his left hand gripped the steering wheel and he threw the car into reverse with his right.

Cars were definitely his favorite modern invention. In the beginning, he had truly hated them; their noise and scent had been overpowering to his heightened senses, but as he had grown accustomed to them, he had developed a great fascination and then love for them. He now owned no less than four cars, one of them being a classic 1967 Shelby Cobra- the first non-Japanese car he had ever purchased- and the other three being his Maserati Gran Turismo, an Audi R8, and a Tesla Roadster.

As someone who rarely spent excessive amounts of money on anything, despite the vast fortune he had amassed over the centuries, the cars were his one exception. The Maserati was his latest purchase and so far he was extremely pleased with it.

He pulled out of the parking garage and headed out into the heavy Tokyo traffic. As he drove, he turned on the news channel on the radio. He was not particularly interested in the human news, but as a public figure of some note, it was important for him to be aware of the goings on in the world. Despite the face that youkai and humans had managed to live mostly peacefully side-by-side, it truly was side-by-side; there was little contact of any worth between the two races. Humans left youkai alone out of fear and the youkai left humans alone out of utter disinterest. It was only youkai like him; businessmen and members of youkai noble families who had any real interaction with them.

He sped along the highway, as he listened to the news anchor drone on about yet another war that seemed to be brewing and Sesshomaru wanted to shake his head in disgust; it seemed that human were utterly incapable of living peacefully. Instead they were compelled to throw away their pathetically short lives in pointless fighting.

They truly are the most wasteful creatures, he thought distastefully.

The sun had set before he had left the office and the bright lights of the highway sped by, streamers of light in the darkness out of his peripheral vision. That was another one of the modern invention which had bother him, though unlike the cars, he had never truly gotten used to them and he would sometimes have to resort to wearing sunglasses at night, just to keep from being blinded by them.

He pulled of the highway and began to head down one of the less busy offshoots. After a few more minutes, he made a turn and left the main streets behind for the quieter roads that led to his neighborhood. As he began to encounter more traffic lights and stop signs, the frustration that had ebbed away on the faster highway crept back in.

Kagura's incredible selfishness and greed made him furious. He had always suspected that she was at least partially using him for his money, but he had been ok with that because, at least initially, he had been using her to keep the crazy socialites at bay. Over time though, he had developed a vague sort of affection for the sultry demoness and the fact that she had obviously never reciprocated that affection in the least stung slightly.

More than that however, he had spent so long making her out to be an absolutely perfect person- mostly in an effort to show up his brother, who constantly complained about his own girlfriend on every possible occasion. How could he possibly explain the sudden disappearance of his supposedly flawless girlfriend without looking either like a total asshole for dumping such a wonderful person or like a complete fool for falling for a gold-digging bitch?

He turned again, onto yet another, smaller road. This one was less brightly lit, so Sesshomaru pulled off his sunglasses. He was distracted, deep in the middle of his brooding and putting his glasses in their case, and he almost missed seeing the dark shape dashing across the street. He slammed on the breaks and his car came to a screeching halt as the shape tumbled out of the way of his car.

~

Kagome was devastated. No, devastated didn't even begin to cover what she was feeling at that moment. He had dumped her, dropped her as if she had burnt him. The reason? She was pregnant and he was seeing someone else. Her best friend Sango, to be exact. And apparently this wasn't a recent thing either; it had been going on for months.

What really got to her thought was the way he had handled the whole situation. He had flat out told her that it would be too much of a hassle to take responsibility for the child he had accidentally fathered, when he would rather be with another person.

Who says that kind of stuff? She wondered as she lugged her heavy suitcase down the darkened street. Said suitcase contained everything that she had been allowed to keep at his house for the entirety of their year and a half relationship.

I guess that should have been a sign that he wasn't serious about us. She thought cynically. Sorrow ate at her like acid. He'd was her first serious boyfriend and she had just wanted their relationship to be perfect and everlasting just like the ones in the romance novels that she had devoured during her teen years. I'm totally pathetic; here I am, twenty three years old, and I'm still waiting for my fairytale prince to come and sweep me off my feet.

The neighborhood, which she had once though was so pleasant, had become so cold and unfriendly to her newly disillusioned eyes. All the modern, posh mansions stood behind high fences and hedges, cut off from each other and the world outside. She glanced down at her watch. She had been walking for a solid half hour now and had only made it a few blocks.

She wanted to scream; why couldn't there be a bus stop or train station anywhere near his stupid house? Why on earth is the closest one of either of those so far away?

Kagome came to the end of the block and as she started across the street, she was so deep in thought that she did not see the car coming around the corner at a blinding speed, until the hi-beams were in her eyes. She began to run, but her foot caught on an uneven bit of pavement and she tripped and tumbled to the ground, just as the car screeched to a halt a hair's breadth from her prone form.

A scream ripped its way from her mouth; pain shot through her as her palms scraped against the road and her kneecaps connected with the hard ground. The horrible burning pain that only comes from scrapes and bruises began to assault her senses and her eyes watered.

The driver of the car threw open the door, leaving the engine still running, slid out, and hurried to her side, just as she began to push herself up wither hands. She looked up, and in the illumination of his car's headlights, the man who knelt by her side looked frighteningly like Inuyasha, so much so that for a few seconds she thought that it really was he who had nearly mowed her over with his car. However after she blinked, she could see that beyond the similarities of the long, bright silver hair and golden eyes, that the two men looked nothing alike. For one thing, Inuyasha was hanyou, while this man was obviously a pureblooded youkai.

Kagome blinked up at him, stupidly. He's gorgeous, she thought, then realizing how crazy that thought was for her current situation, she decided that she must have somehow hit her head when she fell.

~

He exited the vehicle as quickly as possible and rushed to the front of his car. At first he thought that he had hit the person laying in the middle of the street, but he let out a breath of relief that he had not even been aware that he was holding, as the figure- a woman, he realized- began to stir.

As Sesshomaru squatted down he saw her look up momentarily and he saw her freeze for a fraction of a second, before pushing herself up on her knees.

"I did not see you in the street; are you hurt?" he asked her as he reached out and took a hold of her shoulders.

The woman looked down at her hands, which were slightly scraped, and then pressed her hands to her stomach for half a second, before answering.

"I think so." she winced as she brushed her palms off on her thighs. Here heart was still pounding from the rush of fear and adrenaline, but she was relatively fine and more importantly, her baby was as well. Kagome let out a little sigh if relief and her heart began to slow.

Sesshomaru took in her appearance. She was small in stature, wearing a light cream-colored sweater and a black skirt over a pair of now-ripped, black tights; on her feet she wore a pair of low heels that matched her sweater. Her hair was long and black, and it fell in waves around her face, obscuring it from his view, and down her back. But what was odd about her was the tremendous floral patterned suitcase, which had fallen over when she had tripped.

Where could she be going with that at this hour? He wondered.

"I'm so sorry," she apologized, "I should have been paying attention to the street before crossing."

The youkai looked at her strangely. "You should not be apologizing, I nearly ran you over." he glanced at her baggage, the back at her. "Let me make this up to you. Where are you headed?"

"I- I'm trying to get to the train station, but it's fine!" She said, forcing a laugh, "I couldn't possibly impose on you like that!"

"Nonsense." He stood and offered her his hand, "I cannot in good conscience leave you to walk to the station in the dark after nearly injuring you. You are clearly distracted enough to wander out into the middle of the street without ensuring that it was safe, so I feel that it is a reasonable assumption that you would be putting yourself in danger by continuing to make this journey on foot." Though his words were condescending there was no malice in them.

“I-” She reached up and took he hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet.

“I insist.” He said smoothly, not giving her any further chance to protest. He walked over to her fallen suitcase picked it up as easily as if it weighed nothing. Walking back to the driver’s side of the car, he tipped his seat forward so that he could stick the suitcase in the back seat of the car.

And what a car it was. It was a brand new two-door sports car; the kind that cost a fortune on a regular basis due to maintenance, special gas, and insurance, and which had absolutely no practical redeeming qualities that make up for those expenditures.

Oh my god, Kagome thought, he must be loaded. That fact gave her mixed feelings about the man; all of the wealthy people she had ever met had turned out to be completely awful, case in point, her ex-boyfriend.

The woman was staring at him with an odd expression when he pushed his seat back in place and stood up.

“Climb in.” He told her.

She hesitated for a few seconds, but when she realized that he already had her suitcase, she decided that resistance was fairly futile, so she went over to the passenger’s side door, opened it and slid into the leather seat.

It was when he joined her in the car and they had both shut the doors, that he realized what had been bothering him, all the while, about the woman. While he could smell her perfume and the general scent that went along with being human and female, he could not actually smell her, which meant that the tiny woman in the seat beside him was concealing her scent, which also meant that she was a miko.

Interesting, he though. Apart from Kikyou he had not met many priestesses in the modern world. Part of him was curious about what exactly she was concealing, but Sesshomaru was not a nosy man nor was his curiosity a burning one, so he let it go.

“Which station were you heading for?” He asked, putting the car in drive again.

“Just whichever one it is that’s closest to here that the A train picks up from; I’m trying to go to my friend’s house.” Kagome didn’t know why she’d told him the second part, it had just sort of slipped out.

“And why couldn’t this friend of yours have come and gotten you?” The tall youkai asked. He was either expecting her to answer or to tell him that it was none of his business. What he was not expecting was for her to burst into tears. But that was exactly what she did.

There was nothing about his question that should have set her off, except for the fact that thinking about why she was trying to go to her friend’s house reminded her that she couldn’t go home; not when she was pregnant out of wedlock, which reminded her that she would never be pregnant in wedlock, because she had suddenly become the victim of fate’s twisted sense of humor. And just to add insult to injury, not being able to go home also meant that she no longer had a job, because she was currently working as a miko at her family’s shrine. So Kagome buried her face in her hands and sobbed shedding great, heavy tears over the injustice of everything.

Sesshomaru was not sure what to do with the crying woman in the passenger seat of his car. His knowledge of women was limited to ones like Kagura- who were practically heartless, ones like his mother- who’s hearts were made of ice, and ones like Izayoi- who were utterly unflappable. He had never dealt with an overly emotional woman, not even once in his six hundred plus years of life.

So he did the only thing he could think of, and pulled off to the side of the road.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to cause you distress.” He said, praying that his words wouldn’t make her cry harder.

After a few minutes, her sobs became quieter and then subsided into softer sniffles. “It’s not your fault,” she hiccupped, forlornly, “I’m just having an awful night and the rest of the future looks pretty bleak too.”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeves and looked up at him. With a watery half-laugh, she said, “I feel terrible, I never even introduced myself. I’m Higurashi Kagome.”

He looked at her, slightly confused, but offered his name in return. “Taisho Sesshomaru.”

Kagome looked up at him and smiled- albeit weakly- at him for the first time that night. “Thank you Taisho-san, for helping me like this. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after tonight, but if I am ever in the position to repay your kindness I will.”

Sesshomaru stared down at her, and suddenly it dawned on him that the solution to all of his problems might be literally staring him in the face with wide blue eyes.

“There is one favor that you might do me, though it is a tremendous thing to ask of you, and therefore feel free to decline.” He began slowly, “I was put into a very delicate position earlier this evening when the woman who I had been seeing for some time decided to reveal her true colors, leaving me with no option but to show up alone to my family’s home this winter.

“This trip promises to be absolutely unbearable should I show up without the girlfriend about which they have heard so much. So here is the favor that I would ask; would you allow me to bring you with me to my family’s home for a week, in the place of the woman who was supposed to go? I would of course pay you for your time and troubles.”

He wanted to close his eyes while he waited for her answer; his request was so outrageous that no woman in her right mind would ever consider-

“Wouldn’t they know that I was not her?” Kagome asked, and his heart nearly shuddered to a stop.

“They have never met her and as far as your names go, she went by the nickname that a friend of hers from America gave her, K-chan. So as far as my family knows her name could have been anything that could be abbreviated to K-chan.”

Kagome mulled his proposition over in her head for a few minutes. On the one hand it was crazy. Going away on a trip with a man she had just met? Pretending to be his girlfriend? Meeting his parents while pretending to be his girlfriend? But on the other, he was offering money, something that she was desperately going to need a lot of very soon. She was only a month along, but a nine month pregnancy was not long enough for her to make the kind of money that she would need to bring a baby into the world all on her own.

“How much would you pay me?” She asked quietly, looking down at her lap; she felt guilty about asking him, but she was really, really going to need that money.

“Ten thousand dollars.” He said.

“What?” She gaped at him; that was more money that she made in three months combined. “No way! You can’t pay me that much!”

“What would you deem appropriate payment, then?” He inquired, raising an eyebrow at her. I wonder if this is an act or if she is seriously trying to turn down the money.

“I couldn’t possibly accept anything over five hundred.” She shook her head, “That’s way too much money.”

“Five thousand, then.”

“No! I appreciate your generosity, but I’m already doing this to repay a favor.” She seemed genuinely distressed by the idea of him giving her a large sum of money.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Sesshomaru growled at her, “It is a favor that I did not even get to complete, after I nearly ran you over in the street during what you admitted to be ‘an awful night’. Maintaining this charade is going to be complicated for the both of us, so just take the money and quit being difficult.”

“But, but-” she sputtered.

“If it will make you feel better, we will call it twenty five hundred dollars and that is final.” He said, exasperated. The last woman he had known wanted to take every cent he had, and this one wouldn’t let him give her the money that she deserved. “Youkai are very possessive of their significant others; they are constantly touching them, spending time with them, or maneuvering them around. You will be forced to put up to that level of intense intimacy for a week straight, from a complete stranger, no less. This is a bigger favor than you can possibly comprehend, Higurashi-san.”

On a whim, he leaned over and propped an arm against the passenger-side door, effectively trapping her in her seat, inches away from him. She looked at him, shrinking slightly back into the seat.

His lips were so close to hers, and their position so suggestive that Kagome could not help but feel her heartbeat speeding up. He’s right, she thought, this is intense. His eyes burned like embers, staring straight into hers.

“You will take the money, Kagome.” Her name rolled off his tongue like honey and she felt heat run straight through her body.

Then Sesshomaru moved back over to his side of the car. “Do we have a deal?”

“Yes.” She managed to say, despite the fact that her whole brain was going haywire.

He maneuvered them back out onto the road and they headed back in the direction they had come from. There was tension in the car now, so thick it was almost suffocating. Both Kagome and Sesshomaru were completely silent for the rest of the ride, each one trying to pretend that they had not been affected by what had just taken place.

~

Oh dear lord. This fic is all Sugar0o’s fault. And I cannot wait to keep going with it!

Just a couple notes: I‘m using inches, dollars, um… if I ever talk about the temperature it will be in Fahrenheit , not Celsius; mostly because I’m confused enough as it is by those things, and I do not need the complication that trying to convert stuff creates. So if you’re from some place other than America, I’m very sorry that my country had to go and try to be all individualistic with out measurements and currency.

The cars! I’m a car nerd. I love cars. I’ve actually driven the Maserati that Sesshomaru has here. I want it more than I want to breathe, but it’s stupid expensive so I’d never buy one, even if I could afford it. If you can figure out why Sesshomaru has the other three cars that he does, I will give you an internet. :D

Also I actually don't really know what the deal is with foreign cars in Japan. I tried to find out if Maserati made cars with the controls on the right instead of the left, but I couldn't, so we're just going to suspend our disbelief, ok? XD

Please read and review; your reviews inspire me and make me want to write more!

Thank you for your love and support; writing wouldn’t be nearly this much fun without all of you to read what I’ve written!

Love,

R.M. Avalon