CHAPTER 19: VAMPIRE PROBLEMS

“Get me my sword!” Masaaki screamed, as the massive beast continued to savage him.

Shannon scrambled to get the sword. As she was rushing towards him with it, the dog released him suddenly, turned, and bolted deeper into the house, up the stairs. Shannon dumped the blade into his hands and Masaaki looked at the place where the dog had disappeared, then the front door. A trail of blood marked the vampire’s passing.

“Stay here,” he growled. “The dog attacks you, use the boomstick.” He lunged to his feet and ran to follow the trail of blood.

The vampire had taken a straight line through the trees, toward the road. Masaaki followed at a full run, his arm already healing from where the dog had torn at it.

Unfortunately, if he was healing, so was his foe.

A few minutes later, he burst onto a gravel road and saw a dark shape on the road far below, beside a big silver car. The vampire hesitated beside the car, looked up at him, and Masaaki thought he saw fury in the man’s eyes before he ducked into his car and lit off the engine with a heavy rumble.

Masaaki ducked his head and ran for all he was worth.

The rear of the car started to ease away, then, with a gravel-flinging spin of its tires, it lurched forward, leaving him behind. Masaaki ran after it, regardless, but the car proved too fast. It pulled further and further away, until Masaaki eventually slowed to a halt, scowling. He stood there in the road for long minutes, listening to the heavy roar as it disappeared down the hill.

Eventually, Masaaki turned and started back to the house. Stopping at the place where the vampire had attacked him, he retrieved his kendogi and hakama and returned them to his body. Wiping his katana on the abandoned sleeve of the vampire’s shirt, he returned it to its sheath. Then, tucking his daishō and tantō under his obi, he went to see how his daimyō had fared with the war-beast.

He found her lounged on the stairs, petting it.

The same wretched creature that had sunk its teeth into his arm and shook him like a toy was now slumped against her on the staircase, mouth open, tongue lolling, letting her rub it behind the ears.

Narrowing his eyes, Masaaki drew his katana and started forward. Immediately, the dog’s tongue stopped lolling and it started to growl.

“What are you doing?” she cried, jumping up between them as Masaaki started up the stairs.

“That thing belongs to the vampire,” Masaaki snarled. “The vampire that ate of me. Get out of my way. It’s going to die.”

But the stubborn, soft-hearted woman held her ground. “You are not killing this dog.”

“That dog ripped up my arm!” Masaaki screamed. He jabbed his katana at the open door. “And he allowed a vampire lord to escape! He dies!”

“He was just doing what he was told,” she retorted. “He’s a good dog.”

He’s a good dog… “Of all the mindless, idiotic things I’ve ever heard a woman say!” Masaaki snapped. “The animal belongs to the enemy.” He went to shove past her. “Get out of my way.”

She pushed him back. And flung him down the stairs. With a single shove.

Masaaki uncurled from where he had collapsed into a painful pile at the base of the stairs, groaning. On the stairs above him, the woman had her hand to her open mouth, in obvious shock. “Oh God, I am so sorry!” she cried. “I had no idea…”

Angry, now, Masaaki lunged back to his feet. “You want to protect the beast that just aided your enemy? Fine. I will be outside on the front porch, awaiting the dawn. Be sure to scream when it assaults you.” Then he turned on heel and stormed out of the house, so angry he was shaking.

#

Half an hour later, once he was sure he was not being pursued, Theo pulled off the road, put the truck into park, and shut off the engine. Slumping forward against his dash, he let out a wretched breath of pain and loss. Angus… The first dog that he’d found in three hundred years not to immediately bite his hand on contact, and he’d just left him to die. Like a coward. After Theo used him as a distraction. Theo’s gut clamped with guilt and he had to fight down the wrenching in his chest. He’d just given up his best friend to monsters. Because he was too much of a coward to fight the yatagarasu head-on. He had to use Angus as a prop. Six years of companionship, and Theo had just used him as a diversion and then left him behind, all-too-sure of his triumph in the whole affair.

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Now who’s getting cocky, jackass?

Theo pulled a trembling hand from his guts and looked down. The glinting gray ropes of intestine were still visible through the sticky red, though the wound was closing slowly. Much too slowly. The cut in his shoulder was likewise healing slowly, the downward slice almost hitting his left nipple, exposing the white notches of bone, the pulsing of organs underneath. At this pace, it would be days before his right arm worked properly again.

Enchanted steel, Theo realized, horrified. The yatagarasu had attacked him with enchanted steel. Specific-made to kill Third Landers. Why the fuck was the vampire queen allowing him to carry enchanted steel?!

Yet, even if it hadn’t been enchanted, the yatagarasu had almost killed him. Theo had been down, blind, unable to see. One more swing…

And Angus had given his life to save him.

Theo felt the rage bubbling up from within and he almost turned his truck around and set it on a collision-course for the queen’s living room, wounds or no.

No, he told himself. To make the best out of Angus’s sacrifice, he needed his rest. With the yatagarasu guarding the queen, he needed to prepare, to plan. He still didn’t want to kill the First Lander, despite the fact he was now gazing at his own intestines. The enthralled did strange things when suffering a queen’s poison, and Theo didn’t hold his actions against him. He couldn’t, having been in that position before, knowing the desperation, the mindless love for something he infinitely hated.

He did, however, hold it against the queen.

He had to find a way to separate them. The queen seemed rather oblivious and lazy. If the yatagarasu was removed from the equation, killing her would be easy. Yet that made Theo wonder…why was his light unbound? As dangerous as a yatagarasu was to a vampire, there was no need for the queen to leave him his power. Even enthralled, he was a danger to her, and the First Lander’s blood had the same exquisite rush of power whether the golden crow could summon his light or not.

She’s stupid, Theo realized. Stupid, and arrogant. That would make his task easier.

Theo drove back to his hotel and parked out back, where his truck was shielded by the road by the building. Carefully wadding up a towel and stuffing it against his wounds, he pulled his leather bomber jacket from the seat and was painstakingly working his fingers through the sleeves when his phone began to ring.

Pausing to pull it from his pocket, Theo hesitated upon seeing Mandi’s number. She’d called at least ten times since he’d left, none of which he had answered. He let this one, too, go to voicemail and resumed his struggles with his coat.

His phone began to ring again. Letting out an irritated growl, Theo picked up the phone and thrust it to his ear. “I’m busy,” he snapped, before ending the call. He was just forcing his limp right wrist through the coat when the phone rang again.

“Goddamn it, what?!” Theo snapped.

“Did you kill my brother?” Mandi’s voice was tremulous, wracked in a sob.

Bleeding, his intestines even then sliding from the throbbing slit in his abdomen, Theo froze. “What?”

“He disappeared,” Mandi whimpered. “We haven’t seen him in four days.”

Theo had left Soldotna five days ago. He’d been scouring Eagle River ever since. Cold chills started working his way down his spine. “I didn’t kill your brother, Mandi.”

“Where are you?” Mandi asked. Over the phone, he could hear her voice crack.

“Out past Anchorage,” Theo said. “There was something I had to deal with out here.”

“Have you seen Chris?” Mandi asked again.

“Not since the last time he drove you to our meeting,” Theo said. “I didn’t hurt your brother. I swear to you, Mandi.” He started inching his way into the jacket again.

“I really need to see you,” Mandi whimpered. “Please, Theo. I’m scared. I think I saw someone at the house, the night he disappeared.”

Theo hesitated with the jacket. “Like who?”

“It was dark. But it looked like you.”

Theo grimaced and pushed a wad of entrails back into his stomach cavity, flushing with the sudden pain in his gut from the rough treatment. “Look, Mandi, it wasn’t me. I’ve been in Eagle River the last five days. I really have to take care of something before I come back.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “You didn’t really mean all that stuff you said, did you?”

Hearing the plaintive plea in her trembling voice, Theo collapsed forward, hitting the steering wheel with his forehead. “No,” he muttered.

“I didn’t think so,” she babbled, sounding suddenly ecstatic. “You were trying to protect me, right? Trying to keep me from getting hurt? Before I could fall in love with the beast? Because you’ve been hurt in the past? You’ve seen your girlfriends die before, right?”

Theo felt his guts clamp with unease…then felt them slide out into his lap.

“Look,” Theo said, holding the phone against his ear with his shoulder as he started stuffing them back in place, “I’m having a little bit of a personal crisis right now, Mandi. Can I call you back?” The brutal treatment was leaving him sweaty and trembling, and he felt somewhere between vomiting and shitting himself.

“I don’t care what people think,” Mandi blurted. “I love you, Theo. You rescued me from vampires. You’re the kindest guy I ever met. I want to spend the rest of my life—”

“I can’t fucking talk!” Theo snapped, as a tourist walked right past the truck, trailing three little girls. He had to hunch forward to hide the intestines piled on his lap from view, which made some of them slide to the floor.

“—with you.” There was a long silence. Then, “You’re such a fucking asshole, Theo.” The line went dead.

“Fuck!” Theo cried, hurling the phone into the seat. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the loop of intestine off of the floorboard and did his best to scrape the dirt and dog-hair off of it, which made his guts twist—which felt like snakes moving in his hands. He swallowed down bile and, somewhere between revulsion and horror, Theo painfully shoved his guts back into his abdomen and, one-handed, tied the towel shut around it. Then he forced his limp hand the rest of the way into the jacket, then painstakingly zipped that up.

Thus armed, he grabbed his phone and climbed out of the cab. He slammed the door shut, locked it, and did his best not to stumble through the hotel lobby and up the stairs to his third-floor room. Swiping the keycard, he shoved the door open, slipped inside, then fell against it, shutting it with his back.

Somehow, he stumbled the last twenty miles to his bed, then lowered himself, aching, to the mattress and began the painstaking process of peeling cloth and other debris out of his wounds. Eventually, once he was sure he wasn’t going to heal with a wad of towel or jacket in his body, he propped himself up on a pillow and retrieved his phone. He dialed Mandi’s number with his functioning hand and lifted it to his ear, waiting for her to pick up.

After the sixth ring, he got sent to voicemail.