CHAPTER 25: PLAN B
Though she was blindfolded and gagged, her arms locked in steel behind her back, Daiyu kicked at her captors when they pulled her out of the van. They grabbed her easily and hefted her up and out of the back, then dropped her to the ground, her chin hitting the dirt hard, with sharp gravel digging into her naked breasts and stomach.
“Be careful with her,” the Japanese vampire who had called her a whore snapped.
Daiyu tried to kick at their legs, their feet, the ankles…anything…but without being able to see, they simply laughed and danced around her. She was hyperventilating, now, knowing the sorts of things that awaited her in her new home. Her captors had taken great pleasure in telling her of the depravities that went on in that basement. One of their best customers. Constantly having to replenish their supply.
Then her captors were slamming the back door on the van and she heard gravel crunch as they walked back to the front. The engine still running, she heard the increase in RPMs, then heard the tires pop against the gravel as they eased away from her. Then the car engine vanished in the distance, leaving her alone with the vampires.
Then she heard another crunch on the gravel, slow and easy, and Daiyu froze. It grew close enough to kick, and she twisted and tried, her ankles locked together with rope.
Surprisingly, her feet hit nothing.
“Shhh!” the Japanese vampire cried. “Shhh, shhh…” She felt him kneeling beside her, near her chest, out of range of her feet. Very gently, he touched her face.
Daiyu screamed a curse at him through the gag and rolled away, kicking at the air where she thought he had been.
“Calm!” the Japanese vampire said, grabbing her by a foot and holding it in place. “Ancestors, please! Let me take off your blindfold and get that thing out of your mouth so we can talk.”
Daiyu went still, wary and panting.
“Shhh, calm.” Very gently, the man reached forward and started unbuckling the blindfold and the gag. As soon as they were no longer covering her face and eyes, Daiyu sucked in a huge breath of air to scream.
The Japanese man’s hand came down on her mouth suddenly and he lifted the other in a fist to strike her.
Daiyu cringed twisted away, waited for the blow.
A sudden light hit her face, as bright as the sun.
Confused, Daiyu opened her eyes. The Japanese man’s fist, which he was holding up for her, was shining with a brilliant, glorious energy…
Daiyu felt her mouth fall open as she looked at the man’s fist, to his face, and back. It wasn’t a spell. It wasn’t blood magic, causing the air around his hand to glow. His flesh was glowing. As magnificent as the sun.
“You will not scream?” the yatagarasu asked softly.
Her mouth fell open and she gave a small shake of her head.
Yet still he kept his hand against her lips, and his oddly-striped brown eyes were timid. “I wore a façade when I entered the slave den,” he said softly. “I do not think you’re a whore, sanzuwu.” Then, very slowly, he removed his hand.
Daiyu stared up at the yatagarasu a long moment, then twisted to find the vampire standing a few yards off, watching them with interest. Then Daiyu noticed the color to the vampire’s flesh, the golden tinge mingling with the silver.
…silver?
“That’s a queen!” she gasped, rolling up against the yatagarasu’s knees in her haste to get away from the vampire.
The yatagarasu caught her and helped her sit up. “Yes, sanzuwu, a queen. And yes. I’ve been feeding her.”
“She enthralled you,” Daiyu said, in horror. Honored ancestors, a vampire queen. A young one, too, by the looks of her. Probably only then building her harem. And with two golden crows enthralled…
The yatagarasu held her in place and said, “Not enthralled. I drank of her poison. As will you, if you choose to feed her.”
Food for a queen. Daiyu started panting and attempted to pull away, roll to her feet, something.
“Not enthralled,” the yatagarasu snapped. “Look at me. Tell me what you see.”
Daiyu froze at the sharpness to his voice. Slowly, she turned to the yatagarasu, then saw the bleached ripples in his eyes, the streaks of silver just then starting to show in his hairline. Because she couldn’t believe she had heard him correctly, she said, “You chose to feed her?” And now that she was looking, he looked paler and more lifeless than most men, which is what had, at first glance, made her think he was a vampire.
“It’s a long story,” the yatagarasu said, “but she freed me, as I’m about to free you. We’re going to give you the choice to stay or go. If you stay, I will make you drink of her poison, so she cannot enthrall you by accident.”
Daiyu’s heart started pounding. He said they were going to free her. Suddenly, her entire world had narrowed to that one simple fact.
“Truthfully, I need some help,” the yatagarasu went on. “I don’t think I can last another two weeks feeding her alone. If you stayed and helped me, sanzuwu, I would be greatly indebted to you.”
Daiyu narrowed her eyes. He wanted her to let a vampire feed on her. Willingly. He must be sick. Or insane. She almost told him he was dreaming, but managed to keep her mouth in check, knowing that he’d be more likely to release her if he thought she was going to cooperate.
Though she had no intention of doing any such thing, she reluctantly said, “I could drink of the queen’s venom?”
The relief on the yatagarasu’s face was pitiful. “Yes,” he said, putting a key in the padlock at her wrists, freeing them. “We’ll also get the collar off your neck. My daimyō has a spinning device that will cut it, if you can hold still.”
Every muscle in Daiyu’s body went stiff. “I will hold still.”
“We’re going to free you,” the yatagarasu insisted again. “Don’t run.”
“I won’t,” Daiyu lied.
“Even if you don’t want to feed her,” the yatagarasu said, his eyes pleading with her. “Please don’t run.”
“I won’t run,” Daiyu said, trying not to let her desperation show. “Cut it off.”
#
As Masaaki had instructed before her arrival, Shannon stayed a respectful distance from the new yatagarasu. Even now, she was standing beside the couch as Masaaki cut the collar with the grinder against the wall, throwing sparks across the living-room. As he did, he told the Chinese chick how they were going to find her a place to live and get her some clothes and give her a stipend for her services.
And all the while, Shannon watched the woman’s face, and she knew. Masaaki didn’t know, but Shannon did. She was too eager to please. Too happy. Too easy to laugh at his nervous jokes.
And, sure enough, when Masaaki cut the final piece of metal free and smiled and went to help her sit up, the woman shifted to crow form, jumped out of her bonds, launched into the air, and flew out the broken front-door window of her parents’ house.
Very slowly, the huge grin on Masaaki’s face faded and he lowered his head to look at the grinder in his hands. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he set the grinder down, got up, went over to the door, and looked outside. After several minutes of silence, he turned from the window, lifted Shannon’s coat from the rack and threw it to her.
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“Let’s go, daimyō.” His voice was dull and lifeless. “She’s not coming back.”
“Let’s stay here for a few hours,” Shannon offered, agonized by the disappointment in his face. “Until it’s time to go to Aikido practice. Maybe she’ll come back, Masaaki.”
For a long moment, Masaaki simply stood there by the door, Shannon’s coat in his hands. Then he shrugged and put her jacket back on the rack and went to kneel beside the sofa, facing the front door. When Shannon tried to make conversation in the hours that followed, he simply grunted or gave her as brief a response as possible, usually a single word.
The yatagarasu didn’t come back.
When the time came for Aikido lessons, Masaaki simply got to his feet, went to the wall, retrieved her jacket, and threw it to her. “Aikido lessons, daimyō.” Then he pulled open the door and went to the car, defeat all over his features.
Shannon followed, watched Masaaki stumble several times in Aikido practice, and again a couple hours later, in kendo practice. Once they were in the car again that night, headed home, she cleared her throat.
“I don’t want to hear it, wan-ko,” Masaaki interrupted, before she could speak. “My penance is to feed you. Even if that means my death.”
“Okay, sure, whatever,” Shannon said, because she had long ago realized that it was futile to argue with a samurai about cleansing his honor and dying needlessly. “I was actually going to suggest we go to the grocery store for some multivitamins and electrolytes. Get you souped up on Gatorade and vitamins. Might help.”
“I want tea,” Masaaki said. “I’m almost out.”
If there was one thing that Shannon had learned about samurai, they drank tea like a racehorse. What was worse, Masaaki had found a bottle of kombucha tea on a rack in a gas-station, and, upon tasting it, had decided that he would make it. And nothing Shannon had been able to say had kept him from filling her brand-new cellar with a dozen gallon-jar glass bottles of the nastiest, most putrid-looking brew she had ever seen. It had scum floating on the top of it. And he drank it. With relish.
Shannon shuddered. “Do you have to make that disgusting stuff?”
Masaaki picked up a discarded kombucha bottle from the floorboards. “Says it has all the vitamins and minerals that I need right here.” He tapped the eye-catching label. The entire bottle, Shannon noted, had been covered with little Japanese scribbles from his dictionary.
Shannon grimaced. That’s just what he needed to learn. Modern marketing propaganda on the wondrous beneficial qualities of fermented tea. “Look. I’m getting you some real food. You can’t survive on just tea. You’re not Chuck Norris.”
Masaaki frowned at her. “I can survive on sunlight.”
Shannon’s mouth fell open. “Holy crap, you might actually have him beat.” She considered that a long moment, tapping her finger to her jaw, then shook her head. “Nah, he’s still cooler.” Then she pulled to a stop at a light and twisted to jam her finger into Masaaki’s meaty chest. “And you, my samurai friend, are going to eat some real food. Living off sunlight may be all hunky-dory most of the time, but you’re feeding a vampire, so you gotta replace all those red blood cells.”
Masaaki frowned at her. “I like tea. I need another few boxes to refresh the kombucha batches downstairs.”
Shannon sighed. “Fine, so we’ll get tea and multivitamins and fruit.” She thumped his chest again. “And you will start eating it.”
“I eat food, I have to shit,” Masaaki grumbled. “It’s uncomfortable.”
Shannon opened her mouth…then shut it again. She thumped his pec again. “Everybody shits. The shogun shits. You will be eating real food, not sugar-water. Got it?”
Masaaki grunted and picked up a judo manual, pointedly ignoring her.
Narrowing her eyes, Shannon drove them to a grocery store and parked, then told the samurai to stay in the car.
Masaaki yawned, tossed the judo manual into the backseat with the mastiff, and got out of the car with her. Sprawled out in the back, taking up every inch of the seat, Angus sniffed the judo manual and then shoved it off of his back, onto the floor.
Shannon watched Masaaki calmly close his door and adjust the swords on his belt. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What if you get attacked again?” Masaaki demanded. “I need to be nearby to rescue you.”
Shannon rolled her eyes and gestured to the parking-lot. “This is a public place. They have cameras and security guards, as well as tiny guardian elves. Nobody’s stupid enough to attack someone in a store, Masaaki. There’s too many witnesses.” Even this late at night, just after sunset, the parking-lot had tons of people in it, most of whom were wearing the bright clothes and the shorts/sneakers/ T-shirt combos of out-of-state tourists. Nice summertime evenings, in Alaska, were always active and busy. On sunny days, people went shopping or hiking at ten or eleven at night, and didn’t think anything of it.
“I’m your bodyguard,” Masaaki retorted. “How am I going to guard your body if I’m sitting in the car with that demonkin’s mutt breathing down my neck?”
“Oh, dammit, fine,” Shannon said. Because, in truth, having so much money sitting in the bank was making her uncomfortable. Aside from Masaaki’s splurges on martial arts books and war paraphernalia, she’d actually cut back on her spending, trying to keep anyone from noticing. She’d been getting a small instead of a large coffee at Sleepy Dog, and had taken to parking the Mercedes out behind the building, so Josh and the other baristas wouldn’t see her driving a two hundred thousand dollar car. For the last week, she had been considering buying a really crappy old beater car so nobody saw her driving a Mercedes. Having that much money just didn’t feel…secure. Like she suddenly needed twenty guys with submachine guns and a train of intimidating black SUVs wherever she went, just to keep some crazy from deciding she would make an excellent hostage or kidnapping victim.
So, though she would never admit it to his face, having Masaaki around just made her feel…safer. Even walking around in a damn kendogi and manskirt, toting around three swords in the middle of Fred Meyer, Masaaki had become a comforting presence, something she could rely on.
Masaaki grunted and stretched his arms limberly over his head, yawning as he flexed his spine with the ease of a dancer. Shannon noticed, despite herself, that he looked even better in the kendogi now that he’d spent a few days breaking it in, so it no longer had the stiffness and wrinkles like it had just come out of a manufacturer’s shrink-wrap. She saw the way the heavy cloth clung to his body in all the right places and cleared her throat, quickly finding something else to look at. She locked the doors on the Mercedes.
Masaaki continued to stretch, groaning. “I think Master Shinzato damaged my liver with that last sword strike. I can feel the blood pooling inside, under my lungs.”
Oh. Great. Just what she needed to hear. Shannon had gotten used to the crazy, random-ass stuff that the immortal said as an ‘oh, by the way…’ and had long since stopped feeling sorry for his bouts of internal bleeding. Shinzato Yusuuke had, after all, offered him armor. Repeatedly. “Food,” Shannon said, heading toward the front door.
Masaaki cut his stretch short with a startled sound and hurried after her.
Inside Fred Meyer, Shannon grabbed Masaaki by the belt and yanked him through the automatic doors before he could start another thirty-minute search for elves. While he was twisting around, looking behind them, she tugged a cart out of the foyer and shoved samurai and cart through the second set of automatic doors and into the main store. She took him to the multivitamins first. As soon as they were in the aisle, Masaaki whipped out his handy-dandy little pocket-dictionary and frowned up at the heading over the shelf.
“That says ‘women’s vitamins,’” Masaaki informed her.
Shannon narrowed her eyes. “Women’s vitamins have more iron in them. Iron is important if you lose blood. You’ll go anemic if you don’t have iron.”
“It says they’re for women.” He wandered over to the men’s section. “Here. These are for men.” He pointed to the non-iron-rich vitamins on the shelf above him.
“Listen to me,” Shannon growled, not about to try to explain to a samurai the nutritional mechanics of menstrual cycles, because that for sure would keep him from touching the women’s vitamins. “You need these.” She threw a few bottles of women’s multivitamins into the cart.
The samurai narrowed his eyes at the bottles—each showing a happy, healthy woman on them—then looked up at her. “What are you trying to say, wan-ko?”
“You’re losing blood. You need these. Women lose a lot of blood. These are better for rebuilding blood.”
For a moment, Masaaki just gave the pills a blank stare. Then his eyes widened and he took a step backwards. He looked up at the woman’s shelf with outright horror on his face.
Shannon slapped her face into her hand, knowing, by then, that the situation was beyond salvage. “Fine. You know what? Fine.” She yanked the bottles out of the cart, stacked them back on the shelf, took several men’s vitamins from the shelf, and then followed those up with some iron supplements.
She then steered him to the sports drinks section, where she loaded up the cart with a good forty bottles of pretty-colored liquids for him to try, then they headed over to the produce department, where she bought him plenty of fruits and veggies to compliment the ‘sushi rice’ she had bought at a specialty foods shop in Anchorage.
Shannon, whose ‘food aficionado’ status before the samurai’s appearance had been limited to the pursuits of microwaveable cheeseburgers and frozen pizza, hadn’t even realized there was a difference between regular rice and sushi rice. Which, of course, had made Masaaki call her a barbarian. He liked, it seemed, to call people barbarians. When he was the one running around with swords and sticking them in people. The hypocrite.
“Tea,” Masaaki said, once they’d filled the cart with enough fruits and veggies to make an elephant puke. He pulled out his pocket dictionary again.
Shannon rolled her eyes, but took him back to the tea aisle. “You’re on your own this time, buddy.” Then, as he started wandering around the shelves, puzzling through the titles, she said, “Okay, while you look real good at the pictures, I’m gonna wander over to the coffee aisle and get myself some java. I’m running low.” She waved at the shelves upon shelves of tea. “Get whatever looks good. I’m thinking ten boxes max, though. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
Masaaki grunted and started combing his fingers along the boxes, flipping through his annoying little book. “What is pomegranate?”
“And stay there,” Shannon said, hesitating at the end of the aisle.
Masaaki waved her off and kept searching.
Sighing, Shannon pulled her cart around the end of the aisle and went looking for coffee. Out of habit, she started looking at the brands that were on sale, first, then, halfway through picking out the cheapest, most generic brand she could find, realized that in the last week she had just dumped over fifty thousand dollars on a sword-swinging freak, was probably about to spend another three hundred on food for his ungrateful ass, had just inherited millions, and she deserved Folgers, dammit.
She had found her favorite canister, tucked down on the bottom shelf, and was standing back up from retrieving it, when the air shimmered at the corner of her eye and a man materialized at her back. An instant later, she felt two painfully sharp pricks against her spine. “Scream,” a deep male voice said against her ear, “and I carve out your heart right here, vampire.”