CHAPTER 27: STANDOFF

That was enough to make Theo stop crawling. He froze against the carpet, because to be inundated with the yatagarasu’s light, at that point, was more horrifying than being taken as a thrall. “Please don’t,” he whimpered. “I won’t move. Please.” He was groveling like a coward, and he knew it, but he would do anything to keep the yatagarasu’s light from touching him again.

The yatagarasu grunted. “Go ahead and take him, Shannon. He flinches, I’ll blast the chickenshit into a coma.”

Theo shuddered and closed his eyes in a wash of pure misery. A queen. He was going to be claimed by another queen. He had given up everything and fled to the Third Realm so that he could never again fall prey to the depravities of another queen.

Theodore heard her approach and cringed into the carpet. Instantly, he felt a wash of shame. Theodore Ósvaldr Hjörr. One of the most powerful barons on the Council of Lords, with a palace of his own, an army under his command, and having the respect of the entire Third Lands at the mere whisper of his name, and here he was squirming on the hard carpet of a second-rate hotel, trying to hold as still as possible while a queen thralled him so a yatagarasu wouldn’t hit him with his light again.

But the queen stopped beside the yatagarasu and said, “Why were you trying to kill me?”

Theodore laughed bitterly and rolled his head into the carpet, away from them.

The yatagarasu sighed. “Just thrall him now and ask questions later. He’ll answer your questions once you thrall him.”

“Shut up, Masaaki.” A pause. “How bad did he hurt you? Can you even talk?” Then, to Theo’s surprise, she came to squat beside him, just out of reach, so that she could see his face.

“Just do it,” Theo whispered, twisting his face away from her. “I’ll give you nothing willingly, monster.”

Instead of laughing at him and telling him either way worked for her, the queen crept sideways until she was once more in his field of vision. “Just do what?” she asked Theo, timidly.

“Thrall him,” the yatagarasu said.

“I thought you said you didn’t want me to thrall anyone, Masaaki,” the queen growled. “You made me promise.”

She promised not to thrall…? Theodore really met her eyes for the first time since their chance meeting at the gas-station. Even through his misery, he was surprised at the nervousness he saw there. Much the same as the anxiety she had shown at the pump. Not at all the malicious, self-serving confidence he had always known of the queens. And, back in his home realm, he had met dozens of queens.

“Lords are different,” Masaaki said. “You can thrall as many of them as you want. The self-serving scum do it to others, as thoughtlessly as picking up a coin off the street.”

“I do not,” Theo snapped, his anger rising. “If that were true, crow, I would have enthralled you instead of tied you with rope. Believe me. It made more sense to thrall you, asshole.”

The yatagarasu’s sword seemed to dip slightly. Then his shock faded with suspicion. “Of course not. You were saving your poison to thrall the queen.”

“You can’t thrall a queen!” Theo snapped back, his cheek still pressed to the carpet. “Their magic is too strong.”

“Okay,” the queen said, “everyone just shut up about thralling for a second. Nobody’s thralling anybody. I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. All I really want to know is why you’ve been trying to kill me.”

“You’re a queen,” Theo growled, meeting her amber gaze again. “I was going to kill you before you had a chance to pollute this Realm and make more of your kind.”

She pursed her lips in an O. “Ooooh,” she swallowed, “kaaaay.”

“Just sink your fangs into him and flex the muscles in your wrists,” the yatagarasu said. “If you don’t yet have the control, then you can wrap one hand around your wrist and squeeze. Simple.”

“Masaaki!” she snapped, “I’m not going to thrall him. Stop being an ass. You told me it was a horrible thing to do to somebody—hell, you made me promise not to—and just because this guy scared you, you don’t need to be a dick. A lord is no different than a yatagarasu.”

“A vampire lord,” the yatagarasu snapped, “is entirely different, Shannon. That is what they do. Their sole purpose in life is to enthrall an army and collect sustenance for queens.”

“I’m not doing it, okay? Just stop being a prick and let me talk to him.”

The yatagarasu sighed, deeply, but went quiet. Theo, who had been listening to the conversation with rising shock, watched as the queen bit her lip and turned back to him. She seemed to study him a moment, all nerves.

“Uh. Well.” She cleared her throat, obviously compiling her thoughts. “Okay. See, Masaaki forced me to be a vampire. He wanted to teach me to be a good vampire, see? At least, I think that’s what was running through his screwed-up head. Anyway, my parents didn’t even tell me I was a vampire until I got this note after they’d left, something about them bringing back a consort. I don’t really know. But they left Masaaki tied up in their attic when they left and I freed him and he made me drink his blood. He’s got some weird honor-code thing going on where he’s been giving me his blood to keep me from having to drink from anyone else, but Masaaki can’t keep up and it’s really wearing him down and I was hoping maybe you’d let me drink your blood because we don’t have anyone else because the other yatagarasu flew off when we freed her and he’s going to die if you don’t?”

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What the hell? Theo rewound the garbled mess in his head, piecing it back together in his mind. It sounded like the queen was…asking? Theo slowly twisted his body on the rug to face her, stunned. He saw hope mingled with anxiety in her eyes. Was she asking?

“Careful, lord,” the yatagarasu warned, at his movement.

But Theo ignored him. He was so utterly bewildered by her apparent query that, for a long moment, he could only stare. “Are you…” he said softly, “…asking me, little queen?”

She blushed and looked down and started picking at the carpet. “Ummm.” She glanced up at the yatagarasu.

“You don’t have to ask him for shit,” the yatagarasu spat. “Just take him and be done with it. He’s demonkin. Born of the Third Realm. He doesn’t deserve your compassion, daimyō. It’s lost on him. Believe me.” The flatness in the yatagarasu’s eyes combined with the hatred in the man’s voice to leave Theo feeling cold. He knew, right then, that if this queen weren’t in the room with them, he would be dead.

But the queen’s face darkened and she said, “Masaaki, go stand out in the hall, okay?”

The yatagarasu went completely stiff. “No.”

“Goddamn it, Masaaki, go!” she cried. “I need to talk to him alone, okay? You’re making things worse.”

“No, daimyō,” the yatagarasu repeated, firmly. “If I leave you here with him, he will be a corpse when I do.”

And Theo realized right then that the yatagarasu was undeniably not enslaved. And, in realizing that, Theo understood that there was nothing stopping the yatagarasu from putting his sword through his neck, should the man decide that the queen was taking too much time in thralling Theo. And he would, too. Theo sensed that, if she took much longer, his life was forfeit.

The queen—only a teenager, it seemed—didn’t seem to recognize that fact. She gave the yatagarasu a long, irritated look, then turned back to Theo in a huff. Immediately, she lost some of her confidence, and she sounded almost timid as she said, “Um, look. I was hoping you could help us. I’m not going to thrall you—”

“You’re going to thrall him or he’s going to die,” the yatagarasu interrupted.

“Masaaki, goddamn it!” she shouted. “You are not helping the situation.”

“I am going to end the situation,” the yatagarasu snapped. “One way or another.”

The queen went pale. “You’re not killing him.”

“Enthrall him or I kill him. One or the other. He’s a lord, daimyō, which means he could enthrall me, if I let him sink his fangs into me.”

“I did sink my fangs into you,” Theo said softly. Theo remembered the man screaming under him, thrashing in terror, and felt a wash of guilt. “I’m sorry, Masaaki.”

The yatagarasu’s face hardened and he gave him a merciless stare. “One or the other, daimyō.”

“Look, just give me a few minutes,” the queen snapped. Then, to Theo, “Okay. Um. You said you were going to kill me ‘cause I was a queen? I mean, like, what if I had those little black things ripped out of my arms? Would everybody be happy, then?”

Theo froze. “What?”

At the same time, the yatagarasu said, “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” the queen demanded. “You don’t want me to use them, I don’t want to use them, hell, you even said I should get them both removed, when you first cut me open, so if it would ease his mind, why not?”

Masaaki jabbed the sword at Theo. “I’d carve the poison sacs out of his arms. Gladly. But yours, daimyō, will stay.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“For times like this, when you must choose whether to thrall a lord or let me kill him.”

Trembling and sick, Theo said, “Kill me, crow. I’ve been thralled before. I’d rather die than go back.”

The yatagarasu cocked his head at Theo and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, but said nothing.

“Oh, this is just freakin’ stupid.” The queen suddenly got up and bared her wrist to Theo’s lips. “Go ahead.”

Theo glanced at the girl’s wrist for a startled moment before his instincts kicked in. He rolled away from her as quickly as his sluggish body could move, in the hopes that the First Lander wouldn’t hit him with another blast of sunlight.

He was too late. He screamed and curled in on himself as the yatagarasu’s light suddenly seared the entire room until it was too bright to see. Then the light dimmed just enough for Theo to see the yatagarasu stepping forward, sword held high…

The queen ducked under the sword and dropped on top of him, putting her forehead to Theo’s cheek. For a moment, Theo thought she was trying to feed, and he started to throw her off. Then he realized that both of her hands were planted over his face and arms, protecting as much of Theo’s skin as she could.

Instantly, the yatagarasu’s light went dim. “Daimyō,” he said softly, “get off of him. Right now.” There was fear in the man’s suddenly-pale face. Unmistakable fear.

“No, goddamn it,” the queen retorted, lifting her head so that Theo could look up at her in bewilderment. She was not looking at him, however, and was peering up at the yatagarasu. “Listen to me. Both of you. Masaaki, it would not go well if you leave a decapitated corpse in this hotel room. They would take your swords and put you in jail.” She turned to look down at Theo. “Nameless vampire dude, I am not your regular vampire dudette. I’m not going to be thralling anyone, okay? But Masaaki is dying and you could help us. You don’t have to. Hell, at this point, all I really want to hear is that you’re not gonna try to kill me again. But you could help him.”

“Daimyō,” the yatagarasu said softly, eyes catching on Theo. “Get off of him. Please.” And Theo knew that the last word was meant for him.

“Put your sword away, samurai,” the queen retorted, oblivious. “He’s not going to hurt me.” Obviously, the queen had no idea that a lord was stronger and faster. …or that every instinct in Theo’s body was screaming at him to run his fangs through her neck and twist off her head.

Slowly, Theo turned to look at the yatagarasu, who was standing two steps away, utterly rigid, then returned his gaze to the queen who was straddling him. He considered.

“Don’t…” the yatagarasu whispered.

“Back off,” Theo said, holding the queen’s gaze. Above him, the queen frowned.

But the yatagarasu understood. Very slowly, he took a step backwards.

“Further,” Theo growled. “Get out.”

“You’re going to die, demon.” But the yatagarasu backed to the other end of the room. He did not, of course, leave them alone together, but it was far enough for Theo’s comfort.

Then, very gently, Theo reached up and lifted the queen off of him.

She grunted as he set her aside, obviously surprised at his strength.

“Little one,” Theo said, “one thing you will learn…” He glanced over at the yatagarasu, who was still watching him from the far wall, utterly stiff. “A lord is dangerous.”