CHAPTER 44: TROUBLE IN THE DINER

Shannon was in the diner’s tiny one-room women’s bathroom when someone jiggled the latch.  “Just a minute!” she called.  She turned on the faucet and started washing the back of her neck with a paper towel.  Two hours into her trip with the barghest and she already felt like she’d lost ten years off of her life.  He was so barbaric.  So crude.  So utterly convinced he owned her somehow.

Someone gently rattled the latch again, and Shannon sighed and reached for a paper towel.  One of the downsides to living in Alaska in the summer:  Tourists were always so impatient.  She was drying her hands and turning when the door slid open and a man in black stepped inside.

“Whoa,” Shannon said, blushing.  “Dude, this is the women’s—”

The man lifted a gun. 

Masaaki, once Shannon had taken him to a firing range and he’d seen how efficient a gun was in hurting someone, had spent untold hours with the judo and karate masters, learning techniques in disarming.  Which, to Shannon’s frustration, he had insisted on passing on to her in untold hours of drills and scenarios—most of which had hurt like hell.  Masaaki never play-fought, and he never made it easy for her to disarm him, often taking the time to kick her in the crotch or punch her in the face if she wasn’t paying enough attention.

Thus, Shannon found herself reacting by instinct.  She stepped in and to the side, shoved the muzzle up, and twisted, all in one smooth motion.  She heard the man’s trigger-finger break in a wet pop as she yanked the gun out of his hands.  He screamed and reached for his hand.

“Oh!” Shannon cried, dropping the gun and slapping a hand to her mouth.  “Sorry!  My friend’s got me in martial arts and it just kinda slipped out.  Sorry!”  Lots of people in Alaska walked around with guns.  Bears were dangerous, and you could shoot a grizzly’s heart completely out and it would still have three minutes to rip you apart on sheer adrenaline alone, so most native Alaskans who spent any serious time outdoors carried a hand-cannon and a million pounds of lead.  Maybe he’d come into the bathroom to clean it or something.

Then Shannon saw the second black-clad man stepping into the room and she stumbled backwards into the sink.  “What…?”

This time, when the man brought up a gun, he didn’t wait to fire it.  There was a puff of air, then Shannon stepped aside as the projectile flew past, breaking the glass mirror behind her.  She saw the little fluff of pink color fall and rattle into the sink, in the unmistakable shape of a tranquilizer dart.

Seeing it, Shannon froze.  Hikers didn’t use tranquilizers.  Slavers used tranquilizers.

“Yeah, it’s a queen,” one of them was saying, touching something on his neck.  The other was chambering another dart.

Oshit, Shannon thought.  Oshitoshit, Masaaki…

But Masaaki was over two hours away, in Kenai, having some sort of mental breakdown.

“Take it out back and kill it,” a sharp female voice said, the voice of a native Spaniard. 

“But Zenaida said she wanted it alive!”

“This is my jurisdiction and I’m not risking any more men.  Don’t take any chances.  Kill the beast.  Leave the body for the retrieval team to grab with the helicopter.”  The sound was a faint hum in the air, barely audible.

“Imelda says kill it,” the one with the broken finger said.  He then reached into his vest for something.

Shannon’s heart was hammering like a sledge against her ribs, realizing that they were serious.  They were seriously going to try to kill her, and no one was going to help her.  Masaaki was gone…and the barghest couldn’t get out of the car.  In that moment, knowing she was alone in this, Shannon suddenly found her mind going absolutely still.  Like standing within a crystal, looking out at her own fears and emotions flying around her, but not part of her, she saw the man pull the trigger again.  Another dart lunged from the gun.

Shannon spun out of the way, having plenty of time to think each action through as she lunged to the side and forward, hitting the gun-wielder in the throat with her knuckles.  He went down gagging.

“Enjoy silver aerosol, bitch,” the man with the broken finger said.  At the same time, he dropped something to the floor and the whole room exploded in a cool wash of mist.  Instantly, Shannon felt her eyes and skin begin to heat up as if being burned by the sun.  She gasped and stumbled back, unable to see.  Gasping, it turned out, was the wrong thing to do.  Instantly, her lungs were on fire, like someone had coated the inside of her chest in kerosene and lit a match.  Shannon fell to her knees, totally unable to see, breathe, or even think.

  Though she couldn’t see him, she heard the sound of metal against leather and recognized the metallic ringing of some sort of blade.  She heard footsteps as though from the bottom of a well, infinitely slow, as each beat of her heart took a century to pass.

Unable to see, knowing the blade was destined for her throat, Shannon lunged to her feet and ran, throwing all of her power into shoving the man aside and getting to the door.  Shannon hit his body sooner than expected and felt a sudden, searing agony in her ribs, then her hands had found his neck and she was shoving him aside, away from the door.  She heard an audible pop as his neck snapped. 

“Man down!  It got Delgado!”

“Take him out and leave him for the retrieval team.  Don’t walk him through the front of the café.”

“He might still be alive…”

“No witnesses.  If God wills it, he’ll survive until we get the helicopter out here.”

She found the knob, twisted, and fumbled backwards, trying to yank the door past the body on the floor.

She got enough of a crack open, then ducked, gasping and blind, into the tiny hallway that led between the main dining area and the back kitchens.  She was rushing towards the dining area and the crowds of people she heard there when she felt something move directly in front of her.  She heard a little puff, then jerked when something small hit her in the chest.

Immediately, her knees went limp.  She slid to the ground on numb limbs, still unable to open her eyes.

Behind her, she heard someone say, “It got Tristan.  Help me get him out of here.  Command says leave him in the woods for the chopper.”

Ice-cold circles of steel snapped down onto her wrists, and she heard a weird hiss as the metal fused.  Something grabbed her by the back of her coat and yanked her to her feet.  She felt them roughly grab her under her arms and lift her off her feet, headed in the direction of the kitchens.  Up ahead, she heard someone saying, “—officers.  We’ve just apprehended a federal fugitive.  For your own protection, we’d appreciate it if you all stepped back…”

Officers? Shannon thought, her body’s responses sluggish where they held her up and on her feet.  So they were law-enforcement?  She hadn’t seen any badges.  Shouldn’t they have flashed a badge or something?  Told her to come with them down to the station?  And what kind of law-enforcement talked about killing people and leaving them out back?  Or used tranquilizer darts?

“We need to do this quick,” of the men holding her said.  “Drug’s gonna wear off soon.”

Shannon tried desperately to pry her eyes open, but her body’s instinctive reaction had been to throw her eyelids shut, over the burn, and they now absolutely refused to obey her commands entirely.  Her lungs, face, and hands were on fire, and the most she could get out of her limbs were slow, lethargic movements, like that out-of-her-mind drunk she’d gotten at a friend’s house, for passing her last Nursing midterm.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

It all happened extremely fast.  Six men escorted her out of the back of the café and Shannon felt the sun start to sear her face and hands as they dragged her out of the shadow of the building and into the dappled darkness of the birch and cottonwood forest beyond.  Six more men joined them outside, bringing the total to twelve.  Throughout it all, Shannon only got the blurriest of images through her burning, watering eyes, just enough to know that there were a lot more attackers than she originally thought.  Then she was being led by her manacled wrists at a brisk pace out of sight of the café, deep into the mountain wilderness beside the Seward Highway.  When she fell, she was dragged.

“Please, the sun,” Shannon babbled, as they led her stumbling into the woods.  “It hurts…”

“Just keep it moving,” one of the ones in black said.  “There’s a good spot about a mile up the hill.  Good open field for the helicopter.”

They seemed to walk forever, ignoring her questions entirely. 

“Yeah, this looks good,” the same man said eventually.

Then they were forcing Shannon to her knees behind a fallen birch log, well out of sight of the little café.  She heard a metallic click and vaguely saw a man lift something to her head.

“Hey, before you do that, ask her if she knows where to find that lord in Soldotna.  The one we can’t pin down.”

“Why would she know that?” the one behind her—holding a gun, Shannon realized—demanded.

“I dunno, all these demons seem to talk to each other.  Just freakin’ ask.”

The gun tapped Shannon in the back of the head.  “You know where we can find a natural vampire lord, little girl?  Huh?”

Suddenly, Shannon’s mind clicked into focus again.  She felt everything still once more, putting her back in that crystal core, looking out on her own emotions, which simply washed away without her attention to give them strength.  She knew, right then, that she was going to die if she didn’t delay them for a few minutes—long enough for the drug to wear off.

“I know him,” Shannon said.

The man behind her snorted.  “Right.  Okay.  What’s his name, there, vamp?”

“Theo,” Shannon said.  “He attacked me in Eagle River in July.  Consorted me.”  Her words sounded slurred, barely understandable.

“See?” the first one demanded.  “Told you to ask.”

“Where’s he live?” the one with the gun to her head demanded.  “Where’s his nest?”

“I can take you there,” Shannon said.

She wasn’t prepared for the gun to collide with her skull.  She slumped forward, whimpering, barely able to do more than crawl awkwardly in the moss and lowbush cranberries as she reeled from the blow.  Someone grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up onto her knees again.  “Tell us where he is, sweetcake.  Zenaida’s been looking for your friend Theodore for decades, now.  Got a damn good bounty out on him.”

“He’s in Kenai,” Shannon said.  “Killing another lord.”  Her arms and legs were losing some of their numbness, but her eyes and lungs still burned like they’d been raked with coals.

The first man hissed.  “Another lord?  Where in Kenai?”

“I was going there,” Shannon said.  “I can find him.”

The man with the gun snorted and cocked his arm to hit her again.  On instinct, Shannon reached up, grabbed him by the forearm with both fists, and found her fingers puncturing the muscle of his arm as she tightened her grip.  The man started screaming, and she heard more guns sliding from their holsters.  Shannon’s mind, still deep in that crystal core, felt everything moving around her as if Time itself had slowed for her.  The man with the gun at her head started pulling the trigger beside her ear.  Her right ear, so close to the gun, suddenly lost all comprehension of sound.  Bullets grazed her scalp, sliding over her skull and embedding themselves into the tree in front of her.  Shannon dimly heard more guns going off like soft puffs—silencers???—but she didn’t have the coordination to get out of the way of the bullets—it was all she could do to hold onto the man’s arm as he started kicking her in the spine.

Shield yourself, that utterly calm part of her mind told her said into the chaos.

Instantly, a flare of power rushed upwards from within that crystal center and spread outwards in a glimmering, shifting bubble.  She felt something cinch down, and suddenly the bubble went black as night.  The man’s arm and foot came off where they had been within the sphere, cut clean and falling to the moss beside her.  At the same time, from her good ear, she heard the whooping thumps as bullets pounded against the barrier.

“It’s using a shield, faespar, faespar!”

Getting up, Shannon numbly started stumbling away, quickly outdistancing her attackers.  Behind her, the men in black gave chase, slapping new cartridges into their guns.

The next round of blasts almost knocked her from the crystalline calm as they shattered the voidlike bubble around her and sank into her flesh, dragging her already-numb legs out from underneath her and sending Shannon rolling through the brush like a runaway bus.  She hit a tree with the middle of her spine and collapsed against it, hurting all over.  Men were still running to catch up with her as she righted herself with a groan and looked down at her body.

Her abdomen was covered with spots of crimson.

They shot me, Shannon thought, horrified.

“Silver!” someone was screaming.  “Get her with silver!”

Seeing the crimson dotting her shirt, sensing all the men rushing up around her, Shannon’s mind went clear again.  She found herself looking at an array of possibilities—strands of fire, strands of ice, strands of light-eating void.

Spurred by panic, she chose the Void.  Immediately, she began weaving it outwards, spooling it from her core, out her fingertips, twisting it through the air in uncontrolled arcs, slinging it towards the blurry black shapes that were shooting at her.

Trees started falling, sliced into sections by the ropes spinning from her fingertips.  Men screamed.  More trees fell, logs sectioned into pieces, huge arcs of color opening up the canopy to the sky.  All the men within reach of her light-eating whip had simply fallen to the ground, no longer screaming.  The last three others were shooting again, and this time, when the bullets hit her, they ripped through her chest in agonizing waves of heat. 

Not knowing what else to do, having no control, Shannon yanked the whips of blackness around, cut them loose from her fingers, and threw them at those three last black shapes that had been just out of reach of her original cords.  She hit two.  One ducked out of the way, and the cord sailed off into the woods, slicing more trees off mid-trunk before it sank into the ground and disappeared.

Gasping on the ground, Shannon’s vision—already blurred and burning—narrowed to a tiny pipe, with darkness encircling it all around.  The sun, blazing against her face and hands, was an agony that left a gurgling whine in her chest, but Shannon couldn’t move her body out of the way, to take refuge in another patch of shadow.  She was too tired.  Too weak.  She watched the man stand, watched him slap a new cartridge into his gun, and watched him take aim at her face.  The crystal core that had given her refuge before had shattered with the searing pain in her chest, the sudden, inexplicable urge to throw up.  Shannon coughed and saw blood spatter her shirt.

So much for Björn’s bullshit about soul mates, she thought, miserable.  She had actually started to believe him, a little.  He’d sounded so sure of himself.

She watched the man start to squeeze the trigger, her heart slowing down again, this time because every ounce of her awareness became focused on that one blurry point at the end of his arm.  In the centuries that followed, Shannon found herself getting angry.  She didn’t even know these people.  And they’d attacked her.  She was just Shannon Meeks, college student and—thanks to Masaaki—whitebelt in nine different forms.  She was a nobody, and this guy was going to kill her in cold blood.  Boom, no more brain.  Ha!  Shannon wondered who was going to get her parents’ beat-to-shit house.  She should’ve deeded it to Masaaki—Theo already had a place.  She hoped Masaaki didn’t stab himself.  That would suck.

Something huge and brown lunged out of the shadows and hit the man in the arm.  The gun fired, but it hit the tree behind her head, splintering the wood.

…something huge and brown?

The man went down, hard, and she heard another scream, followed by a horrible snarling growl, another gunshot, and a sudden wet burble.  Shannon wasn’t really paying attention, though, because her chest hurt.  She could feel her body healing over the wounds, sealing that horrible burning within her chest, abdomen, and thigh.  Her hands and face were the worst, wrapping her in that unspeakable, all-encompassing agony that was only then sinking through her wash of adrenaline and terror.  She tried to cry, but coughed again, this time spattering blood clear out onto her jeans.

Something big and brown slunk away from the last black shape in the woods and grabbed her by the back of her coat.

“Angus?” Shannon tried to say.  It came out as a gurgle.

The dog yanked her off of the tree that was supporting her and started dragging her backwards.  Yanking and pulling in rough, jostling tugs that began to tear her coat.

Falling onto her back, no longer able to see the men that were attacking her, Shannon tried to tell the dog to get off her, but she couldn’t force words from her throat.  She lifted a limp hand and tried to push the dog away from her.  “No, Angus,” she tried to say, “it’s not playtime, buddy…gotta see the bad guys when they shoot me, sweetie…”  It came out in bloody liquid bubbles.

Angus ignored her, and as weak as she was, Shannon had to give up and let him drag her.  The dog had tugged her a full thirty feet or so, out of the clearing she had created with those light-eating ropes, before he grew bored and dropped her.  Shannon groaned and feebly pushed herself up again, re-propping her spine against the base of a spruce tree.

Angus sat down at her feet and peered into her face with his big, drooping jowls and whined, like he always did when he wanted pets.  He lifted a paw and set it on her lap.  Another whine.  Poor guy was probably hungry.  That asshole barghest had probably been starving him.

With her last bit of strength, Shannon lifted her hand and dropped it on his paw.  Then, with that final act of consolation, she closed her eyes and felt the darkness claim her.