CHAPTER 49: THE SAMURAI AND THE JIAOLONG
Masaaki could not keep his hands from shaking. He put both fists into the alien grasses of this barbaric northern hellhole and squeezed. His whole body was trembling from the strain of an entire day of searching for Theo—running and flying and finding nothing. He was so exhausted he couldn’t even keep his hikari under control—the woods around him were alight with random, intermittent flashes as he fought the mindless compulsion of the lord’s venom, as he had the entire day.
“I’ll kill you, Theo,” he managed, burying his face in the forest mosses in a half whine, half howl of rage. “I’ll bury my blade in your filthy heart!” The last came out as a scream. He knew the compulsion to return to the vampire lord was merely the venom’s hold on his body, calling him back to the vampire as a willing sacrifice, but knowing it gave him no foothold to stop it. He had to find Theo, and he had absolutely no idea where he was. He’d been running for hours. Flying for hours. When it had become clear he wasn’t going to be able to find him by land, Masaaki had actually left his daishō and tantō behind in a nameless patch of woods and flown. He’d crossed roads, sped over waterways, zigzagged over unfamiliar forest, and finally dropped to the ground beside a glacial spring in exhaustion, so completely lost and desperate he had attempted to drown himself in the cold water in the hopes it would clear his head.
It hadn’t. Lungs burning, water still dribbling down his back and spattering the forest mosses under his prostrate body, couldn’t stop trembling. “Theo,” he whispered. It was the only word he could think, and it kept tumbling through his head in a cacophony. Theo, Theo, Theodore, Theo, Theo…
Then, like the rumbling thunder of the ō-daiko, he heard his father’s disapproving voice, You are not acting like samurai.
The shame of those words drove a cold stake through the fog of his misery, causing him enough clarity of mind that he could lift his head and take stock of his own disgrace. Masaaki was naked, honorless, wailing for the presence of the man who had made him that way. Ancestors’ tombs, he’d left his swords in the forest. His swords. Totally losing control, then, Masaaki screamed and tore out the grass, shredding it with his fingers, and the glacier behind him lit up with another hikari. Thrashing, he rolled down the streambed and back into the creek. Resurfacing, he spat out water and sucked in a huge breath. “Theo, I’ll kill you!” he shrieked, splashing water in impotent agony.
“Who is Theo?” a female voice asked from behind him.
Masaaki jumped from the creek and spun, splashing a sheaf of water away in his haste to face the stranger.
The woman was lounging upon a nearby boulder, naked, a bluish tinge to her skin, with the dappled darker lines of what looked like scales. Her hair—wrapping her face in a mane—was white and almost feathery, her eyes slitted and yellow, like a viper. She cocked her head at him with predatory curiosity.
Masaaki swallowed, hard. He’d seen something like this, working under his daimyō in the homeland, except it had been green, a denizen of the jungle, and it had wiped out one of the shogun’s northern armies.
Fear, he found, was powerful antivenom. He took several steps backwards, until the stream was between them.
Her bearded face spread in a smile that showed thick white fangs as she watched him. “You’ve been screaming his name enough—I would have thought you would know whose name it was you scream.”
“Jiaolong,” he breathed, using the Chinese.
Her smile broadened. “I’m pretty sure that was not his name.”
Masaaki scrambled backwards up the open creekbed until his spine hit a birch tree. He swallowed hard. His brother had been eaten by a jiaolong, several generations of Man ago. He had been lured into her bed under the pretense it was a pious woman offering herself to the gods. She had been better at hiding her true nature than this creature, though, her eyes blue, their pupils round, her skin tawny and smooth. The voice of a saint, the body of a seductress, the flirtatious eyes of a courtesan. They’d found her together sweeping the courtyard in a modest temple to the Yatagarasu line, and, once her intent had become apparent, Kanaye had won the friendly sparring match to take her home first.
…and had died for it.
This one, however, didn’t seem to care enough to go for a full illusion, her body clearly in some state between serpent and man. She seemed…lethargic. Almost indolent. Like she had been watching him merely for the diversion of seeing him scream.
Still, he tensed his body to run. “Why didn’t you just eat me?” Some jiaolong were strictly vegetarian, or only partook in the flesh of animals, but there were plenty of others who were not so discriminating.
The jiaolong laughed and shrugged. “It was entertaining to watch.” She shrugged, a languid motion of her dappled shoulders. “Besides. I’ve eaten recently. It would cause me indigestion so soon.”
She wasn’t, Masaaki knew, jesting. The only reason he still lived was because it would have been an inconvenience to eat him.
In other words, she was lazy.
“You have a reprieve, yatagarasu,” she confirmed in a yawn. “I’m not hungry now. More…curious.” The jiaolong glanced around, gold eyes flashing even in the distant midnight sun. “How does a yatagarasu find himself here, in the frozen north across the ocean from his homeland?”
Knowing that laziness would not save him from the affront of discourtesy, Masaaki nervously said, “I was…imprisoned…for many years, Jiaolong Denka. They transported me in a barrel in the bottom of a cargo vessel a couple centuries ago.”
“Ah.” She smiled as if she found that answer satisfying. “So you were enslaved. Vampires or Inquisition?”
“Vampires,” Masaaki said. He cocked his head. “What are Inquisition?”
She made a dismissive snort. “Nothing but hypocrites, the fearful and powerless fighting a righteous crusade to ‘cleanse’ our Realm of the magic that gives it life, all the while feeding on the blood of their victims to make themselves stronger.”
That didn’t sound good. He swallowed. “And may I inquire…why you chose this place?”
She idly glanced up at the trees surrounding them. “Better hunting here.” And, without asking, Masaaki knew she wasn’t talking about the moose.
The jiaolong moved on the boulder, and when she did, the patterns on her skin rippled with boneless grace. Getting resettled, she elegantly crossed her legs—her ankles were likewise feathered with the same feathery white mane as her face, he noticed—and said, “You were telling me about this Theo. Why do you hunt him? Did he wrong you in some way?” Like a curious, sated cat, questioning a large insect.
Masaaki swallowed again. “You could say that.” His throat was much too dry. This creature ate creatures like him, when no armies were at hand. He started inching sideways, to get around the tree.
She continued to lounge lazily on her boulder, watching him. “Would you like me to kill him for you?” There was no malice in the statement, just a question.
Instantly, however, Masaaki choked on the terror of losing Theo. “No!” he gasped. “No. Please no.”
That seemed to interest her. “And yet you curse his name and line until you are hoarse.”
“He’s a vampire lord of the Nightlands,” Masaaki said. “He enthralled me. It was…” he ground his jaw against the last, “…my choice.”
“Oh interesting,” she said, sounding delighted. “Might I ask why?”
“I…” Masaaki felt his face reddening. “I was dying.”
That perked her up. “And you asked him to save you.” She tisked. “Isn’t that against your Code, samurai?” She seemed only pleasantly amused, but the shame in her amicable words savaged Masaaki’s soul. A true follower of Bushidō would never choose life over their honor. Again, Masaaki began contemplating the cross-shaped cut.
Jumonji giri, he thought. Only then will my honor be cleansed.
But, in contemplating that, he once again found himself face-to-face with the idea of never seeing Theo again. Already, the adrenaline was fading and Masaaki mind once more panted a mental babble of Theo…Theo, Theo…
The jiaolong reached down, touched the ground beneath her boulder, and a rush of blue energy zigzagged towards him through the earth, under the stream, and into his feet even as he tried to jump away. Instead of an attack or a trap, however, he felt his head clear.
“There,” she said, yawning as if bespelling him had been no special thing. “The venom will not bother you while we talk.” She reclined lazily, again her body taking a serpentine flexibility before finding a comfortable position.
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“Thank you,” Masaaki whispered, able to think without the venom’s fog once more. “Thank you,” he repeated.
“Of course.” She stretched, taking in the last filtered light of the sun, splaying her legs with complete disregard for human mores, displaying her pink, feather-clad womanhood as she stretched, oblivious to his presence.
Masaaki quickly looked somewhere else, trying to come up with a reason to excuse himself before she grew tired of the sport. “You look very…comfortable.”
“I recently ate,” she said. She yawned again. “That’s one nice thing about Alaska. The game is large enough to be more than a mouthful.”
She toys with me, Masaaki realized bitterly. They both knew he wasn’t fast enough to escape, should she give chase. Now that the jiaolong had his scent, he would only live to return to serve his daimyō at her pleasure unless he could find some other way to pacify the creature.
From the boulder, the jiaolong went on, “Interesting, that you chose to help a queen. Why would you do such a thing? Do your species not get along? I was under the impression that the light and darkness do not mix?” She yawned again.
“She was young,” Masaaki said, thinking perhaps to lull the jiaolong into sleep, then slip away while she dreamed.
She paused in stretching and lifted her head to look at him. “How young?”
“She hadn’t yet taken blood,” Masaaki said. “She says she is only nineteen.”
The jiaolong looked duly impressed. “And you gave her first blood. That is…admirable of you.” She yawned and curled into a fetal position on the rock, facing him, resting her maned head on her taloned hands. Nonchalantly, she dragged a silver nail across the boulder’s surface, creating a shower of sparks to cascade down the boulder’s front. “Has she had sex?”
Masaaki bristled immediately, but kept his features calm, knowing that jiaolong and their ilk had no taste for the cold, darkness-soaked blood or bodies of the demonkin. To such a creature, Masaaki was the prize. A vampire was like a slab of rotten fish in comparison. “No. Her lord will not do his duty.”
“Ah, interesting.” She smiled sleepily. “Sounds as if she needs someone stronger. Have you tried a dragon? I hear there’s some in the northern mountains.”
Masaaki laughed despite himself. “A dragon wouldn’t come within ten feet of a queen. Too cowardly for that.” Then he realized who he was talking to and checked himself.
If the statement bothered the jiaolong, she showed no hint of it. “I would say it was more intellect than cowardice, considering.” She continued to watch him. “What about a barghest? I hear there are still plenty of them in the Nightlands.”
“Barghest?” Masaaki snorted. “A barghest would simply eat her.”
“There is an ancient legend of a barghest and a Firstlander vampire queen,” the jiaolong said. Then her delicate azure brow dimpled. “Or was it a prophecy?” She seemed to consider that, then shook herself. “Regardless, it had to do with Odin meddling in affairs not of his Realm.” She cocked her head at Masaaki. “Have you met a barghest?”
There was a strange tone to the way the jiaolong asked, accompanied by a sudden twinge of alarm in Masaaki’s gut, that made him hesitate. She’s not here to play with her food, he thought suddenly. She’s here for information. Information on Shannon…
“Perhaps you’ve seen one nearby,” she insisted.
The alertness of her golden eyes, the way her body was so perfectly—too perfectly—relaxed, made every muscle in Masaaki’s body tense. “Not that I’ve seen,” he said, thinking of the one trapped in the slaver stables in Eagle River.
Her smile was a warning. “You’re lying.” Slowly, she uncoiled from the stone and her maned feet slipped to the ground, her predatory eyes fixing on him. “I can always tell when Crows are lying. They smell like frightened ducks.”
“What issue do you have with the followers of Odin?” Masaaki asked, carefully putting more distance between them. He knew from experience that jiaolong were fast when they struck.
She watched him carefully as he moved away from her. “A minor difference of opinions.”
Masaaki didn’t believe her. There was just something…wrong…about the way she was asking. Something almost…desperate.
“We emptied the slaver’s cells this afternoon,” she grated. “The barghest was gone. Sold to your queen for a pittance.” She cocked her head. “But when I visited her house, I found nothing but shredded walls and broken vehicles. They had left…to go where?”
Masaaki felt his heart give a startled hammer that washed away all remnants of the panic from Theo’s posion. Shannon…
The jiaolong took a moment to watch him, then pushed herself from the boulder and started lazily across the stream towards him, her hips moving with graceful, seductive bonelessness. “Just tell me where to find the barghest, little Crow, and I will forego dessert.” She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I had myself a Crow.”
And if a jiaolong was speaking of Odin and meddling, forces were at work that he dearly needed to understand if he was to keep Shannon alive. “What business do you have with the queen?”
The jiaolong made a dismissive wave with a taloned hand. “More the barghest than the queen. Odin sent one of his Champions to this Realm. The winds tell me he walks upon our plane even as we speak.”
“Which one?” Masaaki demanded. Odin only did as much on rare occasions, when something could be handled no other way.
The jiaolong seemed amused by his question. “Nökkvi, if my reading of the winds is correct.”
Masaaki felt his blood chill. Could that miserable beast have been Nökkvi? He had seen Odin’s Right Hand once, in a clash with Viking forces in the north, and the gory memory left him cold.
“So you see,” the jiaolong said, “if you know where this barghest can be found, it’s best you tell me. Odin has no business here, and my companions and I would very much like to send him a message he cannot ignore.”
“And the queen?” Masaaki asked, dancing further into the forest, putting trees between them. “She will be safe?”
The jiaolong followed, and the trees around her began to shimmer as she entered the darkness with him, lighting up the dusky canopy overhead. “We have other uses for the queen.”
We. Again, the jiaolong spoke of companions…but what creature could merit being called an ally by a jiaolong?
There weren’t many, and those he could think of left him in a cold sweat, his heart hammering a staccato against his ribcage.
“You plan to make an army.”
The jiaolong smiled slowly. “But of course. One that shall drive the mundane from this world in a scourge that shall be sung about for the next two winters of mankind.”
Regardless of her words, Masaaki knew by the mere fact the jiaolong was so willing to tell him of her plans that she intended to eat him this night. “How,” he pressed, slipping around alders, continuing to put distance between them.
The jiaolong didn’t even try to keep pace—she was lazy. Slow and lazy. “My companions insist they can reverse the destruction these mortals have wreaked throughout the world, return our Realm to the Old Ways. I am not fully convinced, but…” She hesitated, squinting at her sharpened fingertips before filing a talon on the cottonwood tree beside her. “…something must be done.” Blowing bark shavings from the curved silver talon, she finished, “They overwhelm this realm like rabbits without a lion.” Eying her fingers as she held them out in front of her, she said, “The other realms don’t have to deal with them—I don’t see why we should have to.”
“They breed overly much,” Masaaki agreed, his heart hammering with adrenaline as he tried to find a way out of this, a way back to warn his daimyō. “Can’t imagine your kind have fared well. Considering your…proclivities.”
The look she gave him was hard, bitter, and angry. “I haven’t.” And, in those two words, he knew she saw him as nothing more than a rodent to bat with her paw until it stopped entertaining her, a prize dessert to appraise and admire before consuming, a morsel to tease with her fork before downing with a glass of wine.
He took another step backwards.
“And before you run,” she said, “know, Crow, that I’ve been watching you since you left that iron carriage along the beach.” And then, with a smile, she pulled three swords of the Old Country from the ether and examined them with appreciation. Matched daishō and tantō. Masaaki’s heart stopped.
She looked at him over them, the nearness of her body making the golden crows lacquered into the black scabbard shimmer blue. “I believe these belong to you?”
“Yes,” Masaaki whispered, despite himself.
She slipped the largest blade from its sheathe enough for the enchanted steel to gleam blue, the ripple against the cutting edge evident even in the dying light. “Very nice,” she said, examining the inscription. “Masamune. And personalized.” She tisked as she watched him over the enchanted steel. “I take it you want them back?”
“Yes,” Masaaki breathed.
She snapped the katana back in its sheath. “Then come get them, samurai.” As he watched, she leaned them against a tree behind her, an open challenge she expected him to take. In fact, as her attention sharpened, watching him expectantly, her body seemed even more fluid, even less human.
She’s lazy, Masaaki thought, seeing her body in its awkward, shifting mix of serpent and man. If she was lazy, there was a possibility she wouldn’t have bothered to examine the spells upon his swords. Specifically, the one that called his wakizashi to him when his life was in danger.
Instead of moving towards the weapons, as expected, Masaaki started backing away.
The jiaolong frowned and watched him. “Or I can snap them in half, if you prefer.” She reached for his katana.
Requesting his ancestors’ forgiveness for what he knew they would take as cowardice, Masaaki turned and ran.
His ancestors were not the only ones who took the gesture as cowardice. Behind him, he heard the jiaolong give an animal roar as it upformed and gave chase, making the forest shudder with the sudden, displaced weight of its massive body. Trees snapped in half as it lunged after him, gaining ground, not bothering to weave around the trees as it hurled itself after him.
With the creature bearing down on him, Masaaki summoned his hikari as bright as it could go, dropped to his knees, spun, and, as the jiaolong’s great bearded jaws opened wide to consume him, he held out his left hand. “Ken!” he snapped.
The wakizashi appeared, scabbarded, in his left fist. He drew it with his right, and, as the jiaolong blindly crashed into him, slashed out once, then twice.
The blinded creature screamed and reflexively bit down repeatedly at the empty air, eventually clamping down on his arm, scabbard still gripped in his fist, and tearing it from his body as its serpentine body started to twist and writhe like a worm covered in salt.
Masaaki slashed its ivory underbelly three more times, giving the immortal a taste of enchanted steel, then bolted back for the tree where it had left his katana, leaving a trail of his own blood as he sought his largest sword. For, while his wakizashi was good for quick defense in close combat, his katana was bewitched to kill the Realm’s most powerful immortals, should they ever leave him an opening.
Masaaki found the tree, took the katana, and was unsheathing it one-handed when he caught the tell-tale flash of color from the corner of his eye. Turning, Masaaki had just enough time to see a massive, scaly blue tail tipped in white disappear into the unending blackness of the Void before the portal snapped shut again and he was alone.
Magus, Masaaki thought, stunned. I just dueled a magus…
And survived.
He knew without a doubt, however, that the next time their paths crossed, it would not happen again. While the jiaolong were known for being lazy when content, they were never stupid twice.
Before that happened, he had to make it to his daimyō.