CHAPTER 67: THE RIGHT BOAT

“But these are all made of metal. I need wood.” Björn was scowling at the riverboats lined up on trailers at the massive open-air gravel parking area of the Deshka Landing—the prized recreational vessels of thousands of Anchorage residents’ weekend warriors. He was making a frustrated face as he paced down the rows of aluminum, flat-bottomed Sea Arks. “None of these will burn.”

Shannon had tried to explain that to him on the ride out here, of course, but the barghest hadn’t been listening. Because, apparently, a ‘boat,’ to him, was made of wood. Period. These were bathtubs.

“There’s nothing here,” Björn finally said, coming to a slow dejected halt. “Is there no boat-builder in this miserable land?”

Shannon paused beside him and decided to try, again, to tell him that the world had moved on from wood.

“Okay, look. When we discovered how to mine aluminum from dirt—”

“I’ll take this one,” Björn said, sounding almost desperate. He stopped beside a large V-bottomed vessel with an inboard motor and fiberglass hull. “It looks like it can burn.”

“Fiberglass doesn’t burn,” she informed him.

“Well then what does?!” the barghest roared, putting his fist through the fancy hull as he glared at her.

Seeing that, Shannon grimaced and grabbed the big beefy angel-slayer by the arm and started steering him away from the expensive toys. “Come on. Let’s go see if they’ve got any canoes or something. Sometimes they’re made of wood.”

“I don’t want a ‘canoe,’ I want a ‘boat’,” he argued. “The biggest boat they have!”

“What’s his problem now?” Angus asked, trotting up from where he had been hanging out by the river, awing a bunch of onlookers as he skipped stones with his ‘mouth’.

He’s not happy with any of these, Shannon thought. He wants a wooden boat.

Angus sighed, deeply. To the barghest, he said, “You’ll be happy with one of these.”

“No, it needs to burn!” the barghest snarled, starting to ooze shadow everywhere from those tattoos that, when they were flowing with darkness, looked like striped cuts into the Void.

Shannon glanced at Angus, who was frowning a the barghest. “You’ll be happy with a regular boat,” Angus said, frowning.

“No, the boat is wrong,” Björn insisted.

Angus was scowling, now. He took a step closer, squinting up at Björn like he was a strange seven-foot bug. “You will be happy with a metal boat.”

“I will not,” the barghest snarled, spinning on him and leaning down to put his fangs in Angus’s face, “and if you speak out of place again, dog, I will eviscerate you and feed on your butchered remains..”

Angus’s brown doggy eyes went wide and he scrabbled backwards until he fell on his ass in the dust. The rage immediately cleared from Björn’s face and he chuckled jovially, “So your tiny flatulent dog is afraid of me. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came to his senses.” He turned and started wandering down another aisle of boats, whistling.

The behavior was so strange that neither Shannon nor Angus had anything to say to that. They followed Björn to the next row and watched the barghest’s broad back as he investigated each vessel, shaking his head before moving to the next.

“What the hell was that?” Shannon whispered, once the barghest was out of earshot.

Angus still looked shellshocked, his mouth open. “I…” He swallowed hard. “It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, when one tries to compel another in a way that goes completely against his core, subconsciously, they sometimes…erm…fight it.”

“Meaning his subconscious is on to you,” Shannon whispered back.

Angus swallowed again. “I think I’m going back down to the river. Call me if you need any more help.”

Shannon looked at the group of plaid-wearing outdoorsmen who had gathered at the boat launch. One of them was trying—and failing—to skip the same rounded stones that Angus had been skipping with his ‘teeth’. They stopped the moment Angus trotted up, laughing and cheering as the ‘dog’ picked up another rock.

He misses interaction, Shannon thought, watching the feylord entertain the humans in such a simple manner. She wondered how long he had been trapped as a dog.

Probably too long, she realized.

Shaking herself, Shannon went looking for Björn.

Realizing the barghest was no longer in the same aisle as her, Shannon went to catch up with him.

She found Björn slumped at the end of the next row, looking at the metal boats in despair. As she watched, he hunkered in on himself and dropped his face into his hands.

Seeing that, feeling his misery, Shannon set her jaw. She pulled out her phone and walked off several paces so the barghest couldn’t hear her, then found the number for the leader of the local carpenter’s guild.

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“Yeah?” a rough-sounding guy answered briskly.

“Hey,” Shannon said, peeking between the river boats to look at Björn, who had dropped his hands between his legs and was once again staring up at the moon, “I know this is short notice, but I have a friend who needs something built tonight…”

“You realize it’s past midnight?” the man snapped. That, of course, never stopped most Alaskans, who were often out and doing things until well past one o’clock due to the extended hours of the daytime summer sun, like the guys who had just come in from a two-week fishing trip along the Yentna and were standing around watching Angus skip stones, their boats already up on trailers. Still, it was asking a lot…

Shannon straightened, pulling out her inner rich bitch. “It’s extremely time-sensitive and my daddy left me a lot of money before he died. So, because I’m rich, impatient, and probably a little delirious from lack of sustenance, I am willing to pay you a lot of money if you can get enough guys together to finish it before dawn. Something with four zeros. Five if you make it good and fast.”

There was a very, very long pause on the other end. Then… “What do you need, exactly?”

#

“Come on, Björn, I need to talk to you,” his little queen said, grabbing him by the hand and trying to pull him away from the twelve-man crew that was—with magic tools—even then building him a boat. It was a blocky, ugly thing, clearly not the work of masters, but they assured him it would hold water, which, at this point, was all he needed.

“I need to stay and watch,” Björn said, anxiously watching them place the planks and sealants. “Make sure they don’t screw it up.”

“Do you know how to build a boat?” Shannon snapped. “No. Come. Here. I really need to talk to you.”

Björn felt the tug of the Nótt Danzleikr and stumbled to face her, frowning. After she had spent so much time gathering the men and equipment to build this thing for him, he was surprised she wanted to drag him away. “Shannon, this is importan—”

Then he saw how pale his little queen was, how she was sweating and trembling.

“I’m hungry,” Shannon whispered. “It’s been too long, and I can’t feed on Angus right now.”

Björn made a face. “Of course you can’t. The blood of a dog wouldn’t last ten minutes.” He thumped his chest. “You need a real man.”

“Okay,” she babbled, “fine, yes, please just follow me into the woods for a moment and show me how real men goddamn taste—I’m having trouble not eating the help.”

Björn could commiserate. He, too, hungered, and the blood-webs of the humans as they moved and flexed over his boat looked delectable. “Very well,” he said. “To the forest.”

Seeing her break out into a run to lead him to the line of alders, he jogged to catch up. As soon as they were out of sight of the crew, she turned on him, panting, and put her tiny hand to his chest. “Okay, on the ground, chest down, head down, I’ll just get this over with—”

Björn grabbed her gently by the wrist and held it until she looked up at him. She swallowed hard, looking caught between the urge to try and force him and the urge to bolt.

“I would like to see you this time,” he said, as she timidly met his eyes. “On my back.”

She immediately bit her lip and looked away, obviously not having considered that as a possibility. “I…”

Björn cocked his head down at her. “Then you’re not hungry enough to compromise?” he asked, praising himself for using his late couch-man’s word. At her continued hesitation, Björn sighed. “Then perhaps we can just wait until that vampire friend of yours comes back.” He released her and turned to go, and this time, when she caught his arm, the grip was like iron.

“Okay, on your back,” she said, not looking at him. She was, he noticed, shaking. “I’ll do it, just don’t…take…” Her eyes flickered to him. “…advantage…?”

“I understand you have no control,” he said. “It’s common in young queens.”

“That’s not what I said,” she gritted.

Björn, turning back, met her eyes for a long time. Then, softly, he said, “I said I won’t.”

The vampire queen swallowed, then nodded and gestured at the forest floor. When it was clear that she intended to follow through, Björn carefully lowered himself to the ground, then, when she didn’t bolt like a frightened deer, lay down on his back, stretching his arms up over his head and cupping the back of his skull with his hands as he watched her with interest.

For a moment, she just stood there, fidgeting like an anxious rabbit as she watched him. Then, slowly, she crouched beside him and licked her lips with nervousness. Her whole body was shaking. She couldn’t meet his eyes. “How much can I take?”

Straight to the point…she must be hungry. Björn snorted. “I’m not a vampire. Take what you want. As long as there is darkness, it will replenish.”

Gingerly, she stretched her arms out over him and put her small hands on the meat of his chest. Björn said nothing, watching her. She has a birthmark on the small of her throat, he thought, curious. Often, birthmarks were a sign of how a soul died in the last incarnation, an energetic imprint that colored the skin.

“This okay?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“Wherever you wish.” Then Björn winced, reconsidering. “Well. There are places I’d rather you didn’t.”

She made a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, no.” She took a shuddering breath and met his eyes and he saw the fear there.

“I gave my word,” Björn said.

That seemed to steady her, because a moment later, she glanced back down at his chest. Then, taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and sank her fangs into him.

Immediately, Björn groaned at the sudden heady rush of a tiny dose of the Nótt Danzleikr, having forgotten how good it felt. She has no control—she douses me with her poison again. He tensed, despite himself, a reflex of past ages. Immediately, her eyes flashed open in panic and she started to pull back.

“Keep going,” he managed, forcing himself to go still again. He tilted his head back in his hands and looked up at the moon to give her privacy. “A few drops won’t kill me.”

“I could let you drink my…erm…poison…” she managed.

“The day I need to drink the poison of a queen to keep my head is the day I no longer deserve it.”

Timidly, she tried again. Again, he felt that icy thrill as she lost control as she drank. Again—dangerously—he adored it.

“Sorry,” she whimpered, as more frigid poison entered his body. She was shivering all over. “I can’t keep the—”

This time, when she tried to pull away, Björn caught her hand and slapped it back to his chest. “Drink.”

It was then that he realized how badly she had been struggling to control herself, because she groaned when her fangs re-entered the flesh of his body, low and deep, and she collapsed over him, releasing completely, now. “Oh god,” she whimpered, tightening her hands in his flesh. “God, god, god…”

And then she rolled her head back and started moving with a rhythm of carnal pleasure that electrified his skin and demanded he join her.

Björn tucked his hands back behind his head and forced them to stay there.

Panting, the vampire brazenly crawled on top of him, such a tiny thing, but so sensuous as she undulated across his body, bearing her tiny fangs in pleasure as she arced her back, touching, licking, smelling, rubbing…

Odin’s hat, Björn thought, as his body grew ever more aroused beneath her. This is going to be harder than I thought…