Chapter 3: The Virgin Queen

He had kicked her. Shannon was still reeling at the pain in her jaw and spine, stunned by how close he had come to hitting her in the throat. A blow, she knew from her parents’ patchy self-defense classes, that would have killed her.

Meeting the man’s hate-filled gaze, Shannon knew she probably should have just gotten to her feet, inched her way between him and the dormer, and fled the attic, never to return. But something that her mother had written in the letter stayed her hand. If you are reading this, your father and I did not survive our fight with the vampire lord.

Could she be serious? Could they really be dead?

“Look,” Shannon said softly, getting back to her feet by sliding up the wall. “I don’t know what my parents did to you, but I’m going to help you, okay?”

She could see by the unchanging fury in his eyes that he either could not understand anything she was saying or he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Shit,” she whispered again, swallowing. About eighty percent of her wanted to call the police. The last twenty percent, however, was the gut instinct while looking into his furious brown eyes, seeing the unmistakable hatred that he bore for her, that he would come for her the moment he was free, in retaliation for whatever crimes her parents had committed against him.

And, judging by the way he was hanging in their attic, buck-ass naked, suspended in what looked like a painful position by his wrists, she was pretty sure that whatever they had done to him, it had been bad.

“Listen,” Shannon whispered, daring to take a step towards him, though still out of range of his kicks. “I’m going to take the ball out of your mouth so we can talk, okay? Please don’t kick me.”

She thought she saw a flash of shock in his intelligent brown eyes before they darkened again.

“Okay,” she said, gingerly taking another step to the side, skirting around him, to get to his back. “I’m getting you down, don’t worry. Just hold on.” When he merely followed her progress with his eyes, glaring at her over the red rubber ball prying his jaw open, Shannon found the courage to step up and put her hand on his shoulder to spin him gently.

As soon as her hand touched his skin, however, he jerked viciously away from her and shouted something against the rubber ball. His struggles made him twist where he hung, so that he was once again facing her, scowling at her like she had just tried to desecrate his mother’s grave.

“Um…” Shannon said, nervous. “I need to get at the back of your head to unbuckle the gag. I could walk around…?”

He snorted in unmistakable disgust and looked away.

He thinks I’m lying, Shannon thought, horrified by his reaction. What had her parents done to him?

“Um, okay,” she said softly, “I’ll just walk around.” She went gingerly behind him and lifted her hands to the back of his head. Immediately, his entire body froze in its bonds, as rock-stiff as a statue.

Nervous, but glad to be behind him, out of the range of his kick, Shannon began to unbuckle the gag. To her surprise, he didn’t twist and try to kick her, as he had so viciously the first time she’d tried it.

When she pulled it free and stepped back, the man was slow to close his mouth, looking almost as if it pained him to do so. She saw him work his jaw, still watching her with hatred.

“Uh,” Shannon said, flinching under his glare, “I really don’t know what to say, but I want you to know I had absolutely nothing to do with this, okay?”

He continued to scowl at her in silence. Outside, the birds had finally fallen silent as nighttime hit Alaska in full swing.

Then it struck her. The fanny pack. Her parents had left instructions…

“Um,” Shannon said, swallowing at the sudden, overpowering urge to open the fanny-pack buckled to his narrow hips. To be able to walk in the sun…

She immediately fought that down. No. No way. She was going to help this man. She just needed to convince him she wasn’t…what? A vampire?

“So,” she said softly, “are there keys to this thing?” She didn’t see any padlocks, no means for freeing him. Everything looked solidly fused together. Even his wrist and ankle cuffs seemed to have been welded in place around his limbs.

The man offered nothing, merely watched her with mistrustful eyes. “Okay,” Shannon said softly. “I’m going to go get some bolt-cutters or something and get you down, okay?”

He didn’t respond, but she saw his understanding, his desperation.

Shannon turned and ran. She jumped down the ladder, hit the floor, and bolted for her father’s shop. Inside, she found bolt-cutters and hacksaw, and was already halfway across the yard when she hesitated, her mother’s words coming back to her.

You will be able to enjoy life as a normal human, absolutely immune to sunlight of any form.

Her mother had been telling the truth about the man in the attic. Was she telling the truth about being able to withstand the sun, as well? Her mother had never had problems walking in the sun. Then she savagely fought that idea down. Fuck her mother. Her mother, she had sensed on more than one occasion, was evil. Whatever she was doing with the man in the attic, it was clearly immoral and vile.

But it continued to nag at her. She could best the sun by tasting his blood? How much of a taste? After so long living in the shadows, more than once, she had felt willing to do anything to be able to step out into that beautiful brilliance. What if she could get him to agree to give her a taste? What if, tomorrow morning, she could step out into the morning to greet the dawn?

Looking up at the sky, seeing the beginnings of stars in the half-light of midnight, knowing that she would be cursed to it forever if she let him go, Shannon had the startling realization that yes, she might be willing to do a little evil, in order to live a normal life.

#

When the Third Lander came crawling back into the attic, she carried an armful of tools.

…and a glass and a knife.

Seeing that, every fiber of Masaaki’s being went stiff, and that tiny flash of hope that he had allowed himself was squashed in a mingled wave of horror and dread.

She seemed to hesitate, looking down at the tools in her hands. “So, um, this is maybe going to sound really weird,” she started, “but if I drink your blood, will I be able to go out and walk in the sunlight without hurting?”

Masaaki felt his gut twist and he looked away. So they had told her. By the way she had rushed to find something to free him, he had thought they hadn’t told her.

“So, uh, I take that as a yes?” She was watching him much too closely, judging his reaction. She swallowed again. “Uh, could I pay you to, like, give me a taste? I don’t make a lot of money—hell, I just got fired—but I’d pay whatever I could afford.”

Masaaki swiveled to frown at her. She was offering to pay him? He had to review her words in his mind, just to make sure he had really heard correctly. Then his eyes fell back to the knife and the glass in her hands, along with the other tools, and he realized he wasn’t going to have a choice in the matter. He never did. They took what they wanted, regardless of how desperate his pleas. And a queen… She would never be satisfied with a single sip.

“I have nothing to say to you, Third Lander,” he whispered. He knew that defeat etched his words. He no longer cared. He had actually allowed himself to hope at the way she had bolted for the ladder. For a moment, he had thought that she was different.

For a long time, she simply stared down at the glass and the knife. Then he watched her shoulders slump. “Fuck. Yeah, that was stupid. Sorry. I just got… Real stupid. Sorry.” She turned and dropped both knife and glass back down through the hole in the attic floor.

Seeing that, Masaaki had to blurt, “You’re not going to take it?”

She frowned at him. “Of course not.”

He peered at her. “You don’t want it?”

The near-silver skin of her face actually flushed. “Uh. Honestly?” She dipped her head, biting her lip. “Yeah. Real bad. Shit, I must sound really desperate. I was gonna drink blood. And you’re hanging from a fucking chain in the ceiling. I’m really sorry.” She almost sounded…disgusted?…with herself.

Masaaki almost spoke to her, then. Almost. But he’d been tricked too many times, his hopes given life on too many occasions, only to be thoroughly crushed. He lifted his head to look beyond her, focusing on a point in the dusky trees outside, a tactic that he had found helped him pretend he was not a captive in an unending nightmare of blood and pain.

“How long have my parents had you like this?”

Masaaki shook his head and continued to peer out the window.

“Five years? Ten?”

He looked at her, then, a bit stunned by her lack of understanding for the situation. Indeed, she was sweating and her hands were trembling where they held the tools.

“Look,” she said, “I know it’s been a long time, and I’m gonna let you loose whatever you say, but hear me out for a second first, okay?”

Masaaki snorted and returned his eyes to the window. Within a few short hours, the sun would rise again. It had been the first time he’d been allowed to see the sun in decades, and even with the ache in his shoulders and wrists, it had lifted him out of his despair, that first day.

“Okay dude,” she said, “you’re really creeping me out, here.” She almost sounded angry. “Okay, sure, I got a little stupid and excited and blundered bigtime, but I’m going to help you. You keep looking at me like you’re gonna go for my throat the moment I let you down.”

He continued to ignore her.

“Are you gonna go for my throat the moment I let you down?” She was cocking her head at him in his periphery.

He started counting the leaves on the alien tree in the distance.

She walked up to him and poked him in the chest with a small, pointed finger, making him grunt. “You don’t hold me responsible for this, do you? ‘Cause if you do, that’s utter bullshit. I didn’t even live here the last three years, you got me?”

Tearing his gaze from outside and refocusing on her face, Masaaki said, “I’ve been trapped in the basement of this building for forty years, at least.”

Her mouth fell open, her lips forming an O.

“So enough of your excuses, demonkin.” He returned his attention to the spindly white tree.

“I’m gonna let you go,” she said.

He snorted. “Actions speak louder than words, Third Lander.”

“So what you and I need to figure out, right now, is who’s in charge, here.”

Masaaki frowned and looked back at her, despite himself.

“See,” she said, tapping his chest with the bolt-cutters, “my mom left me a really nasty little note. Makes my guts twist thinking about it, if even half of it is true. And my instincts are telling me that you’re probably one of the only people out there who could tell me how much of it is utter horseshit.”

Masaaki glanced down at the bolt-cutters, then back at her face. Reluctantly, he said, “What kinds of things did she say?”

“Oh, I dunno, let’s see. That I was a vampire. That vampire children are rare, and that there’s a group of vampires out there that wants to eat me. Oh, and that you’d kill me in an instant if I let you down.” She hesitated and gave him a wary look. “Like you’ve got some sort of eerie powers that kill vampires. That true?” Then she winced. “Well, not that I’m a vampire. I’m just wondering. Can you kill them?”

Because lying had never been something that Masaaki had been particularly good at, he smiled at her and said, “If you cut me down, little queen, I will delight in ramming my fingers into your demonic eyes and tearing them from your perverted skull so that you may not create your vampire horde. My only regret would be that you couldn’t watch me eat them afterwards, while I desecrate the rest of your filthy corpse in every way I can think of before taking my own life amidst your entrails.”

She went still, staring at him, her voidlike, demonic eyes wide. “Oh…kaaaay.” Slowly, she lifted the bolt-cutters off of his chest. “Dude, I really think you need to see a shrink. I got one in town I go to. She’s awesome. Really helped me get over some of the ostracism stuff from school. Oh, and that my parents were fucking psychopaths.” Then she was reaching up with the clippers, and Masaaki instinctively whimpered and made fists with his hands, having already endured that horror many times before.

Then, with her feminine grunt and a metallic thunk, the bolt cutters slammed home. Masaaki frowned and opened his eyes with a start. Did she just… Having expected her to take his fingers, he had not even considered that she would be using the cutters to release him. Then the chain between his wrist snapped, slid up through the swivel and out the other side, and suddenly Masaaki was falling.

His bare feet hit the carpeted floor and his knees, unused to supporting his weight, collapsed beneath him. He hit the ground hard, falling backwards, his arms slamming limply into the floor with him.

Instantly, agony began assaulting his shoulders and arms. He shrieked, his back arcing against the carpet as the blood began rushing back to the nerves. It made him feel as if he had lost his arms, as if they were merely throbbing hunks of ragged meat attached to his collarbone. He groaned and ground his teeth, waiting for the pain to stop. He lay there, panting, for several minutes before he realized that the girl was still in the room with him, watching.

“I just want to make it really crystal clear that I’m not like my parents,” she said, standing a good ten feet out of reach, bolt-cutters in hand. It was obvious she was going to brandish them as a club, if he tried to approach her.

But Masaaki wasn’t looking at her. He spread his wrists apart for the first time in decades. The sight was so beautiful to him that he simply started to weep.

He didn’t realize she had moved closer until a grating rumble drew his attention to the hacksaw she was running through the bar between his legs. Head bent, her face tight with concentration, the vampire said, “I’ll figure out how to get the cuffs off. Looks like they actually welded the fuckers on.”

Masaaki simply could not comprehend the fact that she was kneeling between his legs, cutting away the bar. He watched in stunned silence, his freed hands dropping to his sides. He hadn’t realized he was crying until the hot warmth slid down his cheeks.

Please don’t let this be another ruse, he thought, desperate. Please, by everything that is holy, let this be a naïve little vampire girl and not a trick.

The hacksaw took much longer than he had expected, and he watched the little beads of perspiration form on her forehead. She was having problems cutting it? At first, Masaaki grew angry, thinking this was another game, that she was simply toying with him. After all, since when did a vampire have problems putting enough force behind—

Suddenly, watching her weak struggles with the hacksaw, Masaaki realized what the problem was. “You’ve never taken blood before, have you?” he blurted, staring. He glanced up at her wrists, saw the perfect smooth skin there, and his breath caught. “You’re a virgin?” A virgin queen. By the sacred blood of his ancestors… Masaaki suddenly found that he was having trouble breathing.

She hesitated with the hacksaw, then nervously glanced up at him, eyes carefully avoiding his nakedness. “You know,” she said softly, “you got some really bad timing, there, dude.” She started sawing again, without answering the question.

Feeling he had to know, now, Masaaki reached out and grabbed her hand on the saw, stopping it easily. The vampire hesitated, looking down at his hand, then slowly following his arm up to his face. There was fear, there. “I’m helping you, buddy,” she said softly. But her voice had the tone of someone who was scared out of her mind, and doing her absolute best not to show it.

She’s a virgin, he thought. Holy ancestors, a virgin queen...