Chapter 11: First Blood

“No way,” she said, twisting to put her wrists as far out of reach as possible.

Grunting, he leaned forward, took her other arm, and pried her hand away from her wound. Then he just stared at it like someone studying a viper. She saw what looked like a flash of panic on his face. Then he closed his eyes and started taking slow, even breaths.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Shannon cried, when he wouldn’t let her put her hand back to her wrist, and just continued to…meditate? “I’m bleeding to death!” She started to get back to her feet.

He tugged her easily back down. “You will if you run off.” He took a deep breath, looking down at her arm. “Be still,” Masaaki said. “This is something that is very difficult for me. It’s actually shameful that I’m taking this long, so please just stop talking. I don’t need the distraction.” He straightened his spine once more, closed his eyes, and once more fell into a silence.

“You want me to stop talk—”

He made that deep Asian grunt of his, silencing her. Shannon narrowed her eyes. She waited, listening to the quiet drips of her blood on the floor, interrupted here and there with a deep, easy breath from the man kneeling in front of her.

Then his silver-brown eyes opened and flickered to her face. “Promise me one thing.”

“What?” Shannon asked. “Not take that tantō and stab you in the foot?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Promise me you will never take what is not given.” And, for a brief instant, she saw the fear in his eyes, laid bare for her.

Never take… Was he talking about his blood? “Well, that’s easy,” Shannon agreed.

“Promise,” he insisted.

“Fix my wrist!”

Eyes flashing, he leaned over her and said in a roar, “Promise me you will never drink from me without permission, vampire!” The last was said only an inch from her face, his hot breath blasting back the hair around her ears.

“Fine!”

“Fine!” At that, he bent her wrist back with one hand while he began grinding his fingers against the bone of her mid-forearm.

“Ow, shit!” Shannon cried, trying to yank her hand back. It had always been a tender spot, and she hated people touching her there. Almost religiously so. Now she knew why. Silver-oozing venom sacs. Gotta love them.

Masaaki continued to hold her firmly and began rubbing upward, like someone massaging a tube of toothpaste, and Shannon’s whole arm and wrist really began to hurt.

“Owwww,” she groaned, trying in vain to pull her hand away. “Owww, please, ow! That fucking hurts.”

“Will you stop complaining?” His eyes were fixed on two little points of blood forming on her wrist. …Points of blood?

“What the hell are you doing to me?!” Shannon cried, again trying to yank her hand back, with more force, this time.

Masaaki held her easily, grinding his big hand upward along her forearm, dragging a wretched, unavoidable cry from her lips. Somewhere between the agony in her arm and the glowing ivory fangs that slid from her wrist from his ministrations, however, Shannon just lost it. She started tugging, first, but when that didn’t work, she tried hammering at his arm with her wounded fist. Masaaki ignored her and kept squeezing. “Owww! Ow ow ow ow.” she cried, whimpering, now. Her tugging became more desperate as the pain intensified, triggering strange surges of weird pressure in her chest, leaving her gasping, feeling like she needed to breathe or eat or something.

Masaaki continued to hold her until two ivory teeth about an inch long had emerged from her wrist, which he kept carefully bent backwards. “Eventually,” he said softly, as he finally finished kneading the flesh of her forearm and held up her wrist so she could see, “you will learn the control to extend them yourself. Until then, we must do it this way.”

Shannon was shuddering with adrenaline and fear. “What are those things?” she whispered, her eyes fixed to the two teeth embedded in her wrist. They almost looked like a snake’s fangs, hollow, and with some sort of beautiful, filigreed silver engraving on them that glowed, almost silver-white against the ivory.

Oh gods. She had fangs in her wrists. “What are those, goddamn it?” she asked again, on the verge of panic.

Masaaki let out a ragged breath, and she could see sweat glistening off of his brow from the glow in her wrist. “Kiba. It is the artifact of the blood magus. You have four of them. They’re actually anywhere from four to twelve inches long, and they’ll grow with age. The rest of it is embedded in your forearm.”

“Why is it glowing?” Shannon whispered.

He took another slow breath, obviously as unnerved as she was by the thing in her wrist. “They act as a receptacle of power and the start of the digestion process. They extract the magic from the blood so that you can use it, much like the intestines absorb nutrients. If sunk into the flesh, they also absorb life-force, and strong emotional energy.”

“Why is it glowing?” she demanded again.

Masaaki’s eyes flickered to her face. “It’s how you command the obedience of others, vampire. It is your nature.”

“At the moment,” she whimpered, “my ‘nature’ can take a flying fuck. Let me go, I’ll run in to some surgeon in Anchorage and get those things cut out, and then everybody will be happy.” Even now, she was feeling a strange pulsing in her chest, just under her heart. Almost a pressure. A suction. A hunger. “Oh God,” she whimpered. “That’s connected to something in my chest, isn’t it?”

He gave her a wary look. “You feel it already?”

“I’ll get them cut out!” she cried.

“Without those, you die. You’re outside your Realm, vampire, and they make your life-force.” But he was looking at them like he did, indeed, want to wrap his fist around them and tear them from her arm. “They’re a prized trophy,” he whispered. “They glow for years after they’re removed, and it’s said that they hold the spirit of the Third Lander they came from, until it slowly slips back to its own Realm.”

But Shannon wasn’t listening. As she watched, the little bubbles of blood tipping the end of the two hollow fangs slowly slipped inward, down the tube, drawn into her arm by some internal pressure. Seeing that, she felt a twisting of revulsion in her guts and tried again to pull her arm away.

“Calm, wan-ko,” Masaaki said, holding her steady. “The last thing you want to do is break these before they’ve had a chance to feed. Once they wake, and they can repair themselves. Until then, you must treat them as delicate porcelain, okay?”

“I don’t want to be fed,” Shannon whimpered, watching the bubbles of blood slide further into her arm, two dark spots inside the ivory tubes. “Please let go of my arm.”

#

Masaaki heard her beg him again to release her hand, and he found he almost couldn’t go through with it. It was her innocence, however, that drove him to finish the deed. Once begun, he knew he owed it to her to give her his blood. To offer her another way.

Still, when he looked down at the glowing kiba, he felt his courage failing him, washed from underneath him like sand in a creek. Suddenly, he was remembering those same, ivory fangs traced across his face, plunged into his belly, etching designs upon his chest. He remembered being helpless as they took what they wanted, delighting in his terror, his vulnerability, his inability to protect himself.

He had to blink to clear himself of the memories.

Shannon was watching him, unable to pull away from him, looking, for all the world, how Masaaki imagined he himself once looked, that first time the vampire fed on him.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, though whether it was for him or for her, he wasn’t sure. “I have to do this.” Again, he wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

“Please don’t turn me into a vampire,” she whimpered. This time, she was begging, and it made a deep part of his guts twist, remembering pleading in a very similar way, when the roles were reversed. A dishonor that, by everything that Bushido was, should have caused him to run his blade through his guts the moment he found his wakizashi. Jumonji giri. The cross-shaped cut. The most painful death, reserved for the greatest of shame. That was the seppuku that his dishonors had earned him. He had earned a death, alone, without a kaishakunin standing by to sever his head for him should he falter or lose his grip.

Yet here he was, making a vampire, against her will, in the wild hopes that he could train this one to be different. An excuse, he knew. A justification to keep living, after being broken like a whipped dog. He wasn’t samurai. He hadn’t been samurai since the moment he’d let his master take his swords from him and sell him like a sack of gold.

“Please,” she whimpered again, eyes fixed to the blood sinking down the tubes of her fangs.

Masaaki swallowed hard and looked away. “Shannon,” he whispered. “I gave you my word I will help you, and make this right. You have no idea how hard this is for me. Now take my gift with courage and stop dishonoring it.” He met her gaze and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Watch,” he commanded softly. “Learn. I will help you through it.”

When she bit her lip and gave a tiny nod, Masaaki found the courage to do what he had to do next. He took his tantō and sliced open his palm.

Seeing his own blood, Masaaki curdled inside, and suddenly it was all he could do not to drop into a ball of instinctive terror and simply start rocking in mindless shock. He swallowed hard as memories came back, of being bled, hanging upside down in helplessness, alone to watch his lifesblood dribble down his throat and chin to pool into a pot beneath him, that horrifying fear of not knowing whether they intended to remove the needle in his chest before he bled to death.

He had wanted to live. That was what had destroyed him. All that time, Masaaki had wanted to live, when every samurai knew from birth that a true warrior divorced himself from that desire, to become a better weapon on the battlefield. A true samurai did not care whether he lived or died, as long as he lived an honorable life. But hanging there, in complete shame and dishonor, feeling his own warm blood dribble down his chin, having to tilt his head so it wouldn’t get in his eyes, Masaaki had been desperate for his captors to come back and tug that needle from his flesh before he bled to death. So desperate he had been panting in short, dizzy whines by the time they finally returned and yanked it from his vein, sipping on glasses of crimson.

“This is really hard for you,” the vampire whispered softly.

Masaaki jerked and looked at her. She had been watching his face, and her too-big amber eyes were filled with compassion. She made an awkward nod to his hand.

Masaaki looked down, not having realized he had fisted his fingers over his wound, so tightly that his knuckles were white, and scarlet liquid was pooling in the indentations of his fingernails in the meat of his palm.

“Very,” Masaaki whispered.

“We can still vote to dismiss,” she said.

Masaaki met her eyes, saw her fear, there, and had to swallow down the urge to shove her fangs away from him and leave the monster there to bleed to death.

Not a monster, Masaaki thought. Not yet.

If he did this, he would have to let her drink of him again. And again. Several times a week, for as long as he served her. And if he let her drink of him, once she tasted the glorious ambrosia that was the yatagarasu, he may be re-condemning himself to those horrors. Like an emperor with a firebird, she might not be able to let him come and go at will, might not be able to trust that he would come back to rejuvenate her when she needed it. She might simply clip his wings and trap him in a pretty golden cage, to enjoy at her leisure.

“Is that two votes for dismissal?” she asked. “Sounded like two votes for dismissal.” Despite the hope in her words, however, her face was flushed and sweating. The yōki awakens, he thought, watching the unmistakable signs of the vessel’s arousal within her. Flushed skin, brighter eyes, redder lips, faster breaths, the big, unnatural pupils dilating fully, giving him twin glimpses into a void. And, once recognized, the signs spawned another shameful rush of fear within him, until he instinctively wanted to drop her hand and crawl away. It took every ounce of control that Masaaki had to continue holding the vampire’s wrist, her fangs extended and waiting.

She was panting, now, eyes flickering from his face to his blood, then back to him. “I don’t…” she panted, “…feel very good…” Indeed, he could feel her heart racing against his fingers.

“You need blood,” Masaaki managed. “I triggered the change. You need to feed for the first time or you’re going to die.” And, some old and wretched part of him thought that maybe that wouldn’t be such a horrible thing. One less parasite to torment the world.

The vampire seemed to sense that, too, because her unnatural eyes widened. She swallowed hard, looking from him, to his blood, and back again. There was no mistaking the longing in her face, now. The monster was waking.

“It hurts,” she whimpered, her big black eyes begging him for release. And he knew she wasn’t talking about the fangs puncturing her wrist. She was begging for his blood. Instinctive horror washed through Masaaki’s core and he had to swallow down the dual urge to both sob and curl into a terrified ball. Her breaths were coming in tiny gasps, now. Like a woman giving birth. Or a vampire about to feed for the first time. Every ounce of Masaaki wanted to fling her hand away from him and run, let the abominable creature starve to death.

What if he couldn’t stop her? What if she overpowered him and took everything she wanted? What if he died, awash in his own blood, just like that innocent young geek whom Masaaaki was supposedly saving with his sacrifice? The newly-awakened vampires had no control. And queens needed a lot to sate them.

But she was awakening. Because of him. She had agreed to this, albeit reluctantly, and without real understanding. He was now honor-bound to help her, and what little honor he still maintained required that he put those fangs to the blood pooling in his palm, to help her begin her transformation.

And still he held back, unable to make his muscles move, transfixed by the blackness of her gaze. Fully dilated pupils, stretched so that none of the iris remained. The same inhuman gaze that had come to him every night for six hundred years, to take their fill of him, in any way they desired.

“Please,” she whimpered. She was trembling, now, and Masaaki knew there was no going back. Within the next few seconds, she would either feed, or die.

Looking at that demonic gaze, seeing the animal need in her face, her whole body trembling violently as her infernal eyes flickered to his blood and face and back, over and over again, too quickly, Masaaki almost lost courage and left her there to begin his jumonji giri.

You started this, fool, that warrior part of him growled, sitting up in the back of his mind. You triggered the change in an innocent girl. Finish it, or a hundred cross-shaped cuts will not repair the damage to your soiled soul.

Shaking, fighting down the shameful urge to bolt, Masaaki twisted her wrist and, before he had a chance to think about it, lowered the hollow fangs to the welling of blood in his palm. Immediately, they began to suckle, drawing the crimson liquid through their semi-translucent ivory tubes, lines of darkness disappearing into her wrist. Watching the silver etchings of her fangs flash gold as she ate him, Masaaki felt sick.

“Oh…” the vampire moaned. “Oooohhh.” He watched her demonic eyes roll into the back of her head, her back straightening suddenly as her breaths started to grow ragged and too-deep. He heard the start of the chest-deep rattle, the sound of a Third Lander in the throes of passion. Hearing it, Masaaki was inundated in a wave of disgust, and tears stung his eyes as he forced his hand steady under hers. Too many times, he’d heard that same clicking growl as he’d been helpless, taking their demonic pleasure from his blood and body. She reached out with her other hand—the wound already closing on her wrist—and gripped his shoulder, painfully strong.

I can’t do this, Masaaki thought suddenly, listening to the rattle deepen, the rumble that had always heralded some new horror of their twisted minds, some new diversion with which to use his flesh. He fisted his hand and drew it away before he could help himself.

Immediately, the vampire’s head snapped up and her eyes flashed open, as black as the void. When she bared her lips, he saw her elongated fangs, the deep crimson of her lips, and he felt himself lunge away from her, fully in the grip of that old, instinctive terror. “More,” she snarled at him, slowly getting to her feet. Like a mistress commanding a slave. Masaaki swallowed, eying the distance between them. Again, he had the urge to bolt. Just run out into the sunlight, pull free his wakizashi, and begin his penance.

“More!” she screamed, panting, now, whimpering. She took a step towards him, jerky, like a puppet on strings.

And, indeed, if he left her with only that tiny taste, it was going to kill her. In agony, Masaaki realized that no tiny cut in his palm was going to satisfy that first hunger. It was why a vampire always killed on its first awakening. They needed sustenance.

Meeting her insane voidlike eyes, Masaaki did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He carefully slid the towel aside and dropped it to the floor, bearing his body to the vampire.

With an animal snarl, his daimyō lunged forward and rammed her fangs into the thickest part of his thigh, gripping it tightly with fingers that bruised. Masaaki gasped as he felt the fangs sink deeper into his leg and the sudden exhaustion that always came when a vampire’s kiba entered his flesh. He felt it tugging at his energy, pulling at his essence, like smoke being sucked out an open window. Masaaki groaned and knotted his fists on his thighs, forcing himself to endure, to not panic.

But the innocent girl in front of him was transforming, becoming something else, becoming that thing that had haunted his waking life for seven centuries, stalking him in nightmares, giving him no escape. She was gasping, now, mouth open in bliss, her skin starting to take on a golden glow. The glow of him. She was eating him. Siphoning him dry, taking his essence and making it her own, that low demonic rattle clicking in her chest and throat, something utterly inhuman.

Unwillingly, Masaaki froze, remembering a different place, a different time. A vampire, above him, her body aglow with his life-force. That same unearthly rattle in her chest, her head thrown back in the same savage bliss. He remembered wanting to live, yet knowing he would have no choice. He never had a choice. They fed until they were satisfied, and it was luck alone that had kept him alive all these years. Luck, and the fact that he was a yatagarasu. As such a prize, they always sated themselves on others, first. Because of what he was, Masaaki had watched thousands of terrified victims die before him, executed in his place, because he was too valuable to risk first-taste. Too much of a delicacy. Dessert, not the main course.

It was too much.

“Stop,” Masaaki said. His whole body was trembling, and he was at the very edge of insanity, teetering on the brink. That he had allowed himself to fall in this position, that he had gone back to feed vampires, was warring with his being, leaving everything he considered himself to be on the very threshold of shattering.

She laughed at him and tightened her grip. An evil, demonic sound. He felt the tips of her fingers pierce his leg, so tight was her grip. He tried to crawl away, then, but his leg might as well have been locked in the jaws of a vice. He felt the kiba sink deeper, penetrating to the bone, increasing the speed of his drain.

Masaaki tried to shove her away, but she grabbed his wrist and held it like a vice.

Desperate, now, he summoned the hikari. The room immediately flashed, too bright to see, as his body took on the radiance of the sun. The vampire hissed, but did not release her hold.

The reality of that hit him like a sledge to the gut. The hikari did nothing. Because he had fed her. Because she was eating him.

Panic took hold, then. That same panic he had felt every time they’d fed on him. Every time he’d been helpless to stop it. He dropped to the floor, whimpering, curling into a ball, trying to protect his face, his stomach, his eyes. She crawled over him, that Third Lander rattle in her chest, a demonic purr as she prepared to use his body like the others.

He’d been wrong, he realized, utterly devastated as he felt his life-force slip away. He’d been so wrong…