Chapter 18: Home Turf

Theo did a U-turn, took his truck back down the mountain, parked, and got out. He shut the door softly. Taking a deep breath of the pleasant alpine air, he glanced down the road in either direction. In the half-light of almost one o’clock in an Alaskan summer, the gravel road looked an almost ghostly white against the darker trees around it. It was dead silent except for the mosquitoes.

“That was a really shitty job you did back there,” Theo told his dog. “You didn’t even warn me, you prick.”

The big mastiff collapsed to the bed with a disgusted grumble, making the axle creak.

“You’re punishing me for not taking you on that run.”

Angus ignored him.

Theo sighed. Tucking his keys into his pocket, he started back up the road.

He found the driveway the new Mercedes sedan had pulled into, then ducked into the trees. Weaving between the birch and aspen, he prayed they didn’t keep a dog. Dogs were notoriously aggressive towards Third-Landers, with Angus being the exception. Well, Theo’s exception. He’d found the puppy six years ago in the bed of a pickup truck outside a grocery store, last puppy left of the litter. Just having lost another of his friends to old age, Theo, out of some depressed, insane whim, he had gone to see how viciously the cute little $1500 non-pedigreed puppy would try to bite him. After all, dogs hated Third Landers.

But the mottled little brown pup had licked his hand. Theo had paid the kid the ridiculous, exorbitant price on the spot, in cash, and the dog had henceforth made Theo the exception.

And, for some reason, a vampire queen’s exception. The damned dog had gone utterly apeshit over the two unimportant vampires that had come rolling into town, but the moment he unwittingly comes within three feet of a queen, the dumbshit just stands there and pants and strains out over the walls of the pickup bed in an attempt to lick her face.

Maybe he was trying to eat her face. All sneaky-like. That made Theo feel a little better. He simply couldn’t believe that Angus’s senses were growing that dull. Sure, the dog was already six years old in a breed that normally didn’t live past seven, but Jesus. That was just creepy. Theo still had goosebumps.

Theo slipped between the trees amidst the drone of mosquitoes, listening. He could hear the two of them talking inside. Discussing something about dictionaries. He crouched, waiting. He didn’t want to get too close, lest the queen see him before she went to sleep. He was about ninety percent sure that she was, for some reason, genuinely wasted, and was about to crash, and hard. Which would be perfect for rescuing a yatagarasu and removing an unwanted cancer from the First Realm before it had a chance to spread.

Eventually, sure enough, the house went silent and he heard the sound of sleep.

Theo slipped closer and through the walls, he could see the shimmery, eye-searing gold web of life-essence of the yatagarasu sitting in a cross-legged position below and in front of the soft silver-gold of the vampire queen, who was stretched out on her side, supposedly on a bed or couch.

Silver-gold. Which would be why Theo hadn’t noticed her silver before. She had already drunk of the yatagarasu. The poor bastard was already enthralled. Damn. That was going to make things complicated. If he was anything like Theo, the yatagarasu likely would be sitting there on the floor, wishing he could go to the kitchen, grab a knife, and cut off the vampire’s head while she slept, yet at the same time, able to only act with devotion towards her. Devotion and deep, crushing love.

Damn. Well, at least without the queen awake to give commands, he had a chance of earning the yatagarasu’s cooperation by lack-of-action. If the man was of strong enough mind, he could resist the queen’s poison enough to allow Theo to liberate him. And, if he was anything like Theo, that was what he would desire more than anything in the world.

Still, if the man wasn’t of strong will, the poison would drive him to defend, and Theodore would find himself doing battle with a creature that could have him helpless with a mere thought.

Which meant he had to drink of the yatagarasu.

Theo despised doing it, but in this case, with the yatagarasu already enthralled, he simply couldn’t take the risk. Watching the two webworks of light inside the house a moment longer, he went back to his truck for some rope.

#

Masaaki was examining a page of six different basic karate stances when he heard the strange rhythmic scratching-thumping coming from the attic. He froze, listening. It came and went, seemingly increasing and decreasing in volume, and it definitely was not normal.

“Daimyō,” he whispered.

“Boomstick,” she said. The metal-and-wood weapon was leaning against the couch near her head. They had argued for a good ten minutes about where she would sleep, and how close he would sit next to her when she did, before finally deciding on the living-room couch. She had gotten out a marker and drawn a thick black line about three feet out from the couch on the hardwood floor, encircling it, and had told him that to cross the line was to ‘die by acute lead poisoning.’ Which, he had come to understand, meant by boomstick. After hearing the explosive power of the weapon—and the shattering of the heavy wooden door that had followed—Masaaki had given it a wide berth.

“Daimyō!” Masaaki hissed again, when the strange scrabblings continued, moving to the other side of the house.

This time, his daimyō ignored him completely and snored.

Masaaki glanced down at the black line marking the boundary she had drawn onto the floor, then considered crossing it to wake her. Then he remembered the thunder of the boomstick and decided he didn’t really want to see what kind of horrible new magics the Third Landers had developed during his captivity.

Reluctantly, he got to his feet and went up the stairs, listening.

Scatch-scratch-scratch, thumpthumpthumpthumpthump…patterpatter…THUMP…patterpatter…thumpthump…scratch-scratch…

Masaaki hesitated at the still-deployed attic staircase, listening. Then, slowly, he climbed the ladder.

The sound was louder, here, but the attic was empty.

Whatever it was, it was on the roof. Masaaki listened as it thudded across the ridgeline and down the other side. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump…scratch-scratch…whine…

…whine?

Frowning, Masaaki scrabbled down the stairs and went to his daimyō, stopping at the black line painted over the walnut. “Daimyō,” he said. “I think there’s something on the roof.”

“Then go kill it and stop bugging me,” she moaned.

“Samurai would rather not kill unless it’s necessary, daimyō,” Masaaki retorted. “Today was the first time I’ve been outside of a building in decades. What if it’s something strange? Maybe you would like to come with me?”

“Maybe I would like to effin’ sleep, Masaaki,” she said in a slur. “You said, if I didn’t lock you out of my bedroom, you would let me sleep.” She was obviously only half-awake.

Masaaki grimaced, but stopped trying to rouse her. He cocked his head and listened to the strange thumping some more, then, nervous and tense, went out the front door and walked outside. He had to back up to the treeline to be able to see over the front porch roof, but what he saw made him freeze.

A dog was on their roof. A big dog. Walking back and forth over the eaves and scratching at the shingles and whining. It obviously wanted down.

“Uh.” Masaaki stared at that for a moment, watching the dog lumber back and forth, whining. He walked a few paces around the edge of the house, trying to figure out how it had gotten up there. And, more importantly, how he was going to get it down. He made a circle around the house, looking. There were ways, if the dog would cooperate, to get it to come down two layers of roofs and onto a small shed, from where it could probably jump down without help, but it was on the other side of the house, whining, completely oblivious to Masaaki.

He was still busy trying to puzzle out how the dog had made it onto the roof when he heard movement behind him just before something hard and heavy slammed into the back of his head, knocking him to his knees. As Masaaki was reeling from the blow, he felt something hit him again, driving him to the ground. Delirious, now, he felt an impossibly strong hand in his back, just under his shoulder-blade, holding his chest against the ground. Immediately, the prick of fangs followed, then the agony as they sank into his body. With entrance of the fangs, he felt his life-essence draining, slipping away, the fangs sapping his energy, leaving him weak and exhausted.

“No…” Masaaki gasped and whimpered and began struggling for his hikari.

A male voice above him said, “I’m a lord. My teeth are in you, boy. A simple tensing of my wrist and I can take you completely. I don’t want to, but I will. Don’t make trouble for me and I won’t make you mine.”

Masaaki froze, all of his wits suddenly abandoning him with that one simple thought. A lord. He was being eaten by a lord. Her parents had returned. They had brought home a lord. He was going back to the basement. He hadn’t escaped when he had the chance and now he was going back to the basement. All of his old terror returned in a sudden wash and he felt his body start to shake, his life-essences draining from him through the fangs in his back, the inhuman strength pinning him to the ground. “Please no,” he whimpered. “Please, no, no, no…” He sucked in a sob and tried mindlessly to crawl away. “Please…”

“Christ,” he heard the vampire growl. “You’re almost free of this, boy. I just need to make sure you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

“Please…” Eating him. They were eating him. He was going back. Food for vampires. They were eating him. He was being pinned down, unable to move while they drank their fill. Masaaki tried weakly to push himself up, but all the energy was being drained from his limbs, sucked away as they fed. “Please let me go,” he babbled. “Please, please, please…”

Then the fangs were retreating, the nauseating tug as they slipped back through his skin leaving Masaaki trembling all over. He curled into a ball as soon as the vampire released him.

“Put your wrists behind your back,” the vampire lord growled.

Panicking, now, Masaaki released his hikari and tried to get to his feet to run.

The vampire ignored the flash and caught him easily before he’d made it past his knees, wrenched him violently around, and threw him back to the ground. “Goddamn it, boy. Your wrists.”

“No,” Masaaki wailed, trying desperately to keep his wrists out of the vampire’s grasp.

Growling, the lord simply took them, yanked them behind him, and wrapped them with rope. “I will avenge this,” the lord snarled, knotting the rope tight. “Just hold on for a few minutes while I take care of the problem.” Then he went to work on Masaaki’s feet, and not all the strength in both of Masaaki’s legs could keep the vampire from binding his ankles together once more. His attacker then rolled him over, and for the first time, Masaaki got a good look at the lord’s gold-silver skin, his too-black eyes, the pupils stretched to the very edge of the white, felt his arms and wrists bound once more, and he lost it. He started screaming, the mindless sound of a terrified animal.

“Shhh! Fuck.” The vampire yanked his overshirt off, tore off a sleeve, and forced it between Masaaki’s jaws, then tied it at the back of his head. Feeling his jaws once more pried apart by some foreign object, Masaaki summoned his hikari again, flashing as bright as he could go, and started kicking at the lord with his bound feet.

The vampire held an arm to his eyes, but he merely grunted at the feet hitting his midsection. “I’m helping you, damn it,” he growled. “Just hold the fuck on. I’m not going to enthrall you. Damn it. Just calm down.” He reached out for Masaaki’s shoulder, and Masaaki, seeing the all-black of the pupil, the golden life-glow that the creature had taken from him, shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut, suffocating on the rag in absolute terror.

The lord’s touch never came. He pulled back his hand, then turned and scowled at the house. “Just stay right there. I’ll fix this. This family line dies tonight. The fuckers will never do this again.” Then the lord was getting up and striding towards the front door.

Somewhere in the panting terror that followed, Masaaki watched the lord yank open the front door and step inside.

Then Masaaki’s world suddenly came to a halt.

His daimyō. The lord was here to claim his daimyō.

With that thought, Masaaki’s fear faded like smoke, blown away to reveal a crystal-clear mind. The mind of a warrior.

Summoning his hikari again, he downformed, his body growing smaller, his wrists slipping through the bonds as his fingers sprouted feathers. Then, as soon as his wrists and ankles were free, he stepped out of the ropes and clothes and upformed again, yanking his katana from its sheathe as he moved.

The lord would die. His daimyō was in danger and the lord would die.

He bounded up the stairs, threw open the door, and lunged inside the vampire lair. Inside, the lord was reaching for his daimyō with his filthy hands…

Masaaki hurled himself forward and summoned his hikari, making the vampire hiss and turn.

Masaaki hit him in the head with his foot, knocking him back, away from the couch. That he followed up with the sword, slamming the tip through his gut, then tugged up and out, severing a good portion of ribcage. He twisted and swung again, screaming, and hit the vampire solidly in the shoulder with a downward stroke.

The vampire lord screamed and stumbled backwards, holding up his one working arm.

Masaaki put himself between his daimyō and the vampire, still keeping his hikari as blindingly bright as it would go. The vampire stumbled, unable to see, and hit the coffee-table, sprawling. Behind him, his daimyō was calling, “Masaaki? What the fuck, Masaaki?”

But Masaaki was lunging again, this time aiming to take off the vampire lord’s head as he struggled to right himself, one arm hanging limply at his side.

A massive form came from the side, hitting Masaaki like a thousand pounds of lead, a painful grip on his arm dragging him to the ground.

The dog, Masaaki thought, struggling to get out from under it. Ancestors, the dog…

But then the beast was shaking him, flinging his arm back and forth, and the sword clattered across the room. With a cry of rage, Masaaki kicked at the beast, but it continued to hold on, shaking him and dragging him until Masaaki thought his arm would come off.

“What the fuck is going on, goddamn it?!” his daimyō shouted.

Then Masaaki looked up, saw the vampire lord on his feet by the door, good arm holding in his guts, his other arm hanging limply at his side. He saw the hesitation in the lord’s eyes.

“Angus!” the vampire called.

The dog ignored him, continuing to savage Masaaki’s arm, throwing him back and forth like a doll, keeping him from reaching the sword.

“Angus, come.”

The massive dog started dragging Masaaki backwards, away from the sword and the vampire lord, deeper into the living-room. Masaaki lost control of his hikari, trying to scrabble to stay near his weapon.

For a moment, it looked like the vampire would try to retrieve the katana. Then Shannon was gasping, her eyes finally being able to adjust to the commotion in the room. “What the hell is this?!” she cried.

The vampire lord’s eyes flickered to Shannon, then to Masaaki, then to his dog. His face setting with deadly coldness, the lord turned and ran.