Chapter 33: Bringing Home the Barghest

Shannon sat outside the Fred Meyer store, glaring at the grill of the SUV in front of her for a good half an hour, fuming. The sun was going to come up in a little over an hour, and they’d left her there. Again. They’d just teamed up on her and told her to deal with it, so the dude was gonna die, so what? The jerks!

Masaaki and Theo had been like two annoying peas in a pod ever since Theo had fed Masaaki his venom. Masaaki had even been egging her on to give up her virginity. To a vampire. Who was like, ancient. At least like thirty. How freakin’ disgusting was that?

What was worse, she’d just become their sugar mama. ‘Go buy this, Shannon. Go buy that, Shannon. You got that twelve million ready, Shannon? Maybe you need to make another visit to the bank, Shannon…’

Well, she was sick of it. It was her money, not theirs, and she didn’t give a damn about two little fey pricks. That barghest had been begging her to take him. And they’d twice now forced her to leave him behind. Well, fuck them. She wasn’t waiting for the next stupid clandestine meet-up to tell them to screw off. She didn’t need their permission. It was her money. She yanked out her cell phone and went to the GPS app.

Just like geocacheing, Shannon thought, searching through the history. She found the one she was looking for and twisted the key in the ignition. An orange dot showed up at the back end of Eagle River Road, where she had subtly marked it the last time she’d been waiting in the van for Theo.

She put the car in reverse, backed out of the parking-spot, and headed off toward Eagle River Road. She still had a duffel bag in the trunk of the car from the last time they’d made her load up on cash, and though she hadn’t counted it, after the irritating skinny dude with the black leather gloves and really big gold watch had offered them the barghest for free, she figured they would take whatever she had and be happy for it.

Shannon took Eagle River road until she passed an unnamed side-road veering off to the left, which she took—gotta love that little red line on Route Tracker. The gravel against the tires sounded the same as she remembered from being stuck in the back of the van. She followed the gravel road a ways, then turned and followed her handy little line down an even sorrier-looking, grassy driveway plastered with No Trespassing signs that pulled to the left, starting up the base of the mountain. Shannon took it, gunning the Mercedes up the steep drive, following that little orange dot.

The house at the top of the hill was an unimposing ranch-style building with a single-car attached garage. Shannon saw the creeps’ ghetto-van parked out front, so she pulled up, put the car into park, and switched it off. She took a deep breath and good out. Then, popping the trunk, she grabbed the duffel, slapped the trunk closed, and went to the front door. She rang the bell for several minutes before she saw movement behind the glass.

The guy with the black gloves and the gold watch answered, peering past her at the driveway before settling his gaze on her face.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” Shannon said, dropping the money at his feet. “I want the barghest.”

The man continued to hold her stare before his brown eyes suspiciously flickered to the duffel. “What’s that?”

“Money,” Shannon said. “Open up the garage. I’m taking him home with me.”

The gloved man’s blue eyes were cold. “How did you find us? You put a tracer on us?”

“I own a cell phone,” Shannon said. “GPS app. Reaaallly handy when you’re making shady deals with people who don’t want to hand out their phone number.”

The gloved man made a face. “The barghest is unavailable. We’ve already begun draining him.”

“Excuse me?” Shannon asked.

“Bleeding him,” the man said. “We’re going to try to recoup some of our losses with his lifeblood.”

Shannon narrowed her eyes again. “If you ever want me, my lord, or my fiancé to come back, you will get me that barghest. Alive. Now. Or I swear, this is the last sack of money you’ll ever see from any of us.”

The man with the gloves gave Shannon a long look. “Your lord and your fiancé don’t even know you’re here, do they?”

Shannon suddenly found herself wondering how much a slaver could get for a vampire queen, then saw the consideration in the man’s face and realized that he was wondering it, too.

You just left your bodyguard at home and went to hunt down slavers, Shannon thought, in horror. Yeah, she really needed to work on that whole Thinking Things Through thing that Masaaki and her kendo teacher had both been trying to drum into her.

But then she watched the slaver work the numbers in his head, and he shrugged. “I’ll go get the process stopped. Go back to your car and wait there. We’ll bring him out to you.” He ducked to pick up the sack of money, then disappeared back inside the house, shutting the heavy wooden door in her face.

Apparently, Shannon was worth more to them long-term as a rich brat than she was short-term as a slave. Shannon let out the breath she’d been holding, then walked back to the car on trembling legs, muttering, “Stupid, stupid…” under her breath. Who the hell did she think she was? James Bond? She was a white-belt, she cried when she broke a nail, and she’d left her own personal Chuck Norris at home. When she made it back to the Mercedes, her knees were trembling, and it was all she could do not to jump back into the car and peel out of the driveway before they could shoot her with a tranquilizer dart and cart her into their little hall of horrors.

Then, when the garage door opened and they dragged out the barghest sprawled on a beat-up metal dolly, his big arms bound in those big silver sheaths, ending in huge metal bowling-balls around his fists, Shannon felt her heart start to pound. Seeing the ivory markings over his body, with no cage between her and his skin, she once again felt that weird instinct to bolt, and actually had to grind her boots into the ground to keep from running.

The slaver with the black gloves and gold watch chuckled. “These things eat vampires, ya know.”

“I was told,” Shannon gulped.

The slaver shrugged. “Just sayin.”

“Why’s he look dead?” Shannon managed, as they started awkwardly maneuvering the huge tattooed man off the dolly.

“He’s fine,” the gloved man said. “We’d only barely started the drain. He’s just drugged outta his brute mind, is all.”

“Won’t last long, though,” another of the creeps insisted, as they levered the barghest’s limp head in past her driver’s seat, into the back of the Mercedes. “They’ve got a really high metabolism. You’ve got like forty-five minutes before he starts to wake up, tops. Get yourself some really heavy-duty chain. The big shit. Wrap him up good and padlock the shit outta it. Might stop him.” He actually sounded a bit guilty. Like he knew Shannon was about to die horribly.

“Uh, I’m starting to think maybe I should come back for him,” Shannon began, thinking of the interior of her Mercedes.

“Already paid for him, sweetcheeks,” the gloved man said, as they all strained to lift the barghest from the dolly. “He’s your problem, now. Plan on feeding him about fifty to a hundred pounds of meat a day, to keep his weight up. You could cut it back to twenty or thirty, but he’d start to lose definition.”

A hundred pounds of meat a day? Why, that was the size of a small human, Captain. “Uh,” Shannon said, as it took all five of the big men to heave the barghest into the back of her car, making the suspension creak. “How much does he weigh?”

“You want my guess, probably around seven hundred.”

No wonder her Mercedes was squatting. “Uh, okay,” Shannon said. For his part, the barghest lay where he’d fallen, sprawled over the back seat, head down in the footspace, big arms sheathed behind his back, padlocked together in eight different places.

The gloved man handed her a firstful of keys. “To the padlocks, though you might as well flush ‘em down the toilet. You ain’t never gonna use ‘em.” He paused and gave the sleeping barghest a long look. “You want my opinion?”

Shannon didn’t really want the opinion of a guy who gave off the slimy-dirt feel of a used car salesman, but she nodded.

“You’re a queen, right?” the man said. Then, before Shannon could deny it, he said, “Thrall him. Make him your pet fuckbuddy. He’d like that. Seems to have the hots for you. Just don’t let him shoot his load in the wrong hole. The two of you could probably breed, barghest blood in the vamps and all.”

Yeah, Shannon really could’ve done without that imagery. She fisted her hand around the padlock key and swallowed. “O-kay, thank you very much, I’ll take it from here.” With effort, she shoved the barghest’s huge bare feet deeper into the car, then shoved her seat back on him and locked it into place, somewhat comforted by the way it seemed to squish his huge body in place, then felt stupid, remembering what he had done to the table and the front of his cage. One twitch and he was probably going to send the seat—along with the side of her Mercedes—flying off into traffic.

Forty-five minutes. She had to hurry.

“Oh, and missy?” The man with the black leather gloves leaned over her door, his dark eyes fixing on her.

Shannon hesitated, realizing the other four men were all standing around, much too close for comfort. She swallowed, her mind frantically starting to sift through the self-defense moves that Masaaki—and her nine other martial arts teachers—had drummed into her. “Yeah?” she asked, trying not to let her voice waver.

“You tell anyone where we are, we won’t bother adding you to our stock. We’ll just kill you. Slowly.” His brown eyes were dark above his cruel smile. “Have some fun while we’re doing it, too.”

Shannon felt her stomach twist, but she kept her head up, looking the man straight in his dirty brown eyes. “Nice doing business with you.” Shannon then curtly yanked the door from the gloved man’s hands—making him grunt in surprise—and ducked into her seat. She calmly pulled the door shut behind her, nonchalantly stuck the key in the ignition, and unhurriedly started the engine. Putting it into reverse, she backed up, did a lazy three-point turn in the cramped driveway, then headed back down the gravel path back to the road at a sedate pace.

Halfway down the gravel road, about a mile from the house, Shannon drew the car into park and sat there, hyperventilating.

“Oh God,” she managed, gasping for air. She had just stared down human slavers in their own driveway. “Oh god, oh god.” And for what? She peered over her shoulder at the huge naked dude sprawled over her back seat. She hated naked dudes. And this one had ripped apart steel bars. What the hell had she been thinking?

Swallowing hard, Shannon reached over, took one of Masaaki’s many karate manuals from the floorboards of the front seat, opened it, then draped it over the barghest’s crotch. Then she turned back to face the road ahead of them, trying to get her breathing under control. This was so not good. Theo and Masaaki were going to flip. Totally flip. She was dead. It was that simple. She was just dead. Death by Masaaki. She could almost feel the sword taking off her head. She wondered which one he’d use. He kept complaining that he didn’t want to sully his katana on an imbecile. Maybe he’d saw it off with the stubby little tantō, instead.

Behind her, Shannon heard a sound from the backseat and she froze. A groan. Shannon glanced in the rear-view, saw the man’s silver-sheathed arms start slapping against the backseat as he struggled to right himself. Approximately forty-three minutes early.