Chapter 35: Home Alone

Shannon froze. “Um. My friends are…”

“Not so big and scary,” the barghest said flatly. “And if you set me free on some lonely dirt road and somehow manage to leave me there, I can find you again anyway. Save me the trouble. Just take me home now.”

Save him the trouble? Shannon fought another insane urge to duck out of her car and bolt. It took every ounce of self-control she had to turn her back on those long ivory fangs and put her hands back on the steering wheel. Holding her breath, she put the vehicle into drive and started them moving again.

She was pretty sure that driving without a door was all kinds of illegal, so Shannon took the quickest way home—a little over a mile to her parents’ place, instead of the seven or eight to her new home in South Birchwood. Sans door, the sound of her tires on the pavement was loud, the wind unnerving in her face. She endured the funny looks she got driving down Eagle River Road, but thankfully no police officers stopped her in the short time it took for her to get back up the mountain to her childhood home. That much, at least, went well for her. Shannon didn’t know how, exactly, she would have explained to the nice police officer why her very good friend was shackled, stinking, and dressed in 101 Ways To Kick Ass, Illustrated.

“All right,” Shannon said, snagging the keys and jumping out of the car as soon as they had come to a stop, “now before you break anything—”

The barghest kicked the driver’s-side seat out into the gravel driveway and started to climb out. Shannon swallowed and backed up.

“Undo my ankles,” the barghest growled, sitting there where the driver’s seat should have been, glaring up at her.

“Uuhmm,” Shannon chuckled nervously. “No.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “No?”

“Yeah, screw that,” Shannon said. “You want iced tea or something? Theo left some hotdogs here the last time he fired up the grill.”

“I want you to release my arms and legs.”

Shannon laughed again. “Sorry buddy. You’re, uh, gonna have to just sit tight until Masaaki gets back. He’s got swords.”

The barghest started to growl, a weird rattling sound in his chest that almost sounded like a cat purring—or like one of those alien sci-fi movies where the creepy predator was stalking you in the dark. When the barghest stood, he didn’t bother stepping out of her car before he straightened. He just bent the doorframe up and around himself as he got to his feet. “I’ve been looking for you,” he growled. “Since childhood, I’ve been searching for you. Like hell I’m letting you keep me chained up like an animal now that I’ve found you, Mardöll. Release me.”

The name triggered something deep in Shannon’s chest and she felt her whole body go into a panic, even as her mind went utterly still. A name swirled to the surface, surrounded by an ancient fear. “Nökkvi.” The word came off the tip of her tongue before she could stop it.

“Release me!” the barghest roared, his face going red.

Nökkvi? What the hell? Shannon gave a nervous laugh, backing up further. “Uh, sorry, no. You threatened to eat me. I don’t free guys who threaten to eat me.”

“Eat you out, little queen,” he growled. “I’m going to enjoy taking your body with mine, in every way a man claims a woman, from now until we both die in a pile of our own entrails. I’ll take the soft filth that this weak and gentle realm has spread across your mind and claw it away. I’ll teach you to kill without mercy, revel in the blood of your vanquished foes. We’ll hunt Christians under the moon together, Mardöll, and when we can’t kill any longer, I’ll plant my seed in your womb and you’ll bear me children of our blood, a union blessed by Odin himself, champions to fight the coming war.”

Shannon’s mouth fell open, locked in a silent O. Her legs started moving of their own accord and she scrabbled back up the driveway, leaving him standing beside the car, his ankles locked together. If he wanted to catch up with her, he was going to have to hop.

The barghest started snarling and tensed one thigh until she heard the unmistakable sound of shattering metal.

…or snap a padlock.

Shannon turned and bolted for the house, where there would be a phone. Like an imbecile, she’d left her phone in the passenger seat, which was now guarded by an angry barghest.

Behind her, she heard him roar and charge her. Shannon hit the front porch, threw open the door, and slammed it behind her. Then she grabbed the phone off the kitchen counter, ran up the stairs, skidded around the hall, ducked up the second set of stairs to the third floor, then hurled herself towards the little dangly cord separating the attic from the rest of the house. She tugged down and, even as the front door detonated inward, threw the phone through the dark opening, then snapped the cord off the pull-down ladder and crawled up into the darkness. She yanked the stairs up with her, sealing her into the blackness except for a golden rectangle of light peeking between the attic entrance.

Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs and into the hall beneath her. “I know you’re up there, Mardöll!” the barghest snarled, light dancing through the cracks as he moved directly under her body. “You can’t hide from a barghest. Your blood lights up like quicksilver.” The star-speckled blackness of his blood, on the other hand, was almost impossible to see through the floor. Like trying to follow a shadow through the darkness. “Come down!” He stomped a foot into the floor, making the whole house shudder.

Shannon scrambled for the phone and started dialing Theo’s number.

Below her, the growling hesitated. “Who are you calling?” the barghest demanded.

“Pest exterminators!” Shannon shouted back.

The barghest roared and she heard something that sounded like the shattering of wood and sheetrock.

Shannon hit CALL and planned out exactly how to tell Theo that she had a rampaging barghest in her living room as she waited for the call to go through.

After the first ring, she got Theo’s answering service. Hey, yeah, this is Theo. My phone’s probably dead or on vibrate, so leave a message or call back in a few. Thanks!

“Your hero’s phone is dead, remember?!” the barghest laughed at her. “I’ve got you all to myself for a couple days, vampire. Plenty of time to remind you of Odin’s gift, as I sink my teeth into your flesh and—”

Shannon got up, tiptoed over to the closest dormer, and peeked out the window.

In the hall below her, the barghest had gone utterly still.

Damn, he’s got good hearing, Shannon thought, wincing.

“You climb onto the roof,” the barghest snarled, “and I’m going to start bringing this house down.”

Shannon laughed and opened a window. “Yeah righ—”

The house shook dangerously as something heavy slammed into a support wall.

“Okay!” Shannon cried, tugging the window shut again and backing away. “Okay, okay! You just stay down there and I’ll stay up here and we’ll wait it out, okay?”

“Come free my arms,” the barghest growled.

“Um, let me think on that one,” Shannon said, sitting down cross-legged beside the opening in the floor. “No.”

“Free my arms, woman,” the barghest growled through the crack.

“Not bloody likely!” she shouted back.

There was a roar of rage that actually made a puff of dust rise from the crack in the floor that the barghest was yelling into. “I don’t have time to coddle you, you flighty, addle-headed fruitcake!”

“Fruitcake. Yeah.” Shannon laughed. “That’s a good one, there, bud. Epic.”

“Odin gifted you to me. Reward for killing a jötunn my last life. I will claim my prize. There’s no use running from me, you sun-loving coward.”

“Riiiight,” Shannon said. “Let me just open the door to the crazy man now because the lame insults are chipping away at my tender self-esteem.”

“Come down here and let’s talk.”

“After the whole planting your seed bit, I think I’m fine up here, thanks.”

Instantly, the beast’s rage was back. “You’re going to deny me?!”

“Why does my house not have an eject button?” Shannon asked. “I think Masaaki’s right. It needs an eject button.”

The beast raged and slammed into another wall. “Come down!”

“In your dreams, creep!” Shannon shouted back. “You bring down the house, I’ll just hop out the window and leave you to crawl out of the rubble while I go get the police.”

The animal roar that followed made the air in Shannon’s lungs vibrate, but he stopped destroying her house. “Feeling better?” she called, when he stopped panting.

Beneath her, Shannon saw a shape move through the crack in the floor, and when she concentrated, she saw his sparkly blackness, just out of reach. “At least open it so I can see you,” the barghest growled.

“Oh, and give you the ladder?” Shannon laughed. “Sure, let me just go do that right now.” She waited. And waited. And picked her nose and waited.

Eventually, he got the point. “Let me see you!” he snapped, and Shannon heard yet another part of her house shatter. “I spent too long waiting not to see you!”

“In your dreams, buddy-boy.” She was about to call Theo again when the phone rang. She picked it up and answered it with, “Oh thank God. I need you guys right away. I know you told me not to, but I went and bought that barghest dude anyway and they didn’t drug him up good enough and now I’ve got a raging barghest loose in the living room and I think he’s going to tear down my house with his bare hands.” Then she cocked her head at the thumping, shuddering sounds below. “Well, shoulder. His hands are still locked in those bowling-balls, though I think he can get them off if he keeps pounding them into my floor like that. I need Masaaki and his swords like ASAP, before he gets into the attic.”

There was a long pause on the other end before the unmistakably no-nonsense voice of a female police officer said, “Ma’am, are you missing the driver’s-side door to a Mercedes-Benz?”

“Uhhhhh,” Shannon said. “…no?”

The police officer went on to explain that there was the abandoned door to a Mercedes CL65 laying in the parking lot of the Eagle River Church of Christ registered to a Shannon Meeks, and that the church staff would highly appreciate it if she came and removed it before service tomorrow.

“Absolutely, officer,” Shannon said, as another part of her house shuddered under the barghest’s attack. “I’ll tell Shannon.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. And please remind her that littering is a crime.”

Shannon readily agreed. Then, once the police officer hung up, she tried dialing Theo again. One ring and she was at voicemail again, with Theo’s cheerful voice telling her to call back. She tossed the phone aside in disgust.

“Come down,” the barghest growled, “and you have my word I won’t hurt you.” The words had come only a few short inches under the attic floor.

“I’m fine up here, thanks,” Shannon said.

“I just want to see you. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a soul gifted to me. Just let me see you.”

“I don’t think so.”

The barghest started growling again. That odd clicking sound that, even more than the ivory markings, left her with the deep instinctive urge to run… Shannon realized that she was bending her wrists back unconsciously, her fangs slipping through the skin. She quickly made fists and swallowed. Yeah. If she thought Masaaki was mad now, just wait when he came back and she’d enthralled the guy… He was going to go nuclear.

“Stop growling,” Shannon snapped. “You’re making my wrists twitchy.”

“Was that a threat?” he snapped.

“Uh,” Shannon said, “yes, actually.”

“It would be the last mistake you ever made, vampire.”

“Yeah, well,” Shannon said, “I’m kinda feeling like my time’s running out anyway, so I don’t really have anything to lose.”

There was a long silence. Then, “You didn’t dream about me at all?”

“Uh,” Shannon said. “Maybe a little one after the first time you asked me to take you home. I think I was at war with giant monkeys with ray-guns. You totally had my back.”

“I was a monkey.”

“Yeah. A big one. With stripes.”

She heard a huge sigh and what sounded like a body contacting the floor. “Odin told me you would fight it. I get a lifetime worth of dreams—I know the taste of your blood, your thoughts, your juices. I spend a lifetime of nights easing my sorrow with the sweetness of your body. And then you show up as oblivious as a stuffed toad. Loki still taunts me for stealing his sister.”

“I think you lost me at juices,” Shannon said.

The barghest grunted and she heard the metal balls thump against hardwood. “Here. I’m sitting. Open the damn thing up so I can talk to you.”

“You are talking to me just fine,” Shannon said. “You mean you dreamed about me?”

The barghest muttered and she heard a thump the approximate sound of a ripe melon.

“That sounded suspiciously hollow. You hit your head?”

From much further away—floor-height??—the barghest said, “I’m lying down. Open the hatch and I’ll tell you what you’ve forgotten.”

Remembering his comment about planting his seed, Shannon laughed. “No, I think I can do without.”

“You are pissing me off!” the barghest screamed, breaking more of her stuff.

“You ever try out for the Hulk?” Shannon asked. “You’d make an awesome green dude. Totally got the anger thing down pat.”

Below her, the barghest bellowed and she heard more wood splinter.

“Hulk smash?” Shannon asked.

The hallway went eerily quiet. She knew he was still there, because she could hear his breathing, but he made no motions to move, so it was difficult to see his blood-web.

“Uh,” Shannon said. “You knock yourself out or something?”

“When I get my hands on you,” the barghest said in a low, dangerous voice, “you’re gonna wish you hadn’t made me wait.”

…Hadn’t made him wait? “Wait for what?” Shannon asked, despite herself.

“To make you mine.” The passion—and rage—in his voice was unmistakable. “I’ve been alone for a thousand lifetimes, and when the gods finally take it upon themselves to give me a mate, she runs from me like a terrified rabbit. I will ease my pain with your body, as was foretold to me in my dreams. I’ve been alone too long to put up with your bullshit.” Shannon was pretty sure that meant he wanted to crawl up there, right then, and make sweet, passionate love to her, barghest-style. Which probably included bloodspray and the flinging of severed limbs.

Shannon slid away from the attic door, despite herself, her heart beginning to hammer. “Uh, dude. I think you’ve got the wrong gal.”