Chapter 4: Freedom

“Do you have a consort yet?” Masaaki demanded, still gripping her hand around the hacksaw. He had to make sure. Had to make absolutely sure. Pulling hand and hacksaw out of the little groove she had created, he turned her arm over, to get a good look at the soft skin on the other side. Very gently, he ran his thumb along her wrist and forearm, feeling for scars.

She frowned at his ministrations with utter incomprehension in her face. “Um. Okay, that’s creepy.”

He felt nothing but the silky-smooth skin of a vampire queen. The feel was inhuman. Almost like living glass beneath his skin, and he had to suppress a shudder as he remembered the same texture sliding across his own body countless times before, using his body, eating his spirit as he was helpless. “Did your parents give you a consort?” Masaaki asked again.

“Is that like a computer program?” Her other hand was trembling and tightening around the toe of her boot, but so far, she had not tried to pull away.

She knows nothing, his startled mind realized in that moment. An utterly clean slate. In the wrong hands, she could be used for ultimate evil, the raising of a vampire army here in the First Lands. But in the right hands? Could she force the invaders back? Permanently? Was it worth hoping? And could he become a consort? Feed her his blood? Spoil her for the vampire lords that would even now be searching her out? Doubtless, that was why her parents had not yet taught her how to feed. They were saving her for a lord.

He hesitated, scanning her face. The blood of the yatagarasu would certainly satisfy a queen. In the First Realm, no blood was sweeter to a demonkin. But he had sworn to himself that, once he found his freedom, he would never to allow another demon to drink from him. After six hundred years of servitude to brutal and sadistic monsters, it would take all of his control to allow that first taste. But what if, after his sacrifice, she didn’t cooperate? What if she took his blood and, high on that ambrosia, decided to return him to the dungeon? Was it worth the risk? Would it be easier to just kill her?

“Um, dude?” She licked her lips and her too-big demonic eyes flickered down to the hacksaw, flipped upside-down for his inspection of her forearm, then back up at him. “You’re hurting my hand.”

Masaaki could have killed her, then. She was unawakened, as weak and corporeal as any human. He could have reached out, caught her ears in his fists, and brought her face against his knee until she stopped breathing. A queen. Everything he knew was telling him to do just that.

But he was looking upon her innocent face and thinking about the way she’d cut that chain, instead of his fingers. Very slowly, he released her hand.

For a moment, she looked like she would scrabble away from him and leave him here to free himself the rest of the way. Her eyes flickered back to his face, searching. Then, slowly, she began working the hacksaw again, and he saw her hands trembling where she held the tool.

“So, uh,” she said as she worked, her voice unsteady, “you have some creepy powers, right? I mean, you just decided not to kill me just now, right?”

“I have no powers that I can control collared such as I am,” Masaaki said. Immediately, he had to fight another wave of despair. To say it, out loud, hurt more than wearing it.

Her eyes flickered up to his face, then dropped to the ensorcelled metal band around his neck. “I might be able to get it off with a grinder, though you’d have to trust me with a power-tool near your throat.”

He actually stared at her. “You would take it off? In the presence of a yatagarasu?”

“Ummm,” she said, giving a nervous laugh. “Weeellll, considering the way you just said that, I’m having some serious second thoughts.” But she kept hacking at the bar between his legs, bent in concentration.

“You would take it off,” he repeated, just to make sure he’d heard her correctly.

“Sure, why not?” She wasn’t looking at him.

“I could kill you,” Masaaki blurted.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t just now, so I’d like to think we set some sort of precedent.” She finished cutting through the bar and moved on to the other ankle.

Masaaki caught her hand, stilling the hacksaw again. “I am a yatagarasu,” he said, in case she simply did not understand. “I can make anything at all burn with the heatless light of the sun.”

He watched her swallow. “Um. Yeah. Seems pretty stupid that they kept you here, considering you’re their Kryptonite.”

Masaaki frowned. “What?”

“Kryptonite? Superman?” Then, looking up at him, seeing his confusion, she winced. “Okay, um. Bane. You’re their bane.”

That was, indeed, a very good way to describe it. To a vampire, the yatagarasu was either the ambrosia of the gods or the poisoned fruit, depending on who had the upper hand in the situation. And Masaaki hadn’t had the upper hand in over six hundred years.

“You’re hurting my hand again,” she whispered.

Masaaki released her, stunned that he was doing so.

“So, uh, how about we introduce ourselves a little,” she said, her voice tremulous as she once more renewed her efforts at the bar between his legs. “I’m Shannon. I’m nineteen. My parents just told me they’re dead, and oh, by the way, you’re a vampire, Shannon, and there’s people that want to eat you.”

“Not eat you,” Masaaki whispered, before he could help himself. He had been so enraptured by the simple fact that a vampire was freeing him that he hadn’t really thought to guard his words.

Sure enough, the blade of the hacksaw hesitated. He watched her bite her lip. Saw the muscles in her elegant neck tense. “So what are they gonna do?”

That simple question, asked in such innocence, made something deep and powerful within Masaaki surge. It took him a moment to realize that it was that passion he had thought was long-dead. The warrior-instinct of a samurai. He would kill for this innocent girl.

For a moment, he could only stare at her in stunned silence. How could a vampire have given that fire back to him, even if only for a moment? The vampires were the ones that had spent centuries delighting in seeking out and destroying even the tiniest licks of that flame, leaving a husk of what he once was. And yet, here he was, naked and in shackles, feeling compelled to pledge his sword in fealty once more. Insanity.

“That bad, huh?” she whispered.

Masaaki shook himself, refusing to acknowledge that unwanted new drive and instead considered her question. “What will happen to you?” At her little nod, he gave a shrug. “If the first lord who finds you is less than noble? He’ll likely take you to a dungeon, force you to take him as consort, and bring humans and vampires to you to turn into thralls and soldiers so that he may command them through your link to them. Oh, and compel you to birth him more queens.”

She was staring at him. “Please tell me you’re not serious,” she whimpered.

“Such is the risk of being a queen.”

“I’m nineteen!”

“Your use to them is the same whether you are fourteen or four hundred.” Masaaki watched her thoughtfully, fighting that strange compulsion to kneel in seiza and put his forehead to the ground in fealty. He would not do that again. Ever. He’d rather plunge his sword through his gut and begin a jūmonji giri to restore his tainted honor. But then again, his honor was already a ragged, blood-caked, rotting thing. Six hundred years of captivity had tattered that once-pristine tapestry and shredded it to rags. The laws of Bushidō required some reparation. Some restoration of what he had lost, and soon. In his situation, a samurai who had allowed himself captured, there were few options. Seppuku or…

He hesitated, looking at her. A samurai lived to serve. He lived to fight for his master. It was the very basis for his honor. But why would a vampire queen not violate that oath, when a man trained in Bushidō, raised by a line of men whose breathtaking nobility had been the subject of poets, a man who was deeply studied in the arts of the samurai, had violated that sacred trust?

“Tell me, little queen,” Masaaki said, after several minutes of internal struggle. “Are you all alone in this house? You said your parents are dead? You have no uncles or brothers? No one to protect you?”

Her eyes widened and flickered to his face, and he saw her fear. Softly, she whispered, “I cut you down.” It sounded like a plea. It took Masaaki a confused moment to realize why.

She thinks I ask because I’m going to kill her, Masaaki thought. He cleared his throat embarrassedly. “No. I ask because I can help you.”

She blinked at him, and the relief on her porcelain face was painful. “You can?”

“My name is Masaaki Yatagarasu. I was a samurai of the Heishi clan. It’s been some time, but I was trained in many forms of combat, for many years.” He gestured at the bands around his ankles. “I can help you. But I need to know if you have vampire kin that will throw me in their dungeon the moment they realize what I am. To a vampire, a yatagarasu is…a prize.”

She swallowed. Still not entirely trustful, she said, “If my parents weren’t lying through their asses in their letter, they’re dead and I’m all alone here. But they’ve lied about stuff like that in the past. They’ve always been…creepy.”

“They’re vampires. If they are not dead, then they need to be.” Then, at the way the girl flinched, Masaaki realized his mistake. Even with her overly-big eyes, her glass-smooth skin, and her ruby lips, he wasn’t, he realized, stunned, even thinking of her as a vampire. Embarrassed all over again, he said, “There might be some exceptions. May I read their letter?”

She hesitated a long time, her feminine neck still bent to her task, glowing almost silver in the dusky half-light. A queen, Masaaki thought again, still stunned by that fact.

Then, slowly, she straightened, and her golden eyes showed a moment of fear before they slid away. “Um, yeah. Here.” She thrust the tool into his hands. “You do the hacksaw. I’ll be right back.” Then she got up, backed a few feet away from him, and met his eyes.

Masaaki saw the indecision in her eyes as she stood that way, well out of reach, for much too long, biting her lip. She’s going to run, Masaaki realized, horrified. Slowly, he set the hacksaw down, tensing to give chase. The girl watched the gesture and took another step backwards.

“Don’t run,” Masaaki warned. “I’m fast, girl.”

She bolted.

He lunged after her, but the half-removed bar between his legs caught his free ankle, throwing him to his knees before he could reach her. She dropped down the hole in the attic floor and disappeared.

“Wait!” he cried, crawling forward to the stairs out of the attic. Looking over the edge, he saw her pausing there, twenty feet down the hall, watching him with all the wariness a sparrow would give a hawk.

She’s going to escape. A virgin queen and she’s going to escape. And, judging by the look on her face, he knew that he would never see her again.

“You said,” she accused softly from the hall, “If a vampire’s not dead, it needs to be.”

“I said there are exceptions!” Masaaki cried.

“I’m not a vampire,” she shouted back. “You think I’m a vampire!”

Knowing he couldn’t reach her in time, Masaaki prayed to his ancestors for guidance in finding a way to ease her fears. “Shannon,” he called down to her, “I wasn’t lying. If you continue on your current path, you will end up like I did, but they will never let you escape. A yatagarasu is a prize. A queen is a priceless treasure. And you will end up as I did, if you run today. I’m the only one that can help you.”

“Why’s that?” she demanded. “There were at least three times up there I thought you were gonna kill me.”

And he had been, too. But somewhere along the line, Masaaki had chosen a different path. Like the flow of water, rushing over changing terrain, something had altered his course. “You are alone in a very scary world, there, Shannon. Nightmares that you can not even dream about are real, and stalking the night. But you don’t have to be alone. You’re a vampire queen. I can help you use that to your advantage. In the First Realm, they are stowed away in basements and turned into tools. In the Third Realm, they rule. I’ve had six hundred years to learn more about vampires than any man has a right to know. I can teach you.”

He saw a moment of debate there, saw her consideration. But then her eyes flickered to the stairs behind her. “I told you I’m not a vampire.” She started backing away slowly.

“Stop!” Masaaki cried. “Damn it. I can help you!”

She turned and disappeared down the stairs at a run. Masaaki felt a wretched sinking in his gut as he listened to her hurried footsteps cross through the house and out the front door, knowing he had just made the unforgiveable mistake of letting a vampire queen escape alive.