Chapter 23: The Slave Traders

It was getting better. Masaaki thought of the shameful way he had fallen after a kick that night, sprawled on the floor without the energy to get back to his feet, and had to believe that it was getting better. The kendo instructor, Shinzato Yuusuke, had sent him home early, told him to get well.

Shannon hadn’t said anything after they’d gotten into the car. She knew exactly why he had fallen, and wanted another way. After several minutes of silence, she said, “Look, Masaaki, maybe we could find someone to help you—”

“No!” Masaaki snapped, frustrated and ashamed that she didn’t think he was able to fulfill the task at hand. “I asked for this. I brought you into this. I will help you or I will die trying.”

“…at which point, I’ll have to find someone else anyway!” Shannon cried. “Look, Masaaki. I’ve decided. Remember that catering note? Well, I’m gonna go meet them. You can come with me or not, but I’m going.”

Masaaki frowned and turned to look at his daimyō. “Catering note?”

Shannon hesitated. “Yeah, uh.” He watched her lick her lips and tighten her fingers on the steering wheel. “Okay, look. That note you found on my parents’ door. It was from the Five Realms Trading Company. They said meet tonight, at one-o-clock.”

Masaaki felt his body go rigid around him, remembering the hundreds of prizes that had arrived in the vampires’ dungeon, carefully traded from vampire to vampire through an extensive network across the world. “Absolutely not.”

“I figured I got enough money,” Shannon blundered on, “and if I free enough of them, maybe one or two will turn out like you and stay and help me.”

“No,” Masaaki snapped. “Those creatures are dangerous, daimyō.”

She met him stare-for-stare. “Dangerous like you?”

Masaaki narrowed his eyes, on the verge of fury that she would even suggest it. Very softly, he said, “I didn’t swear to serve you so you could take slaves and create a harem of your own, daimyō.”

“I didn’t say take slaves,” she growled at him. “Listen to me, you sword-flinging freak. I said free them. Let them decide like you decided.”

“None of them are going to make the decision you want,” Masaaki growled, “and the moment you try to keep them anyway, you and I are finished, daimyō. I will leave.”

“Well, then, it can’t hurt anything to try, because I’m not going to try and keep them,” Shannon retorted.

Masaaki didn’t like the idea. Having a slave, for a vampire, even momentarily, was too much temptation. It was too easy for them to use that slave. Taking another’s life-force to serve her own needs. And the moment he watched his daimyō drink from a bound and helpless victim, he would be responsible to destroy the monster that he had created. He said as much.

“Look, I’m going tonight,” Shannon said. “With or without you. I’m not going to let you die because you’re a stubborn uptight prick, okay? And think of it this way… If none of them stay, we’ll be doing the world a service by buying them and freeing them.”

Masaaki glared at her. “You’re giving them more money with which to capture others.”

“Oh yeah?” Shannon demanded. “What about you? How long were you in the hands of vampires? Wouldn’t you have liked to have been bought by a cute chick with her yatagarasu friend oh, say, seven hundred years ago?”

Masaaki turned to look out the window. To have been freed from that hell, he would have devoted his sword to her for life, just as he had done for her the moment she had actually cut away those chains. But he was samurai. Who knew what kind of honor she would be dealing with, in the others? Second Landers, especially, were known for their fickle betrayals, their backstabbing selfishness, their self-serving manipulations. And Second Landers were a vampire’s stock-in-trade. Their power, tied to the land, didn’t ebb and flow like a lot of First-Landers, most of whom were tied to seasons.

Softly, Masaaki said, “I am not like most of these creatures, daimyō. If you find one in ten that doesn’t run—and carry tales of his capture back to his people, who will come hunting you—I will be surprised.”

She made a dismissive sound. “One in ten sounds fine to me.”

Realizing she was utterly serious, Masaaki turned back to glare at her. “You are going to be putting yourself in danger, daimyō.”

She gave him a much-too-cavalier grin. “That’s what I’ve got you for. I was hoping you’d go with me.”

“No,” Masaaki growled. “By freeing them, you’ll be advertising your location. They will go back to where they came from, tell their own kind about the Third Lander queen who just bought a new house in Birchwood.”

“So we don’t take them to the house,” she retorted.

“I refuse to be a part of this,” Masaaki growled. But, in the end, he followed her to the car when the time came for her to go meet the purveyors of sentient flesh. He crossed his arms and looked out the window in silence, watching the darkness slip by outside.

Long minutes passed where neither of them spoke, with only the hum of the Mercedes as it accelerated down the road. “Thank you,” Shannon said, as they drove to their meeting-place.

“I get to choose the slaves,” Masaaki muttered.

“Done,” she said.

Masaaki sighed and shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was visit with flesh-traders. He knew right now that it would take every ounce of willpower that he had to keep from burying his sword into their depraved, disgusting skulls. “Before we meet with them,” Masaaki reluctantly said, “I want you to know the kind of people you will be dealing with, daimyō. They are disgusting wastes of human skin. They will smile as they lie to you. They are vile, lacking the morals of a rodent. If you didn’t have money, they would take you and sell you, instead. It is probably best that they don’t know I’m a yatagarasu.”

“Obviously,” Shannon said. But he could tell she was listening.

“There are some creatures that are more valuable to you than others,” Masaaki said. “Yatagarasu, obviously, but they are rare, and you probably won’t see another of those for decades, even if you meet with these snakes once a month.” He drew a deep breath, then let it out between his teeth. “Fey are good, because they are constant. Unlike myself, their power won’t dwindle with the onset of winter.”

Shannon gave him a startled look. “You mean you’ll be able to give me even less in winter?”

Masaaki grunted and continued. “A vampire lord would be ideal, if you could enslave one, but the Five Realms Trading Company is run by vampires, so—”

“Any idea when you were planning on telling me that, Masaaki, or were you just going to let me find out on my own in, say, October, when I killed you?”

“At this rate,” Masaaki snapped, “I’ll be dead in two damn weeks, girl. The waning of my power in winter wasn’t a high priority on my mind.”

Shannon actually drew the car to a sudden stop and turned to stare at him. “Two weeks?” she demanded.

Masaaki felt his shame like a blanket, stifling him. “You were right, okay? I thought about it. I was going to try to hold out longer, but each time you feed, I sink further and further into darkness.”

“Oh Jesus,” Shannon said, “dude, I did not want to hear that.”

Masaaki glared at her. “Hence why I’m picking tonight’s slaves. I’ve been there. I’ll be the best judge of the ones who will stay.”

“Okay, Masaaki. Jesus. What do we do if none of them want to stay?”

Masaaki had been dreading that question, ever since he finally came to face the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to feed her alone. She ate a good ten times what her parents had, combined, energy-wise. He took a deep breath, then said, “Daimyō, if none of them want to stay, I will help you enthrall a vampire lord.”

She frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

Masaaki grimaced. “The man who attacked me that night was a lord. My guess is someone your parents tried to bring back for you, for the same reason. A queen has the ability to thrall a lord with her kiba, if she doesn’t allow him to drink of her venom first. If we can’t find anyone to stay of their own will, I will help you catch him and thrall him.”

The car still motionless on the road, cars passing around them on either side, Shannon peered at Masaaki for some time before she said, “I thought you said you would cut off my head if I tried to thrall anyone.”

“My offer is for a vampire lord,” Masaaki said. “They are, by their very natures, meant to be reservoirs for queens. They produce their own essence, and can magnify that which they drink, and they can store near-limitless energy, for long amounts of time. If you had a vampire lord in thrall, you could use him to focus and store my energy, and you could drink solely of him when I need the break.”

“You said you’d cut off my head if I thralled anyone.”

“Lords are the worst kind of vampires,” Masaaki snapped. “We would be doing the First Lands a service. I won’t shed a tear if you enthrall a lord, no. Hell, I’d have you enthrall an entire nest of vampires, but you can only drink from the lords. The rest, you would simply kill by taking their essence. Too weak.”

“That guy you cut in half,” Shannon said. “The one with the dog.”

“Yes,” Masaaki said, frustrated.

“How do you know he’s even a lord?” Shannon demanded.

“You mean aside from when he told me while he was eating me?” Masaaki demanded. “Because of his skin, wan-ko. He shares the same silver color you did, before you began eating of me. It is the color of the Third Lands magics under his skin, coursing through his blood.” He gestured at the outside of the car. “If you ever see another vampire, you will understand. Lords will look silver, where I am yellow-gold. Other vampires, the lower tiers, will have whatever pathetic life-energies they’ve managed to steal from their victims. If they haven’t eaten in awhile, they will have no glow. Lifeless, you understand? That is how you will be able to judge them, when you see them. They will look like a walking corpse, in your hunter’s-eyes.”

A car honked behind them and Shannon got the Mercedes moving again. Softly, she said, “That lord didn’t seem like a bad guy. He had a dog.”

“Hitler had a dog,” Masaaki retorted. He had read about Adolf Hitler in the history textbooks she had bought him. “Blondi. German Shepherd. Hitler loved that dog. Nazi propaganda used it to portray Hitler as an animal lover and win support from the masses. But when he was losing the war, the coward made his doctor use the cyanide capsules on his dog first, to prove they worked, because Hitler was too much of a chickenshit to use them on himself.”

Shannon was quiet for some time before she said, “Serial killers and their fucking dogs.”

“So,” Masaaki said, “yes, I will help you claim a lord. But just one, and only if you don’t get another volunteer tonight. If you try for more, I will wash my hands of this whole affair, you understand?”

“I get it,” Shannon said softly. “Now shhh. This is it.”

They were pulling up to a four-way cross-street, with stoplights at all four corners. Shannon put on the turn-signal and turned onto the road leading up the mountain. Pulled off the pavement just up the hill was a beat-up old van covered in rust-spots. Shannon pulled the car over in front of it and took a deep, shaky breath as the driver’s door on the van opened and a narrow-waisted guy in jeans and T-Shirt got out. “You’re my rich fiancé from Japan.”

Masaaki twisted to peer at her. “What?”

“My rich, kinky fiancé from Japan,” she blurted again, as the guy started toward their car. “You wanna have fun with them with me. You’re into rope bondage, and having all the powerful critters to tie up turns you on.”

Masaaki considered that, then shrugged. “All right.”

Then the white man with the crewcut was tapping at Shannon’s window, which she rolled down.

“Evening,” the man said. “We’re totally lost and our van broke down. You got a spare jack?”

His daimyō, the naïve youngster that she was, frowned and said, “Oh, okay. Um, yeah, there’s probably a jack in the trunk…”

“We’re the ones you’re looking for,” Masaaki said to the man, unbuckling and opening the door. “Show me my new playthings.”

The man’s face darkened slightly before he said, “Who is he?”

“Her fiancé,” Masaaki said. “Just moved here from Japan. Sold my harem in Okinawa. Looking to start another. You have any fauns or succubi?”

The man glanced at the road, then said over his shoulder, “Not right now. A barghest, two fey—twins—and a Three-Legged Crow.”

Masaaki felt every muscle in his body go stiff.

Then the girl, fool that she was, cried, “You have a Three-Legged Crow?” Masaaki could have strangled her. She had, by that simple sentence alone, doubled or tripled the price. Which, of course, would make it so that they could buy one slave today, instead of three.

“Sure thing, sweetie,” the man said, with all the patronizing sweetness of a man about to bilk the rich little millionaire for everything she was worth. “Let’s all go get in the van so we can show her to you, okay?”

Even though his heart was pounding like thunder in his ears, Masaaki forced himself to calmly reach into the backseat and tug forward the duffel bag.

Immediately, the man’s eyes widened. “Fuck. Is that what I think it is? Fuck, man, you guys need to get with the program. We don’t take cash. You pick, then we make a delivery to your place and we exchange.”

“We want the Three-Legged Crow,” Shannon babbled, like a moron. “Can we just trade now?”

Before the man could agree to taking all the money in the duffel, Masaaki interrupted, “We will see what other creatures they have available, wan-ko. We have plenty of time to choose the right denizens for our harem.”

Like an imbecile, her eyes went wide and she cried, “But it’s a Three-Legged Crow! I thought you would’ve wanted a Three-Legged—”

“I’ve had a Three-Legged Crow,” Masaaki interrupted brusquely, wishing he could tell her to shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up. “I’m interested in seeing the others. Hopefully they have something new, but fey are pretty standard and boring.” To the man, he said, “The barghest is female?” In truth, he wouldn’t be getting anywhere near a barghest, nor would he allow his daimyō to do so, but this fool didn’t need to know that.

“Male,” the man said. “Big monster of a dude. He takes it up the ass real nice, if you strap him down good.”

Getting out of the car beside him, Shannon froze. “That’s horrib—”

“Sounds good,” Masaaki said. “Take me to see him.” He tossed the duffel at the man. “There’s more where that came from, if I like what I see tonight. We’re getting married soon. I must keep my beautiful bride well-supplied. How often do you get imports?”

“Our shipments come in four times a month,” the man said. “We had scheduled meets with her parents twice a month.”

“We want to see every shipment,” Masaaki said, striding to the van. “Shannon, here, has the horrible tendency of killing her slaves, and her parents emptied out their harem before they left. For the first little while, we’ll need to see everything you get in.” Just in case the slavers got it in their heads to try and slap chains on him and Shannon to make a few extra bucks, he figured it was a good idea to let them know there was more cash where this came from. Lots more cash.

It was a tense, hour-long ride in the blacked out, sectioned-off backseat of the van with a trio of flat-faced men, during which, Masaaki did his best not to let his agitation show. A yatagarasu. Here. Female. The assholes. He wanted to shove his wakizashi through their guts and twist, but if he killed them before they could take him to her, he’d never be able to free her.

Then they heard a van pull into a garage of some sort, then heard the garage door sliding closed behind them and the engine shut off. The outwardly rusted—yet inwardly bullet-proof—sliding door was opened by one of their three baby-sitters, and then they were all climbing out into a plain concrete waiting-area of some sort.

“Follow me,” the man in jeans said. He led them through the small door cut into the back of the garage—barred from the outside—and then down through a long concrete bunker until he reached a dimly-lit row of cells, the only illumination a single fluorescent bulb down the center of the hallway.

Masaaki felt his heart wrench when his eyes caught the yatagarasu. She was Chinese. Naked but for a collar and cuffs. And she looked at him with such fiery anger…

He quickly turned away. “The barghest?” he said casually. “I’ve heard interesting things about them.”

When, in fact, he didn’t give a damn about the big, extremely dangerous beast huddled in the corner of one of the cells, Masaaki stood there and listened to the slaver’s lies, all the while feeling the yatagarasu’s accusing brown eyes on his back.

Behind him, his idiot companion was staring at the yatagarasu and blurted, “But I thought you wanted a yat—”

“I don’t want a Chinese whore,” Masaaki spat. “If I buy a yatagarasu, it will be Japanese. The thieving, honorless Chinese can die by my blade a thousand times over. I find their deformed women no more attractive than a plague rat. If you want a Chinese crow, then I suppose I will accept your decision, but I would rather take the two fey and wait for the next shipment.”

Just hold on, Masaaki thought. I’ll get you out of here, girl…