Chapter 34: Vampire, Meet Barghest

“Oh shit.” Shannon almost ditched, right then—just switched the car off, jumped out, and ran for all she was worth for the main road. Instead, she swallowed, hard, and looked over her shoulder.

The barghest’s bleached, near-white eyes were open and blinking at the leather where his head was jammed against the back of the passenger seat. He groaned and started trying to twist in the seat.

“Shit!” Shannon cried, sitting forward again. She had been counting on Masaaki and Theo to help keep the brute under control until she could talk some sense into him. The struggles in the backseat became more violent, and she heard metal creak as he moved. Then he started to shake, and the Mercedes rocked back and forth precariously.

“Um, okay,” Shannon babbled, swiveling to look at him, “so before you freak out and break my car, I’m taking you home with me, okay? Can’t take you home with me if you break an axle en route, okay? Please calm down?”

The barghest’s ghostly-pale eyes fixed on her, and for a long moment, she wasn’t sure whether he recognized her or even understood her. Then, slowly, he lowered his body back to the seat and went utterly still, never taking his eyes from her face.

Oh yeah, Shannon thought, he totally wants to eat me. Shit, shit, shit! What Theo had said about rabid tigers suddenly was leaving her hyperventilating again. He looked like a tiger, with those creepy-ass creamy white tattoos all over his body. She bit her lip and turned back to face the road, stepping on the gas, knowing her only hope was to get the barghest to Masaaki and Theo before he woke up enough to chew on her head. So screwed. She was so so screwed…

“Am I dead?” the barghest asked, in a barely-comprehensible slur.

“Uh,” Shannon said, scrambling for something to say that would keep him from ripping up her car before she could get to Masaaki and his swords. “Yes. Yes, you are dead. Now be really really still and maybe the grim reaper won’t notice.” Hands shaking, she put the car into drive.

Behind her, the barghest remained in silence for some time. Then, just as she was pulling out onto Eagle River Road, he said, “You’re pretty.”

Shannon almost overshot the far lane and had to swerve to keep from going into the ditch. Her tires squealed as she struggled to recover and keep the car in the lane headed home. Gasping, her heart hammering like a sledge against her ribs, she cried, “I said shut up, the reapers will get you!”

The barghest narrowed his eyes at her.

Panting, Shannon hit the accelerator, already planning out what she was going to say to Masaaki.

Masaaki, I’m really sorry. I had a moment of girly benevolence and I just had to drag home the seven hundred pound vampire-eating beast. Can we keep him? Masaaki seemed to understand the girly benevolence thing. Him and his damn seven virtues of a samurai. He was always trying to get her to be more like ‘a proper daimyō.’ She was pretty sure that courage was on that list, and it took courage to get into a car with something that could eat her, right?!

Courage…or stupidity. She had a pretty good idea which one Masaaki would claim this was.

“Where are we going?” the barghest asked, still slurring.

“We’re going to meet my big scary friends, okay?” Shannon said, her fingers gripping the wheel until the leather creaked.

The barghest snorted, but said nothing.

The ride went just fine until they hit a stoplight, then the barghest started sitting up behind her, showing God and everybody his current state of undress—and restraint. Beside her, Shannon saw a woman in the passenger seat of a truck look down at him and her eyes widen.

“Shit!” Shannon cried, realizing the karate manual had slid loose in his contortions. She twisted, bent to grab the manual that had slid to the floor, was reaching to replace it against his crotch again before she realized the barghest was watching her way too closely. Shannon froze under his pale-eyed stare, suddenly aware of that weird instinctive urge to run thrumming through her veins—and the fact that her entire arm, face, and upper body was within reach of the monster’s teeth.

Behind her, a car honked. Shannon dropped the manual, twisted, and stepped on the gas without looking to see what was in front of her. Barely missing a collision, she quickly pulled the car off the road, swerved over the curb, thunked up across a concrete divide, and parked them in the empty lot of a church, panting, gripping the wheel with both hands.

The barghest turned over his shoulder to look at the church, then back at her. Shannon lifted her eyes to the mirror, and for a long moment, they looked at each other through the rearview.

Shannon swallowed. “Uh, you got a name, there, dude?” she asked, fidgeting with the mastiff-chewed leather on the steering wheel. She was fighting the urge to throw open the door of her car and bolt across the parking lot.

He didn’t answer her, just watched her through the rear-view.

“I’m Shannon,” Shannon offered.

“That’s not your name.” The way he said it, she had just stated the most obvious thing in the world.

Shannon blinked at him in confusion a moment before she got it. The slavers. Right. Probably prepped them before each visit, told them to call her Mistress Vampire Queen or something stupid like that.

“So, uh, I want you to know I’m not going to enthrall you.”

He snorted. “You could try.” He leaned forward until he was breathing in her ear. “I’d rip off your arm and feed it to you.”

He didn’t sound the least bit like he was joking. As he leaned back, Shannon chuckled nervously at the ghostly-pale beast in her backseat. He was big. Like grizzly bear big. And, after watching him break steel chains and pull huge metal bolts out of concrete, she believed he could do just that. He barely even fit in the back of her car. The greasy, Cave-Man mat of his shoulder-length hair was brushing the upholstered gray ceiling, and even with his arms pulled out of the way, exposing the pale ivory stripes tattooed across his chest, he had man-titties. In a good way. And, now that she was trapped in a car with him, she realized he smelled overwhelmingly like dirty, unwashed male.

Masaaki was so going to kill her.

Then she realized that maybe Masaaki didn’t have to know. Yeah. That’s what she needed to do. Set this dude free out at Knik River or something, then hightail it for home. Give him a couple bucks, maybe grab a few changes of clothes from Wally’s, which was only a quick dash across the street…

While Shannon was distracted with that, the barghest leaned forward again, put his nose to her shoulder, and inhaled, deeply. As she screamed and twisted and tried to work her spine into the steering wheel, he showed long, predatory canines. Longer and more predatory than hers. “You smell good, vampire.”

“Ooookay.” Shannon swallowed and cleared her throat, realizing that, as big as he was, the barghest could lean forward and bite out her throat as she drove. “Okay. Um. I gotta get out and make a phone call. You just stay put, okay?” She yanked the keys from the ignition. Then, even as his face was darkening, she opened the door, hopped out, and slammed it behind her. Scrabbling for her cell phone, she dialed Theo’s number.

“You get the note?” Theo demanded, as soon as he picked up. Shannon thought she heard the sound of a car running in the background.

“Uh, no,” Shannon said, watching the barghest through the glass. She scrambled to come up with some reason to get the two of them to show up at a parking-lot in the middle of Eagle River without telling them about the barghest. “Um. I’m having a bit of a problem with my car—”

“Look, Shannon, you’re gonna have to deal with it yourself, okay? Masaaki and I are gonna go rescue my dumbass friend from a nest of vampires in Kenai. I don’t have time to fix your flat.”

Shannon narrowed her eyes. “Just because I didn’t know how to fix a flat tire, you don’t have to be a dick about it. Masaaki didn’t know.”

“Masaaki effectively just stepped out of the thirteenth century,” Theo retorted. “You were born here.”

“I need you guys to stop by and help me,” Shannon grated. “The car is creaking funny.” Which was true. Because the barghest was leaning over the front seat, licking her headrest.

Oh fuck. “Please come help me?” Shannon whimpered. “I don’t think I can take care of this one on my own.”

“You’ve got cash. Call a tow truck or something.”

Shannon bit her lip as the barghest leaned back, putting his feet to her door, fiddling with the latch with his toes. Reflexively, she hit the auto-lock on the keychain. You just stay tight, buddy…

Behind the glass, the barghest’s face darkened into a scowl. “Open the door,” she heard him shout, barely audible through the sound-dampening walls. Shannon shook her head and made the universal Stay Put gesture.

The barghest’s eyes narrowed. An instant later, her door came off the car, flying past her to skitter out onto the concrete of the parking lot, coming to a metallic, screeching halt about fifty feet away.

Then, door open, the beast shoved his shoulder into her seat, prying it out of the floor and to the side with the sound of ripping metal.

“Shannon?” Theo demanded, over the phone. “What was that sound?”

Shannon hadn’t realized the phone had slid from her ear. “Uh, yeah. Theo, I really need your guys’ help.”

Path clear, the barghest shoved his legs through the opening he had created and scooted and squirmed forward until he was sitting halfway out the now-missing door. “Why do you need their help?” the barghest demanded.

“Who was that?” Theo demanded.

“A…guy…” Shannon managed.

But Theo didn’t press. “Okay. Well, tell him the jack’s in the back, right under the carpet. Masaaki and I’ll be back by tomorrow evening, okay?”

Shannon froze. “Wait, what?”

“Tomorrow evening,” Theo said. “We called and postponed the twins showing up until we get back so you don’t gotta take care of anything on your own. Just sit tight and watch movies or something. Oh, and will you feed Angus for me? We left him at your new place.”

Shannon swallowed, eyes locked with the barghest’s. “Uh, sure. But Theo—”

“‘Kay. Thanks. Hey, gotta go. Phone’s dying. Needs a charge.” The line went dead.

Very slowly, Shannon dropped the phone away from her ear. The barghest was grinning up at her, looking very not drugged. “So,” the barghest said. “Just the two of us for a couple days, eh?”

Predators had good hearing, too.

Shannon took a step backwards, letting the phone slide down beside her leg. She was pretty sure she could outrun him, what with his ankles shackled together. But that wasn’t exactly the socially responsible thing to do, considering.

“So,” the barghest said again, leaning forward and sniffing at her leg, much too close to her crotch for comfort. “Why’d you call for help?”

Shannon batted his face aside and stepped back. “Why the hell did you lick my headrest?” she retorted.

The barghest didn’t show an ounce of remorse, and instead glared at her like she’d just pissed in his pudding. “Wanted to get a taste of you.”

About ninety-five percent of Shannon wanted to bolt, right then. Just drop everything and skedaddle. The other five percent wanted to kick him in the balls, then bolt. It was the angry five percent that made her stamp her foot and blurt, “Get your ass back in the car or I’m leaving it here.”

The barghest cocked his head up at her and Shannon watched him deliberate before he slid back into the Mercedes and pulled his big feet inside with him.

…And now what, sweetcheeks? Shannon thought, watching the barghest watch her through the glass. She knew, beyond a doubt, that she was in over her head. The barghest could kill her. Easy. He’d shoved the seat aside like it was made of popsicle sticks. A seat that was supposed to be screwed into the frame and crash-proof, and he’d just leaned on it and it crumpled.

Shannon considered calling Theo again and blurting out what she’d done. She didn’t really have a lot of options. She sure as hell didn’t want to get back into the car with that thing.

But she had to. Because she couldn’t really leave a chained-up naked dude in the back of a car that was now thoroughly registered in her name, parked in the middle of Eagle River.

Shannon reluctantly reached inside and shoved the front seat awkwardly back into place, though it was uneven and bent and to the right. Giving the barghest a wary glance, she climbed in after him, settling into the seat that was now higher and more wobbly than before. She peered into the rearview mirror.

“Tell me seriously,” Shannon said. “Are you going to eat me?”

“Are you going to thrall me?”

“Uh,” Shannon said, “No.”

“Then probably,” the barghest said, shrugging.

Shannon’s eyes widened. “Listen, you creep,” Shannon snapped. “I went back there to save your damn life, and you’re threatening to eat me? I was planning on letting you loose, okay? See this?” She held up the keys that she’d been holding onto with a death-grip ever since the slaver’s house. “It’s to your padlocks.” Somehow, speaking through the mirror seemed safer, and it was easy to pretend that there wasn’t a man-eating beast in her backseat when she could look at him through glass.

The barghest’s ghostly-pale eyes stilled on the keys, but he said nothing.

“Okay,” Shannon said. “So I’m just going to take you to a park somewhere and unlock your arms, okay? All I want is for you to promise you’re not going to eat me.”

The barghest smiled slowly, then leaned forward, ducking out of the mirror, making the Mercedes creak. For a long moment, he just sat there like that, out of range of her rearview, until Shannon worked up the courage to turn around and look at him.

Sure enough, with his face right there, the wraithlike skin and eyes and hair just inches away, she felt like peeing herself. This close, it was impossible to ignore the light-eating blackness coursing through his veins, spotted with pinpricks of light. Like a pulsing web of the Milky Way, it laced through him with such strength that it reminded her of Masaaki’s gold, surrounding him with a glittering blackness that reminded her of a starry sky.

His near-white gaze fixed on her, the barghest said, “Take me home.” It was not a request.