Chapter 41: Drained

“What’s not good?” she could hear the sharpness in his voice.

Shannon took several deep breaths. She needed to get to Masaaki. Masaaki had this thing about stabbing people with swords, and if he had no other available targets, it seemed like he was perfectly willing to stab himself. But the sun was coming up. And she had no car. Because she’d brought home a barghest. That scared the shit out of her on so many levels she just wanted to puke. “Damn!”

She heard the barghest start up the steps.

“Stay there!” Shannon snapped, a bit more harshly than she had intended. The barghest immediately fell to his knees and started babbling about how he would make it better. As he did so, the blanket came loose, exposing his upper body and those weird tattoos across his shoulders and sides. Instead of terrorizing her, like it usually did, she found herself wanting to rush down there and slap her palms to that broad chest and drink until her problems went away.

“Crap!” She closed her eyes, put her forehead to the splintered doorframe, and took several deep breaths. She needed to feed. She couldn’t help Masaaki if she didn’t feed. But Masaaki was in Kenai, and Masaaki was her food…

On the steps, Björn was babbling about being sorry, and oh, how he was going to wring her scrawny neck and squish her brains out through her ears, and he would do anything to please her. Shannon felt that rising panic try to take over again, but she ruthlessly smothered it down before it could claim her. Masaaki needed her, and she wasn’t about to let some two-ton, sickly-pale, stripy asswipe get in the way.

“Okay, you know what?” Shannon demanded, straightening with that new resolve. “It’s your lucky day, buddy. You get to feed me. I’m gonna eat your soul and you’re gonna love it and say ‘Thank you, Shannon,’ when I’m done, then we’re gonna go on a nice long car-ride together and you’re gonna be a perfect angel while I find my friend. Mmkay?”

Björn’s head came up with a scowl before he quickly devolved into a babbling wash of gratitude for letting him serve her in that way.

“Yeah, whatever,” Shannon said. “It’s just until I can get back to Masaaki. It sounds like Theo left him in Kenai.”

“I can kill Masaaki,” Björn offered sweetly.

Shannon gave him a long, hard look. “All right, you crotch-sniffing Romeo. Barghests have a good sense of smell, right? You got that whole predatory thing going for you?”

“Mmmhhmmm you smell great.” He lifted his nose and inhaled. From down the stairs and inside the house. He made a little blissful smile. “Like flowers.”

She liked to use lavender oil instead of perfume. “Okay,” Shannon said. “I need you to find Masaaki for me. If I find you something he wore, could you recognize his smell again?”

“Oh suuuuuuure,” the barghest said dreamily. “Then I get to kill him?”

“I’ll think about it,” Shannon said. She stepped into the house and went looking for Masaaki’s karate gis. Though Masaaki liked to avoid this house at all costs, it was more convenient than the new house in South Birchwood, so they often showered and changed clothes here in between the yatagarasu’s never-ending stream of martial arts lessons.

As expected, she found a perfectly-folded kendo hakama beside two solid wood bokken in the first-story bedroom he had chosen for himself—the bedroom that just so happened to be the closest to the front door. She grabbed the carefully-folded hakama and unceremoniously shoved it at the barghest, who had followed her into the room like a 6’4” puppy.

“Can you smell him on this?” Shannon asked, gesturing at the black garment.

Björn wrinkled his nose. “He’s a vegetarian.” Like the samurai rolled in excrement and ate flatworms for breakfast.

Shannon looked at Björn, then at the man-skirt. “You pass,” she said, yanking it from his hands. “Come on. I gotta call a cab. We gotta go pick up Angus, then drive in to town to get a car.”

“But the sun’s coming up,” Björn said, sounding seriously worried.

“Ohhhh,” Shannon said, flinching. She glanced at the sun, then back at Björn, who was all but panting with concern. After months of being able to come and go at will, she’d forgotten how much the sun actually hurt. “Oh. Crap. You can’t be out in daylight?”

“It hurts,” he said.

That made two of them. Already, the light from all the open windows and broken doors was beginning to chafe. “Oh damn. Damn.” About ninety percent of her wanted to crawl into the basement and wait out the sun. The other ten percent knew that, by the way Masaaki had been totally flipping out on the phone, she didn’t have time for that. In anguish, Shannon glanced out the front door at the overgrown little drive that veered off to the detached garage that hadn’t been used since Shannon’s school days.

Then something occurred to her: The limo had tinted windows.

“Okay,” Shannon said, “here’s the deal. My parents had this limo made for me that blocked sunlight. I don’t think the driver’s compartment blocks sunlight, but I can deal with that. I’ll just bundle up real good and wear sunglasses. You are going to have to find a way to hang out in the back seat with a three hundred pound mastiff that’s probably going to try to eat your face.”

“I’ll eat the mastiff,” Björn said with a shrug.

Shannon twisted to glance up at him, saw the long white ivory fangs glistening in his goofy smile, then decided to reconsider her seating arrangements. “The mastiff gets shotgun. You get the back. Until then…” Then she took a deep breath, steadying herself, then started pulling Masaaki’s stacks of books and karate equipment out of the way, clearing a spot in the floor. “Let’s do this thing. You want this laying down or sitting up?”

“However you want me!” Björn blurted, once again rubbing a man-titty in her face.

Shannon shoved him off. “Fine. Laying down. On your stomach. Let’s go.” She shoved the last of the equipment out of the way and gestured at the carpet. She didn’t even have to ask the barghest to lie down…he basically scrabbled to get to the ground, as soon as he saw where she wanted him, dislodging even more of his blanket.

“Okay,” Shannon said. “You’re gonna stay there. Do not get off of your stomach or I will hate you and leave you here and never talk to you again, you understand? Don’t move.”

The barghest went utterly, perfectly still.

“You can breathe,” Shannon added, after a moment.

He gasped into the carpet.

“But don’t move,” Shannon repeated. “You move, I’m gonna hate you.” Then, when he continued to lay there like a statue, Shannon hesitantly sat down on his blanket-covered butt, a knee on either side of his body, then pulled the comforter far enough down his back so she could get a good look at the pulsating starry blackness of his internal organs, streaked with that soft silver glow of her own blood. “Okay, I need you to think really clear for me for a minute and tell me the truth. How much can I take? Is this going to hurt you?”

The barghest snorted. “My power is limitless. You couldn’t hurt me if you tried, you soft, nitwitted wenc—”

“Thank you, that’s what I wanted to know,” Shannon said, slamming her fangs into his sides.

Beneath her, the barghest shuddered, but remained still.

“Stop me if I’m going to hurt you,” Shannon managed, but already, the heady feel of that cool, starry blackness was overwhelming her, soothing her aches. Like the shade of a tree in the desert. Or the cool touch of dusk. In a moment, it had washed all of the yatagarasu’s gold from her veins, negating it entirely, leaving rippling, glinting jet in its place.

“Ohhh,” Shannon groaned. “Oh God.” Masaaki had been good, but this was…

This was something utterly different.

And, in this case, different was good. Way too good. And the more she tried to draw from him, the more there was to give. It slid into her veins like ice on a sweltering day, easing a nagging emptiness that she hadn’t even realized she’d had. She felt that coolness working its way up her arms, spreading through her body, and she started to feel that hot static building in her core.

More, her frantic mind demanded. Must have more. She drove her fangs deeper, seeking that refuge of shadow, that boiling pool of blackness beneath. Beneath her, the barghest grunted.

Shannon moaned and slumped forward, holding herself up by her wrists as the vibrancy came back, giving life to everything around her. She was panting, her heart racing so hard it felt like a thrum in her chest. That fiery static was building in her groin, spreading upwards, livening her senses, leaving every molecule of her skin over-stimulated, the static building, like starry black waves crashing back and forth inside a glass of water.

More, he body screamed. As all the other times, the need was growing impossible to control, yet this time, the sheer amount of energy she drew left her staggered. She pulled it in, falling upon his body, reveling in the feel of his warmth beneath the blanket, the sweat slickening his hard body.

Under her hands, the barghest’s breathing grew heavy. Very slowly, the muscles in his back began to flex and Björn started to roll himself over.

“Wha?” Shannon slurred, yanked from the pleasure of draining him by sudden alarm. She forced her fangs in deeper in irritation. “No. I told you to stay down.”

Björn shuddered again, but stilled. “Please let me see you,” he whispered.

“No,” Shannon growled, trying desperately to return to that wave of pleasure she had been riding. “Just stay there. I’m almost finished.”

“Please…” Björn gasped.

“No!”

But by that point, Theo’s brief lessons on control were resurfacing in her mind, serving to yank Shannon the rest of the way out of the delirium of the feast and recenter her firmly in the fact that she was undulating her body against the mostly naked back of a male barghest.

Letting out a howl of dismay, she jerked her hands free and scrambled off of him. Her fangs slid back into their sheaths on instinct, and she left bloody hand-prints in the carpet as she crab-crawled backwards a few feet, panting.

As soon as she was off of his back, Björn rolled to the side and got to his hands and knees and started crawling towards her.

“Don’t,” Shannon growled. “Get back on the floor.”

But, to her surprise, Björn only seemed to hesitate, wincing, like he was hearing the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. Then, slowly, he started moving towards her again.

“I said stay down!” Shannon cried, scooting further away.

The barghest hesitated again, but, after obvious struggle, he renewed his efforts once more, forcing Shannon to back away further.

“Stop crawling towards me,” Shannon blurted, once her spine hit the corner of the room. Björn slowed to a halt again, that weird wince on his face. Then, with great effort, he resumed his crawl. Oh God, Shannon’s startled mind thought. He broke the magic. He’s gonna kill m—

The barghest grabbed her ankle and held it in a massive fist, head down and panting. “There are…going to be…some understandings…between us…” Björn gasped.

“Get your hand off my leg!” Shannon shrieked, that deep, instinctive terror suddenly powering her words.

He groaned and listed sideways, but his hand came off her leg, balling into a fist in the carpet. Shannon lunged to her feet and, without trying to slip around the massive beast cornering her, used the power thrumming through her veins to jump over him. She overshot by several yards and stumbled into the far wall before she got turned around.

“What did you do?” Shannon demanded, inching towards the door. Then, when he started getting to his feet, she cried, “Stay on your knees! And tell me!”

He slumped back to the floor, sweat glistening off his bared back. “You drained…some of…venom.” He panted on his hands and knees, head hanging down between his arms, hair falling in a pale halo around his face. “Weakened Nótt Danzleikr.”

Shannon swallowed, hard. “Uh, so what does that mean, you only have to do half the stuff I tell you, now?” She could leave him here. Go get the dog, hightail it for Kenai, figure out another way to find Masaaki. Maybe, if she was really lucky, Angus was a bloodhound wannabe.

“Stepped…aside. Can…fight.”

Watching the barghest’s enormous shoulders shaking with the intensity of resisting her questions, she made another nervous laugh. “Yeah, okay. Fine, bud. I’m leaving you here. Live long and prosper. I gotta go find Masaaki. Toodles.” So what if the barghest ruined her house? She could buy another one. She’d never liked this one, anyway.

“Don’t go!” he cried, reaching a burly arm for her. “Please!”

“Uh, yeah, no,” Shannon said, dancing around him and through the door. “A massive dude who can bring down a house with his bare hands who wants to revel in my juices. Can’t say I’d feel comfortable roadtripping with you. Sorry!” She spun and hurried towards the front door.

She was halfway through the living-room before she heard him call, “How are you going to find him without me?”