Chapter 60: A Conflict of Interest

Theo wasn’t there. In the parking lot behind her, the vampire lord was vehemently cursing in some native language, groaning and holding his knee.

All right, Theo’s out of the picture, Shannon thought, turning back to face the vampire lord. Time to play What Would Masaaki Do?

Then she winced.

Well, aside from kill him.

Crush their testicles first, explain later. You can always let them go if it’s a misunderstanding. They will not always do the same. It had been a kind of mantra for the samurai over their first couple weeks together. At the time, she’d thought he was just being a backwards, overprotective warmongering jerk, but now…

You are daimyō here, not they, his voice chanted in her head. Act like it.

She hadn’t really thought much of the samurai’s manly fourteenth-century grunts and mutterings at the time, but they were beginning to make a lot more sense when pitted against creatures that seemed to have no problems enslaving and eating people. In fact, they actually were starting to seem like good advice…

Taking a deep breath, she went back to the car, skirting around the groaning vampire, and yanked out the other gun—grateful, for once, that the Inquisition used silencers when they tried to kill creatures like her. Then, because she wanted him distracted, Shannon emptied the clip in the vamp’s other knee. Like the first time, not all the bullets hit—she wasn’t a marksman—but enough got him that he went down in a blubbering heap on the asphalt.

Shannon knew from experience why… Silver really sucked. Like, bad. Kind of like having the worst kind of salt rubbed into the worst kind of wound, then doused in gasoline and set on fire.

He was gonna kidnap me, she reminded herself, tossing the gun back into the car, refusing to feel bad. She walked carefully around the lord, who wasn’t paying much attention to anything but his destroyed kneecaps at this point, and got behind him.

“I’ll explain later,” she promised him. Then, even as he frowned and turned to get a better look, she dropped down behind him and rammed one of her palms into his back, releasing the venom stored there.

While this time she expected it, Shannon still wasn’t ready for the wave of pleasure that followed as she emptied her venom into him. She moaned and fell forward over him, rubbing her body all over his carnage as he lay there shuddering and bleeding out.

It was the bone chips that finally got through to her. They were poking out of his legs, pricking her as she ground against his thighs…and he seemed perfectly willing to let her do it, caught between a pained whimper and a groan of pleasure, his brown eyes locked somewhere between adoration and agony.

Jumping away before she could make the same four-hour mistake she’d made with Theo, Shannon cleared her throat and sloughed as much of the bone and gore from her shirt and pants as possible. The lord lay on the ground, hyperventilating up at her, clutching the pavement on either side of his prone body with both white-knuckled hands.

Like a guy seeing an angel for the first time, Shannon thought, feeling a little guilty.

“So, uh,” Shannon said, “tell me what you did with Theo.”

“The Thirdlander was going to subdue him for me,” the lord replied immediately.

“Soo…Buðlungr.”

The man on the ground nodded, still pumping blood out onto the ground.

He really needs to get that taken care of, she thought anxiously. “Where’s Angus?”

“The Duke bound him, told me he wanted a pet to take back home with him,” the vampire said.

That definitely didn’t sound good. Shannon swallowed hard. “Look, normally I wouldn’t do anything like this, but I couldn’t find Theo or Angus and the shit was hitting the fan and you got the short straw. Sorry.” She cocked her head at him, as, unlike Björn he didn’t seem to be fighting the enthrallment at all.

Probably has no experience with it, she thought. Didn’t build up an immunity… This was the First Lands, not the Third Lands, after all…

Still, that the guy was staring up at her in adoration as he literally bled to death on the ground was a little creepy. “Hey, uh, fix your knees and, uh, don’t move from this spot until I come back. Mmmkay?”

The vampire lord nodded, mouth open in wonder.

Okay, now she felt bad. She cleared her throat. “I, uh…” Swallowing, she glanced back at the corner where she’d last seen Theo. “I gotta go.”

“Take me with you!” he blurted, crawling on his shattered knees towards her, unconcerned by the bone chips he trailed in his wake.

Really bad. Looking around to see if anyone in the diner had seen the zombie-man crawling across the parking-lot trailing a smear of gore and bone shards in between a tan minivan and a green sedan, Shannon took several steps backwards, feeling even worse. “Uh, no.”

“I looked for you,” the big man blurted. “Seven hundred years. Please.”

Yeah, uh, no. “Stay here,” she ordered. “Don’t move unless I tell you.”

The vampire lord immediately went stock-still, clearly intending to do just that, right down to his own breath.

“But breathe and heal yourself while you sit there,” she clarified. “Pick the silver out.”

He did as he was told. Without question. Just started digging his fingers into his own legs, tearing muscle to get at the silver.

Odin’s nutsack, I really need to go easy on that stuff, she thought, feeling a new wash of guilt as she looked down at her bloody wrist.

And, while Shannon wanted to know more about this old-timey dude who had supposedly been looking for her for seven centuries and how he had managed to pretend to be the old lady, she had a bad feeling she needed to find Theo before the shit hit the fan. So, despite his whimpers of protestation, she left him there, picking bone from his own kneecaps, to go find Theo.

#

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen shivered under the iron-tight grip of a blood-binding, unable to so much as twitch without permission.

Be silent, the Duke had commanded the moment the vampire had taken his blood. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had been idly chatting with Beatrice when Buðlungr had punched through the window, grabbed him by the neck, wrenched him from the car, and driven his face into the asphalt. A second later—just a second—and the vampire had tasted his blood and bound it, and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen was doomed to dance to his whims like a puppet.

Even now, merely the thought of opening his jaws to speak left sweat standing out all over his body.

Come drink of this coward before I think better of it, the Duke had growled to someone over his shoulder, as he had held him with his face pressed to the tar-stone. Then another lord had dropped beside him, and without even the slightest hesitation, had sunk his fangs into Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s body and brutally drained him almost dry.

Like I’m meat to him, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had thought. Not even worthy of learning my name…

“We’ll have the queen bind him later,” the Firstlander lord said, straightening, wiping Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s blood from his wrists. “I want his obedience, not his body.”

“Now come, dog,” the Duke had sneered, standing. “Your new lord has business to attend to, and I don’t want you getting in the way. Heel.”

And Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had. Humiliatingly, he had.

“Sit,” the Duke eventually said, as coldly as if he were talking to a disobedient animal. And Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had sat. The Duke looked down at him then, a smile of disdain on his face. “Ah, to see the tables turned so poetically. We should record this for posterity. Any bards around? No? Ah, well, I supposed I shall be forced to enjoy it alone.” The Duke turned back to watch the back of the café, face thoughtful. Idly, he said, “How long shall you be a dog for me once I return to my homeland, feylord? Ten? Twenty centuries?”

Oh Gaia’s toes, he’s serious… Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, who had been commanded not to speak, the bindings of seiðr wrapped tightly around his jaw, could not respond.

“Speak, dog,” the Duke said.

Bound by seiðr, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen heard himself bark.

“Again.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, unable to hesitate or even think, did.

A slow, cruel grin spread across the vampire lord’s face, and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen felt himself recoil in humiliation. “Good dog,” the Duke said. And then, with disgusting familiarity, he reached out and rubbed Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s head like a favored hound. “We’ll see how you like my kennel bitches later. I’ve always wanted a halfbreed.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s heart gave a startled hammer of disbelief. He can’t be serious, his panicked mind babbled. He can’t.

But he was, and Tl'oghk'etnaeyen knew it. Thirdlanders—especially royal Thirdlanders—were known for their deviant cruelties, especially to upper-tier Secondlanders. It was part of why Tl'oghk'etnaeyen and his kind harassed them as much as they did, whenever they got the chance. From childhood, every denizen of the Summerlands had heard the stories of Firstlander princesses getting caught, bound by seiðr, and made to submit to Thirdlander masters, princes being strutted out as a plaything for a queen’s favored courtesans, Gaia’s most powerful immortals made to prance and sing like fools.

Or, in the worst cases, bred to beasts for the entertainment of the entire court.

Fuck me, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought. Fuck… He, as studious, untraveled, and risk-adverse as he was, had always considered himself the least likely target for a Thirdlander blood-binding, and had actually considered himself smarter and better than those who had.

Yet here he was, squatting on the ground on his hands and knees, compelled to act like the beast by one of the most terrifying magi of the Third Lands.

And, like any good magus, the Duke’s thoughts were shielded by a reflective wall of indifference. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen could no more seek out or alter his new master’s true intent than he could lift his hands from the ground or force open his jaw without breaking it.

The Duke gave him another cruel smile, then re-focused his attention on the back of the café. Sure enough, Theo and Shannon came walking into view, taking refuge behind the building as they led a black-clad woman between them—

That’s an Inquisitor, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought, on a quick wash of hope. Where there was one, there was usually twenty, and anything that would break up the Duke’s concentration long enough for Tl'oghk'etnaeyen to walk the Void would be a welcome diversion.

The Duke noticed the same. “My. They found one of the hypocrites. How splendid.” The Duke didn’t attack immediately, however, seemingly content to watch and wait.

After a few short moments, Shannon appeared to get into a brief argument with Theo, then shook her head and headed back around the café.

Shannon, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen agonized, knowing what awaited her there. The natural-born Firstlander vampire lord, upon taking Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s essence, had re-shaped the air around him to hide his true shape, taking instead the identity of the doddering old Beatrice, whom Duke Buðlungr had dumped in the woods and forced Tl'oghk'etnaeyen to compel to start walking. Alive, still believing that she had been driven two hours out of her way by her very best friends in the world, the dying old woman would now walk, endlessly, until her feet bled and she starved to death or Tl'oghk'etnaeyen told her to stop.

For that, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen felt wretched. It was one thing to meddle good-naturedly with the lives of the arrogant. It was quite another to cause misery just for misery’s sake, especially in one so naturally kind and selfless, and the fact that he had been party to it, however unwillingly, made him sick.

“Good dog,” Duke Buðlungr said, petting him again absently. “Pant for me.”

That hoary spawn of a sprite’s testicle, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought, as his body immediately started panting enthusiastically. The Duke, who could catch vague glimpses of Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s thoughts through the blood-binding despite his efforts to conceal them, looked down at him with a smug grin. “So how does it feel to have your mind subdued by another, dog?”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen bristled. It wasn’t his mind being subdued, it was his body, and if the Duke gave him half a chance, he would weave his tiny Thirdlander psyche in a tapestry so tight he thought he was a maggot for the next ten millennium.

The Duke must have caught wind of that thought, because he laughed. “A challenge. I’ll enjoy breaking your spirit, boy. It’ll give me something to do.” He cocked his head at the distant café, a slight frown coming over his face as he concentrated. “But first…”

Theo had shoved the girl to the ground and put his hand around her neck, which Tl'oghk'etnaeyen found surprising, all things considered. Part of why he had stayed with Theo for so long was that he had seemed, on the whole, decent. At least as so far as Third Landers were concerned, Theo was decent. Time and again, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen had watched Theo release mortals instead of enthrall them, knock heads together instead of kill. Choking a mortal girl, threatening her with his fangs, hadn’t seemed like something Theo would do of his own accord.

And, indeed, Theo let the woman up after only a moment, and they squared off uneasily a few paces apart.

“He didn’t take her,” the Duke said, shaking his head, bemused. “I will never understand that boy.”

Theo licked his wrist and the girl stumbled.

“Oh, he intends to bind her,” the Duke said, still watching from the alders like a voyeur behind a privacy screen. “How delightful.”

Then Theo spat and wiped his wrists, and the Duke looked disappointed. “One would think he had unicorn blood.” Oblivious to the Duke’s commentary, after another exchange with the girl, Theo turned to walk away.

“Ah, I think it’s time for introductions,” the Duke said. “Come, pet. Heel.” He walked forward, and, humiliatingly, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen clambered on all fours beside him, his arms and legs compelled to motion by the worming blackness coursing through his veins.

“Stay,” the Duke said, once he’d made his presence known, then had advanced towards the other two.

Run, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen willed Theo. Just leave her and run… It was the only way any of them were getting out of there with their freedom—Theo had to make it out unfettered. He had more knowledge, more will, more power than the inexperienced little queen. He needed to escape.

But, sickeningly, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen was forced to sit there, hunched on all fours, and watch helplessly as first the Inquisitor, then Theo, were bound and haltered.

“Come, my pets,” the Duke said as he led the two others back to where Tl'oghk'etnaeyen huddled near the forest’s edge. “You too, dog,” he said as they approached. “Let’s go see if my gracious contract-bearer has finished binding his queen yet so I can go home.”

Then, with Theo and the Inquisitor walking with the same stiff, jerky motions as Tl'oghk'etnaeyen himself, they made their way around the back of the building to the other side, where the car was parked.

“Stay here for a moment, my little inquisitive whore,” the Duke said, stroking a finger down the Catholic woman’s face. She went stiff all over, biting her lip. There was sweat on her brow and tears on her cheeks. The Duke chuckled and took a deep breath over her shoulder. “Ohhh how I love that smell. You reek of fear, hypocrite. It’s magnificent.” He grabbed her chin roughly, then, and kissed her, rough and lacking any passion.

“Leave her alone asshole,” Theo gritted.

The Duke, still claiming the lips of his unwilling subject, smiled and gave Theo a sneer over her shoulder. “Oh you have no idea what’s in store for this arrogant harlot, Theodore,” he said. “Trapped in this realm, forced to do the bidding of a child…” he bared aged yellow fangs, and looked back at his prize. “I must entertain myself somehow.” He kissed her again. And the Inquisitor, despite her whimpers, started to meld into him, reaching for him, pressing her curves passionately into his…

He took his time, enjoying putting his hands where he shouldn’t, enjoying the Inquisitor’s whimpers of terror.

After several minutes of her shaking, whimpering body grinding itself against him, Duke Buðlungr shoved the woman violently away, making the startled Inquisitor stumble and hit the grassy ground hard on her ass. The Duke wiped his lips on the back of his arm like he’d touched them to the ass of a mule. “Stay here, whore,” he growled to her. “You move, and I’ll bind your blood, too.” He looked up at Theo and Angus. “Same for you. Stay. My pets.” He cocked his head at Theo. “I already have a dog…how would you like to be my pony, Theodore?” And, at that, the Duke strode away around the corner of the building.

“Damn,” Theo whispered. “Goddamn.” His fists were balled and trembling.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen looked over at the vampire lord, wishing he could do or say anything but sit there in mute silence as his friends got hurt.

Minutes went by, then the Duke came hurtling around the corner of the café, looking furious. He stopped at Theo, grabbed him by the throat, and snarled, “Come here, Hjörr. Your queen needs to be reined in before I eviscerate her.” Then, without another word or glance at Tl'oghk'etnaeyen or the Inquisitor, he turned and stalked back around the cafe, dragging a choking Theo by his grip on the baron’s throat.

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen glanced at the Inquisitor, who was still shivering on the ground, fighting some internal battle within. Her mind was an incomprehensible babble of shame, despair, and self-loathing.

I’m sorry, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought. I’d help if I could…

But he couldn’t. All he could do was sit there like a lock-jawed animal.

“Angus. Psst.”

The words came from the edge of the forest behind him. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen turned his head, his eyes widening when he saw Shannon hunkered there amongst the alders.

“Angus,” she whispered. “Come here.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen, of course, could neither move nor speak. All he could do was cringe inside, knowing that the hunters were already on her trail, and that it would be only minutes until she was found and subdued like he had been.

Shannon frowned when he didn’t move, but didn’t take a hint. She actually started to leave the edge of the forest.

Angus shook his head as hard as he could, but he was unable to so much as whine, the Duke’s ‘Be silent’ still gripping him in an inescapable iron fist.

Shannon frowned at him, then her attention slipped to the Inquisitor, who was frozen in place, watching the queen as she wiped tears from her cheeks.

Shannon turned back to him. “Angus,” she hissed. “Come on, you gotta get us out of here.”

The Inquisitor cocked her head at Angus, then her face started to shift with understanding. “He’s the feylord, isn’t he?” she asked, swiping tears from her eyes.

Shannon gave the woman an uncomfortable look, then took another step towards. “Angus, what’s wrong?”

Go back, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen willed. Please go back. Run as far and as fast as you can… The idea of Buðlungr getting hold of the queen was too much for him to bear. If he managed to take her back to the Nightlands with him, she would probably end up the entertainment of another queen, a curiosity to be shown off in chains.

After all, at last count, there were only fourteen of them in the Third Lands, and none in the First Lands. That census was over a hundred years old now, though…

“He’s probably blood-bound,” the Inquisitor said, turning her head away, but not before Tl'oghk'etnaeyen saw her face twist with loathing. “If I were the magus, I would have immediately removed his ability to speak.”

Spoken like someone who’s done it before, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought bitterly. He nodded at Shannon, though.

“Leave him and go, if you still can,” the Inquisitor said. “He’s useless to you now. There’s no way to fight a blood-binding.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen nodded at her again. Run, he willed. Run, run…

But the vampire queen took another hesitant step out of the foliage, completely exposed, now. “I can carry you,” she said to him.

As much as he wanted that, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen shook his head emphatically. Too simple for Buðlungr to trace, too easy for Tl'oghk'etnaeyen to betray her.

But the queen, damn her, just kept coming. “All right, look,” she whispered, “I’m just gonna carry you until we get out of range of his spell or something.”

This time, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen’s head-shake was so emphatic that he almost fell over.

“The bindings of blood-magic work regardless of distance,” the Inquisitor said bitterly. “There is literally nowhere to run, once the cords of seiðr are tied. That lord owns him now.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen nodded his agreement.

“Yeah, fuck that,” Shannon said, and took another step closer, reaching for him. At the same time, she jerked, looking up at something rounding the building, headed towards them…

#

Shannon was an arm’s-length from the feylord when Duke Buðlungr rounded the corner with Theo in tow. He looked pissed. Really pissed.

In Buðlungr’s grip, Theo looked weak, his blood-web flickering like a dying flame.

They took it all, she thought, frowning. Even her own essence was now missing from her consort’s veins.

Then the Duke’s eyes caught on Shannon, and Buðlungr froze, mid-step. Meeting the blood-magus’s cold blue gaze, Shannon’s heart skipped a beat. She had thought he would stay to help his friend get the silver out of his shattered knees. Instead, it looked as if he’d simply taken Theo over for the native guy to drain almost to death. Even then, Theo was pale, wobbling as he walked, and smoking from where the sun touched his skin, no longer protected by Masaaki’s golden glow in his veins.

“You,” Buðlungr snarled, pointing at Shannon. “Come here.”

Shannon giggled at the hilarity of that. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Come here,” the Duke snarled, “or I kill your consort.” He grabbed Theo by the throat and lifted him completely off the ground with the ease of a man hoisting a fish.

Seeing Theo bat ineffectually at the Duke’s arm, feet kicking as he choked, Shannon hesitated. She really didn’t want to see Theo die. He seemed like one of the good guys…

There are always two roads, Masaaki’s words rang in her mind, even if one is invisible. Don’t take the stupid road, daimyō. Too many people lose everything because they never see the second road.

At her feet, Angus was trembling so hard he was almost falling over, his breaths coming in tight, agonizing pants. He was obviously fighting some deep, instinctive terror of the man in front of him. In his contortions, his blood-web flickered between the brown-gold ambiance of a dog to the blazing green of the feylord—laced with the nasty black tapeworms that she had seen writhing in Theo’s blood. She squinted down at him, then up at Buðlungr.

“I have no patience with children,” the Duke snarled, squeezing Theo’s neck until his face and ears turned purple. “Don’t test me. Come.” Like she were a dog. Like he had treated Angus and Theo.

And, remembering how Buðlungr had treated the Inquisitor, Shannon really couldn’t see putting herself in the same position, regardless of what he did to Theo. That was…dumb. Hell, if Theo’s rantings on the drive here had been any indication, Theo would rather be dead than blood-bound by a Thirdlander…

There are always two roads, Masaaki’s words reminded her again.

Angus continued to hyperventilate at her feet, whimpering.

The Duke’s eyes narrowed. “Dog, come here,” Buðlungr snapped. “She doesn’t do what she’s told, I’ll kill you first.”

Angus immediately got off his haunches and started forward with jerky efficiency.

All hail the second road, Shannon thought, dropping down and grabbing Angus by the hips. Spinning the feylord around, she pinned him to the ground and rammed the fangs of her other writ into what she hoped was his chest.

“Teleport us!” she snapped, injecting him with all the venom she had left, careful not to suck any of the blackness back inside her. “Now!”

Angus’s eyes went wide and he raised a paw to the air…

“No!” Buðlungr screamed, dropping Theo and storming towards them, the rags of his robe billowing outward as shadow started to coalesce around him. “Don’t you dare, you impudent shit. Do not walk the Void. Do not.” With the Duke’s words, the dog seemed to go into a mini-convulsion as the conflicting orders warred within him.

Remembering her dealings with the barghest, Shannon grabbed the dog by the jowls, pulled him until his face was an inch from hers, and said, “If you love me, you will teleport us right now.”

Angus froze, going still beneath her. She saw that same sudden clarity, the blind devotion of the barghest. His paw came up, and he drew a circle in the air around them. The air between them and Buðlungr fell away, replaced by that cold, miserable superhighway of colored energy lines.

Shannon picked the dog up and hurled him into it, ducking in after him just as Buðlungr’s arm reached through to grab her.

“Close it!” she screamed, even as the extreme cold started to singe her skin. “Close!”

“Leave it open!” Buðlungr snarled, starting to drag her out.

Angus, for his part, looked like he was about to pass out, his eyes actually starting to roll in his fuzzy forehead from some great internal strain.

So much for the second road, Shannon thought, as she struggled, grabbing the glowing threads in a freezing fist to keep the Duke from pulling her back out into the grass.

It was the Inquisitor who saved her. Throwing a slender leather sheath aside that she had plucked from the ground, the Inquisitor stepped forward, darkness in her face, and stabbed the Duke in the clavicle with a silver blade, then again in the neck. The Duke howled and Shannon had just enough time to see Buðlungr turn on the Inquisitor, grabbing her face with a malicious fury before the portal snapped shut, sealing Shannon and the dog in the icy darkness.

“Angus,” she gasped, on lungs already starting to freeze. “Please…” Her parents had left her that On the Use of Blood book in the basement, which she assumed was about blood-magic, and if there was one thing she knew, it was that she needed to level the playing field. I might be able to get the worms out of you, she thought, as hard as she could. But you’ve gotta take me home. “Please…”

It was the last thing she was able to say before her vocal cords froze, and for a long, horrible minute, Shannon thought it would be the last thing she said, ever. Then, almost tentatively, she felt a warm hand on her frozen skin, tugging on her stiffening arm.

Glancing back at her, Angus—who was starting to turn green as her eyes blurred—grabbed a luminescent strand laid out before them seemingly at random and tugged. Then, like light-speed in the Enterprise, all the mishmash of intersecting cords blurred and they were moving unbelievably fast…