Knight Watch

by Tim Akers

  Esther walked past me to look at the door from which I had just emerged. Glancing back, I saw that the rough wood of the door was newly decorated. A cast iron shield hung like a door knocker, and a banner of dark blue and gray draped across the archway. The door was still open, and I could hear the roar of the waterfall. Esther pulled the door shut, then ran a finger over the black face of the shield.

  “Hm. Warden. I was a warden once, before...” her voice trailed off with a note of unaccustomed uncertainty. She looked over at me. “Before. Good luck with that. I was hoping you might replace Clarence, but apparently not.” She looked at the door next to mine and chuckled. “And Chesa has clearly found her way to the courts. No surprise there.”

  The other door had an iron tree on it, but instead of leaves, the boughs were hung with arrows.

  I nodded, then looked back at my shield.

  “What does that mean? Warden?”

  “Guardian, bastion, bulwark...they’re all the same. You protect the team. Clarence was more offence, you’re more defense,” she said. “Not as glamorous. But important.”

  “Can we stop talking like Clarence is dead,” Bethany said. “And can we do something about this bloody fish!”

  She drew her knife and stabbed at the flopping trout, burying her blade a good inch into the table with each strike. The fish slapped its way across the table.

  “Let’s not be cruel.” Tembo stood and took the fish in both hands, then drew his palms together. The fish disappeared. “Did you find your domain? Is it mostly fish?”

  “No, it’s...it’s kind of frightening, actually,” I said. “I don’t like it. Can I use yours?”

  “You would like mine even less,” Tembo said.

  “Point is, you got your domain up and running,” Esther said. “But you’re back kind of early. Training not go well?”

  “I don’t know what going well would look like,” I said. “But I do know that someone...something, actually, tried to kill me. And it looked like Eric Cavanaugh.”

  This didn’t have the effect I was hoping it would. Esther nodded sagely, Bethany was still recovering from her fits of laughter, and Matthew and Tembo just stared at me.

  “That’s what domains do. Conjure tests to sharpen your mythic identity,” Esther said. “Every hero has to go through a series of trials to reach their full potential. Your domain just keeps that cycle of your journey on repeat. I suspect you have some issues with your friend that might need to be addressed in therapy, but I’m sure—”

  “No, you’re not listening. It really was Eric. I mean, it really wasn’t him, it was a monster that looked like Eric. But it knew things only Eric would know. And after its cover was blown, it started referring to Eric in the third person. And it knew about Clarence!”

  That got their attention. I had to relate the whole fight, moment by moment, at least three times before they would settle down. By then I was starting to shiver. Finally, Esther noticed my discomfort and sat me down in front of the fire.

  “Get out of those clothes. Tem, one of your cloaks or something?” The mage did something with his robes, a flourish and bow, and was suddenly holding a sturdy cloak in his hands.

  “I’m more than a wardrobe, you know,” he grumbled quietly.

  “I know, I know, but it’s such a good trick,” Esther said, taking the cloak. She held it up so I had a modicum of privacy. I stripped fast, then wrapped myself in the cloak. It smelled like dry grass and beaten dust. When I was situated, Esther leaned against the table and started thinking out loud.

  “So, the thing that got to Clarence came for you, too. I hope Chesa—”

  “Oh my God, Chesa!” I shouted, standing up a little faster than the cloak would allow. It took Matthew’s hand to keep me from falling into the fire. “She’s still in her domain! We should go save her!”

  “We’re doing no such thing,” Esther said, gesturing to the door from which I had emerged. “Both of your domains are still hot. She’s fine. Or at least, she’s better off than Clarence. For now, that will have to do.”

  “Sounds like a fetch, doesn’t it,” Tembo said gravely. “That’s some serious business.”

  “Is that a dog joke?” I asked.

  “No, he’s right,” Esther said swiftly. “A Fetch, more commonly called a doppelganger, or the Twin Stranger. That didn’t come from your domain. It was sent. By someone who has access to Eric. Or his memories, at least.”

  “Memories? He could be dead?” I asked. Esther and Tembo exchanged grave looks, but it was Matthew who answered.

  “If he’s lucky. Getting a bit of your soul spliced into a Fetch is nasty business. Devil stuff.” He shook his head. “Not the kind of thing I can heal.”

  “Then we need to help him. Eric...the Fetch, I mean...said that he hid in the woods after the dragon attack. And when he tried to find his way back to the parking lot, he couldn’t find it.” I turned to Esther. “Maybe he was sucked into some part of the unreal?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Esther said thoughtfully. “Someone pushed Kracek over the edge. Made him manifest while the two of you were fighting. And that same someone has now attacked both Clarence and you in your domains. So they’re after something. But what?”

  “Could be us. They might have been trying to draw us there. We have plenty of enemies in the unreal,” Bethany said.

  “But there was no resistance. No fight. Just Kracek,” Tembo said. “He was an asshole, but he never wanted to destroy Knight Watch.”

  “Well, whoever it is, they have Eric. And we need to get him back,” I said. “I know I’m new to the hero game, but it feels like saving your friends is top of the list.”

  “He’s right. We find this Eric loser and we save him from whatever’s gone wrong in his life,” Bethany said. “And hopefully the assholes behind it will be there too. And we give them the fight of their lives.”

  “Great,” I said. “So how do we do that? How do we find Eric?”

  “Easy,” Bethany said with the kind of smile you might find on a hungry tiger. “We tie you to the roof of the car and drive around until your nose turns red.” I flinched back.

  “Don’t worry,” Esther said. “She didn’t mean that literally.”

  Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  S.S. HANGNAIL

  She meant that almost literally. What ended up happening is that they asked me a bunch of questions about Eric, then Esther went away for a while. When she came back, they put a blindfold on me and led me through the halls of MA. Eventually I smelled exhaust and engine oil and heard the familiar sound of tires squealing in the distance.

  “This is the garage,” I said.

  “Yeah. Owen and Gabby are almost here. They’re going to follow behind with a containment team,” Esther said. Seconds later I heard their car hit the tarpaulin flap and screech to a halt. “Good. We’re ready. John?”

  “Yeah?” I was getting annoyed with being blindfolded but had learned not to complain. Outside my head at least.

  “Have you forgotten how to drive yet?”

  “Nope. Like riding a bike. I can manage.” I pulled at the blindfold, only to have my hand smacked away. “Ow! What are we doing here?”

  “You’re going to drive something like a car. But the less you think of it as a car, the better this will go. And you can’t look where you’re going.”

  “This is not going to go well,” I said. “Unless it’s a Tesla.”

  “Nik heads up his own team. Completely different mythology,” Esther said. “Just get in, have a seat, and relax. But don’t think about where you’re going. And don’t forget you’re driving. And don’t think about zombies, or horror movies, or girls. And try—”

  “God, lady, I get it. Think about everything and nothing. Pay very close attention to not doing anything and have your mind so blank it’s completely full.” I felt forward, found what was probably the edge of a car door, and slowly patted my way into the seat. The shocks had a lot of give in them.
But at least there was a wheel. The smell of ripe feet wafted up around me. “We’re all totally going to die. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

  “We have made our peace,” Matthew said from somewhere behind me. The conveyance swayed and dipped. Esther tapped me on the shoulder.

  “We’re all in. Get going.”

  “How do I—”

  “By doing it,” Esther answered.

  “Right. Just doing. Every motivational poster ever.” I gripped what must have been the steering wheel and settled back. There were pedals under my feet. I pushed one of them.

  “God ALMIGHTY!” Tembo screamed. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “SORRY! SORRY! I JUST—”

  The rest of the team burst out into laughter. Esther shushed them.

  “You’re doing fine,” she said. “Just go.”

  I went. Don’t ask me where. I just know where we ended up, and what it looked like when we got there.

  But we went to the mall. And we were flying.

  The Caneville Valley mall was an anomaly unto itself. To begin with, there isn’t a place named Caneville in driving distance of the mall’s cherry-pink walls, and the nearest valley is an erosion ditch that cuts through the crumbling parking lot. Once fortified by nationally branded department stores and populated by armies of teenagers anxious to use their freshly minted driver’s licenses, the Caneville Valley Mall has fallen on hard times. The anchor stores are gone, the food court has gone to seed, and the teenagers have abandoned cars for cellphones and selfies. Makes for a quiet mall. And quiet malls are creepy as hell.

  We came at the mall from above, about twenty minutes after we left Mundane Actual. We were riding a Viking longboat made of toenails. Which explained the smell, I suppose.

  “This seems about right,” I said when Esther loosened my blindfold. I snatched my hands off the wheel, which was a normal car wheel, attached by a series of pulleys and gears to the tiller, while the makeshift pedals at my feet ran the sails. The ship listed heavily to the left. Esther grabbed the wheel.

  “We’ve been circling this place for the last ten minutes,” she said. “What we’re looking for must be inside. You want me to land?”

  “I want anything that gets me off this thing. Do we have parachutes? Because I’ll jump. Like, right now.”

  “Just chill out for a second. We’ll be down soon enough.”

  “Looks like a fortress of some kind,” Tembo said, peering down at the mall. “Do your people still build castles?”

  “Only the kind that distribute cheese,” I answered. “No, it’s a shopping mall. Like a market, only sterile and angsty.”

  Esther took us down. We landed next to a pair of minivans, and across from the food court. I swung down the ladder (still toenails) and tried to gather my nerves.

  “Yeah, this has to be a mistake,” I said. There were only about a dozen cars parked in the lot, spread out across seven acres of weed-cracked asphalt. The mall rose before us like a mountain range painted the color of strawberry ice cream that has started to curdle in the sun, its walls stripped of once familiar store names, the only remnant of those missing signs a slightly less-filthy spot on the ramparts. I looked around the parking lot. “We’re not going to find monsters here. This place is about as magical as a court subpoena.”

  “Do not underestimate the power of abandoned places,” Tembo said as he climbed down from the boat. His deep blue robes unfolded voluminously around him as he straightened. “This is the storehouse of a million dreams. Just because the dreamers have woken up doesn’t mean their visions have left the world.”

  “Don’t know that I want to cross swords with the dreams of a million teenagers,” I muttered. I stretched out my shoulders, trying to get the armor to settle back into place. Plate mail was not made for flying. There was a place in the middle of my back that I was sure I would never feel again, and my left leg was coming up with new and exciting ways to cramp. I walked back and forth in the abandoned lot while the others collected their gear and got ready for whatever it was we were planning on doing.

  “I’m staying with the ship and coordinating with Gabby and her team,” Esther said. She nodded to the entrance of the parking lot. A remarkably inconspicuous car pulled across the road, and Owen got out, directing traffic away from the mall. “I’ll ring if we need to pull out fast.”

  “Or just in case someone notices that a longship of human body parts is parked next to their minivan. You know. As typically happens at the Caneville Valley mall,” I said.

  “The point is that this could be a place of considerable power. We won’t know until we get in there and start peeling back the layers of reality. So keep your eyes open, and your sword ready,” Matthew said. He popped the trunk and rummaged through the equipment. “And...I forgot my censer. I need to go back.”

  “No. Not having you on hand for Kracek nearly cost Clarence his life,” Bethany said. “You’re going in without it.”

  “I wondered why I didn’t see you at the faire,” I said. “Were you seriously on an errand? Running out to the corner store for some milk or something?”

  “The incense heightens my awareness of the brilliant. Without it, I’m going in blind.”

  “Might want to cut some eye holes in that mask, then,” I said with a smirk. Bethany chuckled, but Matthew only shook his head.

  The rest of us got our gear out of the car and strapped up. I had my new shield, along with the sword from my domain. The rest of my armor was slapdash, the bits and pieces of armor and heraldry that Esther had been able to scrounge from the storeroom, but the rest of the team looked like professional...something. Cosplayers? Employees of Medieval Times? Reenactors with CEO budgets and Tolkien aspirations? The point is that I felt a little out of place as we started the march into the mall, not because I was carrying a sword, but because my cuisses didn’t quite match my sabatons, my pauldrons were mismatched, and I was missing a vambrace on my left arm. Nerd problems.

  We walked up to the food court entrance, past the empty fountain and the cracked trellis of the beer garden. A faded sign welcomed us to Caneville, Where Fun Comes to Life!

  “Any fun around here died a while ago,” Bethany said. “I always hated these places. Glad to see them rotting away.”

  “Maybe the fun is coming back to life. Zombie fun,” I said. Tembo hissed at me.

  “Not the kind of joke we make, Rast,” he said. “I nearly lost an arm to a possessed merry-go-round once. Damned horses had teeth like saw blades.”

  “That is disturbing. I am disturbed. I’m beginning to wonder about my career choice, my friends.”

  “You don’t pick Knight Watch,” Bethany said. “Knight Watch happens to you, and you try to make the best of a weird situation.”

  “Good talk,” I said. “Let’s get this over with. Are we sure Eric’s in here?”

  “You were driving,” Matthew said. I bit my tongue. Everyone knew I was blindfolded. If I wanted to point out the ridiculousness of this situation, I shouldn’t be talking to the guy with a steel mask and glowing skin.

  Inside, the Caneville Valley Mall was as sterile and as clean as a desiccated body left in the desert, picked over by years of rodents and bleached white by the burning sun. The scattered planters held the dry husks of palm trees, their leaves withered in the half-light of the mall. Of the dozen food vendor stalls, only four remained open, though I couldn’t see any employees. Flickering neon signs offered Kebob Paradise, or Fried Fries on French Flapjacks, surrounded by exclamation points of questionable sincerity. I averted my eyes.

  “The days of fast food are behind us,” I muttered. “Thank the gods.”

  “You’ll miss it eventually,” Matthew said. His voice still rang with divine power, though I was learning to hear him through the mask, as well. “We eat pretty well, but at some point, you’re going to want something that isn’t boiled or burned.”

  “There are monasteries that live on beer,” Tembo said. “You could give that a tr
y if you don’t like my cooking.”

  “Why do you think I’m so chill all the time?” Matthew answered.

  “Can we get on task, people?” Bethany asked. “We’re not here to recover precious artifacts of nostalgia. Someone in this place is screwing with the unreal, and I for one want to rearrange their insides.”

  “And save my friend,” I said. Bethany shrugged.

  “Yes, the mission,” Tembo said. “Form up. Rast, you’re on point.”

  “The guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Cool. Tell my mom I loved her.”

  “You’re not really on point, idiot,” Bethany said. “You’re just the first one in line. If there’s trouble, the rest of us will see it long before it eats you.”

  “Eats me,” I repeated. “Cool, cool, yeah. Eats me. No problem.”

  With my nerves thoroughly ruffled, I started through the food court and into the depths of the mall. The others fell in line behind me, with Bethany darting back and forth to the sides, stalking through the shadows of empty storefronts. More than once I thought I saw her ahead of me, her form flickering among dead palm trees or reflected in the overhead mirrors, but every time I looked back, she was still behind me. I shook it off.

  We emerged from the food court and into the labyrinthine corridors of the greater mall. Most of the stores were closed, and the few functioning lights took on an oppressive quality, like the unsettling green of a storm cloud. We passed a brightly lit toy store whose interior chirped and sproinged, but I saw neither customers nor employees. Winds moaned along the upper concourse, and the dappled sunshine coming through the peaked skylights turned sour. My heart was in my throat.

  “There were cars in the parking lot, right?” I asked, confirming I hadn’t imagined it. “So where are those people?”

  “We’re getting into the strange,” Tembo answered. “I’m not sure why this didn’t show up on the actuator, but this is clearly an anomaly. No place is this empty.”

  “You haven’t been in a mall recently,” I mumbled, but he was fundamentally right. The mall felt beyond empty. It felt evacuated, as though a pestilence had swept through and consumed all life. No longer concerned with running into a security guard, I drew my sword and huddled behind my shield. Creeping forward, I kept my eyes active and my balance forward. The air smelled like a fight waiting to happen.