Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles)

by Hartness, John G.

  “Worse than fighting an archdemon who wants to bring about Hell on earth?”

  “No, I’ll give you that one. But you had an angel for backup that time.”

  “And this time I’ve got you. I know you’re scared, but it’ll be okay. I promise.” I reached out and patted her on the knee.

  She grabbed my hand like it was something dead, which technically it was, and smelly, which it was not, and moved it off her leg. “That would be great if I had any faith in you, Jimmy. But you’re an idiot. Just try not to get Mike killed. It would really mess up my karma if I had to curse you.” I had a feeling she wasn’t talking about turning me into a toad or anything nearly that gentle, so I got up and walked to the other side of the boat myself.

  “That went well,” Greg said as I leaned on the railing next to him and Sabrina.

  “Bite me.”

  “No thanks.” The boat ran aground with a gentle thump, and I grabbed Sabrina and hopped over to solid ground again. This time when Greg overbalanced I just let him land on his ass in the mud. Served him right for making fun of me. I did at least put out a hand to help him up. The cop driver lugged a couple of cases of battery-operated crime scene lights to the edge of the boat, and I hopped back over to give him a hand. He showed me how to set them up and get the area at least partially illuminated while the others made their way ashore. Greg and I didn’t need the light, and I was pretty sure Anna could make plenty of light on her own, but I decided I might as well let the poor guy feel useful. He was about to get a serious introduction to the man behind the curtain, so I let him think the world was normal for a few more minutes.

  Anna walked slowly away from the boat. Her head was back, long hair streaming behind her. She had her eyes closed and her hands reaching out in front of her and to the sides, feeling her way like a blind person, only somehow different. It was like whatever she was feeling for wasn’t in our world, but another one. I felt magic tickle my skin and the hair on my arms stand up. I knew there had to be some serious hoodoo floating around this place if it triggered what little sensitivity I had. I looked around, and the cop who drove the boat was the only one who looked unaffected. Greg was shaking his head like a Labrador that got a noseful of pepper. Mike was off to one side of Anna about twenty feet away, leaning heavily against a tree. He was glowing a little, bathed in a pleasant white light that was sharp and somehow warm at the same time. Sabrina wasn’t suffering any obvious physical effects, but the cross she wore under her T-shirt had started to glow a bright green, maybe somehow attuned to the faerie magic. I’d seen holy objects glow white or red around demons, but never green.

  I stepped up behind Anna, my Glock in hand like I thought it would do any good against anything magical. I had three magazines for each gun with me: one loaded with normal hollowpoints, one carrying silver-jacketed rounds dipped in holy water, and one packed with cold iron rounds. Despite my bravado with Ogg, I’d never fired the cold iron rounds, not even at the range, so I was a little nervous about them. I’d had these specially crafted by a guy I found online who claimed he could even make bullets out of wood. That idea made me a little nervous, so I paid him for the cold iron rounds and then paid him that much again to take the wooden bullets off his website. After I bought a case, that is. I didn’t know if they’d work like a stake through the heart, but figured it was worth a try. He agreed to stop selling wooden bullets for a small fee, roughly the gross domestic product of Belize. I paid him. I put it on a credit card, figuring there was a good chance I’d outlive the bank it was issued by. And I was only slightly exaggerating.

  “Here,” Anna said, stopping abruptly in front of me.

  I stopped myself before I ran into her, figuring since she already didn’t like me I shouldn’t dump her in the mud. “What do we do?” I asked.

  “You get back. Mike, I need you.” Mike pushed himself off the trunk of the tree and shambled over. He walked like a man in his seventies, not almost forty. But he hopped to when Anna spoke, and as he reached her side he pulled out a pair of holy symbols from under his priest’s collar. One was the crucifix that I’d watched his mother give him the day he was confirmed. I remembered that like it was yesterday, because it was one of the only times I went to Mike’s church. I was raised Protestant, so the Catholic Church was full of mystery to me. I thought it was cool, all full of incense and chanting in a forgotten language. Mike was confirmed, and then his mom gave us five bucks each to get banana splits at the old Dairy Queen on Central Avenue. Those were the best banana splits in the world. Now, seeing that crucifix around Mike’s neck, I could smell his mom’s Aqua Net hair spray again, feel myself sweating through my dress shirt in the back of his dad’s gigantic Caprice Classic, and taste the extra cherries I wheedled out of the DQ guy.

  The other symbol was unfamiliar but glowed the same color as Mike and his crucifix, so I figured God was okay with the dual identity thing. It was silver, a circular design with Celtic knotwork all over it, and a sense of great age about it. By the way Mike handled it and how Anna looked sideways at him, I knew this was a holy symbol, but not necessarily something that was specifically Catholic. I stepped back again, not because I’d been told, but to get close enough to a tree that I had some cover in case things went bad. Because things always go bad after the holy symbols come out.

  Chapter 11

  ANNA HELD HER arms out to the side and started chanting. Mike stood right behind her and started a chant of his own. This one I recognized. While Anna was chanting who knows what in whatever witchy mother tongue she spoke, Mike recited the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Anna’s hands started to glow a bright yellow. Mike’s white glow moved from all around him to center on his hands. All the while they kept chanting, and glowing, and chanting, and glowing, until finally their hands blazed like tiny stars, and I had to holster my pistol to cover my eyes. I heard the uniform muttering under his breath and realized that he and Sabrina were praying, too.

  The chanting stopped abruptly, and Anna spoke in a strained voice. “The portal is open. We should go through quickly. I don’t know how long I can hold it.”

  I brought my hand away from my eyes and saw, sure enough, a glowing portal hanging in the air right in front of where Mike and Anna were standing. On the other side of that portal was a very big, very mean-looking troll with a battle-axe longer than I was tall. The troll took one giant step through the portal and raised his axe to chop Anna in half. I dove for her, knocking both her and Mike to the ground, out of the path of the axe. We hit the ground in a tumble of arms, legs, and irritated witch as the axe slammed into the turf right behind my back foot. The portal winked out of existence with a loud “pop,” and the troll turned back to bellow at the empty air.

  “Great. Two troll fights in one night. I love my life,” I muttered as I tried to get myself untangled from Anna and Mike and get to my feet before I was cut in half by the pissed-off, and now stranded, troll.

  I got lucky for once. The troll had swung so hard trying to chop us in half that he had a hard time digging his axe out of the sucking mud. I was on my feet, drawing the Glock before he had dislodged his weapon, and Greg had him flanked on the other side. Sabrina and the boat-driving uniform took the other compass points, and the troll growled at us.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said. “I don’t really want to kill you.”

  “Too bad, human. I really want to kill you!” He bellowed, yanking his axe free of the mud and charging me. I got off a couple of rounds before he reached me, then dove off to the side away from where Mike and Anna were still trying to get to their feet. Sabrina and the patrolman emptied their magazines into the troll, but it only seemed to irritate him. He swung back around with the axe, and I rolled aside again. This time he took out two small saplings and almost decapitated Sabrina, who dove out of the way at the last minute.

  I’d fought trolls before, hand to hand even, but this guy was the Hulk Hogan of trolls, if there was such a thing. I don’t mean he wore a yellow wife-beater
and had a funky mustache. He was big, bad, and tough as hell. I fired off a couple more rounds, this time aiming at a knee in hopes that his joints were weaker than the rest of him. The round just clanked home with a sound like shooting steel plates. My bullets found their mark just fine, the only problem was the mark was pretty much impenetrable. The shots to the knee did cause the troll to stumble, which gave me enough time to clear out of his immediate strike zone.

  I looked back at the uniform and waved him over. “Get Anna and Mike out of here. They don’t stand a chance against this thing.”

  “And you do?” he asked, eyes wide. I felt the air moving behind my head and dove forward, taking the cop down with me. The axe whistled through the air where I’d just been standing and the troll let out another howl of frustration as the force of the axe swing spun him.

  “Do you stand a chance?” he repeated.

  “Probably not. But do it anyway. Greg, you got any bright ideas?”

  “Cold iron?”

  “Yeah, that’s about what I thought.”

  The troll had turned his attention to where Mike and Anna were trying to take cover in a stand of trees. He was working his way through the trees with a savagery that would have made Paul Bunyan proud.

  “Hey, green teeth!” I yelled. “What did those trees ever do to you?” I stood about thirty feet from the troll when he turned and charged me again, but this time I stood my ground as long as I could. My Glock barked sharply, and three bright yellow holes appeared in the troll’s chest. The creature stopped dead and stood straight up, looking down at his chest.

  He poked one of the holes with a giant finger, looked back at me, and screwed his face up into something I almost recognized as pain. The troll stood there for a second, said “Ouch,” and fell over backward.

  “Nice shooting,” Greg said, stepping up beside me.

  “Not really. I was aiming for his head. These cold iron bullets tumble worse than silver. Makes them drop six inches over ten yards.”

  “That sucks for accuracy, but you got him.” He held out a fist, and I bumped knuckles with him.

  I walked over to Mike and Anna, who were making their way out of the woods. “You guys okay?”

  “We’re fine, Black. But there’s no way in hell I’m opening that portal again.” Anna snarled.

  “We need to get over there. And besides, this dude, if he was the guard, is dead. And none of us even got a scratch on us. If he was an innocent bystander, what are the chances we’d open on another one.”

  “Uh, Jimmy?” Sabrina said from behind me. “You might want to rethink your optimism.”

  I turned around to see the eight-foot troll standing behind me with a very angry look on its face. Admittedly, I think every expression on a troll’s face looks angry, but since he had the whole nostril-flaring, spit-flinging, eye-bulging thing going on, I’m pretty sure I was right about his feelings. Especially considering the number of times I’d shot him.

  “Ouch,” the troll said slowly, pushing at the wounds in his chest. After a few seconds of mashing around in there, three misshapen chunks of iron popped out of his chest and landed with a splat in the mud. The troll looked up at me and grinned. I knew my night was about to take another turn for the worse.

  “Run,” I whispered to Mike and Anna. “Get to the boat and get the hell out of here. Get Sabrina and that cop, too. Drag them off if you have to. Spell them. Whatever. There really need to not be any humans here in about eight seconds. I can’t look out for any of you while I try to take this thing out.”

  I heard them take off and heard Greg’s forty-five spit four quick thunderclaps into the night. The troll lurched forward, propelled by the force of the bullets, then spun around, lashing out with his axe. Greg got an arm up to block the axe handle, or the swing would have taken his head. As it was I heard the crunch as both bones in his right arm broke and saw Greg go flying several feet before he hit the ground with a wet thud. I saw Anna and Mike splash toward the boat while Sabrina and the uniform laid down cover fire. The troll didn’t even take notice of their slugs hitting his broad back. He’d already turned his attention back to me. Just what I needed—a partner with a compound fracture and seven hundred pounds of pissed-off faerietale creature hell-bent on ruining my manicure. If I got manicures, which I don’t. But you get the idea.

  “Troll, I told you not to do anything stupid. And there you had to go and hurt my friend. Now why don’t you open that portal back up and get your slimy green ass back to Faerieland, where you belong?”

  I saw the pontoon boat pull away from shore while the troll was staring at me. Mission number one accomplished—get the humans to relative safety. Now for mission number two—make sure the vampires don’t get smeared to toothpaste by the Big Bad. Greg staggered to his feet behind the troll, but I waved him off. His arm was hanging limp at his side. I could see he was going to be no help.

  I whispered, “Get to the trees and drink something. Even a squirrel will help.”

  He nodded once and slid off into the woods where he wouldn’t be a distraction. My attention returned to the troll as he threw his axe to one side and pulled a pair of long knives from his back. Not a sheath on his back—the sheath was his back. No wonder Greg’s bullets didn’t do any harm—they hit the troll in his swords. Crap, crap, and double-crap.

  “Come on now, Greenie, we don’t want to kill anybody,” I said, completely ignoring the fact that I was holding a pistol with now twelve rounds of cold iron ammunition and he had a pair of knives that were each longer than my forearms. He started to twirl his blades faster, making a whooshing sound that quickly grew into almost the whirr of helicopter blades. Only sharper, and with points on the ends. And coated with troll blood, which undoubtedly had some things growing in it that I couldn’t spell on my best day. This was probably going to hurt a lot.

  He suddenly lunged forward with a double thrust, and I had to jump back to keep from becoming a vamp-kebob. Just like the bouncer at the club earlier, he’d been playing dumb and slow, because now instead of a lumbering brute with a battle-axe, I faced a giant ballet dancer-cum-ninja with a pair of razor-sharp blades and mad close-combat skills. He followed his lunge with a slash to the sky, and I was forced to jump backward, twisting my ankle as I landed awkwardly. He slashed at my midsection, and I leapt into a backflip. I came down heavy on my left leg with a curse, and rolled to the side as both swords slashed down at my head. I moved fast, but the troll had developed super-speed that would make the Flash hang up his winged baseball cap if he saw it. The beast planted both swords in the turf and used them as a pivot, lashing out at me with both feet and connecting like the world’s smelliest wrecking ball.

  Both size-thirty-three feet slammed into my chest, and I felt a couple of things pop. I tumbled ass over teakettle through the underbrush and slammed into a tree. I lay there for a couple of seconds looking at the pretty birdies circling my head until I remembered that there was a monster trying to kill me. By that time the troll was back on his feet, swords in hand, and headed my way. I scrambled to my feet and looked around for an exit strategy. Or an air strike. Or a small thermonuclear device. Or the 101st Airborne. Any of those three might stand a snowball’s chance of slowing this beast down, but I sure didn’t. All I saw was a bunch of trees, mud, and a giant green monster that wanted to dissect me, then kill me. He reached me the same time I realized there was nowhere to run, and he came at me with a furious combination of slashes, thrusts, and cuts that would have turned me into sushi if I’d still been standing where he expected me to be.

  Instead, I was looking down on him from a tree branch twenty feet straight up. It took Greenie a few seconds to realize I was gone, and by the time he looked up, I was on my way back down. I hit the ground five feet behind the troll, dropped to one knee, and emptied my magazine into the back of his kneecaps. The cold iron ripped into his flesh and spewed troll bone chips and yellow blood all over the trees. I danced back out of the way as the troll toppled over backward,
writhing in pain as he grabbed at his knees. I looked down at the monster as he lay on his back and flailed at me with one sword like a really ugly, dangerous turtle.

  “I guess there’s no chance you’ll just magic open a portal and leave me alone, is there?” I knew the answer before I even asked the question, but I figured I had to give him a chance.

  The troll rolled over and started crawling toward me on his shattered knees, using one sword as a crutch and flailing at me with the other. “I will crush your skull and pick my teeth with your spine, little Sanguine.”

  “That’s what I figured.” I reached down into my ankle holster and pulled my back-up gun. I swapped out magazines and put six cold iron rounds in his face. He toppled over into the mud and lay still. I picked up one of his swords with both hands and cut off his head with one clean stroke. I danced back and fell on my ass in the mud trying to avoid the spurt of blood from his neck, getting myself probably dirtier in the process than if I’d just let him bleed on me.

  I heard a weak chuckle from behind and looked around. Greg was leaning against a nearby tree, his Colt 1911 in his hand. “I’m glad you carry a spare pistol. I’m not sure I could hit the broad side of a barn right now.” He looked like crap, but he’d splinted his arm, so that was good. We heal really fast, and if he hadn’t gotten the bones straight, we’d have to re-break it later. And that would suck.

  “I don’t need you to hit a barn, bro, I just need you to call Sabrina to come back and pick us up. I think we might have to call this a night. We’ve only got a couple of hours left ’til sunrise, and now we’re both beat to hell.”

  “Yeah, I can’t fight anything else tonight—I can barely stand.”

  “And for me, well, it’s a good thing I only have to breathe to speak, because I think I’ve got a bunch of broken ribs. Maybe a punctured lung. So can you make the call?”