The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy

by Richard Parry

• • •

  Sky reached out for the door handle. They were in the thick of the smoke, but it wasn’t hard to breathe and it didn’t sting her eyes. Rex reached out for her arm, stopping her from touching the handle.

  “Two things,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Sky.

  “First,” said Rex, “handle could be hot. Don’t grab that with your bare hands unless you want to smell cooking bacon.”

  Sky pulled her hand back. “What’s the second thing?”

  “If there’s a fire in there—”

  “Where there’s smoke,” said John, “there’s fire.”

  “If there’s a fire in there,” said Rex, “and it’s just smoking low, a bit ol’ gust of fresh air can set it off.”

  “Bigger fire?” said Sky.

  “Explosion,” said Rex. “Called a backdraft.”

  “Like the movie?” said John.

  “That was a terrible movie,” said Rex. “But sure, like that.”

  “Got it,” said John.

  “What movie?” said Sky.

  “There’s these two brothers,” said John, “and they—”

  “Fire,” said Rex.

  “Right,” said John. “So, how do we get the door open?”

  The handle clicked, the door easing open a crack. John dropped the axe, tackling Sky and taking her to the ground as he shielded her with his body. She felt all the air go out of her lungs with an oomph, and then—

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Son,” said Rex, “son, help the lady up.”

  John looked down at her, his face inches away, and stole a kiss before scrambling to his feet. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No, it’s good,” said Rex. “Right response to a different set of inputs. If there had been a grenade or a backdraft, that would’ve been about perfect. Would even have been called smooth.”

  Sky let John pull her up, held his hand a little longer, then pulled him in for another kiss. “It was perfect,” she said.

  The almost-Miles-Megawatt-Smile flared briefly in the dim corridor, then John snared his axe from the floor. “I’m going to find out who opened that door.”

  “While you’re there,” said Rex, “see if you can see what all the smoke is about.”

  “Gotcha,” said John. He used the axe to push the door open, then slipped inside the room.

  Sky looked at Rex. “Anything cause smokeless fires?”

  “Cigalikes,” said Rex. “You know, those e-sigs. Chemical spills, but they don’t smell like flowers either. Maybe Hollywood, if someone’s filming a movie.” He scratched at his stubble. “I hate to say it, but he was probably right. Where there’s smoke, there’s—”

  John burst back into the corridor, slamming the door closed behind him. His eyes were wild. “Run,” he said, before the door exploded into fragments. Sky was tossed aside, her head hitting the wall, and she slid down into the cool black.

  • • •

  “C’mon kid, I’m too old to be carrying children around.” The voice was familiar, but muffled, like it was coming from a long way off. “You need to get up, Sky. You’ve got to get up.”

  She opened her eyes, black edges around her vision. Sky could see a face — Rex, like a Tyrannosaurus — above her. She tried to speak, coughed, tried again. “You look terrible.”

  “That’s because,” said Rex, “we’re getting our asses kicked.” His face was covered in soot, a bright angry burn on the lower part of his jaw. His left eye was weeping and red. Rex’s face pulled away as he stood up, and he reached a hand down to her. “C’mon. You’ve got to move.”

  “Where’s John?” Sky took his hand, felt herself lifted up — it feels like floating, everything feels like I’m floating — and almost went back down as the dizziness hit.

  Rex almost smiled. She could see he wanted to, but it didn’t come. “Like I said. He’s getting his ass kicked. So you have time. To get moving.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I got my ass kicked,” said Rex. “I’ve fought a lot of fires, but…” His voice trailed away, then he shook himself out of it. “We’ve got to get going.”

  “Wait,” said Sky. “Where?”

  “Out,” said Rex. “We’ve got to get out.”

  “Hell, no,” said Sky. “My lover’s here, and all my friends are here.”

  “We’re going to die,” said Rex. He looked like he meant it.

  Sky pulled her taser out. “If that’s what it takes.” Maybe it was the hit to the head, but she meant it too, because she didn’t want a life without John Miles in it.

  “Right,” said Rex. “Here’s where we’re at. There’s this thing—”

  The wall beside him exploded in a shower of drywall and smoke, and John came through wrestling … something. It looked like a man made of fire, the whites and yellows and reds of a hearth flickering up through his body. His eyes were the brightest white, like the core of a furnace, his mouth held in a snarl. He — it? No, definitely a he — and John were wrestling over a fire axe held between them. The air around them shimmered with heat.

  Sky raised her taser without conscious thought, pulled the trigger. In the hair’s breadth of time between her raising it and firing, the man of fire looked at her and seemed to smile. The taser tick-tick-ticked and … nothing.

  Then it exploded in her hand, the battery inside swelling with heat. Sky screamed, hands covering her face as shards of metal and plastic flew like shrapnel.

  She heard a grunt, spared a glance and saw John use the distraction to wrest the axe away from the man of fire. John gave a yell, swinging the axe into the burning figure. It passed through, but sluggish, pulling John off balance. The man of fire seemed to laugh, taking a step back. “You can’t fight fire with an axe, little man. And you should not,” and here, he looked at Sky, “throw batteries into a fire. It’s on all the warning labels.”

  John righted himself, looked at the fire axe in his hand, and swung again. It snared on something in the man of fire, pulled him a little off center again, and those terrible bright white eyes swung away from Sky. The man of fire took a step back. “You killed my brother.”

  “The big guy?” Rex was taking a couple steps back. “He didn’t put up such a hard fight.”

  “Your view of his value doesn’t stop him from being my brother. His power is now mine, and you have made me Agni. You have made me fire.” Agni — the man of fire — laughed. “You held the power of the Night for so long, squandered all it had to offer, and now you will die, with just a taste of what could have been.”

  “To be fair,” said John, holding up a hand as he bent over, catching his breath, “none of the three of us squandered the Night, or whatever it is.”

  Agni blinked, the white-hot eyes shutting off for a second. “What?”

  “It was my buddy, Val,” said John, leaning on the axe. “He had the — what do you call it? The Night? Stupid name. Anyway, Val, and, uh, I guess, Danny.” John straightened, working a kink from his back. “Thing is—”

  Agni’s white-hot eyes moved to Rex. “You will all die here, and you are speaking of trivialities.”

  “He’s like that,” said Rex, putting himself in front of Sky. Rex tapped the side of his head. “I think he got hit in the head when he was a child.” He shrugged, a what-are-you-gonna-do? gesture.

  Sky looked around as they talked to Agni, distracting the thing that had eaten the power of his dead brother to stand, burning like a bonfire, in front of them. He can’t be killed with the axe. How do you fight fires? Her eyes moved to the walls of the room, the rich drapes hanging in silken promise. You smother them.

  “Really,” said John, “it wasn’t like that. My mother was very loving.”

  “You’re just lucky you didn’t drown in the bath,” said Rex.

  “ENOUGH!” Agni blazed, heat making both Rex and John stumble back. John — her John, her beautiful man — raised the axe. She could see it in the set of his face, the way he held his shoulders, ju
st how he lifted the axe. He was going to die, he was going to do something to buy them a precious second to get free.

  That just wouldn’t do. Not this time. She felt something lurch in her stomach, knew with a sick feeling what she had to do. After this, she wouldn’t feel his touch, or see his face, or taste his kisses. She wouldn’t know what it was like to be his wife, and she wouldn’t see — again — how he ignored other women, his eyes for her alone.

  Sky grabbed the drapes off the wall, the heavy material coming free with a tear. The sound made all three of the men turn, John’s eyes starting to widen, Rex’s face one of confusion. Agni’s eyes, those white coals, narrowing. And before she could think about it anymore, she was running. Running at Agni, the drapes in her arms causing her to stumble, just once, before she got her stride. Sky hit Agni at a run, the drapes falling over the blazing man like a shroud, and she could feel the heat of the man burning the fabric she held.

  But she’d got a good speed up, hit Agni off balance, and her rush carried her clear to one of the broken windows at the room’s edge. She could hear John screaming behind her—

  Baby, no!

  —as she carried Agni out into the cold Chicago air, held against her like a prize. She burst into the cold day in a shower of broken glass, the building’s solid tears falling like rain, sharing her descent. The drapes were on fire now, her skin was blistering, and she held Agni tighter as the living flame thrashed against her, the air pulling at her hair as she fell.

  “Hi,” he’d said. “I’m John.”

  “I don’t care,” she’d said. She’d taken one look at that megawatt smile, at the easy way he stood, and knew he was trouble.

  The smile didn’t falter. “This is usually where you tell me your name. Because we’re introducing each other.”

  “Imagine,” she said. “Imagine a world where you go into a mall where everyone’s got advertising, right. And the advertising is all aimed at you. All the clerks, all the stores, hell, even the ice cream cart, they’re all trying to sell you something. And that one thing is dick. You can’t even buy an ice cream from the ice cream cart. They only sell dick, and that one guy at the ice cream cart, well, he’s only got one dick in stock. That’s what it’s like being a woman. Every man wants to sell you a dick, and I’m not buying.”

  “Huh,” said John. “You know, that’s fair enough. Can I interest you in a drink instead?”

  The air was really rushing past her now, and her shirt caught on fire. The pain was so much, not the burning, but the memories as they came to her as she fell.

  “I drive a cab,” she said.

  John was dissecting his dinner, something with chicken or fish, she didn’t know. The menus were all in French. “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?” Sky frowned. “Are you even listening?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You drive a cab.”

  “You’re not surprised?”

  He’d laughed then. “I tell you. When you get to meet my buddy Val, well, you’ll understand that nothing much is really that surprising.”

  “What’s he do?” Sky leaned forward. “Spy? Elevator technician?”

  John had leaned back, savoring the wine. Or trying to. His face said yes, his lips said no. “He solves problems,” he said, then put his glass down. “Say.”

  “Yeah?” The wine was good, and at two-fifty a bottle it had better be. It was a little earthy for her tastes, and she was already doing the mental math on how many extra fares she’d need to run to pay off this dinner. But she wanted to enjoy it, because he’d asked her here.

  “Are you trying to get into my friend’s pants?”

  She blinked, then laughed. “I don’t even know who he is.”

  Something sad went through his face for a second before that megawatt smile came back. “Plenty of time for that, after I sell you the full bag-o’-dicks package.”

  The ground was getting closer, but the tears in her eyes were making the world a soft collection of muted grays. She tried to pull in a breath, but all she got was fire and smoke.

  “Baby,” said John. “Baby, I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

  Sky looked up from the kitchen counter. It had been a bag-of-shit day, one of those ones where everything was a red light in your way. “John Miles, this had better be good.”

  He’d looked a little stunned, but swallowed. “I love you.”

  “You … what?”

  “I love you,” he said. “See, I made a list.” He led her to the bathroom, where he’d written on their mirror with a Sharpie. Number one said she had a great singing voice. Number two was that she sang in the shower every morning. Three was that she didn’t hate his terrible cooking, and four was that she didn’t mind him being him. It went on, memories held on that glass in black marker, until she hit the end. It said “Number 20: Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She didn’t say anything back, too afraid of what it meant.

  “Oh,” said Sky, the air taking her words away. “I love you, John Miles.”

  She hit the ground, and Skyler Evans didn’t say anything after that.

  CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

  Adalia’s feet crunched over broken shards of a fallen vase. It had probably been nice once, the bits and pieces just holding a hint of perfect colors and a shape that held the eye. She knew if she tried hard enough she could step sideways into that other place and see what it had been, and what it could be.

  She didn’t want to. Being in the other place didn’t feel like being her.

  “You know, there’s probably going to be bad things happening up ahead.” Gabriel walked in front of them, his feet making no sound.

  “Do you think there are zombies here?” Just James’ eyes were wide and round, his head on a swivel. “I think Ghost Boy should go first.”

  “He is going first,” said Adalia. “His name is Gabriel.”

  “Loudmouth is still making too much noise.” Gabriel turned away, hands in his pockets.

  “Does he always call me James?” said Just James. “If he doesn’t I don’t have to call him Gabriel.”

  “Very mature,” said Adalia. Boys. “We need to find my mom.”

  “Wait one,” said Just James. “She’s a werewolf, right? She went in ahead to bust some skulls. That was the plan?”

  “Right,” said Adalia. “That was the plan.”

  “So, and I’m kind of talking out loud here, but wouldn’t she be right in the middle of the danger vortex? You know, random gunfire, sharp knives, harsh language, all kinds of scary things.”

  “Sounds plausible,” said Gabriel. “Just said louder than it needed to be said.”

  “I think there’s more biting and clawing from zombies, but that sounds right,” said Adalia.

  “Cool,” said Just James. “I think we should go to where she isn’t.”

  “We should find the Shield,” said Gabriel. “She is your armor.”

  Adalia looked between them, then blew her breath out in a sigh. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She took a peek sideways into the other place, not quite stepping there, just looking, then said, “They’ll both be in the same place. When the time comes.”

  “What does that mean?” said Just James.

  “I’m with Loudmouth this time,” said Gabriel. “What time?”

  “When the Sacrifice is made,” said Adalia. “When the Guide is blind. When the Shield is sundered, the Good Right Arm is broken, and the Knight Falls.”

  “Sounds amazing,” said Just James. “Why are we going there?”

  “To save the world,” said Gabriel. He still had his hands in his pockets.

  “Because we must,” said Adalia, “or my family will die.”

  “I figured it’d be something like that,” said Just James. He pushed the button on the elevator in the lobby.

  “That won’t work,” said Gabriel. “The power is out.”

  The elevator doors opened, a soft ding sounding in the lobby
. Light spilled from the doors as they opened, a widening line being drawn against the dark carpet.

  “Huh,” said Gabriel.

  A man stepped from the elevator, a white robe pulled close about him, head covered by a cowl. He looked for all the world like a monk, a book held in one hand, a rosary in the other. His face was shadowed, but Adalia could see a clean jawline, a hook nose. The man’s head turned towards Gabriel. “Begone.”

  Gabriel had a moment to look surprised before he flickered out like a candle in a gust of wind, the air snapping where he used to be.

  “Hey,” said Adalia. “That was my friend.”

  “The ghost is gone?” said Just James. “All right.” He looked at Adalia, caught her stare, and swallowed. “I mean, that was a total dick move.”

  The man stepped closer to Adalia, the light from the elevator slipping away as the doors closed behind him. His face was planes and angles inside the shadow of his cowl. “I am—”

  “Saint John,” said Adalia. “Or, that’s what you call yourself now.”

  Saint John paused. “Yes.”

  “You know this guy?” said Just James. “How—”

  “Be silent,” said Saint John. Just James’ mouth worked, no sound coming out. “The Master needs you. He calls you.”

  Adalia felt cross. Who was this thing to tell her friends what to do? “We’re coming, but not because he called.”

  “You are coming because you are destined to die.” Saint John held the book out towards Adalia. “I am here to call you to justice.”

  “That’s not how this works,” said Adalia. She saw the eyes within the hood blink in surprise. She held up a hand. “Oh, I know you think you’re here for justice, or whatever twisted fantasy you’ve got. I know you think you hold power over the living, and the dead. You think you are the Hand of God.”

  “I am—”

  “What you are,” said Adalia, stepping sideways a fraction, just a tiny step into that other place, “is a fantasy.”

  “You’re not—”

  “What I am,” said Adalia, smoothing the front of her sweater, “is a reality check. By the sun that warms us, the moon that dreams with us, and the stars across the endless Night, I call you back, Gabriel Pearce. I am not done with you.”