“My dear Vivian!” the old man’s voice boomed out in bass welcome. “I have been waiting in hopes of your visit. This means you have found Lancelot. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Vivian answered, peering closely at the man. “Who are you?”
“I am Merlin.”
“The wizard of Camelot?” Vivian asked, trying to suppress laughter. “I guess the gang’s all here.”
“Quite,” Merlin nodded amiably in agreement. “I have Arthur with me, and we are most eager to begin. I hope our relationship this time will not be spoiled by past difficulties.”
“Since I don’t remember anything about any past, I guess we’ll get along okay.”
“You will remember everything after we meet. Take this with you.” Merlin held out a smooth stone with writing on it, which Vivian accepted, liking the first warm feeling she had experienced since entering her dream state. “This stone has my address on it, and is proof that I am real. It will pass with you into reality upon your waking, which I sense will be very soon.”
“But if I’m…” Vivian began just as Merlin and her surroundings spun out of focus.
“Vivian…wake up,” Lancelot whispered urgently as he plucked the woman from her bed, feeling something more than concern as he rushed with Vivian’s naked form into the safe-room. He was bare-chested, having only thrown on his pants and tennis shoes before hurrying to get Vivian. She stirred and wrapped her arms around Lancelot’s neck, thrusting her breasts against his chest.
“Wow…changed your mind about fraternization, huh?” Vivian remarked sleepily, suddenly realizing that she clutched the rock from her dream. “Hey…baby…I had a whopper of a dream, complete with-”
“Later,” Lancelot snapped, cutting her off. He laid her down on the bed inside the room. “Stay here. The boys hired three pros to come over and waste us. They bypassed my security system as if it wasn’t there. I’ll be back.”
“Wait…where the hell are you going?”
“I have to see to our guests.” Lancelot started pulling the door closed behind him, but Vivian launched out of the bed and grabbed the door.
“Stay in here with me. It’s a safe-room. Let them look around. Once they see we’re in here, they’ll leave.”
“I have plans for them, Viv.” Having pried her fingers off the door, Lancelot gave Vivian a little push back. “Watch on the screens if you want. Don’t open the door until I’m finished.”
Vivian overcame her first impulse to rush out after Lancelot. Instead, she went over and switched on the monitors. Three men, dressed in black, wearing pullover masks, were already spreading out from the main entranceway. In their hands, they held automatic pistols equipped with what Vivian thought were silencers. The infra-red cameras furnished distinct but tinted images, and Vivian quickly scanned for Lancelot, but could not pick him out anywhere.
One of the men entered the kitchen, while another went directly upstairs, and the third searched the ground floor rooms away from the kitchen. Vivian watched the man in the kitchen walk further into the room, swinging his silenced automatic left and right. Vivian gasped as Lancelot seemingly appeared out of thin air behind the man, blocking her view. She saw the corded muscles knot up in Lancelot’s back. When he turned, he held the man’s weapon. As Lancelot disappeared from her view once again, she saw the man lying in a heap on the kitchen floor, his head turned nearly completely around. He twitched obscenely in his death throes.
Seeing movement on the screen opposite the kitchen, Vivian sat down in the rolling seat fronting the monitors. The attacker who had searched the rooms opposite the kitchen quickly walked through the living room area with weapon at the ready. A huge hand twisted the gun out of the man’s hand, while another encircled his throat. With his feet kicking around wildly nearly a foot off the floor, the man grappled weakly at the hand throttling the life out of him. Vivian swallowed and took a deep breath as Lancelot finished the intruder off, before once again disappearing from view.
Vivian searched for the last of the trio, picking him up on the hallway monitor. The man finally worked his way into Vivian’s bedroom, cursing as he noticed the safe-room door. Fearing that his team had been discovered, and the police called from the safe-room, he turned and jogged to the bedroom door. Lancelot clothes-lined him at the doorway viciously, catapulting the man backwards nearly ten feet in the air. The third intruder lost his weapon as he landed heavily on the floor, gasping for air. Lancelot kicked the weapon further away. Vivian hurriedly exited the safe-room as Lancelot turned on the bedroom light, his face a mask of deadly intent.
“What…” Vivian began, only to be gestured into silence.
Effortlessly, Lancelot plucked the man off the floor, and walked past Vivian to enter the safe-room. He dragged the last home-invader along roughly. Vivian followed, wondering just how powerful the thousand-year-old knight was. Lancelot dumped the squirming man on the chair in which Vivian had sat. Gripping the man’s whole groin area in one hand, while pinning his neck to the chair with the other, Lancelot glanced at Vivian.
“Close the door,” Lancelot directed, as the man feebly grabbed at Lancelot’s arms. “You might want to leave. I need to ask Sparky here a couple of questions.”
Vivian closed the door, but stayed inside, folding her arms over her chest. Lancelot nodded with a smile, and turned back to his captive.
“Make it easy on yourself,” Lancelot advised. “Tell me who sent you.”
The man tried to get at Lancelot’s face in a sudden attempt to gain a moment’s diversion. Lancelot squeezed his captive’s balls, evoking a blood-curdling scream. For the first time, Vivian noticed that she still clutched the dream rock, and it was glowing. Lancelot eased his grip.
“Tell me who sent you,” Lancelot repeated, as the man’s screams dissolved into painful gasps. “The room’s soundproof. I have all night, and believe me, it will be a long one for you.”
“The…gang-bangers…” the man strained the words out through clenched teeth. “They…hired us.”
“You guys have a driver. How are you to contact him?” Lancelot asked, tightening his grip on the groin slightly.
“No…” his captive hissed in protest. “Cell-phone in my pocket…no call. Just hit one, and hang up.”
Lancelot snapped his neck with one lightning-fast movement, releasing the man’s groin, and moving his freed up hand to complete the execution.
“What the hell…” Vivian had reached out, instinctively wanting to stop Lancelot, and then pulled her hand back. “No prisoners tonight, huh?”
“I need them for a message I want to send.”
“How’d you know they had a driver?”
“They’re pros,” Lancelot answered, digging the aforementioned cell-phone out of the shuddering corpse’s pocket. “They wouldn’t want a strange car pulling up in the middle of the night with the motor running. The way they disabled my very good security system means they had skills. C’mon, you can help me with getting the driver.”
Lancelot handed Vivian the phone and shouldered the corpse. She followed him down to the kitchen, where he threw the body down on the first man’s crumpled figure. A few seconds later, Lancelot added the third body to his pile of corpses.
“When I get across the street, you hit the number one on his phone the way he told us, and summon the driver,” Lancelot told her, moving out to the front entrance alcove closet, where he acquired a black windbreaker to put on. “Give me about five minutes. I’m going out the back door, and down the street a ways before crossing.”
“You know…I’m not sure I like you much anymore,” Vivian stated uneasily, as she watched Lancelot zip up his windbreaker and don a black wool watch-cap, along with black leather gloves.
“I’ll grow on you,” Lancelot grinned. “What’s that in your hand?”
Startled, Vivian held up her glowing dream rock and handed it to Lancelot. Lancelot looked it over, as it glowed more brightly in his hand.
“Does this address mean s
omething?” Lancelot remembered a sword from long ago giving him the same feeling when he held it.
“I was given it in a dream,” Vivian replied. “I walked down a torch-lit corridor to a room where an old man in black robes told me that I needed to take you to the address on the rock.”
“Merlin,” Lancelot whispered, holding the rock up closer with excitement building within him. “What…oh, crap…never mind. Five minutes, Viv.”
Lancelot handed the rock back to Vivian, and rushed toward the back entrance. Vivian glanced up at the clock in the alcove, and waited near the front door. When five minutes passed, she opened the cell-phone, and pressed one. Closing it, Vivian peered out the small security eyelet, where she could see the street fronting Lancelot’s house.
A large black van motored slowly in front of the house and parked along the curb. Lancelot slipped around the van from the other side, gripped the passenger side door handle for a moment, and then flung it open. He dived across the seat. The passenger side door closed on its own, and the van rocked for a moment. Lancelot’s garage door opened a minute later, and the black van backed up out of sight. Vivian walked around to where the garage opened into the kitchen. By then, Lancelot had parked the van inside, and closed the garage door.
“Man, I could use a cup of coffee,” Lancelot said, moving past Vivian on the way to the pile of corpses.
“I can handle that,” Vivian found the coffee maker. “Where-”
“It’s all set, Viv,” Lancelot said, carrying the first body out. “Just hit the button.”
“Wow, quite the little homemaker,” Vivian muttered under her breath, starting the coffee machine.
“I heard that,” Lancelot called out from the garage.
“Great, super hearing too,” Vivian sighed. “Any other surprises?”
“It’s not super hearing,” he replied, walking past her for the second body, “and yeah, I hate liver.”
“And lima beans,” Lancelot added as he made his way to the garage. “I hate lima beans.”
“I’m not talking about foodstuffs, Monte Python,” Vivian giggled. “I’m talking about superpowers. You don’t fly or anything, do you?”
“No, but I can dance incredibly well,” Lancelot answered on the way back from the garage.
“No shit?” Vivian absorbed his claim with some skepticism.
“Yep,” Lancelot confirmed, bundling his last thug out to the van.
Vivian handed him a cup of coffee as he returned to the kitchen. “Want anything in it?”
“No, black is good.” Lancelot sipped from the cup with satisfaction. “Here’s what we have to do. You follow me in my Pontiac. When we get to the main munchkin’s house, I’ll go inside and collect him. Once I set up my little message van outside his house, you drive up and get me.”
“How do you know where he lives?” Vivian shuddered while sipping her own coffee.
“The police provided me with enough information – or rope, as it were – to hang myself. They think this is the first time I’ve ever been set up. How about it? Are you up to this?”
“As long as we go and see this Merlin guy right after,” Vivian replied, gesturing at the glowing rock on the counter. “He told me in my dream he would return my memories.”
“You didn’t feel any angst at all, while talking with him?” Lancelot asked curiously. “You two had some rough meetings, and were at each other’s throats most of the time.”
Vivian shrugged. “He mentioned that, but I don’t recall anything, let alone a grudge. He told me he has Arthur.”
The coffee cup in Lancelot’s hand shattered, and his face went slack for a moment. He recovered quickly. After throwing away the pieces of coffee cup in his hand into the garbage can under the sink, he quickly cleaned up. Vivian saw the lacerations on his hand heal as he silently wiped up the spilled coffee. When he straightened from his task, Lancelot’s face was a mask over hidden emotion.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“I hope so,” Lancelot replied. “It means things are speeding up. Not that the view isn’t very pleasing, but I think you should put on some clothes for this next gig.”
Vivian looked down at herself unbelievingly. “Holy crap! I…I’ll be right back.”
Lancelot nodded, smiling, as Vivian put her cup down and jogged from the kitchen. Lancelot followed her so he could watch her run up the stairs. Turning at the top, she glanced back down. Seeing Lancelot watching her, Vivian bent slightly at the waist and wagged her butt at him. Hearing him laugh, she hurried to get dressed. Having seen Lancelot’s obvious physical reaction to her gambit, she smiled with some satisfaction.
* * *
Vivian eased off the accelerator, noticing that Lancelot was gesturing for her to slow down. The neighborhood near Thirty-eighth Avenue and Foothill Boulevard looked drab and seemed in disrepair, illustrating the larger problems in the East Oakland community. Nothing moved on the street this early morning. She watched Lancelot park the van and immediately exit the vehicle. He ran up and around to the back, vaulting a fence on his way. Out of Vivian’s view, Lancelot landed on his feet in a crouch, facing two pit-bull dogs of mottled coloring. He bowed his head, holding his hands out without hesitation. The two dogs whined for a moment, licking his hands, before lying down on the ground with their heads resting on their paws. Lancelot straightened, and noiselessly entered the house from the rear.
Moments later, Vivian tensed, seeing Lancelot hurtle the back-gate with a body tucked under his arm. He entered the van with his human bundle. Ten minutes later, he carefully exited the van. Crouching low, he sped toward the passenger side of his Pontiac as Vivian started the engine. Seconds later, the Pontiac motored away from East Oakland and the van full of dead bodies.
“What took you so long?”
“I propped them up the way I wanted them in the van,” Lancelot answered, stripping off the stocking hat and gloves he had worn and popping them into a plastic bag from the Pontiac’s glove compartment. “I left our three visitors with their masks in place, and I fixed the gang leader up in the passenger seat.”
“He was alone? That was lucky.”
“He wasn’t alone.” Lancelot looked over at Vivian to see if she was making a joke. When she glanced at him questioningly, Lancelot straightened in his seat and waved her off with his left hand. “Hey, I didn’t start this.”
“How many?” Vivian asked quietly.
“Three.”
“Jesus, the cops will be all over you, Monte.”
“Don’t call me that. Monte Python and the Holy Grail was an insult,” Lancelot retorted.
“Lighten up, Monte. It was a funny movie – a little slap-stick, but funny,” Vivian asserted, enjoying the cold-blooded killer’s discomfiture about a movie. “Want to get breakfast, or should we head over to your old buddy Merlin’s place?”
“He’s not my old buddy, and if you ever get your memory back, I will rag you over this warmness for Merlin until you scream.”
“Shit, I must have really hated him.”
“Hate is such a weak word,” Lancelot observed, smiling. “Anyway, I’m a little nervous about seeing my old buddy. Merlin was the conductor of Camelot’s rise and fall. Even you were but a pawn.”
“You just killed seven guys,” Vivian pointed out sarcastically. “How tough could meeting an old man be?”
Lancelot laughed, shaking his head knowingly. “Oh, I so hope you get your memory back,” he remarked.
“Why do you think he hasn’t contacted you?” Vivian felt a sudden chill she couldn’t shake at a memory flitting around at the borders of her mind.
“I’m a little weak in the dreaming realm,” Lancelot answered. “As to why he didn’t contact me in the real world, it may be that he hadn’t gotten all his ducks in a row yet. Besides, you just popped into my life. He may have been waiting for your arrival.”
“Ducks in a row,” Vivian smirked over at Lancelot. “That’s so cute. Where’d you get that one, the 1300s?�
�
“You know, I’m beginning to reconsider the whole spanking thing,” Lancelot warned. “Let’s go for it. Pull over, and I’ll drive. Did you bring your magic Merlin rock?”
“Why can’t I drive?”
“Because I just bought this car, and I’d like to drive it while it’s still in one piece.”
“Fine,” Vivian pulled over to the curb. She poked around in the pocket of her jeans, and came up with the rock. She handed it to Lancelot, who punched in the address on the Pontiac GPS navigating system. “Do you recognize where in Oakland that address is?”
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