Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood

by Dudek, Andrew

  It’s not like you have a choice, I told myself. The vamps already know where you are—it won’t be safe until you can win this war. If you want to live you have to go on the offensive.

  Krissy was sitting on my couch, nervously kicking around pieces of what had once been my coffee table. Her head was down, her hair shielding her face, but she looked up when I came in.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have a TV,” she said. “Everybody has a TV.”

  “I don’t trust those things. They turn people into zombies.”

  Krissy’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  I held a serious expression for a moment, but then I grinned. “No, not really. Not literally, anyway. Come on, we gotta get going.”

  I pulled on my jacket. It was black leather with silver studs at the seams and had once been owned by a Sex Pistols-obsessed elf prince from Madrid. The jacket was enchanted with defensive spells, making it sturdier than a lot of body armor on the market. If I fell off a motorcycle wearing my jacket I’d get up without a scratch. It wasn’t bulletproof, but it would slow down just about anything with teeth, claws, or blades.

  Krissy stood up and stretched. Even in my baggy shirt, it was a good look for her. The flannel clung to her body in interesting ways and I had to force myself to look away. She caught me staring, though, and smiled shyly. Pointing to her forehead, where I’d hit her with the gun, she said, “Between this and this,” holding up her left hand, where I’d cut it with the silver switchblade, “people are gonna think I got myself, like, an abusive boyfriend.”

  I opened my mouth. Fortunately, I was saved the awkwardness of having to reply by a knock on the door. “Looks like our ride’s here,” I said.

  The man outside my door was not Mayena Strain. For one thing, he was a man. He was tall, a good six inches taller than me, which put him about six-six. He was skinny as a rail, though, so I figured that even with his extra height I outweighed him by a good twenty pounds. His black hair was combed back so tight that it seemed to smooth the wrinkles in his forehead. His finely tailored black suit, silk shirt, and tie each looked like they’d cost more than my apartment. His hands were in his pockets and he surveyed me with sea-green eyes. Evidently, he was displeased by what he saw.

  I knew the man. At least, I’d seen him a couple of times at the Table’s headquarters in London. He was some higher-up, some officer, but I couldn’t remember his name.

  “Hey,” I said, affecting a whiny, nasal voice, “you’re not the pizza guy.”

  Krissy giggled.

  “Mister Carver, I presume.” The man had a slow, deliberate, and posh English accent. He was looking from me to Krissy and back with the same kind of disdain you might gaze at something disgusting you found under a rock. Finally, he continued: “My name is Gerard Avalon. I am the Knights of the Round Table’s Commander of North American Operations.”

  Now I noticed the little medallion on his lapel. It was shaped like a medieval shield, with the letters C.O. embossed over a painted image of the North American continent. The man’s title sounded impressive, I know, but I didn’t have much regard for the Table’s Commanders Council. Mostly, I thought, all they did was sit on their asses in London and give orders to the rest of us out in the field. His whole job consisted of filling in the space between the knights on the ground and the Pendragon. Gerard Avalon may have looked like a British gangster, but he was little more than a puffed up bureaucrat. Yeah, we have those in the paranormal world, too.

  “Nice to meet you, sir,” I said. “Nice to see you out of the office.”

  Screw respect. You don’t get to treat me like a piece of dog crap and not get called on it.

  Avalon’s eyes twitched slightly, and he looked at Krissy. “Who is this?”

  “Krissy Thomas,” she said. Despite the darkness of the surroundings, she managed to sound bright and chirpy.

  Avalon ignored her. To me, he said, “This is the thrall?”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I did the silver test. She’s clean, and she’s coming with us.”

  Avalon shook his head. “Time is of the essence, Mister Carver. We can not afford to bring this amateur along.”

  “She shook off an enthrallment,” I said. “That makes her a victim of a supernatural attack. Remind me, Commander, what’s the Table’s job again?” I folded my arms and held eye contact. “She’s coming with us.”

  Avalon scowled, but I had him there. Table protocol dictated that any survivor of a supe attack had the option of joining the Table. Mostly we don’t have to recruit—new blood comes to us. The commander’s eyes cooled as he looked at me.

  “Captain Strain is waiting on the street,” he said. “Let us go.”

  He led the way down the hallway from my apartment to the staircase. I waved to Krissy in an after you gesture and moved aside to let her out. Before I followed them I took one last look around. The safe house was small and cramped and usually dirty, but it was mine, dammit. I was going to kinda-maybe-sorta-almost miss it. You’re making a mistake, the dark part of my brain whispered.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I whispered.

  “Dave, you okay?” Krissy was standing at the top of the staircase.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  May was leaning against the hood of a big van when I got outside. It was one of those windowless, Silence of the Lambs numbers with a cab in front and a sliding panel door. The kind they always tell kids not to get in with strangers.

  May smiled when she saw me. Her smile evaporated when she saw Krissy. “Is this the one that tried to kill you?”

  “She was enthralled, May. It wasn’t her fault.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s coming—”

  “I can speak for myself,” Krissy said. “Dave thinks I can join you guys.”

  May laughed, cruelly and derisively. “Her? She doesn’t exactly have the warrior look.”

  “As fascinating as this is,” Avalon said, “it would be best if we were moving. Vampires could very well be watching this building.”

  Avalon opened the sliding door and got in. May frowned, but she hopped in the driver’s seat. I was about to join her up front, but the commander motioned for Krissy and me to go with him.

  He closed the door, and May turned on the engine and put the van in a drive.

  “Once we get through the tunnel,” Avalon said, “it should be safe.”

  “Vampires and other supes mostly stay out of Queens,” I explained to Krissy.

  “Why, because it’s Queens?” Krissy laughed at her own joke.

  I smirked. “The Table’s regional headquarters is in Long Island City. Imagine that you were a bank robber. Would you spend much time in the same neighborhood as a major police precinct? It’s the same principle. Supes stay away from Long Island City.”

  We rolled in silence for a few moments until Avalon said, “Mister Carver, I am going to enlist you into the Knights of the Round Table. Do you understand what that means? I am.”

  I nodded. As NorAmOps Commander, Avalon would normally be the guy to choose the Captain of the New York office. But I guessed Bill Foster had made a strong suggestion that I was the man for the job. Bill was the new Pendragon, and one of the greatest warriors in the Table’s history. During a time of war, it would have been near political suicide to disobey such a suggestion. Avalon was stuck with me, but he was letting me know that he was in charge.

  “Alrighty,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Avalon scowled, like he couldn’t believe somebody like me could possible exist, let alone be put in charge of a division of the Knights of the Round Table. But William Foster Pendragon had spoken, and Avalon had to play the good little soldier.

  “David William Carver,” he said, his voice even more haughty and formal. “Do you swear to defend humanity from all dangers supernatural?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Do you swear to be mankind’s shield against the darkness?”

&nbs
p; “I do.”

  “And do you swear to use your sword faithfully and only in defense of those under your care?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I, Gerard Avalon, Commander of the Round Table, name you David, Knight of the Round Table. With the approval of William Foster Pendragon, Prince-General of our order, I name you Captain of the Round Table in charge of New York City and its surrounding areas.” He smiled bitterly. “Congratulations, Captain.”

  Avalon reached under his bench seat and slid out a huge sports equipment bag, like the kind they use to transport hockey gear. From one of the side pockets he took out a medallion shaped more or less like his. Mine just had a C chiseled in its front. I pinned it to the collar of my jacket.

  Now it was official—I was Captain Carver.

  I looked at Avalon. “Thank you, sir. Now, where’s my sword?”

  Avalon smirked, and he unzipped the bag. Without another word, he took out my sword.

  When he joins the Knights of the Round Table, each knight is given a sword. No one knows how they’re made, except for a secretive organization called the Swordmakers who were trained either by the Lady of the Lake or the wizard Merlin, depending on who you ask, but one thing is for sure: each sword contains the same power as Excalibur, the legendary weapon of Arthur Pendragon. They’re magic, basically, and they can hurt or even kill just about anything, even things that laugh at ordinary mortal weapons. The things that dwell in the dark have a healthy respect for the swords of the Round Table.

  Even sheathed in its leather scabbard, my sword was impressive. It was modeled on something called an arming sword, and it looked like something that would have been used by the Christians during the Crusades. It had a classic cruciform hilt and a big sapphire gem in the pommel and two more in the cross-guard. The blade was better than three feet long, so I couldn’t draw it in the confines of the van, but just touching the wire-bound hilt was enough. Energy crackled from the weapon, flowing from the hilt into my body. Abruptly, all of my nervousness was gone. My sword was back in my hand. Everything was okay.

  It was like someone had reattached my arm after nine months as an amputee. For the first time since that clearing in Guyana, I was complete.

  Krissy lurched forward in her seat. Avalon bounced off of the bench and hit his head on the ceiling (which gave me more pleasure than it really should have), and my back slammed into the wall.

  “Pothole,” Krissy said unnecessarily.

  The screech of metal on rock was audible as the tires’ rims scraped against the street. The van slowed down, peeled out of the road and came to a stop. It rocked on its shocks as May put it in park. A moment later the door slid open.

  Her thin-bladed sword was in her hand and she nodded in approval when she saw mine. The smile faded, though, and was replaced by a cool, steely-eyed expression. I knew that look. It was her battle face.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Tires are flat,” she said. “And we were followed. Dave, we got vampires out here.”

  Chapter 6

  My former building still loomed in the shadows behind us, less than three blocks away. A few lights were lit in nearby windows, but for the most part the neighborhood was still. A few blocks behind us lurked a van with the same designer as ours, its headlights glaring with a predatory leer. Its sliding door stood open, but it was too dark to make out who or what was inside. Slowly, though, four humanoid figures loped out, unfurling themselves with an eerily feline grace. We were still too far away to make out the expressions on their face, but it was clear from the leonine way they watched: They were hunting us.

  They stood unnaturally still. Their eyes never left us, even for a moment. May was right: these things were vampires.

  I hadn’t seen a vamp since the Battle of Guyana, when May and a hundred other knights had pulled Bill Foster and me out of the hole in the ground, killing the things left and right. Mostly, though, I remembered the three months that had come before that, when I’d been tortured. The scars on my neck and wrists prickled.

  The back, passenger-side tire of our van was flat.

  “They’ve been tailing us since we left the safe house,” May said. “Pulled over right before we hit the pothole. It’s like they knew it was there.”

  A vampire hit squad, if that’s what this was, would have scouted out the routes we’d take to get from the safe house to the headquarters. Probably, the vamps did know that the pothole was there, and that was why they’d chosen this spot to make their attack. We could get away on three tires, but it would slow us down.

  “Think we could hoof it?” I asked.

  “They’d catch us.”

  “I guess that just leaves the one option.”

  “Mmm.” May lifted her sword.

  I drew mine and spun around to face the vampires. The steel slid out of the leather as easily and silently as if it had been polished every day for the last year. The power of the sword really flowed through my body now that the blade was free. It energized every muscle, every fiber, every atom in my body turning the knobs all the way to eleven. Any residual fear was...not gone, exactly, but shrunken. Like a shadow at high noon, the fear was tiny and inconsequential. There was nothing to be afraid of. I had my sword.

  I looked into the van. “Care to join us, Commander?”

  Avalon smirked his same smarter-than-thou smirk. “I expect the two of you captains have matters well in control.” And he reached over and slid the van’s door shut.

  “Freakin’ office warriors, man,” I snarled. “Coward.” I looked at May. “Ready?”

  “Whenever you are, Captain Carver.”

  I found myself grinning. Captain Carver. I liked the sound of that. With a wordless cry I lifted the sword above my shoulder and ran towards the vampires.

  May outpaced me easily. She’d always been faster than me, but she used to have put a little effort into it—damn, I was out of shape. Her sword was held in front of her like a cavalry commander ordering a charge.

  The vampires surged forward, a hiss rumbling from their throats so loudly it was practically an inhuman wave of force.

  With her free hand, May pulled from her belt a long, thin piece of wood. She pointed the wand at the lead vampire and muttered something in a dead language. There was a sound like a car hitting a wall of cement, and the vampire was picked off of his feet as if by an invisible bird. He rolled around in the air for a moment before hitting the sidewalk. The second vampire, who was right behind the leader, was taken down like a bowling pin. Both of them lay still.

  A third vampire vaulted over his fallen peers. He got a good five feet of air and his fingernails extended into catlike black claws. May ducked under his pounce, letting the vampire land directly in front of me.

  This vampire, like all vampires, looked human at first. He was about six feet tall with a blond buzzcut and a respectable business suit. Like most vamps, he was good looking, which was one of their best weapons. While they’re stronger and faster than humans and they can take their prey by force, vampires typically use ambush tactics. By looking like an attractive guy or girl they can get close to their prey until their ready to strike. It lets them be a little more subtle, a little more seductive. In service of that goal, a vampire is almost always going to be attractive.

  At least when they want to be. But ask any TV makeup artist: It takes a lot of effort to take an ugly person and make them pretty. Especially when you’re dealing with supernatural levels of ugly.

  As I watched the vampire’s face seemed to melt away. His features blurred and distended. His skin turned papery and gray so that it hung off of his body like another set of clothes. He snarled, wolflike, revealing a mouthful of long, dagger-like teeth. But what really drew the attention was the way his eyes darkened until they were totally, completely black.

  Like I said: not so hot.

  The corpselike thing swung his claws at me, but I was ready. I jumped back, letting him sail pass harmlessly. He overcommitted, putti
ng too much into the attack, and for just a second he was off-balance. It was long enough. I swung the sword, my arm vibrating with the energy, and took his head off at the shoulder. The vampire’s body wavered on its feet for a moment, before it dropped boneless-like to the ground.

  May was grappling with the fourth vampire. A thick, clear liquid bubbled at the ends of his fangs. I closed in to help, but the vamp that May had put down like a bowling ball was back on his feet and in the fight. He hit me with massive force, his clawed hand closing around my neck.

  We hit the ground in a flurry of oxygen-starved grunts (from me) and animalistic snarls (from him). The sword dropped from my hand. I managed to get an arm in between me and the vampire, so the enchanted leather took most of the damage. The female vampire appeared above me, too. Her eyes shone in the darkness and, while her companion kept me pinned to the ground, she descended with her fanged jaws hanging open.

  Suddenly, like a demented elephant, the horn of the van started beeping. The two vampires looked over their shoulders to see what the commotion was about. Krissy sat in the driver’s seat, hammering at the steering wheel like she was trying to drive a nail into the horn. I slid my hand beneath the vampire’s claws and, with a grunt of effort, pushed him off of me.

  The sword was back in my hand before I was fully on my feet. With my left hand I shoved the vampire. They may have greater-than-human strength, but that doesn’t mean they get to ignore Mr. Newton. When I acted he reacted. The vampire stumbled backwards.

  I brought the sword down in a downward arc that opened the vampire’s belly like a fish. Gray, dry, cordlike entrails tumbled out of his abdomen. He blinked for a moment, staring down at his opened stomach. With another swing I took off his head. The vampire dropped like a stringless marionette. On my follow-through I spun and brought the blade towards the female vampire. She leaped straight up, just in time to avoid decapitation. Instead, the sword sheared through her legs, just below the knees. She landed in a clumsy heap.