Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood

by Dudek, Andrew

  Krissy came up behind me, holding a ratty old backpack. It was old and covered with grime, but I recognized it. Once upon a time it had belonged to a girl named Luisa. She’d been part of the Family, and she’d died in this dark pit with the rest of them.

  The power of the Gauntlet was palpable, dancing in my fingertips like a faerie drum circle. It wormed its way up my arms, gushing a kind of energy I’d never felt before—just from holding it in my hands. I wanted—no, I desperately needed—to put it on, to feel its full might.

  “Dave?” Krissy whispered.

  “I’d like to say that I put the Gauntlet immediately in the bag. That the temptation was nothing. For a long moment, thug, I stood staring at the old weapon as my boots were soaked through with the blood of the last man to wear it.

  It made a certain amount of sense. With the Gauntlet wrapped around my arm, I could put an end to the vampires for ever. Hell, I could stop every supe threat in the world. I could appoint myself planet Earth’s own personal superhero.

  “Dave, are you okay?”

  The power called to me.

  But what happened after I’d won? What happened after I’d killed every vampire and goblin and werebeast and ghoul and troll and spirit and demon? Would I give up the power? I looked down at the body and I knew the answer: No. No one would willingly hand over that kind of power. If I put on the Gauntlet of Greckhite, I might be able to kill all of the world’s monsters. But there would be a new one.

  And his name would be David William Carver.

  Still, the power called to me.

  I wanted it.

  I could use it.

  “Dave,” Krissy said. “We have to go.”

  I tore my eyes away from the Gauntlet and looked at her. Krissy’s eyes were set. I could see it in her face—if I tried to take the Gauntlet, she’d try and stop me. I’d kill her, of course, but she was willing to take that chance.

  She tossed me the backpack. I caught it. And I remembered who I was.

  I put the Gauntlet in the bag.

  Neither of us said anything as I led the way back towards the stairs, but I thought I saw a proud smile cross Krissy’s face.

  Chapter 35

  Two weeks later, and I was in a cell in the dungeon under the Table’s headquarters in London. They were holding me until my trial for the murder of William Foster Pendragon.

  Yeah. That happened.

  After I killed Bill (see, I didn’t deny it, but it so wasn’t murder), I’d taken Krissy to get the cut on her head checked. While the doc was shining a flashlight in her eyes, checking for a concussion (she didn’t have one), I called London and told them what happened. A few hours later, Commander Gerard Avalon showed up at the hospital, still wearing his immaculately pressed suit and his thin-lipped sneer.

  We stood in the brightly lit hospital hallway as doctors and nurses dashed by, completely ignoring us. There was a look of contempt on Avalon’s face as he eyed the grimy backpack.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a backpack,” I said. “Inside it is a goblin weapon called the Gauntlet of Greckhite. It’s a long story, but Bill Foster was a traitor and he was planning on destroying the Round Table.”

  “Was?”

  I nodded. “He’s dead.”

  Avalon’s eyes flashed. “Are you saying you killed the Pendragon?”

  “I had no choice,” I said. “He was a traitor.”

  The commander put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, “David Carver, I’m placing you under arrest for treason to the Knights of the Round Table, dereliction of duty in time of war, and—” his eyes sparkled “—the murder of a superior officer.”

  A couple of burly knights in matching black suits appeared from around a corner and pinned my arms behind my back. My friends were nowhere to be seen as Avalon’s bodyguards marched me out of the hospital. They put me onboard Guinevere, freshly back from battle, and took me to London.

  Yeah. That happened.

  I stopped the traitor from ending human civilization, and how did they thank me? By locking me in a literal stone-walled dungeon. Who the hell did these bureaucrats think they were? I saved everyone—including, I should add, their musty old asses—and they threw me in a cell. The nerve. The gall. The…

  Sorry. I guess I was indignant about the whole thing. I think I was entitled.

  My guards were good guys. They didn’t agree with their bosses’ decisions to keep me locked up, but they had orders to follow. I couldn’t fault them for that. Through the guards, bits and pieces about the end of the war filtered in. Details were fuzzy, but what I gathered was this: May stopped Loretta’s ship. Guinevere intercepted the larger ship miles from New York Harbor and done something she hadn’t done in at least a century: attacked and sank another vessel. It sounded like a spectacular battle—lots of fireballs and lightning bolts and cannons going off. Wish I could’ve been there.

  The elders had put all of their chips on Bill and the vampire twins. Roberto and Bill were dead, and no one had seen Loretta since Krissy and I had broken the enthrallment. The elders’ plans fell apart. A few days after the Battle of New York, the elders sent a formal envoy to the Table to negotiate their surrender.

  The vampires turned on each other, pointing fingers and screaming at the top of their empty lungs to anyone who would listen about who was really responsible for the war. It took a week of angry shouting in a castle outside Edinburgh, but it was ultimately decided. A few elders were found to be the parties most guilt, and they were sentenced to an eternity in the Round Table’s most secure prison. The rest of the elders agreed to disband, and they slunk off to their castles and fortresses to lick their wounds.

  Suddenly instead of a united front, there was a fractured mess made up of dozens of vampiric factions. The only vampire who didn’t lose influence was the one who represented them in the Scotland Accords. Ambassador Flavian was now the de facto leader of the vampires. Somehow, I wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

  But the vampires were stymied. We let them continue to exist in the same corners of the world that they took after the last Vampire War. As long as they stayed in those corners, we’d leave them alone. They wouldn’t try to expand again. Not for a while, anyway.

  My concern was my survival. My cell was cramped—just large enough for a cot and a toilet. A set of iron shackles were embedded in the wall, reminding me that it could have been worse. Three of the walls were solid gray stone. Vertical iron bars kept me from freedom, a fact I couldn’t help but notice every single moment of every single day.

  Bastards. I should’ve let them burn.

  The thud of a bolt unlocking at the top of the stairs. Most days I only got visits twice when my guards brought my meals down. Breakfast had been a couple of hours ago, and it couldn’t be dinnertime yet. Which meant…

  May appeared at the bottom of the granite stairs, every bit the conquering hero. Her black uniform was all crisp lines. Her boots sparkled. The handle of her sword had been polished. Other than the guards, she was the only person I’d seen since I’d been put in this cell, and she was coaching me on how to survive the upcoming tribunal.

  Three members of the Commanders Council had been selected to serve as my judge, jury, and I guess—if it came to it—executioner. I was scared. There was a better-than-good-chance that I was going to wind up losing my head over this—literally.

  Before the Battle of the Atlantic, May was a hero to the rank-and-file knights. After the battle, she was an icon. One of the only currently active knights who was also a practicing magician. She’d literally sent the vampires’ plans for world domination to the bottom of the ocean. One more time, Mayena Strain was going to save my ass.

  She’d come to see me a few times over the last few weeks, in between attending the peace talks and overseeing the mop-ups of vampire resistance. She’d cut my hair (which made me look more respectable) and shaved my face (which emphasized the scars on my neck, which she wanted the tribunal to
remember I’d gotten in service to the Table). She’d also coached me about what to say to the tribunal. Mostly it involved acting contrite and respectful. I figured I could do that. Probably.

  May was carrying a garment bag over her shoulder. The butterflies, which had been in my stomach since I went into the dungeon, mutated into Mothra beasts. There was only one reason May would be bringing me a suit of clothes.

  “Morning, Dave,” she said brightly. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m pretty sure the biscuit they gave me for breakfast was a rock,” I grumbled.

  “You’re in England. That’s just English food.”

  “It wouldn’t kill them to fry me some bacon, that’s all I’m saying. What’s in the bag?”

  Her smile faded. “You know what it is.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “It’s your uniform,” she said. “Your dress blacks. Today’s the day.”

  I swallowed a mouthful of stale air and held it for a moment. The already-cramped cell suddenly felt even smaller. “Right,” I finally said. “When do we start?”

  “The tribunal’s assembling upstairs,” May said. “In a few minutes the guards will bring you up.” She stood inches from the cell, much closer than Round Table regulations technically allowed. “Remember, I can’t say anything during the trial, but my testimony’s on the record. So’s Earl’s, Rob’s, Krissy’s, everybody. It’s gonna feel like you’re on your own, but you’re not alone, Dave. Remember that.”

  I nodded and looked her in the eyes. “I know. Thank you, May. Listen, I don’t know how this is gonna go, but just in case, I want to say—“

  “David William Carver,” May snapped. “If you finish that sentence I’ll turn you into a toadstool.”

  I blinked. “You can do that?”

  “If you don’t stop acting like a dead man walking, we’ll find out.” She put her hands on top of mine, which were wrapped around the bars of my cell. “You’re gonna be fine, Dave. You’ve survived much worse than this.” She leaned in close and kissed my fingers. Then she whirled around and shouted, “Guards! He’s ready to go.”

  Just like that she was gone, and a burly knight named Hank took her place. He unlocked the cell and handed me the garment bag. He didn’t turn around while I changed.

  The dress uniform of the Knights of the Round Table is a midnight black shirt, pants, jacket, and hooded cloak. My cloak was held in place with the pin denoting my rank of captain. I looked at Hank and asked, “How do I look?”

  He grunted in a manner that was definitely nonverbal, and beckoned me out of the cell. Another guard, Hank’s brother, Tony, appeared at the top of the stairs. He led the way down a long hall. Hank stayed right behind me the whole time, so it would have been impossible, even if I’d wanted to try, to escape. They took me down a short, narrow hallway. An old-fashioned elevator was fixed in an alcove off the main hall. Hank gestured and I climbed inside. As he shut the gate, he whispered, “Good luck.” Then he begun to work the rope-and-pulley system. The elevator started to rise.

  There was a stool in the center of the cart. I sat down. After a moment, the roof overhead opened, and the elevator emerged into a larger manmade cavern.

  My stool rose until it was in the center of a huge, round table. The center of the table had been carved away with a watchmaker’s precision. The table itself was more than two hundred feet in diameter, and though there were only three chairs, spaced in a triangle, I knew it had originally been designed to seat more than a hundred knights.

  Six guards stood in a rigid circle around the table. Each was dressed in shining plate, chain mail, lobstered gauntlets, and visored helmets. Each one wore an identical, sheathed sword and held a long pike.

  The room beyond the guards was wide open, but still clearly underground. (Interestingly, the whole Round Table compound is actually underground beneath the city of London. It’s an actual medieval castle. And it’s underground. I’m not sure how that happened, but I bet it’s a cool story.) The walls were fifty feet high and lined with stadium-style seating. Most of the seats were occupied. They were too far away and it was too dark to make out any faces, but I could see they mostly wore black suits like mine. Knights, then. It wasn’t every day that a knight of the Round Table was put on trial for treason and murder.

  I glimpsed a flash of bright red hair in a seat in the amphitheater’s front row. May. I grinned and shot her a thumbs-up. She shook her head. I didn’t need to see her expression to get the message: Take this seriously.

  No worries there, May. I was taking it plenty seriously.

  A door at the top of the stairs opened and three cloaked, hooded figures emerged. Each of them carried a candle, and they moved slowly, like a funeral procession. When they reached the bottom of the amphitheater, they each took a seat in one of the chairs that surrounded me.

  My tribunal placed their candles on the table in front of them. They pulled folders and stacks of paper from inside their cloaks. At some unseen signal they each took off their hoods.

  Gerard Avalon sat directly across from me, his face totally blank. Seriously, I don’t know if he played poker, but he should have. He’d have made a killing. To his left there was a brown-skinned woman with iron gray hair pulled back in a lockjaw bun. Her name was Camila Gutierrez, Commander of South American Operations. She nodded politely, if not warmly. On the other side of the triangle was a grizzled old man with a bald, tomato-like scalp, and a Santa beard. He was the European Commander and his name was Heinrich Luther. With a handkerchief, he dabbed sweat from his bald pate, the whole time staring daggers at me, at Avalon, at Gutierrez, at the whole amphitheater.

  Luther was the first to speak, in a heavy German accent. “David Carver, you stand accused of treason, abandonment of duty, and most seriously, the murder of William Foster Pendragon. Do you object to these charges?”

  Damn right I object, I was going to say, but I was interrupted.

  “Captain Carver, Commander Luther.” Gerard Avalon’s posh accent was syrupy and smooth. “This body has not stripped the accused of his rank. As such he deserves to be addressed by his title. Do you not agree?”

  Luther frowned and dabbed more sweat from his brow. “I suppose so.”

  Avalon spread his hands in a there you go gesture. Gutierrez smiled, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

  Luther glowered and faced me. “Captain Carver, do you object to the charges?”

  Go time. I cleared my throat and said, clearly and loudly, “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “On what grounds do you object?”

  “On the grounds that Bill Foster was a traitor who was trying to kill me, every single knight of the Round Table, and billions of people besides.”

  “And you have proof of this?”

  I shook my head. May and I had discussed this over and over again. “Not physical proof, sir, no,” I said. “But I was examined by truth-finders. What did they say?”

  “I would remind the accused that we will ask the questions.”

  Avalon cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Let the record show that truth-finders on loan from the Magic Council have corroborated the story of the accused. As far as they could ascertain, he is telling the truth.”

  “But as we all know,” Luther hurried to add, “the mind-readers can be fooled.”

  “Bullshit,” my mouth snapped before my brain could catch up. A quiet laugh rumbled through the amphitheater like a distant peal of thunder. I shot a look at May, who gave a small shake of her head. Back it up.

  “Excuse me?” Luther whispered dangerously.

  “I’m sorry, Commander,” I said. “But I’d like to ask when the truth-finders were wrong.”

  “I will not discuss specifics with you,” Luther said. “This council is not on trial.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The accused does raise an interesting point,” Avalon said. “I am afraid I find myself at a loss to think of even one instance when the truth-finders were bested. One
or two at a time, perhaps, but six of them? I do not recall it happening. Could you provide an example, Commander Luther?”

  Luther wiped more sweat and looked at the papers in front of him. “Nein. I can’t.”

  “I see,” Avalon said, the two words dripping with derision. “Then perhaps we shall return to more earthly testimonials. Beginning with Lieutenant Elmore James. The lieutenant has a stellar service record—he has never had a formal disciplinary note in his files, and he has fought bravely at both Guyana and New York. While Captain Carver is here, by the way, he is one of only two active knights in New York, so he could not be here in person, but he wrote this: ‘I was sitting in the office when Krissy Thomas came in. She went down to the basement. A few minutes later there was an explosion and the Pendragon came out, wearing that Gauntlet.’” Avalon looked at me. “You were holding William Foster in the cellar, yes?”

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “Page Thomas has already been cleared of any wrongdoing. Her brain displayed elements consistent with enthrallment.”

  Avalon let that hang in the air for a moment. Say what you wanted about the man, but he knew how to put on a show. It was so quiet in the arena that you could hear the hum of the Table’s defensive spells around the doors.

  “We now turn to the testimony of Captain Mayena Strain.”

  “I must object,” Luther said. Of course he did. “Captains Strain and Carver have a well known personal, romantic relationship. Her objectivity must be questioned.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw May lean forward dangerously.

  Avalon said, “Captain Strain was our most valuable asset during the war. She led us to several key victories, including the final battle. She also, I should point out, saved our life at the Battle of Bucharest.”

  Luther scowled and looked down.

  Avalon continued: “Before I read her testimony, I should say that I have Captain Strain’s permission to announce this: The Commanders Council has seen fit to accept her resignation. This testimony will be her last act as a knight of the Round Table.”