Knight (un)Life - A Black Knight Short Story Collection

by John Hartness

  *****

  Angela Clarkson’s door was covered in almost stereotypical teen angst-isms. She ran the gamut from vampire photos to skull and crossbones “Keep Out” placards to bumper stickers with band names I didn’t recognize. In other words, it was designed to make people like me feel old. No, I don’t mean vampires, I mean adults. Which I suppose Greg and I qualify as on our best days.

  I knocked sharply on the door and heard a muffled “Go away!” from the other side.

  “Looks like we’re in the right place,” Greg said. “Why don’t you let us handle this, Jane?” She looked at him sharply at the use of her first name, but I guess Greg figured when you’re wearing the head of the family on your shoes you can be a little more familiar than the gardener. He motioned for the trophy wife to head back downstairs, and she snarled up at him.

  “She’s been locked away in that room ever since the day it happened. She won’t speak to me, won’t come out except in the dead of night to raid the refrigerator, won’t do anything except sit up there in her room listening to that damn music.” She stomped off down the stairs and Greg and I both shrugged.

  “Looks like she’s come down with a bad case of sixteen,” I muttered.

  “Dude, let me take the lead on this one,” My partner said.

  “Why? Don’t you think I’m sensitive?” I spread my hands in my best impression of someone innocent and sweet, which wasn’t very good.

  “Yeah, you’re about as sensitive as a plutonium enema.” Greg left me considering the simile and knocked softly on the door again. “Angela? She’s gone. My name is Greg and I’d like to come in and talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “Bugger off” came from the other side of the door, closer this time.

  “Angela, you know we can get in there anytime we want, right? I’m trying to be the good cop, but I can only do that as long as we can actually talk to you.”

  Just as I was about to knock the door off the hinges, it opened.

  The room inside was a shrine to all things her blonde bombshell step-mother would have hated. Angela had flopped back down in the middle of a mattress on the floor, black sheets swirled carelessly on the bed. The walls were covered in band and movie posters, the bloodier the movie, the better. I counted six Saw movies, three old-school Friday the 13th, and one original Fright Night, plus some indie thing called The Gospel According to Booze, Bullets & Hot Pink Jesus that actually looked interesting. The windows were covered with heavy blankets so that the only light in the room came from a lava lamp in one corner and a couple dozen candles strewn around every horizontal surface. The flickering light made Angela look smaller than she already was, which was pretty tiny. Where Jane had curves in places I didn’t even know were places, Angela still had the coltish figure of a girl turning into a woman. Her long legs were more scrawny than sultry, poking out from the cargo shorts that looked about five sizes too big. A tattered Sex Pistols t-shirt hung off her skinny torso, and a watch in a thick leather band capped off one bony wrist. Long, badly dyed black hair hung around her neck, with streaks of crimson and purple. And dangling from a leather thong between the bumps in her training bra was what we’d come her for - Alan Clarkston’s college ring, blue gemstone flickering eerily like it was lit from within. Which, come to think of it, might have been the case.

  Greg held out his hand to keep me from rushing across the room and snatching the ring, muttering “Slow down, Gollum. She might go nuts if we snatch the Precious.”

  I shrugged and leaned against the door jamb. If he wanted to talk, fine. But I really needed to hit something, and soon.

  Greg pulled a desk chair over and sat next to the bed. “Hi Angela, I’m Greg.” He stuck out his hand, and she shook it reflexively. No matter how much of sixteen she was, manners had been instilled in this kid at an early age.

  “Your hand’s cold.” She said.

  “Yeah, that happens.”

  “You’re dead.”

  “That happens too.”

  “Why didn’t you rot?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know how it works.”

  “My dad rotted.”

  “Yeah. It’s not real pretty.”

  “Probably worse since your asshole buddy over there shot him.” I had no idea how she knew I was the one doing the shooting, until I looked down and saw that I was the only one with a visible gun. For all the stupid jokes I make about it, Greg’s utility belt does help him carry concealed.

  “Hey!” I protested. “I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”

  “You’re a moron,” she said to me. “You’re right, though. I guess you’re here to tell me why what I did was wrong and how my dad can never go to heaven as long as I keep him trapped here and all that crap?” She looked at Greg with a raised eyebrow.

  “Look, Angela. I don’t have those answers. I’ve been dead a while and I’m still walking around, but I’m not really sure why. I don’t know anything more about heaven or hell than you do. I’ve never seen either one, and I’m not in a big rush to, either. But I know what it’s like to lose somebody you love, and how hard that can be. So if you need to talk about it, I’ve been there, and I’m a pretty good listener.”

  Great, now we’re vampire counselors. If I didn’t get to punch or bite somebody soon I was gonna go nuts. But the kid seemed to be responding to Greg’s psycho-babble. I left them there talking in low voices about grief and what it felt like when you couldn’t ever see somebody you loved ever again. Greg really missed his baby sister, who would probably be a few years older than Angela by now. She was just a preschooler when we were turned, and Greg’s never seen her since. I didn’t miss anybody like that, and didn’t want to hang around being all mopey and maudlin. It was just a little too cliche for me - the whole tormented vampire thing. If I stayed in that room any longer I was going to sparkle or start wearing a lot of hair gel, and that was no good for anyone. So I went to the kitchen looking for a snack. Like a cook, or a maid.

  What I found was Mrs. Clarkston in the study tearing everything apart. She was ripping into shelves and file cabinets like a madwoman, tossing papers around and generally making as big a mess as I did when I shot her zombie husband in the face. The deceased Mr. Clarkston was struggling against his restraints, but she ignored him in her efforts to make the office look like a trailer park after a tornado. I walked in as quietly as I could, which is pretty quietly since I am one of the undead creatures of the night, and stepped up behind the harried arm ornament.

  “Looking for something?” I whispered into her ear and leaned back to watch as she jumped nearly out of her designer hose and squealed like a nine-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert.

  Jane whirled around and aimed a slap at my face. I caught her hand easily and pulled her to me, looking her square in the eyes and putting a little mojo into my gaze. “Sit down,” I ordered. “Now talk. You’ve got bigger problems than a zombie in the library, don’t you?”

  She looked up at me, hypnotized. I guess I’d put more whammy in that gaze than I’d thought.

  “I need to find the will. He told me before he died that he changed the will to leave everything to that brat, and I have to find it and destroy it.”

  I leaned in close, sniffing along the side of her neck. “So he told you that he was cutting you out of the will, huh? How did that make you feel?”

  “I was angry, furious. After all these years putting up with her crap and now she was going to get everything? It was supposed to be mine, dammit!” She started to flush with anger, and the blood flowing to her face was making me really want a snack.

  “So what did you do when you got angry, Jane?” I purred into her ear, running my tongue along the side of her neck. Her sweat tasted sweet, the slightest tang of salt hinting at the blood that ran just beneath the thin flesh of her throat.

  “I doped him up. I dosed his morning shake with energy drinks and diet pills to make his heart give out. I knew he had a weak heart after his bypass a few years ago, and I
figured if I could get him all worked up he’d croak on the treadmill. And it worked, too! But then that little brat found some way to bring him back, and now I’ve got to find that will before she does, and get rid of the stupid walking dead over there.” She sneered at the corpse of her husband, who sat very still in his chair. He looked at me with the half a face he had left, and I could almost see a flicker of human emotion left in his one eye. I nodded at him, and bit deeply into his wife’s neck.

  She arched her back, causing all sorts of nice things to happen under her blouse, but that was nothing compared to the rush of hot blood down my throat. The coppery taste almost scalded me on the way down, but I could feel the warmth of her life force flowing through my veins, making my shriveled heart beat again in time with her own weakening pulse. I drank, and drank, and saw the room sharpen, the colors brighten and every detail come into crisp focus. I pulled back after a couple of pints, taking just enough to leave her loopy, and stepped back from her, looking around a little wide-eyed. She stared up at me with glassy eyes, still under my mojo.

  Greg and Angela stood in the doorway watching me, Greg with a disapproving glare on his face and Angela looking at me with a fierce joy on hers. “I knew you guys were real. I knew it!” she said. I crossed the distance between us in half a second and locked eyes with the girl, dropping the full force of my will into my stare, and she fell under my spell instantly.

  “You will forget you ever met me. You will not remember any interaction with Greg or myself, and you will forget all about any zombies, vampires or magic. The only monsters you will believe in are the ones that exist in your everyday life, and the ones on TV.” She nodded slowly, and I turned to Greg.

  “Take her outside. She’s about to be an orphan, and homeless.” He gave me a disapproving glare, but I held firm. I had a bad feeling that we were going to have a “conversation” about this later, one of those talks that you only have with your best friend or someone you’re sleeping with. And since Greg’s never been my type, the chances of make-up sex after our “conversation” were nil. After a long minute he led the girl out of the library, and I looked over at the zombie in the chair. I held out the ring I’d snatched from around Angela’s neck and looked over at him. “This is what’s tying you here, right?” He nodded, and I put the thong around my neck. I pulled out my pocket knife and cut him free of the chair.

  “Do what you need to do here.” I motioned toward his stunned gold-digging widow, and Alan shambled across the room to her. Without hands it was a little difficult, but the last thing I saw of the lovely and evil Mrs. Clarkston was her struggling in the chair as her husband shoved the stump of one arm down her throat. I went to the safe behind the portrait of Mr. & Mrs. Clarkston and pulled it open. I didn’t bother with a combination, I was flush with new blood and at the top of my game. I ripped the door off the safe and pulled the folded will out. I glanced at it to make sure it was the one listing Angela as the inheritor of everything, and put it in my back pocket. My front pockets I filled with cash from the safe and walked out towards the front door. I paused at the desk, took an expensive lighter out of a drawer, and very carefully lit the piles of paper that Jane had scattered all around the room. The office went up like a tinder box, and I hauled ass out of the McMansion.

  I found Greg and Angela standing by Greg’s car in the front driveway. I handed her the ring and the will, and started for the car. Greg shot me a grim look, and I reached into my pocket and handed her the cash I’d taken from the safe as well.

  She stood there for a moment, tears pouring down her face as she watched her home go up in flames. “Where will I go?”

  Greg put an arm around her shoulders and said “I’ve called a friend of ours. He’s a priest, and a good man. He’ll find you a place to stay until you get back on your feet.”

  “Thank you.” She shook my hand, and then hugged Greg fiercely. I heard her whisper to my partner “She still loves you.” Before she pulled back and held up the ring.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “That’s between you and your theology, sweetie.” I turned and walked to the car. Greg got in and started the engine, and as we backed into a turn, we saw a brilliant flash of blue light as she smashed the gem and waved goodbye to her father.

  Movie Knight

  A Black Knight Chronicles Short Story

  By John G. Hartness

  I wanted to play with the idea of the guys trying to have a relaxing evening at home, except nothing can be easy for these guys. So it isn’t. This story takes place after Back in Black.

  “Don’t answer that.” Sabrina warned as I reached for my phone. She was on the couch beside me with the TV remote in her hand, popcorn in her lap, and a beer on the table beside her. I had a straw in a nicely chilled bottle of B-Negative and a beer chaser. And a ringing phone.

  “I’d listen to her, bro.” My partner, Greg Knightwood warned from his armchair. He had his own beer and blood combo pack set up, and his bare feet were crossed on a tattered ottoman that had survived years of moving since we’d graduated college. I shuddered every time I saw anybody’s bare skin touch that thing, even though Greg was long past catching any diseases. We were all three settled in for a long overdue movie marathon, and after the events of the past few weeks, we deserved it. A trip to FairyLand and back, a cage mage against trolls and evil fairies, and playing matchmaker for a dragon definitely had taken its toll on the three of us. So we were all looking forward to a nice night of mindless entertainment, and then my phone rang. I could see why they were shooting me daggers just for thinking of answering the call, but I’ve never been the brains of the operation.

  I ignored them both and picked up the phone. Bobby Reed’s face looked up at me from the screen, frozen in the goofy look he was sporting when I took the picture. I swiped my finger across the screen to answer and said “Sharky’s Pool Hall. CueBall speaking. You rack ‘em, we smack ‘em.”

  “Jimmy?” Bobby’s voice sounded weird, thready and high.

  “Yeah, Bobby, what’s up? We’re stocked pretty well right now, but if you had anything exotic come in I can come see you tomorrow.” Bobby was a coroner’s assistant for Mecklenburg County, and was also one of my best connections for fresh blood. Having Bobby on speed dial kept the people of Charlotte from a lot of odd cases of iron deficiency and listlessness that vampire victims are known to experience.

  “I think I need you down here. I need your help, Jimmy.” Bobby sounded scared. And not “my boss found out I’ve been selling blood to vampires on the side and now I’m fired” scared. More like “there’s a tiger in the morgue and it wants to eat my liver” scared.

  “What’s up, man? Did that parakeet’s owners finally find you?” I teased. Bobby’s promising career as a pet undertaker had been cut short following an embarrassing event at a party involving a parakeet, a mountain goat and five cans of whipped cream.

  “That ain’t funny, man. Just get down here. There’s something bad going on, and I don’t think the normal cops can help. I gotta go, I gotta hide. When you get here, I’ll be in the top right drawer. I don’t get reception in there, but knock before you open the door. I’m taking my shotgun in with me.” Bobby hung up and I stared at the phone trying to process his last words.

  “What’s up?” Sabrina said from the couch. She looked so relaxed, sitting there waiting to watch a science fiction movie with her “favorite dead dork detectives.” She had her shoes off and sock feet propped up on the coffee table. Sabrina was casual today, which meant jeans and a plain red t-shirt, with a dress shirt unbutton over the tee to cover her sidearm. It was a pretty big departure from the tailored look she usually sported as a detective in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, but she wore it well. Damn well, as a matter of fact, and I’d been looking very forward to sitting beside her on the couch and idly playing with her long curly brown hair for a couple of hours.

  “Gear up,” I said in my best impression of Mark Harmon from NCIS, which wasn
’t very good. “Bobby’s down in the morgue and scared out of his mind about something.”

  “Did he tell you what had him so scared?” Greg asked as he levered his bulk out of the easy chair. He waddled to his room for some boots and probably some truly unfortunate spandex.

  “No, just that he was going to be hiding in one of the drawers with a shotgun, so we should be careful when we got there.” I went to the closet and grabbed my Glock and a shoulder holster. A Ruger LCP in a paddle holster got velcro’d around my right ankle, and I pulled out my long leather duster. I know, it’s a stereotype that all vampires wear long black cloaky things, but sometimes you need to conceal a weapon or two. I closed the closet door, thought about it for a second, then went back in to grab my sword.

  The sword had been a gift from a fairy princess a few months ago, before she got mad at me and threw me out of her kingdom forever. Yeah, really. That crap happens to me. It’s a gift. I wasn’t sure what had Bobby so worked up, but if he was calling me, then bullets might not be enough. That gave me another thought, and I looked back to Sabrina. “You should grab your armor out of the bottom drawer in my room.”

  “My armor?” She said, a little confused.

  “The chain mail Milandra sent back with you when we got home from FairyLand? It’ll be better against claws or fangs than Kevlar.” She looked at me, evaluated the gear I was sporting, and went to my room without an argument. I made a mental note of the date and time, hoping I could write that down for posterity later.

  Less than ten minutes after Bobby’s call, we were out the door and into the night. I checked the time and saw that we still had plenty of time before daylight to deal with whatever catastrophe we were running headlong into, and slid into Sabrina’s passenger seat. Using her flashers we were at Presbyterian Hospital less than fifteen minutes later, and pulled around to the small morgue entrance. The morgue was a mess, several gurneys had been overturned their occupants scattered around the room in various stages of dismemberment. Greg stopped to investigate as I went for Bobby’s hideout. I kicked a stray foot out of my way as I walked over to the wall of stainless steel drawers and banged on the top right drawer.