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

by John Hartness

  “Oh, yeah, that smells weird. What is it?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked you, now would I?”

  “I don’t know, every once in a while you like to be the smart one.”

  “No, Gregory, I am well-adjusted to being the good-looking one while you are the smart one. Now do you know what that smell is?”

  “No, but I can follow it.” And he did just that, wandering through the aisles in a seemingly random pattern that somehow felt anything but random. I motioned for Sabrina to stay with the boy and set out after my partner. Greg’s sniffer is so much better than mine it’s like comparing a bloodhound to a water buffalo with a head cold, so I just followed him until we came to a locked door well away from the rest of the convention. Greg looked back at me, I shrugged, and he reached over and yanked the knob right off of the door.

  “That solves the pesky lock issue.” I said, opening the door and peering inside. I fumbled around for a light switch for a second, and then flipped on the fluorescents. It was an ordinary storage closet, about ten feet by fifteen feet. The only thing out of the ordinary was the guy passed out on the floor. He looked to be nearing sixty, white hair, a little jowly but in decent shape. I reached down and shook him gently. He jerked awake with a cry, pulling away from me and scooting on his butt to the wall.

  “Leave me alone!” He yelled, but his voice came out thready, like he hadn’t had anything to drink in years.

  “Hey fella, are you alright?” I asked, holding up both hands so he could see I was unarmed. That’s when I realized I wasn’t just making a show of it, I was really unarmed. I don’t usually go out without at least a small pistol strapped to my ankle, but the convention center had rules against that sort of thing, and a metal detector could have made my life very uncomfortable, so I left my guns at home tonight. All I had on me was a pocketknife, and I was pretty sure Greg was in the same boat. Suddenly I paid the old man a lot more careful attention.

  “Brian?” He asked when he could finally manage to speak again. “Where’s Brian?”

  “Who’s Brian?” I asked in my best I have no idea what’s going on tone of voice.

  “My son. Blonde hair, about eight years old. I brought him to his first convention. Where is he? Where am I? What am I doing here?”

  He was getting more and more agitated, so I helped him up. “I think your son is right out here, but aren’t you a little old to have kid his age?”

  “What do you mean? I’m thirty-eight.”

  “Dude,” Greg said gently. “You’ve gotta be at least fifty-five, maybe sixty.”

  “No way! Here’s my license, I’m thirty-eight years old! I know kids your age aren’t the best at telling age, but you should be better than that!” He pulled out a wallet and showed us his ID. It did indeed look like him, only twenty years ago. Weird thing was, that license didn’t expire until next year.

  “Greg, this dude’s our age.”

  “No I’m not! I told you…”

  “Shut up.” I put the force of my will into my voice, and his mouth snapped shut so quickly I was worried he might have bitten off part of his tongue. I didn’t see any blood, so I stopped sweating it. I passed the license over to Greg, who examined it minutely.

  “Looks real.”

  “Yeah, and we’re not exactly the poster children for looking our age.” Since we’d died in 1995, right out of college, and still looked twenty-ish instead of the nearly forty we really were. I waved a hand at the muted old dude and waved him over. “Look, uh..Dave,” I said, checking his license to get his name. “Something funky is going on here. I know there’s a costume contest and all, but you look like you’ve been hit with some serious old man makeup.” His eyes got big as I talked.

  “I’m guessing from your reaction that you don’t know anything about what my partner is saying?” Greg asked.

  “No, what are you guys talking about? And where’s Brian? Where is my son?” He was starting to yell now, and if he really had been aged twenty years in twenty minutes, that couldn’t be good for his blood pressure.

  I thought frantically about how to calm him down before we had to deal with security when I had an idea. “Sleep.” I said, throwing enough mojo at him to stop a charging rhinoceros. He slumped to the floor, and I quickly caught him and eased him down into a sitting position.

  “What are you doing?” My partner asked furiously.

  “I’m buying time. Now can you fire up your super-sniffer and get back to chasing that weird scent? It’s all over this dude, but it’s not his. It’s like whatever smells funky spent a lot of time with our victim here.”

  “And whenever it was done with him, he was old.”

  “Yeah, exactly. So unless we want a whole lot of prematurely golden age geeks out there, we’d better find whatever did this, and fast!” Greg started sniffing around the storage room like a bloodhound until I smacked him on the back of the head.

  “What was that for?”

  “Whatever did this isn’t in here, moron! Try outside, maybe?”

  “Oh yeah.” He led me back out into the exhibit hall, trying to look subtle as he sniffed the air repeatedly.

  Just as he locked onto a scent, a voice came over the loudspeaker announcing the beginning of the costume contest. “Come on!” I started down the aisle without even waiting to see if Greg was following.

  “How do you know it’ll be at the costume contest?” He said, panting to keep up with me. Okay, he was panting more out of habit than anything else, since we don’t have to breathe, but he panted like a sled dog in Aruba anyway.

  “One - because everyone will be at the costume contest, so that’s where the food will be. Two - because there’s no better place for a hideous life-sucking monster to hide than in the costume contest. Now hurry up!” I poured on the speed and made the length of the convention center in about eight seconds. The contest was in a big ballroom, some distance from the dealer hall, so I sent Sabrina a text telling her where to meet us.

  Greg and I skidded to a stop at the door to the ballroom, trying our best to look nonchalant. “Don’t worry, fellas, the hot Catwoman costumes haven’t even started yet,” offered the pervy guy in a Silent Bob trenchcoat at the back of the room. I shot him a dirty look and started to make my way to the front of the crowd, annoying no small number of fanboys and video camera-toting momma’s boys who had traded their one weekend of the year out of the basement to come to the costume contest. There were the usual contenders - the juvenile Slave Leia we’d seen earlier, a cavalcade of Batman villains all working the scene together. One guy went deep into the comic book backlist and pulled out an Ambush Bug costume, much to Greg’s delight. I will admit to a glance or two at the Black Cat and Harley Quinn costumes, but it took me only a few seconds to lock onto my most likely target - a statuesque blonde in a toga with a slit in the leg that went about half a mile past decency, and a golden circlet glittering on her brow.

  About half a dozen con-goers were following her like she was dropping ice cubes in the Sahara, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes continually scanned the crowd, looking for something but obviously not finding it in the gathered nerd herd. I waved Greg over to me and pointed, trying to get close enough to her to get a whiff of her scent. Greg breathed deeply, then nodded to me. “That’s her. Or she’s it. Or whatever. You know what I mean.”

  “Yep.” I moved to intercept the woman, but her eyes locked on me as I approached and she waved an arm negligently at her sycophantic followers. Suddenly they transformed from sappy loverboys to a half-dozen angry humans, all focused on yours truly. I did the best duck and weave I could, trying to avoid hitting any of them. They didn’t make things easy on me, throwing their own punches and trying to wrestle me down to the ground. I shoved a couple of them back and got a good look at the men attacking me, and what I saw made me gasp. I could see them aging almost before my eyes. I glanced back over to Nightmare Barbie, and saw that she was getting obviously stronger and more beautiful as she dra
ined the life from the men attacking me.

  “We gotta get the fight out of here!” I yelled to Greg. “She’s got too many people to draw from! We’ll never stop her in here!”

  “You’ll never stop me anywhere, mortal!” The blonde bombshell laughed. “I’ve been feeding off souls since before your ancestors dragged themselves from the mud and grew legs!”

  I stopped short and stared at her, open-mouthed. “Wow, lady, you’re worse at witty repartee than I am. And I thought nobody was that bad!” That gave the biggest fanboy time to catch up to me and clock me in the head with his Green Lantern Power Battery, and I went down like a sack of scrawny potatoes. I gave my best Hercules impression, and tossed the heap of flailing nerds off of me. I continued my mad dash for the door, hot on Greg’s heels as he sprinted down the hall into the atrium, looking for any place that would give us some room to maneuver.

  We got into the atrium, and started thumping hypnotized nerds. While somewhat satisfying, nothing we did brought us any closer to actually taking down our psycho Aphrodite, until I got a bright idea and chunked a Storm Trooper at her head. She deflected the flying cosplayer with barely a twitch, but the distraction did momentarily break her hold on the rest of her geek army. I put as much mojo into my voice as I could muster and shouted, “Sleep!” in my best James Earl Jones impression. Admittedly, I sounded more like C. Thomas Howell in Sixteen Candles than James Earl Jones in anything past puberty, but it worked. The humans in the lobby all slumped to the ground, leaving Greg and I alone with our attacker.

  She glared around at her fallen minions, and then hissed at me “No matter, vampire! I will feat on your bones tonight!” She leapt across twenty feet of atrium like she was on wires, and I barely got out of the way of her outstretched arms, which were suddenly much longer and much clawy-er than they had been a few minutes before. I ducked another slash, then lashed out with a kick that she narrowly avoided.

  We both pulled back, taking the chance to size up our opponent. She was tall, built like a centerfold, with blonde curls spilling all the way down to her butt. And thanks to the open back of her toga, I could see exactly where that part of her started. She wore Roman sandals that laced up exceptionally long and well-formed legs, and except for the claws at the ends of them, had gorgeous arms, too. In short, she was like every beautiful woman in the magazines, except a little more open about the fact that she wanted to rip my heart out and eat it.

  “Isn’t this the point where you waste a lot of valuable time explaining yourself so I can figure out how to defeat you?” I quipped as I circled, jockeying for position. She didn’t even crack a smile, just stopped moving and closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, the stood stock still and smiled at me.

  “No, vampire. This is the point where I use your idiot friend to kill you.” I heard the air move behind me, but I was too slow to get out of the way as Greg suddenly smashed into me with both fists. The force of the blow lifted me off my feet and deposited me face-first onto the steps beside the monster-chick. I rolled over just in time to see her claws streaking down at my chest, and kicked out just in time to deflect her into the concrete beside me. I hopped up and punched her in the jaw, but she only smiled at me. I turned my head in time to meet Greg’s fist full on with my nose, and borrowed blood exploded from my face. I went back down onto the steps, rolling to the side to avoid getting skewered and trying desperately to come up with a way to survive this that didn’t include killing my best friend.

  Greg lashed out again, this time trying his best to stomp me into the carpet. I rolled away and kept rolling until I was far enough away to regain my footing. I looked up just in time to see the rotund revenger charging me like a spandex-wrapped rhinoceros, and jumped high over his head, letting him pass harmlessly underneath me. I cast a glance at our wayward soul-sucker, but she was nowhere to be found. Great, my partner wants to kill me and the real baddie has vanished. I hate leaving the house.

  I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and furiously worked on a plan to beat down Greg without permanently injuring him. He was fast, but I was faster. I couldn’t hold a candle to his strength, but I could (probably) outwit him in his addled state, and I was definitely faster. Unfortunately, all that meant was that I could run around in circles indefinitely while I tried to figure out what this freaky woman was, and how she’d befuddled my partner. And how I’d escaped her rather obvious and spectacular wiles.

  When the idea hit me, it landed with all the force of a portly vampire running at full steam. Well, the idea didn’t hurt, but when I had the idea, I stopped in my tracks. Since Greg was chasing me at the time, that meant that he caught me, rather suddenly. And that did hurt, quite a lot, actually. He tackled me with all the form, speed and power of an NFL linebacker, ramming me into a guardrail that groaned against the impact, but managed to hold. Good thing, I thought as I looked out over the twenty-foot drop to the floor below.

  I rammed my head backwards, connecting solidly with Greg’s nose and crushing it with a satisfying thwack! My partner released his hold on me and staggered back, blood pouring from his crushed nose and eyes streaming tears. “What the hell did you do that for?” He wailed, although with his busted sniffer it sounded more like “But de hebb didoodoo dat pour?”

  “Are you done trying to kill me?” I asked, bending the guardrail back into shape and making it a point to stay out of arm’s reach.

  “Trying to kill you? Are you insane?” Greg sat on a nearby step and reached into a pouch on his utility belt. Yes, utility belt. Don’t ask. It just makes my head hurt. He pulled out a wad of tissues and started trying to stem the blood pouring from his nose. After all, he every drop that he bled out meant more he was going to have to replace later.

  “Dude, you were just trying to turn me into sidewalk pizza, remember?”

  “No. I remember us going to the costume contest, I remember seeing the hot blonde, and that’s the last thing I remember. What happened?”

  “You went all Hulk Smash on me and tried to kick my ass.”

  “How’d I do?”

  I just stared at him. “I’m still here, and you’ve got a broken nose. You tell me how you did.”

  “Fair enough. Now what?”

  “Now we try to figure out why she was able to get you to want to kill me, then we try to figure out why you don’t want to kill me anymore, and then we try to kill her.”

  “Sounds about right.” Greg got up from the steps, staggered a little, and sat back down. “I might need to be here for a few more minutes.”

  “No worries, I’ll go find Sabrina and our seductress and figure out how she’s bespelling people.”

  “Pheromones.” Came a voice from beside me. I jumped an appropriate distance into the air, like twelve feet or so, and turn to see Sabrina standing there. She still had on the Cap t-shirt, but it was ripped at the waist now to give her faster access to her guns. I liked the look. A lot.

  “I’ve been warning you about that. One more time and you’re getting a bell!” I said as I landed less than gracefully. She just smiled.

  “What about pheromones?” mumbled Greg from the steps.

  “She’s using pheromones to mojo guys. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  “For the obvious-impaired among us, why don’t you give me the Pheromones for Dummies version.” I sat down next to Greg like a dutiful pupil.

  “Some people think that when humans are aroused, they give off certain scents that are meant to attract other humans.”

  “They do.” I interjected. Sabrina looked down at me and I shrugged. “Sorry. Vamp-sniffer, remember? People give off all kinds of scents all of the time, not just when they’re turned on. But go on.”

  She continued in her best graduate assistant tone, which was made more than a little distracting by the fact that she was wearing shorts that were just an inch shy of being indecent, a shredded superhero t-shirt and knee-high boots. All in all, it was very difficult to drag my eyes up to her face,
much less pay any attention to the words coming out of her mouth.

  “Since your monster is obviously female, and all the people she’s bedazzled have been men, it’s obvious to me that she’s using pheromones of some sort to do the trick.”

  “Then how did she get Greg and not me? I mean, I know his sniffer is better than mine, but mine’s still pretty good.”

  “What did you have for dinner?”

  “Same thing I always have, oh wait, you mean who did I have for dinner?”

  “Yeah, who?”

  “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”

  “Just answer the question, Jimmy. I’m pretty sure I know the answer anyway.”

  “Okay, I stopped into Fuel for a bite in the bathroom while you were parking the car. Sorry, I get peckish in crowds, you know that.”

  “And whoever you drank from had just finished dinner, right?”

  “Yeah, and boy did they like their pizza with garlic! Wait a minute, you think…?”

  “Yep, you got too much garlic in the blood and it kept you from smelling the pheromones.”

  “Thin, Detective, really thin.”

  “You got anything better?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Not a bit. Occam’s razor it is, then.”

  Greg’s head snapped up. “Occam’s razor?”

  “You know, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one?” I said, finally the smart one for a change.

  “I know what it is, bro. I just didn’t think you did.” So much for me being the smart one.

  “So now what?” I asked them.

  “Well, since you broke Greg’s nose, I think he’s safe from smelling anything. And since her mojo doesn’t seem to work on women, I’m in the clear, so all we need to do is…this!” Sabrina tossed a handful of black pepper in my face, setting off an insane sneezing fit and ensuring that I wouldn’t smell anything for at least another few minutes.

  “Thanks, now how to we find this chick?” I asked, reaching out to Greg for some of his tissues. Unfortunately as we scoured the convention center, it became pretty easy to follow her path by the trail of unconscious old men she’d left. We found her in the exhibit hall, once again surrounded by mindless men. I know, Sabrina would probably say that was redundant, but that’s beside the point.