The Black Knight Chronicles (Book 6): Man in Black

by John G. Hartness

  And tonight, somebody was looking to assassinate royalty on my watch.

  Not gonna happen.

  Chapter 4

  I BREEZED PAST the door guy and the bouncer—pretty easy to do when they’re both running for the exits. I fought a tide of humanity until I found myself in an unfamiliar place—a dance floor. Lights were flashing all around. Strobes were popping in time to the deafening music. You want to even the playing field against a vampire? Take us to a dance club—the sights and sounds really play havoc with our souped-up senses. Fortunately for me, I swiped some spare earplugs the last time I went to the firing range with Sabrina. Super-hearing is great, until you squeeze off half a dozen rounds from a Mossberg twelve-gauge and can’t carry on a normal conversation for three hours.

  The dance floor was mostly empty when I got inside—seeing people get ripped limb from limb will do that to you. The vampire stood in the middle of the room, drinking from his last victim, a girl dressed in her finest club wear—short-shorts and a lamé tank top that was now drenched in blood. The vampire dropped her with a thud when he caught sight of me, and he gave me a grin.

  “Oh, look, the new sheriff showed up to teach me the error of my ways,” he said. He was a solidly built man, a little over six feet tall and around two hundred twenty pounds. Blood soaked his beard and his blue dress shirt, with spatters all over his slacks and expensive shoes. If it weren’t for the fangs and the gore, he wouldn’t have any trouble picking up companionship at your average nightclub. As it was, the only friend he was going to find tonight would be my stake or a nine millimeter silver-tipped hollowpoint.

  “I’m not here to teach, pal. I figure you know what’s wrong with what you’ve done, and I’m just going to deal with it.” I reached under my shirt and drew my Glock from a shoulder holster. “We going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”

  “I like it rough. Besides, if you think a bullet can stop me, your reign as Master will be even shorter than anybody expects.” A shadow flashed across his eyes, something dark, like something else might be going on with this guy. But then he charged me, his hands reaching for my throat as he lunged, and all thoughts of deeper meaning and anything else went out the window.

  “Yeah, I hope you’ve got better moves than that,” I said, raising my pistol and squeezing off six rounds before he got to me. I scored three hits in his torso, then stepped aside as his momentum carried him past me to the floor.

  He did, in fact, have better moves, rolling through his dive to come up on his feet and fling a pair of silver throwing knives at me. I ducked the first one, but the second caught me in my left thigh, burying itself to the hilt and sending agony through the whole limb. I dropped to my knees and yanked the knife out, but he was on me before I could get back to my feet. I took a kick square on the jaw that snapped my whole body back and slammed my head into the concrete floor. Then he kicked me in the jewels, and my vision went white from pain.

  My opponent reached down and dragged me to my feet, holding me up by my chin. “You beat Tiram? I can’t believe it. That guy was tough. You’re not fit to lick my boots.” Something in that rang false. This guy was young, not more than a decade old. Who was he to know about the Master of the City? I started feeling an awful lot like there was somebody looming over this whole mess, pulling strings and making me dance.

  Back to the matter at hand. I looked down at the vampire and smiled. “Well, am I fit to kick your ass?” I asked before I whipped the throwing knife around and sliced his throat from ear to ear. Blood spurted out, but it was a move intended more to startle than incapacitate. It did the job, though, because he dropped me. I returned the favor of the kick to the groin, then followed up with a kick to his knee that spun his patella around to somewhere it wasn’t supposed to live. He dropped to the floor, and I grabbed him by the hair. It felt good to have someone to take some frustrations out on, someone I didn’t have to pull my punches with. I yanked the yuppie vamp up to his feet and held him there by his hair, staring into his face

  “Who sent you?” I asked him.

  “Screw you,” he said through gritted teeth.

  I jabbed the silver knife into the meat between his shoulder and neck, nowhere that would kill, just be extremely painful. “Who sent you?” I asked again. I had a fleeting thought that this was not something last year’s model of Jimmy Black would ever do. Then I wondered for half a second if that was a good thing, but then my captive opened his mouth to speak. I leaned forward.

  “Screw you, asshole!” He grunted. I moved to the side and stomped down on the back of his ruined knee. He howled in pain, and I moved back around to his front.

  I held the knife in front of his face and leaned in. “Who. Sent. You?” I asked a third time.

  “Screw. You. You’ll never stop what’s coming for you. You’ll never be strong enough.” He said, then spit a gobbet of blood in my face. When I blinked, he leaned forward and rammed his head down onto the silver throwing knife, shoving the spike deep into his brain. I couldn’t tell for sure if the shadow I saw evaporate from his head was real, or just a by-product of getting blood spit in my eye.

  “Shit,” I said as the dead vampire slid off the blade and collapsed onto the floor at my feet. “Well, that didn’t go as planned.” I said to the empty room.

  “I should certainly hope not,” came a voice from near the bar. I looked over and a thin, good-looking vampire about six feet tall with perfect hair and a very European style sat there staring at me. “Because if you had planned anything about that debacle, my report would be very short indeed.”

  “Report?” I repeated, eyebrows crawling toward my hairline. Don’t tell me . . .

  “I am Clive Paulson, and I am to be your evaluator for the Council. I daresay it is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Black.” He stood up and held out his hand, crossing the width of the club in a blink. He moved so gracefully that I barely noticed it. One moment he was sitting, all skinny jeans and tailored T-shirt, the classiest of club wear. The next, he was in my personal space, hand extended for me to shake.

  I shook his hand, wiping the blood off first. He looked down at his palm, and drew a handkerchief from somewhere to wipe the last drops of bad guy off his skin. I suddenly felt a lot less like a badass Master of the City who could handle anything, and a lot more like a gawky JV quarterback who just had Tom Brady ask him to toss the pigskin around a little. Everything about this guy was smooth, cultured, and just cool. I had none of that going for me. I just happened to be the guy who helped take out Tiram and saved the world once or twice.

  “So, when do we start evaluating? I guess I’m as ready as I’ll get, unless I need to be wearing something that doesn’t have a bad guy’s blood all over it, in which case I’ll have to change.” I said, looking at Paulson.

  “My evaluation began the moment you arrived and made your first error in handling the situation,” he replied.

  “What mistake? I took out the bad guy. Problem solved.”

  “That problem, yes. However, there are hundreds of people running through the streets of Charlotte who saw this rogue attack humans, and that is bad for our anonymity. You should have bespelled the crowd to forget everything that happened. That would have been a much safer course of action. Not to mention firing your gun wildly about in a public place. I care not a whit for the humans you may have killed or injured, except that the bullets may be traced back to you.”

  “I’ve got people in the police department. And as for it being safer to hypnotize a crowd than let them run loose, it wouldn’t have been any safer for the people that asshole would have killed while I was mojo-ing that many people. That reminds me,” I said. I walked around the floor, making sure none of the victims could rise. In most cases it wasn’t a problem, because the rogue had drunk enough to kill, but not enough to bring them back. A couple were drained completely, so I broke their necks before they could rise.

  “There, that’s done,” I said. “Or was that another mistake?” I’ll adm
it, I didn’t like this dude coming in questioning my methods. Especially since he was better dressed than me, too.

  “No, that was correct. Any spawn sired by that lunatic would have to be put down, so it was certainly better not to have them rise in the first place. I trust you have cleaners on call?”

  “You know it,” I said, and pulled out my cell. I pressed a few buttons, and when a voice came on the other line, I said “William, I need a cleanup at Legend Uptown. And did you know the evaluator had already arrived?”

  “I did, sir. I sent you a text message to that effect several hours ago,” William replied.

  “Really?” I asked, turning the phone over in my hands. “I gotta get used to this new phone. I’m on my way back to the office, and I assume my new buddy Paulson will be joining me. How are you and Abby coming on those passwords?”

  “After working on it for several hours, she managed to crack Mr. Tiram’s passwords, and she uncovered several hidden accounts that even I was unaware of. The young lady is quite resourceful with a computer.”

  “Well, just wait until you meet—” I stopped, remembering that he wasn’t likely to meet Greg anytime soon, if at all. The thought of not having my buddy to high-five after taking down this stupid vamp was bad enough, but the not having anyone to talk to was really taking the gilt off the edges of this Master-of-the-City thing. “Yeah, she’s pretty good. We should be there in fifteen. Oh, and could you have a few different blood bags available when we get there? I’m feeling a little peckish.”

  “Yes, sir. The cleaners will be there in five minutes.” William clicked off, and I slid the phone back into my pocket.

  “Blood bags?” Paulson asked.

  “Yep, like from a blood bank.”

  “Why on earth would you have blood bags on hand?”

  “In case you missed it, while you were sitting on your ass sipping a mai tai over in the corner, I got stabbed in the leg by a psycho vampire. I’d like to top off the tank before I move on with whatever you’ve got planned.”

  “There are still a few humans cowering in the restrooms, and one that fainted behind the bar, why not simply drink from one of them? If you’re shy, I promise to turn my back.” He gave a little sneer, and I wanted to punch him. For a brief second, discretion reigned and I decided that beating up the guy that the Vampire Council sent to evaluate my Master-worthiness would probably be considered a bad decision in most circles.

  “I don’t drink humans,” I said.

  Paulson looked at me like he’d seen a unicorn. “What? I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”

  “I don’t drink from humans, except in emergencies. It’s just not my thing.” It was really more a Greg thing than mine. My old partner had refused to drink from humans—almost to his death a couple times—and after a while I just followed along with it instead of listening to him bitch about it. Then I started meeting more humans again, then I started dating one, and before I knew it, they just weren’t a food option for me anymore.

  Paulson looked at me again, then just laughed, shaking his head the whole time like a vampire that didn’t drink blood was the funniest thing he’d ever heard of.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and stomped out the door, the snotty little vampire following along behind, laughing all the way.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS AN HOUR or so later when I walked into my office, barefoot from the shower but dressed, my hair still damp. I’d hauled on a fresh pair of jeans and Grendel T-shirt. Paulson sat on one of the matching dark leather couches, and Abby sat opposite him on the other sofa. I grabbed a bag of O-Negative and a Miller Lite from the minifridge, offered one of each to Paulson, and sat down in the brown leather armchair when he declined. The furniture made a “U” shape around a large TV that came down from the ceiling when Abby tapped on her tablet computer.

  “I’ve got the Skype link ready to speak to the members of the Council,” Abby said. “They’ve been waiting for a few minutes.”

  “Let them wait,” I said. If I’d learned anything from dealing with Tiram and Lilith, it’s that real power lies in the ability to screw with someone else’s schedule.

  “That is unwise, Mr. Black,” Paulson said. “The members of the Council have been playing politics and power games since before this nation existed. Simply making them wait a few more minutes will do nothing to assert your authority and will quite likely prove irritating. They are not vampires whom you wish to irritate.” He hadn’t moved since I came in, sitting on the couch with that preternatural stillness vampires use to freak out their human prey.

  “Fine,” I said. “Fire it up, Abby.”

  The screen blinked to life, and a table full of apex predators stared out at me from the fifty-inch LED screen. The Council, at least the part that was available to conference with me, was made up of a regular rainbow of bloodsuckers. There were a couple of Asian vampires, several old white dudes, a young woman with a punk-rock look to her, a Latino guy in a slick suit, a white guy in a cowboy hat, and a very jittery young vamp in the back of the screen with a keyboard on his lap and a look on his face like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

  “Ummm . . . hi?” I gave the screen a little finger-wave and watched as the skinny idiot in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen waved back at me.

  “Hello, Mr. Black,” said one of the European-looking vampires. He wore an expensive suit and round wire-rimmed glasses, and a wineglass of deep red liquid sat on the table before him. “I am Karl, Master Vampire of Germany and the surrounding nations. My compatriots and I compose the majority of the Council. We are the ruling body for all of vampiredom around the world. Our word is law.”

  “I am Chanchira, Master of Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the surrounding countries,” said the female Asian vampire. “Our purpose in this meeting is to explain to you the role of the Council, your role within the Council, and the evaluation process, which I believe Mr. Paulson has already begun.”

  Paulson nodded, and Chanchira went on. “As Karl mentioned, we are responsible for the continuation of the vampire race across the globe. That means that we enforce the laws of our people and do whatever is necessary to prevent the mundane world from becoming aware that we are anything more than creatures out of their storybooks.”

  The Latino vampire spoke up, “Take tonight for instance. While you were able to subdue the rogue with a minimum of property damage, you did nothing to protect the secret of our existence.”

  “I saved lives tonight. That’s kinda what I do.”

  “Human lives,” Karl said with an upturned lip. “Worth less than cattle.”

  “I think we’re probably going to have to agree to disagree on that point, Karl,” I said. “So what’s the plan? Homeboy follows me around, decides if I’m good enough to be your guy here in Charlotte, and then he goes away?”

  “Not exactly,” Chanchira went on. “Mr. Paulson will evaluate your performance, yes. And if you are somehow found suitable, he will return to London to continue his work there for us. But if he deems you unfit to rule, you will be replaced.”

  “Replaced?” I asked. If I’d been a dog, my ears would have whipped up in hope for a treat. “Replaced like I can quit and go home, replaced?” I knew the answer, but I had harbored a little hope that William was wrong. I was going to need to hear it from the horse’s mouth to extinguish that hope and face the reality of what I was facing.

  “Replaced like he cuts your head off and takes your throne,” said Karl.

  “Well, that’s a lot less appealing,” I muttered. “What do I have to do?” I asked.

  “Simply go about your business as you normally would. Mr. Paulson will watch and evaluate, and when he is satisfied that you will be a good Master, he will file his report and return to London.”

  “Or he’ll cut my head off and wait for you to send in the next guy,” I said. Paulson coughed behind me, and I turned to him. “Oh, right. I remember. If he doesn’t think I’m good enough, he’ll cut off
my head and become the next guy. So he’s got about zero incentive to tell you guys how awesome I am, and all the reasons in the world to say I suck.”

  “We would never have put it so crudely, but that is, in effect, the situation,” Chanchira said.

  “Welcome to the United States, assholes. Crude is just how we roll,” I grumbled, and nodded for Abby to kill the screen. She did, and it slid back up into the ceiling.

  I stood up and walked over to stand in front of Paulson’s sofa. “You want to do this now, or you gonna pretend to evaluate me for a while until I really get beat down, then decide I’m not fit to rule and stab me in the back?”

  Paulson stood and looked me in the eye, no mean feat given the difference in our heights. “When I come for you, Mr. Black, and if your performance tonight was any indication, I will be coming for you, I’ll make sure you know I’m coming.”

  I stared down at him, then held out my hand. “That’s all I’m asking for, Paulson. Fair warning.” We shook on it, and I looked around the room. “Let’s get to work. We’ve got a kidnapping to solve before Owen makes it rain blood all over Charlotte. And I want to get a better look at this dead vampire before he’s disposed of, see if we can get any information off his clothes or whatever.”

  “Where do you want to start, boss?” Abby asked.

  “Let’s head to the morgue. We’ll go over the vamp’s body with Bobby and then head over to the police station and check out what the crime-scene guys have on the kidnapping.”

  “Sounds good,” Abby said. “I’ll drive.”

  FIVE HARROWING minutes later, Abby slid her Escalade into a parking spot between a Mini Cooper and another school bus-sized SUV. I got out, my knees a little wobbly, and glared at Abby over the hood.