Date Knight

by Bridget Essex

  “Oh, you know, this is just fine,” I manage, wrapping my fingers in her hair as she draws my chemise over my breasts now, freeing them.

  “Because I could always stop,” says Virago, her bright blue eyes flickering in the dimly lit room as she glances down at me, as her mouth turns up at the corners and she grins at me almost wickedly, “and put on my armor.” She tilts her head to the side, raising one brow as her smile deepens, her lips glistening in the shadows.

  “You're so mean,” I tell her breathlessly, and then I'm laughing, shaking my head as I stare at her, propping myself up on my elbows. I pull her down to me, and I'm kissing her hard, fiercely. “You're a knight even without the armor, baby,” I tell her, with a little laugh, as she breaks our kiss off, trailing kisses down my neck again, aiming—God, I hope she's aiming—for my breasts.

  But as her head hovers above my breasts, as she reaches down, about to gather their curves in her hands, about to kiss them, taste them...

  The lights in the living room that I just turned on flicker.

  I glance over my shoulder at the small, dimly lit lamp on the table beside the couch. It's one of my favorite unicorn lamps (Don't ask how many unicorn lamps I have. The number is staggering. But, hey, everyone needs ample lighting in their home, right?), a ceramic one from the eighties, with a rainbow-haired unicorn rearing below the bright pink lampshade. The unicorn lights up; there's a small light bulb in his stomach, as well as the light bulb in the actual lamp, and as I watch, both the unicorn and the main bulb flicker as if they're trying to sync up with a Christmas song.

  They flicker. And then they go out altogether.

  The room is plunged into darkness.

  On top of me, straddling me, Virago sighs. I can't see her in the dark, but I can feel her as she sits up, as she reaches across me and pulls me up, too, her arm around my right shoulder.

  I turn to look back at the backyard, and I can see the houses that are visible over the fence. All of their lights are out, too.

  I can't help it. As I sit there on the couch, my heart rises in my throat, and I grip Virago's arms tightly as she draws me to her, holding me against her chest.

  I flashback to a month ago. I remember crossing my living room to that exact same sliding glass door. I remember staring out into the torrential downpour at something that couldn't possibly have existed...but did. I stared out that night at a massive, towering monster who had just obliterated my shed with its enormous body. And, that night, I also stared out at a woman wearing armor, who was wielding a sword and challenging that massive beast to fight.

  But as my heart rate skyrockets, as my breathing comes fast, I tug my chemise back up, back over my shoulders. And I rise up from the couch, padding silently to the open sliding glass door as I draw my bodice closed. And I stare out at my backyard.

  Behind me, silently, Virago stands up and follows, crossing my living room to come stand behind me again, wrapping her arms tightly around my waist and drawing my back to her front. I can feel the steadiness of her heartbeat as I stare out into the blackness of the night. I can feel the steadiness of Virago herself.

  And, out in the backyard, I am very gratified to see...well, nothing. There's nothing out there. There's no beast. And the knight that came through that evening a month ago, my knight, is standing here with me, holding me close.

  It's ridiculous that I'm afraid of thunderstorms. It's ridiculous that another power outage would unsettle me so much. I'm just being silly, I tell myself, as I take a deep, calming breath. Power outages happen. Storms happen. It doesn't mean anything at all.

  But as the rain intensifies, as even more buckets of water slosh out of the clouds, Shelley, currently obscured out in that downpour (how she can still be running around, sniffing things and peeing on them, I'll never know—she must be utterly soaked!), lets out a strange, high-pitched bark.

  I peer out, and so does Virago, her body stiffening behind me, her arms tensing, her breathing slowing even more.

  Lightning arches overhead, and my backyard, for just a heartbeat, is illuminated.

  And I see...people.

  Chapter 2: Three Knights and a Queen

  There are four people standing in my backyard.

  And they're all women.

  Oh, my God.

  I stare out into the backyard, trying to peer through the rain and make out shapes in the intermittent flashes of lightning.

  And there's another flash of lightning now, so bright and dazzling that it lights up the entire sky.

  And that's when I realize that it's really true, what I thought I saw.

  Because all four women in the backyard?

  They're wearing armor. They're carrying swords.

  They're knights.

  Virago realizes this at the exact same moment that I do, and then she's racing past me, through the open door and into the torrential downpour with a wordless exclamation of joy. She leaps off the porch, over the three steps, and then she's running across the backyard, whooping now with a kind of happiness that's completely catching. My fear and (ridiculous) worry about the monster coming back was unfounded. There are knights in my backyard. Knights.

  Of course it's all right. These are Virago's knights, knights she knows. There isn't any monster. But still, I can't help but glance around, just to be sure, gazing over the tops of the houses, up at the sky, even peering around the corner, out to the front yard, to make certain there's nothing prowling the Boston streets. But, no, there are only the four knights.

  There's no beast. I take a deep breath, turn my attentions back to the women slogging through the pouring rain and Virago eager to meet them.

  There's no beast, I think to myself, trying to calm my roaring heartbeat.

  But, for some reason, it won't be calmed.

  Virago is shouting something excitedly, and the knights are shouting back excitedly, but it's just one big, loud sound that's merging with the near-constant thunder, and I can't hear specific words. When I look hard, though, I can see the many embraces, the happy expressions, the joy at reunion. I make sure that my chemise is up and over my shoulders, and then I slog out of my living room happily, over the porch and into my backyard, determined to herd all of the knights somewhere drier.

  And, as the lightning crackles overhead, spearing down out of the sky and striking a nearby house, I make an amendment: somewhere drier and safer.

  “Alinor!” I hear Virago cry jubilantly, drawing a shorter woman to her and squeezing her tightly. The woman, I can vaguely make out through the downpour, seems to have very short hair. “And Kell!” Virago yells, flinging her arms now around a woman with long, dripping hair. Everyone's wearing armor, but in the darkness and the intermittent lightning bursts, I can see that some of them are wearing an armor that's similar to Virago's, but some are wearing a different kind...

  “It's you!” this last woman, Kell, is shouting, practically jumping in place. “I wasn't sure if we could even find you, Virago, but then we started to open the portal, and we used your battle mare as an anchor for the spell, and—”

  “Aphelion hates having spells anchored to her,” says Virago, shaking her head, but she hasn't stopped smiling, so this comes out as ecstatic, too. Anchors? Spells? Battle mares? I don't pretend to understand what they're talking about as I step across the last few feet to reach her. Virago's hair is glued to her back now with water, her pants, shirt, and, I'm assuming, shoes are utterly saturated, but she doesn't care; she just keeps grabbing different women and hugging them tightly in turn, before grabbing another one to embrace enthusiastically.

  “Virago, the storm—you guys are getting soaked!” I tell her, reaching out and touching her shoulder. Virago wheels around, and then the smile that blossoms on her face is as bright as a thousand suns as another bolt of lightning arches overhead, temporarily illuminating the entire world.

  “My fellow knights!” Virago yells triumphantly, folding forward into an effortless, graceful bend, and she's now kneeling in front o
f me on one knee...in my flooded backyard. The mud squelches around her knee. Virago spreads her arms to encompass me, and I think she's about to start a Shakespearean soliloquy, but she doesn't. Instead, she inhales deeply and announces, with a huge, happy smile: “This is the love of my life!” she shouts. “It is my deepest pleasure to introduce to you the lady Holly, my lover!”

  “Lady Holly!” all of the knights chorus instantly, cheering and raising their fists to me in knightly salutation. I'm immediately blushing, even though it's freezing, and my chemise is paper thin. Virago reaches out, takes my hand and presses the back of it to her warm mouth. All of the knights are still cheering as they watch, and then Kell makes a sound that I can only interpret as another world's version of the classic “bow-chicka-wow-wow.” And my blushing intensifies.

  “Virago, we are overjoyed to meet your lover,” says one of the knights, her voice low and warm, her eyes sparking with kindness, even in the dark. She has long black hair, high cheekbones and a very aristocratic nose. I recognize her a little, and I wrack my brains for a moment until I realize that this is the knight that we handed Virago through the portal to, the one standing in the meadow when we opened the portal to save Virago. This is Magel, I realize, then. Virago said that she was the head of the Royal Knights of Arktos City.

  I guess this means that Magel is Virago's boss?

  But as I offer an arm down to help Virago up from her position, kneeling in the muddy quicksand that my backyard is turning into, Magel steps forward easily and holds out her hand to me, smiling warmly. I take it, and she shakes it emphatically, pumping my arm up and down like she's trying to get water up from the bottom of a very deep well.

  “It is an honor to meet you, Lady Holly,” she says, her voice low and warm as she nods to me. “That you have tamed our wildest knight, oh, that is a pleasure long in coming,” she says with a chuckle.

  Wildest...knight? What in the world does that mean? I'm blinking back the rain, trying to see through it and gauge her face when another knight steps forward, wiping the water out of her eyes.

  “Let's get inside, yeah?” asks the shorter woman—Virago called her Alinor, I think. She hooks her thumbs in the leather loops around the waist of her armor as she waggles her eyebrows at me. “Then we can all look at your lovely lady, Virago! It'll be a right treat!”

  One of the other knights whoops tiredly, and that's when I realize that, despite the enthusiastic greeting they gave Virago, they all must be exhausted. It's no easy trick to create a portal and move through it, and they must have done both of those things to be standing right now in my backyard. I'm still very unclear as to how all of this portal business works, but Virago told me that the effort to come back through a week ago, in order to find me again, exhausted her utterly. She had to tune the portal to a specific person. Me. So it must have been very hard, I'm assuming, for the knights to find Virago here.

  My heart flutters inside of me as the women begin to slog through the backyard toward the sliding glass door. Shelley is bounding around triumphantly, barking her head off with joy as she leaps around the knights, but for a moment...I don't share her excitement.

  Because, yes, it's obvious that those knights are very close to Virago, are her closest friends, in fact, and—for all intents and purposes—they are also her family.

  But they wouldn't have come through the portal just to meet her new girlfriend.

  There must be a very important reason that they sought out Virago. They must need her for something.

  There must be something wrong.

  Something's wrong back on Agrotera, and Virago's presence is required.

  And that scares me to death.

  I don't know why my brain immediately feeds me the idea that they must have built the portal and come through it for a bad reason, but then, I'm also highly, highly aware of all of the stories that Virago told me about the campaigns she and her fellow knights have participated in. I mean, the only reason that Virago even came through the portal to Earth in the first place is because her company of knights was sent by Queen Calla, the queen of Arktos City, to rid the northern mountains of a massive, man-killing beast. And, yes, the queen had every reason to believe that the knights would be able to vanquish the creature, but they almost didn't. They almost didn't come out of that campaign alive.

  And Virago has been on many other campaigns, ones even more dangerous than her recent run-in with the beast, starting with the very first campaign she ever went on—which was to kill a pack of savage, cannibal werewolves.

  A pack of cannibal werewolves.

  When Virago tells me the stories of the beasts she's vanquished, or the terrible people she's brought to justice, and how she always, always helps keep Arktos City safe...I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that a large part of myself is very, very grateful that she isn't currently doing any of these things.

  Yes, Virago has bested massive monsters and evil enchanters and natural disasters. She has come out of all of these incredibly dangerous situations victoriously. But that was before she was my girlfriend.

  I...don't really know if her being in that much danger all the time is something I could handle.

  I finally know what the romantic partners of cops feel like. But I've never heard of a cop dealing with a pack of cannibal werewolves.

  When we trudge through the backyard and make our way up the steps onto the back porch, the lights inside flicker, on and off and on and off, stuttering light onto the porch, and then in one blaze of brightness, all of the electricity is switched on again. All of us, dripping and creating puddles beneath us, shuffle into the living room. I draw the door shut behind us.

  Okay, I have to admit: it's...pretty surreal to see four female knights—and my girlfriend, who is also a knight—standing, larger than life, dripping water on my living room floor. Even though they're soaking wet, they still stand regally, at ease, and that's impressive, considering how much like a drowned rat I currently feel. I push my sodden red curls out of my eyes, and then Virago is moving quickly into the kitchen, opening the cupboard beneath the sink. She emerges with stacks of hand towels and begins to pass them out, and then I find myself racing upstairs to grab a bunch of thicker towels from the linen closet in the hallway.

  “Oh, thank you,” says Kell happily, when I come back down the stairs and hand her a big, fluffy pink towel. She leans forward at the waist and shakes out her hair to dangle in front of her. And what a massive amount of blonde curls she has, seriously—they're waist-long and so thick. She wraps her hair in the towel and begins to rub it vigorously, sniffling.

  Alinor is definitely shorter than Virago, but you'd never know she's shorter, standing next to her. Alinor's got a big personality, something that's evident when she darts forward, wraps her arms around me and squeezes me like she's using my body to make a fresh cup of orange juice.

  “Lovely to meet ya, Holly, my girl!” she booms in my ear, squeezing me even harder. Her arm muscles are like rocks, and I can actually hear my ribs popping as I gasp for breath and give Alinor a watery smile.

  “Nice to meet you...too...” I manage, before Virago is clearing her throat.

  “Alinor, please don't kill my lover,” she chuckles, and then Alinor lets me go, taking a step back and giving me a flourishing bow. She's already used a kitchen towel to dry her hair, and the short, blonde ends of it are sticking up in all sorts of directions.

  Alinor's armor and Kell's armor are very similar, I realize, glancing around at the knights in my living room. But the rest of the knights wear armor more like Virago's, the more traditional type of armor that you'd see at a Renaissance festival or in a book about medieval knights. It's full-body armor, with chest plates and back plates, and though Virago doesn't have a helmet (she borrows one from the faire whenever she jousts), almost every inch of her leather-clad body is covered by metal plating, each large, hammered piece attaching to the next with leather thongs.

  But all Alinor and Kell are wearing is leather pants t
opped with leather skirts, and a leather bra. These things are covered in metal bits, including metal spirals over their breasts, but their arms and stomachs are noticeably bare—and their stomachs, I note, are just as muscled as Virago's. What kind of training program do they have for these knights? And why hasn't Jillian Michaels gotten in on this yet? Kell and Alinor have some leather thongs tied around their arms, but other than those few leather straps...that's it.

  It's not just the armor that's giving them this certain look, but their faces and their expressions—honestly, both Alinor and Kell look much wilder than the other knights. The kind of warrior women who aren't afraid in the slightest, who rush into battle without any anxiety or even the slightest wavering of their bravery, swinging their swords (or axes, or other ridiculously terrifying, sharp, pointy fantasy-type weapons). And it seems that I'm right about this, because Alinor beams at me just then, her bright brown eyes warm and...a little intense. Wild. She has a scar that traces over her face and her right cheek, and she wears it quite proudly as she lifts her chin, holding me in her confidant gaze.

  “All right—it is time for introductions,” says Virago then, straightening and rolling her shoulders back, her voice taking on that storyteller cadence that she uses when she's about to tell me a particularly good tale. She wraps her arm around my shoulders. “These,” she says, gesturing forward, “are my knights,” she tells me proudly. “This here is Alinor,” Virago tells me, turning and gesturing to the shorter knight with the close-cropped sandy blonde hair. Alinor bows low at the waist, lifting her chin and giving me a bright smile when she rises.

  “This is Kell,” says Virago with a wide smile. Kell stops toweling off her hair and flings it down her back again as she stands up straight. Even though her hair was just completely drenched, the toweling actually dried it pretty well, because it's starting to curl in massive waves. She has a lot of hair, a gorgeous blonde color that tumbles over her shoulders. And, yes, she—like Alinor—looks a little wild, and a little, well, crazy. In a nice, I'm-going-to-fling-myself-into-battle-come-what-may kind of way. She has bright blue eyes, and those eyes rove over me in our moment of introduction, training very, very slowly over my breasts.