The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  “Why, we’re here to help, little vampire. If tonight goes poorly for you, it could go very, very poorly for us.” She spoke into my ears in a low voice, almost a purr, and I remembered the feeling of her blood pulsing through my veins.

  Pulling back took almost everything I had. I poured all my reserve strength into looking, very carefully, into her eyes, which seemed about the only safe place I could look. “What do you mean, go poorly for you?”

  She chuckled and pulled back from me, giving Sabrina a glance as she crossed back towards the door. “You have no idea what awaits you in the afterlife, little vampire, if you even have one. Zepheril and I, however, know exactly what is waiting for us. And that’s why we have no interest in bringing about the end of our lives anytime soon. Because what we have in store is unpleasant beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Zepheril put a hand on her arm and spoke when she paused. “All that is important is that our interests align with yours for the moment. It is time to go.”

  “Oh, hell no!” Sabrina said from where she had stationed herself with her back to a wall and a clear line of sight to everyone in the room. “I am not going anywhere with Tinkerboy and his partner, Slinky the Super-Slut. I agreed to work with you two because there’s no other way to get this case solved, and I still only halfway believe in vampires. But I am not going into a firefight with a couple of . . . of . . . whatever you are at my side!”

  Phil crossed to her quicker than anything I’d ever seen. I mean, he made me look positively glacial. He literally appeared at her side and whispered something in her ear. She pulled back, tears in her eyes, and slapped at him. He caught her wrist and looked deep into her eyes. A long moment passed with them staring at each other. I strained to hear what was said, but it was too low even for my vamp hearing. I looked to Greg and pointed at my ear, but he shook his head. Nothing there, either. After a few more interminable moments, Sabrina sagged a little and Phil let go of her hand.

  “Now can we go?” he asked quietly, and for a second Phil didn’t look like the self-righteous jerk I’d come to know and half despise. He looked like he must have before he fell, kind, peaceful, caring. I didn’t like it, so I was happy when his normal sneer came back.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Sabrina.

  “No. But let’s go. We need to finish the job.”

  Sabrina shouldered her way past Lilith and hurried up the steps ahead of everyone. I wanted to make some crack to Phil about taking a sword to a gunfight. Desperately. But after his little encounter with Sabrina, I knew better than to push my luck by making a joke. Instead, Greg and I followed, stopping at the closet to gear up. I wasn’t sure how much good my guns would do in this mess, but it made me feel better to strap them on regardless.

  And to make things even more festive, Mike was leaning on the fender of his Lincoln Town Car when we got upstairs. I’d harbored a sliver of hope that we could get rolling before he got here, but I should have known better.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to come out before nightfall, so I did a little research on our demon, and thought you might like to know exactly what it is that we’ll be facing tonight.”

  “Not we, buddy. You’re staying home.”

  “Not likely, old friend.”

  “This is not a matter for discussion.”

  “Then let’s not discuss it. I’m going with you, and when you hear what I have to say, you’ll agree that you need all the help you can get.” Then his mouth dropped open at the sight of Zepheril coming up the stairs.

  I had to admit, he made an impressive picture, what with the wings, the sword, the six-pack abs. Mike flapped his mouth open and closed a couple of times then said, “Well maybe you do have enough backup after all.”

  Zepheril stepped over to the stunned priest and put a hand on his shoulder. “No party is so strong that it cannot be aided by a true man of faith. We would be honored to have you accompany us.”

  I try not to argue with angels as a rule, even (or maybe especially) fallen ones, so I hopped up on the trunk of Mike’s car and asked, “What did you find out?”

  He took a deep breath, shook his head, took another deep breath, and finally started to speak. “You told me that the demon identified herself as Belial. Having certain resources at my disposal that most people do not, I went back to the church and did a little research. Belial is one of the most powerful of the second-tier demons. She is the child of Baal, one of Lucifer’s Archdukes. Baal is the ruler of the seventh circle of Hell, which houses the most violent of sinners. All the murderers, rapists, suicides and blasphemers end up in the seventh circle, and Baal has complete dominion over them. That wasn’t a dominion that came to him by default. He’s earned his place. He is simply the meanest, nastiest demon in all of Hell and there isn’t anyone that can challenge him. Not and win.”

  Phil and Lilith’s interest was suddenly clear to me. “And Belial is daddy’s little girl?”

  “Exactly.” Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a rosary, holding it like a talisman. “Legend has it that she is the offspring of Baal and the Whore of Babylon.”

  Mike went on. “If Belial brings Baal to Earth, then he would have complete dominion over this realm, just like he does over the seventh circle. Baal is a force of nature, a creature so powerful that even the angels fear his power. If the ritual completes and the sun rises on Baal in this world, then the entire world will belong to him. He will, in effect, create a Hell on Earth.”

  The wise men of the world are right. Ignorance really is bliss.

  Chapter 29

  I stood up and started pacing. “All the more reason why you’re staying here. I will not be responsible for taking you into a gunfight with a demon.”

  “Bite me. And I mean that figuratively, of course,” Mike replied.

  “Seriously, Mike. We can’t take you with us. It’s too dangerous. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you,” Greg added.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me. And regardless, I’m a grown man. I get to make all kinds of bad decisions for myself. I can drink a little too much, eat too much red meat, and consort with undead creatures if I choose. And really, is this going to be significantly more dangerous than having my two best friends be vampires?”

  “Yes. Because we’ve never wanted to kill you. Strangle you a little, but never really kill you. If what you’re saying is true, this demoness is far more dangerous than anything we’ve ever faced outside of a video game.” Greg managed to stay calm, which was more than I could say for myself.

  “How do you plan on handling her if she’s so . . .” Mike’s voice trailed off as he took a good long look at Lilith. “Oh. Now you can consort with demons, but I’m not good enough to come with you?” His voice was cold, and the look he gave me was heavy with disappointment, and something else I couldn’t quite figure out. Maybe fear?

  “I’m not consorting with them, Mike, I’m using them. They’re tools, and like a cheap hammer, they’re tools that I don’t care about. You, I care about. I don’t give a rat’s ass if Lilith doesn’t make it out of this alive, assuming she’s technically alive now, but you’re one of my best friends. And I only have two friends, so I can’t afford to lose any of you. Please, I’m begging you, don’t give me any grief, just stay home.”

  “No. I’m going with you, and I’m old enough to be stubborn about it. Who’s riding with the holy man?” He raised his voice on the last so that everyone else could hear him.

  Greg yelled “Shotgun!” and hopped in the passenger seat. I shook my head in defeat and went to get in Sabrina’s car. Phil and Lilith started toward Mike’s car, but when they saw the look on Mike’s face, the fallen angel and his servant changed direction and wordlessly got in the backseat of Sabrina’s much smaller sedan. Phil’s wings vanished, and I didn’t even bother to ask where they went.

  “Don’t you two have a car?” I asked.

  “No,” Lilith answered simply.

&n
bsp; “Then how did you get here?” I asked. There was silence in the car for a long moment, then I thought about it for a second and got the mental image of Phil carrying Lilith as he flew along Independence Boulevard during rush hour. “I bet that was something for the commuters to see, huh?”

  We rode in silence across town to the school and pulled into the far end of the parking lot. Sabrina popped the trunk and pulled out a pair of pistol-grip twelve-gauge shotguns. She handed one to me and started loading oddly colored shells into hers.

  “What are those?”

  “Bean-bag rounds. Non-lethal, but they’ll take almost anyone out of the fight. Plenty here for you, too. Let’s try not to kill any civilians if we can help it.”

  “I don’t mind that in concept, but in practice, the civilians are likely to be the only things we can kill. I’ve got a bad feeling about whatever is in there waiting for us.”

  “Me too.” She looked nervous, and I reached out to touch her arm.

  “Hey. It’ll be fine. We’re the good guys.” I tried to manage a smile filled with bravado and cocky charm, but I think I looked more like I was about to puke.

  I felt more like I was going to puke, for sure. And as our motley crew made our way across the parking lot, I felt worse. The closer we got to the school, the worse I felt. It wasn’t nerves, or a bad bag of blood. Something was messing with me. I looked around at the rest of the gang and saw that Greg was decidedly green as well. Even Phil and Lilith looked like breakfast wasn’t settling well in their stomachs. We were about twenty yards from the entrance to the school gym, when I saw the huge banner across the front of the building proclaiming, “Fall Carnival for Christ!—No HELL-oween here!”

  “Ahhh, crap,” I said. “We’ve got a problem.” I waved everybody together. Sometime between leaving our place and getting to the school, Phil and Lilith had magicked their outfits into something more early 2000s yuppie than late ‘80s goth porn. I didn’t ask how they managed that trick. I really didn’t care right now.

  “What’s the problem?” Mike asked. “I mean, I certainly don’t agree with their odd bias against Halloween, but the rest of our plan seems to be solid.”

  “Except for one thing—location,” I said. I looked around at my queasy partner, and the near-dead-looking Lilith and Phil. Mike and Sabrina looked fine, but that also made perfect sense. “The whole school seems to be consecrated—

  holy ground.”

  “Oh crap,” said Greg. I watched the realization creep across the faces of the rest of our group as well.

  “What do we do?” Sabrina asked. “How do we get in there and get the job done without our heavy hitters?”

  “We just do it, my dear,” Mike answered. He reached over and took my shotgun, racked a shell into the chamber and pulled out his crucifix. “You and I go in there and drag our little demoness out into the parking lot where our compatriots can send her back to Hell. And don’t forget, I brought a little backup myself. And I daresay he’s the heaviest hitter of all.”

  “I can personally vouch for that.” Phil handed Sabrina his pistol. “Silver rounds. I don’t know what effect they’ll have, but it can’t hurt.”

  He passed a few extra magazines around to the rest of us from his apparently bottomless coat pocket. I didn’t question the supply, because I didn’t care how he got them or where they came from as long as the rounds gave us an edge in the fight to come.

  “Thanks.” Sabrina took the gun from Phil, tucked it into the back waistband of her pants and nodded to Mike. “Let’s go.”

  “As they say in the movies, my friends, we’ll be back.” My old friend looked a dozen years younger as he shouldered the shotgun and headed off to fight a demon in a school gymnasium. If I squinted, I could even make myself ignore the bandages he was sporting on one hand and the limp he had picked up fighting zombies all over town last night.

  “Do you think they’ve got a chance?” I asked Greg.

  “I can only hope, bro. For all our sakes.”

  Chapter 30

  I wasn’t a patient man. I’m a less patient vampire. I paced the parking lot, growing crankier than hell with each passing moment and no word or indication of what was going on inside. I looked over at where Greg sat on the tailgate of a nearby pickup.

  “How long have they been in there?”

  He made a show of checking his watch and said, “About three minutes.”

  “I hate waiting.”

  “We can see that.” Phil was sitting cross-legged on the roof of a minivan, with Lilith beside him.

  I started toward the door of the gym, in earnest this time, knowing that forces were in motion against my making it onto consecrated ground. But I’d never tested myself to my limit of endurance. Maybe if a vampire were determined enough, he could make it.

  The place pushed back at me, like I was trying to walk through a hard wind. The closer I got, the harder it seemed to push against me, and the sicker I felt. I had gotten almost to the front door when I heard shots ring out from inside. The boom of a twelve-gauge shotgun is unmistakable, and the sound I heard was two of them firing in the kind of rapid succession that would require a fast reload if the job wasn’t done.

  After about half a dozen shots, the gunshots stopped, and then it got quiet. Too quiet, as the cliché goes. No screams, no running feet, none of the sounds I would expect from a crowded school carnival whose attendees had to contend with a couple of nutjobs unloading a pair of shotguns. The silence reigned for about half a minute, as I kept pushing at the invisible barrier keeping me out. Then a low whir reached my ears.

  The sound started slow and low, picking up in pitch and intensity, like a jet engine ramping up for takeoff. The noise built for a few seconds, then an explosion from inside sent blinding light out of every window and blasted me back from the doors.

  I had almost enough time to gather myself for another assault when the doors of the gym opened up and a stream of people poured out, running like the hounds of hell were on their heels. Which, for all I knew, was true. A couple hundred people ran out into the night, a few of them getting into their cars and careening off down the street, but most just left their cars and ran for home rather than risk the traffic jam in the parking lot.

  Phil, Lilith and Greg had pushed their way to my side, and as the stream slowed to a trickle, a familiar figure lurched into view. Mike bounced down the central steps of the building, holding onto the handrail like a sailor on shore leave. Instinctively I broke toward him, expecting the same intense pushback of consecration this close to the building, but there was only a slight roiling in my gut so I kept moving.

  I shouted to the others as I ran, “I can make it. Whatever caused the explosion must have weakened the holy hold on the land.”

  “Mike, are you okay?”

  He had a dazed look on his face, and his eyes were out of focus. I had to repeat myself a couple of times to get his attention. When I got through the crush of people, I saw that my friend’s hair had gone completely white, like the good guy in a bad horror movie. “Are you okay?” I repeated, and he seemed to come to himself a little.

  “What happened? Where’s Sabrina? Did you kill the demon?” Greg peppered Mike with questions faster than he could answer. I waved Greg off and then pulled Mike around to the other side of the car.

  “She’s an innocent, Jimmy.” The words were less than a whisper, and I probably wouldn’t have understood what he said without my vamp hearing.

  “Who’s innocent? The teacher? Nah, man, she’s the bad guy, I’m pretty sure. What happened in there?” I couldn’t follow Mike’s line of thought, and I wondered if he’d taken a smack to the head.

  “No. Sabrina. She’s an innocent, Jimmy. In the full meaning of the word. That’s how she got caught.”

  My borrowed blood ran cold as what he said started to sink in. “The demon has Sabrina? Because she’s a . . .”

  I didn’t say “virgin.” Just because I’d heard of them didn’t mean I necessarily beli
eved in them any more than unicorns. Not grown women virgins. Sabrina was a grown woman. And hot. A hot, adult virgin in today’s society? I might be the vampire standing in the parking lot fighting a demon with a fallen angel and an immortal feminist, but pegging Sabrina as a virgin was a leap of logic I’d never have made.

  “This is unfortunate.” Phil has a talent for understatement. Obviously.

  “Yes. Belial has her. Her and a dozen children. We haven’t got much time, we have to get in there and stop the ritual before—” He collapsed against a nearby car, coughing. There was a little blood as he coughed, and I wondered what kind of beating he’d taken in there.

  “Mike, I wish we could.” Greg was starting to freak out, and he always talks really fast when he freaks out. “But it’s sacred ground. We can’t go in and help. You’ve got to do it. You’re the only one that can save her.” That last bit was more like ‘theonlyonethatcansaveher.’

  He hadn’t quite lapsed into “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope,” but we were getting close. Mike tried to stand, but collapsed again.

  “Well,” I said, letting Mike slide down to a sitting position beside the car. “I guess it’s time to test a theory.”

  Chapter 31

  “Oh, hell no!” bellowed Greg, as Lilith looked at me and said “What theory, little vampire?”

  “Dude, it’s the only way,” I replied. I looked over at Lilith and said, “Come along, sister, I think you’re on this ride, too.” I walked towards the entrance, with Greg walking backward in front of me, both hands out.

  “You can’t go in there, man. We’ve tried it before, and it doesn’t end well. Even if you make it, we can’t function on holy ground.” He finally got both hands on me and stopped my march to the gym.

  “Yeah, but we’ve never figured out why, have we? Mike has always said that it was our subconscious hang-ups making us sick whenever we went near a church, not anything having to do with our vampirism.”