The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  Then they were at it again. Faster than my eye could follow, Phil went after Baal with the sword. Baal swatted the slash away with one huge forearm, and lashed out at Phil with his razor-sharp claws. Phil ducked under one slashing blow and stabbed at the monster with his sword. Baal actually caught the blade with one hand, but white fire flowed over his clawed fist and the demon yanked his burned hand back.

  Phil followed with a slashing overhead blow, but Baal was too fast, dancing backward with a grace belied by his giant size and massive muscles. Baal lunged forward with both arms, stabbing at Phil with his claws, but the angel spread his wings and flew over his attack and slashed at the monster’s back. The blade drew a thin line of white fire down the demon’s back, and he let out a howl that blew the glass out of backboards all around the gym.

  I saw a split-second opening while Phil was clear and the monster was distracted. I took my shot. Squaring my feet, I emptied my last clip of silver ammo into the back of the demon’s head, and had the satisfaction of seeing the beast fall face-first onto the gym floor. Phil landed beside the fallen demon and raised his sword high.

  “Nooooo!” I screamed and launched myself at the angel, catching him in a tackle worthy of the Pittsburgh Steelers. We tumbled head over heels across the gym as I tried to keep him from killing Baal.

  “What are you doing, vampire?” I looked down when we had stopped to find a very pissed-off angel inches away from my face. He stood up, taking me with him, and grabbed me by the shirtfront. “I had him beaten. I’ve waited centuries to make this right, and now you decide to interfere? What the hell are you thinking?”

  “Sabrina,” I croaked. He had more than a little throat in his grip. “We’ve got to save Sabrina. You kill Baal’s body, what happens to his host?”

  “Idiot! His host isn’t even on this plane of existence anymore. She’s in Hell, you moron! He traded places with her, that’s why you could kill all those little girls without murdering a child. Or didn’t you think of that?”

  “How do you know?” I know Phil had been around since the beginning of time and all, but some things I wasn’t quite ready to take on faith. Phil didn’t speak, just waved his arm around the gym. I followed his hand and saw a bunch of dazed little girls where demons had been lying, and an unconscious substitute home-ec teacher sprawled on the bleachers where Belial’s body had been.

  “Oh,” I quietly said. “As you were then, back to the killing big demon things.”

  Unfortunately, Baal was no longer where we’d left him. Why is nothing ever easy?

  Chapter 35

  Of course the demon wasn’t lying where we had left him, all nicely posed for a killing stroke from an angelic sword. Demons aren’t exactly renowned for obedience. That’s why they’re demons and not angels, I suppose. Baal had gotten to his feet and pulled himself back together on the other side of the gym, with his back to a wall. He looked a little the worse for wear, but only a little. I hate fighting things that heal faster than me, so I made a mental note. He definitely had the edge on me in the healing arena.

  I took a quick inventory. I had exactly one knife, a .380 pistol with eight rounds of regular ammo, a Glock 17 without a bullet to be had, and a bad attitude. Phil had a really big, magical sword, and Greg had two fists and a concussion. The more I thought about it, the worse our odds looked. I did what I always do in those situations—I stopped thinking before the odds convinced me to stop trying.

  I jumped as high into the rafters as I could and yelled out to Greg, “Go low!” He dove at Baal’s feet while I dropped from the rafters on his head, hoping to accomplish something besides getting cut in half by Phil’s oversized toothpick. Baal was too fast for either of us, though, swatting us both out of the air like mosquitoes. Really big mosquitoes in Greg’s case, but you get the idea.

  I managed to adjust my course enough to land on a broken basketball backboard, and turned back to the fight to see Phil wading in with his sword. He and Baal were weaving a deadly ballet in the air over the gym floor, Baal’s wing and Phil’s shoulder healed enough to make the fight too evenly matched again. Thrust, dodge, thrust, slash, duck, repeat. It was almost beautiful to watch, except for our pressing need to help the angel and get Sabrina out of Hell. I made another mental note to ask Mike’s Wiccan friend Anna about different planes of existence if I lived long enough to see her again.

  I looked frantically around the gym for something heavy enough to hit Baal with, but other than a pile of shattered party decorations and an overturned apple-bobbing tub, there was nothing of any size lying around. Then my eyes lit on the still form of Bun-head, curled in a fetal position beside one set of bleachers. I yelled over to Greg “Make sure big ugly stays off me, I’ve got an idea!”

  “How do you suggest I do that?” he yelled back.

  “Keep Phil alive!” I dashed across the gym. Pieces of ceiling fell around us as Baal and Phil’s battle raged on. We were going to have to finish this pretty quickly, or there wasn’t going to be anything left of the gym.

  I got to Bun-head, reached out and shook her shoulder. “Hey, lady. Janet!” I shook her harder, and finally she looked up at me and screamed. I forgot that I had my fangs on display, and that tends to worry humans, even ones that sometimes summon demons. I slapped her across the face, and she stopped screaming long enough to slap me back.

  “What in the world is wrong with you, young man?” she asked tartly.

  “Wrong with me? Lady, we don’t have that much time. Anyway, do you know how to banish this big red bastard?” I pointed over to Baal, and she turned a really gross shade of pale green. I moved back a little, in case she was going to puke, but she got herself under control. Even as I moved back, I realized the irony of not wanting to get a little puke on me when I was covered in demon brains and blood both demonic and vampiric. But we all have our little hang-ups, and one of mine is being puked on.

  “How would I know anything about banishing monsters?” She looked more confused than anyone who had caused this much trouble had any right to look.

  “You’re kidding, right? Lady, you frickin’ summoned him! I would think that knowing how to put the genie back in the bottle would be one of the first things they teach you in Demon Summoning 101!”

  “Demon summoning? What are you talking about young man? And what is wrong with your teeth?”

  “We’ve got way more important things to deal with right now than my teeth. Like the fact that the big red guy over there is Baal, an Archduke of Hell, and that you summoned him, and now I need you to put him back where he came from because there is a very attractive lady cop that is currently hanging out in Hell, where Baal is supposed to be, because when he came here, she had to take his place down there. Are you getting this? Hell. An innocent woman in Hell.”

  I was pretty proud of the fact that I hadn’t hit her yet, but she was running out of time before I started punching things, and she was the nearest target.

  “I did no such thing, young man. I am a Christian! I merely called up the angels to assist me with a certain problem, and nothing more. I would never consort with demons! I won’t even speak to agnostics!”

  “What ‘certain problem’ were you calling angels to help you with?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Cancer? Are you sick? Do you have a sick kid?”

  Still nothing.

  “Were you praying for peace? Trying to bring soldiers home and bring those families back together?”

  Not a peep.

  “Then what the hell was it?”

  “The lottery.” She said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her.

  “What?”

  “I asked the angels to help me win the lottery. It’s up to $165 million, and I could use the money to do so much good.”

  “I bet you could. If you live long enough to collect and if there are any people left to help.”

  I couldn’t believe it. A string of kidnappings, a zombie infestation, a pile of demon possessions, a par
king lot full of trashed cars and a gymnasium that looked like Armageddon was just the opening act, and it was all for money. Root of all evil in-flippin’-deed. “When you called these ‘angels’ did you use a spell or pray?”

  “I found a spell to communicate with celestial bodies. I used that.” I heard a huge crash from behind me and chanced a look over my shoulder. Baal had thrown Phil through the DJ setup at the end of the gym and the angel was getting up, scattering CDs, turntables and speakers every which way.

  “Well, great job, lady! Look how well that’s worked out for everybody!”

  “I didn’t mean to!” She was almost crying as what she’d done started to sink in. I took a deep breath, looked back at where Greg and Phil were holding their own (barely), and settled myself down.

  “I know. And you can make it right. Do you know how to banish this beastie?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t remember anything since Tuesday night. I was walking home, and all of a sudden I was asleep. I had the most terrible dreams, too.”

  Crap. Tuesday was when we fought the girl at Tommy’s house. When Mike banished Belial, she must have followed the magic back to her summoner and taken her over. Bun-head remembered nothing since Belial took over and started trying to bring Daddy Dearest to Earth in earnest. That meant she wasn’t aware when Baal was summoned.

  “Stay here, then. And if that thing kills us, start running.”

  “Where will I go?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to care very much if I’m dead. If I croak, you’re on your own. And maybe even if I don’t croak.”

  I stood up, centered myself and got ready to jump back into the fight. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something shiny. I’ll admit that I’m easily distracted by shiny objects, but this time my “attention to detail” paid off.

  At one side of the gym there was a little stage set into the wall, and at the front corners of the stage, one on each corner, were two flags. One was the standard American flag with an eagle atop the flagpole, but it was the other flag that caught my eye. I recognized it from playing softball for a Baptist church one summer in high school. It was the Christian flag, a red cross on a field of blue in the top left corner of a white flag. More importantly, the flagpole was eight feet tall and topped with a heavy gold cross. It looked like just the thing to smite an archdemon with. I looked around the gym quickly and saw no better option. It was time to see if this theory about holy objects really held.

  I ran across the gym and grabbed the flagpole, pleasantly surprised when it didn’t burst into flames at my touch. Okay, maybe vampires aren’t all that unholy. What about demons? I yelled over to Greg, “Get high!”

  He vaulted about fifteen feet into the air, and I chucked the flagpole at him like a javelin. He harnessed all of his vampire abilities, caught it on the fly, turned a somersault in midair, and dove straight down for Baal, cross first.

  Phil saw what we were doing and launched into an all-out attack, thrusting and slashing with renewed fury. I had a brief second to think about how screwed we were if this didn’t work, and then Greg was diving into the demon with his Christian flagpole/spear. As the flying vampire got close, the cross atop the flagpole began to glow, eventually bursting into white fire as it touched the demon. Greg buried the cross deep into the meaty part between Baal’s head and shoulder, and the demon collapsed to his knees, screaming. Greg landed behind the beast and rolled clear, as Phil moved in for the kill.

  He paused for a second, sword raised, and Baal looked him in the eyes. “Why, Zepheril? You could have been the greatest of us all.”

  Phil looked at him with something like pity and said, “Milton was wrong, Baal. It is infinitely better to serve in Heaven than to rule in Hell. I hope this proves that I’ve learned that lesson.” Then Phil drew back his sword and sliced off the demon’s head in the middle of the gym.

  Chapter 36

  After such a brutal fight, the aftermath was almost anticlimactic. There was no big explosion, no huge lightshow as the demon vanished into sparks, no great gaping maw opening in the earth to suck Baal back into Hell. All in all, it would have been much more impressive if it were designed for the Xbox. But real life, as weird as it is, still isn’t a video game.

  So the demon disappeared, to be replaced by a screaming Sabrina standing in the gym firing her pistol randomly around her. We all ducked, and she ran out of ammo without shooting anyone on this plane, so all was good.

  I waited a minute before I stood up cautiously and said, “Sabrina? Are you okay?”

  She looked at me, still holding her pistol, and said in a shaking voice, “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?” I repeated, more slowly this time.

  “I . . . I think so. I mean, I’m back. I’m alive, or at least I think I’m alive.”

  “Trust me. You’re alive. I can smell you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure I smell like Hell.”

  “Literally, but it beats being dead and smelling like zombie.”

  She laughed, which worried me a little. I always worry when a woman laughs at my jokes. When they’re laughing at me, it’s situation normal. But when they’re actually laughing at my jokes, I look around for the camera crew.

  “So, it was Hell? I didn’t imagine that?” Sabrina limped over to one of the tables that had been scattered around for the carnival and sat down.

  I followed her and stood beside her. I kept looking around, worried that we weren’t quite done fighting for the evening. After all, it wasn’t quite midnight, so I figured there was still a chance for everything to go to crap at the witching hour.

  “Yes,” I said simply. “I’m pretty sure you were in Hell.”

  “I believe it.”

  “What was it like?” She hesitated, and I added, “If you can talk about it, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I think I can. I was surrounded by those psycho little girls from the forest again, and no matter how many of them I killed, more of them kept coming. They swarmed me again and again, and when I finally thought they had killed me, I opened my eyes and I was standing there in the forest again, and they were all coming again. It was like Zombieland meets Groundhog Day.”

  She shivered, and I moved beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “You know, Bill Murray was in both of those movies. It’s clear you have a thing for my type.”

  She elbowed me in the gut, but she laughed a little. That was twice she’d laughed at my jokes. We were gonna need a hospital for her pretty damn quick. She was obviously concussed if she thought I was funny.

  Then her smile died. “What happened here?”

  I gave her an accounting to the point where Phil cut off Baal’s head. When I got to that part, I stopped and yelled across the gym. “Hey, Phil!”

  “Yes, James?”

  I guess I’d acquitted myself well enough in the fight, I’d been promoted past little vampire. “Why did you help us?”

  “I told you. Baal was a danger to us all.”

  “Uh huh. You’re a fallen angel, right? Cast out of Heaven for picking the losing side in Lucifer’s rebellion? Stuck here on Earth forever because you can’t go to Hell and you’ll never be allowed back into Heaven?”

  “Never is a very long time, Jimmy-lad. And we’re not given to see all the way to the end of time.” Mike limped into the gym, one arm draped over Lilith’s shoulder as she helped him to our table. “Even the worst of sinners is offered redemption, again and again.”

  Greg and Phil made their way over to us, as did Bun-head, who introduced herself rather shamefacedly as Janet.

  “That’s a nice fairy tale, Mike. Not necessarily true.” I pulled a chair over next to Sabrina, and she didn’t pull away. That’s always a good sign.

  “You made enough peace with your maker to come onto holy ground to fight a demon. Who’s to say there’s not hope for even a fallen angel?” I shook my head a little, but I generally defer to Mike on spiritual matters. After all,
he’s the one with the hotline to the Guy Upstairs, not me.

  “Hey!” Greg’s head snapped up. Even with his vamp healing, he looked rough. His fight with Belial took a toll. Greg had a black eye, which looked about three days old. Split lips were healing, but still seeping a touch. If he felt anything like he looked, then he felt like he’d been killed all over again. His eyes were clear, though, and something had obviously struck him.

  “How did you get in here? And what about you?” He asked Phil, and then Lilith. “I thought you couldn’t set foot on holy ground without bursting into flames or something.”

  “That was him. I’m not a fallen anything, little vampire. I can go anywhere I like. I just didn’t want to get involved in your little mess.” Lilith looked at all of us smugly, obviously pleased she’d been the only one who hadn’t been possessed, nearly killed or beaten to a pulp by a demon.

  Phil glanced over at Lilith, then sighed and let it pass. “I couldn’t set foot on holy ground, but once Baal set the demons free and stepped out of the circle, the gym was no longer sanctified. The very touch of a demon corrupts any place that it alights, and only the holiest of places can withstand that touch. This place was not nearly holy enough to stay sacred with an Archduke of Hell walking around. Rescue became possible.”

  “And I guess Janet here could come in because she was still a human being, even if there was a demon driving the bus, so to speak. But why was Baal so disappointed in you? The boy was torqued.” I wasn’t sure he was going to answer me, but he and Mike exchanged a look, and then Phil took a deep breath and started to talk.

  Chapter 37

  “I suppose after sharing the field of battle, you’ve earned an explanation,” Phil said. “Long ago, in the dawn of mankind, there was a war in Heaven. Lucifer and an army of angels decided that humans were being given too much rein over this world, and that God needed to be deposed. I was one of those angels.”