The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  “He’s at Presbyterian Hospital, probably still in surgery. We can get someone to take you over there as soon as you answer a few questions for us, okay?”

  By now I’d gotten him to the back of an ambulance and had him sitting down on the bumper. His eyes darted around the scene, still looking for his partner while the blue and red lights painted lurid shadows down the brick alleyway. I motioned for a paramedic to bring over a cup of coffee and sat there with my arm on his shoulders until he pulled himself a little more together.

  After a minute he stopped the worst of his shaking, and I asked, “Are you okay? Can I ask you a couple of questions now?” He nodded, and I went on. “What’s your name?” I figured I’d start with some softballs and see how it went from there.

  “Alex Glindare.”

  “Where were you tonight?” I knew this guy could no more cause the kind of carnage I saw in the alley than I could be a Coppertone girl, but the question had to be asked.

  “I was working late. I’m in acquisitions for Wells Fargo, and you might have heard that we bought this little bank a while back.” He jerked his thumb from one skyscraper to another. I knew something about banks buying each other all over town, but since I’m more of a stuff-cash-in-my-mattress kind of guy, I took him at his word.

  “And where was Stephen?”

  “He had rehearsal. Down the street. He was going to come meet me at the office when he was done.” Alex pointed down Tryon to the Center for Dance, the new headquarters of North Carolina Dance Theatre.

  “Do you know when rehearsal was due to be over?” I was trying to keep the questions simple, so he didn’t have to push too hard to answer, but still felt like I was giving him some attention. Since I knew he had nothing to do with this, I could only hope that by running interference with the spouse, I was freeing Greg and Sabrina up to do the real investigating.

  “He was supposed to finish up around ten, then walk down to meet me. I didn’t even look up until after eleven, and when I saw what time it was, I freaked out and started calling him. His phone went straight to voice mail, so I decided to see if he was grabbing a drink at Rock Bottom or Fox & Hound. Then I saw this, and they told me a dancer had been attacked, and . . . we do this all the time, and nothing like this has ever happened.”

  I gave him a minute to pull himself together before starting in on the more direct questions. “Do you know anyone who would have any reason to hurt Stephen? A jilted former lover, perhaps, someone he beat out for a part in a show, anything like that?”

  He took a minute to think about it before answering. I had to give him that. Most spouses in this situation sanctify the injured party, and all of a sudden a wife-beating SOB with a twelve-pack-a-day Miller habit becomes a choirboy who helps little old ladies cross the street.

  “No. We’ve been together for more than five years now, and I’m pretty sure he’s never cheated on me, and I’ve never cheated on him. And as far as competition at work goes, somebody might put Icy Hot in his dance belt, but I can’t see a modern dancer beating someone almost to death.” He gave me a wry smile. “Stereotypes exist for a reason, Detective. Gay men aren’t all sissies, but we’re not usually beating people up in alleys, either.”

  He had a point. I didn’t know a whole lot about Charlotte’s gay culture, but I couldn’t imagine a guy putting another guy in the hospital by beating him with a ballet shoe.

  “All right, Mr. Glindare, that’s all we need for now. Would you like one of these officers to drive you over to the hospital, or do you think you can make it there safely on your own?”

  “I’ll be all right. Just, please, catch the bastard that did this to Stephen.”

  “We’ll do everything in our power, sir.” I didn’t bother to mention that our power included a few things not normally in the police arsenal, but I shook his hand and headed back over to Sabrina and Greg.

  Chapter 4

  Sabrina and Greg were back at the blood smear with a short balding man with thick glasses who was pointing some kind of laser measuring device at the wall. Just eyeballing it, it looked like somebody had picked the victim up and slammed him against the wall a few times. Only problem with that scenario was that the bloody bricks were eight feet off the ground. So either the attacker brought a ladder to a mugging, or we were playing in the supernatural world again. Sabrina introduced me to the blood spatter expert, whose name I promptly forgot, and motioned me over to the side. Greg stayed behind to geek out over all the buttons and LEDs on the man’s toys.

  “What did the partner say?” she asked.

  “Husband,” I replied absently, going through my mental notes to prepare the recap.

  “Huh?” Sabrina stopped cold and looked at me for the first time since we got to the alley. Her eyes were tinged with red, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t from the wind.

  “Husband. They were married out of state last year.”

  “Okay, what did the husband say?” Her voice was tight and there was a sharp line between her brows that I’d never seen before. I stepped closer, but she backed away, like a skittish animal.

  I kept my voice low and even, trying to play it cool. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, but I’m here if you change your mind.” I held out a handkerchief. “And stop drying your eyes on your scarf, you’re getting mascara on it.”

  “You weren’t supposed to notice that.”

  “I’m a detective, Detective.” I gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m supposed to notice things.”

  She looked at me then, and it might have been my imagination, but I thought that line between her eyebrows might have been a little less deep than a few moments earlier. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Now, what did the partner—husband—say?”

  “He doesn’t know anything, nobody would want to hurt your cousin, the victim walked alone this way fairly often, blah, blah, blah.”

  “Kinda what I figured. There’s not going to be anything here of any use, either. At least there hasn’t been at any of the other scenes.”

  “So now what?” Not being well versed in police procedure I didn’t know if we all had to stand outside for the rest of the night in freezing weather, or just her. Like I said, the cold didn’t really bother me and Greg, but with no blood of our own, it took a long time to warm back up after being outside for a while.

  “We go to the hospital.”

  “Good deal, I’m getting a little peckish.” Even if my blood hookup didn’t work at the hospital, they were good sources of nutrition for so many reasons.

  “Oh. I guess I woke you up before breakfast, didn’t I? Sorry about that. But you’re not going to—”

  I cut her off before she had to ask. “I’ve got a guy who hooks me up out of the blood bank.”

  “So do you go down there and buy a pint, or what?”

  I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to get into the details of the bloodthirst with Sabrina, but if it took her mind off her injured cousin, I’d give it a shot. “The human body holds about ten pints of blood. My body doesn’t make any blood. I need to replace all ten pints at least every three days, preferably every two. And for me to be at full strength, I need ten pints daily.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.” She looked a little pale as the red and blue flashing lights played across her face.

  “Fortunately, most people don’t. Now you have some idea why blood banks are always running short, even though they’re constantly doing blood drives. It’s not just humans and hospitals that are getting that blood. It’s vampires too. And some probably aren’t as thrifty as me and Greg.”

  “That must get expensive, and what do you do if your guy takes a vacation? Do you have to go back to . . . you know?”

  “Eating on the hoof? Not always. Our guy has a nice little network of assistants and backups, and there are other places to get blood if we really need it. But sometimes, if supply gets tight, we have to hunt.
Greg refuses, and he learned some kind of Zen yoga trick that lets him hibernate until the flow is restored, but I’m not against grabbing take-out from time to time.”

  “I guess it’s just a little unnerving hearing you talk about it like that, like it’s nothing.” She wrapped her arms around herself a little tighter, whether from the chill or the topic I wasn’t sure.

  I kept my voice soft, “You guys make blood all the time. We don’t. It takes you about twenty-four hours to replace a pint of lost plasma, and about a month to replace that many red blood cells. And you’ll never miss it. So as long as I’m not drinking more than a pint or two at the most, the worst thing that happens is my donor feels a little woozy when they wake up. I try not to drink from anybody that looks like they’re about to drive anywhere. I don’t want to cause an accident. And in a few days, they’re good as new. But if I don’t eat, it’s bad for everybody. I will get weak, then I’ll get a little nuts, then I’ll get really nuts, then I’ll turn into a monster. Then I’ll eat, with no regard for leaving anything behind, and then we’ve got a bigger problem.”

  “A new vampire.”

  “Yeah, a new vampire. If I go nuts and drain somebody completely, unless I take precautions, they’re coming back. And most of the time, we don’t want that.”

  “Most of the time?” She looked at me questioningly.

  “Okay, I can’t think of a time that I’d want to turn somebody, but it might happen. But yeah, we don’t want that. So sometimes I go out for dinner. I don’t go after anyone that’s been fed on recently, at least as far as I can tell.”

  “But you guys aren’t the only vampires in town, are you?”

  “I’m sure we’re not. There are too many of all other sorts of critters running around for us to be the only vamps, and you heard the goon in the club tonight talk about vampires and some kind of ‘master.’ But I don’t know any others.”

  “And don’t really want to meet any,” Greg said, joining us. “Your Dr. Fishbein was very enlightening, Sabrina. As we suspected, the majority of the attack took place elsewhere, then the victim—”

  “Stephen,” Sabrina said in a small voice.

  Greg toned down the professorial tone a bit and continued.

  “Sorry, Stephen was brought here and dumped. But there was an element of the attack that took place in the alley. Apparently his head was held at nearly eight feet off the ground and beaten severely against the wall. I asked Dr. Fishbein to speculate on what could have done such a thing, but he was reluctant to do so.” Greg looked a little chastened, like the blood spatter guy had spanked him over something.

  “Let me guess,” said Sabrina, affecting a hunched posture and nasal quality to her voice “I do not speculate, Mr. Knightwood. I leave that to the detectives.”

  Greg looked relieved. “Yes, exactly. I wondered what it was that he has against detectives, but I didn’t want to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong.”

  “There’s a first,” I said.

  Sabrina snorted, and I looked over at her. It was good to see her smile again, even for a second. “He’s failed his pistol qualifications seven times. It’s the only thing keeping him from coming into the department and moving quickly to a gold shield, so he’s a little bitter. Don’t let him bother you. We’ve got bigger issues.”

  “Like what?” Greg asked as Sabrina walked past him to the car.

  “We gotta go to the hospital to talk to the victim,” I said, following her.

  “Oh good,” he exclaimed, digging for his car keys. “I’m a little hungry.”

  Chapter 5

  Sabrina got even more withdrawn as we neared the hospital. Greg dropped us off at the front door, then went to try to find parking. Sabrina and I walked in, and the disinfectant smell of the place almost knocked me over. Hospitals weren’t my favorite place when I was alive, and having enhanced senses has done nothing to endear them to me, despite the fact the place was now my main grocery store. The smell of fake lemon, ammonia and death permeates every inch of the place, and no matter what time of day or night I arrive, it’s always too bright, too loud and too sterile for my taste.

  I cracked a couple of lame jokes to try to lighten the mood, but nothing helped the cold shoulder I was getting. Sabrina was obviously worried about her cousin, but I felt like there was something else going on. As we walked past the nurse’s station on the way to Stephen’s room, I grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop.

  “What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice. I didn’t want a huge scene if we could avoid one, but I was not going in that room without all the information.

  “What do you mean? There’s nothing going on, it’s just a case.” She didn’t look me in the eye, which is generally a good idea with vampires, but Sabrina was immune to our mojo somehow.

  “Sure,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words, “It’s just a case where the victim is your cousin and for some reason your heart is beating twice as fast heading to his hospital room as it was at the very bloody crime scene. So do you want to tell me what you’re afraid of, or do you want to keep trying to BS a guy who can hear the very blood in your veins?”

  Sabrina looked up and down the hall, and seeing no one, pulled me to a sitting area by the elevators. Greg came off the elevator just then, and I waved him over. She took a deep breath, and then said, “I wasn’t telling you everything.”

  “Wanna move on to the things I didn’t already know?” I shot back.

  She took another deep breath, dashed a tear away with the back of one hand, and went on. “Stephen isn’t just any cousin. He was my best friend growing up. He was like my brother.”

  I leaned back against the wall. “And you haven’t told anybody in the department because . . .”

  “Because they’d throw me off this case so fast it would make your head spin, and I’m the only detective that cares enough to actually try to find out who’s doing this.”

  “Not to mention the only one with the appropriate extra-curricular resources to actually get anything done.”

  “And that.”

  “What else?” I asked, leaning in to make sure we weren’t overheard as a nurse wheeled a cart of expensive-looking equipment past us.

  “What do you mean?” Sabrina doesn’t do the wide-eyed innocent look very well.

  “Really? You’re still going to try to lie to someone who can read your blood pressure from ten feet away?” I put a hand on her shoulder and looked in her eyes, no mojo. “Tell me. I’ll do anything I can to help. And I won’t even be a smart-assed jerk about it, I promise.”

  “Stephen wasn’t exactly the golden child in our family. His parents were—are—very Southern, and very Southern Baptist.” She looked from Greg to me to see if we understood what she was saying. Having grown up around here, we got it perfectly.

  “So you’re saying that he wasn’t exactly welcome for Thanksgiving once it became obvious that he wasn’t ever going to bring home any grandchildren,” I said.

  She put her head in her hands and talked to the floor. “Exactly. Stephen came out when we were teenagers, and it didn’t go over well at school. He got beat up a lot, but it was even worse at home.”

  “His parents beat him for being gay?” Greg asked furiously. My partner is a real champion of the downtrodden, having gone through life as an overweight comic book nerd. Now that he’s a super-strong, super-fast overweight comic book nerd, he’s gotten a little self-righteous about it.

  “No,” Sabrina said. “They never laid a hand on him. At all. I don’t think my uncle even spoke to Stevie for the last two years he lived at home. They just ignored him, pretended like they didn’t have a son, and when he turned eighteen, they kicked him out.”

  “Just like that?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He came home from a summer dance clinic to find all his belongings in boxes on the porch and the locks changed.”

  “That’s pretty awful,” I said. “But what does that have to do with you?”

  “Because he
called me that night. When his folks kicked him out, he called his favorite cousin Sabrina to see if he could stay with me, just until he found a place.”

  “So how long did he stay?” I asked.

  “I didn’t pick up the phone. I was still in school and needed my dad’s money to cover my apartment. I knew if I helped Stevie out, my parents would cut me off. So I didn’t answer. I haven’t seen him since.”

  She still hadn’t looked up, and I suspected she was afraid of what she’d see on my face.

  I reached down and took her hand. “How long has it been?”

  “Nine years. We were so close, it felt like I cut off my arm to abandon him like that, but I did it. And now he’s lying in there hurt and I’m scared to go see him because . . .” Her words trailed off. She took a deep breath, and shoved her emotions back under control.

  “Because you’re afraid he’ll hate you for leaving him out in the cold.” I made my voice a little hard, and it had the desired effect.

  Her face snapped up, and she looked at me in a sort of shock.

  I went on, “He might, you know. But it’s more likely he still loves you and has just been waiting for you to grow up enough to be a part of his life again. Now let’s go in there and see what we can do to help him.”

  “How’d you get so smart all of a sudden?” Sabrina asked as she wiped her eyes and got to her feet.

  “He’s older than he looks, remember?” Greg chimed in. “You don’t live this long without picking up a few things.”

  “Well, technically, you didn’t live all that long.” Sabrina laughed a little.

  “True, but you can still learn a few things walking around dead. Now let’s go have a little family reunion.” I took her arm and led her down the hall to her cousin’s hospital room.

  Chapter 6

  Stephen was unconscious, and it was probably for the best. His face looked like something that had been dragged along I-77 behind a truck for a couple of miles, and then beaten with a meat tenderizer. He had tubes coming out of every visible orifice, and three or four bags of different substances dripping into his arms. The beep-beeping of his heart monitor was steady, but I was alarmed to see the respirator pumping away. His skin had a greenish tinge to it, like nothing I’d ever seen before.