The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  We took a booth in the back and waited for Otto to arrive. He made it there before our drinks did, dressed down in a long-sleeved polo and a baseball cap over his bald pate. He’d obviously taken the time to shower as well, because there wasn’t a hint of slimy green blood anywhere on him. The waiter took our orders, and then went off to leave us to our conversation.

  “Okay, Otto. Let’s start by telling us what that thing was? It looked like a giant with bad hygiene,” I started.

  “No, that wasn’t a giant. It wouldn’t have come up to a giant’s belt buckle. That was a troll,” the bouncer-turned-troll-slayer said matter-of-factly. The waiter paused for a second in delivering our drinks, then shrugged and set the glasses on the table. I guess he’d heard a lot weirder stuff.

  “Just once, I’d like to meet a supernatural creature that couldn’t spot us from fifty yards away. Just once,” Greg muttered from across the booth.

  “I pegged you two from a hundred yards away as vampires. It took the other fifty yards to peg you as straight boys,” Otto said.

  “Anyway,” I interrupted, not interested in yet another conversation about the general sexual preferences of vampires, “that doesn’t answer the question of what the troll was doing there. Got any ideas, or did you just slice first and ask questions later?”

  “I didn’t ask. Trolls are ancient enemies of my people. The mere sight of one in my city filled me with an uncontrollable rage, and I attacked. I lost control of myself, bringing shame to my father and my House.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “Who are your people?” I asked, figuring I’d start slow.

  “The Fae. Your people call us faeries,” he said.

  “I know that, but Greg and I, we’re a little more progressive than that. We believe in live and let live, don’t ask don’t tell, whatever two consenting adults do is between them, that whole thing.” I trailed off weakly when I saw him looking at me like I was a moron. I get that look often enough to recognize it, unfortunately.

  “Not homosexuals, vampire. Faeries. Like in the tales. Except we don’t all have wings, and we’re not tiny. As you can see.” As if to prove a point, he stood up and struck a pose like a Greek statue.

  “I get it, I get it. Now sit down,” I hissed. He sat, and I leaned forward. “Now, you say you’re a real faerie, like faerie godmother faerie?”

  “Yes, although I have no intention of singing bibbity-bobbity-boo with you.”

  “And you guys hate trolls and trolls hate faeries?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how does something like that move around a city unnoticed? It was nine friggin’ feet tall if it was an inch. And it was uglier than Greg going through Xbox withdrawal.” I knocked back my Coke and motioned to the waiter for another.

  “Glamour,” Otto said simply.

  “Gonna need a little more, babe. I don’t think you’re hiding that much ugly with Cover Girl concealer,” Sabrina said.

  “No, human.” Otto managed to make “human” sound a lot like “cockroach,” but I let it slide. Besides, the term didn’t technically apply to me anymore. “Magic. Creatures of the higher realms can easily manipulate what is seen by those from more mundane planes.”

  “So the troll used magic to hide its true nature until it started fighting you?” I asked, starting to get the picture.

  “Yes, then it needed all its resources just to survive. But all those resources weren’t quite enough.” His face split in a nasty smile, and for a second I was very happy that he hadn’t turned that magical sword in my direction.

  “This is going to sound like a stupid question, but what is a faerie doing working the door at a gay bar?” I asked. Sometimes I can’t believe the words that come out of my own mouth.

  “I was sent here to find out who is attacking my people. There have been several attacks on the Fae who live in this city. Our queen sent me here to put a stop to it. Even if they choose to live in this mundane world, her people are still under her protection.”

  “Your people?” Sabrina asked. “Are you telling me some of the victims of these attacks are faeries?”

  “Not some,” Otto said. “All of the victims so far have been of the Fae.”

  “The bloodstains on the wall where Stephen was attacked would be consistent with marks left by a troll attack,” Greg observed, moving his waffles around so it looked like he was eating.

  “My cousin isn’t a faerie, at least not in the literal sense of the word. No offense.” She nodded to Otto.

  “None taken. But may I ask, what is your cousin’s name?”

  “Stephen Neal. He’s a dancer.”

  “Hmmm.” The faerie looked at Sabrina, then at his drink, then back at Sabrina, then back at his drink.

  “It’s still full. Now spit it out,” Sabrina said, slamming her open hand down on the table.

  The faerie looked at her and smiled. “I like you. You are strong for one of the mundane world. You would make a good faerie. Like your cousin. He is not who you think he is. Or what.”

  Sabrina sat there for a moment staring at Otto, then drained her soda in one long gulp. She waved the waiter over and ordered a screwdriver, light on the OJ, and downed that before responding. We all looked on in silence as she leaned in, took hold of the front of Otto’s shirt and pulled him close.

  She spoke very slowly and distinctly, as if she were having trouble with the language. “Now. What were you saying about my cousin?”

  Otto looked around, made sure that there were no civilians nearby, then pried Sabrina’s hand from his shirt. She winced, but let go. “Stephen isn’t really your cousin. At least not by any blood relation. He’s one of us. Your legends call him a changeling. In certain cases we switch faerie children with human newborns, taking the human child to our lands and leaving the faerie babe to be raised as human.”

  “Why?” Greg asked.

  Sabrina looked stunned, like she didn’t know what to say.

  Otto fidgeted for a minute, but eventually answered after another glare from Sabrina. “Sometimes it’s because the human infant has a condition that could prove fatal without treatments that aren’t available in human society, sometimes it’s because the family situation of the child is unfavorable, and sometimes . . .” Otto trailed off and I saw Sabrina’s eyes go hard.

  “Sometimes?” she prodded.

  I knew that look, and really hoped Otto wouldn’t pick this moment to get stubborn. I wasn’t sure the furnishings could survive a clash of wills. And I couldn’t afford any more demolished wardrobe tonight.

  “Sometimes we need the children to breed with our children to keep a particular line alive. The Fae do not reproduce as quickly as humans do, but we can breed with humans if need be. Our numbers have dwindled in recent centuries, and we occasionally have to resort to extraordinary measures to insure our survival.”

  “Extraordinary measures?” Sabrina asked.

  This conversation was going sideways fast, and I waved the waiter over for our check. I shoved Greg out of the booth to go pay at the counter before my friend and the faerie bouncer redecorated the restaurant in Early Apocalypse.

  “Why don’t we relocate this conversation somewhere a little more private?” I asked. “We’re starting to draw a little attention, and that could be unfortunate for everyone involved.”

  “Where would you suggest, vampire?” Otto asked.

  “Our place, and go easy on the ‘vampire’ stuff, Tinkerbelle. Some of us try to stay incognito.” I got up and headed for the door, Sabrina and Otto followed exchanging glances like two cats that you just know are going to start fighting the second you put the Fancy Feast down. “Greg will ride with you and show you the way,” I said to Otto over my shoulder. I led Sabrina out the front door to my car.

  The ride to our place was uneventful, mostly because Sabrina sulked the whole way. The way she was acting, you’d think she wanted to tussle with a supernatural beefcake in the middle of a twenty-four-hour diner. We went down the sta
irs into the apartment (because I hate to think of it as a crypt, regardless of the fact that it sits underneath a cemetery, and besides, crypts don’t have high-speed Internet) and got a couple of beers out of the fridge. Then I called in the cavalry, or more specifically, Father Mike. Mike had been running interference at the hospital since we left Stephen there, but I figured his calming influence and priest’s collar might be needed.

  Greg and Otto got to our place a few minutes after Sabrina and I opened our beers, and we all settled into the living room. Greg pulled a chair over from the computer for himself while Otto sat in the armchair. I stationed myself on the arm of the couch next to where Sabrina sat, putting myself between her and Otto, in hopes that I could calm them down if it all went pear-shaped.

  Sabrina took a long pull of her beer and looked over at Otto. “I believe you were about to explain how you kidnap human babies and use them for breeding stock, weren’t you?” Her voice could have been coated in honey, except for the obvious razor blade hidden underneath her tone.

  “That is a crude way of putting things, but true enough at the root of it all. We did in fact replace your female cousin with a child of our own, the boy that grew up to be your cousin Stephen. No harm has ever been done to the girl, who lives among our people as one of us, and has risen to a certain prominence within our House.” Otto paused for a drink, and I took a second to evaluate how Sabrina was handling this news.

  She looked shell-shocked, to say the least. “A girl? Stevie was supposed to be a girl?”

  “Yes. The child we replaced was a female. We have no real need of human males. It is the gestation cycles of our women that are at issue, not the libido of our men.” Otto actually blushed at this, as though this was something not usually discussed in polite company.

  Good thing for him he wasn’t in polite company.

  Of course, this was when Mike made his appearance, which was good, because I needed an excuse to get another drink.

  “Hello, boys. What’s the emergency?” Mike asked as he came down the stairs and tossed his overcoat on the back of a kitchen chair. I’d given a little thought to a coat rack, but it would just be another thing to not ever get used, kinda like Greg’s NordicTrack. I’ve gotta tell you, that was one disappointed vampire when he realized that no matter how much he worked out, he was never going to burn any fat. Being stuck in the body you died in might be good for Brad Pitt, but when you’re an overweight twenty-something, and you’re going to be fat for eternity, it just sucks.

  I met Mike over by the bar and poured him a double scotch. He took one look at the glass and raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

  I just held out the drink, and he downed it. I poured him another and brought him over to the sofa. He sat next to Sabrina, and I reclaimed my perch on the arm.

  I made the requisite introductions and caught Mike up to speed on where we were in the story. It’s a credit to how long he’s been hanging around with vampires that he barely raised an eyebrow until we got to the changeling bits. Then he stopped me.

  “Jimmy, my boy, are you telling me that these . . . faeries . . . steal human girls and use them for brood mares?”

  Sometimes I forget that even though Greg and I went to Clemson, Mike actually spent summers on a farm in his youth.

  “I think that’s about where we had gotten to when you walked in, Padre.” Sabrina had managed to stay quiet through my retelling of the night’s events, but I could tell she was seething. Part of it was the pulse I could hear pounding in her veins, but mostly it was the I-want-to-eat -someone’s-liver tone of voice she was using.

  Otto raised a hand to interrupt. “If I may explain?”

  I nodded at him, really hoping that he had something good up his sleeve. “The girls are raised as our own, and with the rarity of children in our Houses, they are revered beyond measure. There is good reason every little human girl dreams of being a Faerie Princess, after all.” Otto smiled a knowing smile at Sabrina, who bristled at the condescension.

  “Some little girls dream of being the ones off slaying dragons, you pointy-eared chauvinist. And regardless, there’s a difference between a Faerie Princess and a prostitute. You can’t just go around taking little girls and replacing them with faerie boys.”

  “But what if the little girls would never grow up healthy in your world?” Otto asked mildly.

  “What are you talking about?” Sabrina growled.

  “Your cousin had a rare genetic disorder called Tay-Sachs disease that would have killed her in childhood had she remained here, probably before she entered kindergarten. By taking her to our lands, we were able to use magic to heal her and allow her to live a normal, if pampered, life.”

  “Then why didn’t you bring her back when she was healed? Why don’t you just come over here and heal all the sick babies? Why are you only so magnanimous to the ones you want to squeeze out litters of little faeries for you?” Sabrina wasn’t ready to let this one go yet.

  “Much faerie magic only exists within the boundaries of our realm. If you bring faerie coin into your world, the gold turns to lead. If you take faerie food out of Faerie, it turns to dust within minutes. And if your cousin were to return to the mundane world, the changes wrought upon her body would immediately reverse, and she would die a horrible, painful death. So she is forced to live in the lands of the Fae and be treated like a precious treasure instead of coming back here to die in agony. Does that sound like a fair enough trade?” Otto leaned back in the chair and sipped his beer while Sabrina tried to process this new information.

  “I guess so,” she said after a long moment.

  She got up from the couch, headed over to the bar and poured herself a stiff drink. She drank down half of her drink and came back to where we were all watching her expectantly. I tensed, ready to throw myself between Sabrina and the faerie if bullets started to fly.

  She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, you and Stevie are faeries. You killed a troll at Scorpio because trolls are sworn enemies of faeries, and all the evidence points to a troll attacking Stevie in the alley. Now what?”

  “What do you mean, now what?” Otto asked.

  “Is that the only troll in Charlotte, or are there more?” Sabrina asked. “And why did a troll beat up my cousin? And why have other gay men been attacked all over town? Are they all faeries? Have all of these been troll attacks? And if so, why? And where do we go to find out?” Her voice had been steadily rising with each question until it was high and thready by the end. I could tell that the night had taken a toll on her, but nothing prepared me for what I heard next.

  Otto stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, and the bald faerie said something I thought I’d never hear outside of a Disney movie.

  “We must journey to the lands of the Fae.”

  Chapter 12

  The first words out of my mouth were pretty predictable, I suppose. I looked Otto in the eye and said, “Are you out of your addled little mind? There’s no such thing as Faerieland, and even if there was, there’s no way we’re going there. Tell him, Greg.”

  I looked over at my partner, but he had a look on his face that was somewhere between “kid at Christmas” and “teenager just got to second base.”

  “I’m up for a trip to Faerieland, bro. Let’s roll.” He actually bounced off the couch to his feet.

  Otto looked down at Sabrina. “We must journey to Faerie to save your cousin. From what Greg told me of his injuries, he has been wounded by a blanthron, a spiked glove favored by Trollish gladiators. The spikes are often tipped with venom from the verdirosa plant, the Green Rose. It is an extremely dangerous plant that grows only in Faerie.”

  “And you know all this from Greg talking about Stephen’s injuries?” I crossed my arms and stared at the faerie, not buying any of it.

  “No, I know this because nothing else in all the realms, magic or mundane, smells like verdirosa venom. A floral scent, with a hint of death underneath.”

  “You wi
n. Whatever beat up Stephen had faerie poison on his fists. Gee, kids! There’s a faerie in my living room. First one I’ve ever met. Guess who’s my chief suspect?”

  I tried to loom over Otto, but he stood up. He was a lot more buff than me, and having seen him fight, I knew he could probably take me. So I put a Glock in his face to even the odds.

  “Sit down, Tink.”

  Otto sat. “I did not harm Stephen. As a Knight-Mage of House Armelion, I am sworn to protect him. He is my charge, my duty.”

  “My cousin. My family,” Sabrina said from beside me. Her Smith & Wesson service pistol wasn’t pointed at Otto, but it was out and ready.

  “Can’t we all calm down and discuss this logically?” Mike said.

  He put a hand on Sabrina’s shoulder, pushing her gently back to the sofa. Then he moved in front of me, putting his face in my line of fire. I lowered my gun. This was not the night to be shooting my friends in the face. Not with more appealing targets right there in the room. I sat back down on the arm of the couch.

  “Good,” Mike said. “Now, let’s question our friend Otto, shall we?” He turned to the faerie, put his hand on his cross and rested the other hand on the bald man’s forehead and said “Do you swear in the sight of God to tell me the truth?”

  “I am of the Fae, minister. I cannot lie. It is not in my nature,” Otto replied.

  “Yeah, I read that somewhere,” Greg said.

  “Greg, that was an Alex Craft novel. It wasn’t exactly a scholarly work.” I pointed to his copy of Grave Witch on an end table.

  Greg had fallen in love with the author when he saw her picture on a website. I didn’t blame him. Blue-haired chicks in corsets are hot. But they are not necessarily reliable primary research sources.