The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  “Tomorrow night. I didn’t reply, ‘cause I got a date with a good-looking lady, you know?”

  “Reply. Tell them yes. Then when you get the location, you call me. Immediately.” I leaned in and showed a little fang to drive my point home. Pun completely intended. Bobby nodded frantically, then pulled out his cell phone.

  He sent off the text and looked up at me. “You gonna head out now and go do some investigating or something?”

  “Not yet, Bobby. First you’re going to tell me everything you know about the fights. And I mean everything.”

  “Okay, just . . . back up a little, would you? You’re kinda crowding me a little.”

  “It’s intentional.” I loomed a little more, then backed off and sat on a rolling stool. “Speak.”

  “Well, as far as I can tell the fights have been going on for a couple months. They started off slow, like boxing matches, or something. But as the crowds got bigger, the fights got rougher, nastier. They had a first blood match, where the winner is the guy who makes his opponent bleed first. Then they built the cage, and it went no-holds-barred. Whatever the fighters wanted to use, they could use. That last fight, with the faerie dude? It was a damn bloodbath. That troll had lost his last two fights, but he was jacked up and ready to go. He lit into the faerie like a pit bull on a steak, then he broke out this funky spiked glove and just beat the hell out of him.”

  “The faerie just stood there, taking it as long as he could, but he was crushed, man. And the faerie that runs the place was pissed. You could tell he wanted a better fight, and the crowd did too. So after the troll pounded the faerie into paste for a little while, they did a troll match. That was a lot better.”

  “You know that faerie was our friend’s cousin, right? And that those gloves were poisoned and almost killed him, right? And that I’m gonna—”

  Greg grabbed me and pulled me back before I broke any parts of Bobby that might be useful later. Like everything.

  “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t even think about it like that,” Bobby said.

  “It’s cool. Just call me with the address the second that text comes in.”

  “Sure, man. Sure. But what are you gonna do?” Bobby looked back and forth from me to Greg.

  “We’re gonna do what we do, Bob. We’re gonna be monsters.” I let go of his collar, and he slumped backward against the corpse. “Be careful. You’ve got an elbow in that guy’s intestines.”

  Chapter 23

  Fortunately for us, the day turned out to be severely overcast, so Greg and I weren’t trapped in the hospital until nightfall. It was still a little unnerving to be driving during the day, so I was grateful to get home after our little chat with Bobby.

  I clumped down the stairs to our apartment, tired but energized to finally be making some progress. I hung my coat and guns in the closet and headed to the fridge, even though I smelled Mike hiding in the corner.

  “O, B or A?” I asked Greg.

  “One of each.” He said as he fired up the computer. I tossed his bags of blood on the coffee table and bit into a bag of B-negative. The cold blood wasn’t terribly appealing, what with the anticoagulants and plastic taste, but I needed to fill the void. I polished off the first bag and let out a contented sigh.

  “Well, Mike, you gonna say something or just lie there on my couch all night?” I said to the priest.

  “You knew?” he asked, impressed.

  “I’m hungry. I smelled you from the top of the stairs. Been biting your nails to the quick again?”

  “An old habit I revert to in times of stress,” he answered.

  “And this case has you stressed? That’s sweet,” I said.

  “I do have other things in my life, James. As much as it may amaze you, I do not live solely to be your daytime errand boy.” There was an odd note in Mike’s voice, but he waved aside my concerned look. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just a grouchy human up past my bedtime. But I am a grouchy human with information.”

  “Bedtime? It’s not even noon,” I said.

  “Yes, but I haven’t been to bed, Jimmy. I was planning on getting some sleep after I knew Stephen would heal, but somebody needed me to talk to Anna and her coven.” Mike walked over to the bar and poured himself a scotch. That was one I’d never seen before—Mike drinking before noon. But I guess if you haven’t slept in a couple of days, afternoon is relative.

  “Sorry about that, pal. Sometimes I forget you’re human.”

  “I’m not sure how to take that, but I’ll assume it was meant as a compliment.”

  “It was, and besides, Anna hates me. So did you see her?”

  “No. There is this remarkable invention, Jimmy. It’s called a telephone. You can use it to speak to people without showing up at their place of business looking like a disheveled wino.”

  I gave Mike a closer look, and he did have about three days’ worth of beard going, and there was more white in it than I had ever seen before. He’d lost weight, too, and it didn’t look like the healthy kind. I opened my mouth to ask him about it, but he spoke first.

  “Anna and her friends have noticed an increase in magical energy in recent weeks, much of it centered north of Uptown.”

  “There is a disturbance in the Force,” I intoned gravely. Mike glared at me so I shut up. At least Greg laughed.

  “Anyway,” Mike went on, “according to the witches, there has been a great deal of powerful magic in use, and by several powerful practitioners. They fear that something dangerous may be on the horizon.”

  I raised my hand, and Mike looked over at me. “Are we talking about slip-on-a-crack-break-your-mother’s-back kind of dangerous, or raising-a-demon-to-take-over-the-world kind of dangerous?”

  “They couldn’t tell me,” Mike said ruefully. “I think they were a little embarrassed that they didn’t really understand the nature of the forces at play. Anna thinks it feels potentially very bad, but couldn’t say why, and no one else sensed that much.”

  “That’s it? There was a big pile of magic being tossed around somewhere north of downtown?” I asked.

  “Uptown,” Mike corrected automatically.

  “You realize that those are ridiculous arbitrary labels for the same piece of real estate, right?”

  The whole uptown/downtown thing always bugged me. People who grew up here, like me, called the center of town “downtown,” because that’s what you always call the center of town. But a few years ago, the rich folks in the middle of the city decided that it should be called “uptown.” So now there’s all this confusion about what to call an area of like eight square blocks. But this is the same town where you can stand at the intersection of Queens Road and Queens Road, so what do you expect?

  “No matter what you call the neighborhood, the disturbance seems to emanate from the industrial district between downtown and the arts district on North Davidson Street. But it moves around some.” Mike rattled his glass and looked at me meaningfully.

  I motioned for Greg to fix him another scotch. “All righty, then. There’s a gallery crawl tomorrow night, so let’s go out among the hippies and freaks to see if we can turn over a rock and find a troll underneath,” I said. “If there’s something going on up there that needs juice, there will be plenty of souls running around to siphon off of.”

  “Good idea,” said Mike. Before I could find the sarcasm in his apparently sincere comment, his phone rang.

  “This is Michael,” he answered .

  As soon as I heard the voice on the other end, I was on my way to the closet to grab my guns and coat. I put the Glock in my shoulder rig and strapped my Ruger LCP to an ankle holster. As I was pulling on my coat, I tried to listen to the conversation between Mike and Sabrina.

  “He . . . it’s back!” I heard Sabrina through the phone.

  Greg bolted for his room to gear up as well, while Mike talked to Sabrina.

  “It’s beating the hell out of the cop in the hallway, and then it’s coming in here for Stephen! Get away from him,
you son of a bitch! No, Alex!” I heard a series of gunshots, then nothing.

  I bolted for the stairs, yelling back at Mike, “Wait for us here. Tell her we’re on our way.”

  We dashed up the stairs and jumped in Greg’s car. He jammed the hot rod into gear and tore out of the cemetery parking lot like a bat out of hell. I just hoped we weren’t too late for Stephen. Or Sabrina.

  Chapter 24

  We beat the cops to the scene, and didn’t bother parking. We just pulled up to the curb and ran for the stairs. I was out of the car before it stopped—rolling awkwardly toward the building—and springing up at a dead run. And when we run, we move. I didn’t really stop for the door, just ripped it out of the frame and ran up the three flights of stairs to Stephen’s floor. I was about to rip that door off the hinges, too, when Greg grabbed my arm.

  “What?” I snarled at him. My fangs were fully out, and I was in full-on attack mode. Greg pulled back a hair, but he held fast to my arm.

  “Chill for a second. We don’t know what we’re getting into out there,” he said.

  “There’s a troll out there, and it’s come for Stephen. Sabrina’s in there. I don’t want it to get either of them, so I’m going to stop it,” I said and tried to turn back to the door.

  Greg held me still without a problem. Truth be told, he’s a lot stronger than me, and I’m really strong. We’ve never known why some of our powers are stronger in one of us than the other, but that’s the way it is.

  “Dude,” he said firmly. “You need to chill for a second. She’s a trained professional, she can take care of herself. What if there are already cops out there? You go out there all vamped, and we’ve got way bigger problems than just a troll. And all you brought was guns? You know you can’t take a troll out with bullets. I grabbed this for you.” He handed me the sword I’d brought back from Faerieland, the one Milandra thought I might need.

  “Thanks. All right, I’ll go out—” Just then a huge crash from the hall shook the entire building, and we heard an enormous bellow of rage from the other side of the door. “Screw that, I’m going troll-hunting!” I flung the door open and found myself face to face with . . . Stephen.

  But this was Stephen as I’d never seen him, and I was pretty sure Sabrina hadn’t either. He had dropped whatever illusion kept him looking human, and he was a big dude. Stephen in faerie-form stood at least six foot eight inches and was cut like a professional wrestler. And I don’t mean Dusty Rhodes. Homeboy was ripped, and he was covered in blood that didn’t look like it was his. His back was to us, and I could see that he never learned that you could wear boxers under a hospital gown. But that wasn’t what stopped me cold. That was the sight of Sabrina unconscious in the hallway with a nine-foot-tall troll barreling toward her at a dead run with murder in its eyes and green stuff dripping from its teeth.

  I shoved Stephen to the side, and launched myself at the troll, sword outstretched. I crashed into the monster and buried my blade into its gut to the hilt. I saw about a foot of steel come out of the thing’s back, but that didn’t stop the troll from wrapping one enormous hand around my throat and punching me in the head with the other fist.

  I felt knuckles the size of golf balls crunch into my head and my vision swam black. It pulled the fist back again, and I kicked out, catching the monster in the throat with one foot. It shook its head in sudden pain, and I took the opportunity to puke in its eyes and pull my sword from its belly.

  It dropped me to wipe the blood out of its vision, and Greg came in from the other side. He buried a silver dagger in the troll’s back, and the beast caught him in the face with a backward-thrown elbow. Greg crashed into the opposite wall, and I saw him sink through the drywall.

  The troll caught sight of Stephen again, and started down the hall towards him. “Stephen! Get to the roof! We need room to maneuver!” We also needed a few seconds’ breather, and I hoped he could outrun the massive creature long enough for Greg and me to recover our balance.

  “Come on, partner, we aren’t dead yet,” I said as I pulled him out of the wall.

  “Actually, we are,” he said with a sickly grin. He pointed to the puddle on the floor. “You puked first.”

  “Strategy. I blinded him with my stomach acid,” I said as we staggered to the stairwell. I heard the door to the roof bang open four floors above me. “We gotta hurry. Stephen can’t hold that thing for long.”

  “We don’t make stomach acid,” Greg said, as we dashed up the stairs. Always gotta have the last word, that’s my partner.

  We reached the roof a few seconds later, and froze at what we saw. Stephen was there, and he was putting on a demonstration of the uncanny agility of the Fair Folk. I suddenly understood why legend had given them wings—Stephen looked like he was flying as he jumped and somersaulted over the swinging fists of the troll. The monster kept throwing punches, and Stephen kept dodging with a grace that was, well, otherworldly. No wonder the dance company kept him around.

  “I bet he’s amazing in Swan Lake,” Greg murmured, just as awed as I was.

  “What do you know from Swan Lake?”

  “I’m cultured. But that’s not the point. Let’s go kick some troll ass.”

  I nodded at him, and then yelled out to Stephen. “Hey, Baryshnikov! Get over here, and bring your ugly friend!”

  The faerie changed direction in midair and landed just in front of us, facing the troll. Greg and I spread out a few feet to either side of him, making a triangle facing the troll, who was readying for another charge. From thirty feet away, the monster bellowed a challenge, or at least what I thought was a really bad insult in Trollish. I bared my fangs and shrieked a scream that came from somewhere around my navel, and all of us rushed forward. Seconds before the inevitable collision, inspiration struck me and I knew how we could kill this thing and not get any more hammered than we already were.

  “Go for the knees,” I yelled at Greg, and we both dove under the troll’s outstretched arms and rolled past the monster.

  I lashed out with Milandra’s sword and cut the monster’s right leg nearly in two, while Greg spun around and shot out the troll’s left kneecap. The troll flopped on its belly and slid halfway to Stephen, who looked around for anything to hit the thing with. I threw him my sword, and he cut off the troll’s head, splattering even more green-black blood all over the roof. Stephen looked down at the headless monster lying in front of him, and promptly vomited all over its corpse.

  “Feel better?” Greg asked me. “Now you’re not the only one that puked.”

  “I told you, that was part of the plan,” I protested, and then headed back to where the faerie was standing holding the queen’s borrowed sword. When I got to him, I took the blade out of his hand, noticing as I did that the flesh of his fingers was blistered from touching the steel.

  Just then, Sabrina burst onto the roof with a shotgun in hand, yelling, “Nobody move!” She saw us standing there, and then rushed over to wrap her arms around Stephen’s waist. “Are you okay, Stevie? Did it hurt you? Where’s Alex? Is he okay?”

  “Alex is fine. I got him to hide in the bathroom when you ran out in the hall after the troll, then I led the thing away from my room so he couldn’t get hurt. You guys got here just in time. I don’t know how much longer I could have held out against it.” The air around him shimmered for a second, and when it cleared he was in his human form again.

  “I’m just glad you’re both all right.” Sabrina hugged him again, and then looked over at me. “What about you?”

  “We’re all right. A little battered, but nothing a little midnight snack won’t cure. What about you? That looks like a nasty bruise.” I reached out and gently brushed my fingers against a lump rising on her forehead.

  Sabrina looked away quickly. “It’s nothing. Just a lump.”

  “Well, make sure you get that looked at. We’d hate to have to break in another police department resource. Right, Greg?”

  I turned to my partner, but he wasn’t her
e. I looked around, and found him searching the troll’s body. Greg reached into the dead troll’s coat pocket and pulled out a cell phone and a business card.

  He held up the phone. “That was nasty. But I bet this is going to be very useful indeed.” Then he looked at the card. “Whoa.” He passed it to me.

  It was one of mine. Now that was weird. And disturbing. I don’t give out many of the things, because of the stupid slogan Greg put on them. “Shedding light on your darkest problems.” Bleh. But that narrowed the list of people he could have gotten the card from down considerably.

  Sabrina walked over to him and held out her hand. “That’s evidence, Knightwood. Hand it over.”

  Greg snatched back the card and slipped both items into his pants pocket. “No way. This is evidence, all right, but you guys can’t fight this. If your people go looking into whatever is on the other end of this phone, a lot of them are going to end up hurt or dead. So we’ll hang on to the phone, and we’ll make the body disappear. And you’ll figure out how to write this up in a way that doesn’t mention faeries, vampires or trolls. Because that’s what we do. Right?”

  Sabrina stared at him for a minute, and I could almost see the wheels turning as she tried to come up with a way to follow police procedure and still do the right thing. Finally she said, “Right. I hate it, but you’re right.” She looked over at me. “When did he get to be the smart one?”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, he’s always been the smart one,” I said.

  “Fair enough, but I’ve got some questions about this troll attack, and we need to get Stephen back to his room.” Sabrina took her cousin by the arm and led him through the destroyed stairwell door and down into the hospital.

  We rescued Alex from the bathroom, and after convincing him that Stephen was fine, and swiping a couple of chairs from a comatose patient across the hall, we were all crowded into Stephen’s room. Alex and Stephen sat on the bed, with Sabrina seated next to them.

  Greg wedged a chair under the door, and he and I sat across the bed from Sabrina, who kept eyeballing Greg’s jacket pocket like she really wanted that phone back. I scooted forward in my brown pleather hospital chair and moved to cut that off before she got rolling.