The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  Under the tabletop was a cleverly disguised gun safe, with room for half a dozen shotguns and rifles, plus a dozen or so handguns. I went to the coat closet and put my guns back on, double-checking my ammo situation. I hadn’t fired a shot in last night’s encounter, but it’s always worth another peek before you leave the house under-armed. Greg had a Glock identical to mine in a shoulder holster and a Mossberg shotgun. Sabrina had her department-issued Smith & Wesson .40 in a shoulder rig, and I saw her pick up a Glock 19 from the case and clip that onto her belt as a backup.

  “I don’t really know much about guns,” Stephen said tentatively, obviously unnerved by the amount of ammo and gun oil floating around the room.

  I handed him a belt with a couple of long daggers in it and said, “Use these for anything close. Grab that shotgun and point it in the general direction of anything you want dead. The buckshot will take care of the rest.”

  He still looked a little shaky, but better nervous than dead. Mike, as usual, declined the use of a gun, but Alex picked up a .38 revolver, checked the cylinder expertly, and tossed a couple of speed loaders in his jacket pocket.

  I raised an eyebrow, and Alex laughed at me. “Remember, Mr. Black, faerie, not pansy. I know my way around a pistol.”

  “Noted.” I chuckled. All geared up, we split into separate cars and headed out for a little party crashing. Just before I walked upstairs, I reached back into the closet and grabbed Milandra’s sword. It had come in handy once already. No sense in leaving it behind.

  Chapter 26

  We got to the meeting place and split up according to the plan. Stephen and I got into Greg’s car and rolled slowly into the parking lot, while Sabrina and Greg went in the front door on foot. Not for the first time, I wished for those snazzy in-ear two-way radios that you see on all the cop shows, but as it was, we just made sure our cell phones all showed roughly the same time, and went for it.

  The big roll-up door at the loading dock was open, with a pair of trolls flanking the opening. These guys were decked out in full leather armor, with chain mail pieces, helmets, giant battle-axes and war paint. It looked like some comic book version of what a troll warrior was supposed to look like. They would have seemed ridiculous if they weren’t nine feet tall with axes that gleamed in the streetlights.

  I got out of the car and walked up to the steps beside the dock, Stephen in tow. The smarter-looking of the two trolls (and let me tell you, that’s a race to the bottom if I’ve ever seen one) held out a hand and reached behind his back. I tensed and put a hand on my Glock, but relaxed when he brought out an iPad.

  “Are you on the list?” he rumbled. In his giant mitt, the iPad looked like a Barbie phone, but he managed to scroll down a list of members or something.

  “Probably not. I brought the faerie you’ve been looking for.” I gestured back at Stephen, who did that shimmer thing and revealed his true form. “Let me talk to your boss.”

  “No way, vamp. Give us the faerie, and we won’t crush your head. But you don’t get to see the boss.”

  The dimmer-witted troll was looking very confused by all this talking, and he started forward, axe in hand. His partner waved him back and said, “Gorton wants to smash you. Give me the faerie, and I won’t let him.”

  “As much as I appreciate you looking out for my well-being, I think I’ll pass. Now call your boss and I won’t blow off anything you’re fond of.” I pulled my Glock and pointed it at an area just south of his belt buckle.

  He got the point, but his friend Gorton didn’t. As soon as he saw the gun, he raised the axe and charged. Stephen suddenly got over his fear of firearms and put five shells of double-ought buckshot in the troll’s chest. It went down in a spray of green flesh and black blood, axe clattering across the pavement. That wouldn’t kill a troll, no matter how much I wished it would, but he’d be out of the fight.

  “Now,” I said, keeping the Glock trained on the other troll’s most prized possession. “About that whole ‘seeing the boss’ thing?”

  He looked over at Gorton, then back at the pair of us, and motioned for us to follow him into the warehouse. Since no one else had come running when Stephen went all Rambo on the troll, I figured Sabrina and Greg had taken care of the other guards. I nodded to Stephen, who had finished reloading, and we walked into the dark warehouse after the troll.

  I paused just outside the door to listen for heartbeats, breathing, guns cocking—anything that would give away that somebody on the other side of the door was going to put a couple rounds in my head as soon as I crossed the threshold, but I heard nothing. Our guide led us through a maze of shelving to a big open area where a cage had been set up with bleachers and lights all around it. I looked around in confusion, trying to reconcile the arena-sized interior of the building with the warehouse-sized exterior.

  Stephen saw my puzzlement and chuckled. “Magic, Jimmy. The building is bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

  “How?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I did mention magic, didn’t I? It never makes any sense except to the spell caster, and they’re all a little bit crazy. Keep your eyes open. This is going too well.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I hope the others are okay.” Just then the troll reached the far wall of the open area, and knocked on a door. The door clicked open, and he gestured for us to go inside.

  “Boss is in there. I gotta go help Gorton pick buckshot out of his lung. That wasn’t very nice, shooting him.” He looked at Stephen reproachfully.

  “It wasn’t very nice of him to try to cut me in half,” Stephen replied calmly.

  “He’s not very smart. He saw guns and got angry. It happens.” The troll shrugged a shoulder the size of a VW bug and walked past us back the way we came.

  I looked at Stephen, who looked back at me and shrugged himself. That seemed to just about cover the situation, so I shrugged back at him, and walked in the door.

  We stepped into an office that looked nothing like anything I expected. It looked more like a cross between a library and an armory, with melee weapons of all shapes and sizes on stands and on hangers all over one wall, all showing signs of heavy use. Two walls were taken over by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with old, leather-bound books. The books also showed signs of heavy use, and the room even had one of those rolling ladders on a track circling three walls to provide access to the upper shelves and the highest weapons.

  The fourth wall was taken up by a bank of flat-screen televisions, some showing news feeds, some showing movies, and several showing closed-circuit security camera feeds from around the building. I pointed to one screen that showed Gorton lying on the loading dock while his compatriot picked buckshot out of him with a pocketknife. Of course, a troll’s pocketknife would be a human short sword, so it wasn’t a simple operation. Somehow I still couldn’t find it in myself to feel bad for the guy. Especially since another screen showed half a dozen terrified men in their twenties crammed into a cage half-naked and dressed like extras in Spartacus.

  Seated in one luxurious chair in front of the bank of television screens was the last thing I would have expected. Sipping on amber liquid from a crystal glass was a faerie. He wasn’t nearly as good-looking as the other faeries I had met. He had pinched features, beady dark eyes, and slightly greasy hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, but he was unmistakably a faerie. The chiseled jawline, ridiculously high cheekbones and angular slant of the eyes would have been clues even if I hadn’t seen the pointed ears right away. He looked a lot like someone took everything that made the Fae so annoyingly attractive, and then dropped those features on a third-string mobster. Great, I thought. We get to bring down the Joe Pesci of the faerie world.

  I didn’t say anything, and neither did Stephen. I just walked over to the wet bar behind his little seating area, poured myself a drink, and took a seat. Stephen passed on the drink, but sat in a chair off to one side.

  After a long few moments, our host finally
looked over at us and said, “You two have cost me a great deal of money, and two trolls. That bill will have to be settled.” He looked at me and his dark eyes glittered. “I have heard of you, vampire. I am not impressed.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. If I’d known I was meeting fans today, I would have put on clean socks.” I finished my drink. “Nice scotch. Now, time to shut down your little fight club.”

  “Or?” One greasy Fae eyebrow shooting north almost to his receding hairline.

  I’ve always wanted to be able to do that, but regardless of the hours spent practicing in the mirror, I can never get only one eyebrow to go up. So instead of looking bemused, or sardonic, or some other fifty-cent word, I just end up looking surprised.

  “There’s no ‘or,’” Stephen answered while I was contemplating eyebrows. “Just stop. Simple as that.”

  “Well, my dear ballerina, I fear there is nothing simple about it. You see, gentlemen, I make a great deal of money from our little enterprise here, and as I rather like money, and what it can buy me, I doubt I’ll just decide to stop out of the goodness of my heart. Besides, I enjoy it.” He leaned back in his chair, and picked up a remote control. “Take a look. You might find yourself hooked.”

  He pressed a few buttons on the remote, and the lights in the room dimmed. A projection screen lowered from the ceiling, and images flickered to life.

  We sat there as a greatest hits montage of faerie/troll combat rolled across the screen. I recognized all the beating victims in one state of combat or another, from standing triumphant over a fallen troll to bouncing off the canvas with blood oozing from eyes, ears and mouth. In every shot one thing was constant—the crowd was going absolutely nuts. No matter who won, the crowd screamed with a frenzy that one usually only sees at NASCAR crashes.

  Our host spun his chair back around and looked levelly at us. “As you can well imagine, there is a significant amount of money wagered on these events. And no matter who wins the fight, the real winner is always the house. As I am the house, I do not intend to give up that revenue stream. So it seems we are at an impasse. And if you are not here to fight in tonight’s event, it seems I must recruit another combatant.”

  “Like your monster tried to ‘recruit’ me?” Stephen spat.

  “Precisely. Given our kind’s recuperative capabilities, had you been a little less resistant, we could have knocked you unconscious, brought you here and put you through a full bout without anyone ever being the wiser. Now look at all the problems you have created.” He put down his glass and steepled his fingers. “What could I ever do to convince you that it would be in your best interests to participate in tonight’s event? Oh, I have an idea.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I hate it when the bad guys have ideas. I hate it even more when they smile about those ideas. Our nameless little friend picked up his remote again, and the screen withdrew back into the ceiling. On the center monitor was exactly what I was afraid I’d see—an image of a troll carrying an unconscious Sabrina in through the loading dock door.

  Our host looked up at us, wearing a smile colder than the winter wind outside, and gestured to the weapons lining the walls. “Choose your weapons, gentlemen.”

  Chapter 27

  Stephen drew both daggers and started for the faerie behind the desk, but I held him back. “I don’t think that’s going to do your cousin any favors.”

  “Quite correct, Mr. Black. What has this world come to when a bloodsucking fiend is the voice of reason? Now, Stephen, our bout begins in just a few hours, so I suggest you go to the locker room and join your compatriots. I have something very special planned for tonight’s event. Have you ever seen a real battle royal, gentlemen? Not the silly things on your wrestling programs, but a real fight to the death? I think in this case it will be more like twenty men and trolls enter, no one leaves. How does that sound?” He leaned back and smiled again, reaching for his glass.

  His hand never got there. He froze as an enormous crash echoed through the warehouse. Gunshots and screams rattled the walls as the cavalry appeared on the monitor. Greg was a blur on the screen, blasting his way through a horde of trolls on his way to rescue Sabrina, who had “suddenly” regained consciousness and was steadily shooting holes in the trolls nearest her.

  Our oily friend reached into his pocket, but I was behind the desk with one hand on his wrist and the other lifting him by his throat before he could withdraw his hand.

  “Take your hand out of your pocket. Very slowly. And if it’s not empty, I’m going to rip it off and drink you dry from the shoulder.”

  He looked down at me, and I don’t know if it was the fangs or the look in my eye that convinced him, but he complied. I was a little disappointed, having developed a taste for faerie blood over in Never-Never Land. I looked back at the monitors, then at Stephen. “Go ahead, kick a little troll booty of your own. No point letting the cop and the bloodsucker have all the fun.”

  He ran out to join the fray like a kid running into the living room on Christmas morning. I wondered for a second how his new bloodthirst was going to go over with the other guys in Nutcracker, then turned my attention to the matters at hand.

  I dropped the faerie into his chair and sat on the edge of his desk. “So your guys fell for the noisy decoy and missed the stealthy fat vampire. I think you need to buy a better class of henchman next time. But now that we’re alone, I don’t have to be nice.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you were on your best behavior when you threatened to rip my arm off.” He rubbed his throat.

  “If I wasn’t on my best behavior, I wouldn’t have given you the option to keep the arm.” I knocked back the last swallow of his scotch, then continued. “What’s your name?”

  “Not that I owe you anything, vampire, but I am called Leonard.”

  “Okay, Lenny, who’s your boss?”

  “I am.”

  “You know I can hear your heartbeat, right? I know when you’re lying.” I leaned in like I was listening close. “Yup, big old fibber. Now let’s try this again.” I punched him in the chest, cracking a couple of ribs in the process. “Who. Is. The. Boss?”

  He coughed hard, and rubbed his chest where I’d just left a handprint as a souvenir. “I run the show here.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” I said, as I backhanded him, hard. Both lips split and a thin line of blood arced out to splatter on the desk blotter. “I’m going to run short on time soon, because my friends don’t approve of me beating people up. So stop dancing around, and just tell me what I want to know.”

  This time I punched downward, breaking his nose and sliding it sideways across his face. Blood poured down the front of his shirt, and I was really starting to have trouble not eating him when I heard him mumble something.

  “What?” I said, yanking his head up.

  He grinned at me, his face a mask of blood.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Unable to talk, he stretched out a hand and pointed behind me. I turned, and let his head drop as I caught sight of the monitors. The fighting was all over, with Stephen joining Greg and Sabrina in high-fives and touchdown dances with unconscious and wounded trolls scattered all around them.

  But of course that wasn’t the only thing on the monitors, and it wasn’t the most important thing, either. In the center monitor, coming through the front door, was a pair of faeries that looked like stereotypical martial arts movie bad guys. They had the long ponytails, long coats, no shirts, and most importantly, they had pistols pointed at Alex and Mike’s backs.

  “Crap.” I let go of Lenny’s ponytail.

  His head bobbed loosely for a second before he regained control of himself and stood up. He was recovering pretty quickly—I guess faeries do heal fast.

  “Crap, indeed, vampire.” He turned his head to the side and spit a gobbet of blood onto the floor. “Now I’m going to have to clean the carpets. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of carpets?”

  “You shoul
d ScotchGard. And yeah, I know exactly how hard it is to get blood out of carpets. Try hardwood sometime. You never get everything out of the cracks.” I got a smile out of him with that at least.

  Then I realized that he wasn’t smiling because I was funny, he was smiling because he had a very large pistol pointed at my chest.

  “Have you ever wondered whether anything other than a wooden stake through the heart could kill you, vampire?” he asked with a nasty grin.

  Then he shot me in the left leg, and I went down like a scrawny sack of potatoes. I lay writhing on his floor for a minute before I looked up at him and said, “This isn’t going to help with your cleaning bill.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’ll give me a rate just to do the whole room.” Still smiling, he shot my other leg, this time through the calf, because I was hunched over my thighs.

  It felt a lot like I’d imagined getting shot would feel. In other words it hurt. A whole lot. It felt a little bit like getting smashed in the leg with a hammer, if the hammer drove a burning coal all the way through my leg.

  Lenny used one foot to roll me over so I was lying flat on my back. He put his boot on my right shoulder to hold me in place, and then sighted along the barrel.

  “Now,” he said, “I asked you if you’d ever wondered whether anything other than a wooden stake through the heart could kill you. I mean, legends are old, and there probably weren’t guns when the legends first came about. So maybe we just need to conduct a scientific experiment. I know! I’ll shoot you, right through the heart, and if you heal, then it will take a wooden stake. If you die, then the legends are wrong.”

  He stretched out his arm, and I thought about how many vampire legends were wrong—garlic, holy water, churches—all that stuff dead wrong. Sunlight did in fact burn like a champ, but we’d never experimented with the stake or fire thing. Same with decapitation—we just figured those killed pretty much anything, so no reason to think we were exempt. Now it looked like I was going to find out the hard way.