The Black Knights

by Matilda Reyes

  I didn’t know what I’d do if he didn’t.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MY DREAMS OF ASHOR were as vivid as anything I experienced during my waking hours. I wasn’t convinced that part of my being wasn’t transported to another place outside of time and corporeality. Everything I saw was too similar to what I’d experienced during the year I was trapped in the liminal plane, the place in-between here and the places beyond, whatever that meant. All I knew was that it was a place where I’d trained and learned about the history of the Order and how best to control my temper.

  Yawning, I opened my eyes and found myself in the vast library of the liminal plane. Like always, it was a shining testament to knowledge and beauty. The wood surfaces gleamed as if recently polished and the leather of the seats looked brand new despite the hours I’d parked myself in them. The enormous room looked like the pictures I’d seen of the Royal Portuguese Reading Room of the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura in Rio de Janeiro with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases and decadent reading areas.

  Candlelight danced from the mezzanine, casting flickering shadows around me. I shivered. The shadows reminded me of the wraiths, the formless creatures that taunted me with their silent menace and feather-like caresses. Walking through a giant spiderweb was more comfortable than being in the general proximity of my would-be torturers. Although I’d never asked Ashor or Il Separatio about them, I was convinced they were an anomaly of sorts, not belonging to any world and intent on scaring me half to death. Running a hand over a glossy table, I whistled.

  “Ashor,” I sang. “My dude, this is the fourth time you’ve been a no-show. What’s up with that? I could use your help, Oh Great One.”

  “One day I will strike you down and enjoy it,” said my favorite and only immortal friend. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and whirled me around. I gasped and put a hand to my heart, much to his delight. His eyes crinkled and he let out a belly laugh that shook his immense frame. “In the meantime, I do enjoy messing with you. Sit, sit.”

  “We have to talk and I’m going to yell. I will shout until we both go deaf.”

  “Try it,” he said, smirking. “Anything you can do, I can do bigger and better. Remember, I’ve had a millennium of practice. Now, what do you want?”

  “The darkness,” I replied, not wasting any time with formalities. “What is it and how do we stop it?”

  “If I knew, I would have taken care of it.”

  “That’s not helpful,” I snapped.

  “Not my problem, puny human girl. While you were too busy throwing salt at people, I’ve been placating gods and other beings such as myself. Your people have been messing with the occult for too long, child, and it is time to pay the price. You’ve unleashed something that wants to foster the chaos and madness that will disrupt the Balance. Your job is to fix the problem from your side. The corporeal is your responsibility now.”

  “Oh, come on,” I whined. “That’s not fair. I’m new to this whole obscure knowledge thing. I didn’t do anything. My friends did the spells that brought me back.”

  “The problem precedes their actions to save you, the most powerful of Il Separatio’s knights, save for yours truly. First, best, and brightest.”

  “Nope, you don’t have an ego as big as you are old,” I said, rolling my eyes. “If this precedes me, when did it start? Whose fault is this, so I can blame them and make them help?”

  Ashor scoffed. “I, too, am a Black Knight. That means I only know as much as I am told. Take it up with the Big Guy if you want details.”

  Il Separatio, the Entity of Neutrality and father of the people of the Vespers, was more terrifying than God and the Devil combined, at least in my opinion. He was faceless, much like my wraiths, but with such an immense presence, I was too scared to even think about sassing him. Unlike God and the Devil, he was not inclined to talk to his children, so we were left to figure things out on our own. Ashor had been born more than a millennium earlier than me. Besides my brief interactions with the inscrutable deity, he was the last one to have been graced with more than just a few words. If Il Separatio wasn’t talking to Ashor, I was screwed.

  “No, thanks,” I said with a shudder. “Do you have anything helpful to say?”

  Ashor’s glare made me quake in my boots. Even in his seat, the rangy old man towered over me at damn near seven feet. His freakish old-man muscles were concealed by his eclectic wardrobe of Seventies leisure suits, shirts open to his navel, and snakeskin boots. He radiated power and might. As much as I enjoyed giving him a hard time, it was hard to remember he’d lived lifetimes and had supernatural abilities I couldn’t comprehend. He’d taught me how to use my ability to summon and emit energy, how to control the wind, and how to influence minds. The last two were abilities I’d inherited when my siblings died along with my parents in a horrible explosion.

  “Have you been working on your mind control?” he asked as if he could read my mind. Shit. I hoped he couldn’t because then I was screwed.

  I shook my head. “No, Dakarai thinks it’s a bad idea until I learn to control my desire to perform an exorcism. But why should I stop? That darkness, that entity or whatever you want to call it is in Esai. How do I pull it out of him?”

  “Who is to say it always resides in him? During your battle with Marcus and the cult earlier in the year, you saw it leak out and touch you, the beast, and the seer. What if you’re infected and you carry the darkness?”

  I’d only given that option momentary consideration in the immediate aftermath. Unlike Esai, I wasn’t a jerk of epic proportions who wanted to stir up drama when there wasn’t any. I tried to maintain the Balance while Esai and his buddies wanted to radically change the Order.

  “No. You’re wrong,” I insisted. “Mikael is too good to carry any darkness.”

  “And you?”

  “I’d feel it.”

  “Would you?”

  “Stop with the twenty questions! What am I supposed to do?”

  “The Powerful One will not teach you what he cannot control. You must learn to succeed.”

  “Who? Il Separatio?”

  “No, the Wise One.”

  “Dakarai?”

  He waved a hand, and a gust of air pushed me into the seat across from him. I landed with a thud and rubbed my back. “Yes, him. There is magic you must learn to defeat this entity. He will not teach you because he’s too powerful to conduct any strong magic without dire consequences. I will teach you what I can, but it may not be enough. There is too much you still have to learn and do. To destroy your enemy, you must understand its origins and neither a book nor a lesson will teach you that.”

  Dakarai’s powers seemed limitless, yet he was hindered by them in ways I didn’t understand. He was telekinetic, pyrokinetic, and his ability to make explosions dwarfed my own by far. Yet, whenever we had a battle on our hands, he sat back and let us fight, claiming he’d cause more damage than help.

  “That’s not fair!” I shouted. “If I can’t learn from Dakarai or a book where the hell do I get this information?”

  “Experience, impudent child. You have earthly concerns to handle before you can tackle a demon. Unless I am mistaken, you still have a cult that is kidnapping our people. Solve that and only then can you tackle the unknown. You will learn magic, but you will not fight that battle yet.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “What do I need? A wand?” I looked around the room for a spare piece of wood from the wizarding world and a pointy hat.

  “First, you remember that this is no game,” he said, the first hint of thunder in his voice. “Wisecracks will not save you from your fate. Nor will they save you from the wrath of beings more powerful than me.” Ashor snapped his fingers and a stack of books two feet high appeared on the table in front of me. “Magic is more than just fancy words and a silly wand. It resides in the blood, in the essence, more so in you given your powerful bloodlines and calling. You must understand the theory of magic, the ways to summon it from your core
before you can learn how to use it in a battle against other practitioners. I can move these books with you to the earthly realm, but only for a short while. Read quickly and do not share their contents with your nosy boyfriend.”

  “He’s not nosy,” I said, the lie spilling easily from my lips. I didn’t even care I was fibbing to an immortal being who could smite me with a thought, if he were so inclined, not that I believed he would. Nicholas never spread gossip, but he never missed the opportunity to listen to a salacious story or ten. I likened it to my love of reality television — a guilty pleasure.

  Ashor stared down his nose at me until I squirmed.

  “Alright, fine,” I grumbled. “So he’s a little nosy. I’ll tell him that these are off limits and I’ll read during every spare moment I have. Is that acceptable?”

  “For now. In the meantime, stop worrying about your beast.”

  My heart leaped into my throat. “Is he coming back?”

  “I can’t read his mind, nor can I influence his decisions, if that is what you’re asking. Your souls and lives are connected, but he has done something he may never reveal to you. Can you live with that?”

  “I don’t care as long as he comes back.”

  “And the boyfriend?”

  “Irrelevant to this conversation. Nicholas will always be a huge part of my life. I care about him. Wait. Why are we discussing my love life and Jordy in the same breath?”

  “You tell me, puny mortal.”

  “You said I’m immortal.”

  “Uh-huh. Figure it out.”

  I blinked, and he was gone.

  “Dammit, Ashor! Not cool at all.” I blew out a breath and opened the first book on the top of the pile, Ad studium magicae ex chao. It was as old as Ashor and had a layer of dust an inch thick.

  That was an exaggeration.

  It was old, musty, and gross, to be sure, but that was on the outside: The pages were well-preserved compared to the cover, and the print was legible. By the time I finished the first chapter, my eyes were blurring from the sheer number of details I’d have to memorize for a field of study I couldn’t even comprehend. Closing the book, I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, willing myself to wake up. I needed time to rest before starting my work day, and the only way that would happen was if I broke out of this dream.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The blaring of my alarm clock jolted me awake. I flailed and slapped at the loud contraption until it silenced. I was always disoriented after one of those dreams, but this time I was downright stupefied. Next to the alarm was the ancient, leather-bound book I’d been trying to decipher in the library, dusty cover and all. I sat up and cradled it to my chest, my heart pounding. Until that moment, I’d harbored the tiniest sliver of belief that Ashor was just a figment of my overactive imagination, the result of spending too much time in the liminal plane alone. But here was proof: He’d sent a book back from the library I’d dreamed about for months.

  “Ungh,” groaned Nicholas, as I tossed my quilt to the side and covered his head.

  Oops, I’d forgotten that he’d come over late last night and slept over.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Time izit?” he mumbled through a yawn.

  I smiled. “Too early for you. I will make coffee and go to the gym.”

  “Uh-huh. Wake me up when you get back.” He flopped onto his belly and fell asleep.

  Without letting go of the book, I brushed my teeth and ready myself for my workout in record time. As crazy as it sounded, even I wouldn’t have let this impossible gift out of my sight if someone offered me an obscene amount of money, a private island away from this madness with a personal chef and masseuse, and all the reality television in the world. I set the coffee maker to brew as I flipped through the pages. The words were in Latin, which I’d understood in the liminal plane, a language I couldn’t have been bothered to learn in reality. Yet, somehow, I understood them.

  Chaos magick is the theory and practice that emphasizes the practical use of many belief systems and the creation of new, unorthodox methods.

  New and unorthodox? I wondered what that meant in times that were older than Ashor.

  Wait. What? How the hell did I understand Latin as clearly as I understood Spanish and English? Was this another one of Il Separatio’s mysterious gifts? Did I have the gift of tongues?

  I tried to say the words out loud, but it sounded like garbled pig Latin. Speaking was out of the question. Yet here I was, stumbling along a paragraph on the etymology of the word chaos. With each passing sentence, I understood more and more. I was so close to shouting for Nicholas to show him my impressive new skills and bug him for theories on what had happened overnight. Ashor’s warnings to keep my nosy boyfriend away from the book rang in the back of my head. Knowing Nicholas, he’d have an introductory Latin grammar book, a notebook, and a stack of translation cards prepared by the time I came back from the gym. I hated that I couldn’t use his overzealous self. His insatiable curiosity made him an excellent research partner.

  Sipping my coffee, I traced a finger along a complicated sentence. That one hadn’t magically revealed itself and my conjugation wasn’t yet that good to intuit the meaning. I’d have to go to the library to find that grammar book sooner rather than later. Getting it out without Cecilia noticing would be difficult. Doing so without her snarky comments would be damn near impossible. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but she was back to hating me this week. It was a shame because I could have used her talents to untangle this puzzle. She wouldn’t have believed me if I told her the truth. Worse, she would have tried to take the book away from me for her perusal. As I drained the last of my mug, I contemplated bothering Dakarai, not caring it wasn’t yet five in the morning. Ashor hadn’t warned me off talking to the smartest man I knew. He also hadn’t given permission. What I would have given to go back to sleep and ask a few more questions. There was no help for it. I was on my own.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  I gathered my gym bag and water bottle and ambled down to the private training studio I used to share with Jordan. It was his, and after my return, he’d let me have free rein of the place. He wasn’t great with words, and he was a control freak about his sacred spaces, so I understood the gesture for what it was. The room wasn’t as neat as he’d kept it, but I could still work out without tripping onto a disgusting mat, like in the main gym. Dropping the bag, I set the book on the weight bench and started my warmups. I kept my eyes on it all throughout my routine, contemplating its secret knowledge. If it was the key to learning how to defeat the cult and the demon that plagued me, then I would do everything in my power to absorb its contents. Through osmosis, if I could.

  I’d been working for half an hour when the door let out a pneumatic sigh and slid open behind me. Only Mikael and Nicholas had the access code, so I didn’t bother to turn around.

  “Your form is good,” remarked a familiar voice.

  I spun around, ready to hurl the weight in my hand at the intruder—and froze. In front of me stood all six feet and two hundred pounds of muscle was that Jordan. Great, I was hallucinating on top of everything else. My heart pounded in my chest, and there were butterflies in my stomach, the girlish crush that only came out in private moments. I didn’t care that I was a hot mess. A hallucination wouldn’t care about my heated cheeks and sweaty palms. Jordan was here, in some form or another, and that was all that mattered.

  “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  “That’s all the welcome I get?” he asked. “I thought I’d at least get one of your shocked gasps and heart clutches. I’m disappointed.”

  I shrugged, trying to play it cool even though my voice wavered. “My tolerance for dreams and hallucinations has intensified over the last few years. How are you? Better yet, where are you?”

  “I’m standing right in front of you. We’re in my studio. Our studio,” he corrected himself. “I’m not a h
allucination.”

  “Uh-huh. Vision, dream partners, whatever. So? Where in the world have you been?”

  “Where haven’t I been? Jas, I’m not a hallucination. Touch me.”

  “That strategy hasn’t worked out for me. Can you believe I dreamed that Ashor sent back a book from the liminal plane with me?” I nodded over at the bench.

  His eyes flicked to the dusty volume, and he arched a brow as he returned his attention to me. Jordan crossed the room and stopped in front of me, so close I could feel the heat emanating from his body and get a whiff of the scent that was undeniably him. He raised a hand to caress my cheek and pinched my chin between his fingers. My heart stuttered at the intimacy of his touch. “Still think I’m a hallucination?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “You’ve been gone for so long. Everyone said you’d missed your own deadline, so you weren’t coming back.”

  “I got held up.”

  “I swore that you were coming back, that you wouldn’t abandon me… us,” I corrected myself as my cheeks flushed. “Not when we have another fight on our hands. Even Ashor expressed his doubts, but not me.”

  “This is getting annoying,” he said, turning away with a yawn. He released my face and tapped me on the nose. “I’m going to my apartment to unpack and shower. It’s been a hell of a long trip. Come and see me when you wake up.”