Knight in Charlotte

by Edward McKeown

  “Don’t look to your vampire friend,” Bora said in a heavy Eastern European accent. “She seems to have misplaced her magic ring. In here, she’s nothing but a corpse.” He twitched the net bag holding Prosperine. The jaguar snarled explosively, but its helpless rage merely amused the huge werewolf. Bora laughed, a twisted sound of human and wolf. “Even you, Templar, never dreamed I would drive you into a church. Your allies are helpless.”

  “Why isn’t he?” Samantha demanded.

  “Werewolves aren’t affected by religious weapons of any faith,” Jeremy grated.

  “Just so,” Bora said. “We owe no allegiance to gods or devils, only to the nature of the Wolf.”

  “Bet you guys love Jack London novels,” Sam snapped.

  Great, Jeremy thought, annoy the werewolf. If only I could reach the bloodsword.

  Samantha, as if sensing his thought, locked eyes with him and started moving to the right.

  OhmyfuckingGod, Jeremy thought, she’s going to decoy Bora.

  “No, Sam,” Jeremy yelled. He raced forward toward Bora. The werewolf dropped the rope to Prosperine’s net and spread his arms wide, huge claws out. Jeremy skidded to a halt, just short of the werewolf’s grasp. From under the coat, he pulled a large spray can.

  “You going to paint me out of existence, Templar?” The werewolf, puzzled by the can, hadn’t even bothered to strike.

  “Yes,” Jeremy grated. “I think silver is your color.” He triggered the can. A cloud of silver nitrate spray enveloped Bora from head to toe as Jeremy emptied the can’s contents.

  Bora gave a howl of utter anguish and leapt away, blue flames enveloping his wolf pelt.

  Sam raced around the burning wolf to get the bloodsword. Jeremy chased Bora as the can sputtered out its remaining contents. To his surprise, the blue flames generated no heat, and, rather than burning, Bora seemed to be diminishing. The huge bulk of muscle evaporated. Teeth and claws disappeared along with the hair and pelt. All that was left was a naked, pot-bellied man with big ears. Still flickering blue and screaming, Bora ran for the front door, falling as his legs tangled in the straps of the leather bag.

  Jeremy stood there, torn between terror and relief. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  Samantha handed him the sword. She hadn’t struck the fleeing wolfman. In any hands other than Jeremy’s, the weapon had no magical properties. “Aren’t we going after him?”

  Jeremy looked at her. “You want me to chase a naked man down Tryon Street and stick him with a sword? That will look great on YouTube. Besides, I don’t think I can catch my breath, much less him. My right arm’s broken.”

  “Siddown, fer Crissake,” Sam said. “I’ll look for a first aid kit. Don’t move until I get back.”

  As she ran to the back of the church, Jeremy picked up the fallen leather bag. He walked slowly and painfully over to Debbie.

  “I feel like I’ve been eaten by a wolf and shit over a cliff,” Debbie whispered.

  “I think that was Bora’s plan.” Jeremy nodded. “This might help.” He scooped up the white stone ring out of Bora’s bag and placed it on her finger. The effect was immediate. The corpse-like look faded, to be replaced with her usual vivacity.

  Bob had no such relief and he groaned as he crawled up onto the pew. “I can’t say that I like being under obligation to a Templar for my life,” Bob said, wiping his face. “Yet I owe you a favor. Got anything in mind? Gold, jewels, a date with the girls from Hooters?”

  Jeremy looked at the demon and considered for a long moment. “I want Wells Fargo to get Wachovia.”

  “That’s an easy one, kid,” Bob said. “I never liked those pricks at Citibank anyway. Ok, done deal and we are square. I’m outta here.” He made his shaky path past a returning Sam, to the exit.

  “Will someone let me out of this net?” a voice came from the floor.

  Prosperine, now a naked redhead, looked up hopefully from the floor.

  Debbie untangled the shapeshifter as Samantha returned with a first aid kit she’d found and splinted Jeremy’s forearm. Prosperine donned his duster, looking as erotic as a sailor’s dream in the black leather.

  “We won this time,” Sam said. “I wonder how long it will take for Bora to recover?”

  Prosperine laughed like Lauren Bacall. “If he’s smart he won’t stop running until he hits the Canadian border. Whatever you did to him, stripped away hundreds of years of power and strength. There are a lot of creatures here in Charlotte who would be delighted to get claws and teeth into that saggy, white ass.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” an outraged voice shouted.

  The four turned to face Cardinal Esposito, who advanced on them from the rectory door, cross outstretched in one hand and container of Holy Water in the other.

  “Crap,” Debbie said and dodged behind Prosperine.

  “Nothing much,” Sam said wearily. “We just stopped a demonic turf war, saved Combined Way, assorted humans, two demons, a familiar and perhaps the economic future of the city.”

  “We’re better than Batman,” Jeremy said, a little giddy from shock.

  “You did all this with a vampire, a witch’s familiar and a lesbian,” Esposito said.

  “Sounds like a promising series for TV,” Debbie replied.

  Esposito glared at Jeremy’s defenders, though he carefully kept a large crucifix between him and Debbie. “Do you have any male acquaintances? You seem to associate only with unchaste women.”

  Samantha gave him a defiant look. “Smile when you say that, Cardinal Fang.”

  “I’m not a woman, I’m a jaguar,” Prosperine said, insulted.

  “And I get chased all the time, honey,” Debbie added with a false sweetness.

  “And I am an angel,” came a new voice. A snub-nosed blonde girl dressed in jeans suddenly stood among them.

  Esposito barked a laugh but it was cut short as the lines of Shadowheart’s body shimmered and changed. In place of the blonde teen, stood a raven-haired woman nearly seven feet tall. Emerald eyes blazed from her flawless, pale face. She wore leather and silver mail, and a sword hung at her side. From her shoulders towered wings of black and red feathers.

  “Do I still amuse you, Inquisitor?” she said, her voice high and musical, so beautiful that it was hard to concentrate on the words.

  “I see your auto-da-fe and raise you a deus ex machina,” Samantha said, her grin nearly as sharp as Debbie’s.

  “Surely, surely,” Esposito sputtered, his face blank with shock. “You cannot be real. Not a true angel. Not serving with this heretic. He has broken every rule—”

  “God is not a bureaucrat,” Shadowheart said. “These rules you prize come from men, not divinity. Your traditions work on evil because they are sanctified by belief, but your disdain for other beliefs is unfounded. A Buddhist monk is as holy, or more so, than you.”

  “But there are so many more worthy,” Esposito insisted, pointing at Jeremy.

  “Do not presume to question me,” Shadowheart said. Though she did not raise her voice, the power of it rang off the walls, and everyone froze. Jeremy realized that he had never before seen his guardian angel angry.

  “I am Jeremy’s guardian by appointment and by my will. He is foolish, vain, self-absorbed and generally all those things young men are. But he is also valiant and prone to defend his friends past the point of reason. He’s faced enemies that would break your mind, even turning some of them, if not to good, then away from evil.”

  She lowered her head and the full power of her gem-bright eyes smote the Jesuit. He fell to his knees, raising his hands.

  “You are,” he said, “you’re a real angel.”

  “Yes, Raoul, I am. Why is it that you always found it so easy to believe in demons and devils and so hard to believe in angels and more? You never really believed. Did you?”

  “No,” he said, tears streaming down his face.

  Jeremy who still harbored doubts about who and what he served, felt a mute sympath
y for the priest.

  “So Raoul,” Shadowheart continued. “I now elevate you from inquisitor to the level of a simple shepherd. For you have that in common with those who kept watch on the hillside; an angel of the Lord has spoken with you.” She spread her black and red wings till they seemed to fill the cathedral. Debbie squeaked and cowered behind a column. Prosperine ducked under a pew.

  “What must I do?” Esposito whispered, his eyes burning.

  “Do you not already know?”

  “Command me,” he said.

  “Inquisite no more. Heal the sick. Comfort the poor. Defend the helpless.”

  “So it shall be,” Esposito said. “I swear it.”

  He turned to Jeremy and to the Templar’s embarrassment, bowed his head to the floor. “Forgive me. Forgive my arrogance.” The Jesuit rose and backed away, his eyes only for Shadowheart, till he reached the door and vanished.

  Shadowheart blurred and transformed back into her mall-rat form. She snapped her bubble gum derisively at Jeremy. “You are a pain in my ass. You break rules just to hear the sound of them cracking.”

  “Yet you stay with me,” he said, his voice low.

  Shadowheart scowled. “I must have a “bad-boy” thing.”

  To The Holy See

  From Raoul Esposito SJ Calificador,

  Your Holiness

  The audit of Jeremy Leclerc has been cancelled. He is beyond the powers of the Realm of Earth to judge.

  I submit my resignation as Inquisitor and request reassignment to Sub-Saharan Africa where I may finally begin God’s work….

  The End

  Pas De Deux

  Jeremy almost dropped his latte on the keyboard as he read the headline from the Charlotte Observer website: POLICE SEEK “VAMPIRE” KILLER.

  “Dammit,” he said. People stared as the lanky, brown-haired, man wiped hot coffee off his wrist. Jeremy ignored them as his eyes devoured the text.

  “Twenty-six-year-old, Desmond Rovelo was found dead near Eastland Mall by teens in the early morning hours. The teens claim to have seen a small, white female fleeing the scene. A witness, Latesha Williams, said that the man had two bite marks on his throat and appeared to have lost much blood.”

  As if on cue, his cell phone vibrated. He flipped it open.

  “It wasn’t me.” The voice belonged to Debbie Middleton, vampire and sometime ally.

  “You have a cell phone?”

  “You think Verizon wouldn’t sell to the undead? Anyway, it wasn’t me. I was in a threesome last night and other than being a bit anemic, they’re fine and can testify I was with them all night.”

  “Never mind. You may be the evil undead, but you worked too hard to get a truce with the forces of light to throw it away so soon.”

  “Damn right. But we both have a problem.”

  “Let’s meet. The sun’s down and I’m in the Starbucks on East Boulevard.”

  “Yuppie scum. I’m outside. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t stick a bloodsword in my petite derriere before coming in. You Templars are quick with those things.”

  “I never stab a lady without warning.”

  “I ain’t a lady and wasn’t when I was alive, but thanks.”

  The door opened and Debbie stepped in, folding her cell phone. Most of the men in the place glanced up from their laptops and electronic toys. Debbie looked a lot like a country singer, small, but with a pile of bright blond hair and a bust that threatened to burst her blue jean jacket.

  She dropped into an overstuffed chair in the quiet corner he’d settled in. Jeremy glared at the staring men who went back to their PCs, tablets and cell phones.

  “Any idea who or what it is?” Jeremy said. He tried to keep his eyes up on Debbie’s. The vampire had turned their first hand-to-hand combat into something more erotic and lingering. For two hundred years Debbie had lived a life of sensual decadence. She played the human body like an instrument in return for a “nip and a sip.”

  “No. The cops think it was a psycho, but it’s a vamp.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “No vamp that knows me would come near. I’d kill them. This town ain’t big enough for two of us. Least not the way I want to exist.”

  Jeremy scanned the story. “Victim was a mugger with a record of robbery and assault. Another vamp with a heart of gold?”

  Debbie shrugged, which was fun to watch. “Vamps love criminals. For those few of us bothered by feeding on humans, it’s an out. And y’all don’t really care if they go missing. They’re also the ones out at night in isolated areas. Convenient snacks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoever this is has to go,” Debbie said. All the coquettishness disappeared and something old and deadly faced him now. “If this is a new vamp they need to feed way more than I do and they aren’t that careful. I leave humans alive, tired and happy. A killer vamp is going to make my hunting and feeding way harder.”

  “The White Pass protects you.” Jeremy winced mentally as he remembered the Templar Master’s expression when Jeremy told him how he’d bound the Order to exempt Debbie from being hunted by the forces of light, in return for her aide against a Bain-Sidhe haunting South Park Mall.

  “Not from the police or what would follow if I’m revealed,” Debbie countered. “We have to find this new vamp and kill it.”

  “This sounds like the setup to a bad buddy movie,” he said.

  Debbie’s lips twisted. “Yeah. You, me and your guardian angel.” Her eyes darted around. “Where is she anyway?”

  Suddenly, a girl stood next to Debbie, medium height, cute, cornflower blue eyes wearing a loose white blouse and jeans. She looked down at Debbie, who’d frozen like a rabbit.

  “Shadowheart,” Jeremy acknowledged. He hadn’t seen his guardian angel manifest in several weeks. Shadowheart had several manifestations to human eyes, this being the least alarming. But Debbie saw her as she actually was, warrior archangel, and as terrifying to her as any monster of darkness to a human. “Debbie is going to help us.”

  The angel turned her gaze from Debbie who sank further into her chair. “Templar, you spend too much time with such creatures.”

  A flash of anger lit Jeremy. “It’s hard to meet nice girls doing what I do.”

  “Uh, Jeremy, Honey,” Debbie interrupted, “I don’t think you should argue—”

  “Or what? I’ll be condemned to a lonely life of fighting in shadows until I die?” He snapped his laptop closed and rose. “Too late.”

  Debbie rose and stretched. Shadowheart used the distraction to step into a shadow and vanish. Jeremy felt a weight in the gold and crystal housing that he wore on a chain under his shirt. Shadowheart rode him again.

  I feel a disturbance to the South, Shadowheart mindspoke. Something evil prepares itself. Seek the area of the Greenway.

  Debbie and Jeremy piled into his black Mini Cooper and drove to a side street near a pedestrian entrance to the McMullen Greenway, a bike path and trail of packed dirt and wooden walkways over swampy ground. A few joggers and bikers in brilliant-colored clothing were leaving as the greenway closed at dusk. When they were safely out of sight Jeremy and Debbie climbed out of his Mini.

  Though the evening was warm, Jeremy carried a black leather duster in his arms. Rolled in it was the bloodsword, a plain Templar blade with a jeweled hilt. No ornamentation that; the jewel was a potent force against evil. Under his loose beach shirt, a Walther PPK rode in the small of Jeremy’s back. Debbie and he split off the trail. She went for the swampy areas where the mosquitoes wouldn’t trouble her undeadness. He went off to a piece of high ground with a view of the trail, dusted himself with OFF and sat with his back to a tree. Time dragged by.

  Anything? he finally mindspoke to Shadowheart.

  I feel a sense of something, she replied, a sense of something evil nearby but it is hard to filter it out from your D-cupped ally.

  Jealous? he said.

  Your infantile fascinations with sex are of no interest to me. I
am of the same stuff as the stars.

  Hot gas, huh?

  The gold and crystal pendant he wore that held Shadowheart’s essence thumped him on the chest. Silence, I am searching. In a second Shadowheart flicked into existence in her normal mode of the small blond girl. She pointed. “That way.”

  Jeremy stood and drew the bloodsword, slipping on his leather duster as the evening had cooled. He stumbled over the clinging undergrowth that seemed to be everywhere in the South, finally resorting to a path to make some speed. A sweet, smoky smell from ahead slowed him and he saw a cigarette glow in the darkness of the woods. He recognized the smell of pot.

  Jeremy gained a vantage on a small hillock. On a bench below sat a girl about his age, small, and dark-haired, pale and intent. She wore jeans and a black bolero jacket and held a joint. Facing her on the bench was a big muscled goon, with tattoos, spiky hair and a small beard.

  “That’s a little taste, baby,” he said, crossing his booted feet. “I got all the good stuff. I can even get you serious drugs. Pills, whatever you need.” He smiled at her. “For the right favors I can even cut the price some. Hey, it’s not like I want to suck you dry.”

  “Funny you should put it that way,” she said in a high, sweet voice and leapt at him, eyes glimmering silver, fangs out.

  “What the fuck?” he screamed.

  Jeremy plunged out of the undergrowth, drawing the Templar bloodsword.

  The vampire’s head snapped around. She spotted him, then dropped the struggling drugger to race away with inhuman speed. The drugger stumbled off the bench and directly into Jeremy’s path. They collided and went sprawling.

  “Hey man,” the drugger shouted. “What you and the bitch up to?” He pulled a snub-nose pistol out, but before he could aim it, a small, slender hand clamped down on his wrist.

  “Now don’t be going off prematurely,” Debbie purred in the drugger’s ear. “I hate that in a man. Wanna party?”

  Leaving Debbie to deal with the drugger, Jeremy scrambled up and set out after the female vampire, running flat out. She’d fled down a side trail, one that the locals had made to reach the greenway from their backyards.