Knight in Charlotte

  Jeremy’s Walther cleared his holder before he even considered whether he should interfere. He fired one round, hitting the maddened waiter between the eyes. He dropped as the women fled. Jeremy stood. Shadowheart had left her pitchfork in the cabin but she held a large dagger in her hand. For some reason the Angel had always abhorred firearms.

  The maitre ď, a heavy-set man with red eyes and wearing a fez, approached them. “Forgive us,” he said, in oily voice. “Pierre is rather high-strung. Perhaps the long journey back from the lower session of Hell he came into, will help him with his customer relations skills.”

  More staff came in including Dogface. “Poor Pierre,” Dogface said. “Just couldn’t take the hags.”

  “Clean this up,” Fez ordered. “Nothing to worry about,” he said to the car at large. “A round of drinks on the house.”

  Dogface glanced at Jeremy. “What did you have to go and kill poor Pierre for? Nobody would have missed those anorexic bitches. Interfering busybodies don’t do well in Hell.”

  “Then take your own advice,” Jeremy snapped. “Get your snout out of mine.”

  Jeremy turned to Fez. “I think we’ll skip desert.”

  Shadowheart sidled up to him. “I can think of something better for desert.”

  I hope she’s just playing in character, he mused. “Come on.”

  Shadowheart followed on his heels. They quickly exited the car and made their way back to their compartment. Outside the window the world whizzed by at high speed, indistinct in the fading light. Jeremy quickly pulled down the shades, darkening the room further.

  “I think we’re safe for the moment,” he said. As he turned, he bumped into Shadowheart, and found his hands on the waist of her silk and leather bodice. “Uh, sorry. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly as if struggling to concentrate. “This body… this body… is strange…”

  Jeremy felt his head swimming and knew he should let go of her but couldn’t seem to remove his hands. Her ruby eyes drew him in. Her body, pressed against his, was fever-hot and lush, soft as it had never been before. In her teen incarnation Shadowheart normally felt light and insubstantial. As an angel, her body had been strong but lifeless. Now she was all sex and heat, the scent of her was delicious, overwhelming. He felt his body awakening to hers.

  He tried to think but arousal drove reason away. Her mouth came to his, sweet and intoxicating like Amaretto. Her tail slid up between his legs. The angel was gone and the succubus was irresistible. He shrugged off his duster as his hands discovered her body. She gave a low, wild laugh. He threw her on the table, out of control with a woman in a way he had never been before. Shadowheart too was out of control, her red eyes gleamed, the lips shone, her tail slapped his back in encouragement as they tore off each other’s clothes.

  She reached for him and pulled him into her. “Now, now,” she laughed. He buried his face between her breasts, alternately tonguing each nipple. The universe narrowed to her mouth, her body, her long, strong legs. The climax struck them both at the same instant in a roar and scream of satisfaction. Jeremy thought he might pass out and it felt as though his entire body was one huge pulse. They collapsed on the table, gasping for breath. Despite having one of the biggest orgasms of his life, Jeremy realized he was still hard as a rock inside her.

  Again a laugh he’d never imagined as hers sounded in his ear. “You’re mine. I can make you do anything. I can make you do more.” They made love again, building to an apex as strong as the first.

  “Oh God,” they both screamed at the same moment.

  The door slammed open. The two demonic porters glared at them. “I knew there was something wrong with them,” Dogface growled. “They called on God. You’re spies for the other side.”

  “Get em,” shouted Pig-face. They drew extendible batons from under their coats, snapping them to full length.

  Jeremy surged off Shadowheart. He grabbed his duster from the floor, pulling the sword from its hidden sheath. There was no time to go for the gun. He flung the leather duster over Pigface’s head and blocked Dogface’s swing. They slashed and parried. Jeremy found fighting with a raging hard-on threw off his balance. However it seemed to bother Dogface too. He saw Shadowheart crash into the other porter. Soft and supple as her body was, it still held more strength than any human’s. She slammed Pigface into a compartment wall, causing a fold-out bed to come down on his head.

  Then he was too busy with his own opponent. He nicked the lesser demon. It yelped in anguish at the bite of the enchanted blade, then struck back heavily with the baton. In the confined space the long sword was a disadvantage, hard to swing and he was afraid to hit Shadowheart. It rang and belled with the demon’s blows. Jeremy heard a body fall but couldn’t turn to check. An instant later a heart-shaped tail, snapped around the demon’s upraised weapon arm, jerking him off balance. Jeremy ran Dogface through. He fell soundlessly, dead the instant the bloodsword pierced his insides.

  He turned to Shadowheart, to see the other demon dead under the bed, its neck obviously snapped. She stood, red lips parted, magnificent body bruised but radiant. She stepped forward and hoisted herself on to him. “We won,” she said, sliding her legs behind his and locking them. “Satisfy me. Now.” She rocked her hips back and forth again driving reason from his mind. He kissed her frantically as she roped him to her with her tail. “Come quietly this time,” she ordered.

  After the sexual frenzy, he lay on the floor of the compartment with no idea of whether he’d followed her orders. Shadowheart still straddled him,. He was still hard inside her for all that he barely had energy to breathe. What if this is it? he thought. What if it’s never this good again? How could it ever be? She’s a succubus, sensual beyond human powers. No wonder men damned themselves for them.

  Her own breathing slowed. “That was… that certainly was… I have never felt such things before. This body--it has powers that cannot--that challenge me. We will have to be careful.”

  “Yes,” he managed, “we wouldn’t want anything to happen. Would we?”

  She looked down and gave him a rueful smile. Then she stood, sliding off him. “Well at least now I can think clearly again. I haven’t been able to do that since we arrived here.”

  Jeremy’s nerves still thrummed. Most of his muscles, no longer distracted by Shadowheart’s new-found erotic power, began to protest his making love standing up for as long as he had. Hope there’s some ibuprofen in the med kit, he thought.

  He looked up at her. She stood in perfection over him, her tail wrapped around her own leg. She ran her hands over her new body as if inspecting it for the first time. Then she stretched languorously. He felt his body stir in response.

  “Stop that” she said. “We have work to do.”

  “You’re causing it,” he said. “Unless you think I normally rip my clothes off in public places and have maniacal sex on a pile of dead demons.”

  “We weren’t on them,” she replied, “that would have been disgusting. Besides, I don’t think two dead demons constitute a pile.” She reached over and drew a bed sheet off the fold-out bed that had slammed down on Pigface. “We have to get rid of these two. Can you get up? By which I mean off the floor.”

  Jeremy struggled to his feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get them out the window.”

  “At this speed?” he marveled. “I don’t think the windows will open.”

  “Hah,” she replied, “this is Hell, not America. No one cares about safety.”

  Jeremy stared at his guardian angel, if he could still call her that. “You know, maybe we should talk about what just happened.”

  Shadowheart pulled open the window, air blasted into the room. “Can’t hear you.”

  Wrestling dead demons out the window finally did for his erection, which was a relief. He needed the blood supply for other uses. It took both of them to shut the window against the force of the wind.

  “Look,” he began. “I just want
to make sure we’re okay I think we need to discuss this.”

  “Later,” she said giving his rear a playful slap with her tail. “I find myself curiously sticky. I want a shower.” She disappeared into the coffin-sized showerette and pulled the door. Water ran immediately.

  “I hope it’s cold,” he muttered.

  “Ouch!” she said. “Brrrrrrr… I heard that.”

  “Your hearing,” he added gathering up their clothes, “is curiously selective.”

  He sat on the downturned bed and sleep struck him down in an instant.

  The smell of coffee and food woke him hours later. The rust red sky was bright again, daytime. A platter sat beside him with a note from Shadowheart. “I figured you deserved a big breakfast. I’m out hunting for information.”

  He devoured the food, suspecting that Shadowheart’s absence had more to do with a desire not to talk than any valid need for intelligence.

  “Greetings, passengers,” a voice announced. “We will be entering Old Dis station in one hour.”

  Jeremy finished the coffee and juice, then headed for a badly needed shower.

  When he came out, Shadowheart was there with her face buried in the New York Times Hell edition, and was distinctly uncommunicative. He decided to let matters lay for now. The maglev train slowed.

  “Entering Old Dis station,” the announcer called. “Prepare to disembark. Due to the unexpected disappearance of two of our porters there will be some delay in offloading luggage.”

  Shadowheart looked directly at him for the first time that day over the top of the paper. She gave a somewhat hesitant wink. He smiled back. Without discussion, Shadowheart shouldered her formidable trident. Jeremy pulled a submachine gun from the duffel – an MPN that used the same 9mm ammo as his pistol. In place of the normal H&K logo was the leering face of a devil.

  “Local make,” he muttered. He jacked the slide and hung the MPN under his leather duster. They shouldered their packs and hastened to the exit as the train pulled into a station that looked like it came straight out of the Swiss alps. Jeremy and Shadowheart exited the train. Above them loomed black mountains, a castle crowned one of them. “That looks familiar.” He consulted his Tablet, “I don’t believe this.”

  “What?” Shadowheart said.

  “Houska Castle.”

  “The one near Prague?” Shadowheart said. “Its chapel sits over a chasm that can lead directly to Hell.”

  “According to the tablet, this is the other side of the chasm. The castle is duplicated on this side. It doesn’t look like a regular castle, though.”

  “Its strength was never in battlements or archers,” Shadowheart said. “More powerful forces guarded it.”

  A wailing howl made them look into the valley below. In it sat a ringed, medieval looking city, though trucks could be seen on the roads outside of it. From their vantage they could see over the walls into narrow, winding streets. The wailing howl repeated and something winged launched from a minaret near the outer walls.

  Shadowheart shuddered. “A Fury. We must avoid them.”

  “No argument.”

  They rented a Land Rover at the station. The sour-looking clerk put a literally ungodly amount on the credit card Velos had given them. They threw their gear in the back. He offered Shadowheart the keys.

  She stared at him. “I can’t drive.”

  Jeremy couldn’t hold back the laughter. When he was done he had a very cross succubus glaring at him.

  “I teleport,” she growled, “I fly, on occasions I have been known to walk. Driving never came up.”

  He tried to keep a straight face. “I’ll have to teach you sometime. Hop in.”

  Shadowheart slid in, the leather of her panties squeaking on the leather of the seat. “Velos said Joan was ordered to this area. He had no information on where. The Tablet just says that her punishment was to ‘assault the heights as did Sisyphus.’”

  “Wasn’t he condemned to push a rock up a hill?”

  She nodded. “There was very little other information. We have to remember this isn’t the real Joan, in Hell she is just another damned soul, for all that she did not come to exist in the normal way.”

  “Perhaps we should look for her on the greatest height?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shadowheart said. “Hell tailors the punishment to fit the crime and the personality of the damned. Though this is not the real Joan, she doubtless sees herself like unto Joan who was the Messenger of God, freeing France from tyranny. She who took fortification after fortification in battle—”

  “Castles,” he said, “on heights.” He looked at the looming pile over them. “And here we have a castle guarding an express route to Hell, atop a mountain.”

  “She was sent to Dis recently,” Shadowheart said. “Maybe she didn’t get far.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a place to start.” He headed the Land Rover up the steep roads toward Houska. It took longer than he figured. The roads were terrible, with neither guardrails nor signs. Despite the GPS, they had to backtrack twice but eventually they began to close on the castle.

  “I don’t remember there being a tower in the center of it,” Jeremy said.

  “There wasn’t on our side,” Shadowheart replied, looking up. “Nor does it match the rest of the building. I think it’s something new.”

  “Better and better,” he replied.

  They pulled up to a gate in the low wall that surrounded the castle, which at close range looked more like a chateau than a fort, except for the incongruous tower projecting up from its center. They stepped out of the Land Rover, weapons in hand; the air was crisp but not very cold. The sky was as light as Hell seemed to get.

  A shrill yell split the air and a huge bat-winged form lunged over the wall almost over their heads.

  “Dragon!” Shadowheart shouted.

  Jeremy pulled the MPN from under his duster. But they were not the dragon’s target. It banked like a fighter and emitted a thin jet of flame at something on the other side of the wall.

  A young girl’s voice shrilled. “Pour Francaise y Deo!”

  “We’ve found her!” Jeremy said, rushing forward.

  They shouldered their way through the gate onto a lawn of charred grass. A girl stood there. The grass next to her was burning, as was the fountain behind her. She bore sword and shield and looked up at the dragon wheeling above her with hopeless eyes. It roared and hovered. Jeremy went to one knee and brought up the MPN. It stuttered its death song all the way through its magazine. The dragon pulled up short and screeched in agony. It again spat the liquid stream of fire that ignited in mid-air. Jeremy threw himself behind a poster and flinched as the flames washed by. Shadowheart flung her pitchfork but the weapon simply glanced off the dragon’s armor.

  The distraction gave Jeremy a chance to snap in another clip. He stepped out and aimed at the wing joint. He held down the trigger, to hell with controlled bursts of three. The volley destroyed the joint and the monster fell to the ground. Before it could recover itself the slender girl leapt in, her sword held high, hacking at the outstretched neck. The dragon gave a screech and fell. She hacked again and the head came off.

  “I won. I actually won this time. I will not have to go back!” she shouted to the sky.

  Shadowheart and Jeremy walked over slowly. He let the MPN fall back under his duster. Shadowheart picked up her pitchfork but shouldered it. The girl looked at them with a mix of gratitude and wariness.

  Jeremy looked over the slender girl with her short, light-brown hair. She wore a blue surcoat emblazoned with gold fleur-de-lis, and held a workmanlike arming sword in one hand and a triangular shield on the other. On the shield two more fleurs-de-lis flanked a vertical sword holding up a crown. Chain mail hung under the surcoat. Her chest heaved as she looked at the dead dragon.

  “Thank you, Sir Knight,” she said with a pronounced French accent that Jeremy could not place. Her voice was light, high and childlike. This was not the Joan of trial and burnin
g but a younger version; she looked about sixteen.

  Jeremy spoke to her in French but Joan raised a hand. “I am sorry. I am… not the real Jeanne d’Arc, but rather the creation of a lonely girl. I know only the few words of French that she did.”

  “I am Jeremy Leclerc, Knight Templar.”

  “A Knight with a machine gun? Wearing black leather?”

  “I am from the same time as Camille. The Knights Templar still live and still fight evil in the shadows.”

  “How did you die and end up in Hell, poor knight?”

  “I am not dead.”

  “What!?”

  “This is Shadowheart, she’s an angel—”

  “And looks less like an angel than you do a knight.”

  “My true form revealed would bring all Hell down on us. Jeremy speaks the truth; he is a living Templar, and I am an angel. We have come to get you and Camille out of Hell.”

  “I am,” Joan said, her face twisted in pain, “where I belong. She imagined me, you know. I was her best friend, her only confidante, the sister she never had. I failed her.”

  “You saved her from being raped,” Jeremy said.

  “She had survived that before. When I killed her father, I ripped the shroud off all she had concealed, all she lived in dread of having revealed. She was ashamed of what had happened to her and more than anything else, wanted it kept secret. By striking down the evil, I brought upon her all she feared most. Then she answered by taking her own life — brought to death and shame by me, her creation, the sister of her mind and soul.

  “I did not contest my sentence. Indeed I called it upon myself. Camille is condemned to Hell; I must embrace it.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “You are doomed for no reason other than a misplaced sense of guilt.”

  Joan shook her head. “I failed her.”

  “How? You struck down a child-molester. You did not make him one. Nor did you prevent Camille from going to the police, her school, her doctor. What choice did she leave you? Stand by while she was violated, or fight?”

  Joan sighed. “Yet by fighting I doomed her.”