Knight in Charlotte

  Jeremy’s heart went out to her. Camille had dreamt of Joan, the woman – warrior, someone decisive, capable of meeting evil head-on with blade in hand. How could this Joan be other than what Camille had imagined for her?

  “So I am sent here to fight on in a hopeless battle. In the tower above us is a demon. He controls the people of this castle, humans all and condemned souls like me. They see me as a monster and resist my efforts to reach the demon atop the tower. If I can slay that demon I can release the people of the tower and the prisoners tortured in the dungeons below. As I reach each level of the tower, I am attacked by more powerful opponents. I am driven back or…” she shuddered, “I am slain and flung back to where I came to hell to begin the long weary journey again.”

  Jeremy gestured at the dead dragon. “That was never a human.”

  “This last time I steeled myself to my ultimate effort, I nearly gained the summit before being beaten back. My demonic opponent has upped the ante by bringing supernatural beasts against me. I would rather that anyway. Against those that were never human, I need not stay my hand.”

  “What manner of forces are inside?” Jeremy looked up at the tower.

  “Men of various types, some women.”

  “How armed?”

  “Swords, axes… ah, no guns. At least not before this.”

  “Then perhaps,” he said, slapping a new magazine in his MPN, “we, too, can up the ante.”

  Shadowheart nodded, “Stay behind me when we attack. This body is not as delicate as it appears.”

  Joan smiled sadly. “It is not for you to forgive or to aid me in my doleful fate. I am here for punishment.”

  “Then we will take you to the one person who can forgive you: Camille.”

  Joan blanched. “I dare not face her.”

  “Is the Maid of Orleans afraid?” Jeremy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Be brave, Joan, this time you are not forsaken,” Shadowheart said.

  Joan stared at her.

  “Yes, Joan. Look at me, see me. See what I actually am. Trust in Jeremy.”

  Joan turned to Jeremy.

  “I believe there is a reason for hope,” he said. “I believe you’re guiltless, certainly of anything I would not have done in your place. Don’t you want to see Camille?”

  “More than anything,” Joan said, “but I fear she hates me.”

  “You must face it as your namesake would have,” Jeremy said.

  She smiled sadly. “I guess – pitiful simulacrum that I am – I owe it to her to be the best Joan of Arc I can be. Very well.”

  A horn sounded above them in the tower.

  “This will not get easier,” Jeremy said, leveling the MPN and making sure his sword was loose in its sheath in the duster. Shadowheart’s tail stood erect behind her now, resembling a scorpion’s sting.

  “Have fun storming the castle,” Jeremy muttered.

  “Charge,” Joan cried.

  They raced across the grounds heading for the gaping door. From above, spears, arrows and rocks rained down. Jeremy fired a burst to back off the unseen enemies above. A shaft stuck in Joan’s shield, till she hacked it off with her sword. Then they were in the building facing a winding stairway. At the foot of it stood a unit of Spartans, their round shields overlapping, their spears glinting. Jeremy fired on the run, telling himself that they were both dead and damned and shooting them down like mad dogs wasn’t evil. Living Spartans might have broken but these knew what a gun was. The surviving Spartans scattered and flung a shower of spears, charging with their kopis out.

  Shadowheart snapped spears out of the air with the tines of her pitchfork faster than a human eye could see. She brought the heavy trident down on one Spartan’s helm crushing it. Joan did good work with her shield as Jeremy fired from between them. Evidently Camille had imagined her Joan as far more powerful than an ordinary girl. She smashed shields with a Spartan and it was the Spartan who was flung back. A spear thudded into Jeremy’s leather duster but the Kevlar panels spread the impact and kept it from penetrating. Still, the blow made him hiss in pain.

  “Upward,” Joan called and they raced up the stair straight into Cardinal Richelieu’s musketeers charging down, rapiers drawn. Jeremy dropped the first wave but the MPN clicked empty. There was no time to even draw the Walther. He dropped the MPN which saved his life as a rapier rammed into it and splintered. The MPN bumped on his chest, held by the lanyard. Jeremy pulled his bloodsword and blocked another rapier.

  A tail, with the heart-shaped tip held rigid, impaled the musketeer through the throat and bright blood splashed as he fell. Shadowheart, her Victoria’s Secret wardrobe in tatters, crashed into the Musketeers, flinging them off the stairs onto the pavement below.

  Jeremy cleared his Walther and shot musketeers further up who were leveling their muskets. Only one managed to fire, the ball knocking chips off the wall behind him. As they reached another landing a man in an SS uniform stepped out of an alcove, raising a Colonial Luger. His shot scored across Shadowheart’s back. She staggered and screamed. Jeremy gave him back a round between the eyes. As the SS trooper fell, Jeremy snatched up his weapon. Another SS trooper stepped out and into Shadowheart’s pitchfork and was flung into the air like a bale of hay.

  “I thought they didn’t have guns,” Jeremy shouted.

  Joan shrugged. ”They didn’t before.”

  Joan fought as if she were the true Messenger of God. Shadowheart, her wounds closed up, was equally deadly. A musketeer stabbed Jeremy and looked on in shock when the coat stopped the blade. Joan downed the man with a back hand cut.

  On the next level samurai attacked. It was sword versus sword and trident. Joan was knocked down and would have lost her head but for Shadowheart’s stabbing tail. Joan nodded gratefully as the Shadowheart pulled her to her feet Jeremy fired the last rounds in the Luger and Walther at two archers who appeared on the top landing.

  Shadowheart flung her pitchfork and impaled a charging Japanese solder. Jeremy grabbed up the bayoneted Arisaka and picked off a Japanese officer. He worked the bolt looking for more enemies. “What next?” he gasped. “Trolls?”

  They mounted the final landing.

  “This is too easy,” Joan said, looking about. “The last time I made it this far, this area was full of Teutonic Knights.”

  “Easy!” Jeremy said. He looked at Shadowheart clad now only in leather panties and rags. “Are you all right?”

  “I can use my powers to heal this body,” she said. “It’s inefficient but manageable. On the other hand, we won’t be able to return anything to Victoria’s Secret.”

  They walked into the round turret to face an old man – dignified, white-robed and bearded. He sat on a simple wooden throne as the very image of a kindly king.

  “You are the demon of the tower?” Joan demanded.

  “Or you are,” he said in a resonant voice.

  “I am Joan of Arc.”

  “You are a lonely girl’s dream. The real Joan of Arc never came to Hell.”

  Joan flushed, her hand tightened on her sword.

  His eyes fell to it. “I hear you are good at solving problems with steel. Come, Pretender Joan, strike me down and take my place. You will, I think, make a good demon of the tower.”

  Joan stepped forward.

  “No, Joan,” Jeremy said.

  “Silence,” the old king thundered. “This is Joan’s test. Not yours. Speak but one more word and she forfeits.” He stared at Jeremy then at Shadowheart. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Succubus and Collector, this is not your place.”

  “But it is mine,” Joan said. “Keep your eyes to me, old trickster. I am your opponent here.”

  “Very well, Pretender. Why do you hesitate? Am I not evil? Destroy me without thinking. Deal with problems as you have – plunge in and cut. There is only good and only evil. What is it that stops you?”

  Joan stared at Jeremy as if she could will some information out of him but it was Shadowheart wh
o spoke. “Old Trickster, she called you and you are. You want to play a game without telling her the rules or the stakes.”

  He glared at her. “Shouldn’t you be on your knees somewhere? What does a succubus know of the wider Hell? Your province is the world of lust between the legs. Stay out of mine.”

  Shadowheart looked at Joan. “You must judge for yourself how it is that you will fight.”

  Joan walked forward and the old king smiled at her as she came. Two paces from the throne, she let her arms hang down, sword and shield resting on the ground. “If I let you live, old codger, is the game mine?”

  “Oh, not so easily,” the old king said. “Weakness in striking evil, can be as evil as striking too hard.”

  “How then shall we contest without bloodshed? Why should I withhold my hand in the presence of evil?”

  “I can answer only the first question. You must search in yourself for any answer to the second. We shall do battle by a question. Answer well and win. Answer poorly and you begin your battle for the tower anew from its lowest depth.”

  He turned to Jeremy and Shadowheart and frowned, “You two are not right, but I will deal with you after I dispose of this childish simulacrum of Joan.”

  “I am Joan,” she shouted. “At least I am as much Joan as Camille could dream me. I will be Joan!”

  The old king laughed. “We shall see. I will put a question to you that was once put to her. Let us see if you are Joan or not.”

  He drew himself up. “Joan, who styles herself, Jeanne d’Arc, Messenger of God, do you stand in God’s grace?”

  Joan’s face clouded. Jeremy’s heart went out to the slender, pale girl, blood-stained and tormented.

  “Who am I to speak for God?” Joan said. “I do not even know if he envisioned me in his universe. It was Camille who gave birth to me. Yet did she not come from God? Am I not –however tiny, however insignificant – some part of his plan for existence?” She hung her shield by a strap from her shoulder then took a cloth out from under her surcoat and wiped her blade before sheathing it. “I can only hope that I am in God’s grace now; and if I am not, that he embraces me in it when he chooses.”

  The old king jerked upright with a great cry. His arms flew up. Joan sprang back, raising her shield and placing a hand to her sword. Shadowheart and Jeremy leapt forward too, weapons raised. But there was no need, the old king’s façade faded; in his place was a Minotaur. It gave an ox-like bellow of agony then seemed to imploded into black sand that fell to the floor with a hiss. A wind swept into the chamber and dispelled the reek of the place, if only for a few blessed moments.

  Joan stared at them in confusion. Shadowheart put up her pitchfork. “Well answered, Joan. Much as your namesake did at her trial. 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.' It was a trap. If you claimed you knew God’s mind, you would be a heretic; if not then you would be condemned for claiming to be a messenger of God.”

  “Well done,” Jeremy said.

  Joan looked at him and blushed furiously. “Thank you, Sir Knight. It seems that part of my task here was to learn that there are other ways to solve conflict than with the edge of a blade.”

  “Sometimes there are,” Jeremy said, “and sometimes nothing else will do. Sometimes our enemies are the blackest evil. Yet you were sent here by a white that could see no grey. That was no less cruel and unjust.”

  Her eyes shone as she looked at him. Jeremy felt a blush too. Here I am standing between a succubus and a child, he thought, the world remains out of joint.

  “I think we are free of this place,” he said, gruffly. “We must find Camille.”

  “Let us go,” Joan agreed.

  They walked cautiously down the tower steps but the tormented dead who’d battled them so savagely were nowhere to be seen. No bodies, no blood, no sign that the tower had ever held anyone.

  They exited the tower through the lower gate; a stern cold wind greeted them. Jeremy kicked down a guard room door and returned with three heavy red cloaks such as the Spartans wore. Joan and he gratefully wrapped themselves in them.

  “I’m hot all the time,” Shadowheart said.

  “Young eyes,” he said.

  “She’s a girl,” Shadowheart replied.

  “But I’m not. Me, boy. You naked succubus… young eyes. Work it out.”

  “Oh, right.” She wrapped the cloak around her. “I have a change of clothes in the car.”

  Joan lived in a small room in a nearby village. They collected Joan’s pitiful few things. The landlady demanded a lease-breaking fee and refused to return Joan’s deposit until Shadowheart tapped her on the shoulder with the pitchfork. The terms moderated quickly.

  They piled into the Land Rover. Jeremy noted that, for all Joan identified with Jeanne d’Arc, their Joan knew how to use a seatbelt. Well she had come from Camille’s subconscious. Her active personality was that of a heroine, but under that lay the same basic knowledge that Camille had.

  “What do we do now, Sir Templar?” she asked.

  “You can call me Jeremy and her Shadowheart. Now, we look for Camille. If only we had some idea of where to look.”

  “I do,” Joan said, leaning forward in excitement, “or at least I know the name of the place. When I was killed the first time and the Collector who brought me to Hell,” she shuddered,“ thought it amusing to tell me that she was sent to Plandome, only a few days march from my tower. He seemed to think it a fine punishment that we would be near yet unable to reunite. As I was bound to my tower, Camille is bound to this Plandome.”

  Shadowheart, again attired in Victoria’s Secret’s finest, though still, at Jeremy’s insistence, wearing the cloak, consulted the tablet. “Dis had a special section for suicides. This Plandome seems to be one. There are no interstates – at least not in this ring. But there is a route. It winds about. I make it around 150 miles. We could drive through the night and make it.”

  Jeremy looked at Joan. “Can you drive?”

  Joan looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. Camille didn’t have a permit. She was supposed to start in the fall. I don’t know anything about life that she didn’t.”

  He turned to Shadowheart.

  “No, I haven’t learned in five hours. Man up and drive. I’ll set the tablet for GPS.”

  They drove for hours through the pitch-black night, gradually coming out of the mountains, to Jeremy’s intense relief. After sunrise they entered a small, cheerless hamlet. There was a gas station. Jeremy pulled in. To his surprise, out came a Neanderthal. The hairy, powerful man walked up and looked them over.

  “We’re looking to fill up and for some breakfast,” Jeremy said. Shadowheart and Joan stepped out and were stretching.

  “Got Satans?” he grunted.

  Jeremy shook his head “I’ve got credit cards.”

  “No good. Gold or Silver Satans. Or maybe something else.” He looked over Shadowheart. “Nice succubus.”

  “She’s not on the menu.”

  “Okay how about the young one –”

  He froze as Jeremy rested the ultra long barrel of the Colonial Luger on the bridge of his nose. “I’ve wanted to try this one out again,” Jeremy said in a conversational tone, “and if you don’t shut your filthy mouth and get on with filling the car up, I’ll drop you and burn your shithole station to the ground.”

  “Damn Collectors,” he muttered, backing off.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Jeremy said. “You just became self-service. Get out of my sight.” The Neanderthal fled back into his station.

  Jeremy filled the Land Rover and they drove over to a Waffle House. It wasn’t half bad. They were back on the road in half an hour.

  “Next stop Plandome,” he said.

  *****

  “I don’t know what I expected,” Shadowheart said, “but this surely wasn’t it.”

  “It’s like Hello Kitty designed a town and pink vomited itself all over it,” Jeremy added.

  Plandome stretched in all it
s hideousness across the valley ahead of them. It was a child’s drawing of a town, with houses in pink and blue, trees in pink and blue. The mad hatter had never dreamed of something this bad. People walked about in the distance and clunky pink and blue cars wandered about the landscape.

  “It reminds me of the Polly Pockets and Barbie things that Camille liked when she was younger,” Joan offered.

  “What do we do?” Shadowheart asked. “Go knock on doors?”

  “I think,” Joan said suddenly, “I think I feel her.” She pointed to the center of the hideous community, where a particularly gruesome house sat on a small hill covered with pink and blue Christmas trees.

  Jeremy drove on. Joan acted as a compass, directing them through the winding streets. They finally pulled up to a Tudor house in a perfect lawn which would have been cute but for the colors.

  “Yes, yes,” Joan said in a mix of excitement and fear. “She’s here. I know it!”

  Jeremy looked around. “No obvious threats, except to one’s sense of good taste.”

  Shadowheart nodded. “This entire town clashes with my outfit.”

  “Yeah, I guess leather and lace is more New Orleans than Levittown. Let’s go prepared. You want my spare pistol?”

  “I’ll stick with my pitchfork.”

  “I have my shield and sword,” Joan added. “I know what guns are but not how to use one.”

  “Yeah, and none of these are beginner’s weapons.” He jacked the slides on all three and stepped out. Despite the mild temperature he kept his duster with his armor and sword on. They walked up to the door and rang the bell.

  The door opened. Two ordinary-looking people stood there: a man of his late forties, with a receding hairline, a woman around the same age, slender, with a mouth that looked as if it supped on lemons. But the eyes told the story; they were black from lid to lid.

  “Yes?” said the man.

  “We’re here to see Camille,” Jeremy said.

  “Why would you want to see her?” the woman said. “She’s a very dirty girl.”

  “Yes,” said the man, “a temptress. A very bad girl.”

  “Please go away,” the woman added. “Camille is ours. We’re her new mother and father and she has to stay here with us to become a good girl.”