Black Knight 02 - Back in Black

by Hartness, John G

  She smiled back at me and said, "I held up my badge and gun and shouted 'Raid!' as loud as I could. You'd be amazed how many guys are flushing little baggies of things down the toilet right now. But you probably still want to clean this mess up pretty quickly. And put that away." She pointed at the glowing sword Otto was holding. He waved it in another curious gesture, and the blade disappeared.

  "Okay," I started. "You wanna tell us exactly what the hell is going on here?" I asked the bouncer.

  "No, but that probably isn't an option, is it?"

  "No. It's not."

  "Okay, then. Help me get this mess out of here before anybody notices, then we can go somewhere and I'll explain everything."

  "Alright. What do you drive, because there's no way this beast is gonna fit in my Honda."

  "I've got a truck, I'll bring it around." Otto said as he started off towards the parking lot.

  "Way to buck the stereotype,” I said to his back as I started picking up arms and legs, trying to figure out how we were going to get the monster into the back of a pickup. Otto just flipped me off without looking back, then went around the building toward what I assumed was the employee parking lot. He came back a few minutes later in a small panel truck with the club logo painted on the side, and backed it expertly up to the corpse. He jumped out and grabbed the beast under the arms. With a strength that belied his normal human appearance, he picked up the creature's torso and stood there staring at Greg and I.

  "You two going to help me, or do I have to do everything?" He asked with a smirk. We each grabbed a thigh and together we wrestled the giant into the truck. Otto slammed the door down and said, "I'll take care of this. Meet me at Landmark in two hours." Without looking to see if I had any objections, he got into the driver's seat and pulled out of the parking lot.

  "I don't think I want to know what he's going to do with a headless giant in Charlotte at 2AM on a Saturday night." I said as I headed down the hill to my car.

  "Yeah," Greg agreed, squelching along beside me, oozing monster blood with every step. "And I don't want to know how much it's going to cost to clean your upholstery after this ride home."

  Chapter 11

  After a quick trip home to clean up, Greg, Sabrina and I headed to The Landmark, a 24-hour restaurant famous for decent food and interesting atmosphere, especially after hours. Greg and I were in our more normal garb, while Sabrina was still in her club wear. I'd offered her some of my clothes, but apparently Sandman t-shirts were not her style. We took a booth in the back and waited for Otto to arrive. He made it there before our drinks did, dressed down in a long-sleeved polo and a baseball cap over his bald pate. He'd obviously taken the time to shower as well, because there wasn't a hint of slimy green blood anywhere on him. The waiter took our orders, and then went off to leave us to our conversation.

  "Okay, Otto. Let's start by telling us what that thing was? It looked like a giant with bad hygiene." I started.

  "No, that wasn't a giant. It wouldn't have come up to a giant's belt buckle. That was a troll." The bouncer turned troll-slayer said matter-of-factly.

  "Troll? Like under the bridge troll?" Sabrina kicked me under the table as patrons in other booths started to look around, and I lowered my voice. "What do you mean a troll? Trolls don't exist."

  "Neither do vampires. Yet here you are." The smug bouncer leaned back and sipped his sweet tea. I had to admit, he had a decent point.

  "Just once, I'd like to meet a supernatural creature that couldn't spot us from fifty yards away. Just once." Greg muttered from across the booth.

  "I pegged you two from a hundred yards away as vampires. It took the other fifty yards to peg you as straight boys." Otto shot back.

  "Anyway," I interrupted before they could really get going. "That doesn't answer the question of what the troll was doing there. Got any ideas, or did you just slice first and ask questions later?"

  "I didn't ask. Trolls are ancient enemies of my people. The mere sight of one in my city filled me with an uncontrollable rage, and I attacked. I lost control of myself, bringing shame to my father and my House." I could tell by the verbal capitalization that he wasn't talking about the TV doctor, but otherwise I had no idea what he was talking about.

  "Who are your people?" I asked, figuring I'd start slow.

  "The Fae. Your people call us fairies." He said.

  "I know that, but Greg and I, we're a little more progressive than that. We believe in live and let live, don't ask don't tell, whatever two consenting adults do is between them, that whole thing." I trailed off weakly when I saw him looking at me like I was a moron. I get that look often enough to recognize it, unfortunately.

  "Not homosexuals, vampire. Fairies. Like in the tales. Except we don't all have wings, and we're not tiny. As you can see." As if to prove a point, he stood up and struck a pose like a Greek statue.

  "I get it, I get it. Now sit down." I hissed. He sat, and I leaned forward. "Now, you say you're a real fairy, like fairy godmother fairy?"

  "Yes, although I have no intention of singing bibbity-bobbity-boo with you."

  "And you guys hate trolls and trolls hate fairies?"

  "Yes."

  "But how does something like that move around a city unnoticed? It was nine friggin' feet tall if it was an inch! And it was uglier than Greg going through Xbox withdrawal." I asked while Greg kicked the hell out of my shin. If this meal lasted much longer, I was going to have some serious healing to do.

  "Glamour." Otto said simply.

  "Gonna need a little more, babe. I don't think you're hiding that much ugly just with Cover Girl concealer." Sabrina interjected.

  "No, human." Otto managed to make "human" sound a lot like "cockroach," but I let it slide. Besides, the term didn't technically apply to me anymore. "Magic. Creatures of the higher realms can easily manipulate what is seen by those from more mundane planes."

  "So it used magic to hide its true nature until it started fighting you?" I asked, starting to get the picture.

  "Yes, then it needed all its resources just to survive. But all those resources weren't quite enough." He grinned a nasty smile and for a second I was very happy that he hadn't turned that magical sword in my direction.

  "So that explains the fight tonight, but not any of the other attacks." Sabrina interjected. "Because everyone up until tonight has been human."

  "But the bloodstains on the wall where Stephen was attacked sure looked like he was attacked by a troll." Greg observed, moving his waffles around so it looked like he was eating.

  "But my cousin isn't a fairy, at least not in the literal sense of the word. No offense." She nodded to Otto.

  "None taken. But may I ask, what is your cousin's name?" Otto replied.

  "Stephen Neal. He's a dancer."

  "Hmmm. Well, Detective, I'm not sure how to explain this to you...but your cousin isn't actually your cousin. And he is a fairy. In every sense of the word." Sabrina sat there for a moment trying to absorb what Otto was telling her, and finally just reached out and drained her soda in one long gulp. She waved the waiter over and ordered a screwdriver, light on the OJ, and downed that before responding. We all looked on in silence as she leaned in, took hold of the front of Otto's shirt, and pulled him close.

  She spoke very slowly and very distinctly, as if she were having trouble with the language. "Now. What were you saying about my cousin?"

  Otto looked around, made sure that there were no civilians around, and continued. "Stephen isn't really your cousin. At least not by any blood relation. He's one of us. Your legend of changelings isn't very far off base at all. Sometimes we switch fairy children with human newborns, taking the human child to our lands and leaving the fairy babe to be raised as human."

  "Why?" Greg asked. Sabrina looked stunned, like she didn't know what to say.

  Otto looked uncomfortable, but answered the question. "Sometimes it's because the infant has a condition that could prove fatal without treatments that aren't really available
in human society, sometimes it's because the family situation of the child is unfavorable, and sometimes..." Otto trailed off and I saw Sabrina's eyes go hard.

  "Sometimes?" She prodded. I knew that look, and really hoped Otto wouldn't pick this moment to get stubborn. I wasn't sure the furnishings could survive a clash of wills. And I couldn't afford any more demolished wardrobe tonight.

  "Sometimes we need the children to breed with our children to keep a particular line alive. The Fae do not breed like humans, but we can breed with humans if need be. Our numbers have dwindled in recent centuries, and we occasionally have to resort to extraordinary measures to insure our survival."

  "Extraordinary measures?" Sabrina asked. This conversation was going sideways fast, and I waved the waiter over for our check. I shoved Greg out of the booth to go pay at the counter before my friend and the fairy bouncer redecorated the restaurant in Early Apocalypse.

  "Why don't we relocate this conversation somewhere a little more private?" I asked. "We're starting to draw a little attention, and that could be unfortunate for everyone involved."

  "Where would you suggest, vampire?" Otto asked.

  "Our place, and go easy on the 'vampire' stuff, Tinkerbelle. Some of us try to stay incognito." I shot back. I got up and headed for the door, Sabrina and Otto trailing behind me exchanging glances like two cats that you just know are going to start fighting the second you put the Fancy Feast down. "Greg will ride with you and show you the way." I said to Otto over my shoulder, and led Sabrina out the front door to my car.

  The ride to our place was uneventful, mostly because Sabrina sulked the whole way there. The way she was acting, you'd think she wanted to tussle with a supernatural beefcake in the middle of a 24-hour diner. I led her down the stairs into our apartment (because I hate to think of it as a crypt, regardless of the underground location, and besides, crypts don't have high-speed Internet) and got us a couple of beers out of the fridge. Then I called in the cavalry, or more specifically, Father Mike. Mike had been running interference at the hospital since we left Stephen there, but I figured his calming influence and priest’s collar might be needed.

  Greg and Otto got to our place just a few minutes after Sabrina and I opened our beers, and we all settled in to the living room, Greg pulling a chair over from the computer for himself while Otto sat in the armchair. I stationed myself on the arm of the couch between where Sabrina sat and Otto, in some ludicrous hope that I could get between the two of them if it all went pear-shaped.

  Once we were all settled, Sabrina took a long pull of her beer and looked over at Otto. "I believe you were about to explain how you kidnap human babies and use them for breeding stock, weren't you?" Her voice could have been coated in honey, except for the obvious razor blade hidden underneath her tone.

  "That is a crude way of putting things, but true enough at the root of it all. We did in fact replace your female cousin with a child of our own, the boy that grew up to be your cousin Stephen. No harm has ever been done to the girl, who lives among our people as one of us, and has had several healthy children with the males of our House." Otto paused for a drink, and I took a second to evaluate how Sabrina was handling this news.

  She looked shell-shocked, to say the least. "A girl? Stevie was supposed to be a girl?"

  "Yes. The child we replaced was a female. We have no real need of human males, it is the gestation cycles of our women that are at issue, not the libido of our men." Otto actually blushed at this, as though this was something not usually discussed in polite company. Good thing for him he wasn't in polite company.

  Of course, this is when Father Mike made his appearance, which was good, because I needed a reason to go get another drink. "Hello, boys. What's the emergency?" Mike asked as he came down the stairs and tossed his overcoat on the back of a kitchen chair. I'd given a little thought to a coat rack, but it would just be another thing to not ever get used, kinda like Greg's NordicTrack. Gotta tell you that was one disappointed vampire when he realized that no matter how much he worked out, he was never going to burn any fat. Being stuck in the body you died in might be good for Brad Pitt, but when you're an overweight twenty-something, and you're going to be fat for eternity, it just sucks.

  I met Mike over by the bar and poured him a double scotch. He took one look at the glass and raised an eyebrow. "That bad?" I just held out the drink, and he downed it. I poured him another and brought him over to the sofa. He sat next to Sabrina and I reclaimed my perch on the arm.

  I made the requisite introductions and caught Mike up to speed on where we were in the story. It's a credit to how long he's been hanging around with vampires that he barely raised an eyebrow until we got to the changeling bits. Then he stopped me. "Jimmy, my boy, are you telling me that these...fairies...steal human girls and use them for brood mares?" Sometimes I forget that even though Greg and I went to Clemson, Mike actually spent summers on a farm in his youth. I don't even really know what a brood mare is, although I figured it out from context.

  "I think that's about where we had gotten to when you walked in, Padre." Sabrina had managed to stay quiet through my retelling of the night's events, but I could tell she was seething. Maybe it was the pulse I could hear pounding in her veins, but more likely it was the 'I want to eat someone's liver' tone of voice she was using.

  Otto interrupted smoothly before things got out of hand. "If I may explain?" I nodded at him, really hoping that he had something good up his sleeve. "The girls are raised as our own, and with the rarity of children in our Houses, they are revered beyond measure. There is good reason every little human girl dreams of being a Fairy Princess, after all." Otto smiled a knowing smile at Sabrina, who colored under his gaze.

  She didn't stay the blushing girl for very long, though, and quickly came back with "Yes, but there's a difference between a Fairy Princess and a prostitute! You can't just go around taking little girls and replacing them with fairy boys!"

  "But what if the little girls will never grow up healthy in your world?" Otto asked mildly.

  "What are you talking about?" Sabrina growled.

  "Your cousin had a rare genetic disorder called Tay-Sachs Disease that would have killed her in childhood had she remained here, probably before she entered kindergarten. By taking her to our lands, we were able to use magic to heal her and allow her to live a normal, if pampered, life. Does that sound like a fair enough trade?" Otto leaned back in the chair and sipped his beer while Sabrina tried to process this new information.

  "I guess so." She said after a long moment. Sabrina got up from the couch, headed over to the bar and poured herself a stiff drink. She drank down half of her drink and came back to where we were all watching her expectantly. She gave Otto a long look that I didn't catch all of, took a deep breath and said, "Okay, you and Stevie are fairies. You killed a troll at Aquarius because trolls are sworn enemies of fairies, and all the evidence points to a troll attacking Stevie in the alley. Now what?"

  "What do you mean, now what?" Otto asked.

  "Is that the only troll in Charlotte, or are there more?" Sabrina asked. "And why did a troll beat up my cousin? And why have other gay men been attacked all over town? Are they all fairies? Have all of these been troll attacks? And if so, why? And where do we go to find out?" Her voice had been steadily rising with each question until it was high and thready by the end. I could tell that the night had taken a toll on her, but nothing prepared me for what I heard next.

  Greg stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, and my partner said something I thought I'd never hear outside of a Disney movie. "We've got to go to Fairyland."

  Chapter 12

  The first words out of my mouth were pretty predictable, I suppose. I looked my partner in the eye (because he was standing and I was sitting) and said, "Are you out of your addled little mind? There's no such thing as Fairyland, and even if there was, there's no way we're going there. Tell him, Otto!" I looked over to the bouncer, but he had a look on his f
ace that was so far from encouraging as to be ridiculous.

  "Actually, James, that is probably the best course of action at this juncture. We do not know if there are more trolls in the area, and why they have chosen now to reveal themselves. Without that information we are fighting blind at best. I think your friend may actually be correct." Otto then went over to his coat and put it on, standing by the stairs looking back at me.

  "That can't happen. Greg doesn't get to be right, because Greg's never right. And how the hell are we supposed to get to Fairyland anyway?" I looked around, but all my friends were gearing up like they thought this was the best idea since sliced bread. Even Mike, and the only reason I called him was to be the lone voice of reason in the crowd.

  "I am a knight-mage of the Fae, and I can grant us passage into the lands of House Armelion." Otto said, and when I looked back at him he wasn't wearing normal clothes anymore, but golden chain mail and a helmet. The sword that he conjured up in the troll fight hung at his waist, and he looked nothing like the human bouncer that had stood in my den a few seconds before. He looked alien somehow, like his features were just a little too angular, his eyes just a little too blue to be real. And his ears had tapered to distinct points. I also noticed a hint of fang when he spoke, so it looked like Greg and I weren't the only ones vying to be top of the food chain.