Divine Knight

by Michelle L. Levigne

  "Is it safe to move him?" he asked.

  Angela's head snapped up and she stared at him, eyes wide, made enormous by the tears glistening in them. It amused him for a moment to realize she had completely forgotten he was there.

  "Yes." She swallowed hard and rubbed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She smeared some of the ash from the painting across her cheeks. "Yes, please, we should move him, make him comfortable." A trembling exhale escaped her, evidence of sobs she fought. "Oh, Maurice, what do I tell Holly if anything happens to you?"

  Ethan took most of Maurice's weight, but Angela supported his feet and guided them down the three flights of stairs. They ended up in the furniture room, and settled him, still unconscious, on a long, old swayback sofa.

  "Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his own bed?" Ethan said, when Angela produced a basin of herb-scented water and a soft cloth from nowhere.

  "Maurice's bed isn't even big enough for one foot, let alone all of him." She shook her head, frowning as she swabbed the smeared ashes off his forehead, and then pressed the cloth against his throat, his wrists, and wiped his face again, wringing out the cloth each time.

  "Oh. Right." He shuddered, remembering with an odd sense of calm he couldn't quite understand, that until that geyser of light, Maurice had been six inches tall and flew on big, glittery, Hollywood-gaudy wings.

  They both jumped when a banging sounded at the front door. A moment later Ethan saw the light ripple through the room. He had a sense of the light doing that through the entire shop. The front door slammed open and the sound of running feet came toward them through the shop. A plump young woman with ginger-tinted hair and pale, round cheeks hurtled around the corner into the room.

  "What happened?" she demanded, and slid to her knees next to the sofa, reaching for Maurice's hands.

  Ethan figured it was a good bet this was the Holly Angela had mentioned.

  "How did you know?" Angela asked.

  "I felt it. Like someone pulled hard on something I was holding and couldn't let go of, and then just before it snapped, they let go and it rebounded on me." She tugged on a braided cord hanging around her neck and brought out a teardrop-shaped pendant. A smoky haze coated it, obscuring the white and any other colors it might have contained. "What did he do?"

  "Feels like I sunburned the inside of my skull and my skin," Maurice said, his voice a creaky whisper. He didn't move, didn't try to open his eyes, but he winced when Holly pressed his hand to her cheek.

  "A very apt description." Angela scrubbed her eyes clear of tears with the heel of her hand. She stood up and gestured for Ethan to come with her. "Holly, keep him from doing anything until I send for help."

  "Help? What kind of help? Maurice, so help me, if you tried to break that curse ahead of time and make the council listen..."

  "The exact opposite." She bent and squeezed Holly's shoulder. "He was playing the hero to the extreme. I fear he stepped into a trap meant for me. Keep him quiet, would you?"

  "Don't worry," Maurice said. "Couldn't get me to move to save my life. Aww, honey, don't cry."

  Ethan followed Angela out of the furniture room to the main room of the shop. He felt as if he walked about an inch above the floor. All sounds and colors were muted, yet at the same time an added dimension had been added to all his senses. The question was if the change was in him or the shop. Maybe he had been scorched inside and out, as Maurice had so aptly put it.

  "Do you have it?" Angela asked. She flinched when Ethan brought the talisman out of his pocket.

  He kept the scarf between it and his skin, and flinched again, remembering how it had bit his fingers when he thoughtlessly put his hand in his pocket. If he hadn't reacted, if he had left it in his pocket, none of the last half hour would have happened.

  "It looks dead, or at least quiet for now. Who gave this to you, and why?" She shook her head when Ethan opened his mouth to respond. "Hold that thought. I have to send for help."

  She turned to the dark, iridescent globe sitting on her counter and pressed one hand to the top curve. The colors slowly swirled, gaining speed the longer she spoke. "This is an emergency call to Asmondius of the Disciplinary Council, and a request for medical assistance for Maurice, assigned on parole to Divine's Emporium. He has been seriously injured, caught between a dimensional transport curse and the barrier spells woven into his exile. He is back to his normal size, but--"

  "But you're not sure if anything else is normal?" A wizened, silver-bearded man in a violent purple sweat suit flickered into being four steps behind her. "Believe me, my dear lady, the alarm went off the moment the spell was destroyed in such a brutal matter. I came as soon as I got the coordinates. Where is the boy?"

  Ethan sat down. He had to, with the way the floor seemed to be rolling like a stormy sea under his feet. He landed at a little white wrought iron bistro table, and waited for Angela to come back from showing the old man to the furniture room. The worst part of all this was the feeling, growing stronger every moment, that everything should have seemed perfectly normal to him. And that didn't make any sense.

  "You'd feel better if you gave yourself permission to believe," Angela observed, when she came back into the room.

  "Believe what?" Ethan flinched at the volume of his voice, which seemed to echo off the ceiling, the display of dishes on one side of the room, and the windows.

  "Coffee?" She narrowed her eyes and tipped her head to one side for a moment. Her lips flicked into and out of a smile almost too quickly to be seen. "I can't... read you, for some reason. It's odd. Refreshing, but odd. What kind of coffee would you like?"

  "Black. As strong as you can make it." He snorted and rested his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. He felt as if he had been awake six days in a row, on his feet the whole time. "I don't suppose you could make it half whiskey?"

  "Let's start with coffee, and if you need it, I'll find something stronger." She set a cup down on the table and took the seat opposite him with her own cup.

  Both cups were twice the normal size. Ethan snorted, sparsely amused to see the liquid in his cup was so deep black it looked thick, as if he couldn't stick his finger through the surface. Definitely the way he liked his coffee. He took a sip, holding the cup in both hands, and was astonished to find it was scalding hot.

  "How did--" No, he didn't want to know how she dispensed coffee hot enough to be fresh, but thick enough to have been condensing in a pot on the back burner for a week. He took a swallow and waited until the heat and the extra-strength caffeine jolted through his system. Then he opened his eyes, sat back, watching Angela sip coffee that was nearly white with cream, and started talking.

  He liked how she didn't react when he told her about the Von Helados, their claims about her, the information they had given him, the blank circle with Neighborlee at the center. He told her about the lab report on the talisman, and even told her about the time he was sure it had tried to jump out of the coffee mug he had stored it in.

  She watched him, face serene, eyes hooded, and sipped slowly. Until he told her how the Von Helados had showed up in his office again with their plans to file papers to take her into custody.

  "What date was this, exactly?" She slowly, carefully put her cup down on the table.

  Ethan saw the first reaction in her when he told her.

  "I should have known, should have realized. We had an... well, let's just call it an incident, here. The protective barriers around our town were threatened, momentarily weakened or compromised, I suppose. I was, in essence, invisible to them, or at the very least they could not sense me strongly enough to know I was here. Until the barriers wavered." She shook her head. "The question still remains, are they after me, specifically? Or am I just a tool, a convenient gate?"

  "They wanted you to get pulled into that painting by the talisman." Ethan nearly laughed at how ridiculous that statement was on the surface, yet he knew it was the simple truth.

  "A very unfriendly painting. M
any people through the generations have tried to destroy it, and got destroyed themselves--or sucked in--for their efforts. I suppose it is irony that the very magic that was sent to make me a prisoner there was strong enough to eliminate at least one threat."

  She sat up and glanced at the doorway, as the old man appeared again. "How is he, Doctor?"

  "You have a very sick young hero on your hands." He shook his head. There was a starkness in his eyes that sent an answering throb through Ethan. He had seen men look more hopeful as they watched a buddy bubble his life away, with a dozen bullet holes in his chest.

  "The inimical magic wound itself around his inborn magic as the anchor to pull him through the dimensional doorway. However, the conditions of Maurice's exile were also interwoven with the core of his magic--part of the limitations on him, you see. The tug of war set up a friction and unraveled some things that I thought could never be unraveled." He shook his head and tsked a few times. "I just don't know. Be thankful he was returned to his normal size and those wings were removed, otherwise I'm mighty fearful he might have been stuck that way for the rest of his life."

  "Ah..." Angela blinked a threat of tears out of her eyes. "What should I do for him?"

  "The best medicine is that young lady holding his hand right now. But some heavy-duty cosseting wouldn't be amiss. I'll be back in a few days to see if there's been any change. Human-style analgesics, lots of chocolate. And I'd stock up on a couple crates of diet cherry cola to let him drown his sorrows once in a while." He bowed to her, stepped back, and vanished in a swirl of purple sparkles.

  "Does that happen a lot?" Ethan murmured, and didn't even bother rubbing his eyes, in the vague hope he was imagining all this.

  "It's almost normal around here, yes." Angela shook her head and looked at the talisman, lying on the table between them. "If the struggle killed this, then the Von Helados know you met me and the curse was triggered. If it is only sleeping... You have to get it out of here before it wakes up. It could open the protective shield around my town and my home, and let them in."

  "If you're not their Annabelle, what do they want from you?"

  "Finding the answer to that would mean letting them get close enough for me to interrogate them. I don't want to risk that." She shuddered delicately.

  Something hot and angry stirred to life in Ethan's chest. Angela should never have needed to shudder, to feel a moment's fear or anguish. He hated the Von Helados for what they were trying to do to her, and for using him to weaken her for their attack.

  She wasn't the kind of woman who needed protection, like a hothouse flower that had to be checked every hour to make sure conditions were just so. He suspected that she had many allies, people who would lay their lives on the line to defend her, and at the same time never consider themselves her defenders, because they saw her as strong, omniscient, eternally serene.

  She might not need him, but Ethan wanted to protect her. Yet everything he had seen in the last two hours was beyond his experience, so what good could he do her?

  "Could you leave?" he said finally, when he envisioned picking her up in his arms, carrying her out to his car and driving to an airport to get her out of the country, if necessary.

  "I defend this place as much as it defends me." She briefly rested her hand over his on the table, little more than brushing her fingertips across the back of his hand.

  The contact sent sparks through him, starting something fizzing in the back of his mind, in the dark, locked places. It stirred something in his chest that he thought was long dead and cold, turned to dust from lack of use.

  "Then let me stay and help." He couldn't believe he had said that. "What little good I can do, considering all the..." He gestured around the shop. The words stuck in his throat.

  "The magic? The otherness?" A sparkle touched her eyes for a moment. Was she laughing at him, or did she understand his struggle?

  "I'm pretty good with a gun. And other weapons." For some odd reason, he remembered the words of that woman at the newspaper office, the last time he had been in Neighborlee. She had called him a knight, a slayer of dragons. The mental image of a long, heavy sword in his hands, slashing and smashing and hacking his way through enemies, made him feel good. Useful.

  "This danger, these enemies, are not the kind who can be dealt with using Human weapons." She stood, and Ethan was instantly on his feet. "Thank you, but the greatest service you can do me, and for the good of this town, is to take that poisoned thing out of here, back to its makers, as soon as--no, not to its makers. They can perhaps revive it. Just get it out of here. Even a remnant of poison inside our borders could be our undoing."

  Ethan drove away a short time later, after stopping at Stanzer's office and consulting with him. If anything happened to him--such as the Von Helados pulling some nasty magic on him in punishment--he wanted to make sure the local P.I. knew about it, so he could warn Angela and Divine's Emporium could be prepared for whatever happened next.

  He couldn't help feeling as if he had been punished for something that wasn't his fault. That he was a child who had been sent away for the crimes of his parents or his siblings. An ache shot through him the moment he crossed the border, leaving Neighborlee, but it didn't diminish with time and distance. If anything, it settled deep inside and became a part of him. And it stirred an anger he hadn't allowed himself to feel in years.

  * * * *

  "Is he gone?" Maurice's voice was slightly louder, stronger, but still a croak as if his throat had been scorched. Amazing how sharp his ears had grown when they were the only sense he could use without feeling that sunburn prickling that made him want to jump up and dive into something cool and thick and wet. The problem was that he needed to do it to the inside of his head and the underside of his skin.

  "Gone." Angela stepped into the room, her footsteps stopping at the foot of the couch where Maurice usually woke up on his days of freedom from wings and everything shrunken.

  "Can't trust him."

  "I know." She sighed. Maurice opened one eye and saw the faint lines around her mouth and eyes, the shadows in her eyes, the weariness. "Until he is willing to see, to hear, to believe, he will remain their tool."

  "This might help," Holly announced, scurrying into the room. "Angela, I hope you don't mind, but--" She gestured with a slight lift of the tray in her hands, holding ice cream and cold cream and sunglasses.

  "Everything here is at Maurice's disposal." Angela stepped over to the other wall and pulled a little table forward, for Holly to put the tray on. "Doctor's orders are heavy-duty cosseting."

  "He even prescribed a bath of cherry cola." Maurice tried to snicker, but it hurt his throat. Holly was instantly there, before he could finish wincing, offering a big spoonful of ice cream. He moaned through the blissfully cold and creamy mouthful, swallowed, and closed his eyes, hating the tears glistening in hers.

  "Maurice, what exactly did he--"

  "He didn't say anything exactly, but we both know the verdict."

  "Your magic is gone, isn't it?" Holly whispered.

  "For now," Angela said. "And since this is entirely out of the doctor's experience, we have no real idea when it will come back."

  "If it will come back," Maurice corrected. He opened his eyes, despite the ache that normal light put in them. "Looks like you're stuck with me, babe."

  "No, you're stuck with me." Holly slid the sunglasses on over his eyes, and bent down to kiss him.

  His lips stung a little at the pressure, but Maurice didn't care. He knew better than to tell Holly or Angela right now that the trade-off was well worth it. Just like the proposal to have him take over the guardianship of Divine's Emporium, this situation solved his problem of how to stay with Holly. With his magic burned out of him, he was mortal.

  Well worth it, he told himself again. He settled back to let Holly feed him ice cream and smooth cold cream over his tingling, prickling skin to sooth it. He planned to enjoy all the pampering he could get before he had to le
arn how to live like an ordinary mortal.

  Chapter Ten

  By noon, Maurice couldn't stand lying still. Especially with people coming in and out of Divine's to shop. He had never noticed it being so busy on a weekday before. Then again, he had never been visible, flat on his back on the sofa in the furniture room, with people coming in to look at a piece "I've been thinking about for the last week since I saw it," and stopping short at the sight of him. Angela had offered to put him up in her quarters, but the couch wasn't long enough for him and he didn't want to use her bed.

  Maybe it was being visible that bothered him the most. He had grown used to, and grown to like, being able to zip around the shop nearly at the speed of light, avoiding traffic jams in the aisles, listening in on the fascinating and strange and sometimes totally inane conversations of customers--and being entirely invisible and inaudible to ninety-nine percent of the people he encountered on a daily basis. Now, he had to make eye contact and conversation and his body suddenly felt huge and slow and awkward. When he finally got up on his feet and got moving, he always seemed to be where someone wanted to look or stand.

  He couldn't even complain to Angela about it, because the shop wasn't empty for more than two minutes at a time. Someone always wanted her help, or they loitered in the main room where Maurice perched on a stool and leaned on the counter. People were a lot more tolerant or else oblivious to extremely weird things in Neighborlee than in the rest of the Human realms, but he knew the things he needed to discuss with Angela might just push the envelope for anyone who overheard them.

  "You're not invisible anymore," Angela said, when he tried to bring up the subject for the fourth time, thinking he might have an amazing three minutes of private conversation, and finally succeeded. "Think about it. Think about all the people you've wanted to make friends with. And all the people you wouldn't want to be friends with, who would be terrified at all the inside information you have on them." Her eyes sparkled and her lips twitched against a smile that struggled to break free.