Black City Dragon

by Richard A. Knaak

  The distraction was just what I needed. Leaping over a pew, I raised the sword high.

  The Wyld noticed me and tried to turn to defend itself, but Fetch had another limb in his mouth and, despite the scrapes and bloody wounds caused by the Wyld’s other attacking legs, tugged back with his full weight.

  With one stroke, I severed the head. A dark, inky substance spilled out from the gap.

  Despite its lack of a head, the Wyld continued to move with conscious effort. That was another thing about Feirie folk: you never knew exactly where the actual mind was. I flipped the sword around so that I had the point toward the floor, then threw myself on top of its wriggling body.

  Two clawed hands finally managed to tear Fetch free, though it cost another limb, and sent Fetch crashing into the confessionals.

  The limbs now all focused on me. The Wyld appeared to have no limitations on how it could bend its limbs. Five hands grabbed my legs, arms, and throat. Another pair sprouted from the body and tried to seize the sword by the hilt, only to quickly pull back with burned fingers. Her Lady’d done a fine job preventing the weapon from being stolen by any Feirie folk.

  Eye can burn it! the dragon roared. Let me burn it!

  Quiet! Even as the creature tried to simultaneously rip my limbs off and throttle me, I managed to plunge the blade into its thorax.

  The body convulsed. The hands lost their grips on me and flailed. They battered the confessionals and nearby pews.

  Her Lady’s gift glowed brighter. It always did when it fed.

  The Wyld’s body shriveled. I pushed the blade deep even as the corpse shrank to a small pile of burnt black flesh. Even then, I kept the tip touching. Within seconds, the last bit of the Wyld faded, its essence swallowed by the sword.

  No, not the last bit. I thrust the sword point in the skull. A few more seconds, and even that trace was gone.

  With an epithet worthy of any of Deanie O’Banion’s mob, Fetch rose to his feet. He eyed the sword. “Everything copacetic, Master Nicholas?”

  “Yeah. All done. Good work, Fetch.”

  “Applesauce! I was too slow to react at the end! Moved like an old jalopy!”

  “It’s done. You did just fine.” I looked over my shoulder at the door through which Father William had gone. “Can you leave the same way you came?”

  “Aye.” He didn’t waste another moment. We’d done this enough times.

  “All right,” I quietly growled at the dragon. “Give me your strength and no games.”

  Of course . . .

  I ignored his condescending tone. Sliding Her Lady’s gift back into its magical sheath inside my jacket, I set the pews as right as I could, then went in search of Father William. Diocles, meanwhile, had the good sense to fade away. It would’ve been nice if this would be the last I saw of him, but I knew better. He’d be right back haunting me the next time I stopped in St. Michael’s on Old Town.

  To my surprise, Father William met me right outside the door. I was perturbed, but not overly much. I’d had clients who tried to listen in to my work, unaware that no matter what happened inside, they’d not hear anything outside. Even more important, soon, it’d be as if I’d never even been here.

  “Did you discover anything, Mr. Medea?”

  “You might have a mouse or two. Nothing spiritual . . . other than what should be here, naturally.”

  He looked at me as if wondering if I was making a joke about the church. Little did he know I’d be the last one to do that. Complain, maybe, in the hopes that someone up there was listening, but not make any joke.

  “Thank you for checking. I suppose it must be my nerves.”

  “Yeah. I’d go ahead and make a blessing, just to feel comfortable. Can you do that?”

  Father William smiled briefly. “I think that’s possible. What about your bill?”

  “I’ll be in contact with you about that in a couple of days. Since I didn’t find anything, the fee will be nominal, as I mentioned on the telephone.” Of course, what the good priest didn’t realize was that within minutes of my departure, he’d forget I was ever here. In fact, the only thing he’d remember was to either do the blessing or get someone else to do it.

  I left only concerned about how the Wyld had first gained entrance. Fetch met me at the Whiting, his tail wagging.

  “Time for some grub?”

  “Yeah, you deserve it. Good job. The Golden Ox on North Clybourn will still be open.”

  “Wiener Schnitzel?” Of late, Fetch had developed a taste for the German dish. The Golden Ox had only been open for about a year, but it now ranked right up there with Berghoff’s for Fetch.

  “Yeah, but fresh. You can stay out of their trash for a day or two, can’t you?”

  His tail wagged harder. Sometimes I wondered if he forgot he wasn’t actually a dog. Here in the mortal realm, he couldn’t even talk unless near me, much less shift to his original shape. Didn’t seem to bother him much, though, so I set the thought aside just as I’d done since he’d first switched allegiances.

  I pulled the Whiting out onto Adams and left St. Patrick’s behind. I must’ve gotten caught up in my usual thoughts faster than I realized, because the next thing I knew Fetch was saying, “Cubs lost again, Master Nicholas.”

  “Yeah.” Three games in a row to the Brooklyn Robins. Who lost three games in a row to the Robins?

  I knew what Fetch was trying to do. He thought I was already thinking of the rest of the night to come. Every time we finished a case, the nightmares I got when I slept afterward were always more striking and more debilitating. Every night, I dreamed of fighting the dragon again and saving Cleolinda, the princess that had been foolishly offered to him by the locals. Every night, I won, only to lose in some other grotesque manner.

  Every night, I watched her die again and again, just as she had in real life, one reincarnation after another. Just one more damned element of my curse. Cleolinda was reborn over and over, only to die violently despite my best efforts. The incarnations rarely knew their true past, but that hardly made losing them any easier. I’d tried to avoid them, but something always brought us together. It’d been five decades since the last time and the images still burned in my memory as if yesterday. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve all this and couldn’t recall any saints who were supposed to be tortured after death, like I’d been. More to the point, I didn’t know what she had done to deserve her fate except to have fallen in love with me.

  “Master Nicholas . . . your hands . . . take care now . . .”

  I realized I’d again become lost in my memories, not the first time I’d done that. Unfortunately, I’d become so lost that I’d opened myself up to him.

  The effect faded the moment I became aware of it, but I remained glad that it was night. During the day, anyone passing on the sidewalk next to us would’ve had a good view of twisted, scaled hands halfway to becoming the clawed feet of a reptilian-looking beast.

  “Don’t do that again!” I snapped at the empty air.

  Eye did nothing . . .

  “You know what I mean.” He wasn’t exactly lying, but he wasn’t also exactly telling the truth. One of his tricks was to wait for my raw emotions to take command of me. Apparently that was some sort of loophole enabling him to influence my physical form. He’d used that to nearly take over more than once.

  He receded into the back of my mind, but that didn’t fool me. He’d be waiting, as he always did, for some mistake, some error of judgment, that’d give him his opportunity. We were allies by necessity, enemies by nature.

  I wondered if I should’ve let Father William bless me while he was at it.

  I left Fetch behind the restaurant with a fresh Wiener Schnitzel, then continued on home. The house near Old Town was a simple Queen Anne that’d served me for the past few years. It sat in a quiet neighborhood where people went about their normal mortal lives. I’d chosen it perhaps in part out of defiance to my curse. I supposed I would’ve been better off in one of the
safe houses spread around the city, but I refused that. Besides, I’d accumulated a few items over the centuries that I didn’t care to part with.

  There were a couple of bedrooms upstairs, but I rarely used them. Instead, I sat down on the couch in the living room and, despite my best attempts to fight it, immediately fell asleep. I dreamed.

  Once more, I sat atop my horse—this time as pure white as I’d once hoped my soul to become—racing with my spear ready over a sandy landscape. There should’ve been hills nearby, but the nightmares were never consistent about minor features.

  I heard her scream. My horse needed no urging to pick up its pace.

  The scream transformed into a titanic roar. The landscape rose before me, becoming a murky form with a tail. Try as I might, I couldn’t focus on the growing monster enough to recognize any details—

  The telephone rang.

  I jumped to a sitting position and stared into the hallway where the telephone sat on a small table. No one called me unless they needed me. Hell, no one could even locate the number to call me unless they were truly threatened, as St. Patrick’s had been.

  I quickly took up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Medea! I’m sorry to bother you again so soon.”

  Father William. I looked to a clock hanging on the nearest wall. I’d only left the priest a little over two hours ago, which meant I’d slept all of maybe fifteen minutes. “What can I do for you, Father?”

  “Mr. Medea . . . there definitely has to be something in the church. I swear I just saw some horror moving about out of the corner of my eye! You must have made a mistake.”

  My mood took a distinctly darker turn. On a rare occasion, I have to go back to my clients for a second attempt. Generally that happens when the foul essence of the Wyld I’ve slain actually masks the presence of a second or even third.

  Father William had seen the small advertisement in the Tribune two days earlier. He’d been the only one to see it. The simple announcement had called on anyone who thought there was something ghostly happening in their home, place of work, or even place of worship, to contact me by telephone. What it hadn’t said was that the advertisement would appear only to the person in need and no one else. The powers that bound me to the role of Gatekeeper also provided methods by which I could track any Wyld who’d managed to cross to the mortal world. It made my work a little easier.

  Just a little.

  Despite my desire to disagree with the priest, I knew that Father William couldn’t have remembered my name and number unless he still required my services. Clearly, I’d missed something after taking out the Wyld I’d discovered.

  “When would you like me to return?”

  “Could you—could you do so now? I really need your help!”

  “I can be there in half an hour. Is that all right? Will you be alone?”

  “Yes. No one will interrupt this.”

  “Good. I’ll be there soon.” I hung up. I hadn’t bothered to take off my jacket so all I had to do was button it right and head out the door. I’d promised Barnaby I’d return the Whiting early in the morning, so the car was still parked outside.

  It being well past midnight, I didn’t encounter much traffic. I’d have preferred to pick up Fetch, but I knew it’d take too long to locate him. Besides, I’d spent most of my sixteen hundred years without his help and survived.

  ‘Tis only us as it should be, the dragon mocked. As only it can be . . .

  I detected a hint of bitterness at the end, bitterness I shared. “Yeah, well, let’s the two of us try to tidy this up quickly, what do you say?”

  Eye was not the careless one . . .

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. I parked in the same spot as before, then walked over to St. Patrick’s.

  As before, Father William met me at the door. He looked pensive and kept glancing back over his shoulder. Whatever he’d caught sight of must’ve been one of Feirie’s darker denizens. I kept my hand near the jacket opening as he led me inside.

  “The work you do, it must be God’s work,” he whispered. “I suppose.” This wasn’t a conversation I intended to prolong.

  “Dealing with darkness, though, must leave you with the danger of corruption.”

  “Can’t say I’ve noticed.”

  He paused to look at me. We were near the altar now. I wondered where he planned to lead me. When he’d originally called, he’d indicated the problem had been solely in the vicinity of the nave. I’d also glanced at the sanctuary, noting nothing at the time. I didn’t sense anything even now, which meant that the Wyld still hiding here had to be very adept at magic.

  “How much clearer your mission could be, how much more you could give the world, if only the beast in your soul was at last cast out.”

  I didn’t care for how this was going. When he’d mentioned a beast, I’d felt the dragon tense as well. “Father William, just what—”

  “May the Lord forgive me . . . and bless you,” he murmured, abruptly drawing a cross over my forehead.

  If it’d been most people, I would’ve recognized the feint in time. Only because he was a priest did I fail to notice that there was something in his other hand, until it pricked mine.

  The world spun. I’d had my share of poisons over the centuries, but I’d rarely found anything that worked this fast.

  Not a poison! my unseen companion roared in my head. Potion! Feirie!

  I didn’t have time to thank the dragon for the correction before the potion knocked us out.

  I woke up in a room lit by a single candle in a holder set by my left shoulder. My arms and legs were spread wide and bound to the ends of a heavy oak bed frame by thin black metal wire that burned my flesh. I tried to pull myself free and when that proved impossible, I forewent good sense and silently asked the dragon to give me his strength.

  We were both rewarded with a shock of agony that didn’t stop until the dragon receded again. I wasn’t terribly surprised at what’d happened even though I’d still hoped for better; I’d dealt with black silver before. A fond creation of the elves. I’d left a Wyld behind all right . . . and it seemed he’d made the priest his puppet.

  I couldn’t see much farther than the dim light of the candle, but it looked like a basement. I didn’t think it was part of St. Patrick’s though. Somewhere near, no doubt, because I doubted the priest could’ve dragged me very far.

  There was a creak and the flickering light of another candle entered the room. A moment later, Father William leaned over me.

  “I’ve prayed for you to be able fight his accursed influence long enough to understand that your freedom is at hand, Your—Holiness.”

  “I’m not the pope, Father. I’m just Nick Medea, remember? You can untie me now and we can forget all about this. I promise I won’t tell anyone . . .”

  He shook his head. “You cannot fool me, dragon! I know you are now speaking with his mouth! Soon, though, you will be cast out and he will be freed!”

  He had both our attention now.

  He could separate us? Make us two again?

  Yeah, me with a body, you with nothing. Remember?

  The brief elation I’d sensed in him faded. Eye would be no more. Eye will not be no more!

  I have to admit I was tempted. I owed him nothing. Still, I didn’t exactly trust Father William. Not only was I not certain he was sane, but, assuming he spoke the truth, what sort of spell would he know to cast the dragon out? I’d tried getting such help now and then over the centuries, and the damned thing was still with me.

  Of course, all of this didn’t answer one important question: how did he know who I was? True, the priest hadn’t called me by name, but he’d mentioned the dragon as if perfectly aware he spoke with two, not one.

  “He’s lying to you,” I suddenly declared loudly to him. “To be expected when dealing with one of the Feirie folk, of course!”

  Father William looked as if I’d just turned into the devil himself. “Spare me your twisted trut
hs, beast! The angel has warned me against your constant lies!”

  Angel. There it was. Just as I’d expected. No doubt tall, beautiful, perfect . . . it wouldn’t be the first time I’d crossed paths with an elf passing themselves off as something holy. Of course, not being able to step on sacred ground generally put a quick end to those masquerades.

  I saw an opening. “Have you seen your angel in the church, Father? Have you ever invited him in? He won’t be able to enter. You know what that means.”

  “You won’t turn me with your lies, dragon!” Father William crossed himself. “I’ve seen her stride between the pews and kneel before the altar without the slightest trepidation. She wanted to prove herself to me so that your twisted words would have no power!”

  The door creaked open again. Two figures with the unmistakable look of thugs entered. I couldn’t make out details too well, but they looked like Micks, maybe even members of O’Banion’s gang, although a bit pale even for the Irish. The bulges in their coats were clearly guns. The elf must have had a powerful hold on the priest if this pair didn’t raise his suspicions. That meant an elf of the royal Court.

  That meant, here in the mortal world, a follower of Oberon. A tall, slim shadow in a flowing coat much too warm for the spring weather slipped through the doorway. It glided rather than walked. Without looking behind themselves, the two gunmen stepped apart to let it through.

  The candlelight illuminated a narrow otherworldly face framed by flowing midnight black hair. I had to admit she looked the part of an angel. She was beautiful, strikingly beautiful, although much of the aura of seduction she radiated was lost on me. I’d faced Her Lady in the Feirie Court many times over the centuries. No elf compared to her deathly perfection. Even more important, I’d long ago given my soul to someone else. The elf could’ve been a thousand times more glorious than Her Lady and still not affected me.

  I’d faced enough elves over the centuries to read their tiniest reactions. A very slight shift of her tapering, silver eyes was enough to tell me she wasn’t happy about my immunity to her charms.