The Black Knight Chronicles (Book 6): Man in Black

by John G. Hartness

  I dropped two more naga before abandoning my pistol, mostly because I noticed the first one starting to move again. “Paulson, do naga regenerate?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s starting to look that way, isn’t it?” I don’t mind having a smartass sidekick. I don’t even mind having a sidekick who’s smarter than me; I’ve had that for years. But having a smartass sidekick who actually wants me dead? That sucks.

  Chapter 10

  “IF I GET OUT of this, Paulson, I am kicking your ass,” I said, holstering my Glock and drawing my other kukri. I quickly severed the head of one snake-man and kicked another back to make a little room. Two snake-men came at me, wicked claws slashing at my face. I ducked one attack and sliced his belly open, spun around to try and keep the viscera from covering me, and then stood up, shoving my kukris through the lower jaw of a second naga and splitting his head when I pulled the curved knives apart.

  Paulson didn’t reply, and when I looked back I saw him struggling to keep a naga’s clawed hands from reaching his throat. I moved to rescue him, then remembered exactly why he was on this continent, and stopped. Could I actually save a man who was here for no reason other than to kill me? What if I did, and he killed me and took over my city, becoming a worse Gordon Tiram, looking on humans, particularly any humans with ties to me, as nothing but food? I shook my head, and turned away.

  I vaulted over the two naga in front of me, burying a kukri in the head of each snake-man as I leapt over them. I landed and drew Excalibur from my back sheath.

  I was reminded of the benefits of owning a legendary, magical sword the moment my hands wrapped around the hilt of King Arthur’s blade. The instant I drew the sword, all my aches and pains went away, and I felt energized, as if I had just drunk a pint of faerie blood. It also gave me a general boost—I felt stronger, faster, and more vibrant than normal. Which was good, because I was surrounded by five naga, two of which had spears.

  The first spearman thrust at me, and I easily parried his attack. Unfortunately that left me open for the second attack, and I barely avoided becoming a vampire-kabob. I lashed out with Excalibur and scored a hit on the snake-dude’s nose, which apparently is a crazy sensitive area, because he dropped his spear and fell back, clutching his nose and babbling in a sibilant language I didn’t understand. The other spear-carrier came at me again, but this time I dodged, grabbed the haft of the spear, and yanked. The naga lurched forward, then stopped suddenly, his eyes going wide as my sword slid through his ribs. I flicked my sword to the side to let the dead snake-man fall to the ground, and turned to face the three remaining.

  “Who’s next?” I asked. The snake-men around me all backed up, then the mass of them parted as what I assumed was Big Daddy Naga came toward me. Where most of the snake-men were about six feet tall with small hoods, muscular humanoid chests and arms, and thick coiled tails that they balanced on, this mother was a solid eight feet, with arms that made Hulk Hogan look like the “before” picture in a Charles Atlas advertisement. He carried a sword that could carve an engine block like a Thanksgiving turkey, and he was missing one gigantic front fang. Here was our mystery diner. Now I knew exactly what had eaten the county workmen.

  “Who dares disturb the rest of King Kalim?” the thing bellowed.

  “Jimmy Black, Master Vampire of Charlotte. I would say the pleasure’s mine, but let’s face it, there’s no pleasure here.”

  “You’re funny, vampire. For that, I’ll only kill one of you for invading my tunnels. The other one can go back upstairs and tell Tiram he was warned to stay out of the tunnels.”

  Really? Who the hell is warning Tiram of anything? I bet if this place didn’t stink to high heaven, there’d be a trace of familiar perfume all over these tunnels.

  “News flash, Special K—Tiram caught a bad case of dead. I’m the new boss, nothing like the old boss. This is my city, from the deepest sewer to the tallest skyscraper. You ate a couple of men a few days ago, men who were just doing their job. That’s a no-no in my city, so you can either pack up your snake-dudes and snake-dudettes, and go back to wherever the hell you came from, or we can throw down. What’s it going to be?” I looked around for Paulson, and saw him leaning against a wall, looking a little the worse for wear but still standing. Great, this guy is no help at all.

  Kalim looked down at me, something like a smile stretching across his alligator snout, but I missed “alligator microexpressions” day at detective school, so I wasn’t sure if he was about to laugh or bite my head off. “Should I take that as a challenge, then, bloodsucker?”

  “Challenge? No, take it as a promise. Either you and your whole buttload of scaly buddies get the hell out of my city, or I’m going to show you what dead looks like.”

  Kalim apparently decided that we were through talking, because he lifted that giant über-claymore over his head and came at me with a war cry that would have been way more intimidating had my ears not still been ringing from the flash-bang. As it was, having an eight-foot-tall snake warrior charge me was plenty intimidating. I ducked his initial charge and sliced at his midsection with Excalibur, leaving a long slash across his ribcage. He howled and spun around way faster than I expected, and I had to drop to one knee to avoid decapitation. I clambered to my feet and left a bloody line across his chest.

  He shifted to a one-handed grip and came at me with a claw, then the blade in a deadly thrust. I dodged both and tagged his wrist with Excalibur. I cut a few tendons, and his hand involuntarily opened, letting the sword clatter to the floor. He managed to make a fist with that same hand and catch me with a vicious backhand to my face that left me dizzy for several seconds. In that time he wrapped his good hand around my throat and picked me up off the ground. He started to squeeze, and I was very happy I no longer needed to breathe. But I did need a working, uncrushed spine, so I rained down blows from Excalibur onto his arms and shoulders. I couldn’t get a good angle around his arms, so most of what I did was just put small cuts and bruises on him, but I finally caught him a ringing blow to the elbow, and he dropped me. I went down to one knee, then tried to come up with my sword opening him up like he had a zipper for guts, but he crossed both arms at the wrist and snatched Excalibur from my grasp. He flung my sword into a corner and grinned down at me.

  Not only did the boost I felt from the magical sword instantly vanish once I was disarmed, but all the bruises and little injuries I’d sustained during the fight made themselves known, too. So I was in a world of hurt when Super-Snake reached down to break me into a thousand little vamp-pieces. Just as his claws touched my shoulders, there was a flash of dark red fabric and body odor, and the most unlikely savior in the world tackled the giant snake-man and pulled my butt right out of the fire.

  I watched the naga king and his assailant tumble across the floor and come to rest facing each other, about eight feet apart. The newcomer wore a burgundy hoodie, Chuck Taylor high tops, and jeans that might have been clean the first time Obama ran for president. He was a skinny little vampire, but he had a pair of silver knives and enough balls to go one-on-one with the Mega-Snake.

  “Rabbit?” I asked as I recognized the little Morlock. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I am dead, part of the whole vampire thing, remember?” He gave me a quick grin, then slashed at a naga claw that got closer than he wanted it.

  “I meant real-dead, smartass.”

  “I was too fast for those bastards,” Rabbit said. “I got some folks to safety, and we been working on cleaning out our old tunnels. This one was next on our list.”

  “Good timing,” I said as I circled back around to where Excalibur lay in the muck. A naga pressed the tip of his tail down onto my sword to keep me from it, and I looked up at the snake-man. “What about that seems like a good idea to you? I’m covered in snake blood, pissed off, and a lot stronger than I look. Now move your tail or lose it.”

  He glared down at me and folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t going to be the aggressor, but he
wasn’t going to move, either.

  “Fine,” I growled. “Have it your way.” I reached over my shoulder, drew a kukri, and cut off the last three feet of his tail. He shrieked and toppled over, then righted himself and slid away, what was left of his tail coiled beneath him. His balance seemed really off, and he stuck close to the walls to steady himself.

  “Huh, I guess they do use that thing for balance,” I said, picking up my sword and welcoming back the rush of Excalibur’s magic, letting it course through my body. Then I looked at Kalim the Snake-King and grinned a wicked grin.

  I caught Rabbit’s eye and wiggled my sword, then pointed to the three-foot section of naga tail lying in the dirt. He got the idea immediately and worked himself around to where Kalim’s back was to me. At my nod, he charged the snake-king with a flurry of knife strikes, and I ran in to his tail, sword held high. Excalibur flashed down, black-green snake blood splashed up, and several feet of naga tail writhed bodiless on the floor. Kalim pinwheeled his arms, trying to retain his balance, but without the last few feet of tail, he couldn’t stay upright. He flopped down on his side and spun around to face me.

  What he found was Excalibur staring him in the face and a very pissed-off vampire holding it. “Hi there, remember me?” I asked. “I think the last time we talked, I said something about getting the hell out of my city. Remember that?”

  “Die, vampire scum! My tail will regrow itself in a matter of hours, then I will search the city high and low looking for you. I will find you, and I will rend you limb from limb! I will erase the very memory of your existence from the stones. Then the mistress shall reward Kalim past all imagining, and the Awakening shall cast your entire world into shadow!”

  Awakening? Mistress? Sounded like Lilith had something more in mind than I originally thought.

  “I’ve lived in the shadows for decades, asshole. It comes with the fangs.” I said, then I stood up and chopped his head from his shoulders. Amid the greenish-black blood and bone chips, a familiar dark shadow flickered across my vision, almost too fast to see. I jerked back as it passed me, then the sluagh was gone as if it had never existed. I kicked the head out into the center of the room, stepped forward, and stood beside it. “Nagas!” I bellowed. Several of the snake-men came out of the shadows to listen. I saw Paulson step into the light as well, making sure not to let any naga behind him but making sure he was close enough to hear my every word.

  I took a deep breath and looked around at the gathered naga. “Once upon a time, that was your leader. Not anymore. He made a mistake, and it cost him his head. Now I don’t want to kill anybody else, but I will if I have to. So here’s the deal—I’ll be back down here in three days. I don’t want to see so much as a scale or a fang when I come back. I don’t care where you go or how you get there, but get the hell out of my city, or I’ll chop every damn one of you up and wear you for boots. You understand?”

  The naga I saw nodded. “Good. Now don’t do anything stupid on your way out of town. I really don’t want to come back down here. It stinks.”

  The remaining naga slithered off into the tunnels, and I turned to Rabbit. “So you’re the new Morlock leader?”

  “So you’re the new Master of the City?” he replied.

  “Not anything either one of us expected,” I said. I pulled over an abandoned bucket, flipped it over, and sat. Rabbit curled his legs underneath himself and sat on the floor. Paulson stepped closer, stopping a bit away from us.

  “Who’s the suit?” Rabbit asked. “And where’s your fat friend and that hot cop?”

  “Yeah, we had a difference of opinions, so we’re all taking a break from each other for a little while.”

  “You pissed them off.” The little punk was perceptive, if nothing else.

  “There was a lot more to it than that, but basically. Anyway, the douche in the suit is Paulson. He’s here to evaluate my performance as Master, and if he doesn’t think I’m up to the task, he’s supposed to kill me and take the job.”

  “How’s that working out so far?”

  “We’re leaning pretty heavily on the ‘kill me and take the job’ option at this point, I’d say. But I don’t get a vote. Just a chance to kill him before he executes me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” I repeated. “How many Morlocks do you have left since Lilith’s purge?”

  “Lilith?” Rabbit looked shocked. “I thought it was Tiram who ordered the hit.”

  “So did I,” I said. “That’s a big part of why I killed him. After I killed him, Lilith owned up to the whole thing.”

  “Wow, shit.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “I got about two dozen people down here. Most of them are pretty screwed up and frightened. Seeing everybody you’ve ever cared about get killed will do that to a person.”

  “I can understand that.” We sat in silence for several long moments before I felt the pressures of the city start to move me. I stood up, and as I did, an idea struck. “Rabbit, I’ve got to go. I wish I could hang, wish I could help, but I can’t. All I can offer is this—I promise that the Morlocks are safe from the Master of the City and my forces as long as I hold the chair. Provided you don’t try to overthrow me.”

  “You’re not going to hunt us?”

  I smiled at the little guy. He had no idea that he’d just walked right into my plan. “No. I’m going to ask you to hunt for me. The tunnels are your territory, pal. Keep clowns like those naga out of them, and I got no reason for us to have a problem.” Now I didn’t have to hunt Morlocks, and the Morlocks would take care of hunting the other nasty things in the smelly places.

  “You got a deal.” Rabbit stood up, stuck out his hand, and we shook. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go find the rest of my crew and see about cleaning up a bunch of dead snake bits.” He ran off into the tunnels, and I turned to Paulson.

  “I suppose now’s the time that you tell me how poorly I handled that, too?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “Much to my amazement, you did as well in those confrontations as you could have. With the naga, they were never going to accept your authority without a significant amount of bloodshed, so you applied force until the problem was solved. And with the small smelly vampire and his people, you came to a solution without bloodshed that still resulted in solidifying your power base and shoring up the defenses of the city. As much as I am loath to say it, I find I must admit that was well done.”

  “Well,” I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here before I screw something up.”

  “I suspect there will still be plenty of opportunity for that topside.”

  Chapter 11

  I DON’T HAVE to sleep every day; the myth about falling into a death-like trance the second the sun comes up is crap. But I get bitchy if I don’t sleep every three days or so. So I got home, washed the naga-funk off, and crashed after giving William a rundown on the sewer situation and leaving him to report to McDaniel. If my vampire body servant was going to be up my ass every time I took a step, I might as well make the little bastard useful.

  My dreams were enough to make me rethink sleeping as a retreat. I saw Mike, my priest best friend who’d died of cancer just weeks ago. I saw Greg, my other best friend who I beat the hell out of while Mike was dying so he wouldn’t turn Mike into a vampire. Greg used to be my partner in this whole detective thing, but that kinda went out the window when our discussion on a person’s right to die ended with him throwing me through a tombstone. And of course I saw Sabrina. Detective Sabrina Law, my most-days girlfriend, sometimes lover, and woman most responsible for me caring about anything outside of the newest Halo video game. The woman who left me when I went to fight Tiram and started down this whole “Master of the City” road.

  I spent a long restless night of dreams with her, my best buds, my parents, Greg’s kid sister, and everybody else I had abandoned since I became a vampire.

  Evening arrived, and instead of waking completely refreshed
, which had been my plan, I awoke really, really wanting to bite someone with extreme prejudice. Then I smiled. I remembered that I had a meeting with the leader of the Stanleyville Bloods tonight. The thought of getting to inflict a little punishment cheered me right up. So much so that I took a quick shower, threw on some jeans, my Doc Martens, and a Hellboy T-shirt, and clomped down the stairs for breakfast with a song in my heart. Admittedly, the song was Def Leppard’s “Love Bites,” but what can I say? I’m a child of the ’90s. On the ground floor I opened the fridge and pulled out three bags of B-positive, draining one flat before I ever got downstairs.

  Abby was on the computer when I stepped into the basement, so I walked up next to her to see what was going on. “What’s the story, evening glory?” I punned, trying to cover a yawn with the back of my hand. Paulson was sitting on one of the couches, reading the Wall Street Journal. I paused for a minute, watching. I hadn’t seen anyone read a real newspaper in years, and I was fascinated by how slow the process was. He kept starting an article on one page, then flipping several pages back, then flipping back to the front. News without hyperlinks was like watching paint dry.

  “Still not sleeping well?” Abby asked. “You should bite somebody on Xanax, see if that helps. Anyway, I’m still logging Owen’s emails and phone calls, but there’s been nothing more from the kidnappers.”

  “That’s strange,” I said. “Shouldn’t there have been an angry phone call about how things went down by now? Even if our guy ended up with the money, this is the perfect time to squeeze Owen for more money. Try hacking the phones of his goons, maybe the kidnappers are communicating through an underling.”