The Black Knight Chronicles (Book 4): Paint it Black

by John G. Hartness

  I held up my hands in surrender and grabbed Abby’s keys off the table in the foyer. “We’re outta here,” I yelled up the stairs.

  “Wait for us!” came Abby’s shout back, and I felt a headache coming on. Greg was not my idea of the perfect companion for a gentlemen’s club, no matter how poorly named the establishment. My worst fears were abated somewhat when he came downstairs in a black polo shirt, black leather jacket, and blue jeans. He managed to look almost like a normal pudgy twenty-something, except for the four-inch platform boots he was sporting. They had more chrome on the toes than my last car had on the bumper, and there were purple flames dancing around the toes.

  “Nice boots,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand so he wouldn’t see the grin.

  Greg, of course, is immune to my sarcasm after all these years, so he just glanced down and grinned. “These old things? Thanks. I’ve had them for uh . . . weeks and weeks.” I knew he was lying, of course. His clothes had gone up in the same fire that destroyed all our belongings a few months ago. That’s when we took over the frat house. I was about to crack on him more when I caught sight of Abby walking down the stairs.

  I stopped in mid-snark with my jaw hanging open as she came into view one leggy step at a time. Abby was rocking the stripper heels, a pair of four-inch Lucite jobs that made her look even taller than normal. The view was impossibly improved by the skin-tight mini dress she had on. The mini was no more than three or four napkins sewn together in strategic spots. “Damn, Abby,” I whispered. “You know we’re going there to investigate, not find a job, right?”

  She just walked past me, reached out with one hand and slowly closed Greg’s mouth for him. She leaned in and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, reaching out for her keys as she did so. “Careful, Greggy. You’ll catch flies.” She sidled past us to the door and opened it, turning to look back at where Greg and I stood frozen by the stairs. “Coming boys?” I gave myself a shake, earning a glare from Sabrina, and followed the girls out to the car.

  I didn’t even have any witty comments for the ride over to Lilith’s place. I’m a big enough vampire to admit to a little touch of nerves. Lilith scared the crap out of me. She was older than anyone I’d ever heard of, going all the way back to Adam, or so she said. I didn’t know what kind of power she was packing, but she’s the kind of woman used to getting her way, and when she didn’t, we weren’t on the best of terms. I thought we were in her good graces at the moment, but it’s always hard to tell with her. She’s immortal, gorgeous, and has her fingers in pretty much every criminal enterprise in several states. Plus she has troll bodyguards, and trolls are just nasty.

  One of the human valets opened the door to the Escalade as Abby rolled to a stop under the portico. She hopped out, blew him a little kiss, and asked him to keep the car close. He stammered some type of agreement and almost tripped over himself looking at her ass. Abby just laughed, a little silver trill that had Sabrina and me sharing a nervous glance.

  “She’s way too good at that for comfort,” I muttered, taking Sabrina’s arm as we walked to the door.

  “She’s blonde, built like a centerfold, and twenty-two. What do you expect?”

  “Point to you, but I don’t have to like it.”

  “Actually, Jimmy, you do. You’re not her dad, her uncle, or even her big brother. You’re just one of her roommates, and she’s going to use sex as a weapon just like you use mojo. We all have our little gifts. Hers just happen to come in a D-cup.” I gave her a sharp look as she outlined all of Abby’s arguments from earlier in the day with half the words and none of the yelling. I was about to mutter something about hating smart women when I ran into the palm of one of the bouncers.

  I had to look up into his dark glasses, which doesn’t happen to me often. He was about the size of a Porta-Jon, with hands the rough size and shape of shovels. One of those shovels was pressed firmly against my chest. I looked down, then at him, then back at his hand in a polite, non-verbal invitation to get his paws off me.

  “I gotta frisk you, pal. Sorry, but it’s the rules.”

  “Since when?” I’d never been frisked when Phil, the former proprietor, ran the place.

  “Since a couple guys from out of town started some trouble. Now there’s a strict no-weapons policy.”

  He seemed pleasant enough, so I decided against kicking him around the parking lot to show off my manliness for my girlfriend. I locked gazes with him and spoke very clearly. “You checked me thoroughly. None of us are carrying any weapons. We’re all clear.”

  He repeated my words exactly, if his tone was a little wooden. His partner looked from me to him and back again, then I repeated the process, mojo’ing him into thinking we’d all been frisked. I even let them think they copped a feel on Abby. Might as well give the guys a little thrill if I’m going to muck around in their heads, right?

  The Fallen Angel was one of the higher-end strip clubs in town. Unfortunately, our work had led Greg and me into all of them at one point or another. Some were charming in their utter failure to make the grade as a “club.” Those joints were really more like biker bars that happened to have naked women dancing around poles watched by a lower class of bad guys than the sophisticated criminal element found in the true “clubs.” The true test of a strip club versus joint was not so much who was on their poles, but who stared at their poles.

  I liked those classless joints—they appealed to the badass rocker hiding deep inside my geeky exterior. Okay, that rocker hides underneath several layers of my geeky interior, too, but that’s beside the point. The joints were barely legitimized brothels who’d pulled a liquor license to keep up appearances. But the Angel was a tall step up from those joints, as topless bars went. At any given time you could find some of Charlotte’s top athletes in private booths, see business deals getting done over a lap dance, and penicillin could easily take care of any diseases you’d contract from a visit to the buffet.

  You could also find a good sampling of Charlotte’s supernatural population, which wasn’t always helpful to our cause. Our last visit forced a spontaneous renovation of the interior. A gargoyle took offense at a vampire walking through the door of his favorite strip club. We might have destroyed a great deal of furniture.

  Lilith made more than cosmetic changes to the place during the subsequent remodeling. Changes definitely for the better. The sound wasn’t as loud, the lighting was a bit brighter, and none of the girls were under the influence of anything stronger than coffee. At least not that I could tell.

  The four of us clustered uncomfortably by the bar as I tried to get the bartender’s attention. No easy feat when there’s a topless woman dancing on the bar in question. Between heels that could crush a skull and legs that looked like they could probably do the same, the barkeep wasn’t paying any attention to my waving twenty-dollar bill. The dancer, however, was on my photo of Andrew Jackson like a shark on fresh tuna, and before I could even open my mouth to ask about Lilith, my twenty bucks was gone and a stripper was kissing me on the cheek and whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

  I pulled back, trying to escape the grasp of a stripper on a money-hunt and the wrath of Sabrina. I looked frantically around for reinforcements, which I did not find. My ever-faithful partner was entranced by the redhead on stage, or at least doing a good job of pretending to be so. Abby hid her giggles behind a hand and made no attempt to help. Sabrina finally pried the girl off my neck with the most effective mood-killer I’ve ever seen—her police badge.

  The stripper skidded backward, dropping to her butt on the bar, and scurrying to the floor before running off. The bartender glared over at Sabrina, and she nodded down at the badge.

  “Where’s Lilith?” she asked over the music and the commotion coming from the kitchen.

  I had just enough time to figure out that my night was going to suck before a troll came barreling out the swinging doors leading to the kitchen. He was glamoured to look like a block-headed human with shoulders the
width of a Buick and no neck, but I could smell him from twenty yards away, despite his being covered in stripper perfume. Without stopping, the troll blew through two tables of businessmen and one cluster of NFL linemen on his way to the door. I jumped after him. No way was I losing a potential lead in two murders smelling suspiciously of troll involvement. Abby and Greg followed, but even at vamp-speed we weren’t going to be able to catch the troll before he made the parking lot.

  “Help me! They’re with the IRS!” the troll yelled as he passed the doormen. The bouncers obviously had deep-seated tax issues they wanted to discuss, because they immediately turned to block our path.

  “Take care of these two. I’ll go after the troll!” I yelled. I never slowed down as I reached the bouncers, just dove right over them and rolled to my feet a few yards past the confused men. They turned around to find Greg and Abby standing in their faces, fangs on display. I heard a whispered “holy shit” from one of the doormen, and knew he was only a few seconds from Dreamland. At least I hoped he was. I needed Greg and Abby pronto because I had no particular desire to face the troll alone. I tried to keep the troll in sight without actually engaging him until they could catch up.

  Unfortunately, the troll must have realized the odds had improved in his favor about the same time I did, because he came to a full stop and turned to face me. Trolls are everything you’ve ever thought they should be—better than eight feet tall, kinda greenish-yellow skin that smells like six-month old pumpkin, and patches of hair longer than my thumb growing out of various moles scattered all over their faces. Not attractive creatures, I promise.

  A gap-toothed grin split the troll’s hideous face, and he held out both hands to me in a “come and get it” motion. I didn’t want to. Really, I didn’t. I know exactly what a six-month-old pumpkin smells like, and I don’t want to get that close to anything smelling that bad again. Not that I had much choice. I was barreling through the parking lot at better than twenty miles per hour, far too fast to stop. So I went and got it. Right in the face I got it.

  “It” was the troll’s fist, of course. A fist about the size of a Thanksgiving turkey covered my entire face and delivered an impact that felt like running into a brick wall. A brick wall that stunk worse than my middle-school gym shorts. I wish I had bounced off the fist. That would have hurt way less. But no. My feet and body kept running, right past and under the troll’s outstretched arm, so that I flopped flat on my back in the parking lot like a cartoon character and bounced the back of my head off the asphalt. Repeatedly. If I’d been capable of getting a concussion, I would have had three right there. Even with my vamp immunity to the normal bumps and bruises of life, I still saw little stars and bats tweeting around my head for a second before one encyclopedia-sized foot came crashing down onto my chest, driving the breath out of me and cracking at least six ribs.

  The breath wasn’t the problem; I don’t need to breathe. But broken ribs hurt. And with no breath, I couldn’t even swear at him. The troll reached down and picked me up by my throat, again keeping me from the sweet healing magic of profanity. I gathered my wits as best I could and shook one of my knives free, dropping it into my palm and stabbing the troll through the wrist as he reared back to punch me in the face. He opened his hand and sent me crashing back to the ground.

  The troll yanked my knife from his arm and flung the blade aside, stepping back like he was going to kick my head somewhere into the next time zone. I rolled out of the way and drew my Glock as I came to my feet. I was shaky, but the full load of blood I’d drunk over the course of the day was already knitting my ribs back together. I drew a bead on the troll’s forehead and said those words that most people with a gun actually don’t mean. “I don’t want to shoot you.” I meant it, however. This guy was our only lead in at least two murders, so I didn’t want to shoot him. In the head, at least. Truth be told, I really did want to shoot him a little bit, but Sabrina’s been working with me on this crap she likes to call “impulse control.”

  “Bullets won’t kill me, vampire. Ogg is strongest one there is!”

  “Pretty sure that’s the Hulk’s line, buddy. And these are silver bullets. Does that make any difference?”

  “No. Silver not hurt Ogg. Only cold iron.”

  “Good to know,” I said as I pulled a fresh clip out of my shoulder holster and swapped it for the one in the pistol. “These are cold iron rounds. Now would you like to sit down and talk this out like civilized monsters?”

  “Crap. Ogg hate vampires.” He turned and walked slowly to a Hummer parked a few spots away. He dropped the tailgate on the Hummer and sat. The back end of the vehicle sank about six inches, then held.

  “Nice ride,” I remarked. I sat on the trunk of a Lexus parked nearby.

  “Thanks. That’s Ginger’s car you’re on. She won’t like that.”

  “I won’t tell her if you don’t.”

  “Okay.” When he wasn’t trying to stomp me into a bloody smear in the parking lot, Ogg seemed like a decent enough troll. Maybe when this was all over we could hang out. I shook myself. I gotta stop looking for friendship in topless bars—it never ends well and is frequently very expensive.

  “All right, Ogg. Why did you run when you saw us?”

  “Last time you come around, big fight. Didn’t go so good for gargoyle. Before that, another fight. Lots of trolls end up dead. Ogg didn’t like odds.”

  Smarter than the average troll, I mused. “Good point. Well, we’re not here to kill anybody this time. Well, not specifically.”

  “That’s good to hear, little vampire.”

  Crap. I turned to see Lilith standing behind me, holding Greg and Abby by their elbows. They weren’t struggling, but the look in Abby’s eyes would have turned Lilith to ash if vampires had those kinds of powers. And if magic still worked on Lilith, which I wasn’t at all sure about. The one thing I was sure about was that she didn’t look happy.

  “Ogg is much more than a troll. He’s a valuable employee, and I would hate to think how much I would hurt you if you killed him.”

  “Hi, Lilith.”

  “Hello, James. Shall we go inside and discuss this like civilized beings, or do I need to call out reinforcements? Your friends here have already destroyed my front door, my awning, and three patrons’ vehicles.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Greg, and he shrugged. “Sorry, dude. Those door guys weren’t quite as human as I thought they were. So things got a little breaky.”

  “Are they alive?” I asked.

  “They’re alive,” Abby spat. “But only because your partner has a bleeding heart. If he hadn’t stopped me, those morons would have been the ones with the bleeding hearts.”

  Lilith laughed, a light, cheerful peal that nonetheless resonated with something in my gut and made me shiver. “I like this one, James. Can I borrow her sometime?”

  “Keep away from the jailbait, Lil. I don’t want you to have to kick my ass over it,” I responded.

  I slid off the trunk of the Lexus with a wince as the last broken rib poked me somewhere uncomfortable. I pulled up my shirt and saw it poking out under the skin of my abdomen. I gave it a sharp shove to snap it back into place. Then I leaned my head on the trunk of the car and pounded it with my fists for a couple of minutes while I whimpered every curse word I’d ever known and a few that I’d never tried before. When I stood up, there were a series of round, baseball-sized dents in the trunk of the Lexus.

  Ogg looked at the car, then back at me. “Ginger is not going to be happy.”

  “Tell her it was a freak hailstorm,” I muttered, stalking off toward the demolished entrance of the club. It looked like a grenade had gone off up there. Mangled metal and shattered glass littered the whole area. A pair of six-foot-tall planters lay on their sides with bouncers stuffed into them headfirst. One bouncer kicked feebly at me as I walked by, so I pulled him out of the huge concrete flowerpot. The other guy was out cold, so I figured it was better to just leave him there.

  Sabrin
a was waiting for me inside what was left of the doorway, now just a gaping void surrounded by cinderblock and electrical wires. “Never a dull moment with you, Jimmy. I gotta give you that one.”

  “This wasn’t my fault. I was busy getting my face kicked in by an elephant.” I took her arm as I walked past, and headed right back to the bar. I ordered three doubles of Patrón and a beer chaser, and had two of the tequila shots burning their way down my throat by the time Lilith and the others made it inside.

  Chapter 8

  LILITH SLID IN next to me at the bar and downed my last tequila shot. I glared at her, reaching in my pocket for cash, but she shook her head at me and nodded at the bartender. Since I got the shots for free, I figured I wouldn’t whine too much.

  “Would you like to move this discussion to my office, James, or am I mistaken? Was your blonde friend only here for amateur night?” Lilith purred the questions in my direction, but didn’t wait for an answer. We followed her down a hallway past the VIP rooms into her well-appointed office. Lilith had taken out the pole and small stage that Phil had in one corner of the office. She’d replaced it with a conference table and half a dozen high-backed leather chairs. I pulled a chair out from one end for Sabrina and took a seat near her with my back firmly pointed at a wall.

  Abby and Greg sat, then Ogg tried to wedge himself into one of the remaining chairs. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, he dragged a granite end table over and crouched more than sat on it. The troll loomed over the entire table, looking mildly ridiculous, but every time I glanced in his direction my ribs reminded me that he was anything but funny.

  “Can I offer any of you a drink?” Lilith inquired from the head of the table. Ever the perfect hostess, she pressed a button on the wall and a leggy blonde came in to take drink orders. Sabrina and Greg passed, I requested a beer, and Abby asked for a bag of B-positive. The blonde returned with my Miller Lite, a huge mug of something foul-smelling for Ogg, and a glass of amber liquid I presumed to be scotch for Lilith. Then she sank to her knees in front of Abby and pulled her hair to one side. Abby looked around the table for a second, then shrugged and drank deeply from the girl. I smelled the fresh blood as soon as her teeth made contact, and took a deep swallow of my beer to keep my hunger in check. It’s hard to drink beer when your fangs involuntarily extend. I managed not to spill anything on my shirt. Barely.