Hard Day's Knight

by Hartness, John G.

  “Unfortunately, I can vouch for that.” Phil handed Sabrina his pistol. “Silver rounds. I don’t know what effect they’ll have, but it can’t hurt.” He passed a few extra magazines around to the rest of us out of some apparently bottomless coat pocket, but I didn’t care. If it would give us any edge in the fight to come, I was all for it.

  “Thanks.” She took the gun, tucked it into the back waistband of her pants, and nodded to Mike. “Let’s go.”

  “As they say in the movies, my friends, we’ll be back.” My old friend looked a dozen years younger as he shouldered the shotgun and headed off to fight a demon in a school gymnasium. If I squinted, I could even make myself ignore the bandages he was sporting on one hand and the limp he had picked up fighting zombies all over town last night.

  “Do you think they’ve got a chance?” I asked Greg.

  “I can only hope, bro. For all our sakes.”

  Chapter 31

  I’m not a patient man. Even if you discount the fact that I’m not technically human anymore, I’m not a patient vampire. So it was with a distinct lack of patience that I paced the parking lot waiting for some indication of what was going on inside. After what seemed like an hour, I looked over at where Greg sat on the tailgate of a nearby pickup.

  “How long have they been in there?”

  He made a show of checking his watch and said, “About three minutes.”

  “I hate waiting.”

  “We can see that.” Phil was sitting cross-legged on the roof of a minivan, with Lilith beside him. They’d morphed costumes again, this time into some type of Euro-biker chic with a lot of brightly colored leather and zippers.

  I started once again towards the door of the gym, and once again I could feel the place pushing back at me, like I was trying to walk through a hard wind. The closer I got, the harder it seemed to push against me, and the sicker I felt. I got almost to the front door when I heard shots ring out from inside. The boom of a twelve-gauge shotgun is unmistakable, and the sound I heard was two of them firing over and over as fast as they could.

  After about half a dozen shots, the guns fell silent, and then an eerie silence fell. No screams, no running feet, none of the sounds I would expect from a crowded school carnival where a couple of nutjobs had just unloaded with a pair of shotguns. Silence reigned for about half a minute, then a low whirring sound started.

  The sound started off slow and low and picked up in pitch and intensity, like a jet engine ramping up for takeoff. The noise built for maybe a half a minute, then blinding light blasted out of every window and a thunderous explosion came from inside.

  I had just about enough time to think about how bad this was going to be, when the doors of the gym opened up and a stream of people poured out, running like the hounds of hell were on their heels. Which, for all I knew, was in fact the case. A couple hundred people ran out into the night, a few of them getting into their cars and careening off down the street, but most either getting in fender benders in the parking lot or just leaving their cars and running for home.

  As the stream slowed to a trickle, one figure lurched into view, bouncing down the steps holding onto the handrail like a sailor on shore leave. I recognized Mike and ran to help him, ignoring the roiling in my gut from being that close to holy ground.

  “Mike, are you okay?” He had a dazed look on his face, and his eyes were out of focus. I had to repeat myself a couple of time to get his attention. When he finally looked at me, I saw that my friend’s hair had gone completely white, like the good guy in a bad horror movie. “Are you okay?” I repeated, and he seemed to come to himself a little.

  Mike stood up straight, walked over to a parked car, leaned against the back bumper, and threw up noisily all over the parking lot. I looked away, because I have a particularly delicate stomach for someone who has to drink human blood to survive, and also because I didn’t want Mike to be embarrassed.

  “What happened? Where’s Sabrina? Did you get her?” Greg peppered Mike with questions faster than he could have answered even if he wasn’t busy puking. I waved him off and then pulled Mike around to the other side of the car. I really didn’t want to smell puke while I tried to figure out what went wrong.

  “She’s innocent, Jimmy.” It came out almost a whisper, and I probably wouldn’t have understood what he said without my vamp hearing.

  “Huh? Who’s innocent? The teacher? Nah, man, she’s the bad guy, I’m pretty sure. What happened in there?” I was trying to keep Mike focused, but it seemed like a lost cause.

  “No. Sabrina. She’s an innocent, Jimmy. That’s how she got caught.” My borrowed blood ran cold as what he said started to sink in.

  “You mean the demon has Sabrina? Because she’s a…” I didn’t say “virgin,” just because, like unicorns, I’ve heard of them but didn’t necessarily believe in them. And Sabrina was a grown woman. And hot. So a hot, adult virgin in 2010? I might be the vampire standing in the parking lot fighting a demon with a fallen angel and an immortal feminist, but that was too much for me to believe in.

  “Yes. Belial has her. Her and a dozen children. We haven’t got much time, we have to get in there and stop the ritual before…” Mike didn’t get to tell me before what, although I figured it was something really bad, because he started to vomit again, and this time there was some blood in there. And then he started to cough, and that made more blood happen, and best living friend or not, that was enough to make me a little hungry.

  “Mike, we can’t. None of us can go in there. It’s sacred ground. We can’t go in and help. You’ve got to do it. You’re the only one that can save her.” Greg was starting to freak out, and he always talks really fast when he freaks out, so that last bit was more like theonlyonethatcansaveher. He hadn’t quite lapsed into “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope,” but we were getting close. Mike tried to stand, but collapsed on the trunk of a nearby Buick.

  “Well,” I said, letting Mike slide down to a sitting position beside the car. “I guess it’s time to test a theory.”

  Chapter 32

  “Oh Hell no!” bellowed Greg, just as Lilith looked at me and said “What theory, little vampire?”

  “Dude, it’s the only way,” I replied. I looked over at Lilith and said, “come along, sister, I think you’re on this ride, too.” I started walking towards the entrance, with Greg walking backwards in front of me, both hands out.

  “You can’t go in there, man. We’ve tried it before, and it doesn’t end well. We can’t function on holy ground.” He finally got both hands on me and stopped my march to the gym.

  “Yeah, but we’ve never figured out why, have we? Mike has always said that it was our subconscious hang-ups making us sick whenever we went near a church, not anything having to do with our vampirism.”

  “Are you willing to take that chance?” Greg looked me in the face. “Is she worth it?”

  I answered in reverse order. “I don’t know, and yes, I am. Now either come with me or get out of the way. And Lilith, get your immortal tookus up here, I need a little pick-me-up.” She came up beside me and gave me a sultry gaze. “Can it, appetizer. I just need the blood.”

  She pouted a little. “You’re no fun when you’re being all heroic, little vampire.”

  “Maybe after I save the world, get the girl and ride off into the sunrise we can play a different game. But for right now, give me your arm, please.” She stretched out her wrist to me, and I drank. Not a tentative sip like the last time, but a full gulp of immortal blood. The power of ages crashed over me like a wave, and I could feel myself being rolled over in the sensation of it. I could almost feel myself getting taller (the last thing I needed) and stronger (the intended result) and even sexier (a new sensation altogether). I drank for just a few seconds, and let her go, feeling more alive than I ever had when I was alive. I looked at Greg and said, “you might want to top off the tank, too, old buddy. I think we’re gonna need it.”

&nb
sp; Then I pushed past him and headed up the stairs into the church gymnasium to fight the demon that had kidnapped my maybe-someday-if-I-get-really-lucky girlfriend. Sometimes I have the most terrible ideas in the world.

  Chapter 33

  The gym looked like a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the lame movie, not the badass TV show) and Vacation Bible School. There were prom-style decorations that looked like they came from 1993, glittery letters and bunting strewn all around the gym, and cheap posterboard signs over booths with slogans like “Bobbing for Salvation,” and “Baptismal Dunking Booth.” I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry at the crazy attempt to de-monsterize Halloween, and felt no small irony that a couple of monsters were crashing the party trying to save the children of people who would most likely lead the pitchfork party if they knew about our existence.

  I didn’t have much time to consider the setting, though, because my attention quickly locked on to our friendly neighborhood demon-summoning taking place right at center court. The bun-headed lady from the forest was standing in the middle of a glowing circle, and there were eleven little girls playing ring-around-the-psycho. The kids all faced out, and they all had the same glowing eyeball thing going on as the first bunch we rescued. The kids ranged in age from high school girls down to one kid that looked barely old enough to go to middle school, but that wasn’t the worst part.

  No, the worst part was Sabrina. She was floating over the center of the circle, a good ten feet in the air over the bun-headed woman, and it looked like a rope of energy was flowing from each of the kids up to where she floated. As we watched, Bun-head twisted her hand in the air, and Sabrina turned in the air until she was standing in midair, looking straight at us. Her hands extended to the sides and her feet crossed at the ankles in a grotesque mockery of a crucifixion, and the look on her face was pure agony. I took one look at her writhing in pain and launched myself at the witch.

  I flew a good twenty feet, landed and took another huge leap, crashing right into the invisible wall of the circle. I slid down to the floor like the coyote in one of those old cartoons, and heard the witch laugh maniacally as I lay crumpled on the hardwood floor. I heard several loud cracks like handclaps and looked up to see Greg shooting at Bun-head and screaming something that I couldn’t hear through the ringing in my ears and the chirping of those imaginary birdies that were circling my head. The witch kept laughing as the bullets just bounced harmlessly to the ground.

  “Did you morons really think you could come in here and stop me so easily?” She asked, as she started to glow herself. The energy from the twelve kids was passing through Sabrina and down into her, making her eyes glow and her hair to begin to unravel.

  “Well, I kinda hoped.” I said from where I lay on the floor. “Since our frontal assault didn’t work, I don’t suppose you have a better idea?” The last was to Greg, who had stopped shooting when it became apparent that he was doing no good. Of course, he emptied a full clip before it became apparent to him, but since I was the one who bloodied his nose on the impenetrable magical barrier, I wasn’t making any smart remarks about the strength of his decision-making.

  “I got nothing, bro.” I tried to come up with something, but between the throbbing in my face from crashing into the circle and the nausea in my gut from being on holy ground, it was getting pretty hard to think. Bun-head didn’t make things any easier when she started to chant in some arcane language. The lights coming from the little girls glowed even brighter, and Sabrina started to scream as the flow of power through her became unbearable.

  I managed to get onto my knees and started to beat on the circle, screaming for Greg to come help me, to get her out of there. Nothing happened, of course, except that my hands got sore to match my face. I had a sudden thought and yelled back to Greg, “Salt!” He tossed a fistful at the circle, but it bounced off just like everything else we threw at it. I didn’t even know enough about magic to understand why it didn’t work. And frankly, I didn’t much care why. All I knew was that the one living person I’d felt a connection to in a couple decades was on the other side of that magic barrier about to be possessed by a serious bad guy, and I was stuck on the outside, unable to do anything about it. All we could do was pound on the solid air while Sabrina screamed.

  Then she started to spin in midair, and the light flowing through her got even brighter. The faster she spun, the brighter she glowed, and the louder she screamed. Bun-head kept laughing as the ground beneath her started to glow in answer to the light pouring down out of Sabrina. It started off white, but shifted to red as I noticed the kids in the circle starting to change. There is no way this is going to end well, I thought just before my night took yet another turn for the worse.

  Chapter 34

  The only word I have for what the kids turned into was “demon.” I don’t know if there’s a better word, or if there’s some type of hierarchy of Hell that I’m offending with my oversimplification, but when I see a four foot tall thing with red skin, horns and a spiky tail where a little girl was standing a couple of minutes before, “demon” just happens to be the word that leaps to mind. Sic the ACLU on me, see if I care.

  So I was kneeling on the floor of a church school gymnasium, watching the woman I might not love but certainly had a couple of twingy feelings for spin in midair above a psycho substitute home ec teacher who had developed a knack for summoning the denizens of Hell while a herd of demons broke loose from the magical circle and bum-rushed me and my partner. This was definitely looking like a night I should have stayed dead.

  I was trying to figure out how to beat the demons without hurting the little kids that I figured had to still be trapped inside, when Greg stepped up beside me and shot the nearest monster right between the eyes. It flew backwards into the circle and lay still. I looked at my partner, the vegan vampire who wouldn’t even feed off bunnies, with my jaw bouncing off my knees.

  “I might have a few issues left over from being tossed naked into the girls locker room in sixth grade. I’ve decided to think of this as therapy.” He turned faster than anyone but I could follow and dropped another pair of demon girls before they could close on us.

  “Dude! That was almost thirty years ago!” I yelled as I kicked a little girl across the gym.

  “Some wounds take a long time to heal, man.” He plugged another kid, and I started to worry. These demon children were dying just like humans, only redder humans with pointy extremities, so of course I figured it was going too well.

  Apparently I was right, because just then three of the demons got to me at the same time. I took one by the throat in one hand, and fended another off with the other arm, but the third one jumped on my back and bit the side of my neck. I hate someone trying to move in on my gimmick, so I bludgeoned the second kid with the first one, and tossed them both to the far side of the room. The kid on my back was really becoming annoying by that point, so I reached back over my shoulder and grabbed a handful of demon hair. It took a couple of tugs, but the little brat finally came loose from my neck, and I pitched her over to join her friends beneath one of the basketball goals.

  I drew my Glock and started plugging away at demon children, noticing that when they fell, they didn’t turn into dead little girls. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better because I didn’t kill them, or worse because I didn’t know if I could have saved them. But at the moment, they wanted to eat me alive, and since I objected to that on principle, shooting them in the face seemed like the best option available. After a few minutes of shooting, Greg and I were the only things standing, and with the little demon girls taken care of, we turned our attention back to Bun-head and whatever Hell she was trying to raise.

  “Oh crap.” I muttered as I saw what was going on at center court.

  “I think we’re gonna need a bigger gun.” Greg agreed.

  “What the Hell is that?” I asked.

  “I think Hell is exactly what that is, bro.” “That” was a huge bea
st climbing out of a glowing red hole in the gym floor. It was at least twelve feet tall, with long curving black horns protruding from a bony forehead that looked like a cross between a wolf and a huge bull’s head. The monster had arms the size of pine trees, with foot-long claws at the ends of hands the size of Christmas hams. Its legs were human in shape, but bigger around than my waist. It had bare feet with three claws in front and one backward-facing claw, all razor sharp and shiny in the red light. Its skin was red like the little demons, and it had a double row of teeth that glinted as it smiled down at Bun-head.

  “You have done well, my daughter. Now shed that weak mortal shell and assume your rightful shape.” As we watched, she morphed into a female version of the beast. I could tell it was female because it wasn’t terribly modest about hiding the fact, as eight teats hung grotesquely off its chest.

  “Dude,” I whispered to Greg. “Where’s Sabrina?”

  “Dude,” he answered, “ I think the big thing is what Sabrina turned into.”