A Dark and Stormy Knight

by Bridget Essex

  His skin is as pale as milk, and he’s staring at me with narrowed brown eyes, his face twisted into a terrible grimace. There's a sword in his hand, pointed right at me. A sword with a black hilt and a wickedly glinting blade.

  Shit.

  I gulp down air, take a step backward, tugging Sammie with me. I wasn’t prepared for this. Well, no one could be prepared for this, but…I can’t think, can only reflect that here and now may be my last moment in this life. I’m going to die. This guy is going to kill me. Obviously. He doesn’t look like the type of person who asks questions first.

  The only advantage I have is the shard, still glittering in my hand. I hold it up to him, gripping it like a blade.

  His dark eyes trail over my hand, and he’s already laughing, as if this is the most hilarious sight he’s seen in days…but then he stops short: he just realized what I’m holding.

  His shrewd gaze travels up to my eyes again, and this time, a cunning expression crosses his face.

  I think I just gave him an extra reason to kill me.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, no.

  I shove Sammie behind me, because I’ll be damned if this guy harms a hair on my dog's head. I still hold the shard out, as if it can somehow protect me, because I’m not going to leave. I’ve got to stand my ground, even if my knees are shaking, even if I feel like the earth is going to crumble beneath my feet.

  I’ve got to be brave. For Charaxus.

  I take a deep breath, and I lift my chin.

  “What the fuck did you do to her?” I ask, my voice low, gruff.

  The man, unsurprisingly, says nothing in response. Instead, he takes a few nonchalant steps toward me, as if he’s walking down the aisle of the grocery store, looking for the bakery section. He turns his sword in easy circles, the hilt moving back and forth in his palm comfortably; he seems a little bored by the prospect of killing me.

  Fear, cold as ice, trickles along my spine.

  I’m going to die, but I have to save Charaxus first. She’s worse off than me right now. And I’ve got to get Sammie out of here, get him somewhere safe… But even if I could elude this guy, are there other armored men with him? What if they're scouting all over the park? What if the people I care about are in danger, too?

  I lift the shard higher, at the level of my heart, in a false show of bravado. “Let her go,” I growl—or try to, but my words are the kind of trembling, high-pitched crap that might come out of a twelve-year-old boy’s mouth when he’s going through his voice change.

  Of course, the man laughs at me. Well, he doesn't just laugh: he tips his head back, closes his eyes, and roars with amusement at my expense.

  I’m no expert on combat or anything, but I have taken a couple of self-defense classes. And right now?

  It’s a golden opportunity.

  The guy is laughing at me, carelessly distracted. I lick my dry lips. I don’t have time to wonder whether his armor is thick, to wonder whether the chink I’m seeing, between his breast-plate and his abdomen-plate, has anything beneath it to shield him…

  I just go for it.

  I’m not a violent person. I’ve never done anything like this before. But when there’s a sword-wielding guy threatening you, bound and determined to kill you and the woman you love (and your dog), this great big ball of anger fills you up. You know you’re the only thing standing between your loved ones and certain death—and that's an indescribable motivator.

  As I move toward the guy, holding the shard in my sweat-slick hand, snarling, my teeth bared, I think about Charaxus.

  I love her.

  I’ve loved her my whole life, unconditionally. She doesn’t have to love me back. She doesn’t have to do anything. She just has to be. I know she exists now. And that means everything.

  And I'm not going to let this guy touch her.

  The clearing is quite small, and the guy had already taken a few steps toward me, so it’s only a matter of one, two, three steps, and then the shard is through the chink in his armor: it sinks into soft leather there, and beneath the leather, into flesh and bone.

  The shard is long, and it punctures deep.

  I gasp, startled by what I've done. I make eye contract with the guy—who stares at me, his face puzzled, his brows furrowed as if he’s trying to figure something out, like a hard equation. But then I’m flying through the air, and I realize that the butt of his blade went into my stomach, and I’m falling against the trunk of a tree, the small of my back cracking so hard that the air is knocked out of my lungs.

  I topple to the ground, gasping.

  The man looks at the shard still protruding from his stomach, and he sighs, holding it gently between leather-clad thumb and forefinger. He hisses out in pain, but then he’s wiping the bloody shard on the leather underside of his forearm, looping the chain over his belt.

  There’s a small amount of blood leaking from his abdomen…but that’s it. When he whirls toward me with hatred on his face, I admit that I was pretty stupid to think that such a small injury could distract the guy from his quest. As I stare up at him from the leaf-littered ground, still trying to catch my breath, I realize this is it.

  My last moment.

  I brace myself. My body tenses up, and as he comes closer, I find my eyes focusing not on my assassin but, rather, just past him.

  On Charaxus.

  Her sky-blue eyes are full of pain, but there’s also rage creasing her features… And as I hold her gaze, as the armored man takes the last step toward me, Charaxus' features soften. She looks at me, her eyes brimming with tears, with an expression of deep and profound love.

  And that’s enough. I know that she loves me, even though she can’t say it.

  I tense as the killer lifts the sword over his head, prepared to deliver a blow that’s likely to slice my head off. I refuse to look at him; besides, icy fear freezes my muscles. I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die, and I had so much to live for. This is horrifying, horrifying—will Sammie be safe? I can't see him; where did he go? Will Charaxus live? Will she ever get back home?

  I blink at Charaxus, and a small measure of peace moves through me at the sight of her. I mouth the words: “I love you,” and I hold her gaze, and I wait for the pain.

  God, I hope there’s something after this. I hope it’s not just darkness. I hope I’ve been wrong all this time, that there’s something to that nonsense about souls.

  For the first time in my life, I hope there’s a better place. I hope I'll have the chance to see Charaxus again.

  I hope.

  I can hardly breathe as the sword extends over my head, as it starts to streak down—

  Sammie.

  I had dropped Sammie’s leash when I was plunging the shard into the man’s stomach. I was hoping against hope that he would run away, find everyone back on the hill, stay safe.

  But that’s not what Sammie had in mind.

  I hear the growl before I see my dog leaping into the air. And it’s a barbaric growl, the kind that makes your instincts kick in, that makes your breath come short and fast. I break my gaze with Charaxus, and I’m watching in horror as Sammie flies, hurtling himself across the empty space between him and the armored man.

  Sammie’s going straight for the guy’s throat.

  I don’t know how my dog knows that all of that armor is too tough for his teeth to sink into. Maybe he doesn’t know; maybe he just realizes that a human's throat is a vulnerable place. I think every dog owner secretly believes that, if they got into a life-threatening situation, their loyal dog would come to their defense.

  But Sammie is just a big, lovable goofball. There isn't a mean bone in his body…

  Still, his teeth hit their mark and connect with the guy’s neck. At the same time, the necklace loosens on the man's belt, and the shard falls, glittering, to the ground.

  I crawl quickly, gasping, sobbing, scrabbling through the overgrown grass at my feet, searching for the shard. I find it, but my fingers also connect with some
thing else.

  Shit.

  Yes.

  Oh, my God…

  The katana.

  Whoever attacked Charaxus must have taken the katana away from her and just dropped it into the brush, like a piece of garbage. My fingers close around the familiar hilt, and I turn around on my knees, holding the katana up in front of me like a shield.

  Sammie and the man are still locked in battle: my dog is growling, so low and rumbling that it sounds a little like thunder…

  No, that is thunder, a peel of it rumbling along the horizon far away. I glance up, at the flicker of lightning that dances in the sky, and then I’m tripping to my feet, gripping the shard in one hand and the katana in the other.

  Sammie’s jaws are locked around the armored guy’s throat, and the guy bangs Sammie up against a tree, trying to dislodge him. It doesn’t work; Sammie stays put, so the guy slams him against the tree again, prying his jaws apart with strong, leather-gloved hands.

  Sammie springs down to the ground and then darts forward, trying to bite the guy’s leg, but he misses, because the man whirls around suddenly, coming for me, Sammie angry on his heels.

  Okay. Final showdown.

  There’s Sammie, this guy, and me with the katana, and one of us has to die in order to end this nightmare. It’s not going to be Sammie—I’ll be damned if I let this son of a bitch hurt my dog—so it’s either the man or me.

  One of us is going to die.

  One of us is going to die.

  And as the guy barrels down on me, I stiffen my muscles, praying that somewhere in the back of my head is the knowledge from those self-defense classes that I can’t fully remember…

  He lunges, his sword angling toward me with the certainty of a head-on collision. I sidestep him, not because I remembered how to sidestep an attacker, but because, under pressure, that handy not-wanting-to-die instinct really does take over your body, even if you’re in shock over what’s happening…which I am.

  I think the man assumed he was delivering my death blow, so he keeps barreling forward with the momentum, trying to pull up, trying to turn and swipe his sword across my middle…

  And when he pivots, when he puts on the brakes…that’s when Sammie catches up with him.

  My dog rises onto his back legs and attacks the guy’s jugular. Sammie’s earlier bite had already injured him there, and now Sammie zeroes in on the same place, as if it’s a bull’s-eye.

  I stumble forward, heart skittering in my chest as I watch Sammie dangling in midair. The man is tall, and Sammie’s tall, too, when he stands up on his back legs, but the guy wrenches his neck away, causing Sammie to swing through the air…

  And that’s when he brings the hilt down, between Sammie’s shoulder blades.

  My dog yelps, but he holds on, his jaws still gripping the man's throat as I realize the armored guy is about to sweep the blade of the sword down, right onto—or into—Sammie.

  “Leave my dog alone, you asshole!” I scream, the words bubbling up from someplace bright and burning deep inside of me, and I swing the katana toward the seam in the armor where the chest plate and the abdomen plate connect.

  The katana isn’t a real katana (it’s too cheap to even be called a katana, probably), and it’s not especially sharp, but with enough force, something that’s sort of sharp suddenly becomes really, really sharp.

  I’m not aiming that well, but I don’t have to. Because the guy is arching away from me, the gap in the armor, revealing the leather shirt beneath, plenty wide enough for the katana to sink in—and it does. The katana slides through the leather and his skin and hits his ribs with a sickening thud that I feel in my own bones.

  I jerk the katana back, and the blade is sliding over his flesh at the exact same time that he’s pulling away from me, and everything moves so quickly: I’m standing there, the katana dripping blood to the ground, the armored guy standing a few feet back, staring at me with this incredulous expression on his face, gripping the hole I just made in his body, and we both watch one another for a long, surreal moment, panting.

  I feel as if the world has slowed, as if I'm moving through water... The armored man, gasping, circles me slowly, Sammie growling beside me, his shoulder pressed tight against my leg. I want to sink my fingers into his fur, want to tell him it’s okay…but I know it’s not okay, and so does my dog. We move together, the guy’s expression shifting from one of shock to one of utter loathing.

  He’s so pissed, he’s going to slice me open.

  I lift the katana, and my hands aren’t shaking anymore. Suddenly, I realize that my back is to Charaxus.

  Charaxus. The reason I’m doing all of this.

  Her.

  I love her. I can’t let her die. She’s given me hope when I was hopeless, her dream the only constant in my life. When I was desperate and deeply alone, she was always there, if only in my dreams.

  It was enough then to keep me going. It was enough to keep me trying to survive, to keep me wanting to survive, even during the darkest days.

  So now, as my dog leans against my leg, loyal and loving, willing to fight for me no matter the cost, his heart so big and pure that it leaves me breathless—I make myself a vow.

  I'm not going to die. Charaxus is not going to die. And Sammie is going to live to be a hundred and two (in dog years).

  I face the man, whose neck and abdomen are streaming with blood, as he lifts his sword, gathering his strength, ugly thoughts distorting his face, twisting it into a cruel grimace.

  He thrusts his sword forward. I sidestep it, twisting the katana up. The guy’s strong and relentless, and when his sword bangs down onto the katana’s blade, I feel the force of it travel into my nerves, my shoulders screaming from the strain.

  This can’t go on forever. I won't be able to take this forever.

  From somewhere deep inside of me, something starts to rise. I parry the blade again with sheer, dumb luck (I am not a sword fighter; hell, I wield a paintbrush), and I decide that this is it. This is where I hope that sheer, dumb luck will see me through this.

  My katana is still vibrating from his blow, and as the guy prepares for the final chop of his sword, ready to kill me and end this fight…I step forward, toward him.

  And I push the shard, still wrapped tightly in my palm, so tightly that my palm is bleeding, into the hole I made in his stomach.

  He groans, and his knees buckle. He’s starting to fall forward, and his sword is descending, too. There’s no time to move away; I’m hopelessly entangled with his limbs, and I can’t let go of the shard...

  This heat begins to pulse through my shoulder. I don’t understand what it is, but it’s instant, lancing...

  I twist as I tear the shard out of his stomach.

  Then I turn and glance at my shoulder.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  There’s so much blood.

  I stumble toward Charaxus. I'm starting to see white dots at the corners of my vision. Half-blind, I use the shard on the rope that binds her hands.

  Sammie’s at my feet, quiet now, only panting. I’m trying to saw so hard through the rope that I don’t realize I’m falling against Charaxus. The rope snaps away from the tree, and everything moves slowly as I stumble backward.

  I didn’t think he’d get me with his sword. I was doing so well, was so close...

  I fall, lie on the ground, stare up at the sky through the tree’s branches. From somewhere far away, I hear my name, and Sammie is licking my face, but I can hardly feel it.

  “I love you,” I tell Charaxus, a whisper. It felt important to say that. So important. It’s my deepest truth.

  All my life, I loved her. And now, in death, I love her, too.

  I’m not afraid, I realize, closing my eyes.

  I just hope I get to see her again.

  I'll love her endlessly. Always.

  Always.

  Chapter 13: In that Heart Courage to Make Love Known

  I can’t see anything, only darkness,
but I can still feel. I can feel the hopelessness of loss, the deep cavern of regret, swallowing me whole.

  I don’t want to die. I have too much to live for.

  I want to keep painting. There are so many things I want to paint.

  I have friends, people who love me.

  I have her.

  I want to live.

  I want to live so badly that the longing starts to thrum through me, but there’s nothing for me to fight against anymore. There’s only me, and the feelings rising inside of me, like petals unfurling around a rose.

  I'm alone now.

  Gradually, I become aware that the sensation of loss is growing bigger, wider…or is it the loss? I don’t know; I can’t tell. Whatever this is, it’s painful, and it’s large, and it's tugging at me, pulling me, and there’s nothing I can hold onto in this empty space…

  So I go. I move forward.

  Into more darkness.

  And then…

  I’m staring up at something, kind of like someone would stare up at a drive-in movie screen, their head tilted back to watch the moving images. But I’m not in front of a drive-in screen, not exactly…

  Everything’s strange: I don’t know what I’m seeing. There isn't really a screen, because what I’m experiencing is bigger than me. Bigger than…everything.

  I stare, and I try to focus.

  There’s a little girl. That’s the first thing I make out.

  She’s small, maybe five years old, and she has long black hair that curls in waves over her back. She’s pale. Incredibly pale.

  I watch the girl lift her head, watch her wipe a bit of blood off of her chin with her sleeve, pain wrinkling her features.

  Charaxus.

  Somehow, I’m seeing Charaxus as a child.

  “Again,” someone commands in a low growl, and the little girl picks up a wooden sword. I realize now that she’s wearing black leather armor, but no metal pieces. The guy across from her is holding up a wooden sword, too.