The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  It was like everything about the person was flowing into me, like I was drinking their dreams, their hopes, their very soul. It was a better rush than anything I ever felt while alive. Every time I took a victim, I understood a little better why some vampires went nuts and did it all the time. But I also understood why Greg tried so hard to stay off the vein, because it was harder to go back to the bag after every fresh meal.

  I knelt there, letting the visceral pleasure of drinking from the source wash over me for a couple of seconds before I forced myself back to reality. I drank for several minutes, taking about three pints from the girl before I felt like I could sustain myself for a night or two. When finished, I took a moment to lick the last drops from her neck and watch as the vamp saliva healed the puncture wounds almost immediately.

  I looked in her eyes, and she stared back at me glassily. I’d drained her just to the brink of unconsciousness and felt a twinge of guilt about that. I’d fed more than usual, but the past couple of nights had taken a lot out of me. I’d had more close calls in twenty-four hours than I usually had in a week, leaving me with a distinct sense that my life wasn’t going to get any less complicated in the near future. “When you wake up, you won’t remember me. You’ll remember drinking too much and lying down here to rest for just a minute. Now sleep.” She obediently rolled onto her side and began to breathe evenly among the pine needles.

  “Will she be okay out here all night?” Abigail asked.

  “I checked the weather. It’s supposed to be unseasonably warm tonight. Lows in the sixties, so yeah, she’ll be fine. No one will notice her out here, and she’ll wake up in the morning a little dizzy and maybe a touch embarrassed, but none the worse for wear. Now, let’s find you some dinner.”

  We wandered the campus for almost another hour before Abigail found somebody she wanted to bite. It was like taking a picky eater to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and having them order chicken fingers. I mean, really, what was the point?

  She finally found a guy she liked in a parking deck over by the student center and mojo’d him into the back seat of his Suburban, although I wasn’t sure if she needed any mojo for that. She was pretty cute, after all. She even made out with the guy for a few minutes before he made some comment about cold hands, and then she bit him. I watched her back stiffen when she got her first intentional taste of fresh blood, and it was almost like her hair stood on end. She drank from the guy for a minute or two, before I reached in and tapped her on the shoulder.

  No response. I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. Still nothing. I leaned into the back seat with a growl and grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair. I yanked, and she finally came free, glaring at me with fangs bared.

  “Hungry!” she demanded, voice low and threatening.

  “Stupid,” I replied, my own voice very calm and very flat. Either my word or my tone registered with her, and reason came back into her feral eyes.

  “Is it always like that?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah, every time. It gets easier to know when to say when, though. And sometimes you’ll find someone who ate something that disagrees with you, but most of the time it’s pretty awesome.”

  “So why do you drink out of the bag? That stuff tastes like crap. I can’t imagine drinking that plastic-tasting junk after what I just had.”

  “We drink out of the bag because we can’t hunt every night, or even every couple of nights, and stay hidden. And staying hidden is pretty important when you’re as allergic to sunlight as we are.” I didn’t go into all the moral implications with her. It didn’t feel like the right time.

  “And you’re afraid you’ll like it too much and turn into the monster you think you are?”

  I hated perceptive women, and now fate had dropped another one into my life. “Something like that. Now clean up and juice him into forgetfulness. We’ve gotta get home.” I talked her through the process again, and she mojo’d the guy to sleep.

  She wiped the blood off her chin, and then looked around, confused. “How exactly are we going to do that? You sent Sabrina and Greg off with the car.”

  “You’re in a car, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but he’s out like a light.”

  “Then he won’t mind if we borrow it, will he?” I reached into the guy’s pocket, grabbed his keys and got behind the wheel.

  “What about when he wakes up in a cemetery?” Boy, she was just full of questions.

  “I think we might be better off parking at the CVS across the street and walking a couple of blocks home, don’t you?” I answered her question with a question, like all my best and most irritating teachers always did to me.

  “Probably. I guess you’ve kinda got this down, huh?”

  “I haven’t stayed undead this long by coasting on my looks, kiddo. Stick with me and you might learn a thing or two.” I grinned at her as I turned the monstrous SUV around and headed home.

  Chapter 8

  It was almost dawn by the time we ditched the car a couple blocks from the cemetery, got home and caught everyone up on the vamp nest I’d found. There was an email waiting from Mike, demanding that we keep him in the loop no matter his upcoming surgery. So I emailed him a summary of the night’s discoveries and asked him to meet us at our place after sundown, figuring if there were a lot of vampires around, a priest and a cop were about the only flavor of humans we were willing to take in with us. Sabrina headed home for a couple hours’ sleep, and the rest of us trundled off to our respective rooms, with the sofa for Abby.

  I felt the sun setting as I awoke. The odor of wet dog and cheap cigar filled my room and I lay perfectly still, my senses painting a picture of the room around me. There was only one of them, so I wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t daylight anymore, so my guest was either a really bad vampire hunter, or he didn’t want to kill me. I felt a pressure on my mattress, then smelled gun oil. I felt the barrel press against my temple and heard my intruder take a breath before he spoke.

  I didn’t bother opening my eyes, just took a deep breath and said, “You stink. It was bad enough when it was scattered all over a murder scene, but it’s really over the top in my bedroom.”

  I finally opened my eyes to see a large hairy man who smelled of cheap cigars holding a pistol to my temple and leaning far too close to my face for comfort.

  “Give me one good reason not to splatter your brains all over the comforter, you bloodsucking parasite,” he growled, and I got a much better look at his slightly pointed canines than I needed.

  “Because I’m a bloodsucking contributing member of society? I mean, really, I pay taxes and everything.”

  He growled again, and I heard the cocking of the pistol.

  “Okay,” I tried again. “How about because I have a Glock 17 pointed at your testicles and can pull the trigger at least once before you can get a round through my head?”

  “Won’t kill me, bloodsucker. Unless you’re packing silver rounds, which I doubt.” He leaned back a little, though, and looked down to see that I did in fact have a pistol aimed straight at his most prized possessions.

  “I don’t think I care, pal. You ever had to regrow your balls? I bet it hurts like the devil. And it’s really about the suffering when you’re shooting somebody’s nuts off, anyway. So why don’t you get off me, go wait in the den and I’ll come join you for a beer after I take a leak?”

  “You’re awfully calm for somebody with a gun in his face.” He hadn’t moved yet, but I was pretty sure he was about to, which was good, because he was heavy and making me have to pee. And I was really starting to dislike the smell of wet fur.

  “That’s because,” came Greg’s voice from the doorway, “he knows I’ve got you covered, and my shotgun is loaded with silver slugs. Now, get up, and let’s go to the den.” The guy got off me, holstered his pistol and left my bedroom under my partner’s watchful eye. I headed to the bathroom thinking about the new security system we were totally going to have to install.

  I took car
e of nature’s rather urgent call and joined Greg and our unexpected guest in the den. They were standing over the couch, looking down at Abigail’s sleeping form. She had her hands folded across her chest in a funereal pose, and a placid expression on her face. “All she’s missing is a lily in her hands,” I said, as I grabbed the back of the couch.

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!” I tipped the couch far enough to dump the kid onto the floor. Her pink panty-clad rump with “Tuesday” written on it in purple letters pointed up at the sky for a few seconds before she whirled the blankets around herself and shot into the bathroom at top vamp speed. Laughing, I sat down on the sofa and tossed a beer at our guest.

  He raised his monobrow briefly before twisting off the top and plopping down in the armchair. “Thanks,” he grumbled. He was obviously a little put out at my lack of fear, but I wasn’t giving him any answers until he gave me a few first.

  Greg took up his post in the game chair and glared at the intruder drinking our best domestic swill. “Okay, now would you like to explain who you are and what you’re doing here?”

  “I’d rather not, but that’s probably not an option at this point, is it?” tall, dark and hirsute answered.

  “Probably not, furball,” I replied before Greg could get a word in.

  That eyebrow shot up again, and he tipped his beer at me. “So you know.”

  “I do, but I don’t think Greg does.”

  “How?”

  “You’re not the only one with a nose that works.”

  “Know what?” my behind-the-times partner asked.

  “See?” I said.

  “I do,” the werewolf in my den answered. “My name is Kyle King. I’m a private investigator working on a series of odd murders all over the Southeastern U.S. I followed the trail of bodies to Charlotte and picked it up last night at the university. That trail led me to you two, and here I am.”

  “Wow,” I pronounced grandly. “That is a true marvel of understatement, Mr. King. Shall I point out just a few of the things that you may have neglected to mention? There was the fact that the trail you followed here didn’t exactly lead to us, but rather to the very mobile young lady in our bathroom. There’s the fact that murders are investigated by the police, you know, people with actual authority and jurisdiction? Then there’s the fact that you didn’t follow our trail by any ordinary means, but rather by your prodigious sniffer. And last, but not least, there’s the fact that you couldn’t come visit us last night because you were too busy scratching fleas and chasing cars under the full moon to focus on anything else. Isn’t that right, Mr. King?”

  “I don’t chase cars. And I don’t have fleas, bloodsucker.” He stood up from his chair and stalked over to me. I stood up at the same time and got in his face, while Greg sat in his little purple chair ticking off the new ideas on his fingers. So much for him being the smart one.

  “Wait a minute.” Greg bounced up and interposed his gut between King and me. “You’re a werewolf?”

  “Yeah,” King muttered, sitting back down.

  “That is so cool!” Greg did that annoying thing where he bounced up and down on his heels again, so I took the opportunity to go get another couple of beers. Abigail came out of the bathroom while I was at the fridge, and I waved her back into my bedroom.

  “Bite me. I want my pants,” she said in the tone of a pretty girl who was used to all the guys gawking when she walked across the room. I felt an odd anger rising in my chest when I saw the interest in Greg’s eyes, and I felt a sudden urge to punch King right between his furry eyebrows. It was weird, kinda like she was my little sister, or my kid. Note to self, I thought. Get her some more clothes. Like burlap.

  As she was pulling on her pants and giving Greg the closest thing to heart palpitations he’d felt in a decade and a half, King looked her up and down one more time, drawing that strange red mist across my vision once more, and asked, “Are you Abigail Lahey?”

  “Yep.” She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. And you are?”

  He stood and shook her hand. “Kyle King. I was informed that you were dead. Apparently, someone was mistaken.”

  “Not really. I’m pretty dead. Feel how cold my hands are.” She laughed as King jerked his hand back. “What’s the matter? You were perfectly willing to accept that the boys were vampires, so why not me?”

  “I saw you. I mean, you were at the college.”

  Abigail had done exactly what I’d hoped she would do; she’d rattled King into giving us more information than he intended. I decided that it was time for me to jump in.

  “Yeah, about that,” I said, head still in the fridge. “Was that before or after she was left as a peace offering to the local vamp warren?” One of these days, I was going to have to figure out the correct name for a group of vamps. Were we a pride? A nest? A clutch? Who even knew those things?

  “She was dead when I got there, bloodsucker. I don’t kill people.” King settled back in the chair.

  “No, you don’t. You just hump their legs and pee on their tires.” I tossed beers to Abigail and Greg and sat back down on the couch next to Abigail. “Are you old enough to drink, Abby?”

  “I’m dead. I think it’s okay. And yes, I’m twenty-one.” She flicked the bottle cap at me. I caught it and tossed it in the general vicinity of the trash can.

  “Twenty-one forever. I can think of worse fates,” King said.

  Greg and I just stared at him with flat looks.

  “So, King. Why are you here?” King started to say something, but I cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know the whole line about murders and chasing the killers, but why are you here? Or if you want to get real specific about it, why are you here instead of hunting down the vamp that killed Abby? Or at least chasing down the coven of vampires at the school?” Still having trouble with the group designation, I just decided to run through all of them until I figured out the best name for a bunch of vampires.

  “I saw you at the crime scene and did a little research. Sounds like you lumps are actually pretty good at what you do, no matter how stupid you look.”

  I let that pass, but Greg got an indignant look on his face. I’d warned him about the spandex for years, but sometimes he just had to hear it from somebody outside the family.

  “I can’t take this vampire chick on my own. I’ve tried. And if I can’t take out one vamp, there’s no way I can take out the dozen or so that are hanging around campus. I checked with a couple of folks around town, and everybody says you’re square. So I came here for help.”

  “You’ve got a peculiar way of asking, buddy. And who did you talk to, anyway?” I wasn’t quite ready to let go of the whole waking-up-with-a-gun-in-my-face thing.

  “I jumped to a couple of different conclusions when I saw Miss Lahey lying on your couch. Sorry about the gun. And if I went around giving up my sources I wouldn’t have sources for very long, would I?” He actually looked a little contrite, so I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Fine. Sorry about threatening to shoot off your junk.” I leaned over, and we clinked beer bottles, sealing the apology according to the guy code.

  “You threatened to shoot off his . . . you know?” Abigail suppressed a giggle.

  “Yeah, I’ve had a couple of unusual awakenings this week, so I’ve taken to sleeping with a pistol. I heard Chief Howls-at-Moon here when he came through the door upstairs, so I was ready for him when he got to my room.”

  “Why didn’t you just stop him in the den?” she asked.

  “I wanted to control the situation, and the smaller room worked in my favor. I’m better in close quarters because I’m skinny and can navigate better than he can. Plus, I know where all the crap on the floor is in my room, and there’s no telling where Greg left an Xbox controller in the den for me to trip on.”

  “Good point. I found three buried in the couch, along with an Apple TV remote.”

  “I’ve been looking for that.” Greg jumped up to grab the slim si
lver cylinder from her.

  “Well, King, you found us, but I’m not feeling too helpful just yet. Why don’t you tell me the real reason a PI is chasing a murderer across state lines, and we’ll see if we want to help you,” I said.

  “It’s personal,” King growled.

  “So is breaking into someone’s home with a gun. And I’ve never had werewolf for breakfast, so why don’t you cut the crap and tell me a story, Papa Wolf?” I finished my beer and set it on the table, then leaned back with my hands behind my head. I wanted to make it very clear that he wasn’t getting any help until he answered a few questions.

  Apparently it worked, because he looked me in the eye, then drained his beer in one long swig. He took another deep breath, like he was working himself up to telling me his story, then said, “She murdered my wife.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. I leaned forward. “Who?”

  “Her name is Krysta. She’s been a vampire for at least a century, and she’s a psycho. She turns people for fun, and kills anybody who gets in her way. I got in her way, so she decided to turn my wife to teach me a lesson. But lycanthropy and vampirism don’t mix, so . . . my wife didn’t rise. She just stayed dead.”

  For once, I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, watching the big man struggle to keep his emotions in check. His shoulders tensed, and I feared for the structural integrity of the beer bottle he was holding. He took a deep breath, held it, took another one, then let it out in an explosive rush and relaxed his grip on the bottle’s neck. After a long pause, he continued.

  “The same woman who turned you killed my wife. I can smell her on you like cheap perfume. I’ve chased her for ten years, and this is the closest I’ve ever been. So I’m going after her, and I’m going to kill her. And if this nest of vampires you found is protecting her, I’m going to kill them too. Any questions?”

  Nobody answered for a long moment, then I said, “Okay, King. You want to kill the vamp that turned Abigail. I get that. And I’ve got a little beef with her myself. But what’s the plan? And do you want to just ignore the fact that there’s a frat house full of vampires that have been snacking on coeds for the past century? I don’t think so. Not in my town.”