The Black Knight Chronicles

by John G. Hartness

  “Yeah, and the Easter Bunny craps jelly beans,” I snarled. “You killed me and left me on my sofa. Then I woke up and murdered my best friend. All because of you, you evil, bloodsucking bitch.”

  I hadn’t realized how angry I was until Greg put a hand on my shoulder and murmured appropriate calming noises, trying to get me to take my seat again.

  “Well done, Mr. Knightwood. After all, we wouldn’t want to ruin our lovely evening with unnecessary bloodshed, would we? Now, would anyone like a bite to eat? I find business discussions go so much better on a full stomach,” New Guy said smoothly.

  “Don’t worry,” Greg said flatly, suddenly standing right behind me. “Any bloodshed will be absolutely necessary, I promise.”

  I glanced over at my partner and shivered a little at the look on his face. He was seriously pissed, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since high school when the center for the football team used his X-Men collection for toilet paper. Suddenly, it looked like the werewolf was going to be the voice of reason at the party, and I had a really bad feeling about that.

  “So who are you, how do you know Krysta, and why exactly shouldn’t I rip out her heart and eat it?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and waving one of New Guy’s human minions over. The guy came over, knelt beside my chair, and rolled up his sleeve as if it were something he did every weekend for kicks. For all I knew, it was. With bravado I didn’t feel, I sank my teeth into his wrist and took a big drink, my eyes never leaving Krysta. She smiled a slow smile as she watched me drink, and the hair on the back of my neck went up again. Something about this whole scene wasn’t right, and New Guy’s next words told me how unfortunately correct I was.

  Chapter 11

  “My name is Gordon Tiram, and this is my city.” New Guy looked over the patio like a feudal lord, which I supposed he had just declared himself. I dropped the arm of the human I was munching on and gaped up at the vampire who had just declared himself my new boss.

  “What do you mean, your city?” Greg sneered, despite my trying to wave him to silence. Usually running off at the mouth was my shtick, but apparently Greg had appointed himself Dumb Question Guy for the evening. I was starting to see just how annoying my habit could be to an observer.

  “I mean, Mr. Knightwood, that I am the Master of Charlotte. All vampiric activity within the metropolitan area falls under my dominion. Krysta here has paid appropriate tribute as a visitor to my territory, and I have given her my protection. That extends to all my subjects, including yourself and Mr. Black. So you will not harm her without my permission, which I will not give. Do I make myself clear?”

  Greg started to answer, and I gave up on trying to subtly shush him. Instead, I reached over and poked him in the gut. He let out an oof and shot me a nasty look, but I ignored it and started talking fast and thinking faster. If I didn’t come up with something pretty quick, we were going to end up in a big fight with two seriously powerful vampires and a couple dozen humans. I wasn’t at all sure we could win, and I knew we couldn’t win without making a lot of well-dressed corpses.

  “So,” I began, “is Master of the City a city-only position, or is it like most things around here, a city-county collective? I mean, are you the Master of Charlotte, or are you the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Master of the City? I just wanna know if I have to ask permission just within the city limits, or does your control reach all the suburbs, too? And what about neighboring counties? Are you more like the Master of the Greater Charlotte Viewing Area, because I don’t watch much TV, and that might be tough. And did we enlist in your little army, or were we drafted? Because our mail service has been really spotty for the last fifteen years or so, and I think I might have eaten the guy who brought me the certified letter telling me that I work for you.” I paused to take a breath and check for reactions, but Tiram just sat there smiling what he probably considered an enigmatic smile. I guessed it was, since I had no idea what it meant, but I wasn’t about to admit to that.

  “I have heard of your legendary wit, Mr. Black. Now I see that those reports are at best half-true.” I put on my best wounded expression, but he went on, “I am the Master of the City, and my territory extends to all vampires living, if you’ll pardon the term, within the region. There is another Master in Atlanta, and one in Washington. But you only need concern yourself with me. And you do need to be concerned with me, Mr. Black. Because you are correct, you cannot defeat me. You cannot even hope to survive a moment of my displeasure. So please, sit.” He laid a lot of mojo on the last word, and my butt was in the chair before the sound died on his lips.

  “Now,” he said, “I understand that you feel you have an unresolved disagreement with Krysta, and that Mr. King here has convinced you she is an evil creature, murdering willy-nilly all across the country. But I assure you that she is not, and that Mr. King here is mistaken. And you gentlemen would like nothing better than to forget all about this unpleasant encounter and go back to your ridiculously boring existence.”

  I felt the weight of his words, and he made a lot of sense. I mean, why would a vampire like Krysta, obviously someone of good breeding, run around killing random people? It just didn’t make sense.

  I was halfway out of my chair when Greg spoke up. “Are you done playing Boggle with his brain yet? Because it’s not working on me or Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, and I really hate to see Jimmy so confused all the time.”

  I shook my head to clear it and realized that Tiram had put the mojo on me something fierce. Greg and King were apparently immune to the effects, but I’d bought it—hook, line and sinker. I was totally going to have to take up yoga or some of that other meditation crap Sabrina kept yammering about.

  “Interesting. My words had no effect on you at all?” Tiram asked Greg.

  “Yeah, they annoyed me. You’re a pompous ass, and your girlfriend is a mass murderer. And we’re going to kill her. Now how many of your walking hors d’oeuvres are you willing to sacrifice to protect her?” Greg got to his feet, a samurai sword coming from under his long coat to end up in one hand, and a pistol in his other.

  “Fascinating. Your mind is so much stronger than your friend’s,” the Master of the City mused.

  “That sets the bar pretty low, pal. Now, can we get back to the question at hand? Namely, are you going to get out of the way so we can off your arm ornament, or is this going to get ugly?” Greg was pretty intense, and King looked as if he were ready for a fight, but I was still having a hard time clearing my head.

  Everything got very clear very quickly when Krysta reached out and grabbed a pretty waitress by the throat. “Put away the sword, fat boy. I’ll happily kill this human and leave the mess for you to deal with.” She held out her other hand, claw-like, and I could see her ripping the girl’s throat in my mind.

  “Okay, kids, let’s everybody calm down.” I stepped forward with both hands out, trying to defuse the situation a little. “Nobody wants to hurt anybody here. We just want to talk.”

  “Actually, Mr. Black, I’m pretty sure we all want to kill each other,” Tiram said, his eyes never leaving my partner.

  “I know that. I just didn’t have anything better to say, and I needed to get a little closer.”

  “Closer?” he parroted.

  “Yeah, so I could do this.” I drew my Glock and shot Krysta in the wrist, shattering both bones in her forearm and causing her to drop the waitress.

  I grabbed the human girl before she hit the floor and looked her in the eyes. “Run,” I said, my voice low and heavy with mojo.

  She took off as if the hounds of hell were on her heels, and when I turned around, I thought she might have been right. King had obviously taken my hint to get ready for a fight, because where a tall guy with a monobrow had stood seconds before there was now a seven-foot-tall wolf-man with claws like razorblades and a seriously grumpy look on his face. Or muzzle. Or whatever.

  Greg and I got shoulder to shoulder with the wolf-man and squared off to face Tiram, but he hadn’t moved.r />
  “Do you three really think you can defeat us?” he asked with a cold smile.

  “Not really,” I answered honestly. “But I think we can take one of you. And I bet neither one of you selfish chumps wants to be the one we take.”

  I leveled my pistol at Krysta’s face, and Greg lined up his sword on Tiram. King growled low in his throat and bunched his muscles to leap into the fray.

  Chapter 12

  Just as our wolf-man was about to pounce, I felt a huge impact on the side of my head and was knocked to the patio. I broke my fall with my hands, but my gun went skittering across the concrete and right into the swimming pool. Contrary to popular fiction, a good pistol will fire even when wet, but I hated swimming, and I was wearing my favorite pants. I had just about enough time to realize all of this before I felt a rush of air toward my head.

  I rolled over in time to see a spiked heel slam down right where my temple had been half a second before. I looked up to see a beautiful human woman in a very short skirt trying to stomp me to death. I had no time to enjoy the view because she quickly lined up for a second stab with her stiletto heels. I clambered to my feet with all the grace a scrawny vampire could muster, which wasn’t much, and caught her fist as it flew toward my eye.

  “Sleep,” I said as we locked eyes.

  Nothing.

  I heard Tiram chuckle behind me and chanced a glance over my shoulder. He was leaning against the bar sipping a drink with an umbrella and smirking at me while the babe in the miniskirt landed a solid punch on my cheek.

  All right, I thought, the hard way it is. I took the shot to the face while still holding her other hand, and as she drew back again, I reached out and slapped her to the ground. I felt bad about it for about half a second, but when she kicked up and caught me in the shin with a heel, all remorse went out the window. I ducked under a punch thrown by another blank-eyed yuppie in party clothes and picked up the first chick by the collar and one leg. I lifted her easily over my head and threw her into the pool, taking out a waiter and a tray of drinks in the process.

  I looked around, and Greg and King were similarly occupied with mesmerized bankers and their tarted-up girls du jour. One guy jumped on King’s fuzzy back and beat him in the head with a Blackberry, while Greg used his sword to deflect glassware hurled at him by two women near the bar. Another mortal rushed at me, head down and feet churning. All I needed was a red cape and some tight pants to complete the picture of me as matador and the idiot as bull. I dodged, picked him up by the scruff of the neck and his belt as he passed and pitched him into the pool on top of the first girl, who was just climbing out.

  King flipped the guy off his back, and I looked on in horror as he wrapped a huge furry fist around the human’s throat. He leaned in, fangs bared and eyes narrowed, and drew back his other hand for the killing stroke. Just before he ripped the man’s face off, Greg ducked under a flying highball glass, which caught King a solid blow to the temple. His yellow eyes rolled back in his head, and the giant wolf-man collapsed on top of the human he’d been about to eviscerate.

  “Nice timing!” I yelled to Greg.

  “Thanks!” he shouted back. “You got any bright ideas?”

  “Yeah, don’t kill the humans!”

  “Got it!” He shattered two martini glasses with a swipe of his sword.

  I heard the squeak of a leather shoe behind me and ducked under a punch that would have knocked me into the middle of next week. I looked up, and up, and up to the largest human I’d ever seen up close. Almost seven feet tall and wider than most doorways, he stood over me like a very grumpy bald mountain with a goatee and more tattoos than the entire lineup of Mötley Crüe. He drew back a fist that looked bigger than Rhode Island and swung for my head. Fortunately, he was almost as slow as I’d hoped, and I ducked his punch easily. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as stupid as I’d hoped, and by ducking under his haymaker, I put my face right in front of the uppercut he threw behind it. It felt like a lead-lined Christmas ham hit me right on the point of my jaw, and I staggered back a good five feet before crashing into a glass and metal patio table. Steel bent, glass shattered, and one undernourished vampire got wrapped up in lawn furniture like a grievously wounded pretzel.

  The walking mountain came at me again. I tried to stand, but I was too tangled in table parts. He helped me to my feet, if by helped one could refer to picking me up, table and all, over his head, and throwing me twenty feet into the swimming pool. I sank to the bottom instantly and would have drowned in seconds except for my one little advantage—I breathed out of habit, not necessity. I felt a little like Br’er Rabbit in the middle of the briar patch down where it was cooler and no one was trying to crush my head. I took a few seconds to disengage from the mangled table and looked around for my pistol while I was down there. No luck. I figured it had been sucked into a drain or something. I made my way as stealthily as possible to a ladder and climbed out of the pool on the side away from the fracas.

  Greg seemed to be holding his own, swatting glassware out of the air like Luke Skywalker in Lightsaber 101. Every once in a while, one of the minions would get brave and dart in for a punch, but Greg always smacked them back with the flat of his blade.

  I was actually impressed, which might explain how I missed the dripping wet minx in the miniskirt aiming my gun at my best friend’s back and pulling the trigger half a dozen times. Before I could react, Greg was down with a tight grouping of new orifices in his back, and the mesmerized woman had turned the gun in my direction. There was most of a patio and a swimming pool separating us, but I covered the entire distance in one very pissed-off leap. I landed in front of her and knocked the gun out of her hand before she got off a round. I punched her in the jaw and had the small satisfaction of seeing her eyes roll back into her head as she collapsed to the deck.

  The noise of the gunshots had shaken the mojo out of some of the revelers, and they were looking around in bewilderment. Then one guy looked down at Greg, saw the bullet holes, and screamed like a seventh-grade girl at a Justin Bieber concert. That sparked a stampede for the elevators, and I found myself swimming upstream trying to get to my partner’s side.

  I finally reached him, but about two seconds too late. Krysta had Greg by the throat, and I was even more impressed by her strength when she casually lifted his bulk into the air with one hand. She was a tall woman, so getting him off the ground wasn’t an issue, but Greg had never been what anyone would call svelte. She smiled at me, then looked over at King, who was just now regaining consciousness, albeit in human form.

  “Now, dear son of mine,” Krysta said, with a smile that made my blood run cold. Or maybe that was just from my dip in the pool. Either way, it was getting chilly. “Whatever shall I do with this sack of meat? He’s no good for a plaything. He’s much too homely. You were bad enough, but I took pity on you and shared of myself. But this?” She gave Greg’s limp body a shake. “This thing isn’t even worth keeping around.” She finished insulting my manhood and my friend, then casually tossed my partner over the side of the patio to the sidewalk some sixteen stories below.

  I ran to the edge and looked over, seeing just the last second of his fall before Greg hit the unforgiving concrete with a wet thwack.

  I spun around, my vision completely red, but Krysta and Tiram were nowhere to be seen. I was alone on a patio with a half-dressed, semi-conscious werewolf, five comatose partygoers, and one very nervous security guard, who had just gotten off the elevator. I threw King over my shoulder, nodded to the guard, and got in the elevator.

  I pushed the L button, while the guard stared at me, dismayed. “Lightweight,” I said, nodding to King’s incoherent, and very heavy, carcass. Then, the doors slid shut, and I went down to try and scrape my partner off the sidewalk before the cops showed up.

  Chapter 13

  Through a combination of insults and slaps to the head, I managed to get King ambulatory by the time we reached the lobby. We walked quickly toward the doors, ignoring th
e frightened looks we got from the humans. A crowd had started to gather around Greg’s inert form by the time I got there, and I had to push my way to his side. It was tough going for the first few feet before people noticed I had a giant wolf-guy in tow. Then the crowd parted like grease in a Dawn commercial.

  I knelt by Greg’s side and pretended to feel for a pulse, while I tried to inconspicuously shake him awake. “Play dead,” I whispered.

  “I am dead,” I heard him mutter back.

  A huge weight lifted off my shoulders when I realized that “being thrown off a building” had moved onto the Will-Not-Kill-Vampires list, and I went ahead with my plan. I reached down and grabbed one arm, pulling him carelessly to his feet.

  “Hey, watch out!” I heard somebody yell from the crowd. A few other onlookers shouted concern for his well-being, and I turned to address the crowd.

  “What? Don’t you people read the paper? This is a stunt dummy. A prop. See, I can poke my finger inside the fake bullet holes.” That was nasty. “We’re shooting outtakes for the new Will Smith movie. The cameras are in the van over there.” I pointed at a parking lot across the street. “This isn’t even a person. Here, feel the skin. Cold as the grave, right?” I held Greg’s arm out to the nearest old lady, and she shrieked appropriately.

  I hefted Greg into a fireman’s carry across my shoulders and started making my slow way to the car. The crowd parted, disappointed no one had died. Three guys slipped me business cards and told me they were stuntmen or extras. I thought about telling them King was really Vin Diesel, but decided we didn’t need autograph seekers.

  King backed his truck out of its parking space, and I tossed Greg into the back, then hopped in beside him. King pulled onto the street, his tires barking and laying a stinking strip of rubber behind us. Greg let out a feeble groan when we hit a set of railroad tracks, and I grabbed his head to hold it steady. I wasn’t sure if he’d broken his neck, or if we could live through that. I banged on the cab. “Slow down.”