Anna spoke from behind me. “Don’t you trust us, vampire?”
Her voice had a snide tone to it that I didn’t like.
“I don’t trust anyone, witchy-poo. It’s how I’ve gone this long without finding splinters in my lungs.”
“Well, don’t worry, vampire, we won’t harm either of you. Tonight.”
I didn’t like the way she emphasized “tonight,” but there wasn’t anything I could do about it with sunrise almost over the horizon.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t harm them, Anna. These boys are under my protection.” We all turned at Mike’s voice, and I swear my friend looked like he had a glowing halo around him. “I don’t think you and yours want to bring down my disappointment, do you?”
When he walked the last few steps to stand next to me I thought the glow might have been nothing more than a street light behind him, but I wasn’t sure. It faded as he drew close and whispered, “Thought you’d leave the priest to sleep while all you magical types play in the park, huh? When will you guys ever learn?”
Mike grabbed the zombie by the ankles and started to drag the thing into the circle. The process was made somewhat more difficult by the bandages on his burned hand, but he was strong for a human. The dead guy thrashed around and threatened to scuff the circle, so I grabbed the zombie under its arms and helped Mike carry the animated corpse into the right place in the pattern. I figured the chances of them closing the circle with Mike inside were significantly lower than if I was alone in there, and I knew Greg was keeping a sharp eye out now, so I was willing to help.
Once Mike and I were safely out of the circle, the witches closed it with chalk and mumbling, and then the show started. There was a whole lot of chanting, some smelly stuff thrown into fires at the five points of a pentacle that was scribed within the circle, and a bunch of call-and-response “spellcasting.” I was starting to get bored when suddenly the zombies leapt to their feet and rushed at the circle.
They smacked into the magical barrier like it was a wall of glass, and I was exceptionally happy to not be in there with them. They beat on the air, which to them, at least, was very solid, and began to wail. Not the low, guttural kind of moaning that you think of when you think of zombies, but a wail that oscillated like an air-raid siren. It built in volume and pitch until Mike, Greg and I went to our knees with our hands pressed to our heads.
The witches either had earplugs, were deaf, or were protected somehow from the noise, because they kept right on chanting and singing as the keening got louder. Finally, as the zombies literally blew out their voice boxes and their throats exploded with splatters of blood on the air of the magical boundary, silence reigned again. The zombies collapsed to the ground, empty bodies again, and that quiet was the most fantastic thing in the world. I thought for a second that it was all over, that we had sent the souls back where they belonged, but I should have known better.
A new voice came out of the circle, and my blood ran cold as ice.
Chapter 25
“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” said the disembodied voice from within the circle. It was a kind voice, a gentle voice, the type of voice that was more soothing than a mother’s croon after a nightmare but which also held more strength than a father’s sternest lecture. The voice touched a part of me that I thought had died fifteen years ago. Tears rolled down my cheeks at the sound.
I looked over at Mike, and he had the most rapturous look on his face I’d ever seen outside a painting. He stepped towards the circle. He was almost within arm’s reach of the boundary when I realized what he was doing. Completely under the spell of the demons in the circle, he was going to break the magical restraints, and all those damned (literally and figuratively) spirits were going to be free again.
I only made it one or two steps before a black blur flew in and knocked Mike sprawling across the grass. The seductive voice turned into a screech of disappointed rage and hurled curses in half a dozen languages at my oldest friend and my partner as they tumbled across the concrete away from the circle. I got a look at a face inside the circle, and if that was what things in Hell looked like, I was glad to be immortal for all intents and purposes.
Greg held Mike down with his considerable bulk and superior strength, and I yelled over at Anna “This would be a great time to wrap this up, lady!”
The witches’ chanting grew in volume and intensity, and the light show inside the circle kicked up in earnest. Nearly a dozen angry amorphous, faceless (thankfully) souls whirled and tumbled like psychotic Caspers in a spin cycle, with radiating red, blue and purple lights bouncing around inside the circle like a Star Wars rerun on fast-forward. The chanting seemed to last forever, but it must have only been a few minutes, because the sky had barely begun to lighten in the east when suddenly the circle fell dark and silent. All thirteen witches slumped to the ground, unconscious. I looked over at Greg and Mike. They had stopped wrestling around and stood staring at the scene on the plaza.
I walked over to Anna and checked her for a pulse. It was strong, and as I felt the blood pulse through the side of her neck, my stomach gave an embarrassing rumble, testament to the long and painful night that had left me hungry. But you don’t snack on witches who’d saved the world. Instead, I shook her gently until she began to stir, and I asked quietly, “Is it done?”
She allowed me to help her stand and walk her over to the edge of the circle. She took off her pentacle and passed it over several of the nearest bodies. When it didn’t even flicker, she nodded wearily. I helped her over to a bench, and quickly confirmed that all the other witches were still breathing. I avoided the circle, because even if Anna had broken it by leaning over and swinging her necklace over the dead guys, I didn’t want to do anything stupid like scrub out a line with my shoe and end up having to fight all these dead guys again.
Turns out the dead guys weren’t my immediate problem. Our little light show had attracted the wrong kind of attention. I heard a gentle “ahem” sound and turned. Detective Sabrina Law stood on the edge of the concrete plaza, gun in hand and pointed straight at my heart. Obviously, she hadn’t taken our disappearance last night in stride.
I hate mornings.
Chapter 26
“Hi Detective.” I reached hard for a pleasant, maybe even respectful tone but was really too tired to pull off anything other than half-dead. “Hi yourself, Black.”
“Please, Sabrina, call me Jimmy.”
“No thanks, Black. And my first name is Detective.” She holstered her gun and reached behind her for a pair of handcuffs.
I snapped at that point. It had been a ridiculous night. I’d gotten handcuffed to a bowling alley chair, had my ass kicked by possessed middle-school girls, chased zombies all over Charlotte, been tossed through a windshield, narrowly avoided being trapped in a magic circle by a coven of witches and I was not about to be handcuffed again, even if it was by the sexiest cop I’d ever seen.
With less concern than usual for the consequences of my actions, I grabbed the cuffs from her, spun her around and snapped them shut on her wrists. With her hands secured behind her back, I tore off a strip of my T-shirt and balled it into a gag.
I turned her back to face me, looked the very angry detective in the face and said, “We are about to get a lot of things straightened out.” With that, I tossed her over my shoulder and started toward Mike’s car.
“Mike,” I hollered back over my shoulder. “Pop the trunk.” He and Greg had started moving about the same time I had, and by the time I got to the car with my kicking bundle of detective, they were close enough to open the trunk. I deposited my cargo, making sure not to drop her head on the jack or tire iron, and tucked her long legs into the trunk.
I leaned down until our faces were inches apart. With fangs on full display, I said, “I’m very sorry you have to ride in the trunk. And I’m very, very sorry about the level of gross going on in said trunk. But you’ve been a real pain in the butt tonight, and we’re going to my pla
ce to clear the air. So, I’ll be taking this.”
I removed her pistol from her side, then grabbed her portable radio. “And this is to make sure you behave on the trip. Oh, and I think I’ll take these, too.”
Her backup piece was a nice little .38 strapped to one ankle. I also relieved her of her cell phone and her spare handcuff keys. I slammed the trunk shut and got in the passenger seat. It was nice of Greg to read my mood well enough not to make me call shotgun. He got in the backseat and sat there, eyes wide. I told him tackling Mike was a nice save and then stared ahead.
“Let’s go home, Mike.”
“With her?” he asked.
“Yep. And we should probably not be too concerned about the speed limit or stop lights. The sun’s coming up fast, and I’d rather not be a sausage biscuit by the time we get home.”
Mike drove like a bat out of hell. He parked his car in back of the cottage, where it would be out of view from the road, and I carried our guest. Then Greg and I hauled ass downstairs before we started to smolder.
“Now here’s the deal,” I told the detective when I’d dumped her on the couch. “I’m going to take the gag out. Any screaming and I gag you again. We’ve been through a lot together tonight, and you should know by now that I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to take the handcuffs off, but you can’t have any of your guns back until I decide you’re not going to do anything irritating like shoot me. Ditto your portable and cell phone. And no one will be tracking you by the GPS in those toys, because I took the battery out of both of them. Capiche?”
She nodded and sat there glaring at me, not saying a word even after I took the gag out. I reached around behind her and unfastened the cuffs, and that’s when she made her move. She slammed her forehead into my nose hard enough to blur my vision, and shouldered me to the floor as she got off the couch and tried to bolt for the stairs. I grabbed one ankle and pulled her to the floor, and she spun around and kicked me in the side of the head for my troubles. I let go of her leg and lay there for a second as she scrambled to her feet and got into a fighting stance. I thought she was trying to get away, but she just gave herself enough room to maneuver and turned back to kick my ass.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you have messed with the wrong woman, assholes,” she said, keeping an eye on both Greg and I.
Greg held up his hands and said, “I’m not the one doing the messing, Detective. That’s all my partner’s idea.”
I’d regained my feet by this point and mimicked Greg’s hands-up pose. “We really don’t need to do this, Detective. I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m pretty sure you can’t hurt either of us.”
“Wanna bet?” she growled.
I realized in that moment that there is nothing sexier than a woman who can kick your ass. I shook my head, pushing inappropriate thoughts and images to the rear for the moment, and vamped out on her. I put on a burst of speed and picked up the cuffs from the floor behind her, snapped them back onto her wrists and threw her across the room onto the sofa before she’d even seen me move.
She flopped into a sitting position on the couch and stared at me, eyes a little wild. “How did you do that?”
I crossed the room in less time than it took her to blink and said from the arm of the couch beside her “I have a few talents. Now would you like me to explain them to you?”
She nodded silently.
“Are you sure? We can go a couple more rounds if you’d like, but if our little sparring match goes any further, I’m afraid it will get hard on the furniture. Not to mention you.” I hate intimidating women, especially pretty ones, but it had been a long night.
“I think I’m good,” she said.
“Great. I’m going to let you go now. If you attack me again, I’m going to knock the ever-loving crap out of you and hang you by your ankles from the rafters. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, a bit wary, and I reached behind her back to uncuff her again. This time we made it through without any headbutting or other unpleasantness, so I gave her back her handcuffs and keys.
“What are you?” she asked after a minute.
“Do you really want to get to the tough questions this quickly?” I asked. “How about a beer first? Or something stronger? We have a full bar.”
“Of course you do. Beer is good. Light if you have it.”
“Greg, a light beer for the lady. And a bourbon for me, if you don’t mind.”
He fixed the drinks while I kept an eye on our guest. When he delivered the drinks, he plopped down in the room’s one armchair. I got off the arm of the sofa and sat beside Detective Law, who slid as far down the couch as she could and still be sitting. Mike came into the room from where he’d been hiding in the safety of the stairs, grabbed a kitchen chair and pulled it over.
When we were all settled in, I looked over at Detective Law and laid it out for her. “We’re going to take a huge chance with everything we’re telling you tonight. Usually, whenever we get into a jam that we can’t talk our way out of immediately, we mojo the person into forgetting they ever met us. But for some reason we can’t mojo you. We’re going to tell you the whole story, with no BS. And when we’re done, we’ll see how you react. If things go the way I think they will, then we all get to figure out what next to do about all this.”
“All what? You mean the kidnapped girls and the pile of dead people in Marshall Park?”
“Yeah, that’s the beginning of it. There’s a lot more crap going on here, but there are some things you need to understand before we figure out what we’re doing next.”
I finished my drink in one pull and turned back to Detective Law. “We’re vampires.” I waited, but there was no reaction. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, don’t you have anything to say to that?”
“Look, Jim, I’ve been a detective for the last ten years. This might surprise you, but you’re not the first person I’ve come across that thinks he’s a vampire. I figured that out a while ago. The black clothes, the fake fangs, the nighttime-only business hours. Obviously you’re part of some type of vampire cult or something.”
I sighed and tried again. “You’re missing the point. We’re not pretend vampires, we’re the real deal. We drink blood, we have fangs, we live underground in a cemetery, for crying out loud.”
“Sure, and I bet if I look in your crisper I’ll find bags of blood from some orderly you bribed at a hospital, right? And you’re fast, but you’re no Superman. I live in the real world, pal. I deal with real monsters every day. Don’t drag me down here and give me some bullshit about things that go bump in the night. I . . .”
Her voice trailed off to nothing as I pulled her pistol out of my jacket pocket, ejected the magazine, and bent the barrel of her service weapon ninety degrees from normal.
“You wanted Superman?” I asked from my new spot across the room. “Was that strong enough for you?” I was suddenly sitting beside her on the couch again. “And how about fast? Will that do for fast?”
I dropped my fangs into place and leaned in very close to her face. “You’re welcome to check and see exactly how real these are if you like, Detective. I could certainly use a snack.”
She shook her head, her mouth opening and closing like a flounder on the deck of a fishing boat, so I leaned back to a more acceptable distance, retracting my fangs as I went. “We keep the fangs tucked away until we need them. They make it hard to talk, and they tend to cut our lips if we leave them out all the time.”
Mike piped up. “Not to mention the name of the game is for them to blend in.”
“We blend as best we can, and, yes, we do indeed bribe a guy at the hospital for our blood supply, but if pressed we can certainly take our meals on the hoof, as it were. Greg pretty much never eats take-out, but every so often I feel the need for a nibble. It reminds me exactly where I stand on the food pyramid—at the absolute top. Now do you believe me?”
She looked from me to M
ike and back to me again. She shook herself slightly and refocused on Mike. “But I thought you were a priest? Are you some kind of vampire priest?”
Mike laughed and leaned back in his chair. “I am a priest. A human priest. I’m still very much alive, thank you. Jimmy and Greg and I grew up together, and we’ve been friends for far too long to let a little thing like turning into the living dead get in the way. I trust these boys with my life, and they trust me with their secret. “
She relaxed a little, probably relieved to know that we have a friend that we haven’t eaten. “You’re really vampires? You and the other one?”
“Yep, Greg. My best friend since junior high and now my undead business partner.” I pointed to him and he sketched a rough half bow from where he sat.
“And you really drink blood?”
“Yep.”
“And you really can’t go out in the sunlight?”
“Poof!” I confirmed.
“Holy symbols?”
“Bad juju for us.”
“Stakes?”
“Make us dead as doornails.”
“Decapitation?”
“Ruins our night forever.”
“Garlic?”
“Total myth. I love Italians.”
Law opened and closed her mouth as she realized the distinction I’d just made. I could tell she thought it was funny. Point for me. After a second’s pause, she asked, “Running water?”
“I shower every day, so running water is not an issue.”
“Silver?”
“Hurts, but doesn’t kill. I’ve never been shot with a silver bullet, and it’s not an experiment that I’d care to try.”
“How?”
“How what?” I played for time. I figured we’d get to this question eventually. I wasn’t really crazy about the answer, but it was going to come out, and I had promised full disclosure.
“How did you two become vampires?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Well, I have all day. Because I’m not leaving until I’m satisfied you’re not as evil as all the stories make you out to be, and I don’t think you’re going anywhere until sundown.”
The Black Knight Chronicles (Omnibus Edition) Page 14
