Hard Day's Knight (Black Knight Chronicles)

by John G. Hartness

  “Grab Tommy. I stashed him on a roof.” I yelled to Greg.

  “Where are you going with her?” He yelled back. He was weaving a little back and forth, but he could stand, at least.

  “Where else? I gotta take her to Dad’s.” And I tossed the girl over my shoulder like a rolled-up carpet and took off toward the only place that was safe to interrogate her – St. Patrick’s.

  Chapter 6

  I carried the girl/witch/thing over my shoulder toward St. Patrick’s Church, hoping by all I had ever believed in that Dad could contain her. “Dad” is Michael Maloney, the priest at St. Patrick’s, and he’s one of the best friends a vampire could have. He’s also an old friend, the only person from before that Greg and I ever associate with. He’s been there for us for a long time, and I really hoped that he had enough juice with the Big Guy Upstairs to bind this whatever-she-was long enough to get some answers.

  I couldn’t just go in through the front door, that whole holy ground thing is pretty true. But there’s a corner of the cemetery that sits on unsanctified soil, because the church decided during the Great Depression that it needed a place to bury suicides within the fence, so the church could keep the funeral revenue. But Catholic doctrine wouldn’t allow someone who took their own life to be buried on hallowed ground, so they bought the property next door, knocked down the non-sanctified house that was there, fenced in the lot and expanded the graveyard. It’s really handy to have a place to meet that no one would ever think to look for us, and Greg and I keep a room of sorts in one of the crypts for emergencies. And this was shaping up to be a doozy of an emergency.

  I called Dad on my cell when I was close, and he met me at the crypt with a lantern and a battered leather bag. I guessed it was his exorcism tool kit, and gave it a wide berth. Mike’s never tried to douse us with holy water or anything else, but crosses, true believers and vampires don’t mix.

  “Jimmy, my son, what have you gotten yourself into?” Mike asked as he held the door for me. I dropped my little care package on the floor of the crypt and Mike stood there gaping at the hog-tied teenager in front of him.

  “Don’t call me your son, Dad. And I don’t really know what I’ve gotten into. That’s what I’ve got you for. This little chicklet is way more than she seems. She kicked the crap out of me and Greg both, and if I hadn’t dropped a minivan on her head she probably would have killed Greg.” That was the moment that my body decided to let all the bruises and exertion catch up with me, and I slid down to sit on the floor of the crypt.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat in that bag?” I eyed his satchel hopefully.

  Mike shook his head. “Sorry, my – um – Jimmy. I don’t exactly keep the red in with the Host.”

  “It’s alright. I’ll go out for a snack later. For now, we need to find out what’s gotten into this kid. Literally.”

  Mike’s eyes got wide, and he actually inched closer to his bag. “You think she may be possessed?”

  “Not my field. But I know she’s way stronger than she should be, and she sensed us as vamps from way farther away than even a bloodhound could have.”

  “Hmmm. Well, extra-dimensional beings would certainly be able to sense the presence of other creatures of their ilk, and demons are reputed to have incredible strength.”

  “Hey! Go easy on the ilk, old buddy. Remember, me and my ilk used to slip you Playboys in middle school.”

  “No offense meant, James. It’s just a term. Now, let me get a closer look at her.” He knelt on the floor beside the girl, and only my speed allowed me to grab his shoulders and pull him back intact. The girl lunged at his face, trying for all the world to eat his nose. I yanked him out of the way, and whatever she was laughed. And it was the kind of laugh that makes places inside you go very, very cold.

  “Come closer, priest. Give us a little kiss,” it mocked. Mike grabbed a crucifix from his bag, and thrust it at the girl-thing. It hissed and tried to roll away, but I kinda lost sight of things for a minute there. Probably because I was trying to put a sarcophagus between myself and the holy symbol. Mike was the truest type of true believer, and the cross in his hands gave me a monster of a migraine, and from the looks of things whatever was inside the girl liked it even less than I did.

  “In the name of God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son on Earth I command you to leave this girl!” When I opened my eyes again, peeking carefully over the big stone coffin I was hiding behind, Mike was standing over the girl, cross in his left hand and a Bible in his right. The cross was glowing with an ethereal light, and it looked like something was floating around the girl. It was like a cloud of glowing red gnats, buzzing and angry, was coalescing around her head. Then I heard the voice again, and not for the first time that night, I got really worried.

  “Foolish priest! Do you think that your trappings of faith can save you?” The voice seemed even freakier now that it was coming from the cloud instead of the girl. The sound was all around us, swirling in and out of the air like an angry wind. “I see inside your soul, priest! I see your darkest thoughts, your blackest fears, and you are not holy!”

  “I am a servant of the Lord God Almighty and by his grace I am sanctified. You are a beast of Hell and I command you to leave this girl!” Mike raised his Bible over his head and pointed the cross at the girl like a conductor in Beethoven’s Fifth.

  The thing laughed, and I swear the girl’s eyes glowed red, like something out of a bad horror movie. “I serve a power older and stronger than your pitiful little carpenter. Your little book means nothing to me, and you cannot command one with power such as mine!” With its words, Mike’s Bible burst into flames, and he threw the book at the girl.

  Mike switched into Latin, and since I’m not old enough and certainly not religious enough to have much of a grasp on dead languages, I had no idea what he was saying. But after a couple of seconds of chanting, the cloud-thing screamed in rage and pain, and then flew out at Mike like a comic-book bee colony, heading straight for his hand. The crucifix flared into blinding light, first white, then a deep crimson red.

  I heard the thing laugh again, and then through that awful cackling laughter, I heard Mike begin to scream. There was one last flash of red light, and a wave of force blew out from Mike and the girl. I felt it in my chest like a hurricane; it picked me up and flung me limp into the far wall of the crypt. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was that laugh. And Mike screaming.

  Chapter 7

  When I woke up I was alone in the crypt. There was a puddle of melted silver on the floor where I last remembered Mike standing, and the seatbelts I had tied the girl with were lying on a pile in a corner. They’d been cut neatly, not torn, but that was all the info I could glean from my surroundings. I went to the door and eased it open just a crack to see the bright sunlight begin streaming into the crypt from the cemetery.

  Crap, I thought. Guess I’m stuck here for a while, at least.

  The whole thing about sunlight is real, too. We don’t burst into flames immediately, but it doesn’t take long for one of us to be reduced to a pile of charcoal briquettes if we come into contact with direct sunlight. And of course my best-case scenario was that Mike had recovered enough to go into the church, where I am certainly vampire non grata, so that wasn’t much better. I took a quick inventory and saw that my cell phone had been crushed at some point in the fight, so I settled down to wait for nightfall.

  After a ridiculously boring day of staring at a sunbeam, I felt more than saw the sun finally dip below the horizon, and I headed out into the cemetery. Mike was on his way out of the church and hurried across the sanctified part of the graveyard to meet me.

  “Where have you been, dude? I’ve been stuck in there worried sick all day!” I started to lay into him pretty solid, but then I got a good look at my old friend. He looked his age for probably the first time ever. He had a bandage on his forehead that looked fresh, and his left hand was wrapped heavily all the way from the elbow to the fi
ngers. “Jesus Christ, man, how bad did she get you?”

  “Pretty badly, I’m afraid. Not all of us are blessed with eternal youth, James. I just recently returned from the hospital with our young guest. She’s terribly shaken up and I only got her to sleep in the parish house a few moments ago.” He took my elbow and led me further from the church, as though there was someone in there he didn’t want to take note of our little chat.

  “What? She’s in the church?” I was baffled. I would have bet the farm that she was way less welcome on holy ground than me. “And have you heard from Greg? My phone got…”

  “Trashed. Again. Here.” Greg tossed me a replacement phone as he came out from behind a tree. I looked him up and down, but he didn’t seem to be any the worse for wear after getting pummeled last night. As if in answer to my unspoken question, Greg went on. “I’m fine. I had a snack before I went to bed last night. Tommy’s arm is a clean break, but she got both the bones so it’s gonna be useless for a month or so. They kept him at the hospital for observation; I talked to him while I was on my way over here.”

  I put the phone in my front pocket this time, since my back pocket didn’t seem to be very good for protecting them. “So what was that you said about the girl being in the church, Mike? I figured her for a serious bad guy, given what she did to all of us last night.”

  “What was residing in the girl was in fact, a very serious bad guy, but the girl herself was guilty of nothing more than curiosity and a desire for a little payback on the kids at school who teased her. I think we can all relate to those sentiments, can’t we?” He raised an eyebrow at Greg and me, and we had the good grace to look sheepish. I’m not sure when my old friend had developed the juice to get me to be embarrassed at my youthful indiscretions, but he certainly had it now. Maybe it came with the first grey hairs. I’d never know.

  “So you’re saying she was possessed? By what?” Greg asked.

  “Yes, she was possessed. And based on the amount of power she exhibited, we may have a very serious problem. I don’t know exactly what type of demon was possessing her, but it’s obviously incredibly strong. I’ve never experienced anything like that kind of power. To be able to melt a symbol of the Lord in the hands of a priest…” Mike trailed off, and if anything, he looked a little paler. Not as pale as me, but getting there.

  “How’s the hand?” I wanted to change the subject, and quick.

  “Mostly second-degree burns. I dropped the crucifix before it completely liquefied, but some of the molten silver did get onto my skin. I probably won’t have full use of the last two fingers again.” That explains the screaming I heard as I passed out. Molten metal eating through your flesh tends to do that to a person.

  That subject was even more uncomfortable than the first, so I switched back to the lineup. “So what do we know?”

  “Not much,” Mike said. “There are only a few demons that have the kind of power she exhibited last night, and all of them are bad news. And if what she said about serving an even more powerful demon is true, then we have to stop her.” Of course we do. Because we’re not vampires, the beasties that give people nightmares and make them think twice about walking down that alley alone, we’re detective vampires. We’re the good guys. Like Batman, only with dietary restrictions. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like just to eat people, like a normal vampire. But no, not only do I have a conscience, I have a roommate with a Kal-el complex and a priest for a best friend. If I could find a shrink that kept office hours after sundown, I could spend eternity in therapy.

  “So what happened to the demon? When you got it out of the girl it just went back to Hell?” Greg asked, a little more hopefully than I thought we had a right to be. Of course I was right. I hate being right sometimes.

  “I have no idea, but I doubt it. I would expect that it found someone close by to inhabit, but the ethereal definitions of close by could mean anywhere in the city.” Mike was wobbling a little by now, so I led him over to sit on a headstone. It was a mark of how much had been taken out of him that he was willing to sit. Usually that was one of the things Greg and I did to get a rise out of him, sit on headstones and make fun of the occupants. Mike never disrespected the dead. Greg and I exchanged a worried glance behind Mike’s back and with a nod decided on an impromptu plan.

  “Alright,” Greg started, “you stay here and keep an eye on the girl, and when she comes around see what kind of information you can get out of her. Somebody had to help her bring this thing up; no kid has that kind of power. See if you can get the names of who else was in the circle with her that night, and keep her here. The beastie’s gotten into her once, that might make her vulnerable to a repeat possession, if there is such a thing.”

  I chimed in then “we’ll split up and keep an eye on Tommy and his family. If getting revenge on him for picking on the girl was part of this creature’s contract for getting to this side of Hell, then it may still go after them. I’ll take the hospital and Greg will keep an eye on the sister.”

  “That sounds good, boys. I think I would do well to do my part from my chair this time.” Mike said, as he started back towards the church. “Boys?” He called as he stopped at the cemetery gate.

  “Yeah, Dad?” Mike replied.

  “Be careful. This one is bad. Very, very bad.” Greg and I looked at each other as Mike limped into the church, looking every bit as old as we were all supposed to be. We stood there watching our friend’s back for a second, then headed off into the night for our respective charges. Good thing I was headed to the hospital, I needed breakfast bad.

  Chapter 8

  It only took me a few minutes to get to the hospital, and no I did not turn into a bat to get there. I can’t do that. I’ve heard that some of us can take animal forms, but either I haven’t figured out how, or I haven’t been around long enough, or the vampire that made me wasn’t strong enough, or something like that. I don’t really know. So since I can’t fly, I took the bus. And by that I mean I jumped on top of one and hitched a ride to the hospital.

  Cut me some slack, I was out of cash. When I got there, Tommy had some company that I certainly wasn’t interested in seeing – the police. I did a quick one-eighty in the hallway once I saw the guard outside his room and headed back downstairs to swipe a disguise. If possible, it’s a good idea to avoid masquerading as someone with medical training, because someone always wants you to do something with that training, and that can turn out poorly for you and the patient. So I usually put on my best janitor clothes and grab a bucket. There’s never been a hospital that didn’t have something that needed to be mopped, and the cleaning staff is usually pretty invisible.

  I found an unattended supply closet on Tommy’s floor and commandeered a bucket and mop. I wheeled my way down the hall to the room next to Tommy’s, and headed in to mop and eavesdrop. Fortunately for me, the guy in the room was comatose, so he didn’t care that I was doing a crappy cleaning job, and I was able to hear a grumpy-sounding female detective grilling Tommy through the wall.

  “Mr. Matthews, how exactly did you break your arm?” She asked.

  “Fell off my skateboard.” Tommy had the sullen teenager thing down pat, probably because he was a teenager with a crap attitude toward authority figures and a system full of painkillers.

  “That’s bull!” I heard her slam something to the floor, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who was playing the bad cop. If she was playing. “The doctor told us your injuries were consistent with your arm being broken by a very strong person. Now who did it?”

  “I told you, I fell off my skateboard.” Tommy even managed a little whine at the end. I was impressed; I wasn’t anywhere near that good at being a putz when I was a kid.

  “And I told you, I know you’re lying.” I could almost see her leaning in to him, her voice dropped and got real confidential. “We can’t protect you if you don’t tell us the truth, Tommy. And you want us to protect you, don’t you? I’d hate to have to leave here
and take that guard with me. Wouldn’t you?” I certainly wouldn’t hate that, but I didn’t think she was asking me.

  I heard nothing for a minute, then heard Tommy take a deep breath and say, “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened.” My heart, if it still beat, would have stopped for a second, and Tommy’s next words did nothing to make me feel any better. Before I could reach through the wall and strangle him, he said “I hired a couple of vampire detectives to protect me from a demonic curse and when we went to confront the witch that cursed me, she broke my arm like a twig.” The silence from the other room was thick, and I leaned my head against the wall berating myself for not eating the kid when I had the chance.

  After a long minute I heard the woman’s voice again, and it was pretty obvious that she was not happy with Tommy’s answer. She spit out the words like they were bullets. “You little bastard. I have somebody in this town kidnapping little kids, and this girl is just the latest. Now you were seen harassing her at school and the neighbors say a kid matching your description was at her house before she went missing last night. You know something, and if anything happens to that little girl and it turns out you had anything to do with it, I will personally make sure that you do your undergraduate work in the federal penitentiary in Raleigh.” With that, I heard her heading for the door. Seconds later I felt the wall shake as she slammed the door to Tommy’s room open.