Hard Day's Knight (11 page)

I stood up, spinning the chair around to free up the cuff and flexed my arm. The cuff groaned a little and I shoved the metal band further up my forearm until it was nice and tight. I flexed one more time, and all I got for my trouble was a red mark around my arm and a couple of stares from the neighboring lanes.

“You know, man,” Greg chimed in again, “You’re gonna need a lot more muscle than that to break a police-issue cuff.”

“Yeah, I know. Time for Plan B.” I said, reaching down and grabbing the back of the chair with my free hand. I worked the molded plastic for a minute, couldn’t get it to give at all, and finally just ripped the whole seat free of the swivel and stood there in the middle of the bowling alley with a chair hanging from one wrist. “Let’s go.” I snarled at Greg, who was having trouble getting to his feet due to overwhelming laughter.

I stalked out the front door, pausing long enough to tell the counter guy that the chair in lane nine was busted, and reached under the bumper of Greg’s car. I found one of those magnetic key boxes, and slid it open, only to find a business card for Detective Sabrina Law. She had written a note on the back of the card saying, “Hide it better next time.”

Greg made it out to the parking lot in time to collapse in laughter again at the sight of a gangly six-foot-three-inch vampire stomping around the lot cursing inventively and swinging a plastic chair around his head by a handcuff.

“Dude, hold still, let me get you out of that thing.” He said when I stopped swearing and he stopped laughing long enough to take a breath. He reached into a pocket of his utility belt and brought out a small folding saw, the kind they sell at sporting goods stores. I thought of about seventeen wisecracks but decided I valued emancipation from the bowling alley furniture over a good zinger right then and held my tongue. His little saw was surprisingly effective, and in a couple of minutes, I was free. Well, mostly free. I still had a handcuff dangling from my wrist, but there was no longer a giant hunk of molded plastic attached to it. Some nights you can only ask for so much, and this was shaping up to be one of those.

“I don’t suppose you have another set of keys in that belt, do you?” I asked hopefully.

“No, but I have the next best thing.” Greg replied. Before I could ask what exactly that was, he reached under my arm, grabbed my Glock and walked over to where a young couple was doing what young couples do in the back lanes of parking lots. Greg tapped on the glass with the pistol, and then put his fist through the back passenger window. He pulled a skinny teenage kid out through the window, pointed the gun at his rapidly shriveling pride and joy, and hinted that the kid should run away. Then he leaned into the back window, smiled at the girl broadly enough to show a lot of fang, and laughed as she beat a hasty retreat out the other door. He tossed a t-shirt at her retreating, and naked, back, and reached into the floor of the back seat for the boy’s pants.

“Subtle.” I said as I walked around and got into the passenger seat. Greg had retrieved the car keys from the boy’s pants by then and put the car in gear.

“Sorry.” He said without an ounce of remorse. “I was under the impression that we were in a hurry.” He peeled rubber out of the parking lot and handed me back my gun. I tuned the radio to an oldies station and cranked some vintage Springsteen as we headed off to the site of the latest kidnapping. I wasn’t sure what our detective friend would think about our appearing at her crime scene, but I wasn’t too inclined to care. We only had about 48 hours to stop the summoning of a serious metaphysical beastie from taking place, and our opposition had just gotten one ankle-biter closer to their quota.

That night would have been a great opportunity for bank heists, jewelry store capers or just knocking over liquor stores, because it seemed like every cop in the greater Charlotte area was camped out in a three-block radius between the latest victim’s school and home. Greg and I dropped the car a couple of blocks outside the ring of flashing blue lights and left the keys in the ignition. I’d rifled through the kid’s wallet on the way across town and found twenty-seven bucks and six condoms. Something to be said for youthful optimism, I suppose.

We circled the perimeter until we found a young, scared-looking cop working a section of sidewalk alone. I walked up to him, smiling my friendliest smile (which I’ve been told looks like a cross between someone who’s just eaten bad sushi and Hannibal Lecter), and got close enough to see the color of his eyes.

“Hold it right there.” The kid stammered, and put his hand on his gun. I hoped he wouldn’t shoot himself in the foot before I mojo’d him. “You’ll have to go around, sir. Sorry for any inconvenience.”

“So am I, Officer. Now give me your handcuff keys.” His eyes went glassy and he reached around to the back of his belt and handed me the keys. I unlocked the cuff around my wrist, relieved to find that my mojo wasn’t on the fritz, it just apparently didn’t work on badass Amazon warrior princess cops. “Thanks, Officer. You never saw us.”

Greg and I split up, and he headed towards the kid’s home to see if he could pick up anything there. Greg’s way more sensitive to psychic garbage than I am, so that was right in his wheelhouse. Since the odds of me picking up any “vibes” were pretty close to nil, I concentrated on what I do best, looking for things to hit and annoying pretty women. Towards that end I headed towards the center of activity in hopes of finding Detective Law. I used her business card and my P.I. credentials to badge my way into the mobile command tent they had set up in the schoolyard and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Lose these?” I asked, holding her handcuffs out dangling from one finger. The cops around us let out a couple of wolf whistles and I put on my best imitation of a rakish grin. It probably worked a little, because the next thing I knew, Law had me spun around with my hands cuffed behind my back.

“You asshole!” She whispered in my ear. “You have the nerve to show up here at my crime scene. I told you not to get in my way.”

“This is getting old. Why don’t you take me outside?”

“Oh, I will. Mostly because I don’t want everybody to see me beat the crap out of you.” She stood me up and perp-walked me out of the tent. As soon as we were in some relative shadow, I stopped walking. She had to stop, too, because despite my skinny frame, she couldn’t move me. She looked up, confused.

“You want to take these cuffs off of me now.” I said.

“I don’t think so.” She spat.

“It wasn’t a question.”

She got right up in my face and was about to say something that probably would have accomplished absolutely nothing when I dangled her cuffs in front of her face. I had never bothered to give the other cop his key back, but it was worth petty larceny to see the look on her face. She got another look entirely as I crushed the handcuffs into a mangled mess of steel and dropped them at her feet.

“Don’t bother trying that again.” I smirked. She reached for her gun but I stepped very close into her and caught her hand as she was reaching for it. “Don’t.” I said, keeping my voice low. “You’ll never make the draw, and it wouldn’t matter if you did. Now just ignore all this for a little while and let’s work together to get this kid back home safely.”

I released her hand and stepped back. She stared at me for a minute, and if looks could kill, I’d have been dead all over again. But since they can’t, at least not from any beastie I’ve encountered, we just stood there scowling at each other. Finally she broke the silence. “I’m going to talk to the parents. You go check out the school and let me know if you come up with anything. My cell number is…”

I held up her card. “I’ve got it. If you get a 704 number you don’t recognize, it’s me.” I turned and headed towards the school.

“Hey,” she called out after me. “Wait a minute.” She took a couple of long strides over to me and leaned in close. “I don’t know how you did that little handcuff trick, but it’s gonna take a lot more than that to scare me. When we get done with this mess, I’m going to find out what your deal is. And if I don’t like what I find, you’re going to be very unhappy for a very long time.”

I looked at her for a minute while I formulated a response. In a burst of inspiration I went for honesty. “I’ve been unhappy for longer than you can imagine. Without an end in sight.” I turned around and walked off in the direction of the school to see what I could find about a missing little girl.

I kicked myself a little as I scanned the sidewalk for anything out of the ordinary. I’m not usually the brooding type, but something in her eyes just made me miss being human, just for a minute. I’ve gone whole years without missing the sun, but right then the prospect of never being able to wake up next to a beautiful woman and watch the sunlight play across her back and legs was enough to almost bring me to tears. Of course, even before I was turned the odds of me waking up next to a beautiful woman were pretty slim, so that part hasn’t changed. I had been lost in my thoughts for a minute or two when I caught a strange scent on the air. I pulled out my cell and called Greg.

“Yo. Where you at?” I asked.

“God, your grammar gets worse the longer you’re dead. I’m on the roof of the school. I found something funny up here. Where are you?”

“Just about to hop the playground fence over by the swings. See me?”

“Yeah. And fortunately for you I’m the only one who can see you. The cops assigned to the school are all out front and inside. Come up here and take a look at this.”

“Alright, I’ll be up in a second.” I crossed the playground, trying to figure out what the smell was. It wasn’t quite sulfur, but it had a little of that acrid tang to it. I couldn’t place where I had smelled it before, so I took a running leap onto the roof and walked over to where Greg was kneeling looking at something.

“What’s up?” I asked him. He was down on one knee in front of what looked like a protective circle. I’m no magician, but I’ve read a lot of comic books, so I know a magic circle when I see one. As long as the circle was drawn by someone with a taste for 1970s Marvel comic villains, that is.

“This circle. It’s wrong.” Greg, however, had dabbled in magic when we were in high school, so he had a lot more actual knowledge of the mystical arts than I did. Of course, a retarded orangutan that has walked through a magic shop once has more knowledge of the mystical arts that me, but that’s irrelevant.

“Nope, pretty sure it’s a circle, bro.”

“Yes, I know that. But look at these symbols.” He pointed to several scribbles and squiggles around the inside of the circle. “These should be on the outside of the circle, so that whatever was summoned into the circle couldn’t scratch them out and alter the protection of the circle.”

“What if you weren’t trying to pull something into the circle?” I asked. I really had no idea what I was talking about, and that was obvious from the odd way Greg was looking at me.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Well, couldn’t you cast the circle around you, then do your spell thingy so that whatever you summoned would be free to go get something, and you’d be safe. I mean, I guess it’s a crappy way to do something, and it’s probably not the safest thing in the world, but would it work?”

Greg’s eyes got big and he sat down on the roof with a “thud.” “I hadn’t even thought about that? That’s so awful I didn’t even think anyone would consider it. How gross.”

“What’s so bad about that? I mean, you don’t get eaten and when you send the whatever back to wherever all you have to do is erase the circle, right?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I was missing, but it looked like it was going to be bad. I hate having smart friends.

“What’s so bad about that? Really? You don’t get it?” I mentioned I hate having smart friends, right? “What’s so bad is that once you summon a whatever from wherever without a circle to bind it, then that whatever is free to do whatever it likes to whoever it wants to do it to, without you being able to banish it to anywhere, much less wherever it came from in the first place!”

“You lost me at like the second whatever, man. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if you hide in a circle and don’t bind a demon, for example, into another circle, then that demon is just set free. It can do anything it wants and you don’t have any control over it. It’ll go after the closest body, and if it can’t get to you, it’ll go after the next best thing.” Greg explained, and I started to feel a little, no a lot, sick to my stomach. Which is a nice trick since I don’t eat.

“The girls.” I said in almost a whisper.

“Yeah, the girls.” Greg agreed. “Whoever summoned the demon must have waited until they were the only ones left around, then cast the spell.”

“But how would they know they were getting the right girl?” I asked.

“I don’t think it mattered. As long as they got an innocent, which innocent they got was irrelevant.”

“So this little girl just drew the short straw?” Even with everything I’d seen, that didn’t sit right with me.

“Pretty much.” Greg was still sitting there on the roof, looking at the circle and shaking his head. I reached down to him and pulled him to his feet.

“Come on.” I said, walking toward the edge of the roof.

“Where are we going?” He asked, falling into step beside me.

“Back to the playground. I smelled something funky, and we might be able to trace this thing by the scent.”

“And I’m important to this operation how, exactly?”

“You’ve got a better nose than me, so I need you to take a whiff, tell me if it’s important, and if it is, you need to track the whatever it is to wherever it went.”

“Alright, I’ll play bloodhound, but if you try to put me in one of those stupid doggy Christmas sweaters again, I’m gonna stake you in your sleep.”

We circled around the playground a couple of times before I caught the scent again. I waved Greg over to where I had smelled it, and he took a deep breath. “Smell that?” I asked.

“Yeah, dude. Smells like vindaloo.”

“Who’s that?”