Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles) (16 page)

I leaned my head against the door, trying to get my breathing to slow to something resembling normal. I must have stood there motionless for a full minute before I heard the sound of people behind me. People breathing and rustling around uncomfortably, then the sound of someone stifling a laugh. Then came another, then another, then someone couldn’t stifle it anymore and burst out laughing. First a polite little chuckle, then a titter, then a chortle, then a guffaw, then peals of laughter rolled over my back like a hailstorm. Each laugh hit me between the shoulder blades like a knife, because the second I opened my eyes and looked down I knew exactly who and what they were laughing at.

When I’d walked, or run screaming like a little girl, into the dining room, I’d been wearing my normal investigate-and-probably-kill-things wardrobe. That consists of a long black leather duster, jeans, a black T-shirt with a comic book character on it (Neil Gaiman’s Death this time), a shoulder holster with my Glock 17, an ankle holster with my Ruger LCP, and a pair of motorcycle boots. And boxer briefs for the intimately curious. When I opened my eyes after deciding that I wasn’t going to have a heart attack after being chased by giant spiders I saw something out of the ordinary. At least, out of the ordinary since I stopped going to college parties, and it became almost impossible for me to get blackout drunk.

I was naked. Not just missing an article of clothing or two. I was butt-naked standing in a formal dining room with what sounded an awful lot like a table full of people laughing at my skinny freckled butt. I turned slowly around, and the dining room had transformed from an empty, dusty, nasty shell of a formerly glorious place to a spectacular hall of culinary delights, complete with loaded table circled with guests. And by guests, I mean everyone who ever disapproved of me in my life. Anna was there, smirking at my hands clasped in front of my groin. She sat next to my middle-school principal, Mr. Whiteside, who told me time and again that I would amount to nothing in my life because of my flexible relationship with punctuality and attendance. Beside him was my Uncle George, who always thought that I went to Clemson for college because I couldn’t get into the University of South Carolina. No matter how many times I told him I never applied to Carolina, he always bashed me for my choice of colleges.

Next to Uncle George was a string of girls stretching from middle school through the college girls I’d dated before I died. Every one of them giggled and pointed at my skinny frame. No small number of them had done the same thing in real life, leading to a series of unpleasant dates and a few downright disastrous ones. They were followed in the hit parade by Mickey Rogers, the guy who beat me up every day in fourth grade and stole my lunch. Next to Mickey was Jacob Riley, the guy who beat me up in sixth grade. Then there was Thomas Evers, who kicked my ass all through eighth grade. I never got beat up in odd-numbered years, or at least not enough to remember.

Anyone who had ever ridiculed or demeaned me was sitting around one fancy-dress dinner table, watching me clutch my jewels with both hands and scurry through the room butt-naked. As bad as the moment was, cavorting naked in this dining room wasn’t the most humiliating event of my life, which says a lot of unpleasant things about my life. But naked cavorting definitely made the top five. I reached the far door and yanked it open, ducking through and only caring the slightest bit about what was on the other side. Until it tried to kill me.

THAT’S THE STORY of my life, right? I barrel through the world yanking open doors and never thinking about what might be on the other side until it tries to shove a stake through my heart. Which is exactly what happened when I got through the door and slammed it shut, leaning my back against the door with my eyes closed. I heard the creak of a floorboard directly in front of me and opened my eyes just in time to see a stake headed for my chest. I dropped straight down onto my heels and then exploded up, launching myself at my attacker’s midsection. He folded like a cheap suit, and I dumped him on his ass a few feet away. I stepped quickly back to give myself some room to work, happy to find myself clothed again, then froze at what I saw.

Lying on the floor in full vampire hunter regalia was the spitting image of Van Helsing. Or at least what I imagined Van Helsing would look like if he was alive today. He was taller than Hugh Jackman, but he had the leather duster, big hat, and flowing shirt going on. He was dressed all in black, with a closely trimmed beard and flowing dark hair. He put his hands back beside his head and performed a flawless kip-up to land on his feet, then lashed out at me with a vicious kick to my head. I ducked back just in time, a little stunned at the speed of the vampire hunter.

My surprise morphed into outright concern when he drew a pair of long silver daggers and came at me faster than any human had a right to be. I looked around me, taking in my surroundings for the first time, and realized I stood in an old-fashioned kitchen. I reached over to the cast-iron stove and grabbed a black iron skillet to use as a shield. I swatted away several of the hunter’s strokes, but he was always advancing. I batted him aside time and again, but he kept coming.
So this is how most people feel about old age
, I thought as I dodged another thrust.
Inexorable and sobering.
I managed to get a punch or two in myself, but never connected with any strength behind it. The one good shot I got in, Van Helsing got one of his knives up and dug a deep furrow into my forearm.

I drew back my bleeding arm and said, “This is my favorite jacket, asshole. You’re gonna have to pay for that.”

“Let’s see how much you worry about fashion when your head is hanging on my bedpost, bloodfiend.”

I blanched a little at the image. “Dude, you are the worst interior decorator in the world.” He had me pinned in a corner, with a refrigerator on one side and the stove on the other. Only a massive butcher’s block separated the two of us, and he grinned as he sheathed his knives.

“You think that’s a good idea, putting away your weapons in the middle of a fight?” I asked, secretly very relieved that he’d put the knives away. That cut on my arm
hurt
, and the silver meant that it wasn’t going to heal very quickly. All my relief washed away in a tidal wave of fear when he picked up the butcher’s block and swung it at my head. That thing must have been two feet in all directions and weighed a couple hundred pounds. I ducked, and a whole swath of cabinetry turned to splinters. I turned my duck into a forward roll and dove under his outstretched arms before he could regain his balance, and came up behind the hunter.

I put one hand on each side of his head, and with a quick twist of his neck, dropped his lifeless body to the kitchen floor. Van Helsing lay on the tile with his head facing the wrong way, and I reached down and relieved him of his jacket. I shrugged into the stolen leather duster and grinned. After all, he’d sliced mine open, so it was only fair. I looked around and saw two exits to the kitchen—one back the way I’d come and another one that looked like it led out into the backyard. I decided against walking back through the dining room and risking my clothes again. I turned the knob leading outside.

But instead of stepping out into the Market, or anyplace else for that matter, I stepped into my living room back home. Abby was standing in front of me, and it was all I could do not to throw my arms around her and kiss her adorable little vampire face.

“Abby! I am so glad to see you! Something crazy is going on here, and we gotta find Anna and get the hell outta Dodge.”

I reached out to her, but Abby slapped my hand away. “It’s not going to work, Jimmy. I’m really out of here this time. I’m tired of making up my mind just to get called back into another one of your schemes. I’m moving in with Greg, and there’s nothing you can say to stop me.” She turned and walked out the door, slamming it hard enough to rattle the glass on her way out.

I turned around a couple of times calling out for Greg, then Sabrina, but I was completely alone. I wandered through the house looking for someone to explain what the hell was going on, but there was no one there. No one. All of Abby’s stuff was gone, all of Greg’s stuff was gone, even the stuff of Sabrina’s that she’d taken to leaving at our place was gone. The bottle of scotch I kept on the bar for Mike was even gone! I was completely alone, and I had no idea how to get back to my friends or how to rescue the kidnapped humans from the Dream King.

I heard a creak on the stairs and heard a
whoosh
as something heavy swung toward my head. I dove out of the way, then spun around and launched myself into my attacker. I heard a
“Whoof!”
from above me as I buried my shoulder in the other guy’s gut. A fairly large gut, to be sure. I shoved the stake-wielding fatty off me and took a good look at who was trying to kill me this time. And almost ended up decapitated when I froze. It was Greg. My partner and best friend was trying to kill me.

He would have, too, if my self-preservation instincts hadn’t outweighed my shock at the situation. He dropped the katana he was swinging at my throat, then stepped in and jabbed with a stake. Because I’m a lot faster than Greg I was able to get an arm up quick enough to block. I didn’t manage to block the punch to the ribs that he followed up with, and I heard something crack low in my chest. Greg had always been stronger than me, and whatever rage was fueling him now had him jacked up beyond his normal strength. I staggered from the punch to the ribs, and he caught me on the side of the head with a looping roundhouse punch that would have killed a human. As it was, I spun completely around and went weak in the knees for a second. The only thing that kept me alive was the fact that I knew his style. I knew that Greg always follows up that right with an uppercut designed to finish the fight right there. Against an opponent who doesn’t know it’s coming, the uppercut usually does the job. But I did know it was coming, so I stepped inside his punch and blocked it with a forearm.

“What the hell, bro?” I exclaimed as I danced back out of my partner’s reach.

“You’re out of hand, pal. All your talk about being the ‘apex predator’ has gone to your head. You’re killing things just to satisfy your bloodlust. You’ve turned into the monster we’re trying to protect people from, and I’ve gotta put you down.” He threw another punch at my head, but I knew the move was a patented Greg feint. I batted the attempt aside and spun out of the way of his follow-up strike with the stake. A quick kick lashed out at my midsection, allowing me to trap his foot in the crook of my elbow.

“Greg, this is nuts. I’m the same guy I’ve always been. What are you talking about? Today I might have killed a goblin or twelve, but they totally count as monsters. And they were eating us!”

Then it clicked. Greg was still in Milandra’s palace, recuperating. He was too injured to travel and had to drink faerie blood every couple of hours to rebuild his leg muscles. So how was he here trying to stake me? Simple answer—he wasn’t. Fake Greg threw another punch at my face, and I caught his arm. Now that I knew it wasn’t really Greg and was probably just a figment of my imagination, I didn’t have to play nice anymore. I pulled hard on the arm, and twisted while I yanked. I planted a foot in the creature’s chest for leverage, and after a few seconds, the arm came off with a wet ripping sound. I swung my improvised club around my head a couple of times, then made a “come here” gesture to the bleeding thing that was masquerading as my partner.

At least I really hoped it was a thing masquerading as my partner. Otherwise I was going to have to open every jar of peanut butter in the house for the rest of eternity.

I was right, because the air shimmered, Greg vanished, and the room we had been fighting in was suddenly the inside of a tent, very similar to the other tents in the Market. I was lying on a blanket on the floor, and I was covered in a cold blood-sweat from head to toe. Sitting in a chair on a small dais was a wizened little man with big ears and a couple of tufts of white hair dancing around his head. He saw me looking at him and began to do that really irritating slow clap thing that people do when you’ve figured something out, but they still want to make you feel obtuse about it.

“Well done, Mr. Black. You found me out. None of it was real, not even the icky-wicky widdle spiders.” He grinned at me, and I worked really hard at not lunging up to punch his nose out through the back of his skull. I slowly got to my feet, shaking my head to clear the last of the cobwebs.

“Where are my friends?”

“Well, they haven’t figured it out quite as quickly as you did. And they aren’t having a particularly good time in my dreamland.” He gave me a vicious grin and pointed to where Anna and Abby lay writhing on blankets. They both looked like they were trapped in their worst nightmares, which thinking back to what I’d just left, I supposed they were.

“Let them wake,” I demanded, taking a step forward.

The little man held up a warning finger. “Ah-ah-ahhh. You behave yourself, or their dreams might take a turn for the worse. And you know what they say happens to you when you die in a dream, right? You die in real life.”

“I’ve been dead for a while. It’s not so bad. Now let my friends go.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I wring your scrawny neck, Yoda.” I stalked to the dais and put a hand on each side of the little man’s head. As soon as I touched him, he vanished in a flash of light and a puff of smoke.

I heard a cackling laugh float through the air, and the obnoxious little man’s voice came back to me. “It’s not that easy, Mr. Black. You don’t get to steal my dreams without a fight!” I felt a breath on the back of my neck, and turned to see an ogre standing there dripping sweat and spoiling for a fight.

I looked up, up, and up at the beast, a twin to the one we’d fought in the chef’s tent. It reached out with a furry paw, and I ducked, lashing out with a kick to one knee. I bounced off, my foot hitting the beast in the leg and launching me backward instead of doing any damage to the ogre. I landed flat on my back in the center of the tent, and the ogre stalked me while I scurried around backward like an oversized crab. It stomped at my head, and I flipped over, jumping to my feet and running for the tent opening. The tent opening that oddly enough was no longer there. I turned back to the ogre and racked my brain for some weak spot in the creature. I saw nothing, just a big beastie with visions of picking its teeth with my shinbones.

Then it hit me—a vision. That’s all any of this was, a vision. A dream. It wasn’t real, it was all a dream. And if I could take control of the dream, I could take control of the ogre. It swung a huge fist at my head again, and this time instead of ducking I thought as hard as I could about being more powerful, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t going to hurt, and I just stood there. I planted my feet and stuck out my chest, and the ogre’s fist bounced off my jaw like a spitball.

The ogre’s eyes widened, and I looked way up at its stunned face. “I’d run now if I were you,” I said, and made a shooing motion with my hands. The ogre turned and dashed through the side of the tent, leaving a cartoon outline of its body where it went through the tent wall.

“Very good, Mr. Black. Very good. But you aren’t out of the woods yet. You must still match wits with me, and I fear you are inadequately armed for that particular battle.”

The little man stepped out of the blackness right in front of me, and I smiled down at him. “I don’t have to be strong enough or smart enough to beat you, chump. She already is.”

I pointed over the Dream King’s shoulder at where Anna stood, her glowing blue hands held high above her head. She leveled her fists at the little man, and beams of pure magic shot from her hands and enveloped the little manipulator. He let out a scream as the blue fire enveloped him, and the tent flickered back into reality. The Dream King flung out his arms, and I watched as the fire flickered behind his eyes, rolled across his face, and finally covered his entire body in a flickering blue shimmer. The blue light flickered around him for long seconds, then a black fog began to ooze from his eyes and mouth. The smoke coalesced into a floating ball of blackness that hung in the air above the Dream King for a moment, then swirled in on itself until it finally winked out of existence. The little man’s eyes opened wide within the nimbus of blue, then he floated up into the air about a foot, finally falling heavily to the dirt. He lay there stunned for a long moment before sucking in a deep breath and rolling over onto his knees. The little man gave Anna a terrified look and bolted from the tent.

“What did you do to him?” I asked the witch, who had sunk heavily onto a stool as soon as the Dream King fled.

“I burned out his magic. He’ll never use his power to harm anyone again. Because he doesn’t have any power left.”

“Wow. That’s pretty harsh,” I said, poking around the tent looking for a back room.

“Especially since his magic was what had kept him alive for the last couple thousand years. He’ll probably be dead before the sun sets.” She put her elbows on her knees and sank her face into her hands. I patted her on the shoulder in what I hoped was an encouraging fashion. I knew what it felt like the first time you crossed a line, and how much easier it got every time you crossed it afterward. It was the kind of thing I tried not to dwell on, but something I hoped Abby would realize before she was too far over the line. Anna patted my hand in a kind of thanks, and I stepped away to give her a moment alone.

I stepped over to where Abby was lying. She was still out, but she wasn’t thrashing around like before Anna took out the Dream King.

I reached for her, but Anna caught my arm. “Leave her. She’ll come out of it on her own now, but you should let her find her own way back.” I nodded and moved to check out the rest of the tent. My super-hearing could detect more people breathing, I just needed to find them.

I kept poking around, finding more and more vile substances in jars, books with indecipherable writing on the covers and human body parts labeled with uses I didn’t want to know. Finally, in a back corner behind a stack of boxes, I found what I was looking for.