Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (20 page)

I dropped the fairy into his chair and sat on the edge of his desk. "Now that we're alone, I don't have to be nice."
 

"I wasn't aware that you were on your best behavior when you threatened to rip my arm off." He replied, rubbing his throat.
 

"If I wasn't on my best behavior, I wouldn't have given you the option to keep the arm." I knocked back the last swallow of his scotch, then continued. "What's your name?"

"Not that I owe you anything, vampire, but I am called Leonard."

"Okay, Lenny, who's your boss?"
 

"I am."
 

"You know I can hear your heartbeat, right? I know when you're lying." I leaned in like I was listening close. "Yup, big old fibber. Now let's try this again." I punched him in the chest, cracking a couple of ribs in the process. "Who. Is. The. Boss?"
 

He coughed hard, and rubbed his chest where I'd just left a handprint as a souvenir. "I run the show here."
 

"That's not what I'm asking," I said, as I backhanded him, hard. Both lips split and a thin line of blood arced out to splatter on the desk blotter. "I'm asking who is the boss. And I'm going to run short on time soon, because my friends don't approve of me beating people up. So stop dancing around, and just tell me what I want to know." This time I punched downward, breaking his nose and sliding it sideways across his face. Blood poured down the front of his shirt and I was really starting to have trouble not eating him when I heard him mumble something.
 

"What?" I said, yanking his head up. He grinned at me, his face a mask of blood. "What's so funny?" Having a little trouble speaking, he stretched out a hand and pointed behind me. I turned, and let his head drop as I caught sight of the monitors. The fighting was all over, with Stephen and Alex sharing a tender moment and Greg and Sabrina high-fiving. But that wasn't the only thing on the monitors, and it wasn't the most important thing, either. In the center monitor, coming through the front door, was a pair of fairies that looked like stereotypical martial arts movie bad guys. They had the long ponytails, long coats, no shirts, and most importantly, they had pistols pointed at Mike's back as he preceded them into the warehouse.
 

"Crap." I said, letting go of Lenny's ponytail. His head bobbed loosely for a second before he regained control of himself and stood up. He was recovering pretty quickly - I guess fairies do heal fast.

"Crap, indeed, vampire." He turned his head to the side and spit a gobbet of blood onto the floor. "Now I'm going to have to clean the carpets. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of carpets?"

"You should ScotchGard. And yeah, I know exactly how hard it is to get blood out of carpets. Try hardwood sometime, you never get everything out of the cracks." I got a smile out of him with that at least. Then I realized that he wasn't smiling because I was funny, he was smiling because he had a very large pistol pointed at my chest.
 

"Have you ever wondered whether anything other than a wooden stake through the heart could kill you, vampire?" He asked with a nasty grin. Then he shot me in the left leg, and I went down like a scrawny sack of potatoes.
 

I lay writhing on his floor for a minute before I looked up at him and said, "this isn't going to help with your cleaning bill."
 

"I'm pretty sure they'll give me a rate just to do the whole room." He said, still smiling, and shot my other leg, this time through the calf, because I was hunched over my thighs. It felt a lot like I'd imagined getting shot would feel. In other words it hurt. A whole lot. It felt a little bit like getting smashed in the leg with a hammer, if the hammer drove a burning coal all the way through my leg.
 

Lenny was standing over me by this point, and he used one foot to roll me over so I was lying flat on my back. He put one foot on my right shoulder to hold me in place, and then sighted along the barrel. "Now," he said, "I asked you if you'd ever wondered whether anything other than a wooden stake through the heart could kill you? I mean, legends are old, and there probably weren't guns when the legends first came about. So maybe we just need to conduct a scientific experiment. I know! I'll shoot you, right through the heart, and if you heal, then it will take a wooden stake. If you die, then the legends are wrong."
 

He stretched out his arm and I thought about how many vampire legends were wrong - garlic, holy water, churches - all that stuff dead wrong. Sunlight did in fact burn like a champ, but we'd never experimented with the stake or fire thing. Same with decapitation - we just figured those killed pretty much anything, so no reason to think we were exempt. Now it looked like I was going to find out the hard way. The greasy little fairy reached up, crunched his nose back into place, spat another big glob of blood onto my shirt, and then shot me right through the heart.
 

Chapter 30

I woke up hanging from the ceiling of the warehouse, hurting in places I wasn't even really sure were places. I tried to look around, but moving my head made me want to puke, and I thought that barfing while swinging from my wrists might be a bad idea. And it certainly wasn't going to do any favors for my poor wardrobe, which was already blood-soaked and perforated. When I was finally able to lift my head, I saw Greg hanging opposite me, with Stephen also swinging from the rafters across the room. Sabrina and Mike were tied back to back on the floor, and Alex was tied to a folding chair. All of them looked to be in some state of disrepair, and I had a brief flash of fierce pride in my friends knowing that we didn't go down easy. I heard the rumble of a crowd outside the room we were in and knew we were still backstage at fight night.
 

"Good, he's awake." Greg said. "This would be a good time to tell me you have a plan." He looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to his face, with one eye swollen shut. His mouth wasn't really working all that well, so he was a little hard to understand.
 

Before I could come up with something witty to say, Mike looked up at me and said "I'm sorry, James. I blew the whole operation. They appeared out of nowhere, and I couldn't fight them. I ruined everything, I'm sorry." Mike actually looked in the best shape of all of us, even though his face was red from shame. It looked like the bad guys hadn't wasted much energy on the humans, concentrating the beatings on Greg and me. Even Stephen looked pretty fresh, although his lip was swollen and there was a splash of blood down the front of his shirt. Sabrina was sporting the beginnings of a black eye, but otherwise just looked really mad, not badly injured.
 

"Don't sweat it, Dad. I shouldn't have had you stationary. It was dumb on my part. You and Alex should have been circling the business park, not sitting still."
 

"But another vampire would have heard them coming." He said.
 

"Yeah, but I'm kinda short on vampire friends, so I gotta go slumming with humans." I laughed at my own joke, and the laugh started a coughing fit. The coughing fit racked my chest until after about half a minute of coughing and spitting up blood I heard the plink of a piece of bullet bounce off the concrete floor. "That's better. Lead tickles when it comes up, did you know that?" I asked to no one in particular.
 

Lenny stepped out of the shadows and responded, "I've heard something about that. Well, vampire, now you know that getting shot in the heart won't kill you."
 

"Now it's time to find out if the same is true for greasy fairies." I said, spitting a gob of blood on his expensive Italian loafers. He calmly pulled a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, wiped off his shoe, and then kicked me square in the balls. My vision went white from the pain and I tried my best to curl up into a ball, which is really hard when you're hanging from your wrists with your feet dangling six inches off the floor. Who would have thought the little chump could kick so high?
 

"I think we're past insults, don't you?" He said when I was able to focus my eyes on his face again.
 

"Not at all. You're still ugly and your mother dresses you funny." This time he reached out and grabbed my calf, which apparently still had a bullet in there somewhere, because I could feel it move around as he dug his thumb into the muscle, making me scream and pass out again. When I came to again, the smarmy little fairy was still there, grinning like a cat with a spare canary.

"Now would you like to hear my proposition, or should we just trade barbs and torture all night?" Lenny asked.
 

"Which one is going to hurt more?" I asked.
 

"Well, one has the potential for great pain, while the other has the certainty."
 

"Then why don't we go for 'potential' for a change? I'd hate for you to get bored with torturing me."
 

"Oh don't give up on my account; I have a great deal of patience when it comes to torture."
 

"Oh good lord, will you get on with the witty repartee already!" Greg yelled. I shot him a look and Lenny crossed the floor to face my partner, who was putting some serious strain on the ceiling joists by hanging there.
 

"I'm sorry, vampire, I don't think anyone was talking to you."

"Oh come on, dude. We've all read the comic books. This is the point where you tell us your diabolical plan for world domination, so we can come up with some clever and unexpected way to stop you." Greg looked down at the greasy fairy and continued. "It's a formula thing, just go with it."
 

"Well, Mr. Knightwood, I hate to disappoint, but I have no aspirations to rule the world. I just want to make a lot of money. And you fine lady and gentlemen are going to help me."
 

"I doubt it, asswipe." Sabrina chimed in.
 

"Detective Law, sit there and shut up when the more evolved species are speaking. It's better for your health and you might learn something." Lenny took two long steps to where Sabrina and Mike were sitting and slapped her, hard across the mouth. She rocked back and I saw blood coming from her split lip.
 

"You done beating up humans and defenseless vampires, or are you going to prove your sexual inadequacies a little more before you make your offer?" I said.
 

He turned to me, glaring. "Here is my offer. I have a fight scheduled to take place in thirty minutes, and thanks to your interference, I am one fighter short. You have two choices: you can provide me with a fighter, or you can all die."
 

"Wait a minute; this has all been about a fight club thing the whole time?" I asked.
 

"What do you mean?" Lenny looked confused at the question.
 

"All the attacks on the fairies around town, they haven't had anything to do with species-hunting or race hatred, you've just been kidnapping people for your fights?" I said.
 

"Yes. We capture the fairies, put them in combat with the trolls, and then return them to their homes when the fights are done. It's all very civilized, and besides, most of our people who find themselves trapped in the mundane world relish the idea of showing their real selves for a change and battling with their racial enemies. It's a lovely evening out on the town for the humans, who think they are seeing spectacular special effects, and a very lucrative enterprise for everyone involved."
 

"Except the fairies." I said.
 

"Well, there are always the little people, aren't there, Mr. Black? Certainly my troll compatriots have come out of the past week somewhat the worse for wear, but you don't hear them complaining, do you?"
 

"I don't think they can string that many words together. But what's your point?" I replied.
 

"My point is that prior to your interference, we had a nice little business going. We made money, the trolls and fairies got to exercise their long-term grievances, and all was right with the world. It wasn't until you, Mr. Neal, that we had anyone resist the offer." He looked at Stephen with what seemed to be genuine confusion.
 

"I had no idea what a troll was, you idiot! I've been here my whole life! I didn't even know I was a fairy until I was twenty. Not that kind, anyway." Stephen yelled at the shorter fairy.
 

"Oh, a changeling." Lenny sneered. The way he said changeling was like it was some kind of incurable disease that just wasn't discussed in polite company. "That explains everything."
 

"Well," he continued, "that's beside the point. I need a fighter, and you need to get out of here alive. So," he clapped his hands together with a big grin. "Who wants to fight a troll in a cage match?"
 

Chapter 31

The crowd was rabid as I walked to the ring. I was dressed in clean clothes that Lenny had brought over from our place. Too bad fairies don't have the same breaking and entering restrictions as vampires. He had taken the time to feed me, and since he'd ordered his fairy ninja bodyguards to let me drink from them, my wounds had pretty much healed. I looked across the ring, and standing there with a battle-axe in each hand, was my old friend Gorton the troll. He looked pretty healed, too, and pretty grumpy with me. I was unarmed, except for my teeth and my wits, which basically meant that I was totally unarmed.