Black Knight 02 - Back in Black (24 page)

"No Scotch in FairyLand?" I asked.
 

"No, James, there are no fermented beverages at all in the lands of the Fae." He said.
 

"I wonder why that is?" I looked over at Sabrina.
 

"No you don't, you just didn't have anything witty to say." She said, not moving from right next to me.
 

"Good point." I told her.
 

We sat, and drank, and sat and drank, until finally we had polished off the bottle of Scotch as well as a twelve-pack of Miller Lite. When he finished the last of his drink, Tivernius stood, a little unsteadily, and waved a cheery farewell to all of us. He walked to the center of the room, waved his arms, and after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, conjured a portal in the air to take him home.
 

"Hey wait," I said, hopping up and running to my bedroom. I grabbed Milandra's sword and brought it back to the den. "I meant to send this back to you. I know Milandra's pretty pissed that we got Otto killed, and tell her that I'm sorry. I liked him; he was a good man. Um, fairy. Oh, you know what I mean!"
 

"I do know what you mean, James. And while you are all still forbidden from returning the lands of House Armelion under pain of death, Her Majesty did tell me that she wished you to keep this blade, should you survive your encounter with the traitor Leothandron." He reached through the shimmering hole in the air, and pulled out a plain scabbard. He slid the sword into it and presented it to me. "Use it well, James. This blade has been gone from your world for some time, but this may be the time to return it to the land of men. Be well, my friends." And with a wave and a smile, he stepped through the hole in the air, and vanished.
 

"I will never get used to seeing somebody do that." Sabrina said.
 

"You probably won't need to, babe. Since we're banned from FairyLand, not much use for portals in my living room." I said.
 

"Babe?" She asked, that one eyebrow shooting north. I tried to return the eyebrow, but without having my face pulverized I could only move them two at a time. She looked at me trying, and laughed. "Call me whatever you want, Jimmy, but for tonight, call me a cab. I'm done."
 

"Take my bed. The sheets are clean." I said.
 

"No, I couldn't. I'll cab it home." Sabrina protested.
 

"Then have to cab it all the way back here tomorrow for your car? That's silly. Go to bed. I'll be fine on the couch. I don't really sleep anyway, remember?" She started to argue more, then caught sight of Alex and Stephen watching us smiling.
 

"What?" She asked dangerously.
 

"Nothing, cousin dear. We just think it's cute." Stephen said.
 

"Think what's cute?" Sabrina asked, voice dripping with danger. I pretended to be busy getting a blanket out of the linen closet; because I didn't need to be around if she shot them. Greg took that opportunity to mutter a quiet "goodnight" to everyone and run into his room, slamming the door behind him. I guess he'd seen enough bloodshed and brutality for one night.
 

"You two have never even kissed, and you're acting like an old married couple!" Alex laughed while he said it, which might be the only thing that kept him from certain death. "Cousin, it was wonderful to finally meet you." He said as he crossed to Sabrina and gave her a big hug. In the face of his hug and big grin she couldn't even pretend to stay mad. "Now I'm going to take my husband home and put him to bed. Goodnight everyone, and thank you."
 

"Yeah, guys. We can't thank you enough." Stephen agreed.
 

"That's okay, Lenny thanked us plenty," I said, pointing at the cash on the table. We all laughed, and the guys all headed up the stairs and into the dawning light. Mike went with them, counting on his clergy bumper sticker to get him out of a Breathalyzer test. Besides, his church was close.
 

Sabrina and Stephen took a moment at the bottom of the stairs, heads close together, talking softly. When they finished, he headed upstairs with Alex and she walked back towards me, wiping at her eyes.
 

"Wanna talk about it?" I asked, holding out a bottle of beer.
 

"Not really. Family stuff. I thought you were out of beer?" She asked.
 

"We were out of guest beer. We were not out of my private stash." I smiled as I carried my blanket over to the couch.
 

Sabrina stood at the doorway into my bedroom and looked over at me, holding up her bottle. "I get to drink from the private stash?" She raised that eyebrow at me again, and I knew it was going to take me a long time to get to sleep.
 

"Detective, you can drink from whatever you want." I said with a smirk.
 

"Maybe if you play your cards right, I'll tell you the same thing someday." Sabrina said, smirking right back at me. She turned, walked into my bedroom, and closed the door.
 

<<<<>>>>

Author’s Note

As always, there are a few folks that I need to thank for helping this book come to life. First of all, a big thanks to Dallas Tanner for providing the cover art for this book. I think the cover is fun and a little creepy all at the same time, and perfectly captures the kind of silliness that the Black Knight boys are all about.
 

I also owe a thanks to Cyd Knight and Amanda Moore for helping with the preliminary proofreading for this volume. I hate proofreading, because I have the attention span of a mosquito on crystal meth, so their help was invaluable.
 

This is where I’m going to get a little socially conscious, so if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to hear anything about what a writer thinks outside the page, then you should stop reading here.
 

Okay, if you’re still around, you asked for it. I came up with the core idea of this book last summer, when I was horrified at a series of suicides by young gay men across the US. In the span of just a few months, more than half a dozen young men took their own lives as a result of bullying and teasing because of their sexual orientation.
 

That’s wrong. It sucks. It’s awful. And if I can do anything with my books to make people understand that there’s nothing wrong with being different, then I want to do that. But of course I can’t be serious for very long, so I ended up writing a (hopefully) funny book that happens to have a small subplot about a family coming back together after being torn apart by bigotry.
 

But please, if you’re a young person reading this and thinking that a fat straight hillbilly from North Carolina doesn’t know anything about being young and gay in Wherever You Are, please understand that I might not, but I still want to help.
 

And the only way I can help is to write snarky books with what I hope are honest gay characters that aren’t caricatures (regardless of the dancer stereotype), and say sincere things in the author’s notes like this. So please, understand a simple truth - it gets better.
 

Dan Savage is a brilliant columnist who much funnier than I am, and he’s also a lot more familiar with what it’s like to grow up gay in America. Last year he started the It Gets Better Project, which solicited testimonials from people from all walks of life to tell their stories. Go to www.itgetsbetter.org for more information, and some amazing stories.
 

The Trevor Project is a place where people can call in and get help if they are having trouble coming out, or dealing with being gay, or dealing with people having trouble with them being gay. If you are considering suicide, please call them or go to their website. The website is www.thetrevorproject.org and the phone number is 866-488-7386.
 

And if you have issues with someone’s sexual orientation, or weight, or color, or whatever and feel the need to make their life miserable about it - please keep an eye over your shoulder because Greg is pretty touchy about bullying, and now that he’s a super-strong, super-fast fat comic book nerd, he’s got the juice to do something about it.
 

www.itgetsbetter.org

www.thetrevorproject.org

Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance

Copyright 2010
Derek J. Canyon

“Dead dwarves don’t dance!”

Earless giggled as she crouched with her two companions, Grue and Munk, in the dark apartment.

“Quiet!” Grue ordered, clamping a meaty hand on the slight woman’s shoulder. He pushed her out of the light streaming up through the cracked and stained duropane plastic window.

“I told you we shoulda left her behind. She’s getting worse every day.” Munk shook his head, still kneeling by the window, gazing intently into the night.

“We don’t leave family behind,” Grue grumbled. “’sides, we needed three shooters to pull this.”

“And ain’t I a shooter!” Earless chuckled, neon eyes dancing in the gloom. She pointed a forefinger at Munk and clicked her thumb. “I’m a wiz bang genny shooter!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Munk muttered between his teeth, “a dumbass wackjob shooter.”

Grue bent down to look at the hyped woman. Grimy blonde hair hung in tangles behind her head, while shaved temples exposed the mangled stumps that had once been her long pointed ears. Her face was thin, her cheeks hollow and pale. Great shadows hung under active eyes that darted about, looking everywhere, the implanted neon iris rings flashing with her chaotic mood. A thick turbo patch nestled affectionately on her neck, slowly releasing the narcotic. Dirt and grime stained her red leather jacket, the lumiweave dragon on the back long since faded into obscurity. Thin silver bracelets snaked around her wrists, and a matching necklace peeked out from the tank top that tightly wrapped her skinny torso.

“Listen up, Earless. Just stay icy a few more minutes. The target’ll be here any minute, then you can zero him.”

“Not a problem, Grue. Can I take the first shot? Huh? Can I? Can I, please?” She smiled, revealing a set of perfect teeth marred only by the absence of two incisors and an upper canine – casualties of violent johns.

“Maybe. Just calm down. Why don’t you watch through that window? But stay out of sight.”

Earless made a big show of sneaking to the second window, raising long legs high and walking on her toes. This did little to dampen the sound of her hard-soled, gator-skin cowboy boots striking the floor.

“She’s gonna get us smeared, Grue,” Munk whispered to his big companion.

“Well, since she’s saved our hoops more times than I can count it’ll make us even.” His eyes narrowed menacingly at the man beside him. Even crouching, Munk’s muscular frame was impressively thick and stocky: a good friend to have in a fight. But compared to Grue’s genetically engineered bulk, he might as well have been a skinny little kid. Of course, Munk had repeatedly upped his lethality over the previous fifteen years of his criminal career. His body hid a variety of cybernetic surprises. Unfortunately, those surprises were old tech in 2134, antique cyberware that couldn’t compete with today’s new chrome.

Undaunted by Grue’s glowering, Munk pushed the subject. “That’s ancient history. Ten years ago she was hell’s own bitch. A psyker that could blast away like Satan himself. But she’s fried. When’s the last time she even tried to teekay a freaking spoon?”

Grue shot a glance at Earless and lowered his voice. “We ain’t gonna split up no matter how much you complain. We’re all that’s left.”

“Yeah,” Munk almost growled, “and we were more until she let Daksha get diced by that pack of rippers.”

Grue’s face stiffened and he pushed Munk against the wall. “Munk! The past is the past. We gotta look ahead. If we snag this job we’ll score the creds to ditch the biz. Retire to Arizona. That way we won’t end up like Daksha or any of the others.”

Munk shook off Grue’s hand with effort. “I ain’t ending up like them. Bank on it. But I still don’t like Earless being here. I don’t like this job, neither. It’s mass murder.”

“We’ve had this talk, Munk, and we agreed it was the only way to go.” Grue sighed and turned to look out the corner of the window.

“Don’t mean we can’t back out.” Munk’s voice softened. “Listen, I don’t mind smearing a few corporate security guards during a grab, but this is a massacre. They’re all innocent.”

“Nobody’s innocent and we can’t back out. Smith already forked the advance and we got the ‘ware. We don’t fade from fixers with their gear and creds.”

“No. We just murder a couple dozen innocent dwarves.”

“Damn it! Drop it and think about the payoff.” Grue swung around and stomped off across the empty room. He pushed past the unconcerned Earless and into the bathroom. “Just watch the club.”

“Yeah, right,” Munk breathed, leaning beside the window to look down at the dance club. Wetwork. He hated it, and had promised himself never to do it again after Minisoft’s ripper squad had offed Daksha during a hit. He pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket and upended it in his palm. The last Kokastik flopped out. Shaking his head, he scratched it across the stubble on his chin and puffed it to full life as the end started to glow. He bent his head back, taking in the diluted buzz of the drug, calming his nerves.