Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood (12 page)

Chapter 17

I blinked. “Um. What?”

May’s gray eyes seemed a shade or two darker in the florescent lighting of the office, and they were heavy with concern. “For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been seeing this thing in my dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?” I asked.

“Fire,” said May. “Every time, it starts with my parents’ house in San Diego. It’s on fire. The Pacific Ocean is on fire. Castle Arthur in ruins.
Guinevere
run up on rocks and broken.” She pointed at the drawing in my hand. “And that thing is always the last image I get before I wake up in a cold sweat.”

I wasn’t an expert in oneirology, but I was betting when two powerful magicians had the same recurring dream over the same time period, it meant something. This wasn’t just bad. It was apocalyptic.

“Do you know what it is?” I said.

“Never seen anything like it before.”

Madison Coburn raised her hand like a diner asking for the check. “Uh...I think I have.”

May and I spun around to stare at the young woman. She swallowed heavily, looking like she wanted to phase through the nearest wall like Kitty Pryde, but she held her ground.

“I mean, I don’t know
what
it is, but I think I recognize those symbols.” She pointed at the little gold characters that Dallas had drawn on the scarlet bands. “It’s not like I can translate it or anything, but I think they’re a type of goblin script.”

“I don’t suppose anybody can translate old goblin languages,” I said. No one volunteered, which was not at all surprising. Even most of the mountain-dwelling supes didn’t use ancient Goblin much anymore, preferring regional dialects crossbred with local human tongues.

I asked May, “Which side are the goblins on in the war?”

“Most of the tribes are officially neutral,” she said, like reciting a memorized fact. “But the Himalayans are siding with the vamps.”

I grimaced. “Of course they are.”

The goblins of the Himalaya Mountains were the most aggressive, most human-unfriendly tribes on the planet. Their queen was an ornery old biddy that hated the Table because we dared stop her from raiding nearby Nepalese settlements for food and sexual gratification. If she saw an opportunity to hurt the Round Table, while simultaneously increasing her own standing in the world she’d take it.

“Babyface Martin and his people have them under control, though,” said May. “They’re trapped in their caves—they shouldn’t be much of a factor.”

I sat down at the desk and put my head in my hands. It wasn’t fair. Like the vamps weren’t enough to deal with—now I had a potentially deadly goblin weapon in the mix? Damn, but it never rains. And the worst part was that there was nothing I could do about it—this was a job, at least at first, not for a knight, but for a scholar. We needed somebody who knew something about ancient goblin mythology, and there were very few people in the world who fit that description. With the war raging, any of them with any sense would be hunkered down in their homes or libraries. There was no one who could help.

Wait.

Yes, there was.

“I think I know someone who can help,” I said. “I have to go alone.”

“You sure about that, Dave?” May said. “It’s dark outside. Could be vamps.”

I shook my head. “This guy’s a little shy—if we come at him in force he’ll disappear—but I think he’ll talk to me.
Just
to me. Besides, it’s not like I’m going anywhere especially dangerous. Just Jersey.”

I parked the Toyota in the lot of a small elementary school in northern New Jersey. Trucks roared audibly in the distance as they crawled up and down the Turnpike like overgrown mechanical beetles. Nearby, playground equipment stood like monuments to childhood. I closed the car door with a little more force than was strictly necessary—I wanted to make sure that the inhabitant of the school knew I was coming. He wasn’t the kind of guy I thought was wise to sneak up on.

My sword wasn’t around my waist, which was bothersome. It was strange—I’d only had the thing back for a couple of days, and I was already finding myself dependent on the comforting weight at my hip. I did have the hunting knife that May had given me tucked under my jacket, though, and the switchblade was in my pocket, so that was something.

The first four doors were locked, but I got lucky on the fifth. That’s the thing about big buildings: lots of times, someone will miss a lock and you can get in without the “breaking” part of “breaking and entering.”

My boots clicked like hooves on the linoleum floor as I made my way through an empty office and into a long, deserted hallway. Roughly drawn children’s pictures were hanging along the walls outside of some of the classrooms. I stopped for a moment in front of one of them: a Crayola drawing of a humanoid creature with short limbs, long ears, and gray skin. The caption, in a childish scrawl, read “The man in the basement.” I smiled and kept moving. As I strode through the hall, I peeked into the classrooms. They were empty, which wasn’t surprising. To all appearances, I was alone in the school.

But I knew I wasn’t.

After a few more twists and turns in the hallway—I’d been in this school before, but it had been a long time ago and it was dark—I found the door I wanted. Someone had scratched an A in the wood. Signs stapled to the door announced it was “Off Limits” to any but “Authorized Personnel Only,” and that everyone should “Keep Out.”

I felt a small smile on my lips, and I pounded on the door. “Addy!” I shouted. “Open up. It’s Dave Carver.”

Then I stepped back and waited, facing the door and keeping my body as far away as possible. You don’t want to enter a goblin’s lair without permission and you don’t want to turn your back on one, either. Addy was relatively easygoing so I figured I wouldn’t need it, but I missed my sword.

There was a series of steady thumps from behind the door, the sound of heavy footsteps on stairs. A lock clicked and the door opened. Squinting at me out of a darkened stairwell was the last of the Adirondack goblins.

From a distance you could almost mistake Addy for somebody’s grandfather. He had two arms and two legs, and they were more or less in human proportions. The top of his head only came to the middle of my chest, and he hunched as he walked, making him seem even smaller. The top of his head was ringed with wiry white hair like Friar Tuck. He wore a tattered old janitor’s jumpsuit that had been repaired so many times that it was impossible to tell where the original material ended and the patches began.

But that was where the similarities to a human grandfather ended. The skin on his face and hands—which were also on human scale, except for the grotesquely long fingers—was cracked and leathery like an elephant’s, and it was colored in a complex patterns of greens and browns. His eyes were tiny, perfectly round, and coppery, like new pennies. Half a dozen gold rings pierced his ears, which were long and elfishly pointed. His cracked lips split into a facsimile of a smile when he saw me, revealing rows of short, pointed teeth.

“Hey, Addy,” I said. “Good to see you, man.”

“Carver.” Goblins can learn human languages, but their vocal systems aren’t designed for them. Addy sounded like boulders being scraped together. “How can I help you?”

“Right to business, huh?” I said. “That’s why I always liked you.”

Addy stared at me, unblinking. Goblins aren’t really big on humor. Or maybe I’m just not as funny as I think I am. Although it wasn’t like Addy didn’t have a reason to be dour. He was the sole survivor of a proud people. “Addy” wasn’t even his real name, which was an unpronounceable series of guttural syllables. It was an abbreviation for the name of his tribe: Adirondack.

For centuries his people had lived in the mountains of upstate New York. Unlike a lot of goblin tribes, they weren’t interested in bothering humans. They left humans alone, so the Round Table left them alone. That is until one day forty years ago, when a bunch of stoned hippies wandered into the goblin territory.

What happened next was the subject of great controversy in the Table. The goblins claimed that the humans had attacked them, so they were forced to defend themselves. None of the hippies survived, so we only had the goblin side of the story, but it didn’t much matter. The Round Table’s job was to protect humanity from dangerous supes, and when the Adirondack goblins killed those kids they became dangerous supes.

That war had been brief, but fierce. When the smoke cleared, most of the Adirondack goblins were dead and their caves were full of blood. A few survived, but they were all males. Goblins don’t believe in interracial marriages, so they couldn’t just breed with females from other tribes. After the Adirondack War it was only a matter of time before the whole tribe was gone.

Within thirty-five years all but three were dead. They were too old, too weak to continue living in their ancestral family homes, so the Table had stepped in to “help.” I’d been part of the team that had hiked into the mountains, picked up Addy and his brothers, and brought them down to this elementary school. (The school was built on a convergence of low-powered ley lines which allowed the Table’s magician allies to create a powerful concealment spell over the basement.) Over the last five years I’d heard through various grapevines that Addy’s two older brothers had passed on, leaving him alone.

“How’s the basement?” I asked. “Anyone ever bother you?”

“No. No one comes down.”

“That’s good. And you raid the cafeteria at night?”

“Yes.”

“Well, school food...I guess it’s better than nothing.” I forced a chuckle. “Listen, Addy, the Round Table needs your help.” The goblin’s eyes narrowed and his lips curled away from his needle teeth in a scowl.
Duh, Carver,
I thought,
of course he doesn’t want to help the organization that wiped out his family.
I hurried to add, “I need your help.”

He nodded, but he still seemed hesitant. “What can I do?”

I took Dallas’s sketch from my pocket and showed it to the goblin. “These symbols are ancient Goblin letters, right? Can you translate it?”

He studied the paper for a moment before muttering, “
Gragihigt
.”

“Uh,” I said, “what?”

“It is...a legend of my people. Sometimes it is called the ‘Death-Bringer.’”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It is called the Gauntlet of Greckhite, my people’s god of war. It is said that whoever wears the gauntlet can wield the power of Greckhite.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s not good.”

He handed me the paper. “No. It is not.”

“Any idea where to find it?”

He shook his head. “It had been lost for many centuries, if it ever truly existed.”

I folded the drawing and put it back in my pocket. “I figured it was a long shot. Thanks anyway, Addy.” I turned to leave, but stopped myself. “How you doing out here, Addy? Really, you can tell me.”

He sighed and hesitated for a moment. “I...I am lonely, Carver.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I imagine you would be. You sure I can’t convince you to leave this place? I’m sure the Table would be willing to set you up with an apartment or a condo somewhere in the city. It’d be easier for me to come and see you.”

He shook his head. “I have a...” He seemed to be struggling to remember the English word. “...a
television
. I’ve seen the news programs. I’ve seen the way your people treat each other. I would be no less alone in one of your cities. You are a
hagirite
, Carver, a noble warrior, but the rest of your people...they are dangerous. They kill and kill and kill. It is all so pointless. Do you know the ritual of
kiriga
?”

I shook my head.

“It is the last rite of my people. When a hunter nears the end of his life, he will go out into the forest, leaving a trail so that the young may follow him. If the
kiriga
is successful, the scouts will find the hunter’s body, near that of a large beast. The tribe will eat for many days on the hunter’s sacrifice.”

“So a warrior’s last act is to give up his body for his people?”

“Yes. I will die soon, Carver. My people are gone. I will not perform my
kiriga
.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling foolish.

I shook the goblin’s hand and left him alone. The last forty years of the guy’s life had sucked and he just wanted to run out the clock in peace. Couldn’t blame him for that.

The night air was cold as I stepped outside. A freezing wind howled from somewhere out east, and I zipped up my jacket. As I walked back towards the car, I thought about Addy, but I also thought about my own situation. If I didn’t find this
Gragihigt
and stop the vampires soon the human race could very possibly be joining Addy’s people in extinction.

I was caught up in these dark thoughts as I walked, which is why I didn’t see the guy coming up behind me. He punched me in the side, just below the ribs, hard enough to knock me off balance, and I tumbled to the ground.

I rolled and sprang back to my feet, the knife in my hand. I swung the blade in a tight, controlled circle at my attackers.