Knight Life (40 page)

    
“My dear Ronnie,” Arthur replied coolly, “you've done a marvelous job these past weeks. But this is my decision.” He raised his voice so that it carried above the noise as he declared, “Whatever the results are, good or bad, yea or nay ... we shall witness them together.”

    
Buddy called out, “Is this some kinda king or what?”

    
The cheers helped to drown out, just for a moment, Arthur's wishing that Gwen were there. He wondered if she was even in the city anymore ... if she even cared anymore, about him, or about anything.

G
WEN HAD BEEN
staying at the apartment of an old college friend, Sheila O'Shea (“If you're ever in trouble, just think S.O.S!” she'd always been fond of saying). Sheila, however, hadn't been home for a few days: not an unusual occurrence for someone who had a weakness for base players. This had suited Gwen just fine, particularly considering what she was about to do.

    
She had cleared a space in the middle of the apartment, and drawn a large pentagram on the floor. White candles were set to burn at each of the five points. Gwen made one final check to make sure that the chalk line was uninterrupted and unbroken. Then she sat on the floor outside the pentagram and opened the
Carpathian
book to a marked place.

    
“Two can play at this game,” she said softly.

    
She prepared herself, took a deep breath, and started to speak words, old, ancient and—to her—incomprehensible. Outside, the thunder and lightning worsened, and she wondered whether it was just coincidence or whether she was somehow causing it.

    
She continued the incantation, and slowly she held up a piece of cloth. She had no idea what impulse had prompted her to keep it with her since she'd ripped it off the clothing of the demon waiter who had taken Merlin. But kept it she had. She spoke the words, being careful not to stumble over any of them. “Take your time,” the man in the store had cautioned her. “There is no consequence for taking your time and saying them correctly; however, if you rush and speak them incorrectly, the results can be nasty.”

    
She held the cloth tightly, continuing to speak the words. And now it seemed to her as if the words were taking on a life of their own. She no longer had to avoid stumbling over the words; they flowed through her. The cloth began to glow, then became hotter and hotter. She was almost through the spell, and she had to hold on to the cloth until she had completed it, but it was getting more difficult to hold on to with each passing moment. She got to the last words just as she shrieked, unable to hold the cloth anymore, and it practically flew out of her hand.

    
The air within the pentagram shimmered, bent back on itself, and the demon materialized in the heart of it. It was brown and scaly, like a gargoyle come to life, and it took one look at Gwen and lunged at her with a roar. There was a sound like nails raking chalkboard, and the demon slammed to a halt, crashing into the edges of the pentagram, confined by the eldritch power of the mystic shape she had drawn on the floor. As long as Gwen did nothing to break the line, the demon could not emerge.

    
It glared at her with primeval fury. “Lady, you don't know what you're screwing with.”

    
“I've got a pretty good idea,” she shot back calmly. She was already flipping through the pages to another place she had marked in the book. She found it and started speaking.

    
The demon stiffened, recognizing it immediately.
“Stop it! That's a binding spell! You . . .” Quickly he adopted a pleading tone. “You don't want to be doing that . . . you . . .”

    
She didn't listen. Instead she hurried through the spell. Upon her speaking the last words, the demon sank to the floor in frustration. “Say it,” she told him.

    
“Damn you.”

    
“Say it,”
she repeated.

    
“I am bound, I am bound, I am bound,” snarled the demon. “What wilt thou?”

    
“I need you to take me to Morgan.”

    
“Ohhhh, you don't want to go to Morgan,” said the demon. There was something that sounded like genuine panic in his voice.

    
“Oh, yes,” said Gwen. “I do. I do want to go to Morgan. And you'll take me there.”

    
“But she'll kill me! And then she'll kill you.” The demon tried to strike a conversational tone. “Let's talk about this sensibly. We're caught in circumstances here. No sense both of us dying, right? So let me kill you quickly and painlessly, and at least one of us can go on living.”

    
“And where does that leave me?” said Gwen.

    
“Always in my heart,” he assured her.

    
“Nice try,” said Gwen. “Take me to her. Now!”

    
“I can't!” He was genuinely afraid. She'd almost have felt sympathy for him if the circumstances had been otherwise. “She'll kill me, I swear!”

    
“You should have thought of that before you kidnapped Merlin.”

    
“Please! Please, you . . . you're an amateur! You don't know what you're getting into! She'll . . . she'll pick you apart like an insect! And me, the things she'll do to me! When I took Merlin, that was the closure of my service to her! I was
so
looking forward to free agency! And now you come along and bind me with a piece of personal possession that you lucked into, and you're going to put me up against her, and it's not fair! It's not fair! I
don't . . . I . . . I . . .” The demon suddenly started to breathe rapidly.

    
Gwen looked down at it frantically. “What the hell is it now?”

    
“I'm—” The demon gasped repeatedly. “I'm hyperventilating.”

    
“Yeah, right . . . this is a stupid
trick
, isn't it?”

    
“I swear! I swear it isn't!”

    
“You swear? Demons lie like humans breathe!”

    
Except even she had to admit that it didn't look like he was lying. He was flat on the floor, his chest continuing to rise and fall rapidly. “A-hunh! A-hunh! A-hunh!”

    
“Oh, Jesus Christ in the foothills. Wait here.”

    
She went into the kitchen, grabbed a paper bag, walked back to the out-of-breath demon and extended her hand across the pentagram. It was only at that instant that she realized, in doing so, she was breaking the circle.

    
Instantly the demon vaulted out of the enclosure, slamming Gwen to the floor. The two of them went down in a tangle. She wanted to let out a shriek of alarm, but her throat was constricted with terror. The demon clawed at her.

    
No, he clawed past her, snagging the paper bag from her hand, rolled off her, and brought it up to his mouth. He breathed in and out rapidly, the bag inflating and deflating. Gwen sat up, staring at him, as he managed to get out, “Sorry” while breathing into the bag.

    
“Don't mention it,” Gwen managed to say. She watched him until his breathing slowed to a normal level and then said, “Uhm, you want to lie down or something? I've got some Xanax in the bathroom.”

    
“Sure, sure, thanks,” he said. She went to get it and, when she returned a few moments later, she found him lying on the couch. She leaned over the demon and proffered him a Xanax and a cup of water. The demon waved off the water and simply gulped down the tranquilizers.
Then he lay back full on the bed and tried to calm down. “I'm . . . I'm sorry—”

    
“Be quiet. Just get yourself together.” She shook her head. “All the demons in the world and I get one who goes hyper in tense situations.”

    
“Look!” said the demon. “There's demons and there's demons.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “We're all pretty much alike to you mortals, like you're pretty much all alike to us. Some of us just handle tension better than others. Besides, you're not exactly Miss Tough-as -Nails either. Look at you. Your hands are shaking. Your eyes are glazed.”

    
“Of course they are,” snapped Gwen. “I haven't slept for days now. I've been gathering things, working, studying, reading, running around like a lunatic, going everywhere I could to find what I was looking for. I've been cramming for this confrontation with you . . . and with her. I'm so loaded with uppers, I have to wear lead weights on my belt to keep my feet on the floor.”

    
“Oh, dear.”

    
“You bet your ass, Oh dear.' “

    
The demon regarded her with open curiosity. Gwen had pulled her strawberry blonde hair back in a tight bun. She wore a tight-fitting black sweater, black slacks, and black shoes. “You're not at all the way I remember you, or the way Morgan described you. You were a cream puff.”

    
“Cream puffs get stale fast.” She had pulled out her skull-headed knife from a sheathe strapped to her leg. It made her feel a little better, waving it around. “Come on, up. Let's go. Let's move it.”

    
The demon nodded slowly. “My name's Morty,” he said. “I just think I should warn you . . . there's a price—”

    
“In dealing with demons, yeah, I know. Considering my life up until now, it'd be hard for me to tell when some sort of karmic backlash hits me.”

    
“Trust me, you'll know,” he said darkly.

    
“And you're warning me of this, why?”

    
“Because, you seem like a nice person. And I don't run into many of those.” He glanced at the candles. “You even used white ones instead of black. It's just a nice change of pace. You, uhm . . . you sure I can't just kill you now? Save us both some—?”

    
She waved the dagger in the vicinity of his throat.

    
“No, I didn't think so,” he sighed. Morty stood and weaved slightly from side to side.

    
“What is it now?”

    
“That tranquilizer—I'm feeling really woozy.”

    
“Well, let's get moving before you get too woozy to do anything useful.”

    
The demon walked over to her, raised his arms and said, “Hold me around the waist.”

    
Gwen complied. Her face against the demon's back, she said, “Is this necessary for me to be transported with you?”

    
“Not at all,” said the demon. “But I get off on it.”

    
Before Gwen could reply, they vanished in a puff of black smoke.

A
LL EYES IN
the ballroom were riveted on reporter Louise Simonson, standing out in the rain near a polling place, looking a bit bedraggled as she said, “With the polls closed barely an hour ago, the first returns are coming in. And it looks right from the start that the all-important mayoral race is going to be tough to call. With prevoting surveys indicating that Kent Taylor's numbers are practically nonexistent, the battle between Keating and Penn has narrowed, as we wait to find out whether swing or undecided voters will go with the feisty Republican or the genuinely original Independent.”

    
Ronnie patted Arthur on the shoulder. “Genuinely original beats feisty any day.”

    
“I hope you're right,” Arthur said softly. All around, campaign workers were piling food on paper plates, battening
down for a long night. Outside rain hammered against the windows.

    
“Yup, looks like it's going to be a tough race to call,” continued Ronnie, and then he walked off, leaving a confused Arthur.

    
Arthur turned to Percival. “To call what?”

    
“It's a bizarre phenomenon, Sire,” said Percival. “All the stations want to be the first to announce a winner. So over the years they've started predicting who the winner will be earlier and earlier in the evening. Sometimes with as little as one percent of the vote tabulated.”

    
“Really?” asked Arthur, fascinated. “One percent? But that sounds so insane. I mean . . . isn't that the equivalent of going up to a crowd of a hundred people, picking one person, getting his opinion, and assuming that the rest of the crowd can have their opinions guessed at from this one chap?”

    
Percival smiled. “It's more scientific than that, highness.”

    
“Oh.” Arthur nodded. “Science. Incomprehensible. Give me magic any day.”

    
He sat there, fidgeting with his hands. “Nervous, your highness?” asked Percival finally.

    
“We fought the good fight, Percival. Whatever happens, happens. I wish Merlin were here.”

    
“What about Gwen?”

    
He didn't reply . . . possibly because he wasn't sure.

C
HAPTRE

THE
T
WENTY-SECOND