Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles) (12 page)

I CAME TO WITH a raging headache, a throbbing ache in my wrists, needles of ice all up and down my arms, and what felt like hot pokers being jabbed into my shoulders. And
then
I realized the screaming pain in my left bicep. I shook my head to clear it, and a wave of nausea bubbled up from around my toes and swept over me like a tsunami. I choked down the bile and blinked my crusty eyes open. I was chained to a big
X
of timbers in another tent. My arms were supporting most of my weight, which explained the pain in my shoulders. I got my feet under me and tried to turn my head far enough to the side to see what was holding me. I turned to the right and saw exactly what I expected to see—sturdy rope with a thin silver chain twined around it, effectively sapping all my strength. I looked over to the left, expecting to see the same thing there, and had to fight the vomit down again when I got a good look at my arm.

The little bastards had cut my arm off! Not really, my arm was still there, but the bicep muscle was gone! My arm had been butchered while it was still attached, and I could see all the way to the bone. And bone was about all that was left. My bicep, tricep, and forearm muscles had been stripped away as clean as you please, leaving white bone and a few fibrous ligaments holding the pieces together. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a reedy croak.

“Good morning, sunshine. Glad you could join us.” Greg’s voice came from behind me. My head snapped up at the sound, and I returned to trying not to vomit.

“Don’t puke,” he warned. “They’re not much for cleaning us up around here, unless we barf on a piece they want to cook.”

“What the hell happened? What are they doing to us? They cut my friggin’ arm off!” I could hear my voice going up into squeaky thirteen-year-old-boy territory, but I couldn’t help it.

Greg’s voice came back to me, and the calm in his voice helped me keep myself together. “Chill, bro. They didn’t cut your arm off, they just cut all the meat off your arm. There’s a difference.”

“Yeah? You wanna point out exactly what that difference might be?”

“You won’t like it.”

“I’m tied to a cross with silver chains and my arm’s been chopped up like sushi. I don’t think I like much right now.” I shook my head again and spat out a mouthful of bile.

“The meat will grow back once we feed. If they’d just cut off the arm, it wouldn’t.” All of a sudden, I got it. All the pieces fit, from the chef yelling that he wanted us alive, to cutting out the muscle and not the ligaments.

I took a ragged breath and hissed to Greg. “We totally just became the lunch special, didn’t we?”

“And probably dinner, and I’d even bet we’re part of the Goblin Breakfast Burrito, too.”

“Of course. Since our muscle tissue grows back, they don’t have to buy fresh, or even rotten meat anymore. They just cut us up carefully and we’re a renewable resource.”

“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” I muttered.

“Don’t forget regenerate. You gotta respect a goblin who runs a green kitchen, and keeps his overhead low to boot,” Greg added.

“You got a plan yet?” I asked.

“Not a clue. You?”

“I just figured out that I was an entrée. Gimme a couple seconds.” Of course that’s when the grinning green lardball of a chef decided to waddle back in, grinning with all sixty-some teeth.

“How are my prizes doing today? I brought you some din-din!” He held up a bucket, tipping it forward to show the blood within. He jammed a straw between my lips and held the bucket up to my face. I tried to turn my face to the side but he grabbed my chin with his fleshy mitt and held my face to the bucket. I smelled the rich metallic scent of the blood and started to drink. I could feel the strength flowing into me from the rich liquid until the silver sapped it right out of me, leaving me helpless again. I drank and drank, the lukewarm blood coursing down my throat and flowing into all my muscles, rebuilding the destroyed arms and regenerating the missing flesh. I finally let go of the straw and looked over at my arm, watching in horror as the muscles spun out of my arm like threads, twining around themselves, fastening to the tattered ligaments and bones, regrowing the skin, and then inflating it like a balloon.

“We’ll regenerate faster if you bring us something better than pig’s blood, you know,” I said when I was able to tear my eyes away from the disgusting sight of my arm growing back.

The chef was holding the bucket up to Greg’s face now, and my partner was trying to drink enough to grow back his right calf muscle. “I don’t think so, fangboy. I don’t want you getting back any more strength than my little silver bands can keep under control. Abdullah, get over here!” Chef yelled over his shoulder, and a lean goblin with a narrow face and slightly paler green skin darted into the tent. This new goblin wore a belt with a startling array of knives dangling from it, everything from tiny scalpels and art knives to a Bowie knife almost the length of his arm.

Abdullah stopped in front of me and drew a pair of knives from his belt. In one hand he held a wicked short blade that curved back to a vicious-looking point. In the other he held what looked like a fillet knife that my dad used to clean fish with. He grinned at me, showing all his teeth at once and said, “This might hurt. A lot. But only if I do it right.” Then he sliced across my regrown bicep with the short knife, making two quick deep cuts across the arm. Once he’d slashed me to the bone at the elbow and inside my shoulder joint, he switched hands and used the thin knife to make long cuts lengthwise, sliding the blade right along the bone and sending a screech of blade on bone through my ears and every nerve ending in my body.

I managed to keep from screaming until the fillet knife went in, and managed to remain conscious for almost the entire butchering procedure. I only passed out when he took the bicep muscle, held it up in front of my face and gave the raw edge of the muscle a long lick. His beady eyes fluttered shut, and he gave a contented sigh. That’s when I passed out.

I came to sometime later, and looked over at my arm, at the ligament and bone it had become again. A few tendrils of muscle fiber tried valiantly to reattach to something. This time I felt a screaming pain in my right arm, too. Without looking, I knew I’d been filleted on both arms this time.

“Greg, you there?” I whispered.

“Barely,” his voice wasn’t a whisper, but it sounded like he was using every bit of strength just to speak.

“What did they cut off you?”

“They peeled both arms, cut off both calves and one quad.”

“That’s the big muscle in the leg, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. They nicked an artery in my leg and had to stop. Apparently our circulatory systems still work, which came as a surprise to me and our captors.”

“Why wouldn’t they work? We still survive on blood, right?”

“Jimmy, you do know there’s a difference between drinking blood and a transfusion, right?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess it’s magic, then.”

“Yep, we’re made by elves, just like the cookies.” Greg giggled a little, and I could tell he was goofier than normal because of the pain.

“So . . .” I started. “About that plan for escape?”

“I was hoping you had one.”

“Nah man, that’s your gig. Remember? I get us into stupid situations, and you get us out of them. Well, I did my part. Now it’s time for you to step up. Use that overstuffed head of yours for something other than a hat rack and get us out of here. You think it up. I git ’r done.”

“Sorry, pal. I got nothing.” Greg fell silent, and after a few seconds I could hear him snore lightly. I’ve never understood how in the hell a guy who doesn’t breathe can snore, but that falls into the category of “things I’ll worry about when I’m not in imminent danger of death.” I tested my bonds again, but I was tied tight. No matter what Abdullah cut off my forearm, he always left enough meat on my wrists to keep me bound. Then I had an idea. It sounded terrible even in my head, but I was out of options.

I took a deep breath and shoved my arm forward as hard as I could, into the rope holding me upright. The bonds cut into my wrist at first, but enough blood had soaked into the rope to give it a little stretch, and after just a few seconds I’d shoved my forearm through the loops, which now hung loosely against the bloody bones of my lower arm. I had just a little extra room to maneuver, so I twisted, tugged, and generally tried to contort my way out of the bonds without giving the silver chain too much contact with my exposed bones and flesh. Everywhere it touched it burned like lemon juice on a paper cut—only a thousandfold. I pulled and twisted and yanked and stretched and cursed and wept for several long minutes before I realized I was getting nowhere and sagged against the rope, held fast by expert goblin knots and my own stupidity.

I hung there, defeated, for what seemed like an eternity until the chef came back into the tent. He took a look at my forearm and said, “That must have hurt.”

“Like a sonofabitch,” I replied. Chef motioned at the goblins behind him, and a pair of lackeys came forward. One held a stake over my heart with a mallet while the other untied my wrist and rebound me to the cross.

Chef came over to me with the bucket I tried to resist, but a nod from the chef to the goblin with the stake set the little bastard to scraping along the bones in my arm with his knife. After about three seconds of that blinding agony I resigned myself to drinking, and reached out with my tongue for the straw. Chef grinned as he watched my flesh regenerate, then moved around behind me to feed Greg.

I decided to give my stellar negotiating skills one more shot. “You know we weren’t alone when we came in here. Our friends will be here for us any minute now.”

Chef laughed, a deep belly laugh that made me feel really bad about the prospects of my rescue. “You mean the lizard? The lizard is well known to us. He’s a decent purchase most days, but he doesn’t stay bought. You paid him in promises, I paid him in three bowls of stew and an all-you-can-eat voucher for his next visit. That little bastard was so stuffed when he left that his belly hung lower than his feet. He had to lift his gut with his forelegs to walk out of my tent! So I don’t think you’ll be getting any rescue from him. No, Sanguine, you’re here until I decide that free vampire isn’t tasty any longer. And I love the taste of free.”

“At least tell us where you were getting the humans from. We came here trying to rescue them. It’s not like we wanted to disrupt your business, we just wanted to—”

“You just wanted to steal away the main ingredient for my stew!” Chef came around to face me again. “For that I should gnaw hunks out of your buttocks and make you sit in a salt bath! I should drain you dry and feed you vampire blood! I should peel every inch of skin from your body and paint you with acid! Then I should regenerate you and do it all over again! This is my livelihood, bloodfiend, and I deserve to make a living just like every other goblin in the Market!”

“But these are
people
, Chef! Just like you and me! Well, maybe not
just
like you and me, but people regardless! And you’re killing them and chopping them up for soup stock. How is that right?”

“I’m not killing anyone, moron. I buy my meat fresh, but not
that
fresh. This isn’t a slaughterhouse, you know.”

“Coulda fooled me,” Greg said from behind me.

“Shut up! What kind of monster do you take me for, Sanguine? I told you, I get the human meat in on a daily delivery from my supplier, and it’s dead when it gets here. Well, mostly dead, anyway.”

“What do you mean, mostly dead?”

Chef opened his mouth to answer, then all hell broke loose.

I’M NOT RIGHT often, and usually it happens by accident. Like now. In my bluff to the chef, I’d inadvertently told him a truth. Our friends really were on the way to rescue us, but it wasn’t Marty. Or at least, it wasn’t
just
Marty. He darted into the tent, jumped up and down with his head-ridge twitching for a second then ducked back out. I heard him shout something unintelligible, and fervently hoped that it was a call to the cavalry. It was.

Sabrina, her cousin Stephen, Anna, and Abby burst into the back of the tent guns blazing. Or actually, swords and hands blazing mostly. Stephen held my sword, the one I’d borrowed from Milandra the last time we were in Faerieland, and it was glowing bright blue. Apparently my sword liked goblins about as much as I did. Anna’s hands were glowing with a pale yellow light, and there was a similar golden aura coming from her eyes. Given her dislike for me, I wasn’t sure having her super-powered was a good thing, but I knew that Sabrina holding a Mossberg Persuader twelve-gauge shotgun was a
very
good thing. I’d helped her spec out the mixed silver and cold iron shot she loaded that puppy with, and I knew that if goblins weren’t acquainted with the concept of a “boom stick,” they were about to get an introduction.

Chef and his bodyguards spread out to try to flank the attackers, but the first one to step forward got blown to chunks by Sabrina’s Mossberg. Little bits of goblin spattered across my face, and I knew I was never getting that smell out of my hair.

Sabrina racked another shell and said, “If the rest of you want to stay in one piece you’ll lie facedown on the ground and behave while we rescue our friends.”

Chef and his minions dropped to the deck, and Abby came over to cut us loose. I was able to stand, but Greg sagged against her and she had to half carry him back to where Sabrina kept her gun trained on the chef.

“You’re making a huge mistake, human,” Chef said from his place on the floor.

I stepped on the back of his head as I walked past and said, “Wouldn’t be the first time, Greenie. And we came out of those scrapes just fine, too.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be the case this time, Sir Sanguine. You have been found in violation of the peace of the Market for a second time. The penalty for this, as was explained to you upon your first infraction, is death. Kill them all.” The new voice came from the same faerie guard that I’d met earlier. The good humor he’d shown then was gone, and he had more friends. There were at least half a dozen faeries with him, all armed with swords and long daggers. They spread out to block any exit and advanced on us slowly, swords drawn.

“Wait a minute, I’m unarmed. And my friends should only get a warning. They haven’t gotten a warning,” I protested. The faeries stopped, looking at one another. Apparently most people didn’t try to talk their way out of a fight here. Honestly, it wasn’t my favorite tactic either, but I didn’t think I had much of a chance to kill all of them and still rescue the Carmichaels from whoever or whatever had them.

“But you have been warned, and now you are once again in the center of a disturbance in the Market. I am within the bounds of my authority to order you all executed to avoid further nuisance. I so order.” The faeries started in again, renewed in their resolve to make little vampire bits all over the floor.

“You don’t want to do this, pal. We’re friends of Queen Milandra.” The faeries froze again as I stretched the truth just a little. Technically, we’d done her one big favor, and then started a small war in her throne room, but everything turned out all right in the end, and there were hugs when we left. Really, there were. Anyway, it worked. At least for a minute. I saw several of the faeries look back at their captain, or sergeant, or whatever with concerned glances. Milandra was known to change the color of the sky to match her dresses, and they looked a little concerned that her capriciousness might be turned on them if they chopped up her friends.

“We conveyed your likeness to Her Majesty after our first encounter with you, Sanguine. She informed us that you were to be left alone and extended all courtesies unless you or your associates violated one of the more serious laws of the Market. Killing goblins is in violation of exactly thirteen serious laws of the Market. And the Market is not under the jurisdiction of the Queen. So I’m afraid your precious lizard-loving queen can do nothing for you now.” Great, all the guards in Faerie and we run into the one that hates Milandra’s sometimes-dragon husband.

I stepped forward to where the guard captain stood and pitched my voice low so no one else could hear us. “Look, we know you don’t really want a big fight on your hands. We don’t want a big fight, either. I’m tired, and my buddy here is still trying to regrow his legs. So why don’t you just step aside and let us go, and you’ll never have to worry about us again.”

“If I stand aside you will leave the Market, never to return?” he asked.

“As soon as we find the chef’s supplier and rescue the humans he’s kidnapped, yes.”

“That is unsatisfactory. You have violated the laws of the Market. You must now face the consequences.” He drew his sword and came at me, and he was
fast
, faster than a vampire fast. The only thing that saved me was an inherent distrust of everyone, so I was already diving backward when he started to reach for his weapon. I hit the deck, and his blade whistled through the air where my neck had been.

Then the fight was on. Stephen leapt into the fray and took on the captain, twirling my sword with an inhuman grace. Stephen wasn’t human, but a faerie swapped in infancy with a human child. His swordwork was pretty spectacular, but the guard captain was a real soldier, with possibly centuries of experience. Stephen put up a good defense, but the soldier quickly proved that he was the better warrior. He deflected a flurry of attacks from Stephen and dove in for a thrust that would have gutted the young faerie if I hadn’t managed to regain my footing just in time to kick the captain in his knee. He howled and went down, and I turned my attention to the rest of the fray.

Abby was standing over Greg’s prone form, taking on two guards with nothing more than her bare hands and what looked like a soup ladle. She was doing a good job of holding them off, but I could see her breathe a sigh of relief when Stephen stepped up and ran one of the guards through. Abby quickly stepped inside the stroke of the second guard and sank her teeth into his neck. A bit old-fashioned, maybe, but damned effective.

Sabrina had three guards pinned down behind an overturned table with her Mossberg. Whenever a hint of pointy ear poked up over the table, she let fly with another shell. The Mossberg only held eight, so she was about to need a reload. I stepped up behind her and drew her service weapon from the holster.

“Reload, I’ll cover you.” She nodded and started pumping fresh shells into the gun from the bandolier she had slung over one shoulder. A dozen Wookie jokes came to mind, but since I was the one being rescued, I decided to give her a break this time. A guard peeked up over the table, and I shot off the tip of his ear. He fell back, screaming, and I grinned at Sabrina.

“Show-off.” She grinned back. The Mossberg reloaded, she racked a shell into the chamber and blasted away at the table again.

I turned to check on Anna and my eyes widened. The witch had the chef and all his minions bound with glowing bands of blue fire, and from the howls coming from the goblins, it wasn’t a comfortable captivity. She shot me a nasty smile and pointed a finger at me. I dove for the floor just as a yellow sphere of force came shooting out of her fingertips at me. I heard a gurgling croak from behind me and rolled over just in time to see the top half of a faerie guard fall to the dirt beside me. His legs stood alone for a second, then toppled over backward. The smell of burnt faerie seared my nostrils, and I waved my thanks to Anna. She grinned back at me, and I remembered how much she didn’t like me. I was suddenly very glad she didn’t have that kind of juice back in our world. At least I thought she didn’t. Scratch that. I really,
really
hoped she didn’t.

It looked like our side was winning the battle handily, despite the lack of notable contributions from me or Greg. Even Marty had a long dagger in hand and was beating the hell out of Abdullah the goblin with the flat of it, wielding the knife with both hands. I stood up, looking around for something that needed to be punched, bitten, or kicked, and saw nothing. I leaned against the center tent pole to watch the carnage, then froze as I heard a thunderous roar from just outside the tent.

I glanced around, but everybody else looked just as confused as I was. Except for Chef, who grinned like he’d just found a toy in his Cracker Jack box.

“That would be my bodyguard, Slim,” he said with a smirk. Then the back wall of the tent tore away and the biggest ogre I’d ever seen charged us. He was all of eleven feet tall if he was an inch, with arms that hung almost to the ground. His fists were each bigger than my head, and his thick-browed head sat upon shoulders the width of three NFL linemen. Long tusks protruded from his lower jaw, and his bluish skin looked more like scales than flesh. All in all, he looked like ten miles of bad road.

I looked around to see what contingent of my army was going to take this guy on, and saw every one of my soldiers was otherwise occupied. “Stephen! I could use that pigsticker if you don’t mind!” I yelled, and Stephen tossed my sword across the tent, bending down to pick up a discarded blade from one of the guards he’d felled. I snatched my sword out of the air and stepped into the monster’s path.

“Slim, huh? I guess your mom had a flair for the ironic,” I said, hoping to distract him with my witty repartee. The ogre just grunted and charged, his huge arms outstretched to bowl over anything in his path. I dove forward and slightly to the side, landing in a roll that took me under his wingspan and left his huge back exposed. I leapt and jabbed downward with my sword, which glanced off his scaly hide. I crashed into his back, and Slim reached around faster than I would have dreamed possible, snatching me off his shoulders and slamming me to the ground.

I lay there dazed for a second, then managed to pry my eyes open. I looked up at a huge foot rushing toward my face, and rolled to one side. Slim stomped where my head had been, and the entire tent shook with the impact. My roll put me directly underneath the beast, so I decided to take the lowest of the low roads—I thrust straight up with my sword, stabbing the ogre right in the family jewels.

Apparently ogre physiology is similar enough to human that certain parts are in the same place. Slim let out a high-pitched keening howl that was sure to have dogs all over the Market whimpering in sympathy. I almost felt bad for stabbing him, then remembered that he tried to stomp my face flat, and he worked for a guy who
ate my bicep
. I got over my guilt in a matter of seconds, and quickly slid out from under the collapsing monster before the ogre fell to his knees. Both hands were clutching his wound, which gave me the perfect opening to stab him through the throat and put him out of all our misery. I drew back.

“STOP!” Bellowed a new voice, and all activity in the tent ceased. We all turned simultaneously to see a familiar, and yet still very scary form standing over the tent. Yeah,
over the tent
. Tivernius the dragon had ripped the roof off and was glaring down at us from some twenty feet in the air. Nearby tents shook with every flap of his giant wings, and his golden eyes fixed me with a look that made my borrowed blood run cold.

“Put away your weapons or I will incinerate each and every one of you,” the dragon said in a quieter voice. We all hurried to obey. I didn’t have a scabbard for my sword, so I just kinda jabbed it through my belt and tried to look non-threatening. I suppose to the dragon I
was
pretty non-threatening.

Tivernius shimmered, and instead of a huge golden dragon floating above us, a handsome man with blond hair and golden armor stood in the middle of the tent. He stalked through the tent in a wide circle, taking in all of the different factions of combatants. The guards knelt and removed their helmets in his presence. Marty prostrated himself before the dragon-man, groveling in what sounded like five or six different languages. Anna released the goblins, who immediately knelt and bowed their heads. Greg and Stephen bowed deeply, Anna, Sabrina, and Abby curtseyed, and even I gave him a nod of respect. I probably would have bowed, but once you’ve been through a cage fight with a guy, he loses a little of his majesty.

Tivernius came to a halt in front of me and looked at the moaning ogre, who had fallen over on his side and lay there, clutching his sack. Tivernius shook his head at me and held out his hands over the ogre. Golden light flowed down onto the monster, and the lines of pain on its face eased. After a few seconds the light went out, and the beast rolled over and went to sleep.

“That was not very nice, stabbing him there,” Tivernius said, turning back to me.

“It wasn’t very nice trying to stomp my head into a pancake either.” I felt no remorse.

“Still, Jimmy. You stabbed the guy in the jewels.”

“Dude, he’s an ogre, and he was trying to kill me. If there hadn’t been armor everywhere else, I woulda stabbed him somewhere with a little more dignity. Besides, his boss ate part of me!”

“That’s not the ogre’s fault.”

“I am not going to stand here in the middle of friggin’ Faerieland debating a dragon about the morals involved in stabbing an ogre in the nuts! I refuse. I have to draw the line somewhere, and this is it! Now are you gonna kill me, or are you gonna let us go?” I heard the note of hysteria in my voice, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d gone from entree to rescued, to battling guards, to stabbing an ogre in the balls, to facing down a dragon. I was absolutely on the edge of losing my cool, and didn’t have the energy left to hide it.

“Neither. I’m bringing you before the Queen, who shall decide your fate.”

Well, crap.