Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles) (7 page)

The troll shook his head. “Uh-uh. Ogg can’t go back to Goblin Market. And wouldn’t take humans if he could. Bad for humans there. Lots of things there don’t like humans.”

“In case you missed it, I’m not exactly human anymore, Ogg.”

“Don’t matter. These things hate vampires more than normal humans. They call you wingless bats.” Ogg’s shoulders shook a little at that, like he was holding back a big laugh. I was less amused.

I reached over and grabbed Ogg’s chin, getting a fistful of slimy flesh and troll spittle. “Ogg, let me be very clear. You will take us back there. You will take us to the guy who gives you your jawbones. Or I will put so many bullets through your head that your face looks like moldy Swiss cheese.”

Ogg looked me straight in the eye, all hint of goofy troll guard gone. In his eyes I saw the monster all the faerie tales talked about, vicious, intelligent, and absolutely not interested in taking orders from a skinny vampire with a big nose. When he opened his mouth, it was like I was hearing to a whole different monster.

“Take your hand off me vampire, if you want to keep it. I’ve had enough of your stupid questions, enough of your condescension, and enough of this ridiculous charade Lilith calls a ‘job.’ Lilith, I quit. I’m going home. Vampire, if you value what passes for a life for your miserable carcass, you will stay far away from the Goblin Market.”

Ogg took my wrist firmly in one hand and removed my hand from his face. I thrashed the best I could, but I couldn’t even think about breaking his grip. The troll stood up, released me, and stepped to the center of the office. He made a few strange gestures with his hands, and a glowing yellow circle appeared out of thin air. Ogg turned back to Lilith, gave her a very formal bow, and stepped to the circle. As he was about to step through, he paused and looked back at me.

“Remember what I said, vampire. The Goblin Market is no place for you or your people. Ignore this warning at your peril.” Then he stepped through the glowing circle and disappeared. I got up to run through the circle after him, but crashed into the iron bar of Lilith’s outstretched arm. She clotheslined me like vintage Hulk Hogan, and for the second time tonight my feet kept going while my shoulders and head stopped cold. I flopped to the carpet on my back and the air
whooshed
out of me in an explosion of profanity.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I demanded once I’d regained both oxygen and my feet.

“If you’re going to get yourself killed chasing after him, I don’t want it coming back on me. Ogg was a very good servant, and now I have to find a replacement. I will not have you starting an inter-dimensional war in my office on top of that. You have inconvenienced me quite enough for one night. Now get the hell out of my office.”

I thought about pushing it, but took a good look at the fire in Lilith’s eyes and decided that I may have pushed enough things for one night. I got up with all the dignity I could muster, which wasn’t very much, and headed for the door. Greg and Sabrina were right on my heels, but Abby hung back. I looked at her, and she waved a hand for me to go on without her.

“I’ve got a couple of things I wanted to talk with Lilith about. I’ll meet you guys out front.” I didn’t move for a minute, not liking anything about those two getting chummy, but Abby waved a hand at me, and I turned around, muttering about snotty kids these days. Sabrina laughed and grabbed my arm as we made our way past rooms with loud music and even louder guttural noises coming from them. The club was much busier than it had been when we first arrived, and I had to push my way past several dancers and a couple of drunken patrons on my to the door.

One of the drunker guys took exception to me blocking his view of the stage, and decided to get in my face. He reeked of sweat, stripper perfume, and stale Mexican food, and that’s what I could smell from three feet away. When he got up close and started poking me in the chest and slurring things about my manners, I was done. I grabbed his wrist and squeezed, hard. The snapping of a couple of bones brought the slovenly asshat to instant sobriety, and I pulled him even closer. I looked deep into his eyes, and spoke with all the power of my mojo behind me.

“You can only be aroused by fetish porn of women over the age of seventy dressed up in animal costumes. This fascination with furry GILFs will continue for seven days from right now. You will find nothing appealing about any woman who isn’t old enough to drink Ensure for every meal until the week is up. Now get out of my way and learn some manners.” I shoved him back into his chair and made it the rest of the way to the door without incident.

“Man, that was harsh,” Greg said as he joined me at the door.

“Grandmas need love, too.”

“Yeah. But that wasn’t a punishment for him, it was a punishment for
them
. Now the town’s going to be full of old ladies getting perved on.”

“Only for a week. Just be glad I didn’t take away his attraction to women altogether.”

“Can we do that? Make somebody switch teams like that?”

“Of course not, bro. Being gay is a choice, remember? Don’t you watch Fox News?” Greg stared at me for a minute, then we both cracked up.

Sabrina walked up just then, her sidearm in her hand. “Jesus! I thought I was going to have to shoot my way through there. I haven’t been groped that much since I wandered into a mosh pit in college.”

“Glad somebody got lucky tonight,” I grumbled. I waved the valet over and mojo’d him into getting Abby’s car without the ticket. I wanted to hit the road, and if the blonde bimboshell was going to get all cozy with an immortal pseudo-succubus, she might have to find another ride home unless she surfaced pronto. I didn’t have to feel badly for stranding her. Abby sauntered out well before the Escalade made its way around.

“What was all that about?” I asked.

“None of your business,” was the flat reply.

“I think it might be, Abby. Lilith is dangerous, way more than you know.”

“I don’t think you know anything about her, and you don’t know much more about me. So why don’t you just crawl back inside a bottle and leave me alone.” I jerked my head back like I’d been slapped. That one actually stung a little. I got in the backseat of the Escalade without saying another word, just trying to figure out what I’d done to get Abby so upset.

IT WAS A QUIET ride back to our place, but when she pulled up in front of the house, Abby didn’t turn the engine off. “Everybody out,” she declared, putting the SUV in reverse and holding it in place with the brake.

“Where are you going?” Greg asked.

“Don’t worry, Greggy, I’ll be home before dawn this time. I promise. But I’ve got a couple of errands to run, so I’ll see you later, okay?” She was at least still being nice to Greg.

I tried to let it slide, but it’s not in my nature, so of course I opened my mouth before I had any idea what I was going to say. “Errands for Lilith?”

“Errands. If I want you to know more, I’ll tell you. Now are you getting out or do you want to ride along and watch?” I opened the back door and stepped out to stand by Greg and Sabrina. We stood in our front yard and watched Abby slam the Escalade into gear and peel out onto the highway, slinging a little gravel in my direction as she did so.

I watched her go, feeling uncomfortably like the parent who just let his prom queen daughter go to her first rock concert unescorted. After a few seconds of brooding, I yanked my mind back to the problem at hand, namely this mysterious Goblin Market and somebody selling human jawbones there. I walked up the steps to the house, in past Greg, and headed down the stairs to the den. Sabrina was already there, leaning over the tabletop computer thingy and working her Google-fu. I grabbed a beer and gestured with it at her, but she waved me off. Silly sense of duty and propriety.

I was just about to pop the top on my beer when Sabrina’s cell rang. I looked at my phone, saw it was after nine, and set the beer down. Greg stopped halfway down the stairs and we blatantly eavesdropped on her conversation, which consisted of a lot her saying “yes, sir” and “uh-huh.” She finished with an “I’ll be right there,” and clicked off. She looked up at us and said, “Did you two get all that?”

I ticked off the high points on my fingers. “Missing couple. Abandoned car in mall parking lot up by the lake. Baby in the backseat. Responsible parents otherwise, so it looks like it’s one of ours.”

“That’s the gist of it. Let’s go.”

“Got any idea where?”

“Yeah, we’re going back to where the bones were found. If this is a fresh kidnapping, that’s where he’s going.” She pulled her jacket back on and headed up the stairs.

“Or it.” I added, following her.

“Huh?”

“That’s my line. Or
it
. Whatever we’re after probably isn’t human. And it probably isn’t on our side of the river, either. So you call ahead for a boat, and I’ll get some reinforcements.” I started punching numbers into my phone as we headed down the porch steps to Sabrina’s car.

“Should I call Abby?” Greg asked.

“No,” I said. “She wants to go off and do her own thing, we should let her. She made it abundantly frickin’ clear that she had plans for the night that didn’t include us, so we’ll fill her in when we see her again.” I slid into the passenger seat and dialed my oldest living friend, something I hadn’t done often enough lately.

Father Mike Maloney answered on the third ring, sleep coating his voice and making him sound way older than his almost forty years. “Hello?” It sounded so un-Mike-like that I actually checked the number on the screen before I spoke again.

“Dad? That you?”

“James? How are you, my son?” He sounded better, at least until he pulled the phone away from his mouth to cough. There was a nasty rattle going on there, the kind you read about people having. People that are dying. I pushed those thoughts aside and forced a cheer into my voice that never made it onto my face.

“I’m good, Dad, how are you? The drugs working okay? Sounds like you got into the medicinal weed again.”

“I’m much better, thank you. The chemotherapy is doing wonders to shrink what’s left of the cancer cells, so they tell me. The drugs are . . . difficult, but I’m managing. They do make me very tired, though.” This was bad. This was the guy who less than a year ago had literally stood with me and Greg against a demon, and now he was tired before Leno came on? Crap and double-crap.

Mike had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus a couple months ago, right about the time everything in our lives turned upside down. Since finding out our best friend was maybe terminally ill, Greg and I had acquired a roommate who drank more blood than both of us put together, had our house burned down, gone to Faerieland, and almost gotten killed a couple of times. I still found time in there to feel bad about not visiting Mike more.

“Glad to hear that, old buddy.” I put a little extra teasing stress on the “old” part. Mike, Greg, and I were all the same age and had been best friends since middle school. Mike was the only one who looked his age, but if his voice was any indication, he might be looking a lot older than he really was nowadays. “Mike, we need help. If you’re not able to come out, that’s cool, but we really need you to drum up a little support, and the support we need kinda hates me.”

“You mean Anna. What can I do?” I could hear him pulling on pants in the background.

“I need you to get Anna to meet us out by the rafting center. I’ll text you the address. Tell her she’s gonna want pants for this one. And boots that she doesn’t mind throwing away at the end of the night.” Anna was a witch friend of Mike’s from a comparative theology quilting bee or something. She hated my guts, and suffered Greg only slightly better. But she was a real witch, with plenty of juice backing her up and a full coven, so she was useful.

We blew through town with Sabrina’s dash light going, making it up to the crime scene in half the normal time. A familiar dark sedan pulled up a few minutes later, and Sabrina waved them through the police tape.

I stomped over to Mike’s car. “You shouldn’t be here. You’re too sick.”

“That’s what I told him. But for some reason he’s very loyal to you two abominations,” Anna said, stepping out into the mud. Anna was dressed in jeans with fishing boots on, a good choice by my best guess.

Mike got out of the car in his priest uniform, except he’d added a set of ridiculous-looking but very practical hip waders. That wasn’t the problem; it was everything else about how Mike looked. To put it bluntly, he looked like crap. His hair was gone, and Mike was not a guy who could pull off a bald look.

Worse than the hair was the way his skin hung off his face. Mike had been pudgy all through school and adulthood, and the scholarly life of a priest had blown pudgy up a little, to say the least. Now his usually round face was stretched, with jowls and deep wrinkles around his eyes. His skin had a peculiar yellow cast to it, too, like jaundice but not quite. But it was the smell that brought tears to my eyes and made me quickly turn my head to look out over the river. I could hear from the sharp intake of breath beside me that Greg was right behind me and smelled it too. I gave Mike a hug and held on tightly for a minute, then felt Greg’s pudgy arms reach around both of us in a kind of group hug that would have normally made me a little uncomfortable, but right then felt like the only thing we could do. I felt the hitch in Greg’s breathing as he hugged me, and I pushed them away. If he broke down right now there was no way I was going to hold myself together.

I pulled back, keeping one hand on Mike’s shoulder, and repeated, “You shouldn’t be here. This could get serious, and you’re sick.”

“Yeah, you look terrible, Mike. What do the doctors say?” Greg asked from beside me.

Mike looked at me for a long minute before answering, and we both knew the score. “I’m doing as well as can be expected, Gregory. Now what’s going on out here that you’ve got to drag me away from
American Idol
to consort with heathens like this fine young lass.” He always leaned a little heavier on his hint of a brogue when Anna was around. I thought, not for the first time, that she might be the one to make him regret his vows.

“Well, since you’re here . . . We’ve got a problem, Dad. Anna, thanks for coming. We really need some help on this one.” I reached out a hand, and she shook it limply. Anna made no secret of the fact that she wished I would take a long walk into a beautiful sunrise, but I needed her expertise, so I didn’t bite her. It didn’t stop me from wondering if witch tasted like other humans, or if it was true what they say, that witch tastes like chicken.

“Always happy to help the police, Black.” I noticed that she never said she was happy to help me, but I let it slide.

“Fine, whatever. There were some remains discovered near here, and we have reason to believe that the murders took place on that island over there.” I pointed across the river to a small wooded island formed when the river split for about a quarter mile. It was maybe the size of a football field, but no more.

“And what are we supposed to do about that?” Anna asked. She stood with her arms crossed and her chin out. I knew from past experience that nothing about dealing with her was going to be easy, so I took a deep breath and spit it out.

“What do you know about something called the Goblin Market?” I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder.

Anna went white. And I’m not talking just a little blanch, I’m talking she was suddenly paler than me, and I haven’t seen the sun in this millennium.

Slowly, I continued, “Because we think the Market is over there, and we think it’s the reason at least two women are dead and another couple is missing.”

She looked around like the bogeyman himself was going to jump out at her from the tree line, and she skittered back from the water’s edge so fast she lost a boot and went tumbling backward. Lucky for her, I was paying attention, because I vamped out and caught her before she did herself any permanent harm. She didn’t even get her foot muddy, because I had her standing upright again before anyone else noticed what had happened.

“Are you okay?” I asked. She looked up at me with big eyes and nodded. I stepped back slowly, keeping an eye on her to make sure she wasn’t going to do anything else crazy, like try to move. “What’s wrong?”

“The Goblin Market is over there?” she whispered. She took an involuntary step back and almost lost her balance. She caught herself and stood stock-still, staring across the water like she was expecting Jason, Freddy, and the Loch Ness Monster to come out of the darkness and eat us all.

I nodded. “That’s our best guess, anyway. A pair of human jawbones were found out here, and the guy who bought them told us he got them at the Goblin Market. That seems like the most likely place.”

“Then we have to get the hell out of here, now!” Anna hissed. She kept looking around like the ground was going to boil over with rats, spiders, and snakes at any moment. I’d seen Anna exorcise spirits from a dozen zombies in one night, but I’d never seen her spooked like this.

“We can’t leave until we get into the Market and rescue the missing couple,” Sabrina said from behind me. I nodded and crossed my arms.

Anna shook her head again. “Maybe you can’t leave, but I’m out of here. I’m just a witch, I can’t deal with the kind of things that go to a Goblin Market.”

I held out both hands to her. “And we don’t want you to. We don’t want you to deal with anything. I wouldn’t ask you to fight our battles for us, Anna.”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

“We just need you to open the door for us,” I said, trying to use my best “everything’s okay” voice on the terrified witch. I was starting to think that maybe this shopping trip was going to take the top spot on my list of Really Bad Ideas.