Paint it Black: 4 (The Black Knight Chronicles) (5 page)

I MADE IT AS far as the first floor, but got detoured on my way back to bed by the smell of bacon cooking. Since there was only one person in the house still capable of digesting solid food, I figured that must mean that Sabrina was up. I’m pretty smart that way. I padded into the kitchen on my tiptoes, hoping to get a good yelp out of her as I snuck up on her, but all I got was a swat on the ass with a spatula when she turned out to be hiding behind the door.

“You sneak like a spastic hippopotamus,” she said, dumping the spatula in the sink and grabbing her plate. Sabrina was dressed for work in slacks, her boots from the night before, a maroon scoop-neck blouse, and a jacket that I knew was covering a shoulder holster. Her hair was pulled back, and I guessed she had taken a shower while I was having my little “discussion” with Abby. I had a brief, fleeting dream of Sabrina finally taking me up on my long-standing offer to wash her back, and I cursed myself for missing what might have been the perfect opportunity. She looked at me, and it was like she could read my thoughts, because she gave me a little wink that made my heart feel like it was actually pumping blood again.

We sat across from each other at the small kitchen table. Sabrina tucked into what looked like a delicious helping of bacon and eggs, then slathered butter on a couple of pieces of toast, just to add insult to injury. I lived vicariously through her stomach and drank blood from a bag. I’d tried to come up with ways to flavor blood, but it never worked. Mixing it with various beverages produced fairly disastrous results, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never get the bacon seasoning to come together right. So I smelled the bacon, and drank my O-negative.

Finally, she broke the silence. “How did your little chat go?”

“About like you’d expect.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, me too. But she agreed to not be a complete bitch about it in front of Greg, and I agreed not to be a complete tool about it with her, so I think that counts as compromise.”

“Did you break any furniture reaching this compromise?”

“No, and there was surprisingly little profanity and yelling.”

“Good God, Jimmy, I think you might be growing up.”

“Well, it’s certainly taken me long enough.” Despite my youthful good looks, I’m almost forty. I’ll always look twenty-two, because that’s how old I was when I was turned, but I don’t trust Greg not to throw me a fortieth birthday party anyway.

Sabrina stood up, scraped the crusts into the garbage, and put her dishes in the sink. “I’ll get those tonight, don’t worry about washing up after me.” I laughed, and she looked at me for a second, then laughed herself. “Oh yeah, forgot who I was talking to. Don’t let Greg worry about washing up after me.”

“He won’t. He’s been using the dishwasher as a gun cabinet. Don’t ask.”

She started to say something, then just shook her head, and I walked her to the front door. This was one of the new things in our “relationship,” the whole saying good-bye in the morning thing. I wasn’t very good at this part, so it usually consisted of me stammering and looking at my feet a lot until Sabrina left. This morning felt different, somehow, though. So I just pulled her close to me for a minute, letting her warmth soak into me through my T-shirt, then I stepped back.

“See you tonight.”

“Okay. See you tonight.” Then she tilted her head up, and I kissed her good-bye, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And maybe for some guys it would be, but I’m not that kind of vampire. She slipped out the door, careful not to open it too wide and torch me, and I stood in the foyer, smelling her on my clothes.

Until a sound like a herd of thundering rhinoceroses came barreling down the stairs. I got out of the way before Greg crashed us both through a wall, and put out a hand to steady the rushing ball of pudgy detective. “Where’s the fire, partner?”

“I remembered the smell!”

“What smell?”

“The funky smell on the jawbone, dude. You remember how it was kinda rotten, and kinda damp, and kinda dead, and kinda not, and all gross?”

All thoughts of the really nice kiss I’d just experienced went swirling around the toilet drain of my memory as the scent of the morgue came back to me. “Yeah, I remember it,” I said sourly.

“I remembered where I smelled it before!”

“You wanna share that with the rest of the class, genius?” I was
so
not thrilled with this abrupt shift from happy boyfriend kissing a hot girl to detective talking about gross stuff.

“Troll.” Greg beamed at me like the first time he beat Zelda. The second the word crossed his lips, I was bombarded by a ton of sense memory. Green monsters with battle-axes, evil faeries shooting me, cage fighting for ridiculous sums of money, meeting my first dragon, getting beaten to a pulp several times . . . he was right. It smelled like troll.

“You’re a genius, bro. Now where does that put us?”

“Well, I guess we’re looking for a troll.” The air went out of Greg like I’d popped a balloon giraffe at a six-year-old’s birthday party. I put my hands on his shoulders, turned him around, and pointed him down the stairs toward the basement.

“Now, go do your internet magic, Jedi master, and go find us a troll.” I gave him a little shove, and he started toward the stairs. I followed him down and threw myself into a comfy chair while he settled in behind his desk to get sleuthing.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, looking over to where I was curled around the Xbox controller.

“I’m going to do what I do best during the daylight hours, of course.”

“Play video games, scratch yourself in inappropriate places, and drink beer?”

“I might not drink much beer today, but yes to the rest of it.” I fired up
Arkham City
and commenced to kicking butt Batman-style. We spent most of the day that way, playing video games and researching trolls on the internet, until sunset when we could really start to work. Abby joined us about mid-afternoon, and we worked out an uneasy truce between her and Greg where I pretended to have never spoken about her hunting, and she pretended not to have any issues with either of us.

I WAS DRESSED to go out when Sabrina came over after work. “Dressed to go out” for me meant I had a black sweater pulled over my latest
Sandman
T-shirt and a black jacket to hide my shoulder holster. I had my Ruger LCP in an ankle holster on my right leg, a Glock 17 under my left arm, and knives tucked into several places around my waist, wrists, and ankles. I decided to leave the sword at home, at least for tonight, but I was loaded for anything short of the zombie apocalypse nonetheless. Come to think of it, we’d dealt with at least one zombie apocalypse with a lot less firepower.

Sabrina pulled back after giving me hug hello, confusion wrinkling her forehead. “What’s with the artillery? Do you have a lead I don’t know about?”

“Maybe. Did you get anything at work today?”

“No. We had four sets of parents to meet with, one from each of the women we have remains for, and the worst ones were the parents of the ones we haven’t found remains for yet. They still have hope, even Bruce Marvo’s parents, who know in their hearts that he’s dead, but they can’t let him go.”

I thought back to Greg’s baby sister, and how much it hurt him to cut himself out of her life, and winced a little. I held out my arms to Sabrina again, and she stepped in to me. I hugged her tight and stroked her head for a minute, then she backed off and looked me in the eyes. “So what’s the plan? You must have someplace specific to go, or you wouldn’t be packing all this armament.”

“Can’t slip anything past you, babe. You ever thought about police work as a career choice?” She laughed, which was one of the hallmarks of our relationship. I tried to keep her laughing. If not with me, I’d settle for at me.

“We gotta go to the Angel.”

Sabrina pulled back, her nose wrinkled. “Are you kidding me? You know I hate that place. And that woman.”

“Yeah, but Greg remembered the smell, and she’s the only one in town that can give us a lead.”

“What’s the smell?”

“Troll.”

“Crap.”

“No, troll. They smell really similar, but there’s a slight difference. And there’s only one person in Charlotte that keeps trolls around.”

“Only because you killed the evil faerie prince that ran the cage-fighting outfit.”

“He needed killin’. So you wanna wear that or you wanna change?”

“What? You don’t think this is appropriate?” She had on the slacks, jacket, and blouse from this morning, and she looked great. But she might be a little overdressed for where we were headed.

“I just thought you might want to change is all. It’s kind of a girl thing, isn’t it? Three or four outfits per day?”

“Bite me, fangboy. The last place I want to go tonight is a strip club run by an immortal criminal godmother, so I’m sure as hell not going to change to fit in.”

I held up my hands in surrender and grabbed Abby’s keys off the table in the foyer. “We’re outta here,” I yelled up the stairs.

“Wait for us!” came Abby’s shout back, and I felt a headache coming on. Greg was not my idea of the perfect companion for a gentlemen’s club, no matter how poorly named the establishment. My worst fears were abated somewhat when he came downstairs in a black polo shirt, black leather jacket, and blue jeans. He managed to look almost like a normal pudgy twenty-something, except for the four-inch platform boots he was sporting. They had more chrome on the toes than my last car had on the bumper, and there were purple flames dancing around the toes.

“Nice boots,” I said, covering my mouth with one hand so he wouldn’t see the grin.

Greg, of course, is immune to my sarcasm after all these years, so he just glanced down and grinned. “These old things? Thanks. I’ve had them for uh . . . weeks and weeks.” I knew he was lying, of course. His clothes had gone up in the same fire that destroyed all our belongings a few months ago. That’s when we took over the frat house. I was about to crack on him more when I caught sight of Abby walking down the stairs.

I stopped in mid-snark with my jaw hanging open as she came into view one leggy step at a time. Abby was rocking the stripper heels, a pair of four-inch Lucite jobs that made her look even taller than normal. The view was impossibly improved by the skin-tight mini dress she had on. The mini was no more than three or four napkins sewn together in strategic spots. “Damn, Abby,” I whispered. “You know we’re going there to investigate, not find a job, right?”

She just walked past me, reached out with one hand and slowly closed Greg’s mouth for him. She leaned in and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, reaching out for her keys as she did so. “Careful, Greggy. You’ll catch flies.” She sidled past us to the door and opened it, turning to look back at where Greg and I stood frozen by the stairs. “Coming boys?” I gave myself a shake, earning a glare from Sabrina, and followed the girls out to the car.

I didn’t even have any witty comments for the ride over to Lilith’s place. I’m a big enough vampire to admit to a little touch of nerves. Lilith scared the crap out of me. She was older than anyone I’d ever heard of, going all the way back to Adam, or so she said. I didn’t know what kind of power she was packing, but she’s the kind of woman used to getting her way, and when she didn’t, we weren’t on the best of terms. I thought we were in her good graces at the moment, but it’s always hard to tell with her. She’s immortal, gorgeous, and has her fingers in pretty much every criminal enterprise in several states. Plus she has troll bodyguards, and trolls are just
nasty
.

One of the human valets opened the door to the Escalade as Abby rolled to a stop under the portico. She hopped out, blew him a little kiss, and asked him to keep the car close. He stammered some type of agreement and almost tripped over himself looking at her ass. Abby just laughed, a little silver trill that had Sabrina and me sharing a nervous glance.

“She’s way too good at that for comfort,” I muttered, taking Sabrina’s arm as we walked to the door.

“She’s blonde, built like a centerfold, and twenty-two. What do you expect?”

“Point to you, but I don’t have to like it.”

“Actually, Jimmy, you do. You’re not her dad, her uncle, or even her big brother. You’re just one of her roommates, and she’s going to use sex as a weapon just like you use mojo. We all have our little gifts. Hers just happen to come in a D-cup.” I gave her a sharp look as she outlined all of Abby’s arguments from earlier in the day with half the words and none of the yelling. I was about to mutter something about hating smart women when I ran into the palm of one of the bouncers.

I had to look up into his dark glasses, which doesn’t happen to me often. He was about the size of a Porta-Jon, with hands the rough size and shape of shovels. One of those shovels was pressed firmly against my chest. I looked down, then at him, then back at his hand in a polite, non-verbal invitation to get his paws off me.

“I gotta frisk you, pal. Sorry, but it’s the rules.”

“Since when?” I’d never been frisked when Phil, the former proprietor, ran the place.

“Since a couple guys from out of town started some trouble. Now there’s a strict no-weapons policy.”

He seemed pleasant enough, so I decided against kicking him around the parking lot to show off my manliness for my girlfriend. I locked gazes with him and spoke very clearly. “You checked me thoroughly. None of us are carrying any weapons. We’re all clear.”

He repeated my words exactly, if his tone was a little wooden. His partner looked from me to him and back again, then I repeated the process, mojo’ing him into thinking we’d all been frisked. I even let them think they copped a feel on Abby. Might as well give the guys a little thrill if I’m going to muck around in their heads, right?

The Fallen Angel was one of the higher-end strip clubs in town. Unfortunately, our work had led Greg and me into all of them at one point or another. Some were charming in their utter failure to make the grade as a “club.” Those joints were really more like biker bars that happened to have naked women dancing around poles watched by a lower class of bad guys than the sophisticated criminal element found in the true “clubs.” The true test of a strip club versus joint was not so much who was on their poles, but who stared at their poles.

I liked those classless joints—they appealed to the badass rocker hiding deep inside my geeky exterior. Okay, that rocker hides underneath several layers of my geeky interior, too, but that’s beside the point. The joints were barely legitimized brothels who’d pulled a liquor license to keep up appearances. But the Angel was a tall step up from those joints, as topless bars went. At any given time you could find some of Charlotte’s top athletes in private booths, see business deals getting done over a lap dance, and penicillin could easily take care of any diseases you’d contract from a visit to the buffet.

You could also find a good sampling of Charlotte’s supernatural population, which wasn’t always helpful to our cause. Our last visit forced a spontaneous renovation of the interior. A gargoyle took offense at a vampire walking through the door of his favorite strip club. We might have destroyed a great deal of furniture.

Lilith made more than cosmetic changes to the place during the subsequent remodeling. Changes definitely for the better. The sound wasn’t as loud, the lighting was a bit brighter, and none of the girls were under the influence of anything stronger than coffee. At least not that I could tell.

The four of us clustered uncomfortably by the bar as I tried to get the bartender’s attention. No easy feat when there’s a topless woman dancing on the bar in question. Between heels that could crush a skull and legs that looked like they could probably do the same, the barkeep wasn’t paying any attention to my waving twenty-dollar bill. The dancer, however, was on my photo of Andrew Jackson like a shark on fresh tuna, and before I could even open my mouth to ask about Lilith, my twenty bucks was gone and a stripper was kissing me on the cheek and whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

I pulled back, trying to escape the grasp of a stripper on a money-hunt and the wrath of Sabrina. I looked frantically around for reinforcements, which I did not find. My ever-faithful partner was entranced by the redhead on stage, or at least doing a good job of pretending to be so. Abby hid her giggles behind a hand and made no attempt to help. Sabrina finally pried the girl off my neck with the most effective mood-killer I’ve ever seen—her police badge.

The stripper skidded backward, dropping to her butt on the bar, and scurrying to the floor before running off. The bartender glared over at Sabrina, and she nodded down at the badge.

“Where’s Lilith?” she asked over the music and the commotion coming from the kitchen.

I had just enough time to figure out that my night was going to suck before a troll came barreling out the swinging doors leading to the kitchen. He was glamoured to look like a block-headed human with shoulders the width of a Buick and no neck, but I could smell him from twenty yards away, despite his being covered in stripper perfume. Without stopping, the troll blew through two tables of businessmen and one cluster of NFL linemen on his way to the door. I jumped after him. No way was I losing a potential lead in two murders smelling suspiciously of troll involvement. Abby and Greg followed, but even at vamp-speed we weren’t going to be able to catch the troll before he made the parking lot.

“Help me! They’re with the IRS!” the troll yelled as he passed the doormen. The bouncers obviously had deep-seated tax issues they wanted to discuss, because they immediately turned to block our path.

“Take care of these two. I’ll go after the troll!” I yelled. I never slowed down as I reached the bouncers, just dove right over them and rolled to my feet a few yards past the confused men. They turned around to find Greg and Abby standing in their faces, fangs on display. I heard a whispered “holy shit” from one of the doormen, and knew he was only a few seconds from Dreamland. At least I hoped he was. I needed Greg and Abby pronto because I had no particular desire to face the troll alone. I tried to keep the troll in sight without actually engaging him until they could catch up.

Unfortunately, the troll must have realized the odds had improved in his favor about the same time I did, because he came to a full stop and turned to face me. Trolls are everything you’ve ever thought they should be—better than eight feet tall, kinda greenish-yellow skin that smells like six-month old pumpkin, and patches of hair longer than my thumb growing out of various moles scattered all over their faces. Not attractive creatures, I promise.

A gap-toothed grin split the troll’s hideous face, and he held out both hands to me in a “come and get it” motion. I didn’t want to. Really, I didn’t. I know exactly what a six-month-old pumpkin smells like, and I don’t want to get that close to anything smelling that bad again. Not that I had much choice. I was barreling through the parking lot at better than twenty miles per hour, far too fast to stop. So I went and got it. Right in the face I got it.

“It” was the troll’s fist, of course. A fist about the size of a Thanksgiving turkey covered my entire face and delivered an impact that felt like running into a brick wall. A brick wall that stunk worse than my middle-school gym shorts. I wish I had bounced off the fist. That would have hurt way less. But no. My feet and body kept running, right past and under the troll’s outstretched arm, so that I flopped flat on my back in the parking lot like a cartoon character and bounced the back of my head off the asphalt. Repeatedly. If I’d been capable of getting a concussion, I would have had three right there. Even with my vamp immunity to the normal bumps and bruises of life, I still saw little stars and bats tweeting around my head for a second before one encyclopedia-sized foot came crashing down onto my chest, driving the breath out of me and cracking at least six ribs.

The breath wasn’t the problem; I don’t need to breathe. But broken ribs
hurt
. And with no breath, I couldn’t even swear at him. The troll reached down and picked me up by my throat, again keeping me from the sweet healing magic of profanity. I gathered my wits as best I could and shook one of my knives free, dropping it into my palm and stabbing the troll through the wrist as he reared back to punch me in the face. He opened his hand and sent me crashing back to the ground.