Dying Is My Business

Nine

I rolled aside. The Black Knight’s sword clanged against the pavement where my head had been only a moment ago. He raised his sword and brought it down again. This time I rolled in the opposite direction, narrowly avoiding the sharp edge of the blade as it buried itself deep in the concrete. As the Black Knight struggled to pull the sword free, I got back on my feet.

There wasn’t enough time to run. The Black Knight yanked the sword free, sending tiny bits of concrete showering through the air. He advanced on me again and swung the sword. I jumped back, feeling how close the point came to my chest as it cut past me. I took another step back and bumped up against the Explorer. The Black Knight kept coming. With nowhere else to go, I climbed on top of the overturned vehicle.

On the sidewalk, Bethany sat leaning against the wall of the clothing store. She grimaced in pain and rubbed her injured leg. Thornton stood feebly beside her, his broken arm preventing him from carrying her to safety. In this condition, they were helpless. It was up to me to keep the Black Knight away. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish that. Bullets didn’t hurt him. Neither did the Anubis Hand. I needed a weapon of some kind, but I didn’t have anything.

The Black Knight started toward Bethany and Thornton, the metal of his armored feet hammering the sidewalk. Desperate to draw the Black Knight’s attention away, I shouted, “Hey!” The Black Knight stopped and looked up at me. I was surprised it worked.

The Black Knight remained as stoic and silent as ever, staring up at me through his visor. I grinned back at him. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but at least I had his full attention. He kept looking up at me, not making any attempt to climb up onto the car after me. I wondered if his armor was too heavy to let him.

“What’s the matter, are you too lazy to climb up here, or are you just afraid of heights?” I taunted. “How many fights has the mighty Black Knight lost because someone got up on a chair? Are you always this pathetic, or is this a special show just for me?”

The Black Knight rose straight up off the ground, levitating like a circus trick until he hovered at the same height as me.

Shit. I backed away. Hanging in midair, the Black Knight took a step forward, placing one armored boot onto the Explorer, then the other. Balanced on its roof, the Explorer tipped forward under the Black Knight’s weight. He stomped toward me, the tip of his blade pointed at my chest. I backed up the incline of the overturned vehicle, raising my hands defensively.

“I told you, we don’t have the box,” I said.

He took another step forward. I got the feeling he didn’t care whether we had the box or not. He just wanted us dead. I took another step back.

“Trent, get away from him!” Bethany shouted from the sidewalk.

I reached the end of the Explorer, and stopped. There was nowhere left to go. Below, it was only a short drop to the street. I could easily make the jump if it weren’t for the fact that it would lead the Black Knight directly to Bethany and Thornton.

The Black Knight took another step forward. Standing at the center of the vehicle now, his weight shifted the balance again. As the Explorer tilted, it threw both of us off our footing. I wobbled and steadied myself, but the Black Knight was wearing heavy, cumbersome armor. It took longer for him to regain his equilibrium. I wouldn’t have another chance to catch him off guard, I realized. It was only when I was already barreling toward him and saw the Black Knight lift his sword to skewer me that I realized I’d done something stupid again.

I was close enough to grab the wrist of his sword hand before he struck. I struggled to keep the sharp edge of the blade away from me, not to mention the hooked barbs on the other side. This close to the Black Knight, I could see through the slits in the visor of his helmet, but I didn’t see anything inside, not even streetlight reflecting off his eyes. There was nothing on the other side of that visor but darkness.

“Don’t let him touch you!” Bethany shouted.

But it was already too late. The Black Knight wrapped the hard fingers of his gauntlet around my neck. The metal felt unnaturally cold against my skin. To my surprise, the fingers of his gauntlet grew even colder, burning my skin like frostbite as they squeezed. I struggled to catch my breath.

Something wormed its way into me then, something dark and icy that flowed from the Black Knight and hollowed me out inside. It sapped my energy. I felt sluggish all of a sudden, exhausted. I had to force myself to stay upright. Desperate, I moved one hand away from the Black Knight’s wrist and clutched the metal gorget over his neck. We wrestled, locked in our awkward embrace as we tried to overpower each other.

The Black Knight’s sword inched closer. I gritted my teeth and pushed harder against him. The icy metal fingers sank deeper into my neck. The frozen blackness inside me continued its work, draining my energy. In a few moments I would either black out or my windpipe would be crushed. Probably both. I pushed as hard as I could, every muscle in my body tensing to the breaking point. My head throbbed. It felt like I was going to explode.

Suddenly, a bright, bluish-white light poured out of my hands and spread like lightning across the Black Knight’s armor. He released me, and the cold darkness that had been spreading through me dissipated instantly. He stumbled back and staggered from side to side, rocking the overturned car precariously. Then he doubled over like a drunk in pain.

I stared, my mouth hanging open. What the fuck…?

I didn’t have time to think about it. The web of bluish-white light around the Black Knight sizzled out. He started to straighten, already recovering. I rushed him, ready to put my hands on him again and hoping that whatever had just happened would repeat itself. He didn’t give me the chance. Before I reached him, the Black Knight burst apart. His body separated into a dozen big, black crows. They scattered, cawing, and flew up into the night sky. Stunned, I watched them fly away until I couldn’t see them against the dark anymore. The Black Knight’s horse was gone, too, I saw. Vanished like it had never been there.

This night was getting crazier. Or maybe I was. Either way, it looked like I’d won. Even if nothing else made sense, I knew that this, at the very least, was a good thing.

I hopped off the overturned car. I collected the two halves of the staff and brought them over to Bethany and Thornton. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess a staff isn’t so great against a sword.”

They stared at me with their mouths agape. “It doesn’t matter,” Bethany finally said. “The staff is just a piece of wood. The power is in the hand itself.”

I supposed that made sense for something called the Anubis Hand.

Sirens blared suddenly in the distance. Not just one or two cruisers this time. It sounded like dozens. After all the damage the Black Knight had caused, including two demolished police vehicles, the NYPD clearly wasn’t taking any more chances. From the sound of it, they’d called in every cop they could find.

“We have to get out of here,” Thornton said, before I could. “The last thing we need is the police getting involved. Bethany, can you walk?”

The gash in her leg looked pretty painful, but she used the wall behind her to push herself up from the sidewalk. Then she winced and groaned and slid back down onto her backside. “Damn it. I—I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re going to have to,” I said. I handed the pieces of the staff to Thornton so I could help her up. With his good arm he tossed one segment of the staff aside and kept the segment with the fist. He put it in the pocket of his long coat, fist first.

I held out my hands, and she put hers in mine. They looked so small and delicate that they reminded me of doll’s hands. I helped her to her feet. “Thanks, I think I’ve got it,” she said. I let go. She stayed upright.

The sirens grew louder. We ducked around the corner, with no choice but to head back toward Eighth Avenue. We moved too slowly for my liking, with Bethany limping and Thornton still not fully mastering the art of walking on dead legs. We only made it half a block before Bethany had to stop. The three of us piled into the shadowy, recessed doorway of a Broadway theater that was locked up for the night.

I poked my head out and watched the cops pull up to the overturned Explorer. They’d brought the riot van with them. I took that as a good sign. It meant they didn’t know what to expect when they got here, they’d only gotten reports of a disturbance in Times Square. They weren’t looking for anyone in particular. More to the point, they weren’t looking for me.

The Explorer’s plates were fake. They couldn’t be traced back to me or Underwood. But my fingerprints were all over the car, a cinch to dust and lift. I had no idea if my prints were in AFIS. Certainly the people Underwood sent me to steal from weren’t the type to call the cops, but there were thirty-odd years I couldn’t account for. But even if my prints weren’t in the system, what about Bethany’s and Thornton’s? They were thieves too, even if they refused to call themselves that. Did they have records? Their prints and DNA were all over the inside of the car. They could lead the cops right to me.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Just how many item have you ‘secured’ before now?”

“Lots,” Thornton said. “We’ve been doing this for years.”

I watched some of the cops inspect the car while others interviewed people in the crowd. Cell phones changed hands, pictures and videos being replayed for the authorities. I wished I knew what was on those videos, or how clear they were.

“Do the cops know who you are? Do they know your faces? Have your fingerprints?”

“No,” Bethany said. “We’re careful. Always. We don’t leave a trail.”

“You left enough of a trail for the gargoyles to find you,” I said. “The Black Knight, too.”

“There’s a world of difference between the Black Knight and the NYPD,” she insisted.

That didn’t make me feel any better, but it would have to do. “Can you walk?” I asked.

“I’m going to need a minute.” She bent over to inspect the gash in her leg.

I was antsy and wanted to keep moving. The more sidewalk we could put between us and the cops, the better. I turned to Thornton and for the first time noticed a long strip of skin had been scraped off his cheek in the car crash and was now dangling from his cheek. I could see the striations of the pale, bloodless muscle beneath. “You should fix your face. It’ll attract attention like that.”

Thornton frowned like he thought I’d just insulted him. Then he raised a hand to his cheek and felt the flap of skin hanging loose there. “Ew.” He pressed the skin back into place until it stuck. Now it just looked like he had two big, ugly scars on his cheek that came to a point under his eye. “Better?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure better is the right word, but it’s good enough.” I turned back to Bethany. She was still bent over, carefully removing bits of dirt and gravel from her wound. Her thick, dark hair fell forward to reveal one ear. My breath caught in my throat. Her ear came to a point at the top. It reminded me of Ch’aqrath, the elf prince in The Ragana’s Revenge.

“Are you—are you an elf?” I blurted. Hearing it out loud like that, I immediately cringed at how stupid I sounded.

She looked up at me, her sky-blue eyes flashing with indignation. Then she straightened up and quickly brushed her hair over her ear again. “Don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “No one’s even seen an elf since World War Two.” She said it as if I should have known something so obvious.

“Oh,” I said.

“Trent, what was that back there?” she asked. “That energy that came out of you, how did you do that?”

I looked at my hands. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but they didn’t look any different to me. “I don’t know. It just sort of happened.”

“Bullshit,” Thornton said. “You did magic, Trent. Magic doesn’t just happen.”

“What?” I scoffed. “Come on, give me a break. There’s no such thing as magic.”

Thornton rolled his eyes. “No such thing as magic, he says. You might as well say there’s no such thing as gravity.”

Granted, there shouldn’t have been any such thing as gargoyles, werewolves, amulets that raised the dead, or knights who turned into crows, either. Maybe Thornton was right and magic was real after all. Hell, maybe The Ragana’s Revenge was nonfiction. Who was I to say? I was an amnesiac. Everything I knew about the world I’d learned from a Brooklyn crime boss and old black-and-white movies on a half-busted TV.

“No one has ever fought the Black Knight and survived,” Bethany said. “Not until you.”

“Fess up, Trent,” Thornton said. “First you turn the Anubis Hand into a freaking cannon, then you zap the Black Knight back to whatever hole he crawled out of. You’ve been holding out on us. What are you? A magician? Thaumaturge? No, let me guess, a mage?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I honestly don’t know what happened back there. All I did was touch him.” A noise from the street caught my attention. The cops were trying to get the Explorer’s doors open. “We don’t have time for this. We have to keep moving or they’ll find us.”

“Fine,” Bethany said. She took my hand and started limping determinedly up the street, leading me like a dog on a leash toward Eighth Avenue. Thornton followed with his broken arm swinging loosely at his side. “Come on, magician,” she said. “Forget what I said about going our separate ways. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

And just like that, I was in.