Knight in Charlotte Read online

  Knight in Charlotte By: Edward McKeown

  Copyright © 2013 Edward McKeown

  www. http://edwardmckeown.weebly.com/

  All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover art by: Michael Church

  This book is work of fiction. Characters, names, places, incidents, and organizations are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Dedication

  Knight in Charlotte

  Is dedicated to

  Laura Jean Stroupe

  Dear Friend

  Editor of this work

  Writer

  And quite a character

  The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, or as the world knows them, the Knights Templar, were the foremost of the Western Christian military orders. Endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christendom, and grew rapidly. The Templar Knights formed the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades . Their white coats and red crosses struck fear in many a foe.

  When the Holy Land was lost, support for the Templars faded and resentment of their financial success grew. King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, decided to murder his bankers to avoid his debtors. He caused rumors to be spread about the Templars' secret initiation ceremonies. In 1307 Templars in France were, tortured into giving false confessions, and condemned to be burned at the stake. Pope Clement V, conspired with Phillip IV and disbanded the Order in 1312. The Order disappeared taking with it much of their wealth. Phillip V and Clement died not long after their moves against the Order under mysterious circumstances. Rumors and legend persist that the Knights Templar still fight evil in the shadows.

  Foreword by Edward McKeown

  Forewords are usually of interest to the writer’s family, friends, and professional writing acquaintances. If you enjoy the book though, you may come back and want to know a bit more of what was in my mind. So here it is and I will keep this one short. Jeremy Leclerc is my first foray into fantasy and specifically the genre of urban fiction. The inspiration for this character struck me when I was listening to Greenday’s song, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. As is so often the case for me while listening to the music, I found a movie playing in my head, just a series of images. The first image was of a young man in a long, black, leather coat wandering down a darkened street. I knew somehow that under that coat was a magic sword. I knew that he walked a lonely road and that there was supernatural danger on it.

  When the line, “my shadow’s the only one who walks beside me” came I knew that Jeremy, as I later named him, did not walk entirely alone. It struck me then that of all the characters in fantasy, the hardest one to believe in and to write, is an angel. Why is that, I wondered? We think of them as either insipid or as all powerful, or we find the religious trappings of an ”angel” troubling or confining. What’s worse for a writer, how could my character then have doubts about the universe or the meaning of everything when he had a direct pipeline to God? I am not very religious, nor did I feel like trying to answer those “big questions” about, “the meaning of it all.” I certainly didn’t think I would do as well as Kant and others in any event.

  I found the answer to this writing problem easier than I expected. My angelic character, Shadowheart, does not give you answers, nor does she solve your problems for you. She’s a friend, an annoying kid-sister, a deadly warrior princess, an obscure oracle, bound not to interfere with human free will. Humans are and will always be the balance between good and evil. Neither side can win us over by force majeure; it always falls to us to choose to be good or evil. Otherwise we are mere meat-puppets and who needs those? They probably smell bad after a few days. At the end of the day, the creatures of evil are of an in our space-time and subject to at least some of it rules. Shadowheart is not, but is bound by law, to help Jeremy only so much. Only when the forces of evil, cheat and break the barriers between the worlds can Shadowheart bring her full force to bear. And while she may disapprove of his taste in girlfriends, that too she just has to put up with….

  All of these stories have been published and/or podcast in a variety or magazines and anthologies with one exception and are gathered here to be offered together for the first time. The new story is Let’s Go to Hell; this story was originally intended for Janet Morri’s “In Hell” series where I have had stories in Lawyers in Hell, Rogues in Hell and the upcoming Visionaries in Hell. This one didn’t quite fit the In Hell series,as it was a bit too optimistic and cheerful, I mean what the Hell?

  Cheers

  Edward McKeown

  Table of Contents

  The White Pass

  Kudzu Jesus

  The Devil and the Details

  The Devil you Know

  Medi-evil

  The Audit

  Pas de Deux

  The Tithe of Hell

  There’s Something in the Woods

  Let’s Go to Hell!

  Knight in Charlotte

  The White Pass

  Jeremy Leclerc, Knight Templar, ducked behind a pillar to get away from the cold drizzle blowing into Charlotte’s SouthPark Malls parking deck. He shivered under his black leather raincoat, but could not close it for fear of slowing the draw of his bloodsword. Nor did he want to stand in the shadows with a thirty-inch blade drawn. Security at the mall wasn’t good, but the weapon reflected any glimmer of light.

  “Swords, yet another way in which we have failed to enter the twenty-first century,” he whispered, brushing dark-brown hair out of his eyes.

  From the large, gold-encircled crystal that hung under his shirt, a sprightly female voice issued. “Complaining again? Some hardy warrior. It’s just water.”

  “Cold water,” he said. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Son of Adam,” she said, “only you can hear me unless I will it.”

  “Right and I’m the one who doesn’t need to be hearing you. I’m watching for a hideous human-eating beast from the underworld. Quit distracting me.”

  “Distracting? More like keeping your sorry self alive. Not all monsters are ugly bunches of muscles. This one might be gorgeous. And we don’t know that this one eats the women. They just disappear. We know nothing about we’re up against.”

  “My guardian angel,” he muttered, “is a know-it-all pain in the ass.”

  “I sense something,” she said, “a hint of pain and terror in the wind. I fear we are too late.”

  “Damn it. Which way?”

  “North, by the cell phone tower.”

  Jeremy ran down the ramp, avoiding the video cameras that he’d earlier noted. Then he was out in the December mist, his feet splashing through shallow puddles as he raced out past the high-end restaurants, ducking behind SUVs and monstrous pickups to avoid the eyes of the miserable valets by McCormick and Schmick’s. The rain and mist grew worse, curtaining him off from the mall and late holiday shoppers.

  “So much for America’s sunny South,” he muttered, putting his right hand on the bloodsword’s grip.

  The darkness next to him wavered and Shadowheart appeared. As her blonde hair and blue shift did not cling, she’d only manifested as an image. Incarnation was difficult for her in the earthly realm.

  “This is no natural storm,” she said. “Look, there, where the streetlights have failed.”

  Jeremy moved out, staring into a darkness that was more than the absence of light. Then he saw it.

  It drifted forward, one with the mist, towering over the nearby cars. The creature was a pale image of a woman, with colorless h
air draped down its back, wearing a flowing dress. The rags of its dress and hair tossed in the wind. A grief-ravaged face of haunting beauty seemed to focus on the horizon. It was as if the rain and mist had taken their own mournful form.

  In one hand it held what looked like a bunch of blood-soaked rags. In the other, hanging loose-limbed as only the dead can, was the body of woman, well-dressed, a handbag dangling from her shoulder. Her wide, staring eyes and open mouth were stretched in horror.

  “A Bain Sidhe,” Jeremy snarled.

  A sound reached him. A high painful sound that might have been the wind sighing but wasn’t. The Bain Sidhe sang its awful song. It raised the hand holding the corpse over its head, easily fifteen feet in the air. The long bony hand opened and the corpse flew up into the sky and vanished.

  Jeremy’s sword slid from its sheath as if eager. Its silver shone bravely in the low light. Jeremy rushed forward, weapon held high.

  “Jeremy, you fool. No!” Shadowheart called.

  The Bain Sidhe’s mournful face lowered to regard him. Its eyes were huge dark pools that drew him in.

  Despair shattered Jeremy. A howl of grief and pain burst from him as he stumbled to the ground, sword falling from nerveless fingers. Every loss he had ever experienced welled up fresh and painful as a new cut. The rain felt colder than the pit of Hell and his body shivered with ague.

  He managed to look up at the looming Bain-Sidhe with its soulless eyes and ravaged beauty. Its wind-like song filled his ears:

  “Fall to the cold ground

  Never rise again; there is no point, no hope

  Fall to the cold ground.

  Rot and be food for worms,”

  Jeremy could only barely draw a breath.

  “Back, hellspawn,” a voice cracked.

  Suddenly Shadowheart stood between him and the Bain Sidhe, but she was not the slender blonde teen. This Shadowheart towered over Jeremy in her black armor. Her green eyes, set in a face of heartless beauty, framed with midnight hair, blazed down at him. She turned to face the Bain-Sidhe, her great black and red wings spread between him and the apparition.

  “Back,” Shadowheart shouted. “You will not have him.”

  Energy surged between angel and Bain Sidhe, causing a flickering, roiling disturbance of the soul and the very air. They extended hands toward each other and the space between them shimmered.

  But across the link that bound him to Shadowheart, Jeremy instantly knew his guardian was overmatched and losing. While her wings shielded him from the worst of the Bain Sidhe’s influence he struggled to his feet, dragging the sword up with him, its point scratching the asphalt. He staggered away, somehow managing to keep his feet under him.

  ‘Shadowheart,’ he sent, ‘run.’

  Jeremy’s strength returned with every yard he gained away from the creature. He paused between two cars and looked back. The Bain Sidhe was nearly invisible through its protective mist of fog and rain. It passed a streetlight, which dimmed and went out, then the creature was gone.

  Jeremy heard the sound of wings over his head and Shadowheart dropped from the sky to crouch alongside him. By the time she landed, the wings and black hair were gone and she was her smaller blonde self. This time she wore a fur-trimmed leather jacket and the usual paraphernalia of a Charlotte mall rat. But when she stood, it was slowly and her speech was halting. “Jeremy. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Free from the Bain Sidhe’s baleful presence, only his knees and hands, scraped from falling to the pavement, troubled him. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” she said as rain dripped off her jacket. “I am badly damaged. Jeremy, let us go into the mall and rest.”

  “You don’t look hurt,” he said, suddenly frightened.

  “I had to fully manifest in this universe to fight the Bain Sidhe in this plane and I do not feel pain as you mean it,” she said, starting forward. “But I have taken injury from the beast. It is ancient and powerful.”

  Jeremy followed her, sliding his sword into a hidden sheath in his coat. “It will not pursue us?”

  “No,” she said. “Your life-energy does not interest it. This one consumes only the female.”

  “It doesn’t want you?” he said.

  She gave him a slight smile and brushed rain off her face. “My animus is female but I am not of the race of Eve. My energy is hostile to the creature.”

  He walked alongside her, concerned by the unsteady gait. After a few more steps she leaned on him. She did not feel human. Her body was light and generated no warmth, but at least no one would walk through her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought…well, I guess I didn’t think.”

  “Something new about that?” she snapped.

  They reached the side door to the mall. Passersby likely took them for a couple on a date. The light of the doorway was welcome but the tinkling Christmas music made Jeremy want to scream. Scream warnings to those walking out into the night. Shouts of his failure and his defeat.

  “I am too hard on you,” Shadowheart said, her voice gone gentle. “Too hard because I am afraid and hurt and because you’re young and reckless. You flung yourself at a monster that even I dread, and I rebuked you. Forgive me. It’s only my wounds speaking.

  “What can I do?” he whispered. “How can I help?”

  She pointed to an alcove in the food court. “A quiet spot, some hot chocolate from the Caribou would be nice too. It’s outrageous what they charge but what can you do?”

  Jeremy left her in an alcove and hurried to buy two hot chocolates. His frantic looks back at Shadowheart seemed to charm the staff. As he grabbed the cups and headed off he heard one girl say. “Lucky bee-yotch, I want a guy who is so eager to look after me. And he has such a cute French accent. ”

  Shadowheart leaned back in her seat, eyes half-closed. But the sight of the chocolate made her sit up. “Ah. You know, God gave us chocolate.”

  Jeremy strove for lightness. “Benjamin Franklin said he gave us beer.”

  She rolled her eyes and lifted the chocolate. Before Jeremy could warn her of the heat, she took a healthy swig. Shadowheart quickly finished hers and gave a sigh of contentment. At her casual glance at his untouched cup, he quickly pushed it across to her. She sipped the second cup more slowly.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Even talking with you is restorative. I am, after all, your guardian angel. But I am going to need to retreat to my crystal soon and for an extended period.”

  “My guardian angel,” he repeated.

  Shadowheart sighed. “This again? You have your own angel and still you do not believe. Doubting Thomas has nothing on you.”

  “You say you’re an angel. Clearly you’re supernatural but beyond that, who knows? It’s not like you’ll answer my questions about the God and the universe.”

  She sipped her chocolate. “I keep telling you that it’s forbidden.”

  “And I keep telling you that makes no sense. What are we, God’s ant farm? Is there nothing good on TV in heaven? Why do we suffer? Why is there evil? What use am I supposed to have for a God who makes ridiculous rules?”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him you said so.”

  “Please do.”

  She frowned. “What is it with you and rules? Who ever heard of a Taoist Templar? Not to mention to what you did with the oath of chastity.”

  “I had my fingers crossed on that one, obviously so did my father.”

  “Do you forget how we met and were sealed to each other?”

  “No,” he said. “It was very impressive. The Templar master took me to a door in the deepest part of Roslyn Castle one morning. Yet it opened to a field under stars. What did you call it?

  “The place between the worlds.”

  “So how does an angel lose to a Bain-Sidhe? Your power comes from beyond space-time.”

  “I am not here to fight your battles for you Jeremy. If you do not have free will then you are merely a puppet. No, in the Rea
lm of Earth I am severely limited by design. I am allowed to intervene only when there is a breach of order of the universe. The Bain-Sidhe is of the space time that man was meant to inhabit. My interference by directly confronting it made me vulnerable as I was the one in violation.”

  He looked at her calm, gentle face. “Thank you. I’m grateful you don’t always follow the rules.”

  “You must be rubbing off on me. I, for one, would be grateful if you could follow at least some of the rules.” Suddenly she swayed and looked faint.

  Jeremy grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’re not going to…going to die? Are you?”

  Shadowheart steadied, then looked out over the throngs of holiday shoppers with their noise and packages, the running children busily ignoring the hapless adults trying to negotiate with them about their behavior.

  “I am not alive, Jeremy, and cannot die. But in this earthly realm I can dissipate to where we are parted and I am no longer me. I would pass to the hollow place where I have no purpose, no function, and no reason for being. When I am not a guardian angel, I am nothing.”

  Jeremy struggled to comprehend as he tore at his shirt, trying to pull out the crystal. “Then go now.”

  She put a calming hand on his arm, a light touch, like a bird settling. “Soon,” she said. “But you must promise me not to fight the Bain Sidhe until I return.”

  Jeremy pressed his lips together. “That was the third woman murdered in two weeks. When will it strike again?”

  Shadowheart shrugged. “It’s not a natural creature. It doesn’t need to eat every day. It might not kill again for a thousand years or it might kill a thousand times tonight.”