Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood (4 page)

Chapter 4

I carried a bucket of cold water from my sink into the bedroom. “Sorry about this, too,” I said. And I dumped the bucket on Krissy’s sleeping face.

She came to with a shriek, sputtering and sending droplets of water flying across the room.

“Morning,” I said.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her voice was shrill, somehow more alive than it had been the night before. “For that matter, who the hell are you? Where am I? Why am in this bed?...” Her eyes widened. “What did you
do
to me?”

Memory loss can be a side effect of enthrallment. Usually people don’t remember being enthralled, or anything they did while under the spell.

I held my hands up in a pacifying gesture. “I didn’t do anything to you. Though, you
did
try to kill me, so you know—kinda justified.”

“What?” The girl’s eyes bulged in their sockets. She sat up and glared at me. I’d put a bathrobe on her while she slept, and she squirmed out of it. The water had seeped through the old cloth of the robe, though, and soaked her tank top. It clung to her torso in an interesting way, and she glared and put the shapeless robe back on. “I’ve never met you before. Why would I try to kill you?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess you didn’t. The vampire that enthralled you did. You were just the weapon.”

She blinked. “You’re insane. That’s what this is. You’re some crazy person and you, I don’t know, kidnapped me so you could live out your sick delusions.”

“Krissy.” I kept my voice gentle and even, as un-crazy as I could. “Think for a minute. Try and remember everything that happened in the last hour or so. It’ll probably seem like a dream or a bad trip, but I promise you: it’s true.”

For a moment she remained angry and indignant. Then her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in astonishment. I tried hard not to laugh. I really did.

“What’s so funny?” Krissy demanded. “I tried to kill you. With, like, a gun. Why’d I do that? Where’d I get a gun?”

It took a force of will, but I got serious. “Do you remember what we talked about? The vampire?”

She rubbed absently at the cut on her head. “But that can’t be real, can it?”

“Why else would you try to kill me? Like you said, I never did anything to you.”

“Like, a real vampire? Immortal blood-drinker with a cape?”

It never ceased to amaze me how little people knew about the world. They thought, arrogantly, that science was the path to understanding the universe. And maybe it is, I don’t know, but there’s more to the world than scientists are willing or able to comprehend. For centuries people never mentioned vampires—they knew they were out there, but they were afraid of drawing their attention. With the advent of science, though, we’d decided that vampires and other supernatural predators were fictional, collective faery tales, and so they couldn’t hurt us.

These days people pretty much just know vampires from Hollywood: sexy, romantic symbols of everlasting love and eternal life. They don’t see the reality: that vampires are ruthless, dangerous predators whose resemblance to humanity is purely superficial.

“Why would a vampire need to use me to kill you?” Krissy asked. “Couldn’t he, just, suck your blood?”

“I’m...not sure,” I said. I pointed at a pile of clothes on my dresser. “Get out of those wet things and come out. I think we need to have a talk.”

I brewed a pot of coffee. I was already tired, and I figured it was gonna be a while before I got any sleep. My new job was going to be nightshift-heavy, so I decided I’d better get used to long, dark hours. The milk in the fridge was sour, so I drank the coffee black. Stronger that way anyway.

It took Krissy longer than I’d expected to get changed. I was starting to get nervous as the caffeine jackhammered its way through my system. May would be here soon, and Krissy had a decision to make before she got here. I wanted to make sure she had as much information as I could give her.

When Krissy emerged she was wearing an old flannel shirt that had once belonged to Bill Foster. It was huge on her, as were my old pair of jeans I’d loaned to her, but she’d cinched it tight with a belt. Her wet hair was pushed behind her ears, making her look very, very young.

She took the steaming cup of coffee and sat down in my only kitchen chair. I leaned on the back of the couch (after brushing off the debris of the coffee table), and faced her.

“So, like, who are you?”

I smiled. “Dave Carver, monster hunter. You know all of those horror movies? Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, zombies? Well, they’re all real, and it is—was—no, is—my job to protect people from them.”

“And that’s why a, god,  vampire wanted you dead?”

“That’s my guess. With the war on, they’re gonna want to take every sword out of the Table’s armory that they can.”

“Wait—sorry, what war?”

I shook my head, realizing just how little Krissy knew. “The Knights of the Round Table—my organization—is fighting a war with the vampires right now.”

“When you say ‘Round Table...”

“Yeah,” I said. “Same table.”

“Wow.” Krissy’s eyes sparkled, and for the first time I realized she was a really pretty girl. “So are you, like, Sir Lancelot or something?”

I laughed. “Not exactly. But I am a knight of the Round Table.”

She studied my face for a moment. I noticed her eyes linger on the necklace of scars that rose above the collar of my T-shirt, but she didn’t comment. I figured she recognized the significance without needing an explanation.

“There’s another knight on the way here,” I said. “She’s gonna take us someplace safe.” I didn’t mention that
this
place was supposed to be safe. No point in scaring the kid more than necessary.

“Okay.”

“That’s it: Okay?”

She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I’m going crazy. Might as well go all the way, right?”

This time I laughed for real. “You’re not the first person to think they’re losing it when they get a peek at the dark side of the Force. But wait till you hear this: I want you to come with me.”

Krissy gaped at me. “Now
you’re
crazy.”

I shook my head. “I’m giving you the chance to help the Knights of the Round Table fight these things.”

“I don’t know anything about fighting.”

“Neither did I, at first,” I said. “I learned.”

She hesitated, her face scrunched up like a rabbit. “I don’t know...”

“No one’s gonna force you into this, Krissy,” I said. “If you don’t want to do it, no problem, you can go your merry way. But I think you’re special. With no training at all, you managed to shake off a vampire enthrallment. You had the gun at my head and you
hesitated
. I don’t know if you understand how amazing that is. I think you were meant to join this fight.”

“Yeah, but—”

“We’re at war,” I said. “And if the Table loses, that’ll be it for humanity as anything other than a particularly intelligent species of livestock. The vampires will turn cities into farms, places to raise human children for slaughter. I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen, and I think you can help.”

“I’m not ready to fight a war.” Krissy was staring into her coffee, watching the steam rise from the black liquid.

“No one ever is,” I said. “So you train. You get ready. Let me tell you something that my old teacher once told me: When you come face to face with a nightmare, you have three choices. Most people ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s really the only path to a normal life after something like this: blissful ignorance. Other people can’t quite forget it, so they spend the rest of their lives afraid to peek around corners or look under beds, because they
know
that there are monsters out there. Or, you can do what every Knight of the Round Table has done. You can choose to fight. That’s what I did—twice, now.” I looked at her seriously. “It’s a big decision, I know, but you need to make it now. What do you want to do?”

I was surprised, but there was no hesitation this time. Krissy looked up and said, “I want to fight.”

Chapter 5

I threw all of my belongings into a bag. It took less time than you’d expect—I didn’t have much: a few nineties rock band T-shirts, some jeans, a bunch of underwear and socks, and a whole lot of knives.

Have you ever felt the urge to click your heels and vomit at the same time? That was what I felt like. May would be here soon, and I’d be going back to the Table. I was excited, but it was a nervous excitement, and my stomach churned like it was on a ship out at sea. The Table had nearly gotten me killed already, and I was giving it another crack at the piñata.

It’s not like you have a choice,
I told myself.
The vamps already know where you are—it won’t be safe until you can win this war. If you want to live you have to go on the offensive.

Krissy was sitting on my couch, nervously kicking around pieces of what had once been my coffee table. Her head was down, her hair shielding her face, but she looked up when I came in.

“I can’t believe you don’t have a TV,” she said. “Everybody has a TV.”

“I don’t trust those things. They turn people into zombies.”

Krissy’s eyes widened. “Really?”

I held a serious expression for a moment, but then I grinned. “No, not really. Not literally, anyway. Come on, we gotta get going.”

I pulled on my jacket. It was black leather with silver studs at the seams and had once been owned by a Sex Pistols-obsessed elf prince from Madrid. The jacket was enchanted with defensive spells, making it sturdier than a lot of body armor on the market. If I fell off a motorcycle wearing my jacket I’d get up without a scratch. It wasn’t bulletproof, but it would slow down just about anything with teeth, claws, or blades.

Krissy stood up and stretched. Even in my baggy shirt, it was a good look for her. The flannel clung to her body in interesting ways and I had to force myself to look away. She caught me staring, though, and smiled shyly. Pointing to her forehead, where I’d hit her with the gun, she said, “Between this and this,” holding up her left hand, where I’d cut it with the silver switchblade, “people are gonna think I got myself, like, an abusive boyfriend.”

I opened my mouth. Fortunately, I was saved the awkwardness of having to reply by a knock on the door. “Looks like our ride’s here,” I said.

The man outside my door was not Mayena Strain. For one thing, he was a man. He was tall, a good six inches taller than me, which put him about six-six. He was skinny as a rail, though, so I figured that even with his extra height I outweighed him by a good twenty pounds. His black hair was combed back so tight that it seemed to smooth the wrinkles in his forehead. His finely tailored black suit, silk shirt, and tie each looked like they’d cost more than my apartment. His hands were in his pockets and he surveyed me with sea-green eyes. Evidently, he was displeased by what he saw.

I knew the man. At least, I’d seen him a couple of times at the Table’s headquarters in London. He was some higher-up, some officer, but I couldn’t remember his name.

“Hey,” I said, affecting a whiny, nasal voice, “you’re not the pizza guy.”

Krissy giggled.

“Mister Carver, I presume.” The man had a slow, deliberate, and posh English accent. He was looking from me to Krissy and back with the same kind of disdain you might gaze at something disgusting you found under a rock. Finally, he continued: “My name is Gerard Avalon. I am the Knights of the Round Table’s Commander of North American Operations.”

Now I noticed the little medallion on his lapel. It was shaped like a medieval shield, with the letters C.O. embossed over a painted image of the North American continent. The man’s title sounded impressive, I know, but I didn’t have much regard for the Table’s Commanders Council. Mostly, I thought, all they did was sit on their asses in London and give orders to the rest of us out in the field. His whole job consisted of filling in the space between the knights on the ground and the Pendragon. Gerard Avalon may have looked like a British gangster, but he was little more than a puffed up bureaucrat. Yeah, we have those in the paranormal world, too.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said. “Nice to see you out of the office.”

Screw respect. You don’t get to treat me like a piece of dog crap and not get called on it.

Avalon’s eyes twitched slightly, and he looked at Krissy. “Who is this?”

“Krissy Thomas,” she said. Despite the darkness of the surroundings, she managed to sound bright and chirpy.

Avalon ignored her. To me, he said, “This is the thrall?”

“Not anymore,” I said. “I did the silver test. She’s clean, and she’s coming with us.”

Avalon shook his head. “Time is of the essence, Mister Carver. We can not afford to bring this amateur along.”

“She shook off an enthrallment,” I said. “That makes her a victim of a supernatural attack. Remind me, Commander, what’s the Table’s job again?” I folded my arms and held eye contact. “She’s coming with us.”

Avalon scowled, but I had him there. Table protocol dictated that any survivor of a supe attack had the option of joining the Table. Mostly we don’t have to recruit—new blood comes to us. The commander’s eyes cooled as he looked at me.

“Captain Strain is waiting on the street,” he said. “Let us go.”

He led the way down the hallway from my apartment to the staircase. I waved to Krissy in an
after you
gesture and moved aside to let her out. Before I followed them I took one last look around. The safe house was small and cramped and usually dirty, but it was mine, dammit. I was going to kinda-maybe-sorta-almost miss it. You’re making a mistake, the dark part of my brain whispered.

“Yeah, maybe,” I whispered.

“Dave, you okay?” Krissy was standing at the top of the staircase.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

May was leaning against the hood of a big van when I got outside. It was one of those windowless,
Silence of the Lambs
numbers with a cab in front and a sliding panel door. The kind they always tell kids not to get in with strangers.

May smiled when she saw me. Her smile evaporated when she saw Krissy. “Is this the one that tried to kill you?”

“She was enthralled, May. It wasn’t her fault.”

“Yeah. Maybe. What’s she doing here?”

“She’s coming—”

“I can speak for myself,” Krissy said. “Dave thinks I can join you guys.”

May laughed, cruelly and derisively. “
Her
? She doesn’t exactly have the warrior look.”

“As fascinating as this is,” Avalon said, “it would be best if we were moving. Vampires could very well be watching this building.”

Avalon opened the sliding door and got in. May frowned, but she hopped in the driver’s seat. I was about to join her up front, but the commander motioned for Krissy and me to go with him.

He closed the door, and May turned on the engine and put the van in a drive.

“Once we get through the tunnel,” Avalon said, “it should be safe.”

“Vampires and other supes mostly stay out of Queens,” I explained to Krissy.

“Why, because it’s Queens?” Krissy laughed at her own joke.

I smirked. “The Table’s regional headquarters is in Long Island City. Imagine that you were a bank robber. Would you spend much time in the same neighborhood as a major police precinct? It’s the same principle. Supes stay away from Long Island City.”

We rolled in silence for a few moments until Avalon said, “Mister Carver, I am going to enlist you into the Knights of the Round Table. Do you understand what that means? I am.”

I nodded. As NorAmOps Commander, Avalon would normally be the guy to choose the Captain of the New York office. But I guessed Bill Foster had made a strong suggestion that I was the man for the job. Bill was the new Pendragon, and one of the greatest warriors in the Table’s history. During a time of war, it would have been near political suicide to disobey such a suggestion. Avalon was stuck with me, but he was letting me know that he was in charge.

“Alrighty,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Avalon scowled, like he couldn’t believe somebody like me could possible exist, let alone be put in charge of a division of the Knights of the Round Table. But William Foster Pendragon had spoken, and Avalon had to play the good little soldier.

“David William Carver,” he said, his voice even more haughty and formal. “Do you swear to defend humanity from all dangers supernatural?”

“I do,” I said.

“Do you swear to be mankind’s shield against the darkness?”

“I do.”

“And do you swear to use your sword faithfully and only in defense of those under your care?”

“I do.”

“Then I, Gerard Avalon, Commander of the Round Table, name you David, Knight of the Round Table. With the approval of William Foster Pendragon, Prince-General of our order, I name you Captain of the Round Table in charge of New York City and its surrounding areas.” He smiled bitterly. “Congratulations, Captain.”

Avalon reached under his bench seat and slid out a huge sports equipment bag, like the kind they use to transport hockey gear. From one of the side pockets he took out a medallion shaped more or less like his. Mine just had a C chiseled in its front. I pinned it to the collar of my jacket.

Now it was official—I was Captain Carver.

I looked at Avalon. “Thank you, sir. Now, where’s my sword?”

Avalon smirked, and he unzipped the bag. Without another word, he took out my sword.

When he joins the Knights of the Round Table, each knight is given a sword. No one knows how they’re made, except for a secretive organization called the Swordmakers who were trained either by the Lady of the Lake or the wizard Merlin, depending on who you ask, but one thing is for sure: each sword contains the same power as Excalibur, the legendary weapon of Arthur Pendragon. They’re magic, basically, and they can hurt or even kill just about anything, even things that laugh at ordinary mortal weapons. The things that dwell in the dark have a healthy respect for the swords of the Round Table.

Even sheathed in its leather scabbard, my sword was impressive. It was modeled on something called an arming sword, and it looked like something that would have been used by the Christians during the Crusades. It had a classic cruciform hilt and a big sapphire gem in the pommel and two more in the cross-guard. The blade was better than three feet long, so I couldn’t draw it in the confines of the van, but just touching the wire-bound hilt was enough. Energy crackled from the weapon, flowing from the hilt into my body. Abruptly, all of my nervousness was gone. My sword was back in my hand. Everything was okay.

It was like someone had reattached my arm after nine months as an amputee. For the first time since that clearing in Guyana, I was complete. 

Krissy lurched forward in her seat. Avalon bounced off of the bench and hit his head on the ceiling (which gave me more pleasure than it really should have), and my back slammed into the wall.

“Pothole,” Krissy said unnecessarily.

The screech of metal on rock was audible as the tires’ rims scraped against the street. The van slowed down, peeled out of the road and came to a stop. It rocked on its shocks as May put it in park. A moment later the door slid open.

Her thin-bladed sword was in her hand and she nodded in approval when she saw mine. The smile faded, though, and was replaced by a cool, steely-eyed expression. I knew that look. It was her battle face.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Tires are flat,” she said. “And we were followed. Dave, we got vampires out here.”