Knight Watch Read online

  I sat back in my chair, mind spinning. Somehow, I was beginning to accept dragons. But this reality twisting thing, this was a lot to get my head around. What was the difference between Kracek the dragon and Kracek the Hosier? When did he stop being a suburban accountant and start being a dragon? While we were fighting? After? When he started to change? It was all very confusing.

  “You clearly have questions,” Esther said. “But first, I want to make something clear. Almost no one knows this. There’s not some big government coverup, no ancient order running the world from behind the scenes. Mythological creatures are rare and, for the most part, happy to go unnoticed. There’s a djinn in Sacramento running an In-n-Out franchise, and you’d never know the difference. Folks like that, they’re not the problem. It’s the ones that slip the leash and start causing havoc—burning down farmyards or writing reality-destroying poetry—that we concern ourselves with.”

  “We,” I said, gesturing to the room. “The Knight Watch.”

  “The Knight Watch,” she said, nodding.

  “It’s a terrible name.”

  She creased her brow and leaned back, looking like I had confessed to murder.

  “It’s a great name. Like nighttime, only a knight, and we watch. Knight Watch. What’s the matter with you, you don’t like my name?”

  “Your name? So this is a new operation? Myths have been roaming the world for centuries, doing whatever it is they want to do, but now you’ve decided to get involved? One of them eat your family or something?”

  “I am not in the habit of discussing my age, or my history, certainly not with new recruits,” she said. “Rest assured that Knight Watch is well established. We know what we’re doing. The team that you’re going to be joining goes back to the Middle Ages, long before these things were myths that no one believed in. We have history and training on our side. If you hadn’t stepped in, we would have taken care of Kracek, probably without having to kill him. The dragons don’t like it when one of their own gets killed. That’s where the elites come in.”

  “Everyone keeps using that word. Elites. That’s Tembo, right?”

  “The whole team, yes. You’ve met Tembo and St. Matthew, and Bethany, as well as Clarence during the operation. There are others, spread around the world, across different time periods and specializing in different kinds of myths. There’s even a crew whose whole job consists of chasing down ghosts on social media. But your team, the ancient team, these are people with a particularly strong connection to their own mythic past, achieved either through training, practice, or dumb luck.” She made a mark on her paper. “You seem like the dumb luck type, to me.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment,” I said. “Look, I’m okay with not being like Tembo, or any of the others. Sure, I like medieval stuff, I go to ren faires and play at swords, but there are thousands of people like me. You shouldn’t have brought us here.”

  “Thousands of people, sure. How many of them have killed a dragon?” she asked.

  “How would I know? Like you said, reality breaks itself to hide these things. There could be hundreds.”

  “I can assure you, there are not hundreds. I know of twelve mortals who have faced a dragon in battle and survived. Six of them were on that field. Including the two of you.” She folded her arms and stared at me. “How do you explain that?”

  I opened her folder and pulled out the picture of my mom’s wrecked station wagon, then pushed it in front of her. “Two tons of Swedish steel and gasoline. It’s not a miracle.”

  “It is, actually. That’s the part you don’t understand. Driving your car into the dragon’s skull shouldn’t have killed him. It should have killed you, and whatever scraps of reality clung to you. There should have been a rupture in the mundane world. This...” she gestured to Kracek’s dead body, lying next to the car’s bumper. “...is impossible.”

  “You have a funny way of using that word,” Chesa said.

  “Which parts are impossible?” I asked. I took the photo and turned it to face her. “If you could just circle the parts that are impossible. I’ll start. The dragon that used to be an accountant, he’s impossible.” I pushed the photo toward her. “Now you go.”

  “You’re awkwardly clever, Mr. Rast,” she said, then snatched the picture off the desk and filed it away. “This is what you’re not understanding. Reality breaks both ways. It protects itself from the myths by twisting into something it can explain. And it protects the myths from us in the same way. I don’t know how they perceive our world, but modern technology cannot affect these creatures.”

  “So it’s like werewolves?” Chesa asked. “You need a silver bullet?”

  “Werewolves aren’t real,” she said, then held up a hand at my obvious exasperation. “But if they were, guns wouldn’t hurt them. Any type of gun. They stay true to their mythological origins, whatever they may be. A werewolf, if it comes from the First Nations lore, would only succumb to the weapons the original storyteller had to hand. A spear, a bow, a club...but not a gun. And since most of these creatures come from pre-gunpowder eras, guns are the least useful weapon you can imagine.”

  “Then why all the soldiers in the hallway? They looked like the gun-toting kind,” I said.

  “Mundane Actual’s task is different than that of Knight Watch. Tembo’s magic, Bethany’s agility, even Clarence’s sword are no good against bullets. They protect us from normal threats, human threats. Some of these myths have spent generations developing a mortal following. They have lackies, guards, human resources departments...MA handles that side of things. And we protect them from monsters.”

  “So, if guns don’t work, what does? Wishful thinking?” Chesa asked.

  “To kill a dragon, you need a sword, wielded by an elite. Or a magical spear, or the right combination of spells...the stuff of folklore. The weapons of mythology. You need a knight,” she said, leaning back in her chair, face splitting with a smile. “Or, you know, its culturally appropriate equivalent. Spiritwalker, samurai, night hunter...you get the idea.”

  “You fight dragons. With swords,” I said.

  “We do.”

  I took a deep breath, rubbed my face, then sat down.

  “That’s crazy,” I said.

  “No,” she answered. “It’s unreality. It’s the Knight Watch.”

  Chapter EIGHT

  MANY QUESTIONS,

  NO ANSWERS

  I sat there quietly for a while, letting my mind wrap around all this nonsense. Chesa was abuzz. She peppered the air with questions, most of which she answered for herself, the rest of which Esther just ignored. And for her part, the head of Knight Watch spent the time going through her papers, making notes and muttering to herself. After a while, Esther cleared her throat, squared and closed the dossier, then folded her hands on the table.

  “Well, I think we’re done here. Do either of you have any questions?” She held up a hand, stopping Chesa’s barrage. “Questions about this side of things. Who we are, what we do? Stuff like that.”

  I had so many questions. If dragons were real, what about wyverns? What about wyrms? Drakes? How about hydras? Were they related, or was there some kind of draconic hierarchy that just used different names depending on culture? Oh, what about the dude in Loch Ness? Dragon! It could be a dragon!

  Reader, I hadn’t even gotten out of dragon-related questions before she interrupted me. And in case you’re wondering, they’re all different things, except for kirin, which are a whole other thing, and might be the origin of the entire family.

  Oh, and dinosaurs aren’t real. It’s complicated.

  “I think you misunderstood me, Mr. Rast,” Esther said sharply. “Unless you’re actually a loremaster you don’t need to know about every gob-bobbin and draco-lich. What you do need to understand is that you’re going to be making a sacrifice. If you accept this job, your life is never going to be the same. And it’s not all rainbows and water nymphs on the other side of this door.”

  �
�Ma’am, look at us,” Chesa said, sitting up straight. “We spend most of our disposable income on chainmail and weapons training. I compare every single real-world relationship I have to the Lay of Leithian...”

  “This explains some stuff,” I muttered.

  “And I only really feel at home on the weekends, when I’m in some commandeered forest preserve pretending to be something I will never be.” Chesa leaned a little bit forward. “I have lived my entire life in anticipation of this moment. I am ready. Utterly, utterly ready.”

  “Everyone feels that way to start,” Esther says. “We will have this conversation again when you miss your father’s funeral because there was an oni in a comic book store. But I appreciate your enthusiasm. And what of you, John? Are you ready to be the hero you were born to become?”

  I sat back in my chair. Of course, my brain said. Of course I am. But was I? Did I even know what was involved? I didn’t want to miss funerals, or birthdays, or...anything, really. But mostly, I didn’t want to miss out on being a knight.

  I looked over at Chesa. She was watching me with slight disapproval, kind of the way she looked at me ever since we broke up. I couldn’t decide if she wanted me to say yes, or if she was hoping I’d scuttle back to the real world and stop ruining her dream job.

  “Yeah, I’m up for it,” I said. “How could I not be.”

  Chesa deflated a little. So that was definitely a hopeful no.

  “Excellent. You’ll be meeting the team soon enough. You’ll be getting assigned an extraction team. They’re responsible for getting you into and out of real-world situations, so you can deal with the unreal world problems. For now, we’ll return you to your homes and let you recover. I’m sure your families will have some questions.”

  “What are we supposed to tell them?” I asked. “I don’t think ‘I’m joining an army of mystical heroes’ is going to cut it with my mom.”

  “Lies. You’re going to tell them lies. To be honest, your life isn’t going to change that much in the short term. Our operatives have to live in the real world, even as they acclimate to the mythic dimension. I’ll leave it to your mentors to explain how that works later on. For now, just go home and enjoy your time off. Quit your jobs, get some life insurance...treat it like a little vacation.”

  “Life insurance?” I asked.

  “You’re going to be fighting dragons, John. People die.” Esther stood up and shook each of our hands in turn. “Miriam, cut the tape. Their consent is on record.”

  For the briefest of seconds, the control room behind the glass was filled with a maelstrom of ghostly cloth, bones, and glowing fog. A shattered porcelain mask hung at the center, its pieces spinning slowly like a windchime. The speakers squealed to life, and the room was filled with hideous, mind-scraping laughter. I dove under the table, barely beating Chesa into shelter. The lights in the room flickered, and the temperature in the air dropped twenty degrees. The speaker snapped off.

  “A simple yes would have sufficed, Miriam,” Esther said irritably.

  “Let me have my fun, Esther.” Miriam’s voice sounded like honey slowly pouring over organ pipes, which was a frightfully specific image that imposed itself in my brain. Her laughter came again, this time just inside my skull. I swatted at the air.

  “Cut it out, Mir,” Esther snapped. “They’ve had a hell of a day.”

  “Sssspoil sporrrrrt,” Miriam groaned. Then the lights settled down, the chill left my bones. Esther rapped on the table.

  “Come on out. She’s occasionally a fright to deal with. But she means well. Believe me, she’s not the scariest person you’ll end up working beside. I mean, you’ve met the janitors.”

  We crawled out from under the table and looked around. Chesa tried to look composed, even as she smoothed out the ruin of her plastic chainmail dress.

  “Okay,” Esther said. “Are you guys ready?”

  “Ready for what?” I asked.

  “The grand tour. The parade. The guided walk around the heart of mystery and wonder that is Knight Watch.” She stood up. “Just don’t touch anything. Or anyone.”

  We were definitely in the weird part of Mundane Actual. MA tactical squads filed through the hallways, armed for bear, but they were joined by guards in high-tech armor and long swords, and the doorways that led off in all directions were...strange. Iron grates led into misty chambers, or archways that flickered with blue flame. One door looked like a thousand faces melted together, their mouths working in wordless torment. Several doors were bricked over and heavily guarded. I half expected to see Tembo, or one of the other elites, but everyone we saw wore the MA badge and dull gray coveralls.

  “Where are the guys?” I finally asked. “Tembo and the others?”

  “Already down the hole,” Esther said. “Except Clarence. He’s not quite up to speed, just yet. A lot of his injury was mundane. You clipped him with that cursed station wagon of yours. We’re working on it. Hopefully he can make the trip later today.”

  “What’s all this talk about a hole?” Chesa asked.

  “Every one of the elites has their own personal domain. It’s a fragment of their mythic past that allows them to interact with the unreal world. The longer they’re in the mundane, the more contaminated their mythic selves become. Matthew starts missing coffee and blue jeans, Bethany remembers videogames, Clarence...well, Clarence has been with us for a while. But he still needs to spend time in his domain to recharge his batteries.”

  “Is that why Matthew only had so much light left?” I asked. “He talked about getting back to the brilliance, but I didn’t know what he meant. Just figured he was a special kind of nuts.”

  “Yeah, he might be. But his domain contains a spark of the divine. Lets him heal and do other stuff. And it turns his skin into sunlight,” Esther answered.

  “Wait, what now? There’s a glowing guy?” Chesa asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Forgot you weren’t there for that. It’s pretty crazy.”

  “Point is, the team has to get there as quickly as possible. The fight with Kracek took a lot out of them, so they’re on their way to their domains. It takes a little while to adjust to it, kind of like a diver returning to the surface. It’s not a literal hole,” she said. “Nothing around here is a literal anything.”

  Esther said some more stuff about domains, how they were all about the mythic self, our true identity in the unreal world...something about dying. Not really sure. The last part of her speech went a little over my head, not because I’m dense, or because it wasn’t interesting. No, I lost focus because there were ladies. Hello, ladies.

  Two of them marched down the hall, dressed in form-fitting body armor that looked like a cross between tactical gear and ring mail, heavy on the wing motifs, and boots that looked like they could crush skulls. The lead had light brown skin and freckles sprayed across her cheeks, with eyes the color of amber and long, black hair gathered in dreads. Her companion was pale and muscular, with short silver hair shaved on the sides, except for half-a-dozen thin braids tucked behind her ear. She carried a double-bitted battle axe cradled in her arms like a child, and her eyes were the color of dew-speckled moss. She was beautiful.

  I mean, if you notice that sort of thing. Which I did. Gods, did I.

  Oh, and they both had wings tucked against their shoulders, feathers speckled with every color of the rainbow, and deeper tints shifted under the surface, like the face of the most precious of jewels. They stared at me as I passed. Actually, I guess I was staring, and they were just returning the insult. They went around a corner and disappeared.

  “Hot damn,” I whispered. “So angels are real.”

  “God, John, have some class,” Chesa muttered.

  “Valkyries,” Esther corrected. “Angels can’t walk around like that. Cancer risk. Trust me, you wouldn’t like angels half that much.” She grabbed me by the shoulder and escorted me down the hallway. “And if you’re done offending our royal guests, we need to get on with the tour. Mysteries don’t r
eveal themselves.”

  “I’m going to like this gig more than I thought I would,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll screw it up in the first few weeks,” Chesa answered. She glared at Esther and added, “I speak from experience.”

  “Are we going to need to keep you two in different containment chambers?” Esther asked. “Because that can be done.”

  “Let’s just get on with the tour,” I said.

  Esther gave us a minute to settle down, then started up where she had been before the divine intervention.

  “The farther we get from the mundane, the stranger things get. You’re going to have to let your mind get a little loose if you’re going to stick around here.” We passed a final intersection and came to another corner. “Here we are.”

  A broad set of shallow stairs led up to a set of double doors, the largest I had seen in this place. The doors looked mundane enough, but the closer we got, the more unreal they felt. Not magical, really. Just out of place. Dented steel plates slid into the walls as we approached, and I could tell that the doors were almost a yard thick, with interlocking teeth that ran in a channel along the floor. The room beyond was a massive bowl, with rows of ancient terminals that flickered in green and amber, leading down to a machine that looked straight out of the movies. Pipes and tubing surrounded an iron tank, speckled with thick glass portals bound in bronze and dozens of gauges. Technicians sat at the dozens of terminals, taking notes or fiddling with controls, talking into brass speaking tubes as they worked. A handful of them surrounded the tumor of machinery in the middle of the room, dressed in old time pressure suits, with rubber breathing tubes that led back to the terminals. The whole room looked like mission control for a steampunk rocket team. The only things missing were top hats and actual steam.

  “Welcome to Reality Control,” Esther said. “The heart of Knight Watch.”