Chapter One
I have never been so happy to smell raw foot cheese. Our mode of transportation, the Naglfr, was a flying Viking longship made entirely from the clipped nails of dead warriors, worthy of Valhalla but also desperately in need of a pedicure and perhaps a change of socks. The sun-baked deck of the Naglfr shimmered with waves of pure, rancid stench. The cold winds cutting through my armor and into my bones did little to alleviate the stink. Not even Sir Gregory d’Haute, despite being drenched in perfume and hair oil, was immune to the cloud of filth wafting off the surface of the grotesque, flying longship. Our noble paladin huddled close to the side of the ship, his face pale and eyes watering. A particularly foul odor wafted off the deck, and Gregory lunged for the gunwale. The very satisfying sound of Greg losing his lunch followed. I leaned back on my plank and closed my eyes, basking in the morning light and the reek of toenails.
Now this was traveling in luxury.
“Why are you smiling?” Chesa asked. She huddled opposite me, nose and mouth wrapped in a perfumed stole, eyes watering. “I swear, you’re almost enjoying this!”
“Think how much worse it could be,” I said. “We could be in the stomach of a whale. Or falling through a rainbow. Or in the backseat of a taxi the morning after Mardi Gras. This isn’t so bad.”
“The business with the rainbow wasn’t terrible,” Tembo said demurely. “At least when you are falling out of heaven, the view is quite nice.”
“Was it? I didn’t notice, seeing as how I was screaming in terror,” I answered. “Here we have the view, and only a little bit of smell.”
“You’re the one who complained endlessly about the stink,” Chesa pointed out.
“Let’s just say I’ve seen the advantages of having a flying longship to carry you around, even if it kind of smells.”
“Kind of smells?” Gregory groused. “My lungs are burning. Like, actually burning.” He coughed violently, then spat something black and viscous over the side of the ship. “We should have brought the Saint.”
“Matthew had other business. God business,” Tembo said. “We’ll be fine.”
“I get the feeling God business looks a lot like sleeping in,” Gregory said.
“Not ours to judge.” I stood up and stretched, feeling the wind buffet my face. This wasn’t so bad. And it certainly beat the alternative. Which, given the restrictions of our magical powers and the laws concerning horses on the highway, usually meant walking.
For a brief while, the Naglfr had been taken from us by the valkyries, back when they thought we were responsible for the theft of a very important and dangerous sword called the tatertot. Or something like that. Tater…thot? Anyway. They gave it back after we uncovered the true thief who, of course, turned out to be one of their own, thereby saving the world. All part of the job.
“It’s good to see you settling into the team, Sir John,” Tembo said. The bald mage sat comfortably in the front of the ship, wreathed in a cloud of swirling mist. It was some kind of reverse Stinking Cloud spell that protected him from the worst of the Naglfr’s distinct aroma. “There were doubts about you, you know. You seemed awfully attached to the Mundane.”
“That’s not my fault,” I said, poking a finger at him. “You guys need to work on your onboarding process. There has to be a better way to recruit members than trawling through Ren Faires waiting for the world to fall apart.”
“It was a bit of a shock for us, too,” Tembo said. “You and your car were not exactly what we were expecting.”
I had gotten onto the Knight Watch team by killing a dragon that popped up in the middle of a Ren Faire last year. It wasn’t a glorious battle. More a matter of driving my mom’s station wagon through the beast’s skull, which isn’t supposed to work. The creatures of the Unreal are supposed to be immune to modern weapons like guns, grenades, and the engine blocks of Volvo station wagons. That started a whole chain of events that ended with my friend Eric trying to destroy Knight Watch so he could live out his dream of being a wizard. Typical stuff, if you think about it.
“I’m just happy to be a hero.” I leaned against the side of the ship and stretched my back. Actual armor was so much heavier than the Ren Faire stuff I was once used to. I was gaining new muscle just by wearing it around, not to mention the bulk gained in practicing with Gregory. Slowly, I was becoming the kind of knight I had dreamed of being. Very slowly.
I looked over at Chesa. She rolled her eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re flexing. Or trying to, but there’s armor in the way, so it just looks like you’re trying to fart without anyone noticing.”
“I can take the armor off, if you’d like.”
“Whatever,” she said, looking away. I smiled. Chesa was the ex-girlfriend I will always regret leaving. It was a special irony that we ended up in Knight Watch together. Not that I really thought we had a chance of getting back together. Chesa lived in a realm of shirtless, oiled elven men with abs like knuckledusters. Difficult to compete with that. Not to mention Gregory d’Haute, our newest recruit, and every straight woman’s dream of gallantry, jaw line, and butt muscle.
“Better leave the armor on for now, John,” Tembo said from the prow. “We’re getting close to the anomaly.”
“Thank the light,” Gregory muttered.
“Right, so, what’s the plan?” I asked as the longship began to descend. Whatever powers controlled the vessel, they rarely took into account the comfort of the passengers. I clung to the oar rail and tried to maintain my composure as we dropped out of the sky.
“According to the Anomaly Actuator, there’s a major incursion of the Unreal in this stripping center—”
“I believe you mean strip mall,” I interrupted. Our job was keeping the mythic world from interfering with reality. It mostly involved rounding up gangs of gnomes who had discovered spreadsheets, or rogue air elementals hiding in the ductwork of abandoned malls. Today, we were dispatched to a strip mall in exurbia. Or, as Tembo liked to say…
“Stripping mall, yes.” Tembo gathered his robes and peered over the side of the longship. “Esther thinks it could be an accidental intrusion into the Mundane, but there’s something else interfering with the signal. Better safe than sorry.”
“If she wanted safe, she should have sent the healer,” I said. Saint Matthew was already on assignment, along with our rogue, Bethany. I hated when the healer was absent. Bad things always happened. Usually to me.
“Just don’t get hurt,” Gregory answered, sliding his massive zweihander across his lap and caressing the hilt. “Kill them before they kill you. Simple enough.”
“Great advice, Haute. Keep it coming.” I gripped the oarlock and tried to lean casually, despite the Naglfr’s perilous descent. “If a troll is trying to bite me, do I let it? Or should I avoid that?”
“Depends on the troll,” he said with a smirk. My eyebrows shot up.
“Wait, are there sexy trolls?” I asked. “Is that a thing?”
“Gods, John, you’re terrible,” Chesa said, covering her face with both hands.
“I’m just asking. Is it?” Gregory and Chesa exchanged a look and chuckled. Fortunately, the rapidly approaching ground saved me from further ridicule.
“Here we are,” Tembo said.
The Naglfr crunched down in the middle of a parking lot, skidding to a halt next to a light pole. The mage leapt smoothly from the ship, followed by Chesa, graceful in her elven leather and glimmering scale mail armor. Gregory and I clambered awkwardly down the ladder, our steel boots clanging as we hit the pavement.
The strip mall looked abandoned. Weeds filled the cracked parking lot, and the half-dozen businesses stood dark, their lights extinguished and doors shut. This happened sometimes, when the Unreal intruded on the Mundane; things got spooky, driving away the usual crowds. It was reality’s way of protecting the fragile illusion of normalcy. It’s easier to pretend there aren’t dragons when there aren’t any witnesses.
“Looks creepy enough,” Chesa said. “Might just be abandoned. Where should we start?”
I scanned the store fronts. Vape store, laundromat, vape store, cash 4 gold, nail salon… there it was. Used bookstore. I pointed.
“Dog-eared Discount Books,” I said. “If we don’t find a bunch of gnolls in that place, I’ll eat my hat.”
“Your hat is forge-welded steel, Sir John,” Tembo noted. “Quite a meal.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, taking the helm off my belt and pulling it onto my head. The cheekguards pressed tight against my face. I left the visor up for now, then drew my sword and unslung my shield. The shield was new, a gift given to me by the valkyries for saving Valhalla from certain doom. They called it Svalinn, the shield that protected the earth from the sun’s heat. Its frosty steel stung the knuckles of my hand through the iron grip of my gauntlet. I smiled and pointed at the bookstore. “Let’s make trouble.”
“We are here to prevent trouble—”
“Will everyone please stop analyzing my cool dialogue!” I stomped across the parking lot, approaching the storefront. The team, at least one of them giggling into her hand, fell in behind me.
The front window display of Dog-eared Discount Books depicted an alchemist’s lab, complete with bubbling cauldron, tended by a cloak-draped figure wearing a medieval plague mask. Oddly, the figure was surrounded by leprechauns, and the misty depths of the cauldron glimmered with false gold. I paused to consider the situation.
“Are leprechauns part of our jurisdiction?” I asked.
“Only if they find their way into the banking system.” Tembo waved his arm at the display, casting a beam of light across the green-clad munchkins. “Those are just dolls. Not what we’re here for.”
“Okay then.” I put my shoulder into the front door, half expecting it to be locked or, worse, barricaded. But the door swung open, ringing a quiet bell. We swept inside.
Silent rows of bookcases stretched the length of the building, obscuring sight lines while filling the air with the heady aroma of moldering pulp and dusty cardboard. A wave of nostalgia hit me, for days spent in libraries and nights tucked into the bookcase nook in my childhood home, filling my head with stories of knights and dragons and ladies fair. I remembered heavy tomes crushing my lap, and the bleary shock of looking up to realize it was night, and dinner had been missed, and homework forgotten, along with all the troubles of my waking life. Reading had been like a dream I never wanted to wake up from. If I hadn’t become a knight, I think it would have been a good fate to become a monk, hidden away in some monastery’s library, surrounded by histories and the conversations with the dead that came with them.
“Man, this place stinks,” Chesa said, snapping me out of my reverie. She shouldered her way past me, casting a distasteful eye over the display tables and stained carpets. “Haunted by a mildew sprite, if you ask me.”
“We just got off a boat made of toenails, and you’re complaining about musty books?” I asked. “Have you no respect for the written word?”
“I was more of a gamer girl. And every time I showed any kind of interest in books, Eric would drop one of his stories in my lap and stand there until I’d read it.”
“Ah, yes. Zenith Hammer, Legend of the Inchoate Blade of Ebon Vengeance. Both a blade, and a hammer, but also inchoate vengeance. How could I forget?” Eric, my friend who once tried to destroy Knight Watch, was also a writer in addition to being a self-made wizard and former villain. Mostly a writer of adjectives, but not even good adjectives like quickly or clearly. Eric was more of an effulgently kind of guy. He had once written a first person flashback in second person imperfect. The mind boggles. Eric and his torrent of literature had nearly beaten the joy of words out of me, and I didn’t have a lot of other stuff going on in those days to distract me.
“Enough chatter,” Gregory said. He drew the wavy blade of his zweihander and took up position at the head of the stacks. “There are monsters to vanquish and mundanity to restore!”
“Hooray. Mundanity.” I snapped my visor closed and headed for the aisles.
Stacks of violently read and discarded books rose around us. The deeper into the store we got, the higher those shelves rose, until it felt like we were in a cathedral of abandoned literature. We were deep in the Unreal, as the bookstore transformed around us into a labyrinth of musty tomes. What had once been the information desk was now a babbling fountain with a statue of an owl in the center. Water poured down the intricately carved feathers to splash into a pool at its feet. The bottom of the pool was filled with glittering coins, apparently tossed by hopeful patrons looking for the latest Grisham novel. We paused at the water’s edge.
“What are we thinking? Is there some kind of library spirit we need to know about, Tem? A particular kind of faerie that frequents used bookstores?” I asked.
“There are many pathways into the Unreal, but most of them start with books.” The mage ran a hand over the dark dome of his forehead, mopping up sweat with the hem of his robes. “We’re as likely to meet dragons as halflings, though both are usually content to sit in their respective holes and let the world pass them by. We must be ready for anything.” He took another pass at his head, then adjusted the collar of his robes. “Is anyone else… hot?”
“Now that you mention it.” A trickle of sweat ran across my face, joining a salty stream dripping down my chest. “I figured it was just the armor.”
“I’m not wearing a third of what you are, and I’m about to croak,” Chesa said. Her tan face glistened majestically in the fading fluorescent lights, beads of sweat quivering on her supple lips. A flush broke out across her ample—
“We must be in the romance section,” I said quickly. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Wait.” Gregory threw an arm in front of Chesa, pushing her back. “Do you hear that? Is it…”
“Chittering,” I said. The sound rose from all directions, the rattling chirrup of a thousand pointy mouths. It drew closer. “Positions, everyone!”
We formed a defensive front, Gregory and I slightly in front, Chesa between us with her bow drawn, Tembo at the back, already drawing skeins of swirling light into his staff. Red eyes, low to the ground and glowing with malevolence, appeared in the growing shadows. One pair at first, then a dozen, then hundreds.
“This feels bad,” I said.
“Maybe it’s just rats.” Chesa pulled an arrow to her cheek and sent it into the shadows. The darkness shrieked. Drums joined the chittering chorus. “Or not.”
“Goblins,” Tembo said. “More than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Well, there’s about to be fewer of them,” Gregory answered with a smile. I really wish that idiot would wear a helm. Not because I cared for his safety. I just got tired of looking at his smug face, and the spray of oiled curls that somehow always looked like he’d just stepped from the fountain of eternal beauty. “Come, friends, let us face them with bravery, that we might win glory and honor for—”
The goblins didn’t wait for Gregory’s speech. They rushed out of the shadows in a horde, wave after wave of greasy, scaly, hairy bodies, wearing mismatched armor and carrying rusty swords and crooked spears.
Rats would have been better.
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