Endless Knight Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  ENDLESS KNIGHT

  First edition. November 11, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Nazri Noor.

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter 1

  Lucero Beach was beautiful in the afternoon. Perfect weather for a strawberry daiquiri, with a balmy breeze that smelled of salt and waves. It was tough to beat such a glorious day, just a lazy time sitting on the pier with the boys of the Boneyard, our beers and cocktails dewy with condensation, sipping our drinks quickly because they warmed just as quickly in the sun. Nothing but the rush of water, and faint, distant strains of steel drums and steel guitars.

  Hi. I’m Dustin Graves and I’m – well, I’m content. Or I was, rather. Content to be among friends, to be communing with nature, as close to nature as we could get in Valero. And content to be replacing my blood with alcohol, to just let go for the span of one blissful, carefree afternoon. Just the one.

  It was just me and the boys – well, some of them, those of us who were built to hang out in the sun without bursting into flames. I sat with Herald at a wooden table over the same jetty where we once hung out as buddies, just friends enjoying a little bit of brunch. We were with Prudence back then, and we were with Prudence that day, too, but this time she had Gil along.

  How things had changed, I thought, looking down the table to find Mason and Asher deep in conversation about something or another. Video games, I figured, some kind of heated, impassioned discussion between a nephilim and a necromancer. They really didn’t have very much in common apart from their age, those two, but they got along magically just the same.

  Asher’s laughter cut across the table, easy and musical over the slow rush of wind and waves, the distant calls of seagulls. It was good to see him so happy, his eyes healed back to their former brightness and luster. The wound I cut into Mason’s cheek by accident had healed over, too, leaving his skin as unblemished as when he’d first joined the Boneyard. I smiled to myself. Some things changed, I thought, and some stayed the same.

  The sound of waves rushing drew my attention out towards the ocean, towards the pristine blue of sky and sea. Crystalline water frothed into peaks of pure foam as it hit the sands. I watched the sea, and I remembered coming here as a kid with my dad and my mother. I watched the sea – and I remembered the Great Beasts.

  Damn it. I shook my head vigorously. No. No, no. This was a day I was dedicating to myself and my family, one of those in-between periods when we were allowed to spend time being human, being boring and alive, seeking out slivers of normalcy in the spaces between now and the end of the world.

  Yet a single thought about Tiamat and her brood brought everything crashing back, and instead of tumbling waves and a warm, salty breeze, my mind and my chest were filling with memories of terror instead – with Loki, with the Eldest, with Agatha Black.

  I tossed back the last of my daiquiri and sighed. Herald frowned, then squeezed my hand with warm fingers.

  “Problem? Everything okay?”

  I forced a smile as I looked at him, my body already slipping back into learned and practiced responses. Herald’s frown deepened, and his grip on my hand went tighter.

  “You really don’t need to lie to me, you know. Of all people.”

  I sighed again. “I’m sorry. Just – I started thinking of stuff I shouldn’t be thinking about.”

  He draped an arm across my shoulders, his body warm against mine. It was a hot day out in Valero, tank top weather, and I was grateful for the press of skin – Herald’s skin – against mine. It felt familiar, comforting, but most important of all, human.

  “We talked about this,” Herald said, his fingers digging gently into my shoulders, reassuring. “We’ve only got so much time to breathe between the battles we need to fight. Let’s make the most of it, okay?”

  I smiled at him, genuinely this time. There really wasn’t any reason to be so somber, at least not just yet. I curled my fingers around the stem of my cocktail glass, treating it like a delicate champagne flute the way that Sterling had taught me, then tossed back the rest of my daiquiri like the uncouth, uncultured barbarian I actually was. Pureed frozen strawberries and rum streaked the inside of my throat. I swallowed carefully to stave off a bout of brain freeze.

  “That’s better,” Herald said, chuckling. “Though maybe ease up on the chugging, huh? We’ve still got business to attend to.”

  He summoned a waiter to order me another drink – why yes, I loved being coddled by someone who met my needs before I even knew I needed them myself, thanks for asking – and I looked around the jetty, searching the beach for the second half of our party. Not quite the second half, really. We were only waiting for two more people. And, okay – they weren’t quite people, either. Not exactly.

  Prudence frowned as she glanced down at her watch, tapping its face. “We got the time right, didn’t we? We were supposed to meet right here, weren’t we?”

  Gil reached across her shoulder, squeezing as he chuckled. His fingers closed over the very same blue dragon tattoo I’d once noticed on her shoulder so long ago – the first hint, I should have known, of Prudence’s true nature.

  “They’ll be here soon enough,” Gil said. “This is important, to them, and to Dustin.”

  I nodded at them both, feeling around the inside of my pocket for the rolled-up scroll of parchment. Still there. Good. Prudence glanced between me and Gil impetuously, then turned to her beer, drinking it quietly, if a little grumpily.

  Mason spoke up just then, his head whipping away from his conversation with Asher. He glanced around the jetty, his eyes scanning. “They’re here,” he said.

  My eyes narrowed as I focused on him. “How the hell do you even know?”

  He nodded at the far end of the parking lot. “Golden convertible just pulled up.”

  Prudence craned her neck. “You mean the golden four-wheel drive, right?”

  I groaned. “This again.”

  The Greek god of the sun had a strange enchantment on the hideously gaudy car he liked to drive around, the modern manifestation of his beloved chariot, that same one that was supposed to draw the sun across the sky in all the ancient myths.

  Gil growled as he followed the rest of us rubbernecking to look for Apollo and his magical chariot. “He’s going to take forever to get here. Look at him basking in all the attention.”

  Basking was one way to put it, and pretty apt, if you ask me, considering how much the sun god was enjoying the disproportionate amount of attention passing women in the parking lot were giving him. He’d just stepped out of the driver’s seat, his white linens unbuttoned to show off his torso. Artemis emerged from the passenger side, her face dark with fury as she swatted at the air, pressing her way through the gaggle of girls gathered around her brother. Where had all those women even come from?

  “Grab some extra chairs for the twins,” Prudence said.

  “Already on it,” Asher said, dragging a couple of seats over, giving the gods places of honor at opposite ends of our table.

  It took longer than expected – I had time to suck down half of a fresh daiquiri – but Apollo finally gave up on his brazen peacocking, plied with attention and possibly some limp napkins and receipts with hastily scrawled phone numbers on them.

  “You should just carry around business cards to hand out to all your admirers,” I joked as he slipped into his seat. He was beaming so hard that it felt as if the sun had left the sky to join us for a drink.

  “I do. Remember? I gave you one myself.” He winked in a way that had bits of me puddling on the floor. Beside me, Herald laughed softly, like he’d noticed. “But I don’t like having my number out there jus
t with any old person. You were special, Graves.” He winked again. This time I had to clutch onto my seat for support.

  “Apollo,” Artemis barked. “You do this every damn time. Enough flirting and let’s get down to business.” She swept a lock of beautifully curled hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. A simple blink of her eyes, and the ferocity melted from her features. “Now. You said you had something for me, Dustin?”

  I rummaged through my pockets, then stretched out across the table to hand her the scroll, the deed that Odin had extracted from Loki’s very blood itself. Something passed across Artemis’s face as her fingertips brushed against the parchment, electric, the ends of her hair almost quivering. If there was power in the deed, I couldn’t detect it. She certainly damn well could.

  She unfurled the scroll in one swift motion, her eyes moving lightning quick as she read its contents. I wasn’t sure which bit of it she saw that did it, but her eyes welled up with tears. Asher – sweet Asher – forgot himself, reaching out to pat the goddess of the moon and the hunt on the back of the hand. That’s just who he was. Artemis sniffled, then smiled at him gratefully.

  “Thank you,” she said to me, then again to the table. “You don’t know how much pressure this takes off of me, off of everyone.” She brushed under her eyes, her voice breaking as she laughed. “I can rest easy now, knowing I have somewhere to keep the animals. I mean, it’s small, but the All-Father gave me enough to start. Plus this means I don’t need to crash on Apollo’s proverbial couch anymore.”

  Apollo sucked air in through his teeth, then tutted. “This is what I get for being generous,” he said to me, shaking his head.

  Artemis rolled her eyes and leaned in towards Asher. “He takes his conquests home every night. It’s gross. I mean, he’s my brother, I have to hear that shit. And even if I don’t, I know it’s happening somewhere in his domicile.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Asher said, nodding wisely. “My best friend is super horny, too. But at least he doesn’t take his vict – I mean, his partners home.”

  If Mason was offended at playing second fiddle to Sterling as Asher’s bestest friend, he made no indication.

  Artemis sucked in huge lungfuls of breath, then exhaled, her very being brightening as she did. “Seriously, Dustin. Thank you for this. Thank you. I mean, it was your fault I got evicted to begin with, but thank you anyway.”

  Prudence laughed, as did Gil. So did the rest of the table, actually, with Herald rubbing my back good-naturedly. I shook my head and rolled my eyes in mock surrender. Entities, am I right?

  “This calls for a celebration,” Apollo said, his face buried in a menu, one hand signaling for a server.

  “A perfect day for it, too,” Mason said, looking out to the sea. “Beautiful waves, clean sand, gorgeous people. And a – well, I’ll be damned. Would you look at that geyser.”

  That what? I followed his gaze to a waterspout that rose not far from the shore, a pillar of liquid swirling and building, much to the delight of Lucero Beach’s many, many normal civilian visitors.

  “This isn’t right,” Herald muttered, his voice dark with warning. “Something’s here.”

  “Or someone,” I said.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, partly from the anticipation of something terrible, but also from the telltale activation and preparation of spells, that eerie tingle and buzz that sometimes heralded the coming of powerful magic. I glanced around – everyone in our party was practically ready to rumble.

  With a spurting rush, the waterspout dissipated, droplets of seawater scattering in a glittering pinwheel. But the water at the spout’s base was still spinning, like the funnel of a tornado – or the center of a whirlpool.

  Oh. A whirlpool. Oh, damn it.

  A woman rose from among the waves, her hair braided with seaweed, her skin glistening with jewels and scales. Her face was imperious, arrogant, and frightening in its inhuman beauty. Her shoulders dripped with seawater as her body and her arms slowly emerged from the waves.

  Her tentacles followed shortly after.

  Chapter 2

  That sure as hell wasn’t a mermaid. I sprinted over the jetty, then across the shore, hardly caring that my flip-flops had flown right off my feet in my hurry, hot sand filling the spaces between my toes.

  The boys called my name as I ran, but my legs wouldn’t stop pumping. Who knew what I was even trying to accomplish, but I had to do something, anything. Scylla of the Great Beasts was making a public and literally splashy appearance on Lucero Beach, and I had to find out why.

  “Mortal,” she boomed across the waters, her voice reverberating as if it called from somewhere in the depths of an ancient ocean. “The speck of dust. The one called Dustin Graves.”

  I ran harder. The boys, Herald most of all, screamed even harder. I was pretty sure he called me an idiot. But Scylla clearly came for me – I mean, she just namedropped me, after all – and the sooner that I could deal with her, the sooner she could sink back among the waves and disappear. And the sooner I could get on the phone with Royce to beg him to deal with the inevitable fallout.

  But it was far, far too late for that. This was the beach in broad daylight, on a weekend, no less. People already had their phones out, pointing and marveling at the specter from out of the sea. Sure, maybe to a normal civilian onlooker, Scylla might have looked like a marvel of special effects, like an animatronic dinosaur or a functioning replica of a Hollywood shark.

  This was California, after all. You could still convince most of them that this was just a movie shoot. But at some point, someone was going to notice how Scylla’s tentacles were just a little too realistic, how her gills worked a little too well for simple prosthetics. And worse, someone was going to swim right up to her out of curiosity, and probably get torn limb from limb for the effort.

  I was wading through the waves by then, the seawater warm around my calves, my feet digging through clumps of wet sand, my shorts soaked. Scylla beckoned with one finger, her eyes rolling impatiently as I approached. If she had feet, she would have been tapping them.

  “Goddamn entities,” I huffed, sweat already dripping down my back. “Everything has to be a goddamn spectacle, she can’t just bang on my bedroom door like the rest of them, has to be this whole production, can’t just – Scylla, hi.” I forced a smile onto my lips, because this was still an entity, after all, someone who could rip me apart if I so much as looked at her the wrong way. “Now’s not a good time. Can we postpone this, maybe? I have a really nice bathtub at home. We can talk there.”

  One of Scylla’s tentacles whipped at the water, scything through it and sending new waves rippling and crashing against me. I fought to keep my balance, my hands thrashing through the water as I tried my best not to get knocked on my ass.

  “It does not please me, human,” she said, sneering as she forced the word out of her mouth. “To be sent to you as a messenger, to be put on this errand for the sake of my council. I am here on Tiamat’s behalf. She has a message for you.”

  “And?” I tilted my head at her, my eyebrows raised, my body fighting every impulse to say something sarcastic.

  Scylla raised her hands, her tentacles mirroring the gesture, rising around her like spines, like the pillars supporting a temple. “It has begun.”

  The water was warm. The day was hot. Yet the sensation creeping down my spine was very much of my sweat turning as cold as ice.

  “What has begun?”

  “The end of all things, perhaps,” Scylla said, bored again, trailing one finger in the waters, her tentacles receding. “This great adversary of yours, this witch who serves the Old Ones – she has split herself, body and spirit, into many disparate pieces.”

  I stuck my hands on my hips. “You’re kind of late to the party on that bit. We’ve known about Agatha Black and her Coven of One for a while now.”

  “Oh? And I expect you know about her movements as well, how she intends to bring her wholesale slaught
er across the various corners of your beloved earth?”

  “What?”

  Scylla looked past my head, her eyes searching the sky, or perhaps piercing the ethers for a glimpse of what Agatha was doing. I had to hope for Scylla’s sake that Agatha wouldn’t look back.

  “Right this moment. Yes. It is curious, how she has chosen to orchestrate her killings. Each of her manifestations is, right now, planning what appears to be a series of ritualistic murders. A symphony of sacrifices.”

  My mouth fell open, the breath caught in my throat. “We have to do something about this,” I said, turning back to the shoreline, trudging through the waters, sloshing my feet through wet sand.

  Scylla scoffed. “And what would you do, little speck of dust? The sacrifices are coming. There is nothing to stop, unless you can find each of the thirteen manifestations. The witch will spill the blood that she needs.”

  I stopped in place, steadying my breathing, suddenly aware of the banks and banks of innocent normals with their phones and cameras pointed in my direction. Their faces were twisted with looks of irritation: I was blocking their view of the wondrous sea-woman behind me.

  If they only knew, I thought. If they only knew that my friends and I were all that truly stood between humanity and hell on earth, and carnage, and madness eternal. Someone yelled for me to get out of the way. I turned over my shoulder.

  “Scylla. Why is Agatha doing all this? What is she hoping to accomplish?”

  Her face said everything, but she was too proud to say that she didn’t know herself. Her lips parted as she tried to speak, but her eyes darted away from me, focusing on a different point in the water. She bared her fangs, hissing.

  “Not you,” Scylla cried. She raised her hands, her tentacles following suit, each horrible, glistening appendage poised to strike. The waters around her roiled and frothed, stirred into a frenzy by her anger.

  I whirled in the water, searching for the object of her ire, and found him standing waist-deep in the sea. It was a man I could have only described as statuesque, his silver hair slick with seawater, his tanned, muscular frame unmoved and unmolested by the churning waves Scylla was sending forth.