Shadow Knight

  Shadow Knight

  SAM HUNTER

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Backmatter

  Blurb

  Can an ordinary man save an extraordinary world?

  Dex’s life is turned upside down when he wakes up in the middle of a medieval street with nothing but the wallet in his back pocket—only he doesn’t even have that for long when he encounters a gorgeous blonde thief.

  Dangerous priestess Fleur is in more than a little trouble, but she’s the only one that Dex can depend on. Together, they try to save Amber, a petite priestess and Fleur’s best friend. Along the way, they pick up the sultry Lady Olivia and the mysterious Tilda, a half-demon as dangerous as she is sexy.

  Between a corrupt noble and the town knights, Dex has his hands full trying to keep the girls safe.

  And he’ll do anything to keep them out of harm’s way.

  Even if that means he has to defeat a demon.

  Chapter

  One

  The lobby of my building was a little too busy for my liking, so I waited until the shiny silver doors of the elevator were closed before I opened the padded manila envelope. Was it the first time I’d checked my mailbox that day? No. Was it the second time? Still no. But on my third trip, the mail had finally been delivered—including the package I’d been eagerly awaiting all week.

  The floor numbers ticked up slowly as I carefully slid my thumb underneath the flap of the envelope, pulling the glass frame from within which contained one single card.

  The Black Lotus.

  I would be unbeatable at Magic Mondays now.

  While I hadn’t gotten into the weekly card game with a few of my nerdier coworkers trying to be this intense, it was hard not to use some of my frankly ridiculous salary to beat my opponents. As a computer engineer for one of the most successful tech companies in California with a good eye for stock options and no girlfriend or family to spend money on, I had more income than I knew what to do with sometimes. Between my amateur lock-picking tools and subscriptions, my expensive gym membership, the replica medieval battle swords I regularly bid on, and the money I gave to various charities, I still had a good amount leftover each quarter for luxury purchases. Including Magic: The Gathering cards.

  The elevator door dinged, and I was so distracted by the glossy surface of the beautiful Black Lotus card that I didn’t notice my neighbor walking in as I walked out. We bumped into each other, both wrenched from our own individual worlds.

  “Sorry, Jessie,” I told her.

  “Dexter!” she replied, her eyes widening at me.

  The elevator doors began pushing closed, but she stood between them, blocking my path. She was wearing a skimpy silk pajama set in powder blue and looked beyond frazzled.

  “I’m so glad I ran into you!” she said. “I locked myself out of my apartment again, like an idiot. I was about to go to the lobby and call for the super, but would you mind…”

  She bit her lip, waiting for me to jump in and offer to help before she had to ask. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders, and she pushed one side behind her ear while she stared up at me with pleading eyes.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll grab my kit.”

  “Thank you so much, Dex,” she spouted, placing one hand around my bicep. “You’re saving my life.”

  “It’s really no problem,” I told her as we walked together to my apartment. “Just give me a second.”

  I unlocked my door and placed my mail on my kitchen counter, slipping the Black Lotus card back into the padded envelope for safekeeping. Jessie trailed in behind me, looking around curiously at my place.

  “Do you actually know how to use that?” she asked.

  When I turned around, she was staring at the large Claymore sword mounted on my wall. Hardened steel, double-edged blade, engraved hilt. It’d been a steal on eBay for only $400.00.

  I chuckled.

  “I’ve trained with it a little. I’m not sure I could win any duels any time soon though.”

  Jessie nodded, eyeing me curiously, like she was rewriting her opinion of me based on my apartment. I tried to see it through her eyes—the battle sword replicas, the giant entertainment center including several game consoles and controllers, the large wall of bookshelves filled with fantasy pulps and stacks of board games. I wondered how I could subtly steer her vision towards my spare bedroom, where the door stood ajar for the mounted pull-up bar, and my weight rack and punching bag were visible within. Just so she could see I wasn’t entirely as nerdy as I came across.

  Sure, I’d been a nerdy kid growing up—I hit puberty late and took a lot of shit from the “cool kids” up until I grew a foot and a half over one summer and could suddenly handle myself. But the nerdy hobbies never really left me.

  Obviously.

  Shaking my head to myself, I grabbed the small lock-picking kit from my bedside table drawer and joined Jessie back in the entryway, not sure why I felt the need to impress her. It’s not like I was particularly looking for a girlfriend at the moment anyway.

  “Ready?” I asked her.

  She smiled at me kind of funny, turning on her heels in her slippers and guiding me to her apartment. I could have sworn she was swinging her hips more than usual on the walk.

  When we reached her door down the hall, I sank down to my knees, settling into the familiar task. Removing my tools from the small leather pouch, I slid the turning tool into the lock, creating tension and then inserting my trusty city rake. Jessie watched, enraptured as I worked, as if she hadn’t seen me do this for her several times before.

  Despite having been stranded in the hallway multiple times at this point, she never seemed to remember that her door locked automatically behind her. I didn’t mind. It was good to get practice in every once in a while, and I liked to help.

  I had the lock open in half a minute, having only needed one tool to jimmy it. The locks in our apartment complex were kindergarten-level easy to pick, which is why I’d installed a more sophisticated one on my own door. They’d definitely find a way to take the improvement out of my security deposit when I moved, but it was worth it to know that not any middle schooler with an amateur lock-picking kit and half a brain could break in.

  “Oh my God, thank you so much, Dexter,” Jessie said, walking into her apartment.

  I stood in the doorway awkwardly. I think she expected me to follow her in, but I was embarrassingly impatient to get back to admiring my Black Lotus card.

  “No problem,” I called. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

  Jessie returned to the entryway.

  “Do you want to come in, have a cup of coffee or something? I’ve gotta repay you somehow.”

  “Nah, it’s alright, no payment necessary. I’m happy to do it.”

  She looked a little disappointed, her head falling to one side as she pursed her lips at me.

  “Okay…” she said. “You know, you should put a sign up or something. Let people know you can help them get into their apartments. These automatic locks screw a lot of people over.”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, I’m not sure I should advertise that. Hi, I’m your neighbor you’ve never met and I can totally break into your apartment any time I want. I promise I won’t do it unless you ask me to though.”

  Jessie laughed, blushing a little.

  “Yeah…when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound like such a good idea.”

  I smiled at her, trying to bow out gracefully.

  Sure, she was beautiful, and seemed to want to spend more time with me…but I was smart enough to resist getting involved with a girl who lived down the hall. For however fun—and convenient—it might be, the consequences could be disastrous. Lease-breaking disastrous. And I really, really liked this building (despite the locks being amateur at best).

  “See you around, Jessie,” I told her.

  “Bye, Dex,” she sang, leaning against the wall.

  I turned around, closing her door gently behind me as I left and kneeling down to gather my lock-picking supplies back into the small black leather pouch I’d had since high school. Lock-picking had always been a hobby of mine, for whatever reason—maybe it was my obsession with the Ocean’s 11 movies as a kid. Somewhere between wanting to be a knight and wanting to be a computer engineer, I’d wanted to be a master thief. That career goal eventually faded, but the lock-picking hobby remained.

  As I stood up, two things happened—a blur of movemen
t caught my eye from the right, moving so fast down the hallway I hadn’t even noticed its approach—and a large blunt object came swinging down at my head just as I was pushing myself up.

  Pain shot through my head with a deafening crack, and the world went dark.

  When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the smell.

  Horse manure, cooking smoke, forging fires. It smelled like the renaissance festival I’d gone to one year—which turned out to just be lots of busty women in corsets and men eating full turkey legs and drinking flagons of ale, which I couldn’t really complain about—but I’d been hoping for more realistic medieval battle reenactments and less novelty souvenirs.

  When I shook my head, piercing pain followed, running down my spine. I opened my eyes and blinked into bright sunlight—where the hell was I? Hadn’t I just been in my apartment hallway, picking a lock? Was I robbed? Was I dead?

  As I stood, my eyes began to adjust, so I could see the ground beneath me was dirt and cobblestone, the wall I had been leaning against made of mossy, ancient-looking stone. I checked my back pocket, thinking I had definitely been robbed, but my wallet was still there in my jeans. I took it out and counted the money, checked for my credit cards and I.D.—it was all there. In my other pocket, my leather lock-picking kit still remained.

  If I wasn’t robbed, what the hell happened to me?

  I was in some sort of alleyway, having been dumped there by whoever attacked me, I assumed. But it didn’t look, or sound, or smell like San Francisco—in fact, it didn’t look like anywhere I’d ever been before.

  Confused as all hell, I stumbled out of the alleyway and into a bustling street. That’s when things got really, out-of-control, what-in-the-actual-fuck crazy.

  Because I had emerged into an all-out Lord of the Rings, D&D, A Knight’s Tale scene, complete with bustling wooden market stalls, horse-drawn carriages, and even a town crier type guy running around and yelling about noblemen and increased grain taxation.

  “What in the….” I started, but before I could even finish the thought, a carriage almost ran me over, forcing me to jump backwards into the alley. A prissy-looking man dressed in full-out medieval garb including a cape and silly hat eyed me rudely from the carriage, as if he was offended a lowly peasant like me would dare to lay eyes upon him.

  What. The. Fuck.

  As I backed further into the alleyway and away from the nobleman’s evil glare, I ran directly into something—or someone.

  I turned around and saw a nun—or, at least, she was dressed like a nun. Sort of. Black robes, white trim, a habit covering her hair and stretching up her neck—but the outfit hung tighter on her than most nuns I knew, and she looked young, and, well, attractive. Maybe it was just my own prejudice that I pictured nuns as exclusively old and homely.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I told her, moving to allow her to pass me.

  She eyed me for a moment, a tiny smirk playing at her full lips, before nodding politely and disappearing into the bustling street. I couldn’t help but notice an odd, sultry sway to her hips. Were nuns supposed to walk that sexily?

  I didn’t have time to ponder it. As she disappeared into the crowd, I started to come to terms with the fact that I’d woken up in a strange place, with strange people, and zero idea of how I got there or how to get back home again. I didn’t even know if I could use American money here. I reached for my wallet again, trying to take stock of what I had at my disposal to get myself out of there.

  But my wallet was gone.

  And it took me all of three seconds to figure out who’d nicked it.

  Chapter

  Two

  I burst out of the alleyway, peering down the bustling street to find the thief. It didn’t take long—her long black habit made her easy to pick out in the crowd. But she was quick—in the second I spotted her, she was gone, disappearing down another alley across the street.

  Navigating around a stalled carriage in my path and hoping I didn’t get kicked or bitten by a horse, I pushed my way through the street, trying to follow the woman. My senses exploded suddenly with new sights, sounds, and smells—all at once I inhaled the smoking legs of lamb hanging down from butcher stalls, the incense burning from a haphazard shop featuring crystals and animal skulls shrouded behind woven fabrics, the sweat and manure and urine and mud. I felt dizzy by the time I’d crossed the street, pushing my way around a crowd of young children in tattered renaissance faire clothes throwing around what looked like a cow spleen as a toy.

  In the alley, I just barely caught sight of the woman disappearing around a corner, her black habit swishing in the breeze. I took off at a sprint, my tennis shoes sinking into the wet dirt. When I turned the corner, I saw her leaning against a wall, the backdoor of what seemed to be a bar open next to her. She was picking through my wallet.

  Drunk-looking men eyed her as they exited the bar, but she didn’t seem afraid—in fact, her eyes seemed to dare them to mess with her.

  “Hey!” I shouted, jogging over to her. “That’s my—”

  But before I could even finish my sentence, she took off again like a bolt of lightning, weaving through the large and drunken men and disappearing into the alley beyond.

  “Shit,” I breathed.

  I took off after her.

  I didn’t know where the hell I was, how I’d gotten there, or what sort of massive head trauma I’d obviously endured, but I did know that the only asset I had in this strange and confusing world was my wallet, and I wasn’t going to let it go that easy. I shoved my way through the drunken men, eliciting a few curses, but luckily they all seemed too smashed to run after a stranger pursuing a thieving nun.

  The woman ran full speed down the alley, making a tight left turn into another busy street. I was right on her heels, but she knew the terrain better —weaving around townspeople and ducking under pallets as beefy men delivered wares to various stalls. A fishmonger nearly dropped a crate of foul-smelling trout on me as I pushed past him to follow the nun, who had jumped lithely onto the rim of a stone fountain and danced along the edge, jumping down and disappearing into the crowd on the other side.

  Not having the time or agility to follow her path, I hopped directly into the fountain, my jeans soaking up to my calves with the dirty water. I splashed directly across to the other side, jumping out and through a throng of old women feeding pigeons on the other side. The nun glanced back as I pursued, surprised I was still on her heels, then ducked into a doorway of a musty shop.

  I followed, bursting loudly into a quiet bookstore, one wall covered floor to ceiling with shelves containing actual scrolls. A bespectacled old man behind the front counter eyed me ungraciously, but I quickly ran across his shop to the open backdoor, where the nun must have disappeared, yelling “sorry!” as I did.

  Emerging into another alley, I looked left then right—finding the nun fifty feet down the way, catching her breath against a trough where a group of large, snorting hogs ate their lunch within a wooden pen.

  I walked over to her with my hands in the air, half-scared the pigs would somehow be compelled to protect her. This woman had led me to what looked like a seedier area of this strange world, maybe hoping I wouldn’t follow. The garbage and manure smell had increased, the sunlight not quite making its way into this particular alleyway.

  “Here,” the woman said through labored breath as I approached her, rolling her eyes at me. She opened my wallet, emptying the few random coins I had into her palm and tossing it back. “Most of it is useless anyway.”

  I caught the wallet, shocked she actually returned it.