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“I’m
sorry I talked to mom and dad. I
always am.”
Raymond Barone, Everybody loves Raymond
Marilyn was still reading the
gymnastics magazine when Everett
came back in. She looked up, doing a
double-take when she realized it was him.
She looked behind him to see Donovan, Richard, and Erik looking around
as nonchalantly as they could the restaurant.
“Four,” Everett said in a tired voice.
He looked back at the three Europeans and turned back to Marilyn. “Apparently.”
“Who are they?” she asked with a
glance to them as she collected the menus.
Everett
just closed his eyes and shook his head in surrender.
“Hey, what’ve you got in the way
of bourbon, m’ dear?” Donovan asked as he sat down.
Marilyn froze with the menu halfway in
front of him. She looked at Everett, then back at
Donovan. “Um, I, don’t really
know. I, can go look.”
“Thanks,” he said, settling in to
look at the menu. Again, Marilyn
looked at Everett. He closed his eyes for a second time and
shrugged in defeat.
When she left, Everett turned and looked across the table
at Erik. “So, let’s try this again,”
he said. “My name’s Everett Kendall,
knight-defender of this city. And you
are?”
“Erik Karlsson, knight-errant,” he
answered. He folded up the menu and
placed it on the table. “I’m from Norway and I’m here on behalf of the knights
of Europe.”
Everett
stared at him, unimpressed. “We’re
here tracking a knight we believe to be a threat to those around him, and
possibly to knights around the world.”
“Alan Vick,” Everett connected. Erik nodded, as if surprised. Everett rubbed his eyes
and looked down. “This week just
cannot get any frickin’ weirder.”
After a moment, he looked at Donovan and Richard, then turned his
attention back to Erik. “So what? You want to know where he’s staying? What room?”
“That’s the tricky part,” Erik
said.
“Knights are no more a formal
enforcement agency in Europe than they are here in the Americas,”
Richard said succinctly as he read over the menu. “We have no enforcement power.”
“Moreover,” Erik interjected, “we
have only a vague notion of what it is that Alan Vick is up to.”
“I’m guessing you know about
Knightspeak,” Everett
said. But the three knights all perked
up, intrigued but lost. “Knightspeak?”
he asked. “The weird language or
whatever that Alan can talk in that makes weird things happen.”
Erik laced his fingers together
and leaned forward over the table.
“Please, enlighten us.”
Everett leaned forward as well. “No.”
He sat back, looking at Donovan, then Richard. “I don’t know who the hell you guys
are. And the fact that you’re from Europe, while neat, does not impress me. Alan is a strange guy, but if you want my
help, you’re going to have to convince me why, exactly, I should put my faith
in you versus him.” He looked at the
blue shirts the three knights wore.
“If for no other reason, he’s in black and red.”
“Everett, consider this carefully,” Erik
said. “The US knights have been estranged
from the knights of the rest of the world for decades. And we, as representatives of the knights
of Europe, are coming to you for
assistance.”
“Do you have papers?” Everett asked. “Do you have an official seal, proving that
you represent the knights?” Erik sat
back, considering what to say. Pausing
to take a few breaths, Everett
glanced towards Marilyn. He thought
for a moment. “Look, I don’t like
Alan. I don’t like him and I don’t
trust him. But I at least know
him. I don’t know you.” Erik was about to speak, but Everett held up his
hand. “However, let’s say for a moment
that you are from the European knights.
That makes me even less likely to discuss this matter with you. This is our problem; we’ll fix it.”
“You may not be able to,” Richard
said, drawing Everett’s
attention.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“Alan Vick has been recruiting
since before he arrived in the States,” Erik said, putting his hand in front
of Richard to go along with his cautionary glance. “We believe that what Alan has planned is
something very big and, more than likely, very violent.”
“What do you mean by recruiting?”
“Do you know about the
Knightsnet?” Donovan asked.
“Yeah,” Everett said. “It’s a message board online that is
specifically for knights. It’s a
public, sort of, forum for knights to discuss what’s going on in the world.”
“Alan has been very quietly, but
very aggressively, recruiting knights from all over the United States,”
Erik explained. “He’s…” He stopped as the waitress arrived. Everett
sat still, his eyes never leaving Erik as Donovan and Richard ordered. When the waitress turned her attention to
Erik, he smiled. “I’m fine,” he said.
“I’m not eating,” Everett said to the woman, his eyes never
leaving Erik’s. When the waitress
walked away, Everett
leaned back in his chair. “You were
saying.”
“He seems to be amassing an army,”
Erik said in a low voice. “Where and
how and for what, we don’t know. But
the European knights feel that whatever he’s up to, it must be big. And more than likely, bad.”
“Why are the European knights even
involved?” Everett
asked. “Why do they care?”
“Do you remember the British naval
maneuvers off the coast of France
last year?” Richard asked with an air of superiority. “The French government got into an uproar,
demanding that Britain
testing weapons was an unnecessary and aggressive act?”
“I honestly didn’t pay much attention,”
Everett
said. “It seemed like nothing more
than political posturing.”
“What actually happened was an
island was raised from the bottom of the ocean,” Erik explained.
Everett’s eyebrows went up as surprise registered. “Say what?”
“A large island was raised from
the bottom of the ocean,” Erik repeated.
“Theories insist that it was raised by volcanic activity beneath the
ocean floor.”
“An island?” Everett asked.
“Yes, it rose up south of the
British coast and west of the French coast,” Erik went on, “putting it
technically in both nations’ waters.”
“An island?”
Donovan snapped his fingers in
front of Everett’s
eyes, jerking his attention back to the conversation. “Stay with us.”
“The island has since been sunk
back into the ocean,” Erik explained.
“But we, the knights of Europe, know
that Alan was involved, in some small way, with that island rising. Moreover, we also know that he was involved
in several extremely classified activities in Paris
and parts of Germany.”
“Classified?” Everett said.
“What else would you call it?”
Richard asked. “There was some kind of
government operation going on, which he was part of, but we can’t figure out
what government or for what reason.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Everett said
carefully. “You think that, because
Alan Vick was involved in…” he closed his eyes, unable to process the
exaggerated events laid out before him,
“all this stuff, and that he’s come back to the States and is
supposedly recruiting this army of knights, that he’s up to no-good.”
“That’s about the gist of it,
yeah,” Donovan agreed. Everett sat back and
rubbed his eyes again.
“Everett, I appreciate that you don’t know
us from Adam,” Erik offered, “but we’re here to help. But in order to help, we need your help.”
“Yeah, and Alan came to me, asking
me the same thing,” Everett
disputed with an edge of annoyance.
“Alan’s got this damn weird language thing that can work magic, but
you guys come at me with government black ops and some island popping up out
of the Atlantic Ocean, even though
absolutely NO media outlet has even slightly mentioned it. Which does seem odd. Seems like, if a new landmass were to just float
up out of the water, somebody’d have noticed.”
“Powerful people, with potent
sway,” Erik said cautiously. Everett looked away,
but the chilling weight of the words stayed with him. “Everett,
what happened in Europe is not important
now. It is in the past. But it tells us that Alan has been, and
more than likely will be again, into something that is very ambitious and
very dangerous.” He looked
expressively at Everett. “Whatever he’s up to, we have to find out
about it before he can go through with it.
And in order to do that, we need your help.”
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