My Dark Knight (Kings of Hell MC 2)

“Mr. Fane, please, he meant no harm,” Elliot was quick to say.

Knight took a deep breath and exploded with anger. “I don’t need your protection from this maniac! He’s dead. His bones are rotting in the ground somewhere, and this is just a shadow of him. Look. He can’t even appear without you calling him.”

Fane’s handsome features twisted into a mask so distorted it could barely be called a face at all. Opening his mouth so wide the darkness of his throat seemed like a black hole, he dashed at Knight, ready to claw his eyes out.

Bravado ceased to mean anything in the moment when such a monstrous yet shockingly material being attacked, and Knight’s knees went soft. Mindlessly, he grabbed the flashlight off the mantelpiece and swung it at the apparition’s head. Only nothing happened when the two of them clashed. Knight’s hand sank into Fane as if he were a cloud, and even though his fingers felt icy cold where he couldn’t see them, there was no pain.

He stepped back, holding the flashlight to his chest, and watched Fane touch himself in the place where Knight pierced through just a second ago. His smooth hands clenched and slowly, very slowly Fane looked at Elliot, no longer a beast but the handsome man he first appeared as.

“W-what happened to me?” he uttered.

Elliot took two steps closer, as if he wasn’t freaked out by a fucking ghost. “A terrible thing, Mr. Fane. You are best off not thinking about it. Do you not remember?” He glanced back at Knight, seeking help as if they were assisting someone hit by a car not talking to a long-dead serial killer.

Knight rubbed his face, still hoping this was all a bad dream. He shouldn’t have clowned around. He should have known that in a place so ripe with the supernatural this kind of thing could have happened. “You are a murderer. You killed thirty men, and one of your victims got the upper hand, finally. No one is sorry for you. Everyone hates you. You are rotten to the core. Go back to the maggots, where you belong.” He didn’t even notice when he approached, or when his voice became louder, but there was no denying the pure hatred leaking out of Fane’s gaze. If he could, he would have charged at Knight again.

Elliot sneered at Knight, of all people. “Stop freaking him out.” He reached out to Fane’s ghost, as if he wanted to stroke a favorite pet.

Knight grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, so that he stood between Fane and the reckless idiot. “Do not touch him. You don’t know what could happen!”

Fane took a step closer, and a cane almost identical to Elliot’s appeared in his hand out of thin air. “Why did you call me then if you claim to know all about who I am?”

“We-we wanted to learn about you, Mr. Fane. About your motives, about the pain you must have suffered,” Elliot said in a soft voice but stayed put behind Knight.

Knight fought the tightness in his chest and spoke, “He wants to say we wanted to know if you ate people.”

Fane blinked. “What utter nonsense! I am no barbarian!”

“Told you,” hissed Knight and pulled on Elliot’s hand. “Now, let’s go.”

Elliot resisted, but Knight wasn’t having it anymore. They needed to get out of here before things got any more dangerous.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fane. I meant no disrespect. It made sense to me at the time,” Elliot stumbled over words, all of his attention on the ghost.

They would close the door, forget any of this ever happened and make sure no one ever came down here again. Especially Laurent.

Knight was out of breath by the time he reached the threshold, but his heart trembled with unspeakable fear when Fane darted after them, eager to leave this room, to haunt the whole clubhouse, to turn someone’s life into constant misery.

And it would be all Knight’s fault.

Chapter 9

Knight stumbled and crashed against the wall of the hallway outside of Fane’s chamber of horrors, bringing Elliot down with him. But as Fane put his foot just inches away and braced himself to run up the stairs, the air around the door frame shuddered, and Fane fell back, as if he’d hit a barrier of bulletproof glass that wouldn’t even budge under his weight. The inhuman scream of fury that followed resonated in Elliot’s bones.

He pressed himself tightly against Knight but watched William’s every move as the ghost ran his fingers over some force in the doorway that was impenetrable to him. William Fane was somehow anchored to his place of death and unable to leave the room.

“Mr. Fane…” Elliot pulled away slightly, struck by the impossibility of William’s position, but Knight still held his arm in a steel grip. “You are so much more handsome than in your portraits.”