A Knight Arising 1-4

CHAPTER ONE:

Lukas sat on the edge of the apartment building, one leg thrown carelessly over the edge and an arm wrapped around his other knee. His dark skin gleamed in the light from the full moon and the neon lights of the stores on the street below. He loved this time of night…the hum of the city seemed less menacing and the world was asleep. He sat there for hours, until the sun came up and he had to seek refuge from that glaring orb.

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Michelle rushed through the store, her arms full of glossy paper bags, bumping into people and drawing angry looks. Her shopping had taken her longer than she thought, and now she was going to be late for her afternoon appointment. Andre was going to be pissed, she thought.

She ran along the aisles of the store, out the doors and down the street towards the subway station. As she bustled along, her mind ran along familiar paths – paths filled with uncomfortable, disconcerting thoughts and memories. She sat on the subway for two hours as she jogged between transfer points, missed stops and construction zones. She finally got to her apartment in the Falcon Heights complex. Michelle had lived in Minneapolis for about two months, working in the afternoons as a corporate consultant for a Washington, D.C. company. Gerald Newman and Associates, a consulting company a hundred and twenty years old, was paying extravagantly for the luxurious suite in the Oakwood apartments, but they would only continue to do so if she made it to her appointments on time! Damn it all!

She burst in the door, shielding her eyes from the bright light that shone through the windows. She tripped over the rug and barked her shin on the shoe rack. She swore through gritted teeth as she dumped her packages on the dining room table and launched herself to the bathroom.

Michelle eased herself under the massaging water stream issuing from the shower head, the hot water easing sore, tired muscles and fogging up the mirror and making the ceramic tiles of the bathroom floor slick with moisture. She lathered up and washed her hair – she had to be sparkling for this meeting. She tumbled out of the shower and dried herself off with a fluffy white towel. Normally she luxuriated in her showers, it was one of her favorite activities, but this was not the right time. She did, nevertheless, take a moment to bury her nose in the fragrant towel, sighing as she rubbed it over her dripping body.

Now was the moment of truth – her hair. Being of mixed blood, she had the black, curly hair of her father and the wave and body of her mother. It was an absolute pain to keep tidy, and in her haste she had forgotten that. She took a straightener to her hair and attacked it with a vengeance. A blow drier, a scrunchie and some mousse turned her rats' nest of hair into a sleek, black helmet with a long pony tail reaching almost to her waist.

Michelle's wardrobe was slightly easier to choose from – she merely had to impress the client with her looks and her smarts. She didn't know much about who the client was sending as a delegate, but assumed it would be a man. Men were easy to impress: they thought with their dicks, and not much else. Of course, she knew exceptions, like her daddy, but she had always run across the chauvinist type in business matters. So, with this in mind, she went casual-sexy. A black lacy push-up bra started the list, and a pair of boyshorts slipped up her legs. Knee high nylons went on her feet. She took out a crimson lace top shirt out of the closet and put it on. It was long in the arms and the trunk, so the cuffs would hang out her jacket sleeves and the hem would hug her hips. Her third-best suit came out; it was a white blazer coupled with white front-seam pants. She slipped them on and stepped into a pair of heeled sandals. Michelle did not need the height as she stood at a respectable 5'10", but the heels added a provocative sway to her hips and made her slightly more imposing. Men often backed down when a woman could look directly into their eyes, or even down at them.

Michelle took a step back and looked in the floor length mirror and appraised herself. She was a slender woman, weighing in at a grand total of a hundred and fifteen pounds of bone and muscle. Her light caramel coloured skin was flawless except for a couple of small moles and freckles on her neck and shoulders and long, slender hands and small, dainty feet stuck out in the proper places. She had high cheek bones framing two almond shaped eyes, a well-proportioned nose and high, narrow eyebrows.

She applied red lipstick and lip gloss to her lips and adjusted the neckline of her shirt and buttoned up her blazer. She fixed a couple of hoops to her ear lobes, chose a gold-plated necklace from her safe. She shrugged into a dark knee length coat and grabbed her purse and portfolio from the kitchen table as she sauntered out the door. She got on board the elevator and called a cab on her cell phone; it was waiting for her as she walked out the door of her apartment building.

It was a thirty minute drive from her apartment to the offices of Jaimeson, Tyler and Goodriche. Michelle reviewed her portfolio as the cabbie navigated the hell that was the Minneapolis street system. Jaimeson, Tyler and Goodriche had been around since the early 1940s, having been founded in the economic boom that had heralded the start of the Second World War in America. They dealt with European and African imports. They had a silent partner that held over thirty percent of their assets. The eldest sons of the company's founders each held fifteen percent of the stock, and the final quarter of the company's assets was held by small-time investors throughout America, Europe and Africa.

They had over three thousand employees taking care of various parts of the business in branches across the western hemisphere. Their gains were at over five hundred million a year, but they were loosing money, and fast. The executives of Jamieson, Tyler and Goodriche had called her in an attempt to find out what was going wrong.

The cab finally pulled up outside a tall sky rise. Its steel and concrete edifices were broken by long mirrored windows and marble carvings. The JT&G offices were on the sixty second floor, overlooking the downtown sprawl of greater Minneapolis. Michelle got out of the car as the doorman opened the door. He was an old man with a white goatee and moustache and had white hair with grey temples tied back in a neat pony tail.

"Good afternoon," he said. His voice held a hint of an upper class English accent. "I assume you are here to speak with Mr. Jaimeson, Miss…" He looked at her expectantly, his warm brown eyes looking at her steadily.

"Michelle Leodegrance. I'm here from Gerald Newman and Associates."

"I will tell them you will be right up." He took her hand as she stepped onto the curb and motioned for her to precede him up the stairs into the foyer. Michelle heard him mumbling behind her, but didn't turn around. Either he was senile, she thought, or he had a microphone. It was probably the latter, for he seemed to be a stable sort of man.

Michelle walked through the main floor of the office building and moved to the triple bank of elevators in the center. A hand on her arm stopped her, prompting her to turn around. The doorman stood there with an unreadable expression on his face.

"The Firm has a private elevator, madam. Please follow me." He passed by her towards the back of the building. There was a partition there, with mirrored glass doors; she could see their reflections in the glass, but nothing beyond them. The old man walked up to them, tapped lightly, and pushed open the panels.

She stepped through the plate glass doors into a vast foyer carpeted with Persian rugs laid over Grecian rose granite. African-style carvings in some black wood sat in little nooks inset into the walls, and they were lit from below with little halogen lights. The sculptures' shadows lay steadily on the walls behind them. They were kind of spooky.

A brass elevator sat in the middle of the back wall of the room, directly across from the doors Michelle came through.

"This way," said the old man as he passed by her. For some reason he always seemed to disappear from sight the moment she blinked, only to suddenly appear out of the corner of her eye. Michelle followed him into the elevator. It had glass walls, and as it rose up the vertical wall of the sky scraper, she could see the carvings in the walls on either side of the elevator shaft, carvings of knights, warriors and wild beasts. Part way up, the elevator paused, and Michelle saw, carved deeply into the wall of the shaft, the image of a wild beast, with a snake's head, a leopard's body and a lion's haunches surrounded by uncountable hounds. It started again with a lurch, and then the ride was smooth the rest of the way up.

The elevator stopped and Michelle and the old man stepped through the door into a very professional looking office. The ceiling was high and pillars covered in books and collectables filled the room, blocking lines of sight. She could make out a desk and a small group of people down at the other end of the room.

"Miss Leodegrance, master Lukas and his associates are down there," he pointed. "Jered Jaimeson is the one in the black and khaki, Mr. John Tyler and Mr. Percival Goodriche are the bearded and the bald men, respectively. You'll know master Lukas, I'm sure." The man had a little, knowing smile on his wrinkled face. "Your Mr. Andre Bors will be here soon, I understand that he was held up in traffic on the way here."

Michelle's relief was apparent as she slouched a little in her wool jacket. The doorman's smile grew larger. "If you need anything, you may call me Mer. I suggest that you wait to ask me questions until you are done with your meeting." He bowed slightly and stepped back into the elevator, the brass doors closing in front of him.

Michelle turned and walked slowly through the room. It spread the length and breadth of the sky scraper. It was dark and windowless, lit by electric torches and candles. Plasma TV screens sat in fake hearths, with looped videos of flames dancing and casting light across the floor. In all, it was a cozy atmosphere, but there seemed to be an underlying tension in the room. She threaded her way between the pillars to the desk, taking as a direct route as possible. The four men seemed to be talking together, but as she drew closer, they paused, and turned to look at her.

Jaimeson was a handsome man, blonde haired, blue eyed with a closely cropped beard. His tailored suit fit like a second skin and complimented his fair complexion very well. It was with difficulty that Michelle took her eyes off him.

Tyler was pudgy and short, with a dark, unruly beard and a mop of curly dark brown hair. He wore a beige three piece suit with an embroidered waist coat and dark shoes. Stylish, she thought, but a bit over the top. He had an olive complexion and his outfit accented this feature.

Percival Goodriche was another matter altogether. He stood well over six and a half feet tall, was lean and pock marked, as though he had had a really bad case of chicken pox and he'd scratched his face clean of scabs time and time again. He wore a burgundy rugby shirt, blue jeans and loafers. His bald head gleamed in the fake fire light and his bifocals glittered in the unrelenting glow of the candelabras around the desk; he looked wizened and energetic. He was standing with his back half turned towards Michelle, and the young woman could see a tattoo of three swords, point down, on the back of his neck.

Goodriche turned all the way around and stepped back, and Michelle got her first look of "Master Lukas." He lounged on the edge of his desk, loose fitting black pants and a ruffled silk shirt draped his frame. The man's skin was smooth and coloured as the finest chocolate. Around his neck lay a necklace with a golden Celtic Knot with three swords, point down, in the center. He was reading a yellowed piece of paper, but he looked up at her as she rounded the last pillar. He had the most incredible, piercing amber eyes Michelle had ever seen. This was actually a pale comparison, as she had never seen amber eyes before, but she was riveted by their intensity. She had to force herself not to go weak in the knees, but she was quivering more violently the longer he looked into her eyes. It was as though he recognized her. It was as if…as if she recognized him…

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Michelle remembered: She was looking up at the moon, for some reason, as she was walking home one night from the subway station. She looked up, and there was a man sitting on the edge of her apartment building – just sitting – looking up at the moon. It was as though she was watching the moon through his eyes, for an odd double vision of the moon passed through her mind.

The moon she saw with her own eyes was the moon as she had always known it, a cool, bright orb in the night sky, a sad man looking down at the world, surrounded by stars.

The moon she saw through his eyes was clouded with mist, a long, shimmering path leading to it. She saw a shore with three women in robes silhouetted against the light of the moon. She was lying in a boat, her legs wrapped in a red cloth with a golden lion rampant emblazoned across her body, and her head in someone's lap. Her head hurt, as though she had suffered a mortal blow on it.

The image wavered, and she came 'round, still looking into Mr. Lukas' eyes.

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Mr. Lukas blinked and smiled, his little moustache rising as his face moved, revealing white, perfect teeth.

"We have much more to talk about than work, I think, Miss Leodegrance. That'll have to wait though. Your boss is on his way up."

A shudder of disappointment ran through Michelle's body.

CHAPTER TWO:

Andre Bors was a big man, muscular, but covered by a heavy layer of fat. This said, he was not a balloon of gristle and cellulose: More accurately, he looked, and often behaved, more like a shaved bear raised on his hind legs and given a very cunning human mind. At the moment, he was sitting very irritably on a cushioned bench inside the Firm's private, brass-walled elevator, fingers tapping an agitated tempo on the gaudy glass prism on the top of his cane.

It annoyed him that he even needed the cane. Before he had become involved with legitimate business, Bors was a successful player in one of the larger New York crime syndicates. His entry into legal business came following a hit on his family – his third wife and four of his children were found shot and gutted in his Brooklyn home. He turned to the police and turned informant. When the time had come for the take-down of the syndicate, he and the gang-cops with him entered a warehouse, guns blazing. Five minutes in, just before his former bosses were taken into custody, a bullet, a forty-five calibre magnum round from a revolver, had lodged itself into his right knee joint.

There were days when he didn't need the cane, when he could walk around, even run and lift weights, without pain. But on the days when he couldn't move his leg he typically stayed home, with his forth wife and three kids, and worked from his office. It was from there that he was called today, from his little garden shed outfitted with plants, desks, computers and the like, everything a business executive needed to work effectively away from the office. But, at two thirty this morning, a call had come in from Washington, D.C., from head office. Lukas Lejonhjartad had called the CEO of Gerald Newman and Associates, a willful, quiet man with the best interests of not only the company but its employees and clients at heart, and voiced concern about the consultant appointed to his company's headquarters in Minneapolis.

Kasey Grant was kind and patient, but when he thought one of his employees was not performing up to par, he tended to alternate between violent anger and tremulous, nervous worrying. When Bors "got the call," as it were, Grant was nearly crying into the receiver. Recollecting this, Bors' tapping of his fingers increased their tempo.

"Andre, you just have to do something!" he remembered Grant saying, "Michelle seems to have irritated Lukas Lejonhjartad. She's… I dunno Andre! He's asking that someone come in and mediate between the two of them in their first face-to-face meeting. I guess he's nervous. She is a strong-willed woman, and does come on kind of strong at times."

Bors' forehead crinkled as he recalled the forty minutes of whining that he put up with before he made the suggestion that he knew Grant wanted to hear. "Why don't I go, Kasey? Lukas doesn't know me, but I know both of them, at least by reputation. I remember Michelle from a couple of years ago, but I haven't spoken to her since. I suppose I could be considered a comparatively neutral mediator."

And those were the words that had led Andre Bors, former criminal, former police informant, and current executive of one of the East Coast's most influential business advisory firms, to board an emergency private jet from Brooklyn to Minneapolis at ten that morning.

A pause in the elevator's upward moment caused him to look up, through the glass plating in the doors. Spotlights shone briefly on a grotesque creature surrounded by dogs. Bors' eyes seemed inexorably drawn to those of the bass-relief carving. The world at the edges of his vision began to blur, and the creature's head seemed to move. The sound of thirty couple hounds baying rang faintly through his mind, mesmerizing him. The surreal moment was suddenly broken as the elevator jumped sharply upward, continuing its journey up the last hundred feet of the sky scraper. Bors stood and turned, looking down at the city as it fell away from under his feet. It was a magnificent view. Bors himself was wary of heights, and typically took the isle seat so he didn't have to see the world disappear. On this occasion, however, he was happy to see the view. He could see Lake Calhoun in the distance, and Lake Superior just over the horizon. The parks, the neighborhoods, the universities…he could see everything from his slowing brass carriage. With a soft bump, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open silently. He started and turned, twisting his bad knee cruelly as he did so. He let a feral growl escape his lips before stepping painfully out of the elevator.

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Michelle slowly slid her eyes from those of the tall, dark and ever-so-handsome Lukas Lejonhjartad and sent a furtive glance toward where she thought the elevator was. The columns of stone and books hid it from view. The growl sounded almost evil, and it stirred all sorts of nasty memories and half-remembered legends.

Lukas merely laughed. "Mr. Bors! You are expected. Welcome!"

"Lukas, your hallowed home is annoyingly cluttered," came a voice, drifting faintly through the office. "And why is it so bloody dark?" *Bang* "DAMMIT!" roared Bors, "Why the hell would you put THAT there??"

Michelle mused that Andre Bors didn't particularly care whose toes he stepped on. They had met, briefly, a number of years ago at a conference in San Francisco. They'd met, bumping glasses over a buffet table, upon hearing that their firm had been awarded a national prize for the most successful corporate consultations that year. The big bald man hefted his weight around with the help of a prism-topped cane at the time, something he attributed to a twisted ankle from skiing. He drank a lot, laughed a lot, and told so many jokes that half the conference attendees were doubled over, holding their splitting sides. Michelle herself had fallen off her high-heels and was laughing herself hoarse at Bors' recital of Aristophanes' "The Frogs."