Midnight Crusader

by Nancy Gideon

  He saw her then and directed his horse to the side of the arena. With his visor down, she could only see his eyes, eyes that seemed to alter in color and shape even as she watched. Then he reached up to lift his helm, and she gasped to see Alex Cross seated in the saddle in regal battle attire.

  Wrong. It was all wrong.

  "Ah, Miss Bright. Come to enjoy a good show and cheer me on? I do hope you've brought your troublesome friend with you. There's much I need to settle before circumstances force me to flee."

  "Who are you?"

  "Why I am Legion, for I am many. But there's only one you should recognize. Or are there more, my dear?"

  She continued to stare at him, into the features she knew from the Amazon, past them to what lay beneath. To the man behind the mask.

  Step-clunk-step-clunk-step-clunk.

  Yes, she knew him. But not as entrepreneur Alex Cross, vampire murderer. He was more. But what? What? The truth was there, just out of reach. If she stretched, if she reached out to the very limit, she could just brush it with her fingertips. The truth behind the mask.

  She knew. Some part of her knew.

  Her breathing increased in tempo. A rigid tension seeped up her limbs, as if she'd been plunged into ice water. Or an icy sea.

  "I know you."

  "Do you? Tell me."

  "I know what you are."

  "Excellent. No more surprises except perhaps one."

  It wasn't a surprise to her after all. Somehow she'd known. She'd seen the dangerous undertow beneath the invitingly serene surface. She hadn't recognized him until it was too late, but now she saw the madness and the nightmare.

  And then she saw behind the mask.

  She screamed as he reached for her.

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  Chapter Twenty-five

  "Gabriel de Magnor, come on down."

  Gabriel descended the steps to the rail of the arena where Rollie stood practicing his sword thrusts. Gabriel watched his friend for a long moment, heart shredded by the knowledge he carried. When at last he could bear the pain no more, he cried out, “Why?"

  "You still don't know? I could never beat you, Gabriel, and I could never be you."

  "Why would you want to?"

  Rolland, the plain and the poetic, stared at his friend and stated with bland simplicity, “Because my father loved you. And she loved you."

  As Gabriel continued to look at him through tragic eyes, Rollie spun away, his movement with the sword growing more vicious.

  "You had everything, Gabriel. You were everything I wasn't. Handsome, brave, strong, all the things my father wanted me to be, but I was ever the disappointment. He wanted a hero and he got a poet. I was smart and sensitive and skilled in diplomacy, but he didn't admire those qualities. He wanted a brutal thug for a son, someone with a sword arm and a mindless love of violence. He loathed me; did you know that, Gabriel? He'd often say, ‘Why can't you be more like your friend Gabriel?’”

  "I'm sorry."

  Rolland turned on him with an angry, “You will be. But not yet. That comes later.” He went back to twirling his blade through the exercises they'd learned as boys. “My father believed the measure of a man was in the length of his sword, if you get my meaning. Because I hadn't ravished half the shire by the time I was thirteen, he called my manhood into question. He didn't understand. I didn't want just any peasant slut, any warm body ready and/or unwilling to be bedded. I wanted perfection in a woman. And I saw it when she came. But she saw only you.

  "What did you know of romance or courtship? You were a strutting brute fresh from the battlefield. And the minute she saw you, she forgot all that we had in common, all that we'd shared in your absence. I was her friend; you were her dream come true. I hated you as a man as much as I loved you as a brother."

  "I didn't know,” Gabriel repeated lamely.

  "Of course you didn't. You were too stupid, too caught up in your own pride and purpose.” His tone grew darker. “When I saw you fall in battle, I was hiding behind the bodies of the dead. I was only there because my father insisted that I accompany you in your folly. I saw you fall, and I saw my chance to have everything that was denied me."

  And he told how he raced back with news of Gabriel's death, raced back to break the news to Naomi, to comfort her in her despair, to quickly offer his support and his protection, his love.

  "But do you know what she said to me after I laid my soul at her feet? ‘Where is his body? How could you have been so cowardly as to have left him behind?’”

  Coward. Her words echoed.

  He hadn't checked. He'd been too afraid to approach the fray, too eager to leap at the chance to lay claim to what Gabriel had left behind.

  Coward. Her accusation burned.

  He hadn't meant to hit her, but suddenly he'd seen red then black in his frustration. He hadn't planned to drag her to her bed to brutally vent his lust and anger upon her fragile virgin's frame. But when it was over and her sobs finally quieted, he knew she could never shake his claim. He would wed her as soon as it could be arranged, Gabriel's memory be damned. And she would accept him and learn to love him. Gabriel would be forgotten.

  But when he'd awakened while darkness still shrouded the room, he saw she was up and about and already dressed. When he demanded to know where she thought she was going, she tore out his heart with her reply. To find Gabriel. To search for his body on the field of battle because she couldn't believe he was gone.

  "I tried to talk to her, to tell her how it was. I'd bedded her. She belonged to me. Her beloved was lost to her, whether she liked it or not, whether he lived or not. Do you know what she said?"

  Gabriel shook his head, too numb in heart and mind to imagine.

  "She told me she'd rather be dead alongside you."

  Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut, his thoughts too active now as he pictured her leaping to her death, not out of grief but in desperation.

  Because he had valued honor more than her love.

  "Because of you,” Rolland continued bitterly, “I lost the only woman I could have loved. And then you killed me with your foolishness. You changed my destiny, Gabriel, so I made you the focus of my future. I wanted you to know the horror I felt when she went out that window. It was so easy to poison your soul with guilt. You never suspected my part in her demise. You saw me only as your devoted friend. You believed everything I told you once you were carried back with your shield instead of on it. Killing you then would have been too easy, too merciful. You were so fragile, so dramatic in your grief. What did you know of grief, you who'd had everything? She was everything to me, Gabriel. The only thing. I decided in that cold, black room you dragged us to where we awoke to face our new existence, that I would devote the centuries I would now have to making you pay for my pain. You will know that horror. I couldn't save her, couldn't keep her then, but now I can hold her forever. Now, she will never leave my side. I've beaten you at last."

  Icy terror gripped his chest.

  "Where is she, Rollie?"

  He gestured to the end of the arena where the king's and queen's thrones would hold pseudo-royalty during the show. A figure slumped in the queen's chair. With a flash of preternatural speed, Gabriel was beside her, despair taking him to his knees.

  Her head was at an odd angle. Her throat had been ripped open, and her crumpled medieval costume was black with blood. Gabriel's hand shook as he reached beneath the spill of her hair in search of a pulse.

  "What do you say, Sir Gabriel? Would you give up your honor now to save her? Would you walk away and let me go free to have her? Turn your back on your notions of justice just to have her die in your arms?"

  His words croaked from a throat closed tight with awful sorrow. “Yes. I will."

  "You'd turn down the adoration and acclaim that comes with being a hero, a defender of justice? I don't believe you."

  "For her."

  "Even though she's not the woman you pledged to love for an eternity?"
/>   "Even so."

  Amazingly, Naomi's eyes flickered open. The slight movement was a struggle, and speech even more demanding upon what little life remained. He leaned close to hear her whispered words.

  "He pushed me, Gabriel. When I said I'd rather have your memory than his shallow devotion, he pushed me out the window. I didn't jump. I wouldn't have damned my soul by suicide at the risk of not spending the hereafter with you. That was my mother's way, not mine. I love you, Gabriel, then as now. Don't let him escape his fate. I would see justice done."

  Her eyes slipped shut even as he called out her name.

  "Would you hear the rest of the story now, Gabriel?” Rollie taunted from the arena. “Would you like to know why you will not win?"

  Slowly, he rose to his feet and turned to confront his tormentor. “Tell me with your last breath."

  The cold fury in his friend's glare set Rolland back, but the hesitation was brief.

  "While you were chasing about the globe trying to reunite with your lost love, I was busy getting stronger. Instead of making war and dreaming of days past, I was seeking out sources of power to one day defeat you. You bastard. In your arrogance, you killed me. You made me this beast that I am."

  "No.” Gabriel shook his head. “What you are is not my doing. You've been shaped by hate and madness and jealousy. I no longer see the man I once called friend."

  "Oh he's here inside somewhere, the poet, the gentle dreamer. But that man was never good enough, never brave enough to best you. I had to become more.

  "While you honed your skills at killing and doing the right things, I continued to learn, to search, to gather knowledge. Knowledge is power, friend, not brute strength. And then in the early 1600s, when I was pursuing that thirst for enrichment by following the Catholic campaign to stamp out native religion in South America, I came across a legend, the story of one of our kind, an ancient creature trapped in the jungles, worshipped by ignorant savages. The priests, of course, in their narrow-minded piety, were horrified, but I was fascinated. I thought if I set it free, perhaps in its gratitude, it would share its wisdom with me."

  "And what did you learn from this beast?"

  He chuckled, a low nasty sound. “It had nothing to say. It sucked up my soul and ripped my body to pieces. But it was a revelation in disguise. This creature, this Fanged Deity, had been fed on weak, human natives. When it drank my vampiric blood, it evolved. It became a thinking, higher being capable of so much more, and I became with it. But just like that beast, whom I now inhabited, I was a prisoner within that tomb. The essence of my soul had no body to return to. The creature was bound by some ancient magic to the stones of that tomb, and I was held there with it. But the power, we shared the same power in that prison until another luckless soul stumbled in to set us free."

  "Cross."

  "That's one name he might have used. Quinton Alexander is who he was as a man. A scheming lunatic, a serial killer with a shrewd mind and a talent for survival. We shared what we were with him, not that he appreciated it. We used his knowledge of this century. Here's where the story gets interesting. Knowledge is power, but money means control."

  He'd used his resources well. He had tons of ancient gold, but no way to bring it into the country. Until he met a fellow entrepreneur named Zanlos who just happened to have the things he desired most: Naomi Bright and a way to move his stone prison out of the jungle. He needed another schemer and he needed his revenge. He found both in one.

  "I found her for you, Gabriel. Through Alexander, I found her and used Zanlos’ greed to bring her here, to set a trap you could not resist. In the same body, I used Alexander's face to build my temple here in Las Vegas and this one you remembered so well to play upon your foolish sympathies. No one, not even Zanlos, knew we were one in the same. Now you know, so you might as well know everything. How I planned, how I manipulated, how I longed for the moment when my revenge would know fruition.” He smiled dreamily as his gaze fell on the motionless figure slumped upon her mock throne.

  "It was so difficult seeing her every day and not taking her then. But that pain was part of this ultimate pleasure. She didn't know who she was. I didn't believe it myself until my little thrall Rita made me privy to her nightmares. Imagine my shock to find out you'd been right all along. Her spirit had survived the centuries. But I couldn't have her ruining my surprise too soon. She was my means to finally acquit myself. She had rejected me and for that, she will suffer. I let you believe you were the cause of her death, and how your torment delighted me. And now you will die while she watches, and I will have her. For an eternity, I will have her. I'll be the better man."

  "You will get what you deserve."

  They were distracted for a brief moment as two of the Excalibur's pseudo-knights entered the arena thinking to get in a little pre-show practice.

  With a fierce mental push, Gabriel knocked Rollie off his feet. While he rolled back and forth, his armor making him a turtle in a shell, Gabriel vaulted down into the arena floor to snatch the sword from one of the mock combatants. When the ‘knight’ began to protest, Gabriel looked at them, his eyes blazing red and horrible, and growled, “Go!"

  Stumbling back in shock and terror, the two men fled.

  Rollie got the momentum to flip over and scrambled to his feet. He pushed back the visor that had fallen over his face, and what it revealed was a seething mass of changing images. Rolland then Cross then the beast from the tomb in Peru and on to whatever souls it had devoured over the centuries. All a part of the creature Gabriel confronted with sword in hand.

  "You will not become what I am,” it snarled, fangs exposed and dripping. “I will not share what I am with you. What you are ends here and now. I will crush your bones and scatter the ashes."

  "Only if Rolland defeats me. And that's never happened. Never. Come on, Rollie. Don't be a coward hiding behind your new friends. Face me, man-to-man. Or was your father right all along?"

  Roaring with centuries of rage and frustration, what had once been Rolland Tearlach charged him. Gabriel managed to throw up his blade in time to avert the shattering blow as it descended. He went down to one knee under the force but used his other leg to sweep Rollie's footing out from under him. Trapped on the arena floor a second time, Rollie struggled with the straps and buckles to his breastplate, flinging the protective gear aside, along with his gleaming helmet. Then he was up and looking for first blood.

  They circled and feinted, searching for weaknesses. Those failings were well known to each other. Rolland's was fear and hesitation, Gabriel's the rashness of pride.

  Now Rolland would try to goad him into a reckless move so he could defeat him with his own vanity. Gabriel drew upon his mental training to flush away the passions of the young man he'd once been. He wasn't Gabriel the Fighter who sought out battles to avoid the dreaded complaisance of peace. He wouldn't think about the sense of betrayal and bitter regret Rolland's actions stirred. He wouldn't fixate on the fact that even now Naomi's life was ebbing away a second time because he hadn't protected her properly. Or of the orphaned girls in a suite at the Luxor. The fight he fought was no longer personal. It was a matter of justice. Justice was cold and indifferent to emotion. It couldn't be swayed by past friendships and present losses. It went beyond him and what he wanted or needed. It wasn't about settling scores or righting past wrongs. And that justice would be served.

  He advanced steadily, sword singing through the air, sparks sizzling off Rolland's blade as he parried each swing. This wasn't the Rollie he'd sparred with in his youth. He was stronger, more cunning, more aggressive in his attitude. And he wasn't going down easily.

  With a sudden lunge to the left followed by a quick spear of his sword, Rolland managed to lure Gabriel just far enough off balance to slip in a piercing jab. Pain scalded through Gabriel's shoulder, forcing him to scuffle backwards in momentary retreat. Lifting his sword instigated agonies, making him clench his teeth and struggle against the spreading flames numbing his ar
m. Blocking the next hacking blow sent shattering waves of misery through him.

  "You're finished, Gabriel,” Rolland gloated as he observed his wounded friend through dispassionate eyes. “In your final moments, I want you to think about Naomi and me together, about the things I plan to have her do for me, to me. Or perhaps I'll just let her die and return as a drooling, decaying corpse who'll howl at the moon in mindless hunger. Then I will have the satisfaction I've craved since your shadow spread over me."

  Panting to control the pain, Gabriel saw not the companion of his youth—the poetic, pensive Rolland Tearlach who shared his joys and sorrows. He saw instead a man warped by inferiority and rage, shaped by circumstances beyond him and groomed by the madness of the spirit now merged with his own. He wasn't the Rollie who had written him steamy sonnets to pass to the Lady Erlina, who was years older and wiser and the first to teach him the ways of love. This wasn't the friend who'd sat with him while he mourned the death of his two younger sisters from a fever caught in a sudden rainstorm. This wasn't the companion who'd listened to his longings and his grumblings and his fears with a compassionate ear and a comforting heart. This was a monster who needed to be stopped before he inflicted more horror upon the world. And more unforgivable retribution upon the woman he loved.

  He would be stopped.

  "I am not to blame for your failings,” Gabriel told him. “If you fell short in the comparison, it was because of the measuring not the man. I was never the better man, and it was our differences that made me love you so as my friend. I begged for your forgiveness once, and I do so again. Forgive me, Rolland."

  And he swung with both hands firm on the hilt, swinging through with unerring accuracy just above Rolland's shoulder line. Momentum had him spinning about on wobbly legs, spiraling down to one knee. And from that submissive position, Gabriel looked up into the eyes of the man who had been like his brother. And there, he saw for a fleeting second the forgiveness that would allow him peace.

  Rolland's head rolled back, dropping to the arena floor, followed a second later by his crumpled body. A sudden blue silver flame engulfed the figure, burning fierce and hot until nothing remained but ash upon the sand.