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Authors: James Byron Huggins

Nightbringer

BOOK: Nightbringer
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Nightbringer

 

James Byron Huggins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nightbringer

Copyright © 2004 by James Byron Huggins

http://jamesbyronhuggins.com/

 

This eBook is licensed for personal use only. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

 

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between characters or events in this story and
with any other person or creature, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

H
e was not alone. Wearing battle-scarred armor, his blood-red robe ragged from the storm of the last three days, he walked slowly through the bright, early morning light—the brightest morning he could remember.

He was aware that his hand no longer bled and burned as it had three days before. Nor was his sight clouded and white as it had been three days ago. Yes, his hand and his eyes had been healed in the same dark hour. Now he could see again
... and fight again.

He saw the soldiers—so many men who lay as dead— sprawled across the glistening grass as if struck down by some soundless lightning. But he knew that they were not dead, just as he knew they would rise again when the great and mighty force that had also risen here was gone.

He passed the sleeping soldiers without further thought and reached the place where the sky had been so streaked and torn by lightning. And he gazed upon the gigantic gravestone that lay white and alone in the close-gripping dust of the morning that would soon warm with the sun and rise and dance like ghosts.

He thought about the man who had been laid in the tomb
, and he laughed; yes, it would be a day for ghosts.

Holding the spear that had struck and finished the storm in his perfectly healed hand he gazed upon the gaping black entrance of the cave with perfectly healed eyes. But he did not enter the grave.

He didn't have to.

***

A flintlock pistol trembled in the old man's hand as he staggered wildly through the Cimmerian corridor. He seemed to be searching for something, but there was nothing ... nothing.

His face was streaked with blood from where claws had torn deep furrows across his skull. His eyes darted back and forth, wide and shocked and uncomprehending. His legs threatened to betray him before he could reach the door.

He cautiously entered the Great Hall of the castle.

Butchered bodies glistening black in the moonlight lay strewn about, some dismembered in a blood-bathed orgy beside others killed so efficiently that there was no blood at all. He tried to push down the fear that rose within him but his shaking body belied his futile attempt. More quickly he began to back toward the door and then turned to run but with his first stride he froze.

A growl shuddering like tremors in the wake of an earthquake enveloped his blood-soaked boots and crawled up his knees to hold him in a vise of fear. The pistol wavered in his hand.

He turned.

Glowing red eyes gazed upon him from the night.

The pistol clattered from the man's hand as he fell to his knees, mouth opening in a silent scream. He raised trembling hands as if to beg for mercy but knew those eyes would never grant mercy.

The thing half emerged from the darkness.

A scream rose in the man's throat.

Thunder struck the hall as the huge twin doors were thrown open. And even against his fear of the slouching horror that stood at the edge of the night, that had brought the night, the man whirled to behold—

Silhouetted by lightning that tore the sky apart in
fantastic spider webs of fire, a stranger boldly entered the blood-drenched castle. He did not even hesitate as he stepped over a bloody body and said nothing as he coldly lifted a flintlock rifle at his waist and fired.

With a roar the abomination spun away.

The stranger heedlessly cast the smoking long rifle aside as he strode steadily through the swirling smoke and withdrew a flintlock pistol that he fired instantly. The creature howled and retreated again. And even before the sound of the gunshot returned from the bowels of the castle, the stranger had withdrawn yet another pistol to fire yet again with a dead steady hand.

A guttural howl that seemed more human than demon erupted from the creature and it staggered back, back
,
back
into the night …

Without a word—without even a glance at the old man sprawled across the bloody floor—the stranger stalked
forward, withdrawing a long, broad dagger and rapier.

The old man saw the spectral silhouette of the stranger as he strode over his fallen form, glimpsed the flash of lightning as it slashed down the edge of the sword. Then the stranger disappeared into the vast darkness of the night, pursuing the creature, and was gone.

***

Artillery shells erupted as the man slid silently into a
ravaged trench, crouching beside a soldier who hung headlong, his mouth open in what would have been horror if he had been alive.

As the man hit the ground, he raised his rifle, though he had not yet entered enemy lines. But what he hunted this night would not be found in enemy lines. No, tonight, it was here, feeding on flesh and fear.

Night had not yet fallen, and already it had emerged—growing stronger with all this death. The man knew that if he did not kill the creature soon then he would not kill it at all because the beast would fade into the darkness and escape again.

He moved quickly, teeth clenched in concentration, scanning everything, ready for anything. He heard a scream and moved, innately understanding the cause. Then he slowed because he knew the victim would be dead when he came upon the scene, and he did not wish to join him.

The creature was there when he arrived.

It whirled, its eyes blinking,
and then it vaulted incredibly high and far from the trench, coming to ground to run across the sulfur-clouded field. But the man was almost as quick as he raised his rifle and fired.

It howled and stumbled, clutching its thigh, and the man fired again and again, working the Enfield rifle as fast as the bolt would allow. His seventh and last shot went wide—he was certain because he did not hear another cry.

Crouching low, the man hastily shoved cartridges into the rifle while glancing at his surroundings, acutely alert to the danger that the creature might circle in its tracks and attack. Not that he expected to actually see it coming for him. In the smoke and fog, it was impossible to determine movement, but his senses were hyper-acute—years of war had made them so.

He rose and moved after it, sensing more than hearing a hideous cry at the far side of the battlefield.

It had already reached enemy lines to kill again.

Instantly running, the man was enveloped by the fog and mist but easily tracked the creature by the bloodcurdling cries that cut through the gathering night. But when he dropped low into the German trench, he was not surprised that he encountered no attack. The creature had been here and was gone. The horrified, frozen stares of dead men—their throats and chests ripped open—were evidence enough.

Utterly still, the man listened. He had tracked it over a century and a million miles to this battlefield. Had determined this one would not escape him again. But he knew, as time passed, that the beast had, indeed, escaped him. Just as he knew that there was nothing to do but begin tracking it again.

Again and again we fight, but the fight must end

Quickly he shed his British paratrooper uniform and donned the uniform of a dead Nazi colonel as a contingent of SS troops reached the site. They shouted questions in their language and he sternly silenced them in their language.

Yes, he spoke their language.

In the two thousand years he had walked this Earth, he had learned a hundred languages
.

* * *

 

Chapter One

 

An edge keen and white as a razor rose behind the whetstone as the man pushed it along the edge of the sword. His smoothness was the sign of a master, though there were few alive now who would know the sign of a master.

He did not care.

It was his purpose to insure the age-old weapons within the Abbey of Saint Gregory's were preserved as if they would be used tomorrow in a war that men had not waged for hundreds of years. Before war became bloodless and the enemy faceless.

Saint Gregory's, the greatest abbey to rise upon the Alpine crest joining Italy and France, was in truth more museum than monastery. For throughout its Great Hall and innumerable chambers, corridors, and catacombs lay a great repository of weapons borne in all the wars ever fought for, or against, God. Nor was its purpose to glorify or condemn
, but rather to proclaim the truth that God would judge each man for the blood he had shed.

Having lived here for almost seventy-two years, Barnabas had meticulously polished and preserved the Roman armor— the swords and shields and spears—every day, though he could not explain why. But it was what he was compelled to do and so he maintained the vulnerable armor until it burnished like deep gray waves of fire.
He sharpened the blades with gentle, exquisite skill so that a razor's edge honored all the swords and spears and daggers. And, last, he regularly replaced the royal red cloak on the marble Roman centurion that forever stood guard beside the altar of God.

Odd, yes, that a statue of a Roman centurion stood in the place usually
reserved for angels or saints or prophets. And it was in this cathedral alone that a centurion stood in that holy place. But there were also magnificent statues of Moses and Mary and Joseph. And along the wall were exotic runes and emblems of the Order of the Knights Templar—some curious form of calculus, it was held, that revealed the tombs of the prophets, the secret of perpetual motion and eternal energy – even immortality. Carved into the pillars and ceiling and panels, the enigmatic symbols held a running-dog pattern – the image of waves crashing along a shore, each running over the next in air slashed with foam.

Barnabas had watched a hundred scholars and priests, ministers, councils, and merely obsessed believers as they spent months
and even years trying to decipher the enigma contained within the runes. But they all eventually departed in frustration, and although Barnabas could not understand the runes, it was clear to him that the secret to the code was not contained within the code itself.

For he was also a mason, though not as most understood masonry. Indeed, he did not clumsily mortar stones together to construct a wall with less than perfect smoothness. In fact, such was his skill that he needed little mortar at all, and when he finished no one could determine where one stone ended and another began. For it was his particular gift to patiently shape the blocks until they fit so tightly that not even air could pass
between them.

Life had always been thus. Barnabas did not know why. He only knew that he had been raised within the abbey and that
it had been a good life. But sometimes in the night he saw the face of the man who had left him here so long ago—saw in his mind alone, for his eyes were weak and opaque now—as the man emerged from the smoke and screams and war. He could hear the man's comforting words, and then the man lifted his small body from the frozen ground and carried him from that World War II battlefield.

He remembered the man bearing him so strongly through a night torn by shrieks and screams, through fields of mist-shrouded dead, through the thudding of machine guns and eruptions and the wounded howls of still more men who did not yet know that they were dead. He remembered how the man had been so utterly unafraid, as Barnabas had been so utterly afraid. And then, hours later that same night, the man had climbed the slope to this forbidding place and boldly entered the abbey as if he owned all that it contained—as if he'd built it, and none resided here except by his will.

Yet as they rose on the slope the man spoke soothingly to him about the gigantic stones of the abbey—their weight, shape, and purpose. He had talked until Barnabas had completely forgotten his fear, so fascinated had he become with the man's words. And Barnabas had studied each stone as the man passed them, describing a reason for each. In that moment Barnabas understood what he wished to do for the rest of his life. He would keep this place for the man. He would protect it for this man.

Then the man gently delivered Barnabas into the arms of the monks before assuming a different, dark, gigantic aura of authority—an authority so absolute and stern that none uttered a word as he instructed them to care for Barnabas as if for their own lives.

Even at such a young age Barnabas vividly understood that the monks answered to the man as if to a king. Then the man encouraged them to maintain their faith, their courage, and their strength—to remember their purpose, even when war threatened to crush the doors of this holy place. Because this place would never fall, he said. No, it would never fall because what it contained did not belong to man, nor would God allow man to possess it. Then the man turned without fear into the night ... and was gone.

Days tirelessly faded into months, months into years, years into decades—abbots were appointed, grew old, and died, for no one who came to Saint Gregory's ever seemed to leave. And Barnabas continued to do what he had always done, working as he had always worked, and remembering the night of the storm—the night he would have known death but for the man who had so fearlessly delivered him from its clutches. Nor had a single monk ever voiced a question of it in all the years.

Some questions should not be asked.

***

Though he was old, even for a monk, he was strong and seemed not a monk at all in the cold manner in which he turned the petrified, shattered skull in his hands.

The fingers that slid o
ver the bone were thick and callused, the hands wide and powerful. His huge squared head, where it emerged from his dust-shrouded habit, was completely covered with long gray-white hair streaked with spidery black. But his thick shoulders indicated no curse of age, nor did his senses seem diminished as he turned to the silent shape that now stood behind him.

The other monk spoke hesitantly to him. "Brother Melanchthon, the
... uh ... the Father Abbot wishes to know if you will participate in Compline Prayers today."

Melanchthon did not move within the amber sphere of his wall-mounted torch. "I will participate," he growled like a bear roused from hibernation.

The other monk hesitated. "But ... how?"

"As any participate—each according to his ability."

Slowly Melanchthon turned his head. The other monk was smaller, but much taller with a slender body. His hands were long and delicate. His fingers, as he folded them around his lamp, seemed to stretch almost to his wrists. In aspect he seemed breakable and precious, like porcelain. And though he did not tremble at the older monk's steady gaze, he seemed to fight the impulse to rush away.

Mercifully, Melanchthon smiled and nodded. "Yes, I shall attend evening prayers, Brother Jaqual. Tell Father Abbot that I beg his forgiveness for my absence this afternoon."

Jaqual nodded but did not raise his eyes as he turned away. The light from his lamp silhouetted his long brown habit until the darkness overcame the halo. Melanchthon watched him until he was gone, then turned his attention again to the crumbling wall that had once been stone. He once more studied the broken shard of skull. Then, frowning, he studied the wall as if it were an enemy.

Even an amateur's eye could see that the squared stones were once mortared together
although, just as equally obvious, it had been buried for centuries—perhaps for as long as Saint Gregory's had stood.

Melanchthon unceremoniously cast the skull aside and carefully struck a faint gap between the stones with a rock hammer. Though brittle, the stone returned a deep thud as if all the earth pressed behind it—lifeless stone refusing to let him enter.

Guarding its secret ...

***

Shadows of rock and wind-blasted trees—their bark shorn away to leave them naked and white in the fading sunlight— began to pale as the sky darkened.

Wind exploded in gusts, lifting sheet
-like ghosts of snow from the white-ribboned ground, swirling them down the mountain and toward the abbey that stood monolithic and alone against the blue outline of mountains merging with dark clouds.

The monk who stood upon the parapet, watching the slow gathering of the storm seemed as placid and calm as the deepest of the ocean's unexplored depths. He turned with a faint smile as Jaqual approached with long, gangly strides that made him seem all ankles, knees, and hips.

Father Stephen laughed good-naturedly at the sight, waiting for the novice to speak first, though he already knew what his words would be. The younger monk folded his hands; "Brother Melanchthon says he will attend Compline Prayers, Father Abbot. But, I ... uh ... gathered from his tone and actions that he ... well ... He may not have been speaking truthfully."

With the words Jaqual bowed his head, as if he had failed. But Father Stephen laughed again as he gently laid a hand on the monk's thin shoulder. "Melanchthon must dig for his bones, eh?" he said with an indulgent smile. "I expected little more."

They walked toward the roof entrance of the abbey. "Come, my young Jaqual, let us worship God together. But, first, I want you to use the telephone. We should make sure that Mr. Trevanian's tour group is already in the mountains. If not, then we must advise them to return to Lausanne."

"Because of the storm?"

"Yes, the storm. There was nothing on the last radio weather report, but I do not fancy the face of it."

Jaqual glanced back at the mountains. "But
... uh ... we have nothing to fear?"

Father Stephen laughed and grasped the monk's arm. It was thin and spindly as a broom. "No, Brother Jaqual. Saint Gregory's has withstood a million storms; it can withstand a million more. But if Mr. Trevanian's tour bus is caught on the pass, then we might be forced to assist in their rescue. And I do not relish the idea of trouncing into the gale bearing rope and ax."

As they reached the door, a gust of slicing cold wind cut across the roof in razors of ice. Father Stephen winced as he quickly pushed Jaqual into the stairway and slammed the door shut. The older monk angrily shot the bolt.

"Well," he muttered with irritation, "that's enough of that! Go now, son, and determine if the tour bus can beat the storm to our door. If not, they must turn back."

Father Stephen scowled as he descended.

"It seems we are separated from the world until the wrath of this beast has passed."

* * *

BOOK: Nightbringer
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