Nightbringer (14 page)

Rebecca grabbed their heads and covered them, and Josh's last word was lost in the sound of a prehistoric beast colliding fully against the door
– a force that struck without fear and without mercy—a force that would not be denied.

"
Here
!"

***

Gina spun in full stride, reacting as if she had shoved her hand into a flame—a reaction far faster and superior to conscious thought.

"Josh!"

She turned toward Cassius but there was no need. He was already descending into the stairwell four steps at a time, dropping with the agility and grace of a human tiger.

***

The thunderous attack upon the door did not falter a single beat and iron hinges spiked so deeply into stone began to retreat. Then an impact on the door behind them caused them to leap away, shrieking in escalating horror.

Rebecca whirled from one to the other.

"What's happening!" Rachel screamed.

"There's two of them!" Rebecca shouted.

In the next second they were running wildly through the room, shouting incoherently though Josh's voice proved the loudest and most frantic as he screamed for his mother. Then the huge door leading into the corridor shattered mid-panel, sending jagged splinters through the room like knives. The smaller door also began to splinter—slowly, inexorably.

A railroad tie in the portal shattered along its entire length and they froze together, staring. No one moved as a blackness beyond anything they had ever known bled into the gap, and a single red eye of malignant, evil intelligence stared over them.

Fangs split in a smile.

Rachel screamed again. Then the smaller door shattered and they grabbed one another, all of them howling in terror, unable to run or even think as a shape appeared in the opening.

Barnabas!

Ax in hand, the old caretaker nodded once.

Behind him, one monk clutched a large bottle of liquid. Then Barnabas saw the thing that stood beyond what remained of the door on the far side of the room, and he shouted angrily in German. He cast the ax aside and fairly flung Josh into the arms of waiting monks.

"Run!" he shouted. "Now!"

Enraged at his presence, the creature bellowed—a hideous, shrilling, reptilian roar—and struck the portal with such force that concrete rocketed across the room.

Without another word Barnabas snatched the bottle from the monk and shattered it across the floor—and hurled his torch.

The mushroom-explosion rocked the walls and floor and the abbey itself. Rachel was vaguely aware of fire snaking through the shattered remnant of the doorway in what, at the moment, seemed to her so much like black fangs of a dragon.

Gasping at the superheated air, Barnabas dragged them to their feet and they fled up the corridor. He slammed the first door they passed and bolted it, and then they were through another, and another which he bolted
just as quickly.

Rachel spun as somewhere far behind them, somewhere deep within the abbey, a door shattered with the rending sound of paper. She was still staring when Rebecca grabbed her hand and she heard Josh screaming at her to hurry.

They raced, putting one door after another behind them but the rending sounds began to stack one after another, as if the creature were splintering the doors as fast as they bolted them.

"Where are we going!" Rebecca shouted.

"Only Cassius can destroy it!"

Rebecca whirled. "Who?"

"There!" Barnabas shouted and pushed them quickly through a doorway where a long staircase wound up a square tower. The stairway was securely anchored to the walls, leaving a clear and unobstructed view to the top landing, six floors above.

"Hurry!" the old mason cried as a door too close fell to the fury of the beast. They rushed past Barnabas and
, at the last, Rachel clearly caught the expression of true fear on his wrinkled face that only a child somehow seemed able to see.

***

Cassius selected corridors without hesitation as they rushed faster and faster through the abbey. Gina had no thought but one—she would kill anything to save her children.

Without even checking the doorknob, Cassius crashed through a door, sending planks flying, and didn't lose a stride as he came up against the rail of a colossal staircase that stretched into the depths of a huge square tower.

Gina looked down and saw Rachel and Rebecca and monks rushing frantically upward, trying to escape something—the beast. Then she screamed as she saw Josh sprawled across the lowest landing. He was trying to rise but he was exhausted. He fell again, trying to reach the step. Barnabas reached down to lift Josh from the landing when—

Gina screamed again as the door behind Josh exploded into jagged planks and Barnabas was sent sprawling awkwardly across the landing and the creature entered the stairwell.

As the beast beheld Josh it howled in triumph.

"Run!" Barnabas screamed to Josh and turned into the beast, swinging the ax hard.

The creature hurled a contemptuous backhand that blasted Barnabas across the stairwell, where he hit the wall and slid to the floor.

The hideous Nephilim stood above Josh.

Rachel reached out, even as Gina reached out, though neither could reach him.

"Josh!"

Sword in hand, Cassius vaulted over the railing.

Gina screamed, "Cassius!"

Cassius dropped through empty space, falling faster and faster past flight after flight as the beast sixty feet below them moved solidly over Josh. It drew back a clawed hand and wasted a single moment to raise its bestial face in triumphant glee.

"RAPHAEL!"

The beast whirled with a curse as Cassius crashed thunderously into the base of the shaft, shattering planks that ricocheted across the entry like jagged knives. He rose up instantly, sword in one hand, the Colt .45 in the other. Instantly Cassius fired a full clip—seven big rounds—and the beast staggered, howling at the eruptions of blood and flesh from its chest. It took a single swipe before Cassius leaped across the landing, taking it completely from the stairwell and away from Josh, who pressed himself against the closest wall.

Descending fast, Gina passed Josh with only a glance to enter the corridor to see them wrestling fiendishly across the stones, revolving in a whirlwind of blows and blood
y tatters.

She didn't have a shot but held aim with the MP-5 in case they separated for even a second. But they weren't separating. They were locked eye to eye, and Cassius wasn't letting it escape as he struggled to strike a single clean blow with the sword but they were too close for the sword.

Incredibly, even beneath the snarls and roars and curses, Gina heard words hiss between them—words of a language she did not know and had never heard. Then Cassius whirled and hurled it headlong into railroad ties that splintered like twigs.

As the beast stood again, encircled by torches, Gina saw it clearly—no shadows, nothing hidden. Its face was her first sight. It was almost flat, like a man, but with large eyes that reflected red. It had wide flaring nostrils and fangs similar to an ape's. Its forehead was strangely void of the short coarse hair
that covered the rest of its body, casting a human aspect.

Head and shoulders taller than Cassius, it was mammoth in every proportion from the thick, sloped shoulders to massive curved pectorals that connected into wide, sweeping shoulders worthy of a bull. Its hands, much larger than a man's, were far thicker with long fingers that ended in black claws half again as long.

It crouched before Cassius, who still stood in Gina's line of fire, and laughed. Its voice was a ragged growl, like a human voice raked across coals to emerge scorched, blackened, torn.

"Even here
... you would come for me."

"To the ends of the earth, Raphael."

Cassius' hand tightened on the sword. In the same action Raphael leaped as the sword flashed out, cutting stone from the wall in a slice of sparks. But the leap had carried Raphael beyond the bare remnant of a wall composed of more ties.

Momentarily separated from the centurion, the beast moved down the beams, poised. "You're as quick as I remember, Cassius!"

Raphael's laugh was striking—each bark separated distinctly from the rest—a laugh that had built for centuries to finally find release. He smiled, "This was a trap, Cassius, if you have not already realized! And you are outmatched!"

"I know of Basil," Cassius retorted spitefully. "Your game was poorly played
, Dominic!"

"You know all, do you?" Raphael clearly found victory even in defeat. He cast a laughing gaze at Gina. "It does not matter! The mortals cannot help you
! You are alone ... against the two of us."

Raphael had almost reached the end of the beam.

Cassius awaited him.

"So be it," he answered. "The God whom you sought to destroy will decide it."

"That I destroyed?" Raphael roared in laughter, his fangs unhinged widely. "Have you forgotten who nailed Him to the tree, Cassius! Was it I? No! It was a fool of a centurion who traded salvation for the stuff of swine!"

A blur of black and the entire section of ties w
ere torn from the wall as Raphael struck.

Gina saw the huge forearms upraised and knew the beast had struck with its full strength and weight. She glimpsed Cassius raising one arm against a ton of timber that crushed him to the floor as Raphael leaped forward, doubling the weight.

Then the entire corridor shook with the impact of a cannon that hit the heavy stone wall ten feet to Gina's left and she whirled, shocked. In one second she realized what was happening.

There was no door at the site of impact, and then the stone wall was hit again. Rock fell from the ceiling—the floor trembling in the wake of it with a short pause—and the next impact sent a stone weighing half a ton rocketing across the corridor like chalk.

It was the second Nephilim, but it didn't have a door and so it was blasting a hole through solid stone.

Training made her decision and Gina turned and opened fire on Raphael, who crouched over Cassius. She concentrated on his stomach but couldn't prevent the barrel from rising and knew rounds struck both walls far to the side, deflected by bones.

Still, Raphael was howling and it was all Gina could do to discern him as he twisted and retreated in the swirling smoke billowing from the torches. Then suddenly the Nephilim made an effort to move on her before Cassius roared and shifted the entire wall of ties. Gina glimpsed Cassius surging to tear a path through the timbers. She fired again.

The long blast hit Raphael solidly in the chest and Gina glimpsed a huge arm, much larger, much more powerful than Raphael's battering stones from the wall to her left. As Raphael fell back, hitting the wall, Gina spun and fired thirty rounds at the second beast.

She didn't have a line to the target so she rained lead upon the broken wall hoping to frighten it. Then as Raphael regained his balance, Gina whirled to hit him again. She shouted and raised the MP-5 toward the ceiling to reload as Cassius suddenly erupted from the floor, hurling off ties, standing squarely before Raphael.

Gina changed clips and spun toward the broken wall and heard Cassius shout something in Latin as a whirling, titanic battle raged less than ten feet from her back. She didn't have time to be astonished that she was not concerned—she knew Cassius would never let the beast reach her—as she fired another clip at the jagged section of wall, preventing the second Nephilim from engaging.

A sharp, wounded howl like a dog compelled Gina to turn and she vaguely saw Raphael rush horrifically toward Cassius, who angled smoothly to the side. The katana flashed from right to left, slashing horizontally across the Nephilim's stomach.

Raphael grunted and bent double at the cut, grabbing his
torso with a forearm, and didn't turn back as he hit another door that—amazingly—slammed into the far side of the hall in a solid piece. Then the Nephilim turned and fled, vanishing into the darkness.

Cassius saw the broken section of stone and for the first time Gina saw fear follow shock. With his free left hand he
ripped out the Colt .45 and held aim on the section and Gina followed.

Cassius didn't wait to see if there would be another attack. He moved directly to the hole staring
now without any semblance of fear. If the other creature had remained, they would have been eye to eye, but nothing happened. Slowly, sweating and covered in blood—Gina couldn't discern whether it was his or Raphael's—Cassius stepped back and didn't even bother to look at the door where Raphael had fled.

But Gina couldn't handle such control. She ran to the door, dropping the second clip and inserting the third while opening the bolt again as she boldly stepped through.

The corridor was long, dimly illuminated, and empty so she stepped back into the demolished section of hallway.

Cassius shook his head and leaned, or fell, against the wall. Gina saw claw marks torn deeply across the left side of his face, and blood flowed heavily from his forearm. But without any indication of pain Cassius wiped his left hand on his leg and removed his shirt so that he wore only a
black T-shirt, blue jeans, and black boots.