Nightbringer (29 page)

Cassius didn’t remember releasing the gladius when he hit the pillar but knew that he had. Just as he knew that the collision against the granite had knocked him unconscious for a split-second. It was the painful impact against the floor that had awakened him.

The white fur of Jaqual
’s chest was drenched in crimson, and his ribs lifted slowly and painfully. Nor did he seem eager to press this fight. For a moment he gazed at the door, as if considering escape. But pride caused his lips to curl and the fangs to shudder. His blazing red eyes gazed upon Cassius once more.

Cassius knew he appeared much the same. Breathing hard, he recognized dimly that his armor was rent with the evenly separated claw marks and breathed a sigh of gratefulness for the steel.

With a slight stumble, Jaqual came forward again. He held a hand over his stomach and Cassius saw the glint of white beneath the blood—ribs and internal organs gleaming.

“
Yeah,” he whispered, and circled slowly to the side.

He didn
’t look for Gina and the kids but knew where they stood by replaying every movement made inside the Great Hall since the battle began. They had moved across the room as the battle had moved, evading its fury. Now they stood a long space from the altar, which towered behind Cassius.

No time to think
… Draw him so Gina and the kids can run … Don’t worry about the rest …

Without glancing at what was behind him—he knew already—Cassius began to slowly retreat, Jaqual following step by step. The last wound hadn
’t injured Jaqual as much as surprised him and he was watching Cassius carefully. When Gina and the kids had a safe path to the door, Cassius stopped and raised the gladius. Feet wide, bent forward, Cassius faced Jaqual squarely—an insult.

“
You tire, beast,” he whispered through mashed, bloody lips. “Perhaps you
didn’t
underestimate me …”

Jaqual
’s fangs separated.

He charged.

* * *

Chapter Sixteen

This is the end
…

It was the last thought Cassius had before Jaqual
’s hurtling rush carried them together through display after display that exploded into splinters and spinning shards before they crashed and rolled across the floor once more.

Cassius had half risen when he glimpsed a blur of white whirling
toward him and what hit him—Cassius didn’t know—sent him sprawling half-conscious. But at the same time—executing the one action Cassius did not anticipate—Jaqual spun and snatched up an oil-fed candelabrum and hurled it like a spear across the Hall.

Gina and the children were racing for the door as the fiery missile exploded in their path like napalm, mushrooming over a wide expanse of the Great Hall, consuming all that would burn. They staggered, screaming at the flames that only narrowly missed engulfing them, as well.

All hope of escape was closed.

“
No,” Jaqual growled. “There’s no escape!”

Cassius cared nothing for death. He had accepted death so long ago that death was like a cloak he had borne through ages. But he feared for Gina and the children. And as he stood, he did what he had never consciously done before in battle
…

He
prayed.

Never, never in battles that rose into scores of hundreds of thousands beyond reckoning had Cassius ever consciously prayed
because in battle he had always been like a force of nature, pure and at home with war, with fighting and killing until the battle was won – until armies were destroyed, nations were freed and those who had terrorized the earth lay in dust.

But now Cassius prayed clearly
and distinctly. He prayed simply because all that remained within him now was simple— a simple hope to finish off this satanic beast – a simple hope to be at peace with God because he knew this was his last battle – a simple hope to see Gina and the children alive and safe as he drew his last breath.

He had spent every moment of every century searching for the peace that passes all understanding, as his friend Paul had said, and he
’d never known such peace. It had been a fable and a curse until now. Because as he finished the simplest of all prayers, Cassius felt what was the source of his spirit—the man he had trembled before as he nailed Him to the crucifix, watching and deciding. And it was greater even than what Cassius had hoped. He did not know why he had never felt it before but it was perhaps because he had never faced a foe that he knew he could not defeat with his own strength.

Blood hid the depth of his gaping wounds as Cassius stood. His breath was hoarse and ragged and what strength remained, remained beneath what he could know.

Slashed and beaten, Jaqual slowly turned like a gladiator awaiting some signal to finish the fight. But the thick, hinged right knee that had propelled his huge bulk across the Great Hall with such astonishing speed was crippled now. Still, the injury had no effect on Jaqual’s bestial countenance. Beneath the pain, which he accepted as stoically as Cassius, the inhuman rage was undiminished. Nor did the scarlet eyes reveal any fear or any doubt of his ultimate victory.

Reading every line, every blink in the Nephilim
’s face— measuring the smallest fiber of strength yet remaining in the colossal form—Cassius made his decision, a decision he knew he would make from the very beginning.

In three strides he reached the altar.

With a shout Cassius sent the altar table pin-wheeling to the side. Then he snarled as he bent and locked an iron grip on the iron crucifix and in the next second he placed a boot against the wall and surged back. For a moment the bolts anchored deep into the stone wall resisted and held, then they were tore free in an explosion of white dust.

Impatiently Cassius hurled the crucifix aside as if it were meaningless chaff
and reached into a crevice chiseled into the stone.

He
withdrew a long thin object wrapped in layers of oiled white silk and cloth. Casting the rags aside, Cassius turned toward the Nephilim with his spear, the spear of Gaius Cassius Longinus—the spear that pierced the heart of Jesus of Nazareth.

Almost six feet long, the steel haft bore a broad leaf-shaped spear
point that cast a strange, unnatural scarlet glow. It was chipped by battle and should have been brittle with age. But as Cassius slowly lowered the haft, the gray blade shone thick and deep and solid with strength.

Cassius bent his face toward the Nephilim, staring without mercy or remorse. And Jaqual understood. He barked some harsh, guttural curse before glancing at the closest tunnel.

Only a quick glance, but Cassius understood.

As Jaqual rushed to escape, Cassius leaped and caught a lamp heavy with oil to hurl it toward the exit. Jaqual
’s crippled leg slowed him and the lamp struck the tunnel, exploding in a nova of mushrooming flame. Instantly it was an inferno— certain death for the Nephilim in his injured condition.

Jaqual reared at the flames that engulfed him for a split second before vacuuming back
into the tunnel, also setting the walls aflame. And when the Nephilim spun, Cassius clearly saw fear—the fear of a trapped animal determined to escape though he is killed in the attempt.

Instantly he raced for another corridor and Cassius leaped like a tiger to snatch up another lamp and hurl it with all his strength as well. Leaving a trail of fire that stretched twenty feet across the Great Hall, the lamp exploded even more ferociously than the first, devouring the curtains and wood at the exit.

And again and still again the scene was repeated, Jaqual raging and racing against the flames as Cassius hurled lamp after lamp to imprison him in a final, flaming arena. Cassius’ last throw cast the largest lamp completely across the great expanse of the Hall where it detonated to shut off Jaqual’s last possible avenue of escape, save for the great entry doors that stood behind Cassius.

“
No,” Cassius whispered, intentionally repeating Jaqual’s words, “there’s no escape …”

Raging, Jaqual lifted hands aloft with forearms tight before his face as he twisted to escape the flames, but there was no escape. His voice
thundered with molecular fear.

“
NOOOOOO!!!”

The
Nephilim whirled as Cassius came through the flames, his blood-red cloak trailing a wide fan of fire. Jaqual had time for a single cry before Cassius roared and leaped and powerfully drove the spear through the Nephilim’s chest and out his back.

Instantly Jaqual knew what had happened—what the spear contained. He staggered back, oblivious to the flames
now in the shadow of a death far more terrible that burned and devoured him from within. With jaws open and drawn— eyes wide and frantic—the Nephilim struggled with all his great strength to pull the spear from his chest but the spear held.

Jaqual staggered through the burning wreckage of the Hall, bellowing and surging with superhuman, bestial strength to tear out the spear, but the spear would not release. Then by some vivid death instinct, the Nephilim whirled to see
…

Cassius stood once more between the two huge columns that supported the gigantic, sloping dome. At the point of the dome rested a thousand tons of granite and stone.

“
No
!” Jaqual gasped.

Bent between the pillars, Cassius glimpsed Gina and the children racing toward the
towering entrance doors. Yes, they would be safe now. But halfway across the expanse Gina hesitated, searched desperately, and captured Cassius’ eyes with her gaze.

Cassius
’ weariness was like death. There was not an inch of his body not covered in blood. But he held her gaze for a moment that lasted … and nodded sadly.

Gina shut her eyes and lifted her face in a scream that could not be contained—a scream that began in her life force and defiantly seared the abbey and the battle, the flames and whatever else could come because she owned this now
.

For love lost, she would own
this forever ….

Her teeth were clenched tight as she lowered and shook her head. She whirled to Rachel and Josh.
“Come on!” she screamed and instantly pushed open the huge portal.

Rachel reached plaintively toward Cassius, who smiled gently as Gina threw open the door and, covering her children,
staggered into the howling blackness of the snow-slashed day. When Cassius turned his head again to Jaqual, he saw that the Nephilim had also watched them flee.

His defeat was complete.

Gazing upon the beast, Cassius shook his head—sadly, tragically, painfully. Then, with a frown, he shut his eyes. His chest and shoulders and arms expanded, gathering the last, truest measure of his strength. It was enough to draw the Nephilim’s mind back to where he stood.

Aghast, Jaqual staggered forward.

“If you do this, you’ll die too!”

Wearily, Cassius opened his eyes, and he stared upon the beast.
“As I planned from the beginning,” he whispered, and nodded. “Let this mountain bury us both.”

A shocked gasp burst from Jaqual as Cassius instantly pushed against the
pillars. Eyes shut fiercely, blind to where Jaqual stood, Cassius surged from the depth—-from the core— of his strength as he had never done, because only death remained once this last, deepest strength was spent. Cassius’ arms shook, and he felt veins straining to burst from his shoulders and arms as blood strained to burst from his forehead. A snarl burst from his lips but the pillars held!

Cassius heard Jaqual staggering, surging to pull the spear from his chest, and risked a glance.

The Nephilim twisted against the spear to snap the haft, but the spear would not break or even bend. Then his screams became hideous as he thrust a hand inside his own chest, claws rending to savage his flesh from the steel that had touched the blood of Jesus.

Bellowing
insanely Jaqual finally tore his hand free.

It was smoking—scalded and blistered. Insane with pain, the Nephilim bent back, shrieking to a force unseen in a language unknown.
His words flowed like millions of rivers thundering into darkness without depth—like millions of beings from millions of dimensions dying at once.

Cassius threw his back against the first pillar and slammed both hands against the second with enough force to shatter bones that had never shattered. Roaring to endure the abysmal agony, Cassius pushed and sinews within his chest drew taut as piano wire and began to snap, fiber tearing from fiber and still Cassius pushed until the pain in his shattered wrists and hands spiraled to where his body trembled, threatening to disobey even his will.

And then, at the crest of the dome, Cassius heard a brittle crack like molten glass plunged into ice.

Jaqual raised his head.

“
You fool
!” he whispered.

Cassius pushed farther and the pillars began to separate.

He had no thoughts. He had no dreams of victory. Neither did he long for love because he knew he was loved. What surged forth from him was beyond death. He walked forward, pushing the pillar, and stone plates the size of boulders cascaded into the Hall.

Jaqual staggered forward.

“Cassius! We can be free!”

Cassius shook his head.

“
Only God is free
…”

Jaqual threw back his head and
raged against the words with a corruption that rose from bowels black, flinging angry curses at what might be beyond.

Cassius surged against the pillar, and it fell across the Great Hall like the death of a giant, of an age—huge stones crushing stone into dust—and Jaqual raised clawed hands for one final celestial cry of
defiance before he was gone.

Cassius lifted his face to the now-open clear, blue sky that blazed with sunlight—stone
s falling, destroying every semblance of a shadow that had once marred his life. Dying, he raised a hand into the plummeting stones with a single cry.

“
Forgive me!”

Was gone.

* * *