Nightbringer (8 page)

"Where'd that come from
!"

Whether it was her gun or her rage, they cried out and pointed, and Gina angled toward a staircase.

It seemed as though the cry came from beneath the monastery, and she doubted that even the monks knew half the passageways honeycombing this ancient place. Breathing hard, trying to slow her racing heart, Gina noticed that her hands were slick with sweat. She released the grip only for a second to wipe her palm on her leg.

She knew fear was a vivid part of fighting—no one was unafraid in combat—but still, she had difficulty controlling her breathing, thereby reducing tunnel vision.

She reached the bottom of the stairs.

Nothing
...

She poised, listening for the slightest sound.

No, nothing
.

It was as if the howl had struck the entire abbey into silence
like the roar of a lion would silence every creature in the forest at once.

Terror told her to retreat. With a narrow glance she could see her chest lift with each rapid heartbeat. She was certain that her heart alone would betray her position.
Even worse, she was conducting a building search alone— completely against FBI regulations—but she had no choice. If this place was still inhabited by a killer then she had to find him before he found her or her children.

She decided to make a slow reconnaissance down the tunnel to her right, sensing that it would lead back to the Hall and Josh and Rachel.

A distant chamber where the tunnel bled into a dozen directions was a pit of darkness. She'd almost reached it when she caught the scent of wicks—the odor of extinguished flame.

It was one of those moments when everything happens at once—understanding and reaction occurring simultaneously. It is a faculty everyone
seems to possess when instinct flares to danger and the body has already reacted before the mind comprehends why.

Gina stopped moving—completely.

She didn't lower the SIG, didn't breath. Then, very slowly, she bent her face twenty degrees, expanding her vision peripherally. She could see almost 360 degrees now, the only blind spot directly behind her.

She couldn't see
for more than a distance of ten feet, but that was as good enough for the moment. To hurt her, it would have to touch her, and to touch her it would have to cross that ten feet. It was enough, in her position, to get off a half dozen rounds.

Cold.

Gina blew beads of sweat off her lips and focused her breathing. Then she caught the very, very distant sound of water dripping, of wind moving to her left. She felt the cool air on her sweat-slick face, using the sweat to detect anything that might stir the air—an approach, a retreat. Her body was damp and cold but she would not move – not until she was certain.

A large, rectangular table made of stone stood upon a small rising on the far side of the chamber with a dozen tall wooden chairs surrounding it. The large cobblestone floor had no other furniture, no emblems
and no displays. But two-foot long iron spikes similar to eighteenth-century fence posts extended from the stone wall six feet above the floor, completely encircling the room.

In less than a second Gina memorized the position of everything—the table and spikes and tunnels. She didn't know the purpose of this place and didn't care. Right now it was an arena.

No movement, but she couldn't see the walls!

He could easily be standing there, just outside range, waiting. Gina lifted her gaze ten degrees, increasing her distance, listening...

When it happened.

One-tenth of a second before he struck, Gina had a flashing, incredible thought that he had waited patiently behind her until she shifted her gaze—a gaze he could not possibly have seen.

What felt like a wrecking ball hit her in the back and Gina couldn't get off a shot. She knew she had screamed, and then she was in the air and on the floor, rolling. She hit the wall hard, and as she reached her knees, she saw the approach of ...

Huge it was with mountainous hulking shoulders and a massive wedge-shaped head. Its chest was equally gigantic with inhumanly powerful shields of muscle sweeping out from the center. Its arms were thick with the strength of an anaconda.
And Gina vividly knew the fear that resides in the deepest, most secret place of the heart—the fear of the beast that waits for you in the dark.

It was a fear Gina had not known since she was a child
- since before she was old enough to understand what should be feared. It was a fear that even adults never kill because it is bound to some part of them that yet lives in ages past though it is subdued by thousands of years of civilization.

But let that civilized adult stand alone in the darkest forest night, sensing its approach, and the fear will live again as vivid and breathless as it lived inside man five thousand years
ago. For some things are beyond science, beyond knowledge, beyond understanding and beyond civilized instinct.

She didn't see the blast that tore the semiautomatic from her hand to send it clattering into shadows any more than the hand that grasped her throat and lifted her from the ground.

Gina instantly kicked at the form and hit twice, but it was like kicking a brick wall. She tried to reach its throat—her only hope—but its throat was far beyond her reach. She began to panic as oxygen was shut off from her brain and struggled madly and then frantically.

Blindness, tears...

Floating...

"God" whispered Gina. "Help—"

It roared in anger, and then its hand was torn from her throat.

Gina's legs buckled as she hit the floor but she instantly rose, despite the fact she hadn't yet drawn a breath.

It is a unique experience to stand when you are gravely wounded. Only the upper part of your torso seems to rise, all life centered in your chest with your head rising above it, seeing everything within arm's length with lucid clarity.

Her attacker was spinning through the middle of the chamber wrestling with
... a man?

Michael
!

Gina shouted—more from shock than fear—as Michael roared and slammed it thunderously into the wall and the creature came off the stone like a hurricane
before they went to the floor, revolving in murderous blows across the chamber. Then Michael threw out a leg to stop the spin and his right hand hit the beast in the throat with a crushing blow.

Gina followed every move like a cat.

Michael closed his right hand and the beast
did
feel pain—for a flashing instant Gina glimpsed what seemed like fear—because it howled and with a vicious twist threw Michael to the side.

It rose snarling, grasping its throat with a clawed hand. Yet its right hand was open, fingers hooked like talons.

Michael also stood, crouched like a gladiator. His hands were open and flexed, ready to grapple. Gina could see his silhouette, framed by the faint light of the distant stairway.

Roaring, they charged each other.

Their collision was titanic, and Gina fell back against the wall, barely seeing arms intertwining and releasing, grappling. She saw the creature twisted, arm extended—it had thrown a terrific blow and missed. Then Michael charged forward again, completely lifting it from the floor, slamming it into the wall.

There was no finesse to this fight. It was pure power with the narrowest technique.
In awkward holds they swayed back and forth, each straining volcanically to overcome the titanic strength of the other. But it seemed that neither was truly superior, that they might fight for an eternity before either claimed victory.

Then Gina saw Michael's right hand flash up and close on one of the iron spikes protruding from the wall. Instantly Michael snapped it at the base and violently stabbed down. The sharp iron sank a foot into the beast's neck behind the collarbone.

Blood struck the ceiling.

Howling, the beast hit Michael with its uninjured right arm, and nothing could have resisted th
at wrecking-ball impact.

Michael sailed across the chamber as if shot from a cannon but somehow managed to touch one foot to the floor, turning
himself in the air. He landed like a linebacker poised to rush his opponent.

Gina didn't watch the creature. She was too captured by Michael—his skil
l and strength and almost superhuman agility. Michael had barely gained balance before he charged forward. Gina spun her head to see a sheet of black melting into a wall of black—it was escaping!

Michael was at the edge o
f the same darkened tunnel, pursuing it as if he would pursue it across centuries and continents and hell itself when Gina regained her senses.

"Michael
!”

Even as he hit the edge of darkness, his left knee bent—a single step to absorb and halt the impetus of his hurtling rush with such strength that he did not need another. Gina knew she had seconds to decide a dozen things and didn't surrender to the rush—never, never surrender to the rush—and made only one decision.

Michael was a soldier—a highly conditioned and highly trained soldier—because only someone with extensive combat training could have done what he had done.

Frowning with an anger that pronounced judgment on all before him, Michael stared into the darkness a long moment. Watching alertly, Gina said nothing and suddenly wished she had retained the presence of mind to retrieve the SIG.

Slowly Michael retreated from the tunnel. Then he turned toward Gina, and his jaw tightened. He stared upon her as if she were a disobedient child—as if he ruled this world—a world Gina did not know and shouldn't know.

Without any words he walked toward a corridor that Gina hadn't noticed. "Wait a second!" she shouted. "Where are you going? Hey! Don't you think I deserve an answer!"

He was gone in the tunnel, and Gina spent six seconds to find the SIG and then rushed after him.

Gina found him kneeling over
... something.

It took a second for her to recognize that it was a human being. Because whoever it had been was torn into huge, ragged, bloody chunks of meat, like a slaughtered bull.
The walls in this chamber were bright enough—horrible enough—to make the entire room appear black, though she knew it was blood painted across the walls, pooling upon the floor, thick and vicious, hurled in heavy handfuls across the ceiling.

Gina knew that it had been a man—a big man—but she could determine nothing else.

"Who is it?" she asked.

Michael's voice was somber.

"Molke."

Gently Michael laid a hand on the body and Gina saw that Molke's head was still barely attached to his neck and shoulders, though the lower part of his body was eviscerated. She barely caught Michael's words.

"I'm sorry ..."

Gina closed her eyes for a single brief moment so she could come to terms with this—whatever it was. She opened them when she heard movement.

Michael stood over the body.

Eyes opening fully, Gina took the whole of him into focus. His
exceptional physicality was accepted but she had not yet come to terms with the brute strength that had snapped an iron spike like a candy cane.

She had once witnessed a
New York Special Agent – not a big man but one completely enraged over losing custody of his own children to his shrew of a wife – when he snapped three iron spikes off a fence. But afterward he couldn't remember doing it, and when asked to repeat the feat he only cut his hand.

But for some reason she believed Michael knew exactly what he had done and could do it anytime he wished. Finally he turned to her. He glanced at the SIG and shook his head.

"That won't save you."

"Yeah," Gina replied, surprising herself with her own calm, "I
already figured that out. So what will?"

Michael walked toward a staircase.

"Time for you to leave."

***

A heated argument was already raging when Gina entered the Great Hall.

Josh and Rachel ran toward her screaming and Gina knelt and held them until they finished asking questions, comforting them. Rebecca was close behind. She had been a surrogate mother during the rampage. With a quick glance Gina said to her, "Thank you."

Rebecca nodded, then sat next to her father.

Gently Gina wiped tears from the faces of her children
and hugged them close and tight. Then she rose slowly, holding their hands. She walked them back to the dais and sat them down beside Jaqual, always close. The monk seemed to have taken to them like a big brother. Gina lifted her face toward him.

"Watch them."

"Yes, ma'am."

"No!" shouted Josh.

Gina knelt again. Gently, she brushed his hair from his tear-slicked face. "Baby, I have to go talk to these men. I'll only be ten feet away. You’ll be able to see me every second." She stared him in the eyes. "I'm not leaving you, Josh. Not ever."