The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (18 page)

The lights were out. And no emergency
generator had kicked in. Maxie’s cameras would be out. Perfect.

“Where is everyone now?” He caught her hand
and turned to face her.

“Sleeping,” she kissed him almost viciously
and ended with a bite on his lower lip.

“Ow!” He wiped his lip and tasted blood.
“What was that for?”

“I thought you liked it rough,” She laughed
softly and pressed herself against him under the cover. He allowed
her to push him over on his back again.

“Sometimes, maybe…” he admitted, but this was
not one of them. “It depends on what you mean by it.”

She got up on her hands and knees in the bed
and crawled over him. He was tired. He really wished she would go
away. He wanted nothing to do with her anymore. He wanted to rest
and recuperate, but there was at least one thing still interested
beyond all reason and his own body betrayed his mind… again. Her
actions were drunk and reckless and, apparently, it was not in his
nature to take advantage of drunken women. He tried to pull her
back where she belonged beside him. Just sleep it off. She leaned
over him and licked his ear before biting his earlobe much too
hard.

“Dammit!” he cursed and pushed her back.
“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Would you?” She laughed and climbed on top
of him, sitting back on his legs. She leaned over him and he could
feel her smooth skin on his exposed stomach as she kissed his chest
and then slid her tongue all the way down his belly. While part of
him was revolted by her, another part seemed quite pleased and
surprised by her attentions. The pleasure was short-lived when she
bit him again on the very part that was on her side.

“Stop it,” he grabbed her shoulders and
pulled her back up on his chest. “You’re drunk. You’d best go now.”
She was making him angry. He kissed her roughly and pulled her hair
when she tried to bite him again. He knew she could taste the blood
in his mouth from his lip. Perhaps it was blood she wanted. Perhaps
she was as bloodthirsty as her companion, Valentino, when she was
drinking. Alcohol did strange things to people. He could not
imagine the Pixie drinking anything other than a glass of tonic
water. She didn’t seem to be the type. In fact, he could not
imagine her drunk at all. But then she didn’t look like a wanton
slut either, though she certainly filled that bill quite readily.
An abomination! He made an abrupt effort to put his insistently
interested, but injured part where it wanted to be and missed. She
laughed and sat up again. She pushed down on his shoulders and he
took her by the waist, trying again and she moved away. This
topsy-turvy situation that she seemed to prefer was not his cup of
tea. He missed the mark painfully the third time and winced. She
giggled.

“That’s not funny,” he told her as she
continued to giggle. The thunder crashed around the house and the
rain drummed on the windows and the roof. The storm put him in mind
of his home in Scotland. Where exactly was his home in Scotland? He
couldn’t remember, but it seemed to him that it rained there… a
lot. She leaned sideways and reached out for the bedside table
almost crushing the rest of his desire from him in the process.

“Dammit!” he muttered and grabbed for the
sheet as she slid off of him clumsily.

He heard the clink of a bottle and then
blinked as an almost blinding flash of lightning illuminated the
room. The strike was so close the thunder was almost instantaneous.
The effect lent credence to the idea that God highly disapproved of
what he was doing. He got only a fleeting glimpse of her in the
light before it was gone, leaving white spots in front of his
vision like the unexpected flash of a camera. She turned up the
wine bottle and drank heavily from it in the brief moment he was
able to see her. Only the line of her throat as she swallowed the
bottle had been visible in black and white like a cheap French
silkscreen print. She returned the bottle to the table awkwardly in
the pitch darkness and then pressed her lips against his, filling
his mouth with the sweet liquid, surprising him yet again. He
almost choked before managing to swallow the unexpected and
unolicitied drink. She pushed herself backwards and went down on
him again with very cold lips and tongue, almost taking his breath
away and it was his turn to get away from her. He sat up sputtering
again, pushing her away.

“Dammit!” he repeated the only word he could
think of. The anger returned suddenly and he grabbed her shoulders,
slamming her on her back, pinning her beneath his weight. “Is it
trouble you want or are you just trying to provoke me? What do you
want? You want to fight?”

“I thought you would never ask,” she smacked
her lips and tried to bite his chin. He thought she must be very
drunk and felt almost guilty as he moved back into the proper
position in which he felt was most efficient manner to finish what
she had started. He closed his eyes and she wrapped her legs around
his waist like a common whore. But unlike a prostitute she meant
only to play with him and kept the objective just out of range,
laughing and giggling.

“I don’t think you have what it takes to take
what I have,” she jeered at him.

Her flippant attitude outraged him. No woman
had ever treated him in such a manner. Paid or unpaid. Willing or
unwilling. He got up on his knees and pushed her legs down before
grabbing her hands. He shoved them under the small of her back and
lifted her up, poised to make the final strike. “Where do we go
from here?” he asked.

“You would rape an innocent maid, sir?” she
asked and giggled. It suddenly occurred to him that he had heard
these words before and then the voice of a man overpowered
everything else. The words were spoken as if in a prayer by someone
with a very deep voice, familiar, yet strange to him ‘O God, thou
knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee.’ It
almost caused him to throw her from the bed… almost, but he had
gone too far to stop because of a ghostly voice in his own
head.

So this was her fantasy? To be raped? But
that was ridiculous. What in the world was she doing? No, no, she
was drunk. There was no doubt, but it was far too late to think
about it.

“Ye’re nae innocent maid, lassie,” he told
her surprising even himself with the sudden appearance of a
noticeable Scottish brogue. She laughed and tried once more to
squirm from under him. He pulled her back and found the mark with
no trouble. To his immense, but brief amazement, entry was
difficult, almost painful. She continued her struggle against him
with little success, protesting that he was hurting her as if
everything that had just passed between them had never
happened.

It was far too late for protests. She
shrieked once in his ear and he clamped his hand over her mouth. He
felt her body rise against him and he pushed harder. She certainly
felt like an innocent maid. Vaguely he wondered how she had
accomplished the illusion. He would have to ask her about it some
other time. If this was some sort of game, he understood none of it
and he was not about to make a habit of it.

When it was over, she scrambled from the bed
without another word. No giggles. No laughter and no teasing
remarks. He should have had the last laugh, but it wasn’t funny.
She was searching for her clothes in the darkness, bumping into the
furniture as she scrabbled around the floor. He tried to apologize
to her and tell her that he felt terrible about taking advantage of
her drunkenness. She sniffed and coughed and he could tell that she
was crying, but she did not answer him.

He fell back on the bed and covered his face
with his arms. He wondered why he had done it. To teach her a
lesson? Hardly. The only lesson he could have hoped to teach her
was to hate him. For gratification? Doubtful. He didn’t feel
gratified in any way, shape or form. The worst thing about it was
glaringly obvious. The very fact that he could do such a thing only
proved that he was a criminal.

The door opened and closed and she was gone
along with his latest opportunity to get the key to the door. But
it was just as well. Perhaps she would not be back and he could
more easily keep his vow to himself not to touch her again, though
he might have preferred to accomplish it some other way. His guilt
was overwhelming to the point that it consumed his mind completely
and washed everything else into oblivion. Even the immediate danger
of his precarious situation eluded him while he sank deeper and
deeper into a black depression. He found the rest of her wine and
drank it before going back to sleep.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Three miles from the ruins of Pompeii in
southern Italy, in a painstakingly restored authentic Roman villa,
behind a picturesque rock wall topped with cast iron fencing, a
strange assemblage of men was seated on either side of a long,
lacquered table in one of the sunny rooms. In the center of the
table was a white disc inlaid with a blood red cross pattee trimmed
in gold. The room’s double doors opened out onto the sun terrace
where the bright sunshine of the beautiful summer’s day glinted off
the surface of the swimming pool and sent shimmering reflections
dancing across the plastered ceiling above their heads.

The Council Room was ominously quiet as the
grim-faced members sat drinking wine and glancing expectantly at
each other from time to time. The expressions on their faces ranged
from worry to fear to anger as they waited for their leader to join
them so that the meeting could get underway. Some of them drank
from heavy glass goblets, while others used tankards made hammered
gold or silver of varying designs. An empty burnished gold goblet
of simple design sat up-side-down in front of an empty chair near
the head of the table. The inverted goblet was decorated with a
simple silver disc on which the letters IAAT were deeply engraved.
It, like the others, was very old. A priceless relic of superb
craftsmanship from days gone by.

One of the men, a smallish blond with pale
blue eyes set wide apart in an equally pale face, stared forlornly
at the empty chair behind the goblet. Next to him, sat a sleeping
man with a head full of curly black hair; his darkly handsome face
was marred by a ragged scar that ran from the top of his left
cheekbone to his jaw line. The smaller man bumped him roughly when
he began to snore and he sat up, blinking in feigned innocence. Two
steely-faced men eyed him darkly from across the table and he
shrugged apologetically before closing his eyes and resuming his
nap, unaffected by their disapproval.

Presently, the sound of heavy footsteps
echoed along the terrace, and they all stood in unison to await the
appearance of the Grand Master. The sleepy Italian was the last to
stand, pretending that he had forgotten where he was. He winked at
one of the stern fellows across the table and the man scowled at
him with open hostility.

At last, the imposing figure of the Templar
Master dressed in a charcoal gray business suit, entered the room
and stopped at the head of the table. His faded blue eyes were
large and watery as if the sunlight bothered them and his head was
capped by a rather untidy mop of thinning, red hair. The men
standing around the table watched him apprehensively as he surveyed
each of them individually as if assessing them for proper attitude.
He nodded in approval and then sat in his chair causing them all to
follow suit. At once, a tall, thin boy dressed in neatly pressed
brown slacks and a white shirt brought a crystal decanter and
filled his glass with dark red wine.

The Master drank from the goblet and clunked
it loudly on the table in front of him. The meeting had been called
to order almost an hour earlier by the venerable Seneschal, Philip
Cambrique, Chevalier d’Orient. Now the presence of the eminent
Grand Master, Edgard d’Brouchart, signaled that the meeting would
get started. They had been forced to wait as always, in order that
Sir d’Brouchart might impress upon them their subordinate
positions.

He held out one meaty hand toward the empty
chair on his left and the young man stepped forward again. He
reverently picked up the empty golden goblet and presented the cup
to the Master who accepted it with equal gravity. The young valet
poured a bit of wine into the cup and stepped back quickly as the
man up-ended the goblet in front of the empty chair, spilling the
wine across the table.

A murmur erupted around the table and a
muffled “No!” sounded from the far end of the long room where
eleven apprentices sat in two rows of heavy, medieval-style
armchairs placed against the wall. Each of these fellows, ranging
in age from fifteen to fifty, was there at the beck and call of his
Knight with the exception of one: Christopher Stewart had no Knight
at this meeting. His Master was the reason that this unscheduled
meeting had been called. The ‘no’ had inadvertently erupted from
his lips, and he had received a punch in the ribs from one of the
older apprentices sitting behind him. Apprentices did not speak
unless spoken to in Council. He looked about the table, searching
for a sympathetic face and found the formerly dozing Italian Knight
gazing at him with a peculiar expression in his dark eyes.

“Sirs, Most Respected and Honored Brothers
and Fellows,” d’Brouchart began his address in French. “You are all
aware of the need for this assembly, the nature of our emergency
and the grievous news that has reached us from abroad.”

A stilted silence greeted him.

“Brother Dambretti,” the Master turned his
watery blue eyes on the Italian sitting halfway down the table on
his left.

“Your Excellency,” Dambretti answered and
tore his gaze away from Christopher with the hint of a smile
sparkling in his dark eyes.

“What news?”

Lucio Dambretti, Chevalier l’Aigle d’Or
pushed back his chair and the legs grated on the marble floor,
echoing against the white marble panels covering the walls. He
stood to address the assembly, glancing at each of them before
beginning, indicating that his ‘news’ concerned them all. He was
tall, but not too tall and dark, definitely of local stock. His
black, curly hair was cut short, but not too short. A frown creased
his brow and crinkled the pale scar on his left cheek.