The Warrior (39 page)

“Oh my God!”

She dropped her shoes and began to run, flying over the dunes, leaping the clumps of grass, so caught up in escaping to see that she was only vaguely aware of John on his way down the side of the bluff with his knife in his boot and his rifle in his hands.

As she was racing back toward John, the house and safety, something strange began to happen. Odd, disjointed scenes began to flash before her eyes.

Alicia was caught between the present and the past, running for her life now as she'd done once before—in the same place, toward the same man—while the devil and his demons surged at her heels. In her mind, a figure loomed over her, and as he did, she stumbled and fell. Then her throat began to burn. When her hands came away covered in blood, she began screaming, a never-ending shriek that came echoing down the centuries.

Screaming Nightwalker's name.

 

Richard saw the house rising up from the bluff, a huge edifice of wood and glass, like a giant crystal half-unearthed from the womb of Mother Earth. The house was magnificent, but it was just a house. It was the bluff looking out over the bay and the curve of the shoreline that seemed familiar. An odd sensation of having been here before swept through him, but he shook it away, telling himself that he was just anxious.

Suddenly he saw movement on the beach and recognized the tall, slender figure of his daughter. He grabbed Dieter by the shoulder, pointing, as he shouted into his ear.

“There! Look! Down on the shore! Delivered right into my lap, by God!” Then his anxiety level rose. “Damn it! She's seen us. She's running. Faster! Don't let her get away!”

The throttle was open as far it would go. The closer
they got to shore, the more certain Dieter was that he wouldn't leave here alive.

“Run it aground!” Richard shouted, so Dieter did. The engine stopped on its own as the boat beached itself on the sand. Then Richard grabbed Dieter's arm. “She's running! Catch her!”

Dieter spun on him then, snarling back in his face. “You said you only wanted me to drive.”

Richard pulled out a gun and put it to Dieter's head. “Run or die. Your choice.”

Dieter's eyes went wild. He slapped the gun away, then leaped from the boat. Richard picked up the gun and followed, clumsily splashing through the shallows to get to firm ground.

Dieter's legs were longer and younger than Richard's, and he soon made up the distance between himself and Alicia Ponte. She was only yards away when she suddenly stumbled and fell. Now he had her.

He never saw John Nightwalker come over the dunes, but he heard the gunshot a heartbeat before the bullet went into his right eye and blew out the back of his head.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

Richard was a good thirty yards away when the shot rang out. When a spray of blood suddenly flew out of the back of Dieter's head and then he dropped to the ground, Richard hesitated. What now? Run or die? When he realized Alicia was no longer running, he made the choice.

Alicia staggered to her feet and struggled toward Dieter's body, unaware that anyone was coming until Richard caught her in a flying tackle. They fell to the ground, rolling and kicking. The gun popped out of his hands as he rolled on top and then straddled her waist. As
soon as he had her pinned, he put his hands around her neck, pressing tighter and tighter against her windpipe.

“You destroyed me! You destroyed everything I worked for! What kind of a daughter does that?” he shouted as his fury raged.

He didn't feel her pummeling his body or scratching at his neck and face, trying to reach his eyes. She was fighting for her life, and he was trying to end it. For Richard, there was no moment of familial recognition. No sense of wrong for what he was about to do. In his mind, he was destroying the enemy.

“You bitch! You unholy bitch! Not only have you destroyed everything I ever worked for, you went and gave it away. How does it feel to know you're going to die?”

Alicia couldn't believe what she was hearing. The man on top of her was a stranger, but his voice was one she'd known all her life. John had been right. Her father wasn't dead. And she wasn't going to be, either. She wasn't about to die, not when she had so much to live for.

While she still had the breath to do it, she screamed John's name, all the while fighting back, kicking harder, scratching deeper. Kneeing him when she could and pummeling him with her fists.

When Alicia raked her fingernails down the side of his face, the pain was so sudden and intense that Richard lost focus. Without remembering that he wanted her conscious as he killed her, he doubled up his fist and hit her on the side of the jaw.

Her eyes rolled back in her head as she went limp.

Richard's chest was heaving from the exertion. He was streaked with dirt and sweat. At least now he had time to find the gun, he thought. Then he heard the
sound of someone running, remembered the Indian and frantically looked up.

Nightwalker was still coming, and he was less than fifty yards away. In a fresh wave of panic, Richard rolled off Alicia and began digging through the loose sand in a frantic effort to arm himself. He looked up again. Nightwalker was almost on him, coming with a cry on his lips so wild it rattled Richard's senses, and the gun was still nowhere to be found.

Then all of a sudden the air shifted and he felt the sting of cold rain on his face. The stench of burning flesh was in his nose, and his clothes were covered in blood. Men in strange clothing were running amok, slashing and burning and laughing wildly. And all the while it was as if he were standing outside his own body, watching the scene from afar.

There were savages all around, but most lay injured or dying, their wounds being washed clean by the storm that was upon them. And in the midst of it all, another savage appeared—a savage with the same face as John Nightwalker. He came out of the trees on the run with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a war cry on his lips. It sent a chill up Richard's spine as he watched the Indian slay his men one by one—slashing and stabbing and disemboweling one after the other, until there was no one left standing between them.

When Nightwalker pointed at him, Richard knew he was next. Then the savage was upon him, screaming words he couldn't hear in a language he didn't understand.

 

Everything around John seemed to be moving in slow motion. He couldn't distinguish between the energy of
the spirits that haunted this place and the ones who'd just beached themselves on the shore. All he could hear was Alicia screaming his name. He came out of the trees and over a dune just as Dieter Bahn was about to grab her. Insanity was upon him. Not again.
Not again.

He didn't even break stride. He shot from his hip, downing Dieter with one bullet, and kept on running. Then he turned his attention to the man with Bahn. Although he no longer wore Richard Ponte's face, John still knew him. He ran with the pain of recognition, feeling the blood pumping through the stranger's body, hearing the thunder of his heartbeat, tasting the fear boiling in his belly. The dark soul had returned to the scene of the crime.

John lifted the rifle over his head and let out a war cry that shattered the air. Then he put the rifle to his shoulder. Just as he was about to fire, Alicia suddenly staggered into his line of vision, blocking the shot.

“No! No!” he screamed. “Alicia, get down!”

She kept going, apparently unable to hear him.

His heart sank. He couldn't risk a shot at this angle, and the bastard was going to get to Alicia before he did.

John saw the man leap, taking Alicia down in a flying tackle. He thought of the baby she was carrying, and a white rage spilled through him as he kept on running. But five hundred years had changed a lot of things. Now the sand was deep and shifting beneath him, slowing his progress, hindering his speed.

As he topped another dune, he saw that Ponte had already taken her down and was now on top of her. As Ponte wrapped his fingers around her neck, John suddenly gave out a great roar of rage.

John saw him double up his fist and knock her out. When Alicia went limp, it gave John the clear shot he needed.

The first bullet hit Ponte in the arm. A second grazed his forehead.

Ponte went down screaming as blood pumped out of his wounds and soaked into the sand.

John tried for another shot, but with them both on the ground, Alicia was once more in the line of fire. He leaped a piece of driftwood and kept on running.

Suddenly Ponte came up with a gun and started firing.

The first two bullets went wild, but the third bullet went through John's shoulder, ripping through flesh with a hot, burning pain.

John staggered, then lifted his rifle to jack another round into the chamber. Just as he realized it was empty, Ponte swung his gun toward Alicia.

“No!” John screamed, then pulled the knife out of his boot and threw it.

He saw Ponte grunt as the knife buried itself in his chest all the way to the hilt.

Ponte looked down at the protruding handle and then back up at John Nightwalker. For a fraction of a second he thought he saw a half-naked Indian coming at him with a spear, and he felt a sense of relief that it was finally going to be over. Then the world went dark as he fell on top of his daughter's body.

Blocking out the pain in his shoulder, John ran the last few yards, grabbed Ponte by the back of the shirt and dragged him off Alicia. She was covered in blood as John fell to his knees beside her.

“Please let it be his, please let it be his,” he mumbled
as he felt her neck, trying to find a pulse. His face was streaked with tears. He could hear his own heartbeat pounding against his eardrums, but he couldn't feel hers.

“No,” he groaned. “Please, please…no.”

Then suddenly it was there, steady and strong beneath his fingers.

“Thank you, God,” he said softly, then pulled her into his arms and just held her.

His rage had been spent with Richard Ponte's last gasp. And so, apparently, had his immortality. Blood was still flowing from his shoulder, running down his arm and onto Alicia.

“So be it,” he muttered, realizing what had happened, as he pulled his knife out of Ponte's chest, then stabbed it into the sand a few time to clean it, before sliding it back in his boot.

Then he staggered to his feet, gritted his teeth against the pain rocketing through his body and picked Alicia up. He carried her away from the carnage, into the shade beneath a stand of small trees that were bent and stunted from years of salt spray and wind. Once there, he leaned against a tree trunk, then, using it for a brace, slid downward, still holding her in his lap. When they were safely on the ground, he got his cell phone, shifted Alicia to a more comfortable place in his lap and made a call.

The phone rang twice, and then a man answered.

“Corbin Woodliff.”

“Corbin, it's John Nightwalker. I have that story I promised you. But I need you to make a call for me first.”

“What now? Where are you?” Corbin asked.

“Back at my beach house in Georgia. You need to call the Feds. It's about a cleanup job.”

Corbin frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“There are two dead men on the beach below my house. One of them is a man named Dieter Bahn. The other is Richard Ponte.”

“You're out of your mind, man. Ponte is dead.”

“Well, yes, he is now. Ask the FBI if they want first dibs on breaking the story, or do I call the locals and let them be the ones to break the news to the nation that Richard Ponte pulled a fast one on the U.S. government with a fancy plastic surgery job and some of his own DNA planted in a big fish.”

“You're serious, aren't you?” Corbin said.

Alicia moaned. She was regaining consciousness just as he was close to losing it. He needed to get both of them some medical help.

“I've got to call an ambulance now. The bodies are on the beach. Tell the Feds to come and get them, or the tide will.”

He hung up the phone, then dialed another number. This time the call was local, and he not only knew the dispatcher, he also knew the EMTs.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

“Sandy, this is John Nightwalker.”

“Why, hi there, John. Are you all right?”

“No, ma'am, I'm not. I've got a bullet hole in my shoulder and an unconscious woman in my lap. Do you suppose you could send Mark and Penny out this way? We're down on the beach below the house.”

“Oh good Lord! Yes. Hang on, John, I'll have help out there before you know it.”