Deviant Knights (9 page)

He had no clue what to do.

She seemed to sense their confusion, and had
been quiet since her initial demand to know where she was going.
 
Michel had nearly growled at him when he’d
told her where they were and where they were going.
 
But unless she was
Wi-Fied
to the Illuminati, he doubted she could do much, if anything, to put them in
harm’s way.
 
If she
were evil, of course.

He watched her as she gazed at the scenery they
passed.
 
She sure didn’t look evil.
 
Having felt his eyes on her, she turned, the
lavender orbs clear of guile.

“I have so many questions.”

“As do I,
querida
.
 
As do I.”
 
He wasn’t sure how much he could share with
her.
 
But he wanted to quell her fears,
protect her.
 
It was an instinct he
couldn’t fight.

Chapter Seven

“You were human?
 
Before?”

“I suppose I still am.
 
I just don’t die.”

“That makes you anything but human.
 
Who made you this way?”

“She really has no name, but
She
has been called many things over the course of five millennia.
 
She is The Sacred Feminine, The Goddess,
Isis, Ishtar,
Asherah
…there is too little time to
speak all of her names.
 
But ultimately,
She
is Mother Earth, Gaia Herself.
 
Humans have given her that name.
 
What it really is, we do not know.”

“And
Gaia
saved you?
 
Does this sound as insane
from your end as it does mine?”

Laughing, he turned to smile.
 
She quickly looked away because what little
she had seen of that incandescent grin, she knew it would leave her breathless.
 
She would forget he was clearly a few cards
short of a full deck.
 
Too bad, they were
both perfect minus the insanity issue.

The events of the night in the penthouse swirled
around in her brain and she had been picking them apart for hours, looking for
loopholes.
 
Perhaps she was in denial of
all the things she’d seen.
 
Maybe she
herself was the mad one and all this was but another of her vivid dreams, this
one gone wild.
 
Perhaps all those long
nights in the arms of her dream lover had finally kicked her off the insanity
cliff.
 

“Yes,
She
saved me, as
well as many other knights.
 
Friday the
thirteenth of October, 1307.
 
That’s the
day King Philip IV of
France
along with his puppet pope murdered hundreds of my comrades.
 
If it had not been for her salvation, we all
would have died.
 
When many of my order
were arrested and tortured, she saved a few dozen of us, those she deemed
worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

“Being
Her
servant on
Earth.”

“So you’re a servant?
 
I’m lost.
 
You were almost murdered back in the dark ages just to be some chick’s
servant?”

“Not a
chick
.
 
She’s a supreme being and should be given a
little more respect,
querida
.”
 
Laughing again, he turned his ten-kilowatt
smile in her direction.
 

Feeling a current sizzle through her body, she
grasped the hem to her black dress to prevent herself from grabbing him.
 
She sure as hell hoped he didn’t notice the
impact he had on her.
 
Heat swelled in
his eyes as he continued to look at her, and his smile faded into the look of
pure desire.

 
“I am not
that
kind of servant.
 
I do the things that must be done. I work to
save this planet from itself and those bent on destroying it.
 
She is the spirit of the Earth;
She
is life itself, birth and rebirth.
 
God holds jurisdiction over the Heavens,
Lucifer over the underworld.
 
She is the
very life-force of the planet, and She has become a very pissed off deity.”

“I can understand.
 
We haven’t taken care of our home.
 
We are destroying the planet,
heck,
we even punched a hole in the Ozone layer...”

“That isn’t what this is really about.
 
Yes, we should take better care of the home
we have, but
She
has bigger problems.
 
A war has been waged on this planet for
millennia.
 
And it has taken a toll.
 
Heaven and Hell have been fighting over the
souls of human beings for eternity.
 
Modern Christianity has
masculinized
religion
and written her out of existence in the minds of most people, but almost every
religion since the dawn of time has included Gaia in one form or another.
 

“We as
Templars
began
to understand
Her
importance a long time ago. The
Crusades opened our minds to other religions, older, deeper mysticism.
 
We had at first run into the Crusades blindly,
fighting against what the church deemed infidels, offering our service for
imagined injustices.
 
Although there are
many religions, they can all co-exist with one another if the basic principles
of that religion are followed.
 
We needed
to work for peace, not the destruction of everything that was labeled ‘different.’

“Once our order had spent time in a whole other
place, one with a completely different mindset, truths slowly became known.
 
We learned of Gaia on our travels.
  
But what we learned went against some of the
ideals of the Catholic Church and its vision of the world at that time.
 
It fit perfectly with Christianity, mind you,
but early Catholicism did not suffer open-minded fools.
 
Fortunately, the
Vatican
has become a much more
lenient entity as time has marched on.
 
If only they’d had that mindset 700 years ago.
  

“King Phillip of
Spain
was devoutly Catholic and
also owed us untold masses of gold that we had lent him to wage his wars.
 
He wanted even more and we refused.
 
What better than to call us heretics and have
us
murdered so he would not have to repay his debts to
us?
 
Pope Clement was in his back pocket,
and nearly all of
Europe
was afraid of him,
his army and armada had laid waste to much of the continent.
 
So, he killed many of us off, while some of
us were able to escape, and
She
saved the chosen few.”

 
“This is
just too deep.
 
I feel like I’m
dreaming.
 
I’ve finally been pulled into
the madness I’ve dreamt of for two years.
 
When will I wake up?”

“You’re awake,
querida
.
 
Perhaps we were unwise to tell you the
truth.
 
But there is just something in
your eyes.”
 
He looked thoughtful for a
moment.
 
“You did see the blade rupture
my chest, correct?”

Thinking back to the hellish night, she felt
chills run down her spine.
 
She knew he
had to have died. Watching that thing run the blade from his belly to his
breastbone had almost made her wretch.
 
“Yes,” she whispered.

“Would you like to see my wound?”

“No.”
 
It
was almost inaudible to
her own
ears.

“I think it may be best.
 
Then perhaps you can be pulled from your
denial.”
 
With that, he pulled open his
shirt to reveal a thin, light pink scar that was nearly imperceptible.

“How?”

“It began healing almost immediately.”

“Will you never die?”

“Of natural causes, no.
 
We cannot die unless our
heads are taken.”

“And what have you been doing to serve for the
last seven hundred years?”

“Mostly, the same thing you saw, fighting the
Illuminati.
 
My nights are spent seeking
out the evils unnatural to this world.
 
We repel the demon hordes that arise from Hell.
 
Heaven ignores us for the most part, as they
don’t see us as a threat.
 
But there are
times when both factions will play games with a particular soul and we will
intervene.
 
She does not like wars to be
waged on
Her
soil.”

“So you are basically a foot soldier in the
Earth’s battle to protect itself?”

“Good analogy.
 
But I am no foot soldier.
 
I am a
Knight Templar.”

“You were a Knight Templar.”

“I will always be a Knight of the
Temple
of
Solomon
.
 
I took an oath on my twenty-first birthday to uphold the values of our
order with my life.
 
And being that I
still have a life, I still have an oath to uphold.”

“But isn’t the oath you took to a religion that
cast you out?”

“Men cast us out.
 
Men and their misguided
desires of greed.”

“So what was this oath?”

“What I took from that ceremony was that I
needed to stand for what is right.
 
To
stand and fight evil where it rests.
 
To shine the light of truth into the darkness.”

“I suppose that holds up even now.”

****
 

Kadence
got very quiet for a moment, her eyes looking over his face.
 
Gabriel felt heat blossoming within him, as
he became covetous of that gaze.
 
“How do
I fit into all this?”

“I wish I
knew,
querida
.”

“Is that why you both have shrunk from me?
 
You wonder if I’m evil.” She’d hit the nail
on the head, but he didn’t wish to admit to it if it would pain her.

“We need to determine what you are.”

“So I’m right.”
 
She looked away, but not before he saw the hurt on her face.
 

He saw her reflection in the glass window and
wanted to ease the ache from her.
 
His
hands moved of their own accord and went to her shoulders, rubbing them in
hopes of calming her.
 
Her body
immediately stiffened to the touch, but she slowly melted into his hands.
 
His gentle ministrations had their desired
effect.
 
A rush of desire swelled through
him at the simple gesture, his need to pull her close and ravage her screaming
in his ears.

Gabriel knew that Michel would not approve.
 
Casting a quick glance across the car, he
found Michel sitting with his eyes open, quietly watching the interaction
between them.
 
His gaze was hooded,
observing seemingly enough to enthrall him.
 
Their stares met, a look of understanding instantly zipped between them.
 
They were both slaves to her call.

Gabriel turned again to
Kadence
,
feeling her relaxing further to his touch.
 
He spied her neck.
 
Soft tendrils
of her coppery hair flowed from the quick chignon she’d put in.
 
The thin column of flesh was so enticing.
 
His mouth moved to it of its own accord.
 
He placed his lips just under her hairline
and felt her stiffen once more.
 
Continuing to massage her shoulders, she melted soon after.

He stole another kiss, laying it tentatively.
 
She did not stiffen the second time, but
rather arched her neck back to better receive his touch.
 
It was a move of acquiescence and all the
permission he needed to venture further.

Moving closer to her, he pulled her back to his
chest and gathered her into his arms, kissing the tender flesh of her neck and
ear.
 
Her breathing had quickened, and he
felt her rapid heartbeat against his lips.
 
He pulled away the soft jacket he’d put on her the night before, bearing
her further to his tongue.
 
The ripe
swell of her breasts above her bodice could be admired from his vantage point,
looking over her shoulder.
 
He gently
cupped the flesh and molded it to his fingers as he tasted every inch of her
his mouth could reach.