Nightbringer (16 page)

None spoke and Gina glanced at Cassius. He was paying no attention to the activity, which surprised her. Perhaps he was unaware. Then she laughed lightly at the thought. Cassius was never unaware—not of anything.

Finally Melanchthon spoke. "I do not know if it is, in truth, the Spear of Destiny. I only know that it is what I have read of—a spear point with nails taken from the crucifix attached to it with copper and gold and silver. It is supposedly the spear of the high priest, Caiaphas, which he gave to the captain of the temple guard. The spear that Cassius took from the captain's hand on Golgotha."

Gina was impressed that the monk did not look in Cassius' direction. But the others were not so controlled. Several of the monks passed more than one glance toward the lone figure.

It was enough.

The monsignor's words were forthright. Nor did the profoundly formal tone seem out of place. "It is time for truth!" He turned and stared fully upon Cassius and extended his arm. "I abjure you by Almighty God: Are you Gaius Cassius Longinus, the centurion who crucified the Son of God?"

Cassius did not move, nor did he give any indication of surprise or anger. Then his dangerous eyes rose and he gazed with what seemed like judgment upon the monsignor.

That everyone did not run screaming through the room seemed a most remarkable thing to Gina. She felt her heart racing, felt sweat upon her palms and rubbed them on her legs. A glance at Rachel and Josh told her that they were the only ones not t
rembling. In fact, they seemed encouraged by Cassius' demeanor, regardless of the implications. Both of them turned their gaze to the centurion.

With a stern effort Gina took a deep breath and held it, reducing the oxygen in her blood, erasing the tunnel vision that encircled all that she could see.

From everything Cassius had done since the battle began, the answer was obvious. Those who respected, or feared him, did not wish for Cassius to answer, and Gina knew it. Only those who wished to know for a purpose other than survival would have demanded that he speak, and Gina knew it was time.

Her words were certain with the kind of quiet someone uses when they acknowledge a betrayal of love. "The spear is why you opened this abbey in the first place, isn't it, Monsignor?"

The monsignor scowled. "What, Gina?"

"You heard
me."

"Yes. I heard your question
which, as you well know, is no question. Yes, some seek the spear because they believe that the ancient relics contain the power of God."

"Like you?"

"No," he said flatly. "No, I am wiser than that. And as we discussed earlier, I was a skeptic. I did not believe these walls contained anything but standard medieval weapons, chariots, statues—a wealth of treasures, to be sure, but not the treasure they sought."

Gina stared. "Which is?"

"Which is nothing anyone needs to possess," Cassius said beside her, and Gina's heart leaped.

He had moved silently across the Hal
l but she had not seen or sensed him. And neither, apparently, had the others, who reacted with even more alacrity. With the air of a commander, Cassius gave Gina the reloaded MP-5 and a belt of fresh clips.

“You’re hot,” Cassius said quietly. Then he
turned to the monsignor, and the monsignor involuntarily stepped back, though Cassius made no sign of approaching.

In the moment that lasted, Cassius seemed revealed in an entirety that only Gina had witnessed. He was imperious and lordly—a king among them who held their lives or deaths in his grasp. No one spoke as Cassius cast a long gaze.

Melanchthon did not raise his face. Father Stephen cast his cowl over his head, and Jaqual fell to his knees with hands folded, face bent. Then Gina saw Josh and Rachel. They were glancing to the monks, to Cassius, and back again. But even Josh seemed to sense the power, the fear of the moment, and didn't speak.

Cassius' voice was the tone of stone intoning a deep resonance of strength, as though he had dipped his hand into an abyss of immortal might that he summoned at will.

"Don't be afraid ... For I am Gaius Cassius Longinus, the centurion who crucified the Son of the Living God. I was once a soldier of Rome. But I serve in another army now. And if by my life or death I can save you ... I will."

***

It was easier to deal with the situation, Gina discovered, by simply watching and listening—at least until her mind no longer reacted against the thought that Cassius was the two-thousand-year-old centurion who crucified Jesus. And as she listened to the professor and Cassius discuss the situation, she found reason to make the impossible seem less impossible.

Cassius knew all there was to know of these creatures. Clearly, he had hunted and killed them for centuries. He knew their habits as any good hunter would know the habits of his prey. He knew their limitations, their instinctive reactions, preferred tactics, and could anticipate what they would do—to
a point. But he was also honest enough to admit that they were ultimately unpredictable.

Although the initial discussion focused on the Nephilim, it was not long before it spiraled out to embrace other subjects, as if Cassius realized that further discussion of the creatures only fueled their already heated fears. And Gina noticed several of the others—Melanchthon, Jaqual, and Monsignor DeMarco—as they appeared on the edge of the group, listening attentively.

The casual, easy manner in which Cassius described historical events was genuinely fascinating. He described the fall of Rome, the rise of continents, lost civilizations, abandoned cities the world was not fortunate enough to remember. He discussed the founding of the New World and, he added, that Christopher Columbus was the only person who
hadn't
seen America when it was "discovered." He spoke with intimate knowledge of the Celts, the Druids, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Hitler, and a dozen more characters that were only partially captured by historians.

Gina was intrigued that Cassius had never contributed anything to man's memory of history, not even anonymously, and wished to know why.

Cassius sighed. "I saw events unfold through my eyes just as others saw them through their eyes. We all had our prejudices, our philosophies. I don't know that my memories were any better than the next man’s."

Staring into flames within the hearth, the professor laughed. "How true—no one man comes to history with a blank page. We come with what we have already decided is true."

"Yes," agreed Cassius, "but I've read your work, Professor. You have an ability for impartial analysis that escapes most so-called historians." He laughed. "I've seen history rewritten a hundred times, and each time the evil and the good have changed. But as far as I could discern, you simply described events as accurately as historical documents and physical evidence allow."

The professor was stunned by the quiet comment, but Cassius did not seem to notice as he continued. "But still you err in understanding the fall of Rome."

"Describe it to me," said Haider, rapt now.

"People look at Rome's d
ecline in population, the disintegration of the army in the second century, the plague that wiped out half the city under Marcus Aurelius, the invasion of the Gauls that destroyed the aqueducts, and these were indeed forces of the decline. But those events were as nothing. Rome would have survived—it had survived worse. The truth is that Rome fell because its god fell—a god named Caesar.

"In the end, even legions turned on one another—those who worshiped the Christian God and those who remained loyal to Caesar." Cassius grew more still. "Rome could have survived anything but the Messiah. But Christianity was the one thing no army could overcome—a kingdom beyond this world that made all authority and suffering as nothing when compared to the glory of it.

"Rome simply did not know how to deal with a religion that denied the ultimate reality of this world. Killing was no answer because it did nothing to affect what Christians claimed to possess."

"When did you come to believe?" the professor asked.

"I began to wonder as I watched Him day after day. I don't know how anyone could watch Him ... and not wonder. Then He was brought before Pilate." Cassius shook his head. "I had never seen Pilate tremble. But he trembled before this beggar—this homeless, wandering Jew. And he wasn’t alone."

Cassius expelled a hard breath. "A crucifixion is the most painful death that any man could suffer. It was meant to deter others from attempting the same crime. I'll spare you the details. Your English word excruciating is taken from the Latin
word, ‘crucifix.’

"I expected Him to die before we ever reached Golgotha. But His strength was so great He wouldn
’t die until He decided. Everything that happened up the Via della Rosa was just a doomed attempt to make Him ask, just once, for mercy. But He never spoke, as I knew He wouldn't. Because by then I knew this man would overcome death on that hill as He had overcome everything else."

The crackling of flames was the only sound, and Gina's mind returned to something else. "You said you only wanted to live long enough
... Long enough for what?"

Cassius frowned. "That has nothing to do with this. I
’ll kill this beast. He's escaped me too many times. And he's inflicted far too much harm on the world."

He held the katana close, the
.45 at his side. Gina felt confident that he stood a good chance against the creature with the weapons. But in hand-to-hand combat, he stood no chance at all.

"How much longer before we know about the radio?"

"The monsignor says the components are made to adapt," Gina answered numbly. "He's hopeful, but I don't know ..."

"It'll be night in five hours. If it's not fixed before night, we'll need to barricade the room as much as possible. Its power is greater at night."

"Why?"

"Night plays well with its preferred methods for stalking and attacking." He nodded at the tunnels. "It can see in the dark as well as we see in the day. And it will take risks in the
dark that it won't take in the light. But out here we have the advantage of the light. We don't need to lose that."

Jaqual bent slowly over Josh and Rachel and motioned to the table, where he'd prepared a meal for them. Gina smiled thankfully at the young monk, and then the kids rose and walked, quite content, across the Hall. Cassius watched them leave before he spoke. "Do you ever wonder why children are instinctively afraid of the dark?"

"Yes,” Gina nodded. “I have."

"Because memories live longer than
creature that carries them," he said quietly. "And some memories are older than the mind itself."

When no one spoke, Cassius continued. "Just as the Jews have a strange, intimate understanding of God that other races seem to somehow lack—racial memory, they call it—there are things in everyone's mind that are older than years. Just as poets wrote of neuroses, obsessions, and their psychological effects hundreds of years before science followed, the heart knows things that science will never comprehend.

"We fear the darkness because the darkness once contained the source of our greatest fear—a fear that has been suppressed, but never completely vanquished from the deepest part of our being. We fear the darkness because
it
was once out there in the darkness—stalking us, waiting for us, watching us.

"Nightbringer, they called it, and the fear of it was so great that generation after generation inherited that fear in a thousand ways and passed it on in a thousand ways to generation after generation. Now men say they're too rational to fear the darkness. What they don't know is that the part of them that fears the darkness is beneath their mind."

Gina sighed and lowered her face to her knee. "But most of the Nephilim are dead, Cassius."

"Most of them," he agreed. "But even if I killed the last, there is always the chance that another would be born."

"I don't understand that at all," Gina murmured. "These things are as old as you. Don't they ever die?"

"They die—eventually. But their years are beyond my knowledge. I've killed Nephilim born in the days of Jericho and some no older than a century. The old ones are the most dangerous because they understand the secrets of sorcery."

Gina felt confident enough to say, "If God is God, then why didn't He simply prevent these creatures from ever existing? They're evil, right?" She raised her hand. "Wait—I know they're evil. The question is: Why did God allow them to inhabit the earth?"

It was obviously a question Cassius had heard and even asked before. "Why is there suffering?" he answered finally. "Why did God create Satan? What good purpose have these creatures served in a world that was not—
is not
—theirs?"

He paused a long time. "I believe Satan is as beyond the understanding of the most brilliant man or woman as God is within the understanding of the simplest child.
But ultimately all things happen for one reason; the glory of God. Whether you can explain how or why isn’t going to decide anything. Everything exists for the same reason."

No one spoke and finally Cassius placed a hand upon his sword and stood. He took a deep breath, staring into the tunnel and the entrance to the catacombs. "I'm going to make a quick circuit of the corridors." He looked at Gina as she raised her face. "I won't be long."