The Red Cross of Gold I:. The Knight of Death (4 page)

The big man popped into view again and stood
with his hands on his hips looking down at them.

“I say we dump him here and be done with it,”
he grumbled. "Cut our losses here."

“That's ridiculous," she objected and
frowned. "He's wearing the rings."

Mark looked down at his hands. He wore two
rings. . One on his left ring finger was shining gold, smooth. Was
he married then? He turned his hand over and found a triangular
white shield on top of the ring with a blood red cross inlaid in
the white stone. Something tugged at his memory and another
disorienting scene flashed in his head. He saw a line of horses and
riders in full battle armor. In front of each rider was the white
triangle with the red cross like a scene from a movie. The horses
snorted and pranced uneasily, dust clouds rose behind the closely
packed line as they advanced. His head swam and the image
disappeared. On his right little finger he wore a silver ring with
four initials engraved on top accented with black: IAAT. Those were
not his initials. The rings meant nothing to him, but they were
important clues to his identity.

“I know he ain’t the right one,” the man
argued. “He’s too stupid to be an assassin…. bullshit! He’s
probably a Mormon or a Gee Hovah’s Witness or something. If he was
so all fired dangerous, how the hell did we get the drop on him
like that?”

"Don't be silly, Maxie. You sound like an old
movie," she said and winked at Mark as if the man were an errant
child. "He just wasn't expecting us. That's all."

Mark wiggled his fingers as the feeling
returned to his extremities. Already, he was feeling much better
and the greater part of his aches and pains had subsided. He had no
intention of sitting still while the man carved him up for the
buzzards. A very short, but vivid memory of another place and
another time flashed in his mind, leaving him with the distinct
impression that he could easily dispatch this disgusting brute with
his pocket knife, if he could get his hands to cooperate. He could
take off his head with one blow and hang it from one of the tree
limbs for the birds to eat. He could cut out his heart and leave
his carcass for the vultures. He could disembowel him and …. Mark
shook his head and the hideous visions vanished, along with his
hope, as the man pulled a pistol from his pocket.

“Don’t get antsy, dipshit.” The man must have
read the look on his face. “I don’t have no problem with offin’ you
right now.” He turned to the woman again. “You ain’t gonna get
nothin’ out of him.”

“I got him to talk to me. That’s more than
you can say.”

The Pixie squared off with him in Mark’s
defense. The man was ready to murder him and dump his body in the
ditch.

“Oh, yeah?” The man’s voice grated on Mark’s
ears. “I guess I shoulda fucked him then? What did you get out of
him besides a poke and a moan? I bet you didn’t even get
yours.”

The Pixie’s face reddened with anger and she
slapped the man’s face to Mark’s surprise. “Watch your mouth, sir!
How dare you speak to me in such a manner? You will remember who
pays your salary.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, right.” The man backed off a
bit and rubbed his cheek. “Excuse me, your preciousness. I thought
we brought him here to interrogate him, not scr… sit in his
lap.”

“There is nothing wrong with a little
kindness, Maxie.”

She seemed to calm down a bit and then looked
down at Mark He felt extremely guilty about what had happened in
spite of having been helpless to do much about it. He suddenly
wanted to kill the man and take the girl to a convent. A convent?
What was wrong with him? He rubbed the back of his head. The blows
to his head must have caused extensive brain damage. His stomach
growled and he stretched his legs out flexing the muscles in his
calves and thighs. The tingling had subsided.

An alarm went off in his head and he
remembered stopping at a small store looking for potato crisps or
some biscuits. That was when he had seen the one called Maxie for
the first time. The man was waiting for him in the parking lot. The
man had thrown something in his eyes. The pain had been
excruciating and he’d been blinded by whatever it had been. Where
was his car? A mangy, black rat with sickly yellow eyes ran across
his feet and he jerked his knees up involuntarily and wrapped his
arms over his head. Where had the rat come from?!

He looked up again and saw that his captors
were still arguing. Mark Andrew Ramsay. That was his name. He
grabbed at the rat when it ventured near enough, snuffling at toes,
but it was gone again. He crawled after it in the debris under the
stone stairs. He was so hungry; he had to catch the rat. The stone
was cool on his palms. His boots made loud noises in the dark, dank
chamber.

He stabbed at the rat with his dagger and
pain exploded in his side as he fell over on his back, staring up
at the leaves above his head. Maxie's ugly face bobbed into view.
The big man’s nostrils flared with anger and he drew back his foot
in preparation of kicking him again. Mark rolled on his side and
curled into a ball, expecting the blow that never came.

“Leave him alone, Maxie. Can’t you see he’s
hurt?”

The Pixie’s voice cut through his panic and
he felt gentle hands on his shoulders.

“Get up, dipshit!” Maxie growled at him and
waved the pistol menacingly.

“Don’t touch him again, Maxie. Come on, Mark.
We’ll see what Cecile has to say about this.”

She helped him up and he limped across the
rocks, twigs and leaves, each step jarring his aching side. He
rubbed his ribs and ran his hand through his hair. He could feel
the blood drying on his face in the hot breeze.

The white car loomed in front of them and he
stopped to pick several tiny pebbles from his socks as he leaned
one hand on the roof of the car. The woman bent down and helped him
dislodge the irritating pieces of debris. She was still talking to
him and he had not been listening. He tried to focus his attention
on her words. He needed all the information he could get, no matter
what the source.

“I think she'll be pleased to meet you,” the
Pixie was saying. “She's been looking for you guys a long time. She
kept telling me about the Order. I never really thought much about
it. Now here you are, just like she said. You don’t seem so
dangerous to me. I guess I was expecting a vampire or something.
You have no idea how worried I was, but now I feel a lot
better.”

Mark looked at her in disbelief. What was she
talking about now? Vampires? And why would he be dangerous? But, he
was the assassin; the Knight of Death she had called him. Of
course, he was dangerous if he was an assassin. What had he been
thinking? He would certainly assassinate the big fellow if given
the chance. He had many questions he wanted to ask her, but not
with an extra set of ears paying attention. She was certainly
friendly enough. That stuff about women being dangerous had come
from his lips, not hers. He didn’t mind her company. It was the
presence of the goon with the big knife that bothered him. They
would simply have to get rid of him and things would be much
improved.

She opened the Lincoln’s back door and
allowed him to get in first. He slid into the cool leather comfort
of the back seat. He leaned back, sighing in relief as her guard
dog climbed into the driver’s seat. The man was handy after all. He
could curse, snort, kick, slap, punch and drive. What a guy! The
door locks clicked and he automatically tried the door handle while
she made herself comfortable beside him. Locked and controlled from
the driver's seat, of course.

He laid his head back and closed his eyes.
She was talking to the driver, telling the man strange things that
meant nothing to him. Every time the man spoke, Mark Andrew’s
hatred for him grew. He was foul-mouthed, rude and ungodly. It
would have been so easy to climb over the partition and break his
neck, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea at the time. They were
traveling down a narrow, two-lane highway in the middle of
God-knew-where and it would have been very difficult for the man to
drive with a broken neck. At least he would stay dead, if he could
kill him; he was sure of it. Mark snapped his eyes open at the
absurdity of that thought. Of course, the man would stay dead if he
was killed! He closed his eyes again. So tired...

The Pixie rummaged in her bag and came up
with a cell phone. She punched a couple of buttons and he could
hear the phone ringing and then a voice answered abruptly. A female
voice.

“It’s me,” the Pixie answered. “Great news!”
“Uh, huh.” “We have him. He’s asleep.”

Mark opened one eye and looked at her as she
talked on the phone excitedly. She winked at him when she saw him
looking at her. “Yeah. He’s great. You were right. Yes. About
everything.”

Mark frowned at her and she winked at him
again, squeezed his thigh and patted him like a small boy or a new
puppy.

“On our way. Yeah. Uh, huh. OK. Bye,
now.”

She closed the phone and turned around
sideways in the seat. He closed his eyes again and felt her snuggle
into the seat beside him. Her touch was electric even though his
shirt. She began talking to him again, calling him Chevalier and
Sir Ramsay, telling him all about how much he was going to like the
place they were going as if they were going on a blind date or more
like he was a child and she was taking him to a surprise party. She
climbed out of the seat and found him another bottle of water,
crisp and cold in the fridge when he licked his dry lips. He sat up
straighter, took the little bottle from her and drank the entire
thing down. Her bag produced lip balm and she applied it to his
lips with one finger while he stared at her in wonder. A complete
stranger she was and she acted as if they were old friends or
lovers. His stomach growled again as the hunger he’d felt earlier
returned with a vengeance.

Almost all his pains had faded away except
for the stinging cut on his forehead. He was tired, but not so much
so that he couldn’t have slit the man’s throat from ear to ear
before taking a nice nap.

She stroked his arm and his face, telling him
what they would eat when they got ‘home’. Even though her hand was
silky smooth and cool, he cringed under her touch. She continued to
talk trivial subjects while moving her attentions to his leg.
Almost before he registered her intent, she redirected her
attention became much more intimate in nature even as her monolog
continued unabated. Mark ignored his best first impulse to push her
away and glanced up at the rear-view mirror. The driver was
watching them more than the road. The pixie leaned against his
shoulder and kissed his ear. Then she licked his neck under his
earlobe and moved around to kiss his eyelids and then his lips and
he felt himself responding to her attention in spite of their
audience. She reminded him of some of the royalty he had known.
Servants were simply part of the furniture.

He returned the kiss while still looking at
the man in the mirror, but when she moved her hand again, he
grabbed her hand with the intention of stopping her. Then, to his
own consternation, he pressed her hand against himself and closed
his eyes. She began to repeat the same process she had executed in
the pecan orchard. Predictably enough, his stomach, the driver and
the locked doors were soon forgotten as she climbed into his lap
and sat facing him with her hands on his shoulders. It was
happening again. And he seemed utterly powerless to stop what he
felt was very, very wrong and this time, he had full control of his
arms, his legs, his hands and his brain, but not his senses.

He rose up slightly and looked over her
shoulder once more. If he couldn’t kill the brute, he could at
least make him miserable some other way. Only one downside
presented itself to his muddled brain: If she was a prostitute and
this man was her pimp, he was going to have an immense bill. He
didn’t think that such a thing would have been something he might
normally do, though he had no idea what he might do, normally or
abnormally.

Mark’s reticence evaporated and he responded
more animatedly to her attentions than previously, by taking a much
more active part. He caught her hair in his hands and pulled her
close, kissing her long and hard, while keeping one eye on the
mirror. The guy looked really pissed. When the man looked again, he
winked at him and then turned his attention fully to the very
energetic Pixie in his lap. It was the least he could do for the
bastard in the front seat. Mark was quite sure that the situation
would change very soon and had no idea what might be waiting for
him at ‘home’. The second episode was over almost as quickly as the
first, but they took up the same subject on the deep black carpet
of the floor in front of the seat. Between the second and the
third, he had a slight bout of guilt when he wondered if he had a
wife and perhaps a dozen children somewhere waiting for him,
wondering what had happened to him. The fridge produced sweet,
white wine to drink. Despite the danger of his predicament and the
uncertainty of his immediate future, he temporarily forgot the ugly
brute and everything else he couldn’t remember.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no
standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow
me.

“Sir Ramsay?” a whisper very close to his ear woke him up with a
start. “We’re home.”

Mark Andrew snapped his eyes open and found
the Pixie on her hands and knees above him. To his astonishment, he
was lying on the thick carpet in the rear of the limousine. A
terrible sense of guilt flooded over him as one of the only
memories he had washed over him. Well, he really couldn’t hold
himself responsible for the first time, could he? And the second
time had been motivated more by revenge than by desire. But the
third time, which had lasted a good bit longer than the first two
had been unmitigated lust. A sin in and of itself.