Midnight Jewels (35 page)

But he hadn't been born in the past. He had been dropped into a more civilized society where violence was only an occasional event, not a way of life. The closest most Americans in the latter quarter of the twentieth century ever got to real violence was reading the headlines in the morning paper. True, most people feared violent crime, but the reality was that few would ever be a victim of it. Few civilized people needed the primitive survival instincts their ancestors had once depended on for hunting and defense. Whatever was left of those instincts lay dormant within the average individual.

Unfortunately for Croft, in him those instincts had never been dormant. Always he had been aware of them, simmering just below the surface. They had always been fierce, strong, and very much alive. They would have taken him over years ago if he hadn't found the other side of his nature, the part that could be civilized, analytical, rationally serene. This part of him could control the other side of his being.

Paradoxically it could also be used in some strange way as a source of energy, a means of stimulating the more aggressive elements within himself. Croft had a theory about how that actually worked. It involved the realization that civilized behavior actually required more willpower and emotional strength than did aggression and violence. The force needed to ensure civilization was every bit as strong as the fiercer elements within man. It had to be in order to have allowed civilization to triumph at all. But this force was less understood and less controllable.

From the moment he had discovered it, Croft had thrived on the challenge of controlling that inner source of power. It was his salvation. It kept him from becoming a beast at the mercy of his own, more aggressive and violent instincts.

Tonight he needed it in a way he had never needed it before. The other side of him was exhausted, its resources devastated by the effects of poison or drugs. And tonight he needed that side of himself.

It must have been in the goddamned fish. He would never eat smoked salmon again. But no. The poison or drug had probably been in the wine.

Drunk. The poison or drug had made him feel and act drunk. Was that how it had been for his father?

He pushed the stray thoughts aside. They were a weakening influence on him and he could not afford any more weakness.

He needed strength. He found the source of it within himself, sensing that he would be draining all his reserves when he tapped into what remained of his energy.

In the distance he heard the muted roar of the Jeep's engine. Whoever had followed them from the Gladstone estate had finally realized the quarry had taken a detour at Drifter's Creek.

Croft moved farther into the shadows, his mind steadying on the focal point of calm strength that was his only hope now. He realized he had temporarily stopped shaking.

It was cold in the starlit shadows, but there was a sense of lightness as well. The darkness offered concealment while allowing his primitive senses full rein. Mercy would probably say this was his kind of place, Croft thought grimly, a ghost town.

The Jeep roared back into town and halted abruptly at the end of the street. Two male figures leaped from the front seat. Croft saw me odd shapes jutting from their hands and knew that Dallas and Lance were both carrying guns.

Mercy huddled in the shadows of the ruined structure and listened to the sound of the returning Jeep. Croft was right, as usual.

Mercy wished disappearing was a viable option. Under the circumstances it looked like the best way out of an untenable situation. She inched carefully toward the wall, wary of unseen objects lurking the shadows waiting to trip her. There was one window in the old shack, but it had been boarded up long ago, her questing fingers discovered. Fortunately there were plenty of cracks and knotholes in the wooden walls. When she pressed her face close to the boards she could see a couple of other disintegrating buildings looming in the shadows outside. Their outlines seemed a little clearer now than they had earlier. Maybe her eyes were getting more accustomed to the darkness.

She hugged herself against the chill. It wasn't just cold in Drifter's Creek. There was something more. She remembered the vague uneasiness she had experienced when she
and Croft had first driven through the ghost town. Croft hadn't seemed aware of anything out of the ordinary, she recalled.

Possibly because the strangeness she had felt hadn't seemed particularly out of the ordinary to him, Mercy thought wryly. The man was an enigma. It was awkward being in love with an enigma.

Mercy caught the flash of the Jeep lights between a staggered row of buildings as the vehicle stopped right in the middle of the road. Whoever was driving probably wasn't unduly worried about blocking oncoming traffic. There wasn't much likelihood of any traffic on this road, especially at this hour of the night.

The lights of the Jeep were left on to illuminate the road between the dry, rotting hulks of buildings. The vehicle itself was in deep shadow, but Mercy thought she saw a shape jump out of the front seat and move forward to crouch beside the fender. Perhaps there were two shapes. She couldn't be sure. It seemed very probable that Dallas and Lance traveled as a pair. Snakes were said to do exactly that.

She knew she couldn't be seen, but Mercy drew back instinctively, wondering where Croft was. She glanced around blindly, desperately trying to quiet the panic that threatened to inundate her. She hated being cooped tip like this. She felt like a trapped animal waiting for the arrival of the hunters.

She had to get out.

Under normal circumstances it was possible Croft could handle the situation outside. There was a terrifying kind of strength in him that had its roots in the emotional as well as physical side of his being, and he freely admitted that violence held some sort of fascination for him. Mercy forced herself to acknowledge
that he was one of the hunters of the world, a predator who was at home in the darkness.

But tonight Croft was weakened by whatever had been
used to poison or drug him. The! thought of him trying to take on Gladstone's two musclemen was appalling.

Croft could get himself killed out there in the shadows and she wouldn't even know it until Dallas and Lance finally tracked her down in her poor hiding place.

Mercy shuddered. She hated this dark, cold room. She wondered what it had been when Drifter's Creek was a flourishing mining community. It wouldn't surprise her to find out
this particular building had once served as the town's morgue.

Tile thought made her almost sick to her stomach. She tried telling herself that towns the size of Drifter's Creek wouldn't have had morgues, but somehow the image of a dead body sprawled on a table nearby wouldn't vanish.

She could see the body very clearly in her mind's eye. The dead man was dressed in miner's doming, his dirty shirt stained reddish brown from the bullet wound in his chest. The town doctor was leaning over him, shaking his head. It was too late. Just another victim of a claim feud.

The miner's small store of personal belongings were stacked on another table. A gun in its holster, an iron shovel with a wooden handle, a battered hat.

He had never had a chance to draw the gun.

Mercy gasped and came back to her senses with a start. She was going to drive herself crazy. Even if Croft did survive to fetch her he would find a crazy woman waiting for him. It was no good. She had to get out.

Mercy bolted for the door and nearly went sprawling as she stumbled over an object in the darkness. Her scrambling hands encountered a long wooden object and instinctively closed around it. It was a length of wood
that was surprisingly round in shape.

Rising to her feet, Mercy headed once more for the door. She clung to the wooden stick as she let herself outside into
the shadows. It wasn't much, but the stick gave her a feeling of being aimed, albeit poorly.

She felt a little better outside in the open. Lately she seemed to be developing a sizable case of claustrophobia. First it was the fear of being locked in Gladstone's vault, and then those nightmare images of a dead man inside the old cabin a few minutes before. Hanging around Croft was proving uncomfortably stimulating to her imagination. His streak of melodrama was definitely starting to rub off on her.

Mercy made her way cautiously along the wall of the gutted structure in which she had been hiding, keeping the building between herself and the view of the road. A faint gurgling sound warned her of the small creek a few seconds before she would have stumbled into it. Glancing down she could see the dark swath of water. It would have been bitterly cold. That made her think about Croft running around in the chilled night without his boots.

Overhead the wind sighed in the treetops, an eerie, desolate sound. She hated that whispering cry, Mercy thought. It was the epitome of loneliness and isolation. Just like Croft. He was out there somewhere, the burden of protecting her and himself resting squarely on his shoulders. She knew instinctively that he was accustomed to facing this kind of dung alone. He probably wouldn't appreciate help from an amateur.

But he was in a seriously weakened condition. He needed her help. She had as big a stake in me outcome of this night's work as he did. Mercy was convinced now that both she and Croft were fighting for their lives.

The shot, when it came a moment later, crackled through the night, startling Mercy into realizing just how serious matters had become. She froze, waiting in an agony of suspense for a shout or cry from one of the three men who were hunting each other through the ruins.

"Over there, damn it. I saw him." The voice belonged to Lance.

Mercy closed her eyes and silently told Croft that he couldn't be dead. She wouldn't allow it. Then, clutching the stick, she moved away from the shelter of the cabin and edged toward the shadow of the next ruin. More voices drifted toward her. She caught bits and pieces of conversation from Lance and Dallas. The clear night air carried sound very well.

"What about the woman?"

"No problem. We'll find her later. Falconer is the one we have to worry about. Are you sure you saw him?" Dallas sounded angry and impatient. He also sounded a little worried. Perhaps this business of hunting ghosts at night wasn't his cup of tea.

"Something moved."

"It could have been anything," Dallas muttered.

"He's not armed. We know that. And he's fighting that stuff I put in me wine. You saw the condition he was in when the woman pulled him out of the pool. He can't last much longer. That stuff should have made him pass-out by now." Dallas sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.

"Don't bet on it. He should have keeled over in the garden and he didn't. I don't know how he stayed on his feet. I was lucky to get him into the pool. He almost got me, instead. I'm telling you, Dallas, the guy's fast and strong."

"You should have made sure of that scene in the pool. If you had, we wouldn't be here now. Gladstone's not happy. Stop worrying about how fast the bastard is. With that stuff still in his system Falconer can't be anything but dead slow by now." Lance sounded satisfied with that deduction.