FOREVER KNIGHT: ON HOLY GROUND

Based upon the television series created
by James D. Parriott and Barney Cohen

Produced by Paragon Entertainment Corporation in
association with TriStar Television
 
 

A Peacock Press Book / © May 2000

Copyright covers original material only and is not intended to infringe
on copyrights previously held by Paragon/Tristar/Sony Inc.
The majority of characters depicted herein are not the property
of Peacock Press or Jean Graham and are used here without
permission for non-profit/entertainment purposes only.

Proceeds from the sale of ON HOLY GROUND
benefit the following charities:
The Humane Society of the United States
Paralyzed Veterans of America
Help the Children
 

http://jeangraham.150m.com
 
 

For Chuck
 
Acknowledgments:

The author wishes to thank the following for their assistance during the writing of this novel: Chuck Graham, for suggesting the setting, and for historical consultation and proofreading; Nancy Kaminski, for Forever Knight continuity, Toronto regional references and proofreading; Cindy Ingram and Karen Gross, for proofreading, medical terminology and continuity; Sherri E. Swaringen and Mary Combs, for French translations; Mary Lou Manzie, Sener Erdem, Zebella, and Jayne Gleed, for assistance with Turkish; Laurie MacDonald, for historical costuming advice; Immajer, for the Forever Knight font; and Steven Runciman's The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (Cambridge University Press, 1965) for principal historical details on the city of Constantinople.
 
 
Additional Disclaimers:

This is a work of fiction.  Although some historical figures are represented, any resemblance to other actual persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.  Matters of religion, philosophy or historical interpretation portrayed in this novel do not necessarily reflect the views of the author, and offense to those of other persuasions is neither intended nor intentionally implied.
 

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, including e-mail, Internet or web publication, without the express permission of the author.
 

1

HE FELT THE SUNLIGHT DYING.

As it had done for nearly eight centuries, the waning day woke Nick Knight. It rescued him from dark dreams and reminded his Beast that the hunger demanded to be fed.

He donned a black silk lounging robe and slippers and padded down metal stairs to the loft's ground floor. The only light here filtered hazily through a ventilation shaft high above the door. A pale blue beam bisected the room, diffused with dust motes and the intersecting shadows of a fan's lazily rotating blades. At his touch the small remote – last discarded on the back of the black leather couch – set off a mechanical whirring that reverberated through both the fireplace and the aging brick walls that flanked it. Heavy shutters groaned upward, uncovered tall windows and allowed the last feeble rays of a setting sun to spill across the floor.

Nick pressed the control again. With a mechanical squeal of resistance, the shutters ceased their upward march and waited while he cautiously approached the light. He stood just out of its reach, one hand caressing the snout of an ornately carved dragon posed rampant on the mantel, the other lifting with fingers splayed to
skirt the very edge of the sunbeam.

He could feel its warmth. If he closed his eyes and cast his memories back to the time before, he could almost remember what it had been like to walk unscathed in the sunlight.

Almost.

Gingerly, he permitted the upraised hand to breach the barrier between dark and light. It entered a fire that instantly stung him with the prick of a thousand searing needles. In another moment, white, acrid smoke began to curl from blistering flesh, and he snatched the hand back with a swallowed oath, clutching it to his chest.
Vampire senses told him that the last of the sun's corona had just vanished below Toronto’s skyline. To step into what remained of the dwindling light would be safe now. Frowning, he turned away from it instead.

From the street level below, the grinding of antiquated elevator gears announced the imminent arrival of a visitor.

By the time the car arrived and the heavy door rumbled open, Nick had completely raised the shutters, turned on the lights, and stood ready to greet his guest wearing the semblance of a smile. The burns that had disfigured his hand just moments ago were healed and already forgotten.

“Hello, Nat,” he said.

Dr. Natalie Lambert stepped into the loft. To Nick, her smile brought along a light all its own. “Good –  you’re up.” Her voice exuded optimism; that was typical, pure, irrepressible Nat. He hoped she never changed. If there was one ray of hope left in his grim life, Natalie embodied it. “I brought you a little ‘snack’to try out before you start your shift.”

Nick's smile faltered slightly as Nat placed a paper bag on his kitchen table. She reached in and withdrew a red plastic thermos bottle. If she noticed his hesitation, she chose not to comment. She unscrewed the thermos lid, then hesitated, casting him a look that clearly said, “Well?”

Picking up his cue, Nick moved further into the kitchen and opened a cupboard, returning with two cut-crystal wine goblets in hand. “And would you care to join me, Dr. Lambert?”

“A-ha.” The sound she made was halfway between comment and laughter. “I thought you'd never ask.” She rummaged again in the bag and came up with a can of diet cola. When he looked askance at that, she laughed and handed him the open thermos. “Drink up. Trust me, it’s good for you.”

Nick sniffed briefly at the bottle and quickly held it away again. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Listen, it’s not that green tea stuff again, is it? Because the green stuff tasted really, really bad.”

“Well, you won’t know until you try, will you?” She popped the aluminum tab on the soft drink and poured the fizzing contents into one of the goblets.

It was another cue. Nick cleared his throat and looked around the kitchen. “You know I have a bottle of real wine around here somewhere, if you'd rather...”

“Oh, no. Not before work. And enough stalling already. Pour.”

The last word was a friendly but unmistakable command with which he meekly complied. Surprisingly, what flowed from the thermos was neither green nor chalky white, as her previous concoctions had been, but deep crimson and slightly cloudy with some
darker, unidentifiable substance. He lifted the glass to inspect the contents more closely, sending her a questioning glance over its rim.

Natalie declined to answer the unspoken query and touched her glass to his in a toast. “Cheers.”

“Salud.”

He waited until she’d begun to drink, then, unable to stall any longer, warily brought the potion to his lips and tasted it.

His amazed look brought a new smile to Natalie’s face. “Well?”

He tasted it again. The stuff smelled vile, but...

“All right,” he conceded. “It’s almost palatable. What is it? Or shouldn't I ask?”

Nat’s cheerful demeanor wavered for the first time since she’d arrived. “Oh, you know,” she hedged. “Two parts vegetable protein, a few enzymes, four parts currant juice. I found a great new one at Giovanni’s the other day.”

He waited, knowing that the list was incomplete. “And...?”

“And...” She set her glass down, spreading her hands in surrender. “Okay, so it’s also one teensy part steer’s blood. But only because I gave some thought to what you said after the last test we ran.”

Nick rotated his glass, studying the swirling red liquid. “About starvation not being the answer.”

“Yes. We weren't having much luck with the other protein  substitutes.  I  thought  maybe if  we  tried this approach, then gradually reduced the quantity of blood in the formula...”

Something in his eyes must have betrayed his doubts, because Natalie reacted as though he’d just rejected her cure theories outright.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she huffed. “It isn’t crazy and you know it. There were significant changes in your blood chemistry when you reduced your intake to a minimum. The key is in finding a substitute that you can tolerate.” She frowned. “Well, one of the keys, anyway.”

When she didn't elaborate, he gently prompted, “And the other?”

Nat’s fingers toyed with the half-empty glass on the table. She didn’t look at him. “A little co-operation would be nice,” she said.

Stung by the accusation, Nick responded with an automatic denial. “But I have been co-operating.”

When her look clearly disbelieved him, he took another, longer draught of the red concoction and arduously fought the gag reflex that threatened to bring it all straight back up again. His voice, when he spoke, was strained from the effort. “I’ve tried, Nat. You know I’ve tried.”

She nodded, though she was obviously still not convinced. “Two years ago,” she said in a small, hushed voice, “one of my ‘customers’ sat up on an autopsy table, scared the living hell out of me, and then... Then he said that he’d give anything for a chance to be human again. And I believed him.” She drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “I guess what I need to know now is... well, whether or not you're sure that it’s still whatyou want.”

Leaving the nearly drained goblet on the table, Nick fled to the relative safety of the windows. Until now, he’d been careful to keep the table, purely psychological barrier though it was, between them. Now, he found it necessary to widen that distance; to draw the Beast away from her, away from the alluring scent of human blood that coursed through her veins. “How can you doubt that?” he asked of the window’s hazy reflection. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Well, a small voice teased him, perhaps one thing. He wanted to have, to love Natalie Lambert. But he could not achieve one wish without first attaining the other.

“And what will you do if we find a cure, Nick?” her image in the glass queried softly. “If you were mortal again, would you stay in Toronto, with the police department, with...?”

Though she didn't complete the question, he thought he knew what the last words would have been. With me. And he wanted to say yes, oh yes Nat, I’d stay with you, and love you as no other mortal man ever could.

But with the Beast clamoring within him for a darker, far more hideous parody of that love, it was a confession he dared not make. Not now. Not yet.

“I don’t know,” he said lamely instead. “I hadn’t thought that far.”

Natalie's reflection nodded again, accepting the lie. “And if we find the cure, what about the others? The ‘Community,’ as you call it? How will they take it?”

“I don't care about the others,” he said. It was almost true.

Nat’s tone told him that she knew as much. “Somehow,” she said, “I doubt that Janette would agree.”

Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t want to think about Janette, nor of LaCroix and the centuries they had spent together. Those memories brought the vampire all too easily back to the fore.

“Tell me just one more thing, then.” Natalie moved to stand close – too close – behind him, and he had to clamp down on a hunger fueled by a thousand pleasantly erotic dreams of taking her into his arms, of making love to her the way a mortal would have done. But dream invariably turned to foreboding nightmare when the Beast emerged to take what it desired, and in moments, Natalie lay cold and lifeless in his embrace.

“Why do you want to be human, Nick?”

The question startled him from the dark vision of her death, reminded him only too graphically that she stood, heart beating a steady, audible rhythm, just inches behind him.

“You know why.”

“Tell me again.”

He looked out at Toronto's cold and unforgiving night and said, “Because I want my life, my humanity – my soul – back again.”

For the briefest of moments, her hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I’ll see you later, Nick.”  Then she was gone, the wheezing elevator grinding its way slowly back down to the street. Back to safety –  away from the Beast. With an angry oath, he quelled its demand to follow her, to stalk the prey and claim it for his own. He stormed across the kitchen, bypassing the protein drink without thought, yanked open the refrigerator door and pulled one of many unlabeled green bottles from inside. With his teeth, he ripped out the cork and spat it away, upending the bottle to drink greedily of its dark red contents.

With every swallow, the Beast screamed a silent, agonized protest. It could never be sated with this vinegar, this chilled bovine travesty that he forced upon it in conscience-easing penance for centuries of death. It wanted warmth, life, humanity.

It wanted Natalie.

Even with the bottle drained, the Hunger gnawed at him relentlessly.

With an anguished cry, Nick hurled the glass container across the room. It struck the fireplace and shattered into myriad green shards that rained noisily down onto the hearth.

It didn't help.

“But then, nothing ever really does help, does it?”

Nick wheeled toward the elevator door. A glowing apparition of LaCroix stood there, smugly mocking him with its condescending smile.

Eight short months ago, Nick had pinned his vampiric sire to that very door with a flaming length of wood; had watched him burn to ashes in a writhing pillar of fire. The scorch marks still remained in mute evidence of the deed – he could see them through the ghostly figure’s insubstantial form.

And yet, staked and burned or not, LaCroix – or whatever essence remained of him – was here.

In his dreams, sleeping or waking, LaCroix continued to torment him. It seemed not even True Death could change that.

“Cat got your tongue, Nicholas?” The ghost addressed him with LaCroix’s characteristic smirk on its face, in its voice. “Or is it that we're merely brooding – yet again – over the beautiful-but-ever-inaccessible Dr. Lambert? Tsk. Such a waste. And so simple a dilemma to solve, too.”

Deliberately, Nick turned his back on the delusion. He willed it away, but it continued to whisper its cruel temptations in his ear.

“Take her, Nicholas. Make her your own. Make her one of us.”

Nick closed his eyes and hissed a single word in answer.

“Never.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” LaCroix’s voice dripped contempt. “There's that wearisome oath of yours in the way again. No human blood. It was a fool's forswearing, you know. Undertaken in the heat of passion. And it is high time you renounced it, don't you think?”

He didn’t, but Nick would not dignify the insult with a reply.

LaCroix’s laughter taunted him. “Really, Nicholas. You used to be ever so much more entertaining when you were true to yourself, true to us. Before this nonsense of a ‘soul’ became your constant, all-consuming obsession.”

Nick didn't want to think about ‘before.’

In  the  more  than one  hundred  years  since  he had sworn that oath, he had broken it more than once. But without it, and without his diligent effort to adhere to it, a thousand more mortal deaths would have weighed on his conscience, haunted his dreams.

“We have no souls, Nicholas. If nothing else, surely Constantinople taught you that? You can't have forgotten...”

“No.”

Hardly. The capacity to forget was merely one of many mortal abilities of which LaCroix’s ‘gift’ had rendered him incapable.

He remembered only too well the scent of human fear in the air, and the harsh, desperate noises of a city preparing for siege.

“No,” he said again. “I haven’t forgotten...”

*    *    *

 A much-needed day’s rest had proved utterly impossible.

The diplomatic party had arrived on the evening tide, arranged lodging in a humble clay dwelling, then had sought to retire for the morning. But the sounds of frenzied activity without had precluded them. Nicholas’ mortal companions had risen and departed one by one, leaving him alone in the house.

In mid-afternoon, Antonio had come bursting through the door, a broad ray of deadly sunlight spilling in behind him. Nicholas had swiftly retreated to a safe corner, beside the heavily shuttered windows, and waited for the expedition leader to close the door before he stepped forward again.

“What...?” he started to ask.

“Niccolo!”

His Venetian shipmate had hastily begun to gather personal items from about the room. “There’s very little time. We must leave here, now.”

“Leave? We have only just arrived.”

“Yes.” Antonio continued his frantic preparations. “And so have the Turks. Thousands of them. The rumors were true. They are less than three hours’ march away by land. No one knows how close by sea, but if we go now, with the early tide, we might just be able to slip past the Turkish fleet that is no doubt this moment sailing down the Bosporus.”

“But the expedition...”

“Was ill-conceived and ill-timed from the beginning. I tried to tell the doge as much; he wouldn't listen.” Breathless, Antonio gathered baskets, casks and trunks into a small pile by the door. “Reparations for the Fourth Crusade, indeed. Well, now he will simply have to assuage his predecessor’s guilty conscience over that sacking some other way. Because another madman, far worse than Dandolo, is about to attack this ‘holy’ city. Soon enough, there will be no more Venetian trading interests left to protect.”

Spying the apothecary chest in a corner, the merchant headed for it. Nicholas reached out to stay him. “I think perhaps you overestimate the sultan’s capabilities. These city walls are three-fold and have stood for more than nine centuries. No army could breach them, not in a year’s time, not in ten.”

“Will you gamble your life on that assessment? Because the rest of us will not. We sail – with the next tide.”

He reached again for the chest and again,  Nicholas stopped him. “Dusk is still more than four hours away,” he said.

Angrily, the other man brushed off his hand.

“You’re the physician. Find some way past your mysterious sun ailment, my friend. But find it quickly.”

He started to lift the wooden chest, but Nicholas caught and turned him, capturing his gaze with cold blue eyes. “You do not need the apothecary,” he said, and the Venetian's eyes instantly lost their determined focus. “There is another aboard ship, below decks.”

“Yes.” Antonio nodded dumbly. “Below decks.”

When Nicholas released him, the merchant blinked and shook his head, turning from the no-longer-vital chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I cannot allow us to be trapped here. I will not. Stay if you must. But find your own salvation.”

Abruptly, the door was thrust open again, and three crewmen appeared to begin collecting the assembled baggage. Forced to retreat once more to the wall, Nicholas tried one final argument.

“If we stay, Antonio, we may be able to help.”

“Help?” With one gloved hand, the other man tapped at the silver buttons sewn onto his tunic, a decorative affectation he’d recently adopted from his wealthier Swiss customers. “I am a merchant, Niccolo, not a soldier. I have a family. We all have families, waiting for us in Venice. And this is not our fight.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

Limned in blinding sunlight, Antonio turned back from the door to glower at him. “What, have you espoused the Christian faith after all, of a sudden? And the faith of an apostate emperor,  no less?  This from a man who refused ever to attend ship’s prayers!”

The merchant handed the last of the piled casks into waiting hands and paused in the doorway. “No. Faith or no faith, there is nothing in Constantinople worth dying for. Come with us, Niccolo. Please.”

Come with them. A simple step through a single door, out into the light. So easy a thing for a mortal. For Nicholas, one step into the daylight was a step into the fires of eternal hell.

“I... can’t,” he said.

His terror at the prospect of burning must have communicated itself in his tone. “Can’t?” Antonio glanced out at the day and then back at him with eyes that clearly questioned whether the doge’s court physician had far darker secrets to hide than a mere aversion to the sunlight. Abruptly, he made the sign of the cross, a gesture that prompted Nicholas to wince and turn away.

“May God have mercy on your soul,” the merchant said, and hurried out.

The door closed, leaving Nicholas in safe, blessed darkness once again.

With a growl of frustration, he ripped the lid from the apothecary chest. He searched through the mortal salves and potions and finally lay hands on one of the jars containing his own personal elixir. It was cold and lifeless, inadequate to his need, but as it had done aboard ship, it would sustain him through the daylight hours when he could neither fly nor hunt.

He drained the jar in moments, then pulled out another and drained that as well. With his back to the sun-warmed clay wall, he slid to the floor cradling both empty jars, and listened to the sounds of a city frantically preparing to defend its walls against the coming invaders.

“My dear Antonio,” he said miserably, “God would first have to find my soul.”

*    *    *

The shrill of a telephone jerked him rudely back into the twentieth century. LaCroix’s soft laughter still mocked him from across the room, but the specter faded out of being even as he watched, chuckling to itself.

“Yo, partner!” Don Schanke's bombastic voice chirped from the speaker when Nick’s terse greeting tape had finished playing. “Wakey, wakey! Sorry to call you in early, buddy, but we got a live one up in Willowdale. On second thought, better make that a dead one. Spirit of Pentecost Church on Finch Avenue. I'd pick you up on the way in, but I gotta grab breakfast on the fly, so I'll meet you there, okay? Hasta la bye-bye.”

The machine beeped once and clicked off, returning the cavernous room to silence.

Sighing deeply, Nick gazed at the blackened and blistered elevator door for a moment. Then, with a last glance out at Toronto’s darkening night, he hurried upstairs to change.