Deviant Knights

by Alexandra O'Hurley

  Michel lowered his paper and nearly glared at her. “You’re safe. We are going somewhere you cannot be touched. We need to find out what you are as soon as possible.”

  “I bet a scream from me would get people running in here and fast.” She felt her eyebrow rise as she said the words.

  Gabriel lowered his tablet and looked in her direction. “We’re in Europe. Specifically, heading to Monaco.”

  “How the hell did we get overseas that fast?”

  “You slept through the prep and the flight. About—” Michel twisted his arm to gaze at his watch and then back to his paper. “—thirteen hours. We came across on my private jet and then used the train to be less conspicuous for the second leg of the journey. A friend has a villa in Monaco. We will hide there under his care and determine what it is you are.” Michel raised his paper again after he spoke, as if any response was irrelevant. It should have pissed her off, but her mind reeled.

  “Thirteen hours?” Kadence didn’t ask the question of anyone in particular. Looking back to the window, she felt pulled by the streaming scene. She was slowly losing it, her mind swirling with more questions than she could voice. The lack of firm answers, of knowing her place in the world, made her feel weak.

  Yet, she felt stronger now than she’d ever felt.

  ****

  Michel watched her over the top of the newspaper as she returned from the lavatory with the small bag of toiletries they’d scavenged for her. He was careful so she wouldn’t feel his eyes. She was lost in thought anyway, her eyes straining to see the sights as they whirred past the ultra-modern train.

  He felt compassion for her. She’d been through a lot in the day she’d been awake and had handled it well. Other women he’d known in this era would have broken down and been a sobbing, frantic mess. Not Kadence. She’d watched death and called it a fake, railing against them for some imagined slight.

  If only she’d been right. If only it were mere theatrics. But this was his and Gabriel’s life. The small band of immortal warriors were scattered to the edges of the earth in sets of two or three, guarding specific treasures from getting into Illuminati hands. Time passed slowly when it was never-ending. Michel had often thought that it would have been easy had he not been saved all those years ago.

  He had lived through most of modern history. Knowledge was power, and power corrupted. Knowing the ebbs and flows of the civilization around him, he’d soon learned how to spot the patterns. Nothing was random anymore. People were so incredibly predictable. History surged in circles, caught in a vicious cycle. The more things changed…

  His eyes drifted to Kadence. She brought a mystery and set it in his lap. Nothing had astounded him in a few hundred years. She was a constant surprise. Her dreams of a Templar Knight had brought them together. And then she’d absorbed evil into her body after the killing blows had been struck.

  Was she evil? Like attracted to like? Would she spell the end of him, Gabriel, potentially the Order? He sensed no malice from her, but no one was to be trusted in the circles he traveled in.

  Yet, he was still aggressively attracted to her. Even now, his cock was hard in his tailored trousers. He looked down at the bulge as it grew under the fine silk, hidden behind the newspaper. He wanted this woman unlike anyone he’d ever wanted.

  But she could be the enemy. She was light, vibrancy. He’d felt it the night they’d met, needed to reach out and touch that part of her to feel like he was living again. It had been part of the reason he’d wanted her as much as he did.

  Now, he had doubts. And he needed to hold back until he found out what she was. He hoped for both their sakes that it wasn’t what he thought. His fingers itched to touch her skin. His mouth burned to taste her flesh. And the lusty light in her eyes had not yet faded. Even in her eagerness to piss him off, she’d pushed him in an attempt for attention. She demanded his response, cried out for it, and he so wanted to give it to her.

  He hoped he would survive until they got to Monaco.

  ****

  Gabriel heard the soft snoring coming from across the private car. Michel was fast asleep for the first time in days. His friend needed the sleep. As did he. Even so, he couldn’t seem to find any rest with the woman sitting beside him so close. Nor could he focus on his research with the sawing noise transverse from him. He put down the tablet and pinched his nose, fatigue settling in deep.

  The frantic trip to get Kadence out of New York City had been harrowing at best. They’d narrowly escaped the airport, another set of Illuminati fast on their heels. Fortunately, they had the pilot turn in a bogus flight plan. No one else knew where they were headed until they were in the air. It wouldn’t take long for their archenemy to have scouts in every major airport across the globe, so they stopped on a small strip they’d found in the German countryside just outside Luxembourg some years ago. The SS had probably used it back in the forties to ship goods and spies in and out of France, and now it had benefited good for once.

  Kadence had been dead to the world, sleeping through boarding and de-boarding, then a hayride to the local train station. They’d then boarded a Rail Europe car bound for Monaco and she had still been out of it. He’d breathed a sigh of relief when she had finally awoken. Guarded, he wasn’t sure how to react to her now. He and Michel had whispered conversations about what she was while she’d slept. But they hadn’t expressed too much, afraid she would awaken at any moment and hear the darkest concerns.

  Hopefully, the Illuminati thought them to still be in the air. Or at their final destination, at this point, because he didn’t think he had the mettle in him at this point to fight. Nor did he have the wherewithal to consider the what-ifs of Kadence. His instinct told him to pull her into his arms and hold her close. His mind told him to stand back.

  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.

  He lowered one hand to the edge of her dress, pulling it up her creamy thighs. Her panties were long gone. They’d cloth her once they
reached Monaco. There had been no time to worry about undergarments on their harried escape. As he pulled the fabric higher, he began to see the shadow of her sex appear. Breath hitched in his lungs, he needed to see her once more. Touch her. Taste her. As the shaved mound became apparent, he took in air on a hiss.

  Once he caught sight of the pink flesh, pearled already with her juices, he could no longer resist. He lowered himself to the floor, resting on his knees as he widened her thighs, pushing her back to the seat. Catching her eyes for a brief moment, he lowered his head to sample a little of her bliss.

  Chapter Eight

  Kadence drew in a deep breath as Gabriel’s tongue slashed a fiery trail along her pussy. His mouth suckled her clit before sliding back down to lick the length of her. She felt his fingers holding her lips open wide for his invasion. Her fingers slid into his hair, the silky strands slipping through her fingers as she urged him closer.

  He would not be directed. Lazing around her pussy, he licked and sampled at his leisure, not creating a rhythm for her to move her hips to. Sweet torture, he kept her heightened but did not allow her to begin to build to any release. She rocked her hips, silently demanding he give her what she needed, but he ignored her request, making her yearn.

  She watched his head moving, languidly rolling from side to side between her thighs, the sight of his huge form crouched there sinful. The muscles played in his neck and shoulders as he laved her sex, stretching tightly against the soft material of his shirt. She wanted to pull the fabric from him, to see his tightly coiled strength rippling as he ate her pussy.

  Her eyes looked across the car, and she realized that Michel was awake. His steely eyes were watching them. More so her and her reaction to the tempting touches of Gabriel’s tongue. He seemed intrigued by her reaction, just like at dinner, watching her eyes and mouth move. Besides his intense, hooded gaze, he looked unaffected to her, calmly sitting across from them as if they only talked about the weather. But upon closer inspection, she saw the telltale signs.