Midnight Jewels

his eyes while he concentrated on focusing what remained of his energy and willpower. He had to stay on his feet and in command of the situation. Mercy's life depended on how well he could pull himself together. She had saved his life earlier this evening. The least he could do was repay the debt.
    Mercy, sweet Mercy. He had to do this for her.
    Slowly he turned his attention inward, finding the quiet place in his mind where strength and energy swirled together in a calm pool. Another bout of shivers went through his nerves, distracting him for a few seconds, but Croft fought his way through them.
    The night air was fresh and invigorating. It stirred ancient hunting instincts and revived old senses that most of the modern world had long since forgotten. Croft inhaled deeply.
    He soon found himself on the familiar mental path, following the serene spiral of energy to its focal point. This was where he went when he meditated. This was the place he had found when he had finally acknowledged the potential for violence that lay in his own mind. He had known then that unless he found a counterpoint to that lethal element in his nature he would be destroyed by the raw, destructive energy it produced.
    Long ago Croft had come to the conclusion that in some ways he was a throwback to a more primitive era. Violence came all too easily to him. It seemed to be built into his genes. His reflexes and instincts would have made him a good survivor, a valued member of society perhaps if he had been born in a different time and place. A part of him had always understood the primitive ways of survival.
    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