The Templar Chronicles (49 page)

All but Cade.

They had come when he’d called, had answered a man who until recently had sworn that he would no longer worship a God that let his beloved bride die in so horrible a manner. They had heard and responded to the true voice of his heart, the voice that knew that no matter what sins he had committed in the past or what might happen to him and his companions in this midst of this confrontation, this evil could not be allowed to walk amongst men, could not be allowed to work its twisted hopes and dreams on a populace that reacted as little more than sheep when faced with such danger.

They had come and he understood instinctively that it was his duty to watch and record what happened here today, to keep the record straight for any and all who might have need of it in the future.

Baraquel shrieked his rage and fury at the appearance of his former brethren and at last the binding that had held him was gone. He had time only to rise up onto his taloned feet and then the seven fell upon him en-masse.

The renegade did not last very long after that.

When it was over, the men of Echo were left alone in the room. Of the angels, and their fallen brother, there was no sign.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The men of Echo made their way back through the complex to the train station and then retraced their steps along the tunnel to the exit beneath the motor pool. There, exhausted, beaten and torn, the survivors at last emerged into the open air.

It had been only three days since they had entered Eden.

For most of them, it felt like three weeks.

The dark funnel cloud that had covered the base was gone. The sky above was clear and cloudless, a bright vibrant blue that seemed almost artificial after all the time they had spent in the dim lighting of the base and the grey landscape of the Beyond. The two HWMMVs were still outside the building, right where the team had left them days before, but Cade couldn’t be certain that Baraquel hadn’t interfered with them in any way and so he ordered that they remain untouched until a technical team could be brought in to check them out.

Which meant Echo was going to have to hoof it out on foot.

They all wanted to put as much distance between them and Eden as possible and so no one hesitated when Cade gave the order to move out. Duncan and Chen had both suffered burns to their hands and faces, so Riley and Davis carried their gear. Olsen kept a sharp eye on Cade, just in case the commander’s injuries got the better of him again. Their exit was far less dramatic than their entrance; when they come in, they’d done so as a well-organized military force, confident in their abilities to face whatever was before them, riding their modern chariots of steel and chrome, but as they left Eden behind, they looked more like a ragtag group of refugees than the trained military unit that they in fact were.

While the mission was a success, it had cost them dearly. Along with the ten men of 3rd Platoon, Echo had lost two of its own, Callavecchio and Ortega. Never mind the unknown number of staff members and scientists that Vargas had led to their doom by launching the Eden Project in the first place. Yet Cade was not unsatisfied. Good men had lost their lives, yes, but they had done so in the name of a worthy cause and their sacrifice had not been in vain. Cade was willing to trade ten men’s lives, a hundred, maybe more, if it meant keeping one of the Fallen from walking the earth.

As they moved down the main street, past the crumbling administrative buildings and housing units, Cade was able to make radio contact with Captain Mason, who seemed overjoyed to hear from him. He gave Mason an abbreviated sit-rep, let him know that they had wounded with them, and asked that his medical personnel be ready to receive them when they arrived back at the staging area sometime in the next half hour.

Mason did them one better, sending a pair of SUVs to pick them up just outside the gates and was waiting for them on the steps of the command center when they arrived. On seeing the condition of the unit, he came down and personally lent a hand in helping Cade out of the vehicle.

“Praise God,” he said, a smile on his face. “We’d all but given you up for dead.”

Cade winced in pain, but refrained from mentioning how close they’d really come.

Mason must have read something in his expression, however, for he leaned in and asked, “Is it over?” His voice was steady but his eyes betrayed his concern.

Cade nodded. “Yes,” he said wearily. “It’s done.”

“My men?”

Cade shook his head. “I brought their rings out with me and should be able to direct you to their remains, but there was nothing we could do. They were dead long before we arrived.” He intentionally refrained from telling the captain about the way the bodies had been used by Baraquel; that could wait until later at the full debriefing. There was no need to bring it up now.

Mason seemed to understand there was more to the story than what was being said but he was content to let it go until later and for that Cade was grateful. What he needed now more than anything else was a hot meal and a cup of coffee.

But as he turned to join his men, his thoughts were already drifting to the clues the fallen angel had given to him.

The Sea of Lamentations.

The Isle of Sorrows.

The City of Despair.

A grim smile crossed his face.

At last he had a destination and he would not be long in seeking it out.

EPILOGUE

One week later.

Cade was in the midst of unbolting the shattered mirror from the floor of his workshop when the radio on the table next to him sputtered and then quietly died. For a moment the sound of the birds singing in the trees outside could be heard through the open door and then that, too, was abruptly cut off.

Everything was still.

Cade felt a grim chill wash over him and he glanced across the room to where his sword case rested on its shelf.

Somehow he knew he’d never make it in time.

A steady hum sprang out of nowhere, filling the air around him, and within seconds it had built to a fever pitch, the rising shriek sharper and fiercer than the savage wail of a banshee. Cade clamped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut against the agony.

As abruptly as it had begun, the scream faded.

Silence fell.

Cade opened his eyes and discovered the seven standing before him, shining in their glory and majesty.

He remained kneeling, unable to do anything but gaze in humble awe at their very presence.

The leader of the group stepped forward and extended its hand to Cade.

Held securely in its grip was a tar-black feather.

It was familiar looking and Cade had little doubt that it had been taken from the wings of the renegade, Baraquel.

“You will need this, son of Adam,” said a voice inside his head.

Cade reached up and took the feather from the angel’s outstretched hand. He glanced down at it, only for a second, but when he looked up again he found himself alone once more.

“Thank you,” Cade said to the empty air him, and from somewhere, far off, he thought he heard a whispered reply.

Be strong, for heaven is not yet finished with you.

And as he climbed to his feet in the emptiness of their departure, Cade didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at the thought.

*** ***

A TEAR IN THE SKY

CHAPTER ONE

The priest ran toward the altar as if hell itself followed on his heels.

He didn’t have much time, minutes at best. Still, that might be enough. The others would have a warning at least. It was the best he could do, given the circumstances.

Racing up the steps, he crossed to the tabernacle and spun the dials on the lock with trembling fingers. He set the second one incorrectly and had to do it again, losing precious seconds in the process. Opening the tabernacle, he bent one knee, genuflected, and then removed the ciborium from inside the blessed chamber.

From the other end of the church he could hear them banging on the inside of the sacristy door. He’d locked it behind him, but he didn’t expect it to hold them for long.

Opening the ciborium and removing one of the communion wafers, he begged for Christ’s forgiveness for his sins and then placed the wafer on his tongue. From years past the voice of Father Jerome, his old seminary professor, came to him.

“Viaticum, from the Latin ’via tecum’, meaning ’provisions for the journey.’ The final rite in the sacrament of Extreme Unction, the giving of the Eucharist ensures that the dying do not die alone, but have Christ with them in their final moments just as He has been with them in life.”

Behind him, the door to the sacristy burst from its hinges and the howls of his pursuers filled the nave.

He was out of time.

Steeling himself for what he knew was to come, he calmly closed the tabernacle and spun the dials, locking it against intrusion. It wouldn’t hold out a determined thief, but he had done his part and could rest easy on that score. He got to his feet and turned to face the front of the church.

The shadows had reached the transept.

He hurried to the altar and took up the Bible resting there. It wouldn’t hold them off but he felt better with it in his hands.

As they reached the foot of the altar, he calmly went down to meet them.

CHAPTER TWO

Knight Commander Cade Williams stalked down the hallway of the Bennington Containment Facility, angry at himself for being there yet knowing that he really had no choice in the matter.

Just hours before a request had been relayed to him by the facility’s warden. The request had originated from the prison’s most high-profile prisoner, Simon Logan, the Necromancer, a man who had used the arcane power in the Spear of Longinus to try to destroy the Order itself.

He would have succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for Cade and the men of the Echo Team.

Logan had apparently asked to see Cade. Said it was urgent even. But it was the note that accompanied the request that had captured his attention.

Just eight simple words.

I have a message from your wife, Gabrielle.

Anything else the Necromancer might have said would have been ignored outright. After turning Logan over to those who ran the facility, Cade’s interest in the former head of the Council of Nine had vanished. He had other, more pertinent things to worry about than the fate of a man who had tried to take on the Order and lost.

But if Logan had actually received a message from Cade’s long dead wife, Gabrielle, then that was something Cade couldn’t simply ignore. As a necromancer, Logan certainly had an affinity for the dead, which made the possibility that he’d spoken to Gabrielle a realistic one.

Cade knew his wife’s spirit was not at rest. He’d encountered her shade several times over the last few months and it was Gabrielle herself who had convinced Cade not to slay Logan outright when he’d been at Cade’s mercy following the assault on the Council’s stronghold. Why she might have relayed a message through the Necromancer rather than simply coming to see him herself was what he didn’t understand and that lack of understanding was what had driven him to agree to the visit.

He reached the guard station at the end of the hall. There he surrendered his side arm, watch, and the contents of his pockets. The black feather he wore on a piece of leather about his neck was glanced at curiously when he laid it down with the rest of his items, but no one made any comment. One of the guards requested that Cade remove his gloves, but the senior officer stepped in and informed the guard that that wouldn’t be necessary.

Which was good because Cade wouldn’t have agreed to the request anyway. His gloves stayed on, no matter where he went. He wouldn’t have objected to giving up the eye patch that covered the ruin of his right eye, but they didn’t ask.

He waited with the senior officer for the junior one to buzz them through the gate and then the two men moved down the end of the hall and through a series of three more barriers until they came to the room outside the Necromancer’s cell.

Cade was a member of the Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar, as they were once more commonly known. Long thought to have been destroyed in the fourteenth century, the Templars had emerged from hiding during the desperate days of World War II and had joined with the very entity that had excommunicated them en-masse so many centuries before, the Catholic Church. Reborn as a secret military arm of the Vatican, the Templars were now charged with defending mankind from the supernatural in all its forms.

As the commander of the Echo Team, the most prestigious of the elite strike units fielded by the Templars, Cade was known for both his ruthless efficiency and his often unorthodox methods.

The two men guarding the Necromancer recognized him by sight, despite the fact that he’d never been down to this part of the maximum security level before, and were already opening up the doors to the room beyond as he stepped up to the guard station.

The man who’d escorted him turned to face him. “Rule #1: Nothing goes in that doesn’t come out. Rule #2: No physical contact with the prisoner. And Rule #3: If you need help, just yell and we’ll come running. Got it?”

Cade nodded and then stepped through the door.

The room was large, about twelve feet to a side, and in its center stood a cage of iron. The cage had been home to Simon Logan, the man known as the Necromancer, ever since Cade had defeated him in battle several months ago. It was furnished with a bed, a toilet, and a small writing desk, nothing more.

Inside the cage waiting for him was the Necromancer.

Logan was a shadow of his former self. He’d lost considerable weight, his features sinking into the ruin of his face like a pumpkin past its prime, his bones poking awkwardly against the confines of his jumpsuit. He was in constant movement, shuffling back and forth across the small space of his cell, eight steps across and then eight steps back, over and over again, like a man hunted by something he couldn’t see nor understand.