The Templar Chronicles (63 page)

He straddled the priest, putting one knee on either side of the man’s chest, and glanced once more at Duncan. “Let’s just see, shall we?”

The priest began twisting and turning his head, trying to keep it free, but Bishop grabbed it with both hands and held it steady against the man’s struggles. Bending down, Bishop forced his lips over the other man’s, as if he was going to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but rather than breathing out, Bishop breathed in.

The priest’s eyes widened and then his body bucked upward spasmodically, once, twice, three times. Bishop rode them out like a cowboy on a bronco, as if he’d done this a thousand times before, and after the third spasm the priest went limp.

Bishop gave a small grunt of pleasure and began to work at his victim, sucking at his face, his cheeks puffing in and out furiously as he dragged something free of the priest’s body. An odd slurping sound filled the room. For Duncan’s benefit he pulled back slightly, revealing the prize he sought.

A luminescent, mist-like substance was being pulled from deep inside the priest, flowing out from his mouth, across the space between the two men, and into Bishop’s gaping maw. The Chiang Shih commander drank it down greedily, his chest and shoulder’s heaving as he worked to bring as much of it up as possible. In contrast the priest’s body began to shrink in upon itself, the flesh turning a slate grey while shriveling up like a dried piece of fruit as Bishop sucked more and more of the man’s life force out of his form.

It went on far longer than Duncan could bear to watch. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, praying for the man’s soul.

At last the slurping sound stopped.

When Duncan opened his eyes, he found Bishop squatting a few feet away, an amused smile on his face. Behind him, the desiccated body of the priest lay on the stone floor, discarded like so much trash.

Duncan faced his tormentor defiantly, both for himself and the dead man on the floor before him. “You can do whatever you want to our bodies, but our souls belong to God and nothing you can do can separate us from Him. Killing us only hastens our entrance into heaven.”

Bishop laughed in his face.

Movement caught Duncan’s attention.

A sudden, unexplained dread stole over him as he turned to get a better look.

On the ground behind Bishop, the man Duncan had assumed was dead slowly turned his head.

Their eyes met.

The priest’s groan of horror almost drowned out Duncan’s own.

Unable to look, Duncan tried to turn away, but Bishop wouldn’t let him. He grabbed Duncan and forced him to face the last of the four prisoners, the young nun.

“Look at her!” he commanded.

Duncan did. She was young, in her late twenties, thirty at most, with curly brown hair. Her blue eyes blazed in sharp contrast to the greyness all around them.

“Don’t tell him anything,” she said in a trembling voice, holding Duncan’s gaze, doing what she could to put on a brave show.

But all the Templar sergeant could see was an image of her face, sunken in on itself, horribly transformed like the priest’s as the very life force within her was sucked up to satisfy the ravenous hunger of the vile creature standing nearby. There was no way he could watch this innocent young woman suffer like that, particularly when he considered the spiritual ramifications of the act. To have one’s soul forever trapped like that, cut off from God? Damn the consequences, but he couldn’t do it. The moans of pain and horror still issuing from the shadows in the corner only helped confirm his decision.

Enough was enough.

When Bishop quietly began asking questions a moment later, Duncan told him what he wanted to know.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Voices intruded, brought him back from the darkness into the light.

Duncan lay still, listening, not wanting to give away the fact that he was awake until he could get his bearings and figure out what was going on.

After he revealed what he knew to Bishop, he was emotionally and physically exhausted. That hadn’t stopped his captors from beating him practically senseless again. He had vague memories of being dragged out of the ruined building, across the rocky ground, and into one of the tents set up on the plain. At that point he’d finally lapsed into unconsciousness and had no idea how long he’d been out.

The voices were close, but didn’t sound as if they were in the same room, and so he decided to take a chance. His left eye was still swollen shut, but his right worked and by cracking it slightly he was able to get a limited view of the room without, he hoped, revealing to anyone that might be watching that he was awake and aware.

.He lay on a dirt floor. That much was immediately obvious from the dirt and rock directly in front of his face. From the lack of feeling in his hands and feet he knew he was trussed up like a Christmas turkey. He turned his head slightly and as his eyesight adjusted to the dim light, he was able to make out a bit more. His memory of the tent was correct; he lay inside a large structure made of canvas or some similar material, supported on a framework of thick wooden posts. The room he lay in was separated from another by a large piece of cloth. A thin strip of light revealed where the gap hadn’t been closed completely.

The voices, one male, one female, were coming from the other side of the partition and he could make out the silhouette of the man against the fabric, pacing back and forth as he spoke.

Duncan sensed that what was going on in the next room was important, not just for him but for the fate of those on the other side of the Veil, and he knew he had to get a look at whoever was in there. His position on the floor didn’t allow him to see through the gap in the partition, however, and he knew he’d have to move to manage it.

He slowly rolled over, ignoring the sharp jab of a rock that cut into his already bruised flesh and then, seeing it wasn’t enough, did it again one more time. That did the trick. Now he could see through the slight gap into the room beyond and he got his first look at the female speaker.

She was a stunningly beautiful Asian woman with a finely featured face, large eyes, and hair the color of midnight that stretched down past her waist in a long flowing wave. Dressed in traditional Japanese attire, she lounged on a throne made from some kind of black material. Obsidian, maybe. She held an intricately decorated paper fan in one hand, her long nails painted crimson and sheathed in gold, and she waved the fan around as if in punctuation to what she was saying.

“You are certain this will work?”

“Most definitely, Princess. He will return for his teammate, just as he once tried to return for me. At that point he will be at the mercy of our soldiers.”

Duncan couldn’t see whom she was speaking to but the voice that responded was unmistakably male, with the slightest hint of an accent, and he had little doubt that the man was Bishop.

“I’ll be quite displeased if things do not go as you foresee.”

The steel in her voice made it clear she was used to being obeyed.

Bishop, however, didn’t sound concerned in the slightest.

“Have no fear, my lady. Things have gone exactly as we’ve planned and the information given to me by our captive will certainly give us an edge on our opposition. When that bastard Templar and his men cross the Veil, we will be more than prepared to deal with them in the manner they deserve.”

Bishop chuckled. “By battle’s end, the ranks of your soldiers should have swelled appreciatively. And this time, they will come with more than their fair share of combat experience.”

Good Lord! The entire situation had been manufactured to draw Cade and the rest of the Templar fighting elite into a trap. He had to get out free and warn them before it was too late. But how?

Confident now that he was alone, he turned his head and took in the rest of the room. He could see that the lower edge of the tent had been spiked to the ground every couple of feet. Even if he could get free of his bonds, there was no way he could fit between the gaps. No, if he was going to get out, he would have to either cut through the fabric itself or make his way into the next room and fight his way out through the front entrance.

He didn’t imagine he’d be able to cut through the tent wall with his teeth, his knife long since having been taken from him, which meant the later was his only option.

Obviously not the best of plans, but it would have to do.

First things first, though. He had to get out of these bonds.

But even as he began to twist and turn his wrists, trying to loosen his bindings, the conversation in the next room caught his attention.

“Remember our agreement. Once we lure the Templars here, Commander Williams is mine. The Master expects me to deliver him intact and we don’t want to disappoint him.”

The Princess laughed dismissively. “I’d deliver that renegade from Hell a hundred such souls if it will help him keep his side of the bargain and shatter the Veil as he claims.”

“Good. Then we’re in agreement and all that’s left is to bait the trap.”

“Which will happen when?”

“Soon. Very soon. The last of my troops are moving into position as we speak and it should only take the witches another hour or so to prepare the Curtain around our positions. After that, all we have left to do is sit back and wait. When our righteous little friends launch their operation against us, they’ll find that we have more than one trick up our sleeves.”

Their laughter filled the room and Duncan knew that there was far more to this than Cade suspected. The Chiang Shih weren’t just planning an incursion into the living world, but apparently had struck some kind of deal with a more powerful force to shatter the barrier between the worlds themselves. He didn’t know much about the Beyond, but what he did know made him absolutely certain that destroying the Veil was a very bad idea.

Think, Duncan, think!

He knew his time was rapidly running out. But so far his bonds had resisted his attempts to loosen them and he didn’t think he had the energy left to keep working at them with brute strength alone. If he was going to get free in time to make a difference, he had to find a better way.

He shifted position and the sudden spike of resulting pain let him know that he had at least one, maybe two, broken ribs to go along with the festering knife wound in his shoulder. A lot of good he was going to be in a fight.

The pain in his ribs reminded him of the rock he’d rolled over a few minutes before and a plan blossomed in his mind. Now if the damn thing was only sharp enough…

He rolled back in the direction he’d started from, until a jab in his back let him know he’d found what he was looking for. As quietly as possible he maneuvered himself around until he could feel the sharp edges of the rock with his fingers. Taking it in hand, he began to saw it back and forth against the bonds that held him.

It was slow work. The rope was tight and allowed very limited movement. The lack of feeling in his fingers made it hard for him to position the stone properly. More than once he sliced through his fingers or the flesh of his wrist and the rock began to get slippery with his blood, making it even harder to hold.

At this rate I’m going to bleed to death before I get out of here, he thought, but he didn’t stop.

It might have been an hour, maybe more, his sense of time having long since fled, but eventually he felt his bonds grow looser and knew he’d managed to cut through the first strand of rope.

Invigorated by his success, he set to with a renewed sense of urgency.

Light flooded the room behind him and Bishop’s voice rang out.

“What’s this? Our guest has had enough of our hospitality?”

Footsteps crossed the room as Duncan cursed inwardly. He was so damned close!

He looked up to find Bishop standing over him, a cruel smile playing across the man’s face.

Without another word the Chiang Shih commander lifted a booted foot and brought it down viciously against Duncan’s temple.

The room went dark and the youngest member of the Echo Team knew no more.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Riley handed Cade the binoculars. “He’s about three hundred yards west of us, down on the plain. Looks like they beat feet and left him behind.”

After the decision to defy the Seneschal’s orders, Cade and his men had wasted little time in replenishing their supplies and returning to the Beyond. They made the trek to the Chiang Shih camp as swiftly as possible, knowing that every second spent in their world might have translated into hours on the other side of reality.

Now it looked like they might be too late.

From their vantage point on the ridge, they could see that the tents that had housed the Chiang Shih still littered the plain, but rather than being filled with the teeming horde they’d expected they now appeared to be deserted. Several of them had been partially dismantled, as if the owners had been forced to flee in the midst of the job. The great bonfires that had marked the encampment when the Templars had last seen it were now nothing more than piles of black ash, though several still gave off thin wisps of smoke that climbed into the sky like disembodied spirits, indicating it hadn’t been all that long since they’d been doused.

In the middle of it all was Duncan. He was tied upright to a thick post that had been driven into the earth beneath his feet and even at this distance Cade could see the terrible bruises that covered the young Templar’s face. He hung against the ropes that bound him to the post, unmoving, and Cade couldn’t be sure if he was alive.

Nor did he dare use his Sight to find out. Doing so would attract the attention of other denizens of the Beyond and they didn’t need any additional foes to worry about.

No, they were going to have to do this the old fashioned way. They had to go and see for themselves.

A bit of searching revealed a narrow trail and the team carefully picked their way down to the plain below. From there they made a cautious approach, using what cover they could find, until they reached the edge of the encampment. There, Cade called a halt.