The Heretic: Templar Chronicles Book 1 (12 page)

Cade gave it another try.

“Listen to me, George. I know you can understand me if you try.”

The revenant’s gaze never left the remaining strip of human flesh Cade held in his other hand.

“I’m going to ask you some more questions. If you answer them, I’ll give you this.” Cade held up the flesh.

If the revenant could have salivated, Cade was certain he would have.

“Do you understand me, George?”

Slowly, Winston raised his gaze from the meat to look Cade in the eyes. With a barely noticeable twitch, he indicated his understanding.

“Good.”

Cade paused, considering, and then asked, “Who did this to you, George? Do you know who it was?”

Winston tried to speak, but his reply sounded like nothing so much as a choking bark.

“I’m sorry, George, I didn’t understand. Try again.”

Again the sound.

It was obvious that he was trying to cooperate, but the damage to his vocal cords had progressed too far for him to be understood.

Cade was not yet ready to give up. It was clear that the revenant still possessed the intelligence he had held in life; the person that had once been George Winston was still locked inside that body, struggling to get out. If he could, he should be able to tell them what they wanted to know. But first Cade would have to figure out a way to allow that to happen.

As it turned out, it was the revenant himself who found the solution. With one hand he traced the number nine on the floor beside him.

“Nine?” Cade repeated aloud, puzzled by the answer.

The revenant repeated the gesture, his eyes locked on the strip of flesh Cade still held in his hand.

“There were nine of them?”

The revenant’s head twitched, and his hands clenched into fists as he sought to maintain control. His hunger was growing. Calming himself, he nodded.

“Okay. The number nine.” Cade didn’t understand what Winston was referring to, so he moved on, hoping a different question might elicit a more understandable response.

“What did they want?”

Ignoring the question, the creature suddenly lunged at Cade, his hunger taking his self-control.

Cade didn’t even flinch. He’d positioned himself carefully, and he simply watched as the revenant fetched up against the length of his chains and crashed back down to the floor, snarling.

Cade ignored the outburst, trying to keep the creature from focusing on its hunger.

“Do you know where they are, George?”

Winston snarled and snapped at Cade with his rotting teeth, his control uncertain.

Cade tried again. “Help me find them, George. Tell me where they’ve gone. Help me get the ones who did this to you.”

Winston didn’t respond, just went back to staring at the flesh in Cade’s hand.

“You’ve got to tell me more, George. I need your help. Do you know where they are?”

Nothing.

“Come on, George. Don’t stop now.”

Still nothing.

Just that stare.

And the hunger it conveyed.

Realizing that he would get nothing further from the revenant until it had fed again, Cade tossed him the thin strip of flesh.

Like a rabid dog, the creature threw itself onto the morsel, its eyes alight with an unholy hunger.

But as Winston raised the meat to his lips, he suddenly froze in mid-motion, his hand halfway to his mouth.

He stayed that way for several long moments.

Cade signaled for the others to hold still. As they watched, the former Templar shook his head violently, like a dog shaking itself free of water. He slowly lowered the hand holding the morsel to his side and mumbled something further.

Moving slowly, Cade crouched so that he was on the same level as the revenant. “What did you say, George?”

Again, the same garbled phrase.

Impatiently, Cade moved closer. In the next room, Olsen and Riley both went on alert, but didn’t interfere with their commander.

“Please, George. One more time.”

Winston repeated his statement and this time, Cade understood. What he had first taken for gibberish was actually a two-word phrase, repeated frantically over and over again several times.

“Help me.”

Cade stared into the other man’s eyes and saw hope there.

For what seemed like the longest time neither man moved.

Then, in one swift motion, Cade drew his gun and shot the former Templar in the head.

The revenant’s body crashed to the floor, unmoving, his gaze now fixed permanently on the wall behind him.

As the Father Garcon stepped forward and began blessing the body, Cade stood, whispered a gentle, “Godspeed,” and turned away.

He had a nest of necromancers to find.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They spent the rest of that day and the majority of the next wading through database after database in an effort to correlate the scant leads they had against lists of known enemies of the Order. The initial threat assessment had come back with over four hundred groups or individuals who had reason to want to harm the Order, from rival religious groups to magickal societies that openly worshipped the devil. From there they had begun the process of correlating the list of names with other known facts, such as the ability to raise a revenant, proximity to the locations of the attacks, and any connection they could find with the number nine.

By early evening, they still had way too many possibilities to contend with. It was going to be a long night.

They needed more information, more details to help narrow the search.

The hoped-for forensic results came back from Ravensgate late the next day, but ultimately proved unhelpful, confirming only what they already knew - that some person or persons unknown had assaulted the compound, murdered everyone on the grounds without the use of modern weaponry, then disappeared back into the night without a trace.

The team was getting frustrated, the long hours of research without anything to show for it wearing at their nerves.

They needed something else to happen if they were going to make any progress.

In the early hours of their third day at Folkenberg, something did.

Just after 3 A.M., Captain Stanton sent word that the Broadmoor commandery in upstate New York had just been attacked. This time, with the troops on full alert, they were able to repel the attackers after a fierce firefight. According to the base commander, they had a lot of information for Commander Williams.

The plane was fueled and the team’s equipment loaded. With thanks to Captain Stanton and his men, Echo Team departed just as the sun was coming up over the horizon.

*** ***

A car and driver was waiting for them when they arrived in Syracuse just over an hour and a half later. They passed the ride in silence, not wanting to talk about the investigation in front of a stranger, fellow Templar or not, the suspicion of an inside ally still prominent in their thoughts.

They were met at the gate by the acting commander, Major Barnes, who led them onto the property and explained what his men had encountered during the battle the evening before. He told a harrowing tale of a wall of fog that enveloped the grounds, of spectral creatures that hunted in its depths. He told of their frantic efforts to throw back the invaders, only to be beaten time and time again. He summed things up with a look of disgust. “By the time it was over, we had thirty-five men dead, sixty-seven wounded. And all we have to show for our efforts was a single corpse.”

Cade gave the man his full attention. “One of theirs?”

“Yeah. Somebody made a lucky shot, it seems. We’re not sure why, but shortly after he was killed the fog dissipated, and the attack faded away to nothing.”

Cade felt his excitement growing. “Let’s have a look at that body.”

The corpse had been left where it had fallen, some hundred yards away from the entry in the open grass. The man had been in his early thirties, with long black hair and a well-kept beard. He was dressed in a thick robe complete with a hood, something that looked like it belonged in the Middle Ages, beneath which he wore a T-shirt and jeans. The bullet wound in his chest told the rest of the story.

But it was the signet ring on his left hand that drew Cade’s attention.

A ring with a skeletal snake chasing its own tail surrounding the number nine.

Known as the Ouroboros, the snake symbolized many things in many cultures: the circular nature of life, the cyclical power of the universe, the idea that all things are renewed through entropy and decay.

He had no idea what the nine represented, but at least he now understood why Winston had been focused on the number.

Cade knew that he was looking at his first concrete clue to the attackers’ identities.

Assuming that the dead man had been the sorcerer who had summoned the ghostly fog, it seemed logical to guess that his death had banished the creatures back to their own realm of existence.

Around them, Barnes’s men were hard at work collecting the bodies of the dead, both those that had perished at the hands of the Enemy and those that had risen again only to be sent on to their final rest by their fellow Knights. It was a gruesome sight, one that filled Cade with unease, for he knew that he could have been investigating another deserted commandery if Barnes’s troops had not succeeded in repelling the assault. The thought prompted a question.

Turning back to the major, Cade asked, “Any idea what their objective was?”

“We’re not entirely certain. As near as I can tell, the attack was a diversion, designed to hide whatever it was that they were doing in the cemetery. We found a block and tackle set up over a grave, but we haven’t had time to look into it further yet.”

“Show me,” said Cade.

Barnes led them across the property and into the cemetery. It was a large one, with graves dating back more than one hundred years, yet the one they finally stopped at wasn’t more than a year old. The inscription read simply JULIUS SPENCER, 1944-2003.” The coffin had been dug out of the grave and its lid torn open, but the body of the former Knight remained resting peacefully inside. The aforementioned block and tackle lay discarded in the grass a few feet away. Unlike the scene at Templeton, with its many desecrated graves, here only this particular one had been disturbed.

As Riley questioned the locals for more details, Cade stepped away from the others and used his Sight to survey the scene around him

With it he could see that the graveyard existed in the Beyond, just as it did here, but that was where the similarity ended. In the real world, the graveyard was a well-manicured place of respect and remembrance. In the Beyond, it was a wild, desolate locale.

The grass was overgrown, knee high in most places, obscuring many of the gravestones. The stones themselves were cracked and worn, the writing on their surfaces obscured by overgrowths of fungi and mold. The trees, in the real world lush and healthy, were disease-ridden hulks in the Beyond, their leafless branches stretching down almost to the ground, their skeletal forms stark against the grey sky. Off to his left, the brooding form of the manor house stood watch in the distance.

A flicker of motion caught his eye.

When he turned to find it, he saw a shadowy figure standing out among the gravestones. Before he could get a good look, the figure moved off, disappearing from view among the markers.

He suspected he knew the spirit’s identity, however.

Later, he would verify that suspicion.

It was time they found some answers to this puzzle.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After ordering his men to get some rest, Cade retired to his own room, ostensibly to do the same. In truth the Commander had much different plans.

Once inside, he closed his bedroom door but left it unlocked. Moving into the bathroom, he took the mirror down off the wall and returned with it to the bedroom, placing it flat on the floor next to the bed. He took a pad of paper out of the desk, wrote a short note to Riley explaining what he intended to do, and placed the note prominently on his pillow.

He left both of his guns in his kit bag; firearms didn’t work in the Beyond. While he didn’t exactly understand why, he had come to the conclusion it had something to do with the fact that the spiritual nature of the place didn’t mesh well with the mechanical nature of the gun itself. This seemed to be supported by the fact that melee weapons, powered only by the strength and determination of the wielder, worked without a problem. In fact, the more emotional the attacker, the more damage the blow inflicted.

Cade knelt on the prie dieu that stood in the corner of his room and took a few moments to prepare himself mentally for his journey across the barrier. Reaching the other side was always a difficult and draining task. Without a clear head, he could end up getting lost or not having the strength to make the return journey.

The Beyond was still very much a mystery to Cade, despite his many journeys there. As nearly as he could tell, it was a shadow realm that existed close to the real world in time and space, but forever separated by a wall of energy he had come to call the barrier. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, those that for one reason or another had not moved on to a more lasting rest. Other creatures inhabited the Beyond as well, dark, twisted creatures that hunted the shades and roamed the land in great predatory packs. For lack of a better name, Cade called them spectres, after the mythical creatures of legend. He avoided them wherever and whenever he could.

The fact that Spencer’s spirit remained in the area around his grave told Cade that he would probably find the former Templar close by on the other side of the barrier. Cade intended to make the crossing with the hope of contacting Spencer’s shade and finding out just what made him so interesting to the opposition.

Cade strapped his sword across his back in its habitual carry position and moved to the other side of the bed.

Without further delay, he stepped through the surface of the mirror.

*** ***

The squad members were assigned to guest rooms in the east wing of the house, identical to Cade’s. The rooms were small, with a minimum of furnishings; a narrow bed, a desk and chair, and a kneeler in the corner for prayer time. A small bathroom, containing a toilet, sink, and mirror, was connected to each room.