The Templar Chronicles (50 page)

His first words to Cade seemed to reinforce that viewpoint.

“The dead torment me.”

His voice was a reedy whisper, so different from the bold commands he’d shouted at his followers before his defeat.

Cade had no sympathy for him. “As well they should,” he replied. Logan had thought nothing of dragging the souls of the dead back across the barrier between the land of the dead and that of the living and forcing them to reanimate their decomposed and corrupted bodies. For him to be haunted by those he’d treated in such a fashion was nothing but justice itself and Cade told him so.

Logan went on as if he hadn’t heard.

“They torment me. Especially her.”

Cade’s pulse quickened.

“Who?” he asked.

“You know who.”

Cade crossed the room to stand in front of Logan. For all he knew Logan was running an elaborate con and so Cade refused to give him anything. “No, I don’t,” he said, “tell me.”

Logan’s response, when it came, surprised him.

“She said you wouldn’t believe me, so she said to give you this.”

As Logan reached inside the pocket of his prison uniform, Cade automatically braced for an attack, expecting him to pull out a shiv or some other makeshift weapon he’d fashioned without the guards’ knowledge. But Logan’s hand emerged from the interior of his clothing with only a pewter medallion that dangled from a silver chain.

Logan tossed the necklace through the bars at Cade.

Wary of arcane trickery, Cade refused to catch it, stepping back and letting it fall to the floor at his feet.

A glance downward told him it was a Saint Christopher medallion, the kind a lot of cops carried around, Christopher being the patron saint of policemen and lost causes.

This particular medal had a dent in it, right in the center where the face of the saint had once been, a dent large enough that it obliterated the saint’s entire image, leaving just the caption running around the outside of the disk.

Seeing it, Cade froze.

He recognized that dent. Remembered the night that medallion had deflected a bullet that should have take his head off like it was yesterday, how that tiny piece of medal had saved his life and consequently the life of his partner as well. They’d been pinned down in a shadowy corridor inside a Southie tenement house and had never even seen their assailant until that shot had come blazing out of the darkness. Saint Christopher had saved his life, there was no question of that, and he’d worn that medallion night and day for years afterwards in a superstitious show of faith.

Cade’s heart beat wildly. A hand reached out in front of him and it took him a moment to realize it was his own. He picked the medallion up and turned it over, knowing even before he did so what he would see.

The inscription read: “Every day after this is a gift. Use them well.”

He’d put it there, the day after the shooting, to remind him just how fragile and transitory life actually was. He’d never taken the medallion off, not until that horrible summer day seven years ago.

Cade’s fist clenched around the medallion.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice as cold as winter snow.

But Logan didn’t even flinch. He simply stared at Cade with those eyes that had seen too much and said, “She said you’d suspect that I’d taken it from her grave, so she gave me a message for you.”

Cade visibly started. It was as if Logan were reading his mind. He had been thinking that Logan, or at least one of his cronies, had disturbed Gabrielle’s rest and he was ready to tear the man limb from limb for doing so.

“One day at a time. She told me to tell you one day at a time.”

A wave of dizziness washed over him at the implications of what Logan was saying. Seven years ago he’d put that same Saint Christopher medallion in his wife’s hand just before the funeral director had closed the casket over her still and silent form. Call it superstitious, but he’d wanted her to have some extra protection in the next life, considering how horribly this one had ended for her. He vividly remembered leaning down to kiss her cold cheek and whispering to her, asking her how he was going to survive without her.

She’d apparently decided to finally answer his question.

Cade stayed lost in thought for several long moments. At last he looked up and met Logan’s eager gaze. “I’m listening,” he said.

Logan seemed to gain some of his old confidence back at Cade’s reaction. He stepped away from the bars, went back to pacing back and forth across the space of his cell. “I have some requests,” he began, but Cade cut him off.

“I don’t have time to play games, Logan. Get to the point.”

The Necromancer turned to face him.

“Sunlight.”

“I’m sorry?” The comment was so unexpected that Cade had trouble following the other man’s train of thought.

“Sunlight. I want to see sunlight again, before the end of my trial.”

Cade didn’t have to even think about it. He knew the prisoner was going to be transferred from Bennington to Longfort at the end of the month and doing so would require him to travel in an armored transport vehicle. The transport had windows. Provided it didn’t rain on the day he made the trip, Cade knew he could persuade the warden to forget the blindfold and let the prisoner have one last look at the sunlight, though why Logan would want it was beyond Cade’s ability to fathom. No matter. He’d put a window in Logan’s personal cell if that was what it would take to get the information he needed out of him, orders to the contrary be damned.

“Done,” Cade replied. “Sunlight. Before the end of your trial.”

Logan grinned slyly, but Cade pretended not to see it. “Now,” he said instead, “tell me what she said.”

Logan explained that Gabrielle’s shade was visiting him every night, tormenting him, refusing to let him sleep. “She just keeps repeating the same refrain, over and over again, her voice like an ice pick in my mind.” He closed his eyes, as if he wanted to avoid any distractions and get it right.

“The Lady in the Tower sleeps beneath the banner of night on the island of lost dreams, but her sleep is not restful and she can find no peace.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I would think it would be obvious, Commander.”

“So wow me with your superior knowledge.”

“Your wife is not dead, simply a captive of the Adversary.”

Cade stood there, stunned.

It was perhaps the last thing he’d ever expected to hear. And yet, somehow, he suspected that the Necromancer was right.

Gabrielle? Alive?

That put a whole new perspective on things.

CHAPTER THREE

Cade spent the next three days wrestling with his thoughts, trying to come to grips with the doubts that had arisen in the aftermath of his conversation with the Necromancer. They had burrowed deep within the heart of him, their questing tendrils seeking out the soft places of his soul and anchoring there like some kind of cancerous mass, growing roots, oozing outward unchecked, until they were so large that ignoring them was no longer even an option. Not knowing would eat him alive, would consume him from the inside out. There was no other choice; he would have to see for himself.

For that, he was going to need some help.

Later that afternoon he knocked on the door to Riley’s quarters in the senior noncoms housing unit. “I could use your help,” Cade said to him without preamble when Riley opened the door.

The other man shrugged. “Sure. Anything you need.”

“You might want to hear me out first,” said Cade and something in his voice made Riley do just that.

Cade had his personal vehicle there at the commandery and so the two of them took a leisurely afternoon drive, wandering the back roads as Cade laid out the problem and exactly what he intended to do.

Riley was silent as Cade talked, letting him get it all out without interruption, but when he was finished Riley didn’t hold anything back.

“You know Logan’s a lying son-of-a-bitch, don’t you? That he’s probably telling you all this just to mess with your head?”

Cade nodded. “That was my first reaction. But what if he’s not?”

“What do you mean ’what if he’s not’? Of course he is! He’s the freakin’ Necromancer. Lying is all that he does.”

“Maybe. And maybe not. But I can’t take that chance. If there is even the slightest possibility that some part of what he told me is the truth, then I need to find out. And there is only one way of doing that.”

Riley shook his head. “What you’re proposing is nuts. It’s public property and the cops are always cruising by the place. You wouldn’t last twenty minutes.”

Cade shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any choice. I’ve got to try and see for myself. I’m going nuts second guessing it all.”

Riley didn’t reply.

They continued driving in silence for a time, each of them lost in their own thoughts. The December landscape unfolded around them, empty fields and stark, barren trees that reached outward with skeletal branches, the road winding up and down, around this hill and over that, headed everywhere and nowhere. Cade knew the idea was risky, and he had no desire to try explaining everything to the police should they be caught, but he was willing to take that chance. The only issue was whether his friend was willing to go along with it.

After a long while, Cade spoke up. “So, are you in or not?”

Riley looked over at him. “Of course I’m in.”

And at that, Cade just had to smile.

** *** ***

It was a simple headstone, plain grey New Hampshire granite, its front polished to a glistening shine so that the words carved into its face contrasted sharply with the smooth surface. Unlike the other stones around it, this one did not contain a name. Nor was there the usual assemblage of dates. Cade had not seen the need for them; he knew who rested here, knew when she had been born and the awful day that she’d died. He didn’t need a set of dates to remind him of those times. He’d known that he’d be the only one returning here after the funeral was over and he’d chosen to leave them off the marker. In their place he had selected a line from Dickens that seemed particularly appropriate to him during those dark summer days immediately following Gabrielle’s death.

It is a far, far better rest I go to,

than I have ever known

Now, looking at those words in the pale light from his flashlight, he was struck with an overwhelming sense of bitterness. What foolish arrogance had made him choose that quote over some other? Rest was certainly the last thing she had received and he suspected that it was all his fault.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Riley asked. Cade knew it was his friend’s way of giving him one last chance to think about the potential consequences, but he’d already made up his mind. He had to know. It was as simple as that.

In answer to Riley’s question, Cade picked up his shovel, drove it deep into the earth in front of the headstone, and began digging.

Riley watched him for a moment and then joined in.

They worked in companionable silence, save for the sound their shovels made biting into the dirt and the whispering of the wind through the trees around them like a watchful taskmaster urging them on. The recent rains had softened the earth, but all the moisture it retained made it heavier and Cade soon found himself sweating from the effort. His only focus was getting to the casket below so that he could quench the growing sense of urgency unfurling in his gut.

They piled the dirt beside the grave, knowing they were going to need it again before they were done. Its rich full scent filled Cade’s nostrils and he thought it strange how the aroma of life could be found here even surrounded by so much death. The work was hard, the dirt heavy and seemingly unwilling to reveal that which it hid from prying eyes. A backhoe would have made the effort far easier, but Cade dared not risk it. This was a public cemetery, after all, and the machine would only call attention to them. A passerby might miss a pair of men digging in the glow of a flashlight but ignoring a bright yellow piece of earth moving equipment was another story entirely. Getting caught was the last thing Cade wanted to happen; grave robbery had a fairly serious sentence attached to it. He’d taken as many precautions as he could think of. They’d parked his Cherokee in the woods a couple hundred yards away from the cemetery entrance and had cut through the woods until they’d reached the stone fence that surrounded the property. They’d clambered up and over it and from there made their way through the maze of headstones until they’d come to the secluded area where Gabrielle had been laid to rest. It was in the rear quarter of the cemetery, as far from the road as it was possible to get, and their flashlights had been covered with red filters to limit their visibility.

Two hours after they started, Riley’s shovel hit something hard, something that wasn’t dirt. He drew the shovel out of the ground and pushed it back in again, this time a few feet to the left of his previous strike. Another dull thud came back to them.

`They worked a bit more quickly after that, reenergized by the discovery, and it wasn’t long before the top of the casket was revealed, its black lacquer surface, so polished and shiny the last time Cade had laid eyes on it, now dulled from the patina of dirt that coated it. Once the lid was uncovered it took only a short burst of effort to clear the earth away from the sides of the casket, giving them room to open it. As Riley climbed out of the hole to get the necessary tools, Cade got down on his knees and examined the lid. Even in the limited light of his flashlight he could tell at once that it was still sealed shut, just as it had been in the day it had been lowered into the ground.

As he waited, Cade’s thoughts turned to what was before him. Gabrielle’s death had not been an easy one. The damage the Adversary had done to her face had been horrible. In the autopsy that followed, a legal requirement in the case of a homicide, the medical examiner had been unable to determine a specific cause of death. The idea that a mortician would continue the process the ME had begun, heaping further indignities on her earthly remains, had been more than Cade could bear and he’d had her immediately buried without even the benefit of being embalmed, just wanting to get the whole process over with as quickly as possible. To be certain the funeral home carried out his wishes, he insisted on being present throughout the preparation process and had them seal the casket in front of him.