Infernal Games (Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Series)

(T
emplar Chronicles #4)

––––––––

S
imon Logan lay on the cot in the corner of his
cell, listening to the voices of the dead whisper to him from out of the
darkness.

Their voices helped him, sustained him. They
lifted him out of the depth of his despair and gave him the courage he needed
to face each day as if it were not identical to the one before it and the one
before that and so on back through an endless succession of such periods, the
sterility of prison life blurring into one long, endless repetition of the same
activities that were designed to break his will and turn him into an obedient
little prisoner.

The voices were his sanity and his salvation.

And while he listened, the dead told him
things.

Important things.

Things he couldn’t have known otherwise.

The dead were his friends, you see, the
whisper of their voices like the caress of a lover in the depths of the night.
They told him of the world outside these walls, of the events that transpired
there while he was locked away in that meager eight-by-eight foot space, and in
turn he gave them tasks to perform, orders to carry out, providing a purpose
and direction for their existence that they thought had been lost lost forever.

It was the perfect symbiotic relationship.

The wards, bindings, and other enchantments
built into the walls of his cell kept him from doing anything more than
speaking with the dead, but speaking with them was enough for now. Logan lay
on his bunk in the darkness, conserving his energy, knowing he was going to
need it if the voices were right, if today was, indeed, his day of salvation.

It was still early afternoon when the voices
told him that the guards were headed in his direction. His cell had no clock
and this far underground there wasn’t a window to let him judge the passage of
the sun across the sky, but he knew what time it was just the same. He’d
always been able to sense the coming of darkness for decades and right now his
senses were telling him that darkness was still many hours away.

That was fine; he was patient. He could
wait.

He thanked the dead for their service and
then sent them on their way with the messages he had prepared for just this
eventuality. The time had come; he could feel it in his bones.

The footsteps stopped and the lights flashed
on suddenly, harsh and blinding: the move designed to disorient, perhaps even
to cause physical pain. He was abruptly thrust from the utter darkness of long
days spent in solitary confinement, but he’d been forewarned and so was not
caught by their petty game, sitting on his bunk with his eyes held gently shut
when the flare of brilliance chased away the darkness. By the time that the
guards arrived at the door of his individual cell, his eyes had adjusted to the
light enough to be able to see without difficulty.

There were nine of them; an auspicious
number.

The duty captain stepped up to the outer cell
door and said, “Assume the position.”

The man was nervous; Logan could smell his
fear from five feet away. It made him want to smile, but he made sure to keep
the grin off his face and his expression carefully neutral. Anything else
would simply earn him a beating.

He got up from his bunk and crossed to the
door of his cell. Turning around, he slid his hands through the waist-high
slot and then winced as the duty captain on the other side slipped a zip tie
around his wrists and cinched it tighter than necessary.

“Okay, you know the drill. Back off.”

He followed the duty captain’s orders,
pulling his hands back out of the slot and stepping away from the door, giving the
guards room to open the door and enter the cell.

They formed up around him, with the duty
captain to his left, holding his arm, and the others arrayed in groups of four
before and behind him. When the duty captain gave the signal, they led him
down the hall and then up the three flights of stairs to the general population
level. The raucous noise that usually filled the cavernous space quieted as
they realized who was being brought up. Soon all of the other inmates were
standing at the fronts of their cells, staring in silence at the procession as
it made its way slowly past.

Even in here, amidst the worst of the Order’s
enemies, the man once known only as the Necromancer commanded respect and fear.

It had been just over two months since Logan
had requested an audience with Knight Commander Cade Williams and given him
information that had eventually led to the confrontation with the Chiang Shih
and the deaths of dozens of Templar soldiers. For his part in the process he’d
been transferred to solitary confinement and left to rot alone in the darkness
with barely enough food to survive. Rather than break him, however, the change
in circumstances had proved to be a boon. No longer haunted by the ghost of
Cade’s dead wife, Gabrielle, the Necromancer had slowly begun to recover and
was now in better physical condition than he had been since arriving at the
prison.

The guards took him through general
population and then up five more levels, passing through a checkpoint each
time, until they reached the ground floor. There they went through a
successive series of checkpoints until, nearly a half an hour after they
started, the group stood before the massive double doors leading to the main
entrance and the transport yard just beyond.

The duty captain stepped forward, a rubber
ball gag, the kind favored by S&M enthusiasts with straps that allowed the
gag to be pulled tight and secured around the back of the head, in one hand.
He held it up for the prisoner to see.

“Open up,” he said.

For a second, Logan hesitated. It was more a
result of being startled by something so out of the ordinary than any real objection
to the request, but that second was enough. The duty captain had been waiting
for an excuse to cause his prisoner some misery and that was all he needed. He
looked over Logan’s shoulder and nodded to the guard behind him. Logan didn’t
even have time to brace for the impact before what felt like a sledgehammer
drove itself into his kidney full bore. For a moment everything went white as
his body tried to process the massive shock it had just received.

When he came back to himself again, he found
he was down on his knees with a guard holding tightly to each arm as the duty
captain shoved the gag into his mouth and pulled it tight. Logan didn’t fight
back; it would only escalate into a beating and he didn’t want to take the
chance of being injured right now.

Patience. Their time will come.

The gag and handcuffs were redundant inside
the prison, as the wards built into the very foundations of the building kept
him from accessing his power in any significant way, so the use of the
restraints now indicated that they were taking him outside the gates, most
likely as part of a transfer to a new facility. After spending the last six
months locked away beneath the ground in solitary confinement, the idea of
walking out those doors was almost daunting.

Almost.

The duty captain stopped at the checkpoint
and the Necromancer listened in to what was being said.

“What have you got, Charlie?” asked the
officer on the other side of the bullet-proof glass of the control booth with a
bored tone.

“Transfer to Longfort post-trial. There to
remain until the end of time.”

The other officer’s laugh was muffled by the
glass. “We can only hope, right?”

That’s interesting
, the Necromancer thought as he ignored the
joke. Apparently he’d been tried and found guilty in absentia; he certainly
hadn’t attended any proceedings of that type in the last two months. He
thought of the promise Knight Commander Williams had made to him several months
before. A view of the sunlight, before the end of his trial. That had been the
deal.

Better late than never,
he guessed.

Papers were passed over, signed, and passed
back again. When all was in order the group was allowed to proceed through the
checkpoint to the final barrier, a thick set of double doors made of reinforced
concrete. The duty captain took a tighter hold on Logan’s arm and with a loud
clang the doors began to slide slowly apart.

A lobby like one found in most modern
business buildings was just beyond the doors, part of the cover the Order had
set up around the facility. Security guards stationed behind the “information
booth” eyed him curiously as he was marched past, but they knew better than to
speak to him.

Logan barely gave them a passing glance, as
his attention was fixed firmly on his destination.

A transport bus was waiting outside.

The guards didn’t hesitate, just hustled him
out the doors into the cold, February snow and over to the waiting vehicle.
The driver opened the doors as they approached so the group didn’t even have to
slow down as they led him up the stairs and down the aisle to the back of the
bus where a specially prepared enclosure awaited.

It wasn’t much to look at, just a chair
welded to the floor inside a box of bullet-proof glass, but the moment that he
was shoved into the seat he felt the bindings that were etched into the walls
around him, bindings designed to keep him from using his powers against those
on the other side of the glass. He was like a newborn babe, naked and
unprotected from those who might wish him harm.

Or so they thought.

Two guards stepped inside the box with him
and quickly wrapped him in several sets of thick iron chains which the duty
captain then secured with a special set of blessed padlocks. Their job finished,
the guards stepped out of the enclosure and closed the door of the box behind
them, securing that with a lock as well. Satisfied that all was as it should
be, the guards moved several seats forward and sat down facing the front of the
bus, their weapons by their sides.

The Necromancer wanted to laugh at the
theatrics. He missed his old nemesis; had Williams been in charge he would
have been drugged into unconsciousness, bound with silver, and sealed inside a
protective circle before they would have even thought about taking him from his
cell. This lot was making things far too easy.

He glanced out the window at the place where
he had just spent the last six months of his life. The innocuous little
building known to the Order as the Bennington Containment Facility looked more
like a public high school than a maximum security prison for offenders of some
of the world’s worst evils, but that was hardly a surprise. The Templars had
had centuries to perfect the art of hiding in the open and even he had to admit
that they did it quite well.

“Let’s roll,” the duty captain called forward
and the driver raised a hand in reply. There was a moment spent as the driver
started the vehicle’s oversized engine and threw her into gear and then, with a
sudden jerk, the bus got underway.

The first three hours passed without
incident. Logan had long ago learned the art of sitting patiently and he
practiced that now as he waited for the right time. At first the guards were
tense, constantly looking over their shoulders in his direction as if he might
pull a Harry Houdini and escape from his bonds right before their very eyes,
but as time passed and he remained securely bound, they began to relax.
Relaxation eventually turned to boredom and boredom to complacency.

Logan felt them long before seeing them,
their presence like a beacon in the night to one with his powers. He prepared
himself for what was to come, knowing there would be a moment of vulnerability
when the guards might think of opening his “cell” and shooting him in the head
rather than taking the chance that he might escape into the world once more.
He didn’t expect them to have enough presence of mind to think of it, but
better safe than sorry. He focused inward, centering himself and gathering
what power he could just in case he would need it.

The bus rolled onward.

Several
moments later the headlights picked up the first wispy strands of a low-lying
fog creeping along the road, but the driver barely noticed. The suddenly
changing temperatures at this time of year often caused a bit of ground fog and
he gave it no mind as he continued forward, unaware that in doing so he’d just
committed everyone aboard to the events which were to follow.

A
hundred yards down the road the fog had risen to cover the wheels of the bus
and the driver was starting to grow a little concerned. It had grown thicker
as well as higher, limiting the driver’s ability to see any obstacles that
might be in the road ahead of him, and he naturally slowed the vehicle down as
a result.

It
never occurred to him to wonder where fog like this had come from on such a
cold night.

Noting
the change in speed, the duty captain came forward and crouched down beside the
driver. “What’s the delay?” he asked, none to happy to be slowing down given
the particular cargo they were carrying.

The
driver waved at the windshield ahead of them. “Can’t see shit. If I hit
something at this speed we’ll be in serious trouble. Better to slow down now
than pay for it later.”

As
much as he disliked the idea of slowing down, the duty captain knew the driver
was right. “All right,” he said, clapping the other man on the shoulder.
“It’s your bus; you know what’s best. Just get us there.”

“I’ll
do my...”

The
driver never finished his sentence, distracted as he was by the way the engine
of the bus coughed once and then died.

The
loss of power meant the steering and brakes reverted to manual control and the
driver suddenly found himself trying to steer a twelve ton behemoth rolling
forward at just over twenty-five miles per hour. To their right was a forest
of thick pine, to their left the yawning mouth of a narrow ravine; the driver
did not want a closer look at either. The muscles on his arms stood out as he
strained to hold the vehicle on course. He pumped the brakes frantically with
both feet in an effort to get the bus to slow down and come to a stop, thanking
God as he did for his foresight in slowing the bus just moments before. If they
had still been travelling at the higher rate of speed they wouldn’t have had a
chance.