Infernal Games (Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Series) (12 page)

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T
he
revenant was easy to follow, given the difficulty it had moving in its
reanimated body, and Cade was able to stay within a few feet of it as it
crossed the parking lot and headed for the woods from which it had emerged. It
didn’t seem to notice him following along in its wake, or, if it did, it
apparently didn’t care.

Just
because he couldn’t question the damned thing didn’t mean there wasn’t anything
to learn from it,
Cade reasoned.
If he could follow it back to wherever
it had come from...

The
moon cast a silvery hue over everything and provided enough light for Cade to
keep the revenant in sight, even when they entered the trees. The dead man
plunged ahead, forcing his way forward through the overhanging branches and
thick brush growing between the trunks. He stuck to his direction of travel
with single-minded devotion, refusing to deviate from it. It didn’t matter
that there was a clear path only a few feet to one side, the revenant followed
whatever path he was seeing in his head with unerring accuracy, a juggernaut on
a mission. At one point he walked directly into an oversized tree and became
stuck, his feet still trying to drive him forward while his body was pressed up
against the tree’s trunk. Cade debated stepping forward and pulling him loose
when the revenant turned slightly to one side and was able to slip past on his
own.

Cade
let himself fall behind the creature by about fifteen feet, close enough that
he could keep it in sight but far enough back that he would have some advance
warning when they reached their destination. He didn’t want whoever was
waiting for the revenant to see him before he saw them. Thanks to his earlier
research, he knew these woods extended for a couple of miles before ending at
the eastern edge of a newly developed residential complex. Hopefully they
would either change direction or come to their destination before they reached
that point because he couldn’t let the revenant be seen by Joe Citizen.

They’d
been walking for about fifteen minutes, covering roughly a quarter mile or so
in that time period, when Cade caught sight of something moving through the
trees off to their left. In the dim light it was hard to get a good look but
he had a sense of a sleek body moving through the trees on all fours.

A
dog, maybe? If so was it just some neighborhood mutt or was there something
more dangerous on their trail?

Cade
kept moving, but now he was trying to keep one eye on the revenant and another
on the trees around him, searching for whatever it was he had seen.

He
was soon glad that he had, for he saw it again moments later, on his right this
time. It was closer now, too.

Definitely
a dog of some kind,
he thought. He caught a glimpse of a sleek snout and
ears tipped back in an attitude of attack but then it was gone again, lost in
the deepening darkness between the trees.

Unfortunately
for Cade, not lost enough.

The
first of them came rushing in from the side and only the fact that Cade caught
a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye allowed him to throw himself to
the side as the creature passed through the spot he had just been standing, its
jaws snapping shut on empty air and no doubt pissing it off.

Cade
had gotten a look at it as it sailed overhead, however, and as he scrambled to
his feet he drew his sword and put his back to a large oak in order to keep it
from sneaking up on his blind side.

He
was just in time.

Three
of the creatures stepped out of the shadows in front of him.

They
were the size of Great Danes, but no living Dane ever looked like this. Their
skin hung rotting on their frames, and their empty eye sockets seemed to blaze
with an unholy light.

Cade
had fought their like before and knew them for what they were.

Corpse
hounds.

Arcane
creatures dragged to earth from another plane for a specific purpose, released
to return to their home afterwards only if they fulfilled their mission. And
in this case, it looked like Cade was their target.

Snarling
in rage and hunger, they charged across the grounds with unnatural speed,
moving unerringly toward Cade.

He
met their teeth and claws with the sharp bite of his sword, snarling his fury
at being interrupted in his pursuit, directing every ounce of his anger down
through the weapon at his attackers. All the anger and frustration he was
feeling at being forced to work for the Necromancer poured out of him now that
he had a target at which to direct it. His sword spun like a dervish, striking
with deadly accuracy, neither giving nor receiving any quarter from his foes.

For
their part, the corpse hounds harassed him on three fronts, striving to pierce
his defenses, to gain the opportunity to sink their fangs into his flesh or
rake him with their claws.

Cade’s
martial skill and the added protection of his thick leather jacket kept him from
suffering any serious wounds, though he was bleeding from half-a-dozen minor
injuries by the time the hounds made their first mistake.

One
of them rushed in from the side while Cade was engaged with its brethren in the
front, but the wintery ground betrayed it and it slid too far forward, opening
itself up to a blow from Cade’s sword. He didn’t hesitate, either, just lashed
out with the edge and nodded with grim satisfaction as the snow was splashed
red from the hound’s severed throat.

With
one of their number eliminated, Cade’s task of defense became easier. The
fight continued for another few minutes, until a second of the creatures rushed
forward, slipped beneath Cade’s sword, and clamped Cade’s left arm in its
mouth. No doubt the hound had intended to drag him forward and into range of
the other beast, but Cade had anticipated that and when he felt the teeth clamp
around his forearm he rammed his sword up through the underside of the hound’s
jaw and out the top of its skull, killing it instantly.

With
two of its companions dead or dying, the third hound decided it had had enough
and slunk off into the darkness to lick its wounds, leaving Cade to try to
catch his breath.

By
the time he had, the zombie was long gone.

––––––––

L
ater
that night.

Simon Logan stood in the shadows on
the other side of the room and watched the woman’s chest rise and fall, rise
and fall, as her body drew breath into her lungs and let it out again with a
barely discernible hiss.

It looked like she was sleeping,
but he knew better.

Her
body was an empty vessel.

Her
heart beat, her blood flowed, but there was nothing of substance inside. Her
spirit had been torn free of her mortal frame and now wandered elsewhere.

He
liked to imagine her in some dark place somewhere, lost and afraid.

He
knew her soul still existed somewhere because she had spent weeks tormenting
him in his cell, returning night after night to haunt him mercilessly until he
had agreed to get a message to her husband, Knight Commander Williams.

It
seemed their love united them, even in death.

How
charming.

Logan
felt his heart race and the blood pound in his veins as he considered that
fact. The wife of his most fervent enemy, here, in his grasp.

Defenseless.

It
was almost too good to be true.

He
walked forward and stood over her. Her eyes were open, staring upward, but he
knew she wasn’t seeing him. He reached down and ran a finger slowly down the
side of her face, across her chin, and down between her breasts until stopped
by the buttons of her dress. She had a lush body, one that he would have
enjoyed taking against her will, repeatedly in fact, if there had even been a
spark of awareness, of independent will, left inside it.

But
there was not; he’d used his considerable powers to know the truth of that.

Her
body was but an empty shell, waiting for her soul to come home.

Too
bad that’s never going to happen.

When
the dead had first whispered to him of the woman sharing William’s house, he
had simply been focused on finding a way to use that information against his
enemy. But then he had began to think about the situation, to see how best to
turn it to his advantage, and he’d realized that he had a far greater
opportunity before him than he’d previously realized.

Williams
loved his wife. He had spent years tracking the entity that he felt was responsible
for her death and had left honor and duty behind in order to care for her body
when he discovered she had not passed into the afterlife as he had previously
believed. This was a man who would walk straight into hell itself if it meant
there was a chance to return her to his side.

It
was that love that Logan was using against Williams, that had forced him to
carry out Logan’s commands; to recover the very items he needed to bring his
plans to fruition.

How
exquisite
, he thought. Using the very thing that binds Cade and his wife
together so strongly as the linchpin that will tear them apart forever
.

He looked down at the helpless woman in front
of him with gleeful satisfaction.

“Soon,”
he whispered to the empty air around him.

––––––––

R
iley
didn’t know what to do next. He sat in the cafeteria, gulping down some lunch
that he couldn’t even remember ordering, and wondering just what to do next.

His
team had been going over what little evidence they had for days and still
didn’t have a single lead worth talking about. The Preceptor was growing
impatient and was starting to make Riley’s life difficult as a result.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything the Echo Team leader could do about it.
As far as he could tell, both Simon Logan and Cade Williams had gone down a
hole and pulled it in after them.

They
had been focusing most of their attention on the Necromancer. Rightly so, in
Riley’s opinion. The Necromancer was the known threat, the one who had
attacked Templar commanderies, colluded with infernal creatures, and had
attempted to use the power of the Spear of Longinus for his own personal gain.
If Echo hadn’t locked him up, he would have continued in the same vein, leaving
a trail of death and destruction in his wake.

Clearly
the tiger hadn’t changed its stripes, either. He’d left three missing,
presumed dead, during his escape and then, only a few hours later, a warehouse
full of bodies. Who knew what the hell he’d be up to next?

Riley
knew Cade was in this up to his eyeballs – the phone call in Paris had made
that abundantly clear – but Riley didn’t think it was by choice. Somehow the
Necromancer had coerced him into cooperating and Riley would bet a month’s pay
that it all had something to do with Gabrielle.

He’d
fought beside Cade for years now. The Knight Commander might like to play
loose and fast with the rules now and then, but he had his own rigid code of
ethics and part of that was making certain that innocent bystanders didn’t get
hurt. If you were working with the enemy then God help you – Cade could be a
ruthless son of a bitch – but those who were on the side of righteousness had
nothing to fear from the man. The way the monk had been treated in Paris was
proof of that; Riley was certain Cade had simply been trying to incapacitate
the man and hadn’t intended to put him in the hospital with so severe an
injury. From Riley’s perspective, Cade was as much a victim of this whole mess
as that elderly monk was.

Perhaps
it was time to look at things a little differently, however.

They’d
had no luck tracking the Necromancer so maybe they should focus their efforts
on tracking Cade instead. If he was working for Logan, especially if he’d been
coerced into doing so, then maybe finding Cade could help them find the real
problem, Simon Logan.

It’s
worth a shot
, he thought.

He
got up from the table, dumped what was left of his half-eaten lunch into the trash
bin, and headed to the suite of offices he had commandeered for his
investigative team to comb through the mountains of information collected from
law enforcement agencies all across the country on a daily basis, looking for
some clue that might tell them where the Necromancer had gone.

Riley
stood in the doorway and scanned the room, looking for one tech in particular.
When he found her, he made a beeline for her station.

“I
need you, McGreevy,” he said, as he came up behind her.

“Uh
huh,” she said, without turning. “That’s what they all say. Then they don’t
call, they don’t write, and before you know it...”

The
sudden silence must have clued her in. She looked back over her shoulder, saw
Riley, and nearly had a heart attack if the look on her face was any
indication.

“Knight Captain Riley!” she exclaimed, her face flushed with embarrassment
for talking to a senior officer in such a fashion. She shoved her chair back,
intending to jump to her feet with a salute, and promptly ran over his foot.

It
just wasn’t her day, it seemed.

Riley
eventually got her to stop apologizing profusely – she was starting to make him
feel guilty – and got her seated back in front of her workstation.

McGreevy
was a computer whiz, one of those kids who could have gone to MIT at the age of
fourteen but whose family situation required her to stay at home and care for
her younger brother. Then, several years later, she’d suffered the horror of watching
her entire family – mother, father, and little brother – slaughtered at the
hands of a rogue vampire. When Delta Team had been dispatched to deal with the
rampaging bloodsucker, they’d found McGreevy standing over the smoldering
corpse of the vampire with a can of extra strength hairspray and her mother’s
favorite cigarette lighter in her hands. With everything she’d had to live for
taken away from her, the Order had stepped in and offered to help. McGreevy
had been here ever since.

“What
can I do for you, Knight Captai?,” she squeaked out, as she tried to get her
breathing, and her embarrassment, under control.

“I
need you to hand off whatever you’re working on to someone else. I’ve got
something new I’d rather have your dealing with.”

“Okay,”
she said, then tapped out a few things on her keyboard. “Done. What do you
have?”

Riley
frowned, but then decided he didn’t want to know. She probably had algorithmic
scripts ready-made to handle a hundred different tasks, just the way Olsen used
to...

The
thought of his old teammate put a knot the size of a gold ball in Riley’s
throat and for a moment he couldn’t speak.
Damn how he missed him! Olsen
would have had this thing cracked in no time, no doubt about that.

Riley
cleared his throat and looked at McGreevy once more. She sat there patiently
waiting and gave no sign that she’d noticed his emotional moment at all. He
knew he wasn’t fooling her, but appreciated her courtesy nonetheless.

He
smiled, to show there were no hard feelings over the chair.

“I
need you to stop searching for Simon Logan and focus your efforts instead on
Cade Williams.”

“The
Here...” she began, surprised, and then quickly changed tacks. “I mean, former
Knight Commander Williams?”

“The
very same.”

“Am
I allowed to ask why?”

“No,
you are not,” he replied, but smiled when he said it to take the sting out of
it.

McGreevy
shrugged. “You’re the boss. Anything in particular you want me to start
with?”

Riley
grabbed a scratch pad off her desk and jotted down a list of names, about eight
in all. He ripped off the page and handed it to her. “These are some of the
fake IDs I remember him using in the past; I’m sure there are more in the
database somewhere. Cross reference the names on the list with any electronic
record you can get your hands on – credit card receipts, phone charges, hotel
registrations, airline tickets, you name it. Start with Immigration in Paris.
If he’s out there, I want to find him.”

“Got
it!”

McGreevy
turned away, intent on her computer, like a bloodhound on a scent, when Riley
thought of something else.

“How
do we keep track of who is using which safe house on any given day?” he asked.

She
didn’t even have to think about that one. “We can’t. We can tell which safe
houses are being used due to the entry and alarm codes attached to every
property, but they don’t tie the use to a particular person.”

Riley
thought about that one for a moment. “So we can tell which house is occupied
but not who is in it?”

“That’s
right.”

“Good
enough. Get me a list of houses that have been used in the last seventy hours,
with a priority on those within a hundred mile radius of our present position.”

“Got
it.”

Riley
used the scratch pad again to jot down his cell number. “Call me the minute
you have something.”

“Will
do.”

It
wasn’t much; he knew that. But at least they were moving in a new direction
and that felt better.

He’d
crack this thing, one way or another.