Infernal Games (Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Series) (2 page)

“Give
me a hand!” he yelled and the duty captain jumped to his aid, grabbing the
wheel with both hands and adding his strength to the driver’s. Between the two
of them they were able to keep the bus on the road and pointed in the right
direction until it slowly ground to a halt several long and tense minutes
later.

That’s
when they noticed the fog.

No
longer content to lie clinging to the ground in slowly drifting pools and
eddies, this fog seemed to have a life of its own. It had sprung up like a
wall all about them, leaving a clear patch of ground roughly ten feet on all sides
of the bus, so that they seemed to be sitting in a special little clearing of
their own. The fog twisted and turned, churning about, and both men would have
sworn that they saw faces in its depths; grey, distorted shapes with black,
bottom-less holes for eyes and mouths opened wide in silent screams...

Movement
of a different sort within the depths of the fog became clearer as an
individual in a long black robe stepped out in front of the bus, his face
hidden in the depths of his hood.

“What
the hell...?” said the duty captain.

As
if in response, the newcomer reached up, grasped the edges of his hood, and
pulled it back, revealing his face to the men on the bus. The coarse black
thread that had been used to sew his lips and eyes shut, precautions used to
keep him from seeing or speaking in the afterlife, stood out in stark contrast
to the light grey coloration of his dead flesh while the glint of metal in his
ears marked where molten silver had been poured into place to keep him from
hearing.

The
living watched as the dead man lifted an arm and pointed at the bus.

The
duty captain turned his head just in time to see something monstrous emerge
from the fog on the right side of the bus. As his mind was still trying to
make sense of what it was seeing, the creature slammed into the side of the bus
with all the force of a runaway train. Tires popped as the bus slid sideways
for several yards, stopping just inches away from the edge of the embankment.

Men
were screaming, guns were firing, but the duty captain didn’t notice. His gaze
was locked on that of the prisoner in the back of the bus, the prisoner who
couldn’t speak around the gag placed in his mouth but whose laughter was
somehow ringing loudly in the duty captain’s ears as the thing outside slammed
into the bus for a second time, sending it careening over the edge of the
embankment and tumbling, down, down, toward the ravine floor below...

––––––––

K
night Captain Matthew Riley, acting commander of the Echo Team,
stood at the edge of the embankment and stared down at the wreckage in the
ravine several hundred feet below.

It
looked as if the driver had lost control of the bus on the icy road and, unable
to stop the oversized vehicle, had careened off the embankment and into the
ravine. The dents in the sides and roof of the bus showed it had rolled
several times on its way down the embankment before coming to rest with its
nose rammed into a large, outcropping of rock, the impact hard enough to push
the engine block halfway into the cab.

Riley
knew looks could be deceiving, however.

It
had been two months since Knight Commander Cade Williams had come stumbling out
of the Beyond with Riley’s near-dead body in his arms, the two of them crashing
through the mirror in the surgical prep room of the Templar commandery in
Arlington, Virginia. Thankfully the medical staff sprang into action immediately
and as a result managed to save Riley’s life. Not only had he lived to see
another day, but the faith healers who had treated him shortly thereafter had
been able to cut his healing time down from several months to just a couple of
weeks.

A
good thing, too, because the powers-that-be had put him to work the minute he’d
gotten up out of that hospital bed.

The battle with the Chiang Shih had been
costly and many of the Order’s strike teams, including Echo, Bravo, and Delta, had
been all but decimated. Riley was the only man still on active duty out of
Echo’s four-man command unit. Sergeants Nick Olsen and Sean Duncan had both
perished during that last op; Olsen at the hands of the Chiang Shih and Duncan
while fighting the fallen angel Asharael, known to the Templars as the
Adversary. Riley’s friend and long-time commander, Cade Williams, was still
alive but had been “forcibly retired” as a result of the actions he’d taken in
the wake of the Chiang Shih assault.

As a highly decorated member of the Echo
Team, as well as one of the Order’s most senior surviving non-coms, Riley had
been tapped by the Preceptor to rebuild the strike teams to operational
capacity. Over his protests, he’d been put in charge of Echo itself and
elevated in rank all the way to captain.

When word of the escape had come down from
Bennington, the Preceptor had immediately ordered Riley to the crash site. Riley
had been told that he was the logical choice; not only had he been part of the
squad that had captured the Necromancer, but he was one of the few surviving
Templars who had faced the Necromancer in personal combat. When Riley had
calmly pointed out that he’d lost that encounter, his objections had been
overruled and he quickly found himself aboard one of the strike team’s
Blackhawks headed for the crash site.

Staring down at the wreckage now, he was
overcome with a sense of dread so strong that for a moment all he wanted to do
was turn around and climb back aboard the helicopter, leaving this mess to
someone else.

He shook off the feeling, slung his HK MP5 on
its sling around his back, and grabbed hold of the rope that was being offered
to him by Martinez, one of the men under his command. With a nod to the
others, he started down.

Less than five minutes later Riley and his
three companions stood on the floor of the ravine, staring at the wreckage of
the bus. The partially caved in roof, as well as the various dents and scrapes
that bore evidence to the bus’ unexpected journey down the hillside were
expected, but the massive rips in the metal, rips that looked suspiciously like
giant claw marks, were not.

The sight of them gave Riley pause.

The advance team had confirmed that the
vehicle in the ravine was the long-overdue bus, but had not ventured down to
the ravine floor to look for survivors. Riley’s first instinct was to rush
forward and see if there was anyone left alive in the wreckage, but he quelled
the notion before acting on it.

By the book,
he reminded himself.

The men, including Riley, were dressed in
standard Templar tactical gear that included dark ceramic body armor worn under
black jumpsuits of flame retardant material without markings or insignia,
lightweight Kevlar tactical helmets with built-in communications gear along
with audio and video recording devices, and military style combat boots. Each
man was armed with a Heckler & Koch MP5 SD submachine gun, a HK Mark 23 .45
caliber handgun and the holy sword they’d been given at their investiture into
the Templar ranks. Not wanting to give their exact positions away by speaking,
Riley ignored the tactical communications gear and used hand signals instead,
sending Ortega and Simmons toward the front of the vehicle while he and
Martinez headed for the rear, their weapons out and at the ready.

The bus had landed right side up and
perpendicular to the slope of the hill so that they were approaching it from
the passenger side. They moved forward cautiously, their gaze jumping from the
shadows around the bus to the darkened interior and back again, as they watched
for movement. So far there hadn’t been any sign of the transport team or their
passenger, which Riley found unsettling.

If this bastard is loose again...

The newly fallen snow crunched underfoot as
they rounded the side of the bus and got their first look at the back of the
vehicle. Beside him, Riley heard Martinez gasp aloud and he nearly did the
same.

The back end of the bus had been peeled open
like a tin can, the jagged edges of the newly-torn steel shining in the
darkness. Just inside the vehicle, the shattered remains of the prisoner’s
enclosure reflected the light of their flashlight beams back at them and they
could see that the arcane symbols filigreed into the depths of the glass had
been burned black from a surge of power strong enough to overwhelm their
protections.

That was all Riley needed to see to know that
the Necromancer had, indeed, escaped.

“Cover me,” Riley said and moved forward to
the back of the bus. He could see Ortega and Simmons entering the vehicle from
the front and felt confident enough to sling his weapon and use his hands to
boost himself up into the back of the bus.

As he climbed to his feet, he saw Ortega
shine his flashlight on a seat closer to the front and then stiffen in
surprise.

“What have you got?” Riley called.

“Blood,” the other man said. “A lot of it,
too.”

Riley moved forward and added the beam of his
flashlight to those of the other man.

Ortega was right; there was a lot of it. It
had splashed across the seats and pooled on the floor, then froze in a wide
puddle that reflected the light with a ruby red glow. But there was just
blood, nothing more.

If the men were injured, where had they gone?
Riley wondered.
If they were dead, what happened
to their bodies?

“Spread out and search the area around the
bus. Look for bloodstains, tracks, anything to indicate where they might have
gone,” Riley ordered.

Fifteen minutes later they had nothing to
show for their efforts but a chill that went deeper than the evening’s coldness.

The missing men had seemingly vanished into
thin air.

With a last, uneasy glance around the
wreckage, Riley ordered his men back up the embankment.

Once they had all returned to the relative
safety of the road, Riley moved a few feet away from his men. He pulled his
tablet from his pack, fired it up, and then placed a video call to the man who
had ordered him out on the hunt, Preceptor Johannson.

“The bus was attacked; there’s no doubt about
that,” he said, when the Preceptor’s narrow face filled the video screen. He
went on to explain what they had found while searching the wreckage and also to
detail the efforts they had made to find the missing transport team.

The Preceptor frowned when Riley had finished
speaking. “Any sign of the prisoner?”

“No, sir. Not a trace.” Riley waited for
the Preceptor to ask about the transport team that had been assigned to the
bus, to no avail. The lack of concern for the missing men infuriated Riley,
but he kept a lid on his anger. He answered several more questions the
Preceptor put to him about the condition of the wreckage and then agreed to
wait for the clean-up crew to arrive before returning to the commandery.

As Riley slipped the tablet back into his pack,
he shivered visibly and not just with the cold.

––––––––

H
undreds
of miles away, Preceptor Johannson disconnected from the call with Captain
Riley and leaned back in his chair, his mind racing at a furious pace. The
next forty-eight hours were critical and he knew he needed to bring all of the
Order’s resources to bear if he wanted to recapture the escaped prisoner before
something serious happened.

He
turned to one side, where his aide, a man named Hennessey, stood waiting.
“What’s the status on strike teams two and four?”

“They’re
up and ready, sir. Standing by on a five minute alert status.”

“Good.
Make sure the team leaders have been briefed on the prisoner’s capabilities.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“I
want a scrying team assembled immediately. Have the prisoner’s blood and DNA
samples pulled from storage in case they’re needed. That will be all for now.”

“Right
away, sir.”

Hennessy
was halfway to the door when Johannson called out to him.

“One
more thing, James. Inform Commander Williams that he has been reactivated,
effective immediately, and assign him to the pursuit of the prisoner.”

“Sir?”

Hennessey’s
tone was full of the doubt that the Preceptor himself was feeling, but
sometimes unusual problems called for unusual solutions. “You heard me,
James. Reactivate Commander Williams. Restore his network privileges and
access codes while you are at it so that he can access the mission briefing and
Captain Riley’s report when it is available. No sense sending the man out
half-cocked.”

“Of
course, sir.”

As
Hennessey left the room, Preceptor Johannson considered the decision he’d just
made. It hadn’t been an easy one; there certainly wasn’t any love lost between
him and the former Knight Commander. One of Williams’ men had been captured in
the wake of the battle with the Chiang Shih several months before and the
Preceptor had refused to allow the Echo Team leader to attempt a rescue,
instead ordering the portal to the Chiang Shih stronghold in the Beyond sealed
for safety’s sake. Enraged, Williams had tried to strangle the Preceptor.
Only the swift action taken by then Sergeant Riley, the same man now in charge
of the Echo Team, had saved his life, but Riley had then turned around and damned
himself by not arresting Williams when ordered to do so.

Oh
what a tangled web we weave,
Johannson thought with wry amusement. Williams
had disobeyed direct orders, taken an armed force back through the portal to do
battle with the Chiang Shih a second time. The Templars had emerged victorious
but both Williams and Riley had been lost in the fray. Johannson had kept his
mouth shut when the two men were honored posthumously and their empty coffins
buried with honors, figuring it made no sense to impune the reputations of the
dead. But when they’d miraculously turned up alive and well in the Arlington
commandery he’d taken what he knew about their previous behavior to the
Seneschal himself to see that they were punished accordingly.

In
the end, Williams had cut a deal. All charges against his executive officer,
Sergeant Riley, would be dropped in exchange for Williams’ immediate retirement
from the Order. He would be declared persona non grata and his name stricken
from the rolls. Johannson’s revenge had been spoiled slightly by the
Seneschal, who had promoted Riley to Knight Captain and put him in charge of
Williams’ old unit, the Echo Team, but Johannson could live with that given
Williams’ dismissal.

And
now here I am inviting the fox right back into the henhouse.

It
couldn’t be helped, though. He may consider Williams and his unholy gifts a
threat to the Order and to all it stood for, but the reality of the situation
necessitated Cade’s use. The Order had pursued the Necromancer for years
before Williams had finally succeeded in bringing him to justice. With the
Necromancer once more on the run, it made sense to bring back the one man who
knew more about him and his motives than anyone else alive.

Satisfied
he’d made the right choice, the Preceptor picked up the phone to inform the Seneschal
of his decision.