The Heretic - 01

by Joseph Nassise

  Cade barely noticed.

  He had eyes only for his dead wife, who was standing a few feet behind the altar.

  “You need him, Cade.â€

  He snorted. “Like hell I do. The world will be a better place without him.†His thoughts turned for a brief moment to the death toll that could be laid at this man’s feet.

  “Justice demands his death.â€

  “Then justice will have to take a backseat. You will need him at some point in the future. I can see it. Without him, your vengeance will go unclaimed.â€

  Cade considered her remarks, knowing as he did so that if it hadn’t been for her previous warning, they might never have known about the traitor within their ranks. But still he wanted to know more,

  “What will I need him for? And when?â€

  “I don’t know.â€

  “You don’t know, or you can’t say?â€

  She didn’t respond.

  Motion at the door caught his attention. Several Knights entered the chapel, their weapons at the ready.

  “Sir?†Riley called, the question in his voice obvious.

  “Here,†Cade replied, looking toward them with the briefest of glances. “The room’s secure.â€

  He turned back to face his wife, only to find she had gone as suddenly and as mysteriously as she had come.

  But she had accomplished her end.

  The Necromancer would live, at least for the time being. Others in the Order would turn their skills upon him and eventually he would tell them all he knew. At that point his fate would be up to those in charge.

  But for the moment, he would live.

  Cade turned his defeated prisoner over to his second-in-command and watched as the man was searched and secured by the other soldiers. Riley himself filled him in on what was happening.

  “The complex is under control. The last of the Council members have been rounded up. A few of them are even talking, and with their help we hope to have the rest of the missing artifacts rounded up before long.â€

  “Casualties?â€

  “Eighteen dead, twelve wounded.†Riley hesitated, obviously searching for words.

  “Just say it,†Cade said gruffly, a sudden dread filling his heart.

  “The chopper Olsen and Duncan were in went down. Smashed straight into the conservatory. Olsen took a piece of shrapnel deep in the chest.â€

  “Is he dead?â€

  “No, boss. And that’s the problem. By all rights he should be, yet it looks like he’s going to be all right. Whatever Duncan did when he pulled him out of the wreckage saved his life. Some of the men are calling it a miracle.â€

  Cade covered his surprise. “Let them call it what they want,†Cade said gruffly.

  “Just make sure Olsen gets what he needs.â€

  “Yes, sir.â€

  As Riley turned away, Cade reached out and grabbed his arm. “Keep Duncan close, just in case.â€

  Riley grinned. “You can count on it, sir.â€

  As Riley escorted the prisoner out of the chapel, Cade remained behind. He walked down the center aisle and took a seat in the first row of pews, facing the altar.

  “Gabbi? Are you still here?â€

  Only the silence answered him.

  Using his Sight, he tried to find some trace of her lingering on the other side.

  Where in the living world the chapel had lost its glory and had become just a small dark corner in a larger, darker world, in the Beyond, a startling transformation was taking place.

  Even as he watched, a golden light blossomed in the center of the room, slowly driving away the darkness and the shadows until it shone with the faith that had once infused its walls, a faith that was slowly forcing its way back in. The room was empty, but it was not without power.

  And in that moment, his heart echoed that brilliance.

  He found himself hoping that one day the burden of vengeance would be lifted from him as well, and that he, too, could feel such a cleansing.

  But for the time being, he had a vow that still needed to be fulfilled.

  Turning off his Sight and returning to the real world, he took one last look around.

  The chapel seemed empty, but deep inside he knew the truth.

  After all these years, he’d been so close.

  Raising his head, he stared into the shadows at the back of the room.

  “Run,†he said softly. “Run while you can. One day I will find you, and on that day there will be a reckoning.â€

  He hefted his sword and stared at the word etched into its blade. “A reckoning, indeed.â€

  With that he turned away and walked back up the aisle and into the rising dawn outside.

  ###

  If you enjoyed HERETIC, here's an advance look at the next novel in the Templar Chronicles series, A SCREAM OF ANGELS...

  PROLOGUE

  He stared down at the object at his feet with the dawning realization that what they had just uncovered could change the face of the world forever.

  Never had he been more exhilarated. Or more frightened. He knew, too, that he was going to have to decide how to deal with the discovery in the next few minutes or the news would spread all over camp faster than a forest fire in the high Sierras. If that happened, it would be too late.

  He and his team had been working along the shores of the Dead Sea for several months now and the season was just about over. In another week or two their permits would expire and, with little to show for all their work, it was doubtful that he could gain the funding for a return trip the following season. Never mind the rising violence in the Occupied Territories that threatened to close the borders permanently.

  But now there was this.

  He turned to the man crouched next to him. “Who else knows?â€

  The other shook his head. “No one. I’ve been working this end of the trench all day by myself. You’re the first to see it, other than me.â€

  Maybe, just maybe, they had a chance then.

  After another moment of deep thought, he said, “Okay, here’s what we are going to do...â€

  * * *

  Later that night.

  His team moved swiftly through the camp and assembled on the far side. The rest of the area was quiet and no one seemed to have noticed their passage. With five hours before sunrise, they should have just enough time to extract the specimen, wrap it up, and get it loaded on the truck before their companions discovered what they were up to.

  There were five of them. All men he’d known for years. All men he trusted implicitly.

  They had sworn the same oaths as he and so he had little doubt that they would go to the grave with the secret if it became necessary.

  He hoped it would not. He hated to think of what he’d have to do if they were discovered in the midst of their activities.

  It was difficult work. The specimen wasn’t too tall, just a hair over seven feet, but the width was twice that and he was determined to remove it in one piece if at all possible. It took them almost three hours just to free it from its ancient resting place. Getting it properly mounted and wrapped took another two. By the time the sky began to glow pink with the coming sunrise, they were working furiously to get the now-secured package loaded up into the back of one of the expedition’s half-ton trucks.

  While the rest of his team had worked through the night to extract the specimen, he had reached out to his network and had set other, longer range plans in motion. He’d secured a site to store the specimen until they could decide what to do with it and had arranged for others to meet them a few hours drive north. Smuggling the specimen across the border and out of the country was going to be difficult, but thankfully he knew more than a few places where the border guards would look the other way for the right amount of money. Heâ�
��™d cross that particular bridge when they came to it. For now, he’d done all he could.

  The team said their goodbyes quietly and then he climbed up beside the driver for the long ride north. The rest of the expedition’s personnel were just beginning to stir and there was no time to waste.

  As they got underway, it occurred to him that he had just organized and carried out the biggest theft in the history of the free world.

  And, God help him, it actually felt good.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You have got to be kidding me!†Sergeant Sean Duncan stared in disgusted disbelief at the hand-held cosmetic mirror that his commanding officer, Knight Commander Cade Williams, had just given to him. “What the heck am I supposed to do with this?†he asked.

  His question was greeted with several raucous calls from the other men in the ranks, suggestions that he check to be sure his hair was in place or that he ask it who was the fairest of them all, which only caused the newest member of the Echo Team to scowl even deeper than usual.

  Cade ignored both the question and its various replies as he finished handing out the mirrors that his executive officer, Master Sergeant Matthew Riley, had managed to procure.

  Heaven only knew where he’d appropriated them from, here in the midst of the Longfort Containment Facility, the Order’s most remote prison complex; Cade was just happy he had. They were desperately needed for what lay ahead.

  When he was done he shot his exec a glance and the big black sergeant called the rest of the team to order.

  “All right, that’s enough. Pipe down and pay attention!â€

  The men were all members of the Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar, as they were once more commonly known. Long thought to have been destroyed in the fourteenth century, the Templars had emerged from hiding during the desperate days of World War II and had joined with the very entity that had excommunicated them en-masse so many centuries before, the Catholic Church. Reborn as a secret military arm of the Vatican, the Templars were now charged with defending mankind from the supernatural in all its many forms.

  Williams was in command of the Echo Team, the most prestigious of the elite strike units fielded by the Templars, and was as known for his ruthless efficiency as he was for his un-orthodox methods. His command squad was made up of four men; himself, Master Sergeant Matthew Riley, Sergeant Sean Duncan and Sergeant Nick Olsen. Riley and Olsen had been with him a long time; they had seen and heard things that would make the average Templar soldier sick with fear, but Cade had won them over with his leadership and his dedication to the cause. They would follow him anywhere, no questions asked.

  Duncan had only been with Echo for a just a few weeks, having spent several years before that on the Preceptor’s security detail, but in that time the unit’s strange and often enigmatic leader had become important to him. Cade had helped him begin to recognize that his own unique gift was just that, a gift, rather than a temptation or a curse. And though he often had difficulty with Cade’s disregard for the Rule, the code of behavior that every knight was sworn to live by, he had come to quickly understand that he could learn a lot from the other man.

  Cade waited until he had their undivided attention and then turned to the smaller man standing rather uneasily off to one side of the group and said, “Warden, if you wouldn’t mind?â€

  “Very good, Knight Commander.†The warden was a short, stout balding individual who looked more like a banker from the Midwest than the man in charge of two hundred of the Order’s most dangerous prisoners. “As you know, Longfort prides itself on the fact that we’ve never had a major riot or a successful escape. Since the facility’s construction in 1957, we have done our utmost to keep the beings you bring to us safely locked away from the rest of humanity in a place where they can do no further harm. I say that simply to let you know how unusual and dangerous our current situation is.â€

  The warden cleared his throat and then continued. “I’m afraid our illustrious history caught up with us last night. Somewhere around eleven pm there was an incident in Cell Block D. We don’t know what caused it or even exactly what happened. What we do know is that while a guard was escorting another prisoner back to cell 26, the door to cell 28

  came open instead and the Eretiku confined there was released into the main corridor.â€

  The men were completely silent now, their attention fixed firmly on the warden.

  “Things rapidly went downhill. We lost the guard and all of the prisoners along that section of the walk before we even knew we had a problem. When we did realize we had a breach, we responded the way we are trained to respond. We locked down the wing and sent in a squad to try and re-secure the prisoners that had escaped.â€

  The warden looked out at them and every single soldier in the room could see the regret so plain on his face. “It was exactly the wrong thing to do. We lost the entire squad, never mind a good portion of the prisoners, before we understood just what it was we were dealing with. When we did, we pulled out, sealed off that section of the complex, and called for help.â€

  Cade took over from there. “We’ve been ordered to secure the cell block and have been given authorization to put down the Eretiku and any of the other prisoners that we feel necessary in order to carry out that order. I don’t need to remind any of you just how difficult this is going to be; Delta lost five men during the initial capture and they were better equipped than we are right now. But we don’t dare delay any longer while waiting for the right equipment to be flown in because if that thing in there finds a way out of the complex we’ll have a much bigger problem on our hands.â€

  He picked up two stacks of photographs from the table beside him and handed one of them to Riley, who in turn made certain each member of the team received a copy.

  “This is what you will be facing,†said Cade.

  The photo showed an elderly woman in dark clothes and a shawl, her face turned mostly away from the camera.

  Several of the men looked up at Cade, to see if he was joking. He most assuredly was not.

  “And here is a picture of a guard who was unlucky enough to meet her gaze during the incident last night.â€

  Riley passed the second stack of photos around. This one showed a man in a hospital bed who appeared to be at the end of a long illness. His cheeks were sunken and hollow, his skin ghostly pale. Large red weeping sores could be seen across the exposed skin of his face, neck and hands and it was clear that they extended beneath his clothing as well. His hair had mostly fallen out; what was left was thin and lifeless.

  “You’re looking at Private Jason Polnick, age 28. Yesterday he was perfectly healthy.†Cade paused, and then said, “They don’t expect him to live out the night.â€

  He looked them over, making certain that they understood the implications of what he was suggesting. “Some of you might not be familiar with the Eretiku. The name itself is Russian and it refers to a woman who has sold her soul to the Devil and returns after death from the grave to prey on the life-force of the living. Don’t let the old crone appearance fool you. She’s incredibly fast, incredibly strong, and meeting her gaze infects you with a wasting sickness that makes Ebola look like the common cold. She also has the unique ability to fool your eyes into thinking she isn’t there. Hence the mirrors. They’ll protect you from her gaze and let you see her at the same time.â€

  Cade moved over to a wall, where a map of the complex had been tacked up. It resembled nothing more than six pointed starfish, with each cell block arcing out like arms from the central hub. “We’ll station half of you here,†pointing to the thick set of blast doors that cut the cell block off from the central hub. “A second group will be here.†The blast doors he pointed to this time were deeper down the block co
rridor and cut off the cells themselves from the guard’s section.

  “Olsen and Callavecchio, you’re with me. You’re the best I’ve got, shot-wise, and we’re going to need everything we can bring to the table in that department because we’ll be shooting at a target we can only see in a three-inch mirror.â€

  The two men nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  Cade looked over at Riley. “Once we’re inside the doors, the first thing we’ll do is plant some demo charges along the walls, rigged to a set of controls that we’ll leave with you. If things go badly for us, and you suspect that thing will find a way out, don’t hesitate to blow the place. We can always rebuild but we can’t afford to let that thing loose.â€

  “Roger that,†said Riley, but it was clear that he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the order.

  Cade turned back to the others. “We do this by the numbers, people, by the numbers.

  Watch your backs, keep your eyes open, and make absolutely certain you don’t look this thing in the eyes. Any questions?â€

  There weren’t any.

  “All right then, let’s suit up.â€

  Books in the Templar Chronicles series

  THE HERETIC

  A SCREAM OF ANGELS

  A TEAR IN THE SKY

  About the Author

  Joe is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles trilogy, as well as the Hunt Chronicles series coming soon from Tor Books in the US and Pan Books in Germany. He has also written four installments in the internationally bestselling adventure series Rogue Angel from Harlequin/Gold Eagle.

  He’s a former president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror writers, a two time Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee, and the man behind RockYourWritingCareer.com, a membership site for writers who want to take their careers to the next level.

  Connect with him online at:

  http://www.josephnassise.com

  http://www.thetemplarchronicles.com