Hunters Rise (Echo Team Book 1)

by Joseph Hutton

  The spectres swarmed around them, striving to pierce their defenses, to gain the opportunity to sink their fangs into the Templars’ flesh or rake them with their claws. At the same time, the blessed blades of the Knights sought to pierce the unnatural forms of the spectres, sending them back across the portal with a shriek of pain and a flash of witchfire every time they connected. The combination of the Knights’ martial skill and the added protection of their ceramic body armor kept them from suffering any serious wounds, though they were both bleeding from half-a-dozen minor injuries by the time they beat back the first wave of the attack.

  When the spectres pulled back to regroup, the two men quickly made their way up the steps and back inside the house, slamming the door behind them.

  Cade moved to the nearest window and drew back the curtain, peering out into the front yard.

  The sorcerers hadn’t moved, though more spectres had emerged from the portal to join the survivors from the first wave.

  “Back door,” said Cade.

  They ran through the lower floor, moving through the living and dining rooms, hoping they hadn’t yet been surrounded. From the far side of the kitchen they could see through the sliding glass doors that led out into the patio at the rear of the house, where a seething mass of spectres pressed up against the glass from the outside, trying to force their way in.

  The glass was bulging inward, the weight of the spectres proving to be too much for it. Duncan was closest to the doors when the fragile material gave way with a loud crash.

  The sergeant disappeared under the onslaught.

  The creatures flowed over him, coming straight for Cade.

  He met them head-on, his sword flashing in the dim light.

  He slashed, hacked, and stabbed, until he was once again able to beat them off. Blood flowed over the right side of his face from a large gash at the edge of his scalp. He could still see through his good eye, and that was all that mattered.

  The spectres had retreated to the backyard and he glanced at them, reassuring himself they remained at a distance, before moving to assess Duncan’s injuries. Cade feared the worst as he moved over to Duncan’s still form, but was relieved to find he’d been knocked unconscious but was still breathing.

  Kneeling next to him, his eyes on the spectres just outside the doors, Cade pulled out his radio phone and tried to call Riley, with no success.

  It wouldn’t be long before the spectres made another assault. He had only moments to figure a way out, or Barnes’s recovery team would have two more bodies to add to their load.

  But he couldn’t think of a solution.

  At least Riley would follow orders; when they didn’t make the rendezvous, he’d head for Bristol, Flynn in tow, and confront the Preceptor. There was some small measure of comfort in that.

  Then it hit him. He didn’t know if it would work, but he was willing to give it a try.

  “You’re probably not going to like this,” he said to his unconscious teammate, “but we’re all out of options.” Sheathing his own sword, he scooped Duncan’s still form over his shoulder and grabbed the man’s discarded weapon in one hand. He ran down the hall and up the steps to the second floor. He was already tired; there was no way he was going to be able to hold off another attack, not without Duncan’s help.

  By the time Cade made it to the end of the hall, the spectres had rallied and were in the house, swarming at the foot of the stairs and climbing toward them.

  Cade raced down the corridor, making for the master study where he and Duncan had found Commander Stone’s remains.

  The first of the spectres reached the second floor and let out a bone-chilling shriek as Cade burst into the study.

  Behind him, the hallway filled with screaming wraiths.

  The mirror, and the potential salvation it offered, was ten feet away.

  A searing-cold hand clawed at his back, slashing partly through the back panel of his protective vest. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he dashed the final few steps across the room, planted one foot on the lip of the great mahogany desk that stood between him and the wall, and launched the two of them directly at the mirror covering the wall just beyond with one shove of his powerful legs.

  If I’m wrong, we’re both dead, he thought and then they were gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The twenty minutes came and went.

  No Cade.

  Riley chalked it up to the bad weather and did his best to curb his anxiety. He’d already called Major Barnes at the Broadmoor commandery and filled him in. A recovery team was on its way, with an extra squad of troops just to be safe.

  Thirty minutes.

  As Flynn sat watch by the window, Riley paced the small room, his frustration growing by the minute. Cade should have been here by now, rain or no rain. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut. He’d been Cade’s right-hand man for too long just to leave him out there on his own.

  By the time forty-five minutes had passed since Cade’s phone call, Riley made his decision. Grabbing his shotgun off the couch, he headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Flynn asked, from his position by the window.

  “To find Cade,” Riley replied, opening the door and stepping out into the darkened parking lot beyond.

  Flynn grabbed his gun and followed. “’Bout damn time.”

  Riley pulled up to the house and both men cautiously got out of the vehicle to investigate. Flynn laid his hand on the hood of Cade’s vehicle. “Cold.”

  “Not good.”

  Weapons in hand, they continued forward.

  The darkness veiled both the house and yard. It wasn’t until they were only a few feet away from the front door that they noticed the smashed windows and claw marks. Riley held up one hand, and both of them instantly stopped and dropped into a crouch, their eyes on the door in front of them.

  Nothing moved.

  Riley considered the situation. Almost an hour had passed since they’d last had contact, but that didn’t mean the action was over.

  He remembered Cade’s admonition about being a hero but discarded it. If they waited for reinforcements, it might mean life or death for Cade or Duncan if they were lying injured somewhere inside.

  Riley started forward, Flynn at his back.

  The search of the house went smoothly, and they didn’t encounter any resistance. They found Stone’s body upstairs in the study just where Cade had said it would be. In the kitchen, they found Duncan’s rifle, lying in a pool of drying blood and shattered glass.

  Of their teammates, Duncan and Cade, there was no sign.

  Staring at the destruction around him, Riley found himself asking the same question over and over again in his mind.

  Where are you, boss?

  Chapter Twenty

  Duncan regained consciousness slowly. His body hurt, and his mind tried to shy away from the pain, far happier to drift in a dream state than to face reality. He pulled himself to a sitting position, shaking his head to clear his thoughts.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he could only stare in silent amazement at the landscape around him.

  He sat amidst a patch of rocks on the shore of what appeared to be a large lake or inland sea. Small stones covered the beach, worn smooth by the water’s caress. The sun was sinking out on the horizon, and its light burnished the water’s surface with an unusual glow.

  The incongruity of a sun setting over water on the east coast might have registered if it wasn’t for the astonishing fact that everything around him was some shade of grey.

  The stones.

  The sky.

  The water.

  Even the sunlight.

  All grey. A million different subtleties and shades to be sure, but grey nonetheless.

  It was only when he looked down at himself that he could see some small vestiges of color, though even this was washed out and faded. His clothing, even his skin, seemed to be cast with a strange pallor, like a corpse too long in the te
pid air of a newly sealed tomb.

  He scrambled to his feet to get a better look around, and in doing so caught another flash of color from a nearby pile of rocks. He cautiously made his way over to it.

  A dark form was stretched out behind the rock, and Duncan’s relief was palpable when he realized that it was Commander Williams.

  Duncan rushed over to his fallen teammate.

  Cade was unconscious, bruised and battered, but seemed to be without serious injury. Duncan dared not use the dark, murky water to revive him. Left with no other way to help him, he resorted to sitting by his side, waiting for Cade to regain consciousness.

  It seemed to take forever.

  As he sat there, a dense fog rolled in off the water, drifting in and out among the boulders that jutted out from the dark sand. He quickly realized that anything could be lurking in that fog. After what he’d already gone through, the thought made him more than a little uneasy.

  When Cade did finally revive, Duncan was full of questions; questions regarding where they were, how they had arrived, and what they intended to do in order to get home.

  After turning the man’s sword back over to him, Cade did his best to answer them.

  “Let’s start with the easiest question - where we are,” said Cade. “I call it the Beyond, for lack of a better term.” He explained how he had first discovered his unique ability to see into this otherworldly plane after awakening in the hospital following the attack on his family, and how this led to his discovery that he had the power to walk between them. He filled Duncan in on what he knew of the place in general. Considering he’d never spoken about this with another human being, Cade thought he did an admirable job summing it all up.

  Duncan, however, found his explanations anything but reassuring.

  “So how did we get here?” he asked, looking around at the desolate landscape around them. “What happened to the portal that we came through?”

  “To be honest, I’ve never brought anyone across with me before. Wasn’t even sure I could. It’s probably just simple luck that we didn’t end up in the drink. As for the portal, I haven’t a clue. It’s probably around here somewhere.”

  “So you don’t know where we are?”

  Cade smiled grimly. “Sure I do. We’re in the Beyond. I’m just not certain of our precise location.”

  “Lord help us!” Duncan said.

  “I’m not so certain the Lord even knows this place exists,” Cade replied under his breath, but would say no more on the subject when pressed for an explanation.

  They spent several moments discussing what to do next. They had to find another rift, of that Cade was certain. The rifts were the only method he knew for getting back to the real world.

  “So all we really need to do is find another of these portals and go back the way we came in, right?”

  Cade shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.” He remembered the first time he’d come here, the wonder and amazement he’d felt. “See, every mirror in our world can potentially be used to make the journey across the barrier into the Beyond. But once here your choices become far more limited. The rifts only appear haphazardly and only for a short time. It’s as if our world is spinning at a rate different from this one. When the movement of the two worlds brings a rift here in connection with a mirror there, a portal appears.”

  The first time, he’d slipped on his bathroom floor. Rather than smashing the mirror, his arm had passed effortlessly through the glass. A few experiments had led to his using the large mirror in the master bedroom to cross entirely to the other side. Since then, he’d been here a dozen or so times. Enough that he understood the peculiarities of travel in and out of the Beyond, but not much else. “I’ve seen them suddenly pop up out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. It’s one of the reasons why I never stray too far from the place where I came in. As long as I don’t spend too much time here, I can safely get back out again before the portal disappears.”

  As he spoke he climbed wearily to his feet and began looking around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sparkling light that was the telltale sign of a nearby portal.

  Unfortunately, visibility was down to less than ten feet.

  There was still more bad news to give to his companion. “So, yes, we have to find another portal. But when we do, we won’t have any control over where we reenter the real world. For all we know, we could end up in the back room of a church in Moscow or in some peasant’s hut in Brazil just as easily as we could end up close to where we came in. Time and distance are different here.”

  “But at least we’d be back in our world, where we belong,” Duncan replied.

  Cade couldn’t argue with that.

  They made the decision to follow the water’s edge as a guide, hoping to come upon another portal quickly. If they did not, they could always backtrack along their path without fear of getting lost and try again in the other direction. They used a stack of small rocks to mark their starting location and prepared to set out.

  That was when they noticed the eyes watching them from the fog.

  “Commander?” Duncan said.

  “I see them,“ Cade replied.

  Dark, twisted shapes moved through the fog around them. For the moment they were staying back, watching and waiting; but Cade suspected that, whatever they were, they wouldn’t remain there for long.

  He considered their options. They could either take the fight to whatever was out there or they could head out into the water and hope the others didn’t follow. One glance at the oily-looking surf let him know that wading knee deep into its depths was not something he wanted to do unless absolutely necessary. Neither did charging the fog appeal to him. He didn’t know exactly what was out there, but it was reasonable to assume it was dangerous, whatever it was. A benign encounter in this place was a rare thing.

  But a decision was needed and he chose the least threatening one. “Start backing toward the water,” Cade whispered.

  Duncan nodded.

  They backed up slowly, swords in hand.

  The creatures, whatever they were, stayed hidden in the fog as they followed them.

  As the Templars neared the water’s edge, a sudden sound reached their ears. It came from behind them, out across the water, a faint, distant splash.

  “What is it?” Duncan asked, but Cade only shook his head.

  From out of the fog came another splash, this time closer, and a dark, shadowy form could be seen making its way toward them. Slowly it advanced, and it soon became clear that the sound they were hearing was an oar or steering pole being dipped repeatedly into the water as the vessel drew closer.

  Cade stood at the water’s edge, waiting for whatever was approaching.

  After a moment, Duncan moved to join him.

  As the two men watched, the approaching figure finally emerged from the fog.

  Charon the Ferryman, Cade thought, a shiver of fear striking his heart as he gazed at the newcomer, who was wrapped in a long, hooded robe that prevented the two Knights from gathering any specific details. The figure certainly did resemble the mystical boatman of the River Styx and the narrow boat the newcomer piloted did nothing to dispel the illusion.

  The three of them stood there, staring at each other for several seconds. No one said a word. Then the ferryman lifted an arm, its hand all but hidden in the bulky folds of its sleeve, and gestured for the two soldiers to step into the boat.

  “No way I’m going anywhere with that thing,” Duncan said under his breath, but with the other creatures closing in on them from behind, he had little hope that they could escape under cover of the fog or fight their way through the marauding pack.

  At the moment, the ferryman seemed to be their best option.

  A howling cry came out of the fog, mournful and hungry at the same time.

  Duncan visibly started at the sound.

  The figure on the boat gestured again, clearly indicating that the two of them should board the
vessel before the creatures, whatever they were, attacked.

  Cade moved forward and grasped the prow of the boat in one hand. The ferryman moved to the rear of the vessel, preparing to cast off and giving them room to board.

  Behind Duncan, Cade could see several sets of eyes peering at them out of the fog. Misshapen forms could be seen moving closer, cutting off their escape.

  “Come on!” Cade yelled.

  Duncan cast one last look to the rear and then rushed for the boat.

  The creatures chose that moment to charge.

  Cade waited for Duncan to jump aboard, then pushed their boat into shallow water before clambering inside. A shrieking cry sounded right at his heels and he turned to see a wave of sinuous serpent-like forms rushing across the sand toward them, all scales and gleaming teeth.

  Too late! his mind cried, but he had forgotten their mysterious benefactor.

  The ferryman swiftly moved forward, standing over Cade where he sprawled on the floor of the boat. As the creatures closed the remaining distance to the water’s edge the ferryman struck out with its staff, slashing through their forms with ease.

  When the beasts retreated, the ferryman used that opportunity to take the boat out into deeper water.

  Their adversaries chose not to follow.

  They moved out through the shallows, headed for what Cade hoped was deeper water. The fog was thicker there. Cade quickly lost any sense of direction in the heavy, shrouding mist, but their guide moved the boat through the water with deft precision. He was about to begin questioning their rescuer when Duncan cried out in alarm and backpedaled away from the edge of the boat.

  “Sweet Jesus!”

  Cade looked over the side, trying to see what had brought such an unlikely curse to his teammate’s lips.