“It’s my intention to mount a raid against the Chiang Shih encampment and rescue Sergeant Duncan. I’ll not leave one of my men in the hands of those vile things and a rapid strike seems to have the best chance of succeeding.
“Understand that this is strictly a volunteer operation. Anyone choosing to accompany me will more than likely face charges of insubordination and disobeying a direct order, never mind mounting an illegal and unsanctioned operation. Nor can we expect back-up should anything go wrong and I’m sure I don’t need to remind any of you how often that can happen. Our previous excursion is a perfect example.
“Still, Master Sergeant Riley and I can’t do this alone. We need all of the help we can get. So we’re going to step outside of the room, give you a chance to talk this over amongst yourselves. There is no shame in choosing to stay behind. After all, I am asking you to follow an illegal order. All I ask is that you give us enough time to make the crossing before reporting our departure to the authorities at Ravensgate.”
Cade glanced over at Riley, to be certain he hadn’t missed anything, and at the slight nod of the other man’s head, he wrapped it up.
“So talk it over. Make your decision with your head, as well as your heart. I’ll see you in a moment.”
Cade stepped down from the altar steps, heading for the door leading to the hallway with Riley at his side when someone called his name.
He turned to find the entire contingent of men on their feet. Sergeant Davis from First Squad had come out of the pews to stand in front of them.
“I think I speak for all of us, sir, when I tell you that there is no need for further discussion,” said Davis. “We’ll follow you wherever you ask us to go. In this world or the next.”
He snapped to attention and behind him each and every one of the other soldiers did the same.
Cade looked over at Riley, who grinned back and said, “Looks like you’ve got yourself a strike team, Commander. Let’s go get our man.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A bucket of ice-cold water was thrown in his face and Duncan awoke, spluttering. When he could breathe again he realized that he was now hanging upside down, his wrists and ankles bound with thick chains, the slack between his legs slung around a hook protruding from the ceiling, leaving him trussed up like a side of beef ready for curing.
He tried to raise his head, wanting a better look at the chains that held him, but even that slight movement brought a wave of overwhelming pain, forcing him to relax lest he pass out again.
He was naked, that much he knew. The air around him was cold and clammy on his bruised and battered body. His vision was limited, his left eye swollen nearly shut, and his lips stung where they had cracked and split open. The cut on his forehead, though not deep, throbbed in time with the beat of his heart, as did the knife wound in his shoulder. The latter, at least, had stopped bleeding. His arms dangled down over his head, his fingertips just barely touching the floor, but the hours he’d spent chained up had robbed him of any feeling in them.
The pain was good.
He welcomed it, basked in its presence, for it let him know he was still alive. And every moment he lived and breathed was another moment in which he might be rescued.
The Order would come for him, he was sure of it.
He clung to the notion the way a drowning swimmer will cling to an errant piece of wreckage, steadfast in his belief. To allow any other consideration to enter his thoughts would bring doubt. Close on doubt’s heels lurked despair and he knew that to succumb to despair in this place would be the beginning of the end.
He had to stay strong, had to believe that Cade and the others would come for him. It was just a matter of time, he told himself, just a matter of time. Hang in there.
A foot shuffled nearby and dragged him back to the here and now. Out of the corner of his eye he could see one of his jailers standing there, waiting. Duncan soon found out for what.
With a clank of bolts being withdrawn, a door on the other side of the room opened and Bishop walked in.
The very sight of him set Duncan’s body twitching involuntarily. His mind might still be his own but Duncan knew that his body had betrayed him sometime earlier. Hours of pain at this man’s hands had instilled in him a conditioned set of reactions. He could feel his heart rate accelerating and his bladder threatened to let go against his will. The mind rebelled but the flesh remembered.
The flesh remembered.
He had to hold out, had to give Cade and the others time to get here.
It wouldn’t be much longer.
Couldn’t be much longer.
Bishop crossed the room and squatted in front of him. As if he were reading his mind, Bishop smiled and said, “They’re not coming for you, you know.”
Duncan looked away, saying nothing.
“Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re on your own. They won’t risk the entire squad just to rescue one man.”
Duncan focused on a patch of nearby wall, refusing to acknowledge what the other was saying.
“It makes no tactical sense. You know it as well as I do. Cade won’t risk the others. Not to rescue someone like you. The new guy. The guy who hasn’t even been a member of the team long enough to matter.”
That last comment broke Duncan’s carefully manufactured fa�ade. Anger flared somewhere inside.
“Shut the hell up, asshole.”
He regretted the comment the moment it left his lips.
Bishop simply nodded in disappointment. “Don’t you know? I’m well acquainted with our dear friend Cade Williams.”
Like a cat playing with its food, Bishop reached up and began prodding Duncan’s body, each jab sending waves of agony washing over him. Duncan clamped his mouth shut, refusing to cry out.
“He’s not coming.”
“I should know.”
“Once, I was in the same position as you are; lost, trapped, beaten and bruised but refusing to give up my companions, trusting that they would return and rescue me from the hell in which I found myself. And do you know what happened?”
Duncan steadfastly refused to make a sound.
Quick as a snake, Bishop’s hand shot out and grasped Duncan’s wounded shoulder, squeezing it viciously.
The pain was excruciating.
Duncan screamed.
Bishop shouted over him, wanting to be sure Duncan heard him beyond his pain. “He left me there, lost and alone, at the mercy of my captors! Abandoned by the one man who could have rescued me. Just as surely as he’s abandoned you!”
Bishop let go, turning away in disgust.
Gasping, Duncan fought to keep from blacking out. He was dimly aware of the door opening, but the pain kept him from giving it his full attention. It was only when the tramp of booted feet intruded on his consciousness that he forced his eyes open to see what new pleasures Bishop had in store for him.
Three other Chiang Shih had entered the room, including the hulking brute who had beaten Duncan senseless the night before, but the sight of them didn’t bother the captive at all. He was too focused on the four humans who followed in their wake. Dirty, disheveled, sporting fresh set bruises of their own, still Duncan recognized them as the three priests and the young nun who had spoken with him and Cade several days before. Seeing them, Duncan was embarrassed by his nakedness, but there wasn’t much he could do about it so he tried to put it out of his head.
Bishop said something in a language Duncan didn’t understand and the three Chiang Shih moved toward him.
Bracing himself for another beating, Duncan was surprised when they lifted him up, freed the chain from the hook above and set him down on his feet, unharmed. His legs couldn’t hold him and he collapsed to the cold stone floor. The brute hissed in annoyance and hauled Duncan back up to his knees, forcing him to kneel. To be certain he didn’t collapse a second time, the creature kept his hand firmly locked on the top of Duncan’s skull, holding him upright.
Another command from Bishop and
the four captives were then hauled forward and forced to their knees, facing Duncan with only a few feet separating them. Duncan could see the pain and terror in their eyes, could hear their unspoken pleas for him to do something, anything, to get them away from these monsters.
Bishop stalked forward until he stood behind the first of the captives and stared down at Duncan.
After a long silence, broken only by the nun’s quiet weeping, Bishop reached out and placed his clawed hands on either side of the priest’s head.
“All right,” he said softly, “time for a few simple questions. If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll let these people go.”
Bishop smiled, a sudden, predatory smile full of teeth. “Tell me the make-up and armament of all the Templar units now within the city limits.”
Duncan stared directly into Bishop’s yellow eyes. Slowly he shook his head and repeated his answer from earlier.
“I can’t tell you that.”
Bishop shrugged.
“Okay, have it your way.”
With a quick snap of his wrists, he broke the priest’s neck and then stepped back, watching as the body crashed to the floor, the man’s sightless eyes staring into eternity.
Bishop stepped over to the next man in line.
“No, please,” the priest whimpered, leaning forward in a vain attempt to stay out of reach, but Bishop just laughed, grabbed the man’s hair, and hauled him upward. He leaned down, his tongue flicking out and caressing the edge of the man’s ear.
The hot stink of excrement filled the room and the man’s face went slack with fear.
Duncan felt sorry for him, but there wasn’t anything he could do to save him. There was no way he was giving up Echo or any of the other strike teams in the vicinity. Doing so would leave the entire populace of Boston at the Chiang Shih’s hands, for with the information Bishop wanted he could wipe out all of the strike teams before they could even be brought to bear against the threat.
No, the priest was a man of God. He of all people should understand the reward waiting for him in heaven, should know that his life here on earth was being exchanged for something far better.
They were both soldiers in Christ; there wasn’t any choice to be made.
Bishop repeated his question.
Without taking his gaze off the face of the man before him, Duncan shook his head.
This time Bishop wasn’t as gentle. He grabbed the man’s head between his hands and wrenched it savagely to the side, twisting it until the flesh of the neck ripped apart and the head came free. Blood spurted upward, splashing across Bishop’s dark coat, as well as the face of the priest kneeling next in line.
Bishop cast the man’s decapitated head aside and Duncan was certain he would remember the odd thumping sound it made as it skipped across the stone floor and out of sight somewhere behind him for the rest of his life. He said a prayer for the man’s soul and then added one for his own.
When he looked up he found Bishop watching him closely. The man’s eyes narrowed and he looked to the two remaining prisoners, then back at Duncan before seeming to come to a decision. He barked out another command.
The Chiang Shih soldiers stepped up, unchained the remaining priest, and dragged him away from the nun. As Duncan looked on they forced him to lie flat on the floor and held him down with arms and legs extended. The priest had his eyes squeezed shut and was praying aloud the entire time, stopping only when one of the Chiang Shih cuffed him on the side of the head.
Bishop knelt down in front of Duncan so that they were eye to eye. “You’re a soldier. Death doesn’t scare you. I can understand that. And I can also understand your willingness to let your fellow captives give their lives in order to protect those you consider friends. After all, what are they to you?”
His reasoning was off, but Duncan wasn’t about to correct him. He knew it didn’t matter what the vile thing in front of him believed. God would understand the reasoning.
But Bishop wasn’t finished.
“There are things worse than death, however, as I’m sure you understand Sergeant Duncan.” He drew out the name, mocking him. “Things that would make a good little knight like you recoil in horror and disgust. Things to damn your soul for all eternity.”
He stalked over to where his companions held the prisoner to the floor. “Can you justify your silence in the face of something like that? Can you hold your tongue, knowing your silence can send another to the bottomless pit, their link to the divine forever severed?”
He straddled the priest, putting one knee on either side of the man’s chest, and glanced once more at Duncan. “Let’s just see, shall we?”
The priest began twisting and turning his head, trying to keep it free, but Bishop grabbed it with both hands and held it steady against the man’s struggles. Bending down, Bishop forced his lips over the other man’s, as if he was going to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but rather than breathing out, Bishop breathed in.
The priest’s eyes widened and then his body bucked upward spasmodically, once, twice, three times. Bishop rode them out like a cowboy on a bronco, as if he’d done this a thousand times before, and after the third spasm the priest went limp.
Bishop gave a small grunt of pleasure and began to work at his victim, sucking at his face, his cheeks puffing in and out furiously as he dragged something free of the priest’s body. An odd slurping sound filled the room. For Duncan’s benefit he pulled back slightly, revealing the prize he sought.
A luminescent, mist-like substance was being pulled from deep inside the priest, flowing out from his mouth, across the space between the two men, and into Bishop’s gaping maw. The Chiang Shih commander drank it down greedily, his chest and shoulder’s heaving as he worked to bring as much of it up as possible. In contrast the priest’s body began to shrink in upon itself, the flesh turning a slate grey while shriveling up like a dried piece of fruit as Bishop sucked more and more of the man’s life force out of his form.
It went on far longer than Duncan could bear to watch. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, praying for the man’s soul.
At last the slurping sound stopped.
When Duncan opened his eyes, he found Bishop squatting a few feet away, an amused smile on his face. Behind him, the desiccated body of the priest lay on the stone floor, discarded like so much trash.
Duncan faced his tormentor defiantly, both for himself and the dead man on the floor before him. “You can do whatever you want to our bodies, but our souls belong to God and nothing you can do can separate us from Him. Killing us only hastens our entrance into heaven.”
Bishop laughed in his face.
Movement caught Duncan’s attention.
A sudden, unexplained dread stole over him as he turned to get a better look.
On the ground behind Bishop, the man Duncan had assumed was dead slowly turned his head.
Their eyes met.
The priest’s groan of horror almost drowned out Duncan’s own.
Unable to look, Duncan tried to turn away, but Bishop wouldn’t let him. He grabbed Duncan and forced him to face the last of the four prisoners, the young nun.
“Look at her!” he commanded.
Duncan did. She was young, in her late twenties, thirty at most, with curly brown hair. Her blue eyes blazed in sharp contrast to the greyness all around them.
“Don’t tell him anything,” she said in a trembling voice, holding Duncan’s gaze, doing what she could to put on a brave show.
But all the Templar sergeant could see was an image of her face, sunken in on itself, horribly transformed like the priest’s as the very life force within her was sucked up to satisfy the ravenous hunger of the vile creature standing nearby. There was no way he could watch this innocent young woman suffer like that, particularly when he considered the spiritual ramifications of the act. To have one’s soul forever trapped like that, cut off from God? Damn the consequences, but he couldn’t do it. The moans of pain and horror still iss
uing from the shadows in the corner only helped confirm his decision.
Enough was enough.
When Bishop quietly began asking questions a moment later, Duncan told him what he wanted to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Voices intruded, brought him back from the darkness into the light.
Duncan lay still, listening, not wanting to give away the fact that he was awake until he could get his bearings and figure out what was going on.
After he revealed what he knew to Bishop, he was emotionally and physically exhausted. That hadn’t stopped his captors from beating him practically senseless again. He had vague memories of being dragged out of the ruined building, across the rocky ground, and into one of the tents set up on the plain. At that point he’d finally lapsed into unconsciousness and had no idea how long he’d been out.
The voices were close, but didn’t sound as if they were in the same room, and so he decided to take a chance. His left eye was still swollen shut, but his right worked and by cracking it slightly he was able to get a limited view of the room without, he hoped, revealing to anyone that might be watching that he was awake and aware.
.He lay on a dirt floor. That much was immediately obvious from the dirt and rock directly in front of his face. From the lack of feeling in his hands and feet he knew he was trussed up like a Christmas turkey. He turned his head slightly and as his eyesight adjusted to the dim light, he was able to make out a bit more. His memory of the tent was correct; he lay inside a large structure made of canvas or some similar material, supported on a framework of thick wooden posts. The room he lay in was separated from another by a large piece of cloth. A thin strip of light revealed where the gap hadn’t been closed completely.
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