While his brain was still trying to process that last item, the Necromancer reached out and picked it up. His song rose higher, mixing with those of his followers, the entire chorus seeming to rise toward some mysterious denouement. Cade felt something in his ear pop and blood trickled down the side of his face.
The Necromancer laid his left hand flat upon the table top. He brought his right hand, the one holding the cleaver, up over his head.
As the song swelled to its climax, the Necromancer shouted out a word of power and brought the cleaver whistling downward. It slashed through his wrist – skin, flesh, muscle, and bone – as if it wasn’t there and embedded itself half an inch deep into the wooden surface of the table.
The veins in the Necromancer’s neck stood out like taut wires and Cade thought Logan was going to scream and collapse to the floor in pain, but the sorcerer held himself together long enough to let go of the cleaver and snatch up the Hand. Without hesitation he shoved the base of that shriveled relic against the bleeding stump of his severed wrist.
The moment the Necromancer’s blood touched the mummified skin of the Hand power flashed across the room in a wave that was almost, but not quite, visible to the eye. Cade felt it as though and it slammed him against the pillar with awesome force. Two of the Necromancer’s acolytes were thrown to the ground and Cade thought he heard the unmistakable sound of a neck snapping under the impact. Cade watched in horror as the flesh of the Hand filled out, the skin pushing away from the bones, the blackened, shriveled husk swelling and turning a healthy pink color.
Silence fell.
The laughter began moments later, starting slowly but building in volume and tone until it was echoing around the massive room.
The laughter was coming from the Necromancer and when he thrust his hands into the air in a victory stance, Cade could see that the Hand had grafted to the sorcerer’s wrist completely, as if he had lived with it since the day he had been born. Power literally dripped from its fingers in blackish-green threads of arcane might.
“Behold! The Hand of Glory reborn!” Logan shouted.
There was more than a touch of madness in his voice.
The Blackhawks set down with military precision and discharged their passengers before climbing back up into the night sky above where they would remain until the extraction order was given. The minute Riley’s feet hit the concrete he forgot about the choppers, confident that the pilots knew their jobs and needing, right now, to concentrate on his own.
The windows of the warehouse ahead of them were lit from within by a strange greenish-black hue and Riley knew that they had found their target.
That was where they would find the Necromancer.
And hopefully Cade.
He charged forward, knowing without needing to look that his men were forming up around him in a classic SWAT formation with overlapping fields of fire that would support and enhance their effectiveness as a strike unit. Five yards to his right another squad was doing the same and Riley had a moment to admire the precision of the team’s operation before figures lurched toward them from the shadows surrounding the building.
It took only seconds for the lead men in each squad to recognize the newcomers for what they were – reanimated corpses fresh from the grave, or, in this case, the sea – and to pass the signal to the rest. Gunfire arced out with brutal efficiency, cutting a swatch through the enemy ranks.
Just as Cade had discovered earlier, however, these creatures were only minimally affected by the bullets that ripped through their rotting forms. A few fell to lucky headshots, but the rest simply regained their feet or continued on undeterred by the gunfire.
In seconds they would be among the knights.
“Swords!” Riley called out over the team’s communications equipment and his men ceased their fire, drew their holy blades, and met the oncoming charge straight on.
Swords flashed, bodies collided, but the precision and unity of the Templars was no match for the restless dead. Riley and his men chopped through the enemy ranks in moments, leaving the field littered with corpses and the path to the warehouse clear of obstruction.
Riley raised his sword and signaled for the squads to form up on him as they converged on the entry point, a tall warehouse door that filled half of the structure’s rear wall and used to bring the oversized shipping containers into storage. Two men ran forward, placed demolition charges, and ran back. Riley crouched down and turned his back.
The shout came next. “Fire in the hole!”
The Necromancer snatched up the Staff of Anubis and power flashed again, surrounding him in a sickly black corona of arcane energy that seemed to shift and dance with a mind of its own.
Without another word to Cade, Simon Logan pointed the Staff of Anubis at Gabrielle and shouted out a long string of words in ancient Sumerian.
Power flashed out from the end of the staff and struck the feather around Gabrielle’s neck, enveloping her in an inky ball of energy so thick that she was momentarily lost from sight as the ground beneath Cade’s feet seemed to shake in response.
Riley raced in through the breach in the warehouse door, his eyes going wide at the sight of the Necromancer wielding the Staff of Anubis in what looked to be an attack against Cade’s wife, Gabrielle, while Cade himself struggled against the bonds that had him tied to a support pillar nearby. Between the two groups were several of Logan’s personal entourage, who appeared to be involved in some kind of ritual summoning that looked suspiciously familiar to Riley.
He centered the muzzle of his gun on the Necromancer’s back and fired three swift shots.
All three struck home with deadly force, throwing the Necromancer forward and sending the Staff of Anubis tumbling free from his hand. The arcane power flashing about the room snapped off with the suddenness of someone flipping a switch.
Now released from the onslaught of all that energy, Gabrielle’s body sagged against its bonds in the metal frame on the other side of the room. Her head lolled back and forth on her chest for a moment before going still.
Riley rushed over to Cade’s side. Riley could sense the battle winding down around him, the Necromancer’s acolytes surrendering now that their leader was out of the fray, but Riley’s attention was focused now on his friend. He cut through Cade’s bonds with his knife. The Knight Commander tumbled forward and only Riley’s quick hands kept Cade from collapsing to the floor. Riley was helping him try to sit up on his own when a voice cut across the chatter and commotion filling the room.
“Cade? Cade, where am I?”
Gabrielle!
Cade couldn’t believe what he was hearing and his grip tightened like a vice on Riley’s arm as he muttered, “Up. Help me up.”
He didn’t think he’d spoken loudly enough, but Riley must have heard him because his friend was suddenly helping him to his feet so he could see.
Cade looked across the warehouse floor, across the death and destruction, across the blood and the bodies of the dead, and looked into his wife’s eyes for the first time in seven years.
“What happened?” she asked. “Why am I in this thing?”
It really was her, he realized.
She was here. Alive.
Whole!
Summoning his strength, Cade replied, “I love you. I’m here. I’ll explain everything.”
Then to Riley, “Leave me. Get her down.”
Cade looked up to reassure her once more and that’s when it happened.
Gabrielle’s body convulsed.
One minute she was looking at him with a sense of deep bewilderment and then her body snapped as if she’d been hit with a bolt of lightning.
For one, long moment she was still with them, afraid and uncertain of what was going on, and then she blinked and convulsed again.
When she opened her eyes a moment later, someone, no, something, had taken up residence there.
It stared across the room at Cade and then it smiled.
That smile promised a h
undred horrible things, each one worst than the last.
But that was nothing compared to when she spoke.
“Hello, Cade,” said the Adversary from behind her eyes.
As her husband shouted in horror, “Gabrielle” flexed her arms and legs, snapping the iron frame holding her prisoner like a small twig. She landed in a crouch and as she rose to her feet, great, grey and black molted wings sprouted from her back and spread out behind her with the snap of clothes on the line.
The muzzles of Templar weapons swiveled in her direction and shots began to snap out, peppering the air around her, but she flexed those great wings and launched herself upward, smashing through the roof and disappearing into the night sky high above.
A single black feather drifted down to the floor of the warehouse in the wake of her passing.
THE END
(Continued in JUDGEMENT DAY)
Coming 2013
Books by Joseph Nassise
The Templar Chronicles
The Heretic
A Scream of Angels
A Tear in the Sky
Infernal Games
Judgment Day (coming June 2013)
Babylon Rising (coming Oct 2013)
The Great Undead War
By the Blood of Heroes
On Her Majesty’s Behalf (coming July 2013)
The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle
Eyes to See
King of the Dead
Watcher of the Dark (coming Nov 2013)
HELLstalkers
The Cereberus Protocol
Rogue Angel
The Spirit Banner
The Dragon’s Mark
Tear of the Gods
Cradle of Solitude
Library of Gold
Staff of Judea
The Vanishing Tribe (coming June 2013)
About the Author
Joseph Nassise is the author of more than twenty novels, including the internationally bestselling TEMPLAR CHRONICLES series, the JEREMIAH HUNT trilogy, and the GREAT UNDEAD WAR series. He has also written several books in the popular Rogue Angel action-adventure series.
His work has been nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award and has been translated into half a dozen languages to date. He has written for both the comic and role-playing game industries and also served two terms as president of the Horror Writers Association, the world's largest organization of professional horror and dark fantasy writers.
Read more at Joseph Nassise’s site.
Infernal Games (Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Series) Page 17
