A hideously waterlogged corpse bobbed to the surface of the water, its features twisted into a parody of a smile.
Cade stumbled backward, bile filling his throat.
The weeds were not weeds at all, but the tangled hair of a thousand corpses, each one standing upright in the shallow water leading to the beach.
To get to the shore, they were going to have to pull them aside one at a time, creating a route for the Ferryman to use in getting them close enough to disembark.
The two Templars set about their task.
It was exhausting work. The corpses had been in the water for some time, growing heavy as water accumulated in their tissues, but had also been preserved in some strange way to keep them from decaying. It took both men to move a single corpse and often another would bob directly into the path to replace the one they had just removed. Both men were forced to turn away more than once, the expressions on the bodies of the dead oddly unsettling to the battle-hardened warriors. It was almost as if some sorcery had been placed on the bodies for just that purpose.
They made slow progress, but progress it was, and some time later they finally managed to break through the corpse field and enter cleaner water on the other side.
They were close enough now to see the slash in the sand where another boat had been temporarily beached and to make out the double set of footprints that ran up the beach to the jungle beyond.
Even more encouragingly, there weren’t any tracks leading back down the beach from the treeline.
Whoever had landed was apparently still on the island.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Ferryman brought his vessel up as close to the beach as possible. Riley and Cade jumped out and waded through the knee-deep water until they reached the shore. When they turned back to thank their mysterious benefactor, they discovered that he had already turned his vessel around and was headed for deeper water.
“Great. Just try finding a taxi out here,” Riley said and despite the position they were in, Cade couldn’t help but laugh.
The tracks they’d seen from offshore were easy enough to locate with just a few minutes of searching. Drawing their weapons, they followed them up the beach and into the trees beyond.
They hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when they found Bishop.
Or, rather, what was left of him.
His severed head had been impaled on one end of a sharpened stake. The other end had been driven into the ground in the middle of the trail, eliminating any chance that they could have passed this way without seeing it. The ripped and shredded remains of the rest of his body lay scattered in and out of the trees just beyond, many of them impossible to identify.
The two Templar warriors stopped and carefully surveyed the area around them, wary of an attack, but the woods around them seemed empty. Whoever had done this appeared to have moved on.
Then Bishop’s head spoke to them.
“Aren’t you even curious, Officer Cade? About why I’m in your house? Why shot your partner and am holding your wife hostage. Aren’t you even curious about why I’m going to kill you both?”
The voice chilled Cade down to his very core, for it was a voice out of his past, a voice he never expected to hear again, a voice from that horrible summer day when a thing posing as a human killer had invaded his home and slaughtered his beloved wife right before his eyes.
It was the voice of the Adversary.
Riley had been friends with Cade long enough to know the personal relevance behind those particular phrases and he shot a quick glance at his commander.
“Stay cool. He’s trying to rile you,” Riley said, sotto voce.
Fighting to restrain the rage coursing through him, Cade could only nod, not trusting himself to speak. He knew Riley was right; the Adversary was baiting him, trying to goad him into acting rashly, just as he did in his recurring dream. Cade also knew that if he gave into that anger, if he let it control him and guide his decisions, the battle would be over before it even began.
After a moment, when it was clear that their enemy was not waiting for them amidst the shadows of the trees and when Cade had managed to reign in his anger to a manageable level, they skirted around the gruesome trophy in the middle of the trail and continued onward. The trail led deeper into the woods and they followed it until a clearing opened up before them.
As Cade emerged from the trees, he stopped in amazement. There before him was the town from his dreams, from the blackened buildings lying in crumbling heaps on either side of the road to the occasional strange-looking plant that had managed to force its way up through the concrete surface into the dim light and warm air above. The sky had grown dark, slate-grey storm clouds laced with silver and green lightning having rolled in from the horizon and were now casting their shadows over the town below. The air was heavy with impending rain and the electrical tension of the growing storm. Even the wind had made its scheduled appearance, just as it had in his dream, its voice like those of a thousand lost souls forever begging for deliverance at exactly the same moment.
“Where the hell are we?” Riley whispered, the fear evident in his voice for perhaps the first time since they’d entered the Beyond. He watched the shadows around them stretch and move as if under their own accord. Cade didn’t have the heart to tell him that he thought he’d gotten it right the first time; that they were, indeed, in Hell itself.
They stood at the edge of the City of Despair.
But while the landscape before him resembled his dream in many ways, there were differences, too. On the far side of the town, where the landscape had simply faded into nothingness in his dreams, there now stood a massive white tower that stretched skyward, reaching for the clouds above. Hovering over it was that awesome tear in the sky, that rip in the fabric of reality, that they had been following ever since they first laid eyes upon it, like the star that led the three wise men to Bethlehem. He didn’t know what that thing was, wasn’t even sure he wanted to know, but seeing it gave him hope. The fact that things were not identical to his dreams meant that the future was not preordained, that the events coming toward them were not written in stone, that the way they played out in reality did not have to mirror the way they had ended in his dreams.
No sooner had he come to that conclusion that a lance of pain shot through his hand, flashing up his arm and across the damaged side of his face, just as it always had in his dreams.
Which meant any minute now the Adversary should be making his appearance…
As if on cue, the sound of booted feet striking pavement echoed back to him from the other end of the road and a dark figure stepped out to bar their way.
The Adversary had arrived.
All the years of pent up hatred exploded through Cade in that instant. Every stolen moment, every potential memory, every lost laugh and cry and shout of joy, all the things he was never able to share with his wife because of the actions of the thing standing before him, all of it came roaring together inside his heart and mind, screaming in anguish at what had never been.
Cade gave into that flood, let it bend him, break him, never once considering that losing control might be the very thing that the Adversary had planned.
Dimly, in the back of his mind, he could hear Riley shouting, “No, Cade! No!” but it was way too late.
With a scream of rage and loss, Cade charged the Adversary.
Just as he always had in his dreams.
Laughter rang out, echoing across the ruined landscape, and the Adversary suddenly straightened to its true height, throwing off its concealing robes to stand revealed in all its majesty and power.
The fallen angel stood at least eight feet tall, clothed in gleaming armor and brandishing a sword that shone like the sun. It hurt just to look at him and Cade was forced to hold up a hand to shield his face from the glare even as he continued his precipitous charge forward.
Foolish acts often have unwelcome consequences and this was no exception to the rule. Even a
s Cade rushed forward the Adversary raised his free hand and pointed it at Cade. A brilliant flare of red-black power shot forth, striking Cade in the chest and throwing him violently to the ground. Before he could get up the Adversary struck out again, and again, hammering him with each successive strike, pounding him into submission. Arcane energy flashed through Cade, short-circuiting his nervous system, sending his limbs flapping and his teeth clenching and unclenching uncontrollably. His body flopped about the ground like a fish out of water and pain flooded over and through him, growing stronger and stronger with each successive strike from the Adversary’s hands.
Cade could hear himself screaming, could hear the Adversary echoing his cries with crazed laughter, and then it all became too much. The last thing he remembered was the thunder booming overhead and the lightning flashing and crackling around him.
The storm’s arrived, he thought, and then the darkness took him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Cade regained consciousness some unknown amount of time later, he found himself spread-eagled against a nearby wall, his arms and legs stretched out to either side by an unseen force that held him in place as surely as if he had been embedded in the concrete itself. No matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t so much as turn his head, never mind free one of his limbs. It was hopeless; he was completely at his captor’s mercy.
He was much deeper in the city, apparently, for he could just barely glimpse what he thought was the base of the white tower out of the corner of one eye.
He wondered if Gabrielle was up there somewhere, high above. If she could see him, if she knew he had come for her.
Some rescue this was turning out to be.
The sound of someone approaching drew his attention. A man stepped out in front of him. His skin was dark, his hair equally so, and he was dressed like anyone you might pass on the street of an average neighborhood.
The newcomer smiled and in that smile was every cross word ever spoken, every insult ever made, every act, no matter how small or large, that had harmed another human being, and Cade knew that he was looking at the Adversary in another of his many guises.
Just to be certain, Cade triggered his Sight, figuring he no longer had anything to lose by using his gifts.
His mystical vision helped peel back the layers of deception, revealing the true face of the creature standing before him, and what he saw made him jerk back in horror.
His attention was drawn first to the great wings rising over each shoulder, their once tar black feathers long since tattered and torn, stained with the ash of the great city around them, identical to the one Cade wore around his neck. Where the feathers had fallen away completely a thick pink membrane could be seen stretching beneath, its surface covered with a fine web of crimson veins that pulsed with what seemed to be life of their own.
The flawless beauty of its face had been replaced by a seeping ruin, a canvas of open sores that oozed a dank smelling fluid which in turn were interspersed with layers of flesh that hung loosely from the bone, visual evidence of the corruption that lay within its soul. One eye festered with rampant infection and seeing it, Cade finally understood that both he and Simon Logan, the Necromancer, had been marked as one of the Adversary’s own.
The very idea made him want to vomit.
Asharael raised a hand and Cade’s gaze was drawn involuntarily to its overlong fingers. They had to be six inches or more in length, topped by curving yellow nails that had been sharpened to a point. Cade followed their length to where they pointed out toward the horizon.
“Look!” Asharael whispered and in his voice Cade could hear every lover’s seductive promise, every con man’s intrepid game. Out there in the darkness endless vistas opened up before him even as he watched, each one a vision of paradise, worlds where he was the ultimate authority, where he waded in wealth and riches, where beautiful women waited at his beck and call to fulfill his every whim, regardless of how base or how refined his demands.
“This could all be yours. Power beyond your imagination. Wine, women, and riches to do with whatever you will.”
Cade said nothing, waiting for what it would cost, knowing that every agreement, especially one with the Enemy, had a price. He did, however, drop his Sight, both unable and unwilling to look at the Adversary’s true form another moment longer.
The Adversary suddenly stepped closer and grasped Cade’s chin. Seemingly without effort he pushed Cade’s chin upward, so that Cade could see the churning hole in the sky above. It seemed larger now, more ominous even than it had before, and Cade didn’t know if that was because he was closer to it or if it had fundamentally changed in the time since he’d set foot on the island.
“You’re looking at the Barrier, the veil of power between this world and the next,” said the Adversary. “You have the power to control the doorway between the two.”
Cade’s head was pulled back down, until he was looking at the Adversary once more. The other released him and stepped back, smiling.
“All you have to do is open that doorway and I will let you and your friends go free.”
Cade refused to reply. Go to hell, you bastard, he thought.
The smile never left the Adversary’s face. “Not enough for your tastes? Perhaps you’re expecting me to sweeten the pot? Well let’s see, what might entice you to do as I ask…”
Mockingly, the Adversary snapped his fingers. “I know. Your precious wife.”
Without waiting to see Cade’s reaction, the Adversary turned away toward the white tower and pointed. Cade felt a rumble beneath his feet and white blocks of masonry began falling from somewhere up above, crashing down around him with thunderous impact.
Cade’s head was suddenly free and he was able to turn and look at the white tower.
Aside from a small ring of stones making up the rear wall, the entire tower was gone. The Adversary had torn it down without laying a single finger on it. But that wasn’t what caught Cade’s attention.
In the middle of the lowest floor of the tower was a sumptuous bier of gold and platinum.
On that platform lay Cade’s dead wife, Gabrielle.
Cade was unable to speak.
He knew it wasn’t physically his wife; her body was still back in the real world, as far as he knew, guarded by Elizabeth Clearwater and her hedge magick. But Elizabeth had said that Gabrielle’s essence, her soul if you will, had left her body and gone elsewhere.
Cade had no doubt that he was looking at it now.
“Oh, you bastard,” he said, surprised to find himself able to speak.
The Adversary just laughed.
“Will you do it? Will you open the door?”
Cade shook his head. “No.”
The Adversary turned away from him and raised his hands. Power flashed, but Cade didn’t know what it was for. A few moments passed and then from out of the ruins stumbled Riley. He was clearly not under his own power; his steps uncertain, his direction shaky. In one hand he held his sword. His struggle to free himself could easily be seen on his face, though when he, in turn, saw Cade that struggle changed to simple fear.
They were out of their league and Riley knew it.
As Cade watched, Riley’s gaze shifted past the spot where Cade was secured to the remains of the wall and his expression changed to one of bewilderment. The sound of someone approaching reached Cade and then moved passed him.
Duncan stepped into view.
His eyes were empty, his face slack-jawed, and yet he moved forward with purpose and grace. In one hand he held a combat knife and there was no evidence of the injuries that had forced him to clamber along wearily behind Bishop.
Duncan marched forward, moving inexorably closer to Riley, brandishing his weapon.
“Cade?” Riley called, clearly uncertain what to do.
But when he tried to answer, the head of Echo Team discovered that while he might be able to move his head, his voice had been taken from him.
“Cade, help me!” Ril
ey called, as Duncan moved closer.
The Adversary stepped in front of Cade, blocking his view.
“Open the door and I will free your friends.”
Cade shook his head.
“Very well. Let it be on your hands.”
The Adversary waved his hand in Riley’s direction and then stepped aside to enjoy the show.
Unable to do anything, Cade was forced to watch as his two comrades attacked each other against their will.
Neither of the men was interested in defense and both took horrendous blows as they fought without consideration of their own safety. In seconds, they had each sustained grievous wounds and were bleeding in half a dozen places.
“Shall I stop?” asked the Adversary.
Cade struggled to speak, to tell the Adversary that he’d do it, that he’d open the damned doorway, but the other refused to release his arcane hold on Cade’s vocal chords. The Adversary was enjoying this and had no intention of stopping, Cade realized.
Even as he fought against the bonds that held him, Cade saw Riley thrust his sword forward, impaling Duncan through the stomach, the point of his weapon emerging from the younger Templar’s lower back. At the same time, Duncan’s hand came swinging around and embedded his knife deep in Riley’s unprotected neck.
Cade watched in horror as both men toppled to the ground, unmoving.
Silence fell.
To be broken a moment later by the Adversary’s cackling laughter.
“Oh, what a show! What a show!” the fiend said, smiling all the while.
Cade vomited in helpless fear and emotional pain.
But the Adversary wasn’t done. The fallen angel had one more offer to make.
“Obviously, the stick didn’t seem to work. Maybe you are more a carrot kind of guy.” The Adversary moved closer and whispered in Cade’s ear.
“How about I return your wife to you? Restore her to how see was on that day before I entered your lives? You could hold her again. Hear her voice. See her smile. Make love to her as if all this never happened. All you need to do is open that doorway and carry her back across the Veil. Reuniting her spirit with her body will return her to the way she was all those years before. It will be like all this had never happened.”
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