Infernal Cries: An Echo Team Urban Fantasy Novel

by Joseph Hutton

  He picked up the phone. “Why do I have the feeling this isn’t a social call?”

  On the other end of the line, Riley chuckled. “Because you’re psychic, that’s why. Isn’t that why they ran you out of the Order?”

  “Very funny. They wish it were that simple.”

  There was a moment of silence as Cade waited for Riley to tell him the reason for the call. When the silence stretched for too long, Cade said, “Well, nice chatting with you, but I’ve got to…”

  Riley cut him off. “Sorry, man, just trying to figure out if I really want to pull you back into this mess.”

  “You wouldn’t have called if you didn’t need something. And I’ll be the judge of whether or not I get involved, okay? Out with it.”

  The command tone fell back into his speech automatically and he almost laughed when Riley responded to it by getting right to the point.

  “The Necromancer’s escaped.”

  “So I heard.”

  Another pause, then, “We tracked him to Bridgeport, to an old warehouse down by the harbor.”

  Cade frowned. Bridgeport wasn’t more than twenty minutes from where he now stood. What was the Necromancer doing out here?

  “He performed some kind of…a ritual, I guess you’d call it. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Near as we can tell he split as soon as he was finished, and I suspect he is long gone by now, but the power that’s still lingering here feels dangerous as hell. I was hoping I might convince you to come take a look…”

  Cade didn’t say anything, just let the silence linger as he thought it through. The Order had forced him out and truth be told, that didn’t make him all that inclined to help them now. Yes, he’d disobeyed a direct order, but he’d believed at the time – and still did today – that the order had been illegal. In disobeying it, he had saved not just a valued member of the Order but quite possibly society as they knew it. Rather than acknowledge that the end result of his actions had been for the betterment of all concerned, the Powers That Be had decided to assuage the Preceptor’s bruised ego.

  Those were not the kinds of men Cade wanted to work for.

  But…and here’s where things got sticky.

  It wasn’t the Order that was asking. Or, at least, not after he sent their mealy-mouthed messengers packing. No, this was Riley. A man who had literally gone to Hell and back with him just because he’d been asked.

  Cade couldn’t send his friend away empty-handed.

  He weighed Riley’s request against the security he had set up on the property to protect Gabrielle during the times when he had to go out. The wards were extremely powerful – he’d certainly paid enough for them to be – and he was confident they would stand up to even a determined attack. If Logan had just performed a major working, there was no way he would have enough energy left over to breach the barrier.

  Besides, he thought, Riley says he’s long gone and I would be too if I knew the Order was tracking me.

  “Bridgeport, you said?”

  Cade could all but hear Riley’s sigh of relief. “Yes, by the harbor. I’ll send a car for you.”

  Cade was already shaking his head, even though Riley couldn’t see it. “No. Don’t do that. I’ll catch a cab and you can give me a lift back yourself when we’re done. Fair enough?”

  “If that’s how you want to play it.”

  “I do. Give me the address.”

  After memorizing the street and property number, Cade told Riley to give him an hour and he’d be there as soon as he could.

  After hanging up the phone, Cade called a cab company he had used in the past, told them he needed to go to Bridgeport but not the exact address, and then spent several minutes reviewing the state of the wards protecting the house, making certain they were operating properly. Satisfied, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and double-checked the padlock he had installed on the outside of the door to Gabrielle’s bedroom. The lock was for her protection as much as his; she would be safe inside the room if she awoke during one of the brief periods when he was not at home and he would have time to gauge her mental condition before letting her out into the rest of the house. It pained him to have to lock her in; but if it kept her safe, it was what he must do. Satisfied, he returned to the kitchen.

  The last thing he did before leaving was take the .45 out of the drawer and slip it into the pocket of his coat. It wasn’t that he was expecting trouble or that he didn’t think the Templars would be carrying adequate weapons, for he wasn't and they would be.

  It was simply that these days, after all he’d been through, he never went anywhere without being armed.

  As soon as they entered the neighborhood where the warehouse was located, the cabbie began to get cold feet, just as Cade had known he would. Cade watched him grow more nervous by the moment until at last the cabbie’s courage gave up and he pulled over to the curb at least two blocks from their destination.

  “Gonna have to let you off here, man. It’s a bad neighborhood and I’m not going any farther.”

  Cade knew it didn’t make any sense to argue; he could see by the way the man’s hands were shaking that this was as close to the warehouse as he was going to get. He paid the driver and then got out of the cab.

  The cabbie barely waited for Cade’s feet to hit the sidewalk before he pulled away and drove off down the block as fast as he could.

  Cade was in an industrial neighborhood, with darkened office buildings and large, looming warehouses sealed off from the street behind twelve-foot steel fences topped with rows of barbed wire. A lone hooker stood beneath the streetlight at the end of the block and she eyed him hopefully for a moment until he turned and headed in the other direction. She shouted something at his back in Spanish, but he was too far away to hear what she said.

  Better not to know, he thought.

  He strode forward with determined steps, his head held high, projecting an aura of menace. He wanted those watching from the shadows of the buildings around him to know that he was like them.

  Predator. Not prey.

  They got the message and left him alone.

  After ten minutes of walking, Cade reached the address Riley had given him over the phone. The gate to the property was open and he could see three black SUVs inside the yard facing the entrance to the building. As he drew closer, a shadow detached itself from the side of the building.

  Cade tensed, but then a familiar voice said, “There goes the neighborhood.”

  Riley.

  “Who are you kidding?” Cade shot back. “Property values fell into the toilet the minute you stepped out of your truck.”

  The two men came together and embraced, slapping each other on the back and smiling in the process. They were opposites in many ways. Riley was tall and muscular, where Cade was average height and wiry. Cade was white with a head full of hair, where Riley had shaved his skull several years ago and was dark. Despite their physical differences, they had a lot in common intellectually and spiritually, however. Cade was genuinely glad to see his friend and former teammate; it had been awhile.

  As they pulled apart, Riley said, “Hear you told the Preceptor to put it where the sun don’t shine.”

  “Yeah. He’s lucky I didn’t show up to deliver the message in person.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been a sight! Can’t imagine why he thought you’d just drop everything and come running back to help out, but I’m glad you’re here now.”

  Cade knew that tone and snipped Riley’s hopes right in the bud lest there be some confusion later. “I’m here to take a look around and give you some advice. That’s it. Nothing more; nothing less.”

  “Right.”

  Cade turned and looked at the building a few feet away. It didn’t look like much, just an old warehouse. Then again, true evil never did look the way you expected it to look. In some ways, that was a sure sign of its power, to blend in with everything around it and hide from scrutiny until it spread like a cancer.

  Cade no
ticed that Riley was making an effort to look everywhere but at the building and alarm bells went off in his head.

  “Something I should know about?” he asked.

  Riley’s shrugged. “I don’t know. Something just doesn’t…feel right.”

  They were talking about the Necromancer. Of course it didn’t feel right. He said as much to Riley.

  But the other man shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. He was silent a moment and then added, “The whole thing just feels staged. Like I’m missing something obvious and it’s gonna come back and bite me in the ass. You ever get that feeling?”

  All the time, Cade thought, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt Riley’s flow of thoughts.

  “I mean, I’ve been in places where the Necromancer has used his particular brand of magick and it always leaves a certain residue in the air, a greasy feeling that just kind of hangs about. Some of it’s him, some of it’s the nature of the magick he uses, but whenever he’s tried to do something, a ritual or a spell or a working of just about any kind, that feeling is there.”

  He glanced at the building and Cade realized it was frustration, not fear that had Riley so agitated.

  “That feeling in the air is gone, if it was ever here in the first place. And given what’s inside that room, it should be here. Should be here in spades. But it’s not. And that makes me think I’m missing something.”

  Cade frowned. He trusted Riley's instincts and it wasn’t all that often that the big man was wrong. At least not about something important like this. Now, more than ever, he wanted to see inside the warehouse.

  “Still not going to give me an specifics, huh?”

  Riley shook his head. “I’ve done enough already to prejudice your opinion. No sense adding to that. There are several bodies and a fair bit of blood, but that’s all I’m going to say for now. We can talk more once you’ve had a chance to take a look.”

  Fair enough, Cade thought, fair enough.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Riley led Cade into the warehouse and past the shipping containers toward the rear of the building. Several of the other knights called out to say hello; many of them had served under Cade at one point or another and still respected him as both a knight and a warrior. Those who had not, who might see him through different colored lenses, wisely chose to keep their opinions to themselves. This was the Echo Team, after all, and the prestige it enjoyed now was due entirely to the efforts of the man now walking in their midst.

  When they reached the bodies, Riley stepped to one side, out of the way, so that Cade could do what he’d come to do.

  He began by standing and looking out over the scene, trying to get a feel for the ritual in general. While he didn’t think of himself as an expert on mystical rites and black magick, he did have a fair amount of experience with them, both as a result of being the Echo Team commander for so many years as well as his general research into the subject while tracking enemies of the Order.

  The fact that blood sacrifices had been made, human sacrifices at that and more than one, meant that the summoner thought an incredible amount of energy was going to be needed for the rite. Usually this meant the caster was trying to summon something from the infernal realms, anything from a minor demon to a major one, but Cade didn’t get the sense that such was the case here. For one the iconography within the summoning circle was incorrect, never mind the fact that a five pointed star wasn't used when trying to call something from the nether regions. Plus Cade also picked up on the same lack of negative energy that Riley had.

  He walked over to one of the corpses lying on the floor and squatted down beside it. Cade put the man in his mid-thirties and guessed that he was mostly likely homeless, given the condition of his clothing and the amount of dirt that was caked under his fingernails. The man’s throat had been cut and the size of the wound made the cause of death pretty obvious.

  And yet…

  Something wasn’t right. Something about the wound in the man’s throat…

  Cade bent closer for a better look.

  The cut was even and extended all the way across the front of the man’s neck, right about where his Adam’s apple would be. The cut was very deep; the knife had been extremely sharp and applied with force.

  Most likely from behind, Cade thought.

  Cade stood up, took another look down at the body, and frowned.

  If the cut had been made from behind with one swift movement, as appearances seemed to suggest, then blood should have sprayed outward all over the man’s clothing as his heart kept beating in an effort to keep him alive. But except for some blood splashed over the neck of his shirt, his clothes were free of it.

  That wasn’t possible.

  Cade stood and moved over to the next body. Another male, younger this time, probably in his late teens, early twenties. This victim was better dressed; football jersey, clean blue jeans, shiny white sneakers. The same sort of wound bisected his neck and, like the first, the lack of blood across his clothing was telling.

  They were already dead when their throats were cut.

  Cade knew he was right. Still, he checked the other three bodies arranged around the casting circle just to be certain. In the end, all of them had the same wound and the same damning evidence.

  “Find something?” Riley asked, after watching Cade move from corpse to corpse.

  “In a minute,” Cade said, not yet ready to give his conclusions. He had a few more things he wanted to check out. Like seeing all this through his Sight.

  Several years ago, Cade had barely survived an encounter with a supernatural entity he’d come to know as the Adversary. The battle had resulted in what he thought had been the death of his wife, Gabrielle, and had left him scarred both physically and emotionally. He’d lost the sight in his right eye and the flesh on that side of his face had been savagely disfigured, leaving him with a wide band of scar tissue that stretched from the hairline above his eye, down across his cheekbone, and around behind his ear. The eye itself was still intact, but was nothing more than a milky white orb floating in a sea of damaged flesh. He was wearing an eye patch over the scar tissue now as he habitually did when he was out in public but he knew the patch wouldn’t interfere with what he intended to do next.

  While the damage to his eye had cost him his ability to see in any normal sense of the word, he had gained something unexpected in return. When he moved his ruined eye just so, the supernatural world was revealed to him in all its so-called glory. Nothing could hide from his Sight; he could see through the guises of demons and angels alike, as well as anything in between. Mystical power was as obvious to him as a mountain in the middle of a desert plain.

  If there had been a ritual conducted here, especially one powerful enough to require the sacrifices of six human beings, it should have left psychic echoes all over the place. He should have no trouble examining them with his Sight and, in doing so, would hopefully learn more about the reason for the rite in the first place.

  Stepping back, Cade removed his eye patch, closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again, moving his damaged eye just so in the process.

  Much of the spiritual world is driven by emotion, with objects and locations taking on the predominant feelings surrounding them. In a building where human sacrifices had been carried out, Cade expected to see the place crawling with the impact of all the fear, pain, and despair the victims had felt and was only slightly surprised when he didn’t see it. The lack of it told him far more than its presence would have. He’d been right, the killings could not have taken place here.

  But that didn’t mean there was nothing to see.

  Loose, smoke-like tendrils of shifting green-black power connected each of the corpses on the floor to the ritual circle between them and a larger vein of power connected the circle with the corpse on the frame. Even now there seemed to be some energy pulsing between them, as if the bodies in front were feeding energy of some kind to the one behind them.
r />   What the hell?

  Cade had never seen its like.

  Along with his Sight, the Adversary had passed on another unique ability to Cade, one he called his Gift. The proper name for it was psychomery, he’d later found out, the ability to divine information about an object or its owner through physical contact.

  It had been seven years since the Gift was thrust upon him, but in that time he still had not grown comfortable using it. He wondered if he ever would.

  It wasn’t the loss of tactile sensation that bothered him so much. He’d become accustomed to how things felt through the thin material of the cotton gloves he always wore. And it wasn’t as if he was unable to touch things at all. When he was at home safely surrounded by his own possessions, he would often move about the house without his gloves on, doing just that for hours at a time. His home was his sanctuary; only his closest companions were allowed inside in order to limit the psychic latencies that might be left behind.

  Nor was it the fact that using the psychometry brought a degree of physical danger, for he had never been one to shy away from the possibility of physical injury. On past occasions he’d emerged from sessions confused, disoriented, at times even uncertain of his own identity. He’d even bitten one of his teammates once, after seeing visions of hungry, rampaging revenants.

  No, his discomfort lay in the way the Gift had come to him. There was little doubt that the Adversary meant to kill him on that summer night and had only failed by the smallest of margins. But something had been left behind, some kind of residue or catalyst that resulted in his Gift, his Sight, and the nature of their origin would always make him uneasy.

  Still, he’d be the first to admit that his powers had certainly been helpful over the years in tracking down the supernatural threats and enemies that plagued humankind. Which was why he would continue using them for precisely that purpose.