by Mel Odom
“Simon, you’re my friend and I love you for the courage and good heart that you have. I swear to you that on any battlefield you choose, or that chooses you, you’ll never be one man or one Templar Knight standing alone.” Nathan stared into Simon’s eyes. “But do not do this thing. You can’t trust Booth.”
“I have to,” Simon said.
“Let me go. Appoint me as your representative. I’ll make the meeting with Booth.”
“I can’t.”
Exasperated, Nathan exploded, “But it makes bloody sense! You’ll be safe and we’ll find out what Booth really wants.”
Simon met his friend’s gaze. “You can’t go. Even as my representative, you wouldn’t be able to speak for me. There are some things I’ve got to set right for my father’s memory. I’ve got to stand accountable for my actions.”
“Then let me come with you.”
“You need to stay here. Keep everyone safe till I get back.”
Apprehension darkened Nathan’s features. “And if you don’t come back?”
“Keep everyone safe.”
Nathan leaned in and hugged him fiercely. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “You just bloody well make sure you come back, mate. We need you here.”
Tall and straight, Simon turned to Pettibone. “All right, Sergeant. You can let the High Seat know I’ve accepted his Flag of Honor.”
The ATV hatch opened.
“Come aboard, Lord Cross.”
Simon entered the ATV and took a sling-seat in the back. No one spoke to him as the hatch closed.
“Just sit back and enjoy the ride, Lord Cross,” Pettibone advised. “It won’t be long.”
The ATV jerked into motion.
For a time Simon kept contact with the other ATV. He saw Nathan and the others load back up and turn the attack vehicle around to head back to the stronghold. Then the connection, kept encrypted and separate from the channel cycling through Pettibone’s ATV, was lost.
Simon sat back and was alone in the midst of potential enemies, protected only by a thin veil of honor from an ideal that was nearly a thousand years old and birthed in another world than the brutal landscape that lay around him.
Three hours later, Simon slipped through the shadows surrounding the Elephant and Castle tube station with Pettibone and the other Templar. The House Rorke entrance lay behind a secret door within the abandoned tube.
When Simon had first returned to London four years ago, he’d come through the tube station. He hadn’t been back since.
The area was worse than it had been. The Burn continued to scour the city. Huge holes and cracks tore up the streets where demons had battled or Carnagors had tunneled up through.
Pettibone waved them to one side of an alley. The Templar hunkered down with their blades drawn and their pistols in hand.
Simon waited for them, but the sense of foreboding continued to build within him. It didn’t make sense that they were holding their present position. There was nothing keeping them from entering the tube station.
“What are we waiting for?” Simon asked.
“Patience, Lord Cross,” Pettibone said. “The city continues to grow more dangerous every day. Things could have changed even in the few hours we’ve been gone.”
Simon checked the HUD and noticed—not for the first time—that the other Templar had kept him in the midst of them. He felt like a prisoner, but he knew that what they were doing made perfect sense. Under similar circumstances, he would have done the same thing.
Across the street, a line of Templar came from the tube station and approached. When Simon recognized Booth’s distinctive black over red armor design, a sour bubble of distaste burst at the back of his throat.
Simon stood as Booth came toward him. The Templar spread out around them, but two of Booth’s personal guard remained close enough to defend him if the need arose.
“Simon,” Booth said. His faceplate turned translucent to reveal his face. Despite the ongoing invasion, Booth had gained weight during the last four years. It showed in his features. Simon hadn’t been certain of that during their exchange aboard the ATVs when Booth had come for Macomber.
Hiding out seems to have agreed with him, Simon thought, and he stopped himself just short of making that observation. Instead, he managed a more diplomatic, “High Seat Booth.”
“Even with the offer of the Flag of Honor,” Booth said, “I really didn’t expect you to trust me.”
Simon wanted to assure Booth that the matter had been daunting. “We have a common goal,” he said.
“The book of Goetia.” Booth nodded. “Did you bring it with you?”
“No.” Simon didn’t care to elaborate that it was burned or that it was no longer in his hands. “I have the book. I came to see what you had to offer.”
“Ah well, I suppose you possessing the book was too much to hope for. It doesn’t really matter. Arrangements can be made. Ransom has always been a part of war.”
A high-pitched whine sounded behind Simon before he could move.
“Warning,” the suit’s AI said. “An electromagnetic neural pacifier has—”
Pettibone threw himself forward with the device clutched in one hand. The pacifier had been designed to take out the armor when a Templar wounded on the battlefield wasn’t in command of his senses. It had also been developed in case of possession by a demon or a tainted artifact. The Templar armor was as dangerous as a miniature tank and definitely more mobile. The pacifier also had to be coded to the armor’s defense overrides to get through. Each House had their own sets.
Simon tried to block the pacifier, but Pettibone was too quick and too practiced to completely avoid. In addition to that, two of Pettibone’s Templar tackled Simon and knocked him to the ground while he was off-balance.
He struck one of them in the faceplate hard enough to rock his head back and succeeded in levering a forearm under the chin of another. He planted a foot and rolled in an attempt to break free of their holds. Before he could get to his feet, Pettibone slammed him with the pacifier.
“Block electromagnetic buildup,” Simon ordered.
“Complying,” the suit AI responded. “Operations error. Electromagnetic burst is noncombative. No threat perceived.”
“Negative,” Simon said desperately. “Shut down House Rorke protocol.” He’d been a fool to trust Booth, and he’d been an idiot for not thinking the overrides could be used against him. But they’d been necessary among his own teams.
“Hold him!” Booth ordered. “Sergeant! Put him down!”
“Enter password for House Rorke protocol shutdown override,” the suit AI said.
Before Simon could respond, Pettibone slammed the pacifier home against the base of the armor’s helmet. Then a series of electromagnetic bursts swept through the armor and along Simon’s neural pathways. He tried to hang onto his consciousness, but he fell into a deep, black well.
FORTY-FOUR
L eah stood on one side of the conference table in the small room she’d been taken to after Tech Ops had finished the image recovery of all the burned pages.
Jenkins had uploaded the images to a file, then uploaded the images of the secret text as a separate file. He’d given copies of both files to Lyra Darius. Lyra had asked Leah to wait for her in the conference room.
As she waited, impatiently, Leah studied the constant vid feeds pulsing through the monitors on all sides of the room. All of them would go silent at the touch of a button, but anyone in the room also had access to other rooms in the compound as well as to many street level views around the Ellis Building. Some of them also showed nearby neighborhoods.
Night had fallen on the city hours ago. The demons hunted everywhere.
As she watched them, Leah wished Command had given the order to emplace weapons in different parts of the city. At one time that had been part of the plan to deal with the demons. They could have killed them from a distance.
Unfortunately, those weapons would have been found and
destroyed almost immediately after use. And Command had worried that the demons might find a way to trace the wireless communication back to the compound. Losing weapons was a problem too, because they hadn’t yet found a way to quickly produce them for operatives in the field.
On one of the screens, a group of stalker demons chased a man and a boy. The demons caught up with them in seconds. Leah made herself watch their deaths so that it would be burned into her mind why she would give the demons no mercy when she had them in her sights.
Then the door opened and Lyra entered.
“Have a seat,” Lyra invited.
“I don’t want to sit,” Leah said. “Sitting means staying, and staying means delaying. One way or the other, I need to be somewhere that I can be doing some good.”
“All right.” Lyra sat on the corner of the table. She looked tired and exhausted. “I ran your suggestion to take a copy of the Goetia manuscript to the Templar—”
Leah started to object.
“—to Simon Cross,” Lyra amended, “by my advisors. To a person, they all vetoed the idea.”
Leah’s heart sank. You betrayed Simon’s trust. Despite the setback, she immediately began coming up with plans to strip the files from the computers and get out of the compound with them. None of them seemed particularly easy, but she wasn’t going back to Simon without something in hand.
“I pointed out that we would still have a copy of the manuscript to work on ourselves,” Lyra went on. “Their response was that the Templar would have a headstart on us because they’d be more familiar with the language.”
“Which is exactly why we should give it to Simon,” Leah said.
“I made that same argument. I also pointed out that unless we were prepared to keep you on permanent lockdown, we couldn’t guarantee the control of the Goetia files.”
Leah didn’t say anything, but a tingle of fear ran through her. She’d been trained to handle incarceration. Out in the field it sometimes happened. But she couldn’t imagine being locked away while Simon was still battling the demons and to save those he could in the city.
“I know you could promise me that you wouldn’t go near those files,” Lyra said.
“I would never do anything to hurt this organization,” Leah said immediately, going for the opportunity. “I give you—”
“Stop.” Lyra held up a hand. “You lie prettily, but you still lie. You’ll do exactly what you think you need to do in this matter. You’ve got plenty of precedent set up in that regard.”
Leah quieted. Her mind busied itself with ways to get out of lockdown. She’d been trained to handle that as well.
“Fortunately for you,” Lyra said, “my advisors are that only: advisors. My decisions are mine in this place, and they’re not open to review. Therefore, it’s my decision that you be allowed to take this information to the Templar—to Simon Cross—with the understanding from you, and I know you can’t guarantee an agreement from him, that we share information that becomes pertinent.”
Leah couldn’t keep the smile from her face.
“Stop grinning like a loon,” Lyra ordered in mock-seriousness. “I’ve just given you orders that put you in harm’s way again.”
Making her face grim again, Leah nodded. “Yes, ma’am. When can I go?”
“I thought maybe you might want to rest and grab a bite before you—”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I’m rested. And I can eat on the way.”
A sad smile twisted Lyra’s lips. “Somehow I thought you’d say that. Let me have your hand.” She offered her own.
Leah took the other woman’s hand.
“Ready for transmission,” Lyra said.
“Ready,” Leah replied. She closed her helmet and watched as the download application appeared onscreen.
“Transmitting.”
The transfer took several minutes because none of the files had been compressed. When the upload bar hit 100 percent, a beep sounded. Leah knew about the AIs that drove the Templar armor, but suits worn by her group and the military didn’t feature those.
“Don’t make me regret this, Leah,” Lyra said. “Don’t hold information back on us and bloody well don’t get yourself killed.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You can go. Motor Pool has a motorcycle for you as well as nutri-sub you can eat on the way.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Minutes later, Leah threw a leg over the twenty-year old BMW R 1200 GS Adventure Enduro motorcycle she’d been assigned and keyed the big engine to life. The roar filled the neat garage.
“Command said you were used to this model,” the compact mechanic said as he gave the petrol tank a final wipe with a towel.
“I am,” Leah agreed.
“I hope it takes care of you.”
“I’m sure it will, chief.”
“Well, try to bring it back. You’ve lost two of them and they’re getting harder and harder to find.”
Leah glanced around the motor pool. There were currently fewer vehicles in the bays than she’d seen at any other time. Tanks, armored cars, jeeps, and motorcycles made up the inventory.
“I’ll do my best, chief,” she said. Then she twisted the accelerator, let off the clutch, and lifted her foot as she shot forward.
She raced through an underground tunnel wide enough for the military tanks. Two-point-four miles later, she arrived at a security checkpoint manned by a dozen men wearing the same kind of armor she had on.
“Leah Creasey?” one of the men asked.
“Yes.” Leah rested on her left foot and leaned the motorcycle.
“Special dispatch.”
Leah knew the man was reading the orders on his HUD. “Yes.”
“Do you know the area?” the man asked.
Leah pulled down a map overlay of the area. The tunnel let out into an underground parking garage. “Yes.”
“Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you.”
The man signaled the others and they checked the monitors outside the false wall. When they were satisfied there were no spying demon eyes, they opened the wall.
The security chief tossed Leah a quick salute.
Leah twisted the throttle and raced out into the parking garage. Seconds later she was racing through London’s broken streets as if the hounds of Hell were after her. And, at times, they were.
Hours later, Leah parked the motorcycle under a tree deep within the woods. She took one of the petrol tanks from the rear of the bike and topped off the tank. Anytime she stopped she made that her first order of business. Running out of fuel while fleeing demons wasn’t a pleasant prospect.
Then she changed her communications array to the frequency Simon’s Templar stronghold monitored and attempted to contact them. Almost instantly she was put through to Danielle.
“Where are you?” Danielle demanded.
“Only a few miles from the stronghold,” Leah answered. “I thought I might call before I just came in.” She noticed the tension in Danielle’s face and voice even before her suit’s analysis programming kicked into play to confirm it.
“That’s a good thing. Did you have any luck with the manuscript?”
“Yes. I’ve got a copy of it with me.”
Relief showed on Danielle’s face and eased some of the fatigue etched there. “Stay where you are. I have your location. I’ll have a team bring you in.”
“I could come in by myself.”
“In case you’re not alone.”
Leah peered around the empty woods. “Who else would be here?”
“Hopefully, no one. But just in case.”
Irritation chafed at Leah. She suddenly felt more vulnerable in the woods. “What’s going on, Danielle?”
“We’ll tell you when we have you.”
When we have you? Leah didn’t care for the sound of that. “You’ll tell me now or I’ll be gone before anyone can reach me. Where’s Simon?”
Danielle took a breath and let i
t out. “While you were gone, Simon was lured back to the Templar Underground by High Seat Booth. Now Booth has him. We just received a ransom demand. Either we bring Booth the Goetia manuscript or he’ll stake Simon out for the demons to have.”
Leah threw her leg back over the motorcycle. “Clear me through, Danielle. I don’t want to wait on your escort.” She keyed the engine to life.
Terrence Booth, Leah knew from previous encounters with the man, was a despicable lout. Adding liar and conniver to the list wasn’t a hardship. She’d detested him from the moment she’d met him, almost as quickly as she’d come to trust Simon Cross.
It was hard to accept the two men came from the same environs and heritage.
Leah stared at the frozen image of Simon chained to a chair in a small room. His head sagged forward on his chest. He was either unconscious or drugged into a stupor.
For all you know, he’s already dead and Booth shot this of his corpse. Leah tried to forget that thought had ever crossed her mind but it was impossible. Concentrate on the fact that he’s alive. If he’s not—
She couldn’t finish. If Simon wasn’t alive, it was already too late.
Booth’s message had been short and to the point. She played the last of it back.
Booth stood in front of the vidcam in full armor. His faceplate was translucent to show his features. Simon sat in the background, stripped of his armor and chains binding his chest, arms, and legs.
“I know you have the Goetia manuscript,” Booth said. “I’ve sent men into Akehurst Sanitarium to retrieve it after Professor Macomber told me about it. I found your handiwork. So either you produce the manuscript by sunrise tomorrow or I stake Cross out as demonbait.”
The vid blanked.
Leah made herself breathe out. A headache crashed like blazes between her temples. She hated thinking about what might have happened if she’d gotten her freedom any later than she had. “Did anyone talk to Booth?”
“I did.” Nathan sat on the other side of the comm control room. He was pensive and had a hard time sitting still. “If I’d been in the same room with him, I’d have kicked his bloody teeth down his bloody throat.”
