Fall of Night: A Templar Chronicles Novel

by Joseph Nassise

  Something about the sight of the two of them filled his heart with trepidation and he had the curious sensation that this was the signal he’d been waiting for, even if he hadn’t known as much.

  Things were about to change.

  Whether it was for better or for worse remained to be seen.

  Keeping his gun trained on the stranger lying in the grass before him, he advanced cautiously. As he drew closer, he could see that she was Hispanic, maybe thirty years of age, with jet-black hair and fair features. She was dressed in jeans, a worn flannel shirt, and sneakers that looked a couple of years newer than the rest of her ensemble. She had no weapons on her that he could see and her hands were empty.

  He slipped his pistol back into its holster and knelt down beside her. He could see that she was breathing and when he checked her pulse it was fast but steady.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “Can you hear me?”

  When she didn’t respond, he patted her cheek with the back of one hand a few times until she stirred and opened her eyes.

  She looked up at him, clearly confused.

  More confusing were her first words to him.

  “Sergeant Riley?”

  He stared down at her, stunned. He was certain he had never seen her before, positive that he didn’t know her. And yet she knew not only his name, but the rank he’d held for a number of years in the Templar Order.

  On any other day he might have suspected a trap, might have thought she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, some kind of supernatural entity wearing the guise of a woman in distress to lure him in close enough to strike. But even as the thought rose in the back of his mind, he dismissed it, trusting his instincts, all of which were telling him that this woman was not a threat.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, as he took her hand in his own and helped her sit up.

  She shook her head, not in reply to his question but as if to clear it, and her grip on his hand suddenly tightened. Turning to him, she said, “Where’s Cade?! Can you take me to him?”

  Cade? he thought. What the hell?

  “Who are you?” he asked her and her answer was perhaps the biggest surprise so far that night.

  “Gabrielle Williams.”

  # # #

  She watched his expression grow hard and his face fill with anger.

  “Gabrielle Williams is dead.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s me. Honestly. I know I don’t look the same but it’s really me.”

  He stared at her, the skepticism clear on his face.

  “Prove it.”

  “How?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  She had no idea what Sergeant Riley was doing here but she didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. She desperately needed to make him believe her; he, more than any other person, would know where to find Cade.

  Ten minutes earlier she wouldn’t have even recognized him, never mind been able to answer his question. But now, with her memories restored, she had what she needed to prove to him that she wasn’t lying, that she was, in fact, Gabrielle Williams.

  She repeated the words she’d once spoken to him while Cade lay wounded at their feet.

  “Names have power. With the right name you could even assault the very gates of heaven. And you’d have a good chance of forcing your way inside.”

  He stared at her, incredulous, and then answered her statement the same way he’d done so many months earlier when he and the rest of the Echo Team had been trapped in the Beyond during their investigation of the Eden facility. “So what are we going to do with that name?”

  Her smile was bittersweet as she gave him the reply she given him that day. “You, Master Sergeant Matthew Cornelius Riley, are going to bind that angel with your bare hands.”

  “God in heaven!” he exclaimed in a stunned voice. “It is you!” For a moment he was at a loss for words, and then, “How?”

  Gabrielle shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Right now I need you to take me to Cade. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  He helped her to her feet and then delivered the bad news.

  “I wish I could but Cade has been missing for several weeks now.”

  Gabrielle felt her heart seize. “Missing?”

  “No one has seen him since the night he…” Riley faltered, unable to go on.

  “Since the night he tried to destroy the Adversary?” she finished for him.

  And stabbed me in the heart in the process. Oh, Cade!

  Riley stepped back, the surprise on his face now replaced with something else. “What do you mean tried?”

  They didn’t know, she realized. The Templars didn’t know!

  “Look, I’ll explain everything later but I’ve got an important message that needs to get to the Templar high command as soon as possible. Literally millions of lives are at stake!”

  The Templar soldier grimaced. “Yeah, well that’s going to be a problem, too. As of about an hour ago, the Templar high command is in complete disarray. The Grand Master is dead and a man I wouldn’t piss on even if he were on fire has assumed command of the Order.”

  Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to stand there looking shocked. She had no doubt that the Adversary was behind the problems the Templars were facing and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With Cade missing and the Templars close to falling apart, she had no idea what to do with the information she possessed. No one else would believe her, she was certain of that.

  Riley hesitated for a moment and then said, “I managed to get word out to several of the other team leaders before the Preceptor assumed power. I’m headed out to meet them now. Why don’t you come with me? You can tell them your story and we can figure out what to do from there.”

  It sounded like a reasonable idea and Gabrielle quickly agreed.

  “We just need to grab some gear I left…”

  Riley didn’t get any further. From around the side of the house stepped a man clothed in the black clerical garb of a priest. He stopped a dozen yards away, his attention fixed firmly on Gabrielle, an eerie smile on his face.

  “You’ve led me on a merry chase, Anna,” he said in a voice that carried across the yard to them, “but now it’s time that you came with me.”

  Riley stepped in front of Gabrielle, his pistol back in his hand. “You know this guy?” he asked over his shoulder, never taking his gaze off the newcomer.

  “Never seen him before in my life but I can tell you I don’t like the looks of him.”

  Riley had, but he wasn't inclined to mention where.

  He brought his gun up and pointed it at the man who had once been Inquisitor Daniels. “Don’t know what you want, but this is private property and you aren’t welcome, mister. I suggest you get yourself back to wherever it is that you came from and do it toet suite.”

  The priest looked at him. “I’m here on orders of the Seneschal, Templar. Move aside.”

  “Yeah, not happening,” Riley called out. In a lower voice he said to Gabrielle, “I’ve got a vehicle parked in a clearing in the woods behind the workshop. When I give the word start heading in that direction.”

  But before Gabrielle had a chance to take even a single step, two humanoid figures came swooping down from above and landed midway between them and the priest.

  The newcomers were shaped like humans, if you ignored the large bat-like wings jutting out behind their backs, the jagged claws at the ends of their fingers and the smooth, featureless expanse of their faces.

  Riley recognized them for what they were – nightgaunts, denizens of the lower planes – and realized that things had just gotten considerably more dangerous for him and his new charge.

  Rather than being terrified at the sight, however, Gabrielle rose to the occasion. “Give me a weapon,” she said from over his shoulder. “I can fight.”

  “No, head for the workshop…”

  She cut him off. “I’m not leaving, you idiot! Are you going to give me a we
apon or just leave me here to be gutted like a fish?”

  Well, when you put it that way.

  All Riley had on him at the moment was the pistol in his hand and his blessed sword in the sheath strapped to his back. He passed her the firearm.

  “You know how to use that?”

  “I’m a policeman’s wife,” she replied, as if that was answer enough.

  Watching the way she checked the magazine and then chambered a round, Riley decided that perhaps it was.

  The nightgaunts stood where they’d landed, their long forked tongues snaking out and tasting the air. They hissed in Riley’s direction, but made no move to advance.

  The priest called out again. “Last chance, Anna. Come with me now and no one gets hurt.”

  In reply, Gabrielle brought the weapon up and snapped off a shot in the priest’s direction, missing him by less than an inch as he dove out of the way.

  With piercing shrieks issuing from heaven-knew-where, the nightgaunts threw themselves into fray. With powerful thrusts of their hind legs they crossed the space between them and their quarry in seconds, gliding through the air with the help of their massive wings, lashing at both Riley and Gabrielle with their impressive claws, before swooping upward to try again.

  The Templar and his companion weren’t without recourse of their own, however. Riley lashed at the creature closest to him as it went by, the sudden tug on his blade letting him know he’d scored a hit. Gabrielle turned out to be an excellent marksman and she put at least two shots into the body of her attacker the first few times it tried to attack.

  Time and time again the nightgaunts attacked and each time the two fended them off. It didn’t take long for Riley’s arms to grow tired nor Gabrielle to run low on ammunition, but by then the attackers started to show signs of injury as well.

  As one of the nightgaunts hovered above them, lashing with its claws, Riley changed tactics. Instead of slashing at it with the edge of his blade, he leapt upward as high as he could go, jabbing the point of his blade into the creature’s abdomen and dragging it down with him as gravity pulled him back to earth.

  Seeing what he’d done, Gabrielle turned and put a pair of bullets into the thing’s skull, killing it.

  At that point the two of them were able to focus all of their attention on the remaining nightgaunt. Given that it was injured, they were able to make short work of it.

  Exhausted, Riley lowered his sword and was about to complement Gabrielle on her shooting when she screamed, “Look out!” and barreled into him, knocking him down atop the corpse of the creature he’d just slain.

  As a result, the burst of bullets that should have taken his head off at the shoulders passed over him without injury. He lifted his head and saw the priest standing about twenty-five feet away, one of the assault rifles from the cache held in his hands and pointed in their direction. The priest was lining up the weapon to try again when Gabrielle’s arm snapped up and she put a pair of bullets smack into the center of his chest.

  The rifle fired wildly as the priest fell over backward with none of the bullets finding their mark.

  “Thanks,” Riley said, as he fought to catch his breathe.

  Still too pumped on adrenaline to say anything, Gabrielle just nodded.

  Riley rose to his feet and retrieved the firearm from the priest’s grasp. Walking around to the back of the workshop, they paused to allow Riley to retrieve the last two duffle bags and then he led her through the woods to the waiting vehicle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  As the pair disappeared into the woods, a figured dressed in dark clothes and a hood stepped from the shadows near the main house. The newcomer stood watching the departing duo for a moment, then turned and walked across the yard to where the confrontation had just taken place.

  He stood over the body of the first nightgaunt he came to and stared down at it, an expression of disgust on his face. He lifted his hand and held it over the corpse, palm down. There was a flash of blue light, there and gone again in a moment, and then the stranger moved on to the next corpse, repeating the process.

  Behind him, the first of the nightgaunts began collapsing in on itself, crumbling away bit by bit until there was nothing left but a small pile of fine, dark ash. That, too, would be gone by morning, lifted and scattered about by the wind until there was nothing left to prove that such a creature ever existed.

  He repeated his efforts above the corpse of the other, then turned his attention to the body of the priest. The demon that had possessed it was gone now, sent back to the Infernal Plane upon his death, and the body left behind was just that, a body, and nothing more. There was no need to destroy it as he had the others, for it wouldn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary to whoever had the misfortune to stumble across it.

  He turned and stared once more in the direction the Templar and his new companion had gone. Captain Riley might not have recognized the Nephilim’s wife at first glance, but he certainly had, physical appearance notwithstanding. The years she’d spent in the Beyond were marked on her soul and he’d been able to see those marks shining bright and clear beneath the flesh of her physical form.

  Her continued existence, even in a body not her own, gave him hope that all was not lost. He’d known for weeks that something had gone radically wrong with his former companion’s plan to eliminate the Adversary once and for all and he’d spent the time since gradually piecing together the truth of what had occurred. That knowledge threatened to send him back into isolation, for he’d seen no way of stopping the cataclysm to come.

  But now…

  Now there was hope, slim though it may be.

  The woman was the key.

  With her in the forefront of his thoughts, he strode over to the headstone sticking out of the earth nearby. Just as Gabrielle had done before him, he ran his fingers over the inscription carved into the rock.

  The irony was not lost on him.

  His spell had worked, restoring the woman’s memory so that she could let the others know what lay ahead for them. If they did not act, and act swiftly, their chance to save this world would pass them by.

  The time for rest was over.

  It was time for war.

  With a final glance to be certain he hadn’t missed anything, he turned and strode into the shadows beneath the trees, disappearing from view as if he hadn’t ever been there at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Riley, with Gabrielle in tow, was the last to arrive at the abandoned smelting facility and warehouse that served as the rendezvous point for the code black signal. More than a few of the men waiting inside breathed a sigh of relief at his appearance, which was the first sign that things had not gone as well as he’d hoped. Glancing around at the men gathered there, he received another; there were only twenty-five, maybe thirty men in total.

  Less than half, Riley thought with dismay.

  Things weren’t going to get any easier either.

  Quite a few of those assembled were staring at Gabrielle, wondering what she was doing there, and he knew he was going to need to address that question sooner rather than later. But first there were things that needed to get done.

  He sent pairs of men to watch both the front and rear entrances of the building, as well as putting another set of eyes up on the roof. He had the team leaders report in, giving him the status of their men and the supply caches they’d retrieved, and accounts of what they’d run into in the process.

  When that was finished, he introduced Gabrielle to the men as someone who could explain some of what was happening.

  With that, he turned the floor over to her.

  Gabrielle stepped into the space Riley provided, out in front of the assembled men, and looked them over, seeing the doubt and the apprehension on their faces. She knew that this was not a time for equivocations. She had come here to warn them and warn them she would.

  “I suspect that some of you know the story of how Knight Commander Williams came to be a Templa
r,” she began.

  Several of the men nodded.

  “The story of how the Adversary possessed the body of a killer and used that man to attack Commander Williams and to slay Williams’ wife, Gabrielle. Of how Williams joined the Order to seek vengeance on the Adversary, to make him pay for the life he’d taken.”

  She had their attention now; stories about the man some called the heretic tended to do that. She gave them a moment to take it in, to let the tension build in a way that would get them to listen to what it was she had to say.

  “I’m here to tell you that there is far more to that story, starting with the fact that Cade’s wife did not die that day. I should know, for I am that woman. I am Gabrielle Williams.”

  And with that introduction, she told them everything.

  Of her time spent wandering the Beyond.

  Of her efforts to warn and assist Cade whenever she had the power to pierce the Veil and cross the barrier from the Beyond.

  Of the days spent trapped on the Isle of Sorrows, only to be released when Cade sent the Adversary back to the Infernal Realm where it belonged.

  Of the horror she’d endured as the Necromancer’s ritual had reunited her spirit with her body, only to discover that the Adversary shared that same space with her.

  And finally, of what the Adversary had done in those final moments.

  “With our minds and spirits sharing the same physical shell, the Adversary was free to plumb the depths of my very soul, to share my memories, to plunder my secrets. But the connection worked both ways, as I slowly came to realize.

  “While he could see into my thoughts, I was free to see into his own.”

  Every eye was fixed on her as her story sped toward its climax.

  “In that final moment, when Cade drove his blade into my heart activating the ritual he and his angelic allies had fought to invoke, I saw the Adversary’s true purpose. The ritual would not destroy him, as the angels intended; in fact, it had the opposite effect. The ritual allowed him to channel his power in conjunction with those of his former scream that waited in the underworld. With that one final burst of power he and his allies possessed the angels before them, driving out the divine spirits and seizing control of the physical bodies for their own. Not only does the Adversary live anew, but he now has his six most powerful allies at his side!”