Riley cursed inwardly. “But you can open the way so one of us can go?”
He wanted to laugh bitterly at his own words; one of them wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against the things that lurked on the other side.
Uriel shook his head, however.
“I am no more able to open the way to the Beyond than I am to enter it.”
“Then how the hell are we-“
Uriel looked pointedly at Gabrielle.
“Me?” she asked.
The archangel nodded. “You, and you alone, can do it.” He explained that her earlier efforts at crossing the Veil, her connection to Cade, and her “unique” as-he-called-it nature all combined to give her the ability to open a way to the Beyond. It wouldn’t be easy; but with his guidance she should be able to do it.
If she can’t, Riley thought, we’re fucked.
Gabrielle looked around at the knights standing in silence, watching her.
“Fine. Let’s do it.”
# # #
Miles away, in his office in the Ravensgate commandery, the Adversary snarled in rage and shattered the desk in front of him with a single blow.
He had been monitoring the exchange between the archangel and his new allies through the link he’d established with the Templar named Green. His attempt to influence the other renegade knights had been going well enough until the wingless bastard had shown himself. His very presence had made the link more difficult to sustain and the Adversary had been forced to focus solely on listening to what was passing between them, rather than being able to actively force Green to interrupt it.
Now he’d heard enough.
So my old friend, Uriel, thinks he can outsmart me, does he? After all the years of standing on the sidelines he thinks he’s going to enter the game in the final hours and take the prize when it is just within my grasp? Think again, you stupid pawn!
The Adversary summoned his power and sent one final command to his pet Templar and then severed the link.
Green might be little more than a pawn himself, but pawns had been known to take down Queens in the past so why not now? Why not indeed?
With that issue taken care of, the Adversary turned his attention to the other. Picking up the telephone, he dialed Grand Master Johannson’s private extension. The former preceptor picked up on the first ring.
“Yes, Lord?”
“Riley and the rest of the renegade knights are holed up in the offices of an abandoned granite quarry outside of Fairfield. I want you to send our troops to eliminate them immediately.”
“Of course.”
In his guise as Seneschal Ferguson, he’d urged Johannson to move against the Grand Master and assume his position. The minute the ambitious little Templar had done so, his “friend,” the Seneschal, had made several moves of his own, including corrupting the former Preceptor with a conqueror worm of his own. From there, the infestation of the regular Templar ranks had begun. Almost two thirds of the Order was now under his direct control and it wouldn’t be long before the rest were as well.
With the Templars eliminated from the equation, it would be much easier for his plans for conquest to move forward at an accelerated pace.
So far everything was working to plan.
Well, almost everything, he thought. There was still the issue of the elusive Nephilim named Williams.
If Uriel was telling the truth, Williams had been in the Beyond for several weeks now. That was more than enough time for the nature of the Beyond to work on the angelic side of the man’s nature, corrupting it from within. For all the Adversary knew, Williams might have already Fallen, leaving no need to send anyone after him.
But Williams had been known to get himself out of some very tight spots in the past.
Best to be certain.
Hanging up the phone, the Adversary moved to the middle of the room, giving himself enough space for what he intended to do. Calling forth his power, he summoned a full sneak of shadow demons, thirteen in all. He embedded an image of the former Knight Commander Williams in the feral mind of each of the creatures, then sent them on their way.
Thinking he had all of the bases now covered, the Adversary returned to his desk and went back to looking over the maps he’d been examining earlier.
Conquest is a glorious thing, he thought, one made all the more special when the enemy doesn’t even know that you are coming.
# # #
No sooner had Gabrielle agreed to make the attempt to rescue Cade than Sergeant Green went berserk. Riley watched in stunned amazement as Green drew his sword, let out a bellow fit for a Viking, and charged across the short distance that separated him from where Uriel stood with Gabrielle.
At first Riley thought Uriel was the target and so he was a bit slow to respond, fully confident that the archangel could defend itself. It was only when he realized that Green had his gaze, and his fury, locked onto Gabrielle that he realized his mistake.
Without Gabrielle, their plan to rescue Cade was over before it began.
Riley fumbled for his pistol, knowing he was already too late.
A shot rang out, looming large like thunder, and Riley looked up to see Gabrielle standing in front of the archangel as if to protect him, a pistol in hand.
Green, thrown over backward by the close-quarters shot, twitched once and went still.
Chaos erupted.
Men began shouting, weapons were raised, and it all might have gone to hell right then and there if Uriel hadn’t stepped in. He opened his mouth and literally roared, sending a wave of sound so loud and so powerful washing over them that it was all they could do to cover their ears and pray for it to end.
When the shout died away, Uriel pointed to Green's corpse and said, “Look!”
Green had fallen face-up, the shot that had killed him looking like a third eye in the center of his forehead. As Gabrielle, Riley, and the rest of the Templars looked on, a large, slug-creature as fat around as Riley’s fist forced its way out of the bullet hole, trailing a line of blood and brains behind it.
As the creature reached the floor and began moving across it toward the entrance, Uriel grabbed Riley’s sword from his hand and cut the thing in half with a single blow. There was a flash of blue light and then the thing laid still.
Gabrielle stared at it with revulsion and then turned to Uriel.
“Tell me that’s not-“
“A conqueror worm?” Uriel shook his head. “I can’t, because we both know that it is.”
Feeling strangely ignorant, Riley asked, “What the heck is a conqueror worm?”
“A psychic parasite,” the archangel answered, as he poked the slug with the blade of Riley’s sword. Whenever he touched it with the blessed weapon the corpse sizzled like steak on the grill.
Gabrielle picked up Green's discarded sword and continued the explanation. “They’re harvested from the Sea of Sorrows in the Beyond and can be used to living, to bend them to the harvester’s will.”
“So someone was controlling Green?”
She nodded, a grim expression on her face. “And most likely listening to everything we were saying as they did so.”
There was really only one individual who had both access to the Beyond and a desire to know what was going on within Riley’s group of renegade Templars.
The Adversary.
“God in heaven,” Riley whispered, struggling to resist the urge to cross himself and then giving in to the notion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Believing that the Adversary would do everything in its power to prevent them from sending Gabrielle into the Beyond in search of Cade, Riley immediately ordered the Templars to begin preparing to defend their current location against what could only be an imminent assault, leaving Gabrielle to work with Uriel in the hopes of opening a way into the Beyond.
Discarded pallets and large rock carts were strategically placed to allow the defenders shelter against incoming fire. Weapons and ammunition were distributed and stacked within easy r
each. He put his two best snipers on the roof and ordered several more men to form an advance position by arranging the vehicles into a defensive position a half dozen yards in front of the main doors.
After that, there wasn’t much to do but wait.
It didn’t take long. Within ten minutes of their taking up positions the first of the enemy showed up at the mouth of the dirt road leading back to the highway. Four SUVS, each carrying half-a-dozen men, pulled to a stop angled in opposite directions across the road, blocking the only way out.
Or so they thought.
Riley knew better. Cade had selected this place and he never would have done anything so stupid as to choose a location with only one way in and one way out. Beneath the building in which they stood was an underground tunnel via which the finished granite blocks had been moved half a mile east to a platform where they were loaded onto a train. The train tracks themselves were long since defunct, but Riley had been down in the tunnel not a month earlier and knew it was still functional. As soon as Gabrielle was away, he and his men would retreat in that direction, escaping to fight another day.
For now, he’d let the enemy think they had them cornered.
# # #
On the far side of the warehouse, Gabrielle stood with Uriel, preparing to return to the one place she swore she’d never go again.
The Beyond.
She didn’t care that she was breaking her vow; all she wanted to do was to find Cade and bring him home. She’d worry about the Adversary and all the rest once she’d managed that much.
“So how do I do this?” she asked.
Uriel shrugged.
It was not the answer she was expecting.
“What the heck does that mean?”
“It means I cannot tell you how to breach the barrier. Only you can do that.”
“But back there…” she began, pointing to where the group had been discussing the situation just moments before.
Uriel cut her off.
“Back there was for their benefit. Would you have agreed to try if I told you I didn’t know how to open the way?”
“Of course not!”
The archangel smiled.
“So how the hell am I supposed to do this?”
“How did you do it before?”
“I haven’t got a clue!”
“Yes, you do. Your memories are intact; with a little effort they are all there for the taking. See yourself opening the Veil, just as you did when you stopped your husband from killing the Necromancer in New Orleans.”
New Orleans? God but that felt like years distant from where she was now.
She closed her eyes and tried to remember where she had been moments before turning up in that desiccated chapel behind the plantation the Circle of Nine had used as their base of operations.
The moment she tried to focus on one memory, however, her mind was flooded with a thousand other thoughts.
Fear for her husband’s life.
Anger at the Adversary.
Curiosity about the archangel standing by her side.
Worry about the violence to come.
Dismay that she wouldn’t be able to do this.
Damn it, Williams! Knock it off!
But the more she tried, the worse it got.
She was just about to say as much to Uriel when the firing started.
# # #
“Here they come!” Riley shouted to the men around him as several newly arrived SUVS swerved around those that had been parked at the entrance to the complex and raced toward where the Templar commander was hunkered down with his men behind their own vehicles.
The snipers on the rooftop got off the first few shots, but Riley and those around him weren’t too far behind. Bullets slammed into the oncoming vehicles with deadly precision in a fusillade of fire that would have pulverized any ordinary vehicle.
These were Templar assault vehicles, however, reinforced with armored plating around the chassis and fitted with bulletproof windows. The gunfire Riley and his team threw at them damaged the vehicles and wounded some of those inside, but didn’t stop them completely. Recognizing that the drivers intended to ram their defensive position, Riley ordered his men to fall back inside the building. He waited until the other vehicles were almost upon them and then triggered the explosives they’d packed into the front few vehicles, watching as the blast lifted the oncoming SUVs and slammed them back down again, leaving nothing but broken, twisted wreckage in their wake.
Satisfied they’d given as well as they’d taken, Riley slipped inside the building and rejoined his men to wait for the next wave of attackers.
# # #
“Stop trying so hard. Just see the portal there in front of you and make it a reality.”
Gabrielle wanted to scream in frustration. Gunfire and explosions were going on around her – people where dying for heaven’s sake! – and Uriel kept telling her that all she had to do was relax and focus.
A powerful blast shook the very foundations of the building and Gabrielle was thrown forward. She would have slammed her head against a nearby stack of crates if Uriel hadn’t reached out and caught her.
“We’re running out of time,” he said.
Thanks for the pep talk.
She pulled free of his grasp, walked a few feet away to give herself some room, and did what she could to block out everything around her. She focused solely on her breathing, an old mindfulness routine she’d learned in her youth, in and out, in and out, closing her eyes and just letting everything else drift away.
When she was ready, she began to imagine the portal there before her, the shimmering mirror-like opening that would lead her from this world to the next. She tried to visualize it down to the finest detail, from the silver-green color to the slight ripples that washed across its surface.
A grunt from Uriel reached her and when she opened her eyes, the portal was shimmering there in the air before her.
She’d done it!
She had no real idea how she’d managed it, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she’d succeeded!
Then another blast shook the warehouse.
# # #
“Watch out! There trying to flank us!”
Riley felt like the fighting had been going on forever, though he knew it had only been a few minutes. But in that time he and his men had been forced to give up half of the ground they controlled and it wouldn’t be long before the mass of troops ahead of them took the rest.
There were just too many for his men to hold them off for long.
At first, it had been the horror of firing on men you knew, men you’d worked with day in and day out, that had caused them to lose ground they shouldn’t have lost. There wasn’t anything Riley could do if the men under his command tried to avoid killing their former comrades.
Not that those attacking them had any such qualms, he thought bitterly. It was as if the newly arrived Templar didn’t remember that they’d ever been on the same side; they charged his teams’ positions with ruthless abandon, throwing away their lives in an effort to overrun the rebels. First his teams gave up the external ground, then the area around the front door, and finally the middle of the warehouse.
This was it; they had nowhere else to go. They either held this ground long enough for Gabrielle to step through the portal or they’d lose before the real war ever began.
Riley fired a burst from the assault rifle in his hands and then felt it run dry. He had already used the last of his magazine so he tossed the rifle aside and pulled out his pistol. An enemy soldier stuck his head out past the stack of pallets he was hiding behind and Riley drilled it with a snapshot that sent the man tumbling backward where gunfire from several other sources made his now-lifeless body twist and shake.
A cry from behind Riley caught his attention and he turned to see the gleaming shape of a portal burst into existence at the back of the warehouse.
Gabrielle did it!
# # #
“Reme
mber, time passes differently in the Beyond,” Uriel shouted over the din of the gunfire around them. “Find Cade and return as quickly as you can. We’ll be waiting for you!”
Gabrielle nodded, grabbed the sword she'd momentarily put aside, and then hurried over to the portal. Taking a deep breath, she lifted one leg and stepped across the opening, feeling the power of the doorway pulling at her, wanting to drag her from this world into the next. As she gave into it, she chanced a look back.
She could see Riley standing in the gap between their hastily-assembled fortifications, firing at the incoming soldiers spreading out across the warehouse floor. He was doing everything he could to buy her a final few, precious seconds to make the passage across the Veil. As the portal pulled her into its depths, she saw an enemy grenade bounce across the floor to land at Riley’s feet.
“No!” she shouted.
The Templar leader tried to throw himself out of the way, but it was too late.
The last thing Gabrielle saw was Riley’s body being lifted into the air by the concussive blast of the explosion and then the darkness of the Beyond claimed her as its own and she knew no more.
The story continues in DARKNESS REIGNS (Coming Spring 2016)
BEFORE LEAVING THE COMMANDERY
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Interested in more TEMPLAR books?
The Templar Chronicles Series
The Heretic (Book One)
A Scream of Angels (Book Two)
A Tear in the Sky (Book Three)
Infernal Games (Book Four)
Judgment Day (Book Five)
Fall of Night (Book Six)
Templar Missions Novella Series
Shades of Blood and Darkness(Novella #1)
The Hungry Dark (Novella #2)
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Fall of Night: A Templar Chronicles Novel Page 20
