Darkness Reigns

by Joseph Nassise

  17

  A strange expression crossed the squad leader's face. "Cade Williams?" he repeated.

  Cade nodded. "Yes."

  "Knight Commander Cade Williams?"

  What the heck was wrong with this guy? Didn't I just answer that?

  "Just Cade. It hasn't been Knight Commander for some time. Now who are you and what do you want?"

  The squad commander didn't seem to have heard him. He stood there, staring for a moment, his gaze going from Cade to Gabrielle and back again.

  Finally, he said, "I don't believe you."

  Cade laughed; he couldn't help it. The whole situation was just absurd. A Mexican standoff in the ruins of Ravensgate? With a squad of Templars who may or may not be on the same side he was on? And the best their leader can come up with is "I don't believe you?" Could the night get any more ridiculous?

  Rapidly losing his patience, Cade said, "I don't care if you believe me or not."

  Behind him, Gabrielle said softly, "You're not helping the situation."

  Cade spoke without turning to face her. "Not helping?" he said over his shoulder. "He's the one pointing a gun at our heads."

  "And you're holding one of his men hostage."

  "Because he's holding a gun to our heads!"

  The Templar squad leader looked from one to the other with an expression that could only be disbelief, though whether that was because he didn't believe they were who they said they were or because they were talking about him in the third person as if he wasn't even there, Cade wasn't sure.

  The man's next statement cleared that up, however.

  "Prove to me that you're who you say you are."

  Cade sighed, exasperated. "How the hell do you expect me to do that? Think I've got my name and birthdate tattooed on my ass?"

  Behind him, Gabrielle murmured, "Wouldn't that be something..."

  There are at least half a dozen guns pointed in our direction and she's making jokes. Damn, but I love this woman.

  The squad leader, thankfully, didn't hear her.

  "While I never met him myself, the tales say that the Knight Commander had a particular word engraved on his sword."

  The tales say? Cade thought. What the fuck tales were those?

  "What was that word?" the squad leader asked.

  "Defensor," Cade replied.

  But the squad leader shook his head. "Every Templar sword bears that mark. I'm talking about the other one."

  Cade was silent long enough that Gabrielle spoke up.

  "Cade? Do you know what he's talking about?"

  "Yes."

  "Then answer the man, for heaven's sake! My arms are getting tired."

  A moment passed, then two, as Cade found himself oddly resistant to saying the other phrase aloud with Gabrielle standing right there beside him.

  She opened her mouth, no doubt to say something about the delay, when Cade gave in to the inevitable.

  "Ulciscor," he said softly, and then, with more force, "Ulciscor."

  Vengeance.

  The squad leader pointed to the sword hilt rising up over Cade's shoulder with the barrel of his own weapon. "Show me."

  Gabrielle glanced at Cade. He gave it a moment's thought and then nodded. Since he was still holding a knife to the soldier's throat, it was left to Gabrielle to draw the weapon, walk toward the squad leader and hold up the sword so that he could see the engraving running down the length of the blade.

  Reading the word etched there, the squad leader's face went still. He looked at Cade, and it seemed to him that the squad leader was noticing his eye patch and facial scar for the first time. In the next moment the entire situation changed.

  "My apologies, Knight Commander," the squad leader said, lowering his weapon and giving the signal to his men to do the same. "We had no idea who you were and meant no disrespect."

  Surprised himself by the sudden turn of events, it was all Cade could to do shrug and say, "Sure. None taken." He glanced down, realized he was still holding a knife to the other Templar's throat, and quickly let him go with a whispered apology. Thankfully, the man seemed too stunned by the revelation of Cade's identity to do more than stand there rubbing his throat with a shocked expression on his face.

  The squad leader stepped forward and extended his hand.

  "Sergeant Michael Dean, sir."

  Cade took the man's hand in his own and gave it a brisk shake, thankful for the sudden change of attitude and intending to capitalize on it while the going was good. He introduced Gabrielle to the sergeant and then told him that he had an urgent message for the Templar high command.

  "How quickly can you get me in front of them?" he asked.

  Sergeant Dean shook his head. "Best I can do is to get you in to see my commanding officer, Major Hale. Anything beyond that will be up to him."

  "But he can put me in touch with those further up the chain of command?"

  "I really can't say, sir. That would be up to Captain Hale."

  Cade could recognize a bit of military stonewalling when he heard it. No sense pushing too hard just yet, he thought. They only just made contact with what was left of the Order and he needed to stay in their good graces if he was going to find what he was looking for.

  He put a smile on his face and glanced around, saying. "Good enough, sergeant. Is this Major Hale close by?"

  "Less than an hour, Knight Commander. We have a vehicle standing by. It won't be long."

  "Very well. Lead on then, Sergeant."

  A few quick commands from Dean had his men reorganized as a loose group with Cade and Gabrielle in the center and then they set out toward a break in the wall surrounding the former commandery. Once beyond the barrier, Sergeant Dean led them through the woods to where a six-wheeled vehicle was parked in a small clearing, guarded by two more Templar soldiers who Cade rightly took to be the vehicle's crew.

  The vehicle was an armored personnel carrier; long and lean and fearsome looking. It had six all-terrain tires – four in the front and two in the back – and an armored chassis that would easily withstand small arms and possibly even heavy weapons fire. The front windshield was protected by a set of metal louvres, currently open, and a 7.62-mm machine gun rested in a roof turret just behind the front cab.

  Cade didn't bother looking for insignia on the vehicle. The Templars had always operated in secret and he didn't expect that to have changed in the time he'd been gone, end of the world or not. Leave the enemy to their iron fist emblems; just made them easier to identify in the wild, he thought.

  The double doors at the rear of the vehicle were thrown open and the squad members began to climb inside, the smoothness of their actions making it plain they had done this very act many times before. The interior was outfitted with long bench seats on either side and built to carry ten soldiers reasonably comfortably. It was a tight fit with Cade and Gabrielle added to the load, but the sergeant refused to allow anyone to ride on the outside of the vehicle, so they made do with cramming everyone inside.

  Once they were settled, Sgt. Dean gave the order, the big 365-horsepower engine rumbled to life, and they got underway. Dean had said the ride would take close to an hour, so Cade settled back and took stock of those around him. Dim, red-colored lights ran the length of the vehicle above the bench seats, designed to save the occupants' night vision should they need to deploy rapidly, and while the lights weren't the best for noticing fine detail, they did shed enough illumination to let Cade get a decent look at those who shared the compartment with him.

  The first thing he noticed was the rag-tag nature of the team seated around him. They might move and act as a unit, but they certainly didn't look like one. Gone were the custom-designed battle dress uniforms and the standardized weaponry that marked the Templar combat teams of his day. These soldiers – six men and four women – were dressed in a hodge-podge of styles, from camouflage BDUs to jerseys and jeans, all in various stages of wear. The same variety could be seen in their ages; a couple of them had to be p
ushing sixty and at least one couldn't have been long out of his teens.

  Cade was seated across from a woman with close-shaven hair and fine features that were in part blunted by her hard expression. She sat with her head pressed back into the seat and her eyes closed, giving him the chance to study her at length. He guessed she was about twenty-five, give or take a few years. The sallowness of her complexion suggested she hadn't seen the sun in quite a while and the tightness of her skin revealed a less than adequate diet. She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, over which she wore a thick button up, no doubt to ward off the evening chill. A watch cap was pulled tight on her head.

  As the vehicle bounced along the wooded track, her over-shirt parted slightly and a necklace of long, sharp teeth could be seen hanging around her neck. Cade angled his head and leaned forward slightly, trying to get a better look.

  Are those vampire teeth? he wondered.

  Curious as to their origin, Cade triggered his Sight. The teeth lit up with an eerie blue-green aura, revealing their supernatural nature and confirming his initial guess.

  He blinked, restoring his vision to normal.

  The woman chose that moment to open her eyes, no doubt having felt the weight of his ongoing scrutiny. She didn't say anything, just stared back at him as if daring him to say something.

  So, of course, that's just what he did.

  "Where'd you get those teeth?" he asked.

  She studied him in turn for a moment, then answered laconically.

  "Hunting vamps."

  Cade nodded to himself. Ask a stupid question...

  Still, her response gave him pause. With the exception of the Chiang Shih incursion several years ago, Cade could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he and the Echo team had been called out to deal with vamps. They simply weren't that numerous in the United States. Or so he thought; the fact that the woman opposite him was wearing a necklace of vamp fangs suggested that might be another one of those things that had changed since he'd been gone.

  He was still pondering the implications of that when the woman followed his question with one of her own.

  "Where'd you get that scar?" she asked, nodding at the large white line that started above his eye, crossed the orb itself, and ran down the side of his cheek to end near the top of his neck.

  "Hunting a fallen angel," he told her, which, while it wasn't exactly the truth, was close enough.

  "Yeah? Rad. Hope you made the bastard pay."

  She smiled as she said it, prompting Cade to smile in return, two hunters understanding each other perfectly in that moment.

  They might not look like the knights I'm used to, Cade thought, but if she was any indication, they were Templars through and through.

  It was a reassuring thought.

  It was coming up on close to an hour of traveling when the truck made several turns and then came to a halt. A few moments later someone pounded twice on the rear doors, no doubt the signal that it was okay to open up. Those sitting near the doors did so, then dismounted. Cade and Gabrielle followed.

  They found themselves standing in a parking lot that had seen better days. The pavement was cracked and crumbling, and weeds grew up through the surface in small patches here and there. A chain-link fence in dire need of some much-needed repair ran around the outer perimeter. On the far side of the lot, Cade could see three large earth-movers rusting in the sunlight, their Department of Public Works logos faded but still visible even at a distance. Closer still, on the far side of the vehicle they'd just emerged from, Cade could see an odd shaped building that resembled nothing so much as a giant beehive, if that beehive had been cut in half vertically and then cemented to the side of a hill. He'd seen DPW garages like this in the past and wasn't surprised when two massive doors suddenly swung open in the center of the "hive", allowing their all-terrain vehicle access to the interior.

  Sergeant Dean appeared at their side. "Follow me," he said, then turned and headed for the entrance. Cade and Gabrielle fell in behind him.

  They had just entered the facility when Cade felt the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention as the wards protecting the entrance snapped closed at their backs, sealing them inside. Soldiers stepped out of the shadows around them, rifles trained in their direction, and Cade and Gabrielle came to an abrupt halt as they were quickly surrounded.

  "What's going on, Sergeant?" Cade asked, taking care to keep his tone level and steady. "I thought we had an agreement?"

  "You did," said a voice from behind the ring of soldiers and a moment later the group parted slightly to let this new individual approach. The newcomer was about Gabrielle's height - five seven, maybe five eight, if Cade had to guess - with a stocky frame and short-cropped hair that was far more salt than pepper. He was dressed in well-worn fatigues of dusty grey and was wearing military grade combat boots on his feet that looked at least a decade old.

  "I've since rescinded it."

  "And you are?"

  "Major Thomas Hale."

  Apparently that was all Cade was going to get from the man, for at that point the major turned to Sergeant Dean and said, "Take their weapons and then search them."

  Under cover of the other soldiers, Dean moved in. "Sorry, Knight Commander, but I'll need you to surrender that sword," he said quietly, once he stood in front of the other man.

  To his credit, he didn't flinch as Cade reached up and took hold of the hilt of his weapon, drawing it forth from its sheath, and then handing it over without objection.

  Then again, Cade thought, it's easy to be brave when you've got half a dozen other guys covering you with semi-automatic rifles.

  Dean took the weapon, almost with a sense of reverence it seemed to Cade, and then moved to do the same with Gabrielle's. She, too, handed hers over without a fuss.

  What else was there to do, really?

  Dean passed both swords to one of the other soldiers and then stepped back over to them, quickly frisking them to be certain that they weren't carrying anything else. Satisfied, he looked over at Major Hale and nodded.

  At that point Hale stepped forward, his attention centered on Cade.

  "These are dark and dangerous times," Hale said. "My responsibility goes first to those under my command and second to those who have taken refuge here. I don't know you or your companion, so I'll be damned if I let you take another step inside this facility without confirming that you are who you say you are, regardless of whatever arrangement you made with Sergeant Dean."

  Cade felt his anger swell. He'd been fighting the Adversary and his minions for well over a decade, had faced numerous supernatural creatures and more than one fallen angel in his quest to keep evil in check. Who did this major think he was, preaching to him about responsibility?

  He was about to saying something along those lines, something that no doubt would have landed them in even hotter water than they currently found themselves, when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder.

  "We need them, Cade. We won't find Riley on our own," Gabrielle said softly, in a voice only loud enough that he could hear and at the touch of her hand his anger fled as swiftly as it had come.

  Gabrielle was right. What was he thinking?

  He nodded, then addressed himself to Hale.

  "How do you intend to do that?" he asked. "Fingerprints? Retinal scan?"

  To his surprise, Hale laughed. "If only it were that easy. Even if we had the technology for that, which we don't, the records we'd need to match them against have long since been lost. Besides, there are plenty of demons who can replicate a human being right down to their very DNA. No, we're going to do things a little differently."

  Demons replicating DNA?

  While Cade was still wrestling with the idea that the men and women around him seriously thought he and Gabrielle might be demons in disguise, Major Hale called for another member of their group to come forward.

  This man was dressed in the classic black shirt and pants of a Catholic priest, compl
ete with a white collar at his throat, but the mystical symbols tattooed on his face and forearms in blue and silver ink made him resembled an ancient Druid covered in blue woad more than a modern priest. His head had been shaved on the sides, the remainder gathered into a kind of top knot, like those worn by monks in the Dark Ages.

  If Cade hadn't already guessed that this was one of the Order's mystics, the power he senses radiating off the man would have confirmed it.

  Use of the arcane was nothing new to the Templar Order, despite their fervently religious nature. Back when Cade had been in charge of the Echo Team, there had been a small division of mystics stationed at Ravensgate and he'd used their scrying abilities to track down lost items or to get a sense of where a fugitive might be holing up on more than one occasion. They were also the group that created and maintained the wards that guarded the facility and they'd been indispensable in repelling the demon the Council of Nine had called forth to attack the commandery several years earlier. Unlike his own abilities, which many of his fellow Templars thought had been given to him by the Adversary during their initial encounter, the mystics were considered men of God, their power granted by the Lord Almighty and therefore safe to use without concern for corruption or sin. More Moses to Cade's Witch of Endor, if one wanted to put it into biblical terms, which the knights were wont to do.

  This particular mystic stepped forward and, without even bothering to introduce himself, pulled what looked like a silver ball on a stick from his pocket and raised it over his shoulder as if to hurl it forward like a knife.

  Thankfully, Cade had seen an aspergillum before, a device used at Mass to sprinkle Holy Water on congregants, and rather than seeing it as a threat and taking the man out where he stood, he waited patiently as the priest thrust his arm forward once, twice, three times, splashing droplets of blessed water on him and Gabrielle.

  Cade was reaching up to wipe the water off his face when a shriek split the air directly behind him and he turned to see Gabrielle with her face in her hands, squirming about as if the water had grievously injured her. Rifles snapped into position all around them and Cade stepped closer to her, trying to cover as much of his wife's body with his own as he could, when she cried, "I'm melting!" in her best Wicked Witch of the West voice and straightened to stare at those surrounding her.