Darkness Reigns

by Joseph Nassise

  As it turned out, when the scouts returned with the news that the fuel depot was only minimally guarded and that the Regent was most likely counting on the secrecy of its location to keep its contents safe, Hale ordered the Templars to take it down.

  Thanks to the missions Cade and Gabrielle had participated in lately, plus the minor injuries and shell shock that Cade was still healing from as a result of the mishap on the convoy strike, the smash and grab at the fuel depot was assigned to another squad and they were told to get some rest.

  They waited anxiously with Sergeant Dean, who was becoming a close friend, for the squad to return and they made sure that they were stationed near the entrance around the time the team was supposed to return.

  Trouble was, the team was late.

  T plus fifteen became T plus thirty and still no sign of the squad.

  Sergeant Dean began pacing just inside the entrance, his concern growing with every passing minute. They'd been exceptionally lucky lately; had their luck finally run out?

  An hour after the squad was due in, lights could be seen coming down the old forest road and moments later the two assault vehicles appeared, followed by a pair of lorries full of fifty gallon steel drums. Everyone was okay; the delay had been caused by a problem with the engine of one of the lorries, rather than any opposition from the Regent's men.

  Along with sixty drums of diesel fuel, the raiders also returned with nearly forty new people, men, woman, and children, all of whom had been rescued from a set of cells inside the fuel depot where they'd been waiting to accompany the next shipment south.

  Cade and Gabrielle join the others in helping the newcomers out of the trucks and getting them inside, where they were assigned temporary bunks until their information could be gathered and they could be assigned more permanent quarters and work assignments.

  In the new Templar Order, everyone paid their dues one way or another.

  Cade handed out blankets while Gabrielle gave each person a care package of toiletries and snacks. One man broke down in tears when he took the blanket from Cade.

  "You're safe now," Cade said to him. "You can rest easy."

  "Thank you. You have no idea what we've been through..."

  That was probably true, but he could certainly guess. "What's your name?" Cade asked.

  "Ephram."

  "Got a last name, Ephram?"

  "Black," he said.

  "Well, please to meet you, Ephram Black. I'm Cade Williams. And this is my wonderful wife, Gabrielle."

  Ephram shook both their hands, thanked them again, and then moved off with the other refugees.

  It would not, unfortunately, be the last they would see of him.

  By the next morning, Cade had managed to secure the one thing he'd been asking for from Major Hale for the last week - the chance to take the battle directly to the enemy.

  Rather than slink about in the darkness, attacking small facilities here and there to get what they needed but little more, he argued for a larger, more proactive assault.

  Just north of the ruins of New Haven, he told Hale, there was a large labor and recreation camp that held close to a hundred of their brethren captive. Men were forced to work in the fields, harvesting crops for those in the city, while the women serviced the local troops and, occasionally, if they were lucky, selected to work in the restaurants and entertainment parlors of the upper class.

  Perhaps emboldened by the recent successes or just the need to do something where before all they'd been able to manage as to keep their own hides out of bondage, Hade finally agreed when Cade offered to lead the expedition himself.

  Several days passed, as Cade gathered and sorted through all the intelligence they could get their hands on regarding the camp and its inhabitants. Finally, with a battle plan prepped and approved in advance by Hale, the team was ready.

  The night before they were due to set out, Cade asked to address the assembled warriors just as he had for years while running the Echo Team. Hale agreed.

  They assembled in the large garage area where Cade and Gabrielle first encountered Major Hale. The troops milled about and Cade saw some of those who'd arrived just the other night already among them.

  Good, he thought. They're eager to help and we're going to need that enthusiasm in the months ahead.

  If this assault worked the way he hoped it did, he had plans for much more that the Templars could do down the road. It was time to take this world back from the monsters.

  World of the assault on the work camp had spread through the troops earlier that afternoon and dozens had come forward to volunteer for the op. Cade knew that they were as eager to bring the fight to the enemy as he was.

  There were a few crates of machine parts lying nearby and Cade grabbed one of them, moved it to the center of the room, and then climbed atop it. The noise of the assembled crowd died down as they turned to hear what he had to say.

  "Thank you all for coming!" he began, not really knowing any other way to begin.

  "Some of you know me. For those that don't, my name is Cade Williams."

  "Knight Commander Williams," someone shouted from out of the crowd.

  Cade nodded. "Yes, I once held that rank, though I don't think that matters all that much anymore. What matters is that I have been in this fight at least as long as most of you.

  "Once I led the Echo Team, one of the Order's elite strike teams, and during that time I faced many a foe. But never one more dangerous, or more deadly, than the Adversary, the fallen angel you know as Ashareal.

  "Now, Ashareal and his scream of angels have taken control of our world. In their guise as the Seven, they rule the continents and lord themselves over the human race. For too long have we lived under their yoke. For too long have we toiled on their behalf."

  Every eye was on him. The room had gone completely quiet as they stared, spellbound, at him. He imagined he looked quite the sight, with his dusty old eyepatch and his scar that ran from eyebrow to jaw, with his gloves that protected his hands from unexpected contact.

  But they didn't seem to care. They hung on his every word.

  "Tomorrow that changes!" he shouted. "Tomorrow we'll take the fight to the enemy in a way we never have before. No longer will we settle for taking what we need to survive, Tomorrow we'll take what we need to start anew!"

  The crowd was stirring now, the excitement flashing through it from person to person and they began to realize that things were about to change.

  "Tonight darkness may reign, but tomorrow the sun will rise and we will come with it. We will free our brethren from their chains and with them we will continue, one strike at a time, to take our world back from the evil that controls it."

  "Who's with me?" he shouted.

  The crowd roared back at him.

  They were ready, he thought. They could do this.

  They would do this.

  He'd said what he'd come here to say and so he left it at that, waving to the crowd for a moment and then ending it before things got out of hand.

  As Cade stepped down from the make-shift podium, he heard his name being called from nearby over the cheers of those around him. Turning, he saw the new guy, Black, coming toward him quickly through the crowd. Thinking the man just wanted to say hello and thank him for helping him get settled a few days before, Cade waited for him to approach and then extended his hand.

  Black smiled and extended his hand as well.

  Cade saw the knife Black was holding too late.

  He tried to twist out of line of the attack, but only partially made it. Black thrust the knife deep in his side and Cade felt the blade glance off a rib before burying itself up to the hilt.

  Pain shot through him from the blow and he tried to speak, to ask the fool why he had done such a thing, but he found that his mouth, and the rest of his body, were paralyzed. He couldn't move a muscle.

  That's when the pain began radiating out from the injury itself, sweeping through his system so quickly that it felt
like someone was pumping sulphuric acid through his veins. That emotionless, new side of his personality, the one that he imagined was the angelic side of his nature, idly considered the situation and opined that he'd just been poisoned, even as the pain became overwhelming and his vision began to narrow.

  He could hear screams around him now and through his tunnel vision he saw Black raise the blade of the knife and slash his own palm even as hands pulled him away from Cade.

  Punches rained down on the unfortunate man as Cade's vision began to narrow.

  The last thing he saw was Gabrielle's face looming over him.

  I'm sorry, my love, he thought, I've failed you again, and then blacked out.

  27

  An hour passed. Then two. Gabrielle was getting ready to barge into the surgery and demand some answers about her husband when the door opened and Major Hale emerged with another, dark-haired man in tow.

  They walked directly over to her and Hale introduce his companion as Dr. Wyatt, their chief physician.

  "What can you tell me about my husband?" she asked, as soon as the introductions were over.

  Wyatt started with the good news.

  "The wound itself wasn't as bad as I initially expected. Cade must have twisted toward the strike when he sensed the blow coming, no doubt trying to give his assailant a smaller target, and that probably saved his life. The knife entered his torso about six inches below his left armpit, scraping along his third rib in the process. The end result was a deep puncture wound that was accompanied by a fair bit of blood loss, but no internal organs were injured in the strike and, if we can get him through the night, the wound should heal without much difficulty given plenty of time and rest."

  The news should have been comforting, but Gabrielle hadn't missed the doctor's prevarication.

  "What do you mean, 'get him through the night'? I thought you said the wound wasn't that serious."

  Dr. Wyatt nodded. "You're right; it isn't. In fact, the wound is relatively minor given what we're used to dealing with. The problem is that the blade was coated with Dante's Tears."

  Beside her, she heard Major Hale gasp.

  "I don't understand," she said, looking first to Hale and then back again at Wyatt. "What's Dante's Tears?"

  "Poison," Hale said beside her, nearly spitting in disgust. "A fatal one."

  Gabrielle felt her heart skip a beat. "Is that true?"

  Another nod from Wyatt. "Usually, yes. But there's something strange happening with your husband. Normally, Dante's Tears kills on contact, or as close to contact as to not make much of a difference. Look at how quickly your husband's attacker succumbed to the cut on his hand."

  "But you said Cade's doing pretty well, all things expected."

  "And he is. Somehow his body is fighting off the poison. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. Coming into the slightest contact with that poison is usually a death sentence, but somehow Cade hasn't succumbed. I have no idea how."

  "Well," Gabrielle said, frowning, not liking what she was hearing, "can't you do something for him?"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Give him something to help counteract the poison. Help his metabolism break it down somehow."

  "I'd love to," said Dr. Wyatt. "The problem is that we don't even really know what Dante's Tears really is, never mind have an antitoxin available to treat it."

  Major Hale lightly touched Gabbi's arm, pulling her attention in his direction. "As far as we can tell, Dante's Tears is an artificial compound, made from mixing together the blood from several different demons breeds and then weaponizing the results with ritualistic magic. We've been unable to break the compound down any further than that, never mind get an understanding of the type and kind of ritual utilized. Until we can answer both of those things, there's no way of for us to develop an antidote."

  "So we're just going to do what? Nothing?"

  Dr. Watts finally showed some emotion. "I wouldn't say that," he replied a little testily. "We've treated his injury, preventing further blood loss and staving off the chance of infection by doing so, and we've brought in one of our senior mystics who will use this healing arts to monitor Cade's body for any sign that the poison might be gaining the upper hand."

  "And if it does? What then?"

  Wyatt shrugged. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

  Which is just another way of saying they don't have a frickin' clue, Gabbrielle thought. Never being one to beat around the bush, she went straight to the heart of the matter. "What do you think his chances are?" she asked.

  Neither of them said anything, but it didn't take a genius to see what they thought; neither man would meet her gaze.

  After an uncomfortable moment of silence, Wyatt said, "Right now, as far as well can tell, he's unconscious but stable. We'll keep him as comfortable as we can and hope for the best. It's all we can do."

  She nodded. Paused, then asked, "Who will lead the assault now?"

  Hale waved the issue away. "We'll figure that out later. Right now, our concern is for Cade."

  "Can I see him at least?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  Gabrielle thanked Major Hale and then followed Dr. Watts as he lead her through the maze of warren-like tunnels, deeper into the Templar complex, until they came to the large chamber that served as the commandery hospital. Gabrielle counted about twenty beds, with half that number currently occupied. A portion of the chamber at the rear of the room had been separated from the rest with portable cloth partitions. A pair of guards stood before them, weapons in hand.

  A bit like guarding the barn door after the horse had fled, she thought at the sight of them, but didn't let that show on her face as Wyatt led the way across the room, nodded to the guards, and led her past.

  On the other side of the partitions, in a hospital bed salvaged from God knew where, was Cade.

  Gabrielle had to clench her fist from crying out at the sight of him. He looked terrible; the worst she'd ever seen. Even worse than when she'd come upon him after all those days in exile in the Beyond. His flesh was sallow and tinged with grey, making him look far more like the corpse he'd almost ended up being rather than the living, breathing person he miraculously still was. The network of black lines running beneath his skin, evidence of the poison running through his system, didn't help dispel the illusion either. His eyes, now closed, were sunken in their sockets and his cheekbones seemed far more prominent than usual, as if the poison were eating him alive from the inside out. For all she knew, that's exactly what it was doing.

  She stepped up to the side of the bed and took his hand in her own, nearly gasping aloud at how cold his flesh was.

  Catching her reaction, Wyatt hastened to explain.

  "It's okay," he told her. "We used a cryogenic spell to bring his body temperature down as low as we dared in an effort to stop the spread of the toxin."

  "He's not in any danger of slipping into hypothermia?"

  The doctor shook his head. "He's medically stabilized at that specific temperature and there's no risk from the cold."

  With that, they left her alone with Cade.

  At first she just talked to him, having heard at some point in the past that patients could often hear those around them while in a coma, medically induced or otherwise. She didn't want him to think that he was alone. She found it ironic that they had somehow come full circle, that now she was the one sitting by his side, talking to him, caring for him, just as he'd done for her for so many months when her soul had been trapped in the Beyond, cut off from her physical form by the Adversary's magick.

  But after a time, hearing herself talk but not getting an answer from him, not a murmur of acknowledgement or even a twitch of his limbs, grew wearisome. At that point, she turned to prayer.

  Gabrielle had never had that much faith, growing up as she had in a secular family that hadn't attended church when she'd been a child and only coming to religion later in life more as an intellectual exercise than anyt
hing else. Cade had always been the faithful one. The one who had believed in a benevolent God that cared about His people.

  Then had come the Adversary, in the form of the Dorchester Slasher, and everything had changed. Cade had lost his faith and in the process, Gabrielle had found hers.

  After all, how could she not believe when she herself was the recipient of God's amazing grace, when she was standing here, reborn anew when by all rights she should have been dead long ago?

  She knelt by Cade beside, his cold hand in her warm one, and asked for God's mercy.

  "Spare him, Lord. Heal him. Drive the poison from his body. You haven't brought us this far only to have him stuck down at the hand of an assassin. Give him the ability to heal what needs healing and return him, body, mind, and soul, to me, Lord. I beg of you."

  She continued in that vein for some time, until at least, weary and exhausted, she pulled a chair up beside the bed and collapsed into it.

  Moments later she was asleep.

  "Gabbi?"

  She started awake at the sound, confused about where she was and who was calling her name.

  Then it all came flooding back and she opened her eyes to find Cade staring at her from his bed across the room.

  "You're alive!" she cried, as she rushed over to him.

  "Is that what this is?" he joked, in a weak voice that showed what he'd been through during the last twenty-four hours. "Certainly doesn't feel like I'm alive. More like I got run over by a truck. And then he put it in reverse and did it again."

  Gabrielle couldn't believe it. Cade looked a thousand times better. His voice was still weak, yes, but his flesh had returned to its typical color and the dark lines that had run beneath it were now gone as well.

  "Do you remember what happened?"

  He waved a hand. "Vaguely. I'd just finished speaking to the troops when someone pulled a knife...?"

  Gabrielle nodded. "The blade was poisoned. The attacker took his own life with it seconds after stabbing you. You're lucky to be alive they tell me."

  Cade tried to smile, but the little effort he'd already expended had exhausted him. She told him not to worry, everything was under control, and by the time she'd reached the door to his room he was already fast asleep.