Hellgate London - Exodus Part 43

"Simon!" Crouched on the train car, Wertham reached for him. Their gloved fingertips touched for just a moment, then Simon was gone, sliding out over the side.

Warren swung his free hand at the grenade suspended in the field of force he'd instinctively summoned to keep the palladium spike from shredding his face. Before he made contact, the grenade exploded. Detonating so close to the pa.s.senger car kept the deadly force from the Templar on top and managed to rock the car a little, but the explosion came back on Warren. The impact and following second wave tore Warren from the train and knocked the air from his lungs.

He was barely cognizant of striking the ground. Fear steamrollered over him. He couldn't imagine the ruin his body had taken this time.

Or what would be left of him.

Unable to get control over his fall, Simon struck the ground and rolled. Dazed, he tried to get up but couldn't move for a moment. He knew the demons trailing the train would be getting closer with every second he lay there.

And the train would be getting farther away.

It didn't matter, though. The train was no longer an option. The demons couldn't catch it and neither could he. It was safe. He just had to hope he would be. He rolled over onto his stomach and decided to wait before he tried climbing to his knees.

"Simon!"

The HUD immediately flared to life. "Warning. One of the communication bands available to this unit has been appropriated by an unknown source."

But Simon knew the feminine voice. It belonged to Leah Creasey. He didn't know what she would be doing hacking into a frequency they were using.

"Get up."

That surprised Simon. How had she known he was lying down? "Get up! Now! I'm coming for you! We don't have much time!"

Simon groaned as he pushed himself up. He looked back toward the demons, then dodged back to the nearby wall as they opened fire. Explosions, projectiles, and fires rained all around him.

Then the familiar rumbling noise of a powerful motorcycle engine came through the audio. Tracking the sound, Simon glanced back in the direction the train had gone.

A BMW R 1200 GS Adventure Enduro motorcycle specially built for off-road travel roared toward Simon. It didn't have a light, which meant the driver had some kind of night-vision wear. "Leah?" Simon asked.

"Yes. Get ready."

The motorcycle slid around, reversing the way it was headed when it came to a stop in front of Simon. The figure astride it looked impossible.

Clad in some kind of matte black armor that consisted of overlapping sections, the rider looked almost insect-like, but the armor was so close-fitting that she was undeniably female. An abbreviated full-face helmet covered her head, offering only goggle-looking eyes and a singular antenna jutting up from where her left ear would be. Other armor components, more dense to offer more protection at neck, shoulders, elbows, thighs, and knees, looked slightly lighter in color.

"Leah?" Simon asked again, still not believing what he was seeing. "Yes. Now climb on before the demons reach us."

Simon slid onto the motorcycle behind Leah Creasey. There wasn't much room, but there was a secondary set of pegs for his feet. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Leah twisted the throttle and the rear tire ripped across the ground, then caught traction. Evidently someone had done some work on the motorcycle, increasing horsepower, because it took off almost effortlessly even with his extra weight. He slid his left arm around her waist and leaned into her.

"Saving you," she responded. She sounded completely calm, not as he'd remembered her when he'd met her on the plane from South Africa. "And I shouldn't be doing that. My X-O isn't going to be happy about that. I was here to observe. Not get involved."

"Your *X-O'?" Simon knew from his study of military commands that X-O stood for "executive officer." But Leah wasn't in the military.

Still, he remembered how skilled she'd been at using the rifles they'd picked up after their arrival on the coast of England. He also remembered how she'd been constantly asking questions about things. Everything.

Until she disappeared from the Templar stronghold.

"We don't exactly have time to talk about that," Leah replied. "Are we going to have time later?"

"No." Leah handled the motorcycle like it was a part of her. She roared through the darkness, weaving across the tracks and around debris that littered the tube. "I'm not supposed to be here."

"But you are."

"Foolish weakness on my part. I was trained better than that." Trained? Trained by whom? For what?

The train took shape in the darkness ahead. The surviving Templar had taken up positions along the pa.s.senger car.

"You might want to contact your friends," Leah suggested, "and let them know we're not the enemy. It would be ironic if I saved your a.r.s.e, then we got blown up by your mates."

Simon agreed and called for Wertham.

Stunned, partially from the impact against the ground and partly from the fact that he was still alive, Warren stood in the darkness of the tube tunnel. He wasn't using the night sight he'd learned, so he focused just for a moment and made the change.

Turning toward the roaring motor over to the right side of the tunnel, Warren saw the knight that he had knocked from the train as he slid onto a motorcycle. Then the rider twisted the throttle and the motorcycle sped forward.

Drawing a breath with effort, feeling the pain of something broken inside his chest and hoping it was only a rib, Warren examined his hands. Nothing appeared to be different or injured. The grenade blast hadn't been an antipersonnel one filled with shrapnel.

He'd read about grenades in games he'd played. From what he had seen, the grenade the knight had dropped had to have been a high-explosive munition, capable of doing damage through blunt force.

He'd been lucky.

Then he realized it had been more than that. He'd been powerful enough to escape the blast relatively unscathed.

He gazed ahead, watching as the motorcycle grew smaller. Then he called to another Blood Angel and climbed aboard her as the demon horde swept by him. A moment later, he was once more flying, hoping to find the knight that had taken his hand.

"Were you following me?" Simon asked. "Is that how you found us?"

"I was a.s.signed to you in South Africa," Leah said. "I followed you from there." She leaned the motorcycle and avoided a huge chunk of mortar. "Finding you here tonight was just a fluke. I was a.s.signed to something else."

Simon decided not to ask her why she was there because he got the impression she wouldn't answer.

But his mind was already spinning from all the possibilities. "Why did you follow me from South Africa?" "We needed to know more about the Templar."

"Who is *we'?"

"That's one question you don't get to ask."

Simon felt certain the question was only one of several he couldn't ask. "Why were you told to follow me?" He leaned with her, automatically moving with her on the motorcycle.

"Because we needed to know more about the Templar." "How did you know I was a Templar?"

"Your father was identified."

"My father?" Hope dawned within Simon. "You've talked to my father?"

Leah was quiet for a moment. "No. I'm sorry, Simon. His body was identified. He was in his armor. That's how they knew him. That's how they knew you. They knew your father was a Templar. They didn't know if you were, but the bet was that you were. You were also the only link we had to the Templar, so we had to exploit that."

Exploit.The term sounded offensive.

"If you hadn't saved my life, I'd be tempted to throw you off this motorcycle," Simon growled.

"You wouldn't. You're too much like one of Lord Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts." Leah juked around another ma.s.s, then raced up on the train. "But that's one of the things I like about you."

"Why did you need to know about the Templar?"

"Because you knew more about the demons. Until the invasion, the people I'm with believed they were just myths propagated by the Templar and other people."

"Why didn't you just ask?"

"We couldn't ask. That's not our way. Now be quiet. I broke cover tonight-and I'm going to pay b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l for it-for a reason. Those demons back there aren't the only problem you have."

Simon leaned into Leah again as she sped up and started pa.s.sing the train. "Simon," Wertham said.

Glancing at the train, Simon saw Wertham sitting atop the car with his sword and a Blaze Pistol naked in his fists. Simon also saw the frightened faces in the shattered windows of the pa.s.senger cars. With all the damage there, he didn't know how there couldn't have been casualties. He turned his thoughts away from that.

"I'm all right," Simon said. "Who are you with?" "Leah Creasey."

"The woman you brought with you?" "Yes."

"What's she doing here?" "She claims she's helping." Wertham cursed. "Is she?"

"She may have saved my life back there."

"Well, that's a start. And it's not like we're going to be picky about who helps us here tonight."

Leah pulled in front of the train, feathering the throttle to jump the rail and land in the center of the track. She sped up, the motor roaring loudly.

"You said there was another problem," Simon said.

"There is." Leah leaned again, making the exchange at the Oxford Circus tube station and roaring on toward Charing Cross. "A demon named Merihim has set up an ambush for your train on the Hungerford Bridge."

That immediately caught Simon's attention. All rail lines crossed the River Thames over the Hungerford Bridge. There was no other way by train to reach South London. The Bakerloo tube line ran under the river, but they didn't have access to those rail lines.

If what Leah was saying was right, the demon stood in the path of their escape.

Fifty.

Warren clung to the Blood Angel as it pursued the train whizzing through the Underground tubes. Other Blood Angels joined the one he rode. Like a ma.s.s of bats, they screamed through the tube after the train.

Thinking furiously, Warren guessed that the train would head for Charing Cross Rail Station, and from there across the Hungerford Bridge into southern London. When it came out of Charing Cross and raced across the bridge, the train would be vulnerable.

All it would take was a few moments to overtake the train. Then, if the Blood Angels could overcome the engineers in the control compartment, the train could be shut down. He felt certain the Templar he was after would come back to help.

Warren felt badly about the people that would be hurt. He didn't want to injure them. But if his life hung in the balance against theirs-and he knew that it did-then they would have to die.

No one in London had ever cared about him. Now, with his life on the line, he wasn't about to be foolish enough to care about them.

Patience,he mind-whispered to the Blood Angels.We'll soon have our chance.

Leah halted the motorcycle inside the Charring Cross Station. Behind her, Simon shifted and peered out at Hungerford Bridge. Elevated from the station, the bridge spanned the River Thames. Dusk, not true night, colored the gray sky. Snowflakes came down steadily, obscuring his vision.

But the thermographic vision in his HUD allowed him to see the bright orange figure standing in the middle of the bridge.

"Is that him?" Simon asked. He knew they were only minutes ahead of the train. "Merihim?" "Yes."

"How did you learn about-"

Leah turned the blank mask she wore to look at him with her goggle eyes. "Simon, we don't have time for a Q&A. Not if you want to save that train. Those demons you met back there aren't going to give up.

If the train stops, they'll catch up and those people will still die. Even then they'll have to beat out other demons that will be drawn to this. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Resentment vibrated through Simon. She sounded so professional, so sure of herself. And he...well, things weren't turning out the way he'd thought at all. The rescue attempt was turning out to be a mess. He'd planned hard and worked hard, went sleepless for days.And all for what? To lose at the end? By inches?

"We've been observing Merihim," Leah said. Simon resisted the impulse to ask whowe was.

"There's been a shift in the demon hierarchy since they arrived," Leah went on. "Merihim is a late arrival, but he's staging a power play among the demons as far as we can tell. We had a...someone in a Cabalist organization when Merihim came through into this world. Merihim's playing his own game. Tonight he intends to make your rescue attempt part of his scheme."

"How?"

"He's going to blow up the bridge while the train pa.s.ses and send everyone in it into the river to drown." "Why?"

"As part of a sacrifice to satisfy some blood ritual. That's all we've been able to gather. We don't understand as much about the demons as the Templar do."

"Even we don't understand everything," Simon admitted. He watched the orange figure waiting on the bridge. "How is he going to blow up the bridge? Explosives?"

"We don't know. We tracked one of the Cabalists-like the guy riding the flying demon back there-" "It's a Blood Angel," Simon said automatically.

"-who's managed to spy on Merihim." Leah shook her head. "They're foolish and pathetic, all of them. Children playing with unknown monsters that can devour them all."

Simon didn't quite agree with her a.s.sessment. He thought the Cabalists were just too smart for their own good. Smart enough to get themselves in trouble. Or dead.

"When we questioned the Cabalist we had in custody under heavy drugs, the man told us what he knew. Unfortunately, what he knew was limited. So now is the time you choose whether you want to fight the demons back in the tube, or you figure out some way to break Merihim's threat."

Simon only thought about it for a moment. That was all the time he had anyway. The train was bearing down on them. Brief communication with Wertham confirmed that.

"I'll need to borrow your motorcycle if I'm going to get there in time," Simon said. Simon slipped out of the backpack he'd used to carry extra ammunition and explosives in. He had seven grenades left on a bandolier. He considered seven to be a lucky number, and he hoped it would be enough. Even if he couldn't destroy the demon, he could at least hope it would be distracted long enough for the speeding train to go by. There was no way they were going to get all of the survivors safely out of the area without the train.

He slid the bandolier over his shoulder, making certain where the cord was that would allow him to pull all the grenade pins at one time. The resulting explosions would take place at relatively the same time.

"What?" If the mask Leah wore had possessed features, Simon was certain he would have seen shock written heavily there. "You can't go out there-"