Templar Chronicles: Judgment Day Part 6

As Riley helped him down from the back of the vehicle, Cade took a look around. He'd guessed correctly; they were indeed at Ravensgate. Templars milled about, engaged in a variety of pursuits, but nearly all of them stopped to take in the sight of Echo's current commander leading the infamous Heretic across the parking lot. Cade nodded at those who expressed, via a look or gesture, their solidarity and gave the others the thousand yard stare. He was a bit surprised that the latter outnumbered the former by several factors.

Where had all the veterans gone? he wondered.

By the time he and Riley had crossed to the entrance of the commandery, a small crowd had gathered by the door and more than a few were giving Cade some rather disturbing looks. There was enough anger and frustration on their faces that Cade began to think that they were going to physically attack him, but then Riley spoke up.

"What the heck are you all gawking at?" he snarled at the crowd. "Never seen a prisoner brought in for questioning before? Get back to work before I put the lot of you on punishment detail for the next two weeks!"

Riley's command voice was enough to get them to disperse and go on their way, but enough of them looked back for Cade to know that he was going to have trouble if he stayed too long. Riley had told him that the Preceptor was spreading rumors about his supposed allegiance to the Adversary, but Cade never expected his fellow Templars to believe such bulls.h.i.t.

Apparently, he'd been way off the mark on that one.

Riley led him inside the building, through the checkpoint just beyond the entrance, and down the hall to a set of elevator doors. There were several other people waiting for the lift but they let Riley take the next one that arrived when they saw he was transporting a prisoner. No one, Cade noted, wanted to put themselves in a confined s.p.a.ce with him.

The legend of the Heretic strikes again, he thought wryly.

Riley led him inside the elevator car and then punched the b.u.t.ton for the second level below ground.

Cade waited until they were on their way down before speaking.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" he asked.

"A squad member reported your presence on the bridge earlier to the Preceptor so I had no choice but to bring you in. Now we have to find a way to get you out of here again before he comes looking for your head."

"So take off the cuffs and lead me to the door," Cade said.

"And wind up in the hands of Johannson's interrogators myself? No thanks. You'll get your chance to get out of here in a minute. Just be sure you take it when you do."

Cade could tell Riley was p.i.s.sed at him. That was okay; he was p.i.s.sed at Riley in return.

"That was my wife on that bridge."

Riley turned as if to say something, but the elevator reached its destination at the same moment, the doors swooshing open, and whatever it was, he didn't say it. There were two sergeants standing outside the car, waiting to board, so Riley simply grabbed Cade by the arm and led him down the hall without another word.

Guards were stationed outside the six interrogation rooms at the end of the hall. They snapped to attention when they saw Riley approaching with Cade in tow.

"I need an interview room," Riley told them.

"Of course." The guard casted a curious glance in Cade's direction, but said nothing as he led the pair over to one of the interview rooms and unlocked the door.

Riley stuck his head inside, nodded to himself, and then led Cade through the door.

The already small room was made smaller by the large metal table that sat in its center, bolted to the floor. Two metal folding chairs were on either side of the table, likewise secured. A metal ring was welded into the table-top in front of one of the chairs, with one side of a pair of handcuffs secured to it. A mirror stretched along the wall opposite the table.

Cade smiled when he saw the mirror.

Riley brought him over to the chair and had him sit down, then secured the handcuffs he was already wearing to the free end of the pair attached to the ring on the tabletop. He tugged on them twice, just to be certain that they were secure, before turning back and heading for the door.

"Let him stew for a bit," Riley told the guard. "I'm going to get some coffee and will be back in awhile."

"Roger that," the guard said, with a disdainful look in Cade's direction. "Stew it is."

The guard pulled the door shut with a bang and Cade was left alone with only his thoughts for company.

Thoughts of escape, that is.

He had to hand it to Riley; it was actually a very clever move. Riley had left him both the means to get out of his chains as well as the means to get out of the room, all while protecting himself from any recrimination. The guard had watched Riley secure Cade to the table and then they had both left him locked up alone in the room.

Rumors already followed him like the plague so Cade saw no reason not to use his Talent to get himself out from under Templar control. Let them wonder how I did it, he thought. One more mystery for them to solve.

He waited a few minutes, giving time enough for the guards to grow bored of watching him through the one-way gla.s.s, and then faked a coughing fit, covering his mouth with one hand and spitting the handcuff key into his palm in the process. He waited again after doing so, just in case the noise had convinced the guards to look in on him through the mirror, and he then grabbed the key with one hand and went to work with it on the locks to the handcuffs.

He was out of them in seconds and had his waist chain and leg irons off moments after that. He kept waiting for the door to slam open and the guards to taser him into immobility, but the hall outside remained quiet and the door firmly closed.

That was perfectly fine with Cade.

He had no intention of using the door anyway.

As he climbed up onto the table in front of him, Cade could hear the sound of running feet coming from the corridor outside the door. He knelt down enough so that he could see through the small window set at eye level in the door.

From outside a guard looked in at him, shocked at finding him free of his restraints.

Cade winked at him.

As the guard began fumbling with his keys and shouting for help, Cade crouched at the edge of the table, took a deep breath, and then dove head first at the mirror on the wall in front of him.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

There was an instant of bone-jarring cold combined with the unpleasant sensation of forcing his way through a tangled wall of thick cobwebs and then Cade opened his eyes to find himself in the strange purgatory-like realm he called the Beyond.

Despite all the times he'd been here in the past, he still knew very little about this place. It was a shadowy realm that existed close to the real world in time and s.p.a.ce, but forever separated by a wall of energy he'd come to call the Veil. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, as well as other, darker, twisted creatures that hunted them, roaming the landscape in great, predatory packs. Cade called them spectres and avoided them whenever he could.

The landscape of the Beyond was constantly shifting. Like the image in a funhouse mirror, it could seem hauntingly familiar one moment and infinitely strange the next. Sometimes he would find the place he entered to be a near-identical opposite of the place he'd left in the real world, like a photograph and its negative, and other times they would be starkly different.

This time it was the former.

He found himself standing in an interrogation room much like the one he'd left, except inside this commandery, everything bore a thick patina of decay, as if the basic entropy in all living things had suddenly become visible. The table and chairs were streaked with rust, with patches of metal so brittle in places that it fell apart at the slightest touch. The mirror that had served as his entrance didn't even exist; the wall behind him displayed nothing more than grime-encrusted brick.

The door to the interrogation room wasn't locked, so Cade stepped out into the hallway, made his way to the stairwell at the far end - no way was he taking an elevator in the Beyond! - and headed upward. Several times he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye; dim, shadowy forms going about their business around him. He wondered if he was looking at the shades of long-dead knights or the souls of the living back in the real world. Not that it mattered much; as long as they left him alone, he really didn't care either way.

After reaching the ground floor, he headed for the exit, only to find himself having to turn around and retrace his steps several times as hallways led to places different than the one's he expected. Cade didn't let it bother him; he'd dealt with the strangeness of the Beyond often enough to know that surprises often waited around every corner.

When he finally found the front door, he paused on the threshold, taking a moment to survey the way ahead. In the real world, a circular cul-de-sac complete with a large fountain in the center of it, sat at the base of the steps leading to the front door. From there a long drive ran north for several hundred yards to the gatehouse and the main road just beyond. At this time of year the long rolling lawns on either side of the yard would be lush and vibrantly green while the flowers surrounding the fountain would provide frequent splashes of contrasting colors.

Here in the Beyond, the fountain was overgrown with creeping vines the same color as the brackish water, and the lawns resembled scorched earth more than they did lush green swards.

Thankfully, there were no sign of any spectres.

Cade knew his living presence here would attract the spectres like bees to honey. It wasn't a question of "if" they would get here but rather simply one of "when". It was almost as if crossing the barrier rang some kind of cosmic dinner bell somewhere, riling the spectres up and pointing them in the right direction. Once they caught your trail, they wouldn't give up, either, until they'd either taken you down or you'd taken them out.

The last thing Cade wanted right now was a pack of spectres on his heels. For one, he didn't have any weapons to fight them with. And two, time worked differently here. Minutes could become hours, hours could become days when you made the trip back into the real world. When he and Riley went in search of the Adversary's hideout on the Isle of Sorrows in the Sea of Lamentations, the week they'd spent in the Beyond had actually been four months back home. The Order had declared them both dead and buried them in absentia; something that Cade knew still freaked Riley out. The longer Cade stayed here in the Beyond, the more time might pa.s.s in the real world and the closer the Order might get to tracking down the Adversary, and, by extension, Gabrielle.

He couldn't afford to let that happen.

Over there, every mirror was a potential pathway to the Beyond, but from this side, the pathways back were far more rare. It was almost as if the two worlds were spinning at different rates and he had to wait for one of the rifts on this side to line up with one of the mirrors on the other. When that happened, a portal appeared and he could cross back over to the other side. Normally, at this point he would have to start wandering about, looking for one of those very portals. But the vision-like dream he'd experienced while being transported to the commandery gave him a different idea.

He descended the steps and crossed the cul-de-sac, giving the choked-off fountain a wide berth in the process. At the edge of the lawn he stopped. He lifted the eyepatch covering his right eye and then put his hands at his side and bowed his head slightly. He kept his good eye open, afraid something would sneak up on him if he didn't, but mentally called up an image of his home in the forefront of his mind and did his best to focus on that. He pictured the large mirror in the spare bedroom, the one that had belonged to his wife's mother and which they'd inherited upon her death. It was one of the few mirrors, along with the two smaller ones bolted to the wall in either bathroom, that he hadn't stripped out of the house during his grief-stricken search of the Beyond months earlier. His wife had loved that old mirror and at the time he just hadn't been able to find the force of will to make use of it in so cavalier a fashion. Now, however, he needed a target for what he was about to attempt and that mirror was the best option going for him.

He'd just have to remember to explain it all to Gabrielle when she woke up.

With the image of that mirror fixed firmly in his thoughts, Cade crossed his fingers and then triggered his Sight.

Riley was in the officer's mess, wasting time with a cup of coffee, when the alarms began blaring through the commandery. As those around him scrambled to their feet, he hid his smile behind another sip of his coffee before getting to his feet to join them.

Men were hustling through the corridors to their duty stations as Riley made his way back to the block of interrogation rooms on the lower level. There he found the men he'd left in charge of Cade frantically searching the nearby rooms. Upon seeing him, they snapped to attention.

"What the devil's going on here?" he asked.

"Sir! The prisoner has escaped!"

"What?" Riley shouted, glaring furiously at them as he played his part to the hilt. "You were supposed to keep an eye on him!"

"We did, sir! Honestly!"

"Then how on earth did he escape from a locked interrogation room?"

Riley didn't wait for an answer but pushed past the guards and headed over to the room where he'd left Cade not twenty minutes before. He knew what he would see - the empty room, the discarded restraints, the cracked mirror - but he pretended to survey it as if for the first time. He looked back at the guard he'd left in charge of Cade and felt the temptation to go easy on the guy; he was an unwitting accomplice to Riley's own plan to help Cade escape, after all. But Riley knew he couldn't if he wanted his own involvement to be overlooked.

"What happened?" Riley demanded.

"I marked the prisoner's arrival in the log as required, sir. Upon returning I glanced into the interrogation room through the observation window and noted the prisoner had removed his restraints. I shouted for help and entered the room in an attempt to subdue the prisoner, but he was gone by the time I got the door open."

"What do you mean, gone? Prisoners don't just disappear!"

"He...um, ah..."

"Speak up, corporal."

"He...ah, jumped through the mirror."

Play your part, Riley reminded himself.

"Excuse me? He did what?"

Having already stuck his neck out, the guard must have figured it was all or nothing, for he straightened up and said more clearly this time, "He jumped through the mirror, sir."

Riley stared at him for a long moment before saying, "Have you been drinking, Corporal?"

"No, sir! I swear."

"One does not simply jump through a mirror, Corporal, not even if you are former Knight Commander Williams."

The guard grew pale at the mention of Cade's name and Riley knew the rumors would soon be spreading far and wide. If the rank and file didn't think that Cade was allied with the enemy before this, those rumors would probably go a long way to convincing them. After all, why else would he have run?

Riley shook his head. Couldn't be helped, he guessed. Cade had chosen to make the jump into the Beyond directly in front of the guard so there wasn't much to be done about that now except try a little obfuscation to confuse the issue even more.

"The prisoner must have misled you, fooled you into thinking you were watching him jump through the mirror when he was, in fact, slipping out the door behind you," Riley said, as he turned away.

"He's probably still in the building somewhere. If we work quickly to organize the search, we might be able to salvage this mess. Follow me!"

While Riley was rounding up a search party to scour the commandery looking for Cade, the object of their search was staring in amazement at the brilliant lance of light that shot away from the point where he stood, out across the lawn, and into the distant trees a quarter-mile away.

He had no doubt that following that light would take him to the portal he needed to emerge back into the real world at the point of his choosing - in this case, his own home. It was an exhilarating feeling. All those years, all those trips in and out of the Beyond, and he'd never once thought to use his Sight as a kind of homing beacon for where he wanted to end up. He wanted to shout in excitement, but settled for a fist pump of victory instead.

Cade made note of the path the light blazed across the lawn and the point where it disappeared into the woods. Once he was sure he had it fixed in his memory, he flipped that mental switch deep in the back of his mind that turned off his Sight and the illuminated path disappeared right along with it.

No matter; he knew where he was going now.

No sooner had he dropped his Sight that a piercing howl lifted into the air from somewhere in the distance. It was almost immediately answered by several more and the sound of the pack howling together as one sent chills running up and down Cade's spine.

He recognized that sound. It was the hunting cry of a pack of corpse hounds.

Cade had encountered them once before, in the battle against the Council of Nine in the swamps of Louisiana. He'd been fully armed and armored at the time and the undead creatures had been dispatched without too much difficulty.

But he was unarmed this time.

And alone.

Time to get moving.

Cade took off running in the direction revealed through his Sight. He had no idea how far away the portal was that he needed to take him where he wanted to go, nor how far back the pack of corpse hounds might be. It was going to be a race to see who reached their target first.

The gra.s.s beneath his feet was limp and lifeless, its many shades of grey a sharp contrast to the sea of vibrant green that stretched out in front of the commandery in the real world. Here, too, the lawn was dotted with great, burrow-like holes that led down into the dank earth below and he could smell the stench of the grave as he ran past. Cade didn't know what lived in those holes and he hoped he never had to find out. The corpse hounds and spectres were bad enough; he didn't want to know what kind of creature made its home in holes that seemed to even devour the light that spilled across them.

When he reached the trees on the far side of the lawn, some four hundred yards from where he'd started, he glanced back and was just in time to see the first of the corpse hounds charging around the corner of the house.

It was a big beast, half-again the size of a Great Dane. From this distance he couldn't see the flesh hanging off its rotting frame, but he didn't need to. He knew it was there; nothing living made its home in the Beyond. He could see the reddish-yellow gleam of the unholy fire that burned in the creatures eye sockets, however, and apparently those strange orbs were good enough to see him as well, for the moment the creature's head turned in his direction, it issued an ear-splitting cry and came charging across the lawn toward him.

From somewhere behind the house, several other hounds answered their leader's call.