Tooth and Claw

by Joseph Nassise

  Silence—or near silence.

  Cade tilted his head down and to the right, to better angle his left ear toward the speakers. The operator continued asking the woman to respond.

  “Wait,” Cade said. “In between the operator’s questions, there at the end, what was that?”

  The team looked at him; Duncan with some degree of trepidation, Riley with a degree of frustration that he hadn’t picked up whatever the boss had. Olsen looked amused.

  Preceptor Johannson gave his reptilian smile again. “And by what black magic did you hear what our audio scrubbers had to process three times to notice?”

  Cade levelled a static gaze at the preceptor and said nothing. It was best not to rise to such taunts.

  Johannson’s right eyelid twitched as if irritated that Cade hadn’t mounted a defense against the jab at the rumors swirling around the commander. He cleared his throat mildly. “Maybe you just have remarkable hearing, hmm? Here’s that section of the audio enhanced.”

  A new window came to life on the screen, another audio recording. It was short, just a few seconds, but the sounds that came from the speaker were unmistakable to these men who made a living dealing with the supernatural, with beasts both corporeal and not, who could readily tear humans limb from limb.

  The sound was chewing. Like a starving man tearing into a drumstick and satiating his gluttony with a ravenous feast, mouth open and masticating terribly.

  Duncan paled. Combined with his earlier joke, Cade figured Duncan didn’t need to ask what the sound meant.

  Neither did the rest of the Echo command squad. Cade turned to the Preceptor. “What happened next?”

  Johannson paused the audio, and Duncan—likely not meaning to—released an audible breath. “Local police arrived, but didn’t find anything at the home. And by anything, I mean anywhere. The caller, who we believe was one Mrs. Tabitha Jackson, was right when she said ‘everyone’s gone.’ The whole town seems to have up and disappeared. We have a number of similar calls, a little less desperate than this one, all of them saying more or less the same thing: strange noises, screams in the night, people not checking in at places where they normally would. Things like that. This call happens to be the most . . . telling.”

  Cade arched his right eyebrow, the only one reasonably visible. His left eye was covered by a black patch, concealing horrific scar tissue incurred by a struggle with a being that took his wife years before.

  “Disappeared,” he said, mostly to himself, it seemed. “Bad guys usually leave some kind of evidence.”

  “Local law enforcement reported finding blood, and lots of it, at Mrs. Jackson’s home, in the same room as a landline phone that was off the hook. That, and the intestines of someone or something, probably Mrs. Jackson. Just no Mrs. Jackson. A report was routed to Concord, the largest city nearby, but we used the Templar network to recall the uniformed unit before they could get any CSIs on scene. Since then, not long after this call, the Gales Ferry police department stopped responding to anyone. Near as we know, the town’s empty. The police in Concord know something’s up, but we’re playing the Fed card right now to keep them out.”

  Cade nodded. The Templars routinely passed themselves off as members of Federal agencies to help ensure no inquisitive civilians or lower-level law enforcement would step into a mess they could not possibly survive.

  “The Fed ruse won’t work forever,” Johannson went on. “The police will come barreling in there sooner or later to look after their own, and when they do, they’ll end up a main course of whatever it was that snacked on Mrs. Jackson.”

  Now it was Cade’s turn to wince. Being able to sling jokes back and forth with your team was one thing, and often necessary to team cohesion. He wasn’t sure, though, that he appreciated the off-handed way Johannson referred to the dead. It was an easy thing to do if you hadn’t had to kill before. In his own private background check on Johannson—off the record—Cade knew Johannson hadn’t faced the horrors most other Templars had.

  “So if this is supernatural, or heaven forbid, infernal in nature,” Johannson said, “we need to know fast, and fix it even faster before it spreads. Or shall I remind you how much our adversaries like to replicate?”

  Another wince threatened to show on Cade’s face, but he fought it down. He had a personal attachment to the word “adversary” that had little to do with the preceptor’s use of it. In any case, Johannson was right: their enemies didn’t reproduce sexually, which sometimes meant their progeny developed with virus-like speed.

  “Questions?” Johannson asked.

  Cade stood up. No questions were needed. Standard protocol was to go in, take out whatever demonic creatures might be lurking around, and come right home. In-and-out.

  “Operational discretion?” Cade said. Since Johannson was new, Cade wasn’t yet sure how much over-the-shoulder command he liked to have, and he feared Johannson would want a lot. Some preceptors liked their hands in every little detail, some let their commanders take the load.

  “All yours, Commander.”

  Good, Cade thought. Except that Johannson gave his slithery smile when he said it, so Cade made a mental note to be aware of the possibility of the preceptor gumming up the works at some later part of the mission.

  “Yes, sir.” Cade faced his team. “Wheels up in sixty minutes. Riley, with me. Olsen, prep our backup. Let’s go.”

  The men nodded and gave various verbal acknowledgements before filing out of the Preceptor’s office.

  “Commander,” the preceptor said.

  Cade faced him.

  “Keep this low-profile,” Johannson demanded, keeping his voice quiet. “A lot of Washington types have family in the area, and if it turns out any of them are dead or worse, there’ll be hell to pay. We’ve got some resources on the Hill, but not many, and not enough to bury an incident involving a Congressman’s son or a Senator’s daughter. Do this one quick and by the numbers. Try not to blow anything up or attract attention.”

  As though Cade had ideas contrary to that. Doing things without attracting attention was the Templar way. “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to report anything you find directly to me, is that understood?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I’d hate for us to start on the wrong foot.”

  At that point, Cade had had enough of the preceptor’s snark. “What wrong foot would that be?”

  Johannson appeared delighted that Cade was finally engaging, as if he’d fallen into a crafty trap the preceptor had laid for him. “Even without your file, I know your reputation. If I had another team for this, I would send them. I don’t like mavericks and hotshots, Williams. They get people killed.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying, sir?”

  Johannson gestured for him to speak.

  Cade leaned forward a bit. “You watch too many cop movies.”

  The preceptor’s jaw visibly tightened.

  “I am a Knight Templar,” Cade went on. “And my men and I will destroy whatever evil has infested that town. How I do that is my operational discretion, as I believe you just said. You do your job, and I’ll do mine, and there won’t be any wrong feet to start on.”

  Johannson took that in, then snorted lightly. “I was afraid when I took this position that I wouldn’t like you, Williams. It appears my fear was well-founded. Maybe we can fix that someday. Dismissed.”

  Cade tipped him an informal salute and stepped out of the office. Jakes gave Cade a hearty, “Good luck,” as he passed, and Cade nodded back as he walked into the hallway, where he knew Riley would be waiting. Wordlessly, the pair walked to Cade’s war room, where they’d assemble a game plan and put the necessary pieces in motion to make that plan work.

  “What do you think, boss?” Riley asked. “Revenants? The Council of Nine boys making a comeback?”

  “We don’t have assets in that particular town,” Cade said. “So if it’s the Council of Nine, or what’s left of them, they’re after someth
ing new. Plus they weren’t shy about leaving behind bodies. A whole town disappearing, that doesn’t fit their M.O.”

  “Something new, then.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” said Cade, and they took the stairs down to the war room.

  Cade didn’t mention that he’d very nearly said, That’s what scares me. The combat vet didn’t scare easily after the things he’d seen and done; nevertheless, he found he was having trouble shaking the sounds they’d listened to on the recording.

  Those chewing sounds.

  3

  Early fall sunlight bathed the western slopes of the White Mountains as Templar Team Echo flew two UH-60A Black Hawk helicopters toward Gales Ferry. Cade watched the sun setting with detached contentment; he’d come to prefer the darkness the last few years.

  The helicopters landed near a bend in the river at a public park. Their pilots deftly maneuvered the enormous vehicles, kicking up a fine spray of water, foam, and dirt. Cade led the disembarkation, and his command squad followed close behind, setting up an immediate scanning perimeter. The rest of the team were out of the helicopters within seconds, and the pilots took off, headed for a friendly airfield three miles east which had been called into use for the occasion by the Order. Unlike the Lord’s loaves and fishes, Templar resources were finite . . . but also vast.

  Each man flipped on his night vision monocular and peered through it, searching for any signs of life. Upon first inspection, the area was vacant.

  Cade whirled two fingers in the air. The men gathered and each took a knee on his own protective pads. Cade paused until the Black Hawks were far enough away to make a quiet voice heard.

  “Two squads,” the commander said, his whisper cutting through the still air like a razor. His exhalations proffered no vapor yet, but might by the time the sun had fully set. “Moro, you take five, head to the high school, then the churches. Maybe everyone’s in one place, those’ll be the biggest buildings.”

  Moro, six-foot-two with skin as black as wet coal, smiled broadly at the leadership opportunity. A Yoruba Nigerian, Morohunmubo recently transferred to Echo after clashes with Vatican officers who didn’t care for this soldier’s adherence to his cultural religious traditions. Always happy to take on seasoned vets with a streak of insubordination, Cade and Riley put Moro through his paces a month prior, making him run the selection process all over again with their own added Echo Team surprises, and Moro passed with flying colors. He’d proven himself in combat with the supernatural since then, and his additional insight into things not necessarily Christian had already come in handy more than once.

  Given the unknown nature of the threat on the ground, Cade thought those insights might be useful tonight.

  Moro named five men, each who nodded in turn, accepting their role in the section.

  “Riley, you and I are marching up the main road,” Cade continued. “The rest of you, standard pattern on our sides. Anybody sees anything, and I mean anything, speak up. Got it?”

  One of the men, Kirkland, raised a gloved hand. “Quick question,” he said, and asked - because there’s a joker on every team: “The street we’re patrolling, it’s really called ‘Hurlbutt,’ sir?”

  Short laughs broke the tension just enough to calm everyone’s nerves. “That’s affirmative,” Cade said. “We’ll call it Main from now on so you won’t give away your position by giggling, Kirkland. Now let’s cut the smokin’ and jokin’ and do the job.”

  The men muttered their "yessirs" and "Yes Commanders." Cade gave one quick gesture, and the squad broke up. Moro and his men virtually disappeared into the darkness less than thirty yards from the LZ, headed east. Two of Cade’s men—Kirkland, and a man named Gore—took point, scouting ahead at a distance of thirty meters from one another and from Cade. Duncan and Olsen silently dropped back another thirty, leaving Cade and Riley protected in the middle of a sixty-meter square.

  Cade, for the third time in thirty minutes, checked his HK MP5 submachine gun, then tugged his sword into its most comfortable place on his back. In addition to their primary weapons, each Echo teammate carried a 9mm sidearm and a broadsword blessed by the Pope, designed to work on beings that could shake off the best that human technology had to fire at them. Any single Templar Knight would be perfectly comfortable facing a master kenjutsu practitioner. Echo Team, under Cade’s guidance, could face much, much worse with these elegant, blessed weapons.

  “All right,” the Commander said. “Let’s see who comes out to say hi.”

  “I do love being the bait,” Riley said.

  “Join the Order, see the world,” Cade replied. They would have slapped hands had it been appropriate.

  Once Gore and Kirkland attained proper distance, Cade and Riley began their trek through the park, headed north to pick up “Main Street.”

  The pair of soldiers walked somewhat casually, soft-soled boots almost silent against the blacktop, MP5s tucked snug against their ballistic vests. Neither of them used their night vision scope, choosing instead to rely on the honed instincts of a Templar. For all their top-shelf gear, both men had learned through hard experience that reliance upon technology could be fatal when dealing with agents of the supernatural. Often, human instinct was not only preferable, but superior. Plus their four escorts, hidden in the shadows ahead and behind them, were definitely using their own scopes.

  The sun had set and darkness ruled.

  “No electricity on anywhere,” Riley said as they walked. “Not a good start.”

  Cade nodded his agreement, saying nothing.

  “You smell that, boss?” Riley asked a minute later as they swept past rows of dark houses. Their four teammates remined invisible ahead and behind them.

  “Yes,” Cade said, though it wasn’t so much an odor as a taste, one that he was far too familiar with: the sickly sweet heaviness of decaying flesh. It wasn’t emanating from any one place that Cade could discern; rather, it had a battlefield quality to it, the kind of stench that’s everywhere and nowhere at once.

  Riley worked his mouth and spit against the blacktop, trying to get the taste out of his mouth. “Bad news, man,” he said. “Whatever this is, it’s bad news.”

  Cade didn’t bother agreeing. He didn’t need to.

  They made short order of walking through the residential neighborhoods and onto what passed for one of the major arteries of Gales Ferry. With a population topping out at just over a thousand, Gales Ferry was small and quaint, mostly a retirement community and sometime-tourist trap. The wealthiest residents who were still working commuted to Manchester, or else worked from home in finance-related industries. The high school graduated no more than two hundred kids or so each year.

  The business district was comprised of mostly one-story buildings housing hardware stores, small grocers, repair shops, and the like: Gales Ferry had either kept out the big box competitors by town fiat, or else there simply weren’t enough souls to warrant the expenditure by the likes of Walmart.

  No lights were on in any of the buildings. Streetlights stood dead and dark like autumnal trees that had shed not only leaves, but branches.

  Cade squinted into the darkness at a white globular sign hanging from a two-story brick building down the road. When he’d positively identified the sign, he touched his jaw mic to activate it.

  “Alpha, let’s hit the police station,” he said softly, the mic picking up each subtle vibration and transmitting to the team’s earpieces. “A hundred meters on the right.”

  Olsen, Duncan, Kirkland, and Gore each replied in the affirmative. Cade and Riley veered to the right, keeping a sharp eye out on their surroundings but still seeing nothing unusual—nothing, that is, other than the absolute nothing hanging over the town like a thick fog.

  The police station sat stodgy and rectangular on its own lot, as old and quaint as the buildings surrounding it. Riley and Cade paused on the street to assess it while their escort men took up positions on the other four sides. Cade waited for them to c
heck in, noting that there were no police cars parked in any of the spaces in front of the building.

  “White, clear,” Gore reported over the radio from somewhere behind his commander. Cade and Riley could see that much for themselves since they were standing not twenty yards from the building’s entrance, but protocol was protocol; it kept men alive.

  “Black, clear.” Kirkland. Nothing in back.

  “Red, clear.” Olsen.

  “Green, clear.” Duncan.

  With all four sides of the police station secure, Cade and Riley made their approach, weapons raised, trigger fingers out of the trigger guard and pointed alongside their weapons. The other four men would remain in place unless and until something went down.

  “Go to scope,” Cade whispered.

  Riley flipped down his monocular and took a slight lead in front of his commander. Cade kept his scope in the upright position, wanting to continue using his natural senses until operationally unwise to do so. He tucked his MP5 close to his shoulder and put his gloved left hand on Riley’s right shoulder, following the bigger man into the building.

  They only made it to the concrete steps leading up to the glass doors before stopping. Riley glanced pointedly down at his feet to draw his boss’s attention to the thick smears of blood that painted the steps a grisly black under the rising full moon. Riley paused and raised his head to give Cade time to assess what, if anything, the blood meant for their forward progress.

  It didn’t mean much; clearly, someone had been brutally wounded and dragged down the steps. Tapping the toe of one boot into the fluid to test its tackiness, Cade gauged the blood to be perhaps twelve hours old.

  He tapped Riley’s shoulder three times: Keep going. Riley continued up the steps, weapon trained and sweeping in wide arcs as Cade kept a lookout behind them.

  The two men entered the Gales Ferry police station. Even without the benefit of his night vision scope, it was clear to Commander Williams that they’d entered the scene of a fight, and a big one at that. While the odor-taste of decay still clung to the air around them, he felt sure he could smell the residue of gunpowder as well.