by Mel Odom
When she’d stepped into that world, she’d found most of the men—and women—there weren’t that way. Most of them concentrated on getting out of their predicaments with whole skins first. Mission success came in a distant second.
There were some like Simon Cross and the Templar he’d drawn to his flag, but the majority of them were like the other Templar hiding in their Underground fortresses. Men like Simon Cross, she’d found out, didn’t come along often and the world needed more of them. Especially now.
“What you need to understand,” Leah said patiently, “is that you mustn’t go into that building.”
“It was your information that brought me here,” Simon replied. His voice was a flat accusation. “I wouldn’t have known about them if you hadn’t contacted me.”
“I know.” Leah took a breath and tried to remain calm. Dealing with Simon and his simplistic do-gooder belief was often frustrating, she’d discovered over these past years. If someone else’s life was on the line, he’d risk his every time. “Now I’m telling you that it’s a trap.”
“The bottom line,” Simon stated quietly, “is that Templar—maybe friends of ours—are being held by demons inside that building. That’s all we needed to know.”
“Simon.” Leah heard the click of dead air and knew he’d cut the communication link with her. She cursed him soundly, but she didn’t abandon her post. Apparently Simon Cross’s particular brand of stupidity was incredibly contagious.
She settled in behind the cluster rifle and waited for the action to start.
Three
The decision to go, even with the new information that they were headed into a trap, was almost instantaneous. All of the Templar with Simon knew he had a mysterious source of information within London. None of them trusted her as much as he did. But they believed the information she’d given them: the bad news and the worse news.
As Simon had said, with Templar lives on the line—with friends, fellow warriors, and possibly relatives hanging in the balance—they could do nothing else.
However, it did change the tactics.
“The first team will go in for a brief recon,” Simon said. “If we can get in and out without anyone the wiser, we’re even better off. But if not, we get them out into the street where we’ll have a chance to save ourselves.”
Then he led the first team down into the underground parking garage while the other two teams set up in flanker support positions for a hasty withdrawal.
* * * *
Simon unlimbered his Spike Bolter as he strode through the darkness of the garage. The pistol was specially encrypted to his armor and wouldn’t operate for anyone other than another Templar.
The weapon looked ugly, with a pig’s snout for a business end. Six rapidly rotating barrels could fire up to sixteen hundred rounds per minute. The rounds were palladium needle bullets that could shred even the densest demon hide. With so many rounds spewing from it, the Spike Bolter wasn’t the most accurate handheld pistol and had to be used primarily for close-up engagements, but it more than made up for it with the barrage capability.
The carnage from the street had spilled down into the garage. More cars sat abandoned. Many of them were locked in eternal collisions that had jammed up whatever escape their owners might have wished for.
The elevators leading to the upper floors and to the basement were on the right. With the power grids out across the city, they wouldn’t be working.
Using the night-vision capability of the HUD, Simon gazed around the garage. “Bring up the garage schematic,” he said.
“Accessing,” the suit AI said. At almost the same moment, the blueprint overlaid the garage visual. The elevators and stairwells were clearly marked.
The stairwells were on the left side of the garage. Simon led the way. Fear lurked inside him. It always did these days. It was another thing to take into account when he had to face the demons. When he’d been a child and later a teenager growing up in the Templar environment, he hadn’t really known fear.
When he’d been small, the first stories all Templar children were told of the demons had scared him and given him nightmares. That was normal. Templar children were raised with the idea of bloodthirsty demons waiting to take over the world. That definitely wasn’t the same kind of upbringing other English children enjoyed.
In his teens, however, he’d ceased believing in demons. After all, no one had truly seen one. Even the stories of demons were hundreds of years old, told by men who’d traveled from England and France down to Constantinople, before it was renamed Istanbul. They’d been warriors that had prided themselves on their prowess.
And wouldn’t stories of defeating demons be a grand tale?
That was how Simon had come to think of the Templar beliefs when he was a teenager. He’d alternately frustrated his father and broken Thomas Cross’s heart. In the later years, they’d grown apart. Simon had developed a love for parkour, BASE jumping, and skateboarding as well as other extreme sports, and he’d never known real fear during that time. Even when he’d broken limbs in attempts, he’d been just as ready to try it again.
Now, though, he knew the demons were out there. And they were waiting.
* * * *
At the door to the stairwell, Simon sheathed his sword down his back. He kept the Spike Bolter in his left hand. With his right, he gripped the door’s handle and pulled it gently.
It swung out almost soundlessly. That wasn’t a good sign. The door had been getting used.
He held up and listened. Only silence echoed in the narrow walls. He scanned the floor and checked the metal staircase leading down into the basement.
“Clear,” Danielle said.
Simon knew she was accessing the video from his HUD. Groups were able to do that over close distances. The Templar had been thorough in their armor upgrades. They’d been planning from the start to fight a vastly superior opponent. Some of the upgrades they’d managed over the years had been given to military forces. And Templar armorers had borrowed just as heavily.
After a last quick glance up, Simon started down. He knew Danielle would cover him as she came down. Walter, the fourth man down, would also cover the top while Kevin covered the bottom with Simon.
The stairs corkscrewed down. Graffiti covered the walls. Some of it was funny. Some of it was offensive. The sad part was that none of it mattered any more. The people who had written the missives and the reasons they’d written them were all dead or didn’t matter any more.
With the audio enhancers turned up, Simon heard the soft impacts of the Templar behind him. Nothing human probably would have. They’d learned how to go quietly despite the armor.
Two landings farther down, they reached a doorway marked PRIVATE.
“What did they keep down here?” Simon asked. Danielle had been responsible for the research.
“Files,” she replied. “Extra office furniture. Cleaning equipment.”
Simon examined the schematics. The room was thirty feet by forty feet.
He tried the door.
It was unlocked.
“Ready?” Simon asked. He packed away the last of his fear and concentrated on the adrenaline that was hammering his system. He needed it to keep himself stoked, but too much of it would—
“Warning,” the suit AI said. “Adrenal output beyond optimum. Preparing partial sedation. Stand by for—”
“No,” Simon said. “Abort slap patch.”
The suit came with built-in medical and psychological aids. If a limb was lost, it was designed to truncate the injured area and preserve the blood flow. If a Templar started to hyperventilate or panic, slap patch prescriptions could level the Templar’s emotional state.
If that failed, some of the suits—for those that relied more heavily on magic—spells provided the same results.
I’ve got it, Simon told himself. He needed the adrenaline flow. He always had. That was why he’d taken up extreme sports. His father, God rest his soul, never understood
that entirely.
The others stood waiting.
Simon swung the door wide, shoved the Spike Bolter inside, and cautiously followed it.
* * * *
Boxes and office furniture filled the room and created a virtual maze. Most of it was stacked taller than Simon. Automatically, before he entered the room very far, he checked the ceiling. Far too many of the demons they fought seemed able to cling to any surface.
The ceiling was clear.
He went forward slowly. The Spike Bolter led the way.
“Send distress response,” Simon told the suit AI. “Identify me.”
“Acknowledged. Sending.”
The distress response was a low-level communications tag that infiltrated all the frequencies open to the Templar. It was designed for search and rescue missions for Templar whose suits had powered down due to battle damage or malfunction.
“There are two responses,” the suit AI said.
“Onscreen,” Simon said.
Immediately two starburst blips appeared on the HUD. They were close together, straight ahead of Simon.
“Confirm one other human body temperature,” the suit AI said.
“Onscreen.”
Another starburst, this one red in warning, formed beside the two.
“Can you identify the new signal?” Simon asked.
“Negative. Parameters are human.”
Human. Simon pondered over that but he kept moving forward. A last wall of crates and office equipment blocked the way. He shouldered his way through and heard something shift ahead of him.
Despite his preparation and the four years he’d spent prowling through the obscene landscape London had become, Simon wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted him. He pointed the Spike Bolter automatically and reached for his sword, then stayed his hand when he realized the quarters were too close.
“Hello; Templar,” the thing before him said. Once it had been human, but it was warped and twisted beyond anything human now. Instead of four limbs, the creature had eight. All of them were arms. It stood on four of them with the other four raised before it. Reddish-violet scales covered it in the place of skin. Foot-long black mandibles thrust from its misshapen mouth. Jagged yellow teeth backed those, and there were far too many to be human. Two eyes remained on either side of its head, but they were farther apart than they should have been. They were also segmented and bulbous like a fly’s. Other eyes covered its head like satellites to the main two.
“What is that?” Danielle whispered over the suit comm.
“I don’t know,” Simon replied. In the Templar Underground, they’d studied the demons’ strengths and weaknesses. But they’d worked almost totally from stories handed down over generations and the information had become bastardized.
They had learned more about the demons while battling them after the invasion. As it had turned out, their list of demons and what the demons could do was short compared to what they actually were and were capable of.
“The body has been possessed and corrupted,” Walter said. He was one of the older Templar. He’d found his way to Simon’s group only lately. His primary field of study had been magic.
“That thing has taken over someone’s body?” Kevin asked. He was nineteen and still training. When Simon had split off from the main Templar, Kevin had joined them weeks later. Like Simon’s, Kevin’s father had been killed in the massacre on All Hallows’ Eve at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the beginning, he’d burned for vengeance, but he’d learned to pace himself.
“Yes,” Walter said. Wonderment filled his voice. “There are stories about this, but none of them had ever been confirmed.”
Until now, Simon thought.
“What about the host?” Danielle asked.
“His mind was burned out when the demon took possession,” Walter said.
The demon cocked its head and made a series of anticipatory clicks that couldn’t have come from a human throat.
“You’re sure there’s no chance of saving the host?” Simon asked.
“None,” Walter replied. “His mind is gone. Whoever that was before the demon seized possession of him, nothing’s left of him.”
Simon hoped not.
“Where are the Templar?” Danielle asked.
Guilt flooded Simon when he realized he’d forgotten about the Templar they’d come to save. But the sight of the demon had been overwhelming.
The two Templar lay on the ground to Simon’s right. Both of them had been cocooned in silken strands that looked as black as oil. Neither of them stirred. The only thing that told him they were alive was the constant body temperature. Nothing dead would register on the suit AI’s sensors. Simon took heart in that.
He thought he recognized the blue and green coloring of the armor on one of the Templar. The other, gray over green, was new to him.
“Welcome, Templar.” The demon tilted its head. Yellow ichors dripped from its mandibles. “We knew that some pathetic few of you still existed and chose to fight A few of us were sent to run you to ground.” The mandibles spread. “I shall not be merciful. You will have a harsh death. Just as these two will.”
“Not today,” Simon said as he squeezed the Spike Bolter’s trigger.
Four
The Spike Bolter jumped like a rabid hound in Simon’s armored fist. Without his enhanced strength and training, he wouldn’t have been able to hang on to the weapon. Twenty-six rounds a second thudded into the arachnid-demon’s body. He started them at the demon’s center of mass and allowed the Spike Bolter to track upward. Even with the suit’s strength he couldn’t prevent that.
The bull-fiddle moan of the weapon reverberated inside the enclosed room. A moment later the demon’s screams joined the noise.
It vaulted toward Simon almost effortlessly. Green blood dripped from hundreds of wounds. One of the arms dropped away as the needle bullets chewed through it.
The arachnid-demon grabbed Simon and pressed its face against his faceplate. The mandibles clicked against the polycarbonate-based liquid metal that made up the faceplate. The composite material in its natural state was liquid, but when it had electricity running through it—or magic—it firmed up harder than steel. The suit’s AI kept templates stored in memory for the faceplate’s shape.
Small cracks appeared in Simon’s faceplate as the mandibles increased pressure.
“Warning,” the suit’s AI stated calmly. “Possible breach.”
Simon’s vision blurred a little as the faceplate grew thicker. The fissures disappeared as if they’d never been. Simon brought his right hand up and wrapped his fingers around the demon’s neck.
“You’re going to die, Templar,” the demon snarled. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”
Simon made no reply. He holstered his pistol, drew his sword, and whipped it forward. The blade cleaved deeply into the demon’s flesh. A moment later, the demon went limp in Simon’s grasp. All seven of its remaining arms hung lifelessly. He cast it from him and it fell into a tangled heap in the corner among copy machines that were decades old.
He strode forward and put his hand on the nearest Templar. “Life signs,” he said.
“Accessing,” the suit’s AI replied. “ID confirmed. Elizabeth Stevenson.”
Simon recognized the name. She was one of the young Templar. If he remembered rightly, she would have been twenty-one, eight years younger than he was. She was of the House of Rorke, the same House Simon’s family served. And it was the same one where Terrence Booth now sat as High Seat.
Numbers and values spun across the left corner of Simon’s vision superimposed over the basement scene. The heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration all fell within normal ranges for a sleeping person.
Simon guessed that was normal. The demon wouldn’t want a prisoner capable of defending herself. That was especially true of one with a Templar’s capability.
“Was the armor breached?” Simon asked. The only way Elizabeth could have been sedated was thro
ugh a breach.
“Negative,” the suit’s AI said.
Accessing Elizabeth’s suit’s AI was impossible suit-to-suit. That had to be done back in the safety and security of a lab, with full authorization from the suit’s wearer. Or it could be done once the wearer was dead.
Simon figured he’d know soon enough what had happened to the two Templar. He looked at Danielle, who knelt beside the second Templar.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Justin Fitzgerald.”
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“What House?” The Templar were divided up into eight different Houses that administered the needs and the edicts of the Templar Order.
“Sumerisle.” Danielle’s voice held a note of reverence.
The House of Sumerisle always found favor and respect among the Templar. The last Grand Master, Patrick Sumerisle, died fighting the demons on All Hallows’ Eve. Simon had known and respected the man.
“So he’s one of the royal nephews,” Simon said.
“Grandnephew or great-grandnephew is more like it,” Danielle replied. “He’s only seventeen.”
Simon shook his head. “What were the two of them, as young as they were, doing out here on their own?”
“We were that young,” Danielle said softly. “Not so long ago.”
“They might not have been out here on their own,” Walter added. “This could be all that’s left of a group.”
That sobering thought struck Simon sharply. He didn’t like wondering if there were a line of dead Templar that led to this place.
“Simon.” The voice came from one of the Templar outside the Taylor & Loftus building.
“Yes.”
“There’s movement inside the building.”
“What?” Simon stood.
“Zombies, mate,” the Templar said tensely. “The parking garage is full of them.”
* * * *
They decided to leave the Templar trussed up in the spider webbing. Walter and Kevin carried the unconscious warriors slung over their shoulders while Simon and Danielle led the way back up the stairwell.