As the rest of the Council members dove out of sight behind the portico columns, Olsen turned his attention to the battle below him, seeking new targets, firing again and again until he was forced to reload.
The battle raged on.
In the distance, the storm gathered momentum.
*** ***
Once he had secured control of the tempest, Logan set the second half of his plan into motion. Calling upon the power inherent in the Spear, and adding it to his own dark arts, he reached savagely across the barrier into a realm long since forgotten by most men.
With the aid of his magick, he swept up several of the realm’s denizens and pulled them back into his side of reality. Controlling them, he sent the creatures forth, hidden in the heart of the storm.
*** ***
Cade moved through the melee, Riley at his side. Grim determination was etched on his face as he fought, his blade flashing repeatedly in the moonlight. Each corpse brought him closer to the plantation house. The hounds were designed to slow them down, of that he was certain, and so he refused to give them what they wanted. With the core of Echo Team at his back, he smashed his way through the ranks of the enemy.
From out of the chaos in front of him charged an incredibly large beast; standing more than waist high, it resembled a full-grown lion more than a dog. Snarling, it launched itself at Cade.
As Riley watched, his commanding officer disappeared completely beneath the beast’s form.
“Cade!” he cried, dispatching the corpse hound he was currently fighting and rushing over to his friend.
He needn’t have worried; even as he looked on the point of Cade’s sword came through the creature’s skull from the inside out. With a mighty shove, the commander rolled the corpse off him, his sword still embedded to the hilt in the base of the creature’s neck. Getting up, he placed a foot on the body and pulled the sword free.
Cade was covered with blood and other unrecognizable substances from the hound’s corpse, but he was otherwise unhurt.
Riley clapped a hand on his shoulder in a silent show of support, and they turned to the battle once more.
A Blackhawk roared overhead, its light dancing across the lawn and over the front steps, and in its glow Cade saw a startling sight.
Gabrielle stood on the steps gesturing to him.
He raised his sword, to show he had seen her, and watched as she turned and disappeared inside the house.
It was clear that she wanted him to follow.
As chance, or providence, would have it, several quick shots from the helicopter above him cleared the last of the corpse hounds from his path.
The way to the steps was open.
“This way,” he cried, charging forward, with Riley at his heels.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Inside the plantation house, they sheathed their swords and drew out their firearms. A double staircase immediately in front of them led up to the upper floors.
At the top stood Gabrielle, waiting.
Cade never hesitated.
He charged up the steps, with Riley close behind.
They encountered no one in the halls, so it was only a matter of moments before they found themselves led to the entrance to the grand ballroom on the second floor.
Across the room stood Logan, the Necromancer.
*** ***
“We’ve got trouble,” Olsen said, inclining his head toward the window while he finished reloading his weapon.
Duncan turned to see what he was referring to and instantly wished he hadn’t.
A thick bank of storm clouds had appeared practically out of nowhere, moving faster than any earthbound wind could have carried them. And through a break in the clouds, they caught sight of the cause of that speed within their depths; shapes writhed and rolled within the clouds, shapes that had no purpose for being on this God-given earth.
Clearly, they were some form of summoned being, but not one either Duncan, with his limited knowledge of such creatures, or Olsen, who’d faced more than his fair share, had ever seen before. They were a good ten to fifteen feet in length and shaped, more than anything else, like manatees, except instead of front fins they had fully functional arms complete with claws several inches in length. They had large bulbous heads with human faces and gaping maws full of oversized teeth.
Their eyes, thought Duncan in the instant before the spectres were upon them, their eyes are full of hatred.
*** ***
Logan turned to face them as they entered the room. In his hand he held the Spear. He was dressed in a long, hooded robe, tied at the waist with a black sash. Cade recognized more than a few of the arcane symbols sewn onto its surface and knew that this was not a man to be trifled with.
But neither was he.
Riley moved out to his left, his weapon securely aimed at their foe, making it difficult for the sorcerer to strike them both with one blow.
The Necromancer, however, didn’t even acknowledge his presence. His darkened hood concealed his features, but Cade could tell his gaze never wavered from him just the same.
“He said you would come.”
The Necromancer’s voice was distorted, garbled, and it took a moment for Cade to understand him. When he did, his words set his heart racing as the Templar Commander realized the necromancer could only be referring to one being.
The Adversary.
“Where is he?” Cade demanded.
Logan ignored the question, taking a step closer as he spoke. “Why are you here? Did you think you could defeat me?”
Cade raised his gun. “Put down the Spear. You will not be harmed if you do as you are told.”
The Necromancer acted as if he hadn’t heard. “You and your pathetic ally?” he asked, looking over at Riley for the first time. “Do you really believe you are strong enough to face me?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. In a surprisingly lithe move, he swept the Spear around in an arc and pointed it at Riley.
Riley wasn’t taking any chances. As soon as the Necromancer moved, he pulled his weapon’s trigger.
Cade watched, stunned, as the bullets from Riley gun arced around the Necromancer and smashed harmlessly into the doors behind. Logan mouthed something in a tongue Cade could not recognize, and in the next instant Riley was lifted up off the ground and tossed halfway across the room.
The Templar sergeant slumped to the floor, unmoving.
Logan turned back toward Cade, returning the Spear to his side. With his other hand, he reached up and threw back his hood, revealing his features for the first time.
The right side of his face was a veritable ruin; his skin scarred from exposure to some kind of extreme heat, the flesh melted together and re-formed into some hideous approximation of normalcy. Like Cade’s, his right eye had not escaped harm, but where Cade’s was left intact as a milky white orb, the Necromancer’s had been destroyed outright, leaving the empty socket to gape like an open wound in his face. A few remaining wisps of long white hair hung from his damaged scalp.
The similarities between Cade’s condition and that of the necromancer were too obvious to ignore.
Could this have been what the Adversary had intended for me?
And then an even more disturbing thought.
Why didn’t he finish the job?
Despite his inner turmoil, Cade kept his gun pointed in the Necromancer’s direction. “Put down the Spear and step away from it,” he said.
The Necromancer laughed. “Go ahead, shoot me,” he said, spreading his arms wide, the Spear still held securely in his right hand. “You can’t harm me and you know it. What I did to your companion was child’s play. As long as I am in possession of this,” - he shook the weapon slightly - “I am invincible.”
Cade knew the rumors. He had heard the legends. He also knew that at least some of them regarding the Spear were true; he had seen the power of the weapon firsthand.
Yet he had little choice.
His enemy could not, must not, retai
n control of the Spear.
“This is your last chance, Logan. Put down the weapon.”
The Necromancer smiled. Instead of obeying Cade’s command, he began chanting under his breath. As he did so the head of the Spear started to glow a brilliant crimson in response.
*** ***
The storm, and its fearsome passengers, hit them in a rush. One moment the helicopter was above the estate in clear skies, the next it was encased in a maelstrom of horrific proportions, surrounded by clouds so thick that if it weren’t for the instruments, the pilots would have been unable to determine which direction was up. As it was they had their hands full, fighting against the gale force winds and struggling to keep the aircraft on station.
In the back, Duncan and Olsen, strapped into their seats with safety webbing and seat belts, did their best to keep the spectres away from the helicopter with shots from their weapons.
Their gunfire only had marginal effect, however. The bullets seemed to skip off the creatures’ scaly hides or were tossed away in the winds before they could reach their targets.
Above the howl of the wind and the sharp clatter of their firearms, a new sound could suddenly be heard.
The sound of teeth tearing through metal somewhere in the rear of the aircraft.
Duncan looked at Olsen, and the same thought flashed in both their eyes.
The engines.
*** ***
Cade had no intention of letting his enemy call forth any more of his infernal allies.
He had to do something.
But what?
The necromancer was right; Cade couldn’t harm him while he was in possession of the Spear.
Couldn’t harm him.
But that didn’t mean that Cade couldn’t harm the Spear itself.
It was a difficult shot, made more so by the narrowness of the weapon’s shaft and the room’s dim lighting. It was a shot that few men could have made.
Cade was one of those men.
The shot flew true, striking the wooden shaft of the Spear a few inches below the metal shank that held the tip in place and splintering it into pieces. The head of the weapon flew off into the shadows behind the Necromancer, leaving him holding a useless shaft of oak.
Logan’s shriek of pain and outrage echoed off the walls around them.
But before Cade could end the confrontation with another well-placed bullet, a tremendous blow shook the house, sending them all to the floor..
*** ***
A sharp whine filled the crew compartment, the sound cycling upward into almost painful levels; and then, with a loud crack, something snapped.
The Knights stared at the ceiling; the rotors had shut down.
Seconds later the loud braying of the emergency alarm filled their ears and the pilot gave the Mayday call over the radio.
As soon as he understood they were going down, Duncan pulled himself into a tight ball, protecting the back of his neck with his hands, just as he’d been taught.
One moment they were in the heart of the phantom clouds, the spectres feasting on their engines, and the next they were plummeting through the huge glass walls of the conservatory, the air filled with flying glass, crumpled steel, and the screams of the living and the dead as the ground came up to meet them.
*** ***
Cade pushed himself up on his hands just in time to see the Necromancer disappear through a door in the back of the room. Hauling himself to his feet, he looked for Riley, who was just climbing to his knees, a thin trickle of blood seeping across his forehead. Cade ran over to help him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling the big man up by his arm.
Riley nodded, wiping at the blood absently. “Yeah, I’m fine. I could see and hear, I just couldn’t move. What the hell just happened?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t have time to find out.” He turned and pointed across the room. “Logan escaped through the back door. I want you to grab the Spear and get out of the house with it. Do whatever you need to in order to keep it safe. I’m going after Logan.”
“But…”
“There’s no time. Get the Spear. I’ll meet you out front as soon as I can.”
And with that Cade ran off, following his enemy deeper into the house, leaving Riley to recover the artifact.
*** ***
Duncan came to with the straps of his seat belt cutting into his chest and threatening to suffocate him. He was hanging upside down in the darkness, bruised and battered, but intact.
He took a deep breath, gave a short prayer, and pressed the belt release with his left hand.
He landed on the ceiling of the Blackhawk with a jarring crash. As he moved to get up, he put his hand in a pool of something thick and wet.
Fuel oil, was his first thought, but when he got a good whiff of the substance he corrected himself.
Blood.
The thought put more urgency in his movement.
Climbing carefully into a crouch, he reached into the leg pocket of his coveralls and withdrew one of the standard-issue light sticks he carried on every mission.
By its light he could see Olsen still hanging above him, held in place by his safety straps.
He could also see the wide stain on the front of the man’s coveralls and the thick piece of shrapnel that had gone through them, his body armor, and, finally, deep into his chest.
With a tentative hand, he reached up to see if his companion was still alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Logan plunged down the back steps and outside into the wall of fog he had summoned while on the run just moments before. With the loss of the Spear had come a loss of power, and he knew this latest act of sorcery wouldn’t last very long. He had to be under cover before it disappeared.
With a sense of direction bred from years of familiarity, he headed for the chapel.
He had to reach the Other before they caught up with him.
He would know what to do.
He would help him recover the Spear.
He had to.
To have come so far, only to lose it now would be unthinkable.
Logan couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. His early-alarm system had worked perfectly, letting him know the assault was on its way. He’d placed his troops, summoned reinforcements the likes of which he had never been powerful enough to summon before, and had counterattacked before the Templars had even known what was happening.
Yet somehow the damned Templars had managed to breach his defenses.
Everything he had worked for was in ruins.
From the sounds of the small-arms fire coming from other parts of the property, it seemed the Knights were still fighting against his allies, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the last of them were destroyed, and the full force of the Templar contingent would descend on the house.
He had to regain some measure of control before that happened.
Reaching the chapel, the Necromancer hauled the door open and stepped inside.
The chapel was lit with the same eerie red glow that always accompanied the Other’s presence; but even as the Necromancer made his way down the center aisle, it slowly began to fade away until he was left standing before the altar alone in the darkness.
The Other had abandoned him for his failure.
*** ***
Cade emerged from the plantation house and stood for a moment on the back steps.
Ahead of him was a wall of grey. The fog was thick, unnatural. It felt more like a living presence than an inanimate object. He could sense it looming there, pressing against his awareness like an unseen danger, waiting to swallow him whole.
He knew that the Necromancer had disappeared into its depths.
He had no choice but to follow.
With his gun in one hand and his sword in the other, he plunged down the steps and into the mist.
*** ***
Unable to free Olsen from the twisted webbing that held him in place, Duncan was forced to support Olsen’s body
with one hand and slice through the webbing and seat belt with his combat knife.
He caught his companion’s body as it dropped and carefully hauled him out of the wreckage of the chopper. He found a relatively clear piece of floor and laid him gently down upon it. Now that he was free of the crew cabin he could see that the chopper had smashed through ceiling of the conservatory and buried itself in the wall that attached it to the plantation house.
Looking through the gaping hole they had created, he could see the raging storm. Lightning flashed, illuminating the strange shapes moving in the clouds, but for the moment they no longer seemed interested in the wreck of the chopper.
Which was just fine by him.
A quick look at the front of the Blackhawk let him know there was no chance that either of the pilots had survived, so he returned to Olsen’s side, only to find him conscious.
Olsen’s hand reached out to Duncan.
“It’s all right. You’re okay,” Duncan said softly, kneeling over his companion and doing what he could to block his view of the large hunk of glass protruding from the man’s chest.
Olsen tried to respond, but only managed to cough up a large mass of blood.
It was clear to Duncan that his companion didn’t have long to live.
A man lay dying, and he had the power to save him, power that had been given to him by the Lord above. To ignore that power, to pretend it didn’t exist simply because he didn’t understand it was not honoring the Lord, as he’d believed for so long, but denying Him. Cade had it right, Duncan realized. It wasn’t where the power came from, but how it was used that was important.
He made his decision.
“Listen to me, Nick. I’m going to remove the piece of glass from your chest and see what I can do about that wound. It’s not going to be easy. You’ve got to stay with me, fight to stay alive, do you hear me?”
Olsen stared at him glassy-eyed, and Duncan was afraid he was already past the point of understanding, but finally he gave a short nod.
“All right. On the count of three.” Duncan grasped wrapped his hands around the shard of glass. He made certain he had a good grip on it, ignoring the way it bit into the flesh of his hands. He could deal with that later, after he managed to stabilize Olsen.
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