Infernal Cries: An Echo Team Urban Fantasy Novel

by Joseph Hutton

  Satisfied that he was armed well enough for bear, Cade had one more task to perform. He opened the hood and replaced the wire powering the locating device. He waited for the LED indicator to turn read, then nodded once, satisfied, before closing the hood again.

  Weapons in hand, he set out for his meeting with the Necromancer.

  After learning that Riley missed another chance at bringing in the Heretic, as Cade had once been known, in for questioning, the Preceptor took the case away from him. Command over the hunt for both the Necromancer and the Heretic passed to Delta and Riley and his team were ordered to stand down at the commandery for debriefing at a later time. Riley argued against the move, but was summarily dismissed, his suggestions ignored.

  That didn’t stop him from continuing the search, however. He was sitting in the ops center, paging through scans of some of the material collected from Cade’s workshop, when from behind him McGreevy said, “That’s weird.”

  Something about her tone made Riley look up.

  “What’s weird?”

  “The transponder just came back on.”

  Riley frowned; he didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. “I’m sorry?”

  McGreevy began tapping keys on the keyboard in front of her, her attention on the monitor as she said, “The transponder in your SUV? The one Commander Williams…um…borrowed?”

  “What about it?”

  “It just came back on.”

  Riley scrambled out of his chair and moved to her side. It seemed Cade had made another mistake.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “Hang on, I’m working on that.”

  He watched the computer begin narrowing the search, the screen switching from a map of the eastern seaboard to one of the states of Connecticut and New York to one of New York City. Moment by moment the computer was triangulating on the transponder’s location and throwing that information up on the screen for them to see.

  That’s when it hit him.

  Cade was making mistakes.

  Intentional mistakes.

  He hadn’t accidentally looked at the camera before going into the reliquary. He’d done it on purpose. Just like he’d let Riley see him as he stole the SUV at his house and how the transponder in that same SUV had suddenly turned itself back on. Cade hadn’t needed to steal the SUV at all; they’d found the one he’d taken from the commandery about half-a-mile away on the other side of the property that backed up to his own. He could have easily made his way back through the woods and driven away without Riley or anyone else being the wiser.

  Instead, he’d made a spectacle of himself and increased the chances that he might be caught.

  Cade was leaving a trail for me to follow, Riley thought.

  He’d just been too blind to see it.

  “Come on, come on!” he said impatiently as McGreevy worked the data.

  A red dot appeared on the map in the middle of the screen.

  “Where the hell is that?” Riley asked.

  McGreevy consulted the oracle, otherwise known as the Google Maps database.

  “The Red Hook Container Terminal, Brooklyn,” she said.

  Riley’s finger jabbed at the screen.

  “That’s it! That’s where they are!” He headed for the door at a run. “Suit up and be ready to roll in five!” he shouted to the others as he headed for his quarters and the gear he’d left there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The cavernous interior of the warehouse stretched away before him, illuminated by a series of old arc lights strung across the ceiling, revealing that warehouse 486 was full of shipping containers.

  They were stacked three rows high and more than a dozen deep, with long aisles between them. Several forklifts were parked in a nearby bay, charging off the building’s power supply.

  Cade didn’t hear anything aside from his own breathing.

  He chose an aisle at random and began walking forward. The warehouse was eerily similar to the one they encountered at the start of all this back in Bridgeport and he knew that the similarity wasn’t coincidental. Since the Necromancer rarely did anything by chance, he meant for Cade to notice the similarity and was therefore most likely waiting for Cade near the rear of the building.

  He found the open area at the back of the warehouse, just like the one they’d found in Bridgeport, but it, too, was empty. He walked to the center of it and turned about, his anger building as he began to suspect that he’d been duped.

  As if by some prearranged signal, the doors of the shipping containers behind him suddenly opened and out poured a literal horde of the walking dead.

  Their flesh, what was left of it, was pasty white and bloated, wrinkled from long emersion in the water. Their eyes, lips and other softer parts had been eaten away by marine life and many of them still wore the chains and weights that had been wrapped around their bodies to keep them from floating to the surface when they’d been clandestinely dumped over the side of a boat or tossed like so much garbage from a nearby bridge.

  It was as if the sea had suddenly vomited up all those who had been buried in its depths and as one the mob focused its attention on Cade.

  Shit.

  Without a sound they rushed toward him.

  Cade didn’t hesitate, just lifted the MP5 and opened fire, blazing away at the dead at a rate of 800 rounds per minute.

  Bullets tore through waterlogged flesh with wet sucking sounds and minimal resistance, but did little to stop the mob unless they happened to drive a hole in a revenant’s skull. Bodies collapsed, sometimes literally disintegrating under the weight of the gravity pulling on long-rotting flesh. Those behind them just walked over them in their single-mindedness to reach their prey.

  The previously silent warehouse was now filled with the staccato chatter of Cade’s weapon and the tramp of the creatures’ feet as they came inexorably forward. Cade didn’t have time to choose his shots carefully but he kept the weapon at eye level and tried to take as many of them out with shots to their skulls until the weapon ran dry.

  He hit the release and was slamming the new magazine in before the other one even hit the ground. The creatures covered three quarters of the distance between them and he’d barely made a dent on their incoming numbers. He began to concentrate his fire in one particular direction, hoping to create an opening he could use but getting nowhere as more and more of them seemed to pour out of the container cars.

  As the gun ran dry a second time, Cade cast it away and reached for his handgun, but a suddenly looming revenant tore it out of his hands before he could bring it to bear. He kicked the creature’s legs out from underneath it and drew his sword, turning to run at the same time only to discover the creatures had somehow managed to surround him!

  Unable to retreat, Cade chose the alternative and tried to push forward instead. If he could get out of the open area and into one of the narrow aisles he could limit the number of revenants he’d have to face at one time. His sword danced like a living thing, flashing in the light, striking his foes with savage grace as he fought to cut his way through the mob to safety.

  But the size and scope of the horde was too much. They closed in on him, lurching over the bodies of their wounded comrades in their haste to get their hands on him and soon they were pressing so close on all sides that he no longer had room to swing his sword. Then the weapon was torn from his grasp and he had nothing left to fight with but his own hands and feet.

  Cade refused to give in. Gabrielle depended on him and he fought like a demon, his fists and elbows and knees and feet laying waste to the rotting bodies on all sides, hammering joints and smashing skulls in an all-out effort to reach safety.

  For a moment he thought he might make it. A channel opened between several of the creatures and he steered the mob in that direction, hoping to catch a break and slip through the ever-closing noose, but then a wild swing from a zombie with only half a face left on its skull caught him on the temple and he felt the world spin befor
e him.

  That one stumble was all it took.

  The creatures closed in, pummeling him with their own fists and feet until darkness threatened. Cade staggered, would surely have fallen if the press of the creatures hadn’t been so close, and at that point a rather large and thick-skulled individual reared up in front of him and slammed its generously sized-skull directly into his forehead.

  What had merely been grey a moment earlier went black and Cade fell before the torrent, still being hammered beneath their blows.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Riley said to the pilot over the intercom.

  He was sitting in the co-pilot seat of a Blackhawk helicopter as it whipped over Long Island Sound, headed for the shipping terminal where he was convinced he would find both Cade and the Necromancer. With him in the chopper were the men of the Command Squad, First Squad and half of Second. In the other chopper less than two hundred feet behind them came the other half of Second, as well as Third and Fourth Squads.

  “You volunteering to get out and push, Knight Captain?” the pilot asked and Riley realized he was badgering the man. He gave him an apologetic look, but he didn’t think the pilot even noticed; the man was too busy dealing with keeping them low enough to avoid the radar of the air traffic controllers at La Guardia and JFK but high enough so that they didn’t play chicken with any rogue waves rising off the surface of the water.

  “Two minutes out!” the pilot announced and Riley clapped him on the shoulder to show he’d heard. Thankful to have something to do other than worry, Riley keyed the intercom channel that would not only connect him to the men in the chopper with him, but also those in the other bird still hanging off their tail.

  “Two minutes, Echo, two minutes. The LZ might be hot, so we’re going in locked and loaded with weapons free. If it looks like a threat, take it down before we regret it. We’ve dealt with Logan long enough to know that he won’t give any quarter so don’t take any chances where your life or the lives of your teammates could be in the balance. Unless he proves to be a threat, Commander Williams is to be taken alive and unharmed. Good luck and good hunting. Wilson, would you do the honors?”

  Third Squad’s preacher-turned-Templar took the mike for the pre-action prayer. “Lord, we are Your humble servants, ever mindful of our duty and obligations. Tonight we go into battle again in Your name. Stand with us. Grant us the peace and protection afforded Your servants in times of strife. I ask that You watch over every man that bears Your sword this night. Fill their hearts with courage and their souls with peace. If this be their time to join You, may You welcome them home with open arms. In Christ Jesus, Amen.”

  A chorus of “Amens” echoed over the intercom as the pilot banked the chopper and brought them swooping in toward the container terminal.

  Cade came back from unconsciousness with a start to find himself tied securely to a pillar in the middle of a warehouse.

  In front of him, blocking his view of the rest of the room, was the Necromancer.

  “Hello, Cade.”

  Logan looked better than he did the last time Cade had seen him, back when the sorcerer had been in Templar custody and Gabrielle’s ghost had been badgering him to get a message to Cade, but that still didn’t make him pretty to look at. 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 reformed into some hideous approximation of normalcy. Like Cade’s, his 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 Necromancer was dressed in a long, hooded robe, tied at the waist with a black sash that had more than a few arcane symbols sewn onto its surface that Cade recognized. It was the kind of robe one wore for ritual workings and the sight of it worried Cade more than waking to discover himself in the Necromancer’s custody.

  “You’re just in time for the show. And wouldn’t you know, your lovely wife is the guest of honor.”

  Logan stepped to the side, allowing Cade to see the rest of the room.

  It was the ritual scene from the Brideport warehouse all over again, with two important differences.

  The first was that the men lying on the floor inside the casting circle were still alive, their arms and legs bound tightly and gags in their mouths. One of Logan’s acolytes stood nearby with a naked blade in his hand.

  The second was that the body of Cade’s wife, Gabrielle, was lashed to the metal framework at the top of the ritual layout. Her unseeing eyes were open, staring out across the space at Cade’s.

  The Knight Commander threw himself against his bonds, trying to loosen the ropes that held him enough, to no avail. He cursed and screamed and told Logan that he was going to tear him limb from limb with his bare hands if he didn’t let his wife free, but the Necromancer simply watched it all with mild amusement. Cade strained against his bonds until he was red in the face and then strained some more but he didn’t gain anything. Whoever had tied his bonds knew what they were doing.

  He wasn’t going anywhere.

  When he had exhausted himself, when he was hanging with only the tautness of the ropes holding him up, the Necromancer spoke again.

  “Perhaps you’ve figured it out already, perhaps not, but I don’t want you to misunderstand what is about to happen here so let me explain just to be certain.”

  Logan pointed across the ritual circle at Gabrielle and this time Cade noted that she was wearing the feather from the Adversary’s wing in a necklace around her throat.

  Logan must have taken it from me when I went down under the assault of his minions, Cade thought.

  The Necromancer's voice was full of satisfaction as he said, “When you rescued your wife from the Beyond you seem to have forgotten to retrieve her soul in the process, leaving her physical form nothing more than an empty vessel. A healthy vessel from all appearances. One that would be a sin to waste.

  “After all,” he leered, “there are so many things on the other side of the Veil that wish to walk under the light of our sun, so many entities that wish to walk among those they hope to feed upon, to soak in the anger and fear and despair of their victims in the way that only those with physical forms can do.”

  Cade began struggling again, but the Necromancer paid him no mind.

  “I know I don’t have to explain all of this to you. You know exactly the kind of being I’m referring to, don’t you?

  “You think that you vanquished the Adversary, but I am here to assure you that that is not the case. You cannot kill such a being, only inconvenience it for a time, prevent it from visiting our plane of existence until it has once again managed to gather the power necessary to cast its presence back to this side of the Veil.

  “Of course, if one were to invite it to return, to provide the power it needs to make the passage or, even better, provide a vessel for it to reside in…”

  Cade went berserk, the idea that something so foul might inhabit the body of his wife made him temporarily lose his mind.

  The Necromancer let his explanation trail off, smiled, and said, “Shall we begin?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  When Cade came back to his senses, he found the ritual already started. Incense burned in braziers somewhere out of sight behind him, filling the room with a cloying scent, while in front of him the Necromancer’s acolytes were draining the blood from their four victims into large, silver bowls specially prepared for that purpose as they chanted a deep, guttural song in a language Cade didn’t recognize.

  His gaze shot across the room to find Gabrielle, his heart skipping a beat when he saw that for the moment she was still unharmed, still herself.

  Or, at least, the shell of who she had once been.

  The Necromancer stood between them in the center of the ritual circle. His head
was bowed and he was chanting something in counterpoint to what his acolytes were saying. The songs hurt Cade’s ears to hear, for they were the kinds of songs not meant for human consumption but fashioned and played in places far darker than the mortal realm.

  The Necromancer stepped slightly to one side, revealing what his body had been hiding from Cade’s view. A small wooden table stood there and resting on the table was the Hand, the Staff, and a meat cleaver.

  While his brain was still trying to process that last item, the Necromancer reached out and picked it up. His song rose higher, mixing with those of his followers, the entire chorus seeming to rise toward some mysterious denouement. Cade felt something in his ear pop and blood trickled down the side of his face.

  The Necromancer laid his left hand flat upon the tabletop. He brought his right hand, the one holding the cleaver, up over his head.

  As the song swelled to its climax, the Necromancer shouted out a word of power and brought the cleaver whistling downward. It slashed through his wrist – skin, flesh, muscle, and bone – as if it wasn’t there and embedded itself half-an-inch deep into the wooden surface of the table.

  The veins in the Necromancer’s neck stood out like taut wires and Cade thought Logan was going to scream and collapse to the floor in pain, but the sorcerer held himself together long enough to let go of the cleaver and snatch up the Hand. Without hesitation he shoved the base of that shriveled relic against the bleeding stump of his severed wrist.