The Heretic

by Joseph Nassise

  But his partner shook his head. “We’re not finished yet.” When the prompt came up a third time, Malone inserted Cade’s personal codes.

  “The commander would have your scalp if he knew you had his codes.” Riley said ominously.

  Malone grinned. “I know. That’s why we aren’t going to tell him, right?”

  He received a smile in return. “Mum’s the word.”

  But once again, the security system kicked them out.

  Malone was frustrated, but by no means beaten. He had an ace up his sleeve for defeating the system security, but he was holding it in reserve, until he was certain they were on to something. For the moment, Echo Team’s security expert decided to take another route. He called up a list of the commanderies that had suffered assaults in the last several days. Then he accessed the property records for each, creating a list of all of the Order’s members who had been interred at the cemeteries on those sites. He then instructed the computer to hunt through the service records for those individuals, flagging every member who had a long-duration training assignment similar to Spencer’s.

  Ten minutes later the computer spit back a list of five names. Each and every one of them had been assigned to Birmingham for the same training assignment. But when Malone tried to dig deeper into the individual records, he received the same results. Any detailed information regarding those assignments was classified. And Riley, assigned to the same location during the same time period, didn’t recognize any of the names on the list.

  His suspicions growing, Riley said, “Can you check that assignment against the service records of the entire Order, using today’s date?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see how many other men there are and where they’re located now.”

  Malone considered the request. “That kind of search might set off a few alarms.”

  “The system thinks you’re Cade. What do you care?”

  “Good enough for me.” Malone set the process in motion, then sat back to wait for the results.

  The two men talked over various theories regarding the attacks in the half-hour it took for the computer to complete its task. When it had, they were faced with a list of twenty names.

  Every one of them was assigned to the Preceptor’s commandery in Bristol, Rhode Island.

  None of them were familiar to either of the Echo Team members.

  Malone tried to use Cade’s pass codes to access the individual records and learn more, but even that gambit failed. He was not to be deterred, however; he had the sense that he had a major piece of the puzzle right in front of him if he only had the wherewithal to follow it to its source, and he fully intended to do just that. It was time to use his ace in the hole. “I’ve been saving this for a real emergency. Something tells me this is one,” he said.

  Early in his relationship with the Order, Malone had been assigned to the unit in charge of developing the Templar technological infrastructure. During that time, he had used his knowledge of network systems to bury a back door deep behind the security systems, a hidden port of entry into the heart of the Order’s framework. It could only be used once, but when it was, it allowed Malone to roam around the system as a root administrator with complete access to all but the most fortified sections of the database.

  With the help of the back door and a slick little utility that masqueraded as an authorized net spider, Malone broke through.

  An entire unit was hidden there.

  Neither of the men had been aware of its existence, and they pored over the information with a great degree of shock and surprise. What they had in front of them was a standard TO&E. The Table of Organization and Equipment was a document that identified the unit’s rank structure, mission, and arms and equipment. This particular unit was identified as the Custodes Veritatis, or Guardians of Truth.

  From what they could determine, its primary mission was to protect and preserve the Holy Relics that the Order had obtained over the years, everything from Veronica’s Veil to the staff of Moses. Knight Commander Nigel Stone was listed as the unit commander and all twenty of the previous names they had uncovered showed up on the current duty roster. The unit’s historical records showed that all five of the deceased had been members at one time or another as well.

  “Who does Stone report to?” Riley asked.

  A few key strokes later they had their answer.

  “Son of a…”

  “My feelings exactly,” Malone said, nodding in agreement. “The boss sure ain’t gonna be happy about this.”

  Before Riley could reply the emergency alarms outside in the corridor began blaring.

  The commandery was under attack.

  The two men grabbed their weapons and rushed out into the corridor, the computer, and the damning evidence it contained, forgotten on the desk.

  “What are they looking for?”

  Cade and his companion were seated on the cracked surface of a marble sarcophagus, where they had settled after the shade of the dead Templar had finally agreed to talk.

  The shade’s answer was short and to the point. “The Spear of Destiny.”

  Cade sat back in surprise. The Spear of Destiny was the mythical name given to the lance the Roman centurion, Longinus, used to pierce the side of Christ while he hung on the cross, thus fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies. It was also known as the Spear of Longinus or the Lance of Mauritius. Cade knew that historically the Lance had allegedly been possessed by a series of successful military leaders including Alaric, Attila the Hun, Charlemagne, and even Hitler, all of whom claimed it was the power of the Lance that led them to victory.

  “Why do they want it?”

  Spencer simply looked at him, not bothering to respond.

  The Templar Commander realized the futility of his question. Reviewing what he knew about the Lance, the why of it all quickly became obvious. There was a legend that whoever possessed the weapon would be able to conquer the world. Napoleon attempted to obtain the Lance after the Battle of Austerlitz, but it had been smuggled out of the city prior to the start of the fight, and he never got hold of it. Charlemagne carried the Spear through forty-seven successful battles, but died when he accidentally dropped it. Barbarossa met the same fate only a few minutes after it slipped out of his hands while he was crossing a stream.

  The modern history of the Spear wasn’t as well documented. Somehow it eventually wound up in the possession of the House of the Hapsburg and was placed in the Hofberg Treasure House in 1912, where Hitler was later to “discover” it. A rabid student of the occult and fully aware of the legend attached to it, Hitler had the Spear moved to St. Catherine’s Church in Berlin shortly after he came to power. As the Americans and Russians advanced on Berlin, he had it moved again, this time to an underground bunker to protect it from Allied bombing raids. That bunker fell to the U.S. on April 30, 1945, and an Army officer took possession of the weapon. Consistent with the legend, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker just eighty hours after he lost control of the Spear. General Patton was particularly interested in the weapon and took the time to have its authenticity traced. His fanaticism on the subject was eventually brought to Eisenhower’s attention, however, who found the whole subject distasteful. If Cade remembered correctly, it was Eisenhower who returned the Lance to its rightful location, the Hofberg Treasure House in Vienna, where it was supposedly still on display.

  If the legends are true, and the Necromancer and his allies gain control of the weapon, we’ve got a much bigger problem on our hands.

  But one issue kept nagging at him. He seemed to remember both the Hofberg Museum and the Vatican itself claimed to control the real Lance. If that was true, why was the enemy attacking Templar commanderies looking for the weapon?

  He put the question to Spencer.

  The answer was not what he had expected. “Because the Council knows that for the last fifty years it has rested in a vault controlled by a secret unit within our own Order.”

  Cade sat
there, stunned by the reply.

  16

  Duncan was asleep when the emergency alarms sounded but was out of bed and ready within seconds. Weapons in hand, he rushed from his bedroom just in time to join Malone and Riley as they emerged from Cade’s room across the hall.

  “The Knight Commander?” he asked, as the three of them rushed down the way.

  “Not in his room,” was Riley’s quick answer, and his tone conveyed both his concern and his suggestion to let the matter drop.

  The three of them dashed down the stairs and emerged in the grand foyer, just in time to meet a group of revenants as they crashed through the front door.

  The Knights moved as one, splitting into a V-shaped formation. Riley took point with Duncan on his left and Malone on his right. Without hesitation, the master sergeant opened up on the intruders with his automatic weapon, his companions’ fire joining the fray only a split second later.

  The revenants never stood a chance. Caught in the concentrated fire of the three Knights, the creatures were quickly cut to ribbons.

  The three men waded through the bodies, dispatching any that they found with life left in them with a quick gunshot to the head, and took up positions facing out the open doorway.

  What they saw outside momentarily took their breath away.

  The front lawn was literally crawling with revenants. It was as if the doors of hell had suddenly been opened.

  Cade emerged from the Beyond to find himself in an unused room on the second floor of the Broadmoor Commandery. As always, the mirror he used as an exit point shattered violently with his passage, and he paused for a moment, waiting to see if anyone would come to investigate the sound of breaking glass.

  He needn’t have bothered. The warbling tones of the emergency alarms sounding in the corridors would have masked the sound easily.

  The sound of gunfire reached him the moment he stepped out of the room. He listened for a moment, trying to pinpoint its location. As best he could tell it was coming from somewhere out in front of the commandery. He moved down the hallway until he reached a window, which looked out on the front entrance to the manor house and the grounds beyond, meaning that Cade was in the east wing, exactly opposite where he had started.

  In the light of the floodlights that were mounted on the roof, Cade could see revenants dashing across the lawn, only to be thrown back or brought down by the concentrated firepower of the Knights guarding the front entrance. The front gate lay in ruins, and more revenants poured through the gap even as he watched. Several could be seen gorging themselves on the corpses of those who had defended the gate, next to the smoking ruin of the security shack.

  The missing men from the Templeton Commandery had come home.

  Despite the fact that he was unarmed, Cade never hesitated. He turned and ran for the stairs at the other end of the hall, intent on joining the fray.

  As he moved, a flicker of light caught his eye.

  A portal had formed in the middle of the front lawn, a silver mirror-like disk of shimmering power some ten feet across. Its surface rippled and swirled, as if something was disturbing it from below.

  Cade dashed down the hall and stepped out through a set of French doors. He found himself on a balcony over the portico that guarded the entrance to the manor house. A group of Knights were crouched behind the low wall that ran around the balcony’s edge, firing everything they had at the portal below.

  Cade was just in time to witness to the birth of a nightmare as it dragged itself through the gateway and into this world.

  A hand came first, a hand the size of a small horse, twisted and gnarled, the color of melting lead. It was four-fingered, and each finger ended in a vicious claw. The hand was joined by another, this one on the other side of the portal. Its fingers grasped the edge of the lawn, and the creature slowly pulled itself into view.

  Cade faltered to a halt as he stared in dismay at the demon.

  It stood well over twenty feet tall and was humanoid in appearance. Its skin was the color of a pig left too long on the roasting spit, deep crimson and black, and it glistened wetly in the floodlights. Its head was misshapen, like wax that had rested too close to a fire, and four large bulbous eyes stared lustfully at the world around it from within the depths of what could only charitably be called a face.

  As he watched, a group of Templar defenders emerged from around the corner of the west wing and began firing at it. In reply it reached out, grasped a nearby Suburban in one large fist and hurled it at the Knights, silencing their counterattack with one blow.

  Cade ran to the wall and looked out over the field of battle, knowing he had little time to find what he needed.

  All right you son of a bitch, where are you?

  He looked beyond the oncoming beast, searching for a spot back from the center of the fray in a place of reasonable safety. He strained to see through the flashes of gunfire and the glare from the spotlights on the roof above.

  There!

  A sorcerer stood beneath the sheltering branches of a large elm tree near the wall surrounding the estate. His head was bowed in concentration, and his hands moved rhythmically through the air in front of him

  Having found his target, Cade glanced beside him. The nearest of Barnes’s soldiers was firing shot after shot into the approaching demon with his SCAR-H. It would have to do.

  Cade grabbed the rifle from the startled soldier and rushed twenty feet farther along the parapet, shouldering the weapon in the process. He did his best to ignore both the approaching behemoth and the confusion of the soldiers around him, knowing he was unlikely to get a second shot. With the rooftop shaking beneath his feet from the creature’s approach, he settled in for the shot.

  The view through the scope showed his target in more detail. He was dressed exactly like the man Cade had examined earlier, right down to the robe and the ring on one hand. Cade eyeballed the distance between them as roughly 350 meters. If he’d had his own rifle and the time to study the situation and get into position, it would have been easy. But with an unfamiliar weapon, in the midst of a firefight, with a crazed demon bearing down on him at full speed, well, it was going to be interesting.

  A slight breeze wafted against his cheek, and Cade made a minor adjustment to his position.

  The demon moved another fifteen feet closer with a single step.

  The men on the roof were firing wildly, some scrambling back from their positions, their fear at facing such a creature getting the better of them. In seconds, the organized resistance dissolved into a paNicked retreat as the rest of the men realized that their gunfire was having no effect.

  Cade ignored everything but the target.

  Steady, he thought.

  His attention narrowed to a pinpoint, his entire world reduced to the figure in the reticle of his scope and the voice in his ear, waiting for the green-light command and the moment when all those years of training would come together at the pull of a trigger.

  The demon stepped off the grass and onto the asphalt of the driveway, less than twenty feet from where Cade perched on the rooftop.

  Breathe…

  He pulled the trigger.

  “Good Lord,” breathed Duncan at the sight.

  For years, he’d known that the Enemy was real, that this world was home to more than just God’s creations. But unlike the other members of Echo Team, who fought such supernatural creatures regularly, Duncan had been sheltered from them owing to his assignment. It was one thing to know something intellectually in the back of your mind, quite another to come face-to-face with it.

  For a moment, he froze. He was unable to do anything but stare in dread at the foul creature closing the gap between them.

  It was the sound of Riley’s voice that jerked him out of his paralysis. The master sergeant was yelling at the top of his lungs as he fired his weapon at the demon, and the sound was enough to jerk Duncan back into action. As Malone turned his attention to a pack of oncoming revenants, sniping away at them
as they moved closer to where the three men were positioned, Duncan added his own fire to Riley’s. At the same moment, a torrent of gunfire suddenly began pouring into the demon from somewhere on the roof above.

  Despite the sheer volume of firepower, it did no good.

  The demon barely noticed the bullets slamming into its flesh. It continued moving forward, intent on reaching the manor house.

  Cade’s bullet leapt from the gun and smashed into the flesh of the demon’s left arm as it swung to the side in a random arc.

  “Shit!”

  Cade prepared to fire again, but the demon had closed in, blocking his shot at the sorcerer who had summoned it. He’d have to get higher in order to fire over the creature’s shoulder.

  There was only one choice.

  Ignoring the fact that the demon was only scant feet away, Cade scrambled up onto the wall in front of him. He brought the weapon back up into firing position and sighted once more on his target.

  He was horribly exposed, and knew it.

  Yet he had no other choice.

  The demon let out a blood-chilling roar at the sight of his audacity. It reached for him with one four-fingered hand, its claws gleaming in the floodlights.

  The sorcerer looked up and Cade stared through the scope directly into the man’s eyes.

  Goodbye, Cade thought, then pulled the trigger.

  At almost the same instant, the demon’s gnarled hand wrapped itself around Cade’s waist and yanked him off the parapet. His rifle tumbled free and fell to the ground, two stories below, as the creature began to crush the life out of him simply by squeezing its fist.

  Cade fought against the creature’s grip, but it was like punching a steel band. It was all he could do to keep air in his lungs.

  The demon raised its fist higher to get a better look. Hot fetid breath washed across Cade’s face, followed seconds later by the thing’s unearthly laugh of triumph. Four inhuman eyes regarded Cade with glee as the demon’s mouth opened wide.