The Heretic: A Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Thriller (The Templar Chronicles Book 1)

by Joseph Nassise

  An electrical tension filled the air, similar to that felt before a summer storm, yet what was looming was far less benign than such a simple act of nature. A wind kicked up suddenly, sliding amongst the gravestones, hissing in sibilant whispers as it grew in strength, setting the ends of the Council members’ robes fluttering in its breeze.

  When the song was at its height, the wind howling around him as if in counterpoint, Logan raised the obsidian knife high over his head.

  With one sudden, downward swing, he slashed the canine’s throat.

  Blood flowed, hot and wet in the night air.

  The assistant stepped in with the smaller of the two bowls, catching the streaming liquid.

  Logan used his knife again, this time on the dog’s exposed underbelly, slashing it open lengthwise, working quickly so that he could complete the ritual before the dog died. Setting the knife down on the table, he turned back and plunged his hands inside the still-warm carcass, drawing forth handfuls of entrails. These he smeared liberally about his face and neck, breathing in the thick scent of death and the coppery smell of freshly spilled blood, using the physical senses to activate his arcane ones, linking him with the realm of the dead.

  With a snap, power suddenly flooded through his body, and he grinned at the sheer thrill of wielding such might.

  He felt it coalesce in the air around him like a living, breathing creature, and with a sharp thrust of both his arms, he flung it outward to strike the exposed coffin.

  Logan laughed aloud, heady with power.

  Templar Knights Stan Gibson and Neil Jones had been separated from their unit in the confusion of the surprise assault on the commandery and found themselves wandering on the outer periphery of the battle.

  “What is that?”

  Gibson turned his head and glanced toward where his partner was pointing. Across the lawn near the old cemetery, a bright glow of greenish-colored light could be seen playing across the grounds.

  Curiosity got the better of them.

  Moving carefully and staying in the trees as much as possible, the knights crossed the distance to the cemetery. They approached the gates slowly, using hand signals to inform each other of their intentions. Jones slipped through the gate first while Gibson covered him with the shotgun before following behind.

  They could hear voices, chanting in a strange tongue, the sound rising and falling with the wind like some insane chorus, causing the hair on their arms and the backs of their necks to stand at attention.

  Cautiously, they moved closer.

  Surprisingly, the spirit he was calling forth fought back with a power almost equal to his own.

  Logan could feel the spirit resisting his call to return to its former body, fighting his commands to cross the barrier and answer his summons. Frustrated, the Necromancer increased his efforts.

  It quickly became a battle of wills, Logan’s arcane power pitted against the righteous nature and faith of the former Templar Knight, each side refusing to give in. Power spit and crackled inside each of the circles like hot grease on a grill, and the smell of burning ozone filled the air. The Council chanted, the Necromancer forced more of his power back down the link that connected him to the shade, and still the knight sought to avoid being called from his rest for so nefarious a purpose.

  As a result, the energy began to spill over, no longer affecting just the target grave but those in the immediate vicinity as well, seeping down into the earth to affect coffins on all sides. Where the bodies inside them were too decayed to support their return, the indistinct forms of apparitions began to appear, hovering over their gravestones or rising slowly out of the ground. Their lack of physical form fueled both their hunger for life and their anger at the living. When mixed with the Necromancer’s potent magick, they became not ghosts but spectres, vile creatures with a desire and craving to bring harm to the living.

  There were hundreds of them, and the cemetery grounds gave birth to more and more, swelling their ranks, as the Necromancer continued to pour more and more energy into the confrontation.

  The Council ignored the presence of the spectres, knowing they’d be safe locked within their protective circle.

  In counterpoint to the Council’s chanting, the ghosts took up an unearthly screeching of their own, warbling and weaving in syncopation.

  At that moment, Gibson and Jones appeared from out of the darkness and walked into full view of the Necromancer, the Council, and the spectres.

  Nothing they had been taught could ever have prepared them for the sight.

  “Freeze!” Gibson cried out, as they stepped into view. The muzzle of his gun was locked on the tall figure off to his right, which seemed to be the source of the green light.

  “Mary, mother of God” Jones whispered.

  Following his partner’s gaze, Gibson looked to his left.

  The dead stared back at him.

  A young man stood just a few feet away, one side of his head crushed like an aluminum can, eyes bulging from the pressure. Nearby stood another man, the whiteness of his bones gleaming through his decomposing flesh. There were hundreds more of them; some nearly perfect, so that you wouldn’t have known they were dead if you’d passed them on the street, some so corrupt and decayed that they were barely recognizable as human.

  Some they knew.

  Around them hovered those phantoms that had returned from the other side only to find that their bodies could no longer contain them. These wraiths were less distinct, flashes of ghostly luminescence that flickered in and out of existence. Gibson could see that their faces were strangely distorted, as though they had been twisted and pulled in all different directions at once. They stared out at him through dark, eyeless sockets, and from out of their mouths came a high-pitched screaming.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Then the dead came at them in a rush.

  Gibson and Jones opened fire.

  They might as well have been whistling Dixie for all the good it did them.

  Gibson’s shotgun knocked several of the revenants off their feet with its sheer power, but those behind simply charged forward over the bodies of their brethren without hesitation even as those that had fallen struggled to get back to their feet. The spectres were immune to the officer’s bullets and quickly swarmed forward.

  “Get back!” Jones yelled, and Gibson nodded his understanding, though he could barely hear him over the sound of the dead. The two men turned to run, only to find that the dead were on all sides.

  The end came quickly.

  Something spectral clawed at Gibson’s face, opening a large furrow in his cheek, while at the same time a sudden pain flared in his leg. He looked down to find a revenant with its rotting teeth clamped around his ankle. When he lowered the shotgun to blast the creature into obscurity, others rushed forward, grasping at him.

  Gibson went down in a pile of revenants, his screams rising to join those of the dead.

  Jones’s pistol went silent at that point as he used up the last of the ammunition he was carrying. He hurled it at the face of the first revenant that got close enough, then stuck out with his fists and feet, as the dead swarmed over him.

  The spectacle over, the Necromancer turned his attention back to his task. He could feel the spirit weakening, could feel the struggle shifting in his favor, so he reached down for his reserves and poured more energy into the fray.

  And won the struggle.

  A moment later the lid of the coffin was thrown violently open from the inside.

  A hand, spotted with mold, was thrust up into the night air.

  “Arise!” the Necromancer commanded, and the revenant inside the casket obeyed, forcing itself upright to stand on wobbly legs.

  As it stepped clear of the casket, its gaze fell upon the woman lying bound and gagged at its feet.

  With a cry of both anguish and hunger, the creature threw itself upon the offering and began to feed.

  Logan laughed aloud at the sight, uncaring.
r />   8

  They were awoken before dawn with the report of another attack, this time in Ohio. Less than twenty minutes after being informed of this new development, Echo Team was airborne, headed for the site of the latest confrontation. Driven to the airport by the same novice who’d delivered the note, they found one of the Order’s Gulfstream IV aircraft waiting for them, courtesy of the Preceptor. Within moments of their arrival the group boarded the plane and took off.

  Like most of the Order’s equipment, the interior of the aircraft was spartan. Gone were the leather seats and the recessed minibars, the inflight entertainment centers, and the four-star meals. Only the bare necessities had been spared, though the privacy curtain that separated the main compartment from the smaller, private compartment to the rear remained.

  Riley was up front with the pilot. Duncan was seated in the middle compartment with Malone, who had spent the time since boarding searching through a variety of databases on his laptop. He hadn’t yet said a word to his new teammate, so Duncan was surprised when Malone suddenly sat back and asked, “So what’s your story?”

  Duncan looked up from the magazine he was idly flipping through and across the aisle to where the other man was seated. “My story?”

  Malone was older than Duncan, though not by more than a few years. He carried himself with the assured confidence of a man who had seen and conquered all that life had thrown in his path. His rust-colored hair was cut short in military fashion, and his beard was trimmed so that it neatly framed his narrow face.

  “Yeah, you know, where you’re from, why you joined this crazy outfit in the first place?” The other man acted casual, but Duncan knew there was more than idle interest in the question.

  “Not much to tell,” Duncan replied. “I was born and raised in Georgia. Undergrad and grad degrees in religious studies, then spent some time in the missionary field before joining the Order.”

  “Missionary work, huh? Where?”

  “Mostly in Southeast Asia. Thailand, Laos, even spent about six months in mainland China.” And I hope I never set foot in that country again, he thought grimly, the events that had led him to the Order still fresh in his mind even after all this time.

  Nick must have picked up on his discomfort, for he didn’t pursue that point further. “How long have you been in?” he asked.

  “Five years. Two in the general forces and the last three on the protection detail. I’ve seen my share of things get ugly, but I’ll be the first to admit it pales in comparison to Echo Team’s exploits. From the unit’s record, you seem to see combat fairly often.”

  Nick smiled, and it was not a friendly smile. “You bet your ass we do. More than any other unit. When the higher-ups can’t figure out how to solve something, they call us in. This new job might seem quiet now; but I guarantee it’s going to get sticky, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Duncan inquired.

  Nick opened his mouth but before he could reply his laptop beeped. Muttering under his breath, he began to tap the keyboard with sure, quick strokes. “Go ahead, I’m still listening,” he said to Duncan, without taking his eyes off the screen.

  Duncan nodded toward the rear of the aircraft and asked, “How do you feel about working for him?”

  Nick stopped what he was doing and eyed Duncan in silence. Just as Duncan began to suspect that he had crossed a line he shouldn’t have crossed, the other man finally answered. “What you really mean is what’s it like working for the Heretic, right?”

  Duncan grimaced at his transparency, but nodded nonetheless. “Well, he does have a certain reputation.”

  Nick snorted. “Let me give you a piece of advice. If you’re going to be a part of this squad, then you need to get something straight, and it’s best that you do it from the start,” he said, the casual air now gone from his voice. “In our unit, no one ever calls Cade the Heretic. It’s a bullshit name given to him by someone not even fit to be in the same room with him. You’ll understand that the first time you find yourself facing something that belongs inside someone’s nightmare, and it’s Cade that saves your ass.”

  Nick laughed suddenly at his own harshness and softened his tone. “I’m not trying to be hard on you. Even I have to admit that things are a little, um, different on this team. Cade doesn’t always follow the Rule precisely to the letter, and he has certain abilities that, frankly, scare the hell out of me sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him or that he doesn’t deserve my respect. He’s the best damn commanding officer I’ve ever served under, that’s a fact.”

  “So the stories are true?” Duncan asked.

  “That depends on which ones you are talking about,” Nick answered, with a sly smile.

  From his position at his work area in the rear cabin, Cade could hear the soft hum of conversation between Sergeant Malone and their new team member, reminding him that he had yet to go over the man’s personnel file.

  With a sigh, he turned away from his research in the Apostolicae Sedis and opened his laptop. Powering it up, he called forth Duncan’s service records.

  He skimmed over the early details - born and raised in Georgia, the son of a preacher, home schooled for most of his elementary years, attended a parochial high school and later a Jesuit university, where he majored in religious studies - it was all fairly ordinary. Instead, Cade focused on the present, noting the short span of time Duncan spent in seminary before an unexpected departure for the Orient and a long missionary tour, then the equally short recruitment to bring him into the Order. His zeal and desire to succeed once he had been christened a knight was evident, and his service record over the last five years was exemplary. He’d been selected early on to serve on the protection detail and had remained there, rising to his present position as detail command.

  A series of photographs were included as scanned images embedded into the report, and Cade took the time to study each of them in turn, hunting for evidence that his hunch had been right, that the flash of Power he’d seen centered on Duncan’s hands in the Preceptor’s office was an earthly indicator of his ability to heal with just a touch.

  He stopped to look more closely at one of the older photographs. The image was creased and worn; whoever had scanned the photo did not bother to clean it up. It was clear enough, however, to show a young Sean Duncan standing unhappily in front of an older man dressed in a suit. Duncan looked to be around ten or eleven years old. The man, looking stern and serious, rested his hands on young Sean’s shoulders. The pair stood beneath the entrance to a revivalist tent, the sign marking the doorway partially obscured by the older man’s arm.

  Special Engagement

  Tonight and tonight only

  Pastor Nick Duncan

  Faith Hea…

  Now we’re getting somewhere, thought Cade.

  He printed a hard copy of the photo and settled back in his chair, staring at the photo as if it might suddenly reveal some long-lost secret that only Cade would understand.

  Perhaps, in a way, it did.

  Duncan was startled out of a light sleep by a hand on his shoulder.

  It was Nick. “Boss wants to see you,” he said, gesturing to the smaller cabin at the back of the plane, where Cade had been sequestered since the fight began.

  Nick returned to his seat. Duncan unbuckled his seat belt, walked down the aisle, and drew aside the curtain hanging at the end of the forward cabin.

  The lights were on low but provided enough illumination that Duncan could see the area served as a functional work space. The standard aircraft seats, like those in the forward cabin, had been taken out. In their places were two reclining chairs with a table between them and a large drafting-style worktable. The lights were on over the worktable, shining down on several stacks of papers, a few open reference books, a laptop and portable printer. At the edge of the table was a long black case.

  Williams was nowhere in sight.

  Noting that the lavatory lights on the rear wa
ll were illuminated, Duncan guessed that Cade would be back momentarily. His curiosity getting the better of him, he made his way over to the worktable.

  The books were old, centuries so, if the fine calligraphic script and the carefully drawn illustrations in the margins were any indication. A glance at the text revealed it to be Latin, a confirmation of the authenticity and age of the volumes. Judging by the images and the few snatches of text he quickly translated, each of the books dealt in some fashion with angels and demons.

  His personnel file lay closed on the table nearby.

  Resisting the urge to peek inside it, he turned his attention instead to the long, narrow case that rested on the table beside them.

  It was a sword case. Duncan had no difficulty identifying it, for he had one of his own; every Knight in the Order did. They were given out by the Seneschal during the investment ceremonies, a symbol of the oath of fealty that each man gave as he joined the Order.

  But Cade’s was different.

  Where Duncan’s case was made from simple black fiberglass without ornamentation, Cade’s was covered with a soft supple skin of dark leather and held shut with three simple silver clasps. In the center of the lid, a word had been branded into the covering, its harsh, rough edges providing a stark contrast to the rest of the case’s beauty.

  The word was in a language Duncan did not recognize.

  Duncan glanced up at the lavatory lights, saw that they were still lit, and gave in to a sudden impulse. He reached down and opened the case.

  Inside, lying on a bed of smooth, white silk was Cade’s sword, as Duncan had expected.

  The weapon itself was an unadorned English longsword. Along the length of the blade that was facing upright in the case, the Latin word Defensor had been inscribed in silver.

  Translated, it meant Defender. It was etched into every sword carried by the Templars, for that one word neatly formed the foundation of the Order’s mission — to defend mankind against the evils in the world.