Vengeance Reigns: An Echo Team Urban Fantasy Novel

by Joseph Hutton

  A roar went up from the assembled Chiang Shih as they realized they were under attack. It was answered by a literal rain of crossbow bolts as the Templar knights that had surrounded the camp during Cade’s duel with Bishop brought the full might of their numbers to bear against the enemy.

  Both sides surged together.

  Cade fought to untangle himself from Bishop, all the while expecting some passing Chiang Shih soldier to kill him before he’d managed to do so, but he freed himself and staggered to his feet unharmed. Or at least no worse for wear than when he’d gone down.

  Pandemonium reigned.

  Cade raced for his sword.

  Combatants were everywhere and no sooner had Cade regained his weapon that he was swept up in the maelstrom, forced to defend himself against Chiang Shih warriors hell bent on survival. He fought off two such creatures and turned to take on a third, only realizing it was Riley at the last moment. The other man grinned at him and then eviscerated a nearby opponent with a sudden thrust of his weapon.

  They fought until there weren’t any more Chiang Shih left to fight. Bodies littered the ground all around, but when it was over the only ones left standing were members of the Order.

  Cade found a clear spot and all but collapsed to the ground. He was joined a moment later by Riley, who began using a battlefield med kit to bandage Cade’s most grievous wounds.

  “You had me worried there for a minute or two,” Riley said, as he cleansed one of the lacerations on Cade’s shoulder.

  “Makes two of us. Never figured Johannson would order our rescue, that’s for sure.”

  Riley shook his head. “He didn’t. It was Juarez and his men from Charlie Team. When he heard you’d bucked orders to go back for Duncan, he pulled his men off furlough and got here as quickly as he could.”

  “They must have moved pretty damned quickly.”

  “Took them three days just to get the portal open, working with a team of Templar mystics around the clock. Word is he expected to be avenging our deaths, rather than rescuing our hides. The time differential between this world and our own worked in our favor this time. Now hold still.”

  The Knight Commander grimaced, but managed not to flinch too much as Riley wrapped the bandage tight.

  To keep his attention off Riley’s ministrations, Cade looked at the activity going on around them. Several field medics were moving through the group, caring for other soldiers in the same fashion that Riley was doing for him and across the way Cade could see a collection team gathering the bodies of the dead and preparing them for transportation back to the other side of the Veil. That was a job he didn’t envy at all.

  A few yards away he could see a fellow knight rummaging through the ruins of a nearby tent. At first Cade thought he was just looking for souvenirs, a practice that, while frowned upon, wasn’t actually against the Order’s Rule, but the other man was putting too much effort into what he was doing for it to be something so trivial.

  Curious, Cade kept watching. Another moment passed before he recognized that it was Davis, the man who’d been tending to Duncan before the fight broke out.

  As Riley rummaged in the kit for another bandage, Cade stood.

  Davis’ actions became more frantic the longer Cade watched. Convinced he’d seen enough, Cade decided it was time to find out what was going on. He began walking toward him.

  “Davis?”

  When the sergeant didn’t answer, Cade tried again. “What’s the matter, Davis?”

  “I left him right here. I know I did!” When the sergeant turned to face him, Cade was shocked to see tears streaming down the man’s face.

  An unquiet feeling unfurled itself in Cade’s gut.

  “Left who right here, Davis?”

  But the other man had already tuned him out. He began picking through the pile of corpses, tossing aside each one when it wasn’t the man he was looking for. “He was right here! Right here I tell you!”

  Cade moved forward and grabbed his arm. When the sergeant tried to shake him off, Cade slapped him once across the face, hard.

  It was enough to pull the sergeant out of his frenzy.

  “What are you talking about, Davis? Left who right here?”

  “Duncan!”

  The bottom fell out of Cade’s stomach.

  “What?”

  “When the fighting broke out he was too weak to join us and we needed all hands to defend ourselves against the mob. I made sure he was well-hidden and gave him his sword just in case. But the fighting swept us away from each other and when I got back he was gone.”

  “Could he have gotten up on his own?”

  “Maybe.”

  But Cade read the unspoken hesitation in Davis’ expression and knew it wasn’t likely. Duncan had been badly injured. He wouldn’t have left his hiding place unless he’d had no other choice. And that meant he’d been under pressure from the enemy.

  By now Riley had joined them and Cade quickly filled him in. The master sergeant wasted no time in organizing a search; after all, Duncan was the entire reason they’d come back. It was possible Duncan had moved to another location, either to avoid being discovered or to escape a pursuing enemy. Or maybe he’d received help from another knight and was right now sitting among the wounded in the field hospital that had been set up to treat the injured.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to determine that wasn’t the case. Another team began checking the bodies of the dead still left on the field of battle, but that failed to turn up any sign of him either.

  In the process they discovered something else. Bishop’s body was gone. It wasn’t in the Circle of Judgment where Cade had left it, nor had it been collected with the others by the clean-up squad.

  Riley was in the midst of giving Cade an update on the situation, when shouts drew their attention. One of Juarez’ men was gesturing to them from the edge of camp, waving them over. Cade and Riley lost no time in joining him.

  “Look!” the man said, pointing at a spot in the midst of a set of tracks leading away from the camp.

  At first Cade didn’t see it, but then he bent closer and the glint of gold caught his eye.

  It was a Templar signet ring.

  It was half-buried, as if it had been trampled underfoot.

  Or deliberately stepped on to hide it from casual view.

  His heart thumping, Cade brushed away the dirt and pulled the ring free of the earth surrounding it. Every member of the Order was given just such a ring on the day they were formally inducted and it was Templar policy to engrave the inside of the band with the man’s identification number and date of membership. It likely belonged to either Duncan or Bishop.

  He read the number aloud to Riley. As the unit’s exec he knew every man’s identification number by heart and a moment later Cade had his answer.

  It was Duncan’s.

  But what was it doing here?

  Cade considered the situation for a minute, weighing the pros and cons of his next course of action, and then made up his mind. He asked Riley to hold the ring for a moment and then stripped off the glove covering his right hand.

  Catching Riley’s skeptical look, he explained. “We need to know what happened. The fastest and most accurate way of doing that is with my Gift.”

  “But you’ve told me before that using it here in the Beyond can attract unwanted attention.”

  “True, but right now I don’t see any other option. And I think most creatures, supernatural or otherwise, would think twice before attacking a group this size. I’ve got to take the chance.”

  Without further discussion, Cade picked up and held the ring in his bare hand.

  Weariness.

  Pain.

  Embarrassment that his comrades have been forced to place themselves in danger on his behalf.

  The sharp poke of a sword blade in the small of his back and a voice in his ear.

  “Keep moving. Williams came back for you once, I’m sure he’ll do it again.”

&nb
sp; He stumbled, his injuries and the lack of food taking its toll. But it gave him an idea. As he walked he carefully pulled off his ring and held it in his left hand. A few steps later he stumbled again, only this time he let the momentum take him all the way to the ground, making certain as he did so that the hand with the ring was beneath him. He used the weight of his fall to drive his ring into the ground underneath him.

  When his captor dragged him back up on his feet, he made certain to stumble forward a few more steps, taking the two of them beyond the point where he had left the ring.

  With any luck, one of his brothers would find it…

  Cade came out of his trance shaking his head, doing what he could to clear away the cobwebs that remained from putting his consciousness in the mind and memories of another.

  Riley was looking at him expectantly.

  “He’s alive. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s not alone. Bishop has him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Roughly two hours later, Captain Sullivan stepped up to where Cade was making plans with Riley.

  “That’s it, sir,” he said, when he had the other men’s attention. “Aside from the two of you, and First Squad itself, the rest of the men have all made the transit back through the gate. Whenever you’re ready, we can go.”

  Cade glanced at Riley, caught his barely perceptible nod in reply, and made his decision. He turned to address Sullivan. “You are going to have to go on without us, Captain. We’re staying here.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  It was clear from the captain’s expression that he thought he’d heard incorrectly, so Cade spoke slowly and clearly, not wanting there to be any doubt about his intentions.

  “Master Sergeant Riley and I are going to remain here for the time being. We still have a man missing and I don’t intend to leave until we get him back.”

  Sullivan took a moment to digest Cade’s statement, then visibly steeled himself and said, “Very well, sir, I’ll give you whatever assistance I can. Let me just inform the others…”

  Cade was already shaking his head. “I appreciate the offer, Captain, but I can’t allow that. With Duncan missing, Flynn dead, and Riley here with me, Echo’s command unit is effectively paralyzed.” He put his hand on the other man’s arm and gently began moving him in the direction of the portal, talking all the while. “As head of First Squad, you’re next in the chain of command. I need you to assume control of Echo until I return.”

  If I return, Cade thought, but didn’t say aloud. There was no sense giving the captain reason to insist on remaining.

  “We shouldn’t be gone more than twenty-four hours, if we’re lucky. They don’t have much of a head start; two hours, maybe three at the most. If things go well, we should be able to catch up to them, rescue Duncan, and return to our side of reality before you know it.”

  The captain protested a few moments longer, but Cade could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. And who could blame him? No one in their right mind would want to stay here among the unquiet dead if they didn’t have to, including Cade. He had no intention of abandoning Duncan to whatever fate Bishop had in store for him, at least not without a fight. He was also convinced that this was where he might finally gain some answers to the questions that had been haunting him. About the Adversary. About his wife’s demise. Even about his own strange gifts.

  The answers were here. He just had to have the nerve to go out and find them.

  And that was exactly what he intended to do.

  “When you return, you’ll probably find the Preceptor waiting to close the gate. They might even destroy the church, just to make sure the gate can’t be opened again. I want you to let them do so.”

  Cade explained that he and the master sergeant had another means of returning to the real world and that it was a route that the Chiang Shih were not aware of. By closing the gate, they would be satisfying the Preceptor’s demands while at the same time denying that route to any of the enemy that still might be able to make use of it. Cade had no idea how the Chiang Shih had managed to open it in the first place, but he was damned if he was going to leave a route to his side of reality open.

  He moved down the line, shaking hands with all of them, and wishing them Godspeed on their journey. Taking Sullivan’s hand last, he said, “Remember, close down that gateway.”

  The other man assured him he would and then moved off, intent on reaching the portal before those waiting on the other side got impatient.

  Cade didn’t blame them; he wouldn’t trust the Preceptor not to close the portal early either.

  Satisfied that he’d done all he could to protect his men, both here and on the other side of the portal, he turned back to Riley and inclined his head in the direction that they thought Bishop and Duncan had taken a few hours before.

  Without another word, the two men set off on the trail of their teammate and friend.

  The hunt was underway.

  They moved at a good pace, aware that they needed to close the lead that Bishop had on them. They had a lot of distance to cover and every minute was crucial.

  They hadn’t gone far before they discovered another strange aspect of the Beyond. Time itself seemed to be operating on a schedule unique to each of them. When Cade felt as if only a few moments had passed, to Riley it would seemed like it had been hours. Shortly thereafter their positions would be reversed and it would be Cade who felt as if they had been traveling for hours while Riley was refreshed and ready to go. Their watches were no help, either. Cade’s digital refused to work while the hands of Riley’s analog model simply spun in a continuous circle counter-clockwise.

  The terrain grew more rugged as they went, the mountains rising higher and the pathways growing narrower. An hour into their march they came across the first visible evidence that they were on the right track; a piece of tattered cloth had been partially trampled into the mud and when Riley pulled it free of the earth they could see that it was a portion of Duncan’s jumpsuit. Cade wished that he dared use his Sight again, for he desperately wanted to know how his subordinate was holding up under the strain of being a captive, but doing so was an unnecessary risk and he restrained himself. It was clear Duncan had intentionally left the scrap behind for them to find, even going so far as to trample it in the dirt to hide it from Bishop’s notice as he had done with the ring, and so Cade was forced to rely on that to keep his hopes up.

  They camped that night in a small cave along a narrow mountain trail. Uncertain of what might be roaming out in the darkness, they chose to go without a fire. Dinner was unheated MREs, washed down with powdered drink mix added to their water.

  The choice to forgo a fire turned out to be fortuitous. Cade had just settled down to get some shut eye when Riley called him from the entrance to the cave. When Cade joined him, the big sergeant pointed out across the darkness in the direction they were travelling.

  A campfire burned there, its green glow flickering against the sky like a beacon in the night.

  “What do you think?” Cade asked.

  Riley answered immediately, as if he’d been considering the very question himself for some time. “Two, maybe three hours. No way to catch them in this darkness though. We’re going to have to wait until sunrise.”

  “I agree,” said Cade, but he stood and watched that fire for a long time thereafter, as if hoping he might learn something new.

  Eventually, he slipped back inside the cave and tried to get some sleep.

  They got an early start the next morning, setting out in the grey half-light that preceded the dawn. The sighting the night before had reinvigorated them and they hoped to gain some time on their quarry by getting underway at that hour.

  The mountains continued as far as the eye could see, but the two moved doggedly onward, thinking that those they hunted would soon be doing the same.

  More than once they were forced to break out the climbing ropes they brought with them, tying themselves together in case one of the
m slipped on the narrow trails.

  It was just after midday when they entered a narrow chasm that seemed to have been cut from the living rock around them by a giant blade. It was so narrow that at times they were forced to remove their packs and walk sideways, the stone pushing against their chests and backs, but each and every time they made it through.

  As they emerged from the tight channel through which they’d been passing, they found themselves standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down toward the sea. At the base of the cliff loomed a city, but a city the likes of which they had never seen. Great spires of crystal rose high into the sky, but at angles that hurt the eyes, like the freakish and twisted playthings of a giant, playthings that had gone horribly wrong somewhere between inception and culmination. Dark monoliths of squat stone stood around and between them, a sharp contrast not only in their size and shape but in the simple lines of their design. What appeared to be factories of some kind belched dark smoke into the sky, but the smoke seemed to have a life of its own as it twisted and turned under its own design and often against the wind. A wall rose around the city and a road led from the cliff face somewhere below them right up to the massive gate that barred entrance to the place.

  It was like something out of a nightmare, a haven for the damned.

  Just beyond the city was a sea of wine-dark waves that crashed against the base of the plateau on which it stood, sending spray hundreds of feet into the air. The water extended out in every direction and looking at it, Cade suddenly felt as if they’d come to the very end of the earth.

  Exhausted and hungry, the two Templar knights stared down at this unearthly marvel in sheer amazement, both of them wondering the same thing.

  Is this where Bishop was headed?

  As if in answer to their question, two figures appeared on the road far below. One strode forward unhindered, while the other constantly stumbled and fell. Each time it happened the individual in the lead would haul on the rope that bound them together until the second individual climbed to his feet.

  The newcomers were too far away to see clearly, but Cade didn’t have to see them to know who they were. Something deep inside told him what he needed to know.