And don’t cut him in half with one of those fucking swords, Joe thought.
They crossed the open space between the forest and the trailer without incident. That made Joe more nervous than if the mad old bastard had come out onto his porch with a shotgun. Hyrum was permanently paranoid, and his lack of reaction to their presence was troubling.
Joe eased the shotgun off his shoulder and cradled it in both hands. He climbed up the short staircase and banged on the door with the shotgun’s butt. At least he tried to bang on it—the first impact sent the door swinging inward.
Cade whispered from behind Joe, “Maybe he was expecting company?”
Joe rolled his eyes. Great. He’d teamed up with a sarcastic ninja from New England.
This is going to be a bad day.
Cade entered the house after the Night Marshal, with Riley and Duncan on his heels. His men swept to the left and right, covering the interior of the cramped trailer. Olsen stayed on the porch, eyes peeled for trouble. If he saw any coming, he’d put a bullet to the top of its head before it got within fifty yards.
The Templar didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. A circle of filth an inch deep covered the center of the room, its surface churned and dotted with flecks of pink and white. The stench was incredible, an earthy assault on his sense of smell. “So this is what it looks like when you don’t have indoor plumbing.”
The Night Marshal chuckled at that and shook his head. He pointed at the couch with a TV tray in front of it, the moldy remains of a frozen dinner resting on the plastic. “Even out here, folks don’t shit where they eat.”
Cade wrinkled his nose. “You think your guy pulled out and, what? Wild animals got in here?”
The Night Marshal nudged at the mess with the toe of his hobnailed boot. A filthy acorn cap rolled out in front of his foot. “Yes, on the wild animal part. I’m guessing pigs based on these acorns. No, on my guy pulling out.”
The Templar looked around the place. There was a thin layer of dust on every surface and from the looks of the leftover food, no one had been there for at least a week. “So where is he?”
Joe jabbed a finger at a cluster of pink-tinged chunks half-buried in the filth. “You big-city folks would probably want a DNA test, but my gut tells me that my guy is right there. Or at least what’s left of him.”
Cade rubbed his jaw. “You have to be kidding.”
“Nope, that’s not a joke. Pretty sure that’s Hyrum. Fuckin’ pigs must’ve eaten him.”
Duncan’s stomach groaned in protest at the idea. Cade raised an eyebrow in their guide’s direction. “You’re telling me our lead was eaten by wild pigs?”
Joe shrugged. “I’m not telling you it’s a coincidence. Someone knew you were coming and decided to tie up loose ends. They made it ugly to shut down anyone else who might consider being helpful and forthcoming when I paid ’em a visit.”
Cade furrowed his brows. “Any idea where we go from here?”
Joe bared his teeth in a grim smile. “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it.”
The Templar frowned. “Mind sharing any more details?”
“Sure,” Joe said as he headed for the door. “We’re going to go and rustle some pigs.”
Half an hour later the five men were lying on their bellies along a tree-shrouded ridgeline, peering down into the clearing on the other side where an old, abandoned slaughterhouse stood. After leaving Hyrum’s place, Joe told them that he had an idea where the Swine might be operating from and had led them through a maze of backwoods roads only to arrive at a spot in the woods that looked to Cade like every other spot. The Night Marshal apparently knew where he was going, however, for after a fifteen-minute walk through the woods humping their gear with them on their backs, they arrived at the base of the ridge upon which they now lingered.
The two-story brick building had certainly seen better days, Cade noted. The glass had been broken out in most of the windows, graffiti-covered plywood having taken its place, at least on the lower floor. One section of bricks was stained black with soot, evidence of an earlier fire that had threatened to take the building down with it before it had been put out.
It wasn’t so much the look but rather the feel of the place that set Cade’s nerves on edge. It squatted there in the center of the clearing like a malevolent spider waiting to trap its prey, and even the air around it seemed to be tainted by its presence. He had expected a certain amount of emotional residue when Joe had told them they were headed for a slaughterhouse, but this was way off the charts.
There was something else going on here.
The first clue, of course, was the fact that the “abandoned” slaughterhouse was no longer abandoned. Several members of the Devil’s Swine were hanging around in front of the place. Some were working on their bikes, while others sat around drinking beer and horsing about. All of them were armed in some manner or another; Cade could see an assortment of pistols, rifles, and shotguns being carried or lying within reach of their owners. Two men, both armed with M16s, stood about half a dozen yards away from the others, lackadaisically guarding the entrance to the only road that led into or out of the clearing.
The second was revealed when Cade triggered his Sight; that mystical ability he’d gained when the fallen angel known as the Adversary had tried to kill him, the very event that had prompted his entrance into the Order. His Sight let him see past the Veil and into the Beyond, the Purgatory-like plane between the lands of the living and those of the dead, and seeing the slaughterhouse through its lens revealed the dark heart of corruption that lurked somewhere within its depths. A gray-green miasma rolled off the place in waves, leaking from every opening like a thick fog that was pushing its way out from the inside, and Cade shuddered to think just how much black arts it had taken to taint the place so heavily.
If this wasn’t the source of the electric jamming that was interfering with their surveillance, it was at least a contributing factor. If the Eye was anywhere in Pitchfork County, Cade suspected this would be the place.
A burst of movement among those in front of the building caught his attention and he turned to see a long white Cadillac coming down the access road. The guards moved out of the way and let the vehicle pass without stopping it and, given the way the bikers practically leaped to attention as the car pulled up in front of the slaughterhouse, Cade figured they were about to meet the Swine’s head honcho.
Turned out he was right.
One of the bikers opened the rear door of the Cadillac and a man unfolded himself from the backseat. He was dressed in a dark suit that hung loosely on his thin frame and he stood several inches above the bikers around him; Cade put his height at six foot four or so, give or take an inch. The man was fish-belly pale and wore dark glasses, his bald head gleaming in the midafternoon sunlight.
The newcomer barked a few orders to the men around him and then headed straight for the door to the slaughterhouse.
Just before entering the building, however, the man paused, then turned and slowly looked up toward the ridgeline where Cade and the others were concealed.
For just an instant Cade felt as if a thousand insects were scurrying up his spine and into his brain, but then the feeling passed and the newcomer stepped through the doorway and disappeared into the depths of the building.
Have we been seen? Cade wondered.
They were under good cover and no one had even done so much as flinch when that guy looked in their direction, but that creepy-crawly feeling nagged at him.
Only one way to find out.
He signaled to the others and they moved back down the slope, where they could talk without risk of being seen or overheard.
“Who’s the guy in the Caddy?” Cade asked, expecting Joe to have at least a passing familiarity with the dude, but the other man just shook his head.
“Never seen him before,” he said, and from his tone it was clear that he wasn’t any happier about his lack of information than the Templa
rs.
“Anything we should know about the place before busting in?”
Rather than a quick reply, the Night Marshal gave the question some serious consideration before answering, something Cade respected. This guy knew his business, it seemed.
“This place was built just after the Civil War, so there’s no telling what shape the interior is in. Watch where you put your feet; there are bound to be open drains and troughs all over the place in there and you might not see them clearly in the shadows.”
Sound advice, Cade thought with a nod.
“All right, here’s the plan.”
Riley was a mere ten yards from the guards on the road and they still hadn’t noticed him. He and Duncan were walking down the access road in plain view, but the guards were facing in entirely the wrong direction—back toward the slaughterhouse—and chatting loudly amongst themselves, which served to cover Riley’s approaching footsteps.
Damned poor security, he thought. If I’d wanted to gun them down I could have done it ten times already.
But he wasn’t here to do that, at least not yet. His Mossberg combat shotgun, his preferred firearm for close-in dirty work, was strapped to his back, easily reachable but currently out of sight of the men in front of him. He’d use it when the time came, but for now his mission was to delay rather than destroy.
He stopped walking and heard Duncan’s footsteps come to a halt behind him a step later. Hoping the idiots in front of him wouldn’t shoot them out of sheer surprise, he said a silent prayer heavenward and did what he’d come here to do.
“Ah, excuse me?” he called out tentatively.
The men jumped as if they’d been goosed with an electric cattle prod and spun around, the guns in their hands coming up in ragged surprise.
Riley held up both hands, palms out.
“Easy there, gents. Easy. Just need a little help, that’s all.”
To his relief the guards lowered their weapons toward the ground, apparently thinking Riley wasn’t any kind of threat despite all the visual cues staring them in the face.
Thank God for blind arrogance, he thought.
“Get the fuck out of here,” one of them said, waving the tip of his weapon to indicate that they should go back out the way they had come in.
Riley had no intention of doing that.
“Come on, now. Help a brother out, huh? My buddy and I were doing a little deer huntin’ and our truck broke down a mile or so back. Just need to borrow a phone to call for a tow and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Are you deaf or just dumb?” the other guard asked, scowling. “Turn around and get the hell out of here before we shoot your ass!”
The one on the right raised his gun again and Riley decided he’d given Cade and Joe time enough. He flicked his finger in the prearranged signal and was rewarded a split second later by the sight of the man’s head exploding into pieces as a .50-caliber bullet from Olsen’s Barrett sniper rifle moving at 2,700-plus feet per second tore through it with only the barest bit of resistance. The sound of the shot finally reached his ears but Riley was already in motion at that point, crouching down as he ripped his shotgun off his back, bringing it to bear on guard number two while he was still staring in horror at the decapitated body of his partner, who was only just now beginning to topple over.
Like fish in a barrel, Riley thought as he pulled the trigger and cut the other man down as quickly as the first.
Cade and Joe had moved past the stockyards and were crouched next to a plywood-covered window on the far side of the building when the sound of Olsen’s shot rang out. Seconds later the air was filled with the sounds of gunfire as Riley and Duncan followed suit and the caught-with-their-pants-down bikers tried to respond.
It was the signal they’d been waiting for. Joe stood up, drew back a foot, and slammed it into the plywood, sending it bouncing away into the darkness beyond. He turned and gestured with a smile.
“After you, good sir.”
Cade grunted in reply and slipped over the threshold, entering the old slaughterhouse with Joe at his heels.
The smell caught him first, a thick stench of death and decay that hung over everything like a wet blanket, and he had to force himself to keep from gagging. It wasn’t just the scent of old death, either; this was fresh and close by somewhere. Whatever these guys were doing, it couldn’t be good.
He gave himself a moment to let his eyes adjust and then, after a tap on the shoulder from the Night Marshal indicating he was ready to go, Cade led the way into the darkness.
They moved through room after room like a team that had worked together for years rather than two men who had just met. One of them would kick open a door, spinning to the left while the other went right, their weapons up and ready, but room after room met them with empty and open silence.
Where the hell is this guy? Cade wondered.
The bikers considered themselves to be badasses and maybe against the average Joe they actually were, but against the highly trained special operators of the Templar Echo Team, they were woefully unprepared and outclassed.
Riley’s first shot took down guard number two and the man’s corpse hadn’t even hit the dirt before both he and Duncan were sprinting forward, firing at the bikers in front of the slaughterhouse as they came.
Normally crossing two hundred feet without cover while being fired upon would have gotten them quickly killed, but they had a few things going for them: training, surprise, and the fact that Olsen was currently causing chaos in the bikers’ ranks as he took down one combatant after another from the safety of the ridgeline above.
By the time Riley and Duncan reached the protection of the Cadillac, the fight was all but over.
Things weren’t going so well inside, however.
They found the leader of the gang in the next room they entered. Joe kicked open the door and Cade hustled in, the pistol in his hands searching for a target in the shadows, and then a set of floodlights came on with a loud click, bathing the room in their harsh brilliance.
What he saw in their light brought Cade up short.
The Templar commander was in a wide room with a dirt floor, facing a stage-like platform on which the Swine’s leader currently stood, dressed in a robe stained nearly black with accumulated blood and wearing what Cade thought was a pig mask. Surrounding him on three sides were a dozen or more, well, demon-swine was the best reference Cade could come up with to describe them at the moment; large, misshapen creatures that looked like a cross between a human, a pig, and a demon or two—all snouts, dark beady eyes, and thick slabs of calloused flesh.
“Fuck me,” Cade heard Joe whisper at his back and he found he couldn’t agree more.
Fuck me was right.
Apparently the Swine’s leader had seen them on the ridge.
Joe decided taking the offensive was the best move, for he stepped forward to stand beside Cade.
“We’ve come for the Eye, priest,” Joe said. “Surrender it now and you’ll be dealt with leniently. Make us take it from you and . . . well . . .”
The pig-faced leader laughed in his face. “No, Night Marshal, the time for blind acquiescence has passed. I have no intention of surrendering my property, to you or anyone else. I rule here, not you. He told me you were coming, told me the Templar scum would be with you.”
Without pause, the man turned and addressed Cade directly. “Tell me, Templar, how’s that wife of yours?”
Joe said something in reply, but Cade didn’t hear it. He was staring at the man on the stage in surprise, stunned by what he’d said.
How’s that wife of yours?
Cade’s wife, Gabrielle, had perished at the hands of a supernatural entity known as the Adversary several years before. It was the same creature that had attacked Cade and started him on the long path that eventually brought him to the Templars and put him in command of the Echo Team. He had been hunting the creature ever since. The fact that the pig-faced man in front of him knew anything about Ga
brielle suggested that the two, he and the Adversary, were in league with each other in some fashion.
Staring at the man, trying to make sense of it all, Cade suddenly realized something.
That’s not a mask . . .
Cade didn’t know who, or what, the man before them actually was, but there was no doubt in his mind that he was working for the other side, and that condemned him in Cade’s mind as surely as if the Adversary was standing there on the platform beside him.
Enough screwing around, Cade thought. Without further hesitation he swung the weapon in his hand up toward its target.
Joe knew there was trouble the minute the porcine-priest revealed himself. This wasn’t just some biker gang moving stolen artifacts as he’d been told. This was Left-Hand Path work, no doubt about it, and this guy was giving off vibes that said he had some serious mumbo-jumbo at his disposal.
Normally Joe was the type to crack some teeth first and ask questions later, but with the city boy beside him he thought it might be prudent to try to negotiate first. He’d barely started when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and realized with a start that things were about to go from bad to worse.
Cade’s first shot would have taken the priest right between the eyes if it hadn’t been for the pig-demon standing beside him. The thing must have caught sight of Cade’s gun coming up, for it flung itself forward just as the Templar pulled the trigger.
Dark blood and bits of brain matter splattered the face of the priest as the left side of the creature’s head intercepted the path of the bullet, deflecting it from its intended target and sending the demon back to whatever hell it belonged in.
The body was still twitching when the priest pointed a finger at Joe and his companion and screamed, “Kill them!”
As one, the other pig-demons charged.
Joe’s shotgun roared in response, taking down several of the vile creatures with a single shot while beside him he heard Cade’s pistol blasting away. There were a lot of the damned pig creatures, but unlike other things he’d faced in the past at least these things could be killed with the application of a little well-targeted violence, and he intended to deliver quite a bit of that.
Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories Page 11