Darkness Reigns

by Joseph Nassise

Cade shook his head. "Someone had to call if forth from the infernal plane; it can't move between realms on its own."

  Even as he said it, Cade realized just how odd the situation was. Like Gabrielle had said, just what the hell was the howler demon doing here anyway? They hadn't found any evidence in the house that the owner had been anything but an ordinary, everyday citizen. Certainly nothing to make them suggest that a mage lived there, now or any time in the past. So where the devil had the demon come from? Had it just wandered out of the woods at the right moment?

  His gaze snapped up at the thought, wondering if they were in danger even now. Were there more of the creatures watching them from within the tree-line? Waiting for their chance to strike?

  He slowly turned his head, examining the edge of the woods from one side to the other, until his gaze fell upon the shed in the rear corner of the yard that had been Gabrielle's intended destination.

  He noticed that the door was standing open.

  "Did you find that bucket?" he asked, without taking his gaze off the doorway.

  He could almost hear Gabrielle shake her head. "Never got that far," she said. "The Howler started doing its thing and..."

  Cade didn't wait to hear any more. He strode toward the opening, sword in hand and at the ready, suspecting what he was going to find even before he got there.

  Behind him, he heard Gabrielle hustling to catch up.

  "What's going on, Cade? Talk to me!"

  He ignored her, his attention on the yawning entryway before him. The shed was one of those prefab affairs, made of reinforced plastic built to withstand a decade or so in the sun and snow. He was all but certain that the door had been shut when they'd walked around the house earlier, which meant the demon hadn't come out of the woods at all.

  It had come out of the shed.

  But that makes even less sense than the woods! What the hell was a howler demon doing hiding in a tool shed?

  He was about to find out, it seemed.

  As he drew closer he moved to one side, not wanting to approach the doorway directly head-on. He sensed Gabrielle moving to the other side out of the corner of his eye and mentally wished he'd told her to plug her ears with something.

  Too late now, he thought.

  He signaled for her to hold her position; he was going in first. Normally this would be the most dangerous part of the encounter; he was moving from daylight to darkness as he stepped inside the shed and he would be momentarily blinded as his eyes adjusted to the dark. But Cade had more than one way of seeing in the dark.

  His encounter with the Adversary on that summer night so many years ago had left him with a few gifts of his own. One of those was his Sight, which allowed him not only to the see directly into the Beyond from the real world, but also to see beneath the surface of things, to see the supernatural and spiritual world that surrounds us at all times. That world cast off a light of its own and he could use it to see what lay ahead of him, even in the darkness.

  Reaching deep inside his mind, he mentally flipped the imaginary switch that controlled it. When he opened his eyes, the view before him had radically changed.

  The interior of the shed glowed with a sickly, red light that reminded Cade of a neon sign splashed with blood. He'd seen that effect before and knew it meant something in the area had been touched by the demonic, usually quite recently. Thankfully there were no other howler demons waiting just inside the doors, which was what he'd been worried about the most, and so he stepped forward, entering the structure.

  The shed held the usual assortment of tools; rakes, shovels, a pick axe, and the like. A tarp covered what he took to be a lawnmower and to his right was a floor to ceiling set of shelves that contained a variety of cleaning supplies, including the bucket that he needed to transfer gas from one vehicle to the other.

  Ahead of him, in the rear left corner of the shed, was the portal.

  He spotted it straight away; it was rather hard to miss.

  It wasn't a big one, just a few feet across, occupying a section of the floor near the rear right corner of the shed, but its surface writhed and rolled uncontrollably in the reddish-black light that emitted from its center, indicating that it was active. Given the nature of the creature they'd just fought, Cade didn't have to guess where the other end of that portal came out. It was painfully obvious.

  The howler demon hadn't needed to be summoned at all.

  It had simply crawled out of hell all on its own.

  Which meant another one could come waltzing along at any minute.

  Another howler, or something much worse...

  He felt Gabrielle slip into the shed behind him and heard her little gasp of surprise when she spotted the portal.

  "Is that what I think it is?" she whispered, as if afraid something on the other end might hear them.

  For all he knew something might.

  Before he could answer, she added another question. "Is there any way of closing it?"

  He found himself whispering back. "Yes, it's a portal. No, we can't close it, at least not on our own." Cade glanced at it once more, then said, "We need to get out of here. Now."

  Gabrielle didn't object.

  They backed out of the shed, Cade snatching up the bucket he needed on the way by, and closed the door behind them.

  Cade glanced about, looking for something he could use to brace it shut. Spotting a large tractor tire in the grass nearby, he hustled over and hefted it upright. Rolling it over in front of the shed, with Gabrielle's help he got it situated so that when they let it tip over sideways, it prevented the shed door from being opened easily.

  "What now?" Gabrielle asked, as she eyed the door suspiciously.

  Cade didn't blame her.

  "Now we get as far away from that portal as we can get."

  She turned to him, surprise on her face. "You're just going to leave it there? Open and all?"

  "I don't have any choice," Cade said, as he turned and began walking briskly in the direction of the garage, bucket in hand. "I don't have any way of closing it off, nor the firepower I'd need to keep the things in that want out. Our best bet is to get away from here before something more dangerous than that howler demon comes along. If and when we find someone with the power needed to close it down, we can send them back to do so."

  "What if a civilian comes along and wanders inside?"

  Cade waved his hands in the air. "You see anybody creeping about?"

  "Well, no, but that doesn't mean somebody won't."

  "Nothing we can do about that. All I know is that we're getting out of here before something else comes out of that gate."

  Reaching the garage, he grabbed the hose Gabrielle had found earlier and cut two sections from it, one longer than the other. He took both over to the Mercedes, unscrewed the gas cap, and then put one end of each tube into the tank. He packed a rag in tight around the tubes, sealing off the open mouth of the gas tank as best he could, then put the other end of the longer hose into the bucket he'd grabbed from the shed. Satisfied that all was prepped the way it needed to be, he bent over and blew strongly into the short tube, creating pressure in the tank. In just a few moments gas began to flow out of the longer tube and into the bucket.

  "Color me impressed," Gabrielle said, as she watched the bucket begin to fill.

  "You should see my encore," Cade joked in return, then turned serious. "Grab one of those boxes over there," he said, pointing to a stack of cardboard boxes on one of the shelves, "and fill it with canned food and bottled water. See if you can find a can opener in one of the kitchen drawers as well."

  "I'm on it," she said.

  Satisfied she had the situation under control, Cade turned back to the Mercedes. The bucket was only about a fourth of the way full, so he hustled over to the Blazer and finished the job of hooking up the battery that he'd started earlier. By the time he was finished with that, the first bucket of gas was just about full.

  He returned to the Mercedes, pulled the rag away fro
m the mouth of the tank and pulled the hoses up out of it, cutting off the siphon for the moment. He took the bucket over to the Blazer and carefully poured the gas into its tank. When he was finished, he returned to the other vehicle, started the siphon going again, and got back to work under the hood of the Blazer, attaching the spark plug leads and then reinstalling the distributor cap.

  By the time Gabrielle returned from the kitchen with not one but two boxes of canned good and bottled water and put them in the rear of the Blazer, Cade had gotten the engine ready to go and transferred three buckets of gas into the vehicle's tank. He splashed a little gas into the carburetor to prime it, then set the bucket down and closed the hood of the truck. It was time to test it out.

  "Cross your fingers," he said, as he got behind the wheel. He didn't have keys for the Blazer like he did for the Mercedes, but that was fine; he didn't really need them. He took the long, thin-bladed screwdriver he had in hand and jammed it into ignition keyhole.

  A little help would be nice right about now, he thought heavenward, and then turned the screwdriver.

  The engine reluctantly turned over once, twice, and then shut down.

  "Come on, you bastard," Cade said beneath his breath as he pumped the gas pedal a few times and tried the key again.

  This time the engine caught with a grumbling backfire that stuttered for a few minutes and then smoothed out. He gestured for Gabrielle to get in and, when she had, backed the Blazer out of the garage and down the drive.

  It was time to find Riley and the rest of the Templars.

  6

  Thanks to the information that they'd found inside the house, they knew they were on the outskirts of Covington, a small town just few miles from the abandoned quarry that had been the rendezvous spot where Riley and the other Templars had gathered days earlier. Thankfully Cade had scouted the area thoroughly before choosing the location for one of his emergency caches and was quickly able to orient himself once he knew where they were.

  The drive was passed in silence, their attention caught by the emptiness of the houses they passed along the road. Occasionally they'd find a car or truck abandoned by the side of the road, but there was no sign of any people.

  To Cade, it felt like they'd been dropped into the middle of some apocalyptic, end-of-the-world movie. He kept waiting to drive around a corner and find himself facing a mob of undead zombies stumbling in his direction. He almost mentioned as much to Gabrielle, but the look of concern on her face as she watched the empty houses roll past kept him from doing so.

  They soon left Covington behind and headed into the woodland that comprised the Hilltop National Park, following forest roads north for a few miles. About a half mile before reaching their destination, Cade cut northeast on a less traveled byway, intending to come around and approach the rendezvous point from further north where they could look down on their destination before revealing their presence. It had been several days since Gabrielle had come looking for him and heaven only knew who occupied the quarry now. It might be Riley and his men, but it could just as easily be the enemy, especially given the situation Gabrielle had said the Templars had found themselves in during those last few seconds before she'd stepped into the Beyond.

  Better safe than sorry, he thought.

  After another ten minutes of driving, Cade pulled the Blazer off the forest track and into the midst of the nearby trees.

  "We hoof it from here," he said.

  Before leaving the truck, however, he took the object he'd taken from the house, used the tire iron from the back to break it in half, and then laid one section of it on the ground beside the vehicle.

  Gabrielle looked at it, then turned a curious expression in Cade's direction.

  "What's that for?"

  "Insurance," he said, shaking his head when she tried to get him to explain further.

  Cade led the way through the forest for a few hundred yards until they could see light starting to break through the trees ahead of them. At that point, he gestured for Gabrielle to get down in a crouch and they moved the final dozen yards in that position until they were nearly atop the ridgeline. The last several feet were covered in a Marine crawl, leaving them both side by side on the edge of the ridge, looking down into the pit from a hundred feet above.

  From that point, Cade could see the lone road that was the only way in and out of the abandoned quarry, as well as the smelting facility and warehouse at the far end of it. It was an isolated location and that had been one reason he'd chosen it as a weapons cache and meeting spot when things had started to go sour within the Order shortly after the war with the Chiang Shih. The other reason had been the network of tunnels below the smelting operation that provided an alternate escape route from the facility. An enemy would think they had them trapped, only to discover they'd seemingly vanished into thin air. It had seemed ideal.

  He remembered coming out here alone to inspect the site that first night, and the subsequent trips he'd made to stock the supply cache. He'd never thought he'd actually have need of the place; he'd expected the whole mess within the Templar hierarchy to sort itself out long before it got to that point. Apparently, he'd been way off base in that regard.

  Peering down now from high above, he could see the torched remains of what appeared to be a trio of SUVs littering the road about a hundred yards before the warehouse. Several other vehicles, as well as a half dozen ore carts from the quarry, were strategically placed between that point and the door to the facility. They would have provided some cover for the Templars who'd been charged with defending those inside or at least given them time to escape and Cade nodded in approval at what he saw. His men had learned well.

  His biggest concern, that the enemy would have taken and held the structure once Riley and his men retreated, didn't seem to be an issue. The place looked as deserted as the day he'd discovered it. Nothing moved down there and even though he watched the windows of the smelting facility and the adjoining warehouse, he didn't see any signs of movement.

  They were alone, apparently.

  He turned to Gabrielle. "So you were to meet Riley and the others here, after you brought me back from the Beyond?"

  She glanced away. "Sort of," she said.

  "Sort of?"

  "Yeah. Sort of. We were under attack and I was doing everything I could, with Uriel's help, to break through the Veil before the Preceptor's troops got through our defenses. I didn't really have time to discuss how I was going to find Captain Riley and the others once I made it back from the Beyond. If I made it back, that is."

  The Forsaken One was here? Cade thought.

  That put a different spin on things. He didn't remember Gabrielle mentioning the archangel the first time she'd told him her story.

  "What did he want?" he asked.

  "Who? Riley?"

  "No, Uriel."

  Gabrielle shrugged. "He's an angel. Who the hell really knows what they want?"

  Cade had dealt with more than one angel in his time, both good and bad, and couldn't disagree with her.

  Who knows indeed?

  But still, he had the feeling she was holding something back.

  "Take me through it again, would you? Start to finish."

  Gabrielle sighed, but she did as he asked, telling him about how she'd run into Captain Riley while she'd been looking for Cade and how Riley'd convinced her to accompany him here. His reasoning had been pretty straightforward; he was intent on gathering as many men as possible to face the corruption with the Templar ranks and thought someone in the group might be able to shed some light on what had happened to Cade. The other Templars, however, hadn't believed that she was, in fact, the knight commander's wife and had been just about to evict her from the gathering when Uriel appeared in their midst.

  The archangel's appearance had changed everything. He'd supported her assertions that she was Gabrielle Williams, Cade's formerly "deceased" wife, and that she had an absolutely vital role with regard to stopping the Preceptor's p
ower grab. She was, after all, the only one who could retrieve Cade from his self-imposed exile in the Beyond. That piece of information hadn't gone over well with the others; one of the Templars, a previously well-respected noncom, had revealed himself to be working for the opposition when he attempted to assassinate her on the spot! The traitorous knight had been stopped, but not before relaying the renegade Templars' position to Preceptor Johannson via a powerful arcane link.

  The enemy had shown up shortly thereafter, forcing Riley and his men to stand their ground and fight, buying her the time she'd needed to open the doorway to the Beyond and go after Cade.

  The enemy had broken through their frontline defenses and were inside the building when she'd finally been able to open the gate. As she stepped through the portal, her last instruction from Uriel was to find Cade and return as quickly as possible, before it was too late.

  "Too late for what?" Cade wondered aloud.

  Gabrielle just shook her head.

  And there it was. The thing she was holding back from him. She might be living in someone else's body, but once they'd been as close as any two people could be and he'd been able to read the subtle clues she gave off for years now. It was clear that she wasn't telling him the whole story but for the moment he was willing to let it go. She had her reasons, he was sure, and he trusted her enough to wait for when she thought the time was right. He thought she was going to say something when they'd uncovered the hellgate back in the shed, but she'd choked off whatever she'd been about to say at the time and he had let it go, just as he did now.

  When she's ready, she'll tell me, he thought and left it at that.

  With nothing more to be learned from up here, Cade backed away from the cliff's edge and then led Gabrielle down what was little more than a goat track until they reached the quarry floor. He hung back for a moment, looking and listening, but when he still saw no signs of life he decided that they'd been cautious enough.

  It was time to get some answers.

  He stepped out of the brush and moved forward, following the edge of the road toward the pair of buildings ahead of him, Gabrielle at his back. It was eerily quiet, the only sounds the soft crunch of their footsteps in the gravel underfoot, and Cade could feel his tension rising as they continued forward, the hair on the back of his neck standing up straight as he considered just how exposed they really were. If someone wanted to take a potshot or two at them, they'd be sitting ducks...