Darkness Reigns

by Joseph Nassise

  He reached the burned-out hulk of the first SUV without incident. The vehicle lay on its side near a large crater in the middle of the road and it didn't take a tactical genius to understand that it had fallen victim to some kind of improvised explosive device, also known as an IED. When he'd realized they were about to have unwanted company, Riley must have mined the road and built the barricades to make it as difficult for the enemy to reach them as he possibly could. Having their lead vehicles blown-up unexpectedly would have put quite a damper on the enemy's enthusiasm to reach those holed-up inside the buildings ahead of them. It would also have forced them to slow down, buying those inside more time to prepare for the fight to come.

  Cade nodded his head in admiration; under the circumstances, he would have tried the same thing and it only served to reinforce his long-held opinion that his former executive officer had been an excellent choice to replace him as Echo Team commander.

  He moved on, passing two more wrecked vehicles, the last one carrying a pair of crispy critters still held in their seats by the remains of their seatbelts. Cade barely gave them a passing thought; they'd chosen their side and had paid the price for doing so. But when he reached another set of skeletal remains lying in the middle of the road ahead of him, he stopped and squatted down to examine it.

  There wasn't much left, just a skull and several bones tangled up in the remains of a tattered jumpsuit of battlefield grey. The enemy had apparently cared more for the fallen knight's equipment than his earthly remains, for Cade saw no sign of the man's firearm or sword. Even the man's equipment belt and boots had been scavenged from the scene.

  He reached out and picked up one of the bones, turning it over in his hands. It had a weathered look to it, the surface picked clean and no longer gleaming white. Time had turned it cream-colored and it had a spongy texture to it, not brittle but not solidly strong either, calcified with divots running across its surface. He was reminded of an article he'd seen once about the discovery of Sir Edmund Mallory's remains high atop Mount Everest. This bone had the same kind of look to it that he'd seen in the photographs of Mallory's skeletal remains.

  Like they'd been there a long time.

  Cade didn't see any teeth or claw marks on the bones' surface, which meant it was unlikely that animals had stripped away the flesh. That left only time and the weather as the logical culprits.

  Which made no sense at all, given what he knew.

  He looked up, letting his gaze travel over the ground between him and the entrance to the smelting facility, spotting several more jumbled piles of remains. He frowned at the sight of them just lying there; even the enemy's troops deserved a respectful burial.

  Carefully putting the bone back where he had found it, he rose and walked over to the next set, bending to examine those as well. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Gabrielle doing the same with another, the look of confusion on her face matching his own.

  "How many days has it been since you came looking for me?" he asked, his words sounding unusually loud as it cut through the silence.

  Gabrielle replied, "Four, five days at most."

  Five days?

  And the bodies have been reduced to nothing more than skeletons?

  No way. It just wasn't possible.

  First the abandoned houses, then the howler demon, and now this.

  Something was seriously wrong.

  He thought about the time he and Riley had spent in the Beyond after the defeat of the Chiang Shih, when they'd been searching for the Isle of Sorrows and Gabrielle's disembodied soul. The two of them had spent just a few weeks in that purgatory-like realm by their reckoning, but when they'd returned, months had passed in the real world. Had something similar happened here? Were they already too late to be of any help at all?

  And, of course, there was the bigger question of what the hell had happened while they'd been gone.

  He looked over at Gabrielle. She must have been having similar thoughts, for when he met her gaze he could see that beneath her calm exterior, she was worried.

  No, he thought, not worried.

  Scared.

  That was unsettling, to say the least. She was one of the strongest women he'd ever known, ready to tackle any situation head on. She'd endured captivity at the hands of the Adversary and had used her wits and guts to break free more than once to warn him when his life had been in danger. She'd kept her sanity when the same fallen angel had occupied her physical form for days on end, forcing her into the nether regions of her own mind, trapped and aware but unable to do anything about it. She'd stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the Beyond, facing down wave after wave of spectres, and hadn't flinched even once. And yet...

  And yet here she was, looking practically terrified.

  The time for patience was over.

  "What aren't you telling me, Gabbi? What's the real story here?"

  She stared at him, wordless, and at first he thought she was going to refuse to speak, to avoid his question entirely, or, at the very least, brush it off with some platitude of an answer. But then, after a moment, she seemed to gather her courage and, with a deep breath, she told him.

  "The ritual didn't work," she said.

  Cade frowned, not understanding. "What ritual?"

  "The one Uriel taught you. The one that was supposed to destroy the Adversary once and for all." She smiled weakly. "The one in which I died."

  An image flashed through his mind before she'd even finished speaking; her standing before him, fighting to mentally hold the Adversary at bay, while he screamed in anguish and rammed the blade known as Gabriel's Tear upward, under her rib cage and deep into her chest, where it pierced her heart in a single, savage blow.

  He shook his head, driving the memory away while at the same time trying to understand what she was saying.

  "What do you mean it failed?"

  The idea that her sacrifice might have been in vain was nearly too much to bear. He felt unsteady on his feet, as if the bedrock beneath him was shifting in different directions.

  It couldn't be true.

  It couldn't.

  But deep down he knew it was.

  Gabrielle reluctantly went on. "In those final seconds, while I was fighting to hold the Adversary from breaking free, I caught a glimpse into his mind and saw the real reason he had maneuvered us into that situation.

  "The ritual didn't destroy him. Didn't even come close. He'd been prepared for it, had used its raw power to his advantage, channeling it through him and his connection to the infernal realm, sending it down to the other six members of his scream that had been waiting patiently for millennia for that very moment.

  "Then, when the seven fallen angels were full of their own power as well as the power of the ritual itself, they fought back, seizing control of the angels supporting you, driving their spirits from their bodies and taking them as their own."

  "And thereby setting the Adversary free to walk the earth one more," Cade said in a stunned voice.

  Gabrielle nodded. "Not just the Adversary, but his six closest allies as well."

  It was their worst nightmare come true. He couldn't believe it; all they'd fought for, undone in an instant and by his own hand, no less. He'd never been more disgusted with himself.

  "Does Riley know?" he asked.

  Another nod. "His men didn't want to believe it, but Uriel was a bit more convincing than I."

  Not surprising, that. When God's record keeper, the Watcher of the Ages, told you something, it tended to make an impression. He remembered his own initial encounter with the archangel and he could just imagine how Riley and the rest of the Echo Team soldiers had reacted to theirs. Must have been quite the revelation, he thought.

  With a nod to show he understood, he turned and made for the entrance to the building behind him.

  7

  The oversized doors to the warehouse stood half open, the gap between them shadowed in darkness. Cade stood outside the entrance for a moment, Gabrielle at
his side. A large pile of dust and debris had piled up against the bottom edge of the door closest to him, indicating that it hadn't been moved in quite some time.

  A glint of metal caught his eye and he bent over, brushing away some of the loose dirt near his feet to reveal a brass shell casing. He recognized it immediately; it was a 9mm Parabellum, standard issue for the Templar's MP5 submachine guns. His gaze roamed the ground, picking up dozens more now that he knew what he was looking for. Riley's men had clearly made a stand here before the doors; the evidence was scattered all about their feet.

  As they slipped through the doors, movement caught his eye. Cade stopped just inside the doorway, looking back outside. He let his gaze roam the area in front of him, trying to figure out what he'd just seen.

  Nothing happened for a moment and he was just about to join Gabrielle inside when he spotted it again. A dark spot on the edge of the quarry wall slipped a few feet lower than it had been the moment before.

  It looked for all the world like someone slowly making their way down the cliff face on their hands and toes, crawling along spider-like, unaffected by gravity or the long drop ahead of them.

  Cade's breath caught in his throat as he focused his attention on it, realizing even as he did so what it was that he was seeing.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

  He immediately began searching the rest of the cliff face, knowing where there was one there was certain to be more, and one after another he picked out the rest, until all seven were in his sights.

  A full sneak of shadow demons was on its way toward them, which meant their time at the quarry had suddenly gotten very limited. So far it didn't seem like the demons knew where they were – the demons' descent was too slow and methodical for them to be on their direct trail – but it wouldn't be long before they picked up their scent. After that, it would be like a Friday night feeding frenzy for a school of sharks at Chum Lake.

  They needed to figure out where Riley had gone and then get the hell out of there before the demons closed in.

  Cade slowly stepped back into the shadows on the other side of the doorway, not wanting to call attention to himself with any sudden movement.

  Gabrielle had noted his absence and was waiting there for him to join her.

  "Problem?" she asked, seeing the expression on his face and noticing his tension.

  "There's a sneak of shadow demons behind us," he said. "We've got ten, maybe fifteen minutes, at best, before they locate us. We need to get what we came for and then get the heck out again before they catch up to us."

  "Shadow demons?"

  He'd forgotten that she didn't have the years of experience hunting the supernatural that he did. Her competence with everything they'd dealt with while in the Beyond and after was the equal of any Templar he'd served with and he had to keep reminding himself that she didn't have the same training that any member of his team would.

  "Supernatural bloodhounds," he explained, "Except these are the size of grizzlies and track you by your aura, rather than your scent. Plus there's very little substance to them, hence the name. Makes them hard as hell to kill."

  She was looking toward the open door, eye wide, when he reached out and grabbed her arm, focusing her attention back on him.

  "We're fine. We've got plenty of time," he reassured her. "A quick search for information on where Riley and the others might have gotten off to and then we're gone, okay?"

  She nodded, but her hands didn't stray far from the sword she wore across her back.

  Cade didn't blame her; his hands didn't either.

  Inside, by the light of their flashlights, they found packing crates and pallets piled up in various locations across the warehouse floor. The pattern looked random at first, but Cade's trained eye picked out the firing lanes and arcs of cover that the stacks provided. He could imagine Riley's men making a fighting retreat, engaging the enemy from behind each stack while leading them deeper into the warehouse, no doubt to be attacked by other troops waiting there.

  Must have been a helluva fight, Cade thought, as he eyed the hundreds of shell casings that littered the floor.

  There were more remains in here as well, all in the same condition as those outside. He counted at least ten sets, all clearly part of the attacking force based on their positions relative to the defensive structures. He didn't bother to examine them; he'd already learned what he'd needed to learn from those outside. The fact that there weren't any defenders remains was reassuring; it either meant they'd been carried out when Riley had ordered the retreat or that someone had come back for them once the battle was over. Either way, someone had clearly survived the fight.

  "Over here," Gabrielle said, leading Cade to the rear of the building where there was a wide section of open floor. "This is where I opened the gate to the Beyond."

  There wasn't anything left there now, of course. The portals always closed seconds after being used and left no physical impact on the place where they appeared. But the fact that there wasn't a ring of Templar corpses surrounding the spot seemed once again to suggest that Riley and his men had made it out safely.

  Gabrielle, however, didn't think so.

  "I saw him fall as I stepped through the gate," she said, her voice full of sorrow.

  "Who?"

  "Riley." She explained how she'd seen him standing his ground, holding off the enemy troops practically on his own, when a grenade bounced across the floor and landed by his feet. She'd seen him lifted into the air by the force of the explosion just as the gate had pulled her in with its vice-like grip and spit her out into the Beyond on the other side.

  While she talked, Cade couldn't help but glance to his left where a large section of the floor had been scorched by an explosion. He imagined Riley standing there, firing his Mossberg at the enemy as they closed in, refusing to leave his post until Gabrielle was safely through the gate. Cade felt fear for his friend spread through him at the thought. They had fought together for so long that it seemed almost inconceivable that Riley could be gone and yet he knew how damaging a grenade could be in close quarters.

  Gabrielle went on. "I appreciate what he did to protect me, but I don't understand why he let himself get cornered like that?" She waved her hands at the walls around her. "There's no exit back here. Where did he think he was going to go? Why sacrifice himself in vain?"

  "He didn't," Cade said. "Riley knew what he was doing. Here, let me show you."

  He led her over to a blank section of the rear wall. It looked like any another part but Cade knew differently. He reached out with his left hand, the one on which he wore his Templar ring, and watched Gabrielle eyes grow wide as the surface of the wall shimmered and changed, revealing the door hidden there.

  "What the...?

  Cade grinned. "It's an illusion spell, keyed to the presence of my ring, as well as Riley's and a few other senior commanders that I trusted. If they got out – and I think that they did – this is how they did it."

  He glanced across the warehouse to the entrance, searching for signs of their pursuers.

  Thankfully the coast was still clear.

  "We're going to do the same. Come on."

  The door had a large wheel set in the center, like a bulkhead door on a battleship. Reaching out, he spun the wheel and then gave the door a good shove. It groaned at first but finally swung free.

  "Quickly now! They can't be far behind."

  Gabrielle stepped over the doorframe and Cade followed, closing the door behind them as soon as he was through. He spun the wheel, sealing it shut for the time being, but knew it wouldn't take the shadow demons long to get through it once they figured out where they had gone. He needed something to slow them down.

  Turning, he shone his flashlight about, searching for something he could use to hold the door shut. He and Gabrielle found themselves on what amounted to a loading dock in the midst of a tunnel running perpendicular to their position. When the facility had been in operation, the do
ck was used to load the finished product onto railroad handcars that where then transported to a small station half a mile east. The finished blocks would then be loaded onto to a cargo train that would carry them a thousand miles away to the company's showroom in Atlanta.

  His light landed on a couple steel fence poles resting against the back of the dock. With Gabrielle's help, he carried one of them over to the door and slipped it through the opening in the wheel, preventing it from being turned from the opposite side.

  "That will hold them for a bit," he said.

  Gabrielle looked skeptical, but didn't disagree. She walked to the edge of the dock and shone her light down the tunnel, then onto the tracks a few feet below her.

  "Cade, look!"

  Joining her, he added his light to hers, illuminating the footprints on the wooden slats of the tracks. He jumped down to take a closer look.

  The size and shape of the tracks suggested that they been made by a thick-soled pair of boots, perhaps even more than one. They were dark brown, almost black. Cade used a fingernail to scrape a little bit of it away and then held his finger under his nose. The blood, for that was what it was, still had a bit of a coppery smell to it. Whether the individual who left the tracks had been injured or had simply trod through freshly spilled blood and carried it along with them, Cade couldn't tell.

  As he straightened, Gabrielle jumped down off the loading dock to have a look for herself.

  "Someone made it out," she said, shining her light further down the tunnel, where more tracks could be seen.

  "They did indeed," Cade said. The tracks led deeper into the tunnel and he saw no reason not to follow them to their destination, given what was waiting for them back the way they'd come.