Judgment Day (Templar Chronicles Book 5) (12 page)

Johannson liked Devereaux, not only for his gruff, no-nonsense approach to the Order’s ongoing mission, which Johannson was fully in agreement with, but also for his unrelenting war on all things supernatural. The man was determined to rid the world of anything that wasn’t human and Johannson was more than happy to assist him in the process. So far Cade Williams had managed to escape the Grand Master’s attention thanks to his relationship with the Seneschal, but the Preceptor was confident that things would change once the full breadth and scope of Williams’ treason was put on display for the Grand Master to see.

And he knew he was just the man to do it.

When they reached the end of the hall, the aide opened the door and ushered Johannson into a small study. A desk said to have been made from the bones of giant demon fought around the time of the Second Crusade stood on the other side of the room and behind it, in a high-backed wooden chair that was austere enough to match his personality, sat Grand Master Devereaux.

Devereaux was a hard-looking man in his mid-fifties, with a scar across his throat from where a ghoul’s claws had come a little too close for comfort several decades before. He kept his head shaved and had a tattoo of a Celtic cross on either forearm. He was no longer in the top physical condition he’d once been, with a slight paunch visible beneath his shirt, but at six-foot-two he could still be dangerous in a fight.

He glanced up from the paperwork he was examining when Johannson entered the room, gestured at the pair of similar chairs arranged in front of the desk, and then went back to his reading.

Johannson took a seat and patiently waited until the Grand Master had read through the document, whatever it was, scratched his name across the bottom with a pen, and then set it aside.

At last, Devereaux looked up and gave Johannson his undivided attention.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting so long, Preceptor. It’s been a busy evening and, as you can see, I still have a lot to do. What can I help you with?”

The Preceptor smiled graciously, while inside all he wanted to do was ring the smug “I’m-too-busy-for-this” attitude out of the man.

“It’s no problem, Master Devereaux. The news I bear is distressing, however, and I wonder if perhaps another time might be better to discuss it?”

Devereaux frowned. “Distressing? How so?”

Johannson glanced down, as if ashamed of what he had to say. In truth, it was to hide the smile that crossed his face; if the Grand Master could be led so easily, this should take long at all. For some reason, he’d thought the man to be cleverer than that.

Johannson took a deep breath, pretended to hesitate, and then said, “I’m sorry to say that I believe one of our senior commanders has gone rogue and is cooperating with the enemy.”

That got the man’s attention, just as he’d hoped!

Devereaux leaned forward. “I’m listening,” he said. “I hope I don’t have to remind you of the seriousness of the accusation you’re making. I trust you’ve done your due diligence before coming here?”

“Yes, Master Devereaux. I wouldn’t bother you with this unless I was certain.”

At that point Johannson began laying out his case against Cade Williams, step-by-step, from the night the Dorchester Demon, really the Adversary in disguise, attacked Cade and his wife in their home outside of Boston, to the latest confrontation on the Housatonic River bridge, where Cade had struck several members of his old strike team in an effort to keep them from firing on the creature possessing his dead wife’s body.

He made sure to describe Knight Commander Williams’ regular insubordination toward legitimate command authority, his blasphemous act in unearthing his wife’s body, and the ritual that had been used to put the Adversary’s spirit into the empty shell that had once been Gabrielle Williams.

By the time he was finished he thought he’d stated his case pretty damn well and apparently the Grand Master thought so too, for the man’s expression had gone from weary disinterest to outright alarm at all that he’d heard.

“Where is Commander Williams now?”

Johannson shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You just said that your men took him into custody after the incident on the bridge!”

It was exactly the question the Preceptor had been hoping for and he used the opportunity to play his trump card and seal Williams’ fate. “They did. Williams was arrested and brought back to the commandery for questioning, just as I said. Unfortunately, while waiting for a trained interrogator to arrive, he used witchcraft to escape from the interrogation room.”

“Witchcraft!” Ferguson exclaimed, spitting the word from his mouth as if the very saying of it was distasteful.

Johannson nodded. “Yes, sir. He apparently, ah, stepped through the surface of the two-way mirror.”

Devereaux stared at him without saying anything for a long moment.

“Stepped through the mirror?” he finally asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, where did he go then?”

“I have no idea, sir.”

Johannson noted curiously that the Grand Master’s face was starting to grow red with pent-up emotion.

“And the Adversary? Where is that thing?”

“We’re not certain, sir.”

Devereaux got up from his seat. “Let me see if I have this straight. A senior commander of our most prestigious combat unit appears to be cooperating with a creature that we have, quite literally, been hunting for decades and we’re not sure where either of them are?”

“I’ve had Echo and Gamma hunting the Adversary for several weeks, but they’ve gotten nowhere. Now, with Williams to track down as well, I’m afraid I’m a bit shorthanded.” Johannson sat back with a shrug. “They could be anywhere, frankly. If we want to catch him, I need the authority to track him down wherever he may be, regardless of preceptorship boundaries.”

Johannson was betting that a proactive suggestion to deal with the crisis was just what the Grand Master wanted to hear and he was right. No sooner had he finished speaking that Devereaux was calling for his aide.

“Brooks!”

The door opened almost instantly and the aide, Brooks, stepped inside, tablet in hand. “Sir?”

“Take this down.”

Johannson listened with satisfaction as Devereaux dictated an executive command authorizing the Preceptor to use any means necessary to apprehend and capture Williams and the Adversary. Just as he’d hoped, Williams was temporarily excommunicated and forbidden to exercise his rights and privileges as a member of the Order until such time as his guilt or innocent could be determined by the high council. Even better, the order extended to each of the seven preceptorships worldwide and granted Johannson the ability to requisition any and all supplies he might need to achieve his ends.

It was all he could have wanted and more.

Devereaux finished dictating and turned toward him. “You were right to bring this to my attention, Johannson. I’ve been saying for years that corruption from within is our biggest threat and now you’ve shown this to be true. In order to keep our mission pure, we need to watch diligently for those who have fallen from the path and help them find the truth once more.”

Johannson nodded in agreement and then asked, “But what if they do not want to see the truth? What then?”

The Grand Master didn’t flinch. “We are the shepherds of humanity, tasked by the Holy Father himself to protect the flock from threats and enemies. Sometimes, if a member of the flock becomes injured or sick, it must be culled from the herd, to protect the greater good. Wouldn’t you agree, Preceptor?”

Johannson nodded.

He did indeed.

.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cade stood staring at the wall of books in front of him, wondering just how in hell he was going to find what he needed. Most of the volumes in front of him were written in languages other than English; Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit and German being the most common. This wasn’t an insurmountable problem – he’d taught himself Latin as well as ancient Greek and Hebrew over the years in his search for the Adversary and knew a smattering of German – but identifying which volumes contained information relevant to his cause was turning out to be rather difficult.

When he’d emerged from the Beyond, he’d found himself on the floor of the storeroom that housed the mirror he’d used as his focus, just as he’d expected. Tall metal shelves holding a wide variety of objects filled much of the room, but as curious as he was about what some of them, he forced himself to turn away and head to the door. His time here was limited and he just couldn’t afford to waste any of it.

The door to the storeroom was locked from the outside, but Cade had been expecting that. He put his ear against the wood and listened for a moment, trying to figure out if anyone was in the hallway beyond or not. Breaking out of a locked room right in front of the custodians probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

Thankfully, he didn’t hear anything.

Drawing his sword, he put the point between the door and the jamb right about at the spot where the lock would be and then threw his weight against it. The blade slid forward, popping the lock.

Exiting the room, Cade moved down a short hallway, passing several similarly locked storerooms in the process, until he came to the main viewing area.

This section of the archives looked like the library in a private gentlemen’s club from another era; bookshelves lined the walls while leather chairs and reading tables occupied the center of the room. An annex jutted off from the main room and through its door Cade could see free-standing shelves filled with ancient scrolls. The overhead lights were out, but the smaller lights inset into the baseboards around the room provided enough light for Cade to see by. He guessed there had to be a couple thousand books on the shelves in front of him alone.

He’d been quite pleased to find the room empty.

Now he stood before the wall of books, trying to figure out the best way of approaching what he’d come here to do. Since the sections weren’t labeled, there was no way to tell what was in a particular volume without taking it down and examining it. Given all the different languages that the books were written in, this wouldn’t be a quick or easy task. Never mind that this kind of approach didn’t take into account that many volumes covered a wide variety of topics that might not be easily be discernible with a quick glance.

Without the help of one of the custodians – men whose job it was to know exactly what was in each volume and where particular volumes might be stored – it was going to take him all night to find what he wanted,
Cade thought.

Hell, it might take all week.

It didn’t matter. The information he needed was here somewhere; he knew it. It was just a matter of finding it and there was only one way of doing that.

He slipped the duffle bag off his back and leaned his sword against the wall, within easy reach if he needed it. He began

scanning the titles on the shelves in front of him, taking down the books that he thought might hold information on the Adversary or fallen angels in general and stacking them up on a nearby table as he worked. He’d been at it for nearly twenty minutes, and had accumulated a small pile of books to review more closely when a voice spoke out of the shadows behind him.

“Once again, you surprise me with your cleverness.”

Cade grabbed his sword and spun around.

The man standing on the other side of the room was in his mid-seventies, though he looked two decades younger, thanks to the extreme state of physical fitness at which he kept himself. His white hair was cropped close to his skull in a military-style crew cut and his blue eyes shone with amusement as they took in the sight of Cade standing there where he wasn’t supposed to be.

Cade’s grip tightened on the hilt of his weapon but he didn’t draw it. “I surprise you? Why’s that?” he asked.

“Preceptor Johannson has essentially put a price on your head, young man, and yet here you are, in the heart of your enemy’s stronghold. I must say it’s about the last place I would think to look for you, hence, very clever.”

Cade ignored the backhanded compliment and focused instead on the first part of the Seneschal’s statement.

“Is that what we are now, sir? Enemies?”

To his surprise, Ferguson laughed.

“Good heavens, son. Of course not. We’ve known each other too long, been through too much, for us to ever be enemies. Don’t you know that?”

Cade had hoped as much, but he was done assuming those in command would do what was right. So far, his experience had been exactly the opposite.

For years now, Cade had reported directly to Ferguson in his role as head of all the Templar special-action combat teams. He liked the man for his blunt honesty; if Ferguson had something to say to you, he said it, man to man, right to your face so that you always knew where you stood. It had been Ferguson who had backed Cade’s initiation into the Order when others had tried to claim he was tainted by what the Adversary had done to him so many years before, and Ferguson again who had tried to broker a deal to keep Cade on active duty when the Preceptors had banded together in the wake of the war with the Chiang Shih and demanded his resignation. Aside from Riley, the Seneschal was probably Cade’s staunchest ally within the Order.

Still, Cade found himself oddly uneasy at the other’s presence. Had the events of the last few weeks changed so much that he couldn’t trust even his closest allies?

“And yet you called this my “enemy’s stronghold,” which suggests that while you may not be one of them, I do, indeed, have enemies here.”

Ferguson’s gaze remained steady as he said, “Of course you do. You’ve known that since the day you came to us. I’m not telling you anything new. Or did you think that your nickname was one of affection?”

Cade couldn’t help but smile at that. The old man had a point. The Heretic wasn’t an appellation to be proud of when you belonged to a group of religious warriors. Relaxing at last, Cade put his sword down on the table in front of him and watched as the other man approached.