Judgment Day (Templar Chronicles Book 5) (21 page)

As far as Cade was concerned, he was getting the good end of the deal.

The old man took the cash, flipped through it with his thumb, and then grunted in satisfaction. He gestured for Cade to take a seat in the prow of the boat and then fired up the engine with one quick yank on the starter cord. The outboard came to life with a growl like that of a wounded animal and for a moment Cade wondered if he’d made the right choice, but the fisherman’s deft hand at the wheel quickly dispelled the notion.

The night was cool enough that Cade was thankful for the jacket he’d pulled on to hide his shoulder holster. The moon was full, providing plenty of light to steer by, but the confident way the old man handled the tiller told Cade that he could probably have maneuvered every inch of this lagoon while blindfolded.

It was less than a half-mile from Venice to Poveglia, so the trip was over before it felt like it had even begun. As they approached the island from the north, Cade could see the bell tower rising up over the trees, standing watch some said, over cursed ground. There was something unusual looking about the tower and as they drew closer Cade could finally make out what it was; the arched windows on each side of the tower belfry had been bricked shut.

It was from those very windows that the hospital’s chief surgeon had fallen to his death. Cade thought again about the rumors surrounding the incident; about the claims that the ghosts of the dead had pushed him out of one of those windows for his transgressions against the living.

Unlike most people, Cade was well aware of just how much the supernatural world intruded on the living one. Your average skeptic might dismiss the idea of ghosts as nothing more than nonsense, but Cade knew better. He knew how hungry the dead could be. Not only did he consider the theory possible, but if asked he would have said he thought it highly likely, in fact.

After all, he knew from personal experience just how unrelenting the dead could be when you pissed them off.

Cade was expecting the fisherman to take the boat right into shore, but as they came within a hundred yards, he turned west and began running parallel with the shoreline.

“Hey,” Cade shouted, from where he stood in the prow. “What’s wrong with right there?” he asked, pointing.

The fisherman shook his head fervently and shouted back in return. It was hard to hear over the growl of the motor, and Cade’s Italian was rusty, but he thought the old man said something about the campo peste.

Plague field.

It hit him in the next moment, a wave of malevolence that washed out across the water from the shoreline in a thick, cloying haze that made his head pound and his guts churn. He had the sense that a thousand individuals had suddenly turned and glared in his direction and he knew immediately why the locals avoided the place at all costs.

He glanced across at the tangled growth of vegetation stretching out from the shoreline over that part of the island and could imagine the bones of the dead lying there in the plague pit just beneath the soil in a tangled pile sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty feet deep. He knew that if he turned on his Sight he’d be able to see the ghosts of the dead, lined up along that shoreline, watching them as they motored on past.

Cade looked away, before he would be tempted to do so.

The fisherman took them around the west side of the island, to where a canal gave access to a crumbling old dock that stood along the water’s edge near the back of one of the abandoned hospital buildings. The building was covered in scaffolding, but Cade knew that this was more to keep the bricks from injuring anyone breaking the quarantine that was on the island than it was a sign of reconstruction.

Cade could see the church tower rising up behind the building in the moonlight and he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away as the fisherman brought the boat to a gentle stop beside a decaying set of steps that came down to the water. Something about the tower just drew him to it.

The old man pointed at the steps and said, “Alba.”

Sunrise.

“You’ll meet me here at sunrise?” Cade asked, just to be certain he understood.

The old man nodded.

“Good enough.” Cade grabbed his bag and stepped out of the boat.

The moment he did so a bell rang out in the night air, crisp and clear and loud enough to be heard all the way across the island.

It’s the dead welcoming their own.

Cade shivered. The bell had been removed from the tower many years before.

Apparently the fisherman felt it as well, for a look of fear crossed his face at the sound and he wasted no time in goosing the throttle and getting the hell out of there as fast as the boat would carry him.

Cade found himself wondering if he’d have a ride in the morning or not.

Worry about that later. You have to find the Forsaken One.

He glanced toward the sealed bell tower. Somehow he didn’t think that was going to be as big a problem as he’d originally thought.

Cade knelt down, opened his duffle bag, and removed his sword. He slipped into the harness attached to the scabbard and adjusted it so that the sword rode on his back with the hilt sticking up just over his right shoulder. It was his preferred carry position and made it easy for him to draw. His pistol, an HK Mark 25, already rode in a shoulder holster under his left arm.

Satisfied, he headed out, leaving his bag of clothes and spare cash sitting there on the dock behind him. Somehow, he didn’t think anyone was going to bother it.

He decided to cut through the building in order to reach the bell tower as quickly as possible and soon discovered that nature had long since started to reclaim its territory. Vines and creepers grew throughout the halls and in through holes in the walls and roof. Water stains and the smell of mold were prominent, but here and there he could see evidence – a section of mosaic tile on the floor, a scrap of colored paint on the walls - of what the place must have looked like back in its heyday.

Here and there he found an abandoned piece of equipment, most of which were so covered by vines and creepers that it was often hard for him to recognize them for what they actually were. The same held true for the stark, institutional pieces of furniture he found in some of the rooms; straight-backed steel chairs, bed frames from which the mattresses had long since been stolen or rotted away.

In many of the rooms he felt the fleeting presence of the dead, both ancient and modern. He caught a glimpse of them from time to time, will-o-the-wisps of shadow that shifted about in the corners of rooms he passed or slipped around the corner just ahead, gone again when he reached that place. A few times he passed a room where something darker lay slumbering and he made sure to hurry past without disturbing whatever it was.

By the time he reached the exit at the far end of the structure and stepped out into the courtyard leading to the church, Cade was more than happy to leave the building behind.

The entrance to the church lay just ahead and he walked over to it without hesitation. He found the door unlocked when he tugged on it and he slipped inside. Finding the narrow entrance to the clock tower stairwell, he headed up them at a brisk pace, knowing that what he’d come here for was close at hand and getting closer by the minute.

As he neared the top he could see a faint silvery light shining down the steps from the doorway above.

It looked a lot like moonlight to him.

He’d seen the bricked-up windows on his approach to the island and that made him pause. Those he’d seen looked intact, but he supposed one or another could have fallen victim to the weather or shoddy craftsmanship and was allowing some of the light to filter in from outside.

Or that light was something else entirely.

Only one way to find out.

Cade made his way up the last few remaining steps and looked into the room just beyond from the darkness of the stairwell landing.

What he saw made him nearly gasp in surprise.

The bricked-up windows had been nothing more than illusion. Moonlight streamed in through their open faces, illuminating a tall individual in a dark hooded robe standing before an easel on the far side of the room painting with the help of that very light. From where he stood, Cade had a decent look at the image on the stranger’s canvas and he felt his blood run cold when he realized that it was a portrait of his own face.

The painter spoke up without looking away from his canvas.

“So like a Templar, always skulking in the shadows.”

The comment, and the tone, irritated Cade, but he reminded himself to keep cool as he stepped out into the light. This thing, whatever it truly was, had decimated squads of Templars without even trying. Cade was good, but not good enough to take it on by himself and win. He needed to manage this with a little bit of finesse.

“You know who I am.” He made the statement a fact, rather than a question.

That hooded head turned in his direction, but the shadows made it impossible for Cade to see inside of it. The voice sounded human enough, but he knew that was no guarantee of anything.

“Sniper and decorated police officer. Templar Knight Commander. Husband. Sworn adversary of the angel Asharael.” There was a hint of amusement in its tone now. “Oh yes, I know all about you, Cade Williams.”

“If you know me, then you know why I have come.”

The painter didn’t bother to look up from its canvas.

“You don’t have it in you to do what must be done. Leave this place and let events fall where they may.”

Cade shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Won’t.”

Cade stepped into the room, doing what he could to dispel the growing sense of unease he was feeling in the stranger’s presence, and glanced around as he did so. Paintings and sketches of all shapes and sizes lined the walls and Cade was horrified to see that each and every one of them featured either himself or his wife, Gabrielle. A painting of Cade fighting zombies lurching up from the water amidst a submerged Louisiana swamp stood beside a sketch of Gabrielle as a Ferryman at the prow of a skiff on the Sea of Lamentations. A charcoal rub of the angel Baraquel looming over Riley and Cade in the Eden facility partially concealed a study of Gabrielle as she appeared in the Brooklyn warehouse just a few weeks earlier. Each image was a scene lifted right out of the events of their lives the past few years.

Cade slowly turned in place, taking it all in, and he felt his calm reason slowly being replaced by anger. This thing, whatever it was, had not just been watching events play out on the world stage, as the Seneschal’s journal had indicated, but it had specifically been observing Gabrielle and him.

For quite literally years.

“Why are you watching me? Watching us?”

It came out a little harsher than he expected, but that couldn’t be helped. Cade had never expected to find that the Watcher he’d come to confront would be involved in watching him!

He whirled around, pinning the Forsaken One with his gaze. “What the hell is going on here?!”

The painter ignored him, dabbing more paint on the canvass in front of him.

Cade didn’t like the connections he was drawing in his mind. The Forsaken One knew of his wife’s situation, knew of the feud, for lack of better words, between him and the Adversary, knew even of the abilities that he had kept hidden from all but a chosen few. All that knowledge no doubt meant that he knew as much about the Adversary as well. In this he had all but told Cade to go home, that there was nothing that he could say or do that would help Cade in his quest to free Gabrielle.

Cade didn’t believe that.

Couldn’t believe that.

And the Forsaken One’s unwillingness to cooperate was starting to piss him off.

In that moment his anger got the better of him.

“You
will
speak to me, demon!” Cade shouted, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.

That hooded face turned and looked at him, freezing him with a glance. Cade tried to move his hand, tried to draw the sword within his grasp in order to protect himself from the creature’s wrath, only to find his arm frozen in place.

His fear jumped up several notches at a go.

How do you fight a creature with power like that?

The Forsaken One stared at him a moment.

“Is that what you think I am? A demon?”

The laugh that followed was bitter and dark, made all the more unnerving as it issued from that hidden face.

“I am amazed that you have lived so long knowing so little of the things you hunt, Templar. I could destroy you, here and now, with just a glance and yet you insult me with names and threaten me with your puny excuse for a weapon. Are you really so blind?”

“If I am blind, enlighten me,” Cade replied, unable to do anything else. “Prove to me that you are not what I say.”

For a moment, Cade didn’t think it –
he?
– was going to reply. The Forsaken One added another few strokes to its masterpiece, seemingly indifferent to what Cade said, and Cade had a momentary vision of being stuck in this room forever, trapped with one hand reaching for his weapon, while the bastard in front of him dabbed at its canvas with its brightly colored paints.

When the explosion came, it caught Cade entirely off guard. The palette of paints was flung across the room while the Forsaken One used the brush in its hand like a knife, slashing the canvas into ragged strips with lightning fast movements. One minute it was on the other side of the room, the next the Forsaken One was looming over him with a furious expression on his face.

“Prove to you?” it yelled and it seemed the very walls of the tower around them shook with the sound. “By what measure should I have to prove anything to you?”

The creature’s anger seemed to have caused it to lose its hold on him, for Cade found that he could move once more. But there was nowhere for him to go and he knew that if he dared to try and draw his weapon the thing looming over him would more than likely strike him down before he managed to get even a single inch of his blade free of its sheath. So instead he stood perfectly still, staring up into the square-jawed masculine face that he could now see inside the hood; a face that was human and yet not, a face that was perfectly proportioned in every way, so much so that it appeared almost alien in its perfection, and braced himself for what was to come.