Judgment Day (Templar Chronicles Book 5) (8 page)

Upon seeing that Cade was awake, Dalton shifted position, bringing the muzzle of the gun not so subtly in line with Cade’s chest.

“Don’t even think about trying to escape, asshole,” the guard said.

Cade sized him up with a glance and was unimpressed with what he saw. He didn’t know this man; he suspected that he was one of the new recruits brought up through the ranks after the war with the Chiang Shih. That meant he was most likely one of the Preceptor’s cronies.

Which explains the hostility.

With nothing to do but wait until the van reached its destination, most likely the commandery in Westport, Cade decided he’d been pushed as far as he intended to be pushed. It was time to push back, starting with the idiot sitting on the bench across from him.

“Why not?” he said. ”You think you’re up to stopping me if I tried?”

The guard licked his lips and slid his finger inside the trigger guard.

“The Preceptor doesn’t care if you’re dead or alive when you’re brought to justice,” he said with a smug grin, leaning forward to make his point. ”All I have to do is pull this trigger and claim it was an accidental discharge. That would stop you all right. When all is said and done, I’d probably get promoted and you’d be right where the Preceptor wanted you to be. Deader than a piece of roadkill in the Texas sun.”

Cade looked away and said something beneath his breath.

“What was that, asshole?” the guard said, rising to his feet. “You got something to say to me, say it to my face or I’ll beat it out of you.”

Cade let his shoulders roll forward a bit and ducked his chin even lower, as if cowed by the other man’s threat. He mumbled again, keeping his gaze on a certain spot on the floor in front of him.

Dalton took his hands off his weapon and let it fall to his side on its sling. He balled his hands into fists and took a few steps forward, bringing him across the spot that Cade had been watching.

Almost…

The guard leaned down and thrust his face and finger toward Cade.

“Listen to me, you stupid bastard! No one disrespects...”

That was as far as he got.

Cade reared back and then whipped his head forward, slamming the crown of his skull into Dalton’s forehead right about at the point where his eyebrows met. There was a loud smack of impact and the other man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Cade kicked him a few times, just to be certain.

Satisfied that Dalton was down for the count, Cade leaned back against the side of the van to wait for the ride to be over.

It didn’t take long.

After another twenty minutes or so the van began making a series of short, sharp turns that Cade recognized as the roads leading to the entrance to the Ravensgate commandery. They stopped briefly a few moments later –
guard booth at the gate
, Cade thought – and then continued for another ten minutes before the driver parked the van and turned off the ignition.

Cade heard the front doors open and close, then footsteps approaching the back of the vehicle. When the door opened, he was sitting on his bench, hands out in front of him, and an innocent smile on his face.

Riley and another man he didn’t recognize stared in at him and the unconscious guard at his feet.

“What happened?” Riley asked.

Cade shrugged. ”He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He fell and hit his head when you went around one of those turns a while back.”

The man standing beside Riley sneered and said, “You expect us to believe that?”

Cade laughed. ”I don’t really care what you believe,” he said. ”If you think I’m capable of knocking him unconscious while I’m chained and handcuffed to this bench, more power to me, I guess.”

“Why you smug, little...”

“That’s enough, Brooks!” Riley said, putting out his arm to restrain the other man when he tried to climb into the back of the van.

“But sir! I...”

“I said, that’s enough,” Riley said, in a voice that brooked no further argument. ”I will take the prisoner. You will see to Corporal Dalton, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cade watched as Riley climbed into the back of the van and walked to him. He kept his expression carefully blank as Riley stopped in front of him, his back to the other Templar at the doors of the van, and mouthed the words, “Play along.” Cade nodded almost imperceptibly to show that he understood.

“You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you?” Riley asked aloud.

“No.”

“Good. Keep your cool and we’ll have this sorted out soon enough.”

Riley squatted down in front of Cade to unlock his leg manacles and then did the same with his waist chains. As he got back to his feet, his hand brushed against Cade’s and, in the process, passed him the key to his handcuffs.

“All right, on your feet,” Riley ordered.

Cade did what he was told. As Riley turn to lead the way out of the van, his bulk momentarily hid Cade from view, and Cade used that moment to reach up and wipe the sweat from his face, slipping the key into his mouth in the process.

As Riley helped him down from the back of the vehicle, Cade took a look around. He’d guessed correctly; they were indeed at Ravensgate. Templars milled about, engaged in a variety of pursuits, but nearly all of them stopped to take in the sight of Echo’s current commander leading the infamous Heretic across the parking lot. Cade nodded at those who expressed, via a look or gesture, their solidarity and gave the others the thousand yard stare. He was a bit surprised that the latter outnumbered the former by several factors.

Where had all the veterans gone?
he wondered.

By the time he and Riley had crossed to the entrance of the commandery, a small crowd had gathered by the door and more than a few were giving Cade some rather disturbing looks. There was enough anger and frustration on their faces that Cade began to think that they were going to physically attack him, but then Riley spoke up.

“What the heck are you all gawking at?” he snarled at the crowd. ”Never seen a prisoner brought in for questioning before? Get back to work before I put the lot of you on punishment detail for the next two weeks!”

Riley’s command voice was enough to get them to disperse and go on their way, but enough of them looked back for Cade to know that he was going to have trouble if he stayed too long. Riley had told him that the Preceptor was spreading rumors about his supposed allegiance to the Adversary, but Cade never expected his fellow Templars to believe such bullshit.

Apparently, he’d been way off the mark on that one.

Riley led him inside the building, through the checkpoint just beyond the entrance, and down the hall to a set of elevator doors. There were several other people waiting for the lift but they let Riley take the next one that arrived when they saw he was transporting a prisoner. No one, Cade noted, wanted to put themselves in a confined space with him.

The legend of the Heretic strikes again
, he thought wryly.

Riley led him inside the elevator car and then punched the button for the second level below ground.

Cade waited until they were on their way down before speaking.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

“A squad member reported your presence on the bridge earlier to the Preceptor so I had no choice but to bring you in. Now we have to find a way to get you out of here again before he comes looking for your head.”

“So take off the cuffs and lead me to the door,” Cade said.

“And wind up in the hands of Johannson’s interrogators myself? No thanks. You’ll get your chance to get out of here in a minute. Just be sure you take it when you do.”

Cade could tell Riley was pissed at him. That was okay; he was pissed at Riley in return.

“That was my wife on that bridge.”

Riley turned as if to say something, but the elevator reached its destination at the same moment, the doors swooshing open, and whatever it was, he didn’t say it. There were two sergeants standing outside the car, waiting to board, so Riley simply grabbed Cade by the arm and led him down the hall without another word.

Guards were stationed outside the six interrogation rooms at the end of the hall. They snapped to attention when they saw Riley approaching with Cade in tow.

“I need an interview room,” Riley told them.

“Of course.” The guard casted a curious glance in Cade’s direction, but said nothing as he led the pair over to one of the interview rooms and unlocked the door.

Riley stuck his head inside, nodded to himself, and then led Cade through the door.

The already small room was made smaller by the large metal table that sat in its center, bolted to the floor. Two metal folding chairs were on either side of the table, likewise secured. A metal ring was welded into the table-top in front of one of the chairs, with one side of a pair of handcuffs secured to it. A mirror stretched along the wall opposite the table.

Cade smiled when he saw the mirror.

Riley brought him over to the chair and had him sit down, then secured the handcuffs he was already wearing to the free end of the pair attached to the ring on the tabletop. He tugged on them twice, just to be certain that they were secure, before turning back and heading for the door.

“Let him stew for a bit,” Riley told the guard. ”I’m going to get some coffee and will be back in awhile.”

“Roger that,” the guard said, with a disdainful look in Cade’s direction. ”Stew it is.”

The guard pulled the door shut with a bang and Cade was left alone with only his thoughts for company.

Thoughts of escape, that is.

He had to hand it to Riley; it was actually a very clever move. Riley had left him both the means to get out of his chains as well as the means to get out of the room, all while protecting himself from any recrimination. The guard had watched Riley secure Cade to the table and then they had both left him locked up alone in the room.

Rumors already followed him like the plague so Cade saw no reason not to use his Talent to get himself out from under Templar control.
Let them wonder how I did it
, he thought.
One more mystery for them to solve.

He waited a few minutes, giving time enough for the guards to grow bored of watching him through the one-way glass, and then faked a coughing fit, covering his mouth with one hand and spitting the handcuff key into his palm in the process. He waited again after doing so, just in case the noise had convinced the guards to look in on him through the mirror, and he then grabbed the key with one hand and went to work with it on the locks to the handcuffs.

He was out of them in seconds and had his waist chain and leg irons off moments after that. He kept waiting for the door to slam open and the guards to taser him into immobility, but the hall outside remained quiet and the door firmly closed.

That was perfectly fine with Cade.

He had no intention of using the door anyway.

As he climbed up onto the table in front of him, Cade could hear the sound of running feet coming from the corridor outside the door. He knelt down enough so that he could see through the small window set at eye level in the door.

From outside a guard looked in at him, shocked at finding him free of his restraints.

Cade winked at him.

As the guard began fumbling with his keys and shouting for help, Cade crouched at the edge of the table, took a deep breath, and then dove head first at the mirror on the wall in front of him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was an instant of bone-jarring cold combined with the unpleasant sensation of forcing his way through a tangled wall of thick cobwebs and then Cade opened his eyes to find himself in the strange purgatory-like realm he called the Beyond.

Despite all the times he’d been here in the past, he still knew very little about this place. It was a shadowy realm that existed close to the real world in time and space, but forever separated by a wall of energy he’d come to call the Veil. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, as well as other, darker, twisted creatures that hunted them, roaming the landscape in great, predatory packs. Cade called them spectres and avoided them whenever he could.

The landscape of the Beyond was constantly shifting. Like the image in a funhouse mirror, it could seem hauntingly familiar one moment and infinitely strange the next. Sometimes he would find the place he entered to be a near-identical opposite of the place he’d left in the real world, like a photograph and its negative, and other times they would be starkly different.

This time it was the former.

He found himself standing in an interrogation room much like the one he’d left, except inside this commandery, everything bore a thick patina of decay, as if the basic entropy in all living things had suddenly become visible. The table and chairs were streaked with rust, with patches of metal so brittle in places that it fell apart at the slightest touch. The mirror that had served as his entrance didn’t even exist; the wall behind him displayed nothing more than grime-encrusted brick.

The door to the interrogation room wasn’t locked, so Cade stepped out into the hallway, made his way to the stairwell at the far end -
no way was he taking an elevator in the Beyond!
- and headed upward. Several times he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye; dim, shadowy forms going about their business around him. He wondered if he was looking at the shades of long-dead knights or the souls of the living back in the real world. Not that it mattered much; as long as they left him alone, he really didn’t care either way.

After reaching the ground floor, he headed for the exit, only to find himself having to turn around and retrace his steps several times as hallways led to places different than the one’s he expected. Cade didn’t let it bother him; he’d dealt with the strangeness of the Beyond often enough to know that surprises often waited around every corner.

When he finally found the front door, he paused on the threshold, taking a moment to survey the way ahead. In the real world, a circular cul-de-sac complete with a large fountain in the center of it, sat at the base of the steps leading to the front door. From there a long drive ran north for several hundred yards to the gatehouse and the main road just beyond. At this time of year the long rolling lawns on either side of the yard would be lush and vibrantly green while the flowers surrounding the fountain would provide frequent splashes of contrasting colors.