Judgment Day (Templar Chronicles Book 5) (11 page)

Why else would the Church restrict access to all but four people, the conspiracists would often ask, if they contained only simple documents related to the day-to-day management of the Church?

As head of the Templar’s special combat teams, Cade knew the truth. The archives
did
contain information that would throw the world into turmoil, but it had nothing to do with Christianity. No, the archives contained the truth about the reality of the supernatural world; the truth about how humankind was surrounded by creatures that saw humans as something to be toyed with, or, even worse, fed upon. If that wasn’t bad enough, the information contained therein made it clear that not only were such creatures stronger and faster than the average human being, but that they were often far harder to kill as well.

The Church believed that such information would frighten Joe Public out of their minds and had worked dutifully for many years to keep that information out of the hands of the average man on the street. Even the very name was designed to be misleading; the Vatican Secret Archives weren’t in the Vatican at all, but miles away on the other side of the English Channel at the Templar’s headquarters in Rosslyn, Scotland. More than a little subterfuge was carried out to safeguard the true archives; a portion of the library in Rome was kept locked and under twenty-four hour guard, access to its contents was severely restricted, and certain rumors were carefully leaked at appropriate times. All of this theater was nothing more than that, theater; a large-scale feat of misdirection that kept the public occupied with trying to break the secret of the archives. A secret that didn’t really exist except in their own heads.

It was a marvelous piece of social engineering and Cade had to give them credit for not only coming up with it in the first place, but being able to maintain it in this age of smart phones, Instagram, and the Internet. The Order had an entire division dedicated to just monitoring the various forms of social media, making sure to discredit any actual photographs or video that got uploaded by either flooding the net with similar, though obviously faked, footage or disparaging the reputation of those who did the uploading in the first place.

Cade had long suspected that the Archives held information about the Adversary that hadn’t been made available to the Order’s regular rank and file. He’d gone so far as to request access to that information several times over the years, but his requests had always been denied. No such files existed, was the standard answer. Nor had he ever been able to search for them himself, as the few times he’d been within the archives he had always been in the company of the custodian. With his own personal resources exhausted and without being any closer to finding the Adversary than when he’d started, he thought it was about time to take a look for himself.

He knew he could make the drive to either Hartford or Boston and from there catch a flight overseas, but that would take more time than he wanted to give up at the moment. Thankfully he now had another option. He could get to the Archives, and back again, without having to fly anywhere.

Cade walked into the bathroom where he found a fair-sized mirror held to the wall with four small, plastic mounts. He used the tip of his knife to unscrew the mounts and then took the mirror, frame and all, back into the main room and put it on the floor in front of the bed.

He knew he was pushing things by travelling through the Beyond again so soon after his last trip. Passing through the Veil was both mentally and spiritually taxing and the time spent on the other side, chronologically out of whack with the real world, took a physical toll on one’s body as well. He’d been in a hurry to get his gear and get out of the house after his unorthodox arrival and so he hadn’t felt the effects of his most recent journey into the Beyond until he’d been on the road a bit. Now, a couple of hours later, he felt tired and out-of-sorts and he knew it was only going to get worst after this trip.

Still, what other choice did he have? He needed to get to the Archives quickly and he needed to do it in a way that kept him off the Order’s radar, at least until he had what he needed. Besides, entering the Archives by way of the Beyond helped him avoid not only the guards outside but the locks on the entrance doors as well. It really was the best option available.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, that nagging little voice in the back of his mind said to him, but Cade brushed it off.

The time for debate was over; now it was time for action.

He slipped his arms through the straps of his go-bag and hefted it onto his back and then picked up his sword. The weight of the bag would slow him down a little, but he’d have to make due. He had no idea if he was coming back the same way and he didn’t want to lose what little equipment he had at his disposal by leaving it behind. The Jeep would probably be towed if his trip took too long, but at least it would be safe at the local lock-up, not sitting around the lot waiting to be broken into.

Cade took one last look around the room to make sure that he hadn’t left anything behind and then, satisfied that he had not, he stepped up beside the mirror he’d placed on the floor beside the bed.

He wanted to spend as little time finding the proper path as possible once he was across the barrier, so he began preparing himself for that process now. He stood there a moment, head bowed, clearing his mind of extraneous thoughts. When he was ready he began picturing the oversized dressing mirror he’d seen in the Archives the last time he’d been inside. It was the kind of thing he’d expect to find in the bedroom of a guy like the Edgar Allen Poe or the Marque de Sade, with its thick pewter frame covered with finely sculpted figures of witches and demons and devils, all caught up in acts that would make a back alley prostitute blush. Cade didn’t know where the mirror had come from or what it was doing in the Archives, but he was fairly confident that it was still there. Once an object ended up in the clutches of the custodians, it would take something like the apocalypse to get it out again.

That mirror was going to be his backdoor into one of the most protected vault’s known to man.

When he had the image firmly fixed in his mind, when he could practically see every detail well enough to just reach out and touch it, he took a step forward and disappeared through the surface of the mirror.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Colin Ferguson stared at the red light blinking on the screen of the security monitor next to his desk. In all the years he’d served as the Templar’s Seneschal, he’d never seen this particular alert. Nor had he ever really expected to.

And yet there it was.

He rose from where he’d been sitting by the fire, reading, and walked over to his desk. He tapped the glass surface and waited a moment for the touch-screen keyboard to appear. When it had, he tapped in a series of commands, querying the security system to be certain he remembered correctly what that symbol signified.

He had.

Someone was in the Archives.

He frowned; he didn’t remember giving anyone access to the vault this evening. Or any evening, for that matter. The archives were off limits to all but a few, select individuals and only he and the Grand Master were allowed inside after the sun went down.

As the Templar’s Seneschal, it was Ferguson’s duty to manage the day-to-day running of the Order, leaving the Grand Master free to deal with only those issues of the highest importance. He was in charge of managing the seven Preceptors as well as the headquarters commandery here in Rosslyn. One of his most important duties was maintaining the safety and integrity of the archives.

He cancelled the alert with a flick of his finger and settled into the chair in front of his desk. He entered a handful of commands and suddenly the screen in front of him split into six smaller windows, each one displaying a different section of the archives, as seen by the security cameras mounted in the walls.

Five of the screens showed nothing unusual.

On the sixth, a man in dark clothing with a duffel bag slung across his back and a sheathed sword in one hand was just stepping over to the bookshelf that lined one of the room’s four walls. The man’s back was to him, but something about him seemed familiar to the Seneschal.

Ferguson tapped in a few more commands, activating the camera directly in front of the intruder and zooming in on the man’s face.

The scars and eye-patch would have been a dead giveaway to the man’s identity if Ferguson hadn’t already recognized the former Echo Team commander.

Ferguson felt his heart kick into high gear at the sight.

He’d been following the events surrounding the Adversary with great care for many years and was well aware of the recent incident involving the Necromancer, Simon Logan, and the body of Cade’s wife, Gabrielle. If Cade was here, that meant he hadn’t yet given up hope of rescuing his wife.

The Seneschal smiled at the thought.

The end game begins at last.

He watched as Williams approached the wall of books and began methodically examining the titles on their spines, no doubt searching for something that would shed some light on the situation at hand. Given the number of volumes, and Williams’ lack of familiarity with the way the archives were arranged, it was going to take him days to get through them all. Ferguson had to admire the dogged determination the man showed by his efforts. He wasn’t giving up without a fight, that was for sure.

Ferguson watched Cade for a few minutes and then made up his mind.

It was time Williams got a little help.

The Seneschal leaned forward and got to work. Fingers tapping lightly on the virtual keyboard, he began moving through a series of screens, each one more complex than the last. Ferguson had a reputation for being less than savvy with modern electronics, so those who worked around him on a regular basis would have been surprised at the adroitness with which he navigated through the system menus, shutting down various subroutines and changing the trigger calls on others, essentially rewriting on the fly the entire security system that monitored the archives in a matter of moments. The alert notification was scrubbed. The minute of video that showed Williams bursting through the mirror from the inside was replaced with a loop of tape from earlier in the night, making it seem like the archives were not only empty at this very moment but that they had been that way all evening.

Ferguson rolled back the tapes and watched them for a moment, making certain that his tinkering wasn’t readily visible. Satisfied, he set the loop to run indefinitely and then shut down his connection to the system.

With a little luck, no one would ever be the wiser.

Getting up from his chair, Ferguson crossed the room to where a small, cast-iron safe sat on the floor. The safe was used for storing confidential files or dangerous artifacts while they were being used by the Seneschal and couldn’t be returned to either the subterranean vaults beneath the commandery or the very archives Williams was now searching, as the case might be. Ferguson knew that Williams wasn’t going to find what he needed in the archives and with good reason. The volume that would provide him some of the answers he was seeking wasn’t in the archive at all, but right there in the Seneschal’s safe.

He reached inside and withdrew a slim, leather-bound journal whose cover was stained with time and cracked by age. He stared at it a moment, remembering the sacrifices that had been made to obtain the information recorded within, then, shaking his head at his own sentimentality, shut the door of the safe with a quiet click. Getting up, he headed for the door, the volume clasped securely in one hand.

It was time to give the Heretic the information he was looking for.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“The Grand Master will see you now.”

He damn well better
, Preceptor Johannson thought as he rose from the seat he’d patiently been sitting in since arriving at Rosslyn Castle some two hours prior. He was mightily tempted to voice his opinion aloud, but he knew how to play the game and getting visibly annoyed at the Grand Master’s little power play would cause him to lose points in the grand scheme of things. That was something he simply would not tolerate.

Johansson had been enroute to Scotland for the annual meeting of the seven Preceptors – one Preceptor for each continent - who ran the day-to-day operations of the Templar Order when word of the Heretic’s escape reached him. It took him a good fifteen minutes to get his rage under control, but by the time he had a plan had presented itself. He’d decided to use his time at headquarters to present his case against Williams to the Grand Master himself. As head of the Order, the Grand Master could do things that a “lowly” Preceptor could not, provided certain truths were in evidence. Johansson intended to use those powers to his direct benefit. By the time he was finished, not only would Williams be branded a traitor and an official enemy of the Order, but he would also be excommunicated and cast out of the faith, if things went the way he wanted.

Once the sentence had been pronounced on the Heretic, he could be hunted like the rabid dog that he was, Johannson knew. No one would dare argue with the need to do so, for everyone knew you couldn’t let an animal like that run around free, not if you didn’t want it infecting everyone it came into contact with. Swift and decisive action was what was called for in such situations.

Once the Heretic was eliminated, I can get on with what I came here to do,
he thought with satisfaction.

As the Grand Master’s aide led him down the hall toward the senior official’s private meeting room, Johannson mentally reviewed what he knew of the man.

Antoine Devereaux had been in command of the Templar Order for the last twenty-five years. He was Parisian by birth and had, in fact, risen to prominence during the ghoul incursion of the early eighties, when he’d led strike after strike down into the catacombs beneath the French capital to root out the foul creatures. His notoriety had brought him to the attention of the former Grand Master, who had taken him under his wing and groomed him to be his successor.