Exodus, page 35
Sleep. Heal. I’ll have need of you again.
Warren crashed into the darkness, fearing that he wasn’t going to die, that he was going to live. And if he had to live, he meant to see that the armored man that had cut his hand off was going to pay.
Dazed by the blast, Simon rolled to his feet, somehow managing to hang on to his sword. The armor’s audio dampers saved his hearing and the HUD compensated for the bright lights, then the tunnel filled with dust. The armor filtered the dust out and kept his air supply clean.
He drew the Spike Bolter and examined the blockage that had filled the tunnel. Rock and debris had tumbled down from above, opening into another room of another building. The debris hadn’t quite filled the tunnel. A gap no more than a few inches existed at the top, but nothing moved there.
Turning, Simon ran the other way, quickly overtaking Derek. He gathered Derek’s arm across his shoulders and helped him increase his pace. Together they headed for the other end of the tunnel.
A few minutes later, Simon stood outside the tunnel only a few feet from the River Thames. The mud that stretched out from the bank testified that the river was indeed dwindling. Several boats and ships sat mired in mud as well, even the ones that were broken.
Blood Angels flew silently overhead, staring down for prey. Other demons worked the buildings and boats.
Standing there with Derek’s arm across his shoulders, Simon thought of the men, women, and children they’d left behind in the museum. He didn’t know if the fight down in the vault had disrupted the wards that protected the place or not. He hoped it hadn’t. The thought of those people becoming victims during the night made him sick.
Quietly, the Templar moved out, staying within the shadows. Lisa, one of the female Templar, came back to help Simon with Derek, who faded in and out of consciousness. Evidently the injury was too much for the armor to slap-patch him through.
“Look,” Wertham said, pointing downriver.
Using the magnification application on the HUD, Simon picked the figures out of the darkness. He identified the Cabalists as they made their way out of the glassworks building. They carried someone on a makeshift stretcher, what looked to be a section of carpet cut up from some office floor.
“They’re in league with the demons,” Mercer said. “Just goes to show that you can’t trust them.” He cursed. “We oughta kill them all and be done with it.”
Simon didn’t say anything, but he didn’t think the Cabalists were in with the demons. When they’d found them, they’d been fleeing for their lives. He had no doubts about that.
But he couldn’t explain the Cabalist—Warren—trying to take Balekor’s Hammer from Derek and somehow using it to call forth a demon. Were they using the demon? Or was the demon using them?
He tried to push the matter from his thoughts. He had other things to think about. Provided they made it safely back to the Underground, he was going to make some changes in his life. Sitting back and going on missions for the High Seat wasn’t what he wanted to do. It wasn’t what his father had trained him to do.
Forty-Four
Y ou’re a fool to go out there like this, you know.”
Simon ignored High Seat Booth’s comment and kept packing, throwing a few clothes and rations into the duffel bag on his bunk. There wasn’t much room in the bag, and the way he planned on living was even harder than when he’d been in the South African bush. He was acutely aware of the other Templar in the barracks who were watching him.
“You won’t last a day on your own,” Booth warned. “If not anything else, you should have learned that since you’ve been back.”
Simon rolled the duffel and hoisted it over his shoulder. He turned, but Booth stepped into his path.
“Are you listening to me?” Booth demanded.
Looking down, Simon locked gazes with the man. Booth’s arrogance was palpable. “I hear you,” Simon said, “but that’s not stopping me from going.”
“Then why are you going?”
“There are people out there—”
“I know there are people out there,” Booth interrupted irritably. “I’m not an idiot.”
“They need help getting out of the city,” Simon replied. “Before the demons kill them, or the Burn. Or even winter.”
“The smart ones will figure that out on their own,” Booth insisted. “They’ll abandon the city.”
“They’re not strong enough to do it.” Simon knew that the other Templar were listening in, and some of them looked sympathetic. “And they’re not strong enough to survive the attempt without help.”
“So what are you going to do?” Booth put his hands on his hips and glared at Simon.
Simon was tired of dealing with Booth. It was primary school all over again. Booth was loud and he was a bully. He still didn’t like it when things didn’t go his way.
For the last two days, Simon had recuperated and made his plans. And he did have plans, despite Booth’s doubts. Maybe they weren’t as well thought out as Simon had hoped they would be before he left, but he knew what he wanted to do. He’d also figured out where he could get what he needed to pull it off—maybe.
Derek was still in the hospital, but he was doing well. The doctors expected a full recovery in a relatively short time. They’d mourned their dead. Recovery teams had gone back out the next day in an attempt to bring back the bodies and armor. Simon had gone with them, part of the final duty he figured he owed to the Templar. In the end, they’d brought most of them back, but none of them had been whole.
Only an hour ago, Simon had sent a message up through channels that he was leaving the Underground. He had expected some resistance because Booth didn’t like having his orders disobeyed, but he hadn’t expected the High Seat to come himself. But there was the matter of the long-standing feud between them.
“I’m going to get as many of them as I can out of London,” Simon said.
“Do you plan on carrying them out of here on your back?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re not going to save many of them that way.”
“If I save even one of them, it’ll be worth it. And I plan on saving more than one.”
“You haven’t changed,” Booth declared. “You’ve got the same bleeding heart you’ve always had. Just as full of yourself.”
Simon tried to step around Booth. The High Seat stepped in front of him. Simon took a breath. “Get out of my way.”
“No,” Booth said. “You’re under my command.”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll have you locked up for disobeying my orders.” Booth had come accompanied by eight members of his personal guard. “I am the High Seat. I outrank you.”
“You only outrank me if I choose to stay here,” Simon promised. “I don’t. And I guarantee that locking me up isn’t going to be easy.”
“It’ll be done.”
Taking a breath, Simon focused totally on Booth. “If you want to give orders, then give ones I can respect. Give me orders to defend those poor people starving and freezing to death out there in the rotting corpse that this city has become. Give me orders to get those people out of here. Give me orders to feed them and clothe them and protect them until I can get them out of here.” He let out his breath. “Those are the orders you and the other High Seats should be giving. Not telling us to hide in shadows and bring back whatever you send us out there for while they die scared and alone, hungry and in pain every day.”
For a moment the barracks were silent. Simon grew self-conscious. Naked and out in the open like that, his words sounded hollow. That was why he hadn’t talked to anyone about what he was going to do.
“The missions we assign are important,” Booth argued. “Recovering the artifacts we send you out for is crucial to our chances of beating the demons. The things we’ve known about but have never been able to act on, the secrets we’ve learned and kept over the years, all of those things can tilt the balance against the demons. We know what we’re doing.”
“Fine, but if you manage to save the world and there’s no one to live in it, what have you accomplished?”
“We’re here,” Booth said. “The Templar will live in it.”
“We’re not the only people here.”
“We—”
“Shut up!” Simon exploded, taking a step toward Booth. The man closed his mouth at once and stepped back. “For all my life, I trained to be a Templar, as did my father before me and his father before him. I trained to fight the demons, and to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. And the ones who denied the existence of demons.”
Booth scowled.
“My father raised me up to be a Templar knight,” Simon stated. “Not an armored errand boy. He taught me to be chivalrous and generous, to be modest and intelligent. And to always know that I was supposed to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves.” He took a breath. “That’s what I learned to believe in, and that’s what I wanted to grow up to be like.”
The silence in the room was deafening.
“I walked away from this life—”
“Just like you’re trying to walk away again,” Booth sneered.
“No!” Simon shouted. “This time it’s different. The last time, I left because I didn’t see the need for me to give up my life, for me to turn away from the things I wanted to see and do, just to sit around and do nothing with the training I’d been given. I lost faith. But now—now the demons are here. They’ve come to our world and they mean to make it over as they see fit. They killed people—thousands of innocent men, women, and children—with impunity. I intend to use the training my father invested in me and save as many of those people out there that I can. Because—to me—that’s what a Templar does.”
Someone in the barracks started clapping, slowly at first, then gaining momentum. Other Templar quickly joined in.
Simon felt embarrassed. He couldn’t see Booth’s face behind the helm, but he felt certain the man was livid with anger. He tried to step around the High Seat again.
Booth drew the Surgecaster from the holster at his side. The pistol was solid and heavy, capable of shooting out balls of electrical energy.
“You’re going to be taken into custody,” Booth said. “And you won’t—”
Simon grabbed Booth’s wrist and twisted. The bolt from the Surgecaster whizzed across the room and struck the wall. Simon’s HUD had shown him that no one was there, and the rooms were built to be self-contained and resistant to bombing.
The secondary detonation went off as Simon twisted the pistol from Booth’s grip. A swirling ball of fire ignited and climbed the wall. Klaxons shrilled, sounding the alarm.
Simon drove his fist into Booth’s helm, striking sparks from it as metal grated against metal. Booth tried to get away, but Simon grabbed him by the shoulder and hit him again, using everything he had. Booth flew helplessly across the room, sending Templar diving for cover, and rebounded from the wall.
By the time the High Seat crawled to his knees, Simon was on him. Anger boiled out of Simon, uncontrollable, dark, and terrible. He kicked Booth in the head and sent him back down to the floor. Simon lifted his foot and smashed it onto Booth’s helm again and again, shattering the armor but not yet breaking through.
Someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him back. Simon turned to defend himself, then recognized Wertham’s armor.
“Stop,” the old Templar said. “Stop it now. Before you kill him.” Wertham allowed his helm to become transparent enough for Simon to see his features. He maintained his hold on Simon’s arms. “Do you hear me?”
Breathing hard, Simon couldn’t answer at first. He nodded, then said, “Yes.”
“Kill Booth and they’ll never let you leave this place,” Wertham said.
Simon knew that. He looked beyond the Templar and saw that Booth’s personal guards stood ready, but some of the Templar had interposed themselves between them and Simon.
“Kill him!” Booth yelled. “Kill him!”
“No,” Wertham said. “There will not be any killing done here today.”
“If you support him, I’ll have you locked up in the same detainment center with him,” Booth threatened.
“Try to stop Simon from leaving,” Wertham replied in a calm voice, “and you’ll have to put more than just me in that detainment center.”
Booth swayed, cursing loudly.
“The Templar have never recognized masters,” Wertham said. “Only leaders. Each Templar chooses his own way. You know that, High Seat, and even under these times that must be upheld.”
Simon stood, not knowing what to do. He hadn’t intended to snowball this into a big problem. I should have just left. He could have simply stepped out into one of the tube tunnels and never come back.
But he knew he hadn’t wanted to go that easily. There was something in him that hadn’t relished the idea of walking away without telling Booth what he thought of the way he was running things.
“We’re not supposed to be guerrilla fighters,” Simon said. “We’re supposed to be champions. Warriors that fight the demons and preserve life. All life. Not just our own. By hiding in the shadows and picking and choosing your precious missions, you’re just as guilty of walking away from everything the Templar stand for as when I left.” He paused. “I’m not going to dishonor my father’s memory. I’m going out there and I’m going to do what I can to help those people trapped in this city. You’re going to have to kill me to stop me.”
Booth walked over to Simon. The High Seat moved unsteadily and with effort.
Wertham slid between the two.
Booth’s helm popped open, revealing his bloodied face. One of his eyes was swelling shut. “Go then. But don’t you ever try to come back here.” He spat saliva and blood onto Simon’s faceshield. Then Booth stepped back and raised his voice. “Let him go. Let the demons have him.”
Without a word, Simon shouldered his duffel again, turned, and walked away. Fear trickled through the anger that he still felt, breaking some of his conviction, but he remained convinced that he was doing what he had to do.
Booth’s private guards and some of the Templar followed Simon all the way to the exit that let out into the tube. They passed him through the security doors and he stepped out into the darkness where the monsters lay in wait.
His footsteps sounded hollow in the tube. They also sounded vulnerable.
A moment later, Wertham and three other Templar stepped out into the tube. Each of them had duffels over their shoulders.
Simon stopped and looked back at them. “What are you doing?”
“Coming with you,” Wertham said. He made his faceshield translucent, revealing his wide grin. “What you said back there reminds me of why I took pride in being a Templar. Over the years, I’ve had my own doubts about all the training I went through and the secrets I had. I can’t fault you for those. But I’m not going to sit idly by while you go off on your own to try to do what I think we should be doing.”
Simon stared at the older man. “If you come with me, you’re probably going to get killed.”
Wertham grinned. “Maybe you’ve got some doubts, but I don’t think they’ve made the demon tough enough to take me.” His grin grew wider. “Or, at least, that demon hasn’t caught up with me yet.”
“Booth won’t let you back,” Simon said.
“Regular meals and a bed to sleep in are overrated, if you ask me.” Wertham sobered. “Those people we left back in the museum…I didn’t like doing that. Just walking away from them and leaving them there.”
“I know.”
“I suppose we’ll be checking in on them? After you’ve figured out how we’re going to get them out of London?”
“I have a plan,” Simon said.
“Well, now’s the time to hear it,” one of the other Templar muttered.
“How much do you know about trains?” Simon asked.
Forty-Five
W arren woke in an anesthesia-induced fog. He remembered the feeling from when he’d been a child, after his stepfather had shot him and he’d spent days recuperating in the hospital.
He lacked the strength to sit up or pull the plastic mask from his mouth and nose. It was everything he could do to roll his head to the side. An IV ran a drip into his left arm, taped to his scaled skin, but the blue tinted liquid with small fishy-looking creatures didn’t resemble anything he’d ever been given in the hospital before.
One of the creatures pressed its flat face against the plastic bag and ballooned its mouth. An inky substance jetted from its mouth, then dissipated in the liquid, turning the blue slightly more blue. Almost immediately Warren’s head felt thicker, more distant from the rest of his body. Whatever the fish creature secreted had something to do with the disorientation he felt.
Seeing his left hand reminded him of his right. His wrist hurt. He rolled his head back over the other way.
Tubes ran into and out of the demon’s hand that had been grafted to the stump of wrist. A circular affair of wires held the grotesque hand palm down and fingers spread like it was a piece of art. An ill-smelling poultice wrapped the sewn ends of flesh, but it was made of a clear jelly material that allowed him to see. The thread didn’t look like thread, but more like the sinew he’d seen when his biology class had dissected a cat in lab. The flesh, his own and the demon’s, were reddened from inflammation.
The Cabalists had done it. They’d reconnected Merihim’s hand to him.
“No,” Warren whispered hoarsely. The events in the building came back to him in a maelstrom of fear, pain, and loss. He could still feel the cold, cruel bite of the armored man’s sword cutting through his arm and feel the solid thump of the demon’s hand dropping onto his chest.
“Warren.” Naomi rose from the wingback chair she’d been sitting in beside the bed. She looked exhausted and concerned about him.
Kelli sat in another chair at the foot of the bed. Her eyes stared at him, but they were dark and listless, like nothing was going on behind them.
