Vengeance Reigns E-Book

Joseph Hutton

• Herausgeber: Harbinger Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Echo Team
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 324

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

He vowed that he'd go to Hell and back to save her. Now he'll get his chance. When Knight Commander Cade Williams discovers that his wife, Gabrielle, is not truly dead, but held in some kind of arcane stasis between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead, he vows that nothing will stop him from freeing her soul from the prison surrounding her. But his vow is tested right from the start when an old friend calls on him to help protect the city of Boston from the ancient scourge that threatens to destroy it, leaving Cade with a heart-breaking choice: Do his duty and save the innocent lives he has sworn to protect or forsake them all in order to rescue the one for whom he would brave the walls of hell itself? If you like supernatural thrillers or your dark fantasy with a touch of horror, this series is for you!

Leseprobe

Vengeance Reigns

Joseph Hutton

Contents

The Echo Team Series

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

Infernal Cries Excerpt

The Echo Team Series

About the Author

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Copyright Information

The Echo Team Series

Echo Team Novels

Hunters Rise (Book One)

Angels Scream (Book Two)

Vengeance Reigns (Book Three)

Echo Team Mission Novellas

Shades of Blood

The Hungry Dark

Tooth and Claw

If you want to stay up-to-date on the very latest news, you can follow Joe on Twitter @jnassise, hang out at his Facebook page, or visit his website at josephnassise.com.

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Chapter One

The priest ran toward the altar as if hell itself followed on his heels.

He didn’t have much time, minutes at best. Still, that might be enough. The others would have a warning at least. It was the best he could do given the circumstances.

Racing up the steps, he crossed to the tabernacle and spun the dials on the lock with trembling fingers. He set the second one incorrectly and had to do it again, losing precious seconds in the process. Opening the tabernacle, he bent one knee, genuflected, and then removed the ciborium from inside the blessed chamber.

From the other end of the church he could hear them banging on the inside of the sacristy door. He’d locked it behind him, but he didn’t expect it to hold for long.

Opening the ciborium and removing one of the communion wafers, he begged for Christ’s forgiveness for his sins and then placed the wafer on his tongue. From years past the voice of Father Jerome, his old seminary professor, came to him.

“Viaticum, from the Latin ‘via tecum,’ meaning ‘provisions for the journey.’ The final rite in the sacrament of Extreme Unction, the giving of the Eucharist ensures that the dying do not die alone, but have Christ with them in their final moments just as He has been with them in life.”

Behind him, the door to the sacristy burst from its hinges and the howls of his pursuers filled the nave.

He was out of time.

Steeling himself for what he knew was to come, he calmly closed the tabernacle and spun the dials, locking it against intrusion. It wouldn’t hold out a determined thief, but he had done his part and could rest easy on that score. He got to his feet and turned to face the front of the church.

The shadows had reached the transept.

He hurried to the altar and took up the Bible resting there. It wouldn’t hold them off but he felt better with it in his hands.

As they reached the foot of the altar, he calmly went down to meet them.

Chapter Two

Knight Commander Cade Williams stalked down the hallway of the Bennington Containment Facility, angry at himself for being there yet knowing that he really had no choice in the matter.

Just hours before a request had been relayed to him by the facility’s warden. The request had originated from the prison’s most high-profile prisoner, Simon Logan, the Necromancer, a man who had used the arcane power in the Spear of Longinus to try to destroy the Order.

He would have succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for Cade and the men of the Echo Team.

Logan had apparently asked to see Cade. Said it was urgent even. But it was the note that accompanied the request that had captured his attention.

Just eight simple words.

I have a message from your wife, Gabrielle.

Anything else the Necromancer might have said would have been ignored outright. After turning Logan over to those who ran the facility, Cade’s interest in the former head of the Council of Nine vanished. He had other, more pertinent things to worry about than the fate of a man who had tried to take on the Order and lost.

But if Logan actually had received a message from Cade’s long dead wife, Gabrielle, then that was something Cade simply couldn’t ignore. As a necromancer, Logan certainly had an affinity for the dead, which made the possibility that he’d spoken to Gabrielle a realistic one.

Cade knew his wife’s spirit was not at rest. He’d encountered her shade several times over the last few months and it was Gabrielle herself who had convinced Cade not to slay Logan outright when he’d been at Cade’s mercy following the assault on the Council’s stronghold. Why she might have relayed a message through the Necromancer rather than simply coming to see him herself was what he didn’t understand and that lack of understanding was what had driven him to agree to the visit.

He reached the guard station at the end of the hall. There he surrendered his side arm, watch, and the contents of his pockets. The black feather he wore on a piece of leather about his neck was glanced at curiously when he laid it down with the rest of his items, but no one made any comment. One of the guards requested that Cade remove his gloves, but the senior officer stepped in and informed the guard that that wouldn’t be necessary.

Which was good because Cade wouldn’t have agreed to the request anyway. His gloves stayed on, no matter where he went. He wouldn’t have objected to giving up the eye patch that covered the ruin of his right eye, but they didn’t ask.

He waited with the senior officer for the junior one to buzz them through the gate and then the two men moved down to the end of the hall and through a series of three more barriers until they came to the room outside the Necromancer’s cell.

Cade was a member of the Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar, as they were once more commonly known. Long thought to have been destroyed in the fourteenth century, the Templars had emerged from hiding during the desperate days of World War II and had joined with the very entity that had excommunicated them en-masse so many centuries before, the Catholic Church. Reborn as a secret military arm of the Vatican, the Templars were now charged with defending mankind from the supernatural in all its forms.

As the commander of the Echo Team, the most prestigious of the elite strike units fielded by the Templars, Cade was known for both his ruthless efficiency and his often unorthodox methods.

The two men guarding the Necromancer recognized him by sight, despite the fact that he’d never been down to this part of the maximum security level before, and were already opening up the doors to the room beyond as he stepped up to the guard station.

The man who’d escorted him turned to face him. “Rule #1: Nothing goes in that doesn’t come out. Rule #2: No physical contact with the prisoner. And Rule #3: If you need help, just yell and we’ll come running. Got it?”

Cade nodded and then stepped through the door.

The room was large, about twelve feet to a side, and in its center stood a cage of iron. The cage was home to Simon Logan, the man known as the Necromancer, ever since Cade defeated him in battle several months ago. It was furnished with a bed, a toilet, and a small writing desk, nothing more.

Inside the cage waiting for him was the Necromancer.

Logan was a shadow of his former self. He’d lost considerable weight, his features sinking into the ruin of his face like a pumpkin past its prime, his bones poking awkwardly against the confines of his jumpsuit. He was in constant movement, shuffling back and forth across the small space of his cell, eight steps across and then eight steps back, over and over again, like a man hunted by something he couldn’t see nor understand.

His first words to Cade seemed to reinforce that viewpoint.

“The dead torment me.”

His voice was a reedy whisper, so different from the bold commands he’d shouted to his followers before his defeat.

Cade had no sympathy for him. “As well they should,” he replied. Logan had thought nothing of dragging the souls of the dead back across the barrier between the land of the dead and that of the living and forcing them to reanimate their decomposed and corrupted bodies. For him to be haunted by those he’d treated in such a fashion was nothing but justice itself and Cade told him so.

Logan went on as though he hadn’t heard.

“They torment me. Especially her.”

Cade’s pulse quickened.

“Who?” he asked.

“You know who.”

Cade crossed the room to stand in front of Logan. For all he knew Logan was running an elaborate con and so Cade refused to give him anything. “No, I don’t,” he said, “tell me.”

Logan’s response, when it came, surprised him.

“She said you wouldn’t believe me, so she said to give you this.”

As Logan reached inside the pocket of his prison uniform, Cade automatically braced for an attack, expecting him to pull out a shiv or some other makeshift weapon he’d fashioned without the guards’ knowledge. But Logan’s hand emerged from the interior of his clothing with only a pewter medallion that dangled from a silver chain.

Logan tossed the necklace through the bars to Cade.

Wary of arcane trickery, Cade refused to catch it, stepping back and letting it fall to the floor at his feet.

A glance downward told him it was a Saint Christopher medallion, the kind a lot of cops carried around, Christopher being the patron saint of policemen and of lost causes.

This particular medal had a dent in it, right in the center where the face of the saint had once been, a dent large enough that it obliterated the saint’s entire image, leaving just the caption running around the outside of the disk.

Seeing it, Cade froze.

He recognized that dent. Remembered the night that medallion had miraculously deflected a bullet meant to kill him, saving his life and consequently the life of his partner as well. They’d been pinned down in a shadowy corridor inside a Southie tenement house and had never even seen their assailant until that shot had come blazing out of the darkness. Saint Christopher had saved his life, there was no question of that, and he’d worn that medallion night and day for years afterwards in a superstitious show of faith.

Cade’s heart beat wildly. A hand reached out in front of him and it took him a moment to realize it was his own. He picked the medallion up and turned it over, knowing even before he did so what he would see.

The inscription read: Every day after this is a gift. Use them well.

He’d put it there, the day after the shooting, to remind himself just how fragile and transitory life was. He’d never taken the medallion off, not until that horrible summer day seven years ago.

Cade’s fist clenched around the medallion.

“Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice as cold as winter snow.

But Logan didn’t even flinch. He simply stared at Cade with those eyes that had seen too much and said, “She said you’d suspect that I’d taken it from her grave, so she gave me a message for you.”

Cade visibly started. It was as if Logan was reading his mind. He had been thinking that Logan, or at least one of his cronies, had disturbed Gabrielle’s rest and he was ready to tear the man limb from limb for doing so.

“One day at a time. She told me to tell you one day at a time.”

A wave of dizziness washed over Cade at the implications of what Logan was saying. Seven years ago he’d put that same Saint Christopher medallion in his wife’s hand just before the funeral director had closed the casket over her still and silent form. Call it superstitious, but he’d wanted her to have some extra protection in the next life, considering how horribly this one had ended for her. He vividly remembered leaning down to kiss her cold cheek and whispering to her, asking her how he was going to survive without her.

She’d apparently decided to finally answer his question.

Cade stayed lost in thought for several long moments. At last he looked up and met Logan’s eager gaze. “I’m listening,” he said.

Logan seemed to gain some of his old confidence back at Cade’s reaction. He stepped away from the bars, and went back to pacing back and forth across the space of his cell. “I have some requests,” he began, but Cade cut him off.

“I don’t have time to play games, Logan. Get to the point.”

The Necromancer turned to face him.

“Sunlight.”

“I’m sorry?” The comment was so unexpected that Cade had trouble following the other man’s train of thought.

“Sunlight. I want to see sunlight again, before the end of my trial.”

Cade didn’t even have to think about it. He knew the prisoner was going to be transferred from Bennington to Longfort at the end of the month and doing so would require him to travel in an armored transport vehicle. The transport had windows. Provided it didn’t rain on the day he made the trip, Cade knew he could persuade the warden to forget the blindfold and let the prisoner have one last look at the sunlight, though why Logan would want it was beyond Cade’s ability to fathom. No matter. He’d put a window in Logan’s personal cell if that was what it would take to get the information he needed out of him, orders to the contrary be damned.

“Done,” Cade replied. “Sunlight. Before the end of your trial.”

Logan grinned slyly, but Cade pretended not to see it. “Now,” he said instead, “tell me what she said.”

Logan explained that Gabrielle’s shade was visiting him every night, tormenting him, refusing to let him sleep. “She just keeps repeating the same refrain, over and over again, her voice like an ice pick in my mind.” He closed his eyes, as if he wanted to avoid any distractions and get it right.

“The Lady in the Tower sleeps beneath the banner of night on the island of lost dreams, but her sleep is not restful and she can find no peace.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I would think it would be obvious, Commander.”

“So wow me with your superior knowledge.”

“Your wife is not dead, simply a captive of the Adversary.”

Cade stood there, stunned.

It was perhaps the last thing he’d ever expected to hear. And yet, somehow, he suspected that the Necromancer was right.

Gabrielle? Alive?

That put a whole new perspective on things.

Chapter Three

Cade spent the next three days wrestling with his thoughts, trying to come to grips with the doubts that had arisen in the aftermath of his conversation with the Necromancer. They had burrowed deep within the heart of him, their questing tendrils seeking out the soft places of his soul and anchoring there like some kind of cancerous mass, growing roots, oozing outward unchecked, until they were so large that ignoring them was not an option. Not knowing would eat him alive, would consume him from the inside out. There was no other choice, he would have to see for himself.

For that, he was going to need help.

Later that afternoon he knocked on the door to Riley’s quarters in the senior noncoms housing unit. “I could use your help,” Cade said to him without preamble when Riley opened the door.

The other man shrugged. “Sure. Anything you need.”

“You might want to hear me out first,” said Cade and something in his voice made Riley do just that.

Cade had his personal vehicle there at the commandery and so the two of them took a leisurely afternoon drive, wandering the back roads as Cade laid out the problem and exactly what he intended to do.

Riley was silent as Cade talked, letting him get it all out without interruption, but when he was finished Riley didn’t hold anything back.

“You know Logan’s a lying son-of-a-bitch, don’t you? That he’s probably telling you all this just to mess with your head?”

Cade nodded. “That was my first reaction, too. But what if he’s not?”

“What do you mean ’what if he’s not’? Of course he is! He’s the freakin’ Necromancer. Lying is all that he does.”

“Maybe. And maybe not. But I can’t take that chance. If there is even the slightest possibility that some part of what he told me is the truth, then I need to find out. And there is only one way of doing that.”

Riley shook his head. “What you’re proposing is nuts. It’s public property and the cops are always cruising by the place. You wouldn’t last twenty minutes.”

Cade shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any choice. I’ve got to try and see for myself. I’m going nuts second guessing it all.”

Riley didn’t reply.

They continued driving in silence for a time, each of them lost in their own thoughts. The December landscape unfolded around them, empty fields and stark, barren trees that reached outward with skeletal branches, the road winding up and down, around this hill and over that, headed everywhere and nowhere. Cade knew the idea was risky, and he had no desire to explain everything to the police should they be caught, but he was willing to take the chance. The only issue was whether his friend was willing to go along with it.

After a long while, Cade spoke up. “So, are you in or not?”

Riley looked over at him. “Of course I’m in.”

And at that, Cade just had to smile.

It was a simple headstone, plain grey New Hampshire granite, its front polished to a glistening shine so that the words carved into its face contrasted sharply with the smooth surface. Unlike the other stones around it, this one did not contain a name. Nor was there the usual assemblage of dates. Cade had not seen the need for them; he knew who rested here, knew when she had been born and the awful day that she’d died. He didn’t need a set of dates to remind him. He’d known that he’d be the only one returning here after the funeral was over and he’d chosen to leave them off the marker. In their place he had selected a line from Dickens that seemed particularly appropriate to him during those dark summer days immediately following Gabrielle’s death.

It is a far, far better rest I go to,

than I have ever known

Now, looking at those words in the pale light of his flashlight, he was struck with an overwhelming sense of bitterness. What foolish arrogance had made him choose that quote over some other? Rest was certainly the last thing she had received and he suspected that it was his fault.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Riley asked. Cade knew it was his friend’s way of giving him one last chance to think about the potential consequences, but he’d already made up his mind. He had to know. It was as simple as that.

In answer to Riley’s question, Cade picked up his shovel, drove it deep into the earth in front of the headstone, and began digging.

Riley watched him for a moment and then joined in.

They worked in companionable silence, save for the sound their shovels made biting into the dirt and the whispering of the wind through the trees around them like a watchful taskmaster urging them on. The recent rains had softened the earth, but all the moisture it retained made it heavier and Cade soon found himself sweating from the effort. His only focus was getting to the casket below so that he could quench the growing sense of urgency unfurling in his gut.

They piled the dirt beside the grave, knowing they were going to need it again before they were finished. Its rich ,full scent filled Cade’s nostrils and he thought it strange how the aroma of life could be found here even surrounded by so much death. The work was hard, the dirt heavy and seemingly unwilling to reveal that which it hid from prying eyes. A backhoe would have made the effort far easier, but Cade dared not risk it. This was a public cemetery, after all, and the machine would only call attention to them. A passerby might miss a pair of men digging in the glow of a flashlight but ignoring a bright yellow piece of earth moving equipment was another story entirely. Getting caught was the last thing Cade wanted to happen; grave robbery had a fairly serious sentence attached to it. He’d taken as many precautions as he could think of. They’d parked his Cherokee in the woods a couple hundred yards away from the cemetery entrance and had cut through the woods until they’d reached the stone fence that surrounded the property. They’d clambered up and over it and from there made their way through the maze of headstones until they’d come to the secluded area where Gabrielle had been laid to rest. It was in the rear quarter of the cemetery, as far from the road as it was possible to get, and their flashlights were covered with red filters to limit their visibility.

Two hours after they started, Riley’s shovel hit something hard, something that wasn’t dirt. He drew the shovel out of the ground and pushed it back in again, this time a few feet to the left of his previous strike. Another dull thud came back to them.

They worked more quickly after that, reenergized by the discovery, and it wasn’t long before the top of the casket was revealed, its black lacquer surface, so polished and shiny the last time Cade had laid eyes on it, now dulled from the patina of dirt that coated it. Once the lid was uncovered it took only a short burst of effort to clear the earth away from the sides of the casket, giving them room to open it. As Riley climbed out of the hole to get the necessary tools, Cade got down on his knees and examined the lid. Even in the limited light of his flashlight he could tell at once that it was still sealed shut, just as it had been the day it had been lowered into the ground.

As he waited, Cade’s thoughts turned to what was before him. Gabrielle’s death had not been an easy one. The damage the Adversary had done to her face had been horrible. In the autopsy that followed, a legal requirement in the case of a homicide, the medical examiner had been unable to determine a specific cause of death. The idea that a mortician would continue the process the ME had begun, heaping further indignities on her earthly remains had been more than Cade could bear and he’d had her immediately buried without even the benefit of being embalmed, wanting to get the whole process over with as quickly as possible. To be certain the funeral home carried out his wishes, he insisted on being present throughout the preparation process and had them seal the casket in front of him.

Now, seven years later, he knew little would remain of the woman he had once held so lovingly in his arms. The human body began decomposing shortly after death and nature was remarkably efficient at the process of tearing it down. Cade knew that within just a few weeks the hair, teeth, and nails become detached from the rest of the body, the body itself swells with gases, the skin splits open, and the tissues begin to liquefy. After about a year all that’s left are a bare skeleton and teeth.

As Cade cleaned the last of the dirt from the lid of the coffin, Riley jumped back down into the pit, a pair of tire irons in one hand and a battery-powered electric drill in the other.

Handing Cade the drill, he asked, “Are you ready?”

Cade nodded.

Nothing but dust and bones, he thought, dust and bones. I can handle that.

The lock on the casket wasn’t a typical pin and tumbler device but actually a simple cranking mechanism. A narrow key, similar to an Allen wrench, was inserted into the lock and then the key was turned several times to crank down the lid and seal it tightly. Cade had no doubt that moisture from the spring rains and melting winter snow had gotten into the lock over the years, corroding the interior, sealing together the moving parts deep in the core, and so he hadn’t even bothered trying to get his hands on a proper casket key. Instead, he’d brought along a battery-powered electric drill and he used it now to drill out the lock itself, driving deep holes into the center of the mechanism, effectively rendering it useless.

When he was finished, Riley handed him one of the two crowbars they had brought with them and each man took up a position on either side of lock with about three feet between them. Inserting the flat ends of their wedges into the thin space along the rubber seal between the side of the casket and the lid, Riley counted to three aloud and then they pushed down with all their weight.

At first the lid resisted the effort to open it. But after working at it for several long minutes, they began to make some headway. Finally, there was a sharp crack as the lock broke and the lid jumped open a few inches before coming back down to rest against the edge of their crowbars.

Riley stepped back a few feet, giving Cade some distance out of respect for what he had to do, and for that Cade was grateful. Cade put down the crowbar, placed both hands on the lid, bracing himself for what was to come. Gathering his courage, he said a quick prayer for forgiveness, and then pushed the lid fully open.

For a long moment all he could do was stare. Somewhere in the back of his mind he dimly registered Riley’s whispered “Mary, Mother of God!” but didn’t acknowledge it. He couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to, for what lay in front of him stripped him of his ability to do anything but stare in shocked amazement.

His wife Gabrielle’s body lay inside the casket just as it had on the day they’d sealed it away, perfectly preserved and without even the faintest hint of decomposition or decay. It was as if she belonged in some storybook fairytale, Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or some such, the princess resting peacefully on the bed of white silk that lined the casket, dressed in the sky blue summer dress that Cade had selected for her so long ago. Her hair shone as though a brush had been run through those auburn tresses only moments before and her skin was firm and taut, just as it had been in life. Her good eye was still closed, adding to the illusion that she was just sleeping, and it was so perfect, so real, that Cade found himself reaching out with one hand, intent on checking for a pulse, half-believing for just a moment that maybe she wasn’t dead, that there had been some horrible mistake and that she had been waiting here all this time for him to come and rescue her.

Reality came rushing back in with a crash, as his gaze landed on the thick piece of gauze that had been used to cover the other side of her face, the side that the Adversary had sloughed the skin from, leaving the tissue and muscles beneath exposed to the light, and on the end of the autopsy incision that could just been seen near the scooped neckline of her dress. Gabrielle was dead, Cade knew that, knew it with the certainty of one who has loved and lost, and yet…and yet something clearly wasn’t right here.

“What sorcery is this?” Riley asked, stepping next to Cade so as to get a better look at the tableau laid out before him.

Sorcery indeed, Cade thought, and he knew that Riley had it right in one. Sorcery was exactly what had happened here, sorcery of the type that only a creature as powerful as the Adversary could pull off. With a sudden flash of understanding, Cade reached up and pulled the eye patch off his right eye. He turned his bad eye just so, activating his Sight, and the shimmering web of arcane energies that surrounded his wife’s body sprang into view, wrapping her so deeply in their depths that she resembled a spider’s prey encased in a cocoon.

Cade let Riley know what he was seeing.

“This is not good, boss, not good at all,” the big master sergeant said and for the first time that night there was a hint of fear in his tone.

“Tell me about it,” Cade muttered back in reply, still examining the black glistening bands of energy that shimmered with power in front of his eyes. He’d never seen anything like them and considering all the strange and unusual things he’d dealt with in the years since he’d joined the Order that was saying a lot.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m taking her home,” Cade replied, hesitantly at first, and then with more conviction. “Yes, taking her home.”

Riley ran a dirty hand over his bald head. “Man, I don’t know,” he said. He started pacing in the small space in front of the unearthed casket. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

Cade laughed and there wasn’t anything close to humor in it. “Of course it’s not a good idea. But what else am I going to do? Leave her here? Just cover her up again and pretend that I don’t know anything about it? Not bloody likely!”

“Damn it, Cade, for all you know she’s some kind of ticking time bomb, waiting until she’s close enough to her target before going off with a bang. You can’t bring that kind of power into the commandery without knowing more about it.”

Cade shook his head. “Who said anything about the commandery? I’m taking her home. To my place. I can put her in the workshop, get someone I know to erect a series of wards around her. That way, if anything does happen, it will be confined within the bounds of a sacred circle, limiting its impact.”

“How do you even know it’s safe to touch her?”

Cade gave that one some thought. His Sight hadn’t manifested itself until several weeks after Gabrielle’s funeral, so he hadn’t known anything about the mysterious web of power before unearthing her body, but he suspected that whatever it was, it had been there since the moment the Adversary snatched her life away. Which meant that the police, the coroner, and even the funeral home staff had touched her without disturbing it and that reinforced Cade’s suspicion that he could do the same. Impulsively, he stripped off a glove and reached out toward her. Riley shouted “No!” but wasn’t in time to stop Cade from laying his hand upon Gabrielle’s.

Chapter Four

Her skin was warm.

Cade snatched his hand back, swearing beneath his breath.

“What is it?” Riley asked, and when Cade turned to face him, he found Riley standing with his gun pointed at the casket, his gaze jumping back and forth between Gabrielle’s body and Cade.

“Her skin,” Cade said, “It’s…warm.”

“Warm?” Riley asked, his thumb stealing along the butt of his pistol and flicking the safety off as he turned to give the casket and what it contained his full attention.

Cade pushed the muzzle of the gun downward. “It’s okay,” he said, holding up his other hand in a calming gesture, “it just surprised me is all. I wasn’t expecting it.”

Riley still looked uneasy, but he deferred to Cade’s judgment.

Cade pulled his glove back on, realizing as he did so that he'd been spared the usual flood of psychic images generated whenever he touched someone. Another puzzle to solve apparently, but first things first. He reached into the casket, sliding his hands beneath his wife’s body, and lifted her carefully out. Her body was soft and pliant, like she had simply fallen asleep rather than been dead and buried for seven long years. Feelings Cade had never adequately dealt with came rushing back, threatening to overwhelm him.

Focus, man, focus.

Turning, he found that Riley had climbed out of the hole and was now waiting at the edge to accept his burden, so he passed Gabrielle up to him before climbing out himself. Riley placed Gabrielle gently in the grass a few feet away before returning to Cade's side. The two men then picked the shovels back up and got to work filling in the grave as quickly as they could, conscious that if they were discovered now it would be disastrous.

Filling in the hole took a lot less time than digging it had and it wasn’t long before they were winding their way back between the headstones; Riley carrying the tools and leading the way while Cade followed behind with Gabrielle’s body slung over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. When they reached the stone wall that marked the burial ground’s perimeter, Riley tossed the tools one at a time over the top. The ’clank’ they made as they landed in the gravel on the other side seemed unnaturally loud in the night’s stillness. They waited a moment to see if anything came of it and when nothing did, Riley boosted himself up onto the wall and then disappeared over the other side.

It was about a ten-minute walk back to where they’d left the Jeep, which meant Cade had some time alone with Gabrielle before Riley returned. He sat with her in his arms, his back against the wall, and talked to her. Told her how much he loved her. How much he missed her. How sorry he was that he hadn’t searched for her and of how he would do anything to release her from whatever strange sorcery held her in its grip. His tears flowed freely.

A few minutes later Riley was back, a blanket and coil of rope he’d taken from the back of Cade’s Jeep in hand.

Riley tossed the blanket over the wall to Cade, who used it to wrap up Gabrielle’s body. While Riley held onto one end of the rope, Cade wound the other end around the blanket-wrapped form, tied it securely off, and then climbed up astride the wall where he guided the bundle up the side of the wall as Riley hauled on the rope from the other side. Once the body reached the top, Cade lifted it over the edge and then passed it down to Riley, who was waiting below.

Riley picked up the tools and then led the way through the woods as Cade followed behind him carrying Gabrielle. It didn’t take them long and both men breathed a sigh of relief once Gabrielle’s body was secured beneath a blanket on the rear seat.

The ride passed without incident. Arriving at home, Cade drove around behind the house to his workshop, a two-story barn that he had gutted and remodeled shortly after buying the property. He turned the Jeep around in the drive and backed it up close to the entrance. His neighbors were half-a-mile away on either side, far enough that the chances of being seen were slim in the middle of the day, never mind the dead of night, but Cade had learned to be cautious. The two men maneuvered Gabrielle’s body out of the back of the Jeep and carried it inside.

What had once been horse stables was now a large, open room with bookshelves lining the walls and several work tables arranged in a semi-circle facing toward the door. A wood-burning stove stood in the far corner, its thick black pipe running up through the floor of the second story high above.

Cade caught Riley’s glance at the throw rug in the center of the room between the tables, where a large mirror had been hidden only a few weeks before.

“Don’t worry, it’s gone.” Cade said.

The mirror had served its purpose, allowing Cade regular travel into the Beyond while he searched for his wife’s shade, but it had almost killed him, too. If it hadn’t been for Riley’s timely arrival on that night less than a month before, he would have died from hunger and thirst, the prolonged travel in and out of the Beyond having depleted his body’s resources without him being aware of it. Riley had called in the cavalry, rushing him by helicopter to the nearby Ravensgate Commandery and into the care of the best physicians the Order had on call.

Cade still wasn’t exactly clear about who or what had miraculously cured him while in the hospital, but there was no doubt that it had been a supernatural event. He had vague memories of a hooded figure standing over his bedside but that was all. At the time he’d suspected Lieutenant Duncan of using his own unusual powers to heal him, but the younger soldier swore adamantly that he had nothing to do with it when confronted later about the issue.

They carried Gabrielle’s body over to the couch and laid her down gently.

“You want me to get a few of our mystics over here?” Riley asked, reaching for the cell phone on his belt.

Cade shook his head. “I’d rather keep the Order out of this for as long as I can.”

“But I thought you were going to have the place warded?”

“I am. I’m just not going to use the Order’s mystics to do it.”

Riley thought about that one for a moment, then said, “Okay. I suspect this is one of those things that I don’t really want to know, right?”

Cade lifted his hands in a “What can I say?” gesture.