Infernal Cries: An Echo Team Urban Fantasy Novel Page 10

  Well, that answers one question, he thought. I’m still in France.

  Cade hadn’t gone another hundred yards before the sound of an engine reached his ears. He looked back and saw two headlights coming his way, lights that morphed into a full pickup truck as it drew closer. Cade stopped and stuck out his thumb. He was now shivering in the cold.

  The Frenchman behind the wheel took pity on him and pulled over.

  “Ou allez-vous?” the grizzled old man behind the wheel asked.

  Cade didn’t understand a word. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  The driver shook his head and said something more in French.

  Cade didn’t understand that any better than the first thing, but that didn’t stop him from pointing at the lights ahead in the distance and asking, “Toulouse?”

  The old man nodded and gestured for Cade to get in.

  The battered old pickup rumbled and groaned like it was on its last leg, but the heat was on and Cade quickly shook off the chill that had started to envelop him. The clock on the dash said 4:35, which told Cade the time, though he still didn’t know which day. He knew he’d find out sooner or later and tried not to let it bother him. A glance into the back of the truck showed the purpose for the farmer’s drive into the city; the bodies of several large hogs lay in back, trussed and ready for delivery to the butcher.

  The driver’s breakfast was on the seat between them; a hunk of hard cheese and a roll of hard salami. The driver must have caught Cade looking, for he gestured at the food, mimed Cade having some, and said “Mangez!”

  That was easy enough to figure out. “Thanks,” Cade said, and helped himself to a small piece of each. He cut the same for the driver and the two of them rode along in companionable silence, munching on their breakfast.

  Toulouse was the sixth largest metropolitan center in France, home to just over a million people. It sat on the bank of the River Garonne, some 150 kilometers east of the Mediterranean Sea, and served as home to some of the biggest companies in the French aerospace industry, such as Galileo, Airbus, and SPOT. As such, it not only had an excellent local airport but a well-trafficked train station as well.

  The farmer let Cade off just inside the city limits near a local metro station. Cade shook his hand, gave him a hearty “Merci!” and waved as the old man pulled back onto the road, then headed for the station at a brisk walk.

  Once inside the terminal, he walked by the newsstand. The masthead of the local newspaper told him it was Friday morning, so he’d lost an entire day and a half while inside the Beyond. He cursed, furious with himself for having to resort to such tactics in order to get out of the monastery. Hopefully the Necromancer had not grown impatient and nothing had happened to Gabrielle in the meantime. He spent a few minutes weighing his options. Flights out of Toulouse were all local, so he had to get to Paris in order to catch a plane back to the States. He could fly, but that would mean using his false passport again and he would prefer to limit doing so as much as possible. Every use was a potential flag for the Order’s tech geeks to trace him with. The train, on the other hand, would take considerably longer, but he didn’t have to show ID in order to ride it and wouldn’t show up on any passenger manifest as a result.

  A quick check of the schedule showed a train leaving for Paris at 6:30 that morning, which put him into Paris in time to catch an afternoon flight back to New York. He bought a ticket and then wasted the hour or so prior to the train’s departure sitting in a nearby café drinking black coffee and thinking about how he was going to deal with things when he returned to the States.

  When the time came, Cade boarded the train, found himself a window seat near the back of a car, and settled in for the five-hour trip to Paris.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was close to midnight, local time, when the helicopter carrying Echo’s command team settled into the courtyard of the monastery in question. Riley could see a small group of monks gathered near the entrance to the cathedral watching, and by the time the rotors wound down enough for Riley to disembark he saw that they had been joined by a tall, thin fellow who fit the description of Abbot Martin, the man with whom he was ordered to make contact.

  They flew from La Guardia aboard the Order’s Gulfstream to Paris and took the helicopter south from there, in the mountains and to the monastery. It was faster than driving and saved them from having to navigate the treacherous mountain roads on little sleep.

  The abbot was the only person at the monastery who was aware of the continued existence of the Templar Order – all senior Church officials were – and so to protect the anonymity of Riley and his team, the rest of the monks were told that they were a group of security specialists who’d been hired to keep this from happening again. Quite a few men in that profession were ex-military these days and the cover story kept his men from having to be concerned about the way they looked and moved; combat-readiness was hard to disguise.

  Just another example of the Order’s penchant for hiding in plain sight.

  Riley approached the abbot and introduced himself. “Matt Riley, sir. I understand you’re expecting us?”

  “That I am. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  For the benefit of those listening more than anything else, Riley said, “I only wish you’d called us sooner, sir. Let’s see what we can do about keeping this from happening again, shall we?”

  The abbot nodded his agreement and led Riley and the others over to the entrance to the sanctuary. When several of the spectators moved to follow, he gave them a hard stare that had them suddenly remembering other places they needed to be.

  “They don’t mean any harm,” the abbot said to Riley, who was watching the monks as they wandered off. “They’re just curious.”

  “Of course.” Riley said. However, he was thinking of the last time he’d been called to investigate the theft of a relic and the inside man who’d helped carry it off. He would speak to the other monks when he was done in the chapel; especially those who had found the injured man.

  Speaking of which…

  “I understand one of your people was injured. How’s he doing?”

  The abbot sighed and Riley could all but see the weight of responsibility settle on the man’s shoulders like a suit of iron. “Not well. The doctors tell me he is suffering from a cerebral edema as a result of the blow. The swelling of his brain is starting to interfere with bodily functions. We have him on a respirator and are doing everything we can to reduce the pressure, but the longer the blood flow is reduced the more damage it's causing.”

  It was not what Riley had hoped to hear. “I’m sorry to hear that, Abbot. My men will pray for you both.”

  Two men stood guard in front of the entrance to the chapel.

  Kind of like locking the barn down after the horses have fled, Riley thought, then pushed the uncharitable thought away. These men were just simple Benedictine monks; this high in the mountains they had probably never even thought about being a target for theft, never mind having any idea of the true horrors that walked the pathways of the world and might want what they were guarding. He needed to keep that in mind as he dealt with them.

  But all thoughts of proper courtesy fled when Riley stepped into the chapel and his gaze fell on the smashed mirror on the wall behind the reliquary.

  A few shards of glass still hung around the edge of the frame. But where he expected the floor to be littered with them, it was suspiciously clean.

  The hair on the back of his neck went up.

  He’d seen this kind of thing before.

  Don’t jump to conclusions.

  The abbot had been speaking. “…with us for hundreds of years and no one seemed to care. Then today, or rather yesterday, we get not just one, but two individuals who were interested in it.”

  Riley started, pulled from his reverie by the abbot’s words.

  “I’m sorry; what did you just say?” he asked.

  The abbot looked embarrassed, though whether that wa
s for his own comments or Riley’s inattention, Riley didn’t know. The older man shrugged and said, “I was just remarking on the sudden recent interest in the Hand. Highly unusual.”

  “You said you had two individuals who took an interest in the Hand. Assuming one is whoever made off with it last night, who was the other?”

  “The Monsignor from the Vatican. The one doing the inventory.”

  At Riley’s blank stare the abbot added, “I told your Preceptor about him and assumed he’d passed on the information. My apologies. We had a visit from a Monsignor Evans, from the Sacred Office of the Propagation of the Faith yesterday afternoon. His Eminence, Cardinal Bollinger, has apparently ordered an inventory of some kind.”

  “Can you describe this man to me?”

  “Dark hair. Average height and build. Dressed as you would expect a Catholic priest to be dressed but with an eye patch over one eye.”

  A chill went up Riley’s spine.

  “Do you remember which eye?”

  The abbot thought about it for a moment. “The right. No, the left…sorry, I’m not certain.”

  The right side of the Necromancer’s face, especially the area around his eye socket, was hideously scarred and it made sense that he might wear an eye patch to hide it.

  But the mirror…

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  The other man frowned, hesitated, and then said, “You might think me crazy but there was a strange energy about him, like the feeling in the air when a raging summer storm is just about to break. He was unfailingly polite, friendly even, but at times I was…afraid of him, I guess.”

  Not liking what he was hearing, Riley gestured to the floor beneath the reliquary. “Did your people clean up in here?”

  The abbot appeared shocked. “Good heavens, no! As soon as we discovered the theft, we moved Brother Samuel to the infirmary and then left the chapel exactly as we found it.”

  In an absurd way, Riley had been hoping… but there seemed no way around it now.

  It wasn't the Necromancer who’d stolen the Hand, it was Cade!

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Riley and his team spent the morning interviewing the personnel at the monastery, hoping to find that one piece of information that would tell them where their thief was headed, but they came up empty-handed. No one, expect perhaps Brother Samuel, had seen anything and Samuel wasn’t talking. He was too busy fighting for his life as the edema caused by the blow to his head threatened to shut down the blood flow to his brain.

  Echo’s commander desperately hoped this wouldn’t become a murder investigation.

  After several hours of getting nowhere, the team packed up and headed back to Paris via helicopter. While en route Riley used his phone to contact the head of the local commandery, giving him an update on what he had learned thus far. He did not mention Cade’s involvement, not wanting to put his friend in the crosshairs. There was still too much Riley didn’t know and if some knight decided to shoot first and ask questions later, Riley would have to live with that on his conscience for the rest of his life.

  That decision prevented him from putting out a Bolo, or Be On the Look Out, warning for Cade which meant he was likely going to be able to slip through security at the airport in Paris and return to the States before Riley had a chance to stop him.

  If he hasn’t flown out already.

  So be it. He wasn’t going to call out the cavalry and have every Tom, Dick, and Harry gunning for Cade until he knew more.

  The helicopter touched down at the heliport on the south side of Charles de Gaulle Airport and the team disembarked. Members of the local commandery were waiting there to help unload the gear and to ensure that it was transported over to the waiting jet in the executive terminal on the other side of the sprawling airport complex.

  With some time to kill before they went wheels up, Riley ushered the team into the nearest passenger terminal to get some food.

  By the time Cade arrived in Paris, he had come up with a plan for confronting the Necromancer when the two of them met to hand over the relic. First, though, he had to get home.

  He was still reasonably confident that the Order did not know the extent to which he was cooperating with the Necromancer. They’d probably used the remote tracking device attached to every Templar vehicle to learn he’d taken the stolen Suburban back to his place in Willow Grove. He’d left the tracker in the vehicle for that very reason. Depending upon who found the vehicle, chances were good that they discovered the damage to his house while doing so. That may, or may not, have raised some questions.

  Just how concerned they were about those questions would determine how difficult it was going to be for him to get out of Europe with the Hand in his possession.

  He took a taxi to the airport, paying the driver with cash to avoid the credit trail, and headed for men’s room as soon as he entered the terminal. He found an empty stall and used the privacy it afforded him to affix the extra diplomatic seals he carried to the outside of his messenger bag after removing his passport and airline ticket from a pocket inside. Leaving the restroom, he headed for the ticket counter and checked in for his flight without difficulty.

  He was starting to think all of his concerns had been for nothing when he looked up and saw Riley coming down the hall toward him.

  Cade was just passing a hallway that intersected with the one he was in and he took advantage of the opportunity, ducking right and hoping like hell he hadn’t been seen. He moved a good ten feet down the corridor and then stood to one side of the hall, pretending to be talking on his cell phone while surreptitiously watching the entrance to the corridor.

  If Riley made the turn…

  He did not; Cade watched as he walked right on past, never even glancing in Cade’s direction.

  Cade stayed where he was, watching, and seconds later saw both Manny Ortega and Jimmy Martinez follow in Riley’s wake. That left only Simmons from Echo’s command team unaccounted for.

  Cade waited another moment or two for the missing man to arrive, but to no avail. Perhaps Simmons had been walking ahead of Riley?

  It didn’t really matter one way or the other, Cade supposed. What mattered was what they were doing here.

  There’s at least one way to find out…

  Riley’s phone rang.

  He dug it out of his pocket and glanced down at the display, noting that the incoming number was blocked. Very few people had his number and those that did would have no reason to block their incoming line. Frowning, he hit the answer button.

  “Hello?”

  “I hear you’re in Paris.”

  Cade.

  “Where I am doesn’t matter. I’m more interested in where the hell you are! Do you know how much trouble you dropped me into?”

  “Sorry about that, but I didn’t have a choice. Nor do I when I tell you to get clear of this thing.”

  Riley frowned. “What thing? Tracking the Necromancer? Kind of hard to do at this point, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. Trust me when I tell you that you need to stay out of this.”

  “I’m the one who called you in on it, remember?” Riley replied.

  He slowed his pace, letting the others get a few yards ahead of him so they wouldn’t be able to hear his end of the conversation and know that he was talking with Cade.

  “That may be,” Cade said, “but things have changed. I need to deal with this my way and I can’t have the Order screwing it up!”

  “Deal with what?” Riley shot back. “What are you talking about? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  Cade refused to answer.

  “Come on, man. Give me something. I’ve been to your house. I saw the room upstairs. Does this have something to do with Gabrielle?”

  When Riley didn’t get an answer, he abruptly changed tactics.

  “You want to know why I’m in Paris, Cade? I’m here because of the theft of a relic that’s hundreds of years old. You wouldn�
�t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  More silence.

  Somehow the silence seemed angrier this time.

  Riley was getting angry himself. “They say that that old man might not make it; seems the blow to his head caused some internal bleeding and pressure that they can’t stop.”

  Riley gave it a beat but when Cade didn’t respond he said, “Look, man. Johansson is suggesting that you were involved with Logan’s escape. I’m supposed to bring you in so we can all clear the air and get this nonsense taken care of properly.”

  That got Cade to respond.

  “Johannson’s an asshole,” Cade said sourly.

  “True, but that doesn’t mean we can just ignore him. Whatever it is that you are dealing with, why not come in, have your say, and then let the Order help you deal with it?”

  Cade laughed, but there was nothing amusing in his tone as he said, “Yeah, right. Just the way they did when we needed help rescuing Duncan from the Chiang Shih?”

  Riley didn’t have an answer for that. Three months before, the youngest and newest member of the Echo Team, Sergeant Sean Duncan, had been captured by a horde of bloodsucking Chinese vampires known as the Chiang Shih. They had taken him beyond the Curtain to the elemental plane known as the Beyond and had tortured him for information. Duncan had survived that, only to fall into the hands of Cade’s most fervent enemy, the Adversary. Cade had been preparing to take the Echo Team across the Curtain to rescue him when Johannson had ordered the team to stand down. Even worse, he’d gone straight to the Seneschal, Cade’s direct report, to get him to forbid the team from making the attempt.

  Cade was right; he shouldn’t expect any help from the Order, especially not with the Preceptor already gunning for him.

  Reading his silence for just what it was – agreement – Cade said, “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Riley, but if you interfere that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Keep your head down and stay out of my way, you hear?”