Exodus, page 2
Well, the time is now, my son. I feel I’m being selfish by wishing that it hadn’t happened in your time. But that would only have meant wishing this horrible act onto your children, or their children.
None of us should have to pay the blood price that’s going to be required to see this thing through to the end. But that’s what I swore to do, and I’ll see it done.
The demons have arrived, Simon. They’ve come to London through the Hellgates, magical and technological openings between our world and theirs, and fulfilled the ancient prophecies. They’re bigger and stronger than we ever thought they would be.
As I write this letter, as I prepare myself for the battle that lies ahead, I know only that you’re in South Africa. I’ve tried the phone numbers that you left, but everyone there says you’re off in bush country and won’t be expected for a few more days as yet. I knew it had to be something like that since you didn’t call when the demons first openly attacked. But several of the communications satellites have been destroyed by the demons as well.
The Templar may contact you, my son. If that’s even possible. Or perhaps other Hellgates have opened around the world. I’m afraid I don’t know. There’s even a chance, and acknowledging it makes my heart heavy, that you’ll never see this—my final letter to you. I pray that isn’t so. A father should have a chance to tell his son a final good-bye.
If the Templar do speak with you, they’ll want you back here, to fight and die in the battle to rid the world of the hellspawn. I don’t know what your answer will be. With the odds so stacked against us, I don’t know that there is a wrong answer. Fighting means dying, if not today, then tomorrow. The same for running.
I pray that there is a weakness in the demons, something they’ve overlooked, something that we may yet learn. And I pray that you stay safe and whole until I see you again.
I love you, Simon, with all my heart as I ever have.
Your Father
Thomas Cross
Templar Knight
Seraphim of the House of Rorke
The Carnagor lunged forward and snapped at Thomas. Ready for the move because that was a basic striking pattern for the creature, Thomas vaulted. His left foot landed on the Carnagor’s right tusk and he centered his balance just as it jerked its head up to snap at him again.
Propelled by the Carnagor’s efforts as well as his own, Thomas sailed into the air. The NanoDyne technology used in the armor spun through the mini-gyro systems and helped him stabilize. The armor not only increased his physical resistance, but it amplified his strength as well.
Thomas landed on the Carnagor’s head. “Anchor,” he ordered. Immediately, short spikes popped out of his boot soles and bit into the demon’s scaly hide.
The Carnagor roared, but whether in pain or just the effrontery of the human standing on its head, Thomas didn’t know. He reversed the sword, pointing it down, then rammed it home with all the strength he had at his command.
For a moment, Thomas didn’t think the sword was going to punch through the thick skull. Then, with a dull, grating thunk, it did. He bore down on the weapon, shoving it all the way to the hilt.
Blood and gore spurted out around the blade. The Carnagor roared in pain then. It reared and battered itself against St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Holding tightly to the imbedded sword, Thomas managed to stay atop the frenzied creature. He knelt, his left arm snaked around the sword to hold on.
“Knee anchors,” he ordered.
The suit responded, driving another group of spikes from the metal knees to bite deeply into the Carnagor. Further locked into place, Thomas drew his right fist back. “Right hand hammer.”
The gauntlet, powered by the NanoDyne technology memoryware, curled into a fist and became hard as an anvil. Raising his fist, Thomas bashed it against the Carnagor’s skull beside the sword over and over. Unable to hold against the unflagging effort, the demon’s skull fractured.
Bone turned sideways in the mass of ichor and gore at the top of the Carnagor’s head. Thomas unlocked his fist just as his sword slid free. He slapped his left palm against the demon’s head and triggered the anchors there. Locked into position again, holding on for dear life, the Templar reached deeply into the open cavity he’d created in his opponent’s skull.
His fist crunched through the broken bone. He tore the Carnagor’s brain out by the handful, emptying the skull. A moment later, the demon’s movements became awkward and unbalanced. The Carnagor sagged against a tree, and uprooted it from the ground before collapsing, shuddering a final time, and lying still.
Bruised and battered inside the armor, feeling nowhere near triumphant, Thomas got to his feet. “My sword,” he said.
Immediately, the HUD flicked a light on inside the 360-degree view and revealed that the sword was behind him. He released the anchors and leaped from the Carnagor’s back. His heavy weight drove his feet several inches into the blood-covered ground.
He drew the Spike Bolter as he crossed the ground to pick up his sword. He fisted it, then turned to look for his next opponent.
There were more demons than Templar remaining. In the distance, smoke blew across the urban landscape. Only a few days ago, London’s citizens had shopped and eaten and worked in the area. Now it was little more than masses of rubble.
Tanks, armored cars, and other military machines the British Army had employed against the demons and found lacking lay abandoned, burned-out, and overturned in the streets like a child’s broken toys. Conventional warfare hadn’t even dented the demons’ armament.
Thomas ran. Not for his life, but that of another. Six Stalkers harried a female Templar. Her blue-tinted armor blazed azure sparks as the teeth and fangs of her attackers made contact. She wielded her sword with skill, causing ruby sparks to fly as she attacked. In the end, though, there were too many of them. Her attackers depended on numbers.
The Stalkers were small and wiry. Their lean, wolf-like bodies were covered in a mixture of fur and scales. Jagged, razor-edged claws stuck out from their forearms and backs. They had long, predatory snouts that opened up to rows of serrated teeth.
Thomas struck from behind, never thinking of giving quarter. Stalkers were jackals, preferring to mass on a victim and strike when their prey wasn’t looking or was already overwhelmed. Bringing his sword down in an overhand swing, Thomas cut and smashed through the Stalker’s spine.
Instantly, the demon howled in pain, but then attacked Thomas. It dragged its paralyzed hindquarters behind, slowing it. Still, though, it went for his groin, looking for vulnerable areas. Thomas slammed the hilt of his blade against the creature’s head, breaking teeth and crushing the skull. Twitching, fighting death every inch of the way, the Stalker collapsed to the ground.
The other Stalkers hadn’t given up their attack on the female Templar, though. Although many in number, they worked with single-minded purpose. One of them leaped to the back of another, then vaulted onto the Templar’s back.
Unable to stand against the assault, the Templar went down. Fangs and claws ripped at her armor, finally tearing it away.
“No!” Frantic, Thomas redoubled his efforts. He lopped the head from another Stalker just as the woman Templar put her blade through the throat of a third. No longer able to work with the sword as the Stalkers covered their fallen prey, Thomas abandoned his sword and drew the Spike Bolter.
Knotting his mailed hand in the scruff of razor-sharp tines across a Stalker’s shoulders, Thomas pulled the demon free of the pack. It turned on him, lunging for his face. Thomas shoved the Spike Bolter into the demon’s mouth and squeezed the trigger. Spikes erupted through the back of the Stalker’s head as it continued to try to bite Thomas’s hand off.
Thomas threw the carcass away. He put the pistol at the back of another Stalker’s head and pulled the trigger again. Spine severed, the demon went down in a mewling heap.
The surviving two Stalkers reluctantly sprang away, hissing and snarling challenges. They took up positions behind trees only a few feet away and called to others of their kind.
Thomas knew there wasn’t much time. The Stalkers would re-mass at any moment. He picked up his sword and knelt to the woman.
Blood covered her armor, and it was the good, rich blood of a human, not the foul pus of a demon. Judging from the amount of it, Thomas doubted he’d arrived in time.
“Who…who are you?” The woman’s weak voice echoed inside Thomas’s helmet.
“Thomas.” As long as he was in contact with the woman, a hand on her armor, he knew she’d hear him. “Thomas Cross.”
“The Seraphim…of the House of…Rorke.”
“Yes.”
“I know you.”
Thomas felt bad that he didn’t know her.
“I’m…Kathleen. A knight. Of the House…of Stratham.”
“We need to get you some help, Kathleen.” Thomas kept his voice calm, as if they were only discussing crossing a busy street.
“Too…too late.”
Somehow he knew she’d be smiling beneath her featureless mask. His hand against her armor told him her life signs were dropping. And there was nothing he could do.
“Die well,” she whispered.
“I will.”
She reached for his hand and he took it. Then the strength and the life fled from her.
Gently, Thomas placed her hand beside her. He thought about Simon again, about how this war—this unholy war—was going to be left to his son. So few of them. Levering himself to his feet, he surveyed the battlefield around St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The demons were winning. Just as Grand Master Sumerisle had believed they would. The Templar were there to struggle and die, to shed so much blood that the demons thought them all dead.
Here and there, though, the Cabalists—the strange group that had allied themselves with the Templar to fight the demons—were in evidence. They fought not to die, but to better understand the enemy and to scrape up whatever weapons or even body parts the demons left behind. Thomas feared they had their own agenda, though, and it wouldn’t be discovered until it was too late.
Remembering the woman he’d met, Keira Skyler, her strange clothing and the horns that jutted through her skin along her jaw, the writhing tentacles of hair, Thomas knew that those people could be a threat as well. If they had met under other terms, without the arrival of the demons through the Hellgates and the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Thomas knew they would not have been allies.
A raging, deep roar behind Thomas nearly froze the marrow in his bones. Locating the new threat on the HUD, he turned to face the demon, lifted his sword, and took aim with the Spike Bolter.
The demon towered fifteen feet tall, made even more huge and fearsome by the clustered spikes atop his reptilian head. Corded muscle stood out along his sinewy neck. Pointed fangs filled his huge, gaping maw. The broad expanse of his thick shoulders made his head look small by comparison. Broad-chested, clad in a gray-green chitinous growth as tough as Templar plate mail, the demon stood on legs thick as tree trunks. The scales picked up the light from the fires dancing atop the cathedral.
But the most fearsome thing about the demon was his left arm. It was impossibly huge, dwarfing his entire body. His right arm was thin and spindly, as if it would only take one good tug to yank it free.
“Shulgoth.” Thomas didn’t mean to say the demon’s name. There were some who maintained that naming a demon aloud gave it strength. Thomas didn’t know if he believed or disbelieved that.
But he knew this demon. He’d seen it crush the British military’s finest weapons. Shulgoth had waded in among them fearlessly. Armor-piercing rounds and even sabot rounds fired by British tanks only bounced from his impervious hide. Single-handedly, Shulgoth had lain waste to tanks, armored cars, and self-propelled guns. He’d left only carnage in his wake.
Snarling in a harsh grating language Thomas didn’t understand, Shulgoth opened his mouth and breathed out a cloud of vapor. Thomas ducked to the side but couldn’t evade all of the thing’s volatile breath. The gray steam slicked over his right arm and right side.
Instantly emergency lights flared up inside his HUD.
“Warning,” the calm male voice said. “Outer integrity of armor has been breached on—”
“Cancel warning.” Thomas ran, aware that Shulgoth raised his massive fist to slam down like a hammer. The Templar threw himself forward, rolled, and regained his feet as the blow struck the ground where he’d been.
Whirling, Thomas swung the sword into one of Shulgoth’s legs. The keen blade, further enhanced by the magic the Templar had woven into the weapon, bit deeply into the demon’s flesh. The acidic blood hissed and spat.
“Warning. The sword has taken—”
“Cancel warning.” Thomas could already see the damage the sword had taken. The palladium alloy was the hardest substance the Templars had to work with. Even it wasn’t impervious to the demons’ powers. Or their blood. He yanked the sword free.
Thomas dodged two more blows, then pulled the Spike Bolter up and fired at Shulgoth’s exposed eye. Rounds tracked along the side of the demon’s head and glanced from the spikes, but none of them struck home.
In the next instant, Shulgoth swept Thomas up in his harsh grip. The Templar felt his arms and legs break, heard his armor splinter. His ribcage and the armor’s torso became a vise over his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, but if he had been able to, he would have screamed in pain. He tried to fire the Spike Bolter, but he knew then that it was too late.
Shulgoth lifted Thomas to face him. The demon grinned. The long tongue slathered through the horrible fangs.
Thomas wanted to shout defiance at the blasphemous thing, to let it know that he wasn’t afraid. But he was afraid, and he knew he was dying. His crushed lungs wouldn’t let him make a sound.
Opening his jaws wide, Shulgoth breathed out a noxious breath. The purple-gray mist coiled against Thomas’s helm. In the next instant the HUD’s display lit up with warnings. Pitting scarred Thomas’s vision.
Then, mercifully, everything went black. But his last thoughts were of his son, of Simon, wondering if they would see each other again.
One
FYNBOS BIOME
OUTSIDE CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
L oud gunshots woke Simon Cross from a too-short slumber and threw him directly into the path of a killer hangover. He sat up in the tent, automatically reaching for the hunting rifle beside his sleeping bag. He tried to figure out where the gunshots had come from, but had to admit that he might have dreamed them.
Or hallucinated them. He groaned and cursed as he forced himself to his feet. You know better than to drink like that, you stupid git. Especially while you’re out in the brush.
Bright sunlight lay in wait outside the tent and the mosquito netting. No one else was up and about. The three other tents comprising the group of vacationing tourists he’d brought out to view the flora and fauna of the Fynbos grasslands for the last two weeks hadn’t stirred.
Simon listened intently but the gunshots weren’t repeated. You dreamed it. Go back to bed. Get what little sleep you’ve got coming to you and be glad of it. With all that alcohol in your system, you’re going to be sweating your bleeding guts out today.
With a sigh, he turned back to the sleeping bag. Last night Saundra had joined him. Sometimes she did, but she liked to be out of his tent before their clients got out of bed.
Saundra McIntyre was long and lean, five foot ten if she was an inch, but he still towered seven inches above her and made her look small because he was so broad-shouldered. She wore her long auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. Freckles spattered her cheeks and nose.
He held a great affection for her, but it wasn’t love. He’d been truthful about that. They’d been conducting safaris in the South African wilds together for the last sixteen months. Long enough to get to know each other really well. And to develop great affections for each other.
Neither one of them wanted to risk continuing the relationship anywhere else. Simon, if he ever went home again, lived in London. Saundra lived in Sidney, Australia. Both of them had family ties.
Simon figured he could leave his family—his father was it, more or less—behind easier than Saundra could, but he was unwilling to do that at this point. He preferred an…extended absence from England, he supposed, rather than a more permanent separation. That was the kindest way to put it. Saying it like that didn’t feel so grim and so final.
He sighed. You’re thinking way too much. Dreaming strange things you’ve no business dreaming about. Imagining things. Then there’s that huge hangover you’re going to have to pay for last night’s festivities.
That had been a definite mistake. He’d told everyone when they’d left Cape Town that there weren’t to be any unnecessary items in their gear. He and Saundra hadn’t checked their clients’ gear. If they hadn’t been getting paid so well, Simon might have pressed the issue and looked to see who carried contraband. But they hadn’t.
Jarl Klinker, the photographer from Dusseldorf, had brought in bottles of Russian vodka. He was part of the film research team. The other two claimed to be a director and a writer.
Simon put the hunting rifle down and climbed back into the sleeping bag. It was cool now, but the day would be hot.
“You’re awake?” Saundra mumbled.
“Only just.” Simon closed his eyes and lay back. Saundra snuggled up against him.
“Can’t sleep?”
It was true that sometimes he couldn’t. Too many unresolved complications, he supposed. “I can sleep.”
“Are you sure you want to?” Saundra’s voice held a throaty giggle. She kissed his ear.
Simon rolled over to face her. “Well, I still think that sleep is overrated. And no one is up, so—”
Two quick gunshots cracked the quiet morning again.
