Left hand cell.

End of the hall.

Door code 5-8- "3, you idiot! 3!"

His finger tapped on the keypad 5839 and this time the door lock disengaged with a gentle click.

He hauled open the door and rushed over to kneel beside Cade. He grabbed his friend by the shoulders and rolled him over on his back. He lifted Cade's right hand, jammed one of the cotton gloves onto it, and then put it back down, before repeating the same with the left.

Cade's convulsing stopped a few seconds after that.

Riley shook Cade's shoulder gently. "Cade! Can you hear me, Cade?"

No response.

Conscious that the clock was ticking, Riley tried again, a bit harder this time.

"Wake up, boss! We gotta go!"

Cade stirred and mumbled something, but Riley couldn't understand what he was saying.

Worry about it later, Riley said to himself. Right now, concentrate on getting both of you out of here while you still can.

He pulled Cade into a seated position, then slung him over one shoulder and lifted him up in a fireman's carry. Forcing himself to his feet, he staggered for a moment until he got Cade's weight adjusted properly, and then left the cell behind and headed down the hall as quickly as he could.

Clearly, he couldn't just walk through the commandery with Cade draped over one shoulder, unconscious, so he was going to have to come up with a better plan to get them out. Thankfully, he thought he had one.

When he reached the duty station he gently lowered Cade into one of the chairs and then checked on the guards. Both were still unconscious and didn't look like they'd be stirring any time soon.

Good. That's one problem solved.

Riley grabbed the key ring off the guard's belt and stepped over to the equipment closet. He slipped the key into the lock, said a quick prayer that they stocked the same equipment here as they did back at the Ravensgate commandery, and then opened it up.

A smile spread across his face when he flipped on the lights inside the closet and saw the collapsible stretcher pushed up against the back wall, right where he was hoping it would be.

The stretcher was typically used to transport a sick or injured prisoner from the cell block to the medical wing. In most commanderies, including this one, the medical wing was located close to the motor pool. Knights returning from combat missions often needed medical attention so having the two areas near each other was just common sense, but in this case the design was going to allow the two of them to reach their destination with minimal interference. The average knight wouldn't dare interrupt a senior commander rushing a wounded comrade through the halls; if he ran into someone who outranked him, namely Johannson, he was screwed anyway.

Riley grabbed the stretcher and maneuvered it out into the main room, then pushed it over next to Cade. He bent over it, trying to figure out how to raise and lower the bed, and finally managed to do so after a few minutes of fussing with the mechanism.

When he was satisfied, he straightened up and turned, intending to roll Cade's unconscious body out of the chair and onto the stretcher.

The chair was empty.

"Sorry, man," he heard Cade say and then the other man's fist slammed into his temple from the side and Riley knew no more.

Cade rolled Riley onto his back and then checked to be sure he was breathing. Satisfied that he was, Cade then moved to the nearest guard and began stripping him of the grey BDUs that identified him as one of the commandery security staff.

Thankfully, he was a bit heavier than Cade.

Cade had regained consciousness while Riley had been carrying him down the hall. It had taken him a few seconds to recover from the psychological overload caused by his Gift running rampant beneath his unprotected hands, but once he had he knew that he couldn't allow his friend to endanger his position by partic.i.p.ating in his escape. While Riley had been fetching the stretcher, Cade had decided that knocking him out and leaving him here with the guards was the best way of making it seem as if he'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Without evidence to the contrary, Johannson would have a hard time making any charges, even trumped up ones, stick.

After stripping the guard, Cade pulled the man's uniform on over his own clothes and then dragged the underwear-clad man into the equipment closet, making sure to lock it behind him when he stepped out again.

A glance around the room prompted him to pick up the keycard, no doubt belonging to one of the two guards, that he saw resting on a nearby console, along with the set of keys that he found in Riley's pants pocket. He would have loved to have found his gear pack and sword here at the duty station, but heaven only knew where they were and he didn't have time to look for them. The sooner he got out of here, the better.

If he had even an hour's rest, he would have simply taken the Mirror's Road and left the commandery behind in a heartbeat. But the torture the night before, never mind the extended exposure to the emotional detritus of all those who had last occupied his cell before him, had left him with barely enough strength to stagger down the hall. If he travelled the Road into the Beyond, he'd be a sitting duck for anything with an appet.i.te for the living, which, as near as he could tell, was just about everything on that side of the Veil. No, better to stay firmly on this side of reality.

Grabbing one of the guard's ball caps, he put it on and pulled the brim down low, doing what he could to hide the scarring around his right eye, and then headed off down the hall without a backward glance.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

The Adversary handed off the body of its latest acquisition to its three waiting acolytes and watched with satisfaction as they rushed it over to the nearest bed and began re-attaching the various wire leads and plastic tubes that were needed to sustain it for the time being.

This one was a particularly good specimen, he thought, a lean but well-muscled warrior woman who had fallen in the line of duty just a week before. The bullet that had been her downfall had entered her head on the right side, hugged the interior of the skull cap, and exited on the left, doing just enough damage to put her into an indeterminate coma. Her long blonde hair had been shaved away prior to the surgery that had saved her life, leaving her skull looking like an oddly-shaped melon with fuzz growing atop it.

It was unfortunate but hardly relevant. Araqiel would be more interested in the body's physique that in the length of its hair. Besides, the hair would grow back.

Two other patients, both male, occupied beds in the makeshift ward, leaving three more to be filled. The Adversary was confident its people would find the right candidates soon enough and when they did, he would retrieve them as he had all the others. When he had, the ritual could begin.

Soon, my brethren, he thought, looking at the bodies lying unmoving in the beds before him, soon we will be reunited.

A monitor above the bed of the patient nearest to him began beeping incessantly. He had no idea what it meant that's why the acolytes were there, after all but he'd learned to press the reset b.u.t.ton to stop the noise as he found the high-pitched warbling to be extremely annoying.

He stepped over to the monitor and reached up to silence the alarm, only to have his hand freeze in mid-air before he could complete the motion.

He frowned.

His finger was poised two inches from the surface of the b.u.t.ton and he mentally ordered it to finish its arc.

His hand refused to listen to him.

It hung there, as still as stone, while that horrendous wail of an alarm continued to shout in his ear.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see that several of his acolytes had stopped what they were doing and were looking in his direction, no doubt wondering why he hadn't switched off the alarm yet. Indignation and fury washed over him in equal measure at his loss of face, but no matter what he did he couldn't get his hand to move.

In the darkest depths of his mind he heard a woman laughing.

Now he understood.

He'd been surprised when her personality had suddenly risen up the first time, when he'd been out searching for prey to ease his hunger, and she'd seized control of the body they inhabited together before he'd had time to lock things back down under his control. When he'd regained control, he'd found himself miles from where he'd intended to be, standing on the edge of a bridge in front of several dozen Templar knights, all of whom were trying to kill him and the body he inhabited. He'd managed to stuff her personality back into the depths of his mind and had taken control of their physical form quickly enough to escape serious injury as the Templars had opened fire. He'd even managed to send two of their souls to the h.e.l.l they belonged in before leaving them all in his wake.

He had no intention of ever letting something like that happen again. She would stay in her box where she belonged, until it was too late for her to do anything else and it no longer mattered.

He directed his attention down into the depths of his consciousness, down in the dark where that laughter originated.

Release me, he mentally commanded.

Silence.

I said, release me.

A mental image of a woman's hand the hand on the body that he had seized as his own appeared before him, its middle finger raised.

A voice filled with righteous fury rose from the darkness.

f.u.c.k you.

The woman's insolence was obviously designed to anger him, but he merely found it amusing. That she thought she still had some control over what was going to happen was downright laughable. And if she was counting on that fool of a Templar to come rescue her, then she was in for an even bigger surprise. Williams had failed on the Isle of Sorrows and had done so again while trying to stop the ceremony that had called him back from the infernal plane. What hope did he have of succeeding this time? Absolutely, none.

The Adversary laughed aloud, knowing that she would hear it.

I will not ask again. You will either release me or I will slowly skin your husband alive inch by inch and savor his flesh while the two of you look on helplessly.

He made sure to call up a mental image of him torturing her fool of a husband in exactly the way he'd just described to be certain she understood what he intended to do if she continued with her impertinence. He let the scene roll out in his mind; her husband hanging naked in front of him, hands and legs bound, while he used claws that sprouted from the tips of her own fingers to slice just beneath the layer of skin and then slowly drag it downward to tear it lose from the body...

He caught a sudden burst of abject horror welling up from deep inside and then his hand jerked and he was free.

The Adversary completed the motion he'd started earlier, reaching forward and silencing the monitor with a quick poke of his finger while inside he laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

While his wife was battling the Adversary some two thousand miles away in the only manner that she was capable, Cade Williams was preparing to take an equally dangerous path, stepping out into the unknown and seeking help from an ent.i.ty that even the Templars avoided at all costs.

As plans go, it wasn't the greatest.

It was, in fact, pretty freaking stupid, if he was being honest with himself, but then again, what choice did he have?

He couldn't leave things in the hands of the Order; they'd slaughter Gabrielle the moment they saw her in the belief that doing so would keep the Adversary from returning, but Cade knew first hand that evil would somehow find a way to come back. It had happened before and he had no doubt that it would happen again.

He didn't know how or why the universe had elected him to be the one to constantly face this threat, but since it had happened he was determined to see it through.

It had taken him fifteen minutes to find his way through the Rosslyn commandery to the motor pool. He'd found a car from a local rental company there and taken that instead of stealing one of the commandery vehicles, figuring the missing rental wouldn't be noticed as quickly. From there he'd driven himself to the Edinburgh airport.

It was the most obvious place for him to go and in a bit of reverse psychology he was hoping that it would be the last place the Order would look for him as a result. He expected them to a.s.sume that he would avoid the airport and go overland instead, maybe drive south to Hadrian's Wall and cross into England. Echo had a safe house outside of London, which Riley knew about; it would be logical to think he would head in that direction. They knew he didn't have any identification on him and getting aboard a flight without it these days was next to impossible, so the airport would be out, at least to most reasonable folk.

Cade wasn't reasonable, however.

He needed to get to Venice and he needed to do it as quickly as possible. The drive from Edinburgh to London was at least seven hours, plus however long it took him to find a way across the border and then get to the safehouse. He guessed he was looking at ten hours plus and something told him that was too much time wasted. He needed to do better, hence his current plan. Arriving at the airport, he ditched the car in the long-term parking lot where he hoped it would remain unnoticed for a few days.

Once inside the terminal he checked the flight schedule at one of the free internet kiosks and discovered that there was a direct flight from Edinburgh to Venice at 1:30pm. That gave him roughly three hours to figure out a way to get some identification, buy a ticket, and get past security. If that didn't work, he'd have to sneak past security and do something drastic like stowaway aboard an aircraft.

Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

Trying to think positively, Cade began to wander through the ticketing area, looking for an opportunity.

When Riley came to, he found himself surrounded by several individuals. His own commander, Preceptor Johannson, was there, as was the local commander and head of the European territory, Preceptor Ochoba. There were also a handful of local security officers that Riley didn't recognize.

Seneschal Ferguson was kneeling next to where he laid stretched out on the floor.

On the floor? What was he doing down here?

"How are you doing, son?" Ferguson asked, reaching out and helping him into a sitting position.

Riley winced; his head was pounding and the side of his face hurt. "I feel like I went a couple rounds with Mike Tyson."

He thought quickly. The last thing he remembered was getting the stretcher out of the equipment closet so he could transport Cade to...

Cade!

Cade had knocked him unconscious!

As if aware of his thoughts, Johannson suddenly pointed an accusing finger in his direction.

"You'd better have a good explanation for what you're doing in a restricted area, Captain!"

Riley kept his head down to hide the sudden flash of fury that pa.s.sed across his features. If it hadn't been for the pressure Ferguson applied to his arm, silently warning him to tread carefully, Riley might have leapt to his feet and slugged Johannson in the face. That a.s.shole had been torturing Cade and he intended to make him pay for it!

Thankfully Ferguson was thinking more clearly than he was and answered the Preceptor's question.

"I requested Captain Riley's presence here this morning," the Seneschal said, looking up at the others. "I intended to question Commander Williams with the Captain present to help me ferret out incorrect answers, but I was delayed."

Ferguson turned back to Riley. "Can you tell us what happened, Captain?"

Riley thought quickly.

"I arrived at the duty station to find both guards on the floor, apparently unconscious. I stepped over to the first man and was checking his pulse when I sensed movement behind me, from the direction of the equipment closet over there," he said, waving his hand to indicate the direction he meant. "As I turned to look, something struck me hard in the side of the head."

"Did you see who it was?" Ferguson asked.