In his hands was a dagger with a simple, unadorned hilt. The blade looked uneven, the kind of thing hammered out by a student rather than a master blacksmith. It looked old, old and fragile, and Cade couldn't imagine taking on a training dummy with that thing never mind an angel like the one he'd seen in the vision.

Uriel looked at it with reverence. "The last of Gabriel's Tears."

Cade shook his head in disgust. "You're kidding, right? That's what you want me to take on the Adversary with?"

Uriel, however, was unfazed. He looked down at the weapon he held, turning it over in his hands.

"Haven't you ever wondered why the Adversary chose your house to invade?" he asked. "Why he picked your family to torment?"

Cade glanced at him in irritation. Of course, he had. It was a question he'd been asking himself over and over again for years. Some time ago he'd come to the conclusion that it was because he'd been a.s.signed to the task force charged with capturing the serial killer known as the Dorchester Demon, which was the human host that the Adversary had been hiding in at that time. Still, that answer had always felt too pat for him. There were at least forty other officers from a variety of agencies a.s.signed to that task force and at least half of them lived within the killer's hunting grounds, just as Cade and his wife had. The Adversary could have chosen any one of them.

But he hadn't.

He'd chosen Cade.

"What the h.e.l.l does that have to do..."

His sentence trailed off, unfinished.

"You know, don't you?" he said softly.

"It was not chance or fate or bad luck that brought the Adversary to your door," Uriel told him. "He came there deliberately, because he knew what you do not.

"He came to kill you, because you have angel blood flowing in your veins and it is that very same blood that will allow you to wield one of the Tears against him."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Cade laughed; he couldn't help it. The notion was completely absurd.

"Yeah, right," he said. "Am I cousins with the tooth fairy, too?"

Uriel looked at him with something that Cade suspected might just be pity and that wasn't a pleasant notion.

"Tell me, Commander Williams. Where do you think you're gifts came from?"

"My gifts?"

Cade was starting to feel like the student at the back of the cla.s.s, always several steps behind everyone else.

"Yes, your gifts," Uriel said, with a touch of impatience. "Wait, I know. You probably think those came from the Adversary, don't you? That he did something to you, something that changed you, cursed you, made you into something that isn't quite human?"

Uriel was correct; Cade had, indeed, thought that very thing. One of the reasons that he hadn't stopped the men calling him the Heretic when he'd first heard the nickname so long ago was because he half-believed it himself. Nothing human should be able to do what he could do. He'd decided after being released from the hospital that he'd put those abilities to use in tracking down the Adversary and he'd done just that. He thought of them as useful tools, yes, but tools with a taint about them that tainted him as well.

"You've witnessed the results of other attacks by the Adversary. Seen the results first hand. You've studied every encounter with Ahsharael that can be found in the Order's records and several dozen more in various archives across the country. I would be prepared to say that no detail escaped you."

"So? What's your point?" Cade asked.

"In all that time, in all those records, did you ever once come upon another encounter in which the Adversary granted strange and unique gifts to the individual he'd tried to kill?"

Cade shook his head. "No."

"So what makes you think it happened to you?"

The question hit him right between the eyes. So simple and yet so profound. Cade found himself at a loss for words; he didn't have anything even remotely resembling an answer for Uriel's question. He'd always just a.s.sumed his powers had come from the Adversary, a side effect of the demon's attempt to kill him. He'd fixated on that answer early on and had simply run with it.

Because, really, what else was he supposed to believe? He'd had a hard enough time as it was back then, finding ways of dealing with Gabrielle's death and his own injuries, never mind coping with the realization that there really were things out there in the darkness just waiting for the chance to swallow mankind whole. He'd nearly broken from the mental weight of it all and it was only when he'd finally found the Order that he'd begun to make some sense of it all, to find some purpose in going forward.

He looked up and met Uriel's gaze and in that moment he had the sudden sense that everything about him was being stripped bare, that his thoughts, his emotions, his every wish and desire was being pulled out and laid forth for examination, that the creature in front of him was weighing each and every thing he'd ever done in order to determine if he was worthy of hearing the truth.

To his surprise, it was important to him that he not be found wanting.

"So where did they come from?" he asked. "My...gifts, as you call them."

"You know the legend of the Nephilim?"

Cade nodded, then quoted from memory.

"And it came to pa.s.s when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and l.u.s.ted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'"

The verses came from the Book of Enoch and according to that ancient text the children that resulted from the union between men and angels were known as the Nephilim, meaning "giants" or "those who have fallen." Cade had been studying angelology for years; the story of the Nephilim was familiar ground.

Uriel nodded. "The majority of the Nephilim were destroyed in the great flood, as were the watchers that begat them. But some of their offspring the Elioud survived. The blood that ran in their veins, while far from pure, still bore the stamp of the divine. Some knew of their heritage and tried to keep the old ways alive, but most did not. As the centuries pa.s.sed the knowledge of where and what they had come from was lost and soon the Elioud were no more than a legend. Like their forefathers before them, they were relegated to the pages of texts branded heretical by the religious leaders of that day and age and, ultimately, forgotten by all but a few scholars.

"The Adversary did not forget, however. He knew full well the power that lay slumbering in the veins of those descended from the Elioud and he spent years tracking them down, one by one. Some he would corrupt, like the man you knew as Simon Logan, while others were simply slaughtered outright. Until, at last, his search for the offspring of the Elioud brought him to your door. Your abilities have always been there; the Adversary's attack was simply the catalyst that brought them out of dormancy and allowed you to make use of them."

At first it sounded crazy, sure, but the more Cade thought about it the more it made an odd kind of sense. And really, was it any more fanciful than the other things he'd come to take for granted over the years? Demons and witches and ghosts, never mind sorcerers and black magick? He'd seen more than his fair share of unearthly things since joining the Order and hadn't doubted any of them. What made this one so different?

Nothing, except that this one was about him.

Uriel was standing there, extending the dagger toward him, hilt first. Almost against his better judgment, Cade reached out and took it.

It was heavier than he expected, much heavier, and once in his hand it seemed to lose that sense of fragility that had surrounded it only moments before. The blade gleamed hungrily and he could almost imagine that it had a life of its own.

He hefted it in his hand; it was a good, solid weapon, one that would work quite nicely in hand-to-hand combat. Of course, to use it, he was going to have to get up close and personal.

"Okay," Cade said. "For the sake of argument, let's say I believe you. Let's say I take this thing with me when I confront the Adversary. What then?"

Uriel smiled and the sight was so disquieting that Cade took a step back.

"You must either slash the Adversary's throat or plunge the knife into its heart," the angel told him. "Once the demon's blood comes in contact with the blade, the power inherent in the Tear will do all the rest."

"The demon's blood? You mean Gabrielle's, don't you?"

Uriel gave him that pitying look once again. "At this point, Templar, they are one and the same."

"But..."

The angel cut him off. "No," he said. "There is no more time for questions. I have told you all that I can tell you, have shown you the consequences if you do not do what needs to be done. The rest is up to you."

With those words the angel turned away and would speak no more no matter how hard Cade begged him to do so. Eventually, after several minutes of trying, Cade finally gave up. He'd learned all he was going to learn, it seemed. It was time to get on with it.

He left the tower the same way he came in, noticing as he did so that he had apparently been inside longer than he expected for the sun was just coming up over the horizon. Cade slipped the dagger through his belt and then pulled his jacket down over it before going down to the docks to await the fisherman's arrival.

After Williams left the island, Uriel turned to a seemingly empty corner of the bell tower and said, "I know you are there. You can come out now."

The air in the corner shimmered like the haze rising off a hot desert highway, revealing the form of Seneschal Ferguson standing there. As he crossed the bell tower toward Uriel, the features of his face began to shift and change until he looked like an entirely different individual. Had Williams remained in the room, he would have recognized him as the leader of the scream of angels that had appeared to him after Echo's defeat of Baraquel deep within the walls of the Eden facility, the same angel that had given him the feather that allowed him to track the Adversary across the Sea of Lamentations to the Isle of Sorrows.

This time, though, he looked worried.

"Did he accept the dagger?"

Uriel nodded.

"And he knows what to do with it?"

Another nod.

A longer pause, and then the newcomer asked another question.

"Is he ready to do what needs to be done?"

Uriel turned and looked at his visitor. For a long moment he said nothing, and then he turned and looked out the window to where Cade was making his way back across the lagoon in the prow of the fisherman's boat.

"Of course he's ready," Uriel answered. "He has my blood in his veins."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

After sending Cade on his way to Heathrow, Riley reported in to Preceptor Johannson, claiming that he hadn't seen Commander Williams. He was ordered to catch the next flight back to the United States. Luckily, there'd been one headed to JFK in New York within the hour.

Thanks to the time change, he arrived in New York just before midnight and used one of the vehicles the Templars kept in long-term parking to return to the commandery in Westport, CT. Once back in his quarters, he collapsed on the bed and fell quickly asleep.

He awoke a few hours later to the sound of his cell phone.

"Riley here," he said, once he'd fumbled it out of his pocket and put it to his ear.

"Where are you?"

Recognizing Cade's voice, Riley said, "My quarters. Ravensgate. Why? What did you find out?"

Cade ignored both questions. "Stay where you are," he said, instead. "I'll be right with you."

Right with me? How the h.e.l.l was he...

There was a crash of gla.s.s from inside his bathroom and then the door opened and Cade stepped out, brushing gla.s.s shards off his shoulder. He was dressed in the clothes Riley had given to him at the airport and looked like he hadn't slept since, but there was a manic light in his eyes that he only got when he was on the trail of something good.

"How on earth...?" Riley asked.

Cade grinned. "Yeah, pretty cool, huh?"

"Cool? That's what you're calling it?"

Riley was flabbergasted at what had just happened. Cade had never been able to control his pa.s.sage through the Beyond before, he knew. Traveling that way had always been a bit of Russian roulette; step through the mirror and hope you ended up somewhere reasonably close to where you wanted to be. What Cade had done was the equivalent of trading a catapult throw for a laser guided nuclear missile.

"Learned a trick or two over the last couple of weeks," Cade told him. "But forget about that. I've got something better. I know what the Adversary is up to!"

That caught Riley's attention. He gestured that Cade should take a seat at the small table that served as his work area but Cade was too hyped up to sit. He paced back and forth while Riley took the chair instead.

"You've heard about the soldiers being kidnapped?"

Riley nodded. He hadn't paid too much attention to the news reports, but he was at least aware of them. One missing soldier had been bad enough, with now with five of them missing, the situation was getting plenty of news coverage.

"All former US soldiers. All in top condition before whatever injury landed them in a coma. All of them with little to no brain activity and existing on life support."

"Sounds like they'd be useless to the Adversary," Riley said. "What am I missing?"

"They're just the opposite, actually. They're perfect for what the Adversary has in mind."

Cade explained about meeting the Forsaken One and what he'd learned about the Adversary's plans to bring back his scream as a result.

"He's going to call the other members of his scream out of the infernal plane and give them the bodies of the kidnapped victims as vessels to inhabit on this one. Once he does, it won't take the fallen angels long to a.s.sume control of their new forms, just as the Adversary did with Gabrielle."

While Cade talked, Riley used his computer to pull up information on the kidnappings. Scanning it, he said, "Each of the victims were considered to be all but brain dead; in several of the cases, the doctors were just waiting for the family to give the word to take them off life support."

"Right. Without an active intelligence to fight, it will be easy for the fallen angels to take over the bodies and make them their own. And if that happens, we're in for a world of hurt."

Riley looked up. "Define 'world of hurt.'"

"Biblical-style-cataclysms-right-out-of-the-Book-of-Revelation-with-the-world-divided-up-between-seven-fallen-angels-as-their-personal-hunting-ground world of hurt."

Riley knew Cade wasn't joking; he never joked about things like that.

Taking a deep breath, he said, "Right. Just another day at the office then. So how do we stop this b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

"With this." Cade pulled the dagger out of his belt and laid it on the table in front of Riley.