Part 26 (1/2)

”After everything you've seen even in the short time that you've been here, if you don't see a difference in these people, you never will.” Simon's voice had an irritated edge to it that he hadn't intended.

”Point taken.” Leah took a breath and a new tack. ”What about the people who choose to ignore the high command and decide to have kids anyway?”

Simon kept his voice neutral, getting the feeling that she was testing him for some reason and not knowing what that was. ”There are consequences. People get pa.s.sed over for promotion. Housing needs are met, but wants are ignored. Special privileges are revoked.”

” *Special privileges'?”

”Some of the Templar are permitted to work outside the Underground.” ”Why?”

Simon sipped his tea and found it still almost too hot. ”To observe.” ”Observe what?”

”Politics. Economics. Developments in technology.”

”The Templar seem withdrawn from society. And their technology is ahead of anything anyone else seems to have.”

”When it comes to weapons, yes. But the Templar know they're too focused when it comes to tech development. Medicine is just as important, but they don't have the resources to follow up on it. The Templar exist separately from the rest of the world, but are not cut off. They're here-we'rehere-to guard the rest of the world against the demons.”

Simon had realized how much he'd cut himself off from the Templar and had tried to change that. But it sounded awkward acting like he was one of them as well. That had been the way it had always been.

”Then why aren't the Templar bringing the other survivors in the city here? Why are they leaving them out there to fend for themselves?”

”Because coming here isn't the answer. If we brought them back here, the demons would follow.” Simon breathed calmly even though he was angry because she didn't already see the answer to her question. And perhaps he was partly conflicted with memory of those hard-pressed survivors he'd seen while trekking into the city. ”The sacrifice those warriors made on All Hallows' Eve will have been in vain. We have rations here, a plan in place that will carry us through the fight with the demons, but we can't afford to take on a lot of untrained personnel.”

Leah looked at him. ”What happens to me? I'm untrained personnel.” Simon sat back and didn't answer. He honestly didn't know.

”Simon Cross.”

Waking immediately, groggy from the lack of sleep and achy from the pounding he'd taken the night they'd been attacked, Simon looked up and spotted Bruce Martindale pulling on his armor next to the bed. Bruce was Derek's second-in-command. He was young and arrogant, everything a Templar should be.

Taking the man's lead, Simon sat up and started pulling armor on. ”What's going on?” Simon asked. ”We pulled an a.s.signment.” Bruce shrugged into his breastplate. ”We're going outside.”

”What is it?” Simon stepped into his boots.

”When you need to know,” Bruce replied, ”you'll be told.”

Simon nodded. He hated the abrupt manner the other Templar showed toward him. But there was nothing he could do to change it. He concentrated on the promise he'd made to his father. That was the most important thing. He didn't intend to break it again.

The readout on Simon's HUD showed the time as 3:14 a.m. He'd gotten a little over two hours' sleep after his conversation with Leah had dwindled away to nothing. When he'd returned to the barracks, he hadn't been able to sleep at first. He dampened his audio and yawned, a real jaw-creaker that bordered on painful. It was enough to make his eyes water.

Traces of white snow gleamed on the streets, windowsills, and buildings, and on the wrecked cars, double-decker buses, and military vehicles and tanks mired in the street. Weak moonlight barely chased back the pitch-black shadows draping the urban landscape. There were no lights, no flames or lanterns or candles to light the existence of anyone who still lived in the city.

After two years of guiding clients through the wild outside Cape Town, the city of London looked strange. And dangerous. Gargoyles sat atop some of the buildings, and Simon knew it would be hard to separate them from the demons that might be lurking.

The Chelsea district where they were now was generally thought of as well-to-do. Residential houses in the area were very expensive. Simon had pa.s.sed through the district with his father.

”There's a house just off King's Road,” Derek announced in a quiet voice to the twenty Templar ma.s.sed in the tube station. ”I'm giving you the location now.”

A light pulsed on Simon's HUD, signaling the upload of a map. Superimposed on the viewscreen, a street map took shape. King's Road was clearly marked. The Thames was only a short distance away. ”This is our target,” Derek said.

A red dot formed on the map half a block off King's Road seventeen long blocks from their present position inside the Sloane Street tube station.

”One of the lads in the research division sniffed out an artifact we're supposed to lay hands to,” Derek went on. ”A book.”

A few of the men s.h.i.+fted tensely. ”A book?” one named Waverly asked with a trace of doubt. ”They want us to risk our lives for a book?”

”It's rumored to be a memoir,” Derek went on. ”Supposed to be written by a mad monk that escaped demonic captivity.”

”Never heard of the like,” Waverly said. ”Neither had I,” Derek admitted.

”Brother Cargill,” Simon said before he realized he was going to speak. The Templar's helmets turned toward him.

”That's right,” Derek said. ”I was given an image of the book.”

The image of a large leather-bound book popped onto Simon's viewscreen.

”What do you know of it, Simon?” Derek asked. ”I wasn't given any real information. Just that they wanted the book.”

”Brother Cargill was the man who discovered the Ravager corpse in a display case in the Rorke Museum.” Simon couldn't believe no one else knew the story. ”I remember Brother Cargill,” Amanda Peyer said.

Simon vaguely remembered the young woman from school days. She'd been more successful with the sword than with the pen.

”My father told me the story,” Simon said. ”Brother Cargill was supposed to have traveled with King Richard I in 1189 during the Third Crusade. Cargill maintained that Frederick I, the Holy Roman Emperor, called Barbarossa for his red beard, was murdered by a demon rather than dying by accidental drowning as everyone believed.”

”We don't exactly need a history lesson here,” someone growled.

”Frederick's untimely death put an end, more or less, to the Third Crusade,” Derek said. ”Philip II of France decided to leave. After he did, Richard couldn't do anything more. He had to make a truce with Saladin.”

”Cargill returned to England with Richard,” Simon said. ”But he was supposed to have a fabled book that told of Frederick's murder at the hands of the demon.”

”If the demons could come through a thousand years ago, why didn't they come through then?” No one had an answer.

”Cargill said he'd been taken prisoner by the demon,” Simon went on. ”The way he told it, the demon took him to their world for a time.” When his father had mentioned that, he'd had nightmares that night imagining what that must have been like.

”Why did they take him?”

”Cargill didn't know. He made his escape shortly after that when the demon brought him back to our world.”

”Can't believe the fiends didn't kill Cargill outright,” someone said.

”The Templar reported that Cargill was crazed by his capture,” Simon said. ”They didn't believe anything Cargill said about being taken to the demon world. They didn't doubt the Ravager corpse because they had it, but the things Cargill had claimed to have seen, a burned and scarred land, was beyond anything anyone wanted to believe.” ”Like h.e.l.l itself,” Bruce said.

”Like what they're doing to London,” someone else said.

”On the way back to England,” Simon continued, ”the Templar joined up with Richard I. They were s.h.i.+pwrecked during a storm and beached in Austria. Duke Leopold, Richard's longtime enemy, captured him and ransomed him to Emperor Henry VI, who had taken over Germany. Cargill finished his memoirs in Austria while they were waiting to be ransomed. But the book went missing there, too.” For a moment no one said anything.

Simon stared out at the long, dark street.