C12 Chapter Twelve

After leaving the Morgue Annex, Cade and Riley rejoined the other two men at the hotel room they’d checked into a few blocks from the church. Cade filled them in with what they had discovered.

“So now what?” asked Duncan.

“Martin left something in the church for us to find. We’ve got to find a way to get inside and take a look around without the police hanging around.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Riley said.

Cade agreed. But he also knew that they didn’t have any choice. They had to get inside that church.

As it turned out, things were far easier than any of them expected. On their first driveby, they discovered the patrol car had been taken off the rectory and subsequent passes didn’t reveal the telltale presence of a police stakeout anywhere around the property.

The foursome parked a few blocks away and then made their way back up the street in pairs, passing between the rectory and the church to reach the rear entrance. Flynn pulled out his lock picks and got to work. It took him less than a minute to breach the structure and they were inside with, they hoped, no one the wiser.

From there, they quickly got to work.

“It has to be here somewhere!”

They’d been searching for two hours and still hadn’t found anything remotely resembling the red Templar cross that Cade had seen in his vision. They’d examined the pews, looking to see if the symbol had been carved into the surface. They’d searched each and every panel of the stained glass windows, wrongly assuming that something so bright would be hidden among things that were equally so. There, too, they’d come up empty, however. Riley had even used a set of binoculars to get a close look at the entire ceiling. Still they had nothing.

Now they sat together at the edge of the altar platform, trying to decide on their next move. None of them doubted that there was something here to find. Cade’s visions had never been wrong. But sometimes they had been more than a touch ambiguous and this certainly seemed to qualify as one of those times. Each of them were as frustrated as Cade was at this point.

“Maybe we’re being too literal.”

Cade turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”

Flynn frowned, searching for the words. “It’s like this: Martin obviously knew someone was after him, might have even known that they were aware of you and possibly the Order as well, right?”

“Right. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, then, think about it. Put yourself in Martin’s shoes. If you knew someone was after you, knew that you had vital information that had to be passed on regardless what happened to you personally, would you have left something in plain sight for anyone to find? Especially a symbol that the enemy might recognize?”

Cade frowned. “Of course not.”

“But that’s what we’ve been looking for,” said Flynn. “We are assuming that the cross you saw was something Martin was looking at in the final moments of his life, but what if that’s not the case? What if he were simply focused on the Order itself? What if his hope for rescue simply translated into a mental image of the symbol of his rescuers?”

Cade had to admit it was possible, but in this case, unlikely. He couldn’t prove it, but he had the distinct sense that Martin had been trying to pass him a message and whatever that message was, it was linked to a red cross.

He glanced around the interior of the church, trying not to focus on anything in particular. Maybe Flynn was right; maybe they were being too literal.

His gaze took in the rows of pews before him and then moved on to the organ player’s booth above them. He pivoted when he sat, then turned his attention to the altar. He stared hard at the crucifix hanging on the wall behind it, let his gaze wander over the cloth-covered tabernacle in the rear corner, moved on to the lectern, then the plaque representing one of the Stations of the Cross on the wall nearby…

Wait.

He turned back.

Something about the tabernacle…

Then he had it. The tabernacle was a symbol of the Holy of Holies, the sacred chamber at the heart of King Solomon’s Temple. It was accessible only once a year and then only by the High Priest, for it was the place where God himself resided.

Similarly, the Knights Templar hadn’t always been known as such. Once, long ago, the Order had been called another, more formal name.

The Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon.

The Temple, or the modern day version, the tabernacle, was the place where the Church and the Order intersected.

That had to be it!

Cade jumped to his feet, startling the others. He crossed the room and pulled back the cloth that covered the tabernacle. There, in the very center of the small gold door that allowed access to the storage space inside, was a keyhole outlined in red.

A keyhole in the shape of a Templar cross.

“Good for you, old man,” Cade whispered.

The small door to the tabernacle was locked but that was only a minor deterrent. Now was not the time for niceties, Cade knew. He drew his combat knife from the sheath in his boot and was preparing to wedge the door open when Flynn interrupted.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“What’s it look like?” Cade replied. “I’m going to open the door.”

“With that? Like hell you are!” Flynn pushed him out of the way and Cade watched with not a little amusement as the other man bent over and examined the lock. Satisfied with whatever it was he saw, Flynn removed a small black leather case from a pocket of his fatigue pants and unzipped it, selecting two small metal tools from inside of it. He stuck the ends of both into the lock, fished around with them for a couple of seconds, and then, with a satisfied grunt, removed them.

Grinning, he stuck a finger in the keyhole and pulled.

The door swung open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges.

Inside, they found the small gold container that was used to store the left over Host after Mass. Cade took it out and handed it to Flynn; he knew instinctively that what he was looking for wasn’t inside it. Martin considered his priestly duties to be sacred and he never would have compromised the Eucharist by storing anything with the Host.

But the tabernacle itself was fair game.

The interior of the small container was lined with black velvet, making it impossible to see anything in the dim light of the church. Cade ran his gloved hands against the velvet, looking for something stashed away inside the small space, and was only mildly surprised when his fingers encountered the hidden switch.

“Heads up,” he called to the others and then pushed it.

Glancing around, they all waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Cade frowned, pushed it again, and then did so a third time when everything still looked the same as it had before.

“Think it’s broken?” Flynn asked.

“No. I just think we’re not looking in the right spot.” He turned to the others. “Spread out. It’s here somewhere; I’m sure of it.”

And it was. The switch activated a panel in the back of the wardrobe closet in the sacristy, revealing a staircase. Riley found it completely by chance; he was standing near the wardrobe when Cade flipped the switch for what must have been the twentieth time and heard the slight hiss the panel made as it slid open.

Cade had to give whoever built the place credit. It was a clever setup. Securing the controls inside the tabernacle ensured that no one was going to trip the mechanism by accident and even if, by some strange circumstance, they did, nothing untoward would give it away.

There was a switch just inside the doorway that activated a set of bulbs strung along the ceiling and by that light Echo Team’s command squad descended. At the base of the steps they found a small chamber carved directly into the bedrock deep beneath the church.

A single, bare bulb hung from a makeshift socket in the ceiling. Its harsh light illuminated the small space, giving them a good look at the altar of native stone that stood in the center of the room. A small chest rested on the altar, flanked by two fat, white church candles, the surface beneath them encrusted with the accumulation of years of melted wax. Next to the candle was a modern lighter.

As they spread throughout the room, the light sent their shadows dancing across the walls and drew their attention to the mural painted on the one behind the altar. The mural stretched from floor to ceiling, covering a space about ten feet square, and showed an image of a rock-strewn plain of grey that stretched out to a horizon where storm clouds gathered. It was a landscape without a focus, as if the artist had completed only the background and had yet to begin the subject of the painting itself.

Cade knew better, however.

He knew it was a finished image, knew that the artist had actually captured the bleak nature of the place quite well. He’d been there, had plenty of firsthand experience to make the necessary comparison.

What he didn’t know was what an image of the Beyond was doing on the wall of a room hidden beneath the church.

“Commander? I think you’d better have a look at this.”

He turned to find Flynn had opened the chest and was staring at its contents, a strange combination of amazement and disgust on his face. Cade stepped up beside him.

Inside the chest, a mummified human hand rested on a bed of red silk.

Cade reached inside and carefully drew it out of the box, wanting to get a better look.

The hand had been severed about an inch below the wrist, providing a sort of handle with which to grasp it. A white, tallow like substance coated the fingers, covering the blackened skin beneath, and gave off the thick scent of animal fat and candle wax.

As the other men caught sight of the hand, Duncan crossed himself and a whispered prayer fell from Riley’s lips.

Cade didn’t blame them. The Hand of Glory was a potent piece of black magick, the kind of artifact that any self-respecting member of the church would avoid like the plague. Formed from the severed left hand of a murderer hung for his crime, the Hand could be used for all manner of nefarious purposes. The Order had two in their possession, the first taken from a warlock who’d used it to put an entire complement of Templar soldiers to sleep when they’d stormed his stronghold, the other removed from the grave of a sixteenth century mystic that had been unearthed during a routine street repair in the White Chapel district of London three years earlier; both of them were secured under heavy guard to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.

Just what on earth had Father Martin been up to?

Cade began mentally cataloguing all of the uses of a Hand of Glory.

Putting your enemies to sleep.

Locating a missing person or object.

Forcing a confession from the servant of a witch.

Opening any lock. Or any door.

Wait a minute!

Cade looked from the Hand, to the mural, and back to the Hand again, suspicions flaring.

He grabbed the lighter from the altar top, clicked it on, and touched the flame to the tip of each finger, lighting each one like a candle. The stink of burning animal fat filled the room.

“Don't…” Duncan began.

But Cade wasn’t listening. He suspected he knew just what Father Martin was doing with the Hand of Glory, but the only way to be certain was to try it himself.

Praying he was wrong, Cade turned to the mural and pointed the Hand’s burning fingers in the direction of the mural.

Something passed between the Hand and the wall, a force that was felt more than seen. The effects, however, became visible, as the entire painting shimmered like a mirage seen under the desert sun and then reformed once more, transforming the mural into a glistening web of arcane energy.

It was a portal.

And from the scene on the other side it was clear just where that portal would take them.

Into the heart of the Beyond.