C14 Chapter Fourteen

Cade normally would have made the trip across the Veil on his own, but this time he wasn’t comfortable with that idea. Just about anything at all could be waiting for them on the other side and he wanted not only another set of eyes and ears to be certain he didn’t miss anything, but also someone who could carry what they learned back to the Order should something happen to him.

As executive officer, Riley had to stay behind and manage the unit while Cade was gone. Duncan had been across the Veil before, but finding the portal beneath a church clearly had him shaken up and Cade didn’t think dragging him through it was the best thing right now.

Which left Flynn.

With the decision made, Cade rejoined the others in the secret room below the church and filled them in on his intentions.

“We need a better understanding of why this portal exists and what Father Martin used it for before we report the discovery to high command. The only way to do that is to go through it and scout around on the other side. Once we do, we’ll have a better idea of how the Order needs to respond.

“Flynn, you’re with me. Suit up, but leave your firearms behind. They don’t work on the other side, anyway. Swords and knives only. We leave in ten minutes.”

As Flynn headed up the stairs to retrieve their kit bags from where they’d left them in the church above, Cade turned to the other two. “You two are on guard duty. Give us a couple of hours. If we’re not back by then, report in and let the Seneschal know about the portal.”

With the orders given, there wasn’t anything left to do but gear up and get things underway.

Flynn and Cade stood before the reactivated gate, with Riley and Duncan at their backs. The knight commander turned to face his companion.

“You’ll feel some resistance as you pass through the gate, but just push through it and you’ll be fine. I’ll go first and will be waiting for you on the other side.”

Without waiting for an answer, Cade faced the gate, drew his sword, and took the last several steps needed to carry him into the shimmering portal. There was a moment of bitter cold and a sense of absolute abandonment so profound that if he hadn’t been expecting it, Cade would have curled up in a corner and wept.

He found himself standing inside the ruins of a small room. The hazy illumination that passed for sunlight was filtering in through a nearby doorway, giving Cade just enough light to see by. The ceiling above his head had partially collapsed and if he hadn’t come through the portal hunched over slightly he probably would have smacked his head on it. He turned to face the portal and through its shifting shimmering surface he could just make out the hazy forms of Flynn and Riley standing on the other side. Lifting a hand, he gave the signal and then stepped away from the portal, making room for Flynn who came through moments later.

Flynn was shaking violently when he emerged and Cade gave him a moment to gather his wits about himself. The passage through the Veil was never an easy one and that space between worlds could feel like forever to the uninitiated. Cade had made the trip multiple times while searching for Gabrielle and had become hardened to the experience, but aside from their encounter with the angel Baraquel, who had thrown Echo’s entire command unit violently across the gap, this was Flynn’s only trip into the Beyond and Cade knew it would be disconcerting, to say the least.

“You okay?” Cade asked after a moment.

Flynn nodded. “That was a bit freakier than I expected, but I’ll be okay in a minute.” His voice shook slightly when he spoke, but his shivering had stopped and the panicked expression had left his face.

“Good. I’d hate to have to embarrass you in front of the other men by sending you back.”

“Fat chance of that,” Flynn replied.

Satisfied, Cade crossed the room to the doorway and looked out. Flynn joined him.

The Beyond was still very much a mystery to Cade, despite his many journeys there. As nearly as he could tell, it was a shadow realm that existed close to the real world in time and space, but was forever separated by a wall of energy he had come to call the Veil. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, those that for one reason or another had not moved on to a more lasting rest. Other creatures inhabited the Beyond as well; dark, twisted creatures of all shapes and sizes, and one had to be on their guard at all times while journeying there.

To make matters worse, the landscape of the Beyond was constantly shifting. Like a funhouse mirror, it had a tendency to make things appear either hauntingly familiar or intimately strange. This side of the Veil could often seem to be be a mirror image of the other, except here the passage of entropy marked everything with a patina of decay. Cade liked to think of it as a photograph and its negative image.

Sometimes, though, the Beyond was simply different.

Like now.

In the real world, the church under which the portal was situated was in the midst of a suburban neighborhood, surrounded by other buildings, from two-family homes to the local grocery.

But here, that wasn’t the case.

Before them stretched a sea of what could only be called vegetation, though it was unlike any vegetation any human had ever seen. Dark and twisted, it hung across everything in its path like a spider’s web, seeming to squeeze everything in its iron grip. Looking behind them, they could see that the shell of the building from which they had emerged was covered with it. In fact, it was the growth that had caused the collapse of the structure, the heavy bows forcing the roof partially down into the rest of the building.

A path led down the small hill on which the church rested to what appeared to be a roadway, both of which had been carved from the center of the vegetation. Cade could see burn marks along the edge of the path, evidence that it had been cleared recently, and there were faint tracks in the dirt beneath their feet.

With no other clear direction available to them, they set out along the path.

They hadn’t gone far when a faint whispering reached their ears.

“Hear that?” Flynn asked, unnerved.

“It’s just the wind,” Cade replied absently, but then stopped.

The wind wasn’t blowing.

He turned in a slow circle, looking for movement, hoping to catch sight of something moving toward them through the vegetation.

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

Flynn shook his head. He was glancing around as well, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cade saw motion and he spun in that direction. He was just in time to see a lengthy piece of vine slide out across the path ahead of them. As if sensing his scrutiny, it suddenly went limp. If he hadn’t been looking right at it, Cade would have convinced himself that it had only been a trick of the light.

But he had been looking.

And it hadn’t been the light.

“Cover me,” he said softly.

Flynn stepped closer, drawing his sword, while Cade drew an emergency flare from the cargo pocket of his utilities and, with a flick of one hand, activated it.

The flare blazed to life, its flame a strange mix of white and grey rather than the usual red. From previous travels Cade knew the flame would make him sick to his stomach if he stared at it too long, so he avoided looking at it, turning his attention instead to the vegetation lining the path.

Once it was lit, he held the flare in one hand and drew his sword with the other. Striding forward, he thrust the flame at the vine that had flopped across their path.

Faster than a striking snake, the vine whipped itself back into the dense foliage. One minute it was there, the next it was not.

Flynn gaped at Cade. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

The Knight Commander shook his head. “Afraid not. I’d say that’s a pretty good indication we should stick to the path, wouldn’t you?”

Following his example, Flynn lit a flare of his own and the two of them continued on their journey, moving down the path. A little later they reached the wider road. It ran perpendicular to their current direction and from the tracks beneath their feet it was clear that the traffic had been moving to the left only.

Cade followed the tracks.

Ruined buildings could now be seen beneath the vegetation on either side of the road and, putting two and two together, Cade understood just what had happened to the neighborhood around the church. This was a mirror image of the reality that existed on the other side of the Veil, except in this case, the vegetation had grown abnormally large and had developed a sentience of its own. It had swallowed the town whole, smothering it beneath a sea of creeping vines.

Everything but the road.

Someone was keeping it open.

But for what?

As they walked the whispering followed them, slowly growing in volume. When it grew too loud Cade would brandish the flare and the vines would settle down again, but they didn’t stay silent for long. It took the two men twenty minutes and three flares a piece to reach the end of the growth. Both were happy to leave it behind. With only five more flares between them, they were going to have to be more conservative on the way back.

Ahead of them rose a series of rugged hills covered with a dense growth of forest. The road continued up and over the hills, passing through the trees. Both men were leery about entering the woods, but they discovered that the trees were just ordinary. Whatever had animated the vegetation in the valley behind them had apparently been restricted to that area, much to their relief.

As they climbed higher, they began to see the ruins of buildings here and there among the trees. Curiosity eventually got the better of them and they began making occasional detours to check out particularly interesting locales. More often than not there wasn’t much left, just a series of walls open to the sky above, and the occasional piece of furniture that had survived the ravages of the elements and whatever denizens of the Beyond that made the forest their home.

During one such stop, Flynn froze suddenly and raised his hand for silence.

“Listen!” Flynn whispered.

Cade did so and from the ridgeline came the muted sound of activity.

They left the ruins behind and climbed up the lee side of the ridge as quietly as possible. As they drew close to the rim, they got down on their bellies and crawled. At the top they carefully peered over the edge.

Below them, spread out across the valley floor, was a large encampment spread out amongst more ruins like those they had just left behind. Cade counted thirty tents, each one with round sides and a sloping roof, similar to a Mongolian yurt. They appeared easy to set up and take down and probably didn’t require much effort to transport. A large structure could also be seen in the center of the camp, consisting of several tents strung together, their rectangular styles in sharp contrast to the circular ones around them. Figures moved about the camp, but they were too far away to be seen clearly.

Flynn was prepared. He pulled a pair of mini-binoculars from the cargo pouch of his pants and took a long look through them. Without a word, he passed them to Cade.

From the expression on Flynn’s face, Cade knew it couldn’t be good.

He took a look for himself.

The camp was full of Chiang Shih.

They were making preparations for something. From the size and number of the boxes and crates that were being moved about the camp, it was clearly a major undertaking.

Cade knew that the Chiang Shih were typically solitary creatures and it took either a strong militant commander or the promise of lush hunting grounds to bring even a handful of them together as a group. To assemble a force of this size, the prize must be particularly attractive.

Like the entire city of Boston.

“There has to be a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred of them down there,” Flynn whispered.

But Cade barely heard him, his attention caught by a familiar face. He shifted position, doing what he could to keep the individual in sight while focusing the binoculars for a better look.

Flynn noticed Cade’s change in intensity.

“What is it?”

Cade didn’t answer, not yet, wanting to be sure before he said anything, but then he finally had the glasses focused the way he wanted and there was no question about the individual’s identity.

Bishop.

He handed the glasses back to his companion.

“About ten yards in front of that main structure and a couple feet to the left.”

“What? I don’t see…son-of-a-bitch!” He looked at Cade. “There he is.”

Cade nodded. What he would have done for an operational sniper rifle at that point.

He caught Flynn’s eye and with a nod of his head indicated that they should get going. Flynn silently agreed and the two men made their way back off the ridge and moved away from the Chiang Shih encampment.

When they were out of earshot, they spent a few minutes discussing the situation. It seemed obvious that the road continued around the ridge and passed through the center of the town that the Chiang Shih had claimed as their own. If they used the ruins they’d just left behind as a staging area and had enough reinforcements, they might be able to get into position for a strike at the camp without being seen, though a lot would depend on good timing and a healthy dose of luck.

Either way, it was clear that they had to get back to the other side of the Veil and inform the Order. The decision as to what to do about the Chiang Shih would be made by others higher in the Order’s hierarchy and for that both men were grateful, but they didn’t fool themselves into thinking they wouldn’t be part of the solution.

There was a fight coming and Echo was bound to be at the vanguard of it.

With a last glance toward the ridgeline and the threat that lay just beyond, Cade turned and headed back down through the woods toward the road with Flynn at his heels.

After the men left, a shadow detached itself from a nearby tree and stood upright. It had been hard pressed not to feed on the life force that had been so tantalizingly close, but the warlord had been clear as to what would happen to any that did so.

Knowing they were here was enough. The warlord would offer a generous reward when he heard the news.

Thrilled by its good fortune, the shadow moved to the nearest patch of darkness and disappeared.