He knew what the remaining team feared, that the authorities would see him walking down the street, dazed, and assume he was one of the walkers -- and then torch him on sight. Maybe. Maybe not. Or he would take a single shot to the head by a military sniper, just for being considered a threat. Every soldier was on high alert. He was an old, out of shape black man ambling down the street as though the world hadn't changed. His teammates said he was crazy for insisting he go alone. He'd be gunned down, detained, or possibly attacked by the walkers, feral stray animals, or worse.
But that wouldn't stop him. He had work to do. A priest had come to him in a daydream, more like a vision. An older man with a shock of silver-gray hair and a Templar crest had shown him a series of carvings on a wall that moved when pressed hard. The hieroglyphs opened a facade that hid a secret room that had standing knights in armor with medallions on their chests. Each of the four medallions linked together to create a key that fit into a specific east wall brick. Turning the key gave way to what was behind the door-- a long corridor that opened out to a wider room. There was a single bench table at the center of it. The walls were bare, just highly polished stone. Wall torches sputtered.
Then he'd seen the stone floor that had prone statues of dead Templars in the four corners of the room. The one guarding the western cardinal point held a scroll in his hand. This was the map he was to find. He saw the engraved medallion on the stone statue and then looked at the key in his hand, fumbling to separate out the four medallions he held.
Setting the right one from the western armored knight into the carved stone replica of it and turning it made the wide slate floor tiles around the prone statue drop four inches. He looked closer and in the dusty space was a parchment roll.
Cordell looked up, suddenly coming out of his medium's daze to find himself standing in front of the Scottish Rites Temple. How he'd gotten there he wasn't quite sure. That much didn't matter. The fact that he'd made it alive did.
Maybe the reason the soldiers hadn't shot him, even though he was walking down Sixteenth Street, was because they viewed him as just an old man heading in the direction of Columbia Road and Harvard Street, an intersection that held All Souls Church, National Baptist Memorial Church, and the former Church of the Latter-day Saints that was now a Unitarian church. Perhaps there was some mercy in their hearts, no matter what their training dictated, and they'd let old folks that reminded them of their parents and grandparents go into a house of worship to lie down and die. He didn't know. Didn't care. He just scratched his balding head, wondering how the time had escaped him.
Not lingering, Cordell rushed up the steps and entered the abandoned grand hall. Nothing was locked; people had fled, the power was out. He didn't need lights.
The vision guided him, pulling him around corners, taking him down stairwells, making his breaths labor as he wielded his heft at a frantic pace. But as soon as he entered the chamber that held the four armored knights, an immovable force gripped him and held him firm. Terrified, he struggled against the supernatural hold, his heart pounding in his ears. It had been a trap! He wasn't armed; had to be that way in case he got stopped by military street patrols. The younger Guardians had been right. Now the darkside had him!
To his horror, a sword unsheathed from the scabbard of the western standing knight just as the force thrust him onto his knees. The weapon flew at him, but didn't cut, hovered only an inch away from his neck, then gently lowered to his right shoulder and then his left, before clattering to the floor.
When he looked up, the warrior-priest of his vision stood before him with a sad smile. He had on the same medallion with a heart on a cross pierced by a dagger and crowned by a ring of thorns.
"Only a Templar knight can know our secrets," the priest said. "I am Patrick. Memorize the maps. Use them to feed the remaining teams. You may pass. Ex Orient Lux . . . ex Occidente lex. From the East comes Light, from the West comes law. Follow the Light for knowledge as you head west toward the mountains to establish new laws."
Within the span of a blink, the apparition of the priest was gone.
Carlos rubbed the perspiration from his face with his forearm and waited in the shadowed hallway with Damali. The cool sanctuary, while beautiful and still, put him en garde. There were columns and shadows everywhere. Corners he couldn't see around, obstructions of view, and a hundred places something could slither out from. The fact that he was standing on hallowed ground brought little comfort. He'd seen Father Patrick attacked by the Ultimate Darkness with his own eyes while standing in a cathedral. Who knew if this particular church's history or the behavior of the presiding clerics would be enough of a barrier? He didn't have that information. And that was the overall problem--the lack of information.
But he was sure that his side seemed to be losing.
Father Patrick had been attacked by the Devil and sacrificed by the Light.
Imam Asula had been murdered at the hands of ignorant men.
Rabbi ZeitlofF had been assassinated by possessed creatures.
Monk Lin was on the run.
The Covenant was no more.
A three-year-old baby and her grandmother had almost been killed.
A warrior's parents were in flight with the remnants of a Guardian squad.
There was a wanted dead or alive bounty on his team's heads.
And he was stuck just outside the Bermuda Triangle during U.S. martial law with Hellfire bearing down on him, his wife, and his squad. This was bullshit. His heart broke for the elderly clerics. The loss was so visceral that he was beyond pain, simply numb. Those guys went all the way back to his beginning, his first steps toward redemption when Father Pat first found him. Their deaths tore open a fresh wound just remembering that. Now they were gone, their lives lost in the foulest way possible.
Carlos allowed his head to drop back for a moment and he took in a deep breath before opening his eyes. It disturbed him no end that, at a critical time like this, his gut instinct was way off by a long shot. He should have gotten those horrible images, not her. He should have been the one to intercept them and filter the transmission of information to her verbally, not have such gore taking root in his pregnant wife's mind.
But right now, for whatever reason, Damali's second-sight was ridiculously strong, just like it seemed as though the other female seers on the squad had increased in their ability to pick up the subtlest changes in the environment. But he and his boys were missing everything. That was not good. Not at a time when they should have been on point protecting precious cargo.
He looked at his wife, a deep sense of reverence overtaking him as he watched prisms of sunlight 'wash over her beautiful, cinnamon-brown skin. Her eyes were closed, her thick natural lashes dusting her cheeks. She bit her plump bottom lip, an endearing nervous habit that just made her expression prettier in his eyes. Shards of stained-glass color dappled her face and played over her shoulders and throat, splashing against her white tank top.
The delicate cleft in her throat fluttered with each long inhalation and exhalation that she drew in while trying to sense who and where their contact for a charter would be. Her br**sts were full and her face was beginning to round ever so slightly, although she wasn't showing yet. Even her aura was different. . . more serene, stronger. He could envision her nude with her broad, white wings out, belly full and slowly moving with life, her graceful hands covering her br**sts ... his angel... his reason for existence.
And they'd taken her stage away from her, making her a fugitive so that she couldn't sing for the world. Could never perform live in concert. . . couldn't jam with the team band to the thunderous applause she so rightly deserved. That was a high crime, if ever he witnessed one. It just wasn't right that he and the baby would probably be her only audience from now on. He only hoped that would be enough, and he'd try his best to make up for the darkside's robbery.
Though he did not want to disturb her mild meditation, it took everything within him not to reach out and allow his fingers to trace her butter-soft cheek or to gather her into his arms. Yes, they were both warriors and he respected her as such. But damn he wished he could take any- and everything this cold hard world had to throw at her for her. If he could just spare her some of it, to hell with destiny and fate. She was his wife.
Her thick ropes of velvet-soft brown hair were swept up in a ponytail that he wished he could set loose just to see it cascade to her shoulders. That was what he could never seem to make her understand. To him, she was more important than the Armageddon. What she carried within her was even secondary to her. He loved their child with all his might, all his heart. . . but she owned his soul. There wasn't even a definition for that. Maybe that's why he couldn't ever fully describe for her how he really felt. Women sometimes didn't understand that words were inadequate. There simply were none.