"Yeah, yeah," Carlos said, thoroughly shook as Shabazz walked him behind a huge stone pillar. "She don't get it, man. I'd take a bullet, the burn, whatever they've got--but I cannot take losing her or the baby."
"We all know that, so pull in a coupla breaths while Mar gives Damali the once-over and Medic does a double-check, all right?"
Carlos closed his eyes and leaned his head back, trying to get his breathing to normalize. He felt Shabazz pound his fist and heard him walk away, but his bones felt like jelly. His body was still shaking from the adrenaline rush that had swept through him when he'd seen his wife half dead in his arms. "God, just give me the strength," he murmured, and let out a long, weary sigh.
The only noise in the cave that could be heard was the sound of two men breathing and the distant gurgle of water. Now that they'd finished their joint prayer spoken aloud they were at a loss for what to do next.
"Can you feel the presence of what Carlos is seeking?" Tobias finally asked, breaking the silence.
"I know it's here," Cordell said. "I can't exactly see it, but I know ... if you understand what I mean."
Tobias nodded. "I am a tactical, I feel things. All of my senses are on alert, but I cannot pinpoint why or where right now." "Yep," Cordell said, craning his neck. "You hear that?" Tobias leaned his face closer to the small fissure in the ground and turned his head to the side to listen, then jumped back. "Water is rising. That is the sound of water rising!"
Both men got to their feet, Tobias helping Cordell up. Within seconds, crystal-clear water gushed out of the crack, making them back away quickly. An object wrapped in soaked red velvet thudded onto the floor as the water rapidly receded. It took them a moment to move. Cordell edged forward first and stared down. "It has a Templar seal on it. The crest in the embroidery."
"Then you open it," Tobias said. "You are knighted, I am not. I will not offend the order."
Cordell nodded and stooped down with a grunt. "All religions are represented at this site ... I don't think you, as a man with a good spirit, could offend," he said, carefully untying the leather straps and unfurling the waterlogged fabric. "Don't you think it's odd that this has probably been down here for hundreds of years, if not a couple thousand . . . and the velvet is still good, ain't rotted away or nothing?"
"I think it's Divine," Tobias whispered, watching intently as Cordell's hands worked with reverent caution to then begin unwrapping old, brown linen from around an oblong, hard object.
Cordell pressed his fist to his mouth as he stared down. An eight-inch, broken piece of jagged wood terminated into a sharp, flat, iron spearhead. At the neck of it was a Roman seal and rank etching. The edges and face of the ten-i'nch blade were corroded with a dark, crimson, tarlike substance that also ran down onto the wood.
Cordell's hands shook as he carefully swaddled the weapon in the cloth again, treating it with the care of a newborn infant.
"Hey, I'm sorry. Maybe you were right," Damali said, rounding the pillar and handing Carlos a bottle of water.
He accepted it from her but didn't immediately look into her eyes. "I never meant you were supposed to leave our team to fry ... or to let Ayana die in an oven."
"I know," she said, touching his face. "Everybody knows what you meant. . . tensions are just running high."
Carlos didn't look at her as he opened his water. "How's Ayana?"
"Fine. Everybody is all right. How are you?"
"I'm all right," he said, guzzling his water. "Gotta get a lock on Cordell and Tobias." He finally looked up at her. "I lost my focus, left my men. Haven't been able to reconnect with them, which tells me there's interference in the airwaves real close by. That ain't a good sign, D. Couldn't even look in Habiba's eyes. If I can't get a lock on two men with extrasensory skills who are less than a mile away, then that means at least one of them isn't still on hallowed ground. I sent Tobias to the only safe place I knew--"
A heavy blast rocked the sanctuary. People began screaming and running with clerics. Mortar fire made huge chandeliers and candelabras crash to the floor amid fleeing civilians. Another shell hit and Damali and Carlos were up at the now-shattered stained-glass windows.
Carlos flung a shield of Heru up to cover the facade of the building as Damali sent four white-light pulses from the tip of her Neteru blade to blast the incoming shells out of the air.
"Tactical nets up!" Carlos shouted, causing every tactical squad member to scramble blue-white charges to dome the building.
Folding away, he joined Damali in her window. His blade touched hers, sending a nova of white light toward the Tower of David to chase the direction of the original mortar fire.
"I gotta get over to the Dome of the Rock," Carlos said. "If they shelled here, they shelled there, trying to figure out which location we're holed up in."
"Go," she said, and then turned back to the window. "We'll hold it down here so you can bring those men back alive."
"We'll settle the score later on what I owe you, Fallen," Lilith said with a wicked chuckle. "You are indeed the best at three-card monte--of the three sites, it appears that you've guessed the right one to shell first."
He returned a half-smile as he looked down at the charred remains of demons that still clung to human conventional weapons. "But it does seem that our female Neteru is quite recovered. Perhaps it's time for Vlad to send in his troops?"
Carlos came out of a fold-away just outside the hallowed ground, not wanting to violate the sanctity of the site. He swept the area with his senses, frantically calling out to Tobias and Cordell in his mind as the ground began to rumble. He watched in horror as a missile headed right for the coppery gold, gleaming dome where thousands of innocent civilians sought shelter. Several quick energy pulses from the tip of his blade exploded them in midair.
"Everything' you send to me, I send back to you tenfold!" Carlos shouted.
Prepared to stave off the next volley, he watched in awe as tracers careened toward the dome and then curved, and went screaming back in the direction they'd come. A massive blast threw him off his feet. In the back of his mind he heard people screaming. Thunder seemed to be coming from the earth beneath him, and dazed, he took a few seconds to realize it was nightmare hooves quaking the ground.