The Templar's Code

the stone altar.

The jewel finally returned to its proper setting.

She took another deep breath. “Time to gird my loins.”

Whatever that meant.

CHAPTER 89

Conniving bitch!

She’d carefully planned every detail. The yellow flags leading the way through the forest. The rope ladder extending from the stone slab to the cave entrance. The strategically placed lanterns to illuminate the subterranean cavern. Such a cunning spider.

Saviour would take great joy in plunging a stiletto in the black widow’s belly. And he would make the Englishman watch as he did it.

Focusing on that calming image, he tried not to think about the fact that he was standing at the entrance to a most forbidding place.

“You might find this interesting; caves are symbolic of birth and burial,” Aisquith conversationally mentioned. “No doubt, that’s why so many of mythology’s sacrificial saviors are born in caves. Only the good die young, eh?”

Saviour glared at the battered Brit. “As to thialo!”

“Fila mou to kolo,” his captive calmly replied.

The piss-ant spoke Greek!

“Kiss your own ass,” he muttered under his breath. “And don’t forget who has the gun.” To make sure he remembered, Saviour waved the revolver in front of the other man’s face. Although not so close that Aisquith might foolishly make a grab for it. Because of the rope ladder, he’d had no choice but to cuff the Englishman’s hands in front of him rather than behind.

They’d gone no more than twenty feet when Saviour pulled up short. His heart was slamming against his chest.

“Christos!” he exclaimed, recoiling.

It was a daimon come to life!

Aisquith chortled. “Steady, old boy. You might inadvertently fire your weapon. With all this stone and rock, the discharged bullet could easily ricochet and hit the wrong target.”

“Do not mock me!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sneering, the Brit gestured to the stone grotesque. “Allow me to introduce you to Asmodeus. The demon of lust and king of the Nine Hells.”

Saviour tightened his grip on the gun handle. “Take your pick, Englishman.”

“How amusing. Come. We mustn’t tarry. I believe the lady said three o’clock. A most portentous hour of the day.”

Uncertain what that meant, Saviour jutted his chin at the dimly lit passageway.

As they made their way through the narrow chasm, he silently conceded that “the lady” wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever met. She intended to launch an attack. Why else would she have gone to so much trouble? Dictating the time and place for the exchange. Choosing a dark place of “birth and burial.”

And soon he would be reborn. He’d lived twenty-five years with nothing to show for it. No accomplishments. Not one single thing that he could point to and say “I did this” or “I made that.” Fucking. That’s all he’d ever done — until he met his beloved mentor.

Mercurius had assured him that everything would be all right. That he had nothing to fear. That he had a plan to create the world anew. A better world. No, a perfect world. A world in which there was no disease to steal our cherished friends. And where a mother loves her only son.

Birth and burial.

Her funeral, not his.

CHAPTER 90

The two men entered the Templar sanctuary. One carried a sturdy revolver in his right hand. The other had both wrists cuffed together.

Edie stifled a horrified gasp.

“Hello, love.”

Drained of animating color, Caedmon’s face appeared specter pale. The right side of his face, that is. The left side was a bruised and swollen mess. As though he’d gone five rounds in the Octagon with an Ultimate Fighter. That, or survived the bar fight from hell.

Her gaze moved from his battered face to his manacled wrists. A soiled makeshift bandage had been wrapped around his left hand. She winced, well aware that dirt, germs, and open wounds did not mix.

“I can see from your aghast expression that the photograph didn’t do me justice,” Caedmon sardonically remarked. “You have my companion to thank for that.” He jutted his chin at the armed man standing beside him. “Allow me to introduce Saviour Panos.”

Having taken a position in front of the stone altar, Edie folded her arms across her chest. If her plan was to succeed, she had to stick to the script. “You’re fifteen minutes late, Saviour.” The fact that Panos’s left visage was, like Caedmon’s, a grotesque parody of the right aroused no sympathy in her.

“We ran into traffic.” Wearing a smug smile, Panos placed his free hand on Caedmon’s shoulder. “And would you deprive me of an additional fifteen minutes with my new English friend?”

His jaw set tight, his mouth little more than a taut slash, Caedmon stared straight ahead.

Hang in there, Caedmon. The train is about to leave the station.

“Gee, you certainly know how to make a girl feel unwanted. And speaking of girls, there she be… the Emerald Tablet.” Edie gestured toward the niche. “Yours for the taking.” She’d set the lantern on the stone altar, aiming it directly at the coveted relic, the inlaid gold script of the Eight Precepts gleaming in the fluorescent beam.

What man could refuse so gorgeous an object?

An awestruck expression on his face, Panos strode across the chamber. But in the wrong direction! Bypassing the niche completely.

“What the—” Edie caught herself in mid-curse. Flabbergasted, she watched as the dark-haired man came to a halt in front of a carved pilaster that was set between two octagonal walls.

Raising his hand, Panos caressed a bas-relief carving of an eight-pointed star that was set in the middle of the pilaster. “It’s beautiful.”

The octogram. The same symbol that Panos had scrawled at each of the murder scenes.

Admittedly baffled, Edie wondered what she was missing. Saviour Panos had killed four men to get the Emerald Tablet, and yet since entering the sanctuary, he’d given the relic little more than a passing glance.

“Ah, yes, the octogram. In Islamic art it’s known as the khatim sulayman,” Caedmon remarked. “You clearly have an affinity for the symbol.”

An affinity? Was Caedmon being for real? Try deadly obsession.

“According to legend, King Solomon used the symbol to capture an evil jinn. A jinn, of course, being a demon similar to Asmodeus,” Caedmon continued in a surreally calm tone of voice. One that belied the deeply etched lines of pain that furrowed his brow.

Why was Caedmon placating the bastard? And ruining her carefully conceived plan.

Prior to their arrival, she’d spent two hours on her hands and knees painstakingly examining every square inch of the sanctuary. In addition to the concealed trap that she’d fallen into when she and Caedmon had first discovered the chamber, she found one other trap. This one cunningly placed dead center in front of the niche.