A BMW R 1200 GS Adventure Enduro motorcycle specially built for off-road travel roared toward Simon. It didn’t have a light, which meant the driver had some kind of night-vision wear.
“Leah?” Simon asked.
“Yes. Get ready.”
The motorcycle slid around, reversing the way it was headed when it came to a stop in front of Simon. The figure astride it looked impossible.
Clad in some kind of matte black armor that consisted of overlapping sections, the rider looked almost insect-like, but the armor was so close-fitting that she was undeniably female. An abbreviated full-face helmet covered her head, offering only goggle-looking eyes and a singular antenna jutting up from where her left ear would be. Other armor components, more dense to offer more protection at neck, shoulders, elbows, thighs, and knees, looked slightly lighter in color.
“Leah?” Simon asked again, still not believing what he was seeing.
“Yes. Now climb on before the demons reach us.”
Simon slid onto the motorcycle behind Leah Creasey. There wasn’t much room, but there was a secondary set of pegs for his feet. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Leah twisted the throttle and the rear tire ripped across the ground, then caught traction. Evidently someone had done some work on the motorcycle, increasing horsepower, because it took off almost effortlessly even with his extra weight. He slid his left arm around her waist and leaned into her.
“Saving you,” she responded. She sounded completely calm, not as he’d remembered her when he’d met her on the plane from South Africa. “And I shouldn’t be doing that. My X-O isn’t going to be happy about that. I was here to observe. Not get involved.”
“Your ‘X-O’?” Simon knew from his study of military commands that X-O stood for “executive officer.” But Leah wasn’t in the military.
Still, he remembered how skilled she’d been at using the rifles they’d picked up after their arrival on the coast of England. He also remembered how she’d been constantly asking questions about things. Everything.
Until she disappeared from the Templar stronghold.
“We don’t exactly have time to talk about that,” Leah replied.
“Are we going to have time later?”
“No.” Leah handled the motorcycle like it was a part of her. She roared through the darkness, weaving across the tracks and around debris that littered the tube. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“But you are.”
“Foolish weakness on my part. I was trained better than that.”
Trained? Trained by whom? For what?
The train took shape in the darkness ahead. The surviving Templar had taken up positions along the passenger car.
“You might want to contact your friends,” Leah suggested, “and let them know we’re not the enemy. It would be ironic if I saved your arse, then we got blown up by your mates.”
Simon agreed and called for Wertham.
Stunned, partially from the impact against the ground and partly from the fact that he was still alive, Warren stood in the darkness of the tube tunnel. He wasn’t using the night sight he’d learned, so he focused just for a moment and made the change.
Turning toward the roaring motor over to the right side of the tunnel, Warren saw the knight that he had knocked from the train as he slid onto a motorcycle. Then the rider twisted the throttle and the motorcycle sped forward.
Drawing a breath with effort, feeling the pain of something broken inside his chest and hoping it was only a rib, Warren examined his hands. Nothing appeared to be different or injured. The grenade blast hadn’t been an antipersonnel one filled with shrapnel.
He’d read about grenades in games he’d played. From what he had seen, the grenade the knight had dropped had to have been a high-explosive munition, capable of doing damage through blunt force.
He’d been lucky.
Then he realized it had been more than that. He’d been powerful enough to escape the blast relatively unscathed.
He gazed ahead, watching as the motorcycle grew smaller. Then he called to another Blood Angel and climbed aboard her as the demon horde swept by him. A moment later, he was once more flying, hoping to find the knight that had taken his hand.
“Were you following me?” Simon asked. “Is that how you found us?”
“I was assigned to you in South Africa,” Leah said. “I followed you from there.” She leaned the motorcycle and avoided a huge chunk of mortar. “Finding you here tonight was just a fluke. I was assigned to something else.”
Simon decided not to ask her why she was there because he got the impression she wouldn’t answer. But his mind was already spinning from all the possibilities. “Why did you follow me from South Africa?”
“We needed to know more about the Templar.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“That’s one question you don’t get to ask.”
Simon felt certain the question was only one of several he couldn’t ask. “Why were you told to follow me?” He leaned with her, automatically moving with her on the motorcycle.
“Because we needed to know more about the Templar.”
“How did you know I was a Templar?”
“Your father was identified.”
“My father?” Hope dawned within Simon. “You’ve talked to my father?”
Leah was quiet for a moment. “No. I’m sorry, Simon. His body was identified. He was in his armor. That’s how they knew him. That’s how they knew you. They knew your father was a Templar. They didn’t know if you were, but the bet was that you were. You were also the only link we had to the Templar, so we had to exploit that.”
Exploit. The term sounded offensive.
“If you hadn’t saved my life, I’d be tempted to throw you off this motorcycle,” Simon growled.
“You wouldn’t. You’re too much like one of Lord Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts.” Leah juked around another mass, then raced up on the train. “But that’s one of the things I like about you.”
“Why did you need to know about the Templar?”
“Because you knew more about the demons. Until the invasion, the people I’m with believed they were
