And because the Templar were so prideful and paranoid, his mother had died without him ever having the chance to get to know her.
“You must be worried about your father,” Saundra said.
“Not really.” Thomas Cross had always been able to take care of himself.
Simon stretched out on the ground and tried to make his mind be quiet. He didn’t know what he would do if the demons had finally returned to the world as the Templar had always claimed they would.
In the end, he suspected he wouldn’t have to do anything. After all, his father and men like him had trained all their lives to handle just such an occasion. What could go wrong?
But he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that something had. Hadn’t the poacher claimed that the British Army had been destroyed? Or was that the truth being stretched? A last jab at Simon’s peace of mind?
After a long time, Simon finally slept, but the dreams were all bad, brought on by all the warnings and fearful stories he’d learned as a child. He kept seeing the Monster, the winged demon, that the Templar kept on display at the school. His father had said that it had been created from what they’d understood of the demons and placed there so no one would ever forget why they were there in the Underground, and what they trained for.
Years ago, the Templar had been ostracized by Philip IV as devil worshippers because they’d tried to build a demon’s skeleton from bones they’d known weren’t human. They’d intended to study the bones and get a better understanding of the demons. Instead, the king had used the opportunity to seize Templar lands and fortunes.
Simon had long ago stopped thinking the demon had ever been real. It had just been a prop the Templar had used to scare their children with.
Hadn’t it?
Four
BISHOPSGATE TOWER
LONDON, ENGLAND
D on’t you think you might come away from the window, sir?”
Detective Chief Superintendent Alfred Hyde lowered his binoculars and turned toward the speaker. The superintendent was actually a little unnerved because he hadn’t heard the man enter the dark room. And what with all the…
Hyde sighed. Despite everything he’d seen, he couldn’t bring himself to call the improbable beings that had established a beachhead at St. Paul’s Cathedral demons. Although it would be fitting, given what he’d seen them do, naming them as such didn’t quite seem sane.
The room was black with shadows. Only a sliver of moonlight touched the floor, and the chief superintendent made certain none of it touched him. They were on the fifty-ninth floor of the Bishopsgate Tower, one of the newest buildings in London. During the battles against the invaders, the building had taken several direct hits. So far the enemy hadn’t seen fit to destroy it.
“Who are you?” Hyde asked. He knew the man wasn’t one of the personal guard that followed him around. Nor was he worried about the man’s presence. His team would have verified his identification. More than that, the man looked human. Not like…the others.
The young man snapped to attention in a way that belied his casual dress. All of them had learned not to wear the uniform of the Metropolitan Police Service. The creatures that had invaded the city harbored especial ill will toward anyone in uniforms.
Hyde didn’t know if that was because of the attack by the British military forces in the beginning, or because of the knights.
Calling the armored men knights somehow didn’t quite seem sane either, but the men who’d survived in the ranks called them that despite edicts from on high. Given the mode of dress those men wore and the heroic way they’d laid down their lives fighting the enemy, there was no way they were going to be called anything less.
“Officer Krebs, sir. William Krebs.” The young man saluted smartly.
“No salutes, Krebs,” Hyde said. “It’s one thing if you go off and get yourself killed, but I don’t want you identifying me as a ranking officer to one of those bloody…things.”
The young man looked embarrassed. “Yes, sir.”
“And stop calling me ‘sir,’ confound it.” Hyde was in his fifties, a fit, solid man with white hair and mustache. He wore round-lensed glasses.
Krebs wisely remained silent.
“I suppose you didn’t show up here just so I could yell at you.”
“No, s—. No. Dr. Smithers asked me to fetch you.”
“Oh?” Dr. Smithers was one of the coroners that worked for the MPS. He was a good man, and a friend.
“They’ve identified one of the kn—one of the armored men.”
“Really? Who is he?”
“Dr. Smithers didn’t tell me. He just asked that I bring you to the morgue straightaway.”
“All right.” Hyde wasn’t fond of the idea of traveling anywhere in the city. It wasn’t safe. The monsters that had gutted the city hunted almost fearlessly in packs.
For the moment, he and his group—part of the small number of police officers that had survived the initial attacks of the enemy—had taken up residence under Bishopsgate Tower. The building was one of the newer structures in the city and had been built to stand forever. Supposedly.
Personally, Hyde doubted it would last through the month. The enemy was enlarging daily the area they controlled. It reminded Hyde of the stories his grandfather had told about the Nazi occupation of France and the air raids over London.
Turning back to the window, Hyde lifted his binoculars again and looked in the direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The black, roiling mass of the Hellgates—that’s what some of the shortwave radio reporters were calling it, and Hyde saw no reason to disagree—glowed and flickered.
The meteorological effects of whatever it was were growing more and more every day. Hyde had daily reports of the devastation the manifestation was causing. Over the past few days,
