“You’re going to stay here?”
Seated on the bed in the general barracks room that had been assigned to him, Simon gazed up at Leah. “Yes,” he answered. He’d been surprised to have been accepted by someone. He’d assumed he would have gotten his armor at best, then been forced out into the city on his own. He would have gone without question.
Derek’s willingness to make a spot on his team for him had been surprising. Of course, it looked as though spots were regularly made on the teams.
“What about me?” she asked.
A few of the other Templar listened in to the conversation. A tri-dee at the other end of the room had collected a crowd. There were few new broadcasts from London proper, but the media people seemed determined to fill the channel with old footage and new conjectures.
Simon shifted his helmet in his hands. He’d been working hard for hours to clean the surface. Dirt and grit that clung to the armor made operation of the stealth mode harder. More than anything at the moment, he wanted to finish working on his armor and get some sleep. He was surprised by how tired he felt.
“What do you want to do?” Simon asked.
“I want to find my father.”
“We’re going out on patrol tomorrow.” Simon was amazed at how quickly his thinking had become plural. “If you’ll give me the address, I’ll discuss it with Derek. Perhaps we’ll be able to get by there.”
Leah crossed her arms over her chest. “I feel like I should be doing something.”
Simon put his helmet aside. “You are doing something. You’re surviving.”
“It’s not enough. I should be out there.”
“If you were out there, on your own, you’d be dead in minutes.” Simon nodded in the direction of the wounded man a few beds down. “Even armored up, we’re taking our chances out there.”
“Then why go?”
“Because we were trained for this.”
Leah glared at him reproachfully. “You were trained to fight demons.” Her tone dared him to make her a believer.
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t something I can believe so easily.”
“You’ve seen them over the last few days. You know the demons are real.”
Letting out a quiet breath, Leah said, “Yes, but believing that you were trained to fight these creatures is even harder to accept than believing in demons.”
“Now,” Simon said gently.
After a moment, she nodded.
“We can hurt them,” Simon said. “We can kill them. That’s something the London police and the British military haven’t been able to do.”
“The…the demons still outnumber you.”
Simon noticed that she still had trouble acknowledging what they were up against even though she’d seen the demons up close on more than one occasion. For most people, one introduction was all that was required.
“Unless there are a lot more of you than I’ve seen,” Leah added.
“There are more demons,” Simon replied. “That’s why we have to move cautiously. The demons have weaknesses. We’ve got to discover them.”
“But lying here in wait, hiding,” she said it like it was something obscene, “is only allowing them to terraform more of London.”
“We can’t stop it. Not yet.”
“What if the effects of…whatever they’re doing can’t be reversed?”
Simon barely maintained control of the fear that surged within him. Leah was hitting every major fear that he had. He kept himself calm with effort. All his Templar training had been targeted survival and saving people. “You can’t think like that.”
“Why?” Leah looked more frustrated.
“Because we need to remain hopeful.”
“Hope isn’t a blessing. It’s a curse.”
Simon held back his own frustration. The young woman hadn’t been brought up as he had. And even he hadn’t held to the Templar mind-set.
“Thinking you’re just going to get killed,” Simon said quietly, “will generally get you that way.”
“How did you get trained?” Leah gestured at the barracks. “How did all of this get here? Why are you people so secretive about what you do? Don’t you realize that if the police and military had known what you did, that things could have progressed differently?”
Taking a deep breath, Simon gathered his thoughts. “The Templar Orders weren’t always secret. And this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered the demons.”
Leah calmed a little. “How long have you known?”
“I’ve been told that since I was born.”
“By whom?”
“My father. My grandfather. Everyone I’ve known here.”
“They told you about the demons?”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe them?”
That hurt. Simon broke eye contact for a moment, then looked back at her. “No. I didn’t. I got tired of living like this. So I left.”
“That’s what you were doing in South Africa? Hiding?”
“I didn’t think of it as hiding,” Simon protested. “I wanted my own life. I’d spent twenty-three years down in this place with very little time spent aboveground. I went to South Africa because people there didn’t ask too many questions, and I could be away from civilization while I worked as a guide.”
“When was the last time you…the Templar fought the demons?”
“We’ve never fought them before.”
Leah shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Come with me. I’ll show you.” Simon stood and stripped out of the warm-ups he’d worn down in the barracks. Nude, he started pulling on the armor.
Leah turned away from him.
Realizing that she was embarrassed and knowing he was the reason why, Simon felt bad. Not sorry or modest. “Sorry. You get to where you don’t notice nudity down here. We can’t wear clothing under the armor.”
“It’s all right.”
Simon wasn’t embarrassed. Most of the barracks were co-ed. He finished dressing, then pulled his helmet on. Once the suit had hardened, he opened the helmet and picked up his weapons. They were already clean. Weapons always got cleaned first.
“We don’t go anywhere down here without our armor.” Especially not now. “Let’s go.” Simon took the lead.
Twenty-Five
W arren sat in the back of a panel van and waited tensely, peering through the darkened window at the bat-winged creature that flew across the face of a three-quarter moon. Snow covered
