That thought was too horrible to contemplate. The environmental changes alone would cripple humanity’s efforts to survive. A lot of food came from the sea, and without the sea to provide airborne moisture in the form of rain, crops on land wouldn’t receive the necessary irrigations. Crops, livestock, and wild game would die out. But fresh water was the key to all of it.
After a few more minutes of sober silence, Derek’s scouts returned, informing them that there was a problem.
“We found the private museum where we were told it would be,” Mercer said. He was short and wiry, a perfect scout. “But someone got there before us.”
“Who?” Derek asked.
The Templar’s disgust tightened his voice. “A group of those demon-worshipping Cabalists.”
“They don’t worship the demons. They study them.”
“The Cabalists want to leave the demons alive,” Mercer growled. “For me, that’s enough to put the Cabalists in the enemy camp. I don’t trust them.”
“They helped Lord Sumerisle gather the information he needed to stage the attack on St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
Mercer cursed. “By morning, whose blood was it that soaked into the battlefield there?”
Derek didn’t say anything.
“The Cabalists didn’t fight and die with us,” Mercer went on. “That tells you something. They’re more interested in saving their own necks.”
Simon had yet to see the Cabalists, though he had heard about them. He didn’t know how he felt about them, either. Anyone that wanted to study the demons was suspect in his book.
“They’re making themselves look like the demons,” Mercer went on. “They wear demon armor and are covered with tattoos. Some of these I saw had horns. Not horns that you wear, but ones growing right out of their heads. Some of them look like they’re wearing lizard skins, only it’s their flesh and not some kind of garment.”
“Could be they’re trying to pass as demons,” someone offered. “As a disguise, maybe.”
“And maybe they’re trying to worship the demons,” Mercer snarled. He spat. “I’d just as soon kill ’em all.”
“What are the Cabalists doing at the museum?” Derek asked.
“I don’t know. There’s a manufacturing plant there. Used to be Holdstock Glassworks before they closed it down a few years back.”
Simon knew why the Cabalists’ presence there troubled Derek so much. Even though the Cabalists had remained separate—for the most part—from the Templar, they still apparently knew a great many things from their own studies of the demons.
“Well then,” Derek said, “let’s go see what’s brought the Cabalists out.”
The Templar stayed in the shadows of the back alleys and skirted the riverfront. The dead littered the way. Some of them had been there since the demons had arrived, but others looked fresh.
Tense minutes later, Simon fell into position with his group and scanned the museum with the thermographic display capabilities of the HUD.
Located next to the manufacturing plant that had closed nearly thirty years ago but hadn’t yet been revitalized, the Turnbull Museum was a privately owned collection that extended visitation privileges to only a few. From what Derek had told them earlier, Geoffrey Turnbull had been something of an adventurer and had journeyed to the far corners of the earth gathering artifacts. His taste, and his collection, had been eclectic. An invited guest might find a shrunken head from the wilds of Borneo as easily as he could find Ashanti pottery or Mongolian trade coins.
However, what no one had known until lately, was that Geoffrey Turnbull also had a taste for the arcane. This information the Templar had ferreted out from the same document they’d gotten their hands on that had told them of Robert Thornton’s cursed book. When they’d learned that, the Templar team hadn’t exactly been excited about the prospect. The story about the book devouring Bruce was still fresh in their minds.
What the Templar were there to find was a hammer that was supposedly forged by a demon blacksmith. The entry regarding the weapon called it Balekor’s Hammer. It was supposed to have the power to open gateways into the demon world.
The Templar hoped to use that power to their advantage. But, failing that, they wanted it safely locked away so the demons couldn’t use it.
The museum occupied the bottom two floors of a six-story building. The upper four floors held small business offices and storage areas. If the information they’d received was correct, Turnbull had another museum holding even more exotic items secretly hidden in a sub-basement level no one but the builders had known about. Wealth had its privileges, and the wealthy enjoyed their secrets.
Across the alley, the Cabalists entered the manufacturing plant.
Simon used the magnification application in the HUD to take a closer look at them. Their appearance, most of them looking like demons themselves with their grafted-on horns and demon-hide armor, put him off at once. He couldn’t muster much sympathy for them.
The sight of the two women in the ranks of the Cabalists reminded Simon of Leah Creasey. He wondered why the young woman had left the Templar Underground, but realized that she might have been just as put off by the Templar as he was by the Cabalists.
Derek called for the scouts, then got them moving once again. They froze against the alley wall as a Blood Angel flew by overhead. Then they resumed their approach to the museum.
A thick chain secured the museum’s main doors. The broken windows overhead offered mute testimony that someone had broken into the building, though. The occasional scream sounded somewhere out on the river.
Simon couldn’t help thinking about the people seeking refuge from the demons. None of them had been trained to fight the demons. Or to survive in winter conditions when power to the city was nonexistent, he added. Even if some of them managed to avoid getting killed by the demons, they wouldn’t make it through the winter months.
Some
