The monster howled in terrified pain as the strands sank through its body. In seconds, though, the howls stopped and the creature had been reduced to chunks of meat and bone.
“Come on down,” the knight taunted the monsters still clinging to the wall.“Come on down and die.”
Heather didn’t know if the monsters could understand words. Somehow the ideathat they were clever enough to understand spoken language made it worse. If they were just animals hunting it was horrible enough. But if they were intelligent and malevolent, the situation seemed even more insurmountable.
The knight dragged her sword tip across the pavement in a half-circle. Green sparks shot into the air.
The surviving creatures all backed away. They howled in anger. In a few more seconds, they hauled themselves back over the lamppost.
Heather gazed in wide-eyed wonder at the knight.
“It’s true,” one of the women with Byron said. “The story about the knightsis all true.”
The knight raised her sword in both hands. She smiled fiercely as she turned to them. “Not knights,” she said. “Templar. We are Templar.”
As she looked into the knight’sTemplar’sface, Heather saw the sickness inthe woman’s features. She looked wan and hollow.
As if something’s eating her from the inside, Heather couldn’t helpthinking.
The device on the sword, mounted just below the cross guard, grew brighter green. The illumination lit up the immediate area and chased the shadows back from Heather and the others. A wave of nausea twisted through Heather’s stomach.
Something’s wrong.
“You can save us,” Julie half-whispered. The words sounded too loud. “You canguide us out of London and get us to safety.”
“I want to save you,” the Templar said. “But I can’t.” She howled in pain andshook visibly. “You need to get out of here. I can’t control it much longer.”
Heather took a step back.
“It’s inside me,” the Templar said. “Inside my mind.” Tears slid down herface. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. I thought I could control it.”
“Tell me,” Heather said desperately. “Tell me where the safe places are.”
“Get out of here.” A paroxysm shook through the Templar.
“There are safe places,” Heather said. “We’ve heard about them. The knightshave them.”
“No.”
Heather didn’t know what the Templar was saying no to. “I don’t understand.”
The Templar stopped quivering, looked up, and smiled. “There are no safeplaces anymore, fools. Now you’ll pay the price for your stupid, pathetic hope.”
Heather managed to turn and run, but she didn’t take more than three stepsbefore she felt the sword thrust between her shoulder blades. All sensation below her shoulders left her. Her legs crumpled and she fell to the ground in akneeling position. Only the sword held her up.
Several inches of it stood out from her chest. She gazed at the weapon in disbelief. The knightsthe Templarwere supposed to be good. Neil had told herthey were helping everyone stranded in London, and that they were fighting the monsters.
Not true, Heather thought as she felt her body turn cold. Not all of them.
The sword blade blazed incandescent green. Heather felt herself dwindle and grow small. Then she was sucked into darkness.
ONE
You have found them, vassal. Now I want them dead.
From the third-story fire escape, Warren Schimmer gazed down at his prey and tried not to think of them as human. Not that it would have mattered too terribly much. With his life in the balance against theirs, he would save his own life every time. That was how he’d done things for the last four years.
Do not hesitate or your own life will be forfeit.
The deep, rasping voice in Warren’s head belonged to Merihim, a demon who hadchosen Warren as one of his pawns in the demonic wars playing out over England. To disobey orders would be to die in a most horrible fashion.
Warren was afraid of dying. He’d nearly been killed by his stepfather when hewas a boy. His stepfather had just succeeded in killing Warren’s mother. Thesound of the gunshots still haunted him at night.
But those dreams were less scary than the ones of the demon.
The five people below moved cautiously. Four of them, three men and one woman, were security guards. Warren knew that from the way they moved and the weapons they carried. They also wore hard-shell Kevlar vests and Kevlar helmets.
The fifth person was a man in his middle years. The others had bundled him up in body armor, too, but he moved uncomfortably init. He clutched a package tightly to his chest.
Merihim wanted the package.
Warren didn’t know what it was. He rarely knew what Merihim sent him after.During the last four years, the demon’s primary command had been to watch andgrow stronger in his powers. Warren knew that Merihim often watched through his eyes. The demon’s flesh bound them.
Occasionally, when Merihim’s guards were down, or because Warren was growing stronger in his powers, Warren sometimes got glimpses of the things the demon saw. When Merihim caught him spying, as he did most of the time, Warren ended up getting migraines that left him sick and hurting for days.
Worst of all, those episodes left Warren defenseless. He’d had to rely onothers to keep him safe. Dependence had never come easily to him. These days he hated it worse than ever.
Control had always been a big part of Warren’s life. Now, what little controlhe did have was just an illusion. Merihim controlled him. But he also protected him.
It was a suitable trade-off. Most of the people Warren had met over the last four years had died hard deaths. Living, even as a demon’s vassal, was betterthan dying.
Even when it meant killing others.
The five men entered the alley and walked beneath Warren’s position. A smallobject, no larger than a racquet-ball, trailed them from a discreet distance.
Warren gestured. The object changed course immediately and came to him. He caught it in his right hand, the demon’s hand that Merihim had given him afterhe’d lost his own in battle against a Templar named Simon Cross. It was the hand thatbound Warren to Merihim so tightly.
Covered with silvery-green scales, the hand was
