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Murdoch ran his hands through his hair, but it didn’t hide the shaking.
He might have been silent, and yet I could tell from his manner he knew the answer to my question but wasn’t willing to share it. Murdoch wasn’t much on lying either, something about the Ten Commandments. Rather than fabricate a fallacy, he preferred silence.
“Come on, Murdoch. We can’t help unless we know what’s going on.”
Tires screeched somewhere outside, first one vehicle than another.
The twisting sensation in my stomach told me the sound wasn’t a coincidence. Leaving my question unanswered, I raced to the window.
A series of unmarked white commercial vans pulled to a halt in front of the apartment building, occupying the space the police had vacated less than half an hour ago. Only the van occupants were not interested in either protecting or serving.
The black body armor and tactical equipment concealed their identity but the large crimson crosses on their chest-plates matched the blood-smeared cross on the wall of the bedroom behind me.
The Inquisition piled out of their transport vehicles. Each vehicle seemed to have had the rear compartment refitted for transport as no less than thirty commandos in full-tactical gear with automatic weapons converged on the apartment building. They must have been watching the building. Otherwise, they would have no reason to come back.
They were looking for something, or someone.
Murdoch stood staring at the blood cross, his hands pressed to his temple.
I knew who they wanted.
“Murdoch, it’s time to go,” I called, looking around for a way out.
Murdoch trudged to the window. His eyes settled on the commandos fanning out in front of the building. His face hardened as he set his jaw. “I hoped we’d seen the last of them.”
“Hope springs eternal. Looks like the Red Knight missed a few.”
“Cockroaches always find a way to survive,” he said. “Not a problem. You brought the weapons, right? Let them come. They’ll find we’re a tougher proposition than poor Benjamin.”
I shook my head. This wasn’t the Murdoch I knew. He was always cool, calm, and collected even under the most intense pressure, but this wasn’t that. This was anger, frustration, revenge. He wanted to shoot it out.
“Murdoch, you might be able to survive that, but the rest of us can’t. You’re going to get us all killed.”
He bit his lip. “They will pay for what they did to Ben.”
Lara burst into the bedroom.
“Yep, but right now we need a plan.” She drew her pistol from its holster beneath her arm. “We’re four floors up and surrounded.”
“We can’t take the stairs,” I replied. “There are too many of them. We’d be charging into a firing squad.”
“The fire escape,” Murdoch replied. “It’s one of the reasons Ben picked this building—commanding views and an easy escape route. We can use it to get to ground level. They’ll have left some men on the outside, but we should be able to take them.”
“Okay, I’ll buy us some time with the vanguard,” Lara replied. “You guys find something to barricade this door. As soon as I come back through it, I want you to jam it shut. We need it to buy enough time for us to reach ground level. By the time they breach, we’ll be legging it for the car.”
I held my tongue as she headed for the front door, but I didn’t want her to venture into the firing line.
“Don’t look at me like that, Seth. I’ll be just fine. I trained for this long before you came into my life.”
“You trained for religious zealots with assault rifles?” I called after her. She’d said little about Section Nine’s training regime but I doubted they’d covered the Inquisition.
“Not these particular zealots, but we’ve got plenty of our own. We just need to slow them down.”
Lara raced out the front door, intent on catching them on the staircase. A few shots would certainly give them something to think about.
While Lara slowed them, I went in search of barricade materials. There was a bookcase and a couch, both of which would help our cause. Considering the manpower at the Inquisition’s disposal, I decided to use both. Hopefully the furniture would buy us enough time to make it down the fire escape, but we’d need to move fast.
I pushed the bookshelf toward the door, but pains shot down my right arm. Wincing, I grabbed my wrist. I didn’t have time to deal with this. Turning around, I put my back against the bookcase and started shoving against it, inching it closer to the door. When it was close enough, I worked on the couch.
While I worked, Murdoch opened the window.
“Dizzy, why don’t you slip out first? Take a discreet look around and clear the path for us when the time comes,” Murdoch suggested.
“On it,” she replied. As she raced across the room, her form melted and shrunk, shifting from human to the compact shape of an eagle in flight. She tucked her wings as she shot through the open window before climbing up into the darkening sky. Even if the Inquisition were watching the window, she was gone in a heartbeat.
Given she was the only one of us that didn’t need to clamber down the fire escape, she made a great forward scout. The rest of us, on the other hand, would be totally exposed to fire from anyone waiting below.
A series of gunshots echoed through the building. Three of them in quick succession, followed by a brief pause and another two shots. Automatic weapons fire drowned out Lara’s pistol fire.
Before the fusillade died down, Lara appeared in the doorway. “They’re coming, hot and heavy.”
She slammed the door shut. With Murdoch’s help, I tipped the bookcase over so that it was lying horizontal in front of the door. Once it was in place, we jammed the couch up against it. The makeshift barricade would absorb a few rounds and take some manpower to move.
Then, I reached for the door itself. Running my hand over the timber, I whispered, “Acero.”
Power flowed through me, down my arm and into the door. As it did, piercing pains like daggers made of ice shot through the muscles of my right arm.
The din of the Inquisition storming the staircase flooded the building. Tears streamed down my face as I held my course, transmuting the door and its frame into solid steel, before solidifying the lock and jamming it in place. A wall of steel was going to provide a much sturdier obstacle to their progress and, given they hadn’t encountered it last time they’d visited, I hoped it would sow a little confusion also.
Tinges of blue shot through my arm, barely visible beneath the skin, but the pain of their passage threatened to render me unconscious. I leaned on the wall with my left arm, steadying myself as I swayed.
“Seth?” Murdoch called. “Are you all right?”
I drew in a sharp breath as I nodded unconvincingly. “Yep, that ought to buy us what we need. Let’s go.”
I staggered across the room, as the heavy footfalls of two dozen commandos shook the floor. Murdoch steadied me as we moved, and reaching the window, he placed a hand over my chest. “I’ll go first.”
I was in no condition to argue. On my best day he seemed more durable than me, and the lingering trauma from my battle with the Reoánaighsidhe had me feeling particularly fragile.
Once Murdoch was on the fire escape, Lara followed. I waited till last and salved my wounded pride by considering myself the rearguard against the zealots about to breach the apartment.
“They’re outside, on the fire escape,” a voice from below shouted.
They’d left lookouts on the street. It was unfortunate, but not unexpected.
From my place on the fire escape, I could make out two heavily armored men raising assault rifles at us. They vanished in a blur as an enormous black form hurtled at them from above.
Before they could pull the trigger, Dizzy, all four hundred pounds of her in the form of a Silverback Gorilla, landed atop one of the two commandos. I winced as bones broke when he cushioned her fall. The other commando tried to draw a bead on her but Dizzy backhanded him into the wall. The man hit the bricks and collapsed, out cold. Dizzy shifted back into her human form, grabbed the two discarded assault rifles the commandos had been using, and took up position behind the dumpster in the alley, covering our descent.
There was a thundering impact as something slammed into the front door of the apartment. The frame bowed and warped, but held.
Murdoch descended the fire escape with Lara hot on his heels.
Another thunderous impact tilted the door inward, where it remained propped up by the bookshelf and couch wedged behind it.
One of the commandos spotted me in the window. “They’re getting away!”
“We need them all,” a voice behind him bellowed.
As they wrestled with the barricade, I nursed my right arm close to my chest but extended my left back and sent a bolt of lightning arcing toward the door. The bolt struck the steel, running across the surface. A chorus of pained shouts came from the other side of the door.
“It’s electrified,” a voice shouted.
“It wasn’t when we were here earlier. Get some rubber gloves and get it out of the way, now! You lot, back down the stairs. Cut them off.”
I grabbed the handrails on the fire escape and raced the rest of the way down the steep steps. Stealth had no value to us now, only speed.
I was down to the second level by the time the first of Inquisition breached the apartment. As heavy boots crossed the timber floor, I was heading for the ladder to the ground level. The commando reached the window we’d used to escape and stuck his head out.
“They’re in the alley.”
As he tried to climb through the window, a burst of fire erupted from behind the dumpster. The din of automatic weapons fire was deafening in close quarters. Covering my ears and searching for the source, I looked up in time to catch the black-clad figure topple over the edge of the fire escape. He fell to the pavement below me.
Murdoch stood in the alley with one of the assault rifles Dizzy had borrowed and an immensely satisfied look on his face.
I descended the last ladder as Murdoch periodically squeezed rounds off at the upstairs window to discourage our pursuers.
“Let’s go,” Murdoch called as my boots hit the pavement.
Racing through the alley way, I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. It was chaos all around us. People were screaming on the street, no doubt fearing some sort of terrorist attack or mass shooting. Inside, the Inquisition would be scrambling to make it to the first floor. There would be other members of their strike team trying to fan out to contain us.
Our Humvee was parked near the Tea House. We’d have to get through the Inquisition to reach it.
“I’m parked out back,” Murdoch called. “Leave the car. We’ll send someone back for it.”
To my great surprise, we reached his Humvee without encountering any more resistance. Murdoch unlocked the vehicle as we approached, and he leapt into the driver’s seat. I slipped into the passenger’s and cradled his assault rifle as he fired up the armored car. Lara and Dizzy took the back seats.
The Humvee’s engines roared to life as Murdoch floored it.
“Seatbelt on,” he growled.
I dragged mine across my body, fumbling as I tried to jam it into the seatbelt clasp. Dizzy and Lara followed suit as the Humvee screeched around the corner, leaving a good deal of rubber on the road. Frenzied pedestrians raced away from the apartment and the adjacent Actor’s Church. Murdoch navigated the armored car through the fracas with the precision of a stunt driver.
“Murdoch, shouldn’t we be heading away from them?” I asked as the Inquisition’s vans came into view.
“Oh, we will, in just a moment. Can’t have them following us.”
It took me all of a heartbeat to realize his intention.
Murdoch drove the pedal to the floor as he rocketed toward them. I barely had time to lock the doors.
The Inquisition must’ve seen it coming as they brought every weapon they could to bear and unleashed hell.
Bullets ricocheted off the vehicle’s reinforced plates and reinforced windows. Sustained fire would eventually shatter them, but Murdoch wasn’t going to give them that chance.
When it became apparent the vehicle was proof against their weapons, the soldiers of the Inquisition scrambled for cover. Murdoch steered the Humvee’s bull bar straight into the side of the nearest van.
The force of the impact launched me forward, but the seatbelt yanked me back into my seat in a delightful dose of whiplash. It had nothing on the pain in my arm though.
In the armored Humvee, we fared considerably better than the vans. They crumpled like a politician in front of a press panel. We collected three of the vans, one after the other, before slamming into a streetlight. The pole bent at an obscene angle but didn’t break. The Humvee ground to a halt.
Two dozen enraged Inquisitors funneled out of the apartment building and opened fire at us.
Spiderweb fissures spread across the glass in the Humvee’s rear window.
“Murdoch, get us the hell out of here,” I said.
“With pleasure,” he replied, throwing the stick into reverse and gunning it. He spun the wheel and swung the car back out onto the street. The nearest Inquisitor was struck by the sliding Humvee, sending him flying.
As we rounded the corner and the gunfire subsided, I turned to Murdoch.
“Was that entirely necessary?”
“Yes,” he said, a righteous indignation etched across his face. “They deserve far worse.”
“What if they’d had heavy weapons, like they did when they hit us at the hangar?”
“Then I’d have hit him first,” Murdoch replied. “Do I question you when you make a call?”
He had a point. I’d led him into some pretty horrific circumstances over the years. He’d never second-guessed me.
“No,” I conceded, “but if you can loop me in next time, that would be splendid.”
“Understood.” He gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. “They’re all going to die, Seth. They pervert the word of God to justify their hate.”
“Who was Ben to you?” I asked.
I’d never seen him this upset.
“He was a brother to me,” Murdoch replied, staring at the road ahead.
“You’re going to need to do better than that, Murdoch. Something is going on, and we want to help.”
“How can we help you if you won’t tell us anything?” Dizzy said. “We’re here for you. Why not let us help you, the way you’ve always helped us?”
Murdoch drummed a nervous pattern on the wheel with his thumbs as he guided us out of the heart of London.
I bided my time, not saying anything. I couldn’t make him tell me but I also was worried about him. Ben’s death had shaken Murdoch in a way I’d never known possible. Murdoch had always seemed unbreakable, but now cracks were appearing in his iron façade, and I wasn’t sure how to help him.
“You have no idea how long I’ve carried this secret,” Murdoch began.
“I’ve kept plenty of my own,” I replied. “You can trust us.”
“I know that, Seth, but nothing like this. This is everything to me, a part of my very existence.”
“I won’t force your hand, Murdoch. If you don’t want to tell us, we’ll help as best we can, but we’ll be fighting with one hand tied behind our back.”
Silence settled in the vehicle.
Finally, Murdoch spoke. “Ben was one of my men. I hand picked him, trained him, and guided him. We had entrusted him with something of great value and the Inquisition has stolen it.”
“What was it?”
“A key,” Murdoch said. “One of four required to access a location that men have long sought but never found.”
“There are four keys?” I asked.
“All of them are essential, but any one alone is useless. The four of them together lead to something of unequaled significance.”
“Can I ask what it is?”
“Do you promise not to tell another living soul?”
“Of course,” I replied. “You’ve kept my secrets for years. I’d never betray yours. I’d rather die.”
“Then swear it.”
I swallowed. A sworn oath was bound by my own magic. I would not enter one lightly but neither would I forsake this one.
Imbuing an effort of will into the words, I said, “I swear it. On my life.”
“Good.” Murdoch looked in the rear-view mirror.
“I swear it, too,” Dizzy added without hesitation.
“You have no need,” Murdoch said. “I know your soul.”
There was a nervous pause as he made eye contact with Lara.
“There is no room for conflicted loyalties here, Lara,” he said. “I saved your life at Delphi. If you tell a soul, I’ll take it just as easily.”
Murdoch turned to me. “No matter how much that might hurt me. The item in question is one that has driven men to madness.”
“I understand,” Lara replied. “I won’t say a word. Not to anyone.”
“Good,” Murdoch said. “I suspect your old employers would love to possess it.”
“Possess what?” I asked. “What is it you’ve been hiding?”
Murdoch let out a slow breath.
“We’ve been defending the Holy Grail.”