The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) Read online

  I dropped to Jen’s side and tried to scrape up the strength to help Jen. When I regained my breath, with Dave’s help, I ripped away Jen’s shirt. The bullet had pierced her chest just over her left breast and seemed to have punctured her lung. There seemed to be gallons of blood pouring out of her, her breath was terribly ragged, and bubbles of blood were coming out of the hole in her chest. Images of Spring dying in my arms tried to overwhelm me. I couldn’t let Jen die. “Hold on, Jen!” I commanded. “Don’t die!”

  “Vinnie! Go get me some duct tape, don’t let anything stop you, get back here as fast as you can.”

  “Make up your stupid mind!” yelled Vinnie before he ran out the door.

  Spring, wake up! I need you.

  Her response was sleepy and lethargic. Huh? What? Oh, crap. What the hell, Finn? Get in there.

  I dove my Sight into Jen and started trying to understand what I needed to do first. Spring was there beside me, and we flowed through my friend’s body, coaxing bone and soft tissue to start the healing process. First, we shut down the blood vessels leading to the trail of ruptured tissue, and moved on from there. I couldn’t tell if we were making progress or not, but I couldn’t stop.

  The irregular pulse of her heart stopped. Her lungs fell silent and still.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Spring, we have to restart her heart.

  I don’t know how, Finn.

  You have to know how!

  I’m sorry, but I don’t.

  “Dave, she needs CPR now, and I can’t do it.”

  I had to scramble out of Dave’s way as I continued doing what I could to control the damage. Dave started compressing her chest, squeezing her heart and manually moving blood through it.

  Dave swore and I heard him spit out a mouthful of blood. I couldn’t afford to be distracted as Jen’s life processes starting to shut down around me. The spark was fading from her cells as lack of oxygen started taking its toll.

  I couldn’t let her die, but I didn’t know what to do!

  “Oh God, Dave! I don’t know what to do.”

  I felt a small hand reach between Jen and my chest. It clasped my hand holding the Caduceus.

  Colette’s mental voice was very weak, but I could hear her speak into my mind, “Do as I do.”

  I held my breath and followed her into Jen’s heart.

  Her thoughts came to me, Here and here, then here and here. You see?

  Yes, I do!

  I followed her mental instructions, Jen’s heart jumped, but didn’t continue.

  Again.

  I did. Again, her heart spasmed and stopped.

  Here, I will do this, said Colette. Look for other issues.

  I withdrew, and watched what she did, but still there was no response. I pulled out to a higher level to look at Jen’s whole being. Just like with her brother when he died, her aura seemed to be evaporating like snow on a sunny day. It was leaving, and I couldn’t let that happen. In desperation, I summoned forth my shield and wrapped it around her, then I hardened it and denied passage to her soul. I used the techniques Il Saia had shown me to make a cocoon for Greg’s soul and held her in place. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to do something. It recalled the first time I’d worked this way on my dying father. As with him, I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. Anything was better than losing her.

  I opened my physical eyes and looked down at Jen. Colette’s head prevented me from seeing very much, but I could see Dave grimly compressing and occasionally breathing for her. That’s when I saw her twitch and her collapsed lung started bubbling again.

  “She’s breathing, her heart is pumping!” crowed Dave. He stopped his compressions. I looked around frantically and found Vinnie standing behind me with a roll of duct tape.

  “I need towels!”

  “Huh, it looks like you do.”

  “Get me some goddamn towels!”

  He went over to the cart and came back with a half dozen rags of dubious cleanliness. I used them to clean the blood off Jen’s chest. My hands were soon covered in blood—again.

  Ironically, I knew exactly what to do. “Vinnie, give me a dozen eight inch strips of the tape.”

  He did as I asked, and soon, I had a dressing attached to Jen’s chest on three sides, leaving the bottom one open. I held my breath till I saw it working. As her chest deflated, blood and fluid would sputter out. When she inhaled, the tape formed a seal against her skin and allowed her lung to inflate a little more. Soon she stopped coughing up blood and could breathe more easily. I released the soul shield and dove back in to help Spring and Colette do what they could for Jen’s body. She was going to live.

  Colette’s mind had sharpened and strengthened as she worked on Jen. I assumed she’d been drawing on the power of the Caduceus. Colette felt nothing like I would have expected three days ago. There was strength and steel conviction where I had thought there would have been fun-loving tenderness and compassion.

  Spring interrupted my musings. Finn, we need to get out of here before Mark comes back for us with more guards.

  We can’t move Jen yet.

  I think it will be less traumatic for her to move now versus waiting and get her filled with bullet holes.

  But, we don’t know he has any more guards.

  Well, ask the guard you mojoed.

  “Hey guard, how many other armed people are in this place?”

  “Between ten and twenty-five.”

  Crap.

  I turned my attention back to Colette’s care of Jen. Her single-minded purpose and skill reminded me of Il Saia.

  Colette, we need to go now. Can you keep her stabilized if we move her?

  Perhaps, she has her own fragment of the True Cross—it feels very different than I am used to, but it will aid me.

  She must have been referring to Dave’s bear. “Perhaps” would have to do. I pulled away and stood up. Vinnie was gone. I decided we were lucky he hadn’t decided to shoot us or stab us first.

  Our guard was on his belly, with a rifle pointed down the hall. He fired several rounds into sporadic answering shots. After one more shot, we heard a distant cry of pain. The return shots stopped.

  “How are we doing?”

  The guard swung his gun at me and I cried out, “Stop!”

  The man froze, there were tears streaming from his eyes. “I probably just killed Stewart! You bastard, you made me kill him!”

  I reeled when I understood what I had done to this man.

  “I... I’m sorry, but I can’t let you stop. You must do everything you can to guard us and help us escape. Now!”

  “Stewart was the last one guarding the side entrance. If you hurry, you may be able to escape that way before they send more guards around to that entrance. I’ve told them I have it secured, but I doubt they believe me anymore. Get the fuck out of here before you make me kill anybody else.”

  “Okay, but do what’s necessary to keep us safe.” I ran back to my friends.

  “Dave, you’ll have to lift her, I can’t move my arm. I think I dislocated it.”

  Colette pulled away from Jen and stepped up to me. “Let me see.”

  “Oh no!” I backed away from her.

  She scowled. “Let me check your arm. I am the trained medic. Do not be a coward.”

  That stopped me. If you want me to do something, hit me in the pride every time. Anxiously, I let her examine my shoulder. Her touch was gentle, but every touch emphasized my shoulder’s screaming pain.

  “Relax, Finn. It is just dislocated. It is easily fixed.”

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  “But, of course.”

  I’d seen movies where they relocated a shoulder by smacking it really hard against a wall, so I closed my eyes and braced myself for the impact. I jumped and squeaked when she grabbed my wrist.

  “Relax, do not be an infant. The more relaxed you are, the less it will hurt.”

  I scowled at her as she raised my arm to a ninety-degree angle at the el
bow and gently started pushing my arm at my chest.

  It hurt. A lot.

  I’ll see what I can do, offered Spring.

  Don’t make me all loopy. I need to be able to function.

  Hey, don’t worry your pretty little head. I’ve seen doctors on TV.

  The muscles in my shoulders unclenched and the pain faded immediately.

  “Zat is much better, Finn.” Colette pushed my arm to my chest and then pulled it back out. When my arm reached about 130 degrees from my front, my shoulder popped and my arm slid back into its socket. More importantly, the pain just stopped.

  “Wow, that was easier than it looks on television.”

  She just rolled her eyes at me. “Do not use this arm, or it may fall back out. Hold it across the chest.”

  I did as she recommended, and we turned our attention back to Jen.

  In short order, the three of us had Jen lying down on Vinnie’s cart. It wasn’t long enough for her, but Dave put her thighs against his chest and let her feet dangle on either side of his head. He held her legs in place with one hand behind his neck while he pushed the cart with his other.

  We piled up around the entrance to the hallway and waited for the go ahead from the guard. My uncle’s voice called out from a hiding place down the corridor.

  “Martin, put your gun down, there’s no need for anyone else to get hurt. Your boss is dead, and we’ve no reason to be fighting. Everyone else is working with me now.”

  “I can’t stop. Please just stay back. I don’t want to kill anybody else!”

  I pushed away my grief and my fear for my uncle. “Martin,” I said with force in my command, “lay down some cover fire for us until we’re out of sight.”

  Behind me, Dave said to the guard, “Next time you get a job keeping people locked up in little iron cages, expect bad shit, you whining dirt-bag.”

  We ran for the entrance while behind us, our guard was doing his job. Whatever his sins, I couldn’t help thinking about what I was making him do. We got around a corner and ran down a short hallway toward a door marked “EXIT.” Dave, Jen’s legs bouncing behind his head as he ran, got there ahead of me and rolled to a stop. Colette pulled her hands away from Jen and headed to the door.

  “How you holding up, Dave?”

  When he looked at me, I saw that he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Jen is going to pop a rivet when I tell her how I saved her life and rescued her on this cart.”

  I laughed. Thinking that there would be a time when we could all laugh at it together gave me a rush of warmth.

  Colette stopped at the door. “I will check first, then you follow when I say.”

  Dave whispered to me, “Damn, you guys stink. I think a bath should be the first order of business.”

  Colette crouched down against the wall and held the door slightly open with one hand.

  “Way to think of the important stuff, Dave.”

  When no shots came through the narrowly opened door, Colette made a low dive out. They’d waited till they had a better target. Gunshots popped outside, and my heart just about stopped. Did she just go to her death?

  There were a few more shots and then Colette called for us. “Come, now before more arrive!”

  I wasn’t sure what I expected from a magical terrorist organization’s secret lair, but this wasn’t it. We came out into a small area between two run-down, dirty buildings. I couldn’t decide if we were in an alley, a road, or a small parking lot. There was trash everywhere and the building across from us sported several broken windows. It looked abandoned.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Detroit,” said Dave.

  Colette ran down the side of the building toward what looked like a street. We followed and found that it was a street fronted by rows of abandoned and dilapidated warehouses. There were a few cars parked along the street. None of them looked particularly well loved. I’d heard Detroit was having a hard time of it, but this area looked post-apocalyptic.

  “We parked down there on a side street,” said Dave pointing back down the length of the building we just exited. “We’ll have to move fast.” Oh yippee skippee.

  There was no way the cart’s little wheels could navigate the rough asphalt, so I moved Dave out of the way. “I’ll carry her.”

  “You should not move your shoulder, Finn,” said Colette with evident irritation.

  “I heal fast.”

  Are we okay, Spring?

  I’m fine, but your shoulder’s still not doing very well. Your body can only heal so fast. Just do most of your lifting with your left hand.

  Right.

  I gently picked up Jen and found a position where the pain in my shoulder was manageable. She barely seemed to weigh anything. This was definitely a situation where my new, larger muscles were an advantage. She whimpered and opened her eyes a crack. I tried to smile at her blood stained face. “Hey welcome back, sleepy. Just relax, I’ve got you.”

  Her eyes closed and said in a small voice, “It hurts, Finn.”

  I tried to blink back sudden tears. “I know sweetie, I know.” I wanted to promise her it would get better, but I couldn’t get myself to do it.

  “We cannot go that way,” said Colette, looking down the building. “Come, this way.” She started to lead us in the opposite direction, but Dave balked.

  “Oh, no! We’re not leaving my car! Besides, who said you were coming with us? You smell like shit, and as far as I’m concerned, the farther away we are from you, the better.”

  “Dave,” I said. “Let’s just get away first, then we can start shouting at each other.”

  “Quickly, we must go this way,” said Colette. “They will kill us if we go down there.”

  “Well,” said Dave looking at me. “You can follow Benedictine Arnold there, I’m going back to get my car. They don’t know what I look like, so I’ll just act like a normal pedestrian.”

  I snapped. “Dave, don’t be an ass. You’re covered in blood, for Christ’s sake. Let’s go.”

  “I think I liked you better when you were forced to be polite.”

  I considered it. Somewhere along the way, I’d beaten Smith’s compulsion. Score one for the good guys. I wondered if some part of me assumed the compulsion ended when Smith died.

  I turned to follow Colette and found myself staring into a ferocious scowl especially reserved for me. I tried to come up with a reason for it, but got nothing. “What?”

  “Please do not take His name in vain.”

  The light dawned. “Oh, sorry.”

  I followed and then hissed back at Dave, who hadn’t moved. “Come on, Dave! Your car will be just fine here for a few hours or a day.

  Dave looked longingly down the street towards his beloved Mustang, before turning and jogging to catch up with us. “I’m gonna be seriously pissed if something happens to my car.”

  “Yeah, surprise, surprise,” I muttered.

  We scuttled down past the next building, keeping close to it while I waited tensely to hear a shout or feel a bullet pierce my back. Colette led us into another trash-filled alley between buildings. She pointed to a particularly large pile of palettes and discarded junk.

  “Finn, you and David take the girl and hide behind this. I will find a vehicle.”

  Dave scowled at her until I pointed out the facts. “Hey Dave, she’s a spy, remember?”

  “Okay, fine,” he said with unconcealed reluctance.

  Colette extended her hand palm up to David. “Good, now give me your bear, please.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that Dave had retrieved it from Jen.

  “Oh no! I’m already losing my car! You can’t have this, too!”

  “Dave, just let her use it for a little while. She’ll bring it back.” I scowled at her. “Won’t you, Colette?”

  “Yes, yes, now hurry.”

  David grumbled but gave it to her. He glared over at me and said, “She’d better bring that back!” He looked back to Colette, but
she was nowhere to be seen. “Do you hear me, you little French tart?”

  We made our way back through the alley and crouched behind the pile of junk. I carefully sat down and cradled Jen in my lap, giving my injured shoulder a much needed break. Dave plopped down beside me.

  As exhausted as I was, my time in the cage kept playing back vividly in my mind. I tried to distract myself by running my fingers through Jen’s hair. I started shaking with reaction to everything that had just happened. There was so much blood, so much death. Jen’s blood coated my hands, clothes, and face. I started shutting down, but Spring was there and suddenly everything was better.

  Thank you, Spring.

  De nada, can’t have my sun and root go crazy on me. There will be a price to pay later. Now, keep watch, and I’ll start trying to encourage blood production in Jen. We’ll need water for her very soon.

  After a few minutes, Dave got up on his knees and dug into his bulging pants pockets. He pulled out an ornate cross on a chain and examined it.

  I recognized it. “Hey, that’s Colette’s. Where did you get it?”

  He grinned at me. “Off dead Dr. Strange.”

  “You looted his corpse?” I looked at him with disbelief.

  “Ha! Yep, one thing I learned playing in your world: always check the bodies for goodies!”

  “Sheesh, Dave, that’s just a game.”

  Dave shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “I guess you wouldn’t be interested in the other stuff I found then.”

  Well, now that it was done... “What did you find?”

  He fished back into his bulging pants pocket and pulled out four rectangular golden pendants of various sizes on chains and a leather wallet.

  I gaped at him. “You took all that bling off the doctor?”

  “Yep,” he smiled proudly. “There was two hundred and change in his wallet, too.”

  I wanted to be affronted or disgusted, but the only thing I did was gape and laugh.

  “...And this.” He pulled out a smart phone and panic chased away the laughter.

  “Oh crap, Dave, is that his? You’ve got to get rid of it. They can track it!”

  “Relax, it’s not one of your retarded iPhones, so I took the battery out. I just thought it might come in handy to see who his best buddies are.”