Infernal Games (Templar Chronicles Urban Fantasy Series) by Joseph Nassise Page B

the efforts of the man now walking through their midst.
    When
they reached the bodies, Riley stepped to one side, out of the way, so that Cade
could do what he’d come to do.
    He
began by standing and looking out over the scene, trying to get a feel for the
ritual in general. While he didn’t think of himself as an expert on mystical
rites and black magick, he did have a fair amount of experience with them, both
as a result of being the Echo Team commander for so many years as well as his
general research into the subject while tracking the enemies of the Order.
    The
fact that blood sacrifices had been made, human sacrifices at that and more
than one, meant that the summoner thought an incredible amount of energy was
going to be needed for the rite. Usually this meant the caster was trying to
summon something from the infernal realms, anything from a minor demon to a
major one, but Cade didn’t get the sense that such was the case here. For one
the iconography within the summoning circle was incorrect, never mind the fact
that you didn’t use a five pointed star when trying to call something from the
nether regions. Plus Cade had picked up on the same lack of negative energy
that Riley had.
    He
walked over to one of the corpses lying on the floor and squatted down beside
it. Cade put the man in his mid-thirties and guessed that he was mostly likely
homeless, given the condition of his clothing and the amount of dirt that was
caked under his fingernails. The man’s throat had been cut and the size of the
wound made the cause of death pretty obvious.
    And
yet...
    Something
wasn’t right. Something about the wound in the man’s throat...
    Cade
bent closer for a better look.
    The
cut was even and extended all the way across the front of the man’s neck, right
about where his Adam’s apple would be. The cut was very deep; the knife had
been extremely sharp and had been applied with force.
    Most
likely from behind, Cade thought.
    Cade
stood up, took another look down at the body, and frowned.
    If
the cut had been made from behind with one swift movement, as appearances
seemed to suggest, then blood should have sprayed outward all over the man’s
clothing as his heart kept beating in an effort to keep him alive. But except
for some blood splashed over the neck of his shirt, his clothes were free of
it.
    That
wasn’t possible.
    Cade
stood and moved over to the next body. Another male, younger this time,
probably in his late teens, early twenties. This victim was better dressed;
football jersey, clean blue jeans, shiny white sneakers. The same sort of
wound bisected his neck and, like the first, the lack of blood across his
clothing was telling.
    They
were already dead when their throats were cut.
    Cade
knew he was right. Still, he checked the other three bodies arranged around
the casting circle just to be certain. In the end, all of them had the same
wound and the same damning evidence.
    “Find
something?” Riley asked, after watching Cade move from corpse to corpse.
    “In
a minute,” Cade said, not yet ready to give his conclusions. He had a few more
things he wanted to check out. Like seeing all this through his Sight.
    Several years ago, Cade had
barely survived an encounter with a supernatural entity he’d come to know as
the Adversary. The battle had resulted in what he thought had been the death of
his wife, Gabrielle, and had left him scarred both physically and emotionally.
He’d lost the sight in his right eye and the flesh on that side of his face had
been savagely disfigured, leaving him with a wide band of scar tissue that
stretched from the hairline above his eye, down across his cheekbone, and
around behind his ear. The eye itself was still intact, but was nothing more
than a milky white orb floating in a sea of damaged flesh. He was wearing an
eye patch over the scar tissue now as he habitually did when he was out and
about in public but he knew the patch wouldn’t interfere with what he intended
to