Tooth and Claw Read online

  Tooth and Claw

  A Templar Chronicles Mission

  Joseph Nassise

  Contents

  Summary

  A Note on Chronology

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Return to the widely popular Templar Chronicles urban fantasy series with this set of mission-oriented novellas!

  Gales Ferry. Population: 1,100...500...175...0.

  After the Templars intercept a startling series of 9-1-1 calls, the Echo Team is ordered to the once picturesque town of Gales Ferry, New Hampshire.

  There, a strange tableau awaits - the town is empty, its inhabitants missing, their still-warm last meals resting silently on their tables.

  As Knight Commander Cade Williams and his men spread out in search of the missing townsfolk, they quickly realize that they are not alone.

  Something is stalking the streets of Gales Ferry.

  And the Echo Team is its next target.

  A Note on Chronology

  * * *

  Each of the Templar Chronicles Missions take place between the novels that make up the primary series. As such, they will often feature the original characters and may even delve into the background of these individuals in order to enhance the reader’s enjoyment of the primary storylines.

  * * *

  The events described in Tooth and Claw take place just a few weeks after those chronicled in A Scream of Angels but before the war with the Chiang Shih in A Tear in the Sky.

  1

  Jenny Olsen’s stocking feet made no sound against the sidewalks of the quaint New Hampshire village where she’d lived her entire life. Her screams, on the other hand, echoed shrill and desperate, resounding between the closely-grouped cottages at the west end of town.

  “Help me! Please! God, please!”

  None of her neighbors responded. No lights popped on behind lace curtains or white plantation shutters. She may as well have been the last person on earth.

  The creatures pursuing her were as silent as her own feet, forcing Jenny to constantly turn her head and see if they were gaining ground or if her running was putting distance between them.

  They were gaining.

  They’d been gaining for five minutes now, ever since the chase began.

  Five full minutes at an all-out run. Jenny was now acutely aware of the difference between “meaning to” get in shape and actually doing it. She could feel stamina dripping out of her as if it were actual, measurable gasoline or other fuel; each step was a little slower than the last, each footfall a little closer to the one before it instead of the long strides she’d made five minutes before.

  Five minutes. That’s all it had been, five minutes, and already her heart pounded fast beneath her ribs in a breathtaking staccato.

  She’d noticed during her usual pre-dawn breakfast that things seemed quieter than usual in Gales Ferry, though at the time, her noticing had been a dim thing, curled sleepily around the base of her brain stem, not really raising any alarms. It just seemed like a quiet day. Then she’d gone out to get the local Gales Ferry Independent, having not put on her shoes yet, and was dismayed to find the paper hadn’t arrived. Odd. Arthur Nelson, the thirteen-year-old who delivered it, rarely delivered late.

  Then from around the corner of her little one-bedroom cottage, the first thing had appeared. Then another. When they sprang into a predatory run toward her, Jenny obeyed her animal instincts, that dim thing in her brain awakening and shrieking at her to flee.

  Five minutes ago. It had been only five minutes ago.

  Quickly realizing there was no way to get past the two horrific figures to reach her own house, she’d bolted and made a beeline for Mrs. Jackson’s house across the street. The door was open and Jenny rushed straight toward it . . . right until she saw the puddles of blood and piles of what looked like thick, pink sausages on the floor and which, she was quite sure a moment later, were not sausages at all.

  She screamed and spun and saw the things bearing down on her and she'd taken off once more.

  Now Jenny looked back as she ran, and a small whine of helplessness squeaked from her throat.

  They were closer. The two things were closer.

  They must be people, presumably, dressed in some kind of horror movie makeup. Nothing else made sense. Jenny’s subconscious seized on the idea—kids from the high school! Sure. A late night prank wrapping up just before dawn. That made the most sense.

  Of course, the blood and viscera she’d seen at Mrs. Jackson’s house were awfully realistic for high schoolers.

  Maybe they were university students? A fraternity hazing ritual of some kind?

  Begging her legs to go farther, faster, Jenny looked back again. The high school or college kids had done an incredible job with their disturbing makeup, making their eyes glow a deathly shade of yellow that reminded her of decaying flowers . . .

  And how had they made their tongues so long? The reddish organs hung well past their chins, dangling dry in the darkness, not glistening under the full moon that followed above. And they were naked, “buck-ass naked” as Jenny’s dad used to say, and both were somehow sexless, neither male nor female nor both nor neither.

  Pretty good makeup job, all right.

  Jenny screamed again, using the last of her breath to do so. Someone should have come to help her by now. How had the kids put the whole neighborhood, the whole town up to this prank? Maybe this was a reality TV show, hidden cameras capturing her terror for the laughs of millions . . . ?

  She was coming up on a corner, and a flash of hope flared inside her: Mr. Slausen. No way old Mr. Slausen would put up with this kind of nonsense. He was the proverbial cranky old man, known the village over for his cantankerous attitude. His house was coming up on the right. He’d scared Jenny and her friends as kids, he could certainly put the fear of God into these jerks, make them stop the joke. Then she could stop and breathe, make the world normal again.

  She swerved right and up the slight slope of lush grass, which was a blessing to her sore feet. Mr. Slausen’s porch light was off, which was unusual, but Jenny slammed into his front door anyway, knowing that sound alone would be enough to bring the old man screaming out of the house.

  Jenny pounded on the wood. “Mr. Slausen! It’s Jenny Olsen, please open the door! Mr. Slausen, please!”

  Her fists thumped heavily against the wood, but no response came from the house. No one could step foot on Slausen’s lawn without him shouting out a window, let along banging on his front door. If he was home, he’d have come out by now.

  The nightmare image of Mrs. Jackson’s remains flashed before her. Maybe Mr. Slausen was home. Home, and dead.

  Cursing, Jenny spun to the left—just as one of the things chasing her swung a spider-like hand for her head. Its long nails scraped against Slausen’s door and Jenny squealed fearfully, dodging inexpertly to one side to avoid one of Slausen’s manicured blue point junipers.

  The landscaped obstacle bought her one, perhaps two seconds. Maybe it was enough. She barreled down the west side of the lawn—Slausen’s house was a corner lot—and continued running down Scarsdale Drive.

  Jenny’s mind and body worked on autopilot now, nonsensically hoping the sudden turn would give her a few more feet of space. Ahead lay more houses sitting prettily on their trimmed lawns, and beyond—

  The river.

  Jenny choked on a hopeful laugh that burned her throat. She might be out of shape, but you d
on’t grow up on the riverbank and not know how to swim, and swim well. Make these suckers jump in after her, that’s what she’d do, see how their naked skin liked the cold water, see how funny they were with all that corpse-blue makeup washed off.

  Her breath came in shallow wheezes, her feet starting to bleed from the hard effort of pounding the pavement while protected by nothing but nylons. She could make it, she could make it just the fifty or so yards to the river’s edge, fling herself in, and oh, how the water would feel so good against her feet, soothing the awful burn.

  They reached her first.

  Jenny’s brain, thankfully, was unable to process the pain as she toppled to the blacktop, her jaw splitting in half as the pair of ghouls behind her leaped and snatched her feet from under her. The blow concussed her, making her eyes roll back momentarily while her body frantically ran damage control.

  Moments later, the damage was too extensive for her mind to catalogue. A cold bolt of electricity shot up her legs, and Jenny wondered distantly if she’d somehow made it to the river after all. But no, this cold was something else, something deeper, an eldritch energy that sank into her veins and arteries to replace her blood with ice. Then came paralysis, beginning with her torn toes and crawling inevitably up her legs, her spine, her arms, her neck, and finally her head, freezing her eyelids open in a mask of terror.

  The ghouls hovered over her like carrion-feeding birds, their heads popping left and right as those evil yellow eyes examined her. Their long tongues licked and jerked like a snake’s.

  One of them tapped its impossibly long fingers together as if they were tongs. Still the creatures made no noise, and now of course, neither did Jenny. Through her paralysis, she found she could breathe as if through a straw, only enough to keep her from passing out.

  Which was unfortunate, for it meant she was very much alive and aware as they began to eat her.

  2

  Knight Commander Cade Williams awoke in his bunk five seconds before his cell phone rang a familiar tone, summoning him to the new Preceptor’s office. He swung his legs to the cool tile floor and tapped his phone open in one simultaneous movement that had the quality of a dancer to it.

  He announced himself into the phone.

  “Mission briefing in five minutes, Knight Commander,” said the Preceptor’s secretary. “There’s a situation in New Hampshire, and Echo Team is closest.”

  “Roger that,” Cade said, and clicked the phone off. Two minutes later he was dressed in black BDUs and a warm, grey, thermal long-sleeved shirt to protect against the underground chill. His mind went to work immediately, scanning itself for any hints of what might be waiting for him and his Echo Team in the Preceptor’s office.

  They had no permanent assets in New Hampshire, so that was slender good news; after their bloody campaign against The Council of Nine, it would be something of a relief to tackle a supernatural entity that wasn’t targeting The Order directly the way the Necromancer had. Their ranks were still depleted from Simon Logan’s assault. It would take months to get the Order back to full operational readiness. Cade turned down an offer to be a “fruit picker,” one of the men who acted as something of a talent scout, locating, contacting, and vetting potential men and women to join the Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon. No, wholesale recruiting was not his wheelhouse. He had other things on his mind, and preferred to find Echo candidates on his own time and in his own way. If Seneschal Ferguson had ordered him, then he probably would have done the job. Probably. But Ferguson knew that keeping Echo on call while the Order rebuilt was more important than sending one of its most celebrated and most feared warriors off to do the painstaking work of finding new soldiers.

  Cade marched into the command barracks hallway, bright fluorescents lighting his way toward the single staircase leading out of the underground levels. The other men in his squad, whose barracks were a floor above his own, would already be on their way after getting similar calls: Riley, Olsen, and his newest teammate, Duncan, whose particular skill had come in handy more than once the last few months.

  Duncan was breaking in all right, Cade thought as he took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor of the building. Duncan was still a little tight, a little too cozy with regulations, but a solid man and a good soldier. He’d proven himself to the team; the rest could be polished with time.

  Knight Lieutenant Sean Duncan likely would not, however, earn himself a formidable nickname. Not like the one bequeathed to Cade Williams without his consent or care.

  The Heretic.

  Cade reached the preceptor’s outer office first, but the sound of his command team’s boots echoed less than five seconds behind him. He tipped a nod to Jakes, the secretary, who nodded back.

  Cade held Jakes in high regard. Once a powerful Templar knight, Jakes had lost both legs below the knee in combat with a summoned demon in the Australian outback. Unlike their new boss—and Cade chafed under the word—Jakes had been on the front lines of the Templars’ war against supernatural evil. What had Preceptor Johannson done? File paperwork, as far as Cade knew. That, and maybe kiss the ruby red bottoms of a cardinal or two to obtain his present rank. Of course, after the Templars’ terrible losses recently, virtually anyone could have ascended to the preceptor’s position. Anyone who wasn’t known as the Heretic, anyway.

  “What’s the temperature?” Cade said in a low voice as he passed Jakes’ desk.

  “Chilly,” Jakes whispered back as he typed on a keyboard on his desk. “He’d rather have chosen someone else for whatever it is.”

  “Lucky us,” Cade muttered, and Jakes grinned.

  “Go on in, Commander,” Jakes said, loudly. “The preceptor is waiting.”

  Riley, Olsen, and Duncan piled into the secretary’s office just as Cade put a hand on the doorknob. “Morning,” he said to his command squad. “Glad you could make it.”

  Riley grinned, his porcelain white teeth flashing good nature; Olsen snorted, his bushy red beard and moustache tweaking under the soldier’s wry expression; and Duncan, clean-shaven and straight-laced, frowned. No, Duncan was not quite adjusted to what passed for humor in Echo, not that Cade Williams was exactly the class clown. He had assigned others to that position.

  The four men stepped smartly into Preceptor Johannson’s office. Olsen shut the door behind them, and the four men stood at parade rest before their superior officer. The scent of furniture polish clung stubbornly to the atmosphere and irked Cade’s nose.

  Preceptor Johannson sat behind a simple but titanic wood desk, on top of which sat a pair of computer monitors, a keyboard, and nothing more. The preceptor was older than the command squad of Echo Team by ten years or more, with streaks of silver running across the sides of his close-cropped haircut. The on-the-ground grunts of Echo were expected to dress and groom as befitting whatever particular mission they were tasked with, which explained Cade’s longer hair and Olsen’s beard. The preceptor, as the equivalent of an officer in a normal army, was expected to adhere to a different dress code.

  He struck Cade as being too thin, too narrow in the shoulders to have ever rucked more than the requisite few miles in Templar basic training. Small or thin men were not his complaint; as in any special forces unit there were men who seemed short or even scrawny, yet could handily keep up with their brethren. No, it wasn’t the preceptor’s size the bothered Cade; it was how he carried it.

  “Sir,” Cade said for all of them.

  “At ease,” Johannson said with a quick wave of narrow fingers.

  The men relaxed and took positions sitting or standing in the office.

  As if in an effort to catch up with his boss’s earlier mild sense of humor, Duncan spoke up. “What’s on the menu today?”

  “That is a poor choice of words, Knight Lieutenant,” Johannson said, with the kind of smile only a reptile could make.

  Cade could see the response made Duncan’s stomach flipflop. Duncan should have known better than to be
jocular with the team in the preceptor’s office—or, perhaps, anywhere else for that matter. It wasn’t in his nature, Cade knew. Still, the commander offered Duncan an appreciative smirk for the attempt.

  The preceptor gestured to the large rolling screen on the west wall. Cade and the team dutifully faced it, and Preceptor Johannson began a hastily put-together video brief.

  “Here’s the 911 call that started today’s ball rolling,” the preceptor said. “It’s from a very small town called Gales Ferry, population eleven hundred.”

  A video of an audio analyzer popped onto the large screen. Cade’s eyes went immediately to the time stamp; the call lasted less than a minute, and was recorded less than twenty-four hours previous.

  The audio played: “911, what is your emergency?”

  “Help me, please, everyone’s gone and there’s something outside my house!”

  “Ma’am, calm down for me. Are you hurt?”

  “No! But something is out there, I’ve never seen anything like it—”

  Cade intercepted glances from his command team. Civilians saying things like "never seen anything like it" tended to activate teams like his. They weren’t supposed to see the kinds of things Echo did.

  The audio went on: “Ma’am, stay calm. Are your doors locked? I am sending police to your location right now.”

  “Yes, yes, they’re locked, but I don’t how much good it’ll—”

  The scream that followed spiked the peak of the audio sine wave and made Duncan wince.

  “Ma’am?” the operator on the recording said. “Ma’am, can you hear me? Are you there? Ma’am, please respond. Police are on their way.”