Judgment Day (Templar Chronicles Book 5) by Joseph Nassise Page A

prisoner had removed his restraints. I shouted for help and entered the room in an attempt to subdue the prisoner, but he was gone by the time I got the door open.”
    “What do you mean, gone? Prisoners don’t just disappear!”
    “He...um, ah…”
    “Speak up, corporal.”
    “He...ah, jumped through the mirror.”
    Play your part , Riley reminded himself.
    “Excuse me? He did what?”
    Having already stuck his neck out, the guard must have figured it was all or nothing, for he straightened up and said more clearly this time, “He jumped through the mirror, sir.”
    Riley stared at him for a long moment before saying, “Have you been drinking, Corporal?”
    “No, sir! I swear.”
    “One does not simply jump through a mirror, Corporal, not even if you are former Knight Commander Williams.”
    The guard grew pale at the mention of Cade’s name and Riley knew the rumors would soon be spreading far and wide. If the rank and file didn’t think that Cade was allied with the enemy before this, those rumors would probably go a long way to convincing them. After all, why else would he have run?
    Riley shook his head. Couldn’t be helped, he guessed. Cade had chosen to make the jump into the Beyond directly in front of the guard so there wasn’t much to be done about that now except try a little obfuscation to confuse the issue even more.
    “The prisoner must have misled you, fooled you into thinking you were watching him jump through the mirror when he was, in fact, slipping out the door behind you,” Riley said, as he turned away.
    “He’s probably still in the building somewhere. If we work quickly to organize the search, we might be able to salvage this mess. Follow me!”

    # # #

    While Riley was rounding up a search party to scour the commandery looking for Cade, the object of their search was staring in amazement at the brilliant lance of light that shot away from the point where he stood, out across the lawn, and into the distant trees a quarter-mile away.
    He had no doubt that following that light would take him to the portal he needed to emerge back into the real world at the point of his choosing - in this case, his own home. It was an exhilarating feeling. All those years, all those trips in and out of the Beyond, and he’d never once thought to use his Sight as a kind of homing beacon for where he wanted to end up. He wanted to shout in excitement, but settled for a fist pump of victory instead.
    Cade made note of the path the light blazed across the lawn and the point where it disappeared into the woods. Once he was sure he had it fixed in his memory, he flipped that mental switch deep in the back of his mind that turned off his Sight and the illuminated path disappeared right along with it.
    No matter; he knew where he was going now.
    No sooner had he dropped his Sight that a piercing howl lifted into the air from somewhere in the distance. It was almost immediately answered by several more and the sound of the pack howling together as one sent chills running up and down Cade’s spine.
    He recognized that sound. It was the hunting cry of a pack of corpse hounds.
    Cade had encountered them once before, in the battle against the Council of Nine in the swamps of Louisiana. He’d been fully armed and armored at the time and the undead creatures had been dispatched without too much difficulty.
    But he was unarmed this time.
    And alone.
    Time to get moving.
    Cade took off running in the direction revealed through his Sight. He had no idea how far away the portal was that he needed to take him where he wanted to go, nor how far back the pack of corpse hounds might be. It was going to be a race to see who reached their target first.
    The grass beneath his feet was limp and lifeless, its many shades of grey a sharp contrast to the sea of vibrant green that stretched out in front of the commandery in the real world. Here, too, the lawn was dotted with great, burrow-like holes that led down into the dank