Infernal Cries: An Echo Team Urban Fantasy Novel by Joseph Hutton

Author:Joseph Hutton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harbinger Books
Published: 2017-07-30T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Riley intended to spend most of the day following Cade's disappearance running down information about the men in the warehouse, trying to find something that might link them to the Necromancer, but that path quickly turned into a dead-end.

Thanks to the fact that all of the deceased had been arrested for minor issues in the past - vagrancy, public drunkenness and disturbing the peace, to name a few - he was able to identify them quickly through fingerprint analysis. After studying their records for a short time, one thing was clear. To a man, they were unremarkable in every way.

The morning had barely begun, however, when he received a call from Preceptor Johannson. It seemed that a monastery in France had been burglarized the previous evening.

“The thief made off with a holy relic, the Hand of St. Bernard of Clairvaux,” the Preceptor said.

Riley had never heard of it and said as much.

“I’ll spare you the history lesson,” the Preceptor replied, with more than a hint of condescension in his tone, “and simply say that the Hand was rumored to be able to heal the sick and to raise the dead. It’s the latter that we’re concerned with.”

Riley would have bet the Preceptor had never heard of the relic before that morning, but he ignored the veiled insult and asked, “What makes you think it was the Necromancer?”

“The Hand has been in the monastery for hundreds of years undisturbed. Then the Necromancer escapes and suddenly one of the few holy relics that have been linked to resurrecting the dead suddenly goes missing? That’s too much of a coincidence for me, Knight Captain.”

It was thin, but it was the best lead he had at the moment.

“How many injured and dead?” Riley asked.

“One.”

He frowned. “One?”

“An elderly monk was injured when he surprised the intruder, but he wasn’t alone and several other monks came to his aide. In the process, the thief escaped.”

Riley’s doubts returned. The Necromancer had left a pile of bodies in his wake during both his escape and the subsequent ritual he performed at the warehouse. Doing so was practically his signature at this point. Hell, if given the chance he’d probably kill just to flex his powers and bring the dead back under his control.

So why hadn’t he done the same at the monastery? Why had he allowed the monks to live?

Riley was still trying to make sense of that when the Preceptor said, “There’s a jet standing by at La Guardia to take you and your team to Paris. I want you over there while the trail is still hot. Find this guy and find him quickly!”

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