The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 90

The two men entered the Templar sanctuary. One carried a sturdy revolver in his right hand. The other had both wrists cuffed together.

Edie stifled a horrified gasp.

“Hello, love.”

Drained of animating color, Caedmon’s face appeared specter pale. The right side of his face, that is. The left side was a bruised and swollen mess. As though he’d gone five rounds in the Octagon with an Ultimate Fighter. That, or survived the bar fight from hell.

Her gaze moved from his battered face to his manacled wrists. A soiled makeshift bandage had been wrapped around his left hand. She winced, well aware that dirt, germs, and open wounds did not mix.

“I can see from your aghast expression that the photograph didn’t do me justice,” Caedmon sardonically remarked. “You have my companion to thank for that.” He jutted his chin at the armed man standing beside him. “Allow me to introduce Saviour Panos.”

Having taken a position in front of the stone altar, Edie folded her arms across her chest. If her plan was to succeed, she had to stick to the script. “You’re fifteen minutes late, Saviour.” The fact that Panos’s left visage was, like Caedmon’s, a grotesque parody of the right aroused no sympathy in her.

“We ran into traffic.” Wearing a smug smile, Panos placed his free hand on Caedmon’s shoulder. “And would you deprive me of an additional fifteen minutes with my new English friend?”

His jaw set tight, his mouth little more than a taut slash, Caedmon stared straight ahead.

Hang in there, Caedmon. The train is about to leave the station.

“Gee, you certainly know how to make a girl feel unwanted. And speaking of girls, there she be… the Emerald Tablet.” Edie gestured toward the niche. “Yours for the taking.” She’d set the lantern on the stone altar, aiming it directly at the coveted relic, the inlaid gold script of the Eight Precepts gleaming in the fluorescent beam.

What man could refuse so gorgeous an object?

An awestruck expression on his face, Panos strode across the chamber. But in the wrong direction! Bypassing the niche completely.

“What the—” Edie caught herself in mid-curse. Flabbergasted, she watched as the dark-haired man came to a halt in front of a carved pilaster that was set between two octagonal walls.

Raising his hand, Panos caressed a bas-relief carving of an eight-pointed star that was set in the middle of the pilaster. “It’s beautiful.”

The octogram. The same symbol that Panos had scrawled at each of the murder scenes.

Admittedly baffled, Edie wondered what she was missing. Saviour Panos had killed four men to get the Emerald Tablet, and yet since entering the sanctuary, he’d given the relic little more than a passing glance.

“Ah, yes, the octogram. In Islamic art it’s known as the khatim sulayman,” Caedmon remarked. “You clearly have an affinity for the symbol.”

An affinity? Was Caedmon being for real? Try deadly obsession.

“According to legend, King Solomon used the symbol to capture an evil jinn. A jinn, of course, being a demon similar to Asmodeus,” Caedmon continued in a surreally calm tone of voice. One that belied the deeply etched lines of pain that furrowed his brow.

Why was Caedmon placating the bastard? And ruining her carefully conceived plan.

Prior to their arrival, she’d spent two hours on her hands and knees painstakingly examining every square inch of the sanctuary. In addition to the concealed trap that she’d fallen into when she and Caedmon had first discovered the chamber, she found one other trap. This one cunningly placed dead center in front of the niche. Emphasis on the word dead.

And to lure the bad guy, she’d placed her colorful bait — the Emerald Tablet — in the carved-out recess. All she had to do was get Panos to walk over to the niche before he pulled the trigger and killed them. Because she was fairly certain that was his plan.

“You ought to check out the octogram that’s on the back of the Emerald Tablet,” Edie said enticingly, hoping to nudge the monster in the right direction. “It’s a real beaut. Takes up the whole backside of the relic. In fact, it’s my understanding that the octogram is the key to unlock the secret of creation. That’s why the Emerald Tablet is such a holy relic.”

The sales pitch took, Panos finally deigning to glance at the green crystalline tablet displayed in the niche.

“He will be so pleased,” Panos cryptically murmured as he stepped toward the altar.

Holding her breath, Edie counted the steps until the bastard unexpectedly plunged to his death.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a quick moving blur. Turning her head, she saw Caedmon, a feral gleam in his eyes, rush toward the altar.

Right toward the concealed death trap!