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

wall of thick cobwebs and then Cade opened his eyes to find himself in the strange purgatory-like realm he called the Beyond.
    Despite all the times he’d been here in the past, he still knew very little about this place. It was a shadowy realm that existed close to the real world in time and space, but forever separated by a wall of energy he’d come to call the Veil. Like the mystical Purgatory, it was inhabited by the shades of the dead, as well as other, darker, twisted creatures that hunted them, roaming the landscape in great, predatory packs. Cade called them spectres and avoided them whenever he could.
    The landscape of the Beyond was constantly shifting. Like the image in a funhouse mirror, it could seem hauntingly familiar one moment and infinitely strange the next. Sometimes he would find the place he entered to be a near-identical opposite of the place he’d left in the real world, like a photograph and its negative, and other times they would be starkly different.
    This time it was the former.
    He found himself standing in an interrogation room much like the one he’d left, except inside this commandery, everything bore a thick patina of decay, as if the basic entropy in all living things had suddenly become visible. The table and chairs were streaked with rust, with patches of metal so brittle in places that it fell apart at the slightest touch. The mirror that had served as his entrance didn’t even exist; the wall behind him displayed nothing more than grime-encrusted brick.
    The door to the interrogation room wasn’t locked, so Cade stepped out into the hallway, made his way to the stairwell at the far end - no way was he taking an elevator in the Beyond! - and headed upward. Several times he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye; dim, shadowy forms going about their business around him. He wondered if he was looking at the shades of long-dead knights or the souls of the living back in the real world. Not that it mattered much; as long as they left him alone, he really didn’t care either way.
    After reaching the ground floor, he headed for the exit, only to find himself having to turn around and retrace his steps several times as hallways led to places different than the one’s he expected. Cade didn’t let it bother him; he’d dealt with the strangeness of the Beyond often enough to know that surprises often waited around every corner.
    When he finally found the front door, he paused on the threshold, taking a moment to survey the way ahead. In the real world, a circular cul-de-sac complete with a large fountain in the center of it, sat at the base of the steps leading to the front door. From there a long drive ran north for several hundred yards to the gatehouse and the main road just beyond. At this time of year the long rolling lawns on either side of the yard would be lush and vibrantly green while the flowers surrounding the fountain would provide frequent splashes of contrasting colors.
    Here in the Beyond, the fountain was overgrown with creeping vines the same color as the brackish water, and the lawns resembled scorched earth more than they did lush green swards.
    Thankfully, there were no sign of any spectres.
    Cade knew his living presence here would attract the spectres like bees to honey. It wasn’t a question of “if” they would get here but rather simply one of “when”. It was almost as if crossing the barrier rang some kind of cosmic dinner bell somewhere, riling the spectres up and pointing them in the right direction. Once they caught your trail, they wouldn’t give up, either, until they’d either taken you down or you’d taken them out.
    The last thing Cade wanted right now was a pack of spectres on his heels. For one, he didn’t have any weapons to fight them with. And two, time worked differently here. Minutes could become hours, hours could become days when you made the trip back into the real world. When he and Riley went in search of the