Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Jack Templar Chronicles Book 5) (14 page)

“It’s all right, Sebastian,” Master Adem said. “They pose no threat to me.”

The Captain of the Guard nodded and handed over the weapons.

“Just remember one thing, young Templar,” Master Adem said. “When you come back up, if you come back up, be sure you don’t bring the entire demon horde chasing after you. Because if that happens, I’ll cut the chain and drop the dome in place. Even if you are underneath it.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Now, I’d like to join up with my friends to plan our decent. Any help you can give us would be – hey!”

Without warning, strong hands shoved me from behind. I was caught off-guard and staggered to the edge of the platform. At the last second, I reached out and grabbed Sebastian by his robe, leaning out precariously over the chasm. I heard Daniel yell as he was pushed by the other guard. He tumbled past me, off the platform and down into the chasm.

“Daniel! No!” I cried out.

Desperate, I tried to pull myself with Sebastian’s robe, but he just took a step forward, forcing me to lean out into the open air, barely hanging on.

Master Adem walked into my field of vision.

“Don’t worry, your friends from the village will be with you shortly.” He sneered. “Have a good death, Jack Templar.”

Sebastian yanked his robe from my hand, and I fell backward. There was a moment of weightlessness; then my stomach flew up into my chest as I dropped into the pit and fell into the black hole beneath.

I
don’t know
how long I screamed. At least a minute, maybe two, as I tumbled end-over-end through the darkness. I thought for sure that at any second I’d hit the rock floor, splattering like a bug on a windshield.

When that didn’t happen right away, and after my throat began to burn from the effort, I evolved into panicked hyperventilating and whimpering. I spread my arms and arched my back, trying to copy the way I’d seen skydivers controlling their falls in videos. Soon, my tumbling stabilized and I faced downward, panting in terror as the wind rushed up at me. After a few minutes of that, I started to get my fear of imminent death under control.

I began to think. First, I had a hot flash of anger for being pushed and for Master Adem’s betrayal. But I quickly forced that to the back of my mind. Anger couldn’t help me now. I shouted for Daniel, but there was no reply. I couldn’t see him anywhere below me.

Last, I looked around for any clue how I was going to survive. The wind in my face wasn’t the only thing that gave me a sense of speed. Stuck in the sidewalls of the rock shaft, the occasional glowing stone, iridescent and shimmering, flew past me as if shot out of a gun. I tried to angle my body to steer it toward the wall, thinking I could stop myself and then … honestly I had no idea what I would do then. Climb up? Climb down? I had no idea, but my instinct was to stop my fall before hitting the bottom, assuming there was one.

It was no use. Every time I drifted toward the wall, something pushed me back toward the middle of the shaft. After the third or fourth try, I noticed the air around me had a faint red glow. I looked down and saw a red light far below me. The bottom. It had to be.

Panic roared back. I kicked and bucked my legs, trying to reach the side. Still no use. I flailed my arms around like a swimmer working against a current in a river. Nothing.

The red glow beneath me grew bigger and brighter. No doubt it was the bottom. The end of the line. Looked like Master Adem was right when he said this was where I was going to die.

I used my sword to swing out at the rock wall flying past me. At least it reached, casting off a shower of sparks wherever it hit. But it did nothing to slow me down. In fact, it just threw me off-balance and made me tumble end over end.

Then I was out of the shaft, and the world around me turned red. The wind buffeted my face, but the sense of speed was gone because now I was falling through a vast open space. I steadied my spin and looked around, breathing so fast I thought I might pass out.

I was in a massive cavern, mind blowing in scale. The shaft I’d fallen through was no more than a dot on the ceiling above me, yet I’d barely started my decent through the vast space. Below me, a red lake stretched out as far as I could see in every direction. It glowed as if it were molten rock, but I felt no heat coming from it. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like the soft landing I needed if I was going to survive. This was it for me. No more than a minute until impact judging by my speed.

As a monster hunter, I’d certainly faced death enough times to know it was a real possibility. I’d probably thought about it more than was healthy for a fourteen-year-old boy, but it was the life I lived. Still, this was different because there was clearly no way out. I thought I’d be afraid, but instead a weird sense of calm came over me.

Closing my eyes, I stretched my arms out wide like a bird. I forced myself to think of the good things in my life because I refused to let fear fill my last few moments on the planet. Images flew past me like a movie of my life on fast-forward. My Aunt Sophie making me cookies in the kitchen back in Sunnyvale, back before I knew she was a demon-wolf. Messing around in the woods behind my house with Will and T-Rex when we were just little kids. The moment I met my mom and felt her kind, approving eyes on me. My almost-kiss with Eva right after defeating the dragons at the Academy.

There was so much good in the world, and Ren Lucre meant to destroy all of it. All because of me. Because I failed. And that was just unacceptable.

“No!” I shouted, my eyes flying open.

I had only a second to focus on the surface the lake before I slammed into it.

I expected to be wracked with pain, burned alive in the hot magma or something. Instead, I found myself suspended face down in a thick red fluid, my legs spread out wide and my hands in front of my face where they’d gone to brace for impact.

I didn’t move for a few seconds, not quite believing I’d survived the fall in one piece. I felt overwhelming relief. I was still alive. All I had to do was swim to the surface, and I’d be free.

I tried to kick my legs, but they barely moved. My arms were stuck too, barely moving an inch. The red fluid wasn’t like Jell-O; it was more like thick syrup. A burning sensation built in my chest as the air in my lungs ran out. I wasn’t out of trouble yet.

Using all my effort, I reached up with my hands. I had to stifle a scream once my hands were away from my face. Hovering in the syrup right in front of me was Daniel’s lifeless body.

I wanted to scream, to reach out and grab hold of him, but I couldn’t do either. The thick plasma had me good and stuck.

The burning in my chest grew worse. I needed a breath, and I needed it fast.

I kicked harder, grunting from the effort.

Next to Daniel were three of the Il Cento monks, their robes splayed out behind them like wings. The ones Master Adem had said tried to capture the Jerusalem Stones years before.

I tried to get away from the bodies, jerking from side-to-side with everything I had. As I did, I saw past Daniel and the monks, and my head swam from what was there.

Hundreds more bodies. Maybe thousands. It was the biggest graveyard I’d ever seen. And I was stuck right in the middle of it.

I
screamed
. The red fluid filled my mouth and I gagged on it.

I kicked violently, trying to get out.

Suddenly, I felt pressure on my right arm, then a hard yank. I slid up through the syrup and out into the air.

I was dragged onto dry land and fell into a heap on a hard, rocky surface, coughing and sputtering for air. I was aware of a wind gusting all around me. Then a firm hand slapped me on the back. I looked up and was amazed to see a face I knew smiling at me.

Daniel.

A hot wind howled all around us, shifting directions as if we were in the middle of a tornado. Dust and small pebbles whipped at us, scraping every inch of exposed skin raw. I pulled the front of my shirt over my mouth and covered the rest of my face with my other arm.

Daniel leaned in and yelled in my ear. “I thought you weren’t going to show up. I was starting to think I was in this place by myself.”

I shook my head, disoriented. The wind around us screamed unnaturally. It sounded like there were actual human voices in it.

“I … I … saw you,” I shouted. “You were dead. Right there.” I pointed to the lake of red fluid and gasped. Even with the torrents of wind, the lake surface was completely still, almost as if the whole thing had turned to glass. There, just under the surface, I saw my body suspended, open-eyed and frozen. Daniel’s body was next to mine, a look of horror fixed on his face. I looked back and forth between the body in the fluid and Daniel standing next to me.

“That’s not possible,” I said, crawling away from the edge. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to see our bodies.

Daniel grabbed at my shoulders. “Come on, there’s shelter over here,” he yelled.

Together, we scrambled over the rough ground that was sharp and brittle like volcanic rock. We stumbled into a small cave barely deep enough to fit both of us. It wasn’t much, but it got us out of the wind. I was gasping for breath, and I realized it wasn’t from the exertion. All I could think about was my body back in the lake. The more I thought about it, the harder it was for me to catch my breath.

Daniel held on to me. “Easy there. Just give it a minute,” he said. “Took me a while to stop freaking out.”

“A while?” I asked. “What do you mean? I fell only a few seconds after you did.”

Daniel shrugged. “This place has different rules. What did you see when you fell? At the end?”

“The red lake,” I said. “As far as I could see in every direction.”

“Yeah, me too. But when I got to the surface there was land here.” Daniel said.

“Wait, how did you get out?” I asked.

“The Templar Ring,” Daniel explained. “I was struggling to get out, and I was stuck. But the ring began to vibrate. Then it pulled me, dragging me out of that mess until I was here. I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been wearing it.” He looked back to the red lake. “Did you see all those creepy bodies? We could have been stuck there with them. Forever. I mean, our bodies are still there, but we’re not. Right?”

I took a deep breath, finally getting my nerves under control. The mix of fear and confusion in Daniel’s voice matched how I felt. He was looking at me like I would have all the answers, but I didn’t want to think about being separated from my body. And I especially didn’t want to imagine being stuck in that lake full of bodies for eternity. Regardless of whether there was a second version of our bodies in the lake behind me or not, I felt alive. And we had a job to do.

I leaned out of the cave and looked around. The wind gusted and nearly dragged me out of the cave, so I ducked back in.

“Did you get a good look around?” I asked. “We must be on a little island in the lake, right?”

Daniel shook his head. “That’s the crazy thing. When I pulled myself up from the lake, this wind wasn’t here. It was calm as could be, so I got a good look around. We’re not only on land, but there’s a mountain wall right over that way.”

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “I could see hundreds of miles in every direction when I fell. There was nothing by the lake.”

Daniel shrugged. “But here we are, standing on solid ground while our bodies are frozen in the weird red lake just ten yards away from us. I’d say the rules are a little different down here.”

He had a point. This was an entirely different realm. Everything we’d dealt with until now on our quest, even though there’d been no shortage of the bizarre, had at least taken place in the natural world. The Lord of the Demons had a world that was his alone. If we were going to survive – if walking around dead could be called surviving – learning the rules of the place was essential.

The wind died down a little. I pulled my shirt collar up over my face again and said, “Show me.”

We darted out from the cave and scrambled to a small rise nearby. The wind still whipped at us, but it wasn’t as painful as it had been a few minutes earlier. The sky cleared a little and I saw the mountain wall.

It was massive, stretching left and right without end. I craned my neck upward and saw it disappear into a glowing red ceiling of clouds.

“Look there,” Daniel said, pointing at the bottom of the wall. He had to raise his voice to be heard, but he didn’t have to yell anymore.

I squinted. There was a discolored area centered in the wall’s base, more earth-toned than the dark rock of the cliff. It was a perfect square, so perfect it couldn’t be natural.

“Looks like a door,” I said. I looked around. I thought the Underworld would be filled with demons. Maybe some fire and lava like in the movies. This barren wasteland wasn’t at all what I’d imagined. Then the obvious occurred to me. “We’re not in the Underworld yet.”

Daniel nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. This must be like a waiting room.” He pointed back to the giant door in the side of the rock wall. “We’ve got to get through that gate. And I’m guessing it’s not going to be easy.”

I heard screaming again, and my first impulse was that the wind was kicking back up. I raised my arm to block it, but the gust never came. The screams grew louder.

I turned to track the sound, first looking over the lake. Then I angled my head upward. “Oh no.”

I picked out four black dots up in the air. They looked like birds circling far above us, only they weren’t birds. And they weren’t flying.

Daniel saw them too.

“Come on,” he yelled. “Back to the lake.”

We ran down the hill as the screaming grew louder and louder. The sound seemed to echo in that enormous cavern, so loud I thought it would burst my eardrums.

We reached the lake just as Eva, Will, T-Rex, and Xavier slammed into the surface. It was bizarre to watch it from this perspective. Instead of a big splash when they hit, they simply disappeared under the surface with a wet
gloop
 … and were gone.

Their screaming also disappeared, stopping the second they went under. It was so sudden, like a switch being turned off, that I wondered for a second whether I had imagined the entire thing. I just stared at the smooth surface of the lake, feet planted in the ground, trying to process what had just happened.

It was Daniel who launched into action first.

“Jack! Help me!” he yelled.

He was on his stomach, leaning out as far as he could over the lake surface. I crouched down and did the same. I looked down in the water and was horrified by what I saw. Eva, Will, T-Rex and Xavier were down deep, deeper than Daniel and I could hope to reach. They kicked and struggled in slow motion like insects caught in honey.

As if that weren’t bad enough, all the other bodies in the lake were moving now too. They reached for us like they wanted to drag us in. Even my own body was reaching out for me, blindly grasping, mouth open wide in a silent scream. The sight made my skin crawl.

“It was the same when you went in,” Daniel said. “Just reach down as far as you can.”

I focused on T-Rex because he was the nearest. Crying out, I stretched my hand toward him as far as I could. It felt ridiculous because he was so far away, but I tried anyway.

“I’ve got Will,” Daniel yelled.

I looked over and saw Daniel slide backward onto land, pulling Will out.

Suddenly, there was a tug on my hand. T-Rex. I grabbed onto his hand and pulled as hard as I could. He came sliding out of the lake, sputtering and coughing. I got him to safety and went back to the edge.

“You get Eva,” Daniel said. “I’m getting Xavier.”

It was easier this time. Like anything else, knowing it could be done made the task simpler. Somehow, we reached into the depths and dragged them out.

Once they were on land, I looked back into the lake and saw all six of our bodies there along with the three Il Cento monks with their robes flared out behind them as if they were frozen in the middle of a storm.

Thank goodness, the wind continued to die down until it was only a hot breeze. Daniel and I tended to the rest of our group as they got their wits about them. Eva was the first to recover as wild-eyed panic quickly gave way to her steely resolve. While we helped Will, T-Rex, and Xavier sit up and orient themselves, Eva was already back to the edge of the lake, staring at our bodies hanging in suspension. I walked up and stood by her.

“What do you make of it?” she whispered. “What does it mean?”

I shrugged. “Before that lowly, no-good cur Master Adem had his henchmen shove us over the edge, he said,
I doubt you’ll survive your own deaths
. Looks like we proved him wrong.”

“He said the same thing to us,” she said. “I wonder how many times he’s said that to intruders as he had them tossed over the edge.”

The others were on their feet and came to stand next to us.

“I thought we were goners for sure,” T-Rex said.

“I think we all did,” I said. “Adem said he’d captured you, but I didn’t think he’d throw you in the hole too.”

“He didn’t,” Will said. “We jumped.”

“What?” I stammered.

Will nodded at Eva. “Her idea.”

Eva shook her head. “No, it was my idea that I jump. You guys were supposed to stay up there.”

Will grinned. “I guess we got our signals crossed.”

“No, you said we weren’t a bunch of cowards and that if we were going to die, we would do it all together,” Xavier said. “You were very insistent that we all jump.”

Will shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that’s how it happened.”

I felt terrible that my friends were down here with me, trapped with no hope of escape back up to the surface. Still, I couldn’t help but feel excited for us to all be together again.

“I wish you’d stayed up there where it was safe,” I said. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy to have you here. Xavier, do you have your bag of tricks?”

He held up his backpack. “Not much in it, I’m afraid. But I have a few things.”

“Good man,” I said.

“What’s the plan?” Will asked.

“Well, the good news is that Master Adem also warned us about not bringing the horde of demons after us if we returned with the Jerusalem Stone.” I looked at each of them to let that soak in.

“That’s the good news?” Eva asked. “Hate to hear the bad news.”

“No, logically, it means Master Adem thought we could get back out,” Xavier said.

“But it also means there’s a horde of demons down here,” T-Rex countered.

“Right on both counts,” I said. “I have no idea how we’re supposed to do it, but there must be a way out of here.”

Daniel walked over to where his sword lay on the ground, picked it up, and slid it into his scabbard. “I hope you’re right. But one thing is for sure. Before we do anything, we have to find the Jerusalem Stone. Because if we leave without it, there’s no way I’m coming back down here a second time.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Jerusalem Stone first and then we find a way out of here.”

“Where do we start?” Eva asked.

I pointed to the mountain looming behind us.

“We go knock on that door,” I said. “And we see who or what answers it.”