Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Jack Templar Chronicles Book 5) (4 page)

T
here’s
an old saying that all roads lead to Rome. That may be the case, but it was still going to be no easy matter getting the six of us from the farmland of northern Spain across two countries and down to the Eternal City. But, with a lot of effort, Master Aquinas’s map, and more than a little luck, we were over halfway through our journey before we ran into any serious trouble.

It happened at one of the locations on the map, an old farmhouse at the end of a long, rutted dirt road. Bored cows glanced up as our ragtag group passed by, hardly worth a pause as they chewed their cud. The place was lush and green, very different from the farms in Spain that always seemed dry and thirsty as if the ground itself was desperate for the rain to come. The valley was a place of life, and it was evident everywhere you looked.

The air hummed with insects, and birds flitted from tree to tree chasing them. Squirrels dug up nuts, scampering off to their lairs once they uncovered more than they could chew. A snake slithered across the road in front of us, black and glossy like it’d been polished to impress the new arrivals. It maintained its course as if nothing in the world could hurt it. As we passed, Daniel kicked it to hurry it off the road. The snake curled up and hissed at him, exposing a surprisingly large set of sharp teeth before darting off into the brush.

“What kind of snake was that?” I asked Daniel.

He shrugged. “An upset one.”

Eva clucked her tongue at the comment. I heard her murmur something under her breath, but I couldn’t make it out.

“What’s that, Eva?” Daniel asked. “Did you want to say something?”

“I said you are an idiot,” Eva said. She pointed at the snake. “That was obviously a Robesnake.”

“Uh, actually that was a Fang-toothed Burlsnake,” Xavier cut in. He noticed Eva glare at him. “It’s really quite rare. I can see how you could make the mistake.”

Daniel grinned. “So I’m the idiot, eh? I guess your vampire senses don’t help much in identifying snakes … or from keeping your foot out of your mouth.”

“Keep at me and you’ll find my foot in your mouth,” Eva barked.

“Enough!” I yelled. “The two of you’ve been like this for days, and it’s getting old.”

Daniel looked guilty. “She started it,” he mumbled. “I can’t help that she’s such an easy target to make fun of.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Eva said. “Take that ring off and let’s go at it.”

She started toward Daniel but I stepped in front of her. “Okay, Eva, you’re on point. Daniel, back to the rear. If you two are going to act like little kids, I’ll treat you like it.” Eva tried to protest but I held up my hand. “Go.”

Fortunately for me, she turned and walked toward the front of our group. If she’d refused, I’m not sure I could have stopped her and her vampire strength from going through me to get to Daniel. They’d been bickering for days, the natural vampire/werewolf hatred bubbling up as constant insults and jokes at the other person’s expense.
Acting just like creach
, crept into my mind from some dark corner, and I pushed the idea away. Daniel and Eva were my friends, and the last thing we needed was for them to break out into an actual fight, especially since we were traveling in the open and subject to attack at any time.

After they took their positions in the front and rear, we restarted our walk down the lane, looking for the place marked on the map as a sanctuary for monster hunters. Soon, the trees on either side and above us thickened, and the canopy reached over us to make a tunnel still lit from shafts of sunlight penetrating through the leaves.

“Are we sure this is the right place?” T-Rex asked. “The other stops along the way always had a guard stationed before we got there. I haven’t seen anyone yet.”

“We haven’t seen them, but they’ve seen us,” Eva said.

We were all well trained enough not to spin around to look in the trees around us, but we all did the same thing and moved our eyes without moving our heads. I didn’t see anything.

“Are you sure?” Will asked, obviously not seeing anything either.

I knew the question was wasted breath. If Eva said someone was there, then someone was there.

“Friendly?” I asked.

Eva shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Her tone sounded like we were discussing the weather instead of a possible ambush about to happen. It was smart. Tone of voice changed body language, no matter how hard you tried to hide it.

“Well, that’s just swell,” I replied. I pulled the map out of my pocket and motioned toward Xavier who followed behind us. “Hey, come up here. I want you to take a look at this.”

Daniel came up with him. He knew I didn’t need help with the map; we were only a few hundred yards from the farmhouse. What I really wanted was Xavier to be close to me so I could protect him if we were walking into an ambush. I noticed Will slide closer to T-Rex.

Eva lifted her nose in the air, picking up a scent.

“What is it?” I asked.

But it was T-Rex who answered. “That’s rabbit stew, is what that is.”

I sniffed the air. He was right. I smelled food of some kind. The sweet aroma of carrots mixed with earthy potatoes and root vegetables. I couldn’t tell if it was rabbit stew like T-Rex claimed, but I wouldn’t have bet against him.

“Could be a trap,” Daniel said.

“Okay, let’s drop the act,” I said. “Swords.”

All of us pulled our weapons, some of us slower than others. Xavier and T-Rex both got theirs twisted in their shirts but eventually got them out and went on guard.

“We know you’re there,” I called to the woods around us. “Come out and show us that –”

Ziiiizzz, Thwack

An arrow flew an inch over my head and buried itself into the tree behind me.

“Take cover,” I yelled.

I ran to the trees, pulling Xavier with me. Another arrow slammed into the ground in front of me. I changed direction, but another arrow let loose and again dug into the soil, kicking up dirt and leaves.

I got the point. This wasn’t someone missing. It was someone sending me a very clear message.
Stop moving or I’ll shoot you.

A quick glance around showed me the others fared no better. There were arrows sticking from the ground and trees all around us, but none of us were hit.

“Okay,” I called out. “We get it.”

“Weapons down,” came a high-pitched voice in the tree above us.

I looked up and saw a flutter of movement among the leaves, but then it was gone.

“Weapons down, I said,” came the voice again. “Or I’ll put an arrow in the fat one’s tummy.”

“Is he talking about me?” T-Rex asked. “I’ve actually lost a bit of weight, you know.”

I put my sword on the ground in front of me and motioned for everyone to do the same. We all had backup weapons stashed on our bodies – throwing knives, stars, daggers and the like – so I wasn’t too worried about giving up my sword. Daniel caught my eye. He had his hand on the Templar Ring as if he was about to pull it from his finger. I felt a surge of excitement that I could wear it again. But that would also mean we’d have to deal with an out of control werewolf in our midst.

I shook my head. I figured if whoever or whatever was in the trees wanted us dead, then they would have already taken a shot at us.

“Who are you?” came the voice again. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re travelers seeking shelter for the night, maybe a warm meal,” I said, speaking the words every monster hunter knew by heart. It was the way members of the Black Guard identified themselves. “We ask for your hospitality. Have we come to the place where such kindness is freely given?”

There was an excited chattering of voices in the trees, and then a person fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a solid
thump
. Then another. And another. Finally, I counted an even dozen of them even though I wasn’t sure what they were.

They were half-sized men, the tallest only a little higher than my waist. They all carried bows as big as they were, cradled in rough, thick hands and muscled arms. Their bodies were stout and clad in flexible leather armor studded with small squares of iron in decorative patterns. What made them creepy was that while their bodies looked like they belonged to middle-aged men, their faces bore the smooth features of someone no more than nine or ten years old. While their arms and necks were wrinkled and tanned with time, their faces were pale and their eyes looked too shiny, like they were on the edge of crying. Still, their faces looked blank, so I didn’t think they were emotional about anything. All I knew was that my skin crawled as their moist eyes looked me over.

“So who is it that asks the old question in the old way?” the one nearest us asked. “We’d like to know that very much.”

All twelve of them nodded in unison as they moved closer to us. I fought a sudden impulse to flinch back. I’d suddenly realized what was so odd about them. All of them had the same face.

I didn’t notice at first because some of them wore their hair differently, some wore helmets, and others had scars from some long ago battle. But once I looked for it, there was no mistake. All the faces were the same.

“Just travelers looking for rest,” Eva said. If these strange beings unnerved her, then she was better at hiding it than I was. But the fact that she jumped in to make sure I didn’t tell these strange creatures our names told me she wasn’t comfortable either.

“Can I ask your name, friend?” Daniel asked.

A different one of them stepped forward. “We are the Talib. As for names, you can ask. We can ask. But will the answers and truth be told? Think not, we do.”

“Great, we ran into a herd of Yodas,” Will said under his breath.

I shot him a look and he fell silent. Twelve of these Talib creatures had snuck up on six monster hunters, one of us equipped with vampire senses. There was a good chance many more of them were still in the trees around us, bows pulled, ready to strike us down if we threatened this first group.

“We were told this was a place where hospitality still existed,” I said formally, bowing slightly. “If we were wrong, we apologize and will carry on with our journey.”

Just as I feared, a second group of the weird creatures fell out of the trees behind us and blocked the country lane. These also had muscular, short bodies with the same young head attached to the top.

“Not wrong, only unexpected,” said one of the new arrivals behind us. “Our mistress would angry with us be if we sent you away without hospitality.”

“Or if ate you, we did,” another chimed in.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the two Talib next to him smacked him in the head with their bows.

“Eat not the human things asking hospitality,” said the Talib who had suggested we might be dinner. He said it as if reciting a rule. I thought it was a pretty good rule. I just hoped they followed it.

“You know, I think we’ll just keep moving along, if that’s okay,” Daniel said. “Thanks for the offer.”

Daniel walked toward the latest group of Talib as if to walk back down the lane. The Talib on both sides pulled their bows.

“Our mistress will want to give you hospitality,” one of the Talib said.

“What do you want to do here?” Eva asked me. I saw that she held her hand on a dagger hidden in her waistband.

I still didn’t know how many more of these things might be up in the trees. Maybe we could fight through the two dozen we could see, but fighting against hidden enemies with longbows wasn’t my idea of a good time.

“Let’s go meet your mistress,” I said. “I’d hate to keep her waiting.”

The Talib lowered their bows and smiled so simultaneously and in such an exact way that a shiver went up and down my spine.

We marched down the lane, boxed in by these strange creatures both in front and behind us. As we walked, I saw rustling in the canopy of leaves above. My fear about there being more of the Talib keeping an eye on us appeared to be true. Eva caught my eye and gave me a
now what?
look. I shrugged. I didn’t have a clue what we were getting ourselves into, let alone what we were going to do to get ourselves out of it.

Only a few minutes later, we came around a bend in the road and saw a small cottage in the middle of a meadow. It had ivy-covered walls and a sloped roofline crowned with a weather vane. Brightly painted shutters hung on either side of the open windows where white, gauzy curtains drifted out from inside on a breeze. A chicken pen stood close to the house with an open door, and a couple dozen hens hunted and pecked in the vegetable garden.

“Doesn’t look very scary,” T-Rex said.

“Maybe that’s intentional,” Daniel replied.

The place did look a little too perfect, almost like a movie set for a scene that called for a tranquil cottage in the woods where the kind grandmother lived. Judging by our odd-looking guides/captors, I guessed we weren’t going to find a kind old woman living here who wanted to bake us cookies and pies.

The Talib marched us right up to the front door. As we reached it, the door swung open, seemingly on its own accord. I stopped in front of it, peering into the darkness inside.

“On you go,” the Talib nearest me said. “The Mistress for you now waits.”

“Hello?” I called.

A quick laugh passed through the Talib. “Inside, not out. On you go.”

I looked behind me, but the rest of the guys weren’t much help. They each shrugged and shook their heads. “Okay,” I whispered. “Everyone stay on their toes.”

Carefully, slowly, we went inside.

T
he inside
of the cottage was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. In contrast to the bright and cheery exterior, the room inside was dark and creepy. It took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust after being in the bright sunlight, and when they did I kind of wished they hadn’t. The muddy darkness was better than seeing what was actually in the room.

Even before my eyes adjusted, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Gone was the savory aroma of rabbit stew cooking on a fire that had filled the air outside. Instead there was a stench of mold mixed with old garbage and rotting meat. All of us put our hands to our mouths and noses on reflex. T-Rex even gagged a little.

“That’s no rabbit stew,” Will mumbled.

“Let’s hope not anyway,” Daniel replied.

I saw a fire in the hearth at the far side of the room, a large cast-iron cauldron hanging over it on metal hooks. Near the fire, it was easier to see the objects that covered the wall. Heads. Hundreds of them. Goblin heads. Ogres. Ripshanks. Werewolves. Harpies. All stuffed and mounted the way a deer would be in someone’s basement over a fire. Only these were a hundred times creepier because whoever mounted them decided not to replace the eyeballs with marble or even stone the way it was normally done. Instead, the eyes were sewn shut with thick string. Even though the creatures were dead, the rough way the eyelids were punctured and pulled together seemed violent and uncalled for. I was no fan of the creach, but this trophy room, if that’s what it was, made my stomach turn.

“Ahhh, welcome my travelers,” said a woman’s voice. “You look weary.”

In the far right hand corner of the room, a shadow rocked forward on a chair and slowly stood up. I fought the impression that she might have been sitting in that spot for hours, maybe days or weeks, waiting for someone to arrive. An image came to me of a big hairy spider waiting in her web for a fly to become tangled in her web. I realized all too well that the six of us were the unsuspecting flies in that scenario.

“We ask for your hospitality,” I said. “Have we come to the place where such kindness is freely given?”

The woman cackled loudly, a laugh full of phlegm deep in her throat. “The old ways. Oh, how I do love them,” she said, crossing the room toward the fire.

She walked hunched over and with the shuffle of a very old woman. Dressed in a black robe, she was hard to see in much detail except for long hair that trailed behind her, reaching all the way to the ground. As she reached the fire, more than one of us sucked in a quick breath in shock. She wasn’t an old woman at all, but a beautiful girl, maybe just over twenty. Her skin was smooth and reflected the color of the flames that burned in the hearth. When she smiled, perfectly white teeth glistened behind full, red lips.

“Hello there,” Daniel said, sounding every bit like the wolf in his blood.

“Oh please,” Eva muttered.

“If we are intruding, we can certainly just be on our way,” I said maybe a little too hopefully.

“A werewolf, a vampire, and four human boys,” she said. “What an odd group to be traveling together, if you’ll excuse me for saying. And speaking like members of the Black Guard no less. Curious indeed.”

“We are all friends,” I said. “We are bonded together.”

“If you think you’re going to be able to add some heads to your wall, you’re mistaken,” Eva said.

“Eva,” I hissed. Diplomacy wasn’t her finest quality, but I was crazy to think I could stop her.

“What we need you to do,” Eva continued, “is call off your pack of weird dwarf-children out there so we can get back on the road and away from this nuthouse.”

The words were out so quickly I couldn’t stop her. We all turned to the woman with the crooked old body and the beautiful face to see how she would react. Part of me thought she might attack us. I thought the six of us could take her if it came to that. But I didn’t think we could hack our way through the Talib gathered outside, especially since the longbow appeared to be their weapon of choice, meaning they could strike us from a distance.

The fire behind the woman rose up in height as if a wind blew up. The wood crackled and spit sparks up into the chimney. She turned to us, her face transformed into a snarl. Her hands came up from the folds of her robe, twisted and deformed, more like claws than anything else.

“Dwarf-children?” she bellowed. “You dare mock me? You dare mock my pain and suffering?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not mocking you. We’re just a little scared is all. Sorry.” I punched Eva in the arm. “Eva, say you’re sorry.”

Eva stared the woman down and said nothing.

“Okay, I’m sorry on her behalf,” I said. “But really, it looks like we’ve come here in error. If we could be on our way, we promise not to disturb you again.”

The woman lowered her hands and slid them back under her robe. Her face relaxed and the snarl disappeared, replaced once again with the beauty that had been there before. “I’m sorry; it’s too late for that,” she said ominously. “I am Bella of the Woods, and you may not leave without accepting the
hospitality
you asked for.”

The way she hissed out the word
hospitality
caused gooseflesh to appear up and down my arms. I had a bad feeling her idea of hospitality wasn’t a pot of tea and some cucumber sandwiches. The way the others shifted uncomfortably behind me made me think I wasn’t the only one who picked up on it.

“I hope those things on the wall weren’t given her hospitality too,” T-Rex said under his breath.

Bella cocked her head toward him as if seeing him for the first time. T-Rex took a step back and looked at the ground.

“No, these creach scum were the ones who killed my little boy. An innocent. A mere child,” she turned her back to us to face the fire. “I left him to play in the vegetable garden one day, digging for worms to fish with later in the afternoon down at our pond. I went inside. Nothing around to harm him, you see?” She spun around and spoke right at us as if we were accusing her of something terrible. “Done it before a hundred times. There was no reason to suspect that day would be any different than the last. He was a good boy. He knew to stay close. He knew … he knew …” She faded off as if she’d lost her train of thought.

“What happened to him?” Xavier asked.

Part of me I wished he hadn’t asked the question. Maybe this woman was half-crazed and would have forgotten she was telling us the story, and we’d never have to hear the end of it. I had a terrible feeling that somehow the creatures outside with the dwarf-sized bodies and identical heads were part of this tale. But though their origin promised to be terrible and unnatural, another part of me wanted to hear it; the curious part of me needed to know.

She pointed to the kitchen. “I was standing right there, over by the sink, the moment my world shattered around me. One minute I was the mother of a beautiful boy and the next … and the next minute he was screaming.” She closed her eyes and swayed in place. “I ran outside and they were there. A roving creach hoard who knew my dead husband had been a hunter of the Black Guard. They’d come to pay back a debt for their comrades who had fallen under my husband’s sword.”

“But if he was already dead, why did they still come after you?” Will asked.

The woman turned and spat into the fire, and it burst into a fireball. “Bah, the creach know no honor, no code. They came because they are vile and despicable.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “My boy was only eight years old, protected by the Law of Quattuordecim, protected until his fourteenth birthday.”

“Unless he attacked them,” I whispered, understanding that the little boy must have fought to protect his mother from the advancing creach. A boy of eight attacking a creach horde. That kind of bravery certainly showed he’d had the blood of a monster hunter in him.

She nodded. “They killed my boy, but they paid the price,” she said, indicating the heads mounted on the walls.

“But how?” Daniel said. “You against a creach horde? So many?”

The woman smiled, smug and confident. “All these creach were not there that day. Many of these were added later. But, yes, over a dozen were there.”

“So how did you defeat them?” Eva asked, a measure of awe in her voice. “Were you a trained hunter?”

The woman crossed her arms over her stomach, and I felt my skin crawl again at seeing her crooked, ancient arms and hands.

“When I met my husband, I was practicing the Auld Ways, the ancient magic of a different time, handed down by the women of my family from generation to generation. I fell in love and married. He so much wanted a son, and the Auld Ways means only a daughter was possible. Out of my love for him, I left my magic and forced it deep inside of me until I thought it was dead and gone forever. But when I came out and saw … I saw what those monsters had done to my son.”

The floorboards beneath our feet trembled, then bucked and shook like there were animals beneath kicking up. The woman’s voice rose and grew harsh even as it trembled with grief and rage. A wind rushed through the room, blowing her robe and her hair. She raised her terrible clawed hands in the air as if she were summoning the spirits to her. The fire turned into a jet of flames up the chimney.

“My powers returned, and they exploded onto my enemies with all the vengeance of my female ancestors who had ever held the bodies of their own dead children.”

The woman lowered her arms and sagged forward. The wind died away. The floor stopped shaking. And the fire returned to its slow burn.

“But vengeance wasn’t enough. No amount of creach blood could bring my boy back. So I went to the Forbidden Place, darker and even more ancient than the Auld Ways. I went to where no woman in my bloodline had ever gone before.”

She fell silent and looked at us one by one, as if waiting for us to judge her. Only Eva took the silence as a challenge to guess what she’d done.

“You brought him back,” she whispered. “All the Talib, they all have the same face. That’s not a species. It’s your boy’s head on those bodies.” Then she reached the terrible conclusion. “Your boy’s name was Talib, wasn’t it?”

I expected the woman to be furious at the suggestion. Instead, she gave a short nod of her head as if impressed with how quickly Eva had come to the conclusion.

My stomach turned over on itself. I couldn’t come to grips with the idea that the dozens of miniature men with those odd, identical heads, were somehow her son. She turned and walked over to the black cauldron, and I had a flashback to every childhood story I’d been told with the creepy witch and her bubbling cauldron where she boiled alive the little children who became lost in the woods.

I realized I was holding my breath as she used a giant slotted spoon to scoop out a round mass from the broth in the pot. When she turned, T-Rex let out a short scream.