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

I
t was
an under-developed head just like the ones on the bodies outside. The eyes were open and looking back and forth in a panic. The mouth gaped open and shut like a fish choking on air. Even though it wasn’t fully formed yet, it was clear it was the same face as we’d seen outside.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had visitors,” the woman said, petting the wet hair on the head. “This is the finest one I’ve ever grown. Slowed things down. Got it right this time.” She looked up, right at Xavier. “Now I just need the right sized body.”

Xavier let out a small involuntary whimper and stepped backward until his heels hit the door.

“No need to worry,” she said. “It won’t hurt, I promise. And you’ll live forever. Or at least your body will.”

With a cry, Daniel drew a hidden dagger and swung out at the woman. She raised a clawed hand, and Daniel flew back through the air and smashed into the table. Eva went next, moving in a blur, a dagger in each hand. Again, the woman raised her hand as if grasping something in the air in front of her. Eva dropped the daggers, and her hands went to her own throat, pulling at her neck as if a rope were choking her. The woman threw her hand aside, and Eva flew across the room and hit the wall.

Will and T-Rex stepped in front of Xavier, their swords drawn.

“No, wait!” I cried out.

The woman stopped. But when she turned toward me, the sneer had returned to her face. “Wait? It’s been centuries that I’ve waited. Give me a single reason why I should wait one minute more.”

The woman was too powerful. There was no way we could defeat her with swords. The problem was, I didn’t know how else we were going to do it.

“A single reason?” I asked. “How about vengeance? Real vengeance on the creach truly responsible for killing your little boy.”

The woman laughed scornfully. “Look at the walls around you, boy. I’ve had vengeance and it did nothing.”

“I’m not talking about them,” I said. “I’m talking about their leader.”

Her eyes squinted. “You can’t bargain with something that’s not yours to give.”

“My name is Jack Templar,” I said, hoping it would have some kind of effect. The woman jerked her head on hearing my name. I didn’t know if this was a good sign or just a warning that I was about to get tossed through the air like Eva and Daniel.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“I am the bearer of the Templar Ring, a hunter of the Black Guard, and the last of my father’s bloodline. I’m on a quest to reunite the Jerusalem Stones and have my vengeance on Ren Lucre himself.”

She peered at my hands. “I see no ring,” she said. She looked at my face. “And I see no hero.”

“I wear the ring,” Daniel said, standing on wobbly legs and holding up his hand with the ring. “He lent it to me to keep the werewolf poison in my blood from turning me.”

“So you admit you are a creach,” the woman said.

“My family was murdered by werewolves enslaved by Ren Lucre. My father and two brothers were torn to pieces in front of me, and I escaped only by accident.”

“How fortunate for you,” she said snidely.

“Fortunate?” Daniel asked. “Do you find it fortunate that you survived while your son died?” Anger and bitterness laced his voice. “Would you find it fortunate to have the blood of your sworn enemy course through your veins? Fortunate is not the word I’d use at all.”

I held up my hand at Daniel, and he swallowed his rage and forced himself to be quiet.

I took a deep breath and turned back to the woman. “We’ve experienced loss as well. My other companion who you threw across the room carries the blood of a vampire, but she’s a monster hunter through and through. Her family was tortured and killed in Ren Lucre’s prison.”

“My family was killed in a fire set by goblins,” Xavier said, his voice catching. “I heard them scream as our place burned to the ground.”

I’d known this about Xavier but had never heard him speak about it before. I reached back and patted him on the shoulder.

“My Aunt Sophie who raised me and my mother were both killed. My father rots in Ren Lucre’s prison,” I said. “We all have loved ones to avenge. Let us go so that we can destroy Ren Lucre once and for all.”

The woman’s expression softened, and she seemed to be considering my proposal. “How many Jerusalem Stones do you have so far?” she asked.

“Two,” I answered. “One from the Lord of the Vampires and one from the Lord of the Werewolves.”

She looked impressed by this, and I allowed myself a glimmer of hope.

“Show me,” she said.

Reluctantly, I pulled a stone from my pocket and held it up for her to see. She looked mesmerized by it, as if it were a sparkling diamond instead of a plain looking round stone.

“The other?” she asked.

“Master Aquinas of the Black Guard holds it for me,” I said.

“A likely story,” she sneered.

“I swear it on my mother’s name,” I said.

She nodded and seemed to accept this pledge.

I took a step toward her, doing my best not to look at the head she carried on the slotted spoon. “I’m not saying we understand your pain, only that we have experienced pain of our own. Let us go so we can make certain others don’t have to feel the way we do.”

The woman nodded, and I felt a rush of relief. She was going to let us go. But my heart sank as she pointed at Xavier.

“But you leave him,” she said.

“What?” Xavier exclaimed.

“If you do not return, he will be the perfect size,” she said, raising the blinking and gasping head up with the spoon.

“I’m sorry,” I said, doing my best to sound calm. “We all leave together. But I give you my word that –”

“Then give me the Jerusalem Stone,” she hissed. “For safekeeping.”

My hand tightened involuntarily around the stone. It grew warm in my hand, the first time it’d done so. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, unsure if it was a warning to hold it close or permission to give it away to save my friends.

Will leaned in next to me. “She knew you wouldn’t leave Xavier,” he whispered. “I think she was after the stone from the start.”

“I could kill you all easily enough and just take the stone, you little maggot,” the woman said.

I nodded. Eva was back on her feet. Both she and Daniel moved slowly but didn’t appear to be seriously harmed. The woman had taken them out without even laying a hand on them. What match were we against power like that?

“What will you do with the stone?” I asked.

“Hold it,” she said. “Care for it. And if you return with the other two stones, the one you seek now and the one you left with Master Aquinas, I will return it to you and send you back on your quest.”

“Do you swear not to use it for your Auld Ways or for the Forbidden Place?” I asked, copying the name she’d used to describe her powers.

“Of course,” she said with a smile.

“Then swear it,” I demanded.

The smile turned to a scowl. “Impudent child,” she spat. “You dare command me?”

“Swear it on the thing most sacred to you,” I said. “And you shall have the stone.”

She spun around, her robe swirling behind her. Crossing over to the cauldron, she carefully placed the head back into the brew.

“I swear on the hope that my child might live again,” the woman whispered. “I will keep the terms of our bargain for one month.” A tremor shook her voice. “Now leave the stone and be gone from me.”

The stone had turned cold in my hands, but I had no way to understand what that meant either. I reached out and placed it on the table nearest me.

“Are you sure, Jack?” T-Rex asked.

“I don’t think we have another choice,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Daniel and Eva gave the woman a wide berth as they came back to our side of the room. As the woman turned away, I caught the glint of tears on her cheeks.

“What are you doing?” Daniel hissed. “We can’t leave the stone.”

“Yes, we can,” I said. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Now open the door.”

Eva opened it. Weirdly, the bright light from outside didn’t pour into the room as it should. It was like an invisible barrier existed that kept the world from entering the house of sadness and grief.

Outside, two lines of Talib had formed, one on either side of the door, stretched out to form a path away from the house. All of the identical faces, the face of the young Talib slain all those years ago, turned toward us in unison.

“I don’t like this,” Eva said.

“They won’t hurt us,” I said. “I don’t think they will, anyway.”

I led the way, the faces turning as I walked by them. I imagined the woman’s dark magic in that black cauldron forming all of them at one time, coming alive into the world and attached to a stranger’s body. But where I’d once seen horror, I now saw only a mother’s pain, so immense and unbearable that she would lower herself to create these monstrous versions of her child in the attempt to change the past and bring her son back to life.

As I walked through the two lines, I wiped away tears from my eyes. I knew the pain of loss. I’d seen the same look in my own mother’s eyes when she’d come to me when I’d drowned in the Savage River back in Sunnyvale. There was a fine line between grief and madness, and the woman had certainly crossed it. As we left the cottage in the meadow, I didn’t feel anger toward her, only shared sorrow. I hoped I’d find something on my journey, some talisman or some wisdom to share with her when I returned for the Jerusalem Stone I’d left behind. Anything to make her pain ease so that she could at last accept the finality of death and properly grieve for her son.

The six of us walked in silence for over an hour, all of us lost in our own thoughts about what we’d just seen. I was certain each of us was thinking about our own losses and sorrows, too many for our young lives. But the farther we walked, the more sure our pace became, quickened by our need to distance ourselves from that cottage but also from the desire to move on and live life while we had it.

It was T-Rex who finally broke the silence. He cleared his throat and asked, “Is anyone else really hungry?”

We didn’t laugh, but the question brought smiles to our faces. I dug through my bag and tossed him a protein bar that he happily munched on. Xavier pulled out the map, and we gathered around to decide where to go next.

After we chose a destination, the conversation picked up quickly from there. Eva poked fun at Daniel. “Tossed aside by an old woman like a puppy.”

“I was first to attack,” Daniel reminded her.

“And you failed even with the element of surprise,” she responded.

“I didn’t see your fangs in her throat either,” he pointed out.

I didn’t have to intervene because T-Rex shifted the conversation to lunch, what might be available at the next village we visited. I just listened to my friends chatting back and forth, enjoying the sun on my face, the whisper of wind through the trees and the birdsong all around us. This was life and it felt good.

The only shadow on the moment was the fact that I was marching my friends toward danger and possibly their deaths. The Oracle had prophesied that one of us would die on the quest, and I hadn’t forgotten her prediction. All we could do was push forward and get to Rome as quickly as possible.

As we walked through the forest on that sunny day, there was no way to know if there was a trap waiting for us anywhere else along the way or in Rome. But one thing was certain. The Lord of the Demons promised to be a creach adversary unlike anything we’d ever met before.

F
or the final
segment of our journey, we decided to risk the train. The creach tended to watch the trains closely, but with it being so busy I didn’t think any monster would dare attack us in the open. Even if we were spotted, it wouldn’t be that hard to lose a tail in the crush of people at the train station.

With only ten minutes left until we reached Roma Termini, the main train station in Rome, I nudged T-Rex awake, then stood up to gather my small bag. We had spread out through the cabin in groups of two so we didn’t draw attention. Since all of us wore travel cloaks as a way to conceal our weapons, someone with a sharp eye could have made the connection that we were together. But most people kept to themselves, reading newspapers or napping in their chairs as the outskirts of Rome whisked past the windows.

“Remember when we learned about Rome in Ms. Miller’s class?” T-Rex said. “It was cool.”

I nodded. Ms. Miller was one of the favorite teachers at Sunnyvale because she knew exactly what got middle school kids excited. Instead of talking about dates and the names of emperors, she told us all about the battles and the bloody ways the ancient Romans liked to finish off their enemies.

“Remember that week we learned about the gladiators at the Coliseum?” I asked.

“When she acted out the games and had us pretend to be gladiators?” T-Rex asked. “I remember that you weren’t very good at it. Kind of funny when you think about it, considering how everything turned out.”

I smiled at the memory. Ms. Miller had given us Styrofoam swords, and we took turns in the arena, a circle of chairs and desks with our classmates cheering us on. I went up against Cindy Adams, the girl I had a crush on, and she defeated me in less than ten seconds. In my defense, she later turned out to be a demon sent to kill me, so I think she had an unfair advantage.

“The place Aquinas told us to go is right by the Coliseum. We should go check it out.”

We weren’t there to sightsee, but the Coliseum was something I’d wanted to visit since I was a little kid. “If we have time, we’ll definitely check it out,” I said.

The train slowed and the view outside turned into wide swaths of train tracks branching out in all directions. Roma Termini was one of the busiest stations in Europe. It looked like there were enough tracks for hundreds of trains.

T-Rex stood on his seat to grab his bag from the overhead carrier above us. When he climbed back down, he had a candy bar in his hand. He saw me looking at it and thrust it toward me. “Want a bite?”

“No,” I laughed. “I think you should be a magician though; the way you can produce food out of nowhere has always amazed me.”

T-Rex made a half-turn away from me, then turned back with a candy bar in each hand. “And voila,” he said with a flourish. “It’s just necessity. Will’s always stealing my stuff, so I have to keep it hidden.”

At the mention of Will’s name, I looked down the aisle to locate him and the others. They were doing a good job of blending in, a much better job than T-Rex and I were anyway. It took a few moments to find them in the suddenly busy train compartment. Just as a feeling of dread started to work its way up from my stomach to my chest, I spotted them. Still seated, hats pulled low over their faces. Daniel leaned against the window as if he were asleep, but I would pay good money that he was awake and fully aware of his surroundings.

“Come on,” I said to T-Rex as the train slowed to a stop. I tossed him a ball cap. “Remember, spread out a little and keep your hat down as you leave the train. If the creach are watching, they’ll be looking for a group of us traveling together.”

T-Rex pulled on the hat. “Head down. Don’t draw attention. Got it.”

The aisles filled with busy commuters and travelers eager to disembark. I went first and glanced behind me to see that T-Rex was in line behind me five people back. I realized I was rubbing the spot on my finger where I usually wore the Templar Ring. In the short time I’d worn it, I’d developed the habit of always touching it, especially right before we were about to enter a dangerous situation. I took a deep breath, pulled on my baseball cap, and stepped out onto the train platform.

People swarmed around me, half getting off the train, the other half waiting impatiently to climb on and take their spots. I scanned the sea of faces, looking for any sign of creach. For a second, my eyes settled on a young couple holding hands. They looked like they must have been in their early twenties and normal enough to the casual observer. But the casual observer would have been wrong. They both had wide unnatural grins pasted on their faces with clenched teeth. They looked like they were grinning even though they were in immense pain. Their eyes darted back and forth across the platform, cataloging every face they saw. They were creach for sure.

I chanced a look down the platform to my right and saw Eva and Xavier step out on the platform from the door at the other end of the train car. Eva glanced over, and I discretely nodded my head toward the two creach. I thought she might have missed my signal, but when the crowd between us parted, I saw her hand under the folds of her clothes, certainly resting on the hilt of her sword.

I turned to try to warn T-Rex about the creach. He was just about to exit the train. He must have read my expression that something was wrong because he stutter-stepped like he’d changed his mind and wasn’t leaving the train after all. This must have surprised the people behind him because they ran into him, pushing him forward. T-Rex caught his foot in the gap between the train and platform and fell hard on the ground.

As he fell, candy bars tumbled on the platform from various pockets. Those weren’t a big deal. The problem was that his short sword fell from his jacket and skittered across the concrete platform. People around him stopped in place, staring at the sword, then back at the young boy scrambling on bloody knees to retrieve it.

I looked up at the creach watchers, and my stomach sank. Their fake grins were replaced with real ones. Their clenched teeth were now open, revealing their sharp vampire incisors.

I ran to T-Rex and helped him up. “We’ve got to go.”

T-Rex turned back toward the candy bars still on the ground. “Could I –”

“No, now,” I said, pulling his arm roughly.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the vampire couple had split up. The guy followed directly behind us. The girl had disappeared, but I imagined she wasn’t far away.

We walked quickly over to where Eva and Xavier waited. Daniel and Will were just leaving the train, and I waved them over.

“We’ve been spotted,” I explained.

Eva eyed the approaching vampire. “I can handle him.”

“Not here,” I said, imagining the mess a bloody battle in the middle of all these regulars would cause. I didn’t think the Italian police would quite understand the importance of our mission if we were to chop up some vampires in full view of everyone. “Besides, there are more of them. One I saw for sure. A female. There could be a lot more.”

“Let’s draw them away from the crowds then,” Daniel said.

“Agreed,” I replied. “Everyone stick together.”

We worked our way through the busy throng, our vampire friend following behind. I spotted the girl to our right. She had three more Creach with her. I couldn’t tell if they were vampires or some other kind of monster, but they were definitely in on the chase. I looked to our left and saw at least three others on that side that walked in parallel to us.

The good news was that it didn’t seem like they wanted to start anything in the middle of a bunch of witnesses either. The bad news was that the longer we walked through the station, the more Creach fell into line and joined the growing group trailing us. At the rate we were going, we were going to have to fight dozens of them. I started to wonder whether we had enough muscle to survive the encounter.