Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Jack Templar Chronicles Book 5) (6 page)

“
W
hat’s the plan
?” Will said under his breath as we headed to the main exit leaving the train station. “We have a whole mob following us.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” I replied. “So much for a warm welcome to Rome.”

Instinctively, we were walking together in a tight group, each of us facing a different direction, ready to fend off an attack if one came while we were still in the crowd.

“They’re holding off, so they’re not stupid,” Daniel said.

“They’re not in a rush because they know we can’t get away,” Eva said. “They’re not hunting. They think they’ve already caught us.”

“Maybe we should just stay in here,” T-Rex said. “If they won’t attack us in front of other people …”

“More would just come,” I said. “No, we have to make a move. The faster the better.”

“Taxis,” Xavier blurted.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“There are bound to be rows of taxis outside the train station. We run out, jump in a taxi and
vroom
, we leave them behind,” he said.

Eva shook her head. “They’d just follow us.”

“But not all of them. We’d face fewer when we stopped. And we could pick the location for the fight,” I said. “It’s not a bad idea.”

“We couldn’t fit in one cab,” Will said. “So, we’d have to break into two groups.”

“Okay, Eva, me and T-Rex in one. Will, Daniel, Xavier in the other,” I said. “Does everyone know the meeting point? The address that Aquinas gave us?”

Everyone agreed that they did.

“You guys be careful. Move fast and –”

I slid to a stop and everyone followed suit. Standing in front of us, making no attempt to hide the fact she was blocking our path, was the girl vampire I’d seen when we first got off the train. I’d only caught a glimpse of her before, but now I was able to get a better look at her. She had short blonde hair that she wore spiked up. Her eyes were dark with mascara, and her cheeks had a blaze of blush on them that made her look more like a doll than a person. She wore leather pants with metal studs in them and a heavy biker’s jacket that hung open revealing a black shirt and dog tags dangling from her neck. I wondered if she’d been in a punk rock band before being turned into a vampire or if that was just the style in Rome.

“Going somewhere?” the vampire asked.

Eva stepped in front of us. “How dare you block my path?” she said, her voice filled with command.

The other vampire took a step back and looked uncertain. Then she caught herself, gave Eva a slow nod of respect, but squared her shoulders.

“You have ancient blood in you,” she hissed. “But you are a traitor to your kind. You have no command over me.”

I scanned the area around us. The busy crowds continued to flow around us, heads down, lost in their own small worries and thoughts. In the small gaps as these people passed by, I saw that the Creach had formed a circle around us. We were literally surrounded.

“Neither of us wants a fight here in the open,” I said to the punk vampire.

She looked around at the crowd as if finding the comment amusing. “Do you think anyone will notice? It will be over quickly, and we will carry your bodies away.”

“I think you’re overestimating your ability,” Daniel said, his hand pushing aside his jacket to show the handle of his sword.

“Don’t worry about this one, Daniel,” Eva sniffed, looking down her nose at the vampire. “Arrogance and overconfidence like this is typical in young blood.”

The punk vampire clenched her jaw. I could see that Eva was trying to push the girl’s buttons, and she’d found just the right leverage point. How it was going to help us escape, I wasn’t sure. But I figured Eva knew what she was doing, so I decided just to follow her lead.

“How young is she?” I asked Eva.

“Only a few decades is my guess,” Eva said. “Her maker was not even a century old.”

“So she’s just … what’s the right word for it?” I said.

“She’s a baby,” Eva finished for me. “An arrogant baby who dares to block the path of the daughter of Shakra, the granddaughter of Vitus himself.”

The punk vampire’s expression wavered, and a look of terror crossed her face. She took a step back and looked to her sides as if searching for support. Two of the creach on either side around us walked to her and took a position beside her. The ones on either side of her were vampires, but the other two looked to be some kind of shifter, a creach capable of taking the form of any living thing.

I nudged Will and T-Rex and whispered, “Get ready to run.”

The punk vampire’s confidence returned with the reinforcements. “Such pedigree,” she said. “It makes me even more excited to drink your blood.”

She rushed at Eva so fast she was barely a blur.

“Go!” I shouted at the others.

They all moved in unison toward the nearest exit. I pushed them past me and risked a look over my shoulder. Eva had easily dodged the punk vampire’s attack and used her momentum to throw her to the ground. The other Creach rushed to help her up.

Strangely, the commuters in the terminal barely gave her a glance. It was the way of the modern world. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t get involved. If two young women wanted to fight in the middle of the train station, so be it. Still, I knew the police wouldn’t feel the same way if they saw something.

“Eva,” I shouted. “Outside. To the taxis.”

She nodded and waved me away with a hand. I saw a deep gash on her cheek swell with blood. The younger vampire had landed a blow after all. As I watched, the wounded closed and healed on its own. There was no permanent damage, but it meant the punk vampire was a good fighter. Maybe too good.

“Go!” she yelled. “I’m right behind you.”

I turned and ran. I saw Daniel wrestle a creach to the ground right in front of the door, socking him with a right cross to the chin.

A strong hand grabbed my shoulder. Without looking, I dropped to the ground and kicked backward with my foot. I caught the creach right in the chest, and he went flying through the air.

I scrambled back to my feet and saw Eva and the punk vampire exchange a brutal flurry of punches. Some commuters took notice but only to give them wary looks before shuffling on. I realized they must have thought the fight was some kind of street performance, the kind that always ended with a hat being passed around for donations while pickpockets worked the real money in the crowd.

I was about to change course and run back to help Eva when she landed an elbow to the vampire’s face and then swept her legs from under her.

The second she dropped to the floor, Eva turned and ran toward me.

By the time I turned to open the door, she was passing me.

“C’mon, slowpoke,” she said.

We ran outside, shielding our eyes from the bright sun. I spotted Daniel, T-Rex, Will, and Xavier in a taxi pulling into the road, a handful of Creach chasing it on foot. Eva and I ran to the nearest taxi and climbed in.

“Drive,” I said to the driver. “Let’s go.”

“Dove stai andando, Signore?” the driver asked in a heavy Italian accent. He slouched in his seat, not even bothering to turn around. All I could see was a brown old-fashioned hat.

“Anywhere. Just drive,” I pleaded.

“Ahh … you American?” the driver said. “NFL football. Washington DC. Good, yes?”

“Here they come,” Eva said.

The doors of the train station burst open and the punk vampire ran outside. Her creach henchmen fanned out, looking through the crowd.

“Drive, per favore,” I said.

“Where go you?” the driver asked. “Is correct? English not good.”

“Anywhere. The Coliseum,” I blurted out.

The punk vampire spotted us. She ran at the taxi.

“Coliseum?” the driver asked. “Good. See, not hard. Easy.”

“Can we go now? Please?” I begged.

The driver shifted the car’s automatic transmission into drive. “Americans,” he mumbled. “Always in big hurry.”

The taxi lurched forward, darting into a space barely big enough in the flow of traffic. Drivers bleated their horns in anger, and our driver made some violent hand gestures back at them in response.

Eva and I looked out the back window. The punk vampire ran after the car but fell quickly behind us as we sped away. Only then did I notice Eva wincing in pain. She held up her arm. The forearm was bent at a weird angle, broken in at least two places.

“Do you mind?” she asked, holding her hand out to me.

I took her hand, still feeling a little jolt of excitement from feeling her skin on mine. Just another reminder that I still had a crush on her. That feeling disappeared once she yanked back on her arm, snapping the broken bones into place. She stifled a scream. Her vampire body may have been able to heal itself miraculously, but it didn’t mean her injuries didn’t hurt.

“You all right, miss?” the taxi driver asked.

“I’m fine,” Eva said through clenched teeth.

“You were very lucky back there,” he said. “Both of you.”

A pit formed in my stomach. The driver’s accent had fallen away, replaced by smooth, unaccented English.

“How do you figure?” I asked.

The driver took off his hat and revealed spiky white hair. He glanced back at us, a young face of pale skin, blood red lips, and pale blue eyes. The vampire from the train station.

“You’re lucky because my sister never loses a fight.”

I
reached
for the taxi door but Eva grabbed my forearm.

“The others,” she said before speaking to the taxi driver. “Do you have them?”

“Of course we do,” he said. “Do you think we would have let you escape the train station so easily if we didn’t have the trap in place?”

I pulled my sword and held it to the back of the driver’s neck.

“Where are they?” I said. “Tell me or I’ll run you through.”

The driver laughed. “That wouldn’t be very smart, now would it? First, if you did that, we’d crash and the two of you would be killed. Well, at least you would be, Templar. Second, kill me and your friends would die for sure.”

“He’s right,” Eva said softly. “They played this well.”

“Thank you,” the driver said. “My name is Tomas. You already met my sister Re’gan. We were sent to pick you up.”

“Sent?” I asked. “By who? No one knew we were coming here.”

Tomas laughed. “You hunters are all alike. Constantly underestimating the powers you are up against. Do you really think you were able to travel all the way from Spain without being noticed? Our eyes are everywhere. We see everything. Know everything.”

Eva reached out and slapped the side of Tomas’s head with a cupped hand. The car swerved as he cried out.

“What was that?” he said, rubbing his ear.

“What? Didn’t you see that coming?” Eva said with a smirk.

Under normal circumstances I would have gotten a good laugh, but all I could think about was what was happening to the others. I thought about how many creach were at the train station. What Tomas had said rang true. They must have expected us to arrive to have that many creach waiting.

“Who sent you to pick us up?” I demanded. “Ren Lucre?”

Tomas laughed. “We don’t answer to Ren Lucre here in Rome. This is a world unto itself. The Eternal City where creach rule is the greatest rule.”

“I’m sure the Vatican has a different view of that,” I said. The Vatican was home of the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church with over a billion members.

“Ahh … but the Church is not part of Rome. She is her own country. We do not enter the Vatican walls and the Church leaves us alone.”

I remembered from Geography class that the Vatican was indeed considered its own country even though it was right in the middle of Rome.

“The Church is an old friend of yours, am I right?” Tomas said. “She gave the Templar Knights the right to exist. But then once they became too strong, she stripped away all of their power like a candle one fears will burn out of control if left alone. Just like that,” – he snapped his fingers – “the Church snuffed them out.” His eyes looked up into the rearview mirror and stared at me. “But not completely. You’re still here. The last Templar. You have no idea how excited Draxo is to have you.”

“Draxo?” Eva said. “Draxo the Butcher?” Her pale skin went even whiter.

I swallowed hard. I didn’t recognize the name, but I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t call him that if I were you,” Tomas said. “It’d be a shame for you to die when you first meet him. It would ruin all the fun.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Eva said. “Draxo has been gone for centuries. He’s just a story made up to frighten children and first year monster hunters. Who are you really working for?”

“Oh, Draxo’s real all right. And alive and well. You can count on that.” He pressed the gas and the car zoomed down the street. “But I’ve said too much, and we’re nearly there.”

“Where are our friends?” I asked. “Where are they being taken?”

But Tomas ignored me, clearly done talking for now. I decided to leave it be, especially since he was speeding recklessly now, dodging in and out of cars like we were in a video game. He nearly crashed over and over, leaving a wake of honking drivers waving their hands at us angrily. Tomas didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, even accelerating more after a particularly close call with a delivery truck filled with pigs. I had a thought that Eva and I weren’t that much better off than the pigs, all of us being hand-delivered to our deaths.

“Who is Draxo the Butcher?” I asked Eva. “It looked like you recognized the name.”

“Hard to say what’s fiction and what’s real,” Eva said. “Like I said, he’s the stuff of fairy tales and campfire stories. Like a boogeyman a good storyteller can use however works best for the story.”

“But there’s truth in stories like that,” I said, watching the city pass by outside, trying my best to take note of landmarks as we went. “Like the Boros.”

“I have some memories from my mother … I mean from Shakra,” Eva said, obviously disturbed by her slipup. Shakra had turned her into a vampire so, in that way, she was Eva’s mother. But I imagine Eva’s real mother wouldn’t like sharing the title with a thousand year old vampire.

“What kind of memories?” I asked, trying to turn her mind from her subconscious mistake.

“I can see through Shakra’s eyes and, to a lesser extent, Ren Lucre’s. But only up to the point he changed his daughters into vampires,” she explained. “Shakra met Draxo centuries ago. He’s not someone she ever wanted to meet again.”

“That sounds about right,” Tomas said cheerily. “Hold on.”

The car turned off the busy thoroughfare and took three quick turns down progressively narrower streets. The last one was covered with old cobblestones and framed by decaying brick buildings on either side. The car came to a stop in front of a metal garage door. Graffiti covered the walls around it. Someone had spray painted a row of teeth all around the edge of the door. A few seconds later, the door rolled up, and the resulting hole looked like a gaping mouth. Tomas drove us into the darkness, and the car immediately pitched forward into a steep descent on a ramp.

Down, down it went, no lights to guide the way. While I knew Tomas’s vampire eyes didn’t really need the light, I found myself white knuckling my knees as the car zoomed downward into pitch darkness.

Finally, the road flattened and the car bottomed out. Sparks flew from underneath, lighting up the darkness for a split second. Then Tomas hit the accelerator, and the car zoomed through the underground passageway, making small corrections to the left and right.

“Can you see anything?” I whispered to Eva.

“Yeah,” she replied, “just be glad you can’t. There’s like six inches of clearance on either side of the car.”

We plowed through a water puddle and then the car lurched forward.

“Almost there,” Tomas said, clearly enjoying his role as a mad conductor on this crazy ride. “Hold on tight.”

He punched the gas and the car hit a ramp. We were weightless for a few seconds as we rocketed into the air. Tomas yelled with delight. Then we hit the ground hard on the other side, fishtailing a bit as Tomas got the car back under control.

Ahead of us, I saw a light beaming into the narrow underground road. On this side of the jump, Tomas slowed down and rolled carefully toward the light.

“Welcome to Old Rome,” he said. “Just remember when you meet Draxo that he hates to be called the Butcher. It’s like a thing for him.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Just get us out of this car.”

“What’s wrong? Don’t like my driving?”

I ignored him. It looked like Tomas had been a punk in his life before becoming a vampire, and he was still a punk. I reminded myself that his sister Re’gan had gotten in some good shots on Eva in their fight, not something that was very easy to do. If the sister was that good, then the brother might have skills too. I made a mental note not to underestimate him simply because I thought he was a moron. Sometimes idiots were the most dangerous adversaries of all.

As we entered the lit area, I turned my attention to the situation at hand. I’m not sure what I expected, but what I saw wasn’t even on the radar.

The taxi rolled out onto a cobblestone street not that much different from the one we’d been on right before entering the garage door. Only this street opened into a central town square with an elaborate marble fountain in the middle, arcing loops of water into the air. The buildings surrounding the square looked even older than the decaying brick buildings in the neighborhood aboveground, only none of these were marked with graffiti. Even with some of the buildings extending four stories into the air, they still didn’t reach the top of the cavern. Massive lights rose from many of the roofs, similar to what you might find at a football stadium. These lights made it feel like we were back outside when clearly we were deep underground.

The town square was busy, filled with all matter of creach: vampires, werewolves, goblins, zombies, demons, you name it. But they acted and moved just like their human counterparts above ground, shopping at vendor carts, standing in small groups telling stories, sitting on café verandas and sipping drinks while watching the milling crowd pass by.

But while it looked similar at first glance, on closer inspection there were some pretty important differences. As the car rolled by one of the vendors, I saw that the cart was covered with small cages holding live animals – squirrels, rats, rabbits, that kind of thing. The seller reached in and handed a squirrel to a goblin who handed over a coin, inspected the squirrel from end-to-end, and then popped the thing into his mouth whole, chewing quickly. The drinks served at the coffeehouse looked unnervingly the same color as blood, leaving bright red smudges on the corners of the patrons’ mouths as they slurped them down.

And the fountain in the square didn’t have the usual type of sculpture in its center. Instead there were four creach statues – a vampire, a zombie, a werewolf, and a demon standing face out and forming a square. The weird thing was that each of them held a blade in each hand and had it stuck into the creach next to it. It was from these gaping wounds that the water poured out, looking like colorless blood.

“I see four of the Greater Creach,” I said. “Where are the Lesser Creach?”

“Look at their feet,” Tomas said.

Then I saw it. The pedestal base was an elaborate carving of goblins, shriekers, ogres, dragonbacks, snifferbellies, mugwumps, and dozens of the other Lower Creach I didn’t recognize. They were depicted under the feet of the four main creach, half-squashed and crying out in either pain or pleas for mercy. It was clear where the Lower Creach stood in the hierarchy of whatever this place was.

“Look,” Eva said, pointing. “Over there.”

It was the other taxicab, the one we’d seen the others jump into at the station. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight.

“Where are they?” I demanded. “Where are our friends?

“Already inside, I guess,” Tomas said, a little exasperation in his voice. “I’m surprised they beat us here.”

I took that to mean there was more than one way to reach this hidden underground city. Whoever had driven the other car had taken a quicker way, and Tomas didn’t seem to like that one bit. I filed both pieces of information away for later use.

Tomas pulled behind the taxi, jammed on the brakes, and came to a sudden stop. “Come on, they’ll be waiting for us,” he said.

He got out and we did the same. An important looking building loomed ahead, fronted by a row of smooth marble columns. Before the door stood two minotaurs, big muscled human bodies with the heads of bulls complete with wide curved horns. The last time I’d seen one of these rare creatures was when Ren Lucre’s personal guard came to Sunnyvale. Whoever they guarded inside the building either was important or wanted others to believe he was.

We walked up the stairs, and the minotaurs stepped forward to block our way. Each of them held an ax so massive I doubted I could lift it, let alone swing it around to do any harm. The beasts held out their free hands and grunted.

“Your weapons,” Tomas said.

“What weapons?” Eva said innocently.

Tomas looked nervous. “Come on, we don’t want to keep Draxo waiting.”

One look at the minotaurs’ faces and I knew it was pointless to try to hide my sword or knives. I pulled out my sword and handed it over. Next, I pulled out the small knives I had hidden on each ankle, the one behind my back, and the other strapped to my left forearm. When I was done, I was surprised to see the other minotaur with at least eight or nine different weapons Eva had removed from her body. She caught me staring and shrugged.

The minotaurs were satisfied and stood aside to let us enter. Tomas led us up to the pair of massive bronze doors at the top of the stairs. Two giant metal knockers hung from a chain, each shaped like a screaming human head. He lifted one to bang on the door, but held it up for effect. He turned to look at us.

“I hope you’re ready,” he said. “Because it’s time to meet Draxo.”