Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves (Book #4 of the Templar Chronicles) (3 page)

I was about to say as much to Daniel when Eva turned around and faced us. We were so surprised at her sudden movement, after being still for so long, that we all just stared back at her. I was caught, as usual, by how beautiful she was. But on this night, her eyes seemed to burn from some inner fire. She cocked her head to the side like an animal listening to a distant sound on the wind.

Then she turned to me and whispered in a barely audible voice.

“They found us.” She nodded to the sword at my side. “Get ready.”

Chapter 2

Right after Eva gave us her warning, things went downhill in a hurry.

Clawed, scaly hands jetted from the water on the port side of our small boat and grabbed onto the edge. It was perfect timing, and my mind registered that as a problem. Someone was in command and had trained these Creach well.

A bigger problem was that our boat tipped precariously to one side from all the weight hanging on it.

I lost my balance and staggered down the slope to the port side, hit the gunwale, and nearly fell into the water.

As I leaned over the edge, desperately pulling myself back on deck, I got a good look at what we were up against.

At least ten gillmongers hung on the boat. If you’ve never seen a gillmonger before, just imagine what a half-man/half-fish would look like, and you have a pretty good starting point.

Humanoid in size and shape, they are covered in slimy, scaled, green skin. A single heavy, armored spike sticks out along each long bone, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder, knee to hip. But it was their heads that really threw me off.

Though it wasn’t an actual fish, it was close. Tight green skin stretched over elongated faces with gaping mouths and hardly any chin at all. The mouths all hung open, gasping for air in the foreign environment. They had rows of sharp teeth, too long to fit in properly behind the thin lips.

Huge eyes completed the fishy image. Big, black, lifeless discs the size of baseballs with no white to them at all.

Unfortunately for us, the gillmongers’ bodies were muscular and wiry. This was going to be no easy battle.

“Jack!” Will shouted, grabbing my shirt and pulling me backward away from the edge.

Even as he did so, the gillmongers pushed upward. The boat rocked in the opposite direction, sending us flying against the starboard side. They continued like this, pulling, pushing, pulling, pushing, until all of us sprawled out on the deck, holding on for our lives.

Everyone except Eva, that is.

I glanced up and saw that she remained on the bow of the boat, watching us with an expression of only mild interest.

Then the rocking stopped… and things got really bad.

The hands on the railing disappeared, and for the barest second I felt a surge of hope that something had scared them off. But all they were doing was plunging to the bottom of the river to have a firm surface from which to jump.

In a small explosion of water, the first gillmonger burst from the river, soared into the air, and landed on the deck of the boat, cracking the old wood planking with the impact. Then a second and a third rocketed over. Soon, there were five gillmongers on our small boat, each gripping a short dagger in its teeth.

Daniel got his wits about him first. He was right next to me on the deck, and I heard him say, “Sorry, but no one gave you permission to come aboard.”

He stood, produced his sword from his side and, with a battle cry, plunged into the enemy.

I jumped to my feet and joined him. The gillmonger in front of me greeted the downward thrust of my sword with his wicked little dagger. The collision produced a rain of sparks that reflected in the Creach’s black eyes. But it didn’t faze the monster. He pressed the attack, dagger flying, his mouth gaping open and shut as he moved.

“Enjoy your bath,” Will cried next to me as he forced the gillmonger he battled backward into the river.

In the split second I glanced over to see Will, I let my guard down just enough for the gillmonger I fought. He feinted with a direct knife thrust to my head. I blocked it easily enough, but my footing was off. When the gillmonger kicked at me with a webbed foot, I stumbled backward and found myself up against the pilothouse in the middle of the boat. On reflex, I ducked and felt the gillmonger’s left arm fly just over my head. The Creach’s spikes hammered into the wood on the pilothouse, trapping him there.

I used the opening and slammed my shoulder into his exposed ribs, churning my legs as I hefted him into the air. With a yell, I chucked him over the railing and back into the water.

A quick look across the deck told me we were in trouble.

More gillmongers were launching out of the river and landing on the boat. All of the guys were fighting hard – even T-Rex and Xavier double-teamed a gillmonger together.

But to make things worse, the slow current of the river had spun us around and was taking us directly toward a sand bank curving out toward the main channel. That’s when I remembered that nobody was steering the boat.

We hit the sand bank with surprising force, the current carrying us faster than I thought. Everyone on deck, both hunters and gillmongers, lost their balance and fell. I used the opportunity to dispatch the nearest gillmonger with my sword, lifted his legs, and tipped him overboard. The body hit the sandbank with a thud and lay there, unmoving.

Too bad the sand around the body did move. Claw pinchers made of black, shiny armor rose up from the sand, snapping at the air. Big crustacean bodies followed, dozens of them appearing along the sandbank, each as big as a large suitcase.

“Pincer-crabs,” Xavier shouted. “They can bite through armor. Be careful.”

“I was planning on it,” was all I could manage as the gillmongers redoubled their attack, savagely swinging their swords and body spikes at the nearest one of us they could find. Anyone except Eva, that is. They left her completely alone as she stood silently at the bow.

The pincer-crabs crawled from the sand straight at us. The sound of splintering wood filled the air as they tore away chunks of planking wherever they touched the boat. They appeared to be unstoppable and mindless, ready to consume anything that stood in their path.

This proved true as I managed to trip the gillmonger I was fighting. I kicked him toward the pincer-crab just coming over the top of the railing. In the blink of an eye, the crab grabbed the gillmonger by the arm, dragged him over the edge and back to the sandbar. The pincer-crab detached itself and fell on the gillmonger. I looked over the edge of the boat and saw the monster crab feeding on the body.

There was a scream and then I heard Daniel bellow, “Xavier!”

I turned and saw Xavier with a pincer-crab on him, one of the thing’s sharp walking legs impaled through his shoulder.

“No!” I shouted.

But there were four gillmongers between me and Xavier, and more springing from the water. Pincer-crabs crawled up the side of the boat. Daniel had lost his sword in the battle and now fought with his fists. T-Rex stood next to Will, waving a short sword in front of him as the creatures closed in. Will pulled at Xavier’s arm, doing everything he could to keep him from being pulled over the side to certain death. Screams of pain and terror filled the air.

We were lost. This was the end of our adventure.

Then I felt a breeze as something large flew by me so fast that it was already past me by the time I raised my hands to shield myself.

Three of the gillmongers in front of me flew through the air and off the far side of the boat, their arms and legs cartwheeling out of control. The pincer-crab nearest me shattered into pieces like someone had taken a massive hammer to it. Slimy pieces of glossy black shell covered the deck.

The thing causing this wreckage paused for a moment, arms raised, muscles tense, lips pulled back to reveal two fangs in her mouth.

Eva.

Only it wasn’t Eva, not really. It was her body all right, but her eyes were like those of a wild animal. She looked right at me, and I could have sworn she had no idea who I was at that moment.

The world spun back into gear and everything happened in fast motion. Eva whirled across the boat deck, destroying everything in her path. Gillmongers crumbled from her furious salvo of punches and kicks. She dispatched the pincer-crab trying to pull Xavier off the boat by breaking off its leg. She used that to spear one of the gillmongers before landing a brutal kick on the crab’s body that cracked it in half.

Xavier fell to the deck, holding his shoulder. Will and T-Rex rushed up to help him, and Daniel took a protective position in front of them.

It wasn’t really needed as Eva continued her one-person destruction of the Creach. Soon, there was only one gillmonger left. Eva struck him with a brutal kick to the chest, and the creature collapsed to the deck. She was on him immediately, fangs bared, closing on the Creach’s neck.

“Eva!” I cried.

She cocked her head my direction and hissed. She looked just like the half-crazed, wild vampires we’d seen in the catacombs.

Eva launched herself at me. I had my sword but I didn’t use it. I dropped it to the ground and held up my hands to ward her off. Even though my Change the night before my fourteenth birthday had made me incredibly strong for my size, I was no match for her. She pinned my shoulders to the deck with one of her knees in the middle of my chest. She hissed again, her teeth sliding out farther as she lowered herself toward my exposed neck.

“No… Eva… it’s me….”

Her eyes were glazed over, driven by bloodlust.

“Eva… please… stop… it’s me… Jack….”

I felt her hot breath on my bare skin.

“Your name is Eva… you’re a fourth degree hunter of the Black Guard….”

A sting as one of the teeth broke my skin.

“You’re not a monster… you’re a monster hunter….”

Her body went rigid. She pulled back and blinked hard. Her eyes seemed to focus on me for the first time. Her hold on me lightened, but I held back the urge to throw her. I just lay there trying to sound as calm as possible.

“This isn’t you… Eva…. Fight it….”

She took a shuddering breath and released me. She slid to the side to lean up against the boat railing, her chest heaving from the exertion.

Daniel approached us slowly, stopping to shove the last gillmonger off the boat. He glanced over the side. By the look on his face, I could tell the Creach attack was over. He looked from me to Eva and then back to me again.

“I told you, we need to find the Jerusalem Stones as soon as we can,” he said.

“No,” Eva whispered. “Take me to Aquinas.” She closed her eyes and squinted in pain. “Please. Just take me to Aquinas.”

I looked to Daniel, and he reluctantly nodded his agreement. I let out a sigh of relief. Even though I’d been arguing for days that we go find Aquinas, the truth was that she had gone into hiding after the attack on the Monster Hunter Academy. I had no idea where to begin looking for her. Lucky for us, Daniel was one of the best trackers on the planet. If Aquinas could be found, he would be the one to find her.

Or at least I hoped.

Chapter 3

Even though Daniel never admitted it, I suspected he’d been trying hard to locate the remnants of the Academy ever since we left the place behind over a month ago. It was a sound strategy. If he could find them, it meant the Creach spies would be able to find them as well. Only that was assuming the Creach had anyone as skilled in tracking as Daniel. It was said he could track a sparrow flying in a moonless night. Obviously an exaggeration, but kind of poetical, and it gets the point across. He was good. He was very good.

But after two days, I was starting to worry he wasn’t good enough.

Aquinas had covered her tracks well. After the brazen attack on the Academy, the ancestral main fortress of the Black Guard in the French Alps, Aquinas made a decision to move the remaining monster hunter trainees to different locations. Part of her strategy was that no leader of any group would know the locations of the others. This would ensure that if anyone was captured and tortured to reveal the whereabouts of the other groups, everyone would remain safe. To this end, she had told them nothing about her own destination.

We’d abandoned the boat, too damaged by the pincher-crabs to be of much use, and made our way south toward Spain. Daniel knew of several safe houses used by the Black Guard in the Pyrenees, the mountains dividing Spain and France, and he thought that was our best chance to find Aquinas. We hitchhiked, playing the part of students on a European vacation, explaining away the sidelong looks at Eva with her hood up by telling people she was under the weather.

Along the way, Daniel disappeared for hours at a time, going to some tavern or coffeehouse along the way, checking for contact with other hunters. Even when he did meet another hunter, the information was slow in coming. Daniel reported that word of the attack on the Academy had gotten out, and all hunters now lived under a heightened sense of suspicion. He came back once covered with dried mud, rips in his clothes, and a fat lip. He explained that at one tavern, two hunters had tested him through a swordfight in the stables to see if he really was the fourth level hunter he claimed to be. Only after he’d bested them both with his bare hands, they’d grudgingly told Daniel the rumors they’d heard about Aquinas’s whereabouts. But it was stale news, nothing he hadn’t already heard from other people.

During this time, Eva had fallen back into silence. Somehow she seemed even more withdrawn than before, like she’d closed off the outside world completely and lived only in her own head. I found myself wondering whether this was her way to stop herself from attacking us. The vacant look I’d seen in her eyes when she was about to pierce my neck with her fangs caused me to shudder whenever I looked at her.

Part of me understood that the hunger I’d seen in her eyes couldn’t have just disappeared. It had to be lying just under the surface, fighting to come out. I wondered if her blocking us out was the equivalent to someone on a diet choosing not to look at the piece of cake or the slice of pizza sitting on the counter nearby. I was used to the Creach wanting to eat me. It was hard to adjust to the idea of having to fear Eva.