Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves (Book #4 of the Templar Chronicles) (8 page)

“That’s not what I was talking about,” Daniel said, shooting me a look. “What’s the plan?”

“I thought we agreed to head back up there tonight,” Will said.

“Based on what we saw today, anyone here think those ruins are going to suddenly reveal something magical to us tonight?” Daniel said.

Will took up my defense. “Maybe. We don’t know, do we?”

“That place has been totally picked over by tourists,” Daniel argued. “I don’t know how anything could be hidden up there.”

“I felt something when we first went up there.” I said, lifting up the Templar ring. “This got warm and started to vibrate.”

This quieted them down a little. None of us, including myself, knew how the Templar ring worked, but we respected and feared its power. The silence was broken only by the sounds of T-Rex scarfing down his food.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Daniel asked.

“Because it disappeared when we got there,” I explained. “We walked around the entire site like three times, and it never came back.”

“But it sensed something,” Will added.

Daniel looked unimpressed. “Could have been a Creach nearby. Or something that happened miles from here that set it off.”

I couldn’t really argue either way. I had no more idea how the ring worked than the other guys did. It had come alive only a few times, and that had been in life and death moments. This was the first time it had vibrated. I didn’t know how to interpret what that meant.

“You guys have to try this fish. It’s awesome,” T-Rex said with a mouth full of food. He pointed to my plate. “Are you gonna finish that?”

I pushed my half-eaten plate toward him. “Go ahead, buddy. I’m going to the bathroom.”

I left them behind and heard Will and Daniel get into a heated discussion of whether we were wasting our time in Delphi. I couldn’t help but feel like Daniel might be right.

The bathroom was in the far back of the restaurant, opening to the alley behind the building. As I walked back out of the room, drying my hands with a paper towel, I saw the little girl from the ruins run by at a full sprint. Two teenage boys chased her, calling out to her in Greek, laughing and taunting her. I could tell by their tone that this wasn’t a game. Going back to Dirk Riggle at Sunnyvale Middle School, I really hated bullies. I ran after them into the ally.

The backside of the buildings weren’t nearly as nice as the fronts the tourists saw. Paint peeled from the walls. Telephone and power lines crisscrossed between rooftops like cobwebs. There was trash on the ground from overflowing dumpsters, and stray cats hissed at me as I hurried past them.

I heard the sounds of a fight around the bend in the alley. As I made the turn, I was surprised to see the two teenage boys sprawled on the ground, knocked out. There was a flash of movement to my left. The girl darted down another side alley.

“Wait!” I called. “It’s me. The one who got you out of trouble up at the ruins.” I ran after her. “I just want to talk to you.”

The alley she’d run down was narrow and dark with shadows even during the day. It was like the alleys in Marrakech where I’d tracked the djinn who kidnapped Eva and T-Rex.

There was a wall at the end, and for a second I thought it was a dead-end. Then I saw a door to the right. It swayed on its hinges, showing that someone had just passed through. I opened it cautiously.

“Hello?” I called. “I’m not trying to scare you.” I thought of the two teenagers I’d seen on the ground and considered that this girl probably wasn’t scared of me. She’d shown she could handle herself.

I peered inside and saw an unexpected sight.

A dark, high-ceiled room filled with men, wild animals, and monsters.

All staring at me.

Chapter 10

Muscular men held enormous swords over their heads. A lion, teeth bared, crouched ready to jump. A monster with a woman’s body, but a head covered with snakes, held her clawed hands up, ready to scratch out my eyes. Winged harpies stretched their talons out toward me.

I would have been in big trouble if they had all been real. Luckily, they weren’t. They were just marble statues.

Still, they were pretty creepy, an obvious warning to anyone dumb enough to break into this house that this was one place they really didn’t want to be.

Beyond the statues, I saw the glow of natural light. I drew my sword and slowly made my way through the maze of statues. I remembered how the gargoyles on Notre Dame had come alive, and I wasn’t taking any chances. Lucky for me, all the statues behaved themselves and remained frozen in place.

After I passed the last statue, a long, serpentine dragon with marble flames billowing from its mouth, I saw that the light came from a large, round courtyard garden, surrounded on all sides by windowless walls two-stories high.

Ornate columns lined its outside edges. In the center of the garden stood another circle of pillars. From this second circle, out stepped the little girl I’d been following.

“You said you possessed no intention to hurt me,” she said, her voice and word choice oddly formal.

Her eyes bore into me. They were an ice-cold blue, almost to a point of looking otherworldly. I could have sworn her eyes had been brown when I’d seen her at the temple.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

The girl laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. It felt like she was making fun of me for some reason.

“Then why do you bring a weapon into my garden?” she said.

I realized I had a firm grip on my sword. I was about to lower it, put it away even, but something made me hesitate. Something was wrong here.

“This is your garden?” I said, lowering the tip of my sword just slightly. “Pretty nice for a pickpocket.”

The girl looked down her nose at me. “I only ask. I do not take what is not mine.”

“So you didn’t take that German guy’s money?”

The girl closed her eyes for a brief second and then opened them. “That idiot will find his money in his backpack tonight and feel only joy that he came out forty euros ahead. He’ll laugh with his friends about the idiot American who gave his money to save a street beggar.”

The Templar ring vibrated in my hand. The girl’s eyes darted to it, and I covered it with my other hand on reflex. She smiled, but again I felt the sense that there was no kindness in it.

“So the rumors are true. You have recovered the Templar ring, and you collect the Jerusalem Stones.”

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“I think you already know that, Jack Templar,” the girl said.

“You’re the one I came to find,” I said. “You’re the Oracle of Delphi.”

The girl grinned and raised her arms over her head. Slowly, she transformed in front of me, growing from a child into a teenager, then a young woman. The baggy clothes of the girl became a well-cut dress, cinched at the waist by a red sash. The facial features bore a resemblance to the little girl but were now developed in real beauty. The eyes remained the same though. Ice-cold, calculating, pale-blue so they almost appeared clear.

“Yes, I am the Oracle. My name is Pythia. And your kindness to me today gained you this audience.”

My brain clicked into gear. “So that was the test?” I asked. “Just helping a homeless girl? I think most people would help.”

“Then you are a fool. Man is a cruel breed, able to overlook the plight of even the most helpless, even the needs of a child.”

“Not everyone is like that,” I argued.

Pythia shook her head, looking at me as if I was stupid. “Even your companions would not have given the money as you did. Admit it. You give your race too much credit, Templar. It will be your undoing.”

I bit my tongue. I wasn’t here to argue the nature of man. I was here to find the answer to only one question.

“Do you know where I can find Kaeden, Lord of the Werewolves?” I asked.

“I see everything,” Pythia hissed. “I see the thousand pathways each one of your movements obliterates. I see the birth of a thousand new ones stretching out into time eternal.”

“Sooo… is that a yes?”

Pythia snarled at me, the elegant beauty disappearing for a second to reveal a wrinkled, shrunken face of an old woman. “You dare to mock me, boy?”

The Templar ring grew warm once again on my finger. It filled me with foreboding. Danger was near. “I thought you can see the future,” I said. “It’s what all the history books say.”

“I can see all futures,” she replied, regaining her composure. “You were born with free will – I do not take that from you. I do not take what is not mine.”

I remembered her saying that minutes earlier and at the temple with the German. “You don’t take what’s not yours, but you ask for it.”

“Yes,” she said.

“So, what do you ask for in return for this information?” I asked.

“Belief,” she said. “Belief that you could be the One. Will you give it to me, Templar? Will you give me this thing that I cannot take?

It was a curious request, and I should have been more alert to the venom in her voice. But I was eager to get the information and get out of there.

“Sure,” I said. “How do I do it?”

She grinned and nodded to the space behind me. “Just by agreeing, you’ve already done it,” she laughed.

I spun around. The marble dragon I’d passed on the way in was moving, slowly at first, but gaining more agility and speed by the second. Its wide scales slid over one another as it slithered from the shadows into the light of day.

“This will be fun,” Pythia said.

I didn’t need to be able to see the future to see that I was about to have anything but fun fighting this monster.

Chapter 11

I drew my sword and held it in front of me, cursing my big mouth. I had no clue why my belief that I could be the One meant anything to her. Or how giving her that belief gave her permission to test me. Still, I should have seen that the Oracle was searching for a way to get me to agree to this confrontation. Obviously, she operated under some kind of warped system where she couldn’t force people to do things, only accept what they were willing to give her.

And I’d just accidentally given her the fight she wanted to see.

This dragon was very different from the ones I’d faced before. I mean, even outside the fact that the others had been made of flesh and blood and this one still appeared to be made of stone.

It was smaller than the dragons at the Academy. Those had been like prehistoric creatures, the size of small buildings. This one was on more of a human scale, the head like that of a large lion, with a thick, serpentine body and long tail that tapered off into a nasty barbed spike. I took special note of that and all the other parts of the dragon’s body that might kill me. Its enormous fangs, curved claws, hooks on its elbow joints and probably the ability to breathe fire.

Piece of cake.

“This is Python,” the Oracle said. “Once faced by the god Apollo himself. Can you defeat him, Templar? Do you think of yourself as a god?”

“Uh, no. But I am pretty good in a fight,” I replied.

She scowled. I guess she didn’t like my sense of humor. And neither did the beast coming toward me.

The dragon let out a deafening roar, so loud that I opened my guard to cover my ears. This move was exactly what it wanted me to do, and it charged the second I did.

But I was ready. Covering my ears was just a feint to lure the monster in. I spun to the side and brought down my blade as hard as I could.

As the dragon realized its mistake, underestimating me, it bent its body away. Just in time. Still, my sword struck a glancing blow off the side of the dragon’s body, sending a fountain of sparks into the air.

Pythia cried out, and I couldn’t tell if it was concern for me or for the dragon. I sensed it was because she didn’t want this contest to end too quickly.

The dragon took up a position on the far side of the garden, its body and tail swirling in the air behind it like a propeller. I think it realized I wasn’t just some person off the street. I was a monster hunter, and this fight was not going to be easy.

I held my sword in front of me, pacing the area, getting a feel for the fighting surface with my feet.

“This isn’t necessary,” I said to Pythia. “Can’t we just talk? If you have questions, I can answer them.”

Pythia laughed. “We are talking. Everything we do is language. And you know the old saying – actions speak louder than words.”

The dragon charged. There was no roar this time or any indication before the attack. Its speed was amazing. It was on me before I took my first step to brace myself.

I managed to duck just as the dragon’s claws tore through the air over my head. It was so close that I actually felt my hair move. I thought I was in the clear, but the dragon’s tail whipped at me and struck me across the chest.

I tumbled through the air and slammed into one of the pillars. On reflex, I jerked to the side and felt the dragon smash a claw into the column where my head had been a split second earlier. Shards of shattered marble stung as they hit my cheeks and arms. This was no idle match. The dragon was out for blood.

I used the next pillar to brace myself and get my bearings. Sliding behind it, I had at least a temporary shelter as I took stock of my situation. Turns out, it was even worse than I’d imagined.

All of the other statues in the courtyard had also come alive. They stood on the opposite side of the rectangle, arraying behind the row of columns, craning their heads for a good look at the battle. They seemed content for now to be spectators. I just hoped it stayed that way.

The dragon lashed out again, using its tail to whip around the pillar I was hiding behind. I jumped out of the way but felt a searing pain on the back of my leg. The razor-sharp point of the dragon’s tail had sliced through my jeans and cut my calf. It wasn’t bad, especially since I had so much adrenaline rushing through my system. But the living statues on the far side of the courtyard howled and shrieked with excitement. I realized with a shudder that they must smell my blood in the air. The last thing I needed was for those others to get carried away and join the fight. If they did, I was a goner for sure.