Jack Templar and the Lord of the Vampires (24 page)

“But you and my mother were just children,” I said. “If you were turned into vampires, wouldn’t you still look like children today?”

Shakra heard the hope in my voice and shook her head. “You know so little about your own kind, Jack,” she said. “We vampires can choose to let our bodies age whenever we wish. It is sometimes advantageous for us to do so. A child cannot hide forever. It becomes too noticeable.”

“I can’t believe it,” I mumbled. “This can’t be true.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Shakra said, “Your mother did not stay a vampire forever. After nearly a thousand years, she threw away her immortality for the worst of all possible reasons. A man.”

“My father?” I said hopefully.

“Yes, John Templar. A monster hunter, no less,” Shakra spat. “She had him cornered and could have killed him with a flick of her hand, but she did not. Instead, he fooled her, his deceit wrapped in the trickery of soft words and kindness. After only one thing. The same thing his son is after.” Shakra crossed the room and opened a small gold chest encrusted with white, red, and green gemstones. The light from the fire caught their facets and cast reflections around the room. She tilted the chest forward to show me a plain-looking smooth river rock from the case, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. But she made no move to touch it.

“The Jerusalem Stone,” I whispered.

I stood up from my chair to get a better look, but Shakra hissed and snapped the chest shut. She turned a small key in the center and slid it into a hidden pocket in her clothes. I remained standing. When Shakra had crossed the room, she left the Veritas dagger on the table. I knew if I stood any chance, I somehow had to get my hands on it. 

“Yes, one of the five discovered under Temple Mount by the original Templar Grand Master, the vile Hugh de Payens and his band of bloodthirsty mercenaries. Each Stone held its own power, but combined together, they have the power to defeat any darkness. Or become the strongest darkness of them all. Such is the dual nature of great power. It can be used for both good and evil. This is why each Creach Lord possesses one, so my father would not have absolute rule over us.”

“But how…I mean, if my mother was a vampire?” I asked.

“As I told you, logic and emotion separated in our mother’s womb. The emotions she felt were of unimaginable depth and intensity. Seeing a bird fly into a window and lie dying on the ground could send her into tears for days because of the empathy she felt for the dying creature. It was something I could never understand. When she fell in love with your father, or what she thought was love, she abandoned everything. She chose to become human again to be with him.”

I remembered that the Stones together had that power. I had only thought of it as a weapon against a powerful vampire. It hadn’t occurred to me that a vampire might choose to return to human form. I tried to imagine my mother making that decision. Giving up her immortality to be with my father. To love someone so deeply to be willing to give up eternal life. But another thought occurred to me.

“That means she needed to have all the Stones together, right? How did she do that?”

Shakra waved the question away. “That is another story, too complicated to retell now. It is enough to say that she did it, that your father tricked and betrayed her, and that, as she died, she regretted her actions. All of them. Especially having you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.” I was surprised at the confidence in my voice and in my heart as I said the words. “You are lying.”

“A fool believes only what he wants,” she said. “It’s what makes him a fool.”

I pressed forward. “You once knew how it felt to love someone, didn’t you?” I asked. “I spoke to Gregor. He told me the story of how you came to destroy him in the desert only to save him and then fall in love with him.” Shakra remained expressionless, but there was something new in her eyes. A softness that wasn’t there before. “And then, when you thought you would lose him, you murdered his people.”

She looked at the wall behind me, eyes darting back and forth as if watching a scene playing our before her eyes. I wondered if she was witnessing the slaughter of Gregor’s tribe once again. “It was to protect him,” she whispered. “They would have turned on him eventually. It was the only logical thing to do. I did it for him.”

I stood and faced her, using her distraction to move my hand toward the Veritas dagger on the table near me. “No, you did it for yourself. That’s why you couldn’t stand what my mother did. Her sacrifice was real love. It just makes your selfish act seem that much more barbaric.”

I didn’t even see her move from across the room. I only felt the air swirl around me and suddenly she was standing face-to-face, a small knife at the base of my throat and a hand holding the back of my head. Her blank expression was more terrifying than any snarl could have been. I wondered if her logical mind had made a decision to kill me and end the conversation. Involuntarily, I swallowed and felt the knife break the skin.

“B…but…he forgave you…in the end,” I struggled to say. “He understood.”

The pinprick of pain at my throat disappeared, and Shakra removed her hand from my head. “What did you say?”

“I spoke to Gregor before I came here,” I said, cautious because I knew a single misstep here could result in her plunging the knife into me. “He gave me a message.”

Shakra stepped back, waiting.

“He said he understood, that he knew what you did was, in your own way, a show of love.” I steadied myself in case she attacked. “In the end, he forgave you. In the end, he never stopped loving you either.”

Shakra stood motionless, her face remaining a mask. But her eyes. They clouded over in a deep sadness. It was the first emotion I’d seen in her. In that second of hesitation, I lunged for the Veritas dagger and grasped it.

Suddenly, as if a dam had burst, she exploded in anger. “You lie!” she roared, her teeth bared, crouching low to attack. 

But I was ready for her this time. She rushed to me, blindingly fast. I raised my hand and braced myself.

She stopped suddenly, pressed up against the weapon I held in front of me. Slowly, she looked down and saw what I held to her body.

It wasn’t the Veritas dagger. It was the Revealer.

I could have raised either when Shakra charged me. In her blind rage, I knew she would be careless. If I’d chosen the Veritas dagger, she would be writhing on the ground, dying a slow death. I could have taken the key to the chest, walked casually to the fireplace mantle, and claimed the Jerusalem Stone.

Instead, I’d raised the Revealer. Even though I knew the importance of my quest, I also felt the weight of my pledge to Gregor. He had given me the Veritas dagger and the power to destroy, but he had also armed me with the power of the truth with the Revealer. He had trusted his story to me so that I might make this one decision when it was most important.

Besides, whether I liked it or not, Shakra was still Caroline, my mother’s sister. If there was a chance to get through to her, I had to try.

I spoke quickly, worried that once her shock wore off that she would simply slit my throat. “Let me prove that I’m telling the truth,” I said, holding up the Revealer. “Let me prove that after all those centuries, Gregor forgave you and loved you once again.”

Shakra looked at the Revealer. I could tell she knew what it was, perhaps had even seen this particular one before. Her eyes darted to the Veritas dagger in my other hand. She took a few quick steps back. She knew what that was too.

I leaned out and held the Revealer to her. She hesitated and then took it from me, stepping back quickly after she did so. She slid her hands over the Revealer before looking up at me and giving me a barely perceptible nod of her head.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Ask what you most want to know.”

Shakra gave me a dark look, then looked down at the Revealer. “Did Gregor…” her voice caught as she said the name. “Did Ahmed el-Tayeb…” she looked up, Gregor’s real name lingering in the air. I nodded for her to continue. “Did he…forgive me?”

She finished the question but did not look down at the Revealer to see the answer there. She locked eyes with me. Unwilling or unable to look down.

I realized with sudden clarity that there was no answer there that wouldn’t bring her pain.
Falsum
would simply mean that her lifetime of loss would remain the same, but the small hope I’d given her would be torn from her.
Veritas
would be harder still. Knowing that her one true love had forgiven her, but only minutes before his death, would be a cruel revelation. Centuries of regret would be a burden almost too terrible to imagine.

But even without looking down, she could see the answer in my eyes. I had told her the truth.

With a scream that pierced my ears, she threw the Revealer with all her might into the fire. It smashed into the back wall and shattered.

A torrent of flame gushed into the room. I held my hands to the sides of my head as Shakra’s scream grew louder and louder.

Vases shattered. Mirrors on the wall cracked. I dropped to my knees from the sound of it – the pain almost too much to bear. It felt like shards of glass cutting through my skull and that my head would be the next thing to explode from the sound.

The carpets and the tapestries were on fire now. Everything was so old and dry that it all went up like kindling. In seconds, fire climbed all four walls. In the center of it, her world burning down around her, Shakra continued to scream.

The door burst open and Pahvi ran inside. He hissed when he saw me but went straight to Shakra and led her from the room. She allowed herself to be guided out from the flames, her scream slowly decreasing in volume as if she were running out of breath.

Finally, I was able to remove my hands from my ears. There was blood on both palms, and I wondered if my eardrums had ruptured. The fire surrounding me reminded me I had bigger problems. Already, the heat was so intense that I thought my skin might peel in crisp, black flakes. I grabbed a throw blanket from a nearby chair in one hand and a large stone vase filled with flowers that had survived Shakra’s sonic onslaught. Lucky for me, it was half-filled with water. I put the blanket over my head and poured the water over myself.

For a few seconds, it was amazingly cool, but the heat came right back. It felt like I would catch on fire at any second. Lifting up the blanket slightly, I could see my path to the door. I could make it.

But the Jerusalem Stone was in the chest on the other side of the room.

Seconds could make a difference, so I went with my gut and charged toward the Jerusalem Stone.

As I ran, a tapestry fell from the wall and covered the floor in front of me. I leapt over it and slammed into a chair when I landed, hitting the floor. I scrambled to my feet and reached the chest. I remembered Shakra had locked it. At least it was small enough to just grab the chest and worry about opening it later. Using the blanket like oven mitts, I lifted the chest up. The hot metal burned right through the fabric, and I barely dropped it in time to avoid being burned.

I dropped to my knees and pressed the Templar Ring to the lock. I felt the rush of energy leaving me like water pouring out. The chest lid popped open. Reaching inside, I grabbed the Jerusalem Stone. Impossibly, it was cool to the touch, almost cold despite the inferno raging around us. It reminded me of the Templar Ring, and I wondered if they were made out of the same material. The idea was fleeting because when I turned to look for the door, there was only a wall of fire in front of me.

I was too late. I’d captured the first Jerusalem Stone only to die in the process. I crouched down, eyes darting like an animal, trapped in the inferno.

The crackle and spit of the fire filled my eyes, only now I wasn’t in Shakra’s cave but back in Gregor’s house. Through the flames, I saw the old hunter steel himself to pay for our escape with his life. He turned to me and raised his arm in the salute of the Black Watch. “Do your duty!” he cried to me.

A wave of shame came over me at the words. I couldn’t die in this room with only the first Stone collected. My friends outside were counting on me. The coming war was going to happen, and I had my part to play in its outcome. I had to escape. I couldn’t fail. At the very least, I could not give up.

I stood and, with a yell, ran blindly into the fire, hoping I faced the door. I jumped over a burning couch, dodging a falling tapestry that was now a sheet of flames. The blanket I hugged to me caught fire, and I threw it off. Spotting the door, I sprinted toward it with everything I had.

The heat suddenly disappeared, and I knew I was in the short tunnel that led to Shakra’s room. I’d escaped the heat of the fire, but now I was in a dense cloud of smoke. I inhaled a lungful and choked as I ran. Finally, I reached the end and tumbled forward onto the stage in the cavern filled with vampires.