Jack Templar and the Lord of the Vampires (3 page)

“But you will leave the Academy behind?” I asked.

“We must,” Aquinas said. “If we stay, Ren Lucre will send a greater army.”

“But the Citadel could withstand an assault.”

“Even if it did, we would be pinned down. Neutralized. If you needed help in your quest, we would not be able to give it.” She noticed the hopeful look on my face. “Not to say we will be able to help much in any case,” she quickly added. “Once you leave here to find the first stone, you will want to keep your whereabouts to yourself. Creach spies are everywhere, and betrayal can sometimes come from the very center of the people you trust. To that end, have you chosen your team?”

I shook my head. “I have to do this alone.” Aquinas raised an eyebrow. “I can’t ask my friends to put themselves in danger again,” I explained. “I mean, look at you. The only reason you were injured is because you saved me from that goblin’s arrow.”

“And yet we won the day,” Aquinas said. “And I sacrificed willingly so that it would be so. You might find your friends will not be so ready to let you leave the Academy by yourself.”

“But I—”

Aquinas waved my objection away. “It will resolve itself. A more pressing question is whether you’re sure you have chosen the right Creach Lord to go after first?”

As usual, she asked the very question that was already tumbling around in my head, pulling and pushing against my brain, laughing at me whenever I felt like I’d made a final decision. She knew as well as I what the wolf Tiberon had told me about the Jerusalem Stones. To bring order to the five parts of the Creach, the vampires, zombies, werewolves, demons and the pile of monsters collectively known as the Lesser Creach, Ren Lucre had long ago given each Lord a single Jerusalem Stone to keep safe however they saw fit. They knew that if Ren Lucre kept them all, then he would rule not only over the human world, but over all the Creach as well. They could live with a leader to combine their strength and settle the petty wars between them, but they could not accept a master with complete control over them.

To reunite the Stones, I was going to have to recapture them one by one from each of the Creach Lords. So, it didn’t matter where I started my quest since I was going to have to face each of them eventually. Still, I wanted a win to start the journey. Tiberon had shown me a specific image of where I might find the Lord of the Vampires, so it seemed as good a place as any to start.

“I think it makes the most sense,” I said. “I wouldn’t really know where to start looking for the others. At least I feel like I know where to begin searching for her.”

“So you already know the Lord you’re looking for is actually a vampiress,” Aquinas said. “Still called Lord, as I understand it. Lady of the Vampires just didn’t suit her.”

“Just as Mistress Aquinas didn’t suit you,” I mentioned. She frowned at the comparison, so I quickly changed the subject. “What do you know about her? Anything that can help?” I asked.

Aquinas shook her head. “I admit she is a mystery to me. You would think we would know our enemies better, but all of the Lords are no more than shadows. However, there is someone who does know a thing or two about her.”

“Really?” I asked. “Who’s that?”

“A friend,” Aquinas said, looking away in the distance, a faint smile on her lips. I had the impression she was lingering on a pleasant memory. “A very dear friend,” she said, turning back in my direction. “You must go to him first. Find him and you will get the information you need.”

“Find him?” I asked, puzzled. “You don’t know where he is?”

“Oh, I know where he’s hiding,” she replied. “And I know he doesn’t want to be found, so there’s no telling whether he will be there when he sees you poking around. In fact, there’s a chance he might try to kill you for your efforts.”

I swallowed hard. “Some friend.”

“Indeed,” she said, her voice trailing off, again lost to her memories. In the short time I’d known Aquinas, I’d never known her to be overly sentimental. Perhaps it was the pain medication Bacho had given her for her wounds, but I could have sworn her eyes glistened as she sat quietly with her own thoughts. I cleared my throat, feeling she might have forgotten I was there. She snapped back from whatever memory she’d been visiting and looked at me earnestly.

“Come here, child,” she said. I moved up closer to her and she took my hands into hers. “I wish this body was stronger so that I could make the journey. You must be careful, Jack. Take no unnecessary risks. Stay focused on your quest. And, most important, remember that others may have to sacrifice themselves for you to be successful.”

I started to protest but she cut me off with a look.

“This is the way of things,” she said firmly. “Think of those who have sacrificed to get you this far. When you face a decision to either save one of your friends or to complete the quest, you must choose to finish what you started. The stakes are too high. Your friends understand this and so must you.”

I nodded although in my heart I didn’t believe what she was saying. I couldn’t imagine allowing one of my friends to die for me. Aquinas must have sensed my doubt because she cupped my chin with one of her gnarled hands and lifted my face until we were staring at one another.

“When the time comes, you will make the right decision,” she said with a sad smile. “I know you will. Now, I will tell you where to find this man. But you must keep the information to yourself until you arrive at your destination. Many Creach are able to read minds, so the fewer who know this secret the better.”

I nodded, knowing from her tone that this was not up for discussion.

“Good, now listen closely.” She told me the directions and made me repeat them. Then she nodded in satisfaction. “Good, good,” she said, laying back onto her pillows, her eyelids half-closing. Slowly, with a trembling hand, she held up a bronze medallion stamped with the Templar insignia of two knights sharing a horse. “Show him this,” she rasped. “It might open his mind to you. If you’re lucky, if he favors you, he might give you something essential for your quest.”

I took the medallion. It was thick and heavier than I thought it would be. I slid it safely into a pocket. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

“No, Jack,” she mumbled, eyes closing. “You will do your duty…” I waited for the rest, but instead I heard her breath deepen as she fell asleep.

I put my hand on top of hers and whispered fondly, “Come what may.” 

As I left the tent, I ran into Bacho who lingered nearby, some fresh cut flowers in his massive hands. He walked up, his eyes darting inside.

“She all right?” he asked.

I nodded. “She’s asleep. She’s a tough one, you know.”

“Thinks she’s tougher than she is,” Bacho grumbled. “Gettin’ her to stay put is like wrestlin’ a three-headed draccus in a slime pit.”

 I grinned from the image in my head of Bacho and Aquinas wrestling, but one look at Bacho’s worried face, I realized he didn’t see the humor in it. I patted him on the back. “Go on. She’ll like the flowers.”

Bacho clutched me a bear hug. “Good luck, Jack. Wish I could go wit’ you. I’ll be pullin’ for you all the way.”

Before I could reply, he let go of me and went back into the tent. I turned and saw Will and T-Rex, the two friends who had come with me from Sunnyvale, waiting for me. They couldn’t have looked like a less likely pair to go on a quest against Creach lords. T-Rex was a chubby kid who never missed a meal. In fact, he had been the first person at the Academy to volunteer to be a Ratling, the group of workers who cooked the meals for the hunters. Will was short and small, but he walked liked he owned the world.

“Yeah, but we’re going with you,” T-Rex said as they came closer. I glanced back at Aquinas’s tent, wondering if she had put them up to this.

While the nose-picking had stopped, his love of food and fear of monsters remained firmly in place. I knew it was no easy thing for him to volunteer.

“No guys,” I started. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

“We don’t need you asking. We’re
telling
you that we’re coming,” Will said, full of bravado as always. What he lacked in size, he always made up for in fighting spirit. “Sorry, Jack, there’s no way you’re leaving without us,” Will said. “And I know we’re not the only ones who feel that way.” He turned sideways, and I saw Eva and Daniel walking toward us.

Daniel called as they approached. He was a couple years older than the rest of us and looked it. Even for his age, he was tall and muscular. His square jaw, pale blue eyes, and sandy blonde hair made him look like a model from a catalog. The kind where manly men wore flannel shirts and posed in the woods with an ax and a moose in the background. He even had a scruffy beard from not shaving for the past week. I rubbed my own chin self-consciously and felt only the barest traces of hair. There was no denying it. Daniel was a good-looking guy. The only hiccup to his appearance was that his nose had been chewed of by a screecher.

“What’s this, Templar? You thinking about keeping all the glory to yourself? Did you really think I was going to let you have all the fun?”

Daniel was one of the best fighters I’d even seen. To say we’d gotten off the on the wrong foot was an understatement. Only a few weeks ago, I’d have been looking for a fight from him. But after enduring battles together, we’d become friends. He held out his hand and I shook it.

“Leave it to you to think of chasing down a thousand year old vampire as fun,” I said. 

“That’s because he’s an idiot,” Eva said with enough amusement in her voice to take the sting out of the words.  She raised her arm with the missing hand and pointed her metal claw at Daniel and me. “Good thing you’ll have me to keep you boys out of trouble.”

I felt a secret relief that she was coming. She was a complicated person, strong and in control on the outside. Inside there were deep, open wounds that came from her family’s death at the hands of Ren Lucre. The fact that she’d cut off her own hand to escape so she could have her revenge someday showed her character. Still, she understood what was at stake and had pushed aside her self-interest before to help me succeed. I trusted her completely. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t say my feelings about Eva were more complicated than that. Let’s just say I was happy she would be near.

“Hey, guys, what’s up?” another friend called as he walked up to join us.  

We all turned to look at Xavier, a young hunter who fought with his brains instead of his muscles. It was only because of his clever inventions that I was able to survive the Cave of Trials and retrieve the Templar Ring. Like most geniuses, he was also a bit-scatterbrained.

He noticed us staring at him. “What?” he asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“We could use you on this quest, Xavier,” Eva said. “You never know when we’ll need one of your inventions.”

Xavier’s eyes lit up. “I have a ton of ideas. Some of them might even work.”

We all laughed and looked around at each other. Unconsciously, the others had arranged themselves facing me. If this was our team, it seemed I was to be their leader. Part of me wished I could refuse their help and not put them into harm’s way. But a larger part of me was relieved to not be alone. If we were to be successful, this was the group I would choose. I grinned like an idiot at them.

“Let’s go find some Jerusalem Stones and save the world,” I said.

We all cheered and high-fived each other, filled with the excitement of preparing for an adventure. Hard work, risk and heartache lay ahead of us, but for that one moment we allowed ourselves to feel the glow of confidence and excitement for the adventure ahead.

The memory of that moment in front of Aquinas’s tent faded as I stood looking over the ancient city of Marrakech, getting ready to finally close in on the man we’d traveled so far to find. Aquinas’s final words bounced around in my head. If it came down to it, I didn’t think I had it in me to sacrifice one of my friends. I just hoped it wouldn’t come down to that. Little did I know, the first of many such choices lay only a few hours ahead. We were about to face monsters unlike anything we’d ever faced before.

“
H
ey, that’s mine!” T-Rex cried, reaching out for the candy bar Will had snatched from his bag. The week on the road had thinned T-Rex down a few pounds, but there was still plenty of him to go around. His round face and red, chubby cheeks made him seem even heavier than he actually was. Like all of us, he wore jeans and a plain T-shirt to help blend in when we were in public. His unruly, curly hair stuck up in ridiculous directions from a serious case of bedhead. 

Will, all hundred pounds of him, darted away, waving the candy bar in the air. “This is yours? How do you know?” he said, reading the wrapper. “I don’t see your name on it.”

T-Rex sat down on the edge of the bed and rolled his eyes. “Man, you’ve used that same line since preschool. You need to get some new material.”

Will looked disappointed. This obviously wasn’t how the game was supposed to go. “You’re not going to chase me? That’s no fun.”

“I don’t need to,” T-Rex said. “I’ve got Xavier.”

Just then a metal claw flew from the far side of the room, a spring trailing behind it. The claw grabbed the candy bar out of Will’s hand and then retracted back across the room, landing easily in Xavier’s open palm.  He grinned and waved the candy bar in the air. In his other hand, he cradled a device that looked like a plastic toy gun. “Wow,” he said to no one in particular. “It actually worked this time.”

Xavier was kind of a genius. Like most inventors, his new creations tended to seem like an endless series of failures before he got them right. We’d become used to things blowing up in little puffs of black smoke around our campfires as he worked out a formula for a smokescreen grenade. Once, a piercing squeal almost blew out our eardrums as he fiddled with a device to scramble cell phones.  So when something finally worked the way it was supposed to, no one was more surprised than Xavier himself.

Like most geniuses, he was also a little socially awkward. He was happiest when he could be alone with his thoughts, when his brain was caught up in a new interest or a puzzle he was trying to solve. He often hung around the edges of our group, seeming not to realize we were there. But then, every once in a while, he would say something that showed he’d been listening the entire time. And, because of the way his mind worked, he lacked any kind of filter to soften his opinions or ease into a disagreement. He just blurted out whatever he was thinking, sometimes to hilarious result.

He threw the candy bar to T-Rex. “Here you go, not that you need it.”

T-Rex grabbed it out of midair and frowned. He rubbed his belly. “Thanks, I guess.”

Xavier turned back to his device, reloading the spring back into a compartment and resetting the claw in place. Will looked guilty on Xavier’s behalf and for starting the whole thing. He walked over and patted T-Rex on the back. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” Will said. “That’s just how he is. In fact, I think this road trip is thinning you down.”

Daniel walked into the room. “Of course it is. A beef jerky and trail mix diet along with walking fourteen hours a day will do it to you.”

The wound where his nose had been chewed off was completely healed now and he wore a fake one in its place that blended in nicely. Unless you knew what you were looking for, it was easy to miss that his nose didn’t move quite the way it should and that it was a slight shade off in color now that the rest of his face had been tanned from our weeklong trip. Daniel tried not to show any vanity about his nose, but I had noticed he went out of his way not to look in a mirror.

He walked up to me and nodded back toward the balcony. “This place is something else, isn’t it? Once we get down into those streets, we’re going to be totally exposed. You know that, right?”

“Plenty of places to hide,” I offered.

“And our enemy will know all of them and we know none,” Daniel wasn’t arguing the point; he was just stating the fact the way someone might comment that dark clouds indicated rain was on the way. He had a lot more experience than I did as a hunter, so I would be foolish not to rely on him for help.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked.

He looked at me with an arched eyebrow. I tried not to notice the skin on his cheek tug around the edge of his prosthetic nose. “First, are you sure all this is really necessary?” he asked.

I gave him a deadpan look. We’d already covered this ground a hundred times on the journey here. “Aquinas said this man would have information for us. Vital information.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “We hit the street in teams. Will and T-Rex. Xavier will be with me. And then you…and Eva.” He paused. The match-ups made sense, but the simmering rivalry between us for Eva’s attention wasn’t lost on either of us. Even just saying our names as if we were together had tripped him up. His face flushed, which just highlighted the dead color of his nose. It didn’t help matters that Eva chose that moment to appear from the bathroom door.

She was fresh from the shower and in a full-length bathrobe, holding a towel to her damp hair. She used the hook on her left arm with ease and rubbed the back of her neck dry. Even with her dark brown hair a wet mess, wearing a rag of a robe, she looked beautiful. No, that word is so overused that it hardly means anything anymore. I’m not sure how to describe her to you so that you’ll understand. I can’t be sure I’d tell how she looked or only how she looked to me.

In my eyes, there was no girl more attractive in the world. A single curl of her hair could hold my attention for an hour if I thought I could get away with staring at it. The upward curve of her lip when she was amused made me think endlessly on something clever to say just so I could see it. Her laugh filled me. The way she moved through a room was another endless fascination.

But as I looked at Daniel beside me and saw the way he stared at her, I knew the same brutal hold I felt had wrapped itself around him as well. 

Unfortunately for the two of us, but fortunately for the sake of our mission, Eva seemed not to be stricken by any of these thoughts or concerns. Since the day after I killed the dragons, there was nothing but the banter of good friends between us. And I sensed the same was true between her and Daniel. Whether by choice or because of how she felt, she didn’t seem to have any interest in either of us outside of the needs of the quest.

“I don’t think the teams make sense,” she said, either not seeing or choosing to ignore the adoring stares she was getting from both Daniel and I before we caught ourselves. “I think the three of us should each be separated.”

Will stepped forward. “Are you saying I’m not as good of a fighter as the three of you?”

“Yes,” Eva said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“I’d feel a little better if we split up,” T-Rex said, looking guilty. “Sorry, Will. But Eva and Daniel are third degree hunters. And Jack is…well, Jack.”

Will loosened up. “OK, I guess you’re right. I can hold my own though,” he added.

“I agree,” Eva said. “That’s why I think you should be with Jack.” She pointed the hook attached to her wrist at me. “That needs to be our strongest team because if there’s an attack, he’s who they’re going to go after.”

Daniel nodded. “Exactly. Like you said, that should be the strongest team. Either you or I should be with Jack. The initial assault, if there is one, will be brutal.”

Eva shook her head. “No, each team needs one of the strongest fighters so there is no weak link.”

“I don’t agree,” Daniel said, his voice rising. “And why are you always contradicting my ideas?”

“The better question would be, why are you always wrong?” Eva said, standing her ground. “Ever think about that?”

I held up my hand, the one with the Templar Ring on it, and they both fell silent. “We’ll do it Eva’s way. Will with me. Eva and T-Rex. Daniel and Xavier. We move out in five minutes. Let’s get ready.”

Eva smiled and Daniel looked away. He clenched his jaw, but he didn’t argue my decision. By some unspoken agreement, everyone understood that this was my mission and my word was final. I used the power with care and tried to ask for advice every step of the way. But a group our size needed someone to be the leader and cut through the split decisions. Otherwise we would still be back in the French Alps trying to decide on the best route to the coast. I was quickly learning that authority freely given has its limits, and I could sense Daniel chaffing against being shown up in front of Eva. I made a note to step more carefully.

“You better get dressed,” Daniel called after her. “Because I think we’re in for some fun today.” He looked at me seriously. “I hope whatever this guy can tell us is worth the risk we’re taking.”

“Aquinas assured me it was,” I said.

“But she wouldn’t tell you why?” he asked.

I shrugged. Daniel had asked these questions many times over the last week. I chalked it up to nervous energy. We all expected trouble today. “She said it was worthwhile but that we must be careful. Whoever this man is, he may not react well to us finding him.”

Daniel grunted. Maybe it was his turn to wonder why I was repeating information he already knew.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

He nodded and headed to the next room to put his armor under his clothes. I turned and walked back out on the balcony and gazed over the low buildings stretching in front of me, a warren of narrow streets and dark shadows. Using my trained eyes of a monster hunter, I no longer saw the beauty of the ancient city glowing red in the sunrise. Instead, all I saw were traps, chokepoints, and likely places where we could be ambushed.

I was with Daniel. I hoped Aquinas was right that all this was worth the risk we were taking. I pulled on a traditional Arabic thobe, the gown worn by men in the area, over my clothes. Next, I wrapped a scarf around my head so it covered my face. I tightened the strap of my armor under my shirt a little more and took a deep breath. We’d know soon enough.