Ibenus (Valducan series)

by Seth Skorkowsky

  "Mister Renault and I were just discussing you," Turgen said. "He said the hunt went flawless, until the end. Even then, you took control to save Samantha's life."

  "Good to hear." Allan slipped inside and took the chair beside Luc. The chairs were designed with one arm so that anyone wearing a weapon on their left hip could sit without having to remove it.

  Turgen withdrew his bony hands, resting them in his lap. It occurred to Allan how terribly old he looked. The skin of his neck hung loose above his immaculate tie. While never large, he didn't quite fill his suits the way he once had. Turgen's own holy sword and the student who had inherited it were both two years dead and he'd been withering ever since. The glass of brandy seemed to have restored color to his cheeks, but the excitement of the day had left his eyes tired. "With Taras ready to return to the field, I'll be assigning Chaya to Luc. You'll be assigned Taras and Sam. Providing how things transpire with Victoria, once she's ready, Luc will take Taras, while you take Chaya. That way each team has two knights and one student."

  Allan and Luc shared a look.

  "Makes sense," Allan said.

  Luc nodded. "Any word on Master Schmidt?"

  Turgen shook his head. "No luck so far. He'll be returning from London Thursday."

  "Is he being assigned to a team?"

  "I'll have him assigned as Base Knight. If he has any disagreement with that, it will be between myself and Max."

  The knights nodded.

  "As for our current problem," Turgen said. "Gerhard doesn't yet understand what has happened to him. He doesn't believe."

  Allan ran a finger along his upholstered armrest, touching the cold brass tacks like giant brail dots. "I got that impression myself."

  Luc's chair creaked as he leaned back. "We need to show him."

  "We do," Turgen said. "But Mister Entz strikes me as they type of man that must see it with his own eyes. No amount of video or personal accounts will get through. Though, he will get much of that. He's promised me one week."

  "A week?" Allan blew a low breath, his mind flipping through any recent sighting and rumors they'd found. "That's not going to be easy."

  "If we can't, and he leaves, we can't protect him. He's not trained. Umatri will exert his will to hunt."

  "I know," Allan said.

  "Good. You're the acting Librarian, Allan. It's up to you and Samantha to find a hunt."

  Allan nodded. "We'll start right away."

  The old man's gaze moved to Luc. "In the meantime, his training begins in the morning. If they can't locate a demon to show him, then he's going to leave here as well prepared as we can make him. Work the scheduling with Chaya."

  "I will," Luc said. "We'll work him until he's too sore to leave."

  "Just don't run him so hard he can't go on a hunt. He doesn't have to fight it, but he has to see it."

  "Understood."

  "Now." Turgen picked up the brandy snifter, almost idly. "I would like to speak to Allan alone."

  Luc swallowed audibly. "Of course." He stood, giving Allan a moment's reassuring glance.

  Allan traced the arm tacks, his finger running a figure eight between two of them.

  The door closed with a click.

  Turgen sipped his drink.

  It's your decision, not his.

  "Allan, I'm concerned as to why you accepted Miss Martin as your student. And not just myself. Luc and Samantha have both expressed this with me already and Chaya simply hasn't had the opportunity yet."

  "I didn't accept her," Allan said. "I offered."

  "But why? We don't know her."

  "She managed to track us down. She found us. We can use that skill."

  Turgen nodded, as if considering the words. "She is quite attractive."

  "I noticed."

  "And are you sure that didn't influence your reason?"

  "No," Allan said, the heavy dread suddenly compressing into a hot coal. He forced his voice calm. "It didn't."

  "That's good to hear. It wouldn't be the first time a blonde has caught your eye."

  "With all due respect," Allan said without moving his jaw, that coal igniting into full anger, "Anya tricked us all into believing she was one of us."

  Turgen's hand came up, his eyes narrowing. "Please refrain from using her name."

  "She. She was different. She didn't find us, she let us find her, make us think she was bonded. Victoria was attacked. I saw it. Her partner was killed. I saw that, too. She lost her job, went to therapy, and didn't give up. Victoria hunted us down and didn't come with any intention of joining. That's what makes her different. I have no doubt she hates demons as much as any of us."

  "I understand that, but why your student? She's too close to your own age for her to inherit Ibenus."

  "She can still bond to another weapon," Allan said.

  "And if she doesn't?"

  "Then I will keep her as my student. It is my right."

  Turgen laid his hands on the desk top, one on top of the other. "Yes," he said, calmly. "It is your right. I cannot stop you. But I still fail to understand why you would choose her as your student. You may only have one and until she has bonded, or is dead, you cannot have another. Think of the future, Allan."

  "Taras isn't that much older than Sam," he said more defensively than he intended.

  "Fourteen years, and their circumstances were different."

  Not really, but Allan wasn't going to press the point. He sighed and touched Ibenus at his hip. "I can't…explain it. It was just a feeling, and I still feel it. I had to offer it."

  The old man studied Allan's face. "Are you saying Ibenus called you to act?"

  "I think she did." Allan had spent the drive mulling the possibility but now, speaking it aloud for the first time, it suddenly became real. Why would Ibenus urge him to accept her?

  "I see." Turgen patted his hand on top of the other, the green jeweled ring in his left little finger glinted with the movement. "You are her first protector that we've ever known, and her…personal habits are still unknown. But you must admit that it is rather unusual."

  "I'm not denying that."

  Turgen picked up his glass and finished it. "However, while I cannot control who you take as your squire I will not allow her unobserved access to the Archives."

  "I understand."

  "She's your responsibility, Allan. I'm holding you accountable for her. I want her records. Find out who her therapist was. I have ways to get them."

  Allan nodded.

  "Well," Turgen said, the tension of the last few minutes seeming to wash away with the single word. "Is there anything else?"

  "There is one thing," Allan said.

  The old man rolled his palm upward, offering him the opportunity to continue.

  "With the new assignments, have you given any more thought to our discussion?"

  "Quite a lot, actually. In fact, my original plan was to begin grooming you once Gerhard's week has concluded. But…you seem to have made other plans."

  Allan forced through the urge to look away. "Then what will you do?"

  "I considered Taras." He absently waved away Allan's coming protest. "But he's not right for it. Matt would be the perfect choice, but with Luiza and the baby…transferring knights to replace them in Chile would be a problem."

  "Who then?"

  "Would I transfer?"

  "No. Who will step in to fill your shoes with the museums?"

  Turgen's lips pulsed tight, almost reflexively. "I'm not sure."

  "We need to begin that soon. Train them. Get curators used to them."

  "You believe I don't know that?" The old man's voice grew hard. "I had plans for you, Allan. But your responsibilities were already stretched enough. I'm not dead yet. I'll choose a replacement, but it can't be you."

  Allan's eyes fell away as if watching the dream collapse and shatter onto the floor. "I meant no offense. I'm sorry."

  "Not as sorr
y as I am."

  Episode 138: Chupacabra

  Bass thumps as a blurry image focuses into view, revealing a black and white picture of a creature standing in the woods, its eyes glowing in the camera flash. Another picture slides into the screen, covering it, this one depicting a clawed footprint in snow, followed by shaky video of a hairy beast running into an open sewer tunnel.

  Red flashes, filling the screen with a moment's crimson and the footage now shows black and white security video, looking down on a woman being attacked by spidery insects the size of dachshunds. She falls and is dragged off camera through the white numbers rolling in the bottom right corner of frame. The music picks up, racing into a heavy metal riff as red flashes again, this time fading out onto thick, block letters: MONSTER SEEKERS.

  "Hey, cryptozoologists," says a loud voice, reminiscent in accent and tone to a New England football coach. "TommyD here with a clip that will blow your minds."

  The screen changes to an image of scraggly trees cast in ghostly blues.

  "A pair of ranchers in Sonora Mexico uploaded this video," the voiceover continues. "After losing livestock to what they assumed to be coyotes, they set up in a blind and waited. What they found was much more sinister."

  The image shakes and scans across scrub brush, the colors washed out, only the faintest hints of green and brown visible in the nighttime footage. Barbed wire glints along a trio of white lines stretched between posts. A shape dashes through the circle of light, the size of a wolfhound, a long rodent-like tail flickering into focus for only a moment.

  "There! There!" yellow captioning reads, accompanying the whispered Spanish.

  The camera shakes as the illuminated circle whips across gnarled trees and tufts of high grass. A hunkered creature looks up from the shadows. Batwing ears frame its long face. Vivid blue flashes in its eyes as it looks to the camera. Its lips curl, revealing a pair of curved frontal fangs.

  "Jesus Christ!" the captioning reads.

  A loud pop and the creature tumbles back. It staggers up, then another pop sends it rolling onto its side, large back legs kicking the air as if trying to run.

  "You got it!" The camera swings onto a husky, unshaven man holding a rifle. His pupils glow pale in the night vision's light. The man looks off in the direction of the fallen creature.

  "What was that?" the shooter asks. "Did you see it?"

  "Yes. Let's look." The camera swings around, revealing chipboard walls, close up and washed out in the IR spotlight's glare. The camera looks down a trapdoor at a metal ladder, swings around, and the rungs move past in rapid succession.

  "Come on!"

  The shooter hurries down the ladder, rifle clutched in one hand. He leads the cameraman through the grass and past the twisted tree trunks, the camera shaking as they hurry. They slow and the shooter lifts his gun warily.

  "What is that?"

  The camera moves up onto a hairless animal, blood gleaming in the spotlight. Muscles throb beneath its dark hide. The creature's body seems to deflate, dimpling and creasing as it shrinks. Bones crackle and fur sprouts from the receding skin. The batwing ears shrivel and move higher onto the diminishing skull as the twin fangs, like bent nails, draw up inside it. Within a minute, only a coyote remains in frame.

  "So there you have it," TommyD's voiceover continues. "Honest to God Chupacabra, completely corresponding with descriptions on the 1996 Jalisco photographs, the 2004 San Marcos videos, the 2011 El Paso pictures, and dozens more. Skeptics always claim that these reports are merely coyotes or foxes with mange and that no captured or killed specimen has ever proven to be otherwise. But now…now we know why.

  "Tell me what you think in the comments below, and if you have any videos or tips, please email me. As always, I keep my sources strictly anonymous. So keep your ears to the ground and cameras ready. The monsters are among us. Until next time, TommyD, signing out."

  Chapter Nine

  Victoria stepped into the shower and closed her eyes. She leaned her head back, allowing the hot water to rinse away the sweat and lingering exhaustion. The unfamiliar bed in a house of strangers had made sleeping difficult. Without the Wi-Fi password and her phone still not returned to her, she'd simply lain there in the dark, replaying the weird turn her life had suddenly taken.

  When sleep finally did come it was short-lived. Allan had roused her at six for a morning run. Bright-eyed, shaved, and wearing a dreadful neon lime green shirt, he practically pushed her out the door where they joined Gerhard, Luc, Chaya, and Sam.

  The nagging suspicion that she was a prisoner was quashed when they'd left the estate's grounds and jogged in a haphazard line along the road outside. The bright lights that lined all of Belgium's streets replaced the feeling of being out in the country with one of being some of the last people on Earth. A tree-lined street, brighter than anything in Manchester, and no one on it but half a dozen runners and a few morning commuters. This whole affair wasn't at all what she'd imagined. Then again she wasn't entirely sure what she had expected when Allan invited her to join them. Some run-down converted warehouse, or some mercenary training camp, perhaps? Whatever she'd envisioned, it certainly wasn't an antique-filled mansion with morning jogs and luxuriating in a marble bathroom. It reminded her more of some lavish spa or celebrity rehab center where millionaires atoned for their vices.

  Missing her own shampoo, Victoria selected one of the bottles in the shower. Its fruity mint fragrance filled the tight stall as she stood there, letting it rinse, her mind wandering. She needed her phone back. Surely TommyD had heard of the fire. He'd be worried.

  Just a quick message. That's all it'd take. That and the promise that his questions might soon be answered. Surely they'd let her have her phone back soon.

  The shower done, she stepped out, nearly slipping on the tiles, ice-slick with condensation. Hazards of a marble floor. Toweling off, she wiped the foggy mirror and had opened her toiletry bag when a knock came from the door.

  "Yes?"

  "Can I use the shower?" Chaya asked from the other side.

  Shit. Distracted with her thoughts, she'd forgotten the others would be waiting. She reached for her towel. "Yes, I'm done."

  She barely had it on when Chaya squeezed in through the door, dressed in a smoky gray robe and her curly hair still tied up from their run.

  "I'll be out in a second," Victoria said, quickly tucking her unused toothbrush back into the bag. She'd do that after breakfast.

  Chaya only grunted as she turned on the water.

  Victoria held her breath. Get it over with now. "I'd like to apologize…for…what happened." She turned to see Chaya disrobe, no modesty whatsoever. Victoria maintained eye contact, but not before noticing the gold Star of David hanging from her neck. Not exactly what she'd expected to see, given the obviously Muslim scimitar the woman carried.

  Chaya looked at her, expression blank. "Have you apologized to Sam?"

  "Not yet."

  "Apologize to her." She stepped into the shower and moved behind the half-wall of frosted glass. "If you want respect, you have to earn it."

  "I understand," Victoria said, fighting to keep her voice calm. "I just wanted to say that I was sorry. I mean, we're under the same roof now and I don't want any bad blood from the other night."

  "Then don't use my shampoo."

  "Sorry." Victoria touched the zipper tab to closer her bag, but paused. Can't earn her respect if you let her chase you out. She pulled out her brush and toothpaste.

  #

  "There you are," Allan said as she made it back to her room. He'd changed to gray shirt and jeans, his sword casually hanging from his belt like it was nothing unusual. "Ready for breakfast?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Come on then. We have a long day."

  She followed him through the mansion's halls, lined with their abundant mirrors and portraits of former members, each prominently displaying their weapons. They passed another of those gaudy bouquets
, its smell not as eye-watering now that she was getting used to it. Either that or the growing aroma of food was distracting her senses. "I was wondering if we might go into town later. I have a few things I need to pick up."

  "Of course." He led her into the kitchen where Orlovski was chasing sausage disks across a streaming skillet with a spatula. "Good morning."

  "Morning." He motioned his head to a covered bowl. "Eggs?"

  "Of course."

  Following Allan's lead, Victoria filled a plate with scrambled eggs and sausage and carried through the door into the dining room.

  "Orlovski always cooks the same thing when it's his turn at breakfast." Allan whispered. "The man loves his eggs."

  "That's fine with me," she said, taking a seat at the long dining table.

  Turgen sat at the far end, studying a tablet screen. He glanced up, giving them a silent nod before resuming his reading.

  "I said that at first, too. You don't happen to be a gourmet chef or anything?"

  She shook her head.

  Allan shrugged. "Pity. We're in charge of supper Thursday."

  A sudden nervous chill welled in Victoria's chest and flowed down her arms. "Oh."

  Allan grinned as he forked his eggs. "Don't worry. None of us are what you'd call skilled cooks."

  After they ate, Allan led Victoria down a flight of stairs hidden behind a steel, mirrored door. The posh rugs and ornate molding gave way to concrete walls and floors tiled in an elaborate and random mosaic of jade, obsidian, tigers eye, and a hundred other minerals and metals, most of which she couldn't even begin to identify.

  "What is this place?" she asked, noting the very new and very expensive looking fire suppression system running along the ceiling.

  "Previous owners built most of this in the Forties. The Order picked it up for a bargain after the war and added a little more during the restoration. It goes two levels down." He stopped before a metal keypad. "Don't worry. One of the first orders of business was ripping out all the swastikas." Allan typed in a five-digit code and opened the door. "After you."