by Jeff Gunhus
“I know about you. My father told me you were a traitor. He called you the Great Betrayer for what you did.” Daniel never spoke of his father who he had seen killed along with his brothers at the hands of werewolves. I only knew about it because he’d told me the story during his fever after the screecher attack. His face flushed red as he spoke. “You were the sheikh in the story, weren’t you?” Daniel asked. “But that’s not the true story of what happened, is it?”
Eva gave a short laugh, but then looked at Gregor staring Daniel down. He didn’t deny the accusation. Eva looked confused. “But you’re a hunter. You’re the hunter. The one we grow up hearing stories about.”
“I know what you are,” Daniel spat. “You’re a traitor. My father went to his grave cursing your name.”
We all fell silent. Tension filled the air. I felt like every muscle in my body was pushing against itself, and a pit formed in my stomach. The only person who wasn’t flustered was Gregor.
“I have been called worse than traitor and those worse names have been true too,” he said with a lilting sound of someone reciting a favorite line of a poem or song. “Who was your father?”
“Gavin DeLeguarde. Protector of the Northern Lands.”
Gregor clapped his hands together. “Yes! DeLeguarde. Of course, I see it now. Especially in your eyes.”
“So you don’t deny you’re a traitor?” Daniel demanded.
Gregor slowly turned his back to Daniel and looked as if he were giving the question serious thought. “We’re all traitors, boy. You live long enough and you’ll know the truth of that. Eventually you have to choose sides. Make decisions. But then you learned that hard lesson young, didn’t you?” He let the question fill the room. Daniel’s face contorted with rage. Gregor continued softly. “I heard about what happened to your father. And your brothers. At least you got away. Lucky, I guess.”
Daniel snarled, pulled his sword, and leapt at Gregor. The old hunter moved faster than I’ve ever seen a man move before. My eyes were still looking at the spot where he’d been standing when I realized he was already behind Daniel, holding him in a headlock with his own sword balanced across Daniel’s throat. Eva reacted first and took a step toward the two of them with her sword drawn before I even moved my hand. Gregor shook his head at Eva and held the blade tighter on Daniel’s throat.
“Stay right there, if you please,” he said. “Young DeLeguard and I are talking about traitorous natures,” he hissed the words through clenched teeth.
“Let him go,” I said, finally pulling my sword.
“Not until he gives me an apology,” Gregor said.
“Go…g…go…” Daniel stuttered.
“Eh?” Gregor said. “What’s that?” He relaxed the blade against Daniel’s throat a bit.
“I said, go jump in a river, you traitorous lout,” Daniel choked out.
Gregor paused, then laughed, a deep throaty sound that bellowed through the room. He pushed Daniel away and threw his sword at him. “Northerners. Tough, gritty people. I can appreciate that.”
Daniel grabbed his sword. He stood there fuming, but he’d learned better than to mess with Gregor. He pointed at the old hunter, his hand shaking. “Jack, you should know that Gregor—”
“Daniel, be quiet!” I shouted, the sound of command in my voice surprising me.
Daniel looked shocked at the rebuke. He turned away, a look of disgust on his face. I couldn’t worry about his feelings right then. I faced Gregor and bowed slightly. “We came here for your help, not to insult or fight you,” I said. “Master Aquinas told me to seek you out. She said you could give information to help our quest.”
“Ahh, Aquinas. Fair, fair Aquinas,” Gregor said. “She was once very attractive. Very attractive.”
“You have lived a long time,” Will muttered.
Gregor glared at him. Will turned and looked at T-Rex as if he had made the comment instead of him.
“What?” T-Rex exclaimed. “Wasn’t me. I swear.”
“We must find the Lord of the Vampires and get the Jerusalem Stone away from her,” I said. “Will you help us?”
Gregor didn’t hesitate. “No. I will not.”
“What do you mean no?” Eva said. She had a pained look of watching one of her heroes disappear before her eyes. “You’re Gregor the Great, finest hunter who ever lived. The master of all vampire hunters. Of course you can help us.”
“But that wasn’t the question, now was it?” Gregor said. “The young Templar asked whether I will help him, not whether I can help him. Like you said, of course I can help. But I choose not to. And that, as they say, is that.”
“So you know who I am?” I said.
“I do now,” Gregor exclaimed. “I saw you on the rooftops, jumping like a gazelle, fighting the djinn. When you first walked into the café I thought you were some boarding school toff who had gotten his hands on one of the old books. That cover story wasn’t a lie. You can’t imagine how many young men and women come looking for Gregor the Great and Powerful. It helps me hide actually. Sometimes a lie can be told so many times and so loudly that it can’t help but seem true.” He looked to Daniel. “There’s a good lesson there if you have half a mind to think about it.”
I wasn’t sure what the story was between the two of them, and frankly I didn’t care. I needed the information Aquinas told me Gregor possessed.
“But now the Creach know it’s you,” I said. “Your cover story will no longer work.”
Gregor heaved a heavy sigh and looked around the apartment longingly. “True. But the cost of saving you was known to me. I am at peace with the decision. At nightfall, the djinn are sure to come back. This time there will be no surviving them.”
“But you can sing that song,” T-Rex said.
Gregor shook his head. “The Ibn Al-Lar is a covenant made with the desert. It offers protection only upon the great sands. The djinn today reacted as I hoped, but they will realize the song holds no power over them in the city. It will still be painful to their ears but they are not bound by covenant to stay away. The djinn have always owned the night. They will be back in great numbers at sunset. No song, old or new, will stop them then.”
I felt a pang of terror as I imagined dozens of the black-robed djinn crawling up the outside of the building.
“Then you must come with us,” I said. “I need your help to defeat the Lord of the Vampires and reclaim the Stone.”
Gregor walked up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Aquinas has sent you on a fool’s mission, young Templar. One that will lead to your death and the death of everyone you love. If you are wise, you will stop while you still can.”
I made a fist with my right hand so that the Templar Ring stood out on my finger. I held it in front of Gregor’s face. “Ages ago, you took an oath to the Black Watch. As the bearer of the Ring of Jacques DeMolay, I command you to tell me what you know.”
I half-expected Gregor to laugh at the theatrics, but just the opposite happened. A breeze blew through the room, rattling the glass jars and the shutters on the windows. The lights dimmed slightly and then flickered for a few seconds. Gregor looked around at the signs, anger on his face. When he turned back to me, he looked surprised.
“You play with powers beyond your comprehension, boy,” he hissed. “If you’re not careful, someone’s bound to get hurt.”
“Only if you don’t tell me what I need to know,” I stated, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. In reality, my legs felt like rubber, and I thought they might buckle at any second. “Tell me how we can find the Lord of the Vampires and recapture the Jerusalem Stone she holds.”
Gregor rubbed his chin, weighing his options in a dramatic fashion. Finally, he grinned. “I will tell you what I can. But only out of my affection for Aquinas, not because of some half-baked threat by a second-degree hunter with jewelry on his finger. But only you, not the rest of them.”
“These are my companions. Anything you tell me I will share with them anyway,” I said.<
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Gregor shrugged. “That choice is yours. My choice is to tell only you. That is my condition.”
I suspected this little gesture was just to save face. It was a small concession to make to get what I needed. “I agree.”
“What?” Eva exclaimed.
Daniel has his back turned to me so I couldn’t see his reaction.
I leaned in toward her. “I’ll tell you right after. What’s the difference?”
She scowled and looked insulted, but she didn’t complain.
Gregor motioned me to follow him. “Come then, young Templar. Through this door and I’ll tell you things that you will forever wish you could unhear. You will know things that you will wish you could erase from your mind.”
“I’ve been warned,” I said.
“Then enter and we shall begin,” Gregor said.
I walked through the doorway where Gregor stood. I felt Gregor follow me in and close the door behind us with a bang.
An involuntary shudder passed through my body. I wasn’t sure what I was about to hear, but it was the entire reason for making the journey. I just wished the door closing behind me hadn’t sounded so final and foreboding.
I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but it didn’t sound good.
Chapter Six
The room we entered was similar to the room where Eva and the others now waited for me. The windows were shuttered here as well with only random rays of light coming in where one of the wood slats was opened just a bit. The sun was not as intense now, nearing the afternoon hours. I remembered what Gregor had said about the djinn owning the night and arriving at sunset. I hoped that whatever the old monster hunter had to tell me wouldn’t take too long. I wanted to be far from this place when night fell.
Gregor lit candles in the room instead of turning on the old lamps positioned on the tables. This room felt less used than the one we’d left. A thin layer of dust covered everything. Boxes lined the walls, with books and artifacts spilling out of them. Dark, heavy fabric hung from the ceiling and gathered in the corners, making the room feel like the inside of a tent. I wondered if it was Gregor’s attempt to recapture his feelings as a Bedouin sheikh. He seemed to have read my thoughts.
“Aren’t you wondering about what I told you before? How I could have immortality and yet still be part of the Black Watch?” he asked.
“I am curious,” I admitted. “But I really only need to know anything that will help me on my quest. I think we can just focus on that.”
Gregor lowered himself into a large leather chair. He looked smaller somehow, more like the old man behind the bar in the coffee shop than the warrior who faced down the djinn. He motioned for me to sit across from him. I did so, careful not to knock over the many candles that burned around us. With the old wood furniture, ancient books and fabrics, I imagined the room would go up in flames in seconds if one of the candles rolled off a table.
I stared at Gregor as he sat quietly, studying his hands on this lap. The old man’s face showed an interesting dance of shadows from the candlelight. I couldn’t tell if emotions were appearing and disappearing in quick succession, or if he kept a stoic mask and it was only the candles that made it seem like he was changing. After a long minute of silence, he began.
“I’m trying to decide what to tell you,” he said. “What parts of my story will aid you the most. But the story is like this,” he held up his hands toward me, his fingers interlocked. “Hopelessly connected. From the outside, it’s almost impossible to know what is what. Even when I look at it, I can’t be sure what finger goes with which hand. How can I be sure what facts belong to the story you need to hear and what is just extra? How do I pick out the most important scenes from a life that matters little to anyone, even myself?”
“Perhaps if I asked you questions?” I offered.
“How can you ask questions if you don’t even know what happened? If you don’t even know the basics of the story?” Gregor asked.
“Let me try. Someone I trust told me the Vampire Lord could be found in Paris.”
“Who told you that?” Gregor asked.
“A knight of the Black Watch named Tiberon.”
Gregor’s arched eyebrows told me he knew the name. “Perhaps there’s more to you than I thought, boy. Yes, I think your wolf-friend was right. Her lair was in Paris the last I heard.”
“Then how do I find her?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Gregor chuckled. “She’ll find you. She’ll feel you coming miles before you get there.” He indicated the cloaking medallion I wore around my neck, a gift from Hester the first night I’d become a monster hunter. “I don’t care what kind of trinket you wear around your neck, she or one of the hundreds of vampires will find you first.”
“Then how do I kill her?” I asked.
Gregor grimaced. He looked at me oddly, and for a second I thought I saw a flash of anger. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. You would know that was the wrong question if you knew the whole story. Or at least the important parts.”
I realized the old man already had his mind made that he would tell me his story. I gauged from the sunlight streaming in from the shutters that we had a few hours until dusk. Settling back in my chair, I opened my hands, hoping the gesture came across as both an apology and an invitation. It worked, and Gregor nodded his head knowingly. He looked into the flame of the candle nearest to him, and his eyes glazed over. When his voice came, it was soft and low. A storyteller’s voice. And what a story it told.
“I will not bore you with my life before the night in the desert,” he started. “I will only tell you that it was a good life. My tribe was the Shaouri, a proud, sturdy people that had traveled the caravan trade routes for centuries before I became sheikh. Every Shaouri man, woman and child could lead you to every watering hole and every oasis in the Northern Sahara. We tracked our paths by the position of the sun by day and the movement of the stars at night. We could tell you from the taste of a grain of sand how close the water was and a glance at a sunrise or sunset could predict the weather for days.
“It was a simple life, not easy because the desert can be cruel, but not overly hard either. Members of our tribe never went thirsty. Good meat cooked over our fires at night. There was free time enough for music, for dance, for stories of the old ones, and the mysteries of ancient times. For all the progress of the modern world, I’ve never seen a people so content as my beloved Shaouri. It was the second happiest time of my life.”
Gregor paused for a very long time and stared deeper into the candle flame. It seemed he’d brought himself back in time and considered staying there. Even if it was just in his mind, maybe it was real enough to want to stay. As one minute stretched into another I felt a growing uneasiness that Gregor had forgotten that I was even in the room.
I cleared my throat to rouse his attention, and I immediately felt guilty. As he turned toward me, startled by the sudden noise, I saw tears on his rough cheeks. He rubbed them away unapologetically and continued.
“We told stories of the djinn, but we thought they were no more than that, just stories. The kind mothers told children to get them to go to bed or eat their vegetables. But the old men of the tribe warned that they were real. And they were right.
“I was away from camp on a several day hunting trip when they first showed themselves. They came at night, and two young men were carried off without a trace. These were boys I’d known since the day they were born. The tribe searched in the morning and finally found them in the open desert. Dead. And with no blood left in their bodies. Riders were sent to find me, and guards were posted the next night around the camp. People slept in their tents afraid of what might be lurking outside, all of the old superstitions coming back at once. As well they should have been because by morning each of the guards was gone, nothing left of them but two lines in the sand left by their heels where the djinn dragged them into the desert and feasted on their blood.
“I returned that day
, my horse nearly dead from riding him so hard, and found my camp filled with the wailing of mothers and wives, the cries of sons and daughters, the misery of fathers who had lost a son. These were my people and I was responsible for them.”
“And so you went into the desert to meet the djinn lord? Was the story Xavier told true then?” I asked. “Forty days in the desert? The sandstorm? The snakes and scorpions?”
“Parts of it, with important differences your friend did not know. That no one could know. But which, if you are to be successful, you must know.”
I nodded solemnly, feeling the weight of his words. “Whatever your secret, I will safeguard it. I swear on my honor.”
Gregor nodded, satisfied with my answer. “It wasn’t forty days and forty nights as the storybooks say. It was only ten. But alone in the desert, when you believe you are confronting the devil himself and that he might appear at any moment to kill you, ten days was enough. I had my sword with me, but I was armed with the Ibn Al-Lar, the song of my forefathers passed down through dozens of grandfathers from the earliest days of man so that I might have it on my tongue waiting for the djinn who had killed my tribesmen.
“When they came, it was like nothing I could have ever prepared for. I rose in the morning to a bright red and orange sky. To a child’s eyes, these colors delight and cause wonder. To a Shaouri, it means a sandstorm approaches. It means death.
“I had chosen my camp near a rocky outcropping that looked like a monster’s skeleton rising from the fine, pale sand dunes. I reinforced the small shelter I built there and readied myself for the storm. It arrived hours sooner than I expected. I had endured hundreds of sandstorms in my life, but nothing prepared me for the violence it brought. The wind tore through the desert, whipping up a blinding curtain of sand. I wrapped cloth around my face but the sand was everywhere. In my mouth, up my nose, into my ears. The rocks around me bore the brunt of it. The sand scoured the surface, stripping layers of hard stone, picking up loose boulders the size of a man as if they were no more than dry leaves and sending them soaring in the air.
