by Justin Sloan
First, he’d have to convince Katherine to work with him, find some way to make her trust him.
He turned to head back into Berkeley, to find the church where Mauro had told him to meet them, but stopped at the sound of heavy breathing and a silver mist that had begun to roll through the trees. At first glance he thought it was simply fog catching the moonlight. It was normal enough in these parts.
But the heavy breathing, and then the purplish-red, glowing eyes, told him all he needed to know. That bastard Grundy had ensured he’d have company to slow his pursuit. As the werewolves began to emerge from the tree line, a couple more from behind him, he pulled out his pistol, holding it in his right hand, the knife in his left.
An image of Katherine flashed through his mind—the look of betrayal in her eyes after he’d taken down that other werewolf. If he was going to earn her trust, he’d have to stop killing their kind, at least when they were under Grundy’s control. Judging by the purple gleam in their eyes, these clearly were, so he bit his lip in frustration and pocketed the weapons.
This was going to have to go down the old-fashioned way, with vampire strength and speed-fueled butt-kicking.
The first werewolves charged, three of the others following, but Matthew was ready. Instead of letting them corner him, he kept his back to the car and dodged the first attacker. The werewolf’s head put a dent in the door, causing Matthew to wince. He’d have to apologize to Mauro later for that.
Having learned his lesson, the second attacker found his face colliding with the cement. The third received a chop to the throat, a risky move that almost got Matthew’s hand bitten off. A quick kick to the stomach, followed by a punch to the werewolf’s temple, dropped it unconscious.
Another slid over the car from behind, tackling Matthew. Its sharp claws tore into Matthew’s arms and saliva flew across his cheeks as the werewolf’s teeth nearly took off his face. The training in the temple of Central Asia had prepared Matthew, and the extra strength helped. He brought his knee into the werewolf’s stomach and kicked in with his other leg, flipping the beast over.
Like a gust of wind, darkness swept across Matthew and he felt his fangs growing, his eyes glowing so that everything took on a red tint.
He was using too much of his power. It had only happened once before, and he’d woken up in a cave in the mountains of Nevada, naked and covered in blood.
Never again.
He had two options here—pulling out the weapons to destroy these creatures was the more appealing. Katherine wasn’t here, so how could it hurt her? Then again, she’d proven that not all werewolves were evil, though he still had a feeling most were. He also had a sense of duty to his new friends, if he could call them that. He certainly hoped to one day be able to.
So for now, he used the last bit of vampiric energy he felt comfortable would not pull him over to the side of evil, and ran.
He darted between attackers, nearly as fast as Grundy had moved in the mist, but not quite. Energy filled his muscles, blood flowing, as if it were about to boil up and explode out of him, and then he was free of them, escaping down the hill, past houses where people slept and back toward the church he could see in the distance.
Past it all, there was San Francisco, where he knew Grundy would be working his evil. Matthew meant to find out what his plan was, and soon. As for Mauro’s car, he hoped it’d still be there tomorrow, or whenever they decided to go back for it.
Right now he was just happy that he hadn’t lost control and killed any werewolves. For someone who loved to kill werewolves, that was saying a lot.
Ignoring the sudden chill in the air, he jogged down the hill, taking his time now that he was free of the werewolves. The wind shifted, warm now, and it brought back a memory of days spent in the temple learning the dark arts, before he had believed that they were truly evil. Back then, he would have done anything for his revenge, he had thought. Then anything found its limit, and he ran.
But there were days spent on the ledges of that temple when he would practice channeling the dark forces, feeling them course through him… and it had felt a lot like this.
A glance back showed shapes moving to his left and right. As his head swiveled from side to side, taking it in, he realized something. They hadn’t been sent to kill him or capture him, necessarily, but to divert him, to lead him into what he could only assume was a trap.
His eyes darted to the ground, searching for the markings he dreaded, and then found one—off to his right, faintly glowing in the middle of a cul-de-sac. Lines drawn around stars in a faint, purple light that only he would be able to see.
Veering left, he ran away from it. But he knew that he was likely already within the trap. DAMN! Another one directly in his path. He spun, watching the wave of purple light shoot from one symbol to the other, nearly right through him. He tried to run, skidding on his heels and nearly falling, but the line expanded to a circle of light that hovered off the ground at waist level, with him inside it.
Moving through the light was like trying to run in the ocean, against a riptide. He reached for the edge, as if grabbing hold would somehow save him, but his hands passed right through. Suddenly, his feet were swept up into the air and he was flying backwards toward the immense ball of light that had formed in the circle’s center. The light all around pulled back, converging on him, and he felt his insides twisting like someone wringing out a towel. Then everything went dark, and he was flying through the air.
The ground hit him with a thump. Not cement like the street he had been on moments before, but cold stone. He didn’t need the wind whistling through surrounding hills and valleys to tell him where he was.
If that portal had been from Grundy, and he was certain it was, there was only one place he could be: the temple he had escaped from all those years ago.
This was not good.
Chapter 7
After working their way to the back door, Mauro had pulled out a key ring and unlocked it, glancing around as if they might be followed. Now they were sitting in a large worship hall, waiting in darkness.
Mauro approached the front and lit several candles, but kept glancing toward a side door.
“Any chance you plan on telling me what’s going on?” Katherine said. “This person has a tendency to be late, is that it?”
“She’s very busy,” he said.
“We’re not?”
“Point taken.” He glanced back at the door, then scrunched his face, clearly feeling awkward. But that didn’t mean Katherine was going to let him off so easily.
“Before, about my parents?” she asked.
Triston must have sensed how hard it was to ask that, because he stood next to her and took her hand. A gentle squeeze told her all she needed to hear from him.
“They were Guardians, as I said.” Mauro looked between the two of them, then sighed and leaned against the wall. “There’s a whole battle going on here, Katherine. One you should know about, so you understand what you’re getting into. This isn’t just an army of werewolves, or one stray vampire. This is good versus evil we’re talking here.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that from everything you’ve been saying.” She rolled her eyes, but felt her curiosity piqued. “Just to be clear, you being a priest, good versus evil and all that, are you saying we’re fighting the devil? On God’s side?”
“I can only answer what I believe,” Mauro said. “Would I be here if I didn’t believe we were fighting on God’s behalf? No. Have I seen any higher being, or has anyone?” He shook his head. “This is all based on faith, and that’s fine by me. And all this, whatever you choose to believe or not believe, that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”
“How can it not matter?” Triston said, frowning. “Of course we’re fighting for God.”
Katherine pulled her hand away, surprised to hear him talk like that. “Would any God, or any just and good God, have let my parents die the way they did?”
“But—” Tristo
n started, but Mauro cleared his throat and gave him a stern look.
“You two have no right to assume what God wants!”
Mauro breathed deep and said, “You’re right. What I’m trying to say here is this is my belief, Triston’s belief, sure. But it doesn’t matter if you share religious beliefs with us over the reasons for this war. The fact remains that we are at war with forces of darkness. With evil, wherever that evil might originate.”
“And my parents were involved in this war?”
“They were. Though, to be honest, I don’t think they ever believed in the religious side of it either. Although I’m not sure how you can fight werewolves, vampires, and demons, and still believe them to be anything other than evil.”
“I’m a werewolf, and you’ve taught me I’m not evil,” Katherine said. “All three of us are. So yeah, you’ll have to excuse me for not drinking the Kool-Aid.”
“There’s nothing to excuse.”
“You make a good point, actually,” Triston said, frowning.
“Werewolves weren’t always thought to be bad,” Mauro said, nodding. “In fact, the legends of the werewolves in Europe, Italy, to be precise, have some truth to them.”
“No way,” Katherine said, remembering the time she and Danny come across that stuff online, and laughed at how ridiculous it sounded. Babur had argued for its validity, but they made fun of him for believing anything. Now she felt like an idiot and a jerk.
“Our kind,” Mauro said, “has been at this for centuries. Often fiction pits vampires versus werewolves as two sides of evil, but it’s not so simple, I suppose.”
“And the witches?” she asked.
“Just like this new vampire you told me about.” Mauro leaned forward, glancing toward the door as if he had heard something. “Simply dark magic users. Call them witches, warlocks, devil worshipers, they’re all the same.”
Triston shared an awed look with Katherine. She had to wonder how much he knew already, but the look in his eyes seemed to be genuine interest.
A click sounded and, after a moment, footsteps. Mauro smiled. “Get ready to enter a whole new world.”
She smiled, until she saw his serious expression. “What?”
“No, I mean that quite literally. I hope you don’t freak out or anything.”
She laughed, waving him off, then glanced at Triston, who was also staring at her quite intensely. “I promise not to freak out. I mean…” She frowned. “I’m totally lost, but yeah. Triston?”
He shook his head. “I’ve only heard, but was never allowed.”
“He’s recently been promoted,” Mauro said.
“What, because he found me?” She glared. “That seems wrong on so many levels.”
“No, because of his new, er, condition.”
She glanced over to Triston. “You mean, being a werewolf? One of us?”
“Precisely,” Mauro said, and then held up a hand for silence, as the door had started to open.
Out walked a woman who looked to be about Mauro’s age, maybe a bit older, with silver hair tied back into a bun. She was followed by a tall and even older man.
“Gabe and Merriam,” Mauro said. “We’ve brought her.” He gestured to Katherine. “Please allow me to introduce the newest member of the team, Katherine.”
“She has her mother’s jaw,” Gabe said, shaking her hand.
“She isn’t sure what to think of that remark,” Katherine said, being sure to put a bit of her werewolf strength into the handshake.
Merriam chuckled and nudged Gabe aside. “Ignore the old librarian. He loved your parents like they were his own children, and is probably too awed to be meeting you to think of anything intelligent to say.”
Gabe chuckled. “They were great kids.”
“You knew my parents,” Katherine said, suddenly very interested in this man, “as children?”
“We both did,” Gabe said. “They trained with us to be Guardians. This is, of course before the eleventh worthy, or tenth for that matter.”
“What were they like?”
“Oh, you can meet both of them, and I’m sure you will—”
“Not the worthies,” Merriam said, rolling her eyes at the old man. “Her parents, you old cabbage.” Turning to Katherine, her expression became soft, caring. “Your mom and dad, they would have done anything to fight for what they believed in. And they loved you very much.”
Katherine felt her chest rising as she breathed in, remembering that Christmas Eve so many years ago, the smell of her mother’s fresh-baked gingerbread cookies and the laughter of her dad. But for them to have been part of all this?
“I—I’m sorry,” she said, telling herself not to get choked up in front of these people. “But I still have no idea what all this is. Guardians? But there is not time for you to explain now. Most important now is,” she cast a glance at Mauro to make sure they knew, and he nodded, “there are a bunch of werewolves out there, and we need to stop them before something goes very wrong.”
“The full moon is coming soon,” Gabe said, pausing to push his glasses up on his nose. “If we don’t get control of them before that, I don’t want to even consider the consequences.”
“The full moon,” she said, realizing that somehow she’d forgotten about that little detail. Mauro told her she could control herself now, if she focused, but all of those werewolves… No matter how good or bad they were, when the full moon took over, this country, maybe the world, for all she knew, would be in chaos.
“You see why we must act fast,” Merriam said, nodding for them to follow her. She went through the door. After a moment’s hesitation and a look at Katherine as if to convince himself she really existed, Gabe stepped through the door after her.
Katherine frowned, avoiding Mauro’s eye contact as he followed them through the door.
Before Triston had a chance to go as well, she reached out for his hand and took it, pulling it close to her heart.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I think we have to follow them to find out,” he replied, but stayed there with her, and then took her in an embrace and kissed the top of her head. “Listen, we can turn around right now and run from all this, or do our best to do so. We don’t have to fight.”
“But then there would be no one else to fight in our places, would there?” She pulled back to look into his eyes.
“Actually, there’s always someone else to fight, it just means trusting others. If you can do that, and live with any lives that might have been lost because of that decision, then let’s just go.”
She squeezed his hand and he yelped. “You know I could never leave after a little speech like that, jerk.”
“Well, I also know you are aware of this little werewolf problem we have, and that you have a kind soul, the type of kind soul that wouldn’t want to see millions of innocents die.”
“And this church?” she asked. “They’re going to be of real help here?”
“Not a church,” he said. “But you'll see.”
“Or you could just tell me.”
“Or... You’ll see.”
She scrunched her nose in thought, but a clearing of Mauro’s throat from the doorway told them to hurry.
“Okay, let’s go into the back of this weird, creepy church,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Why the hell not, huh?”
He laughed and squeezed her hand, then nodded toward the door. “Ladies first.”
“Great.”
She went to the door, unsure what to expect, but certain it was nowhere near what she actually found—past the door frame, where she expected to see rows of pews and other church trappings, instead she saw a long hallway, one that looked entirely too long for the size of this church. Gabe and Merriam were there waiting, staring back her way.
With a frown, Katherine stepped forward and felt a strange sensation, as if walking through a wall of wind. It let up suddenly and so she swept forward, stumbling when it stopped. She straightened and looked back to
see Triston coming in behind her, nearly colliding with her.
“I’ll never really get used to that,” he said, smirking.
“Used to what?” Katherine asked.
“You’ve just taken your first portal,” Mauro said. “Welcome to The Training Grounds, where these doors will serve to help you along your journey.”
Katherine looked at them like they were crazy, but then looked in through the door Gabe held open for them, and nearly fainted. The door led to a sun-filled hill, in spite of the fact that it was still night outside where they’d just come from.
“Orientation will be in there,” Merriam said. “I hope you’ve brought your A-game.”
And with that, still in a bit of a daze and totally confused about what exactly was happening, Katherine stepped through the door and into the warm sun. Whatever this was, if it helped her get the answers she so desperately needed right now, she figured it was best to get it over with as soon as possible.
Chapter 8
Matthew had been walking along a dark corridor for longer than he cared to admit. That was the thing with this temple, the temple where he had earned his powers in the name of seeking his revenge—it never made sense, and never let you win.
Except for the one time he’d managed to escape by burning it down.
How was this place standing again? It was possible they’d rebuilt it, sure, but it seemed something more, he thought. Walking with a hand along the wall for guidance, he could’ve sworn he felt a heartbeat from deep within the temple.
After picking himself up from the hard stone of the ledge, he quickly found his way inside, and now was searching for the way out to the lower levels. When he had first come here all those years ago, they hadn’t truly told him what he would become. It was true that, while walking the black markets of Cambodia, this was the place he was told would grant him eternal life and all the power he would ever desire.
