by Jeff Gunhus
“You say this because you are a vampire,” Caroline said. “You came to our castle because my father sought you out. He desired everlasting life, but you brought death with you instead.”
Finally grief overtook the man Vitus held down, and he stopped struggling. Tears flowed down his cheeks, and he mumbled over and over, “What have I done? What have I done?”
Vitus loosened his grip, his attention still on Caroline. “What you say is true. I came to kill your father, but he convinced me to make him part of my family instead.”
“Liar,” the man snarled, but both Vitus and Caroline ignored him.
“Will you make me part of your family as well?” Caroline asked.
“Perhaps someday, child,” Vitus said. “I gave your a father a greater gift than he knows. More of my blood than I have ever given one of my children. He will not only be strong. He will be a like a god.” His voice grew weary. “I admit the transformation took more from me than I imagined. Changing you now could be dangerous for me. But one day. When you’re ready.”
“And my sister,” Caroline asked. “Will you change her as well?”
Vitus shook his head. “She is too weak. Only the strongest can survive my ancient blood.”
For the first time, Caroline smiled slightly. Vitus cocked his head at the gesture. “You find that amusing?”
“No,” Caroline said, “I find it…comforting.”
“Comforting? You do have an unusual mind, don’t you?” Vitus said. “What are you thinking right now?” he asked.
“I’m thinking about your overconfidence and your misjudgment,” Caroline said. “And how it allowed us to get the better of you.”
Vitus grinned. He opened his mouth as if to laugh at her, but blood came out instead. He looked down at his chest and blinked. The point of a spear stuck out through him.
He twisted around and gaped at Angelica standing with the spear in her hands.
“I’m the one you needed to worry about,” Angelica said, twisting the spear. “Emotion can be even more powerful than logic. Especially when it’s anger.”
The man immediately tore himself out from under Vitus and got to his feet. Lightning fast, he retrieved the carving knife from the floor and gripped Vitus in a chokehold with the blade to his throat.
“I know the spear in your heart will only weaken you, but don’t forget I know how to finish the job,” the man spat. He turned to his daughters, wasting no time to applaud them for executing their part of the plan so well. “Your mother?”
“Still alive when we left her,” Angelica said.
“There is a reasonable chance she has already died,” Caroline stated flatly.
Vitus struggled against the man’s arms, but it was a weak attempt. “What do you think you’re going to do? I am the Lord of the Vampires. My blood is that of ancient Rome. Do you really think you can kill me?”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “What I do know is that you’re going to give your blood to my wife and my daughters so they will live for eternity with me.”
Vitus shook his head. “You are my creation! You cannot command me!”
The man leaned in close to the old vampire’s ear. “I do not ask you to give it. I am telling you I intend to take it—whether you like it or not.”
The man shoved Vitus forward, out of the room, back up toward his wife’s chamber. Caroline and Angelica followed their father, leaving behind the lifeless bodies of the castle’s dinner guests with their frozen expressions of terror.
As they left the room, Vitus’s screams echoed through the castle.
“You can’t do this to me. I curse you and your family. Do you hear me, Ren Lucre? I curse you!”
Ren Lucre did not respond. He knew what he had to do, no matter what it cost him. Regardless of how it might damn his soul and the souls of his children, he had to save his family from death.
On that night, the path seemed clear. It was only decades later that the tragedy of Ren Lucre’s decision became apparent. And centuries after that when the curse of the thousand-year-old vampire Vitus finally took its course.
Chapter One
One thing you learn early on as a monster hunter is that the Creach are everywhere. They blend in with regular people. They can be policemen, teachers, shopkeepers, anything you can imagine. Hiding in plain sight, they bide their time, waiting for the Creach war to come when they will be in position to strike against us all at once.
But even though they can be anywhere, the ancient places of the world are crawling with them. I’m not sure why. Maybe monsters feel more comfortable surrounded by old stone buildings and cobbled streets as a reminder of a simpler time, back when superstition kept them safe and hunting was easier to do unnoticed. There are too many cameras in the modern world for an army of monsters to hunt and feed without making a mark. And that’s the last thing they want.
Not yet, anyway.
So, the challenge for any monster hunter is to balance the desire to seek out the Creach to battle them with the understanding that it’s possible to overstep, be too aggressive and find yourself in over your head. One or two monsters, depending on the type, are something most first-degree hunters can handle. But multiply that a few times over and you’ve got a real fight on your hands. In some of the older cities of the world, that number can swell to the hundreds before you can say, “Your mother was a mug-wump.” And then you have huge problems.
These were my thoughts as I watched the sun rise over the ancient Moroccan city of Marrakech. Low, square buildings stretched out in a ramshackle maze punctuated by the spires of dozens of mosques. In the early morning light, the red sandstone of the old city walls glowed a deep ruddy color showing why Marrakech had long ago earned the nickname the red city.
I imagined I could have stood on this spot a thousand years earlier and seen pretty much the same sight before me. Well, almost. Satellite dishes sprouted from most roofs like mushrooms in a field, and the tangle of power lines that crisscrossed the buildings looked as if a manic army of spiders had spent the night spinning metal webs. Still, even with those obvious signs of the modern world, the weight of history hung in the air.
Miles to the north, there were parts of Marrakech with modern skyscrapers, nightclubs and Internet cafes. But we were in the Medina, the ancient center of the city, filled with souks with their haggling merchants, taverns with rough, dangerous characters, open squares packed with performers, merchants, beggars and thieves. And, most important to our mission, thousands of hiding places existed for all kinds of men and monsters that wanted to be forgotten by the rest of the world.
I couldn’t help but feel the pull of the city. The idea of disappearing into its deep underbelly and losing myself in its honeycombed streets seemed for a second like the only reasonable thing to do. Gone would be the weight of the quest to find the Jerusalem Stones and save my father. Gone would be the fear that at any minute my friends would be killed because of the danger I’d put them in. Gone would be the impossible responsibility to stop Ren Lucre and the coming Creach war. I could leave all that behind and be a normal fourteen-year-old kid simply by going for a long walk and never looking back.
I let out a deep breath and let this fantasy go with it on the morning air. Behind me I heard the others stirring in our single, cheap hotel room we’d straggled into late the night before. After two long weeks on the road where we’d kept away from civilization as best we could, we were due for at least one good night’s sleep. Compared to camping out in abandoned houses and in fields throughout the south of France and into Spain, the threadbare beds seemed like the height of luxury.
The road from the Monster Hunter Academy had been uneventful compared to events before we left. Standing on the balcony, I thought back to the awful day when the Creach attacked. After the Cave of Trials, battling dragons, fighting off the goblin hoard, and watching the black wolf Tiberon transform back into human form and disappear into thin air, I hoped we would have at least a little time to rec
over before it was time to leave. But it didn’t happen.
The morning after the goblin battle, Aquinas summoned me to her tent. I made my way through a small tent city that had sprung up near the gates to the Citadel to temporarily house the students. The dorms had burned to the ground. Outside the Academy walls, a student work party shoveled dirt over the bodies of the two dragons I’d killed. Aquinas wanted a deep burial where no Regs (non-hunter humans) would find them. Her tent was easy to spot. It was large and round with a pointed center, like a miniature version of a circus tent. The leather flap covering the entrance was open, so I crouched down and stepped inside.
The tent was mostly empty. There was a large wooden table with no chairs around it, a half-charred rug on the floor, and a cot where Aquinas lay propped up against a pile of pillows. Bacho, the burly Ratling with the thick beard and the kindest of hearts, watched over her with the same doting care as he did one of his soups.
The big man held a sponge with a set of tongs and used it to apply a healing ointment to Aquinas’s wound. A goblin arrow had struck her when she saved my life on the Academy walls. She winced, but when Bacho drew back, she glared at him. “Come, come,” she said. “What are you doing? The balm must be inside. You know that.”
“If you jus’ wouldn’t wince and moan like a newborn banshee,” he said, “this’ll be a bit easier on both o’ us.”
Bacho pulled back the edges of the wound and forced the sponge into the cut. Aquinas set her jaw and growled, “Are you trying to have it come out the other side?”
“Don’t cha get after me,” Bacho said. “Jus’ doin’ what you told me.” He removed the sponge, now bright red with blood, and packed the wound with a poultice of herbs. As he wrapped a bandage around her, she turned my direction.
“See what happens when people get old? The crankiness comes out,” she said.
“I didn’t say you was cranky,” Bacho grouched.
“I meant you,” Aquinas said, giving me a wink. “And are you implying that I’m old?”
“Jus’ about as old as this mountain, I reckon,” Bacho said. “An jus’ about as stubborn too.”
Aquinas laughed softly, the motion making her flinch. She squeezed Bacho’s arm affectionately. “Leave us, old friend. I must speak alone to our young hero.”
Bacho looked unhappy but didn’t argue. As he walked by me, he whispered, “Keep it short. She needs ’er rest.”
“I promise,” I said. He rested his massive hand on my shoulder for a second, smiled, and then left the tent.
Aquinas nodded toward the foot of her bed, “Have a seat, boy.”
I did as she asked and sat at the end of the cot, careful not to move it too much. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Of course it hurts,” she said. “I was hit by an arrow, wasn’t I? But we haven’t time for idle chit-chat and pleasantries, now do we?”
She stared at me for long enough that I finally realized she was waiting for an answer. “No?” I guessed. “We don’t have time for chit-chat?”
“See? I knew you were a bright lad,” she said. “So you tell me. Why are things so pressing?”
I looked down at the ground, not wanting to say aloud what I’d been thinking in the hours since we won the battle against the goblins. Finally, I looked up and met her eye. “Because Ren Lucre knows where we are. And he’ll stop at nothing to kill us.”
Aquinas leaned forward and jabbed a bony finger at me. “You,” she said. “He’ll stop at nothing to kill you. Oh, he’d be happy enough to finish off the rest of us, but it’s you he’s after. Never forget that.”
An ice-ball churned in my stomach. It wasn’t that long ago I’d been Jack Smith, just a regular thirteen year old. My biggest problems had been what to wear to school, getting my grade in math up to a B, controlling the zits on my face, and hoping that a girl would finally realize I was alive. Starting from the moment Eva had appeared to tell me about my past, everything I’d ever known was torn down, piece by piece, replaced with a new life. I’d trained for the monster attacks scheduled to happen on my fourteenth birthday when the ancient truce of Quattuordecim no longer protected me.
In this life, I was Jack Templar, a full member of the Black Watch and Keeper of the Templar Ring, the simple band of stone I’d recovered during the Trial of the Caves. My blood lineage traced back not only to the founding of the Knights Templar but to my namesake Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master who was burned at the stake in a Creach conspiracy. I was the sworn enemy of Ren Lucre, the thousand-year-old vampire and Lord of all the Creach, who I thought I’d defeated in battle once before. But he’d survived and now sought his revenge. I alone held the knowledge of where the Jerusalem Stones were hidden after an ancient, cursed werewolf had given me the information. I’d sworn myself to a quest to reunite the Stones to rescue my father and defeat Ren Lucre before he started his Creach war against mankind.
All this, and still there wasn’t a girl who knew I was alive!
Well, I guess Eva counted as something. I thought of the moment after I’d defeated the dragons, the moment when I first saw her and every fiber in my being had told me to kiss her. It wasn’t just that I wanted to. Somehow, it was more than that. It was as if I was meant to.
But I hadn’t kissed her and the moment passed. In the hectic day that followed, we were right back to being friends, the spark seemingly gone. At least as far as she was concerned. Still, I found myself lingering on that moment, thinking about whether—
“Hey! You!” Aquinas squawked. “Are you still in there?”
I looked up, suddenly self-conscious and not sure how long I’d been sitting there lost to my thoughts.
There must have been something in my expression that gave my thoughts away because Aquinas’s face softened and she leaned back into the pillows.
“I’m sorry this burden has fallen on you,” she said. “I truly am. Under the circumstances, I have to say you’ve held up rather well.”
That was as far as I’d ever heard Aquinas go toward giving a compliment. I did my best to show a brave face, but something still troubled me. “Master Aquinas, when I faced the dragons, I thought about what you told me. About discovering what I truly stood for. Once I grasped that—”
“Don’t tell me what it was,” Aquinas said. “It is for you alone to know. The power comes from the purpose living inside you.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you,” I said. “You warned me about that.”
“Then what is it?” Aquinas asked.
“It’s just…once I understood what it was, what I truly stood for, the power of the Templar Ring poured through me.” My right hand tingled with pins and needles as if my nerves remembered the sensation. “I felt invincible.”
“The Templar Ring was found alongside the Jerusalem Stones themselves,” Aquinas said. “It’s not surprising that it holds great power.”
“But since the cave and the dragons, I’ve tried to summon its power. Dozens of times. Using every trick I can imagine.” I rubbed the smooth stone of the ring with my fingers. “But nothing happens. It doesn’t react to me at all.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” Aquinas asked, the corners of her mouth turned up in amusement. “That you were going to be like a comic book superhero, racing around with your magic ring, smashing your enemies with energy bolts?” Aquinas laughed softly. “If only it were that simple.”
“So, the ring only worked once?” I asked, disappointed.
“What makes you think it worked at all?” Aquinas asked. “Perhaps that power came from inside of you. Or maybe what you felt was only a tenth of its true power. Maybe only a hundredth.”
“Do you think that’s true?” I asked.
Aquinas leaned back into her pillows, her brow pinched above the bridge of her nose as she thought. After many long seconds, she answered. “As I said, it is as much a mystery to me as it is you. Does it only give the bearer strength when he needs it? Does the ring have a conscience and kn
ow right from wrong? Will it ever respond like that again for you? I don’t know the answers to these questions.” Aquinas pointed a finger at me. “And you know it will be up to you alone to discover the truth of the ring. I will not be there to help you.”
I nodded. I’d known even before Aquinas summoned me what must be done. “The remaining Academy members must be moved as soon as possible, and I must leave at once to find the first stone,” I stated.
Aquinas nodded. “Yes, yes. Right on both counts.”
“Where will you take them?” I asked.
“Probably best that you do not know,” Aquinas said. “If you are captured, Ren Lucre has ways to make people talk.”
I shuddered. When the wolf Tiberon and I had been connected, I’d felt his emotion when he told me about his torture in Ren Lucre’s dungeons. He had been a great knight, serving as Jacques de Molay’s right hand, and yet he’d been broken and betrayed his brothers. Although he’d redeemed himself in the end, he paid big time for his sins. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that I would somehow be stronger under pressure.
“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.”
