The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy)

by VanKirk, R. Scott

  My dad said, “Yes, that is exactly what he’s going to do.”

  “What? Dad, what about all those people who’ll die if we don’t stop him?”

  My dad shrugged, “Finn, from what Mark told you, it’s not in your power to help them.” He held up his hand as I started to object. “Finn, this is too big for you. It’s too big for us. It’s time to pull in the big guns. This seems more like something for the CIA and the FBI. They have the resources to handle things like this.”

  “No, they don’t, and that’s the problem.” I said. “If Mark gets the Caduceus, he’ll be unstoppable. No one will be able to stand against him. All he’d need to do is go say ‘hi’ to the president and tell him to press the button. He would. You have to understand how powerful the Caduceus is.”

  “I believe I’ve got a pretty good idea,” said my dad who’d been kept alive with its power before he’d discovered his new, uh, dietary preferences.

  “Do you believe Mark will actually follow through with his threats?” asked Hunter.

  I nodded. “This thing that has him is completely ruthless. He’ll do anything to get this.” I held up the Caduceus.

  “You can just give it to the CIA to use,” said Dad. “We’ll do it publicly, and he won’t have a reason to retaliate.”

  “I can’t take that chance, Dad. This thing likes killing. He might come after you just for spite. I also can’t trust this in someone else’s hands. Whoever has the Caduceus can become an unstoppable monster—even without Wendigota driving them. Detec...Vicky, do you think you can get my parents and friends into witness protection?”

  She considered this a moment. “The U.S. Marshalls handle that. I’ve never worked with them, and I’d have to talk to some people to even know who to call. I’m not sure if we can give them enough justification to do it. It’s normally used for federal witnesses whose testimony will help the feds prosecute a case.”

  “I’m sure I could convince the person who normally approves these cases.”

  “If you can get hold of him, hoodoo him and get everybody protected—by noon tomorrow,” said Dave.

  “Finn, I don’t see any way around this. You have to give it to him,” said my dad.

  “No, Dad, I’m not going to give it to him.” I surprised myself with this, but when I thought about it, I’d known the answer all along. I’d hated bullies ever since I’d been persecuted by Erik, and I wasn’t going to let that thing bully me. Probably the wrong time to develop moral outrage.

  “Great,” said David. “I’ll just nip along and kiss my parents goodbye, shall I?”

  “No, Dave, I think we can keep everyone safe.”

  “How?”

  “I have a cunning plan...”

  “Now, this, I’ve gotta hear...”

  Plans—Cunning and Otherwise

  “Okay,” I said. “The first thing we need to do is figure out how to get in touch with Colette.”

  “But, she stabbed you, Finn!” objected my mother.

  “And shot him,” added Dave.

  I scowled at Dave, “No, that was her partner.”

  “Henchman, you mean.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Dave. He’s dead. And yes, I have to get in touch with Colette. I don’t know where she disappeared to, but her family is probably the only group in the world that can help us. On top of that, Uncle Mark is going after them as well. We have to form an alliance with them. Dave, did you see where she went after we got here?”

  “Nope, she just made scarce. Probably on her way back to Paris by now.”

  “Do you know how to get hold of her?” asked Vicky.

  “Uh, well no. I had her phone number, but Mark’s got my phone.”

  “And, she probably lost her phone as well,” pointed out Dave helpfully.

  “Yeah. Poop.”

  “Not much of a plan, Finn,” said Dave.

  “I’m right here, Finn,” said Colette from behind me.

  “Ya!” I whirled on her. She was standing behind our TV stand. Her appearance set off a lot of shouting and finger pointing, but I was eventually able to convince my parents not to shoot her and Vicky not to arrest her.

  “How did you get there?” I eventually asked.

  She looked haggard, tired, and suspiciously clean, but she still rolled her eyes. “I snuck in.”

  “Okay, so, Colette, can your family help keep our families safe from my uncle?”

  “Oui Finn, but I don’t know if I could convince them to do it.”

  “What if we could return a few of the shards that Matt Smith took?”

  That got her excited. “You have found these?”

  “Finn!” Dave yelled.

  “It’s the only thing we have to bargain with, Dave. Do you want to keep your parents safe?”

  “Crap, you suck at negotiation,” he muttered.

  I turned to Colette. “We can offer you your St. Christopher medal and the other two pieces we found.”

  “I found,” said Dave.

  “...Dave found. In return, you’ll get your family to help us. On top of that, we’ll help you stop Mark and Smith’s organization.”

  Spring gave me a metaphorical elbow dig. You dog, you. What are you going to do with the other two pieces?

  I don’t know yet. It seems like they’ll come in handy, though.

  Colette’s pretty lips puckered as she thought about my proposition for a couple of seconds. “Very well, I will call home and we will discuss zis. How many peoples will we have to help protect?”

  I shook my head helplessly, “Seven or eight families. Maybe thirty or forty people?”

  Out went her lips again as she considered it, making me forget where I was for a moment. Damn, she was cute—even after... hey, wait a minute, she didn’t look nearly as bedraggled as she should. Did she use our shower or something? I shook it off. Who cared?

  Colette finally shook her head. “We could not help with so many places, it would be necessary to bring them to one place...”

  That’s going to be really fun. I can’t wait to hear what everyone says when you call them at 3:30 in the morning and tell them they are being hunted by a magic-using maniac, and they have to leave town.

  “My parents are going to love this,” said Dave unwittingly following Spring’s comment. “Who else is going to be on his hit list?”

  “Let’s see, you, Jen, Dave, Jim, Alan, Jeff and a couple others are on my starred list...” Of course Jeff, Jim and Alan were all just off to college, but their families were still around and vulnerable. I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  “Finn, this is ridiculous,” interjected my dad. “How far down your phone list will you need to go? How long do you think people will be willing to have their lives completely disrupted?”

  “As long as it takes, Dad. I can’t give him the Caduceus. Nothing would be able to stop him!” I looked to Vicky for support. “Do you agree with him?”

  She squinched her face a couple of different ways, ran her hand through her hair. To my dismay, she nodded. “I think you need to give it to him. This is more than any of us can handle.”

  My heart dropped. “What about never negotiating with terrorists and all that?”

  “Finn, that’s all well and good for governments, but you’re not a government, and you have no resources to protect you and your loved ones. Give it to him. Save yourself and your family this time.”

  I cast about desperately for another idea.

  “Finn,” said my Dad. “This is the end of the discussion. You cannot take the lives of your family and friends into your own hands. It’s not right, and I won’t let you do it.”

  I searched my dad’s hard face. There was no give in it. He wasn’t going to budge on this.

  My shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay, but I think it’s a shitty idea.”

  “We don’t like it any more than you do, Finn, but he hasn’t given us much choice.”

  There wasn’t much more to say after that, so we soon broke up
for the night. As if I didn’t feel crappy enough about the night, Vicky, now back in Detective Hunter guise, grabbed me and pulled me aside before she left.

  “I’m going way out on a limb here allowing you and Colette to do this. I expect to see you both down at the station tomorrow after you drop off the Caduceus.”

  The room darkened as the cloud above my head grew and threatened to rain. My face grew heavy as someone increased the gravitational field of the planet around me.

  Just hoodoo her, Finn.

  I can’t do that, Spring, not after I found out what it’s like.

  Sure it sucks for her, but how much more will it suck for us if we are tossed in jail for five years?

  Crap. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

  “Finn, give me your word.”

  Feeling heavy and damp, I nodded mutely and then ushered her out the door.

  More Cunning Plans

  A short while later, Dave, Colette, and I were clustered near our stolen van, which was now alone in our semi-circular drive.

  Still feeling heavy, I said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  Dave nodded his head. “I hate it too, Finn, but what choice do we have? How can we protect our family from that soul-eating psychopath?”

  Colette stood silent, chewing her lower lip and watching the two of us. She’d already vociferously objected. If Mark got this power, it would be open season on the Delacroix.

  “Maybe we could give him a fake,” I suggested.

  “If he has your memories, he’d know it as soon as he saw it. Besides, we don’t have a fake to give him.”

  I felt an idea begin to form. “What if we were able to make a duplicate? If we put a couple of the shards in it, it would at least feel like it was magical.”

  “All right, where do we get a fake?”

  I looked at Colette. “Can you use your pendant to make one?”

  Her eyes studied the horizon and she shook her head slowly. “Euuuu, no. I do not have the skill to do this. To make such as this would require a... euuu...,soul... euuu... attachment? I do not have the words in the English, and I do not have this ability.”

  “Soul attaching, what’s that?” I asked.

  “To create something such as this, which will stay as we want it, we must attach a soul and a source of power to it.”

  I brightened with understanding. “Oh, like I did with the cage for Wendigota in the first place? I bound it with a piece of Holly’s soul.”

  “You chopped off a piece of your sister’s soul?” exclaimed Dave. “Holy shit, I’m glad you’re not my brother.”

  “It was just a small part,” I said defensively. “And it was her idea.”

  Colette looked at me with large eyes. “You can do zis?”

  I nodded cautiously. “Uh, yeah...”

  “Incredible. Of the family, only Mémèr can do this.”

  “Mema? You’ve mentioned her before, is she your mother?”

  “Mémèr,” said Dave. “It’s her grandmother. Though it translates better to Granny.” I looked at him, popped up my eyebrows, and dropped my jaw.

  “What? I took French in school. It didn’t stick but I know a couple words still.” He grinned at getting the better of me. I turned to Colette.

  “Colette, if I could get a piece of a soul, could you show me how to bind it and make a fake look like the Caduceus?”

  “Oui, but the more it looks like the Caduceus before we start, the better it will be.”

  I brightened up. “I’ve got it, believe me, we won’t need to worry about it looking right.”

  Techno-magic

  Seven hours later, I stood in the manufacturing center holding a gray, stainless-steel Caduceus in my hand. It was still warm from the oven, and its tingling power coruscated up and down my arm. It was perfect, except for the color. We could even make the color perfect if we had more time. It had the same solid heft as the real thing, and nearly every detail was correct. There were some issues with the interior where the scanning process couldn’t quite reach, but they were minor. The technology was incredible. We’d even built ceramic inclusions in the center of the fake to make the weights match exactly. On top of that, we took a piece of the string I’d used as a necklace to hold the Caduceus around my neck and placed it in with the slivers. The similarity between the Caducei, real and fake, and my simple necklace’s piece in the fake would give us good mystical connections that would make the fake easier to track. I just hoped it didn’t leave some mystical signature that someone with more experience than Colette or I could see.

  “Wow Chen, this is amazing.”

  The young tech’s eyes glittered with pride and excitement, “I know. I still can’t quite get used to it. It’s like magic, isn’t it?”

  Dave, standing beside me, smirked. “You don’t even know the half of it, pal.”

  The copy in my hand had been produced in a 3D printer out of steel powder with some sort of glue and then heated in a bath of bronze. This replaced the glue with bronze and gave it a slight yellow tint. It really was magic.

  I went to grab my phone to see what time it was and cursed when it wasn’t there. “What time is it?” I asked the room in general.

  “Eleven oh seven,” said Dave. He took a quick look at his phone. “And, we now have eleven new messages.”

  “Crap.”

  “Your parents are so going to take back your ‘Best Son Ever’ mug,” said Dave.

  I could feel the truth of that to the bottom of the pit in my stomach. “Tell me about it.”

  Colette was slumped into a chair in the corner of the large production facility. She’d collapsed there shortly after we’d shown her two of the gold bar pendants holding slivers of the cross. She’d been incensed because Matt Smith had taken the pieces out of their Delacroix mounting and embedded them in the little gold bars.

  When Chen had pointed out that the little pendants were going to be dunked in molten brass, Colette had assured us the little pieces of holy wood were nigh indestructible. I say “nigh” because no one has tried dropping a nuke on one. They were extremely resistant to abrasion, cutting, acids, and would break hydraulic presses. A little molten brass would pose no threat. Of course, the string and the gold bars were different. We’d had to encase those in one of the ceramic inclusions. There had been some concern about the whole thing blowing up in the furnace, but happily, it had worked like a charm.

  “Come on, Colette, we’ve got to get moving.”

  I turned to Chen, shook his hand, and said, “Thanks for the rush job, Chen.”

  “Hey, when the boss says to rush it, we can get it done fast.”

  “Well, we appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I pushed with my will. “Now, after we’re gone, you won’t remember us coming in at all.”

  He shrugged, “Sure, whatever.”

  As we left, I gave the same power-backed suggestion to the receptionist and everyone we had any dealings with. At the door, I turned around and was almost plowed over by Dave. I stepped around him and said to the receptionist, “Oh, and if there is any security footage from this morning it really needs to be erased. Once you’re done, you’ll forget that as well.”

  “Okay, why?”

  “Uhhh...”

  Dave who had been following the conversation with a smirk rescued me, “We don’t like publicity.”

  She smiled at us and said, “I understand. You have a nice day now.”

  We turned and left.

  Dave laughed and said, “I could get used to this.”

  I scowled at the disappointment I felt in myself. One day after swearing off hoodooing people, here I was doing it to everyone I met.

  Desperate times dude, reminded Spring.

  Yeah, that just feels like a cop-out.

  Speaking of cops, she asked. Are you ready to do that voodoo that you do on our Indian problem?

  Don’t talk like that! And, no... I don’t know. Damn, I hate this.

  Tru
st me, you’ll hate prison more, and you’ll get over this more quickly.

  I had no response to that.

  We hopped into the van, and Colette drove us back home.

  “So, how are we going to get into your parent’s garage, grab a rat, and do the hoodoo without them seeing us?” asked Dave. He looked down at his phone. “I told them we would be there by eleven.” The phone rang in his hand. “And there they are. What do you want me to tell them?”

  Tell them it’s none of their business, suggested Spring.

  Very helpful, thanks.

  “Crap, what time is it?” I hated not having my phone!

  “Eleven-twenty.”

  “Tell them we are going to drop off the Caduceus at Mark’s house.”

  After a short conversation and apology, Dave hung up and said, “He’s not amused Finn, but he’s going to meet us there.”

  “Great. I can’t wait.”

  “Dude, you can always stay at my place when he throws you out of the house. You can stay in Marcy’s room. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  “Ha ha. Colette, pull over and let Dave drive. We’re going to have to cast the spell on the way.”

  “We are not witches, Finn. We do not ‘cast spells,’ we call on God’s grace.”

  “Right, whatever. Pull over.”

  A short time later, we were in the rattly, hot back of the van. Colette was not happy that I was going to use a piece of her soul to do the binding, but in the end, she had agreed. There weren’t a lot of other choices.

  We both sat cross-legged, facing each other. I had the real Caduceus in one hand and the fake in the other.

  She said, “It will be difficult to teach you what you need to know to create the connection between the Caduceus and this duplicate in the time we have, and you have not been trained and ordained to use the cross. I should do thees.”

  That would mean I’d have to give her the Caduceus.

  Bad idea, sunshine. She was willing to kill you to get it. What makes you think she won’t just take it and split?

  I don’t know, Spring. I think she feels bad about that.

  Yes, as guilty as a snake eating a mouse.

  I winced at the image of Colette’s face superimposed on a snake that Spring projected.