Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves (Book #4 of the Templar Chronicles)

by Jeff Gunhus

  In evidence of this, piles of rusting suits of armor lay heaped along the edges of the hall. They were battered, scarred black with flames, or punctured with gaping holes. I realized these were the Knights of the Teutons in the Oracle’s prophecy. This place must have once been theirs until taken in battle by Kaeden, the armor left to rust as testament of their defeat.

  At the far end, a throne made of black granite rose up from the floor, a reminder that this entire place had been carved out of solid rock. The time and effort it must have taken were staggering to consider.

  Kaeden was already there, sitting on the throne in human form, his right hand resting on a human skull.

  “You are the first humans to be allowed in these walls for centuries,” he said, his voice echoing through the hall. The sound made the place seem somehow even more empty and abandoned. He nodded at Eva. “For your kind, it has been even longer. But I sense old blood in you. Maybe you have a memory of how this place once was?”

  I turned to look at Eva who turned in a slow circle, taking in the surroundings. She closed her eyes and smiled. “It was wonderful,” she whispered. “Filled with light and beauty.” She opened her eyes and frowned at the dark ruins around her.

  I shared a look with Daniel and Will. I got the sense that none of us liked seeing evidence of Eva’s strange powers or the memories stored within her vampiric blood. It made her seem even more detached from her human self. It made her seem more lost to us.

  For Kaeden, it had the opposite effect. He looked at Eva with new interest. He stood and strode to her, looking her over. He took one of her hands and held it to his mouth. I struggled forward, thinking he intended to hurt her. The guard behind me grabbed me by the collar and yanked me backward painfully.

  But the Lord of the Werewolves didn’t hurt her. He simply placed his nose to her wrist and took a deep breath, pulling in the smell of her.

  He leaned back and sighed. “Ahh, I thought I smelled something familiar. Something I’ve not been near for centuries. You have the blood of Vitus in you.”

  I heard the venom in his voice when he said the name, and I feared that he might lash out at Eva from the anger there. Vitus. I knew the name from the story Shakra told me from her childhood, back when she was known only as Caroline, the daughter of a French noble at the first turning of the millennia. Back before she needed the taste of blood to live.

  The story was about the night she and my mother became vampires. How my grandfather, Ren Lucre, had lured the ancient vampire called Vitus to his castle, meaning to take his powers. Instead, Vitus had turned on Ren Lucre, forcing him to become a vampire, sealing the fate of my mother and her twin sister to be vampires as well. But Vitus’s treachery was his last as the little girls, my mother and her sister, surprised the old vampire in an attack that ended his reign.

  By the sound of Kaeden’s scorn for the name, I guessed he also had a history with the old vampire.

  “Vitus did not create me,” Eva said carefully, as if sensing that one wrong word or the wrong tone could mean death. “Shakra did, Lord of the Vampires, daughter of Ren Lucre, the one who killed Vitus after he gave the gift to ¬¬–”

  Kaeden’s face half-transformed into that of a werewolf, a grotesque mask of hatred. “You call these curses gifts. Look around you. Nothing but ruin and desolation. Those are the only gifts these dark powers bring.”

  Most creatures in the natural world would have bowed their heads in submission in the face of such fury, but not Eva. She stared right into Kaeden’s monstrous face without expression, like a stone in a storm, immovable. He stood in front of her, chest heaving, his face slowly turning human again as he regained control.

  “I meant no offense. That is the word used in the memories given to me with this blood,” Eva said, adopting the overly formal tone that he used. “Do you think I find this to be a gift? I was made a vampire without my consent. I ache with hunger because I refuse to feed. I walk on the brink of madness because of my despair over my betrayal.” Her words hit me between the eyes and ripped my heart to shreds, but she didn’t even glance at me as she continued. “This is no gift, Kaeden, Lord of the Werewolves. Of that, I am sure.” Eva slowly looked down to Kaeden’s feet and then back up to his face, sizing him up. “So, if you’re done with your temper tantrum, let’s discuss the Boros and how we are to defeat it.”

  We all held our breaths. I felt the presence of the werewolf guards draw closer in behind us. It was a risky move – insulting a Lord always is. I wondered if Kaeden might decide he’d had enough and give the order to have our throats ripped out so he could go back to sitting on his lonely throne in his ruined castle. Or he might throw us in whatever dark dungeon this place had and let us waste away for a decade or two. Of all the possible reactions, the one he chose surprised me most. He laughed in short barks.

  “Temper tantrum,” he said under his breath, clearly amused by the sound of the words. He turned his back on us and walked back to his throne. “I told you earlier that you are either brave or reckless. I’m still not certain which is the case.” He sat and faced us. “That goes for all of you.”

  I stepped forward. “Sire, I don’t know which of those two things we are, but I do know that we are committed to our quest.”

  “To steal my Jerusalem Stone,” Kaeden said, the edge returning to his voice. His hand drifted up the spot on the armor breastplate encasing the stone.

  “No, to stop Ren Lucre. To keep him from starting the war he wants between Creach and humans.”

  “Ren Lucre is a fool,” the werewolf spat.

  “There’s the saying, my Lord,” Daniel said. “That the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I know there is no love between vampires and werewolves. Perhaps –”

  “And what do you know of the relationship between vampire and werewolf?” Kaeden sneered.

  “He was a big Twilight fan,” Will said.

  Kaeden furrowed his brow and looked confused. I elbowed Will in the ribs.

  “Everyone knows of the hatred between our two races,” Eva said. “Even the Black Guard’s history books are filled with the werewolf victories over the vampire hordes.”

  I suppressed a grin and felt a little of my tension release. I liked the new sound of confidence and control coming from Eva. I just hoped she didn’t end up going too far.

  Kaeden shook his head. “I forget what it’s like to be human. To think of only a few generations as history. No, it was not always this way. It was not until Ren Lucre that things changed forever.”

  And then Kaeden, Lord of the Werewolves, told us a story that no human might have ever heard before. I stood there, fascinated, caught up in the intrigue and mystery of it all, but with a terrible thought brewing in the back of my mind. I realized the only reason he told us the story was because he didn’t expect any of us to live through the night.

  Chapter 24

  “I was born in Rome at the height of the Republic,” Kaeden said. “Rome was not only a city, it was an idea. A civilizing force that spread across the world, touching all of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East. Think of it; most of Europe lived in mud huts and barely scraped by while Rome bustled with a million citizens going to the theater, eating at restaurants, attending universities, and debating the great questions of the day in public buildings.”

  My head spun at the idea that I was speaking to someone who had actually been in ancient Rome, a place I knew only through history books. He was talking about a time nearly two thousand years ago.

  “I was born to a wealthy family. Our kind were called patricians, which was just a nice way of saying we were the privileged few who lived off the work of others. Mine was an old family, able to trace its roots back to Rome’s founding. My parents lived like royalty, and I, as their only child, was treated like a prince.”

  Kaeden’s eyes took on a distant look, and I expected he was deep into his memories now, reliving parts of his past as he told his tale.

  “I would like to say I was a go
od human for the few years when I was one of you, but that would be a lie,” he continued. “Maybe I was destined to be mean and cruel, spoiled the way I was. Servants to do anything I asked. No consequences for any bad behavior. Never required to do anything I didn’t want to do.”

  “Sounds like you were a spoiled brat,” Eva said.

  I flinched but Kaeden smiled at her.

  “Spoiled. Yes, that is the right word for it. Like a piece of fruit left in the sun, I became something soft and rotten. And the smell of my wretched self attracted a pest,” Kaeden said. “He was a young man, my same age and from one of the other old families of Rome. We traveled in the same circles, attended the same parties, behaved badly at the same taverns, but he always kept his distance from me. I thought nothing of it. Back then, all I cared about was my own good time. But one day he came to me with an offer.”

  “He was a werewolf?” Daniel asked.

  “No, he was human – if you can call someone so dark and mean-spirited human. But he was not of the Creach. Not yet. That was his offer.”

  “But if he wasn’t a Creach, how could he make you one?” I asked. Kaeden shot me a dirty look. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Go on. Please.”

  “When he came to me, we were both nearing our seventeenth birthdays. Things were different then, and we felt that we were men, not boys. We actually felt like we were getting old. That our fun was coming to an end. So when he suggested we do something about it, I was an easy sell.”

  “He wanted you to find a way to become a Creach with him,” Eva suggested.

  I noticed Kaeden didn’t mind interruptions from her like he did from Daniel and me. He gave her an approving smile that ticked me off. I wondered if I was going to have to get into a fight with the Lord of the Werewolves for trying to pick up the girl I liked. The idea was ridiculous, of course. Still, I ground my teeth seeing the way he looked at her.

  “Yes, his proposal was that we combine our gold to fund an expedition to capture one of the mythological beings we’d heard about growing up. We called them gods back then, but they weren’t any more gods than you and I are now,” he said to Eva. “Do you think of yourself as a god?”

  She shook her head. “More of a devil.”

  Kaeden laughed, annoyingly charming. “Exactly. But back then, we didn’t know anything. We were just boys going off to chase fairy tales. We packed as much wine as we did weapons for our expedition. I thought it was all in fun, but my new friend was deadly serious. While I wanted an adventure to break up the boredom of endless parties with the same people, my friend was after eternal life. I should have seen it then. He was consumed with it. Nothing was going to stop Vitus from getting what he wanted.”

  “Vitus?” I asked, shocked.

  This time Kaeden did not seemed annoyed but pleased.

  “Yes, Templar,” he said. “I’m glad to see you know him. I know Eva will access to memory of him, but I hoped that Shakra might have told you something of him as well.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Daniel whispered. “Told you what? Who’s Vitus?”

  Kaeden laughed. “He doesn’t know?” He shook his head in mock disdain. “Is that any way to treat your companions? I would have thought you would have told them your connection with Ren Lucre.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “They know Ren Lucre is my grandfather. I just never told them the story of how Ren Lucre lured an old vampire to his home and ended up being turned into a vampire by him. That old vampire’s name was Vitus.”

  Kaeden looked disappointed that he hadn’t found a weak spot in our group. I think he relished the idea of being the one to tell my friends I was related to our worst enemy. The fact that he thought I wouldn’t have told them made me realize he didn’t understand true friendship. I wondered if I could use that weakness later. I filed it away as Kaeden continued.

  “Yes, Vitus had allowed himself to become old and ugly by the time he stumbled across Ren Lucre. I say allowed himself because vampires can control their aging process completely. He could have looked the same as the day he became a vampire if he chose, but he decided to let himself become an old, bald man.”

  Kaeden ran a hand through his mane of long hair, and I thought I saw him shudder at the idea. For a second, I saw the spoiled brat, the Roman noble who wanted things his way. The handsome guy who loved nothing more than to find a mirror with himself in it.

  “He must have had his reasons,” Eva said.

  “I hope you will never have such reasons,” Kaeden said to her. “It would be a shame to allow such beauty to wither.”

  I cleared my throat, feeling a little ridiculous the second I did it. But I felt better when I saw that Daniel looked jealous too. Kaeden smirked at the two of us like we were all just teenage boys who all liked the same girl, and he knew he had the upper hand. I had to remind myself that only one of us was a two-thousand-year-old werewolf from ancient Rome.

  “But back then, Vitus was young and handsome,” Kaeden said. “Wealthy. Charming. Smart. And completely terrified of growing old. Much like your grandfather, he set out to discover ways to cheat death. To become something more than human.”

  “To become a monster,” Eva said.

  Kaeden nodded. “Yes, but one with eternal life. That was the goal.”

  “You make it sound like this was all Vitus,” Daniel said. “Like you were some innocent bystander.”

  Kaeden scowled and looked only at Eva when he answered.. “No, he began the quest, but I bought into his delusion. Together, we sent out emissaries. We poured our families’ gold into the search, nearly bankrupting ourselves in the process. But in the end, we found what we wanted. In fact, we found more than we’d bargained for.”

  Kaeden grew silent for a full minute, and we all let the time stretch out. He was clearly gearing himself up to tell us this last part of his story. My scalp tingled and my skin turned to gooseflesh as a cold wind passed through the great hall, making the burning torches flutter. It creeped me out. I had a hunch some evil power was at work, a power that didn’t like this story being told.

  Finally, Kaeden rose. I thought that he might of sensed the same power and changed his mind, but one look and I could tell he was determined to finish the tale. With his jaw set, staring into the distance like it he was lost in a different time and place, he told us the rest of his story.

  Chapter 25

  “There were stories being told in the Northern mountains, whispered over glasses of ale at taverns in the small towns, dark tales of a strange creature. Normally, the ravings of superstitious commoners would be ignored, but it was just the type of information Vitus and I were willing to pay gold to hear, so it made its way to us. Vitus was immediately excited and we set off to investigate. Just the two of us, without servants or guards, which made me very uneasy.

  “We arrived at a small village of Appia, long since crushed to dust by the grinding wheels of time. There we heard of missing children. Of dark shadows that appeared at dusk and moved like creatures without bodies. Of three-horned beasts with red skin and glowing red eyes. The more people we asked, the more versions we heard of the terror haunting that cursed place.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “What were they,” Kaeden corrected. “You see, we had sought out a single creature that could give us eternal life. Instead, we had stumbled onto the site of a truly historical occasion in Creach history. A meeting of the Council of Lords. The heads of all five Creach – werewolves, vampires, zombies, demons, and the last a collection of all the rest – goblins, harpies, bloodslugs and so on. The Lesser Creach.”

  “That’s impossible,” Daniel said. “Ren Lucre was the first to unite the Creach. It was the reason the Templars were born. That wasn’t for well over a thousand years later.”

  Kaeden shot Daniel such a look of disgust that Daniel’s face fell, almost looking ashamed of his comment.

  “Imply again that I’m a liar, and it won’t be the Boros that destroys you today, but my own hands a
round your neck. Am I clear?”

  Daniel swallowed hard and nodded.

  The werewolf sniffed and then closed his eyes, collecting his thoughts. “No, this was the first Conclave of the Lords. The threat of the Roman civilization was so great that they felt they had no choice. Rome had united the world of men. Given it roads, governments, and systems that connected it all together. They knew it must be stopped if the monsters were to remain strong. Rome had to fall.

  “I know all this because I heard them speak with my own ears. I won’t bore you with the details of how I was able to hear their meeting, how Vitus and I spent three days crawling on our stomachs through a cave-system, how we infiltrated the guards by covering ourselves with goblin blood, how many times we were almost discovered but some twist of fate saved us. It is enough to say we were there and we heard their plans.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, feeling stupid that I’d missed something. “What was their plan?”

  “To erase the threat, of course,” Kaeden said. “They plotted nothing less than the fall of the Roman Empire. And within a few generations, they achieved their goal. The world spiraled into a dark age that lasted for centuries.”

  “Wait,” Will said. “So you’re saying that the Roman Empire was brought down by the Creach? I thought it was the barbarians. You know, Nero fiddling while Rome burned and all that.”

  I was impressed Will had remembered his history, but not too surprised. I remembered the same lesson from our World History class, but Kaeden shook his head.

  “Almost all of man’s history is wrong,” Kaeden said. “You should know this by now. The Creach operate behind the scenes, moving things in the direction that suits them. Ren Lucre has become the master at it, getting ready for his final war.”

  I caught the bitterness in his voice that bordered on hatred for Ren Lucre and tried to think of a way to use it to our advantage. But before I could say anything, he continued.