Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Jack Templar Chronicles Book 5) (3 page)

“Don’t worry, Daniel,” I said softly. “We’ll get you to the farmhouse where Aquinas can help. Once we get there, everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

I felt comfortable making that promise, but it turned out that only one of those things was true.

T
he farmhouse
where we’d last seen Master Aquinas and the remaining young hunters was burnt to the ground. Every building. Every barn. The fencing. Even the gardens and the crops in the field were all torched so the entire hillside was black and lifeless.

I used my sword to poke through the charred remains of the main farmhouse, but all I found were scorched tiles from the caved-in roof, shards of pottery from what must have been the kitchen, and piles of ash from the destroyed walls. As much as I hated seeing the debris, I was grateful we’d found no bones in the wreckage – so far.

The others were spread out to the burned out husks where outbuildings once stood on the property. As I watched them explore, looking for clues about what had happened here, I tried to remember how many young hunters had been gathered here with Aquinas the last time we’d visited. Three dozen? Four? More than enough so that if they’d been overrun and killed, we were sure to find some kind of remains. Even if ogres had done the job, there would be bones left. Gnawed on from their feasting on the bodies, but bones nonetheless.

“Anything?” I shouted.

Will, T-Rex, and Eva looked up from their prospective ruins and shook their heads. I noticed how each of them gravitated to part of the property that had meant the most to us. I was in the main house where most of the young hunters had been staying. Will kicked through the blackened remains of the barn where the armory and the training grounds had been. T-Rex was near me, digging through what had been the kitchen, lifting pots filled with ash and soot, some of them lopsided and partially melted from the heat of the fire. Eva was farther away, out at the barn where Master Aquinas had kept her caged, rehabilitating her back to health and teaching her control over her vampire form.

All of us were looking for some answer as to what had happened here, but none of us wanted to be the one to find the first body.

“Over here,” Xavier shouted.

We all turned toward him. He was supposed to stay by Daniel, laid out on the stretcher we’d carried him on for the last five days, but instead he was at the far edge of the field waving his hands frantically. We hurried over to him.

“What is it?” I called.

Xavier held up a black arrow with barbs down the entire shaft. I’d seen a weapon like that before, back at the Academy when the goblin army attacked. In fact, one just like it had struck Master Aquinas when she used her body to protect me during the onslaught.

Eva held out her hand, and Xavier handed the arrow over. She lifted it to her nose and sniffed its length.

“Master Aquinas,” she said. “I can smell her blood on it.”

“New or from before?” Will asked.

“It’s old. If it were recent, I could have smelled it from thirty yards away,” she said.

I tried not to show my repulsion at the idea of her smelling blood in the air, let alone being able to identify whose it was. I wasn’t successful though. Eva frowned at me and then stabbed the arrow into the ground.

“You asked,” she mumbled.

I grabbed the arrow and handed it back to Xavier. “Show me where it was. Exactly.”

Xavier took the arrow, careful not to hold it where any of the barbs stuck out. He walked a few steps to an enormous oak tree, bent down, and positioned the arrow on the ground, backside first so the sharp point stuck out.

“So it obviously wasn’t shot here,” Will said. “Could be a trap.”

“What made you look over here, Xavier?” T-Rex asked.

“This was where Master Aquinas conducted many of her lessons. She loved this tree. Said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge back at the Academy.”

I looked the tree over, thinking it a poor substitute for the massive tree at the Academy that used to house four living levels connected by ladders and pulley systems. Still, I saw the resemblance and could imagine why Master Aquinas had been attracted to it.

“She knew you’d come here,” Eva said.

“I guess,” Xavier shrugged.

“Then maybe it is a sign from Aquinas,” Will said.

For the first time since cresting the hill and seeing the old Spanish farmhouse burned to the ground, I felt a glimmer of hope. I crouched down next to the arrow and studied the angle where it pointed.

“Are you certain this is exactly where you found it?” I asked.

Xavier turned his head to one side, then closed his eyes. He had a photographic memory, and I knew he was recalling the exact moment he’d found the arrow. He opened his eyes and looked at its position. “No, it was more like this.”

He moved the point to the right a few degrees and down a couple of inches. “There, that’s it,” he said with confidence.

“Maybe it’s the direction of their escape?” suggested Eva.

“Or the direction she wants us to go to get the next Jerusalem Stone,” Will said.

I wasn’t so sure about that. Master Aquinas was many things, but vague about communicating her wishes wasn’t one of them. Certainly, running for her life through the woods as the farm burned behind them in an attack probably didn’t give her much time to get her point across. Still, I felt like I was missing something.

I got low to the ground and looked down the end of the shaft. It pointed to a tree twenty yards away – to what appeared to be a hole in the trunk.

“There,” I said excitedly.

We ran over to the tree, and I cupped my hands to let Will climb up to the hole. After a little struggle, he reached the hole and looked inside.

“What do you see?” T-Rex asked.

Will reached in and moved his hand around. He brought it out and shook his head. “Nothing.”

Will jumped out of the tree and landed in the middle of us.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“It only goes a foot back. If there was anything in there, I would have felt it.”

“Xavier, are you sure you had the position right?” I asked. “This has to be a message from Aquinas. We just have to figure out –”

“Look under the arrow,” said a deep voice behind us.

We all turned. On reflex, I pulled my sword. Even when I saw who it was, I didn’t lower it.

“Daniel,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and reassuring. “Surprised to see you up and around.”

D
aniel stood behind us
, leaning on a tree for support.

He’d lost the fake nose he usually wore to cover the hole in his face where a shrieker had clawed it away. As many times as I’d seen it, the missing nose still made my skin crawl. I was thankful I’d found a supply of extra prosthetic noses when I rummaged through Daniel’s bag. He might have been a werewolf, but he still cared about his good looks. He had the beginnings of a scruffy beard from the last five days, a reminder that he was a few years older than me and even capable of growing whiskers. It made him look a lot older and more like a man than a teenager, but that wasn’t what threw me off. The scruff actually made him look more like a wolf.

He still had the bindings around his wrists and the thick metal collar around his neck. If he transformed into a werewolf again, we’d at least be able to control him.

“I gathered that from the litter you’ve been dragging me around in and the empty casings of Xavier’s knockout gas right next to it. Not to mention this,” he said, tugging at the iron collar around his neck. “Chained up like a dog. Nice.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly playing nice with others,” I said, casting a quick look over at Eva. “You would have killed each other if we didn’t do something.”

Daniel held up the hand not bracing him against the tree. “Don’t worry, I get it. I’m not upset.” He looked over at Eva. “I didn’t … you know … hurt you, did I?”

Eva barked out a coarse laugh. “Fat chance of that happening.”

I noticed that she kept her distance from Daniel, backing away from him as she spoke. I shuddered, remembering how she smelled the arrow to get a whiff of Aquinas’s blood that was months old. No doubt she could also smell the werewolf blood in Daniel’s veins.

Daniel must have noticed her reaction because even though he looked relieved that he hadn’t hurt her, he seemed hurt by her reaction to him.

“So, you’re not mad?” Will asked, sounding surprised.

“I’m more upset you didn’t keep me knocked out,” Daniel replied. “I’m still a little out of it, so that might be why I’m not turning. I can’t control it. I think you should knock me out again. Like right now.”

“I ran out of materials to make the gas,” Xavier explained. “I was counting on getting more here.”

Daniel looked back at the destroyed farmhouses. “Doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, does it?” He stood and stretched, shaking out his muscles and stretching his neck. When he was done, he no longer needed to lean against the tree. His strength was coming back to him quickly.

I realized I still had my sword out and pointed toward him. I slid it back to my side. It wasn’t that I felt safe, I just felt rude pointing it at my old friend.

“Like I said, have you looked under the arrow yet?” Daniel asked. “It would be just like Aquinas. An arrow pointing somewhere as ruse, the real clue right underneath it.”

Will pulled up the arrow and dug in the soft dirt beneath it. I kept my eye on Daniel, glancing between him and Eva. The last thing I wanted was to have to stop a fight between them. But Daniel seemed in control and Eva kept her distance, so I figured we were all right.

“Got something,” Will shouted.

He pulled out a small metal case about the size of a shoebox and put it on the ground. Brushing off the moist dirt stuck to it, he uncovered a raised image of two knights sharing a horse, the insignia of the Templar Knights. Below it were the Latin words every monster hunter lived by,
Operor vestri officium adveho quis
, Latin for “Do your duty, come what may.”

“Open it,” T-Rex said.

Will did and pulled out a tightly wound piece of parchment and a folded letter. He handed me the parchment and opened the letter.

“Dear Jack. If you’ve found this, it means you’ve survived the Lord of the Werewolves,” Will read aloud. “Your quest is nearly halfway done. You’ve gone farther and accomplished more than you likely thought possible. Only now …” Will paused as he read ahead to himself.

“Come on, Will,” I said. “What does it say?”

He cleared his throat. “Only now you will have to face a challenge far greater than anything you’ve yet encountered. The Lord of the Demons rules from his throne in the Underworld, a terrible place where no living creature is meant to go.”

“Sounds like fun,” Daniel quipped, although his tone didn’t have its usual ring of confidence.

“The map included in this box is the only one of its kind,” Will continued. “Once there were many gates to the Underworld, but one by one they’ve disappeared, permanently sealed to keep the demon horde underground.”

“Demon horde?” T-Rex asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Will kept going. “Go to ancient Rome, in the old Forum. There you must rediscover the Lacus Curtius.”

“What? No rhyme?” Daniel asked. “About time someone just gave us some plain directions.”

“Maybe Aquinas couldn’t while fighting,” T-Rex said.

“The word ‘rediscover’ doesn’t sound very promising,” Will added.

“Right,” I said. “Lacus Curtius doesn’t mean much to me either. Xavier, could you fill us in?”

“Yeah, sorry to say, but these aren’t really simple directions. Lacus Curtius. It’s from ancient Rome,” Xavier explained. “Around 300 BC if I remember it right. The story is that a chasm opened in the middle of the city, right in the Forum where all the shops and markets were located. It started as a crack in the ground and then grew wider and wider, with bad smelling smoke rising from it.”

“Sounds like a volcano or something,” Daniel said.

“Anyway, the Romans weren’t very excited about having this big crack in the middle of their city, so they tried to seal it up. They poured mountains of rock and gravel into it, but it grew wider. They tried binding the crack together using their most brilliant engineers. Nothing. Finally, they went for help to the one source they thought might be able to help. The Oracle. Jack, you’ve met her.”

I shuddered at the memory of my encounter with the Oracle. In the end, she’d come around and helped us defeat the Lord of the Werewolves, but not before trying to kill me off. “Yeah, I’ve met her. What did she say it was?”

“A gate to the Underworld is my guess,” Eva said.

“Exactly,” Xavier replied. “But she was able to tell them how to close the gap. All they had to do, according to the Oracle, was throw the thing Rome held most dear into the pit and it would be sealed up.”

“Again with the riddles,” Daniel grumbled.

“So what did they throw in?” T-Rex asked.

“They tried gold. Piles of it,” Xavier said. “But it didn’t work. They tried food. Banners from Rome’s victories at war. Nothing worked.”

“Throw in what Rome holds most dear,” I said, thinking it over. Finally, I shook my head. “What was it?”

“It was a young soldier named Marcus Curtius who figured it out,” Xavier continued. “After watching all the other items fail, he decided that the city elders had it all wrong. What Rome truly held most dear wasn’t gold or food or victories in war – it was the bravery of her young men and women because they were Rome’s future.”

“But how could that help?” Will asked. “They couldn’t very well throw all the young men and women into the pit just to see if he was right.”

“They didn’t need to,” Xavier said. “Marcus Curtius put on his best armor, took his family sword and selected his finest warhorse. With the city watching, he charged at the wide gap, yelling his battle cry. His horse jumped as if to clear the crack but only made it halfway. Horse and rider tumbled down into the Earth as an offering of what Rome held most dear. Once they disappeared, the earth shook, the crack closed in on itself and never reopened. After that it kept the name Lacus Curtius, meaning the Lake of Curtius, because a small pond formed over the closed up area.”

“But if the gate closed up over two thousand years ago, then why is Master Aquinas sending us there to look for it?” Daniel asked. “Is there anything more to her message?”

Will was already reading the scroll when Daniel asked the question. He read, shaking his head.

“Go on,” I said. “What does it say?”

“Not much else,” he replied before reading the rest. “The gate to the Underworld will not be easy to find. It may, in fact, be sealed off. If so, you must visit the old haunted places of Rome to find a clue as to where to go next. But please be safe. It was in Rome that your father was nearly killed in his own pursuit of the Jerusalem Stones.”

Will paused and looked up at me. He knew that my father’s attempt to gather the Jerusalem Stones and the circumstances of his capture by Ren Lucre was one of the great mysteries since this whole adventure had started. The mystery was only deepened by my dreamlike meeting with my mother when I’d drowned back in Sunnyvale. At the end of that meeting, when I was being dragged back into my physical body, my mother had called out to me, begging for forgiveness for what happened to my father.

And then when the Lord of the Vampires revealed that she was my mother’s twin sister, she also cryptically talked about my father and the sacrifice my mother made for him. None of it made any sense. Even so, as much as I wanted answers to the mystery, I tried to focus on the fact that my father was still alive and being held in Ren Lucre’s dungeon. Finding the Jerusalem Stones would not only stop Ren Lucre and his gathering army, but free my father. Once I did that, he would be able to tell me everything.

“Go on, Will,” I said. “What else does she say?”

Will turned the sheet over and read the rest to us. “Please know that we are safe at a location I do not wish to mention lest this message fall into the wrong hands. I pray for your safety and for your success in this all-important mission. You must not fail, Jack. The world depends on it. Do your duty, come what may.” Will looked up. “And then there’s her signature.”

I carefully undid the ribbon holding the scroll together and rolled out the map, my eyes darting back and forth across the page trying to make sense of it. Xavier reached out and gently turned it around in my hands.

“That might be easier to read,” he said.

I grinned, feeling foolish. Not for the first time, I wondered how it was possible that I’d somehow become the key to stopping the end of the world. It felt like whoever was running things had a pretty twisted sense of humor.

“It’s a map of safe havens between here and Italy,” I said, understanding the map easily now that it was right side up. “This should make our trip easier.”

“What about him?” Eva said from behind me.

I turned and saw she was pointing at Daniel.

“I can’t be knocked out the whole time,” Daniel said. “We’ll never get there.” He looked at me. “And you need me. You need my strength.”

“Your ring, Jack,” Xavier said, excitedly.

On reflex, I rubbed the Templar Ring on my finger that I’d recovered from the Cave of Trials at the Academy. It was a thin band of gold that didn’t appear to be anything special, except that it did odd things from time-to-time like unlock a door or give me bursts of nearly superhuman power.

“What about it?” I asked, feeling possessive, a little like Gollum in
Lord of the Rings
. I hadn’t started to call it
my precious
yet, but I had grown attached to it.

“He’s right,” Will said. “The ring transformed the werewolf Tiberon back into a man.”

“So you could reverse what’s happened to Daniel?” T-Rex said. “Could’ve thought of that days ago. No offense, Daniel, but you’re a real pain to carry.”

Daniel ignored that comment. He was staring me down.

“Do you think it could work?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t change him back. I just released him from a curse. And, if you remember, he didn’t turn back into a man; he turned into a spirit that just kind of drifted away.”

The excitement of the group went out like a light switch. We’d all seen Tiberon’s spirit transform. The thought of Daniel doing the same made playing with powers we didn’t understand suddenly less appealing.

Just then, the ring turned warm on my finger. I placed my other hand over it and squeezed, but I knew the sensation. The ring rarely woke up, and when it did, it was at a time of its own choosing. Slowly, I heard the ring speaking to me. Not in any language I could repeat, just in images, in senses, a deep knowing that filled my body. Just as quickly as it was there, it was gone. The warmth disappeared, leaving behind only knowledge of what I had to do.

Reluctantly, I slid the ring from my finger. I clutched it in my fist, nearly reversing my decision and putting it back on. Instead, I tossed it to Daniel who caught it deftly out of the air.

“What are you doing?” Eva snarled. “If he turns, he could have even more power than he already does.”

I shook my head. “As long as he wears the ring, he won’t turn.”

Daniel held up the ring, turning it so that he could look at it from each side.

“How can you know that?” Eva asked.

“Because the ring just told me,” I replied quietly.

That did the trick. Eva turned away, obviously not happy but with no argument against my decision. We all watched as Daniel held the ring in front of his finger, pausing. I wondered if he was still picturing Tiberon dissolving into air.

“Well, here goes nothing,” he said.

He closed his eyes and slid on the ring. His eyes flew open, bulging. He gasped for air, making choking sounds.

T-Rex let out a little scream.

Daniel’s pained expression turned in a smile as he started laughing. “Got you,” he said. “You should have seen your faces.”

“Well, looks like you’re still a jerk,” Eva said. “That’s a good sign it’s working.”

There was a silent pause, and then we all burst out laughing, a much needed tension release.

“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s look through the farm one more time for supplies and then get out of here. We have an appointment to keep in the Underworld with the Lord of the Demons.”