by Jeff Gunhus
“Are you all right, Michael?” Master Aquinas asked.
The man nodded. “I underestimated the power of the three together,” he said. “I nearly failed. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to try to resist the five. Perhaps we have been too hard on John Templar for all these years. Perhaps it was impossible for him to resist.”
The Colonel slammed a hand on the table, and we turned toward him. “I never want it suggested again that what that traitor did was anything but unforgivable,” he said, his voice pure venom. “Is that understood?”
I saw Master Aquinas and Michael share a knowing look. Unfortunately, the Colonel noticed it too.
“The two of you are here under my protection,” he said, barely controlling the rage in his voice. “Your safety is completely dependent on my men...and my patience with you. You’ll do well to remember that.”
He turned and strode toward the door.
“We have to discuss our course of action,” Kahn called. “We haven’t decided yet.”
“We’ve talked enough,” the Colonel said. “We’ll meet back here in an hour. I will tell you then what plan I’ve decided on.”
With that, he left the room, slamming the door.
“What got into him?” Ritgo said.
“That talk about John Templar is what did it,” Ariel said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say the name without the word traitor attached to it.”
Kahn cleared his throat and nodded in my direction.
“Oh, sorry,” Ariel said. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “I’m tired of everyone except me knowing what my dad did.”
“He doesn’t know?” Ritgo said. “How is that possible? Eh, Aquinas. Why haven’t you told the boy?”
“The reasons are obvious,” Kahn said. “Besides, what do we really know anyway? Only what captured Creach have told us. It could all be misinformation.”
“Not so,” Ritgo said. “Michael, you’re the official scribe. Tell Kahn here we know what happened as well as we know anything else in our history.”
“This is true,” said Michael.
“See?” Ritgo said.
“That is to say,” Michael continued, “we know only parts of it, cobbled together from many perspectives, all interpreting the event with their own point of view and bias. Just like all history, our version of it is only one variation.”
Kahn raised his eyebrows. “See?”.
“I get it,” I said. “But I’d like to hear whatever version you have. I think I’m entitled.”
“Entitled?” Master Aquinas said. Her voice sounded strong again; every minute without the Stone near her made her look better. “That’s a strange choice of word. What makes you entitled?”
“I’ve done as you asked. I’ve talked my friends into coming with me to risk their lives pursuing the Jerusalem Stones. Two of them now have Creach blood flowing through their veins, but they’re still here.” I almost blurted out that Hester had also sacrificed herself for the cause and now, according to Master Aquinas, was being forced to fight against us. But the way Master Aquinas had whispered to me made me decide to hold my tongue. “I’ve reclaimed three of the five. I’ve found the Templar Ring. And now all I want is to know what happened to my mother and father.”
The room fell silent. The new hunters I’d just met wouldn’t look me in the eye. Even Michael looked away, staring at Master Aquinas as if waiting for her lead.
Finally, she took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “You’re right, Jack. You deserve to know the truth.”
“Take care with that word,” Michael said. “Truth is an absolute. Total good or total evil. This story is neither of those, but, like most things in the world, a combination of the two. We’d all do well to remember that.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
Master Aquinas turned to the others. “We have an hour. I do not think the story will take that long, but you are free to leave if you’d like.”
“Are you kidding?” Kahn said. “This is too good to pass up.”
“If he’s staying, then I am too,” Ritgo said.
Ariel folded her arms and sat in her chair.
“Very well,” Master Aquinas said. “Michael, will you tell it? I’m afraid I’m too close to the matter. I can’t be sure I would be able to get through it all.”
“Of course,” Michael said. He turned to face me, his blue eyes burning. “Your father was one of the best hunters of his generation. He was a tremendous talent, a sharp wit, and a man who felt things strongly. That last attribute, I’m afraid, would lead to his undoing. And turn him into one of the greatest traitors in the history of the Black Watch.” He closed his eyes. “Or one of our greatest heroes, depending on your point of view.”
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me everything.”
9
“We knew from our genealogy charts that your father was the final son in the bloodline of Hugues de Payens, the French knight who first formed the Knights Templar.” Michael’s voice was low and steady. “It was Payens who took up residence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in the year 1120, telling the world that the Knights were there to protect travelers, especially the Crusaders, outside the city walls. In reality, he’d formed the Black Guard and come to fight the rising Creach threat. There was a new leader, a vampire named Ren Lucre, who was organizing the monsters into a fighting force that could challenge mankind.
“But the location of their headquarters was no accident. Far beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque were the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. After months of secret excavations, they discovered the Jerusalem Stones, and Hugues de Payens himself carried them into battle to defeat the Creach. The Knights Templar, with this great power at their disposal, fast became one of the greatest powers in Europe. But the Lord of the Creach, Ren Lucre, managed to infiltrate the corridors of power throughout the kingdoms, whispering lies to the royalty until they saw the Templars as a threat. Then a Templar named Tiberon was captured and tortured by Ren Lucre, and Tiberon revealed the location of the Jerusalem Stones to the Creach Lord. Because of this traitor’s actions, the––”
“He wasn’t a traitor,” I blurted.
“Excuse me?” Michael said.
I looked around the table. Everyone had a shocked expression except for Master Aquinas who simply nodded in agreement.
“I knew Tiberon,” I said. The others mumbled in hushed voices, not sure what to make of the claim that I knew someone over seven hundred years old. “He was cursed and lived in the forest outside the Monster Hunter Academy walls. He saved my life more than once. He and his wolves saved the Academy.”
“Maybe he did all that,” Ritgo growled, “but it doesn’t change the fact that he betrayed to Ren Lucre the location of the Jerusalem Stones. Everyone knows what he did and what it caused.”
I didn’t have a good answer to that. Tiberon himself had admitted his guilt from giving in under Ren Lucre’s terrible torture. As his punishment, he’d lived with that guilt for centuries. I remembered the way the power of the Templar Ring had released him from the curse and how he’d drifted up into the sky as a man and not the wolf Ren Lucre had made him. I was sure he’d earned his forgiveness.
But Ritgo was right. It still didn’t change the betrayal.
“Once Tiberon revealed the location of the Jerusalem Stones,” Michael continued, “it wasn’t long before Ren Lucre made his move against the Templar Knights and the Black Guard. On an October day in 1307, the Templars were rounded up and arrested. This was on a Friday the thirteenth.”
“Which started the idea that Friday the thirteenth is bad luck,” Ritgo said, obviously pleased with himself. Ariel rolled her eyes and Kahn gave him a polite clap.
Michael continued. “It was bad luck, at least for the last Templar Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, a descendent of de Payens and your ancestor. On your father’s side of course.”
I looked away from Michael’s stare. On my father’s side b
ecause my ancestor on my mother’s side was none other than Ren Lucre. I’d told Will, Eva, and the others, but I felt embarrassed that these strangers might know my secret.
“Jacques de Molay was tied to a stake and burned alive for heresy. All while Ren Lucre looked on, plotting his next move against the human race. Especially since he possessed the Jerusalem Stones, giving him enough power to pull the Creach from the shadows and have them rule the world.”
This part I was interested in. I’d always wondered why Ren Lucre hadn’t used the Jerusalem Stones to cement his power. “As I understood it, each of the Creach Lords was given one of the Jerusalem Stones for safekeeping.”
“Power never gives up power,” Kahn said. “Never willingly, anyway.”
“Only a man would say that,” Ariel said. “Women know peace comes with both strength and compromise. A woman would give power freely if it meant peace.”
I thought through the rogue’s gallery of Creach I’d met in my journey so far, trying to think who might have been responsible for giving the Stones away. “My mother?” I asked. “Did she give the Stones to the Creach Lords?”
It was Master Aquinas who spoke this time. “No, it would be seven centuries before your mother broke Ren Lucre’s heart. And the day it happened was the second time he was betrayed by a daughter.”
I got it immediately, hitting me like a slap across the face. Shakra, the Lord of the Vampires. She was once Caroline, Ren Lucre’s daughter who he’d transformed into a vampire in a desperate attempt to avoid ever losing her. She’d done it. She’d taken the Jerusalem Stones.
“Why did she do it?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Michael said. “Perhaps she wanted the power to herself. Perhaps she thought she could control the other Lords once she gave them the Stones.”
“Perhaps she knew her father well enough to know the consequences for mankind if he were to have the Jerusalem Stones,” Aquinas said. “I like to believe there was still enough humanity left in her that she refused to let Ren Lucre destroy millions of lives.”
Ritgo threw his hands into the air. “Like that Creach cared at all about human lives. Not likely.”
“She saved my life,” I said. “And those of my friends.”
“I heard she turned your friend into a vampire,” Kahn said, his purring voice really starting to get on my nerves. “Funny way to save someone.”
“Another vampire had run her through with a sword,” I said. “She was going to die. The Lord of the Vampires asked my permission to change her and I gave it.” The words came out fast and louder than I’d intended. It came out like a confession, but I didn’t know what I hoped to accomplish with it. I guess the Black Death motto, The only good Creach is a dead one, had me rattled. My Aunt Sophie had been a demon-wolf and she’d sacrificed her life to save mine. My aunt, The Lord of the Vampires, had done the same thing in the fight with her own vampire hoard in the catacombs under Paris. Ritgo and the others didn’t seem impressed. Only Michael seemed interested.
“I’d like to hear about that particular adventure at some point,” Michael said. “For the official record.”
“If we don’t move faster, we won’t need an official record,” Ariel said. “We’ll all be dead.”
I agreed. I was all too aware of the minutes counting down before the Colonel would be back. We were running out of time.
“Whatever the reason, the Jerusalem Stones were distributed to the five Creach Lords,” I said. “But Ren Lucre remained in power?”
“He is as cunning as he is evil,” Michael said. “He turned his daughter’s betrayal into an advantage, telling the Lords the gift came from him so that they could all be equals.”
“But from that day forward, Ren Lucre craved nothing more than to have the five Jerusalem Stones once again,” Master Aquinas said. “A feat he nearly accomplished just fourteen years ago.”
“And that’s where my father comes in?” I asked.
Michael nodded. “Perhaps you should tell this part, Master Aquinas. You were, after all, more than just an observer in these events.”
Master Aquinas lowered her head. “Which is why you, Michael, are better suited to tell it.”
“As you wish,” Michael said and turned to me. “Your father was one of the most promising hunters in the Black Watch. Only a select few of us knew that his bloodline made him a direct descendent of both Jacques de Molay and Hugues de Payens. Even he did not know that his blood meant that he was the last true Templar knight, part of the bloodline that led straight through history to the discovery of the Jerusalem Stones.”
“Why did you keep the truth from him?” I asked, feeling some of the cold anger I’d felt once I realized the Black Guard had used me as bait to capture or kill Ren Lucre back in Sunnyvale.
“We thought we were protecting him,” Master Aquinas said. “But it became clear once he reached his teen years that he was unlike those around him. The rest of the hunters at the Academy looked up to him. Idolized him, really. These hunters became the new leadership once they reached their twenties. They were going to change the world.”
“Until your father met a young woman. And that chance meeting changed everything,” Michael said.
“No,” shouted a voice from the back wall. “It ruined everything.”
It was the Colonel. He walked slowly to the table, taking a position behind his chair, gripping the back of it. I found myself dreading his presence.
“That day John stopped being one of us,” he said. “Instead, he became one of them.”
“That’s one interpretation,” Master Aquinas said slowly. “Another is that he fell in love. So deeply in love, in fact, that when she turned out to be a vampire, daughter to Lord of all of the Creach, it made no difference to him. And, by all measures, she fell in love with him just as deeply, because she didn’t care when she found out he was part of the Black Guard.”
The Colonel shoved the chair forward and it banged against the table. “She knew exactly who he was. She played him from the beginning. She knew exactly what she was doing the whole time.”
“They had a child together,” Master Aquinas said, her voice so soft that it was nearly a whisper. “And you still think it was a trick?”
“How do we know this boy is even hers?” he said, snarling. “How do we know he hasn’t been sent here by Ren Lucre himself as a spy?”
“Trevor!” Master Aquinas snapped, her voice fully recovered now. She sounded like a teacher scolding a student. The Colonel winced and looked unsure of himself, but only for a second.
“Do any of you believe this boy could have acquired the Jerusalem Stones on his own?” the Colonel said. He pointed at Ritgo. “You said the same thing yourself. Just look at him.”
“Yes…but…” Ritgo sputtered. “The Stones are real.”
“He’s not suggesting they’re not,” Kahn said quietly, slowly twirling a knife in his hand. “He’s saying that perhaps Ren Lucre has allowed the boy to acquire the Stones as a way to lure us into some kind of trap. An interesting possibility when you consider it.”
My fear was slowly giving way to anger at the accusations. I stood up quickly, shoving my chair backward. The others must have been on edge because they jumped up, hands on the weapons nearest them.
Only Aquinas remained seated.
“So this is how we treat the last hope we have of reaching peace and balance,” she said. “This how we treat the One foretold in prophecy?”
“The last Templar who will end the war forever,” Michael added.
The Colonel walked around the table until he stood behind her chair. “A fairytale we teach our children.”
“The Stones look real to me,” Ariel said.
“Yes, they are real,” the Colonel said, “a power we can harness against our enemy. But the prophecy. It’s not about peace and balance – it’s about ending the war forever. Aquinas, it’s you who makes the leap to co-existence and balance. But there is another way to end the war forever. It’s
so obvious that I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.” He crouched down until his mouth was next to her ear. “You kill them all. You kill every Creach, male and female, adult and child. Because once your enemy is destroyed, there is no war to be fought. The Jerusalem Stones aren’t the path to peace. They are the path to the absolute annihilation of our enemy.”
“Yes,” Ritgo bellowed. “With the power of the Jerusalem Stones, we can vanquish the Creach forever.” He pointed at the map on the wall where I noticed a large black X marking the Lord of the Zombies. “I say we go to the lair of the Lord of the Zombies in force and take the fourth Stone.”
“My spies tell me that the Lord of the Lesser Creach has fled to Ren Lucre’s castle,” Kahn said. “It’ll be impossible to get to him without finishing off Ren Lucre’s entire army.”
“Then four will be enough,” Ritgo said. “I say march on the zombies and then use the Stones in the attack on Ren Lucre’s castle.”
“For once I agree with the Neanderthal,” Kahn said, picking up a second knife from the table. “The only good Creach is a dead one.”
I looked at each of them around the table. I straightened my back and tried to appear as confident as possible as I said the words I knew would break Master Aquinas’s heart.
“None of you know me,” I said. “Master Aquinas thinks she does, but she has not been through what I’ve been through these last few months. She’s not seen the price my friends and I have paid to acquire the three Stones we have so far.”
“Jack––” Master Aquinas said, but I help up my hand.
“I’m not my father,” I said. “I have no love for the Creach other than my two friends who were transformed, and I will do anything to transform them back into their human forms.” I pulled three Stones from my pocket and held them out in my open hand. “You want these? Take them. Use them how you see fit. Or tell me how you want me to use them if you think that will kill more Creach. Because I want this war over. And if that means killing every last Creach in the world, then so be it.”