by Jeff Gunhus
“Thank you,” T-Rex said to no-one in particular. “I thought my feet were going to fall off.”
“That would have made a nice snack for one of the zombies behind us,” Will said.
“Actually, zombies tend not eat muscle and bone as much as soft tissues like organs,” Xavier said. “Especially brains, of course.”
I could tell T-Rex was imagining that because he suddenly didn’t look so good.
“I think Will was just kidding,” Daniel said.
“Oh,” Xavier said.
I patted Xavier on the back. “Let’s get into those rocks so these zombies don’t have a chance to eat any of that stuff either.”
Will nudged T-Rex. “If they ate Jack’s brains, they might starve. Get it?”
“Yeah,” T-Rex said, still looking sick. “Hilarious.”
I chuckled, loving that these two guys hadn’t really changed since we’d started hanging out together in kindergarten. We made our way over to the boulders and picked our way through them. There was as nice open space in middle of it all. We certainly weren’t the first travelers to have found the shelter. A blackened pit in the middle showed where fires had been made by visitors for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Fortunately, the most recent visitor to the spot had left behind a small pile of wood covered with branches. Ariel and Daniel pulled these back, shaking off the snow, and quickly got a fire started. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that, on Hester’s command, zombies had formed an interlocking circle around the boulders. Hopefully that would be enough to keep any wanderers from walking toward the flames.
Hester signaled she was ready and I took out the third Jerusalem Stone and Hester transformed into her human form. Will, T-Rex and Xavier handed out the last of our food from the backpacks we had with us. Protein bars and beef jerky. The diet of champions. Or at least of monster hunters stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
“How far are we?” Daniel asked.
Hester took a bite of a protein bar, savoring it like a finely cooked meal. It occurred to me that she hadn’t eaten food since becoming a zombie. Not any kind of food I wanted to think about anyway.
“Not far. Two miles maybe,” she said.
“That’s almost too close,” Eva said, shifting her weight comfortably on the rock she occupied next to the fire. “It’s likely Ren Lucre will have sentries posted.”
Hester shook her head. “He won’t. Wouldn’t matter anyway.”
“What do you mean it wouldn’t matter?” Ariel asked.
“He already knows we’re here,” she said.
Everyone tensed, looking nervously into the shadows between the rocks as if the Lord of the Creach might jump out. I felt the same way.
“Wait, he knows we’re coming? That can’t be true, can it?” Will said.
“Her blood,” Hester said, pointing at Eva. “The Jerusalem Stones Jack carries,” she added pointing at me. “The Stone I carry,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “They all speak to him. Our arrival will not be a surprise.”
Daniel stood up, running both hands through his hair nervously. He looked at me. “Did you know?”
I nodded. “Not for sure. But I can feel his presence. It stands to reason that he can feel mine.”
“Stands to reason?” Daniel said. “Did you think it might be useful to share this information with the rest of us?”
“Would it have changed anything?” Eva asked.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“Then what is the point?” Ariel asked, wading into the conversation for the first time. “We’re here. This is the information we have. Nothing changes in the plan as far as I see it.”
“The element of surprise is an essential part of an asymmetrical attack,” Xavier said, sounding like he was quoting from some book he’d read in a dusty library. “If we don’t have surprise on our side, do we think this will still work?”
No one said anything for a while. The fire crackled, sending sparks up into the night sky to mix in with the green glow of the Northern Lights. There really was no good answer to Xavier’s question. No answer anyone could give with any certainty. As the silence drew out, I noticed eyes slowly turning to me. I realized that the question had been asked to the group, but the answer was expected to come from me.
“I don’t know if it will work,” I said. “Let’s be honest. There’s a lot going against us. Ren Lucre is a tough customer. Not only that, but the Lord of the Lesser Creach is there too, probably with an army of goblins, orcs, trolls, harpies, screechers, minotaurs, you name it. Heck, he probably even has a mug-wump or two in the mix.”
“It’s all fun and games until someone gets eaten by a mug-wump,” Xavier said.
This got a little chuckle from the group, a much-needed tension release.
“Even without all that, Ren Lucre is a thousand-year-old vampire who’s been getting ready for this war for centuries. He’s locked behind the walls of his castle and he surely has a plan for any attack.”
“If this is supposed to be a motivational speech, it’s not really going the right direction,” Will said.
“I wish there was better news,” I said. “But this is what we’re up against. On the plus side, the Lord of the Lesser Creach has the fifth Jerusalem Stone, so we know where it’s at.”
“And Ren Lucre can sense me,” Hester said. “But he doesn’t know I’m with you. And he won’t know I’m going to use my zombie army against him until it’s too late.”
“So we do have the element of surprise,” Xavier said.
“Hopefully,” Eva said. “But you said it yourself, Ren Lucre’s a thousand years old. He didn’t survive this long by taking chances. He’ll be cautious. He might see through us.”
“He might,” I agreed. “And that’s why each of you needs to make your own decision whether to come or not.”
This immediately led to protests from the group, as I knew it would. I held up my hand and they fell quiet.
“This isn’t like the other times,” I said. “This is more dangerous than anything we’ve done.”
“We went to the Underworld,” Daniel said. “In case you forgot, that was pretty dangerous.”
The others laughed softly.
“I get it,” I said. “But this feels different for some reason. This feels like… like an ending.”
“You’re thinking about the Oracle back in Delphi,” Eva whispered. “She predicted one of us would die.”
I shook my head. That had been on my mind, but it was more than that. “I think we control our destiny, so even if she’d seen that in our future, I refuse to believe it’s locked in stone.”
“Then what is it?” Ariel said.
“I’ve always felt like if we didn’t succeed, Master Aquinas would have some back-up plan,” I said. “Some other way to stop Ren Lucre.” I looked at each of my friend’s faces in turn. “But there is no other plan. The Colonel and his Black Death will be no match for Ren Lucre. They’ll only bring the war on faster. There’s no-one else. Just us.”
There was a long silence, each of us lost to our own thoughts. Some stared into the campfire. Others leaned back and watched the Northern Lights dance overhead.
“Then I guess there’s only one thing for it,” said Eva.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’d better not mess it up.”
26
It was a unanimous decision to get a few hours of sleep before starting our attack. Part of me was anxious to move, to just get on with it, but every muscle in my body was beyond exhausted. Worse, my mind was tired. Whatever we were about to face at Ren Lucre’s castle was going to require that all of us were on top of our games. The fight had been coming for centuries so a few more hours wouldn’t make a difference.
Eva and Daniel posted watch to make sure no zombie stragglers made their way into our makeshift camp in the boulders. With their vampire and werewolf blood, they weren’t tired like the rest of us. When we took the vote to rest, I could see
people’s hesitation at the decision. But one look at us and it was pretty clear that we were flat-out spent.
It was the first time I’d ever tried to sleep while stretched out of a slab of cold, hard rock while surrounded by a thousand zombies, not to mention tied arm-in-arm with one. But I think it was also the most tired I’d even been too. Both body and soul. As I lay my head down, using my bunched-up coat as a pillow, I thought it would be impossible to sleep with so much fear and anxiety coursing through me. Halfway through that thought, I was fast asleep.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened my eyes.
The murmuring sound of the zombie horde was gone. The night was perfectly still as if the cold had frozen it solid.
I scrambled to my feet. The fire was out, nothing more than a few smoldering embers. Panic seized me as I turned in a circle. The camp was deserted. I was alone.
“Will,” I hissed, pulling my sword. “T-Rex. Where are you guys?”
“They’re not here,” came a voice from behind me.
I spun around, my sword up in front of me. Once I saw the source of the voice, I slowly lowered the blade until it rested on the ground, not quite believing what I saw.
My mother.
She was dressed in a white gown that billowed around her even though there was no breeze. I’d seen her before, only that time I’d been dead. Drowned in the river before T-Rex had found me and given me CPR.
“You’re not dead, my son,” she said softly, as if reading my mind. “But you are in grave danger.”
“The world is in danger,” I replied.
She walked toward me. “The world isn’t my concern. You are. Only you.”
I nodded. I felt like small pieces of a puzzle were dangling in front of me, just out of my reach. I could sense them, but not see them clearly enough to know what they were. “You once asked me to forgive you,” I said. “Why? What am I supposed to forgive you for?”
A sadness crossed my mother’s face, and I immediately hated myself for asking the question. I only wanted to see her happy. To see her smile. But I fought down the urge to take my words back or let her off the hook. Now, as I was about to face Ren Lucre, the answer seemed more important than ever.
She nodded as if accepting that she needed to answer. “Your father was a great hunter. Perhaps the best since the days of the Templar Grand Masters. It was impossible that we would fall in love. Try to kill one another, certainly. But fall in love? What were the chances?”
She looked off into the distance as if locked in a memory. I waited.
Finally, she turned back to me with a sad smile. “Even with that love, when we knew I was to have a child, we didn’t know how to handle it. I couldn’t imagine our baby living as a vampire. Feeding off of others, never knowing the beauty of the human world.”
“If I was to be born a vampire, how did I…” my voice caught in my throat as I connected the dots. “The Jerusalem Stones.”
She nodded. “It was your father who thought of the Jerusalem Stones and what they could do for us. He told the Black Guard that his quest to capture the Jerusalem Stones was to defeat the Lord of the Creach and end his reign. That was only partly true. His true goal was to use the Stones to transform me, transform us, into human form so that we might live. Nothing else mattered to him. Nothing else mattered to us.”
I tried to comprehend what she was telling me. The entire conversation had the fuzzy sense of a dream, but I knew it was more than that. Still, her words felt like smoke that I was trying to grip with my fingers.
“But if I’m here,” I said, “then it worked. But something must have gone wrong. Otherwise you’d be here too.”
“I am here,” she said. “But not in human form. And not how your father and I planned. And this is why I ask your forgiveness, Jack. And why you must explain what I did to your father if you see him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I betrayed him. I’m the reason he’s imprisoned in my father’s dungeon. I’m the reason the Black Guard was defeated the night they stormed the castle walls. The reason your father is called a traitor.”
“But why?” I asked, imagining my dad suffering in captivity for these past fourteen years. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew he loved me too much,” she said. “I knew once he understood the cost for using the Jerusalem Stones, he would never allow me to go through with it. If he had to choose between me and our child, I knew he would choose me.”
I blinked away sudden tears as I understood what she was saying. “You knew you would die using the Stones to transform both of us. But you did it anyway.”
“Any mother would have done the same,” she said. “I chose life for you then. I’m here because I ask that you do the same now. You must not face him. He’s too strong. You can’t win.”
I felt my stomach twist as I realized I believed what she was saying. But I also knew that this wasn’t a fight I could run away from. Especially now, knowing that I was the reason everything had happened.
“And what about all those that will die in the war Ren Lucre launches on the human world?”
“They are not my concern. You are.”
“And what about my father rotting in the dungeons for all those years?” I asked.
“He would sacrifice for you that way I did,” she said. “It’s a simple choice for a parent.”
“And it’s a simple choice for a son,” I said.
“Your grandfather is devious,” she said. “There are tricks within tricks. Lies within lies. He will trap you, and he will kill you and all your friends. And then my death will have been for nothing.”
“I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening,” I said. “But I have to try. I couldn’t live in a world where I didn’t try.”
She looked away. “Then I’ve lost you already.”
“You asked me once to forgive you,” I said. “You did what you did out of love for me. There’s nothing to forgive. But if it brings you comfort to hear the words, then I’ll say them and mean them. I forgive you, Mom.”
She flinched as if the words were solid things.
“And now you have to forgive me,” I said. “Because I have to do this. I have to try.”
My mom turned suddenly, looking beyond me. On reflex, I ducked, thinking there was an attack.
I jerked up… and saw Eva in front of me.
I looked around wildly. The others were all there, all awake. My mom was gone.
“What is that sound ?” I asked.
But I didn’t need to wait for an answer. Booming artillery fire and the rat-tat-tat of machine guys filled the air.
The Colonel and the Black Death had beat us to Ren Lucre’s castle.
The battle had begun without us.
27
With Hester still bound to my wrist, we marched as fast as we could toward the ferocious sound of gunfire. The thousand zombies following behind us were agitated by the explosions. Their low gurgling sound, that I’d gotten used to from our nighttime hike, had transformed into a raucous snarling. It sounded like feeding time at a zoo, but the animals were out of their cages and only held in check by Hester’s unspoken commands.
My head was still spinning. The adrenaline pumping through my system was enough to wake me up, but I was trying to process what my mom had said. Then there was the possibility that it had just been a dream, some bizarre story made up by my over-active imagination.
But I didn’t think so.
It was too detailed. Too specific.
I’d wondered for months why my mom had asked for forgiveness the first time I saw her. Or why some thought my father was a traitor.
All this time, I’d thought that knowing the answers would make me feel better. The truth was that it only made me feel worse.
I was the reason my mom died. The reason she had betrayed my father to Ren Lucre. I was why the assault on the castle had failed fourteen years ago, leaving so many hunters dead.
> All of it had happened so that I could live.
And that just added to the list of people who had sacrificed for me. Aunt Sophie and Gregor. Both dead. Eva and Daniel turned into Creach. And Hester, bound to me so that the Jerusalem Stones gave her just enough of her humanity back that she’d know what she was doing.
I was at the center of it all. But so was my grandfather, Ren Lucre. Between us, there was enough guilt to go around and leave some to spare.
Only I doubted the Lord of the Creach cared about any of that. All he cared about was war, and domination over the human world. And all I cared about now was stopping him and repaying the debts I owed to my friends and to my parents.
The eastern sky lightened with the approaching dawn. I figured that by the time the sun set that night, the fate for either Ren Lucre or I would be decided.
“Jack, did you hear what I said?” Eva asked.
I startled and turned toward her. She held out her hand and stopped me in place.
“Listen,” she said.
At first all I heard was the sound of the zombies behind us. But slowly I realized what she meant.
The guns and explosions had stopped.
I felt a surge of hope. “Is it over?” I asked. The Colonel and the Black Death hunters had their problems to be sure, but I never imagined that they would actually defeat Ren Lucre. If so, then my friends were safe and total war, for now, had been avoided. “Did they already win?”
We were walking up a steep hill. I figured we had to be close to the castle.
As a group, we ran up to the crest of the hill. Hester and I moved slower than the others because it was awkward moving with our arms tied together. I saw my friends react when they reached the top but didn’t know what to make of it. Eva dropped to her knees. Will put an arm around Xavier.
“What is it?” I asked, hoping their reaction was relief at good news.
As I crested the hill, I nearly fell to the ground myself.
The scene in front of us was like a painting. We looked down the length of a fjord, a ragged, v-shaped valley which usually would have held a body of water. Instead, it was frozen over, creating a snow-covered plain the length of the valley. At the far end, tucked into the rock, was a massive fortress with tall, dark spires connected by arches and battlements. Great fires raged on the castle walls. One of the towers had crumbled, falling forward and spilling rock onto the white snow.