Jack Templar Monster Hunter

by Jeff Gunhus

  Here’s the rule:

  You can tell your friends about the book, but only if you have them read through the warnings first and make their own decision, just like you did. Then, after being properly warned, if they still want to make the same bone-headed decision you did and read the book, then you can go ahead and let them.

  Just make sure they lock their doors too, because the monsters will find them. Just like they are on their way to find you, even as you read this page. I’m not kidding. Go lock those doors. Right now.

  OK, back to the story. I hope this next part doesn’t freak you out!

  Chapter Four

  I walked down the street, back toward my house, working through what had just happened. It had only been ten minutes and already I found myself doubting what I had seen in the principal’s office. It just didn't make sense that a creature like that could hide in plain view.

  "Excuse me, but do you have any change?" said a trembling voice laced with a soft English accent. "Just a few coins. Anything you can spare."

  I stopped in my tracks and looked to my right toward the voice. There, nestled between two bushes, was an old woman bent over at the waist with a walking stick clutched in a gnarled hand. I noticed that her other hand was missing completely. In its place, there was a wooden hook screwed into a socket on her wrist. I couldn’t help but think of Captain Hook from Peter Pan.

  "I'm just a bit hungry. Anything you have," the old woman said.

  Now, it had been a pretty strange day already, so the thought crossed my mind that I ought to run away as fast as I could and not look back. But I couldn't bring myself to do that. I’m not a Boy Scout or anything, but when a little old lady asks for help, it’s just plain rude to ignore her.

  I dug into my pockets and searched them, only to come up empty. Next, I let my backpack fall from my shoulders to the ground and I unzipped each section and looked for loose change. All I could come up with was three dimes and a nickel. I held them out to the old lady, feeling a little embarrassed.

  "This is all I have. But you're welcome to it."

  The old woman leaned her walking stick against her stomach and used her one hand to take the coins from me. As she did, I felt her long cracked fingernails scratch my palm and it sent a weird shiver down my spine.

  The old woman withdrew her hand and put the coins in a small purse at her side. She gave me a wink, turned and shuffled away.

  "Wait. Is there somebody I can call for you? Somebody that can help?"

  She shook her head and mumbled without turning, "Such a kind heart you have. So much like your father."

  It took me a few seconds to process what she had just said. Even then, I assumed I had misunderstood her.

  "Excuse me. What did you say?"

  But the old woman ignored me and hobbled away, back between the bushes. I took a few steps toward her.

  “What did you say about my father?” I said, my voice coming out louder and more demanding than I intended.

  The old woman stopped and turned back in my direction. A smile spread across her face. "I said you’re just like him. Kind hearted. And impatient. Both things that proved to be the end of him. You’d best be careful they’re not the end of you.”

  I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I had never met anyone who had known my father except Aunt Sophie, let alone someone who claimed to have an idea about how he had died. I rushed to catch up to her.

  "Wait. You knew my father?"

  "Of course," said the old woman. “How else could I know you were like him? You’re not daft, are you, child?”

  "Please, I want to talk to you," I said, jogging to catch up to her. We had cleared the rows of bushes that lined the street and had entered the woods. "Can you stop for a second?"

  "Can't stop,” the old woman said. “When you stop, they can find you. You really don't know anything, do you?"

  "Anything about what?" I asked.

  Finally, the old woman stopped and turned to me. She looked up into my face, her penetrating eyes squinting and measuring me up.

  “About being a monster hunter, of course,” she said.

  I stared back at her, caught off guard. She searched my face but whatever she was looking for must not have been there, because she stepped a bit closer and asked, “You are Jack Templar, are you not?”

  “No,” I said. “My name is Jack Smith.”

  The old woman laughed. “Smith! How utterly unoriginal.” She leaned down and stared into my eyes. “No, you are the son of Sir Henry David Templar, Third Earl of the Carderon, Fifth Level Hunter, Leader of the Black Guard, Protector of the Light and quite possibly the last in the Templar bloodline.”

  I felt my stomach sink as all the hope that had been building inside of me drained. This old woman didn’t know my father. Protector of the Light? Leader of the Black Guard? Templar bloodline? Give me a break. She was just some crazy loon. I felt so stupid to have believed her at all.

  “So, you don’t believe me,” the old woman purred, her voice changing, the tremble giving way to a stronger, more confident voice. “You will soon enough. You must remember that everything is not as it seems.”

  The old woman stood up straight, the stiffness gone from her movements. She pulled at the dress and it came off effortlessly, revealing an athletic body dressed in a tightfitting bodysuit of soft leather. In various sheaths and pockets were swords, daggers and throwing knives.

  She pulled off the wig that she was wearing and long brown hair fell down past her shoulders. Finally, she pulled small pits of plastic attached to her face as part of her disguise and rubbed the make-up off.

  In less than a minute, the old woman was gone, replaced by a young girl only a few years older than myself. Bright green eyes, smooth, tan skin, and, I don’t mind saying it, a very pretty face. No, it was more than that. I’ll just throw it out there. She was smoking hot.

  I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. It was totally awesome.

  The transformation was so complete that the only way to tell that this was the same person was from her missing left hand. Only the wooden hook was now replaced by a nasty-looking metal hook with a sharp point.

  “As you can see,” the girl said, “many things which you believe to be impossible are actually quite possible .”

  “Who are you?”

  The girl placed a closed fist across her chest as if in a salute. “My name is Eva. I am a third degree hunter of the Black Guard. Sorry about the theatrics. I just wanted to see what kind of person you were.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m kind of wondering the same thing about you. What’s with the disguise?”

  Eva glanced over her shoulder nervously. “Come on, we should move. We have much to go through in very little time. Your first fight is just a little over twenty-four hours away.”

  My brain was still reeling from the transformation that I had just witnessed right before my eyes (and a little distracted by how good looking the girl was). It took a few seconds before the girl’s last sentence worked its way into my brain.

  But once it did, all the alarm bells started to ring.

  “Did you say my first fight?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course. Sunset on your fourteenth birthday. There will be literally dozens of monsters waiting to do you in.”

  “Dozens…of monsters?”

  “I was hoping we could just jump into the fighting lessons but I see now that you’re not going to stop with the questions, are you? Ok, here’s the deal. I’ll give you five questions, then we start, deal?”

  “Why only five?” I asked.

  “Because we need time for lessons,” she replied. “And now you only have four questions left.”

  “Wait, that’s not fair. I didn’t mean for that to be one of my questions. Can I take it back?”

  “No, you can’t take it back. Three questions left. We’re getting through these quite nicely.”

  “Arrgghh!” I moaned. I realized that I had to be more careful. I though
t through my next questions more carefully. “Why are monsters going to attack me on my birthday?”

  “Ah, that’s better. You come from a long line of monster hunters. Of course, that’s just the common way of saying it. Some of the old-timers go absolutely bonkers if you use that term.”

  “So, what do they—“ I stopped myself just in time before I wasted another one of my questions.

  Eva smiled, then continued. “ I’ll give you a free one. They prefer being called the Black Guard. Not many of us can trace our backgrounds to the original Black Guard. You know, the Knights Templar?”

  “You mean like from the Crusades, back in the Middle Ages?” I asked.

  “You really don’t know anything, do you? Your bloodline, if the information I have is true that is, makes you something like royalty among our kind. That’s why so many monsters have gathered to kill you tomorrow.”

  I swallowed hard. Having someone talk so casually about my death was a little unnerving.

  “What are they waiting for? If they’re already here, why don’t they just attack me now?”

  “The Rule of Quattuordecim.”

  Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “What’s the Rule of Quarter…Quantero…”

  She smiled. “And that’s question five. Quattuordecim. It means fourteen in Latin. Hundreds of years ago, there was a terrible battle between man and monsters. The Black Guard, of course, was at the heart of it all, but the monsters were so brazen that we were forced to enlist the help of normal men to help fight them. In a midst of the war, a terrible mistake was made. Blinded by the bloodlust of war, the Black Guard found and massacred an encampment of monster children.”

  “But…they were monsters, right?” I asked.

  She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “Yes, but they were still children.” I looked down at the ground, feeling embarrassed. “After seeing what the humans had done, the monsters were overcome with rage. They systematically hunted down the human children of the Black Guard and took their revenge. The pain inflicted on both sides was so great that a meeting was held between man and monster to call a truce. The terms of the truce stated that all children, whether man or monster, were off-limits until sundown on their fourteenth birthday. The Rule of Quattuordecim.”

  “So, you’re saying there are monsters all over Sunnyvale, just waiting for me to turn fourteen…so they can kill me?”

  “Oh, they don’t only want to kill you. They want to inflict so much pain that you literally beg for death. After they do that, then they’ll kill you.” Eva stood up, drew her sword and sliced it through the air. “ Right,” she said cheerily. “That’s it for questions. Are you ready to get started?”

  “ So I’m supposed to learn how to fight off a horde of monsters between now and tomorrow? I don’t even know what kind of monsters are coming after me.”

  Eva cried out and lunged at me with her sword. I jumped, falling to the ground, barely dodging her blade.

  “Are you crazy?” I yelled.

  But she was back on the attack, swinging the sword over her head like it was an ax. I rolled to one side and the sword buried into the soft soil where my head had been only seconds before.

  I scrambled to my feet and grabbed a tree branch from the ground. A day earlier, I would hardly have been able to lift the branch, so I was glad to have my newfound strength. I held it in front of me with two hands, mimicking the way Eva held her sword.

  With a cry, Eva launched her attack. I fended it off with the tree branch but it was no match for her sword. The metal blade took huge chunks out of the branch with every blow.

  Finally, she landed a solid blow and sliced the tree branch in half, then knocked the rest from my hand. Lightning quick, she stepped forward, put a foot behind mine and pushed me over. I landed hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs.

  As I looked up, Eva jumped, her sword twirling in her hand as her battle cry filled the air.

  I held my hands up to my face and closed my eyes.

  But the expected pain never came.

  Slowly, carefully, I opened my eyes.

  Eva was poised over me, a foot planted on either side of my chest. She was leaning down, her face inches from mine. The tip of her sword hovered over my eyeball, so close that I could feel the blade with my eyelash when I blinked.

  “And, just like that, you’re dead.”

  It only took me about three seconds to go from scared to irritated. I pushed her to the side and climbed to my feet, brushing leaves and dirt off my clothes.

  “That’s very helpful. Thank you,” I said, not meaning it at all.

  “Actually, it was. Maybe not for you, but it showed me what I have to work with. You have decent reaction time, your improvisational skills are sufficient, and you’re stronger than you look. Your change must be happening.”

  “People keep using that term. What does it mean?” I asked.

  The girl rolled her eyes and fingered the handle of her sword impatiently. “We had a deal. Five questions, no more.”

  “No, you had a deal,” I said. “I never agreed to it.”

  Eva hesitated, looked at the sun lowering in the sky, then turned back to me. “You have the genetic makeup of a fighter. Your body knows you’re a monster hunter even if you don’t. Usually a day or two before your birthday, the change starts happening.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. I was pretty happy about it until I found out it’s so I can face certain death tomorrow at the hands of monsters who want to kill me,” I said.

  “Torture,” Eva corrected. “They want to torture you…then kill you.”

  Finally, something snapped. My body getting all super-human on me? OK. A creepy stranger gawking at me with glowing eyes? Cool. Even my principal transforming into a bat-creature. Weirdly, I could handle that, chalking it up to a piece of bad chicken I’d eaten or something. But the whole thing of being told by a super-hottie that monsters were going to torture and kill me on my birthday because of some ancient truce was finally just too much.

  I realized, with sudden clarity, that the entire day had just been a very complex, very creepy, dream.

  I mean, where else, other than in a dream, does the old witch-looking messenger of bad news magically transform into a beautiful girl just about your age? Has that ever happened to you in real life? See what I mean?

  “This whole day is one big hallucination,” I blurted out. “You. You’re just a figment of my imagination.”

  “Oh no,” Eva said, shaking her head. “You’re an idiot. That’s unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate? Really?” I said. “We’ll just see about that. I’ll prove to you this is a dream.”

  I stepped up to Eva and leaned in to kiss her on the lips.

  BAM! - a very non-imaginary hand slapped me across the face.

  Eva stood there, cheeks flushed red. I couldn’t tell if it was from anger or embarrassment.

  “I knew I should have just come tomorrow with the others.”

  “Others? What others?” I asked.

  “It’s all a dream anyway, so what does it matter?” Eva snapped. “I have better things to do with my time than babysit a newbie hunter who wants to bury his head in the sand and pretend none of this is happening. I’ll be back here at midnight for training. If you’re not here, I’m leaving town and you can face the monsters on your own.”

  Eva turned and walked into the forest. “Do your duty, come what may, Jack Templar. You’re going to need all the luck you can get.”

  “Wait,” I called out. “Come back! Maybe I was wrong.”

  But before she could turn around, the first monster attacked

  Chapter Five

  I chased after Eva, second-guessing my decision that the whole day was a dream. I had almost caught up to her when a massive beast erupted from the ground in an explosion of dirt and leaves.

  The creature towered over Eva, nearly seven feet tall even with its feet still in the ground. It was naked except for a loincloth wrapped around its waist.
The rest of the hairless body bulged with muscles.

  The creature’s hands were webbed with thick, yellowed nails sharpened to points. The face was a cross between a man’s and a mole’s. Tiny black eyes, no more than pinpricks, were positioned above a flat pink nose with fleshy feelers sticking out. The creature roared at Eva, showing a mouth full of jagged teeth.

  It swung a clawed hand at Eva’s head. She ducked easily, tucked her shoulders and rolled to one side.

  The mole-creature screamed and stepped out from the hole, moving more quickly than I would have imagined it could. It raised a massive, webbed foot over Eva, aiming for her head.

  “Watch out!” I cried.

  Eva rolled again and the mole-creature’s foot slammed into the ground. Even from where I was, I felt the earth move.

  Eva was up and running. The mole-creature rampaged through the forest after her, smashing whole trees in his way, ripping down branches. But Eva was quick on her feet, running just ahead of him, ducking the debris that he threw at her.

  I ran after them. I didn’t have a clue what I would do if I caught up to them, but I knew I couldn’t just let her face that thing on her own.

  I reached a clearing. I saw that Eva had her sword drawn now and was still running hard. The mole-creature grabbed a rock the size of a bowling ball and threw it.

  “Eva!” I yelled. But it was too late. The rock hit her in the shoulder so she was thrown off balance; she stumbled and went to the ground. I saw her sword fly through the air and stick into the ground, tip first.

  The mole-creature closed in, screaming at its prey. It swung a massive arm at Eva. She blocked the blow but still went flying in the air from the force of it.

  Without thinking, I ran toward the creature, yelling as loudly as I could. I waved my arms. Anything to distract it.

  It worked.

  The mole-creature turned toward me, its pink, fleshy nose quivering. It lowered itself onto all fours and stampeded in my direction.

  I felt all the blood rush out of my legs. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, frozen, as that wall of muscles ran toward me.

  I braced for impact. But about ten feet from me, the mole-creature was yanked backward as if it had reached the end of some invisible collar around its neck. It fell to the ground, wailing in pain. I just stood there, dumbfounded.