His grandfather offered the seat across from him at the desk and Hector moved to join him. When he was seated comfortably, his grandfather studied him over steepled fingers.
The old man’s eyes drilled into him, boring deep within to discover any secrets Hector might be hiding. It was an absurd observation, as he had nothing to hide from his grandfather, as he was sure his grandfather knew. It did, however, still make him squirm a little in his seat.
“Something has happened, mi niño,” his grandfather began. “Something I thought would never happen, but which I had prepared for my entire life.” He pointed at Hector.
“Had prepared you for, your entire life as well.”
Hector stared at him. What the hell was he talking about?
His grandfather gave him a thin-lipped smile. “I know you have often wondered why I trained you the way I did. Why I taught you to fight and to be strong.”
He paused, and Hector took it for something he needed to affirm and so nodded.
“To explain that, I will need to explain a little about our family’s history and the history of the people we are descended from.”
Hector couldn’t help but smile. He heard enough of their family history all throughout his childhood. His grandfather loved to explain their heritage and had, at length, on multiple occasions.
“As you know,” his grandfather began, “we descend directly from the Olmecs and those who came before them.” Hector nodded. “There are very few of us left in the world. Most have died out over the years or have been bred out.” His grandfather frowned, his lips barely forming a curl downward as sadness crept into his eyes.
“One of the main reasons we have survived when others have died out has been because we were entrusted with magic.”
Hector stopped himself from rolling his eyes. The magic again. Did his grandfather truly expect him to believe this?
“I know you are skeptical,” his grandfather said as if reading his thoughts, “but please, keep an open mind as I explain, and I assure you by the end you will understand.”
Hector’s lips turned down slightly as he studied his grandfather. He remained doubtful and the idea he would believe in magic afterward, highly unlikely, but he nodded anyway for his grandfather to continue.
His grandfather eyed him for a moment as if judging whether Hector would indeed keep an open mind. Satisfied, he continued.
“Our ancestors worshipped many gods. One of these gods, the rain deity, whose name has been lost, even to those of us who still follow the old ways, was often depicted as a Werejaguar. A half-man, half-jaguar.”
Despite his skepticism, Hector was entranced by the story. His grandfather never spoke about this part of their history.
“The truth of the nature of our rain god is he is a Werejaguar. His story has been passed from generation to generation along our family line and I will tell it to you now.
“Ages ago, our rain god came to us and offered protection, protection at the cost of our worship. It was an easy trade in the eyes of our people’s leaders, and we began to worship him.” Hector’s grandfather leaned forward and rested his arms on top of the desk.
“Other gods became jealous of our worship and they sent their servants to kill us. The servants they sent were lycanthropes. Were-creatures of deadly animals. As they rained down murder and death in our lands, we beseeched our rain god for his protection.”
There was a twinkle in his grandfather’s eyes as he told Hector this story and he could tell his grandfather was caught up in telling it as much as he was in listening to it.
“He answered our prayers. Appearing as a Werejaguar, he hunted the other lycanthropes and killed them without mercy. It wasn’t long before the other gods retreated, taking their lycans with them.”
His grandfather sat back in his chair, spreading his hands out wide as he explained.
“Before he left his people, we asked him how we could protect ourselves if those lycanthropes returned. Our god was pleased at our desire to protect our own, and in response, he granted us a boon.”
Hector waited.
With a smile which creased his cheeks and grew crows-feet at the corner of his eyes, his grandfather pulled at a wire necklace which encircled his neck. It was a necklace he hadn’t seen his grandfather wear before. As his grandfather tugged up the necklace, an old key, like those you see in movies with the exaggerated teeth and intricate head made of wrought iron or the like, became visible. The key swung back and forth as his grandfather held it out for Hector to examine.
“A key?” Hector said flatly, unable to hide his disappointment. An old key was the supposed boon of a god? Seemed pretty lame to Hector.
Shaking his head, his grandfather removed the necklace from around his neck and took hold of the key. Scooting his chair back, he bent down, and Hector assumed he was using the key in one of the drawers of the desk. The drawers, Hector knew, had always been locked for as long as Hector had lived, undoubtedly longer.
After a moment of fussing around and an audible click, his grandfather opened a drawer on the right side of the desk and retrieved something from within. What he brought forth left Hector in awe as it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Resting in his grandfather’s hands was a long, wide-bladed knife. Easily over a foot and half long, the blade was carved from a dark piece of jade, its edge, a jagged piece, almost teeth-like. The knife held no cross guard, but instead was embedded in a round shaft of tarnished bronze. Raised, intricate images ringed the hilt. Circular stories told in the only written language of the age.
It was clear to Hector the knife was ancient, but when he considered the story his grandfather told him, if true, the knife was older than most relics in the known world. To be in such amazing condition after all these centuries left Hector stunned. When his grandfather held the knife out for him to take, he could do nothing but stare blankly at him.
“This is your birthright, Hector. This is your obligation and your duty.” His grandfather’s voice took on a solemn note. Gone was the earlier exuberance. Gone was the twinkle in his grandfather’s eyes, replaced now by a hint of sadness. “I’m afraid your studies will have to wait, for you now have more important matters to attend to.”
Again, his grandfather held the blade out to him, and this time Hector felt obligated to take it, though he didn’t understand what his grandfather was getting at.
The moment the knife passed to his hands a feeling like he had never felt before flowed through his body. Heat passed from the blade to him, a heat barely contained, on the verge of breaking free and devouring him where he sat. It roared through his every nerve, his every fiber of being. As quickly as it had taken him, it fled.
Hector gasped, and his eyes widened as he looked upon the blade. The doubts he held before holding this blade evaporated in an instant. He felt as if he had been touched by a god — and perhaps that was what it was. Looking back up at his grandfather, the old man nodded in acknowledgment of what he felt.
“I . . . I don’t understand what this means,” Hector told his grandfather.
His grandfather didn’t say anything in response. Instead he pulled out something else from within the drawer, surprising Hector for the second time this day. A laptop. As long as he knew his grandfather, he shunned computers. So, to see him now with not only a computer, but a laptop, was a bit of a shock. His surprise must have been written upon his face because his grandfather chuckled.
“I didn’t not use computers because I couldn’t, I didn’t use them because I didn’t want to get sucked into them like everyone else of this age.” Setting the laptop on the desk, he waited a moment for it to boot up and Hector watched as he searched for something on the screen and clicked on it.
Spinning the laptop around he turned it to face Hector. On the screen was an open window with a video playing on it. The scene playing out before him left him cold. A boar-like man savagely attacked another man and a woman he was with. Just when it looked as if the
boarman would kill them, a tiger-like woman entered the fight and saved them, briefly, before being all but killed herself. As the boarman was about to kill all of them, the man turned into a wolf-like man. A were-wolf, Hector realized. Which would make the others a were-tiger and a were-boar. Lycanthropes. Like the ones in his grandfather’s tale.
Wide-eyed, he looked up from the screen at his grandfather.
“They’re . . . back?”
His grandfather shook his head.
“These are not the ancient gods returned. These are aspects of a different . . . religion, let’s say.” His grandfather closed the laptop and put it back in the drawer. “Nevertheless, they are still subject to the knife’s abilities, and so, are our family’s responsibility.”
Scrunching his forehead, Hector was confused. “What do you mean, ‘the knife’s abilities’?”
Drawing his lips into a straight line, his grandfather steepled his fingers before offering an explanation.
“Lycanthropy is caused when a person’s totem animal is brought to the surface and linked with the person’s . . . physiology. That is the best explanation that I can give you. Regardless, the knife severs that link between the person and their totem. Ending the lycanthropy.”
The phrasing seemed final to Hector. “What happens to the person?” The words drifted out in like a whisper and the look his grandfather gave him was all the answer he needed.
Hector sighed and looked away “You are asking a lot of me, Grandfather.”
“I know,” his grandfather replied. “You are the only one who can put an end to them.”
Shaking his head, Hector looked back at his grandfather. “This is ridiculous, Grandfather! They have guns! Bombs and missiles even! How can me with a knife stop them if they can’t?”
“Hector,” his grandfather began patiently, “these creatures are not of this time. The power which created them is old and unfathomably powerful.” Standing up, his grandfather rounded the table and leaned back against it in front of Hector.
“From what I have been able to ascertain from the histories, these people, these . . . creatures, have incredible abilities to heal from almost any injury.” His grandfather shook his head. “I’m afraid, guns and other weapons can only slow them, not kill them. Only you can do that.”
Hector didn’t miss his grandfather’s shift from calling them people to calling them creatures. He was trying to dehumanize them so Hector could come to grips with the notion of killing them.
It wasn’t working.
Hector set the blade on the desk in front of him and looked up at his grandfather.
“I’m sorry, Grandfather. I can’t do this.” Hector stood and searched his grandfather’s eyes, hoping to find some understanding. “You are asking too much.”
Hector moved for the door.
“Three officers died during that attack in Chicago.”
Those words halted Hector at the door.
“If what I believe to be true, the Wereboar tore through an entire motel of people in London, killing all but two, who later turned into Wereboars.”
Hector spun. “What?!”
His grandfather nodded. “Someone who survives an attack from a lycanthrope, becomes a lycanthrope. If someone doesn’t stop them, we will have armies of lycans that are all but unkillable.” He smiled wanly at Hector. “Unkillable, except for someone with this knife.” He had picked up the knife at some point and now held it out once again for Hector to take.
Hector stood frozen by the door, staring at the knife as if it was the plague. This was not what he thought he came down here for. He didn’t want this. He wanted to return to school. To graduate. This supernatural bullshit wasn’t for him, regardless of how many people might be affected. It had nothing to do with him.
Hector lowered his head, turned and left his grandfather there with his knife.
Sleep took a long time coming for Hector, his mind restless, as it replayed the scene from Chicago, over and over. The ferocity of those monsters. The power. It left him rattled, seeing the Wereboar tear through those police like a hairy bowling ball knocking over pins as if they were made of paper. Except they weren’t pins. They were people. People who died as a result. Good people who were simply trying to do their job of protecting innocents.
Flopping over in his bed, Hector tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in, as if somehow, if he rested, his brain would erase the horrors he had seen this day and his shame for choosing to not do anything about it.
Obviously, these monsters needed to be stopped. What wasn’t clear was how he could truly do anything about it. Yes, he was a trained warrior. Yes, he apparently had a weapon gifted by an ancient god to deal with this type of threat, but he was still only a man. A man being asked to go to war with monsters. How he could be expected to accomplish this, he couldn’t understand.
No. He had a life. He had responsibilities in the real world, not this fantastical world his grandfather wished for him to step into and to assume the role of lycan assassin.
As final as he felt his decision to be, doubts plagued him for hours before exhaustion at last wore him down and he slept.
When he found his grandfather the next morning, he found death had stolen in through the night to rob him of the last member of his family.
Chapter Four
His grandfather sat behind his desk. The knife was in his hand before him, his eyes open and empty. Years had piled on his features in one night. Wrinkles, like crumpled paper, lined his face and arms where there had been none the night before.
Gone was the firmness of the old man’s body; instead, what sat before Hector appeared to be a frail looking shell of the once strong man he had been. Hector’s parents both died relatively young, and so, Hector had never seen an older person dead. He assumed some of what he was seeing had to be the result of death, but it still looked unnatural to him.
Hector collapsed into the chair across from his grandfather and stared at him. Anger flared up inside of him. Anger that his grandfather had been taken from him, but also anger because, in his mind, this left him with no other choice but to take the knife and do as his grandfather wished.
In a way, it had been his dying wish, though neither of them knew it last night. It was unfair, and Hector knew he had no right to feel angry at his grandfather, but he couldn’t help it. He had made his decision last night. He was going to go home and the lycans were someone else’s problem.
Now, he couldn’t.
Standing and moving around the desk, he took the knife from his grandfather’s cold hands and looked down at him. His grandfather still stared sightlessly at the empty place between his hands where the knife had been.
Reaching up, Hector closed his grandfather’s eyes and kissed his forehead.
“Very well, abuelo. I will do as you asked. I will hunt down these lycans and end them.” Tears welled into Hector’s eyes, creating pools in their corners before filling and emptying in tiny rivulets down his cheek. His heart ached more than when his mother had died five years ago. He had loved his grandfather. Their training together created a bond stronger than family.
“Goodbye, abuelo. Te amo.”
Tears flowing freely now; Hector turned and left the office and walked to the kitchen to the house phone. He made three calls. The first, to the family lawyer, who thankfully assured him his grandfather had taken care of everything in case of his death, and a coffin would arrive at the home in a day so Hector could hold the velario, the candlelight vigil.
“Your grandfather left you everything, Hector. The house, the land, his accounts.” The lawyer paused and when Hector said nothing, the lawyer continued. “Do you know about the accounts, Hector?”
Hector didn’t.
“Your grandfather was quite rich. Sooooo . . . now you are quite rich.”
The amount of money his grandfather had, staggered Hector. He assumed sending him to Harvard had all but bankrupted his grandfather. Now, he knew it had been a drop in the bucket
for him to afford Hector’s tuition.
He had no idea how his grandfather accrued such wealth, and neither did the lawyer. The answer to that mystery might lie in his grandfather’s belongings, the lawyer suggested. He seemed curious himself to discover the truth, and as much as Hector wanted to know, he knew he wouldn’t have the time.
He left instructions with the lawyer to send some trusted people out to close up the house. The lawyer had been with the family for years and so Hector felt, if his grandfather trusted him all these years, he could be trusted to do what needed to be done.
The second and third calls he made were to the cab company and the airline for arrangements to pick him up and fly him to Chicago the day after tomorrow.
Chapter Five
The flight from Topeka to Chicago was short and they were on the ground and off the plane in a couple of hours. O’Hare Airport bustled with crowds of people going this way and that. Nameless faces passed by, like fleeting thoughts, momentarily there and quickly forgotten.
Sylvanis watched the people who passed. Their group got a few interested looks and she couldn’t help but wonder what these strangers saw. She knew it couldn’t be close to the truth. The truth of this group was hidden beneath the surface. There was no way for them to realize there were three of the most powerful people in this world walking among them. Four, if she was being honest. She was powerful too, if in a different way. Her power was still relatively unknown to her. She didn’t grasp its limits. She feared to test them.
It was a subdued group who left the airport that afternoon. Clint hadn’t returned to the house and they assumed he was on his way to Chicago. Kat was most affected as she knew Clint the most out of all of them, though the truth was even she knew little. Sylvanis watched her now. Straight-backed and tense, Sylvanis could see the muscles in Kat’s cheek bunch in tension as she clenched her teeth.
Clint and Kat had been through quite a bit in Chicago and fighting for your life together tends to create a bond. Kat was worried for her friend. The events which transpired at the house last night, Clint’s sudden departure, and the means in which he left them meant he was running straight for trouble.
The Gathering Page 4