by Jeff Gunhus
“Is there a point here?” I asked.
The Oracle hissed at my rude tone. I felt a little bad, but she did try to kill me once, so I didn’t feel that bad.
“Once you left, I explored some of the most obscure potential paths your miserable little life could take. Buried there among the outcomes with the least chances for success was the possibility that you could fulfill the ancient prophecy of the last Templar. That you could bring balance back between man and monster.”
“And why would you want that?” I asked.
“Because once that prophecy is fulfilled, prophecy itself will not be needed. My gift is my curse, and I want no more of it.”
“How can it be a curse?” I asked.
“Think of it. Every person I have ever met, every person I have ever loved, I can see not only their deaths, but every conceivable way in which they might die. I’ve seen versions of your own future, Templar, where you are skewered by a goblin’s arrow, crushed underfoot by a tree giant, ripped apart by a pack of screechers, boiled alive in a witch’s pot, burned at –”
“Okay, I get the idea,” I said, not really enjoying hearing all the ways I might die.
“You see? I’m forced to see these and a thousand other deaths waiting for you whenever I open myself up to the flow of possible futures. I’m tired of it.”
I heard the anguish in her voice and wondered how long she’d lived with the visions filling her head, with the pain of seeing every form of death for each person she met. I felt a wave of sympathy for her.
“I want nothing more than to succeed. For my friends. For my father. For everyone,” I said.
Pythia looked as me hard. “And I want you to succeed for me. I will do something I have never done before and explain to you the riddle I gave you as your prophecy.”
Then she told me something that would not only eventually save my life but also put me in the greatest danger I’d ever faced.
Chapter 20
I sat up with a start, shocked awake by the sounds of men yelling. I was still in the cage and still wrapped in thick cords of rope. We had stopped in the deep forest on what looked like an old dirt logging trail. Sunlight filtered through the canopy above, and I guessed it was midday, over twelve hours since Eva had betrayed me in the tavern.
I closed my eyes and tried to repeat what the Oracle had told me. I wasn’t sure if it had been a dream or some kind of wacky hallucination from being hit too hard on the head… twice. But just in case, I wanted to make sure I remembered it.
Something small hit my cheek, and the Oracle’s words disappeared. Poof. Gone. I opened my eyes just as another little pebble soared through the air and bounced off my forehead.
“Oops, sorry,” came a voice from a nearby bush.
I couldn’t believe my ears. It sounded just like T-Rex. But that was impossible. They were back in the town. No way could they be out here in the forest.
“T-Rex,” I whispered. “Is that you?”
There was a long pause, and my heart sank as I figured I must have been hearing things. And dreaming things. But a guard came running from behind the cart my cage was on, passing by without giving me a second look, hurrying toward the shouting I’d heard farther ahead. This was no man, but a goblin with bulging eyes, hooked nose, and warty skin.
Once it passed, T-Rex’s face poked through the bushes. He looked left and right for more guards, then scrambled out from his hiding spot. He didn’t move with a lot of grace, but to me he looked like a Greek god sprinting to the finish line.
“Boy, am I happy to see you,” I said. And I was happy – even though he’d knocked the Oracle’s words right out of my head. If she was ever really there.
“Are you okay? You’ve been out for hours,” T-Rex said, digging into a bag he carried at his side.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. “Where are the others? Get me out of here.”
He pulled a small knife from the bag and a plastic Easter egg. Sticking both through the bars of my cage, he put them into my hands, tied behind my back.
“Not yet. Hold tight. You’ll know when to move,” T-Rex said fast. He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and ran for his bush as if a pack of cursed demons was on his tail.
“Wait,” I hissed. “Don’t leave me in here. You can’t –”
“Oy, you. Who you talkin’ to?” a snarling voice said from behind me. I turned to see a goblin guard approaching, dressed in full battle armor including a spiky helmet. Over his shoulder, I saw Eva walking just behind him.
I slunk to the rear of the cage, cradling the knife and the weird little Easter egg between my hands and the small of my back. The goblin beat his spear against the metal bars of my cage.
“Oy, I’m talkin’ to you,” the goblin snarled.
Eva walked up and peered into the cage. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned and looked at the exact spot where T-Rex had hidden. She pulled her sword and crept toward the bush. With a lunge, she parted the branches.
Nothing.
T-Rex had been smart enough to get out of there.
“How could you do this to us?” I called out to her.
Eva returned to the cage and shoved the goblin aside.
“Don’t you dare judge me,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This isn’t you, Eva,” I pleaded. “This is the vampire blood. It’s got you all messed up inside. You can fight it.”
Eva laughed, and the goblin laughed with her, poking his spear through the cage at me.
“Fight it?” she mocked. “Why would I want to fight it? This feels great. I’m more powerful than I could have ever imagined. All of my senses are on hyperdrive. I can see in the dark. Smell my prey a quarter mile away. I can hear that mosquito on your neck drinking your blood.”
I cocked my head to the side to shoo the bug away.
“This is where I belong now,” she said. “This is my new family.”
“No, your family died in front of you in Ren Lucre’s dungeon, or did you forget?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she hissed. “And now I have the murderer’s blood flowing in my veins – thanks to you. You made me into this, and now you can live with the consequences.”
“The Eva I knew didn’t blame others or take the easy way out,” I said. “ Then again, I always wondered if the tough girl routine was just an act.”
This seemed to get a rise out of her, so I pushed harder. “Everyone always talks about how brave you were to cut off your own hand to escape your bindings in Ren Lucre’s prison. Maybe you weren’t brave at all. Maybe you were just scared. So scared that you would do something like that to escape.” I didn’t know if I was getting through to her or not, but my anger was getting away from me. “Did you really see your family die there, Eva? Or did you run away and leave them like a coward?”
“Don’t you dare bring up my family,” she spit.
“What do you suppose they’d think of you now? Their daughter the traitor?”
“Should I make ’im bleed a little, miss?” the goblin guard asked, jabbing with his spear.
Eva snapped her head toward him, and I thought for a second I’d gone too far; she was going to have the Creach cut off a toe or two to shut me up. Relief flooded me when she shook her head.
“No, we have bigger plans for this one.” She turned back to me. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your mouth. Right now.”
The look in her eye was so venomous that I suddenly found it hard to swallow, let alone say anything. Even if I could have thought of a good smart-alecky response, I don’t think I could have gotten it out.
“You’ll regret those words someday,” she said. “Wait and see.”
Shouts erupted again from farther up the road. I craned my neck and saw at least two dozen armed Creach running toward us. Among them, I recognized the ones from the tavern, including Skyal, the redheaded woman with horns. The rest were a mix of goblins and ogres, dressed for battle. Looks of terror on
their faces made them even uglier.
“What is it?” Eva shouted.
She didn’t need an answer. Behind the Creach, a flood of giant wolves gave chase.
The Creach stopped in the road near my cage, some of them pointing and shouting what sounded like a warning in their guttural language, all of them looking in the direction they’d been running. I craned my head to see what they were looking at, but I already had a pretty good guess.
The rest of the wolf pack rushed at us from that direction.
In a short time, snarling wolves surrounded our group on all sides. They may have all been Creach, but it was clear that these two groups did not like each other at all. It felt like a fight was about to break out, and I was right in the middle of it, still tied up, in a cage and unarmed except for the little knife T-Rex had given me.
Bottom line, things didn’t look good. And they were about to get worse.
Chapter 21
Skyal strode forward and addressed the wolves.
“We are here on the business of Ren Lucre himself,” she shouted. “He will hear of this outrage.”
The wolves didn’t move. They either hadn’t understood or hadn’t heard the puny morsel of meat yelling at them. Carefully, I worked the little blade against my bindings, not knowing how much time I had before a brawl broke out.
Then one of the wolves let out a chugging sound from deep in its throat, almost like a cough. The others followed suit, and soon the sound filled the air. It took me a second to realize they were laughing.
Skyal looked unnerved by the response. Eva stepped forward and drew her sword. “She speaks the truth.” She walked in my direction. “This boy is the personal property of Ren Lucre, your lord and master. It is of paramount importance that he be safely delivered. Any of you touch him, it’ll be my steel you feel sliding into your heart.”
Every wolf turned to watch me. Up until that point, I’d just been an unfortunate human being dragged along in the Creach caravan, probably for someone’s snack later on. With Eva’s pronouncement, I instantly became the most interesting thing in the forest. I glared at Eva, but she ignored me.
One of the larger wolves, this one with leather armor strapped to its back and chest, jumped down from the rocky outcropping he’d used to perch over us. On the way through the air, he transformed into a teenage boy, no more than seventeen or eighteen by the looks of him.
He landed gracefully on his feet and brushed back long dark hair from his face. I’d always thought Daniel was ridiculously good-looking, probably a source of my jealousy when Eva gave him any attention. But this werewolf guy made Daniel look like he was an old shoe. He was handsome, with fine features, soft eyes, and a body so ripped his six-pack looked chiseled from stone. The leather armor that had looked small on the wolf fit well on his frame, hanging down both front and back. With a smooth motion, his hands found cinches at either side of his waist that drew the armor tight to his body.
I couldn’t help but notice both Skyal and Eva’s appraising looks of this new form of the werewolf even as he walked past them. He ignored their raised swords with such confidence, it seemed impossible that either of them could strike at him. The werewolf crossed over to my cage and peered in at me, scrutinizing me from head to foot. Finally, he turned and looked at Eva.
“Why?” he asked.
Skyal flicked her hair to one side impatiently. “It’s none of your business, now is it?” she said.
The werewolf held up his hand. “The next time the woman with the red hair speaks, my pack will rip out the throats of everyone here.”
Skyal opened her mouth to reply but stopped short. The wolves around the perimeter bared their teeth, some of them drooling in anticipation. Skyal must’ve reached the same conclusion I did. This was no idle threat. They wanted her to speak just to have an excuse to attack. She closed her mouth and lowered her head.
“Good,” the werewolf said. “Usually your kind are not smart enough to know when to stop.”
“Not as stupid as a werewolf,” came a high-pitched voice from among the Creach.
The werewolf spun around. “Who said that?”
The Creach looked around at one another, all pointing fingers at someone else. I bit my tongue because I recognized the voice.
Will.
I searched the crowd of Creach but couldn’t spot him. With the attention diverted away from me, I resumed sawing at the ropes holding me.
“Idiots, all of you,” he said. He turned back to Eva. “But not as weak-minded as a vampire coming into the Black Forest,” he growled. “There hasn’t been one in these woods for centuries. None that escaped alive anyway.”
“And why would that be?” Eva said. “Is not Ren Lucre the ruler of all the lands of the world?”
The teenage boy bared his teeth in the same way as the werewolves around us were doing. “Kaeden, the Lord of the Werewolves, rules this land,” the boy said. “Ren Lucre and those loyal to him are not welcome here. He knows this all too well. A pity for you and your comrades here that he forgot to mention it.”
“What kind of ruler sends out a boy to protect his lands?” Eva sneered.
The boy’s expression turned from anger to bemusement. “What kind of lord sends a girl to find and bring an important possession to him?”
“Thinking of me as just a girl would be a mistake,” Eva said.
“Then perhaps we are both at risk of underestimating the other,” the boy said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “But, just so we’re clear, I suspect this is going to end badly for you and your friends.”
“Lucky for you, I’ve decided to offer you a bargain,” Eva said.
The boy grinned. “You’ll offer me a bargain? By the gods, you are either the bravest or the most careless person I’ve ever met. I can’t decide which.”
Eva shrugged and gave the boy her most charming smile. “Well, I’ve never been accused of being careless.”
He studied her hard for a few long seconds and then clapped his hands together. “All right, we’ll make it interesting. Make me your offer and we will see where this takes us.”
“I want to know where Kaeden is,” Eva said immediately. “Take me to him so I can talk to him in person. Do this and I will let you live.”
The boy erupted into a great bellow of laughter. The wolves around them howled and barked in response.
Skyal stepped forward. It looked like she was about to object to Eva’s request. The boy glanced over at her, his laughter transformed instantly into a mask of rage.
“I dare you. Say something, demon,” he growled. “Please.”
The forest fell silent, all eyes on Skyal. She shrank down, shut her mouth, and backed away. The boy relaxed and turned back to Eva. I shuddered at the thought of how quickly the beast inside of him had shown itself. I made a mental note not to be fooled by the boy’s looks. Violence coiled up inside of him like a snake ready to bite.
My hands were free from the rope, and I twisted carefully to work on my legs in a way that no one would notice. I hoped everyone was watching the verbal contest going on between the boy and Eva. Both the Creach and the wolves around us appeared restless. The beasts paced back and forth while the goblins, ogres, and other Creach all held weapons at the ready. It was a tinderbox that a single spark could ignite. I thought of Will’s shouted insult. It seemed he wanted a fight to break out. I had to be ready for when it did.
Eva waited, expressionless, for her answer. The boy frowned, but it had an air of amusement to it. “That’s an odd request,” he said.
“I have a message for him from my master, Ren Lucre,” Eva said. “Are you going to take us to him or not?”
The boy wagged his finger in the air. “Not so quickly. We’re playing a two-sided game, remember. I want something in return.”
“I told you, I’ll spare your life.”
“You mentioned that,” the boy said. “But you bargain with something that’s not yours to give.”
“Says you,” E
va said.
The boy waved the comment away. “I will take you to Kaeden in return for a simple thing.”
“What is it?” Eva asked.
The boy stabbed a finger in the air toward me. “Tell me who that is,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a simple enough thing to tell the boy a lie, that I was some kid picked up along the road or something. But then I remembered Eva had made a big deal about me being the personal property of Ren Lucre. So the lie had to be more convincing. Still, there were hundreds of options. I had insulted his name and needed to be punished. Or I had accidentally killed one of his minions and would be thrown in the dungeons. Anything would have been better than the option Eva chose.
“That’s Jack Templar,” she said without hesitation. I wanted to scream at her to shut up, but she seemed oblivious to the danger she was putting me in. “Supposedly, he’s the last Templar knight, if you don’t count his father rotting in Ren Lucre’s dungeon, I guess.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed as he looked back and forth between me and Eva. “Jack Templar?” he asked. “The one who bested Shakra and destroyed Tiberon?”
“Destroyed Tiberon?” I blurted, thinking back to the massive black werewolf that had befriended me at the Monster Hunter Academy. “He was my friend. I lifted the curse on him. At his request.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” the boy said, turning to me. “The story I heard was that he helped you destroy the goblin army, and then you turned on him and used magic to destroy him.”
“Then you heard wrong,” I said. “If I had any magic, do you think I would be locked in this cage?”
The boy nodded, acknowledging the point. “Perhaps you’re right, but you did best Shakra?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“But you took her Jerusalem Stone?”
I nodded. “She gave it to me of her own free will,” I said.