“Yes, my dear, I do know your pain,” Ren Lucre said.
Aunt Sophie froze as black lines spread across her face, following the veins beneath her skin.
Ren Lucre leaned and hissed into her ear, “But never suggest that you know mine.”
In seconds, her face was black and the darkness spread to the rest of her body.
“No-one betrays me,” Ren Lucre said. “Not ever.” Ren Lucre stood and Aunt Sophie’s body collapsed under its own weight and fell into a pile of ashes.
I bit into my jacket to keep from making any noise. It had been painful enough to leave her behind as she covered our escape, but to see her die in front of me in her human form, and knowing that she had sacrificed herself for me, was almost too much to bear.
Below, Ren Lucre’s voice bellowed over the congregation of beasts and monsters. “ Find the boy! Go from house to house in this miserable town and kill the humans one-byone if you have to. Just bring him to me alive.”
Mrs. Fitcher scurried forward and bent low. “Sire, if I may be so bold. While a most excellent plan, going house to house may bring unwanted attention from the humans. And if I understand correctly, we are not yet ready for an all-out war.”
“Do you suggest I fear the humans?” Ren Lucre’s eyes narrowed.
“Of course not, Sire. Why would you?” Mrs. Fitcher groveled. “Only, it would be such unnecessary effort when you only need to capture one human.”
“Get to the point, woman,” Ren Lucre snapped.
“I know this boy. I’ve watched him every day. If you want to bring him to you, you need only capture one human. A girl named Cindy Adams.”
“Oh no,” I said.
Mrs. Fitcher continued. “If we have the girl, the boy will come to us. He’s brash and emotional, just like his father.”
Ren Lucre hissed at the mention of my father. Mrs. Fitcher bent low and quivered at his feet.
Ren Lucre shook his head and looked into the forest, lost in thought. His eyes narrowed as if he sensed something hiding in the trees. I felt a pang of fear that Eva and Will were about to be found out. But after a few agonizing seconds, Ren Lucre turned to Mrs. Fitcher. “Bring the girl to me.”
Mrs. Fitcher led the horde of Creach monsters as they streamed back through the house. With a wave of his hand, Ren Lucre sent most of the zombies back into the forest. I wondered if they were being sent to search for whatever he had sensed moments earlier. I hoped that Eva and Will were smart enough to be far away by now.
“Follow me,” Mrs. Fitcher shouted at the others. “I know where the Adams girl lives.”
T-Rex and I waited until the backyard emptied out. He turned to me and whispered, “They’re going to get Cindy. What are we gonna do?”
I saw a flicker of movement down below and hushed T-Rex.
Ren Lucre re-entered the empty backyard. He looked around as if he were sniffing the air. He scanned the roofline and we ducked, holding our breaths . Finally, I dared to raise my head back over the edge to see what he was doing.
Surprisingly, he was crouched next to the pile of dust that, minutes before, had been Aunt Sophie. He scooped up a handful of dust and let it slide through his fingers, mumbling something quietly under his breath. I know it sounds crazy, but if I didn’t know that he was the one who killed her, I would have said that he was mourning her death.
A rock troll wandered into the yard and Ren Lucre quickly threw down the rest of the ash, stood and strode out from the backyard.
“That was weird,” T-Rex whispered.
“Yeah,” I replied, fighting hard to fight down the emotions churning inside me. “But what about tonight isn’t weird? Come on, we need to find the others.”
We crawled along the roof, keeping our profile low enough that any Creach in the backyard would not have been able to see us. We got to the far end of the roof, but were in the same situation as before with the jump in front of us. When I turned back, T-Rex was already in tears.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” T-Rex said. “I know I’m ruining everything. I can’t go any further.”
“You can do this,” I said.
“You don’t get it,” T-Rex said. “I can’t get caught. My grandma will—”
“You’re grandma will what? Get mad at you?” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Listen, she wouldn’t want you to get eaten by monsters, would she?”
“You don’t understand. They’re going to take my grandma away,” T-Rex blurted out.
The words were like a dam breaking inside of T-Rex. He just stood there, shaking and crying.
“Who’s taking her?” I said. “The Creach?”
“No, no…it’s not like that. Just these people. From the government. They came last week for a meeting. Told me she can’t take care of herself anymore. That she can’t take care of me. If I get caught out here…doing all this…they’re gonna take her away for sure.”
I heard grunts coming from monsters below us in the courtyard. I put my arm around T-Rex, to both comfort him but to stifle the sound a bit. “Why didn’t you tell me last week?” I said. “You know, she is getting really old. Did you ever think maybe it might be better for her in a nursing home? You know, safer?”
“You’re still not getting it,” T-Rex said. “If they put her in a home, they’re going to take me away too. Probably put me in foster care in a different town.”
He buried his face into his hands and cried softly. This was almost too much for my brain to process. This night just couldn’t get any worse.
“It’s gonna be OK. I promise. I won’t let them take you away, you hear me? I won’t let them.” T-Rex nodded and wiped his nose on my shoulder. The grunting below us got louder. “But do you think we could talk about this after we put a little distance between us and those monsters?”
T-Rex wiped the tears off his face. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be safer if we just stayed here and hid? You know, wait the whole thing out?”
“No,” I said, “if we stay on this roof, they’re gonna catch us for sure. If you really want to help your grandma, we’ve gotta make this jump.”
T-Rex eyed the distance again between the roof and the tree. “You really think I can do it?”
“I know for a fact that you can make this jump,” I said. It has nothing to do with the muscles in your legs.” I tapped his head. “It’s all in here. We believe something because we’ve decided to believe in it, no other reason.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him toward me. “All I’m asking is that you believe in yourself this one time, TRex. Believe in yourself as much as I do. Can you do that?”
T-Rex slowly looked over at the jump, then back at me. He nodded.
“All right, good,” I said. “I want you to get a running start, take off right from the edge. I’m going to jump first so I can help you when you land in the tree, OK? I’m not going to be able to jump back over if you change your mind, so we’re good, right?”
“We’re good,” T-Rex said. “I’ve got this.”
“Good man,” I said. I did a quick survey to make sure the backyard was clear, then ran to the edge of the roof and launched myself through the air. With my newfound strength, I cleared the distance easily and grabbed hold of the tree.
I looked back to T-Rex and knew right away that he wasn’t going to jump.
“I want to jump. I want to help you, but I just can’t. I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “I really am.”
“Come on, buddy,” I whispered. “You can do this.”
But he was already inching his way back across the roof to the attic window. He turned and waved at me, stuck a finger in his nose and pulled himself inside.
There was nothing I could do. Without a running start, I couldn’t get back up on the roof. And from where I was, I could see there were still Creach monsters guarding the inside of the house.
T-Rex had fought in the zombie battle (although he had only poked a few with his tiny knife), so I knew that he was fair game. The Creach would kill him if they decided to search the attic. But they hadn’t yet. So, with no other option, I convinced myself that TRex would be safer staying behind than in the zombie-filled woods.
Especially considering my next steps were to find Will and Eva, arm ourselves the best we could, then go rescue Cindy Adams before they did anything bad to her.
Yeah, I thought to myself, T-Rex was probably better off in the attic. I turned and climbed quietly through the branches of the tree.
In this part of the forest, the trees grew close together, so it was easy to jump from tree to tree to cover ground quickly. I moved like this as carefully as I could for about ten minutes. I say carefully, because quite often, I would pass over a hobgoblin or rock troll wandering the woods below.
But after a while, I started to get anxious that I wouldn’t be able to find Eva and Will. Or worse, I began to consider the possibility that they had been captured or killed. I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness wash over me. I realized that with Aunt Sophie gone, Will, T-Rex and, in some ways, Eva, were now my only family. And they were spread out, isolated, and possibly dead.
An owl hooted right over my head, close enough that I flinched and ducked down.
A snickering sound quickly followed. I looked up and saw Eva, obviously the source of the owl call, perched in the tree next to Will, obviously the source of the snicker.
They climbed down to meet me. I quickly told them everything that I had seen and about T-Rex’s decision to stay behind.
“Ren Lucre was there?” Eva said incredulously. “You actually saw him?”
“Yeah, tall, pale, pointy teeth, real bad attitude,” I said. “I saw him, all right. I wish I never had.”
Will squeezed my forearm. “Sorry about Aunt Sophie. She was always nice to me. It was kind of like she was my mom too,” Will said. “Are you all right?”
Was I all right? No, not at all. And, somehow, deep inside, I knew that I never would be again. But I took comfort in Will’s concern for me and I felt tears spring to my eyes from the simple gesture.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Thanks for asking.”
“But Ren Lucre wasn’t supposed to be here personally. That was never part of the plan,” Eva mumbled to herself.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this plan of yours,” I said. “At what point were you going to tell me that the hunters were using me as bait to get to Ren Lucre?”
Eva looked taken aback. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—”
Will and I stared at her, not buying it. Soon enough, she figured out that she wasn’t going to be able to fake her way through it.
“OK, it’s true,” Eva said. “We’ve known for years where you were. But we knew you were safe until your fourteenth year. Just in case, you have always had a hunter guardian or two assigned to you. Hester was just the most recent one. But they were always deep undercover, careful not to tip off the Creach that we knew you were here.”
“Because you knew Ren Lucre wanted me taken to him after I turned fourteen. Why?”
“He has his reasons. But what you must know is that Ren Lucre is the most insidious, most cruel leader the Creach has ever had. He has ruled with an iron fist for over a thousand years.”
“A thousand years?” Will said. “That’s impossible.”
“He’s a vampire, isn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes, but he’s more than that. He’s a dark soul who wages the fight against hunters with nearly a crazed ruthlessness. He doesn’t only want to defeat us; he wants to make us suffer. And his hatred doesn’t stop with the hunters. We believe he’s preparing a final battle of Creach against all humans.”
“Can he do that?” I asked. “I mean, is that even possible?”
“You only know the very surface of our world, Jack,” Eva said. “And you only understand the smallest bit of how important your place in that world is.”
“Yeah? Well, I just heard my Aunt Sophie tell Ren Lucre that I’m not who he thinks I am. Turns out I’m just some kind of decoy. This Templar kid is still out there in the world somewhere,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” Eva said. “She must have been trying to protect you.”
“A few hours ago you said she was just a Creach monster that you couldn’t trust,” I said. “Now suddenly you believe she was willing to lie to protect me? Which is it?”
Eva turned away, lost in her own thoughts. I glanced at Will who shrugged at me, not sure what to do.
“Did Ren Lucre believe her?” Eva finally asked.
“I don’t know. He said he didn’t, but…that’s not really the point,” I stammered. “If I’m not this Templar person, then there’s no way I can stand up to these monsters. I mean, this is bad, right?”
Eva shook her head. “I just need Ren Lucre to believe you are still what he’s looking for. I will fight him…and I will kill him. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that?” Will said. “Well, why didn’t you just say so earlier?”
“The only thing you need to know now is that killing Ren Lucre is more important than any of our lives. Yours and mine. If he’s here, we must use this opportunity to kill him. The Black Guard hasn’t had a chance like this in over a hundred years.”
I still didn’t feel like Eva was telling me the whole story. The one thing I had no doubt about was her description of Ren Lucre. I shuddered at the thought of facing him again, but somehow I knew it was inevitable. I tried to push that aside. We had a more immediate problem to deal with.
“I know their next move,” I said. “ They’re kidnapping Cindy to draw me out.”
“Why would they do that?” She looked at me, and even in the dark, I felt my face flush in embarrassment. “Oh, I see, she’s your girlfriend.”
“Uh…well…I wouldn’t exactly say—”
“He has a major crush on her. Everyone knows it,” Will chimed in, a little too eagerly I thought.
“Isn’t that cute?” Eva said. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought her voice had a twinge of jealousy to it. “How old is she?”
The question hit me like a slap in the face. She had her birthday a few months earlier. “She’s already fourteen,” I said. And that meant she was fair game for the Creach to kill.
I took off through the trees in the direction of Cindy’s house.
“Jack, wait!” Eva called out behind me.
But I couldn’t wait. The thought of Cindy and her family being taken and killed by that Creach horde all because of me was too much to bear.
Faster and faster, I jumped tree to tree until I was almost running across the top of them. A quick glance behind me showed Eva in close pursuit but Will had fallen far behind, struggling to keep up.