The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) Read online

  I bristled at the condescension, and couldn’t let it lie. “I know your beliefs, old woman, you track down the pieces of the cross and kill anyone who stands in your way. Tell me this, how could a piece of the holy cross find its way into a burial mound created over a thousand years ago in America? That’s where I found it. Hasn’t it occurred to you that God’s will is greater and more mysterious than even you can know? He saw fit to deliver this burden to me. How can you question His will?”

  “It is not His will that I question. Deliver the relic to me with proper deference and contrition, and I shall let you live.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. I don’t kneel to you, only to God.” Holy shit, did that come from my mouth?

  As I struggled to regain my balance, a double crack of sound hit me. The first came from a rifleman running into the courtyard, the second was his bullet hitting the car behind me.

  I reacted on instinct. I reached out and twisted the light around me. I finally understood how Colette had done it. I poured my will into it and suddenly, the entire world disappeared into a horizontal smear of colors. Grays, browns, greens, and a few lines of glowing white shimmered in bands around me. It was like being in a tornado of light. I couldn’t see a thing. Crap! This never happened to Colette.

  Spring still controlled my strings, and my body dropped to the ground as another shot spanged into the car behind me. Several people in the courtyard cried out, and my body started crawling. I didn’t have to ask. She said,We’ve got to get Dave and Jen and get out of here.

  I listened to the chaos around me, and I realized that everyone else was caught in the kaleidoscope of light I’d created. I let Spring keep the reins and concentrated on keeping up the flow of power into my will. I crawled head first into Jen.

  “Ah!” yelled Jen.

  “Shhhh. It’s me! It’s me!” Spring hissed with my voice. “How’s Dave?”

  “I’m working on him, it will take a couple of minutes before he is ready to be moved.”

  “Fuck that!” said my mouth in a hiss. “Suck it up, Davey boy, we need to go.”

  Dave hissed back, “Next time, I’m going to dive behind you.”

  The stream of power I commanded continued to roar through me to be transformed and manifested as my will. It was a bit like controlling a raging flood with walls of sandstone. Where the power met my will, it scraped and burned. The force of it abraded my mind, and I could feel bits of me being carried off. I couldn’t worry about that. Even with the fireworks, Granny could still probably locate me with her Sight, so I clamped down on my aura like I—Colette—had done when she broke into my room. That’s why I hadn’t seen it at first! I prayed it was enough. It was tough doing both things. Like patting my head and juggling cats at the same time.

  Hurry up, Spring.

  Finn, can you pick up Dave and try to heal him while still keeping up the light show?

  No. I’m maxed on the hoodoo. I’m not going to be able to keep this up too much longer either.

  “Okay Dave,” said Spring with my lips. “I’m going to pick you up. Try not to squeal like a girl.”

  “Finn,” said Jen. “I’ll try to deflect their attention, then you can drop your whatsits, so we can see.”

  “You go, girl!” came tumbling out of my mouth as my hands groped around to find Dave’s head and knees. After a few false and embarrassing starts, I managed to pick him up. Jen got up with us, grabbed my arm and the three of us walked slowly away from the car. I was pretty sure it was away from the car. I hoped.

  Meanwhile, the power continued to roar eagerly through my core. The edge of me containing it, channeling it, screamed in pain as it succumbed, layer by layer and was stripped away, and I was getting tired. Most of the power came from the totem, but it still took effort for me to direct it.

  I thought to Spring, Ask Jen...

  My mouth whispered, “Jen, do you have it up yet?”

  “Yes.”

  Spring kept talking through my mouth. “Okay, Jen, Finn’s going to let go of the light show in a few. Let’s pray that your trick will work against the holy rollers.”

  Spring, keep walking until I say stop. I want to get as much distance as possible between us.

  I took back my mouth. “I’m going to get us into the colonnade, where we can get some cover.”

  “You can see?” asked Jen.

  “No, but I remember the place pretty well. We shouldn’t be too far.” I kept the flow going and the walls of my mind kept abrading away.

  “When were you here?” asked Dave.

  I didn’t even grunt a response. Jen was now guiding us. I could only concentrate on the erosion of my control and the increasing pain and exhaustion. Finally, it became more than I could bear, and I let loose my grasp of the light and the power. As the power flowed away, it took my consciousness with it.

  Mice in the Walls

  “Finn! Come on, wake up.” Someone slapped my face gently.

  I came to. We were in the southern colonnade, leaned up against the stone between two arches. It wasn’t a very good hiding place, and my first thought was to get us out of there. My second thought came when I tried to move, and I discovered that some bastard had tied huge lead weights to my arms and legs. I couldn’t see them, but it was the only good explanation why I could barely twitch my limbs. Maybe this hiding place was good enough after all.

  “Thank God,” said Jen, whose face hovered a foot from mine. “There is no way I could move you any further.”

  “What happened?” I asked with my own mouth.

  “You collapsed, dropped Dave, and fell flat on your face.”

  “I guess that explains why my nose hurts. Do you still have your hoodoo up?”

  “No, I dropped it about fifteen minutes ago.”

  My brain tried to squeeze up a little urgency, but nothing happened. “So what—”

  “The Delacroix are all out hunting for you or nursing their wounds. They carried knife guy and the girl inside. Granny got the other three up. The others headed out of the courtyard.”

  Damn, I hoped they got to Henri quickly. I was afraid I’d crushed his trachea. If so, they wouldn’t have much time to heal him. I didn’t want to see either Henri or Katerine hurt. Henri was generally a little full of himself, but it was not without reason. He was talented and handsome, and he knew it. Katerine was a bit too like Granny for my tastes, but they were both good, God-fearing people.

  “Can you help me move Dave,” asked Jen, “so we can get out of here?” I flopped my head over and saw Dave out cold against the stones beside me. My entire body hurt and my arm was screaming panic at me, but I tried to move. A wave of darkness swept through my vision. “I would, if I could move my own arms and legs. Just...just give me a minute to rest...” And, I was out again.

  The next thing I knew, a pair of strong arms wrapped around me. Dave was hoisting me off the floor. When he saw my eyes open, he said, “Jesus, Finn, what have you been eating? Rocks?”

  I managed to say, “Sorry.”

  “Shut up... okay Jen, which way?”

  “I think we should get as far away from this place as possible.”

  “Amen, sister,” he agreed and started walking to the open end of the courtyard.

  “No,” I said between breaths. “No, we’ll be caught. No place to hide. Open fields.”

  Dave scowled at me. “You got a better idea?”

  I jerked my head toward the open courtyard and squeezed out an exhausting, “Turn around.”

  “Where’re we going?” asked Dave.

  “To church,” I said and stopped to pant.

  “I don’t think all the praying in the world is going to help us, Finn. In case you hadn’t heard, God is on their side.”

  I made the effort to shake my head. “Jen, how long...cover us?”

  I couldn’t see her from Dave’s arms, but her voice was tight. “Ten minutes tops.”

  “Good enough, that way Dave.” I nodded him forward.

&n
bsp; The center of the building complex was shaped roughly like a Templar Cross surrounded by a U of other connected buildings. There was an enclosed courtyard on the east side and the open courtyard that we were in on the west. The chapel, the vertical part of the cross, stuck into both courtyards. Its iron-banded, cross-laden, wooden double doors sat in the central place of honor where you would find the main entrance in a normal estate. It was the original chapel that was built on this site seven or eight hundred years prior. Get it? Prior—abbey—priests? Sigh.

  Well anyway, the rest of the monastery had been built around this ancient church over five hundred years ago by the Delacroix family. They’d been guarding the True Cross for more than twice as long as the United States had existed. I grudgingly had to admit that they had proven themselves apt guardians.

  It only took us a few minutes to get to the entrance of the chapel. Jen reached out to open one of the wooden doors, and stopped when we heard the crunching of gravel behind us. Jen and Dave froze. I dangled. Whoever it was stopped, then started coming closer—headed our way.

  I did an internal inventory to see if I could at least rouse some hoodoo, but that cupboard was bare, raw, and bloody. In fact, I was immersed in silence. Spring wasn’t there, I couldn’t feel her. I had a moment of panic before I found her deep in the hibernation-slumber she called winter’s death.

  I was completely useless, and if Dave had to fight, he’d rip through people like tissue paper. He wouldn’t be subtle or quiet, and someone I knew would die. It wouldn’t stop there, others would come running.

  “Hey!” shouted a voice from a goodly distance away. “Come here! I found something.”

  Oddly, the voice was speaking English, but the gravel walker’s footsteps stopped, then crunched away from us at speed.

  Quickly, we were through the door. Jen pulled it shut behind us, closed her eyes, and collapsed to the stone floor in front of the door.

  “Oh, pus buckets,” said Dave. “Do I gotta carry you, too?”

  Without opening her eyes, Jen lifted one forearm and waved for Dave to back off. “Just give me a second, blondie.”

  Dave turned around, and I finally got a good look at the Chapel. I remembered spending many hours here. One of three chapels, this was the largest with high rows of northern and southern windows. It was very plain and unadorned with wooden double doors in the centers of the right and left walls leading to the arms of the building’s cross shape. There was an altar at the far end on a low dais of rock with a single, plain wooden cross displayed upon it. The roof far overhead was supported by ancient wooden beams, which left a nice spacious openness to the room. I automatically recalled that the low original ceiling and stone columns had been removed and upgraded to this more open ceiling a few hundred years ago. The only furniture consisted of four or five rows of backless wooden benches. They were hard and guaranteed a backache if you slouched.

  Belatedly and happily, I realized we were alone. That would have been awkward if we’d come in on someone praying. What do you say in a situation like that? “Don’t mind the blood, stigmata can make such a mess sometimes.”

  “Okay Finn,” said Dave. “Is this your cunning plan? We’re gonna make our last stand in a church, so we all go to heaven?”

  “No,” I said. I managed to raise one of my arms and point to a single wooden door in the far back wall.

  Dave looked back at Jen. “Can you walk yet, Jen? We’ve only a little further to go.”

  Jen nodded tiredly. “That voice trick kicked my butt.”

  Dave said, “That was you?”

  She nodded.

  “Damn, girl! You are a goddess!”

  Jen smiled and struggled up to her feet. We headed back into what the family called the Vestry despite the chapel’s complete lack of other Catholic features. The Vestry was really just a stone walled rectangle with a wooden table holding the sacraments, a rack with some robes, and a couple of wooden chairs. Normally, the family attended a local church, but special services, such as weddings, were held here from time to time. There was one other door in the Vestry, it was in the floor at the very back, behind a wooden railing designed to keep people from falling in when the door was open. I pointed it out to Dave.

  He had to put me down to get the door open and hooked to the wall. Then he hoisted me back up with a grunt. “Shit, Finn, I wish you were still a muscleless dough-boy nerd.”

  I smiled thinly. “Yeah, well you’ve bulked out quite a bit, too.” It was a side effect of carrying around the bear whistle. He’d also gotten bushier, but his hair was so blond as to be practically invisible.

  We went down a steep, narrow staircase into darkness. It was tortuously slow going, but when we hit the bottom, no one had fallen or broken any bones.

  “I can’t see shit down here, Finn,” said Dave.

  “Just put me down right here, then go up and close the door. No one will look for us down here. It’s an old wine cellar.”

  Dave deposited me non-too-gently onto the cold stone floor, and Jen plopped down beside me.

  “It’s probably filled with spiders, too,” added Dave. “You know it’s just going to get darker when I close that door.”

  “Oh, poor wittle boy,” said Jen. “Are uuu afwaid of the dark?”

  “Nope, just the monsters hiding in it. This seems like a perfect place for goblins or slimes or lurkers.”

  I thought about reminding him that we didn’t live in a fantasy world, but then realized I wasn’t so sure. “Dave, here.” I handed him my brand new iPhone. It functioned as a perfectly serviceable flash light. “Don’t drop it!”

  The cold light of the phone illuminated the familiar space around us, creating deep black shadows and emphasizing the air’s unwavering chill. We were in a six-and-a-half-foot tall stone room about ten feet wide by twenty deep. It contained a half dozen stone columns, a few old, broken wine racks, and a couple of long-empty bottles. I remembered the low ceilings seeming cozy, but now it just seemed claustrophobic. I guess I was bigger than Colette.

  Everything was coated in dust, and due to some fortunate happenstance or good engineering, was quite dry. In the far right corner, a nest of blankets called up fond memories. This was where Colette came to be seriously alone or partake in a biology lesson with a distant cousin or two. I recoiled from exploring those memories. The old mattress and blankets mitigated the discomfort of the cold floor and air. It was useful for a lot of things—which I wasn’t going to think about. Sleeping! Sleeping was good. I concentrated on sleeping. It wasn’t difficult because sleep came at the top of my bucket list about now—if I could just get the energy to crawl over there.

  Dave came back down, picked me up and took me to the nest where he deposited me in a cloud of dust and fabric bits. He explored around the room as Jen sat down next to me.

  In the back left corner he found the iron-banded wooden door with no handle.

  “What’s behind the door?” asked Dave standing in front of it.

  “Don’t know, Colette’s never been through it.”

  “How could she stand not knowing?” he said. “It would kill me.”

  I huddled next to Jen for comfort and warmth. Absolute exhaustion was trying to pull me down into sleep. My arm, miraculously wrapped in a piece of someone’s shirt, throbbed in pain. I watched Dave give the door a couple of experimental shoves, but it didn’t budge. I closed my eyes for a minute...

  And, woke to a body and brain full of aches and pains and a stomach demanding attention. I opened my eyes to dim, flickering light poorly illuminating a small circle of the cellar around me. I was in the nest, lying amidst timeworn, dusty, and disintegrating blankets. Jen and Dave were sitting at the end of the mattress, facing the stairs with their backs against the wall. A lighted candle sat on the stone floor, and they were both chewing on something. Something that smelled like bread. That was all the motivation I needed.

  I pulled myself up and said, “Feed me!” I’ve found that a very handy line to have t
hese days.

  Jen smiled at me and tossed me a four-inch piece of French bread. I dug into it. It tasted divine, but it was dry and hard to swallow.

  “Anyfing to drink?” I murbled hopefully around a mouth full of bread.

  Jen handed me an ornate decanter. “It’s wine, so be careful drinking it. We’ll have to make a water run soon.”

  The green glass decorated with tin was heavy, but the lead weights on my arms had been considerably reduced, so I managed to only spill about half of it down my face. I didn’t care. I desperately wanted to swallow, so I took a second good-sized swig and let the blessed moisture carry the bread down with it.

  “Oh, that is so good!” I devoured the rest of the bread with a few more wine chasers. I looked hopefully at my friends, “More?”

  Dave looked astonished. “More? He wants more? Never before has a boy wanted more.” It was right out of Oliver Twist. On a lark, he, Gregg, Jim, and I auditioned for the school production, and to our surprise, we made the cut. We were even more surprised when we enjoyed ourselves—even if our dreams of meeting hot actor chicks didn’t pan out.

  Jen delivered me from dredging up the obligatory return lines. “Sorry, Finn, that’s all we’ve got.”

  A warm buzz rose up within me and took the sting out of her words. It also took a little of the edge off the pain in my arm and head and made the dim candlelight all cozy and romantic. This fit my memory better.

  I frowned. “Where did you get this food?”

  “Upstairs,” said Dave with a happy laugh. “We went up to explore and found this sitting on the table in the back room.”

  I sat up and my head swam with the buzz. “What? That’s the sacrament you stole. They’re going to miss it and come looking.” I scowled. “That’s where you got the candle, too!”

  Dave waved his hand at me in dismissal. “We took it hours ago, and no one’s come down here looking for it. We were hungry, and we knew you’d need some fuel in a big way. Dying of thirst and starvation didn’t seem like a good plan, anyway.”