Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves (Book #4 of the Templar Chronicles) (7 page)

I pulled him back. “Sorry, T-Rex, but we need to get to the Oracle as fast as we can.”

“I admit it smells pretty good,” Will said. “C’mon, Jack. We’ve had nothing but that horrible food of the train for two days. I want something that’s not processed or fried. Besides, how far can we be from this place?”

I turned and pointed to the snow-covered mountain looming behind up behind us. “That’s Mt. Parnassus. And that’s where we’re going.”

Daniel eyes searched the train station on hyper-alert. I’d scanned the area too and hadn’t turned up any Creach, but I knew Daniel had a better radar for them than I did. He noticed me watching him.

“Looks clear to me,” he said. “For now.”

“Okay, let’s grab some chicken… for the road though,” I added. “We’ll eat while we hike.”

Minutes later, I couldn’t have been happier that Will and T-Rex had asked to grab some food. The dish was called souvlaki, big chunks of marinated chicken with spices, grilled over an open flame. It came with fresh bread cooked in a traditional stone oven. We ate as we walked through the small town, taking in the sights.

Rows of two-story colored houses lined each side of the steep cobblestoned streets. There were cars in the town, but not very many, and most of those were rusted with faded paint. Several of the upper floors had balconies decorated with flowers in hanging planters and sheets of cloth held out on poles so they billowed in the wind like flags.

“Pretty secretive location, huh?” Will said, jabbing a finger at a sign pointing the way with
Oracle of Delphi
written in about ten different languages.

“I guess looking like tourists is a good thing,” T-Rex said.

A bus stopped near us and off-loaded dozens of new arrivals. They stretched and groaned as they shook off the bus ride from their bones. Many snapped pictures with their cameras. I pulled Daniel’s arm. “C’mon, let’s join that group. We’ll stand out less that way.”

Daniel scanned the new group for potential threats. As he did, I noticed a little girl, a local by the looks of her, working her way through the new arrivals, her hand out asking for money. The tourists ignored her as if she wasn’t even there.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Daniel replied. His words distracted me, and when I looked back, the little girl was lost in the crowd.

The group was large enough that nobody noticed four teenagers joining in. As we hiked upward, the guide in the front did his tour-guide thing and pointed out the sites along the way.

Since we’d committed to being with the group, I decided to make the most of it and listen to the guide to see if there was anything in his presentation for us to learn. Unfortunately, it turned out to be in German.

I noticed Daniel listening intently. “You speak German?”

“Sure. Don’t you?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head and he shrugged.

“He’s just covering the basics right now, nothing we don’t already know. Zeus. Swallows. Gaia’s navel.”

“Gaia?” T-Rex asked. “Who’s that?”

“It’s the old Greek name for Mother Earth,” Will said. I was always amazed how Will, who was failing out of middle school back home, knew so much about so many things. Will had always said he was a genius and just bored with school. I thought it was just an excuse to get bad grades, but since our adventures had started, I wondered if he’d been telling the truth.

The tour guide’s voice rose and fell dramatically, and the German crowd
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed. Even Daniel looked entertained, a wide grin on his face.

“What is it?” T-Rex asked.

“Yeah, what he’d say?” Will added.

“Turns out there’s another story about how this place started. The god Apollo faced a dragon here named Python. After a furious battle, Apollo defeated the dragon and threw him down a hole in the ground. It’s said that the dragon’s decaying flesh produces a smoke or vapor that gives the Oracle the power to see the future. Pretty sweet, right?”

“Sounds like Apollo may have been an original monster hunter,” Will said.

“This place is going to be awesome,” T-Rex said.

Then we crested the hill, and T-Rex looked like someone had just taken away his ice cream cone. The ancient ruins of Delphi spread in front of us, but it was mostly just piles of stone.

A couple of small sections of crumbling walls outlined where buildings had stood ages ago. A few miscellaneous pillars stuck up into the sky.

In the center, the Temple of the Oracle lay in ruins, a circular stone base with only five pillars remaining. Each was a different size, and none of them connected to a wall or ceiling. Basically, there was nothing left of it.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

Chapter 8

We worked our way down through the ruins toward the temple. While the complex was larger than I thought it would be, with ruins sprawled along terraces cut into the mountainside, the temple itself was much smaller. In fact, I had Daniel use his German to double-check with the guide that the small circle of stones was the right place. He assured us that it was, shooting us a disdainful look, maybe for not appreciating the beauty of the place.

I appreciated its beauty. I just expected something more than a pile of rocks roped off from the public.

As we got closer, I could make out the layout of the old temple from the ruins. It looked like the temple had two distinct layers, an outer wall of pillars and a much smaller circle of pillars in the center. I imagined that either walls or cloth had closed off access to the inner circle for everyone except the priests and whoever wanted advice from the Oracle. Sounds impressive except that the whole thing was about the size of one of my classrooms back at Sunnyvale Middle School.

“It’s kinda tiny,” T-Rex said as if reading my thoughts.

“But it was built over two thousand years ago,” Will said. “Think about it. This was built before Julius Caesar. Before the Coliseum in Rome. I think it’s pretty cool.”

“I’ll give you that it’s cool; I’m just not sure what we’re supposed to find here,” I said.

“The dragon legend might be something,” Daniel said. “Since there’s a Creach lair around here, maybe we have to prove ourselves in battle?”

I shuddered at the thought of having to face dragons again. Two of them had attacked the Monster Hunter Academy, and I’d gotten up close and personal with them before it was over.

“Come on, let’s get closer,” I said.

We made our way through the crowd of tourists toward the temple ruins. As we approached, the Templar Ring on my finger turned warm and began to quiver slightly. I clutched my hand in a fist and glanced around, expecting to see some kind of imminent attack.

Nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Will whispered, picking up on my anxiety.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just feel like something big is nearby.”

“I don’t see anything,” Will said.

“Something wrong?” Daniel asked, doubling back from in front of us.

“Jack senses something,” Will said.

Daniel nodded. Given our history, that was enough for him to go on high alert without asking any more questions. “Do you have a direction?” he asked.

I focused, feeling the ring turn even warmer in my hand. But I couldn’t lock in on anything. The presence seemed to exist everywhere at once. Its intention wasn’t clear either. It wasn’t good or evil. But not neutral either. It seemed both good and evil at the same time, able and willing to be both depending on… depending on what? My weird senses couldn’t answer that part of the puzzle.

A cry came from our left. In our heightened state of readiness, all four of us spun toward the sound, hands on our weapons.

A few of the German tourists were yelling, but one man in particular was raising a fuss. Barrel-chested and square-jawed, the big man looked like he belonged on a poster for the German Olympic wrestling team. He waved one hand in the air wildly to get someone’s attention while the other hand wrapped around a little girl’s wrist.

I recognized her. It was the same girl we’d seen begging from the tourists when they first got off the bus on the village below. I didn’t need to understand German to guess that she’d gone a little farther than asking for money. My guess was that the big German had caught her trying to pick his pocket.

“He’s calling for the police,” Daniel said, confirming my hunch. “Says the girl stole his wallet. Heads up, guys. This might just be a diversion from the real attack.”

The way the girl struggled against the big man, trying desperately to free her arm from his massive hand, I didn’t think she’d staged it. Suddenly, the big German howled in pain as the girl kicked him hard in the shin. He flung her aside as if she’d bitten him.

She was so light that she flew through the air, hit the ground, and rolled onto the rocks. But with the grace of a hunter, she sprang to her feet in one smooth motion and broke into a run. Right toward us.

The big German, his face so red with anger that it was almost purple, got his wits about him and chased after her. He bellowed German words that would probably have made me blush if they were in English.

I spotted four security guards closing in from either side, coordinating with their walkie-talkies.

The little girl ran right past us without giving us even a look. She ducked under the ropes keeping the tourists from climbing directly on the ruins of the temple and made a beeline for the temple itself.

The security guards and the German converged on the spot from different directions, surrounding her. She climbed the rocks and stood in the center of the circular temple. The guards yelled at her in Greek, waving her to come out. The German shouted the same way, injecting some broken English into the mix.

“Come… girl… out…,” he shouted.

The security guards ducked under the ropes and approached the girl in a tightening circle, their arms out as if cornering a wild beast. By the look in the young girl’s eyes, they pretty much were doing just that.

I wondered what could have happened to the girl to put her in this position. Where were her parents? Why was she begging on the street?

I suddenly had a powerful image of Eva as a kid, one hand missing and wrapped in bandages, begging for money, relying on the kindness of strangers to survive. Without the Black Guard, she might have spent her entire life that way.

In a coordinated move, the security guards closed in on the girl at once. I half-expected her to squirt out from the huddle of guards like in the cartoons and run away, laughing. But she didn’t. Despite her kicking and scratching, the guards had her firmly in control.

The German cheered, and his friends who had gathered around him cheered along with him.

The guards walked the girl over to the German and held her in front of him. We pushed our way closer so we could hear. The guards spoke first in Greek, but the German just looked at them blankly.

“Speak English?” the guard asked.

“A little English,” the German said. “I want my money back.”

The girl spit at the German. “I didn’t take your money,” she said.

The guards gripped her roughly, speaking harshly in Greek. She replied back, venom in her voice.

“She says she didn’t take anything from you,” the guard said. “That she only asks; she doesn’t take.”

“Forty euros missing. My pocket. Gone,” the German said. “She little thief.”

The guards talked among themselves. One brought out a pair of handcuffs and readied them. The girl’s eyes went wide at seeing them, and she struggled to get away.

I dug into my pocket and brought out my wallet. Opening it, I counted out the rest of our money. It only came to fifty euros.

“We need that,” Daniel hissed.

“Not as much as she does,” I said. I stepped forward. “Here,” I called. “I’ll pay the forty euros. Just let her go.”

The crowd spun my direction, and I regretted making a scene. After all, we were supposed to be lying low. I should have waited until they led the girl away from the other tourists before making my offer. But the look of fear in the girl’s eyes was too much to bear. They reminded me too much of Eva’s.

The guards looked confused, so I stepped up and pushed the money in the big German’s hands. “Here, there’s your money. Now there’s no harm done.”

The German looked embarrassed. He held the money at first like it was dirty, but he got over that quickly. He folded the bills and stuffed them into his pocket.

“Now tell them to let her go,” I said.

The German hesitated and then nodded at the guards. “It’s okay. No problem.”

The guards let the girl go. The second they did, she sprinted away like a rabbit being chased by a hawk without once looking back.

“So much for
thank you
,” Daniel muttered.

I watched the girl dart through the ruins until she disappeared. Something told me I would see her again. It turned out my feeling was right – I just didn’t know how soon.

Chapter 9

The ruins at Delphi were a bust. We did everything we could to get close to the temple, but after the whole episode with the girl, the guards watched us too close. None of us thought we were missing much though. The ropes allowed us to get right up the edge of the stones outlining the old exterior wall. From there, we could see into the inner chamber, if you could call it that. It was just an open area with five worn down pillars. There were no inscriptions. No magical hole in the ground. If something was supposed to happen here, it was taking its time.

We decided to go back to the town, have a bite to eat, and wait until dark to sneak back onto the site to get a better look around without the guards. The town was set for the tourists with menus in English and ridiculously high prices for everything. We walked a couple of blocks away from the town center and found a local place where the food smelled twice as good and the prices were half of the tourist traps’. Since we were considerably poorer than we’d been this morning, I was happy we’d found something cheap.

“What do you think?” Daniel asked after the waiter put plates of fresh grilled fish in front of us.

“I think it looks great,” T-Rex said excitedly. “The lemon garnish is perfect. Smells like it was grilled over a real charcoal fire. Ummm… tastes great too.”