Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Jack Templar Chronicles Book 5) Read online

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons

  The Jack Templar Chronicles Book #5

  Jeff Gunhus

  Seven Guns Press

  Contents

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons

  Also By Jeff Gunhus

  Praise for Jack Templar Monster Hunter

  Praise for Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy

  Praise for Jack Templar and the Lord of the Vampires

  PRAISE FOR JACK TEMPLAR AND THE LORD OF THE WEREWOLVES

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  LAST NOTE

  About the Author

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons

  The Jack Templar Chronicles - Book #5

  Copyright 2015 by Jeff Gunhus

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Seven Guns Press. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Eric Gunhus

  Cover Art by Nicole Cardiff

  Edited by Sher A. Hart

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gunhus, Jeff

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons: a novel / Jeff Gunhus

  Also By Jeff Gunhus

  Jack Templar Series

  Jack Templar Monster Hunter #1

  Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy #2

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Vampires #3

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves #4

  Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons #5

  Adult Fiction

  Night Chill #1

  Night Terror #2

  Killer Within

  Non-Fiction

  Reaching Your Reluctant Reader

  Wake Up Call

  No Parachute Required

  Choose The Right Career

  The Little Book Of Secrets

  Praise for Jack Templar Monster Hunter

  Selected as a 2012 Finalist for the Book of the Year Award. – Foreword Reviews

  Selected as a Parent’s Choice Foundation Recommended Read and as a Finalist for Next Generation Indie Book Awards

  "Gunhus brings young readers a monster-filled romp to read at their own risk. The pacing is quick but not rushed, and events seamlessly progress, complete with action, cliffhangers and surprise reveals." – Kirkus Reviews

  "The action starts right from the first chapter and doesn't let up until the book ends. This is the first book in a series, and I look forward to reading the rest of them." – The DMS

  "Jeff Gunhus has made a terrific fast paced fantasy. I even wanted to bolt my doors and lock my windows! Five stars for the best book of the year." – Elizabeth A. Bolt

  “Move over Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, there's a new kid in town – Jack Templar, and he will take you on a wonderful adventure of good vs evil, with friends and enemies at every turn.” – Penny Brien

  Praise for Jack Templar and the Monster Hunter Academy

  “Jeff Gunhus has crafted another winner in the sequel to Jack Templar: Monster Hunter …. in another captivating story filled with plot twists and turns.” – Mother Daughter Book Reviews

  “This book is spellbinding …. Please hurry and finish the rest of the series.” – Charlotte Edwards

  “I would highly recommend these books to anyone who loves adventure and fantasy. Riordan fans will definitely love this series! It's exactly what a middle grade fantasy should be.” – N. Hewitt

  “Holy cow, this book was amazing, just amazing! I don't even know what else to say other than to fangirl all over the place.… You have to read this book. Just ... read it.” – K. Sozaeva

  “The characters leap off the page and grab the reader and draw him or her into the always dangerous, sometimes deadly adventures. This is a series that demands to be read.” – Michelle S. Willms

  “I think anyone who loves an action packed children's book should read this one. You won’t be disappointed.” – Christina Condy

  Praise for Jack Templar and the Lord of the Vampires

  “Mr. Gunhus has once again created a story that his young readers will have trouble putting down until the last word is read and wanting to follow Jack’s next adventure in Book Four.” – Christina Weigand

  “This is the third book of the series, and I fear I must now declare myself addicted. I rapidly read this book and was depressed when I realized I now have to wait for the next book.” – J. Rivera

  “The adventures that Jack Templar goes through are awesome. This series is a great read for middle-grade children and young adults.” – Dalene’s Book Review

  “Continuing with an exciting story. Loved the twists and turns in this book.” – Cheryl Carpinello

  “Hands down the THE BEST book out there! My boys were begging to stay up later to find out what the next chapter would reveal.” – Heidi Silvestri

  Praise for Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves

  PRAISE FOR JACK TEMPLAR AND THE LORD OF THE WEREWOLVES

  “As much as I loved the first books in the series, I didn’t think book 4 could get under my skin as much as 3 did … but Lord of the Werewolves blew me away.” – Sher A Hart

  “An exciting, nay nerve-wracking, gallop through the black forests of central Europe to uncover deep and dark secrets. I only hope Jack and his friends can make it through to the bitter end – it looks like it’s going to be a difficult journey!” – Epping Strider

  I've read all the Jack Templar books (this is the fourth) and this one is my favorite so far! I said that about the last one, too, so they just seem to get better and better! – Melanie Valderrama

  For my own little monsters:

  Jackson, William, Daniel, Caroline and Owen

  And for Nicole: who always smiles when

  she tells me to go write.

  Prologue

  My name is Jack Templar and I am a monster hunter. I wasn’t always this way. In fact, before my fourteenth birthday, I had no idea the world was filled with monsters that lurked in the shadows, watching us, waiting for just the right time to rise up against humans and reclaim the world as their own. But that’s the reality of things. This isn’t a work of fiction or some namby-pamby story with happy endings and heroes who always get it right. This is happening all around you. This is real. Get used to it.

  But, if you’ve been with me on my adventures so far, you already know the drill. Reading this book makes you part of this world of monsters and shadows. Even if you were protected by the law of Quattuordecim because you hav
en’t turned fourteen yet, all bets are off if you’re reading this and the books that came before it.

  You’re part of this world now. A world where the Black Watch is the only thing that guards against the coming war with the monsters. And if you want out, that’s too bad. Once a monster hunter, always a monster hunter. You have only one choice and that’s to …

  Do your duty, come what may.

  Jack Templar

  1

  We huddled behind a row of bushes, covered from head to toe with thick mud, all of us alert for any sign of our prey coming down the forest path toward our trap. T-Rex and Will, my friends from home who had followed me halfway across the world on this crazy adventure, were to my left. Xavier, the young genius of our group, a wunderkind who could build anything with his hands, crouched behind me where I felt him shivering even though it was warm outside. It wasn’t the temperature that caused him to shake.

  “Do you think he’ll come?” Xavier whispered.

  I held my finger to my lips to hush him.

  “You know, I’m not positive I got the mixture just right,” he whispered again, his eyes bright white against the dark mud smeared over his face.

  I craned my neck back to look at him. His narrow shoulders and small frame made him look even younger than his twelve years. Glasses that tended to slide down his nose made him look like a bookworm completely out of place for fieldwork. I stared him down.

  “You’re just telling me this now?” I asked.

  “I … I … maybe it’s right …” he said. “The purity of the ingredients you gave me weren’t exactly –”

  I help up my hand, cutting him off. We were making too much noise. Besides, there was nothing we could do about it now.

  Xavier fell silent, looking down at the ground, embarrassed.

  I gave him a nudge and grinned. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  He smiled, and I turned back to the path, wishing I believed my own words. The truth was that I didn’t know if things were going to be fine any more than I knew if the monster we were trying to trap was even going to show up. But I did know that we had a hard task ahead of us if he did. In fact, there was a good chance that the entire plan was a terrible idea. Unfortunately, I’m the one who thought of it.

  I’d faced vampires, ogres, fire-breathing dragons. Fought gargoyles on the top of Notre Dame Cathedral in the middle of a thunderstorm. Battled the djinn in the streets of Marrakech and faced down a goblin army on the ramparts of a crumbling castle wall. I’d even gone toe-to-toe with Ren Lucre, the Lord of the Creach himself, and lived to tell the tale. Even with all those experiences under my belt, an ice ball churned in my stomach.

  This was no ordinary monster we were trying to catch. It was our friend Daniel, and capturing him was not going to be a simple task.

  A twig snapped to my left and I spun in that direction. He wasn’t supposed to come that way. If he did, we were in real trouble.

  But it wasn’t Daniel; it was Eva. Even after all we’d been through, seeing her when I wasn’t expecting to made my breath catch in my chest. The fact that she was now a vampire hadn’t changed the way I felt about her. If anything, it had just made my bond with her more complicated because I held myself responsible for her transformation. Guilt can be a terrible thing. Combine it with love and it takes on a life of its own, twisting and churning in unexpected ways. Fortunately, we were so busy trying to survive that I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it. I think if I did, I’d drive myself crazy.

  Not surprisingly, she wasn’t covered in mud like the rest of us. Her once tan skin that had made her seem to glow with life now looked pale and hard, as if she were made of stone instead of flesh and blood. Her eyes were even a deeper blue than before, and when she looked at me, I felt like she was able to see through me. She’d pulled back her hair and braided it the way she usually did before battle. Even so, she was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

  She cocked her head to one side and stared into the forest, her face taking on a look of concentration. I knew the snapped twig was no accident. Since becoming a vampire deep in the catacombs beneath Paris, Eva was able to move like soft wind through the world. I swear she could walk across a floor covered with broken glass and egg shells an inch thick and not make a sound. No, she’d snapped the twig on purpose. A signal that, even though we’d agreed she would be at least a mile away while we did this, she was right in the thick of things.

  I hate to say it, but I was glad she’d broken her promise to stay away, even if having her there made things immediately worse as well as making them better.

  Better because her new vampiric strength and senses would help us. Worse because the reason for trying to capture Daniel in the first place was because he’d tried to kill Eva. Seeing her here was just going to make him harder to deal with.

  “M … maybe he’s not gonna come,” T-Rex whispered. Even though life on the road has thinned him out a bit compared to his fighting weight back at Sunnyvale Middle School, he still looked like he’d never met a meal he didn’t like. His round face was marked with red blotches on his cheeks and a twitching nose, two signs that pointed to how nervous he was.

  Instead of hushing him, I reached out and gripped his shoulder in what I hoped was both a reassuring and pointed gesture. I tried to convey the same thought with my eyes.

  It’s going to be fine.… Now be quiet.

  I looked back up the trail. Dangling from a rope in the center of the path was a rabbit Will had caught earlier. Will had become a master tracker, taught by Daniel himself before the disaster in the caves of the Black Forest. Only slightly taller than Xavier, Will was built like a tree stump, his arms looking more like gnarled roots as his muscles built up from our hard journey. Never lacking confidence even before he had any skills, he’d become so sure of himself that he was likely to try the impossible at least twice a day. The thing about Will was that he often achieved it. When we decided we needed a rabbit, he’d gone into the woods by himself, even though we didn’t know if Daniel might be lurking nearby, and came back ten minutes later with his catch.

  The rabbit wasn’t injured, not yet anyway. But it squeaked and kicked in the air as if it knew what was in store for it. No creature, not even a fishing worm, likes to be used as bait. I wasn’t sure the rabbit was necessary. Daniel was certainly taking down bigger prey to slack his thirst and beat back his hunger. But once he came to this spot, I hoped the rabbit would do the last bit of work and draw him in the direction we needed him to go.

  Eva made the barest of sounds, so slight I couldn’t be sure if it was her or just the natural creak of the trees bending in their gentle sway to the breeze. But when I looked at her, she met my eyes and gave me a slow nod toward the path.

  I glanced back and strained to hear anything coming from that direction. Nothing. It didn’t surprise me. Eva’s vampire senses were several times better than my human senses would ever be, a fact that still unnerved me and served as a constant reminder of her otherness. She might still have been Eva the monster hunter – and the girl I secretly loved – but the vampire blood in her was ancient and powerful. There was no telling when and how it would affect her.

  Not that much different from the problem we were having with Daniel.

  A low growl drifted through the trees. I thought it came from down the path, but it might have just been wishful thinking.

  I looked back to Eva, but she was gone.

  That wasn’t good.

  The last time Eva and Daniel tangled, they’d fought like two caged animals. I was happy to have Eva’s strength to help out, but I suddenly found myself wondering if she was there to help or to get her revenge on him.

  I didn’t have much time to think about it because just then Daniel appeared at the head of the path in front of me.

  Or at least the black wolf I knew was Daniel stood there.

  And he didn’t look happy.

  2

  The problem with werewolves in gene
ral is that it’s impossible to know how much control the human in them has over their animal body. It can range from full consciousness to the human and wolf being almost entirely separate. This was the popular version out in the human world, but it was also based on plenty of fact. Books on werewolves are filled with stories of people waking up in the middle of a field or in the forest with a half-eaten animal next to them and a full belly, with no memory of how they got there. I knew this was true from my short time studying at the Academy and my own experiences with werewolves.

  Studies of the Creach by members of the Black Watch are less of a scientific pursuit than a case of know-your-enemy. The best guess, and it really was a guess, was that human control grew over a period of time. The longer the person had been a werewolf, the more control they had. This explained why Kaeden, Lord of the Werewolves, himself dating back to Roman times, had complete control over his human and wolf sides. Daniel, who’d been a werewolf for all of a week, not so much.

  As Daniel stood at the head of the path in his wolf form, he barred his teeth in a menacing snarl, clawing at the ground with one of his massive paws. I thought for a second that he’d smelled us. If he had picked up our scent so easily, then we would have felt pretty dumb for caking on the thick mud all over our skin and clothes for no reason. But Daniel turned his snout to his right, away from us, and sniffed the air again, obviously searching for a scent. It looked like the mud actually was shielding us. Pretty impressive considering we hadn’t bathed in weeks and smelled like a pile of dead mug-wumps.