Jack Templar and the Lord of the Demons (The Templar Chronicles #5) by Jeff Gunhus With two of the Jerusalem Stones in hand, Jack and his friends must race the clock to find the remaining Stones as Ren Lucre's Creach forces gather strength. With two of their group now with Creach blood flowing in their veins, the team will be tested as never before. They must unite together if they have any hope of surviving their journey to the Underworld and their battle with the vicious Lord of the Demons. The fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.
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Author Jeff Gunhus Jeff Gunhus is the author of the Amazon bestselling supernatural thriller, Night Chill, and the Middle Grade/YA series, The Templar Chronicles. The first book of the series, Jack Templar Monster Hunter, was written in an effort to get his reluctant reader eleven-year old son excited about reading. It worked and a new series was born. His book Reaching Your Reluctant Reader has helped hundreds of parents create avid readers. Killer Within is his second novel for adults. As a father of five, he and his wife Nicole spend most of their time chasing kids and taking advantage of living in the great state of Maryland. In rare moments of quiet, he can be found in the back of the City Dock Cafe in Annapolis working on his next novel. If you see him there, sit down and have a cup of coffee with him. You just might end up in his next novel.
Excerpt
Just
then, Eva stepped out from the brush directly into the forest path,
straddling it with her feet set wide apart like a gunslinger in an old
Western. For the life of me, I don’t know how she got that close without
me seeing her, but she did.
“Hey,” she called out. “Wolfboy. Where do you think you’re going?”
Even
as a vampire, Eva retained her English accent. Usually that took the
edge off what she said, but she managed to deliver the challenge to
Daniel with so much condescension and mockery that I thought he might
charge at her.
Daniel
spun around, lips curled back, every tooth showing. What I thought was a
snarl before was no more than a tiny growl compared to the vicious
sound that now came from his mouth. The skin on my arms and across the
back of my neck turned to gooseflesh. I was, after all, a monster
hunter. That snarl activated every instinct I had to pull my sword and
fight. But I held steady, knowing that if they attacked each other, it
was going to be up to me to pull them apart.
“I’m right here,” Eva hissed, barring her teeth to show her vampire fangs. “Come and get me, you dog.”
The
words were barely out of her mouth before Daniel launched himself
toward her. She crouched low where she was, her face twisting into a
terrible mask of hate, her fangs extending out of her mouth past her
lower lip, her hands held in front of her like claws.
Daniel
took three enormous steps, landing the third immediately beneath the
rabbit still desperately kicking to free itself. The second Daniel’s
paws touched the ground, the forest floor gave way and he fell out of
sight.
The cloth covering the hole we’d dug fell into the trap with him, dragging a layer of dirt and leaves in with it.
Excerpt 2
Eva lifted her nose in the air, picking up a scent.
“What is it?” I asked.
But it was T-Rex who answered. “That’s rabbit stew, is what that is.”
I
sniffed the air. He was right. I smelled food of some kind. The sweet
aroma of carrots mixed with earthy potatoes and root vegetables. I
couldn’t tell if it was rabbit stew like T-Rex claimed, but I wouldn’t
have bet against him.
“Could be a trap,” Daniel said.
“Okay, let’s drop the act,” I said. “Swords.”
All
of us pulled our weapons, some of us slower than others. Xavier and
T-Rex both got theirs twisted in their shirts but eventually got them
out and went on guard.
“We know you’re there,” I called to the woods around us. “Come out and show us that –”
Ziiiizzz, Thwack
An arrow flew an inch over my head and buried itself into the tree behind me.
“Take cover,” I yelled.
I
ran to the trees, pulling Xavier with me. Another arrow slammed into
the ground in front of me. I changed direction, but another arrow let
loose and again dug into the soil, kicking up dirt and leaves.
I got the point. This wasn’t someone missing. It was someone sending me a very clear message. Stop moving or I’ll shoot you.
A
quick glance around showed me the others fared no better. There were
arrows sticking from the ground and trees all around us, but none of us
were hit.
“Okay,” I called out. “We get it.”
“Weapons down,” came a high-pitched voice in the tree above us.
I looked up and saw a flutter of movement among the leaves, but then it was gone.
“Weapons down, I said,” came the voice again. “Or I’ll put an arrow in the fat one’s tummy.”
“Is he talking about me?” T-Rex asked. “I’ve actually lost a bit of weight, you know.”
I
put my sword on the ground in front of me and motioned for everyone to
do the same. We all had backup weapons stashed on our bodies – throwing
knives, stars, daggers and the like – so I wasn’t too worried about
giving up my sword. Daniel caught my eye. He had his hand on the Templar
Ring as if he was about to pull it from his finger. I felt a surge of
excitement that I could wear it again. But that would also mean we’d
have to deal with an out of control werewolf in our midst.
I
shook my head. I figured if whoever or whatever was in the trees wanted
us dead, then they would have already taken a shot at us.
“Who are you?” came the voice again. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re
travelers seeking shelter for the night, maybe a warm meal,” I said,
speaking the words every monster hunter knew by heart. It was the way
members of the Black Guard identified themselves. “We ask for your
hospitality. Have we come to the place where such kindness is freely
given?”
There was an excited chattering of voices in the trees, and then a person fell from the sky, hitting the ground with a solid thump. Then another. And another. Finally, I counted an even dozen of them even though I wasn’t sure what they were.
They
were half-sized men, the tallest only a little higher than my waist.
They all carried bows as big as they were, cradled in rough, thick hands
and muscled arms. Their bodies were stout and clad in flexible leather
armor studded with small squares of iron in decorative patterns. What
made them creepy was that while their bodies looked like they belonged
to middle-aged men, their faces bore the smooth features of someone no
more than nine or ten years old. While their arms and necks were
wrinkled and tanned with time, their faces were pale and their eyes
looked too shiny, like they were on the edge of crying. Still, their
faces looked blank, so I didn’t think they were emotional about
anything. All I knew was that my skin crawled as their moist eyes looked
me over.
“So who is it that asks the old question in the old way?” the one nearest us asked. “We’d like to know that very much.”
All
twelve of them nodded in unison as they moved closer to us. I fought a
sudden impulse to flinch back. I’d suddenly realized what was so odd
about them. All of them had the same face.
I
didn’t notice at first because some of them wore their hair
differently, some wore helmets, and others had scars from some long ago
battle. But once I looked for it, there was no mistake. All the faces
were the same.
“Just
travelers looking for rest,” Eva said. If these strange beings unnerved
her, then she was better at hiding it than I was. But the fact that she
jumped in to make sure I didn’t tell these strange creatures our names
told me she wasn’t comfortable either.
“Can I ask your name, friend?” Daniel asked.
A
different one of them stepped forward. “We are the Talib. As for names,
you can ask. We can ask. But will the answers and truth be told? Think
not, we do.”
“Great, we ran into a herd of Yodas,” Will said under his breath.
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