Jack Templar and the Lord of the Werewolves (Book #4 of the Templar Chronicles) by Jeff Gunhus Page A

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.