Drinking Life (Keeper of the Water Book 1) (24 page)

“I know what you’re going to say,” she says. “But we have to go
now
.”

I want to argue with her—want to rip my arm from her grasp and run after my father and John—but I don’t have the strength. Besides, Celeste’s grip is like a vice and the heat from the burning garage is making me woozier. By the time we reach the river without incident, Mom is already dragging the raft—with Cassie already crouched inside—into the river. Celeste holds my arm and helps me climb in.

“You must protect Cassie,” she tells me.

“I will,” I say absently until realizing what she’s
really
telling me:
you
must protect Cassie because
I
won’t be here to do it. Celeste pushes the raft, launching us farther into the river, but makes no attempt to join us.

“What are you doing?” I call out to her. “Tell me you’re going to follow us in the canoe.”

Celeste stomps on a broken branch nearby, splintering it down the middle and making a sharp point.

“Your father has no chance without my help,” she calls back.

“Then let me come and – ”

“
No,
Nia, you
must
protect Cassie!”

I know she’s right but that doesn’t make me feel better as I watch her rush back into the woods.
I
should be fighting, too.

“Why doesn’t someone call the police?” Cassie whines. “I don’t want to live if something bad happens to John.”

For once, Cassie looks genuinely concerned about someone else. Still, I can’t believe
who
she’s most worried about.

“John? You’re thinking about
John
when my
father
and your
mother
are out there, too?” I ask.

Cassie shrugs. “I… I don’t know,” she says. I recognize confusion in her voice; it’s exactly how I’ve sounded a
lot
recently. “I’m just more worried about John. I’ll be devastated if he’s hurt.”

“Shocking,” my mother says, her eyes glowing with the same hatred she exploded with earlier. Cassie immediately takes offense.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” she snaps, her voice echoing across the water.

“Shh,” I tell them before there’s more arguing. An unspoken tension has built between them for years and they’ve picked the worst possible moment to let it erupt. “Both of you need to be quiet. They’re risking their lives to let us escape. We can’t attract attention to ourselves.”

This part of the river is lazy and we don’t escape as quickly as I’d like—though I’m not sure
if
I want to escape quick. I don’t have the strength to row as hard as usual but I’m more focused on gazing toward the wooded area near our houses. Smoke billows through the trees but I see no other sign of movement. My imagination runs wild as I think about the two troops harming my father or John or—most likely—Celeste. As far as I know,
she’s
the keeper that they must be after.

“Why would she have gone
toward
danger?” I say aloud, more to myself than the other two rafters. Cassie has some kind of complaint in response but I tune her out. All I can think about is the keeper in trouble, about my inexplicable need to protect her. I haven’t yet spoken to Celeste about the past and the magic water but it baffles me to think how she willingly walked back into danger. Something is keeping me anchored in the raft but it’s probably just my lack of energy. Regardless of how weak I feel, I
must
help the keeper. Wading silently down the river becomes too much for me to bear so I toss the oars to Cassie before jumping over the side.

The cold water is refreshing and I feel much better than I have since being shot.

“You can’t leave me alone with her,” Mom hisses at me.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe, it’s not
you
that they’re after. They want the keeper,” I call back.

“The keeper? The keeper of
what
?” Cassie asks, her voice laden with frustration.

“Please, Nia, you should stay here,” Mom says as I start swimming back toward shore. “You’re… you’re talking crazy.”

I
know
Mom is hiding something, that the secret she and Celeste share makes her uncomfortable. I hope I’ll be told more about it later—
if
we all survive—but they obviously don’t want Cassie knowing about it. She’s not exactly the tight-lipped kind.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I know what’s going on and I want to help.”

“No, you d– ”

I dive beneath the surface before my mother can stop me. In a single breath, I swim all the way to the shoreline before surfacing. The raft is farther away and picking up speed along the faster part of the river. If either of the troops is nearby in the forest, then Cassie blows my cover by calling out one final plea.

“Make sure you bring John back to me!”

I shiver, whether from the cold water or annoyance I’m not certain. I almost
want
something bad to happen to spite Cassie but quickly shake off that thought. I don’t need any more bad karma today. Looking back at the raft, I can’t help feeling guilty for abandoning it, for abandoning
them
. I ignored Celeste’s command to protect her daughter but I figure the guilt I feel is for leaving my mother.

I run through the woods, my senses not as heightened as usual, my feet slower and clumsier. I nearly trip several times and quickly lose my breath. It sucks trying to be physical when dealing with the limitations of a
normal
person. Still, I encounter nobody as I reach the burning garage. It may be stupid but I run into the fire since I’m as good as dead if I encounter one of the troops and don’t have a weapon.

Luckily, the garage walls are reinforced by cinderblocks that don’t burn. It’s like an oven in here—and I barely avoid being crushed by flaming debris that falls from above—but I only need a minute. My new bow is nowhere to be found so I grab one of the older ones along with some arrows before rushing back outside.

My clothes had just been soaked from swimming in the river but one minute in the garage fire leaves me totally dry. It’s also sapped me of the energy burst I got from the swim. I’m dizzy and my eyes can barely focus as everything around me appears to shimmer in a mirage of heat. I push my body to keep moving but my brain threatens to shut down. This would
not
be a good time to pass out.

I spot movement in the trees—at least I
think
I do. With my bow in hand, I take a deep breath and run toward the movement. I’m still wobbly on my feet but the thrill of the chase gives me some energy back. As I run amongst the trees, hunting for whatever is out there, I feel like the person I was in my dreams. But I quickly figure out I’m not as smart or savvy as my past self.

I quickly lose my prey’s trail. Too late, I realize I’m much too heavy-footed running through the woods—I can’t hear anything over the sound of my own footsteps. When I stop to listen, I barely hear the sound of someone running up behind me. I try to spin and fire but don’t even get my bow loaded before I’m jolted off my feet. A pair of strong arms engulfs me and tackles me to the ground but the pain of being hit isn’t as bad as I expect. Before I can even grunt in surprise, a hand clasps over my mouth.

“You have to be quiet, they’re not far,” a familiar voice whispers. John slowly moves away his hand and unwraps his arms from around me. Despite the situation we’re in, I kinda wish he kept holding me. “You should be with Cassie right now.”

“I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing,” I say. “I need to make sure Celeste and my dad stay safe.”

John nods his head. He puts a finger to his lips to quiet me and then points out toward the woods. I spot a sudden blur moving within the trees. John points back toward the cabins, a silent signal telling me where to go. Before I can explain how weak I’m feeling, he takes off in the other direction, circling around behind our hunter.

“Here goes nothing,” I whisper to myself.

I run back toward the smoke, barely taking a few steps before hearing a familiar
whoosh
. I dive to the ground, rolling out of the way as an arrow zips inches from my head. Another arrow soon follows and I barely jump to my feet before almost being shot a second time in the last hour. I push myself through the fatigue, an explosion of adrenaline helping with that. I finally reach the clearing near the burning garage but don’t know what to do now—maybe I should’ve asked for more specifics of John’s plan.

One of John’s troops charges at me from the trees. He moves quickly but this time I get a shot off, striking him in the top of the shoulder. Such a strike would have incapacitated a normal person but the troops are about as normal as me and John and Celeste. In one smooth movement, he yanks the arrow out of himself, knocks the bow from my hand and crushes me with the back of his fist. It’s not the first time I’ve fought him but it
is
the first time I’m not myself. I see the strike coming but my reaction time is too slow to avoid it. I’m knocked to the ground and he stands over me.

“No amount of water will save you this time,” he snarls.

I try to crab-crawl back but he stomps a massive foot onto my leg, pinning me against the ground. Shock waves of pain ripple through me but I fight the urge to moan—I refuse to give him that satisfaction. He laughs as he starts to unsheathe his sword but that laughter is short-lived.

In an instant, the pain in my leg from the force of his weight is gone. Neither of us sees the speeding blur until it crashes into him. John is all over him, throwing punch after punch, his hands so fast they would make any professional fighter jealous. But the big goon uses his size to roll John off and lands some punches of his own.

“After all this time, you would turn your back on us? On the one goal we’ve worked toward for years?” the goon yells down at John, spit flying from his mouth like a rabid dog.

The goon is just about to take out his short sword when I’m spurred into action. I jump to my feet, soaring toward him in a split second. The thought of John in trouble makes me move faster than ever. The goon swings his sword toward John’s head but I smash into him with my shoulder before the weapon finds its mark. I don’t even flinch when the sword cuts my arm (it’s only a flesh wound on me but anyone else might have lost an arm). The sword falls from his hand and skids across the ground.

“Leave… my… family… alone!” I yell, landing punch after punch between each word.

The goon moves lightning quick for a man his size but time seems to slow down for me, the slightest twitch of his muscles telegraphing his every move. I bob and weave away from every punch, step away from every attempted kick, hop over every leg sweep. Not a single one of his attacks lands and not a single one of mine misses. But the massive man can take a serious beating and he keeps coming back for more. With my bow knocked to the ground twenty feet away, I have no weapon to finish him off for good. I could go on beating him all day if I was my old self but adrenaline only lasts so long. My body fatigues again and it only takes a single misstep before he kicks me in the side of leg, knocking me down.

John tackles him before he can hurt me anymore. The goon rolls across the ground and grabs his short sword.

“John, watch out!” I yell.

The two continue to struggle, hurling curses at one another in a language I don’t understand. I want to jump in and help John but I’d probably just get in the way at this point. I watch in utter horror for nearly a minute when I hear a groan of pain and the rattle of choking blood. I hold my breath, watching the two men separate, unable to see who’s hurt.

“
Te veo en el infierno
,” the goon says with an evil grin.

My heart sinks but John steps back and I see the sword plunged into the goon’s gut. He coughs up a wad of blood, locks eyes with me in a sneer and collapses to the ground. He does not move again. For a moment, John looks at the fallen man. His lips are turned down in a frown and I see sadness in his eyes. The goon may have been trying to kill us but the two of them had been friends—or at least allies—for hundreds of years. I realize at this moment that I never even knew the goon’s name, though who knows if John Leon is
John’s
real name?

John finally turns to me, the sadness in his eyes changing to concern. He rushes over and takes my bleeding arm in his hand.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I look at the dead goon. It’s the first person I’ve ever seen killed, at least in this lifetime. I have a feeling that death wasn’t such a rarity in my
other
life. Either way, the sword plunged deep into the goon makes the cut on my arm seem little more than a scratch.

“It’s fine,” I say. “It looks like we’re going to match now.”

I point at the long scar on his arm, which I can see through the tear in his shirt. He quickly covers it up. Before I can ask about it, we hear
rustling
approaching. I grab my bow from the ground and aim an arrow toward the woods, ready to fire at the first sign of the second goon. But it’s not him.

“Daddy!” I say, relief washing over me. Tears well in the back of my eyes—I hadn’t realized how worried I was for him until this moment.

“You’re supposed to be on the raft with your mother,” he says sternly, though he hugs me nonetheless. He looks worriedly at the cut on my arm but I’m not the only one with injuries. His clothes are ripped in several spots and he has a gash on his cheek. I expected him to be totally overwhelmed in this battle but he seems to be in his element. “I almost killed him but the other conquistador got away from me.”

“The other
what
?” I ask. The shocks apparently aren’t over yet. “How did you know about the – ”

“I have failed to prove my worth to the keeper,” Dad says, his voice full of shame. “I couldn’t stop danger from invading our family. I should have listened to Celeste’s warnings.”

“I can’t
believe
you were in on this, too,” I whine, not unlike how Cassie usually sounds. I think I deserve to do some whining. “Who are you
really
?”

I suddenly feel tingly and worry that Dad’s deception might not be as innocent as he made it seem. Could I have really misjudged the man who raised me for so many years?

“My real name is Percy Faw– watch out!”

An arrow speeds out of the trees and heads straight for me. But before I have the chance to dive out of the way, Dad jumps in front of me. The
thud
of arrow striking flesh and bone is a sound I will never forget. Dad doesn’t even collapse when the second goon rushes toward us. My reaction time is non-existent, my feet frozen where they stand, an easy target for the other man trying to kill me. But John has something to say about that.

John lowers his shoulder into his other troop’s mid-section. John is much thinner and is knocked down but the huge soldier is hit so hard that he flips backward and lands on his face. The force knocks the weapon out of his hand—
my bow!
I’m irate to see that he stole it but that only makes me think of my father. The goon scrambles to his feet and runs off toward the river, not before grabbing my bow again. My instinct is to chase after him but I know I can’t leave.

“Daddy!” I scream for the second time in minutes. This time, my worst nightmare has come true.

His face goes pale and turns even whiter when he looks at the arrow sticking out of his chest. The arrow that struck me earlier hit a little too high but the goon corrected his aim this time. My heart might break before his goes out.

“Nia,” he whispers, a smile emerging through his grimace of pain.

At that moment, Celeste bursts out of the trees. She looks shocked to see me here, even more shocked to see Dad on the ground, mortally wounded. I figure she’ll help me take care of him but her face hardens.

“Where’s Cassie?” she asks.

“Please, Daddy needs help,” I beg.

“
Where’s Cassie?!
” she screams.

I don’t know if it’s the shock of being yelled at or the overwhelming grief I feel but my voice doesn’t seem to work. Finally, I point toward the river.

“She’s on the raft, heading down river with my mom,” I say.

“And that’s where my other soldier just headed,” John adds.

Celeste’s eyes go wide but not because of my father’s condition. In fact, she doesn’t even give him a second look.

“You weren’t supposed to leave her!” she yells at me.

Celeste ignores Dad and runs in the direction of the river. John frowns at me but takes off after her.

“Are you coming?” Celeste yells back at me.

A part of me feels like I
should
follow—that it is my responsibility to do as she says—but I can never leave my father, especially now that his breathing labors.