Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (15 page)

“What happened, ma'am?” he asked when he got closer.

Mia's voice crackled frantically over the two-way. “Gabe, answer me! Are you still alive? There are two beeps now. One sounds like it's on top of the house.”

In mock modesty, the demon covered herself but not entirely. Plenty of enticing caramel skin begged him to touch it. Promised he'd remember his time with her forever.
I was attacked. Two men took my purse and clothing. The things they wanted me to do were terrible. Without you, I'd have been lost.

“I'm so sorry. Here, let me help you.” Gabe took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. As his fingers grazed the luscious curve where her neck met her torso, he stabbed her with the dart in his palm. “Next time, demon, remember that humans move their lips when they talk. Just a suggestion.”

She screamed, her wicked teeth long and razor-sharp as she lunged for him. Her talons raked the back of his shoulder as she bore him to the ground, her legs closing around his waist like a vice grip. If he let go of her neck to stop her talons from tearing his skin to shreds, she'd bite his face off. He had no choice but to sacrifice his back in order to save his life, blood mingling with the rain as it washed down his skin.

“Damn you, Gabe, answer this stupid thing,” Mia practically screamed into the radio. “I think it's on the porch. You've got to hurry.”

Beks. He had to end this. Bracing himself for the pain, he let go of the demon's neck and reached down for his gun. The Rusalka buried its fangs into Gabe's shoulder and began sucking him dry. He put the gun to the back of its head and pulled the trigger. The bullet laced with holy water passed through that perfect head and into the hard muscles of his shoulder. White hot pain blinded him for a moment. When the demon stopped convulsing, he pushed it off himself and tried to stand, blinking the water out of his eyes.

Everything spun around him, the ground a moving target nearly impossible to hit as he stumbled away from the demon and up toward the trail. His left arm hung limp beside him, immobilized by the pain that threatened to steal his consciousness. He couldn't pass out yet. Beks needed his help.

“Mia,” he said into the two-way radio, each squeeze of the release hurting like being stabbed a second time, “I'm coming.”

As he stumbled up the trail, he felt the soothing rush of his healing powers knitting up the scratches and bite marks from the demon. Her demonic saliva would be inside his blood for days, burning through his body if he didn't drink at least a liter of holy water, but the bullet was the more dangerous injury. Even now, his flesh knit around the gunshot. Closing. The bullet would get trapped in his shoulder if he didn't do something, slowly poisoning his blood. His job was so much fun.

The radio cracked to life. “Gabe, thank god. I think it's knocking on the door. What if someone tries to answer it?”

“I'm almost there.”

His lungs burned, and he panted as he finally topped the trail and had a clear view of the house. Mia had been right. A small, blue demon with the body of a pig and the face of a cat butted its head against the door. To someone inside, it would sound like a knock.

“Hey, ugly” Gabe shouted, drawing his katana blade from the walking stick.

The little blue thing turned toward the sound and stepped sideways. In one smooth motion, he threw his blade at the demon, stabbing through its neck and impaling the rest to the side of the house.

Not a second later, the door opened and Rebekah stuck her head out.

“Whose...?” she started to ask and then stopped.

Gabe stopped at the bottom step of the porch, his hair matted and damp, blood soaking down his shirt as another peal of lightning lit the sky around them. She looked over at the demon impaled near her door.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she asked, paling. “If it is, it's not funny. Not even a little.”

Panting, he tried to hold his hands up innocently, but the left one wouldn't move more than a few inches. “Surprise,” he wheezed. “Do you like my costume for tomorrow?”

She slammed the door in his face.

Gabe sunk down onto the top porch step, his head drooping as he struggled to catch his breath. Well, it wasn't like she could hate him much more than she already did. With his good hand, he reached up and felt his left shoulder. The skin was smooth against his fingers. “Mia,” he said, closing his eyes.

The radio crackled and hissed again. “There's another. Further away but coming closer.”

He forced himself to stand and yank his sword from the side of the house. The blue demon's blood squirted everywhere, burning holes in the wood of the porch and side of the house. A drop splashed on his arm, and he wiped it off with his sleeve.

“When this is over, I'm going to need you to do me another favor.”

“Not more demons, I hope.”

He shook his head even though she couldn't see him. “No. How are you with a knife?”

“Pretty good. I am a chef.” She hesitated. “Why?”

Oh, yeah. He'd forgotten that. Must be the demon saliva the Rusalka had injected into him messing with his head. “I'll tell you later. Where'd you say that demon was?”

“Nearby. I think it might be scaling the cliffs near the light.”

“Copy that.” Gabe forced himself up, using the tip of his sword like a cane. If his sensei could see that, he'd roll over in his grave.

Mia's voice returned. “Copy what?”

He sighed. It was going to be a long day.

Chapter Fifteen

Seeing Gabe standing outside her front door covered in fake blood, a disgusting looking blue thing impaled by the blade of a sword into the side of her house, reminded her so much of her father that for a moment she thought it was him standing there and not Gabe. For a moment she almost believed it had been real.

Having slammed the door in his face, she leaned back against it with a sigh, her heart racing. She was about to open the door again and give him a piece of her mind when she stopped, her hand frozen on the doorknob.

Instead of preening in victory or laughing at her expense, he’d melted on the step as though exhausted, his head wilting. She pushed aside the lace curtain on the long, thin window near the door for a better look. Deep gashes stained with red were rent into the back of his shirt, faint red lines marking his skin beneath. He looked like he’d been attacked by an animal.

Her father had looked like that some nights, sneaking back into the house with strange rips in his clothing when he thought she was asleep. Rebekah had always thought he was out drinking or doing Park Services work—maybe helping a lost hiker or something—but now she wasn’t sure.

The faint echo of static reached her through the door, its sound sharp against the steady hum of rain. He’d been talking to someone. Although she couldn’t make out individual words, she knew him well enough to read the stress in his body language. Whatever they were talking about wasn’t making him happy.

“Everything okay?” Dylan reached around her, his hands wrapped protectively across her middle, and tried to look out. He kissed the side of her neck, nuzzling her softly. His voice purred at her throat. “Who was at the door?”

She slammed shut the curtain, turning in his arms so that she faced him. “No one. I was hearing things, I guess.”

A hungry grin twisted the corners of his mouth, and he pressed her back against the glass as he kissed her, his hands inching inside her sweater. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered against her lips, pulling her close.

Rebekah laughed, and he kissed her throat. “I’ve been gone less than a minute.”

“And yet it seems a decade. Let’s go downstairs and get reacquainted.”

Yet despite his kisses and affections, she thought of Gabe sitting out there in the storm, alone, and she pulled away. “I...I need to check the shutters,” she said, a feeble excuse if ever there were one. “The storm’s worse than I thought.”

Dylan’s blue eyes captured her for a moment, his brown and blonde hair as perfectly unruly as the stubble darkening his strong jaw. Her body ached toward him as if drawn by a magnet, but she pulled back.

“Later, then.” He grinned, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I need to practice some new material for the gig tomorrow anyway.” Kissing her one final time, he squeezed her hips gently and walked back toward the living room.

Gabe was nowhere in sight when she opened the front door and slipped out on the porch. Had he noticed her watching and left or did something else draw him away? The storm, though not as violent as the night her father died, still sent vibrations through the ground from the force of its simmering rage. Shielding her eyes, she thought momentarily about going back in to grab an umbrella, but the sound of the door opening and closing might draw Dylan’s attention, which was even worse than the thought of going out in the rain.

As Rebekah stepped out into the storm, she remembered last time she’d seen her father standing in the rain with his katana and telling her to lock up the house. He’d looked determined, sad, lonely, and resolute, like Gabe had just a few minutes before. She wanted to know what was going on and she was tired of being lied to. She had to find him.

If he was anything like her father, he’d have gone to the lighthouse. She should start her search there.

Cold rain pierced her skin like needles of ice as she hurried up the gravel drive connecting the bed-n-breakfast to the tower itself. She scanned the road and trees for anything out of place, any animal that might have come too close, but there was nothing. The harder she looked, the more Rebekah realized she could see and hear.

Distant sounds like the cry of a bird at least a half mile away and the silken strumming of Dylan playing his guitar back at the house. She shouldn’t be able to hear that; no one could. The ocean appeared through the evergreens trimming the trail. Rebekah saw each small whitecap, each ripple of water on its way to the shore. The trees themselves looked magnified as black, thin gashes like scars appeared on the three trunks and some of the branches. What animal would do that to a tree? How could she see it so clearly? None of this made any sense.

Rebekah started jogging toward the lighthouse as the hair stood up on the back of her neck. In another few seconds, it’d appear around the next corner.

“Please don’t be anything strange,” she whispered, repeating it over and over again until the lighthouse came into view.

She stopped.

Gabe stood in front of the lighthouse, something that looked partially like a staff and partially like a katana in his right hand, hacking at a scorpion, spider, and person that a mad scientist had spliced together into one monster. “Die you stupid thing,” he growled, slicing a pincher off one of the creature’s eight legs. Another leg hit him in the middle, throwing him back about ten feet as it scuttled after him.

He was about to die.

“Hey!” she shouted, waving her arms in the air. “Over here!”

The thing paused where it was about to snap off Gabe’s head and looked at her with its human head. Rebekah swallowed the bile that rose to the back of her mouth. What the hell was she thinking, drawing that monster’s attention?
Am I dreaming?

“I bet you can’t catch me!”

She had the distinct feeling, as the whatever-it-was turned away from Gabe and started skittering toward her, that she was about to die. Paralyzed by fear, she couldn’t think as the thing rushed toward her, the single remaining pincher on its front leg snapping a warning, a foul red something oozing out of the place where its other pincher had been as the rain glistened on its hard carapace. A human head and torso rose from the front, black scales covering his arms and chest. The face disturbed her most. Intelligent, human eyes feasted on her the way a chocoholic might look at a slice of triple chocolate cake.

Rebekah closed her eyes and waited to die.

The thing screamed in pain, the sound horrifyingly human. She opened one eye a peek to see Gabe on the thing’s back, his sword cleaving the carapace almost in half as he grunted.

It collapsed to the ground in front of her as she jumped back out of its way, a mess of legs and claws and bulbous tail. His human eyes stared up at her blankly.

Her heart beat so fast it felt like it might explode from her chest, and she stumbled away from the monster her mind knew couldn’t be there. But her eyes told a different story. So did her nose. Thick, sludgy blood oozed out from where Gabe had stabbed the thing, the stench of sulfur heavy in the air.

Keep it together, Beks. Keep it together.
Pause.
Nope. Not going to keep anything together.

Stumbling to the side of the road, she collapsed to her knees and emptied the contents of her stomach into the grass, her eyes stinging with tears as she heaved.

“It’s okay,” Gabe soothed, crouching next to her and rubbing her back. “It’s dead. You’re safe now.”

The crackle of a radio startled her. “Gabe, I’ve got another one,” a voice said.

Mia? Rebekah wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked over at the man she thought she knew, rain dripping into her eyes. “Who are you?” she asked. “And what the hell was that thing? And why are you talking to Mia?”

The anguish on his face scared her more than the demon had.

“Beks...” he started to say, and then stopped. His lips moved but no words passed through them.

“I’m starting to freak out here, Gabe. Say something.”

Mia’s voice again over the radio. “Gabe, what’s taking so long? I said there’s another one. It should be at your location in less than two minutes.”

“Why are you talking to her? Is this a hallucination? Am I hallucinating right now? Did any of that just happen?” Her voice raised an octave with each question as she hugged herself to keep from falling completely apart. Rebekah turned in a circle.

Gabe grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip painfully strong as he forced her to look at him. “I need you to listen to me, Beks. Are you listening?”

She nodded.

“Forget what you saw today. Go back in the house, take a long bath to calm down, and erase all of this from your mind.” His voice caught. “If they find out...If the others know you saw, I won’t be able to protect you anymore. Please, Beks. For my sake. For your father’s sake. He never wanted this life for you. Run for the house and forget you were ever out here.”