Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (19 page)

Rifling through the drawers didn’t produce anything helpful, just receipts and purchase orders related to the bed-n-breakfast. Some notes and handwritten recipes. Nothing that might give her a clue as to what that...
thing
had been yesterday, and what Mia had to do with it. Rebekah searched under the bed next, then in the corners of the closet, and then the dresser drawers. Other than an insanely large number of herbs and some strange looking rocks, nothing stood out as abnormal or strange.

She stood and listened for a sound that might mean someone was approaching or something was wrong upstairs. Nothing. Maybe she was approaching this wrong. Hadn’t Gabe said something about her father yesterday? That he hadn’t wanted her to know any of this. Where would Mia have put his things? Rebekah hadn’t been able to box up his life, so the girl had volunteered to help. Now Rebekah was starting to think there had been more to the offer than she’d first suspected.

To find the boxes of her father’s things, she made her way to the storage room in the back of the basement. Usually they just kept cleaning and other supplies there; however, in the far back corner was a new stack of boxes covered with a tarp. That had to be it—she hadn’t ordered new stock for weeks. Rebekah yanked off the tarp and tossed it to the side. Nearly a dozen boxes were lined against the wall, and somewhere inside those boxes a secret lurked like a monster waiting under a child’s bed, waiting to pounce on her when she stepped on the floor.

She hesitated. Some secrets, especially a secret like this, might be better off buried. Her parents hadn’t wanted her to know, hadn’t wanted her to see whatever it was she witnessed the day before. Could she turn away from the knowledge and return to her normal life like nothing happened? Gabe wanted it. Her father, were he alive and not just a collection of boxes in the storage room, would have wanted it. Maybe she should want it, too. Some boxes might be better left unopened.

Biting her bottom lip, Rebekah flung the tarp back over the boxes, trying to make it look untouched. Tomorrow she would look. Or the next day.

Music from upstairs drifted down into the basement, reminding her of all there was to enjoy. Upstairs, a party was in full swing. Dylan waited for her. A small smile curled her lips as she thought of him, and she shut the door to the storage room behind her. Rebekah made her way out the same way she came in, the night air dark and crisp. She rubbed her arms for warmth wishing that she hadn’t chosen to wear a dress to the party. Why hadn’t she been a sexy cowgirl or astronaut or something with pants?

As she crossed around the porch to the front of the house, a strange noise stopped her at the corner. Footsteps? A gravely crunch filled the air as if a bunch of people were running toward the house. What if it was another one of those things?

She pressed herself flat against the siding as something strange came into view.

Colette, the French bounty hunter in town with her husband searching for some kind of serial killer, ran on all fours like a dog, only no human could move like that. Each movement was sharp, exaggerated, and awkward, as if she weren’t used to her own body as she ran and it kept getting in the way. Blue light oozed from her skin and eyes, casting a pallor on the darkness around her.

The woman ran straight for the house, stopping at the porch to sniff the air. That’s when the others emerged from the darkness: Gabe, Mia, Nicholas, and some other women she didn’t know. None of them tried to help the French woman or even seemed surprised at the way she acted. They just watched.

Rebekah blinked and rubbed her eyes. Now that the woman was closer, peering into one of the windows on the porch, the light separated enough from the person to make sense. Beneath the blue light, Colette bled. Long gashes covered her arms and legs, especially her hands. The French woman looked like she’d tried to dance in the middle of a rose bush. Her face was pale and wan, eyes ringed in darkness. Colette was very ill. Around her, the blue light formed into another shape, expanding out around her. Vaguely human, the thing had long claws where fingers and toes should have been and only the barest hint of features. It looked undeveloped. Like a sculptor had decided to start a piece but died before he could add all the little features and lines that transformed marble into human flesh. Where it spilled out past her and into the yard, the blue light echoed the form of the porch, only beyond it looked like rain.

Almost as quickly as she appeared, Colette turned and ran off down the road as the others chased. Rebekah didn’t have to think about her next move: she followed them. Keeping to the back, well away from Gabe and the others, she hitched her dress up to her knees and ran.

Colette disappeared down the wooded drive on all fours, the shimmering blue rain falling around her like a memory as the tall evergreens watched. As the woman ran, little drops of light like fine grains of dust rose from the surrounding environment, some merging with the light of the creature above Colette and others joining the ghostly recreation of the nearby environment. If Gabe or the others thought the light at all strange, they didn’t show it. Instead, they kept a steady distance, always following but not too close.

Rebekah should have worn a jacket. Icy tendrils of wind lashed her exposed face and arms and legs, chilling her as she hurried after them. Only her feet escaped the cold. The years in high school she’d spent running cross country paid off.

The thing that was and wasn’t Colette ran all the way to the main road before taking a right turn on the Pacific Coast Highway. The woman was going to get hit. Gabe and the others followed along the side of the road just out of reach of the shimmering blue rain. The monster aura around the French woman strengthened with each step, overwhelming the bounty hunter.

A trail of blood followed her down the road.

As they crossed the Cape Creek Bridge, Rebekah started to get a little winded. It’d been a while since she ran this far, and didn’t know how the others managed to keep up seeing as they wore high heeled shoes and short skirts. Thankfully, the thing that was Colette stopped about a quarter mile past the bridge.

Rebekah watched in horror as the shimmering lights amplified to reveal a van driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. With a strength and agility that didn’t seem possible, the bounty hunter jumped and hung suspended on the back of something that didn’t exist.

No. That wasn’t possible. Ducking behind a tree on the side of the road, about a hundred yards from the others, Rebekah closed her eyes and tried to make sense of what she’d seen. A woman—a physical, tangible person—had jumped higher than even the best athlete could and then hung suspended over the blue outline of something imaginary. That hadn’t happened. Surely she’d seen something else. Maybe this was all a dream and she’d wake up in her bed.

She peeked around the tree and down the road.

Nope. Definitely not dreaming.

The van was on its side now, Colette attacking the metal like she wanted to eat the vehicle. If that had been the worst of it, Rebekah might have retained some sense of her sanity. Unfortunately, the woman attacking and eating an imaginary van made everything else look sane.

Gabe, a machete in his hand, faced down three of the women in witch costumes. Their hands were raised and their mouths moving like in the movies if they were real witches about to cast a spell. Gabe screamed at them, but she couldn’t hear the words. Mia and Nicholas wrestled with Colette, trying to drag her physically away from the vehicle and off the road even as the bounty hunter fought like a fiend.

The fourth woman hugged herself and backed near the woods. A subtle tingle, like a whisper across her thoughts, drew Rebekah’s gaze into the woods. Lurking there, teeth as long as a saber-toothed cat and probably as sharp, waited a thing from one of Lovecraft’s nightmares. Two more steps and the girl would be monster food.

Rebekah hurried through the trees, trying to catch up to the monster before it could eat anyone. What she needed was a weapon. Something she could distract it with so the other girl could get away. The woods were dark, lit only by what little moonlight could filter through the pines, ghostly tendrils of light which obscured more than they hid. Twigs snapped beneath Rebekah’s feet as she crept closer, and the crackle of fallen leaves echoed around. It had to see her. Hear her. She was only about fifty feet away when something snagged her foot, tripping her and sending her sprawling face first on the ground.

The monster turned to face her.

It sniffed the air, its pig-like nostrils flaring as it caught her scent, and howled in delight. She was in trouble. Big trouble.

“Gabe!” she shrieked, trying to get to her feet. Her ankle, twisted by the fall, flared painfully, and she stumbled backward just as the thing swiped a clawed hand for her head. That twisted ankle saved her life. She landed on something thick, bruising her back, but she ignored the pain and rolled over on her side, grabbing the log she landed on as she went.

Please work!

With one final roll, she brought the log around and smashed it into the monster’s black head. Rotten from having lain on the ground for who knew how long, the log shattered with a little squish, barely making the creature shake its head.

“Any minute now!” she yelled, trying to pull herself back. She grabbed a fistful of leaves and threw them at it.

The thing lunged for her leg, its claws scraping the back of her calf. Pain seared her leg, scalding hot acid eating into her skin, and she cried out. Her vision blackened. Sobbing, she rubbed her eyes.

The pig-snouted demon reared back on its hind hooves.

Rebekah rolled to avoid the thing’s bite. As she looked up at its hideous visage, something stirred inside. Her worry and fear faded to a murmur; instead, calm settled over her mind. Her parents had trained her for this day since birth, only she’d never realized it. Time slowed.

The monster’s every movement happened as if in slow motion. Strength lying dormant for a lifetime rose up when she called it, and she used both feet to kick the snout-faced thing in the chest, slamming it back into a tree which splintered in half at the contact. Faster than any person should be able to move, Rebekah got to her feet and jumped on the monster, pinning its arms with her knees. Foul, sulfuric breath issued from its deformed mouth, nearly gagging her as it snapped for her face.

“You’re not so scary, are you?” she asked rhetorically as it struggled for freedom. Moonlight rippled across its raging features, glistening off fangs and pig snouts and eyes slit like a cat’s. It was an amalgamation. Like someone took the ingredient list for every creature and just randomly selected features.

She punched it hard, shattering what passed for bones in its jaw, and sat up as it reeled beneath her.

Demon.

This was a demon.

She knew it with the same certainty with which she knew her name or her birthday: because she’d learned it from her parents growing up. The books they’d read to her as a child, the stories they’d told her before bed, the nursery rhymes—all of that had been training. She needed to kill the thing before it realized she didn’t know how. What had been the nursery rhyme her mother sang to her as a little girl? It’d been stupid and simple. Something catchy. She hadn’t understood it at the time, but those words were probably the most important words her mother ever spoke:

Rebekah began to hum.

Little demon on your bed,

Fangs and claws to make you dead,

Don’t be afraid ‘cause I am here

With my blade to cut its head.

The head. Before she could think about how she’d manage to either decapitate or otherwise damage the thing’s head, the demon launched her backward over its head. She slammed into the ground, blacking out a second time. When she opened her eyes again, the demon was on top her, its teeth only a few inches from her face. A drop of saliva landed on her cheek with a sizzle, burning her. Its knees dug painfully into her sides; the thing weighed twice the weight of a normal person.

She was going to die.

Fingers groping the ground at her side came upon a branch about the width of her thumb. It’d have to do.

Before it could bite off her head and eat it for a snack, Rebekah jabbed the branch deep into its eye and further into the brain itself. Blood and puss from the wound scalded her arm, and the demon’s claws raked her side as it convulsed in death. With one massive push, she managed to shove the thing off her before any more bodily tissue or fluids burned her.

In total, the fight had taken only seconds—a minute at most—but as Rebekah lay there, her leg and arms and side burning, looking up into the dark pines dappled with moonlight, she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. She’d killed something. Sure, it wasn’t a nice something, but a something nonetheless. She wouldn’t eat lobster because it was boiled alive, and here she’d just gone and stabbed a branch through a demon’s eye. Rebekah turned her head to look at the thing she’d killed, then turned away and vomited.

All the fear and panic returned in one rush, and she got it out of her system along with everything she’d eaten that day. A bitter aftertaste lingered in her mouth. When she finally managed to get her body back under control, she used the hem of her long dress to wipe her mouth off.

The pain subsided to a more manageable burn as she went looking for the other women. The one who’d almost been demon food had vanished, maybe running into the trees or further off into the woods. For a moment she thought to find the other three dead, Gabe’s machete buried in their skulls, but two of them knelt by the side of the road, hands bound behind their back and minimal bruising and blood to mar their face, as he slapped handcuffs on the third woman.

Gabe stared at her for a moment, anger flashing in his eyes, and then he hurried over and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back toward the woods. “Beks...You shouldn’t be here. I thought I told you to stay away.”

“Gabe, I need you!” Mia called from the road where the shimmering blue van, turned on its side from the accident, seemed even more real than it had been before. So did the thing that had taken over Colette’s form.