Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (24 page)

Thinking of depressed rocks made him chuckle.

On impulse, he turned and looked into the sky where the plume of smoke would be should his entire island have caught fire. Nothing. Looked like he’d be going back home tonight after all. It was just as well. His parents, no doubt, would have fabricated a reason he couldn’t join the Hunters.

The soft chipping of the hatchet ceased.

Smiling, Gabe bent down and reached into the water, bringing up the perfect skipping rock his feet had found.

Beks wasn’t a woodsman. Had never gone hunting or trapping with old man Lorek. When she came through the trees, she made enough sound for an entire herd of elephants.

He didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Keep trying.” He gestured back the way she’d come.

She growled something incoherent.

Gabe chuckled again.

Chopping sounds, louder and faster than before, began almost immediately. They stopped after only a few minutes. Gabe skipped his rock. Six times it bounced on the water before sinking. Fifteen was his record. Maybe he could beat it. He took his mp3 player out of his pocket, settled the ear buds in each ear, and turned on some classical music.

This time when she returned, he said nothing. An arched eyebrow sent her storming back into the woods to try again.

The rest of the day and into the evening passed slowly. Gabe sat skipping rocks and listening to music. Beks swung her hatchet for a few minutes, came back to tell him she’d quit, and got sent back to her tree. Each time she looked a little angrier and dirtier.

Evening cast her darkening gaze on the world, muting and dulling color with the encroaching night. It’d been about an hour since her last visit to where he waited by the beach, so he decided to go see her project and tell her they were done for the day. Drenched in sweat, shivering from the cold, she sat with her back to the tree and her knees hugged up to her chest. She’d been crying.

Ignoring her, he went up to the tree and inspected the cut she’d made. After about six hours of trying, she’d only gotten maybe an eighth of the way through the tree.

“We’ll try again tomorrow.” He turned and started to walk away.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, a squeak in her voice.

Answering, Gabe knew, would only add days to her suffering. She had to come to this first realization on her own or she’d never be able to protect herself. Never have the strength of will she’d need, the resolve, to face down a handful of demons on the worst storm days. So although she hated him for it right then, he kept walking and left her there.

“Ten a.m.” he yelled back over his shoulder. “Don’t be late.”

The sun had set by the time he returned to his island prison, and nothing remained of the demons save some lingering dust the winds of the Pacific hadn’t yet scattered. Ignoring them, he went inside and warmed himself something to eat as he checked the weather radar and forecast. Clear skies for the next couple of days, but then a storm by the weekend. No way would she be ready to handle that by herself. Unfortunately, arranging for her protection meant either calling the station and talking to his mother or leaving Killamook and doing it himself. Gabe grabbed a comic and read instead.

When he returned the next day, Beks had already begun to hack away at the tree. On the ground a few feet away rested what looked suspiciously like a picnic basket. Mia’s idea, no doubt. Gabe just shook his head.

She glanced over at him as if to challenge him to say something negative, but he just turned and went back to his spot to look for more rocks and wait until she was ready. This next part wasn’t going to be fun.

Beks returned around noon, the basket dangling from her arm. When she stopped behind him, her reflection smiled. “Want some lunch?” she asked sweetly.

Please forgive me
. Gabe jumped to his feet, grabbed the basket out of her hands, and threw it as far as he could into the water. The basket shattered on the rocks on the far shore, exploding sandwiches and bottled water.

“Hey, what was that—”

He interrupted her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I didn’t hear a tree fall. You’re not finished. Go back.”

She looked like a cute puppy he’d just kicked in the face. “No. I was hungry. It took me a half hour to get that together for us, and you just went and ruined it.”

Getting in her face, he dropped his voice to a menacing growl. “Oh, you were hungry. Gee, I’m so sorry,” he mocked. “This isn’t the Girl Scouts. We’re hunting demons. Creatures that are stronger and faster than you; creatures who think you’re food. Do you suppose they’re going to wait patiently while you eat your lunch? Think they’ll be worried about how much effort you put into it when one of their massive clawed hands snaps your frail, human body in half and then rushes to the shore and does the same to a few hundred people before it can be tracked and killed?”

“Stop this,” she whimpered. “Why are you saying these things to me? I’ve been trying so hard...”

He was a monster. “Oh, you’ve been trying, have you?”

She nodded.

“You know what demons think of your
trying
?” he asked rhetorically. Biting his lip to keep from apologizing or stopping the necessary cruelty, he took the other hatchet from its holster, walked back along the trail to where she’d been chopping at the pine tree, and sliced it through with three blows. He sheathed the hatchet back at his waist as the tree toppled to the side. It settled with a thud, a tremor moving through the ground and up his leg. “There. I’ve killed your demon for you.” He pointed at another tree—this time choosing one thicker than the last. “Start over. And stop thinking like a human.”

When he left her there to get started, she was sobbing softly.

Sometimes, he hated the person his heritage forced him to be. The person his father raised him to be. Knowing that she hated him more with each passing moment, he walked away and left her alone to start hacking pointlessly. Without the epiphany that was coming, she wouldn’t survive one week as the Keeper of a tower. As much as he wanted to tell her the secret, to whisper the answer to make this all better, it’d only make things more difficult and dangerous later. So he let her hate him.

All things said and done, the final show down took another three days. They’d stopped talking after the incident with the basket save a few sparse words about starting times. This morning, she hadn’t even looked at him. He tied up his Jet Ski to find her already at work, the echo of her chopping audible from the beach. Stopping only to check in and make sure she wasn’t killing herself, he returned to his spot along the Cape Creek shore, now entirely devoid of skipping stones. He brought reading material instead.

Gabe waited until the chopping sounds stopped. The last two days, he’d been searching for the perfect branch—one strong enough to withstand the blows he was about inflict on it while not being so thick it’d kill her. Taking a deep breath, he picked the branch and walked down the trail toward Rebekah. When his father had done this to him on his thirteenth birthday, Gabe had nearly killed him. She might do worse.

Making less noise than a light breeze, he circled around the outside of the trail to approach her from behind. She’d collapsed next to the tree, its trunk only a quarter of the way cut, her bloody hands cradled in her lap.

Without warning, he slapped her in the stomach with the branch. The force knocked her on her side as she cried in pain.

“Stop lying there and get up,” he ordered, hitting her again.

“I can’t,” she whimpered. Matted with sweat and dirt, her dark hair clung to her face and head. She looked up at him through it like a veil.

“No, you can’t. Because you’re a pathetic human. Weak. Lazy. Helpless. Your father’s not here to protect you any more, little girl. He died protecting you. So did your mother.” Hating himself, he hit her again. “Get up.”

“Don’t you dare mention my father!” she screamed, her eyes full or rage. “Don’t you ever talk about him again!”

“Do you think that’s why he kept the truth from you?” Gabe asked, tapping the branch against his shoulder thoughtfully as he paced in front of her. “Is it because he knew you’d be too weak? That you’d quit?”

“I didn’t quit.” She gestured angrily to the tree. “It’s impossible.”

Gabe shrugged. “For a human, sure. Not for a Keeper. That demon we’re tracking—he has your father’s memories. Maybe when Nicholas finds the creature, we can ask its opinion. I bet I’m right. I’d bet anything he saw the weakness in your eyes and was too ashamed to watch you fail.”

Pulling herself to her feet, Rebekah grabbed the hatchet and faced the tree again. Blood—dry and fresh—coated the weapon’s handle. She swung.

A splinter of wood summersaulted into the air.

“Too bad. You’ve been eaten.” He hit her across the back with the stick.

This time, she didn’t cry out.

She swung again.

“Nope, dead. After killing you, that demon went on to kill another twenty-five people. Those deaths are on your conscience. They’re your fault.”

She swung again.

He hit her with the stick. “Dead again. That demon attacked a school bus full of children. Thirty-three deaths. Your fault.”

Screaming—whether from rage or pain, he didn’t know—Rebekah swung a third time.

“Ohh, children and families at a soccer game. That’s going to keep the morgue busy for a while. Looks like I was right. Your father knew you were weak.”

This time, she turned and swung at him. Good. Now they were getting somewhere. He turned her clumsy swing easily, using the branch like a staff, and swept her feet out from under her. She landed on her back with a thud, coughing to catch her breath. Gabe put the end of the branch against her throat. “Dead again.”

Brushing him aside, she crawled to her feet and swung a second time. This blow he caught on the branch. She’d barely raised a chip. He arched an eyebrow. “That all you’ve got? You fight like a human.”

Screaming in shame and frustration, she swung at him over and over again, each blow meant to kill him. Each one a little harder than the one before. He watched her eyes as he danced out of reach, slowly circling around to put the tree in between them again. She was so close to the edge, so close to awareness. One nudge would do it. One nudge would send her over to the other side.

He hoped that one day she’d forgive him for what he was about to say.

“Your father died because you were too weak to help him.”

Rage flashed in her eyes, and she swung again. The impact on the tree sounded like lightning, and her weapon moved through it in one clean slice. Blinded by the splinters of wood launched toward him, Gabe barely rolled out of the way before the tree fell on top of him. Some of the lower branches still got him, slapping him painfully on his back as he was crushed beneath their weight.

Growling, her eyes ignited with rage and tinged slightly red, she stood over him and pushed the branch down into his throat like she wanted to snap his neck with it. “Who’s weak now?” she asked.

Grinning, he grabbed her feet faster than she could move to stop him, tripping her up. He used his brief advantage to untangle himself from the fallen tree. She pursued him as he danced away and hid behind another tree, which she promptly split in two, and then a third. By the time she came to her senses and stopped attacking him, she felled a half dozen trees.

“Beks?” he asked as the hatchet slipped from her fingers. She looked around herself, eyes wide with wonder. He took the weapon and sheathed it. “Beks? Are you in there?”

“I did all that?” she asked, half amazed, half terrified. “Me?”

“Yes. How do you feel?”

Running her hand through her hair left a smear of blood on her face. “Like today is the first day I’ve been alive. Like I’ve never known who I was or what my body could do before.” With a sheepish grin, she jumped and grabbed the bottom branch of a nearby tree. In the space of a minute, she’d climbed to the top and back down again. “Does it always feel like this?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. What you’re feeling is the rush of awakened blood. It’ll fade in a day or two.”

“Awakened blood?”

“Would you like to hear the story?” he asked.

“What story?”

“The story about who we are and where we came from. The secret origin of the Keepers.”

“Yes.”

Gabe gestured away from the tree massacre and back toward the stream. “Come on then. Let’s wash that up and I’ll tell you. You’ll heal more quickly from now on since you’ve been activated, but it still pays to be hygienic.”

Still grinning like an idiot, she followed him back and let him take care of her hands. He was careful not to aggravate the blisters that had burst across her palm as he rinsed off the blood, watching as the swirl of red was diluted by the river.

“In the old days, before the gates between our world and the demon world were sealed through sacrifice, demons roamed the land at will—hunting, killing, and destroying everything and everyone in the path. It was a dangerous time to be alive. A witch named Aethelna, enraged at the deaths of her twin children at the hand of a demon, vowed revenge. It’s said she had a vision which showed her the secret to defeating the demons: become one. So she waited for a humanoid demon to come around and seduced it. Tricked the thing into not killing her. Once she was certain she was pregnant, she killed the demon and used her magic to bind the creature growing in her womb to human form.”

“What happened to the child?” she asked.

“Oh, it was insane. Completely. A rage monster the likes of which the world had never seen. Stayed that way for the first hundred years. Once the blood had been diluted enough through repetitive breeding, the offspring weren’t so much affected by it as they were amplified. Gifted with strength and sharpened senses. Our healing ability came from the witch mother. Every Keeper alive today—and there are thousands spread out across the world—are the direct descendants of that first child.”

She moved in closer next to him as he kept trying to clean her hands. Her fingers curled up to caress his. “So why haven’t I always been strong?”