Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (30 page)

She gestured for him to stop. Taking a deep breath through her nose, she managed to smother the impulse to vomit. “I’m fine...I’m...not fine. Shit.” Knocking her plate of food over, she ran for the door as fast as she could, barely making it out before losing what little she’d eaten to the rocks.

“Oranges,” Gabe said, following her outside where he waited a safe distance away. “I couldn’t eat them for months after my awakening.”

Rebekah glanced over at him through her black hair. “You mean this is normal?”

He nodded. “Perfectly. Just avoid breakfast for a while and things should stabilize. The demon blood stirring takes everyone a little differently.”

Wiping her mouth off with the bottom of her shirt, she struggled to regain some of her dignity as she straightened, being careful not to let her hand linger near her stomach. While he might blame the attack on her demon blood, she felt rather certain it came from a different cause. Mia’s test the day before hadn’t exactly been scientific, but Rebekah had to start believing that things like science weren’t the only answer if she was going to survive this transition.

Telling him she was pregnant—that would have to wait for another day. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

Gabe’s face turned serious, and he stepped back inside the house a moment. When he returned, he had her father’s katana in his hands.

“How...?” she asked, unable to finish the question.

Instead of answering, he held out the sword. She took it hesitantly, fingers slowly curling around the simple black sheath. The weapon had sat in their umbrella rack by the door for as long as she could remember, taken out only under special circumstances. Now, she understood why. He’d done it to protect her—them. Everyone. She thought it’d been lost when he died.

“I always thought he was crazy, you know, going out in the storms.” Rebekah closed her hands around the hilt of the sword and drew it out. Sunlight danced along the silver blade like fire as she turned it in her hand. “I told him as much the night he was killed. Chased him out into the rain and called him a loon. Accused him of losing his mind. That’s the last thing he heard from me.” She took a swing.

“He knew you loved him. That’s what mattered.” He held out his hand for the weapon. With one last look, she sheathed it and passed it back to him. His voice, when he spoke again, was humorless. “We’ll work up to the real thing once you get some basics down.”

“What do we use until then?”

Gabe walked over to a small storage bin attached to the house and opened the lid. Inside, wooden swords, shields, knives, hatchets, maces, and every possible weapon waited as if someone had robbed a museum of its medieval weaponry collection. “These.”

****

By the time he called a rest for the night, Rebekah could barely stand upright. Her legs, exhausted from standing and shuffling and lunging and practicing footwork, ached in a thousand new places as muscles burst into fiery life which she hadn’t previously known to exist. The practice weapons, weighted somehow to be much heavier than wood alone, melted her arms into rubber.

“What do you want for dinner?” Gabe asked, going over to his hot plate as she eased herself onto the bed. She just wanted to rest her eyes for a moment. “I was thinking beef stew; I’ve some cans left from the bunker...”

But she didn’t hear him.

When she awoke sometime in the night to find blankets tucked around her, she smiled. Rolling over, she felt the bed. Empty. Rebekah pushed the blankets off and sat up, despite her body’s angry protest that she lay back down. Where was Gabe?

The faint light of the moon creeping in through the small windows illuminated the darkness enough for her to know she was alone in the house. The shelves where he kept his limited supply of food had been restocked to include fresh breads and fruits and vegetables. He must have gone to shore to fetch more while she slept.

A whistle of wind, sharp compared to the pounding waves beating on the breakers, drew her attention outside. If she concentrated, she could make out the soft scuffle of boots on the rocks. Someone was out there. Gabe. Opening the door a crack, she peeked outside to see him moving through some of the forms he’d tried to teach her earlier in the day.

Only when he performed them, muscles rippling in the chill night air, each graceful movement carried deadly force.

As she watched him, her mind wrestled with competing versions of him. In her psych class, they’d called it cognitive dissonance: when your memory of something doesn’t match up with the reality in front of you. How could smiling Gabe—the boy she’d always loved, able to make her laugh with a small word or phrase, who made her breakfast in bed—also be this deadly killer who spent his nights in weapons practice?

Like he’d heard her thinking, he stopped in mid-swing and turned toward the door. “Beks? What are you doing up?”

Caught, she stepped outside to join him. “Nothing. I woke up and didn’t see you, so I got worried.”

His skin glistened with sweat from the moonlight, and he pulled his t-shirt back over his head. “I was almost finished anyway. Let’s go inside before you freeze to death.”

Rebekah walked like an old woman, her movements jerky. Everything hurt. The warmth of the house after the cold November spray melted some of the tension. Some. She had so many secrets she wanted to tell him, so many questions she wanted to ask. But how? As she sat down on the edge of the bed, he sat next to her and draped the blanket over her shoulders. His fingers lingered on her skin a moment too long.

The soft scent of saltwater clung to him like a perfume.

Rebekah bumped him with her shoulder.

When he bumped her back, she couldn’t stop the small smile spreading warmth across her face. “I missed this, you know. Us. Hanging out.”

“Me too,” he whispered. “Me too.”

With her left hand, she touched his face and forced him to look at her. “I’m going to kiss you now,” she said, leaning toward him. “Don’t read anything into it.”

He sat frozen like a statue as she slowly rose up and kissed him.

In the movies, when the prince kisses the girl, it’s to the accompaniment of music and fanfare and chirping birds. While this kiss had no singing birds or other talking animals nearby to increase the romance, and the princess made the first move, it lacked none of the heat of its video counterparts.

A jolt of energy rushed through his lips and into hers when they touched. She pulled back just an inch, meeting his dark eyes. Shining out from them was the boy she’d fallen in love with all those years ago, the friend she’d cherished. “Beks...” he whispered against her lips, their breath merging into one. The need and longing and hunger in that one word said everything. His fingers ached out for her, warm shivers dancing up her thighs.

She kissed him again.

Gabe met her passion and returned it in kind, his fingers reaching for her as his warmth spread inside her.

Shifting around, she straddled him as he began to unbutton her blouse. Rebekah pulled his t-shirt off and tossed it to the floor as he scooted them both backward on the bed. His lips trailed down her throat, settling on the tops of her breasts as he slid her shirt down her arms, trapping them behind her for a moment.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, looking up at her. “What about...”

“If you say his name,” she threatened, her breath coming in quick bursts. “I may have to strangle you.”

He grinned up at her. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

Picking her up, he rolled her over and brought her to sweet oblivion.

****

Day melted into night which melted into day. Although weapons training wasn’t easy, she grew used to it and began to develop some small skill with her father’s katana and throwing knives. Enough, according to him, so that she wouldn’t cut off her own foot.

Only time would tell if she developed any true proficiency.

For a few hours every day, she read through the notes her father had made in his journal as well as those of previous Keepers. So many different demons, each with unique skills and dangers, dizzied her mind. How could anyone keep this much information straight? Not after a hundred years could she do it.

She had the book open on her lap as Gabe brought her a bowl of oatmeal laced with fresh fruit. “Look at this one.” She pointed to a picture of something with the head of a man, the torso of a horse, and the tale of a fish. “How is this even possible? How on earth would you kill it?”

He sat next to her and studied the picture for a moment, rubbing her bare leg. “Oh, I’ve seen one of those. Nasty thing. That tail makes it extremely fast and hard to catch.” Gabe kissed her shoulder before taking a bite of his breakfast. “Now that you mention it, I think I had to cut off its tail first. Its heart was somewhere in the horse part, which took a while to find. I hate it when that happens. Why do they have to be messy—that’s what I want to know? A clean kill absent all the unnecessary viscera would be more civilized.”

Being with him was comfortable, and when they didn’t talk for a moment it wasn’t awkward. They fell into their old routines easily, as if they hadn’t spent five years apart. Given the extra strength that came as part of her new heritage, the sex was fantastic, too. The last time, at her father’s memorial, he held back, probably afraid he would hurt her. He didn’t have any qualms like that anymore.

“So how did all this get started anyway?” she asked. “I mean, did someone just wake up one day and decide, “Hey, I want to go and dedicate my life to killing monsters?”

Gabe shook his head. “No. The movement developed slowly. At first, it was mostly local militia or the occasional sell sword protecting isolated villages and towns. As cities grew more complicated and advanced, the ad-hock method didn’t work. Alexandria is where they built the first lighthouse. Well, the first official Keeper lighthouse, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Humans were no match for the demons. Wave after wave of soldier got slaughtered. That’s when Aethelna got the idea of merging human and demon physiology into a new type of person. We, as I told you before, are the descendants of that first child.”

“And afterwards? You said it took a century before the rage was manageable. What happened to those other children?”

Gabe arched an eyebrow but didn’t answer. She looked away. Of course, she knew what happened: they raised the children in isolation, mated them with humans, and then killed them once the offspring was produced. It made a sick kind of sense, like the logic of a serial killer.

He continued. “Once the method was perfected, and the new demon-human offspring began to show their abilities, the society of the Keepers was fully formed. Over time, as civilizations grew and expanded, so did the Keepers’ influence. Lighthouses were built, more children were born, and what was once one society fractured into smaller councils.”

She tried to understand what he was talking about. Societies, councils, it all sounded so... juvenile. No one really believed in secret societies anymore. At least, she hadn’t. “So you have to answer to one of these councils? And I guess I do, too?”

“Yeah. That’s how it works.”

“Seems rather formal.”

Having finished his bowl, he went back for seconds. In with the fruit and oatmeal, he added a healthy scoop of peanut butter. “Try having your father in charge,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her. “I don’t recommend working for your parents.”

“I don’t know... I found your mother a lot more intimidating. Those eyes look right through a person. Being with her felt like standing in my underwear.”

He laughed at the jest, but when he sat back down his face turned serious. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like whatever he said next.

“You know we can’t stay here forever, right? Eventually, you have to go back home and take up your post. Speaking of that, there’s going to be a storm tonight.”

Appetite fading, Rebekah put the bowl on the table. “What does that mean for me?”

He caressed the inside of her leg, his touch soothing and protective. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You know that, don’t you?”

“But I still have to fight them?”

He nodded. “It’ll be your first test. Pass it, and there’s no going back. You’re a Keeper.”

She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. How did one fail a test like this anyway? Dying? Although she knew if she asked for more time he would give it to her, she didn’t. Her father wouldn’t have wanted his daughter to be a coward. She owed him this. Owed his memory.

Rebekah grabbed her father’s katana and began to sharpen it.

****

The storm approached as they often did in the Pacific Northwest: suddenly. The blazing beams of the Killamook light, beacons she now knew meant to attract demons, were gobbled by the storm as the rising waves threatened to consume the small island. She didn’t need to wait for a demon to kill her—the ocean would drown them long before.

Sword belt on her hip and throwing knives strapped to her thighs, she wasn’t nearly ready. Not that she would tell him that, of course. Other than reminders about things to do and not to do during battle, he hadn’t spoken to her for the last couple hours. Hadn’t touched her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was mad at her. Probably, he remembered his fiancée. The one he hadn’t been there to protect.

Gabe checked what looked to be a radar app on his phone as a swell broke against the lighthouse. “You ready? We’ve had impact. I’d give the first demon three minutes before it reaches us.”

“No worries. I’ve got this.” She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a smile. “Why don’t you go take a nap? This is cake.”

Shoving his phone in his pocket, he walked over and gave her an intense, salty kiss. “I love you,” he said, brushing her damp hair out of her eyes when he finally pulled away. “Whatever happens. I always have.”

She nuzzled her nose against his. “Me, too.”

“If something goes wrong, I want you to go in the tower and lock yourself in. Don’t hesitate, don’t ask, just do it. Wait until the storm is over, and then use the radio in the house to contact the council. If that fails, take the boat. Mia will know what to do.” He kissed her on the forehead again, lowered his goggles over his eyes, and drew his two machetes.