The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series (40 page)

“I have loved you for a thousand years.”

Whether she meant it now or not, my Kate did. Locked inside, deep inside, Kate loved me. “Kate! I will love you for thousands more!” With Kate’s name on my lips and my heart full of love, I sighed my last.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): DIRK JOHNSON

Corey looked across the gulf and Dirk followed his gaze. Kate on her knees, still covered in tattoos, mouthed something to him across the divide.

“I will love you for thousands more!” he shouted.

“Corey! No!” Dirk yelled. Corey strained against his restraints. Ramming the spikes into his brain, he convulsed and died.

“Nooo!” Eunavae screamed and fought to get to him. Donnie held her back from the edge of the precarious drop, his face contorted in grief and he murmured something over and over as he held tightly to the frantic Eunavae.

Dirk trembled in anger and focused across the divide to see The Mother’s chest rise and fall as she began to laugh. She threw her head back and cackled in wicked glee as she gazed down on the dead body of her husband.

Kate betrayed them all. Responsible for Corey’s hideous death, she took pleasure at the sight of his mangled body. He couldn’t grasp it, he stared at her maniacal throes, and anger blazed inside of him. Something to the Mother’s right caught his eye. Trip, wrestling with someone out of sight from The Mother, dove behind a boulder.

Dirk didn’t have time to identify who he had tackled because the sphere fell and engulfed the four of them on his side of the canyon. They jumped leaving the others to deal with the betrayer.

His last thought in the dragon world;
Kate will pay for this!

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

Kate jumped up in a panic and filled her lungs to scream. Trip grabbed her from behind and clamped his hand over her mouth, tackling her behind the rock. She slapped at his arms and kicked and flailed. He held her tight until she gave out and crumpled in a heap, trembling. Curled into a fetal position, mouth contorted into a silent scream, her face reddened as veins fractured across her cheeks. Trip wrapped himself around her feeling the desperation and loss, ready to silence her again to protect her from being discovered.

A sphere landed on the other side of the gorge. It disappeared with Corey’s body.

Fearful that Kate would draw attention, Trip wracked his brain. Trying to be silent, Kate struggled. Just breathing had become a labor through the tears and pain. Trip needed a diversion. Luckily the Mother cackled like a machine gun and no one could hear Kate’s sobs. That wouldn’t last long, though.

“He’s dead! He’s gone! We have defeated the mighty Corey Chastain.” The woman snarled, insane.

Kate stiffened at the sound and pushed away from Trip. A fierce light grew on her countenance. She wrenched herself up and snatched the whip at her waist.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

“You!” Kate’s guttural roar broke out of her tiny body as she stepped out from behind the rocks. Trip did not think her capable of such fury. “You are The Mother, aren’t you?”

The Mother stopped her crowing and turned to face Kate. “Ah, so Katie Lynn how did you get out of your chains?” She dropped her fake bonds into the dirt.

“You killed my husband! I will have revenge.” She snapped her whip. It slithered out in front of her as she adjusted her stance.

“You can’t touch me, Katie Lynn. I have a world of dragons on my side and two dozen body guards who will stand between us.”

“Do you?” Kate bent her knees slightly and leaned forward, sizing up her enemy.

“Dagan!” The Mother roared.

Silence.

“Hmmm, I guess Dagan is a little busy now.” Kate stepped forward and snapped her whip again. It snaked behind her and around to quiver at the ready for her strike. “And I seem to remember a bargain between Dagan and the other dragons. Corey dies, we go free.”

Fear flitted across the Mother’s face before she schooled it back into arrogance. Trip stepped out from behind the rock scanning the area. He didn’t know if the Rhinodudes would honor the agreement. But they were nowhere in sight.

Tension coiled around Kate, Trip knew she’d tear into this uncanny doppelganger at any second.

The Mother turned a pleading face to him.

“Trip, my love,” she purred and held out her arms toward him. Astonished when desire rose in his gut, Trip couldn’t believe the passion that spiked in him toward the vile woman in front of him. But her painted body quivered in fear, so familiar to him. Possessive feelings for her rose in him. She had been his lover. They were bonded, even if she hadn’t been the right Kate
.

I owe her, don’t
I
?

“Who are you?” Kate bellowed.

“I am Kate Wilson, just like you.”

“That is not possible.” Kate’s arm relaxed a bit.

“Yes, it is. I know everything about your past because it is my past. The only thing that differentiates me from you is the 10 years I spent here in this world after Corey ripped you away from me.”

“What are you talking about? You’re insane.”

“We are the Mother, Kate. We agreed to serve this world as the Mother. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember being tricked.”

“Yes,” she laughed. “Clever little dragon.”

“After we went into Trip’s mind and led him through all of those locked doors to free him, Corey would not let you go. He anchored you to himself. You broke away from me, rolled down the steps and jumped back with the team. You left me trapped in the chair, enslaved to source this world.”

Kate’s hand flew to her mouth, and all the fire in her snuffed out. “No,” she breathed, but she recalled the feeling of being ripped in two. It never occurred to her that it actually happened.

“You left me here!” The Mother shrieked. “You and Corey abandoned me to a life as a battery! I had no one, nothing to anchor me to reality. I became the Mother.” Vehemence frothed out of her as she spat accusations at Kate.

“Then the Sphere Master came and knew me. He told me we had been friends. Carefully and gently, he brought me back. He described the great love I had shared with a man named Trip Carson, and it gave me a reason to be free.”

She turned her focus onto Trip. “I remembered you, Trip. I remembered our connection, our alliance, our kiss under the willow tree, and as we descended into the Scriptorium. You are my protector. I remember choosing you over Corey when we came back. I walked out of his arms into yours, remember? When we came to this world on your jump, I know how distraught you were when you couldn’t touch me in the cave and how you kept trying to get me away from the dragonet. You love me, Trip. I know you do.”

Trip took a step toward her.
Kate
?
No wonder I feel so drawn to her
,
she’s my Kate
. “It was you that night in the meadow.”

“Yes, my love. Finally I could express my love to you, give myself to you fully. I had waited for years to be reunited with you, to feel your arms around me. The greatest moment of my life happened in our wild flowers.” Tears streamed down her face, and her fingers quivered as she reached for him.

Trip ran to her, gathered her in his arms and kissed his Kate. Her body felt so good, so soft. He would save her, finally. He would take her home, and they would be together as they should have been all this time. Sheer joy bubbled inside of him.

He ran his hands down her beautiful body, the body that he knew, his Katie girl, the woman that had chosen him from the beginning. A sense of rightness broke open in him and he kissed her like he had never kissed her before, without guilt. No prior claim, she chose him.

No one would stand between them, now. He broke away and laughed for joy.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TARA JOHNSON

Ding Dong the Dragon’s dead!

Tara wrenched the spear out of his brain and watched him shudder one last time. Now maybe Kate would be free of the psychic bond he had trapped her in. She leapt down from the massive beast and faced the gawking Kiarnusk.

She raised her spear at them and feigned an attack. They scattered like geese, big worthless brutes.

Tara topped the rise, wiping dragon ichor off of her spear and slid to a screeching halt. There stood Trip locked in a passionate kiss with the tattooed Kate. Betrayal sliced through her and anger kindled deep inside. She didn’t free Kate for him!

It took a moment for her to notice who else stood there. An unpainted version of Kate with her whip hanging limply at her side stared in horror at the couple in front of her.

“What the hell is going on?” Tara spat.

Kate snapped her head around, but Trip and the psychedelic Kate didn’t seem to hear her, they just continued groping.

Kate moved toward Tara and she met her in the middle. “She is me. We split apart. She stayed in the Mother’s chair and I broke away from her because of Corey. Dagan said I was broken. Now I understand what he meant.”

“Two Kates?” Tara let out a stream of foul language. Great! Not only did she have one Kate to compete with for Trip’s affections, but two. Not that she still cared for him in that way, of course.

Tara and Kate stared at the couple as they broke apart. Trip laughed and lifted her off the ground in an embrace. Her face peered over his shoulder and a devious and malicious smile met Tara’s and Kate’s surprised gapes. Trip turned with her in his arms.

She put her hand to her belt at her back, then lifted a dagger aimed at the back of Trip’s neck. She raised the knife, poised it in the air for a split second.

Kate and Tara reacted without thought. Kate snapped her whip and knocked the dagger out of her hand at the same time Tara launched the spear at her. The tip pierced through her rib cage and out the other side of her before it lodged in place. Her body rocked in spasms and she dropped her hands to clutch the spear at both of her sides.

Trip staggered back in shock. “No! No! Kate! Oh God!”

She fell forward into his arms and he collapsed to his knees with her, whimpering in her hair as she gasped for air through her punctured lungs. Her hands floundered helplessly at the spear as blood gushed from both sides. She raised a blood-tinged hand to Trip’s face.

“No. Katie girl, I love you, my Kate,” Trip crooned softly and she cupped his cheek in her gore smeared palm.

Kate and Tara advanced to them and glared down at the traitorous woman without pity. On the cusp of death, still she played games with Trip’s emotions. Tara wanted to stab her again.

The Mother pierced Kate with her hate-filled vitriol and gurgled out. “He is coming after you, Kate. The Sphere Master wants another dance.” She coughed and blood speckled her chin.

Her expression of hatred solidified and her eyes glazed as she died in Trip’s arms. He moaned in despair and the sound rent Tara’s heart in two. He eased the Mother down to the ground and tenderly kissed her lips. Gently, he reached a hand up to close her eyes, and then he softly whispered. “Steady there, Katie girl.”