Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (36 page)

“You see, Keeper, you’ve got a little conundrum to face. On the one hand, you have your eternal hatred for me and somewhat greedy desire to see my death.” Juliette waited for him to nod before continuing. All the while, she side-stepped around, slowing circling him toward the docks as he got closer to the door. “However, if you stop to chase me down and kill me now, the woman you love will bleed out and die before you get back.”

Gabe tried to look inside the house, but his view was still blocked. No way to tell if the demon was telling the truth.

“What’s it going to be, Keeper?” Juliette smiled, holding her hands wide. “Save the woman you love or get vengeance for the one you lost?”

“How about both?” Gabe knelt, grabbed the harpoon gun, and fired.

But he didn’t stay around to see if it hit.

Running into the house, he found Rebekah unconscious on the bed, what looked like the hilt of a dagger buried in her stomach. Her own hand, covered in thick blood, drooped off the side of the bed. She’d stabbed herself to keep the demon from getting what he needed.

“Oh God,” he whispered, kneeling next to her and covering the cut. He put his ear against her chest and listened.

Her heart beat faintly. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, picking her up so that he didn’t jostle the blade and carrying her outside. She needed medical help. Now.

The Coast Guard boat was gone, a scorched trail of blood leading from where Gabe had shot the demon. Was it dead? Mortally wounded? As he looked down at Rebekah, her breathing shallow and skin as pale as a ghost, he realized it didn’t matter. Saving her came first.

Cradling her in his arms, he carried her into his boat and laid her across the back seat, wrapping her in a blanket for warmth. “I love you, Beks,” he whispered into her hair, kissing her on the forehead. “Please don’t die.”

He opened the throttle as far as it could go and sped for the dock, radioing in to the emergency police frequency for an ambulance.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rebekah opened her eyes.

When she tried to speak or turn her head, a dozen tubes snared her in a plastic spider web. Something thick and painful reached down her throat, and she gagged, trying to pull it up, but failed. Her arms, like the rest of her, were strapped down to the bed. Tied down. Edges of things—a whiteboard, an IV stand, something humming like a computer—flashed in and out of her peripheral vision.

She fought against the restraints and the tubes, thrashing in bed for her freedom. She wouldn’t be trapped like that again. Wouldn’t let him do that to her.

A face appeared above her: Gabe.

“It’s okay,” he soothed, brushing her hair back out of her face. “You’re in a hospital. No one’s going to hurt you.”

How could she believe him—he was dead. She’d seen the explosion that claimed his life. Felt his death. But something else, another memory tugged at her. His voice yelling at the demon. Asking for her. Could he really have survived?

“Nurse!” he yelled, trying to hold her down as she fought for her freedom.

Gabe or not—dead or not—she’d never be a prisoner again. Not for anyone. Not for any reason.

She felt a sting in her neck, almost like that of a bee, and fell asleep.

****

“You’ve got to come away.” The nurse shooed him out of Beks’ room in the ICU. “She needs to rest. You do, too.”

“But...”

“Listen to me: she woke up. That’s a good sign. There’s nothing more you can do here. Go home, get some sleep, and come back in the morning. I’m sure your wife will want to see you then.”

Gabe was about to correct the man but stopped himself. He’d told them he was her husband so they’d let him back to see her. If he straightened it out now before she woke up again, they might ban him from her room. “Okay,” he agreed and thanked the man. But he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep.

He had a eulogy to give.

Pushing through the revolving door of the hospital and out into the night air, he paused to let his eyes adjust to the blackness. Stars like diamonds looked down from the heavens. Watching. Disappointed. Gabe had failed his duty over and over again: with Juliette, with Rebecca, letting the first-order escape with the Coast Guard’s boat. Now, he had one last chance to make his father proud.

Squaring his shoulders, he slid on his black wool jacket and walked to car. A clean, black suit waited on the driver’s seat, neatly folded. Gabe opened the door and read the note: “Don’t be late. -Mom.”

He snorted. Of course she would know where he was.

Although the parking lot had a good three dozen cars, he’d parked in the back and trusted the darkness to hide him while he changed clothes. What did it matter, anyway, if someone saw him? What did any of it matter? The fear in Beks’ eyes, the terror at being tied down—he didn’t want to imagine what the demon had said or done to make her stab herself like that. To make her that afraid.

Yet instead of hunting the demon responsible, he had to give a eulogy for a man he wasn’t sure he’d ever really known. A man he’d been angry at for almost a decade and barely spoken to these past few years. His father. While Gabe had been trapped beneath the burning house, the chaos demon had used mind control to launch an attack at the Parks Services station. Two of the other officers had been killed in the explosion, but Gabe’s father had died trying to save the innocents Adam had brainwashed into the attack. He’d done his duty.

Normally, Keeper memorials were held at or near the tower entrusted to the deceased’s care. After taking over as Elder when old man Lorek stepped down in order to protect his daughter, their hereditary tower, Cape White, went to another family and Gabe got stuck with the previously abandoned Killamook. Instead, he drove back to the Meceta Head tower. Beks’ tower. The nearby cove and beach offered the perfect seclusion for the ritual.

When he arrived, the visitor’s parking lot overflowed with cars as people from nearby regions and even nearby states came to pay their respects to the passing of an Elder. The official funeral—the one for the wider world uninitiated to the secret mission of the Keepers—had been the night before: lots of shaking hands, listening to mumbled condolences, and trying to ignore the whispers about the terrorist bomb. An inquiry was forming. Gabe had lied his head off.

The moon had yet to rise but starlight softened the darkness as the chirping and clicking of insects escorted him down the short path to the beach. Gabe let his fingers trail through the brush and pines, pausing to inhale deeply. He wished Rebekah were with him. She’d know what to say to make this easier, but she was in the hospital strapped to a bed where he couldn’t help her.
Don’t do this now. Keep walking.

People parted as he passed, stepping out of the way as if afraid the curse of his luck might rub off on them. He didn’t blame them. Four deaths in six months—even among Keepers, it was a high price for one region to pay. His mother waited near the water, a lit candle in each hand, wearing an elegant black dress. The wind teased her long hair out behind her.

Gabe kissed her on the cheek and took one of the candles.

The hum of conversation died.

Soft waves tugged at his feet as he stepped into the icy water and the sand sucked him down. Thick strands of seaweed wrapped around his pants. He walked out about ten feet until the water lapped at his knees and turned around.

Standing out there alone, turning to see all those small lights behind him like a second starry sky, a new awareness settled over on him. Duty wasn’t an imposition—a requirement to fulfill some ancient set of laws passed down from parent to child for millennia. Duty was an act of love. In order to protect the people he cared for, in order to help them have lives filled with as much joy as possible, he had to sacrifice. Fulfilling his duty was how he loved. No other way existed.

Taking the eulogy he’d scrawled on the back of a flyer about diabetes out of his pocket, he stared at it for a long moment before crumbling the paper up and tossing it into the waves.

“I had this whole speech prepared about what a great man my father was and how he dedicated his life to the Keeper Brotherhood.” He took a deep breath and let his free hands trickle through a wave knocking at his legs. “The words might have been eloquent but they would have been a lie. My father wasn’t a great man. He wasn’t a hero. No, he was just a man like the rest of us, trying to do his best.

“Like this candle, like each and every tower we protect, we shine a light into the darkness trying to consume our world.” Gabe held his candle up for a moment, and then placed it in the water beside him so that the Styrofoam ring around the candle could hold it afloat. “Alone, it’s overwhelmed. Weak. One light is not enough when there’s so much out there to contend with. So much suffering. But we are not alone. You all have chosen to cast your lights with his, to take up this burden. Together, we outshine the sun.

“Guarding the light against the darkness. For mankind.”

Those waiting on the beach repeated the Keeper oath. Then they did something totally unexpected: young and old, able bodied and infirm, they waded into the water and stood next to him, casting their candles into the waves to join the one he lit for his father, an escort on this solemn voyage. Gabe put his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and together they watched as the army of small candles drifted out into the ocean.

“Are we going to have to have a talk?” she finally asked.

Gabe shook his head. “No. I know my duty.”

****

The next time she opened her eyes, the tubes had been removed. Rebekah licked her cracked lips, regretting the foul taste in her mouth. The tube down her throat was gone, so were most of the others save for one in her left hand. No restraints locked her arms and legs.

Sitting up set the room to spinning around her, but she had to leave. A half dozen alarms sounded when she removed the sensor pads from her chest and yanked the IV tube from her arm. With effort, she swung her legs around though their movements reminded her more of a wet noodle than the legs she had grown up with.

She held onto the railing on the bed as she shifted her weight forward onto her feet. They held. Now to walk. Slowly so as to not lose her balance, she lurched out with one foot, and then followed with the others.

She was doing it. Walking.

Her legs collapsed, crumbling under her own slight weight. The aid who had looked in the room to check on her turned and called something down the corridor. A moment later, two more men appeared, picking her up against her will and putting her back on the sterile white bed. She tried to fight back but failed.

“Please don’t,” she begged, her voice raw and raspy. “I have to leave.”

“No, miss. You’re in the hospital. You have to stay in bed.”

His argument made no sense, and she planned on telling him that right when her voice came back. If she could.

“What happened to me?” she managed to ask instead. The other sentence had just been too long to get past her throat.

The nurse, his extremely short hair doing little to keep his head from glistening in the florescent lights, gently pushed her shoulders back down on the bed. “You were the victim of a mugging and got stabbed. You’re lucky to be alive. Please, miss, relax; you’re safe here. I’m going to get the doctor.”

Closing her eyes—just for a second, she told herself—dreams pulled her back into the woods looking down at what she believed was Gabe’s dead body. Everything returned in a rush: the slight mold in the air from decomposing leaves, the rustle of wind against her skin, the faint graying of sunlight through the smoke. Dread and fear, as fresh as if she found the body again, froze her as Gabe—no Dylan—now it was Gabe again—stood up and shook her shoulders.

She screamed.

“Miss Lorek?” a man in a doctor’s coat said, holding her back down on the bed. “Miss Lorek, wake up.”

She pushed him away. “I...I’m awake,” she croaked.

He filled her a small glass of water and she drank it down. “I’m Dr. Kumal. I’ve been monitoring your case pretty closely over the last few days. How are you feeling?”

“Like someone stabbed me,” she answered.

“Let me take a look.” Pushing up the hospital gown, he pressed his fingers around the edges of the bandage and into her stomach. She winced. “That hurt?”

“Yes.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

She thought for a moment. “Four.”

Seemingly satisfied, he covered her back up. When he looked up at her, his expression darkened. “Miss Lorek, did you know you were pregnant?”

She nodded. “Is it dead?”

He folded his hands in front of him. “Yes. I’m sorry for your loss. We have grief counselors who specialize in this kind of thing. I’ve asked one to stop by later today and talk with you.”

She should feel sadder, she knew. Should feel like she lost something important. The doctor, an older man with more gray than black in his hair, bit his lower lip and looked away for just a moment. More bad news. Great.

“What is it?” she asked. “Just tell me.”

He approached the bed as if looming over her would make speaking easier. “The injuries you suffered to the abdomen were extensive. We had to perform a hysterectomy to save your life.”

“A hysterectomy? Does that mean...?” Rebekah couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

“You won’t be able to have any more children.” He hesitated for a moment. “If there were any alternative, I assure you I would have taken it. At your husband’s request, we were able to save some of your eggs and freeze them. One day, should you decide, you still have the option of surrogacy.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“I’d like to keep you here under observation for a few more days—make sure there are no surprises. Your husband’s outside waiting to see you. Should I send him back?”

She looked up. Husband? Only Gabe would be that brazen or that desperate to see her. So it hadn’t been a dream. He really was alive—or, Dylan had killed him and taken his form.

“No. Please don’t let him in the room. I don’t want any visitors.” Rebekah rolled over, putting her back to the door.

The doctor shut the door softly behind him.