Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (14 page)

“You’re crazy. The coven will never agree to that; messing with demons only leads to trouble.”

“Hello...Keeper.” Colette pointed to herself. “You’ll have two others nearby. It’s not like I’m asking for a summoning.”

“No way.”

She hesitated. Gabe would just have to be angry. Hunter authority usurped all others. “This will settle your coven’s debt to the Keepers once and for all.”

The witch tucked a strand of her orange hair in her mouth and started chewing. “One favor. That’s it? No more debt?”

This argument was becoming tiresome. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” Mia held out her hand. “But not tonight. Tomorrow. The party will be the perfect cover for the extra people, and if something strange happens, no one will notice. I’ll keep Beks occupied in the house. You can do this without me, right? As long as you have the others?”

“Of course. You are of no special talent or import. So long as the circle is complete.” Colette answered, clasping the girl’s hand. Thin tendrils of red light wound around both hands, binding them to the agreement with a savage cold rush of energy, like having liquid nitrogen poured on her hand. “Until tomorrow, witch.”

“Blessed be, Keeper.” From the sharp sarcasm in Mia’s voice, she meant the opposite.

Chapter Fourteen

Gabe looked from one Hunter to the other and shook his head. Dark clouds seethed and churned above him like a massive demon waiting to swallow anyone below. It'd been gathering energy all morning, an occasional rumble of thunder like some grotesque digestion. He hated daytime storms with their potential for exposure and the weakening pull of the lights.

However, he had more pressing concerns than the weather. “No. Absolutely not.” Colette wanted to bring a coven of witches up to his watch room to recreate the scene of a Keeper's death on All Hallows Eve, drawing on the lingering energies of a first-order demon. How did this not sound like trouble to anyone else? “I can't believe you're even considering this, Nicholas. You know the barrier's weakest that night. The magic could let anything through.”

The French woman practically bristled. “This isn't our first hunt, Keeper. I know how to control the magic.”

He didn't care how many hunts they'd been on or how often they'd done this spell. He wouldn't allow it. Not near an active, open portal. Not on a night when the barriers were already weak. Not on a night where a smorgasbord of innocent, drunken revelers waited around the corner with dinner bells practically hanging from their necks. Not with Beks nearby.

The professor took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. From the red in his eyes, he hadn't slept the night before. Maybe even for two nights. “We need to do this, Gabe. This first has fully assumed human form, I'm certain. Without an idea of its hunting patterns or what type of prey would attract it, we'll never find it in time to save its next victim. Three people at least have died. Maybe more. Every kill is just making it that much smarter.”

Gabe chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

Nicholas Stockholm, First Rank Hunter and head demonologist for the Parisian Society of the blah, blah, blah, settled his glasses on his nose. “Telling.”

“So be it. If you'll excuse me, I have a storm to prepare for.” Not bothering to wait and have to listen to anything else, he retreated into the storage shed and activated the mechanism that opened the door to his underground bunker. At least he had some privacy again since the Hunters moved into the b-n-b, even if it came at a price. How was he going to keep Beks safe with all these extra Keepers nosing their way into her life? And Dylan...Gabe didn't trust that man, no matter how clean he seemed to be. Showing up the very day a Keeper died, then being at the bar the night of the murder. Two deaths so close to him—no one was that unlucky. It had to be more than coincidence. Gabe only had to find proof.

Until this storm passed, however, his hands were tied.

The weapons rack in the back of the bunker, supplemented by his own stock from the now-abandoned Killamook light, flickered with light as he neared, triggered by the motion sensor. He selected an array of knives he could secret in the tops of boots, some cleverly hidden pockets on the sides of his Parks Services uniform, and at his wrists. More than anything, he wanted to bring his machete, but it was just too obvious and out of place in the day time. Instead, he grabbed a medium-length walking staff propped up in the back. Depressing the correct knothole opened the bottom of the staff to reveal the long blade of a katana. He'd spent several summers in Japan growing up, training with the Keepers there; the weapon had been a gift.

Sheathing the walking stick, he closed the weapons rack and left the bunker. Nicholas and the French woman waited for him outside as the first drops of rain splashed down on his head. After all these years, he should be used to the rain, but he wasn't. He walked past the Hunters without acknowledgment.

“Where do you want us?” Nicholas asked.

Gabe stopped and turned around. “Don't you have a demon to hunt? I'll take care of the storm. The faster you find this first, the faster things can go back to normal.” Reaching in his pocket, he grabbed his keys and tossed them to Nicholas. “Take my car. I won't need it for a while.”

“Come on,” Colette took her husband's arm. “He's right. Our duty lies elsewhere. This storm is going to destroy whatever tracks might linger from yesterday's kill. We should be out searching the woods, not lingering here for a mindless slaying.”

The professor looked doubtful, his hand twitching to something on his belt. Gabe turned away when the man's voice stopped him. “The detector—it's up in our room. Use it. It'll alert you to the appearance of any demon within a few miles of this place. You're going to need all the help you can get this afternoon. Daytime storms are the worst.”

“Thank you,” Gabe said. “And good luck.”

Retrieving the detection device wasn't easy. The bed-n-breakfast was full for the upcoming party, and with the rain starting, most people had fled inside for safety. Beks and Dylan were everywhere, setting up decorations and cleaning and other things. Always together. He wanted to vomit.

In the end, he climbed up on the sprawling back porch and into the Mariner's room that way, using a magnet to open the locks on the window. Sneaking was better than having to face Beks again after she slapped him the day before. Although he'd save her life in a heartbeat, right now he'd rather slay a hundred demons than have to talk to his first love. The device wasn't easy to pinpoint mixed in with all of Nicholas' other inventions, but once he had it, he realized there was a flaw in his plan. If Gabe was going to hunt the demons, he'd need someone to read the machine for him and send him locations. He couldn't do this alone.

The other Keepers would all be busy manning their own stations. He'd have to find someone else to help him. Beks was out. So were the other guests. Gabe would just have to get the witch to help him.

Taking the device, Gabe climbed out of the window and down the porch, doing his best to keep the thing dry. He peeked in one of the windows to see Beks and Dylan sitting together at the loveseat, cuddling. Ugh. Dylan may not be a demon; that didn't mean he wasn't hiding something, however. Still, another time. Those two would be there for at least a few more minutes. That'd give him time to find Mia.

When he looked back in the kitchen, there were only empty pots and pans. The key to the back entrance was still in a fake rock on the side of the porch, and he used that to open the storm cellar doors. She was in the bedroom that had recently been used by Beks' father, sitting cross-legged on the bed with an old book in front of her, the binding hand-stitched and the pages yellowing around the edges.

“Mia,” he hissed, but she didn't move. Gabe crept deeper into the room and pulled out one of her ear buds.

“Shit, Gabe,” she practically screeched, hitting him on the arm as she backed away. “What the hell are you doing here? Get out.”

He held up his hands for peace. “Look, witch, I'm not going to hurt you. I need your help with something.”

She looked like he had asked her to bring him the moon. “What's with you needy Keepers lately? Isn't it enough that I'm helping with this spell? What else could you possibly want?”

He couldn't believe he was about to say this. “A partner.”

“Whoa...” she said, her face paling as she pulled the sheet up to her chest. “Thanks for the compliment, but I'm not really into that sort of thing, if you know what I mean.”

“What sort of thing?”

“You know, penises.”

Oh. That was too much information. “No, I think you have the wrong idea. I don't want...that. Not from you, at least. I need your help during the storm. This thing here”—he held up Nicholas' device for tracking demon energy—“will make a noise if a demon comes within a few miles of this place. I need you to monitor it and tell me where you hear them. The louder the beep, the closer it is to you. The quieter, the further away. You should be able to sense at least a little directionality, as well. Enough to give me an idea of north or south.”

“And why should I help you?”

A rumble of thunder echoed down in the basement. “Look, the storm's starting, and I don't have the time or inclination to explain everything to you now. Help me or don't; the choice is yours.”

He tossed her a two-way radio and hurried back upstairs and out into the rain before someone else discovered he was there. The sky darkened with the storm, thick ashen clouds smothering the sun. The oppressive sight did little to lighten his mood, though the gloom meant that the Meceta Head light had that much greater chance of attracting nearby demons. Of course, so would the golden light spewing from all the windows of the bed-n-breakfast like an overturned bee hive. Demons would be drawn to it like honey.

The range of the two-way radio was significant, so he began his patrol by taking the back trail to the tower and climbed the stairs to the watch room where the rest of his equipment was set up. Flipping open his laptop, Gabe logged into the secure website the Keepers maintained that tapped into the weather satellites tracking the lightning strikes. None yet. Good.

Maybe there was still time for a sandwich.

Right after he stood to find the jar of peanut butter he'd left in there a few days ago, the two-way radio on his hip crackled to life, startling him.

“Gabe?” Mia asked.

“Yeah, it's me. What's wrong?”

She sounded scared. “This thing just beeped pretty loudly.”

Gabe looked over at the lightning strike tracker again, but there hadn't been any ocean hits from the storm yet. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” she practically hissed. “Get over here.”

“On my way.” The weakened state of the barrier between realms since the first-order had appeared must be letting the craftier demons slip through in advance of the lightning. Gabe knew it'd happen—he'd killed something that had come through just that morning, in fact—but what he wasn't ready for was how quickly. Usually, if something slipped through while a live demon kept the portal open, it took a day or two at the most before another could get through. Two demons in one day couldn't mean anything good.

As he ran down the gravel lane, the crunch of his feet against the gravel swallowed by the rumble of the storm, a fork of pale blue lightning arched into the water. He needed to dispatch this first demon quickly before a second was upon him. “Can you sense where the demon is?” he asked into the radio.

There was a hesitation. “I don't know, okay. It sounded loud, but whether what I think is loud is similar to what you think is loud or how it rates versus other potential sounds it could make is so confusing. It felt a little toward the water-ish.”

Toward the water-ish? Really? He might as well have asked a child to help him for all the good she was doing so far. Hoping that the witch's instincts were close, he took a trail that would lead him along the cliff.

“Gabe, it's still beeping.”

He scanned up into the trees and out into the violent waves but didn't see anything. “Still looking.”

“Try the trail to the beach,” Mia suggested.

Going down to the beach would take ten minutes, another ten to get back up afterward. By that time, the demon created by that lightning he'd just seen would've reached land. “Are you certain?”

Her answer was immediate. “Yes. Hurry.”

“You better be right about this,” he growled into the radio and started running. The trail was treacherous, falling sticks and logs threatening to trip him as the muddy ground tried to slip out from under his feet. When he came to where the trail forked, one path leading down to the beach and a second back to the bed-n-breakfast, he paused. Although some of the bent evergreens obscured his view, something felt wrong. He saw it an instant later; a young woman walked along the beach. In the rain. As naked as the day she was born.

Yep. Demon.

“I see it, Mia.” He ran down the trail to the beach, his fingers reaching up the top of his right sleeve to where he'd strapped some darts tipped in holy water. Too bad he didn't have his crossbow. On the chance someone would have seen him, he'd had to leave it behind, and his service weapon, though currently loaded with hollow bullets filled with holy water, was too loud to use except out of desperation.

The demon woman's nostrils flared as she caught the scent of him, and she turned to face Gabe just as he started across the beach toward her.

“Excuse me, ma'am” he called out, feigning a concern he didn't feel as he dropped his walking stick/sword on the sand. Demons in human form, first-order or not, were always nasty. “Are you alright? I'm an officer.”

Oh, thank you. You don't know how happy I am to see you
. The words sounded in his mind—convincing, human words spoken with just the right amount of desperation.

“Gabe?” The two-way radio crackled. “Did you get it?”

He ignored her. With any luck, the demon wouldn't be able to understand Mia. It wasn't like demons spoke English or anything; this one in front of him simply planted the suggestion in his head, tricking his brain into thinking it heard whatever he wanted to hear.