Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (8 page)

The thick carpet on the floor could hide clues. Gabe drew his knife from its sheath in the top of his boot and tore up the section around the bed. After a second, he found what he was searching for: faint scratches, five of them, each a different length. The demon hadn’t completely attained human form yet, but it was close. The size and shape of the hands were forming correctly, meaning it’d killed at least once more before this girl. A shot of dread fired down his spine.

What if this was the same demon that killed Rebekah’s father?

Gabe had slain the thing eating Lorek’s body up in the watch room and disposed of it with the rest of the demon corpses. He’d assumed the old man was losing his touch, so he never investigated the scene in more depth. If a first-order demon had killed Lorek and eaten his heart instead of the mindless thing Gabe had slain, it would have his memories and knowledge. It’d know about the Keepers. Their tactics and weaknesses.

It’d know that while one demon remained in this world, that gateway remained open for others to follow.

Rebekah, with the Meceta Head Light swirling above her home, now lived at the center of a bull’s-eye.

Gabe slammed the door and ran out into the hall. His father stood down the hall on his phone. “I’m talking the car. And I accept the Meceta Head post.”

“What’s gotten into you, son? Slow down.”

“The demon that killed that little girl is first-order; it showed restraint, planning, and cunning in this kill. Worst of all, it’s almost achieved human form. I’m going to Meceta Head to make sure Beks is safe. If this thing killed Lorek, that bed-n-breakfast is in danger. Report the foothold to the Council and have the watch on alert. We need Hunters.”

****

Gabe sped back up the 101, sirens wailing and lights flashing, both hands on the wheel. He had to get there in time. She had to be safe. How could he have been so wrapped up in himself to miss this? No fifth-order demon could kill a Keeper, not even an old piece of leather like Lorek. Gabe had been so relieved not to have to tell Moore’s family she was dead, that he’d missed the obvious.

It wasn’t the first time. Six months ago, he’d come back to Killamook to find his fiancé dead. Juliet had been beautiful, with curls as golden as sunlight spilling through the clouds and a smile that could make even the darkest moment seem blessed. They’d made love that morning, shared a small breakfast of bananas and oatmeal. Just a day like any other.

Like an idiot, he’d had a dozen roses in his hand as he opened the door, grinning to think she might be happy to see him. Instead, her severed head was the first thing he saw. Eyes wide with terror, she stared accusingly at him. The demon who’d killed her had been gone already. For two months, Gabe had hunted it inland, abandoning his post and turning his back on his home. Although he’d finally killed the monster, it wasn’t before the demon ate Juliette’s heart. Not before it’d eaten the child he hadn’t known she’d been carrying.

Gabe punched the wheel again. He turned down the road that led to the b-n-b, his heart stuck in his throat. The paved road gave way to gravel after the visitors’ lot, jolting and shaking the car like an amusement park ride. He didn’t care. She had to be alive.

He left his sirens wailing and jumped out of the car. Until he saw her, until he knew she was safe, he couldn’t stop. Jumping the steps of the porch two at a time, he didn’t bother knocking and just threw open the door to the house.

“Beks!” he shouted, looking around. “Beks! Where are you?”

She wasn’t in the parlor or the small living room.
Shit.
Hurrying past a confused-looking couple, he ran back down the hallway toward the guest kitchen. She used to go in there sometimes when she needed something quick and didn’t want to use the full kitchen in the back.

“Beks? You in here?” A young boy with red hair and his mother looked up from where they’d been making sandwiches. Gabe took a breath and forced himself to slow down and not scare them. “Have you seen Rebekah?”

The woman shook her head. “No. She wasn’t at breakfast this morning. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her come back last night either, and I wanted to check her hand again. Is she okay?”

“I’m sure she is. Excuse me.” He backtracked his step through the door and ran smack into someone.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

Gabe turned to see Dylan Hurley, the man he’d questioned the day before about Moore’s concussion, standing with his arms crossed. He glared in that grunge-musician-ironic-hipster kind of way. Gabe couldn’t give a demon’s ass what the vagrant thought. “Out of my way.” He pushed past the musician.

When Dylan grabbed Gabe’s forearm, Gabe kneed him in the crotch and left him there moaning on the floor. He had to see Rebekah.

Mia, her pigtails streaked with black and a half dozen metal studs protruding from different parts of her head, ran out from the kitchen with a knife in her hand. “I’m a chef and I know how... Gabe? What are you doing?”

“Out of my way, witch,” he growled as she blocked his way to the basement stairs.

Her face hardened. “I will stab you if I have to,” she warned. “Don’t think I won’t, Keeper.”

He tried a different approach. “I just need to know that she’s okay. That’s it. I swear I’ll leave right after.”

When he tried to move around her, she shifted position and kept the knife pointed at him. “Not like this you don’t. She’s been through a lot. Her father died yesterday, remember? You took her boyfriend to jail. The last thing she needs right now is you running down there half-crazed and acting like a lunatic. Her father wouldn’t have wanted it.”

Boyfriend?

As gently as he could, he picked up the little pixie of a girl and set her out of his way. “I’ll be quiet, I promise.”

Although he hated to admit it, the little witch had a point about one thing. Rebekah didn’t need to know he’d been there. He’d just sneak in and out. Unnoticed. Hurrying downstairs, he stopped at the bottom and listened. Nothing. Maybe she was sleeping? Gabe knew the rooms downstairs as well as he knew his own house. After all, he’d spent most of his teenage years sneaking down them when her parents were out. Sometimes when they weren’t.

The small living room was empty but tidy, with a neat couch and a few family pictures along one wall. Gabe was even in one, though as a child when the two families had shared a picnic by the beach. A desk with a computer sat on the opposite wall, the screen darkened. Best of all, there was no blood. Listening for any sound, he tiptoed past the couch and down the short corridor to the first room. He opened the door and shut it quickly; her father’s room—unchanged. She wouldn’t have gone in there.

Going to her bedroom next, he hesitated at the door with his hand on the brass knob. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe he was being paranoid. Then he thought back to the girl lying dead on her bed, heart ripped out of her chest. She hadn’t heard her killer or even sensed that anything was wrong. Rebekah was a Keeper and had all the benefits he did, but since she’d never been taught to use them, it was like they didn’t exist. She was as helpless as that teenager had been.

Gabe closed his eyes and opened the door, breathing in deeply. Nothing smelled wrong. He opened his eyes a fraction and sighed. The room was empty. Unfortunately, that meant she was either in the bathroom or dead somewhere he hadn’t looked. He rushed to the bathroom and opened the door.

Steam filled the room. Naked, Rebekah was half bent over toweling her legs dry. The steam softened her skin, making her look delicate as an apparition with subtle, firm curves only partially concealed, and the golden light from the vanity set her skin glowing. As a teenager, she’d been beautiful, but as a woman, she was a vision.

“I...I...” He fumbled for something to say.

She hurriedly pulled the towel up and wrapped it around herself, then tucked her wet, dark hair behind her ears. “What the hell, Gabe! Ever heard of knocking? Get out! Now!”

He took one more look at her, memorizing her beautiful soft curves as she slammed the door in his face. As he walked back upstairs, past the confused-looking guests and an angry Mia and Dylan, he couldn’t keep a small smile from the corners of his mouth.

Chapter Eight

The funeral service for her father was small—he wouldn’t have liked anything fancy. The funeral home handled most of the details, shepherding her through the visitation and cremation so she only had to point or make simple decisions. Dylan had stayed at the bed-n-breakfast to manage things for her, and Mia shadowed Rebekah’s every move. She’d have to thank them. Sighing, she filed that thought in the back of her mind to deal with later.

His will had left specific instructions for his ashes. The pewter urn was cold in her hands as she walked down to the beach and into the water. Standing up to her thighs in icy November waves, she traced the outer rim of the urn. A life should amount to more than a bit of grey dust. A wave drenched her middle, greedily pulling at the urn and nearly ripping it from her arms. She shivered. Some faint pink clouds lingered on the indigo horizon. Soon, night would fall and the first stars poke through the veil. When she was a girl, her father had said those stars were each a lighthouse, their beacons shining down to give hope to the world.

Salt-water spray washed away her tears. Rebekah pulled the top off the urn and let the wind take her father into the ocean.

As the stars turned on their lights, Rebekah waited.

Wasn’t death supposed to bring some kind of insight or life affirmation? Wasn’t she supposed to redouble her will to live and be happy knowing her father was in a better place? Maybe that was the problem. She didn’t know he was somewhere better or even think it likely. He was just gone. Swallowed by the darkness at the end of life and recycled from stars into stars. The pain would fade to a dull ache, she knew. She’d think about him less every day. Then she’d begin to forget details: his acorn eyes or the scruff of his beard when he’d kissed her good night as a girl or his calloused hands shuffling a deck of cards or the way he’d never put sugar in his coffee or his gruff laugh she could never hear enough. Now, in this moment, as the salt spray of the cold Pacific water mingled with her tears and the stars pierced the veil of night, only emptiness arrived and filled her to bursting.

She shivered, legs trembling so that any wave could be the one to pull her under, but she couldn’t make herself walk away.

“Beks?” He touched her shoulder. “Beks, you need to come inside.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re shaking, Beks. If you stay out here any longer, you’ll hurt yourself.”

But the water was the only connection they had left. When she stepped out of the ocean, he’d really be gone. Rebekah looked over her shoulder at Gabe and nodded once.

He carried her to shore, and she let her head rest against his familiar chest. The walk didn’t take long; the beach was just down the cliff from the bed-n-breakfast, and he carried her to the faded blue storm cellar door on the back of the house, safe from prying eyes.

He said nothing as he carried her downstairs and into her bedroom, standing her at the foot of her bed and peeling her icy clothing off like one would skin an orange. This time, she didn’t scream at him or fight him seeing her naked. She didn’t have the strength to fight. Rebekah’s teeth chattered as he pulled back the comforter and laid her in the bed. She watched him blankly as her traitorous body trembled.

“You’re freezing,” he whispered, looking around the room as if there were an answer there to her chills. Gabe stared at her a moment, his face darkened in the dim room, as if deciding something. “Oh, I’m going to get an earful about this tomorrow.” Stripping out of his clothing, he climbed into bed and wrapped her in his arms, tucking the blankets securely around them.

As she shivered, counting away the minutes of the night with the beats of his heart, Rebekah warmed. Heat spread through her torso first, then down the soft swell of her hips and to her feet as her body slowly returned to life. Every part of her tingled with renewed life from where he touched her.

“I begged him not to go outside,” she confessed. In the dim light of the room, all she could see was the spark in his eyes. “Even chased him out in the rain. I should have tried harder. Forced him to stay.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Beks.”

She looked away. “You’re only saying that because you think it’s what you’re supposed to say. You don’t mean it. No one does.”

When he touched her cheek, wiping away the tear that had fallen there, she closed her eyes and leaned into his caress.

His voice was thick when he continued. “I mean this.”

A jolt of energy coursed through her body when he kissed her, igniting every nerve ending in a riot of sensation. As she gasped for breath, his lips trailed down her neck until they reached the soft swell of her breasts. Her fingers dug into the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders and back. The more she touched him, the more his lips reacquainted with her body, the less she thought about anything.

Not her father.

Not how much Gabe had hurt her before.

Not how she would feel about this in the morning.

No, instead she gave herself over to the instincts of her body and opened herself up to him like a flower feeling the first taste of sun after a long, cold winter.

****

Rebekah woke alone. She could still feel Gabe through every inch of her body, inside and out. Rolling over, she felt the dimpled place in the pillow where he’d laid his head. It was still warm. So he had stayed with her then, for a while.

That pissed her off more.

She couldn’t go upstairs smelling like him, so she jumped in the shower and turned the water to scalding, hoping to burn the memory of him from her body. What did he want from her? Six months she’d been home and he hadn’t said a word. He’d avoided the house entirely. Then, two days ago he showed up to tell her that her father died and, like a jealous lover, arrested the man she was with. But then last night had happened. His touch awakened all the old memories, things she had thought buried or forgotten.

And then he left. Again.