Keepers: Blood of The Fallen (3 page)

“Can I have her,” the old man said, while sticking his hand out. His fingers uncurled slowly; they looked like the hands of a skeleton with barely any skin on them, his fingernails were long and yellow.

“No, I think we should keep her. She doesn’t seem to be too thrilled about you being here.” I felt a nudge in my arm. It was Tana trying to get me to be nicer. I just nudged her back.

“Well, may I at least pet her,” he said as he reached for her head.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. She doesn’t like that.”

I saw Cilantra let out a puff of air. I knew she was relieved that the old man didn’t get his filthy little bony hands on her. I knew she would have probably snapped at him, and then she probably would’ve hated me forever. Besides that, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Cilantra needed to be with us. She was a part of the team. We jokingly called ourselves The Three, but we were really The Four.

The weird conversation, with the weird old man, ended weirdly. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t have much to say once he was rejected. He didn’t seem too thrilled to be told no. Not that he could do much of anything in his condition but I’m sure he wanted to punch me in the face. I didn’t care about what he wanted to do. We offered him a place to sleep for a night, on the premise that he not try anything funny with Cilantra. I told him that I would be sleeping in the room with Cilantra for that night, and if he came into the room, I was going to get rid of him. It was a simple thing. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

Cilantra and I were sleeping, it was about two in the morning, and I heard the door open slightly and slowly. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then I remembered the crusty old man. I opened my eyes slightly, to see him, and there he was, lurking near the wall by the door. I pretended to be asleep until he got up to Cilantra’s new cage, which we kept open all the time. She was asleep on her tiny bed that Asia made her, out of an egg crate and a couple of blankets. She never liked to sleep like a bird.

When he finally made his way to her cage and started reaching his ugly little hand inside of it, I sprung up from the bed and grabbed him by his raggedy shirt. The outburst made Cilantra wake up and panic. She flapped her wings like she had lost her mind, even though she had never really flown since she started living with us. I took the crusty old man to the window, still holding him up off of the ground with one hand. He was stiff as a board, with both of his tiny hands wrapped around my wrist. As he yelled, “Please don’t hurt me,” I could feel my grip on the situation slipping. I was starting to have bad intentions.

As soon as the thought of throwing him out of the closed window crossed my mind, I noticed a pain in my chest, instead of the usual heat that comes with high-tension situations. That is the only thing that saved the little crusty fellow. “You tried to steal Cilandria…why?”

“You stole her first,” he responded sarcastically.

“Don’t play with me!” I pressed him up against the window. “If you don’t tell me why you tried to steal Cilandria…I will throw you out of this window.” He closed his mouth and stared at me with wide eyes. He tightened his lips and shook his head vigorously. “You better talk,” I said as I pushed his head against the glass. “Talk!”

By that time, the ladies had made it to the room. I could feel them standing behind me. I knew Asia ran right over to Cilantra and picked her up. I knew I had to put the old man down. I knew Tana didn’t want to see me do what I wanted to do. My anger broke just enough to allow me to put him down. As soon as his feet touched the floor he tried to run. He was stopped instantly. Tana put him in that box that I hadn’t seen for several years. He didn’t even try to fight it; he just sat down in the fetal position. I thought he would end up sucking his thumb; he didn’t.

I looked at Tana, then at Asia. They looked confused. Cilantra…she didn’t look confused. She looked like she had seen a ghost, like she had been hit with a serious blast from the past. It was like she knew who he was all of a sudden. I wasn’t convinced by his silence. I had a feeling he wasn’t done. Cilantra jumped out of Asia’s arms and glided across the room, landing a few feet from the raggedy little man. She then hopped over to him on her one leg, looking more and more curious with each tiny hop. When she got right up to the old man, she stuck out her neck to see his face up close. He raised his head slowly and looked at her in the eyes. I knew something wasn’t right.

“Cilantra,” I said.

“You remember, don’t you,” the old man said to Cilantra.

Cilantra just stood there and stared at him. Her face was slowly becoming emotionless. Her curiousness was fading away. She seemed to start to think she was above the old man. She started to look like he was nothing to her, but she knew him. I could tell. “Remember what,” I asked the old man.

“She remembers me. She remembers what happened.”

“What happened? Or do I not even want to know?”

“The day you found her,” he said, without taking his eyes off of Cilantra. “The day you found her was the day we met. She was…attacked by Navarium…um…the best way to explain it would be: attack dogs.”

“Attack dogs?!”

“Well, attack dogs-ish. Those vile things are mean. They are loyal to only the Navarium that raised them, and they don’t play well with others. The latter cannot be more accurate.”

I looked at Asia. It seemed like she knew what the little old ragged man was saying was true. “Asia? What is it?” I asked.

“I believe him. I’ve seen them in my dreams. They’re big, ferocious creatures. They have little horns from their head to the tip of their tails, two rows of them.”

“Yes!” The old man shrieked.

“They snarl and slobber all over the place. Their mouths are almost like running water faucets.”

“Yes, and the venom is very poisonous, indeed,” the old man added.

“Yeah. The drool they produce even kills the grass underneath them. In my dreams, I’m flying away from them. Then I’m hit with something and brought to the ground. They walk up and stand over me, burning my side with their venom. That’s when I wake up.”

“Yes! The power of Cilandria! She has made you see! You are the one she trusts with all of her heart, and she has formed a true bond with you.”

I was very confused. I knew that Cilantra loved Asia, but I had no idea that she had that kind of bond with her. That made me uneasy, because I was the one that found her. I saved her life. I tried to form a bond with her when I first found her, but she had never really been that into me. She took to Asia so quickly. It was like a slap in the face. I thought maybe it was because of my bloodline. Another one of those benefits of being a Kavar. As a matter of fact, Cilantra had moments when she would seem so afraid of me, right after she was just snuggling up close to me. She could feel it. She could sense that I was part Navarium. That stung a bit.

I didn’t know why, but I always felt like I needed that owl to love me. It was just something I would wake up and feel deep down. I felt like its father, and I carried the love for a child for that bird. For a bird… A bird I wasn’t even sure had any significance to it; I just rode with my gut feelings. I was right; she was a special owl. I had to quickly get over my distaste for her bond with Asia, because I realized it was childish. Deep down, though, I still had some mixed feelings towards that.

I walked out of the room, thinking I needed some fresh air. I ended up taking a trip outside into the front yard. I figured the girls could handle the old fool if he tried anything else crazy. I just wanted time to digest everything that I had just heard. I had a feeling that the Navariums had some sort of biological weapon, but I never would have thought it would be something like a dog. I tried to imagine what a Navarium dog would look like, maybe like that giant dog from the movies. Or it even could’ve been like a bilgesnipe. I was sure it looked more like a bilgesnipe than Cujo, but it was fun to consider.

For some reason, I felt compelled to go to the edge of the yard and look over the hill on the side yard. I was not ready for what I saw. My suspicions were confirmed. There were at least fifteen bilgesnipe looking creatures lying down at the edge of the hill, and they were snarling, but they looked exhausted. They were truly hideous creatures. They seemed to be bred to be evil, but they also seemed to be actual physical creatures with real physical creature tendencies. As I stood there wondering why they were all at the foot of the hill, I imagined what was going on inside the house.

2

Every moment I spent away from Mo was nerve-wracking, and the fact that he always needed some alone time at some point during the day made me worry about what he was doing. I figured he must have just needed that moment to remind himself of who he was, but every day? While he was outside, doing who knows what, Asia and I had to stand there and listen to the torn-to-shreds old goblin of a man. The things that old guy told us were a little shocking but very enlightening and a little relieving. Not to mention, nearly unbelievable.

After we agreed to let him near Cilandria for more than a moment, he agreed to tell us everything he knew about Keepers, Guardians, and Navariums. He wouldn’t have told us anything if Mo hadn’t left. He told us the truth about the book we found on the night that started it all. It wasn’t a book by a Keeper, for a Keeper. It was a book that served purposes he didn’t even understand. It wasn’t intended to be read by all Keepers, is what he thought. The Navariums used the book to try to kill us outright, but according to the scraggly little man, it is impossible for a Navarium to actually kill a Keeper. The war we were fighting had rules that could not be broken, unless certain individuals allowed it. Lenox was not one of those certain individuals; Lenox was a complete waste of space and very invaluable to the Navariums. The scraggly little guy said he knew every important name, and he had never heard of Lenox.

I didn’t know what to think of all the things that the old man was telling us. I didn’t know if he could even really be trusted. Asia was standing next to him like she would snap his neck the moment he tried to run with Cilandria. I wasn’t worried about that, but I was worried about what he told us about Mo: being that Mo was a Kavar. He was susceptible to the desires of the Navarium, just as he was the love of a Keeper. He wasn’t a weak man by any means, but he definitely had his moments of weakness. I saw him struggle to control his happiness whenever we watched a gory movie. He loved the parts with blood everywhere, but he hated when the blood looked extremely fake. He made a huge deal about that every time, so I couldn’t really forget those awkward moments.

With the knowledge that the book was some made up garbage, I couldn’t help but to be happy that the so-called moves we learned were just some joke. I can’t even put into words how stupid I felt
learning moves
. The whole book was a lie. If he wanted to, Mo could make his symbol disappear whenever he wanted to, and mine wasn’t even real. I apparently only made it appear because Mo made me believe that it would come. My mind is on a whole different level than anyone else’s on the planet; that much, I had no doubt about. If any evil thing could convince me of something, I would be extremely dangerous…

Mo was the last free Kavar. He was basically a god among us, and he didn’t even know it. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell him that. The other four Kavars to have ever existed were all viewed as some sort of god. Zeus- yes the Greek god of lightning- was probably the most famous of all of them. It would have come as a shock, no pun intended, but when I really thought about it, I realized that Zeus had moments of bloodlust, a Navarium trait: something all Kavars had. The Greeks even believed that he was the creator of man. Maybe he was the creator of the Greeks, but I still believe in God. Kavars wield a power so great that they could cause global cataclysms and some did. One Kavar, known only as Ti, was probably the most powerful of all of them.

“The legend says that Ti was so powerful that he could resurrect people from the dead and give them an exact amount of time to live, during which time they would serve him and try to earn more time. He was much stronger than Zeus, who many believe was the strongest of all. Ti was born with his abilities, and he started using them as soon as he could walk. However, like your friend, he had to battle his Navarium side. He had to face the evil that swam in his blood. Sometimes, when the evil is too great, and too constant, you have no choice but to give in. Ti lived for thirty-six years before he could no longer fight his hunger for blood. He fully embraced his Navarium bloodline, and he never looked back. Some say he still lives, though he would be somewhere around seven or eight thousand years old by now. I say it is impossible, but what do I know?” The old man shrugged and started to stroke back the feathers on top of Cilandria’s head.

I had heard entirely too much information that day, but I knew there would be more to come. I knew that the old man was there for a reason much bigger than Cilandria or the story of Ti. I knew that if I pushed a little more for information, that I would get it, and I probably would not like what I heard. Asia, on the other hand, was not thinking about not liking what she heard. She came right out and asked, “So, why are you really here?”

The old man took in a very deep breath before revealing his truths. “Well, first, I would like to formally introduce myself. My name is Quazo. Quazo of the Seventh Realm, and I serve the Order of the Keeper. No need to introduce yourselves, I know your names, and it is very nice to meet you, even if you can’t say the same in return…I take your silence as silent inquiries. You are right to assume I am not here for Cilandria, nor just for the sake of being here. You see, I have come to deliver a message to all three of you. Your friend should probably be present for what I am about to tell you.”