The Curse Keepers Collection (153 page)

Ahone had used Manteo and Ananias for his own selfish purposes, and he saddled them with an additional responsibility. Each man would be a keeper of the curse from that day forward; his entire future purpose would be to protect the curse’s existence. He would pass on the duty to his firstborn once the child turned eighteen; the child would in turn pass it on in the same manner, and so on.

But Okeus, Ahone’s twin, hadn’t gone quietly. Before he was locked behind Popogusso’s gate, he used what remaining power he had to engineer an escape clause. The curse would break if the Keepers pressed their right palms together, freeing the gods and spirits. The Lost Colony of Roanoke would return with one caveat: everyone would be dead—no living thing could go to Popogusso and survive the journey back to the earthly plane.

When Ananias realized he’d lost the two people he’d tried to protect—his sole purpose for cooperating with Manteo’s plan—he became inconsolable. In his despair, he tried to kill Manteo, but Ahone had created a failsafe of his own. Whenever the two Keepers were in close proximity, they found it difficult to breathe, as though they were two magnets that repelled each other. Ananias found it impossible to get close enough to Manteo to break the curse, but he vowed that one of his progeny would hunt the Manteo Keeper down, break the curse, and seek revenge.

And so we began our vigil.

For over four hundred years, we waited. Our destiny weighed so strongly on us that when Grandma Opal turned out to be a conjurer, her father was greatly relieved. Surely the Dare Keeper would finally come on her watch, and my grandmother would be the one to save us all.

When she turned eighteen, Grandma went through the marking ceremony and had Okeus’s symbol tattooed on her chest like all the Manteo Keepers before her. Grandma’s father refused to let her marry for fear that a husband and children would distract her from her mission. The years passed like water in a stream, but the other Keeper never came. My great-grandfather died without seeing his prophecy come to pass and, at the age of forty-one, my grandmother married a man she hadn’t loved, solely to carry out her duty—bearing the next Curse Keeper.

My own father—her only child—was a bitter disappointment.

He was irresponsible and insolent. He hated his duty and felt trapped by my grandmother’s iron fist, but he couldn’t deny that she was the wisest woman he’d ever known, a fact that chafed like sandpaper on an open wound. He knew he’d never live up to her expectations, so he soon created a mission of his own.

To break the curse himself.

When he became an adult, he rarely saw my grandmother, putting as much distance between them as possible, which was ironic considering my grandmother owned the house we lived in as well as her own smaller home less than two blocks away.

After my fifth birthday, my grandmother convinced my mother to bring me to her house for weekly lessons on the curse. My father wasn’t happy about the arrangement, yet he never considered denying her. As much as he hated his mother, he feared her more.

I feared her as well.

Her house smelled of the herbs and roots she used to help her speak with her spirits, and she had a no-nonsense air about her. When she turned her deep, dark eyes on me, I knew without a doubt she could see into the depths of my soul. But the more time I spent with her, the more my fear—although still present—gave way to respect.

One day, after a year of lessons, I finally felt bold enough to ask a question of Grandma Opal rather than just listening to what she had to tell me.

“Am I a Keeper yet, Gran?”

“No, my child. Not yet, but soon. You will be
the
Keeper.” Her voice was low and sad.

I studied her face even though I found it hard to hold her gaze. “What does that mean?”

“You will find out soon enough.” She sounded weary and old when she said it. Even though she looked older than anyone I knew, she usually didn’t sound like it.

“Do you think she learns about the curse too?” I asked.

“Who?” Her voice had a sharp edge to it.

“The other person who’s going to be a Keeper.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you call her a she?”

I shrugged. “Something tells me the Dare Keeper is a girl.” I glanced up at her. “Is she? Do you know?”

She watched me, then nodded. “Yes, the voices have told me that she is female. Younger than you. But the fact that the Dare Keeper is a female is secret. Not even your father can know. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Even though I didn’t understand the urgency, by the age of six I’d already figured out that my father and my grandmother had very different ideas about what it meant to be a Curse Keeper.

“And yes, I’m sure she knows about her role.”

“But she’s our enemy?”

“You can’t believe everything your father tells you.”

“Which is why I visit you?” I asked.

“Yes.” She was quiet for a moment. “How did you know with such certainty the soon-to-be Dare Keeper was female? Do you hear voices, Collin?”

“No.”

She watched me for several seconds. “No, I didn’t think so. Still, my voices assure me it will happen in this lifetime, even though you aren’t a conjuror.” Her voice trailed off.

“Does that make me a priest?” I asked, not sure I liked the sound of that. “Like Father Brian at the Catholic church?”

“Yes and no. You will be educated about the spiritual world like Father Brian, but you will know things no one else can ever know. Not even the other Keeper. The priest and the conjuror each have their roles and powers, but their knowledge shouldn’t cross. Just like the Keepers get their power from opposite forces—the land and the sea—your purposes for the curse are opposite as well.” She leaned close. “The fact that she is a female and a conjuror is a bad sign, Collin. That is why my father thought I was the one, because I was both—something that has never been seen in the history of the curse. But the fact that she is female, a conjuror,
and
a Dare Keeper is ominous. This girl is special. She is already stronger than I am and she has barely begun to learn her role. When she seeks you out, she will be prepared . . . and dangerous. I must make sure you are ready.”

“But Dad says
he
will be the one to break the curse.”

She sighed. “Life is full of many disappointments.”

After that, I went to her house more frequently—several days a week—and she told me everything she knew about the curse and my role in it. She taught me about the gods and the major spirits, and about the Manitou, the life force of every creature. But as I grew older, she switched her to focus to the ceremony.

“She will resist the ceremony to reseal the gate, Collin. You must find a way to make her do so anyway. Tell her that there will be a great reward if she reseals the gate.”

“I thought you said she wasn’t my enemy,” I said, reminding my grandmother of our earlier conversation.

Her gaze narrowed. “I never said she wasn’t. I only said you can’t believe everything your father says.” She studied my confused face. “There’s a chance she could end up being a friend, but the truth is that if she purposefully breaks the curse, she’s most likely a foe. You must be prepared for either possibility. Especially since she may seek you out with the intent to harm you.”

I nodded. Hurt
me
? This was becoming all too real.

The ceremony was a thorny issue, since the Dare Keeper, as the conjurer, should be the one to conduct it. But my grandmother ensured that I would be able to take the lead role if the opportunity presented itself. She drilled me endlessly until every last detail of the ceremony was seared into my memory.

When I was ten, Gran told me about the weapons a Dare Keeper had made a hundred years after the creation of the curse, an act encouraged by the betrayer god, Ahone. The Keeper had hired a Croatan conjuror to give the weapons power to use against the gods and spirits when they eventually escaped from Popogusso. “The Dare Keeper may have had a weapon made to protect himself from the gods,” she said, “but he really did it to have the upper hand on the Manteo line when the time came. But the curse is based on duality, so any weapon must have a counterpart. He was forced to create one for the Manteo line as well, even though we’ve never laid eyes on it.”

“What are the two weapons?” I asked in awe.

“A spear and a ring.”

“I want the
spear
.”

She gave me a grim smile. “The spear is yours, but the ring holds more power.”

“How can that be?” I asked in disbelief. “What can a ring do that a sharp-pointed spear can’t?”

“Power is deceiving, Collin. Great things can be hidden in small packages.”

“What does the ring do?”

“The ring gives the Dare Keeper who possesses it power over the gate to Popogusso without the other Keeper.”

I scowled. “So what does the spear do?”

“It can maim gods and spirits.”

“Hmm.”

“It is powerful in its own right, Collin. When you are old enough, I encourage you to find both weapons and hide the ring from the future Dare Keeper forever. The less she knows about its power, the better. You do not want her to have a strength that you do not.”

I shook my head in annoyance. “But I don’t even know exactly what it does.”

“All the better,” she murmured.

“You said ‘find the weapons.’ Are they lost?”

“Yes, a foolish descendent of Dare sold the weapons to a family in South Carolina and they disappeared for more than a hundred years. But the voices tell me that they’re about to surface, and you must find them. The fate of the world depends on it.”

I nodded solemnly. I took my future Curse Keeper role seriously, unlike my father.

“The Curse will break when you take on the role. I foresee this more strongly than any other vision I’ve had, yet I can’t see the outcome.”

“I won’t let you down, Grandmother.”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me close to kiss the top of my head. “You will have a rocky start, but you will make me proud in the end.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

While my grandmother taught me what she thought I needed to know to fulfill my role as the Manteo Curse Keeper, my father had his own version of the truth. With an intact curse, my father had two responsibilities: provide a new Keeper, and teach that Keeper about his heritage. Since he’d completed task one of his role, that left task two. He taught me about the curse, just not in the way his forebears had intended.

He’d kick back in his lawn chair in our ramshackle backyard, drinking beers like they were ice-cold lemonade. While my grandmother taught me about my duties, my father made sure I knew that Manteo had fucked us over twice. “Not only are we expected to get this damn tattoo”—he pulled down his T-shirt to show the intricately designed ink on his chest, the god Okeus’s mark in the center—“but we’re expected to sire a brat to get the same damn mark.”

I waited for him to finish his guzzle of beer while my six-year-old brother Conner sat several feet behind me, digging in the dirt with one of my mother’s spoons, one of our few “toys” that actually worked. All the other ones were broken thrift-store finds that should have been thrown in the garbage.

“But the best fucking part, my boy, is we are stuck in this cesspool forever.” He motioned around him as he said this, a slosh of beer flying from his can.

That was new information, and my expression must have given away my interest.

“Aha! You didn’t know that.” He pointed his index finger at me while still gripping his can. He finished the beer, then leaned to the side and shouted at my brother. “Conner, get me another one.”

Conner grumbled, but got to his feet and went through the back door. My father waited for the bang of the door shutting before he leaned forward. “That’s right. We’re stuck here.”

“In this house?”

He snorted his disgust. “No.” He crumpled the can with his fist and tossed it over his shoulder. “The Outer Banks. Bet your grandmother didn’t teach you
that
, did she?”

“No, sir.”

Conner came back out with my father’s beer and handed it to him. My father popped the top and leaned back in his seat with a satisfied grin. “There’s two sides to every story, Collin. Don’t you forget it.”