Authors: Shelly Crane
Tags: #Young Adult, #Angel, #Aliens, #paranormal romance, #Fantasy, #molly
I pulled back so he could see my face in the dark and know I mean business.
“I understand that, I feel the same way about you, and I have never cared that you are a Keeper. Have I ever said or done anything to make you think that that bothered me?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “I can’t handle this anymore, Merrick. I can’t handle you thinking I’m playing some kind of game with you. Not only is it insulting, but it’s absolutely not true.”
“I know it’s not a game. You’re right. I was being an idiot. You’re just too good to be true sometimes. I promise I’m done, no more. I’m sorry. Ok?”
I paused just a second and heard the truth ring out in his voice.
“Ok.”
I heard him exhale, like he’d been holding his breath. I realized I’d been holding mine too.
“I missed you so much,” he breathed.
He nuzzled my neck and kissed under my jaw.
“I missed you, too.”
“I’m so sorry. For everything,” he said huskily as he continued to caress me.
“I know.”
“Forgive me.”
I couldn’t speak, he wouldn’t let me as he seared me with more scorching kisses.
“Say it. Say you forgive me, baby.”
“I forgive you,” I whispered against his chin.
“Say you want me.”
“I want you. I’ll always want you.”
“Tell me you need me here with you.”
“I do need you. I can’t live without you, Merrick. You’re honest and thoughtful and human and a great father to Lily and you drive me crazy in every good way. I love you.”
He exhaled, because he knew I was telling the truth.
“That’s good enough for me.”
“Promise me that you’re done with this. Promise me that you understand that you are absolutely, not getting rid of me even if you wanted to, stuck with me.”
“With all my heart, I promise.”
“Good, now please, stop making me talk.”
And he loved me and I loved him until it was so late, it was useless to even get out of bed. Though it hadn’t been much a fight to begin with, I think I learned why that little phrase about make-up sex is so very true.
I feel someone rubbing my arm. I wake up, fully expecting to see... Who? Who was I expecting to see? I’m in the Rabbit after all. Nobody ever rides with me but Danny. Matt refused to ride with me in it. We always took his big quad cab Ford everywhere. But, I had a feeling like I should be somewhere else, with someone else.
I pull off the ridge but am surprised at how dark it is out. It should be the afternoon. It should be...wait. Who’s that? A lady. Wait- I know her. Mrs. Trudy? I stop the car.
She waves to me and then she’s there, in the seat next to me. How do I know her?
“Hello, sugar.”
“Hey. How did you-”
“No questions. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I know you.”
“Why of course you do. I’m only gone this world a few months and you already writing me off as a bad memory?” she asked playfully.
It all floods back. Everything. I remember her, her son, the bunker, her death. Merrick.
“Oh, Mrs. Trudy,” my voice cracks with emotion.
“No tears, honey. Got no time for that.” She looks at me thoughtfully. “You are still just as pretty.”
“Mrs. Trudy. I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too. But, darling, you gotta be strong, for my family. Our family. Be strong. Things are coming. Bad, bad, and more bad things. You gotta be perseverant. Diligent. Careful. Understand?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know, Mrs. Trudy. I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. You can do this. Everything hangs in the balance. Everything. We gotta tip the scales, sugar. So eat up.” She smiled. “Pack in all you got and be ready for whatever they got to throw at ya.”
She started to wave, her image waved and moved like ripples of water and I remembered this. This is a dream. This is how people leave my dreams, just like my dad did that time. Her body swayed, then the background.
The ridge in front of us started to bleed and run like paint thinner splashed on a portrait. The rabbit was the last thing to go and I looked once more at Mrs. Trudy and she touched my cheek easily.
“You were the daughter I never had. Bye, sugar.”
“Bye,” I said through tears.
I awoke instantly and felt Merrick’s hand rubbing my arm, in his sleep. I took a deep steadying breath and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I didn’t know if the dream had been real, it felt real, but I needed it nonetheless. I needed a boost of Mrs. Trudy’s guidance and no nonsense encouragement. I needed the calm of my ridge for just a minute.
Later on in the morning, it was Sunday so there was no school lessons, no training lessons, no chores except kitchen duty so I sat by the stairs with Merrick and Lily, Calvin and Lana, Jeff and Marissa, Lillian and Cain, and Danny and Celeste. We played Name That Tune, with me on the piano. Cain won, almost every round. He was pretty impressive.
Celeste had finally gotten her mom to come down during the night while everyone was sleeping but has now barricaded herself in her room. We just decided to give her time and leave her alone.
After a while Cain got out his guitar, which I didn’t even know he had brought one with him. It was a yellow wood Gibson acoustic. He sat down on the stairs in front of us and tuned it. He looked around and smiled shyly. I thought he looked kinda nervous, which was weird for Cain. He looked at Lillian and they smiled wide at each other.
Then he began to strum Collective Soul’s ‘Run’. He started to sing the words and I froze in utter shock. He could sing. Seriously.
Are these times contagious
I've never been this bored before
Is this the prize I've waited for
Now as the hours passing
There's nothing left here to mature
I long to find a messenger
Have I got a long way to run
Pretty soon, people gathered around and he played a few more and sang with that easy mellow voice. I joined in on some with the piano if I knew them but mostly just listened. He then played Mat Kearney’s ‘Where We Gonna Go From Here’ to honor Aaron and Mitchell since they were buried and we hadn’t gotten to have a memorial yet.
It was sweet of him to think of that.
All of your ways and all your thunder
Got me in a haze running for cover.
Where we gonna go from here?
Where we gonna go from here?
The back of your eyes look like my mother’s
When we talk you’re like my brother.
Where we gonna go from here?
Where we gonna go from here?
Lillian was smiling through her tears the whole song. It wasn’t a popular song. With this group of people I figured only Cain and I had ever heard it but it was pretty and soothing. We cried, we sang and just remembered the ones we’d lost. There were so many now...
He played a few more tunes, including, by request from Josh, The Hollies version of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother“.
I thought about my dad. My mom. Mrs. Trudy.
After Cain was through, he put down his guitar to indicate that his concert was over and people started talking again. Mostly about the ones who had died. Funny stories or crazy things they’d said or done. Josh was telling a particularly hilarious story about his father.
Cain and I glanced at each other, remembering that we’d seen Josh’s father outside that night before the cave. And we’d never said a word to anyone. Josh’s father wasn’t just dead like he thought. Josh’s father was a Lighter.
Which was worse.
“So anyway, he took this board, right?” Josh was very animated in his telling. “Like a piece of plywood and placed it over the hole in the window, only we had no way to prop it up or make it stay so, my dad came up with this crazy idea to use the mop. So he propped the mop up outside to hold the wood in place propped against the tree and we went to bed. Well, we heard a thud and a big crash and went to check. I was behind him and when we turned the corner to the kitchen, all you could see was the mop standing there. The mop head looked like hair and the tree branches looked like arms. Upright it looked like some lady was just standing there in our broken bay window. My dad screamed like a girl. I thought he was gonna pee his pants.”
Calvin and Franklin literally rolled on the floor laughing and murmuring “pee his pants”.
We traded storied for a while and then I saw Lily start to nod off in Merrick’s lap. Then a quick look showed Merrick nodding off too. I remembered that we hadn’t gotten much sleep the passed couple night, what with all the drama and uh, other things going on at night. Ahem.
I gingerly took Lily, it was a hefty task, from Merrick on the floor and urged him by scratching the top of his head to follow me to bed for a nap.
I put Lily down and then we went to bed ourselves. By now it was lunch but I could care less. Too many things on my mind.
We laid there and I decided to grill him, even though we were beat, on all the things that could happen, are happening and what he thinks we should do.
“So, the new Taker has all the old Takers memories?” I ask after he explained as much.
“Yes. It’s like, the very first Taker and every one after him is kinda stuck in the new one. He has their memories, their thoughts so they know exactly what they were thinking about, what they wanted, what they had planned to do. It makes the new Taker all the more dangerous because he knows what worked and what didn’t.”
“Why can’t Lighters and Takers be female?”
“We have no idea. For whatever reason, Lighters in Lighter form are all males. We can only come here in the same sex of a the body we take. Human females can be absorbed, but that’s it. They can’t be used as vessels.”
“How do they reproduce?”
He laughed.
“They don’t, honey. Neither do we. We are a limited number. That’s why it’s so hard on us when a Keeper dies. Because unlike humans, there will never be another one to come along and replenish the numbers. Just like Lighters. When they are all dead, they’re dead. Done.”
“So, I know it’s impossible but, if we somehow killed off the thousands of Lighters who made their way here, it would be over?”
“Yes.”
“But, would the moon’s light return?”
“No. The moon would still be dark because the Lighters weren’t there.”
“Hmmm. I never understood that- wait. The glowing skin? They all just sat up there and glowed all night?”
He laughed again.
“You are so cute. Yeah, kinda. After everything you’ve seen, is that really so hard to believe?”
He left his arm there as my pillow but shifted so he could lay sideways to face me. I did the same.
“Yeah. It sounds so fake and weird. I always thought the moon’s light was a reflection of the sun’s light.”
“It was the only way humans could explain it.”
“Hmmm. I see. So, I’m not trying to be self centered or anything but...you think I’ll have to worry, about this new Taker, ya know, trying to come and take me?”
“I hope not. Like we said, I’ve never seen a Taker do that before. The human who absorbed him must have had a very strong sense of family. Some of the human stuff sticks around, just like it does with us when we take a body. Us usually more than them but, the Taker is very susceptible to human emotions and the Lighters
really
are when he’s here.”
“Well, good.”
“And besides, this Malachi is not new, he’s from England, back in the sixteen or seventeen hundreds. I remember he was particularly ruthless. He doesn’t like to kill humans, or at least he didn’t back then. He wants to make them his mindless minions and slaves, basically. He just wants to be treated like a king. Make them his maids, cooks, chauffeurs, army, his, uh, entertainment.”
He cleared his throat.
“What? You mean sex?” I whispered it like it was dirty, because I thought it was.
“Yeah.”
“Takers have sex? So it wasn’t just the last one who had an interest in it?”
“No. They are in human bodies. The bodies physical needs are the same as any other human. He doesn’t love them, he uses them and keeps them on staff specifically for that purpose.”
“What?” I can feel my face scrunched in disgust.
“It is what it is to them. Some human men are the same way.”
“That’s...gross.”
Gross! Gross! Who would want to have sex with a Taker? I guess, to them he’s like a rock star or the president or something. Eww. I’m appalled also by, not just the devious nature of the Takers but how it mixes with the human stuff too. Humans have enough meanness in us without adding to it. I wonder if he hurts them or cares about them at all. But if he was terrible to them and hurt them, wouldn’t just not go back?
Then I remember the Takers compulsion. Oh no. They stay because they can’t leave. My stomach heaves and I feel sick thinking of helpless girls, just trying to be loved and feel special, though going about it completely wrong and being turned into, for lack of a nicer word, whores for evil. Against their will. I pray that’s not true. I pray that he is gentle with them and they at least want to be there.