“What about…the world?” I stuttered. Surely Jake, the poster boy for the greater good, wasn’t jumping ship?
“The world will be fine.”
I pushed strands of wet hair from my face. “But…No. No, it won’t be. Not without me, anyway.” And just like that, it finally made sense, just like Jake had said it would. “I’m the Light Keeper,” I said, more definite than I’d ever been in my life. I was the Light Keeper, and this was my destiny. . .
“Jake?”
Inside the car, everything was silent apart from the echo of the raindrops. No annoying banter. No annoying music. Nothing.
“Have you lost your mind?” I asked him seriously.
“Have you? Did you really want me to leave you there to rot? Is that who you think I am?”
“This isn’t about you,” I said, floundering for words. “I don’t blame you.”
“Well, now you can thank me,” he said darkly. “Because I’m setting you free.”
I lowered my voice. “I don’t want to be free,” I said, surprising myself with the statement. “This is my responsibility. This is my life—”
“No, it isn’t,” he interrupted. “It’s not your problem anymore.”
“Jake,” I beseeched him. I could hardly believe the change—in both of us. Here he was, trying to set me free, and there I was, practically begging him to take me back to the watchtower.
But I wouldn’t turn my back on this. If I did, surely I’d be no better than the demons? I’d be knowingly unleashing evil onto the world. There might not even be a home for me to go back to if there was no new Light Keeper.
“What’s happened to you?” I tugged at the sleeve of Jake’s jacket, willing him to listen. “This isn’t you.”
He glanced at me. His eyes were cold and black, like something fundamental within him had changed. I almost didn’t recognize him.
“This isn’t you,” I whispered again.
My words turned my blood to ice.
What if…?
This isn’t Jake.
I began to feel dizzy. A harrowing thought crossed my mind. The shapeshifter had stolen Bernard’s face. It had been imperceptible to me, and yet Jake had known. He had been able to spot the subtle differences that had escaped my notice because he’d known the real Bernard.
But if this wasn’t Jake, then Jake—the real Jake—was...
For a while I couldn’t move. I sat paralyzed in the passenger seat, frozen in time. Bit by bit, the pain started to set in. It built in my chest, and in my throat, and then stung my eyes until I didn’t think I could take another breath.
Dead.
“Where is he?” I gasped, sobs breaking my voice. “What have you done to him?”
I lunged for the steering wheel, heaving it towards me and throwing us off course. The nose of the car spun and we screeched to a stop just inches from a tree.
I threw open the passenger door and staggered out into the rain.
“Hey!” he called in Jake’s voice.
Anger rose inside of me. “Don’t you dare speak!” I screamed. “Don’t you dare use his voice!” I shook with grief as I ran blindly away from the car. I didn’t know which direction I was heading in. I didn’t care, either. All I knew was that I had to get away from this thing.
“Wait!” He got out and started after me.
I fought my way through the spiky tangle of bracken. But I didn’t get far. He grabbed hold of me and together we fell to the ground. In amongst the undergrowth he stooped over me, his face only inches from mine and our bodies entwined.
“You think you can get away from me?”
“Let go of me!” I shouted, struggling to free myself.
He held me steady. “No,” he said through clenched teeth.
With his face close to mine, he sighed tersely, his breath prickling against my lips.
I jerked my head away from him as his hand pulled at my cardigan pocket. And then, in his other hand, I noticed something glinting in the moonlight.
A knife, I realized in alarm.
I felt the blade cut the inside of my hand. For a long moment, it felt as though time had stopped. I couldn’t feel the rain pounding against my skin, nor the rasp of the demon’s breath on my throat, nor the sting my broken skin. And then in a flurry, it all came back—tenfold.
With every ounce of strength I could muster, I scrambled out from underneath him. He grasped my hand to stop me. The grit on his palm scraped against my severed skin and I cried out in pain. He held me there, and our eyes locked.
I looked into Jake’s eyes—trying to see him.
“Let go,” I hissed.
I felt the command resonate through me, honoring me. As if from out of nowhere, a gale charged through the trees and tore our hands apart. I’d summoned that gale—I knew I had. I’d felt it in the depths of my soul.
The shapeshifter was knocked backwards, stunned. I seized my opening, clambering to my feet and staggering into the undergrowth.
With every second, I expected to feel his arms fasten around me and drag me back down to the ground. The fear drove me to move faster. I kept running until I broke through the trees and surfaced into a clearing. There, I stumbled to a halt, gasping for breath.
I was at a bridge.
Not the bridge we’d traveled across on our way to the watchtower. This one looked different somehow, smaller and even more rickety.
I was at the bridge to the western mountain.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder. I was alone. In the forest behind me I heard the sound of a car engine. I flinched, expecting the El Camino to shoot out into the clearing at any moment. But it didn’t. In fact, the sound grew more distant, as though it were heading away from me, back towards the watchtower.
The Light Keeper, I realized.
My breath came out in a sob. “No,” I screamed into the desolate night. “No!”
JAKE
Chapter Fifteen
Past Lives
I’d been eight years old when they’d recruited me, and ten years old when I’d gotten good.
There’d been a few of us at first, all drafted in for training. They’d brought us over to a remote peninsula on a ferry, and from there we’d been taken to the main house. That was where I’d grown up, for the most part, and subsequently where I retreated back to after every mission. It was the closest thing to home I had.
The main house had been different back then; it had been our playground. It’d felt vast and limitless when I was a kid—a sprawling estate set in acres of forestland, with a backdrop of three snow-capped mountains in the distance. And I’d felt like it was all mine. I’d been prince of my kingdom.
I always looked back on those times fondly—perhaps as some of the best days of my life. There had been three of us in my little circle, all pre-teen boys and tough as anything: me, Billy Alton and Philip Drayson, or Flip as I called him. We’d been inseparable, bonding instantly through the fellowship of our new lives. During that first year, Flip and I had no concept of rules and restrictions and we caused havoc wherever possible, and poor old Billy had dutifully come along for the ride.
Of course, in those days, I hadn’t been old enough to understand the true implications of what had been happening to us. Sure, I’d known that something was up. And I’d known it was big, too. After all, we were just kids, and we’d been taken away from our parents for this.
But the first year at the house had been deceptive; it all seemed like smooth sailing. They’d been watching us, observing our every move. We’d thought we’d been playing, scrapping with each other, dossing around the mansion and attending the occasional academic lesson in its ostentatious rooms. But all the while we’d been under assessment for our skills, our natural reactions, our attention to detail.
We’d had no idea that only one of us was meant to survive.
By the second year, I’d started to notice changes. Physical combat training had been upped to six times a week, and we’d been required to atte
nd daily lessons on demonology. They’d been molding us, filling our brains with knowledge and moral obligation. They had us nearly brainwashed, to the point where we’d forgotten we were children at all.
Most of our elders had been unapproachable; they’d been huge, dominant men with egos to match. But we’d had a mentor, and I’d liked him. In fact, we’d all liked him. He’d been tolerable, anyway.
Rufus.
We were supposed to call him Sir, but we never did. He’d drilled into us the mantra of our purpose, day in and day out: we were warriors, blank canvases waiting to be shaped into whatever they needed us to be.
When my third year at the main house rolled around, training had escalated to full-on kill-or-be-killed combat. It was then that they’d renamed us according to our skills—and so Shadow was born. At eleven years old I’d mastered the art of stealth combat—I was everywhere and nowhere. I could kill a demon before they’d even seen me coming, and moved through the darkness like I belonged there. Well, I guess I did.
It had been around that time that the others had started dropping off. They’d pit us against low-level demons, testing us to see who faired best. That’s how they’d thinned the herd, weeded out the weak.
Flip had been the first to go.
We’d been out on the docks: me, Flip, Billy, and a couple of our seniors. We’d been on a hunt, springing an ambush on a nest of vampires. It had been going well, too. But it only takes a second to lose a life. And a second really was all it had taken. Flip was careless, cocky; he’d hesitated, even after our seniors had ordered us to fall back. He thought he knew better. I saw it in his eyes.
Fall back, Flip, I begged silently.
I saw the vampire snap his neck. I watched the light leave Flip’s eyes. I watched him slump to the cold planked floor, and the thud of his body hitting the deck struck through my heart with a pain I never imagined possible. I still hear that sound in my darkest of nightmares. I probably always will.
For three years we’d been inseparable, Flip and me, and I hadn’t been prepared to lose him. I swear, I cried my heart out for that boy. It had taken two of our seniors just to get me out of there. I’d risked my life just to run to him, and I’d kicked and fought when the elders prized my fingers from Flip’s lifeless body. They left him there. To this day, I can’t believe they just left him there.
That was the last time I cried.
I still thought about Flip, all the time, especially when I saw a kid who looked like him or if something funny happened and I wanted to tell him about it. I often wondered what he’d be like now. Steel, probably. Like me.
Billy went a few years later. I was twelve, nearly thirteen at the time. He was bitten by a viper demon. You didn’t get a lot of viper demons anymore, but back then they’d been all the rage. They fed off blood, taking their fill and leaving their venom to do the rest. It took a few hours for the poison to finish Billy off.
I’d stayed with him. It had been painful—for both of us, but in different ways. I tried to keep him comfortable, to keep him laughing right up until the end. When he finally slipped away, I was struck by a deep, unimaginable sadness. I didn’t cry, though. Life at the main house had beaten that out of me long ago.
Rufus and I paid our respects to Billy in a private memorial on Rovers Bay, south of the peninsula. I loved that place. Whenever I needed time to reflect, or to ground myself, Rovers Bay would be my refuge.
It was my idea to go there for Billy’s memorial. I didn’t ask the other elders to come, just Rufus. I found a secluded spot in a cove, and we said our last goodbyes there. We didn’t just said goodbye to Billy that day. We also said goodbye to Flip, and James too.
James?
That’d be me.
Yes, I’d had a name before I became Shadow, and it wasn’t Jake. But I stopped being James a long time ago. His light had gone out when Flip’s had. And losing Billy put the final nail in the coffin.
So that was that. I was the last one standing. At the tender age of twelve, I’d won the double-edged sword. I was reborn, regenerated. Programmed to hunt, fight and kill. I was told what to do and when to do it, and I always obeyed. They sent me to war every day until I could have done it with my eyes closed. Eventually, my missions got harder and my thirst for demon blood got stronger. Why not? I had nothing else to live for.
Until they sent me to find the next Light Keeper.
That was when everything changed. For the first time in my life as Shadow, I almost said no. And I had never said no—not to them, anyway. I didn’t know why I was resisting—I just knew that I didn’t want the job. At the time, I tried to convince myself that it was because the task was beneath me. And maybe that truly had been the reason. Who knows? I mean, I was a frontline kind of guy, and this job was so far from the frontline that I couldn’t even see the line. So it was possible that that was the reason—definitely possible. But more likely I resisted because, deep down in my gut, I had a sinking feeling that it would end badly. And man, did it end badly.
So if I’d known that it was doomed from the start, why do it?
Good question.
I didn’t say no to Rufus that day because I’d heard a voice.
Do it, the voice had said.
And it hadn’t been Rufus’s voice on the other end of the phone line, or my own subconscious nagging at me to follow orders. No. I’d heard Flip’s voice. Had it been madness setting in? Maybe.
But Flip had told me, clear as if he’d been right there beside me, to do it—to find the Light Keeper. It knocked the breath right out of me. Hearing Flip’s voice took me back to another world—to a place and time I’d long since left behind. It had been like hearing a song that jolts the memory, or smelling a unique scent that triggers a flashback to the past.
For the first time in many years, I remembered James. And that memory had set off an awareness of something ill-omened within me, as though I knew I was coming to the end of my life as a Shadow. I didn’t want it to end, but something inside of me told me that it soon would. Actually, Flip told me it soon would.
So, wary but accepting, I went in search of the new Light Keeper, certain that I would be heading into ruin.
It took a while for me to find her—to find Elana, I mean—but once I did, I knew she was the right one. Strangely, though, once I was sure, I found myself delaying our departure. Maybe I’d gone soft in my sentimental state of mind, but a part of me had wanted her to keep on enjoying what life she had left. Every day I told myself, This will be the day I take her. And every day, I backed down.
I probably would have put it off a lot longer, too. But one day, I received the wakeup call I needed.
It was a Saturday. I’d followed her to a party, a school dance or something. I’d never attended a function like that myself, so I kept out of the way, not sure how to behave. But still, I was glaringly out of my comfort zone. I shouldn’t have gone at all, and I knew it. I was too exposed.
But, well, I guess I wanted to see her. No, scratch that. I wanted her to see me. And not just as a nameless stranger, passing her on the street, or drinking at the same coffee shop. I wanted to have one day when she would think I was a normal guy, doing normal guy stuff like going to parties or whatever normal people did. For one day, I wanted to be someone else. So I spoke to her outside the community hall, and I had my moment to be normal.
It felt good.
It was then that I realized she had no idea what she was destined to become. Usually, even if we didn’t know the identity of a charge, they would at least have had some hint to the fortune of their bloodline, some elder family member to break the news over a cup of tea and a slice of pecan pie. But Elana was none the wiser—if she’d been forewarned of such a calling, she would have had no questions about my intentions. That sort of thing doesn’t just slip your mind.
That made my job all the more difficult.
After the party, I followed her home, unseen. I walked virtually beside her, hidden amongst the trees as she paced al
ong the woodland path alone. I was no more than a few feet away from her, yet she remained completely oblivious to my presence. I wanted to yell at her, to scold her for walking home alone at night. Look how easy it is for me to stalk you, I wanted to say. I mean, anything could have happened to her. Demons, humans, anything.
I stayed alongside her the whole way home. And, admittedly, that hadn’t been the first time I’d done it. For the past few weeks, my whole life had been about keeping her safe. I’d waited outside her house, her school, cafes—everywhere she’d been, I’d been, too. Not intruding, though—just waiting, watching, making sure nothing had happened to her.
Neurotic, yes.
Alright, so I’d become obsessed with guarding her. One step away from restraining-order status. That shameful realization dawned on me the Saturday night of the dance. I’d been watching her too fondly. I’d walked too closely beside her. I realized that I’d been living out a strange fantasy whereby I’d deluded myself into believing that I meant as much to her as she meant to me. I felt as though I knew who she was without ever having spoken to her—she was pure, and she was brave, and she was mine.
And that’s when I realized I needed a reality check. She was the Light Keeper, and I was the drudge sent to collect her, that’s all. Nothing more. Worse, I’d put it off for way too long. I had to take her—and I had to take her then, before I lost what little sanity I had left.
So that’s exactly what I did. Together, we set off on our fatal journey, both of us privately preparing to give up our lives, though neither of us sure how it would happen. We had more in common than she’d ever know.
For all the hassle it had been to take my Witch to the watchtower, I can wholeheartedly say that those four days with her had been the greatest four days of my life. No longer was I playing out the fantasy in my mind—I’d been living it. And that had made my send-off all the sweeter. When it came to Elana, I had no regrets. Not one.
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