Screw it. She squeezed the water out of her hair, donned the helmet, and climbed onto the motorcycle behind Keane. Her hands automatically went around his waist, and his body was hard in her arms. He didn’t settle back against her as some level of her had hoped he would. Instead, he leaned slightly forward, gripped the handlebars, and zipped down the road in the opposite direction of the ambulance.
Back at her house, which Keane somehow found without Holly giving him directions, he led her to the back porch and told her about the deal.
“I gave you back your life,” he said as he leaned against the house, his arms behind him, “but I must take others to keep you alive.”
She hadn’t understood at first. What was he trying to tell her?
“It takes cadavers to keep a former cadaver alive. Your number was up, Holly Brimmer, but you chose to extend your life. To do so, others must die.”
“Are you saying you have to kill people?” That couldn’t be what he meant.
He sat beside her on the porch swing and stared at his black work boots. “Not people exactly. Not anymore anyway. Demons overtake humans and use them as hosts. Once a demon possesses a human body, the human is gone. So I kill the demons.”
“Demons?” She looked around her yard. “Right. Okay.” She searched for the hidden cameras. Surely she was on some ridiculous reality television show. Something designed to make her look like an idiot.
“Demons walk among humans. Most criminals are possessed by them. When I kill them, their energy keeps you alive.”
Holly studied Keane’s profile. He didn’t look like a nutcase, and yet, what came out of his mouth sounded like the ramblings of someone who needed a padded cell. She stood and her usually cast-iron stomach flopped.
“I was really dead, right?” she said.
He nodded.
“Then I should still be. This isn’t natural.” A quick image of her grandparents’ faces flashed into her mind. They had been waiting for her. “You had no right to bring me back.”
“You made the choice.”
She studied the guilty look on Keane’s face as he angled his head up. “I…I didn’t know what was happening. You saw my condition. I was in so much pain.”
“Even so, every seven days, I will need to slay a demon so you can continue to live.”
Slay a demon? Who talks like that? She shook her head. “It was my turn to die. I’ll take it. Don’t you dare hurt anyone.” She squeezed her eyes shut expecting to drop dead on the spot. When the splintered planks of the porch floor didn’t crack against her skull, Holly opened her eyes.
“There’s no going back on this. It’s all part of the curse, Holly.” Keane slid off the swing.
“What are you?” she asked before he could go into her house.
“A good question. One I’ve been considering for centuries.” He closed his fingers around the doorknob. “The word monster is the only answer I can come up with.”
Chapter Three
A cruel curse. A gift, the wretched hag had called it. She must have had a twisted sense of humor to go along with her witch’s candles, crystals, and potions. Keane would have willingly died from the sword wound across his stomach. To die in battle, fighting for his Celts and defending his homeland, would have been the highest honor.
Instead, here he remained. A constant. A wheel that no longer turned. A creature that looked like a man, but did things no sane man would ever do.
A murderer for the sake of keeping others alive. True, he only killed demons, but when their blood stained his hands, it was hard to remember he was keeping the demons from hurting anyone else.
He’d tried to refuse the witch’s attention, but when one’s intestines are spilling out one’s lower abdomen in a warm, crimson coil, clear thought is impossible. The pain he had been in at the time his soldiers brought him to the crone had rendered him speechless, near death—a death he was ready to accept. However, his brother and second in command, Eliah, begged the sorceress to save Keane. Eliah wept for Keane, his only brother, and though it broke his heart to hear his brother fall so deeply into desperation, he did not wish for his own life to be unnaturally lengthened. He’d accept his time to leave this plane and go with dignity. To die a warrior’s death.
As he’d mustered up his final shreds of strength to decline the hag’s offer of dark magick, Keane felt Eliah’s hand clamp over his, great tears streaming down his brother’s young, battle-scarred face. Keane’s words strangled in his throat looking into his brother’s eyes, and the witch took his silence to mean he wanted her to work the spell. To pull him back from death’s precipice.
Before he could stop her, the crafty sorceress had tossed her chant, her dark magick, into him. His entrails healed, his skin mended. Aside from a scar stretching clear across his stomach from the base of his ribcage to the opposite hip, he was returned to his original state before the slice of an opponent’s long-sword. A swipe that had ripped him from his horse and brought him to the blood-soaked battleground.
“You are saved, brother.” Eliah had helped him to his feet and threw his arms around Keane’s shoulders. “We will have many years together. We will finish the fight. The Celts will be victorious!” His soldiers had thrown up a cheer loud enough to rattle the very ground beneath their feet.
Unfortunately, he was around to witness the Romans defeat the Celts. At that moment, however, seeing his brother’s joy made it hard for Keane to be angry at being cheated out of his honorable demise.
“Thank you,” Keane had told the crone. She had given him his life back.
“Truly a wonderful gift I’ve given thee. Your service will be thanks enough, warrior.” The cackle she released into the candlelight frightened him more than facing an army of fire-breathing dragons.
“My service?” He towered over the withered witch, but her power leaped off her cloak-covered fragility, and he staggered back.
Eliah caught him before he hit the ground again. “What do you wish from us, witch?”
“I wish nothing from you, dear, but your brother owes me a debt.” She ran her crooked fingers along Keane’s bare arm and when he looked down, his bones were visible beneath his flesh. She’d given him a glimpse of the death he’d avoided.
“I asked you to save him.” Eliah stepped between the witch and Keane. “I will pay for your magick.” He plunged his hand into the coin purse at his belt.
The hag put her hand over Eliah’s, and he froze, his eyes wide with terror. Keane would never know for sure what the witch had done to him with that touch, but Eliah slid his hand from his money pouch and let the coins drop to the ground like golden hailstones.
“Only you can pay the debt.” She pointed at Keane, a nasty smile on her cracked lips.
“Fine. How?” He was tired of the games. He had more homeland to protect.
“I give you the abra cadaver, warrior. With it, you shall save many as I have saved you tonight.” She angled a gnarled finger at Keane’s arm focusing her cloudy, gray eyes on his flesh.
Standing amongst his men, Keane suddenly keeled over, gripping his bicep as something seared his skin. The burn was incredible, as if someone branded him with fired iron. When he pulled his hand away, an inked serpent spiraled its black body around his bicep, and the witch’s voice echoed in his head.
Marked with the snake,
in you I wake,
the power to shed
death from the dead.
With those words still whispering in the air, the hag disappeared into the darkness of the night. He had walked away, but instead of continuing the fight with his men, he’d kept walking until he was compelled to kneel beside an enemy soldier dying in the carnage Keane’s army had unleashed. He’d placed his hands over that soldier’s chest and brought him back from the Dark Place.
From that point on, century after century, he’d been saving people and killing demons to keep them alive. He could barely call what he had a life. People weren’t meant to live as long as he had. Peo
ple weren’t meant to do what he did.
You’ve come to terms with what you are. You can’t change it. You can only deal with it, as you have been all this time.
On the redeeming side—yes, there was one—everyone Keane had saved with the abra cadaver had turned out to do something important. The list was long, but the more recent saves had been among the most interesting. Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564, Italian Renaissance artist famous for his sculpture, Statue of David. Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642, father of modern science. Keane had hoped Galileo could figure out a way to undo the witch’s curse, but in their time together, the scientist was too interested in the night sky.
George Washington, 1732-1799, first president of the United States. Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888, author of Little Women, the first piece of literature published for the mass market of juvenile girls in the nineteenth century. Mary Walker, M.D., 1832-1919, first female surgeon in the U.S. Army who continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. Too bad she hadn’t known anything about releasing people from spells.
Amelia Earhart, 1897-1939, first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean before disappearing...or so the public thought. Keane had other theories about where Amelia had gone.
Rachel Carson, 1907-1964, zoologist who promoted environmental awareness and not a moment too soon. Keane had been around long enough to see the unfortunate deterioration of the planet. Hopefully things would turn around soon. If he were to live forever, he wanted a comfortable environment.
Elvis Presley, 1935-1977, King of Rock and Roll. The man still met a premature end, but not before changing the music world forever.
Plus there were the everyday heroes—the firefighters, police officers, soldiers, doctors, and other citizens who did something life changing for the people around them. He had saved them too. He’d been all over the globe, but the last few centuries found him concentrating mostly on Americans who, it seemed, were in the habit of getting killed before their time. In any event, they’d all done something to prove their worth—to prove they’d deserved saving.
To make Keane feel as if he weren’t entirely wretched. That some part of him was still good, still worthy.
Holly, his latest save, had to be important in some way as well or he wouldn’t have been drawn to her accident scene. Once he saved someone, he couldn’t move on until the important accomplishment was achieved. Part of the damned curse. He had to keep killing demons to maintain the abra cadaver or his save would die.
How long would it take Holly to do whatever she was meant to do for the world? Keane had been able to manage the loathing his saves arrowed his way while he stayed with them, but he couldn’t take Holly hating him anymore. Couldn’t take the cool contempt that simmered behind her lovely eyes right now.
What was it about her?
Looking back to the map still on the kitchen table, he drew in a deep breath then swept his gaze up to study Holly’s pale face. He knew she wasn’t sleeping at night. Demon energy produced horrific nightmares until the save did something important. He wanted Holly to hurry up with her something important so she wouldn’t suffer anymore.
“It’s been two months, Holly,” he said. “I know it doesn’t get any easier to accept, but I only kill the bad guys. They’re not humans.”
He said this at least five times a week. At first Holly hadn’t believed the demon part of the curse. No one ever did. Not until they saw the green hue of demon blood. Not until a demon host body disintegrated before their eyes. He made his saves watch the first kill fade away so they’d believe him. He still felt like a killer, but he wanted his saves to think better of him.
They never did.
“I wish I knew what I was supposed to do so you could leave,” Holly said.
“Always so eager to get rid of me, huh?” He stood and folded the map. He was used to this stage of the game, but Holly’s disgust bothered him. Why did he want her to like him?
“You don’t belong here,” she said. “Neither do I. We’re both supposed to be dead.”
The guilt. His saves always felt as if they were getting a second chance they didn’t deserve.
“Yes, but we’re not dead.” He tucked the map under his arm. “You need to get on with things.”
“I can’t get on with things until you go,” Holly said.
“I can’t go until you get on with things,” Keane said.
She shrugged and finished her drink. Rising from the table, she washed her wine glass at the sink. “You made a huge mistake saving me, Keane. I’m nothing special.”
Why did she feel like something special?
Chapter Four
Holly adjusted her beach chair and burrowed her bare feet into the warm, smooth sand. She sighed in satisfaction. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in months and hadn’t been away from the house for a weekend since meeting Keane. Her contact with the outside world had been limited. Trips to the grocery store, the library, a car dealership to purchase another vehicle. She’d told the police that her prior mode of transport had been stolen, wrecked, and apparently cut in half. The officer who filled out the report had raised an eyebrow at her story.
“Cut in half, miss?”
“From driver to passenger side, yes.”
The officer had made a noise that registered somewhere between Well, this is a new one and Is she drunk?
She had said as little as possible and hoped the whole event would get filed under Weird, But Not Worth Investigating Further. Fortunately, that was the way things rolled, and now here she was at the beach on her first official outing since not being dead.
In the chair to her left, her mother sat happily chatting on her cell phone with her father who was back at the beach house at the top of the dune. Every August for as long as she could remember, her parents had rented a house on Virginia Beach for the month. She always looked forward to spending time here. She loved the sun, the sand, the salted air.
This summer, however, she hadn’t been to the beach house once until now. How could she with Keane bringing bodies home every seven days? Sure they were nothing but ash in about a day, but she still felt as if she were running a funeral home. How could she face her parents when her cowardice had kept her unrightfully alive? Other people died because of her. They were, as Keane always put it, the “bad guys,” but still her existence meant death for others. She knew they were demons, but they looked so much like humans. The more demons Keane killed, the worse her dreams became.
She hated those dreams.
Holly shivered though the sun was out in all of its noontime glory. Fat golden rays rained down on the sand and shimmered on the water. If she hadn’t agreed to come to the beach house this weekend, her mother had threatened to drive to her house. That certainly wouldn’t do. She didn’t want her parents to meet Keane. Didn’t want to have to explain him to her parents, especially her mother. No way.
“So good to finally see you, Holly Berry.” Her mother dropped the cell phone into her canvas bag and gave Holly’s sun-screened forearm a little squeeze. “Your father and I were getting concerned.”
“I was busy.” She twisted her feet deeper into the sand, hitting a cool spot.
“So you’ve said, but it’s not like you to stay away from the beach. You love it here, don’t you?” Her mother took a swig from her water bottle and repositioned the straw hat shading her face. Even in the shadows under the hat, her mother was exquisite. Mona Brimmer’s Italian complexion gave her a Mediterranean beauty that Holly hadn’t inherited. Her mother’s youthful appearance often had people mistaking her for Holly’s sibling, not her parent. Holly knew for a fact that several younger men had asked for dates with Mona, but fortunately her parents were devoted to one another like no two people she had ever met.
Will I ever have love like that? Hard to imagine. Her life resembled a zombie comic book at the moment. How could she even consider looking for someone now?
“Holly, I said, don’t you love it here?” Her mother poked Holly’s
bicep with her elbow.
“Of course I love it here.” She traced the rim of her sunglasses with her index finger. “I just couldn’t get away, with teaching summer school and all.” White lie. No big deal. Better than trying to explain the truth to her mother. A truth her mother would never accept.
So you see, I died, and this guy brought me back to life and… Holly shook her head. Not going to happen.
“Well, you’re here now.” Her mother smiled. “Your father will be down with lunch in a little while. Tell me what’s been going on with you.”
Holly scanned the horizon and counted the sailboats that dotted the line between sky and sea. The water got deep quickly at this beach. If she waded in and kept walking, it would be over her head in a few yards. If she didn’t let her arms and legs do what they’d been trained to do in deep water—if she didn’t swim—the ocean could swallow her. Those dark waves could take away this game of pretend she was playing. Yes, she was alive, but she wasn’t living. She was supposed to be dead. The universe had decided her time on Earth was done. How dare Keane zoom in on his motorcycle and meddle with her life…or her death? She gripped the arms of her beach chair and nearly choked over the tightness in her chest.
So much for being relaxed.
And how did she even know if the story Keane had told her was true? She was certain the car accident had been real. Her destroyed car was proof of that, but there was no way to be sure she had actually died. No way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Keane had zapped her back to life. That he had undone her death.
Maybe she’d wake up in the hospital some day. Her parents would be sitting beside the bed where they had waited for her to open her eyes. Maybe she’d only dreamed about Keane while in a coma. That seemed more realistic. A trauma-induced haze versus an ancient and cursed Celtic warrior sent to save her so she could do something important for the world. Logic supported the first notion over the second. Holly was a big fan of logic.
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