Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series)

by Augustine, Donna

  Dodd cleared his throat and I realized we were already ringside to the massive space hole that was spilling radiation out and that we had raised our voices to the point that all the Keepers were avidly listening to our spat. "Not that this isn't entertaining," quite a few heads nodded as he said this, "But not enough to die from radiation poisoning for." They nodded for that too.

  Maybe this was where I was meant to die, surrounded by a bunch of sarcastic assholes like myself, being killed by their leader because he looked like he was about to explode. Logic now entered my brain as my temper exited, screaming that he was an idiot in front of everyone was probably not on the top ten ways to handle things. Not that he wasn't and didn't deserve it, I just could've been slightly more tactful. I realized exactly how pissed he was when he switched places with Buzz so that he didn't even have to touch me as we began.

  I took a deep breath, trying to shake it off. Time to get to work. A fight with Cormac wouldn't mean shit if I couldn't fix this.

  I felt the tingle in my hands as the energy of all the Keepers started to flow through me and I concentrated every cell in my body to feeling the edges of where our existence ended and the strange universe started. Jagged and angry, it resisted the pressure. This felt so strange compared to a normal wormhole that just stretched open. Unlike a slit in a seam of clothing that can lie closed, this was a rip right in the center.

  "I need more," I yelled down the line. I gripped Dodd and Buzz tighter as I felt more power flow from them. I closed my eyes, my sight was useless anyway. It wasn't working and it had to.

  "More," I screamed. I could feel it in the way the energy coursed threw me, almost as jagged and unruly as the hole's edges; they were giving me every last ounce they had.

  But it started to budge. Slowly, the edges started to creep closer together. I opened my eyes, wanting visual proof. It was slow, but it was working. Before our very eyes, we were altering the fabric of our very existence. It was awe inspiring. What else might we, as a group. be capable of?

  It was half-closed now, and I noticed for the first time that the ground beneath my feet was spongy. I should've realized this earlier, we couldn't just stretch our world without something happening. The sand and earth that covered over the hole didn't just appear out of nowhere. We were stretching it and that would have repercussions. The electromagnetic force that keeps gravity from pulling us to the center of the Earth lost a little of its strength tonight. It was a small price to pay.

  I measured the distance from where I stood now, to where the I had been before we started. I was closer to the center and farther from the cars. If the hole had still been the same size, I would've been standing a third of the way in it.

  Almost finished, just a small gap was left when I felt a tingling near my ankle. Silver tendrils snacked around my leg. I looked over at everyone else but their concentration was firmly on the hole as it slowly closed.

  I shook my leg and tried to knock it free but it clung with determination. It wrapped its way up my leg, like a boa constrictor, as I tried to not lose my concentration on the space hole. Only a few feet left and it would be closed.

  As the edges finally touched, blocking out any sight of a foreign galaxy, I could feel the sides mesh together like there'd never been an opening. Laughter rose around me as we all shared in the same relief. We'd been fighting an uphill battle and this was the first time in a while I felt hope. We could fix this. We could fix all of this. We just needed to take out the senator before he could help anybody else get more wormholes up and running.

  The silver coiled mist moved around my leg and reminded me of its presence. “Get off,” I whispered to it. I didn't think it was going to do anything but then I felt a pinch. “Get off,” I whispered again, in a harsher tone. This time it dissipated into thin air.

  It wasn't that I was ungrateful to it, whatever it was, but I had a group of Keepers here that I didn't want to freak out. I didn't think it would hurt me, but the fact it showed up out of nowhere was a bit unnerving. I thought it was tied to spells, like Vitor had explained. But there was no spell here, which meant there was something else at work that I didn't know about or understand.

  I needed to stay calm and in control, and I needed to keep all the confidence of the Keepers, because I knew that the other space holes would be much harder. This one had already pushed them further than they'd ever gone already. I could sense it when we had all joined. There'd been a hesitancy at first.

  Everyone was smiling and patting each other on the back. But when I looked at Cormac, I knew he was pissed. He was smiling at his people, but when his eyes landed on me they weren't smiling anymore. I got it. I didn't want to, but I undermined him in front of his people at a time we couldn't afford it. Considering all the shit he's done to me, I'd say we still weren't even.

  "So where do we go now?" a couple of them asked, still riding high.

  "New York?" another Keeper offered up.

  "No," I said. "Now we kill a senator."

  Chapter Sixteen

  "I didn't expect a normal cemetery," I said to Vitor as we watched Hammond's body get lowered into the ground.

  "We've got burial grounds on my planet that are similar to this."

  As I looked around at the large crowd that had shown, I noticed the people certainly weren't of the normal variety as I spotted Fae and werewolves. It wasn't the largest turn out I'd ever seen but it was a healthy amount of a few hundred.

  Cormac stood about fifty feet from me as he spoke to Burrom. I'd felt his eyes on me several times but every time I tried to catch him, he wasn't looking any longer. We hadn't spoken since we closed the hole the night before. When we'd returned to The Lacard, I had gone to my room and he'd gone to his.

  "What's up with you two?" Vitor asked, noticing where my attention had been directed.

  "It's nothing. He's just pissed off at me," I answered as I smoothed down my black dress.

  "I wouldn't worry about it, considering."

  "Considering what?"

  "You know, the contract."

  "The loyalty contract?"

  "Strange name for it, but yes, that."

  "What would you call it?"

  "In your language? I'm not sure that it exists exactly. Maybe a prenup?"

  If Vitor hadn't been so transfixed on all the different people coming and going, he might have noticed that I was about to lose my shit right then and there. It bought me time to calm myself down. I had to, and in a hurry. Vitor might have not noticed but Cormac had. He knew something was up and I didn't want this conversation interrupted.

  I unclenched my fists and tossed my hair around as if I wasn't about to march over and kick the shit out of him. It worked; he went back to his conversation with Burrom and I was free to delve for more information.

  "How do you guys use it? Is it the same as us?"

  "We don't commonly use them anymore. Traditionally, they were used when we wanted to join two houses together but the children were too young to form an actual marriage. It was a place holder, of sorts."

  "Did you ever break one?"

  "I'm not sure about yours, but ours have varying time periods where if the relationship isn't consummated, the contract dissolves on its own."

  I will not freak out and cause a scene at the funeral. But oh, would he pay afterward. I didn't want to hear a thing about the idiot comment.

  "Keepers can live forever so what's a few years if you change your mind?" Vitor continued.

  "I still don't get how our brains stop us from aging."

  "Yours do, ours don't."

  "Why is that?"

  "It's a Keeper thing. Even though Fae have a single consciousness, we don't know which genes are responsible for aging so we can't turn them off."

  "Why didn't you guys work that into the deal with the original Keepers?"

  "I wasn't around back then but everyone knows it was a non-negotiable. They were greedy buggers, your other half, that is. They were willing to let people in, but
nothing else."

  "You still have long lives."

  "About three hundred years, which is a drop in the ocean compared to Keepers. On the other hand, you guys are dropping like flies so maybe you need them." We both looked at the casket after he said it. "You're down to less than a hundred now."

  "And the information that was merged with our DNA is gone," I said sadly. If they could've just written something down, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. "We're taking out the senator next…or trying to."

  "I don't know if you can take the senator out."

  "Maybe not, but we've got to try. Are you in?"

  Complete silence.

  "I'll take that as a no."

  "I can't jeopardize my people."

  "And what about the Earth?"

  "We still have our planet."

  I shook my head and walked away from him in disgust. As I stepped up to the casket and looked down at Hammond, I didn't feel mournful at all. If he had all of a sudden woken from a deep sleep, I might have tried to kill him myself. He was the major reason I was in this mess. He was around with the original Keepers when it was started and I found it hard to believe he hadn't had a hand in it. He brought this down upon all of us.

  A group of twenty-two men and women, all arriving together, instantly drew my attention. They were led by a dark haired, lanky man, whose eyes darted from person to person, his body stiff.

  "They're the defectors. The one in the lead is Linus," Cormac said as he came to stand next to me. He wore nothing but black from head to toe, except a glimmer of a gold watch at his wrist.

  "We need to talk."

  "I'm not ready to talk," he said mockingly.

  The defectors were upon us before I could respond. They nodded in greeting. "We're here to pay our respects."

  "Then do so and get out," Cormac replied in a tone closer to a growl.

  "Thank you," I replied. "It's a nice gesture." Cormac bristled beside me as I said the words. He had a right to be upset with them but it didn't change a thing.

  "I'd like to speak with you both," Linus said.

  "Sure," I answered. Cormac didn't say no. We both looked at him and he still didn't seem to feel it necessary to speak. That was as good as it was going to get from him.

  "We know what you did with the…" Linus paused.

  "I like to call them space holes."

  "We know you closed the smaller one. We've done some recon. We know how hard that must have been."

  "And?" Cormac was not going to make this easy.

  "We want to help you with the others."

  "It changes nothing," Cormac told him.

  "We aren't asking for that."

  "Fine. Be in touch in two days from now."

  Linus, and the few of his people that had hovered close enough to hear, walked away, back to the safety of the group.

  We waited another hour or so before everyone left then we all drove back to The Lacard.

  The streets were still empty, except for a few stragglers who carried duffle bags; they were clearly out looking for supplies before they went back to their hidey holes. Vegas was shut down, for all intents and purposes, like I'd never seen in my lifetime. It wouldn't be nearly as scary if I knew that I'd be able to kill the senator and put an end to this.

  The Lacard, in contrast, was fully staffed today, not that it mattered. Nobody was out gambling anyway. I think as things got scarier, the staff thought this place was safer than most and were just looking for a reason to be here. Even before I actually knew anything about wormholes or aliens, wolves and Fae, there had always been this underlying current. It wasn't something you could explain to an outsider, we hadn't discussed it in the staff room, it was just a feeling that if the shit ever went down, this would be a bastion in the storm.

  I looked at Cormac out of the corner of my eye as we climbed into the elevator with Dodd and Buzz. He was an angel and devil wrapped into one. The good was he'd keep everyone safe and together. The bad? He'd do it at any cost, even if he had to become the devil himself.

  The doors slid open and Buzz and Dodd got out.

  "I had to do it," Cormac said, as he beat me to the punch before we were even alone.

  "How did you know?"

  "Because it's very hard to hide something from someone as old as I am. I knew exactly what Vitor was telling you."

  "You don't do something like that without telling someone," I started to scream.

  "It's not forever. Would you have preferred to be stuck under Vitor's control? It was the only way to stop it."

  "That doesn't make it right."

  "I didn't lie. I just didn't explain the whole thing."

  "How long does it last?"

  "Five years."

  "What!"

  "Five years is nothing in our lifespan."

  "Why five?"

  "Because you would be twenty-eight by then and out of Vitor's reach. There was no other way."

  "I want it broken like you said you would break all of them."

  "So you can go stay with Vitor? No."

  "Because I don't care what the Fae think of as legal age. I'm a grown adult and I'm sick of someone always trying to rule my world."

  "If you want me to break it I will, but it won't end up being the only thing broken if Vitor thinks he's going to force the issue." His eyes were deadly when he said his next words. "Choose wisely."

  The elevator doors opened to the penthouse floor and instead of walking to his apartment he made a left to the rooftop stairs.

  "Don't walk away from me, I'm not done."

  "I'm not. I'm going to the roof. You're welcome to come," he said as he continued on his way.

  I watched the door to the stairway hang open and knew he was waiting for me.

  I rounded the corner and he stood there. "I'm too tired to fight. This is my retreat. If that's what you are looking for, don't come. I promise I'll fight with you later, all you want."

  It hit me suddenly, I'd never even realized that he might be the one mourning for Hammond. I'd barely known him but he had been a father figure of sorts to Cormac. I watched with fresh eyes as he climbed the stairs and walked toward the large weeping willow that sat by the edge of the roof. He sat on the bench underneath, just staring outward at the strip and the mountains beyond.

  "I'm sorry," I said as I sat next to him. "I didn't realize what he meant to you."

  He didn't speak and I didn't force him to. When I would've left, he touched my shoulder, silently asking me to stay. I stayed until the sunset warmed the sky, neither of us saying a word.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The details of the contract weren't as bad as I'd thought. It was really pretty cut and dry actually, as long as I didn't sleep with him, we wouldn't be married, beginning and end of it. Of course, I couldn't read the damn thing and he'd proven to be a little less than honest at times to meet his own ends, but I was going to accept it at face value. Partly because it was what I wanted to believe, and the other larger part was because I just couldn't handle another issue on top of what I already had going on.

  The defected Keepers called in two days, as Cormac had told them to, and then two days after that. Problem was, we couldn't figure out a plan to get to the senator. He had nothing public scheduled for the indefinite future. As gruesome as it might sound, it needed to be a public execution. Odds were against us being able to take him down in the first attempt. If we could at least out him for what he was, it would drive him more into the open. Secret Service wouldn't be protecting a monster. He'd lose his offices and security. His family was another question altogether. I personally wondered if they even were his family.

  There I was, countless days after the first space hole appeared, weeks after the senator killed Rick, and we finally got a break. I sat, curled up on the couch, searching online and there it was; the senator had announced he'd be holding a televised appearance, around the corner from his office. He said in the press release that he was doing it to show his supporters that ev
erything would be okay.

  I wasn't buying it. There was an angle, I just didn't know what it was.

  I dialed out but the call didn't go through. The cell service had become very sketchy; I wasn't sure if it was because they didn't have enough people to maintain the grid or if the space holes were messing with the signal. I grabbed the weird phone Cormac had given me yesterday. It wasn't as pretty as my iPhone, but I knew it would work.

  Cormac's guys had erected a cell tower on top of the roof and on several other properties he owned. We now had the smallest cell service provider available but it was the most reliable. I knew what the implications were of what he was doing. It was for the same reason I had inventoried how much gas was in his private garage.

  "Where are you?" I asked when he answered.

  "Setting up more tower locations."

  "We've got an opening."

  "Conference room. I'll be right there."

  I found Buzz and Dodd lounging in chairs when I got there. I caught them up to speed quickly, since they'd only gotten a brief text from Cormac. He walked in just as I finished.

  He sat down and didn't say anything right away. Finally, he leaned back and rubbed the dark shadow on his jaw. "We're missing something." He shook his head. "I think it's a trap."

  "It doesn't matter. It's our only shot. The space holes have to be closed and we need him taken out first," I countered.

  "Why? Can't we try to close them and then worry about the senator?" Buzz asked, unsure after Cormac shared his opinion.

  "No," I replied. "I'm afraid to, especially after the smaller one. When that closed, I could feel the fabric of our existence thinning. If we close them all and he creates another tear afterward, I'm afraid it would be of a magnitude we could never heal."

  "But the defectors aren't operating anymore."

  "That we know of," Dodd added.

  "Until we are positive we've got every other Keeper and the senator shut down, we don't attempt to close anything else," I said.

  "There's something we aren't seeing," Cormac repeated.

  "What do you guys want to do?" I asked Buzz and Dodd.