by ID Johnson
“Do you need any help in the kitchen?” Ru asked, being polite. She asked almost every evening, and every time, Ivy said no, as she did again this night. At least she didn’t mind when someone else pitched in with the dishes, as Ru tried to do frequently.
Ru turned back to Cutter, who was studying her closely when her eyes first met his. He looked a little uncomfortable and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I think I’ll head upstairs for a few minutes,” she said.
“Okay. See you in a bit.” He offered her a small smile, and Ru returned it. Cutter was a mystery not likely to be solved any time soon. As she headed up the creaking stairs, she remembered how attractive she’d found him when they’d first met. She still thought he looked like a Greek god, but things changed after he’d asked her out only to tell her this fantastical tale about how they were both half-angels and she was also part demon. That had strained their relationship, and even though she now knew everything he’d said was true, she still hadn’t quite figured out how to get over the shock of finding out about her past so abruptly.
She entered her bedroom and dropped her crossbody bag on the floor. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she checked her messages and saw that her adoptive mother had called again. She’d have to call her some other time. One thing was for certain; since she’d learned her true identity, she was no longer at Liddy Brown’s beck and call.
Ru leaned backward on the bed, resting her head on her pillow. She was glad the guys had helped her move her own furniture in earlier that week. It was better than sleeping on the sofa downstairs in the parlor, which she’d done on the last few weekends. All of her furniture had been moved to storage earlier in the week, except that old couch she’d gotten off Craigslist, which she’d been sleeping on since her bedroom furniture had made the move already. The new owners could have it once the house was sold for all she cared, but she would have to go back sometime soon to get the few odds and ends she’d left behind when she’d left that morning for the last time. Most of her essentials were in the suitcase in the back of her car, next to the box that contained three years of teaching memories.
Lying in the dark, staring at a ceiling that could use a fresh coat of paint whenever Rider got around to it, Ru couldn’t help but think about everything she’d gone through in the last few months. There was a lot to contemplate, but the one thought that bothered her the most revolved around Thanatos pretending to be Kyle. His backstory had been so convincing, and he’d somehow manipulated his appearance so that Ru wouldn’t recognize him, even though she’d seen Thanatos in her dreams—which it turns out were actually visions where he was truly there, in another realm, in spirit form. Cutter had explained how Thanatos had been able to influence her emotions, and his words made sense, but that didn’t make it any easier to get over Kyle. Though she’d only gone on a couple of dates with him, she’d been sure from the very beginning that they would have a long future together. He was everything she’d been looking for in a man—funny, intelligent, witty, good-natured, and extremely attractive, though she usually didn’t dwell on outward appearance. To find out that he wasn’t what he seemed made her angry, but it also left her feeling desolate. While Kyle might not have been real, which meant his feelings for her weren’t either, she had been envisioning a life together with him, and now he was ripped away from her, gone forever like the puff of smoke Thanatos had literally disappeared in that night in the woods a few weeks ago when she’d discovered his true identity.
Since then, all of the other Keepers had been searching those same woods for the portal opening, the one Thanatos had been leading Ru to when she’d realized who he was and what his intentions were. So far, none of them had had any luck, and while Ru had a feeling she could possibly find it, due to the fact that her father was a Reaper, the other Keepers wouldn’t let her step foot in the woods for fear Thanatos and his Reapers were lurking there somewhere. If she wanted to go, she’d have to do it in her spirit form, and that would mean mastering the skill that so far had eluded her.
Thinking about her Reaper blood made Ru uncomfortable. Cutter assured her that she was one hundred percent Keeper, but Ru wasn’t convinced. She seemed to have a bond with Thanatos even before he presented himself as Kyle, and seeing him sitting in a gorgeous garden full of flowers, crying over a failed mission, had touched her somewhere deep in her soul. Thanatos was her enemy, and she knew she was charged with sending him and his cohorts back to Hell. But in moments when she was completely honest with herself, there were other emotions tied to him as well, and Ru realized this wasn’t solely because he was linked to Kyle. He may have been disguised as someone who didn’t really exist when he’d kissed her, but there was something behind the veil, a passion that intrigued her more than she would ever be willing to admit to anyone else. Was that her Reaper blood calling out to her, attempting to reunite her with her own kind, or was it something entirely different? Ru had no way of knowing, but it was obvious she couldn’t make the same mistake her mother had. Any sort of relationship with Thanatos at all was completely out of the question, particularly since he’d used his powers to hurt her in the forest. Yet, that didn’t seem to prevent him from slipping into her thoughts whenever she let down her guard.
Thankfully, he hadn’t literally slipped into her mind since the night she’d confronted him in the woods. Every night when she went to bed, she wondered if he’d show up again in her dreams, but that had yet to happen. Most of the time, she dreamt of her mother’s beautiful face staring down at her. Ru longed to find her mom, to ask her the questions that had been burning in her soul since the day she’d realized Liddy Brown was not her mother. For as long as she could remember, Ru had thought that day would never come, that she’d never find her birth mother. Now that she’d seen her picture and realized it was a possibility, she was excited, nervous, and a bit angry, if she was honest. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to find Seraphina until she mastered the skills Cutter was trying to teach her, and at this rate, that would take a thousand years. Ru didn’t have that kind of time.
He had promised they could go and visit his hometown, Los Angeles, Wyoming, as soon as Ru could slip into a spirit state. Even though they’d be going in their human form, he thought it was important that she master this skill before they left. Ru was looking forward to that as well; she had learned Seraphina’s mother lived in Los Angeles, and she was anxious to meet someone who had the same blood flowing through her veins as Ru did.
Cutter had also promised to take her to visit her father, Larkin, a Reaper who was chained deep within the bowels of Hell. There would be no traveling to other realms if she couldn’t master the dream state, however, and she knew she’d have to find her mother before she could even think about seeing her father. What she might say to him, she still had no idea. All these years, she’d been wondering about her mother, but her father rarely crossed her mind. Perhaps that was because Ru had a vague memory of her mother but absolutely none of her father. Maybe it was because, deep down inside, she knew her father was a horrible person, and she just couldn’t come to terms with ever facing him. Either way, Thanatos had put the idea in her mind that Larkin was suffering terribly, and that he did not deserve that. Ru wanted to see for herself, wanted to understand who Larkin was and why he had created her in the first place. Had he loved Seraphina, or was there something more sinister at play?
It was all a tumultuous mess, and Ru knew a difficult journey lay ahead of her. After finding her mother, she’d have to concentrate on identifying the three portals to Hell that still allowed Reapers to come through once they were banished. These Reapers were killing unmarked souls, people whose names had not yet been written in the Book of the Dead. If they weren’t stopped, the fate of humankind could be in jeopardy. Cutter believed Ru was the one destined to lead the Keepers to these portals to close them once and for all. One such portal lay in the forest near Reaper’s Hollow, the one Thanatos had attempted to take Ru to, and although it seemed like it would’ve be
en a good idea to play along a bit longer so he’d draw her closer to the location, no one blamed Ru for running away before he could do so. If she’d gotten too close, he might’ve found a way to drag her down to the pits of Hell where Cutter would’ve never found her again. The thought of languishing in Hell while Thanatos tried to convince her to join his evil forces made Ru’s stomach tighten.
A soft rapping on the door caused her to sit up. “Yeah?” she called. It opened, and Lyric stepped in, the other female Keeper who lived in the house Ru had learned was once occupied by Keepers back during the Revolutionary War era to hunt down Reapers such as the infamous Headless Horseman—who really did have a head, though it was cloaked.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Lyric asked, though she didn’t flip on the switch.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ru shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to try and collect my thoughts before dinner.”
“How’d it go today?” Lyric was tall, like Ivy and Ru, with the same platinum blonde hair, though it was currently dyed a light pink color. She rode a motorcycle and had a lot more edge to her than Ivy did, which Ru could identify with. They shared the same love of punk rock music.
“Meh,” Ru replied, not really wanting to get into it again. “I’m happy it’s over, and we can move forward now.”
Nodding, Lyric said, “Well, that’s cool because I just stumbled upon some information while I was in the other realms, and apparently Nat isn’t done with you yet. He’s going to go looking for your mom, hoping that will lure you in.”
This information made Ru sit up even straighter. “How do you know that?”
“Remember we caught Zu a few weeks ago, right before Nat tried to trick you?”
“Yeah,” Ru replied. Zu was one of Thanatos’s right-hand Reapers.
“He finally gave some information up to Gabriel.”
“You spoke with the Archangel Gabriel?” Ru still couldn’t wrap her mind around such a possibility. He was mentioned in the Bible, after all.
Shrugging, Lyric said, “I’m a direct descendant. Anyhow, we need to get on this. At least we have the information now.”
Like Cutter, whose last name was Michaels because he was a descendant of Michael, all of the Keepers were named for their lineage. Thus, Lyric’s last name was Gabriels, Ivy’s was Uriels, and Rider, who was Cutter’s cousin, shared his last name. Ru had recently found out that her parents had combined their last names so that her true name was Rune Seraphina Raphaels Ronobes, but she’d known herself as Ruin Roberts, Ru for short, her entire life, and that’s how she still identified herself. That’s also what all of her legal paperwork said, including her birth certificate, which Liddy Brown had managed to procure when she’d come to live with her family at the age of three.
“Do you think things have changed now that Thanatos’s plan to get me fell through?”
The light from the hallway cast the half-angel in a bit of an eerie light as she responded. “No, I don’t think so. This was his backup plan, and now that you’ve foiled plan A, I think he’s already moved on to this. He doesn’t seem to be in Reaper’s Hollow anymore. We had quite a few unmarked souls claimed before he pulled this Kyle business, and since then, the activity has moved on. We’ll see where he resurfaces if he and Raven and the rest of his mess of an army start racking up the numbers again, but in the meantime, we need to get you in shape so we can start searching for your mother ourselves.”
Ru nodded, mention of Kyle’s name pulling at her heartstrings. Lyric surmised that the person pretending to be Jess, Kyle’s sister, was actually Raven, a Reaper who’d been working with Thanatos for many years, and one Rider had almost captured just before the whole ruse.
“Dinner’s ready!”
Rider’s booming voice echoed down the hallway, and Ru dragged herself up off of the bed, hoping they could all have a nice meal together and not talk about any Keeper business. She needed something to take her mind off of the complex web her life had become, especially since she knew Cutter would be pushing her hard later. She had to master these skills quickly, or else she was going to be letting a lot of people down, and her mother could be in danger. The thought of losing her before they’d even met wasn’t something Ru would allow herself to entertain.
Ruin’s Promise Chapter Two
“Concentrate, Ru. I know you can do this.” Cutter’s voice cut through the darkness, but Ru wasn’t as convinced as he was. After weeks of trying in every venue and under every sort of conditions they could come up with, Ru was still struggling to slip out of her human form. Cutter had described it to her a million different ways, but she just wasn’t getting it. At all. At least with the light, she could now conjure it to some degree whenever she wanted to, though it never seemed to grow to the extent it had when she’d knocked Thanatos into the air in the forest when they’d last met. But the spirit realms still evaded her.
They were sitting in a dark room, one Rider had constructed for this purpose. The floor was padded, and all of the walls were surrounded with black fabric, as was the ceiling. She couldn’t even see her hand three inches in front of her face. Cutter had thought it might help if she was already close to the blackness slipping into one’s spirit state first created, but so far this hadn’t helped either, and she felt a little bad that Rider had gone to so much trouble to make this place for her when it wasn’t doing her any good.
Cutter sat next to her on the floor; he may as well have been in another room. She couldn’t see him, and his directions weren’t doing her any good. “Imagine yourself floating away, leaving your body, traveling into the blackness.” He’d said those words, and variations thereof, dozens of times, and still she had no luck. In frustration she opened her eyes and cradled her head in her hands.
“Don’t give up, Ru. You’ll get it.”
“Ha, that’s easy for you to say,” Ru snapped back. Not being able to see his face to tell if he was offended was a plus, but she still felt bad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark at you. This is just so… frustrating!”
“I know. I mean, I can imagine. The rest of us learned to do this when we were so young, it just came second nature. I can’t imagine having to learn it now.”
“Must’ve been nice,” Ru muttered. Cutter and the other Keepers were raised in a small community where everyone knew about Keepers and Reapers. They were brought up understanding their purpose and learning to hone their skills so that they could take out the evils of the world whenever called upon to do so. Ru had missed out on all of that when her mother had left her, and it turns out, placed some sort of a cloaking spell on her so that none of the other Keepers or Reapers would be able to find her. Cutter’s superiors had finally gotten past all that through years of searching, and he and his team had been assigned to acquire her, which sounded very inhuman to Ru, but then, they were all only half-human anyway, and most of the people Cutter answered to weren’t humans at all….
“Ru,” Cutter said reaching through the darkness to place his hand on her knee. As usual, there was an exchange of electricity, which Ru had initially taken as attraction, but now that she knew they were both Keepers of the Light, she realized it was actually electricity. “Think back to how you felt when you were in the woods and you had to call upon your powers to save you from Nat. How did you feel then?”
“I felt terrified,” she admitted. “I felt… angry, like I wanted to fight back.”
“Okay, now how do you feel when you are trying to slip into your spirit form?”
“I feel… frustrated,” she admitted once again. “And angry.”
“Why does it make you angry?”
“Because I can’t do it.” She thought that was obvious enough.
“Is that the only reason you’re angry?” he asked.
“Yes.” Why else would she be angry? But then, on second thought, she realized it wasn’t the only reason. “No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m also angry… because… it’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair that I didn’t get to learn this when I was a little girl, like all of you got to learn it when you were young.”
“Good. What else?”
Ru could feel the fever within her beginning to rise. “All of you got to grow up with your parents, knowing who you were, what your own damn names were. I didn’t get any of that.”
“Right. Because?”
“Because my mom left me. She abandoned me. And the person she left me with was—is—a horrible mother who never loved me.” If Ru had ever admitted any of this to anyone, she couldn’t remember doing so.
“And that makes you angry?” Cutter asked, pushing her harder.
“Of course it does! I didn’t deserve that, any of it. It wasn’t my fault I broke things. Even if I didn’t have this power coursing through my body, I still was just a little girl. And… and… I deserved to be loved! She never loved me. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure anyone ever has.” Her anger turned to sadness for a moment, which made her even more irritated. “Now, here I am, the Keeper you’ve been looking for for so long, and I can’t even make this shit work!”
“Okay, that’s good, Ru. You’re getting all of this off of your chest. You have every right to be angry and upset. What else are you feeling?”
She had to consider his question for a moment. Besides the frustration and anguish, there was another emotion welling up inside her. It took her a moment to admit it. “Fear,” she finally said in just a whisper.
Cutter must’ve moved even closer to her, because she felt his breath on her cheek. “Fear of what, Ru? What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid… if I slip out of my body I’ll never get back in.” It was true, even though he promised her he’d be right beside her and would get her back.