FOREVER The Constantines' Secret: A Covenant Keeper Novel

by S. R. Karfelt

  Further down the path William’s voice shook. “Don’t you move a step, Mister.”

  Beth knew without looking that the rifle was now pointed at the doppelganger. She clutched her wailing daughter closer, mentally willing William to shoot now.

  BLOODY END—HALLOWMAS

  A STREAK OF white shot across the path toward William, like a silent deadly missile. Beth opened her mouth to warn the boy, to tell him to shoot while he still could, but Kahtar’s doppelganger appeared beside him that fast, already reaching for the weapon. A gunshot sounded, ricocheting through the woods. Beth heard it the same time something knocked her off the stump and punched her to the ground.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  I’ve been shot.

  Flat on her back with bare legs still hooked over the stump she struggled to take a breath and wondered why it didn’t hurt.

  “Dear Lord!” Thomas knelt beside her, somehow now holding Dianta in his arms. “Mrs. Costas!”

  Air seeped slowly into Beth’s lungs and brutal pain shot through her body. Her eyes watered and she blinked them, trying to focus. “Thomas! Help Will!” It took all of her air and she struggled to take another breath.

  Thomas pressed a hand against her shoulder and it felt like gravity had nailed her to the earth.

  From the path a voice came, familiar, yet nothing like Kahtar’s. “I need her.”

  Thomas jumped to his feet and whirled around. Kahtar’s doppelganger moved closer, towering over Thomas, his summery robes covered in Will’s blood. Beth’s heart shrank in fear for him. Thomas, who moments ago had made disparaging remarks about Dianta, now held her protectively. Dianta reached a grasping hand toward what she thought was her father.

  “Dah.”

  “No,” Beth gasped.

  Thomas grabbed the little hand and held her against his chest, pressing the hood of her coat over Dianta’s face like Beth had done.

  He senses it. The darkness of that heart oozed over them. Beth fought to keep his touch out of their hearts, brushing Dianta’s with her own.

  “Will?” Thomas said, looking in his son’s direction. Whatever he saw or sensed filled his heart with a wave of despair so crippling that Beth felt it in his seeker heart, a pain so large it crowded out even the darkness of the doppelganger’s. With Dianta still in his arms, Thomas rushed toward William, his boots leaving a wake of dead leaves and brush.

  Not sparing Thomas even a glance, Kahtar’s lookalike bent over Beth and with one massive hand hauled her to stand. Pain slammed through her, but as she found her footing her breathing became easier and her head cleared.

  “I need her,” he said again, steely eyes glaring into hers. Still holding tightly to her arm he yanked Beth closer. Something in his cruel eyes looked desperate. Behind him Beth saw the dark outline of Thomas with Dianta against his shoulder and Will’s shotgun in his hands. She quickly returned her eyes to the steely ones before her, hoping this being of darkness hadn’t felt the sudden hope flair in her heart.

  “Who?” she said, hoping the sound of her voice would cover the faint clack of the rifle. “Who do you need? What do you want?”

  Whatever old type of rifle Thomas fired sparked in the dark trees. Beth kept her eyes on the steely ones during that nanosecond, waiting, bracing herself, knowing the bullet entering his back would slam the giant man against her and take them both to the ground. Something flickered in the depths of his familiar eyes that reminded her of Kahtar’s when disappointed, and she remembered that warriors could scan to sense both a gun and approaching bullet. He never even flinched. The same healing light Beth had seen erase scratches from his feet glowed beneath his lightweight robe.

  Something lifted Beth off her feet and threw her into the trees. Alone.

  BETH WOKE CERTAIN that she lay at the bottom of Lake Erie. All that dark water seemed to be pressing her deeper into the mucky bottom while suffocating liquid filled her lungs. She knew the baby in her belly was gone now. It had to have been ruined. This bullet had hit below her breasts and taken the baby and all feeling with it. The only thing left was pressure.

  Kahtar’s rough hand slapped Beth’s cheek and she realized she still lay on the ground in the woods behind the cabin with only gravity weighing her down, drowning in her own blood.

  With effort she sucked in a deep, bloody breath of air.

  “Rouse.” The hand slapped again. Not Kahtar’s. Beth tried to move her head away from that hand. It surprised her when her neck obeyed and turned for her. She opened her eyes. A filthy heart pressed against hers as Kahtar’s doppelganger again slapped her cheek, hard. “I need my anchor,” he said.

  “I need my daughter.” Beth’s words came out with a hissing gurgle that slipped from a puncture in her chest. The bright slice of moon hung above the trees now and she looked away from the nightmare kneeling over her to find another right beside her. The remains of Thomas lay almost against her arm, his body facing one way but his head twisted wrong so that he stared at her with dead, empty eyes. He had beautiful, trustworthy eyes. In the dim light she could see the soft brown of them. Pain slid through her heart.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Beth pleaded. She couldn’t sense Dianta’s heart through the dirty touch surrounding her own, huffing against her heart like airborne puffs of grease, and fear seemed to weigh her deeper into the ground.

  “Where is my anchor?” asked the Doppelganger with another slap.

  “I don’t know!” Beth had no idea what he wanted and she didn’t care. “Where’s my baby?”

  Kahtar’s eyes came closer, staring into her own. The dark heart pressed against hers, attempting to surround it.

  “Stop it!” Beth screamed. “Kahtar! Old Guard!”

  The face moved away for a moment, to raise up and look at the surrounding trees before returning. He smiled. “You anchor him, don’t you?” Something in his eyes shifted, taking on a familiar look. A look she welcomed when in Kahtar’s eyes now caused bile to backwash from her gut into her throat. The face above hers tilted curiously, the mouth smiling. “Anchor me like you do him.” He shoved a giant knee between Beth’s thighs, his body weight crushing them, stapling them to the ground with pain, and his heart approached intimately, smoking hers.

  Fear entered Beth’s heart, ugly and mean, and darkness from shadows she’d been protected from all her life slithered toward her, reaching long fingers into places that should never be touched, not like this. Beth’s mind shut down and instinct made her try to scream. She tasted blood in her mouth as the sound spewed from her throat in a burst of wet blood, sprinkling her face.

  The scream didn’t affect the monster bearing down on her, but something familiar and good thundered through the woods to her left. Hope wove its way among strands of fear as a familiar galloping sound echoed through the ground under Beth. From out of the trees Wolves shot out, snarling and hairy, and landed on Kahtar’s lookalike. Fierce growls ripped from his throat as he bit down, his massive mouth covering half the man’s head. The force of impact toppled the doppelganger over and onto Thomas’ body.

  Wolves’ presence gave Beth the strength to shoot to her feet. She had to find Dianta and get away. Her legs seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds, and every step took effort. She searched the path for Dianta, her heart begging and desperate for the touch of her baby. A sparkle caught her eye; the horn on Dianta’s hood, reflecting in moonlight. She thumped on wooden legs and grabbed Dianta by the back of her coat. The slight bodyweight yanked on muscles around the hole in Beth’s chest and she nearly fell. She knew if she fell that she’d never be able to get up again.

  Stumbling down the path, bent half over, she ignored the canine growling and pained yelps behind her, ignored the fact that the crunching sounds were Wolves’ bones shattering beneath fists and that he would lose the battle with the cruel giant and wouldn’t walk away from it. Beth never hesitated or turned to help him, but moved faster, stumping forward on numb legs. Dianta hung limp from her arms, her bottom half bent wrong
.

  Holding Dianta close to her face Beth tried to feel her breath, tried to sense her heartbeat or the touch of her bubbly baby heart. There was nothing to feel. Beth stopped moving at the same time Wolves screamed a canine gurgle of pain. The sound tore through the forest to echo across the pond Beth now stood beside, so close to the tesseract and safety.

  But too late.

  Beth spun, already sensing that somehow the giant had moved that fast. “You did this!” The words tore from Beth’s throat like agony, and she beat back fear and pain to shout her fury. “You killed my baby! You killed her!” The words scorched her throat and whispered in bloody puffs of air out the hole in her chest like an echo. “She did nothing to you! You monster!”

  The giant wretched Dianta from Beth’s grasp as though to toss her aside.

  “No!” Beth screamed, grabbing hold of Dianta’s coat with a death grip, attempting to pull her back. “Don’t you dare! Dishonor breeds death! You can’t do this and keep your giftings! You can’t!”

  “I can,” he growled into her face, daring to be amused. But he allowed Beth to take her daughter.

  “You heal her! Dammit, you fix her, or I will rip your head off your neck and eat it!” Beth spat the words at him and saw her bloody spittle spatter his face.

  He grinned down at her. “You are a worthy anchor, despite your dirty blood.”

  “To hell with you and your filthy heart! I will kill you for this!”

  “Anchor me and I will make her live.”

  Beth looked into the face, certain she was making a deal with the devil and not even caring what he meant. “Okay. Anything. You fix her!”

  BLOODY HELL—DAY OF THE DEAD

  “WHY DID YOU bring Dianta? Francis was supposed to,” Kahtar growled as he exited the tesseract near his cabin, too annoyed to be polite. Honor Monroe couldn’t stay far enough away to suit him. After a long day, the last thing Kahtar wanted to see was this man who’d both wooed and hurt his wife. He couldn’t believe Honor had the nerve to show up any day. “And why are you standing in the middle of the driveway with my daughter? Get her inside! It’s cold out here!”

  A loud sob echoed across the driveway and Kahtar froze. The warrior stood unnaturally still in the wet grass where the driveway turned into path, holding Dianta, his head bent over her. Kahtar moved to his side in a flash and reached for her.

  Honor turned away. “Don’t! Don’t! She’s hurt badly! I’ve never healed a baby. I don’t know—I don’t know if I’m hurting her worse.”

  Scanning his baby, Kahtar bellowed hoarsely, “Old Guard!”

  They appeared, their light revealing a sight that froze his heart. Dianta looked broken like a doll, her legs bent wrong, her eyes wide and glazed. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing. In a flash of light she vanished from Honor’s arms, and a second flash took Kahtar with her.

  NOT BOTHERING TO look up and take in his surroundings, Kahtar bent low to blow breath onto Dianta’s face. Welcome Palmer’s familiar hand gripped his shoulder, and the surgery at Cobbson Clinic swam into his peripheral vision.

  “That’s it, she’s breathing. I can fix this, Kahtar. I can fix it. I promise you. It’s the same as with anyone else, only smaller, but it’s what I’m good at and it’s just going to take a while.”

  Behind him, Kahtar heard Honor’s sobs of anguished relief. “You did right, Honor,” Welcome said, “reducing the swelling in her brain came first. You did very well. You saved her life. Now, where’s Beth? She should be here.”

  For a moment Kahtar ignored him, watching his unmoving daughter’s miniscule body sprawled on the marble operating table while Nurse Hippolite cut her tiny jeans off.

  Welcome’s green eyes turned toward him. “Pray, Kahtar, and you too Honor, but I’m going to ask you two to help Dianta by leaving the room. Kahtar, you won’t help her by watching this. You can be certain she senses your heart. Your fear could hurt her more.”

  Leaving that room was the hardest thing Kahtar had ever done.

  THE DOOR SWUNG shut behind them, and the bustle of the surgery shut off, making the hallway suddenly quiet.

  “What happened to my daughter?” Kahtar grabbed a handful of Honor’s shirt and shoved him against the stone wall, only then noticing the man wore a robe over wet swim trunks.

  Shivering in his sopping clothing, Honor shook his head. “I didn’t fix her.”

  “I asked you what happened to my daughter.”

  “I don’t know! But somebody else healed her! Not just healed her! I think she was dead, Kahtar. Before I found her someone else had restarted her heart and left her there. Who on ilu’s sweet earth would have breathed life into a baby and left her with those monkeys? What kind of monster would do such a thing?”

  “Monkeys?”

  “I don’t understand! I don’t even understand how monkeys got inside your veil, let alone who would leave a helpless baby with them?” Tears soaked Honor’s face.

  Kahtar scanned directly and mercilessly into Honor’s head to see if he’d had a stroke.

  “Stop!” Honor clutched his forehead. “Listen to me! I was heading home for the night when I passed your tesseract and I knew something was wrong!” A sob tore from his trembling lips. “I felt Beth’s heart screaming for help! Chief, Beth had Dianta! She was in that veil too! If somebody did that to Dianta, what did they do to Beth? I can still feel her pain, but I couldn’t sense her in there.”

  Kahtar let go of Honor, who slid down the wall and dropped his head onto his knees, shaking.

  Not caring who sensed or saw him do it, Kahtar vanished.

  SEVEN MINUTES. IT had been at least seven minutes since they’d taken Dianta from the veil when Kahtar reappeared inside it. As soon as his feet touched the ground he scanned, pushing it far and wide. No one is here. Taking a deep breath, he blew it out. Beth wasn’t there. But she wouldn’t have left Dianta. Fear pressed against his heart, but he proceeded as he’d always done, logically.

  “Old Guard!” he bellowed. One flickered into being beside him. “Are there monkeys inside this veil?”

  It occurred to him as he asked that the increase in foxes he’d sensed lately could well have been something else. And there was the unexplained vandalism. The Old Guard shimmered brightly, and put his hand on Kahtar’s shoulder. In a burst of light several more Old Guard lit into being, their expressionless black eyes on him.

  “Monkeys and bodies.”

  No.

  Light from Old Guard lit the yard and across the slope of grass not twenty yards away Kahtar’s gaze fell on the body of a dead boy. His chest had been torn open. Duty required Kahtar study it. Seeker? In disbelief he looked at an Old Guard for confirmation. “He’s a seeker?”

  The Old Guard nodded.

  The bloodied clothes stirred a distant memory. Homespun, denim, silver buttons, early manufactured boots—1830’s or 40’s. His scan produced similar results; this man’s tissues held none of the toxins of the more modern world outside the veil, but those from the mid-nineteenth century—mercury, lead, and arsenic. A second body laid close by, its chest also caved in, but the neck broken and the head turned to face its back. Kahtar sensed the same poisons, with traces of tobacco and alcohol. A second seeker.

  Still scanning, Kahtar watched the Old Guard, wondering if they could make sense of the injuries. Each man had died from a single blow through the chest. The bodies had been mangled, but after death, as though in anger. Who would have the strength to kill like that? Kahtar doubted anyone but an Old Guard could have the strength to do it, but never in all his time had he seen an Old Guard kill with such merciless drama.

  A few feet away from the pond, several Old Guard knelt in the grass with their backs to him. Kahtar refused to look away from the seekers and see what they were looking at. He knew. Felt it. Recognized the composition, even lifeless. The heavens above seemed to fall toward the earth, landing on his shoulders with their weight. A shield dropped over his heart.

  Kahtar refused to stagge
r. It was his duty to bear and endure, and duty always came first. Long ago he’d created armor for his heart, strengthened and refined it over millennia. He would die later, and this pain would destroy him.

  Merciless, an Old Guard took his arm and moved him closer in a flash of light, forcing him to see the lifeless body of a woman, lying at an angle, almost face down.

  A heap of filthy fur lay over her legs, covered in blood, and Kahtar focused his attention on that as the weight of the universe bore against him. His feet seemed to be sinking into the grass with it. The fur whimpered. Wolves. Kahtar hadn’t recognized his own dog soaked in blood.

  “Buddy,” Kahtar whispered, the weight moving into his throat. Sprawled over the body, Wolves didn’t raise his head. From a trail into the woods a blood trail coated the vegetation for yards, stretching from the woods to the woman. The dog had crawled to lie in a pool of her blood.

  “The dog is broken,” said an Old Guard. “Shattered and left to suffer.”

  “I’ll end him,” said Kahtar, reaching to put him to rest, but Wolves growled, a fierce but fearful threat low in his throat, rippling the skin over his snout to bare bloody teeth he snapped at Kahtar’s fingers. Withdrawing quickly, Kahtar gaped at the animal. In the years he’d had this dog he’d never heard it growl.

  An Old Guard reached for Wolves and in a shimmer of brilliant light the dog vanished. Kahtar knew he’d surely never see him again, but focused on the body and refused to feel anything, not even the tortured weight scorching his throat. This ruined woman sprawled flat on her back wasn’t Beth, it was a dead body he reminded himself. Still, something hit the shield around his heart like a battering ram and the universe above seemed to echo with the sound.

  Kahtar knelt to ascertain cause of death, landing heavily. He’d done this many times. An Old Guard ran his shimmering hand over the body. The head was turned to the side and the man brushed blonde hair off it, but Kahtar still didn’t look at the face. A gunshot wound in the right shoulder wasn’t visible as more than a faint hole through the thin material of a dress, but Kahtar knew the exit wound in the back would be significant. A second gunshot had entered from the front, just below the breast line, grazing the spine. It had blown open a lung and littered both with rib fragments, tearing a hole so big that she’d surely died from blood loss.