Dutch.
And all of him swallowed all of me.
Memories rushed by, Dutch tinged with gold flecks of love and light as he stood in the middle of a room and grew frustrated with me and something I had said or done. And I knew he was frustrated with me because he pressed his fingers to his eyes in a way that let me know he wanted me to stop what I was doing but would not speak the words, because a tiny part of him never wanted me to ever stop what I was doing no matter how much it annoyed him. And so he said nothing, he simply pressed his gorgeous fingers to his eyes and waited.
* * *
My eyes filled with tears and I sob-smiled as Dutch filled me, happy to know I could never rid myself of him no matter how hard I tried but also grief-stricken to know I would spend the rest of my days missing him.
“Juma?”
Kash stood next to me—so close I could feel both the warmth of his body and the chill of his Keeper-ness, that eerie sensation I picked up from every one of his kind but Dutch.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “Can you speak? Does anything hurt?”
I turned my tear-filled eyes to meet his. Kash Kalish, the Keeper too gentle to Keep and so instead he worked the background details of The Gate, especially those of Dutch’s life, loving Dutch the way a father should love a son, without expectation or guile. Whose unwavering devotion led to me. Or his following of me for those many months Dutch and I were apart.
I’d sensed Kash immediately all those nights ago in some back alley of a Mumbai slum, his chill reaching me long before he did, but his countenance, the gentleness he exuded suggested I leave him be, that he meant me no harm. And so I went about my business, the business of death and revenge and all things bloody, and killed the other Keeper, the one tracking my fellow Poocha. I ripped that monster limb from limb and eviscerated him under the light of a full moon, and all the while Kash watched, never once stepping from the shadows to stop my attack.
“You watched me for months,” I finally said without acknowledging his questions at all. “And never once tried to stop me.”
I could tell he wasn’t expecting those words to tumble from my mouth, because he stepped back a little as if to give himself some space to look me over, study me up and down, and discern in those seconds whether my brain was functioning as it should. When his eyes reached mine, I held his gaze and waited, and I suppose somewhere in that pause, the silence between us, he decided I was all there because he opened his mouth and engaged me in my first conversation since crossing back to life number seven.
“It was never my assignment to stop you,” he said. “Only to make sure you were safe.”
I let his words sink in, then almost-laughed low.
“Dutch. That screams Dutch.”
The simple act of speaking his name aloud, hearing my voice form around the syllable hurt my heart, but it also felt good. I needed to say his name and I needed to say it to someone who loved him as hard and as fierce as I did.
Kash laughed, and the sound filled the room like beautiful music. I let it seep into my bones and understood how one could get lost in the sound of another’s happiness. I wanted to crawl into the world of Kash’s laughter and live there forever, enveloped in such joy, safe from the fuckery of this game of lives.
“He was quite definite in his instruction that I was not to stop you from doing anything, my only job was to keep you safe,” Kash said. His laughter stopped short and turned into a grimace as he held his side. I saw it all and he saw me see it all, but he waved me off as if it were nothing and continued, “After following you for a short time, I wondered just how much of you Dutch understood.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” the Keeper said, and I reveled in his words and his memories and every ounce of his love for the man I loved. “Ever since he was young and full of laughter. And then when he burned with the memory of a girl named Kajal. I watched the darkness overtake him, followed by the death and women and sex. He used it like a salve to somehow protect himself from what? Feeling vulnerable? Sadness? Living?”
Kash looked out the window and seemed lost for a moment, and I wondered what memory of Dutch he recalled, I wanted to hear it, I wanted him to share it with me but I knew it was his to hold tight to and keep to himself, so I remained quiet and waited for him to return.
“And then I saw you and I watched you in action, over and over again because I couldn’t help myself. You were this murderous Valkyrie from another realm, and I knew you would save him. I knew you were the woman I’d been waiting for, the one who would teach him to love himself again, the one who would love him, and when all was said and done, protect him. And best of all, you needed nothing or no one to protect you, so then I got to sit back and watch you in action, and my dear, you are something else.”
Kash smiled, and this time I had a decent hunch which memories he was getting lost in, those full of blood and gore and dead Keepers.
“I knew you were watching me.” My voice pulled him from his reverie. “I didn’t know why and I never really thought too hard on it, but after a while, I would seek you out in the dark corners, expecting you to play witness to my deeds.”
My voice trailed off as I wondered if during all those killings, all that blood, I knew Kash was somehow an extension of Dutch.
“I think deep down inside you knew,” he said, as if reading my mind. I smiled and twined our fingers.
“Maybe.” Then without rhyme or reason or any sort of warning, I sobbed, and it was loud and long and all of it sounded like a cry for Dutch.
“And maybe that is why I sneaked in here without anyone knowing,” Kash continued as I held his hand and cried. “Because even though everyone out there thinks you need some time to properly heal and whatnot, I know better. I know you can leave now and save him one more time.”
I heard Kash’s words as he near-whispered them while I sobbed and gulped air and swallowed lifetimes of missing Dutch, I just did not immediately put them together in any sort of sensical way. They banged against each other and crossed my brain in staccato format: singular, individual, on their own rather than a most significant phrase. Such that perhaps I heard one him save time more or him more save time one or time more save one him.
Until I didn’t.
“What did you just say?” I stood straight and wiped my eyes as I glanced around the room for Simone because, even though I still was not quite sure of what Kash had uttered, somewhere deep inside me I knew, and that deep place was already getting ready to do what it had to do—and step one was to find Simone.
Kash reached up and over his shoulder, grimacing as he pulled my machete from the depths of his sweater and placed her in my hands. “I said you need to get out of here and go find him before they kill him.”
I wanted to cry and scream and holler and whoop and let the world know Dutch was alive. That dark and dangerous soul with brown skin like a warm summer night and a dirty mouth like the nastiest sin ever and a touch so feather-light and full of heat, that man who lit me up in places I had not even known existed, who knew my darkest selves and loved them unconditionally—my sweetness—my love did not perish on that battlefield of gore and death. But I did none of that, because I knew Dutch alive and in the hands of his father and sister was a fate worse than death. I knew exactly where they had him—Kowdiar Palace—and thanks to Veda and her need to share with me every twisted horrific detail of that table and that room, I knew exactly what they were doing to him.
I shuddered aloud—choked, really—as the air became trapped in my lungs and throat, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Juma?” Kash stepped away from me—still holding his side, looking rather pale—and spoke, and gone were the sweet demeanor and fatherly disposition, replaced by a stern, steady gaze that suggested shit was about to get real. “There’s no time to waste. Your parents are safe, but he is not. And I need you to go get him. Now. Before all that’s left of him is a carved-up, bloody mess.”
My parents.
Amidst all that had happened—my childhood home in ruins, the Black Copse, fighting Veda, watching Khan move in for the kill, that last shared moment with Dutch—I forgot about Rufus and Mimi and the fact I had raced into that house because of them, I’d dragged Dutch down to Atlanta because of my ma and da. My desperate love for the people who brought me into this world damn near destroyed the man I loved.
“Don’t do that, Juma,” Kash said, and pulled me out of my head.
“Don’t do what? I don’t know what to do, Kash.” I untwined our fingers and shrugged my shoulders. “I woke up alone, on a cold bed of stone, in a bare room devoid of all life, thinking Dutch had died. I pulled myself back into this life despite the fact I believed my reason for living perished at the hands of his father in Atlanta. I crossed this room on feet that could barely stand. For him. To make good on every promise I ever made him, and now you’re telling me he’s not dead. And neither are my parents. And you keep holding your side in a way that has me worried.”
Kash tsk-tsked my concern under his breath.
“So yeah, I’ma need a second to digest alla that,” I let my southern show out as I held a finger in the air and waved it around a bit, trying to wrap my head around my new reality, the who-what-where-whys of everything I’d thought was true but, in fact, was not, because all of that was wrong and what was right was the opposite of what I knew and all of it ran around in circles like a dog chasing its tail in endless inanity, pointless and irrelevant and yet very very real.
“There is no second to spare, my dear.” Kash left my side and walked toward the far end of the room. He opened a door I had not even noticed, because it was painted as white as everything else in the room and faded into the background.
God, this room was fucking annoying, I thought to myself as I watched Kash approach me with a holster for Simone, a jacket, and my boots. As if he had known we would have this moment together alone in the safe house and time would be of the essence, both for Dutch and for me.
“You don’t even know if he’s still alive,” I whispered while I adjusted the holster around my shoulder, as if the lower my voice, the less likely the truth of my worries.
“Oh, I know he’s still alive,” Kash replied. “Khan is going to want to celebrate and deliberate and elongate Dutch’s end. It’s only been two days. He’s going to need at least a week.”
I shuddered at the thought of Dutch on that table alone, trapped and cut up like an animal. Whatever hesitation might have lingered on the periphery of my words and feelings metamorphosed into a keen desire to strap Khan to that table and do unto him what he had done unto my love. I holstered Simone, and with that picture in my head, tied up my boots and slipped into the jacket Kash held out for me.
“What about my folks?” I asked. A sudden urge to lay my eyeballs on them flooded my being. “I need to see them, touch them.”
Kash ignored my question as he worked the locks of the window, pushing it open to allow a cool breeze into the room that chilled the air.
“Rufus and Mimi are fine. Fast asleep in their beds, unscratched. I knew they were in danger, staying in that house after Veda attacked you in the backyard, and I got them out of there just in time,” Kash explained. “But Dutch, he is another story altogether—so go, my dear, now, while it is dark and there is no one here to suggest otherwise.”
“Who would stop me?” I asked. “And what is wrong with you? Why do you keep holding your side like that?”
“Avery, Frist, the other Keepers who love Dutch and would want to plan and plot and cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s because that is what we do as Keepers, we always have a plan and we do our best to make it foolproof and damn near perfect.” Kash’s voice was urgent as he answered the questions he wanted to answer and ignored those he did not. “But now is not the time for such nonsense. Now is the time for action, quick and dark and deadly. Now is the time for you, Juma, to bring the pain and make it hurt like a motherfucker.”
CHAPTER FOUR: DUTCH
I contemplated the two women standing above me as the bile rose in my throat and what remained of my skin pricked with danger, and I reached the following conclusion: Nothing good could come of the unholy union of Shema Mathew and Rani Rao. The former so ruthless, she would cut her child’s throat to save herself, the latter so lethal, few dared cross her. As a unit they gave Khan and Veda a run for their money in the contest for Most Fucked-Up Duo.
Shema brought her hands to her sides and I breathed easier, but I never took my eyes off her.
“You need me to work those wounds,” she began, her voice a desperate whisper as her eyes flashed to the door.
“Fuck you, Shema,” I replied, my voice raised because I didn’t give two shits about her or whatever she feared. I had been through hell and back, ten times over, thanks to Shema and Khan Mathew. Nothing scared me anymore.
“And keep your goddamned hands to yourself,” I said as I shifted against the leather straps, their magic still holding me hostage.
“At least let me release your bonds,” Shema replied, then watched me engage in a battle both she and I knew to be fruitless.
“Dutch.” Rani stepped into my line of vision, her beautiful face twisted into a sneer I knew all too well. “For once in your goddamned life, stop being such a fucking baby and let Shema help you. It’s the only way you’re escaping this place alive. And it’s the only way you’re getting a shot at killing either of us for whatever wrongs your poor conflicted brutalized soul has suffered at either of our hands—and trust me, we are so bent out of shape about your feelings, you fucking pussy. Let her help you. It’s the only way any of that will ever happen.”
I fucking hated that cunt.
Rani stepped away from me and smirked.
She hated me just as much.
“Or sit here and stew in your righteous indignation. Wait for that motherfucker you call a father to come back here, unroll those knives, and get back to work. Rage against your sister and the Black Copse and your pathetic lot in life. And then die. Because unless you allow us—and by ‘us,’ I mean myself, the woman who takes great pleasure in fucking you up, and Shema, the woman who regrets the very day she birthed you—to help you, that is going to be your very certain fate. Next time Khan walks back in here, those limbs of yours are coming off, and then your head, and then it’s bye-bye Dutch.”
I glared at Rani as a new rage flooded my being, one I had never before contemplated because I had never before considered being on the receiving end of this brand of fuckery. I expected Khan and Veda’s antics—the pain, the drawn-out torture, the perverted theatrics—what I never once imagined was this crap.
The Shema and Rani Show.
Until the day I ended his life with a few well-placed stabs of my blade, Rani was James’ main bitch, his go-to killer. They were thick as thieves, had been since I could recall. And they enjoyed nothing more than making my life a goddamned living hell. It was where they excelled as Keepers, not in Keeping but in keeping me black and blue and internally bleeding on a regular basis.
Rani jumping ship and climbing aboard Shema’s tugboat did not happen in this game of lives.
Then there was Shema, that fucked-up woman I once upon a time called a mother. When had she stopped cosigning all Khan’s bullshit? Because he might have been the enforcer of all kinds of deceit and deception, but she was the brains of the enterprise. Shema drafted the blueprint for his madness. Shema knew from day one what went on in this room when Khan strapped me to the table, unrolled his special set of knives, and closed the dining room doors. For all I knew, she was the one who’d taught him to cut and slice and dice without killing on the spot.
And now she wanted to help me?
Me?
The child she despised and long ago abandoned to a cadre of psychopaths? The dark fuck she helped turn into someone who could not bear being touched? The cold soul who would rather die than let her anywhere near them.
Fuck that shit.
And fuck
her.
“Keep your hands off me, Shema.” I repeated my earlier demand, and to my surprise, she listened. The woman who paid little attention to me or anything I had to say, who rarely looked my way and considered me little more than an irritant, that woman seemed to soften around the edges as my words hit her, sharp rejections of the dim vestiges of maternal instinct she must have held on to should the day come she needed to act like someone’s mother.
“Holy fuck, Shema,” Rani said under her breath, her voice tinged with something I swore sounded a little like fear. “Just leave him and let’s go. You cannot save those who don’t want to save themselves.”
Shema glanced Rani’s way, returned her gaze to me, then turned back to Rani, as if waging an internal battle, one she seemed incapable of winning.
“I cannot, Rani. When everyone’s cards are on the table, the fact remains I am his mother, and all this madness—this game Khan is playing with everyone’s lives—all of it has gone too far.” Shema inched closer to the table as she spoke.
“Fine, you’re his mother, that I understand, but he is a goddamned fool and hardly worthy of the risk you’re taking right now with your life and mine. Look at him,” Rani growled, and they both looked down at me, strapped to that table, parts of me skinned and open, other parts healing due to whatever magic thrummed in Shema’s blood, all of me fucked. “He has his faculties thanks to you. You alleviated his pain and began healing his wounds. He is able to think clearly and make a rational decision and guess what? This fucking genius chose death. You can do nothing more for him, so please, let’s go before Khan and Veda return for the curtain call in this charade of horrors.”
The way Rani said “charade”—sher-ahhhhd—made it sound so beautiful when everything around us—the walls the floors the ceiling—was splattered in gore and blood and death. They stood on either side of the dining table, looking down on me, one desperate, the other tormented, and all of it, the entire scene, so fucking bizarre. From my supine position, I watched as Rani reached across the space between them and wrapped her fingers around Shema’s wrists, her grip gentle but firm. Shema moved slightly to place her palms flat on my stomach, and Rani moved with her, the women in silent sync with one another, heedless of my demands of no touching, and suddenly I couldn’t help but wonder: Lovers or friends?
Death Page 2