Keeper vs. Reaper (Graveyard Guardians Book 1)

by Jennifer Malone Wright

  Janette was making all kinds of noise and it only made Jack drill her even harder. He needed release, not sexually, but to purge himself of all the shit that was going on inside of him. He felt the sweet, hot core of the woman he was inside clench against him and knew that she was going to climax.

  Without warning, as Janette began her orgasm, Lucy’s face swam before him. “Oh fuck!” he cried out in surprise.

  “Fuck yeah, oh my God, yes!” Janette pretty much screamed in response, probably thinking that he had cried out because of the sex. He felt her finally release and then she collapsed onto the tailgate beneath him.

  He didn’t get his, and that was all right. After seeing that Keepers face while fucking someone else, his equipment was deflating rapidly. Janette assumed he’d gotten off and that was all right. Now, he could just take her home.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  Sex usually worked as a temporary patch for his problems. This time, it just seemed to be making the problems worse. He’d hoped for a little taste of her soul before this all began, but now the thought of that almost repulsed him.

  “Oh, Jack.” Janette pushed her skirt back down and turned to face him. “That was awesome.”

  Jack quickly took care of the condom and then pulled up his jeans. Not wanting her to see his flaccid junk. “Hell yeah it was.”

  She licked her lips and then reached for the beer that sat on the bed of the truck and had, by some act of God, not tipped over. She took a long swig and then pulled herself up and sat on the tailgate. “I like the sound of the water.”

  “Huh?” What did she say? He had been staring up at the stars, his mind wandering to Aiden and what he was doing.

  “I said, I like the sound of the water. You know, the calming sound of a babbling brook and all that. They even have this sound on CD’s that help you sleep.”

  “Oh. I like it too, very soothing.” Was that the right answer?

  Something was nagging him and he couldn’t place it. Like he needed to be somewhere and he’d forgotten about it. While he sat listening to the babbling brook, and the babbling Janette, he remembered Aiden’s words. ‘Well, I can. I still have a job to do.’

  “Oh fuck!”

  Janette jumped a little at his sudden outburst. “What?”

  “I … I think I forgot to do something.” He lifted her off the tailgate. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to take you home.”

  She sighed. “And why am I not surprised?”

  He slammed the tailgate shut. “That’s not what this is about. I have a serious issue I need to take care of.”

  She offered him a fake smile. “I’m sure you do.” With that, she adjusted her top and disappeared around the side of the truck, on her way to the passenger door.

  Jack rolled his eyes and slipped behind the wheel.

  Dropping off Janette was uneventful, thank God, because he wasn’t sure he could handle another clingy chick right now. Once he had her safely deposited at her house he didn’t go back to his place like he should have.

  He drove slowly back across town and turned off on cemetery road. His dashboard clock read that it was 2:35 AM, and the sun rose at about 5:00 AM, so there was still a couple of hours until the sun rose.

  He parked his truck discreetly down the road from the cemetery, but in a spot where he could see most of the expanse of headstones and also Lucy’s house. He turned off all the lights on the truck and killed the engine. Leaving him in complete darkness.

  “Lucy!” Ethan had yanked the door open to find her bleeding and traumatized on his front porch. “What the hell happened?” He quickly put his arm around her and guided her inside. “Oh my God, you’re neck!” He ran out of the room and was back in an instant with a wet towel, a dry towel and a bunch of stuff like peroxide and creams. “Now, tell me what happened.”

  “I … the Reapers,” she breathed out slowly, knowing that she couldn’t speak clearly because of her rapid breaths. After a couple of long inhales and exhales she tried again. “I was talking to Dad while I was out on patrol and I was attacked by Reapers.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I don’t get it Luce, you fight Reapers all the time.”

  “No, Ethan. They tried to kill me. Like … slit my throat kill me.”

  “Well, I can see that,” he retorted in a ‘duh’ type tone. “I mean why are they trying to kill you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, ouch!” She recoiled when he touched the wet towel to her neck wound. “Fuck, be careful.”

  “I have to clean it, Lucy. Just lay down on the couch. It will be easier to get to it that way. Now what were you saying?”

  “I was saying that the reason why they want to kill me is because of that Chosen One bullshit. They think I’m going to be the one to bring down the Reapers, so they want me dead.”

  Ethan held the compress to Lucy’s neck and leaned back a little, his blue eyes iced over. “This isn’t good. If they are going to attempt a murder in a small town like this than they probably won’t stop until they get the job done.”

  Lucy closed her eyes, trying to block out the fact that her neck hurt like a bitch. “I’m not used to this sort of thing. We’ve been raised to kill if we have to, but mostly we just have fights and run the Reapers off. Neither side wants to worry about disposing of bodies and all the shit that goes along with committing crimes like that.”

  “Well, the Reapers know that you could be the end of their race. They don’t want that so apparently having to do a little clean up this time isn’t going to bother them.” He dabbed the cut on her neck with some peroxide on a cotton ball, dried it and then put some triple antibiotic cream on it. “We can’t really put a bandage on this right now, so you’re going to have to stay away from town until this heals. There is no way to cover it up.”

  Her lids fluttered up and she looked into Ethan’s eyes. She was still stuck on the attack, not her wound. “You want to know the weirdest part of all of this? One of them saved me. Right when the one had his knife at my throat the other jumped in out of nowhere and grabbed him off of me. That was when I ran away. If it wasn’t for that guy, I’d be dead on the graveyard trail right now.”

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Why would he save you if they were here to kill you? That is really strange.”

  “I know. I can’t figure it out either. Liv and I had an altercation with him earlier today in the bakery. He seemed surprised to see us in there, and I actually didn’t get any bad vibes from him then.”

  “I’ve never heard of a Reaper actually saving a Keeper from another Reaper though.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what happened.”

  Ethan rubbed his forehead and she noticed that he was wearing only plaid cotton pajama pants. This was another of those moments when she wished that she could be more than friends with him. His upper body was totally ripped. Like, panty-dropping ripped. He had several tattoos covering his arms and back, which only added to his hotness, in her opinion.

  “I’m going to get you something to drink.” Ethan stood up and left the room, obviously still tired from being woken up in the middle of the night.

  A few minutes later he came back holding a steaming mug in one hand. “Here, I made you some hot chocolate.”

  “Thank you.” She accepted the mug and took an experimental sip. The warm liquid tasted like someone was trying to shove bitter bakers chocolate down her throat.

  She grimaced. “I wish you had coffee.”

  Ethan was currently pacing the floor in front of where she sat on the couch. “You know I don’t drink that crap.”

  “It’s not crap and you should keep some here for me.”

  He stopped and stared at her for a second. “You never come over here, why would I keep any special drinks around for you.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Sorry.” As much as she loved Ethan, maybe their friendship was sort of one sided. She didn’t come over to his house, he always came to hers. He was always around, so she
had never thought of it that way. But now that she had a moment to really consider the situation, she realized that he was the instigator for everything that they did together. She never just stopped by for coffee or asked him if he wanted to go do something.

  I am the worst best friend ever.

  “Lucy. Hey, Lucy.” She came back from her thoughts to find Ethan waving his hands in front of her face.

  “What?”

  “Are you all right? You spaced off there for a minute.”

  She took another long drink of the nasty hot chocolate. “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  Ethan nodded and turned toward his bedroom. “I need to get dressed. I’m going to go back to the house with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You have classes tomorrow.”

  “I can take a day off. I am so far ahead in most of my classes it won’t hurt anything if I miss a day.”

  “Ethan…”

  “No.” He turned back to face her, his expression hardening into that don’t fuck with me look he got when his mind was made up. “I’m going back to the house with you, so stop trying to argue with me.”

  “Fine.” She nodded. She didn’t know why she was trying to argue about it in the first place. Those fucking Reapers had tried to kill her, so of course she didn’t want to be there by herself.

  Once Ethan had thrown on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt with a black hoodie, he came out of his room and grabbed the keys to his jeep off the table. “Let’s go. We can’t leave the souls unattended for too long while we know there are Reapers running around out there.”

  Yeah, especially with her dad out there. She had to talk to him soon and let him know she was okay after the attack. He was probably pretty worried. “All right. But I have to drive my car home. I can follow you there.”

  They both went out to their cars with Lucy feeling ten times calmer than she had been when she’d first pulled up into the driveway. She drove home with Ethan following close behind. When she finally pulled into her driveway, she didn’t see the black truck hidden far down the road in the darkness. What she did see was five cars parked in the dirt lot right in front of her front lawn.

  “Son of a bitch,” she whispered as she turned the key, shutting down the engine. Then she pushed her car door open and stalked over to Ethan just as he was parking the jeep. “I can’t believe you called them.”

  He slammed the door shut. “Seriously, you’re surprised? What else was I supposed to do? Someone tried to cut your throat, Lucy! They tried to murder you!”

  “Ethan, I want to prove I can do this on my own. Dad left the graveyard to me. He’s only been gone for like a minute and now you’ve already called in the cavalry because I’m incompetent. It looks like I can’t do my job.”

  Ethan’s icy blue eyes bore into her. “It’s not every day that this happens. As a matter of fact this has never happened in the Summer Hollow cemetery as far as I know. Not since I’ve been patrolling with your family.”

  “I don’t care,” she huffed and turned away, heading toward the house.

  “Lucy. I just want you to be safe and I don’t care if you are pissed at me about that.”

  “I’m not pissed,” she called back. “I’ll deal. Let’s go in and get this over with.”

  The last thing she wanted to do at the moment was go in and fight with her brothers and sisters. They were going to be gunning for blood when they found out about this, and she was going to be lucky if she could go to the bathroom alone until the Reaper situation was taken care of.

  She may be a Keeper, able to hold her own … well, usually able to hold her own, but she was still the baby of an entire family of Keepers and an Estmond to boot. If you messed with one then you got the entire clan up your ass.

  Just about every light in the house was on and she could already hear the commotion of voices and arguing coming from within. This was really going to suck. A bath and a carton of mint chocolate chip sounded more the way she wanted the rest of the night to go. She looked up at the sky. Well … the rest of the morning anyway. It was still dark but the horizon was just starting to show the dim light of the approaching dawn. Normally, Lucy would just be heading in to hit the sack after a long night of patrol.

  With a sigh, she mounted the stairs of the front porch and headed into what she could already hear was chaos.

  She pushed open the door and found all of her brothers and sisters were there except for Greg, of course, but knowing her family, they had already told Greg what had happened and he was probably speeding toward Summer Hollow, giving his piece of shit car a reason to finally conk out on him.

  Everyone was talking, no … yelling, over each other. She couldn’t even gage what exactly the argument was about. Bits and pieces filtered through all the voices and she caught ‘can’t be alone,’ ‘fucking Reapers,’ and ‘no more patrolling.’

  “Hey!” she yelled, slamming the door behind her after making sure Ethan had crossed the threshold and wasn’t in the way. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Every single one of her siblings silenced and swiveled their heads in her direction. She couldn’t help but notice the look of utter relief that took over the expression of each and every one of them. God, how she loved them.

  “Come here,” Hannah ordered, but was first to stride across the living room to meet her. First, she grabbed Lucy and wrapped her arms around her, hugging her as if she hadn’t seen her in years.

  Returning the affection, she hung onto her sister just as hard.

  When Hannah finally released her she stepped back and then reached out, lifting Lucy’s chin with her fingertips. “Let me see this.”

  “It’s fine, Ethan took care of me.”

  “Good, just make sure that you keep it clean.”

  “I know how to take care of cuts and scrapes, Hannah.”

  Damn, sometimes being the baby of a family of seven kids was the worst shit in the world. No one had any confidence in her, even when it came to the smallest things.

  “I know you can,” Hannah apologized, “I’m sorry.”

  Even though she knew Hannah was just trying to help, the feeling of failure she’d had since the attack just got worse. Ethan stood silently at her side, ever her quiet bodyguard. Knowing he was there beside her was oddly comforting, even though he was the one who called in the Estmond clan.

  Let’s just get this over with so I can get some freaking sleep.

  She looked past Hannah and ran her eyes over each of her siblings. “So, what are we arguing about?”

  Yeah, let’s just put it all on the table right now.

  Everyone suddenly erupted into the chaotic yelling and hand waving that they had been in the middle of when she first opened the door. Again, she couldn’t make out a damn thing.

  “Wait, wait, wait. One at a time.”

  Surprisingly, they all shut up. Daniel waited for the last person to silence and then stepped forward, closer to Lucy. “We don’t want you to be alone. Someone needs to stay here with you.” He had on that fucking trench coat that he liked so much, but at least his eyes weren’t bloodshot for once.

  Oh hell no. “I don’t need anyone to stay here with me.”

  Dan seemed to know this was coming. Of course he knew it was coming, anyone who knew Lucy would know that she wasn’t one to ask or admit that she needed any help for anything. She was as stubborn as the rest of the Estmonds.

  Hannah shook her head. “You either agree that someone will stay here with you, or we are going to have to send you somewhere where the Reapers can’t find you.”

  What the fuck! “You would send me away? You can’t do that!” Dang, could she sound any more childish than that, all she needed to do now was stomp her foot.

  Hannah’s dark brown eyes didn’t show even one ounce of humor. “We can, and we will if you don’t agree to this. This is for your safety, and since you are apparently the Chosen One for that crazy ass prophecy, then they won’t stop with one failed attack, Lucy.”
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  “You can’t send me away. How the fuck would you do that? I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions.”

  James sat in the arm chair opposite of the couch with his feet on the coffee table. She couldn’t help but think that if her dad were in the room that he would never attempt putting his nasty shoes up on their ancient coffee table. “You have to make a decision Luce, we won’t let them get to you.”

  “You can’t go patrolling anymore either,” Steph added.

  Lucy did stomp her foot this time. “You all are batshit crazy. I’m a Keeper! This is my graveyard. Mine! I will not abandon it because one Reaper tried to kill me.”

  “There were two, Lucy.”

  She swung her head around and gave Ethan the most furious glare that she could muster. “Shut up, Ethan.”

  “Wait, what?” Daniel raised his eyebrows. “Why would you tell us there was only one Reaper if there are two running around town trying to get to you?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  She knew that the last thing she should care about was outing a Reaper to her siblings. But, for some reason she felt the need to protect this one. He had saved her from having her throat slit open like an Easter ham. She kind of owed him.

  But … he was a Reaper, she didn’t owe him anything. Not really.

  “I … he … one of the Reapers had me on the ground with the knife at my throat when the other came out of nowhere and grabbed him off of me and gave me enough time to run. If he hadn’t done that, I would be dead right now.”

  She said the last part with remorse, that fucking feeling of failure taking every opportunity to rear its ugly head.

  “He saved you?” Daniel repeated incredulously.

  Lucy nodded. Knowing how crazy it sounded.

  Liv caught Lucy’s eye. “Which one was the one we kicked out of the shop?”

  “The one who helped me.”

  Liv nodded, giving Lucy a knowing look. “He didn’t seem lethal when we saw him down at the shop today.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Steph finally spoke up. “You mean to tell us that you ran into one of those fucktards in your shop and didn’t think it was something you should tell us?”