Keeper Chronicles: Awakening (26 page)

The girl swung her head up and backwards, like it was barely attached to her shoulders. Colette touched the girl’s face. “You can trust us. We want to help you.”

Nodding limply, mouth agape and mute, the girl pointed.

“Is he over there? Where? I need you to tell us, please!”

She kept pointing.

“Help me carry her to the car,” Nicholas said, standing quickly. “Hurry.”

The girl’s weight, despite being limp, was easy to carry given her Keeper strength. Colette lugged demons around for a living, after all; one little girl posed no challenge. “Keep pointing, okay,” she whispered. “You can do this.”

Using the seatbelt to help hold the girl in place, Colette managed to get the entranced waif into the front seat where she could see where they were headed. With any luck, the demon hadn’t detected that they’d reversed the feed, using its connection with the girl to track him. They’d have ten minutes, maybe less, before it wore off or he killed her. Colette refused to let another of his victims die.

They had families, too.

“Keep pointing,” Nicholas urged as they backed out of the alley where they’d found the girl screaming.

“I’m going to try to join with her,” Colette said. “Try not to kill us both.”

She touched her hands to the young woman’s temples and closed her eyes. She chanted quietly. Slowly, a picture formed. He sat on a bed—beneath him, a green floral bedspread spread out. The kind you’d find in half the hotel rooms in the country. She tried to look around. A small desk, dresser, and flat screen television finished the room. Bland artwork. Definitely a hotel and not an expensive one. It had to be close or he wouldn’t be able to maintain the connection with his host—maybe within a ten kilometers.

She needed something, anything, to narrow that down. Seattle had literally hundreds of hotels. He could be at any one of them. On the desk, something caught her eye. A logo. If only she could see it a little more clearly, she might be able to make it out.

Like he had heard her thought, he turned his gaze to the table, stood up, and walked over.

“Does this help?” he asked, picking up the advertisement telling about the wireless internet available at the hotel.

Green and gold, with a shooting star—Vacations Express. She knew where he was.

The demon, Adam, looked into the mirror and straight through Colette.

“I’m going to enjoy you, darling,” he laughed, holding her there with him. Locking her psychic connection. “You’re one fine piece ‘o woman, that’s for sure. We’re going to have a right good time before you die.”

What happened next was not something the demon had prepared for: she saw him.
Really
saw him for his true self as she hadn’t experienced since absorbing his memories. The demon was afraid. Mortally so. She and Nicholas had been closer than they knew on several occasions, nearly capturing him each time. But beneath the fear for his life lurked another fear. Something he hid. A secret he was killing to protect.

Bracing herself against the pushback, she forced her way deeper into his mind. The people he’d killed, their memories and essence, were trapped in a prison of his own making. One of them called to her: the Keeper, Rebekah’s father.

She tried to force her way through the demon’s thoughts to the Keeper despite the almost unbearable pain. The remnants crowded in, shouting at her. Crying. They pulled her down with them and sent jolts of pain through her mind with their fear. Pushing past them, she struggled toward the keeper. He was trying to tell her something he believed important. The images of the deceased flitted by Adam’s mind like ghosts begging her to free them.

Desperate, they swarmed her, reaching for an out. Any out. All those children.

“No,” she said, pushing them away. “No. Not now. I need to see the Keeper. You have to let me through to him.”

Adam screamed in rage, the sound piercing her mind like a gunshot.

“Keeper!” she yelled, reaching out for him in the whirling mass of memories. “Keeper, I need your secret.”

He turned and looked at her then, lines of weariness pulling at his eyes and forehead. Shadowed husks formed his eyes. Bloodied clothing hung from him like rags. “Rebekah -”

“Get out!” Adam screamed, psychically lashing her. “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

Colette fought back with all her strength; however, he was simply too strong. Before she was flung violently from her mind, she thought the Keeper mouthed two words.

She’s. Pregnant.

Yanking her hands away from the girl’s temples, Colette flew backwards, crashing into the backseat and toppling over. “Vacations Express,” she panted, struggling to regain control over her body as the last vestiges of the spell wore off. She stared at the tan roof of the SUV. “Quick. He won’t stay long.”

Colette shivered as the psychic imprint he’d left slowly faded. So many people—more than they’d known. More than anyone suspected.

“And Nicholas...” She struggled to form the words he’d need to hear; the last words he ever wanted to hear. “There may be a girl. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. She knew he thought about his first wife. In the front passenger’s side seat, the girl’s head still hung limp and lifeless, one floppy hand pointing forward.

The hotel was on a brightly lit street with a nearly full parking lot. Not the kind of place demons usually chose to make their lair. Not the kind of place she could walk in fully armed. Although she hadn’t seen anything like a room number, the girl pointed up at the second floor toward the end.

Forcing herself to stand, she slid on her trench coat to cover the weapons and walked toward the main entrance while Nicholas went into the side door. The reception desk was fully lit, monitored by a pair of security cameras. The jammer in her pocket would make sure her image wasn’t recorded, but that still left the night receptionist.

No one sat at the desk.

“Ring for Service,” the sign read. Colette obliged.

When the Indian woman emerged, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Colette darted her. Hopping the counter in one leap, she swiped the manager’s card from the woman’s pocket and hacked into the company’s registration. There. Room 212. The idiot had checked in under his own name.

Keeping the key card, she ran to the second floor where Nicholas guarded the stairwell. Colette drew her sword and gestured with it toward the room.

She tossed the key card to Nicholas and tightened her grip. He unlocked the door and stepped back.

Click.

By the time she recognized the sound, the door exploded outward in a fireball, flames burning past the edges. The blast knocked her back ten feet and into an end table with a vase full of colored glass on top. Bits of orange and green and pink landed around her like a rainbow as the broken glass sliced her arms and legs.

“Nicholas!” she screamed, forcing herself to her feet. Her ears rung, distorting all the sounds in the hallway. She yelled again.

That’s when she saw his arm sticking out beneath the door.

The carpet and wallpaper began to smoke as the fire from the explosion spread. Pushing through it, she ran to the door and threw it off him. It had protected him from the worst of the fire, though he’d paid for it in other injuries she couldn’t see. “Come on,” she said as the hallways began to fill with people screaming and the overhead sprinkler system kicked in. “We need to leave before the police get here.”

He groaned.

Wrapping her hand around his waist, she supported him to the car without attracting undue attention mostly because everyone else around her was screaming and stumbling around confused. Moaning in pain at each step, he held his chest like it might fall off if he let go. “Hold on,” she whispered when she got into the car, taking one of the tranquilizer darts and stabbing him in the leg with it. He collapsed, and she laid him on the back seat.

Colette climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition when a discordant scent hit her nose. The girl was dead. He must have killed her while they were inside, covering his tracks. “Shit.” Reaching past the dead victim, she opened the door and pushed the girl out into the parking lot. “Sorry about that.”

She didn’t hang around to discover if the corpse accepted the apology.

The wail of sirens filled the night as she drove away fast enough to clear the area but slowly enough to avoid police attention. She should have seen this coming. Should have realized that he’d only let her see where he was because it was a trap. Picking up her cell, she dialed the emergency council number for Seattle.

“Parks Services, how may I help you?” the woman on the phone answered.

“Hunter 097 requesting aid.”

A hesitation. “Let me transfer you.”

“Elder Sloan speaking.”

“Elder, this is Hunter 097 calling to report an explosion at the Vacations Express off Main Street. Casualties expected.”

“Any sightings?”

“Negative, elder. I am requesting asylum for myself and my partner; he needs a doctor.”

“Understood. I’ll text the coordinates.”

When the message came through, she linked it to her maps and started the route, popping the phone into the holster hanging from the windshield. As the mechanical female voice started speaking directions, Colette looked in her rearview mirror in time to see a pair of headlights speeding toward her. Adam. He must have been watching for them in the parking lot.

She floored the gas, but it was already too late. The other car slammed into her, launching her car forward a few feet and jerking the steering wheel from her hand. The car careened off the street and onto the sidewalk with a sharp jolt. She took out two parking meters before managing to force the car back on the road.

His car rushed out into the lane next to her.

Instead of letting him hit the side of her car and possibly launch them into a parked car or, worse yet, a building, she slammed on the brakes. Nicholas thumped into the seat behind her, thrown forward from the sudden stop. Adam’s car crossed in front of hers, barely missing her bumper, and she floored it.

Her right front bumper clipped the rear of his car, sending it spinning off the side of the road into a closed nail boutique.

“Perform a U-turn when possible,” the GPS ordered.

What a fantastic idea. Spinning the wheel, she turned the car around and skidded to a stop in front of where the demon’s vehicle had crashed into the store. Leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running, Colette jumped out.

Broken glass covered the sidewalk as the whirr of the building’s alarm woke all the neighbors. She had maybe one minute before someone came out to see what happened, maybe less. She needed to be quick.

She entered the shop through the front window, stepping over as many of the jagged edges of glass she could to avoid making noise. In the American movies, the hero would always call out for the monster. Taunt it. Colette wasn’t stupid enough to let the thing know she was there.

The driver’s side door was wedged in tight with the wall, so she went around to the passenger’s side, kicking away some fallen stylists’ chairs and product. In a strange way, all the broken bottles of nail polish looked pretty spilled across the floor. Like a kid’s finger painting. She reached the door and yanked, but it wouldn’t open. The crash had compressed the front of the car, jamming the door mechanism. Shit. Taking off her already scorched shirt, she wrapped it around her hand and punched through the glass.

Colette reached in the car and grabbed the bleeding head of hair mashed against the steering wheel. Looking at the face, she cursed. Another woman. Another thrall puppet. The demon toyed with them.

“Hey, are you okay?” a guy asked from the sidewalk.

“I...I saw the accident and pulled over,” she said, stumbling for something believable. “I think that girl’s dead. Call 9-1-1.”

Hand over her mouth like she was trying not to scream, she backed out of the nail salon and through the window. The guy who showed up had his ear to the telephone, his eyes scanning the interior of the shop as if looking for the body. Colette used his distraction to sneak away, running to her car while he wasn’t looking. Above the shops, lights began to flicker on. Others were waking up.

Turning the key in the ignition, she started the car and pulled out. With any luck, no one was paying attention to note her license plate. She drove to the safe house as fast as she could, constantly checking her rearview mirror to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Her hands shook on the steering wheel. Facing down escaped demons, most of whom were ravaging monsters capable of killing her in the time it took to sneeze, had become her normal. No one joined the rare ranks of the Hunters without a death wish of some kind, and she wasn’t an exception to this rule after what happened to her sister. But she also didn’t spend so much time in one place, didn’t get to know any of the Keepers in the regions she worked at.

Although she’d heard that Gabe had woken up from his coma, she’d had precious little other news from the people at the Meceta Head light in the last two weeks. Mia and her coven of clichés had been surprisingly nice to work with—like when she’d belonged to a coven of her own—even though they’d been stupid enough to drink demon blood. It kind of made them even more endearing. And Rebekah...the girl was being thrown into her heritage, full force no doubt, and she had no family there to help her through the transition. It would be a rough time.

Stop this
, she ordered herself, punching the steering wheel and glancing over at the GPS to make sure her little blue triangle still followed the appropriate green line. Nostalgia meant weakness. Emotions sapped the resolve she’d need when everything was said and done.

Her life had taken a different route. One that didn’t involve the simplicities and niceties of normal Keeper life. She had Nicholas. He was enough.

“Destination on the left,” the mechanical woman advised.

Colette slowed. The green line ended abruptly at what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Turning in, she looked for an opening or door. Most of the windows in the upper floors had been broken out, probably years ago, and the walls covered with rust. She passed by dozens of empty metal trash bins and crates—a decade’s worth of industrial waste. The perfect place to hide.