Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) (25 page)

We
sailed over the ocean until we dipped into the bay. Linus got his crew in line, along side ours, before we took the last jog to close the final gap and get us within striking distance of the hole.

Cormac took the place beside me. I was selfishly glad he was there
. He took my hand in a firm grip, lending his support.

"I have to tell you something," I said to him.

"What's wrong?"

"I
'm mad about a lot of things."

He didn
't say anything, just waited for me to keep speaking.

"But if we die here, I want you to know… I don
't hate you. I mean…you know."

He said nothing for a second and I thought he didn
't understand at all. I was just about to open my mouth and take another bungled attempt when he smiled.

"I know. I don
't hate you, too."

I nodded and looked down at the ocean waves, slightly embarrassed now.

"You ready?" he asked, bringing the dire situation back front and center.

Can you ever be ready to possibly destroy the Earth? I
couldn't even get the words out. I was sure my face was tinged green from nausea at the thought of what might happen.

"Good," he said
, in a normal tone, which I'm sure was for the sake of people listening on. Then he leaned in closer to me and whispered. "Just don't throw up because there's no way I'll be able to play that one off."

He raised his hand and I heard the engines roar as the boat started its slow churn forward. His fingers kept their grip on mine and I felt Dodd take my left hand, lending his own support.
It was going to be a joint effort, but I'd be the lead as I was the strongest at this by far. Ultimately, the failure would rest on my shoulders.

We were within ten feet when I felt the silver strands start to wind up my legs. They were the last thing I needed.

I looked down at the strands weaving around my ankle. "I get it, you don't like this, but I'm doing it, so cut it out."

The god damn things pinched me then.

"I said, cut it out! It's happening and no amount of carrying on is stopping it. I don't have a choice."

"What are you doing?" Cormac asked.

I looked down at my ankles and the strands were gone.

"Nothing." I didn
't have the energy to explain something unexplainable right then.

We dropped anchor at the edge of the abyss.

"On the count of three," I called out to everyone and began the countdown as we all linked together.

This was the biggest group of Keepers yet and the additional energy that was pouring
into me almost made me feel high. I reveled in it for a selfish moment and then directed it toward the hole. Like the others, the edges rebelled against being closed. This hole was massive. I realized quickly I wasn't going to have enough juice.

Out of desperation, I had to go beyond just directing the flow of energy and actively try to pull it from the other Keepers. I wasn
't even sure how I was doing it but I felt it working.

In my peripheral vision, I saw many eyes looking toward me but nobody broke ranks as I forced them to offer up more than they had
initially been willing to part with.

"Careful," I heard Cormac say. "Pull too much and you could kill them."

"Pull too little and we all die anyway," I replied.

"She makes a good point," Dodd chimed in on my other side.

I blocked them out as I used everything I had inside me to feel for the edges again and tried to force them to close. Just a little more. I just needed a touch more power and I knew I'd have it. I pulled on them and I felt the strain. I also felt the edges moving. Slowly, finally, the hole started to shrink.

The winds around us kicked up a notch, and whipped my hair into my face but I ignored it. I also pretended the boat wasn
't rocking, dangerously close to capsizing, as the air started to howl. I felt the energy straining as Keepers became distracted but I pulled at them to make up for the difference.

Finally, after what had felt like hours, the edges of the tear in our universe touched. The city was gone for good
; all its buildings and all the lost souls lost forever, but so was the space hole, filled in by ocean now. I released Cormac and Dodd's hands in our human link and collapsed on the deck of the boat in utter exhaustion. I heard a sigh of relief as everyone released each other's hands.

"How did you do that?" Dodd asked as he sank to the ground, looking as depleted as
I did.

"Do what?"

"Force our energy from us? I swear, I don't think we could've let go if we had wanted to."

"We couldn
't. I tried. That wasn't cool. You could've killed us," Linus said from his seated position against the other side of the boat.

"I didn
't know I was doing it, but I would do it again." I cringed the minute I said the words, as I realized how much I had just sounded like Cormac in one of his overbearing moods.

"Something
's wrong," Cormac said, the only one of us left on their feet as he paced the boat. Then he started to float and hover, clearly trying to get a better view of whatever he thought he was seeing. A bolt of lightning hit the water feet from us, as if in case anyone was doubting his instincts.

I gripped the side railing and dragged myself to my feet. I expected to see tornado
es in the distance, giant bolts of lightning and fires. It was all of those things and worse.

Chills ran
over my skin and I couldn't find any words to describe the horrors in front of my eyes. I'd had happier nightmares. Besides the fires that were raging on the coastline, I could see creatures, for lack of a better word, walking the area. They weren't fully in existence, but they weren't
not,
either. They appeared, like ghosts, with a translucency to their features.

A large grayish one
noticed us and glided toward our boat, skimming the ocean surface as it headed straight for us.

"What the hell is that?" a Keeper screamed.

"Start the engine, move this thing!" Dodd yelled.

"We couldn
't outrun it anyway," Cormac said as he was standing next to me.

It closed the small gap and hovered over us a moment with
a curious stare, sniffed the bow and then hissed before it moved away, not caring to be near us. The sky looked strange as well, with a shimmer that had nothing to do with stars. 

"What the hell is going on?" Dodd asked.

I hadn't noticed him standing next to Cormac and I until he spoke.

"You know when you think you see something in the corner of your eye but you tell yourself it
isn't real?"

"Yes."

"I think we just made it real."

"That is exactly what you did,"
a voice echoed in the air, everywhere and nowhere all at once.

We
all circled and looked for the source. A cyclone of air started to blow and Keepers were thrown from the boat by the violent winds. Cormac, Dodd, everyone…thrust overboard several miles out to sea. The angry ghost like creatures moved out of their paths as they sailed through the air. At least whatever new form of creature they were, they had no interest in us.

The deck was clear except for me, I stood
, without feeling even the smallest breeze, as the wind tunnel headed straight toward me.

I stood my ground and waited. It stopped five feet in front of me. The winds dropped off and
a golden Adonis stood, looking at me from the same spot, blond hair flowing gently in the ocean breeze.

"Who are you?"

"Don't you recognize me?"

"What are you?" I asked him.

"You knew me as Senator Core," he said as he stood toe to toe with me.

"But
what
are you?"

He smiled. "I
'm what the Keepers created. I'm the very core of our existence, of all existence, at the very smallest level."

"I don
't understand."

"Of course you don
't," he said as he laughed aloud in a giddy manner. He spun around with his arms outstretched to the sky as he took a deep breath. "Oh, to be alive and free," he yelled to the sky.

He turned back to me. "You don
't know what it was like, being stuck in that human form."

"Why were you? I thought I killed you."

"You killed my host. The body I needed to live here, until now that is. You're not as stupid as I thought. The pieces are starting to fit together. I can see your mind working," he circled me now, examining me like a lab rat. "Every plane in the universe has its own requirements to exist. Your Keepers tried to destroy me but they couldn't. You can't destroy energy. The best they were able to do was rob me of my ability to exist on this plane. In essence, they maimed me. That is why I needed you to alter the physics of this universe in order to dwell here again. There are so many planes of existence, but you humans only see a fraction of what exists. Yes, you might unknowingly draw energy from the other planes, but you could never see what really existed all around you. The other planes weren't as strong, but once you thinned this world, that all changed."

"Why did you kill Rick and my foster parents?"

"That was payback. Your whore of a mother owed me a debt when I helped her barren form beget you." Then he started to cackle. "You're so obvious. You aren't of my flesh. I helped her get pregnant with Hammond's child, I didn't give her one of my own. She wasn't worthy. All she wanted was to get pregnant to give the wolves a Keeper they could control."

"Why would you help her?"

"It was the deal. She helped me escape the prison the Keepers had put me in by bringing me a body. The Keepers had stolen the one they had given me."

"Did you kill her?"

"No, the wolves did that when, in the end, she refused to hand you over to them. A sudden attack of guilt, I guess. Pathetic humans." His voice was filled with contempt.

"Which
wolves killed her?"

"I don
't know which ones did it, nor do I care. They were just a pack of mongrels to me."

"
Did you ever want to help them?"

"Those filthy things? Talentless and stupid, I liked them less than even you. But I needed to get your bleeding heart father on board and some of the other Keepers."

"It was about this, the whole time. Creating tears that would then alter the universe."

He had a hard time keeping his attention focused
; I got the sense that he was a bit enthralled by his own form, the way a little girl would twirl in a new dress, as he constantly shifted about the deck. "It's why your father killed himself. I wasn't sure you would be able to repair them on your own. He had figured it out. After you, he was the second most adept at altering the fabric of the planes of existence."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because it no longer matters. There is no turning back," he replied as he walked around the deck. "You've merged the planes of our existence. You've melded this world with the place magic lives."

I looked around again and knew he was right. Everything felt slightly different, looked different, more intense.
The air felt the way it did when lightning was about to strike and everything had a crackle to it.

"It
's time for us to say goodbye now," he said. "I can't have you lingering around in my world. You're now a liability."

He turned and smiled again and I knew he was going to try to kill me. I didn
't blame him, I had the same intention toward him.

I thought he was going to come at me, but he didn
't. He raised his hand and directed a dark tendril of smoke toward me. I watched it gather and realized the resemblance it had to the silver ribbons that had been appearing around me. Strand after strand gathered in his outstretched hands until with a quick burst of motion, he released them on me.

I tried to dodge them but they were
like heat seeking missiles and they followed me down onto the deck.

They started to burn my skin, but that wasn
't the worst part; they started to bore into me. I tried to get to my knees, if I could just get a hold of the senator, maybe I could take him out, but I couldn't even get to my feet.

"You thought you had a chance of killing me?" he said as he towered over my crippled form. "I helped create you! You were nothing but a means to an end. If I hadn
't needed you I would have helped the wolves rip your mother and you to pieces."

I was dying. I knew it. I wo
uld leave this world in a shambles with this monster at the helm. A slow death would have been preferable. At least they would've had a few good years. Now they had nothing but terror.