The Keeper: A Short Story Prequel to Forbidden (2 page)

“But Sirin would never condone such a move—”

“You’re right,” Talus said. “He didn’t. When he refused the recommendation to infect the world as a permanent solution to the ambition and hatred that plagued mankind, Megas had him assassinated and set the virus loose. That was two years ago. Now it has infected every living human on Earth. You feel no emotion except fear, Pavel and Gustov Malincovich, because on one of your visits to an outpost, you contracted Legion and lost your humanity. Haven’t you noticed an increase in your fear these past two years?”

The question struck a chord of alarm in Pavel. How could this man know of their change these past two years?

“We mastered our emotions through terrible struggle,” Gustov objected.

“No! The struggle you faced was
before
Legion took your humanity, two years ago. What you have embraced as a victory through these last two years of solitude and discipline was the onset of Legion. You did not
overcome
your emotions. Legion overcame you.”

“And not you?” It was all absurd!

“I fled to the wasteland where I’ve lived for two years in complete isolation with all of my research and samples, searching for a way to defeat Legion. I think I have found the means at last. Now one day…one day, with your help, the world might be free.”

“Madness!” Gustov said, rising again. “We will not help you. We reject these lies!”

“You speak out of fear. And if you deny the truth I bring, you will spend the remainder of your days in death. I chose you because as disciplined hermits your minds must be strong. Now you must entertain the truth of what I say.”

Talus picked up the vial, pulled the cork free, and quickly dipped his index finger into the liquid. It came out red, like blood.

He held his bloodied finger up in the firelight and drilled them with a piercing stare. “I can prove that what I say is true.”

“Blood?” Gustov said.

“A single drop of this blood on your tongue and you will know.” Talus brought his hand to his mouth and touched the tip of his tongue to the blood. “Just a drop.”

The fear and alarm coursing through Pavel’s veins thickened his pulse.

“What is so special about this blood?” he asked.

“What does it matter?” Gustov cried. His eyes were wild. “It’s poison, that’s what it is!”

“Do I look poisoned?” Talus asked. A faint smudge of the blood colored his lower lip.

“Poison takes time. This means nothing.”

The stranger suddenly stared over Gustov’s shoulder and spoke in a hushed tone. “Are you protected from robbers?”

Pavel jerked his head around, following the stranger’s stare. The night looked empty. But before he could inquire, a finger was shoved into his mouth from the side.

Leaping to his feet, he flung out his arm and knocked the stranger’s hand wide. The coppery taste of blood was unmistakable in his mouth. He spat onto the ground, trying to rid his mouth of the stuff.

Gustov stood back, face stricken with terror. “You’ve poisoned my brother! God have mercy, you’ve killed him!”

Talus lifted his palms in a sign of surrender, index finger now only half-bloodied. “Wait. Wait and see.”

“Wait for what?” Pavel demanded, fighting back dread at the thought he might indeed die.

“A hint, that’s all.”

“What have you done to me? A hint of what?”

“Of
life
, man! Haven’t you been listening to me? This vial holds the key. You have no idea the pains I undertook to acquire this last remnant of the blood.”

Gustov was calling the man a lunatic, crying out that he had poisoned his brother, but now a faint tingle began to rise through Pavel’s chest.

Talus watched him expectantly. “It’s the last of the blood that defeated the Raison Strain so many years ago, taken from a man named Thomas Hunter. It is known now only as ‘TH’ blood, its source a closely guarded secret. Its properties were never clearly understood, but it has some effect on the virus.”

“He’s speaking madness!” Gustov cried.

But Pavel was now infected with the blood and he had to know more.

“Then the blood defeats the virus?”

“No. But I’m confident that it’s strong enough to push death back for a few years if enough is ingested. I’ve given you only a single drop—a brief taste, as I’ve said.”

Pavel was now only half listening. His heart was beating far too hard. A well of emotion he had long forgotten began to rise through his throat. He opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t find the words.

“There’s only enough left for five,” Talus said, “And only for a time. You feel it, don’t you?”

Pavel did not merely feel it. Emotions long dead now crushed him with such force that he found he could not move.

“I…I…” His tongue felt thick in his mouth.

“You’ve drugged him!” Gustov cried.

Pavel turned toward his brother and nearly buckled beneath a wave of sudden tenderness toward him. Of love. Vital. Too vibrant. Gustov, his loyal brother, his friend! His vision swam beneath the onset of tears. “I…I forgot. I have forgotten.” And suddenly, it became clear to him: He and Gustov must help the world to remember. What it meant to feel. To bleed compassion, to soar with tenderness. To drown in love.

“It’s not a drug,” Talus was saying. “And this is not a gift for now—but for the future when it will be needed by a dead world.”

Sorrow, unlike any he could remember, suddenly swallowed Pavel—too sudden, too raw. Too real.

He dropped to his knees, grabbed his beard with both hands, threw back his head, and wailed at the dark sky. Tears flowed over his cheeks. He wept for his brother, gaping at him now, for the stranger, bearing his impossible burden…and for himself. He wept for the world because he knew that everything Talus had said must be true.

They were dead.

Gustov was beside himself, trying to get him to stop, citing the teachings of Sirin in a vain effort to silence his cries. Talus was speaking to him, urging calm, but Pavel hardly heard them. His mind was staggering under the weight of new life.

And then, more suddenly than it had come, the emotions left him only minutes after he’d first felt them. His cries trailed off. Silence settled over the camp.

Death swallowed him once more.

He pushed himself to his feet and stood wavering by the fire.

“You see?” Talus said.

“I had forgotten,” Pavel said, with the sense that, were the blood still with him, he would mourn this very fact.

He glanced at Gustov’s stricken face and then back at Talus. Yes. There was something there, in the stranger’s face, that he had not seen in years. Hope.

“Now you too will die?”

“I will be like you within weeks.”

“You came here knowing you would die.”

“Yes. But I cannot save the world alone.”

“It was a suicide mission.”

“In a manner of speaking. Yes.”

Pavel paced behind the log.

“Tell me what I should do.”

“Join with me to form a new order. An order of Keepers dedicated to protecting these secrets. We three will take this truth forward and keep the blood for the day when it will usher in a new kingdom. A world of mortals.”

“Mortals?” Gustov cried.

“We will all take wives and bear children to keep the truth.”

“Wives?”

Pavel ignored Gustov’s outcry—he would see soon enough.

“What else?”

“You will learn the secrets of my science before they too are buried forever. And you will learn how to fight.”

“First marry, now fight? It undoes every vow we’ve taken!”

“Make no mistake, this secret brings terrible danger that must be guarded with our very lives. The struggle has only begun in this world where life itself is now outlawed. Forbidden.”

“But all the while we will remain dead.”

“Yes. The dead Keepers of truth. Of life.”

A breeze stirred through the clearing, lifting the creased newspaper page from the ground, sending it skittering a few feet into the fire. As Pavel watched, Sirin’s face contorted and blackened within its flames.

He lifted his eyes to Talus. “Make me a Keeper,” he said.

Talus nodded, then turned his gaze to Gustov’s blanched face. But it was Pavel who spoke first.

“It’s your turn, brother,” he said.

Front Cover Image

Welcome

The Keeper

About the Authors

Copyright

Ted Dekker
is a
New York Times
bestselling author of more than twenty novels, with a total of more than 5 million books in print. He is known for thrillers that combine adrenaline-laced plots with incredible confrontations between good and evil.

Tosca Lee
left her position working with Fortune 500 companies as a senior consultant for the Gallup Organization to pursue her first love: writing. She is the critically acclaimed author of
Demon
and
Havah
and is best known for her humanizing portraits of maligned characters. She makes her home in the Midwest.

Copyright © 2011 by Ted Dekker

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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First eBook edition: September 2011

ISBN: 978-1-4555-1343-7