The Keeper's Vow (23 page)

Us?

“TRISTAN!” Katie yelled. She wanted to get
up, but dizziness overcame her. She looked down at her hand. Her
jacket covered most of it, but she could feel the blood pouring
out. She was going numb. She moved her hand and torn fabric stuck
to it revealing a hole that pumped blood.

Tristan still had the knife in his hand and
it glistened with blood as he raised it to Brain’s neck. “Give me
one reason,” he said. Blood ran down Brian’s face and his body
jerked. Tristan’s arm was against his neck.

Katie blinked surly losing consciousness as
Tristan was beginning to fade into the shadows. She dropped her
eyes, catching a glimpse of her hand, her body, everything fading
into darkness.

“Please,” Katie pleaded. She was being
burned alive. “Please. Help me.” Katie felt panic shake her bones,
and forced her eyes open once again.

Tristan dropped the knife and Brian, and ran
to her. As he lifted her, pain seared as if the hole had ripped
farther.

Before Katie could tell him to wait, he was
running down the street, in a darkness, so fast it made her
vomit.

Katie tried to keep her eyes open, but
passed out.

“She needs to go to the hospital,” Lucinda
screamed.

“No.” Tristan shouted. “They’ll find out.”
Katie felt weak. The pain was gone, she was still in Tristan’s arms
but he was laying her on Lucinda’s white couch. Katie tried to
protest. Her words fell out like slugs.

She closed her eyes. She could hear Will and
Lucinda talking but the sound was thick and long.

Tristan was back, she didn’t need to see him
or feel him to know he was back. He grabbed her.

“STOP,” Lucinda screamed. It was
high-pitched and crazed, but Tristan was shaking and he wasn’t
listening. He continued to lift Katie’s head.

Stop what?

The taste was violent. As soon as it touched
her lips she wanted to scratch her own eyes out. She chocked and
spit it back up.

It was blood.

“Drink it,” Tristan said, forcing her mouth
open with his shaking hands. She tried to push him away.

“Drink it—Katalina. Drink it or we’ll die.”
His eyes were hysterical. Did he hear himself? Lucinda fought
against Will, trying to get to Katie. Why was Will holding Lucinda
back?

“GET AWAY FROM HER,” Lucinda screamed over
and over.

Katie cried as Tristan forced more down her
throat. She was choking on it. He was drowning her in blood.

She blacked out.

“You left him in an alley barely breathing.”
Lucinda’s voice sliced through Katie’s mind.

She opened her eyes. They were heavy. She’d
had a nightmare?

“She would have died if I didn’t,” Tristan
said, sitting with his shirt off and blood smeared on his face and
chest. They were in his room. She could tell by the Japanese cherry
blossom picture above his head. That was always in the downstairs
room.

“I understand that, but you could have
killed Brian,” Lucinda said. “Go take a shower. You smell like
vomit.”

“He
shot
her. I don’t care if he’s
got broken ribs.”

“I do! He’s my son, Tristan. We’re family.
You don’t do that to family.”

“Now I’m family?
Your
son
has
problems. He’s out of control.”

“Enough.”

Tristan scowled and looked at Katie. She
wished he hadn’t seen her. She didn’t want to talk. Not yet. He
turned away and she went back to a drossy, ache filled
blackness.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nightmares
flashed across Katie’s mind. So many people dying, or being
murdered. All night, she awoke in cold sweats.

I’m sorry.
She’d hear over and over
again. Maybe it was Tristan. Maybe it was a lingering thought from
the nightmares.

It was dark when she woke up for the final
time. Her body was sore but she felt fine. She sat up and swallowed
a scream when she saw Tristan sitting at the desk.

“Are you trying to kill me?” She was having
a heart attack. Everything felt too fast. Too real. She tried to
slow her heart down.

She stopped breathing when she saw his eyes.
They were red. She didn’t know if he was crying or if they were
just red. She looked away. There was no reason someone’s eyes would
just
be red, but she didn’t want to think that he’d cried.
Her stomach turned.

Katie focused on herself. What had happened.
She was with Brian eating pizza…then. Her stomach dropped and she
touched her stomach.

It wasn’t a nightmare. What happened was
real, and she should have been in a lot of pain. A bullet flew
threw her stomach just yesterday. Or maybe it was still the same
night? How many days had it been? She should be in a hospital
hooked up to IVs.

She lifted up her shirt just enough to peek.
Maybe it
was
all a dream. There was a angry red line just
above her belly button. It looked like an old cut. Not a fresh gun
shot wound. A thin red line where tiny perfect stitches held her
together. Katie had seen Lucinda stitch enough things to know what
her patch jobs looked like. Katie was a patch job.

“What’s going on?” She couldn’t look at
Tristan without remembering how he forced blood down her throat,
how she drowned in it.

The door burst opened and smacked against
the wall, bouncing back into the grizzly man that was her
father.

“Get out. You, get away from her.” He hadn’t
shaved in weeks maybe. He had a beard that made him look like a
mountain man. He grabbed Tristan by his shirt and slammed him
against the wall. Tristan didn’t do anything to fight back. “How
could you? Why didn’t you just stay away?” The last word came out
as a whisper. Her dad crumpled over and let Tristan go. “Please,
just leave.”

“I’m not leaving her.” Tristan said.

“Can’t you see you’ve ruined her life?
You’ve ruined it. All because of you. You’ve destroyed my
family.”

Katie’s mouth opened but the words stayed
confused and swirling in the back of her throat.

Tristan met her eyes.
Do you want me
gone? If you want me gone, I’ll leave and never come back.

What was he saying? And why did she hear it
so clearly in her mind? Hysteria spread through her. Her limbs
ached. Why did Tristan look like that? So weak and defeated.

The memory attacked her like a violent
nightmare. The little boy with black hair and blue eyes. Walking
away from her. Leaving her as she reached out for him. Tristan
looked at her now with the same broken eyes.

“Just leave,” her dad screamed.

“No!” Katie found her voice. “No.” She
couldn’t make sense of what was happening, but she knew if he left
she’d feel empty again.

Her dad sobbed. She’d never heard him cry.
It made her cry.

Her dad stood up and hugged her. “I’m sorry,
Katie Bug. I messed up. I messed up.”

He held her for a long time, and they cried.
She didn’t know why, but she felt like this pain, was like going
home. The deep pain felt like something they’d been side-stepping
her whole life. All the nights he’d left her in this house for
another family to raise. The times he was too drunk to remember she
needed to eat more than chips and water. They never talked about
it. She didn’t want to. She hated thinking about her dad that way.
He wasn’t like that anymore.

Tristan moved and she panicked. He slid down
the wall and sat on the floor in the corner. His head leaned
against the wall and he watched her. Listening to the past she
never told anyone.

Her dad pulled away from her. “Do you see
why I tried to protect you?”

“Why don’t I have a giant bullet hole in my
stomach? Why am I—Okay?”

Her dad didn’t say anything. Neither did
Tristan. They weren’t going to tell her. Her breath quickened. They
couldn’t go on treating her like this. They were going to tell her
something or she was going to flip-the-fuck-out.

“You’re like me,” Tristan said.

Katie stared. She didn’t want a
clarification. She didn’t need one; she knew what he meant. It was
impossible.

“That’s why I made you drink. You would have
died if I didn’t. You would have—”

“Please. Stop,” her dad said again. His
voice was small. He was begging Tristan, not telling him.

“You don’t remember me because he made you
forget me. I can read your thoughts because your mother made me
take the Keeper’s Vow. You don’t remember her because—”

“I didn’t want it to haunt you for the rest
of your life, Katie Bug. I wanted you to grow up happy. I wanted
you to have your own life. Your mother wanted you to have your own
life.”

Katie was calmer than she expected. Her
mother was a vampire. That was kind of cool, maybe? Tristan broke
their eye contact and she knew she hadn’t heard the worst of it.
Allison had told her once that vampire women couldn’t give birth.
They were infertile. It was only guardian women who could bare
half-vampire children.

“You’re a vampire?” she asked her dad. It
was impossible. His face contorted. He ran a hand across his
face.

“There’s something I have to tell you. But
you know, I’ll always be your dad.”

“Dad, don’t,” she didn’t want to hear it. He
was her dad no matter what. She didn’t want to hear otherwise. No
matter what they’d been through, the tough times up until her last
year in middle school, it didn’t matter.

“I knew your mother for a long time, but
there was a time I hadn’t seen her for years. I—she came to me
looking for help. She was—pregnant.”

“Dad, please—I don’t want to know.”

“Your mother wanted a place to start over.
Her family kicked her out. I always loved her. I fell in love with
her all over agin. And you. Katie you were the most beautiful thing
I’d ever seen. I’ve always loved you.”

Was that why he’d leave her with Lucinda.
For months.

“Who is my—who was she with?” She couldn’t
say father. She couldn’t even think of the woman that was her
mother. She’d spent so much of her life not caring about the one
she saw in the picture frames. Now she felt betrayed.

“She didn’t know.”

Katie sniffed. Her mother was a tramp. Her
next question was directed at Tristan. “What’s the Keeper’s
Vow?”

He looked into her. Deep. “It allows us to
hear each others thoughts.”

“Why?” It didn’t make sense to her.

Tristan shrugged. He was lying to her again,
but he didn’t budge. Her dad looked at him and sighed.

“Tell me what happened.” She didn’t have to
clarify that she meant the event that seemed to start it all. The
event that made Lucinda start hating her dad three years ago, the
one that made her dad erase everything about her life.

Her dad stood up. “I’ve relived that night
over and over for the last ten years. I don’t want to hear it
again.” His heavy footsteps thumped on the floor—they paused before
opening the door. “I can’t stop you anymore. But I erased your
memories for a reason. Katie Bug. We can still go back to the way
things were.”

Katie stared at the floor. She was tired of
being kept in the dark. “Life only moves forward, Dad. Never
backwards.” Her eyes never left the floor, but she knew Tristan was
watching her. It was what he had told her on their first practice.
She finally understood what he meant. She couldn’t run away
forever.

The door opened and closed. She didn’t have
to look up to know her father was gone. The only sound left in the
room was Tristan’s light breaths. He was so quiet, but she could
hear it.

She opened her mouth.

“We lived in the mountains,” he said.
“Because my mother was blacklisted. I was five at the time, but my
parents only fed me blood, so I developed faster. I didn’t know
that until I met you.

“You were almost five. Your mother brought
you over because she wanted you to grow up around someone
like
you. I didn’t believe you were like me. You had never
had blood. You were just like a normal girl, and as dumb as a rock
as far as I was concerned.”

His sudden silence made Katie look up. He
was staring at her—in her. “So calling me names is a force of
habit?” she said, uncomfortable under his gaze.

Tristan smiled, but his gaze never broke. He
was looking at her like he was seeing her for the first time in a
long time. “You can say that. I wasn’t nice to you at first. I used
to talk you into eating dirt and worms. You were the first kid I
had ever met. You were the first and only friend I ever had. One
day, I put a mouse on your head and your mom said she wasn’t going
to bring you anymore. I think that was the first time I had ever
cried as a boy.

“After that day I treated you like a
slow-friend instead of my unequal rival. I read to you, and cleaned
up after you when you made stupid messes. Annabel The Dimwatted.
You’d always talk to this ugly doll you carried around,” Tristan
snorted.