The Keeper's Vow (3 page)

“Lucy, w—what’s going on?”

“Remember when you were six, I used to run
your bath water every night? You were so particular about using the
jasmine bubble bath. You were addicted to it. I think I’ve got some
jasmine body-wash under the sink.”

“Lucy. Brian—” she couldn’t say it. Not out
loud.

“You loved it when your dad worked nights.
You’d come over carrying your overnight bag and spent hours in the
bath—”

“Lucy!”

“Tristan is going to be fine.”

A scream filled the house. It rumbled
through the walls and shook her. Lucinda’s eyes were wide and
worried. He wasn’t going to be fine. It was written all over her
face.

“Oh my god,” Katie cried. She tried to wipe
her face, but stopped as she felt the blood coat her cheeks. She
turned and saw herself in the mirror. It couldn’t have been her.
She looked down at her hands. They were someone else’s. Not
hers—hers could never be that red. She rubbed them on her wet
skirt.

“Listen to me Katie.” Lucinda gripped her
shoulders tight. “I need you to keep it together for just a little
bit longer.”

“I can’t.” Katie said, trying to rub the
blood off her arms. It smeared like lotion.

“Katie, remember when Brian fell out of that
old tree-house and his bone stuck straight out of his leg. You were
the bravest ten-year old I’d ever seen.”

“He wasn’t going to die!” Katie’s heart
pounded. “I wasn’t covering up a murder.” She shook harder.

“Tristan isn’t going to die.” Lucinda turned
on the shower, and checked the water. “I promise, things will be
fine. You just need to get out of those clothes and cleaned
up.”

Lucinda left the bathroom and it took every
ounce of self-control not to scream as Katie peeled off the bloody
clothes. She stood under the shower head and watched the
tinted-pink water roll down into the drain. No matter how many
times she scrubbed, she couldn’t get the red stain from underneath
her nails or the smell out of her nose.

Ten-minutes had passed, or maybe twenty. She
couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. She turned off the water. Only the
sound of water being sucked down the drain echoed in the
bathroom—the house was silent. She hesitated before she pulled back
the shower-curtain. What would she do with her clothes? Burn them?
It was evidence of whatever they had just done.

She squeezed the curtain in her hands and
moved it. It came more as a relief than a surprise that her clothes
were gone and replaced by Brian’s old shirt and basketball
shorts.

Lucinda. She was like that. Thorough.

Katie dried her hair and her body expecting
to see blood every time she pulled the towel away. She had to stop
looking in the mirror because every patch of pink blotchy skin
looked like a permanent stain, and she’d rub on it until it
burned.

She opened the bathroom door. Silence.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, she checked the living-room. What if
they’d left her in the house. What was she supposed to do?

She jumped when she walked by the
dining-room and saw everyone sitting at the table. Every one except
Tristan. Her heart pounded and her stomach lurched. She swallowed
back vomit and breathed deep, using the doorframe for support.
Lucinda said Tristan was her nephew, but Katie had never heard of
him before. From the look of Brian’s face, neither had he. Why
would she not take her own nephew to the hospital? What—who—

“Katie?” Lucinda got up from the table and
hugged her. “He’s going to be just fine. Don’t look like that,
Sweetie. He’s okay. He just needs a few days to get back on his
feet.”

“A few days?” Had Lucinda not seen the way
blood spilled from his body like a knocked over carton of milk?

“Katie, sit down.” Will said. He sat at the
far end of the table. He had changed his shirt, not a drop of blood
to be found. His hands were spotless.

“Will—”

“Lucy, we don’t have time. They’re coming.
The longer we wait the more we put her at risk.” Will’s eyes were
soft and green. The same soft eyes she had seen nearly her entire
life—eyes that were honest. She looked away. Why did every thing
about him, and the way Lucinda held her close, make her want to run
for her life. She pulled away from Lucinda, and opened her mouth to
scream all of the questions that had been building ever since she
saw Tristan standing on her front porch. Nothing came out. She was
too afraid to say anything.

She sat down in the chair farthest from them
all.

Will sighed. “Katie, there are people coming
here. They are going to give you two options. We can’t make the
decision for you. All we can do is tell you that no matter what, we
will always be here for you,” he said.

“What decisions? Who’s coming?” Katie could
feel her muscles contracting, telling her to get up and run.

Lucinda sat in the chair next to her.
“Katie, Tristan is a vampire. We couldn’t take him to the hospital
because the people there, who
could
help him, can’t know
that. In fact, no one can know that, especially the people coming.”
Lucinda reached for her hand.

Katie pulled away and looked around the
table. They were all watching her, waiting for some type of
reaction. “What’s
really
going on?” she said.

The doorbell rang, echoing throughout the
house. Katie looked at them and then the hallway.

“I’ll stall them for as long as I can,”
Lucinda said, getting up from the table.

“I know we are asking you to believe
something that seems crazy, but you have to listen to me,” Will
said. “There is a lot more to this world than you think, Katie. The
people who are here are bringing someone who is going to erase your
memory unless you choose to become one of us.”

“Erase my memory?” Katie’s insides squeezed.
She could hear Lucinda open the door. Voices filled the hall.
“Will?”

“Trust me Katie. Don’t say a word unless I
tell you to.” He looked at Allison and Brian, “Repeat the story I
told you. Don’t so much as mutter Tristan’s name.”

“Got it,” Allison said. Brian nodded, his
face just as pale as before. His eyes never left the table.

Will got up and moved to Katie, as the
voices grew louder. “Trust me Katie. Everything I’m about to say
about you, is true. Everything. But once they tell you everything,
it’s your decision.”

“Will—” Katie stuttered.

He put his hand on her shoulder and
squeezed. Nothing about what he said was reassuring.

“My wife and I are looking forward to
another one of your dinners, Lucinda. Don’t tell Mariam I told you
this, but I dream about your steaks,” said a voice in the hall.

“Nonsense, Jim,” Lucinda said, walking into
the room. Her voice was light, but Katie knew by the way her eyes
darted from Will onto her, that she was on edge like the rest of
them. A large man followed Lucinda in and laughed.

“Will, if Mariam was half as good at cooking
as your wife, I’d have have all my clothes custom made.”

Katie took in Jim, the man that made the
room smaller. He was as big as his voice, almost as tall as the
doorframe, and—staring at her.

“This is her?” A high-pitched voice said
behind Jim. An old, thin woman fixed a pair of glasses on her face
and peered at Katie. Not a hair strayed from her tight, white bun.
She moved past Jim and closer to Katie.

Will squeezed Katie’s shoulder one more
time. “Yes, Katalina Watts,” Will said. “Drew and Katalina’s
daughter.”

“Oh, Katalina Rockwell? From an eastern
province? The one in New York?” Jim said, nodding. His voice
bellowed in and out as he looked back and forth between Will and
Lucinda.

“That would be her,” Will said.

“Well,” the woman said, looking away from
Katie and on to Brian and Allison. “What exactly happened?” She
peered at them over the top of her glasses.

Allison sat up straighter than a board and
cleared her throat. “We were walking to get ice cream. We took a
shortcut through the alley between Second and Third Street and a
D-Range vampire attacked us. She was feeding off a homeless man and
tried to attack Katie. We—me and Brian—fought her off but she ran
off when she smelled the iron in Brian’s knife. As soon as she hit
the sun she crystalized.”

“A D-range in the middle of the day?” The
woman said with an arched brow.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, Henrietta.
Women are always getting changed and then thrown out. The north
gate is right there next to that ice-cream parlor.”

Henrietta looked between them; she settled
her gaze on Brian. “Where exactly, Sir, did you get an iron knife,
and why did you have it while walking home—
from
school
?”

“I—I—”

“Speak up boy,” Jim cleared his throat. He
too had hardened his gaze on Brian.

“I took it from my dad. I didn’t mean to—I
just wanted to—I don’t know. I—”

“That’s enough,” Henrietta snapped. “You
know the rules. We have them for a reason, if you can’t follow
them—I don’t care
who
your father is—we will send you to an
omitter.”

Brian didn’t move. If it weren’t for the
tinniest lift of his chest, he could have passed as dead. No one in
the room moved. Katie had been wrong. It wasn’t Jim who had made
the room small—it was this woman; she stood no taller than five
feet.

“Glock,” she said to the doorway. A tall
thing walked into the room. It wasn’t a man—it couldn’t have been a
man. It had no face—nothing Katie could see. Just a single black
eye peering out from a head wrapped in gauze. It wore a suit, but
she could tell the clothes were meant to hide something. Something
hideous. Its hands were a color between gray and white. The veins
clearly webbed and green.

It reached toward Katie and she jumped back
in her chair.

“Don’t worry dear, you won’t remember a
thing,” Henrietta said.

“Wait.” Will moved between Katie and the
thing, Glock.

“Will, you know the rules,” Jim said,
seemingly bored and ready to move on to something new.

“She’s a guardian.”

“She isn’t on the list,” Henrietta said.

“She was born with the mark. Drew didn’t
register her. He didn’t want her to know about us after he lost her
mother.” Will seemed unfazed by the thing standing only inches from
him. A smell seeped from Glock that was inhuman.

“I thought that was a little suspicious
given the lineage,” Jim said, eyeing Katie. “Why didn’t you say
anything three years ago? You know we’re short on recruits.
Especially ones with a solid bloodline like hers. If you knew, it
was your responsibility to say something.”

“It wasn’t my place. Drew made his decision
clear,” Will said.

“It’s
her
decision. Not his,” Jim
said appalled. “Really, Will. You let an old friendship cloud your
judgement. I told you he was no good when he became a
deserter
—
”

“We can’t change the past, Jim.” Will turned
around to face Katie. “But, it’s her decision now.”

As soon as Will moved, she was flooded with
the putrid smell seeping from Glock. She tried to avert her eyes,
but his single black eye was like a magnet forcing her to look.

She was mesmerized. It changed colors from
black to green-gold. Like an animal in the night. “
I know you.
I’ve tasted you before. I know what you are. I’ve drank the horror
that is your past.”

“What?” Katie said. Her heart pounded in her
chest and her skin itched with disgust.

“I said, it’s your decision now.” Will
looked between her and Glock. “Glock, could you wait outside, we’ll
call you back in if we need you.” Glock’s orb returned to black and
he left the room, leaving behind his smell. Had no one else heard
him?

“I—I don’t know,” Katie said, looking
between all the eyes staring at her.

“This isn’t fair. Brian and I had three
months to decide,” Allison said. Katie wished she had sat next to
Allison.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t a normal
situation, Miss Stonewall,” Henrietta said. “You were under the
protection of the school and you and your classmates were sectioned
off from the rest of the world to learn about our world and make
your decision. Miss Watts does not have that luxury given she
wasn’t properly registered. We have rules for a reason.” She turned
to Katie and took off her glasses.

It was the first time she looked kind. The
wrinkles around her eyes lifted as she knelt next to Katie. “My
number one priority in life is to protect as many people as I can.
But, it’s my personal agenda to make sure the children in this
world have a fighting chance. I would be going against that if I
let you walk out this door without deciding. When the evil in this
world knows you can see it, it’s only a matter of time before it
seeks you out.”

“How can I make a decision when I don’t know
anything about any of this?” Katie wanted to get up and fight her
way out of the room, but there was no way she’d make it past
Glock.

“We can make all of this go away. That’s
what Glock is here for. He is an omitter. He erases memories.”
Henrietta looked at Katie with clear blue eyes. “Or we can tell you
what you need to know.”

Katie thought about the blood that was
smeared across her face and arms. How it coated her hands. She’d
give anything to forget it. To forget the smell, that even now,
lingered. “Will I just forget today?” Katie looked between Will and
Lucinda.

Darkness passed between them. Lucinda
frowned, “We don’t know. Sometimes people only forget a few days,
sometimes they forget months—or years.”

“Years?” Katie couldn’t believe that. How
could they erase someone’s memories if they didn’t know how it
worked. Henrietta had threatened to do it to Brian. Now Katie
understood why he was still staring at the table—still stark
white.

“The omitters don’t talk. When they take
more than they are supposed to, we don’t know if it’s something
they can control.” Jim rested his hand on a chair.