The Marked Son (Keepers of Life) (6 page)

I jolt awake, shaking. Sweat clings to my skin. I’m at a loss as to where I am, and then I hear voices. Arguing.

The clock reads ten after midnight. I pull my hand down my face and sigh, listening to the shrill tone leaking through my door. I know that voice. I roll out of bed, and ease my door open, only then hearing the other voice calmly striving for reason. I soundlessly make my way to the kitchen, but stop short of the room at a point where the shadows hide me.

Grandma sits at the table wearing a bright pink, girlie nightgown. It’s nothing like I expect a grandma to wear. She holds a cup of coffee in her hands and a shocked expression on her face. Mom, still in jeans and a t-shirt, is leaning against the counter, tapping an unlit cigarette. Her face is stiff, her eyes haunted. She wants to light up, but she’s smart enough not to do it in her mother’s house.

Grandma shakes her head. “You can’t leave him.”

“He belongs here.”

No guesses needed to know who
he
is.

“What does that mean?” The confusion in Grandma’s voice matches what I feel.

“I can’t deal with him anymore, okay?”

“He’s your son, Addison.”

Mom taps the cigarette so hard, the end splits and tobacco spills out. She cusses and gives Grandma a hard look. “You’re wrong there. I’ve tried to ignore the signs, but they’re getting stronger. He’s his father’s son through and through. Love ’em and leave ’em Dylan. But that’s not all. Far from it.”

Grandma only sputters. “I-I don’t see how—”

Mom leans forward. “He’s obsessive. Whatever he wants, he gets. He doesn’t back down until he does. Just watch. You’ll see. It’s
unnatural
.”

“And you blame Dylan’s father? I thought he didn’t know his father.”

“With his DNA? Dylan doesn’t have to know him.”

“Honey, it sounds like you’re punishing a boy for his father’s sins.”

A bitter bark of laughter escapes Mom. “Dylan hasn’t been a boy for a long time now. God knows why he’s still hanging onto me.”

“Addison!” Grandma scolds gently. “Dylan loves you.”

Tears flood her eyes. “He pities me.”

“Baby,” Grandma’s voice holds a wealth of sympathy, and she begins to rise. “You’ve had it so rough for so long…”

“Don’t.” Mom motions her back down and turns away, gripping the countertop until her knuckles turn white. Her back is to me, but her voice shakes with emotions I’ve never heard before. “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve given him as much as I can. He’s changing too fast, and now…”

Her sudden, tiny gasp for breath is swallowed by a sob. “Nobody understands. It’s so hard. Looking at Dylan. Seeing
him
. He’s stealing Dylan away, and I can’t stop it.” Her chest stutters up and down, and when she looks at Grandma, there’s a deep-seated dread behind her eyes. “Worse, I don’t want to. Dylan doesn’t belong. He’s never really belonged.”

Grandma puts her hand to her temple, as if to cradle her mind, to comfort her distress. Thick silence descends on the kitchen. The truth is finally out. Deep down, I’ve always known. The scared looks. The nervousness.

The empty hole I’ve always carried within me grows heavy.

“Honey,” Grandma finally says. “I don’t know what to say.”

A sad vulnerability washes over Mom’s face. “You know, I thought I loved him. He was so handsome, and I was so young. I thought we’d be together forever. But he showed me the cruelest fairy tale of all, and I can’t pretend anymore.”

“Addy.” Grandma holds out her hand, begging Mom to take it.

Mom stares at the hand, the pull to take it a visible struggle. Her eyes reflect her tension as they shift to Grandma’s blue ones. “You love me, don’t you?”

“Since the moment you came into my life.”

“You want me to be happy, don’t you?”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I brought Dylan here to set him free.” Mom’s lips quiver. She puts her fingertips to them, whether to stop their trembling or stop the words that flow in hurtful waves. “Please,” she whispers past her fingers, “make him go. If you don’t, I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be happy again.”

With Grandma shaking her head as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing, Mom whirls about and runs out the back door.

I shiver though I’m not cold. My mind feels like it’s encased in ice, and I need to chip away at the frozen bits and pieces to figure out what’s going on. None of it makes sense.

Grandma stays seated, her eyes unfocused and confused. “Oh God,” she whispers. “This can’t be happening. Help her.”

I hear the car start. Mom has run to the front of the house. She’s leaving, and I can’t seem to feel anything. I stand there in the shadows, a shell of skin and bones, with a battered soul.

Grandma gets to her feet and heads toward the front door without seeing me. I’ve become a shadow, and I follow quietly behind her.

She pushes the screen door open and steps onto the front porch among the calls of the crickets and frogs. Mom’s car speeds away, trailer in tow, spitting mud and water and gravel toward the porch and off into the yard, where bits of rock ping off the ugly metal sculptures. Grandma’s hands cover her mouth, and after a moment, her breathing becomes a ragged mess.

Mom’s done it again. She’s left her family with no excuses, except for a finger pointing squarely at me. The unwanted son. I push at the door and Grandma twirls about, her eyes shadowed by sadness. “Dylan. What are you doing up?”

“She’s gone.” Something inside me is slowly withering, taking me with it. Nausea creeps over my body.

She stares after the twin spots of red swiftly fading from sight. “She’ll be back.”

“No, she won’t.” It’s as if Mom’s been whispering it in my ear since the day I was born. Everything she’s done has led to this moment. It’s hard to feel sorry, or mad, or anything. I’m too numb.

We continue to stare at the lights until they’re swallowed by the night. “I guess that’s why she never said much on the way up here. She never intended to stay.”

“She’ll be back.”

Grandma sounds confident. “Is that what you told Grandpa the first time she left?”

Her arms snake about her waist in a comforting hug. “She came back.”

What’s wrong with her? Mom ditches her family for a nomadic life and for seventeen years she doesn’t contact them—not even to say she’s alive? I seriously don’t get it. What bizarre hope is Grandma hanging onto?

Out of nowhere, anger, fueled by my sour stomach and a killer headache, wells inside me. “Stop kidding yourself. She didn’t come back. She barely slowed down to throw me out of the car.” I thrust out my jaw and glare up into the star-spangled night. “God! She just keeps the surprises coming, doesn’t she? Too bad they all suck.”

“Don’t say that.” Grandma wraps her warm fingers around my arm. I can feel her shaking. “Your mother is—”

“Yeah,” I interrupt, saving her the effort of lying. “I know. You forget, I lived with her longer than you did. I know
exactly
what she is.”

I have no energy left. Shaking from the weakness that’s suddenly infected my body, I tug the screen door open. “I’ll leave in the morning.”

“What?” Grandma blocks my way inside. I could pick her up and toss her aside, but she doesn’t seem to understand that fact. Her eyes have taken on a strange light. “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re home now.”

Home? I don’t know what the word means. She’s upset. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. “You don’t owe me anything. Why should you? You don’t know me.”

“Yes, I do. You’re my grandson, and that’s all I need to know.”

“Even if Mom’s right?” I challenge. “I’m no angel.”

“No one around here is. We’re all a rotten bunch of apples, so you’ll fit right in. You’re staying, and that’s that.”

I stare at Grandma. Her pale eyes crackle with undeniable authority. It won’t last long, her wanting me. I change friends faster than I do TV channels, and no one has ever kept in touch. I disappear, and they’re happy to let me go. Grandma just doesn’t know any better yet.

She lets out a breath of pent-up air. “Go to bed. I’m gonna pray that tomorrow is a better day.”

“Whatever.”

She pushes me inside. “Just wait. It will be.”

I head toward my room, my feet dragging. I’m barely holding it together. My insides melt, but there’s no warm fuzziness to this feeling. It fans out in wave after dangerous wave. And when I reach my bed, I fall onto the too-soft mattress and stop thinking.

Yet sadly, I live on.

Armed and Dangerous

The hounds were out in force. Navar’s nasty creations, more monster than manageable, were scratching the land and sniffing the air when Kera stepped back into her own realm. She hadn’t thought they would be so close. With her mind filled with Dylan, she’d burst through the barrier and into a net of trouble. She cautiously moved away, but not fast enough.

The hounds yipped and howled, catching her scent. She sped through the forest, lunging around the brush and vaulting over obstacles until she reached Lani’s sister and the caves where society’s undesirables hid. She released a sigh of relief only when she crossed the secret entrance, still invisible because of its collective spell that also covered any scent or tracks leading there. For now, she was safe. At least, as safe as she
could
be.

She’d let the shock of finding Dylan alive in the human realm distract her and she’d nearly been caught. Her foolishness surprised her.

To those who stopped to stare, she nodded a harried greeting. How scandalous she must look, all disheveled. Yet the few mothers she spied rocking their children wouldn’t condemn her. Their eyes held only curiosity and concern.

The people were a ragged group, and their plight tugged at Kera’s heart. Through no fault of their own, they were bound to a dark existence. Their skin had grown pale and thin, and their eyes red-rimmed. Yet, these were the strongest of their kind. Disease had ravaged many, taking the weak and helpless, and now hunger threatened those who remained. Tunnels were being excavated in an effort to secretly bring in supplies, because with Navar and his men so close by, she and her father had been forced to cut back on their weekly visits.

With shaking hands, Kera wiggled into the space allocated for Lani and her sister Signe. She found Signe huddled around an earth heater, a metallic contraption that poked into the ground and gathered the earth’s heat, keeping the cave warm and dry. She was humming a sad tune and sewing a button on one of Lani’s shirts. Seeing Signe brought to mind kindness and secrets and forever friends.

Signe glanced up, and the hurt in her eyes mirrored Kera’s own. Tears sparkled behind her lashes. “She’s hanging in the square. Nailed to the post like a criminal. Her head on a spike. What was her crime?”

Shame pinched Kera’s chest. While she’d been hiding in the other realm, one of her best friends had been mourning the death of her sister. Alone. She knelt before Signe and hugged her. “She was innocent. The sweetest of us. I followed Navar, thinking I could help her, but there were too many of them. I’m so sorry.”

Remembering her inability to rescue her friend had bile rising in her throat, and to think of her hanging in the square for all to see… Silent tears broke free.

Signe hugged her tighter. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to risk your life for hers. You know she wouldn’t.”

“I know, but—”

“No. Don’t do that to yourself.” Signe gripped the edge of her sleeve and patted away the evidence of their sorrow. It was only then that she noticed Kera’s lack of clothing. “What’s going on?”

Kera stood. That she’d been able to break through the wall separating the two realms still unsettled her, and seeing Dylan kept her off balance in a way that made everything she did seem unreal. “I…I need to borrow some clothes.”

Signe pushed back a lock of curly red hair that defied containing and looked down at the clothes in her hands. “You can have these. I don’t know why I’m mending them. She’s not coming back, I know that, but I couldn’t bear to see them in such disrepair.” The freckles splashed across her nose and pale cheeks brightened, as if she were admitting to doing something wrong.

The clothes she held were cut in a boy’s style, but were made for Lani. She wore them when she went foraging, more of an excuse to scout out the area for anyone nosing around. It was a job Lani had taken upon herself, and one the group took advantage of.

Signe tied off the thread and stood. “I won’t ask you where your clothes are, but are you in trouble?”

Kera’s gaze swept the tiny space. Their only privacy from the others who lived in the caves was a rickety screen made of woven branches. The whir of earth heaters, plus the sound of tunnels being dug, rattled the air.

Fearing they could be overheard, Kera kept her voice quiet. “What do you know about the barrier?”

Signe turned Kera around and helped her out of the cumbersome layers of underskirts. “Not much. Only that to go there, to try and cross between the realms, will bring about death.”

She turned Kera back around and handed her the trousers.

The well-worn cloth slipped over her skin, whisper soft. It wasn’t the first time she’d worn Lani’s clothes, but pulling on the dark trousers made her wonder why Lani hadn’t worn clothes that blended in with the forest. Why wear a bright blue dress?

“Lani was found close to the barrier.” Kera watched Signe’s face. “Too close.”

Her friend bit her lip in an effort to stop its trembling. “She was foraging. Don’t look at me like that. She wouldn’t cross over. What would she gain by doing so?”

Now she knew something was wrong. Lani never foraged in anything but the clothes Signe had just mended. She couldn’t keep the secret a moment longer. “I found a rip in the wall.”

Signe hugged Lani’s shirt to her chest. “How? Where?”

“So you know nothing about it? Did Lani?” Kera held out her hand for the dark shirt.

“No.” Signe handed over the shirt and shook her head. “She would have told me. You know her—she told us everything. If the wall is weakening, then it has to do with Navar. Everything is falling apart, and it’s all because of him. He’ll do anything to gain the throne.”

Kera finished buttoning her shirt. “You’re probably right. Navar’s treachery shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.”

Signe swept Kera’s heavy braid aside and helped her into a canvas duster. Buttoned, it fit tightly around Kera’s torso, but the fabric had been scored around the legs for ease of movement. When Kera stood still, it hung like a proper lady’s coat. Lani had called it practical femininity.

Signe adjusted the sleeves by cuffing them once. “You’re lucky you got away. He’s cast a net of fear so wide, no one feels safe. Those who used to be our friends are turning on us to save their own skins.”

With the collar flipped into place, Signe’s hands stilled, chilling Kera’s neck. She slowly pulled them away and her voice grew thin. “Did she die quickly?”

The pain of losing her sister filtered through Signe’s words. Kera looked straight into her friend’s eyes. “Your sister is the bravest woman I’ve ever known. Her death was quick.”

Signe closed her eyes and nodded. “I told her not to go foraging.”

“Are you in need of food?” The supplies had been thin lately, but she hadn’t thought their stores had gotten dangerously low.

“We’re always in need, but she could’ve waited. I-I think it was a ruse. She was a protector at heart. I believe she wished to make sure everyone was safe before she came home.”

“That sounds like her.” Lani and Signe weren’t just sisters, they were best friends, all three of them were. Losing Lani was like losing part of herself.

Kera turned away, but Signe wouldn’t let her go. “You see it, don’t you? The stench of decay beneath the perfection Navar is creating? We can’t afford to ignore it much longer. If we do, we’ll all perish.”

Kera saw it. Signe feared it. Lani had died because of it.

Never again.

“I won’t let anything happen to you. To any of you.” Kera squeezed her friend’s hands. “I promise.”

“Lani promised me that, too. I’m just afraid—”

Whatever she was going to say, she stopped short and moved away.

Afraid of what? Kera could badger Signe to find out, but she was barely holding herself together. Things were spinning out of control. Kera didn’t like the helplessness that had infused Teag. It weakened the people and made them more susceptible to Navar’s wishes. She had to find a way to infuse them with hope.

She had to get rid of Navar.

A fine sheen of sweat formed along her temples. She’d contemplated getting rid of Navar before, but never seriously. Her people wore blinders, and ripping them off wouldn’t be easy. She’d have to make people see Navar for who he truly was. Once his true nature was revealed, she would somehow force him from power. Show Navar that he wasn’t—

Her mind flashed to Dylan and the power she felt in his presence. If she could tap into that power, she could use it to neutralize Navar’s reach for the throne. Except, Dylan lived beyond their world. Why he lived there and not here was a mystery she needed to solve. So deep in thought, she jumped when Signe touched her arm.

“What’s wrong?” Signe asked. “You’re breathing oddly.”

Kera’s confidence immediately sank, knowing Signe would most likely disapprove of her plan. “What if I told you I crossed the barrier?”

Her friend gasped, and her pale skin turned even paler.

“I didn’t mean to, but when I did, I saw
him
. The boy from my dreams.”

“Oh, no…”

The look of disbelief mixed with dread on Signe’s face matched the feeling inside Kera. “I know, but when I saw him, I felt a surge of power.”

“You think he’s a
first
?”

Kera nodded. “Trapped in the human realm. He has to be, right? It would explain our dreams, how intense they always are. How whenever we need each other, one of us appears.”

Signe wrung her hands. “You must be careful—”

“The hounds are close!” A child ran by, his warning a harsh whisper. “The hounds!”

The digging machines stopped. The air stilled. Everyone held their breath.

All too quickly, the bay of the hounds echoed within the caves. They were close, but by the sound of it, they were moving fast, and…away from the area. Knowing that didn’t stop Kera’s skin from crawling. Like all of Navar’s creatures, the beasts didn’t differentiate between their intended quarry and those unfortunate enough to find themselves in their path. Only one thing could make Navar pull the hounds away from the hunt.

There were other, more deadly hunters in the forest.

Kera glanced at Signe, who had turned to rummage in an old bag.

“I have to go,” Kera said.

“Wait. Wait.”

“Signe, I have to go.” She had to get home, had to warn her father they were making another sweep for the undesirables.

Her friend brought out a small bundle and pressed the package into Kera’s hands. “One of the boys…he found it and brought it back. It’s Lani’s.” She took a step back. “Take it. It’s useless to me.”

Once unwrapped, the shiny blade’s edge winked blue in the dim light. Lani’s dagger, made of
incordium
, the strongest metal created by the ancients. Kera looked to Signe. “I can’t take this.”

“Yes, you can. I know it’s old, but its properties are useful, especially against magic, and I know you know how to use one. She’d want you to have it.
I
want you to have it.”

Signe wasn’t like Lani. She had a soul so gentle, she couldn’t eat a carrot if she thought a rabbit had eyed it first. The metal felt warm in Kera’s hands, and if the legends were true,
incordium
wasn’t just strong, it was a conductor. It could absorb and spit back any magic that was aimed at its user. It was Lani’s most prized possession.

And now it was hers.

A husky thank you passed Kera’s lips as she tucked the dagger under her belt.

“Keep it on you at all times.”

Kera nodded mindlessly.

Signe grabbed her friend’s arm. “Kera, please do as I ask. You’re taking too many risks.”

“I’ll keep it on me.” It was a promise she could easily keep. After a quick hug, she paused by the woven screen. “I’ll be back with provisions. Tell everyone to stay put.”

Kera slipped out of the cave’s entrance and raced over brambles and dodged trees, moving in the opposite direction of the hounds and their handlers. She had neared the edge of the forest when she heard the unmistakable
swoosh-click
of broken wings.

Millispits. Tiny, winged amphibian-type creatures with sharp, serrated fingers, no mouths, and large, glowing eyes. Imperfectly created from magic to do two things: kill anything that moves with their serrated fingers and long, venom-filled tail, then die.