Keeper of the Innocents

by Kristy Centeno

  “I should give you something good to remember.” When he lowered his hand and questioned me with his eyes, I leaned in all the way and touched my lips to his.

  This time our mouths met in a provocatively sweet kiss that forced the twenty butterflies in my stomach to flutter all at once. Unlike the kiss we’d shared an hour or so before, this one was not sexual at all, but a means to release our growing sentiments. It was an escape of sorts. Through it we said what neither of us had the courage to say aloud.

  Instead of feeling as if my heart would break from sadness this time, I was overwhelmed with sentimentalities unlike any I’d experienced prior to meeting Rhyzel. I’d dated before—had in fact broken up with my last boyfriend not too long ago, but Rhyzel was the first guy that put me at odds, conflicted my entire personal belief in what was right and wrong, turned me on, and made me feel whole in a matter of seconds.

  “Mom, look, they’re kissing.”

  I broke away, and found a little girl of about eight staring at us and giggling. A woman—I assumed to be her mother, scorned me with one look and pulled her child away as fast as she could.

  Rhyzel coughed uncomfortably. “I think we should get out of here now.”

  “Good idea,” I replied, putting on my helmet. He did the same, and within moments we were riding away from the Open Air Cinema and heading in the direction of home.

  ***

  Rhyzel’s apartment was just as I remembered it. Its interior had a very modern twist to it, unlike mine, which had more of a family feel to it. The walls were painted with darker colors varying from red to blue and even some dark grays. Like ours, it was also a two bedroom but the layout was different.

  Where the kitchen and dining area was located in our apartment, in Rhyzel’s it was the opposite. The bedrooms and bathroom was situated in that area and the kitchen and dining room faced east, whereas ours faced west.

  “Is this your doing?” I motioned around the room.

  Rhyzel placed his helmet on top of the coffee table. “Some of it. My mother has a more contemporary taste. She’s more about the bold colors and leather furniture.”

  “Has?”

  “Had,” he corrected quickly. “Sorry, I don’t like to think of her as gone.”

  I sympathized with him. “I understand.” I placed the helmet he’d lent me on the coffee table and took off the backpack. “Where can I put this?”

  “The couch is fine.” He pointed to the hallway in front of him. “Still in the mood for something cool?”

  I nodded as I placed my backpack on the couch. “You have any ice cream?”

  “I make a mean ice cream sundae.”

  I laughed softly at the expression on his face. He definitely resembled a carefree child, excited about sharing something with someone he cared about.

  “I’ll go for that.”

  “All right. Follow me.”

  He led me to the kitchen and told me to make myself comfortable at a tiny, two chair dining table. I pulled back one of the chairs and sat while he moved around in the kitchen, gathering ingredients for his mean ice cream sundae.

  Engrossed in his task, Rhyzel didn’t even notice I was taking advantage of the moment to admire him in silence. He was definitely admirable physically, but his handsome face, hypnotic eyes, and killer body wasn’t what got to me. No entirely, anyway. It was his personality as well. His desire to be seen as a person and not a monster really called out to me. It was something I could understand all too well.

  At times I found myself wishing I could be even halfway normal, because being a witch took a lot out of me and required so much responsibility. Much more than any normal girl my age had. But then, being a Keeper was who I was and was born to be. It was in my blood and I couldn’t help it any more than Rhyzel could help being half demon.

  “Eat up.” His voice snapped me out of my thoughts and I glanced down to find a huge bowl filled with vanilla ice cream, banana, peanuts, whip cream, and chocolate syrup sitting there.

  “You’re not expecting me to eat all this on my own, right? This is enough ice cream sundae for like four people.”

  Rhyzel pulled out the remaining chair, sat down, and offered me a spoon. “No. I’ll help you.”

  I took the spoon he offered. “Good, ’cause this is too much sweet, even for me.”

  “Dig in,” he said, taking the first spoonful and bringing it to his mouth.

  “Tell me something, Rhyzel…” I filled my spoon with ice cream. “Did you ever meet your Keeper’s Overseer?” I brought the spoon to my mouth to taste the ice cream and was instantly gratified with its sweetness.

  He shook his head. “No. I heard about him through Selena.”

  “That was your Keeper’s name?”

  He finished another spoonful of ice cream before responding. “Yes. She spoke to me often of her life as a Keeper.”

  “She trusted you.” It wasn’t a question, but he answered it as if it was.

  “I guess so. Selena was like a second mother to me. I spent as much time with her as I did with my biological mother. When my mother died, I went to live with Selena in her hometown.”

  “So that’s the friend you were with?”

  A dark shadow possessed his expression. “After Selena was killed, I sought several of my mother’s friends and moved to quite a few small towns until a week ago, when I came back here.”

  I wanted to know how he’d lost his Keeper, but somehow I knew he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Not yet. Maybe one day, but I could tell that was a subject he wanted to avoid so I changed the topic.

  “So how long was she your Keeper?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Did she have a family?”

  Rhyzel put down his spoon and sat back, his expression unreadable. “Two daughters who hate my guts for what happened to their mother. They blame me for what happened.”

  I had wanted to change the subject but I only made it worse by asking more questions.

  “Rhyzel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad—”

  “No. It’s okay. I’ve had time to accept that. It was hard at first, but I eventually got used to people hating me,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

  I set the spoon aside. “I don’t hate you, Rhyzel.”

  “Right now you don’t.” His response came as a shock almost. What exactly did he mean by that?

  “Am I going to have reason to hate you sometime in the future?”

  “Who knows?” Sadness tinged his eyes. “I have a high probability of turning completely evil one day. You know that.”

  Yes, I knew. I was aware of it. But I didn’t want to think about it.

  “There’s a little evil in everybody. We’re not all completely good.”

  “It’s different with me.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I can really hurt people.”

  I don’t know why, but I had the feeling he was trying to tell me something without voicing the actual words.

  “People hurt people every day. Haven’t you seen the news lately?” I argued.

  “Yes, but not like I can. I can wipe out an entire town in a matter of minutes with my powers alone. I can seduce people into a lifetime of servitude as unwilling slaves. And knowing all this scares me. What if I can’t fight the bad in me anymore and one day I give in?”

  I could deny it as much as I wanted, but he was right. How many witches had given in to the selfish need to call themselves conquerors of humanity? Plenty. And it had taken Servers of Good like me to eliminate these egotistical creatures.

  I’d crossed paths with evil doers before and the battles always ended badly for them. It didn’t make my job any easier, though. For every evil being destroyed there was always another waiting to take its place. It was a never-ending circle.

  “That’s not going to happen, Rhyzel. You’re strong. You can fight it. I know you can.” I had faith in him. He’d proven to be good so far. I was clinging on to that hope because I so desperately needed him to be even h
alfway human. “Your Keeper had faith in you. She chose to save you. To give you a second chance. She wouldn’t have if she thought you’d turn against her one day.”

  “It’s not that simple. Her choice got her killed.”

  “It’s a risk every Keeper takes. I can die tomorrow protecting Renee. I’m aware of that. But being a protector of the innocent is in my blood. I would rather die than let anyone hurt Renee.”

  Rhyzel squeezed his eyes shut. “You’d risk your life for your charge?” His voice lowered so much I could barely hear him. The sudden change of mood kind of threw me off.

  “Naturally. Renee’s well-being is more important. I vowed to protect her and I have every intention to do just that.”

  Instead of responding, Rhyzel opened his eyes, popped to his feet, walked towards me, and pulled me out of the chair. Before I could ask what was wrong, he placed his hands on my hips and kissed me.

  The initial contact was sweet and demanding, but just as I began to concentrate on the way his tongue delved heatedly into my mouth, an eerie image flashed behind my closed eyelids. An image I would have given anything not to see.

  The creature that had haunted my dreams for so long hovered over Rhyzel, its enormous hands covered with his blood. On the hard floor laid Rhyzel, bleeding to death, gasping for air, his gorgeous eyes staring at me and pleading for forgiveness.

  It came and went quickly, but it affected me enough that I collapsed on the floor of Rhyzel’s kitchen, gasping for air as I clutched my chest—the pain I felt became overwhelming. Through those few seconds of envisioning the future I could not only feel the physical pain he would ultimately undergo at that moment, but the agony of his tumultuous thoughts as well.

  The enemy from my nightmare was real. Not a figment of my imagination but an actual creature, and somehow, some way, it would find a way to get to Rhyzel. The vision was not of the past, but of the future, and the message was clear: Rhyzel was going to die soon.

  “Demi? Demi! What is it?” Rhyzel shook my shoulders, trying to get me to react. “What did you see?” He was on his knees, touching my face, pushing my hair back, shaking me in his own desperation to know what had caused my sudden distress. I just sat there, completely motionless.

  I tried to talk but the words just wouldn’t get past my lips. I’d seen him die. I’d felt his suffering as if I was the one going through it. I knew he had but a few days left, if that, and I didn’t have the guts to tell him. I couldn’t warn him what was going to happen. I’d turned into a big pile of mush and in the meantime Rhyzel could feel the anguish I was going through. Every time we touched we exchanged some form of information, and he had kept his hands on me the whole time.

  “Demi, I can feel it. Talk to me. What’s wrong?” I could practically feel the level of anxiety he was in. “Why are you in pain? What exactly did you see?”

  I finally moved, burying my face in his chest. “Just hold me, please.” It was all I could say.

  He wrapped his warm, muscled arms around me and held me tightly against his hard body. “You’re scaring me,” he whispered.

  I didn’t respond, but looped my arms around his midsection instead.

  “Demi, I need to know.” He ran one hand over my short tresses. “I don’t want you to bear this alone.”

  I shook my head, wiping my tears in his shirt in the process. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “If it’s about me, I need to know,” he insisted softly.

  “No. You don’t.”

  “It’s best that I know so I can be prepared.”

  “I don’t think it’s something you can be prepared for.” My visions had never failed. Whenever I saw someone die, they always did. No matter how hard I tried to change things I wasn’t a powerful enough source to change what was already written.

  “I need to know regardless.”

  I pushed back, my eyes filled with unshed tears. “Even if that means there might not be a tomorrow?”

  His gaze wavered a bit. “I’m going to die? Is that it?”

  I didn’t respond. I just couldn’t say the words. It was too much of an effort.

  He sighed. “Demi, it’s okay.”

  Not understanding how he could be so calm about knowing his death was imminent, I shoved him aside and picked myself off the floor.

  “How can it be okay?” I stared down at him. “Rhyzel, you…are going to die!”

  “It’s my destiny, Demi.” Slowly, as if he feared that moving too quickly would scare me away, he stood and took my hand. “Don’t you see? I’ve been hunted my entire life. It has to end one way or another and the demons are many, whereas I’m only one. I can’t hide forever.”

  “No.” I refused to be so calm, knowing what would eventually happen. “We can at least try.” It was useless to even hope for a better outcome, but my desperation was such that I couldn’t give in without trying.

  “What’s destined to happen will happen, no matter how we intervene. You’re a Keeper, you should know that by heart.”

  “No.” I clasped my hands together to keep them from shaking.

  “Is it soon?” he asked. When I nodded, he reached out for me and pulled me to him. “Can you do me a favor, then?”

  “What?” I rested the side of my face on his right pectoral muscle so I could listen to the beating heart underneath.

  “Could you spend another day with me? Tomorrow, maybe?” He’d accepted the facts already. He wouldn’t move a finger to stop it no matter what I said. He was already giving up. “Give me one more day and I’ll be happy. Can you do that?” One more day? We’d barely had but a few casual encounters, most of which had turned ugly at some point.

  “I…” Responding cost me greatly. “I…need to take care of Renee.”

  “You can bring her along. I won’t mind.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Do you know about that park on Pinewood Road?”

  “The one they shut down for renovations?”

  “That’s the one. Well, they reopened it last weekend. Maybe we can head over there tomorrow and make a morning out of it.”

  A day with Rhyzel—one final day to make up for those few times I’d treated him like he wasn’t worth the soil under my shoes.

  “Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

  “My boss has a few problems he needs to bring up to code tomorrow so he gave us the day off.” His warm breath tickled the top of my right ear as he moved his head down. “So you don’t have to worry about my schedule at all. I’m available.”

  “We can do that.” I wasn’t that worried about Renee. It was made clear during their meeting that she had been comfortable around Rhyzel. Usually she wasn’t very comfortable around people she didn’t know, but with Rhyzel she’d shown no discomfort at all.

  He pulled back enough so he could tip my chin up with his fingers. “Don’t be upset, Demi. I’m not worth it.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Look at it this way…you won’t have to worry anymore about being betrayed by me.” I found his attempt at lightening the mood even more upsetting.

  “Don’t.” I reached up with my right hand to caress the side of his face. “I can’t…” Words failed me, so I simply stood there and added nothing more.

  Rhyzel leaned in and planted a kiss on my forehead. “As much as I love having you here with me, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  I turned my head to the right to glance at the digital clock on his coffee maker and noted it was half past eleven.

  I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “I’m sorry…I gotta go.” If I had my way, I would have spent the night, but Mom knew who I was with and she was likely waiting up for me.

  “I know.” He embraced me again, gentler this time, and as he did, he planted several pecks on the top of my head, cheeks, chin, the sides of my mouth, and then finally my lips.

  We exploded into a passionate display of affection.

  Our kissing was much more urgent
this time around. We both knew death loomed over one of us and holding back was impossible. Our lips moved in unison, our hands acted with a mind of their own, prodding, touching, caressing.

  His tongue played a sexy game of tag with mine. His hands caressed my body as if I was a fine piece of china he feared would break if touched too hard. And in the middle of this I allowed myself to feel and enjoy. Not to think. Thinking would break me down. It would eat away at the magic of the moment and I simply didn’t want that.

  I slid my hands under his shirt and ran my fingers over his abdomen—over his scar and up to his chest. He moaned into my mouth and pushed against me. His response emboldened me and elicited one of my own. I acted by allowing myself free access over his upper body, worshiping every muscle with the tips of my fingers.

  Rhyzel’s hands had found their way under the hem of my shirt when my phone began to ring. The sound was like having a bucket of ice cold water thrown on us. I knew who it was even without taking out my cell to see the number.

  We pulled back, breathing heavily—panting almost.

  “I…it’s…” In the heat of the moment I’d wanted nothing more than to stay with him. To take things a step further, but it was a risk I couldn’t take. Not with my mother twenty feet away and aware of who I was with. Even though she didn’t know I was right next door, she could very easily find me if she put her magic to work.

  “I understand.” Rhyzel looked at me, his eyes simmering with heat. The redness in his irises said it all. It matched what I felt. “We’ll meet up tomorrow again.”

  “Tomorrow.” I touched the side of his face, hoping to memorize what he felt like so that I’d never forget. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “I’ll wait for you sometime after nine. Is that okay?”

  “Yes.” I whispered my response. “Bye.”

  Rhyzel planted another quick kiss on my lips before stepping aside. I didn’t wait for him to show me out the door. I did it myself. I needed to put distance between us before things really got carried away, so I marched out of the kitchen to the living room, where I picked up my backpack from the couch.