Keeper of the Innocents

by Kristy Centeno

  “I’m back.” Rhyzel walked into the kitchen empty-handed and pulled out the chair opposite of mine. “Renee’s still watching TV.”

  I nodded. “Can I ask you something?”

  Rhyzel made himself comfortable on the chair. “What is it?”

  “What is this whole thing about a secret? What are you hiding from me?”

  He avoided eye contact as he pushed the glass of water closer to me. “Aren’t you going to drink some water?”

  I grabbed the glass and downed half the water in it before setting it back down on the table. “Can you answer me now?”

  Rhyzel met my gaze this time. “Did Renee tell you that it’s not something I want you to know now?”

  “Yeah, but I’m…not comfortable with secrets. I hate them, actually.”

  “I bet you do.” His attempt at a smile was comforting if nothing else. “But you’ll know soon enough. I promise.”

  “Rhyzel…I…feel incapable of—”

  “Demi, I’ve kept a lot of secrets from you,” he blurted. “And I know you’ll hate me for keeping them from you later, but that’s always been a risk I just had to take.”

  “What?” Alarmed, I tried getting up but was instantly hit with a bout of dizziness. “What’s going on?” I fell back into the chair and turn a questioning gaze on Rhyzel. “What did you do to me?”

  The world began to slowly shake around me and I realized very quickly that something was terribly wrong.

  “Two years ago you did save my life. That much is true, but what you don’t know is that your gift failed you, as well as your memory, because of a spell I used.”

  I tried to focus on him but my vision was blurry so the only thing I could do was listen. “What…spell?”

  “I got it from a warlock. My powers alone wouldn’t have interfered with this gift of yours, so I needed a little help,” he confessed. “After you were knocked unconscious by the demon, I cast the spell over you and erased the major details of that night so that you wouldn’t remember me afterwards.”

  “How? Why?” I pushed my chair back and heaved, feeling as if I’d throw up at any moment.

  “I’d been searching for Renee’s Keeper. I had to make sure she couldn’t interfere in the job I was put in charge of completing, but things went sour quickly after that and I had to bail. I had an army of demons after me and had to split town for a while. That while turned into two years. Once it was safe to come back, I did.”

  I shook my head. The dizziness started to get worse with every passing minute. “How did you make that…connection? I found out not too long ago about Renee being my charge, so…how could you know?”

  “It wasn’t that hard to put two and two together. You’re a Keeper. You spend a lot of time with her. I know enough about Keepers of the Innocents to know the one closest to the child in danger will be chosen to guard him or her. There has to be something that ties them together and I had seen you two enough to know you’d eventually be chosen to be her guardian.” He spoke with a calmness that put my nerves on edge. “You care for Renee. You’d give your life for her. You said so yourself.”

  Feeling as if I was a piece of debris in the middle of a tornado, I picked myself off the chair and stood. My head pounded hard, my legs felt wobbly, my vision was impaired, but still I tried to walk away from Rhyzel.

  I had to warn Renee to get away. To run.

  He popped to his feet too, stepping in front of me to block my only escape route.

  I took two, maybe three steps forward before falling straight into his arms. The second he touched me I was assaulted by images of him cloaking his presence, watching Renee and me from afar. He’d been planning to get close to me for a long time and it had just been revealed to me by means of a vision.

  Now I understood why he’d tried so hard to get rid of my gift, as he put it. It would have revealed his true intentions. What he hadn’t counted on however, was my ability being put out of commission temporarily rather than permanently. Not only that, but by messing with magic he didn’t know how to handle, he’d made himself a victim by sharing a connection with me he wasn’t counting on.

  His spell had worked to a certain degree, but it had also backfired.

  “You…betrayed…me.” My worst fears had just come true. I had grown to trust him and he’d been planning to bypass my supernatural instincts so he could get to Renee, and I had personally delivered her to his home.

  “Demi, I tried telling you…” He picked me up and carried me to another room. Because of my advanced state of disorientation, it was hard to determine what part of the apartment he took me to, but I was aware of him lying me on something soft. A bed maybe?

  I tried to scream but even that became impossible. I was slowly slipping into unconsciousness, and as hard as I tried to fight it off, I couldn’t.

  “I tried to tell you. I tried to warn you, but you didn’t understand.” He touched the side of my face, and through that simple caress he could pick up the amount of loathing I now felt for him. The anger. The pain. The hurt he’d caused with his betrayal.

  With darkness waiting to claim me, I managed to say, “If you hurt Renee, I’ll kill you,” before finally passing out.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A Hard Choice

  I don’t know how long I was swimming in darkness, but while I was completely out of it Renee’s voice haunted me. Called out for me. Begged me to help her and I was unable to come to her aid. I fought through the black abyss to get to her but I searched and searched in vain for what felt like days.

  My effort was fruitless. I couldn’t find Renee. I couldn’t help her. She’d been taken from me and she now found herself someplace where I couldn’t get to her. This scared me more than anything else. She was vulnerable and defenseless without protection.

  I was supposed to protect her, but somehow I’d managed to screw that up. I’d been told to make sure she was safe at all times, and along the road I’d ended up doing the opposite. I’d actually taken her directly to her biggest threat without even knowing it.

  As my eyes slowly peeked open and I took in my surroundings, confusion set in. I was momentarily at a loss. Where was I? Why was I alone? Where was Renee?

  I fought through the drumming in my head and sat up, ignoring the nausea. As soon as I glanced around the room I remembered.

  In spite of my upbringing, in spite of my mother’s teachings, I had trusted the wrong person. He’d gotten close to me so he could get to Renee and I had brought her to him on a silver platter.

  Rage, fury unlike any I’d ever felt coursed through my system, replacing the hurt and any other emotion I’d experienced before. Rhyzel was and always had been my enemy and he was going to pay for his betrayal. For making me out to be a fool. But most importantly, he was going to pay for taking Renee away from me.

  Pushing through my multiple discomforts, I hurried off the bed, clumsily falling to my knees and taking a lamp, which was sitting on top of the nightstand to the right side of the bed, with me. It broke as soon as it hit the floor, causing a ruckus I hadn’t anticipated.

  I knew I’d probably alerted my captors but I didn’t give a shit. Whoever crossed the closed door would meet my wrath without a doubt. I was pissed off enough to do just about anything.

  No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I heard loud murmurs and then a set of feet approaching the door. Supercharging the magic within, I readied myself for whoever jiggled the doorknob and prepared to act quickly.

  I had no idea who was about to make the mistake of coming in, but whoever it was, was about to get a nasty surprise.

  The moment the door swung open and Rhyzel stepped in, I bolted to my feet and rushed toward him, pushing him as hard as I could, pinning him to the open door. Caught off guard, he had no time to react. He looked surprised to see me up and alert and I rejoiced in the fact he wasn’t expecting me.

  I wasn’t going to give him any time to counter attack, so I acted swiftly.

  Co
mmanding the magic out, I pushed strings of it out of the tips of my fingers and wrapped them around his neck, then I let loose a charge of power. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut as current after current electrified his body.

  I was taking a huge risk. There was a chance I could pass out again, especially after being drugged, but I vowed that if I was to black out, I’d kill him before that happened.

  When Rhyzel opened his eyes again, they were glowing red and staring right at me. But he didn’t move to protect himself. He didn’t fight back. This only made me angrier. Why didn’t he provide more motives for me to finish him off?

  Furious, I hit him with another torrent of pure power. He growled and doubled over in pain. I knew he was being hit not only by the charge of magic, but with the amount of anger, disdain, and pain he could feel through my touch.

  I don’t know what hurt him the most, but I hoped they felt as awful as being betrayed felt for me.

  “Stop! Please! You’re killing him!” The sound of a woman’s voice really threw me off. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be present. I’d forgotten to be cautious of others who might be lurking about.

  “Please! Stop!” the woman’s voice screamed even louder.

  I glanced back and was shocked out of concentration when I spotted a blonde, green eyed woman standing three feet behind me. Was she a ghost? She had to be. This woman, whom I’d seen before through images inside of Rhyzel’s mind, had died. She was dead. What the hell?

  “Who are you?” I let go of Rhyzel and took a step toward her.

  She shrank away from me. “Please! Don’t hurt my son,” she begged.

  “Son?” I blinked.

  “Demi,” Rhyzel coughed and coughed. At one point he even coughed up blood. I would have felt guilty had it not been for the fact that he’d betrayed me in the first place. “Let me explain,” he said.

  I turned to meet his fading green eyes. “Explain what? Who is she?” I pointed to the blonde woman.

  “My…mother.” He straightened up, but doubled over again in a fit of cough. “She’s my mother.”

  I shook my head fervently. “Your mother is dead. You told me she had died. I…saw it.” I scanned the images in my head and recalled the scene where Rhyzel held his mother in his arms while sobbing. There had been blood. Lots of it.

  “What you saw was a brief memory of the time my mother was badly hurt. She wasn’t dead. I only thought she was at the time,” he hastily explained. “Demi,” he reached out to grab my wrist but I shrank away from his touch.

  “Don’t touch me or I’ll kill you!” I screamed. “So you’ve lied about everything? Your mother? You lied about…” How he felt about me. No. I couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t important. “Where’s Renee?”

  “Please, listen. My son had a good reason to do what he did. Let him explain.” Rhyzel’s mother rushed toward him and placed a shaky hand on his chest.

  “I don’t listen to traitors,” I said to her. To Rhyzel I said, “You better cough up Renee’s location or I’ll keep my promise and give you a one way ticket to hell!”

  Rhyzel’s mother paled. He, on the other hand, simply straightened up and patted the hand on his chest—perhaps to reassure his mom that all was well.

  “She’s safe. For now. But—”

  “Stop right there.” I lifted one hand, palm facing him. “Safe for now? That doesn’t sit well with me. You fooled me into coming here and bringing Renee. And I felt sorry for you because I saw you die—”

  “What?” Rhyzel’s mother turned terror-filled eyes to her son. “You’re going to die?”

  “That’s not important.” He took his mother’s hand and pulled her into his embrace.

  “What do you mean? Not important?” She began to sob. “I waited six years to be reunited with you…and you’re going to die? Is it going to be soon?”

  “I’ll die happy knowing you’re safe and away from him.” Rhyzel’s attention centered on his sobbing mother then. “I made a decision to save you, but everything has a price.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about. “What’s going on?”

  Rhyzel’s mother didn’t seem to hear me. She clung to her son as if he was moments away from dying and she was trying to revive him somehow.

  “Do you remember what I told you about the spell I got from a warlock?” Rhyzel glanced in my direction. When I didn’t respond, he continued, “The spell didn’t exactly work as it was intended. I don’t know if the one who gave it to me designed it that way on purpose or if he was just not powerful enough, but the incantation backfired in more ways than one. But you already know that. What you don’t know is that night we shared a connection and I now have visions, too.

  “I disappeared for two years after the attack on purpose. I knew it wasn’t the right time to come back. You weren’t ready to be Renee’s Keeper and Renee was just too young.”

  “So you’re sharing my gift, and you used it against me? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “What does it all have to do with Renee exactly?” I wanted him to get right to the point.

  “Renee will be safe until the lunar eclipse tonight. She’s in a place you can’t access with a spell—”

  “What is your involvement? What role did you play to get her there?” I glared at him. Why was he beating around the bush?

  “I had to get her away from you and bring her to a place she could cross over the land of Monarch. That was my involvement.”

  “The land of Monarch? That’s something I’ve never heard of before. What exactly is it?”

  Rhyzel didn’t answer right away but instead walked his mother to the kitchen and helped the extremely thin, unkempt woman to sit on one of the chairs before turning to address me again.

  “Monarch is a realm created by a leader demon by the name of Monarchy. He created this place as a means to punish those followers who didn’t do things according to his expectations. This place is an exact replica of the world we live in minus the human race. It has many flaws, but amongst them is the fact that magic does not work well there. Those cursed to Monarch can exist as individuals but do not have access to the outside world.”

  “You mean to tell me this is where Renee is?” I asked, my level of anger and concern rising with each passing second.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “How do I get her back?”

  “You can’t.”

  “No. You’re taking time to explain all this, so don’t tell me now I can’t get her back.”

  “Demi, the only one who can open the gate to get there is Renee, and she’s already in Monarch.”

  I closed and opened my eyes quickly. “No. No. This is all your fault!” I glared at Rhyzel. “You got her to open the gate, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t bother denying it. “Yes.”

  “You’re despicable. Renee is only a little girl! I was right all along. You are more demon than human and you always will be.” I rushed past him to the living room.

  “Demi, wait! There’s something else you need to know.” I could hear Rhyzel keeping pace behind me but I refused to stop or listen.

  I had to find a way to get Renee back and he was in my way. I marched toward the front door, unlocked and opened it in a succession of quick movements. In spite of the exchange of words with my mother the night before, she was the only one who could help me, so I had every intention of seeking her guidance, but as I opened the door of Rhyzel’s apartment I did not encounter the hallway that led to my own. Instead, I came face to face with Ezekiel, the dark winged angel.

  “What the hell…?” I was taken aback by his sudden presence and the fact that I was no longer in my apartment complex but in Levion. One moment I was walking out of Rhyzel’s two bedroom apartment and the next, I was stepping into Levion with the door slamming shut behind me, shutting Rhyzel out of my meeting with the dark angel.

  “This place might not be very charming, but it’s no hell.
I can assure you of that.” Ezekiel’s wings folded behind him as he straightened his back.

  “I know why you’re here.” I almost lost the nerve to look directly at him, but I opted to face the consequences of my mistake head on.

  “Do you now? And what would that be?” Ezekiel appeared calmer than I expected and I wasn’t sure how to take that. It was confusing as hell.

  Wasn’t he supposed to lecture me because I failed in the one mission he entrusted me with?

  “You have not failed, Demi.” He spoke those words with an assertion I was unsure of. “At least, not yet.”

  “Renee is gone and it’s my fault. How have I not failed?”

  “Renee is safe and unhurt for the time being. As long as she lives, you have not failed.”

  “I don’t know how to get to her. I personally delivered her right into the hands of the demon who wanted her dead. I don’t have the ability to get her back. If that’s not failing, I don’t know what is.”

  “Rhyzel is not the demon who wants Renee dead.”

  Surprise must have registered on my face, because Ezekiel added, “You were not expecting that, were you?”

  “There’s more going on here than I know, right?”

  Ezekiel didn’t respond, but reached out and took my hand, tugging me behind him as he took the six, maybe seven steps that put him directly in front of a small wooden table—the only furniture in the brightly illuminated room, and placed his other hand on its surface.

  “This is the means to get to Renee,” he said, pointing to a three inch, silver vial sitting on top. “But before you decide to take this, there are things you must know first.” He released my arm and clasped his hands together in front of him.

  “What do I need to know?” More surprises? I’d already had my fair share today.

  “Not everything is as it appears. You have misjudged Rhyzel and even Renee.”

  Was he finally warming up to that lecture?

  “I don’t get it. Rhyzel betrayed me. His actions were clear enough.”