Secret Keepers: The Complete Series

by Jaymin Eve

  A voice caught my attention, just a murmur really, and I leaned forward trying to hear what they were saying. At first the words were muffled, but then they started to yell and it got a lot clearer after that.

  “Imperial is my land!”

  That was definitely Laous. I’d recognize his slimy voice anywhere. The reply came from someone I didn’t know.

  “You will be taken by the council. They’re looking for you – everyone is looking for you.” The next words after that sounded like resistance, but I couldn’t be sure because Laous laughed, drowning it out.

  “I will have the starslight stone in my possession very soon,” he said. “Two of the four secret keepers are found. Using the blood from the Imperial girl will lead me to number three.”

  The Imperial girl. He had to be talking about me.

  Realizing I was wasting time – he was talking about using my blood afterall – I went back to my door dilemma. I stretched up as tall as I could in the chair, my hands and arms screaming as I strained them, and gained just enough height to use my chin and mouth to pull the lever down. As long as I didn’t think about how many hands had been on that handle, it would all be okay.

  The door clicked and I stilled. That sound had been deafening to my sensitive ears, but Laous and his companion continued talking, so I felt safe enough to hook my free foot into the gap and pull it back, shuffling my chair as I moved. Once the door was open, I realized that the voices had gone quiet. The sudden silence made me feel uneasy, but I really didn’t have much choice. If I stayed, I was dead.

  Shuffling forward again, I struggled to get over the edging between the bedroom and the hallway. That small piece of wood might have looked nice but it was freaking annoying when you were tied to a chair.

  Eventually I got over, and then once I was in the hallway I looked left and right, trying to decide which way would lead me to freedom. Or my mother. I really didn’t want to leave here without her, but I was outgunned, outmanned, out-aliened. I needed backup.

  Making a split-second decision, I moved in the direction with the most light. The hall was plain, nothing in it to indicate what I would find at the end. I was lucky this entire place had wood floors, so far anyway. The moment I ran into carpet, I would be in trouble.

  The light grew brighter and was almost painful after so much darkness. It wasn’t the light of the sun though, definitely artificial. My mind was solely focused on just making it through this hallway. No point in worrying about what would come next if I was discovered here by Laous. At least it did feel like my headache was subsiding, making it easier to focus.

  The hallway ended abruptly. I found myself in the sort of kitchen that chefs dream about. High ceilings, long stainless-steel benches, multiple gas stoves and ovens, huge overhanging racks filled with every pot and pan imaginable…

  I was no cook. I generally burned everything, myself included. My mom, on the other hand, could take three ingredients and turn it into something worthy of a restaurant. I guess everyone had to have some redeeming qualities. On one hand she treated me like the child of Satan, but on the other she could make a wicked omelet.

  I had to lift myself up again to scrape across the tiled floors in this room. Tiles turned out to be a real pain in the butt, each of the grout sections catching on the legs, and I almost tumbled over more than once. As I passed some drawers, I wondered if there were knives inside. I could see some high on the walls, but they were way out of reach.

  But these drawers…

  Just as I was figuring out a way to pull one open with my mouth, a chuckle rang out through the large room. It startled me so badly that I slammed my chin against the partially open drawer, cursing loudly. Laous was standing in the doorway, the one on the opposite side of the room to where I had entered, looking amused, those squinty eyes locked on me.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to try and escape. My companion thought I was crazy leaving you in there, but I’m constantly curious about human nature. Fascinates me the way you’ve … dragged yourselves up. Battling with each other. Living so primitively. But you definitely shine as a species when you’re backed into a corner.”

  Well, great, he was even crazier than I had originally thought. Disappointment welled so fast within me that it almost was a surprise. For one brief moment I had thought there was a chance I could escape, but Laous had been playing me the entire time.

  “What do you want from me?” I said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Surely you could have taken my blood while I was unconscious, so there must be something else you need?”

  He straightened, strolling closer, looking completely at ease. “Where is the fun in taking your blood while you are unconscious? Seems kind of rude.”

  Damn, I really hoped his sort of insanity wasn’t something you could catch, because it was spilling all over the room. He paused right before me.

  “Where is my mother?” I asked.

  His happy geniality disappeared in an instant, to be replaced by a dark, stormy expression. In that moment, he was terrifying. My breathing and heart rate both increased, my body reacting even though my brain was calm. Laous closed in on me, leaving only an inch between us. “I will be the one asking questions here, not you. Right now you’re alive because of me. Your life belongs to me.”

  Blah, blah. Heard the crazy dictator speech already. My mom was an expert at it, actually.

  “Where is my mom?” I repeated.

  He paused, staring at me, unblinking. “She’s … fine. Now that I have you, and your blood, I no longer need her to draw you out of hiding. So she’s free to go.”

  “Show me her,” I demanded. “If she’s free to go, let me say goodbye at least.”

  He did that same pausing thing again, only this time I caught a flicker of … worry in his eyes. The tight press of his lips gave me the same feeling. What was going on?

  “Where is she?” I would just keep asking until he answered. “And where am I?”

  “You’re in Overworld.”

  Those words were enough to almost stop my heart. The sharp pain in my chest started rising toward my throat as I tried to digest the information. “Overworld? We’re not on Earth?”

  He shook his head. “No, we’re in a small section of Imperial which is not controlled by the overlord.” He chuckled, and just like that his stormy expression was gone again. “I was smart enough to secure more than one location, knowing that eventually the time would come for Daniel to take his rightful place.”

  He raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Daniel was always meant to be overlord, did you know that? He has the true range of power at his disposal. But I needed the position for a short time. I needed to be able to vote for the overlord children to go to Earth.”

  That must have been what they were talking about with him finding the first secret keeper. Laous had a very long-term plan in place, which meant he probably had a plan B and C ready should anything derail this one.

  “What did you do to Daniel?” I asked, hit with a mental image of how he’d been knocked down. An intense sort of worry bloomed inside of me and I was surprised by the strength of it. I had no idea why Daniel affected me so strongly. He’d done something no one else ever had. He’d gotten under my skin.

  “I temporarily disconnected him from the network.” Laous sounded very proud of himself.

  He wasn’t going to get a look of awe from me though. I was mostly just confused.

  “Here in Overworld, we have a living network,” he said. “Like your internet, but it’s natural, running through our land. Connecting us all. Giving us gifts. Powering the people. It’s this network I plan to control when I find the starslight stone Earth currently possesses. Once I have the stone, I will control everything.”

  He’d used that stone on the chain to interrupt this “network” temporarily. What else could he do with it? And if that small sliver was starslight, I was afraid to imagine the power he’d have with a large stone.

  Laous took a step c
loser to me. I’d been so busy watching his expression that I missed the blade in his hand. He rested it against my throat, and there was nothing I could do to resist. My hands were still secured behind my back.

  “Playtime with the grubbers is over,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed your fear and false bravado, but now I need to find the third secret keeper.”

  I knew what that meant. I tried to jerk back and twist in my chair. My entire body lifted as my chair went up onto two legs, before crashing back down again. That random movement startled Laous and the blade bit into my skin. Before I could do or say anything, he shrugged, and with a flick of his wrist sliced right across my throat.

  Chapter 5

  It took longer to die than I would have expected. In the movies, a throat gets slit and then the person is dead almost immediately. Right? But that didn’t happen for me. There was just pain, so much pain, and then blood seemed to be everywhere, making it difficult to breathe. I felt like I was choking to death on my own blood, in slow motion.

  Laous must have released me from the chair. In my pain-filled state, I realized I was draped across the tiled floor, red washing across my vision, tinting the world into a single tone of death. There was a roar, loud, and then it faded away to leave nothing but an endless silence. I kind of missed the roar.

  Why am I still alive?

  The warmth of my blood disappeared as I was lifted, hazy white light replacing the red.

  “Stay with me, Callie.” The deep rumble of a voice was comforting, so I clung to it, letting that soothing sound and the haze of white take me away from all the pain. The rasping of my breath became more labored with each inhalation, echoing in my ears. Wetter. Blood spattering. There was one last shuddering breath … then only silence. I didn’t hear anything more. I didn’t see anything more.

  I expected to fade away. Only … I continued to be tethered to life, despite the lack of heartbeat or breath in my lungs. Because even though I was not breathing, someone near me was, and it somehow filled my body with oxygen at the same time. The pain in my throat subsided; the blood stopped painting my skin red, and instead refilled my body, moving through organs, repairing injuries.

  I wasn’t unconscious. I wasn’t conscious. I had to be dead, only … that didn’t feel quite right. Was there another state of being I’d somehow missed in the facts of life my mom taught me?

  The hazy white disappeared from my vision, to be replaced by a bright blinding light. Light at the end of the tunnel? This had to be it, the moment I ceased to exist. The moment I faded from the world.

  “Callie, open your eyes.”

  They’re open! I wanted to scream. I had no voice to do so, but in my head I was yelling at the rumbly-voiced male. I was busy dying over here. Who the hell was he to order me around?

  Out of nowhere, my heart started beating again; my chest expanded as air surged in and out of my lungs, this time by my doing. The white light faded, and I finally realized my eyes had been closed, so I let them spring open – only to find that there was still nothing but white surrounding me.

  “Whhh-a…” My first attempt at talking didn’t go so well, but as I tilted my head back to see the richest cinnamon and gold eyes staring at me, I finally found my voice.

  “How … am I not dead?”

  It was almost impossible for me to read the expression on Daniel’s face. I had never seen anything like that look before, a blending of fury and pain, staring down at me like he was seeing more than just my face. He was seeing into the darkest recesses of my heart and soul. Usually I’d be trying to hide that side of me, but I’d just died … almost. Or something had happened to me and I was feeling exposed and raw, unable to shield myself behind my usual barriers.

  Feeling started to return to my arms and legs, and with that came awareness that I was cradled across Daniel’s lap. He held me tightly, his long legs spread out in front of him, muscles visible through his dark pants.

  I tilted my head back again, and I didn’t even question how comfortable it felt to be resting against his shoulder. More feeling returned to my body, and I knew in a moment I would have to move off him. But until then I was going to let someone support me – for the first time ever. Reality could stay away for a few more seconds.

  Daniel’s eyes flashed a pure gold; I had to blink and make sure I was seeing that color correctly. “I’m so fucking sorry, Callie,” he rumbled. “I never thought Laous could get the drop on me like that. I let you get taken. I let you down.” His long lashes hid his eyes briefly, before he met my gaze again, the brown bleeding back through the gold as he tried to calm himself.

  “He hit me with a piece of starslight stone, a very powerful piece which he stole from Emma. It malfunctioned my powers, knocked me off the grid, and disconnected me from the network. When that happens, our powers need to reset. Like a knockout punch. It takes some time for all faculties to come back into working order.”

  “Did you know the stone could do that?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Emma’s necklace is a small piece of the stone which is hidden on Earth. Like a tiny sliver of the power which Laous will have should he find that original stone.”

  This was why it was so important to stop him from finding it. He was crazy and evil. He’d tried to kill me.

  I almost died.

  As if he’d heard my thoughts, Daniel’s arms tightened around me and I wondered why my chest suddenly felt like it had tightened, too. After a few seconds of contemplation, I realized what it was … emotions. I was filled with a million feelings, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I had been so used to numbness, but ever since New Orleans, where the soul and music of that city started to pierce my icy interior, things had been changing.

  Daniel topped it off. He changed everything for me, and now he had somehow saved my life. I knew it was him. There was no one else who would bother.

  “You saved my life,” I rasped out, my voice not completely back to normal yet. My eyes were burning. Was I going to cry? I literally never cried. What was happening to me?

  “I was too late to save you,” Daniel replied softly, and suddenly he had all of my attention. “I did the only thing I could, which will allow you almost a full life.”

  A beat of silence, and then I was struggling against his hold, managing to roll out of his arms and onto the white floor. My legs were like jelly, but I didn’t give up until I was standing before him. My skin was tacky with blood, and I didn’t bother to look down because I couldn’t bear to see the red staining my body.

  “Explain?” Less rasp this time.

  He was on his feet now, too. I had to tilt my head back to see him clearly. “As Jason told you back in NOLA, I’m the interim overlord of House of Imperial. I haven’t had the initiation ceremony yet, but when I do, I will rule this house.” He paused, as if weighing his words. “We’re the guardians of the underworld.” My heart rate picked up. Had he just said underworld? “When you died…” he continued, “I used the only power I had at my disposal to save you. I tethered your soul to me … and the land of Imperial. We’re the house where souls come to be judged. To rest. So we have a unique power over them. You died in my arms, and I stopped your soul from leaving while I healed you.”

  I swallowed roughly. “Why didn’t you just let me go through that … the rebirth?”

  Everything about him went hard again. His eyes narrowed, lips tightened, jaw became rigid. “Because you would be gone.” The words were ground out from between clenched teeth. “Gone, and a new version of Callie would be reborn in a new body. You’d have no memories. No connections. You’d start again.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face, trailing it down across my neck – which was no longer sliced in two – continuing down to press against my chest. “I have a heartbeat. I’m breathing. I feel alive.”

  Daniel nodded, still looking ten shades of pissed off. “For the most part, you are alive. But there’s some things which will change. I’ll do my very best to help you deal with it, b
ut it’s better you understand now.”

  I crossed my arms tightly over myself now, trying to hold it together. “I prefer my bad news straight up, so hit me with it.”

  He did.

  “You’ll have to spend a certain amount of time in the underworld. This world will renew your life essence, because its energy tethers your soul. A soul which has somewhat tasted the afterlife and will want to make its way back there.”

  Fuck. “Okay, what else?” Visiting here frequently was something I could live with.

  “You’ll also have to spend a lot of time with me. More than a few days outside of my presence, away from my energy, and you will fade away. Your soul will end up in our justices, and you’ll be properly dead.”

  I couldn’t read his face. It was blank for the first time since he’d saved me. Which sucked, because there was no way for me to know how he felt about his sacrifice to keep me alive.

  And in all truth, right then I was struggling to think about anyone but myself.

  A roaring filled my mind, like a tornado had just sprang up. I wanted to yell and scream. I’d been a prisoner most of my life already, and just when I was planning on some freedom, I found myself in an entirely new sort of jail.

  I knew I was an ungrateful bitch, but I couldn’t look past it right now.

  “What are the justices?” I asked, my words echoing weirdly in my mind. I sounded detached. I felt it, too. My body wasn’t my own anymore and that had my brain struggling to comprehend who I was in this moment.

  Daniel stepped closer to me, and I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that my body reacted. It wanted to crawl back into his arms. I couldn’t just pretend it was because of our new bond; I’d been wanting to crawl into his lap since I first saw him. Too-good-looking alien bastard.

  I would be stronger than this new dependence I had on him, though. I might have to be around him, but I didn’t have to touch him.

  As I stepped back, he paused. “I’ll show you.” His voice was flat. He turned and waved his arm, and the white-walled dome we were in opened with a pop that left a low ringing in my ears.