Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series)

by Augustine, Donna

  I shook my head. All the times I'd imagined talking to a family member and now I sat here and couldn't think of a single other question.

  "We'll get in touch with you if we think of any," Cormac said.

  Colie stood, paused by Vitor with her palm out and he placed a wad of cash into it. Burrom never would've of had to pay anyone. I'd seen him with his kind. There was a reverence and touch of fear.

  Cash in hand, she walked out the door without a by your leave. Yes sir, that's my family.

  "Now what?" It wasn't exactly a question but a statement, and no one answered me. "We still have no idea what he is. We have no clue how to kill him. I think the only option we've got is to out him."

  "What is that going to do?" Vitor asked.

  "I agree. We've got nothing else. Let's make it as hard as possible for him," Cormac said.

  "I think he's afraid of being touched by me."

  All three men turned to look at me.

  "In the alley, when you got shot, it's just a hunch but I don't think he wanted me to touch him. I think he was actually afraid of me getting close to him. If we could corner him somewhere that he can't disappear, somewhere I can get my hands on him, maybe I could take him out."

  "No, it's impossible," Cormac said at the same time Buzz and Vitor said "Yes."

  "She's the only one that might be capable of closing wormholes of that size up. You want us to just walk her out there for the senator to kill her?"

  "I'm doing it," I said as I dug into my position, not sure if I was so adamant because I didn't like Cormac trying to push his way or because of the niggling fear that I was the last one in between the senator and billions of humans.

  Cormac stared me down as I stood. "I'm doing it," I repeated, then in a softer voice I said, "we don't have another option."

  Dodd burst into the room, just as Cormac opened his mouth to speak. "There's another one."

  No one had to ask. We all knew what he was talking about.

  "It took out a chunk of Mexico. This one's got about a ten mile radius," Dodd continued.

  "How long ago?" I asked.

  "Not more than five minutes. It's just hitting the air waves now."

  I walked over to the window overlooking the strip and waited for the panic to descend. The government had been able to keep the first, smaller one a secret so far. The NY one had created pure panic in the region but here, it hadn't been as bad. People had thought it was a localized problem. Yes, they'd been scared, but not the terror that would soon grip them when they knew it wasn't local. There would be nowhere safe.

  As I watched below, I saw it begin. Humans still have a pack mentality at their core. It pops up in the strangest of places, if you look. On a summer day, with no traffic, cars on the highway will still drive in clusters, never really spaced apart evenly. At the mall, shopping, people flock to where other people are browsing, thinking it's where they should be. In times of turmoil and stress, the instinct increases tenfold. Our natural instincts come to the fore and drive our actions.

  Slowly, the people on the street started to clump together. Strangers, who wouldn't normally approach each other, huddled together until there was barely a stray to be found. Soon, they'd start to hide indoors, probably in bomb shelters and basements, clinging to an imagined security like a child hides under their covers. I wished I was ignorant and thought I could hide from this. They were the lucky ones. We'd all meet our death, but I would watch its slow march forward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "This is crazy," I said to no one in particular as we all walked down the Vegas Strip. It had only been yesterday that the latest space hole had appeared, and approximately twenty-four hours later the place was a ghost town. The casino was abandoned, with most of the staff having called out. The streets were deserted, shops were closed with handmade signs taped to the windows, declaring they were unsure of when they'd reopen.

  The only ones that were outside were us. 'Us' felt like a school outing. The call came in from Rogo an hour ago, giving us Hammond's locale. It was strange how the timing of that call worked out. He just all of a sudden knew exactly where he'd be, as the Earth teetered on destruction because of what they had been doing.

  I decided to ignore the coincidence for the moment and immediately went to leave. Cormac didn't want me to go alone. Even though he didn't want to see Hammond, he came. Buzz, Dodd, Ben and Dark decided to join in to see the downfall of society in person.

  It felt like that too. Like society had decided to come to a screeching halt in the course of a single day.

  "Do you think people are going to start looting?" Buzz asked.

  "I think they're too scared to come out to loot," I replied. I hadn't even seen a police car, not that there was anyone to arrest.

  "Where we walking?" Dodd asked.

  "Caesar's," I replied.

  "I can't believe that's the place he chose," Dodd continued. "I thought he hated that guy back when he knew him? What a hypocrite."

  My head snapped quickly to Cormac. "Please tell me your birthday is at least A.D.?"

  "Of course it is."

  I heard Buzz humph from behind us and I swear he said something like 'yeah, not by much' under his breath. I turned back to look but they were all smiles. I've become a big fan of ignorance lately and I decided that moment was a good time to practice my new life plan of 'need to know only,' and sometimes not even then. If I had started this plan earlier in my life, right now I'd be watching Star Wars DVDs and eating cookie dough ice cream in a cozy little basement. My quest for knowledge had me tracking down the destroyer of the universe. You tell me who the bright ones are?

  As we stood in front of Caesar's, I paused. This was going to be awkward enough when I opened with "Hey Dad, how've you been since I buried you alive and left you for dead?" I wasn't looking for an audience.

  "Guys?"

  "No sweat," Dodd answered. "We'll hang back."

  "Thanks."

  I made my way into the casino with Cormac by my side. I'd known there was no way he'd wait, so I'd expected this, maybe even relied on it a bit, if I were feeling particularly truthful.

  The lobby was empty but for two girls huddled behind the front desk listening to AM radio news. That creeped me out on a normal day, with its fuzzy transmission and newscasters who always sounded somber. They barely looked over as we walked in and I motioned them back to their radio. That was all they needed to ignore us again.

  "I'm hoping you have an idea where the French Villa is in this place?"

  "This way."

  The place was deserted. I wondered why anybody had even opened the doors but I guess they still had a straggle of guests hidden away in their rooms with no way home. The car rentals agencies were depleted of vehicles and the airports had all shut down, the FAA grounding any non-emergency flights until further notice.

  "I'll wait out here," Cormac said, once we stood outside the doors.

  I pressed the bell and waited. After a few minutes, I pressed it again.

  "Do you think he's in there and just not answering?"

  "Come on."

  "Where?"

  "There's a balcony off the pool area. We'll go in that way."

  The hottest day of the summer so far, and even the pool area was abandoned. Cormac waved me closer and I tried to not be self-conscious of the entire length of me touching him as we floated up to the balcony. I pulled back a little too quickly once our feet touched the landing; not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want him to know how much I liked being near him.

  Cormac raised his nose to the air. "Do you smell that?"

  I filled my lungs with air. "I can't smell anything. What is it?"

  He tried the doors to the suite but predictably they were locked. I figured he'd just break the door down but instead he ran his hand over the joint where the door knob was and it melted.

  "Can I do that? How did you do it?"

  "I forced the particles in the metal apart, liquefying it. I don'
t know if you can do it but you've got a long time to try."

  "Does that mean I'm going to need a long time?" I asked while he stuck his fingers in the hole where the door knob had been and opened it.

  "I'm making no judgments." He took a step in the door and waited for me.

  "That would be a first," I said as I followed him into the opulent suite. "Wow, this place is nice."

  "Overkill, if you ask me."

  "This from the man with ten Ferraris."

  "Different."

  Cormac raised his nose into the air again and started walking toward a set of doors off the main living area.

  "What is it?"

  "Blood." He stalled at the doorway. "Maybe you should let me go first."

  I didn't bother discussing it with him, just pushed forward.

  "Shit." It wasn't the most eloquent reaction to finding Hammond dead, but I didn't know what else to say.

  "Damn," Cormac said as he stepped into the room next to me.

  Hammond was laid out on the bed, motionless, head on the pillow with a peaceful expression on his face. If it weren't for the foot long slices that ran up the insides of his forearms and the veins that were ripped out, hanging like strands of spaghetti, and the blood red circle of blood he lay on, it might not have been so bad.

  "Are you okay?"

  "It screws up the plans a bit. I was counting on his strength to help with the space hole tears."

  "That isn't what I meant."

  "I know." I walked closer, staring at the father I'd never get to know and wondered why he would do something like this. "Do you think it was definitely suicide?"

  "I'd never have guessed that he'd go out this way, but yes. I think he did this himself." He paused over him.

  "You think he left a note?" I asked Cormac who was already searching the room.

  "Nothing here. I'll go check the rest of the place," he said, but then paused. "Why don't you help me look?"

  "I want to take a couple of pictures on my phone."

  "Of the body?"

  "Yes. In case I'm missing something."

  "I'll do that and you go check out the rest of the place."

  "Cormac, what's the deal with you?"

  "He was your father."

  "No, he was a man that I never got to know, that most likely has the blood of millions on his hands." I looked down again at his body, hands lying in blood. "Bad choice of words, but you get my point."

  "If you say you're good, okay." I thought he was going to just exit the room at that point but he still didn't leave, fussing here and there, opening more drawers.

  "Cormac, I'm fine. Seriously," he nodded and finally moved on to the other rooms.

  I watched his back retreat and pulled out my phone. I took a series of shots from every angle possible, even if some of the close ups made me feel ill. I didn't want to miss any clues if this turned out to not be a suicide.

  "How's it coming along?" Cormac yelled from the other room. "I'm want to give the guys a call to get some help in here to take care of the evidence. I'd prefer the hotel not find him."

  "Go ahead," I yelled back. I continued taking pictures, trying to figure out what would've driven him to do something like this. Had he simply been blasé after all these years and lost the drive to keep going, or had there been something more devious at work? He'd had a certain zest about him when I'd met him. This just didn't sit right.

  His body looked ashen already and I felt a sense of mourning creep upon me; I wanted to ignore it but couldn't completely squash the feeling. It wasn't for him; it was more a selfish mourning. He'd had a long and interesting life. Why couldn't I have shared in that, even for just a little while? These last weeks he'd been alive but hadn't reached out to me at all. It made me doubt that he hadn't known about me from the beginning. Maybe he had been mad about the mountain and he would've in time, but I'd never know now.

  "Whoa," Dodd said as he walked in. "This is some serious shit. Now this…this is shit you don't come back from." He walked around the bed eyed up the scene. "You know, I'm surprised he didn't do it in the tub?"

  "Why?"

  "He was very neat. This just seems a bit… messy."

  "Let's get him out of here," Cormac said as he walked back in. "Is Buzz getting a car?"

  Dodd nodded as he started to roll Hammond up in the top blanket from the bed. Cormac and I both moved to the opposite side to start helping him when everything started to shake.

  I grabbed the edge of the bed trying to keep from falling. "I don't think that's an earthquake." I gazed at Dodd and Cormac, praying they'd disagree.

  Cormac looked at me. "It could have been, but I don't think it was."

  Cormac answered his phone as it started to ring a second later. "Yes, here too. See what you can find out. We'll be there in a minute." He hung the phone up and threw it in his pocket. "Come on, let's get out of here. I don't want to be in this building when another one hits. Dodd, you get the body down, I'll take Jo."

  Dodd swung Hammond up over his shoulder as he grumbled about how unfair life was sometimes.

  We floated down to the abandoned pool and made our way through the back to where Dark and Buzz waited in a Mercedes truck. Hammond went into the trunk area and the three of us squeezed into the back seat.

  I pulled my phone out, along with everyone but Buzz, and that was only because he was driving and Dark yelled at him about driving and surfing at the same time.

  "I don't see anything about more holes, but according to what people are writing on Twitter, more than half of the globe felt the shaking," Dodd said.

  "The holes are creating instabilities," I offered up.

  "Then we've got to try to get them closed, like yesterday," Dark said.

  I shook my head. "We've got to take out the senator first. If he's still helping someone open more behind the scenes, it will just keep getting worse anyway."

  "So what do we do? The senator or try to fix the holes?" Buzz asked.

  I looked over at Cormac who was suspiciously quiet, a pensive look on his face.

  "Let's try to fix the smallest hole in Nevada with everyone we can get to help and see if it's even possible," I offered. "Then we plan to corner the senator. If we don't take him out soon and he opens up another one, we might not have anything left to fix."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cormac had called contacts in NASA, the CIA and the FBI in order to get us close enough to the small space hole in the Nevada desert. I'd heard him speak to dignitary after dignitary, pulling string after string, and all I'd really wanted to do was take the phone from his hands and scream loudly 'The gig's up boys and girls! Cut out the red tape, the ship is sinking!' I'd restrained myself, but barely.

  Here we were, twenty Keepers dressed in black, slinking through the night like special ops on our way to save the Earth. I didn't know if there would be enough of us, but after the ground shook earlier today, I didn't want to wait for the rest of the Keepers to get here. Traveling was a real nightmare these days. No commercial planes, you had to travel with your own gas supply, if you were lucky enough to have one. Even with Cormac's private planes, we couldn't get them all here quick enough. Better to try and come back if necessary. But I had to try. Waiting was no longer an option.

  As we approached, the first thing that surprised me was that it was easier to see the thing at night. From a distance, it looked like a giant glowing orb, protruding right from the ground.

  "You sure you're ready to try this?" Cormac asked as we neared its glowing brilliance.

  "I didn't know there were other options."

  We paused about five hundred feet from the rim. "I wish there was." Cormac's voice echoed the awe I felt inside. "I'm going to be on your right, Dodd and Buzz on your left."

  "Why isn't Sabrina participating? She's a Keeper."

  "I'd rather have her about one hundred feet behind us, waiting," he replied.

  "Good idea. Once we get there, we've got to act quickly or I'm afraid the radiat
ion will take us down before we can close anything."

  We lined up in an arc, with me at dead center. Fitting place name, I thought. I hoped it wasn't foretelling.

  "Okay everyone, once we hit ten feet, I'm going to channel all the energy through me and direct it towards the space hole. Let me lead, but everyone concentrate on forcing the edges of the hole closed. And don't hesitate. We get there and start right away. If I give the hand signal, we break and retreat back here." I looked around at the faces that alternated between staring at me and then at the ominous space hole. Signs of nerves abounded as I saw one of the greener girls having trouble standing still. A guy I knew as Mathew was twitching his jaw like he'd done a line of cocaine and I wondered to myself how the hell we'd be able to shut the larger ones if we couldn't get this one done. "This is not that big. It's not going to be difficult with the amount of Keepers we've got here," I added, trying to boost the morale a bit.

  "It will be fine," Cormac said to me, but I knew the game. He was lying to me just as I had lied to them. We didn't know any such thing.

  I hope so, I thought, but didn't say aloud.

  He squeezed my hand, "Just don't get distracted. Keep focused."

  "I think I could figure that out." I snapped, and knew I was on edge; perhaps overreacting due to stress.

  "There's a lot of things I thought you'd figure out that you haven't."

  I should've left it at that. I'd gotten nasty, he'd gotten nasty back. But I couldn't.

  "You mean like figuring out that you used my friend to screw with me? Stuff like that?"

  "Using her would have been sleeping with her. If I'd actually wanted her, I would have had her, and that's just stating the facts." He broke into a falsetto then "'I don't want you, no wait, I do want you' and then you hang all over Vitor. Maybe you had it coming?"

  "So you used my friend? You thought that was the smart thing to do? No wonder we've got holes rotting away our universe, this whole operation is being run by an idiot!" It took me only a fraction of a second to regret what I'd just screamed in front of everyone.