The Keepers (The Alchemy Series)

by Donna Augustine

  “Hey, Jo, since we’re slow, do you want to cut out early? If you want to stay, I’ll ask Vicky,” Arnold said to me a while later, as I hung around the service bar.

  “I’ll go. Thanks.” I was relieved to get off the floor. I’d waited for something to happen all night. Even when everything had gone smoothly, I was exhausted from the anticipation of waiting for something that had never materialized. I’d go home and relax on my couch, and read up for my finals.

  I quickly changed and went to wait for the bus that would take me home. I felt the tingling sensation of being watched again as I stood at the stop. This time I had the feeling it was Hawking. I’d slipped out the back entrance that only a casino person would’ve been able to see me leave. He was probably watching to make sure I held up my end of the bargain. I was, at least for now. I needed information from him, and I wouldn’t completely burn that bridge until I had it. Once I had what I needed, I planned to take a blow torch to it. He had me shot, I might not have died, but I was still prickly about it. That wasn’t something I was going to get over. In fact, my anger had done nothing but grow in the last day. He would be lucky if I didn’t torch the whole casino down around him. I might be a broke waitress, right now, but I was resourceful. I’d find a way.

  I spent the ride home thinking about how satisfying it would be to take Hawking down. I was so immersed in my thoughts I almost missed my stop. I pulled the cord and had to get out a block farther away than normal, but it was a beautiful night for a walk, and I figured the guy following me should earn his keep. Let him have to hop from bush to bush for all I cared.

  I couldn’t pin-point anyone on the bus who looked like a tail, and when I got off, I got off alone. My best guess was that whoever was following had driven behind in a car. Apparently, these thugs had higher standards then I did and wouldn’t slum it on public transportation.

  The bus had just pulled away when a man stepped into my path. I looked up to see Vitor’s face. I just shook my head and walked around him.

  “How are you, Jo?” he asked, as he fell into step beside me.

  “I’ve been better,” I replied without bothering to look at him.

  “I saw you at the casino. I think I misjudged whatever happened the other night. You aren’t on the best terms with Cormac. I’m not exactly sure why you are so opposed to hearing me out.”

  “Because you want something from me, and whatever it is, I want no part of it.”

  “Why won’t you at least hear me out? Maybe we could help each other.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I had to laugh at that. “I don’t need anything from you that badly, and I have a feeling whatever I could gain would cost me a lot more than I was willing to give.” As we walked into my development, I headed toward my trailer. He already knew where I lived, so I didn’t see the point in evasion now. And for whatever reason, I didn’t think he was a threat.

  “I have information that I think you would want to know.”

  We stopped in front of my trailer, and he held his hand on my door. I was forced to pause, whether I wanted to or not.

  “What?”

  “There are whispers, Josephine. Something is coming, something big that will steam roll over Cormac’s entire organization. You are one of them. Do you want to take that chance?”

  “What’s coming?”

  “There are dangerous people aligning against Cormac and they aren’t alone.”

  “Shouldn’t you be telling him?”

  “He won’t do what needs to be done. I need you. ”

  “I’ve told you, I’m sorry your people are having trouble, but I learned years ago that there is only one person you can depend on. Maybe it’s time for them to learn that lesson, too.”

  I looked meaningfully at his hand and stood waiting for him to remove it.

  “You’re backing me into a corner, Jo.”

  The sound of desperation in his tone alarmed me. I looked at his face now, and realized that I might have been lulled into a false sense of security with him. It wasn’t in his nature to attack, of that I was positive, but he was desperate. Desperation made people do horrible things. I’d seen it many times in my life.

  I tried to soften my face and body language. “Look, Vitor, I’m really beat tonight. How about tomorrow afternoon we sit down and talk? I promise I’ll hear you out then.”

  His hand relaxed on my doorknob. I’d walked him back from the cliff just enough to buy me the time I needed.

  “Okay,” he said, then paused as if figuring out his schedule in his head. “I’ll be here at three.”

  “Deal.”

  He nodded his head, and I watched his back as he walked away. When he was willing to take my word on the meeting tomorrow, he proved he was honest. Only honest people take you at your word. Liars and thieves expect the same in return. Unfortunately for him, I didn’t have a problem lying when it came to saving my own ass.

  I went inside, opened up my laptop and typed a quick email to my professors. I wrote that there had been a death in the family. I’d dummy up the documents if it meant they’d let me finish my course at a later time. Either way, a degree wasn’t worth my life. Whatever was going on, I didn’t know, but the visit from Vitor had just tipped my hand. I needed to get out of here and I needed to do it now.

  Hawking wasn’t someone I was ready to go against, and I wasn’t letting anyone pull me into a fight with him. I’d take on Hawking when I was prepared to, not because I was being forced to. I wasn’t prepared to willingly go to him for help either. That would constitute choosing sides. Me, myself, and I didn’t leave room for sides. One thing I knew for sure, if I didn’t choose, I wasn’t ready for the hell that was about to come my way if I stuck around.

  I packed everything I could get into a duffle bag and waited. And waited. Finally, at three forty-five a.m., I made my move. I crawled out the back window of my trailer and made a slightly undignified thump on the ground. I stayed low and in between the trailers until I made my way out through the back of the development.

  Constantly checking every shadow, I was pretty sure I’d made a clean break. I ducked into the twenty-four hour Seven Eleven, and bribed the clerk with a five to use his phone. Using my cell phone was out of the question. I wouldn’t put it past Cormac to have it bugged, so it was turned off, lying useless in my bag. Hawking had plenty of money, and Vitor didn’t look like a slouch in that department, either, if the Rolex he’d been wearing tonight was any indication. Money usually meant plenty of connections. Who knew what either of them might be able to gain access to when they tried.

  I had the cab pick me up a block away, not wanting any witness to the taxi company I used. I thought it would be better not to take the cab too far out of the area either, more traceable that way, but there wasn’t a bus that ran along this line this time at night.

  I hopped into the shabby interior of the cab. “Take me to the nearest major bus depot.”

  “That’s about half hour away, miss.”

  “I know.”

  He eyed my dingy t-shirt and ripped jeans with a fresh dirt mark skeptically. “As long as you can pay,” he stated in broken English, and stared at me in the review mirror. “We prosecute non-payers.”

  “Go,” I said glaring at him.

  We took off, passing the entrance of what was my home. It wasn’t fancy or new, but it had been mine. The only real home I’d ever had, and I felt like I’d been hit in the gut with a baseball bat. I’d been hysterical too many times in the last few days, I wasn’t going to cry anymore. I couldn’t afford to. I had no one but myself, and no one wanted to rely on a hysterical woman, including me.

  Chapter Nine

  I hadn’t meant to, but I’d fallen asleep waiting for my bus, as I sat on the ground alongside the building. In my hand was a ticket to L.A. It was a city with enough people to get lost, at least for now. The ticket was still firmly in my grasp as I awoke to a shoe nudging my side.

  “Where are you going?”

 
I knew the voice instantly, and I cursed in my head. I looked up, and expected to see his men with him, but he was alone.

  “How much do you weigh?”

  He looked taken aback by the question but answered, “Two hundred and forty lbs.”

  Yep, no shot. “I think you just answered your own question.”

  He had the nerve to laugh. “Come on. We’ll talk on the way back,” he said.

  It was still early enough that the bus depot was empty, and I weighed my options. I knew I couldn’t take him, but would going with him willingly be the height of stupidity? Last time I’d followed one of them without a thought hadn’t ended well.

  “Don’t make this difficult.”

  “Why, so you can try to kill me in the privacy of your own home? Why not just do it here?”

  He squatted down, eye level with me. “If I wanted you dead, you would be. I never wanted to hurt you. I thought I had no choice. Now that I do, I have no intention of killing you.”

  “What about the repercussions you talked about?”

  “You didn’t go far enough for them to apply.”

  I knew he was being honest with me, but my body rebelled as I sat frozen.

  “I understand why you don’t trust me. I’d have to be an imbecile not to. But you have my word that I’m not going to physically harm you.”

  He held out his hand to me, as a symbol of his word. I stared at it for a moment, leaving it to hover between us for a good half a minute. Half a minute might not seem like a long time in the everyday scheme of things, but when you’re talking about a full thirty seconds of awkwardness and possible rejection, it seems like forever.

  He smiled as I took his hand finally, and again, that strange fission of energy seeped into my skin where we touched. I wanted to pull back from him, not because the connection felt bad, but because it felt strong. I didn’t want to feel any kind of connection to him.

  He looked down at our still joined hands, and I realized he felt it, too. His mask slipped just enough that I could see that it disarmed him as well. Even so, he held my hand all the way to the car until I became self-conscious. I didn’t want to break the connection first and show any unease or weakness, but I was afraid the clamminess of my hands would reveal me, anyway.

  He finally released my hand when he opened the door to a jet-black sports car. I climbed into the seat made from the softest leather I’d ever felt.

  “What kind of car is this?” I asked, as he got into the driver’s seat.

  “It’s an Aston Martin.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and his lips twitched upward.

  “Do I amuse you?” I asked, as I bristled. My life was being turned upside down, and this guy thought everything I said was funny.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get all defensive. It’s not a bad thing.”

  I turned my gaze back toward the road and let it drop. I had bigger fish to fry, things more important than whether or not I amused him. “So, let’s talk,” I said looking to get to the heart of the matter.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I wasn’t referring to small talk.”

  “What’s wrong with small talk?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s probably because you aren’t very good at it, are you?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “That’s why it bothers you.”

  “No, I’m not good at it. You are?”

  “I’m not a huge fan, but I can hold my own.”

  “Can we talk about more serious matters, now?”

  “If you insist, but it probably won’t be good.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but you get a bit irritable on more sensitive subjects.”

  In spite of myself I laughed. I knew I was rough around the edges but I wasn’t used to people besides Lacey pointing it out.

  “So why did you try to leave?” he asked.

  My gut told me he already knew the answer. He had found me within hours of my departure, which confirmed he was having me watched, no surprise there. He was testing me again. Everything with this man was a test.

  “Vitor came to see me, but you know that, so, clearly I’m not going to lie about it. If you want to play games, find someone else. I don’t like them.”

  He hopped on the highway and let the engine loose. The speed shot a huge surge of adrenaline through me, as if I didn’t have enough flooding my system already.

  “What did he say?” His voice was calm, but I heard something in his tone I couldn’t quite identify.

  “He wanted to talk. He wanted to tell me a little bit about himself. Now I have a couple of questions. Only fair I think.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Vitor isn’t human?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you are the one who helps them get around so to speak? But we are human right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you want to help him?”

  “What I feel about the situation doesn’t matter. It’s not my choice whether or not to allow them to move to Earth. I don’t own this planet. But, I do have to add, regardless of what he says, they’ve already destroyed their world. That doesn’t give me a real warm fuzzy feeling about asking them to move in, even if it were up to me.”

  “He said they have technology that could help.”

  “He says a lot of things. Do you want to let them all come on over?”

  “He said people are gathering to move against you?”

  “Yep, that sounds about right.”

  “When does this deal end? I don’t remember reading about war activities in the small print on that contract I signed.” And when can I get the hell away from this mess. I thought my life was messed up before? This put things in perspective.

  “Not sure,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “Yes, well, that doesn’t really work for me.”

  “I’m not trying to play with you. There are a lot of factors at work.”

  “Which leads to my next question, what are we exactly? This seems a bit beyond making some pocket change and good skin.”

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but you do understand there’s no going back?” He turned toward me to make sure I understood him. “You have a couple of drinks one night and slip, no one is going to let you off the hook.”

  “Didn’t we already establish the whole secrecy thing? I get it. Now look at the road if you don’t mind, and start spilling.”

  “I’ll do better than tell you.”

  I felt a jolt in the road and realized it was one of the Lacard driveway speed bumps. We fell quiet as he pulled over to the curb. The moment we came to a full stop the valet took his car.

  “Take that to my suite,” he said to the valet, and I turned to see my duffle bag disappear. Oh shit, that didn’t bode well for my evening. He could have had the valet check it for me to pick up later, but he didn’t.

  We walked to his elevator in silence, and I noticed more than a few pairs of eyes watch us cross the casino floor, including Vicky’s. I knew what it looked like, but I’d stopped caring about what people thought of me years ago. If they wanted to imagine me sleeping with the boss, let them. That was a lot easier pill to swallow then what I’d grown up with. They meant nothing to me.

  When we stepped into his elevator, I thought we would head up but we dropped instead, and I had to remind myself that I had his word on my safety. Did I believe him? Yes. If he still wanted to kill me, like he said, I’d probably already be dead. Hell, anyone of them could’ve killed me in my trailer. No one would have noticed me for days.

  When the elevator opened, we stepped into a small square hallway. As the doors closed behind us, a panel opened revealing a keyboard. He dialed in a code, then a beam of light scanned his iris and the second set of doors opened. I followed him into a long hallway that ha
d to be at least a mile long.

  “I didn’t realize the casino was so big.”

  “This area is larger, but it’s close.”

  “When do we get to the whole top secret area?” I tried to sound glib, but I wasn’t sure I’d pulled it off.

  He stopped suddenly in front of one of many doors. “Now.” He opened a door and waited for me to enter.

  I heard him shut it, as I looked around. The room was the size of my high school gymnasium, but its walls, ceilings, and floors, were the polished dull grey of a pencil tip. A line of computers and equipment lined the back wall and there were two enormous monoliths of polished ebony at the opposite side of the room.

  Drawn to them, I walked over to the closest one and ran my fingers along the veins that ran through the stone. When I touched them, I imagined I could feel a pulse running through them. It felt so real I drew my hand back quickly.

  “What are they?” I asked in awe.

  “These help us to open a portal. This is where we transport.”

  I pulled my eyes from their beauty to see him standing a few feet behind me, admiring them as well. He walked forward and stopped next to me. I watched him graze the ebony surface with his fingers, like I had done, tracing the pattern across its sleek surface. An image of him grazing his fingers across my skin popped into my head. He turned his face to me and I swear he could read my thoughts. His eyes were intense as they stared at my face and lingered a second too long on my lips.

  He turned his back to the monolith and leaned against it with a knowing smirk.

  “Don’t look at me like that. There isn’t a chance in hell.” I took a couple of steps to gain some distance. “Now, explain this to me?” I turned my back to him and looked around the room.

  “Come here.” He pushed off and walked toward a desk where a small dark stone lay. It looked like the same material as the larger monoliths but a fraction of the size. He picked it up and tossed it to me.

  I held it warily, not wanting to close my hand around it. I held it far from my body with my palm open.

  “Close your hand around it.”

  “Why?” I asked, as I stalled.