Once Upon a Haunted Moon (The Keeper Saga)

by Thompson, K. R.

  “…love shall never find you again…never…never…” the Fire Witch’s raindrop voice hissed through her mind.

  A few more pebbles gave way, as Ella’s toes pushed across the rock and into open air. She balanced on the balls of her feet, teetering on the edge as a soft wind blew against her body. She lifted her arms out, steadying herself, as she stared up at the Moon. She was ready.

  She had come to make her bargain with the Great Spirit.

  “Give him back to me,” she said in a heartbroken whisper to the full harvest moon. “Give him back or put me in the sky…”

  She waited, knowing a response would come. She closed her eyes, swaying in the night breeze, ready to fall…

  ***

  The Wolf watched the tiny white-haired creature. He had seen her when she first reached the summit, small shoulders stooped with the burden of grief her soul carried. She had aged so very much in such a short time. Her blue eyes that had once been courageous and full of life now looked dull and vacant, as if her very spirit had left her, and she was as dead as the one she loved.

  He knew why she had come to this place, to the very top of the mountain. Ironically, it was the same mountain, and the very edge, he had also come to so long ago. And she, too, had come for the same reason he had.

  To bargain… to beg…

  He watched as the girl stood at the edge and made her heart’s plea. He hoped the Great Spirit would grant her wish, but he had very strong doubts. After all, he had made this exact request, once, too, and things hadn’t worked the way he had hoped. If anything, the consequences of his request and actions that followed it had been downright disastrous.

  She swayed slowly back and forth with the wind, as if she had given the night air control of her fate. He got to his feet, following behind the girl to save her should the breeze turn. He didn’t want her fate to be the same as his own. A long, lonely existence with no end…

  Just as he closed in behind her, though, he stopped, and watched in wonder.

  ***

  “White Wolf must live,” a voice whispered on the breeze, “…must keep life…”

  Ella’s eyes filled with tears when she realized the voice was that of Bright Eyes. “Please…” her voice broke, and The Wolf caught himself wishing the same thing for her, even though seconds before, he had been ready to pull her back from the edge, “…please let me go, too…”

  The wind stirred, pushing her back from the danger of the cliff, and the shadowy, translucent form of the boy’s spirit appeared near the girl’s arm. He reached out and stroked her white hair, his fingers brushing lightly through the strands. She felt him, turned and gasped. Then she fell sobbing as she melted into his arms. He held her for a few moments, and then gently took a step back.

  “White Wolf must stay. Not time,” the boy’s spirit flickered as he reached to cup her cheek. He turned his golden stare to The Wolf, “Shining Star say same. Not time. She stay Moon and watch Swift Foot always. One day, Great Spirit put in sky where belong. Both Swift Foot and White Wolf in sky when time come. But not now. Not time.”

  The boy’s spirit flickered again. He turned the girl’s face up to his, “Bright Eyes go now. Stay near Shining Star. White Wolf see sky and remember words. Love always. Wait for White Wolf until time come.”

  She nodded, still crying, as his spirit disappeared. The Wolf, feeling his loss anew, threw his head back to cry to the Moon.

  Ella knelt down and wrapped her arms around the big gray wolf, who had howled as if his heart had been broken all over again. She buried her face in his soft fur, still crying, but was thankful there was someone else who shared in her sadness. They stayed on the mountain until dawn, staring up at the Moon that shone even brighter, and at a bright, new star that sat near her, gleaming like silver in the night sky.

  Even though her heart was still broken and would never truly heal, the Great Spirit had granted a different wish. Once again The Wolf had come to save her.

  Even though she was still broken —

  She wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brian

  “We’ve got to go! NOW!” Nikki took my hand and jerked me down the hall and out the double doors. Luckily we were between periods, and kids were everywhere, so no one spotted anything unusual as she dragged me out of school.

  “What’s wrong? Where are we going?” I was being pulled across the parking lot now, toward Nikki’s blue Jeep. She hadn’t slowed down a bit. She still towed me along, and I was nearly twice her size.

  “Something’s wrong with Tori!”

  Well, that particular bit of information made me move faster. I beat her to the Jeep, hopped in, and slammed the door before she could get in on the other side.

  Her hands shook as she tried to stick the key in the ignition, and I noticed the white mist outline her again, this time stronger. I didn’t want to try to calm down a new wolf, after all, I hadn’t had great results with a mountain lion. I needed Nikki to stay human, so I slowly reached over, put my hand on hers, and guided the key in for her.

  “Easy now, just take a deep breath. We’ll get to her, everything’s going to be fine,” I said, trying to calm her down, while doing my best not to let my own anxiety come shining through. What had happened to Tori…did they take her to the same place they had taken Adam…was she hurt?

  “Just take one long breath in and out,” I advised her (and me.)

  She nodded and visibly calmed as her breath whooshed out.

  “Do you need me to drive?”

  “No, I’m okay now,” she tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace when she started up the Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot.

  We rode for a minute in silence. I didn’t want to upset her more, but I really needed to know what had happened and prepare for what I was about to see.

  “So, can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked carefully, still trying to keep a calm, neutral tone.

  “I was in English class, in the middle of a test, when I saw my house,” Nikki did actually grimace this time, gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles turned a chalky white, but thankfully the rest of her stayed normal-colored, “The door was open, and I heard a scream. It had to be Tori, no one else is home!”

  My heart fell to my stomach, and then I watched my own black and white, sparkling mist edge around me. My wolf was getting ready to come see what was going on.

  “Easy now,” Nikki repeated my words back to me with a tight smile, “There isn’t room in here for your wolf. He’s too big to fit in my Jeep.”

  “Right,” I let out a deep breath, the mist left, and my wolf went back down into his shadows.

  It took forever to get to her house. What should have taken ten minutes took an eternity instead.

  Finally, we pulled up in the driveway, and jumped out of the car, racing up the yard and across the porch.

  “Wait! Wait!” I hissed at Nikki, trying to push her back, “You stay behind me! There may be someone still in there!” I managed to get her behind me before we got to the front door that stood wide open, inviting everything, good or bad, in.

  I took a deep breath, searching for a scent of who had been there. I caught a flowery perfume that I knew was Tori’s. I tracked her across the porch and thru the door, but hers was the only scent I found. As human, I can scent really well, but my wolf scents even better, not to mention he is generally a better fighter. Fangs and claws do better than fists anytime.

  “You stay behind me,” I reminded Nikki again. She nodded, wide-eyed as she stared at the open door, then at me as I switched to my big black and white wolf, thinking up a quick apology to him for sending him back moments before for being too big, then calling him back to possibly do battle as the big wolf that he was.

  I padded softly through the door and into the living room. Still, the only scent I could find, other than Nikki and her family, was Tori.

  Nikki stayed glued behind me, following me step for step as we searched the livi
ng room, then went from one room to the next, finding nothing but a mess of strewn paper and dishes in the kitchen.

  “She’s gone,” Nikki said in a whisper. She was afraid of being heard, even though we both knew we were the only ones in the house.

  I sniffed my agreement with her statement, and looked at the mess of broken glass on the floor again. Either the kitchen counter had been ransacked by whomever took her, or Tori had put up one heck of a fight.

  We both jumped when a loud groan erupted, and the house shook as if it trembled. The pictures hanging on the wall up the staircase took turns shaking, one after another, as if some unseen force was making its way up the steps, hitting each one in turn. The wooden banister creaked, until finally, the picture at the top of the stairs finished shaking and everything got quiet.

  I thought Nikki’s house was weird before with the glowing wall, but now I thought it was downright freaky. She apparently had a poltergeist in attendance now, too. I let out a low whine. My wolf had taken on some weird stuff before, but both a ghost and a zombie deer in less than twenty-four hours? Even that pushed extremes a little, especially since up to a few months ago I believed that I lived in the most boring place on earth.

  “I think it’s just the house, not a poltergeist,” Nikki whispered, reading my thoughts, “But I know that it’s trying to tell us something.”

  I snorted, letting her know that I didn’t think much of her house’s form of communication. Couldn’t it draw a message on a foggy window or something?

  “It wants us to go upstairs. It wants to show us something,” she stared up the steps a second before she started toward them.

  I barked once, sharp, then carefully tugged the end of her shirt with my teeth, and sent out as clear a message as I could, You are staying BEHIND me! Remember? If we have to go up there, I’m going first! Who’s the quick-healer in this group? Who’s the wolf here? Who’s supposed to protect YOU!

  “Okay, okay!” she put her hands up in surrender, “I’ll stay behind you, I promise.”

  I huffed out a breath, and gave her a long look to dare her to do anything different than stick to me closer than my own fur, then started my unwilling ascent up the wooden staircase.

  Nothing else happened, other than Nikki bumped into my hip every other step in an effort to stay as close as possible. At least she kept her promise. We reached the landing at the top and stopped, waiting for the house to show us whatever it was it wanted us to see.

  A minute passed.

  I guess it’s finished trying to freak us out…I broke off my line of thought, when the rickety old steps to the attic flopped down at the end of the hallway in a blatant display of invitation. Come on up!

  “I seem to be spending a lot of time in this attic lately,” I mumbled, human once again since my wolf wouldn’t fit through the small opening in the ceiling. I stood in the middle of the room, waiting for Nikki to flip the paper to see what the house wanted us to see.

  The blue wall rippled, and then flashed, showing us the downstairs kitchen once again. This time, though, it showed Tori, teetering under a big stack of paper. She either must have found something at the library that was of interest, or else she decided to just print everything the library had and sort it out later. Judging from the mess downstairs, I bet that she printed everything.

  She left, leaving our sight for a moment, then came back barefoot. She curled up in one of the kitchen chairs, inspecting the first sheet of paper in the pile. So engrossed in her reading, she didn’t see the shadow that passed by the kitchen window.

  “Get up! Move! They’re coming! You’ve gotta run!” I urged her through the wall, knowing that what I was seeing had already happened, but I couldn’t help it. It was like watching a horror movie where you could see things happening that the other person couldn’t — you had to try to help them, even though you knew they were done for.

  And of course, just like all horror movies I had ever seen, this one played out the same way. Tori didn’t see who the bad guys were, or even have an inkling that someone was lurking so close by, until they came through the door. When three giant cats slinked through the kitchen, I wasn’t surprised and judging from Nikki’s posture out of the corner of my eye, she wasn’t either.

  Tori looked up, startled, and then screamed. But it was a sound of frustration, not of fear. They paced in front of her, backing her against the wall by the table. She began picking up whatever she could reach, starting with the coffee cups on a ledge near her arm. She sent them flying with deadly accuracy, each one dinging off the head of the enormous cat closest to her, who just happened to be Rune.

  He hissed, and then screamed as only a mountain lion could, angry at the torrent of cups that had managed to fly his way. I couldn’t help smiling as Tori screamed back at him in a fury greater than his, still pitching whatever her hands could find. Too soon, she ran out of available ammunition, and her hands lighted on the stacks of paper. She gripped as much as she could hold, then took a visibly deep breath, and stepped forward to try to clobber Rune in the head with a good ten pounds of library paper.

  The stack lasted one hit before the sheets shifted and she lost her grip. Sheets fell, sifting through her fingers to the floor. Now unarmed, she balled her fists up, the only weapons she had left. Even though the look on her face said that she knew she had lost, she still stood as straight and tall, as proud as any Indian I ever met.

  A vague thought flitted through my head that I wished she had kept those awful boots on. At least then, she would have had a chance, and from my past experience, it would have been a really good chance of at least inflicting a migraine, if not a concussion.

  Rune apparently decided he had taken enough abuse from her, and sprang, knocking Tori flat on the linoleum. His face mere inches from hers, he opened his mouth to show off impressive, curling fangs and did another one of those loud cat screams again, this time even louder than before.

  I expected her to scream back. But she didn’t. She lay stiffly, staring in disgust at the huge cat that had her pinned. Rune was getting visibly angrier at her lack of fear, tail twitching behind him from one side to the other in agitation. I saw his claws start to extend and I knew he was tiring of her. He was ready to go in for his kill.

  I wanted to jump into the wall and save her. I started forward and had nearly reached it, when Nikki grabbed my hand.

  “No,” she said in a firm whisper, “You can’t help her that way. The wall will just zap you like it did before. All we can do is watch.”

  I mumbled something not so nice under my breath, but stayed back, and watched Rune, hoping he wouldn’t go through with what he had planned. Luckily, he didn’t get the chance to think about it much longer.

  “I don’t recall giving instruction to kill her,” a musical voice said, liltingly, “I have other plans, you see, and her death would not serve me well here. She will, of course, die — but not by thy hand.”

  I expected to see Wynter appear as she had before, blue hair glowing in the wall. But it wasn’t her. Though the voices of the sisters were similar, the Spriteblood who appeared was very different. Hair as red as blood, glowed like rubies in the dull, blue wall. She had the same opal skin as Wynter and it peeked through in strange holes in her dress, showing different patches of flesh here and there. The holes looked as if the fabric had rotted away, but when she walked, they moved, constantly knitting back together, and then rotted away in a different place. So far, the sisters shared the same musical voices and an interest in strange clothing.

  Rune backed off, but stayed close to Tori, ready to do whatever the Spriteblood bade.

  “Take her to him. There she can watch him die as she did before, then the others will follow,” the fairy said, smiling a grotesque, pointed smile.

  A light sand covered Rune as he switched back to human. The tattoo of the cat stared at Tori, watching her hungrily as Rune reached down and grabbed her. Tori punched at him, but Rune ignored her, and found a way to pin her arms as
he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, carrying her through the door. The other two cats followed close behind him.

  The Spriteblood looked around the kitchen for a moment, and then stared up toward us as if she could see us watching her there. I knew then there were more differences than hair and wardrobe between Wynter and her sister. While Wynter’s eyes were strangely enormous and blue, they still held compassion and a shred of respect for humanity.

  This fairy’s eyes, though, were blacker than anything I had ever seen. They were dark and endless…soulless.

  I was looking into the face of Death.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brian

  In short, Nikki’s house freaked us both out. So we went to the next safest place we could think of.

  We parked Nikki’s Jeep in the driveway of Evan Black Water, Sr., Adam’s grandpa. The old man always seemed to know what was going on and had an idea of what to do. I just hoped he had his clothes on this time.

  Thankfully, when he answered the door, he did. His eyes had a dark, haunted look to them, though, and we knew he was worried about Adam. For the first time, he didn’t say a word to us, just opened the door and let us in, then went back to sit in his recliner.

  We followed and sat opposite him. Long moments passed in silence. It felt as if we had gone to a funeral, the sadness was palpable coming off of both him and Nikki. I stirred uneasily from my place on the couch. The old man finally focused on me, fixing me with his sharp eyes and gave me a slight nod.

  “The fear I have for my grandson is great. He is a great warrior, but the evil he faced is old magic…and very strong,” he said quietly, “Have you come to tell me of his death?”

  “No!” Nikki and I both answered, shattering the stillness of the room.