Gatekeeper

by Natasha Deen

  I pointed at Kent, who looked like he was having some kind of seizure. His back arched then bowed, his arms jerked and his legs spasmed. Craig went to his ferrier form and circled him.

  “Don’t hurt him! Don’t take him!” I rushed to Craig.

  “They’re dangerous,” he said. “I have to take them back.”

  “But Kent is melded to them—he’ll re-die at his lowest point.”

  “Maggie—”

  “Please, Craig, he’s my charge.” I pointed to Serge. “He’s our charge. Let us try to separate them.”

  “No, with this power and intelligence, and their ability to affect the living—”

  “Let me try,” I begged. “Please. I’m supposed to be a guardian and I know how to do it. I know how to save him.”

  “And a gatekeeper. You have to protect both worlds. We can’t let this thing loose—”

  “One try, just one.”

  His head cocked to the side. “They’re telling me to give you the chance.” His voice growled with frustration. “One chance, Maggie, then I take it down.”

  “They have him convinced he’s some kind of psychic saviour. That’s why he’s helping them. He’s always to be somebody.” I struggled to my feet. “When I saw him, he was uber-gorgeous. Too good-looking to be housing evil spirits in his body.” I motioned behind me. “And the tree. They’ve done something to it—made it part of his delusion. He’s connected to it—I figured setting it on fire would hurt them. They created some kind of dampening field, that’s why I couldn’t call you to me. But it takes energy and resources. I figured if I could get them mad enough at me, at each other, I could break their focus, weaken the field. The madder they get, the weaker they get, the easier it’ll be to separate Kent.”

  Craig came our way, ducking as the wind swept burning twigs in our direction. “Time’s ticking. Do something or let me take them.”

  An explosion rocked the ground as the house caught on fire.

  “Maggie. Serge.”

  We turned as Kent came our way.

  He gave Craig a dismissive glance. “I don’t think we need to call in the supernatural help, do we?”

  “You will,” he said to The Family, “but they don’t.” Turning to me, he continued, “One chance, that’s it.” He stepped back.

  Flames and wind heated the air.

  “There’s one of him, two of us,” said Serge. “I say we beat the crap out of him until they separate, then let Craig have some playtime.”

  I was up for that plan, too.

  “See?” said Kent, his voice going to chorus. “It’s good to work as a team.” His body shivered, shook.

  Then there were two of him.

  Four of him.

  “If this was a movie,” said Serge, “right now, I’d make some smart comment about him needing more than four clones to takes us on.”

  “But this isn’t a movie,” I said, “And we’re totally outnumbered. He knows where Rori is—I’m sure of it. Use his mom to take him out.”

  “His mom?”

  “It was the only thing that seemed capable of separating their bond.”

  Serge smiled grimly. “I’m assuming we’re not talking about a bunch of yo momma jokes.”

  “No, I mean anything that plays into his not being a good son.” I went to the left, picked out the two Kents I’d deal with. “Ready?”

  He nodded and we ran to confront the legion.

  If this were a movie, this was where there’d be battle music—some kind of intense orchestral music with drums and violins. Maybe hard rock or even metal.

  But it wasn’t, and there was only the silence punctuated by my breathing as I ran to confront the legion.

  My Kents stood, confident, and waited.

  And I realized had I been really smart, I would never have run to them. I would have waited and let them come to me. After all, I was mortal. They weren’t. Of the two of us, I needed to conserve my energy.

  I put on the brakes and lurched to a stop four feet from them.

  They smiled. “Second thoughts.”

  “I met you halfway,” I panted. “Time for you to do your share.”

  “I can wait for you if you’re tired.”

  This was officially turning into the worst battle scene ever.

  I peeked at Serge who was doing a passable and enviable job of battling his Kents.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked. “Battle it out with paper, rock, scissors?”

  The Kents smiled. “Best out of three?”

  They were playing me, but why? It took me a second to figure it out. “You can’t fight me, can you?”

  “I can do a lot of things,” said Kent One.

  “But not fight. There’s too much for you to keep track of. Serge, the real Kent, the tree, Craig, your clones. I start throwing fists and something’ll have to give.”

  He shrugged. “Try me.”

  It was a bluff and I called it. I closed the distance between us.

  “Think carefully,” said Kent Two. “We have the training of hundreds of souls. Karate. Judo. Boxing. It’s the advantage of being a collective. Do you really want to grapple with us?”

  I raised my hand as if to slap Kent Two.

  He grabbed it.

  I raised my other hand.

  Kent One grabbed it.

  As fast as I could, I brought my knees up, one at a time, and got them both in the crotch.

  They let go, doubled over.

  “I have the collective training of being a girl and knowing what happens to boy parts when you kick them.”

  The Kents grunted their rage.

  I back-pedalled and as Kent One lifted his head, I closed my fist and swung hard.

  Flesh connected with flesh and I heard the crunch of bone breaking, but I didn’t know if it was his face or my hand that suffered the injury. Adrenaline thrummed through my body, dulling my pain, and I readied myself to hit him again.

  Kent Two jumped, grabbed me around the waist and hauled me sideways. He imprisoned my arms with one of his. “Our turn,” he said in my ear, his tone gleeful.

  Kent One came at me.

  I used Kent Two as a combination wall-springboard, jumped up, pushed all my weight into him and drove both feet into Kent One’s chest.

  We all went down.

  I looked skyward, saw flashes of orange and red. A drive of my elbow into Kent Two’s ribs freed me from his grasp. I rolled out of their way and stumbled to my feet.

  Their faces flickered and the glowing light snuffed out. The worms were visible now.

  “If that’s how you want to play.” They shivered and shook, but instead of splitting, they joined into one Kent.

  Too fast for me to do anything, he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me to the ground. Kent pinned my arms to the snow and put his full weight on my chest.

  “Suffocation is a funny thing,” he said as he released his fingers from my neck. “It looks so violent on TV but it doesn’t have to be.” He smiled. “At least for me. It’s simple, really. I’m heavier than you and my weight is slowly crushing your chest. You’re not strong enough to breathe, to get in the necessary amount of oxygen. You’re going to suffocate to death,” he grinned, “and I’m going to sit and watch.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Your mom will be so proud,” I said. “Another death courtesy of her golden child.”

  The worms pulsed under his skin, stretched out his flesh.

  “My mother will never know.”

  “Of course she will. If my dad doesn’t tell her, Nancy will.”

  “I’ll kill them right after I’m done with you.”

  “Craig will tell her.”

  He loomed over me, put his face close to mine. “She won’t believe him.”

  “Sh
e will,” I wheezed the words. “He knows things about you, things no one else does. Things about her that he couldn’t know unless you told us. All those nights you visited her and came back to talk about it. All the searching we did for your killer. All the crying you did. He’s going to tell her everything. And she’ll know you slaughtered me, Nancy, and my dad. Then what?”

  He grabbed my throat.

  “She has no friends, no family. She’ll be all alone in her grief. There’ll be no one she can talk to about you. No one will want to listen to her mourning over a drug dealer.”

  His fingers tightened.

  “What do you think she’ll do with those meds, when she’s all alone and hurting?”

  “I’ll watch over her, make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”

  “Think she’ll want your guardianship? Think she’ll even visit your grave? Her murdering son?”

  “Stop it!” He shifted his weight, raised his hand to punch me.

  It was all I needed. I rolled with his movement, spun out from under him. Scrambling, I planted my hands and feet in the snow, crawled away and clawed for air.

  I didn’t know where he was, didn’t know what he was doing until I felt his foot make rib-cracking contact with my torso. He kicked me so hard I thought I was going to vomit.

  “I tried to do right.” He stood over me, grunted the words. “When Dr. Pierson came to the city with the shipment, I tried to end it, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  “That was the fight Courtney saw. You told her you were fighting with your dad.”

  “He was like a father to me.” Kent’s voice went to the legion’s chorus. “I trusted him with everything. He knew my life, my passwords. He murdered me then humiliated with the email to the registrar. He betrayed me. It’s time to even the score.”

  “And you’re going to make him pay with Rori?”

  “He left a mother without her son. I’m leaving a father without a daughter. Fair is fair.”

  “But what about Rori? Think of her!”

  “Sacrifices must be made for justice to win.”

  “And adding child-killer to your roster. Your mother will be so proud.”

  Grabbing me by the back of my head, clutching a fistful of my hair, he hissed, “At least I have a mother. You have nothing. Some whore your father knocked up who bailed the moment she pushed you out.”

  He brought his hand back to drive my head into the ground. I reached back and clawed his skin.

  He grunted, let go.

  I spun around, kicked out his legs as I rolled to my butt.

  Kent went down, landed on his stomach, and I crawled on top of him. Hooked my legs around his waist as he struggled to get up, locked my arm around his throat, and squeezed.

  “You had a mother.” My voice didn’t sound like mine, anymore. “She loved you, cared for you. And what did you do? You got yourself killed.” I tightened my grip. “And turned her into a drug addict. Isn’t that ironic? The boy savior destroys his mother’s life”

  He tried to claw himself free, but I had rage—and fear for Rori—on my side. “We both know it’s not a coincidence that she went on the pills after the Thanksgiving weekend. What happened? When she found you that night, it was around the area you grew the drugs. Did Dr. Pierson see her? Did you tell him? Did you sic the man who murdered you on your mother, too?”

  He gasped for air. When that didn’t work, he threw himself back, slammed me to the ground. Tomorrow—if I lived through tonight—that was going to hurt. But tonight I was too focused on separating Kent to notice the pain.

  “Did you tell him about your mom being in the park? Good old Doc Pierson. I bet she opened her door when he knocked. Her son’s favourite role model. Of course she answered the door. Of course she listened and believed every word when he lied and told her you’d taken him into your confidence. That you were worried about her anxieties. I bet he’s been the one feeding her those meds. Lovely little samples, just like the Tylenols Nell’s dad gave me. No prescription to fill out, no records to keep. Just quietly dosing her until she’s too stoned to worry about her missing son. You want to kill me? You’re just going to murder your mother.”

  Kent went still. His hands fell to the sides and he started crying. His body wriggled, his skin bloated, and I heard the sound of flesh ripping.

  I shoved him up, crawled out from under him.

  His eyes rolled back in his head, froth poured from his mouth, as The Family ruptured his stomach and poured out of his body in a mass of worms.

  The souls crawled away from the husk of Kent’s body. I backed out of their way, preparing for another round, but they seemed more focused on regrouping with the others than dealing with me. When they’d gone, I crept to the skin.

  “Kent?” I spun in a slow circle, checking out the worms to see if I recognized any. But the worms all looked the same, sickly pink, sparse hair covering, sightless, with gaping mouths. They slid along the snow.

  Serge was dealing with one Kent and the worms headed to it, which meant the legion was trying to conserve energy. Good. We were gaining ground.

  My team had their sections under control. Time for me to step up and find Kent. Which meant checking the skin tent. Pushing down the rising nausea, I moved toward it. The flesh had taken on the consistency of a deflated balloon. Wrinkled, stretched out.

  “Kent, are you in there?” I got down on all fours, picked up a section of the flap in my thumb and forefinger, and lifted. And gagged. The smell coming out of the flesh bag was a combination farm fertilizer, boys’ locker room, garbage, and decomposition. I dropped the flap and scuttled backwards.

  The skin wriggled. A small bump, the size of a rodent, moved up from Kent’s stomach to his head.

  I got on my knees, ready to either deal with Kent or another one of the legion.

  The rodent-thing pushed from under the skin and as it emerged, it turned into a full-sized Kent. He crawled on his hands and knees. “Maggie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I feel like crap.”

  “You should. You’ve been a Class-A jerkface.”

  “It’s not my fault.” He coughed, gagged, and vomited up a thick, green mass.

  “You lied to me and now a little girl’s missing.”

  “That wasn’t me, I didn’t want—”

  “God, Kent, stop! Just stop! It’s not your fault you decided to make and sell drugs, it’s not your fault The Family inhabited you, it’s not your fault they took Rori!” I jabbed my finger at the burning skeleton of the tree, now burning with a psychic fire of purple-black flames, tinged with white. “That’s your fault. The only way you could have known about the snow on the bark is if you had a connection to her.” I took a breath, trying to calm the rising hysteria. “You talk about betrayal, but what have you done to that little girl? You saved her life. Her dad called it a medical miracle but it wasn’t. It was you. She hurt herself, you fixed it.”

  “I could see the brain injury,” he said. “I could see how to fix it.”

  “How can you save her life only to take it from her? How could you violate her trust?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did! You’re nothing but a liar! The only way—the only way for you to have fixed her injury was through energy. You knew you were dead. You’ve always known you were dead. You lied to me the first moment we met, and you’ve been lying the whole time. No wonder The Family loves you! What did you do? You lied about going home or doing loops around the town, and you went to visit Rori. Practised your ability to manipulate energy. Rori couldn’t hear Serge or see him clearly after her accident. But the only way you would know how she really felt about her family, the only way you’d see the snow on the tree was if you’d spent time with her.”

  “I just wanted to see her, to see if I’d done a good job. She woke up and when I realized she could see me…” />
  “You befriended her. But this—” I swept my hand at the destruction burning all around us. “This is how you repay her love for you?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know The Family was inside me—”

  “Liar—!”

  “No!”

  “Your skin was peeling, you were shedding. That could only happen if you had combined. You had to agree to the joining, which meant you believed whatever they were telling you…Is that why you left the house that night? Told us you had the flu, but really you wanted privacy for you and your new friends?”

  “They offered me a place to belong! Told me I could get justice from Pierson.”

  “It’s a lie, Kent! Rub your brain cells together—it’s not justice to kill a child. That’s revenge. Do what’s right. Separate from them so Craig can come in.”

  He started to cry. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You have to! I can’t help Rori until you do!”

  He kept crying.

  “Is this what you want? This is the legacy you leave your mother? Kent the Child Killer? Kent the Murderer of Little Girls?”

  “No! No!”

  I tried not to get angry. Reminded myself he’d been vulnerable and The Family had manipulated him. Reminded myself I had a part to play in this drama. I’d believed him, taken his words at face value and that made me responsible, too. “As long as The Family is in this plane, they can come after anyone they like—including Rori. Especially Rori. As long as you’re linked with them, they can use your knowledge. They’re linked to you and that means on a psychic level, they’re linked to your mom. You don’t think she won’t dream of this, that on some level, she won’t know?”

  “Don’t you understand! I can’t separate! Once you join The Family, you can’t get out.”

  The fires raged, throwing heat and flame, but I went ice-cold. “They have you?”

  He sobbed, nodded.

  “You can never transition and I can’t help Rori. Not unless Craig destroys you.”

  “I didn’t know—” Behind him, a wave of worms rose up. Swallowed him.

  “We are family,” said the legion. “We don’t leave our own.”