Old Man on the Sea (The Lost Keepers Book 6)

by AR Colbert

  “I do know. Without a doubt. And I want to go with you,” I said to Devon.

  “Hang on. Where did all this confidence come from?” Gayla asked.

  I turned back to the girls to find Dom watching me closely, her head tilted to one side. She was looking for the answer in my mind, and try as I might, there was no hiding it. In fact, I was surprised she hadn’t already asked me about Rasputin. It was all I could think about all morning.

  After a bit, Dom shook her head, keeping her eyes on me as she spoke. “She’s not really confident. And Devon, I think you should go alone at first. We don’t want to use up all your energy on the first lighthouse in case it’s wrong.”

  “It’s not wrong!” Why was Dom denying this? I knew she could see into my mind. I couldn’t understand why she was hiding my meeting with Rasputin from the others. I figured she’d rat me out right away, being the rule follower she was. Unless she was trying to keep me out of trouble…

  Dom’s eyes narrowed. “What is going on in there, Ev?”

  “Come on, Dom. I know you know.” Everyone else remained silent as they took in the tense interaction between us.

  She stood and reached her hands out toward my cheeks. “May I?”

  I nodded. There was no use trying to hide anything from her now, anyway. Her cool palms cupped my cheeks, and her brown eyes darkened slightly as she stared deeply into mine. Then she gasped and dropped her hands. “Everly, I think you’ve been cursed.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “Tell the others how you know about the lighthouse.”

  I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the influx of objections I was probably about to receive. “I met—” My throat closed in on itself, restricting my airflow and leaving me choking on Rasputin’s name. My hand clenched around my neck, willing it to open and provide me the oxygen I needed. Very slowly, after lots of coughing, the sudden choke hold eased up.

  A whole minute had passed before I was able to breathe properly again. Wiping the wetness from my eyes and shrugging off Dom’s concerned arm over my shoulder, I tried again. “I—”

  “No!” Dom clamped her hand over my mouth. “You’ll choke and die if you try too hard to reveal your source. You’ve been cursed to secrecy.”

  A curse. Suddenly, memories of my mother choking until she vomited in the basement of the gallery flooded my mind. She’d been cursed as well. It’s why she couldn’t reveal my heritage. It’s why she couldn’t tell me where she was going. If only I could have read her thoughts like Dom could read mine. “You can see it in my mind though, right?”

  “No.” Her eyes were sad. “It’s like a dark blanket has swallowed up anything that might reveal what you saw.”

  “But what about the lighthouse? I can mention it without dying.” Or I thought I could, anyway. I had to try. The Flannan Isles were on the opposite side of the world. I would never be able to reach them without help from the others.

  “You can try,” she said.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, listening to the thunderous beat of my heart. Here goes nothing… “The old man is in the lighthouse on Eilean Mor.” I blurted the words as fast as I could, before I would keel over. But they came out in a jumbled mess of syllables.

  “What?” Devon scrunched his eyebrows.

  I grinned, happy to still be breathing normally. Apparently information about the lighthouse wasn’t cursed—only Rasputin’s name. “Eilean Mor. It’s an island in Scotland.” I opened up my laptop and showed them pictures and the maps I’d saved during my research that morning.

  “And you’re certain this is where he is?” Devon asked.

  “Yes. Can you take me with you?”

  “Wait wait wait…” Sean stood with both hands in the air before him. “If you’re sure this is where the old man is, then we all need to go. You’re going to need some backup.”

  “I can’t take everyone at once,” Devon said. “I’m not strong enough.”

  “How many can you take at a time?” Tate asked.

  “I’ve never gotten more than two.”

  “Alright,” Tate said. “I’ll go with her on this first run.”

  “No.” I spoke a little too loudly, and Tate turned to me like he’d been burned by the word. “If we meet the man, I’ll need to know if I can trust him.”

  “I’ll glamour him.”

  I shook my head. “I want Dom with me. She’ll be able to hear the truth in what he tells us and see what he doesn’t tell us.”

  She stepped forward and grabbed my hand. “Of course I’ll go with you.”

  “And no offense Tate, but I think Sean and Gayla should be next. We’ll need Sean’s finesse in case things go sour, and only Gayla will be able to verify if the scene matches her vision.”

  He looked offended, but he didn’t object. “Fine, but don’t do anything until we’re all together again. Just stay put.”

  “Devon, are you ready?” I turned away without agreeing to Tate’s request.

  “I am if you are. The first time is a little jolting, but I promise you’ll be fine.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Nah, it’s just a little chilly.”

  I picked up a bag I’d prepared for the trip. Inside sat the stone tablet I’d taken from Rossel, the note from Rasputin, a flashlight, two water bottles, and a granola bar. I added my phone to a zip-up pocket and secured it over my shoulders. Then Devon, Dom, and I took each other’s hands and made a small circle.

  “On the count of three. One, two…”

  It felt like I was yanked out of New York and dragged across the icy arctic tundra, but only for a fraction of a second. Then I stood wide eyed and trembling in a green field surrounded by choppy ocean waters.

  “You okay?” Devon asked with a chuckle.

  “Uh, that was more than a little chilly.” I rubbed the goosebumps across my arms. “But yeah, I’m fine. This is incredible.”

  The rocky island we stood upon was high above the sea. It wasn’t overly large, but very steep, and it was sparse of any signs of life other than the lighthouse standing tall at the center of a hill and the ancient looking ruins of an old stone chapel. An abandoned railway and stairs led up to the white lighthouse. All around the island were steep, rocky cliffs and inlets. There were plenty of areas that could qualify as a “cleft in the rock.” So where would we find old man Driskell?

  “Wow,” Dom murmured. I followed her gaze to the overcast sky, where just a trickle of golden light from the setting sun was breaking through beneath thick gray storm clouds. It was much later in Scotland than it had been back at the apartment.

  “Well, it looks like your best bet will be up there in the lighthouse. You wanna go now, or should I bring the others here, first?”

  “Go ahead and bring Sean and Gayla,” I said. “But Devon… I don’t want Tate to come.”

  “What? Why?” Devon looked shocked, but Dom physically relaxed, the hint of a grin pulling at her lips.

  “I just think we should keep this a small group for now. We shouldn’t be quick to forget that he was tasked with killing me just last week. Let’s see what the old man has to say, then we can pull him back into the mix if we need to.”

  “If you say so.” Devon shrugged. “You guys okay here while I go back?”

  “We’re fine,” Dom said. Devon nodded and disappeared into the air before us. Once he was gone, Dom turned back to me with a sad smile. “I think that was the right call.”

  “I hope so.” I was less certain. I wanted to trust Tate, but if Dom and Rasputin’s suspicions were true, it was definitely best to leave him out of this.

  The sunlight disappeared entirely while Devon was gone, dipping below the horizon for the night. Giant raindrops began to fall in scattered splashes on our arms and the rocky earth. “I hope they hurry. This reminds me of storms back on the ranch at home. Any minute now this sky is gonna open up and dump buckets on us.”

  Dom squinted up into the clouds and a roar of thunder cr
acked across the sky. “I think you’re right.”

  Devon reappeared then, right on cue, with Sean and Gayla’s hands clasped in his and Tate’s half-bent form wrapped around his waist, like they’d been mid-tackle when Devon left. What was he thinking? Tate had latched onto Devon like an uninvited hitchhiker, and it was a wonder Devon was able to make it here at all! Weak from the extra exertion of teleporting a third person, Devon fell to his knees and held his head in his hands.

  “Tate! What did you do?” I scowled at him and knelt to check on Devon. “Are you okay?”

  Devon groaned with a gentle nod. A flash of lightning illuminated the world around us, almost immediately followed by a thunderous boom—the opening act of an ominous storm rolling across the sky. A few more heavy drops fell from the clouds. Then, as though someone turned on a faucet, the heavens opened the floodgates and drenched us to the bones almost instantly.

  Sean helped me get Devon back to his feet, but he was still too weak to move. Without another thought, Sean scooped his friend up in his arms and pointed to the lighthouse, now glowly brightly atop the hill. “Let’s go!”

  We took off after him, pushing through the heavy rain like curtains of water blocking our way. A gust of wind blew across the open air atop the island, and I nearly lost my footing. The ground was slick, and it was difficult to gain much speed through the mud and rocks that jutted up from the grassy earth.

  Another bolt of lightning flashed through the sky, striking the island itself not far from where we ran. No—it didn’t strike the island. “Taaaate!”

  I veered off to my right to where Tate was laying on the ground. He appeared to be unconscious. The others were by my side a moment later, and the sky lit up once more with a bright flash of electricity. Then everything went dark.

  CHAPTER 11

  My wrists ached. And it was cold. Too cold. Why did the girls turn the air conditioner on? A groan escaped my lips and I tried to brush away whatever was tickling my nose, but my hand was stuck.

  “Everly?” a voice whispered. I wanted to open my eyes and see who was there, see what my hand was caught on, but my eyelids were too heavy. And it was so, so cold. I just wanted to curl up and drift back to sleep.

  “Everly,” the voice whispered again.

  I slowly fought the gravity holding my lids closed. Low flickering light reached my half-open eyes, and the brightness was too much to handle. Though it wasn’t more than a candle in a jar, the light felt as though it seared my brain.

  I groaned again, then heard a rough cough from across the room. Fighting against the pain from the candlelight, I forced my eyes open wide enough to see the hunched over outline of a strange man pacing back and forth in front of a window. No light shone through aside from occasional flashes of lightning in the distance.

  It all came back to me. The island. The storm. Was that Driskell? Where was I now?

  I moved to sit up, but quickly realized my wrists were tied to bedposts above my head. My ankles were tied together as well.

  “Everly!” The whisper from before was more like a growl now, but the old man pacing in front of the window didn’t seem to notice. I arched my back enough to twist and steal a glance over my shoulder. Gayla’s platinum colored locks fell through slats of what appeared to be a prison cell built into the wall behind the bed I was tied to. Her dark eyes were wide with fear. Behind her lay the lifeless bodies of the rest of our crew. Dom, Sean, Devon… they were all there except one.

  “Where’s Tate?” I whispered. Gayla’s dark eyes shifted to the other side of the room where Tate was strapped to a chair and gagged. He was still unconscious, and his head lolled limply to one side. “Is he alive? And the others? Is everyone okay?”

  “I think so. I just woke up before you. But that’s him. That’s the old man from my vision. I told you he was crazy.”

  I glanced back at the man mumbling incoherently in front of the window. The low light made it difficult to make out his features, but I could see a long scraggly beard and fiery orange untamed hair hanging down well-past his shoulders like a matted mane of a lion.

  “Wake up Devon so he can zap us out of here,” I suggested.

  “I tried. He’s out cold.”

  I turned back toward the old man. It was going to have to be me, then. I’d have to be the one to get us out of here. I searched the space immediately around me, looking for anything sharp that I might be able to use to cut through the ropes that bound me, but there was nothing. There was nothing in the room at all, save for two chairs, a small table near the window, and the bed.

  Well, there was the prison cell, too. The floor and walls were solid stone, as though the room was carved right out of a mountainside. And perhaps it was. We certainly weren’t in the lighthouse. Perhaps we were in the cleft of the rock from Gayla’s vision. That meant the old man was definitely who I was looking for.

  “Driskell.” My voice was raspy, my throat raw from yelling in the storm. I cleared it and tried again, louder this time. “Driskell!”

  The old man stopped mumbling his gibberish and turned to face me. He froze there for a long time—much longer than was comfortable, and it was too dark for me to make out his expression. A clap of thunder boomed from outside, and it seemed to restart his motor. He immediately set into motion, marching straight toward me.

  I braced myself, pulling my chin in and turning away slightly as he raised his arms in the air. I couldn’t make out what he held, but it looked like it would hurt if he used it as a weapon. Thankfully, that wasn’t his intention.

  With one swift motion, he brought his arms down from over his head and released the object, throwing it down on the stone floor with all his might. It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces, and as the object burst into bits, my chest felt as though it was cracked open as well.

  “The tablet!” Gayla gasped behind me. He must have retrieved it from my bag, which I noticed hanging limply off the edge of his table.

  Driskell met my eyes again. His glowed a beautiful shade of blue, almost a turquoise, and they were wild with an energy I couldn’t decipher. Did he want to kill me? Because shattering the tablet definitely made me feel like I was one step closer to death. It wasn’t just the emotional loss of the piece, but physically I felt broken as well.

  “Everly. You’re glowing,” Gayla said.

  I glanced down at my arms and saw nothing. Driskell must have seen it though. A strange grin spread its way slowly across his scruffy face. The candlelight glinted off of his teeth, casting eerie yellow flashes from his mouth. It added to the madness he already projected.

  Another crack of thunder drew my attention briefly to the window. It was loud enough to cause Tate to stir, and with his movement returned the strange tingle across my skin. Only it was different this time. It wasn’t the invisible thread that drew me into Tate that I felt buzzing through my body, it was more like a new sense of life. An energy I’d never felt before.

  It pulsed along with my heart, increasing in speed and force with every thump in my chest. Driskell threw his head back and laughed maniacally. Then he looked down at the floor where the pieces of my tablet still lay scattered like leaves in the fall.

  It was easy to see where the pieces had fallen, because they now emitted that same strange glow I’d seen back in the gallery. Driskell, Gayla and I all watched in silent wonder as the pieces moved back together, dragging themselves roughly across the floor until they snapped back into place, like a magnetic puzzle. It was the same thing they’d done when I dropped it in the gallery.

  But this time I felt each piece as it reconnected with the whole. As the tablet came back together, so did I. I could feel its power surging through my veins, again and again until at long last the tablet had been fully restored.

  With one quick tug, I broke through the ropes binding me to the bed. I jerked my feet apart, snapping the rope that had been wrapped around my ankles as well. I sat up, stronger than I’d ever been, rubbing the tender area where my wrists had gone
slightly raw, then stood.

  Driskell took one step back as I approached him. There wasn’t fear in his eyes—it was something else. Respect? Reverence, maybe. Whatever it was, it was undeserved. I bent down and picked up the tablet, examining the carvings in the stone and confirming it was the same as it had been before it was broken. Then I pulled it to my chest, and a bright white light filled the small stone room.

  Driskell fell to his knees, bowing his head clear down to the floor. The wind howled through the rain that pelted the small window on the outside wall, but even through the racket I heard his shaky voice croak out a single word that would change my life forever.

  “Deliverer.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The bright light faded as quickly as it had come on. Dom, Sean, Devon, and Tate all stirred, awakened by the flash and groaning in pain. Gayla rushed to help the others in the cell, and I shot Tate a wary glance from where he sat tied to his chair.

  Turning away again, I extended a hand to the old man who was still bowing with his face to the ground. “Driskell, stand up. We need to talk.” He slowly raised his face, but did not meet my eyes. I wiggled my hand, urging him to take it, then helped him to his feet.

  “Will you please release my friends?”

  “The friends, yes. The prince?” He cut a sharp look to where Tate sat. “I think not.” Driskell’s words were thick with a German accent, and though he looked like a hermit driven to solitary insanity, he spoke with a high level of intelligence and carried himself like a man who had plenty of experience in the highest echelons of society.

  Tate caught my eyes, and I held his gaze for a long minute while Driskell fumbled with some keys to open the prison cell behind me. His expression was pleading, almost desperate. He turned to Driskell and his irises flashed gold, but nothing happened. A siren needed his voice for glamour, and Driskell had Tate gagged. He was as helpless in that chair as a mortal.

  I felt no joy seeing him in that state, but I wasn’t ready to set him free, either. Not yet. With clenched teeth I turned away in time to see my friends stumble out of the prison cell. Gayla and Dom rushed forward and wrapped me in their arms. Devon, still too weak to move much, slinked out and plopped himself down on the bed I’d been tied to.