Guardian Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Kickstarter Backers

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Interim

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Character art

  Georgette

  About the Author

  Guardian

  Book Two of the Reaper Saga

  Eli Kwake

  Copyright © 2021 Eli Kwake

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-955587-06-8

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-955587-07-5

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-955587-08-2

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Printing 2021

  www.elikwake.com

  To every seventeen and eighteen year old trying to figure life out.

  I’ve been there.

  Acknowledgments

  In no particular order:

  Thank you to the amazing Sarah “Dreamie” Walker-Wood for the cover art oh my good golly goshness it is gorgeous!

  Thank you thank you thank you to Stephanie Martin and Heather Snitch for being the world’s best beta readers! You rock!

  Thank you Jesse Ledina/AndrogynArt for the character art of in. It came out so wonderful.

  Thank you thank you thank you to Charlie Knight for the editing and proofreading and generally acting as my therapist a few times during the editing process. Words cannot express.

  Thank you a bajiliion times to Ruth Kwake, my awesome and wonderful mother-in-law, for being my alpha reader. I know for damn sure this book would never have made it here without you.

  Thank you to my Kickstarter backers. You believed in me and my work and I cannot thank you enough.

  Thank you, forever and always, to my wonderful, kind, patient, and caring husband Alex. Without you I would not remember to eat and, without eating, this book would not have been possible. I love you.

  Kickstarter Backers

  In no particular order

  Sable Aradia and Erin Righ

  Linda Costello

  Susanna Romig

  Makenzie T.

  Jean Smith

  Stephanie Martin

  Ian S. Mitchell

  Thunderpaws

  BasicDragon

  Alexander Bennett

  Sarah Lemler

  Lauren Nelson

  Mark Laybolt

  Andrew Jenner

  MAMA RUTH

  Laria

  The Closet Forge

  Jaina (LadyJVader)

  Mel K.

  Ashe D

  Michael Chandra

  Safia H Senhaji

  Joel Rieck

  Heather Snitch

  Amy Winters-Voss

  Kathryn

  Greg Howard Schneider

  Erika Robinson

  S. Farbman

  Uncle Lothar

  Morrigan

  Alix Jean Barron

  Chrissy Mackey, PhD

  Eric Schreeck

  Eddy Lipinski

  Amy Welch

  Stephanie Gildart

  Phillip Taylor

  Floridalma Trinidad

  John Van Mulligen

  Fairlith Harvey

  Michael Brockelhurst

  Debbie Romig

  Natasha Trisbe

  Leo Soderman

  Kajetan

  Prologue

  I am tired today. It takes more effort than I want to think about to push myself into a standing position. Next to the table I am on is a toilet that I can just reach if my arm is extended to its fullest.

  I pee. My urine is dark. I am thirstier than I have ever been. I flush the toilet and crawl slowly, painfully, back onto the table. The boy is not awake yet.

  When he finally does wake up, I smile at him. I feel my lips crack open and bleed, so I lick at them. My tongue is almost too dry to do more than spread the blood around.

  I want, need, water, but...I don’t trust anything they give me here. Everything is probably drugged.

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” I ask the boy with a voice that cracks.

  He nods eagerly. I don’t imagine he’s ever had someone tell him stories like this before. I don’t know that I will be able to finish the story today. There’s a lot still to tell, and I am so tired. My mouth and throat are dry. It hurts to talk.

  I am running out of time. I hope I will last long enough to finish the story, at least.

  I take a deep breath and begin.

  Chapter 1

  There was a sizzle, and the delicious smell of browning butter wafted up with the heat. I delicately lifted two of the custard-soaked pieces of bread and lowered them into the pan. While the first side was cooking, I cracked six eggs on the counter, plopping each one in a bowl. I flipped over the bread and then turned back to the eggs, whipping them energetically with a fork until I couldn’t tell where the yolks ended and the whites began.

  I removed the French toast from the pan, melted more butter, and put in two more pieces of custard-soaked bread. As it cooked, I cut up an early melon into thin slices. I flipped the French toast and then put half of the melon into a container in the fridge. The rest, I placed on two plates along with two pieces each of the toast. I put a little more butter in the pan, then poured in the whipped eggs, scrambling it with the spatula as it cooked.

  I was resolutely ignoring the bright brown eyes staring up at me from near my knees. A tail wagged eagerly. I sighed, reached into the cabinet, and fished a bone-shaped biscuit out of a tin. I patted my knees, and Georgette stood on her hind legs, grinning. I put the biscuit in her mouth.

  “Good girl,” I told her as she dropped back onto all fours. She trotted over to the corner where her bed was, the treat in her mouth, and laid down to eat. I turned back to the eggs.

  While I was pouring the eggs from the pan onto the plates, Andrew’s door opened. My adopted father walked out into the living room, shrugging into his jacket. I picked up the plates and brought them to the table. Andrew sat in his usual seat, and I nudged his plate towards him. He took it, and we ate for a moment in companionable silence.

  “What are your plans for the day?” he asked after he finished his eggs.

  I shrugged. “I was going to take one of my skyscapes to the barter market today and see if I can’t get some blank canvases in exchange. After that, I’ll most likely be painting. How late do you think you’ll be
home?”

  He grimaced. “I have a lot of meetings, so...pretty late? You know how it goes. I’m slated to be done at eight, so that means nine or ten.”

  “Should I make you dinner, or...?”

  He shook his head. “One of those meetings is a dinner meeting. No need to make me a plate.” He finished his toast and fruit, then glanced at his watch. “I heard you take Georgette out very early this morning. Did you have another nightmare?”

  I shrugged. “I’m used to it.” A small crease appeared between his eyebrows, and I waved a hand at him, laughing uneasily. “Honestly, it was almost light when I woke up. It’s not like when I would have them at midnight.”

  He sighed. “If you say so. When do you see Ruth next?”

  “She’s out of town for a couple of weeks; we’ll figure it out when she gets back.”

  “Alright, then.” He looked at his watch again and stood. “I’ll see you tonight, Raven.” He walked to the elevator and pressed the button. A moment later, he stepped in.

  I speared my last piece of French toast on my fork and stared at it before stuffing it in my mouth and collecting the plates. I washed up slowly, trying to keep my mind on what I was doing instead of letting it drift back to that nightmare. I dried the breakfast dishes and put them away.

  “I’ll be back later, Georgette,” I told her and then walked out onto the balcony, closing the door behind me. I pulled the hood of my jacket up against the rain and looked out over the city, smiling a little at the misty view.

  And then I flew upward to the dome of the Tower and opened the door.

  In the last year and a half, I had cleared out my old belongings from the dome. I had replaced my things with paintings, painting supplies, and an easel. Lilly’s things, I had mostly left alone. I had cleaned up a little — made her bed, folded her laundry — but it hurt too much to think of getting rid of everything. Sometimes, when I was missing her, I laid on her bed and had a conversation with the empty air, pretending she was there. Sometimes I even pretended it helped.

  I glanced briefly at the empty bed, then turned to my side of the dome. I didn’t keep all my paintings up there, only the ones I had painted from the top of the dome. My skyscapes. Most of them were my earlier work and weren’t worth bartering with, but I had gotten the hang of painting in the previous six months and had been able to barter for some of my supplies instead of buying everything.

  I had always been sort of aware of the barter market in Sky City but, prior to living with Andrew, I hadn’t been welcomed there. People there wanted handmade things — works of art, journals, knitted sweaters — and I had never made much. I knew how to whittle, Da had taught me, but I wasn’t very good at it and hadn’t really bothered. Thieves, like Lilly and I had been, were shunned in the barter market.

  After I was adopted by Andrew, I hadn’t really given much thought to going there at first. I had other things to focus on.

  Andrew had convinced me to go back to school. I didn’t like it, but I did it. I was eager to do anything I could to repay him in those first months after he adopted me, and it seemed to mean so much to him. I had forgotten a lot, but Andrew brought in tutors to catch me up to where I had been, and eventually, I was put in with people my own age at a big school in the city.

  It wasn’t a good time.

  It wasn’t just that I was new, or even that I was famous, or that I had Powers and most everyone else didn’t. It was that I started school around that time the nightmares started. I would go to sleep, and then I would start dreaming. I would be half into a normal dream, and then I would land back in the forest with Lilly or in the facility fighting Willow. I think if it had been once in a while, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was almost every night.

  That was also when I started having the fits. I would be fine, and then I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes it had a trigger — a smell like pine, or a sight like a dingy white wall — and then I would be on the ground, gasping like a fish out of water. I would be crying, terrified, but at the core of me, I was calm. It felt like a storm of emotion raging around me. Andrew and Ruth called them panic attacks.

  Andrew had insisted I start visiting Ruth on weekends when she had days off because, as he said, she’d like you to visit.’ She did seem happy to see me. But she had this way of prying information out of me. She got me to talk about the nightmares and the fits. She teased it out of me for weeks, and then, when I admitted talking to her about it seemed to be helping some, she started teaching me other things that might help. Painting was one of her suggestions.

  “You exercise, and that will help, but you need a creative outlet,” she told me. “You already said you don’t enjoy whittling, so maybe try painting for a week or two. Just splash some color on the page or even just paint an apple. Whatever comes to mind. Then bring it back for me to see, and we’ll talk about it.”

  She was right. The painting did help, almost more than the talking. When I felt angry, I would splash color on the page. When I was calmer, I would try to remember things and paint them. The farmhouse I had grown up in, the dome of the Tower, the bowl of fruit on the counter. I liked it. I kept trying even though my first pieces were terrible. I got better. And in time, I braved the barter market and found I was no longer shunned there.

  Not that anyone wanted the first pieces that I brought — they truthfully weren’t very good. But they looked at the paintings, told me to keep trying, and to come back when I had something. When I finally had something good enough, I almost cried. But that was six months ago, and now, I was more practiced.

  I knelt down and looked over my recent works, trying to decide which ones were worth the effort of wrapping in wax paper and carrying to the market. The first I discarded — it wasn’t ready yet — but the second and the third I thought showed some promise. I wrapped them carefully, put them in a bag I had bartered for, and went back out into the misty rain of the city.

  The barter market was near an intersection with canals on one side and two roads on the other side. Fishermen brought fish fresh off the boats, and people with other goods brought them by car or on foot. I flew down onto the sidewalk and joined the queue to get inside.

  “Paintings?” a familiar voice asked. I turned and saw Delia Lang standing behind me with a box of rhododendron blossoms in her arms.

  I nodded. “A couple of skyscapes.”

  She smiled. “Do you ever do still life?”

  “A few,” I said tiredly. I didn’t like still life very much.

  But she smiled even wider with a twinkle in her eye. “I’ll swap you a few bunches of rhododendrons for a painting of some of the plants in my garden. I’ve seen your work, Raven. You’re good.”

  I thought about it. “Which plants?”

  “My rhododendrons, of course, along with my apples and blackberry brambles. I’d like the blackberries and apples to be in fruit and the rhododendrons to be blooming. Otherwise, it’s your choice.”

  I sighed. The flowers did look nice...and maybe I could sweeten the deal. “I can manage that, I think. Can I get a carton or two of blackberries when they’re ripe?”

  “Sure, I’ll send you some.”

  “Deal.”

  She selected a few bunches of flowers and handed them to me. I took them, gave them a smell, and smiled. The line started to move, and we filed inside. Delia, behind me, wandered to the left.

  I wandered to the right, looking for a specific stall. He usually tried to set up his stall in the same place every time, unlike some of the stalls which you had to search all over for. I found him set up one spot to the left of his norm, looking faintly irritated. I hoped not too irritated.

  “Hi, Justin,” I greeted him, approaching the stall and shouting slightly over the noise in the market.

  His look of irritation passed, and he smiled at me. “There’s the young prodigy. Nice flowers. I haven’t seen you in a few weeks! But then, I suppose I did trade you a good few canvases last time, and you take your time before you decide
something is finished.”

  I nodded. “I’ve brought two of them back for you. The others I’m still finishing up...” I trailed off, catching a figure in black out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over at them, then shook my head. When was I going to stop searching for him? “Sorry, I thought I saw someone. Anyway, do you have any blank canvas today?”

  If Justin didn’t have a canvas, there were other people I could try, but I liked his the best. He came from a family that specialized in fabrics. Most of the canvas they made went to making waxed jackets against the rain, but if they had a subpar batch, they would give it to Justin. He would then either cut it and stretch it over frames or trade it in large pieces for people who liked to do that step themselves.

  Justin also had the best selection of paints in the city, which he traded alongside the canvas. In addition to canvas, I was now looking for a good, rich green. I had a little bit left, but not enough for my current projects and the new commission from Delia Lang. I would have to trade one painting just for the paint, but it would be worth it.

  He nodded. “I have a fairly fresh batch, just got it a week ago and haven’t sold out yet. Do you want pre-stretched or fabric today?”

  “Pre-stretched,” I said with a small grimace. Unstretched, I could get more canvas, but I’d have to build my own frame, and I did not like doing that very much. “And do you have any good greens?”

  He stroked the short beard on his chin contemplatively. “Maybe. What did you bring me today?”

  That meant yes, but maybe I wasn’t worth it yet. Justin was picky. I handed him the flowers and pulled out my paintings, unwrapping them from the wax paper and leaning them against his stall. He handed me back the flowers and picked up each piece in turn. He paused longer while holding the second one.