Drinking Life (Keeper of the Water Book 1) (33 page)

END OF PART ONE

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-
Kevin

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First and foremost to my wife, Keeper of My Heart, for never once giving me grief about all the hours I spend in front of the computer…

To my three little boys, Keepers of My Pride, I hope one day you’ll read my books and be proud of Daddy…

To my two sisters, Co-Keepers of My Fan Club, I’m not sure I would write so much if the two of you weren’t always willing to read my stuff and say such positive things, whether deserved or not…

And finally to Stephanie Zultanky, Keeper of My Words and the best editor I know, for never failing to prove that I’m not as smart as I think…

Timing is everything in life. And mine just happens to be terrible.

“Gray van, pull over
now
!” echoes the voice of authority speeding behind me. I barely hear it over the sound of rushing wind. “Young lady, get back inside the vehicle now or we
will
open fire!”

Celeste drives the tour van like a wild woman, pushing it so hard that the engine whines with protest. We speed down the highway—at least as much as the van
can
speed—weaving in and out of traffic. It’s not the first high-speed chase I’ve been involved in today but this time it’s the police chasing us instead of John’s soldiers.

Ponce de Leon’s soldiers
, I remind myself. I allow the thought of John to enter my mind for only a split second and it almost leads to catastrophe. I lose my balance just long enough to fall out of my open door. Somehow I manage to hook my arms through the open window frame and stop my body from plunging to the speeding pavement below. My feet dangle mere inches from the street but Celeste doesn’t ease off the gas the slightest bit.

“Focus on what you’re doing, Nia!” she yells. “You have to stop those cops from getting us or we’ll
never
reach Cassie!”

As we speed around a tractor-trailer—the police car still right on our tail—the van’s passenger door clips the side of the monstrous truck. The impact nearly makes me lose my grip but it also slams the door closed and shoots me back into my seat. I barely have time to catch my breath and get over the shock of still being alive.

“Will you stop messing around already?” Celeste barks at me.

At one time, the woman driving the van was Cleopatra, the most famous queen in the history of the world. That information is still new to me but when she barks orders like this and glares at me with her dark fiery eyes, I can totally see how she once held such a powerful position.

My heart pounds as we continue to race along a highway in the Pocono Mountains. This place has been our home for the last several months but I doubt that will be the case after today. Running from the police usually makes you unwanted in the community, not to mention what I’m about to do to get them off our back. I take another deep breath before pushing open the van’s passenger door again. Ignoring the speeding pavement a foot beneath me, I climb out of the van, draping my legs through the open window, precariously balancing my body as the wind tries to push me off. It’s not an ideal position and if we hit a single pothole, I’ll probably be jarred off my perch and fall to a painful death. But I’m growing more accustomed to putting myself in life-or-death situations and I don’t give the danger a second thought. I
do,
however, give a second thought to what Celeste wants me to do.

It hasn’t even been an hour since Celeste confirmed that I
am
an Amazon, that I have to do whatever it takes to protect the keeper and the precious water of life. Apparently, that water is in jeopardy since Cassie has been kidnapped. I tracked the kidnapper’s trail to the main highway but found only tire tracks heading away. Celeste and I sprinted back home, grabbed our bows and jumped into the van. Before we sped away, I told Mom where to find our other tour vehicle—a Jeep—parked in the woods. She was already packing our most important belongings, anticipating that we wouldn’t be staying here much longer.

It didn’t take long to prove her right.

Mom said she’d catch up with us and Celeste raced off, bumping down our long dirt driveway, sharply cutting the wheel once we reached the main road. Old tour vans
aren’t
made for drifting and it felt like we’d tip over. Somehow she kept us on all four wheels and raced toward the highway, speeding in the direction where we saw the tire tracks heading. The kidnappers had a big head-start—at least twenty minutes—and there were a nearly infinite number of possibilities where they could be traveling. I was worried we were chasing a ghost and that thought made me feel sick to my stomach.

Unfortunately, that had been the
only
thing I was feeling.

“The tingling sensation? You
feel that when there’s danger? Like a warning?” I’d asked Celeste. I still didn’t fully understand everything about being an Amazon.

“Sometimes,” Celeste answered. “Not now.”

“Is that a bad sign?”

“It’s not good.”

She apparently thought the same thing I did: the kidnappers took Cassie too far away for us to sense the danger. Celeste sped up, just in time to fly past a cop parked on the side of the road. The Pocono police force had been at our cabin just a few hours earlier to help with the garage fire but now they chased after us like we were criminals. Of
course
they couldn’t have nabbed the kidnappers first!

As soon as the high-speed chase began, I suggested pulling over and telling the police about Cassie being taken. Maybe their resources would give us a better chance of finding her, I tried telling Celeste. But she merely shook her head and I knew what she was thinking. Pulling over would only put us farther behind and the police were certain to ask
plenty
of questions we didn’t want to answer.

We are Amazons—we handle our
own
business.

That was when I felt the slightest tingle, little more than the normal vibration beneath my seat from driving so fast. There was another connecting highway just ahead. Despite our speed and the blaring sirens behind us and the way we swerved in and out of traffic, I somehow managed to spot the faintest set of familiar tire marks in the road.

“Turn here!” I yelled at Celeste, who followed the order without question.

“Do you feel something?” she asked.

“I… I think so,” I answered, trying to concentrate. I suddenly felt the tingle again. This time it was stronger and stayed with me. “Yes, it’s this way.”

“I
told you
how good of a tracker you were,” Celeste said. My feeling of pride barely lasted a few seconds. “Now do something to get rid of those cops.”

I had no idea what she expected me to do until she pointed to my bow. That’s when I decided to open my door and lean out, nearly killing myself in the process as the police shouted warnings to me.

So now I sit perched halfway in my window, dangerously jostling around. I let go with my hands so I can aim my bow at the police car’s front tire. It’s an impossible shot under these conditions but I’m not your average shooter. By no means am I trying to brag, but I might be the most skilled person in the world with a bow and arrow. I have no doubt I
could
make the shot but the better question is if I
should
make the shot. Even the idea of aiming a deadly weapon at the police now makes me a public enemy, but if I actually fire it, there’ll be no turning back.

Celeste feels no hesitation.

“Shoot already!” she yells. When I don’t release the arrow right away, she tries to give me extra motivation. “If we don’t rescue Cassie, you’ll doom the
whole
world.”

I can see the police officer sitting in the passenger side. He doesn’t appear more than a few years older than me and looks very nervous at the sight of my arrow. But that doesn’t stop him from also leaning out of his window, a gun shaking in his hand as he tries to steady it at me.

And
this
is where my timing becomes awful, where I
finally
remember what I want to know—at the worst possible moment. It’s like the proverbial lightbulb goes off in my mind. The doorway to my lost memories is thrown open and I remember
everything
.

Including my real identity.

CRYO-MAN SERIES

BOOK ONE – CRYO-MAN

BOOK TWO – ROBOTROPOLIS

BOOK THREE coming soon…

LIFE, INC. – If you could learn the exact moment of your death, would you? If you could see a deceased loved one for one more day – at the price of a year of your life – would you? These are the questions Life, Inc. wants to know…

COMET CLEMENT (12-PART SERIES)

BOOK ONE – THE INNER CIRCLE

BOOK TWO – INTERCEPTION

BOOK THREE – THE NEW SPACE RACE

BOOK FOUR – THE THREE ARKS

BOOK FIVE – EVACUATION EARTH

BOOK SIX – THE FINAL DAYS

BOOK SEVEN – IMPACT

BOOK EIGHT – UNINVITED

BOOK NINE – TAKOEVER

BOOK TEN – MISSION SURVIVAL

BOOK ELEVEN – RELOCATION

BOOK TWELVE – A SECOND CHANCE

FLEA’S FIVE CHRISTMASES – familiar X-mas characters with a twist…

BOOK ONE – THE NORTH POLE CHALLENGE – winner in the 2010 New York Book Festival

BOOK TWO – THE RUDOLPH CHALLENGE

BOOK THREE – THE JACK FROST CHALLENGE

BOOK FOUR – THE FROSTIE CHALLENGE

BOOK FIVE – THE SOUTH POLE CHALLENGE