This Is Your Destiny (A Curse Keepers Secret Book 3) Read online

  Other books by Denise Grover Swank:

  Rose Gardner Mysteries

  (Humorous Southern mysteries)

  TWENTY-EIGHT AND A HALF WISHES

  TWENTY-NINE AND A HALF REASONS

  THIRTY AND A HALF EXCUSES

  FALLING TO PIECES (novella)

  THIRTY-ONE AND A HALF REGRETS

  THIRTY-TWO AND A HALF COMPLICATIONS

  PICKING UP THE PIECES (novella)

  THIRTY-THREE AND A HALF SHENANIGANS

  Chosen Series

  (Paranormal thriller/Urban fantasy)

  CHOSEN

  HUNTED

  SACRIFICE

  REDEMPTION

  On the Otherside Series

  (Young adult science fiction/romance)

  HERE

  THERE

  The Curse Keepers

  (Adult urban fantasy)

  THE CURSE KEEPERS

  THE CURSE BREAKERS

  THE CURSE DEFIERS

  New Adult Contemporary Romance

  AFTER MATH

  REDESIGNED

  BUSINESS AS USUAL

  The Wedding Pact Series

  Contemporary Romance

  THE SUBSTITUTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Denise Grover Swank

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781477872086

  Cover design by Megan Haggerty

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Two months before the curse broke

  The waves slapped the side of the boat, but instead of the usual peace I experienced while alone on the water, irritation flooded through me. The damn engine was dead again even after the two grand I’d just dropped into it, and I suspected this time it was gone for good. Add on to that the fact that my haul of soft-shell crabs had been pitiful tonight—a far cry from the past four nights, which had netted me almost enough to pay off my latest loan from Marino. Now I was still in debt and about to fall even deeper into the hole. A new engine for the Lucky Star would cost me thousands of dollars I didn’t have.

  Tossing the wrench across the deck, I sat back on my heels, cursing, as a sick feeling of dread washed over me.

  It was like the universe was conspiring against me. I was good and truly fucked.

  Kicking my legs out in front of me, I scooted back and rested my spine against the side of the boat, then reached into the cooler next to me, pulled out a bottle of beer, and popped the top. I took a long drag and stared up at the cloudless, starry sky. At least I could salvage something from this sorry excursion.

  I sucked down the first beer, then took longer to drink the second. When I was finished, I grabbed another even though I knew having three so quickly was a bad idea. But I’d take whatever comfort I could get. Echoes carried over the water and I was close enough to the shore to hear the sounds of civilization, but the night was disarmingly quiet. I found it ironic that Collin Dailey, son of the land, was most at peace while on the water.

  On nights like this one, when I wished I could be anywhere but here and anyone but me, I sometimes wondered about the other Keeper. Did she have the same bad luck that seemed to follow me around like a homeless dog? Did being a Curse Keeper mean we ourselves were cursed?

  My grandmother was the greatest and wisest Manteo Keeper who’d ever lived. She was a Croatan conjuror, a converser with the spirits. Every Manteo Keeper before her had been a priest, so it stood to reason that Grandma Opal should have been one too. A female Curse Keeper was a rarity. But one who was also a conjurer? There had been no recorded conjurors in our line—male or female—since the descendant who’d carved out our fate so long ago.

  There had been whispers about my grandmother when she was a little girl. Friends and family had thought her strange, and it was said that shadows followed her. But when she was older, she revealed that the shadows actually spoke to her. At first her father insisted it was impossible since all the gods and spirits were locked behind the gate of Popogusso, but even as a girl, my grandmother had possessed an intimidating presence. Besides, she wasn’t conversing with gods, but with lost souls—those who had died and not yet crossed over to the spirit world. Soon her father was a believer, and he declared her a conjurer.

  My family had waited for centuries for a Dare Keeper to find us and break the curse. It had been foretold. It was expected. My great-grandfather was sure my grandmother would be the one to see it happen.

  Here’s how the story went:

  Over four hundred years ago, my ancestor Manteo befriended the Englishmen who landed on the shore of what is now North Carolina. He sailed to England twice and returned on the third English excursion to the New World. While the previous two ventures had been composed of explorers and geologists looking for treasure, the third included settlers—men and women and children who would make the New World their home. But the Native Americans were embittered by the previous atrocities that had been carried out by the English, and they vowed to wipe out the colony, going so far as to threaten the Croatan tribe because of Manteo’s traitorous behavior.

  Ahone, the creator god, sensed Manteo’s growing desperation for his people and used it against him, convincing him to create a curse that would bind the gods and spirits of the warring tribes, weakening them. But Ahone insisted that Manteo needed the help of his English friend, Ananias Dare, son-in-law of Virginia governor John White, to do the deed. Since Ananias’s wife had given birth to their first child on Roanoke Island, he bore a desperation of his own.

  So Manteo led Ananias into the woods one cold winter night and followed the instructions Ahone had given him, performing a ceremony to open the gate to Popogusso—hell. Ananias followed along, unaware until the very end that there would be a price for his participation. All he knew was that he was stopping the hostile tribes.

  Ananias raced back to check on his wife and infant daughter, horrified to find nothing—every building, object, man, woman, and child had disappeared from the Roanoke colony. While Manteo’s sacrifice had been the life of his own son, Ananias had unwittingly trapped the entire English village behind the gate to hell along with the Native American gods and spirits. But Manteo had been tricked as well. The gods and spirits of his own people had been ensnared along with the deities of the neighboring tribes. The only god to escape was Ahone.

  Ahone had used Manteo and Ananias for his own selfish purposes, and he saddled them with an additional responsibility. Each man would be a keeper of the curse from that day forward; his entire future purpose would be to protect the curse’s existence. He would pass on the duty to his firstborn once the child turned eighteen; the child would in turn pass it on in the same manner, and so on.

  But Okeus, Ahone’s twin, hadn’t gone quietly. Before he was locked behind Popogusso’s gate, he used what remaining power he had to engineer an escape clause. The
curse would break if the Keepers pressed their right palms together, freeing the gods and spirits. The Lost Colony of Roanoke would return with one caveat: everyone would be dead—no living thing could go to Popogusso and survive the journey back to the earthly plane.

  When Ananias realized he’d lost the two people he’d tried to protect—his sole purpose for cooperating with Manteo’s plan—he became inconsolable. In his despair, he tried to kill Manteo, but Ahone had created a failsafe of his own. Whenever the two Keepers were in close proximity, they found it difficult to breathe, as though they were two magnets that repelled each other. Ananias found it impossible to get close enough to Manteo to break the curse, but he vowed that one of his progeny would hunt the Manteo Keeper down, break the curse, and seek revenge.

  And so we began our vigil.

  For over four hundred years, we waited. Our destiny weighed so strongly on us that when Grandma Opal turned out to be a conjurer, her father was greatly relieved. Surely the Dare Keeper would finally come on her watch, and my grandmother would be the one to save us all.

  When she turned eighteen, Grandma went through the marking ceremony and had Okeus’s symbol tattooed on her chest like all the Manteo Keepers before her. Grandma’s father refused to let her marry for fear that a husband and children would distract her from her mission. The years passed like water in a stream, but the other Keeper never came. My great-grandfather died without seeing his prophecy come to pass and, at the age of forty-one, my grandmother married a man she hadn’t loved, solely to carry out her duty—bearing the next Curse Keeper.

  My own father—her only child—was a bitter disappointment.

  He was irresponsible and insolent. He hated his duty and felt trapped by my grandmother’s iron fist, but he couldn’t deny that she was the wisest woman he’d ever known, a fact that chafed like sandpaper on an open wound. He knew he’d never live up to her expectations, so he soon created a mission of his own.

  To break the curse himself.

  When he became an adult, he rarely saw my grandmother, putting as much distance between them as possible, which was ironic considering my grandmother owned the house we lived in as well as her own smaller home less than two blocks away.

  After my fifth birthday, my grandmother convinced my mother to bring me to her house for weekly lessons on the curse. My father wasn’t happy about the arrangement, yet he never considered denying her. As much as he hated his mother, he feared her more.

  I feared her as well.

  Her house smelled of the herbs and roots she used to help her speak with her spirits, and she had a no-nonsense air about her. When she turned her deep, dark eyes on me, I knew without a doubt she could see into the depths of my soul. But the more time I spent with her, the more my fear—although still present—gave way to respect.

  One day, after a year of lessons, I finally felt bold enough to ask a question of Grandma Opal rather than just listening to what she had to tell me.

  “Am I a Keeper yet, Gran?”

  “No, my child. Not yet, but soon. You will be the Keeper.” Her voice was low and sad.

  I studied her face even though I found it hard to hold her gaze. “What does that mean?”

  “You will find out soon enough.” She sounded weary and old when she said it. Even though she looked older than anyone I knew, she usually didn’t sound like it.

  “Do you think she learns about the curse too?” I asked.

  “Who?” Her voice had a sharp edge to it.

  “The other person who’s going to be a Keeper.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you call her a she?”

  I shrugged. “Something tells me the Dare Keeper is a girl.” I glanced up at her. “Is she? Do you know?”

  She watched me, then nodded. “Yes, the voices have told me that she is female. Younger than you. But the fact that the Dare Keeper is a female is secret. Not even your father can know. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. Even though I didn’t understand the urgency, by the age of six I’d already figured out that my father and my grandmother had very different ideas about what it meant to be a Curse Keeper.

  “And yes, I’m sure she knows about her role.”

  “But she’s our enemy?”

  “You can’t believe everything your father tells you.”

  “Which is why I visit you?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She was quiet for a moment. “How did you know with such certainty the soon-to-be Dare Keeper was female? Do you hear voices, Collin?”

  “No.”

  She watched me for several seconds. “No, I didn’t think so. Still, my voices assure me it will happen in this lifetime, even though you aren’t a conjuror.” Her voice trailed off.

  “Does that make me a priest?” I asked, not sure I liked the sound of that. “Like Father Brian at the Catholic church?”

  “Yes and no. You will be educated about the spiritual world like Father Brian, but you will know things no one else can ever know. Not even the other Keeper. The priest and the conjuror each have their roles and powers, but their knowledge shouldn’t cross. Just like the Keepers get their power from opposite forces—the land and the sea—your purposes for the curse are opposite as well.” She leaned close. “The fact that she is a female and a conjuror is a bad sign, Collin. That is why my father thought I was the one, because I was both—something that has never been seen in the history of the curse. But the fact that she is female, a conjuror, and a Dare Keeper is ominous. This girl is special. She is already stronger than I am and she has barely begun to learn her role. When she seeks you out, she will be prepared . . . and dangerous. I must make sure you are ready.”

  “But Dad says he will be the one to break the curse.”

  She sighed. “Life is full of many disappointments.”

  After that, I went to her house more frequently—several days a week—and she told me everything she knew about the curse and my role in it. She taught me about the gods and the major spirits, and about the Manitou, the life force of every creature. But as I grew older, she switched her to focus to the ceremony.

  “She will resist the ceremony to reseal the gate, Collin. You must find a way to make her do so anyway. Tell her that there will be a great reward if she reseals the gate.”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t my enemy,” I said, reminding my grandmother of our earlier conversation.

  Her gaze narrowed. “I never said she wasn’t. I only said you can’t believe everything your father says.” She studied my confused face. “There’s a chance she could end up being a friend, but the truth is that if she purposefully breaks the curse, she’s most likely a foe. You must be prepared for either possibility. Especially since she may seek you out with the intent to harm you.”

  I nodded. Hurt me? This was becoming all too real.

  The ceremony was a thorny issue, since the Dare Keeper, as the conjurer, should be the one to conduct it. But my grandmother ensured that I would be able to take the lead role if the opportunity presented itself. She drilled me endlessly until every last detail of the ceremony was seared into my memory.

  When I was ten, Gran told me about the weapons a Dare Keeper had made a hundred years after the creation of the curse, an act encouraged by the betrayer god, Ahone. The Keeper had hired a Croatan conjuror to give the weapons power to use against the gods and spirits when they eventually escaped from Popogusso. “The Dare Keeper may have had a weapon made to protect himself from the gods,” she said, “but he really did it to have the upper hand on the Manteo line when the time came. But the curse is based on duality, so any weapon must have a counterpart. He was forced to create one for the Manteo line as well, even though we’ve never laid eyes on it.”

  “What are the two weapons?” I asked in awe.

  “A spear and a ring.”

  “I want the spear.”

  She gave me a grim smile. “The spear is yours, but the ring holds more power.”

&nbs
p; “How can that be?” I asked in disbelief. “What can a ring do that a sharp-pointed spear can’t?”

  “Power is deceiving, Collin. Great things can be hidden in small packages.”

  “What does the ring do?”

  “The ring gives the Dare Keeper who possesses it power over the gate to Popogusso without the other Keeper.”

  I scowled. “So what does the spear do?”

  “It can maim gods and spirits.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It is powerful in its own right, Collin. When you are old enough, I encourage you to find both weapons and hide the ring from the future Dare Keeper forever. The less she knows about its power, the better. You do not want her to have a strength that you do not.”

  I shook my head in annoyance. “But I don’t even know exactly what it does.”

  “All the better,” she murmured.

  “You said ‘find the weapons.’ Are they lost?”

  “Yes, a foolish descendent of Dare sold the weapons to a family in South Carolina and they disappeared for more than a hundred years. But the voices tell me that they’re about to surface, and you must find them. The fate of the world depends on it.”

  I nodded solemnly. I took my future Curse Keeper role seriously, unlike my father.

  “The Curse will break when you take on the role. I foresee this more strongly than any other vision I’ve had, yet I can’t see the outcome.”

  “I won’t let you down, Grandmother.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me close to kiss the top of my head. “You will have a rocky start, but you will make me proud in the end.”

  Chapter Two

  While my grandmother taught me what she thought I needed to know to fulfill my role as the Manteo Curse Keeper, my father had his own version of the truth. With an intact curse, my father had two responsibilities: provide a new Keeper, and teach that Keeper about his heritage. Since he’d completed task one of his role, that left task two. He taught me about the curse, just not in the way his forebears had intended.