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190 pages

English

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From the award-winning author of Season of the Witch, comes a highly original martial arts thriller, blending magic, science, chi and the greatest desire of all: to live forever.Adrian Ashton is a brilliant man: a chronobiologist who has devoted his life to the study of chi - the vital energy that runs through our bodies. A gifted scientist, he is also a skilled martial artist - and a hunter. Calling himself Dragonfly, he preys on fighters and martial artists who are blessed with a strong life force, draining them of their chi and making it his own.But the hunter becomes the hunted when a mysterious woman enters his life. A martial artist herself, she belongs to a long line of Keepers: women who are warriors, healers and protectors. When Dragonfly targets the man she loves, she sets out to defeat him. It becomes a fight to the death in which love is both the greatest weakness and the biggest prize.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Portable Magic Ltd.
Date de parution	02 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781909965157
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE KEEPER: A Martial Arts Thriller . Copyright 2009, 2013 by Natasha Mostert. First Edition published by Bantam Press/Transworld Publishers. Portable Magic Edition: 2013.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
Jacket design by Stefan Coetzee/Asha Hossain Photograph by Paul Venning Model: Carlos Andrade Author photograph: by Mark Andreani Natasha Mostert
ISBN 978-1-909965-15-7
www.natashamostert.com www.portablemagic.com
PRAISE FOR THE KEEPER
Original and daring a hybrid of Eric Lustbader s groundbreaking The Ninja and Ann Rice s The Vampire Lestat. -Jon Land
Will grab your interest right from the start. A distinctive, fast-paced mystery that balances the occult with the latest technology. Excellent character building, a sense of history and an inventive plot make this paranormal tale stand out from the pack. - Monsters and Critics
A stunning psychological thriller. Mostert has delivered another knockout treat. - Daily Mail (London)
Brilliantly compelling and original. I read this book in one sitting. - Robert Twigger (Angry White Pyjamas)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . - Harper s Bazaar
This unusual, deftly written tale combines martial and healing arts with speculation about the life force known as chi , marrying modern science with mysticism, and steering clear of romantic clich s. - The Times (London)
Intellectual Meets Paranormal . Mostert has a knack of blending science and the paranormal in interesting, it-could-happen ways The story, the science behind it, and its mysticism will leave readers thinking (and discussing) long after the story is over. - Graffiti
Even more compelling than the players in this eerie tale is the talented author Natasha Mostert. An ambitious and gifted storyteller, her vivid imagination and compelling research dominate a powerful and entertaining read that will intrigue you. - Karla Mass. The Week s Most Talked About Books
I dedicate this book to Isabella and Tatyana: two little Keepers in the making
AUTHOR S NOTE
I make use of both Chinese and Japanese martial-arts terms in this book. For ease of reference I have used the term ideogram for graphic symbols that are genuine ideograms, i.e. characters representing ideas, as well as for logograms , where the characters represent morphemes or words.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Praise for THE KEEPER
Dedication
Author s Note
LIGHT Prologue
THE KEEPER 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 | Chapter 18
CHI Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 Chapter 23 | Chapter 24
THE THIEF Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32
STEPPING OUT Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 Chapter 41 | Chapter 42 | Chapter 43 | Chapter 44 Chapter 45 | Chapter 46 | Chapter 47 | Chapter 48 Chapter 49 | Chapter 50 | Chapter 51 | Chapter 52 Chapter 53
HEART Chapter 54 | Chapter 55 | Chapter 56 | Chapter 57 | Chapter 58 | Chapter 59
DUST Epilogue
On Writing THE KEEPER
Photograph: In the Dojo
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Fighting for Peace
Play THE KEEPER Game
Also by Natasha Mostert
Preview of DARK PRAYER
Contact Natasha
LIGHT

The love of beauty is a dangerous prayer.
-Adrian Ashton
PROLOGUE
Rosalia came into his life during his gap year. He had just finished school and hiking through Europe on his own felt like a great adventure. He was surrounded by beauty: soaring cathedrals, museums like jewel boxes, ethereal frescos, heroic sculpture. He was happy. It was a year in which time was suspended and reality kept at bay.
But after ten months he was running out of money. Soon he would have to return to England and decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He had no idea what this decision would be, and the knowledge that such a defining moment awaited him made him feel emotionally exhausted.
Palermo was to be the last stop on this journey. He arrived late in the afternoon but still in time to visit the city s most famous tourist attraction.
He drew his tongue over his dry lips; he was thirsty. On his way to the catacombs he had become lost. He did not speak Italian and had difficulty following the broken English of the shop owners he asked for directions. It all felt slightly nightmarish as he walked through Palermo s alleyways, his legs becoming ever more tired and heavy. He looked straight up at the far sky above him;and it was a glazed, parched blue. There was no relief from the heat even though the tall houses on either side almost touched each other and threw deep shadows.
In here it was cooler and very quiet. The tourist buses had all left. Even the hooded Capuchin monk who had taken his donation with listless fingers had disappeared. He was on his own: all alone with eight thousand mummies.
The most surprising thing was that the bodies did not smell-there was no odour except for dust. He wondered if they had ever smelled. Perhaps when they were first placed inside their strainers and left to dry, there would have been a stench of rotting flesh. Even the porous limescale would not have been able to dampen down completely the fruity smell of human ooze. But after an eight-month stay in darkness, these corpses would have been taken from their cells, washed with vinegar and lime and exposed to open air: fresh as a housewife s laundry.
He looked down at the guidebook in his hands.

In 1599, Capuchin monks discovered a way to preserve the dead, and Sicilians from all walks of life flocked to be buried here in the Catacombe dei Cappucini. The deceased often specified the clothes in which they wished to enter the afterlife and many stipulated that their garments were to be changed over time.
His eyes travelled up the twenty-foot wall until it reached the vaulted ceiling. The mummies lined the wall in rows: monks, lawyers, shopkeepers, matrons and maids. Virgins with steel bands encircling their heads to indicate their untouched state. All were dressed, and many were standing, some with hands folded across their stomachs and a jolly slant to their heads. Others screamed silently with open mouths. Many had lost ears, or were missing jaws and hands, while others had defied the passage of time with more success; the caramel flesh truly mummified and the eyes cradled within dusty sockets. There were even mummies with ropes round their necks, but another glance at the guidebook told him that these were not the corpses of criminals but the remains of pious men. The ropes were not nooses, but symbols of penance, worn by the monks during their lifetime and carried with them into death.
Death. As he walked slowly down the long, death-choked corridors he wondered at the ambiguity of this word. When did death take place? Did death come when the brain stopped? His father, a doctor, had told him the brain sometimes continued its electric dance for up to ten minutes after the heart had ceased to supply it with blood. The master switch was what his father called the brain. The conductor. The commander-in-chief.
But he remembered his grandmother s death. His father had given permission for her organs to be harvested and she was to become what was known as a beating heart cadaver . On the day she was pronounced no longer alive, he remembered leaning kiss-close and marvelling at the colour of her skin. Her brain had flatlined, but she was hooked up to a respirator and her heart was beating. Inside her liver was a pulse. Her hands were warm and she would bleed if she were cut. This was his grandmother. They told him she was dead, but she looked alive.

The practice of mummification was outlawed in 1881. But in 1920 an exception was made for three-year-old Rosalia Lombardo, nicknamed Sleeping Beauty . Her father, stricken with grief, begged a certain Dr Salofia to keep his daughter alive forever. Remarkably, Dr Salofia managed to defeat the process of decay. Rosalia is a marvel and looks like a pretty sleeping doll who might awaken at any moment. Dr Salofia s secret died with him: no one knows the method he used to preserve the little girl.
She was lying in a glass coffin in the chapel and her face was innocence itself: the nose pert, the mouth sweet, the cheeks infant-plump. Her ears were tiny shells, and long lashes feathered her closed eyelids. The soft pink bow on top of her head made her look vulnerable, as did the wispy tendrils of hair tumbling over her forehead.
He stared at her, not quite believing how perfect she was.
How could her father have borne to leave her here? Why preserve a three-year-old child and leave her to sleep under the gaze of a thousand leering scarecrows?
A beam of late-afternoon sunlight fell through the tiny, leaded window and made it look as though a sheen of sweat was on her brow. And in that instant he suddenly had a clear understanding of how his future must look. Life-defining moments sometimes happened serendipitously. In that one moment-in that most unlikely of places-the course of his life was set.
Rosalia was not about preserving the dead. Rosalia was about making a wish. A wish to stop time-a wish, in fact, for eternal life.
Keep her alive forever. A father s desperate plea. And clever, busy Dr Salofia with his chemicals and fluids and over-reaching genius had gone to work. But he was not a healer, he was a preserver. H