Awakening, The

by Nicole R. Taylor

  She jumped as Regulus appeared next to her, picking up her bag from the concrete.

  "This way, dear one," he said with a grin, walking off through the line of rental cars. Pressing the fob on the keys, he opened the trunk on a modest looking car. She thought he'd get something flashier. He looked the type to show off.

  The Roman put their bags inside the trunk and thumped it closed and went for the driver’s side before she could push him out of the way. Getting in the opposite side she watched as he put the keys into the ignition. "Do you even have a license?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

  "I might've been born in thirteen AD, Gabrielle, but it doesn't mean I don't know how to drive a car."

  "Whatever, just hurry up."

  "There's one thing vampires don't have and that's a sense of urgency."

  "Even hybrids?"

  "Especially hybrids."

  With a sigh, she punched Newgrange into the GPS and it brought up the directions. "Brú na Bóinne is called Newgrange now," she explained. "They do limited tours of the tomb during the day and there's a small museum and farm nearby."

  Without another word, Regulus backed the car out of the lot and merged onto the highway, following the directions on the GPS.

  "Do you know what we're looking for?" she asked. "Would he have been buried with the human dead?"

  "No," he replied, not once taking his eyes form the road. "I suspect the human population built their structure there as some kind of tribute in the centuries after. The Tuatha would never mingle with them and especially not in death. Aoife wouldn't have hidden him in such an obvious place."

  "Then it's a smoke screen for something else…"

  "It's a burial chamber on the surface," Regulus explained. "They call them mounds. The Celts, the name you know them by, built them so that grass and flowers could grow above. A tribute to the dead."

  "So, why hasn't anyone found the hybrid before now?"

  "What we're looking for is beneath. In the earth."

  "Caves?"

  "Yes."

  She didn't have to ask the next question. Nobody knew they were down there because they would be warded. The Tuatha were as much a dead race as the Celestines and her powers were born of the latter. She knew nothing of fae magic and the likelihood of anyone alive knowing even a scrap was non-existent.

  As the car wove through the green fields, she watched the countryside flash by. She'd always wanted to visit Ireland, and London for that matter, but never really expected it to be like this. On the hunt for a three thousand year old hybrid with mental issues. She wanted to see museums and art, drink Guinness in a traditional Irish pub, and meet a hot Irishman so she could swoon at his accent. Cursing her bad luck, she glanced at Regulus. She didn't think she could hate him anymore than she did right now.

  He returned her look, his lips curving into a sly smile. Ugh. What an asshole. The air inside the car suddenly felt extremely close.

  When they finally reached Newgrange, they passed the farm that was on the map and turned towards the burial mound. From a distance it looked like any other hill they'd passed on the drive here, but underneath it would be a warren of ancient chambers, full of ancient human burials. Regulus pulled the car into the small lot and killed the engine.

  Opening the door, she stepped out into the fresh air and could instantly feel a buzzing sensation tickling against her skin. It was different to the power she was used to, so she could only assume it was the lingering signature of the Tuatha. Closing her eyes, she felt it out and within she could sense the tinge of Celestine, which must have been Aoife's doing. Maybe she had warded this place once she'd sealed Aed in his tomb.

  "Gabrielle." Regulus beckoned, holding out his hand.

  "Do I really have to go down there with you?" she asked, lingering by the car.

  "I gather you can feel the magic around this place," he said, pointing to the mound. "Your expertise is required."

  With a sag of her shoulders, she pushed past him and walked towards the entrance. He was beside her a second later as they approached the very deserted looking historical monument.

  "It's closed," Gabby said, noticing a sign near the entrance to the mound. "Guided tours by prior booking only. No access."

  "Good," the Roman said, walking up to the modern door that had been set into the ancient structure. He ripped the lock off and tossed it aside, pushing his way inside. Gabby had no other option other than to follow him into the darkness.

  As they made their way through the tomb, the air stank of moldy earth and damp and it was colder than outside. She felt out her way with her earth sense, the power around them thick and metallic.

  "Here," she whispered, her voice echoing against the rock. "There's a concealment in the wall."

  Regulus grasped her hand in the darkness and despite herself she shivered. "Lead on."

  "Through the back of this chamber is an opening," she said. "There are stairs."

  Stepping forward, she passed through the ward, magic pulling at her skin. Regulus came without hesitation, his footfalls light behind her as they descended through heavy clay earth and then bedrock. A strange shimmering light began to break up the darkness and she hesitated.

  "Keep going," Regulus whispered behind her. "Nothing lives down there."

  Taking a deep breath, she continued on, the light growing with each step towards the bottom. The staircase finally opened out into a small chamber and she gasped as she took in the sub-terrain. The chamber and adjoining tunnel was lined with smooth rock, like someone had melted it into shape. She ran her fingers over the surface, studying the strange blue hue that almost sparkled.

  Regulus still had a hold of her other hand and tugged her away down the tunnel. The whole network seemed to be lit with some kind of natural phenomenon that had been enhanced with magic of some kind. She'd never seen anything like it. She was content to let the Roman lead her as her fingers trailed against the rock.

  "I suggest you don't look, Gabrielle."

  "What?" she asked, thoroughly annoyed, but she looked anyway.

  Ahead, bloody remains were strewn across the tunnel and up the walls. Turning away with a horrified gasp, she closed her eyes trying to will herself awake.

  "I said, don't look." Regulus was at her side. "Would you like me to carry you across?"

  "Eat shit," she spat, glaring at him. Turning back, she tiptoed her way through the remains, trying not to heave her breakfast all over herself. It was Coraline and Max, or what was left of them. Truthfully, she didn't know them that well. She'd met Coraline only through mental link and one phone conversation. She hadn't met Max at all. Still, she had been a witch and devoted to their cause, no matter her Coven heritage. No one deserved to die like this.

  It was only a few yards ahead that the tunnel opened out into a large cavern. Stalactites hung from the roof, the blue hue of the rock brighter here, but it wasn't the only thing that dangled from the ceiling.

  The body of a woman had been strung up like a star, arms and legs splayed out, each limb impaled on the natural cave formations. Gabby saw the sickly grey skin and instantly knew what the woman had been.

  "Vampire," Regulus muttered, cocking his head to the side.

  "What's a vampire doing down here?"

  "I've encountered them before with the others. They're worshipers, followers created by the Coven long ago to watch over the hybrids."

  "Then why did they lose them?"

  "Hundreds of years down here? Can you imagine how mentally stable they'd be after a decade, let alone a few centuries?"

  "Point."

  The vampire, or what was left of her, was strung up between stalactites and lit up with the eerie light that trickled down from the surface. Reflecting off the blue rock, it made her hair a brighter almost neon shade of red. The whole scene was macabre to say the least.

  "Well," Regulus said, his voice echoing around the chamber. "It's a little theatrical for my tastes."

  Gabby shivered despite the
coat she wore and wrapped her arms around herself. She wanted out of here as soon as possible. "Can you track him?"

  "Give me a moment, dear one."

  He ran his pale fingers along the tomb, before pacing across the cavern, following the trail of blood. As he disappeared into the tunnel, back toward the remains of her allies, she stepped up to the hybrid's resting place and studied the rock. It was like the whole thing had been melted in place and the heat that would've been needed to do something like this would be mammoth. Regulus had said Aoife had imprisoned them. It had been Celestine magic, then. Strange to think that she was touching something that had been wrought thousands of years ago.

  "He's been gone a few days. Two at most." The Roman's voice echoed around the rock, making her jump.

  "How do you know where he's gone, then?"

  "I was made for this purpose, among others," he said blandly. "You have an earth sense. I have a hybrid sense."

  "Is that how Caius found Aya? Arturius?"

  Regulus snorted. "No. We could never track her like that."

  So, just Tuatha tracking then, she thought to herself.

  "We must return to the surface."

  "Where has he gone then, smart ass?"

  "He's looking for the Celestines."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aya made her way through the damp forest, climbing over moss-covered logs, leaping over the little streams that fed down into the lakes. It had changed in so many ways, but nature tended to claim back the land in the span of a handful of years and it had been thousands of those since she'd set foot here.

  This forest marked the land around her home, the field of white flowers and the little house she'd grown up in. It was a place that was of this world, but apart from it. A safe haven for the last of the Celestines…and the place that had marked their horrible end.

  Despite the coldness around her, the air began to thicken the further she walked. The boundary loomed and as if it sensed her presence, it parted and she stepped through into warm summer air. Sunlight streamed through the canopy, warm dots of light dancing across her skin. Glancing back over her shoulder, the only sight she was greeted with was an ever stretching forest, green and gold. It looked the same as it always had in her childhood, but something was missing.

  The further she walked the more she felt apart from this place, like she didn't belong anymore. Nothing stirred, not even the air or a birdcall reached her sensitive ears. This place was as dead as she was and her heart sank.

  Really, what had she been expecting? After everything that had come to pass, would it still be brimming with the life she craved to nurture and protect? Stopping at the edge of the clearing where she knew the white flowers grew, her gaze ran over them, their yellow centers bight and happy. They were the only things that lived here now.

  Memories flooded her mind of the day she'd been standing in the center of this very clearing, gathering the blooms for her mother. She stood in the same spot where Regulus had once stood, watching her go about her work. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she squashed the memories deep within her and stepped out into the sunlight. The flowers seemed to tilt into her as she walked through them, as if they sensed her presence. A macabre welcome wagon, the one thing that could kill her and the one thing that reminded her of her family. It would deliver her to them, but she no longer wanted it. Not yet.

  Finally, she laid eyes on the house through the tress on the far side of the clearing. She almost expected to see her mother standing on the porch, her impossibly long silver hair fluttering in the breeze, her bright eyes and warm smile welcoming her home…but it was dark and empty. The windows looked out onto the forest like soulless eyes, the front door a portal to the abyss. The home she knew was long gone.

  Glancing up at the trees where she'd last seen Grant and Lance, the men that had helped tend to the family and the house, she found the branches bare. They'd been hanging upside-down, blood running down their lifeless arms, dripping from pale fingertips onto the earth below. She'd smelt it before she'd seen them, but it didn't soften the blow. Closing her eyes, she could almost see them as they'd been all that time ago.

  Her mother and father had been placed together on their bed, hands entwined, their bodies mutilated and their life force had pooled over the floors and splattered on the walls. Her brother…her dear brother had been the same. She had been pure and strong, but he was so young…together they would have led the witches into the new age and died together in peace. She couldn't do it without him.

  "Aydrenn," she murmured, uttering his name for the first time in two thousand years. It wasn't fair, but life never was.

  She'd come too far to stop now. Pushing open the front door to the house, she stepped into the darkness. Spider webs clung to the ceilings and dust clogged every surface. No one had been here since the Coven had sullied it a thousand years before. There was no sign of her family’s remains. There was no sign that her family had ever lived here. Their belongings, her mother's books, her father's works, they were all gone. Venturing into their rooms, it was all the same. Nothing.

  A sob escaped her throat. What had she been expecting to find? The bones of her family? The stains of their blood in the wooden floors? Some kind of link to her past? Something tangible that she could hold on to remember them by? She didn't deserve any of it, but she still hoped.

  There was nothing here. Nothing that could help, anyway. The Coven and been through the place and had taken anything that might have pointed them in the right direction. Nothing about the Tuatha and the hybrids Aoife had created. The only thing that was left for her to do here was to make her peace until the day she returned to die her true death.

  Emerging outside, her breath caught in the back of her throat and her already dead heart sputtered and almost stilled entirely. Her family stood a few paces away, hand in hand, smiling with all the power of the stars behind them. But, Aya knew they weren't really there. They were an echo, an apparition, merely left over energy waiting for the day she'd return.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered, as tears began to fall.

  Her father nodded, his skin shimmering with it's familiar glow, marred by his translucency. Her mother smiled kindly, a sadness in her eyes that betrayed that she understood her daughter's fate. And her brother raised his hand in a wave and she knew it was goodbye. As they disappeared across the field, she raised her hand, tendrils of blue flame licking at her fingertips.

  She didn't belong here anymore. Her mere presence was a blight upon the pureness of this place. The echo of her lost family tugged at her heart, but it made her realize the inevitable.

  Aya said her final goodbye and left the clearing and back into the human world. She would never set foot here again. Not until it was time to join her family in the afterlife. She still had things to do, battles had to be fought and won in the name of the Celestines. She had to help her friends and she had to see the Tuatha dead. She had to go back.

  Aya smelt the blood before she found the source. The air was thick with it and she instantly thought of Tristan. Emerging from the forest, she stood by the road, glancing up and down the street at the shop fronts that were still bright with Christmas decorations twinkling in the darkness. A terrible sense of dread chilled her bones and her gaze fell onto the pub.

  The Tuatha were extinct by the time she was born, but that didn't mean that she didn't know who was sitting inside waiting. There was only one reason that the hybrid would be here and she was it. She had been afraid of many things in her time, but now was not the time for fear. Now was the time for facing things head on. Tristan would be counting on her.

  Opening the side door, her eyes began to change instinctively as the overwhelming scent of blood slammed into her. That wasn't the only thing that gave her pause. Her friend was with a man who oozed nothing but dread, death and destruction. It was so potent it made her stomach squirm and her skin prickle.

  Tristan's eyes flew to hers as she stepped inside and she saw the worry in th
em. The knight sat at a table amongst the remains of an unknown amount of humans, body parts and blood strewn around the room. Opposite, sat the Tuatha hybrid. It couldn't be anyone else. He wore a dark tailored suit and a white shirt that had been stained with dark spots of blood. Sickly looking skin made his otherworldly eyes stand out like pits of fire. Red eyes meant red death. The hybrid looked her over just as blatantly, a smirk of satisfaction on his handsome face.

  "You smell like death," she said as the hybrid stood.

  "Welcome," he drawled. "Why don't you join us?"

  Rather than show any weakness, she sat next to Tristan, never taking her eyes off of the Tuatha for an instant.

  "And whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"

  "You can call me Aya," she replied, her head held high. This was one man she would never utter her true name to. Whether he learnt it or not was of no concern, but he would never hear it from her.

  "I am Aed, prince of the Tuatha De Danann. And who are you to be worthy of being the last of your kind?"

  "I am not the last of my kind...I am the only one of my kind. I am neither Celestine, or vampire."

  A smile slowly spread across Aed's face. "You're a clever little girl, are you not?"

  "To a degree."

  "And your kind suffered their end at the hands of your own creations. You never learnt the first time. I was of the understanding that stars were more self-righteous than that."

  Aya's jaw stiffened, but she didn't rise to the bait. "The Five were created human. They were never gifted with Celestine powers."

  "Ahh," Aed said, tapping the table top with a pale finger, "but human's are as corruptible as any other race. So easily manipulated. All you have to do is offer them a little power and they'll eat out of the palm of your hand." He regarded her for a moment, letting his strange red eyes rake over her body. "You were turned by one of their human vampires."