The Awakening Series: Volumes 1 - 3

by Dean Murray

  Every single person I loved was worried about me, and my only solace had been the fact that at least Mephistoles and Fenrir had both been focused on Kyle and me. If Mephistoles had really left, then my family—new and old—was in danger again.

  I heard Kyle start up the stairs about the time I finally cried myself out. By that point I had nearly pulled myself back together, but even if I hadn't, I would have forced myself to put on a convincing show. I wasn't going to let Kyle know how much he was getting to me.

  I'd spent the last few days worrying about the fact that Jace and Kat were convinced that I was their golden ticket to safety. I hadn't felt anything like the smart, tenacious woman they'd described, but they'd nearly convinced me despite all of my doubts. Having Kyle tell me that I'd been nothing more than a flashy façade wasn't exactly going to help me sleep at night. It was like he'd picked out my single biggest vulnerability and jammed a knife into me.

  "What do you want?"

  "Come on. It's time."

  "Time for what?"

  Kyle didn't look back. I watched him disappear past the ward without any kind of response. It was the ultimate game of chicken and I blinked first.

  "I'll stay here—I really will!"

  "Fine, but just so you know, the computers are all locked down—you can't use them to get hold of anyone."

  I realized I was gritting my teeth, but I forced myself to my feet and hurried after Kyle. The last thing I wanted to do was lose him and end up lost out in the abandoned graveyard he was so excited about.

  "You're really not going to tell me what's going on?"

  "Nope, it's best if you're surprised."

  "Best for who?"

  "Best for me, obviously."

  Kyle didn't seem at all worried about being overheard this time around—apparently his earlier concerns had just revolved around the subject matter. That little tidbit of information probably would have been a lot more helpful if not for the fact that I still didn't understand what it was we'd been talking about on the way out the last time we'd left his bunker.

  Fenrir was waiting for us as we walked around a corner and stepped into another large open space.

  "Back so soon? You must be nervous at just how quickly we were able to breach your first two wards."

  "Not at all. I came back to see if you've come to your senses yet."

  Fenrir's voice had been a menacing rumble, but it was nothing compared to his growl. "The last petty god who insulted me lost much more than just his hand. You're treading on dangerous ground. I was already planning on killing you, but if you push me too far the death you'll receive will be much more painful than it needs to be."

  Kyle's smile didn't reach his eyes. "No offense was intended. I was merely trying to point out that you're by yourself now. You've crashed through my first two wards, but they were never meant to stand up to someone like you. This ward, however, is an altogether different proposition, as I'm sure you've realized."

  Fenrir growled again, and this time it felt like the stone underneath our feet was shaking. Kyle just smiled again.

  "Obviously it's not strong enough to keep you out forever—I'm not sure that anything other than Camelot is—but up until now I've been very careful not to make this personal. In the last fight I didn't even mark you except for that one time at the end. Do you really want me to come at you with everything I have?"

  "I'm singularly unafraid of you, Kyle. You would have to get lucky again and again to permanently kill me, while all I have to do is have one good day to get you out of my hair for the better part of two decades."

  "You're sure, Fenrir? You've absorbed a fair amount of power from the two wards you've already taken down. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. You can walk away now and not have lost much of anything in the grand scheme of things. I won't make the offer again."

  "You're wasting your breath. Go back to your hole and get the rest you're going to need in order to come out and challenge me again. We both know that you're still too exhausted to face me right now. I warn you though that by the time you get back you'll be up against more than just me again."

  "Oh? Is Mephistoles coming back?"

  "No, that useless bag of bones won't be back until he smells blood in the water and figures he has a chance of swooping in and taking the pretty bauble hanging from your hip, but he promised to send some of my brethren to help me."

  "And you believe him?"

  "Of course. If he doesn't come through then I'll be camping in front of his door rather than yours."

  All of the back and forth between the two of them was dizzying. Even so, it wasn't in my nature to just sit passively back. I opened my mouth to interject something sarcastic, but before I could get the words out Fenrir hit me with the last thing I'd been expecting.

  "Oh, by the way, he wanted me to make sure that the two of you knew that he and his most recent skirt got hold of your girlfriend's father. Even if you have some kind of bolt-hole it's not going to do the two of you any good. Mephistoles is going to eventually get her old journals—that or he'll kill all of the humans that she's become attached to over the last couple of decades."

  I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. I was having a hard time breathing, and the world had gone all blurry around the edges. That didn't stop me from taking a step forward though. It was stupid, there wasn't anything I could have possibly done against Fenrir with my bare hands but the rational, thinking part of me wasn't in charge right then.

  The tide of anger that broke over me stole away my reason, which was exactly what Fenrir had been hoping for. I was only inches away from the edge of the ward when I felt a surge of power. A split second later something shoved me hard enough to knock me to the ground.

  Kyle had used the distraction I'd provided to bend time and amp his systems up to full combat readiness. He pushed me back away from the ward and then charged through with the point of his sword leading the way.

  It was like watching a fight in choppy stop-motion animation. Kyle was so fast that I caught only flickers of motion when he moved. Fenrir was completely outclassed in the speed department, but it was almost like he could sense what Kyle was going to do before he did it.

  Kyle would streak in and slash at Fenrir and then he'd dart away, often only centimeters ahead of Fenrir's massive, rending teeth. Within a couple of seconds Fenrir was bleeding from no less than six different wounds. None of them were life-threatening, but they were all significant.

  I finally came back to myself enough to bend time to the point where I could keep up with the fight, but I didn't try to stand, didn't try to go help. It was obvious that Fenrir's description of the situation was more on point than I'd realized.

  It was almost possible to convince myself that Kyle was just toying with Fenrir. Nearly every time he charged in he scored some kind of strike on Fenrir. It was tempting to think that a heartbeat's extra effort could have turned any of the attacks into something fatal, but I could see the expression of concentration on Kyle's face.

  He was…scared wasn't the right word. He was conscious of the fact that he had much more to lose than Fenrir. All it would take was one mistake for him to put himself in Fenrir's power. The difference in their speed meant that he could continue to have his way with the massive beast as long as he did everything perfectly, but one trip, one hesitation, one overreach would be all that it would take to flip the tables around.

  It was the kind of high-stakes gambling that made the games they played in Vegas look like child's play, and it absolutely took my breath away. Kyle was nothing less than amazing, and for the first time I realized something that Jace and the others had been trying to tell me.

  Speed was an incredible advantage, but speed could only buy you so much. Past a certain point all it did was give you more time to think about what came next. Kyle had amped his body up to a superhuman point, but even his new strength and durability had limits. He was moving at a speed that made even simple air resistance feel like a thousa
nd pounds of force pushing against his every motion.

  It was like a lethal game of chess. Both of them knew the other's capabilities well. Fenrir knew that he could withstand a tremendous amount of damage, and he knew that Kyle was limited not just by his strength, but also by the traction of the rock under their feet. Kyle had put on a new set of shoes sometime since my aborted escape attempt, but these new shoes were already showing the strain of trying to keep up with forces that no shoe designer could have anticipated.

  On the other hand, Fenrir's paws seemed to individually have less grip than Kyle's shoes, but Fenrir had four points of contact to Kyle's two. That meant that Fenrir was capable of abrupt, violent changes in direction that Kyle couldn't match—at least not in the long term.

  Both combatants moved with a complicated grace that I was starting to realize was more about positioning their bodies and weapons in such a way as to limit their opponent's options while simultaneously giving themselves as many routes forward as possible.

  Kyle drifted slightly closer to the back wall than normal, and Fenrir suddenly surged forward, using his vast bulk in an attempt to force Kyle back into a corner where he'd be at the wolf's mercy. I felt my breath catch. I was sure that the fight was over, but Kyle's expression never even flickered.

  I heard a dull ripping sound as one of Kyle's shoes gave way beneath the titanic force he subjected it to, but it had lasted just long enough. Kyle spun out of the way of Fenrir's lunge and sank his sword into the beast's side.

  I expected the blow to drop Fenrir in his tracks, but instead he threw himself to the side, trying to crush Kyle against the wall. Kyle dropped to his knees, one hand still on the hilt of his sword, and Fenrir's bulk sailed over his head.

  The collision when Fenrir hit the stone wall was breathtaking. I was so distracted by all of the dust falling down from the roof of the cave, and the high-pitched yelp as Kyle's sword was driven in even deeper, that for a second I didn't register the snap that indicated Kyle hadn't managed to get away completely unscathed. As Fenrir bounced away from the unyielding stone, Kyle reached up with his left hand and pulled his sword free.

  Fenrir spun around, snapping at Kyle, but the big wolf had ended up too far into the corner where the two walls met and that slowed him down just enough that Kyle was able to stagger through the ward to safety.

  Fenrir's roar was so powerful that I thought for a moment that he'd deafened me. The dark wolf threw himself at the wards with such force that this time he was launched across the cavern, hitting the stone wall with a sickening crunch.

  I thought for a second that Kyle would charge back out and finish Fenrir off once and for all, but when I looked over at him I realized that his right arm was broken in at least two places. He was doing his best to look unaffected by what had just happened, but his skin was paler than normal.

  Fenrir levered himself back to his feet and his eyes were bright yellow pools of hate. "How are you doing that? None of your kind should have those kinds of emotional reserves. Mephistoles, yes, but that's entirely due to the bauble around his neck. You should have run out of steam only seconds into that fight!"

  "And yet I didn't. Instead I came very close to destroying your form again. I failed, but in this instance, even failure is a kind of success. With more of your kind on their way you can't afford to just let the damage I did heal normally. You'll trade some of your strength to speed your natural healing. I suspect that I just undid most of the gains you made by dropping my first two wards. Imagine what I'll do over the next couple of weeks."

  "It's impossible!"

  "Apparently it's not."

  Chapter 8

  Kyle didn't sag until we were well out of sight of Fenrir. Even then he would have still kept walking under his own power if not for the fact that I took his undamaged arm and looped it over my shoulders. I wasn't sure that I was doing any good, but I couldn't just watch him suffer and not help.

  I got a reserved, but appreciative smile from Kyle in return for my efforts, but he didn't say anything until we were back to his bunker and I'd pushed the heavy metal door closed.

  "You do realize that there isn't anything keeping you here, don't you? I rekeyed all of the wards but the second one to allow you through them. Now that the second ward is down you could make a run for it if you wanted to."

  "I…well, I guess I hadn't thought about that."

  Kyle shrugged with just his left shoulder. "If you try to make a run for it Fenrir will still chase you, but if you'd amped up your speed and stamina and then waited until he and I were in the middle of our fight you would have had a pretty good head start."

  I considered what he was saying for several seconds before shaking my head. "No, it's a nice thought, but I don't know how to get out of here. Even if I made it past both you and Fenrir I'd still just be lost inside this creepy abandoned city."

  "There's a notepad downstairs on my desk. Go grab it and I'll draw you a map. If you head back out now there is a chance that Fenrir will still be injured. That should buy you an extra mile or two before he catches up with you. There's a highway off to the east. With a bit of luck you should be able to flag down a car and hitch a ride. Once you're in a vehicle he won't be able to keep up for long."

  I wanted to take Kyle up on his offer, wanted to go get the paper he would need to draw me a map, but I kept coming up with other problems. I didn't know how to create light, which meant I'd be running in the dark. I didn't know what the temperature outside was like—for all I knew we were in the middle of Alaska and I'd freeze into a solid block of ice before I made it to the highway.

  "No."

  "Fair enough. You'll be better off waiting until I tangle with him again before making a break for it. There's a chance that his friends will have arrived by then, but if they haven't then you'll be almost guaranteed to make it. I suggest shooting for a time bend that is about four times normal speed. It won't buy you as much of a lead, but I think you'll be able to sustain that all the way to the road."

  "I'm not going."

  I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Surprise maybe? Whatever it was I was hoping for I didn't get it. He just cocked his head to one side.

  "You're not?"

  "No."

  Kyle gritted his teeth while he shifted his broken arm closer to his stomach. "Do I get to know why?"

  "Shouldn't we do something about your arm?"

  "There's a splint in the cabinet over there. It's not as good as the stuff a couple of levels down, but it will do the job for now."

  "For now? Can't you just heal it? I saw Jace heal something when we were back at the lake…"

  "Yes, my brother has always been very good at healing effects. Unfortunately, taking care of light burns is not nearly as complicated as fixing broken bones. Normally I can still manage it, but after that last fight I'm too emotionally depleted to manage anything of the sort. I'll set the bones, splint them, and then take enough pain medication to put me under for three or four hours.

  "That should be long enough to regenerate some of my emotional vibrancy, but not so long that my body's natural healing process will have had much of a chance to kick in. It's an unfortunate injury in many respects. I'd hoped to get at least one more fight in with Fenrir before his friends arrived. Things will be much more difficult once I'm outnumbered again."

  "How are you doing this?"

  Kyle had been looking at the cabinet where he'd indicated the first-aid supplies were located, but now he looked back at me. As astonishing as it was that he was continuing to function despite the pain he was in, it was even more incredible how little his face gave away. I had absolutely zero idea what he was thinking other than that he wanted that splint.

  "Doing what?"

  "Working so many powerful effects so closely together. I know basically nothing about your world—our world—but Fenrir is right. Nobody should be able to do what you just did."

  "Are you asking me, or are you telling me?"

  "Telling?"
r />   Kyle took a deep breath. "I'm not entirely opposed to explaining, you'll need to answer my earlier question. Why are you choosing to stay here rather than trying to run away again?"

  My first instinct was to just shrug and try to deflect his question again, but I knew that wasn't going to work. Kyle wasn't going to tell me what I wanted to know unless I gave him a real answer.

  I was trapped by my own hunger for information. I suspected that this was the way that Kyle was most comfortable functioning. Nothing for nothing, valuable information in return for valuable information.

  "Fine. I'm staying here because it feels like the right thing to do. I hadn't really thought it through enough to put names to everything until you forced me to, but if I run then the best-case scenario is that I end up back home with Jace, Kat and my sister."

  "That sounds like a good thing…"

  Kyle's response made me roll my eyes at him. "Yeah, except for the fact that Mephistoles will still have my dad. I don't know anything about where my dad is being held. Maybe Jace and Kat could get him out, but if I go back home it won't be the three of us against Mephistoles, it will be the three of us against Mephistoles and Fenrir. I already know that's a fight we can't win."

  "So you're staying with me out of pure self-interest."

  "Yeah. I guess. I mean you could argue that I'm doing it because it's what's best for my friends and family, but yeah, in the end I'm staying here because it has the best chance of getting me what I want. Does that mean you're not going to tell me?"

  "Quite the contrary. An arrangement where both parties are getting equal value out of it is the safest kind of relationship. Get me the splint and I'll answer at least some of your questions."

  A few minutes later I had the splint wrapped around his arm and had braced myself with his right hand in both of mine and my feet against his armpit.

  "Okay, go ahead and pull on my arm until it straightens out and the bones are realigned."

  "Should I amp up my strength?"

  "Not unless it becomes unavoidable. There isn't any point in risking additional damage to the limb."