The Awakening Series: Volumes 1 - 3

by Dean Murray

  He gasped a little—unprepared for the strength of my response—and I used the distance he'd created between us to get at his right earlobe. I took it gently between my teeth and bit down with just enough pressure to drag another gasp out of him.

  "I want you more than anything, Jace. As bad as all of the rest of this is going to be, it's the prospect of losing you that is the hardest to take."

  He kissed me again, barely giving me a chance to get the words out, and then pulled the neckline of my shirt to one side so that he had clear access to the side of my neck.

  "That is the one thing that you'll never have to worry about losing, Selene. I really shouldn't tell you this—I stop myself from coming right out and saying it at least a dozen times per day because I know it will make me less desirable, but I'm tired of fighting myself. I waited two hundred years for you once already.

  "I'll do it all over again—I'll wait three hundred years if that's what it takes—in order to be with you again. I want you as my wife, want to know that you're mine and I'm yours. Nothing else is more important to me. Nothing will keep me from your side as long as that is where you want me."

  As he spoke he worked his way down the side of my neck with his lips and I finally realized something I should have understood much sooner. He was right.

  Everything I'd seen in the last seven years of watching guys and girls interact said that such an unguarded profession of love should have ruined everything between us. He'd just shifted all of the power in the relationship over to me, just handed me his heart with one hand and a knife with the other. It seemed impossible, but contrary to everything I would have expected, knowing that he was so completely devoted to me made me value him more rather than less.

  Maybe that was the difference between being a girl and a woman. A girl wanted something—someone—precisely because they were capricious and hard to hold onto. She wanted it only as long as someone else wanted it too, valued it only as long as she wasn't sure she would be able to actually have it.

  A woman though was capable of seeing the value behind true devotion. For the first time in my life I honestly didn't care about all of the things that motivated all of the girls my age. I'd always tried to tell myself that I was different, that I wasn't as shallow as they were, but I'd been lying to myself.

  I'd still wanted all of the trappings of popularity. I'd been in love with the idea of having a boyfriend, of being gloriously, visibly in love. I'd been no better than Sandra, I just hadn't been attractive, popular or rich enough to make my dreams come true.

  Even as Jace continued to rain kisses down into the hollow where my neck and shoulder joined together, part of me wanted to shrink away from him in shame at how shallow I'd been. Only I hadn't actually been just like Sandra. I'd wanted all of those things, but I'd been able to understand—on some level at least—that there was more to love than all of those showy things.

  I couldn't have said for sure exactly how it happened, but I'd somehow moved past all of that. I wanted Jace precisely because I knew he would never leave me. I wasn't settling for him and I didn't value him less for his admission. Instead, I valued him all the more because I knew how amazing he was and I finally understood what it meant to be fully committed to someone. I finally understood just how hard that was, and I knew that only someone truly incredible—someone like Jace—could offer their heart to another person like that.

  "I don't deserve you, Jace, but I will spend all of eternity trying to be worthy of you."

  My words came out in a gasp as his mouth finally found that one spot, high on my chest, that always made me melt. He'd stayed well above the swimsuit line, but right then I would have let him do anything he wanted to me. My breathing was too ragged to do more than groan as he pulled back away from me.

  "That is the one point we'll never agree on, Selene, but I will never stop trying to convince you that you're wrong, that you're worthy of me a thousand times over in a million different ways."

  Looking into his amazing blue eyes, I finally managed to get my breathing back under control enough to be able to respond to him.

  "You don't have to stop, Jace. It's just you and me."

  He gave me a slow, lopsided smile. "That's exactly why I have to stop, Selene. We've never been together as anything other than man and wife and I'm not about to ruin hundreds of years of precedent."

  "Still a believer, huh?"

  "Absolutely. I can't believe that there's not anything else out there after this life. There has to be a purpose to all of this, has to be a higher power than just a bunch of Awakened and fae."

  I leaned forward and nuzzled the side of his neck with my nose before kissing a soft trail up from his shoulder to his ear.

  "How does that work? You and I are never going to see any kind of afterlife if it's not possible for us to die permanently."

  "I don't know how it works—not completely. I think that's why they call it faith. Maybe we're just sent back here again and again until we get things right."

  Chapter 13

  Everyone was waiting for us when we finally called for Bethany to come get us and lead us back to the rest of our group. I'd been expecting Dad, Ari, Kat, Byron and Kregor to be waiting, but I hadn't expected for the Lady to be patiently standing in front of her house, or for a group of more than forty Seelie warriors to be cooling their heels to one side of her.

  My little breakdown had meant that a lot of people had been forced to sit on their hands, which dispelled most of the buzz I'd carried away from my make-out session with Jace.

  "I'm really sorry—"

  The Lady held up her hand. "You took what time you needed. It is not our place to question your needs, not when you'd just been handed such a burden."

  The Scepter of Storms had been hidden to one side of me as we'd picked our way between the trees, and I could feel everyone's eyes zero in on it as the Lady spoke. The reaction from the fae was so slight as to be practically non-existent, but I still got the feeling that they didn't agree with her assessment that the artifact was a burden.

  Kat's eyes were bright with desire as she looked at it, and I knew that she also saw nothing but the power she needed to make sure she never had to be afraid again. Dad and Ari looked confused, but I couldn't blame them for that—they knew even less about what was going on than I did.

  Byron surprised me. I saw some of the same desire in his eyes that was so visible in Kat's, but for him the lust for power was more than offset by some level of understanding at what I'd had to give up in order to be handed such a powerful weapon. I could tell that he didn't know the details of my agreement with the Lady, but apparently he'd been in enough negotiations with her to realize that she never gave away anything for free.

  "I have agreed to throw my full support behind Selene's cause. Byron and Jace were right to say that this isn't a war we can afford to sit out. This is another of the turning points. We must fight and win or we will fall to the dark court. It won't be tomorrow or even next year, but a loss to the forces that Kyle has assembled now will begin a pattern of losses of disembodiments that will eventually sap even the strongest of us."

  A low murmur of protest ran through the assembled warriors, but she silenced them all with a look. "Some of you have sworn oaths of obedience to me. Others have not, but all of you have sworn to uphold the principles that the Seelie Court was founded upon. If you turn your backs on those principles you will never find refuge here again. I want a blood oath from each of you that you'll see this war through to its end."

  The tension in the air was immediate and powerful. I was suddenly glad that we'd chosen to stop in a spot that left us well off to one side. For nearly a minute nobody spoke and then Intravil stepped forward.

  "Are you sure that she's the one who should be wielding the scepter?"

  "Yes."

  "Very well."

  Intravil unsheathed her sword and grounded it point-first in the dirt before running her right hand down the edge with enough pressure t
o draw blood. Ari looked like she was on the edge of losing her last meal, but it wasn't impacting me as much as I would have expected it to.

  Maybe that was because I'd seen so much carnage over the last month since I'd found out that I was an Awakened. Maybe it was just because I was so mentally and emotionally exhausted from what I'd been through in the last two hours.

  Both of those were possibilities, but I was pretty sure it had more to do with the hum of power I could feel arcing through the clearing. It was a bit like what I felt when Jace or Kat worked an effect around me. I didn't know the meaning of the ceremony, but one thing was clear to me—Intravil was discharging memories, which meant that the Seelie warriors were deadly serious about what was happening—they'd spent centuries building up their strength, and wouldn't expend energy like that without a good reason.

  Intravil walked over and stood in front of the Lady, blood dripping down from her hand to the ground, which was now smoking and hissing all around the spot where the blood had impacted. After a couple of seconds Intravil made as though to pull away, but the Lady's hand shot out, grabbing her arm.

  "This isn't a minor commitment you're making. Pay it the respect it deserves."

  I thought for a second that Intravil was going to turn on the Lady, but before the younger warrior could move, the Lady released her and grabbed the bloody sword dangling from Intravil's other hand. While I was still trying to understand what was going on, the Lady sliced her own hand.

  It wasn't a small wound, which was saying something given just how hard it was to hurt a fae. If the Lady had been a human she would have probably needed surgery, but she never even looked down at the wound. She just held her hand above Intravil's and let her blood drip down, some onto the ground and some onto Intravil's hand.

  I'd thought the amount of power in the air after Intravil had cut herself had been impressive, but it was nothing compared to what I could feel now. The hum felt like it had taken up station inside of my head and was trying to split my skull in half.

  I looked over and saw that Dad and Ari were less affected by what was going on, but Byron, Jace, Sandra and Kat had fallen to their knees. It didn't make sense that I would be able to endure something that was overcoming all of them. For a second I considered dropping to the ground as well, but something inside of me refused to display weakness. The Lady had said that we needed a symbol, that we needed someone to inspire the Awakened to fight on our side. It was just the five of us Awakened surrounded by fae, but I still knew I needed to be strong.

  Maybe it was something to do with the Scepter of Storms—which I was still holding—maybe it was something else altogether. I wanted to understand, but even more important than understanding was following what was going on.

  The flow of blood from Intravil had almost stopped by the time that the Lady had cut herself, but now it was back, a thin stream that was collecting in a small pool on the ground, mingling with the Lady's blood as bits of power, bits of memory buzzed unseen through the air.

  Nearly a minute passed before the Lady finally nodded, apparently satisfied that Intravil had bled enough, but even then it was several seconds before Intravil closed her fist tight enough to stop the flow of blood. There was something challenging to the look she gave her superior, but she stepped away without a word, leaving the Lady holding the bloody sword that had already tasted the flesh of two of the fae before us.

  The fae were already lining up, some eager, some resigned, but all apparently ready to take part in the ceremony unfolding before us. As each additional fae cut themselves on Intravil's sword the pressure in the air continued to increase. I'd expected that nothing would be worse than the torrent of power that had washed over me when the Lady had added her blood to the mix, but I was only partly right.

  None of the others were able to match the sheer depth of the power she'd displayed, but something about their memories was more biting, harsher, harder to deal with. By the time we were through half of the fae, Jace and the others were no longer kneeling. He, Sandra and Byron had fallen to their backs, hands clasped against their heads, and the only thing stopping Kat from joining them was the fact that Dad had pulled her into his arms, cradling her like she was a child.

  I'd still managed to stay on my feet, but my legs were shaking and I could feel the moment approaching when I would no longer be able to keep them from folding underneath me. It was a special kind of torture to be forced to stand there while fae after fae bled into the growing pool of blood at the Lady's feet, but it wasn't like anyone was asking us for anything—all we had to do was survive.

  By the time the last of the towering figures was standing before the Lady, I'd fallen to my knees and the others were all unconscious. The last man, a platinum-haired specimen with skin that was alabaster-white, looked at me for several seconds before nodding and slicing his hand open.

  The pressure to drop my head, to collapse the rest of the way to the ground had been intense, but somehow I'd managed to meet the eyes of each of the fae warriors. I thought I was home free until I felt Bethany launch herself from my shoulder and fly over to the Lady.

  "You don't have to do this, little one. You have much more to lose if things go badly now. The rest of those present would be disembodied and lose much of their strength, but they would survive—you would not."

  "I know, but that doesn't change the fact that this needs to happen. I can't go toe-to-toe with Kyle or Fenrir, but if I join in the oath I'll be of much more use than I am now."

  The Lady nodded. "So be it. You may be the smallest here, but never let it be said that your courage was any less than the bravest in my court."

  Bethany reached out with one hand as she hovered in place, steadying herself against the hilt of the sword, and then slid her hand along the edge of the sword and added two precious drops of her blood to the pool of blood—only as I watched it ceased to be a pool and instead turned into a red crystal that was more than a foot in diameter.

  The Lady looked down at the crystal and nodded. "Very well, it is done. We're all bound to see this through or lose part of ourselves in the trying. So let it be done."

  Chapter 14

  Even after the ceremony—the blood oath—was over, I still didn't know for sure what it had all meant. Luckily, Intravil agreed to bring me up to speed as we traveled. Little did I know what she meant by 'travelling.'

  Once the ceremony was finished, the Lady rallied her people and sent them out in a dozen different directions while she remained there at her house waiting for additional messengers to arrive. Our pantheon, which included—at least for me—my dad, Ari, Bethany, and Kregor, were sent back to Intravil's home and then through the portal and into the nightclub that I now realized she must own as well.

  We waited there in her private suite for more than an hour while Intravil met with nearly a dozen fae, some with the classic, six-foot-plus build of experienced warriors, and some barely bigger than Kregor. Each of her people left the club like she'd set their feet on fire, and then she disappeared into her office with a man I was pretty sure was human.

  Another hour passed without event. Intravil remained closeted with the guy I had to assume ran the club for her, and the rest of us were left with nothing to do but sit around and look out over the dance floor of the club. As frustrating as that was, we probably couldn't have gone anywhere even if we'd been given the go-ahead. I'd managed to walk back to Intravil's house under my own power, but it had been a close thing and Jace, Kat, Sandra and Byron had had to be carried the entire way. Dad had carried Kat, while two especially burly fae warriors had carried Jace and Byron and a slimmer female had carried Sandra.

  It took nearly the entire two-hour wait before my friends were able to walk around under their own power, and even then they were pretty out of it. Bethany and Kregor had both volunteered to help run messages for Intravil, which meant that left just Ari, Dad and me to watch over the other four and worry about what was going on.

  One of the servers from the
club stopped by every twenty minutes to make sure that we were all okay and ask if we needed anything. Ari and I both ordered virgin daiquiris, but after the third one the novelty of free drinks started to wear off. I wanted answers, and some food—probably in that order.

  I'd spent what felt like forever shifting the Scepter of Storms from one hand to another before I finally decided enough was enough and stood, fully intending to go knock on the door to Intravil's office and demand answers.

  As luck would have it, she chose that moment to leave her office, but all I got out of her then was a quick "we've got to get everyone back through the portal" and then it was non-stop traffic through her living room.

  The fae she'd sent out with messages came back with their numbers more than tripled and they were joined by the five Awakened we'd felt once we arrived in Salt Lake. I probably would have had a stroke when I felt the four from farther away start moving towards us, but by then I was pretty sure they were lookouts for our side. Of course it didn't hurt that the fifth Awakened, the one I'd been able to feel sitting less than fifty yards away from us the entire two hours we'd been waiting, chose that moment to walk through the door accompanied by two more of Intravil's people.

  I got a long, hard glance which included several seconds during which the newcomer studied the scepter at my side, and then the Awakened, a tall black guy who, other than his height, was so average-looking that I was sure his appearance was intentional, disappeared through the portal.

  Another hour passed during which everyone who arrived was ushered through the portal, and I was still no wiser regarding what was going on. It wasn't that Intravil and the others were necessarily trying to be secretive. They were speaking in English, but they might just as well have been speaking in code for all I understood. The terms and concepts they were discussing weren't things I was familiar with and while I knew some of the locations they were referring to, I had no idea why they were important.