The Awakening Series: Volumes 1 - 3

by Dean Murray

  "Because they won't be any good here?"

  "Exactly. Some of my people wanted me to send your pantheon—everyone but Byron—to participate in the assault as well, but I didn't want to let you out of my sight this early. It will take you time to become experienced in using the scepter, and until you are, it is risky to send you anywhere that might result in you being captured. I don't want Kyle getting his hands on yet another artifact.

  "I could have sent Jace and Kat off and kept you and Byron here with me, but I knew that you would feel better knowing that the two of them were nearby. Besides, I know that the two of them will do everything they can to keep you safe and the scepter away from Kyle."

  My stomach started to unknot and I managed a smile of my own. "Thank you—that means a lot."

  "Of course. As for the other Awakened who might be willing to join our fight, I've had my people reach out to them. There are a few we can just call directly, but most of the Awakened who were more open about their locations are already dead. Helena wasn't the only location that Kyle and the Unseelie court hit. The ones we still believe are alive will have to be contacted through other means."

  "What kind of other means?"

  "Classified ads, code words left on message services, and dead drops in out-of-the-way locations among other things. It will take some time before we'll know for sure how many of them survived and are willing to take up arms against Kyle."

  "How long?"

  "I don't know, Selene. I've delegated the contacts to the fae who have the best relationships with the individual Awakened. They are mostly younger and not in a position to help out with the war in other ways."

  "Do each of the Awakened have a fae who…monitors…them?"

  "Yes—at least all of the Awakened who aren't completely ruled by negative emotions. Sometimes they monitor them directly, sometimes at a distance. Sometimes they even monitor them indirectly by way of a contact with their pantheon."

  "Kregor. Kregor is the one that you've been using to keep an eye on Kat and Jace."

  "Indeed, and you as well during your last incarnation."

  "I guess it makes sense—Jace is his creator, so he has a reason to be around us."

  Some of my bitterness must have leaked into my voice. The Lady sighed. "He isn't trying to manipulate you, Selene, and I know that he would never betray Jace. It's as I said before, all fae—all light fae—feel a certain debt of gratitude toward their creator. He's just trying to watch out for you and make sure that you don't get blindsided by something that could be avoided."

  I nodded, but this time I wasn't as convinced. Byron was right. They hadn't been able to drop off the grid until they'd managed to distance themselves from whoever was keeping an eye on them. The Lady seemed to mean well, but it was obvious to me that the system was far from perfect.

  She had leaks in her organization, fae who claimed to be loyal members of her court, but who were actually working for someone else, either the Unseelie fae or for one of the Awakened. Her intelligence network had probably saved many lives, but it was equally true that it had probably resulted in several unnecessary deaths.

  "Kregor didn't join in the blood oath. Does that mean he's not as loyal as you think he is?"

  I'm not sure what kind of response I expected, but the slow shrug I got was unsatisfying. "There is no way to be sure, Selene. Fae as young as Kregor aren't expected to join in. If Kregor were to do that and we were to fail, it would be likely that he would be destroyed. My suspicion is that he was just scared."

  "But you don't know for sure."

  "We aren't any different than humans in that regard. We can err and get people killed, either out of malice or simply by not thinking. The real question is whether you believe that Jace could have created him while burning a negative or even neutral emotion. As long as Jace was burning a positive emotion then Kregor's failings won't be driven by malice."

  "Don't you know?"

  "No. Jace believes that Kregor is Seelie, and Kregor has never done anything to make me doubt his allegiance, but I have no way of knowing for sure. He was created several incarnations ago, and Jace is basing his belief on journals that it is entirely possible Kregor modified at some point."

  I sighed. "I'm starting to understand what we're up against. At least I know that Bethany is Seelie."

  "Do you, Selene?"

  "Yes, she's only growing when I use positive emotions."

  The look I got wasn't exactly pitying, but it wasn't far off from that. "Really? I take it that you only ever burn positive emotions, and that you've been observing her for a long enough period of time to know for sure that she's growing like you expect her to?"

  "No. No, none of that is true. I don't have any idea, do I? Even her joining in the blood oath is no guarantee—she could just be playing a much longer game."

  "Now you know what I'm up against, Selene." The Lady gave me a sad smile and then turned and walked back over to the gathering of her people.

  A few minutes later, we were apparently all there at the rendezvous location because the Lady reached forward and put her hand on a tall, freestanding mirror in the center of the clearing. As the first of the Seelie warriors went through the mirror, Bethany flew over and landed on my shoulder.

  "How are you holding up, Selene?"

  I tried to put my doubts out of my mind, but now that they'd taken root I knew I wasn't going to be able to get rid of them.

  "I'm okay. It's a lot to take in. I don't know why I keep thinking that I'm starting to get a handle on what's really going on in this new world that Kat and Jace thrust me into. Every time that happens, something else comes along to turn everything upside down—you'd think that eventually I'd learn."

  "Don't worry, that's what you've got me for."

  Right, except now I was realizing that I couldn't trust her, not like I needed to be able to. If Awakened like Jace couldn't be sure that their companions were Seelie, then how was I supposed to know? There was only one answer. I needed to work harder to change my default emotion. I needed to get to the point where every single effect I worked was powered only by happiness, and then I needed to survive long enough to make sure that she was actually growing once I cut off all of the neutral emotions.

  Given that we were about to head into a massive war, that was already a tall order, but that was just the beginning. Once I knew what Bethany was—Seelie or Unseelie—I needed to find a way to leave myself a message, one that couldn't be changed or counterfeited, one that I would recognize, but which nobody else would.

  How was that even possible? I could tell the Lady, but even that wasn't any kind of guarantee. Even assuming that I trusted the Lady, all that would mean was that in my next incarnation the Lady would be able to tell me that I'd told her Bethany was light.

  That information was only good if I was really working for the right side when I told her that Bethany was one of the good guys. Was I really that confident that I could never be anything but good?

  "A penny for your thoughts?"

  I shook myself and forced a cheerful smile out onto my face. "I'm just worried about what comes next. I'm not ready to end up in some kind of massive war."

  "Don't worry about that, Selene. You just keep your head down and focus on mastering that scepter. The older fae tend not to address me mind to mind, but speaking that way takes more effort than doing it the old-fashioned way, so there is plenty of actual talking going on. I've picked up some bits and pieces over the last few hours. The Scepter of Storms is a big deal. That's why Intravil agreed to back the Lady's play this time. Those two don't usually see eye to eye on much, but apparently Intravil figures that the Lady wouldn't break out the scepter if she didn't think this was our only hope."

  "Right, the scepter." I looked down at the long, golden rod and tapped the big, bulbous head with my free hand. "I guess I should just be grateful that I haven't dropped it so far. I probably would have on the flight over here if Intravil hadn't kept one hand on it the entire ti
me. I'm such an idiot. I was asking about everything else under the sun when I should have been finding out how to use this overgrown stick."

  Bethany started to answer, but then grimaced. "It sounds like we're being summoned. I just got a message from the Lady and she wants us over at the portal right now."

  "She couldn't just call us over?"

  "I guess she figures it would ruin her image to yell at us."

  "So instead she yells directly into your mind?"

  "That's about the size of it. Just be glad that it's tougher to talk to your mind than it is to talk to the mind of another fae or you'd probably be getting the same treatment."

  I nodded, but somehow I wasn't convinced. I didn't have a good reason to think that the Lady was going to treat me better than she treated Bethany, but I still got the feeling that she wouldn't have been yelling at me—even if it had been easier to talk to me mind to mind.

  I hurried over to the portal, Bethany on my shoulder, and went to step through the portal, but the Lady stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  "This isn't like the other portal you've used. My entire court knows that there is a portal out here, but up until now nobody has been able to figure out where it goes because I've never told them. You're going to want to take a deep breath and hold it as you step through. Things are going to be a little disorienting this time around so try not to gasp in surprise or you're going to get water in your lungs."

  I nodded reflexively—I still didn't understand what she was saying—and held my breath as I stepped through the large, freestanding mirror.

  Disorienting didn't even begin to cover things. I was under water, which I'd been expecting even if I hadn't understood how that was supposed to happen. What I hadn't been expecting was the way that gravity would suddenly go crazy. It was all I could do to keep from puking as gravity was suddenly pulling me forward.

  The water was warm, which was a good sign—it meant that I couldn't be at the bottom of the ocean or anything crazy like that—but I still started freaking out, flailing around in a vain effort to spin myself around so that I'd be able to see the surface of the pond.

  It wasn't working. For a second I thought that I'd forgotten how to swim, but then I realized that the problem wasn't my swimming, it was the fact that I still had a death grip on the Scepter of Storms, which was pulling me straight to the bottom of the pool.

  I was more than a little surprised that I'd managed to hold onto the scepter while panicking like that, but apparently even my subconscious was fully onboard with the idea that the scepter was more important than anything else I'd ever put my hands on. I had an instant in which to consider letting go so that I'd be buoyant enough to ascend, and then a strong pair of hands grabbed me and I was being pulled through the water with powerful, sure strokes.

  I surfaced a second later and sputtered until the Seelie warrior who'd grabbed me got me over far enough that I was able to touch the sandy bottom of the pond. I looked around and saw two more warriors standing out in the middle of the water. Neither of them was wearing armor either, which answered the question of whether their armor was removable or if it was just something they manifested as part of their natural form.

  "Holy cow! I could have drowned. I know she told me to hold my breath, but that still wasn't what I was expecting."

  Intravil grabbed my free hand and helped me up onto the shore next to her. "It was a surprise for all of us. This portal is nothing less than genius. We all suspected that this one might be the Lady's, but there was argument as to whether anyone—even someone as powerful as her—could maintain three separate portals."

  "I guess that argument was just settled rather spectacularly."

  "Indeed it was. She also just settled all of the wagers regarding where the portal exited. None of us realized that you could use a naturally reflective surface like this to create a portal. Apparently the sheer size of the top of the pond means that there's no way to control where exactly you end up when you come through, so it took longer for our swimmers to get to you than it did for most of the others."

  "I guess I should just be glad that you thought to have somebody get ready to catch me. When the Lady warned me about there being water on this side of the portal, I probably should have thought to worry about the thirty pounds of solid metal I was carrying, but it never even crossed my mind. I could have drowned—right after I lost my lunch. I'm glad the portal from your club wasn't this bad—I don't think I could take this kind of transition more than once a day."

  "Transitioning back over from this side to the other will be even worse if we have to do it quickly. It will be a lot harder to avoid falling over going that way, which means piling through quickly one right after the other would be a disaster."

  I nodded, hoping that we wouldn't have to wage some kind of fighting retreat on our way back here, but most of my attention was focused on taking in our surroundings.

  We were in some kind of desert, but not a sandy, Sahara kind of desert—it was rockier than that. The fae who had gone through the portal before me were arranged in a circle around the pond, all on the highest bit of ground in their immediate area, and all looking outward in an effort to make sure that nothing surprised us.

  Everyone was dripping wet, but unlike me the Seelie warriors all still managed to not look like drowned rats—they still looked majestic and perfect.

  Apparently the Lady wanted to make sure that we poor Awakened had plenty of time to get through the portal because she waited until then to send Jace through. Between the ax in his hand, the sword strapped to his back, and the knives I knew he had concealed in various spots on his person, Jace was carrying around at least as much weight as I was, but he handled the transition better than I did.

  He came through the portal amped up enough that he had more time to orient himself before he started sinking, and he had the strength required to mostly fight his increased density. He still might not have made it over to shallow water before he ran out of air, but one of the fae who'd grabbed me fished Jace out within a few seconds of his arrival.

  Kat came through the portal into shallow water, which was probably even more disorienting than what I'd experienced because it meant she'd actually hit the bottom as she came through, but at least it meant that she was able to stand right up once she figured out what had happened.

  Byron also had to be towed out, and then Bethany followed through a few seconds later. I'd been surprised that the Lady had held her back—I hadn't even felt her leave my shoulder in the instant before I'd stepped through, but it had been a smart move. As desperately as I'd been thrashing around I could have seriously hurt her without meaning to.

  "Where are we?"

  Intravil smiled. It was a hungry, disturbing expression. "We're in New Mexico, less than ten minutes' flight from the outer edge around Camelot. The Lady didn't just draw the location for this portal out of a hat. She located it far enough away that nobody from the Helena pantheon was likely to find it, and yet still close enough that she would be right in their back yard."

  She was right, this portal hadn't come about by chance. It made me wonder how many other portals the Lady had secreted in strategic, out-of-the-way spots that nobody else knew about. I was hoping a lot because that would mean that she was even more powerful than anyone had realized. We were going to need all the help we could get.

  A split second later the Lady came through the portal, shimmering into existence between one heartbeat and the next under the surface of the water. It didn't look like she was carrying any kind of weapon underneath her clothes, not based on how easily she rose to the surface of the water and swam over to us.

  Once she was on solid ground, she walked over to a massive boulder and easily shifted it to one side. I hurried over in time to see her pull a long, white sword out of a hollow in the ground.

  "Let's go. Every moment might end up mattering."

  Intravil wrapped one arm around me and grabbed hold of the end of the Scepter of Storms again
as she threw herself into the air, but this time I managed to amp up my strength before we left the ground. That meant her help wasn't strictly necessary, but I wasn't about to complain. I'd look pretty stupid if we had to circle back around to pick up the scepter.

  I half expected Intravil to speak to me again using the link that had been established via the blood oath, but after nearly a minute had passed without any sense of mental contact between us, I tried to initiate it.

  I practically gave myself an aneurism pushing my thoughts in her direction, but nothing happened so I tapped on her hand to get her attention.

  Yes?

  I need to know how to use this hunk of metal. Is that something you can help me with?

  There was a pause for several seconds, but I didn't initially realize that Intravil had just gone directly to the one person who might know.

  Hello, Selene. Intravil said that you needed help using the scepter?

  Wow, I hadn't expected to be talking to the Lady mind-to-mind like that. She wasn't yelling at me or anything, but I still got an impression of restrained power that was only a couple steps away from blowing my mind into pieces.

  Yes. I'm sorry if now isn't a good time, I was just thinking that I should probably figure out how to use it as soon as possible. There's no way of knowing when we'll end up fighting Kyle and the rest, and if I wait until then it might be too late.

  Now is as good a time as any, but the truth is that I don't know how to use it. No fae has ever been able to use any artifact. It seems the derived memories that we absorb from you Awakened are so different as to preclude our being able to activate artifacts.

  I should have realized that. If the Lady had been able to use the Scepter of Storms herself there wouldn't have been any reason for her to give it to me. Still, I must have some reason for thinking that artifacts could be used by more than just us Awakened. It took me several seconds of thought before I was able to zero in on the reason I'd been thinking that.

  I thought that artifacts didn't require someone to burn memories—that's supposed to be why they are so awesome.