The Awakened World Boxed Set

by William Stacey

  The Aztalans had no idea what was about to hit them.

  She saw no lights atop the hill. If the enemy was disciplined, they’d all be awake before first light, but Rowan had decided to hit them while they were still in their blankets. Rowan insisted the best fights were always one-sided and over before the enemy realized they had begun.

  Rowan, his face smeared with paint, touched Angie's shoulder. She gave him a curt nod, closed her eyes, and cast out her life-sense magic. The church flared with life forms, each a horse or person. The soldiers, at least she guessed they were the soldiers, lay about the church's courtyard. The prisoners likely slept as well, but they were all huddled together in a mass in a corner next to the stable. Now there were three sentries: the one in the bell tower and two more moving about the interior. She opened her eyes and held up three fingers to Rowan, who nodded. He looked up to Erin atop the nearby barn roof and held three fingers for her.

  Erin, her wolf eyes flashing green, fiddled with the scope on her rifle. Then, sitting on her bum atop the slope of the roof, her legs bent before her, and her elbows resting on the insides of her knees, she placed the rifle tight into her shoulder and took aim. Even from atop the roof, Erin would only be able to see the sentry in the bell tower, but if she didn't kill him with the first shot, he'd raise the alarm. Then they'd have to assault a roused outpost.

  Angie closed her eyes once more and cast out her life-sense, focusing on the sentry in the bell tower. The wait couldn't have been longer than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity, and then, almost coming as a surprise, Erin fired. Her rifle was equipped with a long sound suppressor, but the shot was still surprisingly loud, and a pair of bats bolted from the open doorway of the barn. The life force of the sentry in the tower blinked out of existence.

  Angie held her breath as she scanned the other two sentries. Both men had frozen in place, clearly having heard the suppressed shot. Sound traveled at night, and there was little chance the men could have mistaken it for anything other than a rifleshot. But Angie and the others had heard hunters for days now, especially at night. In a small mountain village like this, hunting was part of life, and many animals were nocturnal. She didn't realize she was holding her breath until the two sentries began moving again, once more patrolling the fort.

  So far, so good.

  She turned to Rowan. "Ten and three," she whispered, using clock numbers to let him know the relative positions of the last two sentries inside the church's courtyard.

  Without a word, Rowan rose smoothly and began running forward, his sub-gun ready for firing. Tec, Casey, and Jay were a heartbeat behind him, each man moving silently for the stone wall surrounding the church atop the hill. Erin climbed down from the barn, slung her sniper rifle, and readied her own sub-gun before rushing after her brothers. Angie looked to Tavi, who also wore NVGS, and saw the other woman was watching her, waiting for Angie's cue.

  Soon.

  As the others hit the hill, they picked up speed. All were barefoot, and Angie knew what would come next. Without even slowing, Rowan scaled the eight-foot-high stone wall, scrambling over it in seconds. His brothers and Tec were right behind him, with Erin only seconds later.

  And now the killing starts. A heavy weight settled in Angie’s stomach.

  She didn't like fighting and hated killing, but this was war. She closed her eyes and cast out her life-sense magic one last time. Five figures, shining like torches, slipped through the church's courtyard. Two of the five moved like sharks, going straight for the patrolling sentries, who didn’t realize death was coming for them. When the life force of both sentries winked out, Angie opened her eyes and rose into a crouch, her heart pounding.

  It was time.

  Holding her sub-gun tight in her shoulder, Angie motioned for the others to follow and set off at a trot toward the church. Tavi, Wyn Renna, and Deldin Gar raced along behind her. Deldin Gar had made it clear that no matter what, he would stay at Wyn Renna’s side. Angie ran up the path to the church, only slightly out of breath when she reached the top. The wrought iron gates were open. She pushed through just as the gunfire started.

  The large Mission-architecture church stood on her left, with the large open stable on the far side of the courtyard, built against the wall. An extended firepit sat in the center of the courtyard around which the soldiers had made their camp. The horses, all tightly tied together, screamed and thrashed as the assault force of six, spread out in a line with their backs to Angie, walked forward across the camp, firing their weapons in short, deadly bursts at the sleeping soldiers, focusing fire on anyone who stood up or reached for a weapon. Men in sleeping bags or under blankets cried out in surprise, pain, and fear, but their cries were drowned out by the shooting. Clothing hung on lines, but the panicked men tore the lines free in their desperate attempt to run away. A pair of terrified horses broke their ropes, adding to the confusion as they bolted about the cramped compound. At the far end of the courtyard, next to the stables, the women and children bunched together, their arms still bound behind their backs, screaming in terror. The camp was chaos and death, and the screams, gunfire, and stench of cordite, blood, and feces were an assault to Angie’s senses.

  She forced her attention from the slaughter and onto the church's warped wooden entrance, the door long since fallen away. She and the other women had their own task this night.

  Angie stepped through the doorway into what had once been the church’s nave but was now filled with crates of ammunition, bundles of weapons, and other supplies. The Aztalan military had gutted the church, using it for storage. The crumbling adobe walls were covered with graffiti. A large stray cat bolted from Angie, hissing and disappearing into the church. The air stank of sweat, mildew, and rat droppings. Clothing lay discarded on the floor or pushed up against the walls. Cobwebs hung from the corners and ceiling rafters. Pine cones, straw, and other debris crunched under her boots as she scanned the interior of the church, her sub-gun tight into her shoulder. She slipped past the equipment into the church's entrance, the chancel.

  Not three feet in front of Angie, a man wearing only underwear rose from where he must have been sleeping. He stared at her in confusion, his mouth open. "Qué es?" he asked, his voice laced with confusion.

  Angie pulled the trigger on her sub-gun, shattering his chest with a burst of subsonic ammunition. The man crumpled, and she stepped over his corpse, her eyes scanning for more targets. Just because she didn't like killing didn't mean she'd hesitate to do it. Angie was becoming a different person—one she wasn't entirely sure she liked.

  As she swept into the nave, two more men rose from crumpled bedding on her right. She spun and fired at the exact same moment that Tavi did, and both men dropped, riddled with bullets. One was moaning, but Wyn Renna calmly shot the wounded man in the head with her pistol while Deldin Gar used his short sword to stab the other corpse. Elves were nothing if not thorough.

  Another figure, a tall, gaunt man, dashed out from behind crates, charging at Angie so fast he became a blur. The man slammed into her—or rather, he slammed into the shield the Shade King had just created to protect her. Angie staggered back as an explosion of sparks flared out her NVGs.

  "Vampire!" Tavi yelled, opening fire with her sub-gun.

  As Angie's night-vision optics compensated for the sudden flare-out, she saw Tavi fire a long burst of subsonic ammunition into the man who had attacked her. No, not a man, she corrected herself. Tavi was right, he was a vampire. What the hell is a vampire doing here?

  The vampire was so pale he resembled a corpse. His fingernails, like those of all his kind, were long and sharp and could cut a person open from throat to crotch. Vampires were Fey, not true undead, but some of the legends surrounding them were true enough, particularly the blood-drinking and near-invulnerability parts.

  Tavi's bullets hammered into the vampire's torso, staggering him but doing no lasting damage. There were only two ways to kill a vampire: decapitation or a wooden stake through the
heart.

  As Tavi's sub-gun clicked on empty, the vampire surged forward, his eyes glowing with hatred. He slashed at Tavi, but her shade protected her just as the Shade King had protected Angie, and the vampire's nails scored at the translucent red disk that had appeared in the air before Tavi. If the vampire realized it couldn't reach Tavi, it didn't stop trying. It slashed at her repeatedly, each time hitting a shield with a shower of sparks. But with each strike, the vampire forced Tavi back. Her legs hit an ammunition box, and she tumbled back.

  "No!" Angie yelled, trying to get the vampire to focus on her. It didn’t.

  A shade would protect its mage, but only if it had mana, and Tavi's shade had already blocked several attacks. She’d be running out of mana soon enough. Tavi could draw more ambient mana from the atmosphere, but until then, she’d be vulnerable.

  The vampire came at Tavi, but this time, a long crimson band of red energy whipped through the air, wrapping around the vampire's arms and pinning them to its torso. Wyn Renna held the other end of the magical band, her face contorted in effort as the vampire struggled to break free. Angie cast Shutter, magically transporting herself to the vampire's side, where she calmly placed the barrel of her sub-gun against his temple and pulled the trigger, holding it until her bullets shattered the vampire's skull, and then kept shooting into the pulpy mass that had been its brain. Just before her weapon ran out of ammunition, the vampire's corpse turned to ash, leaving nothing behind but its clothing. Wyn Renna's spell dissipated.

  Does everyone know more spells than us? she wondered.

  Angie ejected her spent magazine and inserted another while Tavi stared at the ashes. "Focus!" Angie told Tavi harshly. "Clear the church."

  Just then, bright-red light washed out her optics as a flare ignited near the tower steps at the other end of the church. A bolt of magical red fire lanced through the air at Angie as the Tzitzime blood mage, his hand outstretched, stepped out of the stairwell where he had been hiding. Blood magic, she thought, her fear surging when she realized he was trying to burn her alive. Once again, the Shade King protected her with a shield.

  She didn't bother trying to shoot the mage; there was no point. She dropped the sub-gun and drew Nightfall, moving forward in a mid-guard and leading with the hexed side-sword’s point. The mage drew his own heavy saber and came at her. Their blades met and scraped together, throwing off sparks. He was much larger and stronger and not at all untrained. But by the time their blades had met three times, she understood she was a much superior fencer.

  She parried, twisting her wrist and deflecting his attack, and then flipped her wrist again to come over the edge of his heavy blade and cut his face open to the cheekbone. He cried out, staggering back and lowering his guard, and she ran him through the heart, twisting Nightfall savagely before drawing the blade free.

  The mage fell dead, his saber clattering to the stone floor of the church. It was only then that she noticed the gunfire had stopped.

  "Nicely done," Wyn Renna said. "Truly, you are the daughter of Chararah Succubus."

  "Adopted," said Angie, her breathing rushed, her heart pounding. She turned and stormed from the church, away from the men she had killed.

  Tavi raised a hand as she passed. "Angie, are you—"

  Angie brushed past the other woman, desperate to get outside, to breathe air that didn't reek of death.

  That wasn’t the courtyard.

  If anything, the courtyard was worse than the church. Corpses lay everywhere, and the air stank of blood, shit, and gun smoke. But farther away, the prisoners, freed now, surrounded the Seagraves, their faces wet with tears of gratitude as they thanked them profusely, each trying to touch a member of the werewolf family. Jay she could understand; he had the face of an angel. But an old woman even hugged Casey, wrapping her arms around the huge man, crying into his chest.

  For his part, Casey looked dumbfounded, but he gently reached an arm around her, hugging her back, and Angie heard him say, "You're safe now, Grandmother. No one will hurt you. You can go home."

  He was wasting his time, she knew. In this part of the world, even Ferals would speak Spanish, not English, not even the Spanglish of the Nortenos. Still, his tone was soothing.

  That was when she felt tiny fingers tugging at her hip. She looked down to see a small child, a girl of no more than seven years old with dark-brown skin and filthy clothing, her hair bedraggled. She looked up at Angie with huge sad eyes, dry eyes, the eyes of a child so poorly treated she was no longer capable of crying. "Donde esta mi mama?" the child asked.

  And then Angie began to cry for her, the tears washing away the blood on her soul. No matter what ugly acts she and the others had committed this night, they had also saved these people. That had to mean something.

  Angie dropped onto a knee and hugged the girl, whispering into her hair. "I'm sorry. I don't know where your mother is." Then she repeated the words in Spanish.

  The girl's mother wasn't with the other prisoners, which most likely meant she was dead, but Angie handed the child over to a middle-aged woman who said she knew her and would care for her. That was the best Angie could do.

  Tec interrogated the prisoners, learning what he could from them. Angie had hunted Ferals for so many years that she was somehow surprised to realize they were just people, not cannibal monsters. Damn the dragons for doing this to us. They've turned us against one another.

  Casey and Jay found food and water and told the prisoners they could take whatever they wanted, as well as the horses they didn't need. Rowan had already chosen twenty mounts, enough for everyone to ride with another animal to carry supplies and even a pair of spares.

  The assault had been an unqualified success, the fighting over almost as soon as it had begun. The church had been stocked with more supplies than they could have hoped for: food, weapons, and equipment they'd need to move north. Rowan had even found a pair of M72 light anti-armor weapons—disposable one-shot rocket launchers. Wyn Renna had found the high-frequency radio sitting on an old wooden table in a back office of the church and was already speaking to someone in Coronado on the frequency her mother's people monitored. Tavi was inside, watching her, her face marked with distrust. Angie understood, even if Tavi didn’t. The Fey did what they felt they had to do to survive, and the hell with anybody else, especially humanity. Her own adopted mother, Char, had done almost the same thing, sending the nymph Astris to spy on Sanwa City.

  Any misgivings Angie might have felt about shooting sleeping men vanished when she heard what the prisoners had to say to Tec. He had been right. The Tzitzime mage had already told the prisoners they were to be sacrificed for the glory of the Aztalan Empire, which really meant sacrificed for the blood magic of the Tzitzime cult and its dragon worshipers. When Tec had finished speaking to the prisoners, he urged them to flee. As they slipped away, Angie joined Tec, watching the little girl be led away by the hand. These people would have a hard time getting to safety, but they were alive and free. That was the best they could do.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  He didn't answer at first. When he did, his voice was devoid of emotion. "For what?"

  "For helping, for fighting. For saving those people."

  "Have we saved them? They could easily be rounded up again. The Aztalans have gone to war. They're going to need a lot of sacrifices."

  His voice was filled with pain. He was clearly still in turmoil over the death of his master. She reached her hand out to touch him but stopped herself. Instead, she changed the subject. "There was a vampire with them."

  He turned to stare at her, his eyes narrow. "Really?"

  "That's not the first time, either. A pair of vampire assassins tried to kill me in Canyon City, tried to kill Tavi and Presidente Carter as well. I asked Queen Elenaril, and she said some Fey serve the Tzitzime and Aztalan Empire."

  He exhaled, which sounded more like a growl. "I've heard rumors of a renegade clan of vampires. They call themselves the Night Kin."
/>   "Why would Fey serve the Tzitzime?"

  "Same reason people do: power."

  For the first time in days, he was coming out of his shell. She wanted to ask him questions, so many questions, about Quetzalcoatl, the Tzitzime, the black dragon Itzpapalotl, and his bunker beneath Mount Laguna filled with weapons and supplies. But more than anything else, she wanted to know about the Awakening and if he had known it was coming, because it sure looked as though he had. And it looked as though the United States government had also known about it.

  "Listen," she said, trying to find the best way to broach the topic. "I'd like to—"

  "We're moving out!" Casey yelled as he stepped out of the church, holding a belt-fed heavy machine gun over each shoulder by the barrels. "Rowan wants to be on the move before sunrise."

  Tec turned from Angie. "Where?"

  "Ask Rowan." Casey began to strap the weapons to one of the spare horses, as well as boxes of linked ammunition.

  "You really think you're gonna need all that?" Angie asked Casey.

  "Of course," he answered, giving her a look as if she were crazy. Then he turned away and went back inside the church for more weapons.

  Rowan came out next, followed by Wyn Renna, who wore the Tzitzime mage’s hexed saber on her hip. "What's up?" Angie asked Rowan. "Where are we going?"

  Rowan ran his thumb and forefinger over the ends of his mustache and cocked his head at Wyn Renna. "East. Our elven friend says her mother is going to meet us to the east, at an old airfield along the coast, maybe a half day's ride."

  Wyn Renna nodded. "Forty kilometers to the northeast, there's an old runway at a promontory that juts out into the Gulf of California called Cueva de Leon."

  "The Lion's Cave, I know it," Tec said. "There was a large pre-Awakening town nearby called San Juan de Los Planes, but it’s been abandoned. I don't know if that airstrip is serviceable, but I very much doubt it."