The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  He motioned with his glowing fingers to signal that he was going to jump the men when they came near. I signed back a quick negative with a few added expletives that we had added to the code years ago.

  But there was a focused mania in his eyes. “I don't know what this is, but I can do anything right now, Ren. I can feel it.”

  “What?” I hissed, grabbing his arm, the terror of being discovered combining with panic at his uncharacteristic behavior. Some of the mania in his eyes immediately lessened at the skin contact, but the focus remained.

  He squeezed my hand. “Run. I won't let them hurt you.”

  “Hands at your sides.” A man stepped out of the deep shadows cast by the main tower. There was malevolence in his very movement. “Your type is so predictable, always looking for energy. Boy, put your hands against your sides now. Girl, come here. Clean and easy. There's no escape now.”

  The four other men appeared, surrounding our position. One of them was limping, his expression full of rage.

  Christian stepped in front of me and the electric field between his fingers grew stronger.

  “You don't want to do that, boy.” The man lifted something dark and barreled.

  I lunged at Christian's back at the same time that he half-turned, grabbed me, and threw me to the side as easily as tossing a child's stuffed animal. Something cracked in my right forearm as it hit the edge of the building and spun me around.

  A deafening blast immediately hit the place where we had been.

  As I fell back in horror, I could see Christian dodging left, then lightning lit from his fingers and three of the men went flying. The man from the shadows raised his gun toward me.

  Christian's arm reached out, and a wave of something warm and protective shot from his fingers into my chest.

  Then something pulsed, blinding me, filling my vision with crimson. Lights exploded and detonations rocked the universe.

  Everything in my world went end over end, and I slammed face down onto concrete.

  Blackness. All I saw was blackness.

  Darkness blurred. Faint shapes formed. My cheek was pressed oddly to the hard ground, and dark red streams streaked away from me.

  I tried to move. My cheek wouldn't lift. My neck wouldn't lift. My vision was streaked red.

  I told my neck to move. My lips tried to repeat the command, soundless, something wet upon them.

  On my fifth blink, my vision returned. There was a strange absence of light, only the stars and crescent moon casting any at all. Power lines and towers lay in pieces around me. No electricity arced—as if the entire supply had all been used. There were six bodies lying twenty yards away. One slowly, painfully, rose—becoming a large shadow hovering above the others. The rising figure gave one of the motionless bodies a kick.

  The shape and hair of the kicked body registered, and I instinctively rejected all emotion.

  He was so still, splayed like a carelessly tossed doll. I had never seen Christian like that. Not even after being blindsided by a spectacular sack.

  Protectiveness and primal panic surged.

  I struggled to push upright, blackness completely overtaking my vision, pain radiating through my head. I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, then forced my too heavy head to still and my vision to clear.

  My view of the obliterated lot wobbled with my success. I tried to move my left arm, but it wasn't working, so I stretched out my right and pulled myself forward. Eighteen feet away. Seventeen and a half. Seventeen. Just a little more.

  Each pull scraped a layer of the void away from my mind and a layer of skin from my useless left arm, and my pulling became increasingly erratic and frantic as the figure with my brother's hair didn't move. The blackening pain and the nagging thought that something else required my attention were nothing next to my need, and I curled my fingers into the grit of the concrete, pulling, trying to get to him.

  Then I was splayed out on my back, looking up at the twirling night sky. Stars twinkled and whirled. A booted foot pressed heavily on my chest. I felt and heard something crack, but nothing concrete registered through the all-encompassing pain and the thwarted need to reach my brother.

  I tried to separate the shadowed features and black clothing from the starry sky beyond. The man held a device over me, his boot pushed down harder, and I could feel a gurgle in my chest.

  “Stupid ferals. But I've got you now.” His hands moved with the device. A braided leather band dangled from his damaged fingers. Christian's band.

  He pressed harder and everything started to go black.

  I flung up my free arm and grabbed the end of the band. Power and pressure flooded through my hand, and the sparking seemed to travel from the leather into my bones. The release on the other end of the band sent my arm slamming to the ground, but the band stayed within my grasp, vibrating, then abruptly stilling as it calmed something deep within me. My vision continued to dim, but was now replaced by a calm blue light hovering in my mind's eye.

  The shadowed man above me uttered a long stream of expletives, then stepped harder on my chest.

  “Get up and get over here, you idiots,” he shouted. “And either wake up Lynch, or dispose of him.” Under the increased pressure of his boot, something else cracked in my chest.

  I was...going to die.

  A spark sluggishly ignited in my midsection around the steady blue light, like a wick that had been dormant too long, and the crack of another rib was echoed by a bang a few feet to my side.

  “Son of a—” The foot was suddenly gone.

  Flares of brown, swirling and long-tailed flashed, then the earth trembled as a body crashed next to me, and three others fell farther away.

  A long pole twirled over me and poked down toward the ground.

  “Isn't hunting supposed to provide a challenge, Uncle?” The new voice was masculine and edged. Could a voice be described as chiseled? I longed to see the face attached to such a voice, but everything was going hazy again.

  “You got lucky with that sudden trace that popped from nowhere,” an older voice responded.

  “Or maybe I'm just that good.” I could almost picture the smile behind that riveting voice. I wanted to see it, but couldn't turn my head.

  Not being able to move, confusion, hearing irresistible voices. Angels? Maybe I was dying.

  Dying. Christian. Panic penetrated my muddiness. I tried to turn myself, to reach him, but my body was absolutely useless, heavier now—my muscles seemingly nonexistent.

  The older man sighed. “Try to stay out of the headlines this week, won't you?”

  The two figures moved into view, but like images from a Kandinsky. Frenetic motion and dark colors not allowing my eye to rest.

  “Wild magic is flowing everywhere. The scavengers finished the feral off fifteen minutes ago, then drained him dry.” The older voice sounded disgusted, then swore. “We have to report that they have a tool to identify and hide an awakening.”

  A twinkling white light beckoned me closer, slowly strangling the rest of my senses.

  “...scanning...difficult...heavy in the air...”

  “...feral...awakening...subverts suppression field.”

  I couldn't cough or breathe. Christian. I pushed away from the light with difficulty. I needed to get to my brother. I tried turning again, but the only parts of me I could still feel were the two fingers clutching his band.

  “...scanner stopped working...”

  A figure crouched next to me and touched my wrist. “The girl is fighting.”

  As if the touch had connected me to an external speaker source, I could hear clearly again. It was the guy with the beautiful masculine voice. Michelangelo’s David would sound like this.

  I tried to choke out the words for him to help Christian, but only liquid bubbled up.

  I used every last resource I possessed to slowly curl my hand and touch the boy's fingers at my wrist. The pressure of his fingers increased minutely at the touch. I tried to tell him to help my brot
her, but I couldn't remember how to make my lips work anymore.

  “I can barely tell it's human under the blood.” The older man sounded extremely disinterested. “Broken nose, shattered cheekbones, but she does have long hair. Girl chose the wrong boyfriend. Poor mongrels.”

  “She is as human as we are, Uncle.” The boy's lovely voice radiated disapproval.

  The older man sighed. “The scanner is dead and soon she will be too. Let her find peace,” the older voice said dismissively. “You don't waste reserves on ordinaries when you don't know who might be watching for the right opportunity to strike. If only the scanner was working.”

  “Maybe she isn't ordinary. I've never felt such a linger in the air.”

  “These scavengers are foot soldiers only—boy probably had more magic than they could deal with—bet they leaked his magic everywhere, or else we'd have found it in a container. Still...check her wrist.”

  I felt my wrist lifted.

  “Nothing. Her skin is clear,” he said. He carefully laid my arm back down. “But she feels...” His voice trailed off.

  “Mother would heal her,” the boy said, as if to himself. “She wouldn't care that she was ordinary.”

  “She would care if it hurt you. You are crouching there as if that girl is the first soon-to-be dead person you've ever seen. Help me finish tying up these scumbags.”

  The boy stood and the heat from his hand lifted with him. Everything became cold, painful, and hazy again.

  The night sky was circling. I...was at the planetarium with Christian? Any moment now there would be music and a laser show. But the manager and lighting technicians couldn't agree on something. I could hear the buzz of their furious whispers. Then someone was once again next to me, kneeling and putting a hand on my arm, and I felt some semblance of clarity, along with relief that his hand was touching me again.

  A sigh issued from somewhere far to my left. “Fine. Do it, if you must. A tiny amount only. I'll transport these to Processing.”

  The hand moved to my chest. Something like strangled laughter and blood bubbled from my chest and up my throat with the thought of telling Christian that I couldn't even appreciate my first experience getting to second base.

  Christian.

  Heat centered in the hand pressing against my chest, and something electric and white hot shot through me.

  The electricity connected and something in me—that part that felt neutralized, like a sleeping dragon—pulled greedily, demanding treasure and gold, knitting it together and throwing swashes of energy through my limbs like paint splattering a canvas. And all of a sudden, all I could see was blue. Two circles of ultramarine, the color straight from the deepest shade of The Last Judgment. Staring into those eyes, a winged henna design sketched itself slowly in my mind.

  “Their police are coming.” The older man's voice was flat. Sirens whined in the distance. “They will take care of her, if she lives, and—”

  Her, not them.

  I flipped myself like a flopping fish, then dragged my body toward my brother's unmoving form, arm over arm. There was no pain this time, and I could use my left arm again, but it felt like I was moving through sludge. Like in a dream. A nightmare. This had to be a nightmare.

  “It—she's moving.” The older man's voice sounded disbelieving. “How much did you use, Ax?”

  “Half,” he answered.

  The older man sounded like he was choking. “Half...what were you thinking, Alexander? You are not indestructible, regardless of what you and everyone else thinks.”

  “She's a fighter,” he remarked simply, as if it explained all. “She took it, and I let her.”

  “You play too many team sports. We should have raised you as an assassin instead. I told them that, but did anyone listen? Where's she going?”

  “To the boy.”

  “Don't bother, girl,” the older man called out. “He’s deader than dead.”

  My mind rejected that notion totally. I kept crawling forward. It was getting harder and my vision was tunneling again. No. Not yet. Just a little farther.

  “Ax, stop following her, dammit. This is getting less amusing. The suppression field won't remove our faces from the memories of the officers should they see us. And don't you dare use more magic for her! No! Dammit!”

  A hand touched my back, and then I was next to Christian, vision suddenly clear, dark tunnel pushed away, my hand wrapped around his limp one, still warm. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  “It is too late for him,” the boy whispered. The other man's voice was swearing loudly in the background. “Bringing back the dead like this is forbidden. This is all I can do for you.” His breath, at the nape of my neck, was warm, his voice soft.

  My vision was tunneling again—the shot of clarity having come from outside me. “No.” It sounded like my voice, but a croaked, cracked thing under the blaring sirens, which were growing louder. I could feel no life, but there was something else in my brother's hand, something that tentatively brushed me. I could feel him. I squeezed his hand. Please.

  “I am sorry for your loss.” The hand at my back gave a sympathetic pat, then lifted and the tunnel came rushing toward me, faster, blasting, before everything went dark.

  Chapter Two: Daydreams and Nightmares

  I looked at the winged creature I had penciled in my sketchbook. Since the “accident,” my hand kept recreating its pattern. Why I felt compelled to doodle the same image over and over would have freaked me out, if I felt the emotion for it.

  Three therapists in six weeks had been unable to convince me that Christian’s death had been an accident. The next in line, scheduled for next week, would have no better success. The doctors kept saying that my imaginings were a result of head injuries, and that I shouldn't be concerned with “dreamscape memories.”

  I was obsessively concerned.

  Especially since people seemed to remember that I was “crazy” now, but not exactly why. Not a single therapist, not even my parents, could repeat the events of that night back to me twenty minutes after I would tell it. And none of them seemed concerned about that fact.

  But at least the men in black had not reappeared. Not in the hospital, and not afterward. No one possessing strange powers had.

  I looked at the winged creature—a hybrid of a bird and snake. Not quite a phoenix, not quite a dragon. I wiped at it with my thumb, smudging the shading, then looked down at my otherwise perfectly unblemished hands and curled my long fingers in.

  The authorities could try to convince me until the end of time that there had been an electrical explosion that had blacked out the city. I had seen the pinched looks on the doctors' faces when they couldn't explain why I'd been covered in blood, but not sporting a single scratch.

  I had searched through every volume in the public library and browsed a thousand websites on magic, secret government conspiracies, “awakenings” of all types, and a dozen different meanings of the words “ordinary” and “feral.” Nothing had matched my experience. Nothing had felt right. But the answer to what had happened that night was out there somewhere, and I would find it.

  Besides, the boy's words—Alexander’s words—flowed through my dreams at night. Bringing back the dead like this is forbidden.

  Like this?

  My pencil tip broke. I took a deep breath, then another, and let the calm vibes of the art studio wash through me. My only haven. It was the only classroom that didn't have a rose glued to an empty chair next to mine. Christian had elected for study hall during my art period.

  I took a deep breath, retrieved a pen from my bag, and turned to a blank page in my sketchbook.

  The Homecoming game was next week. The new quarterback was supposedly decent, but I hadn't attended any of his games, and I didn't plan to attend any in the future. Students were still weeping about Christian, yet they were excited for the game and dance, and I couldn't understand any of it. People walked around me living their lives, while I watched them as if they existed on a TV screen. />
  I felt...totally removed. My second therapist had whispered to a colleague weeks ago that I was suffering from some sort of raging delusion mixed with clinical apathy in order to deal with the loss of my twin.

  But it was easier to stay silent and unnerve the therapists than to release the sobs that stayed locked in my chest, rippling there, pushing.

  My pencil moved and Christian's braided leather band slid along the desk and paper as my wrist dragged it along. The world had stopped turning the moment I had awakened in the hospital, asking for Christian and receiving the horrific response of silence from my parents.

  Then the world had turned without me.

  I was stagnant. Like Christian's room or his locker or his classroom chairs. My connection to the world was gone. There was something about me that was different from everyone else now. And until I could figure out how to undo the past, no pathway would reconnect me.

  I hated it. I hated choking back cries at the most random of times. I hated feeling powerless and without direction. I hated turning to speak to someone who wasn't there, accidentally setting a place at dinner in front of an empty seat, calling for someone who would never answer.

  I hated the knowledge that never again would I be able to talk to my best friend.

  The pressure of my thoughts seemed to resonate under my skin.

  The drawing grew darker and more violent as I traced over the lines, undoubtedly leaving indelible indents on the pages below. I gripped the pen, pressure riding beneath my skin, and repeatedly outlined the little black figures screaming in Munch-styled pain. They stared out at me in anguish, moans slipping from their lips. I could almost hear their choked and building sobs.

  Then they started running across the page, shrieking in agony and tearing the ink from their cheeks.

  Literally running and screaming across my paper.

  I dropped my pen and slammed my hands down, catching the pen under one finger.

  The girl on the other side of my large worktable was bent over her work, ignoring me. Focusing on her sketchpad and drawing without care.