Night Awakens: The Awakened Magic Saga (Soul Forge Book 1)

by Leslie Claire Walker

  She met her pimp’s gaze and blinded him. She cut his throat with the blade he insisted she carry for her own protection. A few minutes later, she crawled out of the alley. She put herself back together.

  When the Order welcomed her into their fold, Sunday had gone with them gladly. Sunday burned hot.

  And Faith, who had been raised in a home where the trains ran on time, whose parents had wanted a child they could make into a mirror of themselves, a child over whom they would have absolute control—she burned bright.

  Her parents were sorely disappointed in her when they discovered her to be uncontrollable. The more unruly Faith became, the worse the punishments grew. At first there’d been no bruises in places that could be noticed by outsiders, but eventually there were visible bruises and broken bones and trips to different emergency rooms in an attempt to hide the damage done.

  Her magic had manifested late. She’d talked to whatever gods would listen, and the gods had worked on the only way that gods did—by granting hope and creating awareness so that when an opportunity presented itself, Faith would see and know it for what it was.

  Gods could not act directly in the human world—or any of the worlds. That role was reserved for the beings who lived in them. Angels, demons, faeries, and humans.

  The evening I’d walked into Faith’s life, Faith had lain in her twin bed, tucked beneath her stained white comforter with the black spiderweb designs, sweating and staring at the ceiling, cradling her head in her hands.

  Her stomach roiled with acid. She tasted bean and cheddar tamales and rice in the back of her throat. Her heart thumped in her chest. She could hear the rush of her own blood in her ears.

  She wondered whether she was crazy. Who could claim to talk with gods? People who said they did, but no one believed them. And those who some people believed, like saints or the Pope.

  She didn’t trust what she came to think of as her magic, but she trusted the telltale feeling in her gut—the feeling that seemed to come from someone or something that knew more about the world, and her future, than she did. It said she needed a way out, and soon. She might not be able to find one on her own. During the last year, her parents had installed bars on the windows to which she didn’t have the key. They’d placed deadbolts on her door and locked from the outside every night. Ostensibly, the bars and locks were there to keep her safe. In reality, they were there to keep her prisoner.

  The room brightened with a lightning flash, illuminating matted, beige carpet, floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books and boxes of jigsaw puzzles she’d assembled over and over again, and the dry, glass tank where her lone goldfish had swum and chowed down on his fish food once upon a time. She’d hung posters of forests and mountains on her walls: kind of weird. But the images reminded her of places where she’d felt powerful in some previous lifetime: weirder.

  A roll of thunder shook the house, glass rattling in the windows. Sheets of rain splattered on the roof, washing the world clean.

  She’d known the second Night entered the house. She’d felt it in her gut—the not-right feeling, a change in the air. She held her breath as long as she could, clapping her hand over her mouth when biology finally compelled her to inhale. She listened as events unfolded, knowing in her gut when her mother breathed her last, understanding when her father succumbed a few minutes later. She felt Night climb the stairs and pause outside her door, although she didn’t hear a single creak on the stairs.

  Faith crawled out of her bed, the sheets sticking to her skin. She scrambled beneath the bedframe, hiding. Not that it would do any good, and not that she needed to hide. Her gut told her that she would live through the next few minutes and for many years to come. Hiding was human nature, and she was human—mostly.

  There were places inside of her that felt like…like the gods she talked to. What that meant—what to do about it—was a goddamn mystery. Maybe the woman on the other side of her door held the answers.

  The rush of Faith’s blood became a roar. The beating of her heart became thunder.

  A voice interrupted the vision. Faith’s voice. The Angel’s words. Tearing me away from the glimpse of what my daughter’s life had been like before our paths intersected. If the Angel’s vision was right, then Faith had been far more self-possessed than any kid her age, in her circumstances, should’ve been.

  Do you see? the Angel asked.

  I shook my head.

  She’s not what you think she is. She’s not human—not all the way. She’s part god.

  I shook my head again. That’s impossible.

  The Angel reached into my mind, through my magic. He plucked a memory only hours old and turned it over in his fingers like a many-faceted jewel. Look, he said.

  I did what he asked. I couldn’t have turned away if I tried.

  I sat in Addie’s kitchen at the worn, oak table that was the heart of her home, in my stocking feet. The taste of chiles and chicken and tomatillos permeated the air, steaming bowls of posole in front of us while we discussed the fate of people we loved and the fate of the world.

  The oak chair felt hard under me. The expression on Addie’s face was equally hard. I was a monster. She wanted me dead. Faith was her salvation. She would use Faith to speak directly to her god, to volunteer her services—the Watchers’ services—for the coming war.

  My voice carried the trauma of the morning—Sunday’s arrival, the fear that the Order had tracked down Faith and me, Jess’s confession about what Addie was up to, and the memories of the night I’d found Faith that Addie’s words had caused me to relive. I heard hope in my voice as well. Hope that I could find a way out of the trap that seemed to be falling into place around me.

  “Faith has been using her magic to help with tracking. I haven’t yet had a chance to ask her which god she’s been talking to,” I said.

  Addie blanched. “There’s only one God.”

  “No,” I said. “There’s yours, who would prefer that human beings have no other god before him, and then there’s the rest of them. Very powerful ones, worshipped by whole cultures; less powerful ones, worshipped by smaller tribes; and the local gods who walk the earth in human form and set down roots. It’s a wide world. You know any of the local gods here, Addie?”

  She pressed her lips together until they disappeared, preparing to argue with me. Maybe she saw in my face that arguing would be futile.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “Hear tell of any of them?”

  She nodded. “There’s the Awakened.”

  “Sounds like a god,” I said.

  She snorted. “Supposedly, he—she, it, they, whatever—lurks inside someone in this city like a parasite, waiting for the right time to wake up and take over. The poor person doesn’t even know there’s something inside them. It’s terrible. I couldn’t imagine a more terrible thing to happen to a living, breathing human being than to have their agency taken away like that.”

  “That’s all you know about it?”

  “I’ve heard gossip about it only recently—the last few months. The thing is supposed to have infiltrated someone with magic already, so in addition to taking over that person’s will, it’ll have their magic to boot.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Addie asked.

  “Why would a god need a human being like that?”

  “Maybe it lost its own body a long time ago. Maybe it can’t act here in this plane, this dimension, without a body. I don’t know. The only other thing I’ve heard is that the Awakened is supposed to be showing up now because of the coming war. It’s a player.”

  The memory faded. Only the presence of the Angel in my mind remained.

  What are you saying? I asked.

  The Awakened is inside of Faith. It lives within her. It’s not conscious yet, not yet taken over, but it will. And when it does, Faith will cease to exist.

  I sucked in a breath. My legs wanted to give out. I kept them under me by sheer force of will. I wanted to
scream at the Angel. To tell him that this was a trick. A lie. He could not use manipulation to convince me it was all right for him to take Faith for himself.

  He interrupted that train of thought. Look again, he said.

  And offered me something utterly unexpected. I had made myself vulnerable to him when I let him into my mind, into my magic. In turn, he made himself vulnerable to me by allowing me a glimpse into his.

  The Angel was cold and darkness, a flutter of black-feathered wings on a moonless winter night. He’d folded his wings around Faith’s soul, holding it apart from his own, protecting it. I recognized Faith’s spirit the way I recognized her halo. It shimmered silver, like stars in the night sky. It pulsed with the rhythm of Faith’s heartbeat.

  I had a sudden intense and visceral memory of laying on the roof of my house when I was about eight years old, before the worst of the horror began for me, on an April night. The air had been warm but not too thick, and salt-scented because of the southeasterly wind that blew from the Gulf of Mexico. The shingles dug into my back, but I hadn’t cared. The sky had captured all of my imagination.

  The stars seemed to go on forever. I felt very small. My chest hurt because it was filled with wonder.

  That feeling had stayed with me for a long time. I’d held on to it as long as I could.

  That was what Faith’s soul felt like. Exactly like that. Except for one shining mote in the center of all that dark sky.

  It was not a star. It was something alien. Something that had nothing to do with Faith. It pulsed with a beat all its own, not quite aligned with Faith, not quite at odds.

  What is that? I asked.

  The god inside of her, the Angel said. It’s small now, like you were in your memory, but it will grow.

  A part of me held on to the furious accusations of lies and manipulation with grasping fingers, but the rest couldn’t ignore the evidence right in front of me. And the being who had shown it to me, at possible cost to himself, was not the Father of Lies. He was the Angel of Death.

  He’d known me for many years, since the night my own parents died. He’d followed me all these years, watching me—watching over me. He knew me. And I knew him.

  This was no illusion.

  How long does she have? I asked.

  It could be years before the Awakened takes her over. It could be never, he said. It’s up to you.

  Meaning that Faith had a time bomb inside of her, and if I allowed—or accepted—the Angel to possess her permanently, the god inside of her might never wake up.

  Is it evil? I asked.

  The Angel shook his head. It is what it is.

  Not human. Not bound by human morals or ethics or codes. According to the Watchers, a player in the apocalypse. The Awakened would be an unknown quantity. It would fight on whatever side it saw fit. It could be a boon. Or a disaster. There was no way to know.

  The only thing we knew for sure was that it would obliterate Faith.

  Is there any chance of fighting it? I asked. That Faith can fight it?

  There’s always a chance, the Angel said.

  But no guarantees.

  I’ve saved her, the Angel said.

  And maybe he had. But he’d done it by taking away her choice. By taking away her life.

  The Angel was not a neutral party in the coming war. He had a job to do. He had orders. Missions that involved killing, lining up the pieces on the chessboard so that things would play out the way his boss wanted once the first proverbial shot was fired.

  Was taking the Awakened out of play part of the plan? Was eliminating Faith?

  The Angel knew me, and I knew him. But I didn’t trust him.

  The feeling is mutual, he said. Open your eyes.

  I looked at him—wearing Faith’s clothes, Faith’s body—and then I glanced over my shoulder at what appeared to be an empty gym. It wasn’t empty. I could make out Red’s grass green and earth halo and Corey’s bone white. I couldn’t see them as clearly as usual, but then they were shielded by Ben’s stone gray halo. He protected them while they worked on something, and I’d bet a cool million it involved partnering with the ghost of the Order operative and taking down the spell that held us all mute and kept me from being able to use my magic the way I’d been trained to.

  I felt Red’s eyes on me, the brush of them on my skin raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. He looked at me, and he saw into me. He knew the situation, and he understood the stakes.

  A soul-deep fear seized my heart. This time, I couldn’t pry its fingers away. I couldn’t shove it behind some locked door in the recesses of my mind and pretend it didn’t exist. I could see only one way forward, and it was everything I’d run from when I’d left the Order.

  What if the only way to stop the Angel from using Faith for his own ends, however bloody and violent they might be, was to kill her? What if I’d saved her in the first place—hoping to give her the kind of life I’d never had, the kind of life she deserved to have—only to take it away?

  Even the thought burned my heart, seared my soul.

  Could I do it if I had to? Could I look my girl in the eye and end her?

  Surely the Angel would kill me if I did, but what would that matter? If I had to die, so be it. But Faith?

  The Angel followed my thoughts and feelings as they bloomed inside me. A line formed in the middle of his forehead—Faith’s forehead—as he considered the lengths I might go to.

  We have different ideas about what it means to save someone, I said.

  He made no reply.

  He also made no move to stop Red and the others from unwinding the spells that hindered us. He could’ve. He was big enough and powerful enough to focus on more than one thing at a time. I ran through the possible reasons why.

  Nothing that Red and the kids could do would make a difference to the Angel’s immediate plans. He didn’t care about anything except making Faith his permanent host, or controlling the Awakened and Faith, or eliminating the Awakened and Faith.

  I’d wounded the Angel back at the house. Maybe the wound drained his magic and his ability to act against multiple threats.

  Either of those made a certain kind of battlefield sense. I understood them because I’d experienced similar situations. In each case, I could anticipate the Angel’s strategy and counter his thinking, his actions. Even if I had no chance at all of coming out on top in the end, I could do a hell of a lot of damage. Go down swinging. Hurt him in ways that he couldn’t imagine. And if I got lucky, hurt him permanently.

  That brought a slick, determined grin to my face.

  The grin faded because those lines of thought, while easy to understand, and the questions they raised, were the wrong ones.

  One more possible reason for the Angel’s actions emerged, one I didn’t understand. The Angel feared me. It feared what I would do. And it wasn’t because I’d rather see Faith dead than used as the Angel’s host. The Angel worried about me for another reason.

  He’d taken notice of me all those years ago. He’d tracked me through my time with the Order, always noting how I’d changed, where I was, what I did. He’d pleaded reconnaissance back at the house—the need to know his enemies, to understand our magic. He’d jumped into my mind, intending to overpower me, and I’d played right into his hands, believing he meant to possess me.

  That hadn’t been his plan at all. He’d tried in that moment—and failed—to kill me.

  How had I hurt him? How had I managed to shove him out of my mind? Those were the right questions. Could I have hurt him worse? How? Those were the important questions.

  The pressure in the room shifted. My ears popped, and something unlocked inside of my throat. Whatever Red and Corey and Ben had done, it seemed to have worked.

  I tried my out-loud voice. My words came out in full force, echoing against the concrete walls. “I won’t let you do this to Faith,” I said.

  The Angel answered inside of my mind, unwilling to let go of the hold I’d given him. N
othing I’ve said, nothing I’ve shown you, has made a difference.

  I held his gaze, allowing my answer to show clear in my eyes and on my face. My defiance. My rejection.

  There’s one more thing, he said.

  I expected him to tell me. Instead, he overwhelmed me with his presence, overpowering any ability I might’ve had to fight him.

  The Angel took my consciousness, my magic, in his fist and dragged it down into the depths of my memory. He barreled through the pieces of my victims that made up who I had become and shattered them like glass. He dragged me down corridors darkened by years, my shoes scraping against the stone floors, and buried under the rubble-strewn wreckage of the little girl I had been once.

  That little girl hid behind a steel door welded to its frame. She hadn’t seen the light of day in long, long years.

  The Angel battered down the door with his black-feathered wings. He ripped it from its hinges, the metal screaming as it tore. He crushed it in his hands and threw it down, the clang of metal on the stone floor so loud, it shook me to the core.

  I tried to run. The Angel held me by the scruff of the neck and refused to let me go.

  I tried to turn away. The Angel held my head in place and kept my eyes open by the force of its will.

  I stared into the eyes of the one thing I’d never been able to face. My one weakness. The one thing that could destroy me.

  Chapter 11

  THE LITTLE GIRL stood in the doorway, looking at me with wide doe eyes. Her face was ghostly pale, her long, black hair pulled into a painfully tight braid that flowed to her waist. She wore a pink pajama tank splashed with red hearts and little pink shorts. Finger-shaped bruises striped her skinny arms. Her bare feet shrank from the cold stone floor of the dark room where she’d lived all these years. She breathed deep of air that smelled of dust and cobwebs, lifting her arms to balance the two slow steps backward that she took at the sight of me.

  She whispered a question. The words reverberated off the stone walls.

  Who are you?