Prism (Awakened Chronicles Book 3)

by Harley Austin

  “I guess.”

  “And you’re not there officiating?” he smirked.

  “Can it, Parker, I got it.”

  “Better late than never.” Parker sat down and grabbed an MRE from one of the backpacks.

  Wynn had already heated his and was eating slowly. “Tell me something, Parker; if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.” Winter popped open the plastic of the meal.

  “When did you know?”

  “That I was a newblood?”

  “That you were gay.”

  “Gay? I’m not gay.”

  Wynn scoffed. “Dude you’re sleeping with another guy. You’re gay.”

  “We’re both bi.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Brayden’s the first guy I ever touched. Ever wanted to touch actually.”

  “Really? You two just met like a month or two ago, right?”

  “About that, yea.”

  “You’re in your thirties and neither of you ever slept with another guy?”

  “Nope. Late bloomers I guess. I mean, I looked at other guys. Especially in the gym, but, that’s all I ever did.”

  “Other guys ever hit on you?”

  “All the time. I guess I was too chicken to actually want to say ‘yes’. You’ll think this sounds shallow, but, I wasn’t attracted to any of them like I was to Bray. Or even you.”

  “Not. Attracted to you, Parker.”

  “Are.”

  “You’re such a dick.”

  “So are you.”

  Wynn smirked.

  Parker began heating his spaghetti and meatballs tin against the crystal fire Wynn had built. The stuff wasn’t half bad, actually.

  “You could just have O’Brien or Lear awaken you.”

  “I already asked—both of them.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s a conspiracy now. They both said no. They want you awakening me.”

  “Nice. Never argue with a woman, especially two teamed up against you.”

  “One’s a goddess already.”

  “The other’s an alien.”

  “I am so fucked.” Wynn grinned.

  “No yet you’re not.” Parker snarked.

  “Seriously, Parker, I don’t want you. Let’s just share blood and be done with it.”

  “Did the girls tell you why I didn’t let you cut yourself?”

  “They told me. You had a premonition or something.”

  “It was pretty vivid, Dade. It was a little scary actually, watching you get mowed down. I don’t want to drag you into that.”

  “If what you saw was actually a premonition, then it’s already going to happen. There’s nothing you or I or anyone can do to stop it. What you saw will happen. You can’t change the future.”

  “Maybe I can.”

  “Or maybe you do, but all you do is send me to hell anyway. At some point, someone awakens me; if it’s not you then it will probably be some lesser god.”

  “Lesser god?” Parker grinned. “Do I detect a compliment in there somewhere?”

  Wynn grinned not looking at him. “Maybe.”

  “Let me think about it, Dade. I want you awakened. It’s your birthright. I just, need to think about it first.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Besides, someone has to stick around and watch these two sleep.” He pointed to both Brayden and Romero laying quietly on their sleeping bags, still in their awakening comas.

  “Her irises are like Lear’s,” Parker smiled.

  Wynn nodded. “I looked. Whoever heard of a Latino with purple eyes?”

  “I’m sure it means something.”

  Wynn set down his food. “Parker. Be honest with me.”

  “I always am, Dade.”

  He nodded. “Do you think, Cierra and I—? I mean we’re both kind of type-A. Do you think it would work?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yea.”

  “Brutally honest?”

  “That bad, huh?” Wynn frowned and picked his food back up.

  “To be brutally honest, I think you need to start thinking like a god instead of a Human. I think you need to fuck the woman senseless and knock her up with as many newbloods as her uterus can handle. And then raise decent children so the gods of this world don’t go extinct. That’s what I think. To be brutally honest.”

  Wynn breathed a smile shaking his head at Parker.

  52

  T hunder sounding in the distance jarred everyone from an early morning sleep on the other side of the dam. Parker and O’Brien were alert first and quickly to their feet.

  “What was that?” O’Brien alarmed. She watched as Parker’s eyes illuminated as his mind reached out beyond their side of the dam and to the other side.

  “Some kind of new rifle. Hundreds of them. They’re chipping away at it. They’re shattering it from the other side.”

  “How long before they break through?” O’Brien asked.

  “Probably not long,” Lear was getting to her feet.

  “Maybe half an hour,” Parker watch the thunderous rounds decimate huge parts of the mammoth pillars. “Maybe not that long.”

  “Everyone, pack up,” Wynn began gathering their things into back packs. “The gods will carry the others. Let’s move it, people!”

  Bryn raised her brow to Parker.

  He smiled at her. “You heard the man, O’Brien,” he pointed to Romero, “Move your ass!”

  The group moved quickly through the crystalline forest along the shores of the streams with the thunder booming more and more loudly in the distance, even though they were moving further and further away from the dam.

  “We need to find higher ground,” Tyler alarmed. “If the dam goes it’s going to spill an entire lake into the forest. Some of this silica is sharp. If we get caught in the flow we’ll be cut to pieces.”

  “No doubt,” Lear agreed. “We need a shelter.”

  “We need another dam!” O’Brien quipped moving with a sleeping Romero over her shoulder.

  “No time to grow another dam,” Wynn countered. “The last one took hours. We have maybe minutes.”

  He watched as the streams began rising out of their streambeds. “Make that seconds—”

  All of them turned around to see the mammoth crystalline wall shatter into shards as huge spills of water gushed from behind it.

  “Too late—” Tyler breathed.

  “Well that didn’t exactly go as expected,” the lead agent handed his binoculars to his second in command. “I guess we cracked more than just the top part of the structure.”

  Both watched the shore of the underground lake receding quickly, revealing glistening wet crystalline flora from beneath the water.

  “They won’t survive that if they didn’t find any high ground. That tsunami isn’t going to stop.”

  “Better prepare for the worst, Lieutenant,” the Commander scowled.

  The others watched as Lear worked quickly, breaking off flower petals and mixing other pieces of stone with new shards she’d shattered from other formations. They moved to higher ground within a small cluster of great crystal as the waters rose all around them; but Lear was already seeding the great crystals with her crushed powders and other shard stones. The base of the crystals scintillated with color as new crystal began growing quickly from the bigger ones around them. It didn’t take but minutes for the new crystals to grow up around them as the waters rose, sealing them into a cocoon of color not unlike many of the other strange formations within the forest. The shelter leaked profusely as the torrent of waters washed around and over them, but inside all was quiet, except for dripping water.

  “You like this whole Beaver thing, don’t you?” Parker quipped, a smile growing across his face. “First the dam and now a den?”

  “You didn’t appear to have any better ideas—” She’d just saved all of them, again.

  “Not at the moment.” Parker laid Brayden down in the silica sands next to where O’Brien had just put Romero.


  O’Brien looked around the maybe twenty-foot diameter crystalline cocoon Lear had sealed them into. “How much air do you think is in here?”

  “As bad as this thing is leaking?” Tyler quipped, “once the water recedes we should be fine.”

  “I’m not worried about the air,” Wynn added. “We’re going to be surrounded. This shelter leaves us sitting ducks.”

  “That’s a neat trick,” the Commander watched the drone video feed of the crystalline dome growing with all kinds of colored crystals around them until the waters rose and flowed over and above it. “Mark that location, Lieutenant. As soon as the flood waters ebb, I want it surrounded with enough people and hardware to take out a god.”

  53

  T heir shelter had stopped leaking hours ago. They’d been saved by the quick thinking of Lear’s knowledge of the crystals, but Parker with his clairvoyant mind and O’Brien with her golden wand could see and feel hundreds that had gathered all around them.

  “It’s not looking good out there, is it?” Wynn could hear muffled sounds of movement now and then from outside their cocoon.

  “No, it’s not unfortunately. They’ve got an entire army out there and those weapons,” Parker shook his head, “they look like the ones I saw in my vision with you. Those things weren’t shooting bullets, I’ll tell you that.”

  “It’s ion plasma,” Lear chimed in. “It’s ancient, a little crude, but nonetheless effective against flesh and blood.”

  “What about crystal igloos?” Wynn asked.

  “The crystals diffuse the ion pattern and dissipate their heat too quickly. It’s not an effective tool for cutting the mineral.”

  “Those rifles they used on the dam worked well enough,” Tyler added. “Those things will crack us open like an egg.”

  Lear nodded.

  Brayden groaned. And then yawned.

  All eyes were on him as he stretched. In a flash Parker was kneeling beside him, watching him closely. For the past couple of days, Parker had been watching him change as he awakened. His clothing had filled out hugely. So had other parts of him. Brayden’s build was easily the size of Wynn’s now, packaging included, maybe bigger.

  “Winter—” Brayden sat up onto his elbows, his feelings immediately mingling with Parker’s. Within moments of their empathic connection Brayden knew everything that had happened during his sleep.

  “Your sires don’t sleep long, Parker,” O’Brien quipped, touching Brayden with her hand and mingling her empathy with his. The new god was hunky, gorgeous and even more attractive now that he’d been awakened.

  Parker stepped between O’Brien and Brayden, breaking her touch connection with the guy. “Uh-uh,” he smirked at her lifting her hands away from him. “Hands off the merchandise. He’s mine.”

  “I’ll fight you for him—” she quipped.

  Brayden now stepped between the two of them, entering their playful banter. “Maybe I want both of you—”

  “Jesus, you guys,” Wynn groused, “We’re surrounded by people who want us dead and you’re scheduling fucking date night?!”

  “What else do you do on date night?” Parker asked.

  “OHHH! Good God!” Wynn fumed while Tyler couldn’t hold back a chuckle. The new gods were funny.

  “O’BRIEN. PARKER. WYNN. WE KNOW YOUR’RE IN THERE—” the lead agent spoke through a small megaphone.

  “Jesus,” Parker frowned. “Loud much? Don’t these guys know we’re right here?”

  “WE’RE GIVING YOU THREE MINUTES TO COME OUT OF THERE.”

  “Can we get out of here in three minutes?” Parker asked Lear.

  She was shaking her head. “I was just trying to get us in. I didn’t plan for getting us out.”

  “Parker, you have to do something,” Wynn leveled.

  “Like what?”

  “You’re the god, dude. Figure it out.”

  “He’s right, Winter.” O’Brien agreed. “I knocked out four of them at range with this,” she showed him her golden crystal wand. “There’s no telling what you might be able to do with it.”

  “Do? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. You’ve had practice with all this being a goddess business—I haven’t.”

  “You just put them to sleep.”

  “All of them?”

  “How many can you feel?” she asked.

  “All of them.”

  “Then as many as you can feel.”

  “I’ve never done this before. What if I hurt someone?”

  “Then fucking hurt them, they’re gonna kill us!” Wynn glared.

  O’Brien ignored him. “Just reach out as far as you can and touch their minds, gently. Put them all to sleep.”

  Parker nodded. His eyes shimmered and then glowed brighter and brighter, until he could feel all of them. Thousands. He touched them. Their minds. All of them. All at once.

  Something like a shimmering wave blasted out from his mind. Like its own tsunami, it washed over the troops that had gathered surrounding them. The wave continued to expand, dropping soldiers to the ground; their bodies unmoving, their eyes still wide open. The wave spread through the canyon-like expanse of the cavern for miles through more camps, dropping personnel and soldiers.

  Fifty miles away at the frigid entrance of the cave, soldiers saw the expanding light, and fell unconscious into the snow.

  Parker steadied himself from some dizziness looking around their shelter. Lear, Wynn, and Tyler were unconscious on the sandy floor of their cocoon. Only O’Brien and Brayden were standing. The gods had apparently not been all that affected by the sudden wave that had spread out from his mind.

  “Nice going, buddy,” Brayden quipped with a half grin. “Outside of the shelter would have been better?”

  “Hey you do it next time.” Parker frowned.

  Their cocoon vibrated softly, then hummed with an increasing vibration. It cracked and fissured as if some powerful stresses were being applied from somewhere within; then suddenly the crystal cocoon exploded into a shower of shards and crystalline rocks that flew in all directions away from them. O’Brien and Parker both looked at Brayden.

  “That’s was interesting,” Parker picked up the still sleeping Wynn and a backpack as the others gathered the rest of their people and belongings.

  “I thought it was clever,” Brayden easily lifted Tyler and Romero from the sands, one under each arm. They headed out of what was left of their cocoon. Stepping around unconscious bodies they moved down, deeper into the cavern.

  The two men watched on the screen as the three moved out of the view of the cameras.

  “I now see what you mean, Brad.” Rigel’s British sounded concerned. “My apologies.”

  “None needed.”

  “These new gods,” Rigel shook his head. “They appear to grow more and more powerful with each successive generation. Astonishing.”

  “We won’t be able to handle them with conventional methods.”

  “Oh, I agree. I completely concur. They’re far too dangerous. This is no longer a recovery mission. Terminate them. All of them. Immediately.”

  Brad smiled. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  54

  W ynn’s head was still pounding with a nasty headache after an hour, but at least it wasn’t the migraine he’d woke up with.

  They’d moved into an even larger cavern, so large none of them could see the other side. The forest had grown taller with massive flora and a lot more kinds of crystalline foliage than what the caverns before them had spawned.

  “That was nice work, Parker.” Wynn walked beside him. “Except for the headache. I’ll pass on that next time.” Wynn smiled at him.

  “They’re not going to stop following us, are they?” Tyler asked.

  “No, they won’t,” O’Brien assured.

  “Hey, guys,” Brayden stopped with Romero cradled in his arms, “I think the Brazilian’s waking up.”

  “Already?” O’Brien looked the most surprised.


  Everyone gathered around.

  Romero opened her eyes, looking at grinning faces. “Why is everyone smiling at me?” her Portuguese fluent.

  “Huh?” Parker looked up a Brayden. “She spoke the language occasionally, but not usually in front of all of them.”

  “What’s your name?” Lear asked in Romero in her native tongue.

  “Cierra Romero—what’s yours?”

  Lear lifted her brow, and then looked at the others. “She’s had some memory loss.”

  “Memory loss?” Wynn had never heard of anyone losing their memory awakening.

  “It happens sometimes,” O’Brien assured, “while someone’s awakening.”

  “Awakening?” Romero asked. “Is that what happened to me?”

  Brayden nodded, still holding her. “You’re a goddess now.” Brayden felt her feelings enter his as both mingled theirs together.

  “You know me?” she looked into Brayden’s eyes.

  He nodded.

  “How do I not know you? Because I’d definitely remember you,” she smiled her feelings into his and giving him the emotional equivalent of a warm hug. He returned her affection.

  “Can you stand?” Brayden asked.

  “Do I need to?” she offered him a coy smile.

  “I can carry you all day if you like,” Brayden flirted.

  “Cierra! Do you recognize any of us?” Tyler asked.

  She looked around at the concerned faces. Two girls and three other guys. Then shook her head. “I was on my way to Miami to meet my family.”

  “But you know what it means to be awakened—” Lear offered.

  “Of course.”

  Brayden set her onto her feet. But she didn’t let go of him, her arm stayed securely wrapped around his waist, holding him close to herself.

  “Cierra, it looks like you have some memory loss. We’re all friends.” O’Brien offered. “You should know all of us.”