Awakening

by Melainie Nilles

  AWAKENING

  Daemon Dark

  Part 1 of 4

  Lilly has been marked for death by daemons from a hidden world, a place known as the Shadow Realm. Within her has awakened the spirit of their enemy, one of the luriel. Such beings are myths to her, but one man is out to prove that they exist. The daemon slayer, Mychel, will introduce her to a world of shadows and light hiding beyond the comfort of science and technology, where ancient myths are real and an eternal war rages on, a war in which she has now been conscripted to fight.

  When her life is turned upside down by forces out of her control, Lilly must decide who to trust...

  AWAKENING

  Shadow Realm Saga Book 1

  Part 1: Daemon Dark

  By Melanie Nilles

  Awakening is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters, names, places, or incidents to reality is pure coincidence.

  Awakening

  E-book Copyright © 2015 by Melanie Nilles

  Cover Art by Melanie Nilles

  Published by Prairie Star Publishing; Bismarck, North Dakota. Smashwords edition.

  All Rights Reserved.

  For information, contact Melanie Nilles at melanie_nilles@yahoo.com or check www.melanienilles.com for updates.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ________________________

  Part 1:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  Part 2

  Coming soon!

  Chapter 1

  Lilly swiped her badge and pushed aside the glass door into the lobby of the downtown SRIS center, anxious for this vacation.

  Her quickening steps tapped over the tiled floor, echoing in the high ceiling of the bright entrance hall lit by the massive chandelier hanging precariously overhead. Before her, beyond the glass surrounding the lobby, the orange sun lighting up the sky framed the peaks of tall buildings. The freedom of the outside world should have greeted her like an old friend, but something wasn't right. Darker than the shadows of buildings, another shadow had fallen over Porton. This was something intangible, something cold and malevolent.

  A shiver of fear raced through her, a fear of something unknown. Something dark and foreboding slithered through her, making her wrap her arms around herself in an instinct of defense.

  Ridiculous. She was imagining things. She was an adult now, not a child with unwarranted fears. Her discovery of the possible makings of a storm on Maeras, the smallest moon of their dear Ahlias, had put her on edge. Maybe she should go back and tell them to prepare for something worse than a C-1 weather pattern.

  No. Sadir had taken over. She had shown him her data. He would draw his own conclusions.

  Her shift was done. Time to let others take over. They could decide if the data indicated something worse.

  Her apprehension must have come from the reminder that she would be alone for an 8-day cycle.

  "Lilly?"

  She blinked away the thoughts and turned to the concerned look on the front desk guard.

  "I'm all right," she said and forced a smile. She was not all right, but she didn't want Kory to think she was crazy.

  Something glowed in the shadows beneath him.

  "You don't look all right. Want me to call an escort?"

  "No thanks. I should—I should be fine." She'd been doing this for five years with SRIS, since finishing her studies. Why should this day be any different?

  But she couldn't shake the dread that had taken hold. It wrapped her in a cocoon of darkness, a darkness inside rather than out. She couldn't escape by stepping into light.

  Absurdity! That's what it was. She had nothing to fear, except the normal city life.

  "All right." Kory gave her a sad look, as if he'd wanted to play the hero just once—front desk guard must have been a tedious job, except for watching the protestors who occasionally gathered outside, as they had today. Maybe that was the reason for her concern.

  Or it was the fear of going out into that world alone.

  She didn't have a choice if she hoped to get home.

  Lilly stepped out of the doors of Jemini Tower in the Porton business district into what should have been the freedom of a vacation but for her was a prison of loneliness. Working kept her from feeling the sting of rejection still blistering within her heart since the breakup with Rian barely two cycles ago, fifteen days too fresh for her to heal.

  Like her, a large outpouring of office workers in Porton headed home at this time. They crowded the sidewalks, flowing like rivers along the channels of bikes and electric carts in the street beneath the lev-rail track for the regular five-car trains zipping from one end of the city to another and to the outer districts. Even the skyways connecting buildings over the streets were crowded.

  She had ten minutes to reach the midtown station if she didn't want to wait for the next train to Noren City.

  Hoping to avoid the most recent protest of the moon bases, she pulled the hood of her jacket over her head of dark brown hair with the purple streak, her defiant streak, as Rian used to call it.

  Her heart choked to think of him, threatening to pull her into the dark despair of grief. She had to accept that he'd left and she couldn't change matters. That's all there was too it.

  Fighting the tug at her heart, she forced her feet onward past the handful of people gathered around a podium on which a speaker in a red hat stood and spouted his inflammatory oratory.

  "Traitor! Enemy to the human race! You destroy your own kind by supporting the corruption of a tyranny built on the backs of the poor!" The man with the red hat stood on his pedestal and shouted through his megaphone.

  Here it went again. She and the others who had departed Jemini Towers at that time were his targets. When would they learn that their world needed those resources?

  When a bull cracked its skull, she thought in a feeble attempt to lighten her mood. There was one good thing about the protests—occupying her attention from the ache that grew worse when she couldn't engross herself completely the way she could at her job on the twenty-first floor.

  The world had come together to form the Ahlias United Space Command with numerous corporations contracted, including her employer, to evaluate the data sent by the stations and determine how best to direct service between them and the homeworld of Ahlias. It had united their world but some sought to break that apart.

  The fools. If they knew how valuable the resources were, they would shut up once and for all. Space exploration offered hope for a brighter future, unlike the old cultures made irrelevant in the Scientific Reformation two hundred years ago, when superstition and religion fell by the wayside for the sake of bettering everyone through the technology developed by their scientific knowledge and advancements.

  And yet, some things never changed. Someone always had to protest change. If he had his way, the man in the red hat would have them all living in the elder days.

  They had the same rights to their opinions as anyone, but those opinions were backwards. And this group didn't seem as willing to abide the terms of the standard license to protest.

  The risk that they would take the matter too far weighed on her mind. Lilly ducked through the crowds, wishing she could disappear and doing her best to blend in. The words of the speaker trailed after her. Whether he could still see her or not among the throngs of people hurrying home after a hard day of work was irrelevant. The air about her thickened into a miasma of fury that penetrated her sense of security with the unspoken threat.

  She shivered and looked about, but peopl
e seemed to not notice her, being more intent on reaching their destinations than noticing the man in the red hat. However, the darkness inside her grew with each step, feeling like the eyes and words of the speaker condemned her. She scanned the streets, but no one made eye contact, nor did any threats jump out. People had their own concerns.

  Nevertheless, her pulse raced. Her breathing quickened. She felt like something awful was ready to happen, the same feeling that had haunted her before leaving work.

  But no one seemed to care about her.

  No.

  She looked again.

  One man met her eyes and quickly looked away. His short, sandy-blonde hair matching his fair complexion stood out from the majority of people like her. She gulped, every instinct in her screaming to run. Instead, not wanting to attract any more attention, she tried to hurry without running and stayed with the flow of the people to the small lev-rail station in the hopes of leaving him far behind.

  It might be coincidence that he followed, but if the man was one of the protestors and decided he didn't like her...

  A cold dread prickled under her skin. She refused to be a statistic.

  Lilly shoved past several people, squeezing around many who refused to budge and gave her dirty looks.

  Glancing back, she saw that the man in the trench coat pressed through the crowds after her. That confirmed it. Damn! Why her? Why now?

  Where were the Peacekeepers with their zero tolerance for crime?

  She scanned the various hues of clothing for the dark blue of a Peacekeeper uniform and saw their hoverjet thirty feet above the crowds at the far end of the city block, too far to reach at the pace the stranger made to her, and they didn't seem to show any interest in her predicament. They were no use in her case.

  Hiding would be her best bet.

  Lilly ducked down between people and stayed low while moving in the direction of a dark gap between skyscrapers. Amid the pounding of her pulse in her ears, she reached the shadowy gap and slid along the cold wall and froze, trying to make herself unnoticed in the shadows. She hoped the man hadn't seen her. Once he moved on, she would sneak out and hopefully reach the next block by the time the lev-rail stopped.

  A voice in her head said this was ridiculous, that she was being paranoid and that no one else seemed bothered. She silenced it with the reason that she would rather be cautious than dead.

  She looked up at the chronometer above the open station in the distance and the estimated time before each train—about seven minutes before the next arrived. That time of day, a five-car train passed through every ten minutes. She didn't want to wait any longer than necessary, especially with someone following her.

  Her blood turned cold and something touched her shoulder with icy fingers.

  Lilly spun, expecting someone to grab her. Instead, only the shadows met her eyes. "Who's there?" she whispered, searching desperately within the inky black.

  Movement shimmered in the depths of the shadows too deep for dusk. Her heart leapt from her chest to flee on its own back to the security of the after-work crowds.

  The scuff of a step on the brick tiles behind startled her into whirling. The man who had followed her glared menacingly and her breath caught. With the sun to his back, shadows darkened his features. A long, brown leather coat hung loose about his thighs.

  "Wh—Wh—Who are you?"

  He stalked towards her and pulled a sword from a sheath beneath his longcoat. Lilly backed away. "Don't come any closer! I'll defend myself."

  "Get back," he growled, lifting the sword into a position to strike, calling her bluff to defend herself.

  Something cold touched her back and she whirled, realizing too late that she turned her back to the man.

  He rushed her.

  He missed her and lunged past, a rising glow shimmering from the silver blade. Of all the luck! Without looking back, Lilly raced from the darkness to the crowded walkway. A flare of light behind her made people stop and look. She didn't have time to stare. Instead, she shoved through the tight crowds.

  The three-car train whistled.

  No! The doors hissed shut before she could reach it.

  No. No. No.

  Lilly caught her breath at the edge of the train platform at the downtown station and watched it ease from the waiting citizens. Once clear, it whooshed down the tracks. The next wouldn't be there for ten minutes.

  Her heart pounding in her chest, she looked back.

  The man in the long coat pushed through the crowds towards her, a determined look on his face.

  Hide! Her instincts screamed the word.

  Where?

  Skyscrapers surrounded her, except for the open concrete park with its arching walkways and dancing fountains down the street. Crowds of people eager to leave the city proper for their tenements sat on benches or waited in a tight cluster at the boarding platform. Still others flowed like a slow river up and down the streets surrounded by ominous towers of metal and glass glaring shades of orange and red evening light.

  She couldn't escape.

  Or maybe she could. The humble two-story building with its slanted roof and massive windows with the depiction of a sun and rays on the upper floor gleamed yellow in the evening sun between skyscrapers. It could have been transplanted from history.

  She had almost missed the temple and had to wonder how long it had been there. She hadn't paid it any attention in the years she'd been working at Jemini Tower, but it was somewhat out of the way and she had always been focused on her walk to and from the station. By the looks of bricks of various shades that made up the walls, the old temple was ancient and had been repaired several times in its apparently long history. Even the window flourishes hinted of another time.

  The sign outside the temple said it was always open for worship. Perfect, if she could avoid being spotted by the man now—

  She checked his progress but he seemed to have lost her and looked elsewhere.

  Seeing her chance, she pushed past people, bumping a woman with a child. "Sorry," she muttered and hurried past. Being bumped by her wasn't hardly bad compared to her being pursued by a man ready to skewer her with a sword.

  A quick peek revealed the top of the man's head, but he remained in the same place, still searching.

  She kept her head beneath the people around her and hurried through the double doors of the temple. Once inside, she shoved the doors closed with a thump that echoed through the high-ceilinged chamber and made her wince. So much for subtlety.

  The light through the upper windows shone on the paintings above the alter at the front. Stone columns rose along the right side, supporting a balcony.

  Lilly made her way through wooden benches arched from the front in concentric rings like waves from the disturbance of a rock tossed into water. Each light step she took echoed a soft scrape within the acoustics of the sanctuary.

  "Hello?" Her small voice boomed in the emptiness.

  A door scraped open behind the stone alter, and a young man stepped out in simple, earthy cleric robes from a bygone era. It took her by surprise and she had to look back at the door and its locking mechanism to be sure she hadn't stepped back in time.

  "Uh…Your sign said you were welcome to worshipers any time."

  "Yes. Please. Come in." He stopped several steps away, an eager smile on his face. "What is it you seek? The servants of the Gods are always listening."

  "Hide me."

  The smile faltered. "Excuse me?"

  Lilly hurried to him, feeling that she could trust him, needing to trust him in her desperation. "There's a man with a sword. He attacked me and I…I missed the train. I need to hide until the next train."

  The young man's shoulders relaxed and his gentle smile returned. "All are welcome in the temple of the Gods. This is hallowed ground." His arm swept about the sanctuary with its depictions of glowing men and women in white robes reaching from the sky in blessing. Some illustrations presented these beings spearing terrible monsters.
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  Lilly shuddered and peered back at the door. Hallowed ground meant nothing to a man with a sword who hated anyone who worked for one of the AUSC contractors. "Please. I just need to hide for a while." Surely the acolyte understood that to delay could be fatal.

  The young man gave her a critical look. "You didn't come as a believer to worship."

  "No!" Was he deaf? Had he heard her plea? "I came in here to hide. I need your help." Mythological gods couldn't help her from a man with a sword.

  His face dropped into a frown.

  "The Gods do not turn away their children." The voice boomed from above.

  Lilly turned and looked up at the stern face with the sagged cheeks of age above somewhat more elaborate robes than the boy's.

  "Bring her quickly, Erim."

  The boy looked from the old man to her, an expression of hesitation on his face.

  "Quickly. To the door beneath me." The old man waved them over.

  Lilly looked into the shadows beneath the balcony and saw a door hiding there. Anxious to get out of the open, she rushed from the useless boy and around the benches. She pulled open the door to a dark stairway bending up and around to a light. A moment later, that light disappeared.

  "This way," a disembodied voice hissed from somewhere above, the elder priest's voice.

  Lilly hurried up to meet him and stopped at the corner landing, where he stood.

  His scornful gaze lifted past her. "Erim, return to your duties. You saw no one."

  "Yes, Diviner." The boy bowed his head and hurried down the stairs, the padding of his steps fading until the door clicked.

  "Now," the old man said in a low voice. "Tell me about the man with the sword."

  "You heard." Then at least she didn't have to repeat herself.