Awaken: Book 1 of the Dark Paradise Trilogy

by Isadora Brown

  She was outside her house—what was left of it. The fire was still raging, but all Reese could focus on were the charred bodies of her family as they lied in a heap just off to the side.

  From then on, it was a blur. She thought she screamed, but she couldn’t be sure. Certainly she wanted to collapse—her legs were too strained to carry her weight—but something urged her forward. She needed to touch their bodies, make certain they were dead.

  They couldn’t be dead.

  Just as she was about to spring forward however, someone intercepted her by enveloping her small frame in his strong arms. He smelled of burned pine, spice, and something else, something gritty but poignant.

  “They’re gone, Reese,” he told her, his voice a low rattling sound that hinted at a European upbringing. She knew him, but the way he said her name was new, as though it wasn’t a common occurrence for him to address her as such. “They’re gone.”

  Reese blinked and the vision disappeared. The burning sound of the alarm refused to give her any time to process what she had seen, and after shoving her mascara into her purse, rushed out of the bathroom. Andie should be back from her rendezvous with Jack—Reese couldn’t not notice Jack’s tall, broad stature with Andie’s petite curvy one as they headed out of the lobby together—and maybe it would be easier to find Keirah outside rather than in.

  She didn’t expect Gabe to block her from heading out of the exit. Reese knit her brow together as she took a step back, not wanting to even breathe in the same air as he did. He was wearing a simple white collared shirt and dark jeans, completely ignoring the party’s theme. His hair was slicked back, emphasizing his cold blue eyes and the flawlessness of his face.

  “I’ve been looking for you.” His voice was soft but cutting. He took a step toward her as though he knew she wouldn’t come any closer to him. His face revealed nothing about his thoughts, but she picked up on his tone and knew he wasn’t happy.

  “Gabe,” she said, immediately cautious. “What do you want? We need to leave the building.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Not until we talk. It’s odd that this is the first time we’re meeting tonight, especially after what might happen to your father.”

  Reese’s mouth dropped open, ready to retort something scathing when she stopped herself. This wasn’t something she could roll her eyes at and not take seriously. This involved her father and his job, and as a result, the future of her family.

  “I’m glad to see you’re as smart as everyone says you are,” he said, a subtle smirk tilting his lips up.

  “Can we talk outside?” she asked through gritted teeth. After her vision, she didn’t want to take any chances with fire.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t for general consumption. You see, you’re a Seer. My Seer.”

  Reese’s brow furrowed. “What?” she asked, trying to make sense of what he was saying but falling short.

  “Surely you know what a Seer is,” he said. “Someone who has visions of the future.”

  “A psychic?”

  Gabe scoffed. “Seers are much more important than psychics.” He said the last word with disdain. “You were worshipped in your time. Loved. Adored. Respected. Admired. And the man or woman you gave yourself to was the most powerful person on Earth at the time.”

  She clenched her jaw, her ears screaming that now would be a good time to get out of the building if she didn’t want to go deaf. “You’re drunk,” she said with a roll of her eyes. She planned to brush past him, slip by him without a second glance in order to get around him, but he stopped her by grabbing her arm and snapping her to him.

  “Actually, I’m not,” he hissed down at her.

  Reese blinked. He was squeezing her skin—she knew she’d have bruises tomorrow morning—but she was too transfixed by his face to notice. He looked nothing short of furious, but more than that, he looked ugly.

  So he wasn’t perfect.

  “Let go of me,” she said when she had a better handle of her senses. “You’re hurting me.” She tried to yank away from him but his grip on her only tightened.

  “I’m not finished,” he told her.

  “I think you are, Gabe.”

  The unfamiliar voice caused both Gabe and Reese to pause and turn so they faced the stranger. He was almost half a foot taller than Gabe, putting him at a comfortable six feet six, which meant he was over a foot taller than she was and his frame was more broad. There was something about him that told Reese not to count him out. He had a mess of dark brown hair that caressed the folded collar of his shirt, lip-length bangs parted down the middle that strategically hid the majority of his face, especially his eyes. As such, Reese couldn’t make out the color of his irises, but they were a cross between mud and rain. The lower half of his face was covered in scruff and he didn’t look older than twenty-three at the most. His nose upturned and pointed at the end and his lips looked as though they were the softest part of his body.

  His outfit was even more ridiculous than Gabe’s. He was wearing an off-white collared shirt straight out of the Medieval Ages tainted brown, probably from dirt, that dipped to the middle of his chest underneath a heavy leather jacket that looked as though he made it himself. He was wearing a brown vest with its collar turned down buttoned across his stomach. A gold pocket watch hung from one of his belt buckles.. It was the only thing that looked shiny and new on his person. His slacks fit but a tad loose, matched the color of his vest, and revealed a pair of long legs. The stitching on his clothing was consistent which meant he probably made his entire outfit himself. The material looked strong, durable, and could probably survive the elements.

  In essence, he looked like a man who lived in the woods or something similar. Reese wasn’t sure if she would call him hot with how unkempt and filthy he looked, but he was definitely intriguing.

  “Ollo,” Gabe said, his voice dry. “I’m surprised that you’re standing and awake rather than passed out on someone’s floor.” A pause, as though Gabe was allowing the man some time to take his insult. Then, sardonically, “What are you doing here?”

  “I think you know why I’m here,” he drawled. There was a hint of an accent but it was too subtle for Reese to be sure.

  She didn’t think it was possible, but Gabe’s grip on her increased and he pulled her closer to him. She had to bite the inside of her bottom lip to keep from whimpering. Gabe’s eyes flashed at Ollo, a warning. “I found her first,” he said in little more than a whisper. Even with the alarm going off, Reese heard him crystal clear. “She’s mine. She was always supposed to be mine.”

  “I’ve been around a lot longer than you think,” Ollo said.

  The conversation made no sense to Reese, but Gabe and this guy seemed to know exactly what they were talking about.

  “I’m nobody’s, actually.” She hadn’t meant to say anything, but Reese was sick and tired of being talked about as though she wasn’t in the room with them. “I’m not yours and I don’t even know you.” She locked eyes with Ollo through his dark tresses, and saw that her first guess was right; his eyes were a murky brown mixed with a clear blue. Odd.

  “Darl, shut your mouth for a bit,” Ollo said without looking at her. “I’m trying to save you here.”

  Reese’s mouth dropped open and she was about to pull her arm free from Gabe so she could rip the pocket watch from his vest and stomp on it when a slew of police officers entered.

  “What are you kids doing here?” one of them called. “Get out of the building! Now!”

  Gabe had no choice but to release Reese as the three headed outside. Then, without a word, he disappeared in the crowd. This left Reese alone with Ollo, currently under the awning of the museum to protect themselves from the rain. She was wearing a white dress, after all.

  She spun around to face him, having to tilt her chin up to lock eyes with him. His eyes were hooded, waiting, possibly calculating. The smirk on his lips told her he would humor w
hatever it was she wanted to say, which infuriated her.

  “I didn’t need saving, as you so aptly put it,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes at him. “I was taking care of it myself.”

  “Not from where I was standing, darl,” he replied in what Reese was beginning to realize was his naturally sardonic voice. She still couldn’t place his accent. It sounded like a mixture of raw Australian and melodic Irish.

  “My name is Reese,” she told him, her hands on her hips. “Reese. It’s one syllable. What does darl even mean?”

  The left corner of his lips curled up and his hooded eyes continued to look at her without wavering. “Are you finished, darl?” he asked, pushing his brow up as though to challenge his term of endearment for her. “Because we have a pressing engagement we need to get to.”

  “Pressing engagement?” she asked, throwing her arms out. “Are you insane? I’m not going anywhere with you. Just because you helped me out with that Gabe thing—that I was perfectly capable of handling myself, thank you very much—doesn’t mean we’re friends. Speaking of which, I have to look for my friends to make sure they’re okay.”

  “Are you finished yet?”

  The look on his face made Reese want to slap him. “Yes, I’m finished,” she snapped.

  “Great.” Without warning, he threw her over his shoulder and proceeded to walk out from under their protection from the rain in order to cross the street. “Henry already let your friends know that you got home safely. Now, darl, I know you’re small and all, but could you stop struggling? It’s doing nothing for my shoulder and you wouldn’t want me to drop you and ruin your pretty little dress, would you?”

  There were too many things running through Reese’s mind for her to immediately respond. The fact that he claimed to know Henry and was somehow in on it completely threw her off to the point where she stopped pounding on his back with her fists and trying to get the attention of the crowd in the street too worried about Noir to notice her. Then he continued to talk which only aggravated Reese more, so she put more effort into her shaking.

  “You realize you’re shaking your body around in a wet, white dress, don’t you?” She could hear the smirk in his tone and gave him a particularly hard hit on his shoulder blade.

  “Why is nobody stopping you?” she asked more to herself than to him. “If we were in Beverly Hills, I’d be filling out a police report by now.”

  “This is Onyx, darl,” he said as he reached the stairwell. Reese craned her neck and saw they were in front of Bacchus Brewery, a bar that was neither high-end nor seedy, and only a block away from the Spirit Museum. “They’ve probably seen things stranger than this. I’m about to head up some stairs so unless you want me to drop you and break your neck, you’ll stop moving.”

  “You’re not going to kill me, are you?” she asked as he did so.

  “If I was, do you think I’d tell you?”

  “I would hope so. I’d like to know if I was going to die.” She heard the squeak of a doorknob being turned and the whoosh as it opened. “You don’t lock your doors? You do realize the high crime rate here, don’t you? Especially with Noir back out on the streets.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think Noir is going to honor us with his presence,” Ollo replied, shutting the door behind him. “I’m going to let you down now, but I’m giving you a warning: I’m faster than I look and I have no problem tying you to a chair.”

  “Charming,” she muttered as he placed both hands on her hips and set her down.

  Reese’s eyes immediately locked onto Ollo’s living arrangement. It was dark, but she knew it was a studio apartment since there was only one room. There was no furniture, save for a couch and one bed in the corner with a quilt, no sheets, and a pillow without a pillowcase. The space that would be dubbed as the kitchen was little more than a stove with one burner and a sink that was probably also used as a dish washer. A small fridge was under the counter, and judging from the strong scent of alcohol and the multiple bottles that littered the hardwood floor, Reese believed there was little food in the fridge. She wrinkled her nose and turned to face him. He had a look of amusement on his features and she scowled.

  “If you’re not going to kill me,” she began, crossing her arms over her chest as she tried to suppress the shivering from the cold, “what do you want with me?”

  “There are some things we need to discuss,” he said. He tilted his head as he continued to peer at her and bent down, picking up another handmade leather jacket, this one just as dirty as the one he wore. He handed it to her before walking over to the fridge. Reese looked down at it, surprised that he even thought she might be cold. She hesitated before slipping it on, not wanting to get dirt on her white dress; although, if she was honest with herself, she could admit the dress was already ruined. As she put it on, she was surprised by its warmth, not so much by its smell.

  “Like how you’re still alive, what with all the drinking?” she asked as he cracked open a bottle of liquor.

  “Cute, darl,” he said, pouring the brown liquid in a glass of ice. “Actually no, we need to talk about what Gabe said.” He took a long sip and made a satisfied grunt.

  Reese shook her head and looked away, her fingers idly buttoning the jacket closed. “What?” she asked in a dry voice. “That I’m kind of a Seer?”

  He nodded his head and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Yup.”

  “Well, what about it?” Her eyes snapped back to him. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe it.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But it is true.” Reese opened her mouth, ready to argue, but Ollo seemed to recognize this and jumped in before she could do so. “Think about it. Have you had any visions lately? Your sight goes black and you see what appears to be the future as clear as a movie, like you’re actually there? Maybe your stomach flip-flopped or you got goose bumps or something.”

  She swallowed but said nothing. He grinned as he poured himself another glass.

  “We call those visions, darl,” he said before taking another sip.

  “Gabe said I wasn’t a psychic though,” Reese pointed out.

  “He’s right about that too,” Ollo said. “You are much more important than just a psychic. You are the key to the impending war between angels and demons.”

  Reese snorted and started laughing. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “A war between angels and demons? Why doesn’t God end the war?”

  “Freewill,” Ollo said simply. “God gave humans freewill. He gave the same gift to his angels too.”

  “And demons?”

  “Demons are just fallen angels,” Ollo said in a tired voice. “Nephilim. They, too, have freewill.”

  “What starts the war?” Reese didn’t believe for a second this was real, but she decided to humor him.

  “There’s always been tension between angels and demons, but it has never escalated to the point it has now. God is a very forgiving being. He may punish a person, but a soul is always granted access to the kingdom of Heaven. Sometimes that punishment is served on Earth. Take Henry, for example. He used to be a respected angel, a ruler of his own kingdom in Heaven. The guy could speak, I’ll tell you what. Until one day he gave that all up because he fell in love with a mere mortal. Beautiful, she was, but the whole story is cliché as all Hell. He gave up everything for her, but God punished him before she could ever return his love. Now, every lifetime, he is placed directly in her path, but she doesn’t know he’s alive. He has to watch her grow up, fall in love with someone else, have a family, and die before the cycle starts all over again.”

  “Henry?” Reese asked in disbelief.

  “The ironic part of this whole thing is that besides you, he’s the most powerful demon on the planet.”

  “I’m a demon.”

  “No, you’re a Seer, darl. Weren’t you listening?” Another glass, another sip.

  “What, just because he can make deals with everyone makes him powerful?”

  “It’s more than t
hat,” Ollo said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Henry controls where the souls go.” Reese continued to stare at him blankly, and Ollo made an impatient snort. “Do I have to spell out everything, darl? He’s Charon.”

  “Charon?” She pressed her brows together. “Isn’t he a Greek myth?”

  “When you reduce religion to the simplest terms, they basically represent the same thing: be a good person. There are many stories in the Bible, many myths from the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, native tribes, every culture on every continent to illustrate what it means to be a good person. And, like all legends, they are based on facts that get muddled with time and interpretation. Humans want to differentiate between their religions because they want to know without a doubt that their belief is the right one. In reality, what you believe in doesn’t amount to much compared to how you act on Earth, and that’s the thread that connects religions together. There is no one true religion because all religion is true.”

  Reese let his words sink in and was surprised to find that despite his slurred tone, he actually made sense. “If Henry’s really Charon, why doesn’t he just ask God to forgive him and go back to his kingdom?” she asked.

  “He refuses to apologize for being in love.” He rolled his eyes and took another drink.

  “Okay, but that doesn’t explain why this war is starting and why I’m the key to ending it,” Reese said.

  “The devil, Satan, whatever you want to call him—”

  “Hades.”

  “No,” Ollo snapped. “What is with you humans equating the Underworld to Hell and Hades to Satan? The Underworld was a place where all souls went after they died and Hades ruled over them. That doesn’t make him evil.

  “Anyway, to put it simply, Satan wants more souls. You can’t have power if you don’t have people to exert that power over. In order to get more souls that want to spend their afterlife in Hell rather than Heaven, he needs to corrupt their thoughts on God. This is where Noir comes in.”