The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series

by Natalie Wright

  With that, she turned and walked out. She didn’t wait to hear my response. My heart thumped away in my chest. As I watched her back walk away from me, I realized I’d been holding my breath and let it out slowly.

  Greta turned and watched Emily retreat from us. When we could no longer see Emily, she whipped her head around and glared at me.

  “What? What did I do?”

  She didn’t say a word but continued to hold me in her icy stare. She opened her tote, pulled out a piece of paper, and shoved it across the table at me.

  “She’s right. It is your choice. Make the right one. When you’re ready to man up, come to this address, any day at 4:00.”

  With that, she shoved her chair back, rose, and turned to leave. She took a few steps, then turned back to me.

  “Oh, and don’t tell anyone.”

  Then she left. I heard her footsteps retreat down the hall. They faded, and all was quiet.

  I held the paper in my hands and stared at the address written in blue ink as if it would somehow give me answers.

  ‘Man up’. How dare those bitches cast aspersions on my manhood? They don’t even know me anymore. We’d been apart for a whole awful year filled with a daily struggle to survive. How dare they!

  The sound of Emily’s voice asking me if I was going to ‘man up’ rang in my head. I balled up that little piece of paper and flung it across the room. I missed the trashcan that was my intended target by a mile. If they didn’t think I was man enough, then let them take care of Ciardha on their own. They didn’t need me. Greta was apparently Miss Lucent Energy, all shining with her self-righteous goodness and light. And Emily had the torc. So let them take care of it. Screw them!

  I got up and grabbed my bag, slung it across my body, and got ready to face the torrent of angry eyes and fearful little rat people that scurried about out there. I walked around the table but paused by the piece of paper that I’d flung. It sat there, looking up at me.

  Though I’d balled it up, it had come unfurled when I threw it. It lay straight out, though wrinkled. The blue ink beckoned me to pick it up.

  Just because you pick it up doesn’t mean you have to go.

  I bent down, picked up the paper, and shoved it into my pocket. It felt like it was on fire against my thigh, like it was written with lava ink. It seared into me so I wouldn’t forget it.

  I walked out of that room, her face emblazoned on my mind, her eyes boring into my brain, my heart still swollen with hurt.

  5. Isabella

  The Apocalyptic World

  Isabella ran swiftly. Her long, sandy brown hair swung from side to side as she gained distance from it. She was surefooted, not a wobble in her step. She’d make it to her house and safety. A hundred more yards to go. The shadow that followed her was quick, but she had been quicker. Today, anyway.

  Fifty yards from the door. Her mother waited on the other side of that door, ready to embrace her, smooth her hair and tell her, “It’ll be okay, baby.” Fifty yards to go.

  Her choice to run had been pure instinct. A cold, clammy feeling overcame her. The shadow seen out of the corner of her eye. A small but powerful voice inside beckoned her to run.

  But less than fifty yards from safety, Isabella’s curiosity made her turn her head. She had to see. Her mind had to understand. A casual look behind her to see what could create such a long, wide shadow.

  In an instant as fleeting as one flap of a hummingbird’s wings, she saw it. The shadow, darker than any she’d ever seen. A shadow that was not just a product of the light from without but something that came from within. And the shadow was connected to a man.

  The moment Isabella glanced behind her, her eyes met his. She had wanted to see, and she saw. The man’s eyes were completely black and devoid of light. His thin lips were pulled back in a terrible smile that revealed perfectly even, white teeth.

  In that moment, Isabella knew. She knew that she had looked into the face of a devil. Maybe not the devil, but into a face as evil as any human has ever seen. Into the face of the demons that she had worried might lurk under her bed at night. Isabella looked into the face of the bogeyman and into the face of death.

  She knew she would never reach the door. She knew that she’d never see her mother or father or her dog, Smarty, again. She knew that she’d never again kiss her baby brother’s soft, downy head.

  Before Isabella could scream, cry or utter a single protest, the shadow was all around her. It enveloped her. She felt as if the air had been forced from her lungs, her screams unable to take flight in the airless void. She heard her backpack fall to the ground, but it was muffled, as if in a dream. She knew her eyes were open, but she saw nothing but darkness. She was smothered by a black so complete that she was suddenly unsure whether she was standing up, lying down, or floating in a dark cloud.

  Her skin prickled as she felt the shadow caress her. She knew a person couldn’t feel a shadow. Her brain told her it was a dream. Shadows don’t kill people. But as she thought this, the squeezing of her lungs increased. The soft caress of the dark shadow gave way as it pinched and pulled and slapped at her.

  Dread spread throughout her tiny body like a supersonic cancer. The fear cut through her like icy knives. As her terror grew, so the shadow’s grip tightened. It was in her ears, her nose, her eyes and her mouth. She swallowed the shadow like a pill, and it dug deep, deep, deep into her.

  The shadow filled her. She was so cold, bereft of warmth.

  The shadow will kill me, she thought. As the cold spread and took over every cell of her body, she prayed for death. She prayed to God to let her join her grandpa in heaven.

  Her small body could take no more. The shadow had used her energy. Her prayers were answered. All was done. Her tiny, cold corpse littered the ground as the shadow swept down the sidewalk in search of another filled with light.

  6. Gathering

  Emily

  Greta’s horn blared as I took a brush to my mass of hair. It was frizzed out and doing that not-quite-curly but not-quite-straight thing that it did when I hadn’t taken the time to blow it out.

  Fine, ponytail it is. I grabbed my bag and took the stairs two by two. I ran down the hall to the kitchen to grab a hunk of bread I’d made while Greta’s horn blared. It sounded like she was laying on it.

  “Dammit, Greta, I’m coming!” I screamed.

  I knew she couldn’t hear me, but it felt good to scream at her anyway.

  I twisted each lock, rushed out of the door, then locked each one back up before I jumped the stairs and ran to Greta’s car.

  Even though it had been about a week since Greta and I decided to play nice, it still weirded me out to hitch a ride to school with her. The world had gone nuts in the past year, and each day when I woke up, I hoped that it had all been a horrible nightmare. Being with Greta made it feel even more like a long, strange dream.

  “Hurry up, Adams,” she snarled at me.

  “Calm your panties, Greta. I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “Whatever. It’s not fast enough. Do you want to get taken?”

  “I’d like to see someone try,” I said.

  I should know better than to say things like that.

  “So what, is arrogance like a prerequisite for someone to be a Priestess of Brighid?”

  “Shut it, Greta.”

  Greta drove like a homicidal maniac was chasing her. I looked behind us and half-expected to see a monster truck pursuing her. But there wasn’t anything but a line of the usual Fords, Chevys, Hondas and Volkswagens.

  “Why are you driving like a bat out of hell?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Greta, you’re doing fifty in a thirty-five zone and taking corners like you don’t have a brake.”

  “If you don’t like the way I drive, get out.”

  Greta gunned it into the school parking lot and parked in the middle of a row, wedged between two other cars. She tried to be inconspicuous, but it wasn’t easy. She drove a brand new Volks
wagen Jetta convertible, fully loaded. It wasn’t a luxury car, but it was one of the nicest things on wheels in our school’s parking lot.

  And she was … well, Greta. Even with no makeup, her hair in a ponytail and wearing simple jeans and a T-shirt, she had that bright, glowing sort of look that caused heads to turn. While everyone else looked like something dredged from a sewer, Greta was anything but inconspicuous.

  But I knew something about Greta that no one else did. I knew that she’d killed a man. When pushed, I knew that Greta had it in her to do what had to be done. And that may be the only reason I had accepted her offer to ride to school with her and join her little ‘Let’s fight the Darkness’ club.

  Truth be told, I held my head a little higher than I had before Greta pounded on my door. It’s strange how another person’s energy can affect you so much, for better or worse.

  We walked side by side through the parking lot and up the sidewalk. I felt heads turn to look. Mind you, I didn’t see it. I wasn’t brave enough to look back. And if I had, my guess is that most who turned their heads to look at us still kept their heads down, giving sideways glances more than full-on stares.

  But I felt something else too. Something more than just a stare. Something that made my stomach tighten in a knot and the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  “We’ve got trouble coming,” I whispered to Greta.

  “Keep walking,” she said back.

  We hadn’t taken two steps more when some guys that were ahead of us, leaning against the wall by the front doors, stepped into our path. I didn’t need the sight or my ability to see auras to know that these two dudes were turned. Their eyes were black, and they looked us right in the eye.

  Before I heard the footfalls behind me, I could feel them. There were two more, maybe three, that ganged up on us from behind. Within seconds, a small gang of teenagers gone dark surrounded us on all sides.

  Without turning to look behind me, I used my senses to size it up. I could feel three behind, and there were two more in front. Not bad odds. I’d seen Greta handle herself with enormous, terrifying beasts in the Umbra Perdita. I figured she could take two, I’d take three.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” said a small, squeaky female voice from behind me.

  “To school, moron, where do you think we’re going?” said Greta.

  And I thought I held the world’s record for shooting my mouth off and saying stupid things at the wrong time.

  “Greta,” I said under my breath, “don’t provoke them.”

  “Breathing provokes them,” she whispered back.

  She had a point. The kids with black eyes like Ciardha’s seemed to attack others whenever it suited them. All you had to do was look at them or maybe cross their path and they’d start a fight over it. I recognized most of the guys surrounding us as kids that had been in trouble a lot before the Apocalypse. But there were a few with them that were kids that had been follow-the-rules kind of kids. It’s spreading.

  “Look, we’re just going to class. We’ve got nothing valuable with us,” I said.

  They snickered at me.

  A small girl, about sixteen and no more than five feet tall, came from behind and got right in front of me. She couldn’t have weighed over a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her hair was jet black and hung long and perfectly straight around her face. Her skin was so pale it glowed. And she looked at me with large, black eyes.

  “We don’t like the way you looked at us.”

  “I … I wasn’t looking at you.”

  “You’re looking at me right now, and I don’t like it.”

  “You’re standing right in front of me and getting in my face. It’s pretty hard not to look at you when you’re all up in my grill like that.”

  That scrawny girl hauled her arm back and landed a solid punch in my too-soft stomach. She may not have been big, but she was strong. Either that, or I had become weak. Her little fist punch made me double over.

  “Ha, you didn’t think I’d do it, did you? You thought ’cause I’m small, I can’t whip your ass, huh?”

  “No, I didn’t think that at all.”

  “Yes, you did. Don’t lie to me,” she said. She punctuated her sentence with a roundhouse kick to my left ribcage which sent me to my knees. It had been a long time since someone had hit me hard enough to put me to the ground.

  “Look, I don’t want to fight you. I just want to go to class. Now leave off before you get hurt.” I stood and planted myself firmly, this time more ready for whatever scrawny girl tried to do next.

  Scrawny girl looked back at the two guys behind her, and they all laughed. She was in fighting stance with her legs planted, right foot in front of the other. Her hands were balled up into small fists, and she had her arms up and ready to punch again. She shuffled her feet like a boxer.

  As she turned back, I could see her getting ready to kick again. I caught her leg as it flew toward me and easily upended her. She landed hard on her ass.

  “You’ll regret that, Miss High and Mighty,” she sneered. “Get her,” she screamed.

  “It’s go time,” I said to Greta.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dude come at Greta, but she used her huge tote to stop his fist from hitting her. And I could feel two guys getting ready to rush me from behind.

  Without thinking, I turned and got a low kick in on one of the guys, taking his feet out from under him. The other guy turned and came toward me. He was tall, over six feet, and outweighed me by at least fifty pounds.

  Size doesn’t matter. Remember, he’s mostly empty space.

  I tried to pump myself up in my own head, but mostly I was plain scared. It had been a while since I had to fight more than one person at a time. I was out of shape and out of practice.

  Come on, you can do this. Do what Madame Wong taught you. Be in the flow of Akasha.

  In the few seconds it took the large guy to get to me, I took a big breath in, planted myself, and tried not to think too hard about it. I hadn’t yet achieved synergy with the flow of things around me, but I relaxed myself enough that I could feel his beefy arm hurtle through the air toward my head before I could see it.

  I ducked, and his fist caught only air. Before he knew what happened, I did a large upward kick, and my shoe caught him on the chin. His head whipped back, and when it fell forward again, I saw crimson gush out of his chin and onto his shirt. Before he had time to get his bearings, I gave him a roundhouse to his right side, then landed an uppercut with the heel of my hand on his nose. I heard bone crunch.

  “You little bitch!” he screamed. “You broke my nose.” The big guy was holding his nose with both hands as blood gushed from his face and spilled onto the ground.

  I’m a Priestess of Brighid, sworn to help humanity, so I feel ashamed to admit this. But damn, that felt good. I’d sat in my house like a terrified mole rat. It felt good to kick some ass. But as much fun as it was to see a six-foot-tall denizen of the dark shadows cry out in pain, I didn’t think it was the time or place to fight five teenagers to the death. I’d make my point to them without more blood or death on my hands.

  I grabbed Greta, pulled her to me, and put a shield of Lucent Energy around us like I’d done with Owen in the Umbra Perdita.

  “What are you doing? I had those guys,” she hollered.

  “Shut it.”

  “And get your hands off of me.” Greta pulled at my arms.

  “Calm down. I had to grab you. I’ve got a shield around us. Just chill.”

  By the time we’d finished our conversation, we were surrounded by shadow teens. When scrawny girl tried to kick at me again, the invisible force of Lucent Energy deflected her leg and knocked her back.

  “What the …?”

  She tried it again at the same time one of the guys tried to throw a punch at Greta. The harder they kicked or punched, the more force was deflected back at them, causing them to fall over.

  “She’s a witch,” scrawny girl sneere
d. “Witch, witch, witch, witch,” she chanted.

  The shadow guys took up the chant, and soon the air was filled with their attempt to taunt me, “Witch, witch, witch, witch.”

  “I am a witch,” I screamed out. “And you better leave off before I use my magic to lay you flat.”

  “Nice attempt at a bluff,” Greta whispered.

  It was a bluff. I didn’t know if I could lay anyone flat. Not anymore. Torc or no, the ability to move objects with my mind or manipulate subtle energies required a certain amount of confidence in your abilities. Truth was, I didn’t have much confidence left. Truth was, when I acted confident to Greta, I was just trying to convince myself I was strong.

  But the shadow dudes didn’t back off. They continued their taunt as a crowd gathered. Most of the people up close to us had auras filled with spots and smudges, but only the gang surrounding us had fully turned. I noticed that in addition to their black eyes, they had no auras, only a thin bubble of black. It looked like they’d been outlined in black ink. I could see a few people without any darkness in their auras hanging in the back and around the periphery.

  Greta and I hadn’t planned this fight, but it seemed like I had an opportunity. If I could show the people that still had Lucent auras something, demonstrate some strength …

  I closed my eyes, breathed in and out, calmed myself, and tried as best I could to get into that state of mind where I was one with Akasha. It wasn’t easy with a mob of shadow teens all around me, waiting for a chance to rip me apart.

  I focused on the Lucent Energy around me. There was less and less of it in those days, but it was there. I could feel it if I tried. It was like a million long strands of luminous energy flowed out of me and every person who hadn’t yet turned. And all those threads were connected to each other and touched each other, whether people knew it or not. In my mind’s eye, I could see it. Millions and millions of luminescent threads that spread out in all directions and touched each other.

  I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my lips. It was the first time I’d felt any sense of happiness – or peace – in many months. It was there, all around me. And it gave me hope and strength.