Dawning (The Risen Series Book 1)

by Marie F. Crow

“I find it funny you keep doing it, too,” he says, skipping over my comment. Rhett is staring right into me. He is a predator, and he can smell my fear. “Want to know what else I find funny?” he asks. His voice holds no warmth for me. It is a deathtrap of an ambush just waiting for me to step closer.

  “Not really,” my honest answer brings a smile to his lips. It is not his playful smile though. He is enjoying that he won this round. I liked our other game better.

  “What do they want, Barbie?” J.D. raises his voice, trying to save me from anymore of Rhett’s attention.

  I watch Rhett physically retreat upon hearing our leader’s voice, but his eyes never leave me. Like an animal in a zoo that has been caged too long, he watches me waiting for another chance to attack. I try to hide my shiver with a roll of my shoulders as if I am simply working out a chink in my neck. His smirk grows, calling my bluff.

  “They want you to meet them in the gym in one hour,” I answer

  J.D. and my answer bring me further into all of their attention. “Your three against theirs. They want it done secretly so it will not draw a crowd. Whatever happens, happens and it’s then done between you and them. It stays in the gym.” I continue keeping my eyes only for J.D.

  “What, like Vegas?” Rhett asks, and finally I see his normal smile.

  My hands slow their constant vibration by just a fraction.

  “Except this is going to be a lot better than Vegas.” Lawless’ voice dances with his smile. My hands speed back up when I hear him. “What of Ross?” he asks, just as Simon had hinted, he would. “Just Simon, Richard, and Dolph,” I answer his question, but I still keep my eyes on J.D.

  “Figures,” Marxx voices the same disappointment the whole table is feeling.

  “…and you?” Lawless looks to me. “Which side are you going to be on tonight?”

  I stare at him, this man I have been locked in an emotional war with for what feels like years and I wonder if I am ever going to understand him. “I will be on whichever side of my bed tonight I am on when it happens. This is your fight. Not mine. I stopped fighting a long time ago.”

  “I know.”

  I hear him tell me as I am leaving the room. His voice is dangerously deep, and it makes me want to add a few extra steps to my retreat. J.D.’s words dance through my mind, and I cannot believe what I am about to do.

  “Give me something to fight for, Law,” I tell him, letting him hear the full weight of my desire in my voice.

  I mentally hi-five myself, but I do not turn back to glance behind me. Baby steps here people. Baby steps.

  I find myself unable to sleep with so many of my thoughts chasing it away. A stronger person would just admit to being nervous about what is happening two floors below me. With just the dark- ness and me in the room, I do not have to be strong. The darkness, with its coal-black coldness shields me. It steals my whispered secrets, smothering them within itself. Like a documented diary of my regrets and yearnings, any sleepless, crying nights it keeps private between us. The darkness has become my lullaby and eventually it sings me to sleep despite my nerves.

  The air smells sweet from spring’s blooming flowers. Ahead of me, I can hear their laughter. My Angels are playing within the tall walls of the green hedge maze in front of me. My legs tangle in the chiffon of a dress I have no memory of owning as I run towards their sounds. My heart soars to hear them so close to me. With every corner I turn, I swear I will find them. When I don’t, their laughter becomes higher pitches of their amusement as they call my name.

  Turning the last corner of the maze, I find them. They are sitting with their backs to me on a white cement bench in a gazebo. Lilly is still laughing, and I smile with her giggles.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask them, encouraging the sound of their voices.

  Ashley is swaying her feet and she says, “Waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?” I smile with my question, climbing the wooden steps to where they are sitting.

  “For her,” Ashley says.

  She turns her head to look behind me and I too turn to look. Margaret, with her blood-painted face limps from where I have just entered the clearing. Behind her is her army of damned children.

  Their clothes are soiled and dripping from the blood they have spilt. The blood that belonged to them and the others they had murdered. I know the sounds coming from their throats and my stomach drops when I hear it. The smell of their decay is over- powering the flowers as it fills the clearing around me.

  “Why are you afraid, Helena?” Lilly asks me.

  When I feel her tiny hand take mine, I look down at her. My heart is ripped from my chest by the sight. Lilly is one of them with her once beautiful blue eyes hazy as she stares at me. Turning to see Conroy and Ashley, they too are staring at me with eyes of the Risen.

  I don’t fight as Lilly’s teeth tear into my wrist, drinking from the torn veins. I don’t scream as Conroy takes my throat in his mouth, pulling the tendons with his baby-sharp teeth. I let them take me. Watching Ashley as the children from the school cover me, I know she finally has her revenge.

  I wake suddenly from a dream I am happy to escape when I feel my cot sinking lower behind me. I freeze, waiting for my senses to give me a hint at what is happening in my already heightened panic.

  “Your knife is on the floor. Not the best place to keep it if you were to need it,” his voice only stirs more panic inside me when I hear him speak. “I’d appreciate it if you would let me know now if you have any stolen guns hidden under that pillow though.”

  I roll onto my back to stare at Lawless sitting on my cot. In the darkness, I can only see his shape, but I would know his voice in the darkest of nights. He sits silently beside me, giving me his back and letting the darkness hide him. Each silent moment is stealing more of my breath being so close to him.

  “You were calling out in your sleep and we need to talk,” his voice finally comes with an explanation for his arrival.

  I startle hearing him after the room having been silent for so long. I can see his head turn to me with its outline in the dark- ness. I feel his fingers trace my face with soft patterns. My body betrays me after being starved from his touch for so long. I can hear my breathing quicken with his gentle touch.

  “I miss you, too,” he tells me, answering my body’s response to him. His lips touch my forehead, hesitantly placing a kiss.

  “I’ll give you whatever you want, Helena. You just have to let me know what it is,” Lawless whispers against my flesh.

  I shiver from the hidden meaning of his words. He leans in closer with my body’s invitation. His mouth trails hotly against my neck, quickening his own breath with the taste of me on his tongue.

  “For you not to stick your dick in other people,” I whisper, answering his question and pouring cold reality upon his body’s lustrous hopes.

  I feel him retreat from me with such force it makes the cot shake. His entrance may have been silent, but his retreat is not.

  Every step he is taking from me echoes in the room with his anger. His slamming of the door vibrates the room with it.

  I take another bite from my poisoned apple, listening to his fading footsteps retreating back to the room he now shares with Aimes. The bitter juices coat my tongue and throat. It burns me with its wickedness and my loneliness is the resulting effect it has. I lay in the darkness, listening to their muffled voices rise and fall like the tides. There is no moon giving their waves strength. It’s the force of their emotions carrying their voices forward before lulling them again.

  I know from the pitch in her voice she is trying to talk him down from whatever crest he is reaching. I listen to her voice seep through the wall separating our rooms and wonder what honeyed words she is feeding him. Is she convincing him of my wicked ways? Is she baiting him with her fragile sense of self, snuggling up to him for comfort? Is he offering her what he was so ready to offer me just moments ago? The only real question is do I have the strength to discover any
of these answers?

  Right now, no, I do not. So, I let sleep take me again with the taste of my poison still on my tongue, sweeter than candy, and as deadly as arsenic while my Angels plot my death and their revenge.

  Chapter 40

  I watch the dawn from my window instead of the table across from Marxx as I normally would. I do not feel like listening to any more pep talks, or lectures, about how I should be doing things with the images from my dreams still clinging to my heart. Nor do I have any interest in eating another meal watching the many happy groups around me. Instead, I sit on my window’s edge watching life flow below me. I am woman: watch me pout.

  I heard when each of my former family members went past my room. I listened to their words, and happy voices, and it filled me with only more emptiness. I know one day I will be strong again. It’s just not today. Today I want nothing more than to hide from all the many requests and stares. I want to hide from my many memories that stalk me, waiting for me to close my eyes. Not that any of it is going to happen. It’s just what I want.

  I hear the door open behind me, and in the window’s reflection, I see Aimes leaning against its frame. If this is any hint as to what the rest of the day is going to be like, I am just going back to bed now. I will tie a sheet into a white flag and hang it from my doorway.

  “Anything else you want to say to me?” Aimes asks me and her voice is itching for a fight. I am tempted to give her one.

  “Nope,” I hoarsely say. Tempted, but I am not willing.

  “I don’t believe you.” She stands her ground, edging up to her anger.

  “I figured that out by how you are half hiding in the hallway,” I say to her reflection, staring into her eyes.

  I call her bluff, removing her bravado. It steals the courage for her to continue in her halfhearted attempt of a fight. I feel like Rhett with the smile I give her.

  We stare at each other’s reflection in the window. Its thick glass dulls the colors, casting us both in a grey wash of shades. Nothing seems to be as vivid as it once was between us.

  “Is this your new plan? Are you just going to hide out like a spoiled brat?” she asks me. Her bravery is growing again with my ignoring her.

  “The victim role seems to be taken already. I wonder, are you even alone out there right now? No constant bodyguard of the men you used to hate so much? It really is amazing how fast you flip your opinions these days,” I tell her. I watch her shrink with each of my words. If I had a screen-printed tee shirt right now it would read “Bring It”.

  “That’s not fair.” She crosses her arms, cradling herself under my direct attention. “You turned your back on me. What was I supposed to do?” she asks me.

  “That is what everyone so loves to point out to me. What were you supposed to do? You, who just had to push that extra little bit for your own satisfaction. You, who is always so protected and sheltered from the world. You, who always seem to land on your feet while the rest of us fall to our knees. Yes, what were you supposed to do?” My question lets my anger finally find a release. “How about not question loyalties when you so easily walk away from them? How about not sleep with the only man that has ever meant anything to your friend? How about, just once, stand on your own and not need someone else to hold you up?” I watch her cringe from each of my questions. It brings me no joy, or remorse. “I didn’t. We aren’t, Hells. You should know that.” Her voice is as broken as she looks.

  “Tell me, Amelia, did you sleep alone last night? Have you slept alone any night since this all started? Do you feel safe in his arms? Does his body next to yours in the morning give you the strength to keep going? Do you feel any guilt at all over being so wrapped up in their support?” I stare at her, waiting for any answer she gives me. “You might not be fucking him, but you have taken my place just the same. You can paint it any way you want, with whatever brush you desire. Tell yourself whatever you need to. You know the truth, and exactly what the truth is. At least Leslie was honest in what she was doing. You think by wrapping it up in female frailty forgives it. It doesn’t. It makes it worse. Now get out.”

  She pauses for a moment before closing the door and tells me, “I talked to him, Hells. I gave him a chance to explain things. You should, too. He misses you.”

  She closes the door on my many replies I am biting back. I know every word I have already given her she will share with them as it is. Soon, my room will fill with men and their stares telling me how I have once again been naughty. It presents me with two choices. I can sit here hiding, waiting for them to find me, or I can go out there daring them to find me. I never was one to make life easy for people. If they want me, they will have to find me. Mostly, I do not want to be waiting here for Rhett. I do not like our new games.

  Chapter 41

  The library, with its many shelves of thick, faded books, proves to be the perfect hiding spot from my world. There is no alcohol, no strippers or any over eager women waiting here. They won’t bother to come.

  There are only a few others in the room with me. With their refusal to address anyone, I gather they too are seeking some level of escape from their own private hells. I find the ability to become invisible frees a great weight from my shoulders as I escape into a fantasyland of print and paper.

  The smell of the old books creates a soothing perfume around me like a hot bath at the end of a long day. The many dust particles dance around my chair in the sun’s rays, casting an illusion of magic when I turn the pages. I devour the books, letting the stories create new images for my mind to replay tonight. I cling to each character, as if I am forming new friends with the stories, they tell me. From romance to horror, I find a new person to fill the many empty holes in my soul within the hardbound novels around me. Ashley would have loved it in here.

  “They want you in the gym.”

  I startle from the whisper of a voice in front of me. Aimes is standing there watching me. The next time I am forced to do laundry, I am sewing bells on her stuff. Loud bells.

  “They who?”

  I return my attention to the novel with my dismissal of her.

  Unfortunately, it is not that easy.

  “Who else would want you to come to the gym?”

  I don’t think she meant for her question to form the way her words do.

  “I guess you’re right. It is a short list these days of those who want to be around me.”

  I mean mine.

  “I don’t want to fight anymore.” Her voice is still a whisper, but not because of the social rules of where we are.

  “Then you should just stay silent,” I tell her, closing the novel in my hands. “This is where you run away.”

  “I can’t,” her whisper skips with her breath, sinking in her emotions. “He said if I don’t come back with you, then not to come back.”

  I already know who would give her such an order, but I ask anyway to make her say it. “Who told you that?”

  “Lawless,” she tells me, and my face holds shock with the name she gives me. “He wants you to see it. I think he has some idea that it will reach you in some way.”

  “What will?”

  My curiosity is one of my many downfalls. I would list them all, but my self-esteem is already on a downward spiral as it is.

  “The fight. They didn’t go through with-it last night. Not sure what happened, but they are doing it now. The only thing every- one seems to agree to is you need to be there. So here I am.” She holds her hands out in a grand sweep of presenting herself.

  My lack of amusement takes some of the glow from her smile.

  “We don’t have to talk on the way, but if we don’t get back soon, they will send Rhett next. He hasn’t been a lot of fun and games as of late. Well, he has been a lot of games, just not any of them fun,” she says.

  Her words are eerily similar to another’s from only a day ago. I try to tell myself it’s not me, it’s them, but who am I kidding? I am just a ray of sunshine as of late.

  I take
her up on her offer of not talking as we walk to the gym. A few times, she does try to engage me in conversation. It does not go well for her, and after a few well-landed verbal blows, she finally relents to silence between us. My mind still fills with what I want to say though. My tongue wants to scald her, but my soul is tired of these mud-slinging games. So, I too, relent to the silence between us.

  She pauses in front of the gym door. I can’t see her face, but I know she is working the courage to say something to me. Something she is worried about how I will react to when I hear it. “You should know, they will be watching you. Rhett is worried you are turning against them. I told them you aren’t. You just don’t care about the politics of it. You never have. You have always been strong enough to do your own thing. You may be the only one of us that is,” she says with a shaky breath.

  She pauses before turning to me. Her blue eyes, so much like the many other pairs who were once in my life swim before me. Her eyes are pleading with me to help her, asking me to not let her fall. Pity for her, I am not wearing my cape and tights today. “I know you hate me,” she continues, “I know you think I have turned them against you. I haven’t. They talk about you all the time. They just don’t know how to talk to you anymore. None of us do. You always were the heart of us, the one who took care of us. Give them your heart again, Hells. They need it.” Seriously people, no cape today.

  She does not wait for any answer from me. She knows I am not going to give her one. Instead, we walk into the gym together to watch the best of “when male egos attack live”. She, the one who was sent to summon, and me the one they summoned with no other options between us.

  The atmosphere of the gym is thick with testosterone. Normally, a girl would enjoy the sights before her, but not under these circumstances. Our delay has not stalled their fun. J.D. sits on “our” side of the gym holding a bag of ice across his nose with Paula over seeing his care. Rhett is resting beside him with a few marks of his own on his face, but his smile speaks a different story than his bruises.