Redemption (Waking Up Dead)

by April Margeson

  “Max!” I said with more enthusiasm that I should have. He jumped, opening his eyes to see if something had happened.

  “What spell are you casting?”

  He was clearly exhausted and I had taken him a moment to see that she looked better.

  “It was one of your connection spells. Why?” He rubbed his forehead.

  “The one that I had taught you in the beginning?” I asked in amazement. It seemed that I had really gotten through to him from the start. Max remembered everything that I had tried to teach him and that gave me a sense of pride like none other.

  “Yeah, the silly one.” Max smiled at me.

  The spell that he had been trying on Laynie had originally been written to connect with animals. Back then we were having trouble with a stray dog and I had written it to make it go away.

  That spell would open the mind of any living thing that it was cast on. It was created to help.

  “Has she spoken to you at all?” I asked, hoping that he would say yes, but the answer that I received wasn’t surprising in the least.

  “Something is blocking me from connecting with her. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Let’s join our powers and see if that helps” I said as I extended my hand out to him. He took it and I could feel the stress that the spell had placed on him. His strength was almost nonexistent and it amazed me at how hard he had to try just to be able to hold onto my hand.

  “Do you have another spell that we could try?” Max asked desolately.

  “I think that we should stick with this one for now.”

  We both began reciting the words to the spell in unison.

  Open up your mind

  Let us in

  The higher power has a message, my friend.

  Don’t be alarmed

  Shed your fear

  All is well when she is near.

  Our powers intertwined and, instantly, I knew we were on the right track.

  The edges of her mind were foggy and thick, making it hard to find our way through. I could see now why Max was having such a hard time.

  It took us a long time to filter out what was Laynie and what was the massive block inside her. But as soon as I heard her speak, I knew we were in trouble.

  I stalled. Max wanted to continue, but he hadn’t taken enough time to realize that we were not alone. There were two other voices in here with us, voices that shook me to my core.

  The sound of one of them haunted my mind and I knew that I had heard it before. It was Aden’s maker, Sal. The other one was Aden. They were telling Laynie that the people that she was with had harmed them, but she had already known that. I just don’t understand what they were trying to accomplish.

  In the end, Laynie hated Aden for what he had done to all of them. She hadn’t even put up a fight when she found out that I was going to kill him. Something about this was strange to me. It was worse than strange. It was downright gut-wrenching.

  Then the memory of what Max had told me about Sal being able to tighten the bond the bond with Aden, even after his death, surfaced. This was not going to be good.

  Sal had been one of the most powerful Day Walkers that I had ever heard of. He had made good with a sorcerer long before his death. He had taught him the ways of our people and Sal had always had a skill for the craft. That had led us to believe that at least one of his parents had been a witch. Learning the true craft is impossible if it isn’t in your blood.

  The whispers continued and Max turned to me with a burning fury in his power. He wanted to kill. I could feel it and I knew that this could very well be the end of Laynie if we made the wrong move.

  Our connection allowed the two of us to communicate with each other without letting anyone else know that we were present. It would only be a matter of time before Sal finds out that we are inside her mind. When he finds us, there is no doubt that he will either try to kill the both of us or, even worse than that, Laynie.

  Just be as still as you can and try not to let your power surge. We need to know what they are doing to her.

  Aden had started to speak to Laynie and the sound of his voice sickened me. It was sweet and calm. He was trying to reassure her that she was going to be okay. That is, only if she done what they want her to do.

  Her words floated through the thick air like butterflies flying in early Spring. Her tone was magical and I knew that they had cast a spell to keep her locked inside her own mind. That is the only way that the dead can truly communicate with a living person.

  I could feel Max becoming more restless as Aden spoke.

  Be calm.

  I tried to hold him, but I couldn’t. His anger had gotten the best of him and he went flying through Laynie’s mind like a blur. There was no way that I was going to be able to stop him from doing what he was planning to do. The only thing that I could do is to go after him and fight at his side if that was what this is going to come to.

  CHAPTER 8 Max

  I just couldn’t stand back and watch them do what they were doing to Laynie. Something had to be done and it was up to me to stop them.

  Aden had never had any intentions in letting Laynie go. Even in dead he is still trying to get his hands on her and that is the worst kind of torture. When the dead invade a living person’s mind all the rules go out the window. That is a line that cannot be crossed very easily. Something has to be wrong with the person’s mind in order for that to happen.

  As far as I knew there had been nothing wrong with Laynie’s mind, nothing that she had mentioned to me anyway. The last few months had been hard on her and I knew that she had been struggling to get through the things that Aden had done to her, but it should not have been allowed to go this far.

  I rushed to the place that she was the strongest… her heart.

  She screamed for me and that alerted Sal and Aden of my presence. They had begun to cast their spells and the magic that was being thrown at me sent me whirling. Now I wish that I had stayed with Alzar and listened to what he told me to do.

  Nothing could have prepared me for the pain that I was feeling. The intensity of it reminded me of the time that I had cast a pain blocking spell and it backfired on me. Instead of felling little to no pain, I felt more than I had expected. Alzar had to heal me when he found me because I was very close to dying when he arrived. This was as bad as that had been.

  They were trying to remove me from Laynie and I was not going to give in. I had been through way too much to get here and I will be damned if I let them win.

  I called on Aria, knowing that I shouldn’t. Her power is not something that should be called by a witch such as me and she had been known to bind the power of the witch that called her out of confusion. I could only hope that she wouldn’t take my powers away.

  To my surprise, she didn’t respond. Although, I had expected this, it hurt to know that she had chosen to ignore my call.

  The reason that I had not been able to connect with Laynie was because of Aden and Sal. They had been behind the powerful blocking spell that had been placed within her. That could be the reason that Aria had not responded to me. It doesn’t matter now.

  The pressure that the spells were putting on me was unbearable and I tried to reach Alzar, but he wasn’t close enough to help me. Why didn’t I just listen to him? He’s always right and I had tried him before with the same results. I had always ended up on the bad side of things when I thought I knew more than he did.

  Seconds maybe minutes had passed until I could finally sense Alzar had found me. Instead of coming to my aid, he began to retaliate. His power shook the connection between us and I think that it only made me feel worse.

  Aden shrieked. The sound of it made me happier than I wanted it to and I felt bad for wishing harm on another, even him. Our ways taught us to never harm another without just cause and even then the act was not one to be taken lightly.

  My mind began to fog and even though I remained connected to Laynie, the spell was pushing me farther an
d farther away from her.

  “Max!” Laynie screamed, but the sound of her voice made me realize what was happening.

  I am dying. My body had given up the fight, but my heart wasn’t ready to accept that.

  “I love you Laynie” I called to her in hopes that she could still hear me.

  Everything went dark and I knew that this was the end. I had come so far and now it was all over. I could only hope that Alzar could find a way to save her. Maybe she will come back and live a long happy life.

  Something happened right then that I didn’t understand. I knew that the connection had been severed with Laynie, but there was something else, something peaceful. Had I entered the spirit realm? I could only hope.

  My thoughts were as clear as they could be, but it seemed that nothing else was right. I could hear voices talking around me, but the words were muffled and beyond comprehension. The voices were oddly familiar, but I had become so weak that I just couldn’t make myself care who they were. I’m just so sleepy that I can’t care about much of anything. The one thing that I did care about was Laynie and I am in no condition to help her now.

  Maybe if I could get a little sleep then everything would be better.

  CHAPTER 9 Alzar

  I had done everything that I could do to overtake Sal and Aden, but I failed. Without Max here with me I had been powerless against them.

  Sal had made a wise decision when he turned Aden and knowing that he was a witch had been a major plus for him. I had never seen that amount of power from the dead before and clearly things are about to change. I just wasn’t sure if it was going to be for the good.

  I had heard Max call on Aria before being jolted out of Laynie’s dying body. Somehow, I had known that she would refuse to answer him. It seemed to me that she had gotten more involved than she had wanted to from the start and she had no intentions on doing any more than she had already done. If she could only help a bit more, I thought to myself as I made my exit back to reality.

  I had no other choice but to leave Laynie as she was. The thought of Sal turning her against all of us was becoming more of an issue than I had wanted to think. If he has his way, soon, we would all be dead. That is all he has ever wanted.

  Snapping back to my body, I could feel that something had gone terribly wrong during my return. There was a surge of power at first and then there was nothing. I knew all too well what it was… Max.

  As soon as I had fully reentered my body, I opened my eyes only to find that Max was not there. Jumping up from the bed, I began to search for him and it wasn’t long until I found him.

  He had fallen from the bed into the floor. Blood was coming from his mouth and nose and I jumped over the bed and to his side. His pulse was dangerously slow and if I didn’t do something fast, he was going to die.

  “Alice! Caleb!” I screamed for the only ones that were left that could help me.

  Not even a second passed until the door flew open, bouncing off the wall from the force that had opened it with.

  “What happened?” Alice yelled, not waiting for me to answer before she was at my side.

  Caleb took hold of Max’s upper body and we picked him up. Carefully, we placed him on the bed beside Laynie. The damage that had been done to him was immense, far worse than I had thought.

  I laid my hands on his chest and began to push my power inside him. With each offering I became weaker, but he grew stronger. That was exactly what I had hoped to see. I struggled to give him the power that he would need in order for me to perform a healing spell on him. If I had tried to do it first, he would have died and that is still quite possible now, but I didn’t want to think about it. I needed to react without any second guessing.

  I recited a healing spell over and over until I was sure that it was taking effect. Max moaned in pain and that was the sign that I needed to tell me that what I was doing had begun to work.

  “How did this happen?” Alice asked. The fear that came out with her voice was something that I had expected.

  Her question could be answered with one word, a name that, as I said it, formed a bitter taste in my mouth. “Aden.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Then her fury came. I had never seen her in this condition before and it was making me rethink my previous opinion about her. Undoubtedly, she is as vicious as any vampire could be, but the basis for her fury had been equally justified.

  “How?” Caleb had managed to ask as he was trying to calm Alice.

  Wasting no time, I explained to them about the acts of the dead. Alice’s fury had turned to a sickening hatred after she had time to absorb what I had said.

  “What can we do?” she pleaded.

  “Nothing as of now. Max is unable to help me and I cannot do this without more power.”

  Something about what I had said sparked her curiosity. She had listened to everything that I had told her about how Aden’s maker had enslaved him even in death. She had understood the reason that Sal had chosen Aden to be turned.

  “If Sal knew that Aden had witch blood, then what’s to say that Aden had known the same thing about me and Caleb?”

  She had a point. I don’t think that Aden done anything without knowing that it could help him in some way.

  “There’s only one way to find out. Caleb, come with me. Alice, you stay here until we get back. We won’t be gone but for just a minute and I don’t think that it’s a good idea to leave them alone.”

  She nodded in agreement and Caleb and I headed downstairs to the kitchen. He was unsure of about what was going to happen, but he followed my, trusting that it was nothing.

  How could I have been so stupid? Deep down I knew that Aden’s choice seemed rather funny, but at the time, it didn’t occur to me that he may have known that the craft was in their blood.

  I took a small glass container from the top shelf of the cabinet that we used to store the herbs used in our spells.

  “What are you doing? Are you going to do a spell on me or something?”

  I smiled. “No, I’m not going to do a spell, but I have an idea.”

  “Okay.” He was becoming uncomfortable because of my reaction and the only way that I was going to get him to cooperate with me is to make him understand that he was not in any danger.

  “Don’t worry, Caleb. This is a simple thing and it isn’t a bit dangerous to either of us. Do you trust me?” I asked him, being as serious as I could manage.

  He had taken more time than I wanted him to before he answered me, but I could understand. With everything that he had been subjected to in the last few hours, I think I would be a little overly cautious myself.

  When he finally answered, it was the response that I had wanted. He had said a simple trusting yes, but I knew that it was taking a lot for him to do something that he knew nothing about.

  The history of Belladonna with our people is a strong and trusted one. When a witch ingests the herb, they are given a sense that they are flying, but never actually leaving the ground. The amount that I am going to give him won’t hurt him if he doesn’t have the blood of a witch. If he does, that will be a different story all around.

  I took a small amount out of the jar and offered it to him. He took it without hesitation and I explained to him that all he needed to do was eat it.

  “Is this going to hurt me?” He asked, concern filling his face.

  “No, it won’t hurt you in any way. I promise.”

  With that being said, he placed the herb in his mouth and swallowed it without attempting to chew it.

  I watched carefully, looking for any sign that it was going to work or if it wasn’t. A smile came over Caleb’s face and my anticipation grew.

  “How do you feel?” His expression had changed. Instead of the look of caution, he had a look of amazement.

  “I feel strange, maybe a little sleepy.”

  My heart sank. If he was becoming sleepy the odds that he is a witch are less than I had thought.

  A short momen
t passed. I had turned away from him to put the container back in the cabinet when I heard him inhale quickly. Turning to see if he was going to pass out, my pulse pounded with excitement.

  Caleb had his arms extended in the air beside him. I gasped. It was true. Aden had chosen them because they had the blood of the craft in their bodies. Well, as far as Caleb is concerned. Alice is still questionable at this point.

  “I feel like I can fly!” he announced proudly.

  “Welcome. Caleb, you carry the craft within you.”

  With a shocked expression, he seemed to be relieved that I had told him what his true nature really was.

  “So, what now?” he asked, still smiling.

  “Now, we have to turn you back into a human.”

  CHAPTER 10 LAYNIE

  Aden had spoken to me so sweetly that it made all my past feelings for him resurfaced. I wanted to ask him why he had wanted to do the things that he had done to me and if he had honestly cared for me at all. But none of that matters now. What’s done is done and there’s nothing that any of us can to do to change it. The only thing that we can do is move forward.

  The idea of moving forward pleased me. My life had turned out to be exactly what I had wanted, but it had been taken away from me somehow. Someone had done something to me that had caused me to be in this place.

  I’m not sure where I am, but it feels like I am trapped inside my own body. That made everything so much more confusing. Aden is here with me and there is no way that I am dreaming this up because it just feels too real, but it can’t be real.

  Aden is dead. I had watched my father kill him. I felt him die. Even though our bond had been broken, I could still feel a part of him with me. I’m not sure if it was due to the feelings that I had for him or what, but that was the way it was.

  “Laynie?” I heard him call my name.

  Softly, I answered him. “Yes?”

  “How are you feeling?”