ReAwakened
Page 37
“So would I.” Cupping my face in his hand, he leaned down, placing his forehead against mine. His fingers slid down to my neck, gliding across the violet pendant he’d given me.
The first snowflake of the season descended from the sky, gently landing on my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, wiping away the melted flake.
“For what?” I asked, confused.
“I’m sorry that this journey…us…getting to this point…I’m sorry that it wasn’t as easy as it should have been,” he said. “I’m sorry that the past forced itself between us.”
He wasn’t the only one to blame. I’d spent my fair share of time pushing him away, trying to convince myself that what we had wasn’t real, rushing to protect him from Aurora, but also forcing him away in an attempt to guard own my feelings.
If I didn’t let myself fall for him, then I’d never have to fear losing him.
But I didn't want to live in fear any longer.
“From now on, we leave the past in the past,” I whispered against his lips. “Exactly where it belongs. I think it’s time we focus on the future and ensure that the present doesn’t pass us by.”
Sebastian brought his lips to my ear. “We never did get our dance, did we?” He slid one hand around my waist, bringing me to him. His other hand slipped from my cheek, gliding to the back of my neck as he pulled me into a deep kiss. Moonlight tiptoed through the cracks in the roof above, falling across his dark curls, bathing them in bright silver. “I don’t want to let you go,” he mumbled against my lips. “But I have to leave you for a moment.” His eyes bore deep into me, undressing my soul. “I added words to your song. Words that I’d really like to share with you.”
“You’re going to play for me again?”
He grinned. “Hey, Hunter didn’t suffer your wrath to have nothing to show for it. I should make use of his lessons.” He kissed the top of my head, trailing soft kisses down my forehead all the way to the tip of my nose, finally landing on my lips. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured.
I pressed my fingers against my lips, imprinting his kiss in my memory as I watched him walk toward the inn. More snowflakes fell from the sky, disappearing into the brown earth like falling stars dying out in the atmosphere. Then time froze and the flakes stopped. Time progressed in slow motion.
Sebastian with his back to me, walking toward the inn.
Aurora emerging from the bushes, gun in hand, aimed directly at my heart.
She was here in flesh and blood, no longer just a voice in my head. Looking at her was like seeing into a mirror. That is, if that mirror despised you with every fiber of its being. It was staggering to be so close to her; it pained me to see the intense hatred in her emerald eyes.
Sebastian’s ripped up note. The ghostly girl in the Museum of Torture. The voice inside my head and outside of my bedroom door. The Born responsible for glamouring the werewolves and the rogue vamps. Lena’s attacker. All of it was Aurora. My real-life twin. The true reincarnation of my father’s real daughter. The thoughts flashed through my mind, and as she read them, Aurora smiled a smile so cold and so full of hatred it sent shivers down my spine.
In the blink of an eye, she moved from my heart toward Sebastian’s back.
Before I had a chance to react, she pressed the trigger.
One, two, three times.
“No!” I screamed, rushing across the park to try to intercept the bullets as they sliced through the air.
Sebastian turned to look in my direction.
I dove.
The bullets hit their mark, embedding deep into his chest.
He gave out a slight groan, immediately collapsing to the ground. All three bullets had implanted directly in his heart. They had to be laced with something because I’d never seen someone drift away so quickly.
“Sebastian, stay with me!” I begged him. “Open your eyes, please!”
His lashes fluttered open. “Those words…” he whispered, bringing his quivering hand to my cheek. “The words I wanted to say…”
“Shh...” I silenced him with a kiss. Hot tears slid down my cheeks, plummeting onto his cool skin.
I used my dagger to make a deep cut on my wrist. Bringing it to his lips, I urged him to drink. If I had to, I was going to rip every inch of me open, give him as much blood as he needed to survive. Razor’s warning rang in my ears but it didn’t matter.
This was Sebastian.
And he was dying.
With each passing second, he was slipping further away from me. His blood was everywhere, staining his chest, his back, coloring the white fabric of my dress a deep, deadly crimson.
“Please stay with me, please. Stay with me, Sebastian!” I shook his limp body. “Drink!”
Sebastian shook his head. “I can’t…” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Razor said…”
“Screw what Razor said!” I yelled.
“I could never hurt you.”
You’re hurting me now! I wanted to scream.
“I love you, Dawn. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you...I love you. With all my heart.”
Oh, God!
“I told you before, even if I didn’t have any more tomorrows, I’d never regret our time together. And even now, in this very moment, I mean that.”
“Then fight, damn it!” I screamed. “So that we both don’t have any regrets.”
He pressed his lips together as I tried to force my blood into him.
“This isn’t a small wound.” He looked down at his chest and flinched at the bloody mess. “I’ll…drain you.” His breathing was becoming more labored, his words were barely audible.
“Then drain me!”
“No…” he whispered, closing his eyes. “I love you.”
I love you too, I love you too…
Please don’t leave me!
The sky ripped open, and the snow began to fall, this time with intensity. Snowflakes plunged from above, surrounding us in white, disappearing into the bright red of Sebastian’s blood. And just like the snow that touched the ground, melting away into nothingness, the life in Sebastian’s eyes began to fade.
When I looked back to where she had been standing, Aurora was gone.
Copyright © 2012 by Ada Adams
All rights reserved.
www.angelcreekseries.com
“Many people sing in the shower. I write scenes in my head and act them out.”
In her career as an actress and a writer, Ada spends most of her days immersed in imaginary worlds. Much like the characters she enjoys playing and writing about, Ada is a martial artist with a Black Belt in Shotokan Karate. She is also a big proponent of lifelong learning, and has attained a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (it aids in creating characters with unique quirks!) as well as a Master’s of Science in Education. She lives in Toronto, Canada, and enjoys adventurous nature hikes with her adorable puppies, Cara and Oreo.
If you would like to find out more information about the “Angel Creek” series and its characters, please visit www.angelcreekseries.com.
ALSO BY ADA ADAMS
ReVamped (Angel Creek, Book I)
“Intangible”
by J. Meyers
Twins Sera and Luke Raine have a well-kept secret—she heals with a touch of her hand, he sees the future. All their lives they’ve helped those in need on the sly. They’ve always thought of their abilities as being a gift.
Then Luke has a vision that Sera is killed. That gift they’ve always cherished begins to feel an awful lot like a curse. Because the thing about Luke’s ability? He’s always right.
And he can’t do anything about it.
Turn the page for a special preview of Intangible.
Preview
Chapter One
“Shall she be the first to die, Seer?”
Luke’s head whipped up and he froze with the realization—the woman, the voice, she was addressing him directly. That had never happened before.
She spo
ke again, a taunt. “Yes, I think so. Her healing makes her the more dangerous.”
No. A chill tingled up his neck, settled on his scalp. Not his sister. This one couldn’t be about Sera.
His eyes searched the room. Blood-red rock walls rose from a charred black stone floor with the deepest, darkest shadows lurking in every crack and crevice. Luke blinked hard. Did the shadows just move? He shook his head to clear it, focus. It was a vast, vacant space that felt both cold and hot simultaneously. Luke went from shivering to sweating to shivering again.
Oh my god, Luke thought. Am I literally in hell? He turned around. Damn it, who’d said that?
There.
Wow.
Ivory satin skin, copper colored hair, her body a combination of hard and soft in all the right places. Divine. That was the only way to describe her. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe—it pierced him to his core, her beauty. She smiled serenely at him. And though her words had struck terror, her visage soothed him. He knew with sudden certainty that he’d do anything to make her happy.
Torchlight from sconces on the walls flicked amber across her tall angular form. As Luke gazed intently, however, her beauty quivered, disappeared to reveal a disturbing gauntness. Sharp cheekbones under pale-as-death skin. Collarbones stood out above the skin-tight black tank top. Hip bones jutted out just above the top of her taut black pants. Not an ounce of excess to her body. Nor an ounce of humanity in her glittering dark eyes.
Had he really thought she was beautiful only a moment ago? He studied her. She was sickeningly skeletal, yet then inexplicably alluring again. All at once terrifying, grotesque, and ravishing.
Goose bumps spread up his arms.
This was the scariest vision he’d ever had.
His eyes settled on the wide gold disc wrapped around her neck. It was shaped like an Egyptian collar necklace and inscribed with ancient-looking symbols. It lay flat against her chest, the only adornment she wore.
She smiled suddenly, sending a chill scuttling under his skin. There was no happiness, no warmth in her face—only inhuman excitement. With a start, he realized what was about to happen. Someone was going to die.
But no one else was here. And that could only mean one thing.
He was about to witness his own death.
In all of his seventeen years he’d never had a vision about himself—he hadn’t thought it was possible. And now that it appeared it was, he knew with certainty that this was something he didn’t want to See.
She looked beyond him suddenly and her eyes hardened, her stance tensed. It was almost as if Luke was no longer the target, but in the way. He followed her gaze, turning to look over his shoulder.
He instinctively smiled at what he saw—his twin sister Sera. But in the next instant the woman’s words echoed in his mind. Shall she be the first to die? A rising panic threatened to choke him. He scoured the room for a way out. A way to change what he knew with absolute certainty was about to happen.
It wasn’t his life. It was hers.
“The Children of the Prophecy must die!” The woman’s cry filled the room.
And then her gold necklace hurtled through the air, slicing deep into Sera’s neck.
“NOOOOOOO!” Luke stood up so quickly he jammed his knee into his desk and nearly knocked over the computer he’d been using when the vision had gripped him. His heart screamed staccato beats, his breath came in raspy gulps, his grey t-shirt was drenched. He tripped over his chair, scrambling to grab the small, wire-bound black sketchbook on his bedside table before the details faded away. He wrote in a near frenzy as his eyes fought to focus in the dim light. Every little detail of his vision went down on the page: colors, smells, the look of the room and the people in it, what they wore, words they said. Everything he could remember.
He wrote without thinking. Without order. Without pause. Lists of words, remembered phrases. Any clue that might help him figure out how to stop it from coming true.
He had to stop this one.
If only he knew how.
His visions always came true. Always. No matter what he did. He wrote them down, dissected them for clues. Then he tried to get there before the events happened. He did everything he could to thwart them. But nothing had ever worked.
Visions came to him either complete or incomplete. Complete ones came quickly and with little warning. The vision would take him, and he’d know it would happen soon. He’d have to rush if he wanted even a chance to stop it.
Incomplete visions came on slowly. He’d feel off for hours, sometimes, knowing a vision was coming. And waiting. Impending doom is what he and Sera half-jokingly called it, this prevision sensation when all his senses were abuzz.
That’s the way he’d been feeling since he’d gotten home from school. The whole afternoon he’d been jittery waiting for the vision to come, knowing the delay meant it would be incomplete. But that he also had more time to figure it out. Maybe even enough time to stop it.
What did he have to do to change the future? He hadn’t figured that out yet.
But he sure as hell needed to figure it out now. Right now. It was Sera. Sera’s life. His breathing quickened again just thinking about it. Threads of fear wove around inside his chest and ever so slightly squeezed.
Sera.
He had to save her. Had to. But how?
Don’t panic, he thought. Keep calm. Think. He shut his notebook and put it back down on the table, ran a hand through his short dark hair. A bright red 1:02 glowed on his bedside clock. Shivering, he pulled his sweaty shirt over his head, and replaced it with a soft green henley. He pushed the sleeves up to his elbows as he padded the short distance down the hall to his sister’s bedroom, the khaki carpet swallowing his footsteps. A nightlight stretched his shadow to the far end of the hall.
He paused for a moment at Sera’s door. What was he going to tell her, coming to see her at one o’clock in the morning? It’s not like he could say, “Hey, I’m scared to death that you’re going to die because I just Saw it. Wanna help me figure out how to stop that from happening?”
Shall she be the first to die, Seer? The woman’s words echoed in his mind.
He didn’t have to say anything. He just needed to know she was okay at this moment. He knocked quietly.
“Sera?” Opening the door gently, he said, “Are you up?” and stepped into her room.
It was empty.
Available Now!
www.jmeyersbooks.com
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
&nb
sp; Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two