ReAwakened Read online

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, seeing the pain in his eyes. It’s not you, I wanted to add. It’s Aurora. But dragging Sebastian into my problems—with his long-deceased ex, no less—was one road I never wanted to go down. “I just don’t think this a good idea right now.”

  “Dawn…” he began. But then his jaw tightened and he said, “I get it.”

  Once again, I was aware of his lack of clothing. But this time, instead of exhilaration, I was overcome by the cold feeling of dismay. “I guess I should go so that you can get dressed,” I mumbled, straightening my tank top.

  I reached for the door, but he placed his hand against it.

  “I’m sorry I left you behind,” he whispered leaning toward me. “I won’t let my fear for your safety get in the way again.” His eyes drank me in—every inch of me—and I felt like surrendering to him once again. But then his gaze cooled to sub-zero temperatures, and I was pulled back to reality. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let this blood thing get hold of me again. Consider yourself safe.”

  I nodded and hurried out of the room. He shut the door behind me. Unable to keep my legs from shaking, I leaned against it, blinking back tears.

  I was going crazy.

  There was no other way to explain what had just happened. Possessed by some weird DNA connection or not, I was sure that what I’d just experienced would land me a spot on any psychiatrist’s couch. Sinking to the floor, I buried my head in my hands. Sebastian’s words rang through my mind.

  Consider yourself safe.

  If it meant being away from him, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be safe.

  Ever.

  Taking a deep breath, I gathered my composure and made my way down the stairs. Lena was sitting at the dining room table, sipping a can of Blood Cola. She smiled when she saw me approach.

  “Hi, Dawn.”

  “Hi,” I said, sinking into a chair across from her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, studying my face.

  I plastered on a smile. “Great,” I lied.

  “You’re a Born,” she said.

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded.

  “President Alastair’s daughter?”

  I nodded again.

  “Hmm…he kept you hidden from the public for a long time. Why is that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Information about my upbringing and the history behind it wasn’t something I shared freely and proudly. It always brought on a headache, and my head was already pounding after my encounter with Sebastian and Aurora. Feigning ignorance was a lot easier than divulging the truth.

  Well, you see Lena, my father was protecting me from my crazy uncle who had killed my father’s first daughter back in 1875—the very same girl whose DNA I was cloned from in 1996. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that now, well over a century after her death, she’s reawakened inside my mind and is trying to destroy me because I fell for her ex.

  Yeah, there was no way that I was talking to Lena about my past. There was also no way that I was telling anyone about Aurora. The last thing I needed was confirmation that I’d boarded the crazy bus and was on my way to Loonyville.

  Lena didn’t seem very satisfied by my answer, but didn’t press the matter. Instead, she asked, “Is Sebastian your boyfriend?”

  “No.” That much was clear.

  “Hmm…I thought—”

  “You thought wrong.” I felt guilty for the curtness of my answer, but I couldn’t bear to discuss our relationship—or lack thereof—with Lena. Especially since it was obvious that she had very personal reasons for asking.

  Lena’s pretty face twisted into a frown. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but in a desperate attempt to shift the topic away from me, I beat her to it. “How do you know Sebastian?”

  The question seemed to appease her. She straightened up, leaned across the table, and smiled. “Bast lived with my family in Mexico for a few years in the late eighteen eighties. You see, my father was a very influential vampire back in the day. His great-great grandfather was a human who came to Mexico from Spain during the Spanish Conquest. He wasn’t a very nice man, but he was very important. He fell in love with a pretty native woman and, generations later, my father was born.”

  Lena relished in each word of her tale. Her face brightened as she spoke, animated hand gestures accompanying her words. “Years later, my father met my mother on his travels to Ireland. Little did he know that she came from a long line of Born vampires. After turning my father, she gave birth to my sister and me. Unfortunately, a year after we were born, she was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Don’t even get me started on the sheer stupidity of humans. Witchcraft? Really?” she cried.

  “My mother was a strong woman, but when the townspeople threatened to go after my sister and me, she traded her life for ours. My father, still a fairly new vampire and very much afraid for our lives, packed us up and fled back to Mexico. There, he used his family’s wealth and power to establish one of the biggest underground vampire organizations in North America.

  “It’s not what you think,” Lena said when she saw my probing look. “While he did start the organization on a somewhat lawless foundation, he turned the criminal cartel that worked under him into guardians of the people. Kind of like the guardians we have now. Papi’s men were vigilantes who fought other criminals—like Robin Hood, you could say. In fact, one of my father’s best men was named Roberto, and the moment you heard someone yell ‘Roberto in the hood!’ you knew to run for your life if you’d been involved in any wrongdoing.”

  I envied the ease with which Lena related the detailed history of her family life.

  “Sebastian came to us when I was fourteen,” she said. “He showed up on our doorstep, broken and disoriented, like an injured wild animal. To this day, we still don’t know his story. We never asked, because it was clear that he didn’t want to tell. My father took him in, and Sierra and I worked with him to make sure he healed, learned Spanish, and was in a good state of mind for his training. In three short years, he made peace with his transformation and became one the best warriors in the country. Of course, I had developed a huge crush the moment I laid my eyes on him.” Lena laughed at the memory, but her smile dropped as she continued to speak. “Right away, it was clear that he didn’t feel the same way about me. Time after time, he’d peel my arms from around his neck and tell me that he cared for me very much—but strictly as a little sister. And even then, every time he had to remind me that I was his hermanita, something deep within him broke a little.”

  Because he was remembering Grace—his real sister, I thought glumly. Grace, the little girl who had perished along with his parents and Aurora, just years before Sebastian met Lena. But Lena didn’t seem to know that.

  Had Sebastian kept the heartbreaking details of his past a secret from everyone but me over the past century? I wondered. My heart hurt for him, but at the same time, a tiny warm ember of gratitude glowed deep within me. He had wanted me to know. He trusted me.

  Lena drew me back to her story. “To stop myself from obsessing over Sebastian, I moved on to a boy in the neighborhood,” she said. “Yaxum was human—a troublemaker in need of saving. The closest replacement for Sebastian I could find, I suppose. My father disapproved, but I convinced Sebastian to cover for me while I ran off, seeking my happily ever after.

  “Well, more like, I guilted Sebastian into it by telling him that no one loved me—not him, not my father who had always treated my sister as his favorite—and so on,” she explained sheepishly. “And that’s how I ended up entangled in the worst mistake of my life. Sebastian had to suffer my father’s wrath and was banned from the country. As for me, one failed attempt at marriage and motherhood sent me crawling back to my father. It took a hundred years of groveling to convince him to take me back. Things were finally good between us. So good, in fact, that my sister had to go ahead and screw it up.”

  “By getting abducted?” I asked, appalled.

/>   “By pretending to get abducted,” Lena huffed. “You see, my darling sister was upset at how close Father and I had become. She’s thirty—ten years older than I am now, with a husband and a family of her own, leading a rather mundane life in New York City. I, on the other hand, have become my father’s second in command. When she found out about the Born abductions from a friend, she decided to stage her own kidnapping for attention.”

  My jaw dropped. The phone call, Sierra’s insistence that she was alright and she’d made a mistake—it all made sense now.

  “Pretty crazy, right?” Lena sighed. “She sent a dramatic note to our father, saying that she’d been taken, which should have been our first clue that it was all some sick joke. As far as we know, the actual abductors haven’t left any notes for the victim’s families.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “Just that she had been taken.”

  “And the location where she was being held captive,” I presumed.

  Lena shook her head. “No, I sought her out in my mind.”

  Responding to the confused look on my face, she said, “Born twins have a special connection. We can enter each other’s minds and share thoughts. Sierra and I have been doing it ever since we were little. But it doesn’t always work; we’ve learned to block each other out.

  “When my father called, I tried to seek her out. But I just kept getting: New York, New York. She was blocking out the rest. My father grew desperate, and once he found out that Sebastian was back in Angel Creek, possibly hanging out with a Born, he suggested that I get his help and try to exchange you for my sister. Of course, Bast wasn’t having any of that. At the dance, he tried to shield you from me, but I knew who you were right away. Thankfully, he did agree to help me find my sister if I promised to stay away from you and get my father off your trail. I accepted his offer, since alone time with the guy of my dreams wasn’t a bad consolation prize.” Lena smiled sweetly.

  Again, more puzzle pieces fell into place. I’d bet a good chunk of money that Lena’s promise to Sebastian was behind my inability to get in touch with her father.

  “We set off for New York,” she continued. “My connection with Sierra is much stronger the closer we are to each other, so I assumed that once we were in the city, I would have a better idea of where to search for her. We had almost made it to her apartment when we were ambushed by a group of rogue vamps and some very strange werewolves. Werewolves like I’ve never seen before.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve had a run-in with them as well,” I told her.

  “Anyway, the rest is kind of blurry. We were drugged with vamp blood and brought into that morgue. They just left us to drain like animals,” Lena whispered, shuddering at the memory. “About a week later, Sebastian managed to escape and free some of us. We almost made it out of the facility, but because we were so weak, they caught us. You should have seen Bast fight! Even in his frail state, he didn’t give up.”

  “The other vampires with you didn’t make it. How did you and Sebastian manage to last two weeks?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t by chance,” Lena replied. “We’d been purposely spared. The rogues kept saying that they were ordered to keep us alive until the boss got there. Unlike the other vampires around us, they made sure not to fully drain us. Thankfully, you arrived first.”

  A little glimmer of hope ignited within me. “Do you know who their boss is? Did you see anything that could help us hunt down these rogues? Do you know what they wanted with you?”

  “No, no, and I honestly have no idea,” Lena said glumly, diminishing my optimism.

  “So, your sister found you?”

  “I kept trying to call out to Sierra to find out if she was trapped in the hospital with us. When I finally got through, I found out that she was nowhere near the hospital. She was hiding out in a spa just outside of the city. I would have killed her if I hadn’t been dying myself.”

  Lena had been betrayed by her own flesh and blood.

  “I gathered my energy and called for help,” Lena continued. “I told Sierra everything I knew about our location, and I that had managed to catch a glimpse of the hospital name as we were being brought in.”

  “Could Sierra have had anything to do with your kidnapping?” I had to ask.

  Lena shook her head. “No. She did a very stupid thing by making us worry, but when she realized that Sebastian and I had encountered real kidnappers, I could actually feel her terror. I can always tell when she’s lying, and there’s no way that she had anything to do with it.”

  “You had her call me?” I asked.

  “Well, first, I asked her to call Papi, but she seemed hesitant to admit what she’d done. So instead, I asked Sebastian for your number. It took a while to persuade him to give it to me. Even in his weakened state, he was hell-bent on protecting you. Once they brought in the little kids though, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to save them without your help. I gave Sierra your information and hoped you’d come to help us.” She reached out across the table and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m so thankful that you did. I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to repay you for this.”

  “No need to,” I told her, squeezing back.

  We enjoyed a comfortable lull in the conversation, and when Lena opened her mouth to speak again, I could tell from the wary look in her eyes exactly what she was going to ask. And, as painful as it would be, I also knew what my response would be.

  “So, uhh, you and Sebastian…” she carefully broke through the silence.

  “There is no Sebastian and I,” I assured her.

  “Really? He’s not your boyfriend?”

  I shook my head. “Far from it.”

  “Oh, okay.” She looked down, twisted a piece of hair around her finger and chewed on it for a moment, deep in thought. As she turned her golden gaze on me, I tried not to flinch at the words that floated out of her perfectly shaped lips. “I know this may be forward, but I still really like Sebastian and want to see if he’s changed his mind about me. I’m planning to ask my father for permission to stay here for a while, so I was wondering…would it bother you if I tried to, you know, go after Bast?”

  “No,” I lied. What else could I say?

  Before she could respond, Razor burst through the door, saving me from further thoughts of Sebastian and Lena. The entire team—including Ethan and Hunter—trailed behind him.

  “They followed me around town like little goslings,” he said, pointing at the group. “I gotta say, they’re pretty well-trained. Even the human one.” He nodded over at Ethan.

  I jumped up from the table, rushing over to Hunter. “Welcome back! Feeling better?” I asked, pulling him into a gentle hug.

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  Hunter may have been discharged from the infirmary, but he didn’t look so great, I realized. He’d lost weight, his features were once again gaunt and angular, and his shirt baggy against his tall, thin frame. Dark circles lined his eyes, and there was something darker behind the mask of cheerfulness he was putting on.

  “I’m fine,” he said more resolutely.

  “What about you, Dawn?” Ethan asked. “Razor told us what happened at the hospital. You weren’t injured, were you?”

  Moving my hair to cover the tiny fang marks on my neck, I shook my head. “No.” My skin tingled as strands of hair brushed against the fading scars. “I’m okay. Razor, Sebastian, and Lena are too, so the mission was somewhat of a success,” I said desolately, thinking back to the casualties in the bloody morgue, remembering little Julie’s drained remains. “Did you guys find out anything about the kidnappers? Do we have any leads?” I asked the team. “We can’t let this happen again.”

  Seth shook his head. “Nada.”

  I turned to Sophie. “Twitbrook?”

  She took off her glasses and rubbed the tired crease between her brows. “I couldn’t get through to him. He’s the only president in the world with a PR department the size of an army. When
we reported that the missing Born have been found, the whole thing was quickly swept under the rug.”

  “Our dear president has very lumpy rugs,” I said bitterly. “I’ll get Elisa to make sure that the bodies are recovered from the hospital, and that the families of the deceased are notified.” I paused looking around the room. “So, we have nothing to go on yet again.”

  “Sebastian wasn’t much help,” Razor said, turning to Lena. “What about you? Anything you can tell us?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I know that the rogues who kidnapped us work for someone more powerful, but I have no idea who.”

  “We’re back at square one,” I admitted, repressing a defeated sigh.

  “I’m pretty sure that now we’re at square negative one,” Brooke grumbled.

  “You just made a math joke, Brooke.” Seth couldn’t hide the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “There may still be hope for you yet,” he said.

  “So what should we do now?” Sophie asked.

  “Now, we relax,” Razor said, hunting through Sebastian’s liquor cabinet. Countless shiny bottles filled with bloody alcoholic mixtures lined the shelves, all unopened, used simply for display. When he saw my glare, he put down a bottle of expensive-looking champagne.

  “Relax? You want to relax?” I cried as he made his way toward me.

  “Listen, Miss Pessimist, I get that the word relax doesn’t have a place within the pages of your personal dictionary, but you gotta introduce it to that overworked brain of yours.” He tapped me gently on the head. “We saved Sebastian and Lena. We’re safe. We found the missing Born—albeit not on time. In this very moment, life is good. I say we take a breather!” He moved back to the cabinet and popped open the bottle of Blood Bubbly.

  Brooke clapped her hands. Seth and Sophie glanced at each other, slightly intrigued by Razor’s proposal. Hunter, on the other hand, turned away.

  “Life isn’t good!” I yelled. “We just returned from a horrible scene where many innocent lives were lost! Young vampires died. A week before that, my entire team was injured at another massacre. Who knows what tomorrow has in store?”