ReAwakened Read online

  “If I’m going to be getting sweaty, I’d rather be engaging in a different kind of physical activity,” he quipped, shooting me his trademark smirk.

  Ethan was also not partaking in our sessions, albeit for different reasons. He was once again away on a visit to Shady Pines. Some days, it seemed like he had permanently moved to the facility. His mother’s mental health was declining rapidly, and the weaker she felt, the more time he spent there. Eager to see him, I attempted a few visits, but every time Amelia saw me, she would break out into a bloodcurdling scream and I would be escorted off the premises. Finally, Ethan and I resorted to just speaking on the phone. I called every evening to check on Amelia’s progress, and so far, it had been a brisk, downward spiral.

  “She was doing fine, but since your last visit she started having horrible nightmares,” he cried into the receiver during our last phone conversation. “She’s just a shadow of the person she used to be, Dawn. She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t eat. Most days, she barely sleeps.”

  “Do the doctors have any idea what’s wrong with her?”

  “No.” I could almost see him shaking his head in exasperation. “There’s nothing medically wrong with her,” he said. “That's the scary part. It’s all in her head. She keeps talking about a mistake from her past.”

  “Her involvement with Viktor?” I guessed.

  “Probably. She keeps mumbling, ‘I should have never toyed with their lives’—whatever that means.”

  My life? I wondered. Aurora’s life?

  “‘She’s going to make me pay for it,’ she says over and over again.”

  “She?” I asked.

  I certainly had no plans to make Amelia pay for anything.

  Ethan sighed. “I don’t know, Dawn. Nothing she says makes sense anymore. It’s like her mind belongs to someone else.”

  I know a little something about that, I thought, shuddering.

  “She’s completely checked out. She’s not the same woman she used to be,” he whispered sadly. “Even when she was at her worst with Viktor, she was never like...this.”

  “She’s still your mother, Ethan,” I reminded him. “She’s been through a lot.”

  As he hung up, I vowed to try and visit again soon. Ethan was beside himself with worry; I owed him a shoulder to lean on. I also yearned to learn about my surrogate mother and the accident at the lab that Elisa had mentioned, but all that had to be shelved until Amelia was fully recovered. And, unlike Ethan, I had high hopes that she would get better. Especially since her illness sounded a lot like what I’d experienced with Aurora. I couldn’t help but fear that I would end up like her if Aurora ever decided to show up again. Surprisingly, all had been quiet on that front. For three whole weeks, not a single incident had occurred. Most likely, it had to do with the fact that all had been quiet on the Sebastian front as well.

  Unbearably, painfully quiet.

  The third week of quiet came to an end with Lena’s return from New York. In celebration, we decided to host a small get-together at the cottage. Or, rather, Brooke—who was suffering from an Algebra overdose—decided that she needed to let loose and we would all have to come aboard the party train. Either willingly or dragged onto it kicking and screaming.

  She and Sophie volunteered to prepare snacks and decorate the cottage. By default, that also meant that I had to help. Aside from our training sessions, we hadn’t had a chance to hang out at all, so I found myself looking forward to some alone time with the girls. Since cooking wasn’t one of my greatest strengths, I assembled decorations with Sophie, while Brooke made a garlic pizza. The open-concept layout connected the dining room to the kitchen, enabling us to chat while we worked.

  “You’re making Seth’s favorite food,” Sophie noted, glancing at the stove.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brooke said aloofly.

  “You’ve also cut the garlic bread slices into little video game controller shapes,” I pointed out.

  Brooke bit her lip.

  “You’re telling us that’s not for Seth either?” Sophie teased.

  “What makes you think that it isn’t for me?” Brooke shot back.

  I laughed. “Did you suddenly take up playing video games?”

  “Because if you did,” Sophie said, joining in my laughter, “then we know for sure that it’s all because of Seth.”

  Pressed into a corner, Brooke gave out an exasperated sigh.

  Sophie raised her eyebrows. “Is something going on with you two?”

  “No!” Brooke’s eyes widened into bottomless blue pools. “There’s nothing going on between us. Seth is a nerd. He’s messy and doesn’t care about his clothes and spends too much time with video game characters and…and…he makes the cheesiest jokes and chews with his mouth open and he isn’t even that cute.” She paused to take in a deep breath. “He also tries too hard to be a gentleman and is too smart for his own good and knows a whole lot of stupid facts about pointless things. Plus, he still hates me because of the whole turning him into a vampire thing. But even if he did like me, there would never be anything going on between us. Ever.”

  Sophie stifled a smile. “Yet if you could blush, I swear you’d be a deep, deep shade of burgundy right about now.”

  “That’s enough!” Brooke growled. “What about you? Huh, Soph? What about you and Pete?”

  “You know that I don’t like him in that way,” Sophie said, dropping her gaze.

  “Then who do you like?”

  Before she could respond, Charlotte made her way down the stairs, waltzing into the kitchen, looking brighter and more cheerful than usual. Something within her had transformed since her move into the cottage. Slowly, very slowly, she was starting to look less like a helpless bird and more like a…princess. I had no other words to describe her. I knew from Sophie’s tales that Charlotte had grown up in a very rich family. She was an only, adopted child of parents who had yearned for a daughter, so she had spent most of her life being doted upon. Because of her sickness—both as a little girl when she didn’t know that she was a Born vampire, and later in life as she struggled with being a weak Born—she was used to everyone waiting on her hand and foot. Now, as she made her way through the kitchen, she carried herself with an air of regality.

  “Sophie doesn’t waste her time with silly boys,” she purred, joining us at the table. She then turned to Sophie with a smug smile. “Right, Soph?”

  I cringed at Charlotte’s sharp tone, but Sophie simply nodded. “Pete’s just a friend.”

  “Sophie only has eyes for me,” Charlotte continued, chuckling. Concealed in her laughter was an edge of severity. “No one else.”

  The possessive manner with which she treated Sophie brought out a protective instinct within me, simultaneously startling and angering me. Sophie’s inability to stand up to her friend was even more frightening. I had just started seeing a different side of Sophie—a more confident, outgoing girl—and I didn’t want her to surrender to Charlotte’s domineering ways. When Sophie didn’t protest, I felt the need to stand up for her.

  “Pete’s a good friend,” I told Charlotte.

  “Is that so?” She turned her sapphire eyes on me. “What about you, Dawn? Do you have any good friends?” she asked sweetly.

  “Sophie,” I replied confidently. “Brooke. The team.”

  Months ago, I wouldn’t have even been able to list one.

  Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “And a certain silver-eyed boy, perhaps?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, Sebastian too.” I had no intention of elaborating on that.

  “How certain are you of your friendship?” she asked. Once again, her doe-eyed look and innocent smile didn’t match the harshness in her voice. “I mean, does he only have eyes for you?”

  “I don’t expect my friends to only have eyes for me,” I shot back.

  Brooke, clearly uncomfortable by the tension in the room, attempted to lighten the mood. “What’s going on with you and Sebastian anyway?” sh
e asked me. “And if you say ‘nothing’ again, I’m going to chuck a video game controller at you.” She waved around the carved slice of bread in warning. “Whenever the two of you are in a room together, you look like you’re going to set something on fire.”

  “Nothing’s going on.” That wasn’t a lie. As painful as it was, nothing was going on. At least not anymore.

  Brooke wasn’t buying it. She crossed her arms and waited for me to elaborate.

  “Okay…nothing’s going on, but I do think that I might like him.” There, I said it. Kind of.

  I released a relieved breath. Admitting my feelings for Sebastian out loud to my friends hadn’t brought on the end of the world, I realized. As far as I knew, our planet was still rotating around its axis, and a zombie apocalypse hadn’t broken out.

  “I like Sebastian,” I repeated, tasting the unfamiliar compilation of words on my tongue.

  Brooke giggled. “Did you expect that to be a newsflash or something?”

  “Yes…no…maybe?”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but even Seth told me that he suspected something was going on between you two at our last tutoring session. And Seth is the last person that ever picks up on any kind of romantic signals. Trust me.”

  Sophie grinned. “You’re talking about Seth again,” she laughed.

  Brooke shushed her. “It’s Dawn’s turn to be in the hot-seat now. So, you like Sebastian. And…?”

  “And…what?”

  “And, he obviously likes you too! Don’t even try to deny it—he more than likes you!” Brooke exclaimed. “So what are you guys doing about it?”

  I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable by the sudden attention. “Nothing. For now. Things are…a little complicated.”

  Complicated—I’d really grown tired of that word.

  “Are you sure that you’re not just making them more complicated than they should be?” Brooke asked.

  Was I? Had I let Aurora win?

  “I mean, I get that you grew up in some crazy no-boy zone, but you gotta take the bull by the horns. Or, in your case,” she shot me a sly smile, “Sebastian by—”

  “The lips!” Sophie quickly interjected when she realized that Brooke had no intention of saying the word lips.

  I was grateful when the pizza began to burn, setting off the smoke alarm, diverting Brooke’s attention away from the conversation for a moment. I didn’t know how to tell the girls that, while I definitely wasn’t enjoying complicating things between Sebastian and I, every time I dared to take him by the lips, Aurora would take me by the brain. Being with him was usurping my sanity—and it wasn’t a good loss of sanity, the kind that girls liked to brag about because their boyfriends were so good-looking or such good kissers. Instead, I was going crazy because every time I allowed myself a tiny particle of pleasure, Aurora would try to rip it up from the inside.

  “Don’t fight it, Dawn,” Sophie advised as I headed to my room to change for the party. “You can’t help who you love.” Her words were directed at me, but her gaze was cast toward Charlotte.

  Just as the evening sky swallowed up the last ray of sunshine, the guests began to trickle in. I pulled out a few log benches from the storage area beneath the cottage, placing them around the makeshift campfire pit we’d assembled in the meadow. Brooke, Sophie, and Seth congregated around the fire; Charlotte joined us a short while later.

  Hunter had, once again, decided to opt out of hanging out with us. My anxiety over his elusive behavior hit a peak, so I excused myself from the party and set off for Angel Creek to find him. If he was in trouble, I couldn’t just ignore it. Even if he was indulging in his bad habits again, I wanted him to know that we’d fight it together.

  My first stop was the Main Street pedestrian bridge. Before he had joined our team, the secluded location had been Hunter’s favorite drinking spot. To my relief, the bridge’s only patron was a well-fed tabby. The only other place he sometimes frequented was the graveyard on the outskirts of the town. My concern mounted, as the graveyard, according to Hannah, had been the one place Hunter went when alcohol wasn’t enough.

  As I approached the wrought-iron gate surrounding the cemetery, my eyes connected with a tuft of bright green hair behind one of the tombstones. My heart plummeted. Hunter was leaning against the thick, gray marble, fiddling with something on his lap. A cold fear enveloped me as I watched him bend down toward it. Without thinking, I rushed over, carefully weaving between rows of gravestones to avoid stepping on any final resting places.

  “Hunter! You don’t have to do this!” I yelled. “Please!”

  Startled, Hunter snapped his head in my direction. “Dawn?”

  “Whatever’s bothering you, this isn’t the answer!” I fell to his side, slowly casting my gaze down to his lap. To my surprise, the only thing on it was an old, acoustic guitar.

  “Nothing illegal going on here,” he said, raising his hands in the air.

  He may have as well shot a guilty arrow straight through my heart, I thought, drowning in a pool of embarrassment. “Oh…I thought…you…” I paused, taking in a deep breath. “All that ducking out of practice, avoiding us, evading questions about where you were going and what you were doing—none of it added up,” I said. “Or, rather, what it added up to scared me. I thought you were…using again.”

  He locked his jaw, but didn’t say anything.

  “I owe you an apology. A huge one,” I told him. “I’m so sorry.”

  Stretching out his long limbs, he leaned his head against the tombstone. “I’m trying to work through my problems,” he said. “After the Scarlet House attack, I had trouble dealing with what had happened to those little kids. It came down to either getting some help, or turning back to my old ways.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve been ducking out of practice early because I found someone to help me face things. With this.” He held up his guitar. “It’s been a while since I played, but it’s helped a lot.”

  “I’m proud of you for getting help,” I told him sincerely. “And I’m truly sorry for doubting you.”

  Hunter shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to people doubting me.”

  “Well, it’s not right. I’m mortified that I allowed myself to be one of those people,” I said.

  Again, he simply shrugged and brushed a fleck of dirt off his ripped jeans. “I haven’t exactly been Mr. Talkative these past few weeks. You had no way of knowing.”

  I tried to recall a time when Hunter had been Mr. Talkative.

  “I’m still having some trouble facing certain things,” he explained.

  I flashed back to the night of the Halloween Haunt when he told me about the anniversary of his first kill. “Things from your past?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, and my heart began to race. For months, I had wanted to peel back the dark, heavy shades that Hunter kept drawn around his mind, just for a peek inside. At first I’d figured I could use that knowledge to make him a better fighter, but now I simply wanted to get to know a friend. My friend.

  “Will you tell me about it?” I dared to ask. “About your past, I mean?”

  Hunter looked over at me. For the first time since we had met, I felt like he really saw me, no longer as a prying team leader but as someone who cared.

  “It’s kinda a long story,” he said.

  “I have time.”

  Slowly, he began to talk. Angel Creek disappeared, and I was suddenly a part of Hunter’s past.

  “My life had been a mess since the day I was born. My mother struggled with severe depression and my father blamed me for it. I spent most of my childhood hiding from him as she lay in bed, crying or staring into nothingness.” A sad smile crept across his lips.

  “When I was eleven, she went on medication and things improved. You should have seen her, Dawn. She was so pretty when she was happy. Long blonde hair and a smile that could brighten the cloudiest day. She didn’t just radiate sunshine. She was sunshine. That was the year that she taught me
to sing and play the guitar.

  “And then, just like that, it got bad again. The lows came and went without warning. She stopped playing. She never sang. I started doing it for her, in hope of using music to draw her out of the darkness. I even started writing songs. I placed all of my anger at my mom’s disease into it. My dad, I was convinced, hated me at this point. He would beat me every time he found out that I’d been playing for her, but I endured the pain because every time I played a little spark ignited deep in her eyes.

  “On my fourteenth birthday, she joined in my song. It was something I’d written during a particularly bad week, a song about a ray of light during the darkest of days. Hope for the future. An escape from the darkness. And she sang it perfectly. Word for word.

  “That was the last time I heard her sing. The next morning she was gone. Forever,” he whispered hoarsely. “I guess I should’ve found solace in the fact that there would be no more darkness for her, but I couldn’t help but think that my song had something to do with it. To this day, I’m sure it’s what gave her the strength to do what she did.

  “After my mom’s death, my dad went ballistic. By the time I was sixteen, I’d been hospitalized nine times for broken bones, concussions, and a whole lot of cuts and bruises. The tenth hospital visit put me in intensive care for three weeks, and that’s when I realized that I had to get out. So I packed up my mother’s guitar and left.

  “Since I had no money, I ended up doing a lot of odd jobs all over the place. I even panhandled on street corners. It took two years before I was able to sing again, but the music saved me. It was the only thing that kept me going. My luck took a turn for the better when the lead singer of Blood Vultures found me. The band took me in and they pretty much became my new family.

  “I was the happiest when I was on stage. As long as I was one with the music, I was somehow one with my mother. I felt her on stage with me during every single show. We worked hard and played a lot of small venues. A month after my twenty-first birthday we booked our biggest concert ever.”

  He paused for a brief moment, struggling for words. “And that’s when my father tried to kill me. He came to my dressing room just before we were supposed to go on. He was drunk or high—completely out of it. I can still remember the way his face twisted as he spat at me, yelling that I’d gained fame at my mother’s expense. He ended up pushing me so hard, I stumbled back into a table, hitting my head. I must have been out cold for a while, because the next thing I remember, I was on stage.