Awakened (6 page)

“No, you’re right. It’s a bad idea to go into them today. Plus, it was probably just
some kids playing around.”

I could tell that she didn’t believe a word of it. She stared pensively into the woods,
and I wondered what she was thinking. At least she wouldn’t go in there without me
or someone with her.

“Hey, maybe we can get Jace or Kale to check it out in a few days when we go to Moose
Nose,” I said, hoping to pull her attention from the trail. I knew that it wouldn’t
matter in two days, but I just wanted Mia to not worry. The footprints led away from
her house and into the woods. Maybe it was her father or mother, or even as she said,
some kid.

“Sure,” Mia answered as she turned to me.

Her face was pale with cold, and I held out my hand to her. She took it, and we walked
back to the house together. I didn’t want to leave her, but there was no way that
I could stay—at least, not tonight. My dad would probably freak out if I didn’t come
home.

Hoping it wasn’t a bad idea to leave her there alone, I made sure Mia locked her doors
and set her alarm before I left. On my way back home, I texted Kale, asking him to
check in on Mia that night, and he agreed. I felt a bit better, and so did Mia when
I texted her that Kale would be by to check on her.

I drove home with Ella on my mind. In two days, Kale and Jace would have some sort
of plan to get Ella back, and hopefully, this nightmare would be over.

In the back of my mind, I knew that that wouldn’t be the case, but I still had hope.
I needed it if I was going to survive the rest of the day.

Kale

It was getting harder and harder to control the situation surrounding Ella’s abduction.
I remembered the time when all I had to do was look at a human and use my abilities
as Chorý to get him or her to do as I commanded. Things had changed, and I wasn’t
the person I was before. I wanted to believe that I was no longer driven by thirst
or the need to control others.

It seemed that the hunger was still nestled deep in my bones. With each day that passed,
the burning in my throat and belly increased.

At one point, the hunger had been very easy to control. Ella’s presence had helped.
Now, with all that was going on, the simple act of feeding had become difficult.

Knowing when to stop wasn’t the problem. The problems were making myself stop, caring
about the consequences of not stopping, and—most of all—desiring a human neck. It
infuriated me that Jace was dead on in his assumption of la Luxure. I had spent more
than a century fighting it, and of late, the battle no longer looked good for me.
I needed the blood of my sire to help quench my thirst, and if I didn’t get it soon,
I would become a full-blooded vampire—a mindless killing machine.

Ella’s friend Alex had disobeyed every order I had given him, and as maddening as
it was, I was glad that Alex had ignored my demand that he stay away from Mia. She
didn’t deserve to be alone and hurt. There was still so much more to do, to plan,
and more needed to be figured out. I had a clue where Laurent might have taken Ella,
but the problem was finding it. While I was his prisoner, I had heard him speak of
Arc Island on several occasions, though his right-hand man had once called it Big
Tusk Island.

The Council surely knew that Laurent had such an island, but I was almost sure that
they had no clue where it was. I would have to call in a favor to find it, myself.

I called Jace. He answered on the first ring.

“Yes.” His voice was tight with what sounded like anger and annoyance.

“Two days, my place, with Alex and I can only assume he will bring Mia.” He’d understand
what I meant. I could hear a familiar female voice in the background; I assumed she
was from the Council.

“That may be problematic for me,” Jace said.

What was ‘problematic’ was the fact that I had to work with a Council member in the
first place.

I took a deep breath to calm down before I lost it. I’d learned when to swallow my
pride, but I’d never been good at asking for help. The ache of being unable to handle
things on my own travelled from my stomach to my chest, nestled, and made itself at
home. Going on my own and dealing with the consequences later wasn’t an option. Ella’s
safety was at stake, and with how hardheaded she was, Laurent would soon feel the
need to break her, as he had broken so many before.

“A problem for you?” I asked with forced patience. “Explain what could be more important?”
I paced, hating that I’d allowed the situation to stress me further. My stomach burned
with a hunger that I feared would soon consume me, taking me out of Ella’s life permanently.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten, searching for the calm that I had escaped me.

Jace expelled a breath. “There are some things that I have to handle here.” He sounded
as if he wanted to explain more but was unable to. Maybe he was in front of his fellow
Council members and didn’t want them to know that he was helping a Chorý.

“Where are you now?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I will contact you when I can.” He ended the call.

I placed the phone down, careful not to crush it. My anger had proven two things to
me. First, the la Luxure was stronger than I had believed it was; and second, it would
negatively affect my ability to find Ella.

My head felt as if it had expanded and my sight sharpened, while each sound echoed
throughout my brain. The last ten hours had gone by so painfully slowly that I thought
I would explode into a million pieces.

I needed to feed, and the longer I waited, the worse la Luxure became. The problem
was that human blood was the only blood that would help my hunger, and I feared losing
control if I took from a vein.

My only option was to head to the nearest hospital. It would be easy to finesse a
nurse into taking me to the blood bank there. Bagged human blood would cause the thirst
to ebb, but only temporarily; soon I would be forced to find my master or take from
a willing or unwilling human, but by that time, I was afraid that la Luxure would
have robbed me of my regard of human life.

I needed to find Ella, get her to safety, and then exit her life. She would have Alex
and the Council to care for her while I handled Laurent.

First, I had to make another phone call, one I had thought I’d never have to make
again, to ask for help. I needed to see Ella safe before I left Cedar for good.

Jace

I pushed the double doors to Aleixandre’s office open and waltzed in. He sat at this
desk with his head in a mass of papers. He spent most of his time there, now. Researching
and debating with himself.

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Did someone in this Council ruin my retrieval?
Only one other person knew of the pickup site and drop site and now I’m hearing that
he’s MIA.”

Maybe it wasn’t my fault that Ella was gone. I had assumed that Laurent found Ella
through the weird connection he had with her and Agnes, but maybe I was wrong. I’d
told Aleixandre that I worried about Santiago’s allegiance, but he gave the man more
responsibilities, ones he’d thought would replace Santiago’s need to live forever.
Santiago had threatened to leave before, saying that Laurent created immortals daily,
though Laurent created his immortals with tainted blood and kept them as slaves.

In the end, Santiago had gone to Laurent as he’d threatened. Maybe he had known the
pickup site.

“It’s good to see you too,
son
,” Aleixandre said, tone quiet but threatening. He didn’t even look up from his paper.

I took a deep, calming breath. He was angry, but did I actually deserve his anger?
I handled the situation as best as I could. It wasn’t the eighteenth century anymore;
taking a teenage girl by the authority of the Council was harder than Aleixandre would
ever know; he’d never been sent to retrieve an Arc.

“You have about forty-five minutes before the jet leaves for Rome. Shouldn’t you be
suiting up and hitting the weapons room?” His terse tone left no room for compromise.

“Why?”

There was a long pause. “Because.” Aleixandre looked at me with hard eyes. “I think
that I have been too lenient with you, Jace. Though we had a mole in the Council,
you were still responsible for getting the Arc back to us. You waited too long, and
because of that, she is in his hands. The odds are stacked even higher against us
now.”

I scoffed and ran my hands through my hair. “Do you think it easy? Do you think it
is easy to get a teenage girl to leave everyone she loves behind and follow a complete
stranger?” I knew that Aleixandre was from a different time, but he couldn’t have
been that clueless.

“Who did she have left?” he asked pointedly. “After a nervous breakdown, she was released
from the state hospital, to a family that couldn’t relate to her. You were supposed
to be able to relate to her. You were supposed to bring her here!”

I looked at him in the eyes. Ella had moved from Cedar and left all she knew of Virginia
Beach behind, after the death of her parents. She’d told both me and Kale that she
wanted to leave and live on her own, and I had hoped to use that to get her to come
to the Council. I wanted—no, I needed—her trust. “Christ, Aleixandre! That was the
reason I waited so long! When she finds out the truth—”

“She would have never known!” Aleixandre yelled, launching to his feet. He towered
over me and moved around the desk at a speed that made me flinch. “You have ruined
our chances of ever controlling her, Jace! It matters not that Santiago is now Chorý,
with Laurent! You had the sole responsibility of bringing her here, and you failed.
You are lucky that I even allow you to go as leader in a Blood Hunt!”

Aleixandre was breathing hard, and his muscles tensed. He had never laid a hand on
me, but I had seen his anger in battles. His current temper made me a bit nervous.

“Control her?” I asked, my anger deflating.

Aleixandre growled and walked back to his seat. What had gotten into him?

“She would never have known? They were her parents, Aleixandre,” I said softly. “She
lost everything, and now we wish to deny her the simple truth of what happened to
them, as well as control her?”

I couldn’t believe what he’d said. The Council’s job was to protect the Arc and give
her a normal life, one as normal as possible. What had changed? “What kind of life
would that have been?”

Aleixandre was no longer paying attention. He sat back at his desk and picked up the
phone. I waited for him to dismiss me or at least speak to me again, but instead he
spoke into the receiver.

“Marieth, if Vesco isn’t suited up, in the weapons room, and then on that jet in the
next thirty minutes, let me know.”

The coldness in Aleixandre’s eyes floored me.

“Jace, I suggest you get on that jet and leave this mess to Tamsin and Servitto to
handle. I have been lenient thus far. Please, son, don’t test me any further.” He
pointed to the door. “They are all waiting on you.”

With that, Aleixandre looked back down into his papers.

I headed out the doors and back to my room. This situation was wrong—everything was
wrong, and I had to fix it. To do that, I needed to get back to Cedar. That meant
disobeying an order from Aleixandre, and though I had done it before, there had never
been so much on the line.

For the first time in more than a century, my faith in the Council weakened.

Kale

My body ached, and that distressed me, but not more than the satisfying taste of blood
on my tongue. Where had it come from, and where was I?

The stench of chemicals and sickness bombarded my senses. I got up, and my muscles
groaned in complaint. I hadn’t felt a twinge of unease in years, and now I felt as
though I were falling ill.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I finally processed what had happened: another
blackout. The sticky sweet substance that coated my lips and chin wasn’t from an animal
this time, but from a human.

The blood was fragrant and fulfilling, but the hunger still burned beneath the surface.
The change seemed imminent, and I was powerless to stop it.

I sought to save Ella, but in reality, I was probably an even bigger risk to her safety.
How could I protect Ella from Laurent if I wasn’t even sure I could protect her from
myself? I looked around again, this time seeking the source of the O neg that still
had my taste buds tingling and my stomach pleading for more. Contrary to popular belief,
blood type meant nothing to a full vampire, but each Chorý preferred a certain type.
Ella was AB neg, and every whiff of her scent drove me wild.

I was in a hospital lab, and an intern lay before my feet by his desk. To my relief,
he still had a pulse, even if it was a weak one. What stopped me from draining him
completely? I could only assume I still had some semblance of control over the beast
that was la Luxure.

I turned him over and checked his neck for teeth marks only to be surprised when I
found none. I searched each side of his neck and then ventured toward his shoulders
where I found the gash. I shook my head in disbelief that I had taken from him so
viciously. He wasn’t dead and that was a relief. My cell rang and I sprang up and
placed the phone to my ear.

“Is this the legendary Kale Grey?” The unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line
gave a low rumbling laugh.

I used my shoulder to keep the phone to my ear and picked up the intern’s feet and
dragged him out of sight of the double doors. “Infamous, maybe.”

I chuckled as I thought of the names that I’d been called over the years. “Legendary”
was not one of them. Leech, treacherous parasite, and—the least creative but most
used—blood-sucker. There was no originality but it was still amusing. “Who is this?”

I placed the intern in a chair and glanced again at the gash on his shoulder. The
blood had started to dry around the wound, so I went to the door, cracking it open
to glance around. The hallway was empty.