Gray (Awakening Book 1) (2 page)

It was an odd feeling as I walked past the stables on my family’s property. The place looked so different, as though I’d been away for years. It was like a child’s eyes had seen it last. Seriously weird. Everything was so confusing.

I had always loved our property. I could run, ride the horses, ride my bike, climb the trees, pretty much any activity my heart desired. I had always felt free while there. For some reason, it was like I hadn’t been free in a long, long time.

The house was a beacon of hope, even though that beacon was dark. It was the middle of the night, so no lights being on was the way it should be.

A weird, creeped out feeling passed over me, like someone watched me. I looked around for whoever it was, but no one could be seen. Maybe it was my sister. Maybe she planned to jump out and try to scare me or something. That would be just like her. My lips quivered up in a small smile, but she didn’t jump out.

Something felt wrong about the house the second I stepped onto the porch. No. I was just being dramatic or something. I was home, no matter how little like home it felt.

I wasn’t sure how to get in since Mom wouldn’t have remembered to put the spare key back under the mat where it was supposed to be. Mom forgot her keys all the time, would use the spare, then put it into her purse like it was the one she’d lost. Dad always said it was one of the things he loved best about her.

No. I couldn’t let myself think about anything other than the things they would want to know. I would see them any second. I had to tell them . . . something.

I ran my hand over my eyes. What had I wanted to tell them though? My mind was in a fog as thick as pudding. I had to see Mom, Dad and my sister.

For some weird reason, my body shook in an almost convulsive way. My teeth chattered as though it was the middle of winter, despite the fact I was pretty sure it was early fall.

I touched the place next to the door where we had created a little niche under the siding for yet another spare key. Nobody had told Mom about that one, so there was a good chance the key was still there.

It made me smile as my fingers touched it. I drew it out, unspeakably relieved as the door was unlocked. But again, when I pushed it open, it was obvious something was wrong.

Nothing was where it normally was. Even the smell of the house was wrong. My house had always smelled of books, the slightly musty scent of old paper and the clean, spicy aroma of the ginger tea Mom drank. Those pleasant fragrances were nowhere to be found. The house instead held the sterile, ammonia-like scent of disinfectants.

It looked like something which had been taken from a magazine, sharp, modern and ruthlessly clean. That was not a home, not my home.

But it was. It had to be. The house was where I was supposed to be, a place of safety.

“Mom?” I called, desperate to see them as the door closed behind me.

Where were the pictures of me and Kassia, the wedding photos of Mom and Dad, the family photos? Where were Kassia’s shoes and books which were always all over the living room floor, or Mom’s laptop, or Dad’s camera? Where was the comfort I always felt inside the house?

“Dad?” I asked in a shaky voice. “K-Kassia?”

But as I looked at a bookcase which surrounded the fireplace, one that had always been filled by the books Mom had written, along with ones by every author she loved, it all began to make sense. What sat on those shelves were trophies, not a single book Mom loved, or picture Dad had taken, not a sign that Kassia and I had ever existed.

“Please. They have to be here,” I said desperately, unsure what to do any longer.

“Ben, honey where have you been?”

I turned my head, startled to find a pajama clad woman step sleepily into the living room, her eyes barely open. I had never seen her in my life, but there she was, in my home. Her eyes went wide. Her hand covered her mouth as she looked at me, like she thought I was there to rob the place.

“Who are you?” I demanded, my hands clenched into tight fists.

The woman took her hand away from her mouth and picked a phone up from the table next to her. “I am Rose Connelly, young lady. How did you get in here?” she asked in a far more forceful voice than she had used a moment before.

I narrowed my eyes at her and lifted the key so she could see it. “Why are you in my house?” I asked, even though it had started to become obvious to my addled brain that some horrible mistake had been made.

The woman’s eyes went wide. “YOUR house?” she asked, then turned on a light.

My body jerked. I hadn’t seen a light like that in years. No. That was a crazy thought. Lamps were an entirely normal part of life. Nothing unusual. Nope.

The woman examined me closely, then her mouth fell open. “What happened to you? You’re covered in blood,” she said, but didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, she brought the phone up to her ear and began to make a call.

Blood? I looked down, startled to see that she was right. My shirt had been white at one point, but right then, a huge, reddish-brown, crusty stain covered it. It made me look like I’d come out of a horror movie. No wonder Rose Connelly had looked so freaked out.

There was nothing wrong with me though. I had no idea what was going on. Nothing made sense anymore.

I ignored whatever she said into the phone, my eyes taking in everything they could in the bright room. It was insane. It wasn’t my home at all.

I took a step back, then another, unsure where to go, or what to do. Mom. Dad. Kassia. Where were they? Why couldn’t I remember anything other than times from years in the past? I wasn’t a little kid anymore. I was seventeen years old. The memories which flooded my system were all from when I was little though.

I stepped back again, but bumped into the door. I had broken into someone else’s home. Not a good move, it seemed.

I set the key down on a table next to the door and turned to open it. Lost. Empty. Alone. Where was my family?

“Honey, wait. Don’t leave,” the woman said and stepped toward me. “Are you Shayla?” Her eyes searched my face like it held the answer to a profound mystery.

I tipped my head to the side, unsure why that name felt so familiar. “I . . . I don’t know.”

An image floated through my mind. My sister had been tickling me mercilessly,
As soon as you tell me where you put my stuff, I’ll let you go, Shayla.

My lips quivered a little bit. Shayla. It was my name. “Kassia calls me Shayla the shoplifter because I always take her things,” I said to myself, doing all in my power to figure out the rest of it.

Rose’s lips turned up in a small smile, then she offered the phone to me. “Last I heard, your sister was still in town.”

In town. Right. Kassia was five years older than me. She would be in college, or about to graduate.

I didn’t take the phone though. Strangely enough, it felt foreign, as though I hadn’t used a phone in years. Why did everything feel so unfamiliar?

After a moment, red and blue strobes lit the air. Police lights. Huh. That felt just as bizarre as everything else.

Then the questions began. Police officers asked me hundreds of them, but I had no answers. All I knew, was that my name was Shayla Vincent.

The officers finally decided that to ask the same questions over and over was useless, so simply loaded me into the back of one of the police cruisers. My eyes met Rose Connelly’s as they closed the door behind me and a lost feeling engulfed me.

She turned her lips up in a small smile and lifted her hand to wave, but her eyes turned to something else. I looked as well and saw a guy around my age walking toward her. That guy must be the Ben she had mentioned, because Rose threw her arms around the kid’s neck.

The cops ignored the two. They just got into the car and began to drive. It was even stranger to pull away from the house than it had been to walk into it.

Desolation consumed me. Why would Mom and Dad have sold our house? What was going on?

I grimaced when the police took me to the hospital. There was nothing wrong with me, but they just wouldn’t listen.

Everyone stared and whispered while doctors asked yet more unanswerable questions and nurses checked me for every disease known to man. All I wanted was to see my parents, but no one would answer my questions about them.

After what felt like hours, I was given a pair of blue scrubs and they let me shower off the grime and dried blood which covered me. It felt amazing. The heat of the water soothed both my body and mind. Nothing had ever felt better.

It startled me when I stepped out of the little bathroom, to find that a man and a woman stood there, staring at me. One was a big, bald bull of a man with fierce, intense eyes. The woman was blonde, with silvery blue eyes, taller than me by a head or so.

Silvery blue eyes. Just like Mom. Just like me. Could that be Kassia?

I took a step toward her, but stopped. No way was that my sister. Kassia had always been full of laughter and jokes, but the woman who stood before me wore such a ferocious look, she seemed ready to strangle me or something.

That look made my back stiffen. No way would I be pushed around. Not a chance. “You have a problem?” I demanded, my feet shoulder width apart, one slightly in front of the other, my body loose, ready for the attack.

The blonde didn’t respond, but took a step toward me.

I bared my teeth and raised my fists. She was taller than me, so I’d have to be very fast. I prayed she wouldn’t attack though. Something felt very wrong about the whole situation.

She stopped and tears swam in her eyes. “The hook shaped scar on your neck, where did it come from?” she asked, like there was nothing more important than that small mark on my skin.

I didn’t lower my fists, but since that question had brought the memory back, it seemed important to speak of that day so many years before. “My sister was teaching me to ride my bike, but she forgot to teach me how to stop. I crashed, but didn’t let go of the handlebars, so landed on a pair of ice skates.”

She let out a small gasp and one or two of those tears spilled over. “Why were there ice skates on the ground?” she asked in a shaky voice.

I rolled my eyes. “We couldn’t decide if it was a better idea to make the scarecrow a fairy or a hockey player so we compromised and made it both. The skates just didn’t quite make it to the scarecrow’s outfit.”

“And what did your dad tell you when you were screaming while the doctor stitched you up?”

I gaped at her. My mouth worked silently for a moment. Could that be Kassia? “Dad told me I’d won my first badge of honor. He said we all have scars and that we wear them with pride, to remind us of the lessons we’ve learned.” I lowered my fists and took a small step toward her, trying to find my cheerful sister under the woman’s cold mask. “Kassia?” I asked, my eyes wide. She looked so much like Mom, the kind of woman that men probably loved, both beautiful and aloof.

She stared at me a moment longer. “Shayla,” she stated and sank back into a chair behind her. “Where have you been? They say you’re covered in scars. Who hurt you?”

I stared at her for a moment, but there was no answer to that question. I had no idea. I walked over and sat in the chair next to hers. “Where’s Mom and Dad?” I asked, although something inside me already knew. There was a vacancy in my heart which had never been present before.

She sniffed and wiped at the tears on her cheeks with a shaky hand. “They’re gone, Shayla. Mom and your dad were killed on the same night you disappeared. Even Grandma’s gone. She died four years ago.” She turned to look at me, her bottom lip quivering. “I thought you were dead too, Shayla.”

Pain. It tore through me. Mom, Dad and Gran were all gone? Kassia was all that was left.

It took me a moment to realize that tears slid down my cheeks and my sister held onto me like she planned never to let go. It was strange to see our massive differences. I was short, pale and dark haired, practically identical to my Dad. She was Mom’s double, tall, blonde and perfect. Our eyes were the only thing which showed our relation.

“What happened, Shayla?” she asked me after a few minutes of both of us crying quietly together.

I pulled free and wiped some of my tears away. “I have no idea, Kassia. I don’t remember anything,” I said, though as those words were spoken, an image flitted into my mind.

It was of a man with dark hair and pale skin, with a tattoo of a spear of Odin in the center of his forehead. It was so clear, but that man had weird, pointy ears, like the elves in movies. Strange. Where had that image come from?

The huge, bull-man stepped over and crouched down in front of me. “Shayla, do you remember me?” he asked, his voice a little patronizing.

I looked him over for a moment, then it dawned. “Chief Bouchard,” I said and leaned forward to hug him. He had been my Gran’s best friend, my godfather. I wasn’t sure if he was still the Chief of Police, but something told me it was true.

He pulled me back almost immediately, but his expression was a tiny bit less fierce as he looked at me again. “The doctors want to do some more tests on you, to find out—”