The Awakening of Ren Crown (3 page)

The older man sighed. “The scanner is dead and soon she will be too. Let her find peace,” the older voice said dismissively. “You don't waste reserves on ordinaries when you don't know who might be watching for the right opportunity to strike. If only the scanner was working.”

“Maybe she isn't ordinary. I've never felt such a linger in the air.”

“These scavengers are foot soldiers only—boy probably had more magic than they could deal with—bet they leaked his magic everywhere, or else we'd have found it in a container. Still...check her wrist.”

I felt my wrist lifted.

“Nothing. Her skin is clear,” he said. He carefully laid my arm back down. “But she feels...” His voice trailed off.

“Mother would heal her,” the boy said, as if to himself. “She wouldn't care that she was ordinary.”

“She would care if it hurt
you
. You are crouching there as if that girl is the first soon-to-be dead person you've ever seen. Help me finish tying up these scumbags.”

The boy stood and the heat from his hand lifted with him. Everything became cold, painful, and hazy again.

The night sky was circling. I...was at the planetarium with Christian? Any moment now there would be music and a laser show. But the manager and lighting technicians couldn't agree on something. I could hear the buzz of their furious whispers. Then someone was once again next to me, kneeling and putting a hand on my arm, and I felt some semblance of clarity, along with relief that his hand was touching me again.

A sigh issued from somewhere far to my left. “Fine. Do it, if you must. A
tiny
amount only. I'll transport these to Processing.”

The hand moved to my chest. Something like strangled laughter and blood bubbled from my chest and up my throat with the thought of telling Christian that I couldn't even appreciate my first experience getting to second base.

Christian
.

Heat centered in the hand pressing against my chest, and something electric and white hot shot through me.

The electricity connected and something in me—that part that felt neutralized, like a sleeping dragon—pulled greedily, demanding treasure and gold, knitting it together and throwing swashes of energy through my limbs like paint splattering a canvas. And all of a sudden, all I could see was blue. Two circles of ultramarine, the color straight from the deepest shade of
The Last Judgment
. Staring into those eyes, a winged henna design sketched itself slowly in my mind.

“Their police are coming.” The older man's voice was flat. Sirens whined in the distance. “They will take care of her, if she lives, and—”

Her, not
them
.

I flipped myself like a flopping fish, then dragged my body toward my brother's unmoving form, arm over arm. There was no pain this time, and I could use my left arm again, but it felt like I was moving through sludge. Like in a dream. A nightmare. This
had
to be a nightmare.

“It—she's moving.” The older man's voice sounded disbelieving. “How much did you use, Ax?”

“Half,” he answered.

The older man sounded like he was choking. “Half...what were you thinking,
Alexander
? You are not indestructible, regardless of what you and everyone else thinks.”

“She's a fighter,” he remarked simply, as if it explained all. “She took it, and I let her.”

“You play too many team sports. We should have raised you as an assassin instead. I told them that, but did anyone listen? Where's she going?”

“To the boy.”

“Don't bother, girl,” the older man called out. “He’s deader than dead.”

My mind rejected that notion totally. I kept crawling forward. It was getting harder and my vision was tunneling again.
No
. Not yet. Just a little farther.

“Ax, stop following her, dammit. This is getting less amusing. The suppression field won't remove our faces from the memories of the officers should they see us. And don't you dare use more magic for her! No! Dammit!”

A hand touched my back, and then I was next to Christian, vision suddenly clear, dark tunnel pushed away, my hand wrapped around his limp one, still warm. Oh, God. Oh, God.

“It is too late for him,” the boy whispered. The other man's voice was swearing loudly in the background. “Bringing back the dead like this is forbidden. This is all I can do for you.” His breath, at the nape of my neck, was warm, his voice soft.

My vision was tunneling again—the shot of clarity having come from outside me. “No.” It sounded like my voice, but a croaked, cracked thing under the blaring sirens, which were growing louder. I could feel no life, but there was something else in my brother's hand, something that tentatively brushed me. I could
feel
him. I squeezed his hand.
Please
.

“I am sorry for your loss.” The hand at my back gave a sympathetic pat, then lifted and the tunnel came rushing toward me, faster, blasting, before everything went dark.

Chapter Two: Daydreams and Nightmares

I looked at the winged creature I had penciled in my sketchbook. Since the “accident,” my hand kept recreating its pattern. Why I felt compelled to doodle the same image over and over would have freaked me out, if I felt the emotion for it.

Three therapists in six weeks had been unable to convince me that Christian’s death had been an accident. The next in line, scheduled for next week, would have no better success. The doctors kept saying that my imaginings were a result of head injuries, and that I shouldn't be concerned with “dreamscape memories.”

I was obsessively concerned.

Especially since people seemed to remember that I was “crazy” now, but not exactly why. Not a single therapist, not even my parents, could repeat the events of that night back to me twenty minutes after I would tell it. And none of them seemed concerned about that fact.

But at least the men in black had not reappeared. Not in the hospital, and not afterward. No one possessing strange powers had.

I looked at the winged creature—a hybrid of a bird and snake. Not quite a phoenix, not quite a dragon. I wiped at it with my thumb, smudging the shading, then looked down at my otherwise perfectly unblemished hands and curled my long fingers in.

The authorities could try to convince me until the end of time that there had been an electrical explosion that had blacked out the city. I had seen the pinched looks on the doctors' faces when they couldn't explain why I'd been covered in blood, but not sporting a single scratch.

I had searched through every volume in the public library and browsed a thousand websites on magic, secret government conspiracies, “awakenings” of all types, and a dozen different meanings of the words “ordinary” and “feral.” Nothing had matched my experience. Nothing had felt right. But the answer to what had happened that night was out there somewhere, and I would find it.

Besides, the boy's words—Alexander’s words—flowed through my dreams at night.
Bringing back the dead like this is forbidden.

Like
this
?

My pencil tip broke. I took a deep breath, then another, and let the calm vibes of the art studio wash through me. My only haven. It was the only classroom that didn't have a rose glued to an empty chair next to mine. Christian had elected for study hall during my art period.

I took a deep breath, retrieved a pen from my bag, and turned to a blank page in my sketchbook.

The Homecoming game was next week. The new quarterback was supposedly decent, but I hadn't attended any of his games, and I didn't plan to attend any in the future. Students were still weeping about Christian, yet they were excited for the game and dance, and I couldn't understand any of it. People walked around me living their lives, while I watched them as if they existed on a TV screen.

I felt...totally removed. My second therapist had whispered to a colleague weeks ago that I was suffering from some sort of raging delusion mixed with clinical apathy in order to deal with the loss of my twin.

But it was easier to stay silent and unnerve the therapists than to release the sobs that stayed locked in my chest, rippling there, pushing.

My pencil moved and Christian's braided leather band slid along the desk and paper as my wrist dragged it along. The world had stopped turning the moment I had awakened in the hospital, asking for Christian and receiving the horrific response of silence from my parents.

Then the world had turned without me.

I was stagnant. Like Christian's room or his locker or his classroom chairs. My connection to the world was gone. There was something about me that was different from everyone else now. And until I could figure out how to undo the past, no pathway would reconnect me.

I hated it. I hated choking back cries at the most random of times. I hated feeling powerless and without direction. I hated turning to speak to someone who wasn't there, accidentally setting a place at dinner in front of an empty seat, calling for someone who would never answer.

I hated the knowledge that never again would I be able to talk to my best friend.

The pressure of my thoughts seemed to resonate under my skin.

The drawing grew darker and more violent as I traced over the lines, undoubtedly leaving indelible indents on the pages below. I gripped the pen, pressure riding beneath my skin, and repeatedly outlined the little black figures screaming in Munch-styled pain. They stared out at me in anguish, moans slipping from their lips. I could almost hear their choked and building sobs.

Then they started running across the page, shrieking in agony and tearing the ink from their cheeks.

Literally
running and screaming across my paper.

I dropped my pen and slammed my hands down, catching the pen under one finger.

The girl on the other side of my large worktable was bent over her work, ignoring me. Focusing on her sketchpad and drawing without care.

I stared at the fall of her brown hair, wavy, similar to my own, but hiding someone normal beneath.

Black motion on the page forced my eyes down again, then the pen moved, slipping out from beneath my finger and rolling to the edge of my desk.

Small inked fingers splayed to each side of my hands. My heart hammered harder. I could feel the paper pushing around the edges of my fingers, tiny inked digits trying to lift mine. I closed my eyes and swallowed. Breathe. In, out, in, out. I smoothed my hands across the flat paper. Normal. I took another breath and looked down.

No inky fingers, no movement. The figures were once again standing in frozen torment.

Ok. Sure, no problem. I felt lightheaded. My pulse was racing, and the beat of my heart thumped through the veins of my wrist. I looked to where the feeling concentrated. Dots of henna brown were forming a vague pattern across the pulsing skin. The creature I couldn't stop doodling was taking shape on my flesh.

I looked up. The girl across my worktable was staring at me, eyes pinched. Her expression was a familiar mixture of horror, pity, and accusation, as if she was sure I was two moments away from slitting the skin I'd been staring at.

I had heard the rumors. Quiet Little Florence Crown had become Mad Ren Crown. Covered in his blood, I had killed Christian, the fury of my psychotic rage causing me to blow the entire utility lot. Or, it had been a tragic accident that had caused my mind to snap due to his loss. Rumors had spread quickly at school of my insane ramblings. Why the specifics of my ramblings—concerning magic, electricity, and men with weapons—were never remembered, and hadn't spread online, was a mystery I didn't have the energy to care about anymore.

Even the people I had been friendly with had that mix of expressions when they looked at me. I chose to stay far away from them most of all. It hurt more.

Half a person.

I was half a person now.

My fingers curled, my veins pulsed, the henna brown dots darkened.

I pictured a paper bag and my cheeks caving in and bloating out in its depths.

Christian's voice yelled in my head, “
Breathe
,
you idiot
!”

Breathe. Right. In, out, in, out.

The henna dots faded to a light freckle.

“Miss Crown. Lovely work,” an accented, luxurious voice said from behind me. Mr. Verisetti's long fingers placed a wrapped toffee next to my sketchbook. “Keep it up.”

He moved around the table and said something in a low voice to the girl. She blushed, averted her gaze, then gathered her things and moved to another table. I shakily unwrapped the toffee and shoved it into my mouth. As soon as it touched my tongue, the smooth bottom layer melted. I closed my eyes. The rich, smooth coat settled in my mouth, then the next layer melted. It was like ocean waves riding over my tongue and softly crashing in my ears. Calming and settling me.

There were no worries. The other students had stopped watching me. And the only magic that existed was in Mr. Verisetti's toffees. Even our cranky Calculus teacher loved them.

“I desire your help with something, Miss Crown.”

I looked up at Mr. Verisetti, and the classroom lights caught on the small gold cuff around his upper ear, the only jewelry he wore besides a wide black band around his left wrist.