The Awakening (2 page)

Making his way back across the field to the road,
he followed the directions he'd gleaned from the witch's blood and began his
journey. Revenge was best served with a healthy dose of planning.

CHAPTER TWO

It all started with an image of death.

Blood, screaming...and eyes.
Red
eyes.

Gabby sat up sharply, gasping for breath, trying to
shake off the disorientation from her dream. Her skin was clammy and sweat
trickled down her face as she clutched the covers around herself. The dream had
seemed so real…almost like a vision. It took a while before she realized
where she was and even then her heart still raced.

The door slipped open a crack, letting in light
from the hallway and the biggest pain in the ass she'd ever had the pleasure of
meeting.

"Gabrielle?"

Clutching her head, she'd hoped he'd leave her
alone, but of course he'd heard her heart racing and she'd probably called out
in her sleep. He could hear everything.

"I'm fine, Regulus."

He inched the door open, his bulky frame blocking
most of the light. "Your heart says otherwise."

She'd rather be a million miles away from this
place right now. After Regulus manipulated her into faking his death, she
thought that might be the end of it. Aya had destroyed the Coven and any chance
of them awakening whomever it was they were trying to find. Mental, corrupted
witches descended from the Original Witch, made with Celestine blood. Coraline
had been one of them, but she had been willing enough to help in their cause.
She'd given Zac her power so he could kill Regulus and it was all a ruse.

Zac, Aya…their friends Nye and Tristan, they all thought
the Roman was gone for good. When they found out the truth, shit would hit the
fan. He was mortal enemy number one. After she'd resurrected the founder,
he'd brought her to a house on the outskirts of London. A safe place, he'd
called it. Safe from what?

"I'm fine," she said again. "It was
just a vivid dream."

"Vivid dreams are usually precursors to
something else," the vampire said. "Have you heard from the
witch?"

She shook her head in the darkness, knowing full
well that he could see the gesture.

"Perhaps you should try and recall the dream.
They've had more than enough time to figure out if the Coven's spell
succeeded."

"You seem to know who it is," she said.
"Why won't you tell me?"

"Because it's pointless unless the spell
worked."

Regulus would tell her nothing. That ass and his
schemes and threats had manipulated her into faking his death and he had
nothing but silence in return. He'd made threats against her family and
wouldn't put it past him to make good on them if she tried anything. She had no
cards to play and he knew it.

"What was the dream about?" He sat on the
edge of the bed and she was overly conscious that she was wearing nothing but a
tank top and shorts. He was wearing little else and she found herself looking
him over. She was so used to seeing him dressed in crisp business shirts and
slacks, not form fitting T-shirts and boxers. "Gabrielle?"

"Eyes," she whispered, looking away.

"Eyes?"

"Red eyes and blood."

He frowned, his gaze wandering over her. "I
know you don't want to," he said, his fingertips grazing over her hands.
"But, it might've been a message from the witch."

She pulled her hands back, the gentle gesture
making her uncomfortable. Nodding, she rested her forehead against her knees
and closed her eyes, trying her best to focus with Regulus so close. He really
was handsome in an asshole-ish way.

Letting go, she felt her mind slip back into the
dream, recalling each scene. It came back in startling clarity and she realized
that Regulus had been right. It
was
a vision.

There was Coraline and Max together in a strange
blue tunnel. She felt the witch's panic and desperation as if she was living
inside her skin. They were being pursued by something…someone, running, heart
pounding and skin prickling. Max's horrified screams ripped through her and she
stopped, spinning on her heel.

"
Max
," she screamed. A man was
bent over him, ripping into the flesh of her love like a rabid animal.

"Run," he gurgled through a mouthful of
blood and she realized he was beyond saving. She had to warn them.

Spinning on her heel, she kept running down the
tunnel, back toward the wards, but cold hands were grasping her arms. Cold,
like death. Red eyes stared down at her, a face covered in blood. A monster had
her in his grasp. A monster from the Hell of Max's religion. This
overwhelming feeling of defeat washed over her as she called on her power one
last time. Then nothing but white-hot pain.

"Gabrielle?" Regulus' strange eyes came
into focus and she realized his hands were cupping her face. He was frowning,
like he was worried about her.

Pushing his hands away, she rubbed her temples.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "You were
crying out…"

"It was Coraline," she sighed, shaken up
by the vividness of what she'd just relived. "Max was there and he
tried to save her. They didn't stand a chance."

"Coraline? Ah, yes the Coven defector that the
Six kidnapped at that Halloween party. Can't say I'm sad, never got the chance
to meet her."

"How can you be so flippant about it?"
she cried, wanting to slap him.

"Death is part and parcel with being a
vampire. I've seen so much of it it seems little to worry about. As for
the priest…well, there aren't any gods. Just men and monsters."

How could he just sit there and not care? He must
have lost someone he'd cared about…surely? Maybe he really was dead inside.

"Did you see what ended them?"

"A man with red eyes."

He let out a long sigh and shook his head like he'd
made a decision and as usual, he didn't let her in on it. Reaching up, he
tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Can I do anything?"

She gave him a look.

"You seem rather shaken."

"Why do you care?" She was just his toy
after all. A source of power to be used and abused for his own gain. He didn't
have a right to
care
.

"I've seen many horrible things in my long
life," he said. "You're young. Vulnerable. I remember the first time
I had to kill and it wasn't…" He stopped himself short, his jaw
hard. "Get some rest," he murmured, standing sharply.
"We'll talk more tomorrow."

Gabby frowned as the door closed behind him. She'd
thought Regulus was nothing but a cold-hearted predator. A master manipulator.
But there was something soft underneath the surface and it confused the hell
out of her. Because if Regulus could actually be nice and give a crap about
someone, then the world was more screwed up than she ever thought it could be.

Sinking back into bed, she didn't have the strength
to think about it anymore. The vision still lingered and sleep wouldn't be on
the menu. She thought about the man with the red eyes and understood that the
Coven's spell had worked. Who was he and why did they want to wake him up?

There was nothing she could do about it now, so she
let herself slip back into some semblance of sleep and her dreams were plagued
with red eyes and blood until the sun rose.

CHAPTER
THREE

Zac stood in amongst the sea of tourists lining up
to gawk inside one of London's most famous medieval prisons, the Tower of
London. Of course it wasn't an active prison anymore, the guards that lingered
outside were more a draw card for all the visitors and latent ceremonial status
 than anything else. Nothing more than a photo opportunity in their
regalia. Still, he wondered how many of these humans cared about the history of
such a place. Not many.

Nye stood beside him, glaring at the occasional
human who turned to stare at the ugly scar that marred his face. It ran from
his left temple, across the bridge of his nose, over his right eye and ended
just past his cheekbone. Four hundred and twenty-seven years ago, he'd been a
spy in Queen Elizabeth the First's court. The Tower of London was still at its
terrible peak of executions and incarceration then, Golden Age of Britain or
not. When the Spanish Armada attempted invasion off the coast in 1588, he'd
been lucky enough to have his face hacked open by a broadsword. It was only
later that he'd been turned, so he was stuck with the scar for his eternity.

"Why do we need the Three?" Nye asked
with a groan, shoving his hands into the pockets of his heavy coat. "I
don't like it."

"Because if the Coven managed to complete that
spell, then we need manpower. Preferably in the vampire category. Who knows
what we might face."

"I could do without it."

Zac glanced from his friend to the Tower. "Not
keen for a trip down memory lane?"

"Nope."

The Three had started out as the Six, Regulus'
trusted thugs for hire. They did the difficult jobs that he'd trust no other
with. Aya had killed Rob and Holly not long after Zac'd joined them, making
them the Four, then Nye had defected to Zac's cause. Now they were the Three.
When Regulus had died his last death, they'd splintered and disappeared. Rebels
without a cause. Zac needed to convince them that their cause was the one worth
fighting for.

The Three were the kind of men, in life and death,
who needed a master to serve. Maddox had been an assassin, taking orders from a
higher up. Rix had been a bodyguard to the Kings and Queens of England and Pyke
had been party to the many executions that took place here in the late 1500s.
There was a reason behind his nickname and it was exactly how it sounded.

Zac had been under the command of others at one
stage or another, but he'd quickly risen to the rank of Captain in the
Confederate Army. He'd been a leader in his human life and a mess in his
vampire one. His human life was the one he was trying to connect with and
finding the Three and convincing them to come with him was hopefully his ticket
to finding a way for his two halves to exist together. That was the reason he
felt he should leave Aya.

Thinking of her, he wondered if it was the right
thing to do, leaving her like he had. The morning before he'd stood with her in
the hotel room Tristan had gotten them in The Ritz, the whole world at their
feet and he'd denied her.

She was shaken, but free from her two thousand year
old war for revenge. The Romans had killed her family and turned her into a
hybrid and now they were dead, too. She had nothing to avenge except her
mission to guide the witches. The Witch Hunter was who she needed to be now.
Zac needed to find the man he was meant to be before he was worthy of her love.
Always unstable, always in agony, always a hairs breadth away from utter
horror. That's who he'd been since the day he was turned, but it wasn't how it
was meant to be.

"You can stay up here if you want," Zac
said, looking Nye over. "Just give me a few directions and I can deal with
it." A trip down memory lane wasn't his idea of a good time, either.

"It's fine. That place is like a maze down
there. Besides, Pyke isn't your greatest fan."

"True." He did crash a car with him and
Maddox inside on purpose. Little to no regret on that one.

They walked the length of the bulwark, alongside
the Tower to the Tower Bridge and back, weaving amongst the tourists, scanning
the walls.

"They built this bulwark a few hundred years
ago," Nye said as they walked. "The wall of the Tower used to go
straight into the Thames."

"How do you propose we get into the
dungeons?"

"There's an aqueduct at the foot of the wall
in the river," the spy said, leaning over the edge of the wall and looking
down into the murky water. "The tide lines have changed somewhat in the
last four hundred years, so I reckon that the tunnel will be flooded at some
point."

"Tunnel?"

"Yeah, they used it to bring prisoners to the
dungeons. If they were brought by boat, they had less of a chance to escape.
Once they were inside the tunnel, it was game over. The guards used to call it
the River Styx."

"Sounds cheerful."

"The river of hell, mate. There was no such
thing as human rights back then, not for prisoners. They were fair game."

Leaning his back to the wall and scanning the
crowd, Zac asked, "What chances do you think he's actually hiding in there
somewhere?"

"Pyke was apprenticed to the executioner at a
young age. I suspect it was as good a home as any that he might've had
otherwise. Like most of us thugs, he was a bottom-feeder in the slums until
chance brought him out. He might've had death shoved in his face, but he was
being fed and had a semblance of a bed. For a child, that would've been living
like a lord. If I were him, I would've gone home."

"Then," Zac said, "we try for this
aqueduct once night falls and look until we find him."

"Best option."

They went to a pub across the street and drank
until the sky darkened and the crowds dispersed. Nye became more restless as
the hours wore on, but he didn't say anything.

When the crowd started to thin, they left the pub
and wandered across to the Tower, which was almost deserted. The tide had
dropped to the point where a few yards of sandy riverbed was exposed along the
edge of the bulwark. Satisfied that no one was watching, Zac dropped over the
side and landed with a thud. A soft splash next to him revealed Nye with one
foot in the water.

"Shit," he hissed.

"We have to work on your landing," Zac
said with a grin.

"Shut up."

"You're more antsy than usual."

"Bad juju in this place, mate." The
spy pointed towards the opening a little further up. "We should be able to
get in there. It'll be locked with a grate of some kind."

Zac was at the entrance a second later, scanning
the bars. "No door. Here, take one side."

Together, he and Nye used their strength against
the steel bars, prying them open enough so they could fit through. The tunnel
within was damp and smelt like rotting earth and trash, but they pressed on,
their boots sloshing in the sludge. the further they went, the more signs of
the Tower emerged. The concrete turned into the brickwork of the original
foundation, and things started to become a lot more medieval looking.

The tunnel slanted upwards and they were suddenly
inside the dungeon. Pitch black, sense of foreboding and all of that.

"It's changed more than I thought," Nye
whispered, his voice echoing. "This is where they received prisoners in my
day. That tunnel we came through is new."

The eerie silence was broken by the ding of Zac's
cell receiving a text message. Raising his eyebrows, he pulled it out and
looked at the screen. It was from the witch, Coraline. She'd only
written one word and it made his already cold blood run colder.

Awake
.

He held up his cell so the spy could see.

"Blimey," Nye exclaimed. "Well,
we're in the shit, hey?"

"Not much we can do about it right now."

"What I'm more worried about is how you got
it," Nye waved his hands around. "There's no bloody reception down
here."

"Witches," Zac shrugged.

"Bloody witches. What did I tell you? It's
always witches."

"I guess we better hurry the fuck up." He
didn't know who was awake, if it was the Original Witch or something else, but any
option was a bad one.

Turning the torch on on his cell, Zac scanned the
walls looking for the way forward, but Nye was already moving towards a passage
further up.

"Follow me," the spy said, disappearing
into the darkness.

Putting his cell away and casting his senses out,
Zac followed behind as closely as he could. Nye had his cell out, shining the
way forward, the harsh white light illuminating centuries old prison cells. It
stunk like human filth and damp earth from the thousands and thousands of souls
that had seen incarceration here. A place that had seen such pain and torture
would never stink like anything else, no matter what anyone did to scrub it
clean.

Nye stopped abruptly in front of him, lingering at
the opening to a cell. Zac listened, but couldn't hear anything but their own
breathing.

"What is it?" he asked, but didn't get a
reply.

Nye leaned his head against the corroded bars,
hands clenched into fists.

"Nye?" he asked again.

A low keening sound came from his friend and it
sounded like pure anguish. Zac knew all about that.

"It was here wasn't it?" It couldn't be
anything else. He'd never seen anything get to his friend, not like this.

"Yes."

He waited, not wanting to ask, and let his eyes
take in the cell that had deteriorated with time and the putrid waters of the
Thames. Remembering the night he sat with Nye on the rooftops over Regent
Street, he knew that the spy had been turned underneath the Tower and
judging from his reaction right now, it had been horrific. Who wouldn't want to
avoid reliving that again?

"She was just a girl." Nye's voice was so
quiet, Zac almost missed it. "A tiny waif of a thing."

"What happened to her?"

"They found her in a lane in Cheapside,"
he said, his hands curling around the bars of the cell. "She was accused
of murder. They found her covered in blood from head to toe, sitting amongst a
dismembered body."

Zac could see where this was going, but didn't have
the heart to say anything comforting. He just let Nye get it out, because
holding it in was nothing but trouble.

"They threw her down here because no one knew
what to do with her. She wasn't talking, she wouldn't go outside...she would
fight anyone who neared." He stopped, drawing in a deep breath. "It
was my first assignment after getting my face hacked open. After the Armarda,
after the Hunter pulled me from that fire ship, Reileigh got all the credit. Of
course they didn't believe the rambling fool with a rent face. They found me on
the beach, half dead, half mad, and ranting about the woman on the ship. Lady
Annabeth, a visiting dignitary at court."

Zac remembered that Nye had told him that Aya had
pulled him from the fire ship. She'd saved his life, but failed to take his
memory of her.

"I was determined to show them," Nye
continued. "They didn't believe a word I had to say about her, and I was
smart enough to shut my mouth and play it as delirium from my wounds, but my
part in saving England from the Spanish was forgotten. I'd served the Crown for
years and they repaid me with silence. I would win the trust of the girl and
find the truth. It was what I was good at. I'd solve what no one else
could."

"The girl?"

"She was pale and sickly and wouldn't eat. She
was afraid of everyone who came near, save for me. How could a girl do that?
Tear a full-grown man to shreds? A tiny urchin, half starved and freezing to
death?"

"She was a vampire." Zac didn't have to
ask the question, he could already guess at what happened next.

"I brought her fresh clothing to replace her
rags, I sat with her and told her stories, told her about my family, my
mother's murder. Anything to gain her trust. Eventually she started giving in.
A word here and there and before long she told me anything I wanted to know.
Except, I didn't know the right questions to ask… She was starving," he scoffed.
"But she'd already latched onto me, I'd seen to that."

"She thought you'd save her," Zac said,
realizing what the girl had done.

"She must have compelled me, because next
thing I knew, I was inside the cell. She fed from me, then gave me her blood. I
don't remember how I died…just how I came back. When a guard finally came
looking for me, blood was the only thing I wanted. You can guess how the rest
went."

"What happened to the girl?"

"After I'd changed, I woke in her arms,"
he choked out. "She was singing, stroking my hair, cradling me like a
child. She spoke of the things we'd do together. Unspeakable horrors. I knew
she was lost. There was no way back for her."

"What did you do next?"

"I knew she made me like her. A monster. Everything
was clearer somehow and I didn't feel tired at all. I just felt...hungry. I
knew I had a choice to make. I could either be like her, or be something else.
I couldn't chance her changing someone else, so when her back was turned, I...I
ripped her heart out. A little girl..."