Awakened (Auralight Codex: Dakota Shepherd Book 1) Read online

  3

  Synchronicity

  My heart sank as I pulled the remains of the black and silver card from my washing machine the next day. I’d gone home giddy and distracted by thoughts of Amorie, and unthinkingly dumped my work uniform in the wash without remembering to remove the card from my front pocket. The paper was destroyed and the numbers were illegible. I’d sighed and pouted for a day or so before deciding that it was probably for the best. I had no idea what I’d have done with her number if I hadn’t lost it. Would I have called her? If I had, would I have regretted it? I had no delusions as to how big of a fool I’d have made of myself if I’d ever actually managed to call her up and— what? Ask her out? It really was for the best.

  But that hadn’t stopped her from stealing the sanctity of my dreams and invading my nights with the lingering aroma of her beauty. I saw her day after day (I was a night security guard, remember? I sleep during the day, so that’s when my dreams happened.) and it was always the same. She’d appear somewhere that I happened to be and I’d awkwardly try to ask her for her number again, but every time, the dream would end when she made it clear she had no memory of me, and I’d slink away in shame. I didn’t dwell on her forever. But I can’t say I’d entirely put her out of my mind the next time I saw her outside of my own mind, which was only a few weeks later.

  I had decided to take a few days of sick leave and head down to Gatlinburg to unwind. Gatlinburg is a walking city. The main thoroughfare runs along the Parkway with all the main attractions, and most people just take the sidewalks to get around. I had been there before plenty of times with my family when I was younger, but it had been a while since my last visit and I was trying to remember how to find my way to one of my favorite restaurants when I saw her.

  She was every bit as lovely as the first time I’d seen her, as if not a single moment had passed. Her ebony hair was bound in a loose, but elegant style that left a few roguish ringlets to cascade freely about her face and shoulders. She wore a gorgeous dress cut from some shimmery black fabric that tumbled softly toward her feet in fluttery sidelong layers. I spotted her walking toward me from half a block away and panicked. What could I do? How could I approach her? I glanced around and my eyes landed on a little stall with free information booklets commonly found around the city to help the tourists find ways to spend their money. I darted over and grabbed a little folded paper map before resuming my post, dead center of the sidewalk where I would be in her way. I unfolded the map and made a show of reading it, pretending not to notice her coming closer until she arrived.

  “Dakota?” She remembered my name. I glanced up from my map, trying to look surprised. I noticed that the tall, muscular man who I’d previously assumed was just walking along the same path must have actually been there with her, as he paused with her, though he stood off to the side, unobtrusively. Though unobtrusive was pretty difficult for him. He was six and a half feet tall and built like a truck, with strawberry-blond hair that hung to his shoulders and a straight-up Viking-styled mustache and beard complete with little beads. He wore a tight black t-shirt and Levis jeans. I recognized the little hammer he wore on a sturdy cord at his throat as Mjolnir, Thor’s Hammer. What? I’m a geek; I love comics. Anyway, I noticed the Viking guy was eying me curiously, paying me more attention than I’d have expected.

  But interesting companions aside, I was far more concerned with the fact that Amorie had remembered my name! I put on what I hoped was a winning smile and lowered the map to greet her. “Hey! Amorie! Fancy meeting you here!” I knew I’d butchered her name which I’d pronounced like “Am-murry”. She smiled in return and gave her companion a glance that said that all was well. I decided he must be her bodyguard, and determined with another glance at Viking guy that I should make sure to avoid doing anything that looked threatening. It would take like six of me to make one of him and if he was her bodyguard, I wasn’t interested in finding out what would set him off.

  She laughed softly and drew my attention away from Viking guy again. “It is a small world indeed.” She looked me over and smiled. “What are you doing here, Dakota?”

  Play it cool, hot shot. I’d heard that in a movie somewhere, so it seemed the right thing to say to myself. “Me? I was just, you know. Shopping, and well, right now I was just heading to Huck Finn’s for some dinner. They have the best catfish and— ” Cooler, would be better. “—food.” Sigh. “So, what about you? Have you eaten?” Her smile was growing steadily broader and I couldn’t tell if she thought I was funny or pathetic, or both. My best hope at this point was both.

  “No, I—” She began, but I was apparently still determined to make a fool of myself and just kept talking.

  “Because you could go too, if you wanted. I mean to Huck Finn’s. For dinner. It’s a good place. Though maybe not quite fancy enough for you. But if you like catfish…” I met her eyes with a hopeful smile. “You could go with me if you wanted.”

  She did me the service of looking like she was interested, smiling over at her companion for a moment before looking back at me with an apologetic, or possibly pitying expression. “I’d love to.” My heart literally skipped a beat. “But I have a previous engagement this evening.” She indicated Viking guy and I wilted. Oh. Not her bodyguard. Her date.

  I tried to hide my disappointment behind a smile and put on an excellent show of shrugging it off. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I understand. I didn’t mean to intrude.” I gave a glance toward Viking guy and hoped he wasn’t the territorial type. Though I lost interest in her beefy companion entirely when she took a step closer to me and leaned in.

  “But, perhaps another time?” I met her eyes and realized she wasn’t just saying it to make me feel better. She was actually asking me out! I felt giddy.

  “Yes!” I might have spoken a little too loudly, or too quickly. “I’d love to. Though, do you live here? Because I’m not normally in Gatlinburg. I mean if you want to meet here, I can though. But I live in Knoxville—” She pressed a cool, slender finger to my lips, and her confident eyes told me she felt none of the anxiety I was experiencing. With a smile, she pulled another little card from her purse and started to offer it to me but paused.

  “If I give you this, are you going to call me this time?” I suddenly felt like an ass again.

  “I— what? Yes! Of course! I mean, I was going to last time, but something awful happened and when I got home, your number was… uh… gone.”

  “Gone? Did it disappear?” Her sly lips smiled at me as if to say “I know the truth.”

  “Yes. It was viciously attacked and devoured by the washing machine and I mourned its passing with a vow of silence.” I heard Viking guy snort at that, and I mentally gave him a cookie for getting the joke.

  The smile reached her eyes again, “I see. That is tragic.” I nodded gravely. She put the card away and my stomach sank for just a moment before she pulled out a phone instead. “Well, why don’t you give me yours this time. I’ll be sure to keep it safe from vicious washers.”

  I grinned and nodded, then recited my phone number slowly and carefully, pulling my own phone from my back pocket and flicking the screen on. I input her name into my contacts and asked her for her number again. This time, she gave it with her voice and I enshrined it in my phone, never to lose it again. I showed her the contact file I’d just created to make sure I’d gotten it down correctly and once she nodded her approval, I put the phone away. “Great. Thanks. I can’t wait to see you again.”

  She smiled and glanced at Viking guy again. “I look forward to it, Dakota. For now, I really must go. Please excuse me.”

  I nodded, smiling. “Of course. Have a great night.” She turned and stepped away, daintily offering her arm to Viking guy who almost grudgingly accepted and escorted her down the street. To my surprise, as they departed, he nodded to me in what I would have described as an amiable manner. And here I’d thought he didn’t like me.

  4

  Awakening

  I didn’t hea
r from Amorie over the next few days. I decided that calling her first would seem desperate, and so determined that waiting for her to call me first was the more dignified course of action. That, or the less terrifying. Regardless, I didn’t reach out for a few days, and in those days, I finished my long weekend, returned home, and got back to work. It was Friday of the next week when I heard from her again, though it couldn’t have happened any more differently from how I’d expected.

  Thursday night, I was working my usual shift, wandering about the museum with one earbud in, listening to a motley playlist of varied genre, when I heard something odd. It was a strange scraping sound coming from another room. I plucked the earbud out and clicked my music off, quietly crossing the room to investigate. I carefully approached the sound, figuring it was just one of the janitors or something, when I saw an odd light emanating from the other room in a strange, pulsating pattern. I leaned cautiously around the corner and peered in. In this room, most of the displays were settled against the far wall, with just two smaller pedestals taking up the center space. I noticed right away that one of the two pedestals had been pulled to one side, clearing a space around the other one. That could have been the scraping noise I’d heard.

  I looked up to the other pedestal, and that’s when I spotted the intruder. He was a middle-aged man with long black hair pulled back in a low ponytail. He had pale skin, a wicked, short, beard, and crazy eyes. Maybe all the strange symbols he’d drawn on the floor and the honest-to-goodness wizard robe added to the feeling that he was a few marbles short of a hot dog stand. Whatever he was using to make that cool glowy effect was actually pretty awesome, and I considered casually strolling in and asking him about it before my training kicked in and I settled on taking him more seriously. Crazy people could be highly dangerous.

  Whatever I might have done, the decision to act was made for me when he reached out toward the shiny silver cup displayed on the pedestal. I couldn’t let him steal museum property. If he even touched it, he could mess something up. A lot of the display items were rather fragile, after all.

  I sprinted across the short distance from the door to the pedestal just as a strange green light erupted out from the cup and spiraled toward the man I was right in the middle of tackling. I felt something strike me in the side as I landed on him, pushing him hard to the floor as he wailed and cursed me, kicking against my pin. I twisted his arm into place and cuffed him with some difficulty as he struggled. I wasn’t very strong, but I knew how to use leverage to my advantage, and I was pretty fast. Whatever had hit me in the side hadn’t seemed to hurt me; it hadn’t really even felt like it’d done anything, but I had a distinctly odd feeling all the same.

  I started to think about what had just happened as my radio rasped out, “Shepherd? Are you okay?” it was Joe. He was working perimeter tonight. “Shepherd? What was that sound?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I just kept my hold on the strange man who bucked and cursed. I stared determinedly at his back for an unknowable amount of time, my arms straining to hold him, though I hardly noticed the burning sensation slowly creeping through my shoulders and into my back. Shadows seemed to dance all around me, flickers of the pulsating, glowing lights, and shadowy forms that couldn’t really be there.

  Some time later, whether minutes or hours I couldn’t say, Joe came rustling into the room and some uncertain amount of time after that, police had arrived. I watched with idle curiosity as they took the angry stranger, kicking and spitting curses, out of my sight and out the door. He was calling out strange-sounding names and phrases; I’m pretty sure there was some kind of Satanic ritual stuff in there, but I wasn’t really registering any of it. I couldn’t stop staring at him as his tall, slender frame diminished into the dark of the main hall. Why was he glowing? And how had he managed to make the glowing light he seemed to be emitting pulse and change colors like that?

  At some point, I must have convinced Joe that everything was all right, because I was alone with the cup when my hands suddenly burst into sickly green fire. I gazed at my hands in abject horror, too stunned to even scream. When the flames suddenly extinguished themselves - the fire that hadn’t burned me leaving as quickly as it’d appeared - I finally reached the proper reaction, and panicked. I ran out of the museum and didn’t stop running till I was home.

  5

  Denial

  The next day was hard to handle. It was difficult enough to accept that it had all been a dream when I was still in denial and telling myself I’d just partied way too hard. When I went down for the mail and spent several minutes ogling the strangely desaturated passersby, I began to realize that no amount of partying could really explain these things away. It was with a rising sense of urgency that I pulled out my smartphone and thumbed over to Amorie’s number. I thought about dialing it over and over again. But no. She barely knew me. I was only considering calling her because I had no one else to turn to.

  At least, I had no one else I really wanted to turn to. Ultimately, my choice was made for me, however, when my phone rang, startling me from my indecisive reverie. I was surprised to see the call was from Shannon, one of my co-workers, a day-time museum employee who had bullied me into exchanging numbers during a company meeting. Why was she calling me? She’d hardly ever spoken to me before. I almost thumbed the ignore button, but some part of me was really curious why she was calling and another part reminded me it could have something to do with the incident last night at work. I took the call. “Hello?” I really was out of it. Not even a clever answer quip.

  “Hey! Dakota!” Shannon’s chirpy voice immediately grated on my nerves, almost as much as the way she pronounced my voice like “dak-ota” instead of “duh-ko-ta” like a real person would say it. “How are you?” I thought about answering her with a variety of colorful choice words, but she barely paused for breath. “Listen! The girls and I are going out tonight and we were hoping you’d join us!” What? Why would she want me to go out with the girls? They’d never asked me out before. On the one hand, I was just a lowly night security guard and “the girls” were all proper daytime museum workers with college degrees and salaries. On the other hand, I was the obvious lesbian who was less “out and proud” than simply “couldn’t keep her mouth shut” when it came to things like being asked if she thought male coworker A or B were attractive. Which is to say, on either hand, they’d never asked me out before and I had no idea why they would want me to go out with them now.

  Regardless, I listened on as she spewed out an explanation of where they were going and how it was some new club with some kind of show, and music, I think. I didn’t realize that I’d completely spaced out again until Shannon’s voice finally broke for the requisite oxygen. “So? Will you go?” It was an interesting question. I didn’t particularly want to go out to a new club with a bunch of people I barely knew. I didn’t usually go to clubs at all, and I wasn’t really that fond of hanging out with people who existed outside of a screen. After all, my television idols never put me on the spot or judged me. But as I was standing there, listening and deciding, my eyes had drifted to my hand where just hours before, a sheath of emerald flames had—

  “Yeah. Sure. What time?” I silently assured myself that I was not in denial.

  6

  Running

  A few hours later, I was showered, dried, and standing in front of a mirror in my underwear, trying to decide if a dress was really necessary for my evening destination. After a moment of agonizing over the clothing options my closet had to offer, I caught sight of my face and ended up taking a long, hard look in the mirror. I was what my Nan would have called “a scrawny slip of a girl”. Five-five with a petite frame and boyish figure. I was allergic to exercise for exercise’s sake so my body lacked any real tone despite my generally active career path. My bust was too small to be attractive, at least by my own standards, and I was otherwise altogether uninteresting with medium-brown hair in a short, shaggy cut, and unremarkable light golden-brown eyes. I spen
t a moment studying my face: a soft, pointed chin with a feminine jawline, more or less average lips, and an ordinary, slightly upturned nose. My skin was fair of tone and generally bore no evidence of any lasting relationship with the sun. Working nights will do that for you, as will generally preferring indoors-only hobbies.

  I sighed. It didn’t really matter what I wore. I wasn’t going to impress anyone, and I didn’t even want to. I started to pick the button-down shirt and slacks in one hand over the simple black dress in the other, but just as my mind was made up, I realized I felt oddly disappointed, and so decided the dress it was. I returned the first outfit to its place in my closet, and pulled the dress off its hanger, discarding that into the floor of my closet. I pulled the sleeveless black shift on and straightened it, watching my reflection in the mirror as I did. The length was a little less than I’d remembered, but then the last time I’d tried it on had been a couple years back. I considered my appearance for a moment, then fetched a pair of black tights and the only pair of heels I owned. A few minutes later, I looked at least passably dressed up, even if I had no idea how to make my hair less ordinary, and makeup… Well, I didn’t want to make myself look even worse.

  I took a few steps back and plopped down onto the bed, still eying myself in the mirror, which was fortunate when I realized I’d need to try and remember that dress-wearing meant my legs should try to get to know each other better tonight as well. I leaned forward with a long sigh and placed my head in my hands, comforting myself only momentarily before my hands on my face reminded me of the sickly green fire and I shifted them to my torso instead. I sat there for a few seconds, hugging myself. I realized it was more than a few seconds when my phone’s alarm sounded, reminding me that it was time to go. I was really uncomfortable with how easily I’d been losing track of time. It reminded me too much of the troubles of my youth. But I didn’t want to think about that right now. I had trouble enough without lapsing into regrets from days gone by.