Arianna's Awakening (Arianna Rose Part 1 & The Awakening Part 2) (25 page)

The doors opened to the congregational seating area.  Rows of pews faced the sanctuary.  From where she stood, she saw a man kneeling at the altar.  She ran down the center aisle past the pews, up three steps and stopped beside the man.

“Where is my mother?” she demanded. 

The man turned his head toward her slowly.  He looked like an ordinary man, and she was certain he wasn’t Howard Kane, but something gleamed in his eye, a flicker of something familiar.

“He is waiting for you,” the man replied in a deep voice.

The sound of his voice, the look in his eye, both hit her and an image flashed in her mind.  The man kneeling at the altar had worn a long, hooded cloak.  He had stood alongside Kane and chanted indecipherable words, and had watched as Lily burned

“He is out in the courtyard,” the rumble of his voice snapped her from her vision.  The man gestured with long, thin fingers to the right of the sanctuary. 

Arianna rushed in the direction he’d pointed her in and silently vowed to return and find him when she’d finished with Kane.  He would pay for what he’d done to Lily.  She would make sure of it. 

To the left of the altar lay the sacristy.  The sacristy was little more than a storage room for books, vestments and an assortment of odd-looking tools.  There was a sink, a narrow window and a single door.  She reached out and tried the handle without delay and discovered it was unlocked.  Though the handle turned, when she pushed against the door itself, it did not budge.  Undeterred, she dropped her shoulder and rammed the weight of her body against it several times until, finally, it gave way.  She found herself standing on a small rectangle of concrete before a courtyard.  An immense fountain surrounded by ornate statues blocked her view, but beyond the overly elaborate display, something else was happening, a nefarious scene was unfolding.  A tingling whisper of awareness inched down her spine and propelled her forward.

She ran around the statues and fountain and she immediately saw a woman’s frightened face.  Her mother had been tied to a stake in the middle of the clearing, brush piled beneath her, tears streaming down her cheeks.  She cried out to Arianna, “Run baby! Get as far away from these deranged killers as you can!” her mother’s voice was panicked and shrill, unlike Arianna had ever heard it before.

“Shut your mouth, sinner!” a voice boomed and a man stepped from the shadows. 

He gripped a torch in both hands and Arianna recognized the charred and puckered flesh of the man’s face, the same burnt face that had haunted her nightmares.  Only this time, it was not Lily who burned at his hands.  Her mother would be the one who burned.

Fierce tremors shook Arianna’s entire body and her vision became veiled in crimson.  Her racing heart slowed and all she could see was Howard Kane.  Her scarlet gaze glowed, shining from her eyes, and soaked him in a blood red shroud.  She could hear his lifeblood coursing through his veins; smell the coppery scent of it.  But she did not feel the need to retch.  She did not feel sickened by it.  She felt incensed by it.  A primal voice inside urged her to
kill
, kill him where he stood, spill his blood and feast on it.  Howard Kane had claimed the lives of countless innocents and the day of reckoning was upon him.  Her muscles twitched, eager and aching to channel the energy that stormed inside her.  She started to raise her arm, the force of her energy pulsing like an electric current.

“I would think twice about that,” Kane warned confidently and signaled.  A man appeared from the direction Kane had just gestured to with an assault rifle in hand.  The rifle was equipped with a small, black scope and aimed at Arianna’s mother.

“This is Eli,” Kane spoke.  “He is one of more than a dozen men who have your mother in their crosshairs.  If you do not lower your arm and calm yourself right now, she will be killed.”

Arianna felt her energy begin to flare despite her effort to control it.  Men surrounded her and her mother.  She could sense them.  And there was no way for her to unarm them simultaneously before one took their kill shot at her mother.  She spun, scanning the clearing, looking to the woods beyond it for armed shapes, when a man sprung from her left.  The bite of tiny electrodes against the nape of her neck was immediate and followed promptly by a burst of electrical energy that dropped her to her knees.  As soon as she felt the cold, wet earth touch her legs, she felt the prick of another set of electrodes hit her back and shoulders.  Men rushed her, she could hear the urgent tone of their voices, knew she had been tasered more than once, as her body began to convulse.  She tried to scream, to thrash, but her body refused to cooperate.  Darkness embraced her, stroking and lulling with silky, sinuous fingers.  She strained to shirk it, to evade its elusive allure, but was overtaken.

Chapter 27

Heat warmed Arianna’s face.  She blinked and tried to open her eyes, her vision bleary as though she’d slept for far too long.  But she hadn’t slept.  She’d been unconscious, and not for long.  Night had not fallen yet and the brightness of day made her eyes tear.  Sporadic rain still fell.  She could feel it on her face.  A scent infused the air, acrid and foul.

The smell of burning flesh struck her, burning her nasal passages and the back of her throat.  She concentrated on seeing more clearly, willing her eyes to focus.  When finally the fuzziness lifted, she saw that her mother burned before her, still tied to a stake. The flames had reached her mother’s waist and her body still twitched as she moaned weakly, suffering.  But the twitching and moaning faded quickly as the fire swelled suddenly and consumed her head.  Arianna watched, frozen, a prisoner in her own personal hell, as the last bit of life drained from Cathy Rose.  She watched as her mother’s head lolled to one side, her beautiful face blackened, gone forever.  

A sound escaped Arianna from a deep, primitive part of her.  The sound tore through the courtyard, her soul crying out.  She felt as though a hole had been punched in her chest, a bottomless pit of pain and loss that would never heal.  Tears spilled down her cheeks and a lifetime of memories rushed to her mind.  In each were she and her mother. 

“Why did you do that?” she heard herself ask Kane.  “It’s me you want, you monster!” she cried.

Howard materialized beside her, his face gruesome.  “I am no monster,” he hissed in her ear.  “It is
you
who are a monster.  And that
woman
,” he pointed to her deceased mother, “that sinful, wretched woman, she birthed you.  She raised you, readying you to begin your dark mission.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” she screamed and felt her anger swell.  He had murdered her mother and continued to insult her as she dangled lifelessly from a pole.

The grieving hole in her chest began to fill with the purest of rage.  The world around her became awash in a crimson glow again.

“Your powers will be of no use to you, Arianna,” Kane said.  “Your wrists have been shackled with restraints designed more than two hundred years ago for the sole purpose of containing the Sola,
you
.”

Kane watched her, apparently waiting for some kind of reaction.  But she would not give him the satisfaction, so he continued.

“And I have one more surprise for you before I end your mission before it ever truly began,” he said theatrically.

He signaled to the tree line and Arianna saw a man approaching.  He walked slowly and was followed by another, larger man who pointed a gun at his back.  As both men drew closer, she gasped in horror and saw that the man with the gun trained on his back was Luke.

“Arianna!” Luke called to her.  Tears streaked his dirtied cheeks and panic filled his voice.  His eyes were wide with terror as they searched hers for answers.

“Leave him alone!” she yelled.  “He has nothing to do with this!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.  He helped you kill two of my men, two servants of the Lord.  Their deaths cannot go unanswered,” Kane said and withdrew a pistol from his robe.  He aimed it inches from Luke’s forehead and Luke began to cry uncontrollably.

“No!” Arianna screamed but the sound of her voice was stifled by the deafening sound of a gunshot.  Luke’s body fell to the ground, his once lively silver eyes now vacant. 

Howard gestured to the men who lingered in the courtyard and each of them began igniting torches they held.  Then, one by one, they threw their torches into the kindling at her feet.  The kindling began to burn immediately, the flames growing and expanding.  But Arianna did not feel the heat of the flames lapping at her ankles, and she did not feel sadness or grief.  A new feeling had overtaken her, surging and coursing through her being.  It melted each of her emotions, the ache in her chest, her anger, and her need for vengeance, each seeped from her, until all that remained inside her was pure power.  Her entire body began to radiate red light.  It shone as if the power within her could no longer be contained by her flesh, pulsing vibrantly, harshly, hissing like fiery snakes from her skin.  In that moment, she realized she was no longer Arianna Rose.  She was the Sola.

***

Howard Kane stared in shock.  He began to feel fear for the first time in over twenty years, since he was a boy being abused.  The vision before him, Arianna Rose’s entire body alight in a scarlet halo, could not be happening.  She had transformed into the Sola, living and breathing.  The fire beneath her had climbed up her body, yet she remained unscathed.  He watched in equal parts horror and disbelief as she lifted her glowing arms out to her sides, like a Phoenix defying its death pyre and spreading its wings.  The shackles around her wrists snapped then fell to the flames as though they’d been constructed of chintzy material, not iron.

He wanted to run, to flee from the imminent destruction, but his legs refused to budge from where they stood.  Instead, he was forced to witness the Sola raising her arms, flames shooting out in every direction.  Each of his men at the perimeter of the circle that had surrounded her was suddenly ablaze.  He heard their tortured screams tear through the evening sky.  He clapped his hands to his ears, trying futilely to muffle their cries, and saw that the rest of his men staggered from the surrounding woods, their flesh burning.  Everyone around him burned.  He was the only one who remained.  He became confident that God had spared him. 

That confidence buoyed him as the Sola stepped toward him.  She stopped directly in front of him and glared at him with eyes that blazed with the blood of those who’d martyred themselves.  She loomed near him then spoke with a voice so haunting, the hairs on his body rose like quills.

“You are a fool, Howard Kane,” she said and her voice echoed through him.  “A fool who believes God is directing him to murder.”

“God guides me to do His work,” he replied

“No!” she shouted silencing him.  “You kill because you enjoy it, because you are evil,” she accused.

His insides began to trill, a sudden inexplicable phenomenon.  “God has chosen me to hunt witches, to protect mankind,” he said in a trembling voice. 

The Sola began to laugh, a mirthless sound that resonated through the courtyard.  “No, Howard.  You are one of us.  God is not drawing you to us.  Your own power is.”

Howard’s eyes widened and a breath of awareness raced across his skin.  He knew she’d spoken the truth, could feel it deep within him.  He was a warlock.  He was not going to heaven as a soldier of the Lord.  He would burn in hell for eternity alongside the rest of the evil beings he’d already sent there.

The Sola smiled at him as though she’d read the recognition in his heart as plainly as she would have read a neon sign.  She swept her arm out to one side and he felt himself flying through the air.  It wasn’t until he felt his back collide with something slender and hard that he understood what was happening.  His wrists were suddenly immobilized behind him around the pole, though nothing tangible bound them.

“You have spent your life hunting and killing your own people,
my
people.  You convinced yourself you were doing noble work, God’s work, and now, you will burn here on Earth, and for eternity.” 

Howard cried out in terror, her words cutting through his very core.  She gestured again and brush at his feet blazed angrily.  She assumed a position in front of him and locked eyes with him.  He felt the weight of her judgment blister as painfully as the flames that traveled up his body.  He howled in agony, the heat unbearable as darkness teased at his vision.

Fire lapped at him, torturously, excruciatingly.  But the Sola remained before him, unflinching. 

The last image Howard Kane beheld was a pair of scarlet eyes glowing vengefully at him, glowering, judging his final moment on Earth, and casting him to hell.

Chapter 28

Arianna staggered from the courtyard, dragging legs that felt leaden, to the small doorway she’d come through and into the sacristy.  Each part of her body resisted movement and ached agonizingly.  She stumbled after every few unsteady steps she took.  Pain shot through her head and felt like someone had shoved a sharp blade into her brain and continued to twist it with every move she made.  Shock had not brought with it numbness, or silence.  To the contrary, every cell in her body screamed at once, a deafening shriek from which there was no escape.  She covered one ear with her hand, a painstaking effort she immediately regretted, and found that the shrill sound only burrowed deeper inside her head and shook her bones.  She dropped her hand immediately and nearly collapsed, but a familiar image flashed before her eyes.

Blue eyes, a brilliant shade that matched they sky on a clear day,
penetrated the dimness of the church and watched Arianna.  She was sure it was a hallucination, a wishful product of her fractured brain, until she heard his voice. 

“Arianna!” Desmond called and took several strides toward her.

He reached for her as she was about to collapse and she crumpled into his arms.  He pulled her close and she felt his warmth surround her immediately.  Relief carried her on its current and the stabbing pain in her skull began to recede like a wave, taking with it the smarting pain in her muscles. 

“I felt what happened here,” he said solemnly.  “I got here as soon as I could.”

“They’re dead, Desmond.  They’re both dead,” Arianna whispered.  And with her admission, the floodgates that had held her emotions at bay faltered.  Tears rained down her cheeks, a sudden deluge from a vast tempest of hurt.  Her mother was dead.  Luke was dead.  Lily was dead.  Everyone she’d cared about had died, because of her.  Desmond was the only one who remained. 

Desmond tightened his arms around her.  Her cheek pressed against his solid chest.  She felt his lips touch the top of her head.  “You should have called on me,” he said softly.

Arianna brought her hands up and pushed them against his chest, forcing him back.  She stood of her own volition now, the physical ache and heaviness nearly gone, and put enough space between them so that she could look into his eyes. 

“No,” she said in a voice far stronger than she felt.  “I had to go alone.  We both know that.”

Had he fought alongside her, he, too, would be dead.  He stared at her for several knowing moments, his luminous gaze wise.  He knew she had spoken the truth, she could see it in his face.  He could not have helped her in her battle with Howard Kane.  She was the Sola.

“You felt it,” Desmond said as if intuiting her thoughts.

“Yes,” she breathed and brushed back tears.  “I felt nothing but power, like I wasn’t
me
anymore.  I was everywhere at once.  I was light and fire, I was,” she paused and closed her eyes.  “I was the Sola.”

Arianna opened her eyes and met Desmond’s.  “I know,” he said.  “I felt your power.  We all did.  And now they know you’re here, that you live.”

The gravity of Desmond’s words sent a ripple of uncertainty through Arianna’s being.  The witches of the world had felt her power reach its fullest potential.  They now knew the prophecy had been fulfilled, that the Sola had come.  They would look to her for guidance, for support, for protection.  She was supposed to unite all witches on Earth.  But she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next.

“What do I do now?” she asked Desmond.  “I’m only eighteen.  I can’t live on my own, alone.”

She heard herself say the word, felt it punch through her core. 
Alone
.  Her mother was dead, her only family member, murdered.  She was all alone. 

Desmond stared into her eyes, his expression grave, and said, “You are the Sola.  It is your destiny to walk alone.”

Arianna paused, repeating what Desmond had just said in her head a few times, sifting through them for sense, for meaning. 
Alone
.  It was her destiny to walk through life alone, as in, without him either. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” she blurted out.  “Come with me,
please
.”

She knew she’d just begged him to stay with her, heard the words fall from her lips, but had not been able to stop herself from saying them.  She did not want Desmond to leave.  She needed him, hated that she needed him, hated the vulnerability she swore she’d never feel at the mercy of a man, yet felt for Desmond.  He was the only person she had left.  Everyone else was gone forever, leaving in their wake a cavernous, aching hole.  He felt like home to her.  And she needed him.

“I cannot go with you,” he said and she saw it in his eyes, urgency, and a certainty.  His eyes were like matching oceans of tropical water, warm, clear, and bottomless.  She searched them, looked into them for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their fathomless depths did she see contradiction to the words he’d just spoken.  For reasons she was unaware of, perhaps it was destiny or something far more mysterious, he could not accompany her on her journey.

“Why?” she asked and saw an emotion flicker across his face.  She could not identify it.  It hadn’t lasted long enough.  He’d composed his features immediately into his usual mask of serenity. 

“Your time has come, Arianna.  You will go off; your missions will be forever changing.  This,” he said and gestured to the church around him.  “This clash with Howard Kane, it was just the beginning.  There are more people like him, people who hunt witches.  Your help is needed in so many places.”

Arianna’s head swam, overwhelmed by a sense of duty she feared she could not fulfill.  “How will I know where to go, who to go to?”

“You just will,” he replied cryptically.

All of it was too much.  The tremendous losses she’d suffered, the responsibilities awaiting her, her condemnation to a life of solitude, it was too much.  She needed something, someone, to anchor her to sanity, to give her something to live for.  Without thinking, she stood on her tiptoes and wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a lifeline.  She held on to him tightly, pressing her body to his and savored the feel of his warmth, of the safety she felt with him.  She pressed her cheeks to his and whispered, “Please don’t leave me.”

Firm fingers gripped her upper arms suddenly and Desmond held her at arm’s length.  “I want to stay,” he said.  “I want to stay more than you’ll ever know.  Please understand that.” 

His eyes, suddenly molten, burned into hers with intensity that was overwhelming.  She inhaled a trembling breath and waited for him to continue.  “I have been with you for so long,
cared
for you from a distance.  You’ve been a part of my life, a part of
me
, for as long as I can remember.  I can’t imagine my life without you.  I’ve dreaded this moment,” he said and looked away.

“Then stay,” she begged and cupped his face in her hands, returning his gaze to her.

“I can’t,” he murmured.

“So I’ll never see you again, is that how it works?” she asked and felt her brows draw together in mystification.  “It doesn’t even make sense.”

“Of course you’ll see me again.  I’ll always come when you call upon me.”

“What about now?  I’m calling on you now,
to stay
.”

“It’s not that simple, Arianna.  I wish it was, but it’s not.”

Arianna wanted to argue, wanted to press him for a reason, but knew deep down, that it was pointless.

She started to pull away from him, his hands still held her arms.  He gripped her more tightly then pulled her against him.  He lowered his face to her and she could feel the hurried rise and fall of his chest, feel his hot breath against her mouth. 

“Don’t you understand my feelings for you?” he asked.

“No, I don’t understand anything right now,” she said dejectedly.

He stared at her for a long moment.  He placed his hands under her chin then slowly, achingly slowly, his lips met hers. 

The world fell away from Arianna for the briefest of moments.  The insurmountable ache of loss and melted as the sweet taste of his lips sent a tingle of electricity through her body, something that wiggled and whispered through her soul.  It wasn’t about
mourning, or her powers, the battles that awaited her or what she could do to help others like her.  It was about the feel of him, and only him, the feel of Desmond’s lips upon hers.  He was an irrevocable part of her, and she of him.  His kiss somehow sealed that unspoken connection between them, and explained why he could not stay.  He kissed her slowly, softly, a gentle act of his undeclared feelings for her.

His mouth felt blissful against hers and she wanted more.  She wanted to be closer to him, as close as she could possibly be.  She wanted to affirm life, to acknowledge the existence of something other than death, for death surrounded her, followed her. 

She flattened his lips with hers and tightened her hold on him, then raked her nails down his broad back to his taut waist.  She lifted the back of his shirt and felt his smooth skin beneath her fingertips, warm and inviting.  The urge to peel his shirt from his body and feel his bare skin against hers pressed at her until his hands pushed her away.

“We can’t,” he breathed but his voice lacked certainty.

“Your lips say that, but is that what you really mean?” she replied.  She nibbled his lower lip, and he groaned a delightful sensual sound that reached intimate parts of her.

“Arianna, no,” he said more sternly and grabbed her shoulders.  He held her back, away from him.  “I want nothing more than to,” he said and allowed his eyes to travel her body from head to toe.  “But we can’t.”

“Why?  Are there rules about that, too?  Am I to be chaste as well as alone?” she asked and knew she sounded irrational, like a pouting teenager.

“No.  There are no rules.  And you have not been chaste,” he said and for the first time, his voice was not even.  A hint of acid had crept into it. 

Arianna’s cheeks blazed.  He was referring to her night with Luke, a night she’d regretted wholeheartedly.  Desmond had been jealous.  She’d suspected it, had thought she’d heard the slightest traces of jealousy in his voice when she’d seen him afterward, but had dismissed it.  A remote part of her supposed she should be flattered that he cared, but hearing Luke’s name, poor, sweet Luke who had died because of his short relationship with her, only saddened her. 

“I have to go,” Desmond said dejectedly.  “And so do you.  You are needed.”

Desmond did not give her time to protest or ask questions.  Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and she felt a tingle begin in her chest and branch out as softly as a breath blowing across her skin, warm and welcoming, throughout her body.  She felt the familiar flow of his energy through her, thrumming in time with her heartbeat, whispering through every part of her.  Arianna pulled back for a second to look at his face, desperate to memorize every plane of his beautiful, serene, face.  She did not know when she would see it again.  His golden hair haloed the perfectly sculpted angles of his face.  He looked as though he had been carved from marble, save for his eyes.  He eyes stared into hers, through hers into the farthest reaches of her soul.  Then he pulled her close to him, and she felt her breath catch in her chest.  Light filled her field of vision, brilliant white light.  Desmond and his warmth enveloped her and for a fleeting second, the loss and loneliness that escorted her like a dark and permanent passenger, faded.  All she felt was Desmond. 

When darkness returned, Desmond was gone and the yawning pit of grief slowly returned.  Her hand covered her heart and she doubled over for a moment.  Then she heard a voice whisper through her mind, “I love you, Arianna.  We will meet again soon,” was all it said.  But each word caressed her being with frothy wisps of comfort, of hope.  She would see Desmond again.