Awaken
Authors: Skye Malone
Awaken
Book One of the Awakened Fate series
Copyright 2014 by Skye Malone Published by Wildflower Isle | P.O. Box 17804,
Urbana, IL 61803
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this text and any portions thereof in any manner whatsoever.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters,
names, places and incidents appearing in this work are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations,
or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 1-940617-07-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-940617-07-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936268
Cover design by Karri Klawiter
www.artbykarri.com
Pronunciation
Guide
Dehaian
(deh-HYE-an)
Ina
(EE-na)
Kirzan
(KUR-zahn)
Neiphiandine
(ney-fee-AN-deen)
Niall
(nee-AHL)
Nyciena
(ny-SEE-en-uh)
Ociras
(oh-SHE-rahs)
Reschiata
(reh-she-AH-tuh)
Ryaira
(ry-AIR-uh)
Sieranchine
(see-EHR-an-cheen)
Sylphaen
(sil-FAY-en)
Teariad
(tee-AR-ee-ad)
Yvaria
(ih-VAR-ee-uh)
Zekerian
(zeh-KEHR-ee-en)
Prologue
Before we go any farther, I want to make one
thing clear: I never intended to run away. I fully intended to go
home. I was only taking a vacation.
Even if it didn’t end up like that.
You see, I’ve always been drawn to the ocean.
It makes sense, I guess. Growing up in Reidsburg, Kansas, you’re
about as far from saltwater as you can get without burying yourself
underground, and maybe not even then. Figures that something exotic
and distant like the sea would attract me.
We all want what we don’t have.
But ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of
visiting the ocean. Living by the ocean. I’d stare at pictures of
the sea in books, memorize the name of every fish I saw, and paint
smudges of blue across my preschool art projects and call it the
Pacific. My teachers thought it was cute, and my school friends
thought I was a bit strange, but I didn’t care.
I just knew what I loved.
My parents, though. Oh, they hated it. You’d
think someone close to them had drown or been lost at sea or
whatever for the anger they showed toward the whole thing. The
house was decorated with pictures of deserts, visits to the pool
were strictly forbidden – the threat of disease and kids peeing in
the water were usually the reasons for that one – and for all our
‘vacations’, we’d go to Branson, or Oklahoma City or, on one truly
impressive trip, a corn museum in Illinois.
A corn museum. Seriously, who visits
that?
Well, okay, an agricultural science professor
does, I suppose. Which is what my dad is, by the way. But that’s
beside the point.
They would have rather
died
than let
me travel anywhere near the sea. And when my best friend, Baylie,
asked if I could come stay with her family at their beach house for
two weeks when summer started, Mom and Dad very nearly had a
coronary. It wasn’t about the fact her gorgeous stepbrother would
be there – since, of course, his dad and stepmom were there too and
I’d share a room with Baylie anyhow – or even the time I’d be
spending away from them. It was just about the ocean. Solely the
ocean. And as inexplicably
insane
as anyone could see they
were being, my days of arguing, begging, and even bribery got me
absolutely nowhere.
But it was the best chance I was going to
have, short of hanging around for a year till I graduated –
way
too long to wait, mind you – and then hoping they
wouldn’t keep me from going to college out west with Baylie, just
on the basis it was closer to water.
Because they would. Did I mention they were
ridiculous?
So I took matters into my own hands. What
else is a girl supposed to do when her best friend offers her a
chance to spend two weeks doing something she’s always dreamed of?
I would had to have been crazy to pass that up.
And I may be many things, but crazy certainly
isn’t one of them.
So that’s how, after packing a small bag,
sneaking out my bedroom window, and scaling down a rather loosely
bolted drainpipe, I ended up in a car with Baylie and her golden
Labrador, Daisy, adamantly
not
running away from home, but
instead taking a ‘vacation’ of my very own.
It turned out so differently than I ever
could have imagined.
Chapter One
“Well, here we are,” Baylie announced,
pulling the car to a stop. “What do you think?”
I couldn’t take my eyes from the view beyond
the car window. For the past few dozen miles, ever since we passed
Ventura and the highway curved to meet the sea, I’d been staring.
Crystalline water shone under the late afternoon sun, and
white-crested waves rolled in to meet the sand. The triangular
peaks of sailboats floated across the expanse, while some distance
away, a tiny form sped through the air, parasailing beneath the
cloudless sky.
It might have seemed silly, but I felt like a
kid on their first trip to Disneyland.
“Chloe?” Baylie tried.
“Sorry,” I said, managing to pull my gaze
away from the window long enough to give her a rueful grin. “It’s
just…”
I gestured helplessly at the water.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re hopeless.”
Checking her makeup and her long blonde hair in the mirror, she
wiped away a bit of smudged mascara beneath her sky-blue eyes and
then pushed open the driver’s side door. “Just make sure to grab
your bag whenever you’re done gawking, okay?”
My face flushed in the way it always did when
I was embarrassed, splotching my face and every other bit of skin
bright pink, and I reached for the door handle, determinedly
ignoring her grin. She was well aware I’d always wanted to come
here. She’d just known me since we were both four years old, and
therefore loved to exercise the best friend’s inalienable right to
tease.
I climbed out of the red car and then opened
the rear door, trying to keep my eyes from straying back to the
horizon beyond the beach house. Daisy jumped out, her tail wagging
furiously in gratitude for finally being released from the back
seat, while Baylie popped open the trunk and retrieved her
suitcase, leaving the trunk lid up for me to claim my own bag once
I was done with the dog.
On the porch, the screen door slammed. “You
made it,” Mr. Delaney called, grinning as he jogged down the
stairs. Well-built and tall with dark brown hair and equally dark
eyes, he strode toward us with an ease that made him seem twenty
years younger than his middle-aged status. Taking Baylie’s bag, he
swung it onto his shoulder and then squeezed her into a lopsided
hug. “Perfect timing, too. Diane’s just making some snacks.”
Baylie made an appreciative noise. Before
we’d left Reidsburg, she’d regaled me with stories of Diane’s
cooking. From the sound of it, even her snacks were bound to be
competition for anything the fanciest restaurants back home
could’ve offered.
“Hey, Chloe,” he added to me.
“Hi, Mr. Delaney. Thanks for inviting
me.”
“Of course. More the merrier.”
He smiled and motioned for us to follow him
toward the house. My eyebrows rose as I registered the size of the
place for the first time. Mr. Delaney was the owner of a lucrative
software company, and it showed. Despite being only two stories
high, his home was more mansion than anything. Mission architecture
defined its appearance, though the off-white walls were interrupted
by plentiful windows and skylights peppered the tile roof.
Positioned on more than two acres of land with a private drive, the
sprawling home backed up against bluffs overlooking the sea.
The latter of which was instantly my favorite
part, of course.
Smells of bread and spices filled the air as
we walked in the front door, adding to the promise of delicious
food awaiting us. A ceiling of polished wood beams hung thirty feet
high over the foyer, and a stairway to the right of the door led up
to the rooms on the second floor. At the end of the hallway, broad
windows made up the far wall of the house, through which bright
sunlight poured.
A cabinet door slammed, and then a woman
popped her head around the corner at the end of the hall. “Hi
there!” she called cheerily. Brushing her palms off on her sides,
she hurried toward us and stuck her hand out to me. “I’m Diane –
and please do call me Diane, okay? And he’s Peter. Like Baylie
probably told you, we’re pretty informal here. I’m so glad you
girls could make it!”
Blinking, I shook her hand. I’d never met
her, and only recognized her because of a picture Baylie had shown
me on her cell a few days ago, but Diane was even more adorable in
person than in her photo. With a brunette bob cut that bounced when
she moved and a height of five foot two if she was lucky, she was
like an energetic kid, excited by everything she saw.
I could see why Baylie liked her
stepbrothers’ stepmom so much.
To me, Baylie’s family felt complicated,
compared to my relatively straightforward status as a single child
with one uncle somewhere in Minnesota. Baylie’s mom had died of
cancer when Baylie was five and her dad had married Peter’s
ex-wife, Sandra. Thus she had two stepbrothers out here in Santa
Lucina, one of whom was three years older than us and the other who
was our age. Diane wasn’t related to any of them, but had married
Peter several years ago. Despite Peter and Sandra’s divorce,
however, all the adults seemed to have ended up on good terms,
which meant Baylie was welcomed like one of Peter’s kids by the
Delaneys, and her own dad treated her stepbrothers likewise.
It was just confusing for me to keep straight
sometimes.
Though, to be fair, my straightforward status
wasn’t all
that
straightforward either. My one uncle in
Minnesota? Yeah, he lived in a psychiatric hospital and last I’d
heard, was convinced he was the reincarnation of Napoleon. Or maybe
it was Henry the Eighth. But add that to my parents’ general
insanity, and I had a pretty compelling reason to want to keep
every trace of crazy from my life.
“Would you put their bags in their room while
I get these ladies settled?” Diane asked her husband.
He nodded and then headed up to the second
floor with our bags.
“So neither of you have allergies, right?”
Diane continued.
We assured her we didn’t.
“Great! So I’m just finishing up a few
appetizers for us to have before the cookout tonight – hotdogs good
with you? – and then I’m thinking stromboli for dinner tomorrow. Or
maybe pizza. You girls like capicola and bresaola?”
Trying to keep up, we assured her we did,
though from the look Baylie gave me once Diane’s back was turned, I
was fairly certain neither of us knew what she meant.
“Excellent! The boys are picking up some at
the market as we speak, so the meats should be very fresh. And I’ll
mix up the rosemary crust from scratch – whole wheat flour too;
trust me, you won’t go hungry here – so that should complement
things nicely.”
She kept talking as we walked into the
spacious kitchen. A sunken living room extended off to the left,
complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and a fireplace, while a
dinner table waited in a glass-walled dining room beyond the
kitchen island. A concrete patio with a gazebo and a fire pit took
up part of the backyard, while closer to the bluffs overlooking the
sea, the wood railing of a stairway led down toward the beach
below.
