The Awakening: A Witch-Vampire Romance: Feel the Heat.

This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

©Text Copyright 2014 Tasha Gwartney

Cover By Tasha Gwartney

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated first and foremost to GOD who always picks me up when I fall, and to my wonderful husband and gorgeous little man, who have always supported me in any crazy scheme that I have wanted to get into. I also want to dedicate this book to the readers that will take this long journey down an uncertain path with me. I have created this world, picked it out of my imagination and brought it to life on paper for you to enjoy, but with each page you turn, you are the breath that keeps this world alive. That keeps this journey everlasting. So thank you. Without readers, stories lay stagnant collecting dust.

Prologue

“How could you have let that f
anged louse get you with child,” Morgana asks her sister with seething anger lacing her voice. “How is it even possible for you to get pregnant? Goddesses don’t have spawn…We have to get rid of it. We have to fling this thing inside of you to the wind and hope that it doesn’t come back to haunt us later in life,” Morgana orders her sister who is crying tears of pain and despair.

Laying beyond the veil
, mourning the loss of her lover, her potential mate. Hekate realizes that her sister is right. She can’t give birth to an abomination. A crossbreed. But she realizes that she can store the light. Store it until the right time, implant it into a loyal mortal, then guide it…Make it into something that will seek revenge upon the one that spurned her and the gifts that she bestowed upon him. Hekate lays her hand upon her stomach and feels the light there, it is a tiny thing. But it burns oh so bright. Like a star trapped within a darkened shroud.

“You will become my own, then I will turn you into my ultimate weapon little one
,” Hekate tells the light glowing within.

Morgana smiles a wicked smile once she sees the malicious intent written upon her sister Goddess’s face.

Let the games begin…

Chapter
1.

I
am sitting in the back of our tiny white church, in a pew all to myself, as usual. Being the preacher’s kid doesn’t exactly make you Miss Popularity. I have listened to my father go on and on about the sins of the flesh so many times that it all sounds like static white noise anymore. But just then, smack in the middle of the climax of his sermon, the back doors of the chapel swing open with a huge bang. The noise fairly vibrates throughout the whole congregation. The look on my father’s face is comical. I bet he wishes he could catch everyone’s attention that well. Everyone swivels in their seats to get an eyeful of the late comer. I’m not the only one with my chin hitting my knees. He is a beauty, the purest form of male beauty that I have ever looked upon. I nickname him the
Nordic god
for posterity’s sake.

Ther
e he stands with the sun shining behind him, looking around our gloomy existence. I’m gaping in utter shock at what I am seeing in front of me. He is the man from my dreams. I have been dreaming about him since I was a small child. The dreams always carry me within different worlds or different times, but there is always one constant. Him. I don’t know his name, but his face is as familiar to me as my own. And now he is standing there looking around as if he is searching someone or something out.

I
am sure I can picture what he is seeing. Sardines. Mediocre Sardines. That’s what our congregation reminds me of, so why not him? He continues to look from right to left as if he is really searching someone out. Then his eyes meet mine. I swear I was struck by lightning. Hair standing on end. Electro shock. That’s what that first glance feels like.

When his eyes me
et mine, his facial features don’t change. He just simply stops looking for anyone else. He just pauses, lifts a brow, in that really annoying way that only hot people can pull off, and he actually smirks at me. Like there is something on my face. I lift my hand, searching for whatever it is about my face that he finds so amusing. I find nothing. So I guess it is just me.
Yay! So my luck
.

So I
do what every self-respecting eighteen year old girl should (notice I don’t say would) do. I flip him the bird, smirk right back at him, and turn my apparently humorous ass around in my pew. Yup, I am quite proud of myself at this moment. I hid my shock at finally seeing this man in the flesh quite well, if I do say so myself. And I didn’t fall to the floor like a simpering fool. The man is that gorgeous. Judging by the other gaping sardines surrounding us, I am not the only one to think so.

My reaction elicit
s a booming belly laugh from the Nordic god. It sounds kind of rusty, so he probably isn’t used to laughing. Or maybe he just isn’t used to a member of the female race not simpering. I give myself an inner shrug and struggle not to turn around and watch what he might do next. Like I said, nothing interesting
ever
happens here. So it is almost painful to make myself refrain.

About two minutes into my staring at my father
’s flabbergasted face, I hear another slam. One I assume is due to the doors closing. I wonder what would make someone want to announce their arrival in such a way. Interrupting a conversation was one thing, but a closed assembly? The boy has stiff biscuits, I’ll give him that. It takes my father all of three seconds after the interloper’s departure to call the attention, once again, upon himself.
Pffffft.
And he calls me an attention whore. And I’d wondered where I got it from.

My mother move
s to my pew and hisses something in my ear that I’m not quite paying attention to.

“Why can’t you just pay attention for once Ella? It shouldn’t be that hard. You have been listening to your father lead his flock since you were in diapers.”

I turn to her and stare blankly, thinking that maybe if I wasn’t subjected to the same wonk, wonk, wonk of my dad’s voice day in and out, I wouldn’t have a problem hearing or at least pretending to be interested in what he had to say.

“Mom, I wasn’t the only one distracted by the commotion. I think you might have a bit of drool on your chin.” I point. “Just there.”

She gives an offended huff, straightens in her seat, and pretends, just like the rest of us, that my father is God’s gift to seminary.

Once the droning on and on
is finished, we all file out of our seats and down the aisle like the good little Chiclets that we are. We shake hands at the front doors and half heartily invite various other sardines over for Sunday brunch. In a small town like ours, you
always
attend church on Sundays. It doesn’t matter if you are a true believer or if you are pretending to believe. You show up. If you don’t, you get blackballed. No one wants to be the person that gets sneered at for actually being honest about what they believe. I wish I was that brave.

The next morning I
wake up to my mother’s screeching. This isn’t the first time that I have woken up to her screaming like that. I am sure it won’t be the last.

.

“Ella!”

I
t is my mom yelling for me to get my lazy bum out of bed and not my alarm making the annoying sounds. The alarm clock doesn’t give me headaches in the mornings.
She
does. I turn over and try to squeeze fifteen more minutes out of my sleepy time, or at least wait for my alarm to go off at the time I set it for. Nope, isn’t going to happen this morning.

“Ella!
Get out of bed before I get the ice water,” she screeches.

Yes, she really would dump ice water on me. What a loving maternal figure.

I roll my ‘lazy’ ass out of bed, reaching for the alarm. It starts to buzz right before I touch it, then sizzles to a stop as soon as I touch it.

Well another one bites the dust,
I think to myself.

I wish I knew why I ha
ve this static electric thing stuck inside me. I fry or shock myself on pretty much anything metal that I touch. Thank goodness I have learned to hide it well. Sometimes I don’t even notice it anymore.

I stumble for my shower, hoping against hope that I won’t bang my toe against something on the way. This is the first day of my senior year at the high school here in town.  I wish I could be more excited, but I am just expecting the same bullshit, the same clichés, the same who is wearing what and what great stupendous things they try to play off that they’d done over break.
There is one bright spot,
I think.
Maybe the Nordic god will be attending, or maybe I need to stop with the wishful thinking already.
I laugh at myself and roll my eyes. I just am not that lucky.

I stay in t
he shower until the water starts to run cold, then jump out and towel off, wondering what I am going to throw on to wear that will actually pass muster. My parentals won’t let me leave the house unless I look like something from an Amish settlement. Well they can try at least. I am technically an adult, being eighteen, so they can’t say much as of my last birthday. They can hem and haw about whatever they want, but I can also move out of this hell hole that has everyone fooled into thinking that we are the perfect fifties sitcom family. We have to keep up appearances after all.

I st
and in front of my mirror and really look at myself. It isn’t the first time I have noticed that I don’t look anything like my parents, who are both short with mousey brown hair and simply boring features. I, on the other hand, topped off at 5’11” last year, have long, stick-straight black hair that falls to the middle of my back, and a slender body with curves in all the right places. But the feature that stands out the most are my eyes. They look green even from a distance, but up close they are a startling jade, and when I am angry, they fairly glow.

When I was three and
decided to throw a fit because my mother wouldn’t let me go out and play with the other kids at the playground outside the church, she shrieked as if Satan had just poked her in the ass with his giant fork. My eyes had glowed like I was possessed by a demon; at least, that was Mother’s account of what had happened. She and my father tried to have a Catholic Priest perform an exorcism on me. That didn’t quite work out like they had hoped, considering the priest had laughed until he was crying after he met me. Such loving parents I got saddled with. I have always wondered if I was adopted. Hoped really, but they always clam up and deny it.

What really dr
aws attention, aside from my eyes, is my face, although I don’t really see what the big deal is. To me it is just a normal face, just simply
me
, but my best friend, Jessa, says otherwise.

“Wench, you have a face that could launch a thousand hard
-ons. And you don’t even
see
it. It just makes the masses of jock-strap swinging boys at our old school want you even more,” she always says.

Speaking of Jessa, I hear
her blaring the horn from the front drive of our two-story craftsman-style home. She refuses to step foot in my home. Not that I blame her. Not in the least.

I stop
scrutinizing myself, run for my closet and pull out the first thing I find. I throw on a short, light-washed denim skirt that is frayed around the edges and a gray fitted tee. I start searching the mound of shoes in the bottom of my closet for my red chucks, and once I put them on I slap on some deodorant, grab my Coach Messenger bag, spray on some Tommy Girl, and run out the door. I’ll just have to braid my hair and spackle on some make-up in Jessa’s car. I hope she drives decently or I am going to lose an eye trying to apply my eyeliner. I have always loved Mondays and this is the perfect start to one.

My mother stop
s me on my way out the door.

“What on God’s sacre
d earth are you wearing, Ella?” She is practically screeching again.

Omgosh does she always have to make her voice so shrill?
I think.

“Listen, I’
m running out of time. I’m well and truly late! I can and will wear what
I
want and how I want to wear it. If you don’t like it
Mother,
then please make a
scene
. I’m sure your cronies down at the quilting circle would
love
to hear all about it!”

“You are truly a child of sin,
” she accuses.

“And what does that make you, Barbra?
I’m your child after all. Aren’t I,” I reply.

I
am pretty sure by this point that my mom is going to blow chunks. She looks sweaty and grayish. This is definitely my cue to leave. I book it out the door as fast as my chucks will carry me and jump in Jessa’s clunker, banging the door closed. I sit in the passenger seat panting, wondering what the next thing to jump out at me this morning will be. Jessa is looking at me like I’m crazy.

“Drive dill hole, she’s in a mood this morning. You should have
seen her face when I tried to leave just now. She looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out for not wearing the Amish clothes she bought me over the summer. Ugh,” I explain in exasperation.