The Awakening

"What are you doing?"



The angle of his face was just right. Unfortunately, she was right-handed, but she still did her best to deliver at least a painful blow to his jaw.



He swore; his grip didn't lessen in the least.



He came to a dead stop, staring at her. "I'm trying to save your life, you idiot!"



"Don't save my life; let me get back to the hotel."



"Megan, I can't do that. You're in danger there."



"Let me be the judge."



"You have to come with me. I'm a friend."



"Like hell you are."



He wasn't going to release her. He was an oddly striking man, six feet, maybe six-one, sandy-haired…



cleanshaven. Respectable looking.



Ted Bundy had been charming, so history reported.



She stared at him another moment, then cast her head back and started screaming at the top of her lungs.



He swore again, telling her to stop.



To add to his dilemma, she dropped. Just dropped. Dead weight, she went to the ground.



He swore again.



But this time, he bent down and scooped her up, throwing her over his shoulder. Her nose crashed into the wool of the coat.



She opened her mouth to scream again but he had started running.



Fast… like the wind. They might have been loping, as if she had been tossed over the back of a thoroughbred, or a greyhound.



There was no way she would go down without a fight.



She kept trying to scream.



To claw at his back. But through the wool, her nails couldn't begin to reach flesh to rip. The wind rushed by her.



She tried to see.



But now, a cloud had covered the moon. The fog was thicker than ever.



She was flying at a steady pace…



Into an ebony hell.



"Wait!" Lucian told him firmly. He caught Finn's arm, since Finn was ready to start running again.



"What! Megan is in danger!" Finn shouted, his sense of urgency rising.



"You can't go back to the hotel; Sam Tartan will just have you arrested for arson."



"Arson!"



"The fire began on the stage—with your equipment."



"But that's bull!"



"Of course, it's bull. But Tartan will have you arrested. Finn, think. They want you and Megan separated.



Get the police in on it, and you're in a jail cell and Megan's… out there. Somewhere. Vulnerable."



"I have to find her!"



"We'll find her. But you have to listen to me."



Finn stood still, teeth grating so hard they could have snapped. "Who the hell are you?" He demanded furiously. "What are you? How can you keep knowing any of this. Shit! How the hell do I know that you're not a major part of it? How did you throw people around like that? Yeah, you're right. I know something of what I'm doing, but that was a crowd against us. Damn it, tell me now just who—or what—



you are."



Lucian stared back at him. "You don't want to know," he said quietly. "But this is the truth before any god every honored—you have to trust me now. We're the only friends you've got."



"Megan—"



"I know where Megan is."



"Take me to her—now!"



They were going deeper and deeper into the woods. They'd followed the road—to exactly where, Megan didn't know—and then turned off.



Her captor came to a halt, drawing her back over his shoulder, and setting her down in front of a tree.



She would have stood, except that her limbs didn't seem to be working, and so she sank against the bark as he set her down.



He hunkered down before her. She stiffened, ready to fight again. She eyed him carefully, ready to fight with her mind. He was one of them. He was a liar; he had been held in reserve. She was to be some kind of a sacrifice to Bac-Dal, and this man was going to see that she was kept prisoner until tomorrow at the midnight hour. But that meant she had time to get away.



"Are you all right?" he asked.



Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, yeah, I'm just fine, you asshole. You've abducted me like a sack of meat, thrown me all over, forced me here against my will, but I'm just fine."



"Look, you haven't met me, so you won't believe this. I am your friend. And you have to trust me for a few minutes now. We're almost at what we believe to be a safe house. I need to make sure that there's no one around the area. Can you stay here, please—I'm begging you—for just a few minutes?"



She looked at him. There was something about him. She wanted to believe him, wanted to trust him.



He'd abducted her.



They were in the woods… deep in the woods. And tomorrow was Halloween. She was insane if she trusted him.



But then again, his eyes held some strange power…



And emissary of a demon would have power, right? Logically, she didn't believe in demons. But hell, logic was gone, and evil was out there.



She shook her head. "I can't trust you! I need to get to Finn."



"Megan, Finn will come to you, I swear it."



So earnest, his words were so earnest. He stood then, as if determining he had to trust her. He disappeared into the woods, silent as a cat in the night.



Finn will come to you.



Right. Finn would come to her. Because someone else had kidnapped Finn. And everyone would believe that they had disappeared on purpose, afraid of repercussions from the fire which had surely gutted half the hotel. It had all been so well planned out.



Lucian had said that something would happen. That they'd never be playing at the hotel at midnight on Halloween.



So…



Had Lucian caused the fire? Mike had tried to tell her that Lucian was evil. Mike had tried to help her tonight. Maybe they had been drawn into the dead heat of the fire while trying to escape the smoke.



She set her hands upon the tree trunk, trying to use the support to help her to rise. She came to her feet.



But then she paused.



She could hear… footsteps?



Soft crunching… like something moving the dying leaves of autumn that littered the forest floor. Someone was coming. Someone moving stealthily. Creeping up on her, slowly, carefully.



A hooded figure, bearing a knife held high, burst into the clearing, running straight at her.



Megan screamed in terror and turned to run.



From behind her, she suddenly heard another scream. She turned, and heard a fierce, deep snarling sound.



She turned back.



The fog had settled over the clearing. But she thought she saw…



A dog.



A giant dog. Ripping into the caped entity that had been running toward her with the knife.



"This is insane," Finn said. They were in Lucian's rental car, curving around a winding road in the gray darkness that not even the moon could penetrate. "Why would Megan have driven out here?" He looked at Lucian suspiciously. "I don't care who or what you are, but if anything happens to Megan, I'll find a way to kill you before I die, so help me."



Lucian cast him a glance that was chilling. "We're trying really hard to save your fool lives—and others as well, since the rebirth of a demon could be deadly to hundreds of people for decades to come."



"Why would Megan be in the woods?" Finn insisted angrily, refusing to be cowed, no matter the ice fire in the guy's strange eyes.



"I have a friend who went to see that she wasn't taken," Lucian said.



"Great. You have a friend. And he can throw people around the woods as if they were pebbles as well?"



"She's safe with him."



"In a cabin in the woods?"



"Obviously, yes—they were trying to take her tonight. So, obviously, yes, my friend went to make sure he could take her before they could—and he checked out the cabin in the woods to make sure he could find a real safe house."



"This is just so much bull!" Finn accused him, his growing fear for Megan giving him the adrenaline and strength to fight both his instinctive fear for himself, and the words that were being said. "Dammit, Lucian, who are you? What the hell is going on? This has got to be some really insane murder plot. Demons, shit! What are you?"



Lucian stared at him, his own temper obviously at a peak.



"You want the truth? The absolute truth? Hell, yes, there are demons out there. Demons, boogiemen, monsters, and more."



"And how do you know that? How do you know that for fact?"



"How do I know?"



The car jerked to a halt at the side of the road.



"How do I know? Because I'm a fucking vampire, and my friend is a werewolf. There, you've got in a nutshell. Now, can we try to get to your wife? Or do you want me to prove what I've just told you?"



Chapter 21



"Stop. For the love of God, please stop!"



Megan felt the wind at her back; he was behind her again. He could leap up her, injure her, any second.



Keep running? Run until she could run no more? Wouldn't that be the instinctive thing to do, the way to win? Fight on and on until… there could be no more fight.



But something in the tone of the words caused her to halt. The man had just stopped a maniacal assassin from coming after her with a razor-sharp blade. Or had he? Maybe it was all part of an act, and as Mike had said, they shouldn't trust the outsiders any more than they could trust anyone in the town.



Yet, it might be more prudent to prevent injury, and still, there remained that ring of honesty; this man had evoked God's name. Would the real enemy have done so? Perhaps yes, the better the deception.



A cold breath seemed to touch her nape. She was caught anyway.



She came to a dead standstill. To her amazement, the man crashed into her; they both stumbled forward, and then down.



He was quickly up on a bended knee, and staring down at her, talking quickly rather than offering any force. "My name is Brent Malone. I'm a friend of Lucian and Jade. There are others with us, and we believe that you are in serious trouble, far worse than you've even imagined."



"I imagine that someone wants me dead, what could be worse?" she demanded.