Awakened (Hidden Series Book Four)

By M. Lathan

After killing the biggest threat to their family and the world, Christine and Nathan are eager to move on with their lives, but Christine is sensing death stronger than she’s ever sensed it before. With Nate constantly threatened with losing himself again and a deranged girl with a motive to kill on the loose, a number of things can drive their happily ever after painfully out of reach. When these forces converge with the darkest sort of evil, even fate isn’t on their side. Failure would mean the end of the world, but success isn’t in any of the futures that she can see. With the deaths of everyone she loves closing in, Christine learns just how strong her enemies are and how long they’ve been after her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. Lathan
• Release date: Feb 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9780989418430

M. Lathan

M. Lathan lives in San Antonio with her husband and mini-schnauzer. She enjoys writing and has a B.S. in Psych and a Masters in Counseling. Her passion is a blend of her two interests – creating new worlds and stocking them with crazy people. She enjoys reading anything with interesting characters and writing in front of a window while asking rhetorical questions ... like her idol Carrie Bradshaw.

Book preview

Prologue

Christine

I collapsed, and my head slammed into the marble floor. The fast and potent blow reminded me that I wasn’t the strongest thing in the room. It also reminded me of why I’d come to fear dark and ancient forces.

For a peaceful moment, I watched the sparkling chandelier dance and sway over my head as the glass trembled from the same force that had taken me down. It sounded like thousands of tiny bells, tolling for me.

I heard my mother singing me to sleep. I heard my father belting out a love song in a club. I heard Nate’s soft voice telling me he loved me for the first time.

I love you more. I have loved you for days. I will love you forever.

That was my life, the wonderful parts, flashing before my eyes.

I coughed up blood. It flowed onto the marble floor, and the lights from the trembling chandelier made it glisten like something magical was inside of it.

Cold hands clutched my throat and pulled me to my feet.

Be quick, a voice said. You’ll have to kill her twice.

Chapter One

Christine

I woke up in a cold sweat with the taste of blood in my mouth, and I reached for the bottle of water on my nightstand.

I missed. Suddenly, there were three of them.

After a few labored breaths, my blurry room slowly resolved itself into one of everything. One bottle of water, one fan over my head, one desk in the corner where my books from Trenton were collecting dust.

Weird new-age music floated out of the speakers on my desk and filled the air with my dad’s version of peace. He’d set up a wordless song to play on repeat with whining flutes and cawing birds to make my coma as peaceful as possible.

Now that I was awake, that peace slowly drained out of my body, and dark memories from the day before rushed into its place. I saw dead kids, sick witches dying from unnatural diseases, and Kamon blowing up with his followers. Then the worst part: the seizure that I’d had outside of the prison, the vomiting, the nosebleeds, and finally, the second seizure that had ripped through my brain during breakfast.

I’d agreed to sleep for the day to prevent a third one.

As I swished lukewarm water around my mouth, I saw a small polka dot box with a thin yellow ribbon tied around it on my nightstand. A gift. I sat up slowly and opened it.

Inside, one of my favorite people had placed a compass over shimmering fabric that was clearly there to make it look as magical as it was. This compass, like Pop’s, predicted clashes between humans and magical kind. The mahogany base and copper arrow had none of the signs of use that his did. It was freshly made, just for me. I rubbed my thumb across the arrow, and it thankfully didn’t move away from the line that marked peace.

I smiled as I read Pop’s short note.

I am forever grateful and proud. Never forget to be.

Those words—grateful and proud—were not being uttered in my house. My parents couldn’t see past the danger that I’d put myself in, and they were letting that eclipse the war I’d prevented. Most of all, they hated Pop for helping me, so I decided to keep my gift a secret.

I tucked the gift box and the compass under my sheet and tried to get out of bed. But the room spun around me and made that impossible. This was the reason why words like grateful and proud were not being uttered in my house. Those prisoners were safe, but I couldn’t even stand up on my own today.

Dad?

Coming, honey. Coming!

He ran into my room and disconnected the speakers. For a moment, there was silence, until an all too familiar cloud of noise bombarded me. During my time at St. Catalina, this constant clatter would follow me around everywhere. It was the hum of human thoughts and the answers to a thousand unasked questions just lingering in the air.

My dad’s scattered thoughts screamed louder than the rest of the noise.

She doesn’t look sick. Should she look sick? I should’ve taken her to the hospital. What if Sophia is wrong? What if I’m wrong? About the seizures. About everything. About … Lydia. What if the kid freaks out about her moving in? I should’ve asked first. I can still ask. She wants us together, right?

I tried to ignore his thoughts as he helped me out of bed. With one hand protectively on my back, he led me to the bathroom and closed the door between us. Leave it unlocked, he said. Just in case you fall.

I left it unlocked and started the shower. In an attempt to distance myself from his noise, I sat on the edge of the tub and tried to fill my aching head with other things. More calming things. But the orange light streaming through the window alerted me that the sun was setting on a day that I hadn’t been alive for.

The last thing I remembered was sitting in the dining room with my parents and convulsing hard enough to knock myself out of the chair. I had Remi and Carter to thank for that.

When my mom had informed me that they were still alive, I’d skipped right over feeling sad and went straight to rage. I was angry with them for not dying in the prison, and with myself for even believing they would’ve gone back into a burning building, and with life for not being simple and neat. As my anger fumed, I’d tried to psychically find where they were hiding, and nausea had rolled through my stomach. Then, I’d started to shiver like I was in the dead of winter in New Haven. Then … the seizure. I’d had just enough time to see blood splatter all over my eggs and bacon before my head had slammed to the floor.

So far, it hadn’t been my day. We still had enemies to fight, and my own brain was trying to kill me.

I lit the lavender candle next to the sink and prayed for my brain to heal and for us to find Remi and Carter, but the flame suddenly died before the prayer had time to ferment into a real thing. As the wisp of smoke danced its way into the air, I tried to convince myself that my cancelled prayer wasn’t an omen of things to come.

****

After my shower, my dad insisted on carrying me downstairs. The kitchen smelled delightful and like his teriyaki chicken, but we passed the steaming pots and headed to the door that led to the beach.

He opened it with his foot, and an even louder cloud of noise assaulted me. Pain shot through my head like a bolt of lightning, and I clutched my dad for dear life. There was so much to sense outside that I wasn’t sensing anything at all. I couldn’t hear my dad’s thoughts or distinguish the birds chirping in the trees from the waves crashing against the shore. Everything sounded like a high-pitched screech. And it hurt. It hurt so bad that it brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t want my dad to worry, so I didn’t let them fall. I just braced my head to his chest as he carried me further away from the house.

After what felt like an eternity of pain, my bare feet sank into the warm sand as he put me down. I opened my eyes, and the pain and the noise suddenly became easier to grit through as they competed with … him. Nathan Thomas Reece.

His lips moved as he said something, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. He gestured to the blanket he was sitting on, and I gazed at the two cans of Dr. Pepper to his left, the basket of dinner rolls to his right, and the huge smile on his face. I was in heaven, and heaven was a place where my father willingly let Nathan come to our house.

Staring at him, my brain didn’t feel so broken and life didn’t feel so stressful. He always made everything simple and clear. Life was about loving someone and letting them love you back. That was all there was to it. Everything else was just background noise. Maybe that was why the clatter in my head had faded even more.

The sound of my dad’s voice suddenly cut in.

That’s right, Dad said. "Since he’s been waiting here all day for you to wake up, without annoying me, I decided to be nice. But you are friends. Just friends. Got it?"

We were so much more than friends, but I nodded, and Nate smiled at my dad. I really appreciate this, Mr. G.

Don’t call me that, Dad said. I’m not answering to a nickname. Stop trying to make it happen, and … hands off. I have eyes everywhere.

We watched my dad walk inside of the house and hilariously tuck himself behind a curtain as if we hadn’t seen him hide there. He was the worst spy ever. I just shook my head. How do you make someone less insane when it comes from how much they love you?

What happened this morning? Nate asked.

I was trying to have a vision about Remi and Carter.

Don’t hurt yourself over them. We’ll find them. Or someone will. How are you feeling now?

Better. Sort of. You have a way of fixing things without even trying.

He dropped his head slowly, a sad smile on his face. Funny, he whispered. I was starting to think I was more famous around here for breaking things.

He touched my wrist, the one he’d broken when he’d lost control of his shifting. There was no reason for him to beat himself up over accidentally hurting me. He had to let that go and live a life without stress, especially if he didn’t want my parents to take him away from me again.

My dad apparently had eyes everywhere, but I risked it and ran my fingers through Nate’s hair to move us far away from the topic of my wrist. It was the longest I’d ever seen it in real life, approaching the length it had been in the portal world.

He stared at my hand instead of my face. He studied it carefully as I played with the ends of his hair. It shouldn’t have been so hard for me to stop. He’d slept in my room for two nights in a row, and I had every intention of him sleeping there again. There was just something about the fact that I couldn’t touch him or kiss him that made me really want to.

Nate pulled away and left me there, wanting more, just as my dad intruded on our picnic. He jogged to us with a glass of green juice in his hand. It was the potion that made me a normal human.

Dinner is almost ready, he said. I just wanted to bring this out first. It’s from Sophia and your mother. They want to turn your powers off for a while to stop the seizures. A few doses a day will do the trick.

But Remi and …

But nothing, Dad said. "We want you to stay out of that. You are our priority."

To them, my seizures were more dangerous than a deranged girl and a trained killer … both with motives to kill us.

I didn’t want my parents to turn me into a zombie again, but I reached for the glass just to take it out of my dad’s hand. But before I touched it, the glass tipped over, and the potion splattered all over the blanket.

Christine, Dad said. I felt that.

Felt what?

He gestured to the toppled glass. It jerked out of my hand. I know you don’t want to drink it, but…

I didn’t do anything!

At least, I hadn’t felt myself do anything. As I tried to make my dad see that, Nate soaked up the mess with a pile of napkins.

I was just about to tell them that I didn’t need another glass of the potion when I felt blood trickle out of my nose. It reminded me of my broken brain, and that reminded me of all the noise I’d let Nate distract me from. It came back full force, deafening me, hurting me, screeching like a million fax machines going off at once.

I couldn’t hide it from either of them. Pumpkin, Dad said. I barely heard him over the noise. The glass thing might have been an accident, but you’re definitely doing something with your powers right now. Let’s get inside.

We ran into the kitchen. Inside, they both watched me with nervous eyes, but the seizure they were expecting never happened. I remembered when Pop had taught me to hear only what I wanted to hear, and I chose not to hear the screeching anymore. It faded, but not completely. It hummed somewhere in the back of my head.

In comparison to some of the more epic nosebleeds I’d had, this one was relatively tame. It gushed for two short minutes as I told my dad about my headache and the deafening noise.

Nathan, I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous for her to be out there. I’m not trying to ruin your night, but I think it’s best for you guys to hang out inside.

Nate nodded with this remarkably sad smile on his face. It broke my heart. So when I finished cleaning my nose, I laid a blanket on the floor in the living room to salvage our picnic.

Nate piled way too much chicken over a mountain of rice on both of our plates and brought them to the blanket. On his second trip, he brought a can of soda for himself and another glass of the potion for me.

As it passed from his hand to mine, the glass slipped between our fingers. His quick reflexes sprang into action, and he caught the glass an inch away from the floor. Once was a coincidence. Twice was just weird.

Seriously? he said. Again?

I didn’t do that.

Maybe not consciously, babe, but you’re doing something.

I really hadn’t, but I wasn’t exactly eager to drink the potion. I didn’t want to be that person again—the girl who just sat back and watched while her mother did everything. Not after what I’d done in Kamon’s prison.

Maybe it’s a sign, I said. He chuckled and pushed the potion to me cautiously. I’m not joking. They want me to be powerless, but this thing with Remi and Carter isn’t over. Maybe … maybe I’m supposed to help.

He chuckled again, harder this time. And how did you suddenly arrive at that conclusion?

I had no idea, so I blamed my powers. How do I suddenly arrive at any conclusion? I can just know things, Nate … like that my mom is going to move in tonight. No one told me that. And I know that I’m going to have pancakes for breakfast tomorrow, it’s going to rain, Sophia’s going to wear her dress with the dragonflies on it, and Remi and Carter will still be alive. I feel that. Suddenly. And I know-

I get it, he said. Please stop before you hurt yourself.

But I couldn’t stop. That feeling of needing to help took over me quickly. It spread throughout my body until it infected every inch of me. My mom is getting weaker and…

Chris, he groaned.

I ignored him. She’s getting weaker, and yesterday, we helped her. She’ll probably need us again. My heart pulsed with a rush of certainty. "No. She will need us again, and the sooner we help, the sooner we’ll find Remi and Carter. Nate rolled his eyes. And the sooner life can return to normal. With us going on dates that aren’t bound to my house and maybe even living alone together again. Wouldn’t that be nice?"

He sighed and dug into his food. With a full mouth, he said, Fine, Chris. What else do you know?

I smiled and resisted the urge to do a victory dance. With my powers stirring, and my head throbbing, I thought about Remi and Carter. The last time I’d done that, I’d hurt myself, so I eased my brain into reaching for an answer. Instead of asking where they were, afraid of prompting another seizure, I just thought of their faces.

After a minute, I started to feel like the problem with them or the problems they would cause were going to be big. I was as sure about that as I was about tomorrow’s forecast.

It’s bigger than my mom made it seem this morning, I said. It’s more complicated than just finding Remi and Carter.

How so? Nate asked, his voice competing with the other sounds humming in my head.

With my thoughts still focused on their faces and this big problem they would cause, I arrived at another sudden conclusion. Something about the prison. Something happened there … that will complicate things.

As I gritted through the pain in my head, Nate said, Could it be … I don’t know … that you hurt yourself in the prison? I rolled my eyes at his sarcasm and kept my mind focused.

iPad, I said, just after I’d heard the word in my head. There’s an iPad that … maybe can show me something? I glanced around the room, but I didn’t see an iPad. There was, however, a briefcase on the coffee table.

I opened it.

That’s for your mom, Nate said. She left it there when she came to check on you earlier. Inside of the front pocket, I found breath mints, a phone charger, and three pens. In the middle section, I found a German newspaper and a rubber band. Just when I started to doubt my instincts, I found an iPad. Chris, Nate warned.

What are the odds that I sensed that I needed to see an iPad and one is right here?

Pretty high if you go snooping around until you find one.

Come on. What fun is being psychic if you can’t follow your hunches? We both realized how weird that had sounded coming from me—the girl who’d willingly sedated herself for months and hadn’t used her powers much before that. But something had happened to me in that prison, other than my brain injury and this complication that I was sensing. There was no part of me that feared my strength or my dangerous powers.

With a little effort and an exponential increase to my headache, I cracked Mom’s passcode and keyed it in.

As iPads go, hers was pretty boring—plain background, no pictures, and no apps outside of the standard ones. I felt the need to open her email, and I followed the exciting urge. I clicked the first one from someone named T. Moss.

REPORT: Kamon’s headquarters, Sydney, Australia.

STATUS: Unsuccessful.

Whoa, Nate said, and pointed to the status of the mission we’d intruded on. We’d wanted to help, but it seemed like we hadn’t. Not according to T. Moss.

I scrolled through the rest of the report.

CASUALTIES: 244. Kamon Yates, identified.

NOT FOUND: 9 Hunters.

INCIDENTS: 2 - Nathan Reece (Shifter), Christine Gavin (Psychic)

I nearly dropped the iPad. I had to hold on tight with my trembling hands. Wow, Nate said.

We’re in this!

Wow, he repeated.

The noise in my head hummed a little louder, and I read T. Moss’ description of us.

Nathan Reece, shifter disguised as vampire. Responsible for multiple deaths in the prison. Spotted on arrival and after exit. No charges will be filed.

Christine C. Gavin. Spotted on arrival and exit. Daughter of L. Shaw. Skill level: High, but untrained. Best with: Sensing death and the dead / Secondary: Empath. No charges will be filed.

I didn’t know what to gawk at first — my real name, my mother’s name, or that my best power was sensing death and the dead. There was too much to freak out over at once.

I read the rest of the report out of both fear and curiosity. My heart was racing, and my head was pounding to the same rhythm.

The next section described the nine hunters who’d escaped, much like T. Moss had described me. I skimmed the first seven and read the last two carefully.

Remi O. Vaughn. Last seen on Temple Night, escaping. Purged panther. Skill level: Low. Only power: Teleportation. Excessive force permitted for capture.

Carter J. Yates. Last seen on Temple Night, escaping. Copy of Gabriella McKnight (deceased). Skill level: High. Best with: Manifestations / Secondary: Mind control. Excessive force permitted for capture.

As I read Carter’s description, what was left of my breakfast pushed up to my chest. Something felt wrong, off, strange. I couldn’t quite think of the right word to describe it, but I was cold and nauseous again.

I gagged and slapped one hand to my aching forehead and the other over my mouth. Nate moved my plate and searched the blanket for something for me to puke into.

I wasn’t sure what had caused the nausea and the chills—something about Carter or that more people now knew that Lydia Shaw was my mom—but whatever it was, it felt … big.

Chapter Two

Nathan

I’d allowed my girlfriend to make me commit another violation of the treaty that governed my kind.

Statute Sixteen, the final statute and perhaps the most important, stated that: No magical being is allowed to discredit, plot against, or attack Lydia Shaw. Such acts are considered severe signs of rebellion and are punishable by death without a trial.

And this shifter had conspired with her daughter and Sophia’s husband to sedate her and hijack her mission, and now, I’d watched her daughter hack into her email account.

Perfect.

Surprisingly, that wasn’t the worst part of our date.

On the road with the Peace Group, I’d heard a drunk witch say that psychics were never wrong because they lived to prove themselves right. It seemed like Christine was trying to prove herself right, and she didn’t even see it.

A day after she’d done something truly amazing, reality had hit her. Unfortunately, nothing about her life had changed. She wasn’t a hero in their home. She was their sick baby who needed magical potions to control her powers. I understood not wanting to be controlled, and I understood that her brain allowed her to know more than the rest of us, but two glasses tipping over weren’t signs that she needed to skip the potion. And that certainly wasn’t a good reason for her to hurt herself.

But she wanted it to be, so she’d poured the juice down the drain. She wanted to prove to herself that things were too complicated with the hunters for her to be electively powerless.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. The report we’d found proved that nine hunters had escaped the blast and that more people knew about her, but her nosebleeds, seizures, and the noise in her head bothered me more.

But I was trying to be on her side. Her parents loved her, but they never let her have opinions about things. I couldn’t be another person in her life who treated her that way. So when she’d asked me to lie to her dad about her drinking the potion, I’d said, Okay, babe.

And I’d said the same thing hours after our date had ended when she’d called to tell me that she couldn’t sleep alone.

That last, Okay, babe, caused my second violation of the day. This one wasn’t so much against the Honorable Lydia Shaw as it was against Christine’s father who loved to remind me about his pistol.

As I hid in Christine’s bedroom, waiting for her to come upstairs, I briefly wondered if Mr. Gavin really had it in him to kill a teenager. My money was on yes.

I still had a death wish, and it wasn’t just his gun that could’ve killed me. For a shifter, anxiety was as debilitating as any terminal illness, and I had a chronic and incurable case of it. Christine’s parents had just let me back into her life, and I was going to do everything that I could not to lose her again.

This morning, Sophia had warned me that the weeks following my breakdown were going to be the hardest. I’d stopped shifting like a psychopath, but the cure wasn’t as simple as saying goodbye to my mother. My brain and my bones needed more time to recover from everything I’d done to them. So I couldn’t stress about seizures or guns or the nine hunters who’d escaped.

I couldn’t afford to.

After dropping me off, Paul had left me alone in Christine’s closet. I hid my overnight bag in the darkest corner and waited behind the closed door for my girlfriend. While I waited, I listened to the sounds in their home. In one of the bathrooms, a faucet dripped steadily into a sink, and even further away, a smoke detector begged for a new battery. Something dropped downstairs, possibly a box, and Lydia said, Are you sure you have room for all of my things?

We’ll make it fit, Mr. Gavin said. Stop unpacking. It’s late, and I’m tired.

It’s not that late, honey. And … Christine, where are you going? Do you feel okay? Is your head hurting?

I’m fine, Chris said. I’m tired, too. We’ll unpack tomorrow. I’m really glad you’re here, but … I’m going to bed. After a few kisses and a heartfelt I love you from Lydia, light footsteps padded up the stairs, then down the hall. It should’ve been illegal for someone to smell that amazing.

I waited until her bedroom closed to creep out of the closet. Chris didn’t hear me. Suddenly, all of the tension we’d had at the beginning of our date came rushing back. Now, there was no one to stop me from kissing her. No one to stop my eyes and hands from going wherever they wanted to go.

Just as I snaked my arms around her waist, she said, Carter.

Um … the name is Nathan.

She showed me her phone, and I stopped myself from growling at the picture. On her screen, the last of Kamon’s copies, Carter Yates, was pretending to bite Remi’s face.

I found his Twitter account, she said. I gestured to the door to remind her about her parents. She couldn’t have said that any louder. Sorry. I can’t hear how loud I am. My ears… She softened her voice. My ears are still ringing. But look at this. Carter seems so normal. He plays soccer. He just made sixteen. Remi’s in a bunch of these.

I didn’t have to look. I knew a lot about Carter Yates. He was as normal as Christine was, in the sense that they did normal things for such abnormal people. The old idea of copies living in little glass boxes until their masters set them loose to kill had turned out to be a myth.

Something’s wrong with this, she said, and braced her trembling hand to the left side of her head. She was still in pain, and that hurt me. And the idea of her skipping more dosages and putting herself through more pain hurt me even more. Since finding that email, when I look at him or think about him … I feel strange and nauseous.

I saved my comment because it seemed too obvious. Something felt wrong because Kamon’s crazed lover and one of his demon seeds had escaped from the prison. It was probably going to feel wrong until her mom captured them. So she was worrying and hurting herself for nothing.

At least I was here. As we crawled into bed, I tried to find the silver lining, and that was all I could come up with. If she had a seizure, at least I would be here, and I could make enough noise to alert her parents.

My legs brushed something under the covers, and I scooted it closer with my foot. Someone, probably Pop, had given her a magical compass.

So, she said. I was going to tell her that I saw that email and didn’t drink the potion, but something stopped me. I admit… it was eighty percent fear.

She chuckled, and I put the compass on her phone. It was supposed to mean: this is why you shouldn’t be afraid, but she tucked it back under the covers without commenting on it. I lay on my side to watch her watch Carter. What a wonderful way to spend the night.

I sighed. Immediately, she put the phone on her nightstand and turned off her lamp. You’re right, she said.

I didn’t say anything.

You didn’t have to. It looks like I’m hurting myself, and it’s bothering you, isn’t it?

Very much.

Then I’m done. No more Carter for the night. I’ll put my brain to bed. I smiled, and she locked the door without getting up. She cringed a little as her powers hurt her again. That was the last thing. I swear. Let’s just relax.

Relaxing turned into her warming her feet on mine. Then her legs. Hands. Lips. Before long, I was only wearing shorts, and we were laughing too hard to say that our hands were pulling at the rest of our clothes and too loudly to say that her parents were downstairs.

But as I went in for another kiss, she gagged, shivered, and changed everything.

Are you going to puke? I asked.

Maybe.

She gagged again and rolled onto her back. She shivered harder, her teeth hammering together like we were in the middle of a blizzard. Can I get you something? Like the potion you didn’t take earlier?

No, Nate. I just … feel off … She gagged harder. I picked her up, raced to the bathroom, and got her to the toilet just before she hurled, and shivered, and hurled some more.

A person could only vomit so many times before it was considered an emergency. Claws scratched at my stomach and