Authors: Tessa Dawn
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Romance, #General
Blood Awakening (2 page)
As the Ancient Master Warrior’s crimson tears fell
like raindrops, the rivers overflowed and the heavens shook. Giant boulders
perched atop nearby canyons crashed to the earth’s floor in violent rockslides,
even as the sides of the mountains split open.
And then all was silent.
The anguished cry of the male reverberated through the Rocky Mountains. It
echoed through the rising hills, rose to the blackened sky, and stirred deep
beneath the cavernous valley, until it finally settled as nothing more than a
subtle tremor buried deep within the earth’s crust.
Ciopori Demir stirred.
Her resting place disturbed.
Deep golden eyes, dotted with amber-sparkles like
sun-drenched diamonds, blinked once...twice...a third time. Heavy, dark lashes
fanned ancient cheeks as eyes that had been closed for centuries fluttered
open. A sleeping mind awakened. A soul became aware.
The echo of the male’s call stirred Ciopori’s
heart as she slowly sat up. His anguish penetrated her soul. The cadence of his
cry restored her eternal heartbeat. Somehow, his rage reanimated her pure,
royal blood...primordial, innocent, and unblemished...even as his grief broke
the ancient spell.
Ciopori rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her mind.
She pushed a heavy lock of her hair from her face and struggled to remember:
Where was she?
Who was she?
The memories came back slowly, one scattered piece
at a time: She was the daughter of greatness, the first-born female-child of
the Great King Sakarias and his beautiful wife, Jade. She was the caretaker of
her youngest sibling, Vanya, and the sister of the royal twins, Jaegar and Jadon.
So what was she doing buried deep within the earth? Surrounded by so many layers
of rich minerals, crusted soil, and clammy moisture?
The ancient princess suddenly felt entombed in the
endless layers of evolution. Trapped in a timeless grave.
Think, Ciopori,
she
urged herself, as the dirt walls of her grave seemed to close in on her.
How
is it that you find yourself in this predicament? And what must you do to get
out of it?
The memories began to creep in incrementally, like water through
a leaky dam: all the killings, the endless sacrifices, the loss of so many
females.
The last of their great kind, the Celestial
Beings, had been reduced to ashes by the moral depravity of their men, their
ravenous hunger for power. Their culture had been decimated by a wicked,
insatiable thirst for blood that had become unquenchable.
Ciopori sat up and hugged her knees to her chest,
rocking in a smooth, rhythmic motion, trying to calm her mind. Who was the last
person she remembered seeing? Ah, of course,
Jadon
, her beloved older
brother. Now she remembered.
Jadon had whisked them away—herself and Vanya—at
great risk to his own life. In the midst of a violent storm, he had come into
their castle bedchamber like a thief in the night, imploring them to flee
Romania at once, explaining that they had to get out of the castle immediately
if they hoped to live: Jaegar and his warriors were coming for them.
The men had finally crossed the last and final
boundary: They had gone mad from their endless blood-lust, and were ready to
make the ultimate sacrifice, the virgin daughters of the great king himself,
Jaegar’s very own sisters.
Determined to see his siblings live and his
society survive, Jadon had whisked them across the vast, open countryside,
taking them deep into the heart of the Transylvanian Alps, where he had met up
with a convoy of traveling warriors, a secret group of mercenaries led by the
infamous wizard, Fabian. Eventually, Fabian had secured passage on a ship
across the great sea, taking himself, Ciopori, and Vanya to a foreign land far
across the ocean, an uninhabited refuge where they would finally be given
sanctuary from their own kind.
Sanctuary in the form of a living death
.
A deep, dreamless slumber where their bodies would
remain alive—immortal, yet asleep—until such time as it was finally safe to
awaken them again.
Until Jadon came back to get them.
Ciopori wondered what time it was.
What year it
was
. She began to thrash around, frantically searching for her sleeping
sister in the darkness of the shallow chamber. She must find and awaken Vanya!
How long had it been? How many years had they slept? Had Jadon finally come
back for them?
And whose anguished cry was that?
Her heart felt heavy from the torment in his
voice. Had his sorrow awakened her? Ciopori didn’t know why, but she had to
find that male.
She had to go to him!
Desperately, she began to claw at the ground,
digging in frenzied circles as her body scraped against the walls of the
earthen tomb.
“Vanya! Vanya!”
She cried out until her voice grew hoarse,
digging...turning...clawing...twisting her body this way and that in a frenzied
effort to uncover her baby sister. “Vanya, where are you!”
After what seemed like hours, Ciopori dropped her
head in her hands and started to weep. The earth was suffocating her. She was
about to panic. She had to get out of the ground. Now that she was awake, she
could no longer stomach the shallow grave: The smell of damp earth was all
around her, the blanket of rich soil encasing her like the burial shroud of a
mummy.
Ciopori took a long, slow, deep breath and worked
to calm her mind. She was a Celestial Being.
Picture the earth. See the sky
above you.
She shifted until she was on her knees.
“Ancestors, Great Ones, I humbly beseech you:
From
deep within the earth I pray, my tomb as dark as night; for freedom from this
lowly grave…awaken heaven’s light.
Place my feet along earth’s path, the sky above
my head—where flowers bloom and children laugh; release me from earth’s bed
.”
All at once, Ciopori was standing in a clearing,
her feet on solid ground. Towering pines and fir trees surrounded her, and the
sky transformed right before her eyes from a darkened gray to a brilliant aqua
blue. Her eyes swept over the land, taking note of the simple granite markers.
It was a circular, hallowed clearing.
This was sacred earth.
A burial ground.
Ciopori stepped backward, removing her shoes reverently
from her feet as she paid silent homage to the dead. She wondered who they
were. Were these her father’s soldiers?
And then she saw him
.
The powerful, stunning warrior.
The one whose cries had awakened her.
He was an enormous male, clearly a fighter, with
long, thick hair the color of midnight: the color of hers.
His eyes were like the depths of the ocean, so
black they gleamed blue. And his remarkably handsome face was stricken with
sorrow as he knelt before a simple white stone marker. Ciopori knew immediately
that he was a warrior of some standing. It was in the proud set of his
shoulders, the way he crouched above the ground with both stealth and purpose,
the arrogant slant of his chin. There was a hard certainty in his demeanor...in
spite of his sorrow.
Ciopori had spent very little time with her
father’s guard growing up, but she knew enough etiquette to approach the
warrior with respect.
She padded silently around the periphery of the
grounds, stopping roughly four feet behind him. As was proper when addressing a
male of authority, she averted her eyes, cleared her throat, and awaited his
attention.
The male sprang to his feet like a predator,
rising and whirling to face her in one smooth motion. He looked startled to
find her standing there, as if no one had ever snuck up on him before. His face
was a hard line of menace as he stared her down with those hauntingly beautiful
eyes.
“Greetings, warrior,” Ciopori whispered in the old
language.
Startled by the impostor, Marquis sprang to his
feet and crouched into a warrior’s attack stance.
Great gods
, he must be
losing his mind. No one had ever caught him unaware before.
As soon as he realized the intruder was a female—a
strikingly beautiful, very unusual female—he began to relax. Her hair was the
color of the Vampyr, a deep raven black that shone with highlights of midnight
blue. Her eyes were like nuggets of pure gold with amber diamonds in the
centers, sparkling like the noonday sun. They were clearly
not human
, and
her countenance was positively regal: The woman stood before him like an
Egyptian queen, drunk with nobility, as if she owned the entire world. Yet at
the same time, she bowed her head and averted her eyes with great deference. She
had obviously been raised to behave in such a manner.
Marquis took a step back. He wasn’t at all sure
who
or what
he was dealing with.
The female squared her shoulders and declined her
head once again in the slightest gesture. “I have startled you, warrior. Forgive
me. Once again, I bid you greetings.”
Marquis blinked several times. He had been so
taken aback that he hadn’t even noticed—
she was speaking in the Old Language
.
But unlike himself—or his brothers for that matter—her accent was pure. Her
tongue, absolutely flawless. The cadence was hypnotic.
He cleared his throat. “Be at ease, milady. Should
it please you, this warrior would know your name...
and your lineage
.” Whoa,
where did that come from? He knew, intuitively, that it was the proper
response, although he had no idea how.
The female raised her head then, and her smile was
positively radiant. “I find your inquiry satisfactory, warrior. My name is
Ciopori Demir, begotten of the goddess Cygnus and the human ancestor Mateo
Demir. Daughter of our noble King Sakarias and his gracious wife, Queen Jade.”
Marquis cleared his throat and stared at the
female like she was an alien from another planet. He opened his mouth to
respond, but when no sound came out, he simply cleared his throat a second time
and continued staring. He was positively dumbfounded.
The female looked momentarily confused. “’Tis I
who would hear your lineage now, warrior. Do you belong to my father’s guard?”
Marquis shook his head, trying to clear the
cobwebs. His grief had finally consumed him. He was hallucinating. “Let me get
this straight,” he said. “You claim to be the
daughter
of King Sakarias?
The
King Sakarias? As in the father of Prince Jaegar and Prince Jadon:
the ruler of the Celestial Beings before the Blood Curse?”
Ciopori’s shoulders stiffened and she raised her
chin. “I make no such
claim;‘
tis an assertion of fact, warrior. And I am
beginning to find your attitude almost as wanting as your command of our native
tongue, far too relaxed for my liking. Do you not have more respect for your kingship?
Do you or do you not serve my father’s guard?”
Marquis licked his bottom lip and stifled a laugh,
although the situation was hardly amusing. “No, milady; I can assure you that I
do not serve your father’s guard…as King Sakarias died
twenty-eight hundred
years ago
—thirteen-hundred years before I was even born. And even if he
hadn’t,
serving
is not my thing.”
Ciopori staggered backward. Her eyes grew big, and
she cried out before abruptly catching herself. She brought her hands to her mouth
to stifle the sound. It was as if such a display of emotion would be undignified
in front of a...commoner. Despite her gallant effort, her face became gaunt and
her body started to sway back and forth as if she were about to faint. The
female was shocked...terrified…and clearly grief-stricken.
Marquis felt as overwhelmed as she looked. Surely,
she wasn’t…she couldn’t be...
She did appear to be of their race, though, and
she spoke their native tongue—obviously better than he did, as she found his
dialect offensive. But there were no female Vampyr, only human
destinies
who
were sired by their mates. So what else could she be…if not a Celestial Being? Marquis
delved gently into her mind, quickly scanning her thoughts, unraveling her
memories. He followed the pathways back...back...to—
Holy mother of Cygnus!
As tears began to pour down the beautiful woman’s
face—
Princess Ciopori’s face!
—Marquis glanced around the forest. He
wasn’t at all sure what he was looking for, but given the impossible turn of
events, he half expected to see a god or goddess saunter out of the trees, perhaps
someone better suited to handle the astonishing revelation than he. Gods knew,
he was anything but tactful on a good day, and today was a very bad one.
And then Ciopori fainted.
Marquis moved with all the fluid, supernatural
speed of the Vampyr race, catching her just before her elegant form hit the
ground. As his hand slid beneath her waiste, a bolt of awareness shot through
him like a sudden surge of electricity. Memories—
no
,
dreams
—began
to flood his mind at record speed...
They were memories of his own dreams, ancient
pictures that had come to him again and again over the centuries. Dreams that
had sustained him through battles and losses. A face that had haunted him with eternal
loneliness...
They were fantastical visions he had almost
forgotten over the endless years: images of a woman with raven black hair and
golden eyes with amber irises, dreams of a woman he had always known...
And loved
.
Marquis looked down at the frail body slumped
peacefully beneath him. Was he really holding a living, breathing
female
of his race in his arms? After all these centuries—his people believing not one
had survived? And was the angel from his dreams—the raven-haired beauty who had
come to him so many times in the night—actually a real woman?
Or was he just going mad?
His arms tightened around her waist, and he pulled
her closer to his chest, deeply inhaling her scent.
It was familiar.
Dear gods, it was her.
And she felt exactly as he...
remembered
...exactly
as she had felt in his dreams.
Marquis stared down at Ciopori’s face, studying every
detail, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He wanted to awaken her, but it
had been so long...so many years since he had touched a woman, held a woman in
his arms...or his heart. So many years since he believed he even had a heart. Her
beauty stole his breath away, and he knew the moment she awakened, he would
have to let her go.
Marquis thought about calling out to his brothers
telepathically. He had to tell someone what was happening. After all, this had
monumental implications for their race. But not yet.
Not yet
.
Right now, he would hold this angel from his dreams
safely in his arms and remain in whatever fantasy-world he had drifted into. Right
now, he would imagine she was his.
Time seemed to stand still. It was as if the sun
had simply ceased its journey across the sky and all of heaven was holding its
breath, while Marquis basked in the glow of Ciopori’s exquisiteness…gloried in
the feel of her slight frame tucked so reverently beneath his own. Felt alive
for the first time in centuries.
And then the princess slowly opened her eyes.
Dear gods, she was breathtaking.
She looked up at him but did not appear afraid. And
then she lifted her elegant hand and placed the palm ever so gently against his
cheek.
“Marquis?”
Marquis froze. Her voice was like a robin’s song
as she spoke his—
Dear gods in the heavens, she knew his name!
Marquis’s lips curved into a tentative smile. “Yes.”
She blinked several times. “You are the warrior...from
my dreams.”
Marquis began to tremble as he slowly let his forehead
rest against hers. He had never met this woman, yet he knew her intimately: everything
about her. The way she moved. The way she talked. The sparkling sound of her
laughter. The elegant fall of her hair against her bare shoulders when
she...undressed before bed.
Marquis closed his eyes, afraid to hope. He had
been alone...forever. Born alone with a Dark One for a twin; cast into solitary
existence following his father’s disappearance; cursed as a male who had never
been given a female destiny...in fifteen hundred years. The only peace he had
ever known had been in his dreams—loving a woman he could never possess—throughout
the endless centuries of his life. Yet, here she was...
When he opened his eyes, his gaze locked with hers.
Her own recognition was reflected in their light: She knew him, too.
Marquis exhaled slowly. “I have waited over a
thousand years for you.” His voice was not his own.
Ciopori studied his face. She softly traced the
hard slant of his jaw to the masculine angles of his cheeks, her fingers gently
brushing the chiseled lines as she traced the outline. All at once, she drew
back her hand and smiled. “And I, you, warrior.
And I, you
.”
Marquis drew her close to his heart,
and held
her like she
was the very air he breathed—the most precious thing on earth—because she was. When
he finally released her, there were tears rolling down her cheeks. He gently
brushed them away. “Where did you come from, angel of my dreams?”
Ciopori shook her head. “I...I’m not sure. What
year is this? What is this...Blood Curse...you speak of? And where am I?”
Marquis shook his head.
Wow.
Where to begin?
Perhaps the less traumatic information should come first. “You are in Dark Moon
Vale.”
“Dark Moon...what? Is this place in Romania?” Her
eyes swept the forest floor, the distant canyons, and the high mountain peaks. “We
are yet in the Transylvanian Alps, then?”
Marquis blanched. “No, Ciopori; you are in North
America. The Rocky Mountains.”
Ciopori sat up then, and Marquis helped her to her
feet. She slowly turned around. “Then we did cross the great sea as I
remembered.” She rubbed her eyes as if awakening from a dream. “And the
strange, uninhabited land, it is called...
North America
? Yes, of course,
that’s right. Fabian brought us here. Myself and Van— Oh dear gods, Vanya!” Her
tone became frantic. “You must help me find my sister. At once!”
Ciopori explained how she and Vanya had escaped Romania prior to the Curse—how Fabian
had placed them both in an enchanted sleep to await the return of their brother
Jadon. The story was almost impossible to believe.
Marquis followed Ciopori to the site of her
awakening and scanned the earth’s crust for anomalies. Fortunately, it was
early autumn, and the ground was growing cold. While he couldn’t see beneath
the surface, he could easily detect the slightest variation in temperature. It
was a lot like having a built-in, infrared heat detector. Wherever Vanya was,
her body would put out a clear, recognizable signal.
Sure enough, the undisturbed sleeping chamber was
directly ten feet beneath them, about five feet to the east of where Ciopori
had lain…
fo
r
twenty-eight hundred years
. As the original
Celestial Beings were neither gods nor humans, but the prodigy of the two
species intermixing, they had very long life spans. But they were not immortal.
No, immortality had been a cruel punishment enacted
upon the males when they were turned Vampyr at the time of the Curse. It had
been done to prolong their suffering—to make sure they experienced
it...indefinitely. Consequently, Fabian’s feat had been nothing less than astounding:
keeping two females suspended in animation—alive yet not aging—for this many
years. Casting a spell that could only be broken by the return of their beloved
brother, Jadon.
Marquis shuddered at the thought. Jadon would have
never returned. What if Marquis’s own cry had not awakened her? He refused to
allow the thought.
“She is here,” he said matter-of-factly,
indicating the ground with his foot.
Ciopori turned toward him. “How will we get her
out?” Her face paled. “Dear gods, what if she’s—”
“She’s alive; just as you were.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I can hear her heart beat.”
Ciopori shook her head in disbelief. “Whatever did
my sisters turn you into?”
Marquis ran his tongue over the tips of his fangs,
wondering if she knew—from the dreams, that is. He studied the ground intently.
“The fastest way to reach her is to dig in a straight line.”
Ciopori nodded. “Very well. Where shall we find a
spade?”
Marquis smiled then. “A shovel? We don’t need
one.”
“You intend to use a digging fork or some other
lesser tool?” She scoffed.
Marquis chuckled. “I’m going to use my mind.”