My Merlin Awakening (5 page)

“I’ll be fine.” I straightened away from him and reached for my cellphone. “We should call the emergency services. Warn them.”

Vane yanked the phone away. “And tell them what? That you had a vision? Actually you didn’t have a vision. You saw Merlin’s vision. They will hang up on you without a second thought. With all the alert systems they have in place telling them that everything is fine, the regulars won’t pay attention to you.”

“I’ve got to do something!” I said.

“No, you have to calm down and think. We need help figuring this out.”

Vane tapped on the touchscreen of my cellphone and dialed a number. I saw the number on the screen, but I didn’t recognize it. It didn’t pick up as any of my contacts. The number connected.

“Marilynn?” He put the phone to his ear. “What does the Council know about tsunamis?”

***

The rest of the school day went by in a blur. Everyone seemed to be on autopilot, even the teachers. Most of them checked news updates, blatantly ignoring the no cellphone rule. Yet, everything seemed to have quieted after the small tremor.

Grey and I drove home together. The main street of Concord seemed unusually abandoned as I drove the car we shared around the turnabout and onto the small street that led to the wooded suburbs just past Walden Pond. The cold February sky of grey and blue highlighted the blackened snow that sat in the gutters of the road. At least, the air flowing in from outside smelled of wet pine and dewy wood.

I turned at a small gravel opening off the road, marked by a stumpy mailbox. The Land Rover thundered downhill. About midway, another Land Rover pulled out from behind a hidden lane, blocking our path. I rolled down my window and waved. Without acknowledgement, the other Land Rover reversed and disappeared back into the hidden lane, giving the okay to proceed.

Bodyguards or sentries? I didn’t know exactly what to call them. Wizard-goons seemed too impolite for someone risking their life for you. Besides the physical checks of who was entering the woods, Vane and Sylvia had also set up an invisible perimeter to detect any magic.

I cast a speculative look at Grey, who sat hunkered down in the passenger seat. It wasn’t like him to give me a chance to drive, but today he hadn’t even put up a token protest. The tremor had brought back too many memories. We emerged from the lane into a circular courtyard in front of Ragnar Manor, my home.

The hundred-year-old manor boasted gorgeous arched windows, several balconies, and even a pointy turret. Stone gargoyle rainspouts stuck out at the edges of the house. Ironic, since actual gargoyles nearly burned down the house a few months ago.

I pulled to a stop near a broken fountain in the middle of the courtyard. It used to have a gargoyle statue that expelled water from its mouth. The gargoyle statue had been crushed when Grey’s Corvette slammed into it… the day the sword and the stone fell out of nowhere. The day Alexa died. The day everything changed for us.

I stared at the fountain. It didn’t surprise me that Sylvia hadn’t fixed it. I doubted she ever would.

“It’s starting again, isn’t it?” Grey said.

I pushed a button and the Land Rover’s engine switched off. “It never stopped, Grey.”

Grey continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “The tremor today wasn’t a coincidence. It all goes back to Arthur’s sword.”

“Did you think pulling the sword from the stone was the end? There’s a reason it showed up in the first place.”

“Yes, and I know the reason,” Grey muttered as he flung open the door. He jumped down and turned to look at me. “It’s a joke, Ry. And the joke is on us. Someone with a nasty sense of humor dropped it in the middle of the world so they could watch us as we all tried to kill ourselves to get to it. The sad thing is—that’s exactly what we did.”

Grey slammed the car door and headed into the manor. I watched him climb up the short steps to double front doors. The doors were a masterpiece. Wrought iron with an intricate leaf design on frosted glass. They were new. The old doors had burned down in a volley of fireballs. That day, I left the manor not knowing if I’d ever come back.

On that day the sword and the stone first appeared in London and I learned about magic. I learned that Matt—the new boy at school I’d been crushing on—was a wizard. I also learned about gargoyles. They wanted to kill Grey and me because we were Candidates. Apparently, out of everyone in the world, only a few of us had the potential to actually pull the sword. Candidates also had the greatest potential, therefore, to die.

The Wizard Council sent Matt and Vane out to recruit and train Candidates in hopes of improving their chances of survival; but more in the hopes that the victorious sword-bearer would align themselves with the wizards. The gargoyles had taken a different approach. To ensure their success, they decided to kill every Candidate who was not a gargoyle.

Only it hadn’t been Grey or me whom they killed in their first attack. The image of a girl with impossibly bright eyes, a broad smile, and snarky wit hung in the thin veil that separates day from falling night. Alexa.

The roar of another engine sounded as another black SUV pulled into the driveway. Its bright headlights pierced through the lingering bit of memory. I opened the driver’s side and jumped down from the Land Rover.

I put my hand up to block the glare of headlights that shone into my eyes. The passenger side opened and a shadowy figure stepped down.

My heart gave an uncomfortable leap. The amulet on my neck warmed against my will.

Soft rays of fading daylight shone down on the wavy mane of brown hair making a russet halo around the head of a boy. He had a lean face, inky lashes, and eyes too old for someone I knew to be only eighteen.

He still wore a black biker jacket. I remembered the sensation of my cheek against the back of that slick synthetic leather, and the sensation of flying as his Ducati took the open curves of the road.

Matt
. The amulet gave a silent sigh. My pulse raced so out of control I was afraid it would explode.

Matt’s perfect mouth curved up in an uncertain smile. His burden-filled shoulders straightened. He took a step toward me and then another… until he stood just a few feet in front. The last declaration he’d made to me hung between us. The L. word. The one that had nothing to do with like.

All I had to do was take a step back toward him.

CHAPTER 3 - CROSSROADS

CHAPTER 3
CROSSROADS

“Ryan?” Matt started, paused, then, started again. “Is Sylvia inside? I need to speak with her.”

I blinked. After all he’d put me through. After not seeing each other for two months
that’s
all he had to say to me?

“Not all, but it is a start,”
his voice whispered inside my head.

I almost jumped. I touched the amulet that connected us. The only time I’d heard Matt in my head was the last time I’d seen him. After months of reflecting on that last time, I’d concluded that it just made me… angry.

“Get out of my head, Matt!”

“As you wish
,” he demurred.

My fingers curled into a fist. To shut out what wasn’t meant to be. It was his choice for us not to be together and I had moved on.

The lights of the SUV shut off. Vane stepped down from the driver’s seat. He walked forward, past the front of the car and reached me in a few steps. For a second, he stood right beside his brother. Only a bit of daylight remained.

The resemblance of their faces and matching length of their frames made the brothers seem eerily similar, but that’s where the similarity ended. Vane’s hazel brown eyes glittered despite the dark. Matt’s amber ones sank into the night like a dying ember. Vane’s broad shoulders moved with loose grace. Matt’s lean ones held tight and still. Despite the shadows, they both flickered sharp and true, even if Vane’s torch burned a bit too bright to hold. The tiger next to the lion, Vane pounced forward and placed himself directly in line between Matt and me.

Vane said, “Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

“Since when do you wait for an invitation?” I arched a brow. “Why did you call Matt?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Matt said dryly.

Vane smirked. “I didn’t call. The Council did.”

Five other SUVs burst out of the wooded lane and sped onto the driveway. I tensed. Vane put himself between the SUVs and me.

“It’s alright. I think you’ll like these visitors.” Matt touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see such a vision. It can be… disturbing.”

The destruction I’d seen had been more than disturbing. It was terrifying. My gaze lowered. “I don’t know how you live with them.”

“It helps to have someone share it, for once,” he said softly. “But I would rather not have burdened you. I’m just glad I was close enough to come quickly.”

I frowned. “You were coming here?”

Matt said evasively, “I happened to be in the area.”

The SUVs squealed to a stop beside Vane’s. Several men dressed in uniforms of slacks, black t-shirts, and long wool coats got out. I recognized many of them as guardian wizards who’d protected the Candidates until we got to the Council. Two teenage wizards jumped out of the last SUV next to the broken fountain—a red-haired girl in punk goth clothes and a skinny, black-haired boy with glasses.

I let out a squeal of delight and ran to greet them. “Gia! Blake!”

Gia laughed and met me halfway. She caught me up in a tight hug. “I’ve missed you!”

I touched her long red hair. “You grew it out.” I’d only ever seen her with short, spiky hair. Now long curls softened the angular bones of her face. “It looks good.”

She gave a small, self-conscious smile. “I needed a change.”

I understood that. After a night of battling a thousand or so gargoyles, the dawn looked different. I turned to Blake and attacked him next. He returned my enthusiastic hug with an awkwardly stiff one.

“Er, happy to see you too, Ryan,” he said with a heavy British accent.

Gia rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you left me with just stiff-upper-lip here for company. It is so boring at Avalon Prep without you.”

Vane had found Gia in Hong Kong and brought her to Avalon Prep in much the same manner as Matt had brought me. We had both been accepted as Candidates that day. I had no idea where she was actually from. She never talked about her past, and from what little I knew about it, I wasn’t sure how to ask. 

Gia looked up at the curved gables of Ragnar Manor and whistled. “Nice place, DuLac. A little creepy but… nice.”

I searched her face. “Actually it’s Grey’s family’s house.”

Her expression dimmed. “Yes, Grey.” She glanced inside a huge bay window that took up half of one side of the house. “Is he inside?”

I nodded. “What are you doing here? What about school?”

“School is on break for a week and the Council wanted us—”

Blake cleared his throat. He glanced at Matt, who remained at the edge of the driveway. “Maybe we should allow Master Emrys to explain.”

“Should we go inside?” Matt said. “I need to discuss a few things with Sylvia first.”

An elder guardian, Clarence, with a craggy face and a stern, militant expression marched up. The other guardians fanned out behind him.

I was surprised when Clarence faced me first and bent his head in acknowledgement. “Ms. DuLac,” he said before his eyes slid over Vane to Matt. “Master Emrys, shall we start preparing? I have twenty more guardians arriving here within the next hour.”

“Twenty more?” I glanced at the two brothers as they walked closer. “What is going on?”

Vane shrugged. “Ask him. He’s the wise one.”

I turned on Matt. “What have you done now?”

Beside me, I heard Blake exhale a shocked breath. It amazed me that he still placed Matt up on a pedestal.

Matt colored. “Let’s go inside. Sylvia and Grey need to hear this also. It will be easier to deal with all the questions at once.”

“Or you could tell me now.”
I shouted the words in my head, locking eyes with Matt.