Текст книги "Awakened"

Автор книги: P. C. Cast

Соавторы: Kristin Cast,P. C. Cast

Жанр:

Городское фэнтези

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

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“Okay, seriously, you sound creepily like Seoras.” I looked up at Stark and shook my head. “If you start growing a white goatee beard thingie like his I’m gonna fire you.”

Stark rubbed his chin with one hand like he was considering it. “You can’t fire me. I’ve signed on for life.”

“I’ll stop kissing you.”

“Nae beard for me, lassie.” He grinned.

I smiled back at him, thinking how glad I was he’d “signed up for life,” and how much I hoped that meant he had his “job” for a very, very long time. “Hey, how about this: you fall asleep first, and I’ll stay awake for a while?” I cupped his cheek. “Tonight I’ll guard the Guardian.”

“Thank you,” he said, being way more serious than I expected. “I love you, Zoey Redbird.”

“I love you, too, James Stark.”

Stark turned his head and kissed the inside of my palm and the intricate tattooing the Goddess had placed there. As he closed his eyes and his body began to relax, I stroked his thick brown hair and wondered briefly if or when Nyx would add to my incredible tattooing. She’d given me Marks, taken them away—or at least my friends said they went away while my soul was in the Otherworld—and then Nyx returned them to me again when I returned to myself. Maybe I was set now—maybe I wouldn’t get any more. I was trying to decide whether that was a good or a bad thing when my eyelids got way too heavy to keep open. I thought I’d shut them, just for a little while. Stark was definitely sleeping, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything …

* * *

Dreams are so weird. I was having a dream that I was flying like Superman—you know, with my hands out in front of me kinda guiding me, and the theme music for the cool old Superman movies, the ones with the awesome Christopher Reeve, was playing in my head when everything changed.

The theme song was replaced by my mom’s voice.

“I’m dead!” she said.

Nyx’s voice responded right away, “Yes, Linda, you are.”

My stomach clenched. It’s a dream. It’s just a really bad dream!

Look down, my child. It is important that you bear witness. When the Goddess’s voice whispered through my mind I knew reality had seeped into the Realm of Dreams.

I didn’t want to. I really, really didn’t want to, but I looked down.

Below me was what I’d come to think of as the entrance to Nyx’s Realm. There was the vast Darkness into which I’d jumped to get my spirit back into my body. Then there was a carved stone archway above hard packed dirt, and on the other side of the arch stretched Nyx’s magickal grove, beginning with the ethereal hanging tree that was a magnified version of the one Stark and I had tied our dreams for each other on during that wonderful day on the Isle of Skye.

And just inside the Otherworld arched entrance stood my mom, facing Nyx.

“Mom!” I called, but neither the Goddess nor my mom reacted to my voice.

Bear witness silently, my child.

So I hovered above them and watched while soundless tears washed down my face.

My mom was staring at the Goddess. Finally, she said in a small, scared voice, “So is God a girl, or did my sins send me to Hell?”

Nyx smiled. “Here we are not worried with past sins. Here, in my Otherworld, we care only about your spirit and what essence it chooses to carry with it: Light or Darkness. It is a simple thing, really.”

Mom chewed her lip for a second, and then said, “Which does mine carry, Light or Darkness?”

Nyx’s smile didn’t waver. “You tell me, Linda. Which have you chosen?”

My heart squeezed as I watched my mom start to cry. “Until recently, I think I’ve been more on the bad side.”

“There is a great deal of difference between being weak and being evil,” Nyx said.

Mom nodded. “I was weak. I didn’t want to be. It’s just that my life was like a snowball rolling down a mountain, and I couldn’t find my way out of the avalanche. But I was trying there at the end. That’s why I was at Mother’s house. I was going to make my life my own again—and get back together with my daughter Zoey. She’s—” Mom stopped. Her eyes widened in understanding. “You’re Zoey’s Goddess, Nyx!”

“I am, indeed.”

“Oh! So Zoey will be here someday?”

I wrapped my arms around myself. She loved me. Mom really loved me.

“She will, though I hope not for many, many years.”

Hesitantly, Mom asked, “May I come in and wait for her?”

“You may.” Nyx spread her arms wide and declared, “Welcome to the Otherworld, Linda Redbird. Leave pain and regret and loss behind, and bring with you love. Always love.”

And then my mom and Nyx disappeared in a brilliant flash of light. I woke up, lying on the edge of the bed, arms wrapping around myself, crying steadily.

Stark woke instantly. “What it is?” He scooted over to me and pulled me into his arms.

“It’s m-my mom. S-she’s dead,” I sobbed. “S-she really did love me.”

“Of course she did, Z, of course she did.”

I closed my eyes and let Stark comfort me while I cried out pain and regret and loss, until all I had left was love. Always love.

THE END

For now …

Coming November 2011:

Destined

ALSO BY P. C. CAST and KRISTIN CAST

Marked

Betrayed

Chosen