Awen Rising Read online

  “Oh. Okay. I guess.” She listened to the jazzy recording and stuck a finger between the slats to stare out the window. The red-feathered fronds of the Bottle Brush tree thrashed in the wind and scrubbed against the railing.

  A husky voice clicked on. “Ms. Mayhall? Emily? I’m Mitchell Wainwright. Thank you for contacting my office. We’ve had one helluva time finding you.”

  Emily’s thumb covered the mic as she sucked in a breath.

  “You are the daughter of Janis Alexis Mayhall Mobley, as stated in your bankruptcy petition?”

  An icy numbness stole through Emily’s limbs. She had buried her mother a long time ago, along with the accompanying memories. That she had used her name in the bankruptcy proceedings now appeared to be a bad idea. But who would be looking after all these years?

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Heart thudding, Emily responded, “I am, why?”

  “Alexis Mayhall married Hamilton Hester in Atlanta and bore him a daughter on June 21, 2012. I have the birth certificate in front of me. We believe you to be that daughter. Your father still lives in Druid Hills and would very much like to see you.”

  Like hell. “That’s impossible. My father is buried in a cemetery in California.”

  Unbidden, a photograph popped into Emily’s mind, the one she had found long ago in her mother’s box. The box. The shot portrayed happy people around a picnic table at what appeared to be a family gathering. Her mother had a red-headed baby on one hip. A smiling man had his arm around them.

  Her mother had snatched the picture from Emily, saying it was her best friend’s family, taken the day her friend died. It made her sad, her mother said, and she wouldn’t talk about it—ever. The photo had disappeared, but until Emily got older, she had pretended those people were the extended family she never had. One that actually liked and wanted her.

  “This may be hard for you to fathom, but your mother left with you when you were four. Your father has been searching ever since. Last month we caught a break when Alexis’s name popped up in an ongoing records search.”

  Emily’s heart beat faster. They had moved countless times over the years, taking new names and discarding old ones like yesterday’s underwear. Her mother had blamed it on debt collectors, and always gullible, Emily had believed her.

  “Your father wants you home. At his expense, of course. Please, say you’ll come. Mr. Hester’s heart is set on seeing you.”

  Not knowing what to think, much less to say, Emily stared at her trembling hands. Maybe this was the answer to her prayers. Or it could be a load of hog manure. A trap of some sort.

  “I am authorized to secure first-class passage on the next flight to Atlanta, should you agree. My office will make the arrangements.”

  Something stirred in Emily. A memory? Or the instinct to run? “Look, are you sure you have the right person?”

  “You have a small, paw-print-shaped birthmark on your left lower shin and a scar beneath your chin where you had stitches when you were two. You have a dent in the middle of your forehead where your brother Sean hit you with a, um, stick when you were three,” Mitchell Wainwright read.

  Emily’s thoughts raced. She had a brother. And that was her daddy in the picture. Her real father. And her family. She had known it, even at eight.

  Thrilled beyond her wildest dreams, Emily jumped up and circled the room. Her heart beat a staccato solo, a million and one questions crowding her brain.

  The voice went silky, almost smug, like the attorney had sensed her reaction from the other end of the phone. “Did I describe your identifying marks?”

  Swallowing around a new lump clogging her throat, Emily admitted against her better judgment, “Yes. You did.”

  “Your father has been trying to find you for twenty-six years.” Wainwright sounded relieved. “He wants you to come home. Let me send you a ticket.” And excited, too. Probably in line for a big bonus.

  Hot tears brimmed and trickled down her cheeks. Talk about a miracle! But she had to be sure. “Did you say you have a birth certificate?”

  “I do. Check your email. My assistant sent you a copy.”

  “You have my email address?”

  “We have current records, yes.”

  Her records. The bankruptcy. The foreclosure. The repossession. Her eviction, too? Probably her bank accounts, her medical history, and who knew—her pooping habits?

  Emily opened her inbox and clicked the email to see an official-looking Certificate of Live Birth with a Georgia seal. The mother’s name was Janis Alexis Mayhall Hester, the father’s Hamilton H. Hester. The baby’s birth date was June 21, 2012, 6:21 a.m. Her eyes were hazel, and she had tiny footprints. The baby’s name was Emily. Emily Bridget Hester. Well, hell.

  Opening another email, Emily stared at a formal portrait that had obviously been taken at an expensive studio. It was a couple with a baby—her mother and the man from the old photograph. The child he cradled had wide green eyes and a head full of fiery hair tipped with a halo of gold. That and the grin gave her away.

  “Omigod. That’s me.” Through the slats of the faux-wood blinds she stared at the noisy parrots in the Bottle Brush tree. Her brain barely registered the thick clouds overtaking Venice. They pressed against the windows like a wet shroud, obscuring the seascape and cutting Emily off from the rest of the world.

  Dread-tinged anticipation joined the sick feeling in her gut. Getting out of California was imperative now. She might as well go first-class.

  “How soon can you leave?” Wainwright asked. “And do you need a car to the airport?”

  “Yes, to the car,” Emily said. “And I can leave today. I just need an hour to get ready.” She looked around the room. She had tidied the apartment the night before and her few remaining clothes were packed.

  “Excellent. My assistant will email your itinerary when the arrangements are made. I will see you at the Atlanta airport.”

  Emily ended the call and went to the bathroom to stare at her reflection. She inspected her eyes and smile, and the red hair. Dyeing and straightening it had been a once-a-month ritual in the Mayhall house. One Emily had continued into adulthood, until recently at high-priced salons.

  She had chopped it short and let it go native after changing her name. She stared at the unruly curls and strained to recall the first time her mother had straightened and dyed it.

  A forgotten scene burst into consciousness and the weed of knowing bloomed in her gut. It was the night of her fourth birthday—the day Alexis had taken Emily from her father.

  Nauseated, she sank to the toilet and rested her brow on the porcelain sink. Memories played across the theater of her mind, a thousand and one incidents, coincidences and lies.

  Once upon a time she had known there was more and had ached for it with all her heart. The memory of that feeling was strong and visceral. But nowhere in the shadows of Emily’s mind was there a whisper of the man with laughing eyes.

  Possession

  S halane shivered. The salon was cold, but it wasn’t that. At forty-five years old, hormones had her cranking down thermostats wherever she went. She trusted her team to take care of such details; they were handpicked to follow orders.

  Her teeth chattered as ice coursed through veins more used to hot flashes. The cold penetrated Shalane’s core and the shaking started in earnest. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and doubled over, rocking back and forth to break the grip of the chill.

  This time, Shalane had been meditating before the show. Another wave of chills tore up her back and neck. Cold sweat gathered over lips gone numb. As from faraway, the orchestra played the opening strains of her introduction. The crowd responded. She must get up. She must go on.

  Shalane focused on the wispy threads of thought emanating from the crowd. She followed first one strand, then another, drawing energy from the emotion carried within each until the icy cocoon shattered and fell away.

  With no tim
e to spare, Shalane rose from the sofa and inspected her appearance. Her china-doll face appeared whiter than usual, her pupils too large. Platinum hair framed her cheeks and brushed her shoulders. Her cobalt robe hid a waist not as tiny as it had once been.

  The robe was fashioned from the finest black-market silk by a generous devotee. For Shalane, the Exalted. She Who Grants Boons. She fingered the soft, hand-stitched material gathered at her neck and resisted the urge to rip it from her throat. She’d better pull herself together.

  Shaking like a wet terrier, Shalane shoved the last tendrils of ice from her. The orchestra pounded out the crescendo. Thirty-eight thousand, five hundred, and twenty-three pairs of hands and feet clapped and stomped in unison, begging the Reverend Carpenter to appear.

  She opened the dressing room door and hurried toward the stage. The attendant who had interrupted the trance by pounding on her door now stood guard in the hallway.

  Shalane nodded and paused short of the curtain. She cupped her bejeweled hands and inhaled deeply from the vial of Dragon’s Blood oil she kept for such purposes.

  The applause swelled. The crowd shouted, “SHA-LANE, SHA-LANE!”

  Gathering power to her like a cloak, Shalane thought of her adopted grandson Ned and a smile spread across her face. She stepped through the curtains, only to slam into an invisible wall.

  Was that the roar of the crowd? Or had some outside force planted itself in front of her? She wavered, paralyzed, unable to move, see, or hear.

  Commanding the force to leave her in the name of the Lord of All, Shalane blinked, and the world reappeared. An arena full of people stood before her shouting “SHA-LANE!”

  Whatever she had meant to say was gone. Fear squeezed her throat shut. She invoked Archangel Michael and clawed at the otherworldly veil. She was God’s emissary, was she not?

  Out of Shalane’s throat came a joyous whoop, followed by a blood stirring, “Hallelujah!”

  Then she broke into her signature song and surrendered to rejoicing in the Lord. The audience joined in and the orchestra played along, kicking off Shalane Carpenter’s First Evangelical Tour of America.

  To her devotees, Reverend Carpenter appeared inspired. Unflappable. But fear burrowed inside the woman Shalane. Finding a spot behind her left eye, it drilled a hole and took up residence, leaving her orbit throbbing like an infected tooth. But worse was the panic rippling through her. What if she blacked out on stage? The consequences to the tour could be disastrous.

  **

  The human addressed an auditorium filled to capacity. Nergal’s instructions to the searchers had been simple and explicit. Find a spiritual leader with psychic powers and a penchant for perversion.

  Seeing Shalane in action confirmed Nergal’s suspicion: she was the perfect vehicle for disseminating the Draco’s plan to take AboveEarth.

  The woman bowed and he sent a tickler through the Fomorian linked to her mind. He chuckled when she raised a fist to the heavens. The fool human didn’t suspect a thing.

  While she postured onscreen, Nergal reveled in his good fortune. He would delay notifying the Draconian Council and keep an eye on this one. The previous targets had proved too fragile. Nergal had an instinct about this one.

  Stretching to change bandwidths, his claw halted mid-air. The woman’s angelic voice was reminiscent of his forebears. Nergal was far removed from those hallowed ancestors, but the song reverberated in a wistful corner of his memory nonetheless. He’d obviously been stuck in this hellhole too long.

  With renewed interest, he studied the screen. Something about the woman niggled at him. The melody rose and his vision went soft. Rubbing his head to clear the fog, Nergal studied the round face. Tilted eyes barely contained large brown pupils split by irises on the vertical plane.

  The scales on the back of Nergal’s neck crawled. He knew those eyes.

  Zooming in for a closer look, Nergal gulped. Shalane Carpenter was not just a human-reptile mix. She was a rare, earthbound Reylian. The Draco had known only one in all his years—his old consort, Camille.

  Nergal had met Camille during a long-ago mission to AboveEarth. Afterward, they used an idle volcano chute to rendezvous until a double-crossing firedrake blocked the passage. Much time had gone by, but Nergal never forgot his shameful attraction to the Reylian-humanoid, even after he heard Camille was dead.

  Nergal rose from his seat, horrified. Was Shalane Carpenter a descendant of his consort? If so, the sorceress-priestess could be Nergal’s indirect spawn.

  Gagging, he staggered to the loo.

  A New Start

  A swarthy man in a dated plaid suit and holding a sign met Emily and Ralph at the airport escalator. Now she stared out the window of the white limo and examined the miserable feeling swirling inside her.

  She had known her birth father wasn’t scheduled to pick her up. But Emily had not realized how much she’d hoped he would. And, not for nothing, but the attorney was supposed to be there. Even he left the job to someone else.

  The weather had turned nasty in Los Angeles, but the sun shone in Atlanta and the traffic moved along fairly well. Sniffing back tears, Emily focused on the tents and cardboard boxes dotting the green space along the route. Housing for the displaced and homeless, she guessed. Here and there, decaying buildings were surrounded by chain-link barriers or left to the mercy of scavengers.

  Just short of downtown, the interstate ended. Her driver looked in the rearview mirror and informed her a sinkhole had taken out all eight lanes of Northbound I-75. Emily cringed a little when they detoured through a crumbling neighborhood and moved at a crawl on the congested street.

  She opened a game on her iBlast, hoping to take her mind off the depressing surroundings. But when she heard loud voices, she looked up. The light was green, but the limo was swarmed by a sea of bodies yelling in protest.

  “What’s happening?” she asked the chauffeur.

  “Nothing, ma’am. Just street people looking for a handout.”

  Emily opened her wallet and extracted several one-dollar bills. The limo inched into the intersection. The rabble pounded on the glass. Emily tried to roll the window down, but the driver flipped a switch and it went back up.

  “No’m. That’s not a good idea.” He frowned in the mirror.

  “Unlock my window, please. I’d like to give them what I can.”

  The driver shook his head. “No’m. It’s not ever enough, no matter how much you give ‘em. And I promised Mr. Wainwright I’d bring you home safe.” The limo picked up speed and the crowd parted to besiege the car behind them.

  Emily stuffed the money back in her purse. The signs of deterioration were less obvious once they got past the horde. Fifty-five minutes after leaving the airport, the limo arrived at Wainwright’s office.

  The quaint three-story edifice faced a bustling street, across from the high walls of Emory University. Wainwright’s assistant showed them to his suite. The driver settled Ralph’s carrier and her luggage. With a gracious nod, he dismissed the tip Emily tried to give him and backed through the door smiling.

  The assistant returned with a cup of steaming water and an assortment of teas, along with lemon, honey, and creamer. A few minutes later, she came back to announce the attorney was stuck in traffic.

  Emily settled in one of the not-so-comfortable wing chairs and sipped Earl Grey while studying the décor. Classic style downplayed rich furnishings, as did eccentric touches here and there.

  Most intriguing was a painting in which a full-canopied oak towered above a dark forest. A diminutive deer danced in the foreground before a cave that drew the eye to enter. Emily shuddered. Caves were not her thing. Nor was the dark.

  She thought of her little apartment overlooking the beach. If she focused hard, she could almost imagine the cars rushing by on the street below were waves crashing over the Venice breakwater.

  Her stomach growled and she checked the time. Where was the attorney?

  She shivered and held her lapels toget
her. She’d not been prepared for this kind of cold. Her coat was too thin and her shoes were open-toed, leaving her pink-tipped toes exposed.

  A built-in bookcase loomed behind the mahogany desk. Emily circled to examine its leather-bound books and stone carvings. She reached for the closest stone and turned it over in her hand.

  Flat and carved with a stick figure, she recognized it as a rune. What kind of lawyer played with runes? She traced the vertical line and top right-ray. Emily’s rune-reading skills were on par with her divining abilities—basically nonexistent.

  But she did know a thing or two about stones. Some of the runes were moonstone, others labradorite. Both were worth a pretty penny on the open market. Like gems, the price of semi-precious stones outstripped many currencies.

  She shuffled through the runes and noticed something else. The lines were similar to the hand-written symbols in the manuscript in her mother’s box. Emily weighed one in each hand. Could there be a connection? She placed one over each closed eyelid and let the cool, polished surfaces calm her rising irritation.

  Her stomach growled louder and her composure crumbled. Where was Mitchell Fucking Wainwright? She put the stones on the shelf and flounced to the outer office. She needed to eat thirty minutes ago.

  “Excuse me, miss.” Emily hated the high-pitched tenor of her voice. The woman looked up and beamed. “Will Mr. Wainwright be here soon? I’m sure Ralph’s ready to get out of his cage, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “He just texted that he’s five minutes away. I have nuts if that would help?” The smiled widened.

  “No.” Emily turned away, then changed her mind. “Well, actually, yes.” The attorney might be close, but she had reached the weepy stage. If she didn’t eat soon, the mean would follow.

  The secretary held up a canister of nuts. “Tamari almonds?”

  Emily thanked the woman and returned to the inner office, where she munched and wandered. She noted framed degrees and business licenses, awards, and even a medal from the USAF. Mitchell Wainwright had been in the service. Huh.