Read Awakened (A Fairy Tales Novel) Online
Authors: Melanie Walker
"I only meant that perhaps it would be easier. I meant nothing else by it, I swear." And with those words she ripped her own heart out.
Fangs eyes locked on Bri and she memorized the beauty in the black depths, letting the memory of his face sear itself to her memory. He showed emotion and he would never again grace her doorway. He stood there for a few long drawn out moments and she felt an immense fear that he may strike her dead now but as he let her wrists go she felt the connection between them get severed, he shut her out that quickly and she became nothing to him. He turned and walked away from Bri, the only sound she heard was his fist slamming down on the granite counter shattering it in a thousand tiny pieces before walking out her door.
She slid to her knees and cried. He was gone, he was finally gone.
*
Monday morning came at the same time it did every week but
Bri found it damn near impossible to drag her sorry self from bed, but life went on and as old as she was you would think she would have remembered that. She got to Ashess' house a little passed nine am and growled when she needled Bri for being over an hour late.
"Where have you been?" She demanded as Bri walked into her kitchen and took a mug from one of her cupboards and filled a cup of coffee. Bri’s hair was down and the giant Dolce sunglasses were still on. Bri assumed that Ash was either being polite by not saying anything or she hadn’t noticed the new look of being glamour free. She figured it was the latter because Ash was never one for the former.
Bri had decided earlier that morning that her fear and lies cost her Fangs. Even if he didn’t know the real her, it was still the reason she had to let him go. That and if she had a fighting chance in hell at getting the knife she needed all the help she could get and that meant using her powers for fighting not a perfect appearance.
"I’ve tried calling you where is your cell?" Belle asked coming down the spiral staircase that sat off to the side of the dining room and kitchen area. "I think we have the buyer of the knife."
That had Bri ripping the glasses from her eyes and almost jumping in joy. "What?" She shrieked.
Belle and Ash both paused when they saw Bri’s scars on full display but she shook her head no. Knife talk was more important than her new urge to go all
natural
. "Later about the scars, for now tell me what we have."
They all walked to the table as Belle pulled up the Bridgette Monroe Auction house on her laptop. "It says here that a man by the name of Carl Mortimer III purchased the Blessed Knife in 1818. It was passed down from generation to generation until an ugly divorce caused a stir. Avalon Whelch, the wife of Charles Mortimer found old Charles in bed with another woman and filed for divorce in 1963, each battling in court for the knife upon the finality of the divorce when Avalon was awarded the piece. When Avalon moved to the US in 1970 with their two children she brought the knife with her." Belle was positively glowing as she turned the laptop towards me. "Guess who got the knife upon Avalon’s death in 1992?"
She looked at the photo of Clarke Vincent Whelch, business tycoon for Fortune 500 companies of Vincent, Page and Abbot. The article went on to describe why Vincent chose to use his middle name for the company not wanting to have any relation to his estranged father. "Oh my God Belle, this is huge." She cried and hugged her. "Have we found Whelch?" She asked mentally tallying how soon she could be on a flight to London.
"That’s where we get a little confused. It says here that Whelch placed the knife for auction in 1963 claiming there was no value if it was without the proof of the artist. He had no idea obviously that you are in fact real and figured the piece was a knock-off of the original. When Whelch refused offers from the underground world, AKA
our kind
, he sold it to the highest bidder." Belle said grimly and Bri deflated knowing damn well there was more.
"And....."
"And, the last known owner of the knife was Mr. Timothy Hall, a single male with no children who died in 2008."
"Did he leave a will?" She asked knowing better.
"No. He lost his fortune when his fabrication business went under. It says on his website and a few other articles I was able to find, that he was a welder by trade, specialized in weapons and had planned on making a fake in the design of the knife. It was a smart plan for sure, to capitol on Disney’s portrayal of your life with the knife being played on like the sword and shield. However, in doing so also made a few recreations of the Blessed Knife."
The
fuck
Bri said was a resounding echo to the shit storm they were about to start. "Let me guess, in his final days before the company went ass over tea kettle Hall tried selling the fakes for well above their worth."
"That is correct. Ash tell the lady what her prize is." Belle said but there was no humor in the joke.
"We have a list." Ashess said and took the few sheets of paper from off the nearby counter. "These are the names and addresses to the people we found out he sold the fakes to."
"But the odd thing is, we have four names and addresses from his files for bills of sale but it says here that he only made three of the replicas."
"Son of a bitch!" She gasped. "He sold them all didn’t he, even the original?"
Belle nodded. "And for a lot of skrill Bri, a ton of money. Not a shot in hell at finding them and buying them back."
"What’s a lot?" Bri asked knowing full well the number would make her sick. She had money but with the market being down for so long she hadn’t been investing and was trying to live cheap. All she had was her savings and though it was a small fortune and would only get bigger, unlike all the rich humans she didn’t have death to look forward to when the money ran out. Her fortune had to last forever.
"Quarter of a mill each, as individuals."
Well…fuck!
"Two million dollars are you kidding me? How the hell did this guy go bankrupt?" She asked completely shocked that he was able to sale fakes for such an insane price.
"His business was worth more and he didn’t have enough when the bill came. But the even stranger thing is Vincent had a client whose company bought and sold other companies piece by piece and this guy sold Hall fabrication and steel for over ten million. Sound a little fishy to you?"
It did, oh hell yes it did. "Money laundering?" She asked though it didn’t fit the profile.
"I think it goes much deeper and darker than that." Belle said and pointed to the bill of sales in her hand. "Read those names Ar."
As Bri read the names her stomach dropped. "He sold them to demons? I can’t believe I'm seeing this. Every name on the list is a name from my father’s pantheon. Demons are marked and sometimes sold by the mark of their owner. Ezek's symbol has been the same for over a thousand years. There isn’t a demon alive that bares the mark of the Arch Demon before him." Bri stopped talking because the time it took to process what she had just said. It was enough to make her pass out.
"They know then?" Ashess asked, still a little skeptical and who could blame her, Bri was skeptical.
"There is no way that this info is correct." Bri said insistently. "There is no way that Ezek knew about this, let alone we can’t tell his men about the knife knowing that it can cancel any contract and kill any demon."
"You need to call him Bri, he needs to know about this if he already doesn’t." Belle said, choosing her words wisely.
"He doesn’t know about this Belle there is no way. The knife was created to guarantee my freedom. It can kill even him." Bri said defending the only man who had ever done right by her, even if it was a little too late.
"There is a chance that even the demons don’t know what they have Bri." Ashess said defending their race and she was so on board with that. Bri loved Belle but she had an anger, a hate inside of her that made it damn near impossible to love her. With Belle you crossed your fingers and hoped she didn’t betray you.
"Either way you need to go see Ezek, he needs to know that one of his demons has the original knife and that means Bri, that that demon will be looking for the original."
"If the demon knows what they are for." Ashess defended, her tone getting more agitated by the second.
"Irrelevant at this point don’t you think considering the contract is tucked away just beneath our feet." Belle snipped back.
"Are you implying that I would sale Bri out to free myself of my own contract?" Ashess demanded as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared down Belle.
"Whoa Ash." Bri said shocked that the conversation, though utterly terrifying had escalated this far off the grid.
"No I'm saying that you guys both need back up now from Ezek because whoever has the original knife will be coming for the contract." Belle said in a calmer tone hoping that Ash was convinced.
"Look Ash and I both will go to Ezek at nightfall and tell him what we found out and see what he thinks we should do." Ash seemed to calm at that so Bri took a deep breath. "Until then we need to start checking flights for these addresses and what the hell kind of demons we will be dealing with."
"How do you know they are from your Dad's Pantheon?" Belle asked while looking at the bill of sales seeing nothing strange.
"Ezek marks us physically as you know with his symbol of the moon and star and that draws us together, it’s how we always know when a demon of our pantheon is around. Seeing those names was all I needed."
"You just know." Ash agreed.
Belle went back to her computer and started typing. "So what do you prefer ladies? Coach or first class?"
"First Class." They said at the same time and sat down to start planning the search.
*
"Ah, Princess I just finished talking to a friend of yours in the human world." Her father Ezek said as we walked into his chamber the instant the sun sank in the western sky. His chamber looked like any office in any building and she remembered that when she met him she had feared coming here because she expected to see prisoners chained to the wall and fire burning all around her but Hell in general wasn’t a bad place. There was a special place in Hell for the truly vile, the truly evil and it was a chamber Bri had never seen or wished to. She took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of his dark cherry wood desk, glancing at the photos he had on the wall. There were a few of Bri and Ash and a few with Bri and all the girls. A bunch of just her and the one on his desk was of he and Bri just last Christmas. He replaced that photo every year with a new one of them together.