Awakenings (Elemental Series - Book 1) (24 page)

I could still sense the Sentry all around us. We were completely surrounded by them. They, of course, were out of sight.

We passed Eve’s house and my heart rate accelerated slightly.

“He’s meeting us up here,” Aunt Grace said, motioning towards town.

I continued moving towards St. Nemele. Once we approached the town center, I noticed a more electric taste to the air. I didn’t say anything to anyone else. I was unsure if I was the only one experiencing it. I wasn’t even sure if it was imaginary or real. Jen and Hudson were deep in conversation with one another and it seemed rather intense. Aunt Grace and I were walking in a comfortable silence, still arm in arm. We ended up in the center of town. Instead of going towards the high school, we headed towards the park.

“Where are we going? I thought we were heading to school?” I asked.

“We’re going to meet Vincent in the park and then walk to school,” Hudson said, not turning or looking at me. The way he’d said it made my stomach hit my knees.
What was going on? I thought we were meeting him at school.

Before I had a chance to question anything else we were at the entrance to the maze. A memory from my dream the previous night hit me. I took a seat on one of the benches at the entrance.

“Do you want to go see Eve now? Jen and I will wait here with Jacey for Vincent,” Hudson asked Aunt Grace. He still wasn’t making eye contact with anyone.
On cue
…
there went my stomach.
Reflexively, I pulled my arms around my stomach in a poor attempt to contain my nerves.

Aunt Grace sat beside me. “Enjoy today. I know you’ll go beyond what all expect.” She smiled her Mom smile at me. She kissed my forehead and paused. Instead of getting up to leave, she stared at me with a troubled look in her eyes.

“Jacey, take everything in stride today. You are unique to all of us Nemelites. You are an anomaly to our species. A variation none have seen before. It might be difficult for you to understand now, but remember many of us have never been faced with one as gifted as you and it sometimes makes people take extra precautions to make sure
everyone
is safe.”

“Why does that make me nervous?” I asked.

“I don’t want to make you nervous. I only want to impress upon you how much you mean to all of us.” She stood to leave.

“Good luck today, Jen and Hudson. I’ll see you both later.” She squeezed my upper arm as she got up. Without another word, she turned and headed off to see Eve.

“That was a little on the weird, cryptic side, don’t you think? Hudson, what’s going on?” I asked, looking at him and Jen as they stood within the entrance to the maze.

“Today’s the day, Jace. I don’t know how or what else to tell you. I can only promise you Jen and I are going to be here with you through everything,” he replied.

“Uh –huh,” Jen uttered in agreement.

I thought, Jen of all people would have more to say than ‘Uh-huh.’ Hudson and I looked at her. She was staring up at the sky. My heart plummeted. I immediately assumed the Seekers had returned. Where was the Sentry? Hudson grabbed my hand.

“Trust me.” He pulled me up from the bench, and in the next instant, we were running through the maze. I let him lead the way. I dared not look up once. Not because I was afraid of what I might see. I was basically afraid of what I might
do,
on purpose or not.

I caught a few glimpses of the inner walls of the maze as we ran past them. They were the ones in my dream last night. We rounded another corner and started to slow. I was still grasping Hudson’s hand when we came to a complete stop. I dared not look up.

“Jacey, it’s all right,” Jen said, putting her hand under my chin to bring my eyes up to meet hers.

I cautiously looked up and noticed we were in a space like the one I was in last night. All of the designs were in the same place and each one of them was glowing like they had in my dream.

“What the—” before I finished, I was eye to eye…
at least I think I was…
with Jen. My breath caught and I took a step back. She,
it
was Jen, but not. She was floating and fluid. It was like looking into a rainbow of reds, blues, and purples all mixing together in the shape of Jen.

“It’s me, Jacey. I’m in my natural form so I can enter Nemele. This is one of our Bulwarks, better known as an entrance to our dimension.”

“Y-yeah, I-I know. Been here before,” I stuttered.

“What? When?” Jen asked.

Before I could answer, Hudson squeezed my arm. I’d almost completely forgotten he was here and holding my hand. He was still Hudson.

“I didn’t want to change until I knew you’d be okay,” he said.

“Of course I’m okay. Where are the Seekers we’re running from? Where’s the Sentry?” I asked.

Hudson looked at me, confused. He was about to answer me when a cool breeze blew in from the top of the maze.

“There are no Seekers here, Jacey,” A crisp, now familiar voice said from above me. The reaction in my stomach was enough for me to know exactly who the voice belonged to. I knew then my hope for today to bring magic into my life had been answered. Not only the real hocus pocus kind, but also the unknown belly butterflies kind. Now, I only hoped I was ready for it, ready for it all.

Chapter Sixteen

Introductions
Revelations
High School -
Believe it or not, the same
No matter what Dimension you’re in…

I
looked up to the source of the voice and saw what Jen and Hudson had been running to. It was the cloud form from my dream. I felt a squeeze on my arm again and looked at Hudson. Where I expected to see my brother was a form of swirling earth tones, reds, blacks, browns and golds.

“Hudson?” I asked, reaching out to touch him. When I did, I felt the textures of grass, rock, and earth.

“Trust us,” he said and then floated over beside Jen.

I looked back into the sky in time to see the cloud form float in for a landing right in front of me—
d
é
jà-vu or what?
I literally pinched myself to make sure I was awake. Yeow! Yep, totally awake.

“Hello again,” he said, floating to a halt directly in front of me.

“Hi-ya,” I said back, while self-consciously putting a twist of hair behind my ear. I couldn’t believe ‘hi-ya’ was all I could come up with. Great first impression. What the heck was wrong with me? I looked away from his crystal blue eyes. Wait—the ground wasn’t solid like it had been in my dream—it was moving and fluid. I lifted one foot, then the other, making sure the ground was real. It was.

I looked back up, expecting to see Vincent’s cloud form again. As I did, a hand reached out and placed my wayward twist of hair behind my ear. The hand was a real hand, no cloud, no swirly things, just a real, beautifully tanned hand. I tore my gaze from it. My eyes travelled up an arm, to a chest, and finally to the eyes I would know anywhere, be it in this dimension or any other.

“Let’s try this again,” he said. He extended his hand toward me. “Hi, Jacey. I’m Vincent.”

My ears were literally about to explode off the sides of my head. I was starting to feel a little light-headed.
That
could be from forgetting to breathe
, I thought. With that little reminder, I took in a breath and the person standing in front of me.

He was easily six foot two and stunning. He had collar-length sandy brown hair which wasn’t swept back or spiked up, but perfectly tousled. I focused in on his face. He was a cross between the clean cut, good looking jock and the male lead one imagined while reading a great romance novel—a hint of tall, dark, and handsomely intriguing. I couldn’t believe all of that could be wrapped up into one person, but there he stood, right in front of me. After eyeing him, I realized he was still holding his hand out for me to shake.

“Hi,” I said, this time taking his hand into mine. With the touch of his hand, a million butterflies escaped from my stomach and found their way throughout my entire body. Our eyes connected as our hands disconnected.

“Are you ready for today?” he asked.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for today.”

“Now, this may be a little uncomfortable for you—” before he could finish, Hudson flew in beside me.

“What do you mean uncomfortable?” he demanded as he swirled more fervently than I expected, especially within the small confines of the center chamber.

“Jacey, normally we change into our natural forms to enter a Bulwark. This has been done for all who have entered for the last couple of millennia. There’ve been no non-natural entries that I know of. I can’t tell you what will happen when we try to bring you through,” Vincent stated.

“Then we don’t bring her through. We wait and find another way,” Hudson said, taking a stance directly between Vincent and me.

“We need to try this now, and you know why. I would no more try something I thought would hurt her than you would, and you know that. We have the Sentry outside and I’m going to enter with her, like this,” Vincent said, raising his arms into the air, indicating his human form. Hudson slowed his movements and turned to look directly at me.

If I could have made out his face, I’d have guessed he was surprised at Vincent’s revelation that he was going through like me, as flesh and bone. I knew he’d conceded when he floated away from Vincent and me.

“I’m going to be right here with you the whole time, Jacey,” Hudson said as he floated back to Jen.

“I need you two to go through first to show Jacey what it looks like. I’m hoping she can visualize it and then do it,” Vincent said.

Hudson’s form hovered, not moving an inch from his spot beside Jen.

“Hudson, I won’t let anything happen to her, I promise,” Vincent stated.

“Trust him, trust us,” Jen said to Hudson.

Hudson turned and looked at me. “See you on the other side,” he said as he Jen vanished into the floor mural.

“Are you ready?” Vincent asked, putting his hand out for me to take.

“What do I do? What am I suppose to
visualize
?” Before Vincent could say anything, I felt as though I was going to hyperventilate, and then everything froze. I mean everything. The symbols, Vincent,
everything
, and then I heard it. A familiar voice, it came from the far right of the chamber. Mom—Ria. I looked at the symbol that was her namesake and heard her say, v
isualize you.

At first, there were regular looking branches with Ria’s symbol carved into them, but as I stared at it, the symbol changed into mirrors. I saw a hundred reflections of myself staring back.
Visualize me.

“Thank you, Mom,” I whispered and then everything started to move again. I reached out and grabbed Vincent’s hand. The instant
warmth and the effect of touching him almost made me lose my train of thought. I peeled my gaze away from Ria and looked directly into Vincent’s eyes. My breathing steadied and my hormones relaxed a bit.

“Are
you
ready, Vincent?” I asked. He looked at me with eyes full of wonder.

Next, I shocked him more than I did myself. I began to glow like I had in the attic at my Aunt’s. I stepped into the middle of the chamber and pulled him along. We hovered there for an instant, and then in a flash, we were falling.

I kept my eyes glued to his. It all happened within a second’s time. It was like falling through a door. The brilliant lights within the Bulwark were just like the ones I’d been seeing every night before I entered my dream state, only these lights seemed to be alive and have texture. As we passed through them, each color had a distinct feel or smell, and when it smeared into any of the other colors, their combined aromas and kaleidoscope effects were absolutely amazing.

I had no idea where we would be once we were on the other side, but I wasn’t concerned. I was with him. I was pleasantly surprised and poignantly disappointed all at the same time as the lights started to fade. I knew I’d be getting my first real look at
the other side
, but it also meant I had to look away from Vincent.

I decided then how I was going to deal with this Vincent thing. I didn’t want to come across like some needy, infatuated little girl. I wanted to come across like a woman who was fun, adventurous, and most of all, independent—the total opposite of the clingy, look-at-me girls who he’d probably been bombarded with since, well, probably since he could walk. Once the light around us dulled, I pried myself away and put on my I’m cool with this face.

I shaded my eyes as everything came into focus and found we were standing in the center chamber of the maze again.

“Crap. It didn’t work,” I said.

“Oh, I think it did,” he replied.

He pulled me into him and against the chamber wall. Suddenly, two more beings appeared through the floor.

“Wow,” was all I could come up with, not really knowing if my reaction was because of the two who had entered Nemele, or from the physical reaction my body had from our close contact—a warm, fiery feeling burning in the arm he was holding, which was migrating through the rest of my body. I pulled away from him, reluctantly, knowing I needed to keep my wits about me—especially now. I turned my attention back to the two forms that had just appeared out of thin air.

The second they stepped out of the center chamber and headed towards the interior of the maze, they turned into regular looking teenagers.

“We shouldn’t stand here and stare. We need to tell Hudson and Jen we’re through. I’m certain they’ve probably worn a new pathway at the entrance while waiting for us,” Vincent said, smiling down at me.

“That was amazing. When you come through in your natural form, is it like that?” I asked, as we turned toward the exit.

“I have to say that was a first for me,” Vincent confessed.

“What do you mean, a first?”

“I mean a real first. I’ve always come through as my pure essence since I’ve had my Awakening. I’ve never gone through like this,” he said, lifting both of his arms up, indicating the body he was in now.