Awake in Shadows Read online

  Awake in Shadows

  The Forsaken Chronicles: Two

  Eve Langlais

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Copyright © 2018, Eve Langlais

  Cover Art by Yocla Designs © November 2017

  Produced in Canada

  Published by Eve Langlais

  http://www.EveLanglais.com

  E-ISBN-13: 978 177 384 0581

  PRINT ISBN: 978 177 384 0598

  All Rights Reserved

  Awake in Shadows is a work of fiction and the characters, events and dialogue found within the story are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, either living or deceased, is completely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to digital copying, file sharing, audio recording, email and printing without permission in writing from the author.

  Introduction

  Rebuilding a life while still missing an identity isn’t easy, but that’s what Adara’s determined to do. It’s why she’s been ignoring the overtures from an elegant vampire and the stalking by an overprotective werewolf.

  However, when a mysterious presence begins to haunt her memories—and dreams—wakening a primal terror, she has no choice but to ask for help.

  The problem is, unraveling her secret past seems to be triggering demon attacks. Someone doesn’t want her finding answers.

  Adara might be forsaken, but she certainly hasn’t been forgotten. For he is coming after her...

  * * *

  Warning: This story is a dark urban fantasy rife with violence and mature subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

  Prologue

  Fingers drummed restlessly on the armrest of the throne. A big, lonely seat with a hollow title. All it caused was misery. His misery, which he, in turn, passed on because everyone knew it loved company.

  Dealing with people was his curse. Especially since he hated people. Hated everyone.

  Yet, every morning, he was expected to hear reports. To pass judgement on petty quarrels. To promise the lives of his soldiers to bolster worthless causes. To show interest in the spies who watched the surface world and divulged matters of import.

  Important to others, perhaps. He really didn’t care anymore. But apathy didn’t mean he could ignore his duties.

  Almost done for the day, he could have sighed when he saw the spy striding towards him, looking out of place in his bright red slacks, patterned shirt, and wavy, blond hair.

  The incubus had his own sense of style. But at least he wasn’t as annoying as some of the other sycophants currying favor.

  The spy knelt, head dipped deferentially. “My lord.” A title once reserved only for his father, now shared with his heir.

  This particular male showing deference had been assigned to watch one of the Cabal leaders. His role? To observe and report on interesting developments. As if the plane of existence that called itself Earth were of consequence. Covered in countless humans who multiplied worse than low-born demons, it was a place where magic was weak, and science produced weapons capable of hurting even someone as great as him from afar.

  Who but humans would have invented guns and nuclear weapons? Battles were meant to be fought face-to-face. Hands to claw. If you weren’t bathed in the blood of thy enemy, then could you truly claim you’d won?

  “You have news of interest?” he asked, noting the excitement on the spy’s face.

  “I do, my lord. A necromancer was acting in our city.”

  “Stealing the bodies of the dead.” His lip curled, the disdain very real. Only the weak played with inert corpses. A true puppet master commanded the living.

  “No longer, my lord. The sorcerer was dispatched. But there is other news. A strange female has caught my master’s eye.”

  “And this concerns me because?” Vampires were always chasing after skirts. Hungry and horny. They were all about feeding their appetites.

  “There is something different about her. She’s not human.”

  “Still don’t see why I should care.” He’d lost that ability long ago.

  “I thought you might be interested because we don’t know what she is.”

  That caught his attention, and he pinned the spy with his sharp gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she’s unlike anything we’ve ever encountered before. Not human. Not Lycan. Not elf or fairy.”

  “So, a rare being has emerged.” Mildly interesting.

  “Whatever she is, people are going nuts over her. Her scent is…” His spy kissed his fingers as if tasting something delicious. “When her violet eyes pin you—”

  He froze. “What color are her eyes?”

  “Violet. And bright, too. You look into them, and it’s like you’re ready to lay yourself down at her feet and do whatever she asks.”

  It couldn’t be.

  She was gone. Vanished without a trace or a goodbye. The link between them dead. All inquiries into her whereabouts met with blank looks.

  “What is her name?” he asked.

  “Adara.”

  It meant nothing. However, for the first time in a while, interest stirred within him, and he stood from his throne.

  “I want to meet her.” If it was the one who betrayed him…he’d show her what a foolish mistake that was.

  “Meet her, my lord? You want me to bring her here?” The spy couldn’t hide his shock.

  “Do you need me to speak slower?” he mocked.

  “No, my lord. Only…it might compromise my cover should I act.”

  “Then don’t act. Arrange. Surely a man of your capabilities can orchestrate a little kidnapping.”

  A slow smile bloomed on the spy’s lips. “That I can do. And do we care if she gets injured in the process?”

  “No.” He’d lost the ability to give a damn the day he’d been so grossly betrayed.

  If it was her, and she’d not died as he thought, she’d soon wish she had.

  Chapter One

  The demons watched her from the shadows of the trees. They waited for the shining one. Adara almost grinned in glee.

  Let them attack. She did not fear them, and she refused to cower. She feigned nonchalance as she kept walking, en route to her rendezvous.

  Rendezvous with whom?

  The answer proved elusive, and she didn’t force it. She had other things to deal with, such as demons.

  Acting casual, she tried to count how many were in the woods. Definitely more than a handful. At least it would prove to be a sporting battle, one to get her blood pumping. Her adrenaline fierce.

  What of the danger? She feared nothing in the borderlands. Nothing except discovery. And even that ha
d its own thrill.

  But the greatest delight of all came from him.

  She almost skipped in her eagerness.

  Almost.

  A warrior did not skip.

  But she did pay attention, and she fought not to stumble as she noticed more movement amongst the trees. Big shapes. The kind that usually couldn’t manifest during the day.

  Night was a demons’ friend, especially the higher-level ones, who couldn’t stand any of the sun’s rays.

  The taller shapes moved slowly and could almost be mistaken for tree trunks in these shadowy parts.

  Having studied her geography and her history, she knew better. The borderlands were supposed to be devoid of life, part of the ancient truces.

  What truces? The concept slipped out of her grasp, and she focused on the movement all around her.

  I wonder why we’re not meeting in the field. It provided a more comfortable bower. The note changing their rendezvous location had cited taking extra precautions.

  Meeting with whom?

  She still couldn’t see a face.

  The demons crept closer, enough that she could see the saliva glistening on their incisors. Poisonous if it got in the blood. Not deadly, but very uncomfortable. Part of her education included experiencing it in increasing doses. She still didn’t know why she needed to build a tolerance.

  At least her garments would protect her from some of it, the light material a deceiving white that acted as armor. Her bigger issue, much more than cramps from demon saliva, was how she’d explain the blood staining her apparel when she eventually returned home. She wasn’t supposed to be in these woods.

  The forest is prohibited for a reason.

  They were the borderland before the neutral zone itself. A daunting barrier to keep even the most intrepid from attempting to cross to a place where chaos met everything else.

  A perfect spot for a forbidden meeting.

  Had he sent these demons to escort her to him?

  Why not meet her himself?

  She emerged into a clearing, a tiny dell where the sunlight penetrated, and soft moss covered the ground. A hidden grove made for trysts.

  Yet she was the only one here.

  Her and the demons.

  The glow of their eyes ringed her. Despite the numbers, she still didn’t fear. She kept her chin high in challenge.

  A demon stepped from the shadows, a nightmarish creature with leathery, gray skin, burning eyes, and a hulking body. The loincloth at his hips did little to hide his sex. His body was twisted and grotesque, a true monster with horns coiled on his forehead, the yellow of them matching that of his teeth. His eyes blazed red, true wickedness in their depths.

  Adara didn’t quiver. I fear no evil. I am the light against it.

  “Step aside, foul creature from Hell,” she ordered.

  The ugly demon laughed instead. “If it isn’t the favored one. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  We? Which obviously referred to those scrabbling at the edges of the clearing, fearing the sun. How did they know I’d be here? Have I been betrayed?

  Surely, he wouldn’t.

  A hint of cold air brushed her cheek, and the warm sunlight began to fade as dark clouds crowded overhead. Magic was afoot. The first tendril of fear licked at her bravery.

  She stood taller against it.

  The demons crept closer, and the leader grinned. It was not a friendly smile, and she couldn’t help but swallow to ease the tightening of her throat.

  She refused to show trepidation in the face of pure evil. Rather, she stood against it. “Foul creature, you don’t belong here. Return to Hell.”

  A noise emerged from the ugly demon, and it took a moment for her to realize the fiend laughed, the chortle discordant to the ears. “Don’t you know better than to travel unescorted?”

  “I can protect myself.”

  “Against one. What if you were to face a legion?” The black lips split into a grotesque leer. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Adara’s lips quirked. “Thou and thy brothers from Hell are no match for one who has been blessed.” I am the light against the dark.

  The challenging words set Hell loose, literally. Demons, so many of them, poured from the forest, and a few even dropped from the sky. Before the first of them reached her, she drew forth a blade, a shiny length of steel that sang as it left her scabbard.

  No time to say a prayer, other than one promise.

  I will win. There was no other option.

  When the demons rushed her, she met them with a battle cry of her own and immediately went on the offensive. The blade of her sword sliced through everything she struck, its edge always sharp. Making it even deadlier was the fact that her aim always swung true.

  Missing wasn’t an option. A girl who missed in practice didn’t get fed. The early years had been lean ones.

  But she was past those times when she feared a swish of air as her sword whistled harmlessly past. She didn’t miss. She sliced through the demon ranks, filled with a primal joy.

  This was what she’d been trained for.

  A lunging imp, jaws open wide to show layers of pointed teeth, had her angling her blade upwards. The head went flying, and the body spurted brackish ichor as it hit the ground. A weight on her back saw her reaching to grab and fling. But for every demon she conquered, another took its place.

  And another…

  The battle lust she’d started with turned into grim determination. She did her best to slice a deadly swath through the horde, hoping to hear the battle cry of another join hers.

  Where is he? He’d chosen the time and place of their meeting. Why did he not appear to give her aid?

  Or… She couldn’t allow that train of thought, not when she was engaged in a battle that might see her dead.

  Had the numbers been less, her skill might have prevailed. For all that she killed with grace and maimed with dexterity, she was but one fighting many.

  Black demon ichor slicked the ground. Her own blood, from dozens of cuts, also added to the slipperiness.

  She gasped and grimaced when she was suddenly overrun. There were just too many.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  The borderlands were guarded. One person, a few demons might slip by, but an army?

  Was this war?

  Or something else?

  Did you betray me? Had it finally happened? The thing she’d feared the most.

  Overwhelmed, she dropped to her knees, and still, they attacked with their grasping claws. She tried to look around, to see who commanded the monsters. Did he even now watch from the shadows, basking in the betrayal? The blood in her eyes blinded her. Her own moans and grunts deafened.

  The demons beat her. Broke—

  Enough. Adara stopped what was to come. She’d not willingly entered this nightmare just to remember the haunting pain of what came after the battle.

  This was research, and Adara had allowed herself to relive this segment of her past only because she was looking for something.

  She rewound the scene, retraced her steps back to where the dream started. A gentler moment in a field of waving stalks.

  It was a gorgeous place, a vast expanse of swaying grass. The brilliant green fronds long, the tips of them heavy with seed. Despite it being a dream, she could smell the greenery. The fragrant aroma of life, and the sweeter one of flowers.

  There weren’t many blooms, only a few bright spots interspersed in the grass, shaped like poppies but comprised of every imaginable color. Her favorite being the vivid purple.

  Adara reached down and plucked one free. She brought it to her nose, sniffed, let the sweetness of it fill her senses.

  It never failed to amaze her how real it felt.

  Probably because she’d done it many times before that fateful day. Not that she actually remembered. The only things she could recall, began here. In this dream field with a hand she didn’t recognize.

  How strange it was to look at th
e appendage, to know that she controlled it, yet it was strange to Adara. It looked nothing like her current hand.

  In the dream, her fingers bore callused pads, and despite only holding a fragile stem, she knew them capable of strength. Because, in this dream, she was a fighter.

  Was...

  Real Adara, the one who worked a minimum wage job and lived in a church basement with a poor excuse for a bathroom, didn’t battle demons—unless those in her head counted.

  Her new psychiatrist, a lovely black woman with kind eyes behind red, plastic-rimmed glasses, seemed convinced that Adara’a memories were fantasy.

  “Now, Adara, you do know demons aren’t real.”

  That was what the doctor had said because Adara hid nothing. She confessed it all, including the fact that she remembered being beaten and raped by demons. Not something she enjoyed talking about. She preferred to focus on less painful and more interesting things such as how she used to be six inches taller and living in a different world. One with more than one moon.

  Adara had even told the doctor about the vampire and werewolf she’d met here on Earth. They’d come to her rescue when a necromancer kidnapped her and fed her to his army of the dead.

  Which, oddly enough, didn’t cause nightmares.

  Dr. Bevin kindly listened to Adara’s life story—which was a short one given the gaps in her memories—and then recommended some pills. Pretty little blue ones that started with a Z. Adara took them. It didn’t change the things she recalled or the monsters she still saw.

  Green eyes, set above a fuzzy muzzle, still watched her at night from the alley across the street. Logan didn’t even try to hide his stalking, ensuring anyone who passed by in the dark noticed his big, wolfish body. Her self-appointed werewolf bodyguard keeping an eye on her.