Reborn (The Awakening Volume 1)

True love never dies.

  In just a few days a new arrival at Selene's high school will turn her entire world upside down. She's never met anyone so attractive—or so mysterious—before this, but Jace's unyielding insistence that they've known each other for decades can't be denied—not given how familiar he feels to her.

  In the hidden world of gods and fairies what you don't know can get you killed faster than anything else and only those you love have any chance of saving you.

  Reborn

  by Dean Murray

  Copyright 2014 by Dean Murray

  Also by Dean Murray:

  The Reflections Series

  Broken (free)

  Torn (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)

  Splintered

  Intrusion

  Trapped

  Forsaken

  Riven

  The Greater Darkness (Writing as Eldon Murphy) (free)

  A Darkness Mirrored (Writing as Eldon Murphy)

  Driven

  Lost

  Marked

  The Dark Reflections Series

  Bound (free)

  Hunted

  Ambushed

  Shattered

  The Awakening Series

  Reborn

  Immortal

  Endless

  The Guadel Chronicles

  Frozen Prospects (free)

  Thawed Fortunes (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)

  Brittle Bonds

  Shattered Ties

  Table of Contents

  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

  Other Books by Dean Murray

  Chapter 1

  "You should be more careful, Selene. One of these times you're going to get hurt—you know, if you don't pay attention to where you're going."

  The words were said with a sugary sweetness that adults ate up, but which always made me want to vomit. It was hard to believe that the teachers were all stupid enough to believe Sandra's act, but then again she never did anything really nasty unless it was just you and her.

  Shoving me into the red and black lockers a few seconds earlier was the perfect example. School had been over for more than an hour so the halls were empty—other than the two of us and her clique. Sandra wasn't just mean, she was a coward. If anyone else had been around she would have left me alone, but I'd had the misfortune of having to wait for my little sister to get done with drama practice before I could drive the two of us home.

  "Thanks, Sandra. I hope you get hit by a bus on the way home today."

  We'd hated each other for as long as I could remember. Sometimes I could get her mad enough to drop the act, but not today, not given that someone was approaching the corner ahead of us. She just smirked at me before turning and heading towards the exterior door.

  I adjusted my backpack and followed along behind her. I was going to have a bruise on my right shoulder—I could already feel a dull ache setting in. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that being hit by a bus was too good for her. Actually, I was having a hard time coming up with something suitable. Leprosy was too slow and a heart attack was too fast.

  The footsteps turned out to belong to somebody I'd never seen before, which was novel given that the state of the local economy meant that recently all of the moves were out of town rather than the other way around.

  The new arrival was a guy…a tall, built guy with wavy blond hair and a chin that looked like it had been carved out of marble. My heart started going a hundred miles an hour as soon as I saw him. I usually barely noticed guys, but something about this one was different. He wasn't just gorgeous, he was out-of-this-world gorgeous.

  I wasn't the only one who registered that fact—not that I should have been surprised by that. Sandra shot him a smoldering look before turning and exiting the building, but he hardly noticed.

  It was pretty rare for guys to realize just how much of a total witch Sandra has always been—at least not until after she'd treated them like crap for a couple of months—so normally I'd be all for a guy blowing her off, but this time there was a complication.

  He smiled at me, and it wasn't just any smile. It was one of those slightly lopsided, lazy smiles that only the hottest guys can pull off without looking like an idiot. Even worse, Sandra looked back to see what kind of effect she'd had on him just in time to see him look at me.

  Crap. That was the last thing I needed. Sandra and I already hated each other, but things could always get worse. She already had a boyfriend, there was no reason for her to fixate on this new guy—no other reason than that he'd had the temerity to ignore her and smile at me instead.

  She was going to find a way to make my life even worse.

  Maybe that would have been okay if Mr. Hot-Stuff had actually been interested in dating me, but he wasn't. I knew the type—granted none anywhere near as hot—guys who knew that they made girls' hearts go pitter-patter every time they walked by. There was just something about being hot that seemed to make people want to take advantage of their good looks. He probably smiled at anything in a skirt—regardless of whether or not he was interested—just because he liked seeing girls walk into walls because they were so focused on him.

  I frowned at Mr. Hot-Stuff, which earned me a confused look—he obviously wasn't used to his charm failing like that. He started to hold the door open for me—doubtlessly a reflexive action. The fact that I wasn't impressed apparently hadn't made it to the pea-sized organ that he used for a brain.

  I pushed past him, opening the other door for myself, and headed towards my car without looking back to see what kind of a response my rudeness had triggered.

  Ari, my younger sister, claims that I'm incapable of being rude, that doing so leaves me in physical pain. She's also prone to gross exaggeration. I'm as capable of rudeness as anyone else, I just don't enjoy being rude. Unlike, say Sandra.

  Actually I was already feeling bad about not letting him hold the door open for me…and for frowning at him…and for thinking that he had stunted cognitive abilities. None of that had been fair of me.

  Don't get me wrong, any boy who was that hot was probably a self-centered jerk, but you were supposed to give people the benefit of the doubt before you start acting on those kinds of assumptions. Besides, even if Mr. Hot-Stuff was an egotistical, narcissistic waste of skin he was probably just a product of his environment.

  I wanted to turn around and apologize, but my only hope of weathering the nastiness that Sandra had in store for me was for Mr. Hot-Stuff to leave me alone and decide he had a sudden, compelling interest in Sandra. I couldn't do anything about the second half of that equation, but being rude was a good start towards making sure of the first half.

  As long as Sandra felt like she'd ultimately come out on top where Mr. Hot-Stuff was concerned, she wouldn't feel the need to put me in my place. It was a crappy way to treat people, but I was just one girl. As long as Sandra's dad owned the tile factory that was the main employer in o
ur town, I had exactly zero chance of upsetting the pecking order and instituting something more equitable.

  I was so focused on not turning back to apologize to the blond guy that I almost didn't notice my tires. They were flat. Not just a little low, they were rims-on-the-blacktop flat. I did a slow circuit around my car, but I knew what I was going to find even before the last tire came into view. All four of them were flat.

  I wanted to scream. Or maybe cry—it was hard to say. The only thing I was certain of was that if I opened my mouth I was going to regret it. There wasn't any need to guess who'd sabotaged my car; I could hear giggling from across the parking lot.

  More than anything else in the world I wanted to walk over and key her shiny blue Lexus. I wanted to score the paint from one end to the other and then find a rock and bash in her headlights.

  I closed my eyes and forced myself to take deep, slow breaths. As much as I wanted to pay Sandra back for the last twelve years of brutality, acting on the urge wasn't an option. Anything I did would eventually make it back to my dad, and that was the one consequence that I couldn't live with.

  My dad worked at the tile factory. One word from Sandra to her father and my dad would be out of work. I was stuck between a rock and a hard spot with no exit visible until I graduated from high school and left home.

  I sank down to the asphalt and put my back against the side of my Nissan. My car hid me from the view of Sandra and her friends, but I wasn't under any illusions. I was giving them the satisfaction of knowing that they'd gotten to me. I just didn't have enough fight left in me to care.

  Hadn't someone done an experiment somewhere involving tormenting animals and the ones that weren't allowed to fight back died in short order? That's how I felt. If I'd been allowed to fight back I could have endured two more years of this, but I wasn't sure I could make it if things continued on like they were now.

  I let my mind drift away to a world where I wasn't a social pariah, a world where I could smile back at a cute guy instead of worrying about what his attention was going to make Sandra do.

  The sound of approaching footsteps snapped me out of my reverie.

  There were only two sets, which meant that Sandra had left one of her friends back at her car. I couldn't take all three of them, but there was a chance that I could put Sandra down with my rusty karate skills before her friend could intervene, and I lunged to my feet intending on doing just that—only it wasn't Sandra.

  Mr. Hot-Stuff was back, but this time he was accompanied by a tiny girl who was every bit as attractive as he was. She had fine golden hair that was cut in a stylish bob, flawless white skin and a body that had slender curves in all of the right places. Had someone started making size negative one jeans?

  "Are you okay?"

  It took me a second to realize that the girl was talking to me. It just seemed wrong for a girl like that to even acknowledge my existence. Up until that point my experience with attractive people had been restricted to my school, where everyone paid homage to Sandra.

  "No, I'm most certainly not okay."

  "Oh, your tires are flat. I didn't even know it was possible for two tires to go flat like that at the same time."

  "Then this is going to really blow your mind—all four of my tires are flat."

  Her forehead creased in thought. "Someone did this to you, didn't they? Was it those girls over there by the blue car?"

  Another biting response quivered on the tip of my tongue, anxious to launch itself at her. This time it was something about her being brains and beauty—the whole package and then some—but I just couldn't bring myself to say it.

  Sarcasm had been the only thing to get me through the last few years of Sandra's tormenting, but this girl didn't deserve that. She actually seemed to be trying to help. I deflated.

  "Yeah, Sandra let the air out of my tires."

  "Did you do something to her? It seems like a pretty severe reaction…"

  I shrugged. "That's the funny thing about Sandra. She doesn't actually need a reason. We were in the same kindergarten class and she took an instant dislike to me on the first day of school. She's spent practically every day since then making sure that she 'got' me before I could get her. By now it wouldn't matter what I did to her I still couldn't come out ahead on points."

  The new girl gave me a sad smile. "You never know what the future holds, but for now we should see about getting you mobile. Jace, do something manly and re-inflate her tires."

  Mr. Hot-Stuff—Jace apparently—held his hands up in a 'slow down' gesture. "My knowledge of cars ends at the gas pedal. I'm useless at this kind of stuff."

  The girl rolled her eyes at him. "That's not the only way that you're useless." She held out her hand. "My name is Katrina, but everyone just calls me Kat. This hot mess is my brother Jace. He's not completely hopeless, but rather than waiting around in the hopes that he figures out which end of the tire iron goes on the lug wrench, we should probably just give you a ride."

  Her characterization of her brother drew a smile out of me. "I'm Selene. I appreciate the offer, but I don't want to be any trouble. Besides, if Sandra sees you helping me she'll just be nasty to you too. The last girl who tried to stand up to her was sorry. Sandra got her dad fired from the tile factory and then they were forced to move to another town."

  Kat shrugged. "We don't have any ties to the tile factory and if Sandra tries to screw with us she'll be the one who ends up regretting it. Seriously, you won't be any trouble at all."

  "I was going to go pick up my sister from the junior high and then go home—we're all the way out on the west side of town. Are you sure you don't mind?"

  Jace shook his head. "How come I have a feeling that this is all just a really convoluted plan designed to help you get your hands on my car keys?"

  "Because you're not completely hopeless, Jace. Seriously, aren't you paying any attention at all? Come on, Selene. I've been dying to drive Jace's Viper again—you're not an imposition, you're my personal golden ticket."

  I found myself liking Kat almost in spite of myself. I took half a step towards her, but stopped as I registered what she'd just said.

  "Wait, a Viper? Is there even room for all four of us in one of those?"

  "Nope, which is why my suddenly chivalrous brother will be staying here to fix your car. Don't worry though, he's secretly been hoping to find a damsel in distress to rescue—that's the only reason he's willing to part, even temporarily, with his faithful steed."

  Jace rolled his eyes at Kat. "You sound like you were born sixteen hundred years ago."

  "Better sixteen hundred years ago than sounding like I was born yesterday, infant. Now hand over those keys."

  "How exactly do you expect me to fix Selene's tires?"

  "I don't know—call that roadside assistance company that you pay an obscene amount of money to every month, or walk up to the road and show a little leg—it's about time you used that hunky body you spend so much time on for something worthwhile. The keys. Now. Oh, and Selene is going to be wearing your jacket home—it's getting cold and she's starting to shiver."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but right at that instant a colder than usual gust of wind tore across the parking lot and I did shiver. Jace sighed as he pulled a set of keys out of his back pocket.

  "Fine, but if you put even so much as a scratch on it, I'll—"

  "Please. If I drive it into the side of a building you'll just use it as an excuse to buy something even more expensive. Come on, Selene. If we don't get on our way now Jace will still be trying to figure out how to get your tires fixed when the first bell rings tomorrow. Trust me when I say that you don't want to see Jace when he's gone without his beauty sleep—it's the kind of thing that could scar you forever."

  I still wasn't convinced. For all of my earlier rudeness, I suddenly found myself not wanting to do anything that might make Jace dislike me. He had an easy smile and wasn't so uptight that he couldn't put up with some ribbing from his sister. I
couldn't imagine any of the hot guys Sandra dated being willing to have anyone give them that kind of crap.

  Jace looked away from my tires for long enough to make a shooing motion at me. "You'd better just go, Selene. Kat is insufferable if she doesn't get what she wants. It's a good thing she's usually pretty reasonable or else I'd have to kill her and hide the body. Don't worry, I'll get your wheels working again and leave your car at your house—just leave your keys with me and they'll be waiting in the ignition when you wake up tomorrow."

  My inherent distrust of people tried to claw its way up to the surface, but for once I wasn't inclined to give it its head. Something about the easy give and take between Jace and Kat felt comfortable. I'd spent most of my life avoiding other people as much as possible, but seeing them joke with each other had awoken a hunger that I hadn't even realized I had. I really wanted to get to know the both of them better.

  I handed Jace my keys, and then Kat reached out and grabbed my hand. "Hurry, we need to get to the car before he changes his mind."

  The Viper was parked in the back section of the parking lot, where hardly anyone parked anymore. Back before the economy had taken a turn for the worse, the school board had approved an expansion to the school to prepare for the growth that the city had been projecting, but then the tile factory had started laying people off and the student body had dropped by twenty percent over the course of three months.

  The back parking lot now went unused just like more than a third of the new classrooms. There was even talk of moving the junior-high kids into the high school and trying to sell the junior high. It was just talk though. My dad said that there wasn't anybody stupid enough to buy a twenty-year-old school building in a town where property values had dropped fifty percent over the last five years.

  We arrived at Jace's car breathless and giggling, and even I had to shake my head in amazement at the sheer perfection of the black paint job and chrome rims. If Jace had parked it in the main parking lot there would still be a huge crowd of people standing around rubbernecking.

  "Wow…just wow."

  Kat smiled at me. "I know, right? Don't let on to Jace how amazing it is though. The last thing he needs is for this particular bad habit to be reinforced. If I didn't give him so much crap about the Viper he would have already replaced it with something even more ostentatious."

  The car chirped as Kat unlocked it. I climbed into the passenger seat and shook my head again at the black leather interior as I buckled my seatbelt. Kat pushed the start button and the engine roared to life with a throaty growl that shook my entire body.

  Kat returned my smile with one of her own. "That's nothing, watch this."

  She stepped on the gas at the same time she let off of the clutch and cranked the steering wheel to the left. We shot forward with a squeal of overheated rubber and smoke, slewing around and then shooting towards the exit. My knuckles went white as I held onto the door with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other.

  The road was approaching at an insane clip and I opened my mouth to warn Kat about the speed bumps, but she threw the car to the right at the last second, driving over the grass and skirting around the speed bump with only inches to spare before swerving back onto the asphalt. The car was still fishtailing as she jerked the wheel to the right and sent us screeching onto the main road that went past the school.

  I should have been scared out of my mind; with anyone else I would have been furious, but somehow the fact that it was Kat short-circuited my normal responses. I was still scared, but I felt alive in a way that I'd never felt before. It helped that Kat seemed to have complete control over the car. Her hands were rock-steady on the wheel, and when she made a correction it always seemed to be exactly the right amount of turn to put the car exactly where she wanted it.

  Kat brought the Viper to a roaring ninety miles per hour before coming off of the accelerator and letting our speed drop back down to a relatively sedate ten over the speed limit.

  "Where is the junior high?"

  "Seriously, you don't know?"

  Kat shrugged. "We just arrived in town this afternoon. We didn't even bother going to classes today—we were only at the high school so we could get registered for tomorrow."

  "Take a left at the stop light and then take a right at the old newspaper building. You can't miss it. You might want to slow down a little though—we're probably going to pass a cop at some point along Main Street."

  Kat took her eyes off of the road for just long enough to throw me a pout. "You sound like Jace. Seriously you have to wonder about a guy like that. Why buy a car with this much horsepower if you're never going to open it up and see what it can really do?"

  "I don't know. Bragging rights?"

  "Yeah, I guess." Kat shrugged as though it didn't really matter and then turned right. "So what's your sister's name?"

  "Ari. She's a freshman and she's the only reason I was still at school that late. Starting this week, she's helping out with making the sets for her school's production of Romeo and Juliet. We don't have internet at home so I thought I'd take advantage of the school's Wi-Fi since I had to stay in town anyway. I guess I'll have to start going to the junior high and waiting there for her."

  "Oh, I don't know. I think we can probably find something else for you to do instead of just hanging out at the school for an hour. Knowing Jace, he'll be full of ideas even in a small town like Cold Springs. Assuming of course that you're willing to hang out with us."

  I started to answer and then stopped as I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say. Despite all of his efforts to get his schedule swapped around to working days, my dad currently worked swing shift at the factory, which meant that he usually left for work forty-five minutes after we got home from school.

  Given that Ari and I were now stuck in town for an extra hour every day, we were embarking on an extended block of time during which we were only going to see him on the weekends. Assuming I could get Ari to keep her mouth shut, there was nothing saying that we couldn't spend all evening away from home.

  "I don't know—I guess it depends on what you guys have in mind…"

  Kat gave me a knowing look. "You're not expecting us to ever hang out, are you?"

  "Honestly?"

  "Always, Selene."

  "Well, if I'm going to be honest, once you've had a chance to get the lie of the land I fully expect you'll drop me like the radioactive social waste I am. The fact that you and Jace don't have any tie to the factory means that you don't have to bow down to Sandra, but if you don't play nice with her you're not going to have anyone else to hang out with. People around here have learned that they have to keep Sandra happy."

  "Not even you, Selene? Are you going to give her what she wants?"

  "It would be a lot easier." My response came out as a whisper.

  "It's always easier to give a bully what they want in the short term, Selene."

  "I know. The problem is that sometimes fighting back hurts other people."

  Kat shrugged. "Not fighting back hurts you. Give it some thought. Jace and I aren't going anywhere and it's not like we're going to give that spoiled princess what she wants, so we'll be around if you change your mind."

  She downshifted and then grabbed the emergency brake as she spun the wheel to the left. The back end of the car broke loose from the road and came whipping around us. A second later we skidded to a stop facing back the way we'd come, parked within inches of the curb. I was pretty sure that I'd left my stomach back on the road somewhere.

  I looked back and confirmed that there were only three feet between the back of our car and the front of the next car, and felt myself start to shake as the adrenaline finally hit my system. I opened my mouth, but I didn't know what to say.

  Kat winked at me. "Careful, Selene. If you keep hanging out with me you might decide you like living on the edge."

  "I have a feeling that being your friend might reduce my life expectancy."

  "May
be, but you'll never know until you try."

  Kat pushed a button on the dash and the hard top above us started to retract. With all of the near-death terror, I hadn't been paying very much attention to the front of the school, but as the car finished making the switch to a convertible, I realized that what I was hearing was cheers. A second later Ari was standing up against the car and shaking her head.

  "That was awesome. You must be some kind of pro right? I don't know how else you could both drive like that and have afforded to have Hennessey put a Venom conversion on this thing."

  Kat gave Ari a perky smile. "Nope, no pros here—I'm just a gifted amateur. You must be Ari. My name is Katrina, but everyone calls me Kat. Some moody skank let all of the air out of your sister's tires so I'm giving you both a ride home."

  Ari's smile got even wider for a second. I frowned at her. "Did you even hear the first half of what she said, runt? I've got four flats. For all I know all four tires are ruined at this point."

  "Yeah, I heard, but you're only kind of freaking out, so that probably means that the tire situation is under control. Besides, we're about to drive off in a Viper Venom and the whole drama club is here to see it, which means by this time tomorrow the entire school will know I got to sit in one of the sweetest muscle cars known to mankind. We could get hit by a meteor on the way home tonight and I'd still die happy."

  "Well, based on what I've seen so far, with Kat driving you just might get your wish, but it will probably be us hitting the meteor rather than the other way around."

  Kat stuck her tongue out at me. "I think I'm going to like you, Ari. Your sister didn't tell me that you were a gearhead. Unlike me, you can probably fix all of the stuff that I'm planning on breaking over the next few days. You'll have to excuse Selene, she's still trying to recover from being forced to be something other than dull."

  I was still trying to come up with a response as Kat reached back between the seats and grabbed a heavy, black leather jacket.

  "Here, Selene. It looks like Ari was smart enough to wear a jacket to fight off the chill of driving very fast down a road with the top down, but you weren't, so you're going to need Jace's jacket. Put it on so we can get out of here."

  I accepted the jacket and put it on with a frown. "You're planning on Ari and I sharing a seat, aren't you?"

  Kat batted her eyes at me. "Unless you want me to let Ari drive, in which case you and I can share a seat."

  I held a hand up before Ari could jump all over that idea. "No, there is no way Ari is driving this thing."

  "But, Selene—"

  "No, and that's final. There is no way we could afford to fix this thing if you wrecked it. Kat is driving, but…" I gave Kat my best stern look. "You are going to need to take things more sedately with Ari in the car."

  Kat gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. "Why, Selene, I never would have even considered putting your sister in danger. I'll drive like a sixty-year-old grandma on her way to Sunday school. Scout's honor."

  I shook my head at her, but Ari opened the passenger door and plopped down on my lap. "Okay, let's go. Are you sure you can't squeal the tires a little as we leave? It would do a lot for my street cred…"

  The car dropped into gear with a click that was only barely audible over the engine, and then Kat let the clutch out and spun the tires in one long squeal. I opened my mouth to yell at her, but was assaulted by the smell of burning rubber.

  I got a lungful and started coughing. Kat once again gave me her best innocent look. "Would you believe I meant a sixty-year-old grandma with an especially grabby clutch?"

  Ari looked back at me and nodded, face full of mock seriousness. "She's right, Selene. They have to upgrade the clutch on these things. If Kat hadn't given it a little extra gas it would have died. "

  I rolled my eyes at her, still coughing too hard to get a word in edgewise. By the time my coughing finally subsided to the point where I could give the two of them a piece of my mind, Kat had been driving sedately for nearly five minutes.

  "How did you ever end up as such a gearhead, little sister?"

  Kat raised her hand. "I'll bet there was a boy involved. Am I right or am I right?"

  Ari smiled. "Yep, you're right. Two years ago I had a crush on Jack Samuelson, but he barely registered the presence of anything that didn't have headlights and a gearshift so I had to become con-ver-sant in car speak in order to get his attention."

  I thought the way she'd stretched conversant out like that was juvenile, but Kat just made a fist and pounded it against my sister's knuckles.

  "I knew it. And then by the time you decided that Jacky boy wasn't worth your time you realized that you liked cars. I swear, ninety percent of everything we girls do ends up coming down to boys in some way or another."

  Ari turned even further so that she could look at both of us at the same time. "I don't know about you, Selene, but I think Kat and I are going to be great friends."

  Kat's look of innocence had been replaced by one that was pure mischief. "I'll bet you're starting to reconsider your desire not to hang out with us, aren't you, Selene?"

  "Yeah, I'm starting to realize that leaving you and Ari alone with each other would be a very bad idea."