The Awakening of Ren Crown Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2012 by Anne Zoelle (pseudonym)

  Cover art © Renu Sharma ¦ www.thedarkrayne.com

  Cover design by Anne Zoelle

  Contents

  Chapter One: In the beginning...

  Chapter Two: Daydreams and Nightmares

  Chapter Three: Finding the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Four: Unwise Actions

  Chapter Five: Really Unwise Actions

  Chapter Six: Deadly Assailants

  Chapter Seven: Conversations of the Extraordinary

  Chapter Eight: Into the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Nine: Olivia Price

  Chapter Ten: Culture Shock

  Chapter Eleven: Pain...ting...

  Chapter Twelve: The Cafeteria

  Chapter Thirteen: Adventures in Campery

  Chapter Fourteen: Plans

  Chapter Fifteen: Ganymede Circus

  Chapter Sixteen: On the Edge

  Chapter Seventeen: Thieves, Pyramids, and Firesnakes

  Chapter Eighteen: Marsgrove Redux

  Chapter Nineteen: Preparations

  Chapter Twenty: Death and Consequences

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Midlands

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Service with a Smile

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Of Blobs and Mistakes

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Living and Helping

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Ambrosia for Me, Ambrosia on You

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Never Normal

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Reality in Death

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Moving Forward

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: A New Beginning

  Contact

  Chapter One: In the beginning...

  I would do absolutely anything for my brother.

  “This is hardly a high security lock, Ren,” Christian whispered, motioning at the precise movement of my hands. “Now isn't the time to be perfect. Scrub those pins.”

  “Scrub these,” I whispered back to my twin, lips barely needing to move in order for him to hear me. We had perfected the art of nearly silent communication over the past seventeen years. I carefully pressed in the torque wrench and slid my lock pick across one pin at a time, feeling them, discovering their secrets, movement, and depth. A schematic of the lock drew itself in my mind, and I rotated the picture to determine which pin to move first.

  Brilliant, but impatient, Christian would always be a scrub and bumper, raking a pick across the pins. Which had always worked quite well when our parents were away, and we were uncovering Christmas presents or retrieving items that had been locked up—then putting them back before our parents noticed. But uncovering the secret of each lock was what I found fascinating, and doing it silently while my parents were within hearing range increased the thrill. I loved the feel of visualizing the lock, of finding the order, of fitting each pin perfectly in its slot.

  I felt the tiny give as I pressed the last pin into place. “Ta-da.”

  “Brilliant.” He flashed me a grin as I finished and soundlessly pushed open the door.

  So far, so good.

  No alarm on the garage. No pets. No houses nearby. Three clear exit routes through the yard. Points checked off in my mind on my “Cover for Christian” checklist. Although Christian controlled everything on the field and in his social circles, he needed me to make sure he made it out of each adventure safely.

  My brother attracted attention and exuded magnetism like a planet pulling in satellites. I knew who would get in trouble with the authorities if we were caught. I had tried to take the heat before, but people always looked amused by my attempts. Quiet, little, dreamer Florence Crown? Right.

  I put my pick set in a pocket where I could easily retrieve it and dump it into a bush, in the event that an unnoticed alarm was triggered and we were grabbed by the cops. Having a pick set? Fine. Having a pick set and being caught breaking and entering? Not so fine.

  Christian flashed me his widest grin, hiked his bag high onto his back, and prowled into the garage. I entered after him as always and quietly closed the door so we could use our flashlights.

  We were on our own this time. Christian didn't want his friends to witness his idea of epic romance. After spending two hours with him this afternoon, twisting red tissue into roses, I thought that was probably wise.

  I held my light steady as Christian opened the door of the cherry red convertible, then slipped inside.

  Something outside scraped across the vinyl siding on the garage, creating an eerie noise. The wind had been unusual all night. I concentrated all of my senses and took stock of our surroundings. Adrenaline was nicely buzzing through my veins, but other than the branches scraping outside, the house and garage were quiet.

  Christian's head reappeared, a careless and easy grin on his face, sapphire-rimmed teal eyes winking. “Player?”

  I walked over, wedged the flashlight between my cheek and shoulder, and carefully unzipped my bag. “You don't want to leave it on Sleeping Beauty's pillow?”

  “I'm tempted.”

  I could practically feel his rakish grin. I rolled my eyes, my fingers finding the wired player we had Frankensteined earlier. If he hooked it up correctly, it would start playing when the car door was opened in the morning.

  He took it from me, then absently rubbed the inside of his wrist. “Think of the old man's face if he woke to hearing the music coming from his daughter's room.”

  “Let's not. You are playing with fire as it is, star quarterback or not. Coach is a scary man. He probably turns into a werewolf on full moons and nights when his house gets broken into.”

  “Might be worth being benched. Sate some of your monster-love madness.” Christian smiled and whipped his head in the familiar gesture women unrelated to me seemed to love—flicking his brown hair away from his forehead, then letting it slide down—as he began wiring the player and hooking up the trigger.

  Once during middle school, I had crept into his room while he slept and cut a huge patch from his bangs. The next morning, I had awakened with half my hair sawed off as well.

  I touched the back of my head just to make sure my hair was still attached and hanging past my shoulders. It had taken forever to grow back and had been a traumatic experience—short hair made my eyes look larger and my face look even younger. Looking my age was something I battled regularly as one of the shortest girls in our year. In the womb, Christian had somehow grabbed the height gene and taken some of mine as well.

  Christian examined the steering wheel where tasteful tissue flowers were now twined. He frowned. “What do those romance novels and magazines you like to read say? Do things need glitter to be girly and romantic? You don't like any of that kind of stuff, but you barely qualify as a girl.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I crossed my arms. “Glitter, seriously? I don't understand how you get dates.”

  “I am awesome. And there are some hot girls in your community art class who wear glittery fingernail polish. You should make friends with them—invite them over for sleepovers and nail parties.”

  “Great. Maybe I should transfer to a different high school too, in order to widen your selection? Are bikini models acceptable?”

  “Yes. You are the best sister ever,” he said earnestly, carefully shutting the driver-side door and walking to the passenger side.

  I smiled at his tone, and he winked, looking more relaxed as he absently rubbed the inside of his wrist again before entering the car on the other side.

  He had been peculiarly agitated the last few we
eks, and it had taken considerable effort to distract him and keep him busy. So, if all it took to get him back to his old self was a successful campaign to nab the future Homecoming Queen, I would thank her personally. It would be awkward, but it would be worth it.

  Christian leaned over the center console to complete the last pieces of his campaign, armed the trigger on the “Franken-player,” carefully shut the passenger door, and bumped my shoulder companionably with his.

  I had no doubt that tomorrow morning at school he would be greeted gleefully and with an enthusiastic yes to the question taped to the dash.

  We locked the garage door and crept through the shadowed yard. Mission accomplished. Another operation successfully negotiated.

  On the fifteen minute walk back to our house. Christian was silent, appearing deep in thought, so my mind started connecting the shadows and forming them into dark art in my mind—creatures twining up and howling as we passed.

  My community arts class had watched a presentation on making oil paints from scratch. There had been an itch under my skin ever since I had seen the guest artist press the spatula into the linseed and pigment. It had kept me up all last night, staring at my hand-painted celestial ceiling. I had suppressed it in order to help Christian with the planning and execution of his task, but I couldn't remember ever feeling such a need as the one that continued to run through me—I needed to create my own paint.

  After I made my first batch, I was going to paint these shadows, with their long curling fingers and slow-moving grace. Even if I flubbed the mixing, I would achieve a murky brown result. I could work with that. Excitement built. Yes, that is what I was going to research when I got home. I could probably get Christian to help me beg Mom for the supplies.

  Lightning streaked the sky, sending jagged lights through the shadows. Odd. There was no storm forecast and heat lightning was a summer event.

  I gripped my flashlight reflexively.

  “I saw your mail this afternoon,” Christian said casually.

  My heart picked up more speed as I focused on him. “So?”

  “So? They are courting you. Why didn't you say anything? Finish your application tomorrow. I bet we can get Mom to take us to the steakhouse to celebrate. Dad needs no convincing to go.”

  “How...?” No, I knew how he knew. He had poked through my stuff, after sneaking into my room to peek at what the Harvard stationery indicated. I shook my head. “I'm not going.” How could I keep an eye on him next year if he was halfway across the country riding the football scholarship everyone knew he was going to get from State?

  “What? Don't be an idiot. Of course you're going. I told you that arts and engineering exhibition was a great idea.” He threw an arm around my neck and tugged my head into his space. “Once you accept their offer, I can pry you out of your art and math obsessions so you can finally relax and enjoy yourself. This is our year, Ren.”

  Lightning flashed again.

  I punched his side, halfheartedly trying to free myself. “The year of Crown.”

  “We can do anything. The world is our clam shell—”

  “Oyster.”

  “—and we are searching for the diamond—”

  “Pearl.” I tried to punch him again, but he moved his hips out of the way.

  “—and the journey to find it will mature us into little mini-adults. All those teen self-help articles say so.” He pulled my neck in closer.

  “Christian—”

  “Think outside the pyramid, dear sister. Now that you are in at Harvard, you can totally blow school.”

  I bent my knees, shoved my hand up against his arm vice, and twisted free. “I thought you said we were supposed to be maturing into mini-adults.”

  He splayed his arms wide. “Yeah, at the end of the year. This is like the opening chapter of our epic saga. We need to be frolicking in the pasture and splashing at the river's edge and playing harmless pranks.” He motioned with his fingers, as if they were frolicking through tall grass.

  I held up an edge of the prank bag he was carrying, in retort.

  He grinned and we started walking again. “I know you'll have a good time this year, if you just open up to people a little more. The guys like you, and they rag on everyone.”

  “The guys” being Christian's group of crazed friends. The ones who knew me as a helping hand on missions or the stealthy one in brutal capture-the-flag battles, or as the girl who sketched quietly at the lunch table, but rarely spoke.

  He frowned. “Like you as a friend, I mean. I'd have to kill them otherwise. But cultivating more girlfriends is always a good thing. For all of us.”

  “Very funny.” Lightning lit again, but there was no accompanying thunder. Where was it coming from?

  “It's all about continuing a benevolent dictatorship and having fun. And it is time for you to become a general, instead of first lieutenant.”

  Anxiety ran through me. I could talk to Christian easily, but with other people, words garbled strangely from my mouth. “I don't want—”

  “So, during our third week of dominion,” he said, trampling over my objection. “You should be in charge of—”

  Lightning seemed to light everywhere at once, and Christian suddenly stopped. He bowed forward, clutching his midsection. His bag dropped to the ground, contents clinking.

  I grabbed his arm to steady him. “What's wrong?” I demanded, all humor gone.

  “Cramp.”

  A weird wave of electricity surged through my fingers where they touched him. I snatched my hand back, staring at the digits. The feeling dissipated within me, but increased in the air around us, swirling and darkening. I tentatively touched his arm again, and the energy shot into me once more. It was like focused euphoria.

  Christian shuddered, then rolled his shoulders forward. “I feel strange.” His brows drew together and he looked at his hands, stretching and retracting his fingers. “But good strange. Like I've just made twelve perfect passes and could complete a hundred more.”

  Brows drawn together, he bent and lifted his bag. It looked like something was drawn on the inside of his right wrist. I started to ask, but spectral colors flashed out and wrapped around his duffel.

  Our heads collided as we peered inside. It looked just as it had before—full of red tissue paper, green wrap, adhesives, and tools. Christian's fingers ran along the top of the bag, sparking.

  His fingers, not the bag.

  I stared at him, dumbfounded, moving my hand along his arm and down to his wrist. It seemed important for some reason to maintain contact. “You...you're electric.”

  He gave a strangled laugh, hands jamming together and pulling apart. Electricity sparked between his forefingers, forming five crackling white arcs.

  “Is this real?” I reached out tentatively to touch an arc, and a sparkle fell, exploding on the ground with the report of a bottle rocket.

  I let go of him in shock. The weird pressure built around us again, pushing.

  “The lightning—was it coming from you?”

  There was a depression in the pavement where the spark had hit. I looked to see Christian staring wide-eyed too. “I don't know.”

  “You!” A man stepped out of the deep shadows cast by the trees near the end of the street.

  No. I had stopped paying attention to our surroundings and now we were about to be caught far past curfew.

  “Hands out, and stay right there,” he growled, his voice unfamiliar, his face still too deep in the shadows.

  Christian touched my arm and the grip of his fingers indicated a readiness to run. His hands still glowed an electric blue, and the strange sense of elation ran into me again at the point of contact.

  I shifted my balance to an optimal flight response. If we were caught, Christian could be benched until Homecoming. No one would be pleased by that outcome.

  “Hands out, and—”

  Christian pushed hard on my arm. I rolled forward on the balls of my feet with the motion and we immediately
tore off into the yard at our right.

  “They are running!” The man shouted, as he gave pursuit.

  Another man in black sprinted toward us as we reached the fenced-in backyard.

  Christian swore and we veered toward a backyard play structure, frantically climbing it, then leaping over the high fence. We crashed to the grass, rolling to relieve our momentum. Blue lightning arced around us.

  The man trailing us yelled and I heard him fall into the hedges. We launched forward, skirting a car parked in the driveway and sprinting through the front yard and into the street.

  Another man headed toward us down the street.

  “What the hell?” Christian asked harshly as we ran, veering again into another yard, where a fourth man appeared from the shadows. Christian ran straight at him, pushing him hard in the shoulder. The man flew back and crashed hard. Harder than it seemed he should have with a normal block, but there was no opportunity to look back or think on it further.

  A man stood at the end of the next street, and we swerved to the right. We were being herded out of the neighborhood.

  Lightning flashed again and a crackle of strange thunder finally accompanied it. The lightning connected with the overhead power lines around us, white, sparking lines leading toward the utility company's lot.

  Christian pushed at my arm, and we ran directly toward the lot. Something clanged into the chain link fence as we scrambled up and over.

  A knife lay on the ground on the other side of the chain link fence where we had just been, and my heart leaped fully into my throat. A harmless prank of breaking and entering into the coach's garage was a punishment on par with laps around the football field, not mortal wounds.

  And the police didn't fling knives at fleeing suspects.

  Electricity seemed to spark from the entire lot around us, the blue lines arcing from the poles and power lines toward Christian.

  He pulled me behind a short, square building.

  Why were we stopping? I quickly signed at him—plan? I had been in enough paintball fights at his side—staying in one position eventually meant death. But there weren't enough structures for us to move stealthily between. Why were we here? The street chase was far more in our favor.