Kelley Armstrong - The Awakening

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Kelley Armstrong - The Awakening» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Год выпуска: 2009, ISBN: 2009, Издательство: HarperCollins e-books, Жанр: sf_fantasy_city, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The Awakening: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Awakening»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Book II in the Darkest Powers trilogy takes us deeper into a world where the supernatural intrudes on the everyday with riveting effect.
If you had met me a few weeks ago, you probably would have described me as an average teenage girl—someone normal. Now my life has changed forever and I'm as far away from normal as it gets. A living science experiment—not only can I see ghosts, but I was genetically altered by a sinister organization called the Edison Group. What does that mean? For starters, I'm a teenage necromancer whose powers are out of control; I raise the dead without even trying. Trust me, that is not a power you want to have. Ever.
Now I'm running for my life with three of my supernatural friends—a charming sorcerer, a cynical werewolf, and a disgruntled witch—and we have to find someone who can help us before the Edison Group finds us first. Or die trying.

The Awakening — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Awakening», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Simon, Derek, Rae, and I realized it was no coincidence we were in the same place, and we escaped. Rae and I got separated from the guys and, after running to my aunt Lauren—the person I had trusted most in the world—I ended up here, in some kind of laboratory run by the same people who owned Lyle House.

Now they expected me to help them bring in Simon and Derek?

Well, it was time to introduce a few obstacles of my own. So, in the spirit of proper storytelling, I told Dr. Davidoff where to find Simon and Derek.

Step one: establish the goal. “Rae and I were supposed to hide while the guys stayed behind to distract you with Simon’s magic,” I told Dr. Davidoff. “Rae ran on ahead so she didn’t hear, but at the last second Simon pulled me back and said, if we got separated, we’d meet at the rendezvous point.”

Step two: introduce the obstacle. “Where is the rendezvous point? That’s the problem. I don’t know where it is. We talked about needing one, but everything was so crazy that day. We’d only just decided to escape, and then Derek was saying it had to be that night. The guys must have picked a rendezvous point, and forgot they never told me where it was.”

Step three: map out the detour. “But I do have some ideas—places we talked about. One of them must be the rendezvous point. I could help you find it. They’ll be looking for me, so they might hide until they see me.”

Rather than escape this place, I’d let them take me out by using me as bait. I’d list places I’d never discussed with Simon or Derek, and there would be no chance they’d get captured. A brilliant plan.

The response?

“We’ll keep that in mind, Chloe. But for now, just tell us the locations. We have ways to find the boys once we get there.”

Obstacles. An essential part of the storytelling process. But in real life? They suck.

After Dr. Davidoff and Tori’s mom had gotten my list of fake rendezvous points, they left, giving me nothing in return—no answers, no clues about why I was here or what would happen to me.

I sat cross-legged on my bed, staring down at the necklace in my hands as if it were a crystal ball that could provide all those answers. My mom had given it to me back when I was seeing “bogeymen”—ghosts, as I now knew. She said the necklace would stop them from coming, and it did. I’d always figured, like my dad said, that it was psychological. I believed in it, so it worked. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Had my mom known I was a necromancer? She must have, if the blood ran in her family. Was the necklace supposed to ward off ghosts? If so, its power must have faded. It even looked faded—I swore the bright red jewel had gone a purplish color. One thing it didn’t do, though, was answer my questions. That I had to do for myself.

I put the necklace back on. Whatever Dr. Davidoff and the others wanted from me, it wasn’t good. You don’t lock up kids you want to help.

I certainly wasn’t going to tell them how to find Simon. If he needed insulin, Derek would get it, even if it meant breaking into a drugstore.

I had to concentrate on getting Rae and me out. But this wasn’t Lyle House, where the only thing standing between us and freedom was an alarm system. This room might look like it belonged in a nice hotel—with a double bed, a carpeted floor, an armchair, desk, and private bathroom—but there were no windows and no knob on the inside of the door.

I’d hoped to get Liz’s help escaping. My roommate at Lyle House, Liz hadn’t made it out alive, so when I first got here, I’d summoned her ghost, hoping she could help me find a way out. Only problem? Liz didn’t realize she was dead. As gently as I could, I’d broken the news. She’d flipped out, accusing me of lying, and disappeared.

Maybe she’d had enough time to cool off. I doubted it, but I couldn’t wait. I had to try summoning her again.

Three

IPREPARED FOR A séance. As set pieces went, this one was so lame I’d never put it in a movie. No sputtering candles to cast eerie shadows on the walls, no moldy skulls forming a ritual circle, no chalices filled with what the audience would suppose was red wine but secretly hope was blood.

Did experienced necromancers use stuff like candles and incense? From the little I’d learned about the supernatural world, I knew some of what we see in movies is true. Maybe, way back in history, people had known about necromancers and witches and werewolves, and those stories are based, if very loosely, on old truths.

My method—if I can call it a method since I’ve only used it twice—came from trial and error and a few grudging tips from Derek. As a guy who was taking college-level courses at sixteen, being confident of his facts is important to Derek. If he isn’t sure, he’d rather keep his mouth shut. But when I’d pushed him, he’d told me that he’d heard that necromancers summoned ghosts either by being at a graveside or by using a personal effect, like Liz’s hoodie, so I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, clutching it.

I pictured Liz and imagined myself pulling her out of limbo. At first, I didn’t try very hard. The last time I’d focused all my power into summoning a ghost, I’d summoned two right back into their buried corpses. I wasn’t near a grave this time, but that didn’t mean there weren’t bodies around somewhere. So I kept the voltage low at first, gradually ramping it up, focusing harder and harder until…

“What the—? Hey, who are you?”

My eyes flew open. There stood a dark-haired boy about my age with the build, looks, and arrogant chin tilt of a star quarterback. Finding the ghost of another teenager in this place wasn’t a coincidence. A name popped into my head—that of another Lyle House resident who’d been taken away before I arrived, supposedly transferred to a mental hospital, like Liz.

“Brady?” I said tentatively.

“Yeah, but I don’t know you. Or this place.”

He pivoted, scanning the room, then rubbed the back of his neck. I stopped myself before asking if he was okay. Of course he wasn’t okay. He was dead. Like Liz. I swallowed.

“What happened to you?” I asked softly.

He jumped, as if startled by my voice.

“Is someone else here?” I asked, hoping he sensed Liz, beyond the pale where I couldn’t see her.

“I thought I heard…” He studied me, frowning. “You brought me here?”

“I—I didn’t mean to. But…since you are here, can you tell me—?”

“Nothing. I can’t tell you anything.” He squared his shoulders. “Whatever you want to talk about, I’m not interested.”

He looked away, determined not to be interested. When he started to fade, I was ready to let him go. Rest in peace. Then I thought about Rae and Simon and Derek. If I didn’t get some answers, we might all join Brady in the afterlife.

“My name’s Chloe,” I said quickly. “I’m a friend of Rae’s. From Lyle House. I was there with her, after you—”

He kept fading.

“Wait!” I said. “I c-can prove it. Back at Lyle House. You tried getting into a fight with Derek, and Simon shoved you away. Only he didn’t touch you. He used magic.”

“Magic?”

“It was a spell that knocks people back. Simon’s a sorcerer. All the kids in Lyle House—”

“I knew it. I knew it.” He swore under his breath as he rematerialized. “All that time, they kept trying to shove their diagnosis down my throat, and I told them where else they could shove it, but I couldn’t prove anything.”

“You told the nurses what happened with Simon, didn’t you?”

“Nurses?” He snorted. “Glorified security guards. I wanted to speak to the real boss: Davidoff. They took me to see him at this other place, looked like a warehouse.”

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Awakening»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Awakening» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Kelley Armstrong - The Rising
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - The Calling
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - The Gathering
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - The Hunter And The Hunted
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - Jauría
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - Waking the Witch
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - Blood Lite
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - The Summoning
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - The Reckoning
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong - Living with the Dead
Kelley Armstrong
Отзывы о книге «The Awakening»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Awakening» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x