Harley-Awakening Read online

  Contents

  Harley—Awakening

  Books by Claudy Conn

  Copyright Page

  ~ Prologue ~

  ~ One ~

  ~ Two ~

  ~ Three ~

  ~ Four ~

  ~ Five ~

  ~ Six ~

  ~ Seven ~

  ~ Eight ~

  ~ Nine ~

  ~ Ten ~

  ~ Eleven ~

  ~ Twelve ~

  ~ Epilogue ~

  Excerpt: Awakening—Bray (unedited)

  ~ Prelude ~

  ~ Prologue ~

  About Claudy Conn

  Read more about Claudy Conn’s books

  Harley—Awakening

  Books by Claudy Conn

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  Harley—Awakening (Novella)

  Awakening—Bray (coming soon)

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  ~

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  Harley—Awakening

  By

  Claudy Conn

  Copyright Page

  Harley—Awakening

  By Claudy Conn

  http://www.claudyconn.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

  First edition edited by: Kathryn Riehl

  Second edition edited by: Karen Babcock

  Cover Artist: Kendra Egert

  All rights reserved

  Published in the United States of America

  Smashwords editions

  June 2015

  This novella first appeared in Romancing the Paranormal, published May 2015

  Unedited excerpt of Awakening—Bray

  Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Names, characters, and events depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  ~ Prologue ~

  I STOOD STARING at my easel, my paintbrush in my hand, and smiled, finally satisfied with it. My father caught my attention as he purposely maneuvered the wheelbarrow past me, winked, grinned, and called out, “Are you hungry, baby? I am. Go see if you can steal me a plateful before the crowd gets here.”

  I laughed. “You’re always starving, Dad. When will they all get here?”

  He stopped, put a hand through his chestnut curls, and sighed, “Soon, I think, Harley, soon.”

  As though to prove him right, the sound of wheels on gravel came to our ears. We turned to see truckloads of people, our clan, driving up the pebbled driveway and parking along the grassy square near our three-car garage. It was a bright, sunny day, but they, unlike most of our kind, were unconcerned. They jumped out of their vehicles and into the sun’s full rays, laughing and exchanging quips with my mom, who ran over to greet them. All were in happy moods as they carried trays of food toward the picnic tables we had set up earlier.

  Our clan, the McDagus vampire clan, was immune to the rays of the sun. Immune because of my mother, who was a powerful white witch. The only way her spell worked, though, was if the vampire gave up drinking human blood. Not all vampires were willing or able to do that.

  Yes, vampires. Not ordinary vampires, but vampires all the same.

  Over a hundred years ago, my dad acquired the deed to a huge stretch of land up here in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains overlooking Lake Placid, New York. He settled here with my mom and a few of their dearest friends.

  The members of our clan enjoyed the privacy of their own homes, on plots they owned, all nestled in the five hundred acres surrounding my family’s land.

  It didn’t take long for other vamps wanting what my parents wanted—peace and as much ‘normalcy’ as they could muster—to join them. Thus, the McDagus clan was formed, and they prospered.

  Clan members set down their roots under my parents’ supervision—and rules. They owned and successfully operated stores and restaurants in the village and got on very well. To all outward appearances we were normal. To all outward appearances we were just like everyone else and lived our private lives just above the foothills.

  Yeah, oh yeah, vampires must drink blood to survive. Sure, we drank blood. After all, as I said, we were vampires—except for my mom.

  We didn’t, however, kill humans, and we obviously didn’t drink human blood. We hunted, and we survived, and life there was (I think) glorious. My dad had always run a tight but fair ship.

  “Harley!”

  I turned and saw William, who everyone considered my boyfriend. I suppose he was. He was big and beautiful, and he thought he was in love with me. He wasn’t. He couldn’t have been, because I didn’t feel that kind of connection with him.

  “Harley!” he called again, grinning like a bear who had found a pot of honey.

  I waved at him and smiled when he stopped to chat with friends. Remember, I told myself. Remember this always. Even as this thought occurred to me, I wondered why it should. It was as though I knew.

  Maybe I did.

  My parents wanted us to make a match of it, but I hadn’t been able to say yes to William, even though he was quite a catch.

  Something was missing—that something that would say ‘forever’. Oh, he was sweet-natured and giving, and, holy cow, the sex was good. He was a hunk of hunks, but … there it was, the ‘but’.

  I was an oddity in our clan. I was born to my
parents about twenty years ago. Vamps aren’t supposed to be able to have children, but witches, even immortal witches like my mom, can and do. The long and the short of it, my mom always said, was that something magical happened, and sure enough, there I was—part vamp, part witch.

  Mom said that made me special and that I would one day have a purpose. I didn’t know about that, but I did know I had lots of abilities other vamps didn’t—more even than my mother, abilities she said skipped her but came to me from my ancestors.

  All at once, a blast of fear snapped my head sharply towards the woods. I felt a threat in the air.

  I tried to ignore it as I took a tray from Hattie, one of my friends, and carried it to a picnic table. And, yes, it was our drink of choice—bottles containing animal blood.

  As I looked around I couldn’t help being proud of my mom as she laughed and hugged our guests. As always I was struck by her beauty. Her long red hair blowing in the summer breeze made her easy to find amongst the crowd of our friends. Dad liked to say I was her twin. I suppose I was, except for my eyes. I got his amber eyes instead of Mom’s green ones. I teased her a lot, telling her they were ‘witchy green.’

  Dad pulled her in for a kiss. I made sure they saw me put a finger in my mouth as though to gag, and they laughed. They weren’t more than twenty feet away, and life at that moment seemed beautiful and perfect.

  In a human’s heartbeat, all that changed.

  A minute before they came, I felt it.

  My mother and I had a moment together. I knew she knew as well.

  We both shouted ‘Run!’ at the same time. But there was no time, none, because our clan didn’t understand. Even as they heard us tell them to run, they looked around and hesitated.

  Escape was not an option. Total and gripping fear raced through my body.

  A threat was no longer just in the air. It had arrived, surrounded, stormed.

  “Harley,” my mother screamed and ran to me. She held up a vial she had produced from her jeans pocket. “Drink this, baby—now. Hurry.”

  “What? What is it?” I asked and saw something desperate in her eyes, those beautiful, witchy green eyes, and it scared the shit out of me. I knew in that moment that the worst thing ever was about to take place. “Mom?”

  “Drink!” she shouted as she poured the damned stuff down my throat. I choked on the first swallow and then took the vial away from her and downed it like I was doing a shot.

  I saw relief on her face.

  “Baby, I didn’t know it would be so soon. I knew, but I thought we had time. I’m sorry … I hoped I was wrong. I hoped we’d have more time. Today was supposed to be your big day, a party for your birthday. I am so sorry.” Tears ran down her lovely cheeks.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my clan begin to gather, back to back. Most of them were unarmed and unfit to take on what was coming, but the scent now was all around us.

  Everything happened at once. I stood helpless … like when you reach out to save someone and right in front of you they are taken.

  My world was shattered in that old cliché, that blink of an eye.

  They came with wicked and bloody intent … they came. I had never seen werewolves that huge, vicious, and purposeful—and it was daytime. What the hell?

  I stood for a moment, horrified, as I watched my beloved friends try to fight them off. These werewolves were as large as horses, each one with eyes crazed with a vicious ‘kill intent’. Blood splattered everywhere as they attacked from every direction. It was a chaos of screams, painful bellows, and victorious howls.

  Some of our clan tried to scatter, some stood to fight. All were being taken down and brutally torn apart. Blood covered the grass …

  The atmosphere had the stench of blood, vampire blood—my clan’s blood.

  A few of our beta warriors, who had never before faced combat, managed to kill a werewolf or two as they bravely fought to protect us, but they were so outnumbered. I stood helpless as they, too, were mutilated and fell into their own pools of blood, their body parts everywhere.

  I joined my mother, and we used magic and managed to take down a couple of the werewolves charging at us, but there were too many all lunging at once. A few of our female vampires went back to back with us, but I knew they were scared. The werewolves made a circle around us, drooling bloodied saliva from their sharp canines.

  All at once, my dad tore through the circle, his sword of silver slicing any werewolf in his path. I had seen him run into the barn earlier, and I knew he’d gone to retrieve his sword. He shoved my mother, me, and the three remaining female vamps—my friends, akin to my ‘aunts’—behind him. Our beta soldiers had been destroyed right before our eyes, and we all knew this was the end, but we would go down fighting. What else was there?

  I knew we were all going to die that day.

  My mom touched my face and said, “It will be okay, Harley—we will always be with you.” Her fingers stroked my eyes and then my forehead, and I experienced a charge of energy, her energy, enter my brain, but there wasn’t any time—I didn’t know at that moment what it meant.

  A werewolf, very different from the others and larger than all the rest, stood and motioned for the others to be still. The six of us—my parents, three females vampires, and I—were the only remaining members of our clan. With a nod from the alpha, the three women trembling behind us were taken down swiftly, more swiftly than seemed possible.

  My dad managed to execute two of the weres. Everywhere I looked, I saw a scattering of guts and blood, werewolf parts within our circle, but so many still came at us. Then the alpha stood very still, snarling at us as his pack gathered around him.

  I was stunned to hear the alpha speak in a raspy voice. Werewolves can’t ordinarily speak in wolf form—then again, they can’t change without the full moon, don’t stay in wolf form once the sun is up, and aren’t the size of a horse.

  I realized he wasn’t just a werewolf. His scent told me at once he was more than a werewolf. He was a hybrid.

  He growled, “McDagus. I warned you what it would be.”

  “But, Banks … why … why? What have you become, that you would slaughter innocents? Why do this?” my father asked. “You could have come for just me. I would have met you if that’s what you wanted.”

  “Just you?” the hybrid roared. “Do you think that would have satisfied me? She”—he nodded his bared canines toward my mom—“should have been mine. You took her from me. I wanted her—I told you how I felt about her. You were my friend, and you stole her from me. Even after I told you how I needed her, didn’t want to live life without her, you—who claimed to be my closest friend—took her!”

  “I was never yours, would never have been yours,” my mother interjected. “I didn’t love you, Banks.”

  I listened to this in utter stupefaction. All this bloodshed because of a love feud? All this pain because of one creature’s loss? How wicked could anyone be?

  The hybrid my dad called Banks howled, and it was a sound full of his agony and hate. Then, with a snap of his jaws, Banks tore my father’s hamstrings, and Dad sank to the ground, gasping. Banks was on him, and as I watched in helpless disbelief, he ripped my father’s head off.

  Gone, in the flash of a moment, gone, my dad … gone?

  I stood in shock, choking on my scream. I couldn’t believe he was so brutally taken from me. I watched in denial as my dad’s head rolled away from his body. I cried out the only word I could say, “Noooo … nooo …”

  I heard my mother’s choking words as she said my father’s name and then in Gaelic whispered words of enchantment as she held me close.

  My knees were weak under me.

  We were the last of our clan, and we clung to each other.

  Then Mom stood straight. She stepped in front of me and told the beast, “You have succeeded. You have taken my alpha mate from me. You have destroyed his clan and the life we had. You have the satisfaction of knowing that I suffer. Do what you will now t
o me, but let my child leave.”

  “It is not enough,” he bellowed with fury.

  “Take me then, if that is what you want, Banks, but spare my child. She is an innocent.”

  “Too late!” he answered and stalked up close to her. Suddenly he shifted into human. He stood there, a large, vibrant male filled with one emotion: hatred.

  He stared at her and said harshly, “You were the one—my one—but I no longer want you, witch. I have learned to live without you and mean to continue to do so.”

  I knew what he was about to do. I felt it with every fiber of my being, and I let out a violent cry as I attacked him with all the magic I had inside me. My arms outstretched and my hands sizzling with blue energy, I threw all I had at him.

  It rocked him backwards, and he yelped in pain, but it was useless. I was useless. He was so powerful, and even in his human form he was incredibly strong. He steadied himself and sneered at me. “Don’t think white magic will allow you to harm me.”

  I had to think of something. I had to save my mom.

  Even as I tried to think I was distracted by his wolves changing back into human form. How was this possible? They weren’t shifters, and they weren’t hybrids.

  How could I stop someone with power like that?

  All thoughts ceased, and I went into shock as I stared at him. This was really happening: he had actually killed my father, and now he as about to kill my mother.

  I charged him again, and he swatted at me. He was in human form, but he had produced claws and slashed me open across my neck and shoulders.

  The force of his blow sent me down in a pool of my own blood.

  I was winded and lay helpless as I bled out. The vamp in me began healing the wounds as I tried to get back up and rush him. I had to save my mom.

  And then the unthinkable happened.

  I was up but froze in place when he slammed his fist into my mother’s chest and grabbed her heart. He pulled out my mom’s heart and held it up even as she collapsed, lifeless, to the earth.