Ava Rising: Book 2 of 3

Chapter 3

While Lucas slept, Ava did a quick scouting of their surroundings—the darkness of the February night hiding her form as she moved silently across the desert. She traced her fingers over the alien rock formations, admiring nature's carnival—the twisting and looping structures like giant contortionists frozen for all time in red-hued glory. Each touch brought a new memory—Isi, Owen, and she playing hide and seek among the rock formations, giggling as her grandmother, Lena, taught them how to burrow deep beneath the sand if they ever needed a makeshift refuge. Thankfully these were her own memories and not Lucas's, but still, the last few days had been consumed by reminiscing. Maybe she and Lucas were doomed to a life sustained by memories—forever on the run and physically cut off from one another.

She shivered, and with determined hands, reached into her pocket to draw out a silver necklace. Dangling from the chain was a circular pendant shaped like a miniature Earth, the land and water wrought of jade and lapis lazuli. A delicate silver dagger was affixed on top of the Earth-shaped pendant to form what looked like a primitive peace sign. She flinched, waiting to see if the necklace would burn her hands, but the metal remained warm to the touch rather than the white hot it had burned before.

Her mind went once more to the memory of her grandmother presenting her with the necklace, searching every moment of it for a clue to the necklace's unexpected behavior over the last week. Her grandmother had said the stone would help channel dual sources of energy—power drawn from the Gaia and Ares. What had been her grandmother's exact words? You are holding an alliance stone. One that was created more than half a millennium before you were born. Can you feel its power? Whoever wears it...will find members of both orders called to them, drawn by its ancient promise.

Ever since her grandmother had given her the necklace she had kept it close, puzzling over the mystery of its power. Lena had warned her not to wear it and yet her grandmother had never taken the necklace off—so wearing it alone could not activate the stone. What was its true trigger? Ava had carried the necklace in her pocket since seeing her grandmother—unwilling to risk wearing it and yet unwilling to leave it unprotected. Before that terrible night several days ago, she had thought that she was merely a messenger, guarding the necklace until she could safely transfer it to another member of her Order in the future. But now, now that Lucas had revealed that she was a so-called Alpha, Ava was not so sure. She wished her grandmother had told her more but realized, looking back on the memory, that her grandmother had not really understood the necklace. Gaia lore had passed on the story of the necklace's immense power, but because of the fissure between the orders, alliance stones hadn't been used to channel energy in centuries. It was strangely comforting that her grandmother had trusted her to work out the puzzle of such a powerful object on her own. Lena had believed in her.

She rubbed her hip, wincing as she realized the raw burn there had not yet healed. At one of their infrequent pit stops during the frenzied getaway of the last several days, Ava had slipped into the bathroom at a gas station to wash up. There she had studied the odd burn on her hip—the source of the pain she had felt back in the diner. Examining the raw flesh, she had realized that the burn was the perfect imprint of the alliance stone. The necklace seemed to have awoken. But when and more importantly why? She had gone over those hellish twenty-four hours over and over again in her mind. Some event—shucking her powers, putting her life in Lucas's hands, attacking Lucas's father, being mortally injured without her powers, learning the truth about her identity, or discovering the new and terrible energy that cackled when she and Lucas tried to touch—had caused the alliance stone to burn the mark into her skin and she had been too terrified and full of adrenaline to realize it in the moment. Or she'd been unconscious, lost to the world, as Lucas carried her from his burning house. Either way, she was left terribly confused about the meaning behind the burn. But it was clearly no coincidence. Desperation was a powerful temptress, and desperation was what had led Ava to the middle of the desert, far from anyone who might be alerted to the power of the alliance stone. She took one last look at the necklace and moved to clasp it around her neck when she heard the faintest noise behind her. In a flash she tucked the necklace safely back into her pocket and whirled around.