Sorceress Awakening Read Free Page A

like the stone circle had been.
    Could it be so simple? Could killing these
creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection?
    She needed to try. She was already dead.
She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her
family.
    Gathering her will, she straightened and
held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the
statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a
stone, and fell to her knees.
    As she forced herself back up, she saw
someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The
strange, feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian
and her goal. Anger stirred to life.
    How dare these monsters come into her home
and threaten to kill her and her family.
    A sense of something powerful and old
flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the
stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the
land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step,
and then she snapped her arm up and forward, burying the stone shard in the
woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, and she gasped in shock.
    Growling, the woman clawed at the stone
fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination, a
heavy weight slammed into her and claws ripped into her back.
    Kicking desperately, Lillian dragged
herself out from under the crazed woman. With a last desperate strength, she
crawled up the pedestal and over the gargoyle’s stone leg. Protected on three
sides by his body and wings, she collapsed forward onto his lap. She wanted to
close her eyes and know no more pain or suffering—to know the peace of cold
stone.
    Again, those strange instincts stirred
within her. All she could think to call it was power: old power, deep and
familiar. Her body tingled.
    Was this what dying was like? Was this her
soul preparing to leave? Such a strange sensation. It didn’t seem right, dying
like this. A useless death. Never to know why her world had been turned on its
head.
    Sleep called, wooing her into darkness. All
she wanted was to answer that summons, but that old power within her insisted
otherwise. She lifted her head and gazed at the gargoyle. There was something
different. Her eyes focused on a mark upon his chest. Someone had painted a
symbol on her gargoyle. A small part of her mind took affront to that. Why
deface a statue? Her mind fuzzed in and out of focus. Her grandmother wanted
her to . . . wake the gargoyle?
    Her attention drifted back to the strange
symbol on his chest. On closer inspection it glowed, and it wasn’t painted on
his chest like she’d thought, but hovered an inch above it. She reached out
with her blood-covered hand and probed the symbol. Her hand passed through it
and touched the cold stone behind. A flash of light seared her retinas, and then
it was like she’d touched a high-voltage wire.
    Her hand fused to the stone as it turned
hot all around her. She screamed in pain and terror. Both her body and the
stone now glowed with a blue light.
    Power danced and pulsed between them. A
wave grew, about to crest. She screamed again, instinctively knowing she would
be consumed if she didn’t direct it in some way.
    Ancient memories sparked to life and
flooded words and thoughts into her mind. With nothing else to do, she screamed
the words flooding her mind.
    “I trust to the Mother’s choice. Dark
Watcher, immortal servant of the Light, with my power I summon you to wake.
With my will I do claim you. Hear me and awake. Evil walks the land. Your Sorceress
has need.”
    Darkness crept across her vision, stealing
the sights of the world from her until only the gray-edged image of the
brooding stone gargoyle remained.
    At her cry the power surged into the stone.
It softened under her hands. The shadow of his wings moved up and away as his
muzzle dipped down.
    A