Emerge: The Edge: (Book 1.5) Read online

  EMERGE

  THE EDGE

  Book 1.5

  A Prequel Novella

  Melissa A. Craven

  Midnight Hour Studio

  Atlanta

  Also by

  Melissa A. Craven

  EMERGE: The Awakening

  Available on Amazon.com

  PRAISE FOR THE EMERGE SERIES

  2015 International Book Awards Finalist

  Originality is the distinguishing characteristic of this story! Young Adult Fantasy has been pumped out like never before, but Melissa A. Craven has skillfully developed an Urban Fantasy set in a real life, believable context. I can almost believe this ancient race of Immortals actually lives among us.

  ~ Hub Pages Reviewer

  Emerge – The Awakening is a novel that grabbed my attention within the first few pages and refused to let go until the very end.

  ~ Jamie Georgianson for Readers’ Favorite

  Never once when reading did I stop and think, this kind of reminds me of (whichever book insert here). Bottom line, get this book. It’s amazing and worthy of your time. Warning though... you might get obsessed.

  ~ The Book Goddess

  This was such an impressive start to a unique new series. The characters are the true stars, they grew with the story and were portrayed realistically with their stroppy attitudes, tantrums and snark. Allie was a breath of fresh air when it came to heroines. She was totally badass.

  ~ Literary-ly Obsessed

  Emerge: The Awakening is a story that begins as a single snowflake and ends in an avalanche. Melissa A. Craven has put together a story that unfolds and unfolds and unfolds again, revealing characters of unusual depth.

  ~ Amazon Reviewer

  From the first page to the last, Melissa A. Craven has a talent for keeping her reader’s attention as she reveals Allie’s story, layer by interesting layer. And when you get to the last page, you are left wanting more!

  ~ Amazon Reviewer

  EMERGE: The Edge Copyright © September 2015

  By: Melissa A. Craven

  Midnight Hour Studio INC

  Atlanta, Georgia

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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

  For more information contact: [email protected] or visit the author’s website at www.melissaacraven.com

  Book cover design by: Zoe Shtorm

  Interior design by: Melissa A. Craven

  [email protected]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9909819-3-0

  ISBN-10: 0990981932

  First Midnight Hour Studio Print Edition: September 2015

  DEDICATION

  This one is for Mom.

  Because she always liked the long version best.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Words cannot express how grateful I am to my family. The last six months since Emerge: The Awakening was launched has been an incredible roller coaster ride for us all. I could not have done any of this without the love and support of you all. To my sister, Angela and my mother, Debby, who is the only one who will still talk to me about my book without rolling her eyes. This book is for you, Mom! And to my awesome dad, David, for giving me his very special gift of sarcasm.

  To the one who shall remain nameless, thank you for your countless hours of acting as my sounding board and dealing with my narcissism and one-track mind. I literally could not have done this without you. And to everyone I ever asked to read the loong version—I’m so sorry, it was terrible! But The Edge is the result of all those tireless long drafts. I hope you all enjoy it! To Jenny, I love you but, seriously, get out of my brain! To my uncles, Kerry and Chris, thank you both so much for your valuable input. Stacey Randolph, Kayla Howarth and Michelle Lynn, your feedback was incredible! To all my other beta readers, thank you so much for your enthusiasm.

  To my editors, Amber J Chapman and Deb Bedell, thank you for all your help! And to Zoe Shtorm for the amazing cover art, yet again! And thank you also, to YABooksCentral.com for hosting the cover reveal and book launch!

  A big thank you to the city of Cleveland for all the wonderful memories and providing the perfect setting for Emerge. And to Kelleys Island especially. The island as it is portrayed in the book is purely fictional, but is based on the real Kelleys Island near Sandusky, Ohio.

  Finally, I thank God for the constant reminder that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Over the years, circumstances always bring me back to writing—my favorite thing to do in the whole world.

  ONE

  Aidan:

  “I can’t believe I’m back here again.” Aidan glared up at the Art Deco gates of Cliffton Academy like they were the bars to his prison cell. The school was a small, but elite community that provided Aidan and his friends with some semblance of a normal life. He just wasn’t sure if he could face another year of pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

  I’m going to suffocate here. It took everything he had to cross the perfectly manicured lawns teeming with students and teachers. Fountains splashed and shimmered. Winding paths and small, gated alcoves branched off from the courtyard here and there, offering intimate shaded corners of respite from the late July heat. The gardens were bursting with colorful flowers and the Lake Erie breeze drove the noise of the bustling city center into the distance. It was all such a pleasant picture, but Aidan wanted to run in the opposite direction.

  Time to suck it up and do this. He sighed, but the deep ache in his chest reminded him he was still healing.

  “Can’t be that bad already?” Quinn slapped his back, making Aidan draw in a sharp breath.

  “Sorry, I forgot! Still sore?”

  “It’s alright. I’m just so exhausted, and coming back to this place isn’t exactly conducive to my recovery.”

  “I know. It sets my teeth on edge to be back here again. I don’t know, man, maybe you should’ve stayed in Tibet a few more weeks. You aren’t back to your normal self yet.” Quinn gave him a worried look.

  “I’ll take school any day over that place.”

  “Take it easy today, Aidan. Try not to let it all get to you.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Aidan shrugged, wincing at the tug of torn muscle not quite healed.

  “Quinn!” Sasha waved him over to a group of her friends.

  “Looks like I’ve been paged.”

  “Go. I’m fine.” Aidan slid his earbuds into place, selecting Elgar’s Serenade in E-minor for a soothing distraction. He gazed around the quad at all the eager faces and groups of friends reuniting after six weeks of vacation. And then he noticed the wide arch of empty space surrounding him and the way everyone waved and called out to him, but never ventured close. Aidan’s reality came slamming back into him like a punch in the gut.

  Here we go again. He’d spent the last six weeks with his kind. Now he was back in the mortal world where everything that sucked about being Aidan was ten times worse. Their extreme reactions to his power sucked, but he was used to that. It was the onslaught of all their mortal pain that was difficult for him to manage. Every knee scrape, paper cut, and broken bone—every hurt feeling, bruised ego, and heart-wrenching breakup, Aidan faced it with them.

  Immortals processed pain in a very different way. It still hurt like hell, but it was fleeting. With mortals, the pain lingered longer and
was more poignant. Coming back after so many weeks away, it would be difficult to get used to it again. He was just beginning to learn how to erect a barrier between himself and everything they felt, but it required an incredible amount of concentration and a level of focus he’d completely neglected over the past two months.

  They just feel too damn much!

  At that moment, everyone around him was happy and in high spirits, which he didn’t get to experience with them. As a healer, Aidan only got the sorrow, never the joy.

  “Hey Aidan!” Jason called across the quad. Aidan waved back, feeling his spirits lift at the sight of a familiar face. Jason was a teammate and a long time friend. He wasn’t too complicated or bright, but he was loyal. There were a few other friendly faces around, like Kayla and the rest of the football team. People who would be happy to see him.

  Definitely better than Tibet.

  If Aidan could have a do-over, he would’ve made drastically different decisions that night, almost two months ago. It was just before the end of the school term and he was bored and more than ready for the escape of summer vacation. There was a party, he’d been drinking from Gregg’s special stash—the kind that was slightly more potent to Immortals and therefore off limits. The small flask was just enough to make Aidan feel a little reckless, and a lot stupid. Racing the train seemed like a fun idea at the time; the thrill of driving fast, speeding along the tracks until he pulled ahead of the engine. But it was the turn that threw everything off. He should’ve been able to make it in plenty of time, but he took it too fast and lost control of the car. She didn’t make it. Even now, his heart lurched at the memory of his beautiful, but completely totaled Maserati. He’d missed the train, but rolled his car down a hill and wrapped it around a tree.

  What was I thinking? But it was just another one of those reckless moments when Aidan was so desperate for a distraction he acted impulsively. The mess that followed was a total nightmare and the look of disappointment on his father’s face still haunted him.

  Aidan vividly remembered the moment of impact; the screech of the train trying to stop, the blare of the whistle as it sailed past, narrowly missing him. The crunch of metal. The way his body bounced around as the car tumbled. The excruciating pain as he slammed into the tree, the sound of glass shattering and then silence, as the closest thing to death he might ever know, took him. He was out for nearly three weeks while his body regenerated. When he woke, he was in a clinic in the mountains of Tibet and the worst of it was over, but it would still take many more months before he was completely recovered.

  Aidan’s journey to Tibet was a long road of lies and deception that led to tampering with medical records, coroner’s reports, and a lot of memories. When Aidan was pulled from the wreckage, he was dead; every bone in his body, broken. He was packed off to the morgue where his brothers had to break in to steal his body. They shipped him to Bangladesh in a coffin, and Jin traveled with him to the remote mountains of the Himalayas. Aidan spent the entire summer there as he slowly healed from all the visible wounds. The pain of regeneration was tolerable, but he’d never felt so weak and disconnected from his power. And here he was, months later, and he still felt lost and alienated from the person he was before he “died.”

  There was a Senate hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, where young Immortals could go while they recovered from grievous injuries, but Aidan’s healing gift made it impossible for him to be around other patients. Instead, Gregg sent him to Abbot Jing Zong and the Monastery where Aidan was the only Immortal in residence. He nearly lost his mind from the boredom.

  Aidan worried that he would have to face criminal charges for his reckless behavior. He’d risked discovery and caused far too much effort to cover up his death. His behavior did not reflect well on Naeemah and Gregg in their position as Governor, but somehow, it all went away while he was recovering. The Senate left it to his parents to discipline him, which hadn’t really worked out in his favor. He wouldn’t be driving again until after graduation—in two years. And his allowance was going directly into his college fund for the next year.

  “How was your summer, Aidan?” He snapped out of his reverie to find a pretty brunette staring up at him expectantly.

  Crap, what was her name? He tugged on his headphones. She was his lab partner just last term.

  “Short.” His tone was unintentionally harsh and Aidan watched in dismay as she stammered and rushed away.

  Then he remembered.

  I am such an asshole. He watched her retreating figure, wanting to run after her but he knew that would only make it worse. Her name was Eva and she was mildly Autistic. It was a secret she kept locked up so tightly, she often made herself, and Aidan, sick over it. She was highly functional, but her limitations were mostly social.

  He remembered how difficult it was for her to work so closely with him in chem lab last term. For the first few weeks, she went entirely mute whenever he spoke directly to her. By the end of their last semester together, Aidan had coaxed her out of her shell and they’d become hesitant friends. And he’d just scared her to death on a day that was already a huge challenge for her.

  Aidan slid his earbuds back in place and made his way toward the symphony hall. Mortal girls always had such strong reactions to him. Sometimes they were flustered and frightened, much like Eva. Other girls reacted to him obsessively, following him around campus like an annoying, giggling, whispering shadow. In middle school he discovered that flirting shamelessly sent them scurrying away.

  Guys were different. They were either mildly okay with him as long as he didn’t get too close or it went to the other extreme, and they absolutely despised him for no other reason than his power made them uneasy.

  His Immortal family also responded to his powerful nature, but they tried to hide it for his sake. Some were better at it than others, but it still stung when even his own mother balked at his touch. At sixteen, Aidan was already the most powerfully gifted Immortal of his generation. Probably the most powerful in many generations. His friends always deferred to him, which he ignored most of the time, but it was a lonely life when everyone’s natural inclination was to keep him respectfully at arms length.

  He knew his family loved him and it hurt them to see how much he suffered in his isolation, so he did what he could to put their fears to rest. He pretended. Aidan was the epitome of the jovial, cocky, all American high school boy everyone expected him to be. He smiled and cracked jokes. He flirted with the cheerleaders and he played football. He went to crazed parties and routinely got into trouble. He was the guy everyone wanted around, but no one wanted to approach. He was a total fake. But with mortals, it worked. It made him something they could understand. With his family, his pretense erased their looks of pity and concern. But he’d done it for so long, he wasn’t sure who he was anymore.

  “Aidan, walk me to class?” He turned to see a beautiful blond marching toward him with determination.

  Headphones are the universal sign for leave me alone. How is this difficult? He reluctantly tugged on his earbuds again.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” He put his mask firmly in place as he flirted with the vapid girl.

  “Sucks coming back, doesn’t it? I heard you spent the summer in Spain. We were in Madrid. You should have called.”

  “I was in Bangladesh, actually,” he lied.

  “That’s Spain, right?” Her brow puckered in confusion.

  “No. No it isn’t.” Check out Google maps, babe. Just once in a while, give it a little spin.

  “Aidan! Got a minute?” Graham waved him over.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. Gotta run.” Aidan left her blinking in confusion to join Graham by the steps of the Symphony Hall.

  “Dude, you looked like you were drowning there. You sure you’re doing alright?” Graham asked. “Maybe you should take another week or two off.”

  “I just need to get back to normal. If I’m forced to rest any more, I’ll lose my freaking mind.”

  “Is it extra we
ird this time?” Graham asked. “Coming back after so much time away from all this lying and hiding?”

  “You’re on the cusp, man. A few more weeks and you’re the newbie.” Aidan gave him a playful shove.

  “Happy birthday to me.”

  “It’s normal,” Aidan said.

  “What?”

  “Feeling scared shitless.”

  “I kinda wish I didn’t know it was coming. I feel like a ticking time bomb.”

  “I wish I could say the wait is worse than the Awakening,” Aidan said.

  “Thanks. You’re a big help.” Graham rolled his eyes. “See ya later.”

  “Later.” Aidan took the steps up to the symphony hall two at a time. It was his favorite place on campus—on just about any other day. Today it was a reminder that he could be heading toward a very different symphony hall. If he was a normal guy. He’d received the offer from the Musical Conservatory of Vienna, Austria last year. Of course he couldn’t go. Vienna was the last place any Immortal would step foot willingly. It was the headquarters of the Coalition. He’d be a fool to even consider accepting their offer. But God, he wanted it. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and it killed him to turn it down.

  Other schools were interested. He had a standing offer with the Cologne University of Music in Germany, but his parents wouldn’t let him leave until he had a few years of training under his belt. Just six months after his Awakening was the wrong time. Logically, he knew that. But it didn’t change his desperate need to use music as an escape.

  Stepping into the orchestra pit lifted his spirits more than anything else could have. His position as first violinist and Concertmaster of the Cliffton Orchestra was the best thing about school. That and football were the closest he ever got to normal life.

  “Hey Aidan!”

  He nodded toward the group of giggling flutists as he made his way to his seat. The familiar scent of horsehair and the piney aroma of freshly applied rosin snapped him out of his irritable mood as he checked out the sheet music for the day. They would be doing scales and warm-ups for the first hour. Too many students who hadn’t picked up their instruments all summer would need the practice.