The Awakened Teaser Scene Three: Road

Here is a short and sweet teaser scene I think you might particularly enjoy. Oh, Kyla, when will you stop getting yourself into trouble?
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Kyla’s feet pounded against the road in a frantic rhythm, matching with her heart and the throbbing in her head. She knew she’d lost too much blood. She could feel it dripping down her back as she ran, but she was determined to make it home before she lost enough to pass out.

Everything spun around her in a disoriented blur, and she was halfway convinced that nothing in the past five minutes had really happened the way her mind was telling her it had. Then, just as she ran past the green Falcon’s Rest road sign, she was jolted at the sound of a voice shouting behind her.

“Kyla!”

She screamed and spun around in a panic, not knowing what she would find and not having the coherency to imagine it. But when she saw the blonde-haired boy tearing down the street toward her at full speed, Kyla instantly felt equal waves of terror and relief.

He sprinted over to her much quicker than she knew he should have been able to. Grabbing her just as her knees gave out, Kyla collapsed involuntarily into his arms, yelping in pain when her back fell against his chest. She saw Nathaniel’s eyes grow wide when he pulled away from her carefully and turned her so he could look at it. By his silence, she could tell what he was thinking…and by the blood that was left on his shirt when he pulled away. But she wasn’t concerned with that right now.

“Are you okay?” she blurted out frantically.

Her excessive bleeding obviously worried her, but at the moment it wasn’t her primary concern. Her thoughts were still set on the nightmarish wrestling match she’d just witnessed on Majestic Parkway, and this mysterious boy who had thrown himself into harm’s way in order to save her from that sick, demented man.

A man he appeared to know…

Without even knowing what she was doing, Kyla started to ramble out a string of questions she was far too dizzy and emotionally raw to articulate.

Nathaniel didn’t answer a single one except the monotone, “I’m fine,” he gave her before he lifted her in his arms.

It sent a shock of pain through her body when he held her like that, but Kyla was far too weak and confused to work her way out of his grip. He carried her up the street without a word, and though she wasn’t conscious enough to see where they were going, she did take notice of the enormous castle-looking home that he brought her to the front door of at the top of Falcon’s Rest.

“Where…” she tried to ask him.

Nathaniel didn’t let her finish the question. “Shh…I have to get you inside. Try not to talk.”

Kyla didn’t understand where they were or what had happened or why she was being carried into this mansion of a home, but she didn’t ask him again. Instead she clung to Nathaniel’s chest and told herself this was all a dream. It had to be.

Things this crazy didn’t happen to her anymore.

My Heart on The Awakened

Several people have asked me about my heart on this story and why I ever started writing it in the first place. Granted, there is a lot more to it than what I’m about to tell you, but I think this might be a good place to start.
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It is my personal belief that the greatest deception we (as the human race) face today is that God will not bring His judgment again to the earth. Keep in mind, this is just my opinion, but it’s screaming at me now in a way that I can’t shut it up. I think it is this, our ignoring that He is coming, that the climax of this story is reaching toward. The whole thing is wrapped up in truth, every word that I write in it, which I find ironic since it’s usually in the times that truth is so tainted to me that I am able to write these things.

I see it in every battle, in every struggle that Nathaniel and Kyla and Caden face…everything they are fighting for coming down to this point: That the Son of Man will come again. Even if you don’t believe it. Even if the thought doesn’t make you feel good. He is still coming.

The truth beyond what we want to hear is that everything that can be shaken will be, and only those who recognize Love will be unmoved. I want to challenge the idea of “How can a God who is Love bring judgment?” and show through this story (both to the readers and to myself) how there is love in His judgments, love in His fire, love in the shaking…that this is what it means for the King of all that is to be consumed with zeal for His bride.

I might not understand it yet, but I know there is a violence to the love of God that in a human picture (or a not so human one) is like Nathaniel’s love…like Caden’s love...like Kyla's love. His heart evokes violence over His bride, and there is nothing He will not do to have her; nothing He will not tear down to make her His. Because it wouldn’t be love if He didn't.

That’s the point I am reaching for in the end, that it wouldn’t be love if His fire didn’t come. It wouldn’t be love if He didn’t do what He said…if He didn’t war on behalf of the ones He calls His. Those who wear the seal on their heart, who have been awakened to the reality of who He is. Not who the world says He is or who the church says He is…not even what history claims.

But who He is.

I want to establish that this waking, this theme of sight that is carried throughout the story isn’t something that is marked on a chosen few, but rather that it is only few who choose it. The choice is there, given by blood…because freedom can only come by sacrifice. Whether it is the freedom over a nation by the blood of its sons or freedom for mankind through the blood of the Son, freedom has to be purchased by blood.

I want to write it out plainly: This is the cost of freedom. This is the cost of love. If you want it, you have to bleed for it.

Maybe this is a fictional story, but there is so much truth to it that it sometimes frightens me. That's why I refuse to sugar coat it and make people think that having their eyes opened to the spiritual realm is some fun thing they can be a part of. Like, “Accept Jesus into your heart and you’ll feel happy and tingly inside and everything in your life will get awesome.” That would feel like deception to me, and the deepest kind of betrayal if I were to do a thing like that.

I want to lay it out clearly that if you aren’t willing to lose it all for Him, you are not worthy of Him, and it’s Caden who really drives that across. I haven’t actually written it yet, the part where that theme comes fully into play, but I have seen it in visions. I’ve heard Caden's voice in my head and felt the power behind it, and it honestly takes my breath away. It would be impossible to explain the point he is brought to, the heartache and the conviction and the intensity behind every word. But the way he says it is like this:

“If you aren’t willing to give Him everything, then you aren't worthy to call Him your King.”

Maybe that might sound a little harsh or some people might take that as offensive, but having been at that point myself, I really don’t think it is. Because humans weren’t made for sissy love. It’s in our genetic makeup to have something worth sacrificing for. We want a reason. We don’t want something that’s just handed to us clear and free, that doesn’t come at a price. It might be easier, but love isn’t love if it doesn’t cost you something...and people know that!

In an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability, I will be honest with you about this:

I fight with God more than anyone I know. Truth to me tends to blur from black to white to black again, but it’s the times it falls to grey that I hate the most. I know God exists, and that there’s a good chance He’s not a liar, but I do not know how to trust Him. I used to love Jesus more than my life, to the point that I wouldn’t hesitate to die for Him, but I shut off my heart after it got broken, and it's taken a really long time to heal. I do not know how this story ends, but through everything I used to be and all I have become, I am struggling alongside it to see the revealing of truth. And if there is one thing I can guarantee, it is that I will not be the one who determines the ending.

Needless to say, writing Kyla isn't a stretch for me.

In light of what I just admitted, I know I probably seem like the last person who should attempt to write this kind of story, but I could no more deny this than I could deny who I am. (And yes, I realize that on both accounts I try to repeatedly.) That still doesn’t change what plays out in the end. Not because of all the people who have continually spoken to me of the success I will know and the favor I will have; not because of the countless times I’ve been told that I would write a story that would change what love is to the world…not even because of the promises I have been given over it that have kept me alive. But because I believe in something.

I believe I am supposed to do this.

The Awakened Teaser Scene Two: Donovan

This is an excerpt from Chapter Eight, the point in the story that actually starts to get good.
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Peering through the sparsely needled branches of a pine tree by the road, Donovan’s eyes locked on the girl who emerged from the last blue-roofed condo on Ponderosa Way. She had her auburn hair pulled back tonight, away from her face so it wouldn’t bother her when she ran, and by it he could see the crease in her brow that suggested her frustration. Nothing unnatural there. This one was often frustrated.

He adjusted his position as she moved, careful to keep close to her and yet far enough away that his presence wouldn’t be discerned. It was easier than it used to be, given the girl’s refusal to engage in the sort of behavior she used to anymore. Convenient, truly, that her father had died. Kyla James was always such a headache for him before that.

Donovan grinned to himself at the memory. Such a shame, he thought as he watched her now. All those logs careening out of control, with no one there to stop them from crushing dear Daddy into the ground. It may as well have been a steamroller, but then that wouldn’t have looked much like an accident.

And he needed it to look like an accident.

Watching Kyla run up the road with her long, evenly-paced strides, Donovan thought how much easier it would be if he’d been able to take care of her that way. Not nearly as fun as watching the agony it caused her, but if he’d been able to kill her back then, he wouldn’t be here now watching her like this, trying to figure out how she ever found Nathaniel Blake.

Still, Donovan couldn’t have killed her then and he knew it. She was too protected…just like the boy. It was that sickening joy Kyla used to have that made her all but untouchable to him, guarding what she possessed so he couldn’t get to it. It had almost driven him mad.

But that was the brilliant thing about humans: Steal their joy and you had an open target to their heart. Take the shot and you’d strike them down. And when they were left there writhing in their own blood, in the broken pieces of what they used to have and who they used to be, it was in that moment that they made the choice; either get back up or lose their soul.

Kyla didn’t get back up.

Donovan could have killed her after that if it hadn’t been for the boy; his constant covering over her, his ceaselessly warring on her behalf, sending those to keep guard over her life that so continually guarded him. Caden must have known that something wanted her, even if he didn’t know what it was. As far as Donovan knew, Caden didn’t even know of their existence…of anything of the Coven or especially the Alliance. But he did know enough about the realm of the dark to be able to tell when something was wrong.

Donovan’s inability to kill Kyla James after that was really more of an annoyance than anything since she was no longer moving in the power that threatened them. Still, it was an issue he wished could be resolved. The Howell kids were one thing, but Kyla wasn’t like them. Before she had decided to abandon all she was and run from that power, she had posed a far greater threat to the Coven’s purpose here. A greater threat even than the boy.

Fortunately, Caden Howell was gone now, and there was no other means by which Donovan suspected her capable of being re-awakened.

At least that was what he’d thought before he saw her with Nathaniel.

Glaring forward as Kyla pumped her long runner legs and charged up the hill, Donovan questioned again how she had found him. Suspicious didn’t begin to describe one like Nathaniel Blake just so happening to come into her life. It had to be more than chance. It had to be more than Eli.

In the world of the Nephilim, coincidence did not exist.

It had been over a year since Donovan had watched her like this. Kyla had grown far more beautiful since he’d seen her last summer, and her soul had grown darker as well.

Donovan quivered at the thought of her.

To have access to one like this, with such raw power and such raw beauty, he would kill for such a thing.

He would kill for far less.

Kyla may not be moving in it anymore, but that power was still there. He could feel it as he drew nearer to her. It never really left the ones who were marked by it, this power that ran deep in their blood. Some of them just chose to deny it.

Dancing at the edge of his mind, a thought came back to Donovan that had been toying with him for the past twenty-four hours, daring him to trust in a scenario he knew was too perfect to believe. But if it were true (or if it could become true) that Nathaniel would have a reason to protect this one, then Donovan could use her for more than he had realized.

That was the theory he was operating under now. He had to think positively, too, or he would have to admit he’d been placed in a position of disadvantage with the Resitore. And that was simply not acceptable.

Donovan shuddered at the thought.

He would not let Seth win this. This was his war…or at least it would be before the end. The brotherhood was not going to stop what he had worked so hard for, shed so much blood for. They were not going to stop anything because he would stop them first. And he would do it by turning their own against them, the strongest among them to the dark they so avidly resisted.

He would do it by turning Nathaniel Blake, whom he could feel here even now, watching the girl.

A grin spread slowly across Donovan’s face at his discernment of Nathaniel’s presence. It seemed fortune, after all, had found him again. And he knew exactly what he was going to do with it.

The Awakened Teaser Scene One: Prologue

Alright, kids. Time to kick off our Awakened teaser scenes with the Prologue of the very first book. Hope you like it.
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Rachel Blake trembled as she held her son’s hand. “Just a little farther,” she whispered to him. She tried to sound optimistic, even flashed him a smile, but her efforts were wasted. Nathaniel could see right through her. He had always been able to see through her like that, or through anyone for that matter, to a measure that was sometimes unsettling.

Just one of the many things that made him different than other nine-year-old boys.

Clutching his mother’s hand as she dragged him through the woods, Nathaniel tried not to be afraid. He didn’t know how she managed to navigate her way so swiftly through the trees, but he had yet to question her on it. He may not have known why they were running or where they were going or why his mother was so frantic she was shaking, but he did know this: He trusted her with his life.

Nathaniel held his breath in the eerily still night, which was darker somehow than it should have been. Even if the clouds overhead hadn’t veiled the stars, there was a depth to the dark he had never seen. Or maybe it only seemed that way. Maybe the darkness he felt pressing in on him came from someplace he couldn’t see. Either way, he didn’t like it.

Brushing limp blonde strands of hair from his eyes, Nathaniel pushed himself to run harder, determined that they would not slow down on his account. He could feel the urgency that pulled his mother forward, as if death itself were on her heels.

Rachel skidded to a halt in a move so abrupt her feet kicked up dirt in Nathaniel’s face. He immediately started coughing and she grabbed him in response, covering his mouth and whipping her head back and forth like she expected to see someone…or something leap out at them from the forest.

She wasn’t breathing normally, Nathaniel noticed. He looked up at his mother while her hand was still clasped over his mouth. She was even more afraid than he realized.

“Quick,” she told him.

Rachel dragged him off the trail in an attempt to find cover, and as she pulled him with her into the woods, a jagged rock tore through the knee of Nathaniel’s jeans. It sliced cleanly into his skin, but he didn’t make a sound.

Another of the many distinctions between Nathaniel Blake and others his age was his uncanny ability to ignore pain; something that proved quite beneficial in a situation like this.

Rachel directed him to the hollowed-out shell of a rotten tree. “In here,” she said.

Nathaniel realized she didn’t know he was bleeding. He also realized that this tree, though a very effective hiding place, was not big enough for the both of them.

Looking back at her, he told her flatly, “No.”

Rachel looked down on him with a pained expression. “Baby, please,” she begged. “I need you to hide…just for a little while. I’ll…I’ll come back to get you as soon as it’s safe.”

Nathaniel clenched his jaw stubbornly. “You’re not leaving me here.”

Running her long slender fingers through her strawberry blonde hair, Rachel tried not to cry. He was making this worse for her, Nathaniel knew that, but he wasn’t about to give in to what he could see behind her eyes.

“Who are we running from?” he asked her point blank.

Rachel’s eyes softened helplessly as she touched his face. “I can’t explain that now,” she choked. “Nathaniel, please…tell me you trust me.”

Her words stung deeper than the gash in his knee.

“Baby, look at me,” she whispered when he avoided her eyes. She took his arms in her hands and rubbed them softly.

Nathaniel’s face was tight as he met his mother’s gaze, but still he couldn’t force the words.

“It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.” She tried to hide from him that she was terrified and failed at it miserably. “I promise he is not going to hurt you.”

Nathaniel’s voice quivered as he spoke, out of anger as much as fear. “Who isn’t going to hurt me?”

Rachel hesitated and looked behind her again, then quickly back to her son.

“Don’t leave me, mom,” Nathaniel whispered, pleading with the sapphire eyes that were a mirror image of his own.

Grabbing him with shaking hands, Rachel held him so close that her tears spilled onto his face. Nathaniel couldn’t move. He just stood there frozen as she kissed the top of his head, paralyzed by the truth he didn’t want to see.

“Mom…” he choked.

She took his face in both her hands. “I love you, Nathaniel,” she told him. “More than I knew I could love anything.”

Tears burned in his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.

“Be strong, baby. Be strong for me, please.”

With his jaw still tensed, Nathaniel whispered in a shaken voice to the woman who gave him life, “I trust you.”

Rachel swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “Forgive me,” she whispered. Then she squeezed his hand and disappeared into the forest.

Nathaniel knew exactly what she was doing. He just wished that he didn’t. Shaking as he hugged his knees to his chest, he pressed his back against the rough, rotted bark, attempting to stay as hidden as he could. It was dank and musky in the hollowed-out tree, the air so thick he could hardly even breathe. He could feel things crawling all around him on the inside of the wood, but there was no telling what they were…or what waited for him on the outside.

The forest was hauntingly still when his mother’s footsteps faded, to a measure more disturbing than Nathaniel had ever felt. Waiting there in the dark for the fate he could feel pulling at the edge of his soul, he breathed hard and kept his eyes open. He had never known a fear like this. It constricted him in a way that his lungs weren’t even able to fill with air. But what he felt in that moment didn’t compare to what he felt in the next.

A shrill scream sounded that split the silence, piercing the darkness that hung all around him. Nathaniel went rigid at the sound; eyes wide, heart frozen, the blood drained completely from his face. He felt a shock of fear and a wave of nausea, and an impulse to run despite what he was told. But he didn’t listen to his instincts; he listened to his mother, to the words she had spoken which he knew would save his life.

His breath was hollow and the night air was thick. Everything spun and twisted in different directions, distorting reality so Nathaniel didn’t even know what was happening anymore. He didn’t know if he was still in the mountains or if somehow he had hallucinated all of this, but he knew he wasn’t dreaming. He only wished he was so he could deny this now.

He only wished he could deny that unmistakable scream.

There was a shuffling in the distance, and low muffled noises that he couldn’t make out. His blood stopped cold when the sound grew nearer. Someone was out there. They were looking for him, and with every step they took they were getting closer.

Nathaniel sucked in his breath and held it fast, keeping his eyes open as he peered through the tree. His mother knew what she was doing in hiding him here. He was covered by the dark, kept safe in its bitter embrace…protected by the very thing that was his enemy.

Again, the forest fell silent. Nathaniel stopped breathing so he could listen for a sound, but all that reached his ears was the same empty nothing he felt ripping through his soul.

That was all it took for him to bolt from his hiding place. Springing from the tree, he tore through the forest, guided only by the light of a dimly lit moon. The clouds broke over it now, just enough to let its light reflect down on the trail, like a beacon to guide him to the place where hope died.

Nathaniel slammed to a halt and his whole body froze. His eyes grew wide in sickened horror. He knew it when he saw his mother’s lifeless body lying broken on the trail. He knew it before he even touched her, before he checked her pulse or tried to see if she was still breathing.

He knew that she was gone.

Nathaniel could feel it in the absence where he would have felt her spirit. It just wasn’t there anymore; that permeating warmth, that depth of love, the promise of safety that only a mother could give. None of it was there. All that was left of Rachel Blake was a body…an empty shell of who she really was.

Collapsing to his knees, Nathaniel’s hair hung down in his eyes.

This couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be gone. This woman was the only thing he had in the world.

Brushing several strawberry-blonde curls away from his mother’s face, Nathaniel jerked his hand back quickly when he saw the blood. The laceration was deep, at least several inches.

Someone had cut her throat.

It was a knee-jerk reaction, his crawling backwards away from her. He was frantic as he tried to distance himself from what he didn’t want to see, but at the same time he couldn’t look away from it.

That was when the silence of the forest once again broke away. They were footsteps Nathaniel heard, and they came from somewhere in front of him, but it was too dark for him to see a thing. The clouds that blanketed the moon made that completely impossible. But then the footsteps sounded again, slowly this time, and the white glowing orb in the sky broke past the clouds, opening up just enough light for Nathaniel to see.

He froze at the sight of the figure that emerged, paralyzed in fear at the man’s approach. Nathaniel squinted hard into the dark, attempting to make out the newcomer’s features, not that it would matter what this stranger looked like if he was there to kill him.

The man looked young, probably in his early twenties, but his presence was commanding. And there was something Nathaniel felt from him that left him completely terrified.

The stranger looked down at Rachel’s body robotically, emotionlessly. Even though Nathaniel could see his eyes by the light of the moon, he couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He couldn’t understand his expression at all, which alarmed him even more than this man’s approach.

Suddenly, the stranger turned to face him. “Do not be afraid,” he said. “I am not here to harm you.”

“Who are you?” Nathaniel asked in a shaky voice.

“My name is Seth.”

Nathaniel swallowed hard. “What do you want from me?”

The stranger named Seth didn’t advance, just looked down knowingly on the frightened boy on the path. “I am here to protect you, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel’s face went white. This man should not know his name.