The Awakened Teaser Scene Six: Huntress

Forewarning on this one: It gets a little spicy. You probably shouldn’t read any further if you are easily offended, particularly by seductive witches and evil in its every depraved form.
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Val Linley was not in a good mood. Working any miserably long shift at the coffee shop with the girl she despised more than life itself tended to have that effect on her, but it wasn’t her merely working with Kyla James that had her so upset tonight. It wasn’t what had happened that day, but rather what hadn’t that was worrying her…and what she hadn’t been able to find out as a result.

As Val made her way down a long dark alley in Manitou Springs, her lace-up black stilettos clicked against the pavement. She had made sure to put on her tightest black dress before leaving her apartment, to pin her dark silken hair up in dramatic swoops and to don an unnaturally red shade of lipstick. She was not going to take any chances tonight.

Checking her phone, she saw that she was three minutes early, which was far better in this situation than being three minutes late. Her nerves were on edge as she waited at the end of the alleyway, and she had to remind herself for about the tenth time to calm down. Val knew anxiety was not going to help her right now.

Suddenly, she felt a hand slip around her waist. Turning slowly, she looked up at Donovan and smiled deviously, trying not to let it show on her face what she was really feeling.

“Hey there,” she greeted him in a low sultry voice.

Donovan slipped his arms further around her waist and pulled her close to him, a gesture with which Val immediately complied.

Breathing quietly into her ear, he whispered, “Did everything go as planned?”

She tried to keep her composure, knowing how easy it was for him to discern any change in her emotions. “She’s being stubborn,” Val pouted.

Donovan loosened his grip on her waist. He didn’t look happy.

“Meaning what?” he asked tensely.

She had to keep him calm.

Val knew the last thing she needed was for Donovan to lose his temper. Tilting her head to one side and sliding her hand up his arm, she told him softly, “Don’t worry. I can handle Kyla James.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “And how exactly are you handling her?”

Val moved closer to him again, close enough that she was breathing onto his neck. “Trust me,” she whispered. Then she pressed her lips gently to his throat.

Donovan faltered slightly, but not nearly enough. It troubled her, the extent to which he was able to resist her tonight.

“And for what reason, exactly, should I do that?” he asked.

Val knew she had to lay it on thick if she was going to successfully divert his attention right now. “I have something for you,” she whispered.

He looked into her suspiciously again. “And what is that?”

She smiled as she kissed the side of his face. “You’re gonna like it.”

Sliding her hand up his stomach beneath the black trench coat he wore, she could see by the look in his eyes that she was getting to him.

“Tell me,” Donovan said.

Val looked into him with her emerald green eyes. “I’d rather show you,” she spoke to him softly.

She bit his lower lip as she kissed him on the mouth, and it was when she did this that Donovan finally broke. Grabbing her by the waist with both of his hands, he picked her up so she could wrap her legs around him and slammed her up against the brick wall behind her.

Val became ravenous, breathing heavily as he kissed her, knowing full well what it did to him when she did that.

Every time, she thought to herself as his hand slid up her leg.

He could have beaten her. He could have killed her…or at the very least denied her the standing in the coven she had been promised.

Such depth of power, such impenetrable evil…and yet the Nephilim were still so impossibly easy to manipulate.

Kinsey's Report

One of the very first people to ever read The Awakened decided to write a book report on it for her high school English class. I so loved this that I decided to pull some of my favorite quotes from her report just to share with all of you.
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“The Awakened is a story that stirs fire in the hearts of those who read it, capturing the essence of what it means to have destiny, courage, love and righteous defiance.”

“At this point Nathaniel obeys orders without question. Even when he knows something is not quite right or his mission is pointless, he never questions authority. However, all of that changes when he meets Kyla James, who makes him feel like he’s never felt before. Passion and fire ignite when they are together, making Nathaniel question who he really is and why he is really doing this.”

“Everything is becoming more complicated by the minute, with Nathaniel’s loyalties torn between protecting Kyla from the growing threat of the Alliance and protecting his standing in the Resitore, and the urgent pull he feels to follow his heart.”

“But (Nathaniel) simply cannot let go of Kyla, walk away and face the rest of his life without her.”

“Kyla James was more powerful in the spirit than even she knew. Donovan fears her gifts more than God Himself, because in her spirit she holds the power to set hearts on fire, to awaken and see what no one else can.”

“Who is Nathaniel Blake? Kyla knows he is hiding something, but for the life of her she cannot figure out what it is.”

“There is no explanation to the fire that ignites in (Kyla’s) heart when she is with (Nathaniel.) Even when she realizes that he is the reason Donovan has repeatedly attacked and threatened her, she still can’t stay away from him.”

“(Kyla’s) life hangs in the balance of a war she refuses to acknowledge exists anymore.”

“What (Kyla) refuses to admit, however, is that she is a torn and bleeding child of God who needs only to be protected and shown what it means to truly love and be loved.”

“(Kyla) begins to realize that some things are worth risking everything for.”

“This story brings to life the reality of what love and hate can do. The choices we make affect the destinies we are called to, and like this story, sometimes we are called to act on the extraordinary, to defy all reason in the name of love. Love conquers all, and it will always find a way. For, ‘Love is as strong as death, its jealousy as cruel as the grave. Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the flood drown it.’ (Song of Songs 8:6)”



Miss Kinsey Kouma

The Awakened Teaser Scene Five: Edlowe

This is one of the more high-intensity scenes from book one. You definitely won’t want to read this if you aren’t into spoilers.
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Kyla couldn’t remember a time she’d ever run as fast as she ran from the cemetery that night. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever had to. Cross Country races were one thing, where she competed for a cheap piece of ribbon with some silver scrawled writing on it, or maybe just the pride of knowing she could beat everyone in her division. But running in a race, even a race where she gave it all she had didn’t compare to what this was. A desperation for escape, a flight for survival. The vain hope of evading the reality on her heels.

It was fear that propelled her, that pushed Kyla’s legs to move harder and faster than she even knew they could. Like a jolt of adrenaline being shot through her veins, released by the thing she hated most in this life. But if fear could be used now to put distance between her and Nathaniel Blake…this liar behind her who wasn’t even a man, Kyla was going to take it, and take as much of it as she could. Whatever it required for her to get away from him, that was exactly what she was willing to do.

Running down the road away from Donovan that night…the night that had since become blurred in her memory, Kyla thought she knew then what it was like to feel a blur take her vision, to be disoriented and confused, but to keep pushing forward in spite of this. Whatever she had felt on Majestic Parkway, it wasn’t at all what she felt right now. This was worse. Much worse. Not because Nathaniel had tried to hurt her like Donovan had, but because her fear was no longer founded on speculation.

It wasn’t just an idea in her head or a prodding question at the back of her spirit telling her something wasn’t right. Nathaniel’s own words had confirmed her fear. He was the one who told her he wasn’t human.

It was a surreal feeling when the condo came into view, but at the same time it caused a hollow suspicion to rise in her. Kyla knew that Nathaniel could have easily caught her by now. If he’d wanted to, he could have had her by the arms again in a matter of seconds. She had seen the way he could move, and something told her that what little she had witnessed didn’t do justice to what he was really capable of.

Kyla shoved the thought from her mind and picked up her knees to push the last fifty meters up the inclined road. She usually despised the last fifty meters of a race, but tonight, she didn’t mind. She didn’t waste time going inside, realizing as she neared the condo that there was nothing Loni or Matthew could do to protect her. The last thing Kyla needed was to be somewhere she could be found, because logic told her (despite how senseless logic seemed at the moment) that no shoddily-built structure could keep her safe from Nathaniel Blake. She doubted even prison bars could do that if he really wanted her.

No, her family couldn’t help her right now. There was only one person who could.

Kyla raced to the driveway and jumped into the Civic before she let herself breathe. Pulling the spare key down from the visor, she attempted to start the engine, but it took her four tries to get the key into the ignition. When she finally got it, she threw the thing in reverse, slammed her foot down on the pedal and tore out of the driveway.

It wasn’t until she’d passed Paradise Circle that she realized she left her phone on the deck, but there wasn’t a chance she was going back for it now. She just had to get to Caden. She had to get where she would be safe.

Trying to shake the thought away of what she knew she couldn’t deny (but wished with everything that she could) Kyla trembled as she gunned the accelerator and sped up the road. She tried to calm her breathing, but the full mile of sprinting she’d just pulled off coupled with the fact that Nathaniel Blake apparently wasn’t human made that completely impossible.

It had never taken her so long to drive up to Edlowe Road, and that was even with her pushing twenty over the speed limit. Or at least it felt that way. Thankfully the cops that kept the highway patrolled at night didn’t catch her, which was oddly fortunate in itself, considering that they were usually all over the place.

Couldn’t make this situation much worse if they were, Kyla thought. She wasn’t sure anything could.

But then something happened that reminded her why it was a bad idea to think something like that, even if she didn’t actually say the words out loud. As Kyla wove her way swiftly through the canopy of trees and drew nearer to Skyline Drive, she had a brief moment where relief filled the place where her fear had been kept, like oxygen in the lungs of a suffocating man. She was close now, so close she could almost feel him. Even as she saw the road up ahead, she could imagine the safety of Caden’s arms.

And then it happened.

Suddenly, so suddenly she couldn’t make sense of what she was even seeing, a dark, black…thing flew at the Civic and crashed against the windshield. It flashed in her mind like a picture from a nightmare, a hideous creature with jet-black wings; red eyes, fangs bared…no trace of humanity in it despite that it held the face of a man.

It didn’t click in Kyla’s mind that what she was seeing was real. This whole night felt unreal to her; now more than ever. It seemed to move in slow-motion, like time had slowed down so the image could be deciphered, so her terror could be felt as it seeped into her heart…so the horror of the real could bring death to the relief she had almost felt, crushing in one final blow whatever might have remained.

Eternity couldn’t capture the length that it felt, though she knew it all happened in the blink of an eye. There was nothing about time that was right anymore; nothing about logic or the hope of escape. There was nothing but a shattered windshield, a monster with black wings and a sheer, unadulterated terror that clutched like death itself at Kyla’s throat.

Shrieking at a higher decibel than her voice had ever reached, she swerved off the side of the road, plunging the Civic into an embankment beneath the trees. She cracked her head against the steering wheel at the collision, hard enough that she was momentarily disoriented. Blood dripped down her face from a gash over her left eyebrow; Kyla felt it as she struggled to right herself. Pulling her hand away, she saw red on her fingers, and as she locked in on the image, all she could remember were those red glowing eyes.

Jerking away from the door, she tried desperately to work her way to the other side of the car. She just couldn’t do it fast enough.

Right when Kyla reached it, the driver’s side door was ripped open. A hand grabbed her first by her arm and then by her throat, yanking her out of the car.

Kyla tried to fight it off…whatever that thing was, but her vision was too blurred and her senses too confused for the attempt to be effective.

She could feel the sharp gravel scraping up her legs as she was mercilessly dragged by this creature up the road. She screamed in pain and struggled to free herself from its grip, but it was no use. It wasn’t about to let her go.

In a matter of seconds, the pain reached an intensity her body couldn’t bear, and Kyla began slipping in and out of consciousness. This went on for longer than she could determine, and even in the few brief times she would finally come to, she still couldn’t lock in on what was happening to her.

The next thing she was distinctly aware of was her body being thrown to forest floor and the wind being knocked out of her on the impact. It was so painful Kyla thought she might suffocate; and when she considered what was being done to her (or what was about to be done to her soon) she couldn’t help but question if that was really such a bad idea.

Her eyes shot open when she hit the ground and she gasped for breath, becoming frantic when she couldn’t catch it. She wanted to look around her and see where she was, but when the air wouldn’t come, Kyla knew her current location was far less important than her ability to get oxygen to her lungs. It took thirty-five of the most terrifying seconds of her life, but finally the air began to trickle in.

She remembered something Caden told her when she was nine years old, after she’d fallen out of a tree and she couldn’t catch her breath. “Take slow, small breaths,” he’d said, reassuring her the whole time that she was going to be okay. “Don’t try to get the air. Don’t be afraid. If you calm down, your breath will come back.”

Kyla remembered that now as she struggled in a panic just the way he’d said not to, and it was when she listened to the words he had told her all those years ago that it started to work; at least enough to enable her to figure out where she was.

Jerking her head back and forth and all around her, Kyla tried to take in the scene. She could tell she was somewhere on the mountain, but that was about it. She had no idea how long it had been since she was pulled from her car or how far her attacker had dragged her into the trees. All she could see was the black…threatening and thick, closing in around her moment by moment and cutting off any chance of escape she might have otherwise had.

It was the darkest night she had ever seen, the darkest feeling she had ever felt, and as she lay there petrified on the forest floor, all she could think was that this had to be a nightmare.

Slowing her confusion and ignoring the pain, she looked deeper into the dark and her vision began to adjust. It was clear she’d been dropped in the thick of the forest, just as she’d suspected, but that didn’t mean she knew where she was. All the woods looked the same around here; the towering pines, the moss-caked remains of dead, fallen trees. And they all smelled of pungent evergreen, which didn’t do much to help her navigate her way.

She could have been anywhere, and though that thought certainly concerned her, it wasn’t what drove her raging pulse right now.

Slowly, her vision began to adjust further. She squinted into the dark to look for a way out, but just as it started to come clear, a tall looming figure appeared in her sight. Screaming, Kyla crawled backwards away from it…away from this man who was cloaked in shadow.

And it was then that she knew who had brought her here.

“Donovan…” she breathed in a furious whisper. Recognizing his cold twisted grin, Kyla felt like she was going to throw up.

Donovan’s grin widened at the sound of his own name. Taking a step forward, he pulled a black, jagged blade from beneath the trench coat he wore. “Hello, Kyla James.”

His eyes held her in arrest through their horror and beauty, spellbound by a force she was unable to comprehend. She was captured by them…by the flame that existed beyond the windows of his blackened soul. And it was then that she realized, then that she knew what she should already have known:

Those eyes were not human.

The Awakened Chapter List

The official finalized chapter list for book one of the series.
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1. “…through gates forbidden.”

2. “…some are made of stone.”

3. “…the dangerous leadings of loose-leaf paper.”

4. “…there are no shades to black and white.”

5. “…Donovan.”

6. “…behind sapphire eyes.”

7. “…when defiance is justified.”

8. “…heroes don’t always come with swords.”

9. “…playing doctor.”

10. “…phone call.”

11. “…thicker than blood.”

12. “…lying isn’t always the easiest thing.”

13. “…in the name of science.”

14. “…what wakens in you when you least expect.”

15. “…if the stars could talk.”

16. “…to risk the sight of those who see.”

17. “…the huntress.”

18. “…some truth looks better from a distance.”

19. “…cat and mouse.”

20. “…if only in your mind.”

21. “…the arms we run to.”

22. “…nightmares.”

23. “…they burn like fire.”

24. “…and the truth shall set you free.”

25. “…Aria.”

The Awakened Teaser Scene Four: Coven

And now it’s time for us to get into one of the darker scenes of the story.
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It was dark in the Coven chambers. Buried deep underground between the ancient cliff dwellings of Manitou Springs and the cavern structure that ran for miles beneath those mountains, it was always dark in here. Torches hung along the adobe walls, guiding the thirteen figures cloaked in black that made their way into the ritual room.

Normally these meetings were planned. Tonight’s was not. That was why every Coven member was currently uneasy, questioning what Donovan could want at a moment’s notice, knowing that anything their lord ever wanted at a moment’s notice usually cost them blood.

Balak stood along the wall with his arms folded across his dark, barreled chest. He didn’t like this. Meetings in this place were tense enough as they were, but having to call this one himself (especially when he didn’t know what it was that Donovan wanted) was enough to put even his nerves on edge.

He could see the fear in the eyes of every witch that filed into the cavern. The only eyes he didn’t see fear in were the one that should have held it; the girl who stood at the edge of the wall, not yet allowed near the ceremonial fire at the center of the room, not yet inducted as an official member of the Coven. She was the thirteenth member in waiting, and one that Donovan was particularly fond of.

And right now, her eyes were set on Balak’s.

Balak shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze, not wanting his lord to notice. If he did, Donovan might be tipped off as to the reason for his tardiness earlier that evening when he was supposed to be on watch.

Fortunately, Donovan didn’t notice. He was much too distracted as he entered the chamber to pay attention to the green-eyed beauty along the wall.

Everyone froze when he entered, clasping their hands in front of them and keeping their heads down. Their hoods were pulled in a way that their faces weren't shown, and they kept their eyes fixed on the fire, but when Donovan stepped up and addressed these that had made a covenant to serve him, it was apparent in every one that they feared the worst.

“Our plans have been altered,” he told them. “It seems we have been met with resistance a bit earlier than expected.”

The others didn’t react, at least not outwardly.

Donovan went on. “We will need to realign our strategy to deal with this…issue. That is why I have called you here tonight, so that we can take care of this matter quickly.” He looked up and directly to the girl who stood against the wall.

The gesture made Balak nervous.

“Step forward,” Donovan commanded her.

Immediately the girl complied, walking gracefully across the stone-floored chamber to stand before him. Donovan lifted her chin with his fingertips, smiling as he looked into her porcelain face.

“I have an assignment for you, my dear.”

Her emerald eyes glowed brighter in anticipation, illuminated by the light of the fire. She was excited. Even in her working to hide it, Balak could see that clearly. He knew what this one looked like when she was excited.

It always made him uncomfortable when Donovan touched her…when he looked at her like that. They were a lot alike, those two. Their eyes held the same hollow darkness, the same blackened fire that burned for the blood of the awakened ones. Still, as evil as this black beauty was, Balak knew she didn’t compare to Donovan.

The bloodlust of a witch was one thing. The maniacal drive of the Nephilim was another.

Transportationalish Fun

Okay, so I thought it would be fun to put up some pictures of the different vehicular devices that are used by our main characters in this story. I am an extremely visual person, so this sort of thing helps me out a lot. It might be completely pointless, but at least I will be entertained. And that is what matters, after all.
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Caden’s Jeep




Kyla’s Civic




Nathaniel’s Ducati