Alright, kids. Time to kick off our Awakened teaser scenes with the Prologue of the very first book. Hope you like it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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.
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