Much love to everyone that has read the first book of my "War Angel" Trilogy. Here's a little something from "War Angel II: Where Angels Fear to Tread" to wet you appetite as I work hard to finish writing the final book. I plan to finish up the storyline with a bang!" Enjoy.
Prologue
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trange, unfamiliar hands held her down. She tried to
escape their grip with limbs that were suddenly limp and useless. The
overwhelming sensation of suffocating made her gasp for air as she felt as if
all of the oxygen had suddenly been sucked out of the room. It felt like death.
She opened her mouth to scream for help but no sound escaped her lips. She was
powerless to stop whatever was happening to her. Sleep paralysis was the
medical term used to categorize her current condition but she would disagree
vehemently. What she felt was not the effects of a common sleep disorder caused
by lack of rest, anxiety or stress. What she felt was a sinister, malevolent
entity that very much wanted to do her harm. She had laid down to take a nap
and now she was trapped. Her legs began to move but not because she had
regained control of her body. Someone, or something forced her thighs to spread
apart against her will. Suddenly, a small hand slipped inside her and the
terror she felt for her own safety was replaced by fear for her baby. Sharp,
agonizing pain forced Jahaira to finally wake up screaming, frightened and alone
in the darkness of her bedroom. It felt as if someone was twisting and wringing
out her insides like a wet towel.
The pain did not subside when she finally opened her
eyes and she realized that she was having contractions weeks earlier than she
was supposed to. The child in the big, round tummy she had grown to love over
the past eight and a half months caused her a kind of pain that she had never
known as it fought to be born. She slipped her hands between her legs and found
that her nightgown, her panties and even her bed sheets were soaked. Her water
must have broken when she was asleep but it was too soon. The baby wasn’t due
yet. The king-sized bed seemed longer than a football field as she struggled to
move over to the end of it from all the way in the middle of the mattress. Just
as she tried to hang her feet over the edge to slip her feet into her slippers,
another wave of crippling pain shot through her abdomen maliciously like
menstrual cramps from hell. Doubled over in agony, she tumbled from the bed and
onto the hardwood floor. Fortunately for her child, she landed on her knees and
not her belly. Frantically, her fingers clawed at the top of her nightstand as
she searched for her cellphone, only to discover that it was missing.
“Olive!” she screamed, desperate for her live-in nursemaid
to come to her aid.
Four more times she called out for help but no
one answered. There were only the echoes
of her own voice throughout the house. With spasms tightening her lower back
into knots, she somehow managed to get to her feet and stagger out of the
bedroom. Out in the hallway, she used the walls for support as she walked
barefoot to the staircase, praying that Olive was downstairs on the couch,
maybe sleeping too heavily to have heard her cries for help. At the top of the
stairs, she gripped the bannister so hard that her knuckles turned white as
another contraction ripped through her lower body. If it had hit her on her way
down, she might have taken a nasty tumble that would have probably ended with
her dead at the bottom of the steps from a broken neck. She grit her teeth and
moaned until it passed, then hurried down as fast as she was able.
“Olive, where are you?” Jahaira called out again as
she became even more alarmed when she saw that Olive wasn’t on the couch having
her routine, late afternoon snooze. The television was on but no one was
watching it.
Again, the pain returned with a vengeance, forcing her
to double over and scream. She tried breathing like the doctors had taught her
to keep from hyperventilating. Contractions so close together meant that the
baby was coming soon and she was not ready. This was not how it was supposed to
be and it was certainly not the way she and Lenox had planned it. Every step
forward was an ordeal but she had to get to the telephone in the kitchen. A
journey of just a few feet seemed more like a thousand miles but she eventually
made it. She snatched the receiver from its base and clicked frantically like a
madwoman when there was no dial tone. She would have screamed again if she
hadn’t already been gritting her teeth in agony. Sweat trickled down her
temples and beaded up on her forehead as she tried to figure out what to do
next. If she didn’t get help soon, both she and the baby could die. The nearest
neighbors weren’t very near at all and if the trek to her own kitchen had been
so strenuous, there was no way that she would be able to make it that far on
foot. Feeling faint and light-headed, Jahaira firmly planted both hands on the
marble countertop next to the sink in order to steady herself. After she
recovered from her brief dizzy spell, she raised her head and noticed something
very disturbing through her kitchen window, at the edge of the tree-line just
beyond the backyard, close enough to terrify her but far away enough to make
her doubt her own eyes, she thought she spotted the pale faces of her twin
aunts in the shadows. That’s impossible, she thought. She and Lenox had
moved all the way out there to be safe. They had been careful and there was no
way those two should have been able to find them. That’s when she heard a loud
crash at her front door as something began to split the wood. She was about to
scream when a hand reached around from behind her and covered her mouth.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from "War Angel II: Where Angels Fear to Tread."
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