Description:
The intellectual challenge of college and the warm embrace of a serious boyfriend have given Maya the wings she needs to break away from her bookish and shy reserve. Her ideal life comes crashing down when she and her boyfriend are accosted by a stranger. A stranger with glowing hands.
Maya's boyfriend is killed. She is kidnapped. Changed.
A rescue comes, but not soon enough.
Maya’s senses sharpen, her body becomes strong and agile, and she develops the ability to visually see the emotions of those around her as colorful auras…beautiful auras…tempting auras.
And then there’s the song…
Now, Maya must struggle to control the murderous appetite that fuels her new abilities, accept her altered condition and learn to trust two vigilante half-brothers she never knew she had. As she joins the battle against a secret network of powerful and destructive beings that call themselves "Angels", Maya vows to find and destroy the one who changed her.
On the bright side, at least Maya's oldest half-brother has stopped trying to kill her.
Maya's boyfriend is killed. She is kidnapped. Changed.
A rescue comes, but not soon enough.
Maya’s senses sharpen, her body becomes strong and agile, and she develops the ability to visually see the emotions of those around her as colorful auras…beautiful auras…tempting auras.
And then there’s the song…
Now, Maya must struggle to control the murderous appetite that fuels her new abilities, accept her altered condition and learn to trust two vigilante half-brothers she never knew she had. As she joins the battle against a secret network of powerful and destructive beings that call themselves "Angels", Maya vows to find and destroy the one who changed her.
On the bright side, at least Maya's oldest half-brother has stopped trying to kill her.
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Nook Code
FALLING
Excerpt From Book One of the Girl With Broken Wings Series by J Bennett
Chapter 6
“Your head,” the boy with elf eyes
murmurs as he puts me into a car. Then, “this is, um, awkward.” He can only get
me half in. I hear his steps moving quickly around the back of the car. He
opens the opposite door and pulls me the rest of the way across the back seat.
“Thank you,” I say. I want to touch
the blue glow around him. This will soothe the pain inside of me. Not pain.
Hunger. Great, gaping hunger. I am shivering, still sweating. The strap of my
bra has fallen to my elbow.
“Do we, uh, have a blanket in the
trunk or something, Tarren?”
“Get in the car.”
I hear sirens. They sound closer than
they could possibly be. Just like I think I can hear the boy’s heart thudding
in his chest, but that can’t be real.
“Yeah, it’s a warm night. She’ll be
fine.” The door by my head closes. I flinch at the sound. After a moment it
opens again.
“Seatbelt.” He leans over me,
grappling with the buckle under my back. His heart is a drum. I hear the whoosh of air in and out of his
lungs. I smell him, the sweat on him, the damp of his clothes. Glowing spirals
of blue cloak his body like colored steam. I must touch the color. I am moving
my arm, dizzy with even this effort but desperate. He is so close. My hands
grow hot. Something is happening to them. The skin of my palms is puckering,
splitting open.
“There we go.” The boy is gone. The
door closes. I keep reaching up hoping to catch any lingering wisps of the
glow. The skin furls back over my palm, seaming itself up into a dark X across
the center. The car is moving. Every breath smells like blood. I’m giggling
like a maniac, but only in my head. I shove my hands under my body, because
this will somehow help. I’m still burning to death, by the way.
The driver whispers to himself, “We
had him. We had him.”
The one with the backwards ball cap
and elf eyes says, “Look, we got her; that was the whole point.” He turns to
look at the driver. “We’ll kill Grand some other time.”
The driver doesn’t say anything, but
the color ratchets around him, bright along the edges. I close my eyes, but I
can still feel the skin pulling away from my palms again.
“Your eye is swelling up,” the
passenger says.
“I’m fine. You?”
“Ankle. Just twisted it a little. I’ll
throw some ice on it whenever. No cops behind us. We need to switch our plates
when we stop. Ditch the guns too. We left shell casings. Damn shame, though.”
The passenger pulls a gun from his belt, hefts it in his hand. “My guy went
through a lot of trouble to get this baby. Not that you care. Anyone can get
Glocks.”
“Put that away,” the driver says.
“We’ll cover cleanup later.”
The passenger turns to stare at me. I
watch the delicate shades of blue pulse around him.
“We should probably get her a shirt,”
he says. The driver doesn’t reply, but his eyes flick up to the rearview mirror
when we stop at a light.
After a while, the elf turns to the
driver and asks, “Is there any way this isn’t going to totally fucking ruin her
life?”
I can’t stop shivering. My body jerks,
so that I fall back painfully onto the buckle. The fire is starting to
separate. There’s the part ripping up my bones and evaporating my blood, but
there is something entirely different lifting out of the flames. This is an
exquisite hurt, all neural and twitchy. It’s hunger, but not like a hunger I’ve
ever known before. This hunger is cutting me wide open with a song, carving out
its own channels in my brain and snuffing out the human parts of me.
I think that I am going to die, and I
don’t want to, except that I do, because Ryan is dead, at least I think he is,
but maybe he isn’t, because he can’t be. He can’t be.
The hum of the car seems so loud, and
the passing street lamps blaze like sudden flares in the night. We leave behind the highway and then the
street lamps and then the other cars. I cry, but these are silent tears, hot by
the time they tip over my chin. We sail through the night for a long while, and
the tears eventually dwindle. All that is left is the hunger growing louder and
louder in my bones.
Eventually, the car stops. The driver
gets out. The door by my head is wrenched open. He grabs my shoulders and
pulls. The seatbelt digs into my hips, and I cry out.
“Damn,” he mutters. He grabs my wrists
in one hand and pins them against the back of the seat while he leans over and
undoes my buckle. The passenger side door opens.
“Jesus, where are we? You gotta piss?”
The driver pulls me roughly out of the
car. I hit the ground and curl my legs into my chest. There is only the hunger
and the pain and the shadow of Ryan lingering behind the trees that edge each
side of the road.
The driver pulls a gun from his
waistband, and I am not afraid. The amber glow is so bright around him that it
looks like some sort of unnatural fire. Everything is fire. I stare at the scar
running along his jaw and recognize him. The enforcer of Avalon levels his gun
at me. The blood stains across his shirt and jeans are already turning dark. In
his eyes I see a cold that I would never be cliché enough to call arctic except
that I can’t think of anything else. There’s a lot of blood on him.
“Tarren, no!”
Pant legs intrude into my visual
field.
“She’s infected. We have to do it now
while she’s weak.”
“One shot Tarren. She only got one
shot. She’s like…a hybrid or something.”
“We can’t take the chance.”
“Yes we can, because, uh, because you
could use her in your research. She could be, like, the key. The hybrids are
always the key in, you know, stuff.”
“We’ll take the body back to Lo’s
lab.”
“Cold hearted bastard! She’s blood.”
“His blood.”
“Our blood. She’s our blood Tarren.”
The elf boy’s voice has gone harsh. “She’s our family, and you can pretend that
you don’t care about anything anymore, that you’re suffering the weight of the
entire world on your shoulders, but you’re just afraid. Fuck you. I’m not
moving.”
“You done?” The gun doesn’t move.
“Yeah.” The elf takes a shaky breath.
“I mean no! She could help us. Think about it.
She’ll get strong. She’ll get fast. She can fight with us. We can…”
“And the hunger?”
My protector turns and looks at me. I can
hear how fast his heart is beating, the faint rush of blood as he clenches his
fists. The light around him swells. So blue with sudden streaks of lavender
lashing across. The song. They act as if they can’t hear the music flowing in
hot torrents all around us.
“We’ll buy her rabbits,” he says
finally.
“She’ll lapse and feed on humans.”
“No, she…”
“THEY ALWAYS FEED ON HUMANS.” The enforcer’s voice echoes into the trees.
He pulls in a deep breath. “You know that. She is Grand’s daughter. He’ll come
after her again and by then she’ll be strong. I’ll take care of it. Just get
out of my way.”
“I’m on fire,” I say for no reason. I
lift myself up to my elbows with difficulty. I don’t know which one I want to
prevail. A bullet would be quicker than this slow burn.
“No.” The legs in front of me step a
little wider. “No,” the elf says again. “We’ve crossed a lot of lines, but I’m
not going to let you cross this one. She may feed on humans one day, maybe not.
Until she does, she’s an innocent, and we don’t kill innocent people. Not
today. Not ever. She deserves a chance; I don’t care who the fuck her parents
are. If she crosses over, I’ll kill her myself, but not today.”
The enforcer keeps his gun
steady. “Gabe,” he says.
“I’m not moving.” Gabe spreads his
arms. “If you’ve got to kill her, then do it, but I’m sick of this shit. You
kill me first, ‘cause killing innocent people is what bad guys do. I’m not a
bad guy, and I’d rather be dead then see you turn into one.”
I hold my hands out in front of me and
stare at the new dark slits running through my palms.
“Am I a monster?” I whisper. “Is that
what this is?”
“No,” Gabe looks at me over his
shoulder. “Well, kinda, but we’re going to help you. We’re family.”
Tarren lowers his gun. A slow descent.
***
Visit www.JBennettWrites.com to download an extended sample of Falling. For news and updates about the
series or “Like” the series on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jbennettwrites
BIO:
J Bennett is a professional copywriter, as well as a
novelist. She lives and writes in Southern California.
Works by J Bennett
Girl With Broken Wings
Falling (Book One)
Coping (Novella, 1.5)
Landing (Book Two), To Be Released Jan 2013
Falling (Book One)
Coping (Novella, 1.5)
Landing (Book Two), To Be Released Jan 2013
The Vampire’s Housekeeper Chronicles
#1 Employment Interview With A Vampire (Short Story)
#2 The Vampire Hunter Comes to Call (Short Story)
#3 Duel With The Werefrog (Short Story)
#1 Employment Interview With A Vampire (Short Story)
#2 The Vampire Hunter Comes to Call (Short Story)
#3 Duel With The Werefrog (Short Story)
ONLINE LINKS:
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