Soul Awakened
Authors: Jean Murray
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Chapter Thirty-Six
- Chapter Thirty-Seven
- Chapter Thirty-Eight
- Chapter Thirty-Nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-One
- Chapter Forty-Two
- Chapter Forty-Three
- Chapter Forty-Four
- Chapter Forty-Five
- Chapter Forty-Six
- Chapter Forty-Seven
- Chapter Forty-Eight
- Chapter Forty-Nine
- Chapter Fifty
- Chapter Fifty-One
- Chapter Fifty-Two
- Chapter Fifty-Three
- Chapter Fifty-Four
- Chapter Fifty-Five
- Chapter Fifty-Six
- Chapter Fifty-Seven
- Chapter Fifty-Eight
- Chapter Fifty-Nine
- Chapter Sixty
- Chapter Sixty-One
- Chapter Sixty-Two
- Chapter Sixty-Three
- Chapter Sixty-Four
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
Soul Awakened
Jean Murray
ISBN:
978-1-937254-96-4
E-ISBN: 978-1-937254-97-1
© Copyright Jean Murray 2012. All rights reserved
Editor: Kathryn Steves
Layout/Typesetting: jimandzetta.com
Crescent Moon Press
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Box 269
Middletown, NJ 07748
Ebooks/Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Crescent Moon Press electronic publication/print publication: December 2012
www.crescentmoonpress.com
To our American heroes: find
your
hope, hold onto it, and never let it go.
Black armor glistened in the moonlight. Perfect camouflage against the sand and stone of the night desert. Poised to strike, its arms curled into large claws with back arched and tail raised to the heavens. Patiently waiting. Patiently watching. An opportunist ready to kill. The master assassin has nothing but time in the darkness. One strike to paralyze its victim. The prey will not know its enemy until it begins to savor and consume every morsel with savage glee.
A familiar refuge of horror.
Black and desolate like his soul, the darkness draped the landscape of Bakari’s world. His prison for how long? He could gage only by his hunger, an unbearable pain burning through his chest and eating away what little of his soul remained. The darkness consumed everything, but his insanity.
Until now.
The onyx obscurity wavered into shades of grey. Bright sunlight danced and flickered in the barren corners of his mind beyond his reach. Bolts of lightning ripped across his skin and mind and tore at the fine fabric of his consciousness. The sheets of darkness fell like ash and scattered into the cold abyss.
His mind retreated—fearful. He had been tricked before only to suffer at the sadistic hands of his captor. The next arc struck harder and deeper. The white inferno fried what tendrils of his coma remained. In the wake of his agony, the soft caress of a human soul and the scent of sweet honeysuckle penetrated his skin. The very element that fed his power—living energy.
Like water for a dying man, the human’s energy trickled but did not satisfy his ravenous hunger. His chest clenched into a ball of fire, ignited by the minuscule energy he absorbed into his soul.
The vitality extinguished as quickly as it came. Left barren and wanting, rage consumed him. The goddess Kepi would pay for this new level of depravity. To have living nourishment so close, but denied to feed his dark hunger, was a torture like no other.
The walls of his wooden crypt pressed in upon him. He struggled to move an arm or leg, but the spell of his paralysis was unyielding. He screamed but not a word past his lips. In his mind he thrashed against the invisible bonds, willing himself to break free.
He had not reacted this way since the fateful day of his confinement to his tomb. During his imprisonment he had withdrawn into himself. Numb to the world. His only safeguard against the goddess and the oppressive confines of his prison. Those thoughts of Kepi worsened his agony and current insanity.
Silently screaming, cold tears slipped out of the corners of his closed eyes and trickled down into his hair. He called out to the merciful gods to save him, but in all this time none were answered. His despair suffocated whatever hope he may have left.
Bakari,
a soft melody of a voice broke through the chaos in his mind
.
Ease your pain.
She will come to you again. Hold your will, young god. She will set you free.
The dark mouth of stone and steel exhaled a damp breath that set coldness in Kendra Carrigan’s bones. The heavy footfalls of the large security group echoed down the sandstone hall to the enormous prison entrance. She pressed herself against the wall, afraid she would be crushed by the pall bearers’ powerful strides. With the three heavy tombs upon their shoulders, the procession passed through a large iron gate that loomed ahead. Not much of a welcome home for the Underworld god’s lost son after years of captivity in a wooden box.
She swallowed against her tight throat and took a few steps closer to the opening.
Dang, if it wasn’t pitch black in there
. Asar, the Egyptian God of the Underworld, assured her the confinement of the sarcophaguses to the dungeon was a necessary security precaution. He failed to mention the lack of electricity and lighting.
Large iron bars surrounded the opening like fangs, ready to swallow her the minute she stepped through. Her heart sped up to a quick drum. She nervously fingered the flashlight in her sweatshirt front pocket, along with the spare batteries she always kept with her.
She much preferred the harsh florescent lighting in the museum basement over this. But, she had a job to do. Despite her resolve, the tips of her Uggs remained glued to the lower edge of the iron gate. Worse, her clothes clung against the clamminess of her skin and tightened her shirt down like a corset. She tugged at her collar.
Don’t be a sissy
, she chastised herself for fretting over the dark. It wasn’t like she was a stranger to dark and cramp spaces. She had been crawling through Egyptian tombs since she was a child, but the fact remained— nyctophobia. Whoever said, repeated exposure to your fear would dampen the physical effect, was full of it.
“Kendra?”
She yelped and threw the flashlight into the air. The metal Maglite hit the ground with a
clink
and rolled across the sandstone.
“Sorry, I did not mean to surprise you.”
She leaned forward with her hand over her heart willing it to slow. “No. I’m a little jumpy.” Kendra shifted her gaze up the Underworld Legion Commander’s enormous seven foot body that packed extraordinary amount of muscle under his beautiful ebony skin. Scarification tattoos on his arms and shoulders rippled with the shift of muscles underneath.
Her eyes wandered to the firm round curve of his buttocks when he bent over to pick up her flashlight. His black linen shirt pulled up in the back to reveal the intricate markings that disappeared under a waist band of weathered leather pants. From what she had heard the scroll work extended to his ankles—a status symbol of Bomani’s rank and superiority among the dark warriors. She jerked her gaze to the floor.