by KA Young
Prophecy Of The Female Warrior
The Nephilim Warrior Series
By
K.A. Young
Copyright © 2013 by K.A. Young
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights
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part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark
owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have
been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks
is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
For my sweet husband who supports me in all I do….
Chapter 1
Pain is something that I never fully understood until this moment. You can’t even comprehend the agony of losing someone that was part of you until it happens to you. You always know and accept that life ends in death, but you also believe that you have more time than you truly do. You envision a satisfying, long life. You picture yourself wrinkled and happy on the front porch, rocking in a comfortable chair, looking over at the man you love who’s seated next to you. His eyes are crinkled with laugh lines, permanently imprinted on his handsome face; proof of a long life filled with happiness. At least, we Southerners picture it that way; the front porch is the quintessential icon of Southern culture.
My Joe and I spent many evenings on the front porch of our plantation-style home, sipping sweet tea and listening to the sounds of chirping crickets along with birds singing their delightful night songs. We should have had more time; he was only thirty-six. Way too young to die.
“Anna, are you ready, hun?” My sister, Julie, interrupted my thoughts as she popped her head into my bedroom. “Anna, sweetie, you’re still in your pajamas. The car will be here any minute.” My sister’s lovely blue eyes beheld me with pity. I hate pity.
She was the picture of perfection, as always, with her gorgeous blond hair swooped up in a loop ponytail. It was her go-to style for anything formal, although she could wear her hair any way she liked, unlike me. I had to keep my hair longer than I preferred because of the shape of my face. My sister has a heart-shaped face that I was envious of and always have been, while my face has more of an oval shape; well, maybe a little closer to a round shape. She also has a full four inches on me in height. My five-foot-four frame was quite petite and lacked that long, leggy elegance she possessed. Every other guy chose her over me, except for Joe.
I let out a long sigh as a tear trickled down my face, causing my sister to make her way across the bedroom to my favorite reading chair, in which I was slumped.
“Oh sweetie, it’s going to be okay.” Julie went to her knees and put her arms around me. I sobbed into her shoulder, unable to control my misery. As I finally pulled back, I realized I had made a mess of her dress.
“God, Jules, I’m sorry.” I grabbed a tissue from my box of Puffs and attempted to clean her up.
“Don’t worry about it. Come on, let’s do something with your hair and get you into your dress.”
The drive to the funeral home was torture. I sat next to my sister in the back of the limousine that had been reserved for Joe’s family. We rode in silence most of the way. I stared out the window with Julie holding tightly to my hand while she leaned into her husband, Bill, who sat on the other side of her. She kept glancing at him with concern for me etched on her face when she thought I wasn’t looking. I tried to ignore it because I knew she meant well. Julie and Bill had a picture-perfect life. You know, the lovely home not too far from mine in the suburbs, two kids: one boy and one girl as well as a golden retriever.
Joe and I had attempted to conceive for years. We visited countless doctors and underwent a million tests. All of them claimed we were perfectly healthy. They said that it just takes a little more time with some couples. That was all in the past now that Joe had been added to the growing list of family who were deceased.
My sister and I were all that was left of our own family. Our parents died in a car crash when I was eight and Julie was six. Our grandparents raised us after that in the best way they knew how; by making sure we had an education and always attended church. Being raised in the Bible belt, there was no other choice. Julie adjusted well. She fit in perfectly, where I never did. Sure I had friends, but I certainly had to work at it.
I could always see through people. I had an idea of what they were actually thinking even when their words said otherwise. I have strange abilities that I despise. Julie, however, was proud of it, always telling people that I was psychic. People always assumed I was adopted because the differences between Julie and me didn’t stop with just fitting in. While she was the girl next door, I was anything but. Julie’s skin tone is creamy white and smooth. Mine is highly unusual, a mix between golden tan and pallor Asian. It’s strange, I know, but no stranger than the fact that my hair is auburn with faint pink undertones that almost glittered in the sun. People asked me all the time if I had it colored. Nope, I am just a walking, talking freak of nature. The only feature of mine that I like are my eyes; they’re a deep, emerald green. Joe loved my eyes.
We arrived at the funeral home and I made my way to the chapel. As we walked in, I spotted Joe’s mother and brother, Dan, right away. It wasn’t hard to do; they stood at the front, right beside Joe’s casket. They were surrounded by people offering condolences while staring down at Joe.
Mary Wilkins, Joe’s mom, was a typical Southern belle that refused to do anything except age gracefully. She had her hair done every week; getting it washed, rolled, and set. Her abundant silver hair sat on top of her head in the shape of a beehive, cemented in place with hair spray. She wore a modest, black dress suit, complete with a pearl necklace and matching pearl earrings. Dan, dressed in a black pin stripped suit, stood dutifully by her, holding lightly to her elbow as she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.
God I hated this! I was suddenly furious. Joe and I both hated funerals. Neither of us ever wanted one. We never could see the point. Who wanted a ton of people staring down at a dead body? I had told Joe’s mother of his wishes, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“It isn’t proper not to have a funeral,” she stated angrily. “People need closure; they need to pay their respects. My Joseph would have wanted a funeral and I never heard him say otherwise. Besides, he had a million friends; everyone loved Joseph. What would people think?” She rambled on and on, so I gave in. I didn’t want to fight with her. I didn’t have any fight in me at that moment. I’d just been informed that my husband of ten years had died of a brain aneurysm and they needed to know where to send his body. I was in total shock.
My sister gently took my arm, shaking me out of my reverie. “Anna, we have to go and look at Joe. I know you don’t like all this, but who does?”
“I know, just give me a sec.” I took a deep breath and put my shoulders back. “Okay, let’s go.”
Attendees stepped aside for us as Julie assisted me to the front of the chapel. When we reached the casket, it took me a minute to gain enough courage to glance down at my husband’s body. Joe’s brother sidled up beside me, then took my hand in his and squeezed. I looked up at him and offered him a teary smile of thanks. Mary tugged on Dan’s suit sleeve onl
y a moment later and whispered something in his ear. He let go of my hand and walked out of the chapel, running an errand for her while leaving me to the task at hand. I looked down into the casket.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” I whispered to him as I looked at him lying there. He didn’t appear like himself. It wasn’t him. He was gone. His mother had the mortician fix his hair as if he were a five-year-old, all swooped over to the left side of his face.
He never wore his hair that way. He was a tax attorney for a local law firm and liked to keep his hair clean cut and styled off his face. He thought it gave him an honest look and I had always thought it suited him. Something commanded me to reach in and fix it, but when I touched him, I was bombarded with horrific images.
Something was standing over Joe as he sat in his office, poring over documents on his computer. He seemed completely unaware that a monster nearly ten feet tall with blazing red eyes and fangs had its long claws sunk deeply into his scalp. I wanted to warn him. To tell him to run away, but it was too late. A moment later, his mouth opened in an attempt to scream, although no sound came from his lips. The agony he was experiencing was evident on his face as his body slumped and his head fell forward while blood ran from his nose.
I let out a scream that rattled the rafters. “Joe! Oh my God!” I panted as I backed away from the casket.
I felt like throwing up. I had experienced visions in the past, but nothing on the same scale as what I had just felt with Joe. When my eyes refocused on Joe’s body, I became suddenly aware that I was the only one who had just witnessed his death. The room had been silenced by my outburst. Every eye was on me. Joe’s mother, visibly embarrassed, began to scold me as though I were a child. I would have given her a piece of my mind if I hadn’t been so shaken up. Right now, it was all I could do to remain standing.
“Anna, you must control yourself. We are all mourning Joe, but he is with the Lord now. He went quickly and painlessly.” Or so the doctor explained to us at the hospital. I wasn’t so sure of that anymore. She pulled a Kleenex from her black, patent leather handbag and began to pat my forehead dry with it. I was sweating profusely.
“Why don’t you let Julie take you to the ladies’ room? Julie, dear, will you please help Anna to the ladies’ room?” It was more of a command than a request, as my mother-in-law nodded toward my sister.
“Sure, Mary, not a problem. We’ll be back in a minute. Come with us, Bill.”
After asking Bill to wait on us outside, she helped me to a chair in the corner of the bathroom, and then went to each stall, opening it to make sure we were alone before she turned her attention to me. “What the hell happened back there? You look white as a ghost.” I sat there dumbfounded, still not believing what I had just seen.
“Anna, you’re scaring me.”
I exhaled the breath that I was holding and tried to put into words what I had experienced. As I recounted the events, she gaped at me like I had totally lost my mind.
“Anna, you know that I believe you when you tell me about your little visions and yes, I believe you did just see something, but a monster? It is perfectly understandable for you to be experiencing depression while grieving over Joe and your subconscious is probably looking for a reason, something to explain why he was taken from you so early in life, but you can’t let your imagination run wild right now. As hard as it is to do, you have to accept that he is gone without creating some crazy situation in which he died.” She sighed, she was trying to help, but her type of help was really starting to piss me off.
“I know it sounds crazy, Jules, but I swear to God it was real. I’m telling you something murdered Joe. Something that was not human.” Seeing Julie’s eyes fill with pity once more at my confession was enough for me. I’d had enough.
“Never mind, I’m just tired and in shock. Let’s get this over with.” I stood up and wiped off the mascara that ran under my puffy eyes. I threw my bag over my shoulder and left. I didn’t wait for Julie, instead I all but sprinted to the chapel and took my place on the front pew next to Mary, zoning out until the service was over.
I’d always been able to zone out, to take my mind elsewhere. I could recede inside myself to a place that gave me a sense of peace. My sister called it meditating and thought it was weird. I didn’t care, though, it helped me. Moreover, I needed all the help I could get right now.
After the service, it began to rain as we made our way through the cemetery where all the Wilkins family was buried. We were under the tent where you could hear the rain pelting down against the vinyl. Others stood outside the tent, holding umbrellas.
As they lowered the casket into the ground, his mother’s sobs were audible as well as those of a few other family members. However, his brother sat still as a stone, refusing to look. Today was the worst day of my life. I couldn’t stop the tears, nor did I want to, and the ache in my chest was throbbing now. I didn’t know what I was going to do without Joe. It was more difficult now that I believed some monster had taken him from me. My emotions seesawed between anger and fear until I couldn’t take looking at the sight of my husband being lowered into the ground any longer. So, I looked around the cemetery instead.
Through my blurry vision, I noticed two other families were burying loved ones and then I spotted someone standing a few feet away; his body mostly concealed by a large oak tree. A long, black leather coat with a high collar was his only protection from the rain; his dark black hair was dripping wet. I could only barely make out his eyes, yet they were haunting to me; they held my gaze so strongly that I had a hard time looking away. There was something about him that seemed familiar and, then again, not. I leaned against the back of my seat and nudged Joe’s brother with my shoulder. He turned to me with a questioning eye.
“Dan, do you know that man standing by that tree over there?” He turned to look and his lips tightened into a straight line.
“No, and he looks like some kind of thug. Wait for me to walk you to the car.” Dan looked at me with such compassion. He was one of the sweetest guys I knew.
The service finally finished and I forced myself to keep my head down so that I wouldn’t look at the stranger while everyone got up to leave. As people exited, I received pats on the shoulder, lots of hugs, and condolences until it was finally only family remaining.
I waited while Dan walked his mother to her car and told Julie and Bill to go on. They had to pick up their kids from his mom’s house, anyway. Julie kissed me on the cheek and asked me for the third time if I wanted to go home with them. I politely declined, once again. I loved them, but couldn’t bear the thought of her kids running around me all night. I needed the solitude of Joe’s and my home.
The man was still standing there by the tree when I stood to leave. Something about him pulled me toward him. At first, I fought the urge, but it became so strong that I couldn’t resist anymore. I no longer questioned the draw to him; I just began to walk, not caring that I was getting soaked.
The closer I got to him, the more he stepped out from the protected shadows of the trees. He was a tall man, about six-and-a-half feet tall. He had a muscular build that made him seem as wide as he was tall. He reminded me of a warrior from a highland movie. I wondered if we even produced men like this anymore. I guess that was a stupid question, though, since he was standing right in front of me. My breath caught in my throat as I stopped two feet from him. More details of his features were apparent to me now, his skin tone was an unusual bronze color and his eyes, those dark, molasses-colored eyes bore into mine. They drew me in. He began to walk closer to me. I was overwhelmed with the desire to go to him. I needed to be near him.
“Anna!” I heard Dan call my name with urgency, but I couldn’t look away; my gaze was fixed on this strange man. There was just something about him. I couldn’t explain it to myself. I was finally shaken from my trance when Dan arrived and put a protective arm around my shoulders. He was afraid, I could feel it.
“Anna you’re soaking wet. I asked you to wai
t for me.” He glared at the large man in warning. Both anger as well as fear was radiating from Dan, and this emotional response puzzled me.
“She is in no danger.” At the first sound of the stranger’s deep baritone voice, my heart almost stopped. How had his voice produced such an effect on me?
“How—Why?” I wasn’t sure how to phrase what I wanted to know.
He inclined his head as if to speak when Dan stepped between us.
“Look, buddy, you stay the hell away from her. I mean it, man, you are not wanted here. You understand me?”
He didn’t respond verbally to Dan, but smiled a threatening smile that showed all his teeth. It was obvious to me that Dan’s threat had no effect on this man, I got the distinct feeling fear wasn’t an emotion he was very familiar with unless he was evoking it in another. Dan put his arm around me and steered me toward his truck. “Let’s go, I’ll take you home. You must be freezing.” I reluctantly walked with Dan to the parking lot, turning back before getting into the truck. The man was still standing there, watching me.
I got into the truck and Dan closed the door. He climbed into the driver’s seat of his giant, red Ford pickup and tore out of the parking lot.
Dan kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. “I figured you would rather ride with me than take the car with Mom. Anna, I’m not trying to scare you, but I want you to tell me immediately if you see that guy or any others like him, okay?”
I nodded stiffly.
“I hope you know you can come to me for anything. My brother loved you so much. He would want me to take care of you.”
I smiled at the thought of Joe and then cried. I always heard tears were healing. With as many as I had cried, I should be the healthiest woman alive.
Neither of us spoke the rest of the way to my house. It was a long, twenty-minute drive. When we finally pulled up in front of my home, I felt the need to be alone in order to think about everything. So I didn’t wait for Dan to come around and open my door. I hopped out and headed for the front door. I ran up the steps, two at a time, which wasn’t an easy feat in heels and a dress, inserted the key and opened the door.
