I'm thinking about adding this prologue to the forth book in the Raina Kirkland series, just to get some background out there without slowing the story down. What do you think? SPOILER (reveals information from book 2 & 3)
PROLOGUE
Nick was a rambunctious toddler. Stories of his mischievous actions were still told and retold at family gatherings, always followed by hearty laughs. He was adored, what with his great big brown eyes and untamable red hair. Unlike his studious, quiet older brother, Tristan, Nick was a wild child; bare foot and loud. That was until his baby sister was born. He was calm around her. She was his double, same crazy red hair, same big brown eyes. He looked at little Raina with such wonderment and love. She was the smallest person he’d even seen and he instantly felt the need to protect her. He guarded her well from anyone or anything that could harm her or make her cry. He even gave his own mother a stern word or two for being late for Raina’s feedings.
“Bad Mommy,” he would say with the cutest furrowed brow and grimace.
And at night, Nick would get out of bed and watch her sleep. Peering in on her through the bars, he’d reach his tiny hands in and stroke her back ever so gently. In fact he was doing just that the night Raina died.
A monster came to Raina’s window as Nick stroked her back. The great beast blocked the moonlight from lighting the room and Nick looked up, startled to see it leering in with hungry eyes and malicious intentions! Nick cried out. He grabbed at his baby sister, but she was too heavy for him to lift and he was too short to pick her up and out of the crib. She was trapped!
The monster broke the window and Nick and Raina screamed frightfully. Scared beyond reason, Nick ran out into the hall as the monster advanced on Raina. Nick screamed and screamed for his mommy and daddy. But Daddy was gone on a fishing trip with Tristan. Even though Tristan, being an elf and all, refused to fish. Mommy was home though! He banged his body against her bedroom door, scratched at it and eventually she did open the door. Tall and elegant, young Anna picked up her screaming child.
“What’s wrong?!”
“Ray-ray!” Nick yelled over and over again. Anna walked with Nick in her arms down the hall to Raina’s nursery, but there was no monster.
“She’s fine,” Anna said as she walked to the crib, but she could not deny the feeling of dread building in her gut. For each step she took closer to the crib the less sure she was of that statement. Together Nick and Anna looked down on the baby. Raina’s eyes were closed, lips parted, body very still. Anna adjusted her hold on her son to get a free hand. Shaking and scared she lowered that hand to her baby’s mouth, but she felt no breath.
“No,” Anna said. She could feel panic taking hold, but she managed to set Nick down gently, before grabbing at her baby. At the feel of her lifeless limbs something in Anna broke. “RAINA!”
“Ray-a okay?” Nick asked.
Anna grabbed her baby up into her arms, wiggling her limbs, patting her face, trying to wake her up. She held her close in her arms. “Come on baby, get up, wake up, wake up!” Being a witch, her mind raced through what magic she knew, but there was no spell that could bring her baby back from the dead…and not be a rotting living thing…
Anna held her tight to her, bouncing her gently to the sounds of Nick’s cries. Confused and scared, Nick never left his mommy. He held onto her legs. He wanted to hold Raina too, but he knew Mommy wouldn’t let him. He cried himself to sleep at Anna’s feet instead.
When Raina’s body began to feel stiff in Anna’s arms, Anna set her down in the crib. She knelt down to her son and did something she told herself she would never do. She prayed. Out loud, Anna begged the world, the universe, any creature in all of creation who could bring back her daughter. She made bargain after bargain, promised anything and everything to whoever, whatever. Until her voice was spent and her eyes could cry no more, she bartered her life away for her daughter’s, but no one answered…
With the sun rising through the window and reality setting in, Anna had given up. She began making a list in her head of what she needed to do. She had to keep her mind busy, or she’d break down again and she couldn’t do that. She had no more tears, no more strength for it.
“I need to call the police and then Dan.” She imagined telling her husband that their baby had died. What words could she use? What reason could she give him? She looked up and the window was broken, but nothing in Raina’s room was disturbed in the slightest. “How did this happen?” Anna asked. She looked down at her son, sleeping on the floor. She shook him awake. “How did this happen!?”
Half awake, Nick pointed weakly at the broken window. “Monster,” he said.
“Monster?” she said softly. As Anna stared out the window the sun rose and shined into the room, making it too bright for her mood. But something was off. The light was growing brighter and brighter still, until Anna couldn’t look at the light any longer. She and Nick both looked away and hid their eyes from the light coming in.
“Mommy!” Nick called out. He climbed into her lap and wrapped his arms around her neck.
There was a sound that could not be identified, a smell they could not recognize, a presence too hot, too bright to stand. Anna shielded her son from the heat as they tried to run out of the room.
“STOP!” called a voice too loud to bare. Anna and Nick fell to the ground, holding their ears in pain, but they did stop. With their backs to the presence, they winced when it spoke next, though its words were softer. “You beckoned me? You spoke of a deal?”
Anna slowly turned toward the creature. The creature had taken a human form of a woman with long dark hair and red eyes. She was well over seven feet tall, muscular and nude. Though the look and sound of her was pleasant, her very presence was a strange alien thing, breathed in unspeakable power that Anna feared like nothing else! She couldn’t even speak, but she didn’t have to. The alien knew her and Anna knew that she knew her. She could feel the thing searching her mind, penetrating every private memory, every dark corner. It knew Anna better than Anna and it knew what Anna would give for Raina’s life, what any mother would give for the life of their child.
The woman shaped alien stepped up to the crib and picked up the small baby. Raina’s body looked even smaller in the hands of the alien.
“I am Melpomene, a muse god. It is within my power to bring Raina back. She is not long dead. Give me your son-.”
Anna looked down at Nick for only a second before letting go of his tiny hand. Nick trembled at her side, too scared to move.
“Don’t fear me,” the creature said, as though that was such an easy request for a small child to grant. “If you want your baby sister back, come here Nicholas.” Slowly Nick approached Melpomene. “Take this appendage…my hand” He did and its flesh was hot in his, but not scalding. “You love her most in this world. Call to her.”
“Ray?” asked Nick quietly.
“Yes, call her name.”
“Ray-a! Ray-a! Ray-Ray!” he called to the baby in the god’s hands. “Wake up, Ray-Ray!”
“Good, she hears you. Now give her a kiss.”
Nick didn’t question it. Anna did, but she kept her thoughts to herself. The god bent down to the toddler and held the baby out to him.
“If you kiss her, you will give her a part of yourself. Do you understand? She will have a part of you inside her and you will feel bound to her. You will be her most loyal friend and protector.” Nick nodded, though he didn’t truly understand then the gravity of his actions. He leaned in and kissed his sister on her forehead. A bite of static electricity hit his lips and he jumped back a little, putting his hands over his mouth.
The god smiled. “And now that Raina’s with us again, I must repair her. I too will give her a kiss, though through my kiss much more will be transferred. My kiss will give her a piece of me as well, but it will also restart her heart and heal her body.”
Still Anna could not bring herself to talk, but she didn’t have to. Melpomene knew her mind, she saw the question on Anna’s lips. She wanted to know what the details of their bargain were.
“Our bargain is simple, Annabella Selena Kirkland. Raina is ours, our daughter. I am destined for banishment for the great deeds I’ve done. Raina will be an extension of me left behind; she will be my vessel on Earth.”
The god stood tall and brought the baby’s body in close. Anna looked on in utter fear as the god kissed her baby’s tiny lips, but her heart leaped as Raina began to move! At first just a little, but soon her arms and legs were kicking in full strength, her cries were loud. Her wild red locks changed to sleek dark auburn hair. Her eyes turned a deep red color and what natural magic she might have wielded was all but gone, replaced with something a tad more alien.
Nick stretched his arms up, begging to hold his sister. The god bent down and handed her to him and he held onto her tight.
“Keep her safe, Nicholas. She needs you.”
Nick was too young to really understand what the god was talking about, but those two sentences would stay with him. They would play over and over again in his subconscious, shaping his life.
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