Soul Awakened by Jean Murray Page B

Books strewn in every corner of the cell. The guards he had taken out several seconds after his awakening. The large iron bars were unmistakable. He may have escaped his sarcophagus but Kepi still had him. Even more perplexing, the young human with ringlets of reddish brown hair.
    He grabbed the slender curve of her shoulders. “Who are you?”
    “Kendra,” she whispered.
    Her words brought his focus to her plump pink lips. The drum of her heart kicked up to a gallop. The fine tremor in her body reverberated through his grip. His blood hunger burned through his chest. It had been an eternity since the goddess had last fed him. The fact that his hair was white told him it had been an inferably long time. His eyes would be colorless as well. His skin cracked and bleeding.
    He must look like the beast—hungry and seething.
    Bakari fixated on her slender throat and the soft movement when she swallowed. He leaned into her neck and inhaled along the line of her pulsing artery. “Kendra, you are going to tell me everything I want to know.”
    Her breath hitched and her eyes darted to meet his. “Sure, anything.” The fine quiver to her voice made his predatory urges thunder through his body. His head swam with dizziness.
    Despite the threat that he posed to her, she grabbed his arm to steady him. Angered by his weakness and so much more he pushed off her assistance and snatched the back of her neck.
    His mouth and throat burned to taste the floral sweetness of her blood that had teased his tongue not ten minutes prior before he awoke in the cell. Mere inches separated him from extinguishing the unbearable pain of starvation.
    Her breathing accelerated to the point of hyperventilation. Her whole body began to quiver in his clutches. “Oh, God. Please don’t hurt me.” 
    Bakari exhaled a hiss through clenched teeth. His victims, twenty in all, had echoed the same pleading words before they took their last breath of life. He had descended further into darkness that day, striped of all his worth and ethos. But that was Kepi’s point, was it not? She wanted to destroy him from the inside out. Make him into the killing machine she envisioned for her plot.
    Kepi might have succeeded, considering the murderous actions he had taken upon wakening. Three guards dead. Even the ones outside the cell. Same as now, his instinct for survival overrode any morality he may have had left, and yet he hung uncommitted in taking Kendra’s life. Her words paralyzed him.
    It now seemed too easy. The biggest tip off for his internal sensors was this human. She did not seem held against her will until now.
    Warmth, like rays of sunshine, ebbed in and around her. The powerful but gentle energy he sensed certainly could not be coming from such a small creature. No human could ever generate that level of living power. The small amount of absorbed life kept him from ripping her slender neck open with his teeth. “Impossible,” he said aghast at the revelation. “You?”
    Taking a step back he scanned her. A thick white robe draped her body and obscured the thin lace gown that hugged her body. Crimson streaks of blood covered the front.
    “What’s impossible?”
    He grasped his pounding head. Nothing made any sense. Based on the books, blood, candles, and other spell conjuring ingredients, there was no other conclusion. Kendra had found a way to break him out of his entombment. She will set you free echoed a past memory.
    “You did this?”
    Kendra pulled her lower lip in between her teeth. Her chin quivered as she nodded.
    He stared upon his imposed prison for over gods knows how many years. Bitter rage boiled in his veins. “How long?” Grabbing a hand full of cloth he pushed her up against the large stone wall. “Tell me how long I have been in there.”
    A small tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and followed the curve of her creamy, freckle dotted cheek. “Five years.”
    The answer hit him like a knife to the chest. His agony