Eden's Hollow story idea

Prologue:

The Weather was harsh at half past three and the wind was threatening to blow the house away. To be more precise it was just one house. All the other homes down JC Drive were dealing with an onslaught or rain and wind, but nothing to the extreme of house number 4116.

From the outside it was nothing more than the same cookie cutter house with white fences, the perfect cut lawn, and the same two matching trash bins at the end of its paved driveway. There was nothing special about the house chosen - number 4116 - not from the outside, anyway.

But within the white door of number 4116 and beyond the powder blue trim and white paint was a secret. A well-kept secret for nearly a millennium.

A woman, her human name Patricia Faulk - and yes, human is the appropriate term for the creatures that filled her ever growing neighborhood, though she was nothing of the sort. She was guarding a Portal -- placed conveniently in her spare bedroom -- and guard it with her life she would, until this night, September seventh, when a raging storm awoke her from her rest at half past three.

Patricia, whose real name could not be spoken by humans only those that crossed through the portal could wield her name, awake from the cry of the storm and bolted to its source -- the portal! Her slender figure moved gracefully and with ease around her collection of books stacked in high towers throughout the living room and into the small hall. Her long red hair lightly damp from the shower she had taken hours earlier had unraveled and clung across her fair skinned neck and cheeks curling around her cherry red lips and dark brown eyes.

This was not a normal portal crossing.

She fell to the floor and crossed her legs in front of the bedroom door. She closed her hands on her knees, tilted her head back, with closed her eyes to focus. To cross a portal you must first knock on the door and wait for an answer, that was what Patricia was doing.

She was answering.

Reaching a quick mediation-like state her body began to glow and small runes crawled across her arms and legs, across her belly and neck, until her whole body was being blotched out by the blacken ink of the symbols. Her body rose three feet off the ground and those black symbols, one by one, echoed out and appeared around the frame of the door.

One by one the letters glowed, until finally the doorway opened allowing passage into her home. But as the door opened and two people stepped in a third clawed through reaching with bloodied talons out. This was one of malicious intent and on instinct she closed the portal, but the storm remained as the pounding against the magical door continued demanding her to open it.

“Who has stepped through this portal?” She asked pulling from her trance, but her first response was not anything what she expected it to be. It was the wailing of a baby.

She opened the door into her spare room revealing a large man, an Archangel, covered in blood soaked cloth and armor wielding a long golden sword with a white handle and three sets of tattered wings. His body was shaking and mangled as he forced himself up off the floor just barely cradling a small creature whose cries were beginning to wane on Patricia’s nerves.

“Portal master,” he spoke with ragged breath. “I am sorry to have brought this upon you, but I must beg of you to help.”

“Why does an Archangel need my help?” She asked unmoving with cold eyes at the intruder into her home.

“I do not. But she does.” He dropped his sword and held out the little girl for the woman to see.

“What use do I have with that thing?”

“This thing is no mere child.” His body was too worn and tried to hold her any longer. He fell forward still managing to stay on his elbows with her carefully propped up. Slowly and carefully he laid her down. He turned the infant on her side touching the back of her neck.

“What is she?” The woman gasped as a couple of runes upon her body began to appear.

“They are trying to get through.” He spoke.

“Who have you brought to my door?” she demanded.

“It’s the Darkness.”

“What?” she hissed as more symbols lit up.

“And if they get their hands on this child then the Darkness will be released. She needs time to grow strong. To fight this."

She turned to the door and looked to her arms, already her body was shifting and her eyes felt the urge to shut. They were forcing her to open up. “And you brought them here?” She demanded. “You are disrupting the order, the way things are done! You will be punished!” She turned back around to the silence of the room and to the archangel now touching the back of the child’s neck.

His wings dissolved, his weapons and armor faded, and soon his very image fluttered. With his last breath he focused on the portal master sending out a rush of light against her body. Then he was gone.

She turned back to the portal with rage towards the Archangel and did the only thing she could do to save her life from the Darkness threatening her and the life of the child. She had to sever her connection with the other dimension and once severed the first thing she had to do was hide the child.

For the child was something an Archangel would give his life for, she would ensure his last request be fulfilled and pray that death did not soon await her.

--Brenda Franklin, author of The Pulse Trilogy