The Archangel Michael (apparently) Throwing Lucifer Out of Heaven
~~~

Doing something different, here. Decided to share a rough draft of a scene from my current WIP, The Emissary. I have no cover to show you, and no Buy Links for this, of course, so I’ll share the links for the other three books in the Riverbend series.

To set this excerpt up, you need to know that in Finding Hunter, a trucker named Gabe Angelino brought Hunter Painter home to Willow, after a six-month-long disappearance he nearly didn’t survive. Willow has always thought Gabe Angelino was a real angel. She’s wrong on that, but not TOO wrong. I don’t want to give away too much, but the following scene between Jake (Gabe’s real name) and Azrael, a very old, very powerful angel, demonstrates the kind of thing that can happen when you aren’t careful about saying no to powerful entities.

DRAFT FROM CHAPTER 1 OF THE EMISSARY

A Dark, Deserted Truck Stop
Halfway between Here and There 

AZRAEL’S EYES FLAMED a furious blue. In one blink, he disappeared from the cab’s passenger seat, reappeared by the driver’s door, and ripped it right off the truck, flinging it to the pavement. Before Jake could get his mind around that little trick, Azrael snatched him out of his seat, and hurled him across the empty parking lot with so much force, he might well have continued traveling a half mile or more, had it not been for slamming into the trunk of an enormous oak. Hard.

This was a learning experience of the eye-opening kind, except for the fact that his eyes were squeezed tight in response to fear, shock, and excruciating, back-meeting-tree-trunk pain. Perhaps he couldn’t be killed outright—he was a bit cloudy on that issue, in spite of earlier reassurances—but clearly, breathtaking agony was still on the table.

He’d had no idea Azrael possessed that kind of power. Yeah, he knew the angel was very old—possibly an archangel—but they were careful not to reveal too much about themselves, certainly not to those being recruited to help them on a more or less trial basis. The ferocious strength Azrael had just displayed left Jake stunned. Shaken to his core.

Still groaning from the brutal pain in his back, he slumped to the ground at the base of the tree, desperate to catch his breath. He blinked away the red haze clouding his vision, only to wish he hadn’t. Azrael strode toward him, looming larger and more ominous with each long step. Somehow, the angel had acquired a colossal, glowing sword, which he brandished overhead, and his heretofore pale blonde hair floated this way and that around his face, blindingly bright, and looking far too much like flames for comfort.

With a thunderous roar that shook the very ground beneath them, Azrael’s voice shattered the silent darkness. “You quit? You quit? You cannot quit, you ungrateful idiot! You have been accepted into a cadre of potential emissaries. There is no such thing as quitting!”

Apparently, angels of Azrael’s rank came with built-in loudspeakers featuring a volume capacity rock stars would weep to possess. Jake clapped his hands over his ears, praying he wouldn’t feel blood seeping between his fingers.

It was all he could do not to curl into a fetal position with his arms crossed over his head, the better to await the smiting that was surely on the way. Not that he was exactly certain what-all smiting might entail, but it was bound to be a painful way to die. Again.

~~~

JAKE’S FIRST DEATH—which he had really hoped would be his last—hadn’t been easy. Maybe no death ever was, but drowning had been a cold, terrifying experience. At least he’d had the satisfaction of knowing the woman he’d jumped in to save had been pulled from his arms and into a boat, even as he slipped below the surface, and drifted down to the silty bottom of the river. The last thought passing through his mind as his world went black around him was his fervent hope she wouldn’t waste a single day he’d bought her.

The next time Jake had opened his eyes, he’d discovered to his utter astonishment that he wasn’t dead anymore. At least, that’s what he’d thought at the time. Instead, he rested on a warm, comfortable, and gloriously dry bed in the hushed stillness of a room painted the soft purple-gray of an early evening sky. Looking back on it afterward, he wondered if perhaps it had really been the sky he’d seen around him, and not walls at all. But at the time, he assumed he was in a hospital room, having been rescued from the ice-cold depths of the murky river just in the nick of time.

If only.

~~~

Marcia Meara, Author
(For Those New to The Write Stuff, This is Me,
And My Bio is Below)

Marcia Meara lives in central Florida, just north of Orlando, with her husband of over thirty years, two big cats, and two small dachshunds. When not writing or blogging, she spends her time gardening, and enjoying the surprising amount of wildlife that manages to make a home in her suburban yard. At the age of five, Marcia declared she wanted to be an author, and is ecstatic that at age 69, she finally began pursuing that dream. Three and a half years and six novels later, she’s still going strong, and plans to keep on writing until she falls face down on the keyboard, which she figures would be a pretty good way to go!

Riverbend Series

    

Marcia has published seven books to date, all of which are available on Amazon in both print and Kindle format: 

Wake-Robin Ridge
A Boy Named Rabbit: Wake-Robin Ridge Book 2
Harbinger: Wake-Robin Ridge Book 3
Swamp Ghosts: A Riverbend Novel
Finding Hunter: Riverbend Book 2
That Darkest Place: Riverbend Book 3
Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love

Marcia’s Amazon Author Page

You can reach Marcia via email at marciameara16@gmail.com or on the following social media sites:

The Write Stuff : https://marciamearawrites.com/
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Twitter: @marciameara
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