Today I thought I’d give you a preview of one of my urban fantasy novels, Youngest.
YOUNGEST
Signs of the Prophecy, Book 1
by Debbie Mumford
Gwen Vaughan pushed her linguistic textbooks away and stood, stretching the cramped muscles in her lower back. Tucking a loose strand of shoulder length dark hair behind her ear, she glanced around the apartment she shared with Emily Stevens.
The two girls had gravitated to each other during their first day’s orientation at the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus and had been friends ever since. It’s possible their friendship was an “opposites attract” kind of thing — gregarious, fun-loving Emily was about as different from studious, dependable Gwen as you could get — but whatever the reason, they’d remained friends through their undergraduate years.
Today was a perfect example of the differences in their psyches. It was her twenty-second birthday (and a mere three days before Christmas!), and where was Gwen? Out partying with friends? Home on the ranch with Aunt Katie and Uncle Jem?
Nope.
In her apartment. Alone. Studying.
Sighing and shaking her head, Gwen ambled to the kitchen to brew a pot of cinnamon tea and scrounge a blueberry muffin, but she stopped after only a few paces.
Something wasn’t right.
The air around her felt thick, and the walls of her apartment looked thinner, almost transparent. But that couldn’t be! Walls didn’t just disappear. Not without some kind of natural disaster… like an earthquake… and even then they didn’t disappear. They crumbled and fell.
She caught herself on a chair, closed her eyes, and concentrated on breathing normally. In and out. Easy. Nothing weird about the air. Her heart wasn’t racing like one of Uncle Jem’s prize horses. Everything was perfectly normal. She was safe in her apartment. All was well.
She opened her eyes… and lost the little bit of calm she’d gained.
She couldn’t be… but it seemed like she was encased in a bubble of gelatinous air… while everything around her was thinning and becoming transparent.
Gwen could see through her apartment walls, onto the street outside and, even weirder, her vision went deeper… through the cars and pavement to the heart of the earth. She raised her eyes and saw the outline of her apartment building along with the silhouette of the nearby mountains and beyond… into the infinity of space.
If Emily had reported such a thing, Gwen would have wondered what her friend was high on. But Gwen had never gotten into drugs. Em often teased that the most adventurous thing her roomie had ever ingested was the occasional beer.
Gwen shook her head to clear her vision, but the weirdness persisted.
Was she having a nervous breakdown? Had she studied herself into a collapse?
She should lie down. Close her eyes. Take a nap. When she woke up, this would just be a bad dream. Something she imagined.
The plan of action comforted her. Congratulating herself on the sensible strategy, she turned toward her bedroom… and discovered that her plan might not be completely under her control.
Her legs refused to budge. She was rooted in place, unable to move.
A scream clawed at the back of her throat, but her vocal chords refused to release it. Just as panic threatened to overwhelm her, Gwen heard a calm, reassuring voice telling her to be still; to concentrate on her vision; that she was not losing her mind.
Without stopping to wonder where the voice came from, Gwen grabbed the hope it offered, and obeyed… and discovered that when she calmed her mind, a golden light appeared, pulsing in the distance. She concentrated on that light — and everything between her and its pulsing glow dissolved. Framed in the center of that golden light she saw a man on horseback.
He sat his bay horse like a man accustomed to the saddle, relaxed, the reins held loosely in one hand. A few years older than Gwen, maybe around thirty, he wore western clothes: denim jeans, blue checkered shirt under a dark leather duster, cowboy boots, and a well-worn Stetson. Chestnut curls escaped beneath the brim of his hat and a red bandana wrapped his neck.
As though feeling her gaze upon him, he turned in the saddle and stared directly into her eyes. A slow smile spread across his tanned face and he mouthed the words, “Well done.”
The moment she understood his words, her world snapped back to normal. The return was so sudden, so complete, that she wondered for a moment if she had truly experienced anything out of the ordinary.
Yet, the path between herself and the horseman was indelibly etched in her brain. Though she’d never been there in this life, Gwen knew she would be able to find the place, and the man, without effort.
More importantly, she knew that she would find him, that she must find him… and without delay.
*~*~*
If you’d like to know what happens next, follow this link!
