Rachel sends personal updates to fans of her books once or twice a month. There have been exclusive giveaways, tidbits of news... personal messages. Today she shares a scene that was cut from Eden's Root.
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It's important to me that this mailing list be a real connection between me and the people who've loved my story and characters. To that end, I'm submitting the following short deleted scene from Eden's Root, the first book. I wanted you all to remember how young and incredible Fi was in the beginning. If you have a chance, listen to "Demons" by Imagine Dragons while you read this.
- Rachel
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Fi pelted through the superstore, her eyes fixed on the propped door. 50 yards, she thought, not looking back. The guy rumbled and slammed through the aisles like a bull, but his drunkenness didn’t slow him down. 30 yards. She lowered her head, her legs screaming as she kicked her absolute hardest.
Something drilled through her from the side, knocking her nearly senseless, her head slamming into a tower of detergent that toppled, slamming into both her and the body that had taken her down. Hands grabbed for her wrists, but with her pack beneath her, she was hard to pin. She heard the slap of feet and through her swimming senses she knew that there were two attackers and she was down.
“Not good, Fi,” Sensei Bob chided her.
Her mind whirled, confused. She wrestled with her attacker. He was trying to straddle her but she couldn’t let herself be pinned. If there were two, she’d be overpowered.
“Parry, don’t thrust, Fi.”
The voice was clear as a bell and she knew what she had to do just as clearly. She wrestled her hardest, screaming and kicking until her attacker gripped harder, pushing back. Then she went limp and he fell on top of her, shocked that the resistance had melted. She flipped hard, slamming his head with her pack and shoulder. He grunted and she wriggled away, popping up and fleeing, her eyes filling as she sprinted.
“Keep running, little b***!” A voice called. “We’ll catch you anyway.”
Ice froze the tears in her lids. She stopped dead and spun, pulling the .22 with shaking hands. She aimed it, her eyes staring down the barrel at her tormentor. “No you wont!” she cried. “You stay right there!”
He sniggered, kicking at his friend, who was still getting to his feet. He kept walking toward her.
“I mean it!” she shouted. “I’ll ***ing shoot you.”
He kept walking.
She shifted her aim to his thigh. The outside. No arteries, she thought, her stomach turning as her finger squeezed.
He shouted, his eyes widening as his jeans ripped open and exploded in fresh fingerpaint red. He sank to one knee, screaming as his friend’s hands flew to his face, his curses drowned by the sound of the fire reverberating in her brain.
“Run, Fi!” her Sensei commanded. She turned and raced away, the gun still in her hand as she hit the trees and flew over boulders and through brambles, tugging free with screams of desperation.
She didn’t stop for ten minutes until she tripped and rolled down an embankment into a ditch. Her shoulder and knee struck painfully, but she didn’t feel the impacts. Nothing hit her through the terror. What if they’d caught her? They’d had her, they’d had her down. She was all alone. She looked around, her cheeks wet with tears as they ravaged her, raging and scraping her throat and nose and eyes and ears, all shredding. She was all alone.
Her shoulders shook as she put her head in her hands, her gun still clutched in her hand, the fingers petrified in their last action. There was no one. No Sean. No Papa. No Mama. No God
