The Protector’s Keeper
PROLOGUE
The thirteen-year-old girl sat huddled on one end of the couch, distraught, traumatized, and lonelier than she’d ever been before.
It took her nearly a week of riding the bus to reach this hiding spot in New Jersey. A week of mind-numbing pain, exhaustion and despair. She couldn’t leave the room she was hiding in because the killers who’d taken her family away could find her. But, if she listened real hard, she could hear the ocean waves as they hit the shoreline.
Her brother loved to play at the beach whenever they stayed at the California compound. He’d missed all the fun this summer because he’d reached puberty and had to learn how to change into his wolf form, and how to wield his powers.
Her mother and father would have sent her for training once she started going through puberty too, but now they were gone and she didn’t even have her brother Sam either. What would she do without him? He’d always been with her. He was her twin, a part of her, and now there was only a hole where his voice and laughter used to be.
Samantha looked down at the journal she was clutching in her hands. They said she could leave a note for her brother in case he ever learned that she still lived. She wished she could just talk to him using her mind like she normally did, but the evil ones could find her that way. That was the last thing her mama had said before her death, and she didn’t want them to find her brother or her, either. Leaving a note for him, hoping that one day he’d read it, was the only thing she could do.
She stared at the paper, trying to think of the right words, but thinking only made it harder to fight the tears. So she’d write whatever came to mind.
The tears began to flow anyway as she wrote her heartfelt words to her only living relative.
July 15th, 1985
Dear Sammy,
I hope one day you’re reading this and aren’t dead. Mom and Pops were driven off the road, but they were already dead. Vampires got them. A whole bunch. Mom and Pops thought that they were being followed during our trip back from the California house to our home in New Orleans.
We stayed at a motel one night and they left me there with food and supplies, and enough money to get me here if something happened to them.
They said they’d come back in two days and not to leave the room. Sammy, I knew when they died. Mama was talking to me. She told me where to go, how to get help. She said to run away as fast as I could. To get on a bus and not to talk to you. It’s been a week, Sammy, and I miss you. I know when you try to talk and it’s so hard not to answer you. To keep my mind empty like Mama said. They can find me that way. She said so.
The old people here are changing my name to Erica Samuels. That way you’re always with me. I hope you find this and come find me when it’s safe. They are sending me to Spain somewhere, where there is a family with a little girl. She’s only 5, a baby still.
Come find me, Sam, please. If I don’t see you in a couple of years, I guess maybe you might be dead, but I will keep hoping. I love you, Sammy.
Love, Sammie
Very gently, Samantha Woods closed the journal and placed it on the shelf where she’d found it. As she returned to the plush overstuffed couch to mourn, she kept repeating her new name to herself. “I’m Erica Samuels. I’m Erica Samuels. I’m Erica Samuels.” She might have believed it if it weren’t for her twin constantly calling to her through their familial telepathic link.
She continued to block him, staying silent despite her desire to reach out to him. It was all she could do to save him. He had to grow up to be the man she knew he was going to be. For amongst the usual gifts of one of her kind, she was also clairvoyant. It was just beginning to emerge, but she knew that one day, Sam would be a very powerful man and that he’d help unite the Loup-garou again.
Hopefully, when it was safe again, he’d come and find her. Until that day, she’d be Erica Samuels and she’d protect her new little sister, Catalina. She’d keep her safe from the monsters, too.
