So why am I deleting TAW's prologue? Let's just say four or five readers have expressed their opinions on whether it belongs in the story and from what I've heard, it's time for me to buy a saddle (old joke).
Anyway, it's here for your reading pleasure and I hope you'll like it. It's a bit on the long side, so for the next couple of days I'll be posting excerpts.
P R O L O G U E
Frank Suggs ran for his life.
The night was oppressively hot and thick, typical for Arkansas in mid-summer. Frank fought his way through the heavy moist air, its stickiness coating the insides of his nose and mouth like glue. Gasping, the fifteen year-old werepanther stumbled over roots, scrambled over rocks and waded through shallow streams. Stones and twigs littering the ground bit into his feet. Low-lying brush constantly snagged his already tattered clothes, while branches from their taller tree cousins whipped across his face. From the forest floor, the full moon’s cold light flickered through the canopy like silent laughter.
Frank hardly noticed any of it—the laughing moon, the slashing foliage or his pain.
As he ran, he wished Parker Berenson, his friend and blood brother since they’d been eight years old, was here to tell him what to do. Park would know how to deal with the fuckers chasing him. Frank had seen his best friend talk his way out of more shit than anybody he knew. And if that didn’t work, his buddy had a mean left hook that would take care of the rest.
A dog’s barking yanked him out of his thoughts. It sounded a lot closer than it’d been before. The yelping of two other dogs joining the first one nearly froze him in his tracks.
No! he thought. Frank tried not to panic, but the hounds had picked up his scent again and were in full cry. He put on a burst of speed. A thorn bush branch ripped off a patch of his greyish-tan fur in passing.
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