Love Triangle Entry #1

Title: My Protector: The Calling
Genre: YA Post Apocalyptic

Word count: 70,000 


Query:


Fourteen-year-old Eri sprints into the night seeking a beast that wants nothing more than to feast on her flesh.  She can’t help herself.  Something calls to her, forcing her feet in the perilous direction.  Thankfully, a Protector is watching.


The Protectors are River Island’s only defense against the monsters roaming the darkness.  The clandestine guardians use the Calling—an internal link to the man-eating beasts—to watch over the village. 


As the link grows within Eri, she finds herself repeatedly drawn beyond the borders, hoping to satiate the rage flooding her veins.  But without proper training, the beasts will destroy her.  And as a girl, she’s not allowed the proper training to become one of the Protectors.


With villager deaths on the rise and beast encounters increasing, Eri knows the only way to save herself and her people is to secretly learn the skills of a Protector…if she's given the chance.

First 250:

Going to the river alone is forbidden.  Knowing the clear-cut rule of our people wasn’t enough to stop me from stepping off the gravel path and walking deep into the vacant field.  I no longer controlled my body.

Adrenaline thrummed inside me as I drifted closer.  White-hot anger burned in my belly, if it was even anger churning there.  I had never felt something creep through my veins before.  Whatever this was, it pulled me toward the unknown.

I didn’t belong out there.  I knew better.  I should’ve run in the opposite direction, back to our village.  But I couldn’t turn away.  With each step into the darkness, the foreign emotion intensified, guiding me forward.  I surrendered to the aggression.  I had no choice.

The warning bell struck, ringing through my insides.  My people had fled for safety into the closest shelter possible when it sounded the first time.

Not me.

A few more steps and I would see the river through the trees if the waning light consented.  The coursing water rushed along, mirroring my heightened flow of adrenaline.  The sensory overload amplified, the calling grew louder and became hypnotic, driving me like a machine, steering me down a path I would not otherwise take. 

I should not have been there.

The bell clanged again with faster frequency.  I froze.  The hammering in my chest felt as if my heart would burst through my rib cage and continue onward without me.