Everyone has a soul mate. But what do you do when your soul mate would rather give his soul to the demons than be with you?
Seventeen-year-old Erin has a problem. Seth has been hers forever, but now an ancient curse is tearing him away. And the demons who invoked it will stop at nothing – even murder – to claim him as their own.
How can she win against a curse so binding that it has damned countless others to this same fate – an eternity alone?
The answer lies in the past. To find it, Erin and Seth must risk all, travelling back in time to a dangerous world where love is forbidden, and life – and death – hang on a pledge.
Follow Erin and Seth as they travel to ancient Shenaya and confront the curse that has plagued their families for millennia. Caught in a war between the Angelic Guardians and the Gefallen, the disembodied dead, they must fight to keep their souls in tact and their love untainted.
EXCERPT
Despite the heat, Seth felt icy. Dread could do that to him. Or so he had recently
discovered. Deep breathing usually calmed him, so he sucked in a lungful of desert air
and told himself to relax. It didn’t help. By the time he’d walked from the aircraft to
the immigration hall he’d ripped off a jagged piece of thumbnail, already bitten raw.
He handed his US passport to the Botswanan border official, and, after a frown, and a
stamp, he joined the crowd at the baggage carousel. Botswana in southern Africa was
the last place on earth he’d ever have picked for a holiday destination. But he wasn’t
here on holiday. Not even close.
His backpack was slow in coming. Tired from his long-haul flight from New
York, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Almost as if to mock him, the
hated vision that had brought him to Botswana burst into his mind. In an instant he
was back in ancient times, watching a man he knew only as Gideon. As usual, Gideon
was huddled on a windswept hill with his band of hopeless soldiers, waiting to be
slaughtered by a huge army gathered in the valley below.
Seth snapped his eyes open to stop the battle from waging in his mind. It
wasn’t that he was particularly squeamish; he’d watched enough movies to iron clad
his stomach against gory visuals. But no movie had ever left him icy with dread the
way Gideon’s battle did. And the reason for that was simple. The moment the visions
had started, he had known that the war, fought so long ago in a place he’d never heard
of, was far from over. And, as reluctant as he was, he too was being enlisted to fight
in a cause he didn’t understand or want.
He forced himself to focus on the present: Erin, who waited for him in
the arrivals hall; his brother Kyle, whom he’d come to Botswana to visit; Kyle’s
expedition to find the Lost City of the Kalahari . . .
He ripped off another piece of fingernail. Thinking about the search for the
Lost City was almost as bad as the war-vision. I hope Kyle never finds the damned
place. He slapped his hand on his thigh. Enough! Grabbing his backpack off the
carousel, he set his face into a smile and strode into the arrivals hall.
The first hurdle was finding Erin. She was due to arrive an hour earlier on a
flight from Cape Town in South Africa, one of Botswana’s neighbours. He’d never
met her, although they had spoken over the phone once. Then she’d described herself
as “a short, seventeen-year-old (a year younger than him) with a mass of ginger hair.”
She’d sounded nice. Meeting her was the one ray of brightness in this otherwise dark
He stopped to scan the crowd. A petite girl with shoulder length, reddish-
blonde curls, dressed in skinny jeans and a purple blouse, immediately caught his
eye. It had to be Erin. Nice legs. What’s it with girls that they always under-sell
themselves? He studied her face with his artist’s eye. Vermeer would’ve killed to
paint her. Suddenly wishing he didn’t look so grimy after his three plane-changes,
he walked over to join her. “Hi, I’m Seth. You’ve got to be Erin. My brother’s just
married your sister Izzy.”
“And after only knowing each other for about a week.”
Her dimpled grin was infectious, making him crack his trademark crooked
smile. “Madness.”
“Mysterious.” Erin cocked her head to one side, seemingly appraising him.
He knew he had been accurate when he’d told her he was tall and dark-haired. But
what he had failed to mention was what girls had often said they liked about him: his
strong, angular face, softened by expressive brown eyes. He watched her eyes rove
over his grey Muse: Resistance t-shirt, taking in his broad shoulders and chest. From
there they darted down his black camo-pants to his boots. Amused by her blatant
assessment, he cocked his head to one side, watching her. Suddenly Erin giggled –
was she embarrassed? – and picked up her bag.
“We’ve yet another plane to catch. My fourth in the last twenty-four hours,”
Seth said, hoping to explain away his rumpled appearance. “To a place called Maun.”
“So we do. Let the adventure begin.”
I have spent my entire life living in a parallel universe of make-believe characters, only coming back to reality for long enough to check that no one burnt the house down in my absence. A few years ago I decided to commit some of those ‘friends’ and their stories to paper. The ‘Soul Wars Saga’ comprising ‘Pledged’, ‘Sacrificed’ and ‘Saved’ is the result of those efforts. Before that I co-authored two non-fiction travel books – ‘The Complete Guide to 4x4 Trails’ and ‘The Ultimate 4x4 Guide’. Both books became instant best-sellers in South Africa where I live. And before that even, I studied a degree in African History and Politics at the University of Stellenbosch. When I’m not writing, I am a wife to Andrew and a mom to Stephanie, Erin, and Kate, our teenage daughters. My family and I live in a small town outside Cape Town with two dogs, a cat, a horse, and some neglected fish.
Twitter: @GwynnethWhite
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