Over on the Fangs, Fur and Fey blog, Melissa Marr posted a request for us to post our “Dead Darlings” - these are scenes we’ve cut from manuscripts for whatever reason. The request was 1) Name the book the scene was from. 2) Give the scene 3) Tell us why you liked the scene, etc. So here was mine.

**NOTE: If you haven’t read Scions:Insurrection, bookmark this blog post and come back to it after you have read it.**

1) This is text that was cut from my May release Scions:Insurrection.

2) Kaitlyn ran through Morningside’s shadowed park, the frigid night air seizing her lungs. Dodging around playground equipment littered with bloodstains and glowing hand prints, the heavy stench of burned flesh and death floated in air, sending waves of panic through her.

An owl hooted a split second before his wings swooped close to her head in fast, rhythmic beats. She hunched to avoid his claws and changed direction, heading toward the woods. The trees would make it harder for the big bird to maneuver.

As soon as she entered the moist darkness of the forest, something felt wrong. She tried to step back, but a force pushed at her shoulders, sending her stumbling into the woods, falling to her hands and knees.

Eerie howls rent the night air all around her, raising goose bumps on her arms.

Holding back a scream, she scrambled to her feet and shook off the damp leaves that stuck to her hands.

“Run, Kaitie girl. Whatever you do, don’t let them catch you,” she heard her father’s voice, whispering in that heavy way he did whenever he’d read her a fanciful bedtime stories.

The sound of heavy-weighted, thundering footfalls echoed to her right and left, shaking sapling trees, disturbing underbrush. Damp earth and the musky smell of pursuit filled her nostrils.

Kaitlyn bolted forward as fast as she could while the sounds of pursuit converged behind her. She panted in short, choppy gusts and pumped her arms to help her speed, but she knew the wolves were built to hunt for hours.

She had maybe five minutes of full-on running left.

The wind blew, rustling the heavy-leaved canopy above her. She glanced up and hope swelled. Could she get to the safety of the trees in time?

Casting her gaze back, she saw shadowed wolf outlines bounding around the trees and other obstacles a good thirty feet behind her.

“Kaitlyn, up here,” Landon’s voice brought her to a dead halt.

Kaitlyn glanced skyward to see Landon sitting several feet up on a thick branch of a red oak tree. He leaned down, a serious expression on his face, his hand outstretched. “Climb, woman. Now.”

She took a running leap and caught the lower branch. The rough texture burned her hands, but she managed to pull herself until her upper body laid across the branch.

The wolves reached the tree, their dark eyes wild with the ‘hunt’, their feral teeth bared to rip and tear as they jumped up and snapped at her legs.

“Landon!” Kaitlyn screamed at the same time she barely managed to pull her legs out of harm’s way.

The wolves snarled, throwing themselves against the tree trunk in determination, their nails digging at the bark.

“Hold on, Kaitlyn,” Landon encouraged.

Kaitlyn didn’t know where she found the strength, but she managed to pull herself onto the branch. With steady, pain-filled movements, she moved to another branch higher up and then another.

Suddenly something caught the bottom of her pants’ leg and she glanced back, terror ripping through her. The wolves had shifted to a half-wolf, half-human form and were using their long claws and hands to climb the tree behind her.

Her heart stuttering, Kaitlyn kicked at the clawed hand, knocking it off her jeans. The wolf’s snout wrinkled as he bared his teeth in fury.

“Kaitlyn, it’s okay. I’m here for you,” Landon called out.

She glanced up to see his hand just above her face. “Take it.”

Her gaze caught and hung on the silver necklace with the smashed bullet swinging back and forth on his neck.

Mesmerized, she let go of the tree limb to stop the necklace’s momentum.

But her other hand slipped from the branch, sending her hurtling backward in a free fall toward the ground.

Kaitlyn closed her eyes and screamed, waiting to land in the heart of beasts waiting for her below.

3) I loved the sense of setting here and the terror in this dream, but I had to cut down on word count, and as I was eliminating this scene I realized it was for the best, because this scene would give too much away within the heroine’s own subconscious a bit earlier than I wanted to in the story.

So even during those “painful cutting sessions” we have to do…we learn.

Patrice Michelle