I know it’s been a very long hiatus, but not much has been going on besides the announcement of the Gathering ’10 in the Dekkerverse. But I decided to stop by to give you an excerpt of the much anticipated Immanuel’s Veins. Merry Christmas to all, and we’ll be back soon as the release of Burn and Tea with Hezbollah nears!

“Let me clear up one thing: IV is only VERY loosely connected to BOHC and then only for those who know the BOHC intimately. The book will not advance any knowledge of what happens to Thomas. IV is a stand alone story of great seduction, romance and blood spilling set in the seventeen hundreds in Moldavia.

IV is my first, first person novel, told from the point of view of a famed Russian warrior named Toma. Let me say that this book is not for younger children (under 13) and will undoubtedly cause some alarm, this because it’s a story of unbound love and seduction and some of the pages don’t pretend it’s not. No foul language, heated sex or gratuitous violence, at least no more than Song of Solomon or Exodus. But, yeah, some are bound to object as they might with any of my novels.” –Ted Dekker

Here is the first page (a letter) and the first two paragraphs of chapter one:

To All Who Have Ears to Hear:

I am dead. But perhaps you are as well, if you can read this account penned by a dead man.

I, Saint Thomas of Moldavia, make known this report of all that transpired so that any who seek the truth will know what happened.

Some called me a heretic. They said that my dealing with the matters herein could only mean that I was touched by the devil himself. Some said that I was a creature of the night, a dragon, a beast turned into man. Some said that I was mad, and I will attest that I myself once would have believed that this tale could only come from the mind of a raving lunatic.

But I swear by my very own blood that I am neither devil nor beast and that this is not the tale of a lunatic—unless by love I have been driven hopelessly mad, a reasoning that tempts me more often than I dare admit. Judge it for yourself.

I implore you to open your hearts and your minds to this account. Then, when you have turned the last page, if you still do not believe that what you have read is true, you may say that I deserved my death.

Saint Thomas
Lover of his bride

Chapter One

MY NAME IS Toma Nicolescu and I was a warrior, a servant of Her Majesty, the empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, who by her own hand and tender heart sent me on that mission at the urging of her most trusted adviser Grigory Potyomkin in the year of our Lord 1772.

It was a year of war, this one the Russo-Turkish war, one of so many with the Ottoman Empire. I had slain the enemy with more ambition than most in the humble service of the empress, or so it has been said, and having earned Her Majesty’s complete trust in my loyalty and skill, I was dispatched by her to the south and east, through Ukraine to the principality of Moldavia, just north of the Black Sea, to the country estate of the Cantemir family nestled up against the base of the Carpathian Mountains.

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