PHANTASM FRIDAY

TGIF, Moonlightees! I hope everyone has had a great week. Do any of you have any special plans for the weekend? Nothing much here and I'm rather excited about having nothing to do. So, a couple of weeks ago I explained that I was neck deep in edits. I thought I'd share an excerpt from what I just finished editing, Where the Road to Hell Begins, Part One - Pandora's Box. Yeah, I know I need to work on the title, but that's the working title. I plan to have it sent off at the latest on Monday. *fingers crossed* Writing the synopsis is next and that always stumps me. I have trouble condensing 95K words into 2-5 pages. No easy feat! Okay, so I'll shut up and give you the excerpt. Tell me what you think....like? Dislike? Suggestions? Comments? I'm all ears. ;-)

WARNING: Some content may not be suitable for all readers. Please read with discretion.



EXCERPT - WHERE THE ROAD TO HELL BEINGS - PART ONE PANDORA'S BOX

Instead of a 'hello', she received a gruff, "Nix."

"Hey, sexy," Mads said, forcing cheerfulness into her tone. She leaned her elbows on the rail of the balcony and chewed on the inside of her mouth.

"Mads?" She thought he sat up.

"Yeah." At times like this, she wished she smoked. Had some nasty addiction to turn to for comfort.

"What's wrong?" He definitely sat up this time, the rustling of covers and the squeaking of bedsprings loud through their connection.

"Nothing." Everything!

"Mads…" He whispered furiously, the sound of a door opening and clicking closed coming through on his end loud and clear. "You didn't call me at two A.M. to tell me nothing was wrong."

Madison expelled a long shaky breath. "I think we made a mistake tonight."

Concern tensed his voice, "What'd you do?"

"Oh, nothing much, just released a genie from its crystal prison." And used Pandora's Box to bust him out. Oh and let's not forget how dirty she felt now with the magic still thrumming through her so hard she couldn't sleep.

He whistled low. "That sounds diabolical."

She laughed. Nix could lighten any situation. "He had to be trapped for a good reason, right?"

"Depends." On what? "Where are you, Mads?"

"Mexico." She looked out on the Mexican city. Poverty stark in every direction. "You?"

"South Beach, Miami," the sound of his voice drooled enough she didn't have to see his expression. "The news said a level six earthquake struck Chihuahua, Mexico today."

Yeah, that earthquake was little ole' me channeling the awesome power of the box.

"South Beach, huh?"

"Yeah, beautiful beaches."

Skirt chasing Nix would be in his element there. Jealousy made more vibrant by Pandora's magic hit her hard, had her hoping her phone call interrupted something naughty before it happened. "I guess there aren't any hot babes there."

"None as smoking hot as you."

"Flirt." But the corners of her mouth turned up at his compliment.

"Guilty." On his end came the honking of horns and the revving of engines. "Tell me exactly where in Mexico you are and I'll be on the next flight."

"No."

"You need me or you wouldn't have called," his voice turned a shade darker. Agitation maybe, but it was hard to tell without seeing his expression.

"I don't need you here." She pinched the bridge of her nose. She shouldn't have called Nix. No need for him worry along with her.

"What do you need?"

Loaded question.

"I don't know." She tapped her fingernails on the rail. "Someone to tell me we made the right decision."

"Okay." A long pause screamed between them. "Why'd Amos break out this…this crystal genie?"

"He didn't. I did." Sirens blared in the background, fitting for their conversation and probably his reaction. "With the power from Pandora's Box."

A sharp intake of breath. "You think that was safe?"

"Most likely not." Definitely not. "We didn't have a choice. Amos couldn't break the crystal. Only the box could."

"Uh huh." She could picture him rubbing his eyes, deep in thought over her disturbing news. "Why did you break this crystal genie out?"

"Amos's idea."

"You do everything he tells you to do?"

"Pretty much. He's always right on these supernatural things." She jerked toward the door as a hard bang rattled the lamp beside the bed. "Hold on…" She peeked around the door from the balcony. Amos lay on his side, facing her, sleeping peacefully. A quick glance about the room didn't expose anything lurking in the shadows. Silence too loud pulsed in her ears, her breathing growing ragged as she moved across the room and looked out the window.

"Mads?" Nix's voice expressed his alarm. "Mads! ?"

"Sorry," she whispered, stepping quickly through the hotel room and back out onto the balcony. She yanked hard on the sliding glass door, but the irritating thing kept sticking. "I thought I heard something."

"Next time keep me at your freaking ear."

Madison laughed. "What would you have me do, Nix, hand the phone to my attacker so you can talk him to death?"

"Not amused, Mads."

He would be if he realized how protected she'd become from supernatural entities. They all scrambled to get away from her and Amos. She bet the Birminghams never had that reaction.

"Phoenix…are you coming back to bed?" Madison went brittle still at the sound of the faint female voice coming through the receiver.

The fumbling noise led her to think he covered the mouth piece of his cell phone. "Business call," he whispered furiously.

"Oh, God…." She squinted her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. She should have asked if he was alone. "I'm interrupting. I'm…." She gulped, but couldn't bring herself to utter the word 'sorry'. It'd be a lie if she said it.

Kill the bitch! The green eyed monster surged through her system so fast she stumbled, managing to catch her fall against the banister. Stark evidence she didn't have Pandora closed as tightly as she wanted. She hoped she could eventually replace the air tight seal. Never, never did she want to tap into the diabolical power ever again.

Pain as sharp as a scalpel cut without anesthesia through her breastbone. How long would it take before she wrestled the power back under control?

"No…um…we're finish—erm…it's over…" It sounded like he pulled the phone away from his ear. "Shit! " she heard distinctly even though the word was muted. "Mads, I'm always here for you. Regardless…"

Regardless that he was screwing someone else silly?

Dear God…

"I shouldn't have called."

A threesome. A threesome would work. Madison bent over and tapped her forehead on the railing, but she knew it wouldn't eliminate Pandora's manic thoughts. A threesome was not an option. Not with any man.

"Don't you dare hang up on me!" She turned toward the door to the hotel room. "Tell me about your crystal genie."

A dark shadow walked toward her. Fear should have propelled her into fighting action—killkillkill…fightfightfight¬—but with Nikolas's unwanted protection she didn't figure it posed much of a threat. The figure stepped into a beam of moonlight.

Zennyo….her crystal genie.

"He's not mine." No one would ever own this crystal genie. The power she'd sensed coming from him in the cave was magnified in his direct presence. "I gotta go."

"Mads, don't hang up. Mads—"

Madison disconnected the call. Zennyo stepped into the doorway and braced his hands on the frame.

"How much of that did you hear?" she asked.

"All of it."

"Sorry." Sorry that he heard her, but not about any of the words she'd said.

"Why? I haven't decided if I should let you or Amos live either."

Madison swallowed. Nothing demonic would dare harm them, but Zennyo wasn't demonic or angelic. His moral system rested on a plane she didn't comprehend. Why, had Amos insisted they needed him?

"Comforting," she drawled. "A thank you isn't necessary for busting you out of that crystal crypt. Veiled threats say thank you so much better, don't ya' think?"

Zennyo stared at her, the wind ruffling his bangs and resettling them over his forehead. "I don't understand the translation of your words. I will assume you were being sarcastic."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "You think?"

"I could kill you without lifting a finger and still you speak to me this way?" He cocked his head to the side as if she were a curious bug he inspected. "Your brazenness amuses me."

He didn't look amused. Actually, he didn't look anything.

"You're hurt," he said.

"No." Amos had healed her palms before leaving the cave. Minor injuries like that he could take care of.

"I know your head is hurting."

Her head didn't hurt. It felt like it would combust at any moment and right now, she welcomed that end just to stop the pain. "A very different thing from being hurt. But, yes," she rubbed her temples, "opening the power of Pandora's Box to shatter your crystal home was more taxing than I expected."

"Yes." He stepped onto the balcony. "You're having trouble keeping the lid closed."

"How…do you know that?" She shook her head. "You reading my mind or something?"

"Yes."

"Yes?" She flinched when he took her left hand in his own, cocooning it between both of his. "To which part? Reading my mind? Or something?

"I read minds."

"Great." Warmth pulsed against her hand, but his eyes had begun to glow.

His forefinger circled the emblem of Pandora's Box. "I can turn it off, but your pain and worry were screeching too loud to tune out."

"Sorry?"

He looked at her and shrugged. "Think about closing and latching the lid."

"Okay." She closed her eyes and unbidden images of Nix and some unknown naked and sweaty floozy rose behind her lids….the floozy's legs anchored around Nix's hips, copulating to Queen's We Will Rock You staggered so hard through her mind's eye a gasp escaped her lips.

"No! No!" Zen said and her eyes snapped open. "Focus! Close and latch the lid."

"Okay…okay." The erotic images tried to rise again, but she tamped them down and called up the image of the box. She slammed the lid down with a mental shove and gave a dramatic flick of her wrist to latch it tight.

"Good," Zen said, sounding pleased by her success. "You learn fast. There may be hope for you yet."

Lucky her. She'd live to fight that battle with Nikolas after all…if Zen didn't change his mind and kill her.

"What'd you do?" She nodded toward her hand. "While you were holding my hand?"

"Trapped the power in one place so you could concentrate."

"Thanks."

"Sure."

His eyes had returned to their normal silver, but he stared until she began to fidget.

"What?" Did she have something on her face? In her hair?

"You torment yourself with sexual images of Nix Birmingham. Why?"

"We're just friends."

A lone black eyebrow arched. "You see images of all your friends doing that?"

Thankfully, no. "You wouldn't understand."

"Indeed. You mortals have confused me for centuries." He turned, pushed the glass door open. "You should sleep, get some rest before morning."

"What about you?"

"Zennyo's don't need sleep. All we need is meditation to recharge."

She guessed he didn't need any meditation. He'd been meditating every day since his imprisonment. However long that had been.


If you wish to read a more graphic/violent scene from this book, please visit her: http://wickedthornandroses.blogspot.com/2010/09/buried-in-edits.html

PHANTASM FRIDAY

REMINDER: I'm holding a contest at Shelby M. Summers blogspot. Click HERE if you wish to enter. Winner will be drawn on Monday, August 30th.

~~~~~

KICK-STARTING MY MUSE

(Previously posted elsewhere, just not here...I'm neck deep in edits and I didn't have time to write a post...I'm such a loser. LOL)

I’ve had it! *plants inconspicuous bombs around my prickly muse* Consider this war, buddy-boy! WAR!!! Think you can keep me from writing? Think again! Even if it is gobble-d-goop, I’m still going to write without you! *mumbles about the fickleness of muses*

With a recent run of bad luck lately, instead of DM (an anagram for the name of my muse) going on a temporary vacation, I do believe he’s retired instead. As I lay siege to DM’s iron-clad fortress known as writer’s block, I thought I’d contemplate a few ways that would cajole him back to his post and help me write. Here are my five favorite bribes…erm...enticements to encourage him to return to his job:

5 – Chocolate! Chocolate cures all in large quantities, right? LOL Well, it should! *pouts over the injustice of life* Unfortunately, I’ve gone on the B12/B6 shots to help me drop a few pounds (honestly, quite a bit more than a “few pounds”) since diet and exercise haven’t worked, but only kept me stalled at the same weight for a year so that my cardiologist could fuss at my yearly checkup. And now that I’ve eliminated 22 pounds in 4 months, I have no desire to splurge in one of my favorite pastimes—eating chocolate. Strangely, I haven’t even craved the stuff. Hmm…ponders the disturbing thought that the real me has been transplanted by aliens with a cloned me. ;-) Or maybe, the B shots hardwire your brain for healthy food! *blink, blink*

4 – A weekend (or a week, whichever is needed…most likely a week is on the agenda) alone, without drama, family chatter, housework, taxiing sons between sporting practices, and juggling paralegal work! Just a weekend (or week) to rest, relax and reboot my brain so that it can process all the stuff the muse normally throws at it. Being a realist, I realize that’s not going to happen anytime soon. I leave for vacation with my family soon, so I’m stressing pretty big. Yikes! Too much to get done before the vacation trip!! And then when the vacation starts, there won’t be any alone time forthcoming until school starts up in August. *whimpers at the feeling of muse doom*

3 – Taking a defibrillator to DM’s cold, cruel, fickle heart! *shudders* Yeah, not a good option for the obvious reason that DM is in my head!

2 – Meditating! Actually, this is probably the best idea yet. My meditation is informal, but it does help spark DM into action. When I meditate, I pick the storyline I want to focus on, crawl beneath the covers of my bed and let the world drop away as the focal point transitions into a stream of information and ideas. Sometimes I’ll hover in limbo between waking and sleep, BUT it always works! And, best of all, it doesn’t require chocolate, a weekend of aloneness or painful electrical shocks!

1 – Telling DM I will write whatever he wants without any interference or complaints on my end! LOL That should perk him up fast since we war often over the direction of a storyline. A dangerous promise though. :-/ But one, I’m almost willing to make if DM will return to me and permanently remove ‘grumpy me’ from existence!


So, tell me what’s your cure all for a muse hiatus? Or are you one of the lucky ones that doesn’t suffer from writer’s block? If you don't write, give me some suggestions for kickstarting my muse back into action!

~huggles~

G

PHANTASM FRIDAY

What a week!

I finished my book, Where the Road to Hell Begins, Part One Pandora's Box! *cheers and dances* Nothing is more satisfying than that accomplishment. I think I glowed and grinned for two days. I have a slight problem though; it is a romance without a sex scene. The intimacy will come in book two. Book one is about them building a strong bond, becoming best friends and growing a love to withstand anything the denizens of hell can throw at them. But where do I send a book like this? And will any romance lovers read it without the sex?

Last Friday we had a sleep over birthday party for my almost 13 year old. He'll officially turn 13 this Sunday, August 8th. Those five boys were angels. Seriously! They didn't fuss or fight, but got along fantastically. They were loud and boisterous, but boys are always like that!

My husband is still busy painting the house, but he's almost finished—finally! All he has left is for us to figure out the color of the shutters and to paint them. But it's so hot, I prefer he wait until fall starts setting in and the weather is a tad cooler. As it is, when he climbs the ladder to paint, he's been having mini-black out spells. That does NOT make me feel comfortable! So far, he's not listening to me, which shouldn't surprise me because he never listens to me. Men!

My 82 year old grandmother was hospitalized last week. She's been released back home now, but she still sounds terrible. I worry about her because since Thanksgiving of last year she can't get over things the way she used to. =( She lives three hours away, so I can't just hop in the car and run across town and see her. So, she's been talking to me almost daily by phone. Realistically, I realize she's not going to live forever, but I'd like to have her another 10-20 years old. Although, she's content to meet God—she's a very religious woman, but not a pushy in your face Christian—I'm not ready to let her go. She told me yesterday during a conversation that she never expected to live to be 80, so each day she has past 80, she's happy and feels like God gave her more than she ever deserved.

I've been working on a legal brief that is due August 12th, so I've focused on nothing but that lately. I've not been cooking dinner, but been shoving hotdogs and sandwiches at my family. They're getting very grumpy over that because they're used to getting home cooked meals every night. I told them they were spoiled and was informed it was my fault. LOL Yesterday was the first day I've done any laundry and everyone was starting to complain that they didn't have clean clothes. And cleaning up the house….Ha! The only cleaning I've done is picking up after myself, which is more than my husband and boys are doing. I have to keep telling my boys to pick up their crap and their daddy's crap! I find it extremely rude that no one helps when I'm in a legal crunch! But…I really don't want anyone helping with the laundry. My husband has turned too many things pink or gray by throwing a red or dark in with the whites. The idea of him doing laundry stresses me out more than him not helping out.

So….that's been my week in a nutshell. If you've emailed me, I'm not ignoring you; I've just not checked my emails! As soon as my brief is complete, I'll start catching up on everything in the world. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

~huggles~
Gracen

PHANTASM FRIDAY

Help Me Find the Perfect Name for My Heroine!

Heroines deserve strong names...right?

Anyone ever notice that heroine (the lead female in a book) and heroin (the addictive illegal drug) are pronounced the same way? And, of course, the spelling is almost identical. Hmmm….Do you think someone somewhere is trying to tell us something? Like maybe we’re a man’s drug of choice or we’re as addictive as narcotics? LOL Because we know no one is suggesting we’re big trouble! *cheeky grin*

I’m in the middle of writing and the hero’s name jumped out at me from a billboard. Phoenix—Nix to his friends. Everywhere I look now, I see the name Phoenix. So, I know it’s the right name for my hero. But the heroine, we’re struggling over her name. Nothing seems to fit correctly. She’s been Grace, but that was too close to my name and I kept writing Gracen. So she had a name change to Samantha, but she doesn’t feel like a Samantha. That probably sounds crazy, but I have to “feel” the name before it sits well with me. Next, she became Alexis and then Katherine and that’s where we still are. But, once again, she doesn’t feel like an Alexis and Katherine is okay, but I’m not jumping for joy over it. I do like that I can shorten Katherine to Kat, which would fit with Nix’s character, but there’s still something holding me back for loving Katherine/Kat.

So, here’s where you step in. I want you to pick the heroine’s name. From now until next Thursday, April 1, 2010 (no joking!), you get to suggest names. Then on April 2nd I’ll allow random.org to pick 3 of the suggested names from the list and then you’ll vote your favorite name from those 3 names. The winning name will become the heroine’s new and final name.

To help you suggest a name, here’s a small bio for her: She’s twenty-five, has a five year old son named Avery. Was romanced into an early marriage to a man of means with political and financial connections, but he left her without a word when Avery was two. So, she’s a single mother, with a strong sense of protective mother instincts. But things aren’t as they seem. Overnight, Avery turns homicidal, kills the family cat, then moves on to gutting the family dog, before starting on wildlife animals and the neighborhood pets. A phone call to a psychic tells her a demon is to blame and that she’ll send reinforcements. That’s when Nix enters the scene.

My heroine will face many obstacles, all related to her son. She’ll grow from being a woman with unsure footing in this world, into a woman of conviction and determination to save her son from the evil forces that threaten his livelihood, while learning nothing about her life is as it appeared.

So, she’ll need a solid name and I’m thinking something old-fashioned. But please don’t give me names like Beth, Lisa, Marie, Bridgette or Jane. I have nothing against those names, but they’re a little more commonplace than I’d prefer. But I don’t want names like Ethel and Mildred, either. They’re too old fashioned! Give me something classy and practical.

Don’t forget to leave me a comment with your name suggestion!!


One Rule: You cannot suggest a name that’s already been suggested. If you do, you will not be entered into the contest unless you suggest an alternate name. The person that suggests the winning name will win the following items:

1. A 2010 Moonlight, Lace & Mayhem desk calendar:




2. A Gracen Miller Mouse Pad:




3. And if the winner wants, I'll throw in a PDF e-book of Elfin Blood.


To help you get a better feel for the issue, here’s the first two chapters …they’re unedited and very rough draft, so please pardon any errors or snafus.

CHAPTER ONE

“What?” Katherine said with a mixture of disbelief and irritation. She looked at her son, Avery, and felt adamant denial surge in the form of a pounding headache. She’d come to the doctor for answers and this screwed up diagnosis was what she got?

“Ms. Wescott, all the tests came back normal.” The doctor scratched his chin as if intrigued. The thought of him being ‘intrigued’ over her son’s dilemma pissed her off. She forced aside the urge to whack him with her purse. “Everything except the anomaly with his blood,” he made a face, scrunching his features as if that anomaly still perplexed him. “Fascin—” The word fell incomplete when his glance landed on her hands twisting into tight fists in her lap. His gaze shot to her face. There was a flash of wariness in his ordinary brown eyes, like he expected her to give him a shiner any moment. She wanted to. She sure as hell wanted to pop him in the eye, but she had to settle for hoping the murder she felt at the despicable word ‘fascinating’ showed brightly on her face. He cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously, and he failed to meet her gaze as he continued, “Otherwise, I can assure you there is nothing physically wrong with him.”

“Just psychologically?” she drawled with enough sarcasm to frighten a heavy-weight boxer.

“With the right psychiatrist and medication…Um…”

She would not drug her child into a zombie state so everyone could cope with his condition. Hell, he was already a zombie without medication.

“We think” —so refreshing that the doctor only thought and didn’t have a damn solid answer— “he can live a relatively normal life with medication.”

“Relatively?” she echoed, baffled why the doctor felt that should make her feel better about his diagnosis.

“Dissociative Identity Disorders are not the end of the world, Ms. Wescott.”

Dissociative Identity Disorder her ass! That was the new feel-good medical terminology for multiple personalities. Something her child did not have. Putting a nice, neat medical nametag on the disorder didn’t alter the diagnosis or make her feel any freaking better.

Although….she looked at her son. He sat on the table, his legs swishing back and forth like that of any high-energy child. Avery stared at the doctor with enough malice blazing from his baby-blue eyes that it sent shivers of dread up her spine. Yeah, she couldn’t deny something was amiss with him. But she trusted her gut and it said the problem was much more than multiple personality disorder.

Two months ago, he’d been a happy, healthy, normal child, one that giggled often and adored his feline and canine companions. The next day, he’d been mute and homicidal.

He’d snapped the cat’s neck the first week of the change, receiving multiple cat scratches before he managed feline murder. Five years old and he displayed a marked increase in strength. Explaining away that incident in the emergency room would have been difficult in the best scenarios. The hostile, blaming glances from the medical personal had made her feel worse than a slug. Easily read in those gazes was that if it happened again, Social Services would be called. She didn’t want or need a repeat performance of that event ever again. And if she thought Social Services would help, she’d call them herself.

The dog had been next. Avery had sliced and diced her with a kitchen carving knife. He’d gone into the fenced-in backyard to play and she’d left him alone long enough to pour a glass of iced tea...not more than five minutes at most. When she returned, she’d found him and the dog on the back porch. Blood everywhere like there’d been a struggle. His blonde hair had been speckled with the stuff, his pale face splotched red, his hands coated to his elbows like the hemoglobin had been used as lotion, and the clothes on his chest blossomed with the substance, as if he’d wallowed in the sanguine fluid. The smile on his face…her hands trembled at the memory. She’d choked on a scream and retched over the side of the railing until she could do nothing more than dry heave.

Avery had caught a fly and she’d been amazed at his quick reflexes. And then he tortured it, holding it steady with his fingers while he pulled off its legs before moving on to those fragile wings. Those incidences heralded the beginning of his atrocities.

Twice he’d tried to stab her, slicing her upper thigh the last time. She’d stitched the wound herself, worried about infection when the slash turned an angry shade of red. Religiously, she’d slathered the wound with antibiotic ointment, added warm salty compresses and luckily, the cut healed. It still ached and she’d forever wear the ragged scar of her son’s attack, but she refused to give up on him, or allow anyone to know the total truth of his ferocity. The protective instincts of motherhood had kicked in. Nothing on earth could force her to betray him.

He’d kicked, scratched and bitten her more times than she could count. When the violent episode ceased—sometimes he snapped out of it in the middle of the rage—he would collapse in her arms and sob until exhausted sleep claimed him. His heartbreak broke her heart.

The doctor didn’t seem to notice her distress—just as well—and continued in his patronizing tone, “This disorder always involves some sort of trauma, Ms. Wescott. Your frank honesty can help us determine the trauma and proceed accordingly.”

She ground her teeth hard, amazed they didn’t crack. “Nothing has changed in his life.” Not a damn thing since her husband walked out the door three years ago.

“I’m sure if you would consider—”

“Enough!” Katherine came to her feet with a snap. The doctor flinched in surprise, his words cut off midstream. She sent him a hostile glare, snatched up her purse, held her hand out to Avery and said, “Let’s go, baby.”

Avery plopped off the diagnosis table, while the doctor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Avery sent the doctor a smile that reeked of evil intent. It creeped her out when her baby wore that expression and she couldn’t even explain the expression. It was as docile a look as the one he always wore, but something about his eyes screeched not just evil, but malevolence. There was a difference.

She sniffed. What was that smell? It rather reminded her of rotten eggs. She put a finger to her nose, but nothing helped obliterate the stench. It’d become stronger lately. God-awful described the scent perfectly.

Katherine looked at the doctor. “Do you smell that?”

“Sulphur,” he whispered, face as pale as rice paper, gawking at her son like he was the prophesized anti-Christ. The doctor tossed the chart aside, jumped to his feet, knees popping, and exclaimed, “Ms. Wescott, I don’t think you should walk out that door.” He stared at Avery, not sparing her a single glance through the diatribe.

Wondering at the doctor’s sudden fear, she looked down at Avery. There it was again…that fiery orange glow surrounding the outer perimeter of his blue eyes. The child blinked and the color dissipated.

“We really must put him somewhere we can watch him around the clock, run tests and such.”

Her gaze snapped to him, eyes narrowing. As long as she breathed her son would never become a damn lab rat. “He does not leave me. Ever.”

Anyone that tried to take him was a dead man.

CHAPTER TWO

Katherine chewed on her fingernail. Through her window, she watched her neighbor staple up a “missing pet” poster across the street. The eighth missing animal this month. Would her nightmare ever end?

She released the curtain, turned with the sound of the curtain swishing behind her and walked to the liquor cabinet. Jack Daniels really, really wanted to be her friend or at least her amnesiac friend. Drinking to oblivion was stupid. Drunkenness would resolve nothing. On the morrow, she’d awake with a hangover and the reality that her ‘reality’ hadn’t changed at all. Or, she’d wake to a new horror Avery had committed while she’d been passed out.

Eight missing animals on one street, she thought rubbing her eyes and all of them dead by Avery’s hand. It’d been a month since her doctor visit and things were decidedly worse. Avery’s deeds now included sneaking out of the house at night, stealing the animals somehow from their neighbor’s homes, bringing them back to her house and butchering them in her backyard, or God help her, in her living room on more than one occasion. After committing animal murder, he’d climb back into bed bloody.

She relocated him to her bedroom, hoping she’d wake when he climbed out of bed. For the first time in her life, she became a dead sleeper rather than a light sleeper. She lived in a state of panic of Avery never getting better, her neighbors discovering his nightly jaunts and them learning the lengths she would go to cover up his nightly murderous jaunts. Worse, she feared, his victims would turn to the two legged variety.

Using an alias and going against her belief—or rather non-belief—she’d gone to the Church. They performed an exorcism. Nothing changed.

She visited an herbalist. They administered herbs and performed an incantation, with incense clogging up her sinuses. Again, nothing changed.

In desperation she’d turned to a witch doctor. He’d done his thing and still nothing changed.

A week ago she’d located her umpteenth psychic that claimed to have all the answers. Georgie lived in Kansas, talked a good game, but being jaded came with a lot of trust issues. A nervous giggle jerked through Katherine.

We’re not in Kansas anymore.

Katherine ran a hand down her face. She was starting to doubt her sanity. Then she’d doubted Georgie’s sanity when she cautioned Avery was the cause for her heavier sleep pattern so he could go about his nightly jaunts unhampered. That wasn’t even possible. Was it?

Georgie also warned that evil lurked near, an evil she couldn’t contain and one that would devour her soul. That sounded a bit hellfire and brimstone to her.

She shook her head. Evil? She wasn’t even sure she believed in evil. Her deceased Christian parents would think her blasphemous, but even if evil did exist, her parents couldn’t help Katherine with this dilemma. They were dead. Seven years in the grave now.

Regardless of religious beliefs, Georgie refused to explain, just promised help. Katherine had yet to see any assistance. With each passing day, hope grew further and further out of reach, a smoky mist she couldn’t wrap her fingers around.

Defeat was her constant companion, a weight bearing heavily on her shoulders. But now wasn’t the time for giving up. She shut the liquor cabinet, turned and walked up the stairs to check on Avery. She found him in his bedroom sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed. The tip of a knife rested in the palm of his hand, the handle horizontal, and rotating in a circle unaided by touch.

Katherine closed her eyes, counted to ten and prayed she hallucinated.

She opened her eyes and felt her heart lurch into her lungs. Nothing had changed!

Blackness narrowed her vision, she struggled to maintain consciousness. Avery turned his head toward her, his eyes shining with that strange orange glow and his wide-eyed expression articulated without words, “Look what I can do!”

He came at her so fast she barely had time to release a half-scream before he kicked her feet out from underneath her. She hit the floor hard, the breath whooshing from her lungs and her teeth jarring. He jumped on her before she had a chance to gasp a breath. Instinct took over, thank God. The blade glinted—it was serrated, odd that she noticed that at a time like this or that she wondered where he’d gotten it from—as he slashed it toward her neck.

She caught his wrist an inch from her throat.

Copyright 2010 Gracen Miller ~ No part of this may be copy, pasted, uploaded, or used in anyway whatsoever without the express written consent of Gracen Miller.

(Please note: This contest will also run at Wicked, Thorn & Roses where I blog every Saturday. All names suggested at Moonlight, Lace & Mayhem and Wicked, Thorn & Roses will be combined together to create one contest.)