Evil Waking

Chapter 1

1

Ten feet.

That was the distance between me and a flesh-eating demon that wanted to rip my face off.

The Somnient stalked toward me, a stocky, compact beast that looked like a demonic pit bull with a cavernous mouth of spiky yellow teeth. The smell of sulfur and rotten eggs poured from its mouth, making me want to vomit. It dragged its gnarly claws, leaving a trail of melting snow and rocks behind it.

The beach around us was filled with snow-capped rocks. Running wasn’t an option.

Behind me, the ice cracked on Lake Linette, the city’s great lake that was oh-so-beautiful in the summer, but a major problem for me now because I had nowhere else to run. In the overcast sky, the lake was a gray wasteland, its waves frozen in mid-crest.

I stepped back, and my foot hit a rock. I tripped and stumbled, but I regained my balance, jumping onto the rock.

The Somnient growled, baring its teeth.

“Seriously,” I said. “You have nothing better to do than eat people’s minds from the inside out, do you?”

The Somnient roared.

“It’s negative bazillion degrees outside,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be hibernating?”

The Somnient closed the gap, pouncing onto a rock.

“I keep hoping that one of these days when I talk to you demons, that you’ll talk back, and we can conversate or something,” I said. “Actually, forget I said that. I don’t even want to know what your voice would sound like. It would probably sound like the apocalypse.”

I jumped backward, landing on another rock nearby. Needed to keep my distance.

I hadn’t seen a Somnient since I killed the demon king a while back. The demon population decreased since then, and Somnient sightings were down across the city, which meant I could spend less time demon hunting and more time doing things I loved, like being with my cousins, drinking Prosecco, watching Star Trek…

Any day I didn’t have to deal with these dream-eating demons was a good day.

Now I had to figure out exactly how I was going to dismantle this demon before it made a mess of my client’s dream.

The bitter cold wind blew, damn near knocking me off the rock.

That’s the kind of winter we were having in Kemiston this year—it was cold, even in people’s freaking dreams.

A dreamlike voice spoke from above.

“Didn’t take this bad boy long to show up,” Destiny said.

She was watching the dream, even though she wasn't physically with me. On a day like this, I envied her for not having to do the hard work.

“Won’t take me long to get rid of him,” I said.

Reaching into the air, I felt dream ether pulsating all around me. It buzzed through my body.

I grinned at the Somnient.

“Last chance to repent for your foolish ways, talk to Jesus, or do whatever it is that you demons do to be saved,” I said.

Nothing. The demon didn’t even crack a smile.

“Okay,” I said. “Now it’s time for me to rip your face off.”

“Cuz, strike your pose and do a quarter turn,” Destiny said. “You know, like they do in the magazines.”

“Really?” I asked. “You're giving me posing directions while I fight?”

“Not me,” Destiny said. “It's the client’s photographer.”

I pulled the dream ether into my hands, and I willed it to become bright lines of light that swirled all around me like an overexposed photo.

I extended my hands as if I were shooting the light at the Somnient.

Winking, I willed the rock to disappear, knocking the Somnient onto its stomach.

“More,” Destiny said.

“More?” I asked. “That wasn’t good enough?”

“The wizard tech thingy won’t work right unless you keep going,” Destiny said. “He says to drag this fight out a bit more.”

“Has this photographer ever fought a Somnient before?” I asked. “I shouldn't let this thing live for too much longer.”

“Girl, will you just shut up and pose?” Destiny asked angrily.

Sighing, I composed myself.

The demon jumped to its feet.

I smiled, putting on my best confident smile, imagining myself in a photo shoot.

Because I was in a photo shoot.

Well, kind of.

A real life demon hunt s***h photo shoot with no camera, that is.

Ever since we saved the city from a nightmare train hell-bent on death, we were minor celebrities. The city’s news magazine wanted to feature us. Darius was recording my every move with one of his wizard tech thingies that I had no idea how to explain.

“Time to have some fun with this,” I said.

I flipped into the air, spinning several times as I willed the dream ether to gather above me.

I stretched, hung in the air, holding out my hands.

“There you go, girl,” Destiny said. “Make the clouds gather around you. That would be hot.”

“Umm, that's a little too X-Men for me,” I said, sending a wave of ether into the Somnient, knocking it across the snow.

I flew through the maze of rocks, focusing my gaze on the snow.

A column of it rose high into the air, and I created an opening in the middle and willed it to spin over me.

I held up my hands.

“Yeah, baby,” Destiny said. “Make that snow fly around.”

“Your commentary is creeping me out,” I said, swinging my hands, burying the Somnient in a pile of snow.

“Blow some wind in your hair,” Destiny said. “You've got a few strands falling down over your eyes.”

“He doesn't like that?” I asked.

“It's not flattering,” Destiny said.

I swirled my arms and redirected the cold wind into my face, manipulating my hair. The wind was so strong, it pulled my weave ponytail back.

Yeaaaaah…I was wearing weave today. A girl’s gotta pull out her finest for a photo shoot. Don't judge.

“Looks good,” Destiny said. “Do that other thang that I like.”

“You mean this?” I asked.

I stomped the ground several times. The air pulsed around me in pockets.

I clapped my hands.

The pulsing air became sweltering pockets of heat.

I stomped and clapped in a hip-hop rhythm.

The demon circled me, unsure what I was doing.

I accelerated the rhythm and the pockets flared like subwoofers, bouncing to the beat.

I materialized a black fedora in my hand—Michael Jackson style—and I put it on my head, c*****g it halfway.

“Can I finish this thing already?” I asked, turning around as I stomped.

I had a nice rhythm going. Too bad there was nobody around to record it.

“He likes this shot,” Destiny said. “Go ahead and finish.”

“The wooooooords I've been waiting to hear,” I sang.

I dipped, rolling my shoulders down, and I shimmied back up.

“You are sinspawn,” I said. “You have no right to exist in my world.”

The demon growled.

I c****d my fedora back, kicked out, spun, and pointed at the demon.

“May God grant you serenity upon your return to the underworld,” I said. “May one day you wake up and see the blessed goodness of the holy spirit.”

The demon leaped at me, but I snapped my fingers and pointed at it MJ style, and the pockets of air spewed fire, roasting the demon in place.

Circling up some dream ether, I sprinkled some into the air, keeping the demon in place.

Clapping and stomping, I said, “Be gone!”

The demon cried as if pierced by a knife. It screamed as the fire raged all over its body.

I jumped onto a rock and swung my hands up into the air, rotating my wrists like a dancer.

“Be gone,” I said again.

Holy light emanated from within the demon’s body, mixing in with the fire.

In a blink of an eye, I materialized above the demon, high in the sky, rotating with golden dream ether swirling around me. In a graceful swipe of my hands, I sent the ether flying at the demon.

“Be gone!” I shouted.

The demon shattered into a million pieces as if its body were made of glass. The shards crashed into the snow.

I landed on a rock, hands tugging the collar of my leather jacket. I couldn't see myself, and I'm no judge of my facial expressions, but I'm pretty sure the look on my face right now was damn sexy.

The holy light disappeared, leaving me alone on the snowy beach.

“Girl,” Destiny said. “The director is gushing right now.”

“I bet he is,” I said.

The sky faded. The clouds disappeared, leaving behind only darkness and shadows.

The snow turned black as the rocks.

The dreamscape was dissolving.

“Are we done here?” I asked.

“Done,” Destiny said.

Finally.

“I thought you'd never say the word,” I said.

“I thought you’d never leave a dream exactly when I told you,” Destiny said, laughing.

“Let's take a look at these photos, shall we?” I asked.

I closed my eyes and jumped out of the dream.