In just a few short, holiday-frantic days, I'll be releasing the second in my Dreamwalkers paranormal/urban fantasy series about the humans who can drag monsters onto our plane simply by dreaming about them and how they fight the products of their imaginations. DISCIPLE is set several months after my already-published -- and very very cheap, only 99 cents!!! -- novella TANGIBLE, which introduces Maggie, our heroine, who's about to find out about the secret world of dreamers in this excerpt...
***
One
week later. Richmond, Virginia.
Margaret Louise Mackey, feet icy in wet tennis shoes,
hesitated at the mouth of the shortcut she always took home from the coffee
shop. Fresh snow blanketed the ground, having piled atop the old layer while
she’d sipped mocha lattes and postponed bedtime. There were no footprints in
the narrow alley between the townhouses, no tire tracks, and not much light
except the gibbous moon.
There was nothing to fear in that darkened alley. She’d
walked it every day for the past month. Growing up, she’d skipped up and down
it on a regular basis.
Yet tonight terror locked her joints, dried her mouth and
made her heart pound. The crisp scent of snow in the air, the painful bite of
winter on her exposed skin, and the angle of that gibbous moon had all happened
before.
Last night, in the nightmare.
Not her first nightmare since the funeral, but this one had
been different. This one had felt real. If dreams came true—which she’d seen no
proof of in her life or anyone else’s—halfway down that alley, she was going to
die. Ripped to pieces by vampires straight out of the television shows she’d
been glomming to keep herself awake at night.
Maggie considered returning to the sidewalk and heading for
the house that way. Longer but...safer? And more pathetic. And she didn’t trust
Richmond drivers in this late winter snow. In any snow. Wouldn’t take much for
one of those idiots to skid onto the sidewalk and into her.
She’d lost enough family members to bad drivers lately.
A gust of wind slammed her from the side, snow swirling into
her face, sticking to her hair and cutting through her fleece pants to freeze
her legs. The coffee shop was a fifteen minute walk from the house and it
alarmed her that she could barely feel her fingers and toes.
Much more of this and she’d be nursing frostbite in addition
to insomnia, bad dreams and grief. She wanted to be safely home, tucked under
the comforter on the couch, eating something junky and watching television.
The therapist had assured her grieving was necessary but she
couldn’t allow her nightmares to dictate her behavior. Dreams were only that.
Dreams. The brain working through its garbage and stress—a mental colonic.
With an eyeroll at her own melodrama, Maggie headed down the
alley at a quick pace, her half-numb feet crunching through the pristine snow.
***
DISCIPLE BLURB WRITTEN OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD INSTEAD OF CUT AND PASTED:
Maggie and Zeke survived the events of TANGIBLE (SPOILER!) and now must make their teacher-student relationship work. Platonically. Their tolerance is tested when an enemy from Zeke's past ... dammit, basically the bad guy messes shit up. And also, there are vampires, dinosaurs, chthulhu, zombies, giant spiders, scheming weasels, secret bases, steamy sex scenes, shooting, violence, cussing, narrow escapes and explosions.
I have a great memory, don't I?
Jody Wallace
Author, Cat Person, Amigurumist of the Apocalypse
http://www.jodywallace.com * http://www.meankitty.com
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