Art © RéJean DuBois
The first draft of my standalone dark fantasy novel, The Hands of Cally Wu, has a word count of 63000 words. See my blog for (unedited) excerpts.
Cally Wu has spent the last thirty years with three demons bound to her mind – the result of being a child sacrifice in an occult ritual gone wrong. Nightmares, possession, and uncontrollable bouts of rage are everyday occurrences. They even cost her her son Ben, who she was forced to give to her sister for his protection. Now, Cally spends her nights as a psychopomp, having made a bargain with her demons: if they help her rescue lost and stolen souls, she allows them to feast on the psychic vampires and money-grubbing soul merchants she encounters in the process.
Then someone murders Cally’s sister and locks up her soul. Ben – now twelve – is returned to Cally. Life becomes nearly unbearable as her demons rage against her one source of happiness. The price for even a minute of peace skyrockets.
But with her sister’s soul and murderer still out there, and custody of Ben hardly guaranteed, peace is too much to ask for, anyway. Seeing no other options, Cally bargains with her demons again and again to set things right… until her willingness to compromise might just lose her the last bit of control she had.
Excerpt
That was then.
This is now.
This is me, eyes fluttering open. I suck in air through shallow breaths, the cold stinging my throat, my face numb.
White everywhere. Snowflakes cling to my eyelashes. A few feet away, something dark and shapeless lies on the ground. Red stains the snow, spreading out like an oil spill.
My vision sharpens—and I remember.
Not all of it. But enough. I remember a gunshot, and voices in the distance, and I remember hitting the ground (though not why).
I remember blackness overtaking me; I remember Viola.
Viola.
I cough and roll onto my stomach, forcing myself up to all fours.
Like me, the demons don’t know what happened, but they laugh anyway. They laugh at Viola’s cane, elegant mahogany half-submerged in the snow, and the way pale fingers rest immobile on her chest, forming claws, like it would’ve helped.
Shut up, I tell them, and keep moving.