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Sunday, October 12, 2014

Team Mutant Charm Entry 4: LESSER EVILS, Adult UF

Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy

Title: LESSER EVILS

Word Count: 98,000

Hero: Jean Grey. Like Jean, Lilah will do anything for the people closest to her. They both had traumatic childhoods that greatly affected how they view the world, but managed to rise above them and take control and ownership of their lives.

35-word Pitch: 
Lilah's involvement in her boss' death comes back to haunt her — literally. When her brother takes the fall, she'll have to kill the ghosts who have him before he becomes one.

First 250:
He smiled, and it flooded me with the desperate need to chop off his head. Since Mr. Tall, Dark, and Ghostly aimed to violently rip my soul from my body, I considered it an appropriate, and very necessary response. And I had a quota to beat.

A gust of cool autumn air whispered through my hair as I side-stepped the rusted frame of a car. "C'mon, you little bastard. Let's make this quick. I've only got fifteen minutes before my shift ends."  

The ghost responded by sinking further into the shadow cast by a derelict liquor store, just as a blackened cloud crawled across the full moon. I forced myself not to blink so I wouldn't lose him, and he shuffled to the right. Then the left. Back to the right. They always did that — shuffling back and forth, waving, floating about. The crazier ones jumped or made faces. All of it designed to figure out whether I could see them. Not all people could. Whether you considered that a good thing or a bad one was all a matter of perspective.  

I gave him a few more seconds to finish his shuffling before I took a few steps forward. The tattoo on my wrist heated and tingled as the magic in it flared to life, forcing him into solid form. He looked mostly human, though bent and twisted, both physically and psychologically no doubt, from untold years in Purgatory.  

Honestly, if Purgatory was designed to be some kind of rehab for sinners, someone should revoke its license. 

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