Firefanged

Firefanged, Book 1 of the Demon in Exile Series, is currently available on Amazon and BN.COM.

Excerpt: Shadow Demon

“To the Barn! Run, Cy! Run!” yelled Katie as she leaped off the cedar post beneath the corner of our front porch.

Our eleven-year-old bodies flew across the barnyard in the deathly silence of mid-night, sprinting toward the dark maw of the tall, aging building. Back inside our house, we could barely make out the banging and rumbling of an unseen beast until it suddenly reached the porch, and the harsh sound of the night-demon’s claws shredding the old wood planks brought new terror to our hearts.

The final, defiant scream of our mother had roused us moments before, telling us to go, before a screeching growl in the room below us signaled the demon’s triumph and its intention for more. We heard it clatter up the narrow stairs of our house as Katie and I slipped out the window of our bedroom. The shingles of our porch roof were wet with dew, our bare feet slipping on the wood as we scurried to the edge and slid down to the ground.

The heavy barn door was open, and my target was barely visible through the gloom. A heavy rope hung in the center of the barn, tied to the rafters more than twenty feet above us. I jumped as high as I could and started climbing, hands and feet alternating up the thick cable. Katie, my twin sister, followed on my heels as we shimmied upward together. It was a race we’d done many times that summer as we helped our father ready the loft for the upcoming harvest.

I was almost twenty feet up when a scuff on the dirt floor near the doorway drew my attention. The heavy rope began to sway erratically, but I hung on, finally daring to look down. My sister was gone, the thick line sheared off more than a dozen feet from the ground.

“Katie!” I sobbed. “Katie!!!”

An Infernal laugh answered me from somewhere below, but I saw nothing, nothing but shadows.