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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Teaser Tuesday - Mystic Taxi

The following is a short excerpt from my steampunk urban fantasy work in progress, Mystic Taxi:

Henry parked Mystic at the curb. "Can you answer a question for me?"

"Don't know until you ask." Wanda studied him, one eyebrow raised. "So ask."

"Why do you think I'm a… that I can…"

"That you're a Bringer?" She touched a metal collar around her neck, the center of it dotted with copper rivets. "The voices told me." Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed open the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. "Damn. It's colder than a well-digger's ass out here."

He stood from the cab and faced her. "Did you say voices?"

She nodded, but didn't look at him. "Comes with the job."

"Of being an exorcist?"

"Yep. They're not literal voices because demons don't have mouths to talk with, but they can think. They think all the time. And I get their thoughts inside my head, which is why I wear this pretty necklace I got on." She touched the collar again. "It keeps 'em quiet until I'm ready to listen."

Wanda Snow had to be the strangest woman Henry had ever met. And though she was tall, her face was that of a girl barely out of her teens. She couldn't have been more than twenty, and yet this child had almost snatched his soul right out of his body. Or half his soul. It would take a while to wrap his mind around that one.

"I tried to capture the demon myself yesterday and it about singed my eyebrows off," Wanda said, smoothing her bangs over her forehead. "I couldn't cut its bond and that made it wrathy."

"What's it possessing?" Henry asked.

"The kitchen oven."

That gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "burn in hell."

3 comments:

Creative A said...

Lol! I can't believe these excerpts are from your first draft. They're so complete.

Great writing, great teaser :)
-CA

Karen Duvall said...

Wow, A, thanks!

Yeah, it's a drafty draft, but I'm a tinkerer. I edit as I write so that there won't (hopefully) be a whole lot to revise when I'm done.

Barbara Martin said...

Now this is what I call I teaser. It's getting more interesting with each excerpt you post.