Book 8 Preview (Minor Spoilers!)

One kind reader asked me if I could possibly give an update on the progress of Book 8, and perhaps even provide a sneak peek of things to come.

So, Book 8 is still progressing, though somewhat slower than I had anticipated or hoped for. I really hope to have the first draft done in time for New Years, but the book is proving much more challenging than any of the previous installments in the Songreaver’s Tale.

Still, I’d like to share this little excerpt from the working draft.

Be warned, there are minor spoilers ahead!

Lampwicke released her grip on the mossy branch and dropped. She spread her wings, catching the air like a falling leaf, gliding as she fell. She thought of winter and ice and dead things under the snow, dimming her inner light to shadow. Her skin remained as dark as the Eigerwood itself. When she lighted on the broad leaf of a pitcher plant, it bowed beneath her weight, and cold trickles of dew ran across her fingers and toes to drip into the dark undergrowth of the forest floor.

The vampire’s head lifted, limned with moonlight, three trees away.

Cold fear seized the fairy’s tiny heart.

The vampire sniffed the air, not like a predator, catching the scent of game, but a long, sensual sigh, like a drunkard, savoring the first sip of a fine vintage.

Lampwicke clenched her teeth, and her skin began to glow with fiery rage.

The vampire’s eyes flashed with delight, and the cold blood in his laughter carried to her on the wind.

Two more shadows stalked into the moonlight behind him.

Lampwicke’s body flared like a living coal, and her wings roared in her ears as she shot skyward again.

The little fairy darted through the Eigerwood like a flaming arrow, lancing through worm-eaten leaves and dodging the spindly branches that reached like bony fingers from the trees. These trees muttered at her passing, in words half heard and less understood. Would they mourn the death of another child of the Song, or had they drunk too deeply of shadow to care?

The vampires moved like phantoms, two of them flanking her to either side, the first, still giggling like a self-made monster behind her. Too close.

She knew they would be upon her in a few more heartbeats, faster still, had they desired to end the chase sooner, but vampires loved to hunt. Her life depended on that one, awful fact.

She had learned to depend on it.

The vampire to her right managed half a scream before Bunda’s silvery jaws closed over his bloodstained lips. The vampire’s muffled cry ended quickly, replaced by the agonized shrieks of his companion to Lampwicke’s left. Garvulf liked to play with his food.

Lampwicke spun, mid-flight to face the giggling fool behind her. She wanted to see the look on his face.

The vampire squinted his eyes against the blazing gold light of Lampwicke’s triumph, his red lips twisted in confusion. Lampwicke rolled to the right as the vampire, blinded, ran, headlong into the tree in front of him.

The vampire’s startled whimper of pain brought a smile to the fairy’s lips as she watched him stagger and fumble at his bloody nose. His long black hair tangled in the mess, and he clawed it clear of his face as he stumbled and tried to regain his balance.

“Look up,” Lampwicke told him, though she knew he probably didn’t know a word of Fae. He’d never get the chance to learn her language now.

Morse fell on him from above like a meteor of silver light. Argent flames wreathed the white shaman’s fur as the slender ghoul drove his obsidian dagger downward, again and again.

Garvulf’s vampire finally stopped screaming, and Lampwicke settled atop a nearby fallen log. She draped her arms across a mushroom cap, breathing in its moldy scent as she caught her breath.

“Well done, Lampwicke! Well done!” Morse laughed, his high voice cracking with excitement. His checkered moon-runes sparkled like hoarfrost, giving his pale fur the look of a ghostly jester’s motley.

Lampwicke grinned at the lanky shaman and then laughed the manic laugh of one who had narrowly cheated death once again.

Garvulf stepped into Lampwicke’s golden light, wiping his lips with the blood-spattered white fur of his thick right forearm. His eyes still burned with the silver light of the kill, and his long, wolfen jaws hung open in a drunken leer.

“Only three,” Bunda said in her thick Northern accent. She stepped from the trees, her bi-colored eyes half-lidded with the shivery pleasure of a freshly devoured soul. She alone of the three bore a streak of dark fur that ran from just above her left eye, all the way down her back to her long, bushy tail.

“Only three of us,” Garvulf chuckled, “Lucky that way.”

“Four of us,” Morse corrected him. The shaman gave a grateful nod in the golden fairy’s direction.

Lampwicke grinned again.

“What do you say, little sister,” Bunda laughed, “are you ready to taste your first soul? There may be more of them next time!”

Lampwicke breathed deeply of the scent of the Eigerwood. Not her forest, but it would do. She shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she answered.

Somewhere, far away, a direwolf howled. It’s long, mournful call drifted through the trees as though seeking its lost masters and knowing they would not answer back. Lampwicke thought she heard the Eigerwood laughing around her. The trees here had a cruel sort of humor. This was not her forest.

“They always leave one with the wolves,” Bunda said.

“Maybe more, these nights,” Garvulf added, his black lips curled into an eager grin.

“It would be a shame to break up the set!” Morse giggled in his boyish voice.

Lampwicke’s glow faltered as she took wing again, readying herself. “What do you want me to do?” she asked. She was not afraid of them anymore. If she kept telling herself that, someday, she might even believe it.

“You’ve done enough tonight, little sister,” Morse said with his moon-checkered smile, “Go on back to the nest… Tell the others that we’ll be back soon.”

Lampwicke smiled and nodded. Bunda winked her left eye, the greener of the pair, at Lampwicke and then disappeared into the forest with the other two ghouls close behind.

Lampwicke did not look down as she flew past the stained patch of ferns where the giggling vampire had fallen. Would he and his companions have drunk her life on the spot, or would they have bound her soul in fiery cords of magic and carried her captive back to their dark city? Never again, she shuddered. Morse had promised that to her. He had sworn it on his soul. He would never let the vampires take her alive.

Lampwicke sighed. A dull, weary, heartsickness crept into her body as she flew. No matter which direction she traveled, that city of living death lay before her. Her people would never be free until the vampires were gone, every last one of them. What hope did the White Pack have against that writhing nest of evil? What hope did the Fae have of helping the pack destroy it?

She flew higher now, settling on a branch to look up at the moon. Here, above the stifling whispers of the cankerous leaves, she could breathe again. The scent of tar-black sap and scabrous bark chilled her soul, but, within her heart, one bright memory smoldered on.

“When every cage is broken,” she whispered into the wind, “then I… then everyone can go home.”