Just the one book worked on tonight, but I’m pretty keen on what was accomplished: 521 words on Bone Walker tonight, punting Chapter 10 up to 759 words, and the book in general to 27,680.

And, well, have a snippet! I could see this being the scene snippet that shows up at the beginning of paperbacks, I think. 😉

In the meantime, I rubbed the cloth over Elessir’s hot face and brow. The attention seemed to help; his shivers eased, and his voice gained a little strength as he murmured something in syllables I didn’t know, but which needed no great stretch of imagination for me to peg them as the speech of Faerie. “Alokhiu. Queen turned her into one.” Before any of us could ask, he slit open one eye and peered groggily up at me. “It means ‘bone walker’… more or less.”

Neither Christopher nor Millie spoke, maybe because Elessir was focused on me. Joy. So I said, shoving the worry modulating into a higher and shriller pitch into the back of my mind, “You’re going to have to tell me what that is.”

“It’s hunger, Miss Thompson. For magic. For flesh. For life.”

The worry in me exploded into full-blown dread. I thought of every monster I’d ever seen in a horror movie, any creature that fed upon the living: zombies, succubi, vampires, you name it. None of those were real–or if they were, Millie hadn’t clued me in yet. But there was no mistaking the reality of Elessir’s hoarse words. There was no artifice here, no mockery. And it scared the hell out of me. I froze even as I cradled him, and had to force my next words out through a fear-locked throat.

“And this is what’s riding around in Jude now?”

He sagged in my arms, spent, though his gaze never left my face. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Then he fainted, leaving two shocked Warders and me with his limp form–and an afternoon that had gotten much, much worse.