Shadow Marked by Anna J. Evans

The Devil and Miss Quinn...

Samantha Quinn has been in the dark since age six, when her parents sacrificed her sight in a satanic ritual. She is trying to get over her demonic past, but horrific lifelike visions haunt her. Her intuition gets stronger and clearer with a wild, adrenaline-fueled sexual encounter with Jace, her brother’s childhood friend. And now Samantha is more tormented than ever by what she can “see”—and by what she felt in that forbidden encounter...

Samantha must now prevent the deaths she sees in her premonitions and protect her body from the same demon from her twisted childhood. Her dark curse reveals that Jace will be the next victim, and it is crystal clear that she must destroy the demon to protect her love.

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Excerpt (unedited, may vary from final copy, c. Anna J. Evans):

Samantha Quinn wasn’t afraid of the dark.

Even when she was walking the edge of the ruins, where the demonic infestation had transformed New York City’s Greenwich Village into a maze of rubble inhabited by bloodthirsty predators, the darkness could be an unexpected ally.

The scary things got cocky in the shadows. Careless. They made noise—claws on the concrete, rough skin scraping along crumbling brick, eager breath rasping through thickly scaled lips—things even a sighted person could hear if they were really listening.

To a woman who’d been legally blind since the age of six, the sounds of an approaching demon were like gunshots—impossible not to notice, and easy to avoid if you had practice. Which she did. A girl couldn’t grow up on the south end of the island without learning how to run and hide.

Or when to pay attention to the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

“I’ll be there in ten, fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Wonderful! We can’t wait to—”

“Gotta hang up. Bye.” Sam tapped the bud clipped to her ear, ending the phone call without waiting for Mrs. Choe to say her good-byes.

Ellen and her husband, Chang-su, had lived in the neighborhood for forty years and raised four children in the wake of the infestation twenty years before—when demons emerging from beneath the Atlantic Ocean had found the habitats they sought in the cities of New York and Boston. The Choes knew there were times when safety dictated the rude termination of a phone call. But they wouldn’t be worried. Demons were easy to avoid if you stuck to the main streets and made a run for it on the rare occasions when the creatures prowled too near the edge of the ruins.

The descendants of the ancient dinosaurs—monsters that had escaped from caves near the earth’s core during a series of massive, worldwide earthquakes near the end of the last century—weren’t particularly quick. They had to rely on their prey being careless and letting them get close enough to employ the demons’ various deadly natural weapons. Sam wouldn’t let them get close. She had these streets memorized, and her ability to distinguish areas of light and dark kept her from running into any large obstacles. Sure, she had her share of spills, but she felt confident she could take care of herself, even on the city streets.

It’s just dumb luck, Sam. Someday you’ll fall at the wrong time and something will get you.

Ah, Stephen. Brother, friend, voice of doom. Why was it always his voice that got going in her head at night, when she was trying to pull off the “brave New Yorker” thing?

Because I’m right. You know I’m right. You should move back in with me so you’ll have someone looking out for you, so you won’t—

Sam did her best to banish her brother’s voice, focusing on where she was going, not where she’d been, increasing her speed until her sandals made tiny scraping noises against the concrete as they chased the white cane tapping ahead. She was on her own now. She had her own place, her own life, and she didn’t need anyone taking care of her, no matter what her brother thought.

The Choes hadn’t been surprised to hear she’d finally gotten her own apartment. But then, they’d never treated her like an invalid or an oddity. To them, she was just another girl from the neighborhood, and the only florist they wanted to handle their daughter’s wedding. Sam was gradually making a name for herself above the demon barricade, but Hand Picked was already the hottest thing going below Fourteenth Street. Arranging flowers based solely on smell and texture created some fairly fantastic-looking combinations.

Sam had never seen any of her own arrangements, aside from the occasional silhouette when the sun shone through her shop window, but she took her clients’ word for it that they were stunning. Old friends or not, the Choes wouldn’t hire less than the best for their daughter. They’d finally gotten Sin Moon hooked up with a nice Korean boy who owned a house in the suburbs, far from the dangerous community where they’d been trapped when property values plummeted in the wake of the infestation. They meant to stage a wedding celebration worthy of such an event. And they wanted to approve every last detail months in advance.

Hence the centerpiece Sam was presently cradling with her left arm. She’d promised to bring the sample arrangement over as soon as she finished cleaning up the shop for the day, no matter what the hour.

But as the pungent smell of fresh demon waste mingled with the scents of lavender and wild roses, she began to doubt the wisdom of journeying out alone after seven o’clock. Demonic attacks had been on the rise in recent months. Attacks always increased in the spring, when the warmer temperatures brought certain breeds out of their winter hibernation, but this year it was worse than usual.

Just like her dreams—worse than usual.

She’d been tortured by nightmares since the night she was six years old. At this point, she couldn’t remember what a good night’s sleep felt like. She was accustomed to bolting awake two or three times a night, soaked in sweat, screaming for the giant, shadowy fingers that crept through her dreams to stop hurting people.

It would have been bad enough if the dreams were just dreams, but they weren’t. Once the shadow fingers touched someone, it was only a matter of time. Cancer, the loss of a family member, the loss of that person’s own life—it was impossible to guess what tragedy would befall the touched, but Sam no longer doubted that tragedy would come.

Knowing suffering was on the horizon was her “gift.” Sam could tell when a bad dream was more than just a nightmare.

She could smell it on the air. Taste it on her tongue, sharp and bitter.