#36 YA Urban Fantasy: Cracked

TITLE: Cracked
GENRE: YA Urban Fantasy

Charmingly wicked half-demon Meda must hide from hell's army in a school for demon-hunters—who mistakenly believe she's a saint.

There are some people you know you ought not anger because it isn’t right. Like your mum—if she’s the nice sort.

There are other people you know you ought not anger because they have the authority to punish you. Police officers, politicians, insane asylum wardens, your mum—if she’s the bad sort.

But there are some people you ought not anger that you don’t know about, because no one ever survived to warn you.

I’m the third kind.

I eat souls. The packaging can be tricky, but fortunately I am blessed with special skills to pry my meals from their pesky shells. My teeth rip skin, my jaws snap bones. I am fast, lightning-fast, snuff—oh-was-that-your-life?—fast. I try to stick to bad souls, in the memory of my own mom (the nice sort). There were other reasons, reasons I used to understand, but they are reasons for a good person. I am not that.

That might be why I feel so at home here.

Small rooms, thick walls, hushed whispers and ear-grating wails. A symphony of misery set to the beat of beatings. An insane asylum, prison of the cracked and grey.

Cracked windows, cracked walls, cracked minds. Don’t make them angry or there will be cracked skulls.

Grey stone walls, grey stone floors. Once-white nightgowns, now grey. The skin of the inmates. Grey. The metal-framed bed. The bedding. Grey, grey, grey. The bars on the window…

Black. Imagery ruined. Correction—prison of the cracked, grey and black.