An excerpt!

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For those of you reading along. I haven't looked at my outline in two days and I have no idea where I am except that I have over 17k words of...stuff. So here's some stuff for you.

It was dark. The night was moonless, and the trees stretched upward, blocking the pitiful starlight that would have done very little to illuminate my path. It was silent, that kind of eerie silence that's impossible. City night life is always buzzing. Country night life has animals awake making sounds. There was nothing. It was the silence of the woods that knows when something is wrong.

I wasn't alone. I could feel something there, nearby, but I couldn't see it. Then I could hear, and I wished I couldn't. There was a rhythmic rush of wind nearby, the sound of something flying. But it was loud, powerful, like whatever was flying either was enormous, or had an incredible wingspan. It was accompanied by a sound I couldn't name. It was a horrible cross between a quiet shriek and laughter. It was worse than the sound hyenas made, and their laughter was enough to raise anyone's hackles. Something was following me, preying on me, and enjoying every single second of it.

But worse than the sound was the stench. It was a rank sour odor, the kind that bellied up from sewers or garbage dumps. It filled my nostrils to the point where I could taste it and I gagged as I broke into a run. Fear didn't send me fleeing. The need to escape that horrific smell did.

I didn't know where I was. I knew that I'd wound up separated from Jared, somewhere that was likely in the nightmare realm. Everything around me seemed broken, twisted. The ground beneath my feet was sharp and rocky, no semblance of grass to be found. Up ahead there was a rustle of movement and I spotted two pinpricks of red, spaced evenly apart. They were about six feet up from the ground, and I knew with unshakable certainty that they were eyes.

And they were trained on me.

My brain is so wiped that I'm going to bed before the 11 o'clock news. What is this?