Today's snippet is from Impcatcher, which I am aiming to publish in roughly a month's time. Tal, the eponymous impcatcher, is in a cellar, endeavouring to capture an imp which is throwing bottles of vintage wine at him.
Last week, he ignited a crystal that flared brightly...
The
imp was staring at the cohlstone as it ignited, and it cried out in
alarm and pain. I, of course, was looking anywhere but towards the
flare. As it faded, I lunged through the returning gloom with
gauntleted hands to seize my prey. My hands fastened around the imp’s
throat, and I yanked it bodily off the top of the empty stone shelves
that climbed steeply up the side wall of the cellar. In the rapidly
dying light from the cohlstone I could see what I had caught. Dark
green, mottled skin covering a body the size and scrawniness of an
adult goblin; a large hooked nose, small, bat wings, and two
temporarily blinded red eyes.
It
struggled, of course. I’m no light-weight, and I kept my grip upon
it as it thrashed around, its jaws clamping together with an audible
click as it tried to bite, its wings beating fast to haul it out of
trouble. Without success, needless to say. I’m quite capable of
holding onto even a large imp. And this was one – maybe forty
inches tall, and surprisingly muscular. A quozac. Her Ladyship’s
description had sounded like a hob, or at worst a skitterhorn - a
quozac was far more of a handful. And I’d dropped my binding net.
I'm getting too old for this game – I'll be forty in three years.
I offered up three different covers last week. This time I have a totally different image - again, I'd really appreciate comments about the cover and if you think this is better or worse than last week's offerings!
