Jordan L. Hawk's Blog, page 28
January 27, 2013
Hunter of Demons – Excerpt
With Hunter of Demons coming out next week, I thought I’d post a little excerpt. In this scene, hotshot federal exorcist John Starkweather is trying to remove a Non-Human Entity (NHE) which is possessing Caleb Jansen. Things do not go as planned.
***
John finished the invocation and reached out with the psychic sense he couldn’t describe to anyone 
except another exorcist. It was like extending a rope barbed with hooks, but the rope and the hooks were somehow part of him, connected to his own energy and nervous system. He’d snag the NHE, drag it out of Caleb, force it into the spirit bottle, and hand it over to the disposal team.
Piece of cake.
John’s ears popped as the pressure inside the circle dropped sharply. The smell of ozone filled the air, underlain with a whisper of sandalwood and desert earth dampened by rain. A mad wind sprang up from nowhere; Caleb’s long hair whipped back from his face, and his clothes ruffled wildly. All four of the candles went out at once.
Not according to plan.
Caleb’s head snapped back; his eyes were no longer soft brown, but black as obsidian mirrors. Jagged flashes sparked in their depths.
But the outward manifestations were nothing compared to the energy suddenly flooding the circle, playing along sensitive nerves. John stood in front of an oncoming storm, a leviathan of thunder and lightning, which had the power to obliterate everything in its path.
Fuck. John took an instinctive step back, his hand tightening on his athame. How the hell had things gone wrong so fast, from no physical symptoms to a full-blown possession in a matter of seconds?
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Sean had said, and damn it, he should have listened. Because, however the NHE had reacted to Sean’s weaker talent, John certainly had its attention.
The entity wearing Caleb’s body took a step toward him, and damn, the way it moved, all animal strength and grace. Backed up with such energy, it was like being trapped in a cage with a hungry tiger.
John took another step back himself, instinct warring with intellect. Predator! Run! Hide! screamed his hindbrain, and it was everything he could do to lock his knees and hold firm, because breaking the circle would let it out where it could get at the rest of the team.
Kaniyar was back there with her gun, somewhere. If things got truly out of hand, she’d fill it with silver-jacketed lead. And if John was lucky, she’d drop it before his head was ripped clean off his shoulders.
Etheric energy swirled over and around him. In response, his cock swelled and strained against the zipper of his slacks.
What the hell?
He’d done dozens of exorcisms, and the only one to get a rise out of him had been an incubus—and not even it had affected him like this display of pure, raw, power.
“What are you doing?” the NHE asked. Its voice was Caleb’s, but underlain with a bass roar, like the roll of thunder.
John’s mind froze, torn between his training, which said he should stab it with his athame and throw every bit of energy he could summon into forcing it out of Caleb’s dying body, and the fact it sounded…well, annoyed.
Not angry. Not raging. Not groveling or conciliatory, as if it wanted to trick him into letting it go. Just irritated, as if he posed a minor inconvenience.
The sheer amount of etheric energy bleeding out of it staggered him. There was no way he could make this entity leave Caleb’s body if it didn’t want to go, not without killing Caleb. And he wasn’t ready to do that yet, not when it didn’t seem to pose an immediate danger.
“What’s your name?” John asked cautiously. Some NHEs had them, or took them, and it was as good a stalling tactic as any while he figured out what to do next.
The NHE stared at him unblinking. “Gray,” it said, and this time there came the flash of fangs behind its lips.
Fucking hell. Of all the times for Sean to be right. Drakul indeed.
“Gray?” he repeated stupidly.
“Everything was gray.” Oh. Not a name, then. “Muted. Even the memories of the dead were faded and ghostly. Now there is color. And smells. So many. I never knew there was any scent except for demons.”
Stranger and stranger. “You mean NHEs? Non-Human Entities? We, er, don’t call your kind demons anymore.”
The drakul—Gray, he couldn’t help but think of it now—shot him an annoyed glare. Apparently, John had a talent for pissing it off. “They are not my kind. Demons are food. I am not food. Therefore, I am not a demon.”
“Demons—I mean, other NHEs—are…food?” Goddess, he sounded like an idiot, just repeating things back, but this entire conversation was crazy. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe he’d wake up in bed, and Caleb would turn out to be some completely normal, non-possessed hottie he’d picked up in a bar.
Except the crackle of energy rolling off Gray, vast and dangerous as a thunderstorm, was too real to be part of any dream. Let alone the hard-on John was still sporting.
“Of course.” Irritation again, as if John were a particularly stupid child. “I hunt them. I eat them.” Gray raised one hand, fingers curling, each one tipped with a retractable claw, like a cat’s. “There was one here. I have been tracking it, but it found me first. The mortals got in my way. They destroyed the body I inhabited. So I took the nearest one.” Confusion crossed over the impassive features. “But he did not remain dead.”
Ah. Was this why it bothered to talk to him in the first place? Was he—it—whatever—looking for answers?
“Someone gave him CPR.” John hesitated, but what else was he going to do? “Leave him. If you truly only hunt, uh, demons, then leave Caleb’s body and find another.”
A low growl issued from Gray’s throat, like a rumble of thunder. Then he was only inches from John’s face, and oh fuck how had he moved so fast? His black hair whipped around his head like angry snakes, snapping in the wind, and his lips drew back to expose the jut of fangs. Adrenaline sent John’s heart into overdrive, but he forced himself not to flinch, not to even blink.
The hunt begins, February 5, 2013
January 23, 2013
Weekly WTF?
Fellow writer Diana Beebe alerts us this week about the threat of cyborg cockroaches. Because, they apparently aren’t indestructible enough of their own.
Just wait until I have a laser cannon mounted on my head, human! Mwahaha!
January 22, 2013
Vampires: the Wild Bunch
The trope of vampire as elegant monster continued to dominate literature, and later movies and TV, for almost a century. It wasn’t until the 1980s that this tired old monster got an infusion of new blood (ha!). The shift is most clearly seen in The Vampire Lestat (1985) by Anne Rice and The Lost Boys (1987).
Unlike Varney and Louis (from Interview with the Vampire), Lestat doesn’t waste time sitting around moping. Instead, he uses his new state to achieve the sort of freedom mortals can only dream about. His only constraints are the ones created by the bonds of love. Otherwise, he spends his unlife going where he pleases and doing what he wants, whether that’s searching for the origins of vampires, or starting his own rock band.
The Lost Boys disposed of the European nobleman trope—these bad boys are an American biker gang. Even though they’re the antagonists of the film, the wild, carefree lifestyle of the vampires is clearly meant to be alluring to the viewer. The tagline makes no bones about it: “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire.”
At this point, the vampire has utterly transformed as a symbol. He no longer represents a predator from the outside, preying first on the helpless dead and then on the living. Rather, he now stands for that dark part of our psyche which longs for complete freedom: for the ability to do anything and go anywhere, and damn the consequences.
All of which led up to what I like to call: The Buffy Factor.
January 21, 2013
Tuesday Cat
My cats are a bunch of slave drivers.
January 16, 2013
Weekly WTF?
Since I’m sure none of you ever wanted to sleep again, check out this bug:
It’s called a Brazilian Treehopper, and has pretty much ensured I’m never visiting Brazil. You can learn more about these bizarre creatures here, plus find more weird pictures. You’re welcome!
January 15, 2013
Vampires: the Victorian Era
In the Victorian Era, the vampire underwent the transformation from monster of folklore to the creature we think of today. Beginning with the publication of Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer in 1845, the vampire went from a possessed corpse terrorizing villagers to undead nobility haunting drawing rooms and upper-class bedchambers.
Varney was the origin of many tropes we still associate with vampires today, including the pair of fang marks on the victims. Interestingly, it is also one of the only sympathetic treatments of the vampire until the publication of Interview with the Vampire over a century later. Although his monstrous nature drives him to do terrible things, Sir Varney is tormented by guilt over his actions.
The publication of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu introduced the first lesbian vampire in 1872. But of course the most famous vampire of all time, the one who truly set the type for our modern conception, is Bram Stoker’s 1897 creation, Dracula. Harkening back to the ancient tales of vampire as spirit, the infamous Count causes trouble on English shores well before his earthly body arrives on a ghost ship, whose crew have succumbed already to his monstrous appetite.
Dracula’s desires focus on friends Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray. Lucy slowly falls ill, and even transfusions of blood from a cadre of robust examples of Victorian manhood can’t save her (or probably killed her faster, given that it seems unlikely they were all the same blood type). After death, she returns as a femme fatale, a creature consumed by lust: the very opposite of the upper class model of Victorian femininity, who was expected to be chaste above all else. (The vast majority of women no doubt had a very different experience of sex and sexuality, which history has largely ignored and which survives only in a few personal letters and diaries. But that’s another blog post altogether!)
Poor Lucy must be dispatched by her own fiancee; driving the stake in (no sexual imagery here, nope) by a socially-approved man restores her purity. It doesn’t save her friend Mina from the Count’s dark embrace, however, and she too begins to fall victim.
Upper-class Victorian fears of sex and aggressive women are on full display here; ol’ Bram had some issues all right. But the reason the novel still sells copies isn’t because of prudish neurosis, but because of the lure of the dark side. Even though order is ultimately restored by the destruction of the vampires, some of the characters succumb, at least temporarily, to the whisper of freedom. To doing what society forbids. To being “bad.”
Which leads us into my post for next week. 
January 14, 2013
Link-o-Geek
Sorry, Pentagon.
Chances are good you’ve already seen the White House’s Official response to a petition to build a death star, but if you haven’t you should absolutely read the entire thing. Some of the highlights include:
The subject line: This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For
The official stance that this administration is not in favor of blowing up planets
A reference to the Kessel Run
Check out the entire official response here.
January 13, 2013
2013 Schedule
One of the great things about being indie is I get to set my own schedule…which can also be one of the bad things, ironically, because it can encourage slacking off if I don’t have discipline. Since I’m one of those weirdos who loves deadlines, I thought I’d post my intended 2013 publication schedule here, because the more people who know about it the more obligated I feel to actually meet it. Win-win.
2/5 - Hunter of Demons (SPECTR #1)
3/5 – “The Dragon, the Virgin, & Their Knight” (short story)
4/2 - Master of Ghouls (SPECTR #2)
6/4 - Threshold (Whyborne & Griffin #2)
7/2 - Reaper of Souls (SPECTR #3)
9/3 – SPECTR #4
12/3 – Untitled novel
So there you have it! I’m pretty committed to this schedule, unless serious illness or a family crisis intervenes. If it does, I’ll update accordingly.
January 8, 2013
Vampires: the Folklore
The vampire of folklore was a far cry from the modern image of a suave, sophisticated creature of the night. Tales of creatures that drain some vital force from innocent victims during the night have been told in all times and all places, but the direct ancestor of what we think of as the vampire was born in medieval Europe.
It was a dark time. A man in the prime of life grows sickly and dies in the space of a week. Without any real understanding of disease, grieving survivors grope for an explanation: God’s wrath against some sin committed in the village? A malign spell from a witch? And now the same thing is happening to others, especially members of his family and those who had been in close contact with him before the end. Surely something supernatural must be going on.
The man’s corpse is hastily exhumed in a desperate search for clues, because if the cause is known, perhaps there is some charm or prayer which might bring an end to the misfortune. But when the coffin lid is removed, the body is found to be bloated, with blood around the mouth!
Today, we understand this to be a stage in the natural cycle of decay. At the time, with no scientific knowledge, is it any wonder legends of the undead who fed on the blood of the living thrived?
In slavic folklore in particular, vampires were corpses possessed by evil spirits. (Or the ghost of a werewolf, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post in and of itself!) The demonic spirit would inhabit the body, rise from the grave at night, and attack the living. Usually this meant preying on the dead person’s family and other nearby villagers, but some were far more wide-ranging and traveled across the countryside. Their victims grew pale and weak, until they died—and themselves rose as spirit-possessed undead.
This skeleton was unearthed in Bulgaria by archaeologists. Note the rusted iron stake meant to hold it in the coffin.
The easiest solution was to simply trap the vampire in its coffin—this is the origin of the “staking” myth, except the stake was just meant to pin the vampire in place, not destroy it. Burying corpses face-down, so they would try to dig out in the wrong direction, was another solution.
Some stories, however, held that vampires could be truly destroyed. One involves a soldier traveling by himself, who came upon a what he thought to be a fellow traveler and offered to share his evening fire. Later that night, the soldier awoke to find himself under attack by the other traveler, who turned out to be a vampire. The soldier overcame the undead monster, cut off its head, and burned it on a pyre. But as the flames devoured the body, a plague of rats, lizards, snakes, and other creepy crawlies poured forth. The solider knew that if even one of them escaped, the evil spirit animating the vampire would escape inside it, free to find another human host. Fortunately, the solider was able to kill all the vermin before they escaped. Or so he claimed.
Next week, we jump forward in time and take a look at the legend of the vampire in the Victorian Era, when the suave creature we’re familiar with came to be.
January 7, 2013
Hunter of Demons Sneak Peek
Happy Monday, everyone! I’ve posted a sneak peek consisting of the first chapter of my upcoming release Hunter of Demons. HoD features a hotshot federal agent, a twink with a bad attitude, and a somewhat grumpy vampire. Fair warning, though: this isn’t the kind of vampire you’re used to seeing.
Speaking of vampires, starting on Wednesday I’m going to start a 4-part series of blog posts about the evolution of the vampire, from the early folklore to the modern concept, so check back then!
