Son of a Pitch Entry: Shadow of a Soul

Title: Shadow of a Soul
Age and genre: YA Urban fantasyWord Count: 65,000
Query:Vetis was a young demon who ate good intentions. He was obedient and content, until his curiosity about the chaotic humans on whose energy he fed got him booted from the demon realm. After breaking the rules by befriending a human girl-child, he ends up bound to the Earth in a body that was only supposed to be fancy packaging to conceal the demon within.Fast forward ten years, and the boy who calls himself ‘Wes’ has adapted pretty well to human life. He has survived in the foster care system that bounced him around. He’s even learned how to speak as a human after years of speech therapy. He is scraping by and keeping his demonic nature at bay, even with his mental clarity being muddled by the sixteen year-old boy brain housed in his noggin.Then fate slaps Wes with a trifecta of rotten luck. He accidentally turns his only friend into a life-eating minion. Then he reconnects with the human girl who kick-started his sentence as a child. Only now, she is a powerful (and attractive) demon hunter who seeks to destroy him. Finally, he is contacted by his former demon master, who brings up the matter of ‘the prophecy.’ It’s a damn clichéd notion, but all of Legion seems confident that Wes is destined to consume the world’s soul energy, leaving it clean for a new age of demons to walk the Earth. Wes doesn’t believe or want any of it, but as his hunger awakens he begins to doubt his ability to not annihilate the place he’s come to think of as home.
First 250:Vetis drifted along the wall of a supermarket, nothing more than a phantom. His oily black presence was indistinguishable from the shadows to passersby, but he didn’t need for people to see him. Still, he would try to materialize. He was only six years old, and not very powerful, so filling out his human form and giving it substance was difficult. Bael, who ruled the Vetis arm of Legion, had instructed him to practice.His human body, which served as a tether to walk the Earth, looked like a beautiful little boy, with dark blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and a head of thick, straight hair the color of wheat. It was born of a jackal, but his demon essence was pulled from Legion. The formula for his physical appearance had been stolen from the angels. Some demons had frightening bodies, with many nightmarish heads and dragon wings. They were meant to inspire terror, but a necessity to earn the occasional trust and favor of humans meant that Vetis demons should be pleasing in appearance.            Concentrating all of his will, he pushed his essence out as far as it would go, like a balloon slowly expanding. His boy form, transparent at first, began to solidify until those who looked would see the boy body standing in the store, leaning against a cereal display. A woman walking by pushing a shopping cart glanced at him, did a double take, shivered and picked up her pace. Most living things could sense the darkness beneath his human skin and instinctively knew to fear him.