Free Wicked Demons by Reece Vita Asher

 
     
     
I
     
     
    Andi O’Day was a paralegal for one of the
most prominent law firms in Savannah, Georgia, and had managed to
wiggle into an exquisitely renovated home in the heart of the
Savannah Historic District due to a wild inheritance after her
grandfather’s passing.
    Her life followed a thoroughly realized
success plan.
    That’s what she told herself, anyway,
especially on lonely evenings as she sat at her desk, looking into
a vastly empty office. Okay, most of the time she felt focused and
accomplished. But sometimes she reminded herself that she was
thirty-one.
    Her mother had celebrated her thirteenth
wedding anniversary and had bore three children by the time she was
that age. Andi’s older sister Bronwen opened her own consignment
store, was raising two children, and had managed to marry and
divorce three men by the time she turned thirty-one.
    Thirty-one! What did that mean to Andi? She
forewent the idea of parenthood long ago, not feeling it the right
choice for her. And while her pride ran over for Bronwen, Andi
wanted nothing to do with the hassles of owning a personal
business. So what did she want at thirty-one?
    Love, of course, damn it! The only thing
missing from her success plan.
    And feeling bitter after being
unceremoniously dumped by Kirk From the Second Floor after four
promising dates, Andi was in no mood to sit at her mahogany desk
while her coworker was throwing an engagement party.
    Which is why she was barreling through the
darkness on an unfamiliar road, determined to join the partygoers
and celebrate into obscenely wee hours with champagne, microscopic
finger foods and, hopefully, a good shag.
    “Goddamn GPS, work!”
    Andi fiddled with the tiny lit box attached
to her windshield. It was a crude reminder of the new Charger with
built-in GPS system she should have purchased last week but
decided against in favor of using her savings for travel and
investment opps.
    The screenshot zoomed to an unidentifiable
location.
    “No! Where am I?”
    Reaching for the bane of her frustration, she
hit the slender screen again. And again, and again, and again. It
hadn’t registered to Andi that her eyes had been off the road
longer than her tenth grade driving instructor would have
permitted.
    Pushing the screen for the twentieth time, it
wasn’t until a dark shadow in her peripheral vision caused her to
look up…just in time to watch her vehicle leave the safety of the
asphalt.
    Andi screamed and grabbed the wheel, jerking
it to the right, causing the car to fishtail. The tires were
useless as they screeched into the night, only stopping when the
silver Jetta slid down a muddy embankment. And as the carnival ride
quickly came to a stop, Andi thanked God it was the deep mud that
stopped her rather than a thick cluster of trees that could have
been the death of her.
    Everything stilled.
    Sitting in the quiet darkness, she reflected
on the noises claiming the night right before losing control of the
vehicle. A groaning, almost howling—an ungodly combination—had
pierced the night before fear overrode everything Andi knew.
    Fighting the buzzing in her ears and rattled
breaths, purse in hand, she rolled down the window and climbed out
after the door failed to open.
    Andi had never been in a car accident before.
Adrenaline fed her heart with a fierceness it hadn’t experienced
since that time when she was ten and fell from her cousin’s
treehouse. That’s when she ripped a cluster of muscle tissue in her
knee, causing years of limitations and chronic pain.
    It plagued her even now as she forced her way
vertical, fighting the massive incline back to the lightly traveled
highway.
    Dropping to the ground in a grubby heap, Andi
sat close to the blacktop’s edge. The whole event seemed surreal.
When her heart failed to recover a healthy rhythm, she lay back,
feeling the grass press against her neck, the hard earth cradling
her back.
     
    As if awakening for the first time since the
accident, she