The Sandman

By Jaycee Clark

When the Sandman finds her, Chevy turns to the dangerous dragon shifter lover she left behind. 

A demon of terror and nightmares, the Sandman, has found his prey. Chevy may have put her monster-hunting days behind her, but monsters don’t quit. She enlists the aid of Vahagn, a powerful hunter and her former lover to help banish the demon Sandman once and for all. 

This is a short story, previously published as part of a USA Today Bestselling, multi-author anthology!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jaycee Clark
• Release date: Apr 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533755131

Book preview

Chapter One

People had called him many things through the years. He’d been around a long, long time.

Humanity had changed.

The world had changed.

Blood used to be thick, pungent, a dark robust wine. Most now tasted like…watered-down versions of dessert wines. Something one did not always want and, even when ordered, rarely finished. Too fruity, too light, too…empty.

With the tip of his tongue, he licked his lip and sighed. So different now. He’d finished. He studied the carnage around him, piles of bodies from which he’d fed. He rather enjoyed carnage.

Once upon a time, feedings were easy. Easy to accomplish. Easy to nourish his power. Easy to hide.

Now, in this new, fast-paced digital world, that was not the case.

This feeding, or what he’d left behind, would probably be on the news.

He smiled. Humans and their worries. He didn’t care about the news. It would not be the first time he’d been on the evening edition, special edition, or even the breaking news. No. He traveled where he willed. When he could. The new world made things harder. Harder for his kind, because so few believed. And he was hunted, though many had hunted him through the centuries in various forms, through different lands and forgotten times.

His crimes were legion.

He was legion.

He was a demon.

The humans had a name for him. They always had a name for him.

The Sandman.

Though a name didn’t matter in the course of things. Names once held oceans of power, and for the higher beings still did. Sadly, that was not him. Names now were just names for the most part. No one believed in the magic anymore and that cost those like him power.

Power was getting harder and harder to come by, truth be told. This modern world held so many inconveniences for his kind, spiritual beings from another realm. However, he did prefer it here. Weaker blood or no, weaker power or no, weaker energy or no, here he was someone. Here he answered to no one. Here he was a god of nightmares and fear.

Fear. Lovely, beautiful fear.

Fear fed his power.

He tilted his head back and stared up at the night sky. The dry south Texas night held so many stars, which surprised him, as close to the city as he was. This place was new to him, and surprisingly was not filled with the cowboys and horses he’d always envisioned when thinking of Texas.

He’d grown bored with the world, honestly. He’d grown bored creating sorrow in the wake of his tortures. He’d needed something else.

So he’d tracked her. Many had escaped him through the years, through the centuries, but she…she was someone whom he often thought of. The hunter who had tracked him. She’d been so very, very strong. He could still see her dark eyes flashing in that house, a few hours north of New Orleans.

Mmmmm. He could still hear her broken voice as she begged for her friend.

Those things fed his soul, bright shiny people he dulled into shells. If carnage and blood could feed his power directly, well…

Despair had its own sweet scent and energy. Despair was his sunlight. Those bright shiny people were his nutrients—after he broke them. Such a rush.

Despair.

Hopelessness.

Depression.

Fear.

He fed off them all. And sorrow. Sweet sorrow was so divine. She herself was a powerful mistress.

Chapter Two

The bodies had been ripped apart , by what, no one here seemed to know. At least, not from what he’d garnered from snatches of conversation he’d caught earlier at the local café.

The police had left earlier in the day. He’d sat and watched them, then waited until it was dark, until everyone had left the scene to investigate further.

A dump site, from what the police were saying. Apparently, the victims had not been killed here, merely dumped. It had taken the crime labs and forensic teams three days to gather everything from the large grave found behind an abandoned building not far from the city limits.

Vahagn closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The night air smelled of jasmine, rain, and grass. And something else.

A layer of death, the pungent smell, lay under it all.

And beneath that was the metallic scent of fear, sharper and heavier than the scent of death to him. But then, fear was always easier to pick up for the likes of him.

Many never realized what fear, let alone terror, actually smelled like.

He’d known for centuries how that almost coppery scent, slightly bronzed, could smell. The different variations of it. The way some