Query Kombat Round 2: Carrion My Wayward Son vs I Found a Magic Stone in Paris

Title: Song of the Vulture

Entry Nickname: Carrion My Wayward Son

Word count: 96K

Genre: YA Fantasy

Query:


Eighteen-year-old Alora Delattre should have been burned at the stake. Her power to possess others’ bodies is an ability condemned by scripture as the deepest form of corruption. Her father, the head of the church that would execute her, should have been the one to set her aflame. Instead, he hid her.

Then her mother is murdered by a heretic rebellion, and suddenly death by fire seems like a small price to pay for revenge. She takes over the body of one of the rebels, determined to hunt the killer down and make him bleed. But what she finds in their camp changes everything. For the first time, she sees her benevolent father through the eyes of the people whose blood he has spilled and whose families he has torn apart in the name of righteousness. And then there’s Chet, the quiet, passionate, maddening leader of the rebellion who she swears can see right through her even though he’s blind. She’s risking everything letting him get close—especially while she’s wearing another girl’s skin.

But Scythe, her father’s young, magical tracker, is on her trail and closing in fast. Alora must choose: get the revenge she craves by hauling Chet and his crew to the execution stage, or lead the crusade against the most terrible dictator her world has ever known—her own father.

SONG OF THE VULTURE is a YA fantasy complete at 96,000 words. It is a multi-POV novel with chapters from Alora’s, Chet’s, and Scythe’s points of view. The possession aspect hearkens back to Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, while the father-daughter relationship and the romance will appeal to readers of Marie Rutkoski’s The Winner’s Curse.


First 250:

You will burn, little vulture. Your secret will be discovered, and your body will crumble to ash.

Alora knew the Pyre couldn’t speak, knew the words were in her own mind, and yet the threat still raised the hairs on her arms.

The Pyre’s great pole shone white as a bone over the housetops behind her. Every time she and Kirsi snuck out of the temple like this, that pole watched her dart from shadow to shadow, followed her around every corner, waited for her to slip up so she could finally meet fiery death at its feet.

Alora glared over her shoulder, aimed an obscene gesture in its direction, and continued on her way.

Hooves clattered on the cobblestones behind them, and Kirsi shoved her into the nearest alley, cursing. They ducked out of sight an instant before the guards rode past. Alora’s heart thundered in her ears. That had been a close call. She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a laugh.

Kirsi’s dark eyes flashed her annoyance as she tugged her hood to shroud her pointed nose and deep olive skin. When the guards disappeared around the corner, she rounded on Alora. “Stop laughing, idiot. They could have seen us.”

“Exactly,” Alora replied, breathless. “Dodging them is half the fun.”

She pulled Kirsi back down the road. Faster now. The sooner they got to the Frosted Vulture, the better.

Keeping to the darkest parts of the city, they reached the slouching remains of an abandoned shoemaker's shop a few hours after midnight.

VERSUS

Title: Mist

Entry Nickname: I found a magic stone in Paris

Word count: 90K

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Query:

When sixteen-year-old Deirdre Walsh arrives in Paris to spend the summer at her grandfather’s, she intends to get to know the city like a local, even though she’ll have to fight grandpa on everything from curfews to the rip in her jeans.

But when he tells her about a stone of infinite power he’s been hiding and how she teethed on it as a baby, making her the only one able to wield it, playing tourist is no longer high on her list. The stone is faerie-made and the fey have descended upon Paris to reclaim it from the humans who stole it from them. After grandpa suffers a heart attack and goes into a coma, Deirdre follows the clues he left for her and sets off to find the stone.

But before she can use the stone’s magic to revive her grandfather, the fey kidnap him from the hospital and issue an ultimatum: If Deirdre doesn’t relinquish the stone by midnight, they’ll murder him along with thousands of innocent civilians. Grandpa is no longer the only one she needs to save. In a city where trust is a lost currency and alliances come with a price, all she has is herself and the stone—if the dark magic it’s made of doesn't destroy her first.


First 250:

I slid my passport through the window. The immigration agent did not crack a smile as he began his interrogation. I stared back, scrambling to recall the few words of French I’d hung on to since eighth grade.

“Allez-y, Mademoiselle,” he prodded. He didn’t look like the patient type.

I pulled out a phrase book from my pocket. I had studied it during the flight from New York but couldn’t remember a word of it now. My cheeks went red.

“You are here how long, Miss…Deirdre Walsh?” His French accent was thick, my name dissolving into a string of harsh consonants over his tongue.

“Two months,” I said.

“You stay where?”

“With my grandfather, in Paris.”

A door behind him opened, and a security officer entered the glass booth. The man was tall, all arms and legs, with hair so pale it looked white under the overhead lights. He whispered something in his colleague’s ear, bringing my interrogation to an end. The agent nodded, his gaze drifting past me as if he hadn’t been talking to me for the last two minutes. “Au suivant,” he called. The woman next in line walked up to the window.

The officer grabbed my passport. “Come with me, Miss.” I couldn’t place his accent but I knew it wasn’t French.

“What?” Fear prickled in the pit of my stomach. “Is there a problem?” I ran several international marathons every year and was used to traveling abroad.