A young girl by the name of "Freda" has lived all of her life in the "Netherworld". Her species, known as "Marrow Consumer's" around the world, has been banished and burrowed underground for thousands of years. Her species, needs to consume the Bone Marrow, and blood of humans, to live. If they ever digest human food, they become deathly sick. The bodies of these creatures are built for hunting and survival. They look like humans, the strength of these creatures are extremely higher then the average humans, and they have strong bites to break through the bone, though there are many more, but these are just the basics. Humans banished these creatures underground, but it never stopped them. They also have what humans call "Powers", different type of Marrow Consumers have different types of powers. If ones power is trained and well dealt with, they could transform. Though, young Freda hardly knows the answers to how any of this can be. Freda is a fourteen year old Marrow Consumer, who is cursed with living in the Netherworld. The Netherworld, provides a portal to the human world, which only four can exit. The Netherworld, which is ruled by a dictatorship, chooses the ones who will leave, and provide food for the ones in the Netherworld. Once ten years pass, the ones who provided food come back, and a group of new Marrow Consumers are picked. The ones who are normally picked are ones in the "Army" if you can call it that. The dictatorship, which is led by a queen, arranges her own army, and defenses, and gives them rankings. Freda knows where the food comes from, in her books she is told, and by her teachers as well, she knows all about the history, the wars, and the plan to get back to the surface. All she has been told about humans is that they were savages, and never tried to understand them, and killing humans was the same as killing a brain dead insect. Learn how Freda slowly finds the truth about how this way of life came to be, and her way of life.
Antique store owner Liz brings home a Victorian taxidermy hound from auction, unwittingly unleashing dark forces on her wife and son.
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Nat Loman has finally married the love of her life, Liz, and is getting used to her role as stepmother to Liz's 5-year-old son, Liam. The Loman family runs a bustling antique business so they attend a sale where a striking, black taxidermied hound is up for auction. Liz picks it up for the business, but it ends up being stored in their home, where Nat notices strange things occurring. She quickly discovers the past residents had died violently. Then she hears from a friend about the myth of "the devil's dog", a hound that perches in the shadows, tearing families apart from the inside. Soon, people around the Lomans are dying, and Liz is changing, darkening. It's up to Nat to save the woman she loves from the darkness closing in, and to save Liam from danger no matter what she has to sacrifice.
[[Winner of the 2018 Wattys "Hidden Gems" category]]
[[word count: 60,000-70,000 words]]