Series: The Colbana Files #8
Published by: Shiloh Walker. Inc
Genre: Fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 250
Add on GoodreadsBlade’s End
It’s all coming to a bitter endKit and her lover, Damon, the Alpha of the Southern Cat Clans, are hot on the trail of Madae, an ancient entity that has haunted Kit’s people through the ages. Kit was supposed to be the next target, but she proved to be tougher than Madae expected.
As both an act of revenge and expediency, Madae went for the next nearest of kin…Kit’s cousin, Doyle.
Earth-shattering truths are revealed and secrets laid bare, including secrets that threaten the love between Kit and Damon, and their very lives.
They’re determined to find Madae and save Doyle.
But will those secrets drive them apart?
Will those secrets drive them mad?
And when they find themselves confronting not one ancient evil, but two, will Kit and Damon be strong enough to save Doyle?
Or will one of them pay the ultimate price?
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Author Note: It's recommended you read the short story CHANG before reading BLADE'S END
We stood in a valley.
Tall grasses brushed my thighs and the tips of my fingers.
Doyle stood next to me.
The moment I saw him, I wanted to grab on and hug him. I didn’t let myself.
This felt like more than a dream and carefully, I probed the connection, just as Lemeraties had taught me.
A dream path…But this wasn’t from me. I didn’t know this place.
Doyle had forged this connection, and it felt…fragile.
Off in the distance, there was a funeral pyre.
“Somebody died,” I said, trying for a light voice.
“Looks like,” my cousin replied. He blew out a breath. “Is this my dream or yours?”
“Yours, probably. I don’t recognize this place. Do you?”
“Maybe. But I’ve never been here.” He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“I’m not sure it matters.” With a shrug, I peered at the people gathered around the funeral pyre. They looked…odd. I couldn’t place why. “Any idea where we are?”
“I don’t even know where I am,” Doyle pointed out.
Smashing down my frustration, I looked back at the mourners gathered around the funeral pyre. We weren’t close, but I was able to isolate several individuals.
Several of them were…big. Bigger even than Damon. Bigger than Goliath.
Unnaturally big.
But they weren’t the ones that held my interest.
No, it was a man standing almost separate from the rest.
He’s deadly, I thought.
I knew it in my gut.
And there was something familiar about the way he held himself.
“She knows him,” Doyle said, as if I’d spoken out loud. “She’s terrified of him. But she doesn’t want to let anybody know that.”
I started to ask who, then stopped. I already knew who he was talking about.
And if Doyle was talking about her, then…
Slowly, I turned, searching for the leanly muscled figure.
Instead, I saw a dark, slinking shadow, merging with the night as it prowled.
Once, he turned his head to look at us, although maybe he wasn’t looking at us—his gaze slid right through us and his stance…changed. Readied itself.
A voice echoed from somewhere close.
“You stay close, girl,” a stranger said—and I understood the words, even though I shouldn’t. The language was one I’d never heard in my life. “Do not be stupid and humiliate me.”
“Yes, Father.”
That voice sent a shiver down my spine. The woman speaking wasn’t at all familiar. I’d never heard that particular voice.
But in my gut, I knew.
I scanned the area, searching for them and coming up empty. Finally, I turned—and panic seized my heart.
There, just inches away, stood a tall, powerfully built blond man. He was…beautiful. He was flanked on both sides by equally beautiful peers—the man on his left, even taller than he, a cruel smile on his sculpted face and eyes that shone like polished jewels, their color…indescribable.
On his right was a tall, young blonde woman—her eyes, at least, I could describe. They were the rich azure of the sky on a cloudless day when the sun shone brightly and the blue was so pure, looking at it hurt.
Their beauty would have been enough to stop me dead, but there was a coldness to them that seized me by the heart and flooded me with knowledge.
These…people, or whatever they were, were wrong, broken on some deep level. Broken in a way they could never be fixed. And they liked it.
Predators. They are predators and they kill anybody who crosses them. Not for survival or food or out of necessity, but for fun. Because they enjoyed the slaughter.
“They don’t know we’re here,” Doyle said, moving to bump his shoulder against mine.
The three kept staring through us, their attention clearly elsewhere.
Questions unfolded in my head, one after another after another, but I had no time to ask them as a sound shattered the night.
I couldn’t call it a roar. It was…deep. Booming. It rolled across the plain like thunder and kept going, on and on and on. I felt it every bit as much as I heard it and I wanted to cower on the ground and wrap my arms around my head.
“Damn,” Doyle breathed out, his teeth clenching in response.
“What is that?” I demanded.
“No cat alive makes that kind of sound.” His features relaxed and he shrugged restlessly, shaking off the tension as if it hadn’t even existed.
“Great, so we’re dealing with zombie cats.”
He snorted, but didn’t look at me, eyes still on the darkness, searching for the creature responsible.
“Let us give our regards to the family,” one of the men before us said.
They walked through us, not reacting at all—but then, I hadn’t felt anything when they merged, then passed through us. It’s like we weren’t even wisps of fog, much less thinking, living beings.
The man we’d noticed earlier left the gathered mourners and strode toward us. Looking at him was like a balm for the illness that was the first two.
“They don’t belong here,” a new voice said.
I jerked as Lemeraties moved to stand next to me.
Doyle scowled when he saw her. “Is this one of your tests?”
“No,” she said calmly. “This is not one of my memories, boy.”
He frowned and looked at me, then back at Lemeraties.
“It’s not one of mine, either. I don’t know this place…it’s familiar, but I don’t know why.”
Suddenly, I did. Whipping my head around, I stared at the the woman, watching as she and the males with her strode toward the mourners and the single, solitary male.
The pieces fell into place.
“It’s one of her memories.” I grabbed Doyle by the arms, my fingers digging in. He started to fade under my touch, his connection to the dream path faltering.
“Fuck…don’t let go!” I fought to keep my voice level. Fought…and failed. “Doyle, is she in your head?”
He gave me a lost look. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where I am, Kit. I told you. I…I think I’m beginning to lose who I am.”
“Hold on,” I told him, shaking him. “Hold on and stay you!”
The dream fell apart.