Tag: Amazon

Changeling Is Available For Free Now Through Thursday!

The story of love and death is now available for free download on Amazon!

The banshee are spirits of death. Some were once human; some are of the Good Folk, come up from the darkest shadows under the hill. In the end, it makes no difference. The banshee sing death, and that is the whole of it. When the banshee come singing, death follows behind, and there is no fighting it. No appeal, no bargains to be made. But tonight, Bridget Flanagan has an offer that the banshee have never heard before…

Check out Changeling‘s homepage, or just go straight to Amazon and download yourself a free copy! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library.

An Excerpt From The Guardian Cats Of New York City: Kodama’s Courage

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Kodama’s Courage is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

Kodama could see the Bad Thing more clearly now. It was still a piece of night come alive, but at least it had a shape: it was smaller than a two-legs but much bigger than himself, long and narrow like a living tube, with no legs to be seen. Its head was an evil-looking triangle that swayed on the end of a long neck, and its eyes were two stars in the absolute black.

They stared at each other for a long moment, the Bad Thing swaying, Kodama crouched and hissing.

After that moment finally passed, the Bad Thing spoke in a soft, cold voice:

“What is your business here, little child of Bast?” It said.

It didn’t speak in sounds like the two-legs, or in bodies like a cat, but ideas put into Kodama’s mind. The Bad Thing’s body continued to sway and its mouth remained closed, but still he knew what it meant to say.

Startled, Kodama came out of his crouch for a moment and stared, his head tilted and his ears up with curiosity. Then he remembered that this was a Bad Thing, and he went back into his crouch.

He also remembered something else. Something from those old stories: Bast. That was the name of the greatest of cats, the mother of all cats. The one who had helped the Sun fight the darkness.

“Those are my two-legs in there,” Kodama squeaked. He tried to sound fierce, but he was still just a very young cat after all, little more than a kitten, and looking into the dark stars that were the Bad Thing’s eyes, he was very, very afraid. He tried again.

“Those are my two-legs in there,” he said. “And I know you want to hurt them! And I won’t let you!”

“Aaaahhhh.” The word was long and drawn out, a hiss and a sigh, and it would have sounded sad if it wasn’t so cold. “What a pity. For you see, little child of Bast, my own great mother Apep has commanded that I must bring darkness into these two humans’ lives. And as I am commanded, so it must be.”

“Why? Why doesn’t Apep like my two-legs?”

“Apep has no liking for any who live under the light of Ra, child of Bast. But as to why I was sent to trouble these two in particular? Why, no reason at all. And that is quite the point: pointless despair, random terror. A man too young for such things falls dead of a heart attack because that weakness comes to him from his fathers; a young woman finds herself back in the nightmare of cancer that she thought left behind many years ago. The venom of the great serpent kills a little more of the world’s light.”

Kodama had no idea what any of that meant. So he stuck to what he did know:

“Well, I won’t let you!”

The Bad Thing tilted its head in what seemed to be curiosity. “What do you owe these humans, little one?” it asked. “What have they given you, that you defend them so fiercely?”

For a moment, Kodama didn’t answer. Not because he had no answer to give, but because he had too many. Food, warmth, shelter, love…but he knew that the Bad Thing would just laugh at all of those, because Bad Things don’t understand them. Then, suddenly, he knew the one answer that the Bad Thing would respect.

“They gave me my name!” he squeaked.

“Ahhh,” the Bad Thing said, almost sadly. “I understand the debt that places upon you. Then I fear that must make us enemies. What a pity.”

Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Kodama’s Courage Is Available For Free Now Through Thursday!

At last, we come to the final – for now – story in the Guardian Cats series. Kodama’s Courage honors a cat I once knew.

They are still among us, hidden here and there; the cats who remember the Old Compact: you provide a home for us, feed us, take care of us in our illness, and we will protect you from the dangers of the night. They operate below the sight lines of humanity, dealing with dangers that we would never notice until it was too late. They remember the old magics of Freya, Bast and Hecate. They are the Guardian Cats.

Kodama is a young cat who lives in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood. He has heard the stories of the guardian cats and he dreams of becoming one of them, but first he must face a threat that strikes much closer to home. Something terrible has entered his quiet neighborhood, and it threatens his humans, the kindly giants who took him off the streets and gave him his name.

As he faces one of the hatchlings of the Serpent of Darkness, Kodama must decide what price he is willing to pay to protect the humans who have opened their home to him.

Head on over to Amazon and download yourself a free copy of Kodama’s Courage. And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library.

An Excerpt From The Guardian Cats Of New York City: The Black Dog

The Guardian Cats of New York City: The Black Dog is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

When she reached the source of the disharmony, her fur and whiskers were standing on end and an involuntary growl was rumbling in her throat, but all she could see was the source of the howl: a small black dog, little larger than herself, of the kind that she’d heard the two-legs call a “Skottish Tearer”.

No, wait. When the wind shifted, she smelled nothing but two-legs, their smokes and their food. No dog-smell.

So he was the ghost of a Skottish Tearer, then.

“Enough, enough!” Lanuine growled as she approached the howling ghost. “The two-legs can’t hear you, and the other wolves are here with their two-legs. I’m all the help you’re going to get, and you’re hurting my ears.”

The ghost-dog stopped howling and looked at her, seeming a bit startled. “Oh…oh, oh, sorry,” it – he – said.

“Thank you,” Lanuine said. “Now. What are you called?”

This is the polite thing to ask magical creatures, rather than “what is your name?” There are few powers greater than the power of Names, which is one of the reasons that cats have three names. To name a thing is to define it; to define a thing is to control it. There were many cats who wondered if the two-legs’s peculiar talent for Naming was the source of their enormous power. They seemed to have an odd authority when it came to names. When a two-legs gave something a name, it stuck .

“I am Fala!” The ghost answered. “What are you called?”

“I am called Queenie, the Rat-Breaker,” Lanuine answered. But she was almost too stunned to say it. There had been a resonance when the ghost-dog spoke its name that could only mean one thing. “You give your true name freely?” she asked, aghast.

“My name was given to me by my alpha,” Fala answered. “And my alpha was a very great alpha among the two-legs. He walked with wheels because his hind legs were crippled, but the other two-legs still obeyed him. Great packs of two-legs, as far as the nose could smell…mighty alphas who could have torn his throat out like rotten meat…all of them obeyed his merest bark and growl. The name he gave me is all the name I need.”

That was…actually pretty impressive, Lanuine had to admit. It was true that she didn’t understand how matters of dominance were decided among the two-legs, but still. For one who walked on wheels to lead such a great pride, his will must have been enormous even among two-legs.

Still. Lanuine could not understand the dog-ghost’s willingness to accept the name given him by another as his only name. Could not, and did not want to.

“Fine,” she said. “If that’s how you want it. Now. What has you howling so much? You’re driving cat and dog alike mad with all your noise.”

Usually, a dog would look abashed for at least a moment after such a scolding, but Fala just looked grim.

This was serious. Dogs were usually loud and messy and silly, and as such beneath a cat’s notice, but no cat could deny that the Tribe of the Wolf were utterly dedicated to the protection of their two-legs and their territory.

“This way,” Fala said, turning and leading Lanuine away from the two-legs’s stone path. In truth, Lanuine didn’t need much guidance. The farther they went, the more she could sense a…a wrongness that put her hackles up. There was violence in that wrongness. Violence and death and old, clotted hate.

The farther they went, the harder it was to continue. Only two-legs ignored their instincts like this…and maybe not even them. By the time Fala stopped walking – by the time they reached the center of the wrongness – it was like wading in a bubbling spring of poison black blood, and there were no two-legs seated anywhere nearby.

“What is this place?” Lanuine growled, her ears flat to her head.

“The two-legs used to bury their dead here,” Fala answered. “Members of the pack that they killed for turning against the pack.”

“What?” Lanuine demanded, startled. But before Fala could answer, she turned her attention back to the center of the wrongness, this time focusing on the senses that most two-legs seemed to lack. As she did so, her hackles rose and her ears laid back, seemingly of their own accord.

The ghost-dog was right.

Beneath the earth was the spirit of a two-legs that had not gone to one of the strange places outside the world where two-legs spirits went.

Or at least, it had been a two-legs once. Now, it was little more than a roiling mass of hatred.

Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

The Guardian Cats of New York City: The Black Dog Is Available For Free Now Through Thursday!

The third story of The Guardian Cats is available for free download now through Thursday! In this installment, we see how the Guardian Cats interact with other supernatural guardians

They are still among us, hidden here and there; the cats who remember the Old Compact: you provide a home for us, feed us, take care of us in our illness, and we will protect you from the dangers of the night. They operate below the sight lines of humanity, dealing with dangers that we would never notice until it was too late. They remember the old magics of Freya, Bast and Hecate. They are the Guardian Cats.

There is a place in the heart of the City where the lines of force converge. It is a place of peace that used to be a place of vengeance and horror. There is something there, just beneath the surface, that wants to make it a place of vengeance and horror again. And the only thing that stands in its way is a cat named Queenie and a black dog who is much, much more than what he seems.

Head on over to Amazon and download yourself a free copy of The Black Dog. And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

An Excerpt from The Guardian Cats of New York City: The Watcher On The Shore

The Guardian Cats of New York City: The Watcher On The Shore is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

Nar-Tali didn’t often envy the senses of the two-legs, nose-numb and half-deaf as they were. But tonight he would have accepted their night-blindness if it had brought with it the distance and clarity of their vision. The Thing that was coming, it was coming from the water. He could sense that now, feel it in his whiskers and fur and bones like the coming of the storm. But as much as he strained his senses toward the Great Salty Water, he could detect nothing. The roaring of the rain filled his hearing; the water and the wind washed away all smells.

Then the skyfire flashed again, and he caught a glimpse of…something. It was distant and unclear and it was only there for a moment, but it was…it was like a hill had suddenly risen up out of the water, then slid smoothly back in.

The sky rumbled in response to the skyfire, drowning out all sound. But as the last of the echoes of the sky-roar faded, Nar-Tali thought he heard the last echoes of another – a distant reptilian bellow.

There it was again. Much closer this time. And much, much louder.

Nar-Tali noticed that the ragged two-legs was standing beside him now, staring out at the Great Salty Water. For all the good it would do him. Even if the hill in the water surfaced again, all he would see was black on black. Not that he, Nar-Tali, was doing much better. With all this blinding rain coming down, he might as well be a two-legs himself.

Wait – there it was. The hill in the water. It was beside the long wooden sidewalk that went out onto the water now, and it was approaching shore.

On some instinct, Nar-Tali nudged the ragged two-legs, then pointed toward the shore.

The two-legs nodded. He saw it, too.

The hill was rising out of the water. Only it was longer now. More of a ridge.

The ridge kept rising. And rising. And then it broke the surface, and…

Oh. Great. Sekhmet.

It was huge.

Bast have mercy, it was a great serpent. As long as the sidewalk-over-the-water…no, longer, as long as one of the great metal serpents that carried two-legs in their bellies as they screamed along the rails. And at least as thick.

Its head was broad and flat and angular, with horns and razored spines sticking out in all directions. Its mouth, with its three rows of fangs, was easily capable of taking the ragged two-legs whole. Its scales gleamed black in the light of the boardwalk lamps, and its eyes glowed a poisonous green.

Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

An Excerpt from The Guardian Cats of New York City: Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

Something was coming. Something that raised the fur along her spine and made her claws twitch involuntarily in their sheaths.

“AllEEEEE!”

Closer and louder now. Close and loud enough so that even a two-legs could have heard it. If any two-legs did hear, they would have been disturbed, even frightened, but they wouldn’t know why. Shin-Nephura knew. Whatever was coming was…wrong. It had come from the river – it squished and dripped and splashed with every step, and Shin-Nephura could smell the tidal muds – but it was no right part of the world of cats, birds, mice and two-legs.

It drew closer, and Shin-Nephura finally caught a whiff of something other than the muds.

Rotten meat.

Not like the food the two-legs so wastefully threw away, the meat just moldy or spoiled enough to be flavorful, but the smell of something long dead and decayed.

“aaAAallEEEeee!”

As the dead thing came around the corner and into view, Shin-Nephura’s hackles went all the way up and her claws scraped on the sidewalk.

A two-legs. The dead, lurching, half-rotten thing was a two-legs.

No wise cat wishes to face a two-legs in a straight fight. Slow, clumsy, half-deaf, night-blind, nose-numb, so often strange and silly in their behavior…it was easy to underestimate them. But yet, they were giants. Their strength was immense and their clever forepaws could create horrors. Once a cat was in a solid grip, there was little hope of wriggling free. The best one could hope for was to make the price too high.

“AAAaalleeee”

Still. She had a duty. The ancient compact.

The dead thing was shambling toward the iron gates that led into the courtyard. They were locked, but Shin-Nephura doubted that would be any obstacle. Locks and gates were little use against something like this.

“AAAA—”

“You are not welcome in my territory, dead thing.”

Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood Is Available For Free Now Through Thursday!

In honor of the recent publication of the fourth Guardian Cats story, I’m going to be holding a free giveaway for each of Guardian Cats stories over each of the next four weeks. This week, we’re going back to where it all began, at Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood:

They are still among us, hidden here and there; the cats who remember the Old Compact: you provide a home for us, feed us, take care of us in our illness, and we will protect you from the dangers of the night. They operate below the sight lines of humanity, dealing with dangers that we would never notice until it was too late. They remember the old magics of Freya, Bast and Hecate. They are the Guardian Cats.

Shin-Nephura is the Guardian Cat of the neighborhood of Inwood, at the northern point of Manhattan. And tonight, something terrible has crawled out of the Hudson River to prey on sleeping two-legs of the neighborhood she protects. Something that may be too much for her to handle.

You want to know something crazy? The neighborhood in question has changed enormously in the few short years since this story was first published. The bodega on the cover is gone now, replaced by a trendy restaurant.

Anyway, if that sounds good to you, head on over to Amazon and download yourself a free copy of Shin-Nephura’s Neighborhood. And as always, while you’re there, be sure to check out the rest of the library!

The Guardian Cats of New York City: Kodama’s Courage Is Now Available on Amazon!

The fourth story in the Guardian Cats cycle is complete, and this one honors a cat I used to know:

They are still among us, hidden here and there; the cats who remember the Old Compact: you provide a home for us, feed us, take care of us in our illness, and we will protect you from the dangers of the night. They operate below the sight lines of humanity, dealing with dangers that we would never notice until it was too late. They remember the old magics of Freya, Bast and Hecate. They are the Guardian Cats.

Kodama is a young cat who lives in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood. He has heard the stories of the guardian cats and he dreams of becoming one of them, but first he must face a threat that strikes much closer to home. Something terrible has entered his quiet neighborhood, and it threatens his humans, the kindly giants who took him off the streets and gave him his name.

As he faces one of the hatchlings of the Serpent of Darkness, Kodama must decide what price he is willing to pay to protect the humans who have opened their home to him.

So go check out Kodama’s page , or just go straight to Amazon. Available to download from Kindle or to read for free in Kindle Unlimited. And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library! If you like what you see, please leave a review.

An Excerpt from Neighborhood Witch

Neighborhood Witch is still available for free download through Thursday! If you haven’t downloaded a copy yet, here’s a taste of what you’re missing:

“Dios mio, nena,” Celia gasped as she surveyed the wreckage of her daughter’s living room. “What happened here?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Aracelli answered as she righted an overturned bookshelf. Celia didn’t envy her the task of picking up and re-organizing that big stack of books.

“Me?” Celia asked. “How would I know?”

“When I got home, Brian was lying in the middle of the floor,” Aracelli said as she picked up a few books and put them on the shelves. “He was burning up with fever and shaking like a leaf with the chills.”

Celia made a sympathetic noise, but otherwise said nothing. Aracelli liked to build her case and present all the evidence before she said something that was hard to believe. It was part of what made her a good cop.

“He was delirious, too. Talking about how he’d been seeing things, hearing things…even smelling things.” She paused and took a very deep breath. Her face looked calm, but Celia could see that she was gripping the book in her hands so hard that her knuckles were turning white. It was one of Brian’s books, something about darkness and monsters. Strange that such a gentle soul enjoyed reading about violence so much.

“Do you know what he said to me, mami?”

Celia shook her head.

“He said ‘God, love, I’m so scared. I’m so scared. How bad is it if I’m hallucinating?’ That’s what he said.”

Then she took another deep breath, relaxed her grip on the book, and put it on the shelf.

“After that, he went all delirious again, and he started raving. Talking about seeing faces in the mirror and shadows moving in the corners. About things flying around the room and sticking in the walls and food rotting in the fridge.”

That caught Celia’s attention.

“The food?” She asked.

“We got some nice steaks last night for our anniversary,” Aracelli answered. “They’re maggot meat now. The vegetables look like they’ve been in the fridge for a month, and the milk is green.”

“You would’ve just ruined it anyway,” Celia said as she started to look around the room. “The things stuck in the walls?”

Aracelli put a hand on her shoulder and, when she looked back, pointed up.

Celia followed the finger.

Then she blinked.

Stuck in the ceiling were a butcher knife, a screwdriver, a variety of tableware, and a nail file.

“Connnnyo,” Celia breathed.

“When I got home, Brian was too weak to stand,” Aracelli said. “He was much too sick to, I don’t know, take the stepladder and pound those things into the ceiling with a hammer or something.”

Celia nodded in agreement. That was not what had happened here.

“Can you think of anything you mighta done to make the spirits mad at you?” she asked.

Aracelli shook her head. It might have been strange to some of her fellow cops to see her talking so matter-of-factly about spirits – that’s why she didn’t talk about it with them – but she’d seen her mother at work often enough that it wasn’t a question of belief or doubt for her: magic and spirits were as real as handcuffs and perps. She just didn’t want to carry on the family business, which was something else they fought about.

“I thought that might be it,” she said. “I was trying to think of what we could’ve done…but then I saw the mail.”

Okay, this “building the case” business was starting to get annoying. “The mail?” Celia demanded. “What about the mail?”

“Here,” Aracelli said, picking up a package from a nearby table. “Take a look at this.”

Celia looked at her doubtfully as she took the package, then turned her eyes to the package itself.

Then her eyes went very wide.

She started to shout “conyo”, then corrected herself to “Ay, Dios mio!” It wouldn’t do to swear with this thing in her hands, and calling upon God might help.

She threw the package to the floor (something inside screeched in outrage), snatched a vial out of her purse and poured the contents all over it. Billows of blood-colored steam rose from the package, and the thing inside it squealed and died.

Grimly, she turned to Aracelli, who was staring wide-eyed.

“Imp,” she said. “This was like a magical letter bomb.”

Aracelli went pale. “I could tell something bad was in there, but…wait. What was that you poured on it?”

Celia held up the small, square glass bottle, which had crosses carved on all four faces. “Holy water,” she answered.

“You carry holy water in your purse?”

“And this is why.”

“Good point.” Aracelli sighed and turned her attention back to the sodden package. “So how do I get some? Do you have to buy it, or can you just take some out of the font, or – “

“Don’t worry, I got a bulk supplier.”

Aracelli looked at her quizzically. “There are bulk suppliers for holy water?”

“I have coffee with Padre Sandoval every Wednesday, and he’s always glad to – “ She noticed that one of Aracelli’s eyebrows had gone up. “…what?”

“Coffee?” Aracelli teased. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“Coffee,” Celia snapped. Aracelli immediately raised her hands in surrender, her face a picture of “if-you-say-so” innocence.

“I’m not sayin’ I wouldn’t do it,” Celia continued, mollified. “When he was young, he was a real Father What-A-Waste. But he likes to follow the letter of the law, tu sabes? Probably just as well. Might mess up the holy water if he broke his vows. Besides…” she gave a lecherous grin. “I like ‘em younger. Nice young stallion, to ride all night.”

Aracelli made a face. “Ew, mother!”

“You started it. Now…” Celia turned her attention back to the package. “Who did you piss off, that they would send you something like this?”

Aracelli just looked at the package and shook her head. “I’m a cop, mami. I piss off people every day, most of them from this neighborhood.”

“And any one of them could have hired a bruja,” Celia finished. “Conyo.”

“Well yeah, but how many brujas even are there? Real ones, I mean. There can’t be that many.”

“Es verdad.” Celia rubbed one of her medallions as she thought. “Hmm. It has to be someone en el barrio. Someone who could get Brian’s hair or something – that’s the only way this could be hitting him so hard. And it has to be someone who’s either smart enough to know that you’re too strong and too protected…or just plain mean enough to want to come at you through him in the first place. Maybe both. Hmm.”

It must’ve been in the way she “hmm”-ed. Her daughter knew her too well.

“You know who it is, don’t you?” Aracelli accused.

“I got some ideas.”

“Good,” she said, turning toward the bedroom she shared with Brian. “Let me just get my – “

“No!”

Aracelli looked back. “No?”

“No gun,” Celia said. “You shoot somebody, you maybe go to jail. That’s not winning.” Her face split in a broad and wicked grin. “The whole point of magic, when a gun is so much easier, is that there’s no way to test for it. Now: did the attack ruin everything in your kitchen?”

Hurry on over and pick up a free copy before it’s too late! And as always, while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!