Tag: Fantasy

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: 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!

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 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.