Shadowed Blade, Kit Colbana Book 5
Something wicked this way comes…
The
arrival of a very important person in her office seemed to be the start
of a lot of problems for Kit Colbana, investigator extraordinaire.
Claiming that he needed somebody with her special skillset, he sends her
on a series of jobs that made little to no sense until one culminated
with both her and her partner, Justin barely escaping with their lives.
Back
in Orlando, they go their separate ways to recover, Justin heading to
the house of a local witch, while Kit returns to the Lair, where she’s
recently been living with her lover Damon, the Alpha of the Southern Cat
Clans.
There’s
barely a chance for to catch her breath before trouble of the highest
order comes knocking on her door. This time, it’s the form of a psychic
by the name of Nova. Nova has bad, bad news…Justin has gone missing and
so has the witch who was going to put him up while he healed. Colleen,
one of Kit’s closest, dearest friends.
With
all sorts of non-humans disappearing, fury doesn’t even touch what Kit
is feeling as she heads out to hunt down the people responsible.
But Kit isn’t the only one out on a hunt…somebody is hunting for her…somebody Kit would rather never, ever see again.
*****
It was just pure dumb luck that I found her at all.
The… Well, I can’t say it was a house, but it had been her home. She’d
left it weeks ago, maybe longer. It was dying, too.
Granted, when I’d been sent out to look for her, I’d
thought maybe it was another wild goose chase—the first job had been a pain in
the ass, too.
But this one…
Hell.
I was staring at a dryad.
A real
dryad.
She turned her head and stared at me with eyes the
color of good, strong oak. In her hand, she had a branch she used to draw
circles in the earth.
After a few seconds of us studying each other, she
went back to looking out over the river, her gaze sad.
“What is it you want?” she asked, her voice reedy
and thin.
Like she was fading, dying as swiftly as the tree
she’d left behind.
As I fumbled for an answer, she lifted the branch
and plucked off one of the leaves. They were still green. But the moment she
plucked that single leaf away, it withered, shriveled, and then it was dust—even
before it hit the ground.
“I…” Uneasy, I licked my lips. “Your tree is
dying.”
“No.” Those dark brown eyes came back to mine. “It
is already dead. It died when I left it. It just hasn’t figured that out yet. It
will. But that isn’t what you want.”
“Why did you leave it?”
“Because the wind whispered it was time.” She
lifted a shoulder and the wispy strips of cloth that made up her garments
drifted with the movement before settling back into black. She was more naked
than clothed—covered at her breasts and hips. Her skin was a mottled mix of
brown and tan. She could stand in the trees and scarcely be seen, but standing
out here on the side of the road and gazing into the river, she stood out.
That was
how I’d found her.
I’d been heading back to East Orlando, carefully thinking
through the call I’d have to make, when I saw her. I’d been driving the
backroads, mostly because I wanted to think, and all the traffic on the main
roads annoyed me.
The last thought I’d had before caught sight of
the woman had been…I never should have
taken this stupid job.
My current client—I now realized—was a
self-important, pompous prick.
But I’d accepted the contract, and for another
three weeks, I was giving him twenty hours a week for work of a sensitive nature. His term, not mine.
The first job, I’d been asked to find out if there
was any truth to the rumors of a Green Man who might be living in Alabama—he
had a locale and a few names; he wanted me to look around and see what I
thought. I’d also been asked to talk to the families of a couple missing NHs
while in the area. Missing non-humans was why I’d taken the damn job to begin
with.
Missing people. He had connections.
There weren’t many who had more connections than
the President of the United States of America, after all.
When I’d told him I didn’t see the connection
between a possible Green Man and the disappearances, he’d pointed out that a
Green Man would have ways of seeing things happening in nature that I could
never see.
Well…true enough.
But if there was something weirder than a shifter
in those decaying woods, then I hadn’t felt it.
My boss hadn’t seemed bothered when I’d been
unsuccessful. But I hadn’t wanted to tell him I’d found a dryad’s tree…and no
dryad.
Right now, though, I wanted even less to tell him I’d found the dryad.
“The wind told you it was time?” Raking her up and
down with a look, I shook my head. “What else is the wind telling you to do?”
“The wind tells me to do nothing.” A serene smile curled her lips as she plucked off another
leaf. This time, when it shriveled and faded, she seemed to fade a little more, too.
Oh, shit.
“Is that from your tree?” I asked softly.
“Yes. All that is left, all that is living.” She
plucked another leaf. “Once it is gone...”
“So why are you killing it?”
“Because unlike Albus, I am not strong. I cannot
stand up to pain and torture. Even cutting down a single tree would break me,
and he has much more in mind than cutting down trees.”
Abruptly, she wrenched a handful of leaves, four,
five, six… Dust blew around me and I rushed to her as she swayed, then
staggered. She felt lighter than air as I eased her down. Her skin felt like
the smooth bark on a young tree. “What are you talking about?”
She just shook her head. “It’s been a long time
coming. This…this is best. I’ll see Albus soon.”
She tried to fumble a few more leaves off but her
hands shook too much.
“Please.” She looked at me.
My phone rang.
She continued to watch me with those calm, patient
eyes. Patient, solid.
Like an oak.
I took the branch and stripped the remaining
leaves off as the phone rang again.
By the third ring, she was withering away, turning
to nothing but dust and ash that blew away in the soft, chilly fall breeze.
I answered the fourth ring.
“Ms. Colbana, I was calling for an update.”
“I found her.” Dragging a finger through the dust,
I rose to my feet and stared down. Even the branch was gone. “She’s dead, sir.”
“He’s pissed.”
Shanelle Maguire was a beautiful bitch and she
delivered the words in a stark voice as she dropped into the chair across from
my desk.
“I gathered that.” I’d just finish talking to him
myself. Whitmore was a pain in the ass. “Did he send you here to snarl and snap
at me in hopes of making me do better?”
She snorted. “Like that’d do any good.” She
skimmed her hands back over her hair in what I’d come to realize was a nervous
habit. Beautiful bitch or not, I’d come to sort of like her over the past ten
days. She was blunt and didn’t hold back the truth, something I could
definitely appreciate.
She was also manipulative as hell—something I less
appreciated—but she knew how to make things happen. “Look, I was standing out—”
“This is my shocked face.”
“Shut up,” she said, sighing in annoyance. “I
heard you explaining what happened. What were you going to do? She wanted to
die.
Although…wow. Picking leaves off a tree branch—that’s crazy.”
“Dryads have a connection to their chosen trees.”
I shrugged and thought of the forest giant I’d gone back to look at before
returning home. It hadn’t turned to dust, but it was dead. It had been an
oddity, standing there in the middle of the forest where so many trees had
already gone brilliantly orange and yellow, but its leaves had been
green…mostly. Some, though, had been going brown. Not yellow or orange, the way
you’d think.
But brown.
All the leaves had been gone the second time I saw
it and the branches hung despondent, as if the tree’s strength had simply
drained out of it with the life of the dryad gone. I’d touched the bark and it
had crumbled under the light pressure.
A few storms, a few hard rains, and it would come
crashing down.
“So she just lay there, plucked the last few
leaves and died, huh?” Shanelle wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring off
at nothing, looking about as tired as I felt—although I doubted it was for the
same reason.
“Faded into dust,” I said, carefully dancing
around the fact that I wasn’t telling the complete truth. I’d had to do the
same with Whitmore, but for some reason, I was reluctant to explain that I had been the one to strip away those
few remaining leaves.
Whitmore had really
wanted to talk to that dryad.
My gut was all twisted and hot as I remembered
what she had said.
“Because unlike Albus, I am not strong. I cannot
stand up to pain and torture. Even cutting down a single tree would break me
and he has much more in mind than cutting down trees.”
Who was Albus?
Who was the he
she’d been referring to? I had a bad feeling it might be my client—but there was no way I could even
try to figure that out without questioning him; everything in me was saying Don’t…
I thought of asking Shanelle, probing gently. I
knew how to dance around things and be subtle. It wasn’t my greatest skill, but I could do it.
While I was debating, though, the door swung open.
The sight of the man standing there was enough to
distract me, though.
“Justin...”
I hurtled across the room and caught him up in a
hug so hard, he was laughing and wheezing at the same time. “Careful there,
Kit…I break.”
I didn’t care. “You’re awake.”
“Seems that way. Although if you keep squeezing
the life out of me...”
Two weeks ago, Justin had almost died. The first
week, he’d been in a coma. He’d started to stir, but another friend of ours,
Colleen had used her healing to put him back under.
“The swelling in his brain has gone down, but
there’s still a lot of healing to do—the area of the brain that controls magic
has been heavily damaged and the longer he rests, the more likely it will be
that he’ll regain full control.”
We’d agreed. He needed to stay asleep for a bit
longer, but Colleen could only hold him for a few more days before she had to
bring him back.
“I didn’t know she was letting you up today.”
He patted my back when I sniffed.
Absently, I’d realized Shanelle had left and I
still needed to talk to her. But that could wait.
Buy links
http://www.shilohwalker.com/website/
That sounds good. Thanks for posting an excerpt.
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