Chapter One

 

Erica ducked under the sword and spun to her right, deftly avoiding the swipe, but she didn’t turn fast enough and got the blunt side of her opponent’s sword across her ass. She yelped and turned to glower at him.

Galahad raised a brow but didn’t otherwise comment.

Smug bastard. She rubbed her ass to ease the sting. Even through the leather pants which were part of her “uniform” as guardian—or well guardian-in-training since her Aunt Jilly was the official guardian—hadn’t completely prevented the sting.

“You’re too good now for those kinds of mistakes,” Galahad said, his voice firm. His “training” voice.

Erica tried not to snarl. She knew he was being tougher on her now because she needed to be excellent at the sword fighting before she inherited her aunt’s magical sword and became the full time guardian. She just wasn’t in the mood for it today.

Usually, she thrived at these training practices. And not just because they were an excuse to hang out in the temple with her clowder of cats, where they could take their human forms so she could get to know them better. Coming to the temple, spending time in this dimension where the trees were enormous and the giant birds had florescent wings, and her cat guard could move between forms, had started to feel like a vacation from her real life. Even though the work they did here was very serious. And the adventures they took to recover ancient documents and books to keep them out of the hands of warring ancient creatures was terribly important to the stability of the multiverse. Getting away from Chicago, the harsh, humid summer that had gripped the city, and the fear that she was failing at her regular day job, felt like a relief.

At her regular day job, as a relatively new social history professor at the University of Chicago, she was very low on the rung. Her first job in academia. And her research was going…well, not as well as she’d like. Now the funding for her department had been cut for the upcoming year, which meant she had to worry about even having a job if she couldn’t manage to give her work more attention.

She was an historian at heart. She loved the field she’d gone into, and she didn’t even mind the teaching aspect of it. That was like storytelling and she enjoyed that.

But the divide between her day job and her adventures as a guardian-in-training, a destined protector of the Temple of Knowledge, holding the fate of the universe in her blistered hands, was…complicated.

A warm breeze fluttered through her sweat-soaked hair. The surrounding trees just outside the clearing in front of the temple whispered with the movement of air, a shooshing of giant spruce pine boughs. In the distance, she heard a caw from one of the ginormous birds that called this realm home. And in the blue sky overhead, white clouds scuttered past, faster than the breeze that reached the ground. The clearing was carpeted with soft, spongy grass, still a little damp from the early morning dew. But the day’s warmth had settled in. Not anything like the heat and humidity at home. Just a nice comfortable spring warmth. Which made working in her “leathers” easier. Galahad insisted she train in her guardian-in-training outfit—leather pants, loose shirt covered by a leather vest—because these were the clothing she wore on adventures and so were the things she’d be wearing whenever she got into a sword fight.

It all made perfect sense. And the clothing was absolutely well suited for the work they did. Protective and flexible. The leather was soft and subtle, not clingy and hot the way she imagined leather pants to be. The boots were sturdy and fit her feet well so she wasn’t forever turning her ankle.

But she was just grumpy about everything today. And that included being forced to wear clothes she hadn’t been wearing when she got home from work, before they’d left for the temple.

While the rest of her clowder were inside working with her Aunt Jilly and Jilly’s primary guard and romantic partner, Memnon, Erica and Galahad had been training outside for almost an hour. She needed a break, and a drink, and maybe a nap. But her trainer was a taskmaster and wasn’t likely to let her take that break any time soon.

Galahad swung his sword in a circle a few times before settling it into an en garde position. Erica faced him and took up the start position again, too, pulling in a deep breath.

Speaking of complicated.

Her and Galahad’s relationship had been more fraught lately than usual. They’d started out delicate around each other, uncertain and awkward, but civil. He was the only one of her clowder of destiny cats that could change to his human form in her world, because he was her personal guard, the way Memnon was Aunt Jilly’s. Memnon was also Galahad’s father. Though Jilly wasn’t his mother. So Erica wasn’t related to Galahad. Which was… Well, good. That would have been really weird otherwise.

But Galahad didn’t talk about his past. She knew he was older than he looked—he looked about her age, early thirties—and that the destiny cats aged differently, lived a lot longer, and that once she took up Alendrial, her life would be extended too. She also wasn’t likely to have children—like Jilly didn’t have any—and was good with that. She’d rather be the cool aunt like Jilly than a mother. She was extremely curious about Galahad and where he stood with all this, though. Would he eventually have children like Memnon had had him? Or did he have children already?

Erica did know Galahad had been part of Jilly’s clowder before Erica was introduced to this world and he became her personal guard. But even when she’d only known him as a cat, he’d avoided her. He couldn’t avoid her now. He still avoided talking about anything personal, though.

And for some reason, on that particular day, at this particular practice, while she was already feeling irritable and anxious because of her day job, the fact that Galahad was still so secretive with her just annoyed the fuck out of her.

He’d been a steady and reassuring guard at her back on their adventures. He’d been a good and patient trainer, up until recently. But for a few weeks now, he’d been harder on her, pushing her, less patient. And it had added a level of both competitiveness and…anger, to their work together.

She dove under his sword swing but this time turned fast and swiped at him, a swing he had to turn fast to counter. She grunted in satisfaction as their practice swords clanged against each other. Sliding her sword off his, she leapt back and took another swing at him, coming in from the left, which she knew was his weaker side.

Weaker, but not weak.

He turned and, with two hands on the sword hilt, thrust her sword to one side, circled it, and wrenched it from her grip.

“And now you’re dead.” He stomped up to her as she scowled at her practice sword in the grass and rubbed her hands. “Happy?”

“Fuck off. Of course I’m not happy.” She was better than this. And she was pissed that she wasn’t able to call on those skills at the moment. She was screwing up. She’d been screwing up a lot lately. And that left her…

Terrified.

That was the real source of her grumpiness and anger. She was terrified.

Her day job, which she loved, was in jeopardy. And that was anxiety inducing. But that job wasn’t life or death. Entire universes didn’t depend on her social history research. This job, though. This destiny. This was life or death. And she felt like she was failing at it too. Everything felt like it was falling apart. She wasn’t even sure why. Why it was happening all at once. Why she felt that way here.

And maybe it was just her worry interfering in her training.

But logic didn’t stop the creeping sense that she was failing. And that was going to get people killed.

She blinked hard at the grass when she realized there were tears stinging her eyes. Oh, she really didn’t want to cry. Not in front of Galahad. Not now. Then she might have to explain that she felt like she was losing everything without being able to explain why she felt that way. And even attempting to do that through tears would just be a mess. No. No crying until she was alone somewhere.

Which was a problem since she was rarely alone. The three cat clowder, including Galahad, lived with her in Chicago, in her small apartment. It was fine for the other two because they were cats in that realm and there as enough room for two, even three cats. But Galahad didn’t spend all his time in Chicago as a cat. And even if he had, Erica knew he wasn’t just a cat. Just like she knew Nimue and Nester weren’t just cats. So doing something like crying in her own bedroom wasn’t something she could hide from them.

Her throat was tight as she tried to hold back all the emotions clogging her chest. She would not cry now. There’d be a better time and she’d just wait for that better time.

She sniffled.

Galahad stepped closer. “Are you…?” He softened his voice. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she snapped. But she kept her head turned down so he wouldn’t see her expression. Her hair hung around her, not all that long, but long enough to block her face from the side, which was where Galahad stood. She felt him move and watched his boots step into view in front of her, but she refused to look up.

“Did I hurt you?” His deep rumbling voice was even softer now, and filled with genuine regret.

And that just made her want to cry more. She couldn’t really speak around the contained sobs gripping her throat, so she just shook her head. Argh. She didn’t want to do this here. Now.

Ever.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but she still felt him standing there, right in front of her, and she’d swear she felt him move closer. But he didn’t touch her, so she might have imagined the increase in heat she felt in the air near her. She refused to open her eyes and check. It was taking a lot of effort and concentration to keep the tears in and breathe.

“We should go inside and get you a drink,” he said quietly. “I didn’t realize how hard I was pushing you.”

She snort-laughed, and it sounded sloppy and wet, but she didn’t care. “Yes you did.”

“I—”

She raised a hand before he could make excuses. “Stop. It’s your job to push me and ensure I can do all this stuff. I don’t need you to apologize or make excuses or whatever you were about to do.” Her voice was so thick she barely sounded like herself. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

“I’m crowding you.”

“Not that either. But…maybe right now. Yes. I need a minute alone.”

She still didn’t open her eyes because she couldn’t look at him right now. All her fears and failures and insecurities and anxieties would come spilling out in ugly tears if she did and she really really wanted to avoid that.

“I’ll be inside,” he said quietly.

Even with her eyes closed, she registered the change of shadows when he moved away, taking his heat with him. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know when she was alone. The clearing felt weirdly silent once he was back inside the temple. Even the breeze had died down and birds and bugs fallen quiet.

Though her closed lids, everything looked red because the sun was bright. A beautiful day for having a breakdown.

She nearly laughed out loud.

With a sharp, long inhale, she blinked her eyes open and looked up at the sky.

What the hell was she doing?

She did chuckle this time. She was ever so dangerously…falling apart.

She didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. Not when the world she now inhabited was so dangerous. She really needed to pull her shit together.

Blinking at the clouds, a weird sort of calm filled her, the tears drying without falling. She took slow, steady breaths until she felt in control of the sudden emotional outburst. Until she felt like she could face the others without bursting into tears.

Okay. Okay. It wasn’t that bad. Even if she lost her job, she’d find another. She was just in a slump with the training, but she had backup so it was okay that she wasn’t the best sword fighter yet. Jilly was still perfectly healthy and wasn’t likely to pass the gauntlet of guardianship on to Erica any time soon. There was time and no need to lose her shit just because she was having a bad run.

Everything would be okay.

She bent to scoop up her practice sword and a shadow moved over her. She shivered. Looked up. The clouds were normal. But something…

A sense of dread crept up from her gut, through her chest, up her throat, to grip. Tight. She scowled at the sky. But she didn’t think the dread was coming from that. She’d seen the enemy in that sky once before but never again since she’d taken up her position beside Jilly.

The temple dimension was safe and she was safe here. But…

But something was wrong. Something had changed. Just now. Something to do with the ancient enemies that endangered the multiverse with their eternal battle to conquer the other and rule over everything and everyone.

Erica tried to pinpoint what she was feeling, the dread, the knowledge that something was wrong. She couldn’t but a finger on it exactly. But she knew.

Danger.

Somewhere.

The Wraith-sworn were hunting.

***

Thanks for joining the Spooky Season Calendar! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter excerpt of the novella GHOSTS THROUGH THE CATS EYES. This story is out this month in HAUNTS AND HOWLS THROUGH GHOSTLY VEILS, so if you'd like to read more, be sure to check out the collection!

And if you'd like to read the other stories that are in the Destiny Cats series (all also published in Haunts and Howls collections as well as standalone eBooks), check them out here.

HAPPY SPOOKY SEASON!