Release the Cat's of War - The Crescent City Coven

 CHAPTER ONE

 

 

 “Trouble,” Linda peered into the darkness up the street.

Yellow glowing streetlights winked off as something approached the front of the loft.

“I don’t like them at our backs,” Kat whispered from the side of her mouth.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Lily and her small group of magical survivors had set up a second crescent shape behind her Cove, filling in the gaps between.

And their familiars, Colonel Jackson, Sheba and the others were behind them.

Not that they could do much.

If it had been Harold, her saber tooth tiger watching their backs, she would have been less worried.

He had demonstrated a penchant for removing heads and spines with his razor sharp claws.

But Harold was in line with them, a fifth member in the pentagram Coven.

A low rumble in his throat warned of the approaching danger.

Colonel Jackson meowed and Linda snorted.

“What did he say?”

“He said if you’re so worried about them, go stop them.”

“If the magic dragon kitty is worried, shouldn’t we be too?” Pam gulped.

Kat glanced at the two witches on her left side. Tiffany and Pam were recent recruits and yet to be tested.

But she could feel them through the magical bonds binding them as a Coven.

She could feel their fear, their fight or flight instincts pounding loud in their veins.

And she could feel the magic flowing through them.

She knew they could feel the same from her, draw confidence from her power, and if they could feel her, they could feel Harold.

She concentrated on the Tiger.

Dragon, she corrected.

Her grandmother had shared a secret that cats were dragons, the result of a magical spell gone wrong.

“Can you stop them?” she asked Harold.

He dropped his head and took a deep breath.

Colonel Jackson meowed.

“Shoot now,” Linda dropped to one knee and winged a firebolt through the air toward the approaching cloud of black.

Pam and Tiffany unleased blasts of their own, tinged with pink and purple, like little lancets of lightening flickering up the nighttime street.

Kat raised double fists, constructed a blue ball of energy and zapped the basketball sized fear in a straight shot like a cannon ball up the road.

Harold leaped after it.

She thought he was chasing it at first, but he used it to clear a path in the magic that covered the street.

Screams followed.

“I hope he’s okay,” Kat whispered.

Colonel Jackson meowed again and settled on his haunches.

“He’s said it’s not him you should be worried about.”

There were two more screams that followed the first, and were abruptly cut off.

The streetlights winked back on in a cascade of glowing yellow orbs that dissipated the remaining darkness that floated above the street.

“What the hell is that?” Lily watched as a dark figure padded up the road.

“That is a Harold,” said Kat.

She double checked for an ambush and stepped through the open doorway with a force field ready.

It wasn’t necessary.

Harold would have warned her, she thought.

Or better yet, he would have eliminated the threat with extreme prejudice.

The Tiger stalked through a pool of light.

She could see two grisly trophies hanging from his mouth, white bone poking through crimson meat that leaked a trail back to where she suspected the screams had stopped.

“I mean, if you’re going to have a signature move,” Linda observed as she stepped next to Kat.

Harold dragged a third item with him.

“Is that a leg?” Linda stared.

“It’s still attached,” Kat said.

She felt a little relief at that.

Harold knew when to kill and maybe when to hold back, she hoped. Plus, she really didn’t want to see a bloody leg.

The spines she could pretend were something else, but the leg looked too human to be anything but.

It was connected to a bleeding man with blond hair and thin build, who whimpered with each step.

“We have a prisoner,” Pam and Tiffany joined the rest of their Coven.

“What kind of kitty treat do you give a dragon who drags a man back to you?” Linda asked.

Kat motioned the tiger to follow them back inside.

 

TO BE CONTINUED