Here’s a sneak peak of Chapter 1 of A Cat’s Guide to Meddling with Magic, the sequel to A Cat’s Guide to Bonding with Dragons.
You can download the book from Amazon by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.
Chapter 1: Nefarious Dreams
There he was again, his head floating in the sky, his blue eggshell-skinned face looking down upon me with grey lifeless eyes. Astravar… The man who brought me into this world; the evil warlock who hated cats and didn’t know how to treat us well.
All around me, purple stalks whipped and flailed at the air, sending up a thick purple mist that stretched across the horizon. If I got close to the plants, they could lacerate my skin — shred it off my very bones.
I stood there, looking up at the face without a body, paralysed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t run. But if I did run, then he’d just materialise in front of me, with that wicked grin and expression of dire hatred for any living creature in the world. I couldn’t escape him, in other words.
This land smelled of death and decay, and each time I came here it became worse. At the same time, I had a metallic taste upon my tongue – a taste of raw meat and of being as wild as wild comes.
I watched, and I waited as the words rolled out of his mouth.
“Join me, Dragoncat…”
Then, I opened my own mouth to say something in his own language, but no words came. It was terrible. I didn’t belong here. My stomach burned with hunger, and I felt the urge to hunt down something and slaughter it. A rabbit, perhaps, or something bigger. Something that would pose a challenge for a great mighty Bengal like me.
No, it wasn’t right. I had to wake up from this dream. I didn’t belong here. Even though Astravar’s eyes burned and raged with pure fury, I was losing my fear of the warlock and instead becoming enamoured with what he could make of me.
If I stayed here too long, he’d consume me whole.
“Join me, Dragoncat…” he said again. “You know it is your destiny.”
But I’d promised myself, and I’d promised Salanraja, that I wouldn’t let him talk to me for long enough to drag me over to the other side. So, though my muscles wouldn’t let me, I tried to move my limbs and stand up. Not in this world, but back in the real world — the world of the living. Even if it wasn’t my home.
I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t open them. Astravar had too much of a hold on me. If I didn’t do something, I’d never wake up again.
I turned to see a strange girl in a long chiffon dress. She looked like a young teenager, with long straight and colourless blonde hair. She turned her gaze down on me, and it was then that I noticed her red eyes, the irises looking as if they were burning. “Wake up,” she said.
It was Déjà vu. I’d met her many times, I was sure. But I couldn’t place where I’d seen her last.
“I said, wake up!”
My eyelids shot open, and a sudden shudder ran down my spine. A bright white light filled my vision, which soon faded to show a world I knew well enough. It wasn’t the world I wanted to live in.
But I was much safer here than in Astravar’s domain.
Chapter 2 is now available. >> READ NOW
