Page 78 of Purrfectly Kissed
Don’t judge. Fergie wasn’t shallow, she just liked pretty things. Haters gonna hate. But every time she ran across a thrift or second-chance store, she’d search high and low to see what they had. That was how she’d scored the pumps on her feet.
They made her feel good about herself. Being five-foot two-inches short with more curves than a racetrack, Fergie had had more than her fair share of self-esteem issues growing up. Alright, so she was chubby. She could admit that proudly now.
If everyone looked the same, the world would be one boring as hell place. Fergie liked herself perfectly fine these days, in spite of all the times her step-monster tried to make her diet growing up. So she liked food and shoes. Big deal.
She worked hard to feed and clothe herself, so as far as she was concerned, no one had a right to comment. So what if she wanted some excitement in her life? Fergie was aware she was better off than most, but what was wrong with having goals?
She’d spent a lot of time thinking about how a woman like her could have an adventure. Travelling was the only thing she could think of. Of course, she’d been hoping this job would be the answer to that. Even travelling for work was better than being stuck.
Sigh.
So far, her plans had fallen flat, but hey, at least she was earning a paycheck. Her new boss, Mr. Offner, might be a strange man, but he signed her checks, and that was enough for now. Fergie had never seen more than a glimpse of him. All of her instructions usually came via email.
Most of the time she was able to compile her research quickly, then she’d head back to the office to organize it into neat little spreadsheets, and finally, she’d hand it all in with her laptop. But not today.
Mr. Offner sent her an email detailing everything she could dig up on one of the oldest places on record in the county. Of course, land surveys that old, along with police reports, newspaper articles, deeds, and sales records were nowhere she could easily access them.
After wasting hours at both the court house and municipal building, Fergie had been directed to thesecondpublic library. Apparently anything over a hundred years old was filed away in the godforsaken place. She’d been shocked to find an entire room filled with musty old archives. And wouldn’t you know it, there was no cell service and no internet access. Plus, their phone lines were down. She’d had to photograph each page using her cell. When she got home later, she would send those photos like a fax to her boss along with her spreadsheet. If she could manage that before collapsing into bed.
Excerpt from Bound by Air
Troy Waman looked down at his smartphone to the little red arrow blinking on his map app, indicating he had reached his destination. He frowned pensively before shaking his head.
“What a fucking shithole,” he murmured to himself as he exited the nondescript black SUV his Station Master, Rex, had given him for the job.
“Try not to scratch it,”the tough Bear shifter had said with a barely contained growl after their meeting the day before last. After a thousand years of waiting, TheWardens of Terrawere being called to duty and this was Troy’s first assignment.
It took him a day and a half to make his way to Shadowland, New York from the little suburb in Virginia Beach where his Station was located. There were dozens of them across the continental United States and even more overseas, though he’d rarely been out of the county himself.
Troy rolled his shoulders and exhaled. He was the first from his Station to be called to duty. A fact that left him both proud and humbled at the same time. He’d trained damn hard since he was a child waiting for such an opportunity. Now he had it, and it was almost too much to bear.
Fuck and damn. It’s time Troy, get your ass in gear.That was all the sympathy he had for himself. Why the hell should he have any at all? Troy Waman was no tenderfoot normal. He was a Warden of Terra. He didn’t need to remind himself of the honor and duty that went along with his position.
TheWardens of Terrawere an ancient group of elite warriors. All of them Shifters. Identified in their youth and trained throughout their preternaturally long lives, they were guardians as well as fighters.Station Mastersled teams of Wardens across the planet.
Though they’d been deactivated sometime in the last millennium, Wardens were born, chosen, and trained every day with the distinct knowledge that someday, they’d be called upon to defend the earth. That day was here.
Troy Waman had been trained as a Warden since before he learned how to spell the word. His heritage was a mix of Anglo and Native American. His father’s blood was a mix of tribes including Algonquin, Lenape, Cherokee, and a few others. He hadn’t stuck around long enough for anyone to learn the rest.
He supposed he could get a DNA test, but that might raise too many questions with the normals. Especially in this day of advanced technology in biogenetics.
Besides, it was quite common in today’s world to find Native American peoples descended from multiple tribes. Troy Waman was uncommon for an entirely different reason. He was a Shifter, a special race of dual natured beings with one foot in the supernatural world and one in the human. Troy was aThunderbird Shifterto be exact. Something unique even amongst Shifters.
He stretched his long, lithe body as he stepped away from the vehicle. It was already dark out despite it being fairly early in the evening.Daylight savings my ass.He sniffed the frigid air. The unusually high winds made the cold seem even more bitter. The street lamp stuttered on the corner, a rusty fence squeaked, and a black cat crossed the street, ducking under some parked cars. Troy’s frown deepened.
It looked like the setting of a B-horror flick. All it needed was some half naked co-ed to run down the street with a masked bogeyman stalking behind her, traditional blood-coated knife in hand.Oh yeah.They might call itShadowland Nightmareor something equally cheesy.
He stopped his musings and used his heightened senses to take in the downtrodden area around him. It would seem upstate New York wasn’t all orchards and sprawling suburbs. He smirked as the “I love New York” song ran through his head.Yeah, right.
Apparently, parts of the Empire State were as fucked up as the street where he was born in Newark, New Jersey. He’d visited that shithole back when he was in his teens just out of curiosity. What a mistake that had been! He’d left almost as soon as he’d arrived. His extended family had been, shall we say, less than welcoming.
His gray-haired grandmother had screamed and crossed herself when he stepped over her threshold. He was what they called askin walker. They feared and loathed him as something evil. Him evil? Like he was the motherfucker who knocked-up some unsuspecting normal and left her ass with a Shifter baby.
He was not evil, but he was something they did not understand. He’d been angry and ashamed that day. He’d crashed through his grandmother’s kitchen to hitch a ride back down to his Station in Virginia Beach.
In his youth it was more like a military training camp, but it was all he knew of home. After all, it was where he’d lived his entire life. He’d made his peace and settled fully into his life there.
The incident with his grandmother had happened over a decade ago, when Troy had stolen his records out of Rex’s office. Still, the memory remained fresh in his mind as if it were only yesterday. The fucked-up street where he was standing only brought back the painful reminder that he’d come from the same kind of squalor.Fuck this, he thought.
