Judgement (Kat Dubois Chronicles Book 5)
Table of Contents
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CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF KAT?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Echo in Time (Echo Trilogy, #1)
Judgement
KAT DUBOIS CHRONICLES, BOOK 5
By LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
Copyright © 2017 by Lindsey Fairleigh
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, is intended or should be inferred.
Editing by Sarah Kolb-Williams
www.kolbwilliams.com
Cover illustration by Biserka
99designs.com/profiles/biserka
MORE BOOKS BY LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
ECHO TRILOGY
1: Echo in Time
1.5: Resonance
2: Time Anomaly
2.5: Dissonance
3: Ricochet Through Time
KAT DUBOIS CHRONICLES
1: Ink Witch
2: Outcast
3: Underground
4: Soul Eater
5: Judgement
6: Afterlife
THE ENDING SERIES
Prequel: The Ending Beginnings Omnibus Edition
1: After The Ending
2: Into The Fire
3: Out Of The Ashes
4: Before The Dawn
World Before: A Collection of Stories
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH AND HER BOOKS:
www.lindseyfairleigh.com
CONTENTS
MORE BOOKS BY LINDSEY FAIRLEIGH
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CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF KAT?
EXCERPT FROM Echo in Time
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1
“What’s wrong?” Nik asked, watching me pace. He was leaning against the wall to the left of the door leading out of our cozy little waiting area. And I’m using the words “cozy” and “little” lightly. The private lounge was palatial. Literally, it was a room in a palace.
We were in the old Nejeret Council headquarters in Rome, a relic from days long past, back when Nejerets had been ruled by a patriarchal group of seven men. Heru had been among them, as had my father, Set. But the Council of Seven had gone the way of the pharaohs . . . as had the governing body that replaced it, the Senate. Now we were back to a good old-fashioned feudal monarchy, with Heru as the high king. And in true feudal fashion, war was an ever-burning fire threatening to reduce us all to little more than ash and bone.
Nik and I had been busy little bees the past two weeks, attempting to stave off that dire outcome. Since the shadow souls incident, we’d been spending most of our time gateway-ing around the world, meeting up with small groups of Nejerets—the good guys who supported Heru, not the asshats supporting the rogue Senate, of course—and addressing live audiences of humans, just like Garth suggested weeks ago to make up for my one-fingered PR blunder. Only now we were attempting to counter something much more devastating, PR-wise—the damage caused by the Senate’s ever-increasing hostilities against humanity. It was why Nik and I were in Rome in the first place. In a few minutes, we would be onstage once again, “the Goddess” and her Nejeret friends, addressing yet another crowd of gathered humans.
The now-defunct Council headquarters was a stunning complex—an old palazzo dating back to the thirteenth century that took up an entire city block in central Rome. It was extravagant, with plenty of lavish marble inlays, gold leafing, and arched ceilings. And, like many an Italian palace, there were frescos for days and artwork galore. It was over the top in a way mastered by the Italian nobles of old. And apparently embraced by the Nejerets of old as well.
The private lounge where Nik and I had been hanging out for the past twenty minutes was toned down from the main gallery by just a hair. Whoever decorated the room had tried to warm it up with Persian rugs and upholstered seating, but no amount of furnishings could dampen the effect of the immense oil portraits of Nejerets lining the crimson walls in their gaudy gilded frames or the enormous, intricate crystal chandelier glittering giddily over the center of the room.
I stopped mid-step under the chandelier and looked at Nik, one arm hugging my middle, the other raised so I could chew on my thumbnail. He looked like he could’ve been posing for some avant-garde fashion magazine. He was leaning one shoulder against the wall by the oversized door, head tilted to the side and fingers tucked into his trouser pockets, his tailored pinstripe suit fitting him just right and tattoos peeking out here and there. He looked damn good—more than good enough to momentarily waylay the worries making me pace, replacing them with more pleasurable thoughts for a few seconds.
Nik raised his pierced brow, the corner of his mouth lifting into a slight but satisfied smirk. He liked that he could distract me by simply sharing the same space as me. I would never admit it aloud, but I kind of liked it, too.
“Well?” he said, the one-word prompt knocking my thoughts back out of naughty-land.
Right, he’d asked me a question: What’s wrong?
I cleared my throat. “Nothing,” I said, gaze sliding away from his to the small, round table in the corner of the room.
I’d left the velvet drawstring bag holding my deck of hand-drawn tarot cards on the table. They’d been burning a hole in my pocket, so I’d taken them out, hoping that by removing the distraction I would be able to focus on the upcoming address. The meeting scheduled to take place in the ballroom downstairs was the most significant yet, with over two thousand humans slated to attend.
But now, having the tarot deck out in the open was just making the problem worse. I’d taken to pacing around the room, if only to distract myself from the urge to pull out the cards and flip through them in an impromptu reading. This was so not the time. I needed to focus . . . to get my head in the game. I did not need to be preoccupied by thoughts of even more what-ifs and oh-shits. Not right now.
If we could just get the humans to trust us—if we could just convince the governments to agree to work with us—we would be able to launch a coordinated assault on the Senate and finally wipe them off the playing field. But while the vast majority of humans still gazed at me with a fervor of divine adoration, the logical-thinking, slow-moving governmental bodies were harder to sway. Humanity’s growing fear of the Senate and what it might do next overruled their love of me, and no matter how hard I tried, I’d yet to find a way to t
ip the scales in favor of a full-blown alliance.
“You do seem rather agitated,” Dom said from the little mirror pendant hanging on a leather cord around my neck.
I clenched and unclenched my jaw, then forced myself to look at Nik again. “I’m fine,” I said, both to him and to my incorporeal half-brother.
“Right . . .” Nik crossed his arms over his chest, the fabric of his suit jacket straining oh so faintly at his shoulders.
“Little sister . . .”
Damn it. They both knew me too well to believe my attempted blow-off.
I huffed out a breath, hands falling to my sides. “Alright, fine. You’re right. It’s just that—” I pressed my lips together, inhaling and exhaling deeply through my nose. “It’s going to sound crazy, but—” I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . something just feels off. Like really, really off.”
I raised a hand to run my fingers through my hair, realizing too late that I was messing up Lex’s styling. It wasn’t anything fancy, but she’d given me a super neat left-side part—one she said made me look very respectable—a hairdo to match my respectable outfit and respectable shoes and the air of general respectability I was supposed to convey as the Nejeret figurehead. I was playing a part these days, showing the world that Nejerets were productive, law-abiding, respectable members of society. We had to do everything we could to counter the negative stigma and mistrust caused by the Senate’s seemingly never-ending string of terrorist attacks.
“Damn it,” I said, using both hands to comb my hair back. I pulled the hairband off my wrist and tied my hair up into a ponytail.
Nik’s eyes never left me. “You were tossing and turning all night,” he said.
It was my turn to smirk, though my heart wasn’t in it. “And whose fault was that?”
Nik chuckled, and the wicked glint in his pale blue eyes caused a blush to rise up my neck and cheeks, leaving me on the verge of overheating. “After that, Kitty Kat,” he said, his expression turning serious. “Did you see something in your dreams?”
“Was it another echo?” Dom added.
Chewing on my lip, I shook my head. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single vision of the future since vanquishing the shadow souls a couple weeks back.
“No, nothing like that,” I told them both. “I don’t even remember my dreams from last night.” I shrugged halfheartedly, gaze drifting away from Nik’s. I looked from portrait to portrait, like the Nejerets captured in oil paint centuries ago might hold the answers. “I just—I don’t know. This feeling is . . . I don’t really know how to describe it, other than off-ness.”
It was like I knew something bad was going to happen. Like I was watching a horror movie, and the suspense was building and the music was telling me to tense up for a big scare. That was it—that was the feeling exactly. Except this wasn’t a horror movie; this was real life.
I looked at Nik, a chill creeping up my spine. “Something’s coming, Nik,” I said with absolute certainty. “Something bad.” I could feel it in my bones. In my soul.
Nik frowned. “Any idea of what?”
I gave him a pointed look, eyebrows raised and lips pressed together.
“Right,” Nik said. “Stupid question.”
“Mm-hmm . . .” If I knew the answer to the what question, I wouldn’t have spent the past ten minutes pacing around the room like a caged animal trying to figure it out.
I returned to pacing, making a full circuit around the room and letting my thoughts circulate with me before saying anything more. “Maybe this is a new power manifesting,” I finally said as I passed Nik, focusing on the upside. “I could end up with a nifty Spidey sense. That wouldn’t suck.”
“And it would be nice to know our efforts are paying off,” Nik added.
I grunted my assent.
When Nik and I weren’t attempting to sway humanity to our side, we’d been spending our time back at Nik’s secret cave in Port Madison, working on training my ever-expanding powers. For months, my magical abilities had been growing in leaps and bounds . . . until I’d started trying to purposely hone and cultivate them.
I’d hit a wall. Sure, I was way better at wielding At and anti-At and connecting with the soul-energy than ever before, and my drawings were so lifelike that they were verging on Peeping Tom territory, but I hadn’t had a new power show up in fourteen days, and the universe seemed to have zipped its lips where echoes were concerned. It was beyond frustrating. And also so very typical. It almost felt like the universe was playing a joke on me.
There was a knock at the door.
I froze, heart leaping into my throat. The mounting sense of dread had me convinced that whoever was on the other side of the door was distinctly not good.
Nik stepped away from the wall and cracked the door open, foot lodged against the bottom of the door to keep whoever was on the other side from forcing it open farther.
“We’ll be ready for you in five minutes,” a woman said from just outside. Her voice was unfamiliar, but then, I’d spent so little time with the European Nejerets until recently I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t recognize her. At least she wasn’t charging through the door in attack mode.
I exhaled in relief. I was probably getting myself all worked up over nothing. More likely than not, I was just battling an extreme case of nerves. I did suffer from mild stage fright, after all. That was probably all it was.
“Thanks, Mary,” Nik said. While the unfamiliar Nejeret might’ve been a stranger to me, apparently Nik knew her.
Tension tightened my shoulders in an instant, and I had to swallow the swell of jealousy that had become all too common these days. Oh, the joys of sharing a soul bond. It brought unimaginable pleasure and a sense of love and understanding I’d never considered possible, but along with that came a possessiveness so extreme it verged on stalker-level obsession. Sometimes it was a struggle not to let the soul bond overtake me completely. Sometimes it seemed a hell of a lot easier to just give in. But much as I enjoyed being bonded to Nik, I also still kind of liked being me.
I reminded myself not to hate the woman on the other side of the door just because Nik knew her name. He’d probably crossed paths with her at some point during his thousands of years of being alive. That wasn’t so crazy to believe, was it? Just because he knew her name didn’t mean they shared any kind of a history, sexual or otherwise. They were probably just acquaintances. Little more than strangers. There was no reason to jump to conclusions or believe the worst. No reason at all.
My hands balled into fists. Once I realized what I was doing, I forced my fingers to stretch out and took a deep, calming breath.
Nik started to close the door, then stopped and pulled it open a few more inches. “Tell me, Mary—is Set here?” he asked, referring to my absentee father.
Not that I held our distant father-daughter relationship against my dear old dad—he’d been possessed by the spirit of the mad god Apep when he’d knocked up my mom, and he hadn’t broken free of Apep’s hold until I was all but grown. Now, Set managed things on this side of the pond, acting as Heru’s co-regent in the European arena, so we hadn’t exactly had much of a chance to make up for lost time. One day, maybe, when things calmed down. But until then, our onstage appearances would have to pass for father-daughter quality time.
“He is,” Mary said. “He’s with the princess.” I assumed she was talking about Princess Anne, the heir apparent to the British throne and also Set’s longtime paramour. “She’s rather nervous,” Mary added.
We were about to do our thirteenth live town hall–style meeting. As always, Nik was there as both participant and bodyguard to me. Heru and his sister Aset—Nik’s mother—would be showing up directly onstage via Heru’s sheut power, which enabled him to teleport from any location on earth to any location on earth. A few other local Nejeret leaders would be joining us as well, most notably Princess Anne. This would be her official coming out; after today, the world would know that the future Queen of England was
a young immortal. Not exactly an insignificant revelation.
I couldn’t help but wonder if my thoughts had just touched upon the root source of my overwhelming sense of unease. Would the humans react badly to finding out that one of their own future leaders wasn’t, in fact, human? Heru and Set claimed they’d accounted for every possible outcome, from rioting in the streets of London and other major cities across the globe to an all-out declaration of war against Nejerets. We all knew this was a risky step, but most of us agreed it was a necessary one, too. Progress demanded it. The only way through our current mess was forward.
I moved closer to the table in the corner, staring at the drawstring bag containing my tarot cards. Hands on my hips, I drew my bottom lip between my teeth. I could just check the top card. Quick and easy.
My palm itched, and I rubbed it against my hip absently.
A heartbeat later, I froze, eyes going wide.
Ever so slowly, I pulled my hand away from my slacks and turned it over so I could see my palm. That onyx and moonstone Eye of Horus inked into my skin glowed with a subtle, otherworldly light. And my skin itched with an all-too-clear warning: something bad was going to happen.
It wasn’t just a niggling feeling anymore, and I certainly couldn’t write it off as “nerves” about the impending meeting any longer. The threads of At and anti-At lacing through my body and soul agreed—the danger was real. The rise and fall of my chest grew more pronounced with each breath as I stared at my palm and processed what this warning meant.
Nik shut the door and turned to me. “Kitty Kat?” When I didn’t respond, he took a step my way. “Kat?”
I raised my eyes, meeting Nik’s, and turned my hand so the palm was facing him, giving him a solid eyeful of the glowing symbol.
Nik whistled, long and slow. He knew very well that the ancient protection amulet I’d tattooed on my palm—the symbol that represented our clan—could function as an actual alarm when danger was nearby. He closed the distance between us, reaching out to take my hand in his and get a closer look. “Any sense as to what it’s trying to warn you about?”