Woot! Kaldor Saga 4: Mending Shattered Souls is now available for purchase at the Siren Bookstrand website. This is a book I dedicate to all the loyal Kaldor readers who urged me on when I was in a slump. Thank you, everyone. I hope you enjoy the story.
After his betrayal, Pierre D’Argent is tortured and broken by his own people. His only desire is to somehow find salvation in death. But a mysterious man going by the name of X rescues him, bringing a spark of hope in his life.
Love blossoms between them, despite Pierre’s incurable affliction and X’s amnesia. But shattered souls cannot be mended so easily. On the run from the Sidhe and vampire nations, at odds with their only allies, Pierre and X find themselves in a situation with no escape.
When X’s past reemerges, it brings even more complications and problems. But the worst is yet to come. The Kaldorian land of Xeetha is crumbling under the attack of hostile forces. The two lovers will have to fight for the freedom of the demon lands. Will love be enough to help them find a way?
The book will be available on March 1st. Until then, I am gifting you with an extra excerpt. For more, just click on the link above :D.
He was lost, lost and damned to the darkness and to the pain. The shadows around him threatened to swallow him whole. But he wouldn’t go down without a fight. They’d regret their birth by the time he finished them off.
With vengeance burning in his veins, he tried to jump one of the blurry silhouettes that circled him. It was useless. Strong bindings kept his arms immobilized, and his wings weren’t much better. At first they seemed numb, but as the seconds passed, they started to hurt terribly. The prisoner gritted his teeth at the pain, knowing that it was a natural part of the healing process. After his wings were better, he had a chance at freeing himself.
For now, escaping would most likely be impossible. He was still trapped in some sort of earthling contraption, which effectively immobilized his arms, legs, and wings. He could feel tubes piercing his entire body, and his skin and bones burned as if having gone through a great fire. He was weak now, so he needed a good plan to escape.
A low chuckle sounded somewhere in front of him. As his vision became clearer, the prisoner located the source of the laughter in a middle-aged human dressed in a white robe, sitting on a simple stool. “You’re thinking about freeing yourself, you little freak? Forget about it!” The man got off the stool and walked up to his prisoner, laughing when the platinum blond tried to lunge at him. “Tsk, tsk. Be a good boy! After all, this will be your permanent home from now on, and you should consider making some friends.”
“Fuck you!” the warrior growled. “You can’t keep me here forever! I’ll get out eventually, and I’ll rip your heart out and make you eat it!”
A flash of fear passed through the human’s eyes, but then his gaze became sly and almost predatory. “I don’t think so. But maybe if you would cooperate with us…we could work together for the good of mankind. What do you say?” He smiled, passing a lascivious gaze over the warrior’s body. “I’m sure we could be great together.”
The warrior didn’t even try to suppress his surge of disgust. He just spat at his captor, giving a disdainful look. The man wiped the spit off his face, glaring at his prisoner and signaling other people dressed like him to come closer. “Idiot demon. You’ll regret that. I’ll give you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
The other men disappeared in the shadows behind the prisoner. Still bound, he could not turn his head to see what they were doing, but he could hear loud metallic sounds coming from somewhere in the back.
The man in white grinned. “Feeling a little frightened, are we?”
The prisoner scoffed. “There’s nothing you can do to me that I would ever fear.”
“We’ll see about that,” the man answered as he pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected one of the tubes.
The warrior hissed as the solution started affecting his body, his mobility restricted once more. The human grinned as he approached the prisoner and raised his head, whispering in his ear, “Last chance. Will you join our forces or not? Think about it. By my side, you’ll be free and powerful, feared and respected by all.”
The human’s tongue slipped into his prisoner’s ear, and his hands started roaming the bound man’s body. It was nauseating, and even in his drug-induced daze, the prisoner somehow managed to oppose it.
“Stop…touching…me!” he croaked out.
As if by miracle, the human’s touch disappeared. “Fine. You’ll beg for me to fuck you before the end.”
With that, the white-clad man sat back down on the stool and nodded to someone in the back. Suddenly the machine trapping the warrior started to vibrate. At first, the prisoner didn’t know what was happening, but suddenly an excruciating pain engulfed his back. He felt the machine pulling and pulling at his wings until the pain became too much to bear. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t fight. He could only suffer. As the contraption continued its work, some part of him yielded, and the prisoner felt the break in his body and his heart. He couldn’t help but scream as his black wings were ripped from his body.
“No!”
* * * *
As X’s eyes flew open, a figure loomed over him. On instinct, he attacked the unidentified figure, obviously another enemy bent on his destruction.
As he kicked and tore into the flesh of his enemy, the other man started to fight back. Between hits, X managed to hear the unknown person shout.
“Hey, stop! X, stop already! It’s me.”
The voice sounded familiar, and X shook the remnants of his dream only to identify the person he was fighting as Min. Min currently boasted several wounds, gained in his struggle with X, and X felt terrible for the attack on his friend. Min had already sustained enough physical damage for him to be the target of his attack.
“I suppose it is too much to ask you what you were dreaming about,” Min said shakily.
X didn’t say anything, just turned his back on Min Yu. “How are the others?”
“They’re fine for now,” Min replied. “They’ve kept the arguments to the minimum.”
X sighed, nodding at the former hunter. It was good news, but that didn’t mean the disease wouldn’t hit again soon.
Seeing that the storm would last a while, they’d decided to rest. One of them, either Min or X, would keep watch, in case anything happened. After his shift, X had finally managed to doze off. However, in the process, he’d ended up in that terrible place. He somehow knew that his dream must be a memory buried deep inside. Now that he had his wits, he could even face what he’d lost, the knowledge that they’d destroyed a very important part of him. His entire being screamed that there were many things he needed to remember, but whenever he tried, he found himself in front of a powerful barrier. For the time being, he had no choice but to abandon the idea of remembering, temporarily, to focus on Pierre. After all, his memories weren’t essential right now, but he did need to take care of the young Sidhe.
He had no idea why Pierre attracted him so much. By rights, they didn’t know each other, but there was a vulnerability and a sorrow inside Pierre that X thought he could understand. He wanted to make things better, to help Pierre heal and the brothers reconcile.
Out of the corner of his eye, X stole a look at the Sidhe. The D’Argent brothers had been attempting to rest at the other side of the cabin, but right now they were very much awake, a fact that was to be expected taking into account the noise he’d made upon waking up. As he looked outside to the snowy mountain, X hoped they wouldn’t have any trouble with the DSS. They had escaped the storm, but it still prevented them for making further progress. They were still too close of the Sidhe facility for comfort.
“I think we should get moving,” Jean Luc said, as if guessing his thoughts. “Michel and the others can’t be far behind.”
Min assented, his exotic features showing his displeasure as he thought about the Imperials. The memory shook X as well as he remembered the first time he’d set eyes on Jean Luc. Had it only been a few days ago? It seemed like forever. The image of Jean Luc being dragged off by the Imperials quickly morphed into Pierre and the way he’d look when X had met him.
X got up and made his way across the small cabin, suddenly feeling the need to ensure Pierre was there, safe, by his side. The memory of his beautiful eyes filled with pain, that desire to die, still plagued X. It would probably continue to plague him his entire life, just like the image of his pure-hearted lover turning into a monster.
X fought the painful images resurrected by that thought. He didn’t want to think about that now, because now, Pierre’s beautiful blue eyes were clear, like a cloudless sky, giving him a look of genuine concern. It was more than obvious that his brother had practically forced him to stay out of the fight between him and Min.
Just when he was walking over to Pierre, X felt something approach. He saw Jean Luc tense at the same moment, and Min immediately took out his weapons.
Pierre paled. “H-How far are they?”
“Not far,” Jean Luc said flatly. “We won’t have time to lose them this time.”
X nodded at the words of the silver-haired Sidhe. The way Jean Luc could analyze things so coldly always startled him, but the older Sidhe would be an asset in the fight to come. The Imperials were a force to be reckoned with. X and his friends were in for a terrible time.
