Since you liked Damian so much, here is that scene in its entirety. 🙂 It will likely preface BLOOD HEIR to remind old readers about the events of Kate Daniels series and hopefully keep the newcomers from feeling lost.
One month after the Battle of Atlanta
Order of Merciful Aid
The Citadel
Wolf Trap, VA 22182
14 Sep 2045
Transcript for Record
FOR: Grand Master, Angevin, Damian, 3rd Knight-Preceptor of the Order of Merciful Aid
INDIVIDUALS PRESENT: Grand Master Damian Angevin, Knight-Inquisitor Bruce Dolivo, Knight-Secretary Timothy Hanson (recording)
SUBJECT: Battle of Atlanta /Attempted Invasion by Roland aka Nimrod of Shinar
BD [Reading]:To understand the conflict that took place in Atlanta resulting in the Battle of Atlanta in August 2045, it is helpful to consider two theories.
First, the forces of magic and technology exist in a balance. Both must be present for life to survive. The complete absence of either results in a mass extinction event, as we saw during the Lighthouse Keeper incident in Palmetto GA. Using technology or magic through means of devices and spells increases its respective potency in the world at the cost of the opposite force. So, the more spells the population uses, the stronger is the magic and the weaker is the tech and vice versa. This continues until the imbalance becomes too great and the system auto corrects. This is known as the Balance Theory.
DA: I’m well aware of this. Last time I checked, I wasn’t an idiot.
BD [Reading]: The Shift, the return of magic to our technological civilization is an example of such correction. The correction isn’t instant but gradual, which is why we’re now experiencing magic waves with periods of technology in between. That is also why magic destroys objects with a high technological concentration, such as tall buildings, aircraft, and computers.
DA: Bruce, my time is valuable. Get to the fucking monkey.
BD [Reading]: Second, the Shift isn’t the first such correction our world has experienced. Evidence suggests that several advanced civilizations existed in pre-history, based on the practice magic and that they obtained a level knowledge and innovation at least equal to or surpassing our own. They had experienced their own Shift, which brought waves of technology and ultimately resulted in their demise. This is known as Second Shift Theory.
DA: You’re doing this on purpose.
BD: Yes, you asked me to do this, I dropped everything, and now you’re going to sit and listen to my damn report.
DA: You always did love the sound of your own voice.
BD: And thirty years later you still can’t pay attention to the lecture. I’m still doing your fucking homework for you, Damian.
DA: That is a lie, and you know it. I did my own damn homework. It’s your job to investigate. It’s my job to decide what to do about your findings.
BD: Oh no, I’m losing my train of thought due to the constant interruptions. I think I’m going to have to start from the beginning.
DA: I already know this. The kid knows this. Tim, is any of this news to you or were you awake during the classes at the Academy?
TH: No, Grand Master. Yes, Grand Master.
DA: Tim, tell me who Roland is.
TH: He’s an exceptionally powerful wizard born in the prehistoric times when magic civilizations flourished. It’s rumored that he is the basis for Biblical figure of Nimrod, the man who built the Tower of Babel. When the first Shift destroyed the magic civilization, Nimrod went into hibernation. The current Shift woke him up and he took the name Roland. He possesses god-like powers, he uses blood magic, and he may have created vampires. He seeks world dominion and is classified as extraordinarily hostile.
BD: How is it you have a kid who uses words like flourished? Give him to me, he’s too smart for you.
DA: Get your own smart kid. This one is mine. Just give me the Cliff’s notes version, Bruce.
BD: Fine. Think of magic as water and technology as a dam holding it back. A little bit of water always flows through, but it’s barely a trickle. Then we have the Industrial Revolution, a couple of World Wars, and the Space Race, and information technology. The more we progress, the greater is the pressure on the dam, until eventually the damn thing starts cracking. We think it really started sometime in the 70’s, when all that psychic crap hit.
So, the magic keeps leaking through the cracks, the cracks widen, and eventually Roland wakes up, probably sometime in the 90’s. He crawls out of whatever cave he was sleeping in and starts running around waiting for the dam to break. Which we know it did, and we have our apocalypse.
Nobody exactly knows what happened to Roland in the past, but it was some heavy shit, because the man is unhinged. Mad genius, megalomaniac wizard, crazy cosmic powers, the whole enchilada. He’s obsessed with rebuilding his ancient kingdom, the Shinar. He settles in Ohio, creates the People, and sets about building the foundation for his kingdom.
Shortly after the Shift, he meets a woman, Kalina, and falls in love with her. She becomes pregnant, and at first, he’s happy, but then he decides to kill the child in the womb.
DA: Why?
BD: He’s had children in the past, and it didn’t go well. They were powerful and every one of them died or turned against him and then died. No one knows how many of his own kids he murdered.
DA: Clearly, father of the year material.
BD: Kalina had other ideas. She somehow seduced Roland’s warlord and ran off with him. Magic may have been involved. Roland chased them. At some point she gave birth to a girl. Roland caught up with them, so she gave the baby to the warlord and confronted her husband to buy them time. She did a damn good job, by all accounts. Bought her daughter twenty-five years before Roland learned of her.
DA: What happened to Kalina?
BD: She stabbed Roland in the eye, and he killed her.
DA: This has turned into a lifetime movie.
BD: Do you even know where that saying comes from?
DA: Yes, do you?
BD: Timothy, bonus question. Where does the phrase lifetime movie come from?
TH: Lifetime was basic cable channel that provided programing targeted toward women and featuring women in leading roles. Lifetime’s original content included made for TV movies, which often portrayed women overcoming adversity resulting from men’s actions, particularly in mystery genre.
BD: I’ll trade you Lisa for him.
DA: Pass. What happened with the girl and the warlord?
BD: The warlord decided to make the girl into a killer, and he did. This woman can kill anything. There are reports of her fighting in the pits South of the Border when she was eight years old. Eventually, the warlord died, and from fifteen until eighteen she ended up in a guardianship under one of ours, Knight-Diviner Greg Feldman.
DA: We had her?
BD: Yep.
DA: Did Feldman know?
BD: Looks that way. He tried to enroll her into Academy twice and she bolted both times. You can check the enrollment logs yourself. She went by Kate Daniels.
DA: Well, fucking shit.
BD: Eventually she ended up in Atlanta and ran into Curran Lennart.
DA: The first Beastlord of the Pack?
BD: Yep. Apparently, there was some sort of instant attraction. It gets better. Ted Moynohan at this point is in charge of the Atlanta Chapter.
DA: That fuckhead again. The gift that keeps on giving. I still don’t understand how he got to be the Knight-Protector. If that man was in charge of nothing except his own dick, sooner or later he’d suspect it of presenting a danger to humanity.
BD: He was one of the original 50 people Stone knighted. Stone liked him for dependability and promoted him to Knight-Sergeant, and after he died, Heath took over and Heath prized seniority over ability. We’re taking about the same man who commissioned a life size portrait of Stone and had it framed in gold…
DA: And if Stone was alive, he would’ve brained Heath with it.
BD: And I would’ve paid good money to see that. Anyway, Moynohan hires Daniels as an agent of the Order.
DA: What the actual fuck?
BD: Your guess is as good as mine. This thing is actually a lot more complicated, but you asked for highlights. She works for us for a bit. Meanwhile, her daddy wakes up his sister. Her name is Erra and she is the human equivalent of a nuke. In ancient times, she was his warlord. She’s got a list of titles a mile long, things like Plaguebringer and City Eater, and she is even less sane than her brother. For some reason, Roland sends her to Atlanta, and she runs into her niece. Shit hits the fan. A plague almost wipes out the city, crazy crap happens, but eventually Daniels kills her. In the process, it becomes clear that she and Lennart are an item and Moynohan thinks shapeshifters aren’t people and should be put down. So our girl quits and goes off to be the Beastlady.
DA: …
BD: You okay?
DA: Just think about it. If only we’d managed to reel her in. We could’ve had our own nuke.
BD [sigh]: Yep. This is what happens when you promote people beyond their intelligence. Anyhow, some years pass and Roland and Daniels keep coming into conflict with each other remotely. Meanwhile, Heath is leading us into political nightmare ass first. The Order’s reputation plummets. Moynohan, who is gone full lunatic by now, becomes convinced that the only way the Order can survive is to have a holy war against an evil enemy.
DA: And we know this how?
BD: He wrote a memo to Heath about it.
DA: … Continue.
BD: Moynohan looks around for some enemy to fight and settles on Roland. Roland decides it’s time to meet his daughter in person, so he sends his warlord to get her.
DA: Hugh d’Ambray, another massive pain in the ass.
BD: He was a pain until Roland threw him away.
DA: That man is a butcher. Right now, he sits safe in Kentucky playing house with his new wife, and the moment he steps foot outside of that state, I’ll be on him like white on rice.
BD: Okay. Moving on. Moynohan makes sure that d’Ambray slaughters the entire Atlanta Chapter and burns a deep cover agent embedded with d’Ambray. That agent is…
DA: Are you going to tell us?
BD: It’s a dramatic pause, Damian. That agent is Knight-Crusader Nikolas Feldman, Greg Feldman’s son. Didn’t see that coming, did you?
DA: How does this woman keep doing this?
BD: Luck? Coincidence? Fate? Anyway, Heath refuses to go to war with Roland and for some reason decides to promote Feldman to Knight-Protector and set him up in charge of the Atlanta Chapter. Mariana de Leon calls for Heath to step down and your name is brought up as the possible replacement. You know what happened next. While we were busy sorting all that out and fighting our civil war, Roland and Daniels come into open conflict. This family has an inborn ability to claim land.
DA: Define claim.
BD: They become bound to the land and all living creatures within it. If a significant magic power enters their domain, they know and can track it. It’s something that had been deliberately bred into them to make them better rulers. Apparently, there is a big price tag attached to all this, but we won’t go into that. Short version: Roland tries to claim Atlanta and Daniels blocks him and claims it instead. They make a deal. Lennart gives up the Pack, and Daddy dearest will mind his manners for the next hundred years. Basically, Lennart and Daniels bought some time.
DA: Didn’t last.
BD: No. He keeps poking her with a stick. She and Lennart get married and she gives birth to a baby boy, and that’s just makes her father’s meddling worse. While he’s harassing her, an ancient dragon decides it would be a great idea to invade the world. He opens a secret dimension where he’s been hiding with his slave army and starts capturing people and boiling them alive. The entire city comes together to fight him and somehow Daniels convinces Roland to help her. They kill the dragon, and the moment he croaks, Roland turns on his daughter. When the dust settles, Roland is gone, jettisoned out of our world.
DA: Where?
BD: Nobody knows. Feldman has written a report in which he claims that Roland is imprisoned in the realm outside of our existence and can never escape. I pressed him for explanation, but he hasn’t given one yet. He doesn’t have the highest opinion of us. Like Moynohan, he’s been writing memos for years explaining that Roland is going to invade and Daniels is a danger to democracy.
DA: I’ve read them. His points were valid, but we had more urgent things on our plate. What happened to Daniels?
BD: She unclaimed the land and went back to living in the suburbs with her ex-Beastlord husband.
DA: Just like that?
BD: Just like that. Here’s the kicker. You remember the aunt she killed? Erra, the Plaguebringer? The one with all the titles?
DA: Yes.
BD: She got resurrected on the battlefield.
DA: Bruce, death is forever. In all the decades since the Shift nobody has ever come back to life.
BD: Well, she did. Rumors said she wasn’t fully dead, and she and Daniels have some sort of arrangement. Shortly after the dust settles, she leaves. And here is another tidbit for you. Years ago, Daniels rescued a street kid, a little girl named Julia Olsen. Lennart and Daniels formally adopted her. Julia, they call her Julie, was a sensate and had some weird powers. Word is, she and Erra left together. Their whereabouts are officially unknown.
DA: So, we have an ancient warlord princess running around the country, possibly starting plagues and, good news, she found an apprentice with weird powers. Fantastic. How sure we are that Roland is no longer a threat?
BD: One hundred percent sure. Daniels is unconcerned, and she would be his primary target. As to Erra, we will find her.
DA: What makes you so sure?
BD: Because she looks like this. [passes photograph]
DA: … How tall is she?
BD: Six two.
DA: When you said she was thousands of years old, I didn’t expect… that.
BD: No. I know this look.
DA: What look?
BD: Damian.
DA: Yes? Is there something you want to tell me off the record?
BD: No, I want it on the record. It’s Timothy’s job to record every word that passes here, and I want to be damn sure that he puts this in writing. Do you understand, Knight-Secretary Hanson?
TH: Yes, Knight-Inquisitor.
BD: This woman is a weapon of mass destruction. She can do things we can’t even imagine. She can make indestructible weapons and armor out of her own blood. She has centuries of education and experience. The Shift happened less than fifty years ago. Our most advanced mages are babies compared to her. Leave it alone.
DA: Mhm.
BD: I’m dead serious, Damian. This woman is trouble. Don’t get involved. I mean it.
DA: I heard you. Thank you for the report, Knight-Inquisitor. The Order appreciates your efforts.
BD: I warned you. Ignore me at your own peril. Besides, it’s Julia Olsen we need to focus on. Roland had taken an interest in her. She was seen at his Swan palace and his subordinates referred to her as talmir, which means disciple. Daniels taught her to use bladed weapons, Roland taught her magic, and now, Erra took her with and God alone knows what she’s teaching her. Three individuals from that family have chosen to pour their knowledge into this child. Why? On top of that, this girl had a front row seat to the mess that is Atlanta’s politics for years. She has close ties to the Pack and the Witch Covens. Also, she’s welcome at Hugh d’Ambray’s Kentucky castle. She worries me.
DA: She’s what, eighteen?
BD: Just about. We don’t have an exact birth date.
DA: Young. Independent. And probably has a shit load of power. Find her for me, Bruce. We can’t get Erra, we lost Daniels, d’Ambray was never an option, but we can still get Julie Olsen. We can’t afford to pass on this one. The ruling family of Shinar aren’t the only ones waking up. We need the knowledge in her head, or we’re going to get outclassed fast.
BD: I’ll find her. The question is, how are you going to convince her to join us?
DA: She is an impressionable eighteen-year-old kid. Between the knights and the support staff, we have eighty thousand people who chose our side. Just get me to her, and I’ll take it from there. Make this a priority, Bruce.
BD: Understood, Grand Master.
Knight-Inquisitor Dolivo left the room.
DA [holding photograph of Erra]: What do you think about woman, Tim?
TH: She’s very dangerous, Grand Master.
DA: I’m sure she is. What was it Bruce said? Trouble.
TH: Yes, Grand Master.
DA: When you get to my age, Tim, you realize that playing it safe isn’t always the best strategy. After all, what’s life without a little trouble? Don’t write that down. We wouldn’t want Knight-Inquisitor Dolivo to lose his beauty sleep.
“Don’t write that down. We wouldn’t want Knight-Inquisitor Dolivo to lose his beauty sleep.”
Thank you Tim ! And Thank you for the potential preface !
They do have one heck of a mean streak…gotta love it!
Absolutely wonderful.. thank you
+1 ????
Brilliant!!!
+1
Thank you!!
Thank you, that was wonderful!!!! Damian is priceless.
Woooooooo!!!! Love Ryder! Epic start/intro!
+1
+1
Omg. Thank you. Love the attitude in it.
Julie will not be buffaloed at all. Mini Kate.
“She is an impressionable eighteen-year-old kid.” Am I the only one laughing at this?
No, I was giggling madly at that. So Damian is going to woo Erra and recruit Julie…pride goeth before the fall and I’m anticipating one hell of a thud.
Amen to that
No, I keep thinking about when he finds out Julie is in Atlanta and working on an Order case! Also, can’t wait for Julie to hand him his head when he underestimates her. Hehehehe!
Erra was being pursued by the Grand Master. Julie has special super duper Order papers. He knows by now.
I’m imagining when he met Julie and his plan for the impressionable eighteen-year-old kid turned from chocolate cake worthy prize to random purse cough drop.
+1 +squeeeeee!!
Bless y’all: Andrews clan & fans! <3
This titbit settles shortly after the battle of Atlanta. The actual story plays around 8 years later.
????????
Nope ! 🙂 🙂 🙂
+1
hahaha… this is the perfect intro!
Thank you!
So great, thank you both.
Love it!
Wow… Awesome!! And thank you! What a fun and ingenious way to remind us of previous events and bridge the gap for new readers! And… provide another potential worry/threat for Julie and our favorite family of Shinar….
“…She is an impressionable eighteen-year-old kid…”
Ha! Yeah. Ok. Sure. Fine. You bet.
*snort*
Julie’s about as impressionable as Stone Mountain. Ah, the Order, can’t live with them, can’t live without them!
Hahaha true
And they never learn!
I see a definite comeuppance in the Grand Master’s future….if he even manages to figure out who she is.
By the time Blood Heir starts, he probably knows exactly who she is. He’s courting Erra, after all.
I missed something. Could someone direct me to the scene someone courting Erra? Also IA mentioned that a lot of people liked Damian – I don’t recall reading about him prior to this. Thanks in advance!
PS Tku IA for another masterful scene of wonder and goodness!
Chapter 3 where she gives Nick the Tower to get his assistance
https://ilona-andrews.com/2020/home-sweet-home-2/
“What’s your relationship with the Grand Master?” Nick asked.
“I’m not at liberty to answer.”
My grandmother liked to describe her relationship with the head of the Order as “complicated.” From my point of view, there was nothing complicated about it. Damian Angevin was desperately in love with my grandmother. After he granted her the first Tower, she gave it to me. He found out and presented her with another one, so she would have one of her own just in case. My grandmother liked him, however, her heart belonged to a man who died over two thousand years ago. Damian knew this but he was never one to back down from a challenge.
Ooh, I forgot about that! It’s good to be forgetful; when Blood Heir comes out, it will be *almost* like reading it for the first time.
And thank you, Authorlords, for the precis! I’ve forgotten a lot of the Kate plot points, too.
so question is – is Julie right and Damian started to look for Erra and fell head over heals – or is it all a big game trying to get to Julie?
In Ryder chapter 3, Julie goes to the Order and uses her copy of the Tower badge to gain entry and take over the murder investigation. She mentions ─ to us, in her head ─ that she got the Tower because Damian Angevin gave it to Erra, and Erra gave it to Julie. Read about it at https://ilona-andrews.com/2020/home-sweet-home-2/.
He’s a new character to us, I think. Before this, we’ve always seen the Order through Kate’s eyes. She was way down in the Order ranks and I presume had no interest/knowledge of the upper echelons.
Great Friday indeed!
“She unclaimed the land and went back to living in the suburbs….” Okay, I need to re-read, maybe it’s a Friday thing but it feels like I’m missing something.
Trying to get her away from New Shinar? Impressionable 18 yo? *scoffs* They’ll learn.
And – DA can’t resist that trouble, eh? LMAO – too funny. Nice set up.
Definitely looking forward to this!
Kate died (briefly) and lost the claim to Atlanta. She didn’t try to re-claim it because 1. She promised to let it go and 2. What sane person wants to have to handle everyone else’s problems? (Epilogue of KD book 10)
I love it, it made me laugh a lot, I can’t wait to read the book, thank you.
Now THAT right there is an awesome preface\summary\recap! House Andrews does it again!
Lol loved all the quips and sassiness between them. 😀
It was such a blast from the past seeing over a decades worth of books just summed up about Roland’s timeline.
Wolf trap! Yay! The books are getting closer to me so and it’s exciting seeing familiar setting!
Me, too! I don’t know Atlanta, so it will be fun hearing about places around NoVa in the KD future.
i need to read an interaction between erra and damian!!!!!
+1
+10000
Me too! XD
+ 1
Absolutely !!!!
This was so awesome!! Thank you both so much
“If that man was in charge of nothing except his own dick, sooner or later he’d suspect it of presenting a danger to humanity.”
LMFAO!!! I’ve been laughing at this for the past 5 minutes. I’m deceased
Seriously. Literally LOLed, also during the whole Lifetime thing. Such a fun recap!
+1
+1
I can’t write anything even remotely insightful or witty. My mouth is making OMF, OMG, OMG noises.
I ship it.
Thank you, a blast as always.
History repeats itself. They had Kate right under their nose and didn’t know it. Soon they will have Julie under their nose…and they still won’t even know it.
The Order – amateurs trying to play in the Big Leagues. They are in way over their heads. (SMH)
Not so sure they are clueless. They may have sent a description ahead. Nick could have been told to make anyone with the marker part of the order. But they wouldnt tell him its her.
Maybe the Grand Master sent orders for Nick to cooperate with anyone holding the tower. It wouldn’t take more than that for Nick to do something he really didn’t want to do if he owed Pastor Haywood like Derek said.
I know he is obligated to cooperate, but he could have made it much more difficult, as Aurelia was well aware.
I wonder if he secretly knows who Julie is?
He does hate Roland and Kate but eh, wouldn’t have thought he’d take up with Desandara and her kids, either. Even keeping it quiet and living apart, it isn’t something they can really keep from the Pack or ex-Pack neighborhood gossips.
No way. There is literally no way Nicholas knows who she is.
When IA was in Dallas on one of their tours, I asked if Desandra and Nick would get together. Gordon said “Yes” immediately with great enthusiasm so I figured it would never happen.
I was very pleased when it did.
No. Nick knows that “Aurelia” doesn’t add up, and something about her seems familiar but he can’t put his finger on it. He asked Desandra to sniff a form that Julie filled out, and asked if she recognized the scent.
This is so fun. Great method for exposition too. It just hit home for me that I’m way more engaged when reading exposition through a conversation than through regular narration(?). Probably because of the natural breaks in dialogue plus the tone
Also can someone remind me why claiming the land became an issue for Kate? There was an urge to claim more? Or to rule? I remember Erra warned Kate against something and told Kate to give up the land. But now she’s claimed the land of New Shinar and is ruling it and it’s fine. I’m forgetting something
Mostly, the reason why Errah does not want Kate ruling the claimed land was because she is so young and has no training/education. Errah, if I remember correctly, was not inexperienced, she just chose not to claim any land before. Now, hopefully, she is humanized enough with her time with Kate and Conlan, add several lifetimes of living experience, she will do New Shinar well. (Or not.)
As kids they were taught to claim then release small parcels of land to control the urge to claim more (and thus come into conflict with the head of the house, who already holds the kingdom of Shinar). Kate doesn’t have the practice or control to claim then release and has no desire to rule Atlanta-Shinar, so must release her claim.
Ok, I need a who’s who for the order people!! Thanks great recap. Can only imagine the shit show that will happen once the order gets more involved
Greg Feldman: Knight Deviner(magical examiner/detective) of Atlanta Chapter and Kate Daniels guardian. First mentioned in Magic Bites.
Ted Moynohan: Knight Protector (Head) of Atlanta Chapter. First encountered in Magic Bites until Magic Bleeds.
Nick Feldman: Knight Crusader(undercover/SpecOps) from Magic Bites until Magic Strikes then succeeding Moynohan as Knight Protector of Atlanta Chapter(can’t remember which book). He is also Greg Feldman’s son and technically Kate’s ‘adopted brother’.
Jared Stone: former Army Ranger and founder of The Knights of the Order of Merciful Aid. Grand Master
Heath: successor to Stone as the Grand Master of the Knights
Damian Angevin: current (as of Ryder) Grand Master of the Knights. Had a ‘complicated’ relationship with Erra (gave her a tower card which she passed off to Julie)
Bruce Dolivo: Knight Inquisitor (previously unknown)
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Knight-Secretary is going to be in play somehow.
This is great. Thanks
The best part of Friday.
Chapter of Ryder.Chapter of innkeeper .
Love the recap of Roland, Kate, Erra and Julie. With quips and hints flying !
It brings a smile , remembering the journey of Kate and Curran.
Then expanding to Hugh and Elara, now Julie and Derek.
Maybe Erra and Damian??
Thank you for all the wonderful words.
What chapter of innkeeper?
I really enjoyed Barabas’s take on history and this is yet another long view of events! Cool!!
Innkeeper, Really!!! I need to find it.
Ahhhhhhhh it gets so much better! I think this is a great way to open Blood Heir.
The problem with writing intros like this is that now the Book Devouring Horde wants more Damien… both when Damien meets Erra and the Order’s effort to recruit our impressionable 18 year old!
Prequel…?
One can only hope they do Twitter or DM … or Tok-Tok …
+1
Oh yeah ….
I never thought anyone would consider Julie a major bad. It makes all kinds of awful sense.
Julie, shortly after her initial appearance was crucified and got to watch Fomarians eat her birth mother’s corpse. And when rescued, she was sent back to the battle by the Morrigan and killed several of them.
Julie started out a badass, and only got older and stronger and better trained. She was no slouch when she left with Erra, and she earned every title she has for New Shinar
Thank you so much! ❤️
I was wondering where the snippet fit in.
Hope you all are doing well. ????
I smell t-r-o-u-b-l-e…..❤️????????
Gee thanks. Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head.
Minor continuity question for House Andrews. In this exchange:
BD: It’s a dramatic pause, Damian. That agent is Knight-Crusader Nikolas Feldman, Greg Feldman’s son. Didn’t see that coming, did you?
DA: How does this woman keep doing this?
What does DA mean by that? Is he talking about Kate? I felt a bit lost there…
I assume it is “How is this woman so central to so many of our (the Knights) failures.”
Twice lost as a recruit
Her guardian (and our Knight-Deviner) died
Hired, but not recruited by Moynahan and so a missed opportunity
Moynahan and the order disgraced by Erra while she is hunting Kate
The entire Atlanta Chapter is killed by Hugh D’Ambray while he is hunting Kate
Nick Feldman, an undercover Knight, is with Hugh as he is killing the Atlanta Chapter and is exposed by Moynahan
So all in all the tornado of destruction and disruption that is Kate Daniels has visited the Knights of the Order trailer park
I could see Kate shrugging and saying “ I was just there, those idiots were the ones screwing everything up!”. Thanks for the reply. Interesting points.
Yeah especially when she was locked in that cage when Hugh went on the rampage in the Order.
Hugh even asked Ted if Ted knew who Kate really was when Hugh was playing with him. Then Ted screwed over Nick as Ted was dying.
“tornado [visiting] the Knights of the Order trailer park” LMAO!
I agree, it doesn’t make sense to give Kate any portion of the credit/blame for Nick being outed.
Also, how would DA not have been briefed on this event already? BD should have said something along the lines of “you know this part of the story, but maybe not realize how deeply it’s connected to to the Kate storyline.”
Yay! I love it love it love it!! Thank you so much! So this snippet must be when Julie first left. You two are incredible – getting all the background info in the book with a memo. Brilliant!
This is a fantastic introduction. Nicely summed up so much information. Loved the banter and made me smile throughout. You guys are rockstars. Have a great weekend. Excited to read the book.
That was awesome! Thank you!
Are we all putting Erra and Damian in a “slightly” rocky relationship? 😉
I know I am, so far anyway.
Erra described it as complicated, but this scene is before that relationship takes place
This is gold! Thank you for sharing your continued awesomeness with us!!
So….Tim will throw his hat into the ring with Derek, Ascanio, & Yu Fong as a potential love interest for Julie?
Julie was never interested in anybody but Derek. I don’t see that Tim will be anything but a possible friend. Ascanio and Julie had a brother/sister relationship – when they weren’t working together, they were either fighting or getting into trouble together.
And Yu Fong wasn’t much interested in Julie except that she would call him on his shit when nobody else would. I think he might look for a mate who would do the same, but not Julie – she didn’t care enough about him.
Okay. Once Red dumped her and left, Julie was never interested in anybody but Derek.
I can see Tim every so often, when talking to Julie/Aurelia, starting to snicker and saying something to the effect of “Impressionable, my ass.” And then continuing to laugh without further explanation.
Would he consider a transcript of that session a suitable wedding present?
Heee. This is wonderful! It will make a great intro, too. The foreshadowing! And I love Damian’s disdain for Moynahan Thank you.
I love this!!! This keeps you from having to spend so much time doing set up for people just finding you. Damian has a lot of potential, can’t wait to see where you take him.
Awesome. I thought Erra was taller, though. Did the new body come out shorter? If so, does she whine about it?
I don’t care if she is thousands of years old and all regal-like, she can still whine.
I thought she was taller, too. For some reason, I was thinking she’s either 6’7″ (2m), or a foot taller than Kate.
I’m in the early books of a full, every single story in order KD world re-read, and if I go hunting for the original description, I’ll get confused. Hopefully I’ll come across it soon anyway.
I know you have enough on your plate as it is, but I would love a book with these guys.
How do you two do it? I read something of yours and want more, it’s a given.
I love you guys. You are the best authors ever, and it is just fabulous that you spoil your fans rotten! You truly made my week!
Fantastic . Great as a preface reminder / intro. Thank you ????
Yay!!!’ Thank you! Happy Friday.
This is so much fun! Thank you!
Adore this piece so hard!!! As someone who spent stupid time in school administration this is EVERY conference Ive been in regarding violent unhinged student. Sigh. Sidebar–such a treat. Today is the first day in maybe a week can ALMOST see the sky and can kinda breath a little. Hope to go out today, Hooray for today!
Aaaaaaamazing! That’s me screaming after reading the last paragraph. (Now my husband is staring at me like I’m losing my mind.)
I say it again, you guys write stories, scenes, anything, and it will always be entertaining.
This DA dude must have iron jewels to droll over a plaguebringer and city eater. Go him!
Wonderful! Absolutely glorius! Especially being a “Lifetime movie.”
Eerreemaahgawds!! Best Recap ever!!!! I need to read this at least 15 more times!!!
Side note – I don’t think I used enough exclamation marks to show just how much I loved this
Also I cannot wait to see how Erra turns him into a besotted pup and Julie shows him just how Not impressionable she is!! He won’t know what hit him!!