Valen cats, p.1
Valen-Cats, page 1
Valen-Cats
A PAWSITIVELY PURRFECT MATCH MADE IN HELL
PEPPER MCGRAW
Contents
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Thank you for reading
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Valen-Cats Copyright © 2024 Pepper McGraw
Digital Edition
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover and Inside Images from Dreamstime:
Woman holding stack of books © Anyata
Black kittens with red heart balloon © Andrea Kodýdková
Fire background © Hugolacasse
Paw Prints and Heart © Zsuskaa
Cat Scratching Wall © Bluedarkat
Pawprints © Fourleaflover
Devil Cat © Roni Markowitz
Edited by J.L. Troughton
PMG Publishing
Description
It’s a Pawsitively Purrfect Match Made in Hell
Jane spends her days working for the public library and the local bookstore in Zero, Kansas. She reads all about adventure and romance, but never experiences them for herself.
That’s okay, though. Jane may spend every Valentine’s Day alone, but she always has a new book boyfriend to turn to. This year, however, Valentine's Day is looking up because Jane has fallen in love with two adorable kittens. Who needs romance when you have a pair of purrfectly purrfect kittens to care for?
That's when things take a turn for the weird.
A man shows up claiming to be Lucifer, as in Satan, and accuses Jane of stealing his hell-kittens. Then, to make matters worse, Lucifer decides that Jane will make a perfect mate and wants to take her to the Underworld to be his bride.
There's just one problem with that plan.
There are no libraries in hell. Or bookstores. Or books. Well, there are books, but no steamy romances, so that’s a hell no from Jane.
Only the matchmaking cats of the goddesses can save this match now.
One
“THIS HAS BEEN a disaster,” Tivali lamented, her tail twitching in annoyance.
“A complete nightmare,” Bygul growled in agreement. He couldn’t believe how poorly things were going with this latest witch.
She was supposed to be the easy one! After all, she’d already found her mate.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Soraya said. “The cats weren’t too traumatized and we found each of them homes in the end, didn’t we?”
“Not traumatized?” Muezza exclaimed. “That one kitten went completely psycho!”
“I said not too traumatized, and that only happened because the vampire tried to pet him,” Soraya said. “Once we stopped letting the humans see the cats, things got a lot better.”
“A lot better?” Tivali exclaimed. “We still haven’t found a familiar for the garden witch. It’s bad enough they keep destroying all her plants.”
“It really is a bit of bad luck about her mate,” Muezza said.
“We should have anticipated the vampire would be a problem,” Bygul said in disgust. “I can’t believe it never occurred to me.”
“Well, why would it?” Soraya asked. “Hocus Purrcus lets the vampire pet him all the time.”
“So does Cookie,” Muezza said.
“And the hell-cat wouldn’t be bothered if an entire coven of blood-suckers moved in,” Tivali said.
“Exactly!” Soraya exclaimed. “Honestly, I think they’re more bothered by the wolves.”
Bygul licked a paw and rubbed his ear, thinking hard about their next steps. He didn’t want to give up, but—
“I think we should take a break,” Soraya said. “Not from matchmaking, of course, but from this particular match. We’ll find Jo’s purrfect familiar soon enough, but in the meantime, I have another rather urgent situation that needs our attention.”
“What situation?” Bygul glared at the cat he considered to be more of a liability than an asset in their matchmaking endeavors.
Every time they turned around, Soraya had the most impossible cat she wanted them to match. Either that or she was convinced the most ridiculous humans belonged together. Sure, she sometimes got it right, but just as often, she got it entirely wrong.
Unpredictable.
That’s what she was.
“So.” Soraya drawled out the word, her whiskers twitching in excitement.
That was not a good sign.
Whisker-twitching from Bygul or Tivali usually meant they had a brilliant idea.
Whisker-twitching from Muezza meant he either thought you were an idiot or he was getting ready for some in-depth cleaning.
Whisker-twitching from Soraya, on the other hand, was often a sign of impending disaster.
“I really want to match Jane and I have the purrfect mate in mind for her.”
“Jane,” Bygul said. “Who’s Jane?”
“The librarian,” Muezza and Tivali chorused.
“Again? We already talked about this, Soraya,” Bygul said. “She’s not a witch. We need to finish the witches first. You keep sidetracking us and we’ll never get this coven entirely matched.”
“I know, but she’s witch-adjacent.”
Muezza snorted, Tivali’s tail started to whip back and forth in agitation and Bygul just stared at Soraya.
When she said nothing else, he finally exploded, “How is a non-paranormal human considered witch-adjacent?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she exclaimed excitedly. “It turns out when Merry left Hell to come to Zero, Kansas, she built a tiny doorway between the two realms and one side of that door opens into the library where Jane works.”
“Why would Merry—you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know.” The daughters of Satan were just one of the many reasons Bygul wanted to finish matchmaking this coven and leave Zero, Kansas far behind.
“While that’s very interesting, Soraya, what does it have to do with matching our coven of witches?” Bygul was impressed at how patient Tivali sounded when the tip of her tail was whacking the floor in a rapid, repeated pattern that betrayed her annoyance with every beat.
“Well, Merry and Tempest are witches, and Satan’s their father, and a couple of Satan’s hell-kittens found their way through the doorway—”
“What?” Bygul, Tivali and Muezza shouted at the same time, but Soraya just kept talking.
“—and Jane found them, which is great because it turns out she’s a cat lover, so she’s decided to keep them.”
“But they’re hell-cats!” Bygul exclaimed.
“I don’t think she knows that,” Soraya said. “They’re still young and they haven’t shifted to their larger sizes yet.”
Bygul groaned. “All right. Fine. We’d better go corral those kittens before Lucifer discovers two of his precious babies have gone missing.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” Soraya said. “But it’s purrfect, don’t you think? Because I’m absolutely positive they’re a purrfect match.”
“What? Who?” Tivali exclaimed.
“Satan and Jane, of course!”
“Are you insane?” Bygul exploded.
“Sounds more like a match made in Hell,” Muezza observed.
“Which makes it pawsitively purrfect for him, don’t you think?”
Bygul, Muezza and Tivali just stared at Soraya in amazement. Because how could a cat—any cat, let alone a matchmaking cat of the goddesses—be so completely blind to the obvious?
This was absolutely unacceptable.
Someone had come into Hell and stolen two of his kittens.
Stolen!
From him!
The sheer audacity to steal from Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Nine Realms of Hell and The Beast left Lucifer literally speechless.
He couldn’t imagine who would have the sheer nerve to perpetrate such a crime.
Well, Tempest would.
And Merry definitely would.
But then, they were his daughters, so of course, they’d have the nerve.
They already had their own cats, though, so he couldn’t imagine them coming here to steal a couple more.
Except the kittens were gone. And not just gone from Satan’s home, but gone from all of Hell.
Nine realms and they weren’t in a single one of them!
It was completely unfathomable that someone had ventured into Hell, grabbed two of his babies and then made it all the way out without a single hell-cat sounding the alarm.
Unless—
Maybe the kittens weren’t taken at all.
Maybe they went on an adventure.
Luc couldn’t imagine how two baby cats could find their way out of Hell without help, but there were a few Hell-Cats living in the earth realm they could have gone to visit.
Hell-Cats who lived with his daughters.
Which brought him right back to the idea that either Tempest or Merry had stolen his kittens.
He wouldn’t put it past them.
At all.
Especially since he’d been visiting an awful lot lately, mostly because he enjoyed tormenting their new mates.
And now that he t
Not that he’d needed one yet.
Ever since Tempest and Merry moved to the earth realm and got mated there, it was a bit lonely in Hell for Luc, but at least they were happy, which was really all he’d ever wanted for them.
Even though happiness had come in the form of one of the Exiled and a damn wolf.
Not that he was complaining.
After all, he quite enjoyed showing up at his daughters’ houses and freaking out their mates.
He had to admit, strange as it seemed, the pack lands in Jamesville that Merry called home were even more entertaining than the Coven House in Zero where Tempest lived.
This was entirely due to the wolves.
Wolf shifters on earth were just so damn goofy and way easier to rile up than even the weakest of the Exiled.
Torturing the wolves had honestly become the highlight of Luc’s year.
This was why, even though he was pretty sure that of his two daughters, the likelier one to have planned a kitten heist was Merry (not because of the kittens or anything, but because she enjoyed watching people’s heads explode, especially when the head happened to belong to her father), Luc decided to visit Tempest and her chameleon mate, Matthew, first.
It was always a bit insane inside the coven house, with so many witches and cat familiars, but since Luc considered himself to be the ultimate cat daddy, he found it fairly easy to ignore the witches in favor of the cats.
This time when he visited, hoping to find Fury and Chaos playing with the other cats of the coven house, he found chaos of another kind.
Kyrie chaos.
This was not unusual.
Three, sometimes four earth realm cats were more than enough to cause chaos at any given time, but add a hell-cat into the midst, especially one as purely brilliant as Kyrie was, and well, anything could happen.
And often did.
When Luc arrived, he was just in time to witness one of the earth cats, Cookie, launching himself from the back of the sofa toward a tall bookshelf.
He barely made the distance, hooking his front paws over the top, while his hind claws scrabbled at the shelf below, knocking books and trinkets to the floor, before managing to lunge upward and land on top of the entire thing.
Clearly on a mission, Cookie proceeded to knock everything else off the top shelf, clearing a space for him to sit.
No. To crouch down in a classic hunting pose.
Luc looked up toward what the cat was hunting, then rolled his eyes.
Of course.
Every time he’d visited over the past month, Cookie had been on the same mission: to acquire one of the gems in the staff that belonged to the High Witch, Natalie.
Her own kitten, Moonbeam, had joined the hunt, so that whenever Natalie carried the staff around the coven house, Moonbeam would chase the lower gem, while Cookie would keep his eyes on the high one, always plotting different paths to reach it.
Why Cookie wanted the high one was anyone’s guess.
Maybe it was the challenge of it all.
Either way, he clearly wasn’t giving up anytime soon, which meant that Natalie appeared to have resorted to hiding her staff in plain sight.
Lying across the top of three bookshelves, the staff was clearly taunting Cookie.
Or maybe it was Kyrie doing the taunting, since she was sitting on the back of an armchair, watching Cookie’s antics with a look on her face that clearly declared Cookie both an embarrassment and a source of great entertainment.
“You’re not even going to try and stop him?” Luc demanded.
Kyrie gave him an entirely different look, one that implied he was demented.
Cookie’s bottom quivered, his eyes on the gem of Natalie’s staff high above his head.
“You do realize he’ll never make that leap, right? He barely made the last one.”
Kyrie just licked her paw and kept her eyes on the quivering cat bottom.
That was when Morana swept into the room.
She took one look at Luc, whirled and shouted back up the stairs, “Satan’s in the house!”
“Again?” came a shout from upstairs.
Luc chuckled, recognizing Tempest’s voice, as he walked across the room toward Cookie.
A few moments later, Tempest came barreling down the stairs, Natalie right behind her.
By this time, Luc was sitting on the couch with Cookie in his arms, having rescued him from his mission of doom, and the entire room now echoed with the sound of the cat’s purring.
Kyrie, on the other hand, had been purely disgusted at the rescue and had stalked off in a fit of fury.
No worries, though.
She’d be back soon enough. None of the cats could resist Luc, not when he was in a cat-petting mood, which to be honest, was pretty much always.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Tempest asked.
“Well, hello, my darling daughter. And how are you on this lovely afternoon?”
Tempest rolled her eyes, but then she sat down beside him and with a grin, leaned over to kiss his cheek. “It’s good to see you. Again.” She scratched Cookie on top of his head, causing the purrs to rumble even louder, if that were possible. “So, what’s brought you here this time?”
“Fury and Chaos.”
“As in you’re here to cause them or—”
“Looking for them.”
“I mean, it is a little chaotic here.”
“A little?”
“But there’s not a lot of fury to be found, unless you count Blade, but that’s more fear than fury.”
“Blade?”
“A vampire. He’s terrified of Morana.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Morana called from the kitchen, where she’d retreated after announcing his presence in the house. “He’s a vampire, for goddess’ sake! What kind of vampire’s afraid of the dead?”
Tempest rolled her eyes. “Let’s not get her started.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t decided to raise a few snakes the last time he saw you,” Natalie shouted back.
“Ugh. Too late,” Tempest groaned.
“I needed a bit of snake skin for a potion.” Morana stamped back into the living room to glare at Natalie. “I had no idea there were so many snakes in the area, or vampires, for that matter.” With that, she turned and stormed off, heading toward the back of the house.
“But you knew Blade was there,” Natalie accused as she followed her, “and you did it anyway, just to mess with him.”
Their voices faded as they got further away.
Luc chuckled. “Your coven is so entertaining, the necromancer in particular. I wonder what she’ll raise next in her pursuit of the vampire.”
Tempest let out a choking sound and he glanced at her, surprised to see a horrified look on her face.
“You think she’s flirting with him?”
“Well, either that or she’s torturing him, but considering there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two—if you’re doing it right anyway—I’d say it’s a little bit of both.”
Kyrie leapt up onto the couch at that moment.
“Ah, so you’ve come back, have you, love?” Luc held out his hand and Kyrie sniffed it for a moment before nudging it and graciously allowing him to pet her.
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was that of the two cats purring loudly.
“So why are you here, really?” Tempest finally asked.
Luc grinned. “I told you. Fury and Chaos. The kittens. They’re missing.”
“You’ve lost two hell-kittens?”
“I haven’t lost them exactly. I’m sure they’re around somewhere.” He eyed his daughter suspiciously. She’d always been really good at projecting the innocent act. “I thought maybe they’d be here, visiting Kyrie.”
“They’re not even her kittens,” Tempest exclaimed. “Why would they come here?”
“Because Kyrie mothers all the hell-kittens and they know it. Don’t you, love?” He lifted her head, scratched beneath her chin and stared into her eyes.
