Kati and the Witches in the Hill

By Kari Kilgore

December, 1944.

 

Kati arrives in the great city of Budapest. Thrilled to train as a nurse.

 

Never suspecting vicious struggle on the horizon.

 

Never expecting forces seen and unseen to sweep her into their grasp.

 

And into a choice reaching far beyond her tiny Hospital in the Rock.

 

Faced with life or death, will Kati choose with her mind or her heart?

 

An Excerpt from Kati and the Witches in the Hill:

 

A Trial of Mind, Body, and Soul

 

Kati turned her back to the wind, deciding not to walk to the broad stone promenade along the edge of the Danube. Aimless wandering in the streets was hardly encouraged for anyone nowadays, much less a lonely young country girl.

 

She'd have time enough to make friends with her new home when this awful weather eased up, and hopefully make human friends as well.

 

Kati glanced at the dingy window of a shop, trying her best not to see her reflection in a round mirror hanging in a dark wooden frame carved with flowers and vines. She must look a horrible fright, with her pale skin wind-burned and her hair knotted beyond repair.

 

She froze before she could take another step, grabbing at the pitted stone wall to keep her balance on the ice.

 

That mirror hadn't moved as she did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jan 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393325918

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Kati and the Witches in the Hill

For Nurses Everywhere

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Who make hard choices every single day

Kati and the Witches in the Hill

Kari Kilgore

Chapter 1

The witches in the hill stirred…

Chapter 2

December 21, 1944

Kati never dreamed the great city of Budapest would be so terribly cold.

Not the weather, though that was bad enough with the sharp wind cutting through her thin gray coat, driving grit into her face and hair. That wind smelled of harsh cigarette smoke, oily petrol from lumbering green trucks with canvas flapping across the tall beds, and oncoming snow Kati was even less prepared for.

The towering gray stone buildings all around her, every one at least five floors high and graced with curving balconies and elaborate carvings, funneled the air like the edge of a knife.

Even with broad streets several of her running strides across, Kati felt small and hemmed in by all that grandeur. No different than a mouse caught in a long hallway with a cat at either end.

She tried to imagine how lovely those balconies would be during the heat of distant summer, but numb hands and lips made that impossible. They only looked like airborne larders to her, a wonderful place to store meat if anyone here or anywhere else in Hungary could afford to keep that much on hand.

No one in the crowds of bundled-up, rushing people on the narrow street met Kati’s eyes. All of them focused on the filthy, lumpy sheets of ice