Blood Brothers by Barbara Sheridan, Anne Cain Page A

ponytail at the base of his neck, the other small and struggling to keep up with the first boy.
    Brothers. What similarities in features their faces didn’t have, the matching scent of their blood provided.
    Kiyoshi moved off the road quickly, dropping the blossom as pangs of hunger knotted up his belly. He hadn’t fed in a long while and he didn’t
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    Barbara Sheridan and Anne Cain
    want to now, certainly not on these two children. But something about them made the ache in his soul almost unbearable.
    “ Ani-ue ! Wait for me!” the younger boy cried out.
    The older one slowed his pace, grabbed the small one’s hand and helped him forward. “Sanyu-chan, I won’t leave you behind.” He smiled, scooping up his younger brother in his arms. “I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”
    Kiyoshi’s eyes stung as tears welled up beneath his lashes. He understood the ache inside of him now. How these two children reminded him of his own past…the small one of himself, the older one of someone who had once cared for him that way. Until that fateful day when the demon samurai had come to them.
    “Where are you going?” Kiyoshi asked, stepping around the plum trees, reaching out as though he could catch these precious little ones as he had the blossom.
    The boys stopped and stared in surprise at Kiyoshi, not having seen from where he’d appeared. “Oh.” The older one gulped down some more air, catching his breath. “Are you just traveling through the countryside?”
    Kiyoshi nodded.
    “Tonight, there’s a famous kabuki troupe from Edo visiting the village up this way. There’s going to be a performance. My brother and I want to make it there before nightfall so we can see it.”
    “Ah.” Kiyoshi nodded again, smiling as Sanyu hid shyly behind his older brother’s tall form. “Maybe I’ll see the play too.”
    “Yes.” The elder boy grinned and bowed at the waist politely. “We should get going. It was nice talking to you. Come, Sanyu-chan.”
    “You’re such a good brother,” Kiyoshi said softly. “Never change, and take care of him always.”
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    Blood Brothers
    The boy bowed again. “I’ll take care of him forever.” He took his little brother by the hand and they continued on their way.
    Kiyoshi watched them, smiling at the young one who glanced back.
    The feelings inside him of him were calmed at last, and he stepped onto the road. Perhaps he would go see that kabuki performance and think of those two boys who would also be watching.
    Kabuki ’s art rested in artifice after all, and Kiyoshi could pretend it was himself and Liu taking in the play from the rear of the theater—two friends closer than brothers, letting nothing and no one drive them apart.
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    Barbara Sheridan and Anne Cain

    Anne Cain is a freelance graphic artist and web designer and a proud member of Samhain Publishing’s cover art department. Barbara Sheridan has been published previously in historical, paranormal and contemporary romance.
    Blood Brothers is Anne and Barbara’s second collaborative effort and is set in the same “universe” as their novel The Dragon’s Disciple. To learn more about the series, please visit
    http://www.dragonsdisciple.com . Send an email to Anne and Barb at
    [email protected] or join their Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Barbara and Anne!
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dragonsdisciple

    Looking for more stories that feature love between men? Enjoy this excerpt from WILLOW BEND, a gay erotic contemporary romance by Ally Blue, available now at Samhain Publishing.

    Paul sighed as he dropped his pencil onto the little table beside his easel. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and glared at the half-finished landscape sketch in front of him.
    “Dammit, it’s just not right,” he muttered.
    He wished he could take the canvas and easel out back and paint the meadow from life instead of memory. But that wasn’t going to happen today.