Before the Fire

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Louisiana, 1942. She has been alone for a hundred and sixty-nine years. He has eleven weeks before he ships out. Something is feeding along the Bayou Boeuf road, and the men dying in the dark belong to Robert West. A tank gunner from Harlem with a secret he has kept since he was fourteen, West counts to stay calm, follows orders, and does not believe in monsters. Then a woman walks out of the trees with a blade in each hand and tells him to stay down, in a language he has never heard. Nala was born in 1773. She hunts the things that hunt people, she answers to a German colonel she calls Baba, and she has never once needed rescuing. She does not need it now. What she needs is for the soldier with the steady hands to stop looking at her like that, because men like him grow old, and women like her do not. Eleven weeks. A swamp full of the dead. A war waiting across the water. And one rule she has kept for a hundred and sixty-nine years that she is about to break. Before the Fire is the prequel to the Kalahari Hunters series: the story of West and Nala, the parents whose disappearance opens Where Embers Hide, told right up to the night Book One begins. Listen to it first, or after Book One, and hear every line land twice. A Black soldier hero, an immortal African heroine, Jim Crow Louisiana, a vampire nest in the cypress, found family, and a love that outlasts a war. Duration - 3h 30m. Author - L. N. Bokete. Narrator - Digital Voice West E. Published Date - Saturday, 03 January 2026. Copyright - © 2026 L. N. Bokete ©.