Thor looked behind the groundhog and saw several sets of glowing eyes penetrating the brush.
What on earth was going on?
Jerry held some branches aside and said, “It’s okay everyone. It’s just Thor.”
In the old days, Thor would have taken offense to that comment, but he was a minor celebrity in these woods so he let it slide. He stood still as different animals slowly emerged from the tree line. He noted a one-eyed squirrel he knew as Gypsy, two twin foxes, Troy and Roy, a shy, lone coyote named Dawn, and a three-legged rabbit called Lucky.
Thor, who was a man of few words said, “Huh.”
Then a pink goat came bustling through the crowd, announcing her name as Shelby 19.
“Well,” Thor said.
Jerry stepped forward, paws extended. “Is that a yes? You’ll help us?”
Help them do what? Thor hadn’t been this confused since he was a puppy and his mentor instructed him not to dig.
Suddenly, a familiar screech rained from the sky and Thor cringed as a bat landed on his head. The bat put his wings around Thor’s eyes and said, “Peek-a-boo!” in an Hispanic accent.
“Dammit, Juan! I told you not to do that!”
Juan snickered and sat up, massaging Thor’s massive head with his soft wings. “You see here, my giant friend, what we have is a failure to communicate.”
“Get. Off. Me.” Thor growled.
The bat flapped his wings and launched himself into a nearby maple, dangling upside down.
Thor turned and held up a paw the size of a catcher’s mitt. He addressed the crowd. “All right. Will someone please explain what’s going on?”
Dawn stepped forward, averting her gaze from Thor’s eyes. “It’s the children, Thor. They seem to be missing. My little Mia has been gone almost three days now.” Her tail swished as she sat next to Daisy. The two females exchanged an uncomfortable glance. Daisy’s ear twitched, but Thor knew she had nothing to worry about Dawn was a vegetarian. Which was the reason her pack abandoned her.
Thor said, “Daisy, how long as Eli been missing?”
“Just since this morning.” She sniffled.
Amethyst was a magical community, rich in witches even though they didn’t all know their calling, nor did they all stay in town. Many ventured off, seeking their own coven, their own path. It was a birth place of sorts. A birth place of magic. And where there was magic, there were witches. And where there were witches, there were familiars.
Is that what was happening here? Were these young destined to partner with a witch? Surely if they were, he would have been notified. Except…He was no longer privy to that kind of information.
“And the rest of you? How long have your children been missing?” The words left a sour taste in Thor’s mouth and the hackles rose on the back of the Dane’s neck. They were talking about babies here. Innocents. Could there be a wolf among their midst? A mountain lion? He had heard of sightings. He hesitated to ask if any blood was found at the scenes.
Everyone began speaking at once and Thor felt a headache coming on. “Folks, please, one at a time,” he barked.
One by one, the animals came forward and offered information on their missing offspring. All the circumstances were the same. Each child was there one moment and gone the next.
Except for the goat. She just seemed to be lost. Thor would worry about escorting her home later.
Gypsy the squirrel said, “It was like Tommy just vanished out of thin air.”
Lucky thumped his foot in agreement. “I was keeping an eye on Peach ever since Mama died. She never once left my sight.” He glanced at his severed leg and Thor gave him a sympathetic look. He had heard about the accident. Fiona was able to save the babies from the trap, but not their mother. “She’d be so disappointed.”
The small rabbit hung his head and Daisy nuzzled his cheek, cooing, “It’s not your fault, sweetie.”
Staring at Lucky, Thor had a horrific thought.
“Give me a moment, please.” He stepped back and focused his thoughts on another rabbit. One who should have been safely snuggled next to a baby’s crib. She was the familiar of his witch’s cousin.
Concentrating, Thor focused his vision on the white bunny named Rocket he was still mentoring. He breathed a sigh of relief when he caught an image of her in his mind’s eye. She was sleeping soundly next to the baby, her tiny paws curled up beneath her pink button nose.
Relieved, he turned back to face the animals. “All right. We search the woods. Set up in teams of—“
“Already did that El Jefe,” said Juan, flapping overhead. “No sign of the niños anywhere.”
Thor slid his eyes to Jerry, who nodded.
Troy and Roy said in unison, “We looked everywhere. As soon as we heard Dawn’s daughter was missing, we volunteered to help.”
Thor nodded slowly, a pit growing in his stomach as he came to the realization that the children weren’t lost. They’d been taken.
But why? He had to think. He needed a plan. “All right. Everyone just stay put. Don’t leave the woods. I’ll come back as soon as I learn something.”
“But we’ve been in the woods,” said Dawn softly.
Gypsy said, “This is where they went missing.” Her tail curled up and over her head.
These were Geraghty woods. They were filled with magical herbs and berries, ley lines, and creatures only found in fairy tales. Nothing—no one—should have been able to penetrate them.
Except someone or something did.
Thor looked out into the frightened crowd and knew there was only one thing to do.
“Follow me,” he said, hoping to the Goddess his witch was still out for the evening. She was tolerant, but this was pushing it. Especially since he needed to access his emergency back-up plan. He was certain she wouldn’t like that.
Just as Thor led the crowd away from the forest, the tiger’s eye fired a light into the dark night and Thor felt his new collar grow warm around his neck. While the gemstone was connected to his witch, it had also served as a link to his past. One he had severed without permission. But the sigils Lolly had sewn into the fabric were swirling, activating.
They’d found him.
~THREE~
Back at the cottage, Thor got everyone settled in, instructing Juan to post guard outside and alert him of any suspicious activity. Then he slipped into the Seeker’s Den and got to work.
The Seeker’s Den was his witch’s lair that was electronically equipped with several security measures and linked to various global databases. It was also heavily armed with potions, crystals, herbs and weaponry. There was a special private room that Stacy used to contact the council members for mission alerts, but Thor wasn’t interested in that. He was interested in one particular database and one particular file that he had installed without her knowledge when she first built the den in case of emergencies.
He supposed this might be one.
He mentally checked in with his protégée and saw that the bunny was still soundly sleeping next to the baby.
It made him pause. Perhaps it was a predator that had taken the children. Maybe this was just some tragic, natural event. Still, he had to check in. He had to know.
The computer was connected to a floor control and he pressed his paw to it. The screen vibrated to life. It was password protected, but Thor had cracked the code rather quickly the first time he infiltrated Stacy’s lair and he hoped she hadn’t changed it. He grabbed a pen with his teeth and punched in the code.
He felt a sense of relief when the screen saver faded away. He was in.
He used the pen to click a few more times until he got to the file labeled: WOOF. Worldwide Operations Of Familiars. After a few more clicks, he could access the application.
A window popped up filled with an old familiar face. Time hadn’t been kind to her. She seemed to have a few more gray hairs and a few more wrinkles, but the look in her eye told Thor that she had the same feisty demeanor that used to bite him in
the ass. Literally. The bitch was mean.
“Well, General, it’s about freaking time. I put the call out ages ago,” said the bulldog. Drool covered her bottom lip, pronouncing her considerable overbite.
“It’s been five minutes, Commander,” Thor said. “And I’m no longer a General, if you recall.”
She snarled, “Don’t argue with me, boy, or I’ll have you assigned to the bomb squad.”
Thor rolled his eyes. “Yes, Ma’am.”
She flashed a toothy grin that made her look like a science project. “Better. Now, I see your locator chip is functioning again.”
The chip was embedded in the tiger’s eye that Stacy had given him. All witch’s provide their familiars with some sort of talisman and Thor’s was no different. These objects magically called to them and if the WOOF tech team did their job correctly, the right witch should be drawn to the right charm for her familiar. Thor didn’t understand how it worked any more than he understood how a toilet functioned or why Firefly would be cancelled, but there you have it.
Thor had checked in with the tiger’s eye shortly after he received it and then, thanks to a bit of magic from Fiona, erased it.
Hmm. That made him wonder. Had she somehow reactivated it through the new collar? Not that it mattered now.
“About that, Commander—“
She lifted a beefy paw. “Save it. We have more important things to worry about.” She pawed at her mouse and an image popped up on the screen. It was a US map.
The Commander said, “We’ve received reports of missing familiars across a portion of the United States.”
Thor felt a twinge in his spine. It couldn’t be connected. These were just woodland kids from his neighborhood. They weren’t familiars. Surely he would know if they were.
The Commander continued. “Reports have come from here,” she drew a circle with the mouse, “here,” another circle, “here, here and here.” She connected the circles with straight lines and Thor stared at the screen.
It formed a pentacle. An upside down pentacle.
“Dark magic?” he asked.
“That seems to be the case.” The bulldog coughed and spittle splattered the screen. Thor winced. “Sorry about that,” she said. Then she barked at someone to clean up the mess and a Lhasa Apso jumped up and shimmied his body across the computer which only compounded the problem.
Thor said, “What does this have to do with me?”
He could and would certainly take care of his own and he would find the missing familiars of Amethyst, but this was a larger, complex crime. One for a special Ops task force and that wasn’t his life any longer. He had his own people to protect now, people that depended on him daily and guarding Stacy Justice was a full time job.
The Commander enlarged the image on the screen. Smack dab in the center of the pentacle was Amethyst. “Because, Thor. Your town is next.”
He lowered his head. So it was connected. His jaw hardened at the thought of an intruder slipping into his own town and stealing babies. “We’ve already been hit.”
“When?” fired the bulldog.
“The first one was nearly three days ago. I just learned of it.” He rattled off the names of the young and their species. The Commander confirmed that all of them were slated for training within the year.
A low growl formed in Thor’s throat and a tiny vein throbbed in his right paw. His battle ax paw, they once called it.
“I am hereby temporarily reinstating you Thor. You are no longer a civilian,” she said. “You’re officially an Alpha General.”
Thor wasn’t listening. He was staring at the screen. The pentacle. The towns that had been hit. Memories flooded back to him as he recalled his last active duty assignment before requesting to be released as an independent contractor. Memories of screams and blood and death.
Of Lucy. His one true love.
A black Labrador rushed into view then and whispered in the Commander’s ear. Thor didn’t think it was possible for her scowl to deepen, but it did.
“Did you say the first one went missing three days ago, Thor?”
He didn’t like the tone of her voice. “That’s the information I received.”
More whispering from the Labrador. The Commander pulled up a calendar. A moon cycle calendar. Thor was getting an itchy twitchy feeling all along his back. The kind of feeling a Great Dane gets when a ghost is near.
She said, “Then there isn’t much time. We suspect that this is a moon ritual in the making. A blood sacrifice. And the moon reaches full capacity at 3:22 AM.”
Thor scoffed. No warlock or wicked witch did those anymore. Not since—wait a minute. Thor cocked his head, staring into the Commander’s eyes.
“That’s impossible,” he growled.
“I’m sending someone there to assist you in recovering the familiars. There’s no time to put a team together.”
“I work alone. You know that.”
“Not this time.”
“I cannot leave my witch unprotected!”
“We will send her a temp.”
This was unprecedented. Thor was devoted to his job and he couldn’t risk some newbie cocking it up. Thor slapped his paws on the desk and the entire room shook. The bulldog was startled, but recovered quickly.
“What aren’t you telling me?!” he demanded.
The Commander glanced sideways and with a raised tail said, “Our intelligence has reason to believe that this is the work of The Viper.”
He took a step back. “No, it isn’t possible.”
That villain had been captured by Thor himself as part of a deep undercover operation that lasted for months. So deep, in fact, he nearly lost his way. And it got Lucy killed. That was the last time he ever wore his stars. A week later, he was in Amethyst, searching for Stacy Justice.
The Commander looked him square in the eye and said, “He escaped the witches’ prison, Thor. And he’s coming after you.”
~FOUR~
Before he cut the call, Thor requested a soldier be placed outside Rocket’s house and his former boss agreed to the arrangement.
He stood in the den, deciding what his next move should be. Fiona had said that Stacy might not come home tonight. That was a good thing. He wanted her nowhere near this situation. She was a strong witch, the most powerful he’d ever known, but The Viper was like no human he’d ever met before. He was a master of camouflage with a mind so sinister even the most hardened soldiers couldn’t stand to be in his presence for more than a few days. Thor had lost many a good recruit to torture and madness before he finally stepped in and infiltrated the Viper’s pit himself. Because even though he was a wicked warlock, it is built into the very nature of a witch to have a familiar. And so, that’s what Thor became.
It was the worst time of his life.
As many animals as he had saved, it was the ones he couldn’t that stuck with Thor. When you watch a man swallow a mouse whole, it changes you.
There was a full moon the night of the takedown. The weather was calm, much like tonight. Thor had given the order to surround the pit and wait for his command. Except he didn’t bank on one thing. The Viper’s ultimate goal for the blood ritual was to become a shifter. And the magic emanating from the WOOF team was strong enough to make that happen. Thor will never know how The Viper had discovered his identity as a General of WOOF, but he used that to his advantage. All he needed was a hair from the giant dog’s fur and he was able to transform.
Lucy was the first to recognize the imposter and attacked. But in Thor’s form, he was faster, stronger. Thor heard her cries—still does sometimes in his nightmares—and charged. It was the only time the Great Dane had ever attempted to kill a human. When it was all over, The Viper was hauled off to the witches’ prison, missing a few fingers and one eye. And Thor was left heartbroken.
He had packed up that pain, shoved it deep inside and never visited it again.
Until now.
He gave himself a good shake to clear his head an
d went back to the living room to address the group. He briefly considered sending them all to the Geraghty house, but decided that it would be too risky. Not only for the humans within, but The Viper could be lurking anywhere. Although he was a predator, he was a lazy one, preferring to watch and wait for prey to cross his path rather than hunt it down himself.
No, best to get everyone into the Seeker’s Den. He could lock them in and they’d be safe there. Then he would hunt down his nemesis and finish the job he started long ago.
Just as Thor was about to explain the plan to the frightened forest animals, the doorbell rang. He jumped up and peered through the peephole.
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” he mumbled.
Jerry the groundhog said, “Wh—who is it?”
The rest of the group whispered their concerns. Except the goat who just said, “Meeeehhhh.”
“It’s okay. Don’t be scared,” Thor said.
The group seemed to relax. The goat chewed on a lamp shade.
A giant eyeball met Thor’s through the peephole and he jumped. Everyone screamed behind him.
“El Jefe, we’ve got company. They say they amigos,” said Juan.
“They are not amigos,” growled Thor.
What the hell were they doing here?
“Should I bite them?” Juan clacked his teeth.
“Better not.”
There was a rustling noise and another eye appeared.
“Listen, Hammerhead, let us in or I’ll spray paint your witch’s front door with this new limerick I been workin’ on. The Irish love them limericks see. It goes, ‘There once was a broad from Nantucket’—“
“All right!” Thor said. He jumped down and unlocked the door with his teeth.
Bobo Fett, the poet, waddled his fat gray ass through the door, followed by his equally overweight brethren, Jango Fett and Fat Bastard.
“Fellas, I really don’t have time for your nonsense. So help yourself to the fridge, scratch your balls, watch porn or do whatever the hell it is you do when you should be protecting your witch,” said Thor. “I’ve got work to do.”
Magic and Mayhem: Thor and Peace (Kindle Worlds Novella) (A Stacy Justice Mystery Novella (3) Book 0) Page 2