by Amy Lane
“I’ve made you my familiars,” she said. Then she bent at the knees and called softly. “Puss, puss, puss… come to me, my pretties. We won’t hurt you. Oh yes. Look at you, you handsome boys. Oh, our strong defender, kind and sweet.”
Edward, you pushover! Look what she’s done to us!
But it didn’t matter. Edward sat stoically, accepting her scritches behind the ear with grave sobriety.
“And you. Oh… oh, so much affection.”
Harry watched as Francis wrapped himself around her wrist. She picked him up—a delicate, small-boned cat—and he burrowed against her immediately, purring and nuzzling the crook of her elbow.
She smiled, a kind, maternal smile, and looked beseechingly at Harry. “I can give you a home,” she said softly. “I can give you food and clothes. I can teach you to read and give you a purpose. I just ask that you hold my power, be my familiars, use my magic to change your shape and do no harm. I….” Her voice broke, and reluctantly Harry admitted that the poor woman had used a great deal of strength and so very much compassion in the few moments he’d seen her. “I just didn’t want to leave him, you see. If I hadn’t stored my power in the three of you, I would have aged and died right here, and he would have awakened in this world to live a long life alone. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong—so wrong—to not ask you. But please… won’t you please forgive me enough to let us care for each other?”
Harry’s growl ceased abruptly, and he melted into Suriel’s arms in spite of his best attempts to hold on to his anger.
Strong arms—such a place of tender haven. For a moment, Harry remembered what it was like to be protected and loved. His heart bled and ached, and wed to Suriel’s warmth…
It healed.
“She’s very kind,” Suriel told him, the words low and seemingly for Harry and Harry alone. Harry let out the cat version of a sigh and licked a line up Suriel’s wrist.
In that moment of quiet, he realized the itching, the sickness he’d felt in his stones, his arse, his throat and gut was gone for the first time in a year. His lungs had been rattling—pneumonia, the pox, who knew?—but he could breathe free and easy now. He looked unhappily at Edward, who began to lick his paw philosophically, and looked again at Francis, who was begging Emma for more affection.
She could give them things Harry could not.
She could give Harry things he’d never dreamed of.
He turned his head and searched out Suriel’s gaze. I trust you. You’re so beautiful, and you are holding me so safely.
Suriel smiled and held out a smooth finger, devoid of human lines or roughness. Harry rubbed his whiskers against it anyway.
Please say you’ll be there to guide us? Please, Suriel.
“Emma,” Suriel said in sudden urgency, “there’s a human coming this way. I can distract him, but you need to take Leonard and the boys to sanctuary.”
Emma nodded and pulled Leonard to his feet with the hand not holding Francis. The very plain, very serviceable-looking human reached down humbly toward Edward. “Young sir,” he said, voice formal, “may I carry you?”
Edward allowed himself to be borne aloft, and Suriel held Harry to his chest. In that moment, Harry was as surrounded by safety, by love, as he could ever imagine being.
“You’ll walk on your own,” Suriel said, a thread of humor in his voice. “You wouldn’t have it any other way, would you, young master?”
Harry rubbed his whiskers against Suriel’s robe and then pushed out of his arms to land lightly on the sparse grass of the clearing.
“Do you know where you will go?” Suriel asked urgently.
“The church first,” Emma said, her earlier vulnerability forgotten in their need. “Then I have some train tickets to San Francisco. I do believe I shall be carrying some very unusual bags.”
A part of Harry jumped excitedly. They were going to travel by train after all. And they didn’t even have to stow away in a freight car.
Emma and Leonard started off through the trees, but Harry paused and turned around. Suriel had already begun peering in the opposite direction, looking for the approaching threat, and Harry was forgotten.
He didn’t want to be forgotten.
He meowed imperiously, because dammit, how dare this man—angel—show him affection and kindness and then tell him to be on his way.
Suriel turned briefly. “Go, young master. I do not doubt we shall meet each other again!”
At that moment a familiar figure crashed through the woods, and Harry hissed. Big Cass, enforcer, bugger, hard-handed cock—he’d been the bane of the boys’ existence for years. A shaft of terror shot through Harry’s breast, and he chittered, simultaneously driven to attack and driven away in fear.
Improbably, he felt Suriel’s kind hand along his back, soothing him, and he let a bit of fear and pain from previous encounters with Cass slip through his mind.
Suriel’s howl of outrage shook the trees.
“Run!” he shouted. “An angel’s justice is swift!”
Harry gasped and ran, but not before he saw, growing in stature and brilliance, Suriel’s true form unfurling.
He was enormous and angry, a terrifying figure of retribution.
With a bellow, he raised his shining fist to the heavens and smote the burly, once-frightening body of Harry’s biggest fear.
Big Cass screamed—and disappeared, the remains of his mortal flesh scattering across the clearing like thick crimson water thrown from a bucket.
At his back, Suriel vanished.
HARRY KEPT running, keeping Emma’s soft glow a consistent light in the distance, and eventually he caught up. In the cold, clear dawn, she led the way quietly through the cobblestone streets until they came to a bare wooden door, a humble closet in the wooden facades of the Sacramento business district.
She opened the door, and they followed her down a flight of narrow concrete stairs and into a small room, surrounded by brick on all sides.
She and Leonard led the way, each of them holding their charge with utmost care, and Harry followed, even his lighter, healthy limbs growing weighty with exhaustion.
It had been something of a day.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they found a tiny bed—rope frame, clean-ish straw-ticked mattress—and a small bag filled with bread and cheese, with a water bottle next to it.
Harry sniffed curiously at the bag, and then… oh! Oh yes! He perked up and darted into the shadows—which were suddenly brighter and friendlier than he’d suspected. He’d seen cats do this a thousand times—with a bat of his paw and a crack of rodent neck, he had dinner.
He dragged it out—it was half the size of Francis—and dropped it at Emma’s feet. He would try this maneuver later for a variety of people, and no one ever behaved as Emma did that first night.
She dropped to her haunches and smiled, stroking his neck, even while he emitted a low-level growling sound. “Well done, Harry. It will make my job easier if you and the other boys can fend for yourselves. Can you share this with them, you think?”
Harry’s growl changed pitch, and even while he frowned to himself, Edward struggled out of the crook of Leonard’s elbow and landed solidly next to him. With a sniff and a delicate lick of his whiskers, he chose a thick rat hindquarter and began to dig in. Emma set Francis down gently, and Harry pulled off a strip of skin to leave the tenderer flesh exposed.
She smiled. “You’re a good leader, Harry. Thank you. If you three can refresh yourselves, I’ll see to Leonard, and we can talk about what to do next.”
The rat tasted… well, like food. Protein. Harry and the others ate ravenously, and Emma and Leonard sat on the bed and worked out details. Things like “inheritance” and “coast” were bandied about, and Leonard spoke in a quiet, dry voice that nevertheless managed to convey a great deal of absolutely besotted affection aimed at their mistress.
In the next hundred and something years, that tone never changed.
WHEN THE cats had eaten
and the humans had cleaned up, they rested for the night before the boys jumped into Emma’s carpet bag and Emma and Leonard walked—like respectable citizens—to the train station.
They had a car all to themselves, like royalty, and she held court there, talking to the three boys in their cat forms as though lecturing schoolboys in a hall.
By the time they disembarked, in a damp and sparsely populated place called Mendocino, the three of them had a pretty good idea of what their lives would be.
They held Emma’s power—not all of it, but enough. Enough to keep them all, Emma and Leonard included, young, aging slowly at roughly a rate of five years every hundred or so. They’d age faster if they spent most of their time as humans, slower if they spent their time as cats.
The boys would pick up on small spells—escape, communication, protection—as they studied with Emma, and they were free to use the spells in moderation.
Emma was very frank with them. Their livelihoods depended upon cooperation. If the boys grew greedy for power, Emma and Leonard would wither and die, and the things Emma could teach them, could give them as they grew, would be no more.
If Emma and Leonard were cruel masters, if they were unfair in the things they asked of the three, the boys could opt, at any moment, to simply live as humans, take their chances, and leave the rest of the collective to struggle on, considerably weakened.
Harry turned into a human at this, dismayed to find that none of the dirt or the ragged clothing he’d worn had disappeared or changed in the twenty-four hours he’d been a cat at this point. “But does that mean we can’t leave ever?” he asked unhappily.
“Not at all,” Emma said. Her hand—elegant and small-boned, although her nails were broken under her gloves—moved automatically toward him, as though to pet and soothe. Before Harry knew what he’d done, he’d turned cat, and she smiled as she followed through on the motion. “Stay with us, young Harry,” she said, her eyelids fluttering shut as she leaned into Leonard’s strong chest. “We’ll keep you safe. We’ll give you a harbor in this stormy sea of a world. And when you’re ready, I’ll divest you of the spell and you can go out and make your way as a man, and we can be friends. But until then, please—please consider what this arrangement can do for you.”
Edward and Harry would talk about it in the years to come, about how they would know they were ready to move on. Francis never did. Francis stayed cat so often, he hardly spoke as a human. He kept to himself, fragile, secretive, dependent, for the next hundred and forty years. His home was in Emma’s and Leonard’s arms, and he clung to them, even as a boy.
But Edward and Harry wondered—when would their turn come? When would they have done with family entanglements and a binding to a family they’d stumbled upon in a clearing?
Harry wasn’t sure when they stopped talking about leaving and started talking about how to stay forever. He kept waiting for the sweetness of Emma’s maternal nature to fade, for the insistence of work, of repayment for all her kindnesses to fall upon their backs.
It never did.
They disembarked in Mendocino, and Emma reported immediately to the land office. She had, nestled in the mountains near the coast, a large bit of property with a cabin.
The cabin had a living area with a wood stove for cooking and a few wooden chairs and a table, as well as a small bedroom—mostly room for a mattress, resting on top of a dresser which was just wide enough to use as a frame.
No sooner had Emma and Leonard burst in through the door than they got to work.
Cleaning, cooking, chinking the corners of the cabin against the cold. Sewing new blankets, ticking cushions for the chairs, hooking rugs for the floors, building shutters for the hole in the wall that served as a window.
The boys stayed huddled at first in the center of the cabin, watching the two humans work competently and cheerfully, explaining what they were doing as they were doing it.
Then Harry saw a spider about to drop onto the back of Leonard’s neck, and in a smooth leap and catch, he pinned the thing to the ground.
Leonard turned his angular, homely face to him then and said, “Protecting me, Harry? I’ll take some help if you’re interested.”
Harry had changed then, and then Edward, and while Francis stalked spiders and mice—an important task, nobody argued—the two of them worked as humans alongside Emma and Leonard.
Emma would bring in water from the stream nearby and allow the boys to bathe.
Leonard traded Emma’s hoarded gold for leather and nails and made them sturdy boots for when they were human.
By the time true winter rolled around, all three boys could walk into town as boys and be clothed and shod the same as every young man in the tiny township.
They didn’t go often, but Harry told Edward and Francis that it made him feel like a king.
During the cold hours of the winter, Emma read them stories by oil lamp as they curled on her lap as kitties. Genies and lamps, beasts and merchants’ daughters, angels falling from heaven—even disillusioned princes traveling into the world and returning home to mourn their innocence. She allowed their playful paws to follow her fingers on the page.
They learned to read.
The cabin expanded, amenities were added, more rooms.
They learned carpentry at first, and plumbing, and then, as time furthered, gas and electrical skills.
Emma bought books from far and wide. Leonard became a physician, helping the people in the small township, telling folks Edward was his son. Edward would grow just a little bit older as time went by, so the townspeople didn’t get suspicious.
Sometimes, in their studies, Emma would call Mullins or Suriel. The angel and the demon became as dear to the boys as they were to Leonard and Emma—but only Harry wandered the cliffsides alone after Suriel’s visits, looking off into the sea as though it would glow bright with red-gold hair and sober brown eyes. The angel always made him feel safe beyond words when he filled the house with light, but when he disappeared, Harry felt the closest thing to grief he ever hoped to weigh down his heart.
That grief would grow subtly in the years to come. Harry never noticed when he stopped looking forward to Suriel’s visits and started wondering how he would fill the empty hours after them.
But between visits, they fought, they laughed, they played, they worked, they studied—they loved like family, with a kind mother, a gentle father, and three boys who chose to study as often as they chose to go romping through the wildflowers in the warmth of June.
The outside world passed them in its whirl and blur, except for the odd occasions of Edward and Harry going off into town sometimes, seeking companionship, looking for lovers.
It wasn’t until Harry took a young boy who had lost a limb in a war to his bed that Harry even asked where he’d been in battle.
The answer was Flanders, and that was how the family learned about WWI.
They endeavored to learn a little more about the world, but it wasn’t until Edward, who bedded both boys and girls, came running into the house—there were more than eight rooms added to the original cabin by now—with a tearful brothel girl in tow that the boys found their purpose.
One that burned fiercely in the heart of everybody in the family, as it turned out.
It would become sort of a family business.
Hanging by a Thread
DAMMIT, HARRY, call him!
Harry grunted and labored at the wheel, working hard to haul four tons of freight truck around a corner without tumbling himself, Edward, Francis, and the girls locked in the back all over the on-ramp from Bakersfield to I-5.
You okay back there?
Telepathy—that had been the three familiars’ favorite spell, and they’d never regretted the time it took to study.
It’s a bit rough, Francis said diplomatically, and Harry grimaced. “It’s a bit rough,” from Francis, meant—
In the name of seven hells, Harry, they’re scared enough already! You’re rattling their teeth
from their heads!
Dammit, Edward, I’m doing my best! They’d traveled down to Bakersfield on the word of one of their spies—a particularly observant crow. Seymour was not the most empathetic of witnesses—he tended to look at people in terms of “not dead yet,” “mostly dead,” and “lunch”—but he did know human behavior well enough to spot trafficking in a hot second.
And he lived for Emma’s baking. She’d make him bread every day for a month if only he could give them reliable information.
Harry and Edward had driven while Francis had curled up in the comfortable bed in the back of the cab, but once they’d arrived at the filthy storage facility, baking in the sun, his languor had disappeared.
Francis had never sold himself—but Harry and Edward had figured out that he’d experienced so much evil in the brothel that he hated the place, the institution, with a more than frightening passion. In the nearly hundred and forty years since they’d dragged him away from Golden Child in escape, he had yet to take a lover. His body had aged—not as much as Harry and Edward, who looked to be in their late twenties now—but still, he could pass for twenty-one if pressed.
But his soul seemed as young, as fragile and untouched, as it had that wondrous, terrifying night.
And his fury to rescue those trafficked and imprisoned as human cattle was a brilliant, all-consuming light, second only to his devotion to Bel, Leonard and Emma’s son.
Bel was the focus of all the family—they petted him and spoiled him with all the considerable love in their hearts. It was hard for the three familiars to leave their happy little clearing and what stood now to be a mansion, tucked well back from the cliffside and against the trees.
But there were over fifty girls in the back of the semi Harry was driving, and as the iron behemoth jounced down the crumbling stretch of freeway, Harry could only be glad Beltane Youngblood was back in Mendocino, preparing to leave for Oxford in the fall.
Francis had been their advance guard, sneaking into the stifling storage room when one of the guards had opened it up to shove in buckets of tepid water and empty other buckets full of waste.