High Steaks

by Daniel Potter

  The new word seemed to stymie the man for a moment. His gaze flickered to me and back to O'Meara, dried lips twisting. A fat finger jabbed out at O'Meara's form, pointing at the sword that hung with gentle ease across her back. "That! You cannot wear that."

  Resignation flickered through O'Meara as she reached for the blade. My hackles rose.

  Stop, I thought, and O'Meara's hand froze.

  Rudy must have read the look on my face. "Dude, that's the High Inquisitor," he hissed. "Let him take the sword."

  "Not anymore." I left Rudy to let the frog out of the bottle and stalked toward the inquisitors.

  The man's jaw set, the wrinkles on his weathered face folding into well-worn grooves. I noted any appearance of unsteadiness disappeared as the lynx took shelter behind his legs. I deliberately sat myself in front of him, curling my tail over my front paws. "Sir, allow me to give you a single suggestion. Sit down and shut up."

  Defensive wards glittered to life. "You do not speak that way to me. Houseless vermin."

  I simply smiled, ignoring the warning thoughts flowing from O'Meara. "On the contrary. You are in our House."

  Confusion cracked the inquisitor's icy glare. "This is Death's House."

  "Death is dead. Magus Lansky killed him. He also killed Lady Ezial and assaulted the Council of Merlins. And this is all your fault, Inquisitor. You allowed Lansky to steal refugees from Grantsville as he sought to control his corruption, embezzling nearly all House Hermes's wealth." That got the crowd murmuring questions.

  One magus got to his feet - the same magus who had objected to Death's dismissal of their Archmagus. "What do you mean, embezzled?"

  I turned to him and the crowd. "You all are missing twenty-four hours. While you were all being crushed under a wave of supernatural grief, a battle took place. What Lansky became used all your anchors against the tower. You're all very lucky he thought the Freelance Familiars were bugs too small to squish."

  "Bugs that can break into tass vaults!" Rudy joined in with a chilling laugh. Horrified gasps spread through the crowd, and the inquisitor's face paled behind his wards. "Naturally, we hit Lansky's first, since he was the one causing all the damage. But wanna guess how much we found? Go on! Guess!" Rudy bounded up to the Hermes magus's shoulder and grinned that four-toothed grin in the poor fellow's face.

  "There should have been tens of thousands of groat in that vault," the magus said, voice quavering.

  "Nope!" Rudy declared. "Two pallets of poker-chipized tass! Enough to cover expenses for a few days. Hope you guys didn't have much in the bank o'Lansky!"

  The man fainted, toppling like a tree. I took over the story. "We hit Death's vault next, and I'm happy to report that Death's wealth was not so exaggerated. Unfortunately, it also summoned Lansky, along with Death's soul. We had a bit of a tussle, and you can see plainly that the Freelance Familiars - whom you had all gathered to see die yesterday - stand here and Lansky does not."

  Believe it or not, when about a hundred people wince in unison, there is a soft sound.

  I orbited O'Meara and smiled with my teeth at the inquisitors. "As bounty for saving everyone's lives, and as reparations for the Inquisition turning its eye from a blood sport, we, the Freelance Familiars, claim all of Death's assets for ourselves. Including the gambling debts of the inquisitors, which I'm sure are considerable. Everyone else's will be forgiven."

  The High Inquisitor sputtered, "You think you can do that? No one will support you."

  "Oh really?" I turned and found Ceres in the crowd. Time to see if the cheetah really meant that he wanted me around. Ceres met my eyes with a wry smile before climbing to her feet with Doug's assistance.

  "I support his claim." Her voice rasped with disuse but carried over the silent crowd.

  Veronica pulled herself to her feet. "The Blackwings of House Morganna support our friends the Freelance Familiars. We owe them our lives now for the second time. While gratitude is a novel sensation for many here, I assure you both Thomas and Mistress O'Meara are crusaders for good in our small world. Something that, after decades of backbiting, we desperately need."

  "Hey, what about me?" Rudy interjected.

  "And the squirrel's somewhat decent, but I wouldn't recommend gambling with him. He is an awful cheater," Veronica added.

  "Monopoly is not gambling," Rudy chittered.

  That drew a bit of laughter from the tense and tired crowd. Several more House Morganna and House Picatrix cabals declared their support for the notion.

  A magus wearing a symbol of the House of Hermes stood by the side of his fainted compatriot. "If what the cougar has said about Magus Lansky is true, then the forgiveness of any debt cannot be ignored. We, the Cabal of Articular Frost and Fire, conditionally support these Freelance Familiars." Four stood with him, although the fainted man more leaned or was propped up.

  Another cabal of House Hermes rose, muttering about not passing up a chance to stick a finger in the eyes of the Inquisition. One lone woman in a black leather jacket stood, along with a black snake coiled around her neck. "Keep what you kill," she said with a shrug to the icy stares of her fellow House Erebus.

  Nearly two-thirds of the room stood in support of me, all teetering on wobbly legs.

  The High Inquisitor’s eyes had narrowed, and he turned to find that his fellows had backed away from him. He bared his teeth, hand on his sword, eyes searching for an exit like a trapped rat. "The council will never support you," he hissed.

  "The council is not terribly happy with the inquisitors at the moment." A woman's voice cracked over the tension. Heads snapped to the entrance to the room. A frog-faced woman stood leaning on a silver cane planted before her. A long calico cat with emerald eyes stared out at the crowd.

  O'Meara swallowed so hard I felt it. Madam Morrian, Archmagus of House Morganna.

  Beside her stood a man with a nose so sharp it might have been an ice pick. Willowy gray hair spilled down over shoulders clad in a brilliant purple robe. At his knee, a wolf panted, a living ice sculpture. Water dripped from its transparent tongue.

  And Master Domincus, Archmagus of the House of Hermes. Dread flowed through O'Meara. These two Houses were bitter rivals at the best of times; for them to be in the same place probably meant no good things for anybody.

  The High Inquisitor's legs failed him. He fell to his knees and hung his head. "My apologies. We were overwhelmed."

  "As were we," Domincus boomed.

  "Yet here we stand," Morrian answered.

  I rolled my eyes at the start of another good magus–bad magus routine. "Excuse me," I said, cutting off Domincus's answer. "Are either of you up for a bit of healing?"

  "Thomas!" O'Meara barked.

  I ignored her and continued. "O'Meara took a lot of lumps saving everyone. She needs a new stomach so I can get some food into her."

  Morrian's calico arched her back and hissed as her mistress's large eyes squinted. "You had favor with my House, Thomas. Do not squander it by insulting me."

  "You'll have to forgive Lady Morrian; we've had a very long day. House Hermes will be happy to tend wounds if House Morganna is too tired." Domincus stepped forward. "Everyone here needs healing, food, and water. We can discuss what happened later with the new owners of MGM Grand and all it contains."

  Shock rippled through the room.

  Domincus went down on one knee and extended me a hand. "If any of your story is true, the Council of Merlins owes you a debt of gratitude, and double from House Hermes."

  Morrian and her cat glared daggers at Domincus's back, her broad mouth swallowing down something distasteful before stepping up next to Domincus with a huff. "Impatient upstart. I was going to get to that! We'll do it together! You trust a Hermes to heal and they'll leave something important out. Like spleens!"

  "That was only one time, Morrian."

  "Yes, but it was mine!" the old woman spat.

  Exasperation tinted with admiration flowed through the link from O'Meara. You really cannot he
lp upping the ante, can you?

  I shook Domincus's outstretched hand. It worked, didn't it? We'll finally have resources and respect.

  You're leaving out the third R, Thomas. A firestorm of responsibility is going to come with that vault. O'Meara stepped up beside me as Morrian pushed Domincus out of the way, muttering something more about spleens.

  Well, maybe it's about time I claimed some territory and settled in for a bit, I answered her with a shoulder check.

  Rudy landed on my back. "This means I have to move my tree again, doesn't it?"

  Looking back over my shoulder, I smirked at my friend. "Well, Rudy, if it's too much trouble to move into a penthouse and you want to stay in the strip ma—"

  "I didn't say that! A high rise ain't no tree, but at least it's high! You're not getting rid of me that easy!" Rudy said.

  A purr rumbled up my throat as I let myself lean on O'Meara. "I'm very happy to have you both."

  Afterword

  So we leave Thomas and his friends, having survived by the tip of a singed tail. Thank you for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed the adventure. Please take a moment to review the book and tell me what you thought about it.

  This book, like all my books had a bit of a journey to the page. I knew Thomas and Rudy were going to wreck Vegas somehow but didn’t really know what was going to happen when I started the book. I started with, how would a bunch of familiars play poker? I found the card holders online and the poker scene rolled forth and the entire novel grew from that seed. We see the city through Thomas’s eyes, who is much more liable to count the number of calcified gum wads under the table than look at neon signs that shout about free money.

  That meant for my research I had go a bit deeper than the Tourist Bureau. Fortunately, I was introduced to Jeanene Thompson, a lifelong Vegas resident who was able to describe, through beautifully written Facebook messages, what it is to live in a place where everything feels temporary and how life changes for everyone when the biggest employers never close. She also told me in no uncertain terms where to get the best tacos in Vegas.

  While the first half of the story wrote itself, the second half of the book resembled spaghetti with an extra helping of plot-hole flavored meatballs. I have to credit my wife Amanda for serving as my what-if springboard as I madly attempted to untangle the plot without Rudy leveling the city entirely.

  Thanks go to my copyeditor, Laura Hughes, who not only untangles my… err, creative sentence structures, but notes every time she laughed out loud in the comments. She also told me I’m not allowed to kill off O’Meara. (Not that I really planned to but she didn’t know that.) I also have to thank my fellow San Francisco Bay Area Indie Authors (John Hindmarsh, Alan Petersen, James Beach, Michael Ryder, Barbara Cool Lee, Deb McIntyre and Diane Patterson) for listening to all my crazy ideas and helping me come up with the title of the book.

  I wish you all a happy year. May you dream of sky pirates battling dragons.

  Learn about the new things being squeezed from my mind, by subscribing to my newsletter: http://fallenkitten.com/subscribe/

  Also by Daniel Potter

  Freelance Familiars Book 1: Off Leash

  Freelance Familiars Book 2: Marking Territory

  Rudy & the Warren Warriors (a Freelance Familiars short story)

  Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Potter

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9965940-4-2

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1986, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyedited by Laura M. Hughes

  Proofread by Read Adept Publishing

  Cover by Ebooklaunch.com

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