High Steaks (Freelance Familiars Book 3)

by Daniel Potter

  My gaze went back to Death. His grin had faded into a confident smile, certainly interpreting my lack of an immediate comeback as victory. I hate that.

  Drawing a deep breath, I responded, "You're right."

  A dark eyebrow arched.

  "I don't like being told what to do and how to live my life. If it were up to who I was before, my life would be occupied with video games, a mundane job, and maybe starting a family. Boring, for sure. But I doubt I'm the only person in this room that would have chosen that path."

  Nervous laughter filled the room, most of it not human.

  I continued, "Magi get an apprenticeship of five years. Plenty of time for older magi to convince them that the old world? The mundane world? Forget it. It's beneath you. It's spare parts. Familiars, on the other hand get snatched up, read a pamphlet full of bullshit, and then bonded to a newly brainwashed apprentice. With a bond designed to hurt, to injure if it's severed. Then both are thrust into a society where the rich can buy their way out of murder.

  "But I did get lucky. I dodged the TAU and met a partner who's smarter than the rest of you."

  "Her?" Death jabbed a finger at O'Meara. "Ha! She's nothing but a failure."

  O'Meara stepped forward, picking up the thread of my thoughts. "Am I? I'm one of the few survivors of the Dark War. I battled in the name of everyone in this room, for the council's greed. I came back to be stripped of my rank and shoved into a corner. I'm standing here with the one thing you all sought to deny me: a familiar. The best one there is. Stand against us tonight, and you will be burned."

  Death’s eyes traveled up and down, lips curling into a leering smirk. "Good thing I'm not. No, I'm merely emceeing tonight." He spun from us, facing the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, animals and things. You have met the quarry for the night, heard their empty brav—"

  O'Meara poured her heat into me, my fur transmuting into fire with a whoosh! The crowd near me stumbled back in surprise.

  "-ado." Death shot me an angry look. I merely groomed my flaming paw as the crowd murmured. He drew in a breath and continued, "Now: who will declare themselves the hunters?"

  "House Picatrix hunts the cougar!" Ceres's voice rang out as she and Doug stepped out onto the ring. Two magi flanked her on either side: a man in a dark suit holding a tortoiseshell-colored house cat and a petite woman with a tiny owl perched on her shoulder.

  "The entire house, Lady Ceres? I'm afraid I have to insist on a smaller party. This is a hunt, not a melee," Death said, and several people tittered.

  Ceres glared as if her eyes alone could silence the elder magus. "We of the Luxor will be hunting the cougar."

  "That's one!" Death held a finger in the air.

  "The Blackwings of House Morganna will join the hunt!" Veronica with her cabal stepped out opposite Ceres. Naomi, dressed in a bright peacock-styled gown, gave me a wink. I breathed a sigh of relief that they weren't holding out for the spoils of the botched robbery.

  "And two!" Death beamed, his fingers becoming a "V.”

  Lansky seemed to step out of nowhere behind Death. Blackness filled his aura.

  Death's eyes went round in surprise as his body gave a sudden shiver. Stiff as a board, he toppled forward, his expression frozen. The scent of blood washed over me the moment before the falling of Death's body revealed the still-beating heart clutched in Magus Lansky's hand.

  Time seemed to pause in the room as Lansky brought the heart up to his mouth and bit into it with teeth the color of cold iron. His eyes closed as if he were biting into the world's sweetest apple. "Oooooh, that's so good..."

  He swallowed, his eyes only opening after we had watched his Adam's apple bob up and down. Black webbed through the whites of his eyes, like cracks in a window. A dim light danced in the darkness of his pupils as he looked down at me. "I have joined the hunt and ended it already. Nothing distracts Death like the chance to crush an upstart. Thank you very much, Thomas." He raised the heart towards me as if it were a glass of champagne.

  Feather slowly backed away from him. "You promised!" she whispered. "You promised me, Lansky."

  He smiled down at her. "I did promise, Feather, but I am so tired of animals. This is better. Hunt's off. You don't even have to kill your little friend yet." Slowly, he turned to survey the shocked crowd of magi and their familiars, who were one by one filling with the light of their anchors. "I thought you all could use a reminder. This is my town. A House of Hermes town. I built it from nothing... and I will return it to nothing if I so choose."

  "Bullshit!" a voice rang out. Ceres and Doug stood less than ten feet from Lansky. She reached behind her back and pulled a sword that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a rapier. "This is murder! Drop your wards and surrender, or we will smash you like a bug, Lansky." She raised her left hand, and a ball of sickly-green fire appeared in her fist.

  "You? You're barely a babe out of swaddling clothes, Miss Ceres. No matter what that cat at your side actually is." The corner of Lansky's mouth twitched, and I felt a now-familiar yank on my mind, a probing hook lancing through. Images of Death's smile leered in my memory. The man was gone, and my heart ached. It was a curious sort of hurt. I plucked it out of my mind and tossed it away. A mite of pain remained.

  Ceres's mouth fell open, gawping like a fish out of water. Her channeling abruptly ceased, the fire snuffed out, and her arm fell, swinging loosely from her shoulder as she clutched at her chest with her other hand. "Death..." she groaned before collapsing. Doug stood for another second or two before toppling onto his bond's back.

  I hadn't known Death, and if I were entirely honest with myself, I had not cared about him. He was an obstacle to me that I had been preparing to hurdle. I had no reason to grieve. Pain and loss had brought O'Meara to one knee, but for her too - never a resident of Vegas, and an outcast since her apprenticeship - Death's touch on her life was light. She tossed the loss into the mental bin where she bottled grief and hurt.

  We were in the minority. One by one, the magi and their familiars slowly succumbed to the pain of grief. With each one, Lansky's aura rippled and swelled with the power that devoured the light of the multitude of wards and foci.

  The power of a hunger plane.

  As the wails and howls of the magi filled the room, Lansky's grin widened to the edge of madness. "One big happy family!" he crowed.

  I backpedaled, hissing like a house cat. My mind reeled, trying to connect the dots. If Lansky could feed on Death himself, why in the multiverse did he need that chair?

  Figure out what happened later! O'Meara's thoughts snapped like the crack of fingers in front of my nose. He's a vampire now! Give me the tass!

  There was no denying that. Heaving several groat of tass into my mouth, I touched her with my nose and the tip of my tail. The circle formed, and we slammed the tass into the spell ripper. It came to life, the blade encircling the edge of the shield spinning up with an audible buzz as she swung it toward Lansky.

  "Where did you—?" Lansky's mad eyes narrowed at the buzzing shield then slid to me. "Oh. Oh, that's where you keep it. You're not lying at all, are you? You really were rebuilt by a dragon. I see the marks now."

  "Let them go, Lansky!" O'Meara hissed. "We know how to fight you."

  I swallowed, tasting the bluff on my tongue. You fought this type of vampire by killing whomever he was connected to.

  "Oh, do you? Do you think I'm a mere Tikoloshe?" He cackled, opening his mouth so I could see the black force bubbling within. "You two should be happy with my ascendancy. I'm going to rip down all the structures that have so abused you. Think on all the good you can do with my backing and blessing."

  O'Meara saw herself clad in the robes of the Inquisition again, carrying not only the sword at her hip but the seal of the High Inquisitor nestled between her breasts. An elderly man knelt before her bench, clad in the robes of an Archmagus, shivering in fear.

  In my own mind, I pictured myself lying upon the TAU desk, Oric's perch broken, a full case of fe
y chains displayed behind me. The image had a foreign taste to it, so I ignored it.

  Ceres's fallen form was suffused with the power of her anchor. The bastard was using Ceres's anchor as his own. Ceres's anchor was the concept of ambition itself. And that was what had mucked up Trevor! The entire Luxor bathed in unreasonable and contagious ambition. Disgust filled me as I imagined living with such a compulsion to achieve. With a snarl, I ripped the inquisitorial fantasy out of O'Meara's head.

  "Oh, did you not like that one? I have over a hundred others." Lansky gestured, and the crumpled bodies of the enthralled magi lit up.

  Green vines erupted from the floor and met the blade of O'Meara's sword. An ice spear broke on the mirrored shield. Slender arms began to reach down from the ceiling, dripping with black slime. Our minds twisted together as we fought and parried each attack with flame, claws, shield, or sword. In our whirlwind of flame and magic, we thought of tactics O'Meara had used against the Tikoloshe, but we both rejected that terrible cost.

  "Stop!" A voice ripped through the room. The attacks ceased as Feather appeared between us and Lansky.

  "Why, there you are, Feather. I wondered where you went," Lansky nearly purred. "Why don't you open yourself up a bit? We can talk without being overheard."

  "Master." Feather growled the word. "This is too far. We need Death's tass to rebuild the apparatus."

  "Feather, my pet, if you had bothered to open the link for a second, you'd know that is impossible. The Tikoloshe hunger is not a corruption, it is a power in its own right. There is no need to filter it through the apparatus to create tass. I cannot even use tass without you. Perhaps if you join me now, we can rebuild the apparatus later. Once I have the council seat. They knew Death; they are all in their chambers, weak and defenseless. No more barriers, no more petty politics. You and me, Feather. It will be like old times." Lansky narrowed his eyes and reached toward her.

  Feather wobbled as she emitted a keening wail of pain before pawing at her head as if to scrape off a parasite. "Stop. I don't want it!"

  O'Meara and I stepped forward to try to protect her, though there was no attacking spell that I could see. But her bond blazed, dark and swollen. Feather hissed in warning as we stepped to either side of her.

  "We're going to get you out of here," I told her.

  "Wrong, both of you. Grab my collar," she growled.

  40

  Ninja Cow

  As the purple of the teleport faded into absolute blackness, I had a moment of panic. Had Feather tricked us? O'Meara ignited the tips of her fingers, revealing the gray concrete walls stretching out on either side of us.

  The flood tunnels. Feather had teleported us to the tunnels. I inhaled, and the sharp odor of the Ranch filled my head. Why had she brought us here?

  Feather collapsed between us. A grimace of pain on her muzzle revealed teeth mottled with the color of cold iron. "Idiots," she hissed. "We had it c-contained."

  I rounded on her. "You had what contained, precisely? As far as I know, you've been harvesting friends of mine in that machine. That doesn't sound contained to me!" I could feel Jet's stone heavy in my interdimensional gullet.

  "The corruption, you flea-bitten cub!" Feather spat black ichor on the ground. "We'd burn it out with its own black tass. That machine was two decades of work! The wealth of the Order! It would have opened a new frontier!" Angry red lines shot through the gold of her irises as they opened wide with pain. "AAAAAAIIIIIRRRRRE!" A scream ripped through her as her body convulsed with pain, claws tearing furrows in the concrete. "Neeargh! Break my bond! Do it quickly, or I'll be just like him!"

  I mentally turned to O'Meara. How do we do that? Can we sever the bond?

  Rituals and spell details flashed through O'Meara's mind, all horribly complex. The whole point of the bonds was that nobody could break them, no matter how much tass you had to burn. Most magi bonds were formed with the help of several artifacts that were held by the council and could be undone the same way. We'd have to get Feather to the grand tower. And quickly.

  O'Meara reached out to grab Feather and haul her up but snatched her fingers back as Feather's aura flared with black. Her back arched, her face frozen in a rictus of pain. The crackle of breaking bones echoed through the corridor as her fangs lengthened to tusks of iron.

  Both O'Meara and I flinched back, our thoughts little more than a stream of expletives and fear.

  "Kill me! I can't - HUNGRY!" Feather roared as she rose to her feet, eyes opening to reveal empty darkness contained in her sockets. She leapt at me, and I slammed my paw into the side of her face, my claws snapping on the hardness of the ward before she barreled into me. A flash of cold metal cut through my fur as I rolled with the force impact.

  Don't hit her; push her. O'Meara's thought cut through my instincts. Feather being driven to the ground reared into my mind. I pulled back my teeth and allowed the momentum to carry me onto my back. Feather's head reared back, jaws opening wider than was physically possible. She was uninterested in my throat; she wanted my heart.

  O'Meara loomed up behind her, the spell ripper buzzing. Claws in, I pushed Feather, heaving her directly into its arc. The shield ripped through the wards and bit into Feather's side. The cat's form blurred away from the blade; a black miasma rippled ten feet away before reforming into a very snarly Feather.

  Burnination! O'Meara swore as I rolled up to my feet, pain pricking along my ribs where Feather's claws had found flesh. She's side-stepping. Precisely like the Tikoloshe.

  How'd you deal with it in the war?

  Dark memories swirled in O'Meara mind. Explosions. Lots of explosions. But we'll need to take down her wards first.

  Feather screamed then, a sound that made my fur stand on end, punching through my stomach and twisting my nethers. A cougar's heat scream, perverted into a very different hunger. No trace of intelligence gleamed in the empty sockets. The spell ripper could eventually break through her wards, but who knew how long it'd take us and how many injuries we'd sustain? I had one other idea.

  I don't like this idea at all. But O'Meara stepped close to me and widened her fighting stance, protecting me. I can't see her when she blurs without you.

  Feather attacked. O'Meara spun her sword, forcing her to break through several kinetic barriers before O'Meara slammed the shield into her nose. As Feather blurred back from the attack, I broke my bond with O'Meara and whipped Mr. Bitey back towards Feather's furry neck. She flinched, but chains encircled her body without effort.

  I found myself at the bridge between our minds and heard hers screaming as she came to meet me. Her avatar was mottled with black patches. Kill me! Kill me now, Thomas! He won't stop! He won't listen to me!

  Let me in, Feather! I can help.

  No! It will get you too! Kill me, Thomas! Severing the bond might hurt him!

  Feather, I can stop it. I'm good at resisting these sorts of things. I didn't know how different the blackness was from the mind probes, but I had to convince her to let me try. But I needed permission.

  That's what Lansky thought! Thought he was too smart to let a black plane tempt him. Thought we could harness it! The greedy idiot! Kill me! I deserve it!

  Two figures careened around the end of the tunnel, the four-legged one skidding on her hooves. Grace and Alice.

  Feather glanced backward, then did a double take. Oh, the cow shines, how she shines. Her body blurred.

  "Fucking damnit!" I swore as I broke the connection. "Alice! Grace! Watch out! Vampire cougar!"

  The pair stopped dead. O'Meara flung the spell ripper, propelling it with a wave of flame. Compared to Feather's speed, it might as well have been cutting through molasses. Feather blinked back into that mid-strike, swinging her claws upwards in a brutal uppercut which would have snapped Alice's head back, leaving her chest wide open.

  Feather missed. For a moment, I thought that the claws had passed straight through Alice's head. Grace's anchor flowed through both cow and apprentice. Hissing, Feather reared
up, unleashing a fury of strikes. Alice's head wove among the claws with unearthly precision until both combatants danced apart to avoid the oncoming spell ripper.

  Grace, shining with the power of her anchor, plucked the whirling saw shield from the air as if it were a Frisbee.

  I reconnected with O'Meara as the three began a deadly dance, Feather attempting to hurt Alice, Grace trying to strike Feather with the spell ripper, their forms rocketing around too fast for the eye to follow.

  Plan? I asked O'Meara.

  Oh yes. Gimme some tass. O'Meara slapped down a spell circle between us. I spit tass into the middle of it as we channeled, braiding together a long whip of kinetic energy.

  A blow landed on Alice, knocking her sideways. When she twisted her body like a cat on its very best day, all four hooves hit the wall with a clack! It was the opening we needed. We lashed out with our whip, curling it around Alice's mid-section. We yanked it with all our mental might.

  "MOOOO!" No amount of acrobatics to save her, Alice sailed over our heads.

  With a feral screech, Feather followed, only to be caught by the brutal arc of O'Meara's sword, right on the spell-broken wound. Feather hit the center of our circle with the grace of a spiked volleyball.

  A pipe bomb went off in my head. Mother Ezial is gone, a voice shrieked in my mind. House Morganna's casino magnate, with her smoke hair and perfumes, the one who had tried to tell me to back down - her heart had been ripped out. It had hurt. Lansky had made sure she felt each rib break as he tore open her chest. Lansky's face, bloody lips warped into a twisted smile, loomed in her vision as she died.

  Thomas! Get up! Get angry. Don't think about what you're missing. He's not after us. He's after the council. Now get up. She hauled me up to my feet by the scruff of my neck and pried my eyes open.

  Alice and Feather were a blur of motion. Yet the weight of grief held onto my heart, weighing it down like a leaden leech. I had barely known the woman, and still it hurt like a physical wound. How dare Lansky do this? How dare he use grief as a weapon? I'd kill him. Him and anyone who thought to use this magic ever again. I thrust my anger deep into my heart, blotting out the pain with rage. My coat burst into flame as a growl took residence in my throat.