Veronica tried several different patterns of attacks but to no avail. While I could see the techno-aegis’ yellow nexus, the power source of its flight, dimming, it wasn't doing it nearly as fast as Veronica's own aegis. She began to sag from the effort of maintaining her blade. Sweat streamed down her face in bullets, and both her and Neelius’ chests heaved under the strain. She hurled her own aegis against Jules and swatted his blade away with her own.
That worked momentarily. Jules charged with his own massive aegis, using it like a battering ram. The two shields clashed, and hers was driven back, nearly violating her circle until she forced it away with her blade.
Nearly at the threshold.
Too soon, Jules! Way too soon! Richard's thoughts echoed.
With a sweep of Veronica's arm, Neelius screamed into the battle, his talons and beak crackling with a black energy all his own. The battle changed instantly. Neelius swooped toward Jules and Jowls. When the shield interposed itself, he struck with both talons as the blade swooped around. The shield spun like a top and batted the bird away from it. As Neelius spun away, the shield jerked sideways but not before it nicked the circle. Jowls let out a yowl of pain and Jules winced. The shield struck the blade head on. White flared from its thus far unused nexus as Jules activated the shield’s last trick. Energy from a plane of stasis blasted out, catching Veronica's blade head on. The black blade fell to the ground and simply dissipated.
"YES!" The trio cheered. "We've got you now!"
The Blackwings howled with indignation. "Dirty trick!"
"Simply accurate predictions of behavior,." Sandra called back.
It’s over now, the trio thought. She won't risk her familiar to serve as the sword.
Yet it wasn't over. Neelis scraped himself up from the ground and launched himself back into the air. He circled the interior of the arena, and Jules’ shield shadowed his movements. Veronica, her dress soaked with sweat now, shook with effort as she drew on her anchor. Her aura moved oddly as she reached out, her attention divided. A smaller portion flowed into the circle, and the spot where she had formed her sword before grew bright. Jules cursed, the glow of the stasis nexus flaring in his shield as he turned it toward Veronica.
The second bolus of energy discharged as Neelius dived with the sudden speed of a gunshot slamming into the back of the shield. The stasis spell burst and the dark halo around Neelius shattered, but the bird himself was unfazed, clinging to the shield with his talons. With a grunt of effort, Jules sent the shield into a spin, trying to fling the bird off, but Neelius rode like a pro cowboy, his head hammering at the underside of the shield.
Jules’ eyes bugged in panic as the life went out of the shield, and Neelius fell to the ground with a thud. Neelius stood on the shield, the yellow nexus clasped in his beak.
The black eagle’s eyes beamed with pride.
The gem exploded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Several things happened in rapid succession. Veronica screamed, the auras of other Blackwings and their dogs filled with power. Shock rang through the heads of Tom, Dick and Harry as if you'd slammed their heads together. O'Meara’s wheelchair lurched into motion as Veronica fell to her knees, her eyes blank, jaw slack.
Jules and Jowls stared at Neelius’ toppled form on the ground. A pool of blood spread from his headless neck.
All eyes were on him, his mangled form. There would be no coming back. All magi and Familiars stood in shocked silence.
"The winner is... House Technomagi." Garn's small voice carried across the silence.
Then things moved all at once. A duet of growls rumbled through the air as Dorothy and Naomi erupted in a nimbus of blue light. The air around us howled to life, and Naomi’s form shifted, dagger-sized talons growing from her fingers as black feathers sprouted across her skin. Rinoa, the youngest, ran toward Veronica, crossing the ward as it blinked out.
Dorothy and her companion took a threatening step toward us. Tom, Dick and Harry's minds replayed the scene, bouncing it among their consciousness like a pinball trapped between three bumpers.
"Murderers!" Namoni croaked. Her wolf crouched to leap, his teeth bared, feral with rage.
"Stop this NOW!" O'Meara shouted, heat enveloping my senses in a second before an inferno erupted between both sides. The wall of fire drove Naomi and Morie backward, their fur and feathers smoking from the heat. All the magi’s blue nimbuses winked out, except for Dorothy's. The wind-mistress reached up into the air as if grabbing something and a ball of blue and yellow energy coalesced in the air.
O'Meara charged up to the young magus in her chair and delivered a vicious backhand. The force of the blow nearly lifted Dorothy from the ground. She spun to the side, barely catching herself on the picnic table. "WHAT DID I SAY!?" O'Meara bellowed. She stood on the footrests of her chair and towered over the two Blackwings. "You will be civilized while you are within my—" O'Meara gave a small grunt of effort, and her intimidating stance wobbled slightly. "—jurisdiction!" she managed before falling back into her seat. "There has already... been too much." Human ears might have lost that last bit, as the consequences of that last spell continued to settle onto her body, her muscles clenching is such a way I knew she was in agony.
I looked to Ixey, but she appeared lost, staring at Neelius' headless body. My eyes went back to O'Meara and found her looking at me like a drowning woman on the verge of losing conscious.
Richard, I need to take a small leave of absence, I thought at my bond.
What? Richard mentally sputtered, but I had no time to explain.
I broke my bond to Richard with a snap, the link withdrawing as suddenly as it had been made. The chain swirled into existence and hurled itself at O'Meara before Mr. Bitey's snake form could fully manifest. The chains wound about her wrists and neck. More eyes widened around me.
Oily orange sludge flooded O'Meara's mind, sticking to memories and thoughts, weighing it all down, drowning her under it all.
I strode into her mind even as she made a feeble attempt to bat me away. You know you were supposed to do less magic, O'Meara, I chided.
I don't need your help, O'Meara thought.
I call bullshit on that. I studied her thread. The block that Lady Cavell put in place had been blown wide open, and the wound flowed this sickly substance into her mind. Her insecurities were positively swimming in it. Negative emotions boiled up in her mind like a geyser of bile out of an upset stomach. They'd all been there before, but now, barely two days since I broke my bond with her, they were just as swollen and inflamed as the wound I leaned against.
Get out of my head, Thomas!
You invited me in, I told her as I pushed myself against her source, stanching the flow of nastiness.
You're supposed to be bonded to someone else! O’Meara protested.
Apparently the dragon rebuilt me to take advantage of shifting loyalties. I prattled on as I searched her mind. You have to promise me you won't channel again until you're healed.
I'll do what is required to keep the peace. She thought, and there I saw it, rising from the murk of guilt and pain. A black thing, a parasite on her sense of duty. I fell upon it with imagined teeth and claws. You can't kill a thought, but I did my level best, ripping it off her sense of duty. O'Meara's mind recoiled from the attack, shuddering and pushing, trying to close around me and push me out. I retreated from her consciousness and to the place in her mind I called the garden of regrets: A congress of the fragments of all the six familiars O'Meara had previously bonded to. Most were mere shadows. But not Sir Rex. The dead Great Dane guarded O'Meara's most traumatic memories. So strong was the shade that there had been times when I'd heard his voice streaming from O'Meara head.
There was a new resident there. The sight of which had me skidding to a stop.
My own amber eyes looked back at me with a smug reassurance. He, or I, sat to the left of Sir Rex in the court. While Sir Rex still loomed, I was nearly half his size. The others barely reached his knee,
or in the case of the house cat, his ankle.
"See?" the memory-me said. He had a cobra around his own neck. "I told you I'd come back."
I wondered if I'd have a court in my own head before too long.
Rex's eyes were dead things and did not focus as he glared down on me and growled. "You have hurt her, ripped something out, violated her trust."
"She just attempted to kill herself." I spat the death wish at his paw. It tried to scrabble away, but the Dog pinned it with a massive claw.
"There will be more of these. They breed like vermin. Feed on her loneliness," the dog's voice echoed.
"Rub it in why don't you," the memory-me said. "I've got to be free. It’s the only life for me."
"I can't cure her while I'm bonded to her," I said.
"Without magic, she cannot serve her purpose. Without purpose, her darkness grows. A bond is a raft in the darkness. She will drown without you." The dog spoke as if he'd seen eternity.
"She'll drown with me as well! Just slower." I and the memory-me spoke as one.
Rex hrrmed, picked the death wish up by its tail and popped the squeaking thing into his mouth, swallowing it whole. "Do not come again unless you are ready to take my place."
My hackles rose. "O'Meara's my best friend, old dog. I plan on keeping her around for a long time."
"Then stay and help her!" O'Meara's own voice bled into his.
I wanted to. There was something about the trio I didn't like. Something I couldn't put a finger on. O'Meara mind was different. Her hands felt like home. Yet I didn't trust that feeling either. The entire reason I'd fallen into this insane world was that I'd allowed myself to value comfort over everything else. "Because if I stay, I'd be a pet. That's something I can never allow for myself."
I strode back into O'Meara's consciousness.
She sagged from the exhaustion filling her mind, yet the anger still seethed around me. What did you do to me? I felt you do something!
I purred reassuringly. I took out some garbage. I retreated back to my own head, pulling the bulk of her exhaustion with me. Then, as quickly as I'd initiated it, I pulled Mr. Bitey back from her.
I caught O'Meara glowering before I collapsed into Richard's lap.
"You spineless half magi!" Dorothy spat as I struggled to keep one eye open. "You couldn't win on your own!" Her fists were balled at her sides, but she wasn't channeling now at least.
"Hey, remember, Veronica challenged us!" Sandra stalked forward.
"Indeed!" Harry and Tom said. "Duels are risky. You expected us to just fall over for you? To sit by and let you take our prize?"
"The risk was yours," Sandra said with a tone of grim finality.
Dorothy wasn't about to let her have the final word. "We are a House! You are a group of rats scheming in a basement!"
"ENOUGH!" O'Meara roared. "The next person who speaks across this divide will be banished from Grantville. Go your own ways and cool off, all of you." Her gaze shifted to the arena. Veronica sat, her white dress stained red, Neelius' body cradled in her arms. Behind her Rinoa stood, tears streaming down her face, her hand hovering over Veronica's shoulder, trembling as if afraid to touch the other woman. Tack had paused outside the circle, one foot raised in uncertainty.
"You have more important things to attend to," O'Meara said in a softer voice.
Silence reigned. The animal features of Naomi's body were reabsorbed into her human form, and Dorothy's anger collapsed into a wince of pain. The wolf's teeth disappeared, and Fee gave a whine, each familiar immediately seeking the touch of their bonds.
Jules, with Jowls bundled in his arms, walked toward us stiffly. Ixey followed, biting her lip. As he walked past, O'Meara whispered, "If I find out that was not an accident, Jules, I will not be happy."
"Neither will I," Jules whisper back. Then to everyone else he said, "Let’s go. You all need rest."
Richard's hand tensed on my neck. He'd been petting me, I realized belatedly. A tickle of adrenaline had been keeping my eyes open and now with the situation defused the exhaustion clawed at my mind with heavy pillows. My third eyelids slipped halfway over my eyes.
O'Meara and Ixey were speaking to each other. Ixey's eyes downcast, she tried to give O'Meara the sword, but she pushed it back with a shake of her head.
"What did you do?" Richard asked.
"Magic trick." I gave a little laugh and tried to lift my head. My body obeyed sluggishly as I forced myself back to my feet. "Could you all drop me off for a bit? I need to sleep this off."
"So, are you done with us?"
"No. I need the tass more than ever. And I need it quickly." Unless you know a suicide ward that's willing to commit a fire magus, I added mentally, glad that no one was in my head to hear it.
I had them drop me off at Noise's place.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Noise's place wasn't much. A one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in a building hidden behind a hill just a mile from the main thoroughfare. A voice told me it wasn't the greatest idea to tell the technomagi where Noise lived, but it chimed in after we were en route.
Real werewolves didn’t change at the sight of the full moon. Their humanity ebbed and flowed with the moon herself. During the new moon they were completely human and slowly added wolf until the half moon, then lost the human until they were entirely wolf at the full moon. The Veil had no room for such subtly however, so mundanes saw them as human before the halfway point and wolves beyond it. Most werewolves lived outside of towns and cities their entire lives, but Noise had always wanted more humanity in her life, so she stayed in the city as long as she could, maintaining her own apartment on what she made on freelance coding jobs.
I pawed at the button that was her doorbell then stopped, noticing a ripple of motion. The front of the apartment featured a door and window off to the left. The simple two-paned sliding window stood half-open. This struck me as odd. The apartment had a draft in the best of times. Now it was two days after the new moon in the early winter, a few days before she had any fur to speak of. My muzzy brain and I decided to view it as an invitation. After pushing the window the rest of the way open, I slipped into her tiny kitchen and froze.
A deep sense of wrongness prickled from my nose and down the fur of my back. Had I gotten the wrong apartment? The kitchen, while not spotless (that would have been impossible for even a SWAT team of maids) was tidy. I'd stepped down from the window and into a sink that had no dirty dishes in it. Not a plate, not even a coffee mug. Worse, it smelled wrong, not just of the acid scent of Lysol that hung in the air, but due to Noise's diet the place always had the lingering scent of cooking meat.
My ears tracked breathing and a distant sound of music deeper in the apartment. The sound of typing, but it had no rhythm. The taps were hesitant, coming one at a time instead of the practiced babble of plastic on plastic I normally associated with Noise working.
Cautiously, I crept down onto the kitchen floor. The apartment resembled a storage container in layout. The kitchen was at the front with a hallway from the door that ran into a modest living room. Then two doors: one opening into her bedroom and the other to the bathroom. It was similar to the house we used to share but smaller. I peered around the corner and into the living room.
Noise’s desk chair sat empty, but a figure hunched on the couch in front of the TV. It had her black and green high-performance gamer headset over her ears. I blinked. It was Noise, but she was far too large. She usually didn't give up on the desk a mere three days after the new moon, normally at this point she resembled a werewolf from a wolfman movie, ears pointed and fuzzy, talons like nails (which she trimmed every few hours if she was trying to work), enlarged canines and a general wild look. A slight increase in bulk. Her shape was wrong. She'd slammed on a hundred pounds since I'd seen her last and not all of it muscle. Her scent had also shifted. The human scent was strong, the lupine faint and something else mingled with it.
"Noise?" I asked, padding closer and edging around the
couch. On the coffee table was a platter of a precut veggie sticks, more than half consumed. She made no reaction and continued pecking at the keyboard. "Noise?" I asked louder, knowing it was futile. She stared into the screen, not seeing anything else. I could hear the heavy metal screaming into her elongated ears, the tips rounded, not pointed.
I'd have to poke her, and it’s never a good idea to surprise a werewolf. Wolves had a fear response to cats my size and that instinct came in as soon as the barest sliver of the pale mistress showed herself in the sky.
Gritting my teeth, I circled around Noise and sat in front of her. She didn't glance up. Carefully standing out of arms reach, I batted the top of her screen. She exploded with an animal bellow, jumping clear over the sofa. The black matte laptop flew up, tumbling toward me. The floor vibrated beneath my body as her feet slammed into the ground on the far side. I reared up, waited another half-second and caught the laptop between two paws, closing it the rest of the way with a click of the latch. I carefully took the thing in my teeth and set it on coffee table.
Noise stood, her hands gripping the couch as if she were moments away from picking it up and throwing it at me. The changes had subtly crept into her face as well, her features wider, her eyes rounder. She bared her fangs. I sat still, waiting, my tail wrapping around the front of my paws, my ears forward and friendly.
Abruptly the tension in her form eased. "You are such an ass, Thomas," she managed to growl and sigh at the same time. "What have I said about surprising me when I'm working?" She rolled over the back of the couch, which creaked in protest when her body impacted the cushions.
"Not to let your laptop hit the floor. Or bite through it while catching it. Don't accidentally spill ice cubes down your back or smack you with my tail. Well you didn't say that last one, but it was fairly painful experience for me and you should feel guilty about it." She narrowed her eyes by degrees as the list continued. The tip of my tail started twitching.
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