"Oh no!" Jowls moaned and staggered.
"Oh yes, you little luddite! Behold progress! We'll gather more tass than the rest of you put together! Behold!"
The wall behind her slid into the floor and revealed a figure that might have clanked out of a Jules Vern novel. A heavy frame of shiny brass stood a foot taller than Sandra. It had great three-fingered pinchers for hands and a round belly that might have been salvaged from an ancient boiler. The belly exuded the bright glow of energy magics, but the rest of its frame was studded with silver valves that whistled as the thing moved through the opening with heavy, methodical steps. The metal man's head had been constructed from the bottom of an industrial gas cylinder. It had no mouth but two huge eyes, long and cartoonish, just cut into the metal and covered with a metal mesh.
The thing wobbled as it stopped beside the mechanically-minded shaman and teetered. Sandra put a hand out to steady it. "Stabilizers," she hissed out the side of her mouth.
"That's the green one, right?" a voice whispered back that I instantly recognized.
"Yes." The robot sank to its ankles with a mechanical thunk. She smiled at all of us. "May I present the Mark 7, Autonomous General Purpose Unit!"
A polite applause erupted from those that had hands.
"A bit less autonomous than the Mark 6, I'm guessing," Jowls needled.
"No! I am robot! I obey!" The voice from inside the metal head said, before erupting into a peal of laughter. With a hiss of escaping steam, the thing’s head rose on a pair of pistons on each side of it, revealing Rudy surrounded by a mass of buttons and levers. In the front of the cockpit appeared to be the joysticks of the RC unit salvaged from the copter. Rudy looked at me. "Check it out, Thomas! I got a mecha!"
"It’s not a mecha!" Sandra said in a tone that suggested they'd been over this definition a few dozen times.
"Then its a kaju! Point me at Godzilla! I can take him!" Rudy's left paw hit a lever, and the right pincher spun up with a whirr. "Drill punch!" Rudy shouted as the robot's arm swung upward. The mech pitched forward from the momentum and began to topple forward.
"Step right! Step right!" Sandra squeaked. Rudy cursed and the mech just barely managed to catch itself.
"Oh I'm sure this will be a true help, Sandra," Jowls said. "A snack-driven robot."
Lightning quick, Sandra jabbed a button on the Robot's neck and the head slammed down on Rudy, cutting off his retort. "This way we can test all the mechanical structures and make sure those are sound before we move onto implanting it with intelligence."
"Excellent progress then, Sandra," Jules said. "Now let’s hurry up and test it in the field. Everyone pile into the van."
Everyone nodded and moved out into the parking lot. Noise had one foot on the van’s bumper when she froze and emitted a small moo of distress. "Damn it, I’m herd following!” She whirled back to me. "Thomas, did you find out what’s wrong with me? Can these people help?”
“Uh…“ I began.
Tom stepped up. “Yes! And maybe! But now we have to move at the moment.”
“Why don’t you come with us, Noise? We can explain on the way," Richard said, gesturing into the van.
“Magi,” Noise muttered the word like a curse under her breath and crawled into the van. We piled in after her, the van proving a bit of a squeeze for six people, a robot and a cougar.
Jules pulled onto the road and headed north as I tried to explain what I'd seen. By the time I finished, Noise was grinding her teeth together.
"What happens if my soul snaps?" she asked Richard.
Richard grimaced. "If a magus' thread snaps, they usually die, and if they don't, it means no more magic. Ever. Also their personality tends to be fundamentally altered. You'd be human and a different person."
"So if I survive, I die too." Noise slumped.
"Now, that’s hopefully not what would happen!" Richard said. "But we don't know! We've not experts on lunar energy. It’s a really bizarre thing. To have an anchor to a specific plane be heredity is a huge mystery to all magi, despite the considerable effort that’s gone into trying to understand it. You draw energy from it, but you also send your humanity back along it as the moon waxes. It’s like a conceptual ecosystem. Wolf, human and change. Now you've got another plane between you and it."
Noise bowed her head for a moment, digesting that and looking down at her two-fingered hands. "So I risk dying or I become a monster."
Well, technically she was already a werewolf, but it didn't seem like the right time to split whiskers. I put a paw on her leg. "Look, just help us out for now. I'm sure we can figure something out."
She nodded minutely and slumped against the wall. At least Tom, Dick and Harry were having an animated discussion about the problem, even if the discussion mostly consisted of trading what-ifs.
After a few minutes, the muscles I'd been leaning against tensed and Noise stirred. "So, where are we going anyway?" she asked.
Jules regarded her in the rearview mirror. "Just a spot in the state forest. Nobody will be there."
"This is my pack's territory!" A note of panic crept into Noise's voice. "I can't help you raid my pack's territory."
"We're after tass, not game, Miss Noise. I doubt anyone in pack your will notice. Since they're all nearly human at the moment."
"What if you’re wrong? My Pa could kill me!"
"Thomas, could you please have Miss Noise quiet down," Jules said, staring at me through his rearview mirror as if I was a misbehaving child in the back seat.
I shouldered myself onto Noise's lap, pinning her legs. "Noise, please don't antagonize my clients," I whispered. "I need them on our side if we want to have a shot at curing you."
Anger flared in her eyes. "I don't work for magi! I'm no spell dog!"
"Without help you're not going to be a werewolf either! You can stay in the van if you want and sulk, but that’s not gunna help anybody. You might as well do this little thing!"
I got a close look at her teeth; all were wider than they should have been but plenty sharp. "That's how the damn cat got us. Little things, little favors, and before you knew it we were growling over which of us had the honor of being stepped on!"
"It’s not like that, Noise! There's no mind control here! But there's no health insurance either! You gotta work while you still can!"
Noise snorted hot breath directly into my face. "Oh, so this is totally my problem now? Meanwhile you’re scrapping together all your pennies for O'Meara!"
"Hey g—" Rudy tried to interrupt.
"Not now!" I snapped at him before turning back to Noise. "Leave O’Meara out of this! You're not dying!"
"If I'm still tainted like this come the half-moon, then I might as well be dead! My pack will kick me out, Thomas! Don't you think that’s a high priority?"
"Thomas!" I heard Rudy somewhere off to my left and ignored him.
I growled. "I owe O'Meara my life, Noise! That’s a debt I have to repay! I have to heal her because nobody else is going to! You're a big girl! I can't fix everything! I'm only one guy!"
Noise opened her mouth to reply right before my nose was attacked. "THOMAS!" Rudy chittered at me, flinging his body across my muzzle and my vision. "Hey, listen!" I shook my head to dislodge of the rodent, but he stubbornly held onto my face. "Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!"
"What, Rudy? What do you want? Get off my nose."
"Okay!" The squirrel sprang again. "Just needed to tell you guys that we've arrived." He smiled, and I realized everyone in the van was looking at me and Noise.
"Sooo awkward!" Rudy whispered.
Jowls smiled from his box. "Are you two going to be alright?"
Noise and I made the briefest of eye contact.
"We're fine!" we both spat.
"Good! Now let’s get some tass!" Jowls crowed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Noise avoided my gaze as the magi began their preparations, but she took a black tass bag from Jules as he passed them out. Once Sandra powered up
the robot and got Rudy situated, Noise kept it between her and me. Trying to sort out the damage from that little spat would have to wait. I made sure Jules and Jowls crafted Noise a short-term protection charm so she didn't get any more echoes from whatever plane of existence was about to hurtle into ours. At least this one didn't threaten anyone in town.
Jules had parked the van in front of a perfectly normal looking patch of forest. The sun shined as a chilly wind whipped down the road.
"Here it comes!" Jules said, peering at his watch as I leapt onto the van's roof for a good view and threaded my vision back into the trio. I loved Noise, but I just couldn't fix her problem. Hell, it might actually be a good thing if she had to leave her pack. Her father, Walter, was the portrait of an asshole and was probably abusive to boot. Who knew, anyway? The problem could sort itself out. The trio seemed like a capable bunch. Hopefully they could figure out a solution that didn't have the whole chance of death thing attached.
Richard mentally prodded me to pay attention as a purple haze swept the forest in front of us. I waited for it to all transform into birds or crystal squids. Instead they began to melt. Their needles shrank into waxy nodes dripping like hot candle wax. The tree trunks started to sag, until the they were all bent like willows. A small bird attempted to flee its shelter but landed on the ground with a wet plop. It struggled before its wings melted away, leaving it a bean-shaped ball of gray wax with a beak.
A murmur came from among the magi, tones of disgust.
"This doesn't look too friendly," Rudy commented, his voice muffled from the confines of his cockpit.
"Double-check your warding charms," Jules instructed as white stars appear among the branches of the snagging trees. "Get as much as you can but don't lose your footing." Jules took out the same wand he'd used to push the cars around while the trio, Rudy and Noise advanced toward the transition on foot.
Why don't you guys have something like that? I asked them.
Oh we do, but it's not safe to use kinetic magic in a transition. You never know what the transition will do to the physics, the trio said.
He'll risk it because he hates getting his hands dirty, Tom added.
A new star bloomed, bright blue, from deep in the forest, the light of an anchor being drawn upon. A savage gale howled out of the forest, answering the question of who before I identified the aura. It hit me like a torrent of pillows fired from a rail gun. My claws scrabbled on the van roof but found no purchase on the smooth metal. I stumbled off it head over tail, mewing in a most undignified way. The trio were bowled over where they stood. They were all attempting shield their eyes from the hail of debris the wind was flinging at them. The wind picked up all manner of waxy droplets from the transition, and the stuff was turning back into stones, pine needles and bark as it whipped across the threshold. By the time I'd sat up, Jules, Jowls and Sandra had joined me on the far side of the van.
Jowls howled indignantly, "Those Blackwings! The nerve of them! I won the duel! It’s not right, Thomas! Not right at all!"
"Well, nobody owns a transition, right?" I said as the trio turned the corner of the van and joined us, panting. "Where's Rudy and Noise?" I asked them.
When they jerked their thumbs back toward the transition, I threaded around them to stick my head around the corner. It was like sticking your face out the window while your buddy was driving a hundred miles an hour on the highway. Not that I've ever done that.
Noise and Rudy slogged across the transition's border, each sinking up to their ankles in the muck. Rudy's clank took another step and squished down nearly to the knee. Past them, that brilliant blue star continued to shine. I recognized the aura, streaks of red and green, as Dorothy. It could be no other. Then among the treetops more auras flickered. The remainder of the Blackwings flitted about in the form of crows, the howling wind ruffling not so much as a feather. Two pairs of them worked, one holding a tass bag while the other, the dogs most likely, dug the tass out of the trees with their beaks.
Were they immune to the wind? Or was Dorothy steering it around them somehow? And what the hell were Rudy and Noise doing? She couldn't see magic unless the moon was entirely full, and Rudy, well, he didn't look like he was going to make it very far at all.
The wind increased and hurled a glob of wax that elongated into a whirling stick of hurt that smacked me in the face with a crack. I retreated before I sustained additional head trauma. I turned to Richard. "Options? Can we block the wind?"
As if in answer, the wind around us became a deafening roar and the van began to tilt toward us. Only when Jules hit the side of the van with the beam from his wand did it slam back down onto four wheels. The grim faces surrounding me confirmed it: the Blackwings had won this round. All we could do was wait it out.
In five minutes the windy assault ended, along with the transition. Silence reigned for a brief moment before six raucous caws of victory split the air.
"Come back here, you moldy peanut brains!" Rudy cried out after them.
I waited for a similar invective from Noise, but one didn't come. I bolted around the van and ran into the forest. Rudy had made it another step or two and had sunk into the ground up to the robot's waist. "Noise?" I shouted.
"Here," came a quiet moan deeper in the trees.
She'd made it much farther, but the ground had solidified around her knees. She was plastered with detritus from the forest, pine needles clinging to every bit of clothing and skin.
"Are you alright? Did you get hurt?"
Instead of answering she extended her tass bag toward me. It was stuffed with pinecones, dirt and sticks. "Tell me this is tass."
I studied her and then the bag. I shook my head.
Her anger flared up out of nowhere. She slammed the bag into the ground and let out a bellow of rage. "You mean I just did that for nothing? And let me guess, it was another mage?"
I stepped back, glad she was rooted in the ground for this moment. "They won this round. Next time we'll be ready."
"You never mentioned there were more magi out there! Don't you think that detail would have been helpful?"
"Noise!" I glanced back at the van.
"NO! I'm done! I never should have listened to that old man! Pa is right! Nothing good ever comes of getting mixed up with magi! Nothing!"
"Old man?" The words hit me like a sucker punch. "Do you mean the Archmagus?"
"You were supposed to be a wolf! You were supposed to be MY wolf! The bastard lied. Just like they all lie!" Tears blazed paths down her dirt-covered cheeks, making muddy rivers.
My heart thundered as my hackles rose. "You helped him? You helped him ruin my life!"
"You couldn't remember me! You bought me drinks three times! We went on dates, but as soon as the moon rose you forgot me! He offered to help."
"No no no!" I hissed. "You can't be involved! You're the reason I fought so hard to stay here, to avoid the TAU. To not be a familiar to some random magus!" I didn't want to believe it, but I could feel doors opening in my head. My heart beat so hard that it hurt, threatened to burst.
Yet she stared at me, eyes ablaze, totally defiant. "What are my options? I have a small pack. I can't leave to find a mate. Pa would fucking get himself killed and the pack will just die out. So I asked him to make you into a mate, a suitable mate. He gave me a powder to slip into your coffee or meals. You loved my cooking."
"SHUT UP!" I roared and lashed out. My claws caught her cheek and tore out three gashes on her face.
"Motherfucker!" Noise swore, clapping a hand over her cheek. Blood already ran down it in solid stream.
"Why are you even telling me this? I didn't need to know! It’s done! I can't go back! You, we, are the one part of my life that never asked for anything! I didn't have duty or a job or a fight with you. We could just be!" I could barely see now, my vision blurring.
Her growl rumbled like thunder from the sky. "You want revenge now? Well, you got it! I'm a freak among freaks! In a few days they'll just put me out
to pasture!" She jerked her head upward, showing me her throat. It pulsated with the force of her frantic heart. "Go ahead. Rip it out! If you don't, my father will!"
Part of me wanted to. Part of me wanted to clamp my jaws down on that neck and taste the hot blood of the mate that betrayed me. The rest of me told that part to go jump in a cold lake.
I reared up and put my paws on her shoulders and whispered. "If your father kills you, then I'll personally see that he's sent to the very special hell reserved for fathers who kill their daughters. If it doesn't exist, then I'll create one for him." Noise's eyes widened as I pulled away. "I'm sorry about the cheek," I said, and then left her there.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the way back I spent a lot of time staring at my paws. Useful things, deadly weapons and still painted green and purple. How had I been so stupid? It had been a physical struggle for us to date after the change. I'd ignored all the instinctual bullshit my body threw at me because I'd fought so hard to stay in Grantsville for her, defying everyone who hinted at shipping me off somewhere else. I'd killed three of them. Sabrina and Cornealius’ deaths had been tangentially related, but I'd snapped Sidney's neck because the damn cat wanted to sell me. That had been the cost I'd been willing to pay for her.
And when I'd found out she was a werewolf? Part of the same pack that had snapped my bond with O'Meara? Well, that hadn't been their fault. They'd been mind-controlled. Sunk costs. I made it work. She made it work too. Because of what? Did she feel guilty about what she'd done? Bitch.
I wanted to rip something, slash the upholstery and smash the windows. But to do that I'd have to unsheathe my still-painted claws and remember all the tiny details as to why the effort to stay with her had been worth it.
Woman are trouble, a bother. The thought floated through my mind, uninvited and not mine.
I mentally cursed the trio. I'd never shut the link. I'd completely forgotten about them. Sorry. I can sever the link while I put myself back together. I'm not in a... professional mindset right now.
Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2) Page 12