I played it cool. "Hardy, har, har, har, Weaver. You can put us down now. We're kinda in a hurry." Technically the toolbox that was her thorax contained no digestive system, but I'd seen her catch a soul and put it back into a body, so challenging her ability to eat me might lead to an unpleasant demonstration.
"You're on social terms with giant spider spirits now?" For someone who was the size of two of the world’s largest football players put together, Noise's voice reached an impressive octave.
I sighed. "Noise, meet the Weaver, a spider god who's really good at healing. Weaver, meet Noise, my... ex-girlfriend." We hadn't really talked much since she'd attempted to eat me. The technomagi had kept us both busy and separated the last few days, so we hadn't had a chance to sort ourselves out. Not that I was in a hurry to have that conversation.
Crushed against Noise's thigh, I felt her take a deep breath before the muscle rippled beneath me like living steel. "I am a member of the Granite pack and you should not be here, spirit."
The spider spun on the strand of chain that it dangled from, laughing with that marvelous, and I suspected stolen, voice. "Oh, I see the strands between you both now, caught in a web of your own spinning, my dear."
Noise growled. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Weaver swung close, hooking the net with two legs. "Just imagine that Khatt next to you happy, healthy and in love with someone else!"
A two-fingered fist slammed into the Weaver's face with the force of an electromagnetically driven piston. Her head shattered, her eyes scattering in every direction. Screeching, Weaver swung away from us like an awkward tetherball in a schoolyard. She collided with a tree and skittered into its branches, dripping a trail of motor oil in her wake.
Noise reached up and grabbed the chains at the top of the net. Snap! Gravity hit me with a vengeance and I found myself twisting through the air before hitting the ground on all fours. It shook from Noise's impact beside me.
Noise rubbed her fist. "For the record, I hit her because she gave me the opportunity, not because I flew into a jealous rage."
As if I was going to argue with her now. "So noted," I said. A motion caught my eye. One of Weaver's socket eyes that had landed a few feet from where I stood tipped onto its side and began to roll toward the tree Weaver had fled up. A wet patch spread across my back. I looked and saw I stood under Noise's injured arm, hanging limp, blood dripping from the dull claws of her fingers. I wondered how much blood she'd lost. I nosed her knee. "Come on, let’s get out of here," I whispered.
She didn't budge. Instead she called up to the tree the socket was now rolling up. "If you want to deal, then let’s deal on even footing."
Weaver inched down from the foliage. She'd reassembled her face, with the now-shattered bits of tools proving more flexible than entire tools. The shape of her head now had a much closer resemblance to the one I'd witnessed with Bone Whistler.
"Your werewolf thing is quite rude," Weaver hissed.
"Sorry but you know werewolves. Impossible to train, even when they're not the size of a small house."
Noise growled. "Watch it. I could still use you as a peace offering to Pa."
I ignored Noise and kept my gaze on Weaver, who made no move from her perch watching me with seven remaining eyes. "Next time you carry me into your world, you will provide me a body of natural materials, none of this noisome metal. My web must have both have strength and flexibility to bind those within it."
I didn't point out just how flexible the chain of hydrocarbons that made up a portion of her body could be. Noise might have had much more difficulty snapping a net of nylon than chain links. "You think there will be a next time?"
"You snared us because you need something," Noise said. "What is it?"
"Need is such a silly word. I am a God, a weaver of both souls and webs. There is nothing I need from the likes of you, little wolf. Yet I do want things, and my time on this plane grows short. You wish to trade a want of mine for your need? Untangling your soul from that meadow would be a trivial thing for one such as I."
"And what would that cost me?" Noise folded her arms and glared at the god.
"Since Thomas cannot, you could build me a proper body of oak and willow, obsidian for my fangs and opal my eyes. Store it in a dry, locked space until you or he have need of me."
"Why would we need you?" I asked, fearing I knew the answer.
Weaver turned her seven eyes to me, smiling slyly. "Why indeed? Why indeed have something that can reverse death itself at your call? Swallow a spider and its web, and travel to Bone Whistler in the presence of a suitable body. I will meet you there."
"The price for your services?"
"Just a small piece of yourself." The weaver chuckled with that soft feminine voice. "Quite a bargain against the end of one's life."
"Deal," Noise grunted.
"Noise!" I protested.
She gave me a sidelong glance as she stepped forward. "There's no harm in building her a statue. I need to get back to normal." She looked up at the spider.
"You will be responsible for keeping it safe," the spider responded.
"If it's destroyed while under my care, I'll rebuild it. If it's destroyed while you're using it or you don't bring it back, that's not my issue," Noise said.
"Agreed." Weaver clambered down the tree, and I took a step back. Noise stood her ground. Even Weaver, as large as she was, only came up to Noise's waist.
I saw something knit together between the two of them, a strand of gold, the color I usually only saw in wards. But this was entirely different. Both stared at each other a bit. Noise's tail remained firmly between her legs, and her big ears were rotated downward as if they wanted to fold back against her head but couldn’t quite manage it. Weaver's many eyes scanned her up and down, the spider's posture posed to leap away at a moment's notice.
Noise nodded after a moment and spread her arms. Weaver darted in and plunged four legs not into Noise's chest, but her head, the pliers bending into those invisible angles. The limbs flashed in a series of motions and withdrew. No dramatic flares of energy or spider bites. "It is done," Weaver announced.
Noise appeared unchanged. She looked at her still-two-fingered hands with disappointment.
"The influence of the meadow will fade once you fulfill your end of the bargain. I have healed your injuries as a courtesy," Weaver said. The spirit did a sort of bow to her and then me. With a final "Till we meet again," the tools crashed to the ground in a shower of metal.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Noise and I hid ourselves in a patch of tangled space along the border once Weaver had left. Oddly, Jules never sent anyone after us. Probably too busy making anti-cougar wards around the park. If that was his game plan, then creating wards over an area that large would take them at least a night.
With O'Meara gone, the most natural spot to retreat to was Rudy's tree, but thanks to Noise's bulk we had to take a roundabout route that avoided the major roads. Without the Veil, getting spotted would mean cops or people shooting at us. Going back to the cops might not be a bad idea, but my thinking was the squirrel, lacking natural weapons, might be our best spokesperson.
Noise disagreed. "You're going to send Rudy to talk to the cops? Don't even suggest that to him. He'll think it’s a great idea and promptly blow something up!"
"Well, my run-in with them left a bad taste in everybody's mouth, but I didn't want them bum rushing the technomagi. Harry would have mowed them all down with his force wand." The wand in question sat strapped to my back. Neither Noise nor I had the manual dexterity to use it well.
"So we blockade them. They have to come out to harvest tass, right? And Jowls is the only one who can see it."
"Then we're at a stalemate that's ripping apart the town." Not to mention there are lots of ways for magi to slip past a checkpoint. Invisibility, tunneling, and outright teleportation.
"And you didn't see this coming?"
"Jules and Jowls saved my bacon befo
re and I assumed we shared a common morality that includes 'killing non-magical people is wrong.'" I stopped and looked at her. "Werewolves don't eat people, do they?"
Noise grunted, "Not habitually, no. But no werewolf is going to be particularly bothered if an annoying neighbor disappeared. We traditionally protect our sheep. Humans provide things and comforts that we like. And while the Veil protects us from direct unmasking, we're going to be regarded as deeply weird and that will lead the lynch mobs right to our door."
"Wizards have no such constraints."
"Thomas, magi might not even talk to a mundane within a year. They regard werewolves as animals to be caught and trained. Jules is probably perfectly reasonable to other magi and probably thinks of himself progressive for talking to werewolves. Advocating that he should worry about the mundanes in Grantsville is the same as arguing that a pile of kindling shouldn't be burned on the fire."
"They don't normally face any consequences for their actions at all do they."
"On mundanes? Not unless they make the Veil work too hard." She paused and knelt in front of me, blocking our progress forward. "Thomas, you'll never be able to save them all. No more than you could save all the mice in the world from all the cats. Simply because you have hands and can talk doesn't make you 'not lunch' for something larger. Humans are still part of a food chain. There are other creatures out there who do prey on humans, who kill them. And if they didn't, they'd die. It’s what they are. They didn't ask to be predators of humans any more than you asked to be a cougar."
"You telling me I can't slay monsters?"
"Naw. Any prey animal has a right to defend itself. Humans have society to avenge them. I'm saying you're going to have to let some deaths go. Pick your battles, otherwise they'll just add you the pile."
"Magi are human. They need to respect the lives of all humans. This is dark shit, Noise! This is the death of ten thousand people! Individuals! If that’s not a good hill to die on, I don't know what is. If Jules and Jowls can't see what they're doing is wrong, then they need to be stopped."
"And if you succeed, what then, Thomas? Systemically execute every magus that's killed a mundane? You'll be just as much a butcher as they are by the time you're done."
"People aren’t just resources to be mined, Noise!"
"Everything in this world can be used for something. You got lucky. You got to be an exception to the system because of that dragon, because Archibald did something to you. Congratulations."
"Things have to change, Noise! And it will start here! Maybe! O'Meara only killed in self-defense! It was, granted, overkill self-defense, but still! She's a decent human being! And so is Ixey! They're not all monsters and predators! Hell, Ixey even respects spirits. You should have seen the glare she gave Sandra once she saw how she keeps those elementals."
"Course they're better. They're inquisitors. They have to clean up for the rest of them. They're outliers."
"Do you know that? Do you know any magi outside of this town? Rinoa helped me save you from the hunger plane. She saved me when she didn't have to."
Noise stopped walking. "That sounds like you're going to leave."
I looked off into the distance. "I think I have to. Once this is over. I have to see what the rest of the magic world is like."
"And if you find that the majority of magi ARE monsters in your eyes? What then? Become a serial killer of magi?"
"O'Meara once told me that Archibald had been exiled here because he attempted to destroy the Veil. Maybe he had the right idea!"
"Thomas!" Noise's voice cracked with shock.
"Do you see what will happen here without the Veil? Folks are figuring out that the magi are responsible and they're taking steps to stop them. Maybe they won't succeed, just like a deer that's spotted me might not get away, but now they can perceive what's happening to them. They won't just walk into the slaughter unaware."
"Thomas! Werewolves can't hide at all without the Veil! The humans would finish off what the magi nearly did!"
"Well, it’s not a perfect solution, I admit. But from humanity's viewpoint it'd a better world! Things would change. Werewolves would have to get better at hiding or convince their neighbors that they really are protectors."
Noise snarled. "I'm a wolf, Thomas."
"Your father's at least half English bulldog and you've got enough Rottweiler that you have the coloration. For packs like yours it would be easy to present yourselves as protectors."
"Like a bunch of guard dogs? Never!"
I sighed. There was no point even looking down this particular rabbit hole at the moment. "It’s still probably impossible. In the meantime, we have a squirrel to find."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rudy didn't appear to be home. His nest, which usually had some movie playing in it at a volume I could just make out, was completely dark and silent. Night had fallen before we arrived and the stars were out in force, which struck me as odd.
"Rudy?" I whispered loudly to the still air. "Where are ya?"
I heard a rustling up in the tree and expected to see Rudy bursting out of the branches. Yet no rodent appeared. The tree essentially had to two arm-like branches. One of those branches, pointing deeper into the wood, shook as if in a strong wind, the naked branches flexing. The other remained dead still.
"I think it wants us to go that way," Noise said.
"Guess so."
We set off. I mentally shelved the questions I knew the damn squirrel would never answer. Deeper into the woods proved to be a bit of a misnomer, as the forest was a strip of wood about 500-feet wide with houses running along either side. A precisely measured thickness so you couldn't see a hint of your neighborhood through the trees and a homeowner with a tall fence could pretend that they lived in the wilderness while looking off the back porch. For me, Rudy and most of the wildlife, stretches like this one functioned as a roadway into or away from the center of town.
I picked up Rudy's sign almost immediately, the acrid scent of a firecracker at the base of a birch tree in the dead center of the forest strip. I tasted the air; the expression looks like a snarl, but it’s sort of like sticking a finger in your ears and cleaning out the wax. It opens everything wide and scents hit me like a jackhammer when I do it.
Rudy himself doesn't have much of a scent. Natural squirrels' territories aren't larger than what they can see. Rudy had set off firecrackers every thousand feet or so and Noise appeared content to let me do the tracking. The forest, while young, had a tree sprouting from the ground every two feet or so, which made Noise's passage, well, noisy to say the least. With her massive bulk, she had to thread through the dense trees sideways, breaking every single one of the dried up branches up to eight feet off the ground. Between that and the thunder of her footsteps, it sounded like Rudy's tree had uprooted itself and was giving slow chase.
We followed the trail into the wider wood where the path got more difficult. Rudy had cut back and forth across streams and hills. Wherever he'd been going, he'd either gotten lost or interrupted.
"There!" Noise pointed after tracking a total of thirteen fireworks.
I looked in the indicated direction and saw nothing but a rocky outcropping. "Really?"
"On the other side."
I leapt on top of the outcropping and immediately spotted a soft glow in the distance. Damn eight foot tall two-leggers. The light proved to be a cellphone propped in a tree, its completely white screen illuminating the end of a hollowed out log.
"Bout time you two showed up!" Rudy scolded from the top of the log, tail lashing like a wind sock. "Much longer and I'd have to shove a few firecrackers down your cousin's throat."
"Cousin?"
"There's a bobcat sulking around," Noise said with a smirk. "Didn't you smell him?"
"I was a little busy playing follow the firecracker." I sniffed and changed the subject. "Rudy, what are you doing out here?"
"Hunting wild cashews! What's it look like I'm doing?" He stamped his feet on th
e log, directing my gaze at it. Shavings littered the outside of the log. I crept closer and my eyes slowly resolved detail. The entire opening of the log had been leveled and symbols had been chewed into it. There was the faintest glimmer of magic contained within them. I looked up at the squirrel in wonderment. He'd gnawed the opening of the log entirely flat and chewed a latticework of Greek around the rim. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a wooden hole big enough for a cougar to fit through in a forest where the average age of the trees is less than twenty years?"
"Well, it would have been easier if you kept in a straight line," Noise said. "Trees get older the farther you get out of town."
"I was heading in a straight line!"
Noise and I shared a glance.
"Oh good, you two are already bonded then? You had to bond to make your dramatic escape from Jules and Jowls, right?"
"Bond! Us?" Noise sounded revolted. "Why on earth would we do that?"
"Neither of us are magi!" I said. "There'd be no point."
Rudy gave us both the how-can-you-both-be-so-stupid stare. "You haven't figured it out yet?"
"Figured out what?" I asked.
"Magi aren't frikken special! You're both magi!"
"I'm not a magus!" Noise snapped, then growled.
Rudy didn't even flinch despite how far she loomed over him. "Yes you are! All werewolves are bound to the same conceptual plane. All you're missing is a familiar and education."
"You're full of bullshit, rodent!"
"I'm not! A magus is taught that they're special though a five-year apprenticeship. Familiars get two weeks of training and then BAM! Bonded. Most familiars never realize they have nearly as much control over magic as their magus does. Remember Oric's teleportation tricks? The bird's a magus and doesn't even know it."
"I thought you wanted to be a familiar, Rudy," I said.
"I want to be many things, but I'm squirrel, and that’s what I'm gunna be."
Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2) Page 22