Tack growled. Rinoa gave a sad chuckle and placed a hand on her familiar, who stilled. He looked down at the ground with a sorrowful expression. "I don't know. I haven't seen them in a week."
"What! Why would you leave? Cabals are supposed to stick together! Thick and thin. Like the three musketeers!" Rudy gesticulated wildly.
"I had to leave them," she said, wrapping her arms around Tack's neck. He didn't look well. His coat had thinned in places and his muscular frame had withered. Rinoa had thinned as well, her face gaunt, her previously fiery blue eyes dulled to smoldering embers.
I sighed. "She killed Neelius."
"What?" Rudy's tail flashed back in forth.
I pushed myself to my feet. My muscles protested all the way as if I were a hundred years old, my joints creaking and popping. "I had hoped you hadn't confessed to them."
"When did you figure this out?" Rudy demanded.
"Soon as you showed me the phone and the blown circuit on it. It was nearly identical to one that detonated below the dueling space. Ixey couldn't track it back to Rinoa because she hadn't realized Rinoa was a technomagus." I looked over to Rinoa. "Right?"
Rinoa blew a wayward bang out her eyes. "I'm not a technomagus. I dabble in it a little. It's neat."
"And it was you in the trees watching us the night I showed Jules the tainted tass in the grinder. You, or more likely Tack, probably clearly smelled that the tass we were harvesting was corrupted and vulnerable to disruption."
"I thought I was being so clever," She said, her voice muffled by the fur on Tack's neck.
Tack meanwhile still had his ears flat against his head as he watched me, although he’d covered his teeth. "W-Why didn't you open the portal? Some sort of weird power trip to come through Rinoa's mouth?"
"Because this is a jailbreak, not a bargaining session," I said. "Jules is screwing everybody now, and if we don't do something about it, everybody in Grantsville is going to be in somebody else's stomach."
Rinoa sucked on her cheek and chewed for a moment before answering in a whisper. "The black plane. It came back, didn't it?"
"Worse. It’s a shallowing now," I said.
Rinoa stood abruptly and pointed across the plains, the horizon dotted with flames. "Then you need Veronica. I last saw them that way. Seven days ago."
"Alrighty! Let’s go!" Rudy bounded three feet in that direction, then stopped when he realized nobody was following. He turned back to me. "Come on!"
"I'm not going back until Veronica calls for me. I've got karma to pay." Rinoa gave a weak smile. "I'm the reason it’s all gone to hell."
"Lot of good you'll do anyone out here." I walked over to Rinoa, telling my muscles to shut up with the protests, and offered the side of my harness. "I've got a few granola bars. Take two."
Pride warred in her face for a moment but melted under a pleading look from Tack.
"Thomas! Didn't you hear? She killed Neelius! If she's gonna stay here and do time, let her! We got no time for playing Guilty McGee."
I ignored the squirrel. "Look Rinoa, you believe in karma, right? You pay that off by doing good, not doing nothing. If we don't find the Blackwings soon, everybody in Grantsville is going to either be dead or mutated beyond recognition."
Tack looked up at her with a slight wag to his tail.
Rinoa breathed in and closed her eyes. Under her breath I heard the wisp of a song. "Broken causes, never gather applauses. As I sit ponder all, where or when does my witching hour fall." Her voice wasn't magical, it didn't bring life to the endless desert around us, but it had a clear effect on the magus and her familiar. When her eyes reopened, they were resolute. "Fair warning, they won't be happy to see me."
"Dorothy in particular?" I asked.
"How'd you guess?" She smirked with a half breath of laughter.
Rudy rolled his eyes. "Okay good! We're all properly motivated now. Let’s move. We're dealing with at least a two-X time acceleration here. Maybe more. That’s good, but the sooner we get going the— " The ground rumbled like a growling stomach beneath us. "What was that?" his voice squeaked.
"The fucking fire worms!" Rinoa shouted, her aura bursting to life. "Everyone scatter! I'll distract it!"
Of course the blasted fire desert had giant worms! That makes perfect sense! I thought as I ran to scoop up Rudy up onto my back. My back had other ideas and exploded in pain as the tender muscles spasmed, jerking my front half from the ground. My front paws clawed at the empty air as the rest of my body toppled to the ground like a poorly balanced teapot. Dust flew up around me as the tremors increased to a cacophony. All I could do was close my eyes and think, Well, in all the many ways I was likely to die in the coming year, death by sandworm hadn't made it into the top ten.
"Thomas! Um, ah, you have to stay- Stay absolutely still!" Tack's voice came to my ears.
I ceased trying to stand. I hadn't realized I'd been trying to get up until I stopped. My body is apparently as stubborn as I am. Then I heard the hooves pounding all around me. An unseen stampede encircled me, and my heart crawled up my throat looking for a hug while "The Lion King: the audio drama" erupted with me as the ill-fated king. Yet there was no hooved mass trampling me into the dirt. Instead, pinpricks of yellow exploded all around me and then passed, marks of Rinoa’s magic. The rumbling stopped as the sparkles raced away. A bare thousand feet away, like a whale breaching from the sea, a massive head exploded from the red sands. A mouth formed of four separate pieces yawned wide around the area of Rinoa's auditory illusion. The creature could have swallowed a VW Bug in a single bite. Its jaws closed with an ear-splitting snap, and then it submerged.
"Looks like I owe you again," I said.
"Shhh!" Rinoa shushed harsh and desperate.
The worm exploded from the ground again, its four jaws thundering with an angry rumble. It extended itself several stories from the ground before letting loose a high-pitched scream that bent my whiskers out of place. The scream grew as the worm's head swung in a wild arc.
"Aw crud, that’s the biggest bat I ever did see," Rudy said. I felt two small paws on my rear. "Come on, Thomas, get up! Time to go. It's echolocating."
I tried to take the suggestion to heart, but my muscles simply refused to obey even as the beast stopped its rotations to draw a bead on us.
"Damn it," Rinoa breathed. She was already on her knees, panting, Tack supporting her. "That worked last time."
"Rudy, do you see Harry's rod behind you?" After the encounter with Weaver, Noise had made a hole in my harness to stow the rod.
"Honey roasted California cashews!" he responded, which I translated to a yes. I felt tugging on my harness accompanied with small grunts. "Got it! Wow! There are a lot buttons on this thing! Which one fires?"
The worm reared back in preparation to strike, its four jaws swinging open to display the shine of molten magma within its throat. "The top one!" I shouted as the worm's head zeroed in on our little group.
The yellow beam struck it dead-on as worm head lashed forward. The worm's movement slowed but didn't stop. The great jaws opened and closed in slow motion. A whine filled the air, like the charging of an old-fashioned camera flash.
"Turn it up, Rudy!"
"I'm trying!" The beam narrowed a bit. "Rotten walnuts, would it kill the technomagi to label things?" Rudy swore as the worm picked up speed. "Aha! Other way!" The worm's progress froze all together as the pitch of the whine increased. "That’s as far it goes!" The worm shook as it strained against the kinetic energy field. Its jaws opened and closed, and its body pulsed as the light from its throat grew to a red that threatened to sear my retinas. An acrid scent crept into my nostrils. "Bad worm!" Rudy cried as he swung the beam downward, slamming its head into the ground. The worm screamed fire as the ground shook beneath us.
"No cheating!" Rudy pulled the beam upward, wrenching the worm into the sky. The worm lost its leverage as Rudy pulled it from the ground like a titanic earthworm, its writhing body so long that it blocked the burn
ing sun high over our heads.
A loud pop sounded against the worm's screams, and the bright yellow beam winked out of existence. "Aw nuts." The worm began to fall. "TIIIIMBEEEEEER!"
I struggled up to my feet, trying to ignore my spasming muscles. I got three legs moving while my rear left leg locked into a scream-worthy Charlie horse. Growling with the effort, I hobbled to the side of the falling worm just before it hit the ground. My world became dust and thunder.
We all found each other through our coughing and sneezing at the dust. The four of us huddled, breathing through Rinoa's sand-caked clothing as we waited for a seeming eternity for it to settle. When it finally did, only the smoothness of the sand greeted our eyes, with no sign that the worm had ever existed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We set off, following Rinoa's lead. Honestly, it just appeared to be a random direction to me. I couldn't see or smell any trace of her passage along our route. I didn't see the focus that allowed the Blackwings to transform into crows among the scant few on her person. Tack sported none at all.
The sun never moved, and there was no night. Eventually my bruised muscles gave out entirely and I slept. When I opened my eyes, the only evidence of the passage of time could be found in the way Rudy's coat had gone from gray to a dusty red before he shook himself out. A breeze kicked up, sending the clouds of dust that erupted from every footstep rolling toward the distant horizon. I grew so bored that I started to see the shapes of faces within the dust stirred up by Rinoa and Tack's feet. I ate a few strips of the jerky, but I had nothing to deal with my growing thirst.
We set off again without much conversation. The desert wasn't beastly hot as long as we stayed away from the burning bushes that dotted the landscape. I wouldn't call it pleasant with my winter coat, but my tongue didn't hang from my mouth, unlike Tack's, which was dry and covered in dust. If he complained about it, he didn't do so to anyone but Rinoa. Initially my muscles had protested the movement but soon settled into the timeless rhythm of walking. I had to hold myself back and not get ahead of Rinoa. With only two legs, her pace over the dust was a crawl.
With no solar movement, I lost track of time. Only when Rinoa literally keeled over did I realize my own endurance had been spent. Tack pulled a water bottle from her bag filled with a green ichor. Rudy assisted with the cap, and Tack poured it into her mouth with surprising dexterity. She coughed and sputtered to life, pushing her familiar away as she sat up. Eventually she took the bottle from his teeth and then nursed it like a cold beer.
"After we left, we walked for three days straight," Tack said as Rinoa drained the last of the ichor. Recovering, Rinoa and Tack showed Rudy and I how they'd been surviving. We went to the nearest flaming bush, a big one, nearly a tree, reaching up past Rinoa's head before the branches burst into forge-hot flame. With his paws, Tack dug a circle around it, and the pair sat themselves on opposite ends. The tree's flame abruptly went out as the pair weaved a spell onto it. Small, blackened creatures, each as big as a mouse, scrabbled within the branches in aimless panic. One by one their ashy carapaces unfolded marvelously iridescent wings that buzzed until the creatures took an ungainly flight, drunkenly bobbing and weaving until they exited the circle and burst back into flame. Within twenty minutes, two dozen winged fireballs were in-flight away from us, heading for shelter in nearby flaming plant life. The tree itself had sprouted green thorns among its blacken branches. The growth was so fast I could hear the wood groan under the strain. The thorns extended, growing thick and plump, glinting wetly in the sunlight.
With a gesture of Rinoa's hand, the fragile branches shattered with a thunderous boom. The fruit and wood fell to the ground as the few stout branches that had withstood the blast sputtered alight. Rinoa picked up one of the thorns and bit into it. The green thing nearly exploded with juice.
I trotted up and sniffed at one of the fruits. "What did you do?" I asked. They smelled vaguely of fermented vegetables.
"Magic." She chuckled, biting the top off one and squeezing the gooey pulp inside into Tack's waiting mouth. "All House Morganna's apprentices are responsible for a garden. You learn a few things about plants."
To watch Tack's tail, the pods contained either pure sugar or ice cream. I crunched one experimentally. It was wet with a gummy skin, like a fruit snack with sugary syrup, but the syrup tasted like kale.
I ate about twelve. Gulped them down as if they'd been fish scattered on a dock. There's simply a point where the taste of one's food becomes irrelevant.
***
It might have been two days or perhaps two weeks but eventually the fiery vegetation thickened and the ground beneath my pads solidified into soil. Some patches were so large and so hot that we had to go around them to avoid getting our hides cooked. Even Rudy panted from the heat given off by the vegetation and animals, which, excepting the smaller slithering cousins of the big worm that wove among exposed tree roots, all wore flame as if it were fur. Beneath the flaming canopy were a bewildering variety of body types, from the horse things that hung out under the huge inferno trees, to tiny fire mites that really seemed to enjoy perching on my whiskers until they burnt through them. Rudy served as a fire crew for Tack and I, dashing from one to another and squirting the little buggers with thorn juice wherever they landed. I began to understand why the pair had opted for banishment in the desert. In a forest of flame, you didn't dare sleep.
A caw of alarm followed by the flapping of wings that didn't carry flame was the first indication we were getting close to the Blackwings. The gale force winds allowed me to identify just who'd spotted us. The trees in front of us flared into raging infernos that blackened the remnants of my poor whiskers before I could backpedal to a point that hadn't been heated beyond the ignition temperature of my dry fur.
"Well, this is fine welcome!" Rudy shouted over the howl of the wind.
"She uh, -promised to kill us if she ever saw our faces again." Tack's singed ears looked as if they might melt off his head.
The pattern of wind wasn't directed at us, but around us, fueling the flaming bushes and trapping us in the eye of Dorothy's windstorm.
I looked to Rinoa. "How long can she keep this up?"
"Several hours if she needs to!" Rinoa had her hands in the ground, digging out a circle. "She's got an endless supply of hot air with or without magic. Distract her for a few moments!" Tack joined her on the other side of the circle, and the pair closed their eyes.
I turned back to the blaze. With dust pelting my eyes and nose, I could only see outlines and brightness though my nictitating membranes. The flames between two trees parted to admit a figure that shined with the blue of a channeled anchor. It didn't appear diplomacy was going to be an option. Last time we met, Dorothy had thrown me down a hallway with a stab of her finger, and getting flung into a burning bush was going to hurt a whole hell of a lot worse than smacking into a locker.
"Rudy, do you remember the Dragon Geronimo?"
"What? Oh, hells yeah." I felt him seize hold the scruff of my neck. "Roger dodger."
I charged straight at her with a snarl of fury, then sprang to the side to dodge the massive gusts she hurled at me like invisible dodgeballs. I zigged and zagged around the barrage of wind. Even if I hadn't been able to see the energy propelling the air at me, her flinging arms telegraphed what was coming perfectly well. Rudy and I closed on her. She tried to anticipate where I would dodge to, working in feints into her kung-fu wind dance. The howl of the winds that trapped us here began to fade as I forced her attention onto me.
"Get ready," I growled, and I felt the squirrel set his legs for a jump. I charged for her, and this time she responded with a wide gust of wind sure to catch me no matter which way I dodged. The wave of energy rushed forward, and I leapt straight up, hurling myself fifteen feet into the air.
"Geronimo!" Rudy screeched at the top of my arc. He dashed over my head and flung himself off my nose, limbs outstretched like a skydiver. He sailed. A look of panic spread across D
orothy’s face a she desperately tried to shield herself from the oncoming rodent projectile. She had no time to focus and let her windblast out from her body, pushing Rudy off-course. Rudy tumbled out of the air, landing on his feet with an aggressive chitter.
Her attention on Rudy, I landed without worry and charged around to her other side. Faced with two targets, her aura flared as the wind erupting from her redoubled. The wind struck but didn't knock me down. Rudy just flattened himself against the sand, still crawling toward her exposed ankles.
With a cry of pure frustration, the transformative foci on her collar flared, and in a blur of black feathers she took flight.
A violent stream of water knocked the bird out of the air and sent her crashing into the branches of a fire tree with a squawk and a shower of feathers, The bird expanding back into a woman just before the crash of impact.
I turned to find Rinoa and Tack with spookily identical grins. Rinoa clutched what appeared to be a firehose that pulsed the green of a summoned object. The force of the water pinned Dorothy to the trunk of the now-extinguished tree.
"Yield, Dorothy!" Rinoa demanded of her former Cabalmate as she steadily walking closer.
Dorothy could do nothing but shield her face with her arms from the torrent of water. "I yield! I yield!"
"Formally now!" Rinoa scolded, easing up on the water pressure. If the girl was tortured with guilt over Neelius' death, the apparent rivalry between her and Dorothy had utterly suppressed it.
"You traitorous bit- Blurbleburble." Rinoa's water washed the insult right out of Dorothy's mouth. Dorothy blocked the stream with a hand and spat out a mouthful water. "I, Dorothy Chambers, yield to you, Rinoa. I fucking yield!"
Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2) Page 24