by R D Martin
The dog howled at the painful attack but, otherwise unaffected, continued to fight until sharp daggers pierced its back and sides as the snake’s maw clamped down, lifting it high and tossing it into the air. The dog slammed into the ceiling, and before it could hit the floor, the snake snatched it out of the air. Kicking and clawing, it was no match for the fanged beast as the serpent started swallowing it alive.
Engrossed in its meal, the serpent paid no attention as Cat, bloodied and wounded, dragged itself away from the elevator bank.
Torn between getting to her hurt familiar and staying as far away from the horned serpent as possible, Bella scooted across the floor, trying to keep as low as possible. By the time she made it to Cat’s side, her familiar’s normal had size returned. Sliding her hands beneath him, she lifted the animal and scurried as fast as she could toward the ruined front doors and the street outside.
The moment her feet hit dry pavement, both she and William sped off as fast as their legs could move. After putting a few blocks behind her, she turned down a blind alley and ducked behind a large green Dumpster. If something was still following them, at least she’d be able to see it before it saw them.
Sliding her back down the rough stone wall, she ignored her own pain as she took stock of Cat’s. His hind legs hung limp in her arms and his sodden fur did nothing to hide the rents and gouges in his skin.
“Cat? Cat? You okay?” she asked in a pleading voice, though she knew how stupid the question was. As long as she’d owned the familiar, she'd never seen it hurt. The magic extending their lives protected them against most ills and gave them a miraculous healing ability, but the gouges in his side weren’t closing.
“I’ve, I’ve got to…” she started. The dirty alley started blurring in her vision as everything she’d been feeling came to a head. Wiping the impending tears from her eyes, she began tracing a healing rune in her cat’s wet fur. It wouldn’t hold the shape long, but she wouldn’t need a lot of time. Whispering beneath her breath, she fed energy into the hasty rune.
She wasn’t sure it would even work. Familiars were magic sinks, created to absorb wild magic. She’d never heard of someone using a spell to heal one before, but she couldn’t sit and do nothing. Magic flared bright for a moment before sinking into Cat’s dark fur. Holding her breath, she hoped for some sign the spell worked.
“Bella? It’s okay, Bella.” William’s words cut through her tears and the knot of emotions crowding out everything in her world but her and her oldest friend. There was nothing okay here.
“No,” she whispered, not turning her attention away from the cat. “No, it’s not okay. But it will be. I… I have power. I have magic. It will be okay.” She could hear the rising hysteria in her own voice but didn’t care. Again the magic flared bright against the familiar’s black coat and again died just as quickly.
“Bella, we have to go.” He was trying to keep his voice calm and smooth, but it irritated her like a fly buzzing just out of reach. He wasn’t about to lose his oldest friend. He wasn’t about to lose anything. It was his fault this was happening. He’d made her go to the party. He’d been lying to her from the beginning. Was being rescued by him at the club even an accident? Maybe he’d planned that too. What did he want with her?
Something snapped and everything she’d been feeling, every swirling mixed-up emotion, boiled over and all she knew was she wanted, no, needed to get away. To get away from the monsters chasing her, to get away from William, to get away from everything.
Pushing herself off the dirty ground, she held her palm out toward William and shouted as loud as she could, feeding the protection spell with everything she had. The warding spell flared to life and a gleaming white bubble formed around her, expanding so fast it pushed everything away from her at speed.
William didn’t have time to react as the magic lifted him from his feet and tossed him across the alley like a rag doll. Bouncing off the opposite wall with the breath knocked from his lungs, the last thing William saw as the spinning world around him went dark was Bella rushing from the alley, cradling her dying familiar.
Chapter 21
One piece of chicken, put the bread roll on top, next plate. The repetitive action was comforting in some small way. As each person in the food line received a portion, he or she moved on, giving way to the next. There was no need to think, and for that she was grateful.
She’d run to the vet’s office as fast as she could. She’d never been inside before, though she passed by every morning on the way to the metro, but she must have looked like she’d been through a battlefield because the receptionist tried to get her to go to a hospital herself. She’d screamed at the woman it was Cat, not her, needing help. They took her familiar in the back and had her fill out paperwork.
A little over three hours later, a doctor came to speak with her. It would be touch and go, they insisted, and the next couple of days would determine if Cat lived or died. The best thing she could do, the doctor said, was go home and wait.
Yeah, as if going home right now was an option.
With nowhere left to turn, she’d called Karina for help, feeding her pink-haired friend a line about her apartment being broken into and her cat hurt. Bella hated lying, but telling her the truth wouldn’t have worked either.
So here she stood, freshly showered and wearing a set of her friend’s slightly too small clothes, passing out chicken and bread rolls while trying not to think.
“All right, girl. Time for a break.”
The southern drawl in her friend’s voice brought her out of her mindless trance. Looking up, she saw Karina in her white apron holding two plates. The growl from her stomach reminded her it had been some time since she’d eaten. Nodding, she passed her tongs to another volunteer and followed.
“So, spill,” her friend said as the two sat across from each other. “What’s really going on? And don’t give me any crap about a break-in. You had so much blood on you, when I picked you up, you looked like a zombie. No one breaks into an apartment just to kill a cat, so what’s up? What trouble are you really in?”
“I don’t… Well,” she started, picking at bits of her food. What could she say? Oh, sorry to worry you, but I got in a fight with supernatural creatures and lost. No biggie. Like she’d believe that. “It’s just, well, after William left I got—”
“Who’s William?”
“Hum? Oh. He’s… he’s a guy from work.”
“Not the guy you’ve been crushing on, is he? I thought you said he was out of your league.”
“Yeah, uh, him. Well, anyway…”
“You two hooked up, didn’t you?”
“What? No. We didn’t.”
“Sure?” The sideways glance on her friend’s face said she already knew the truth and was waiting for the juicy details.
“We didn’t hook up.”
“But you wanted to, right?”
“That’s not the point, all right?” She could feel the warm tingle of a blush creeping up her face. If she told Karina about waking in his bed, she’d never hear the end of it.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. So if you two weren’t hooking up…” A slight pause showed she didn’t believe it for a second. “What were you doing?”
“Well, actually we met at a club and…”
A crash from across the room saved her from continuing. Both of them turned toward the source of the noise. Standing in the middle of the food line was an older, unshaven man. His bald head glinted in the fluorescent light, while his white beard stood out in contrast to his dirty coat. His plate lay on the floor in pieces, smashed in his outburst, and he waved his arms about while shouting at the volunteer in front of him.
“Oh God. Not him again,” said Karina.
“Who’s he?”
“Don’t know his name yet, but he started coming by a couple of days ago. Didn’t pay him any attention at first, no different from anyone else, but he started yelling at a volunteer and made the kid cry. I told him not to come back
if he was going to act like an ass, but we can’t refuse to feed him. Same old, same old.” Picking up her plate, she handed it to a passing volunteer and hurried off to deal with the situation.
Bella, alone with her thoughts again, looked around the crowded room. Even after her worst weeks at the office, she’d always looked forward to coming here, to helping where she could. It gave her a lift to see the smile on faces of people who might be having their first meal in days. There was always good conversation and most of the people here were polite. And even though she’d felt heartbroken knowing she couldn’t do more, at least she’d known she could do something.
But everything seemed different now. It was still the same people with the same dirty faces. The same air of hopelessness hung around the diners as always, but it felt on a visceral level as if she were one of them. As if she’d lost everything, and it was time to give up too.
It’s what these people had done, right? Given up? Sure, most of them hadn’t chosen to be in this situation. Looking around the room, she could recount the stories of a lot of the regulars.
The old woman with the thin scraggly hair in the corner. She’d been a devoted housewife for nearly sixty years. When her husband died, and having no children to help her, she’d tried to make a go of it but found it overwhelming. When the market crashed and her late husband’s company went under, she didn’t have his pension money coming in anymore, and with their meager savings gone and credit cards maxed, she’d sold their home to pay for everything. Homeless, penniless, and without a work history or family, she’d been living on the street for the past three years.
Bella spotted a younger man not far away. African-American with a thick scraggly beard and a camouflage jacket, the man was a regular for at least five years according to Karina. He was a veteran returning from some war overseas with post-traumatic stress disorder. Discharged from the military, he’d tried to transition back to civilian life but found it too difficult. His wife divorced him when he couldn’t hold on to a regular job and took their children halfway across the country. He still had his VA benefits, which was more than a lot of the others had, but it wasn’t the VA’s job to find him a new place to live or work.
The room was filled with stories like these and she'd always worked hard to help, but now it almost felt as though she was right where she belonged. She shivered at the thought but wasn’t sure she had any more fight left to give. Maybe quitting now, giving up like the rest of the people here, was the only option left.
Watching Karina gesture animatedly at the obstinate newcomer as she tried to convince him of the error of his ways, it dawned on Bella her life was definitely not following any plan she’d made. In a way, she was no different from any of the people surrounding her. She’d wanted to help people, to make their lives better even if only in some small way, but the only thing she did was sit in her small cubicle at a job she didn’t like and take orders from an evil, sadistic boss. There was no getting around it. Her life was horrible. And the worst thing, if she was honest with herself, was she’d chosen it.
It wasn’t one decision landing her in this rut either. It was hundreds of small choices, small decisions made for her by everyone else because she’d refused to stand up for herself. Her bosses, her neighbor, even Karina had made decisions for her from the start.
With that realization her skin tingled and she swayed in her seat as though she’d been blasted with a thousand small summer breezes. Everyone else was deciding for her, choosing what she would do and when she would do it. Even Cat, though the thought of her familiar made the ball of ice in the pit of her stomach seem larger, had been doing it.
Her nostrils flared as she let the anger inside percolate and boil. It was her life to live and it should damn well be her choice on how to live it.
Pushing herself to her feet, she stalked away from the table and through the kitchen, ignoring the startled looks of everyone. It was time she decided for herself and fought for what she believed in. She would not let anyone or anything decide for her again. It was time she stood up for herself.
Chapter 22
Even in her anger, it was easy to decide she needed to take the reins of her life in hand, but which direction to move was the question. She knew she needed to rescue Samantha, but doing so meant stopping whatever Chryso was planning. But since she didn’t know what that was, her first step was out. That meant confronting the only person she knew who might have answers, her manager, Jonathan Browser.
Entering the building and walking through security had been easy. She'd been working here long enough that most of the security personnel recognized her as she walked by. Nothing out of the ordinary here, she thought as she passed her access badge over the turnstile scanner. Just a pissed-off witch going up to curse her boss. If security thought anything of her unicorn backpack, they chose not to say anything.
Taking the elevator up, she tried not to concentrate on either the fight ahead of her or the fact that she would be out of a job, though knowing she’d never fetch Browser’s coffee again made it a little easier.
With a ding, the car slowed to a halt and its steel doors slid open on smooth tracks. Her heart pounded in her chest as she crossed the threshold into the sea of office gray cubicles inhabited by the soulless drones she’d spent the past few years calling coworkers. Tightening her fists, she put on as confident an air as she could and started the slog to Browser’s office, winding her way through the maze of gray felt walls and cheap clapboard desks.
Most of the people she passed ignored her, and the few who tried to catch her attention, she ignored. She was on a mission and wouldn't let something like niceties sidetrack her. Approaching Browser's office, she heard her name called over the din of hushed conversation and clacking of computer keys. The voice sent a shiver down her spine and made her insides squelch like Jell-O™ as she turned.
Standing in the break room doorway, doing a very respectable impression of either a very fat door or a very wide wall, was the man she'd come to see.
“Ms. Flores,” shouted Browser again. His scratchy voice and deep bellow cut through the normal background noises of an office and caused more than a few heads to pop up from cubicles like groundhogs. Spotting Browser and the subject of his ire, those heads disappeared just as quickly, determined to keep their manager’s attention off themselves. Browser, seeing he had both her and the entire office’s attention, smiled with a malicious grin that split his engorged features. “It’s well past lunchtime, you’re only now showing up to work, and you’re not dressed to company standards. I think it’s time we discussed your future prospects here. I will not tolerate this type of behavior from any employee. We have warned you repeatedly, and now we need to have a little discussion, just you, me, and Human Resources. My office, now.” The man turned and strode up the wide pathway to his corner office, ignoring the looks and stares he’d been more than happy to cause. A dull susurrus of voices arose in his wake.
Following the man to his office, she let the door close behind her as he eased his rotund girth into the large chair behind the desk, and then she dropped the unicorn backpack from her shoulder to the gray carpet next to the door. Unlike the sparse setting outside the room, Browser’s office was not only spacious, but decorated. A chair large enough to fit his massive size sat behind an even larger desk piled with paperwork and small stone and glass trophies. It looked as though the man wanted the world to know that he was the best at something, though from her vantage she couldn’t tell what. In front of the desk were two brown leather armchairs that paired with the executive chair. This was an office, both in size and furnishing, that belonged to an officer, not a middle management nobody.
“So, Ms. Flores. Do you have anything to say to excuse yourself before I call Human Resources and have you ejected from the building?” It was clear by his tone that while he was expecting a certain amount of pleading and simpering, there was no acceptable excuse.
“Actually, yes. I want to know where he’s keepin
g the kids.”
“What kids? What are you on about?”
“Where are they?”
“What are you… No, you know what? Never mind. It’s clear you’ve no excuse for being late, and what’s more, it’s obvious you’ve lost what little respect you’ve had for the company. Yes, I think it’s time we called security and let you go.”
Reaching for the phone on his desk, his chubby fingers stopped in midair as a white blast of frozen air hit the black box, shooting it across the desk to shatter against the wall. As the broken plastic came to rest, the loudest sound in the room was the tink of icicles formed by the blast.
“So, it was you,” Browser said, lowering his hand to his side.
“Where are they? Where are the kids?”
“You know, I wasn’t sure, not at first. You were always so quiet, so easy to push around.” Pushing himself up from his seat, Browser never took his sunken eyes off her. “I even told Master it couldn’t be you. I said you were nothing but a mouse, small and scared of your own shadow. Oh, Master was so mad when you stole from him.”
“Where are they?” she demanded. It felt as if the situation was slipping from her control. “I’m warning you. Tell me where they are and I won’t hurt you.” Holding her hands apart and flexing her fingers, she muttered words that could only be heard and forgotten. Power flowed between her hands as electric arcs jumped back and forth, and she hoped it looked impressive enough that it would give him pause.
“And now you’re here,” he said, moving from around the desk with a grace she would not have thought possible. His features began shifting as he stood opposite her. Standing straight, he still looked like the man she’d suffered under her entire tenure here, but he now seemed full of a power she’d never seen before. “Imagine how he will reward me when I give you to him. Master will make you his plaything.”
Reaching a hand out, he touched a blank spot on the wall, rapping on it with a large gold ring. The white surface rippled and shook for a moment, as though it were a sheet hanging on a line blown by a soft breeze. The movement stopped as fast as it arose, and with a tearing sound that made her jump back from where she stood in the large office, a horizontal rent appeared in the air beneath his hand. As she watched, the tear rotated and solidified, revealing a brick room with black chains and manacles hanging from the wall.