“Sounds like a type of tea.”
He dramatically shakes his head and waves his hand at the same time. “How did I raise such an idiot?” he asks.
“Because you beat me more than you taught me.”
“I sacrificed the lives of many great and powerful people to bring that thing to me and of course it runs off and finds you, of all people.”
“So you were the one who summoned him.”
“I was, and did you see the strength it took? The lives it took for the spell to work? And instead of serving me it’s been what… your pet? Let’s just end this now. Silve,” he says, planning on putting me down on my knees.
When I remain standing, he stares at me in confusion and tries again.
“You tricky little asshole,” he says. “Let’s get this over with.”
He lifts his hand and starts whispering something, so I send fire careening toward him. With a wave of his hand my fire dissipates as I stare at him in disbelief.
This is not good, especially when I have an affinity for fire. That means the rest of my spells aren’t as powerful.
And that’s when he throws the fire back at me. I toss up a barrier but it slams into me so hard that I feel the heat hit my face.
My magic has grown so much since our last fight those hundreds of years ago. But it dwarfs in comparison to the magic he’s throwing at me. Every time I drop the barrier, he hits me with a different magical attack. It’s no longer just the magic of a mage, but all of the magic he’s stolen from the people he’s killed. And it’s nearly impossible for me to block it because I don’t know what to expect. The ground beneath me begins to move, and I realize that he has some type of earth magic as it crumbles, making me stagger.
Havoc drops down beside me before shifting and pulling me to him.
“Havoc… I can’t do this,” I realize.
“What?” he asks in shock.
“He’s too powerful. I’m draining my magic just blocking him.” I reach out for him and take his hand. “Havoc, will you please get everyone back? I’ll hold him off until you get them safely away. Please.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t leave you.”
“You have to.”
Something hits me so hard I’m thrown off my feet and slam into the ground. Havoc pulls me to my feet, and I throw up a barrier before we’re shoved down again.
“Fuck,” I say as my barrier shakes and cracks.
The barrier shatters and I’m hit with such a hard force that I’m thrown back, slamming into a tree.
Havoc leaps into a raven and rushes Geoff.
“Havoc, no!” I yell.
Menace yowls at me.
“Havoc, come back here.”
“No, I’ll keep him back long enough for you to get away. Push the others back.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Then why would you think I would ever leave you?”
Fuck.
Menace rears up and claws at my leg as he yowls again.
“Havoc, do you know what a tsumchi is?” I ask.
“A tsum… chi?” He’s quiet for a moment. “NO! That fucking cat?”
“What is it?” I ask.
“Shit!” he hisses as I see Geoff throw him back.
Quickly, I pick up Menace. I mean, if Geoff thought it was hilarious that I had no idea how to use the cat, then that clearly means he’s badass in some way. Magical, perhaps. Maybe he can eat this asshole. “Can you help me?”
And that’s when he bitch slaps me across the face.
“What the fuck?” I cry as I feel blood dripping down my face. “You’re evil!”
He ducks his head, almost tipping it down as I stare at him.
“Evil!”
He growls at me and tips his head again as I feel a fluctuation of his magic. I reach up and wipe the blood from my face as I stare at him and realize that I feel an influx of magic coming from the top of his head. Is that what he’s doing? Is he trying to perform a spell with me?
Well… what’s it hurt? He might eat me, I suppose, but at this point, I’m not sure it’ll matter.
I set my hand, wet with my blood, right on the top of his head. Strange magic I’ve never felt before hits me. Ancient magic wraps around mine and I immediately start to pull back, not trusting it, until I realize that it feels comfortable. It feels right. And it’s consuming me. Dark blue tendrils wrap around my red magic, weaving with it as I feel it invade my body. And then the magic begins to merge and it’s strange. I’ve boosted magic to work with others before, which is what I thought I was doing here. Should I stop it? What if I’m handing off my magic to this evil monster cat that I kind of like?
But somehow it feels familiar, and I know in the back of my mind that this might be the only opportunity any of us have to stop Geoff. So I take a deep breath and feed him my magic. I shove it all at him, giving him everything I have and praying this isn’t a mistake.
Menace jumps out of my hands as the spell ends and I realize that my magic feels different. When I reach out to the magic coming from Menace, my own magic feels like it’s overflowing.
Is this all my power? Is some of it Menace’s? Is this what it feels like when it reacts to him?
It swells up and spins around me, not out of control, though. I’ve never felt like I’m in so much control.
Suddenly a flash of light surrounds Menace as he pulls magic from me, but I have so much of it that I don’t even notice the difference in my body as the blinding light fades and I feel hot breath on me.
A lot of hot breath.
Slowly, I look up as a huge head lowers down and golden eyes catch mine.
I stumble back as realization dawns on me, but he moves back into my space, large red-scaled foot reaching toward me. When he sets it down, the ground shakes as I realize that what is standing before me is no longer a small cat from hell, but a dragon.
A motherfucking dragon.
“Dragons aren’t real,” I whisper.
He tilts his head in Geoff’s direction and I can feel Menace there in my mind. Not words, necessarily, but I can understand his intentions. And his intentions involve maiming Geoff.
“O-Okay! Yeah… let’s… do this?” I ask, a bit uncertain. I kind of feel like we’re going to do whatever the dragon wants to do, and it doesn’t matter what my plan is.
He lowers his head and I’m confused until I realize that the dragon wants me to climb onto his back.
The dragon.
“Menace?” I ask.
He swings his head over to me, eyes vibrant against the red scales.
“Don’t tell Havoc he’s right about dragons.” As if I could hide the ginormous dragon from Havoc who is less than fifty feet away.
Menace huffs and little puffs of smoke poof out.
“And please don’t eat me,” I say as I climb onto his back, but I know he won’t because somehow we’re connected, and I know that he’s only been able to take this form with the help of my magic.
Once on his scaly back, I don’t know what to hang on to since he doesn’t have a mane like a horse, but he does have pointed spikes that race down his neck that I grip tightly.
“What the fuck are you riding?” Havoc yells.
“It’s a horse,” I say.
“It’s a goddamn dragon! You made him your familiar?”
“Wait… what?” That can’t be true, right? Mages don’t have familiars, witches do, and I’m definitely not a witch.
“Oh my god, you don’t even know what’s going on, do you?”
“Uh… yes, we’re going to eat Geoff… from atop my horse.”
An arrow whizzes by me, startling me and reminding me that we’re not out of the woods yet. Death could still be on the horizon.
And that’s the moment that Menace leaps into the air. His wings beat hard against the wind as he blows fire down, raining it on the illusioned fighters below. What makes their illusion fail quite quickly is the fire eating through their clothes as they run and s
cream in terror.
I have always had an affinity for fire, so I probably could help instead of sitting pretty on my new dragon buddy… I mean horse.
I call the name of fire and push it toward them, taking the fire Menace laid out and escalating it. Even if I can’t see my enemy because of all of Geoff’s illusions, a field of fire will surely take most out.
Menace drops onto the ground feet from Geoff who looks enraged.
“You dare bond with him? You can’t control so much power, Miles. You are weak and useless, and your demon and this tsumchi will see through this façade you wear.”
“You can degrade me all you want, but they both chose me, not you.”
Geoff throws his magic at us but Menace lunges for him as I call upon every ounce of my magic, every sliver of it, and pour it right into destroying Geoff’s body, soul, and magic.
The world lights up in red as the magic slams into Geoff’s barrier while he throws his arms up and fights to keep it intact. I pour my power into it as I see his barrier begin to break and the magic begin to wane.
Geoff’s screaming something, but I can’t hear it over the roar of the fire. The moment the barrier breaks, Geoff tries to leave his body, but that’s when I notice another person rushing to our left. I drop the magic, but Enzo doesn’t seem to mind racing across the burning earth.
Etienne reaches a hand out, and before the soul can find a new body, he pulls it to him and then I see the magic that made up Geoff disappear.
Etienne stares at his hand for a moment before dropping it and turning to me. “I like your horse.”
I pet Menace’s neck before sliding off his back. “Thanks. He’s a little temperamental, though.”
With a flash of magic, the dragon disappears, leaving in its place a little red monster cat.
Havoc drops from the sky, crushing blackened brush when he lands. He grabs onto me, squeezing me against him. His face is bleeding, but his heart is still beating strong, and that’s all that matters.
“You did it,” he says.
“We did it. I couldn’t have done it without every single one of you.”
He pulls back. “I would like an apology.”
My eyebrows furrow. “For?”
He waves at the cat. “Dragon! I told you dragons are real!”
I pick Menace up who looks angry that I disrupted his grooming session. He was really fixated on his shoulders, the area I would have been sitting on when he was in his much superior form. “This… is a cat.”
“It’s a tsumchi, a mage’s familiar.”
I feel very suspicious about this whole thing. “How have I never heard of this?”
“The last one I saw was about seven hundred years ago,” Havoc explains. “They became folklore and they don’t generally shift into dragons. Like generally they have a superior form but a dragon? How do you get all the cool stuff? I want a dragon. Will you let me ride on your back?” Havoc asks as he reaches out to Menace.
Menace hisses and smacks Havoc’s hand.
“He’s pure evil. Pure evil,” Havoc says while he makes a wringing motion with his hands, like he’s miming strangling the cat.
I grin at him. “I seem to have a knack for acquiring evil things. Somehow they become my favorites.”
“So…” Havoc says as he looks around himself at the decimated land, burned to pieces by my fire. “How are we going to explain this?”
“Just like… kick a little dirt over it. No one will notice.”
“You did go a little excessive,” Etienne says as I turn to look at some of the crew who are making their way toward us. Iya is currently trying to smack out fire that had grabbed onto the leg of his pants as he moved toward us. When Evan reaches me first, I turn to him.
“Is Baron alright?” I ask.
He gives me a relieved smile. “I believe he’ll be fine. I helped Badrick get him to Leo who was working on healing him.”
“Oh, thank god,” I say. “And everyone else?”
“For the most part everyone will be alright, I believe. Wounded but happy to be alive,” he assures me.
That’s when Iya reaches me.
“The Penetrators are here to…” Iya looks around. “Oh… are you done already? We just got here. Iya was ready to tear off heads and devour testicles!”
Sam turns to him in clear concern. “Do you… have you… you know what? I don’t want to know. Please…”
“What?” Iya asks.
“You’re vegetarian, right?” Sam asks.
“Yes! I think. I don’t know. What is this?” He gets distracted by something shiny, so I turn to the rest, happy to see that everyone is there, although some look a little rough or bloody.
“Come here, all of you,” I say as I hold my arms out and just try to force them all into this huge group hug. I’m not sure this is what people usually do after a battle, but it’s a requirement now.
Epilogue
“This is the life,” Havoc says as he raises his hands up to help emphasize his point. “I never knew Disney could be so fun!”
“Fun Disney” is currently walking from the car to the entrance.
“I mean, look! We don’t even have to wait in line!” he exclaims.
I look at the parents grabbing their children and pulling them away out of horror of my menacing man. Havoc seems to think this means that they’re giving him their place in line and struts right up to the front ticket booth. He hands the tickets over to a man who assesses us.
“No cats allowed.”
“It’s not a cat,” I say.
“It’s a dragon,” Havoc says helpfully.
“And I’m a merman,” the ticket man says.
I pick up Menace and, while looking the man in the eyes, put an illusion on the cat. “Poof. All gone. Now can we go in?”
His eyes narrow. “Where’d the cat go?”
“There is no cat,” I say. “I poofed it gone. If you don’t take our tickets, I’ll poof us gone too and just wander in.”
He looks at us suspiciously. “You can’t. There are sensors.”
What looks like a manager rushes over to us. “What’s going on?”
“This man won’t let me and my familiar inside because he’s classist,” I say.
“Miles!” the woman says, and I realize I recognize her from assisting her with some charm work a few years ago. She cringes a little when she sees who is beside me. “And your demon.”
Havoc grabs my hand and makes a show of kissing it even though he probably doesn’t even remember this woman. If he did, he’d realize she had no interest in me in the slightest.
“Oh no…” she whispers. “What happened?”
“To what?” I ask.
She waves at Havoc holding my hand.
“He just acts ridiculous in front of everyone else, but he’s a good guy.”
She nods slowly. “Okay…” She’s clearly not convinced. “Let’s check out your tickets. And for your inconvenience, I’ve gotten you some more fast passes seeing as it looks like you’re planning on cutting in line anyway.” She takes my tickets and gets us through and on our way.
I drop the illusion on Menace, so he climbs onto my shoulder. Thankfully, I’d had some of my clothes modified so I can’t feel his claws slicing into my shoulder, and it’s easier for him to hang on to.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Havoc yells and I turn quickly to see what has caused such alarm. When I see that it’s just a man in a Goofy costume, I eye Havoc.
“You’re seriously scared of that?”
“Nicco should work here. He’s as creepy as these costumed fucks,” Havoc hisses.
“You can’t say that word here. There are children around.”
He looks around him and I realize that my statement is wrong. After his outburst, the children have pretty much scattered, giving us a wide berth as we make our way through.
“This is so much better than battling evil dead men,” Havoc decides.
I nod, agreeing with him far to
o much. After the fight, Etienne assured us that Geoff’s soul was right where it belonged and that the people he killed were making sure he never found his way out again. While we can’t be sure we stopped everyone that day, we know that without Geoff, I will crush them with just a look. Or my dragon.
I’ve spent many nights researching mage familiars after that, but sadly, there’s not much information to be found. So everything is now a guessing game. What I have learned is that he’s as stubborn as Havoc and won’t shift into a dragon when you want to be cool and have everyone look at you in wonder. Instead, he just hisses and yowls and flicks his tail back and forth. Then he shifts into a dragon as soon as everyone’s gone just to spite you.
Even so, I’m pretty sure he loves me.
When Johnson told me he wasn’t interested in ruling the district, Evan and I decided that we’d merge the two districts and run them together, with the council’s permission, of course. Once it was granted, I left him in charge of most things, and he just pulls me out when he needs someone threatened or help with some of the bigger decisions. Honestly, it’s much better than me trying to run anything. I’ve always been better at ruling things from the background and lighting things on fire.
“What do you want to do first?” I ask Havoc.
He looks over at me and grins. “I don’t even care. I’m just happy to spend a day with you where we don’t have to question who might threaten our lives. I could do anything… oh my god, look at that chocolate!” He rushes off, dragging me after him. “Forget all that weird gross spilling of emotions. Look at all this chocolate.” Then he smiles at the woman at the front of the line. “If I buy your chocolate, can I cut?”
She instantly smiles back. “Of course.”
It wouldn’t be Havoc if he didn’t have the attention span of a toddler. But the awesome thing about our relationship is that he doesn’t need to give me all those ooey gooey feelings and words filled with love for me to know how much he cares about me.
So I wait on the sidelines and smile at the absolute delight on his face as he comes rushing over, laden down with chocolate. “I got you this,” he says as he holds out a chocolate sundae and is that a… donut on top?
Familiar Beginnings Page 19